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• Security Access Control With Solaris Virtualization

  - by Thierry Manfe-Oracle

  Numerous Solaris customers consolidate multiple applications or servers on a single platform. The resulting configuration consists of many environments hosted on a single infrastructure and security constraints sometimes exist between these environments. Recently, a customer consolidated many virtual machines belonging to both their Intranet and Extranet on a pair of SPARC Solaris servers interconnected through Infiniband. Virtual Machines were mapped to Solaris Zones and one security constraint was to prevent SSH connections between the Intranet and the Extranet. This case study gives us the opportunity to understand how the Oracle Solaris Network Virtualization Technology —a.k.a. Project Crossbow— can be used to control outbound traffic from Solaris Zones. Solaris Zones from both the Intranet and Extranet use an Infiniband network to access a ZFS Storage Appliance that exports NFS shares. Solaris global zones on both SPARC servers mount iSCSI LU exported by the Storage Appliance.  Non-global zones are installed on these iSCSI LU. With no security hardening, if an Extranet zone gets compromised, the attacker could try to use the Storage Appliance as a gateway to the Intranet zones, or even worse, to the global zones as all the zones are reachable from this node. One solution consists in using Solaris Network Virtualization Technology to stop outbound SSH traffic from the Solaris Zones. The virtualized network stack provides per-network link flows. A flow classifies network traffic on a specific link. As an example, on the network link used by a Solaris Zone to connect to the Infiniband, a flow can be created for TCP traffic on port 22, thereby a flow for the ssh traffic. A bandwidth can be specified for that flow and, if set to zero, the traffic is blocked. Last but not least, flows are created from the global zone, which means that even with root privileges in a Solaris zone an attacker cannot disable or delete a flow. With the flow approach, the outbound traffic of a Solaris zone is controlled from outside the zone. Schema 1 describes the new network setting once the security has been put in place. Here are the instructions to create a Crossbow flow as used in Schema 1 : (GZ)# zoneadm -z zonename halt ...halts the Solaris Zone. (GZ)# flowadm add-flow -l iblink -a transport=TCP,remote_port=22 -p maxbw=0 sshFilter  ...creates a flow on the IB partition "iblink" used by the zone to connect to the Infiniband.  This IB partition can be identified by intersecting the output of the commands 'zonecfg -z zonename info net' and 'dladm show-part'.  The flow is created on port 22, for the TCP traffic with a zero maximum bandwidth.  The name given to the flow is "sshFilter". (GZ)# zoneadm -z zonename boot  ...restarts the Solaris zone now that the flow is in place.Solaris Zones and Solaris Network Virtualization enable SSH access control on Infiniband (and on Ethernet) without the extra cost of a firewall. With this approach, no change is required on the Infiniband switch. All the security enforcements are put in place at the Solaris level, minimizing the impact on the overall infrastructure. The Crossbow flows come in addition to many other security controls available with Oracle Solaris such as IPFilter and Role Based Access Control, and that can be used to tackle security challenges.

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• 2012&ndash;The End Of The World Review

  - by Tim Murphy

  The end of the world must be coming.  Not because the Mayan calendar says so, but because Microsoft is innovating more than Apple.  It has been a crazy year, with pundits declaring not that the end of the world is coming, but that the end of Microsoft is coming.  Let’s take a look at what 2012 has brought us. The beginning of year is a blur.  I managed to get to TechEd in June which was the first time that I got to take a deep dive into Windows 8 and many other things that had been announced in 2011.  The promise I saw in these products was really encouraging.  The thought of being able to run Windows 8 from a thumb drive or have Hyper-V native to the OS told me that at least for developers good things were coming. I finally got my feet wet with Windows 8 with the developer preview just prior to the RTM.  While the initial experience was a bit of a culture shock I quickly grew to love it.  The media still seems to hold little love for the “reimagined” platform, but I think that once people spend some time with it they will enjoy the experience and what the FUD mongers say will fade into the background.  With the launch of the OS we finally got a look at the Surface.  I think this is a bold entry into the tablet market.  While I wish it was a little more affordable I am already starting to see them in the wild being used by non-techies. I was waiting for Windows Phone 8 at least as much as Windows 8, probably more.  The new hardware, better marketing and new OS features I think are going to finally push us to the point of having a real presence in the smartphone market.  I am seeing a number of iPhone users picking up a Nokia Lumia 920 and getting rid of their brand new iPhone 5.  The only real debacle that I saw around the launch was when they held back the SDK from general developers. Shortly after the launch events came Build 2012.  I was extremely disappointed that I didn’t make it to this year’s Build.  Even if they weren’t handing out Surface and Lumia devices I think the atmosphere and content were something that really needed to be experience in person.  Hopefully there will be a Build next year and it’s schedule will be announced soon.  As you would expect Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 development were the mainstay of the conference, but improvements in Azure also played a key role.  This movement of services to the cloud will continue and we need to understand where it best fits into the solutions we build. Lower on the radar this year were Office 2013, SQL Server 2012, and Windows Server 2012.  Their glory stolen by the consumer OS and hardware announcements, these new releases are no less important.  Companies will see significant improvements in performance and capabilities if they upgrade.  At TechEd they had shown some of the new features of Windows Server 2012 around hardware integration and Hyper-V performance which absolutely blew me away.  It is our job to bring these important improvements to our company’s attention so that they can be leveraged. Personally, the consulting business in 2012 was the busiest it has been in a long time.  More companies were ready to attack new projects after several years of putting them on the back burner.  I also worked to bring back momentum to the Chicago Information Technology Architects Group.  Both the community and clients are excited about the new technologies that have come out in 2012 and now it is time to deliver. What does 2013 have in store.  I don’t see it be quite as exciting as 2012.  Microsoft will be releasing the Surface Pro in January and it seems that we will see more frequent OS update for Windows.  There are rumors that we may see a Surface phone in 2013.  It has also been announced that there will finally be a rework of the XBox next fall.  The new year will also be a time for us in the development community to take advantage of these new tools and devices.  After all, it is what we build on top of these platforms that will attract more consumers and corporations to using them. Just as I am 99.999% sure that the world is not going to end this year, I am also sure that Microsoft will move on and that most of this negative backlash from the media is actually fear and jealousy.  In the end I think we have a promising year ahead of us. del.icio.us Tags: Microsoft,Pundits,Mayans,Windows 8,Windows Phone 8,Surface

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• Windows 8/Surface Lunch Event Summary

  - by Tim Murphy

  Today was a big day for Microsoft with two separate launch event.  The first for Windows 8 and all of it’s hardware partners.  The second was specifically to introduce the Microsoft Windows 8 Surface tablet.  Below are some of the take-aways I got from the webcasts. Windows 8 Launch The three general area that Microsoft focused on were the release of the OS itself, the public unveiling of the Windows Store and the new devices available from its hardware partners. The release of the OS focused on the fact that it will be available at mid-night tonight for both new PCs and for upgrades.  I can’t say that this interested me that much since it was already known to most people.  I think what they did show well was how easy the OS really is to use. The Windows Store is also not a new feature to those of us who have been running the pre-release versions of Windows 8 or have owned Windows Phone 7 for the past 2 years.  What was interesting is that the Windows Store launches with more apps available than any other platforms store at their respective launch.  I think this says a lot about how Microsoft focuses on the ability of developers to create software and make it available.  The of course were sure to emphasize that the Windows Store has better monetary terms for developers than its competitors. The also showed off the fact that XBox Music streaming is available for to all Windows 8 user for free.  Couple this with the Bing suite of apps that give you news, weather, sports and finance right out of the box and I think most people will find the environment a joy to use. I think the hardware demo, while quick and furious, really show where Windows shine: CHOICE!  They made a statement that over 1000 devices have been certified for Windows 8.  They showed tablets, laptops, desktops, all-in-ones and convertibles.  Since these devices have industry standard connectors they give a much wider variety of accessories and devices that you can use with them. Steve Balmer then came on stage and tried to see how many times he could use the “magical”.  He focused on how the Windows 8 OS is designed to integrate with SkyDrive, Skype and Outlook.com.  He also enforced that they think Windows 8 is the best choice for the Enterprise when it comes to protecting data and integrating across devices including Windows Phone 8. With that we were left to wait for the second event of the day. Surface Launch The second event of the day started with kids with magnets.  Ok, they were adults, but who doesn’t like playing with magnets.  Steven Sinofsky detached and reattached the Surface keyboard repeatedly, clearly enjoying himself.  It turns out that there are 4 magnets in the cover, 2 for alignment and 2 as connectors. They then went to giving us the details on the display.  The 10.6” display is optically bonded to the case and is optimized to reduce glare.  I think this came through very well in the demonstrations. The properties of the case were also a great selling point.  The VaporMg allowed them to drop the device on stage, on purpose, and continue working.  Of course they had to bring out the skate boards made from Surface devices. “It just has to feel right” was the reason they gave for many of their design decisions from the weight and size of the device to the way the kickstand and camera work together.  While this gave you the feeling that the whole process was trial and error you could tell that a lot of science went into the specs.  This included making sure that the magnets were strong enough to hold the cover on and still have a 3 year old remove the cover without effort. I am glad that they also decided the a USB port would be part of the spec since it give so many options.  They made the point that this allows Surface to leverage over 420 million existing devices.  That works for me. The last feature that I really thought was important was the microSD port.  Begin stuck with the onboard memory has been an aggravation of mine with many of the devices in the market today. I think they did job of really getting the audience to understand why you want this platform and this particular device.  Using personal examples like creating a video of a birthday party and being in it or the fact that the device was being used to live blog the event and control the lights and presentation.  They showed very well that it was not only fun but very capable of getting real work done.  Handing out tablets to the crowd didn’t hurt either.  In the end I really wanted a Surface even though I really have no need for one on a daily basis.  Great job Microsoft! del.icio.us Tags: Windows 8,Win8,Windows 8 Luanch

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• singleton pattern in Windows Activation Service

  - by Joshua

  Hello I have a few WCF services that are currently being self hosted, in a very basic NT Service. I want to expand my application to add provisioning of WCF Services, and updates, as well as isolation (I want each WCF Service to be in its own AppDomain). These WCF Services contain logic that needs to be run on a regular basis, pinging the database, and getting information from external devices so that when a request comes in the data is readily available. I'm thinking about trying out Windows Activation Service, because i really like the provisioning, and isolation that comes with a managed services infrastructure. If I didn't use WAS I would essentially have to write the same code myself. From what I understand though WAS does not really support the model of having a service that is running before someone actually calls a method on the service. the article I read here MSDN Article Link states "That means in essence that out-of-the-box WAS hosting is not something that is really suited for sessionful or singleton services. It is more suitable for stateless per-call services." it does say that "Out of the box" so I'm wondering if anyone has used WAS to host a WCF service that really behaves more like an NT Service (starting and stopping independantly of having a method called upon it). Or any other ideas would be great. I was planning on writting this infrastructure myself, to host WCF services in a custom ServiceHost, and put their execution in a seporate AppDomain, as well as allow for provision of these services after initial installation, along with updates. However, I would MUCH MUCH MUCH rather not own that code if I don't have to. thanks Joshua

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• A business Case for Enterprise Python

  - by Srirangan

  Hi all, This will not be a "programming" question but more technology / platform related question. I'm trying to figure out whether Python can be a suitable Java alternative for enterprise / web applications. Which are the ideal cases where you would prefer to use Python instead of Java? How would a typical Python web application (databases/sessions/concurrency) perform as compared to a typical Java application? How do specific Python frameworks square up against Java based frameworks (Spring, SEAM, Grails etc.)? For businesses, switching from the Java infrastructure to a Python infrastructure .. is it too hard/expensive/resource intensive/not viable? Also shed some light on the business case for providing a Python + Google AppEngine based solution to the end customer. Will it be cost effective in an typical scenario? Sorry if I am asking too wide a question, I would have liked to keep it specific, but I need your help to evaluate Python as a whole from the perspectives of the programmers, service providing company and end business customer. For an SME, a Python/GoogleAppEngine based technology stack is a clear scalable and affordable platform. But what about a large MNC that already has a lot invested in Java. Thank you so much. I am researching this myself and will gladly share my conclusions here! Thank you, Srirangan

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• Register and Resolve Generic Interfaces Unity

  - by user1643791

  I am trying to register some generic interfaces and resolve them . I have the registering function private static void RegisterFolderAssemblies(Type t,string folder) { var scanner = new FolderGenericInterfaceScanner(); var scanned = scanner.Scan(t,folder); // gets the implementations from a specific folder scanned.ForEach(concrete => { if (concrete.BaseType != null || concrete.IsGenericType) { myContainer.RegisterType(t, Type.GetType(concrete.AssemblyQualifiedName), concrete.AssemblyQualifiedName); } }); } which is called by the bootstrapper with RegisterFolderAssemblies(typeof(IConfigurationVerification<>),Environment.CurrentDirectory); The registration seem to go through ok but when I try to Resolve them with Type generic = typeof(IConfigurationVerification<>); Type specific = generic.MakeGenericType(input.Arguments[0].GetType()); var verifications = BootStrap.ResolveAll(specific); The input.Arguments[0] is an object of the type the generic is implemented in I also tried using typeof(IConfigurationVerification<) instead and get the same error . When ResolveAll is public static List<object> ResolveAll(Type t) { return myContainer.ResolveAll(t).ToList(); } I get a ResolutionFailedException with them message "The current type, Infrastructure.Interfaces.IConfigurationVerification`1[Infrastructure.Configuration.IMLogPlayerConfiguration+LoadDefinitions], is an interface and cannot be constructed. Are you missing a type mapping?" Any help will be great. Thanks in advance

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• Understanding Domain Driven Design

  - by Nihilist

  Hi I have been trying to understand DDD for few weeks now. Its very confusing. I dont understand how I organise my projects. I have lot of questions on UnitOfWork, Repository, Associations and the list goes on... Lets take a simple example. Album and Tracks. Album: AlbumId, Name, ListOf Tracks Tracks: TrackId, Name Question1: Should i expose Tracks as a IList/IEnumerabe property on Album ? If that how do i add an album ? OR should i expose a ReadOnlyCollection of Tracks and expose a AddTrack method? Question2: How do i load Tracks for Album [assuming lazy loading]? should the getter check for null and then use a repository to load the tracks if need be? Question3: How do we organise the assemblies. Like what does each assembly have? Model.dll - does it only have the domain entities? Where do the repositories go? Interfaces and implementations both. Can i define IAlbumRepository in Model.dll? Infrastructure.dll : what shold this have? Question4: Where is unit of work defined? How do repository and unit of work communicate? [ or should they ] for example. if i need to add multiple tracks to album, again should this be defined as AddTrack on Album OR should there a method in the repository? Regardless of where the method is, how do I implement unit of work here? Question5: Should the UI use Infrastructure..dll or should there be ServiceLayer? Do my quesitons make sense? Regards

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• Logging *Business* Events - use logging framework?

  - by UpTheCreek

  Hi, Something here doesn't feel right to me here, and so I would like the community's input - perhaps I am approaching this in the wrong way.... Q: Is is appropriate to use traditional infrastructure logging frameworks (like log4net) to log business events? When I say business events, I mean I want a global log like this: xx:xx Customer A purchased widget B. xx:xx Widget B was dispatched from warehouse. xx:xx Customer B payment declined. Most traditional infrastructure logging frameworks have event levels something like this: FATAL ERROR WARN INFO DEBUG An of course these messages don't fit well into that. Best description would be INFO, but of course these are important events, and INFO is of very low importance. I would still like this as a 'log' (e.g. I don't want to have to extract this from my business objects each time I want to see it) Seems to me I have two options: 1) Use a framework like log4net and just define a special logger for this (and live with the fact that it doesn't feel right). 2) Provide a service for performing this that doesn't rely on a traditional logging services. I'm leaning towards 2. What has anyone else done in a similar situations? Thanks!

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• Manifesto for Integrated Development Environments

  - by Hugo S Ferreira

  Have you recently take a peek at Coda, or Espresso, or Textmate? Or even Google Chrome's Developer Tools? They are well designed, intuitive, interface rich, and extensible. But Coda, Espresso or Textmate, among several, are text editors, not IDEs. On the other side, VIM and Emacs live in the last century, and Eclipse is an overbloated platform. This is more like an outcry for a decent, common infrastructure for REAL IDEs. But there's some questions attached: (i) what features are needed for such a product and (ii) what products are out there that could fullfil this need, and what are they missing. So here's my draft for a manifesto: Manifesto for Integrated Development Environments: We favor interactivity and productivity over syntax and tools. We favor inline, contextual documentation over man and html files. We favor high-definition, graphic-capable color screens over 80x25 character terminals. We favor the use of advanced input schemas over unintuitive keyboard shortcuts. We favor a common, extensible and customizable infrastructure over unmaintained chaintools. We know the difference between search&replace and refactoring. We know the difference between integrated debugging support over a terminal window. We know the difference between semantic-aware code-completion over dumb textual templates. We favor the usage of standards like (E)BNF.

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• A question of long-running and disruptive branches

  - by Matt Enright

  We are about to begin prototyping a new application that will share some existing infrastructure assemblies with an existing application, and also involve a significant subset of the existing domain model. Parts of the domain model will likely undergo some serious changes for this new application, and the endgame for all of this, once the new application has been fully specified and is launch-ready is that we would like to re-unify the models of the two applications (as well as share a database, link functionality, etc.), but for the duration of development, prototyping, etc, we will be using a separate database so that we can change things without worrying about impact to development or use of the existing application. Since it is a prototype, there will be a pretty long window during which serious changes or rearchitecturing can occur as product management experiments with different workflows, different customer bases are surveyed, and we try and keep up. We have already made a Subversion branch, so as to not impact concurrent development on the mature application, and are toying with 2 potential ways of moving forward with this: Use the svn branch as the sole mechanism of separation. Make our changes to the existing domain models, and evaluate their impact on the existing application (and make requisite changes to ProjectA) when we have established that our long-running side branch is stable enough for re-entry to trunk. "Fork" the shared code (temporarily): Copy ProjectA.Entities to NewProject.Entities, and treat all of the NewProject code as self-contained. When all of the perturbations around the model have died down and we feel satisfied, manually re-integrate the changes (as granular or sweeping as warranted) back into ProjectA.Entities, updating ProjectA to use the improved models at each step (this can take place either before or after the subversion merge has occurred). The subversion merge will then not handle recombination of any of the heavy changes here. Note: the "fork" method only applies to the code we see significant changes in store for, and whose modification will break ProjectA - shared infrastructure stuff for example, we would just modify in place (on our branch) and let the merge sort out. Development is hard, go shopping. Naturally, after not coming to an agreement, we're turning it over to the oracle of power that is SO. Any experience with any of these methods, pain points to watch out for, something new entirely?

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• DirectX works for 64-bit but not 32-bit

  - by dtbarne

  I'm trying to play a game (Civilization 5) which was previously working but no longer. I believe I've narrowed it down to a DirectX issue because I get an error running dxdiag.exe in 32 bit mode. My goal (at least I believe) is to get Direct3D Acceleration "Enabled" in dxdiag (as it is in 64 bit dxdiag). A very similar issue is here: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-gaming/direct3d-acceleration-is-not-available-in-windows/4c345e6e-dc68-e011-8dfc-68b599b31bf5?page=1 The proposed answer, which looks very promising, doesn't seem to work for me. Like other users in that thread, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Direct3D\Drivers does not have a SoftwareOnly key to change. I even tried manually adding it as a string and dword, to no avail. I have a NVIDIA GeForce GT 525M, and before you ask, yes I've tried updating (also uninstalling, reinstalling) my drivers. I've also tried doing the same with DirectX (and Civilization 5 for that matter). Been debugging for some 4+ hours now after a full day of work and I've run out of ideas. I'm hoping somebody knows the solution here! :) Here's what I see when I open dxdiag: DxDiag has detected that there mgiht have been a problem accessing Direct3D the last time this program was used. Would you like to bypass Direct3D this time? No - Crash Yes - Works, but in Display tab: DirectDraw Acceleration: Disabled Direct3D Acceleration: Not Available AGP Texture Acceleration: Not Available If I click "Run 64-bit DxDiag", all three are "Enabled". I should also note that I've tried the following steps as Microsoft suggests, but I'm not able to do so as the "Change Settings" button is disabled. Some programs run very slowly—or not at all—unless Microsoft DirectDraw or Direct3D hardware acceleration is turned on. To determine this, click the Display tab, and then under DirectX Features, check to see whether DirectDraw, Direct3D, and AGP Texture Acceleration appear as Enabled. If not, try turning on hardware acceleration. Click to open Screen Resolution. Click Advanced settings. Click the Troubleshoot tab, and then click Change settings. If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation. Move the Hardware Acceleration slider to Full. Full dxdiag dump: ------------------ System Information ------------------ Time of this report: 11/8/2012, 23:13:24 Machine name: DTBARNE Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.120830-0333) Language: English (Regional Setting: English) System Manufacturer: Dell Inc. System Model: Dell System XPS L502X BIOS: Default System BIOS Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2450M CPU @ 2.50GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.5GHz Memory: 8192MB RAM Available OS Memory: 8086MB RAM Page File: 2466MB used, 13704MB available Windows Dir: C:\Windows DirectX Version: DirectX 11 DX Setup Parameters: Not found User DPI Setting: Using System DPI System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent) DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled DxDiag Version: 6.01.7601.17514 32bit Unicode DxDiag Previously: Crashed in Direct3D (stage 2). Re-running DxDiag with "dontskip" command line parameter or choosing not to bypass information gathering when prompted might result in DxDiag successfully obtaining this information ------------ DxDiag Notes ------------ Display Tab 1: No problems found. Sound Tab 1: No problems found. Sound Tab 2: No problems found. Input Tab: No problems found. -------------------- DirectX Debug Levels -------------------- Direct3D: 0/4 (retail) DirectDraw: 0/4 (retail) DirectInput: 0/5 (retail) DirectMusic: 0/5 (retail) DirectPlay: 0/9 (retail) DirectSound: 0/5 (retail) DirectShow: 0/6 (retail) --------------- Display Devices --------------- Card name: Intel(R) HD Graphics 3000 Manufacturer: Chip type: DAC type: Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_0126&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_09 Display Memory: Dedicated Memory: n/a Shared Memory: n/a Current Mode: 1920 x 1080 (32 bit) (60Hz) Monitor Name: Generic PnP Monitor Monitor Model: Monitor Id: Native Mode: Output Type: Driver Name: Driver File Version: () Driver Version: DDI Version: Driver Model: WDDM 1.1 Driver Attributes: Final Retail Driver Date/Size: , 0 bytes WHQL Logo'd: n/a WHQL Date Stamp: n/a Device Identifier: Vendor ID: Device ID: SubSys ID: Revision ID: Driver Strong Name: oem11.inf:IntelGfx.NTamd64.6.0:iSNBM0:8.15.10.2696:pci\ven_8086&dev_0126&subsys_04b61028 Rank Of Driver: 00E60001 Video Accel: Deinterlace Caps: n/a D3D9 Overlay: DXVA-HD: DDraw Status: Disabled D3D Status: Not Available AGP Status: Not Available ------------- Sound Devices ------------- Description: Speakers (High Definition Audio Device) Default Sound Playback: Yes Default Voice Playback: Yes Hardware ID: HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0665&SUBSYS_102804B6&REV_1000 Manufacturer ID: 1 Product ID: 65535 Type: WDM Driver Name: HdAudio.sys Driver Version: 6.01.7601.17514 (English) Driver Attributes: Final Retail WHQL Logo'd: Yes Date and Size: 11/20/2010 22:23:47, 350208 bytes Other Files: Driver Provider: Microsoft HW Accel Level: Basic Cap Flags: 0xF1F Min/Max Sample Rate: 100, 200000 Static/Strm HW Mix Bufs: 1, 0 Static/Strm HW 3D Bufs: 0, 0 HW Memory: 0 Voice Management: No EAX(tm) 2.0 Listen/Src: No, No I3DL2(tm) Listen/Src: No, No Sensaura(tm) ZoomFX(tm): No Description: Digital Audio (S/PDIF) (High Definition Audio Device) Default Sound Playback: No Default Voice Playback: No Hardware ID: HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0665&SUBSYS_102804B6&REV_1000 Manufacturer ID: 1 Product ID: 65535 Type: WDM Driver Name: HdAudio.sys Driver Version: 6.01.7601.17514 (English) Driver Attributes: Final Retail WHQL Logo'd: Yes Date and Size: 11/20/2010 22:23:47, 350208 bytes Other Files: Driver Provider: Microsoft HW Accel Level: Basic Cap Flags: 0xF1F Min/Max Sample Rate: 100, 200000 Static/Strm HW Mix Bufs: 1, 0 Static/Strm HW 3D Bufs: 0, 0 HW Memory: 0 Voice Management: No EAX(tm) 2.0 Listen/Src: No, No I3DL2(tm) Listen/Src: No, No Sensaura(tm) ZoomFX(tm): No --------------------- Sound Capture Devices --------------------- Description: Microphone (High Definition Audio Device) Default Sound Capture: Yes Default Voice Capture: Yes Driver Name: HdAudio.sys Driver Version: 6.01.7601.17514 (English) Driver Attributes: Final Retail Date and Size: 11/20/2010 22:23:47, 350208 bytes Cap Flags: 0x1 Format Flags: 0xFFFFF ------------------- DirectInput Devices ------------------- Device Name: Mouse Attached: 1 Controller ID: n/a Vendor/Product ID: n/a FF Driver: n/a Device Name: Keyboard Attached: 1 Controller ID: n/a Vendor/Product ID: n/a FF Driver: n/a Poll w/ Interrupt: No ----------- USB Devices ----------- + USB Root Hub | Vendor/Product ID: 0x8086, 0x1C26 | Matching Device ID: usb\root_hub20 | Service: usbhub | +-+ Generic USB Hub | | Vendor/Product ID: 0x8087, 0x0024 | | Location: Port_#0001.Hub_#0002 | | Matching Device ID: usb\class_09 | | Service: usbhub ---------------- Gameport Devices ---------------- ------------ PS/2 Devices ------------ + Standard PS/2 Keyboard | Matching Device ID: *pnp0303 | Service: i8042prt | + Terminal Server Keyboard Driver | Matching Device ID: root\rdp_kbd | Upper Filters: kbdclass | Service: TermDD | + Synaptics PS/2 Port TouchPad | Matching Device ID: *dll04b6 | Upper Filters: SynTP | Service: i8042prt | + Terminal Server Mouse Driver | Matching Device ID: root\rdp_mou | Upper Filters: mouclass | Service: TermDD ------------------------ Disk & DVD/CD-ROM Drives ------------------------ Drive: C: Free Space: 26.2 GB Total Space: 122.0 GB File System: NTFS Model: M4-CT128M4SSD2 ATA Device Drive: D: Model: Optiarc DVDRWBD BC-5540H ATA Device Driver: c:\windows\system32\drivers\cdrom.sys, 6.01.7601.17514 (English), , 0 bytes -------------- System Devices -------------- Name: High Definition Audio Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C20&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_05\3&11583659&0&D8 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard host CPU bridge Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_0104&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_09\3&11583659&0&00 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C1A&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_B5\3&11583659&0&E5 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_0101&SUBSYS_20108086&REV_09\3&11583659&0&08 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C18&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_B5\3&11583659&0&E4 Driver: n/a Name: Intel(R) Centrino(R) Advanced-N 6230 Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_0091&SUBSYS_52218086&REV_34\4&2634DE8D&0&00E1 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard ISA bridge Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C4B&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_05\3&11583659&0&F8 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C16&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_B5\3&11583659&0&E3 Driver: n/a Name: Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_10EC&DEV_8168&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_06\4&109EAB2F&0&00E5 Driver: n/a Name: Intel(R) Management Engine Interface Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C3A&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_04\3&11583659&0&B0 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C12&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_B5\3&11583659&0&E1 Driver: n/a Name: NVIDIA GeForce GT 525M Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0DF5&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_A1\4&4DCA75F&0&0008 Driver: n/a Name: Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C2D&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_05\3&11583659&0&D0 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C10&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_B5\3&11583659&0&E0 Driver: n/a Name: Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C26&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_05\3&11583659&0&E8 Driver: n/a Name: Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C03&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_05\3&11583659&0&FA Driver: n/a Name: SM Bus Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C22&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_05\3&11583659&0&FB Driver: n/a Name: Intel(R) HD Graphics 3000 Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_0126&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_09\3&11583659&0&10 Driver: n/a Name: Renesas Electronics USB 3.0 Host Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_1033&DEV_0194&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_04\4&3494AC3A&0&00E3 Driver: n/a ------------------ DirectShow Filters ------------------ DirectShow Filters: WMAudio Decoder DMO,0x00800800,1,1,WMADMOD.DLL,6.01.7601.17514 WMAPro over S/PDIF DMO,0x00600800,1,1,WMADMOD.DLL,6.01.7601.17514 WMSpeech Decoder DMO,0x00600800,1,1,WMSPDMOD.DLL,6.01.7601.17514 MP3 Decoder DMO,0x00600800,1,1,mp3dmod.dll,6.01.7600.16385 Mpeg4s Decoder DMO,0x00800001,1,1,mp4sdecd.dll,6.01.7600.16385 WMV Screen decoder DMO,0x00600800,1,1,wmvsdecd.dll,6.01.7601.17514 WMVideo Decoder DMO,0x00800001,1,1,wmvdecod.dll,6.01.7601.17514 Mpeg43 Decoder DMO,0x00800001,1,1,mp43decd.dll,6.01.7600.16385 Mpeg4 Decoder DMO,0x00800001,1,1,mpg4decd.dll,6.01.7600.16385 DV Muxer,0x00400000,0,0,qdv.dll,6.06.7601.17514 Color Space Converter,0x00400001,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 WM ASF Reader,0x00400000,0,0,qasf.dll,12.00.7601.17514 Screen Capture filter,0x00200000,0,1,wmpsrcwp.dll,12.00.7601.17514 AVI Splitter,0x00600000,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 VGA 16 Color Ditherer,0x00400000,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 SBE2MediaTypeProfile,0x00200000,0,0,sbe.dll,6.06.7601.17528 Microsoft DTV-DVD Video Decoder,0x005fffff,2,4,msmpeg2vdec.dll,6.01.7140.0000 AC3 Parser Filter,0x00600000,1,1,mpg2splt.ax,6.06.7601.17528 StreamBufferSink,0x00200000,0,0,sbe.dll,6.06.7601.17528 MJPEG 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SampleGrabber,0x00200000,1,1,qedit.dll,6.06.7601.17514 Null Renderer,0x00200000,1,0,qedit.dll,6.06.7601.17514 MPEG-2 Sections and Tables,0x005fffff,1,0,Mpeg2Data.ax,6.06.7601.17514 Microsoft AC3 Encoder,0x00200000,1,1,msac3enc.dll,6.01.7601.17514 StreamBufferSource,0x00200000,0,0,sbe.dll,6.06.7601.17528 Smart Tee,0x00200000,1,2,qcap.dll,6.06.7601.17514 Overlay Mixer,0x00200000,0,0,qdvd.dll,6.06.7601.17835 AVI Decompressor,0x00600000,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 AVI/WAV File Source,0x00400000,0,2,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 Wave Parser,0x00400000,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 MIDI Parser,0x00400000,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 Multi-file Parser,0x00400000,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 File stream renderer,0x00400000,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 Microsoft DTV-DVD Audio Decoder,0x005fffff,1,1,msmpeg2adec.dll,6.01.7140.0000 StreamBufferSink2,0x00200000,0,0,sbe.dll,6.06.7601.17528 AVI Mux,0x00200000,1,0,qcap.dll,6.06.7601.17514 Line 21 Decoder 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Codec,0x00600000,1,4,VBICodec.ax,6.06.7601.17514 BDA Transport Information Renderers: BDA MPEG2 Transport Information Filter,0x00600000,2,0,psisrndr.ax,6.06.7601.17669 MPEG-2 Sections and Tables,0x00600000,1,0,Mpeg2Data.ax,6.06.7601.17514 BDA CP/CA Filters: Decrypt/Tag,0x00600000,1,1,EncDec.dll,6.06.7601.17708 Encrypt/Tag,0x00200000,0,0,EncDec.dll,6.06.7601.17708 PTFilter,0x00200000,0,0,EncDec.dll,6.06.7601.17708 XDS Codec,0x00200000,0,0,EncDec.dll,6.06.7601.17708 WDM Streaming Communication Transforms: Tee/Sink-to-Sink Converter,0x00200000,1,1,ksproxy.ax,6.01.7601.17514 Audio Renderers: Speakers (High Definition Audio,0x00200000,1,0,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 Default DirectSound Device,0x00800000,1,0,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 Default WaveOut Device,0x00200000,1,0,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 Digital Audio (S/PDIF) (High De,0x00200000,1,0,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 DirectSound: Digital Audio (S/PDIF) (High Definition Audio Device),0x00200000,1,0,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 DirectSound: Speakers (High Definition Audio Device),0x00200000,1,0,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 --------------- EVR Power Information --------------- Current Setting: {651288E5-A7ED-4076-A96B-6CC62D848FE1} (Balanced) Quality Flags: 2576 Enabled: Force throttling Allow half deinterlace Allow scaling Decode Power Usage: 100 Balanced Flags: 1424 Enabled: Force throttling Allow batching Force half deinterlace Force scaling Decode Power Usage: 50 PowerFlags: 1424 Enabled: Force throttling Allow batching Force half deinterlace Force scaling Decode Power Usage: 0

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• Where does ASP.NET Web API Fit?

  - by Rick Strahl

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

  Read the article

• Is there a Telecommunications Reference Architecture?

  - by raul.goycoolea

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

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• Windows Azure: Announcing release of Windows Azure SDK 2.2 (with lots of goodies)

  - by ScottGu

  Earlier today I blogged about a big update we made today to Windows Azure, and some of the great new features it provides. Today I’m also excited to also announce the release of the Windows Azure SDK 2.2. Today’s SDK release adds even more great features including: Visual Studio 2013 Support Integrated Windows Azure Sign-In support within Visual Studio Remote Debugging Cloud Services with Visual Studio Firewall Management support within Visual Studio for SQL Databases Visual Studio 2013 RTM VM Images for MSDN Subscribers Windows Azure Management Libraries for .NET Updated Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets and ScriptCenter The below post has more details on what’s available in today’s Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release.  Also head over to Channel 9 to see the new episode of the Visual Studio Toolbox show that will be available shortly, and which highlights these features in a video demonstration. Visual Studio 2013 Support Version 2.2 of the Window Azure SDK is the first official version of the SDK to support the final RTM release of Visual Studio 2013. If you installed the 2.1 SDK with the Preview of Visual Studio 2013 we recommend that you upgrade your projects to SDK 2.2.  SDK 2.2 also works side by side with the SDK 2.0 and SDK 2.1 releases on Visual Studio 2012: Integrated Windows Azure Sign In within Visual Studio Integrated Windows Azure Sign-In support within Visual Studio is one of the big improvements added with this Windows Azure SDK release.  Integrated sign-in support enables developers to develop/test/manage Windows Azure resources within Visual Studio without having to download or use management certificates.  You can now just right-click on the “Windows Azure” icon within the Server Explorer inside Visual Studio and choose the “Connect to Windows Azure” context menu option to connect to Windows Azure: Doing this will prompt you to enter the email address of the account you wish to sign-in with: You can use either a Microsoft Account (e.g. Windows Live ID) or an Organizational account (e.g. Active Directory) as the email.  The dialog will update with an appropriate login prompt depending on which type of email address you enter: Once you sign-in you’ll see the Windows Azure resources that you have permissions to manage show up automatically within the Visual Studio Server Explorer (and you can start using them): With this new integrated sign in experience you are now able to publish web apps, deploy VMs and cloud services, use Windows Azure diagnostics, and fully interact with your Windows Azure services within Visual Studio without the need for a management certificate.  All of the authentication is handled using the Windows Azure Active Directory associated with your Windows Azure account (details on this can be found in my earlier blog post). Integrating authentication this way end-to-end across the Service Management APIs + Dev Tools + Management Portal + PowerShell automation scripts enables a much more secure and flexible security model within Windows Azure, and makes it much more convenient to securely manage multiple developers + administrators working on a project.  It also allows organizations and enterprises to use the same authentication model that they use for their developers on-premises in the cloud.  It also ensures that employees who leave an organization immediately lose access to their company’s cloud based resources once their Active Directory account is suspended. Filtering/Subscription Management Once you login within Visual Studio, you can filter which Windows Azure subscriptions/regions are visible within the Server Explorer by right-clicking the “Filter Services” context menu within the Server Explorer.  You can also use the “Manage Subscriptions” context menu to mange your Windows Azure Subscriptions: Bringing up the “Manage Subscriptions” dialog allows you to see which accounts you are currently using, as well as which subscriptions are within them: The “Certificates” tab allows you to continue to import and use management certificates to manage Windows Azure resources as well.  We have not removed any functionality with today’s update – all of the existing scenarios that previously supported management certificates within Visual Studio continue to work just fine.  The new integrated sign-in support provided with today’s release is purely additive. Note: the SQL Database node and the Mobile Service node in Server Explorer do not support integrated sign-in at this time. Therefore, you will only see databases and mobile services under those nodes if you have a management certificate to authorize access to them.  We will enable them with integrated sign-in in a future update. Remote Debugging Cloud Resources within Visual Studio Today’s Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release adds support for remote debugging many types of Windows Azure resources. With live, remote debugging support from within Visual Studio, you are now able to have more visibility than ever before into how your code is operating live in Windows Azure.  Let’s walkthrough how to enable remote debugging for a Cloud Service: Remote Debugging of Cloud Services To enable remote debugging for your cloud service, select Debug as the Build Configuration on the Common Settings tab of your Cloud Service’s publish dialog wizard: Then click the Advanced Settings tab and check the Enable Remote Debugging for all roles checkbox: Once your cloud service is published and running live in the cloud, simply set a breakpoint in your local source code: Then use Visual Studio’s Server Explorer to select the Cloud Service instance deployed in the cloud, and then use the Attach Debugger context menu on the role or to a specific VM instance of it: Once the debugger attaches to the Cloud Service, and a breakpoint is hit, you’ll be able to use the rich debugging capabilities of Visual Studio to debug the cloud instance remotely, in real-time, and see exactly how your app is running in the cloud. Today’s remote debugging support is super powerful, and makes it much easier to develop and test applications for the cloud.  Support for remote debugging Cloud Services is available as of today, and we’ll also enable support for remote debugging Web Sites shortly. Firewall Management Support with SQL Databases By default we enable a security firewall around SQL Databases hosted within Windows Azure.  This ensures that only your application (or IP addresses you approve) can connect to them and helps make your infrastructure secure by default.  This is great for protection at runtime, but can sometimes be a pain at development time (since by default you can’t connect/manage the database remotely within Visual Studio if the security firewall blocks your instance of VS from connecting to it). One of the cool features we’ve added with today’s release is support that makes it easy to enable and configure the security firewall directly within Visual Studio.  Now with the SDK 2.2 release, when you try and connect to a SQL Database using the Visual Studio Server Explorer, and a firewall rule prevents access to the database from your machine, you will be prompted to add a firewall rule to enable access from your local IP address: You can simply click Add Firewall Rule and a new rule will be automatically added for you. In some cases, the logic to detect your local IP may not be sufficient (for example: you are behind a corporate firewall that uses a range of IP addresses) and you may need to set up a firewall rule for a range of IP addresses in order to gain access. The new Add Firewall Rule dialog also makes this easy to do.  Once connected you’ll be able to manage your SQL Database directly within the Visual Studio Server Explorer: This makes it much easier to work with databases in the cloud. Visual Studio 2013 RTM Virtual Machine Images Available for MSDN Subscribers Last week we released the General Availability Release of Visual Studio 2013 to the web.  This is an awesome release with a ton of new features. With today’s Windows Azure update we now have a set of pre-configured VM images of VS 2013 available within the Windows Azure Management Portal for use by MSDN customers.  This enables you to create a VM in the cloud with VS 2013 pre-installed on it in with only a few clicks: Windows Azure now provides the fastest and easiest way to get started doing development with Visual Studio 2013. Windows Azure Management Libraries for .NET (Preview) Having the ability to automate the creation, deployment, and tear down of resources is a key requirement for applications running in the cloud.  It also helps immensely when running dev/test scenarios and coded UI tests against pre-production environments. Today we are releasing a preview of a new set of Windows Azure Management Libraries for .NET.  These new libraries make it easy to automate tasks using any .NET language (e.g. C#, VB, F#, etc).  Previously this automation capability was only available through the Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets or to developers who were willing to write their own wrappers for the Windows Azure Service Management REST API. Modern .NET Developer Experience We’ve worked to design easy-to-understand .NET APIs that still map well to the underlying REST endpoints, making sure to use and expose the modern .NET functionality that developers expect today: Portable Class Library (PCL) support targeting applications built for any .NET Platform (no platform restriction) Shipped as a set of focused NuGet packages with minimal dependencies to simplify versioning Support async/await task based asynchrony (with easy sync overloads) Shared infrastructure for common error handling, tracing, configuration, HTTP pipeline manipulation, etc. Factored for easy testability and mocking Built on top of popular libraries like HttpClient and Json.NET Below is a list of a few of the management client classes that are shipping with today’s initial preview release: .NET Class Name Supports Operations for these Assets (and potentially more) ManagementClient Locations Credentials Subscriptions Certificates ComputeManagementClient Hosted Services Deployments Virtual Machines Virtual Machine Images & Disks StorageManagementClient Storage Accounts WebSiteManagementClient Web Sites Web Site Publish Profiles Usage Metrics Repositories VirtualNetworkManagementClient Networks Gateways Automating Creating a Virtual Machine using .NET Let’s walkthrough an example of how we can use the new Windows Azure Management Libraries for .NET to fully automate creating a Virtual Machine. I’m deliberately showing a scenario with a lot of custom options configured – including VHD image gallery enumeration, attaching data drives, network endpoints + firewall rules setup - to show off the full power and richness of what the new library provides. We’ll begin with some code that demonstrates how to enumerate through the built-in Windows images within the standard Windows Azure VM Gallery.  We’ll search for the first VM image that has the word “Windows” in it and use that as our base image to build the VM from.  We’ll then create a cloud service container in the West US region to host it within: We can then customize some options on it such as setting up a computer name, admin username/password, and hostname.  We’ll also open up a remote desktop (RDP) endpoint through its security firewall: We’ll then specify the VHD host and data drives that we want to mount on the Virtual Machine, and specify the size of the VM we want to run it in: Once everything has been set up the call to create the virtual machine is executed asynchronously In a few minutes we’ll then have a completely deployed VM running on Windows Azure with all of the settings (hard drives, VM size, machine name, username/password, network endpoints + firewall settings) fully configured and ready for us to use: Preview Availability via NuGet The Windows Azure Management Libraries for .NET are now available via NuGet. Because they are still in preview form, you’ll need to add the –IncludePrerelease switch when you go to retrieve the packages. The Package Manager Console screen shot below demonstrates how to get the entire set of libraries to manage your Windows Azure assets: You can also install them within your .NET projects by right clicking on the VS Solution Explorer and using the Manage NuGet Packages context menu command.  Make sure to select the “Include Prerelease” drop-down for them to show up, and then you can install the specific management libraries you need for your particular scenarios: Open Source License The new Windows Azure Management Libraries for .NET make it super easy to automate management operations within Windows Azure – whether they are for Virtual Machines, Cloud Services, Storage Accounts, Web Sites, and more.  Like the rest of the Windows Azure SDK, we are releasing the source code under an open source (Apache 2) license and it is hosted at https://github.com/WindowsAzure/azure-sdk-for-net/tree/master/libraries if you wish to contribute. PowerShell Enhancements and our New Script Center Today, we are also shipping Windows Azure PowerShell 0.7.0 (which is a separate download). You can find the full change log here. Here are some of the improvements provided with it: Windows Azure Active Directory authentication support Script Center providing many sample scripts to automate common tasks on Windows Azure New cmdlets for Media Services and SQL Database Script Center Windows Azure enables you to script and automate a lot of tasks using PowerShell.  People often ask for more pre-built samples of common scenarios so that they can use them to learn and tweak/customize. With this in mind, we are excited to introduce a new Script Center that we are launching for Windows Azure. You can learn about how to scripting with Windows Azure with a get started article. You can then find many sample scripts across different solutions, including infrastructure, data management, web, and more: All of the sample scripts are hosted on TechNet with links from the Windows Azure Script Center. Each script is complete with good code comments, detailed descriptions, and examples of usage. Summary Visual Studio 2013 and the Windows Azure SDK 2.2 make it easier than ever to get started developing rich cloud applications. Along with the Windows Azure Developer Center’s growing set of .NET developer resources to guide your development efforts, today’s Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release should make your development experience more enjoyable and efficient. If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today.  Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, February 03, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, February 03, 2011Popular ReleasesValue Injecter - object(s) to -> object mapper: 2.3: it lets you define your own convention-based matching algorithms (ValueInjections) in order to match up (inject) source values to destination values. inject from multiple sources in one InjectFrom added ConventionInjectionFacebook C# SDK: 5.0.1 (BETA): This is second BETA release of the version 5 branch of the Facebook C# SDK. Remember this is a BETA build. Some things may change or not work exactly as planned. We are absolutely looking for feedback on this release to help us improve the final 5.X.X release. This release contains some breaking changes. Particularly with authentication. After spending time reviewing the trouble areas that people are having using this SDK (and Facebook in general) we decided to spend a good deal of time work...TweetSharp: TweetSharp v2.0.0.0 - Preview 10: Documentation for this release may be found at http://tweetsharp.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=UserGuide&referringTitle=Documentation. Note: This code is currently preview quality. Preview 9 ChangesAdded support for trends Added support for Silverlight 4 Elevated WP7 fixes Third Party Library VersionsHammock v1.1.7: http://hammock.codeplex.com Json.NET 4.0 Release 1: http://json.codeplex.comJSON Toolkit: JSON Toolkit 1.0: Updates: bug fixed: extra "r" character appear in strings with "\r"Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 2.0 (February 2011): Next release of Phalanger; again faster, more stable and ready for daily use. Based on many user experiences this release is one more step closer to be perfect compiler and runtime of your old PHP applications; or perfect platform for migrating to .NET. February 2011 release of Phalanger introduces several changes, enhancements and fixes. See complete changelist for all the changes. To improve the performance of your application using MySQL, please use Managed MySQL Extension for Phalanger....Chemistry Add-in for Word: Chemistry Add-in for Word - Version 1.0: On February 1, 2011, we announced the availability of version 1 of the Chemistry Add-in for Word, as well as the assignment of the open source project to the Outercurve Foundation by Microsoft Research and the University of Cambridge. System RequirementsHardware RequirementsAny computer that can run Office 2007 or Office 2010. Software RequirementsYour computer must have the following software: Any version of Windows that can run Office 2007 or Office 2010, which includes Windows XP SP3 and...StyleCop for ReSharper: StyleCop for ReSharper 5.1.15005.000: Applied patch from rodpl for merging of stylecop setting files with settings in parent folder. Previous release: A considerable amount of work has gone into this release: Huge focus on performance around the violation scanning subsystem: - caching added to reduce IO operations around reading and merging of settings files - caching added to reduce creation of expensive objects Users should notice condsiderable perf boost and a decrease in memory usage. Bug Fixes: - StyleCop's new Objec...Minecraft Tools: Minecraft Topographical Survey 1.4: MTS requires version 4 of the .NET Framework - you must download it from Microsoft if you have not previously installed it. This version of MTS adds MCRegion support and fixes bugs that caused rendering to fail for some users. New in this version of MTS: Support for rendering worlds compressed with MCRegion Fixed rendering failure when encountering non-NBT files with the .dat extension Fixed rendering failure when encountering corrupt NBT files Minor GUI updates Note that the command...MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 0.8: Fixed the following bugs: *Variable name error in the jvascript file that prevented the use of the deleted item template of the Datagrid *Now after the changes applied to an item of the DataGrid are cancelled all input fields are reset to the very initial value they had. *Other minor bugs. Added: *This version is available both for MVC2, and MVC 3. The MVC 3 version has a release number of 0.85. This way one can install both version. *Client Validation support has been added to all control...Office Web.UI: Beta preview (Source): This is the first Beta. it includes full source code and all available controls. Some designers are not ready, and some features are not finalized allready (missing properties, draft styles) ThanksASP.net Ribbon: Version 2.2: This release brings some new controls (part of Office Web.UI). A few bugs are fixed and it includes the "auto resize" feature as you resize the window. (It can cause an infinite loop when the window is too reduced, it's why this release is not marked as "stable"). I will release more versions 2.3, 2.4... until V3 which will be the official launch of Office Web.UI. Both products will evolve at the same speed. Thanks.Barcode Rendering Framework: 2.1.1.0: Finally fixed bugs with code 128 symbology. It was envisioned that this would be the last release to target VS2008 but support will continue due in no small part to a desire to add SSRS support in the future.xUnit.net - Unit Testing for .NET: xUnit.net 1.7: xUnit.net release 1.7Build #1540 Important notes for Resharper users: Resharper support has been moved to the xUnit.net Contrib project. Important note for TestDriven.net users: If you are having issues running xUnit.net tests in TestDriven.net, especially on 64-bit Windows, we strongly recommend you upgrade to TD.NET version 3.0 or later. This release adds the following new features: Added support for ASP.NET MVC 3 Added Assert.Equal(double expected, double actual, int precision) Ad...DoddleReport - Automatic HTML/Excel/PDF Reporting: DoddleReport 1.0: DoddleReport will add automatic tabular-based reporting (HTML/PDF/Excel/etc) for any LINQ Query, IEnumerable, DataTable or SharePoint List For SharePoint integration please click Here PDF Reporting has been placed into a separate assembly because it requies AbcPdf http://www.websupergoo.com/download.htmSpark View Engine: Spark v1.5: Release Notes There have been a lot of minor changes going on since version 1.1, but most important to note are the major changes which include: Support for HTML5 "section" tag. Spark has now renamed its own section tag to "segment" instead to avoid clashes. You can still use "section" in a Spark sense for legacy support by specifying ParseSectionAsSegment = true if needed while you transition Bindings - this is a massive feature that further simplifies your views by giving you a powerful ...WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.3: Version: 2.0.0.3 (Milestone 3): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Remark The sample applications are using Microsoft’s IoC container MEF. However, the WPF Application Framework (WAF) doesn’t force you to use the same IoC container in your application. You can use ...Rawr: Rawr 4.0.17 Beta: Rawr is now web-based. The link to use Rawr4 is: http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.phpThis is the Cataclysm Beta Release. More details can be found at the following link http://rawr.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=237262 and on the Version Notes page: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes As of the 4.0.16 release, you can now also begin using the new Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!This is a pre-alpha release of the WPF version, there are likely to be a lot of issues. If you...Squiggle - A Free open source LAN Messenger: Squiggle 2.5 Beta: In this release following are the new features: Localization: Support for Arabic, French, German and Chinese (Simplified) Bridge: Connect two Squiggle nets across the WAN or different subnets Aliases: Special codes with special meaning can be embedded in message like (version),(datetime),(time),(date),(you),(me) Commands: cls, /exit, /offline, /online, /busy, /away, /main Sound notifications: Get audio alerts on contact online, message received, buzz Broadcast for group: You can ri...VivoSocial: VivoSocial 7.4.2: Version 7.4.2 of VivoSocial has been released. If you experienced any issues with the previous version, please update your modules to the 7.4.2 release and see if they persist. If you have any questions about this release, please post them in our Support forums. If you are experiencing a bug or would like to request a new feature, please submit it to our issue tracker. Web Controls * Updated Business Objects and added a new SQL Data Provider File. Groups * Fixed a security issue whe...PHP Manager for IIS: PHP Manager 1.1.1 for IIS 7: This is a minor release of PHP Manager for IIS 7. It contains all the functionality available in 56962 plus several bug fixes (see change list for more details). Also, this release includes Russian language support. SHA1 codes for the downloads are: PHPManagerForIIS-1.1.0-x86.msi - 6570B4A8AC8B5B776171C2BA0572C190F0900DE2 PHPManagerForIIS-1.1.0-x64.msi - 12EDE004EFEE57282EF11A8BAD1DC1ADFD66A654New Projectsanael: Algorithms of recognition using neural network based on facebook informationsBressam Contábil: TesteCrazyKTVfromCashbox: get song lists from Cashbox and inserted or update the crazyktv databasedatajs - JavaScript Library for data-centric web applications: datajs is a new cross-browser JavaScript library that enables data-centric web applications by leveraging modern protocols such as JSON and OData and HTML5-enabled browser features. It's designed to be small, fast and easy to use.Delta's Data Access Layer: The data access layer is designed to allow .NET developers to quickly integrate any IDb compatible data source in to their applications and easily fill business objects.Dynamic Mocking Framework: This framework is my first open-source project. With this framework you can mock any public properties and methods (virtual and non-virtual). Based on DynamicObject features of Microsoft Net Framework 4. Programming language: C# Loja em dia: Controle de lojaRovio Library: A wrapper library for Rovio mobile robot written in C#. Used for teaching Robotics courses at the University of Lincoln, UK.Scalable state synchronization infrastructure using P2P: An infrastructure that provides synchronization between peers using WCF P2P.Many applications need to share information between various instances of the application. This infrastructure simplifies the use of peer channel by handling the various patterns of nodes states.Send Documents as attachments with SharePoint 2010: Sends documents from SharePoint 2010 document libraries as email-attachments via Outlook. SheHuiShiJianZhongXin: ?????? - ?????SlimDXControl: SlimDXControl is a WPF control that wraps the complexity of managing a D3DImage for you. You just have to implement the actual DirectX rendering piece -- no messing about with device management or IsFrontBufferAvailableChanged. SplitWmvToBmps: Often task in image processing is to split video (wmv) file we got from web-camera or photocamera to set of bmpsTechpath: TechpathThats-Me App SDK: The Thats-Me App SDK implements the API interface of the social network "Thats-Me" and prepaire it for using on Android, iOS and Windows Phone 7TrackIT: time tracking appuDbCompare: uDBCompare compares various items (Doc Types, Media Types, Templates, Data Types, Relationships, Dictionary Items, & Macros) in the current Umbraco database to a remote database. Versioned TFS 2010 Build: Versioned Build for TFS 2010. Allows for 4 version numbers (Called Major, Minor, Emergency and Build), Will also update the build number into any AssemblyInfo files in the project before building (effectively giving your binaries the same version number).WalkMeIL: VS plugin that contains managed debugging engine.Where2Go: Travel CompanionZombies On Board: XNA, Flixel, Beholder, GameZune HD 2v2 Yugioh Calculator: A small yugioh calculator that can be used for 2 vs 2 duels with separate life points.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, February 22, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, February 22, 2011Popular ReleasesSearchable Property Updater for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: Searchable Property Updater (1.0.121.59): Initial releaseJHINFORM7: JHINFORM 7 VR. 0.0.2: Versión 0.0.1 En estado de desarrolloSilverlight????[???]: silverlight????[???]2.0: ???????，?????，????????silverlight????。DBSourceTools: DBSourceTools_1.3.0.0: Release 1.3.0.0 Changed editors from FireEdit to ICSharpCode.TextEditor. Complete re-vamp of Intellisense ( further testing needed). Hightlight Field and Table Names in sql scripts. Added field dropdown on all tables and views in DBExplorer. Added data option for viewing data in Tables. Fixed comment / uncomment bug as reported by tareq. Included Synonyms in scripting engine ( nickt_ch ).IronPython: 2.7 Release Candidate 1: We are pleased to announce the first Release Candidate for IronPython 2.7. This release contains over two dozen bugs fixed in preparation for 2.7 Final. See the release notes for 60193 for details and what has already been fixed in the earlier 2.7 prereleases. - IronPython TeamCaliburn Micro: A Micro-Framework for WPF, Silverlight and WP7: Caliburn.Micro 1.0 RC: This is the official Release Candicate for Caliburn.Micro 1.0. The download contains the binaries, samples and VS templates. VS Templates The templates included are designed for situations where the Caliburn.Micro source needs to be embedded within a single project solution. This was targeted at government and other organizations that expressed specific requirements around using an open source project like this. NuGet This release does not have a corresponding NuGet package. The NuGet pack...Caliburn: A Client Framework for WPF and Silverlight: Caliburn 2.0 RC: This is the official Release Candidate for Caliburn 2.0. It contains all binaries, samples and generated code docs.A2Command: 2011-02-21 - Version 1.0: IntroductionThis is the full release version of A2Command 1.0, dated February 21, 2011. These notes supersede any prior version's notes. All prior releases may be found on the project's website at http://a2command.codeplex.com/releases/ where you can read the release notes for older versions as well as download them. This version of A2Command is intended to replace any previous version you may have downloaded in the past. There were several bug fixes made after Release Candidate 2 and all...Chiave File Encryption: Chiave 0.9: Application for file encryption and decryption using 512 Bit rijndael encyrption algorithm with simple to use UI. Its written in C# and compiled in .Net version 3.5. It incorporates features of Windows 7 like Jumplists, Taskbar progress and Aero Glass. Feedbacks are Welcome!....Rawr: Rawr 4.0.20 Beta: Rawr is now web-based. The link to use Rawr4 is: http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.phpThis is the Cataclysm Beta Release. More details can be found at the following link http://rawr.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=237262 As of the 4.0.16 release, you can now also begin using the new Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!This is a pre-alpha release of the WPF version, there are likely to be a lot of issues. If you have a problem, please follow the Posting Guidelines and put it into the Issue Trac...Azure Storage Samples: Version 1.0 (February 2011): These downloads contain source code. Each is a complete sample that fully exercises Windows Azure Storage across blobs, queues, and tables. The difference between the downloads is implementation approach. Storage DotNet CS.zip is a .NET StorageClient library implementation in the C# language. This library come with the Windows Azure SDK. Contains helper classes for accessing blobs, queues, and tables. Storage REST CS.zip is a REST implementation in the C# language. The code to implement R...MiniTwitter: 1.66: MiniTwitter 1.66 ???? ?? ?????????? 2 ??????????????????? User Streams ?????????Windows Phone 7 Isolated Storage Explorer: WP7 Isolated Storage Explorer v1.0 Beta: Current release features:WPF desktop explorer client Visual Studio integrated tool window explorer client (Visual Studio 2010 Professional and above) Supported operations: Refresh (isolated storage information), Add Folder, Add Existing Item, Download File, Delete Folder, Delete File Explorer supports operations running on multiple remote applications at the same time Explorer detects application disconnect (1-2 second delay) Explorer confirms operation completed status Explorer d...Document.Editor: 2011.6: Whats new for Document.Editor 2011.6: New Left to Right and Left to Right support New Indent more/less support Improved Home tab Improved Tooltips/shortcut keys Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsCatel - WPF and Silverlight MVVM library: 1.2: Catel history ============= (+) Added (*) Changed (-) Removed (x) Error / bug (fix) For more information about issues or new feature requests, please visit: http://catel.codeplex.com =========== Version 1.2 =========== Release date: ============= 2011/02/17 Added/fixed: ============ (+) DataObjectBase now supports Isolated Storage out of the box: Person.Save(myStream) stores a whole object graph in Silverlight (+) DataObjectBase can now be converted to Json via Person.ToJson(); (+)...??????????: All-In-One Code Framework ??? 2011-02-18: ?????All-In-One Code Framework?2011??????????！！http://i3.codeplex.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=1code&DownloadId=128165 ?????，?????AzureBingMaps??????，??Azure，WCF, Silverlight, Window Phone????????，????????????????????????。 ???： Windows Azure SQL Azure Windows Azure AppFabric Windows Live Messenger Connect Bing Maps ?????： ??????HTML??? ??Windows PC?Mac?Silverlight??? ??Windows Phone?Silverlight??? ?????：http://blog.csdn.net/sjb5201/archive/2011...Image.Viewer: 2011: First version of 2011Silverlight Toolkit: Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit - Feb 2011: Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit OverviewSilverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit offers developers additional controls for Windows Phone application development, designed to match the rich user experience of the Windows Phone 7. Suggestions? Features? Questions? Ask questions in the Create.msdn.com forum. Add bugs or feature requests to the Issue Tracker. Help us shape the Silverlight Toolkit with your feedback! Please clearly indicate that the work items and issues are for the phone t...thinktecture WSCF.blue: WSCF.blue V1 Update (1.0.11): Features Added a new option that allows properties on data contract types to be marked as virtual. Bug Fixes Fixed a bug caused by certain project properties not being available on Web Service Software Factory projects. Fixed a bug that could result in the WrapperName value of the MessageContractAttribute being incorrect when the Adjust Casing option is used. The menu item code now caters for CommandBar instances that are not available. For example the Web Item CommandBar does not exist ...Terminals: Version 2 - RC1: The Third build includes the fix for NLA support. A merged in patch dropped the UI support. Its back now. All patch's except 1 are left. Cheers, -Rob The Second build is up. It takes most patch's sent in from the community. One such patch was around security & how the application handles Passwords. You may find that all of your passwords are now invalidated. You may need to reenter all of your credentials. This would be a good time to use the Credential Manager for each connecti...New ProjectsAllTalk: This is a chat client for Windows Phone 7.AssertFramework: AssertFramework is an implementation of Visual Studio/MSTest assert classes. The Asset and StringAssert classes have been implemented so far. CollectionAssert will be implemented next.AsyncInRuby: Async Web Development in RubyAuto Numbering for CRM 4.0: Reuse and standardize Auto Numbering for CRM 4.0BitRaise: Raise money bit by bit!BoxGame: BoxGame is a small project to develop a RPG in XNA.CCI Explorer (An alternative of .NET Reflector): CCI Explorer is an alternative to RedGate Reflector. It use the Microsoft Common Compiler Infrastructure to decompil and view source executable code. The application is writing in WPF and use the MVVM pattern.Configuration Manager Client Health Check Tool: There are many pitfalls with maintaining ConfigMgr managed systems so they install the client software and can continuously report to the hierarchy. This project provides a scripted solution that detects many issues and automates their repair.cppERF: Class ERF function. Test on VC++ 2008 express, and cygwin.CUITe (Coded UI Test enhanced) Framework: CUITe (Coded UI Test enhanced) Framework is a thin layer developed on top of Microsoft Visual Studio Team Test's Coded UI Test engine which helps reduce code, increases readability and maintainability, while also providing a bunch of cool features for the automation engineer.DocMetaMan : Bulk document Upload and MetaData (Taxonomy) Setter: DocMetaMap lets user select a root folder and upload the documents to selected document library in SharePoint 2010. The tool presents a nice GUI prompting the user to select the metadata / taxonomy to be associated with the documents before uploading them to SharePoint. DotNetNuke Azure Accelerator: DNN Azure Accelerator is a project based on the Azure Accelerators Project to publish the famous DotNetNuke Community CMS in the Windows Azure Platform.GK PlatyPi Robotics - Team 2927: Graham-Kapowsin HS Robotics Club's code repository.HgReport: This is a Mercurial reporting engine written in .NET 3.5. The program will allow you to write your own report templates and execute them against a local Mercurial repository to produce text reports, including HTML, with statistics and other items from the repository history.Image Steganography: 'Image Steganography' allows you to embed text and files into images, with optional encryption.im-me-messenger: A simple instant messenger application for the IM-ME messenging gadgetISEFun: PowerShell module(s) to simplify work in it. It contains PowerShell scripts, compiled libs and some formating files. Several modules will come in one batch as optional features.Kailua - The forgotten methods in the ADO.NET API.: Provide standard calls for vendor specific functionality through ADO.NET. Additional functionality includes: enumerate databases, tables, views, columns, stored procedures, parameters; get an autogenerated primary key; return top N rows; and more. Also some non-ADO classes.Linkual: Linkual makes it easier for blog authors to publish their articles in multiple languages. They will no longer have to set up a separate blog for each language. It is developed in C# and ASP.NET MVC.Lumen - Index discovery and querying: Index discovery and querying framework based on Lucene.netMars Rover Exercise: A squad of robotic rovers are to be landed by NASA on a plateau on Mars. This plateau, which is curiously rectangular, must be navigated by the rovers so that their on board cameras can get a complete view of the surrounding terrain to send back to Earth. Message splitting envelope in Biztalk 2009: Message splitting envelope in Biztalk 2009. The project contains: Source code, Examples. Article describing how to develop it: http://www.biztalkbrasil.com.br/2011/02/envelope-sample-using-flat-file.html.Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Development Framework: Framework for developing Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Applications.Potluck Central: Event Manger is a simple place were you can manage your potlucks.PowerSqueakTasks: For now PowerSqueakTasks primary goal is to integrate MsBuild with Powershell. It provides one simple task, that executes Powershell script in a batch manner - creates PS variables using MSBuild item metadata and then runs specified script over them.PSS Airbus Sound Extender: This application offers users of PSS Airbus the sound extension (like electricity, air-conditioning, apu) for standard PSS Airbus 32x planes. Tested with FS2004 and PSS A319. No sound files are distribute with the package, but explaining manual, how to achieve them, is included.SCCM Client Center Automation Library: SCCM Client Automation library (previously smsclictr.automation.dll) is a .NET Library (C#) to automate and access SCCM (Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager) 2007 Agent functions over WMI.Seng 401 Awesome TSS: Telephone switching system for SENG401 course project. Developed in Visual C#.Silverlight????[???]: flyer???????????，????????。????????silverlight??????????。Simple Notify: SimpleNotify is a lightweight client-server implementation that allows you to notify many users in your network with custom messages in a very simple way. There are a couple of ways how you want to push these messages to your clients. SimpleNotify is developed in C#.Slingshot: SlingshotSmartTTS: A smart text to speech app!SystemSoupRMS: SaaS RMStest project101: test source controlUse BizTalk Logging Events in BizUnit Tests: This project will demonstrate how to use the instrumentation from the Microsoft BizTalk CAT Team logging framework to help you test the internals of your BizTalk solutionWalkme HealthVault Application: Walking application for HealthVault.WikiChanges: WikiChanges is a "Recent Changes" monitor for MediaWiki installations that uses non-intrusive, non-annoying yet useful notifications on the corner with link shortcuts to pages, diff, hist, undo and various other links.Win4 Movie Project: This application is being developed for a class group projectWPF UI Authorization infrastructure (MVVM controlled): This infrastructure provide Attribute base authorization for UI elements within WPF applications

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• Forefront TMG vs pfSense

  - by Macropus

  We currently run pfSense with no problems, however we are looking at TMG as it is included in our partner subscription to MS and allows Windows 7 DirectConnect features to our domain for off-site users. I have had a google, but there don't seem to be any comparisons of TMG to pfSense. Anyone have experience/knowledge of this? Our infrastructure is Windows Server 2008 R2 behind pfSense at the moment.

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• Message pump in C# Windows service

  - by Pickles

  Hello, I have a Windows Service written in C# that handles all of our external hardware I/O for a kiosk application. One of our new devices is a USB device that comes with an API in a native DLL. I have a proper P/Invoke wrapper class created. However, this API must be initialized with an HWnd to a windows application because it uses the message pump to raise asynchronous events. Besides putting in a request to the hardware manufacturer to provide us with an API that does not depend on a Windows message pump, is there any way to manually instantiate a message pump in a new thread in my Windows Service that I can pass into this API? Do I actually have to create a full Application class, or is there a lower level .NET class that encapsulates a message pump? Thanks

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• What’s the best way to label cables in a data center

  - by Ben

  We're in the midst of planning for a big data center renovation at my office, which is going to result in a completely new power and network infrastructure. As part of this, I'd like to label all of our cables properly and sanely. What are your best practices, both for labeling patch panels, cables, power whips, anything and everything in a data center that you'd label?

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• Cannot run Android "Camera Preview" sample

  - by noisesolo

  The sample I'm referring to is: CameraPreview. The program simply force closes upon start up. I've also tried other camera demos that have the same problem. I'm trying to run the samples on my Nexus One and the emulator with the same problem on both. I'm not even sure if the emulator should be able to run them or not. Based on LogCat, the error is: 06-08 16:39:10.483: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(6726): Uncaught handler: thread main exiting due to uncaught exception 06-08 16:39:10.494: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(6726): java.lang.RuntimeException: Fail to connect to camera service 06-08 16:39:10.494: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(6726): at android.hardware.Camera.native_setup(Native Method) 06-08 16:39:10.494: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(6726): at android.hardware.Camera.<init>(Camera.java:110) 06-08 16:39:10.494: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(6726): at android.hardware.Camera.open(Camera.java:90) 06-08 16:39:10.494: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(6726): at com.example.android.apis.graphics.Preview.surfaceCreated(CameraPreview.java:69) 06-08 16:39:10.494: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(6726): at android.view.SurfaceView.updateWindow(SurfaceView.java:454) 06-08 16:39:10.494: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(6726): at android.view.SurfaceView.dispatchDraw(SurfaceView.java:287) 06-08 16:39:10.494: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(6726): at android.view.ViewGroup.drawChild(ViewGroup.java:1529) 06-08 16:39:10.494: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(6726): at android.view.ViewGroup.dispatchDraw(ViewGroup.java:1258) 06-08 16:39:10.494: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(6726): at android.view.View.draw(View.java:6557) 06-08 16:39:10.494: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(6726): at android.widget.FrameLayout.draw(FrameLayout.java:352) 06-08 16:39:10.494: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(6726): at android.view.ViewGroup.drawChild(ViewGroup.java:1531) 06-08 16:39:10.494: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(6726): at android.view.ViewGroup.dispatchDraw(ViewGroup.java:1258) 06-08 16:39:10.494: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(6726): at android.view.View.draw(View.java:6557) 06-08 16:39:10.494: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(6726): at android.widget.FrameLayout.draw(FrameLayout.java:352) 06-08 16:39:10.494: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(6726): at com.android.internal.policy.impl.PhoneWindow$DecorView.draw(PhoneWindow.java:1830) 06-08 16:39:10.494: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(6726): at android.view.ViewRoot.draw(ViewRoot.java:1349) 06-08 16:39:10.494: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(6726): at android.view.ViewRoot.performTraversals(ViewRoot.java:1114) 06-08 16:39:10.494: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(6726): at android.view.ViewRoot.handleMessage(ViewRoot.java:1633) 06-08 16:39:10.494: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(6726): at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99) 06-08 16:39:10.494: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(6726): at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:123) 06-08 16:39:10.494: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(6726): at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:4363) 06-08 16:39:10.494: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(6726): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) 06-08 16:39:10.494: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(6726): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:521) 06-08 16:39:10.494: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(6726): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:860) 06-08 16:39:10.494: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(6726): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:618) 06-08 16:39:10.494: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(6726): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method) All I did to try out the sample was create a new Android 2.1update1 Project, named everything according to the supplied Java file, copied the Java file from the URL to the CameraPreview.java file, then run it. Am I supposed to do anything else? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

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• Win7 Bluescreen: IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL | athrxusb.sys

  - by wretrOvian

  Hi I'd left my system on last night, and found the bluescreen in the morning. This has been happening occasionally, over the past few days. Details: ================================================== Dump File : 022710-18236-01.dmp Crash Time : 2/27/2010 8:46:44 AM Bug Check String : DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL Bug Check Code : 0x000000d1 Parameter 1 : 00000000`00001001 Parameter 2 : 00000000`00000002 Parameter 3 : 00000000`00000000 Parameter 4 : fffff880`06b5c0e1 Caused By Driver : athrxusb.sys Caused By Address : athrxusb.sys+760e1 File Description : Product Name : Company : File Version : Processor : x64 Computer Name : Full Path : C:\Windows\minidump\022710-18236-01.dmp Processors Count : 2 Major Version : 15 Minor Version : 7600 ================================================== HiJackThis ("[...]" indicates removed text; full log posted to pastebin): Logfile of Trend Micro HijackThis v2.0.2 Scan saved at 8:49:15 AM, on 2/27/2010 Platform: Unknown Windows (WinNT 6.01.3504) MSIE: Internet Explorer v8.00 (8.00.7600.16385) Boot mode: Normal Running processes: C:\Windows\DAODx.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\ASUS\EPU\EPU.exe C:\Program Files\ASUS\TurboV\TurboV.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\PowerISO\PWRISOVM.EXE C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenOffice.org 3\program\soffice.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenOffice.org 3\program\soffice.bin D:\Downloads\HijackThis.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\uTorrent\uTorrent.exe R1 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\[...] [...] O2 - BHO: Java(tm) Plug-In 2 SSV Helper - {DBC80044-A445-435b-BC74-9C25C1C588A9} - C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\bin\jp2ssv.dll O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [HDAudDeck] C:\Program Files (x86)\VIA\VIAudioi\VDeck\VDeck.exe -r O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [StartCCC] "C:\Program Files (x86)\ATI Technologies\ATI.ACE\Core-Static\CLIStart.exe" MSRun O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [TurboV] "C:\Program Files\ASUS\TurboV\TurboV.exe" O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [PWRISOVM.EXE] C:\Program Files (x86)\PowerISO\PWRISOVM.EXE O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [googletalk] C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Google Talk\googletalk.exe /autostart O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [AdobeCS4ServiceManager] "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\CS4ServiceManager\CS4ServiceManager.exe" -launchedbylogin O4 - HKCU\..\Run: [uTorrent] "C:\Program Files (x86)\uTorrent\uTorrent.exe" O4 - HKUS\S-1-5-19\..\Run: [Sidebar] %ProgramFiles%\Windows Sidebar\Sidebar.exe /autoRun (User 'LOCAL SERVICE') O4 - HKUS\S-1-5-19\..\RunOnce: [mctadmin] C:\Windows\System32\mctadmin.exe (User 'LOCAL SERVICE') O4 - HKUS\S-1-5-20\..\Run: [Sidebar] %ProgramFiles%\Windows Sidebar\Sidebar.exe /autoRun (User 'NETWORK SERVICE') O4 - HKUS\S-1-5-20\..\RunOnce: [mctadmin] C:\Windows\System32\mctadmin.exe (User 'NETWORK SERVICE') O4 - Startup: OpenOffice.org 3.1.lnk = C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenOffice.org 3\program\quickstart.exe O13 - Gopher Prefix: O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\Alg.exe,-112 (ALG) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\System32\alg.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: AMD External Events Utility - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\atiesrxx.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: ASUS System Control Service (AsSysCtrlService) - Unknown owner - C:\Program Files (x86)\ASUS\AsSysCtrlService\1.00.02\AsSysCtrlService.exe O23 - Service: DeviceVM Meta Data Export Service (DvmMDES) - DeviceVM - C:\ASUS.SYS\config\DVMExportService.exe O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\efssvc.dll,-100 (EFS) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\System32\lsass.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: ESET HTTP Server (EhttpSrv) - ESET - C:\Program Files\ESET\ESET NOD32 Antivirus\EHttpSrv.exe O23 - Service: ESET Service (ekrn) - ESET - C:\Program Files\ESET\ESET NOD32 Antivirus\x86\ekrn.exe O23 - Service: @%systemroot%\system32\fxsresm.dll,-118 (Fax) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\fxssvc.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: FLEXnet Licensing Service - Acresso Software Inc. - C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Macrovision Shared\FLEXnet Publisher\FNPLicensingService.exe O23 - Service: FLEXnet Licensing Service 64 - Acresso Software Inc. - C:\Program Files\Common Files\Macrovision Shared\FLEXnet Publisher\FNPLicensingService64.exe O23 - Service: InstallDriver Table Manager (IDriverT) - Macrovision Corporation - C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\InstallShield\Driver\11\Intel 32\IDriverT.exe O23 - Service: @keyiso.dll,-100 (KeyIso) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\lsass.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @comres.dll,-2797 (MSDTC) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\System32\msdtc.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\System32\netlogon.dll,-102 (Netlogon) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\lsass.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%systemroot%\system32\psbase.dll,-300 (ProtectedStorage) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\lsass.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: Protexis Licensing V2 (PSI_SVC_2) - Protexis Inc. - c:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Protexis\License Service\PsiService_2.exe O23 - Service: @%systemroot%\system32\Locator.exe,-2 (RpcLocator) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\locator.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\samsrv.dll,-1 (SamSs) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\lsass.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\snmptrap.exe,-3 (SNMPTRAP) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\System32\snmptrap.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%systemroot%\system32\spoolsv.exe,-1 (Spooler) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\System32\spoolsv.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\sppsvc.exe,-101 (sppsvc) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\sppsvc.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: Steam Client Service - Valve Corporation - C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Steam\SteamService.exe O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\ui0detect.exe,-101 (UI0Detect) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\UI0Detect.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\vaultsvc.dll,-1003 (VaultSvc) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\lsass.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\vds.exe,-100 (vds) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\System32\vds.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%systemroot%\system32\vssvc.exe,-102 (VSS) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\vssvc.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%systemroot%\system32\wbengine.exe,-104 (wbengine) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\wbengine.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%Systemroot%\system32\wbem\wmiapsrv.exe,-110 (wmiApSrv) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\wbem\WmiApSrv.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%PROGRAMFILES%\Windows Media Player\wmpnetwk.exe,-101 (WMPNetworkSvc) - Unknown owner - C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Media Player\wmpnetwk.exe (file missing) -- End of file - 6800 bytes CPU-Z ("[...]" indicates removed text; see full log posted to pastebin): CPU-Z TXT Report ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Binaries ------------------------------------------------------------------------- CPU-Z version 1.53.1 Processors ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Number of processors 1 Number of threads 2 APICs ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Processor 0 -- Core 0 -- Thread 0 0 -- Core 1 -- Thread 0 1 Processors Information ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Processor 1 ID = 0 Number of cores 2 (max 2) Number of threads 2 (max 2) Name AMD Phenom II X2 550 Codename Callisto Specification AMD Phenom(tm) II X2 550 Processor Package Socket AM3 (938) CPUID F.4.2 Extended CPUID 10.4 Brand ID 29 Core Stepping RB-C2 Technology 45 nm Core Speed 3110.7 MHz Multiplier x FSB 15.5 x 200.7 MHz HT Link speed 2006.9 MHz Instructions sets MMX (+), 3DNow! (+), SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4A, x86-64, AMD-V L1 Data cache 2 x 64 KBytes, 2-way set associative, 64-byte line size L1 Instruction cache 2 x 64 KBytes, 2-way set associative, 64-byte line size L2 cache 2 x 512 KBytes, 16-way set associative, 64-byte line size L3 cache 6 MBytes, 48-way set associative, 64-byte line size FID/VID Control yes Min FID 4.0x P-State FID 0xF - VID 0x10 P-State FID 0x8 - VID 0x18 P-State FID 0x3 - VID 0x20 P-State FID 0x100 - VID 0x2C Package Type 0x1 Model 50 String 1 0x7 String 2 0x6 Page 0x0 TDP Limit 79 Watts TDC Limit 66 Amps Attached device PCI device at bus 0, device 24, function 0 Attached device PCI device at bus 0, device 24, function 1 Attached device PCI device at bus 0, device 24, function 2 Attached device PCI device at bus 0, device 24, function 3 Attached device PCI device at bus 0, device 24, function 4 Thread dumps ------------------------------------------------------------------------- CPU Thread 0 APIC ID 0 Topology Processor ID 0, Core ID 0, Thread ID 0 Type 0200400Ah Max CPUID level 00000005h Max CPUID ext. level 8000001Bh Cache descriptor Level 1, I, 64 KB, 1 thread(s) Cache descriptor Level 1, D, 64 KB, 1 thread(s) Cache descriptor Level 2, U, 512 KB, 1 thread(s) Cache descriptor Level 3, U, 6 MB, 2 thread(s) CPUID 0x00000000 0x00000005 0x68747541 0x444D4163 0x69746E65 0x00000001 0x00100F42 0x00020800 0x00802009 0x178BFBFF 0x00000002 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000003 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000004 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000005 0x00000040 0x00000040 0x00000003 0x00000000 [...] CPU Thread 1 APIC ID 1 Topology Processor ID 0, Core ID 1, Thread ID 0 Type 0200400Ah Max CPUID level 00000005h Max CPUID ext. level 8000001Bh Cache descriptor Level 1, I, 64 KB, 1 thread(s) Cache descriptor Level 1, D, 64 KB, 1 thread(s) Cache descriptor Level 2, U, 512 KB, 1 thread(s) Cache descriptor Level 3, U, 6 MB, 2 thread(s) CPUID 0x00000000 0x00000005 0x68747541 0x444D4163 0x69746E65 0x00000001 0x00100F42 0x01020800 0x00802009 0x178BFBFF 0x00000002 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000003 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000004 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000005 0x00000040 0x00000040 0x00000003 0x00000000 [...] Chipset ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Northbridge AMD 790GX rev. 00 Southbridge ATI SB750 rev. 00 Memory Type DDR3 Memory Size 4096 MBytes Channels Dual, (Unganged) Memory Frequency 669.0 MHz (3:10) CAS# latency (CL) 9.0 RAS# to CAS# delay (tRCD) 9 RAS# Precharge (tRP) 9 Cycle Time (tRAS) 24 Bank Cycle Time (tRC) 33 Command Rate (CR) 1T Uncore Frequency 2006.9 MHz Memory SPD ------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIMM # 1 SMBus address 0x50 Memory type DDR3 Module format UDIMM Manufacturer (ID) G.Skill (7F7F7F7FCD000000) Size 2048 MBytes Max bandwidth PC3-10700 (667 MHz) Part number F3-10600CL9-2GBNT Number of banks 8 Nominal Voltage 1.50 Volts EPP no XMP no JEDEC timings table CL-tRCD-tRP-tRAS-tRC @ frequency JEDEC #1 6.0-6-6-17-23 @ 457 MHz JEDEC #2 7.0-7-7-20-27 @ 533 MHz JEDEC #3 8.0-8-8-22-31 @ 609 MHz JEDEC #4 9.0-9-9-25-34 @ 685 MHz DIMM # 2 SMBus address 0x51 Memory type DDR3 Module format UDIMM Manufacturer (ID) G.Skill (7F7F7F7FCD000000) Size 2048 MBytes Max bandwidth PC3-10700 (667 MHz) Part number F3-10600CL9-2GBNT Number of banks 8 Nominal Voltage 1.50 Volts EPP no XMP no JEDEC timings table CL-tRCD-tRP-tRAS-tRC @ frequency JEDEC #1 6.0-6-6-17-23 @ 457 MHz JEDEC #2 7.0-7-7-20-27 @ 533 MHz JEDEC #3 8.0-8-8-22-31 @ 609 MHz JEDEC #4 9.0-9-9-25-34 @ 685 MHz DIMM # 1 SPD registers [...] DIMM # 2 SPD registers [...] Monitoring ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mainboard Model M4A78T-E (0x000001F7 - 0x00A955E4) LPCIO ------------------------------------------------------------------------- LPCIO Vendor ITE LPCIO Model IT8720 LPCIO Vendor ID 0x90 LPCIO Chip ID 0x8720 LPCIO Revision ID 0x2 Config Mode I/O address 0x2E Config Mode LDN 0x4 Config Mode registers [...] Register space LPC, base address = 0x0290 Hardware Monitors ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hardware monitor ITE IT87 Voltage 1 1.62 Volts [0x65] (VIN1) Voltage 2 1.15 Volts [0x48] (CPU VCORE) Voltage 3 5.03 Volts [0xBB] (+5V) Voltage 8 3.34 Volts [0xD1] (VBAT) Temperature 0 39°C (102°F) [0x27] (TMPIN0) Temperature 1 43°C (109°F) [0x2B] (TMPIN1) Fan 0 3096 RPM [0xDA] (FANIN0) Register space LPC, base address = 0x0290 [...] Hardware monitor AMD SB6xx/7xx Voltage 0 1.37 Volts [0x1D2] (CPU VCore) Voltage 1 3.50 Volts [0x27B] (CPU IO) Voltage 2 12.68 Volts [0x282] (+12V) Hardware monitor AMD Phenom II X2 550 Power 0 89.10 W (Processor) Temperature 0 35°C (94°F) [0x115] (Core #0) Temperature 1 35°C (94°F) [0x115] (Core #1)

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• So you're a new sysadmin...

  - by 80bower

  I've recently taken over management of a Windows 2003 Small Business server and network for a small, less than ten person company. I have some (antiquated) sysadmin experience, but I've little experience with Exchange. The documentation of the existing infrastructure leaves much to be desired, and I was wondering if there's any sort of "So you've just become sysadmin" guides that anyone could recommend.

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• What output and recording ports does the Java Sound API find on your computer?

  - by Dave Carpeneto

  Hi all - I'm working with the Java Sound API, and it turns out if I want to adjust recording volumes I need to model the hardware that the OS exposes to Java. Turns out there's a lot of variety in what's presented. Because of this I'm humbly asking that anyone able to help me run the following on their computer and post back the results so that I can get an idea of what's out there. A thanks in advance to anyone that can assist :-) import javax.sound.sampled.*; public class SoundAudit { public static void main(String[] args) { try { System.out.println("OS: "+System.getProperty("os.name")+" "+ System.getProperty("os.version")+"/"+ System.getProperty("os.arch")+"\nJava: "+ System.getProperty("java.version")+" ("+ System.getProperty("java.vendor")+")\n"); for (Mixer.Info thisMixerInfo : AudioSystem.getMixerInfo()) { System.out.println("Mixer: "+thisMixerInfo.getDescription()+ " ["+thisMixerInfo.getName()+"]"); Mixer thisMixer = AudioSystem.getMixer(thisMixerInfo); for (Line.Info thisLineInfo:thisMixer.getSourceLineInfo()) { if (thisLineInfo.getLineClass().getName().equals( "javax.sound.sampled.Port")) { Line thisLine = thisMixer.getLine(thisLineInfo); thisLine.open(); System.out.println(" Source Port: " +thisLineInfo.toString()); for (Control thisControl : thisLine.getControls()) { System.out.println(AnalyzeControl(thisControl));} thisLine.close();}} for (Line.Info thisLineInfo:thisMixer.getTargetLineInfo()) { if (thisLineInfo.getLineClass().getName().equals( "javax.sound.sampled.Port")) { Line thisLine = thisMixer.getLine(thisLineInfo); thisLine.open(); System.out.println(" Target Port: " +thisLineInfo.toString()); for (Control thisControl : thisLine.getControls()) { System.out.println(AnalyzeControl(thisControl));} thisLine.close();}}} } catch (Exception e) {e.printStackTrace();}} public static String AnalyzeControl(Control thisControl) { String type = thisControl.getType().toString(); if (thisControl instanceof BooleanControl) { return " Control: "+type+" (boolean)"; } if (thisControl instanceof CompoundControl) { System.out.println(" Control: "+type+ " (compound - values below)"); String toReturn = ""; for (Control children: ((CompoundControl)thisControl).getMemberControls()) { toReturn+=" "+AnalyzeControl(children)+"\n";} return toReturn.substring(0, toReturn.length()-1);} if (thisControl instanceof EnumControl) { return " Control:"+type+" (enum: "+thisControl.toString()+")";} if (thisControl instanceof FloatControl) { return " Control: "+type+" (float: from "+ ((FloatControl) thisControl).getMinimum()+" to "+ ((FloatControl) thisControl).getMaximum()+")";} return " Control: unknown type";} } All the application does is print out a line about the OS, a line about the JVM, and a few lines about the hardware found that may pertain to recording hardware. For example on my PC at work I get the following: OS: Windows XP 5.1/x86 Java: 1.6.0_07 (Sun Microsystems Inc.) Mixer: Direct Audio Device: DirectSound Playback [Primary Sound Driver] Mixer: Direct Audio Device: DirectSound Playback [SoundMAX HD Audio] Mixer: Direct Audio Device: DirectSound Capture [Primary Sound Capture Driver] Mixer: Direct Audio Device: DirectSound Capture [SoundMAX HD Audio] Mixer: Software mixer and synthesizer [Java Sound Audio Engine] Mixer: Port Mixer [Port SoundMAX HD Audio] Source Port: MICROPHONE source port Control: Microphone (compound - values below) Control: Select (boolean) Control: Microphone Boost (boolean) Control: Front panel microphone (boolean) Control: Volume (float: from 0.0 to 1.0) Source Port: LINE_IN source port Control: Line In (compound - values below) Control: Select (boolean) Control: Volume (float: from 0.0 to 1.0) Control: Balance (float: from -1.0 to 1.0)

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• Who uses Zimbra Collaboration Suite and why?

  - by AlberT

  I am really curious about other people experiences and choices. After a long scouting, I found ZCS to be a really impressive solution, maybe the only real alternative to M$ Exchange. I'm very interested in opinions and case histories from users having already deployed Zimbra on their infrastructure or planning to do it. Both Community and Network edition cases are appreciated, pro and cons explained too :) Zimlets, addons, useful skins, Zimbra Desktop and other apps or mobile integration use case too of course.

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• Windows 2008 RenderFarm Service: CreateProcessAsUser "Session 0 Isolation" and OpenGL

  - by holtavolt

  Hello, I have a legacy Windows server service and (spawned) application that works fine in XP-64 and W2K3, but fails on W2K8. I believe it is because of the new "Session 0 isolation " feature. (Note: As a StackOverflow newbie I'm being limited to one link in this post, so you'll need to scroll to bottom to lookup the links for '' items)* Consequently, I'm looking for code samples/security settings mojo that let you create a new process from a windows service for Windows 2008 Server such that I can restore (and possibly surpass) the previous behavior. I need a solution that: Creates the new process in a non-zero session to get around session-0 isolation restrictions (no access to graphics hardware from session 0) - the official MS line on this is: Because Session 0 is no longer a user session, services that are running in Session 0 do not have access to the video driver. This means that any attempt that a service makes to render graphics fails. Querying the display resolution and color depth in Session 0 reports the correct results for the system up to a maximum of 1920x1200 at 32 bits per pixel. The new process gets a windows station/desktop (e.g. winsta0/default) that can be used to create windows DCs. I've found a solution (that launches OK in an interactive session) for this here: *(Starting an Interactive Client Process in C++ - 2) The windows DC, when used as the basis for an *(OpenGL DescribePixelFormat enumeration - 3), is able to find and use the hardware-accelerated format (on a system appropriately equipped with OpenGL hardware.) Note that our current solution works OK on XP-64 and W2K3, except if a terminal services session is running (VNC works fine.) A solution that also allowed the process to work (i.e. run with OpenGL hardware acceleration even when a terminal services session is open) would be fanastic, although not required. I'm stuck at item #1 currently, and although there are some similar postings that discuss this (like *(this -4), and *(this - 5) - they are not suitable solutions, as there is no guarantee of a user session logged in already to "take" a session id from, nor am I running from a LocalSystem account (I'm running from a domain account for the service, for which I can adjust the privileges of, within reason, although I'd prefer to not have to escalate priorities to include SeTcbPrivileges.) For instance - here's a stub that I think should work, but always returns an error 1314 on the SetTokenInformation call (even though the AdjustTokenPrivileges returned no errors) I've used some alternate strategies involving "LogonUser" as well (instead of opening the existing process token), but I can't seem to swap out the session id. I'm also dubious about using the WTSActiveConsoleSessionId in all cases (for instance, if no interactive user is logged in) - although a quick test of the service running with no sessions logged in seemed to return a reasonable session value (1). I’ve removed error handling for ease of reading (still a bit messy - apologies) //Also tried using LogonUser(..) here OpenProcessToken(GetCurrentProcess(), TOKEN_QUERY | TOKEN_ADJUST_PRIVILEGES | TOKEN_ADJUST_SESSIONID | TOKEN_ADJUST_DEFAULT | TOKEN_ASSIGN_PRIMARY | TOKEN_DUPLICATE, &hToken) GetTokenInformation( hToken, TokenSessionId, &logonSessionId, sizeof(DWORD), &dwTokenLength ) DWORD consoleSessionId = WTSGetActiveConsoleSessionId(); /* Can't use this - requires very elevated privileges (LOCAL only, SeTcbPrivileges as well) if( !WTSQueryUserToken(consoleSessionId, &hToken)) ... */ DuplicateTokenEx(hToken, (TOKEN_QUERY | TOKEN_ADJUST_PRIVILEGES | TOKEN_ADJUST_SESSIONID | TOKEN_ADJUST_DEFAULT | TOKEN_ASSIGN_PRIMARY | TOKEN_DUPLICATE), NULL, SecurityIdentification, TokenPrimary, &hDupToken)) // Look up the LUID for the TCB Name privilege. LookupPrivilegeValue(NULL, SE_TCB_NAME, &tp.Privileges[0].Luid)) // Enable the TCB Name privilege in the token. tp.PrivilegeCount = 1; tp.Privileges[0].Attributes = SE_PRIVILEGE_ENABLED; if (!AdjustTokenPrivileges(hDupToken, FALSE, &tp, sizeof(TOKEN_PRIVILEGES), NULL, 0)) { DisplayError("AdjustTokenPrivileges"); ... } if (GetLastError() == ERROR_NOT_ALL_ASSIGNED) { DEBUG( "Token does not have the necessary privilege.\n"); } else { DEBUG( "No error reported from AdjustTokenPrivileges!\n"); } // Never errors here DEBUG(LM_INFO, "Attempting setting of sessionId to: %d\n", consoleSessionId ); if (!SetTokenInformation(hDupToken, TokenSessionId, &consoleSessionId, sizeof(DWORD))) *** ALWAYS FAILS WITH 1314 HERE *** All the debug output looks fine up until the SetTokenInformation call - I see session 0 is my current process session, and in my case, it's trying to set session 1 (the result of the WTSGetActiveConsoleSessionId). (Note that I'm logged into the W2K8 box via VNC, not RDC) So - a the questions: Is this approach valid, or are all service-initiated processes restricted to session 0 intentionally? Is there a better approach (short of "Launch on logon" and auto-logon for the servers?) Is there something wrong with this code, or a different way to create a process token where I can swap out the session id to indicate I want to spawn the process in a new session? I did try using LogonUser instead of OpenProcessToken, but that didn't work either. (I don't care if all spawned processes share the same non-zero session or not at this point.) Any help much appreciated - thanks! (You need to replace the 'zttp' with 'http' - StackOverflow restriction on one link in my newbie post) 2: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa379608(VS.85).aspx 3: http://www.opengl.org/resources/faq/technical/mswindows.htm 4: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2237696/creating-a-process-in-a-non-zero-session-from-a-service-in-windows-2008-server 5: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1602996/how-can-i-lauch-a-process-which-has-a-ui-from-windows-service

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