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xamlparser error after clickonce deployment.Application crashing after installation

- by black sensei

Hello Good People, I've built an WPF application with visual studio 2008 and created an installer for it.Works fine so far.I realized it lacks the automatic updates feature, and after trying several solutions, i decided to give a try to clickonce deployment.After a successful deployment on a network server, i 've noticed that the application crashes after installation of the downloaded app.It complains about this: Cannot create instance of 'Login' defined in assembly 'MyApplication, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null'. Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. Error in markup file 'MyApplication;component/login.xaml' Line 1 Position 9. here is the stacktrace at System.Windows.Markup.XamlParseException.ThrowException(String message, Exception innerException, Int32 lineNumber, Int32 linePosition, Uri baseUri, XamlObjectIds currentXamlObjectIds, XamlObjectIds contextXamlObjectIds, Type objectType) at System.Windows.Markup.XamlParseException.ThrowException(ParserContext parserContext, Int32 lineNumber, Int32 linePosition, String message, Exception innerException) at System.Windows.Markup.BamlRecordReader.ThrowExceptionWithLine(String message, Exception innerException) at System.Windows.Markup.BamlRecordReader.CreateInstanceFromType(Type type, Int16 typeId, Boolean throwOnFail) at System.Windows.Markup.BamlRecordReader.GetElementAndFlags(BamlElementStartRecord bamlElementStartRecord, Object& element, ReaderFlags& flags, Type& delayCreatedType, Int16& delayCreatedTypeId) at System.Windows.Markup.BamlRecordReader.BaseReadElementStartRecord(BamlElementStartRecord bamlElementRecord) at System.Windows.Markup.BamlRecordReader.ReadElementStartRecord(BamlElementStartRecord bamlElementRecord) at System.Windows.Markup.BamlRecordReader.ReadRecord(BamlRecord bamlRecord) at System.Windows.Markup.BamlRecordReader.Read(Boolean singleRecord) at System.Windows.Markup.TreeBuilderBamlTranslator.ParseFragment() at System.Windows.Markup.TreeBuilder.Parse() at System.Windows.Markup.XamlReader.LoadBaml(Stream stream, ParserContext parserContext, Object parent, Boolean closeStream) at System.Windows.Application.LoadBamlStreamWithSyncInfo(Stream stream, ParserContext pc) at System.Windows.Application.LoadComponent(Uri resourceLocator, Boolean bSkipJournaledProperties) at System.Windows.Application.DoStartup() at System.Windows.Application.<.ctorb__0(Object unused) at System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.InternalRealCall(Delegate callback, Object args, Boolean isSingleParameter) at System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.TryCatchWhen(Object source, Delegate callback, Object args, Boolean isSingleParameter, Delegate catchHandler) at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.WrappedInvoke(Delegate callback, Object args, Boolean isSingleParameter, Delegate catchHandler) at System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherOperation.InvokeImpl() at System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherOperation.InvokeInSecurityContext(Object state) at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.runTryCode(Object userData) at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.RuntimeHelpers.ExecuteCodeWithGuaranteedCleanup(TryCode code, CleanupCode backoutCode, Object userData) at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.RunInternal(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state) at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state) at System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherOperation.Invoke() at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.ProcessQueue() at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.WndProcHook(IntPtr hwnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam, Boolean& handled) at MS.Win32.HwndWrapper.WndProc(IntPtr hwnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam, Boolean& handled) at MS.Win32.HwndSubclass.DispatcherCallbackOperation(Object o) at System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.InternalRealCall(Delegate callback, Object args, Boolean isSingleParameter) at System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.TryCatchWhen(Object source, Delegate callback, Object args, Boolean isSingleParameter, Delegate catchHandler) at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.WrappedInvoke(Delegate callback, Object args, Boolean isSingleParameter, Delegate catchHandler) at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.InvokeImpl(DispatcherPriority priority, TimeSpan timeout, Delegate method, Object args, Boolean isSingleParameter) at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.Invoke(DispatcherPriority priority, Delegate method, Object arg) at MS.Win32.HwndSubclass.SubclassWndProc(IntPtr hwnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam) at MS.Win32.UnsafeNativeMethods.DispatchMessage(MSG& msg) at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.PushFrameImpl(DispatcherFrame frame) at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.PushFrame(DispatcherFrame frame) at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.Run() at System.Windows.Application.RunDispatcher(Object ignore) at System.Windows.Application.RunInternal(Window window) at System.Windows.Application.Run(Window window) at System.Windows.Application.Run() at myApplication.App.Main() here is just the region the debugger is pointing to <Window x:Class="MyApplication.Login" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:src="clr-namespace:MyApplication" xmlns:UI="clr-namespace:UI;assembly=UI" Title="My Application" Height="400" Width="550" ResizeMode="NoResize" WindowStyle="ThreeDBorderWindow" WindowStartupLocation="CenterScreen" Name="Logine" Loaded="Logine_Loaded" Closed="Logine_Closed" Icon="orLogo.ico"> But the installer version as in the msi from setup project works fine.so i cannot see where the error is comming from since i can have design view. Question 1 : Does any one have a similar issue, or is that a known issue? Question 2 : If it's a known issue then what are alternative.I might give up on the clickonce but then i my automatic update feature will be lost (as in there is none which is not ovekill or seriously outdated that i can find right now). thanks for reading this and for pointing me to the right direction.

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ObjectContext.SaveChanges() fails with SQL CE

- by David Veeneman

I am creating a model-first Entity Framework 4 app that uses SQL CE as its data store. All is well until I call ObjectContext.SaveChanges() to save changes to the entities in the model. At that point, SaveChanges() throws a System.Data.UpdateException, with an inner exception message that reads as follows: Server-generated keys and server-generated values are not supported by SQL Server Compact. I am completely puzzled by this message. Any idea what is going on and how to fix it? Thanks. Here is the Exception dump: System.Data.UpdateException was unhandled Message=An error occurred while updating the entries. See the inner exception for details. Source=System.Data.Entity StackTrace: at System.Data.Mapping.Update.Internal.UpdateTranslator.Update(IEntityStateManager stateManager, IEntityAdapter adapter) at System.Data.EntityClient.EntityAdapter.Update(IEntityStateManager entityCache) at System.Data.Objects.ObjectContext.SaveChanges(SaveOptions options) at System.Data.Objects.ObjectContext.SaveChanges() at FsDocumentationBuilder.ViewModel.Commands.SaveFileCommand.Execute(Object parameter) in D:\Users\dcveeneman\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\FsDocumentationBuilder\FsDocumentationBuilder\ViewModel\Commands\SaveFileCommand.cs:line 68 at MS.Internal.Commands.CommandHelpers.CriticalExecuteCommandSource(ICommandSource commandSource, Boolean userInitiated) at System.Windows.Controls.Primitives.ButtonBase.OnClick() at System.Windows.Controls.Button.OnClick() at System.Windows.Controls.Primitives.ButtonBase.OnMouseLeftButtonUp(MouseButtonEventArgs e) at System.Windows.UIElement.OnMouseLeftButtonUpThunk(Object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e) at System.Windows.Input.MouseButtonEventArgs.InvokeEventHandler(Delegate genericHandler, Object genericTarget) at System.Windows.RoutedEventArgs.InvokeHandler(Delegate handler, Object target) at System.Windows.RoutedEventHandlerInfo.InvokeHandler(Object target, RoutedEventArgs routedEventArgs) at System.Windows.EventRoute.InvokeHandlersImpl(Object source, RoutedEventArgs args, Boolean reRaised) at System.Windows.UIElement.ReRaiseEventAs(DependencyObject sender, RoutedEventArgs args, RoutedEvent newEvent) at System.Windows.UIElement.OnMouseUpThunk(Object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e) at System.Windows.Input.MouseButtonEventArgs.InvokeEventHandler(Delegate genericHandler, Object genericTarget) at System.Windows.RoutedEventArgs.InvokeHandler(Delegate handler, Object target) at System.Windows.RoutedEventHandlerInfo.InvokeHandler(Object target, RoutedEventArgs routedEventArgs) at System.Windows.EventRoute.InvokeHandlersImpl(Object source, RoutedEventArgs args, Boolean reRaised) at System.Windows.UIElement.RaiseEventImpl(DependencyObject sender, RoutedEventArgs args) at System.Windows.UIElement.RaiseTrustedEvent(RoutedEventArgs args) at System.Windows.UIElement.RaiseEvent(RoutedEventArgs args, Boolean trusted) at System.Windows.Input.InputManager.ProcessStagingArea() at System.Windows.Input.InputManager.ProcessInput(InputEventArgs input) at System.Windows.Input.InputProviderSite.ReportInput(InputReport inputReport) at System.Windows.Interop.HwndMouseInputProvider.ReportInput(IntPtr hwnd, InputMode mode, Int32 timestamp, RawMouseActions actions, Int32 x, Int32 y, Int32 wheel) at System.Windows.Interop.HwndMouseInputProvider.FilterMessage(IntPtr hwnd, WindowMessage msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam, Boolean& handled) at System.Windows.Interop.HwndSource.InputFilterMessage(IntPtr hwnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam, Boolean& handled) at MS.Win32.HwndWrapper.WndProc(IntPtr hwnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam, Boolean& handled) at MS.Win32.HwndSubclass.DispatcherCallbackOperation(Object o) at System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.InternalRealCall(Delegate callback, Object args, Int32 numArgs) at MS.Internal.Threading.ExceptionFilterHelper.TryCatchWhen(Object source, Delegate method, Object args, Int32 numArgs, Delegate catchHandler) at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.InvokeImpl(DispatcherPriority priority, TimeSpan timeout, Delegate method, Object args, Int32 numArgs) at MS.Win32.HwndSubclass.SubclassWndProc(IntPtr hwnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam) at MS.Win32.UnsafeNativeMethods.DispatchMessage(MSG& msg) at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.PushFrameImpl(DispatcherFrame frame) at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.PushFrame(DispatcherFrame frame) at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.Run() at System.Windows.Application.RunDispatcher(Object ignore) at System.Windows.Application.RunInternal(Window window) at System.Windows.Application.Run(Window window) at System.Windows.Application.Run() at FsDocumentationBuilder.App.Main() in D:\Users\dcveeneman\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\FsDocumentationBuilder\FsDocumentationBuilder\obj\x86\Debug\App.g.cs:line 50 at System.AppDomain._nExecuteAssembly(RuntimeAssembly assembly, String[] args) at System.AppDomain.ExecuteAssembly(String assemblyFile, Evidence assemblySecurity, String[] args) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.HostingProcess.HostProc.RunUsersAssembly() at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart_Context(Object state) at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state, Boolean ignoreSyncCtx) at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state) at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart() InnerException: System.Data.EntityCommandCompilationException Message=An error occurred while preparing the command definition. See the inner exception for details. Source=System.Data.Entity StackTrace: at System.Data.Mapping.Update.Internal.UpdateTranslator.CreateCommand(DbModificationCommandTree commandTree) at System.Data.Mapping.Update.Internal.DynamicUpdateCommand.CreateCommand(UpdateTranslator translator, Dictionary`2 identifierValues) at System.Data.Mapping.Update.Internal.DynamicUpdateCommand.Execute(UpdateTranslator translator, EntityConnection connection, Dictionary`2 identifierValues, List`1 generatedValues) at System.Data.Mapping.Update.Internal.UpdateTranslator.Update(IEntityStateManager stateManager, IEntityAdapter adapter) InnerException: System.NotSupportedException Message=Server-generated keys and server-generated values are not supported by SQL Server Compact. Source=System.Data.SqlServerCe.Entity StackTrace: at System.Data.SqlServerCe.SqlGen.DmlSqlGenerator.GenerateReturningSql(StringBuilder commandText, DbModificationCommandTree tree, ExpressionTranslator translator, DbExpression returning) at System.Data.SqlServerCe.SqlGen.DmlSqlGenerator.GenerateInsertSql(DbInsertCommandTree tree, List`1& parameters, Boolean isLocalProvider) at System.Data.SqlServerCe.SqlGen.SqlGenerator.GenerateSql(DbCommandTree tree, List`1& parameters, CommandType& commandType, Boolean isLocalProvider) at System.Data.SqlServerCe.SqlCeProviderServices.CreateCommand(DbProviderManifest providerManifest, DbCommandTree commandTree) at System.Data.SqlServerCe.SqlCeProviderServices.CreateDbCommandDefinition(DbProviderManifest providerManifest, DbCommandTree commandTree) at System.Data.Common.DbProviderServices.CreateCommandDefinition(DbCommandTree commandTree) at System.Data.Common.DbProviderServices.CreateCommand(DbCommandTree commandTree) at System.Data.Mapping.Update.Internal.UpdateTranslator.CreateCommand(DbModificationCommandTree commandTree) InnerException:

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Selected value from drop-down list doesn't post from jquery dialog

- by RememberME

I have a jQuery dialog. All of the fields are posting correctly except for the drop-downs, the value is getting passed as null rather than the selected value. <div id="popupCreateCompany" title="Create a new company"> <form> <fieldset> <p> <label for="company_name">Company Name:</label> <%= Html.TextBox("company_name") %> </p> <p> <label for="company_desc">Company Description:</label> <%= Html.TextBox("company_desc") %> </p> <p> <label for="address">Address:</label> <%= Html.TextBox("address") %> </p> <p> <label for="city">City:</label> <%= Html.TextBox("city") %> </p> <p> <label for="state">State:</label> <%= Html.TextBox("state") %> </p> <p> <label for="zip">Zip:</label> <%= Html.TextBox("zip") %> </p> <p> <label for="website">Website:</label> <%= Html.TextBox("website", "http:/") %> </p> <p> <label for="sales_contact">Sales Contact:</label> <%= Html.DropDownList("sales_contact", Model.SelectSalesContacts, "** Select Sales Contact **") %> </p> <p> <label for="primary_company">Primary Company:</label> <%= Html.DropDownList("primary_company", Model.SelectPrimaryCompanies, "** Select Primary Company **") %> </p> </fieldset> </form> jQuery: $('#popupCreateCompany').dialog( { autoOpen: false, modal: true, buttons: { 'Add': function() { var dialog = $(this); var form = dialog.find('input:text'); $.post('/company/create', $(form).serialize(), function() { dialog.dialog('close'); }) }, 'Cancel': function() { $(this).dialog('close'); } } }); $("#create-company").click(function() { $('#popupCreateCompany').dialog('open'); }); My SelectList definitions: public class SubcontractFormViewModel { public subcontract Subcontract { get; private set; } public SelectList SelectPrimaryCompanies { get; set; } public MultiSelectList SelectService_Lines { get; private set; } public SelectList SelectSalesContacts { get; private set; } public SubcontractFormViewModel(subcontract subcontract) { SubcontractRepository subcontractRepository = new SubcontractRepository(); Subcontract = subcontract; SelectPrimaryCompanies = new SelectList(subcontractRepository.GetPrimaryCompanies(), "company_id", "company_name"); SelectService_Lines = new MultiSelectList(subcontractRepository.GetService_Lines(), "service_line_id", "service_line_name", subcontractRepository.GetSubcontractService_Lines(Subcontract.subcontract_id)); SelectSalesContacts = new SelectList(subcontractRepository.GetContacts(), "contact_id", "contact_name"); } }

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Help needed with drawRect:

- by Andrew Coad

Hi, I'm having a fundamental issue with use of drawRect: Any advice would be greatly appreciated. The application needs to draw a variety of .png images at different times, sometimes with animation, sometimes without. A design goal that I was hoping to adhere to is to have the code inside drawRect: very simple and "dumb" - i.e. just do drawing and no other application logic. To draw the image I am using the drawAtPoint: method of UIImage. Since this method does not take a CGContext as a parameter, it can only be called within the drawRect: method. So I have: - (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect { [firstImage drawAtPoint:CGPointMake(firstOffsetX, firstOffsetY)]; } All fine and dandy for one image. To draw multiple images (over time) the approach I have taken is to maintain an array of dictionaries with each dictionary containing an image, the point location to draw at and a flag to enable/suppress drawing for that image. I add dictionaries to the array over time and trigger drawing via the setNeedsDisplay: method of UIView. Use of an array of dictionaries allows me to completely reconstruct the entire display at any time. drawRect: now becomes: - (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect { for (NSMutableDictionary *imageDict in [self imageDisplayList]) { if ([[imageDict objectForKey:@"needsDisplay"] boolValue]) { [[imageDict objectForKey:@"image"] drawAtPoint:[[imageDict objectForKey:@"location"] CGPointValue]]; [imageDict setValue:[NSNumber numberWithBool:NO] forKey:@"needsDisplay"]; } } } Still OK. The code is simple and compact. Animating this is where I run into problems. The first problem is where do I put the animation code? Do I put it in UIView or UIViewController? If in UIView, do I put it in drawRect: or elsewhere? Because the actual animation depends on the overall state of the application, I would need nested switch statements which, if put in drawRect:, would look something like this: - (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect { for (NSMutableDictionary *imageDict in [self imageDisplayList]) { if ([[imageDict objectForKey:@"needsDisplay"] boolValue]) { switch ([self currentState]) { case STATE_1: switch ([[imageDict objectForKey:@"animationID"] intValue]) { case ANIMATE_FADE_IN: [self setAlpha:0.0]; [UIView beginAnimations:[[imageDict objectForKey:@"animationID"] intValue] context:nil]; [UIView setAnimationDelegate:self]; [UIView setAnimationCurve:UIViewAnimationCurveEaseIn]; [UIView setAnimationDuration:2]; [self setAlpha:1.0]; break; case ANIMATE_FADE_OUT: [self setAlpha:1.0]; [UIView beginAnimations:[[imageDict objectForKey:@"animationID"] intValue] context:nil]; [UIView setAnimationDelegate:self]; [UIView setAnimationCurve:UIViewAnimationCurveEaseOut]; [UIView setAnimationDuration:2]; [self setAlpha:0.0]; break; case ANIMATE_OTHER: // similar code here break; default: break; } break; case STATE_2: // similar code here break; default: break; } [[imageDict objectForKey:@"image"] drawAtPoint:[[imageDict objectForKey:@"location"] CGPointValue]]; [imageDict setValue:[NSNumber numberWithBool:NO] forKey:@"needsDisplay"]; } } [UIView commitAnimations]; } In addition, to make multiple sequential animations work correctly, there would need to be an outer controlling mechanism involving the animation delegate animationDidStop: callback that would set the needsDisplay entries in the dictionaries to allow/suppress drawing (and animation). The point that we are at now is that it all starts to look very ugly. More specifically: drawRect: starts to bloat quickly and contain code that is not "just drawing" code the UIView needs implicit awareness of the application state the overall process of drawing is now spread across three methods at a minimum And on to the point of this post: how can I do this better? What would the experts out there recommend in terms of overall structure? How can I keep application state information out of the view? Am I looking at this problem from the wrong direction. Is there some completely different approach that I should consider?

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Help with this code.

- by karthick6891

Heading ##Hey guys i need help with this code.The short version is,i have to do match the follwing by using drag and drop in jquery and later i need to show a message whether it is right or wrong. var output = "Wrong"; var old_item ; var new_item ; var newObjArray=[]; $(function() { var $gallery = $('.gallery'), $trash = $('.trash'); $('div',$gallery).draggable({ revert: 'invalid', containment: 'document', helper: 'clone', cursor: 'move', }); // let the trash be droppable, accepting the gallery items $trash.droppable({ //accept: '#gallery div', //activeClass: 'ui-state-highlight', tolerance: 'touch', drop: function(ev, ui) { new_item = ui.draggable; $(this).droppable("option","activeClass",'.ui-state-highlight'); if(contains(newObjArray,ui.draggable)) { newObjArray.pop(ui.draggable); } newObjArray.push(ui.draggable); deleteImage(ui.draggable,$(this)); } }); // let the gallery be droppable as well, accepting items from the trash $gallery.droppable({ //accept: '#trash li', activeClass: 'custom-state-active', drop: function(ev, ui) { recycleImage(ui.draggable); } }); // image deletion function function deleteImage($item,element) { var $list; $item.fadeOut(10,function() { if($(".ui-widget-content", element).length <1){ old_item = $item; $list = $('<div class="gallery ui-helper-reset"/>').appendTo(element); //$('ul',$trash).length ? $('ul',$trash) : $('<ul class="gallery ui-helper-reset"/>').appendTo($trash); $item.appendTo($list).fadeIn(10); } else{ recycleImage($(".ui-widget-content",element)); $list = $('<div class="gallery ui-helper-reset"/>').appendTo(element); $item.appendTo($list).fadeIn(10); old_item = $item; } }); } //check for given answer // image recycle function function recycleImage($item) { $item.fadeOut(10,function() { $item.find("img").end().appendTo($gallery).fadeIn(10); }); } // image preview function, demonstrating the ui.dialog used as a modal window }); function checkOrder(){ if(newObjArray==null){ } else if(newObjArray!=null){ if(newObjArray[0].attr("id")=="5"&& newObjArray[1].attr("id")=="1" && newObjArray[2].attr("id")=="3" && newObjArray[3].attr("id")=="2" && newObjArray[4].attr("id")=="4"){ parent.parent.increaseCorrectA(); } else{ parent.parent.increaseWrongA(); } } } function contains(a, obj) { var i = a.length; while (i--) { if (a[i] === obj) { return true; } } return false; } I am calling the function checkOrder() from the html page after the matching of items is over.What happens here is i have just stored the user responses on the draggable over droppable in an array,based on it's position.It is a bad practice cause,i am saying whether it's right or wrong through its position in the array.The only thing i can do is get the draggable's id present in the droppable.But i dont know how to get that inside the function checkOrder().Any ideas please?

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Ado.net Fill method not throwing error on running a Stored Procedure that does not exist.

- by Mike

I am using a combination of the Enterprise library and the original Fill method of ADO. This is because I need to open and close the command connection myself as I am capture the event Info Message Here is my code so far // Set Up Command SqlDatabase db = new SqlDatabase(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings[ConnectionName].ConnectionString); SqlCommand command = db.GetStoredProcCommand(StoredProcName) as SqlCommand; command.Connection = db.CreateConnection() as SqlConnection; // Set Up Events for Logging command.StatementCompleted += new StatementCompletedEventHandler(command_StatementCompleted); command.Connection.FireInfoMessageEventOnUserErrors = true; command.Connection.InfoMessage += new SqlInfoMessageEventHandler(Connection_InfoMessage); // Add Parameters foreach (Parameter parameter in Parameters) { db.AddInParameter(command, parameter.Name, (System.Data.DbType)Enum.Parse(typeof(System.Data.DbType), parameter.Type), parameter.Value); } // Use the Old Style fill to keep the connection Open througout the population // and manage the Statement Complete and InfoMessage events SqlDataAdapter da = new SqlDataAdapter(command); DataSet ds = new DataSet(); // Open Connection command.Connection.Open(); // Populate da.Fill(ds); // Dispose of the adapter if (da != null) { da.Dispose(); } // If you do not explicitly close the connection here, it will leak! if (command.Connection.State == ConnectionState.Open) { command.Connection.Close(); } ... Now if I pass into the variable StoredProcName = "ThisProcDoesNotExists" And run this peice of code. The CreateCommand nor da.Fill through an error message. Why is this. The only way I can tell it did not run was that it returns a dataset with 0 tables in it. But when investigating the error it is not appearant that the procedure does not exist. EDIT Upon further investigation command.Connection.FireInfoMessageEventOnUserErrors = true; is causeing the error to be surpressed into the InfoMessage Event From BOL When you set FireInfoMessageEventOnUserErrors to true, errors that were previously treated as exceptions are now handled as InfoMessage events. All events fire immediately and are handled by the event handler. If is FireInfoMessageEventOnUserErrors is set to false, then InfoMessage events are handled at the end of the procedure. What I want is each print statement from Sql to create a new log record. Setting this property to false combines it as one big string. So if I leave the property set to true, now the question is can I discern a print message from an Error ANOTHER EDIT So now I have the code so that the flag is set to true and checking the error number in the method void Connection_InfoMessage(object sender, SqlInfoMessageEventArgs e) { // These are not really errors unless the Number >0 // if Number = 0 that is a print message foreach (SqlError sql in e.Errors) { if (sql.Number == 0) { Logger.WriteInfo("Sql Message",sql.Message); } else { // Whatever this was it was an error throw new DataException(String.Format("Message={0},Line={1},Number={2},State{3}", sql.Message, sql.LineNumber, sql.Number, sql.State)); } } } The issue now that when I throw the error it does not bubble up to the statement that made the call or even the error handler that is above that. It just bombs out on that line The populate looks like // Populate try { da.Fill(ds); } catch (Exception e) { throw new Exception(e.Message, e); } Now even though I see the calling codes and methods still in the Call Stack, this exception does not seem to bubble up?

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Game AI: Pattern for implementing Sense-Think-Act components?

- by Rosarch

I'm developing a game. Each entity in the game is a GameObject. Each GameObject is composed of a GameObjectController, GameObjectModel, and GameObjectView. (Or inheritants thereof.) For NPCs, the GameObjectController is split into: IThinkNPC: reads current state and makes a decision about what to do IActNPC: updates state based on what needs to be done ISenseNPC: reads current state to answer world queries (eg "am I being in the shadows?") My question: Is this ok for the ISenseNPC interface? public interface ISenseNPC { // ... /// <summary> /// True if `dest` is a safe point to which to retreat. /// </summary> /// <param name="dest"></param> /// <param name="angleToThreat"></param> /// <param name="range"></param> /// <returns></returns> bool IsSafeToRetreat(Vector2 dest, float angleToThreat, float range); /// <summary> /// Finds a new location to which to retreat. /// </summary> /// <param name="angleToThreat"></param> /// <returns></returns> Vector2 newRetreatDest(float angleToThreat); /// <summary> /// Returns the closest LightSource that illuminates the NPC. /// Null if the NPC is not illuminated. /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> ILightSource ClosestIlluminatingLight(); /// <summary> /// True if the NPC is sufficiently far away from target. /// Assumes that target is the only entity it could ever run from. /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> bool IsSafeFromTarget(); } None of the methods take any parameters. Instead, the implementation is expected to maintain a reference to the relevant GameObjectController and read that. However, I'm now trying to write unit tests for this. Obviously, it's necessary to use mocking, since I can't pass arguments directly. The way I'm doing it feels really brittle - what if another implementation comes along that uses the world query utilities in a different way? Really, I'm not testing the interface, I'm testing the implementation. Poor. The reason I used this pattern in the first place was to keep IThinkNPC implementation code clean: public BehaviorState RetreatTransition(BehaviorState currentBehavior) { if (sense.IsCollidingWithTarget()) { NPCUtils.TraceTransitionIfNeeded(ToString(), BehaviorState.ATTACK.ToString(), "is colliding with target"); return BehaviorState.ATTACK; } if (sense.IsSafeFromTarget() && sense.ClosestIlluminatingLight() == null) { return BehaviorState.WANDER; } if (sense.ClosestIlluminatingLight() != null && sense.SeesTarget()) { NPCUtils.TraceTransitionIfNeeded(ToString(), BehaviorState.ATTACK.ToString(), "collides with target"); return BehaviorState.CHASE; } return currentBehavior; } Perhaps the cleanliness isn't worth it, however. So, if ISenseNPC takes all the params it needs every time, I could make it static. Is there any problem with that?

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Android app hanging, sometimes until Force Close / Wait dialog appears

- by fredley

I'm making an app that records uncompressed (wav format) audio. I'm using this class to actually record the audio. Currently, my application records fine (I can play the file), however when I click the button to stop the recording, the app hangs for 10 seconds or so, with no log output or any signs of life. Finally it comes round, dumps a load of errors into the log, updates the UI etc. I'm using AsyncTasks to try and avoid this kind of thing but it's not working. Here's my code: //Called on clicks of the record button. rar is the instance of RehearsalAudioRecorder private OnClickListener RecordListener = new OnClickListener(){ @Override public void onClick(View v) { Log.d("Record","Click"); if (recording){ new stopRecordingTask().execute(rar,null,null); startStop.setText("Record"); statusBar.setText("Recording Finished, ready to Encode"); }else{ recording = true; new startRecordingTask().execute(rar,null,null); startStop.setText("Stop"); statusBar.setText("Recording Started"); } } }; private class startRecordingTask extends AsyncTask<RehearsalAudioRecorder,Void,Void>{ @Override protected Void doInBackground(RehearsalAudioRecorder... rs) { RehearsalAudioRecorder r = rs[0]; r.setOutputFile("/sdcard/rarOut.wav"); r.prepare(); r.start(); return null; } } private class stopRecordingTask extends AsyncTask<RehearsalAudioRecorder,Void,Void>{ @Override protected Void doInBackground(RehearsalAudioRecorder... rs) { RehearsalAudioRecorder r = rs[0]; r.stop(); r.reset(); return null; } } In Logcat, I always get output like this, which has me stumped. I have no idea what's causing it (I'm logging the RehearsalAudioRecorder class, and it's being started/stopped correctly by the button clicks. This output occurs after the log output for the button click and correct stop() method call) 12-19 11:59:11.172: ERROR/AudioRecord-JNI(22662): Unable to retrieve AudioRecord object, can't record 12-19 11:59:11.172: ERROR/uk.ac.cam.tfmw2.steg.RehearsalAudioRecorder(22662): Error occured in updateListener, recording is aborted 12-19 11:59:11.172: ERROR/uk.ac.cam.tfmw2.steg.RehearsalAudioRecorder(22662): stop() called on illegal state: STOPPED 12-19 11:59:11.172: ERROR/AudioRecord-JNI(22662): Unable to retrieve AudioRecord object, can't record 12-19 11:59:11.172: ERROR/uk.ac.cam.tfmw2.steg.RehearsalAudioRecorder(22662): Error occured in updateListener, recording is aborted 12-19 11:59:11.172: ERROR/uk.ac.cam.tfmw2.steg.RehearsalAudioRecorder(22662): stop() called on illegal state: ERROR 12-19 11:59:11.172: ERROR/AudioRecord-JNI(22662): Unable to retrieve AudioRecord object, can't record 12-19 11:59:11.172: ERROR/uk.ac.cam.tfmw2.steg.RehearsalAudioRecorder(22662): Error occured in updateListener, recording is aborted 12-19 11:59:11.172: ERROR/uk.ac.cam.tfmw2.steg.RehearsalAudioRecorder(22662): stop() called on illegal state: ERROR ... 10 or more times I've been fiddling with this all day and I'm not getting anywhere, any input would be greatly appreciated. Update I've replace the AsyncTasks with Threads, still doesn't work, the app completely hangs when I click record, despite the fact the Log indicates there's nothing going on in the main thread. Still completely stumped.

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How to design a data model that deals with (real) contracts?

- by Geoffrey

I was looking for some advice on designing a data model for contract administration. The general life cycle of a contract is thus: Contract is created and in a "draft" state. It is viewable internally and changes may be made. Contract goes out to vendor, status is set to "pending" Contract is rejected by vendor. At this state, nothing can be done to the contract. No statuses may be added to the collection. Contract is accepted by vendor. At this state, nothing can be done to the contract. No statuses may be added to the collection. I obviously want to avoid a situation where the contract is accepted and, say, the amount is changed. Here are my classes: [EnforceNoChangesAfterDraftState] public class VendorContract { public virtual Vendor Vendor { get; set; } public virtual decimal Amount { get; set; } public virtual VendorContact VendorContact { get; set; } public virtual string CreatedBy { get; set; } public virtual DateTime CreatedOn { get; set; } public virtual FileStore Contract { get; set; } public virtual IList<VendorContractStatus> ContractStatus { get; set; } } [EnforceCorrectWorkflow] public class VendorContractStatus { public virtual VendorContract VendorContract { get; set; } public virtual FileStore ExecutedDocument { get; set; } public virtual string Status { get; set; } public virtual string Reason { get; set; } public virtual string CreatedBy { get; set; } public virtual DateTime CreatedOn { get; set; } } I've omitted the filestore class, which is basically a key/value lookup to find the document based on its guid. The VendorContractStatus is mapped as a many-to-one in Nhibernate. I then use a custom validator as described here. If anything but draft is returned in the VendorContractStatus collection, no changes are allowed. Furthermore the VendorContractStatus must follow the correct workflow (you can add a rejected after a pending, but you can't add anything else to the collection if a reject or accepted exists, etc.). All sounds alright? Well a colleague has argued that we should simply add an "IsDraft" bool property to VendorContract and not accept updates if IsDraft is false. Then we should setup a method inside of VendorContractStatus for updating the status, if something gets added after a draft, it sets the IsDraft property of VendorContract to false. I do not like this as it feels like I'm dirtying up the POCOs and adding logic that should persist in the validation area, that no rules should really exist in these classes and they shouldn't be aware of their states. Any thoughts on this and what is the better practice from a DDD perspective? From my view, if in the future we want more complex rules, my way will be more maintainable over the long run. Say we have contracts over a certain amount to be approved by a manager. I would think it would be better to have a one-to-one mapping with a VendorContractApproval class, rather than adding IsApproved properties, but that's just speculation. This might be splitting hairs, but this is the first real gritty enterprise software project we've done. Any advice would be appreciated!

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Async networking + threading problem

- by randallmeadows

I kick off a network request, assuming no login credentials are required to talk to the destination server. If they are required, then I get an authentication challenge, at which point I display a view requesting said credentials from the user. When they are supplied, I restart the network request, using those credentials. That's all fine and dandy, as long as I only do one request at a time. But I'm not, typically. When both requests are kicked off, I get the first challenge, and present the prompt (using -presentModalViewController:). Then the 2nd challenge comes in. And I crash when it tries to display the 2nd prompt. I have the bulk of this wrapped in an @synchronized() block, but this has no effect because these delegate methods are all being called on the same (main) thread. The docs say the delegate methods are called on the same thread in which the connection was started. OK, no problem; I'll just write a method that I run on a background thread using -performSelectorInBackground: NSURLConnection *connection = [[NSURLConnection alloc] initWithRequest:request delegate:self startImmediately:NO]; [connections addObject:connection]; [self performSelectorInBackground:@selector(startConnection:) withObject:connection]; [connection release]; - (void)startConnection:(NSURLConnection *)connection { NSAutoreleasePool *pool = [NSAutoreleasePool new]; [connection scheduleInRunLoop:[NSRunLoop currentRunLoop] forMode:NSDefaultRunLoopMode]; [connection start]; [pool drain]; } which should put every network request, and its callbacks, on its own thread, and then my @synchronized() blocks will take effect. The docs for -initWithRequest:... state "Messages to the delegate will be sent on the thread that calls this method. By default, for the connection to work correctly the calling thread’s run loop must be operating in the default run loop mode." Ok, I'm doing that. They also state "If you pass NO [for startImmediately], you must schedule the connection in a run loop before starting it." OK, I'm doing that, too. Furthermore, the docs for NSRunLoop state "Each NSThread object, including the application’s main thread, has an NSRunLoop object automatically created for it as needed. If you need to access the current thread’s run loop, you do so with the class method currentRunLoop." I'm assuming this applies to the background thread created by the call -performSelectorInBackground... (which does appear to be the case, when I execute 'po [NSClassFromString(@"NSRunLoop") currentRunLoop]' in the -startConnection: method). The -startConnection: method is indeed being called. But after kicking off the connection, I now never get any callbacks on it. None of the -connectionDid… delegate methods. (I even tried explicitly starting the thread's run loop, but that made no difference; I've used threads like this before, and I've never had to start the run loop manually before--but I'm now grasping at straws...) I think I've come up with a workaround such that I only handle one request at a time, but it's kludgy and I'd like to do this the Right Way. But, what am I missing here? Thanks! randy

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How to refresh a GridView?

- by Daniel

Hello everyone, I have a GridView which is pretty similar to the Google tutorial, except that I want to add the ImageViews on runtime (via a subactivity). The results are okay, but the layout of the View is messed up: The GridView doesn't fill the content of its parent, what do I have to do to design it properly? Here the code of adding the children: public void initializeWorkbench(GridView gv, Vector<String> items) { Prototype.workbench.setDimension(screenWidth, divider.height()+workbenchArea.height()); Prototype.workbench.activateWorkbench(); // this measures the workbench correctly Log.d(Prototype.TAG, "workbench width: "+Prototype.workbench.getMeasuredWidth()); // 320 Log.d(Prototype.TAG, "workbench height: "+Prototype.workbench.getMeasuredHeight()); // 30 ImageAdapter imgAdapter = new ImageAdapter(this.getContext(), items); gv.setAdapter(imgAdapter); gv.measure(screenWidth, screenHeight); gv.requestLayout(); gv.forceLayout(); Log.d(Prototype.TAG, "gv width: "+gv.getMeasuredWidth()); // 22 Log.d(Prototype.TAG, "gv height: "+gv.getMeasuredHeight()); // 119 Prototype.workbench.setDimension(screenWidth, divider.height()+workbenchArea.height()); } } activateWorkbench, setDimension and measure in the workbench (LinearLayout above the GridView): public void activateWorkbench() { if(this.equals(Prototype.workbench)) { this.setOrientation(VERTICAL); show = true; measure(); } } public void setDimension(int w, int h) { width = w; height = h; this.setLayoutParams(new LinearLayout.LayoutParams(width, height)); this.invalidate(); } private void measure() { if (this.getOrientation() == LinearLayout.VERTICAL) { int h = 0; int w = 0; this.measureChildren(0, 0); for (int i = 0; i < this.getChildCount(); i++) { View v = this.getChildAt(i); h += v.getMeasuredHeight(); w = (w < v.getMeasuredWidth()) ? v.getMeasuredWidth() : w; } if (this.equals(Prototype.tagarea)) height = (h < height) ? height : h; if (this.equals(Prototype.tagarea)) width = (w < width) ? width : w; } this.setMeasuredDimension(width, height); } The ImageAdapter constructor: public ImageAdapter(Context c, Vector<String> items) { mContext = c; boolean mExternalStorageAvailable = false; boolean mExternalStorageWriteable = false; String state = Environment.getExternalStorageState(); if (Environment.MEDIA_MOUNTED.equals(state)) { // We can read and write the media mExternalStorageAvailable = mExternalStorageWriteable = true; } else if (Environment.MEDIA_MOUNTED_READ_ONLY.equals(state)) { // We can only read the media mExternalStorageAvailable = true; mExternalStorageWriteable = false; } else { // Something else is wrong. It may be one of many other states, but // all we need // to know is we can neither read nor write mExternalStorageAvailable = mExternalStorageWriteable = false; } if (mExternalStorageAvailable && mExternalStorageWriteable) { for (String item : items) { File f = new File(item); if (f.exists()) { try { FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream(f); Bitmap b = BitmapFactory.decodeStream(fis); bitmaps.add(b); files.add(f); } catch (FileNotFoundException e) { Log.e(Prototype.TAG, "", e); } } } } } And the xml layout: <LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent" android:orientation="vertical" android:gravity="bottom" android:paddingLeft="0px" android:paddingTop="0px" android:paddingRight="0px"> <com.unimelb.pt3.ui.TransparentPanel android:id="@+id/workbench" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="10px" android:paddingTop="0px" android:paddingLeft="0px" android:paddingBottom="0px" android:paddingRight="0px"> <GridView xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:id="@+id/gridview" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent" android:columnWidth="90dp" android:numColumns="auto_fit" android:verticalSpacing="10dp" android:horizontalSpacing="10dp" android:stretchMode="columnWidth" android:gravity="center" /> </com.unimelb.pt3.ui.TransparentPanel> </LinearLayout>

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AJAX Generated Select Won't Redirect

- by James

So, basically I have this select / drop down menu that I use AJAX to retrieve and create, though when an option is selected (so onChange) I want it to redirect! Though, this still isn't working, I don't get any errors thrown when trying, and tried to do alert() debug methods yet the alerts don't get called. jquery $("#schoolMenu").change(function() { option = $("#schoolMenu option:selected").text(); alert(option); if(option != "- Please Select -") { window.location = "http://www.itmustbecollege.com/pics/pics-from-"+$("#schoolMenu option:selected").val(); } }); This is what is used to call the AJAX // // Populate Schools // $("#state").change(function() { option = $("#state option:selected").text(); if($(this).attr("class") == "menu") { if(option != "- Please Select -") { $.ajax({ type: "GET", url: "/includes/functions.php", data: "f=school&p="+option+"&m=yes", success: function(msg) { $("#fSchool").html("<p style=\"margin-left: 20px;\">Select School:</p>"+ msg); $("#fSchool").show(); $("#school").focus(); } }); } else { $("#fSchool").html(""); $("#fSchool").hide(); } } else { if(option != "- Please Select -") { $.ajax({ type: "GET", url: "/includes/functions.php", data: "f=school&p="+option, success: function(msg) { $("#fSchool").html(msg); $("#fSchool").show(); $("#school").focus(); } }); } else { $("#fSchool").html(""); $("#fSchool").hide(); } } }); It loads perfectly, if you look at http://www.itmustbecollege.com/quotes/ on that bar where you can do "sort by" of Popular | Newest | Category | School if you hover over school a dropdown comes up, select any country and another one appears, though when that is changed nothing happens. here is the PHP for that second drop down // Get College List function getCollege($state, $m = "no", $l = "no") { // Displays Schools if($m == "yes") { $options = '<select id="schoolMenu" name="school"><option value="select" selected="selected">- Please Select -</option>'; } else if($l == "yes" || $l == "yes2") { $options = ''; } else { $options = '<select name="school"><option value="select" selected="selected">- Please Select -</option>'; } $listArray = split("\|\\\\", $list); for($i=0; $i < count($listArray); $i++) { if($m == "yes") { $options .= '<option value="'. trim(titleReplace($listArray[$i])) .'">'. trim($listArray[$i]) .'</option>'; } else if($l == "yes") { $options .= '<li><a href="/quotes/quotes-from-'. titleReplace($listArray[$i]) .'" title="'. trim($listArray[$i]) .' Quotes">'. trim($listArray[$i]) .'</a></li>'; } else if($l == "yes2") { $options .= '<li><a href="/pics/pics-from-'. titleReplace($listArray[$i]) .'" title="'. trim($listArray[$i]) .' Pictures">'. trim($listArray[$i]) .'</a></li>'; } else { $options .= '<option value="'. trim($listArray[$i]) .'">'. trim($listArray[$i]) .'</option>'; } } echo $options .='</select>'; return false; } any help would be great! EDIT: Also, the way I have those drop downs coming for the menus is a bit weird and when you hover over any other "sort by" link they disappear, this is a problem with the "sort by school" because the first select box shows the list up, and if you go and select a school then somehow float over another link it disappears, any help on how to delay that or fix that minor problem?

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Const-correctness semantics in C++

- by thirtythreeforty

For fun and profit™, I'm writing a trie class in C++ (using the C++11 standard.) My trie<T> has an iterator, trie<T>::iterator. (They're all actually functionally const_iterators, because you cannot modify a trie's value_type.) The iterator's class declaration looks partially like this: template<typename T> class trie<T>::iterator : public std::iterator<std::bidirectional_iterator_tag, T> { friend class trie<T>; struct state { state(const trie<T>* const node, const typename std::vector<std::pair<typename T::value_type, std::unique_ptr<trie<T>>>>::const_iterator& node_map_it ) : node{node}, node_map_it{node_map_it} {} // This pointer is to const data: const trie<T>* node; typename std::vector<std::pair<typename T::value_type, std::unique_ptr<trie<T>>>>::const_iterator node_map_it; }; public: typedef const T value_type; iterator() =default; iterator(const trie<T>* node) { parents.emplace(node, node->children.cbegin()); // ... } // ... private: std::stack<state> parents; // ... }; Notice that the node pointer is declared const. This is because (in my mind) the iterator should not be modifying the node that it points to; it is just an iterator. Now, elsewhere in my main trie<T> class, I have an erase function that has a common STL signature--it takes an iterator to data to erase (and returns an iterator to the next object). template<typename T> typename trie<T>::iterator trie<T>::erase(const_iterator it) { // ... // Cannot modify a const object! it.parents.top().node->is_leaf = false; // ... } The compiler complains because the node pointer is read-only! The erase function definitely should modify the trie that the iterator points to, even though the iterator shouldn't. So, I have two questions: Should iterator's constructors be public? trie<T> has the necessary begin() and end() members, and of course trie<T>::iterator and trie<T> are mutual friends, but I don't know what the convention is. Making them private would solve a lot of the angst I'm having about removing the const "promise" from the iterator's constructor. What are the correct const semantics/conventions regarding the iterator and its node pointer here? Nobody has ever explained this to me, and I can't find any tutorials or articles on the Web. This is probably the more important question, but it does require a good deal of planning and proper implementation. I suppose it could be circumvented by just implementing 1, but it's the principle of the thing!

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Updating nested attributes causes duplicate entries

- by params_noob

I have a has_many and belongs_to relationship between Job and Address. When I try to update Job and Address in the same form, it updates job but creates a duplicate entry for Address. Am I missing something here? The Edit and Update Actions from Jobs: def edit @job = Job.find(params[:id]) end def update @job = Job.find(params[:id]) if @job.update_attributes(job_params) flash[:success] = "Job Updated" redirect_to current_user else render 'edit' end end The edit form: <h1>Edit Job Information</h1> <div class="row"> <div class="span6 offset3"> <%= form_for(@job) do |f| %> <%= render 'shared/error_messages' %> <%= f.label :recipient %> <%= f.text_field :recipient %> <%= f.label :age %> <%= f.text_field :age %> <%= f.label :gender %> <%= f.text_field :gender %> <%= f.label :ethnicity %> <%= f.text_field :ethnicity %> <%= f.label :height %> <%= f.text_field :height %> <%= f.label :weight %> <%= f.text_field :weight %> <%= f.label :hair %> <%= f.text_field :hair %> <%= f.label :eyes %> <%= f.text_field :eyes %> <%= f.label :other_info %> <%= f.text_field :other_info %> <h3> Address Information </h3> <%= f.fields_for :addresses do |address| %> <%= address.label :label, "Label" %> <%= address.text_field :label %> <%= address.label :addy, "Address" %> <%= address.text_field :addy %> <%= address.label :apt, "Apt/Suite/etc" %> <%= address.text_field :apt %> <%= address.label :city, "City" %> <%= address.text_field :city %> <%= address.label :state, "State" %> <%= address.text_field :state %> <%= address.label :zip, "Zip code" %> <%= address.text_field :zip %> <% end %> <%= f.label :instructions, "Service Instructions" %> <%= f.text_field :instructions %> <%= check_box_tag(:rush) %> <%= label_tag(:rush, "Rush?") %> <%= f.submit "Update Job", class: "btn btn-large btn-primary" %> <% end %> </div> </div>

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jquery drag and drop script and problem in reading json array

- by Mac Taylor

i made a script , exactly like wordpress widgets page and u can drag and drop objects this is my jquery script : <script type="text/javascript" >$(function(){ $('.widget') .each(function(){ $(this).hover(function(){ $(this).find('h4').addClass('collapse'); }, function(){ $(this).find('h4').removeClass('collapse'); }) .find('h4').hover(function(){ $(this).find('.in-widget-title').css('visibility', 'visible'); }, function(){ $(this).find('.in-widget-title').css('visibility', 'hidden'); }) .click(function(){ $(this).siblings('.widget-inside').toggle(); //Save state on change of collapse state of panel updateWidgetData(); }) .end() .find('.in-widget-title').css('visibility', 'hidden'); }); $('.column').sortable({ connectWith: '.column', handle: 'h4', cursor: 'move', placeholder: 'placeholder', forcePlaceholderSize: true, opacity: 0.4, start: function(event, ui){ //Firefox, Safari/Chrome fire click event after drag is complete, fix for that if($.browser.mozilla || $.browser.safari) $(ui.item).find('.widget-inside').toggle(); }, stop: function(event, ui){ ui.item.css({'top':'0','left':'0'}); //Opera fix if(!$.browser.mozilla && !$.browser.safari) updateWidgetData(); } }) .disableSelection(); }); function updateWidgetData(){ var items=[]; $('.column').each(function(){ var columnId=$(this).attr('id'); $('.widget', this).each(function(i){ var collapsed=0; if($(this).find('.widget-inside').css('display')=="none") collapsed=1; //Create Item object for current panel var item={ id: $(this).attr('id'), collapsed: collapsed, order : i, column: columnId }; //Push item object into items array items.push(item); }); }); //Assign items array to sortorder JSON variable var sortorder={ items: items }; //Pass sortorder variable to server using ajax to save state $.post("blocks.php"+"&order="+$.toJSON(sortorder), function(data){ $('#console').html(data).fadeIn("slow"); }); } </script> main part is saving object orders in table and this is my php part : function stripslashes_deep($value) { $value = is_array($value) ? array_map('stripslashes_deep', $value) : stripslashes($value); return $value; } $order = $_GET['order']; $order = sql_quote($order); if(empty($order)){ echo "Invalid data"; exit; } global $db,$prefix; if (get_magic_quotes_gpc()) { $_POST = array_map('stripslashes_deep', $_POST); $_GET = array_map('stripslashes_deep', $_GET); $_COOKIE = array_map('stripslashes_deep', $_COOKIE); $_REQUEST = array_map('stripslashes_deep', $_REQUEST); } $data=json_decode($order); foreach($newdata->items as $item) { //Extract column number for panel $col_id=preg_replace('/[^\d\s]/', '', $item->column); //Extract id of the panel $widget_id=preg_replace('/[^\d\s]/', '', $item->id); $sql="UPDATE blocks_tbl SET bposition='$col_id', weight='".$item->order."' WHERE id='".$widget_id."'"; mysql_query($sql) or die('Error updating widget DB'); } print_r($order); now forexample the output is this : items\":[{\"id\":\"item26\",\"collapsed\":1,\"order\":0,\"column\":\"c\"},{\"id\":\"item0\",\"collapsed\":1,\"order\":0,\"column\":\"i\"},{\"id\":\"item0\",\"collapsed\":1,\"order\":1,\"column\":\"i\"},{\"id\":\"item1\",\"collapsed\":1,\"order\":2,\"column\":\"i\"},{\"id\":\"item3\",\"collapsed\":1,\"order\":3,\"column\":\"i\"},{\"id\":\"item16\",\"collapsed\":1,\"order\":4,\"column\":\"i\"},{\"id\":\"item0\",\"collapsed\":1,\"order\":5,\"column\":\"i\"},{\"id\":\"item6\",\"collapsed\":1,\"order\":6,\"column\":\"i\"},{\"id\":\"item17\",\"collapsed\":1,\"order\":7,\"column\":\"i\"},{\"id\":\"item19\",\"collapsed\":1,\"order\":8,\"column\":\"i\"},{\"id\":\"item10\",\"collapsed\":1,\"order\":9,\"column\":\"i\"},{\"id\":\"item11\",\"collapsed\":1,\"order\":10,\"column\":\"i\"},{\"id\":\"item0\",\"collapsed\":1,\"order\":0,\"column\":\"l\"},{\"id\":\"item5\",\"collapsed\":1,\"order\":1,\"column\":\"l\"},{\"id\":\"item8\",\"collapsed\":1,\"order\":2,\"column\":\"l\"},{\"id\":\"item13\",\"collapsed\":1,\"order\":3,\"column\":\"l\"},{\"id\":\"item21\",\"collapsed\":1,\"order\":4,\"column\":\"l\"},{\"id\":\"item28\",\"collapsed\":1,\"order\":5,\"column\":\"l\"},{\"id\":\"item7\",\"collapsed\":1,\"order\":0,\"column\":\"r\"},{\"id\":\"item20\",\"collapsed\":1,\"order\":1,\"column\":\"r\"},{\"id\":\"item15\",\"collapsed\":1,\"order\":2,\"column\":\"r\"},{\"id\":\"item18\",\"collapsed\":1,\"order\":3,\"column\":\"r\"},{\"id\":\"item14\",\"collapsed\":1,\"order\":4,\"column\":\"r\"}]} question is how can i find out column_id or order im a little bit confused

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Data Warehouse ETL slow - change primary key in dimension?

- by Jubbles

I have a working MySQL data warehouse that is organized as a star schema and I am using Talend Open Studio for Data Integration 5.1 to create the ETL process. I would like this process to run once per day. I have estimated that one of the dimension tables (dimUser) will have approximately 2 million records and 23 columns. I created a small test ETL process in Talend that worked, but given the amount of data that may need to be updated daily, the current performance will not cut it. It takes the ETL process four minutes to UPDATE or INSERT 100 records to dimUser. If I assumed a linear relationship between the count of records and the amount of time to UPDATE or INSERT, then there is no way the ETL can finish in 3-4 hours (my hope), let alone one day. Since I'm unfamiliar with Java, I wrote the ETL as a Python script and ran into the same problem. Although, I did discover that if I did only INSERT, the process went much faster. I am pretty sure that the bottleneck is caused by the UPDATE statements. The primary key in dimUser is an auto-increment integer. My friend suggested that I scrap this primary key and replace it with a multi-field primary key (in my case, 2-3 fields). Before I rip the test data out of my warehouse and change the schema, can anyone provide suggestions or guidelines related to the design of the data warehouse the ETL process how realistic it is to have an ETL process INSERT or UPDATE a few million records each day will my friend's suggestion significantly help If you need any further information, just let me know and I'll post it. UPDATE - additional information: mysql> describe dimUser; Field Type Null Key Default Extra user_key int(10) unsigned NO PRI NULL auto_increment id_A int(10) unsigned NO NULL id_B int(10) unsigned NO NULL field_4 tinyint(4) unsigned NO 0 field_5 varchar(50) YES NULL city varchar(50) YES NULL state varchar(2) YES NULL country varchar(50) YES NULL zip_code varchar(10) NO 99999 field_10 tinyint(1) NO 0 field_11 tinyint(1) NO 0 field_12 tinyint(1) NO 0 field_13 tinyint(1) NO 1 field_14 tinyint(1) NO 0 field_15 tinyint(1) NO 0 field_16 tinyint(1) NO 0 field_17 tinyint(1) NO 1 field_18 tinyint(1) NO 0 field_19 tinyint(1) NO 0 field_20 tinyint(1) NO 0 create_date datetime NO 2012-01-01 00:00:00 last_update datetime NO 2012-01-01 00:00:00 run_id int(10) unsigned NO 999 I used a surrogate key because I had read that it was good practice. Since, from a business perspective, I want to keep aware of potential fraudulent activity (say for 200 days a user is associated with state X and then the next day they are associated with state Y - they could have moved or their account could have been compromised), so that is why geographic data is kept. The field id_B may have a few distinct values of id_A associated with it, but I am interested in knowing distinct (id_A, id_B) tuples. In the context of this information, my friend suggested that something like (id_A, id_B, zip_code) be the primary key. For the large majority of daily ETL processes (80%), I only expect the following fields to be updated for existing records: field_10 - field_14, last_update, and run_id (this field is a foreign key to my etlLog table and is used for ETL auditing purposes).

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Normalizing a table

- by Alex

I have a legacy table, which I can't change. The values in it can be modified from legacy application (application also can't be changed). Due to a lot of access to the table from new application (new requirement), I'd like to create a temporary table, which would hopefully speed up the queries. The actual requirement, is to calculate number of business days from X to Y. For example, give me all business days from Jan 1'st 2001 until Dec 24'th 2004. The table is used to mark which days are off, as different companies may have different days off - it isn't just Saturday + Sunday) The temporary table would be created from a .NET program, each time user enters the screen for this query (user may run query multiple times, with different values, table is created once), so I'd like it to be as fast as possible. Approach below runs in under a second, but I only tested it with a small dataset, and still it takes probably close to half a second, which isn't great for UI - even though it's just the overhead for first query. The legacy table looks like this: CREATE TABLE [business_days]( [country_code] [char](3) , [state_code] [varchar](4) , [calendar_year] [int] , [calendar_month] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month2] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month3] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month4] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month5] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month6] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month7] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month8] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month9] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month10] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month11] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month12] [varchar](31) , misc. ) Each month has 31 characters, and any day off (Saturday + Sunday + holiday) is marked with X. Each half day is marked with an 'H'. For example, if a month starts on a Thursday, than it will look like (Thursday+Friday workdays, Saturday+Sunday marked with X): ' XX XX ..' I'd like the new table to look like so: create table #Temp (country varchar(3), state varchar(4), date datetime, hours int) And I'd like to only have rows for days which are off (marked with X or H from previous query) What I ended up doing, so far is this: Create a temporary-intermediate table, that looks like this: create table #Temp_2 (country_code varchar(3), state_code varchar(4), calendar_year int, calendar_month varchar(31), month_code int) To populate it, I have a union which basically unions calendar_month, calendar_month2, calendar_month3, etc. Than I have a loop which loops through all the rows in #Temp_2, after each row is processed, it is removed from #Temp_2. To process the row there is a loop from 1 to 31, and substring(calendar_month, counter, 1) is checked for either X or H, in which case there is an insert into #Temp table. [edit added code] Declare @country_code char(3) Declare @state_code varchar(4) Declare @calendar_year int Declare @calendar_month varchar(31) Declare @month_code int Declare @calendar_date datetime Declare @day_code int WHILE EXISTS(SELECT * From #Temp_2) -- where processed = 0) BEGIN Select Top 1 @country_code = t2.country_code, @state_code = t2.state_code, @calendar_year = t2.calendar_year, @calendar_month = t2.calendar_month, @month_code = t2.month_code From #Temp_2 t2 -- where processed = 0 set @day_code = 1 while @day_code <= 31 begin if substring(@calendar_month, @day_code, 1) = 'X' begin set @calendar_date = convert(datetime, (cast(@month_code as varchar) + '/' + cast(@day_code as varchar) + '/' + cast(@calendar_year as varchar))) insert into #Temp (country, state, date, hours) values (@country_code, @state_code, @calendar_date, 8) end if substring(@calendar_month, @day_code, 1) = 'H' begin set @calendar_date = convert(datetime, (cast(@month_code as varchar) + '/' + cast(@day_code as varchar) + '/' + cast(@calendar_year as varchar))) insert into #Temp (country, state, date, hours) values (@country_code, @state_code, @calendar_date, 4) end set @day_code = @day_code + 1 end delete from #Temp_2 where @country_code = country_code AND @state_code = state_code AND @calendar_year = calendar_year AND @calendar_month = calendar_month AND @month_code = month_code --update #Temp_2 set processed = 1 where @country_code = country_code AND @state_code = state_code AND @calendar_year = calendar_year AND @calendar_month = calendar_month AND @month_code = month_code END I am not an expert in SQL, so I'd like to get some input on my approach, and maybe even a much better approach suggestion. After having the temp table, I'm planning to do (dates would be coming from a table): select cast(convert(datetime, ('01/31/2012'), 101) -convert(datetime, ('01/17/2012'), 101) as int) - ((select sum(hours) from #Temp where date between convert(datetime, ('01/17/2012'), 101) and convert(datetime, ('01/31/2012'), 101)) / 8) Besides the solution of normalizing the table, the other solution I implemented for now, is a function which does all this logic of getting the business days by scanning the current table. It runs pretty fast, but I'm hesitant to call a function, if I can instead add a simpler query to get result. (I'm currently trying this on MSSQL, but I would need to do same for Sybase ASE and Oracle)

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Table Name is null in the sqlite database in android device

- by Mahe

I am building a simple app which stores some contacts and retrieves contacts in android phone device. I have created my own database and a table and inserting the values to the table in phone. My phone is not rooted. So I cannot access the files, but I see that values are stored in the table. And tested on a emulator also. Till here it is fine. Display all the contacts in a list by fetching data from table. This is also fine. But the problem is When I am trying to delete the record, it shows the table name is null in the logcat(not an exception), and the data is not deleted. But in emulator the data is getting deleted from table. I am not able to achieve this through phone. This is my code for deleting, public boolean onContextItemSelected(MenuItem item) { super.onContextItemSelected(item); AdapterView.AdapterContextMenuInfo info = (AdapterView.AdapterContextMenuInfo) item .getMenuInfo(); int menuItemIndex = item.getItemId(); String[] menuItems = getResources().getStringArray(R.array.menu); String menuItemName = menuItems[menuItemIndex]; String listItemName = Customers[info.position]; if (item.getTitle().toString().equalsIgnoreCase("Delete")) { Toast.makeText( context, "Selected List item is: " + listItemName + "MenuItem is: " + menuItemName, Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show(); DB = context.openOrCreateDatabase("CustomerDetails.db", MODE_PRIVATE, null); try { int pos = info.position; pos = pos + 1; Log.d("", "customers[pos]: " + Customers[info.position]); Cursor c = DB .rawQuery( "Select customer_id,first_name,last_name from CustomerInfo", null); int rowCount = c.getCount(); DB.delete(Table_name, "customer_id" + "=" + String.valueOf(pos), null); DB.close(); Log.d("", "" + String.valueOf(pos)); Toast.makeText(context, "Deleted Customer", Toast.LENGTH_LONG) .show(); // Customers[info.position]=null; getCustomers(); } catch (Exception e) { Toast.makeText(context, "Delete unsuccessfull", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show(); } } this is my logcat, 07-02 10:12:42.976: D/Cursor(1560): Database path: CustomerDetails.db 07-02 10:12:42.976: D/Cursor(1560): Table name : null 07-02 10:12:42.984: D/Cursor(1560): Database path: CustomerDetails.db 07-02 10:12:42.984: D/Cursor(1560): Table name : null Don't know the reason why data is not being deleted. Data exists in the table. This is the specification I have given for creating the table public static String customer_id="customer_id"; public static String site_id="site_id"; public static String last_name="last_name"; public static String first_name="first_name"; public static String phone_number="phone_number"; public static String address="address"; public static String city="city"; public static String state="state"; public static String zip="zip"; public static String email_address="email_address"; public static String custlat="custlat"; public static String custlng="custlng"; public static String Table_name="CustomerInfo"; final SQLiteDatabase DB = context.openOrCreateDatabase( "CustomerDetails.db", MODE_PRIVATE, null); final String CREATE_TABLE = "create table if not exists " + Table_name + " (" + customer_id + " integer primary key autoincrement, " + first_name + " text not null, " + last_name + " text not null, " + phone_number+ " integer not null, " + address+ " text not null, " + city+ " text not null, " + state+ " text not null, " + zip+ " integer not null, " + email_address+ " text not null, " + custlat+ " double, " + custlng+ " double " +" );"; DB.execSQL(CREATE_TABLE); DB.close(); Please correct my code. I am struggling from two days. Any help is appreciated!!

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Gone With the Wind?

- by antony.reynolds

Where Have All the Composites Gone? I was just asked to help out with an interesting problem at a customer. All their composites had disappeared from the EM console, none of them showed as loading in the log files and there was an ominous error message in the logs. Symptoms After a server restart the customer noticed that none of his composites were available, they didn’t show in the EM console and in the log files they saw this error message: SEVERE: WLSFabricKernelInitializer.getCompositeList Error during parsing and processing of deployed-composites.xml file This indicates some sort of problem when parsing the deployed-composites.xml file. This is very bad because the deployed-composites.xml file is basically the table of contents that tells SOA Infrastructure what composites to load and where to find them in MDS. If you can’t read this file you can’t load any composites and your SOA Server now has all the utility of a chocolate teapot. Verification We can look at the deployed-composites.xml file from MDS either by connecting JDeveloper to MDS, exporting the file using WLST or exporting the whole soa-infra MDS partition by using EM->SOA->soa-infra->Administration->MDS Configuration. Exporting via EM is probably the easiest because it then prepares you to fix the problem later. After exporting the partition to local storage on the SOA Server I then ran an XSLT transform across the file deployed-composites/deployed-composites.xml. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <xsl:stylesheet version="2.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <xsl:output indent="yes"/> <xsl:template match="/"> <testResult> <composite-series> <xsl:attribute name="elementCount"><xsl:value-of select="count(deployed-composites/composite-series)"/></xsl:attribute> <xsl:attribute name="nameAttributeCount"><xsl:value-of select="count(deployed-composites/composite-series[@name])"/></xsl:attribute> <xsl:attribute name="defaultAttributeCount"><xsl:value-of select="count(deployed-composites/composite-series[@default])"/></xsl:attribute> <composite-revision> <xsl:attribute name="elementCount"><xsl:value-of select="count(deployed-composites/composite-series/composite-revision)"/></xsl:attribute> <xsl:attribute name="dnAttributeCount"><xsl:value-of select="count(deployed-composites/composite-series/composite-revision[@dn])"/></xsl:attribute> <xsl:attribute name="stateAttributeCount"><xsl:value-of select="count(deployed-composites/composite-series/composite-revision[@state])"/></xsl:attribute> <xsl:attribute name="modeAttributeCount"><xsl:value-of select="count(deployed-composites/composite-series/composite-revision[@mode])"/></xsl:attribute> <xsl:attribute name="locationAttributeCount"><xsl:value-of select="count(deployed-composites/composite-series/composite-revision[@location])"/></xsl:attribute> <composite> <xsl:attribute name="elementCount"><xsl:value-of select="count(deployed-composites/composite-series/composite-revision/composite)"/></xsl:attribute> <xsl:attribute name="dnAttributeCount"><xsl:value-of select="count(deployed-composites/composite-series/composite-revision/composite[@dn])"/></xsl:attribute> <xsl:attribute name="deployedTimeAttributeCount"><xsl:value-of select="count(deployed-composites/composite-series/composite-revision/composite[@deployedTime])"/></xsl:attribute> </composite> </composite-revision> <xsl:apply-templates select="deployed-composites/composite-series"/> </composite-series> </testResult> </xsl:template> <xsl:template match="composite-series"> <xsl:if test="not(@name) or not(@default) or composite-revision[not(@dn) or not(@state) or not(@mode) or not(@location)]"> <ErrorNode> <xsl:attribute name="elementPos"><xsl:value-of select="position()"/></xsl:attribute> <xsl:copy-of select="."/> </ErrorNode> </xsl:if> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> The output from this is not pretty but it shows any <composite-series> tags that are missing expected attributes (name and default). It also shows how many composites are in the file (111) and how many revisions of those composites (115). <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <testResult xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <composite-series elementCount="111" nameAttributeCount="110" defaultAttributeCount="110"> <composite-revision elementCount="115" dnAttributeCount="114" stateAttributeCount="115" modeAttributeCount="115" locationAttributeCount="114"> <composite elementCount="115" dnAttributeCount="114" deployedTimeAttributeCount="115"/> </composite-revision> <ErrorNode elementPos="82"> <composite-series xmlns=""> <composite-revision state="on" mode="active"> <composite deployedTime="2010-12-15T11:50:16.067+01:00"/> </composite-revision> </composite-series> </ErrorNode> </composite-series> </testResult> From this I could see that one of the <composite-series> elements (number 82 of 111) seemed to be corrupt. Having found the problem I now needed to fix it. Fixing the Problem The solution was really quite easy. First for safeties sake I took a backup of the exported MDS partition. I then edited the deployed-composites/deployed-composites.xml file to remove the offending <composite-series> tag. Finally I restarted the SOA domain and was rewarded by seeing that the deployed composites were now visible. Summary One possible cause of not being able to see deployed composites after a SOA 11g system restart is a corrupt deployed-composites.xml file. Retrieving this file from MDS, repairing it, and replacing it back into MDS can solve the problem. This still leaves the problem of how did this file become corrupt!

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Adventures in MVVM – My ViewModel Base

- by Brian Genisio's House Of Bilz

More Adventures in MVVM First, I’d like to say: THIS IS NOT A NEW MVVM FRAMEWORK. I tend to believe that MVVM support code should be specific to the system you are building and the developers working on it. I have yet to find an MVVM framework that does everything I want it to without doing too much. Don’t get me wrong… there are some good frameworks out there. I just like to pick and choose things that make sense for me. I’d also like to add that some of these features only work in WPF. As of Silveright 4, they don’t support binding to dynamic properties, so some of the capabilities are lost. That being said, I want to share my ViewModel base class with the world. I have had several conversations with people about the problems I have solved using this ViewModel base. A while back, I posted an article about some experiments with a “Rails Inspired ViewModel”. What followed from those ideas was a ViewModel base class that I take with me and use in my projects. It has a lot of features, all designed to reduce the friction in writing view models. I have put the code out on Codeplex under the project: ViewModelSupport. Finally, this article focuses on the ViewModel and only glosses over the View and the Model. Without all three, you don’t have MVVM. But this base class is for the ViewModel, so that is what I am focusing on. Features: Automatic Command Plumbing Property Change Notification Strongly Typed Property Getter/Setters Dynamic Properties Default Property values Derived Properties Automatic Method Execution Command CanExecute Change Notification Design-Time Detection What about Silverlight? Automatic Command Plumbing This feature takes the plumbing out of creating commands. The common pattern for commands in a ViewModel is to have an Execute method as well as an optional CanExecute method. To plumb that together, you create an ICommand Property, and set it in the constructor like so: Before public class AutomaticCommandViewModel { public AutomaticCommandViewModel() { MyCommand = new DelegateCommand(Execute_MyCommand, CanExecute_MyCommand); } public void Execute_MyCommand() { // Do something } public bool CanExecute_MyCommand() { // Are we in a state to do something? return true; } public DelegateCommand MyCommand { get; private set; } } With the base class, this plumbing is automatic and the property (MyCommand of type ICommand) is created for you. The base class uses the convention that methods be prefixed with Execute_ and CanExecute_ in order to be plumbed into commands with the property name after the prefix. You are left to be expressive with your behavior without the plumbing. If you are wondering how CanExecuteChanged is raised, see the later section “Command CanExecute Change Notification”. After public class AutomaticCommandViewModel : ViewModelBase { public void Execute_MyCommand() { // Do something } public bool CanExecute_MyCommand() { // Are we in a state to do something? return true; } } Property Change Notification One thing that always kills me when implementing ViewModels is how to make properties that notify when they change (via the INotifyPropertyChanged interface). There have been many attempts to make this more automatic. My base class includes one option. There are others, but I feel like this works best for me. The common pattern (without my base class) is to create a private backing store for the variable and specify a getter that returns the private field. The setter will set the private field and fire an event that notifies the change, only if the value has changed. Before public class PropertyHelpersViewModel : INotifyPropertyChanged { private string text; public string Text { get { return text; } set { if(text != value) { text = value; RaisePropertyChanged("Text"); } } } protected void RaisePropertyChanged(string propertyName) { var handlers = PropertyChanged; if(handlers != null) handlers(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(propertyName)); } public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged; } This way of defining properties is error-prone and tedious. Too much plumbing. My base class eliminates much of that plumbing with the same functionality: After public class PropertyHelpersViewModel : ViewModelBase { public string Text { get { return Get<string>("Text"); } set { Set("Text", value);} } } Strongly Typed Property Getters/Setters It turns out that we can do better than that. We are using a strongly typed language where the use of “Magic Strings” is often frowned upon. Lets make the names in the getters and setters strongly typed: A refinement public class PropertyHelpersViewModel : ViewModelBase { public string Text { get { return Get(() => Text); } set { Set(() => Text, value); } } } Dynamic Properties In C# 4.0, we have the ability to program statically OR dynamically. This base class lets us leverage the powerful dynamic capabilities in our ecosystem. (This is how the automatic commands are implemented, BTW) By calling Set(“Foo”, 1), you have now created a dynamic property called Foo. It can be bound against like any static property. The opportunities are endless. One great way to exploit this behavior is if you have a customizable view engine with templates that bind to properties defined by the user. The base class just needs to create the dynamic properties at runtime from information in the model, and the custom template can bind even though the static properties do not exist. All dynamic properties still benefit from the notifiable capabilities that static properties do. For any nay-sayers out there that don’t like using the dynamic features of C#, just remember this: the act of binding the View to a ViewModel is dynamic already. Why not exploit it? Get over it :) Just declare the property dynamically public class DynamicPropertyViewModel : ViewModelBase { public DynamicPropertyViewModel() { Set("Foo", "Bar"); } } Then reference it normally <TextBlock Text="{Binding Foo}" /> Default Property Values The Get() method also allows for default properties to be set. Don’t set them in the constructor. Set them in the property and keep the related code together: public string Text { get { return Get(() => Text, "This is the default value"); } set { Set(() => Text, value);} } Derived Properties This is something I blogged about a while back in more detail. This feature came from the chaining of property notifications when one property affects the results of another, like this: Before public class DependantPropertiesViewModel : ViewModelBase { public double Score { get { return Get(() => Score); } set { Set(() => Score, value); RaisePropertyChanged("Percentage"); RaisePropertyChanged("Output"); } } public int Percentage { get { return (int)(100 * Score); } } public string Output { get { return "You scored " + Percentage + "%."; } } } The problem is: The setter for Score has to be responsible for notifying the world that Percentage and Output have also changed. This, to me, is backwards. It certainly violates the “Single Responsibility Principle.” I have been bitten in the rear more than once by problems created from code like this. What we really want to do is invert the dependency. Let the Percentage property declare that it changes when the Score Property changes. After public class DependantPropertiesViewModel : ViewModelBase { public double Score { get { return Get(() => Score); } set { Set(() => Score, value); } } [DependsUpon("Score")] public int Percentage { get { return (int)(100 * Score); } } [DependsUpon("Percentage")] public string Output { get { return "You scored " + Percentage + "%."; } } } Automatic Method Execution This one is extremely similar to the previous, but it deals with method execution as opposed to property. When you want to execute a method triggered by property changes, let the method declare the dependency instead of the other way around. Before public class DependantMethodsViewModel : ViewModelBase { public double Score { get { return Get(() => Score); } set { Set(() => Score, value); WhenScoreChanges(); } } public void WhenScoreChanges() { // Handle this case } } After public class DependantMethodsViewModel : ViewModelBase { public double Score { get { return Get(() => Score); } set { Set(() => Score, value); } } [DependsUpon("Score")] public void WhenScoreChanges() { // Handle this case } } Command CanExecute Change Notification Back to Commands. One of the responsibilities of commands that implement ICommand – it must fire an event declaring that CanExecute() needs to be re-evaluated. I wanted to wait until we got past a few concepts before explaining this behavior. You can use the same mechanism here to fire off the change. In the CanExecute_ method, declare the property that it depends upon. When that property changes, the command will fire a CanExecuteChanged event, telling the View to re-evaluate the state of the command. The View will make appropriate adjustments, like disabling the button. DependsUpon works on CanExecute methods as well public class CanExecuteViewModel : ViewModelBase { public void Execute_MakeLower() { Output = Input.ToLower(); } [DependsUpon("Input")] public bool CanExecute_MakeLower() { return !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(Input); } public string Input { get { return Get(() => Input); } set { Set(() => Input, value);} } public string Output { get { return Get(() => Output); } set { Set(() => Output, value); } } } Design-Time Detection If you want to add design-time data to your ViewModel, the base class has a property that lets you ask if you are in the designer. You can then set some default values that let your designer see what things might look like in runtime. Use the IsInDesignMode property public DependantPropertiesViewModel() { if(IsInDesignMode) { Score = .5; } } What About Silverlight? Some of the features in this base class only work in WPF. As of version 4, Silverlight does not support binding to dynamic properties. This, in my opinion, is a HUGE limitation. Not only does it keep you from using many of the features in this ViewModel, it also keeps you from binding to ViewModels designed in IronRuby. Does this mean that the base class will not work in Silverlight? No. Many of the features outlined in this article WILL work. All of the property abstractions are functional, as long as you refer to them statically in the View. This, of course, means that the automatic command hook-up doesn’t work in Silverlight. You need to plumb it to a static property in order for the Silverlight View to bind to it. Can I has a dynamic property in SL5? Good to go? So, that concludes the feature explanation of my ViewModel base class. Feel free to take it, fork it, whatever. It is hosted on CodePlex. When I find other useful additions, I will add them to the public repository. I use this base class every day. It is mature, and well tested. If, however, you find any problems with it, please let me know! Also, feel free to suggest patches to me via the CodePlex site. :)

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SQL SERVER – Concurrency Basics – Guest Post by Vinod Kumar

- by pinaldave

This guest post is by Vinod Kumar. Vinod Kumar has worked with SQL Server extensively since joining the industry over a decade ago. Working on various versions from SQL Server 7.0, Oracle 7.3 and other database technologies – he now works with the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) as a Technology Architect. Let us read the blog post in Vinod’s own voice. Learning is always fun when it comes to SQL Server and learning the basics again can be more fun. I did write about Transaction Logs and recovery over my blogs and the concept of simplifying the basics is a challenge. In the real world we always see checks and queues for a process – say railway reservation, banks, customer supports etc there is a process of line and queue to facilitate everyone. Shorter the queue higher is the efficiency of system (a.k.a higher is the concurrency). Every database does implement this using checks like locking, blocking mechanisms and they implement the standards in a way to facilitate higher concurrency. In this post, let us talk about the topic of Concurrency and what are the various aspects that one needs to know about concurrency inside SQL Server. Let us learn the concepts as one-liners: Concurrency can be defined as the ability of multiple processes to access or change shared data at the same time. The greater the number of concurrent user processes that can be active without interfering with each other, the greater the concurrency of the database system. Concurrency is reduced when a process that is changing data prevents other processes from reading that data or when a process that is reading data prevents other processes from changing that data. Concurrency is also affected when multiple processes are attempting to change the same data simultaneously. Two approaches to managing concurrent data access: Optimistic Concurrency Model Pessimistic Concurrency Model Concurrency Models Pessimistic Concurrency Default behavior: acquire locks to block access to data that another process is using. Assumes that enough data modification operations are in the system that any given read operation is likely affected by a data modification made by another user (assumes conflicts will occur). Avoids conflicts by acquiring a lock on data being read so no other processes can modify that data. Also acquires locks on data being modified so no other processes can access the data for either reading or modifying. Readers block writer, writers block readers and writers. Optimistic Concurrency Assumes that there are sufficiently few conflicting data modification operations in the system that any single transaction is unlikely to modify data that another transaction is modifying. Default behavior of optimistic concurrency is to use row versioning to allow data readers to see the state of the data before the modification occurs. Older versions of the data are saved so a process reading data can see the data as it was when the process started reading and not affected by any changes being made to that data. Processes modifying the data is unaffected by processes reading the data because the reader is accessing a saved version of the data rows. Readers do not block writers and writers do not block readers, but, writers can and will block writers. Transaction Processing A transaction is the basic unit of work in SQL Server. Transaction consists of SQL commands that read and update the database but the update is not considered final until a COMMIT command is issued (at least for an explicit transaction: marked with a BEGIN TRAN and the end is marked by a COMMIT TRAN or ROLLBACK TRAN). Transactions must exhibit all the ACID properties of a transaction. ACID Properties Transaction processing must guarantee the consistency and recoverability of SQL Server databases. Ensures all transactions are performed as a single unit of work regardless of hardware or system failure. A – Atomicity C – Consistency I – Isolation D- Durability Atomicity: Each transaction is treated as all or nothing – it either commits or aborts. Consistency: ensures that a transaction won’t allow the system to arrive at an incorrect logical state – the data must always be logically correct. Consistency is honored even in the event of a system failure. Isolation: separates concurrent transactions from the updates of other incomplete transactions. SQL Server accomplishes isolation among transactions by locking data or creating row versions. Durability: After a transaction commits, the durability property ensures that the effects of the transaction persist even if a system failure occurs. If a system failure occurs while a transaction is in progress, the transaction is completely undone, leaving no partial effects on data. Transaction Dependencies In addition to supporting all four ACID properties, a transaction might exhibit few other behaviors (known as dependency problems or consistency problems). Lost Updates: Occur when two processes read the same data and both manipulate the data, changing its value and then both try to update the original data to the new value. The second process might overwrite the first update completely. Dirty Reads: Occurs when a process reads uncommitted data. If one process has changed data but not yet committed the change, another process reading the data will read it in an inconsistent state. Non-repeatable Reads: A read is non-repeatable if a process might get different values when reading the same data in two reads within the same transaction. This can happen when another process changes the data in between the reads that the first process is doing. Phantoms: Occurs when membership in a set changes. It occurs if two SELECT operations using the same predicate in the same transaction return a different number of rows. Isolation Levels SQL Server supports 5 isolation levels that control the behavior of read operations. Read Uncommitted All behaviors except for lost updates are possible. Implemented by allowing the read operations to not take any locks, and because of this, it won’t be blocked by conflicting locks acquired by other processes. The process can read data that another process has modified but not yet committed. When using the read uncommitted isolation level and scanning an entire table, SQL Server can decide to do an allocation order scan (in page-number order) instead of a logical order scan (following page pointers). If another process doing concurrent operations changes data and move rows to a new location in the table, the allocation order scan can end up reading the same row twice. Also can happen if you have read a row before it is updated and then an update moves the row to a higher page number than your scan encounters later. Performing an allocation order scan under Read Uncommitted can cause you to miss a row completely – can happen when a row on a high page number that hasn’t been read yet is updated and moved to a lower page number that has already been read. Read Committed Two varieties of read committed isolation: optimistic and pessimistic (default). Ensures that a read never reads data that another application hasn’t committed. If another transaction is updating data and has exclusive locks on data, your transaction will have to wait for the locks to be released. Your transaction must put share locks on data that are visited, which means that data might be unavailable for others to use. A share lock doesn’t prevent others from reading but prevents them from updating. Read committed (snapshot) ensures that an operation never reads uncommitted data, but not by forcing other processes to wait. SQL Server generates a version of the changed row with its previous committed values. Data being changed is still locked but other processes can see the previous versions of the data as it was before the update operation began. Repeatable Read This is a Pessimistic isolation level. Ensures that if a transaction revisits data or a query is reissued the data doesn’t change. That is, issuing the same query twice within a transaction cannot pickup any changes to data values made by another user’s transaction because no changes can be made by other transactions. However, this does allow phantom rows to appear. Preventing non-repeatable read is a desirable safeguard but cost is that all shared locks in a transaction must be held until the completion of the transaction. Snapshot Snapshot Isolation (SI) is an optimistic isolation level. Allows for processes to read older versions of committed data if the current version is locked. Difference between snapshot and read committed has to do with how old the older versions have to be. It’s possible to have two transactions executing simultaneously that give us a result that is not possible in any serial execution. Serializable This is the strongest of the pessimistic isolation level. Adds to repeatable read isolation level by ensuring that if a query is reissued rows were not added in the interim, i.e, phantoms do not appear. Preventing phantoms is another desirable safeguard, but cost of this extra safeguard is similar to that of repeatable read – all shared locks in a transaction must be held until the transaction completes. In addition serializable isolation level requires that you lock data that has been read but also data that doesn’t exist. Ex: if a SELECT returned no rows, you want it to return no. rows when the query is reissued. This is implemented in SQL Server by a special kind of lock called the key-range lock. Key-range locks require that there be an index on the column that defines the range of values. If there is no index on the column, serializable isolation requires a table lock. Gets its name from the fact that running multiple serializable transactions at the same time is equivalent of running them one at a time. Now that we understand the basics of what concurrency is, the subsequent blog posts will try to bring out the basics around locking, blocking, deadlocks because they are the fundamental blocks that make concurrency possible. Now if you are with me – let us continue learning for SQL Server Locking Basics. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Concurrency

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Announcing ASP.NET MVC 3 (Release Candidate 2)

- by ScottGu

Earlier today the ASP.NET team shipped the final release candidate (RC2) for ASP.NET MVC 3. You can download and install it here. Almost there… Today’s RC2 release is the near-final release of ASP.NET MVC 3, and is a true “release candidate” in that we are hoping to not make any more code changes with it. We are publishing it today so that people can do final testing with it, let us know if they find any last minute “showstoppers”, and start updating their apps to use it. We will officially ship the final ASP.NET MVC 3 “RTM” build in January. Works with both VS 2010 and VS 2010 SP1 Beta Today’s ASP.NET MVC 3 RC2 release works with both the shipping version of Visual Studio 2010 / Visual Web Developer 2010 Express, as well as the newly released VS 2010 SP1 Beta. This means that you do not need to install VS 2010 SP1 (or the SP1 beta) in order to use ASP.NET MVC 3. It works just fine with the shipping Visual Studio 2010. I’ll do a blog post next week, though, about some of the nice additional feature goodies that come with VS 2010 SP1 (including IIS Express and SQL CE support within VS) which make the dev experience for both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC even better. Bugs and Perf Fixes Today’s ASP.NET MVC 3 RC2 build contains many bug fixes and performance optimizations. Our latest performance tests indicate that ASP.NET MVC 3 is now faster than ASP.NET MVC 2, and that existing ASP.NET MVC applications will experience a slight performance increase when updated to run using ASP.NET MVC 3. Final Tweaks and Fit-N-Finish In addition to bug fixes and performance optimizations, today’s RC2 build contains a number of last-minute feature tweaks and “fit-n-finish” changes for the new ASP.NET MVC 3 features. The feedback and suggestions we’ve received during the public previews has been invaluable in guiding these final tweaks, and we really appreciate people’s support in sending this feedback our way. Below is a short-list of some of the feature changes/tweaks made between last month’s ASP.NET MVC 3 RC release and today’s ASP.NET MVC 3 RC2 release: jQuery updates and addition of jQuery UI The default ASP.NET MVC 3 project templates have been updated to include jQuery 1.4.4 and jQuery Validation 1.7. We are also excited to announce today that we are including jQuery UI within our default ASP.NET project templates going forward. jQuery UI provides a powerful set of additional UI widgets and capabilities. It will be added by default to your project’s \scripts folder when you create new ASP.NET MVC 3 projects. Improved View Scaffolding The T4 templates used for scaffolding views with the Add-View dialog now generates views that use Html.EditorFor instead of helpers such as Html.TextBoxFor. This change enables you to optionally annotate models with metadata (using data annotation attributes) to better customize the output of your UI at runtime. The Add View scaffolding also supports improved detection and usage of primary key information on models (including support for naming conventions like ID, ProductID, etc). For example: the Add View dialog box uses this information to ensure that the primary key value is not scaffold as an editable form field, and that links between views are auto-generated correctly with primary key information. The default Edit and Create templates also now include references to the jQuery scripts needed for client validation. Scaffold form views now support client-side validation by default (no extra steps required). Client-side validation with ASP.NET MVC 3 is also done using an unobtrusive javascript approach – making pages fast and clean. [ControllerSessionState] –> [SessionState] ASP.NET MVC 3 adds support for session-less controllers. With the initial RC you used a [ControllerSessionState] attribute to specify this. We shortened this in RC2 to just be [SessionState]: Note that in addition to turning off session state, you can also set it to be read-only (which is useful for webfarm scenarios where you are reading but not updating session state on a particular request). [SkipRequestValidation] –> [AllowHtml] ASP.NET MVC includes built-in support to protect against HTML and Cross-Site Script Injection Attacks, and will throw an error by default if someone tries to post HTML content as input. Developers need to explicitly indicate that this is allowed (and that they’ve hopefully built their app to securely support it) in order to enable it. With ASP.NET MVC 3, we are also now supporting a new attribute that you can apply to properties of models/viewmodels to indicate that HTML input is enabled, which enables much more granular protection in a DRY way. In last month’s RC release this attribute was named [SkipRequestValidation]. With RC2 we renamed it to [AllowHtml] to make it more intuitive: Setting the above [AllowHtml] attribute on a model/viewmodel will cause ASP.NET MVC 3 to turn off HTML injection protection when model binding just that property. Html.Raw() helper method The new Razor view engine introduced with ASP.NET MVC 3 automatically HTML encodes output by default. This helps provide an additional level of protection against HTML and Script injection attacks. With RC2 we are adding a Html.Raw() helper method that you can use to explicitly indicate that you do not want to HTML encode your output, and instead want to render the content “as-is”: ViewModel/View –> ViewBag ASP.NET MVC has (since V1) supported a ViewData[] dictionary within Controllers and Views that enables developers to pass information from a Controller to a View in a late-bound way. This approach can be used instead of, or in combination with, a strongly-typed model class. The below code demonstrates a common use case – where a strongly typed Product model is passed to the view in addition to two late-bound variables via the ViewData[] dictionary: With ASP.NET MVC 3 we are introducing a new API that takes advantage of the dynamic type support within .NET 4 to set/retrieve these values. It allows you to use standard “dot” notation to specify any number of additional variables to be passed, and does not require that you create a strongly-typed class to do so. With earlier previews of ASP.NET MVC 3 we exposed this API using a dynamic property called “ViewModel” on the Controller base class, and with a dynamic property called “View” within view templates. A lot of people found the fact that there were two different names confusing, and several also said that using the name ViewModel was confusing in this context – since often you create strongly-typed ViewModel classes in ASP.NET MVC, and they do not use this API. With RC2 we are exposing a dynamic property that has the same name – ViewBag – within both Controllers and Views. It is a dynamic collection that allows you to pass additional bits of data from your controller to your view template to help generate a response. Below is an example of how we could use it to pass a time-stamp message as well as a list of all categories to our view template: Below is an example of how our view template (which is strongly-typed to expect a Product class as its model) can use the two extra bits of information we passed in our ViewBag to generate the response. In particular, notice how we are using the list of categories passed in the dynamic ViewBag collection to generate a dropdownlist of friendly category names to help set the CategoryID property of our Product object. The above Controller/View combination will then generate an HTML response like below. Output Caching Improvements ASP.NET MVC 3’s output caching system no longer requires you to specify a VaryByParam property when declaring an [OutputCache] attribute on a Controller action method. MVC3 now automatically varies the output cached entries when you have explicit parameters on your action method – allowing you to cleanly enable output caching on actions using code like below: In addition to supporting full page output caching, ASP.NET MVC 3 also supports partial-page caching – which allows you to cache a region of output and re-use it across multiple requests or controllers. The [OutputCache] behavior for partial-page caching was updated with RC2 so that sub-content cached entries are varied based on input parameters as opposed to the URL structure of the top-level request – which makes caching scenarios both easier and more powerful than the behavior in the previous RC. @model declaration does not add whitespace In earlier previews, the strongly-typed @model declaration at the top of a Razor view added a blank line to the rendered HTML output. This has been fixed so that the declaration does not introduce whitespace. Changed "Html.ValidationMessage" Method to Display the First Useful Error Message The behavior of the Html.ValidationMessage() helper was updated to show the first useful error message instead of simply displaying the first error. During model binding, the ModelState dictionary can be populated from multiple sources with error messages about the property, including from the model itself (if it implements IValidatableObject), from validation attributes applied to the property, and from exceptions thrown while the property is being accessed. When the Html.ValidationMessage() method displays a validation message, it now skips model-state entries that include an exception, because these are generally not intended for the end user. Instead, the method looks for the first validation message that is not associated with an exception and displays that message. If no such message is found, it defaults to a generic error message that is associated with the first exception. RemoteAttribute “Fields” -> “AdditionalFields” ASP.NET MVC 3 includes built-in remote validation support with its validation infrastructure. This means that the client-side validation script library used by ASP.NET MVC 3 can automatically call back to controllers you expose on the server to determine whether an input element is indeed valid as the user is editing the form (allowing you to provide real-time validation updates). You can accomplish this by decorating a model/viewmodel property with a [Remote] attribute that specifies the controller/action that should be invoked to remotely validate it. With the RC this attribute had a “Fields” property that could be used to specify additional input elements that should be sent from the client to the server to help with the validation logic. To improve the clarity of what this property does we have renamed it to “AdditionalFields” with today’s RC2 release. ViewResult.Model and ViewResult.ViewBag Properties The ViewResult class now exposes both a “Model” and “ViewBag” property off of it. This makes it easier to unit test Controllers that return views, and avoids you having to access the Model via the ViewResult.ViewData.Model property. Installation Notes You can download and install the ASP.NET MVC 3 RC2 build here. It can be installed on top of the previous ASP.NET MVC 3 RC release (it should just replace the bits as part of its setup). The one component that will not be updated by the above setup (if you already have it installed) is the NuGet Package Manager. If you already have NuGet installed, please go to the Visual Studio Extensions Manager (via the Tools –> Extensions menu option) and click on the “Updates” tab. You should see NuGet listed there – please click the “Update” button next to it to have VS update the extension to today’s release. If you do not have NuGet installed (and did not install the ASP.NET MVC RC build), then NuGet will be installed as part of your ASP.NET MVC 3 setup, and you do not need to take any additional steps to make it work. Summary We are really close to the final ASP.NET MVC 3 release, and will deliver the final “RTM” build of it next month. It has been only a little over 7 months since ASP.NET MVC 2 shipped, and I’m pretty amazed by the huge number of new features, improvements, and refinements that the team has been able to add with this release (Razor, Unobtrusive JavaScript, NuGet, Dependency Injection, Output Caching, and a lot, lot more). I’ll be doing a number of blog posts over the next few weeks talking about many of them in more depth. 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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Lightning talk: Coderetreat

- by Michael Williamson

In the spirit of trying to encourage more deliberate practice amongst coders in Red Gate, Lauri Pesonen had the idea of running a coderetreat in Red Gate. Lauri and I ran the first one a few weeks ago: given that neither of us hadn’t even been to a coderetreat before, let alone run one, I think it turned out quite well. The participants gave positive feedback, saying that they enjoyed the day, wrote some thought-provoking code and would do it again. Sam Blackburn was one of the attendees, and gave a lightning talk to the other developers in one of our regular lightning talk sessions: In case you can’t watch the video, I’ve transcribed the talk below, although I’d recommend watching the video if you can — I didn’t have much time to do the transcribing! So, what is a coderetreat? So it’s not just something in Red Gate, there’s a website and everything, although it’s not a very big website. It calls itself a community network. The basic ideas behind coderetreat are: you’ve got one day, and you split it into one hour sections. You spend three quarters of that coding, and do a little retrospective at the end. You’re supposed to start fresh each, we were told to delete our code after every session. We were in pairs, swapping after each session, and we did the same task every time. In fact, Conway’s Game of Life is the only task mentioned anywhere that I find for coderetreat. So I don’t know what we’ll do next time, or if we’re meant to do the same thing again. There are some guiding principles which felt to us like restrictions, that you have to code in crazy ways to encourage better code. Final thing is that it’s supposed to be free for outsiders to join. It’s meant to be a kind of networking thing, where you link up with people from other companies. We had a pilot day with Michael and Lauri. Since it was basically the first time any of us had done anything like this, everybody was from Red Gate. We didn’t chat to anybody else for the initial one. The task was Conway’s Game of Life, which most of you have probably heard of it, all but one of us knew about it when did the coderetreat. I won’t got into the details of what it is, but it felt like the right size of task, basically one or two groups actually produced something working by the end of the day, and of course that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a day’s work to produce that because we were starting again every hour. The task really drives you more than trying to create good code, I found. It was really tempting to try and get it working rather than stick to the rules. But it’s really good to stop and try again because there are so many what-ifs when you’ve finished writing something, “what if I’d done it this way?”. You can answer all those questions at a coderetreat because it’s not about getting a product out the door, it’s about learning and playing with ideas. So we had all these different practices we were trying. I’ll try and go through most of these. Single responsibility is this idea that everything should do just one thing. It was the very first session, we were still trying to figure out how do you go about the Game of Life? So by the end of forty-five minutes hadn’t produced very much for that first session. We were still thinking, “Do we start with a board, how do we represent all these squares? It can be infinitely big, help, this is getting really difficult!”. So, most of us didn’t really get anywhere on the first one. Although it was interesting that some people started with the board, one group started with the FateDecider class that decides whether things live or die. A sort of god class, but in a good way. They managed to implement all of the rules without even defining how the squares were arranged or anything like that. Another thing we tried was TDD (test-driven development). I’m sure most of you know what TDD is: Watch a test, watch it fail for the right reason Write code to pass the test, watch it pass Refactor, check the test still passes Repeat! It basically worked, we were able to produce code, but we often found the tests defined the direction that code went, which is obviously the idea of TDD. But you tend to find that by the time you’ve even written your first assertion, which is supposed to be the very first thing you write, because you write your tests backwards from the assertions back to the initial conditions, you’ve already constrained the logic of the code in some way by the time you’ve done that. You then get to this situation of, “Well, we actually want to go in a slightly different direction. Can we do this?”. Can we write tests that don’t constrain the architecture? Wrapping up all primitives: it’s kind of turtles all the way down. We had a Size, which has a Width and Height, which both derive from Dimension. You’ve got pages of code before you’ve even done anything. No getters and setters (use tell don’t ask instead): mocks and stubs for tests are required if you want to assert that your results are what you think they should be. You can’t just check the internal state of the code. And people found that really challenging and it made them think in a different way which I think is really good. Not having mutable state: that was kind of confusing because we weren’t quite sure what fitted within that rule and what didn’t, and I think we were trying too hard to follow the rule rather than the guideline. No if-statements: supposed to use polymorphism instead, but polymorphism still requires a factory with conditional behaviour. We did something really crazy to get around this: public T If(bool condition, Func<T> left, Func<T> right) { var dict = new Dictionary<bool, Func<T>> {{true, left}, {false, right}}; return dict[condition].Invoke(); } That is not really polymorphism, is it? For-loops: you can always replace a for-loop with recursion, but it doesn’t tend to make it any more readable unless it’s the kind of task that really lends itself to that. So it was interesting, it was good practice, but it wouldn’t make it easier it’s the kind of tree-structure algorithm where that would help. Having a limit on the number of levels of indentation: again, I think it does produce very nice, clean code, but it wasn’t actually a challenge because you just extract methods. That’s quite a useful thing because you can apply that to real code and say, “Okay, should this method really be going crazy like this?” No talking: we hated that. It’s like there’s two of you at a computer, and one of you is doing the typing, what does the other guy do if they’re not allowed to talk. The answer is TDD ping-pong – one person writes the tests, and then the other person writes the code to pass the test. And that creates communication without actually having to have discussion about things which is kind of cool. No code comments: just makes no difference to anything. It’s a forty-five minute exercise, so what are you going to put comments in code for? Finally, this is my fault. I discovered an entertaining way of doing the calculation that was kind of cool (using convolutions over the state of the board). Unfortunately, it turns out to be really hard to implement in C#, so didn’t even manage to work out how to do that convolution in C#. It’s trivial in some high-level languages, but you need something matrix-orientated for it to really work. That’s most of it, really. The thoughts that people went away with: we put down our answers to questions like “What have you learnt?” and “What surprised you?”, “How are you going to do things differently?”, and most people said redoing the problem is really, really good for understanding it properly. People hate having a massive legacy codebase that they can’t change, so being able to attack something three different ways in an environment where the end-product isn’t important: that’s something people really enjoyed. Pair-programming: also people said that they wanted to do more of that, especially with TDD ping-pong, where you write the test and somebody else writes the code. Various people thought different things about immutables, but most people thought they were good, they promote functional programming. And TDD people found really hard. “Tell, don’t ask” people found really, really hard and really, really, really hard to do well. And the recursion just made things trickier to debug. But most people agreed that coderetreats are really cool, and we should do more of them.

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How to mount a blu-ray drive?

- by Stephan Schielke

Maybe it is for the best to close this question. This has nothing to do with a bluray drive in general anymore. Probably a hardware defect. I will try to test it with a windows system and different cables again... Thx so far. I have a bluray/dvd/cdrom drive with SATA. Ubuntu wont find it under /dev/sd wodim --devices wodim: Overview of accessible drives (1 found) : ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 0 dev='/dev/sg2' rwrw-- : 'HL-DT-ST' 'BDDVDRW CH08LS10' ------------------------------------------------------------------------- cdrecord -scanbus scsibus2: 2,0,0 200) 'HL-DT-ST' 'BDDVDRW CH08LS10' '2.00' Removable CD-ROM fdisk dont even lists it. Ubuntu only automounts blank DVDs, but neither CDROM nor Blurays. I also changed the sata slot, sata cable and the power cable. The drive works with a windows system. This happens when I try to mount: sudo mount -t auto /dev/scd0 /media/bluray mount: you must specify the filesystem type I tried all filesystems there are. I also installed makemkv. It finds the drive but not the disc. Here is my /dev ls -al /dev total 12 drwxr-xr-x 17 root root 4420 2011-11-25 19:36 . drwxr-xr-x 28 root root 4096 2011-11-25 07:12 .. crw------- 1 root root 10, 235 2011-11-25 19:28 autofs -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 630 2011-11-25 19:28 .blkid.tab -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 630 2011-11-25 19:28 .blkid.tab.old drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 700 2011-11-25 19:27 block drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 100 2011-11-25 19:27 bsg crw------- 1 root root 10, 234 2011-11-25 19:28 btrfs-control drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 60 2011-11-25 19:27 bus drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 3820 2011-11-25 19:28 char crw------- 1 root root 5, 1 2011-11-25 19:28 console lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 2011-11-25 19:28 core -> /proc/kcore drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 60 2011-11-25 19:28 cpu crw------- 1 root root 10, 60 2011-11-25 19:28 cpu_dma_latency drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 140 2011-11-25 19:27 disk crw------- 1 root root 10, 61 2011-11-25 19:28 ecryptfs crw-rw---- 1 root video 29, 0 2011-11-25 19:28 fb0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 2011-11-25 19:28 fd -> /proc/self/fd crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 1, 7 2011-11-25 19:28 full crw-rw-rw- 1 root fuse 10, 229 2011-11-25 19:28 fuse crw------- 1 root root 251, 0 2011-11-25 19:28 hidraw0 crw------- 1 root root 251, 1 2011-11-25 19:28 hidraw1 crw------- 1 root root 10, 228 2011-11-25 19:28 hpet lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 2011-11-25 19:27 .initramfs -> /run/initramfs drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 220 2011-11-25 19:28 input crw------- 1 root root 1, 11 2011-11-25 19:28 kmsg srw-rw-rw- 1 root root 0 2011-11-25 19:28 log brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 0 2011-11-25 19:28 loop0 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 1 2011-11-25 19:28 loop1 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 2 2011-11-25 19:28 loop2 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 3 2011-11-25 19:28 loop3 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 4 2011-11-25 19:28 loop4 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 5 2011-11-25 19:28 loop5 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 6 2011-11-25 19:28 loop6 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 7 2011-11-25 19:28 loop7 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 60 2011-11-25 19:27 mapper crw------- 1 root root 10, 227 2011-11-25 19:28 mcelog crw-r----- 1 root kmem 1, 1 2011-11-25 19:28 mem drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 60 2011-11-25 19:27 net crw------- 1 root root 10, 59 2011-11-25 19:28 network_latency crw------- 1 root root 10, 58 2011-11-25 19:28 network_throughput crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 1, 3 2011-11-25 19:28 null crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 195, 0 2011-11-25 19:28 nvidia0 crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 195, 255 2011-11-25 19:28 nvidiactl crw------- 1 root root 1, 12 2011-11-25 19:28 oldmem crw-r----- 1 root kmem 1, 4 2011-11-25 19:28 port crw------- 1 root root 108, 0 2011-11-25 19:28 ppp crw------- 1 root root 10, 1 2011-11-25 19:28 psaux crw-rw-rw- 1 root tty 5, 2 2011-11-25 20:00 ptmx drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 0 2011-11-25 19:27 pts brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 0 2011-11-25 19:28 ram0 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 1 2011-11-25 19:28 ram1 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 10 2011-11-25 19:28 ram10 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 11 2011-11-25 19:28 ram11 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 12 2011-11-25 19:28 ram12 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 13 2011-11-25 19:28 ram13 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 14 2011-11-25 19:28 ram14 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 15 2011-11-25 19:28 ram15 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 2 2011-11-25 19:28 ram2 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 3 2011-11-25 19:28 ram3 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 4 2011-11-25 19:28 ram4 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 5 2011-11-25 19:28 ram5 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 6 2011-11-25 19:28 ram6 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 7 2011-11-25 19:28 ram7 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 8 2011-11-25 19:28 ram8 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 1, 9 2011-11-25 19:28 ram9 crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 1, 8 2011-11-25 19:28 random crw-rw-r--+ 1 root root 10, 62 2011-11-25 19:28 rfkill lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4 2011-11-25 19:28 rtc -> rtc0 crw------- 1 root root 254, 0 2011-11-25 19:28 rtc0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 2011-11-25 19:38 scd0 -> sr0 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 0 2011-11-25 19:28 sda brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 1 2011-11-25 19:28 sda1 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 2 2011-11-25 19:28 sda2 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 3 2011-11-25 19:28 sda3 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 5 2011-11-25 19:28 sda5 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 6 2011-11-25 19:28 sda6 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 16 2011-11-25 19:28 sdb brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 17 2011-11-25 19:28 sdb1 crw-rw---- 1 root disk 21, 0 2011-11-25 19:28 sg0 crw-rw---- 1 root disk 21, 1 2011-11-25 19:28 sg1 crw-rw----+ 1 root cdrom 21, 2 2011-11-25 19:28 sg2 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 8 2011-11-25 19:28 shm -> /run/shm crw------- 1 root root 10, 231 2011-11-25 19:28 snapshot drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 280 2011-11-25 19:28 snd brw-rw----+ 1 root cdrom 11, 0 2011-11-25 19:38 sr0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 2011-11-25 19:28 stderr -> /proc/self/fd/2 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 2011-11-25 19:28 stdin -> /proc/self/fd/0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 2011-11-25 19:28 stdout -> /proc/self/fd/1 crw-rw-rw- 1 root tty 5, 0 2011-11-25 19:35 tty crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 0 2011-11-25 19:28 tty0 crw------- 1 root root 4, 1 2011-11-25 19:28 tty1 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 10 2011-11-25 19:28 tty10 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 11 2011-11-25 19:28 tty11 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 12 2011-11-25 19:28 tty12 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 13 2011-11-25 19:28 tty13 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 14 2011-11-25 19:28 tty14 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 15 2011-11-25 19:28 tty15 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 16 2011-11-25 19:28 tty16 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 17 2011-11-25 19:28 tty17 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 18 2011-11-25 19:28 tty18 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 19 2011-11-25 19:28 tty19 crw------- 1 root root 4, 2 2011-11-25 19:28 tty2 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 20 2011-11-25 19:28 tty20 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 21 2011-11-25 19:28 tty21 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 22 2011-11-25 19:28 tty22 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 23 2011-11-25 19:28 tty23 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 24 2011-11-25 19:28 tty24 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 25 2011-11-25 19:28 tty25 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 26 2011-11-25 19:28 tty26 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 27 2011-11-25 19:28 tty27 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 28 2011-11-25 19:28 tty28 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 29 2011-11-25 19:28 tty29 crw------- 1 root root 4, 3 2011-11-25 19:28 tty3 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 30 2011-11-25 19:28 tty30 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 31 2011-11-25 19:28 tty31 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 32 2011-11-25 19:28 tty32 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 33 2011-11-25 19:28 tty33 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 34 2011-11-25 19:28 tty34 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 35 2011-11-25 19:28 tty35 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 36 2011-11-25 19:28 tty36 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 37 2011-11-25 19:28 tty37 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 38 2011-11-25 19:28 tty38 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 39 2011-11-25 19:28 tty39 crw------- 1 root root 4, 4 2011-11-25 19:28 tty4 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 40 2011-11-25 19:28 tty40 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 41 2011-11-25 19:28 tty41 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 42 2011-11-25 19:28 tty42 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 43 2011-11-25 19:28 tty43 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 44 2011-11-25 19:28 tty44 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 45 2011-11-25 19:28 tty45 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 46 2011-11-25 19:28 tty46 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 47 2011-11-25 19:28 tty47 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 48 2011-11-25 19:28 tty48 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 49 2011-11-25 19:28 tty49 crw------- 1 root root 4, 5 2011-11-25 19:28 tty5 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 50 2011-11-25 19:28 tty50 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 51 2011-11-25 19:28 tty51 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 52 2011-11-25 19:28 tty52 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 53 2011-11-25 19:28 tty53 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 54 2011-11-25 19:28 tty54 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 55 2011-11-25 19:28 tty55 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 56 2011-11-25 19:28 tty56 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 57 2011-11-25 19:28 tty57 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 58 2011-11-25 19:28 tty58 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 59 2011-11-25 19:28 tty59 crw------- 1 root root 4, 6 2011-11-25 19:28 tty6 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 60 2011-11-25 19:28 tty60 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 61 2011-11-25 19:28 tty61 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 62 2011-11-25 19:28 tty62 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 63 2011-11-25 19:28 tty63 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 7 2011-11-25 19:28 tty7 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 8 2011-11-25 19:28 tty8 crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 9 2011-11-25 19:28 tty9 crw------- 1 root root 5, 3 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyprintk crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 64 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS0 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 65 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS1 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 74 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS10 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 75 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS11 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 76 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS12 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 77 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS13 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 78 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS14 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 79 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS15 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 80 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS16 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 81 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS17 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 82 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS18 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 83 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS19 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 66 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS2 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 84 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS20 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 85 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS21 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 86 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS22 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 87 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS23 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 88 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS24 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 89 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS25 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 90 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS26 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 91 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS27 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 92 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS28 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 93 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS29 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 67 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS3 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 94 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS30 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 95 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS31 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 68 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS4 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 69 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS5 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 70 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS6 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 71 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS7 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 72 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS8 crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 73 2011-11-25 19:28 ttyS9 d rwxr-xr-x 3 root root 60 2011-11-25 19:28 .udev crw-r----- 1 root root 10, 223 2011-11-25 19:28 uinput crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 1, 9 2011-11-25 19:28 urandom drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 60 2011-11-25 19:27 usb crw------- 1 root root 252, 0 2011-11-25 19:28 usbmon0 crw------- 1 root root 252, 1 2011-11-25 19:28 usbmon1 crw------- 1 root root 252, 2 2011-11-25 19:28 usbmon2 crw------- 1 root root 252, 3 2011-11-25 19:28 usbmon3 crw------- 1 root root 252, 4 2011-11-25 19:28 usbmon4 crw------- 1 root root 252, 5 2011-11-25 19:28 usbmon5 crw------- 1 root root 252, 6 2011-11-25 19:28 usbmon6 crw------- 1 root root 252, 7 2011-11-25 19:28 usbmon7 crw------- 1 root root 252, 8 2011-11-25 19:28 usbmon8 drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 80 2011-11-25 19:28 v4l crw------- 1 root root 10, 57 2011-11-25 19:28 vboxdrv crw------- 1 root root 10, 56 2011-11-25 19:28 vboxnetctl drwxr-x--- 4 root vboxusers 80 2011-11-25 19:28 vboxusb crw-rw---- 1 root tty 7, 0 2011-11-25 19:28 vcs crw-rw---- 1 root tty 7, 1 2011-11-25 19:28 vcs1 crw-rw---- 1 root tty 7, 2 2011-11-25 19:28 vcs2 crw-rw---- 1 root tty 7, 3 2011-11-25 19:28 vcs3 crw-rw---- 1 root tty 7, 4 2011-11-25 19:28 vcs4 crw-rw---- 1 root tty 7, 5 2011-11-25 19:28 vcs5 crw-rw---- 1 root tty 7, 6 2011-11-25 19:28 vcs6 crw-rw---- 1 root tty 7, 128 2011-11-25 19:28 vcsa crw-rw---- 1 root tty 7, 129 2011-11-25 19:28 vcsa1 crw-rw---- 1 root tty 7, 130 2011-11-25 19:28 vcsa2 crw-rw---- 1 root tty 7, 131 2011-11-25 19:28 vcsa3 crw-rw---- 1 root tty 7, 132 2011-11-25 19:28 vcsa4 crw-rw---- 1 root tty 7, 133 2011-11-25 19:28 vcsa5 crw-rw---- 1 root tty 7, 134 2011-11-25 19:28 vcsa6 crw------- 1 root root 10, 63 2011-11-25 19:28 vga_arbiter crw-rw----+ 1 root video 81, 0 2011-11-25 19:28 video0 crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 1, 5 2011-11-25 19:28 zero sg_scan -i gives me: sudo sg_scan -i /dev/sg0: scsi0 channel=0 id=0 lun=0 [em] ATA ST31000524NS SN12 [rmb=0 cmdq=0 pqual=0 pdev=0x0] /dev/sg1: scsi0 channel=0 id=1 lun=0 [em] ATA WDC WD15EADS-00S 01.0 [rmb=0 cmdq=0 pqual=0 pdev=0x0] /dev/sg2: scsi2 channel=0 id=0 lun=0 [em] HL-DT-ST BDDVDRW CH08LS10 2.00 [rmb=1 cmdq=0 pqual=0 pdev=0x5] sg_map gives me: /dev/sg0 /dev/sda /dev/sg1 /dev/sdb /dev/sg2 /dev/scd0 lsscsi -l gives me: [0:0:0:0] disk ATA ST31000524NS SN12 /dev/sda state=running queue_depth=1 scsi_level=6 type=0 device_blocked=0 timeout=30 [0:0:1:0] disk ATA WDC WD15EADS-00S 01.0 /dev/sdb state=running queue_depth=1 scsi_level=6 type=0 device_blocked=0 timeout=30 [2:0:0:0] cd/dvd HL-DT-ST BDDVDRW CH08LS10 2.00 /dev/sr0 state=running queue_depth=1 scsi_level=6 type=5 device_blocked=0 timeout=30 my udf mod is: filename: /lib/modules/3.0.0-14-generic/kernel/fs/udf/udf.ko license: GPL description: Universal Disk Format Filesystem author: Ben Fennema srcversion: 6ABDE012374D96B9685B8E5 depends: crc-itu-t vermagic: 3.0.0-14-generic SMP mod_unload modversions Do I need special drivers or mods enabled? Do I need to change some BIOS settings? edit: Somehow I am now able to fire the mount command without any filesystem errors, but now I get: mount: no medium found on /dev/sr0

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Clustering Basics and Challenges

- by Karoly Vegh

For upcoming posts it seemed to be a good idea to dedicate some time for cluster basic concepts and theory. This post misses a lot of details that would explode the articlesize, should you have questions, do not hesitate to ask them in the comments. The goal here is to get some concepts straight. I can't promise to give you an overall complete definitions of cluster, cluster agent, quorum, voting, fencing, split brain condition, so the following is more of an explanation. Here we go. -------- Cluster, HA, failover, switchover, scalability -------- An attempted definition of a Cluster: A cluster is a set (2+) server nodes dedicated to keep application services alive, communicating through the cluster software/framework with eachother, test and probe health status of servernodes/services and with quorum based decisions and with switchover/failover techniques keep the application services running on them available. That is, should a node that runs a service unexpectedly lose functionality/connection, the other ones would take over the and run the services, so that availability is guaranteed. To provide availability while strictly sticking to a consistent clusterconfiguration is the main goal of a cluster. At this point we have to add that this defines a HA-cluster, a High-Availability cluster, where the clusternodes are planned to run the services in an active-standby, or failover fashion. An example could be a single instance database. Some applications can be run in a distributed or scalable fashion. In the latter case instances of the application run actively on separate clusternodes serving servicerequests simultaneously. An example for this version could be a webserver that forwards connection requests to many backend servers in a round-robin way. Or a database running in active-active RAC setup. -------- Cluster arhitecture, interconnect, topologies -------- Now, what is a cluster made of? Servers, right. These servers (the clusternodes) need to communicate. This of course happens over the network, usually over dedicated network interfaces interconnecting all the clusternodes. These connection are called interconnects.How many clusternodes are in a cluster? There are different cluster topologies. The most simple one is a clustered pair topology, involving only two clusternodes: There are several more topologies, clicking the image above will take you to the relevant documentation. Also, to answer the question Solaris Cluster allows you to run up to 16 servers in a cluster. Where shall these clusternodes be placed? A very important question. The right answer is: It depends on what you plan to achieve with the cluster. Do you plan to avoid only a server outage? Then you can place them right next to eachother in the datacenter. Do you need to avoid DataCenter outage? In that case of course you should place them at least in different fire zones. Or in two geographically distant DataCenters to avoid disasters like floods, large-scale fires or power outages. We call this a stretched- or campus cluster, the clusternodes being several kilometers away from eachother. To cover really large distances, you probably need to move to a GeoCluster, which is a different kind of animal. What is a geocluster? A Geographic Cluster in Solaris Cluster terms is actually a metacluster between two, separate (locally-HA) clusters. -------- Cluster resource types, agents, resources, resource groups -------- So how does the cluster manage my applications? The cluster needs to start, stop and probe your applications. If you application runs, the cluster needs to check regularly if the application state is healthy, does it respond over the network, does it have all the processes running, etc. This is called probing. If the cluster deems the application is in a faulty state, then it can try to restart it locally or decide to switch (stop on node A, start on node B) the service. Starting, stopping and probing are the three actions that a cluster agent does. There are many different kinds of agents included in Solaris Cluster, but you can build your own too. Examples are an agent that manages (mounts, moves) ZFS filesystems, or the Oracle DB HA agent that cares about the database, or an agent that moves a floating IP address between nodes. There are lots of other agents included for Apache, Tomcat, MySQL, Oracle DB, Oracle Weblogic, Zones, LDoms, NFS, DNS, etc.We also need to clarify the difference between a cluster resource and the cluster resource group.A cluster resource is something that is managed by a cluster agent. Cluster resource types are included in Solaris cluster (see above, e.g. HAStoragePlus, HA-Oracle, LogicalHost). You can group cluster resources into cluster resourcegroups, and switch these groups together from one node to another. To stick to the example above, to move an Oracle DB service from one node to another, you have to switch the group between nodes, and the agents of the cluster resources in the group will do the following: On node A Shut down the DB Unconfigure the LogicalHost IP the DB Listener listens on unmount the filesystem Then, on node B: mount the FS configure the IP startup the DB -------- Voting, Quorum, Split Brain Condition, Fencing, Amnesia -------- How do the clusternodes agree upon their action? How do they decide which node runs what services? Another important question. Running a cluster is a strictly democratic thing.Every node has votes, and you need the majority of votes to have the deciding power. Now, this is usually no problem, clusternodes think very much all alike. Still, every action needs to be governed upon in a productive system, and has to be agreed upon. Agreeing is easy as long as the clusternodes all behave and talk to eachother over the interconnect. But if the interconnect is gone/down, this all gets tricky and confusing. Clusternodes think like this: "My job is to run these services. The other node does not answer my interconnect communication, it must be down. I'd better take control and run the services!". The problem is, as I have already mentioned, clusternodes very much think alike. If the interconnect is gone, they all assume the other node is down, and they all want to mount the data backend, enable the IP and run the database. Double IPs, double mounts, double DB instances - now that is trouble. Also, in a 2-node cluster they both have only 50% of the votes, that is, they themselves alone are not allowed to run a cluster. This is where you need a quorum device. According to Wikipedia, the "requirement for a quorum is protection against totally unrepresentative action in the name of the body by an unduly small number of persons.". They need additional votes to run the cluster. For this requirement a 2-node cluster needs a quorum device or a quorum server. If the interconnect is gone, (this is what we call a split brain condition) both nodes start to race and try to reserve the quorum device to themselves. They do this, because the quorum device bears an additional vote, that could ensure majority (50% +1). The one that manages to lock the quorum device (e.g. if it's an FC LUN, it SCSI reserves it) wins the right to build/run a cluster, the other one - realizing he was late - panics/reboots to ensure the cluster config stays consistent. Losing the interconnect isn't only endangering the availability of services, but it also endangers the cluster configuration consistence. Just imagine node A being down and during that the cluster configuration changes. Now node B goes down, and node A comes up. It isn't uptodate about the cluster configuration's changes so it will refuse to start a cluster, since that would lead to cluster amnesia, that is the cluster had some changes, but now runs with an older cluster configuration repository state, that is it's like it forgot about the changes. Also, to ensure application data consistence, the clusternode that wins the race makes sure that a server that isn't part of or can't currently join the cluster can access the devices. This procedure is called fencing. This usually happens to storage LUNs via SCSI reservation. Now, another important question: Where do I place the quorum disk? Imagine having two sites, two separate datacenters, one in the north of the city and the other one in the south part of it. You run a stretched cluster in the clustered pair topology. Where do you place the quorum disk/server? If you put it into the north DC, and that gets hit by a meteor, you lose one clusternode, which isn't a problem, but you also lose your quorum, and the south clusternode can't keep the cluster running lacking the votes. This problem can't be solved with two sites and a campus cluster. You will need a third site to either place the quorum server to, or a third clusternode. Otherwise, lacking majority, if you lose the site that had your quorum, you lose the cluster. Okay, we covered the very basics. We haven't talked about virtualization support, CCR, ClusterFilesystems, DID devices, affinities, storage-replication, management tools, upgrade procedures - should those be interesting for you, let me know in the comments, along with any other questions. Given enough demand I'd be glad to write a followup post too. Now I really want to move on to the second part in the series: ClusterInstallation. Oh, as for additional source of information, I recommend the documentation: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23623_01/index.html, and the OTN Oracle Solaris Cluster site: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris-cluster/index.html

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