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  • Partner Blog Series: PwC Perspectives Part 2 - Jumpstarting your IAM program with R2

    - by Tanu Sood
    Identity and access management (IAM) isn’t a new concept. Over the past decade, companies have begun to address identity management through a variety of solutions that have primarily focused on provisioning. . The new age workforce is converging at a rapid pace with ever increasing demand to use diverse portfolio of applications and systems to interact and interface with their peers in the industry and customers alike. Oracle has taken a significant leap with their release of Identity and Access Management 11gR2 towards enabling this global workforce to conduct their business in a secure, efficient and effective manner. As companies deal with IAM business drivers, it becomes immediately apparent that holistic, rather than piecemeal, approaches better address their needs. When planning an enterprise-wide IAM solution, the first step is to create a common framework that serves as the foundation on which to build the cost, compliance and business process efficiencies. As a leading industry practice, IAM should be established on a foundation of accurate data for identity management, making this data available in a uniform manner to downstream applications and processes. Mature organizations are looking beyond IAM’s basic benefits to harness more advanced capabilities in user lifecycle management. For any organization looking to embark on an IAM initiative, consider the following use cases in managing and administering user access. Expanding the Enterprise Provisioning Footprint Almost all organizations have some helpdesk resources tied up in handling access requests from users, a distraction from their core job of handling problem tickets. This dependency has mushroomed from the traditional acceptance of provisioning solutions integrating and addressing only a portion of applications in the heterogeneous landscape Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) 11gR2 solves this problem by offering integration with third party ticketing systems as “disconnected applications”. It allows for the existing business processes to be seamlessly integrated into the system and tracked throughout its lifecycle. With minimal effort and analysis, an organization can begin integrating OIM with groups or applications that are involved with manually intensive access provisioning and de-provisioning activities. This aspect of OIM allows organizations to on-board applications and associated business processes quickly using out of box templates and frameworks. This is especially important for organizations looking to fold in users and resources from mergers and acquisitions. Simplifying Access Requests Organizations looking to implement access request solutions often find it challenging to get their users to accept and adopt the new processes.. So, how do we improve the user experience, make it intuitive and personalized and yet simplify the user access process? With R2, OIM helps organizations alleviate the challenge by placing the most used functionality front and centre in the new user request interface. Roles, application accounts, and entitlements can all be found in the same interface as catalog items, giving business users a single location to go to whenever they need to initiate, approve or track a request. Furthermore, if a particular item is not relevant to a user’s job function or area inside the organization, it can be hidden so as to not overwhelm or confuse the user with superfluous options. The ability to customize the user interface to suit your needs helps in exercising the business rules effectively and avoiding access proliferation within the organization. Saving Time with Templates A typical use case that is most beneficial to business users is flexibility to place, edit, and withdraw requests based on changing circumstances and business needs. With OIM R2, multiple catalog items can now be added and removed from the shopping cart, an ecommerce paradigm that many users are already familiar with. This feature can be especially useful when setting up a large number of new employees or granting existing department or group access to a newly integrated application. Additionally, users can create their own shopping cart templates in order to complete subsequent requests more quickly. This feature saves the user from having to search for and select items all over again if a request is similar to a previous one. Advanced Delegated Administration A key feature of any provisioning solution should be to empower each business unit in managing their own access requests. By bringing administration closer to the user, you improve user productivity, enable efficiency and alleviate the administration overhead. To do so requires a federated services model so that the business units capable of shouldering the onus of user life cycle management of their business users can be enabled to do so. OIM 11gR2 offers advanced administrative options for creating, managing and controlling business logic and workflows through easy to use administrative interface and tools that can be exposed to delegated business administrators. For example, these business administrators can establish or modify how certain requests and operations should be handled within their business unit based on a number of attributes ranging from the type of request or the risk level of the individual items requested. Closed-Loop Remediation Security continues to be a major concern for most organizations. Identity management solutions bolster security by ensuring only the right users have the right access to the right resources. To prevent unauthorized access and where it already exists, the ability to detect and remediate it, are key requirements of an enterprise-grade proven solution. But the challenge with most solutions today is that some of this information still exists in silos. And when changes are made to systems directly, not all information is captured. With R2, oracle is offering a comprehensive Identity Governance solution that our customer organizations are leveraging for closed loop remediation that allows for an automated way for administrators to revoke unauthorized access. The change is automatically captured and the action noted for continued management. Conclusion While implementing provisioning solutions, it is important to keep the near term and the long term goals in mind. The provisioning solution should always be a part of a larger security and identity management program but with the ability to seamlessly integrate not only with the company’s infrastructure but also have the ability to leverage the information, business models compiled and used by the other identity management solutions. This allows organizations to reduce the cost of ownership, close security gaps and leverage the existing infrastructure. And having done so a multiple clients’ sites, this is the approach we recommend. In our next post, we will take a journey through our experiences of advising clients looking to upgrade to R2 from a previous version or migrating from a different solution. Meet the Writers:   Praveen Krishna is a Manager in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  Over the last decade Praveen has helped clients plan, architect and implement Oracle identity solutions across diverse industries.  His experience includes delivering security across diverse topics like network, infrastructure, application and data where he brings a holistic point of view to problem solving. Dharma Padala is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has been implementing medium to large scale Identity Management solutions across multiple industries including utility, health care, entertainment, retail and financial sectors.   Dharma has 14 years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which he has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past 8 years. Scott MacDonald is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has consulted for several clients across multiple industries including financial services, health care, automotive and retail.   Scott has 10 years of experience in delivering Identity Management solutions. John Misczak is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has experience implementing multiple Identity and Access Management solutions, specializing in Oracle Identity Manager and Business Process Engineering Language (BPEL). Jenny (Xiao) Zhang is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  She has consulted across multiple industries including financial services, entertainment and retail. Jenny has three years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which she has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past one and a half years.

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  • Windows Azure Virtual Machine Readiness and Capacity Assessment for SQL Server

    - by SQLOS Team
    Windows Azure Virtual Machine Readiness and Capacity Assessment for Windows Server Machine Running SQL Server With the release of MAP Toolkit 8.0 Beta, we have added a new scenario to assess your Windows Azure Virtual Machine Readiness. The MAP 8.0 Beta performs a comprehensive assessment of Windows Servers running SQL Server to determine you level of readiness to migrate an on-premise physical or virtual machine to Windows Azure Virtual Machines. The MAP Toolkit then offers suggested changes to prepare the machines for migration, such as upgrading the operating system or SQL Server. MAP Toolkit 8.0 Beta is available for download here Your participation and feedback is very important to make the MAP Toolkit work better for you. We encourage you to participate in the beta program and provide your feedback at [email protected] or through one of our surveys. Now, let’s walk through the MAP Toolkit task for completing the Windows Azure Virtual Machine assessment and capacity planning. The tasks include the following: Perform an inventory View the Windows Azure VM Readiness results and report Collect performance data for determine VM sizing View the Windows Azure Capacity results and report Perform an inventory: 1. To perform an inventory against a single machine or across a complete environment, choose Perform an Inventory to launch the Inventory and Assessment Wizard as shown below: 2. After the Inventory and Assessment Wizard launches, select either the Windows computers or SQL Server scenario to inventory Windows machines. HINT: If you don’t care about completely inventorying a machine, just select the SQL Server scenario. Click Next to Continue. 3. On the Discovery Methods page, select how you want to discover computers and then click Next to continue. Description of Discovery Methods: Use Active Directory Domain Services -- This method allows you to query a domain controller via the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and select computers in all or specific domains, containers, or OUs. Use this method if all computers and devices are in AD DS. Windows networking protocols --  This method uses the WIN32 LAN Manager application programming interfaces to query the Computer Browser service for computers in workgroups and Windows NT 4.0–based domains. If the computers on the network are not joined to an Active Directory domain, use only the Windows networking protocols option to find computers. System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) -- This method enables you to inventory computers managed by System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM). You need to provide credentials to the System Center Configuration Manager server in order to inventory the managed computers. When you select this option, the MAP Toolkit will query SCCM for a list of computers and then MAP will connect to these computers. Scan an IP address range -- This method allows you to specify the starting address and ending address of an IP address range. The wizard will then scan all IP addresses in the range and inventory only those computers. Note: This option can perform poorly, if many IP addresses aren’t being used within the range. Manually enter computer names and credentials -- Use this method if you want to inventory a small number of specific computers. Import computer names from a files -- Using this method, you can create a text file with a list of computer names that will be inventoried. 4. On the All Computers Credentials page, enter the accounts that have administrator rights to connect to the discovered machines. This does not need to a domain account, but needs to be a local administrator. I have entered my domain account that is an administrator on my local machine. Click Next after one or more accounts have been added. NOTE: The MAP Toolkit primarily uses Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to collect hardware, device, and software information from the remote computers. In order for the MAP Toolkit to successfully connect and inventory computers in your environment, you have to configure your machines to inventory through WMI and also allow your firewall to enable remote access through WMI. The MAP Toolkit also requires remote registry access for certain assessments. In addition to enabling WMI, you need accounts with administrative privileges to access desktops and servers in your environment. 5. On the Credentials Order page, select the order in which want the MAP Toolkit to connect to the machine and SQL Server. Generally just accept the defaults and click Next. 6. On the Enter Computers Manually page, click Create to pull up at dialog to enter one or more computer names. 7. On the Summary page confirm your settings and then click Finish. After clicking Finish the inventory process will start, as shown below: Windows Azure Readiness results and report After the inventory progress has completed, you can review the results under the Database scenario. On the tile, you will see the number of Windows Server machine with SQL Server that were analyzed, the number of machines that are ready to move without changes and the number of machines that require further changes. If you click this Azure VM Readiness tile, you will see additional details and can generate the Windows Azure VM Readiness Report. After the report is generated, select View | Saved Reports and Proposals to view the location of the report. Open up WindowsAzureVMReadiness* report in Excel. On the Windows tab, you can see the results of the assessment. This report has a column for the Operating System and SQL Server assessment and provides a recommendation on how to resolve, if there a component is not supported. Collect Performance Data Launch the Performance Wizard to collect performance information for the Windows Server machines that you would like the MAP Toolkit to suggest a Windows Azure VM size for. Windows Azure Capacity results and report After the performance metrics are collected, the Azure VM Capacity title will display the number of Virtual Machine sizes that are suggested for the Windows Server and Linux machines that were analyzed. You can then click on the Azure VM Capacity tile to see the capacity details and generate the Windows Azure VM Capacity Report. Within this report, you can view the performance data that was collected and the Virtual Machine sizes.   MAP Toolkit 8.0 Beta is available for download here Your participation and feedback is very important to make the MAP Toolkit work better for you. We encourage you to participate in the beta program and provide your feedback at [email protected] or through one of our surveys. Useful References: Windows Azure Homepage How to guides for Windows Azure Virtual Machines Provisioning a SQL Server Virtual Machine on Windows Azure Windows Azure Pricing     Peter Saddow Senior Program Manager – MAP Toolkit Team

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  • First PC Build (Part 1)

    - by Anthony Trudeau
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tonyt/archive/2014/08/05/157959.aspxA couple of months ago I made the decision to build myself a new computer. The intended use is gaming and for using the last real version of Photoshop. I was motivated by the poor state of console gaming and a simple desire to do something I haven’t done before – build a PC from the ground up. I’ve been using PCs for more than two decades. I’ve replaced a component hear and there, but for the last 10 years or so I’ve only used laptops. Therefore, this article will be written from the perspective of someone familiar with PCs, but completely new at building. I’m not an expert and this is not a definitive guide for building a PC, but I do hope that it encourages you to try it yourself. Component List Research There was a lot of research necessary, because building a PC is completely new to me, and I haven’t kept up with what’s out there. The first thing you want to do is nail down what your goals are. Your goals are going to be driven by what you want to do with your computer and personal choice. Don’t neglect the second one, because if you’re doing this for fun you want to get what you want. In my case, I focused on three things: performance, longevity, and aesthetics. The performance aspect is important for gaming and Photoshop. This will drive what components you get. For example, heavy gaming use is going to drive your choice of graphics card. Longevity is relevant to me, because I don’t want to be changing things out anytime soon for the next hot game. The consequence of performance and longevity is cost. Finally, aesthetics was my next consideration. I could have just built a box, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as fun for me. Aesthetics might not be important to you. They are for me. I also like gadgets and that played into at least one purchase for this build. I used PC Part Picker to put together my component list. I found it invaluable during the process and I’d recommend it to everyone. One caveat is that I wouldn’t trust the compatibility aspects. It does a pretty good job of not steering you wrong, but do your own research. The rest of it isn’t really sexy. I started out with what appealed to me and then I made changes and additions as I dived deep into researching each component and interaction I could find. The resources I used are innumerable. I used reviews, product descriptions, forum posts (praises and problems), et al. to assist me. I also asked friends into gaming what they thought about my component list. And when I got near the end I posted my list to the Reddit /r/buildapc forum. I cannot stress the value of extra sets of eyeballs and first hand experiences. Some of the resources I used: PC Part Picker Tom’s Hardware bit-tech Reddit Purchase PC Part Picker favors certain vendors. You should look at others too. In my case I found their favorites to be the best. My priorities were out-the-door price and shipping time. I knew that once I started getting parts I’d want to start building. Luckily, I timed it well and everything arrived within the span of a few days. Here are my opinions on the vendors I ended up using in alphabetical order. Amazon.com is a good, reliable choice. They have excellent customer service in my experience, and I knew I wouldn’t have trouble with them. However, shipping time is often a problem when you use their free shipping unless you order expensive items (I’ve found items over $100 ship quickly). Ultimately though, price wasn’t always the best and their collection of sales tax in my state turned me off them. I did purchase my case from them. I ordered the mouse as well, but I cancelled after it was stuck four days in a “shipping soon” state. I purchased the mouse locally. Best Buy is not my favorite place to do business. There’s a lot of history with poor, uninterested sales representatives and they used to have a lot of bad anti-consumer policies. That’s a lot better now, but the bad taste is still in my mouth. I ended up purchasing the accessories from them including mouse (locally) and headphones. NCIX is a company that I’ve never heard of before. It popped up as a recommendation for my CPU cooler on PC Part Picker. I didn’t do a lot of research on the company, because their policy on you buying insurance for your orders turned me off. That policy makes it clear to me that the company finds me responsible for the shipment once it leaves their dock. That’s not right, and may run afoul of state laws. Regardless they shipped my CPU cooler quickly and I didn’t have a problem. NewEgg.com is a well known company. I had never done business with them, but I’m glad I did. They shipped quickly and provided good visibility over everything. The prices were also the best in most cases. My main complaint is that they have a lot of exchange only return policies on components. To their credit those policies are listed in the cart underneath each item. The visibility tells me that they’re not playing any shenanigans and made me comfortable dealing with that risk. The vast majority of what I ordered came from them. Coming Next In the next part I’ll tackle my build experience.

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  • Partner Blog Series: PwC Perspectives - Looking at R2 for Customer Organizations

    - by Tanu Sood
    Welcome to the first of our partner blog series. November Mondays are all about PricewaterhouseCoopers' perespective on Identity and R2. In this series, we have identity management experts from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) share their perspective on (and experiences with) the recent identity management release, Oracle Identity Management R2. The purpose of the series is to discuss real world identity use cases that helped shape the innovations in the recent R2 release and the implementation strategies that customers are employing today with expertise from PwC. Part 1: Looking at R2 for Customer Organizations In this inaugural post, we will discuss some of the new features of the R2 release of Oracle Identity Manager that some of our customer organizations are implementing today and the business rationale for those. Oracle's R2 Security portfolio represents a solid step forward for a platform that is already market-leading.  Prior to R2, Oracle was an industry titan in security with reliable products, expansive compatibility, and a large customer base.  Oracle has taken their identity platform to the next level in their latest version, R2.  The new features include a customizable UI, a request catalog, flexible security, and enhancements for its connectors, and more. Oracle customers will be impressed by the new Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) business-friendly UI.  Without question, Oracle has invested significant time in responding to customer feedback about making access requests and related activities easier for non-IT users.  The flexibility to add information to screens, hide fields that are not important to a particular customer, and adjust web themes to suit a company's preference make Oracle's Identity Manager stand out among its peers.  Customers can also expect to carry UI configurations forward with minimal migration effort to future versions of OIM.  Oracle's flexible UI will benefit many organizations looking for a customized feel with out-of-the-box configurations. Organizations looking to extend their services to end users will benefit significantly from new usability features like OIM’s ‘Catalog.’  Customers familiar with Oracle Identity Analytics' 'Glossary' feature will be able to relate to the concept.  It will enable Roles, Entitlements, Accounts, and Resources to be requested through the out-of-the-box UI.  This is an industry-changing feature as customers can make the process to request access easier than ever.  For additional ease of use, Oracle has introduced a shopping cart style request interface that further simplifies the experience for end users.  Common requests can be setup as profiles to save time.  All of this is combined with the approval workflow engine introduced in R1 that provides the flexibility customers need to meet their compliance requirements. Enhanced security was also on the list of features Oracle wanted to deliver to its customers.  The new end-user UI provides additional granular access controls.  Common Help Desk use cases can be implemented with ease by updating the application profiles.  Access can be rolled out so that administrators can only manage a certain department or organization.  Further, OIM can be more easily configured to select which fields can be read-only vs. updated.  Finally, this security model can be used to limit search results for roles and entitlements intended for a particular department.  Every customer has a different need for access and OIM now matches this need with a flexible security model. One of the important considerations when selecting an Identity Management platform is compatibility.  The number of supported platform connectors and how well it can integrate with non-supported platforms is a key consideration for selecting an identity suite.  Oracle has a long list of supported connectors.  When a customer has a requirement for a platform not on that list, Oracle has a solution too.  Oracle is introducing a simplified architecture called Identity Connector Framework (ICF), which holds the potential to simplify custom connectors.  Finally, Oracle has introduced a simplified process to profile new disconnected applications from the web browser.  This is a useful feature that enables administrators to profile applications quickly as well as empowering the application owner to fulfill requests from their web browser.  Support will still be available for connectors based on previous versions in R2. Oracle Identity Manager's new R2 version has delivered many new features customers have been asking for.  Oracle has matured their platform with R2, making it a truly distinctive platform among its peers. In our next post, expect a deep dive into use cases for a customer considering R2 as their new Enterprise identity solution. In the meantime, we look forward to hearing from you about the specific challenges you are facing and your experience in solving those. Meet the Writers Dharma Padala is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has been implementing medium to large scale Identity Management solutions across multiple industries including utility, health care, entertainment, retail and financial sectors.   Dharma has 14 years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which he has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past 8 years. Scott MacDonald is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has consulted for several clients across multiple industries including financial services, health care, automotive and retail.   Scott has 10 years of experience in delivering Identity Management solutions. John Misczak is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has experience implementing multiple Identity and Access Management solutions, specializing in Oracle Identity Manager and Business Process Engineering Language (BPEL). Jenny (Xiao) Zhang is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  She has consulted across multiple industries including financial services, entertainment and retail. Jenny has three years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which she has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past one and a half years. Praveen Krishna is a Manager in the Advisory  Security practice within PwC.  Over the last decade Praveen has helped clients plan, architect and implement Oracle identity solutions across diverse industries.  His experience includes delivering security across diverse topics like network, infrastructure, application and data where he brings a holistic point of view to problem solving.

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  • Super constructor must be a first statement in Java constructor [closed]

    - by Val
    I know the answer: "we need rules to prevent shooting into your own foot". Ok, I make millions of programming mistakes every day. To be prevented, we need one simple rule: prohibit all JLS and do not use Java. If we explain everything by "not shooting your foot", this is reasonable. But there is not much reason is such reason. When I programmed in Delphy, I always wanted the compiler to check me if I read uninitializable. I have discovered myself that is is stupid to read uncertain variable because it leads unpredictable result and is errorenous obviously. By just looking at the code I could see if there is an error. I wished if compiler could do this job. It is also a reliable signal of programming error if function does not return any value. But I never wanted it do enforce me the super constructor first. Why? You say that constructors just initialize fields. Super fields are derived; extra fields are introduced. From the goal point of view, it does not matter in which order you initialize the variables. I have studied parallel architectures and can say that all the fields can even be assigned in parallel... What? Do you want to use the unitialized fields? Stupid people always want to take away our freedoms and break the JLS rules the God gives to us! Please, policeman, take away that person! Where do I say so? I'm just saying only about initializing/assigning, not using the fields. Java compiler already defends me from the mistake of accessing notinitialized. Some cases sneak but this example shows how this stupid rule does not save us from the read-accessing incompletely initialized in construction: public class BadSuper { String field; public String toString() { return "field = " + field; } public BadSuper(String val) { field = val; // yea, superfirst does not protect from accessing // inconstructed subclass fields. Subclass constr // must be called before super()! System.err.println(this); } } public class BadPost extends BadSuper { Object o; public BadPost(Object o) { super("str"); this. o = o; } public String toString() { // superconstructor will boom here, because o is not initialized! return super.toString() + ", obj = " + o.toString(); } public static void main(String[] args) { new BadSuper("test 1"); new BadPost(new Object()); } } It shows that actually, subfields have to be inilialized before the supreclass! Meantime, java requirement "saves" us from writing specializing the class by specializing what the super constructor argument is, public class MyKryo extends Kryo { class MyClassResolver extends DefaultClassResolver { public Registration register(Registration registration) { System.out.println(MyKryo.this.getDepth()); return super.register(registration); } } MyKryo() { // cannot instantiate MyClassResolver in super super(new MyClassResolver(), new MapReferenceResolver()); } } Try to make it compilable. It is always pain. Especially, when you cannot assign the argument later. Initialization order is not important for initialization in general. I could understand that you should not use super methods before initializing super. But, the requirement for super to be the first statement is different. It only saves you from the code that does useful things simply. I do not see how this adds safety. Actually, safety is degraded because we need to use ugly workarounds. Doing post-initialization, outside the constructors also degrades safety (otherwise, why do we need constructors?) and defeats the java final safety reenforcer. To conclude Reading not initialized is a bug. Initialization order is not important from the computer science point of view. Doing initalization or computations in different order is not a bug. Reenforcing read-access to not initialized is good but compilers fail to detect all such bugs Making super the first does not solve the problem as it "Prevents" shooting into right things but not into the foot It requires to invent workarounds, where, because of complexity of analysis, it is easier to shoot into the foot doing post-initialization outside the constructors degrades safety (otherwise, why do we need constructors?) and that degrade safety by defeating final access modifier When there was java forum alive, java bigots attecked me for these thoughts. Particularly, they dislaked that fields can be initialized in parallel, saying that natural development ensures correctness. When I replied that you could use an advanced engineering to create a human right away, without "developing" any ape first, and it still be an ape, they stopped to listen me. Cos modern technology cannot afford it. Ok, Take something simpler. How do you produce a Renault? Should you construct an Automobile first? No, you start by producing a Renault and, once completed, you'll see that this is an automobile. So, the requirement to produce fields in "natural order" is unnatural. In case of alarmclock or armchair, which are still chair and clock, you may need first develop the base (clock and chair) and then add extra. So, I can have examples where superfields must be initialized first and, oppositely, when they need to be initialized later. The order does not exist in advance. So, the compiler cannot be aware of the proper order. Only programmer/constructor knows is. Compiler should not take more responsibility and enforce the wrong order onto programmer. Saying that I cannot initialize some fields because I did not ininialized the others is like "you cannot initialize the thing because it is not initialized". This is a kind of argument we have. So, to conclude once more, the feature that "protects" me from doing things in simple and right way in order to enforce something that does not add noticeably to the bug elimination at that is a strongly negative thing and it pisses me off, altogether with the all the arguments to support it I've seen so far. It is "a conceptual question about software development" Should there be the requirement to call super() first or not. I do not know. If you do or have an idea, you have place to answer. I think that I have provided enough arguments against this feature. Lets appreciate the ones who benefit form it. Let it just be something more than simple abstract and stupid "write your own language" or "protection" kind of argument. Why do we need it in the language that I am going to develop?

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  • How to begin? Windows 8 Development

    - by Dennis Vroegop
    Ok. I convinced you in my last post to do some Win8 development. You want a piece of that cake, or whatever your reasons may be. Good! Welcome to the club! Now let me ask you a question: what are you going to write? Ah. That’s the big one, isn’t it? What indeed? If you have been creating applications for computers before you’re in for quite a shock. The way people perceive apps on a tablet is quite different from what we know as applications. There’s a reason we call them apps instead of applications! Yes, technically they are applications but we don’t call them apps only because it sounds cool. The abbreviated form of the word applications itself is a pointer. Apps are small. Apps are focused. Apps are more lightweight. Apps do one thing but they do that one thing extremely good. In the ‘old’ days we wrote huge systems. We build ecosystems of services, screens, databases and more to create a system that provides value for the user. Think about it: what application do you use most at work? Can you in one sentence describe what it is, or what it does and yet still distinctively describe its purpose? I doubt you can. Let’s have a look at Outlouk. We all know it and we all love or hate it. But what is it? A mail program? No, there’s so much more there: calendar, contacts, RSS feeds and so on. Some call it a ‘collaboration’  application but that’s not really true as well. After all, why should a collaboration application give me my schedule for the day? I think the best way to describe Outlook is “client for Exchange”  although that isn’t accurate either. Anyway: Outlook is a great application but it’s not an ‘app’ and therefor not very suitable for WinRT. Ok. Disclaimer here: yes, you can write big applications for WinRT. Some will. But that’s not what 99.9% of the developers will do. So I am stating here that big applications are not meant for WinRT. If 0.01% of the developers think that this is nonsense then they are welcome to go ahead but for the majority here this is not what we’re talking about. So: Apps are small, lightweight and good at what they do but only at that. If you’re a Phone developer you already know that: Phone apps on any platform fit the description I have above. If you’ve ever worked in a large cooperation before you might have seen one of these before: the Mission Statement. It’s supposed to be a oneliner that sums up what the company is supposed to do. Funny enough: although this doesn’t work for large companies it does work for defining your app. A mission statement for an app describes what it does. If it doesn’t fit in the mission statement then your app is going to get to big and will fail. A statement like this should be in the following style “<your app name> is the best app to <describe single task>” Fill in the blanks, write it and go! Mmm.. not really. There are some things there we need to think about. But the statement is a very, very important one. If you cannot fit your app in that line you’re preparing to fail. Your app will become to big, its purpose will be unclear and it will be hard to use. People won’t download it and those who do will give it a bad rating therefor preventing that huge success you’ve been dreaming about. Stick to the statement! Ok, let’s give it a try: “PlanesAreCool” is the best app to do planespotting in the field. You might have seen these people along runways of airports: taking photographs of airplanes and noting down their numbers and arrival- and departure times. We are going to help them out with our great app! If you look at the statement, can you guess what it does? I bet you can. If you find out it isn’t clear enough of if it’s too broad, refine it. This is probably the most important step in the development of your app so give it enough time! So. We’ve got the statement. Print it out, stick it to the wall and look at it. What does it tell you? If you see this, what do you think the app does? Write that down. Sit down with some friends and talk about it. What do they expect from an app like this? Write that down as well. Brainstorm. Make a list of features. This is mine: Note planes Look up aircraft carriers Add pictures of that plane Look up airfields Notify friends of new spots Look up details of a type of plane Plot a graph with arrival and departure times Share new spots on social media Look up history of a particular aircraft Compare your spots with friends Write down arrival times Write down departure times Write down wind conditions Write down the runway they take Look up weather conditions for next spotting day Invite friends to join you for a day of spotting. Now, I must make it clear that I am not a planespotter nor do I know what one does. So if the above list makes no sense, I apologize. There is a lesson: write apps for stuff you know about…. First of all, let’s look at our statement and then go through the list of features. Remove everything that has nothing to do with that statement! If you end up with an empty list, try again with both steps. Note planes Look up aircraft carriers Add pictures of that plane Look up airfields Notify friends of new spots Look up details of a type of plane Plot a graph with arrival and departure times Share new spots on social media Look up history of a particular aircraft Compare your spots with friends Write down arrival times Write down departure times Write down wind conditions Write down the runway they take Look up weather conditions for next spotting day Invite friends to join you for a day of spotting. That's better. The things I removed could be pretty useful to a plane spotter and could be fun to write. But do they match the statement? I said that the app is for spotting in the field, so “look up airfields” doesn’t belong there: I know where I am so why look it up? And the same goes for inviting friends or looking up the weather conditions for tomorrow. I am at the airfield right now, looking through my binoculars at the planes. I know the weather now and I don’t care about tomorrow. If you feel the items you’ve crossed out are valuable, then why not write another app? One that says “SpotNoter” is the best app for preparing a day of spotting with my friends. That’s a different app! Remember: Win8 apps are small and very good at doing ONE thing, and one thing only! If you have made that list, it’s time to prepare the navigation of your app. The navigation is how users see your app and how they use it. We’ll do that next time!

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  • FOUR questions to ask if you are implementing DATABASE-AS-A-SERVICE

    - by Sudip Datta
    During my ongoing tenure at Oracle, I have met all types of DBAs. Happy DBAs, unhappy DBAs, proud DBAs, risk-loving DBAs, cautious DBAs. These days, as Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) becomes more mainstream, I find some complacent DBAs who are basking in their achievement of having implemented DBaaS. Some others, however, are not that happy. They grudgingly complain that they did not have much of a say in the implementation, they simply had to follow what their cloud architects (mostly infrastructure admins) offered them. In most cases it would be a database wrapped inside a VM that would be labeled as “Database as a Service”. In other cases, it would be existing brute-force automation simply exposed in a portal. As much as I think that there is more to DBaaS than those approaches and often get tempted to propose Enterprise Manager 12c, I try to be objective. Neither do I want to dampen the spirit of the happy ones, nor do I want to stoke the pain of the unhappy ones. As I mentioned in my previous post, I don’t deny vanilla automation could be useful. I like virtualization too for what it has helped us accomplish in terms of resource management, but we need to scrutinize its merit on a case-by-case basis and apply it meaningfully. For DBAs who either claim to have implemented DBaaS or are planning to do so, I simply want to provide four key questions to ponder about: 1. Does it make life easier for your end users? Database-as-a-Service can have several types of end users. Junior DBAs, QA Engineers, Developers- each having their own skillset. The objective of DBaaS is to make their life simple, so that they can focus on their core responsibilities without having to worry about additional stuff. For example, if you are a Developer using Oracle Application Express (APEX), you want to deal with schema, objects and PL/SQL code and not with datafiles or listener configuration. If you are a QA Engineer needing database copies for functional testing, you do not want to deal with underlying operating system patching and compliance issues. The question to ask, therefore, is, whether DBaaS makes life easier for those users. It is often convenient to give them VM shells to deal with a la Amazon EC2 IaaS, but is that what they really want? Is it a productive use of a developer's time if he needs to apply RPM errata to his Linux operating system. Asking him to keep the underlying operating system current is like making a guest responsible for a restaurant's decor. 2. Does it make life easier for your administrators? Cloud, in general, is supposed to free administrators from attending to mundane tasks like provisioning services for every single end user request. It is supposed to enable a readily consumable platform and enforce standardization in the process. For example, if a Service Catalog exposes DBaaS of specific database versions and configurations, it, by its very nature, enforces certain discipline and standardization within the IT environment. What if, instead of specific database configurations, cloud allowed each end user to create databases of their liking resulting in hundreds of version and patch levels and thousands of individual databases. Therefore the right question to ask is whether the unwanted consequence of DBaaS is OS and database sprawl. And if so, who is responsible for tracking them, backing them up, administering them? Studies have shown that these administrative overheads increase exponentially with new targets, and it could result in a management nightmare. That leads us to our next question. 3. Does it satisfy your Security Officers and Compliance Auditors? Compliance Auditors need to know who did what and when. They also want the cloud platform to be secure, so that end users have little freedom in tampering with it. Dealing with VM sprawl is not the easiest of challenges, let alone dealing with them as they keep getting reconfigured and moved around. This leads to the proverbial needle in the haystack problem, and all it needs is one needle to cause a serious compliance issue in the enterprise. Bottomline is, flexibility and agility should not come at the expense of compliance and it is very important to get the balance right. Can we have security and isolation without creating compliance challenges? Instead of a ‘one size fits all approach’ i.e. OS level isolation, can we think smartly about database isolation or schema based isolation? This is where the appropriate resource modeling needs to be applied. The usual systems management vendors out there with heterogeneous common-denominator approach have compromised on these semantics. If you follow Enterprise Manager’s DBaaS solution, you will see that we have considered different models, not precluding virtualization, for different customer use cases. The judgment to use virtual assemblies versus databases on physical RAC versus Schema-as-a-Service in a single database, should be governed by the need of the applications and not by putting compliance considerations in the backburner. 4. Does it satisfy your CIO? Finally, does it satisfy your higher ups? As the sponsor of cloud initiative, the CIO is expected to lead an IT transformation project, not merely a run-of-the-mill IT operations. Simply virtualizing server resources and delivering them through self-service is a good start, but hardly transformational. CIOs may appreciate the instant benefit from server consolidation, but studies have revealed that the ROI from consolidation would flatten out at 20-25%. The question would be: what next? As we go higher up in the stack, the need to virtualize, segregate and optimize shifts to those layers that are more palpable to the business users. As Sushil Kumar noted in his blog post, " the most important thing to note here is the enterprise private cloud is not just an IT project, rather it is a business initiative to create an IT setup that is more aligned with the needs of today's dynamic and highly competitive business environment." Business users could not care less about infrastructure consolidation or virtualization - they care about business agility and service level assurance. Last but not the least, lot of CIOs get miffed if we ask them to throw away their existing hardware investments for implementing DBaaS. In Oracle, we always emphasize on freedom of choosing a platform; hence Enterprise Manager’s DBaaS solution is platform neutral. It can work on any Operating System (that the agent is certified on) Oracle’s hardware as well as 3rd party hardware. As a parting note, I urge you to remember these 4 questions. Remember that your satisfaction as an implementer lies in the satisfaction of others.

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  • Beyond Cloud Technology, Enabling A More Agile and Responsive Organization

    - by sxkumar
    This is the second part of the blog “Clouds, Clouds Everywhere But not a Drop of Rain”. In the first part,  I was sharing with you how a broad-based transformation makes cloud more than a technology initiative, I will describe in this section how it requires people (organizational) and process changes as well, and these changes are as critical as is the choice of right tools and technology. People: Most IT organizations have a fairly complex organizational structure. There are different groups, managing different pieces of the puzzle, and yet, they don't always work together. Provisioning a new application therefore may require a request to float endlessly through system administrators, DBAs and middleware admin worlds – resulting in long delays and constant finger pointing.  Cloud users expect end-to-end automation - which requires these silos to be greatly simplified, if not completely eliminated.  Most customers I talk to acknowledge this problem but are quick to admit that such a transformation is hard. As hard as it may be, I am afraid that the status quo is no longer an option. Sticking to an organizational structure that was created ages back will not only impede cloud adoption,  it also risks making the IT skills increasingly irrelevant in a world that is rapidly moving towards converged applications and infrastructure.   Process: Most IT organizations today operate with a mindset that they must fully "control" access to any and all types of IT services. This in turn leads to people clinging on to outdated manual approval processes .  While requiring approvals for scarce resources makes sense, insisting that every single request must be manually approved defeats the very purpose of cloud. Not only this causes delays, thereby at least partially negating the agility benefits, it also results in gross inefficiency. In a cloud environment, self-service access should be governed by policies, quotas that the administrators can define upfront . For a cloud initiative to be successful, IT organizations MUST be ready to empower users by giving them real control rather than insisting on brokering every single interaction between users and the cloud resources. Technology: From a technology perspective, cloud is about consolidation, standardization and automation. A consolidated and standardized infrastructure helps increase utilization and reduces cost. Additionally, it  enables a much higher degree of automation - thereby providing users the required agility while minimizing operational costs.  Obviously, automation is the key to cloud. Unfortunately it hasn’t received as much attention within enterprises as it should have.  Many organizations are just now waking up to the criticality of automation and it still often gets relegated to back burner in favor of other "high priority" projects. However, it is important to understand that without the right type and level of automation, cloud will remain a distant dream for most enterprises. This in turn makes the choice of the cloud management software extremely critical.  For a cloud management software to be effective in an enterprise environment, it must meet the following qualifications: Broad and Deep Solution It should offer a broad and deep solution to enable the kind of broad-based transformation we are talking about.  Its footprint must cover physical and virtual systems, as well as infrastructure, database and application tiers. Too many enterprises choose to equate cloud with virtualization. While virtualization is a critical component of a cloud solution, it is just a component and not the whole solution. Similarly, too many people tend to equate cloud with Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). While it is perfectly reasonable to treat IaaS as a starting point, it is important to realize that it is just the first stepping stone - and on its own it can only provide limited business benefits. It is actually the higher level services, such as (application) platform and business applications, that will bring about a more meaningful transformation to your enterprise. Run and Manage Efficiently Your Mission Critical Applications It should not only be able to run your mission critical applications, it should do so better than before.  For enterprises, applications and data are the critical business assets  As such, if you are building a cloud platform that cannot run your ERP application, it isn't truly a "enterprise cloud".  Also, be wary of  vendors who try to sell you the idea that your applications must be written in a certain way to be able to run on the cloud. That is nothing but a bogus, self-serving argument. For the cloud to be meaningful to enterprises, it should adopt to your applications - and not the other way around.  Automated, Integrated Set of Cloud Management Capabilities At the root of many of the problems plaguing enterprise IT today is complexity. A complex maze of tools and technology, coupled with archaic  processes, results in an environment which is inflexible, inefficient and simply too hard to manage. Management tool consolidation, therefore, is key to the success of your cloud as tool proliferation adds to complexity, encourages compartmentalization and defeats the very purpose that you are building the cloud for. Decision makers ought to be extra cautious about vendors trying to sell them a "suite" of disparate and loosely integrated products as a cloud solution.  An effective enterprise cloud management solution needs to provide a tightly integrated set of capabilities for all aspects of cloud lifecycle management. A simple question to ask: will your environment be more or less complex after you implement your cloud? More often than not, the answer will surprise you.  At Oracle, we have understood these challenges and have been working hard to create cloud solutions that are relevant and meaningful for enterprises.  And we have been doing it for much longer than you may think. Oracle was one of the very first enterprise software companies to make our products available on the Amazon Cloud. As far back as in 2007, we created new cloud solutions such as Cloud Database Backup that are helping customers like Amazon save millions every year.  Our cloud solution portfolio is also the broadest and most deep in the industry  - covering public, private, hybrid, Infrastructure, platform and applications clouds. It is no coincidence therefore that the Oracle Cloud today offers the most comprehensive set of public cloud services in the industry.  And to a large part, this has been made possible thanks to our years on investment in creating cloud enabling technologies. I will dedicated the third and final part of the blog “Clouds, Clouds Everywhere But not a Drop of Rain” to Oracle Cloud Technologies Building Blocks and how they mapped into our vision of Enterprise Cloud. Stay Tuned.

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  • Position:absolute

    - by Andrew
    I have I have a div called logo. I want the logo to be on top of other areas and to overlap into the the preface top of a drupal site, the logo currently sits in the header area. I looked up position absolute and I think that what I need to use but when I use position absolute the logo disappears, I can see it if I use position fixed, relative etc. I thought the logo was being hidden because I was not using a z-index but even with that I cant see the logo. What am I doing wrong? #logo { position: absolute; top: 30px; /* 30 pixels from the top of the page */ left: 80px; /* 80 pixels from the left hand side */ z-index:1099; border: 1px solid red; /* So we can see what is happening */ } Also does anyone know of a really good free online css course? Here is some additional information, namely the CSS and the page.tpl.php: <?php // $Id: page.tpl.php,v 1.1.2.5 2010/04/08 07:02:59 sociotech Exp $ ?><!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="<?php print $language->language; ?>" xml:lang="<?php print $language->language; ?>"> <head> <title><?php print $head_title; ?></title> <?php print $head; ?> <?php print $styles; ?> <?php print $setting_styles; ?> <!--[if IE 8]> <?php print $ie8_styles; ?> <![endif]--> <!--[if IE 7]> <?php print $ie7_styles; ?> <![endif]--> <!--[if lte IE 6]> <?php print $ie6_styles; ?> <![endif]--> <?php print $local_styles; ?> <?php print $scripts; ?> </head> <body id="<?php print $body_id; ?>" class="<?php print $body_classes; ?>"> <div id="page" class="page"> <div id="page-inner" class="page-inner"> <div id="skip"> <a href="#main-content-area"><?php print t('Skip to Main Content Area'); ?></a> </div> <!-- header-top row: width = grid_width --> <?php print theme('grid_row', $header_top, 'header-top', 'full-width', $grid_width); ?> <!-- header-group row: width = grid_width --> <div id="header-group-wrapper" class="header-group-wrapper full-width"> <div id="header-group" class="header-group row <?php print $grid_width; ?>"> <div id="header-group-inner" class="header-group-inner inner clearfix"> <?php print theme('grid_block', theme('links', $secondary_links), 'secondary-menu'); ?> <?php print theme('grid_block', $search_box, 'search-box'); ?> <?php if ($logo || $site_name || $site_slogan): ?> <div id="header-site-info" class="header-site-info block"> <div id="header-site-info-inner" class="header-site-info-inner inner"> <?php if ($logo): ?> <div id="logo"> <a href="<?php print check_url($front_page); ?>" title="<?php print t('Home'); ?>"><img src="<?php print $logo; ?>" alt="<?php print t('Home'); ?>" /></a> </div> <?php endif; ?> <?php if ($site_name || $site_slogan): ?> <div id="site-name-wrapper" class="clearfix"> <?php if ($site_name): ?> <span id="site-name"><a href="<?php print check_url($front_page); ?>" title="<?php print t('Home'); ?>"><?php print $site_name; ?></a></span> <?php endif; ?> <?php if ($site_slogan): ?> <span id="slogan"><?php print $site_slogan; ?></span> <?php endif; ?> </div><!-- /site-name-wrapper --> <?php endif; ?> </div><!-- /header-site-info-inner --> </div><!-- /header-site-info --> <?php endif; ?> <?php print $header; ?> <?php print theme('grid_block', $primary_links_tree, 'primary-menu'); ?> </div><!-- /header-group-inner --> </div><!-- /header-group --> </div><!-- /header-group-wrapper --> <!-- preface-top row: width = grid_width --> <?php print theme('grid_row', $preface_top, 'preface-top', 'full-width', $grid_width); ?> <!-- main row: width = grid_width --> <div id="main-wrapper" class="main-wrapper full-width<?php if ($is_front) { print ' front'; } ?>"> <div id="main" class="main row <?php print $grid_width; ?>"> <div id="main-inner" class="main-inner inner clearfix"> <?php print theme('grid_row', $sidebar_first, 'sidebar-first', 'nested', $sidebar_first_width); ?> <!-- main group: width = grid_width - sidebar_first_width --> <div id="main-group" class="main-group row nested <?php print $main_group_width; ?>"> <div id="main-group-inner" class="main-group-inner inner"> <?php print theme('grid_row', $preface_bottom, 'preface-bottom', 'nested'); ?> <div id="main-content" class="main-content row nested"> <div id="main-content-inner" class="main-content-inner inner"> <!-- content group: width = grid_width - (sidebar_first_width + sidebar_last_width) --> <div id="content-group" class="content-group row nested <?php print $content_group_width; ?>"> <div id="content-group-inner" class="content-group-inner inner"> <?php print theme('grid_block', $breadcrumb, 'breadcrumbs'); ?> <?php if ($content_top || $help || $messages): ?> <div id="content-top" class="content-top row nested"> <div id="content-top-inner" class="content-top-inner inner"> <?php print theme('grid_block', $help, 'content-help'); ?> <?php print theme('grid_block', $messages, 'content-messages'); ?> <?php print $content_top; ?> </div><!-- /content-top-inner --> </div><!-- /content-top --> <?php endif; ?> <div id="content-region" class="content-region row nested"> <div id="content-region-inner" class="content-region-inner inner"> <a name="main-content-area" id="main-content-area"></a> <?php print theme('grid_block', $tabs, 'content-tabs'); ?> <div id="content-inner" class="content-inner block"> <div id="content-inner-inner" class="content-inner-inner inner"> <?php if ($title): ?> <h1 class="title"><?php print $title; ?></h1> <?php endif; ?> <?php if ($content): ?> <div id="content-content" class="content-content"> <?php print $content; ?> <?php print $feed_icons; ?> </div><!-- /content-content --> <?php endif; ?> </div><!-- /content-inner-inner --> </div><!-- /content-inner --> </div><!-- /content-region-inner --> </div><!-- /content-region --> <?php print theme('grid_row', $content_bottom, 'content-bottom', 'nested'); ?> </div><!-- /content-group-inner --> </div><!-- /content-group --> <?php print theme('grid_row', $sidebar_last, 'sidebar-last', 'nested', $sidebar_last_width); ?> </div><!-- /main-content-inner --> </div><!-- /main-content --> <?php print theme('grid_row', $postscript_top, 'postscript-top', 'nested'); ?> </div><!-- /main-group-inner --> </div><!-- /main-group --> </div><!-- /main-inner --> </div><!-- /main --> </div><!-- /main-wrapper --> <!-- postscript-bottom row: width = grid_width --> <?php print theme('grid_row', $postscript_bottom, 'postscript-bottom', 'full-width', $grid_width); ?> <!-- footer row: width = grid_width --> <?php print theme('grid_row', $footer, 'footer', 'full-width', $grid_width); ?> <!-- footer-message row: width = grid_width --> <div id="footer-message-wrapper" class="footer-message-wrapper full-width"> <div id="footer-message" class="footer-message row <?php print $grid_width; ?>"> <div id="footer-message-inner" class="footer-message-inner inner clearfix"> <?php print theme('grid_block', $footer_message, 'footer-message-text'); ?> </div><!-- /footer-message-inner --> </div><!-- /footer-message --> </div><!-- /footer-message-wrapper --> </div><!-- /page-inner --> </div><!-- /page --> <?php print $closure; ?> </body> </html> CSS /* $Id: style.css,v 1.1.2.11 2010/07/02 22:11:04 sociotech Exp $ */ /* Margin, Padding, Border Resets -------------------------------------------------------------- */ html, body, div, span, p, dl, dt, dd, ul, ol, li, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, form, fieldset, input, textarea { margin: 0; padding: 0; } img, abbr, acronym { border: 0; } /* HTML Elements -------------------------------------------------------------- */ p { margin: 1em 0; } h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 { margin: 0 0 0.5em 0; } h1 { color: white !important; text-shadow: black !important; } ul, ol, dd { margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-left: 2em; /* LTR */ } li ul, li ol { margin-bottom: 0; } ul { list-style-type: disc; } ol { list-style-type: decimal; } a { margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: none; } a:link, a:visited { } a:hover, a:focus, a:active { text-decoration: underline; } blockquote { } hr { height: 1px; border: 1px solid gray; } /* tables */ table { border-spacing: 0; width: 100%; } tr.even td, tr.odd td { background-color: #FFFFFF; border: 1px solid #dbdbdb; } caption { text-align: left; } th { margin: 0; padding: 0 10px 0 0; } th.active img { display: inline; } thead th { padding-right: 10px; } td { margin: 0; padding: 3px; } /* Remove grid block styles from Drupal's table ".block" class */ td.block { border: none; float: none; margin: 0; } /* Maintain light background/dark text on dragged table rows */ tr.drag td, tr.drag-previous td { background: #FFFFDD; color: #000; } /* Accessibility /-------------------------------------------------------------- */ /* skip-link to main content, hide offscreen */ #skip a, #skip a:hover, #skip a:visited { height: 1px; left: 0px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; top: -500px; width: 1px; } /* make skip link visible when selected */ #skip a:active, #skip a:focus { background-color: #fff; color: #000; height: auto; padding: 5px 10px; position: absolute; top: 0; width: auto; z-index: 99; } #skip a:hover { text-decoration: none; } /* Helper Classes /-------------------------------------------------------------- */ .hide { display: none; visibility: hidden; } .left { float: left; } .right { float: right; } .clear { clear: both; } /* clear floats after an element */ /* (also in ie6-fixes.css, ie7-fixes.css) */ .clearfix:after, .clearfix .inner:after { clear: both; content: "."; display: block; font-size: 0; height: 0; line-height: 0; overflow: auto; visibility: hidden; } /* Grid Layout Basics (specifics in 'gridnn_x.css') -------------------------------------------------------------- */ /* center page and full rows: override this for left-aligned page */ .page, .row { margin: 0 auto; } /* fix layout/background display on floated elements */ .row, .nested, .block { overflow: hidden; } /* full-width row wrapper */ div.full-width { width: 100%; } /* float, un-center & expand nested rows */ .nested { float: left; /* LTR */ margin: 0; width: 100%; } /* allow Superfish menus to overflow */ #sidebar-first.nested, #sidebar-last.nested, div.superfish { overflow: visible; } /* sidebar layouts */ .sidebars-both-first .content-group { float: right; /* LTR */ } .sidebars-both-last .sidebar-first { float: right; /* LTR */ } /* Grid Mask Overlay -------------------------------------------------------------- */ #grid-mask-overlay { display: none; left: 0; opacity: 0.75; position: absolute; top: 0; width: 100%; z-index: 997; } #grid-mask-overlay .row { margin: 0 auto; } #grid-mask-overlay .block .inner { background-color: #e3fffc; outline: none; } .grid-mask #grid-mask-overlay { display: block; } .grid-mask .block { overflow: visible; } .grid-mask .block .inner { outline: #f00 dashed 1px; } #grid-mask-toggle { background-color: #777; border: 2px outset #fff; color: #fff; cursor: pointer; font-variant: small-caps; font-weight: normal; left: 0; -moz-border-radius: 5px; padding: 0 5px 2px 5px; position: absolute; text-align: center; top: 22px; -webkit-border-radius: 5px; z-index: 998; } #grid-mask-toggle.grid-on { border-style: inset; font-weight: bold; } /* Site Info -------------------------------------------------------------- */ #header-site-info { width: auto; } #site-name-wrapper { float: left; /* LTR */ } #site-name, #slogan { display: block; } #site-name a:link, #site-name a:visited, #site-name a:hover, #site-name a:active { text-decoration: none; } #site-name a { outline: 0; } /* Regions -------------------------------------------------------------- */ /* Header Regions -------------------------------------------------------------- */ #header-group { overflow: visible; } /* Content Regions (Main) -------------------------------------------------------------- */ .node-bottom { margin: 1.5em 0 0 0; } /* Clear floats on regions -------------------------------------------------------------- */ #header-top-wrapper, #header-group-wrapper, #preface-top-wrapper, #main-wrapper, #preface-bottom, #content-top, #content-region, #content-bottom, #postscript-top, #postscript-bottom-wrapper, #footer-wrapper, #footer-message-wrapper { clear: both; } /* Drupal Core /-------------------------------------------------------------- */ /* Lists /-------------------------------------------------------------- */ .item-list ul li { margin: 0; } .block ul, .block ol { margin-left: 2em; /* LTR */ padding: 0; } .content-inner ul, .content-inner ol { margin-bottom: 1.5em; } .content-inner li ul, .content-inner li ol { margin-bottom: 0; } .block ul.links { margin-left: 0; /* LTR */ } /* Menus /-------------------------------------------------------------- */ ul.menu li, ul.links li { margin: 0; padding: 0; } /* Primary Menu /-------------------------------------------------------------- */ /* use ID to override overflow: hidden for .block, dropdowns should always be visible */ #primary-menu { overflow: visible; } /* remove left margin from primary menu list */ #primary-menu.block ul { margin-left: 0; /* LTR */ } /* remove bullets, float left */ .primary-menu ul li { float: left; /* LTR */ list-style: none; position: relative; } /* style links, and unlinked parent items (via Special Menu Items module) */ .primary-menu ul li a, .primary-menu ul li .nolink { display: block; padding: 0.75em 1em; text-decoration: none; } /* Add cursor style for unlinked parent menu items */ .primary-menu ul li .nolink { cursor: default; } /* remove outline */ .primary-menu ul li:hover, .primary-menu ul li.sfHover, .primary-menu ul a:focus, .primary-menu ul a:hover, .primary-menu ul a:active { outline: 0; } /* Secondary Menu /-------------------------------------------------------------- */ .secondary-menu-inner ul.links { margin-left: 0; /* LTR */ } /* Skinr styles /-------------------------------------------------------------- */ /* Skinr selectable helper classes */ .fusion-clear { clear: both; } div.fusion-right { float: right; /* LTR */ } div.fusion-center { float: none; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; } .fusion-center-content .inner { text-align: center; } .fusion-center-content .inner ul.menu { display: inline-block; text-align: center; } /* required to override drupal core */ .fusion-center-content #user-login-form { text-align: center; } .fusion-right-content .inner { text-align: right; /* LTR */ } /* required to override drupal core */ .fusion-right-content #user-login-form { text-align: right; /* LTR */ } /* Large, bold callout text style */ .fusion-callout .inner { font-weight: bold; } /* Extra padding on block */ .fusion-padding .inner { padding: 30px; } /* Adds 1px border and padding */ .fusion-border .inner { border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; padding: 10px; } /* Single line menu with separators */ .fusion-inline-menu .inner ul.menu { margin-left: 0; /* LTR */ } .fusion-inline-menu .inner ul.menu li { border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; display: inline; margin: 0; padding: 0; white-space: nowrap; } .fusion-inline-menu .inner ul.menu li a { padding: 0 8px 0 5px; /* LTR */ } .fusion-inline-menu .inner ul li.last { border: none; } /* Hide second level (and beyond) menu items */ .fusion-inline-menu .inner ul li.expanded ul { display: none; } /* Multi-column menu style with bolded top level menu items */ .fusion-multicol-menu .inner ul { margin-left: 0; /* LTR */ text-align: left; /* LTR */ } .fusion-multicol-menu .inner ul li { border-right: none; display: block; font-weight: bold; } .fusion-multicol-menu .inner ul li.last { border-right: none; } .fusion-multicol-menu .inner ul li.last a { padding-right: 0; /* LTR */ } .fusion-multicol-menu .inner ul li.expanded, .fusion-multicol-menu .inner ul li.leaf { float: left; /* LTR */ list-style-image: none; margin-left: 50px; /* LTR */ } .fusion-multicol-menu .inner ul.menu li.first { margin-left: 0; /* LTR */ } .fusion-multicol-menu .inner ul li.expanded li.leaf { float: none; margin-left: 0; /* LTR */ } .fusion-multicol-menu .inner ul li.expanded ul { display: block; margin-left: 0; /* LTR */ } .fusion-multicol-menu .inner ul li.expanded ul li { border: none; margin-left: 0; /* LTR */ text-align: left; /* LTR */ } .fusion-multicol-menu .inner ul.menu li ul.menu li { font-weight: normal; } /* Split list across multiple columns */ .fusion-2-col-list .inner .item-list ul li, .fusion-2-col-list .inner ul.menu li { float: left; /* LTR */ width: 50%; } .fusion-3-col-list .inner .item-list ul li, .fusion-3-col-list .inner ul.menu li { float: left; /* LTR */ width: 33%; } .fusion-2-col-list .inner .item-list ul.pager li, .fusion-3-col-list .inner .item-list ul.pager li { float: none; width: auto; } /* List with bottom border Fixes a common issue when list items have bottom borders and appear to be doubled when nested lists end and begin. This removes the extra border-bottom */ .fusion-list-bottom-border .inner ul li { list-style: none; list-style-type: none; list-style-image: none; } .fusion-list-bottom-border .inner ul li, .fusion-list-bottom-border .view-content div.views-row { padding: 0 0 0 10px; /* LTR */ border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; line-height: 216.7%; /* 26px */ } .fusion-list-bottom-border .inner ul { margin: 0; } .fusion-list-bottom-border .inner ul li ul { border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; } .fusion-list-bottom-border .inner ul li ul li.last { border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; margin-bottom: -1px; margin-top: -1px; } #views_slideshow_singleframe_pager_slideshow-page_2 .pager-item { display:block; } #views_slideshow_singleframe_pager_slideshow-page_2 { position:absolute; right:0; top:0; } #header-group-wrapper { background: none; } #page { background-color:#F3F3F3; background-image:url('/sites/all/themes/fusion/fusion_core/images/runswithgradient.jpg'); background-repeat:no-repeat; background-attachment: fixed; width: auto; } #views_slideshow_singleframe_pager_slideshow-page_2 div a img { top:0px; height:60px; width:80px; padding-right:10px; padding-bottom:19px; } #mycontent{ width: 720px; } .product-body { -moz-border-radius: 4px 4px 4px 4px; margin: 0 0 20px; overflow: hidden; padding: 20px; background: none repeat scroll 0 0 #F7F7F7; border: 1px solid #000000; border-style:solid; border-width:thin; color:#000000; } #product-details { background: none repeat scroll 0 0 #F7F7F7 !important; border: 1px solid #000000 !important; color: #8E8E8E; } #logo { position: relative; top: 30px; /* 30 pixels from the top of the page */ left: 80px; /* 80 pixels from the left hand side */ z-index:1099; border: 1px solid red; /* So we can see what is happening */ } #breadcrumbs-inner { background: none; border-color: transparent; border-style: none; } #block-views-new_products-block_1{ height:200px; } /* List with no bullet and extra padding This is a common style for menus, which removes the bullet and adds more vertical padding for a simple list style */ .fusion-list-vertical-spacing .inner ul, .fusion-list-vertical-spacing div.views-row-first { margin-left: 0; margin-top: 10px; } .fusion-list-vertical-spacing .inner ul li, .fusion-list-vertical-spacing div.views-row { line-height: 133.3%; /* 16px/12px */ margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 0; } .fusion-list-vertical-spacing .inner ul li { list-style: none; list-style-image: none; list-style-type: none; } .fusion-list-vertical-spacing .inner ul li ul { margin-left: 10px; /* LTR */ } /* Bold all links */ .fusion-bold-links .inner a { font-weight: bold; } /* Float imagefield images left and add margin */ .fusion-float-imagefield-left .field-type-filefield, .fusion-float-imagefield-left .image-insert, .fusion-float-imagefield-left .imagecache { float: left; /* LTR */ margin: 0 15px 15px 0; /* LTR */ } /* Clear float on new Views item so each row drops to a new line */ .fusion-float-imagefield-left .views-row { clear: left; /* LTR */ } /* Float imagefield images right and add margin */ .fusion-float-imagefield-right .field-type-filefield, .fusion-float-imagefield-right .image-insert .fusion-float-imagefield-right .imagecache { float: right; /* LTR */ margin: 0 0 15px 15px; /* LTR */ } /* Clear float on new Views item so each row drops to a new line */ .fusion-float-imagefield-right .views-row { clear: right; /* LTR */ } /* Superfish: all menus */ .sf-menu li { list-style: none; list-style-image: none; list-style-type: none; } /* Superfish: vertical menus */ .superfish-vertical { position: relative; z-index: 9; } ul.sf-vertical { background: #fafafa; margin: 0; width: 100%; } ul.sf-vertical li { border-bottom: 1px solid #ccc; font-weight: bold; line-height: 200%; /* 24px */ padding: 0; width: 100%; } ul.sf-vertical li a:link, ul.sf-vertical li a:visited, ul.sf-vertical li .nolink { margin-left: 10px; padding: 2px; } ul.sf-vertical li a:hover, ul.sf-vertical li a.active { text-decoration: underline; } ul.sf-vertical li ul { background: #fafafa; border-top: 1px solid #ccc; margin-left: 0; width: 150px; } ul.sf-vertical li ul li.last { border-top: 1px solid #ccc; margin-bottom: -1px; margin-top: -1px; } ul.sf-vertical li ul { border-top: none; padding: 4px 0; } ul.sf-vertical li ul li { border-bottom: none; line-height: 150%; /* 24px */ More below but I can't paste that much Thanks for the suggestion I've tried this #header-group { position: relative; z-index: 9; } #logo { position: abosolute; top: 230px; /* 30 pixels from the top of the page */ left: 10px; /* 80 pixels from the left hand side */ z-index: 999; } but it's not working. I've taken a screen shot of the div to show the structure. http://i.stack.imgur.com/ff4DP.png

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  • MySQL Syslog Audit Plugin

    - by jonathonc
    This post shows the construction process of the Syslog Audit plugin that was presented at MySQL Connect 2012. It is based on an environment that has the appropriate development tools enabled including gcc,g++ and cmake. It also assumes you have downloaded the MySQL source code (5.5.16 or higher) and have compiled and installed the system into the /usr/local/mysql directory ready for use.  The information provided below is designed to show the different components that make up a plugin, and specifically an audit type plugin, and how it comes together to be used within the MySQL service. The MySQL Reference Manual contains information regarding the plugin API and how it can be used, so please refer there for more detailed information. The code in this post is designed to give the simplest information necessary, so handling every return code, managing race conditions etc is not part of this example code. Let's start by looking at the most basic implementation of our plugin code as seen below: /*    Copyright (c) 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.    Author:  Jonathon Coombes    Licence: GPL    Description: An auditing plugin that logs to syslog and                 can adjust the loglevel via the system variables. */ #include <stdio.h> #include <string.h> #include <mysql/plugin_audit.h> #include <syslog.h> There is a commented header detailing copyright/licencing and meta-data information and then the include headers. The two important include statements for our plugin are the syslog.h plugin, which gives us the structures for syslog, and the plugin_audit.h include which has details regarding the audit specific plugin api. Note that we do not need to include the general plugin header plugin.h, as this is done within the plugin_audit.h file already. To implement our plugin within the current implementation we need to add it into our source code and compile. > cd /usr/local/src/mysql-5.5.28/plugin > mkdir audit_syslog > cd audit_syslog A simple CMakeLists.txt file is created to manage the plugin compilation: MYSQL_ADD_PLUGIN(audit_syslog audit_syslog.cc MODULE_ONLY) Run the cmake  command at the top level of the source and then you can compile the plugin using the 'make' command. This results in a compiled audit_syslog.so library, but currently it is not much use to MySQL as there is no level of api defined to communicate with the MySQL service. Now we need to define the general plugin structure that enables MySQL to recognise the library as a plugin and be able to install/uninstall it and have it show up in the system. The structure is defined in the plugin.h file in the MySQL source code.  /*   Plugin library descriptor */ mysql_declare_plugin(audit_syslog) {   MYSQL_AUDIT_PLUGIN,           /* plugin type                    */   &audit_syslog_descriptor,     /* descriptor handle               */   "audit_syslog",               /* plugin name                     */   "Author Name",                /* author                          */   "Simple Syslog Audit",        /* description                     */   PLUGIN_LICENSE_GPL,           /* licence                         */   audit_syslog_init,            /* init function     */   audit_syslog_deinit,          /* deinit function */   0x0001,                       /* plugin version                  */   NULL,                         /* status variables        */   NULL,                         /* system variables                */   NULL,                         /* no reserves                     */   0,                            /* no flags                        */ } mysql_declare_plugin_end; The general plugin descriptor above is standard for all plugin types in MySQL. The plugin type is defined along with the init/deinit functions and interface methods into the system for sharing information, and various other metadata information. The descriptors have an internally recognised version number so that plugins can be matched against the api on the running server. The other details are usually related to the type-specific methods and structures to implement the plugin. Each plugin has a type-specific descriptor as well which details how the plugin is implemented for the specific purpose of that plugin type. /*   Plugin type-specific descriptor */ static struct st_mysql_audit audit_syslog_descriptor= {   MYSQL_AUDIT_INTERFACE_VERSION,                        /* interface version    */   NULL,                                                 /* release_thd function */   audit_syslog_notify,                                  /* notify function      */   { (unsigned long) MYSQL_AUDIT_GENERAL_CLASSMASK |                     MYSQL_AUDIT_CONNECTION_CLASSMASK }  /* class mask           */ }; In this particular case, the release_thd function has not been defined as it is not required. The important method for auditing is the notify function which is activated when an event occurs on the system. The notify function is designed to activate on an event and the implementation will determine how it is handled. For the audit_syslog plugin, the use of the syslog feature sends all events to the syslog for recording. The class mask allows us to determine what type of events are being seen by the notify function. There are currently two major types of event: 1. General Events: This includes general logging, errors, status and result type events. This is the main one for tracking the queries and operations on the database. 2. Connection Events: This group is based around user logins. It monitors connections and disconnections, but also if somebody changes user while connected. With most audit plugins, the principle behind the plugin is to track changes to the system over time and counters can be an important part of this process. The next step is to define and initialise the counters that are used to track the events in the service. There are 3 counters defined in total for our plugin - the # of general events, the # of connection events and the total number of events.  static volatile int total_number_of_calls; /* Count MYSQL_AUDIT_GENERAL_CLASS event instances */ static volatile int number_of_calls_general; /* Count MYSQL_AUDIT_CONNECTION_CLASS event instances */ static volatile int number_of_calls_connection; The init and deinit functions for the plugin are there to be called when the plugin is activated and when it is terminated. These offer the best option to initialise the counters for our plugin: /*  Initialize the plugin at server start or plugin installation. */ static int audit_syslog_init(void *arg __attribute__((unused))) {     openlog("mysql_audit:",LOG_PID|LOG_PERROR|LOG_CONS,LOG_USER);     total_number_of_calls= 0;     number_of_calls_general= 0;     number_of_calls_connection= 0;     return(0); } The init function does a call to openlog to initialise the syslog functionality. The parameters are the service to log under ("mysql_audit" in this case), the syslog flags and the facility for the logging. Then each of the counters are initialised to zero and a success is returned. If the init function is not defined, it will return success by default. /*  Terminate the plugin at server shutdown or plugin deinstallation. */ static int audit_syslog_deinit(void *arg __attribute__((unused))) {     closelog();     return(0); } The deinit function will simply close our syslog connection and return success. Note that the syslog functionality is part of the glibc libraries and does not require any external factors.  The function names are what we define in the general plugin structure, so these have to match otherwise there will be errors. The next step is to implement the event notifier function that was defined in the type specific descriptor (audit_syslog_descriptor) which is audit_syslog_notify. /* Event notifier function */ static void audit_syslog_notify(MYSQL_THD thd __attribute__((unused)), unsigned int event_class, const void *event) { total_number_of_calls++; if (event_class == MYSQL_AUDIT_GENERAL_CLASS) { const struct mysql_event_general *event_general= (const struct mysql_event_general *) event; number_of_calls_general++; syslog(audit_loglevel,"%lu: User: %s Command: %s Query: %s\n", event_general->general_thread_id, event_general->general_user, event_general->general_command, event_general->general_query ); } else if (event_class == MYSQL_AUDIT_CONNECTION_CLASS) { const struct mysql_event_connection *event_connection= (const struct mysql_event_connection *) event; number_of_calls_connection++; syslog(audit_loglevel,"%lu: User: %s@%s[%s] Event: %d Status: %d\n", event_connection->thread_id, event_connection->user, event_connection->host, event_connection->ip, event_connection->event_subclass, event_connection->status ); } }   In the case of an event, the notifier function is called. The first step is to increment the total number of events that have occurred in our database.The event argument is then cast into the appropriate event structure depending on the class type, of general event or connection event. The event type counters are incremented and details are sent via the syslog() function out to the system log. There are going to be different line formats and information returned since the general events have different data compared to the connection events, even though some of the details overlap, for example, user, thread id, host etc. On compiling the code now, there should be no errors and the resulting audit_syslog.so can be loaded into the server and ready to use. Log into the server and type: mysql> INSTALL PLUGIN audit_syslog SONAME 'audit_syslog.so'; This will install the plugin and will start updating the syslog immediately. Note that the audit plugin attaches to the immediate thread and cannot be uninstalled while that thread is active. This means that you cannot run the UNISTALL command until you log into a different connection (thread) on the server. Once the plugin is loaded, the system log will show output such as the following: Oct  8 15:33:21 machine mysql_audit:[8337]: 87: User: root[root] @ localhost []  Command: (null)  Query: INSTALL PLUGIN audit_syslog SONAME 'audit_syslog.so' Oct  8 15:33:21 machine mysql_audit:[8337]: 87: User: root[root] @ localhost []  Command: Query  Query: INSTALL PLUGIN audit_syslog SONAME 'audit_syslog.so' Oct  8 15:33:40 machine mysql_audit:[8337]: 87: User: root[root] @ localhost []  Command: (null)  Query: show tables Oct  8 15:33:40 machine mysql_audit:[8337]: 87: User: root[root] @ localhost []  Command: Query  Query: show tables Oct  8 15:33:43 machine mysql_audit:[8337]: 87: User: root[root] @ localhost []  Command: (null)  Query: select * from t1 Oct  8 15:33:43 machine mysql_audit:[8337]: 87: User: root[root] @ localhost []  Command: Query  Query: select * from t1 It appears that two of each event is being shown, but in actuality, these are two separate event types - the result event and the status event. This could be refined further by changing the audit_syslog_notify function to handle the different event sub-types in a different manner.  So far, it seems that the logging is working with events showing up in the syslog output. The issue now is that the counters created earlier to track the number of events by type are not accessible when the plugin is being run. Instead there needs to be a way to expose the plugin specific information to the service and vice versa. This could be done via the information_schema plugin api, but for something as simple as counters, the obvious choice is the system status variables. This is done using the standard structure and the declaration: /*  Plugin status variables for SHOW STATUS */ static struct st_mysql_show_var audit_syslog_status[]= {   { "Audit_syslog_total_calls",     (char *) &total_number_of_calls,     SHOW_INT },   { "Audit_syslog_general_events",     (char *) &number_of_calls_general,     SHOW_INT },   { "Audit_syslog_connection_events",     (char *) &number_of_calls_connection,     SHOW_INT },   { 0, 0, SHOW_INT } };   The structure is simply the name that will be displaying in the mysql service, the address of the associated variables, and the data type being used for the counter. It is finished with a blank structure to show that there are no more variables. Remember that status variables may have the same name for variables from other plugin, so it is considered appropriate to add the plugin name at the start of the status variable name to avoid confusion. Looking at the status variables in the mysql client shows something like the following: mysql> show global status like "audit%"; +--------------------------------+-------+ | Variable_name                  | Value | +--------------------------------+-------+ | Audit_syslog_connection_events | 1     | | Audit_syslog_general_events    | 2     | | Audit_syslog_total_calls       | 3     | +--------------------------------+-------+ 3 rows in set (0.00 sec) The final connectivity piece for the plugin is to allow the interactive change of the logging level between the plugin and the system. This requires the ability to send changes via the mysql service through to the plugin. This is done using the system variables interface and defining a single variable to keep track of the active logging level for the facility. /* Plugin system variables for SHOW VARIABLES */ static MYSQL_SYSVAR_STR(loglevel, audit_loglevel,                         PLUGIN_VAR_RQCMDARG,                         "User can specify the log level for auditing",                         audit_loglevel_check, audit_loglevel_update, "LOG_NOTICE"); static struct st_mysql_sys_var* audit_syslog_sysvars[] = {     MYSQL_SYSVAR(loglevel),     NULL }; So now the system variable 'loglevel' is defined for the plugin and associated to the global variable 'audit_loglevel'. The check or validation function is defined to make sure that no garbage values are attempted in the update of the variable. The update function is used to save the new value to the variable. Note that the audit_syslog_sysvars structure is defined in the general plugin descriptor to associate the link between the plugin and the system and how much they interact. Next comes the implementation of the validation function and the update function for the system variable. It is worth noting that if you have a simple numeric such as integers for the variable types, the validate function is often not required as MySQL will handle the automatic check and validation of simple types. /* longest valid value */ #define MAX_LOGLEVEL_SIZE 100 /* hold the valid values */ static const char *possible_modes[]= { "LOG_ERROR", "LOG_WARNING", "LOG_NOTICE", NULL };  static int audit_loglevel_check(     THD*                        thd,    /*!< in: thread handle */     struct st_mysql_sys_var*    var,    /*!< in: pointer to system                                         variable */     void*                       save,   /*!< out: immediate result                                         for update function */     struct st_mysql_value*      value)  /*!< in: incoming string */ {     char buff[MAX_LOGLEVEL_SIZE];     const char *str;     const char **found;     int length;     length= sizeof(buff);     if (!(str= value->val_str(value, buff, &length)))         return 1;     /*         We need to return a pointer to a locally allocated value in "save".         Here we pick to search for the supplied value in an global array of         constant strings and return a pointer to one of them.         The other possiblity is to use the thd_alloc() function to allocate         a thread local buffer instead of the global constants.     */     for (found= possible_modes; *found; found++)     {         if (!strcmp(*found, str))         {             *(const char**)save= *found;             return 0;         }     }     return 1; } The validation function is simply to take the value being passed in via the SET GLOBAL VARIABLE command and check if it is one of the pre-defined values allowed  in our possible_values array. If it is found to be valid, then the value is assigned to the save variable ready for passing through to the update function. static void audit_loglevel_update(     THD*                        thd,        /*!< in: thread handle */     struct st_mysql_sys_var*    var,        /*!< in: system variable                                             being altered */     void*                       var_ptr,    /*!< out: pointer to                                             dynamic variable */     const void*                 save)       /*!< in: pointer to                                             temporary storage */ {     /* assign the new value so that the server can read it */     *(char **) var_ptr= *(char **) save;     /* assign the new value to the internal variable */     audit_loglevel= *(char **) save; } Since all the validation has been done already, the update function is quite simple for this plugin. The first part is to update the system variable pointer so that the server can read the value. The second part is to update our own global plugin variable for tracking the value. Notice that the save variable is passed in as a void type to allow handling of various data types, so it must be cast to the appropriate data type when assigning it to the variables. Looking at how the latest changes affect the usage of the plugin and the interaction within the server shows: mysql> show global variables like "audit%"; +-----------------------+------------+ | Variable_name         | Value      | +-----------------------+------------+ | audit_syslog_loglevel | LOG_NOTICE | +-----------------------+------------+ 1 row in set (0.00 sec) mysql> set global audit_syslog_loglevel="LOG_ERROR"; Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec) mysql> show global status like "audit%"; +--------------------------------+-------+ | Variable_name                  | Value | +--------------------------------+-------+ | Audit_syslog_connection_events | 1     | | Audit_syslog_general_events    | 11    | | Audit_syslog_total_calls       | 12    | +--------------------------------+-------+ 3 rows in set (0.00 sec) mysql> show global variables like "audit%"; +-----------------------+-----------+ | Variable_name         | Value     | +-----------------------+-----------+ | audit_syslog_loglevel | LOG_ERROR | +-----------------------+-----------+ 1 row in set (0.00 sec)   So now we have a plugin that will audit the events on the system and log the details to the system log. It allows for interaction to see the number of different events within the server details and provides a mechanism to change the logging level interactively via the standard system methods of the SET command. A more complex auditing plugin may have more detailed code, but each of the above areas is what will be involved and simply expanded on to add more functionality. With the above skeleton code, it is now possible to create your own audit plugins to implement your own auditing requirements. If, however, you are not of the coding persuasion, then you could always consider the option of the MySQL Enterprise Audit plugin that is available to purchase.

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  • Phonegap / jquery mobile slide transition not workign properly on first call

    - by Alexander Casassovici
    I have an awkward visual glitch. I want nice transition when changing pages on the app. Unfortunately first time i change to another page, Instead of sliding current pagg out and new page in , current page is immediately replaces by the new page, then slides out... and when it's out of view it's the new page is shown... the second time around it works like a charm though !!! This is running on iphone with jquery mobile + phonegap I made a video to make the issue clear: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybvzh_wTnSE <body style="background-color: #000;"> <div id="container" style="display:none;"> <div id="side-menu" style="display:none;"> <div id="header_top"></div> <a href="#dives" onclick="showdives();"><div id="header_dives" class="selected"></div></a> <div id="header_spacer1"></div> <a href="#explore" onclick="showexplore();"><div id="header_explore"></div></a> <div id="header_spacer2"></div> <a href="#search" onclick="showsearch();"><div id="header_search"></div></a> <div id="header_spacer3"></div> <a href="#settings" onclick="showsettings();"><div id="header_settings"></div></a> <div id="header_bottom"></div> </div> <div id="slide_mask"> <!-- START of LOGIN page --> <div data-role="page" id="login"> <div id="home_frame"> <div id="home_logo"></div> <div id="home_fblogin" onclick="login()"></div> <div class="home_login"> <p>Email: <input type="text" name="user[email]" size="30"/></p> <p>Password: <input type="password" name="user[password]" size="30"/></p> <button onclick="show_page_home();">LOGIN</button> </div> </div> </div> <!-- END of LOGIN page --> <!-- START of LOGIN page --> <div data-role="page" id="dives" class="right_pane"> <p>My dives !</p> </div><!-- /content --> <div data-role="page" id="explore" class="hidden right_pane"> <p>My explore !</p> </div><!-- /content --> <div data-role="page" id="search" class="hidden right_pane"> <p>My search !</p> </div><!-- /content --> <div data-role="page" id="settings" class="hidden right_pane"> <p>My settings !</p> <button onclick="logout_db();">logout</button> </div><!-- /content --> <!-- END of LOGIN page --> </div> </div> <div id="log"></div> <div id="data"></div> </body> And the relevant CSS: body {margin: 0; font: 18px Helvetica; text-align: center; background-color: #000; background: url(../img/bg_big.png) repeat; -webkit-user-select: none; /* prevent copy paste for all elements */ } #container { width:320px; height:460px; overflow: hidden;} input{ -webkit-user-select: text; /* enable copy paste for elements with this class */} a {-webkit-user-select: none; /* prevent copy paste for all elements */} span {-webkit-user-select: none; /* prevent copy paste for all elements */} #side-menu {z-index: 1000 !important; position: fixed; height: 460px; width: 56.5px; background: url(../img/bg_big.png) no-repeat; display: inline-block; overflow: hidden; top: 0px; left: 0px; } #header_top {background: url(../img/header/header_top.png) no-repeat; background-size: 56.5px 48.96px; width: 56.5px; height: 48.96px; display: block;} #header_dives {background: url(../img/header/dives.png) no-repeat; background-size: 56.5px 51.75px; width: 56.5px; height: 51.75px; display: block;} #header_dives.selected{background: url(../img/header/dives_selected.png) no-repeat;} #header_spacer1{background: url(../img/header/header_space1.png) no-repeat; background-size: 56.5px 13.9px; width: 56.5px; height: 13.9px; display: block;} #header_explore{background: url(../img/header/explore.png) no-repeat; background-size: 56.5px 51.75px; width: 56.5px; height: 51.75px; display: block;} #header_explore.selected{background: url(../img/header/explore_selected.png) no-repeat;} #header_spacer2{background: url(../img/header/header_space2.png) no-repeat; background-size: 56.5px 15.33px; width: 56.5px; height: 15.33px; display: block;} #header_search{background: url(../img/header/search.png) no-repeat; background-size: 56.5px 51.75px; width: 56.5px; height: 51.75px; display: block;} #header_search.selected{background: url(../img/header/search_selected.png) no-repeat;} #header_spacer3{background: url(../img/header/header_space3.png) no-repeat; background-size: 56.5px 17.73px; width: 56.5px; height: 17.73px; display: block;} #header_settings{background: url(../img/header/settings.png) no-repeat; background-size: 56.5px 51.75px; width: 56.5px; height: 51.75px; display: block;} #header_settings.selected{background: url(../img/header/settings_selected.png) no-repeat;} #header_bottom{background: url(../img/header/header_bottom.png) no-repeat; background-size: 56.5px 160px; width: 56.5px; height: 160px; display: block;} .hidden {display: none;} .right_pane{width: 263.5px !important; background: url(../img/right_bg.png) no-repeat; background-size:263.5px 460px; width: 263.5px; height: 460px; left: 56.5px !important;} #slide_mask{ display: inline-block; overflow: hidden; padding-left: 56.5px; width: 263.5px; height: 460px; top: 0;} and the bit of JS: /////////////////////////////////// //MENU MECHANICS /////////////////////////////////// function showdives(){ $("#side-menu .selected").removeClass("selected"); $("#header_dives").addClass("selected"); } function showexplore(){ $("#side-menu .selected").removeClass("selected"); $("#header_explore").addClass("selected"); } function showsearch(){ $("#side-menu .selected").removeClass("selected"); $("#header_search").addClass("selected"); } function showsettings(){ $("#side-menu .selected").removeClass("selected"); $("#header_settings").addClass("selected"); } the onclick only add/remove the "selected" class to the menu items so... any hint ? been trying eveything for hours and still can't get it neat .. :(

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  • trying to center a css menu made on purecssmenu.com

    - by Party Mcfly
    i have a menu that i generated on purecssmenu.com and im having trouble trying to center it on my page here is the code... <!-- Start PureCSSMenu.com STYLE --> <style> #pcm{display:none;} ul.pureCssMenu ul{display:none} ul.pureCssMenu li:hover>ul{display:block} ul.pureCssMenu ul{position: absolute;left:-1px;top:98%;} ul.pureCssMenu ul ul{position: absolute;left:98%;top:-2px;} ul.pureCssMenu,ul.pureCssMenu ul { margin:0px; list-style:none; padding:0px 2px 2px 0px; background-color:#000000; background-repeat:repeat; border-color:#000000; border-width:1px; border-style:solid; } ul.pureCssMenu table {border-collapse:collapse}ul.pureCssMenu { display:block; zoom:1; float: left; } ul.pureCssMenu ul{ width:80.85000000000001px; } ul.pureCssMenu li{ display:block; margin:2px 0px 0px 2px; font-size:0px; } ul.pureCssMenu a:active, ul.pureCssMenu a:focus { outline-style:none; } ul.pureCssMenu a, ul.pureCssMenu li.dis a:hover, ul.pureCssMenu li.sep a:hover { display:block; vertical-align:middle; background-color:#000000; border-width:1px; border-color:#000000; border-style:solid; text-align:left; text-decoration:none; padding:2px 5px 2px 10px; _padding-left:0; font:11px Arial; color: #969696; text-decoration:none; cursor:default; } ul.pureCssMenu span{ overflow:hidden; } ul.pureCssMenu li { float:left; } ul.pureCssMenu ul li { float:none; } ul.pureCssMenu ul a { text-align:left; white-space:nowrap; } ul.pureCssMenu li.sep{ text-align:left; padding:0px; line-height:0; height:100%; } ul.pureCssMenu li.sep span{ float:none; padding-right:0; width:3px; height:100%; display:inline-block; background-color:#cccccc #111111 #111111 #cccccc; background-image:none;} ul.pureCssMenu ul li.sep span{ width:100%; height:3px; } ul.pureCssMenu li:hover{ position:relative; } ul.pureCssMenu li:hover>a{ background-color:#000000; border-color:#000000; border-style:solid; font:11px Arial; color: #ffa500; text-decoration:none; } ul.pureCssMenu li a:hover{ position:relative; background-color:#000000; border-color:#000000; border-style:solid; font:11px Arial; color: #ffa500; text-decoration:none; } ul.pureCssMenu li.dis a { color: #666 !important; } ul.pureCssMenu img {border: none;float:left;_float:none;margin-right:2px;width:16px; height:16px; } ul.pureCssMenu ul img {width:16px; height:16px; } ul.pureCssMenu img.over{display:none} ul.pureCssMenu li.dis a:hover img.over{display:none !important} ul.pureCssMenu li.dis a:hover img.def {display:inline !important} ul.pureCssMenu li:hover > a img.def {display:none} ul.pureCssMenu li:hover > a img.over {display:inline} ul.pureCssMenu a:hover img.over,ul.pureCssMenu a:hover ul img.def,ul.pureCssMenu a:hover a:hover img.over{display:inline} ul.pureCssMenu a:hover img.def,ul.pureCssMenu a:hover ul img.over,ul.pureCssMenu a:hover a:hover img.def{display:none} ul.pureCssMenu a:hover ul{display:block} ul.pureCssMenu span{ display:block; background-image:url(./images/arr_white.gif); background-position:right center; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding-right:12px;} ul.pureCssMenu li:hover>a>span{ background-image:url(./images/arrv_white.gif); } ul.pureCssMenu a:hover span{ _background-image:url(./images/arrv_white.gif)} ul.pureCssMenu ul span,ul.pureCssMenu a:hover table span{background-image:url(./images/arr_white.gif)} </style> <!-- End PureCSSMenu.com STYLE --> and here is the html, witch is probably not even needed in this posted but i figure i would include it.. i just want that menu centered inside my website. <!-- Start PureCSSMenu.com MENU --> <ul class="pureCssMenu pureCssMenum"> <li class="pureCssMenui"><a class="pureCssMenui" href="home.html" target="scare">home</a></li> <li class="pureCssMenui"><a class="pureCssMenui" href="#">about</a></li> <li class="pureCssMenui"><a class="pureCssMenui" href="#"><span>haunts</span><![if gt IE 6]></a><![endif]><!--[if lte IE 6]><table><tr><td><![endif]--> <ul class="pureCssMenum"> <li class="pureCssMenui"><a class="pureCssMenui" href="#">2009</a></li> <li class="pureCssMenui"><a class="pureCssMenui" href="#">2010</a></li> <li class="pureCssMenui"><a class="pureCssMenui" href="#">2011</a></li> <li class="pureCssMenui"><a class="pureCssMenui" href="#">2012</a></li> </ul> <!--[if lte IE 6]></td></tr></table></a><![endif]--></li> <li class="pureCssMenui"><a class="pureCssMenui" href="#">studio</a></li> <li class="pureCssMenui"><a class="pureCssMenui" href="#"><span>products</span><![if gt IE 6]></a><![endif]><!--[if lte IE 6]><table><tr><td><![endif]--> <ul class="pureCssMenum"> <li class="pureCssMenui"><a class="pureCssMenui" href="#">nightmares</a></li> <li class="pureCssMenui"><a class="pureCssMenui" href="#">hauntworks</a></li> <li class="pureCssMenui"><a class="pureCssMenui" href="#">atmosfears</a></li> <li class="pureCssMenui"><a class="pureCssMenui" href="#">frightwears</a></li> </ul> <!--[if lte IE 6]></td></tr></table></a><![endif]--></li> <li class="pureCssMenui"><a class="pureCssMenui" href="#"><span>links</span><![if gt IE 6]></a><![endif]><!--[if lte IE 6]><table><tr><td><![endif]--> <ul class="pureCssMenum"> <li class="pureCssMenui"><a class="pureCssMenui" href="#">haunts</a></li> <li class="pureCssMenui"><a class="pureCssMenui" href="#">suppliers</a></li> <li class="pureCssMenui"><a class="pureCssMenui" href="#">resources</a></li> </ul> <!--[if lte IE 6]></td></tr></table></a><![endif]--></li> <li class="pureCssMenui"><a class="pureCssMenui" href="#">contact</a></li> </ul> <a id="pcm" href="http://www.purecssmenu.com/">CSS Drop Down Menu by PureCSSMenu.com</a> <!-- End PureCSSMenu.com MENU --> thanks in advance for your time.

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  • What is the importance of the .DFSFolderLink

    - by Swift
    I am currently building a new DFS namespace setup. My folder E:\CommonStuff\ is already shared on the fileserver. And now it is also shared as \DOMAIN\CommonStuff I got 3 questions: I see .DFSFolderLink records in all folders I create in the DFS Managment console. But all folders that was in E:\CommonStuff allready does not contain these records. Are the .DFSFolderLink records important? Does it make any difference if I create subfolders "the old way" in the E:\Commonstuff\ or if I do it within the DFS Managment console?

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  • Proxmox VE cluster not working

    - by JJ56
    I have been using a Proxmox VE 2.0 cluster (2 servers) for months. Today, I had the "bright idea" to install a GUI on one of the servers. I used tasksel, and selected the graphical desktop environment (Gnome). When I rebooted the server, neither of the servers on the cluster could see each other (shows a red light by the server on the sidebar, no statistics). The VMs on each server are working fine, individually. pvecm status on the broken server shows cman_tool: cannot open connection to cman, is it running ?. Running it on the other server outputs a lot of lines (here: http://pastebin.com/HpQfUHTU), but I assume the important bit is expected votes:2 total votes: 1 Trying pvecm delnode (othernode) on either server outputs: cluster not ready - no quorum? Any suggestions as to how I can fix this? Thanks in advance!

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  • HTTP response time profiling

    - by Sparsh Gupta
    Hello I have a nginx reverse proxy. The server is close to serving 600-700 requests per second. I have a Munin HTTP load time plugin which is outputting this: http://monitor.wingify.com/munin/visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/lb1.visualwebsiteoptimizer.com-http_loadtime.html Now, the problem is I am seeing some spikes in the graph. Expected response times should always be under 200ms. I am keeping an eye on syslog and messages but I am unable to figure out the actual cause of this. I was wondering if there is any good HTTP response time profiling system which I can install / embed with this nginx server and get a detailed reports / logs on the breakup of time taken by different things and what exactly is the cause of the spikes. The profiling system would also help me understand bottlenecks and how can I further optimize the latency. Most important right now is to investigate the cause of the spikes in the HTTP load time graphs (similar pattern is reported by external monitors - Pingdom) and to fix it to get consistent response times Thanks

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  • Windows 7 upgrade on XP and Vista

    - by icc97
    I am upgrading a Windows XP (32-bit) machine and a Windows Vista (32-bit) machine to Windows 7 (32-bit). The most important files and accounts are on the Windows XP machine. What I would like to do is the following: backup the XP machine using Windows Easy Transfer upgrade the Windows Vista machine to a fresh install of Windows 7 install the XP backup on the Vista machine and see if everything is working Is this possible? I would have thought its possible as once the Vista machine is upgraded to Windows 7 it should be the same as if I had upgraded the XP machine, but I don't want to waste my time if its not. Thanks

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  • Windows 7 upgrade on XP and Vista

    - by icc97
    I am upgrading a Windows XP (32-bit) machine and a Windows Vista (32-bit) machine to Windows 7 (32-bit). The most important files and accounts are on the Windows XP machine. What I would like to do is the following: backup the XP machine using Windows Easy Transfer upgrade the Windows Vista machine to a fresh install of Windows 7 install the XP backup on the Vista machine and see if everything is working Is this possible? I would have thought its possible as once the Vista machine is upgraded to Windows 7 it should be the same as if I had upgraded the XP machine, but I don't want to waste my time if its not. Thanks

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  • Sending emails from PHP - email providers vs GAE

    - by nrph
    I need to send emails from my social service (this is continuation of Experiences in mailing to registered users). I got strong feeling that it's better to avoid problems with email server configuration and maintance and to choose email provider which will take care of all painful problems. So several offers were compared: http://imgur.com/JkK2X.jpg Three of them look very attractive: Postageapp / Sendgrid / CritSend As alternative i'm considering setup GAE app. Email provider is quite easy to start work with, but have no idea how much effort require GAE to integrate with PHP. So my question is: which option is better to choose: email provider GAE ? Two factors are important here: business background (therefore prices are mentioned), work required to setup and maintain desired solution. Preferably i would love to avoid all email-related problems (like black lists and so on).

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  • Any problems usinga GoDaddy SSL certificate on a Cisco ASA firewall?

    - by Richard West
    I need to purchase and install a SSL certificate on my Cisco ASA firewall. This will allow my VPN users to connect to my ASA without receiving the certificate error from the untrusted self assigned SSL certificate that is currently on the ASA. I had good experiences with the SSL certificates that GoDaddy sells. However, I'm concerned about using them. On my web servers I have to also install GoDaddy's "intermediate certificate bundle". On the ASA I do not think that I will be able to preform anything like this. I do not fully understand what the "intermediate certificate bundle" does, but obviously it's important. So my question is can I use a GoDaddy SSL certificate on an ASA without my users getting any type of warning or error about connecting to a site that using an untrusted SSL certificate. I need this to be as simple as possible for my end users and warning messages are always scary :) Thanks!

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  • SQL Cluster on Hyper V Failover Cluster

    - by Chris W
    We have a VM running SQL Server on a 6 node cluster of blades. The VM's data files are stored a SAN attached using a direct iSCSI connection. As this SQL server will be running a number of important databases we're debating whether we should be clustering the SQL Server or will the fact that the VM is running in the cluster itself sufficient to give us high availability. I'm used to running SQL clusters when dealing with physical servers but I'm a bit sketchy on what is best practice when all the servers are just VMs sat on Hyper V. If a blade running the VM fails I presume the VM will be started up on another load. I'm guessing the only benefit that adding a SQL cluster to the setup will give us it that the recovery time after a failure will be a little quicker? Are there any other benefits?

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  • Recommendations on laptops - long battery life, slim, Windows 7

    - by molecule
    Hi, I have been looking at a couple of laptops... The most important requirement is long battery life, slim & light, and runs Windows 7. One that seems to fit the bill is the Sony Vaio Z series laptops. They claim to have long battery life, have some really impressive specs (on paper) and a very nice design. They are not on sale where I am yet but has seen/used them? Second would be the Lenovo Thinkpad IBM x301 For business users, Thinkpad seems to be the way to go. I have also considered Dell Alienware M11x but may not be completely appropriate for business use? What would you recommend with a budget of USD1500-2000?

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  • Cheap dvr media server

    - by Tester101
    I would like to build a new computer to be used as a DVR and media server. I am thinking of using mythtv as the DVR software, but short of that decision I am completely open to suggestions. Requirements: Must be cheap. Must have low power consumption (since it will always be on). Should be quiet. Should be small. I'm really not sure where to start with this project, and am open to any hardware/software suggestions. Is it possible to build a small quiet and cheap system? *Keep in mind I am working on this project because I am tired of Cable rate increases, but I can't imagine living without a DVR so cost is very important and I would like the system to be sub $200.00. The system also needs to handle the new digital broadcast system. Thanks for the help,

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  • iChat Screen Sharing - Keyboard shortcut to switch back to my computer without messing with the mous

    - by Sergio Oliveira Jr.
    When you are watching a screen sharing session commanded by the other user, in other words, you are watching the other user doing stuff in his computer, how do I switch back to my computer without disrupting the other user by stealing the mouse to click on the "My Computer" window? Put simply: To go back to my computer I have to click in the "My computer" little window at the bottom, but that requires me to use the mouse which is being used by the other user. There must be a way to use a keyboard shortcut to perform that action without bothering the other user who is using the mouse to do something important. Anyone? Thanks, -Sergio

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  • STUN-server using AWS

    - by Yrlec
    We are about to hire some consultants to help us set up an AWS-based server environment that will enable us to handle NAT Traversal for our P2P application. One important part of the NAT Traversal infrastructure is the STUN-server (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STUN). They just told us that in order for the STUN-server to work you must have two public static IP-addresses pointing to the same server. To more specific they said this: It appears that you need 2 static IPs for each server for the STUN to work. Please note, these IPs have to be put into the configuration file, therefore, each time you restart the instance you have to make sure you either use the same IPs or you have to update configuration. As you plan to use AWS for your installation, please confirm that you can have 2 static IP for each server. Our question is if this is possible using AWS and if so, how? If not, do you know any other way to set up a STUN-server using AWS?

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  • CHM to EPUB Converter

    - by griegs
    I recently bought an iriver ebook reader but it doesn't support chm files. I have bought a bunch of O'Reilly books and with them have the soft copy as well. Some books convert quite well using calibre. However, there is one book I have that just won't convert. So I used HH to decompile it and now I have a bunch of html files. These html files contain references to images in folders. How can I now join them all into a single document which Calibre can read and properly convert into an epub or am I going about this the wrong way? I've read this question but it removes the images and the images are quite important to the content.

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