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• How to use jquery to paginate json data?

  - by Pandiya Chendur

  My json Data looks like this {"Table" : [{"Emp_Id" : "3","Identity_No" : "","Emp_Name" : "Jerome","Address" : "Madurai","Date_Of_Birth" : "","Desig_Name" : "Supervisior","Desig_Description" : "Supervisior of the Construction","SalaryBasis" : "Monthly","FixedSalary" : "25000.00"},{"Emp_Id" : "4","Identity_No" : "","Emp_Name" : "Mohan","Address" : "Madurai","Date_Of_Birth" : "","Desig_Name" : "Acc ","Desig_Description" : "Accountant","SalaryBasis" : "Monthly","FixedSalary" : "200.00"},{"Emp_Id" : "5","Identity_No" : "","Emp_Name" : "Murugan","Address" : "Madurai","Date_Of_Birth" : "","Desig_Name" : "Mason","Desig_Description" : "Mason","SalaryBasis" : "Weekly","FixedSalary" : "150.00"},{"Emp_Id" : "6","Identity_No" : "","Emp_Name" : "Ram","Address" : "Madurai","Date_Of_Birth" : "","Desig_Name" : "Mason","Desig_Description" : "Mason","SalaryBasis" : "Weekly","FixedSalary" : "120.00"},{"Emp_Id" : "7","Identity_No" : "","Emp_Name" : "Raja","Address" : "Madurai","Date_Of_Birth" : "","Desig_Name" : "Mason","Desig_Description" : "Mason","SalaryBasis" : "Weekly","FixedSalary" : "135.00"},{"Emp_Id" : "8","Identity_No" : "","Emp_Name" : "Raja kumar","Address" : "Madurai","Date_Of_Birth" : "","Desig_Name" : "Mason Helper","Desig_Description" : "Mason Helper","SalaryBasis" : "Weekly","FixedSalary" : "105.00"},{"Emp_Id" : "9","Identity_No" : "","Emp_Name" : "Lakshmi","Address" : "Madurai","Date_Of_Birth" : "","Desig_Name" : "Mason Helper","Desig_Description" : "Mason Helper","SalaryBasis" : "Weekly","FixedSalary" : "100.00"},{"Emp_Id" : "10","Identity_No" : "","Emp_Name" : "Palani","Address" : "Madurai","Date_Of_Birth" : "","Desig_Name" : "Carpenter","Desig_Description" : "Carpenter","SalaryBasis" : "Weekly","FixedSalary" : "200.00"},{"Emp_Id" : "11","Identity_No" : "","Emp_Name" : "Annamalai","Address" : "Madurai","Date_Of_Birth" : "","Desig_Name" : "Carpenter","Desig_Description" : "Carpenter","SalaryBasis" : "Weekly","FixedSalary" : "220.00"},{"Emp_Id" : "12","Identity_No" : "","Emp_Name" : "David","Address" : "Madurai","Date_Of_Birth" : "","Desig_Name" : "Steel Fixer","Desig_Description" : "Steel Fixer","SalaryBasis" : "Weekly","FixedSalary" : "220.00"},{"Emp_Id" : "13","Identity_No" : "","Emp_Name" : "Chandru","Address" : "Madurai","Date_Of_Birth" : "","Desig_Name" : "Steel Fixer","Desig_Description" : "Steel Fixer","SalaryBasis" : "Weekly","FixedSalary" : "220.00"},{"Emp_Id" : "14","Identity_No" : "","Emp_Name" : "Mani","Address" : "Madurai","Date_Of_Birth" : "","Desig_Name" : "Steel Helper","Desig_Description" : "Steel Helper","SalaryBasis" : "Weekly","FixedSalary" : "175.00"},{"Emp_Id" : "15","Identity_No" : "","Emp_Name" : "Karthik","Address" : "Madurai","Date_Of_Birth" : "","Desig_Name" : "Wood Fixer","Desig_Description" : "Wood Fixer","SalaryBasis" : "Weekly","FixedSalary" : "195.00"},{"Emp_Id" : "16","Identity_No" : "","Emp_Name" : "Bala","Address" : "Madurai","Date_Of_Birth" : "","Desig_Name" : "Wood Fixer","Desig_Description" : "Wood Fixer","SalaryBasis" : "Weekly","FixedSalary" : "185.00"},{"Emp_Id" : "17","Identity_No" : "","Emp_Name" : "Tamil arasi","Address" : "Madurai","Date_Of_Birth" : "","Desig_Name" : "Wood Helper","Desig_Description" : "Wood Helper","SalaryBasis" : "Weekly","FixedSalary" : "185.00"},{"Emp_Id" : "18","Identity_No" : "","Emp_Name" : "Perumal","Address" : "Madurai","Date_Of_Birth" : "","Desig_Name" : "Cook","Desig_Description" : "Cook","SalaryBasis" : "Weekly","FixedSalary" : "105.00"},{"Emp_Id" : "19","Identity_No" : "","Emp_Name" : "Andiappan","Address" : "Madurai","Date_Of_Birth" : "","Desig_Name" : "Watchman","Desig_Description" : "Watchman","SalaryBasis" : "Weekly","FixedSalary" : "150.00"}]} There are 22 records in this json... How to paginate this json data 5 per page using jquery? EDIT: The above image is my summary view of employee list iterated using jquery var jsonObj = JSON.parse(HfJsonValue); for (var i = jsonObj.Table.length - 1; i >= 0; i--) { var employee = jsonObj.Table[i]; $('<div class="resultsdiv"><br /><span class="resultName">' + employee.Emp_Name + '</span><span class="resultfields" style="padding-left:100px;">Category&nbsp;:</span>&nbsp;<span class="resultfieldvalues">' + employee.Desig_Name + '</span><br /><br /><span id="SalaryBasis" class="resultfields">Salary Basis&nbsp;:</span>&nbsp;<span class="resultfieldvalues">' + employee.SalaryBasis + '</span><span class="resultfields" style="padding-left:25px;">Salary&nbsp;:</span>&nbsp;<span class="resultfieldvalues">' + employee.FixedSalary + '</span><span style="font-size:110%;font-weight:bolder;padding-left:25px;">Address&nbsp;:</span>&nbsp;<span class="resultfieldvalues">' + employee.Address + '</span></div>').insertAfter('#ResultsDiv'); } I get 22 records now it may grow how to paginate json date by using jquery pagination.. Any suggestion...

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• print a linear linked list into a table

  - by user1796970

  I am attempting to print some values i have stored into a LLL into a readable table. The data i have stored is the following : DEBBIE STARR F 3 W 1000.00 JOAN JACOBUS F 9 W 925.00 DAVID RENN M 3 H 4.75 ALBERT CAHANA M 3 H 18.75 DOUGLAS SHEER M 5 W 250.00 SHARI BUCHMAN F 9 W 325.00 SARA JONES F 1 H 7.50 RICKY MOFSEN M 6 H 12.50 JEAN BRENNAN F 6 H 5.40 JAMIE MICHAELS F 8 W 150.00 i have stored each firstname, lastname, gender, tenure, payrate, and salary into their own List. And would like to be able to print them out in the same format that they are viewed on the text file i read them in from. i have messed around with a few methods that allow me to traverse and print the Lists, but i end up with ugly output. . . here is my code for the storage of the text file and the format i would like to print out: public class Payroll { private LineWriter lw; private ObjectList output; ListNode input; private ObjectList firstname, lastname, gender, tenure, rate, salary; public Payroll(LineWriter lw) { this.lw = lw; this.firstname = new ObjectList(); this.lastname = new ObjectList(); this.gender = new ObjectList(); this.tenure = new ObjectList(); this.rate = new ObjectList(); this.salary = new ObjectList(); this.output = new ObjectList(); this.input = new ListNode(); } public void readfile() { File file = new File("payfile.txt"); try{ Scanner scanner = new Scanner(file); while(scanner.hasNextLine()) { String line = scanner.nextLine(); Scanner lineScanner = new Scanner(line); lineScanner.useDelimiter("\\s+"); while(lineScanner.hasNext()) { firstname.insert1(lineScanner.next()); lastname.insert1(lineScanner.next()); gender.insert1(lineScanner.next()); tenure.insert1(lineScanner.next()); rate.insert1(lineScanner.next()); salary.insert1(lineScanner.next()); } } }catch(FileNotFoundException e) {e.printStackTrace();} } public void printer(LineWriter lw) { String msg = " FirstName " + " LastName " + " Gender " + " Tenure " + " Pay Rate " + " Salary "; output.insert1(msg); System.out.println(output.getFirst()); System.out.println(" " + firstname.getFirst() + " " + lastname.getFirst() + "\t" + gender.getFirst() + "\t" + tenure.getFirst() + "\t" + rate.getFirst() + "\t" + salary.getFirst()); } }

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• how to organise my abstraction?

  - by DaveM

  I have a problem that I can't decide how to best handle, so I'm asking for advice. Please bear with me if my question isn't clear, it is possiblybecause I'm not sure exacly how to solve! I have a set of function that I have in a class. These function are a set of lowest commonality. To be able to run this I need to generate certain info. But this info can arrive with my class from one of 2 routes. I'll try to summarise my situation.... Lets say that I have a class as follows. public class onHoliday(){ private Object modeOfTravel; private Object location; public onHoliday(Object vehicle, Location GPScoords) { private boolean haveFun(){//function to have fun, needs 4 people }//end haveFun() } } Lets imagine I can get to my holiday either by car or by bike. my haveFun() function is dependant my type of vehicle. But only loosely. I have another function that determines my vehicle type, and extracts the required values. for example if I send a car I may get 4 people in one go, but if I send I bike I need at least 2 to get the required 4 I have currently 2 options: Overload my constructor, so as I can send either 2 bikes or a single car into it, then I can call one of 2 intermediate functions (to get the names of my 4 people for instance) before I haveFun() - this is what I am currently doing. split the 2 constructors into 2 separate classes, and repeat my haveFun() in a third class, that becomes an object of my 2 other classes. my problem with this is that my intermediate functions are all but a few lines of code, and I don't want to have them in a separate file! (I allways put classes in separate files!) Please note, my haveFun() isn't something that I'm going to need outside of these 2 classes, or even being onHoliday (ie. there is no chance of me doing some haveFun() over a weekend or of an evening!). I have though about putting haveFun() into an interface, but it seems a bit worthless having an interface with only a single method! Even then I would have to have the method in both of the classes -one for bike and another for car! I have thought about having my onHoliday class accepting any object type, but then I don't want someone accidentally sending in a boat to my onHoliday class (imagine I can't swim, so its not about to happen). It may be important to note that my onHoliday class is package private, and final. It in fact is only accessed via other 'private methods' in other classes, and has only private methods itself. Thanks in advance. David

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• Populate Multiple PDFs

  - by gmcalab

  I am using itextsharp to populate my PDFs. I have no issues with this. Basically what I am doing is getting the PDF and populating the fields in memory then passing back the MemoryStream to be displayed on a webpage. All this is working with a single document PDF. What I am trying to figure out now, is merging multiple PDFs into one MemoryStream. The part I cant figure out is, the documents I am populating are identical. So for example, I have a List<Person> that contains 5 persons. I want to fill out a PDF for each person and merge them all into one, in memory. Bare in mind I am going to fill out the same type of document for each person. The problem I am getting is that when I try to add a second copy of the same PDF to be filled out for the second iteration, it just overwrites the first populated PDF, since it's the same document, therefore not adding a second copy for the second Person at all. So basically if I had the 5 people, I would end up with a single page with the data of the 5th person, instead of a PDF with 5 like pages that contain the data of each person respectively. Here's some code... MemoryStream ms = ms = new MemoryStream(); PdfReader docReader = null; PdfStamper Stamper = null; List<Person> persons = new List<Person>() { new Person("Larry", "David"), new Person("Dustin", "Byfuglien"), new Person("Patrick", "Kane"), new Person("Johnathan", "Toews"), new Person("Marian", "Hossa") }; try { // Iterate thru all persons and populate a PDF for each foreach(var person in persons){ PdfCopyFields Copier = new PdfCopyFields(ms); Copier.AddDocument(GetReader("Person.pdf")); Copier.Close(); docReader = new PdfReader(ms.ToArray()); Stamper = new PdfStamper(docReader, ms); AcroFields Fields = Stamper.AcroFields; Fields.SetField("FirstName", person.FirstName); } }catch(Exception e){ // handle error }finally{ if (Stamper != null) { Stamper.Close(); } if (docReader != null) { docReader.Close(); } }

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• CSS Footer bar bottom center issue

  - by StealthRT

  Hey all, i am trying to get my bottom bar to center on the screen but i am unable to do so. <style type="text/css"> body { background: #fffff; margin: 0; padding: 0; font: 10px normal Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; } * {margin: 0; padding: 0; outline: none;} #bottomBar { position: fixed; bottom: 0px; left: 0px; z-index: 9999; background: #e3e2e2; border: 1px solid #c3c3c3; border-bottom: none; width: 500px; min-width: 500px; margin: 0px auto; -moz-opacity:.90; filter:alpha(opacity=90); opacity:.90; } *html #bottomBar {margin-top: -1px; position: absolute; top:expression(eval(document.compatMode &&document.compatMode=='CSS1Compat') ?documentElement.scrollTop+(documentElement.clientHeight-this.clientHeight) : document.body.scrollTop +(document.body.clientHeight-this.clientHeight));} #bottomBar ul {padding: 0; margin: 0;float: left;width: 100%;list-style: none;border-top: 1px solid #fff;} #bottomBar ul li{padding: 0; margin: 0;float: left;position: relative;} #bottomBar ul li a{padding: 5px;float: left;text-indent: -9999px;height: 16px; width: 16px;text-decoration: none;color: #333;position: relative;} html #bottomBar ul li a:hover{ background-color: #fff; } a.PDF{background: url(http://www.xxx.com/img/pdficon.png) no-repeat center center; } </style> <div id="bottomBar"> <ul id="mainpanel"> <li style="padding-top:5px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; padding-left: 5px;">First time here? Be sure to check out the "this" button above or download the PDF here -></li> <li><a href="http://www.xxx.com" class="PDF">Download PDF <small>Download PDF</small></a></li> </ul> </div> Thanks! David

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• Why is my javascript function sometimes "not defined"?

  - by harpo

  Problem: I call my javascript function, and sometimes I get the error 'myFunction is not defined'. But it is defined. For example. I'll occasionally get 'copyArray is not defined' even in this example: function copyArray( pa ) { var la = []; for (var i=0; i < pa.length; i++) la.push( pa[i] ); return la; } Function.prototype.bind = function( po ) { var __method = this; var __args = []; // sometimes errors -- in practice I inline the function as a workaround __args = copyArray( arguments ); return function() { /* bind logic omitted for brevity */ } } As you can see, copyArray is defined right there, so this can't be about the order in which script files load. I've been getting this in situations that are harder to work around, where the calling function is located in another file that should be loaded after the called function. But this was the simplest case I could present, and appears to be the same problem. It doesn't happen 100% of the time, so I do suspect some kind of load-timing-related problem. But I have no idea what. @Hojou: That's part of the problem. The function in which I'm now getting this error is itself my addLoadEvent, which is basically a standard version of the common library function. @James: I understand that, and there is no syntax error in the function. When that is the case, the syntax error is reported as well. In this case, I am getting only the 'not defined' error. @David: The script in this case resides in an external file that is referenced using the normal <script src="file.js"></script> method in the page's head section. @Douglas: Interesting idea, but if this were the case, how could we ever call a user-defined function with confidence? In any event, I tried this and it didn't work. @sk: This technique has been tested across browsers and is basically copied from the prototype library.

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• How can the DataView object reference not be set?

  - by dboarman-FissureStudios

  I have the following sample where the SourceData class would represent a DataView resulting from an Sql query: class MainClass { private static SourceData Source; private static DataView View; private static DataView Destination; public static void Main (string[] args) { Source = new SourceData(); View = new DataView(Source.Table); Destination = new DataView(); Source.AddRowData("Table1", 100); Source.AddRowData("Table2", 1500); Source.AddRowData("Table3", 1300324); Source.AddRowData("Table4", 1122494); Source.AddRowData("Table5", 132545); Console.WriteLine(String.Format("Data View Records: {0}", View.Count)); foreach(DataRowView drvRow in View) { Console.WriteLine(String.Format("Source {0} has {1} records.", drvRow["table"], drvRow["records"])); DataRowView newRow = Destination.AddNew(); newRow["table"] = drvRow["table"]; newRow["records"] = drvRow["records"]; } Console.WriteLine(); Console.WriteLine(String.Format("Destination View Records: {0}", Destination.Count)); foreach(DataRowView drvRow in Destination) { Console.WriteLine(String.Format("Destination {0} has {1} records.", drvRow["table"], drvRow["records"])); } } } class SourceData { public DataTable Table { get{return dataTable;} } private DataTable dataTable; public SourceData() { dataTable = new DataTable("TestTable"); dataTable.Columns.Add("table", typeof(string)); dataTable.Columns.Add("records", typeof(int)); } public void AddRowData(string tableName, int tableRows) { dataTable.Rows.Add(tableName, tableRows); } } My output is: Data View Records: 5 Source Table1 has 100 records. Unhandled Exception: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object at System.Data.DataView.AddNew () [0x0003e] in /usr/src/packages/BUILD/mono-2.4.2.3 /mcs/class/System.Data/System.Data/DataView.cs:344 at DataViewTest.MainClass.Main (System.String[] args) [0x000e8] in /home/david/Projects/DataViewTest/SourceData.cs:29 I did some reading here: DataView:AddNew Method... ...and it would appear that I am doing this the right way. How come I am getting the Object reference not set?

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• MySQL-problem when baking with CakePHP.

  - by timkl

  I am currently reading "Beginning CakePHP:From Novice to Professional" by David Golding. At one point I have to use the CLI-command "cake bake", I get the welcome-screen but when I try to bake e.g. a Controller I get the following error messages: Warning: mysql_connect(): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/mysql/mysql.sock' (2) in /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/blog/cake/libs/model/datasources/dbo/dbo_mysql.php on line 117 Warning: mysql_select_db(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL-Link resource in /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/blog/cake/libs/model/datasources/dbo/dbo_mysql.php on line 122 Warning: mysql_get_server_info(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL-Link resource in /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/blog/cake/libs/model/datasources/dbo/dbo_mysql.php on line 130 Warning: mysql_query(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL-Link resource in /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/blog/cake/libs/model/datasources/dbo/dbo_mysql.php on line 154 Error: Your database does not have any tables. I suspect that the error-messages has to do with php trying to access the wrong mysql-socket, namely the default osx mysql-socket - instead of the one that MAMP uses. Hence I change my database configurations to connect to the UNIX mysql-socket (:/Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock): class DATABASE_CONFIG { var $default = array( 'driver' => 'mysql', 'connect' => 'mysql_connect', 'persistent' => false, 'host' =>':/Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock', // UNIX MySQL-socket 'login' => 'my_user', 'password' => 'my_pass', 'database' => 'blog', 'prefix' => '', ); } But I get the same error-messages with the new socket: Warning: mysql_connect(): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock:3306' (2) in /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/blog/cake/libs/model/datasources/dbo/dbo_mysql.php on line 117 Warning: mysql_select_db(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL-Link resource in /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/blog/cake/libs/model/datasources/dbo/dbo_mysql.php on line 122 Warning: mysql_get_server_info(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL-Link resource in /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/blog/cake/libs/model/datasources/dbo/dbo_mysql.php on line 130 Warning: mysql_query(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL-Link resource in /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/blog/cake/libs/model/datasources/dbo/dbo_mysql.php on line 154 Error: Your database does not have any tables. Also, even though I use the UNIX-socket that MAMP show on it's welcome-screen, CakePHP loses the database-connection, when using this socket instead of localhost. Any ideas on how I can get bake to work?

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• Grouping geographical shapes

  - by grenade

  I am using Dundas Maps and attempting to draw a map of the world where countries are grouped into regions that are specific to a business implementation. I have shape data (points and segments) for each country in the world. I can combine countries into regions by adding all points and segments for countries within a region to a new region shape. foreach(var region in GetAllRegions()){ var regionShape = new Shape { Name = region.Name }; foreach(var country in GetCountriesInRegion(region.Id)){ var countryShape = GetCountryShape(country.Id); regionShape.AddSegments(countryShape.ShapeData.Points, countryShape.ShapeData.Segments); } map.Shapes.Add(regionShape); } The problem is that the country border lines still show up within a region and I want to remove them so that only regional borders show up. Dundas polygons must start and end at the same point. This is the case for all the country shapes. Now I need an algorithm that can: Determine where country borders intersect at a regional border, so that I can join the regional border segments. Determine which country borders are not regional borders so that I can discard them. Sort the resulting regional points so that they sequentialy describe the shape boundaries. Below is where I have gotten to so far with the map. You can see that the country borders still need to be removed. For example, the border between Mongolia and China should be discarded whereas the border between Mongolia and Russia should be retained. The reason I need to retain a regional border is that the region colors will be significant in conveying information but adjacent regions may be the same color. The regions can change to include or exclude countries and this is why the regional shaping must be dynamic. EDIT: I now know that I what I am looking for is a UNION of polygons. David Lean explains how to do it using the spatial functions in SQL Server 2008 which might be an option but my efforts have come to a halt because the resulting polygon union is so complex that SQL truncates it at 43,680 characters. I'm now trying to either find a workaround for that or find a way of doing the union in code.

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• How to use Crtl in a Delphi unit in a C++Builder project? (or link to C++Builder C runtime library)

  - by Craig Peterson

  I have a Delphi unit that is statically linking a C .obj file using the {$L xxx} directive. The C file is compiled with C++Builder's command line compiler. To satisfy the C file's runtime library dependencies (_assert, memmove, etc), I'm including the crtl unit Allen Bauer mentioned here. unit FooWrapper; interface implementation uses Crtl; // Part of the Delphi RTL {$L FooLib.obj} // Compiled with "bcc32 -q -c foolib.c" procedure Foo; cdecl; external; end. If I compile that unit in a Delphi project (.dproj) everthing works correctly. If I compile that unit in a C++Builder project (.cbproj) it fails with the error: [ILINK32 Error] Fatal: Unable to open file 'CRTL.OBJ' And indeed, there isn't a crtl.obj file in the RAD Studio install folder. There is a .dcu, but no .pas. Trying to add crtdbg to the uses clause (the C header where _assert is defined) gives an error that it can't find crtdbg.dcu. If I remove the uses clause, it instead fails with errors that __assert and _memmove aren't found. So, in a Delphi unit in a C++Builder project, how can I export functions from the C runtime library so they're available for linking? I'm already aware of Rudy Velthuis's article. I'd like to avoid manually writing Delphi wrappers if possible, since I don't need them in Delphi, and C++Builder must already include the necessary functions. Edit For anyone who wants to play along at home, the code is available in Abbrevia's Subversion repository at https://tpabbrevia.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/tpabbrevia/trunk. I've taken David Heffernan's advice and added a "AbCrtl.pas" unit that mimics crtl.dcu when compiled in C++Builder. That got the PPMd support working, but the Lzma and WavPack libraries both fail with link errors: [ILINK32 Error] Error: Unresolved external '_beginthreadex' referenced from ABLZMA.OBJ [ILINK32 Error] Error: Unresolved external 'sprintf' referenced from ABWAVPACK.OBJ [ILINK32 Error] Error: Unresolved external 'strncmp' referenced from ABWAVPACK.OBJ [ILINK32 Error] Error: Unresolved external '_ftol' referenced from ABWAVPACK.OBJ AFAICT, all of them are declared correctly, and the _beginthreadex one is actually declared in AbLzma.pas, so it's used by the pure Delphi compile as well. To see it yourself, just download the trunk (or just the "source" and "packages" directories), disable the {$IFDEF BCB} block at the bottom of AbDefine.inc, and try to compile the C++Builder "Abbrevia.cbproj" project.

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• Facebook Like not Pulling Title

  - by matthewb

  I am having some issues with the new facebook like button. It shows up fine, however for some reason it's not pulling the title of the page. I have the and I am using og:title, all are filled in, when I view the source of the iframe created on the load of he button, the in there is blank. I am also trying to put the tweetmeme and that's seeing that title and not the meta, or the normal page title. What am I doing wrong? <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:og="http://opengraphprotocol.org/schema/" xmlns:fb="http://developers.facebook.com/schema/"> <fb:like href="<?=$url?>" layout="button_count" show_faces="false" width="100" font="arial"></fb:like> UPDATE: Complete Head <head> <title>Ladder 15 Gets A New Menu!</title> <meta content="Growing up can be hard to do, especially in the Mad River family. But Ladder 15 has come into its own over the winter.&nbsp; With some new cocktails, wine selection, a hefty new beer list and veteran Chef David Ansill in the kitchen, you can check your fist pump at" name="Description"> <meta content="" name="Keywords"> <meta content="cities2night inc." name="author"> <meta content="Cities2Night 2010" name="copyright"> <meta content="en-us" name="language"> <meta content="General" name="rating"> <meta content="index,follow" name="robots"> <meta content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" http-equiv="Content-Type"> <meta content="Ladder 15 gets a new menu!" name="tweetmeme-title"> <meta content="Ladder 15 gets a new menu!" property="og:title"> <meta content="article" property="og:type"> <meta content="http://philly.cities2night.com/articles/show/listing/11/ladder-15-gets-a-new-menu" property="og:url"> <meta content="http://philly.cities2night.com/public/article_images/11.jpg" property="og:image"> <meta content="c0176da0ec38aaf107c0ef6c8cdeee38" property="fb:app_id"> <meta content="Philly2night.com" property="og:site_name"> <meta content="Growing up can be hard to do, especially in the Mad River family. But Ladder" property="og:description"></head>

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• Estimating the boundary of arbitrarily distributed data

  - by Dave

  I have two dimensional discrete spatial data. I would like to make an approximation of the spatial boundaries of this data so that I can produce a plot with another dataset on top of it. Ideally, this would be an ordered set of (x,y) points that matplotlib can plot with the plt.Polygon() patch. My initial attempt is very inelegant: I place a fine grid over the data, and where data is found in a cell, a square matplotlib patch is created of that cell. The resolution of the boundary thus depends on the sampling frequency of the grid. Here is an example, where the grey region are the cells containing data, black where no data exists. OK, problem solved - why am I still here? Well.... I'd like a more "elegant" solution, or at least one that is faster (ie. I don't want to get on with "real" work, I'd like to have some fun with this!). The best way I can think of is a ray-tracing approach - eg: from xmin to xmax, at y=ymin, check if data boundary crossed in intervals dx y=ymin+dy, do 1 do 1-2, but now sample in y An alternative is defining a centre, and sampling in r-theta space - ie radial spokes in dtheta increments. Both would produce a set of (x,y) points, but then how do I order/link neighbouring points them to create the boundary? A nearest neighbour approach is not appropriate as, for example (to borrow from Geography), an isthmus (think of Panama connecting N&S America) could then close off and isolate regions. This also might not deal very well with the holes seen in the data, which I would like to represent as a different plt.Polygon. The solution perhaps comes from solving an area maximisation problem. For a set of points defining the data limits, what is the maximum contiguous area contained within those points To form the enclosed area, what are the neighbouring points for the nth point? How will the holes be treated in this scheme - is this erring into topology now? Apologies, much of this is me thinking out loud. I'd be grateful for some hints, suggestions or solutions. I suspect this is an oft-studied problem with many solution techniques, but I'm looking for something simple to code and quick to run... I guess everyone is, really! Cheers, David

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• NHibernate Many to Many delete all my data in the table

  - by Daoming Yang

  I would love to thank @Stefan Steinegger and @David helped me out yesterday with many-to-many mapping. I have 3 tables which are "News", "Tags" and "News_Tags" with Many-To-Many relationship and the "News_Tags" is the link table. If I delete one of the news records, the following mappings will delete all my news records which have the same tags. One thing I need to notice, I only allowed unique tag stored in the "Tag" table. This mapping make sense for me, it will delete the tag and related News records, but how can I implement a tagging system with NHibernate? Can anyone give me some suggestion? Many thanks. Daoming. News Mapping: <class name="New" table="News" lazy="false"> <id name="NewID"> <generator class="identity" /> </id> <property name="Title" type="String"></property> <property name="Description" type="String"></property> <set name="TagsList" table="New_Tags" lazy="false" inverse="true" cascade="all"> <key column="NewID" /> <many-to-many class="Tag" column="TagID" /> </set> </class> Tag Mapping: <class name="Tag" table="Tags" lazy="false"> <id name="TagID"> <generator class="identity" /> </id> <property name="TagName" type="String"></property> <property name="DateCreated" type="DateTime"></property> <!--inverse="true" has been defined in the "News mapping"--> <set name="NewsList" table="New_Tags" lazy="false" cascade="all"> <key column="TagID" /> <many-to-many class="New" column="NewID" /> </set> </class>

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• Javascript and VERY LONG string

  - by StealthRT

  Hey all, i am having problems with the below code: function showTableData() { var tableArray; var x = 0; var theHTML; for (i = 0; i < 7032; i++) { if (x = 0) { theHTML = '<tr>' + '<th scope="row" class="spec">' + partNum[i] + '</th>' + '<td>' + Msrp[i] + '</td>' + '<td>' + blah[i] + '</td>' + '<td>' + blahs[i] + '</td>' + '</tr>' + theHTML; x++; }else{ theHTML = '<tr>' + '<th scope="row" class="specalt">' + partNum[i] + '</th>' + '<td class="alt">' + Msrp[i] + '</td>' + '<td class="alt">' + blah[i] + '</td>' + '<td class="alt">' + blahs[i] + '</td>' + '</tr>' + theHTML; x--; } } theHTML = '<table id="mytable" cellspacing="0">' + '<tr>' + '<th scope="col" abbr="Configurations" class="nobg">Part Number</th>' + '<th scope="col" abbr="Dual 1.8">Msrp Price</th>' + '<th scope="col" abbr="Dual 2">blahs Price</th>' + '<th scope="col" abbr="Dual 2.5">Low Price</th>' + '</tr>' + theHTML + '</table>'; $('#example').append(theHTML); } </script> <div id="example"> </div> The problem being that the $('#example').append(theHTML); never executes (or shows on the page). I think its because the string is soooooo long! It has over 7,000 items in the array so im not sure if thats the reason or if its something else? Any help would be great! Thanks! David

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• How to iterate a list inside a list in java?

  - by user2142786

  Hi i have two value object classes . package org.array; import java.util.List; public class Father { private String name; private int age ; private List<Children> Childrens; public String getName() { return name; } public void setName(String name) { this.name = name; } public int getAge() { return age; } public void setAge(int age) { this.age = age; } public List<Children> getChildrens() { return Childrens; } public void setChildrens(List<Children> childrens) { Childrens = childrens; } } second is for children package org.array; public class Children { private String name; private int age ; public String getName() { return name; } public void setName(String name) { this.name = name; } public int getAge() { return age; } public void setAge(int age) { this.age = age; } } and i want to print there value i nested a list inside a list here i am putting only a single value inside the objects while in real i have many values . so i am nesting list of children inside father list. how can i print or get the value of child and father both. here is my logic. package org.array; import java.util.ArrayList; import java.util.Iterator; import java.util.List; public class ArrayDemo { public static void main(String[] args) { List <Father> fatherList = new ArrayList<Father>(); Father father = new Father(); father.setName("john"); father.setAge(25); fatherList.add(father); List <Children> childrens = new ArrayList<Children>(); Children children = new Children(); children.setName("david"); children.setAge(2); childrens.add(children); father.setChildrens(childrens); fatherList.add(father); Iterator<Father> iterator = fatherList.iterator(); while (iterator.hasNext()) { System.out.println(iterator.toString()); } } }

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• Conversation as User Assistance

  - by ultan o'broin

  Applications User Experience members (Erika Web, Laurie Pattison, and I) attended the User Assistance Europe Conference in Stockholm, Sweden. We were impressed with the thought leadership and practical application of ideas in Anne Gentle's keynote address "Social Web Strategies for Documentation". After the conference, we spoke with Anne to explore the ideas further. Anne Gentle (left) with Applications User Experience Senior Director Laurie Pattison In Anne's book called Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation, she explains how user assistance is undergoing a seismic shift. The direction is away from the old print manuals and online help concept towards a web-based, user community-driven solution using social media tools. User experience professionals now have a vast range of such tools to start and nurture this "conversation": blogs, wikis, forums, social networking sites, microblogging systems, image and video sharing sites, virtual worlds, podcasts, instant messaging, mashups, and so on. That user communities are a rich source of user assistance is not a surprise, but the extent of available assistance is. For example, we know from the Consortium for Service Innovation that there has been an 'explosion' of user-generated content on the web. User-initiated community conversations provide as much as 30 times the number of official help desk solutions for consortium members! The growing reliance on user community solutions is clearly a user experience issue. Anne says that user assistance as conversation "means getting closer to users and helping them perform well. User-centered design has been touted as one of the most important ideas developed in the last 20 years of workplace writing. Now writers can take the idea of user-centered design a step further by starting conversations with users and enabling user assistance in interactions." Some of Anne's favorite examples of this paradigm shift from the world of traditional documentation to community conversation include: Writer Bob Bringhurst's blog about Adobe InDesign and InCopy products and Adobe's community help The Microsoft Development Network Community Center ·The former Sun (now Oracle) OpenDS wiki, NetBeans Ruby and other community approaches to engage diverse audiences using screencasts, wikis, and blogs. Cisco's customer support wiki, EMC's community, as well as Symantec and Intuit's approaches The efforts of Ubuntu, Mozilla, and the FLOSS community generally Adobe Writer Bob Bringhurst's Blog Oracle is not without a user community conversation too. Besides the community discussions and blogs around documentation offerings, we have the My Oracle Support Community forums, Oracle Technology Network (OTN) communities, wiki, blogs, and so on. We have the great work done by our user groups and customer councils. Employees like David Haimes reach out, and enthusiastic non-employee gurus like Chet Justice (OracleNerd), Floyd Teter and Eddie Awad provide great "how-to" information too. But what does this paradigm shift mean for existing technical writers as users turn away from the traditional printable PDF manual deliverables? We asked Anne after the conference. The writer role becomes one of conversation initiator or enabler. The role evolves, along with the process, as the users define their concept of user assistance and terms of engagement with the product instead of having it pre-determined. It is largely a case now of "inventing the job while you're doing it, instead of being hired for it" Anne said. There is less emphasis on formal titles. Anne mentions that her own title "Content Stacker" at OpenStack; others use titles such as "Content Curator" or "Community Lead". However, the role remains one essentially about communications, "but of a new type--interacting with users, moderating, curating content, instead of sitting down to write a manual from start to finish." Clearly then, this role is open to more than professional technical writers. Product managers who write blogs, developers who moderate forums, support professionals who update wikis, rock star programmers with a penchant for YouTube are ideal. Anyone with the product knowledge, empathy for the user, and flair for relationships on the social web can join in. Some even perform these roles already but do not realize it. Anne feels the technical communicator space will move from hiring new community conversation professionals (who are already active in the space through blogging, tweets, wikis, and so on) to retraining some existing writers over time. Our own research reveals that the established proponents of community user assistance even set employee performance objectives for internal content curators about the amount of community content delivered by people outside the organization! To take advantage of the conversations on the web as user assistance, enterprises must first establish where on the spectrum their community lies. "What is the line between community willingness to contribute and the enterprise objectives?" Anne asked. "The relationship with users must be managed and also measured." Anne believes that the process can start with a "just do it" approach. Begin by reaching out to existing user groups, individual bloggers and tweeters, forum posters, early adopter program participants, conference attendees, customer advisory board members, and so on. Use analytical tools to measure the level of conversation about your products and services to show a return on investment (ROI), winning management support. Anne emphasized that success with the community model is dependent on lowering the technical and motivational barriers so that users can readily contribute to the conversation. Simple tools must be provided, and guidelines, if any, must be straightforward but not mandatory. The conversational approach is one where traditional style and branding guides do not necessarily apply. Tools and infrastructure help users to create content easily, to search and find the information online, read it, rate it, translate it, and participate further in the content's evolution. Recognizing contributors by using ratings on forums, giving out Twitter kudos, conference invitations, visits to headquarters, free products, preview releases, and so on, also encourages the adoption of the conversation model. The move to conversation as user assistance is not free, but there is a business ROI. The conversational model means that customer service is enhanced, as user experience moves from a functional to a valued, emotional level. Studies show a positive correlation between loyalty and financial performance (Consortium for Service Innovation, 2010), and as customer experience and loyalty become key differentiators, user experience professionals cannot explore the model's possibilities. The digital universe (measured at 1.2 million petabytes in 2010) is doubling every 12 to 18 months, and 70 percent of that universe consists of user-generated content (IDC, 2010). Conversation as user assistance cannot be ignored but must be embraced. It is a time to manage for abundance, not scarcity. Besides, the conversation approach certainly sounds more interesting, rewarding, and fun than the traditional model! I would like to thank Anne for her time and thoughts, and recommend that all user assistance professionals read her book. You can follow Anne on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/annegentle. Oracle's Acrolinx IQ deployment was used to author this article.

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• Using VLOOKUP in Excel

  - by Mark Virtue

  VLOOKUP is one of Excel’s most useful functions, and it’s also one of the least understood.  In this article, we demystify VLOOKUP by way of a real-life example.  We’ll create a usable Invoice Template for a fictitious company. So what is VLOOKUP?  Well, of course it’s an Excel function.  This article will assume that the reader already has a passing understanding of Excel functions, and can use basic functions such as SUM, AVERAGE, and TODAY.  In its most common usage, VLOOKUP is a database function, meaning that it works with database tables – or more simply, lists of things in an Excel worksheet.  What sort of things?   Well, any sort of thing.  You may have a worksheet that contains a list of employees, or products, or customers, or CDs in your CD collection, or stars in the night sky.  It doesn’t really matter. Here’s an example of a list, or database.  In this case it’s a list of products that our fictitious company sells: Usually lists like this have some sort of unique identifier for each item in the list.  In this case, the unique identifier is in the “Item Code” column.  Note:  For the VLOOKUP function to work with a database/list, that list must have a column containing the unique identifier (or “key”, or “ID”), and that column must be the first column in the table.  Our sample database above satisfies this criterion. The hardest part of using VLOOKUP is understanding exactly what it’s for.  So let’s see if we can get that clear first: VLOOKUP retrieves information from a database/list based on a supplied instance of the unique identifier. Put another way, if you put the VLOOKUP function into a cell and pass it one of the unique identifiers from your database, it will return you one of the pieces of information associated with that unique identifier.  In the example above, you would pass VLOOKUP an item code, and it would return to you either the corresponding item’s description, its price, or its availability (its “In stock” quantity).  Which of these pieces of information will it pass you back?  Well, you get to decide this when you’re creating the formula. If all you need is one piece of information from the database, it would be a lot of trouble to go to to construct a formula with a VLOOKUP function in it.  Typically you would use this sort of functionality in a reusable spreadsheet, such as a template.  Each time someone enters a valid item code, the system would retrieve all the necessary information about the corresponding item. Let’s create an example of this:  An Invoice Template that we can reuse over and over in our fictitious company. First we start Excel… …and we create ourselves a blank invoice: This is how it’s going to work:  The person using the invoice template will fill in a series of item codes in column “A”, and the system will retrieve each item’s description and price, which will be used to calculate the line total for each item (assuming we enter a valid quantity). For the purposes of keeping this example simple, we will locate the product database on a separate sheet in the same workbook: In reality, it’s more likely that the product database would be located in a separate workbook.  It makes little difference to the VLOOKUP function, which doesn’t really care if the database is located on the same sheet, a different sheet, or a completely different workbook. In order to test the VLOOKUP formula we’re about to write, we first enter a valid item code into cell A11: Next, we move the active cell to the cell in which we want information retrieved from the database by VLOOKUP to be stored.  Interestingly, this is the step that most people get wrong.  To explain further:  We are about to create a VLOOKUP formula that will retrieve the description that corresponds to the item code in cell A11.  Where do we want this description put when we get it?  In cell B11, of course.  So that’s where we write the VLOOKUP formula – in cell B11. Select cell B11: We need to locate the list of all available functions that Excel has to offer, so that we can choose VLOOKUP and get some assistance in completing the formula.  This is found by first clicking the Formulas tab, and then clicking Insert Function:   A box appears that allows us to select any of the functions available in Excel.  To find the one we’re looking for, we could type a search term like “lookup” (because the function we’re interested in is a lookup function).  The system would return us a list of all lookup-related functions in Excel.  VLOOKUP is the second one in the list.  Select it an click OK… The Function Arguments box appears, prompting us for all the arguments (or parameters) needed in order to complete the VLOOKUP function.  You can think of this box as the function is asking us the following questions: What unique identifier are you looking up in the database? Where is the database? Which piece of information from the database, associated with the unique identifier, do you wish to have retrieved for you? The first three arguments are shown in bold, indicating that they are mandatory arguments (the VLOOKUP function is incomplete without them and will not return a valid value).  The fourth argument is not bold, meaning that it’s optional:   We will complete the arguments in order, top to bottom. The first argument we need to complete is the Lookup_value argument.  The function needs us to tell it where to find the unique identifier (the item code in this case) that it should be retuning the description of.  We must select the item code we entered earlier (in A11). Click on the selector icon to the right of the first argument: Then click once on the cell containing the item code (A11), and press Enter: The value of “A11” is inserted into the first argument. Now we need to enter a value for the Table_array argument.  In other words, we need to tell VLOOKUP where to find the database/list.  Click on the selector icon next to the second argument: Now locate the database/list and select the entire list – not including the header line.  The database is located on a separate worksheet, so we first click on that worksheet tab: Next we select the entire database, not including the header line: …and press Enter.  The range of cells that represents the database (in this case “’Product Database’!A2:D7”) is entered automatically for us into the second argument. Now we need to enter the third argument, Col_index_num.  We use this argument to specify to VLOOKUP which piece of information from the database, associate with our item code in A11, we wish to have returned to us.  In this particular example, we wish to have the item’s description returned to us.  If you look on the database worksheet, you’ll notice that the “Description” column is the second column in the database.  This means that we must enter a value of “2” into the Col_index_num box: It is important to note that that we are not entering a “2” here because the “Description” column is in the B column on that worksheet.  If the database happened to start in column K of the worksheet, we would still enter a “2” in this field. Finally, we need to decide whether to enter a value into the final VLOOKUP argument, Range_lookup.  This argument requires either a true or false value, or it should be left blank.  When using VLOOKUP with databases (as is true 90% of the time), then the way to decide what to put in this argument can be thought of as follows: If the first column of the database (the column that contains the unique identifiers) is sorted alphabetically/numerically in ascending order, then it’s possible to enter a value of true into this argument, or leave it blank. If the first column of the database is not sorted, or it’s sorted in descending order, then you must enter a value of false into this argument As the first column of our database is not sorted, we enter false into this argument: That’s it!  We’ve entered all the information required for VLOOKUP to return the value we need.  Click the OK button and notice that the description corresponding to item code “R99245” has been correctly entered into cell B11: The formula that was created for us looks like this: If we enter a different item code into cell A11, we will begin to see the power of the VLOOKUP function:  The description cell changes to match the new item code: We can perform a similar set of steps to get the item’s price returned into cell E11.  Note that the new formula must be created in cell E11.  The result will look like this: …and the formula will look like this: Note that the only difference between the two formulae is the third argument (Col_index_num) has changed from a “2” to a “3” (because we want data retrieved from the 3rd column in the database). If we decided to buy 2 of these items, we would enter a “2” into cell D11.  We would then enter a simple formula into cell F11 to get the line total: =D11*E11 …which looks like this… Completing the Invoice Template We’ve learned a lot about VLOOKUP so far.  In fact, we’ve learned all we’re going to learn in this article.  It’s important to note that VLOOKUP can be used in other circumstances besides databases.  This is less common, and may be covered in future How-To Geek articles. Our invoice template is not yet complete.  In order to complete it, we would do the following: We would remove the sample item code from cell A11 and the “2” from cell D11.  This will cause our newly created VLOOKUP formulae to display error messages: We can remedy this by judicious use of Excel’s IF() and ISBLANK() functions.  We change our formula from this…       =VLOOKUP(A11,’Product Database’!A2:D7,2,FALSE) …to this…       =IF(ISBLANK(A11),”",VLOOKUP(A11,’Product Database’!A2:D7,2,FALSE)) We would copy the formulas in cells B11, E11 and F11 down to the remainder of the item rows of the invoice.  Note that if we do this, the resulting formulas will no longer correctly refer to the database table.  We could fix this by changing the cell references for the database to absolute cell references.  Alternatively – and even better – we could create a range name for the entire product database (such as “Products”), and use this range name instead of the cell references.  The formula would change from this…       =IF(ISBLANK(A11),”",VLOOKUP(A11,’Product Database’!A2:D7,2,FALSE)) …to this…       =IF(ISBLANK(A11),”",VLOOKUP(A11,Products,2,FALSE)) …and then copy the formulas down to the rest of the invoice item rows. We would probably “lock” the cells that contain our formulae (or rather unlock the other cells), and then protect the worksheet, in order to ensure that our carefully constructed formulae are not accidentally overwritten when someone comes to fill in the invoice. We would save the file as a template, so that it could be reused by everyone in our company If we were feeling really clever, we would create a database of all our customers in another worksheet, and then use the customer ID entered in cell F5 to automatically fill in the customer’s name and address in cells B6, B7 and B8. If you would like to practice with VLOOKUP, or simply see our resulting Invoice Template, it can be downloaded from here. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Make Excel 2007 Print Gridlines In Workbook FileMake Excel 2007 Always Save in Excel 2003 FormatConvert Older Excel Documents to Excel 2007 FormatImport Microsoft Access Data Into ExcelChange the Default Font in Excel 2007 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Classic Cinema Online offers 100’s of OnDemand Movies OutSync will Sync Photos of your Friends on Facebook and Outlook Windows 7 Easter Theme YoWindoW, a real time weather screensaver Optimize your computer the Microsoft way Stormpulse provides slick, real time weather data

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• Community Conversation

  - by ultan o'broin

  Applications User Experience members (Erika Webb, Laurie Pattison, and I) attended the User Assistance Europe Conference in Stockholm, Sweden. We were impressed with the thought leadership and practical application of ideas in Anne Gentle's keynote address "Social Web Strategies for Documentation". After the conference, we spoke with Anne to explore the ideas further. Applications User Experience Senior Director Laurie Pattison (left) with Anne Gentle at the User Assistance Europe Conference In Anne's book called Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation, she explains how user assistance is undergoing a seismic shift. The direction is away from the old print manuals and online help concept towards a web-based, user community-driven solution using social media tools. User experience professionals now have a vast range of such tools to start and nurture this "conversation": blogs, wikis, forums, social networking sites, microblogging systems, image and video sharing sites, virtual worlds, podcasts, instant messaging, mashups, and so on. That user communities are a rich source of user assistance is not a surprise, but the extent of available assistance is. For example, we know from the Consortium for Service Innovation that there has been an 'explosion' of user-generated content on the web. User-initiated community conversations provide as much as 30 times the number of official help desk solutions for consortium members! The growing reliance on user community solutions is clearly a user experience issue. Anne says that user assistance as conversation "means getting closer to users and helping them perform well. User-centered design has been touted as one of the most important ideas developed in the last 20 years of workplace writing. Now writers can take the idea of user-centered design a step further by starting conversations with users and enabling user assistance in interactions." Some of Anne's favorite examples of this paradigm shift from the world of traditional documentation to community conversation include: * Writer Bob Bringhurst's blog about Adobe InDesign and InCopy products and Adobe's community help * The Microsoft Development Network Community Center * ·The former Sun (now Oracle) OpenDS wiki, NetBeans Ruby and other community approaches to engage diverse audiences using screencasts, wikis, and blogs. * Cisco's customer support wiki, EMC's community, as well as Symantec and Intuit's approaches * The efforts of Ubuntu, Mozilla, and the FLOSS community generally Adobe Writer Bob Bringhurst's Blog Oracle is not without a user community conversation too. Besides the community discussions and blogs around documentation offerings, we have the My Oracle Support Community forums, Oracle Technology Network (OTN) communities, wiki, blogs, and so on. We have the great work done by our user groups and customer councils. Employees like David Haimes are reaching out, and enthusiastic non-employee gurus like Chet Justice (OracleNerd), Floyd Teter and Eddie Awad provide great "how-to" information too. But what does this paradigm shift mean for existing technical writers as users turn away from the traditional printable PDF manual deliverables? We asked Anne after the conference. The writer role becomes one of conversation initiator or enabler. The role evolves, along with the process, as the users define their concept of user assistance and terms of engagement with the product instead of having it pre-determined. It is largely a case now of "inventing the job while you're doing it, instead of being hired for it" Anne said. There is less emphasis on formal titles. Anne mentions that her own title "Content Stacker" at OpenStack; others use titles such as "Content Curator" or "Community Lead". However, the role remains one essentially about communications, "but of a new type--interacting with users, moderating, curating content, instead of sitting down to write a manual from start to finish." Clearly then, this role is open to more than professional technical writers. Product managers who write blogs, developers who moderate forums, support professionals who update wikis, rock star programmers with a penchant for YouTube are ideal. Anyone with the product knowledge, empathy for the user, and flair for relationships on the social web can join in. Some even perform these roles already but do not realize it. Anne feels the technical communicator space will move from hiring new community conversation professionals (who are already active in the space through blogging, tweets, wikis, and so on) to retraining some existing writers over time. Our own research reveals that the established proponents of community user assistance even set employee performance objectives for internal content curators about the amount of community content delivered by people outside the organization! To take advantage of the conversations on the web as user assistance, enterprises must first establish where on the spectrum their community lies. "What is the line between community willingness to contribute and the enterprise objectives?" Anne asked. "The relationship with users must be managed and also measured." Anne believes that the process can start with a "just do it" approach. Begin by reaching out to existing user groups, individual bloggers and tweeters, forum posters, early adopter program participants, conference attendees, customer advisory board members, and so on. Use analytical tools to measure the level of conversation about your products and services to show a return on investment (ROI), winning management support. Anne emphasized that success with the community model is dependent on lowering the technical and motivational barriers so that users can readily contribute to the conversation. Simple tools must be provided, and guidelines, if any, must be straightforward but not mandatory. The conversational approach is one where traditional style and branding guides do not necessarily apply. Tools and infrastructure help users to create content easily, to search and find the information online, read it, rate it, translate it, and participate further in the content's evolution. Recognizing contributors by using ratings on forums, giving out Twitter kudos, conference invitations, visits to headquarters, free products, preview releases, and so on, also encourages the adoption of the conversation model. The move to conversation as user assistance is not free, but there is a business ROI. The conversational model means that customer service is enhanced, as user experience moves from a functional to a valued, emotional level. Studies show a positive correlation between loyalty and financial performance (Consortium for Service Innovation, 2010), and as customer experience and loyalty become key differentiators, user experience professionals cannot explore the model's possibilities. The digital universe (measured at 1.2 million petabytes in 2010) is doubling every 12 to 18 months, and 70 percent of that universe consists of user-generated content (IDC, 2010). Conversation as user assistance cannot be ignored but must be embraced. It is a time to manage for abundance, not scarcity. Besides, the conversation approach certainly sounds more interesting, rewarding, and fun than the traditional model! I would like to thank Anne for her time and thoughts, and recommend that all user assistance professionals read her book. You can follow Anne on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/annegentle. Oracle's Acrolinx IQ deployment was used to author this article.

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• Base de Datos Oracle, su mejor opción para reducir costos de IT

  - by Ivan Hassig

  Por Victoria Cadavid Sr. Sales Cosultant Oracle Direct Uno de los principales desafíos en la administración de centros de datos es la reducción de costos de operación. A medida que las compañías crecen y los proveedores de tecnología ofrecen soluciones cada vez más robustas, conservar el equilibrio entre desempeño, soporte al negocio y gestión del Costo Total de Propiedad es un desafío cada vez mayor para los Gerentes de Tecnología y para los Administradores de Centros de Datos. Las estrategias más comunes para conseguir reducción en los costos de administración de Centros de Datos y en la gestión de Tecnología de una organización en general, se enfocan en la mejora del desempeño de las aplicaciones, reducción del costo de administración y adquisición de hardware, reducción de los costos de almacenamiento, aumento de la productividad en la administración de las Bases de Datos y mejora en la atención de requerimientos y prestación de servicios de mesa de ayuda, sin embargo, las estrategias de reducción de costos deben contemplar también la reducción de costos asociados a pérdida y robo de información, cumplimiento regulatorio, generación de valor y continuidad del negocio, que comúnmente se conciben como iniciativas aisladas que no siempre se adelantan con el ánimo de apoyar la reducción de costos. Una iniciativa integral de reducción de costos de TI, debe contemplar cada uno de los factores que  generan costo y pueden ser optimizados. En este artículo queremos abordar la reducción de costos de tecnología a partir de la adopción del que según los expertos es el motor de Base de Datos # del mercado.Durante años, la base de datos Oracle ha sido reconocida por su velocidad, confiabilidad, seguridad y capacidad para soportar cargas de datos tanto de aplicaciones altamente transaccionales, como de Bodegas de datos e incluso análisis de Big Data , ofreciendo alto desempeño y facilidades de administración, sin embrago, cuando pensamos en proyectos de reducción de costos de IT, además de la capacidad para soportar aplicaciones (incluso aplicaciones altamente transaccionales) con alto desempeño, pensamos en procesos de automatización, optimización de recursos, consolidación, virtualización e incluso alternativas más cómodas de licenciamiento. La Base de Datos Oracle está diseñada para proveer todas las capacidades que un área de tecnología necesita para reducir costos, adaptándose a los diferentes escenarios de negocio y a las capacidades y características de cada organización.Es así, como además del motor de Base de Datos, Oracle ofrece una serie de soluciones para optimizar la administración de la información a través de mecanismos de optimización del uso del storage, continuidad del Negocio, consolidación de infraestructura, seguridad y administración automática, que propenden por un mejor uso de los recursos de tecnología, ofrecen opciones avanzadas de configuración y direccionan la reducción de los tiempos de las tareas operativas más comunes. Una de las opciones de la base de datos que se pueden provechar para reducir costos de hardware es Oracle Real Application Clusters. Esta solución de clustering permite que varios servidores (incluso servidores de bajo costo) trabajen en conjunto para soportar Grids o Nubes Privadas de Bases de Datos, proporcionando los beneficios de la consolidación de infraestructura, los esquemas de alta disponibilidad, rápido desempeño y escalabilidad por demanda, haciendo que el aprovisionamiento, el mantenimiento de las bases de datos y la adición de nuevos nodos se lleve e cabo de una forma más rápida y con menos riesgo, además de apalancar las inversiones en servidores de menor costo. Otra de las soluciones que promueven la reducción de costos de Tecnología es Oracle In-Memory Database Cache que permite almacenar y procesar datos en la memoria de las aplicaciones, permitiendo el máximo aprovechamiento de los recursos de procesamiento de la capa media, lo que cobra mucho valor en escenarios de alta transaccionalidad. De este modo se saca el mayor provecho de los recursos de procesamiento evitando crecimiento innecesario en recursos de hardware. Otra de las formas de evitar inversiones innecesarias en hardware, aprovechando los recursos existentes, incluso en escenarios de alto crecimiento de los volúmenes de información es la compresión de los datos. Oracle Advanced Compression permite comprimir hasta 4 veces los diferentes tipos de datos, mejorando la capacidad de almacenamiento, sin comprometer el desempeño de las aplicaciones. Desde el lado del almacenamiento también se pueden conseguir reducciones importantes de los costos de IT. En este escenario, la tecnología propia de la base de Datos Oracle ofrece capacidades de Administración Automática del Almacenamiento que no solo permiten una distribución óptima de los datos en los discos físicos para garantizar el máximo desempeño, sino que facilitan el aprovisionamiento y la remoción de discos defectuosos y ofrecen balanceo y mirroring, garantizando el uso máximo de cada uno de los dispositivos y la disponibilidad de los datos. Otra de las soluciones que facilitan la administración del almacenamiento es Oracle Partitioning, una opción de la Base de Datos que permite dividir grandes tablas en estructuras más pequeñas. Esta aproximación facilita la administración del ciclo de vida de la información y permite por ejemplo, separar los datos históricos (que generalmente se convierten en información de solo lectura y no tienen un alto volumen de consulta) y enviarlos a un almacenamiento de bajo costos, conservando la data activa en dispositivos de almacenamiento más ágiles. Adicionalmente, Oracle Partitioning facilita la administración de las bases de datos que tienen un gran volumen de registros y mejora el desempeño de la base de datos gracias a la posibilidad de optimizar las consultas haciendo uso únicamente de las particiones relevantes de una tabla o índice en el proceso de búsqueda. Otros factores adicionales, que pueden generar costos innecesarios a los departamentos de Tecnología son: La pérdida, corrupción o robo de datos y la falta de disponibilidad de las aplicaciones para dar soporte al negocio. Para evitar este tipo de situaciones que pueden acarrear multas y pérdida de negocios y de dinero, Oracle ofrece soluciones que permiten proteger y auditar la base de datos, recuperar la información en caso de corrupción o ejecución de acciones que comprometan la integridad de la información y soluciones que permitan garantizar que la información de las aplicaciones tenga una disponibilidad de 7x24. Ya hablamos de los beneficios de Oracle RAC, para facilitar los procesos de Consolidación y mejorar el desempeño de las aplicaciones, sin embrago esta solución, es sumamente útil en escenarios dónde las organizaciones de quieren garantizar una alta disponibilidad de la información, ante fallo de los servidores o en eventos de desconexión planeada para realizar labores de mantenimiento. Además de Oracle RAC, existen soluciones como Oracle Data Guard y Active Data Guard que permiten replicar de forma automática las bases de datos hacia un centro de datos de contingencia, permitiendo una recuperación inmediata ante eventos que deshabiliten por completo un centro de datos. Además de lo anterior, Active Data Guard, permite aprovechar la base de datos de contingencia para realizar labores de consulta, mejorando el desempeño de las aplicaciones. Desde el punto de vista de mejora en la seguridad, Oracle cuenta con soluciones como Advanced security que permite encriptar los datos y los canales a través de los cueles se comparte la información, Total Recall, que permite visualizar los cambios realizados a la base de datos en un momento determinado del tiempo, para evitar pérdida y corrupción de datos, Database Vault que permite restringir el acceso de los usuarios privilegiados a información confidencial, Audit Vault, que permite verificar quién hizo qué y cuándo dentro de las bases de datos de una organización y Oracle Data Masking que permite enmascarar los datos para garantizar la protección de la información sensible y el cumplimiento de las políticas y normas relacionadas con protección de información confidencial, por ejemplo, mientras las aplicaciones pasan del ambiente de desarrollo al ambiente de producción. Como mencionamos en un comienzo, las iniciativas de reducción de costos de tecnología deben apalancarse en estrategias que contemplen los diferentes factores que puedan generar sobre costos, los factores de riesgo que puedan acarrear costos no previsto, el aprovechamiento de los recursos actuales, para evitar inversiones innecesarias y los factores de optimización que permitan el máximo aprovechamiento de las inversiones actuales. Como vimos, todas estas iniciativas pueden ser abordadas haciendo uso de la tecnología de Oracle a nivel de Base de Datos, lo más importante es detectar los puntos críticos a nivel de riesgo, diagnosticar las proporción en que están siendo aprovechados los recursos actuales y definir las prioridades de la organización y del área de IT, para así dar inicio a todas aquellas iniciativas que de forma gradual, van a evitar sobrecostos e inversiones innecesarias, proporcionando un mayor apoyo al negocio y un impacto significativo en la productividad de la organización. Más información http://www.oracle.com/lad/products/database/index.html?ssSourceSiteId=otnes 1Fuente: Market Share: All Software Markets, Worldwide 2011 by Colleen Graham, Joanne Correia, David Coyle, Fabrizio Biscotti, Matthew Cheung, Ruggero Contu, Yanna Dharmasthira, Tom Eid, Chad Eschinger, Bianca Granetto, Hai Hong Swinehart, Sharon Mertz, Chris Pang, Asheesh Raina, Dan Sommer, Bhavish Sood, Marianne D'Aquila, Laurie Wurster and Jie Zhang. - March 29, 2012 2Big Data: Información recopilada desde fuentes no tradicionales como blogs, redes sociales, email, sensores, fotografías, grabaciones en video, etc. que normalmente se encuentran de forma no estructurada y en un gran volumen

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• The last MVVM you'll ever need?

  - by Nuri Halperin

  As my MVC projects mature and grow, the need to have some omnipresent, ambient model properties quickly emerge. The application no longer has only one dynamic pieced of data on the page: A sidebar with a shopping cart, some news flash on the side – pretty common stuff. The rub is that a controller is invoked in context of a single intended request. The rest of the data, even though it could be just as dynamic, is expected to appear on it's own. There are many solutions to this scenario. MVVM prescribes creating elaborate objects which expose your new data as a property on some uber-object with more properties exposing the "side show" ambient data. The reason I don't love this approach is because it forces fairly acute awareness of the view, and soon enough you have many MVVM objects laying around, and views have to start doing null-checks in order to ensure you really supplied all the values before binding to them. Ick. Just as unattractive is the ViewData dictionary. It's not strongly typed, and in both this and the MVVM approach someone has to populate these properties – n'est pas? Where does that live? With MVC2, we get the formerly-futures  feature Html.RenderAction(). The feature allows you plant a line in a view, of the format: <% Html.RenderAction("SessionInterest", "Session"); %> While this syntax looks very clean, I can't help being bothered by it. MVC was touting a very strong separation of concerns, the Model taking on the role of the business logic, the controller handling route and performing minimal view-choosing operations and the views strictly focused on rendering out angled-bracket tags. The RenderAction() syntax has the view calling some controller and invoking it inline with it's runtime rendering. This – to my taste – embeds too much  knowledge of controllers into the view's code – which was allegedly forbidden.  The one way flow "Controller Receive Data –> Controller invoke Model –> Controller select view –> Controller Hand data to view" now gets a "View calls controller and gets it's own data" which is not so one-way anymore. Ick. I toyed with some other solutions a bit, including some base controllers, special view classes etc. My current favorite though is making use of the ExpandoObject and dynamic features with C# 4.0. If you follow Phil Haack or read a bit from David Heyden you can see the general picture emerging. The game changer is that using the new dynamic syntax, one can sprout properties on an object and make use of them in the view. Well that beats having a bunch of uni-purpose MVVM's any day! Rather than statically exposed properties, we'll just use the capability of adding members at runtime. Armed with new ideas and syntax, I went to work: First, I created a factory method to enrich the focuse object: public static class ModelExtension { public static dynamic Decorate(this Controller controller, object mainValue) { dynamic result = new ExpandoObject(); result.Value = mainValue; result.SessionInterest = CodeCampBL.SessoinInterest(); result.TagUsage = CodeCampBL.TagUsage(); return result; } } This gives me a nice fluent way to have the controller add the rest of the ambient "side show" items (SessionInterest, TagUsage in this demo) and expose them all as the Model: public ActionResult Index() { var data = SyndicationBL.Refresh(TWEET_SOURCE_URL); dynamic result = this.Decorate(data); return View(result); } So now what remains is that my view knows to expect a dynamic object (rather than statically typed) so that the ASP.NET page compiler won't barf: <%@ Page Language="C#" Title="Ambient Demo" MasterPageFile="~/Views/Shared/Ambient.Master" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage<dynamic>" %> Notice the generic ViewPage<dynamic>. It doesn't work otherwise. In the page itself, Model.Value property contains the main data returned from the controller. The nice thing about this, is that the master page (Ambient.Master) also inherits from the generic ViewMasterPage<dynamic>. So rather than the page worrying about all this ambient stuff, the side bars and panels for ambient data all reside in a master page, and can be rendered using the RenderPartial() syntax: <% Html.RenderPartial("TagCloud", Model.SessionInterest as Dictionary<string, int>); %> Note here that a cast is necessary. This is because although dynamic is magic, it can't figure out what type this property is, and wants you to give it a type so its binder can figure out the right property to bind to at runtime. I use as, you can cast if you like. So there we go – no violation of MVC, no explosion of MVVM models and voila – right? Well, I could not let this go without a tweak or two more. The first thing to improve, is that some views may not need all the properties. In that case, it would be a waste of resources to populate every property. The solution to this is simple: rather than exposing properties, I change d the factory method to expose lambdas - Func<T> really. So only if and when a view accesses a member of the dynamic object does it load the data. public static class ModelExtension { // take two.. lazy loading! public static dynamic LazyDecorate(this Controller c, object mainValue) { dynamic result = new ExpandoObject(); result.Value = mainValue; result.SessionInterest = new Func<Dictionary<string, int>>(() => CodeCampBL.SessoinInterest()); result.TagUsage = new Func<Dictionary<string, int>>(() => CodeCampBL.TagUsage()); return result; } } Now that lazy loading is in place, there's really no reason not to hook up all and any possible ambient property. Go nuts! Add them all in – they won't get invoked unless used. This now requires changing the signature of usage on the ambient properties methods –adding some parenthesis to the master view: <% Html.RenderPartial("TagCloud", Model.SessionInterest() as Dictionary<string, int>); %> And, of course, the controller needs to call LazyDecorate() rather than the old Decorate(). The final touch is to introduce a convenience method to the my Controller class , so that the tedium of calling Decorate() everywhere goes away. This is done quite simply by adding a bunch of methods, matching View(object), View(string,object) signatures of the Controller class: public ActionResult Index() { var data = SyndicationBL.Refresh(TWEET_SOURCE_URL); return AmbientView(data); } //these methods can reside in a base controller for the solution: public ViewResult AmbientView(dynamic data) { dynamic result = ModelExtension.LazyDecorate(this, data); return View(result); } public ViewResult AmbientView(string viewName, dynamic data) { dynamic result = ModelExtension.LazyDecorate(this, data); return View(viewName, result); } The call to AmbientView now replaces any call the View() that requires the ambient data. DRY sattisfied, lazy loading and no need to replace core pieces of the MVC pipeline. I call this a good MVC day. Enjoy!

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• Agilist, Heal Thyself!

  - by Dylan Smith

  I’ve been meaning to blog about a great experience I had earlier in the year at Prairie Dev Con Calgary.  Myself and Steve Rogalsky did a session that we called “Agilist, Heal Thyself!”.  We used a format that was new to me, but that Steve had seen used at another conference.  What we did was start by asking the audience to give us a list of challenges they had had when adopting agile.  We wrote them all down, then had everybody vote on the most interesting ones.  Then we split into two groups, and each group was assigned one of the agile challenges.  We had 20 minutes to discuss the challenge, and suggest solutions or approaches to improve things.  At the end of the 20 minutes, each of the groups gave a brief summary of their discussion and learning's, then we mixed up the groups and repeated with another 2 challenges. The 2 groups I was part of had some really interesting discussions, and suggestions: Unfinished Stories at the end of Sprints The first agile challenge we tackled, was something that every single Scrum team I have worked with has struggled with.  What happens when you get to the end of a Sprint, and there are some stories that are only partially completed.  The team in question was getting very de-moralized as they felt that every Sprint was a failure as they never had a set of fully completed stories. How do you avoid this? and/or what do you do when it happens? There were 2 pieces of advice that were well received: 1. Try to bring stories to completion before starting new ones.  This is advice I give all my Scrum teams.  If you have a 3-week sprint, what happens all too often is you get to the end of week 2, and a lot of stories are almost done; but almost none are completely done.  This is a Bad Thing.  I encourage the teams I work with to only start a new story as a very last resort.  If you finish your task look at the stories in progress and see if there’s anything you can do to help before moving onto a new story.  In the daily standup, put a focus on seeing what stories got completed yesterday, if a few days go by with none getting completed, be sure this fact is visible to the team and do something about it.  Something I’ve been doing recently is introducing WIP (Work In Progress) limits while using Scrum.  My current team has 2-week sprints, and we usually have about a dozen or stories in a sprint.  We instituted a WIP limit of 4 stories.  If 4 stories have been started but not finished then nobody is allowed to start new stories.  This made it obvious very quickly that our QA tasks were our bottleneck (we have 4 devs, but only 1.5 testers).  The WIP limit forced the developers to start to pickup QA tasks before moving onto the next dev tasks, and we ended our sprints with many more stories completely finished than we did before introducing WIP limits. 2. Rather than using time-boxed sprints, why not just do away with them altogether and go to a continuous flow type approach like KanBan.  Limit WIP to keep things under control, but don’t have a fixed time box at the end of which all tasks are supposed to be done.  This eliminates the problem almost entirely.  At some points in the project (releases) you need to be able to burn down all the half finished stories to get a stable release build, but this probably occurs less often than every sprint, and there are alternative approaches to achieve it using branching strategies rather than forcing your team to try to get to Zero WIP every 2-weeks (e.g. when you are ready for a release, create a new branch for any new stories, but finish all existing stories in the current branch and release it). Trying to Introduce Agile into a team with previous Bad Agile Experiences One of the agile adoption challenges somebody described, was he was in a leadership role on a team he had recently joined – lets call him Dave.  This team was currently very waterfall in their ALM process, but they were about to start on a new green-field project.  Dave wanted to use this new project as an opportunity to do things the “right way”, using an Agile methodology like Scrum, adopting TDD, automated builds, proper branching strategies, etc.  The problem he was facing is everybody else on the team had previously gone through an “Agile Adoption” that was a horrible failure.  Dave blamed this failure on the consultant brought in previously to lead this agile transition, but regardless of the reason, the team had very negative feelings towards agile, and was very resistant to trying it out again.  Dave possibly had the authority to try to force the team to adopt Agile practices, but we all know that doesn’t work very well.  What was Dave to do? Ultimately, the best advice was to question *why* did Dave want to adopt all these various practices. Rather than trying to convince his team that these were the “right way” to run a dev project, and trying to do a Big Bang approach to introducing change.  He would be better served by identifying problems the team currently faces, have a discussion with the team to get everybody to agree that specific problems existed, then have an open discussion about ways to address those problems.  This way Dave could incrementally introduce agile practices, and he doesn’t even need to identify them as “agile” practices if he doesn’t want to.  For example, when we discussed with Dave, he said probably the teams biggest problem was long periods without feedback from users, then finding out too late that the software is not going to meet their needs.  Rather than Dave jumping right to introducing Scrum and all it entails, it would be easier to get buy-in from team if he framed it as a discussion of existing problems, and brainstorming possible solutions.  And possibly most importantly, don’t try to do massive changes all at once with a team that has not bought-into those changes.  Taking an incremental approach has a greater chance of success. I see something similar in my day job all the time too.  Clients who for one reason or another claim to not be fans of agile (or not ready for agile yet).  But then they go on to ask me to help them get shorter feedback cycles, quicker delivery cycles, iterative development processes, etc.  It’s kind of funny at times, sometimes you just need to phrase the suggestions in terms they are using and avoid the word “agile”. PS – I haven’t blogged all that much over the past couple of years, but in an attempt to motivate myself, a few of us have accepted a blogger challenge.  There’s 6 of us who have all put some money into a pool, and the agreement is that we each need to blog at least once every 2-weeks.  The first 2-week period that we miss we’re eliminated.  Last person standing gets the money.  So expect at least one blog post every couple of weeks for the near future (I hope!).  And check out the blogs of the other 5 people in this blogger challenge: Steve Rogalsky: http://winnipegagilist.blogspot.ca Aaron Kowall: http://www.geekswithblogs.net/caffeinatedgeek Tyler Doerkson: http://blog.tylerdoerksen.com David Alpert: http://www.spinthemoose.com Dave White: http://www.agileramblings.com (note: site not available yet.  should be shortly or he owes me some money!)

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• BizTalk server problem

  - by WtFudgE

  Hi, we have a biztalk server (a virtual one (1!)...) at our company, and an sql server where the data is being kept. Now we have a lot of data traffic. I'm talking about hundred of thousands. So I'm actually not even sure if one server is pretty safe, but our company is not that easy to convince. Now recently we have a lot of problems. Allow me to situate in detail, so I'm not missing anything: Our server has 5 applications: One with 3 orchestrations, 12 send ports, 16 receive locations. One with 4 orchestrations, 32 send ports, 20 receive locations. One with 4 orchestrations, 24 send ports, 20 receive locations. One with 47 (yes 47) orchestrations, 37 send ports, 6 receive locations. One with common application with a couple of resources. Our problems have occured since we deployed the applications with the 47 orchestrations. A lot of these orchestrations use assign shapes which use c# code to do the mapping. This is because we use HL7 extensions and this is kind of special, so by using c# code & xpath it was a lot easier to do the mapping because a lot of these schema's look alike. The c# reads in XmlNodes received through xpath, and returns XmlNode which are then assigned again to biztalk messages. I'm not sure if this could be the cause, but I thought I'd mention it. The send and receive ports have a lot of different types: File, MQSeries, SQL, MLLP, FTP. Each of these types have a different host instances, to balance out the load. Our orchestrations use the BiztalkApplication host. On this server also a couple of scripts are running, mostly ftp upload scripts & also a zipper script, which zips files every half an hour in a daily zip and deletes the zip files after a month. We use this zipscript on our backup files (we backup a lot, backups are also on our server), we did this because the server had problems with sending files to a location where there were a lot (A LOT) of files, so after the files were reduced to zips it went better. Now the problems we are having recently are mainly two major problems: Our most important problem is the following. We kept a receive location with a lot of messages on a queue for testing. After we start this receive location which uses the 47 orchestrations, the running service instances start to sky rock. Ok, this is pretty normal. Let's say about 10000, and then we stop the receive location to see how biztalk handles these 10000 instances. Normally they would go down pretty fast, and it does sometimes, but after a while it starts to "throttle", meaning they just stop being processed and the service instances stay at the same number, for example in 30 seconds it goes down from 10000 to 4000 and then it stays at 4000 and it lowers very very very slowly, like 30 in 5minutes or something. So this means, that all the other service instances of the other applications are also stuck in here, and they are also not processed. We noticed that after restarting our host instances the instance number went down fast again. So we tried to selectively restart different host instances to locate the problem. We noticed that eventually restarting the file send/receive host instance would do the trick. So we thought file sends would be the problem. Concidering that we make a lot of backups. So we replaced the file type backups with mqseries backups. The same problem occured, and funny thing, restarting the file send/receive host still fixes the problem. No errors can be found in the event viewer either. A second problem we're having is. That sometimes at arround 6 am, all or a part of the host instances are being stopped. In the event viewer we noticed the following errors (these are more than one): The receive location "MdnBericht SQL" with URL "SQL://ZNACDBPEG/mdnd0001/" is shutting down. Details:"The error threshold has been exceeded. The receive location is shutting down.". The Messaging Engine failed to add a receive location "M2m Othello Export Start Bestand" with URL "\m2mservices\Othello_import$\DataFilter Start*.xml" to the adapter "FILE". Reason: "The FILE adapter cannot access the folder \m2mservices\Othello_import$\DataFilter Start. Verify this folder exists. Error: Logon failure: unknown user name or bad password. ". The FILE adapter cannot access the folder \m2mservices\Othello_import$\DataFilter Start. Verify this folder exists. Error: Logon failure: unknown user name or bad password. An attempt to connect to "BizTalkMsgBoxDb" SQL Server database on server "ZNACDBBTS" failed. Error: "Login failed for user ''. The user is not associated with a trusted SQL Server connection." It woould seem that there's a login failure at this time and that because of it other services are also experiencing problems, and eventually they are shut down. The thing is, our user is admin, and it's impossible that it's password is wrong "sometimes". We have concidering that the problem could be due to an infrastructure problem, but that's not really are department. I know it's a long post, but we're not sure anymore what to do. Would adding another server and balancing the load solve our problems? Is there a way to meassure our balance and know where to start splitting? What are normal numbers of load etc? I appreciate any answers because these issues are getting worse and we're also on a deadline. Thanks a lot for replies!

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• Application crashing when talking to oracle unless executable path contains spaces

  - by Lasse V. Karlsen

  We have an x-files problem with our .NET application. Or, rather, hybrid Win32 and .NET application. When it attempts to communicate with Oracle, it just dies. Vanishes. Goes to the big black void in the sky. No event log message, no exception, no nothing. If we simply ask the application to talk to a MS SQL Server instead, which has the effect of replacing the usage of OracleConnection and related classes with SqlConnection and related classes, it works as expected. Today we had a breakthrough. For some reason, a customer had figured out that by placing all the application files in a directory on his desktop, it worked as expected with Oracle as well. Moving the directory down to the root of the drive, or in C:\Temp or, well, around a bit, made the crash reappear. Basically it was 100% reproducable that the application worked if run from directory on desktop, and failed if run from directory in root. Today we figured out that the difference that counted was wether there was a space in the directory name or not. So, these directories would work: C:\Program Files\AppDir\Executable.exe C:\Temp Lemp\AppDir\Executable.exe C:\Documents and Settings\someuser\Desktop\AppDir\Executable.exe whereas these would not: C:\CompanyName\AppDir\Executable.exe C:\Programfiler\AppDir\Executable.exe <-- Program Files in norwegian C:\Temp\AppDir\Executable.exe I'm hoping someone reading this has seen similar behavior and have a "aha, you need to twiddle the frob on the oracle glitz driver configuration" or similar. Anyone? Followup #1: Ok, I've processed the procmon output now, both files from when I hit the button that attempts to open the window that triggers the cascade failure, and I've noticed that they keep track mostly, there's some smallish differences near the top of both files, and they they keep track a long way down. However, when one run fails, the other keeps going and the next few lines of the log output are these: ReadFile C:\oracle\product\10.2.0\db_1\BIN\orageneric10.dll SUCCESS Offset: 274 432, Length: 32 768, I/O Flags: Non-cached, Paging I/O, Synchronous Paging I/O ReadFile C:\oracle\product\10.2.0\db_1\BIN\orageneric10.dll SUCCESS Offset: 233 472, Length: 32 768, I/O Flags: Non-cached, Paging I/O, Synchronous Paging I/O After this, the working run continues to execute, and the other touches the mscorwks.dll files a few times before threads close down and the app closes. Thus, the failed run does not touch the above files. Followup #2: Figured I'd try to upgrade the oracle client drivers, but 10.2.0.1 is apparently the highest version available for Windows 2003 server and XP clients. Followup #3: Well, we've ended up with a black-box solution. Basically we found that the problem is somewhere related to XPO and Oracle. XPO has a system-table it manages, called XPObjectType, with three columns: Oid, TypeName and AssemblyName. Due to how Oracle is configured in the databases we talk to, the column names were OID, TYPENAME and ASSEMBLYNAME. This would ordinarily not be a problem, except that XPO talks to the schema information directly and checks if the table is there with the right column names, and XPO doesn't handle case differences so it sees a XPObjectType table with three unknown columns and none of those it expects. Exactly what XPO does now I don't really know, but if I dropped this table, and recreated it with the right case, using double quotes around all the column names to get the case right, the problem doesn't crop up. Exactly where the space in the folder name comes into this, I still have no idea, but this problem had two tiers: Stop the application from crashing at our customers, short-term solution Fix the bug, long-term solution Right now tier 1 is solved, tier 2 will be put back into the queue for now and prioritized. We're facing some bigger changes to our data tier anyway so this might not be a problem we need to solve, at least if all our Oracle-customers verify that the table-fix actually gets rid of the problem. I'll accept the answer by Dave Markle since though Process Monitor (the big brother of File Monitor) didn't actually pinpoint the problem, I was able to use it to determine that after my breakpoint in user-code where XPO had built up the query for this table, no I/O happened until all the entries for the application closing down was logged, which led me to believe it was this table that was the culprit, or at least influenced the problem somehow. If I manage to get to the real cause of this, I'll update the post.

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• Building Awesome WM

  - by Dragan Chupacabrovic

  Hello, I am following these steps in order to build Awesome window manager on 10.04 I am building 3.4 while the tutorial is for 3.1 I installed all of the specified dependencies including cairo. EDIT I ran: sudo apt-get install libxcb-xtest0-dev libxcb-property1-dev libxdg-basedir-dev libstartup-notification0-dev and now it looks like I'm missing a library Please advise: awesome-3.4$ make Running cmake… -- cat - /bin/cat -- ln - /bin/ln -- grep - /bin/grep -- git - /usr/bin/git -- hostname - /bin/hostname -- gperf - /usr/bin/gperf -- asciidoc - /usr/bin/asciidoc -- xmlto - /usr/bin/xmlto -- gzip - /bin/gzip -- lua - /usr/bin/lua -- luadoc - /usr/bin/luadoc -- convert - /usr/bin/convert -- Configuring lib/naughty.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/tooltip.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/init.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/titlebar.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/key.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/mouse/init.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/mouse/finder.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/autofocus.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/screen.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/rules.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/widget/init.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/widget/taglist.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/widget/graph.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/widget/tasklist.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/widget/common.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/widget/prompt.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/widget/launcher.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/widget/button.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/widget/layoutbox.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/widget/layout/init.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/widget/layout/vertical.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/widget/layout/horizontal.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/widget/layout/default.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/widget/progressbar.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/widget/textclock.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/dbus.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/remote.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/client.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/prompt.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/completion.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/tag.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/util.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/button.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/menu.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/hooks.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/wibox.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/layout/init.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/layout/suit/init.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/layout/suit/floating.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/layout/suit/fair.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/layout/suit/spiral.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/layout/suit/magnifier.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/layout/suit/tile.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/layout/suit/max.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/placement.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/startup_notification.lua -- Configuring lib/beautiful.lua -- Configuring themes/zenburn//theme.lua -- Configuring themes/default//theme.lua -- Configuring themes/sky//theme.lua -- Configuring config.h -- Configuring awesomerc.lua -- Configuring awesome-version-internal.h -- Configuring awesome.doxygen -- Configuring done -- Generating done -- Build files have been written to: /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/.build-vedroid-i486-linux-gnu-4.4.3 Running make Makefile… Building… [ 4%] Built target generated_sources [ 5%] Building C object CMakeFiles/awesome.dir/awesome.c.o In file included from /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/spawn.h:25, from /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:33: /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/globalconf.h:57: error: expected specifier-qualifier-list before ‘xcb_event_handlers_t’ In file included from /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:34: /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/client.h: In function ‘client_stack’: /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/client.h:212: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘client_need_stack_refresh’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/client.h: In function ‘client_raise’: /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/client.h:227: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘stack’ In file included from /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:42: /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/titlebar.h: In function ‘titlebar_update_geometry’: /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/titlebar.h:150: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘L’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/titlebar.h:151: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘L’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/titlebar.h:152: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘L’ In file included from /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:47: /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/common/xutil.h: In function ‘xutil_get_text_property_from_reply’: /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/common/xutil.h:39: warning: ‘STRING’ is deprecated (declared at /usr/local/include/xcb/xcb_atom.h:83) /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/common/xutil.h: At top level: /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/common/xutil.h:60: error: expected ‘)’ before ‘*’ token /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c: In function ‘awesome_atexit’: /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:65: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘hooks’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:66: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘L’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:66: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘hooks’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:68: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘L’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:73: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘embedded’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:76: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘embedded’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:77: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘embedded’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:89: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘clients’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:89: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘clients’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:89: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘clients’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:89: warning: type defaults to ‘int’ in declaration of ‘c’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:89: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘clients’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:89: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘clients’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:89: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘clients’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:91: error: invalid type argument of ‘unary *’ (have ‘int’) /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:92: error: invalid type argument of ‘unary *’ (have ‘int’) /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:96: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘L’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c: In function ‘a_xcb_check_cb’: /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:223: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘xcb_event_handle’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:223: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘evenths’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:230: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘evenths’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c: In function ‘awesome_restart’: /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:277: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘argv’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c: In function ‘xerror’: /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:305: error: ‘XCB_EVENT_ERROR_BAD_WINDOW’ undeclared (first use in this function) /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:305: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:305: error: for each function it appears in.) /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:306: error: ‘XCB_EVENT_ERROR_BAD_MATCH’ undeclared (first use in this function) /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:308: error: ‘XCB_EVENT_ERROR_BAD_VALUE’ undeclared (first use in this function) /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c: In function ‘main’: /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:369: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘keygrabber’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:370: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘mousegrabber’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:376: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘argv’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:377: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘argv’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:381: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘argv’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:382: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘argv’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:424: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:425: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘timer’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:425: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘timer’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:425: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘timer’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:425: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘timer’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:425: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘timer’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:425: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘timer’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:431: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:432: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:433: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:434: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:435: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:436: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:443: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘default_screen’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:450: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘have_xtest’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:462: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:464: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:465: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:467: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:468: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:471: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘xcb_event_handlers_init’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:471: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘evenths’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:472: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘xutil_error_handler_catch_all_set’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:472: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘evenths’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:490: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘xcb_event_poll_for_event_loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:490: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘evenths’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:493: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘evenths’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:496: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘keysyms’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:507: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘colors’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:510: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘colors’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:513: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘font’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:519: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘keysyms’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:519: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘numlockmask’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:520: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘shiftlockmask’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:520: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘capslockmask’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:521: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘modeswitchmask’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:563: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘evenths’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:572: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:575: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:576: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:577: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:578: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:579: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:580: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ make[3]: * [CMakeFiles/awesome.dir/awesome.c.o] Error 1 make[2]: [CMakeFiles/awesome.dir/all] Error 2 make[1]: [all] Error 2 make: * [cmake-build] Error 2

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• Using FiddlerCore to capture HTTP Requests with .NET

  - by Rick Strahl

  Over the last few weeks I’ve been working on my Web load testing utility West Wind WebSurge. One of the key components of a load testing tool is the ability to capture URLs effectively so that you can play them back later under load. One of the options in WebSurge for capturing URLs is to use its built-in capture tool which acts as an HTTP proxy to capture any HTTP and HTTPS traffic from most Windows HTTP clients, including Web Browsers as well as standalone Windows applications and services. To make this happen, I used Eric Lawrence’s awesome FiddlerCore library, which provides most of the functionality of his desktop Fiddler application, all rolled into an easy to use library that you can plug into your own applications. FiddlerCore makes it almost too easy to capture HTTP content! For WebSurge I needed to capture all HTTP traffic in order to capture the full HTTP request – URL, headers and any content posted by the client. The result of what I ended up creating is this semi-generic capture form: In this post I’m going to demonstrate how easy it is to use FiddlerCore to build this HTTP Capture Form.  If you want to jump right in here are the links to get Telerik’s Fiddler Core and the code for the demo provided here. FiddlerCore Download FiddlerCore on NuGet Show me the Code (WebSurge Integration code from GitHub) Download the WinForms Sample Form West Wind Web Surge (example implementation in live app) Note that FiddlerCore is bound by a license for commercial usage – see license.txt in the FiddlerCore distribution for details. Integrating FiddlerCore FiddlerCore is a library that simply plugs into your application. You can download it from the Telerik site and manually add the assemblies to your project, or you can simply install the NuGet package via:       PM> Install-Package FiddlerCore The library consists of the FiddlerCore.dll as well as a couple of support libraries (CertMaker.dll and BCMakeCert.dll) that are used for installing SSL certificates. I’ll have more on SSL captures and certificate installation later in this post. But first let’s see how easy it is to use FiddlerCore to capture HTTP content by looking at how to build the above capture form. Capturing HTTP Content Once the library is installed it’s super easy to hook up Fiddler functionality. Fiddler includes a number of static class methods on the FiddlerApplication object that can be called to hook up callback events as well as actual start monitoring HTTP URLs. In the following code directly lifted from WebSurge, I configure a few filter options on Form level object, from the user inputs shown on the form by assigning it to a capture options object. In the live application these settings are persisted configuration values, but in the demo they are one time values initialized and set on the form. Once these options are set, I hook up the AfterSessionComplete event to capture every URL that passes through the proxy after the request is completed and start up the Proxy service:void Start() { if (tbIgnoreResources.Checked) CaptureConfiguration.IgnoreResources = true; else CaptureConfiguration.IgnoreResources = false; string strProcId = txtProcessId.Text; if (strProcId.Contains('-')) strProcId = strProcId.Substring(strProcId.IndexOf('-') + 1).Trim(); strProcId = strProcId.Trim(); int procId = 0; if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(strProcId)) { if (!int.TryParse(strProcId, out procId)) procId = 0; } CaptureConfiguration.ProcessId = procId; CaptureConfiguration.CaptureDomain = txtCaptureDomain.Text; FiddlerApplication.AfterSessionComplete += FiddlerApplication_AfterSessionComplete; FiddlerApplication.Startup(8888, true, true, true); } The key lines for FiddlerCore are just the last two lines of code that include the event hookup code as well as the Startup() method call. Here I only hook up to the AfterSessionComplete event but there are a number of other events that hook various stages of the HTTP request cycle you can also hook into. Other events include BeforeRequest, BeforeResponse, RequestHeadersAvailable, ResponseHeadersAvailable and so on. In my case I want to capture the request data and I actually have several options to capture this data. AfterSessionComplete is the last event that fires in the request sequence and it’s the most common choice to capture all request and response data. I could have used several other events, but AfterSessionComplete is one place where you can look both at the request and response data, so this will be the most common place to hook into if you’re capturing content. The implementation of AfterSessionComplete is responsible for capturing all HTTP request headers and it looks something like this:private void FiddlerApplication_AfterSessionComplete(Session sess) { // Ignore HTTPS connect requests if (sess.RequestMethod == "CONNECT") return; if (CaptureConfiguration.ProcessId > 0) { if (sess.LocalProcessID != 0 && sess.LocalProcessID != CaptureConfiguration.ProcessId) return; } if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(CaptureConfiguration.CaptureDomain)) { if (sess.hostname.ToLower() != CaptureConfiguration.CaptureDomain.Trim().ToLower()) return; } if (CaptureConfiguration.IgnoreResources) { string url = sess.fullUrl.ToLower(); var extensions = CaptureConfiguration.ExtensionFilterExclusions; foreach (var ext in extensions) { if (url.Contains(ext)) return; } var filters = CaptureConfiguration.UrlFilterExclusions; foreach (var urlFilter in filters) { if (url.Contains(urlFilter)) return; } } if (sess == null || sess.oRequest == null || sess.oRequest.headers == null) return; string headers = sess.oRequest.headers.ToString(); var reqBody = sess.GetRequestBodyAsString(); // if you wanted to capture the response //string respHeaders = session.oResponse.headers.ToString(); //var respBody = session.GetResponseBodyAsString(); // replace the HTTP line to inject full URL string firstLine = sess.RequestMethod + " " + sess.fullUrl + " " + sess.oRequest.headers.HTTPVersion; int at = headers.IndexOf("\r\n"); if (at < 0) return; headers = firstLine + "\r\n" + headers.Substring(at + 1); string output = headers + "\r\n" + (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(reqBody) ? reqBody + "\r\n" : string.Empty) + Separator + "\r\n\r\n"; BeginInvoke(new Action<string>((text) => { txtCapture.AppendText(text); UpdateButtonStatus(); }), output); } The code starts by filtering out some requests based on the CaptureOptions I set before the capture is started. These options/filters are applied when requests actually come in. This is very useful to help narrow down the requests that are captured for playback based on options the user picked. I find it useful to limit requests to a certain domain for captures, as well as filtering out some request types like static resources – images, css, scripts etc. This is of course optional, but I think it’s a common scenario and WebSurge makes good use of this feature. AfterSessionComplete like other FiddlerCore events, provides a Session object parameter which contains all the request and response details. There are oRequest and oResponse objects to hold their respective data. In my case I’m interested in the raw request headers and body only, as you can see in the commented code you can also retrieve the response headers and body. Here the code captures the request headers and body and simply appends the output to the textbox on the screen. Note that the Fiddler events are asynchronous, so in order to display the content in the UI they have to be marshaled back the UI thread with BeginInvoke, which here simply takes the generated headers and appends it to the existing textbox test on the form. As each request is processed, the headers are captured and appended to the bottom of the textbox resulting in a Session HTTP capture in the format that Web Surge internally supports, which is basically raw request headers with a customized 1st HTTP Header line that includes the full URL rather than a server relative URL. When the capture is done the user can either copy the raw HTTP session to the clipboard, or directly save it to file. This raw capture format is the same format WebSurge and also Fiddler use to import/export request data. While this code is application specific, it demonstrates the kind of logic that you can easily apply to the request capture process, which is one of the reasonsof why FiddlerCore is so powerful. You get to choose what content you want to look up as part of your own application logic and you can then decide how to capture or use that data as part of your application. The actual captured data in this case is only a string. The user can edit the data by hand or in the the case of WebSurge, save it to disk and automatically open the captured session as a new load test. Stopping the FiddlerCore Proxy Finally to stop capturing requests you simply disconnect the event handler and call the FiddlerApplication.ShutDown() method:void Stop() { FiddlerApplication.AfterSessionComplete -= FiddlerApplication_AfterSessionComplete; if (FiddlerApplication.IsStarted()) FiddlerApplication.Shutdown(); } As you can see, adding HTTP capture functionality to an application is very straight forward. FiddlerCore offers tons of features I’m not even touching on here – I suspect basic captures are the most common scenario, but a lot of different things can be done with FiddlerCore’s simple API interface. Sky’s the limit! The source code for this sample capture form (WinForms) is provided as part of this article. Adding Fiddler Certificates with FiddlerCore One of the sticking points in West Wind WebSurge has been that if you wanted to capture HTTPS/SSL traffic, you needed to have the full version of Fiddler and have HTTPS decryption enabled. Essentially you had to use Fiddler to configure HTTPS decryption and the associated installation of the Fiddler local client certificate that is used for local decryption of incoming SSL traffic. While this works just fine, requiring to have Fiddler installed and then using a separate application to configure the SSL functionality isn’t ideal. Fortunately FiddlerCore actually includes the tools to register the Fiddler Certificate directly using FiddlerCore. Why does Fiddler need a Certificate in the first Place? Fiddler and FiddlerCore are essentially HTTP proxies which means they inject themselves into the HTTP conversation by re-routing HTTP traffic to a special HTTP port (8888 by default for Fiddler) and then forward the HTTP data to the original client. Fiddler injects itself as the system proxy in using the WinInet Windows settings  which are the same settings that Internet Explorer uses and that are configured in the Windows and Internet Explorer Internet Settings dialog. Most HTTP clients running on Windows pick up and apply these system level Proxy settings before establishing new HTTP connections and that’s why most clients automatically work once Fiddler – or FiddlerCore/WebSurge are running. For plain HTTP requests this just works – Fiddler intercepts the HTTP requests on the proxy port and then forwards them to the original port (80 for HTTP and 443 for SSL typically but it could be any port). For SSL however, this is not quite as simple – Fiddler can easily act as an HTTPS/SSL client to capture inbound requests from the server, but when it forwards the request to the client it has to also act as an SSL server and provide a certificate that the client trusts. This won’t be the original certificate from the remote site, but rather a custom local certificate that effectively simulates an SSL connection between the proxy and the client. If there is no custom certificate configured for Fiddler the SSL request fails with a certificate validation error. The key for this to work is that a custom certificate has to be installed that the HTTPS client trusts on the local machine. For a much more detailed description of the process you can check out Eric Lawrence’s blog post on Certificates. If you’re using the desktop version of Fiddler you can install a local certificate into the Windows certificate store. Fiddler proper does this from the Options menu: This operation does several things: It installs the Fiddler Root Certificate It sets trust to this Root Certificate A new client certificate is generated for each HTTPS site monitored Certificate Installation with FiddlerCore You can also provide this same functionality using FiddlerCore which includes a CertMaker class. Using CertMaker is straight forward to use and it provides an easy way to create some simple helpers that can install and uninstall a Fiddler Root certificate:public static bool InstallCertificate() { if (!CertMaker.rootCertExists()) { if (!CertMaker.createRootCert()) return false; if (!CertMaker.trustRootCert()) return false; } return true; } public static bool UninstallCertificate() { if (CertMaker.rootCertExists()) { if (!CertMaker.removeFiddlerGeneratedCerts(true)) return false; } return true; } InstallCertificate() works by first checking whether the root certificate is already installed and if it isn’t goes ahead and creates a new one. The process of creating the certificate is a two step process – first the actual certificate is created and then it’s moved into the certificate store to become trusted. I’m not sure why you’d ever split these operations up since a cert created without trust isn’t going to be of much value, but there are two distinct steps. When you trigger the trustRootCert() method, a message box will pop up on the desktop that lets you know that you’re about to trust a local private certificate. This is a security feature to ensure that you really want to trust the Fiddler root since you are essentially installing a man in the middle certificate. It’s quite safe to use this generated root certificate, because it’s been specifically generated for your machine and thus is not usable from external sources, the only way to use this certificate in a trusted way is from the local machine. IOW, unless somebody has physical access to your machine, there’s no useful way to hijack this certificate and use it for nefarious purposes (see Eric’s post for more details). Once the Root certificate has been installed, FiddlerCore/Fiddler create new certificates for each site that is connected to with HTTPS. You can end up with quite a few temporary certificates in your certificate store. To uninstall you can either use Fiddler and simply uncheck the Decrypt HTTPS traffic option followed by the remove Fiddler certificates button, or you can use FiddlerCore’s CertMaker.removeFiddlerGeneratedCerts() which removes the root cert and any of the intermediary certificates Fiddler created. Keep in mind that when you uninstall you uninstall the certificate for both FiddlerCore and Fiddler, so use UninstallCertificate() with care and realize that you might affect the Fiddler application’s operation by doing so as well. When to check for an installed Certificate Note that the check to see if the root certificate exists is pretty fast, while the actual process of installing the certificate is a relatively slow operation that even on a fast machine takes a few seconds. Further the trust operation pops up a message box so you probably don’t want to install the certificate repeatedly. Since the check for the root certificate is fast, you can easily put a call to InstallCertificate() in any capture startup code – in which case the certificate installation only triggers when a certificate is in fact not installed. Personally I like to make certificate installation explicit – just like Fiddler does, so in WebSurge I use a small drop down option on the menu to install or uninstall the SSL certificate:   This code calls the InstallCertificate and UnInstallCertificate functions respectively – the experience with this is similar to what you get in Fiddler with the extra dialog box popping up to prompt confirmation for installation of the root certificate. Once the cert is installed you can then capture SSL requests. There’s a gotcha however… Gotcha: FiddlerCore Certificates don’t stick by Default When I originally tried to use the Fiddler certificate installation I ran into an odd problem. I was able to install the certificate and immediately after installation was able to capture HTTPS requests. Then I would exit the application and come back in and try the same HTTPS capture again and it would fail due to a missing certificate. CertMaker.rootCertExists() would return false after every restart and if re-installed the certificate a new certificate would get added to the certificate store resulting in a bunch of duplicated root certificates with different keys. What the heck? CertMaker and BcMakeCert create non-sticky CertificatesI turns out that FiddlerCore by default uses different components from what the full version of Fiddler uses. Fiddler uses a Windows utility called MakeCert.exe to create the Fiddler Root certificate. FiddlerCore however installs the CertMaker.dll and BCMakeCert.dll assemblies, which use a different crypto library (Bouncy Castle) for certificate creation than MakeCert.exe which uses the Windows Crypto API. The assemblies provide support for non-windows operation for Fiddler under Mono, as well as support for some non-Windows certificate platforms like iOS and Android for decryption. The bottom line is that the FiddlerCore provided bouncy castle assemblies are not sticky by default as the certificates created with them are not cached as they are in Fiddler proper. To get certificates to ‘stick’ you have to explicitly cache the certificates in Fiddler’s internal preferences. A cache aware version of InstallCertificate looks something like this:public static bool InstallCertificate() { if (!CertMaker.rootCertExists()) { if (!CertMaker.createRootCert()) return false; if (!CertMaker.trustRootCert()) return false; App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Cert = FiddlerApplication.Prefs.GetStringPref("fiddler.certmaker.bc.cert", null); App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Key = FiddlerApplication.Prefs.GetStringPref("fiddler.certmaker.bc.key", null); } return true; } public static bool UninstallCertificate() { if (CertMaker.rootCertExists()) { if (!CertMaker.removeFiddlerGeneratedCerts(true)) return false; } App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Cert = null; App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Key = null; return true; } In this code I store the Fiddler cert and private key in an application configuration settings that’s stored with the application settings (App.Configuration.UrlCapture object). These settings automatically persist when WebSurge is shut down. The values are read out of Fiddler’s internal preferences store which is set after a new certificate has been created. Likewise I clear out the configuration settings when the certificate is uninstalled. In order for these setting to be used you have to also load the configuration settings into the Fiddler preferences *before* a call to rootCertExists() is made. I do this in the capture form’s constructor:public FiddlerCapture(StressTestForm form) { InitializeComponent(); CaptureConfiguration = App.Configuration.UrlCapture; MainForm = form; if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Cert)) { FiddlerApplication.Prefs.SetStringPref("fiddler.certmaker.bc.key", App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Key); FiddlerApplication.Prefs.SetStringPref("fiddler.certmaker.bc.cert", App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Cert); }} This is kind of a drag to do and not documented anywhere that I could find, so hopefully this will save you some grief if you want to work with the stock certificate logic that installs with FiddlerCore. MakeCert provides sticky Certificates and the same functionality as Fiddler But there’s actually an easier way. If you want to skip the above Fiddler preference configuration code in your application you can choose to distribute MakeCert.exe instead of certmaker.dll and bcmakecert.dll. When you use MakeCert.exe, the certificates settings are stored in Windows so they are available without any custom configuration inside of your application. It’s easier to integrate and as long as you run on Windows and you don’t need to support iOS or Android devices is simply easier to deal with. To integrate into your project, you can remove the reference to CertMaker.dll (and the BcMakeCert.dll assembly) from your project. Instead copy MakeCert.exe into your output folder. To make sure MakeCert.exe gets pushed out, include MakeCert.exe in your project and set the Build Action to None, and Copy to Output Directory to Copy if newer. Note that the CertMaker.dll reference in the project has been removed and on disk the files for Certmaker.dll, as well as the BCMakeCert.dll files on disk. Keep in mind that these DLLs are resources of the FiddlerCore NuGet package, so updating the package may end up pushing those files back into your project. Once MakeCert.exe is distributed FiddlerCore checks for it first before using the assemblies so as long as MakeCert.exe exists it’ll be used for certificate creation (at least on Windows). Summary FiddlerCore is a pretty sweet tool, and it’s absolutely awesome that we get to plug in most of the functionality of Fiddler right into our own applications. A few years back I tried to build this sort of functionality myself for an app and ended up giving up because it’s a big job to get HTTP right – especially if you need to support SSL. FiddlerCore now provides that functionality as a turnkey solution that can be plugged into your own apps easily. The only downside is FiddlerCore’s documentation for more advanced features like certificate installation which is pretty sketchy. While for the most part FiddlerCore’s feature set is easy to work with without any documentation, advanced features are often not intuitive to gleam by just using Intellisense or the FiddlerCore help file reference (which is not terribly useful). While Eric Lawrence is very responsive on his forum and on Twitter, there simply isn’t much useful documentation on Fiddler/FiddlerCore available online. If you run into trouble the forum is probably the first place to look and then ask a question if you can’t find the answer. The best documentation you can find is Eric’s Fiddler Book which covers a ton of functionality of Fiddler and FiddlerCore. The book is a great reference to Fiddler’s feature set as well as providing great insights into the HTTP protocol. The second half of the book that gets into the innards of HTTP is an excellent read for anybody who wants to know more about some of the more arcane aspects and special behaviors of HTTP – it’s well worth the read. While the book has tons of information in a very readable format, it’s unfortunately not a great reference as it’s hard to find things in the book and because it’s not available online you can’t electronically search for the great content in it. But it’s hard to complain about any of this given the obvious effort and love that’s gone into this awesome product for all of these years. A mighty big thanks to Eric Lawrence  for having created this useful tool that so many of us use all the time, and also to Telerik for picking up Fiddler/FiddlerCore and providing Eric the resources to support and improve this wonderful tool full time and keeping it free for all. Kudos! Resources FiddlerCore Download FiddlerCore NuGet Fiddler Capture Sample Form Fiddler Capture Form in West Wind WebSurge (GitHub) Eric Lawrence’s Fiddler Book© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2014Posted in .NET  HTTP   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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