shared libraries - Page 134

Is it possible to version a asp.net site like you can do with dlls?

- by Lieven Cardoen

Is it possible to version a asp.net site like doing so with AssemblyInfo.cs in Class Libraries?

Hi there! I was looking for some opinions on the best remote method invocation practices when developing iPhone applications that communicate with Java (java EE) servers. Many iphone applications these days typically talk to a server back end. I typically prefer to write my servers in java using some Spring libraries. So far I have not found or stuck to a definitive practice for iphone-java server communication. What are some technical solutions and libraries that you have used to implement this kind of client-server communication? One thing I always keep in mind is that I want the communication protocols to be simple so that multiple platforms can be added for example, in future adding Android and possibly Blackberry clients, that can use the same protocol to talk to the server.

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Dispatching generic tasks in WCF or .Net Remoting

- by Eric

Hello all, I've been researching for a couple days on and off, and have yet to figure out the best way to achieve the following goal. I would like to define either an interface or abstract class in C# which has an associated Run method, similar to the Java runnable interface. The goal would be to have a shared queue which contains a list of these objects. Then individual clients would be able to derive their own concrete runnable classes and add them to the queue hosted by the server. Clients would also be able to pop these runnable objects off the queue and execute them arbitrarily. This seems like it should be feasible in a VM based language without needing to place any of the concrete implementations in a shared assembly, but I have thus far had no luck finding a working example of such a system. Does anyone know how this might be achieved?

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Long list of if statements in Java

- by steve

Hi, Sorry I can't find a question answering this, I'm almost certain someone else has raised it before. My problem is that I'm writing some system libraries to run embedded devices. I have commands which can be sent to these devices over radio broadcasts. This can only be done by text. inside the system libraries I have a thread which handles the commands which looks like this if (value.equals("A") { doCommandA() } else if (value.equals"B") { doCommandB() } else if etc. The problem is that there are a lot of commands to it will quickly spiral to something out of control. Horrible to look out, painful to debug and mind boggling to understand in a few months time.

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iphone visualizations

- by LaGrad

is there any libraries for visualization on the iphone? preferably open source?

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Singleton Creation preference

- by cwieland

You can create singletons in a variety of ways. I am wondering which is better between these. +(ServerConnection*)shared{ static dispatch_once_t pred=0; __strong static id _sharedObject = nil; dispatch_once(&pred, ^{ _sharedObject = [[self alloc] init]; // or some other init method }); return _sharedObject; } I could see that this compiles down to something very fast. I would think that checking the predicate would be another function call. The other is: +(ServerConnection*)shared{ static ServerConnection* connection=nil; if (connection==nil) { connection=[[ServerConnection alloc] init]; } return connection; } Are there any major differences between the two? I know these are probably similar enough to not worry about it. But Just wondering.

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iOS JavaScript bridge

- by andr111

I'm working on an app where I'm going to use both HTML5 in UIWebView and native iOS framework together. I know that I can implement communication between JavaScript and Objective-C. Are there any libraries that simplify implementing this communication? I know that there are several libraries to create native iOS apps in HTML5 and javascript (for example AppMobi, PhoneGap), but I'm not sure if there is a library to help create native iOS apps with heavy JavaScript usage. I need to: Execute JS methods from Objective-C Execute Objective-C methods from JS Listen to native JS events from Objective-C (for example DOM ready event)

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Managing access to multiple linux system

- by Swartz

A searched for answers but have found nothing on here... Long story short: a non-profit organization is in dire need of modernizing its infrastructure. First thing is to find an alternatives to managing user accounts on a number of Linux hosts. We have 12 servers (both physical and virtual) and about 50 workstations. We have 500 potential users for these systems. The individual who built and maintained the systems over the years has retired. He wrote his own scripts to manage it all. It still works. No complaints there. However, a lot of the stuff is very manual and error-prone. Code is messy and after updates often needs to be tweaked. Worst part is there is little to no docs written. There are just a few ReadMe's and random notes which may or may not be relevant anymore. So maintenance has become a difficult task. Currently accounts are managed via /etc/passwd on each system. Updates are distributed via cron scripts to correct systems as accounts are added on the "main" server. Some users have to have access to all systems (like a sysadmin account), others need access to shared servers, while others may need access to workstations or only a subset of those. Is there a tool that can help us manage accounts that meets the following requirements? Preferably open source (i.e. free as budget is VERY limited) mainstream (i.e. maintained) preferably has LDAP integration or could be made to interface with LDAP or AD service for user authentication (will be needed in the near future to integrate accounts with other offices) user management (adding, expiring, removing, lockout, etc) allows to manage what systems (or group of systems) each user has access to - not all users are allowed on all systems support for user accounts that could have different homedirs and mounts available depending on what system they are logged into. For example sysadmin logged into "main" server has main://home/sysadmin/ as homedir and has all shared mounts sysadmin logged into staff workstations would have nas://user/s/sysadmin as homedir(different from above) and potentially limited set of mounts, a logged in client would have his/her homedir at different location and no shared mounts. If there is an easy management interface that would be awesome. And if this tool is cross-platform (Linux / MacOS / *nix), that will be a miracle! I have searched the web and so have found nothing suitable. We are open to any suggestions. Thank you. EDIT: This question has been incorrectly marked as a duplicate. The linked to answer only talks about having same homedirs on all systems, whereas we need to have different homedirs based on what system user is currently logged into(MULTIPLE homedirs). Also access needs to be granted only to some machinees not the whole lot. Mods, please understand the full extent of the problem instead of merely marking it as duplicate for points...

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Coda 2 and SCP uploading files with the wrong permission

- by Tom Black

Currently I have a basic Ubuntu server running a website. The website is for a few students learning HTML/PHP and each student has their own account with a symbolic link to the shared website folder. Since the students are working on the website together, each user needs to be able to modify all the files (index.html for example). So I created a Webdev group containing all of the students with the default umask of 0002 set in their .bashrc (This allows newly created files to be 774). The shared folder is owned by the group Webdev with a chmod g+s so that new files/folders also belong to the group Webdev. The problem is that the students are using an IDE (Coda 2) and when they create a new file or folder using the IDE the file has the permissions of 644 on the server (not group writable). However when I make a new file through connecting with Cyberduck (SFTP client) the file permissions are 664 (as they should be). So I don't understand why Coda would be any different. However, after some trial and error I believe that Coda is first creating the file on local disk and then uploading that file to the server. On a mac by default a newly created file is 644. When the client uploads a file that's already 644 it stays 644 on the server side (umask is kind of useless in this situation). I've also tried creating ACL permissions for that folder but an uploaded file from my mac via SCP doesn't get the default ACL permissions. In Coda there is an option to change file permissions on a transfer. However this option seems to apply a chmod to all files being uploaded or saved. When one of students is modifying a file created by someone else when they try to upload the file or save it Coda tries to also do a chmod but fails because that user isn't the owner of the file. My current solution is using bindfs... I mount the shared web folder and bindfs sets permissions and group ownership of newly created files. However, bindfs seems to be a bit slow and I'm sure there is a better solution. Even if the students ditched Coda 2 and used Mac vim with scp the newly created files on the server would behave the same (644) which is default on the mac. Other options... 1) Either I teach the students to use (ssh/chmod) with their IDE to change their own file permissions when uploading. 2) I make all the students' Macs have the default umask of 0002 which would upload files with the right permissions. 3) Write a corn script to fix the file permissions every 5 to 15 minutes... (This option I think is the worst if students are working together at the same time). Is there any way that I could make all files that are uploaded via SCP have the default file permissions of 664 even though the uploaded file has a lower permission? (After hours of searching I don't think this is possible) I guess a corn script is my best option for novice users. How do web developers work together on larger sites? similar to this: http://serverfault.com/questions/283492/how-to-specify-file-permission-when-putting-a-file-using-openssh-sftp-command Also similar: http://serverfault.com/questions/395418/managing-linux-directory-permissions-sftp

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FreeBSD with Vagrant - don't know how to check guest additions version

- by joelmaranhao

On Mac OS X 10.9.3 Picked a box from the VagrantCloud Init the vagrant box $ vagrant init chef/freebsd-9.2-i386 A `Vagrantfile` has been placed in this directory. You are now ready to `vagrant up` your first virtual environment! Please read the comments in the Vagrantfile as well as documentation on `vagrantup.com` for more information on using Vagrant. List the files $ ls -al -rw-r--r-- 1 joel staff 4831 Jun 5 17:17 Vagrantfile Vagrantfile content VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION = "2" Vagrant.configure(VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION) do |config| config.vm.box = "chef/freebsd-9.2-i386" end Starting my virtual box leads to Errors $ vagrant up Bringing machine 'default' up with 'virtualbox' provider... ==> default: Box 'chef/freebsd-9.2-i386' could not be found. Attempting to find and install... default: Box Provider: virtualbox default: Box Version: >= 0 ==> default: Loading metadata for box 'chef/freebsd-9.2-i386' default: URL: https://vagrantcloud.com/chef/freebsd-9.2-i386 ==> default: Adding box 'chef/freebsd-9.2-i386' (v1.0.0) for provider: virtualbox default: Downloading: https://vagrantcloud.com/chef/freebsd-9.2-i386/version/1/provider/virtualbox.box ==> default: Successfully added box 'chef/freebsd-9.2-i386' (v1.0.0) for 'virtualbox'! ==> default: Importing base box 'chef/freebsd-9.2-i386'... ==> default: Matching MAC address for NAT networking... ==> default: Checking if box 'chef/freebsd-9.2-i386' is up to date... ==> default: Setting the name of the VM: freebsd92-i386_default_1401982167145_49633 ==> default: Fixed port collision for 22 => 2222. Now on port 2201. ==> default: Clearing any previously set network interfaces... ==> default: Preparing network interfaces based on configuration... default: Adapter 1: nat ==> default: Forwarding ports... default: 22 => 2201 (adapter 1) ==> default: Booting VM... ==> default: Waiting for machine to boot. This may take a few minutes... default: SSH address: 127.0.0.1:2201 default: SSH username: vagrant default: SSH auth method: private key default: Warning: Connection timeout. Retrying... default: Warning: Connection timeout. Retrying... ==> default: Machine booted and ready! Sorry, don't know how to check guest version of Virtualbox Guest Additions on this platform. Stopping installation. ==> default: Checking for guest additions in VM... default: The guest additions on this VM do not match the installed version of default: VirtualBox! In most cases this is fine, but in rare cases it can default: prevent things such as shared folders from working properly. If you see default: shared folder errors, please make sure the guest additions within the default: virtual machine match the version of VirtualBox you have installed on default: your host and reload your VM. default: default: Guest Additions Version: 4.2.16 default: VirtualBox Version: 4.3 ==> default: Mounting shared folders... default: /vagrant => /Users/joel/Code/anybots/operations/robot/freebsd92-i386 Vagrant attempted to execute the capability 'mount_virtualbox_shared_folder' on the detect guest OS 'freebsd', but the guest doesn't support that capability. This capability is required for your configuration of Vagrant. Please either reconfigure Vagrant to avoid this capability or fix the issue by creating the capability. Note that I have recently installed the latest version of VirtualBox, but somehow I can't find the Guest Additions.

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How can I check if PHP was compiled with the UNICODE version of the Win32 API?

- by Wesley Murch

This is related to this Stack Overflow post: glob() can't find file names with multibyte characters on Windows? I'm having issues with PHP and files that have multibyte characters on Windows. Here's my test case: print_r(scandir('./uploads/')); print_r(glob('./uploads/*')); Correct Output on remote UNIX server: Array ( [0] => . [1] => .. [2] => filename-äöü.jpg [3] => filename.jpg [4] => test?test.jpg [5] => ??? ?????.jpg [6] => ?????????.jpg [7] => ???.jpg ) Array ( [0] => ./uploads/filename-äöü.jpg [1] => ./uploads/filename.jpg [2] => ./uploads/test?test.jpg [3] => ./uploads/??? ?????.jpg [4] => ./uploads/?????????.jpg [5] => ./uploads/???.jpg ) Incorrect Output locally on Windows: Array ( [0] => . [1] => .. [2] => ??? ?????.jpg [3] => ???.jpg [4] => ?????????.jpg [5] => filename-äöü.jpg [6] => filename.jpg [7] => test?test.jpg ) Array ( [0] => ./uploads/filename-äöü.jpg [1] => ./uploads/filename.jpg ) Here's a relevant excerpt from the answer I chose to accept (which actually is a quote from an article that was posted online over 2 years ago): From the comments on this article: http://www.rooftopsolutions.nl/blog/filesystem-encoding-and-php The output from your PHP installation on Windows is easy to explain : you installed the wrong version of PHP, and used a version not compiled to use the Unicode version of the Win32 API. For this reason, the filesystem calls used by PHP will use the legacy "ANSI" API and so the C/C++ libraries linked with this version of PHP will first try to convert yout UTF-8-encoded PHP string into the local "ANSI" codepage selected in the running environment (see the CHCP command before starting PHP from a command line window) Your version of Windows is MOST PROBABLY NOT responsible of this weird thing. Actually, this is YOUR version of PHP which is not compiled correctly, and that uses the legacy ANSI version of the Win32 API (for compatibility with the legacy 16-bit versions of Windows 95/98 whose filesystem support in the kernel actually had no direct support for Unicode, but used an internal conversion layer to convert Unicode to the local ANSI codepage before using the actual ANSI version of the API). Recompile PHP using the compiler option to use the UNICODE version of the Win32 API (which should be the default today, and anyway always the default for PHP installed on a server that will NEVER be Windows 95 or Windows 98...) I can't confirm whether this is my problem or not. I used phpinfo() and did not find anything interesting, but I wasn't sure what to look for. I've been using XAMPP for easy installations, so I'm really not sure exactly how it was installed. I'm using Windows 7, 64 bit - so forgive my ignorance, but I'm not even sure if "Win32" is relevant here. How can I check if my current version of PHP was compiled with the configuration mentioned above? PHP Version: 5.3.8 System: Windows NT WES-PC 6.1 build 7601 (Windows 7 Home Premium Edition Service Pack 1) i586 Build Date: Aug 23 2011 11:47:20 Compiler: MSVC9 (Visual C++ 2008) Architecture: x86 Configure Command: cscript /nologo configure.js "--enable-snapshot-build" "--disable-isapi" "--enable-debug-pack" "--disable-isapi" "--without-mssql" "--without-pdo-mssql" "--without-pi3web" "--with-pdo-oci=D:\php-sdk\oracle\instantclient10\sdk,shared" "--with-oci8=D:\php-sdk\oracle\instantclient10\sdk,shared" "--with-oci8-11g=D:\php-sdk\oracle\instantclient11\sdk,shared" "--enable-object-out-dir=../obj/" "--enable-com-dotnet" "--with-mcrypt=static" "--disable-static-analyze"

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Pass a single boolean from an Android App to a libgdx game

- by Doug Henning

I'm writing an Android application that needs to pass a single boolean into an Android game that I am also writing. The idea is that the user does something in the App which will affect how the game operates. This is tricky with LIBGDX since I need to get the bool value into the Java files of the game, but of course, you can't call Android specific things from within LIBGDX's main Java files. I tried using an intent but of course the same problem persists. I can get the boolean into the MainActivity.Java of the android output of the game, but can't pass it along any further since the android output and the main java files don't know about each other. I have seen a few tutorials that explain how to use set up an interface in the LIBGDX java files that can call android things. This seems like wild overkill for what I want to do. I've been trying to use Android's Shared Preferences with LIBGDX's Gdx.app.getPreferences, but I can't make it work. Anyhelp would be MUCH appreciated. I've set up two hello world applications. One is a standard Android app, with a single button that is supposed to write "true" into the shared preferences. The other is a standard LIBGDX hello world that is supposed to do nothing but check that bool when launched and if true display one image to the screen, if false, display a different one. Here's the relevant bit of the Android code: import android.preference.PreferenceManager; public void onClick(View view) { if (view == this.boolButton){ final String PREF_FILE_NAME = "myBool"; SharedPreferences preferences = getSharedPreferences(PREF_FILE_NAME, MODE_WORLD_WRITEABLE); SharedPreferences.Editor editor = preferences.edit(); editor.putBoolean("myBool", true); editor.commit(); } } And here's the relevant bit of the code from the LIBGDX main file: Preferences prefs = Gdx.app.getPreferences("myBool"); boolean switcher = prefs.getBoolean("myBool"); if(switcher == true){ texture = new Texture(Gdx.files.internal("data/worked512.png")); prefs.putBoolean("myBool", false); } else { texture = new Texture(Gdx.files.internal("data/libgdx.png")); } Everything compiles fine, it just doesn't work. I've spent HOURS googling trying to find a way to pass this single boolean from android into a LIBGDX main and I'm totally stumped. Thanks for your help.

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Will Python 3.0's backwards-incompatibility affect adoption?

- by George Stocker

I visited Slashdot this morning to find out that Python 3.0 has been released. I know C# and Perl, but have wanted to learn Python for some time, especially after I saw its ease of use to create useful tools, not to mention its use in game scripting. My question is, how does the intentionally backwards-incompatible release of Python 3.0 affect adoption, and should I learn Python 2? Or should I take the dive and learn Python 3.0 first, and wait for the libraries to be ported?

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C++ Multithreading on Unix

- by Roger

I have two related questions: 1) Are there any good books for multithreading in C++, especially now that C++11 contains multithreading in the standard library? 2) I have the Wrox Programming on Unix book (1000 pages fat red one) and within it, it uses the Unix Thread class. How does this code relate to boost and the C++11 multithreading libraries? Is it better/worse/just specific to Unix etc? Is the performance the same?

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Pass a single boolean from an Android App to a LIBGDK game

- by Doug Henning

I'm writing an Android application that needs to pass a single boolean into an Android game that I am also writing. The idea is that the user does something in the App which will affect how the game operates. This is tricky with LIBGDX since I need to get the bool value into the Java files of the game, but of course, you can't call Android specific things from within LIBGDX's main Java files. I tried using an intent but of course the same problem persists. I can get the boolean into the MainActivity.Java of the android output of the game, but can't pass it along any further since the android output and the main java files don't know about each other. I have seen a few tutorials that explain how to use set up an interface in the LIBGDX java files that can call android things. This seems like wild overkill for what I want to do. I've been trying to use Android's Shared Preferences with LIBGDX's Gdx.app.getPreferences, but I can't make it work. Anyhelp would be MUCH appreciated. I've set up two hello world applications. One is a standard Android app, with a single button that is supposed to write "true" into the shared preferences. The other is a standard LIBGDX hello world that is supposed to do nothing but check that bool when launched and if true display one image to the screen, if false, display a different one. Here's the relevant bit of the Android code: import android.preference.PreferenceManager; public void onClick(View view) { if (view == this.boolButton){ final String PREF_FILE_NAME = "myBool"; SharedPreferences preferences = getSharedPreferences(PREF_FILE_NAME, MODE_WORLD_WRITEABLE); SharedPreferences.Editor editor = preferences.edit(); editor.putBoolean("myBool", true); editor.commit(); } } And here's the relevant bit of the code from the LIBGDX main file: Preferences prefs = Gdx.app.getPreferences("myBool"); boolean switcher = prefs.getBoolean("myBool"); if(switcher == true){ texture = new Texture(Gdx.files.internal("data/worked512.png")); prefs.putBoolean("myBool", false); } else { texture = new Texture(Gdx.files.internal("data/libgdx.png")); } Everything compiles fine, it just doesn't work. I've spent HOURS googling trying to find a way to pass this single boolean from android into a LIBGDX main and I'm totally stumped. Thanks for your help.

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Best-selling Author on Servlets and JSP, Marty Hall, to Keynote at GIDS 2010

Hey Guys,Author of More Servlets and JSP, Marty Hall is coming to Bangalore this April to speak on Choosing an Ajax/JavaScript Toolkit: A Comparison of the Most Popular JavaScript Libraries, Pure Java Ajax: An Overview of GWT 2.0, Integrated Ajax Support in JSF 2.0 and Ajax Support in the Prototype JavaScript Library. You can get more information on developersummit dot com...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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At the Java DEMOgrounds - JavaFX

- by Janice J. Heiss

JavaFX has made rapid progress in the last year, as is evidenced by the wealth of demos on display. A few questions appear to be prominent in the minds of JavaFX enthusiasts. Here are some questions with answers provided by Oracle’s JavaFX team.When will the rest of the JavaFX code be available in open source?Oracle has started to open source JavaFX. The existing platform code will finish being committed to OpenJFX by the end of the year.Why should I use JavaFX instead of HTML5?We see JavaFX as complementary to HTML5, and most companies we talk to react positively once they understand how they can benefit from a hybrid solution. As most HTML5 developers will tell you, the biggest obstacle to deploying HTML5 applications is fragmentation. JavaFX offers a convenient way to render HTML and JavaScript within its WebView component, which provides the same level of quality and features across Windows, Mac, and Linux. Additionally, JavaScript in WebView can make calls into the Java code, and vice versa, allowing developers to tap into the best of both worlds.What is the market penetration of JavaFX? It is currently limited, as we've just made available JavaFX on Mac and Linux in August, but we expect JavaFX to be present on millions of desktop-type systems now that JavaFX is included as part of the JRE. We have also significantly lowered the level of effort required to deploy an application bundling the JRE and JavaFX runtime libraries. Finally, we are seeing a lot of interest by companies operating in the embedded market, who have found it hard to develop compelling UIs with existing technologies.Below are summaries of JavaFX Demos on display at JavaOne 2012:JavaFX EnsembleEnsemble is a collection of over 100 JavaFX samples packaged as a JavaFX application. This demo is especially useful to those new to JavaFX, or those not familiar with its latest features (e.g. canvas, color picker). Ensemble is the reference for getting familiar with JavaFX functionality. Each sample can be run from within Ensemble, and the API for each sample, as well as the source code are available alongside the sample.The samples source code can be saved as a NetBeans project for convenience purposes, or can be copied as is in any other Java IDE. The version of Ensemble shown is packaged as a native Windows application, including the JRE and JavaFX libraries. It was created with the JavaFX packager, which provides multiple packaging options, and frees developers from the cumbersome and error-prone process of packaging a Java application.FX Experience ToolsFX Experience Tools is a JavaFX application that provides different utilities to create new skins for your JavaFX applications. One of the most powerful features of JavaFX is the ability to skin applications via CSS. Since not all Java developers are familiar with CSS, these utilities are a great starting point to create custom skins. JavaFX allows developers to easily customize the look and feel of their applications through CSS. FX Experience Tools makes it easy to create new themes for JavaFX applications, even if you are not familiar with CSS. FX Experience Tools is a JavaFX application packaged as a native application including the JRE and JavaFX runtime libraries. FX Experience tools shows how this type of deployment simplifies the packaging of Java applications without requiring developers to master the intricacies of Java application packaging. The download site for FX Experience Tools is http://fxexperience.com/2012/03/announcing-fx-experience-tools/ JavaFX Scene BuilderJavaFX Scene Builder is a visual layout tool that lets users quickly design the UI of your JavaFX application, without coding. Users can drag and drop UI components, modify their properties, apply style sheets, and the FXML code they create for the layout is automatically generated in the background. The result is an FXML file that can then be combined with a Java project by binding the UI to the application’s logic. Developers can easily create user interfaces for their application, as well as separate the application’s UI from the application logic for easier maintenance. Attendees can get this app by going to javafx.com and checking the link at top of the “Overview” page.Scene Builder allows developers to easily layout JavaFX UI controls, charts, shapes, and containers, so that you can quickly prototype user interfaces. It generates FXML, an XML-based markup language that enables users to define an application’s user interface, separately from the application logic. Scene Builder can be used in combination with any Java IDE, but is more tightly integrated with NetBeans IDE. It is written as a JavaFX application, with native desktop integration on Windows and Mac OS X. It’s a perfect example of a JavaFX application packages as a native application.Scene Builder is available for your preferred development platform. Besides the GA release on Windows and Mac, a Developer Preview of Scene Builder for Linux has just been made available.Scenic ViewScenic View is a tool that can be used to understand the current state of your application UI, and to also easily manipulate properties of the scenegraph without having to keep editing your code. Creating UIs is a complex process, and it can be hard and tedious detecting these issues, editing the code, and then compiling it to test the app again. Scenic View is a great diagnostics tool that helps developers identify these issues and correct them at runtime.Attendees can get Scenic View by going to javafx.com, selecting the “Community” tab, and clicking the link under the “Third Party Tools and Utilities” section.Scenic View allows developers to easily examine the state of a JavaFX application scenegraph while the application is running. Some of the latest features added to Scenic View include event monitoring, javadoc browsing, and contextual menus. The download site for Scenic View is available here: http://fxexperience.com/scenic-view/ Conference TourConference Tour is an application that lets users discover some of the major Java conferences throughout the world. The Conference Tour application shows how simple it is to mix JavaFX and HTML5 into a single, interactive application. Attendees get Conference Tour here.JavaFX includes a Web engine based on Webkit that provides a consistent web interface to render HTML5 across operating systems, within a JavaFX application. JavaFX features a bi-directional bridge that allows Java APIs to call JavaScript within WebView, or allows JavaScript to make calls to Java APIs. This allows developers to leverage the best of both worlds.Java EE developers can take advantage of WebView and the JavaScript-Java bridge to allow their HTML clients to seamlessly bypass Web browser’s sandbox to access native system resources, providing a richer user experience.FXMediaPlayerFXMediaPlayer is an application that lets developers check different media functionality in JavaFX, such as synthesizer or support for HTTP Live Streaming (HLS). This demo shows how developers can embed video content in their Java applications. JavaFX leverages the underlying video (e.g., H.264) and audio (e.g., AAC) codecs on the user’s computer. JavaFX APIs allow developers to interact with the video content (e.g. play/pause, or programmable markers). Some of the latest media features introduced in JavaFX 2.2 include HTTP Live Streaming (HLS). Obviously there is a lot for JavaFX enthusiasts to chew on!

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Ancillary Objects: Separate Debug ELF Files For Solaris

- by Ali Bahrami

We introduced a new object ELF object type in Solaris 11 Update 1 called the Ancillary Object. This posting describes them, using material originally written during their development, the PSARC arc case, and the Solaris Linker and Libraries Manual. ELF objects contain allocable sections, which are mapped into memory at runtime, and non-allocable sections, which are present in the file for use by debuggers and observability tools, but which are not mapped or used at runtime. Typically, all of these sections exist within a single object file. Ancillary objects allow them to instead go into a separate file. There are different reasons given for wanting such a feature. One can debate whether the added complexity is worth the benefit, and in most cases it is not. However, one important case stands out — customers with very large 32-bit objects who are not ready or able to make the transition to 64-bits. We have customers who build extremely large 32-bit objects. Historically, the debug sections in these objects have used the stabs format, which is limited, but relatively compact. In recent years, the industry has transitioned to the powerful but verbose DWARF standard. In some cases, the size of these debug sections is large enough to push the total object file size past the fundamental 4GB limit for 32-bit ELF object files. The best, and ultimately only, solution to overly large objects is to transition to 64-bits. However, consider environments where: Hundreds of users may be executing the code on large shared systems. (32-bits use less memory and bus bandwidth, and on sparc runs just as fast as 64-bit code otherwise). Complex finely tuned code, where the original authors may no longer be available. Critical production code, that was expensive to qualify and bring online, and which is otherwise serving its intended purpose without issue. Users in these risk adverse and/or high scale categories have good reasons to push 32-bits objects to the limit before moving on. Ancillary objects offer these users a longer runway. Design The design of ancillary objects is intended to be simple, both to help human understanding when examining elfdump output, and to lower the bar for debuggers such as dbx to support them. The primary and ancillary objects have the same set of section headers, with the same names, in the same order (i.e. each section has the same index in both files). A single added section of type SHT_SUNW_ANCILLARY is added to both objects, containing information that allows a debugger to identify and validate both files relative to each other. Given one of these files, the ancillary section allows you to identify the other. Allocable sections go in the primary object, and non-allocable ones go into the ancillary object. A small set of non-allocable objects, notably the symbol table, are copied into both objects. As noted above, most sections are only written to one of the two objects, but both objects have the same section header array. The section header in the file that does not contain the section data is tagged with the SHF_SUNW_ABSENT section header flag to indicate its placeholder status. Compiler writers and others who produce objects can set the SUNW_SHF_PRIMARY section header flag to mark non-allocable sections that should go to the primary object rather than the ancillary. If you don't request an ancillary object, the Solaris ELF format is unchanged. Users who don't use ancillary objects do not pay for the feature. This is important, because they exist to serve a small subset of our users, and must not complicate the common case. If you do request an ancillary object, the runtime behavior of the primary object will be the same as that of a normal object. There is no added runtime cost. The primary and ancillary object together represent a logical single object. This is facilitated by the use of a single set of section headers. One can easily imagine a tool that can merge a primary and ancillary object into a single file, or the reverse. (Note that although this is an interesting intellectual exercise, we don't actually supply such a tool because there's little practical benefit above and beyond using ld to create the files). Among the benefits of this approach are: There is no need for per-file symbol tables to reflect the contents of each file. The same symbol table that would be produced for a standard object can be used. The section contents are identical in either case — there is no need to alter data to accommodate multiple files. It is very easy for a debugger to adapt to these new files, and the processing involved can be encapsulated in input/output routines. Most of the existing debugger implementation applies without modification. The limit of a 4GB 32-bit output object is now raised to 4GB of code, and 4GB of debug data. There is also the future possibility (not currently supported) to support multiple ancillary objects, each of which could contain up to 4GB of additional debug data. It must be noted however that the 32-bit DWARF debug format is itself inherently 32-bit limited, as it uses 32-bit offsets between debug sections, so the ability to employ multiple ancillary object files may not turn out to be useful. Using Ancillary Objects (From the Solaris Linker and Libraries Guide) By default, objects contain both allocable and non-allocable sections. Allocable sections are the sections that contain executable code and the data needed by that code at runtime. Non-allocable sections contain supplemental information that is not required to execute an object at runtime. These sections support the operation of debuggers and other observability tools. The non-allocable sections in an object are not loaded into memory at runtime by the operating system, and so, they have no impact on memory use or other aspects of runtime performance no matter their size. For convenience, both allocable and non-allocable sections are normally maintained in the same file. However, there are situations in which it can be useful to separate these sections. To reduce the size of objects in order to improve the speed at which they can be copied across wide area networks. To support fine grained debugging of highly optimized code requires considerable debug data. In modern systems, the debugging data can easily be larger than the code it describes. The size of a 32-bit object is limited to 4 Gbytes. In very large 32-bit objects, the debug data can cause this limit to be exceeded and prevent the creation of the object. To limit the exposure of internal implementation details. Traditionally, objects have been stripped of non-allocable sections in order to address these issues. Stripping is effective, but destroys data that might be needed later. The Solaris link-editor can instead write non-allocable sections to an ancillary object. This feature is enabled with the -z ancillary command line option. $ ld ... -z ancillary[=outfile] ...By default, the ancillary file is given the same name as the primary output object, with a .anc file extension. However, a different name can be provided by providing an outfile value to the -z ancillary option. When -z ancillary is specified, the link-editor performs the following actions. All allocable sections are written to the primary object. In addition, all non-allocable sections containing one or more input sections that have the SHF_SUNW_PRIMARY section header flag set are written to the primary object. All remaining non-allocable sections are written to the ancillary object. The following non-allocable sections are written to both the primary object and ancillary object. .shstrtab The section name string table. .symtab The full non-dynamic symbol table. .symtab_shndx The symbol table extended index section associated with .symtab. .strtab The non-dynamic string table associated with .symtab. .SUNW_ancillary Contains the information required to identify the primary and ancillary objects, and to identify the object being examined. The primary object and all ancillary objects contain the same array of sections headers. Each section has the same section index in every file. Although the primary and ancillary objects all define the same section headers, the data for most sections will be written to a single file as described above. If the data for a section is not present in a given file, the SHF_SUNW_ABSENT section header flag is set, and the sh_size field is 0. This organization makes it possible to acquire a full list of section headers, a complete symbol table, and a complete list of the primary and ancillary objects from either of the primary or ancillary objects. The following example illustrates the underlying implementation of ancillary objects. An ancillary object is created by adding the -z ancillary command line option to an otherwise normal compilation. The file utility shows that the result is an executable named a.out, and an associated ancillary object named a.out.anc. $ cat hello.c #include <stdio.h> int main(int argc, char **argv) { (void) printf("hello, world\n"); return (0); } $ cc -g -zancillary hello.c $ file a.out a.out.anc a.out: ELF 32-bit LSB executable 80386 Version 1 [FPU], dynamically linked, not stripped, ancillary object a.out.anc a.out.anc: ELF 32-bit LSB ancillary 80386 Version 1, primary object a.out $ ./a.out hello worldThe resulting primary object is an ordinary executable that can be executed in the usual manner. It is no different at runtime than an executable built without the use of ancillary objects, and then stripped of non-allocable content using the strip or mcs commands. As previously described, the primary object and ancillary objects contain the same section headers. To see how this works, it is helpful to use the elfdump utility to display these section headers and compare them. The following table shows the section header information for a selection of headers from the previous link-edit example. Index Section Name Type Primary Flags Ancillary Flags Primary Size Ancillary Size 13 .text PROGBITS ALLOC EXECINSTR ALLOC EXECINSTR SUNW_ABSENT 0x131 0 20 .data PROGBITS WRITE ALLOC WRITE ALLOC SUNW_ABSENT 0x4c 0 21 .symtab SYMTAB 0 0 0x450 0x450 22 .strtab STRTAB STRINGS STRINGS 0x1ad 0x1ad 24 .debug_info PROGBITS SUNW_ABSENT 0 0 0x1a7 28 .shstrtab STRTAB STRINGS STRINGS 0x118 0x118 29 .SUNW_ancillary SUNW_ancillary 0 0 0x30 0x30 The data for most sections is only present in one of the two files, and absent from the other file. The SHF_SUNW_ABSENT section header flag is set when the data is absent. The data for allocable sections needed at runtime are found in the primary object. The data for non-allocable sections used for debugging but not needed at runtime are placed in the ancillary file. A small set of non-allocable sections are fully present in both files. These are the .SUNW_ancillary section used to relate the primary and ancillary objects together, the section name string table .shstrtab, as well as the symbol table.symtab, and its associated string table .strtab. It is possible to strip the symbol table from the primary object. A debugger that encounters an object without a symbol table can use the .SUNW_ancillary section to locate the ancillary object, and access the symbol contained within. The primary object, and all associated ancillary objects, contain a .SUNW_ancillary section that allows all the objects to be identified and related together. $ elfdump -T SUNW_ancillary a.out a.out.anc a.out: Ancillary Section: .SUNW_ancillary index tag value [0] ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM 0x8724 [1] ANC_SUNW_MEMBER 0x1 a.out [2] ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM 0x8724 [3] ANC_SUNW_MEMBER 0x1a3 a.out.anc [4] ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM 0xfbe2 [5] ANC_SUNW_NULL 0 a.out.anc: Ancillary Section: .SUNW_ancillary index tag value [0] ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM 0xfbe2 [1] ANC_SUNW_MEMBER 0x1 a.out [2] ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM 0x8724 [3] ANC_SUNW_MEMBER 0x1a3 a.out.anc [4] ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM 0xfbe2 [5] ANC_SUNW_NULL 0 The ancillary sections for both objects contain the same number of elements, and are identical except for the first element. Each object, starting with the primary object, is introduced with a MEMBER element that gives the file name, followed by a CHECKSUM that identifies the object. In this example, the primary object is a.out, and has a checksum of 0x8724. The ancillary object is a.out.anc, and has a checksum of 0xfbe2. The first element in a .SUNW_ancillary section, preceding the MEMBER element for the primary object, is always a CHECKSUM element, containing the checksum for the file being examined. The presence of a .SUNW_ancillary section in an object indicates that the object has associated ancillary objects. The names of the primary and all associated ancillary objects can be obtained from the ancillary section from any one of the files. It is possible to determine which file is being examined from the larger set of files by comparing the first checksum value to the checksum of each member that follows. Debugger Access and Use of Ancillary Objects Debuggers and other observability tools must merge the information found in the primary and ancillary object files in order to build a complete view of the object. This is equivalent to processing the information from a single file. This merging is simplified by the primary object and ancillary objects containing the same section headers, and a single symbol table. The following steps can be used by a debugger to assemble the information contained in these files. Starting with the primary object, or any of the ancillary objects, locate the .SUNW_ancillary section. The presence of this section identifies the object as part of an ancillary group, contains information that can be used to obtain a complete list of the files and determine which of those files is the one currently being examined. Create a section header array in memory, using the section header array from the object being examined as an initial template. Open and read each file identified by the .SUNW_ancillary section in turn. For each file, fill in the in-memory section header array with the information for each section that does not have the SHF_SUNW_ABSENT flag set. The result will be a complete in-memory copy of the section headers with pointers to the data for all sections. Once this information has been acquired, the debugger can proceed as it would in the single file case, to access and control the running program. Note - The ELF definition of ancillary objects provides for a single primary object, and an arbitrary number of ancillary objects. At this time, the Oracle Solaris link-editor only produces a single ancillary object containing all non-allocable sections. This may change in the future. Debuggers and other observability tools should be written to handle the general case of multiple ancillary objects. ELF Implementation Details (From the Solaris Linker and Libraries Guide) To implement ancillary objects, it was necessary to extend the ELF format to add a new object type (ET_SUNW_ANCILLARY), a new section type (SHT_SUNW_ANCILLARY), and 2 new section header flags (SHF_SUNW_ABSENT, SHF_SUNW_PRIMARY). In this section, I will detail these changes, in the form of diffs to the Solaris Linker and Libraries manual. Part IV ELF Application Binary Interface Chapter 13: Object File Format Object File Format Edit Note: This existing section at the beginning of the chapter describes the ELF header. There's a table of object file types, which now includes the new ET_SUNW_ANCILLARY type. e_type Identifies the object file type, as listed in the following table. NameValueMeaning ET_NONE0No file type ET_REL1Relocatable file ET_EXEC2Executable file ET_DYN3Shared object file ET_CORE4Core file ET_LOSUNW0xfefeStart operating system specific range ET_SUNW_ANCILLARY0xfefeAncillary object file ET_HISUNW0xfefdEnd operating system specific range ET_LOPROC0xff00Start processor-specific range ET_HIPROC0xffffEnd processor-specific range Sections Edit Note: This overview section defines the section header structure, and provides a high level description of known sections. It was updated to define the new SHF_SUNW_ABSENT and SHF_SUNW_PRIMARY flags and the new SHT_SUNW_ANCILLARY section. ... sh_type Categorizes the section's contents and semantics. Section types and their descriptions are listed in Table 13-5. sh_flags Sections support 1-bit flags that describe miscellaneous attributes. Flag definitions are listed in Table 13-8. ... Table 13-5 ELF Section Types, sh_type NameValue . . . SHT_LOSUNW0x6fffffee SHT_SUNW_ancillary0x6fffffee . . . ... SHT_LOSUNW - SHT_HISUNW Values in this inclusive range are reserved for Oracle Solaris OS semantics. SHT_SUNW_ANCILLARY Present when a given object is part of a group of ancillary objects. Contains information required to identify all the files that make up the group. See Ancillary Section. ... Table 13-8 ELF Section Attribute Flags NameValue . . . SHF_MASKOS0x0ff00000 SHF_SUNW_NODISCARD0x00100000 SHF_SUNW_ABSENT0x00200000 SHF_SUNW_PRIMARY0x00400000 SHF_MASKPROC0xf0000000 . . . ... SHF_SUNW_ABSENT Indicates that the data for this section is not present in this file. When ancillary objects are created, the primary object and any ancillary objects, will all have the same section header array, to facilitate merging them to form a complete view of the object, and to allow them to use the same symbol tables. Each file contains a subset of the section data. The data for allocable sections is written to the primary object while the data for non-allocable sections is written to an ancillary file. The SHF_SUNW_ABSENT flag is used to indicate that the data for the section is not present in the object being examined. When the SHF_SUNW_ABSENT flag is set, the sh_size field of the section header must be 0. An application encountering an SHF_SUNW_ABSENT section can choose to ignore the section, or to search for the section data within one of the related ancillary files. SHF_SUNW_PRIMARY The default behavior when ancillary objects are created is to write all allocable sections to the primary object and all non-allocable sections to the ancillary objects. The SHF_SUNW_PRIMARY flag overrides this behavior. Any output section containing one more input section with the SHF_SUNW_PRIMARY flag set is written to the primary object without regard for its allocable status. ... Two members in the section header, sh_link, and sh_info, hold special information, depending on section type. Table 13-9 ELF sh_link and sh_info Interpretation sh_typesh_linksh_info . . . SHT_SUNW_ANCILLARY The section header index of the associated string table. 0 . . . Special Sections Edit Note: This section describes the sections used in Solaris ELF objects, using the types defined in the previous description of section types. It was updated to define the new .SUNW_ancillary (SHT_SUNW_ANCILLARY) section. Various sections hold program and control information. Sections in the following table are used by the system and have the indicated types and attributes. Table 13-10 ELF Special Sections NameTypeAttribute . . . .SUNW_ancillarySHT_SUNW_ancillaryNone . . . ... .SUNW_ancillary Present when a given object is part of a group of ancillary objects. Contains information required to identify all the files that make up the group. See Ancillary Section for details. ... Ancillary Section Edit Note: This new section provides the format reference describing the layout of a .SUNW_ancillary section and the meaning of the various tags. Note that these sections use the same tag/value concept used for dynamic and capabilities sections, and will be familiar to anyone used to working with ELF. In addition to the primary output object, the Solaris link-editor can produce one or more ancillary objects. Ancillary objects contain non-allocable sections that would normally be written to the primary object. When ancillary objects are produced, the primary object and all of the associated ancillary objects contain a SHT_SUNW_ancillary section, containing information that identifies these related objects. Given any one object from such a group, the ancillary section provides the information needed to identify and interpret the others. This section contains an array of the following structures. See sys/elf.h. typedef struct { Elf32_Word a_tag; union { Elf32_Word a_val; Elf32_Addr a_ptr; } a_un; } Elf32_Ancillary; typedef struct { Elf64_Xword a_tag; union { Elf64_Xword a_val; Elf64_Addr a_ptr; } a_un; } Elf64_Ancillary; For each object with this type, a_tag controls the interpretation of a_un. a_val These objects represent integer values with various interpretations. a_ptr These objects represent file offsets or addresses. The following ancillary tags exist. Table 13-NEW1 ELF Ancillary Array Tags NameValuea_un ANC_SUNW_NULL0Ignored ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM1a_val ANC_SUNW_MEMBER2a_ptr ANC_SUNW_NULL Marks the end of the ancillary section. ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM Provides the checksum for a file in the c_val element. When ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM precedes the first instance of ANC_SUNW_MEMBER, it provides the checksum for the object from which the ancillary section is being read. When it follows an ANC_SUNW_MEMBER tag, it provides the checksum for that member. ANC_SUNW_MEMBER Specifies an object name. The a_ptr element contains the string table offset of a null-terminated string, that provides the file name. An ancillary section must always contain an ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM before the first instance of ANC_SUNW_MEMBER, identifying the current object. Following that, there should be an ANC_SUNW_MEMBER for each object that makes up the complete set of objects. Each ANC_SUNW_MEMBER should be followed by an ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM for that object. A typical ancillary section will therefore be structured as: TagMeaning ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUMChecksum of this object ANC_SUNW_MEMBERName of object #1 ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUMChecksum for object #1 . . . ANC_SUNW_MEMBERName of object N ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUMChecksum for object N ANC_SUNW_NULL An object can therefore identify itself by comparing the initial ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM to each of the ones that follow, until it finds a match. Related Other Work The GNU developers have also encountered the need/desire to support separate debug information files, and use the solution detailed at http://sourceware.org/gdb/onlinedocs/gdb/Separate-Debug-Files.html. At the current time, the separate debug file is constructed by building the standard object first, and then copying the debug data out of it in a separate post processing step, Hence, it is limited to a total of 4GB of code and debug data, just as a single object file would be. They are aware of this, and I have seen online comments indicating that they may add direct support for generating these separate files to their link-editor. It is worth noting that the GNU objcopy utility is available on Solaris, and that the Studio dbx debugger is able to use these GNU style separate debug files even on Solaris. Although this is interesting in terms giving Linux users a familiar environment on Solaris, the 4GB limit means it is not an answer to the problem of very large 32-bit objects. We have also encountered issues with objcopy not understanding Solaris-specific ELF sections, when using this approach. The GNU community also has a current effort to adapt their DWARF debug sections in order to move them to separate files before passing the relocatable objects to the linker. The details of Project Fission can be found at http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission. The goal of this project appears to be to reduce the amount of data seen by the link-editor. The primary effort revolves around moving DWARF data to separate .dwo files so that the link-editor never encounters them. The details of modifying the DWARF data to be usable in this form are involved — please see the above URL for details.

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Keeping track of File System Utilization in Ops Center 12c

- by S Stelting

Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c provides significant monitoring capabilities, combined with very flexible incident management. These capabilities even extend to monitoring the file systems associated with Solaris or Linux assets. Depending on your needs you can monitor and manage incidents, or you can fine tune alert monitoring rules to specific file systems. This article will show you how to use Ops Center 12c to Track file system utilization Adjust file system monitoring rules Disable file system rules Create custom monitoring rules If you're interested in this topic, please join us for a WebEx presentation! Date: Thursday, November 8, 2012 Time: 11:00 am, Eastern Standard Time (New York, GMT-05:00) Meeting Number: 598 796 842 Meeting Password: oracle123 To join the online meeting ------------------------------------------------------- 1. Go to https://oracleconferencing.webex.com/oracleconferencing/j.php?ED=209833597&UID=1512095432&PW=NOWQ3YjJlMmYy&RT=MiMxMQ%3D%3D 2. If requested, enter your name and email address. 3. If a password is required, enter the meeting password: oracle123 4. Click "Join". To view in other time zones or languages, please click the link: https://oracleconferencing.webex.com/oracleconferencing/j.php?ED=209833597&UID=1512095432&PW=NOWQ3YjJlMmYy&ORT=MiMxMQ%3D%3D Monitoring File Systems for OS Assets The Libraries tab provides basic, device-level information about the storage associated with an OS instance. This tab shows you the local file system associated with the instance and any shared storage libraries mounted by Ops Center. More detailed information about file system storage is available under the Analytics tab under the sub-tab named Charts. Here, you can select and display the individual mount points of an OS, and export the utilization data if desired: In this example, the OS instance has a basic root file partition and several NFS directories. Each file system mount point can be independently chosen for display in the Ops Center chart. File Systems and Incident Reporting Every asset managed by Ops Center has a "monitoring policy", which determines what represents a reportable issue with the asset. The policy is made up of a bunch of monitoring rules, where each rule describes An attribute to monitor The conditions which represent an issue The level or levels of severity for the issue When the conditions are met, Ops Center sends a notification and creates an incident. By default, OS instances have three monitoring rules associated with file systems: File System Reachability: Triggers an incident if a file system is not reachable NAS Library Status: Triggers an incident for a value of "WARNING" or "DEGRADED" for a NAS-based file system File System Used Space Percentage: Triggers an incident when file system utilization grows beyond defined thresholds You can view these rules in the Monitoring tab for an OS: Of course, the default monitoring rules is that they apply to every file system associated with an OS instance. As a result, any issue with NAS accessibility or disk utilization will trigger an incident. This can cause incidents for file systems to be reported multiple times if the same shared storage is used by many assets, as shown in this screen shot: Depending on the level of control you'd like, there are a number of ways to fine tune incident reporting. Note that any changes to an asset's monitoring policy will detach it from the default, creating a new monitoring policy for the asset. If you'd like, you can extract a monitoring policy from an asset, which allows you to save it and apply the customized monitoring profile to other OS assets. Solution #1: Modify the Reporting Thresholds In some cases, you may want to modify the basic conditions for incident reporting in your file system. The changes you make to a default monitoring rule will apply to all of the file systems associated with your operating system. Selecting the File Systems Used Space Percentage entry and clicking the "Edit Alert Monitoring Rule Parameters" button opens a pop-up dialog which allows you to modify the rule. The first screen lets you decide when you will check for file system usage, and how long you will wait before opening an incident in Ops Center. By default, Ops Center monitors continuously and reports disk utilization issues which exist for more than 15 minutes. The second screen lets you define actual threshold values. By default, Ops Center opens a Warning level incident is utilization rises above 80%, and a Critical level incident for utilization above 95% Solution #2: Disable Incident Reporting for File System If you'd rather not report file system incidents, you can disable the monitoring rules altogether. In this case, you can select the monitoring rules and click the "Disable Alert Monitoring Rule(s)" button to open the pop-up confirmation dialog. Like the first solution, this option affects all file system monitoring. It allows you to completely disable incident reporting for NAS library status or file system space consumption. Solution #3: Create New Monitoring Rules for Specific File Systems If you'd like to have the greatest flexibility when monitoring file systems, you can create entirely new rules. Clicking the "Add Alert Monitoring Rule" (the icon with the green plus sign) opens a wizard which allows you to define a new rule. This rule will be based on a threshold, and will be used to monitor operating system assets. We'd like to add a rule to track disk utilization for a specific file system - the /nfs-guest directory. To do this, we specify the following attribute FileSystemUsages.name=/nfs-guest.usedSpacePercentage The value of name in the attribute allows us to define a specific NFS shared directory or file system... in the case of this OS, we could have chosen any of the values shown in the File Systems Utilization chart at the beginning of this article. usedSpacePercentage lets us define a threshold based on the percentage of total disk space used. There are a number of other values that we could use for threshold-based monitoring of FileSystemUsages, including freeSpace freeSpacePercentage totalSpace usedSpace usedSpacePercentage The final sections of the screen allow us to determine when to monitor for disk usage, and how long to wait after utilization reaches a threshold before creating an incident. The next screen lets us define the threshold values and severity levels for the monitoring rule: If historical data is available, Ops Center will display it in the screen. Clicking the Apply button will create the new monitoring rule and active it in your monitoring policy. If you combine this with one of the previous solutions, you can precisely define which file systems will generate incidents and notifications. For example, this monitoring policy has the default "File System Used Space Percentage" rule disabled, but the new rule reports ONLY on utilization for the /nfs-guest directory. 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An Honest look at SharePoint Web Services

- by juanlarios

INTRODUCTION If you are a SharePoint developer you know that there are two basic ways to develop against SharePoint. 1) The object Model 2) Web services. SharePoint object model has the advantage of being quite rich. Anything you can do through the SharePoint UI as an administrator or end user, you can do through the object model. In fact everything that is done through the UI is done through the object model behind the scenes. The major disadvantage to getting at SharePoint this way is that the code needs to run on the server. This means that all web parts, event receivers, features, etc… all of this is code that is deployed to the server. The second way to get to SharePoint is through the built in web services. There are many articles on how to manipulate web services, how to authenticate to them and interact with them. The basic idea is that a remote application or process can contact SharePoint through a web service. Lots has been written about how great these web services are. This article is written to document the limitations, some of the issues and frustrations with working with SharePoint built in web services. Ultimately, for the tasks I was given to , SharePoint built in web services did not suffice. My evaluation of SharePoint built in services was compared against creating my own WCF Services to do what I needed. The current project I'm working on right now involved several "integration points". A remote application, installed on a separate server was to contact SharePoint and perform an task or operation. So I decided to start up Visual Studio and built a DLL and basically have 2 layers of logic. An integration layer and a data layer. A good friend of mine pointed me to SOLID principles and referred me to some videos and tutorials about it. I decided to implement the methodology (although a lot of the principles are common sense and I already incorporated in my coding practices). I was to deliver this dll to the application team and they would simply call the methods exposed by this dll and voila! it would do some task or operation in SharePoint. SOLUTION My integration layer implemented an interface that defined some of the basic integration tasks that I was to put together. My data layer was about the same, it implemented an interface with some of the tasks that I was going to develop. This gave me the opportunity to develop different data layers, ultimately different ways to get at SharePoint if I needed to. This is a classic SOLID principle. In this case it proved to be quite helpful because I wrote one data layer completely implementing SharePoint built in Web Services and another implementing my own WCF Service that I wrote. I should mention there is another layer underneath the data layer. In referencing SharePoint or WCF services in my visual studio project I created a class for every web service call. So for example, if I used List.asx. I created a class called "DocumentRetreival" this class would do the grunt work to connect to the correct URL, It would perform the basic operation of contacting the service and so on. If I used a view.asmx, I implemented a class called "ViewRetrieval" with the same idea as the last class but it would now interact with all he operations in view.asmx. This gave my data layer the ability to perform multiple calls without really worrying about some of the grunt work each class performs. This again, is a classic SOLID principle. So, in order to compare them side by side we can look at both data layers and with is involved in each. Lets take a look at the "Create Project" task or operation. The integration point is described as , "dll is to provide a way to create a project in SharePoint". Projects , in this case are basically document libraries. I am to implement a way in which a remote application can create a document library in SharePoint. Easy enough right? Use the list.asmx Web service in SharePoint. So here we go! Lets take a look at the code. I added the List.asmx web service reference to my project and this is the class that contacts it: class DocumentRetrieval { private ListsSoapClient _service; d private bool _impersonation; public DocumentRetrieval(bool impersonation, string endpt) { _service = new ListsSoapClient(); this.SetEndPoint(string.Format("{0}/{1}", endpt, ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["List"])); _impersonation = impersonation; if (_impersonation) { _service.ClientCredentials.Windows.ClientCredential.Password = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["password"]; _service.ClientCredentials.Windows.ClientCredential.UserName = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["username"]; _service.ClientCredentials.Windows.AllowedImpersonationLevel = System.Security.Principal.TokenImpersonationLevel.Impersonation; } private void SetEndPoint(string p) { _service.Endpoint.Address = new EndpointAddress(p); } /// <summary> /// Creates a document library with specific name and templateID /// </summary> /// <param name="listName">New list name</param> /// <param name="templateID">Template ID</param> /// <returns></returns> public XmlElement CreateLibrary(string listName, int templateID, ref ExceptionContract exContract) { XmlDocument sample = new XmlDocument(); XmlElement viewCol = sample.CreateElement("Empty"); try { _service.Open(); viewCol = _service.AddList(listName, "", templateID); } catch (Exception ex) { exContract = new ExceptionContract("DocumentRetrieval/CreateLibrary", ex.GetType(), "Connection Error", ex.StackTrace, ExceptionContract.ExceptionCode.error); }finally { _service.Close(); } return viewCol; } } There was a lot more in this class (that I am not including) because i was reusing the grunt work and making other operations with LIst.asmx, For example, updating content types, changing or configuring lists or document libraries. One of the first things I noticed about working with the built in services is that you are really at the mercy of what is available to you. Before creating a document library (Project) I wanted to expose a IsProjectExisting method. This way the integration or data layer could recognize if a library already exists. Well there is no service call or method available to do that check. So this is what I wrote: public bool DocLibExists(string listName, ref ExceptionContract exContract) { try { var allLists = _service.GetListCollection(); return allLists.ChildNodes.OfType<XmlElement>().ToList().Exists(x => x.Attributes["Title"].Value ==listName); } catch (Exception ex) { exContract = new ExceptionContract("DocumentRetrieval/GetList/GetListWSCall", ex.GetType(), "Unable to Retrieve List Collection", ex.StackTrace, ExceptionContract.ExceptionCode.error); } return false; } This really just gets an XMLElement with all the lists. It was then up to me to sift through the clutter and noise and see if Document library already existed. This took a little bit of getting used to. Now instead of working with code, you are working with XMLElement response format from web service. I wrote a LINQ query to go through and find if the attribute "Title" existed and had a value of the listname then it would return True, if not False. I didn't particularly like working this way. Dealing with XMLElement responses and then having to manipulate it to get at the exact data I was looking for. Once the check for the DocLibExists, was done, I would either create the document library or send back an error indicating the document library already existed. Now lets examine the code that actually creates the document library. It does what you are really after, it creates a document library. Notice how the template ID is really an integer. Every document library template in SharePoint has an ID associated with it. Document libraries, Image Library, Custom List, Project Tasks, etc… they all he a unique integer associated with it. Well, that's great but the client came back to me and gave me some specifics that each "project" or document library, should have. They specified they had 3 types of projects. Each project would have unique views, about 10 views for each project. Each Project specified unique configurations (auditing, versioning, content types, etc…) So what turned out to be a simple implementation of creating a document library as a repository for a project, turned out to be quite involved. The first thing I thought of was to create a template for document library. There are other ways you can do this too. Using the web Service call, you could configure views, versioning, even content types, etc… the only catch is, you have to be working quite extensively with CAML. I am not fond of CAML. I can do it and work with it, I just don't like doing it. It is quite touchy and at times it is quite tough to understand where errors were made with CAML statements. Working with Web Services and CAML proved to be quite annoying. The service call would return a generic error message that did not particularly point me to a CAML statement syntax error, or even a CAML error. I was not sure if it was a security , performance or code based issue. It was quite tough to work with. At times it was difficult to work with because of the way SharePoint handles metadata. There are "Names", "Display Name", and "StaticName" fields. It was quite tough to understand at times, which one to use. So it took a lot of trial and error. There are tools that can help with CAML generation. There is also now intellisense for CAML statements in Visual Studio that might help but ultimately I'm not fond of CAML with Web Services. So I decided on the template. So my plan was to create create a document library, configure it accordingly and then use The Template Builder that comes with the SharePoint SDK. This tool allows you to create site templates, list template etc… It is quite interesting because it does not generate an STP file, it actually generates an xml definition and a feature you can activate and make that template available on a site or site collection. The first issue I experienced with this is that one of the specifications to this template was that the "All Documents" view was to have 2 web parts on it. Well, it turns out that using the template builder , it did not include the web parts as part of the list template definition it generated. It backed up the settings, the views, the content types but not the custom web parts. I still decided to try this even without the web parts on the page. This new template defined a new Document library definition with a unique ID. The problem was that the service call accepts an int but it only has access to the built in library int definitions. Any new ones added or created will not be available to create. So this made it impossible for me to approach the problem this way. I should also mention that one of the nice features about SharePoint is the ability to create list templates, back them up and then create lists based on that template. It can all be done by end user administrators. These templates are quite unique because they are saved as an STP file and not an xml definition. I also went this route and tried to see if there was another service call where I could create a document library based no given template name. Nope! none. After some thinking I decide to implement a WCF service to do this creation for me. I was quite certain that the object model would allow me to create document libraries base on a template in which an ID was required and also templates saved as STP files. Now I don't want to bother with posting the code to contact WCF service because it's self explanatory, but I will post the code that I used to create a list with custom template. public ServiceResult CreateProject(string name, string templateName, string projectId) { string siteurl = SPContext.Current.Site.Url; Guid webguid = SPContext.Current.Web.ID; using (SPSite site = new SPSite(siteurl)) { using (SPWeb rootweb = site.RootWeb) { SPListTemplateCollection temps = site.GetCustomListTemplates(rootweb); ProcessWeb(siteurl, webguid, web => Act_CreateProject(web, name, templateName, projectId, temps)); }//SpWeb }//SPSite return _globalResult; } private void Act_CreateProject(SPWeb targetsite, string name, string templateName, string projectId, SPListTemplateCollection temps) { var temp = temps.Cast<SPListTemplate>().FirstOrDefault(x => x.Name.Equals(templateName)); if (temp != null) { try { Guid listGuid = targetsite.Lists.Add(name, "", temp); SPList newList = targetsite.Lists[listGuid]; _globalResult = new ServiceResult(true, "Success", "Success"); } catch (Exception ex) { _globalResult = new ServiceResult(false, (string.IsNullOrEmpty(ex.Message) ? "None" : ex.Message + " " + templateName), ex.StackTrace.ToString()); } } private void ProcessWeb(string siteurl, Guid webguid, Action<SPWeb> action) { using (SPSite sitecollection = new SPSite(siteurl)) { using (SPWeb web = sitecollection.AllWebs[webguid]) { action(web); } } } This code is actually some of the code I implemented for the service. there was a lot more I did on Project Creation which I will cover in my next blog post. I implemented an ACTION method to process the web. This allowed me to properly dispose the SPWEb and SPSite objects and not rewrite this code over and over again. So I implemented a WCF service to create projects for me, this allowed me to do a lot more than just create a document library with a template, it now gave me the flexibility to do just about anything the client wanted at project creation. Once this was implemented , the client came back to me and said, "we reference all our projects with ID's in our application. we want SharePoint to do the same". This has been something I have been doing for a little while now but I do hope that SharePoint 2010 can have more of an answer to this and address it properly. I have been adding metadata to SPWebs through property bag. I believe I have blogged about it before. This time it required metadata added to a document library. No problem!!! I also mentioned these web parts that were to go on the "All Documents" View. I took the opportunity to configure them to the appropriate settings. There were two settings that needed to be set on these web parts. One of them was a Project ID configured in the webpart properties. The following code enhances and replaces the "Act_CreateProject " method above: private void Act_CreateProject(SPWeb targetsite, string name, string templateName, string projectId, SPListTemplateCollection temps) { var temp = temps.Cast<SPListTemplate>().FirstOrDefault(x => x.Name.Equals(templateName)); if (temp != null) { SPLimitedWebPartManager wpmgr = null; try { Guid listGuid = targetsite.Lists.Add(name, "", temp); SPList newList = targetsite.Lists[listGuid]; SPFolder rootFolder = newList.RootFolder; rootFolder.Properties.Add(KEY, projectId); rootFolder.Update(); if (rootFolder.ParentWeb != targetsite) rootFolder.ParentWeb.Dispose(); if (!templateName.Contains("Natural")) { SPView alldocumentsview = newList.Views.Cast<SPView>().FirstOrDefault(x => x.Title.Equals(ALLDOCUMENTS)); SPFile alldocfile = targetsite.GetFile(alldocumentsview.ServerRelativeUrl); wpmgr = alldocfile.GetLimitedWebPartManager(PersonalizationScope.Shared); ConfigureWebPart(wpmgr, projectId, CUSTOMWPNAME); alldocfile.Update(); } if (newList.ParentWeb != targetsite) newList.ParentWeb.Dispose(); _globalResult = new ServiceResult(true, "Success", "Success"); } catch (Exception ex) { _globalResult = new ServiceResult(false, (string.IsNullOrEmpty(ex.Message) ? "None" : ex.Message + " " + templateName), ex.StackTrace.ToString()); } finally { if (wpmgr != null) { wpmgr.Web.Dispose(); wpmgr.Dispose(); } } } } private void ConfigureWebPart(SPLimitedWebPartManager mgr, string prjId, string webpartname) { var wp = mgr.WebParts.Cast<System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart>().FirstOrDefault(x => x.DisplayTitle.Equals(webpartname)); if (wp != null) { (wp as ListRelationshipWebPart.ListRelationshipWebPart).ProjectID = prjId; mgr.SaveChanges(wp); } } This Shows you how I was able to set metadata on the document library. It has to be added to the RootFolder of the document library, Unfortunately, the SPList does not have a Property bag that I can add a key\value pair to. It has to be done on the root folder. Now everything in the integration will reference projects by ID's and will not care about names. My, "DocLibExists" will now need to be changed because a web service is not set up to look at property bags. I had to write another method on the Service to do the equivalent but with ID's instead of names. The second thing you will notice about the code is the use of the Webpartmanager. I have seen several examples online, and also read a lot about memory leaks, The above code does not produce memory leaks. The web part manager creates an SPWeb, so just dispose it like I did. CONCLUSION This is a long long post so I will stop here for now, I will continue with more comparisons and limitations in my next post. My conclusion for this example is that Web Services will do the trick if you can suffer through CAML and if you are doing some simple operations. For Everything else, there's WCF! **** fireI apologize for the disorganization of this post, I was on a bus on a 12 hour trip to IOWA while I wrote it, I was half asleep and half awake, hopefully it makes enough sense to someone.

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SQL SERVER – 5 Tips for Improving Your Data with expressor Studio

- by pinaldave

It’s no secret that bad data leads to bad decisions and poor results. However, how do you prevent dirty data from taking up residency in your data store? Some might argue that it’s the responsibility of the person sending you the data. While that may be true, in practice that will rarely hold up. It doesn’t matter how many times you ask, you will get the data however they decide to provide it. So now you have bad data. What constitutes bad data? There are quite a few valid answers, for example: Invalid date values Inappropriate characters Wrong data Values that exceed a pre-set threshold While it is certainly possible to write your own scripts and custom SQL to identify and deal with these data anomalies, that effort often takes too long and becomes difficult to maintain. Instead, leveraging an ETL tool like expressor Studio makes the data cleansing process much easier and faster. Below are some tips for leveraging expressor to get your data into tip-top shape. Tip 1: Build reusable data objects with embedded cleansing rules One of the new features in expressor Studio 3.2 is the ability to define constraints at the metadata level. Using expressor’s concept of Semantic Types, you can define reusable data objects that have embedded logic such as constraints for dealing with dirty data. Once defined, they can be saved as a shared atomic type and then re-applied to other data attributes in other schemas. As you can see in the figure above, I’ve defined a constraint on zip code. I can then save the constraint rules I defined for zip code as a shared atomic type called zip_type for example. The next time I get a different data source with a schema that also contains a zip code field, I can simply apply the shared atomic type (shown below) and the previously defined constraints will be automatically applied. Tip 2: Unlock the power of regular expressions in Semantic Types Another powerful feature introduced in expressor Studio 3.2 is the option to use regular expressions as a constraint. A regular expression is used to identify patterns within data. The patterns could be something as simple as a date format or something much more complex such as a street address. For example, I could define that a valid IP address should be made up of 4 numbers, each 0 to 255, and separated by a period. So 192.168.23.123 might be a valid IP address whereas 888.777.0.123 would not be. How can I account for this using regular expressions? A very simple regular expression that would look for any 4 sets of 3 digits separated by a period would be: ^[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}$ Alternatively, the following would be the exact check for truly valid IP addresses as we had defined above: ^(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|1[0-9]{2}|[1-9]?[0-9])\.(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|1[0-9]{2}|[1-9]?[0-9])\.(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|1[0-9]{2}|[1-9]?[0-9])\.(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|1[0-9]{2}|[1-9]?[0-9])$ . In expressor, we would enter this regular expression as a constraint like this: Here we select the corrective action to be ‘Escalate’, meaning that the expressor Dataflow operator will decide what to do. Some of the options include rejecting the offending record, skipping it, or aborting the dataflow. Tip 3: Email pattern expressions that might come in handy In the example schema that I am using, there’s a field for email. Email addresses are often entered incorrectly because people are trying to avoid spam. While there are a lot of different ways to define what constitutes a valid email address, a quick search online yields a couple of really useful regular expressions for validating email addresses: This one is short and sweet: \b[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}\b (Source: http://www.regular-expressions.info/) This one is more specific about which characters are allowed: ^([a-zA-Z0-9_\-\.]+)@((\[[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.)|(([a-zA-Z0-9\-]+\.)+))([a-zA-Z]{2,4}|[0-9]{1,3})(\]?)$ (Source: http://regexlib.com/REDetails.aspx?regexp_id=26 ) Tip 4: Reject “dirty data” for analysis or further processing Yet another feature introduced in expressor Studio 3.2 is the ability to reject records based on constraint violations. To capture reject records on input, simply specify Reject Record in the Error Handling setting for the Read File operator. Then attach a Write File operator to the reject port of the Read File operator as such: Next, in the Write File operator, you can configure the expressor operator in a similar way to the Read File. The key difference would be that the schema needs to be derived from the upstream operator as shown below: Once configured, expressor will output rejected records to the file you specified. In addition to the rejected records, expressor also captures some diagnostic information that will be helpful towards identifying why the record was rejected. This makes diagnosing errors much easier! Tip 5: Use a Filter or Transform after the initial cleansing to finish the job Sometimes you may want to predicate the data cleansing on a more complex set of conditions. For example, I may only be interested in processing data containing males over the age of 25 in certain zip codes. Using an expressor Filter operator, you can define the conditional logic which isolates the records of importance away from the others. Alternatively, the expressor Transform operator can be used to alter the input value via a user defined algorithm or transformation. It also supports the use of conditional logic and data can be rejected based on constraint violations. However, the best tip I can leave you with is to not constrain your solution design approach – expressor operators can be combined in many different ways to achieve the desired results. For example, in the expressor Dataflow below, I can post-process the reject data from the Filter which did not meet my pre-defined criteria and, if successful, Funnel it back into the flow so that it gets written to the target table. I continue to be impressed that expressor offers all this functionality as part of their FREE expressor Studio desktop ETL tool, which you can download from here. Their Studio ETL tool is absolutely free and they are very open about saying that if you want to deploy their software on a dedicated Windows Server, you need to purchase their server software, whose pricing is posted on their website. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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Earthquake Locator - Live Demo and Source Code

- by Bobby Diaz

Quick Links Live Demo Source Code I finally got a live demo up and running! I signed up for a shared hosting account over at discountasp.net so I could post a working version of the Earthquake Locator application, but ran into a few minor issues related to RIA Services. Thankfully, Tim Heuer had already encountered and explained all of the problems I had along with solutions to these and other common pitfalls. You can find his blog post here. The ones that got me were the default authentication tag being set to Windows instead of Forms, needed to add the <baseAddressPrefixFilters> tag since I was running on a shared server using host headers, and finally the Multiple Authentication Schemes settings in the IIS7 Manager. To get the demo application ready, I pulled down local copies of the earthquake data feeds that the application can use instead of pulling from the USGS web site. I basically added the feed URL as an app setting in the web.config: <appSettings>     <add key="FeedUrl" value="~/Demo/7day-M2.5.xml" /> </appSettings> You will need to do the same if you want to run from local copies of the feed data. I also made the following minor changes to the EarthquakeService class so that it gets the FeedUrl from the web.config: private static readonly string FeedUrl = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["FeedUrl"]; /// <summary> /// Gets the feed at the specified URL. /// </summary> /// <param name="url">The URL.</param> /// <returns>A <see cref="SyndicationFeed"/> object.</returns> public static SyndicationFeed GetFeed(String url) { SyndicationFeed feed = null; if ( !String.IsNullOrEmpty(url) && url.StartsWith("~") ) { // resolve virtual path to physical file system url = System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath(url); } try { log.Debug("Loading RSS feed: " + url); using ( var reader = XmlReader.Create(url) ) { feed = SyndicationFeed.Load(reader); } } catch ( Exception ex ) { log.Error("Error occurred while loading RSS feed: " + url, ex); } return feed; } You can now view the live demo or download the source code here, but be sure you have WCF RIA Services installed before running the application locally and make sure the FeedUrl is pointing to a valid location. Please let me know if you have any comments or if you run into any issues with the code. Enjoy!

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Innovation, Adaptability and Agility Emerge As Common Themes at ACORD LOMA Insurance Forum

- by [email protected]

Helen Pitts, senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance is blogging from the show floor of the ACORD LOMA Insurance Forum this week. Sessions at the ACORD LOMA Insurance Forum this week highlighted the need for insurance companies to think creatively and be innovative with their technology in order to adapt to continuously shifting market dynamics and drive business efficiency and agility. LOMA President & CEO Robert Kerzner kicked off the day on Tuesday, citing how the recent downtown and recovery has impacted the insurance industry and the ways that companies are doing business. He encouraged carriers to look for new ways to deliver solutions and offer a better service experience for consumers. ACORD President & CEO Gregory Maciag reinforced Kerzner's remarks, noting how the industry's approach to technology and development of industry standards has evolved over the association's 40-year history and cited how the continued rise of mobile computing will change the way many carriers are doing business today and in the future. Drawing from his own experiences, popular keynote speaker and Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak continued this theme, delving into ways that insurers can unite business with technology. "iWoz" encouraged insurers to foster an entrepreneurial mindset in a corporate environment to create a culture of creativity and innovation. He noted that true innovation in business comes from those who have a passion for what they do. Innovation was also a common theme in several sessions throughout the day with topics ranging from modernization of core systems, automated underwriting, distribution management, CRM and customer communications management. It was evident that insurers have begun to move past the "old school" processes and systems that constrain agility, implementing new process models and modern technology to become nimble and more adaptive to the market. Oracle Insurance executives shared a few examples of how insurers are achieving innovation during our Platinum Sponsor session, "Adaptive System Transformation: Making Agility More Than a Buzzword." Oracle Insurance Senior Vice President and General Manager Don Russo was joined by Chuck Johnston, vice president, global strategy and alliances, and Srini Venkatasantham, vice president of product strategy. The three shared how Oracle's adaptive solutions for insurance, with a focus on how the key pillars of an adaptive systems - configurable applications, accessible information, extensible content and flexible process - have helped insurers respond rapidly, perform effectively and win more business. Insurers looking to innovate their business with adaptive insurance solutions including policy administration, business intelligence, enterprise document automation, rating and underwriting, claims, CRM and more stopped by the Oracle Insurance booth on the exhibit floor. It was a premiere destination for many participating in the exhibit hall tours conducted throughout the day. Finally, red was definitely the color of the evening at the Oracle Insurance "Red Hot" customer celebration at the House of Blues. The event provided a great opportunity for our customers to come together and network with the Oracle Insurance team and their peers in the industry. We look forward to visiting more with of our customers and making new connections today. Helen Pitts is senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance.

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Emulation of windows sucks on Linux

<b>Technology & Life Integration:</b> "Nevertheless there are a great many windows programs which run quite well, sometimes better, using the WINE developed libraries. Yet I sometimes wonder if it is too little too late."

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Life Technologies: Making Life Easier to Manage

- by Michael Snow

12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} When we’re thinking about customer engagement, we’re acutely aware of all the forces at play competing for our customer’s attention. Solutions that make life easier for our customers draw attention to themselves. We tend to engage more when there is a distinct benefit and we can take a deep breath and accept that there is hope in the world and everything isn’t designed to frustrate us and make our lives miserable. (sigh…) When products are designed to automate processes that were consuming hours of our time with no relief in sight, they deserve to be recognized. One of our recent Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Award Winners in the WebCenter category, Life Technologies, has recently posted a video promoting their “award winning” solution. The Oracle Innovation Awards are part of the overall Oracle Excellence awards given to customers for innovation with Oracle products. More info here. Their award nomination included this description: Life Technologies delivered the My Life Service Portal as part of a larger Digital Hub strategy. This Portal is the first of its kind in the biotechnology service providing industry. The Portal provides access to Life Technologies cloud based service monitoring system where all customer deployed instruments can be remotely monitored and proactively repaired. The portal provides alerts from these cloud based monitoring services directly to the customer and to Life Technologies Field Engineers. The Portal provides insight into the instruments and services customers purchased for the purpose of analyzing and anticipating future customer needs and creating targeted sales and service programs. This portal not only provides benefits for Life Technologies internal sales and service teams but provides customers a central place to track all pertinent instrument information including: instrument service history instrument status and previous activities instrument performance analytics planned service visits warranty/contract information discussion forums social networks for lab management and collaboration alerts and notifications on all of the above team scheduling for instrument usage promote optional reagents required to keep instruments performing From their website The Life Technologies Instruments & Services Portal Helps You Save Time and Gain Peace of Mind Introducing the new, award-winning, free online tool that enables easier management of your instrument use and care, faster response to requests for service or service quotes, and instant sharing of key instrument and service information with your colleagues. Now – this unto itself is obviously beneficial for their customers who were previously burdened with having to do all of these tasks separately, manually and inconsistently by nature. Now – all in one place and free to their customers – a portal that ties it all together. They now have built the platform to give their customers yet another reason to do business with them – Their headline on their product page says it all: “Life is now easier to manage - All your instrument use and care in one place – the no-cost, no-hassle Instruments and Services Portal.” Of course – it’s very convenient that the company name includes “Life” and now can also promote to their clients and prospects that doing business with them is easy and their sophisticated lab equipment is easy to manage. In an industry full of PhD’s – “Easy” isn’t usually the first word that comes to mind, but Life Technologies has now tied the word to their brand in a very eloquent way. Between our work lives and family or personal lives, getting any mono-focused minutes of dedicated attention has become such a rare occurrence in our current era of multi-tasking that those moments of focus are highly prized. So – when something is done really well – so well that it becomes captivating and urges sharing impulses – I take notice and dig deeper and most of the time I discover other gems not so hidden below the surface. And then I share with those I know would enjoy and understand. In the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit here that the first person I shared the videos below with was my daughter. She’s in her senior year of high school in the midst of her college search. She’s passionate about her academics and has already decided that she wants to study Neuroscience in college and like her mother will be in for the long haul to a PhD eventually. In a summer science program at Smith College 2 summers ago – she sent the family famous text to me – “I just dissected a sheep’s brain – wicked cool!” – This was followed by an equally memorable text this past summer in a research mentorship in Neuroscience at UConn – “Just sliced up some rat brain. Reminded me of a deli slicer at the supermarket… sorry I forgot to call last night…” So… needless to say – I knew I had an audience that would enjoy and understand these videos below and are now being shared among her science classmates and faculty. And evidently - so does Life Technologies! They’ve done a great job on these making them fun and something that will easily be shared among their customers social networks. They’ve created a neuro-archetypal character, “Ph.Diddy” and know that their world of clients in academics, research, and other institutions would understand and enjoy the “edutainment” value in this series of videos on their YouTube channel that pokes fun at the stereotypes while also promoting their products at the same time. They use their Facebook page for additional engagement with their clients and as another venue to promote these videos. Enjoy this one as well! More to be found here: http://www.youtube.com/lifetechnologies Stay tuned to this Oracle WebCenter blog channel. Tomorrow we'll be taking a look at another winner of the Innovation Awards, LADWP - helping to keep the citizens of Los Angeles engaged with their Water and Power provider.

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