bit cost - Page 152 - Developer IT

Splunk is fantastically expensive: What are the alternatives?

- by samsmith

This has been discussed, but it has been several months, so it may be time to revisit it: Earlier discussion RE Splunk alternatives For the record, Splunk rocks. But the pricing is simply beyond what we can consider (When I spoke with Splunk today, the cost for a system to index 5gb/day of data is over $30,000.) That is more than we spend on SQL Server (by a large multiple), more than we spend on a rack of servers (by a multiple), etc. etc. The splunk sales team is correct (that for $30K we get more value and functionality than if we spend the same building our own system), but it doesn't matter. The splunk cost is simply too high (by a multiple). Soooooo, we are looking around! Is anyone out there building a splunk like system? Our basic need: Able to listen for syslog messages on multiple udp ports Able to index the incoming data in an async way Some kind of search engine Some kind of UI An API to the search engine (to embed in our console) We currently need to index 3-5gb/day, but need to be able to scale to 10gb/day or more. We do not need a lot of history (30 days is fine). We use Windows 2008 and 2003 servers. Thanks for your thoughts!

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Steps to deploy a custom routing protocol

- by user134589

I'm a Ph.D Student and I'm researching a Service Centric Networking architecture with resourceallocation on a large scale. What I'm looking to do is expand an existing routing protocol like OSPF with extra fields and some new message types that I need for communication between Nodes. I want to manipulate the cost of a network link and I want paths to be calculated like in OSPF V2/v3, but using the cost that my algorithms have calculated. What I have I have the source code of OSPF from Quagga. I am assuming I can edit this code how I want, including packet structures and creating new types. Yes, I am aware it won't be easy but this is a 6 years research project and I am eager to develop something new, to move forward. What I need I would like to know how I can deploy the edited OSPF source files I have (written in C) on any type of server. I have a large testbed environment available with hundreds of virtual nodes and pretty much any OS out there. So if I want to test my extended protocol, how do I make all the nodes in a network use this to communicate? I do not understand what parts of the kernel I need to edit here. I tried searching for days now and I am unable to find how to deploy a non-existing routing protocol, without the use of an application-level framework. If somebody could push me in the right direction that'd be awesome. note: I need this to be a routingprotocol and not an application, since I want this to work on op of the network layer for performance reasons. Thanks!

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Replicated filesystem and EC2 MySQL

- by El Yobo

I'm currently investigating migrating our infrastructure over to run on Amazon's EC2 and am trying to figure out the best way to set up a MySQL service. I'm leaning towards running our own MySQL instances, rather than going with Amazon's RDS, but am still considering the best approach for performance and cost on the instance itself. In order to have persistent data, the MySQL data needs to be on an EBS volume (with some form of striped RAID, e.g. RAID0 or RAID10) to improve persistence. However, EBS IO is limited by the network interface (gigabit, so a theoretical maximum of 128 MB/s), while the ephemeral volumes have no such problem. I did see a suggestion for running two MySQL servers on an instance, with a master running on the ephemeral disk (which we would also RAID) and a slave storing changes to an EBS volume, but this has some additional overhead and complexity (two servers). What I was imagining is using some form of replicated file system such that I could have a filesystem on top of a RAID0 of ephemeral volumes to maximise performance all changes from the above immediately replicated to another RAID1 volume backed by multiple EBS volumes to ensure no data loss The advantages of this would be best possible IO performance for the DB server; no network delay in IO decreased IO on EBS volumes (as all read IO will be done on the ephemeral volumes) so decreased cost good data security, as it's backed onto redundant EBS volumes However, I haven't seen an appropriate system to replicate all changes from one volume to the other; is there a filesystem, or any other approach, which will do this? The distributed file systems, e.g. GlusterFS, DRBD etc seem to focus on replicating disks between servers, can they be set up to do what I'm interested in here? I also haven't seen anything about other's taking this approach. Do I have a solution in need of a problem here (i.e. is performance good enough, so this whole idea is redundant)? Is there some flaw in the plan?

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SQL Server: Network pauses after installing cheap SATA card: Is there a solution?

- by samsmith

At the risk of being assigned to the "bad DBA" club... I did something desperate, and may have to undo it. Problem: After installing a low cost eSATA board, my SQL Server is intermittently unresponsive (seemingly when there is a lot of IO to the eSATA drive). Questions: 1) Is there a solution to the intermittent unresponsiveness that allows me to keep the eSATA in place? 2) Whether or not (1==true): What is a decent, low cost way to add 1-3 TB storage to SQL for non-critical SQL DBs? Detail: Our SAN is full, and expanding it is costly and will take a month. I have a pressing need to add 1-3 TB for some development DBs (e.g. not mission critical; data loss is OK). As a bandaid, I threw a $20 eSATA PCI board in the Dell 1950 server, and attached an external 2TB eSATA drive. This seemed to work fine, but I notice that our production SQL DBs, and even remote desktop, now experience network "pauses" that they never did before (with both SQL client apps and remote desktop throwing "networking problem" errors). This SQL Server has lots of memory, and runs an instance of SQL 2005 (where all line of business apps reside) and an instance SQL 2008 (for development db's). SQL Server RAM has been appropriately configured, and this setup has run great for years. The server is: Dell 1950 Win2003 x64 14GB RAM PERC controller, 2 mirrored hd's internal Dell SAN over gbit ethernet, dual homed 2 PCIx slots (1 used by NIC for SAN, 1 now in use for eSATA board) Thank you for suggestions!

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Top 10 Reasons SQL Developer is Perfect for Oracle Beginners

- by thatjeffsmith

Learning new technologies can be daunting. If you’ve never used a Mac before, you’ll probably be a bit baffled at first. But, you’re probably at least coming from a desktop computing background (Windows), so you common frame of reference. But what if you’re just now learning to use a relational database? Yes, you’ve played with Access a bit, but now your employer or college instructor has charged you with becoming proficient with Oracle database. Here’s 10 reasons why I think Oracle SQL Developer is the perfect vehicle to help get you started. 1. It’s free No need to break into one of these… No start-up costs, no need to wrangle budget dollars from your company. Students don’t have any money after books and lab fees anyway. And most employees don’t like having to ask for ‘special’ software anyway. So avoid all of that and make sure the free stuff doesn’t suit your needs first. Upgrades are available on a regular base, also at no cost, and support is freely available via our public forums. 2. It will run pretty much anywhere Windows – check. OSX (Apple) – check. Unix – check. Linux – check. No need to start up a windows VM to run your Windows-only software in your lab machine. 3. Anyone can install it There’s no installer, no registry to be updated, no admin privs to be obtained. If you can download and extract files to your machine or USB storage device, you can run it. You can be up and running with SQL Developer in under 5 minutes. Here’s a video tutorial to see how to get started. 4. It’s ubiquitous I admit it, I learned a new word yesterday and I wanted an excuse to use it. SQL Developer’s everywhere. It’s had over 2,500,000 downloads in the past year, and is the one of the most downloaded items from OTN. This means if you need help, there’s someone sitting nearby you that can assist, and since they’re in the same tool as you, they’ll be speaking the same language. 5. Simple User Interface Up-up-down-down-Left-right-left-right-A-B-A-B-START will get you 30 lives, but you already knew that, right? You connect, you see your objects, you click on your objects. Or, you can use the worksheet to write your queries and programs in. There’s only one toolbar, and just a few buttons. If you’re like me, video games became less fun when each button had 6 action items mapped to it. I just want the good ole ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘SELECT’, and ‘START’ controls. If you’re new to Oracle, you shouldn’t have the double-workload of learning a new complicated tool as well. 6. It’s not a ‘black box’ Click through your objects, but also get the SQL that drives the GUI As you use the wizards to accomplish tasks for you, you can view the SQL statement being generated on your behalf. Just because you have a GUI, doesn’t mean you’re ceding your responsibility to learn the underlying code that makes the database work. 7. It’s four tools in one It’s not just a query tool. Maybe you need to design a data model first? Or maybe you need to migrate your Sybase ASE database to Oracle for a new project? Or maybe you need to create some reports? SQL Developer does all of that. So once you get comfortable with one part of the tool, the others will be much easier to pick up as your needs change. 8. Great learning resources available Videos, blogs, hands-on learning labs – you name it, we got it. Why wait for someone to train you, when you can train yourself at your own pace? 9. You can use it to teach yourself SQL Instead of being faced with the white-screen-of-panic, you can visually build your queries by dragging and dropping tables and views into the Query Builder. Yes, ‘just like Access’ – only better. And as you build your query, toggle to the Worksheet panel and see the SQL statement. Again, SQL Developer is not a black box. If you prefer to learn by trial and error, the worksheet will attempt to suggest the next bit of your SQL statement with it’s completion insight feature. And if you have syntax errors, those will be highlighted – just like your misspelled words in your favorite word processor. 10. It scales to match your experience level You won’t be a n00b forever. In 6-8 months, when you’re ready to tackle something a bit more complicated, like XML DB or Oracle Spatial, the tool is already there waiting on you. No need to go out and find the ‘advanced’ tool. 11. Wait, you said this was a ‘Top 10′ list? Yes. Yes, I did. I’m using this ‘trick’ to get you to continue reading because I’m going to say something you might not want to hear. Are you ready? Tools won’t replace experience, failure, hard work, and training. Just because you have the keys to the car, doesn’t mean you’re ready to head out on the race track. While SQL Developer reduces the barriers to entry, it does not completely remove them. Many experienced folks simply do not like tools. Rather, they don’t like the people that pick up tools without the know-how to properly use them. If you don’t understand what ‘TRUNCATE’ means, don’t try it out. Try picking up a book first. Of course, it’s very nice to have your own sandbox to play in, so you don’t upset the other children. That’s why I really like our Dev Days Database Virtual Box image. It’s your own database to learn and experiment with.

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How to debug manifest errors?

- by Rryk

I am creating an application that depends on third-party library, which in turn depends on MSVCP90D.dll (it was compiled with debug symbols). While starting the application it fails to start and provides an error message: I have found such library in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\redist\Debug_NonRedist\amd64\Microsoft.VC90.DebugCRT and C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\redist\Debug_NonRedist\x86\Microsoft.VC90.DebugCRT. As you can see one of them is 64-bit, while the other is 32-bit. When I have placed 32-bit into the directory of the application the application silently crashes while loading (log from Visual Studio Output window is below). With the 32-bit one I get another error message: If I press Abort -- programs shuts down, Retry results in breaking into debug session for crt0msg.c file. This is system file and I have no idea how to debug it. If I press Ignore I get yet another error message: So the question is how to debug such errors? Please give me some links where I can read more about it or point me out what exactly I should do in such cases. I know this relates to manifest problems -- please give me a good resource where I can read about resources, since what I have found have confused me even more. This is log for 64-bit version of the MSVCP90D.dll library: 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'D:\Projects\Chromium\devenv\install\build-msvc-debug\chromium-xml3d-rtsg2\chrome.exe', Symbols loaded. 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ntdll.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\kernel32.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\KernelBase.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\user32.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\gdi32.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\lpk.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\usp10.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msvcrt.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\advapi32.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\sechost.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\rpcrt4.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\sspicli.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\cryptbase.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\shell32.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\shlwapi.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\winmm.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\version.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\psapi.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\imm32.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msctf.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'D:\Projects\Chromium\devenv\install\build-msvc-debug\chromium-xml3d-rtsg2\chrome.dll', Symbols loaded. 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ole32.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\oleaut32.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\winsxs\x86_microsoft.windows.common-controls_6595b64144ccf1df_6.0.7600.16385_none_421189da2b7fabfc\comctl32.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\oleacc.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\opengl32.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\glu32.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ddraw.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\dciman32.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\setupapi.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\cfgmgr32.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\devobj.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\dwmapi.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\secur32.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'D:\Projects\Chromium\devenv\install\build-msvc-debug\rtsg2\bin\RTSG2.dll', Symbols loaded. 'chrome.exe': Unloaded 'D:\Projects\Chromium\devenv\install\build-msvc-debug\chromium-xml3d-rtsg2\chrome.dll' 'chrome.exe': Unloaded 'D:\Projects\Chromium\devenv\install\build-msvc-debug\rtsg2\bin\RTSG2.dll' 'chrome.exe': Unloaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\secur32.dll' 'chrome.exe': Unloaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\opengl32.dll' 'chrome.exe': Unloaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ddraw.dll' 'chrome.exe': Unloaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\dwmapi.dll' 'chrome.exe': Unloaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\setupapi.dll' 'chrome.exe': Unloaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\devobj.dll' 'chrome.exe': Unloaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\cfgmgr32.dll' 'chrome.exe': Unloaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\dciman32.dll' 'chrome.exe': Unloaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\glu32.dll' 'chrome.exe': Unloaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\oleacc.dll' 'chrome.exe': Unloaded 'C:\Windows\winsxs\x86_microsoft.windows.common-controls_6595b64144ccf1df_6.0.7600.16385_none_421189da2b7fabfc\comctl32.dll' 'chrome.exe': Unloaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\oleaut32.dll' 'chrome.exe': Unloaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ole32.dll' 'chrome.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ole32.dll', Symbols loaded (source information stripped). The program '[1152] chrome.exe: Native' has exited with code 9 (0x9).

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top Tweets SOA Partner Community – September 2012

- by JuergenKress

Send your tweets @soacommunity #soacommunity and follow us at http://twitter.com/soacommunity OracleBlogs ?Oracle SOA Suite for healthcare integration Dashboard http://ow.ly/1mcJvp SOA Community ?Lost in Translation – Common Mistakes Interpreting Patterns – Mark Simpson, Griffiths-Waite @ SOA, Cloud & Service… ServiceTechSymposium Matthias Zieger, Accenture just added to the agenda to co-present: "Service Modeling & BPM Business Value Patterns" http://ow.ly/ddu7A ServiceTechSymposium ?Newly updated session title and abstract: "Big Data and its impact on SOA", by Demed L'Her, Oracle. http://ow.ly/diOq2 Deepak Arora ?To PaaS or SaaS - the latest discussions with customers using SOA Suite - what are your thoughts #soa #soacommunity SOA Community top Tweets SOA Partner Community July 2012 - are you one of them? If yes please rt! https://soacommunity.wordpress.com/2012/08/28/top-tweets-soa-partner-community-august-2012/ … #soacommunity Sandor Nieuwenhuijs Checkout the BeNeLux Architectural Networking Event during Oracle Open World - meet your peers and the experts http://www.ddg-servicecenter.com/networkmanager/oow/architect/default.aspx … SOA Community ?top Tweets SOA Partner Community – August 2012 http://wp.me/p10C8u-uf SOA Community ?Follow SOA Community on facebook http://www.facebook.com/soacommunity #soacommunity SOA Community ?New Service to promote Your SOA & BPM events at http://oracle.com/events for SOA & BPM Specialized Partners Only! #soacommunity #opn #oracle Jan van Zoggel ?Hotel check, flight check, overview of sessions to visit check http://jvzoggel.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/soa-cloud-servicetech-symposium/ … I'm ready for SOA, Cloud & Service Technology Symposium SOA Community SOA & BPM Specialized Partners Only! New Service to Promote Your SOA & BPM Events at http://oracle.com/events http://wp.me/p10C8u-sH SOA Community Call for content for the next community newsletter. Do you want to publish your success & best practice? Send it @soacommunity #soacommunity SOA Community SOA Adoption in the Brazilian Ministry of Health - Case Study by Ricardo Puttini, University of Brasilia @ SOA, Cloud & Service… Jan van Zoggel ?Just registered for the 5th International SOA, Cloud & Service Technology Symposium in London. Looking forward to it. http://www.servicetechsymposium.com/ OTNArchBeat ?Want to prepare for Oracle SOA Specialization? @t_winterberg offers a suggestion. http://pub.vitrue.com/5Hqu OTNArchBeat ?Oracle BPM enable BAM | @deltalounge http://pub.vitrue.com/BCwj SOA Community Presentations & Training material OFM Summer Camps & Impressions & Feedback http://wp.me/p10C8u-sF Emiel Paasschens Nice! Pdf document on how to use a #Oracle #SOA Suite Domain Value Map (DVM) in the OSB: http://bit.ly/RzyS9w #yam OracleBlogs ?Using Cloud OER to Find Fusion Applications On-Premise Service Concrete WSDL URL http://ow.ly/1m4lz7 demed ?Free VIP pass for @techsymp if you are in London Sep. 24-25. Be the first one to retweet this and I'll DM you details! http://www.servicetechsymposium.com/speaker_bios.php?id=demed_lher … Jan van Zoggel blogpost: Oracle Service Bus duplicate message check using Oracle Coherence caching http://jvzoggel.wordpress.com/2012/08/20/osb-duplicate-message-with-coherence/ … OTNArchBeat ?Oracle Service Bus duplicate message check using Coherence | @jvzoggel http://pub.vitrue.com/ckY8 Oracle UPK & Tutor Synaptis and Oracle Present: Leveraging UPK Throughout the Project Lifecycle: Leveraging UPK throughout the Proj... http://bit.ly/OS2Rbg Rolando Carrasco ?New entry @ oracleradio http://bit.ly/SEvwwS @soacommunity @oracleace How to identify duplicated messages on Oracle SOA SUITE? SOA Community ?Business Driven Development (BDD) Demo Now Available! http://wp.me/p10C8u-sf OTNArchBeat ?Installing Oracle SOA Suite10g on Oracle Enterprise Linux | @lonnekedikmans http://pub.vitrue.com/BEyD OTNArchBeat ?Best practices for Oracle real-time data integration | Frank Ohlhorst http://pub.vitrue.com/1fH1 ServiceTechSymposium ?New OTN podcast featuring speakers Thomas Erl, Tim Hall and Demed L’Her just published. Tune into 1st 3 parts here: http://ow.ly/d1RRn OTNArchBeat ?SOA, Cloud, and Service Technologies - Part 4 of 4 - Best selling SOA author Thomas Erl talks about the latest title... http://ow.ly/1m0txY SOA Community Win a free conference pass for the SOA, Cloud + Service Technology Symposium – become a soacommunity facebook fan!… Lonneke Dikmans VENNSTER BLOG: Installing Oracle SOA Suite10g on Oracle Enterpris... http://blog.vennster.nl/2012/08/installing-oracle-soa-suite-10g-on.html?spref=tw … PeterPaul vande Beek published a blog on exporting Oracle #BPM metrics to a #DWH http://www.deltalounge.net/wpress/2012/08/export-oracle-bpm-metrics-to-a-data-warehouse/ … #soacommunity SOA Community ?Do you follow us on facebook http://www.facebook.com/soacommunity #soacommunity C2B2 Consulting ?Cloud-based Enterprise Architecture by Steve Millidge, C2B2 Consulting @ SOA, Cloud & Service … http://wp.me/p10C8u-sv via @soacommunity Gertjan van het Hof Storing SCA Metadata in the Oracle Metadata Services Repository http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/soa/fonnegra-storing-sca-metadata-1715004.html?msgid=3-6903117805 … arjankramer ?Encrypted OSB Service account passwords http://dlvr.it/20hbNV Richard van Tilborg BPM the Battle http://lnkd.in/yFAJaW OTNArchBeat Using Cloud OER to Find Fusion Applications On-Premise Service Concrete WSDL URL | @RahejaRajesh http://pub.vitrue.com/YDCD SOA Proactive ?Webcast: Introduction to SOA Human Workflow, 8/23, 10 AM EDT. Register @ http://bit.ly/Nx77sY Lucas Jellema ?Programmatically admnistration of OSB using JXM & MBeans. Interesting example is given in https://blogs.oracle.com/ateamsoab2b/entry/automatic_disabling_proxy_service_when … orclateamsoa ?A-Team Blog #ateam: Automatically Disable Proxy Service to avoid overloading OSB http://ow.ly/1lXGKV Atul_Kumar ?Oracle Enterprise Gateway – OEG 11gR1 (11.1.1.*) for beginners http://goo.gl/fb/EJboE Estafet Limited Advanced SOA Boot camp @soacommunity in Munich was excellent.@wlscommunity Learnt a lot and liked the format. SOA Community Oracle Fusion Applications Design Patterns Now Available For Developers by Ultan O'Broin http://wp.me/p10C8u-sd SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Technorati Tags: SOA Community twitter,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,BPM Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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SQL – Migrate Database from SQL Server to NuoDB – A Quick Tutorial

- by Pinal Dave

Data is growing exponentially and every organization with growing data is thinking of next big innovation in the world of Big Data. Big data is a indeed a future for every organization at one point of the time. Just like every other next big thing, big data has its own challenges and issues. The biggest challenge associated with the big data is to find the ideal platform which supports the scalability and growth of the data. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you must be familiar with NuoDB. I have been working with NuoDB for a while and their recent release is the best thus far. NuoDB is an elastically scalable SQL database that can run on local host, datacenter and cloud-based resources. A key feature of the product is that it does not require sharding (read more here). Last week, I was able to install NuoDB in less than 90 seconds and have explored their Explorer and Admin sections. You can read about my experiences in these posts: SQL – Step by Step Guide to Download and Install NuoDB – Getting Started with NuoDB SQL – Quick Start with Admin Sections of NuoDB – Manage NuoDB Database SQL – Quick Start with Explorer Sections of NuoDB – Query NuoDB Database Many SQL Authority readers have been following me in my journey to evaluate NuoDB. One of the frequently asked questions I’ve received from you is if there is any way to migrate data from SQL Server to NuoDB. The fact is that there is indeed a way to do so and NuoDB provides a fantastic tool which can help users to do it. NuoDB Migrator is a command line utility that supports the migration of Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, and PostgreSQL schemas and data to NuoDB. The migration to NuoDB is a three-step process: NuoDB Migrator generates a schema for a target NuoDB database It loads data into the target NuoDB database It dumps data from the source database Let’s see how we can migrate our data from SQL Server to NuoDB using a simple three-step approach. But before we do that we will create a sample database in MSSQL and later we will migrate the same database to NuoDB: Setup Step 1: Build a sample data CREATE DATABASE [Test]; CREATE TABLE [Department]( [DepartmentID] [smallint] NOT NULL, [Name] VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL, [GroupName] VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL, [ModifiedDate] [datetime] NOT NULL, CONSTRAINT [PK_Department_DepartmentID] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ( [DepartmentID] ASC ) ) ON [PRIMARY]; INSERT INTO Department SELECT * FROM AdventureWorks2012.HumanResources.Department; Note that I am using the SQL Server AdventureWorks database to build this sample table but you can build this sample table any way you prefer. Setup Step 2: Install Java 64 bit Before you can begin the migration process to NuoDB, make sure you have 64-bit Java installed on your computer. This is due to the fact that the NuoDB Migrator tool is built in Java. You can download 64-bit Java for Windows, Mac OSX, or Linux from the following link: http://java.com/en/download/manual.jsp. One more thing to remember is that you make sure that the path in your environment settings is set to your JAVA_HOME directory or else the tool will not work. Here is how you can do it: Go to My Computer >> Right Click >> Select Properties >> Click on Advanced System Settings >> Click on Environment Variables >> Click on New and enter the following values. Variable Name: JAVA_HOME Variable Value: C:\Program Files\Java\jre7 Make sure you enter your Java installation directory in the Variable Value field. Setup Step 3: Install JDBC driver for SQL Server. There are two JDBC drivers available for SQL Server. Select the one you prefer to use by following one of the two links below: Microsoft JDBC Driver jTDS JDBC Driver In this example we will be using jTDS JDBC driver. Once you download the driver, move the driver to your NuoDB installation folder. In my case, I have moved the JAR file of the driver into the C:\Program Files\NuoDB\tools\migrator\jar folder as this is my NuoDB installation directory. Now we are all set to start the three-step migration process from SQL Server to NuoDB: Migration Step 1: NuoDB Schema Generation Here is the command I use to generate a schema of my SQL Server Database in NuoDB. First I go to the folder C:\Program Files\NuoDB\tools\migrator\bin and execute the nuodb-migrator.bat file. Note that my database name is ‘test’. Additionally my username and password is also ‘test’. You can see that my SQL Server database is running on my localhost on port 1433. Additionally, the schema of the table is ‘dbo’. nuodb-migrator schema –source.driver=net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver –source.url=jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://localhost:1433/ –source.username=test –source.password=test –source.catalog=test –source.schema=dbo –output.path=/tmp/schema.sql The above script will generate a schema of all my SQL Server tables and will put it in the folder C:\tmp\schema.sql . You can open the schema.sql file and execute this file directly in your NuoDB instance. You can follow the link here to see how you can execute the SQL script in NuoDB. Please note that if you have not yet created the schema in the NuoDB database, you should create it before executing this step. Step 2: Generate the Dump File of the Data Once you have recreated your schema in NuoDB from SQL Server, the next step is very easy. Here we create a CSV format dump file, which will contain all the data from all the tables from the SQL Server database. The command to do so is very similar to the above command. Be aware that this step may take a bit of time based on your database size. nuodb-migrator dump –source.driver=net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver –source.url=jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://localhost:1433/ –source.username=test –source.password=test –source.catalog=test –source.schema=dbo –output.type=csv –output.path=/tmp/dump.cat Once the above command is successfully executed you can find your CSV file in the C:\tmp\ folder. However, you do not have to do anything manually. The third and final step will take care of completing the migration process. Migration Step 3: Load the Data into NuoDB After building schema and taking a dump of the data, the very next step is essential and crucial. It will take the CSV file and load it into the NuoDB database. nuodb-migrator load –target.url=jdbc:com.nuodb://localhost:48004/mytest –target.schema=dbo –target.username=test –target.password=test –input.path=/tmp/dump.cat Please note that in the above script we are now targeting the NuoDB database, which we have already created with the name of “MyTest”. If the database does not exist, create it manually before executing the above script. I have kept the username and password as “test”, but please make sure that you create a more secure password for your database for security reasons. Voila! You’re Done That’s it. You are done. It took 3 setup and 3 migration steps to migrate your SQL Server database to NuoDB. You can now start exploring the database and build excellent, scale-out applications. In this blog post, I have done my best to come up with simple and easy process, which you can follow to migrate your app from SQL Server to NuoDB. Download NuoDB I strongly encourage you to download NuoDB and go through my 3-step migration tutorial from SQL Server to NuoDB. Additionally here are two very important blog post from NuoDB CTO Seth Proctor. He has written excellent blog posts on the concept of the Administrative Domains. NuoDB has this concept of an Administrative Domain, which is a collection of hosts that can run one or multiple databases. Each database has its own TEs and SMs, but all are managed within the Admin Console for that particular domain. http://www.nuodb.com/techblog/2013/03/11/getting-started-provisioning-a-domain/ http://www.nuodb.com/techblog/2013/03/14/getting-started-running-a-database/ Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: NuoDB

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Silverlight Recruiting Application Part 4 - Navigation and Modules

After our brief intermission (and the craziness of Q1 2010 release week), we're back on track here and today we get to dive into how we are going to navigate through our applications as well as how to set up our modules. That way, as I start adding the functionality- adding Jobs and Applicants, Interview Scheduling, and finally a handy Dashboard- you'll see how everything is communicating back and forth. This is all leading up to an eventual webinar, in which I'll dive into this process and give a honest look at the current story for MVVM vs. Code-Behind applications. (For a look at the future with SL4 and a little thing called MEF, check out what Ross is doing over at his blog!) Preamble... Before getting into really talking about this app, I've done a little bit of work ahead of time to create a ton of files that I'll need. Since the webinar is going to cover the Dashboard, it's not here, but otherwise this is a look at what the project layout looks like (and remember, this is both projects since they share the .Web): So as you can see, from an architecture perspective, the code-behind app is much smaller and more streamlined- aka a better fit for the one man shop that is me. Each module in the MVVM app has the same setup, which is the Module class and corresponding Views and ViewModels. Since the code-behind app doesn't need a go-between project like Infrastructure, each MVVM module is instead replaced by a single Silverlight UserControl which will contain all the logic for each respective bit of functionality. My Very First Module Navigation is going to be key to my application, so I figured the first thing I would setup is my MenuModule. First step here is creating a Silverlight Class Library named MenuModule, creatingthe View and ViewModel folders, and adding the MenuModule.cs class to handle module loading. The most important thing here is that my MenuModule inherits from IModule, which runs an Initialize on each module as it is created that, in my case, adds the views to the correct regions. Here's the MenuModule.cs code: public class MenuModule : IModule { private readonly IRegionManager regionManager; private readonly IUnityContainer container; public MenuModule(IUnityContainer container, IRegionManager regionmanager) { this.container = container; this.regionManager = regionmanager; } public void Initialize() { var addMenuView = container.Resolve<MenuView>(); regionManager.Regions["MenuRegion"].Add(addMenuView); } } Pretty straightforward here... We inject a container and region manager from Prism/Unity, then upon initialization we grab the view (out of our Views folder) and add it to the region it needs to live in. Simple, right? When the MenuView is created, the only thing in the code-behind is a reference to the set the MenuViewModel as the DataContext. I'd like to achieve MVVM nirvana and have zero code-behind by placing the viewmodel in the XAML, but for the reasons listed further below I can't. Navigation - MVVM Since navigation isn't the biggest concern in putting this whole thing together, I'm using the Button control to handle different options for loading up views/modules. There is another reason for this- out of the box, Prism has command support for buttons, which is one less custom command I had to work up for the functionality I would need. This comes from the Microsoft.Practices.Composite.Presentation assembly and looks as follows when put in code: <Button x:Name="xGoToJobs" Style="{StaticResource menuStyle}" Content="Jobs" cal:Click.Command="{Binding GoModule}" cal:Click.CommandParameter="JobPostingsView" /> For quick reference, 'menuStyle' is just taking care of margins and spacing, otherwise it looks, feels, and functions like everyone's favorite Button. What MVVM's this up is that the Click.Command is tying to a DelegateCommand (also coming fromPrism) on the backend. This setup allows you to tie user interaction to a command you setup in your viewmodel, which replaces the standard event-based setup you'd see in the code-behind app. Due to databinding magic, it all just works. When we get looking at the DelegateCommand in code, it ends up like this: public class MenuViewModel : ViewModelBase { private readonly IRegionManager regionManager; public DelegateCommand<object> GoModule { get; set; } public MenuViewModel(IRegionManager regionmanager) { this.regionManager = regionmanager; this.GoModule = new DelegateCommand<object>(this.goToView); } public void goToView(object obj) { MakeMeActive(this.regionManager, "MainRegion", obj.ToString()); } } Another for reference, ViewModelBase takes care of iNotifyPropertyChanged and MakeMeActive, which switches views in the MainRegion based on the parameters. So our public DelegateCommand GoModule ties to our command on the view, that in turn calls goToView, and the parameter on the button is the name of the view (which we pass with obj.ToString()) to activate. And how do the views get the names I can pass as a string? When I called regionManager.Regions[regionname].Add(view), there is an overload that allows for .Add(view, "viewname"), with viewname being what I use to activate views. You'll see that in action next installment, just wanted to clarify how that works. With this setup, I create two more buttons in my MenuView and the MenuModule is good to go. Last step is to make sure my MenuModule loads in my Bootstrapper: protected override IModuleCatalog GetModuleCatalog() { ModuleCatalog catalog = new ModuleCatalog(); // add modules here catalog.AddModule(typeof(MenuModule.MenuModule)); return catalog; } Clean, simple, MVVM-delicious. Navigation - Code-Behind Keeping with the history of significantly shorter code-behind sections of this series, Navigation will be no different. I promise. As I explained in a prior post, due to the one-project setup I don't have to worry about the same concerns so my menu is part of MainPage.xaml. So I can cheese-it a bit, though, since I've already got three buttons all set I'm just copying that code and adding three click-events instead of the command/commandparameter setup:  <StackPanel Grid.Row="1" Orientation="Vertical"> <Button x:Name="xJobsButton" Content="Jobs" Style="{StaticResource menuStyleCB}" Click="xJobsButton_Click" /> <Button x:Name="xApplicantsButton" Content="Applicants" Style="{StaticResource menuStyleCB}" Click="xApplicantsButton_Click" /> <Button x:Name="xSchedulingModule" Content="Scheduling" Style="{StaticResource menuStyleCB}" Click="xSchedulingModule_Click" /> </StackPanel> Simple, easy to use events, and no extra assemblies required! Since the code for loading each view will be similar, we'll focus on JobsView for now.The code-behind with this setup looks something like... private JobsView _jobsView; public MainPage() { InitializeComponent(); } private void xJobsButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { if (MainRegion.Content.GetType() != typeof(JobsView)) { if (_jobsView == null) _jobsView = new JobsView(); MainRegion.Content = _jobsView; } } What am I doing here? First, for each 'view' I create a private reference which MainPage will hold on to. This allows for a little bit of state-maintenance when switching views. When a button is clicked, first we make sure the 'view' typeisn't active (why load it again if it is already at center stage?), then we check if the view has been created and create if necessary, then load it up. Three steps to switching views and is easy as pie. Part 4 Results The end result of all this is that I now have a menu module (MVVM) and a menu section (code-behind) that load their respective views. Since I'm using the same exact XAML (except with commands/events depending on the project), the end result for both is again exactly the same and I'll show a slightly larger image to show it off: Next time, we add the Jobs Module and wire up RadGridView and a separate edit page to handle adding and editing new jobs. That's when things get fun. And somewhere down the line, I'll make the menu look slicker. :) 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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Using Lightbox with _Screen

Although, I have to admit that I discovered Bernard Bout's ideas and concepts about implementing a lightbox in Visual FoxPro quite a while ago, there was no "spare" time in active projects that allowed me to have a closer look into his solution(s). Luckily, these days I received a demand to focus a little bit more on this. This article describes the steps about how to integrate and make use of Bernard's lightbox class in combination with _Screen in Visual FoxPro. The requirement in this project was to be able to visually lock the whole application (_Screen area) and guide the user to an information that should not be ignored easily. Depending on the importance any current user activity should be interrupted and focus put onto the notification. Getting the "meat", eh, source code Please check out Bernard's blog on Foxite directly in order to get the latest and greatest version. As time of writing this article I use version 6.0 as described in this blog entry: The Fastest Lightbox Ever The Lightbox class is sub-classed from the imgCanvas class from the GdiPlusX project on VFPx and therefore you need to have the source code of GdiPlusX as well, and integrate it into your development environment. The version I use is available here: Release GDIPlusX 1.20 As soon as you open the bbGdiLightbox class the first it, VFP might ask you to update the reference to the gdiplusx.vcx. As we have the sources, no problem and you have access to Bernard's code. The class itself is pretty easy to understand, some properties that you do not need to change and three methods: Setup(), ShowLightbox() and BeforeDraw() The challenge - _Screen or not? Reading Bernard's article about the fastest lightbox ever, he states the following: "The class will only work on a form. It will not support any other containers" Really? And what about _Screen? Isn't that a form class, too? Yes, of course it is but nonetheless trying to use _Screen directly will fail. Well, let's have look at the code to see why: WITH This .Left = 0 .Top = 0 .Height = ThisForm.Height .Width = ThisForm.Width .ZOrder(0) .Visible = .F.ENDWITH During the setup of the lightbox as well as while capturing the image as replacement for your forms and controls, the object reference Thisform is used. Which is a little bit restrictive to my opinion but let's continue. The second issue lies in the method ShowLightbox() and introduced by the call of .Bitmap.FromScreen(): Lparameters tlVisiblilty* tlVisiblilty - show or hide (T/F)* grab a screen dump with controlsIF tlVisiblilty Local loCaptureBmp As xfcBitmap Local lnTitleHeight, lnLeftBorder, lnTopBorder, lcImage, loImage lnTitleHeight = IIF(ThisForm.TitleBar = 1,Sysmetric(9),0) lnLeftBorder = IIF(ThisForm.BorderStyle < 2,0,Sysmetric(3)) lnTopBorder = IIF(ThisForm.BorderStyle < 2,0,Sysmetric(4)) With _Screen.System.Drawing loCaptureBmp = .Bitmap.FromScreen(ThisForm.HWnd,; lnLeftBorder,; lnTopBorder+lnTitleHeight,; ThisForm.Width ,; ThisForm.Height) ENDWITH * save it to a property This.capturebmp = loCaptureBmp ThisForm.SetAll("Visible",.F.) This.DraW() This.Visible = .T.ELSE ThisForm.SetAll("Visible",.T.) This.Visible = .F.ENDIF My first trials in using the class ended in an exception - GdiPlusError:OutOfMemory - thrown by the Bitmap object. Frankly speaking, this happened mainly because of my lack of knowledge about GdiPlusX. After reading some documentation, especially about the FromScreen() method I experimented a little bit. Capturing the visible area of _Screen actually was not the real problem but the dimensions I specified for the bitmap. The modifications - step by step First of all, it is to get rid of restrictive object references on Thisform and to change them into either This.Parent or more generic into This.oForm (even better: This.oControl). The Lightbox.Setup() method now sets the necessary object reference like so: *====================================================================* Initial setup* Default value: This.oControl = "This.Parent"* Alternative: This.oControl = "_Screen"*====================================================================With This .oControl = Evaluate(.oControl) If Vartype(.oControl) == T_OBJECT .Anchor = 0 .Left = 0 .Top = 0 .Width = .oControl.Width .Height = .oControl.Height .Anchor = 15 .ZOrder(0) .Visible = .F. EndIfEndwith Also, based on other developers' comments in Bernard articles on his lightbox concept and evolution I found the source code to handle the differences between a form and _Screen and goes into Lightbox.ShowLightbox() like this: *====================================================================* tlVisibility - show or hide (T/F)* grab a screen dump with controls*====================================================================Lparameters tlVisibility Local loControl m.loControl = This.oControl If m.tlVisibility Local loCaptureBmp As xfcBitmap Local lnTitleHeight, lnLeftBorder, lnTopBorder, lcImage, loImage lnTitleHeight = Iif(m.loControl.TitleBar = 1,Sysmetric(9),0) lnLeftBorder = Iif(m.loControl.BorderStyle < 2,0,Sysmetric(3)) lnTopBorder = Iif(m.loControl.BorderStyle < 2,0,Sysmetric(4)) With _Screen.System.Drawing If Upper(m.loControl.Name) == Upper("Screen") loCaptureBmp = .Bitmap.FromScreen(m.loControl.HWnd) Else loCaptureBmp = .Bitmap.FromScreen(m.loControl.HWnd,; lnLeftBorder,; lnTopBorder+lnTitleHeight,; m.loControl.Width ,; m.loControl.Height) EndIf Endwith * save it to a property This.CaptureBmp = loCaptureBmp m.loControl.SetAll("Visible",.F.) This.Draw() This.Visible = .T. Else This.CaptureBmp = .Null. m.loControl.SetAll("Visible",.T.) This.Visible = .F. Endif {loadposition content_adsense} Are we done? Almost... Although, Bernard says it clearly in his article: "Just drop the class on a form and call it as shown." It did not come clear to my mind in the first place with _Screen, but, yeah, he is right. Dropping the class on a form provides a permanent link between those two classes, it creates a valid This.Parent object reference. Bearing in mind that the lightbox class can not be "dropped" on the _Screen, we have to create the same type of binding during runtime execution like so: *====================================================================* Create global lightbox component*==================================================================== Local llOk, loException As Exception m.llOk = .F. m.loException = .Null. If Not Vartype(_Screen.Lightbox) == "O" Try _Screen.AddObject("Lightbox", "bbGdiLightbox") Catch To m.loException Assert .F. Message m.loException.Message EndTry EndIf m.llOk = (Vartype(_Screen.Lightbox) == "O")Return m.llOk Through runtime instantiation we create a valid binding to This.Parent in the lightbox object and the code works as expected with _Screen. Ease your life: Use properties instead of constants Having a closer look at the BeforeDraw() method might wet your appetite to simplify the code a little bit. Looking at the sample screenshots in Bernard's article you see several forms in different colors. This got me to modify the code like so: *====================================================================* Apply the actual lightbox effect on the captured bitmap.*====================================================================If Vartype(This.CaptureBmp) == T_OBJECT Local loGfx As xfcGraphics loGfx = This.oGfx With _Screen.System.Drawing loGfx.DrawImage(This.CaptureBmp,This.Rectangle,This.Rectangle,.GraphicsUnit.Pixel) * change the colours as needed here * possible colours are (220,128,0,0),(220,0,0,128) etc. loBrush = .SolidBrush.New(.Color.FromArgb( ; This.Opacity, .Color.FromRGB(This.BorderColor))) loGfx.FillRectangle(loBrush,This.Rectangle) EndwithEndif Create an additional property Opacity to specify the grade of translucency you would like to have without the need to change the code in each instance of the class. This way you only need to change the values of Opacity and BorderColor to tweak the appearance of your lightbox. This could be quite helpful to signalize different levels of importance (ie. green, yellow, orange, red, etc...) of notifications to the users of the application. Final thoughts Using the lightbox concept in combination with _Screen instead of forms is possible. Already Jim Wiggins comments in Bernard's article to loop through the _Screen.Forms collection in order to cascade the lightbox visibility to all active forms. Good idea. But honestly, I believe that instead of looping all forms one could use _Screen.SetAll("ShowLightbox", .T./.F., "Form") with Form.ShowLightbox_Access method to gain more speed. The modifications described above might provide even more features to your applications while consuming less resources and performance. Additionally, the restrictions to capture only forms does not exist anymore. Using _Screen you are able to capture and cover anything. The captured area of _Screen does not include any toolbars, docked windows, or menus. Therefore, it is advised to take this concept on a higher level and to combine it with additional classes that handle the state of toolbars, docked windows and menus. Which I did for the customer's project.

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SSAO Distortion

- by Robert Xu

I'm currently (attempting) to add SSAO to my engine, except it's...not really work, to say the least. I use a deferred renderer to render my scene. I have four render targets: Albedo, Light, Normal, and Depth. Here are the parameters for all of them (Surface Format, Depth Format): Albedo: 32-bit ARGB, Depth24Stencil8 Light: 32-bit ARGB, None Normal: 32-bit ARGB, None Depth: 8-bit R (Single), Depth24Stencil8 To generate my random noise map for the SSAO, I do the following for each pixel in the noise map: Vector3 v3 = Vector3.Zero; double z = rand.NextDouble() * 2.0 - 1.0; double r = Math.Sqrt(1.0 - z * z); double angle = rand.NextDouble() * MathHelper.TwoPi; v3.X = (float)(r * Math.Cos(angle)); v3.Y = (float)(r * Math.Sin(angle)); v3.Z = (float)z; v3 += offset; v3 *= 0.5f; result[i] = new Color(v3); This is my GBuffer rendering effect: PixelInput RenderGBufferColorVertexShader(VertexInput input) { PixelInput pi = ( PixelInput ) 0; pi.Position = mul(input.Position, WorldViewProjection); pi.Normal = mul(input.Normal, WorldInverseTranspose); pi.Color = input.Color; pi.TPosition = pi.Position; pi.WPosition = input.Position; return pi; } GBufferTarget RenderGBufferColorPixelShader(PixelInput input) { GBufferTarget output = ( GBufferTarget ) 0; float3 position = input.TPosition.xyz / input.TPosition.w; output.Albedo = lerp(float4(1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f), input.Color, ColorFactor); output.Normal = EncodeNormal(input.Normal); output.Depth = position.z; return output; } And here is the SSAO effect: float4 EncodeNormal(float3 normal) { return float4((normal.xyz * 0.5f) + 0.5f, 0.0f); } float3 DecodeNormal(float4 encoded) { return encoded * 2.0 - 1.0f; } float Intensity; float Size; float2 NoiseOffset; float4x4 ViewProjection; float4x4 ViewProjectionInverse; texture DepthMap; texture NormalMap; texture RandomMap; const float3 samples[16] = { float3(0.01537562, 0.01389096, 0.02276565), float3(-0.0332658, -0.2151698, -0.0660736), float3(-0.06420016, -0.1919067, 0.5329634), float3(-0.05896204, -0.04509097, -0.03611697), float3(-0.1302175, 0.01034653, 0.01543675), float3(0.3168565, -0.182557, -0.01421785), float3(-0.02134448, -0.1056605, 0.00576055), float3(-0.3502164, 0.281433, -0.2245609), float3(-0.00123525, 0.00151868, 0.02614773), float3(0.1814744, 0.05798516, -0.02362876), float3(0.07945167, -0.08302628, 0.4423518), float3(0.321987, -0.05670302, -0.05418307), float3(-0.00165138, -0.00410309, 0.00537362), float3(0.01687791, 0.03189049, -0.04060405), float3(-0.04335613, -0.00530749, 0.06443053), float3(0.8474263, -0.3590308, -0.02318038), }; sampler DepthSampler = sampler_state { Texture = DepthMap; MipFilter = Point; MinFilter = Point; MagFilter = Point; AddressU = Clamp; AddressV = Clamp; AddressW = Clamp; }; sampler NormalSampler = sampler_state { Texture = NormalMap; MipFilter = Linear; MinFilter = Linear; MagFilter = Linear; AddressU = Clamp; AddressV = Clamp; AddressW = Clamp; }; sampler RandomSampler = sampler_state { Texture = RandomMap; MipFilter = Linear; MinFilter = Linear; MagFilter = Linear; }; struct VertexInput { float4 Position : POSITION0; float2 TextureCoordinates : TEXCOORD0; }; struct PixelInput { float4 Position : POSITION0; float2 TextureCoordinates : TEXCOORD0; }; PixelInput SSAOVertexShader(VertexInput input) { PixelInput pi = ( PixelInput ) 0; pi.Position = input.Position; pi.TextureCoordinates = input.TextureCoordinates; return pi; } float3 GetXYZ(float2 uv) { float depth = tex2D(DepthSampler, uv); float2 xy = uv * 2.0f - 1.0f; xy.y *= -1; float4 p = float4(xy, depth, 1); float4 q = mul(p, ViewProjectionInverse); return q.xyz / q.w; } float3 GetNormal(float2 uv) { return DecodeNormal(tex2D(NormalSampler, uv)); } float4 SSAOPixelShader(PixelInput input) : COLOR0 { float depth = tex2D(DepthSampler, input.TextureCoordinates); float3 position = GetXYZ(input.TextureCoordinates); float3 normal = GetNormal(input.TextureCoordinates); float occlusion = 1.0f; float3 reflectionRay = DecodeNormal(tex2D(RandomSampler, input.TextureCoordinates + NoiseOffset)); for (int i = 0; i < 16; i++) { float3 sampleXYZ = position + reflect(samples[i], reflectionRay) * Size; float4 screenXYZW = mul(float4(sampleXYZ, 1.0f), ViewProjection); float3 screenXYZ = screenXYZW.xyz / screenXYZW.w; float2 sampleUV = float2(screenXYZ.x * 0.5f + 0.5f, 1.0f - (screenXYZ.y * 0.5f + 0.5f)); float frontMostDepthAtSample = tex2D(DepthSampler, sampleUV); if (frontMostDepthAtSample < screenXYZ.z) { occlusion -= 1.0f / 16.0f; } } return float4(occlusion * Intensity * float3(1.0, 1.0, 1.0), 1.0); } technique SSAO { pass Pass0 { VertexShader = compile vs_3_0 SSAOVertexShader(); PixelShader = compile ps_3_0 SSAOPixelShader(); } } However, when I use the effect, I get some pretty bad distortion: Here's the light map that goes with it -- is the static-like effect supposed to be like that? I've noticed that even if I'm looking at nothing, I still get the static-like effect. (you can see it in the screenshot; the top half doesn't have any geometry yet it still has the static-like effect) Also, does anyone have any advice on how to effectively debug shaders?

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How would i access the properties in this object? Twitter API

- by Tapha

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Microsoft Business Intelligence Seminar 2011

- by DavidWimbush

I was lucky enough to attend the maiden presentation of this at Microsoft Reading yesterday. It was pretty gripping stuff not only because of what was said but also because of what could only be hinted at. Here's what I took away from the day. (Disclaimer: I'm not a BI guru, just a reasonably experienced BI developer, so I may have misunderstood or misinterpreted a few things. Particularly when so much of the talk was about the vision and subtle hints of what is coming. Please comment if you think I've got anything wrong. I'm also not going to even try to cover Master Data Services as I struggled to imagine how you would actually use it.) I was a bit worried when I learned that the whole day was going to be presented by one guy but Rafal Lukawiecki is a very engaging speaker. He's going to be presenting this about 20 times around the world over the coming months. If you get a chance to hear him speak, I say go for it. No doubt some of the hints will become clearer as Denali gets closer to RTM. Firstly, things are definitely happening in the SQL Server Reporting and BI world. Traditionally IT would build a data warehouse, then cubes on top of that, and then publish them in a structured and controlled way. But, just as with many IT projects in general, by the time it's finished the business has moved on and the system no longer meets their requirements. This not sustainable and something more agile is needed but there has to be some control. Apparently we're going to be hearing the catchphrase 'Balancing agility with control' a lot. More users want more access to more data. Can they define what they want? Of course not, but they'll recognise it when they see it. It's estimated that only 28% of potential BI users have meaningful access to the data they need, so there is a real pent-up demand. The answer looks like: give them some self-service tools so they can experiment and see what works, and then IT can help to support the results. It's estimated that 32% of Excel users are comfortable with its analysis tools such as pivot tables. It's the power user's preferred tool. Why fight it? That's why PowerPivot is an Excel add-in and that's why they released a Data Mining add-in for it as well. It does appear that the strategy is going to be to use Reporting Services (in SharePoint mode), PowerPivot, and possibly something new (smiles and hints but no details) to create reports and explore data. Everything will be published and managed in SharePoint which gives users the ability to mash-up, share and socialise what they've found out. SharePoint also gives IT tools to understand what people are looking at and where to concentrate effort. If PowerPivot report X becomes widely used, it's time to check that it shows what they think it does and perhaps get it a bit more under central control. There was more SharePoint detail that went slightly over my head regarding where Excel Services and Excel Web Application fit in, the differences between them, and the suggestion that it is likely they will one day become one (but not in the immediate future). That basic pattern is set to be expanded upon by further exploiting Vertipaq (the columnar indexing engine that enables PowerPivot to store and process a lot of data fast and in a small memory footprint) to provide scalability 'from the desktop to the data centre', and some yet to be detailed advances in 'frictionless deployment' (part of which is about making the difference between local and the cloud pretty much irrelevant). Excel looks like becoming Microsoft's primary BI client. It already has: the ability to consume cubes strong visualisation tools slicers (which are part of Excel not PowerPivot) a data mining add-in PowerPivot A major hurdle for self-service BI is presenting the data in a consumable format. You can't just give users PowerPivot and a server with a copy of the OLTP database(s). Building cubes is labour intensive and doesn't always give the user what they need. This is where the BI Semantic Model (BISM) comes in. I gather it's a layer of metadata you define that can combine multiple data sources (and types of data source) into a clear 'interface' that users can work with. It comes with a new query language called DAX. SSAS cubes are unlikely to go away overnight because, with their pre-calculated results, they are still the most efficient way to work with really big data sets. A few other random titbits that came up: Reporting Services is going to get some good new stuff in Denali. Keep an eye on www.projectbotticelli.com for the slides. You can also view last year's seminar sessions which covered a lot of the same ground as far as the overall strategy is concerned. They plan to add more material as Denali's features are publicly exposed. Check out the PASS keynote address for a showing of Yahoo's SQL BI servers. Apparently they wheeled the rack out on stage still plugged in and running! Check out the Excel 2010 Data Mining Add-Ins. 32 bit only at present but 64 bit is on the way. There are lots of data sets, many of them free, at the Windows Azure Marketplace Data Market (where you can also get ESRI shape files). If you haven't already seen it, have a look at the Silverlight Pivot Viewer (http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/06/29/silverlight-pivotviewer-now-available.aspx). The Bing Maps Data Connector is worth a look if you're into spatial stuff (http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/maps/archive/2010/07/13/data-connector-sql-server-2008-spatial-amp-bing-maps.aspx).

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<%: %>, HtmlEncode, IHtmlString and MvcHtmlString

- by Shaun

One of my colleague and friend, Robin is playing and struggling with the ASP.NET MVC 2 on a project these days while I’m struggling with a annoying client. Since it’s his first time to use ASP.NET MVC he was meetings with a lot of problem and I was very happy to share my experience to him. Yesterday he asked me when he attempted to insert a <br /> element into his page he found that the page was rendered like this which is bad. He found his <br /> was shown as a part of the string rather than creating a new line. After checked a bit in his code I found that it’s because he utilized a new ASP.NET markup supported in .NET 4.0 – “<%: %>”. If you have been using ASP.NET MVC 1 or in .NET 3.5 world it would be very common that using <%= %> to show something on the page from the backend code. But when you do it you must ensure that the string that are going to be displayed should be Html-safe, which means all the Html markups must be encoded. Otherwise this might cause an XSS (cross-site scripting) problem. So that you’d better use the code like this below to display anything on the page. In .NET 4.0 Microsoft introduced a new markup to solve this problem which is <%: %>. It will encode the content automatically so that you will no need to check and verify your code manually for the XSS issue mentioned below. But this also means that it will encode all things, include the Html element you want to be rendered. So I changed his code like this and it worked well. After helped him solved this problem and finished a spreadsheet for my boring project I considered a bit more on the <%: %>. Since it will encode all thing why it renders correctly when we use “<%: Html.TextBox(“name”) %>” to show a text box? As you know the Html.TextBox will render a “<input name="name" id="name" type="text"/>” element on the page. If <%: %> will encode everything it should not display a text box. So I dig into the source code of the MVC and found some comments in the class MvcHtmlString. 1: // In ASP.NET 4, a new syntax <%: %> is being introduced in WebForms pages, where <%: expression %> is equivalent to 2: // <%= HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(expression) %>. The intent of this is to reduce common causes of XSS vulnerabilities 3: // in WebForms pages (WebForms views in the case of MVC). This involves the addition of an interface 4: // System.Web.IHtmlString and a static method overload System.Web.HttpUtility::HtmlEncode(object). The interface 5: // definition is roughly: 6: // public interface IHtmlString { 7: // string ToHtmlString(); 8: // } 9: // And the HtmlEncode(object) logic is roughly: 10: // - If the input argument is an IHtmlString, return argument.ToHtmlString(), 11: // - Otherwise, return HtmlEncode(Convert.ToString(argument)). 12: // 13: // Unfortunately this has the effect that calling <%: Html.SomeHelper() %> in an MVC application running on .NET 4 14: // will end up encoding output that is already HTML-safe. As a result, we're changing out HTML helpers to return 15: // MvcHtmlString where appropriate. <%= Html.SomeHelper() %> will continue to work in both .NET 3.5 and .NET 4, but 16: // changing the return types to MvcHtmlString has the added benefit that <%: Html.SomeHelper() %> will also work 17: // properly in .NET 4 rather than resulting in a double-encoded output. MVC developers in .NET 4 will then be able 18: // to use the <%: %> syntax almost everywhere instead of having to remember where to use <%= %> and where to use 19: // <%: %>. This should help developers craft more secure web applications by default. 20: // 21: // To create an MvcHtmlString, use the static Create() method instead of calling the protected constructor. The comment said the encoding rule of the <%: %> would be: If the type of the content is IHtmlString it will NOT encode since the IHtmlString indicates that it’s Html-safe. Otherwise it will use HtmlEncode to encode the content. If we check the return type of the Html.TextBox method we will find that it’s MvcHtmlString, which was implemented the IHtmlString interface dynamically. That is the reason why the “<input name="name" id="name" type="text"/>” was not encoded by <%: %>. So if we want to tell ASP.NET MVC, or I should say the ASP.NET runtime that the content is Html-safe and no need, or should not be encoded we can convert the content into IHtmlString. So another resolution would be like this. Also we can create an extension method as well for better developing experience. 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3: using System.Linq; 4: using System.Web; 5: using System.Web.Mvc; 6: 7: namespace ShaunXu.Blogs.IHtmlStringIssue 8: { 9: public static class Helpers 10: { 11: public static MvcHtmlString IsHtmlSafe(this string content) 12: { 13: return MvcHtmlString.Create(content); 14: } 15: } 16: } Then the view would be like this. And the page rendered correctly. Summary In this post I explained a bit about the new markup in .NET 4.0 – <%: %> and its usage. I also explained a bit about how to control the page content, whether it should be encoded or not. We can see the ASP.NET MVC gives us more points to control the web pages. Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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Combining Shared Secret and Certificates

- by Michael Stephenson

As discussed in the introduction article this walkthrough will explain how you can implement WCF security with the Windows Azure Service Bus to ensure that you can protect your endpoint in the cloud with a shared secret but also combine this with certificates so that you can identify the sender of the message. Prerequisites As in the previous article before going into the walk through I want to explain a few assumptions about the scenario we are implementing but to keep the article shorter I am not going to walk through all of the steps in how to setup some of this. In the solution we have a simple console application which will represent the client application. There is also the services WCF application which contains the WCF service we will expose via the Windows Azure Service Bus. The WCF Service application in this example was hosted in IIS 7 on Windows 2008 R2 with AppFabric Server installed and configured to auto-start the WCF listening services. I am not going to go through significant detail around the IIS setup because it should not matter in relation to this article however if you want to understand more about how to configure WCF and IIS for such a scenario please refer to the following paper which goes into a lot of detail about how to configure this. The link is: http://tinyurl.com/8s5nwrz Setting up the Certificates To keep the post and sample simple I am going to use the local computer store for all certificates but this bit is really just the same as setting up certificates for an example where you are using WCF without using Windows Azure Service Bus. In the sample I have included two batch files which you can use to create the sample certificates or remove them. Basically you will end up with: A certificate called PocServerCert in the personal store for the local computer which will be used by the WCF Service component A certificate called PocClientCert in the personal store for the local computer which will be used by the client application A root certificate in the Root store called PocRootCA with its associated revocation list which is the root from which the client and server certificates were created For the sample Im just using development certificates like you would normally, and you can see exactly how these are configured and placed in the stores from the batch files in the solution using makecert and certmgr. The Service Component To begin with let's look at the service component and how it can be configured to listen to the service bus using a shared secret but to also accept a username token from the client. In the sample the service component is called Acme.Azure.ServiceBus.Poc.Cert.Services. It has a single service which is the Visual Studio template for a WCF service when you add a new WCF Service Application so we have a service called Service1 with its Echo method. Nothing special so far!.... The next step is to look at the web.config file to see how we have configured the WCF service. In the services section of the WCF configuration you can see I have created my service and I have created a local endpoint which I simply used to do a little bit of diagnostics and to check it was working, but more importantly there is the Windows Azure endpoint which is using the ws2007HttpRelayBinding (note that this should also work just the same if your using netTcpRelayBinding). The key points to note on the above picture are the service behavior called MyServiceBehaviour and the service bus endpoints behavior called MyEndpointBehaviour. We will go into these in more detail later. The Relay Binding The relay binding for the service has been configured to use the TransportWithMessageCredential security mode. This is the important bit where the transport security really relates to the interaction between the service and listening to the Azure Service Bus and the message credential is where we will use our certificate like we have specified in the message/clientCrentialType attribute. Note also that we have left the relayClientAuthenticationType set to RelayAccessToken. This means that authentication will be made against ACS for accessing the service bus and messages will not be accepted from any sender who has not been authenticated by ACS. The Endpoint Behaviour In the below picture you can see the endpoint behavior which is configured to use the shared secret client credential for accessing the service bus and also for diagnostic purposes I have included the service registry element. Hopefully if you are familiar with using Windows Azure Service Bus relay feature the above is very familiar to you and this is a very common setup for this section. There is nothing specific to the username token implementation here. The Service Behaviour Now we come to the bit with most of the certificate stuff in it. When you configure the service behavior I have included the serviceCredentials element and then setup to use the clientCertificate check and also specifying the serviceCertificate with information on how to find the servers certificate in the store. I have also added a serviceAuthorization section where I will implement my own authorization component to perform additional security checks after the service has validated that the message was signed with a good certificate. I also have the same serviceSecurityAudit configuration to log access to my service. My Authorization Manager The below picture shows you implementation of my authorization manager. WCF will eventually hand off the message to my authorization component before it calls the service code. This is where I can perform some logic to check if the identity is allowed to access resources. In this case I am simple rejecting messages from anyone except the PocClientCertificate. The Client Now let's take a look at the client side of this solution and how we can configure the client to authenticate against ACS but also send a certificate over to the service component so it can implement additional security checks on-premise. I have a console application and in the program class I want to use the proxy generated with Add Service Reference to send a message via the Azure Service Bus. You can see in my WCF client configuration below I have setup my details for the azure service bus url and am using the ws2007HttpRelayBinding. Next is my configuration for the relay binding. You can see below I have configured security to use TransportWithMessageCredential so we will flow the token from a certificate with the message and also the RelayAccessToken relayClientAuthenticationType which means the component will validate against ACS before being allowed to access the relay endpoint to send a message. After the binding we need to configure the endpoint behavior like in the below picture. This contains the normal transportClientEndpointBehaviour to setup the ACS shared secret configuration but we have also configured the clientCertificate to look for the PocClientCert. Finally below we have the code of the client in the console application which will call the service bus. You can see that we have created our proxy and then made a normal call to a WCF in exactly the normal way but the configuration will jump in and ensure that a token is passed representing the client certificate. Conclusion As you can see from the above walkthrough it is not too difficult to configure a service to use both a shared secret and certificate based token at the same time. This gives you the power and protection offered by the access control service in the cloud but also the ability to flow additional tokens to the on-premise component for additional security features to be implemented. Sample The sample used in this post is available at the following location: https://s3.amazonaws.com/CSCBlogSamples/Acme.Azure.ServiceBus.Poc.Cert.zip

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unexplainable packet drops with 5 ethernet NICs and low traffic on Ubuntu

- by jon

I'm stuck on problem where my machine started to drops packets with no sign of ANY system load or high interrupt usage after an upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04. My server is a network monitoring sensor, running Ubuntu LTS 12.04, it passively collects packets from 5 interfaces doing network intrusion type stuff. Before the upgrade I managed to collect 200+GB of packets a day while writing them to disk with around 0% packet loss depending on the day with the help of CPU affinity and NIC IRQ to CPU bindings. Now I lose a great deal of packets with none of my applications running and at very low PPS rate which a modern workstation NIC would have no trouble with. Specs: x64 Xeon 4 cores 3.2 Ghz 16 GB RAM NICs: 5 Intel Pro NICs using the e1000 driver (NAPI). [1] eth0 and eth1 are integrated NICs (in the motherboard) There are 2 other PCI-X network cards, each with 2 Ethernet ports. 3 of the interfaces are running at Gigabit Ethernet, the others are not because they're attached to hubs. Specs: [2] http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/pe2850/en/ug/t1390aa.htm uptime 17:36:00 up 1:43, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.05 # uname -a Linux nms 3.2.0-29-generic #46-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jul 27 17:03:23 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux I also have the CPU governor set to performance mode and irqbalance off. The problem still occurs with them on. # lspci -t -vv -[0000:00]-+-00.0 Intel Corporation E7520 Memory Controller Hub +-02.0-[01-03]--+-00.0-[02]----0e.0 Dell PowerEdge Expandable RAID controller 4 | \-00.2-[03]-- +-04.0-[04]-- +-05.0-[05-07]--+-00.0-[06]----07.0 Intel Corporation 82541GI Gigabit Ethernet Controller | \-00.2-[07]----08.0 Intel Corporation 82541GI Gigabit Ethernet Controller +-06.0-[08-0a]--+-00.0-[09]--+-04.0 Intel Corporation 82546EB Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper) | | \-04.1 Intel Corporation 82546EB Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper) | \-00.2-[0a]--+-02.0 Digium, Inc. Wildcard TE210P/TE212P dual-span T1/E1/J1 card 3.3V | +-03.0 Intel Corporation 82546EB Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper) | \-03.1 Intel Corporation 82546EB Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper) +-1d.0 Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #1 +-1d.1 Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #2 +-1d.2 Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #3 +-1d.7 Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB2 EHCI Controller +-1e.0-[0b]----0d.0 Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RV100 QY [Radeon 7000/VE] +-1f.0 Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) LPC Interface Bridge \-1f.1 Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) IDE Controller I believe the NIC nor the NIC drivers are dropping the packets because ethtool reports 0 under rx_missed_errors and rx_no_buffer_count for each interface. On the old system, if it couldn't keep up this is where the drops would be. I drop packets on multiple interfaces just about every second, usually in small increments of 2-4. I tried all these sysctl values, I'm currently using the uncommented ones. # cat /etc/sysctl.conf # high net.core.netdev_max_backlog = 3000000 net.core.rmem_max = 16000000 net.core.rmem_default = 8000000 # defaults #net.core.netdev_max_backlog = 1000 #net.core.rmem_max = 131071 #net.core.rmem_default = 163480 # moderate #net.core.netdev_max_backlog = 10000 #net.core.rmem_max = 33554432 #net.core.rmem_default = 33554432 Here's an example of an interface stats report with ethtool. They are all the same, nothing is out of the ordinary ( I think ), so I'm only going to show one: ethtool -S eth2 NIC statistics: rx_packets: 7498 tx_packets: 0 rx_bytes: 2722585 tx_bytes: 0 rx_broadcast: 327 tx_broadcast: 0 rx_multicast: 1504 tx_multicast: 0 rx_errors: 0 tx_errors: 0 tx_dropped: 0 multicast: 1504 collisions: 0 rx_length_errors: 0 rx_over_errors: 0 rx_crc_errors: 0 rx_frame_errors: 0 rx_no_buffer_count: 0 rx_missed_errors: 0 tx_aborted_errors: 0 tx_carrier_errors: 0 tx_fifo_errors: 0 tx_heartbeat_errors: 0 tx_window_errors: 0 tx_abort_late_coll: 0 tx_deferred_ok: 0 tx_single_coll_ok: 0 tx_multi_coll_ok: 0 tx_timeout_count: 0 tx_restart_queue: 0 rx_long_length_errors: 0 rx_short_length_errors: 0 rx_align_errors: 0 tx_tcp_seg_good: 0 tx_tcp_seg_failed: 0 rx_flow_control_xon: 0 rx_flow_control_xoff: 0 tx_flow_control_xon: 0 tx_flow_control_xoff: 0 rx_long_byte_count: 2722585 rx_csum_offload_good: 0 rx_csum_offload_errors: 0 alloc_rx_buff_failed: 0 tx_smbus: 0 rx_smbus: 0 dropped_smbus: 01 # ifconfig eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:11:43:e0:e2:8c UP BROADCAST RUNNING NOARP PROMISC ALLMULTI MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:373348 errors:16 dropped:95 overruns:0 frame:16 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:356830572 (356.8 MB) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B) eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:11:43:e0:e2:8d UP BROADCAST RUNNING NOARP PROMISC ALLMULTI MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:13616 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:8690528 (8.6 MB) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B) eth2 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:04:23:e1:77:6a UP BROADCAST RUNNING NOARP PROMISC ALLMULTI MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:7750 errors:0 dropped:471 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:2780935 (2.7 MB) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B) eth3 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:04:23:e1:77:6b UP BROADCAST RUNNING NOARP PROMISC ALLMULTI MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:5112 errors:0 dropped:206 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:639472 (639.4 KB) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B) eth4 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:04:23:b6:35:6c UP BROADCAST RUNNING NOARP PROMISC ALLMULTI MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:961467 errors:0 dropped:935 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:958561305 (958.5 MB) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B) eth5 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:04:23:b6:35:6d inet addr:192.168.1.6 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:4264 errors:0 dropped:16 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:699 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:572228 (572.2 KB) TX bytes:124456 (124.4 KB) I tried the defaults, then started to play around with settings. I wasn't using any flow control and I increased the RxDescriptor count to 4096 before the upgrade as well without any problems. # cat /etc/modprobe.d/e1000.conf options e1000 XsumRX=0,0,0,0,0 RxDescriptors=4096,4096,4096,4096,4096 FlowControl=0,0,0,0,0 debug=16 Here's my network configuration file, I turned off checksumming and various offloading mechanisms along with setting CPU affinity with heavy use interfaces getting an entire CPU and light use interfaces sharing a CPU. I used these settings prior to the upgrade without problems. # cat /etc/network/interfaces # The loopback network interface auto lo iface lo inet loopback # The primary network interface auto eth0 iface eth0 inet manual pre-up /sbin/ethtool -G eth0 rx 4096 tx 0 pre-up /sbin/ethtool -K eth0 gro off gso off rx off pre-up /sbin/ethtool -A eth0 rx off autoneg off up ifconfig eth0 0.0.0.0 -arp promisc mtu 1500 allmulti txqueuelen 0 up post-up echo "4" > /proc/irq/48/smp_affinity down ifconfig eth0 down post-down /sbin/ethtool -G eth0 rx 256 tx 256 post-down /sbin/ethtool -K eth0 gro on gso on rx on post-down /sbin/ethtool -A eth0 rx on autoneg on auto eth1 iface eth1 inet manual pre-up /sbin/ethtool -G eth1 rx 4096 tx 0 pre-up /sbin/ethtool -K eth1 gro off gso off rx off pre-up /sbin/ethtool -A eth1 rx off autoneg off up ifconfig eth1 0.0.0.0 -arp promisc mtu 1500 allmulti txqueuelen 0 up post-up echo "4" > /proc/irq/49/smp_affinity down ifconfig eth1 down post-down /sbin/ethtool -G eth1 rx 256 tx 256 post-down /sbin/ethtool -K eth1 gro on gso on rx on post-down /sbin/ethtool -A eth1 rx on autoneg on auto eth2 iface eth2 inet manual pre-up /sbin/ethtool -G eth2 rx 4096 tx 0 pre-up /sbin/ethtool -K eth2 gro off gso off rx off pre-up /sbin/ethtool -A eth2 rx off autoneg off up ifconfig eth2 0.0.0.0 -arp promisc mtu 1500 allmulti txqueuelen 0 up post-up echo "1" > /proc/irq/82/smp_affinity down ifconfig eth2 down post-down /sbin/ethtool -G eth2 rx 256 tx 256 post-down /sbin/ethtool -K eth2 gro on gso on rx on post-down /sbin/ethtool -A eth2 rx on autoneg on auto eth3 iface eth3 inet manual pre-up /sbin/ethtool -G eth3 rx 4096 tx 0 pre-up /sbin/ethtool -K eth3 gro off gso off rx off pre-up /sbin/ethtool -A eth3 rx off autoneg off up ifconfig eth3 0.0.0.0 -arp promisc mtu 1500 allmulti txqueuelen 0 up post-up echo "2" > /proc/irq/83/smp_affinity down ifconfig eth3 down post-down /sbin/ethtool -G eth3 rx 256 tx 256 post-down /sbin/ethtool -K eth3 gro on gso on rx on post-down /sbin/ethtool -A eth3 rx on autoneg on auto eth4 iface eth4 inet manual pre-up /sbin/ethtool -G eth4 rx 4096 tx 0 pre-up /sbin/ethtool -K eth4 gro off gso off rx off pre-up /sbin/ethtool -A eth4 rx off autoneg off up ifconfig eth4 0.0.0.0 -arp promisc mtu 1500 allmulti txqueuelen 0 up post-up echo "4" > /proc/irq/77/smp_affinity down ifconfig eth4 down post-down /sbin/ethtool -G eth4 rx 256 tx 256 post-down /sbin/ethtool -K eth4 gro on gso on rx on post-down /sbin/ethtool -A eth4 rx on autoneg on auto eth5 iface eth5 inet static pre-up /etc/fw.conf address 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.1.255 gateway 192.168.1.1 dns-nameservers 192.168.1.2 192.168.1.3 up ifconfig eth5 up post-up echo "8" > /proc/irq/77/smp_affinity down ifconfig eth5 down Here's a few examples of packet drops, i ran one after another, probabling totaling 3 or 4 seconds. You can see increases in the drops from the 1st and 3rd. This was a non-busy time, very little traffic. # awk '{ print $1,$5 }' /proc/net/dev Inter-| face drop eth3: 225 lo: 0 eth2: 505 eth1: 0 eth5: 17 eth0: 105 eth4: 1034 # awk '{ print $1,$5 }' /proc/net/dev Inter-| face drop eth3: 225 lo: 0 eth2: 507 eth1: 0 eth5: 17 eth0: 105 eth4: 1034 # awk '{ print $1,$5 }' /proc/net/dev Inter-| face drop eth3: 227 lo: 0 eth2: 512 eth1: 0 eth5: 17 eth0: 105 eth4: 1039 I tried the pci=noacpi options. With and without, it's the same. This is what my interrupt stats looked like before the upgrade, after, with ACPI on PCI it showed multiple NICs bound to an interrupt and shared with other devices such as USB drives which I didn't like so I think i'm going to keep it with ACPI off as it's easier to designate sole purpose interrupts. Is there any advantage I would have using the default i.e. ACPI w/ PCI. ? # cat /etc/default/grub | grep CMD_LINE GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="ipv6.disable=1 noacpi pci=noacpi" GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="" # cat /proc/interrupts CPU0 CPU1 CPU2 CPU3 0: 45 0 0 16 IO-APIC-edge timer 1: 1 0 0 7936 IO-APIC-edge i8042 2: 0 0 0 0 XT-PIC-XT-PIC cascade 6: 0 0 0 3 IO-APIC-edge floppy 8: 0 0 0 1 IO-APIC-edge rtc0 9: 0 0 0 0 IO-APIC-edge acpi 12: 0 0 0 1809 IO-APIC-edge i8042 14: 1 0 0 4498 IO-APIC-edge ata_piix 15: 0 0 0 0 IO-APIC-edge ata_piix 16: 0 0 0 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi uhci_hcd:usb2 18: 0 0 0 1350 IO-APIC-fasteoi uhci_hcd:usb4, radeon 19: 0 0 0 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi uhci_hcd:usb3 23: 0 0 0 4099 IO-APIC-fasteoi ehci_hcd:usb1 38: 0 0 0 61963 IO-APIC-fasteoi megaraid 48: 0 0 1002319 4 IO-APIC-fasteoi eth0 49: 0 0 38772 3 IO-APIC-fasteoi eth1 77: 0 0 130076 432159 IO-APIC-fasteoi eth4 78: 0 0 0 23917 IO-APIC-fasteoi eth5 82: 1329033 0 0 4 IO-APIC-fasteoi eth2 83: 0 4886525 0 6 IO-APIC-fasteoi eth3 NMI: 5 6 4 5 Non-maskable interrupts LOC: 61409 57076 64257 114764 Local timer interrupts SPU: 0 0 0 0 Spurious interrupts IWI: 0 0 0 0 IRQ work interrupts RES: 17956 25333 13436 14789 Rescheduling interrupts CAL: 22436 607 539 478 Function call interrupts TLB: 1525 1458 4600 4151 TLB shootdowns TRM: 0 0 0 0 Thermal event interrupts THR: 0 0 0 0 Threshold APIC interrupts MCE: 0 0 0 0 Machine check exceptions MCP: 16 16 16 16 Machine check polls ERR: 0 MIS: 0 Here's sample output of vmstat, showing the system. Barebones system right now. root@nms:~# vmstat -S m 1 procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ----cpu---- r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa 0 0 0 14992 192 1029 0 0 56 2 419 29 1 0 99 0 0 0 0 14992 192 1029 0 0 0 0 922 27 0 0 100 0 0 0 0 14991 192 1029 0 0 0 36 763 50 0 0 100 0 0 0 0 14991 192 1029 0 0 0 0 646 35 0 0 100 0 0 0 0 14991 192 1029 0 0 0 0 722 54 0 0 100 0 0 0 0 14991 192 1029 0 0 0 0 793 27 0 0 100 0 ^C Here's dmesg output. I can't figure out why my PCI-X slots are negotiated as PCI. The network cards are all PCI-X with the exception of the integrated NICs that came with the server. In the output below it looks as if eth3 and eth2 negotiated at PCI-X speeds rather than PCI:66Mhz. Wouldn't they all drop to PCI:66Mhz? If your integrated NICs are PCI, as labeled below (eth0,eth1), then wouldn't all devices on your bus speed drop down to that slower bus speed? If not, I still don't know why only one of my NICs ( each has two ethernet ports) is labeled as PCI-X in the output below. Does that mean it is running at PCI-X speeds are is it showing that it's capable? # dmesg | grep e1000 [ 3678.349337] e1000: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Driver - version 7.3.21-k8-NAPI [ 3678.349342] e1000: Copyright (c) 1999-2006 Intel Corporation. [ 3678.349394] e1000 0000:06:07.0: PCI->APIC IRQ transform: INT A -> IRQ 48 [ 3678.409725] e1000 0000:06:07.0: Receive Descriptors set to 4096 [ 3678.409730] e1000 0000:06:07.0: Checksum Offload Disabled [ 3678.409734] e1000 0000:06:07.0: Flow Control Disabled [ 3678.586409] e1000 0000:06:07.0: eth0: (PCI:66MHz:32-bit) 00:11:43:e0:e2:8c [ 3678.586419] e1000 0000:06:07.0: eth0: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Connection [ 3678.586642] e1000 0000:07:08.0: PCI->APIC IRQ transform: INT A -> IRQ 49 [ 3678.649854] e1000 0000:07:08.0: Receive Descriptors set to 4096 [ 3678.649859] e1000 0000:07:08.0: Checksum Offload Disabled [ 3678.649863] e1000 0000:07:08.0: Flow Control Disabled [ 3678.826436] e1000 0000:07:08.0: eth1: (PCI:66MHz:32-bit) 00:11:43:e0:e2:8d [ 3678.826444] e1000 0000:07:08.0: eth1: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Connection [ 3678.826627] e1000 0000:09:04.0: PCI->APIC IRQ transform: INT A -> IRQ 82 [ 3679.093266] e1000 0000:09:04.0: Receive Descriptors set to 4096 [ 3679.093271] e1000 0000:09:04.0: Checksum Offload Disabled [ 3679.093275] e1000 0000:09:04.0: Flow Control Disabled [ 3679.130239] e1000 0000:09:04.0: eth2: (PCI-X:133MHz:64-bit) 00:04:23:e1:77:6a [ 3679.130246] e1000 0000:09:04.0: eth2: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Connection [ 3679.130449] e1000 0000:09:04.1: PCI->APIC IRQ transform: INT B -> IRQ 83 [ 3679.397312] e1000 0000:09:04.1: Receive Descriptors set to 4096 [ 3679.397318] e1000 0000:09:04.1: Checksum Offload Disabled [ 3679.397321] e1000 0000:09:04.1: Flow Control Disabled [ 3679.434350] e1000 0000:09:04.1: eth3: (PCI-X:133MHz:64-bit) 00:04:23:e1:77:6b [ 3679.434360] e1000 0000:09:04.1: eth3: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Connection [ 3679.434553] e1000 0000:0a:03.0: PCI->APIC IRQ transform: INT A -> IRQ 77 [ 3679.704072] e1000 0000:0a:03.0: Receive Descriptors set to 4096 [ 3679.704077] e1000 0000:0a:03.0: Checksum Offload Disabled [ 3679.704081] e1000 0000:0a:03.0: Flow Control Disabled [ 3679.738364] e1000 0000:0a:03.0: eth4: (PCI:33MHz:64-bit) 00:04:23:b6:35:6c [ 3679.738371] e1000 0000:0a:03.0: eth4: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Connection [ 3679.738538] e1000 0000:0a:03.1: PCI->APIC IRQ transform: INT B -> IRQ 78 [ 3680.046060] e1000 0000:0a:03.1: eth5: (PCI:33MHz:64-bit) 00:04:23:b6:35:6d [ 3680.046067] e1000 0000:0a:03.1: eth5: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Connection [ 3682.132415] e1000: eth0 NIC Link is Up 100 Mbps Half Duplex, Flow Control: None [ 3682.224423] e1000: eth1 NIC Link is Up 100 Mbps Half Duplex, Flow Control: None [ 3682.316385] e1000: eth2 NIC Link is Up 100 Mbps Half Duplex, Flow Control: None [ 3682.408391] e1000: eth3 NIC Link is Up 1000 Mbps Full Duplex, Flow Control: None [ 3682.500396] e1000: eth4 NIC Link is Up 1000 Mbps Full Duplex, Flow Control: None [ 3682.708401] e1000: eth5 NIC Link is Up 1000 Mbps Full Duplex, Flow Control: RX At first I thought it was the NIC drivers but I'm not so sure. I really have no idea where else to look at the moment. Any help is greatly appreciated as I'm struggling with this. If you need more information just ask. Thanks! [1]http://www.cs.fsu.edu/~baker/devices/lxr/http/source/linux/Documentation/networking/e1000.txt?v=2.6.11.8 [2] http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/pe2850/en/ug/t1390aa.htm

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Convert YouTube Videos to MP3 with YouTube Downloader

- by DigitalGeekery

Are you looking for a way to take the music videos you watch on YouTube and convert them to MP3? Today we take a look at an easy way to convert those YouTube videos to MP3 for free with YouTube Downloader. The YouTube Downloader functions in two steps. First, it downloads the video from YouTube in MP4 format, and then allows you to convert that MP4 file to MP3. Note: It also supports conversion conversion to some other formats such as AVI video, MOV, iPhone, PSP, 3GP, and WMV. Installation and usage Download and Install YouTube Downloader. (See download link below) Open the YouTube Downloader by clicking on the desktop icon. Find a YouTube video you’d like to convert to MP3 and copy the URL. Paste the URL into the “Enter video URL” text box in YouTube Downloader. When you hover your mouse over the text box, the text box will auto-fill with the URL from your clipboard. Select the “Download video from YouTube” radio button and click “Ok.” Choose a folder to location to download your YouTube video and click “Save.” The video is downloaded in MP4 format. Now wait while the video is downloaded to your hard drive. Select the “Convert video (previously downloaded) from file” radio button. Click the (…) button to the right of the “Select video file” text box to browse for and select the MP4 file you just downloaded. Then select “MPEG Audio Layer (MP3) from the “Convert to” drop down list. Select “OK” to begin the conversion. Choose the conversion quality by moving the slider to the right or left. The options are: Low (96kbps bite rate), Medium (128kbps bit rate), Optimal (192kbps bit rate), and High 256kbps bit rate). Here you can select the output volume as well. Click “OK” when finished. If there is a portion of the beginning or end of the video that you wish to cut out of the MP3, select the “Cut video” check box and choose a Start and End time. Click “OK” when finished. Note: The start and end time represent the audio portion of the MP3 you wish to keep. All portions before and after these times will be cut. The conversion process will begin and should only take a few moments. Times will vary depending on the size of the video you’re converting. Conversion was successful! The MP3 you converted will be in the same directory you downloaded the video to. Now you’re ready to listen to your MP3 or import it to your Zune, iTunes, or music library. You may also want to delete the MP4 files after the conversion if you will no longer need them. Conclusion YouTube Downloader features a very simple interface that’s user friendly and easy to use. It comes in handy when you watch videos that look horrible, but the sound quality is good. Or if you just need to hear the audio of something posted and don’t need the video. It also allows you to download from Google Video, MySpace, and others. Download YouTube Downloader Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Download YouTube Videos with Cheetah YouTube DownloaderWatch YouTube Videos in Cinema Style in FirefoxStop YouTube Videos from Automatically Playing in FirefoxRemove Unsuitable Comments from YouTubeImprove YouTube Video Viewing in Google Chrome TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Windows Media Player 12: Tweak Video & Sound with Playback Enhancements Own a cell phone, or does a cell phone own you? Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier Design Your Web Pages Using the Golden Ratio Worldwide Growth of the Internet

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Windows Azure: Import/Export Hard Drives, VM ACLs, Web Sockets, Remote Debugging, Continuous Delivery, New Relic, Billing Alerts and More

- by ScottGu

Two weeks ago we released a giant set of improvements to Windows Azure, as well as a significant update of the Windows Azure SDK. This morning we released another massive set of enhancements to Windows Azure. Today’s new capabilities include: Storage: Import/Export Hard Disk Drives to your Storage Accounts HDInsight: General Availability of our Hadoop Service in the cloud Virtual Machines: New VM Gallery, ACL support for VIPs Web Sites: WebSocket and Remote Debugging Support Notification Hubs: Segmented customer push notification support with tag expressions TFS & GIT: Continuous Delivery Support for Web Sites + Cloud Services Developer Analytics: New Relic support for Web Sites + Mobile Services Service Bus: Support for partitioned queues and topics Billing: New Billing Alert Service that sends emails notifications when your bill hits a threshold you define All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note that some features are still in preview). Below are more details about them. Storage: Import/Export Hard Disk Drives to Windows Azure I am excited to announce the preview of our new Windows Azure Import/Export Service! The Windows Azure Import/Export Service enables you to move large amounts of on-premises data into and out of your Windows Azure Storage accounts. It does this by enabling you to securely ship hard disk drives directly to our Windows Azure data centers. Once we receive the drives we’ll automatically transfer the data to or from your Windows Azure Storage account. This enables you to import or export massive amounts of data more quickly and cost effectively (and not be constrained by available network bandwidth). Encrypted Transport Our Import/Export service provides built-in support for BitLocker disk encryption – which enables you to securely encrypt data on the hard drives before you send it, and not have to worry about it being compromised even if the disk is lost/stolen in transit (since the content on the transported hard drives is completely encrypted and you are the only one who has the key to it). The drive preparation tool we are shipping today makes setting up bitlocker encryption on these hard drives easy. How to Import/Export your first Hard Drive of Data You can read our Getting Started Guide to learn more about how to begin using the import/export service. You can create import and export jobs via the Windows Azure Management Portal as well as programmatically using our Server Management APIs. It is really easy to create a new import or export job using the Windows Azure Management Portal. Simply navigate to a Windows Azure storage account, and then click the new Import/Export tab now available within it (note: if you don’t have this tab make sure to sign-up for the Import/Export preview): Then click the “Create Import Job” or “Create Export Job” commands at the bottom of it. This will launch a wizard that easily walks you through the steps required: For more comprehensive information about Import/Export, refer to Windows Azure Storage team blog. You can also send questions and comments to the [email protected] email address. We think you’ll find this new service makes it much easier to move data into and out of Windows Azure, and it will dramatically cut down the network bandwidth required when working on large data migration projects. We hope you like it. HDInsight: 100% Compatible Hadoop Service in the Cloud Last week we announced the general availability release of Windows Azure HDInsight. HDInsight is a 100% compatible Hadoop service that allows you to easily provision and manage Hadoop clusters for big data processing in Windows Azure. This release is now live in production, backed by an enterprise SLA, supported 24x7 by Microsoft Support, and is ready to use for production scenarios. HDInsight allows you to use Apache Hadoop tools, such as Pig and Hive, to process large amounts of data in Windows Azure Blob Storage. Because data is stored in Windows Azure Blob Storage, you can choose to dynamically create Hadoop clusters only when you need them, and then shut them down when they are no longer required (since you pay only for the time the Hadoop cluster instances are running this provides a super cost effective way to use them). You can create Hadoop clusters using either the Windows Azure Management Portal (see below) or using our PowerShell and Cross Platform Command line tools: The import/export hard drive support that came out today is a perfect companion service to use with HDInsight – the combination allows you to easily ingest, process and optionally export a limitless amount of data. We’ve also integrated HDInsight with our Business Intelligence tools, so users can leverage familiar tools like Excel in order to analyze the output of jobs. You can find out more about how to get started with HDInsight here. Virtual Machines: VM Gallery Enhancements Today’s update of Windows Azure brings with it a new Virtual Machine gallery that you can use to create new VMs in the cloud. You can launch the gallery by doing New->Compute->Virtual Machine->From Gallery within the Windows Azure Management Portal: The new Virtual Machine Gallery includes some nice enhancements that make it even easier to use: Search: You can now easily search and filter images using the search box in the top-right of the dialog. For example, simply type “SQL” and we’ll filter to show those images in the gallery that contain that substring. Category Tree-view: Each month we add more built-in VM images to the gallery. You can continue to browse these using the “All” view within the VM Gallery – or now quickly filter them using the category tree-view on the left-hand side of the dialog. For example, by selecting “Oracle” in the tree-view you can now quickly filter to see the official Oracle supplied images. MSDN and Supported checkboxes: With today’s update we are also introducing filters that makes it easy to filter out types of images that you may not be interested in. The first checkbox is MSDN: using this filter you can exclude any image that is not part of the Windows Azure benefits for MSDN subscribers (which have highly discounted pricing - you can learn more about the MSDN pricing here). The second checkbox is Supported: this filter will exclude any image that contains prerelease software, so you can feel confident that the software you choose to deploy is fully supported by Windows Azure and our partners. Sort options: We sort gallery images by what we think customers are most interested in, but sometimes you might want to sort using different views. So we’re providing some additional sort options, like “Newest,” to customize the image list for what suits you best. Pricing information: We now provide additional pricing information about images and options on how to cost effectively run them directly within the VM Gallery. The above improvements make it even easier to use the VM Gallery and quickly create launch and run Virtual Machines in the cloud. Virtual Machines: ACL Support for VIPs A few months ago we exposed the ability to configure Access Control Lists (ACLs) for Virtual Machines using Windows PowerShell cmdlets and our Service Management API. With today’s release, you can now configure VM ACLs using the Windows Azure Management Portal as well. You can now do this by clicking the new Manage ACL command in the Endpoints tab of a virtual machine instance: This will enable you to configure an ordered list of permit and deny rules to scope the traffic that can access your VM’s network endpoints. For example, if you were on a virtual network, you could limit RDP access to a Windows Azure virtual machine to only a few computers attached to your enterprise. Or if you weren’t on a virtual network you could alternatively limit traffic from public IPs that can access your workloads: Here is the default behaviors for ACLs in Windows Azure: By default (i.e. no rules specified), all traffic is permitted. When using only Permit rules, all other traffic is denied. When using only Deny rules, all other traffic is permitted. When there is a combination of Permit and Deny rules, all other traffic is denied. Lastly, remember that configuring endpoints does not automatically configure them within the VM if it also has firewall rules enabled at the OS level. So if you create an endpoint using the Windows Azure Management Portal, Windows PowerShell, or REST API, be sure to also configure your guest VM firewall appropriately as well. Web Sites: Web Sockets Support With today’s release you can now use Web Sockets with Windows Azure Web Sites. This feature enables you to easily integrate real-time communication scenarios within your web based applications, and is available at no extra charge (it even works with the free tier). Higher level programming libraries like SignalR and socket.io are also now supported with it. You can enable Web Sockets support on a web site by navigating to the Configure tab of a Web Site, and by toggling Web Sockets support to “on”: Once Web Sockets is enabled you can start to integrate some really cool scenarios into your web applications. Check out the new SignalR documentation hub on www.asp.net to learn more about some of the awesome scenarios you can do with it. Web Sites: Remote Debugging Support The Windows Azure SDK 2.2 we released two weeks ago introduced remote debugging support for Windows Azure Cloud Services. With today’s Windows Azure release we are extending this remote debugging support to also work with Windows Azure Web Sites. With live, remote debugging support inside of Visual Studio, you are able to have more visibility than ever before into how your code is operating live in Windows Azure. It is now super easy to attach the debugger and quickly see what is going on with your application in the cloud. Remote Debugging of a Windows Azure Web Site using VS 2013 Enabling the remote debugging of a Windows Azure Web Site using VS 2013 is really easy. Start by opening up your web application’s project within Visual Studio. Then navigate to the “Server Explorer” tab within Visual Studio, and click on the deployed web-site you want to debug that is running within Windows Azure using the Windows Azure->Web Sites node in the Server Explorer. Then right-click and choose the “Attach Debugger” option on it: When you do this Visual Studio will remotely attach the debugger to the Web Site running within Windows Azure. The debugger will then stop the web site’s execution when it hits any break points that you have set within your web application’s project inside Visual Studio. For example, below I set a breakpoint on the “ViewBag.Message” assignment statement within the HomeController of the standard ASP.NET MVC project template. When I hit refresh on the “About” page of the web site within the browser, the breakpoint was triggered and I am now able to debug the app remotely using Visual Studio: Note above how we can debug variables (including autos/watchlist/etc), as well as use the Immediate and Command Windows. In the debug session above I used the Immediate Window to explore some of the request object state, as well as to dynamically change the ViewBag.Message property. When we click the the “Continue” button (or press F5) the app will continue execution and the Web Site will render the content back to the browser. This makes it super easy to debug web apps remotely. Tips for Better Debugging To get the best experience while debugging, we recommend publishing your site using the Debug configuration within Visual Studio’s Web Publish dialog. This will ensure that debug symbol information is uploaded to the Web Site which will enable a richer debug experience within Visual Studio. You can find this option on the Web Publish dialog on the Settings tab: When you ultimately deploy/run the application in production we recommend using the “Release” configuration setting – the release configuration is memory optimized and will provide the best production performance. To learn more about diagnosing and debugging Windows Azure Web Sites read our new Troubleshooting Windows Azure Web Sites in Visual Studio guide. Notification Hubs: Segmented Push Notification support with tag expressions In August we announced the General Availability of Windows Azure Notification Hubs - a powerful Mobile Push Notifications service that makes it easy to send high volume push notifications with low latency from any mobile app back-end. Notification hubs can be used with any mobile app back-end (including ones built using our Mobile Services capability) and can also be used with back-ends that run in the cloud as well as on-premises. Beginning with the initial release, Notification Hubs allowed developers to send personalized push notifications to both individual users as well as groups of users by interest, by associating their devices with tags representing the logical target of the notification. For example, by registering all devices of customers interested in a favorite MLB team with a corresponding tag, it is possible to broadcast one message to millions of Boston Red Sox fans and another message to millions of St. Louis Cardinals fans with a single API call respectively. New support for using tag expressions to enable advanced customer segmentation With today’s release we are adding support for even more advanced customer targeting. You can now identify customers that you want to send push notifications to by defining rich tag expressions. With tag expressions, you can now not only broadcast notifications to Boston Red Sox fans, but take that segmenting a step farther and reach more granular segments. This opens up a variety of scenarios, for example: Offers based on multiple preferences—e.g. send a game day vegetarian special to users tagged as both a Boston Red Sox fan AND a vegetarian Push content to multiple segments in a single message—e.g. rain delay information only to users who are tagged as either a Boston Red Sox fan OR a St. Louis Cardinal fan Avoid presenting subsets of a segment with irrelevant content—e.g. season ticket availability reminder to users who are tagged as a Boston Red Sox fan but NOT also a season ticket holder To illustrate with code, consider a restaurant chain app that sends an offer related to a Red Sox vs Cardinals game for users in Boston. Devices can be tagged by your app with location tags (e.g. “Loc:Boston”) and interest tags (e.g. “Follows:RedSox”, “Follows:Cardinals”), and then a notification can be sent by your back-end to “(Follows:RedSox || Follows:Cardinals) && Loc:Boston” in order to deliver an offer to all devices in Boston that follow either the RedSox or the Cardinals. This can be done directly in your server backend send logic using the code below: var notification = new WindowsNotification(messagePayload); hub.SendNotificationAsync(notification, "(Follows:RedSox || Follows:Cardinals) && Loc:Boston"); In your expressions you can use all Boolean operators: AND (&&), OR (||), and NOT (!). Some other cool use cases for tag expressions that are now supported include: Social: To “all my group except me” - group:id && !user:id Events: Touchdown event is sent to everybody following either team or any of the players involved in the action: Followteam:A || Followteam:B || followplayer:1 || followplayer:2 … Hours: Send notifications at specific times. E.g. Tag devices with time zone and when it is 12pm in Seattle send to: GMT8 && follows:thaifood Versions and platforms: Send a reminder to people still using your first version for Android - version:1.0 && platform:Android For help on getting started with Notification Hubs, visit the Notification Hub documentation center. Then download the latest NuGet package (or use the Notification Hubs REST APIs directly) to start sending push notifications using tag expressions. They are really powerful and enable a bunch of great new scenarios. TFS & GIT: Continuous Delivery Support for Web Sites + Cloud Services With today’s Windows Azure release we are making it really easy to enable continuous delivery support with Windows Azure and Team Foundation Services. Team Foundation Services is a cloud based offering from Microsoft that provides integrated source control (with both TFS and Git support), build server, test execution, collaboration tools, and agile planning support. It makes it really easy to setup a team project (complete with automated builds and test runners) in the cloud, and it has really rich integration with Visual Studio. With today’s Windows Azure release it is now really easy to enable continuous delivery support with both TFS and Git based repositories hosted using Team Foundation Services. This enables a workflow where when code is checked in, built successfully on an automated build server, and all tests pass on it – I can automatically have the app deployed on Windows Azure with zero manual intervention or work required. The below screen-shots demonstrate how to quickly setup a continuous delivery workflow to Windows Azure with a Git-based ASP.NET MVC project hosted using Team Foundation Services. Enabling Continuous Delivery to Windows Azure with Team Foundation Services The project I’m going to enable continuous delivery with is a simple ASP.NET MVC project whose source code I’m hosting using Team Foundation Services. I did this by creating a “SimpleContinuousDeploymentTest” repository there using Git – and then used the new built-in Git tooling support within Visual Studio 2013 to push the source code to it. Below is a screen-shot of the Git repository hosted within Team Foundation Services: I can access the repository within Visual Studio 2013 and easily make commits with it (as well as branch, merge and do other tasks). Using VS 2013 I can also setup automated builds to take place in the cloud using Team Foundation Services every time someone checks in code to the repository: The cool thing about this is that I don’t have to buy or rent my own build server – Team Foundation Services automatically maintains its own build server farm and can automatically queue up a build for me (for free) every time someone checks in code using the above settings. This build server (and automated testing) support now works with both TFS and Git based source control repositories. Connecting a Team Foundation Services project to Windows Azure Once I have a source repository hosted in Team Foundation Services with Automated Builds and Testing set up, I can then go even further and set it up so that it will be automatically deployed to Windows Azure when a source code commit is made to the repository (assuming the Build + Tests pass). Enabling this is now really easy. To set this up with a Windows Azure Web Site simply use the New->Compute->Web Site->Custom Create command inside the Windows Azure Management Portal. This will create a dialog like below. I gave the web site a name and then made sure the “Publish from source control” checkbox was selected: When we click next we’ll be prompted for the location of the source repository. We’ll select “Team Foundation Services”: Once we do this we’ll be prompted for our Team Foundation Services account that our source repository is hosted under (in this case my TFS account is “scottguthrie”): When we click the “Authorize Now” button we’ll be prompted to give Windows Azure permissions to connect to the Team Foundation Services account. Once we do this we’ll be prompted to pick the source repository we want to connect to. Starting with today’s Windows Azure release you can now connect to both TFS and Git based source repositories. This new support allows me to connect to the “SimpleContinuousDeploymentTest” respository we created earlier: Clicking the finish button will then create the Web Site with the continuous delivery hooks setup with Team Foundation Services. Now every time someone pushes source control to the repository in Team Foundation Services, it will kick off an automated build, run all of the unit tests in the solution , and if they pass the app will be automatically deployed to our Web Site in Windows Azure. You can monitor the history and status of these automated deployments using the Deployments tab within the Web Site: This enables a really slick continuous delivery workflow, and enables you to build and deploy apps in a really nice way. Developer Analytics: New Relic support for Web Sites + Mobile Services With today’s Windows Azure release we are making it really easy to enable Developer Analytics and Monitoring support with both Windows Azure Web Site and Windows Azure Mobile Services. We are partnering with New Relic, who provide a great dev analytics and app performance monitoring offering, to enable this - and we have updated the Windows Azure Management Portal to make it really easy to configure. Enabling New Relic with a Windows Azure Web Site Enabling New Relic support with a Windows Azure Web Site is now really easy. Simply navigate to the Configure tab of a Web Site and scroll down to the “developer analytics” section that is now within it: Clicking the “add-on” button will display some additional UI. If you don’t already have a New Relic subscription, you can click the “view windows azure store” button to obtain a subscription (note: New Relic has a perpetually free tier so you can enable it even without paying anything): Clicking the “view windows azure store” button will launch the integrated Windows Azure Store experience we have within the Windows Azure Management Portal. You can use this to browse from a variety of great add-on services – including New Relic: Select “New Relic” within the dialog above, then click the next button, and you’ll be able to choose which type of New Relic subscription you wish to purchase. For this demo we’ll simply select the “Free Standard Version” – which does not cost anything and can be used forever: Once we’ve signed-up for our New Relic subscription and added it to our Windows Azure account, we can go back to the Web Site’s configuration tab and choose to use the New Relic add-on with our Windows Azure Web Site. We can do this by simply selecting it from the “add-on” dropdown (it is automatically populated within it once we have a New Relic subscription in our account): Clicking the “Save” button will then cause the Windows Azure Management Portal to automatically populate all of the needed New Relic configuration settings to our Web Site: Deploying the New Relic Agent as part of a Web Site The final step to enable developer analytics using New Relic is to add the New Relic runtime agent to our web app. We can do this within Visual Studio by right-clicking on our web project and selecting the “Manage NuGet Packages” context menu: This will bring up the NuGet package manager. You can search for “New Relic” within it to find the New Relic agent. Note that there is both a 32-bit and 64-bit edition of it – make sure to install the version that matches how your Web Site is running within Windows Azure (note: you can configure your Web Site to run in either 32-bit or 64-bit mode using the Web Site’s “Configuration” tab within the Windows Azure Management Portal): Once we install the NuGet package we are all set to go. We’ll simply re-publish the web site again to Windows Azure and New Relic will now automatically start monitoring the application Monitoring a Web Site using New Relic Now that the application has developer analytics support with New Relic enabled, we can launch the New Relic monitoring portal to start monitoring the health of it. We can do this by clicking on the “Add Ons” tab in the left-hand side of the Windows Azure Management Portal. Then select the New Relic add-on we signed-up for within it. The Windows Azure Management Portal will provide some default information about the add-on when we do this. Clicking the “Manage” button in the tray at the bottom will launch a new browser tab and single-sign us into the New Relic monitoring portal associated with our account: When we do this a new browser tab will launch with the New Relic admin tool loaded within it: We can now see insights into how our app is performing – without having to have written a single line of monitoring code. The New Relic service provides a ton of great built-in monitoring features allowing us to quickly see: Performance times (including browser rendering speed) for the overall site and individual pages. You can optionally set alert thresholds to trigger if the speed does not meet a threshold you specify. Information about where in the world your customers are hitting the site from (and how performance varies by region) Details on the latency performance of external services your web apps are using (for example: SQL, Storage, Twitter, etc) Error information including call stack details for exceptions that have occurred at runtime SQL Server profiling information – including which queries executed against your database and what their performance was And a whole bunch more… The cool thing about New Relic is that you don’t need to write monitoring code within your application to get all of the above reports (plus a lot more). The New Relic agent automatically enables the CLR profiler within applications and automatically captures the information necessary to identify these. This makes it super easy to get started and immediately have a rich developer analytics view for your solutions with very little effort. If you haven’t tried New Relic out yet with Windows Azure I recommend you do so – I think you’ll find it helps you build even better cloud applications. Following the above steps will help you get started and deliver you a really good application monitoring solution in only minutes. Service Bus: Support for partitioned queues and topics With today’s release, we are enabling support within Service Bus for partitioned queues and topics. Enabling partitioning enables you to achieve a higher message throughput and better availability from your queues and topics. Higher message throughput is achieved by implementing multiple message brokers for each partitioned queue and topic. The multiple messaging stores will also provide higher availability. You can create a partitioned queue or topic by simply checking the Enable Partitioning option in the custom create wizard for a Queue or Topic: Read this article to learn more about partitioned queues and topics and how to take advantage of them today. Billing: New Billing Alert Service Today’s Windows Azure update enables a new Billing Alert Service Preview that enables you to get proactive email notifications when your Windows Azure bill goes above a certain monetary threshold that you configure. This makes it easier to manage your bill and avoid potential surprises at the end of the month. With the Billing Alert Service Preview, you can now create email alerts to monitor and manage your monetary credits or your current bill total. To set up an alert first sign-up for the free Billing Alert Service Preview. Then visit the account management page, click on a subscription you have setup, and then navigate to the new Alerts tab that is available: The alerts tab allows you to setup email alerts that will be sent automatically once a certain threshold is hit. For example, by clicking the “add alert” button above I can setup a rule to send myself email anytime my Windows Azure bill goes above $100 for the month: The Billing Alert Service will evolve to support additional aspects of your bill as well as support multiple forms of alerts such as SMS. Try out the new Billing Alert Service Preview today and give us feedback. Summary Today’s Windows Azure release enables a ton of great new scenarios, and makes building applications hosted in the cloud even easier. If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today. Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Startup Failures

- by Rick Strahl

I’ve been working with VS 2010 Beta 2 for a while now and while it works Ok most of the time it seems the environment is very, very fragile when it comes to crashes and installed packages. Specifically I’ve been working just fine for days, then when VS 2010 crashes it will not re-start. Instead I get the good old Application cannot start dialog: Other failures I’ve seen bring forth other just as useful dialogs with information overload like Operation cannot be performed which for me specifically happens when trying to compile any project. After a bit of digging around and a post to Microsoft Connect the solution boils down to resetting the VS.NET environment. The Application Cannot Start issue stems from a package load failure of some sort, so the work around for this is typically: c:\program files\Visual Studio 2010\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe /ResetSkipPkgs In most cases that should do the trick. If it doesn’t and the error doesn’t go away the more drastic: c:\program files\Visual Studio 2010\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe /ResetSettings is required which resets all settings in VS to its installation defaults. Between these two I’ve always been able to get VS to startup and run properly. BTW it’s handy to keep a list of command line options for Visual Studio around: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/xee0c8y7%28VS.100%29.aspx Note that the /? option in VS 2010 doesn’t display all the options available but rather displays the ‘demo version’ message instead, so the above should be helpful. Also note that unless you install Visual C++ the Visual Studio Command Prompt icon is not automatically installed so you may have to navigate manually to the appropriate folder above. Cannot Build Failures If you get the Cannot compile error dialog, there is another thing that have worked for me: Change your project build target from Debug to Release (or whatever – just change it) and compile again. If that doesn’t work doing the reset steps above will do it for me. It appears this failure comes from some sort of interference of other versions of Visual Studio installed on the system and running another version first. Resetting the build target explicitly seems to reset the build providers to a normalized state so that things work in many cases. But not all. Worst case – resetting settings will do it. The bottom line for working in VS 2010 has been – don’t get too attached to your custom settings as they will get blown away quite a bit. I’ve probably been through 20 or more of these VS resets although I’ve been working with it quite a bit on an internal project. It’s kind of frustrating to see this kind of high level instability in a Beta 2 product which is supposedly the last public beta they will put out. On the other hand this beta has been otherwise rather stable and performance is roughly equivalent to VS 2008. Although I mention the crash above – crashes I’ve seen have been relatively rare and no more frequent than in VS 2008 it seems. Given the drastic UI changes in VS 2010 (using WPF for the shell and editor) I’m actually impressed that the product is as stable as it is at this point. Also I was seriously worried about text quality going to a WPF model, but thankfully WPF 4.0 addresses the blurry text issue with native font rendering to render text on non-cleartype enabled systems crisply. Anyway I hope that these notes are helpful to some of you playing around with the beta and running into problems. Hopefully you won’t need them :-}© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010

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Software development stack 2012

A couple of months ago, I posted on Google+ about my evaluation period for a new software development stack in general. "Analysing existing 'jungle' of multiple applications and tools in various languages for clarification and future design decisions. Great fun and lots of headaches... #DevelopersLife" Surprisingly, there was response... ;-) - And this series of articles is initiated by this post. Thanks Olaf. The past few years... Well, after all my first choice of software development in the past was Microsoft Visual FoxPro 6.0 - 9.0 in combination with Microsoft SQL Server 2000 - 2008 and Crystal Reports 9.x - XI. Honestly, it is my main working environment due to exisiting maintenance and support plans with my customers, but also for new project requests. And... hands on, it is still my first choice for data manipulation and migration options. But the earth is spinning, and as a software craftsman one has to be flexible with the choice of tools. In parallel to my knowledge and expertise in the above mentioned tools, I already started very early to get my hands dirty with the Microsoft .NET Framework. If I remember correctly, I started back in 2002/2003 with the first version ever. But this was more out of curiousity. During the years this kind of development got more serious and demanding, and I focused myself on interop and integrational libraries and applications. Mainly, to expose exisitng features of the .NET Framework to Visual FoxPro - I even had a session about that at the German Developer's Conference in Frankfurt. Observation of recent developments With the recent hype on Javascript and HTML5, especially for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 development, I had several 'Deja vu' events... Back in early 2006 (roughly) I had a conversation on the future of Web and Desktop development with my former colleagues Golo Roden and Thomas Wilting about the underestimation of Javascript and its root as a prototype-based, dynamic, full-featured programming language. During this talk with them I took the Mozilla applications, namely Firefox and Thunderbird, as a reference which are mainly based on XML, CSS, Javascript and images - besides the core rendering engine. And that it is very simple to write your own extensions for the Gecko rendering engine. Looking at the Windows Vista Sidebar widgets, just underlines this kind of usage. So, yes the 'Modern UI' of Windows 8 based on HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript didn't come as any surprise to me. Just allow me to ask why did it take so long for Microsoft to come up with this step? A new set of tools Ok, coming from web development in HTML 4, CSS and Javascript prior to Visual FoxPro, I am partly going back to that combination of technologies. What is the other part of the software development stack here at IOS Indian Ocean Software Ltd? Frankly, it is easy and straight forward to describe: Microsoft Visual FoxPro 9.0 SP 2 - still going strong! Visual Studio 2012 (C# on latest .NET Framework) MonoDevelop Telerik DevCraft Suite WPF ASP.NET MVC Windows 8 Kendo UI OpenAccess ORM Reporting JustCode CODE Framework by EPS Software MonoTouch and Mono for Android Subversion and additional tools for the daily routine: Notepad++, JustCode, SQL Compare, DiffMerge, VMware, etc. Following the principles of Clean Code Developer and the Agile Manifesto Actually, nothing special about this combination but rather a solid fundament to work with and create line of business applications for customers.Honestly, I am really interested in your choice of 'weapons' for software development, and hopefully there might be some nice conversations in the comment section. Over the next coming days/weeks I'm going to describe a little bit more in detail about the reasons for my decision. Articles will be added bit by bit here as reference, too. Please bear with me... Regards, JoKi

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Time to stop using “Execute Package Task”– a way to execute package in SSIS catalog taking advantage of the new project deployment model ,and the logging and reporting feature

- by Kevin Shyr

I set out to find a way to dynamically call package in SSIS 2012. The following are 2 excellent blogs I found; I used them heavily. The code below has some addition to parameter types and message types, but was made essentially derived entirely from the blogs. http://sqlblog.com/blogs/jamie_thomson/archive/2011/07/16/ssis-logging-in-denali.aspx http://www.ssistalk.com/2012/07/24/quick-tip-run-ssis-2012-packages-synchronously-and-other-execution-options/ The code: Every package will be called by a PackageController package. The packageController is initialized with some information on which package to run and what information to pass in. The following is the stored procedure called from the “Execute SQL Task”. Here is the highlight of the stored procedure It takes in packageName, project name, and folder name (folder in SSIS project deployment to SSIS catalog) The stored procedure sets the package variables of the upcoming package execution Execute package in SSIS Catalog Get the status of the execution. Also, if exists, get the error message’s message_id and store them in the management database. Return value to “Execute SQL Task” to manage failure properly CREATE PROCEDURE [AUDIT].[LaunchPackageExecutionInSSISCatalog] @PackageName NVARCHAR(255) , @ProjectFolder NVARCHAR(255) , @ProjectName NVARCHAR(255) , @AuditKey INT , @DisableNotification BIT , @PackageExecutionLogID INT AS BEGIN TRY DECLARE @execution_id BIGINT = 0; -- Create a package execution EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[create_execution] @package_name=@PackageName, @execution_id=@execution_id OUTPUT, @folder_name=@ProjectFolder, @project_name=@ProjectName, @use32bitruntime=False; UPDATE [AUDIT].[PackageInstanceExecutionLog] WITH(ROWLOCK) SET [SSISCatalogExecutionID] = @execution_id WHERE [PackageInstanceExecutionLogID] = @PackageExecutionLogID -- this is to set the execution synchronized so that I can check the result in the end EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value] @execution_id, @object_type=50, @parameter_name=N'SYNCHRONIZED', @parameter_value=1; -- true /******************************************************** ******************************************************** Section: setting parameters Source table: SSISDB.internal.object_parameters object_type list: 20: project level variables 30: package level variables 50: execution parameter ******************************************************** ********************************************************/ EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value] @execution_id, @object_type=30, @parameter_name=N'FromParent_AuditKey', @parameter_value=@AuditKey; -- true EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value] @execution_id, @object_type=30, @parameter_name=N'FromParent_DisableNotification', @parameter_value=@DisableNotification; -- true EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value] @execution_id, @object_type=30, @parameter_name=N'FromParent_PackageInstanceExecutionID', @parameter_value=@PackageExecutionLogID; -- true /******************************************************** ******************************************************** Section: setting variables END ******************************************************** ********************************************************/ /* This section is carried over from example code I don't see a reason to change them yet */ -- Set our package parameters EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value] @execution_id, @object_type=50, @parameter_name=N'DUMP_ON_EVENT', @parameter_value=1; -- true EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value] @execution_id, @object_type=50, @parameter_name=N'DUMP_EVENT_CODE', @parameter_value=N'0x80040E4D;0x80004005'; EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value] @execution_id, @object_type=50, @parameter_name=N'LOGGING_LEVEL', @parameter_value= 1; -- Basic EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value] @execution_id, @object_type=50, @parameter_name=N'DUMP_ON_ERROR', @parameter_value=1; -- true /******************************************************** ******************************************************** Section: EXECUTING ******************************************************** ********************************************************/ EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[start_execution] @execution_id; /******************************************************** ******************************************************** Section: EXECUTING END ******************************************************** ********************************************************/ /******************************************************** ******************************************************** Section: checking execution result Source table: [SSISDB].[catalog].[executions] status: 1: created 2: running 3: cancelled 4: failed 5: pending 6: ended unexpectedly 7: succeeded 8: stopping 9: completed ******************************************************** ********************************************************/ if EXISTS(SELECT TOP 1 1 FROM [SSISDB].[catalog].[executions] WITH(NOLOCK) WHERE [execution_id] = @execution_id AND [status] NOT IN (2, 7, 9)) BEGIN /******************************************************** ******************************************************** Section: logging error messages Source table: [SSISDB].[internal].[operation_messages] message type: 10: OnPreValidate 20: OnPostValidate 30: OnPreExecute 40: OnPostExecute 60: OnProgress 70: OnInformation 90: Diagnostic 110: OnWarning 120: OnError 130: Failure 140: DiagnosticEx 200: Custom events 400: OnPipeline message source type: 10: Messages logged by the entry APIs (e.g. T-SQL, CLR Stored procedures) 20: Messages logged by the external process used to run package (ISServerExec) 30: Messages logged by the package-level objects 40: Messages logged by tasks in the control flow 50: Messages logged by containers (For, ForEach, Sequence) in the control flow 60: Messages logged by the Data Flow Task ******************************************************** ********************************************************/ INSERT INTO AUDIT.PackageInstanceExecutionOperationErrorLink SELECT @PackageExecutionLogID ,[operation_message_id] FROM [SSISDB].[internal].[operation_messages] WITH(NOLOCK) WHERE operation_id = @execution_id AND message_type IN (120, 130) EXEC [AUDIT].[FailPackageInstanceExecution] @PackageExecutionLogID, 'SSISDB Internal operation_messages found' GOTO ReturnTrueAsErrorFlag /******************************************************** ******************************************************** Section: checking messages END ******************************************************** ********************************************************/ /* This part is not really working, so now using rowcount to pass status --DECLARE @PackageErrorMessage NVARCHAR(4000) --SET @PackageErrorMessage = @PackageName + 'failed with executionID: ' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(20), @execution_id) --RAISERROR (@PackageErrorMessage -- Message text. -- , 18 -- Severity, -- , 1 -- State, -- , N'check table AUDIT.PackageInstanceExecutionErrorMessages' -- First argument. -- ); */ END ELSE BEGIN GOTO ReturnFalseAsErrorFlagToSignalSuccess END /******************************************************** ******************************************************** Section: checking execution result END ******************************************************** ********************************************************/ END TRY BEGIN CATCH DECLARE @SSISCatalogCallError NVARCHAR(MAX) SELECT @SSISCatalogCallError = ERROR_MESSAGE() EXEC [AUDIT].[FailPackageInstanceExecution] @PackageExecutionLogID, @SSISCatalogCallError GOTO ReturnTrueAsErrorFlag END CATCH; /******************************************************** ******************************************************** Section: end result ******************************************************** ********************************************************/ ReturnTrueAsErrorFlag: SELECT CONVERT(BIT, 1) AS PackageExecutionErrorExists ReturnFalseAsErrorFlagToSignalSuccess: SELECT CONVERT(BIT, 0) AS PackageExecutionErrorExists GO

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Expert F# – Pattern Matching with Adam and Eve

- by MarkPearl

So I am loving my Expert F# book. I wish I had more time with it, but the little time I get I really enjoy. However today I was completely stumped by what the book was trying to get across with regards to pattern matching. On Page 38 – Chapter 3, it briefly describes F# option values. On this page it gives the code snippet along the code lines below and then goes on to speak briefly about pattern matching... open System type 'a option = | None | Some of 'a let people = [ ("Adam", None); ("Eve", None); ("Cain", Some("Adam", "Eve")); ("Abel", Some("Adam", "Eve")) ] let showParents(name, parents) = match parents with | Some(dad, mum) -> printfn "%s has father %s, mother %s" name dad mum | None -> printfn "%s has no parents!" name Console.WriteLine(showParents("Adam", None)) Originally when I read this code I think I misunderstood the purpose of the example code. I for some reason thought that the showParents function would magically be parsing the people array and looking for a match of name and then showing the parents. But obviously it cannot do this since there is no reference to the people array in the showParents method. After rereading the page I realized that I had just combined the two segments of code together, possibly incorrectly, and that a better example would have been to have a code snippet like the following. let showParents(name, parents) = match parents with | Some(dad, mum) -> printfn "%s has father %s, mother %s" name dad mum | None -> printfn "%s has no parents!" name Console.WriteLine(showParents("Adam", None)) Console.WriteLine(showParents("Cain", Some("Adam", "Eve"))) Console.ReadLine() However, what if I wanted to have a function that was passed a list of people and a name would then show the parents of the name if there were any, and if not would show that they had no parents… so that doesnt seem to difficult does it… lets look at my very unoptimized noob F# code to try and achieve this… open System let people = [ ("Adam", None); ("Eve", None); ("Cain", Some("Adam", "Eve")); ("Abel", Some("Adam", "Eve")) ] // // returns the name of the person // let showName(person : string * (string * string) option) = let name = fst(person) name // // Returns a string with the parents details or not // let showParents(itemData : string * (string * string) option) = let name = fst(itemData) let parents = snd(itemData) match parents with | Some(dad, mum) -> "Father " + dad + " and Mother " + mum | None -> "Has no parents!" // // Prints the details // let showDetails(person : string * (string * string) option) = Console.WriteLine(showName(person)) Console.WriteLine(showParents(person)) // // Check if the name matches the first portion of person // if so, return true, else return false // let nameMatch(name : string , person : string * (string * string) option) = match name with | x when x = fst(person) -> true | _ -> false // // Searches an array of people and looks for a match of names // let findPerson(name : string, people : (string * (string * string) option) list) = let o = Seq.tryFind(fun x -> nameMatch(name, x)) people if Option.isSome o then o else Option.None // // Try and find a person, if found show their details // else show no match // let FoundPerson = findPerson("Cain", people) match FoundPerson with | None -> Console.WriteLine("Not found") | Some(x) -> showDetails(x) Console.ReadLine() So, my code isn’t the cleanest but it did teach me a bit more F#. The area that I learnt about was the option keyword. The challenge being, if a match of the name isn’t found – and if a name is found but the person doesn’t have parents it should react accordingly. I’m pretty sure I can optimize this code quite a bit more and I think I may come back to it sometime in the future and relook at it, but for now at least I was able to achieve what I wanted.. and my brain has gone just that wee little bit more functional.

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Removing old kernel entries in Grub

- by To Do

I regularly delete old kernels leaving only the latest two entries using Synaptic. I'm using Precise. However in my Grub "previous Linux version" menu there are quite a few entries labelled 2.6.8. I cannot find these linux-images in Synaptic. dpkg -l | grep linux-image Gives: rc linux-image-3.0.0-17-generic 3.0.0-17.30 Linux kernel image for version 3.0.0 on x86/x86_64 ii linux-image-3.2.0-27-generic 3.2.0-27.43 Linux kernel image for version 3.2.0 on 32 bit x86 SMP ii linux-image-3.2.0-29-generic 3.2.0-29.46 Linux kernel image for version 3.2.0 on 32 bit x86 SMP ii linux-image-3.4.0-030400-generic 3.4.0-030400.201205210521 Linux kernel image for version 3.4.0 on 32 bit x86 SMP ii linux-image-generic 3.2.0.29.31 Generic Linux kernel image Sudo update-grub gives: Generating grub.cfg ... Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.4.0-030400-generic Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.4.0-030400-generic Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-29-generic Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-29-generic Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-27-generic Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-27-generic Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38-11-generic Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-11-generic Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38-10-generic Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-10-generic Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38-8-generic Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-8-generic Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin Found Windows Vista (loader) on /dev/sda1 sudo apt-get remove linux-image-2.6.8-8-generic gives: E: Unable to locate package linux-image-2.6.8-8-generic E: Couldn't find any package by regex 'linux-image-2.6.8-8-generic' My boot folder contains the following: abi-2.6.38-10-generic initrd.img-3.4.0-030400-generic abi-2.6.38-11-generic memtest86+.bin abi-2.6.38-8-generic memtest86+_multiboot.bin abi-3.2.0-27-generic System.map-2.6.38-10-generic abi-3.2.0-29-generic System.map-2.6.38-11-generic abi-3.4.0-030400-generic System.map-2.6.38-8-generic config-2.6.38-10-generic System.map-3.2.0-27-generic config-2.6.38-11-generic System.map-3.2.0-29-generic config-2.6.38-8-generic System.map-3.4.0-030400-generic config-3.2.0-27-generic vmcoreinfo-2.6.38-10-generic config-3.2.0-29-generic vmcoreinfo-2.6.38-11-generic config-3.4.0-030400-generic vmcoreinfo-2.6.38-8-generic extlinux vmlinuz-2.6.38-10-generic grub vmlinuz-2.6.38-11-generic initrd.img-2.6.38-10-generic vmlinuz-2.6.38-8-generic initrd.img-2.6.38-11-generic vmlinuz-3.2.0-27-generic initrd.img-2.6.38-8-generic vmlinuz-3.2.0-29-generic initrd.img-3.2.0-27-generic vmlinuz-3.4.0-030400-generic initrd.img-3.2.0-29-generic and ls -l /etc/grub.d yields: total 56 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 6715 Apr 17 20:16 00_header -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5522 Oct 1 2011 05_debian_theme -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 7407 May 17 09:22 10_linux -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 6335 Apr 17 20:16 20_linux_xen -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1588 May 3 2011 20_memtest86+ -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 7603 Apr 17 20:16 30_os-prober -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 214 Oct 1 2011 40_custom -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 95 Oct 1 2011 41_custom -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 483 Oct 1 2011 README gdisk -l /dev/sda yields: Partition table scan: MBR: MBR only BSD: not present APM: not present GPT: not present *************************************************************** Found invalid GPT and valid MBR; converting MBR to GPT format. *************************************************************** Disk /dev/sda: 312581808 sectors, 149.1 GiB Logical sector size: 512 bytes Disk identifier (GUID): F832A498-05E1-4615-B5B1-757ACB4A757A Partition table holds up to 128 entries First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 312581774 Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries Total free space is 4183661 sectors (2.0 GiB) Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name 1 2048 61442047 29.3 GiB 0700 Microsoft basic data 3 163842048 169986047 2.9 GiB 8200 Linux swap 4 169986048 312578047 68.0 GiB 0700 Microsoft basic data 5 61444096 159666175 46.8 GiB 8300 Linux filesystem Please help with removing the old and inexistent kernels from Grub.

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Microsoft hosting free Hyper-V training for VMware Pros

- by Ryan Roussel

Microsoft will be hosting free training for virtualization professionals focused on Hyper-V, System Center, and virtualization architecture. Details are below: Just one week after Microsoft Management Summit 2011 (MMS), Microsoft Learning will be hosting an exclusive three-day Jump Start class specially tailored for VMware and Microsoft virtualization technology pros. Registration for “Microsoft Virtualization for VMware Professionals” is open now and will be delivered as an online class on March 29-31, 2010 from 10:00am-4:00pm PDT. The course is COMPLETELY FREE and OPEN TO ANYONE! Please share with your customers, blog, Tweet, etc. – help us get the word out to strengthen support for Microsoft’s virtualization offerings. What’s the high-level overview? This cutting edge course will feature expert instruction and real-world demonstrations of Hyper-V and brand new releases from System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Beta (many of which will be announced just one week earlier at MMS). Register Now! Day 1 will focus on “Platform” (Hyper-V, virtualization architecture, high availability & clustering) 10:00am – 10:30pm PDT: Virtualization 360 Overview 10:30am – 12:00pm: Microsoft Hyper-V Deployment Options & Architecture 1:00pm – 2:00pm: Differentiating Microsoft and VMware (terminology, etc.) 2:00pm – 4:00pm: High Availability & Clustering Day 2 will focus on “Management” (System Center Suite, SCVMM 2012 Beta, Opalis, Private Cloud solutions) 10:00am – 11:00pm PDT: System Center Suite Overview w/ focus on DPM 11:00am – 12:00pm: Virtual Machine Manager 2012 | Part 1 1:00pm – 1:30pm: Virtual Machine Manager 2012 | Part 2 1:30pm – 2:30pm: Automation with System Center Opalis & PowerShell 2:30pm – 4:00pm: Private Cloud Solutions, Architecture & VMM SSP 2.0 Day 3 will focus on “VDI” (VDI Infrastructure/architecture, v-Alliance, application delivery via VDI) 10:00am – 11:00pm PDT: Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Architecture | Part 1 11:00am – 12:00pm: Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Architecture | Part 2 1:00pm – 2:30pm: v-Alliance Solution Overview 2:30pm – 4:00pm: Application Delivery for VDI Every section will be team-taught by two of the most respected authorities on virtualization technologies: Microsoft Technical Evangelist Symon Perriman and leading Hyper-V, VMware, and XEN infrastructure consultant, Corey Hynes Who is the target audience for this training? Suggested prerequisite skills include real-world experience with Windows Server 2008 R2, virtualization and datacenter management. The course is tailored to these types of roles: · IT Professional · IT Decision Maker · Network Administrators & Architects · Storage/Infrastructure Administrators & Architects How do I to register and learn more about this great training opportunity? · Register: Visit the Registration Page and sign up for all three sessions · Blog: Learn more from the Microsoft Learning Blog · Twitter: Here are a few posts you can retweet: o Mar. 29-31 "Microsoft #Virtualization for VMware Pros" @SymonPerriman Corey Hynes http://bit.ly/JS-Hyper-V @MSLearning #Hyper-V o @SysCtrOpalis Mar. 29-31 "Microsoft #Virtualization for VMware Pros" @SymonPerriman Corey Hynes http://bit.ly/JS-Hyper-V #Hyper-V o Learn all the cool new features in Hyper-V & System Center 2012! SCVMM, Self-Service Portal 2.0, http://bit.ly/JS-Hyper-V #Hyper-V #Opalis What is a “Jump Start” course? A “Jump Start” course is “team-taught” by two expert instructors in an engaging radio talk show style format. The idea is to deliver readiness training on strategic and emerging technologies that drive awareness at scale before Microsoft Learning develops mainstream Microsoft Official Courses (MOC) that map to certifications. All sessions are professionally recorded and distributed through MS Showcase, Channel 9, Zune Marketplace and iTunes for broader reach.

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Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 2 (12.1.0.2) Now Available!

- by Javier Puerta

Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 2 (12.1.0.2) is now available on OTN on ALL platforms. This is the first major release since the launch of Enterprise Manager 12c in October of 2011 and the first ever Enterprise Manager release available on all platforms simultaneously. This is primarily a stability release which incorporates many of issues and feedback reported by early adopters. In addition, this release contains many new features and enhancements in areas across the board. New Capabilities and Features Enhanced management capabilities for enterprise private clouds: Introduces new capabilities to allow customers to build and manage a Java Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) cloud based on Oracle Weblogic Server. The new capabilities include guided set up of PaaS Cloud, self-service provisioning, automatic scale out and metering and chargeback. Enhanced lifecycle management capabilities for Oracle WebLogic Server environments: Combining in-context multiple domain, patching and configuration file synchronizations. Integrated Hardware-Software management for Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud through features such as rack schematics visualization and integrated monitoring of all hardware and software components. The latest management capabilities for business-critical applications include: Business Application Management: A new Business Application (BA) target type and dashboard with flexible definitions provides a logical view of an application’s business transactions, end-user experiences and the cloud infrastructure the monitored application is running on. Enhanced User Experience Reporting: Oracle Real User Experience Insight has been enhanced to provide reporting capabilities on client-side issues for applications running in the cloud and has been more tightly coupled with Oracle Business Transaction Management to help ensure that real-time user experience and transaction tracing data is provided to users in context. Several key improvements address ease of administration, reporting and extensibility for massively scalable cloud environments including dynamic groups, self-updateable monitoring templates, bulk operations against many events, etc. New and Revised Plug-Ins: Several plug-Ins have been updated as a part of this release resulting in either new versions or revisions. Revised plug-ins contain only bug-fixes and while new plug-ins incorporate both bug fixes as well as new functionality. Plug-In Name Version Enterprise Manager for Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 (revision) Enterprise Manager for Oracle Fusion Middleware 12.1.0.3 (new) Enterprise Manager for Chargeback and Capacity Planning 12.1.0.3 (new) Enterprise Manager for Oracle Fusion Applications 12.1.0.3 (new) Enterprise Manager for Oracle Virtualization 12.1.0.3 (new) Enterprise Manager for Oracle Exadata 12.1.0.3 (new) Enterprise Manager for Oracle Cloud 12.1.0.4 (new) Installation and Upgrade: All major platforms have been released simultaneously (Linux 32 / 64 bit, Solaris (SPARC), Solaris x86-64, IBM AIX 64-bit, and Windows x86-64 (64-bit) ) Enterprise Manager 12.1.0.2 is a complete release that includes both the EM OMS and Agent versions of 12.1.0.2. Installation options available with EM 12.1.0.2: User can do fresh Install or an upgrade from versions EM 10.2.0.5, 11.1, or 12.1.0.2 ( Bundle Patch 1 not mandatory). Upgrading to EM 12.1.0.2 from EM 12.1.0.1 is not a patch application (similar to Bundle Patch 1) but is achieved through a 1-system upgrade. Documentation: Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Introduction Document provides a broad overview of capabilities and highlights"What's New" in EM 12.1.0.2. All updated Oracle Enterprise Manager documentation can be found on OTN Customer Webcast - EM 12c Installation and Upgrade: This webcast is for customers who are interested in learning how to successfully deploy or upgrade to EM 12.1.0.2. Customer Webcast - Installation and Upgrade - September 21(registration and info on OTN starting September 12) Enterprise Manager 12c R2 Resources: OTN Download Page Upgrade Guide

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