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  • SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #048

    - by Pinal Dave
    Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 Order of Result Set of SELECT Statement on Clustered Indexed Table When ORDER BY is Not Used Above theory is true in most of the cases. However SQL Server does not use that logic when returning the resultset. SQL Server always returns the resultset which it can return fastest.In most of the cases the resultset which can be returned fastest is the resultset which is returned using clustered index. Effect of TRANSACTION on Local Variable – After ROLLBACK and After COMMIT One of the Jr. Developer asked me this question (What will be the Effect of TRANSACTION on Local Variable – After ROLLBACK and After COMMIT?) while I was rushing to an important meeting. I was getting late so I asked him to talk with his Application Tech Lead. When I came back from meeting both of them were looking for me. They said they are confused. I quickly wrote down following example for them. 2008 SQL SERVER – Guidelines and Coding Standards Complete List Download Coding standards and guidelines are very important for any developer on the path of a successful career. A coding standard is a set of guidelines, rules and regulations on how to write code. Coding standards should be flexible enough or should take care of the situation where they should not prevent best practices for coding. They are basically the guidelines that one should follow for better understanding. Download Guidelines and Coding Standards complete List Download Get Answer in Float When Dividing of Two Integer Many times we have requirements of some calculations amongst different fields in Tables. One of the software developers here was trying to calculate some fields having integer values and divide it which gave incorrect results in integer where accurate results including decimals was expected. Puzzle – Computed Columns Datatype Explanation SQL Server automatically does a cast to the data type having the highest precedence. So the result of INT and INT will be INT, but INT and FLOAT will be FLOAT because FLOAT has a higher precedence. If you want a different data type, you need to do an EXPLICIT cast. Renaming SP is Not Good Idea – Renaming Stored Procedure Does Not Update sys.procedures I have written many articles about renaming a tables, columns and procedures SQL SERVER – How to Rename a Column Name or Table Name, here I found something interesting about renaming the stored procedures and felt like sharing it with you all. The interesting fact is that when we rename a stored procedure using SP_Rename command, the Stored Procedure is successfully renamed. But when we try to test the procedure using sp_helptext, the procedure will be having the old name instead of new names. 2009 Insert Values of Stored Procedure in Table – Use Table Valued Function It is clear from the result set that , where I have converted stored procedure logic into the table valued function, is much better in terms of logic as it saves a large number of operations. However, this option should be used carefully. The performance of the stored procedure is “usually” better than that of functions. Interesting Observation – Index on Index View Used in Similar Query Recently, I was working on an optimization project for one of the largest organizations. While working on one of the queries, we came across a very interesting observation. We found that there was a query on the base table and when the query was run, it used the index, which did not exist in the base table. On careful examination, we found that the query was using the index that was on another view. This was very interesting as I have personally never experienced a scenario like this. In simple words, “Query on the base table can use the index created on the indexed view of the same base table.” Interesting Observation – Execution Plan and Results of Aggregate Concatenation Queries Working with SQL Server has never seemed to be monotonous – no matter how long one has worked with it. Quite often, I come across some excellent comments that I feel like acknowledging them as blog posts. Recently, I wrote an article on SQL SERVER – Execution Plan and Results of Aggregate Concatenation Queries Depend Upon Expression Location, which is well received in the community. 2010 I encourage all of you to go through complete series and write your own on the subject. If you write an article and send it to me, I will publish it on this blog with due credit to you. If you write on your own blog, I will update this blog post pointing to your blog post. SQL SERVER – ORDER BY Does Not Work – Limitation of the View 1 SQL SERVER – Adding Column is Expensive by Joining Table Outside View – Limitation of the View 2 SQL SERVER – Index Created on View not Used Often – Limitation of the View 3 SQL SERVER – SELECT * and Adding Column Issue in View – Limitation of the View 4 SQL SERVER – COUNT(*) Not Allowed but COUNT_BIG(*) Allowed – Limitation of the View 5 SQL SERVER – UNION Not Allowed but OR Allowed in Index View – Limitation of the View 6 SQL SERVER – Cross Database Queries Not Allowed in Indexed View – Limitation of the View 7 SQL SERVER – Outer Join Not Allowed in Indexed Views – Limitation of the View 8 SQL SERVER – SELF JOIN Not Allowed in Indexed View – Limitation of the View 9 SQL SERVER – Keywords View Definition Must Not Contain for Indexed View – Limitation of the View 10 SQL SERVER – View Over the View Not Possible with Index View – Limitations of the View 11 2011 Startup Parameters Easy to Configure If you are a regular reader of this blog, you must be aware that I have written about SQL Server Denali recently. Here is the quickest way to reach into the screen where we can change the startup parameters. Go to SQL Server Configuration Manager >> SQL Server Services >> Right Click on the Server >> Properties >> Startup Parameters 2012 Validating Unique Columnname Across Whole Database I sometimes come across very strange requirements and often I do not receive a proper explanation of the same. Here is the one of those examples. For example “Our business requirement is when we add new column we want it unique across current database.” Read the solution to this strange request in this blog post. Excel Losing Decimal Values When Value Pasted from SSMS ResultSet It is very common when users are coping the resultset to Excel, the floating point or decimals are missed. The solution is very much simple and it requires a small adjustment in the Excel. By default Excel is very smart and when it detects the value which is getting pasted is numeric it changes the column format to accommodate that. Basic Calculation and PEMDAS Order of Operation Read this interesting blog post for fantastic conversation about the subject. Copy Column Headers from Resultset – SQL in Sixty Seconds #027 – Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_-3tLqTRv0 Delete From Multiple Table – Update Multiple Table in Single Statement There are two questions which I get every single day multiple times. In my gmail, I have created standard canned reply for them. Let us see the questions here. I want to delete from multiple table in a single statement how will I do it? I want to update multiple table in a single statement how will I do it? Read the answer in the blog post. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • What Makes a Good Design Critic? CHI 2010 Panel Review

    - by jatin.thaker
    Author: Daniel Schwartz, Senior Interaction Designer, Oracle Applications User Experience Oracle Applications UX Chief Evangelist Patanjali Venkatacharya organized and moderated an innovative and stimulating panel discussion titled "What Makes a Good Design Critic? Food Design vs. Product Design Criticism" at CHI 2010, the annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. The panelists included Janice Rohn, VP of User Experience at Experian; Tami Hardeman, a food stylist; Ed Seiber, a restaurant architect and designer; John Kessler, a food critic and writer at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution; and Larry Powers, Chef de Cuisine at Shaun's restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia. Building off the momentum of his highly acclaimed panel at CHI 2009 on what interaction design can learn from food design (for which I was on the other side as a panelist), Venkatacharya brought together new people with different roles in the restaurant and software interaction design fields. The session was also quite delicious -- but more on that later. Criticism, as it applies to food and product or interaction design, was the tasty topic for this forum and showed that strong parallels exist between food and interaction design criticism. Figure 1. The panelists in discussion: (left to right) Janice Rohn, Ed Seiber, Tami Hardeman, and John Kessler. The panelists had great insights to share from their respective fields, and they enthusiastically discussed as if they were at a casual collegial dinner. John Kessler stated that he prefers to have one professional critic's opinion in general than a large sampling of customers, however, "Web sites like Yelp get users excited by the collective approach. People are attracted to things desired by so many." Janice Rohn added that this collective desire was especially true for users of consumer products. Ed Seiber remarked that while people looked to the popular view for their target tastes and product choices, "professional critics like John [Kessler] still hold a big weight on public opinion." Chef Powers indicated that chefs take in feedback from all sources, adding, "word of mouth is very powerful. We also look heavily at the sales of the dishes to see what's moving; what's selling and thus successful." Hearing this discussion validates our design work at Oracle in that we listen to our users (our diners) and industry feedback (our critics) to ensure an optimal user experience of our products. Rohn considers that restaurateur Danny Meyer's book, Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business, which is about creating successful restaurant experiences, has many applicable parallels to user experience design. Meyer actually argues that the customer is not always right, but that "they must always feel heard." Seiber agreed, but noted "customers are not designers," and while designers need to listen to customer feedback, it is the designer's job to synthesize it. Seiber feels it's the critic's job to point out when something is missing or not well-prioritized. In interaction design, our challenges are quite similar, if not parallel. Software tasks are like puzzles that are in search of a solution on how to be best completed. As a food stylist, Tami Hardeman has the demanding and challenging task of presenting food to be as delectable as can be. To present food in its best light requires a lot of creativity and insight into consumer tastes. It's no doubt then that this former fashion stylist came up with the ultimate catch phrase to capture the emotion that clients want to draw from their users: "craveability." The phrase was a hit with the audience and panelists alike. Sometime later in the discussion, Seiber remarked, "designers strive to apply craveability to products, and I do so for restaurants in my case." Craveabilty is also very applicable to interaction design. Creating straightforward and smooth workflows for users of Oracle Applications is a primary goal for my colleagues. We want our users to really enjoy working with our products where it makes them more efficient and better at their jobs. That's our "craveability." Patanjali Venkatacharya asked the panel, "if a design's "craveability" appeals to some cultures but not to others, then what is the impact to the food or product design process?" Rohn stated that "taste is part nature and part nurture" and that the design must take the full context of a product's usage into consideration. Kessler added, "good design is about understanding the context" that the experience necessitates. Seiber remarked how important seat comfort is for diners and how the quality of seating will add so much to the complete dining experience. Sometimes if these non-food factors are not well executed, they can also take away from an otherwise pleasant dining experience. Kessler recounted a time when he was dining at a restaurant that actually had very good food, but the photographs hanging on all the walls did not fit in with the overall décor and created a negative overall dining experience. While the tastiness of the food is critical to a restaurant's success, it is a captivating complete user experience, as in interaction design, which will keep customers coming back and ultimately making the restaurant a hit. Figure 2. Patanjali Venkatacharya enjoyed the Sardinian flatbread salad. As a surprise Chef Powers brought out a signature dish from Shaun's restaurant for all the panelists to sample and critique. The Sardinian flatbread dish showcased Atlanta's taste for fresh and local produce and cheese at its finest as a salad served on a crispy flavorful flat bread. Hardeman said it could be photographed from any angle, a high compliment coming from a food stylist. Seiber really enjoyed the colors that the dish brought together and thought it would be served very well in a casual restaurant on a summer's day. The panel really appreciated the taste and quality of the different components and how the rosemary brought all the flavors together. Seiber remarked that "a lot of effort goes into the appearance of simplicity." Rohn indicated that the same notion holds true with software user interface design. A tremendous amount of work goes into crafting straightforward interfaces, including user research, prototyping, design iterations, and usability studies. Design criticism for food and software interfaces clearly share many similarities. Both areas value expert opinions and user feedback. Both areas understand the importance of great design needing to work well in its context. Last but not least, both food and interaction design criticism value "craveability" and how having users excited about experiencing and enjoying the designs is an important goal. Now if we can just improve the taste of software user interfaces, people may choose to dine on their enterprise applications over a fresh organic salad.

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  • The Shift: how Orchard painlessly shifted to document storage, and how it’ll affect you

    - by Bertrand Le Roy
    We’ve known it all along. The storage for Orchard content items would be much more efficient using a document database than a relational one. Orchard content items are composed of parts that serialize naturally into infoset kinds of documents. Storing them as relational data like we’ve done so far was unnatural and requires the data for a single item to span multiple tables, related through 1-1 relationships. This means lots of joins in queries, and a great potential for Select N+1 problems. Document databases, unfortunately, are still a tough sell in many places that prefer the more familiar relational model. Being able to x-copy Orchard to hosters has also been a basic constraint in the design of Orchard. Combine those with the necessity at the time to run in medium trust, and with license compatibility issues, and you’ll find yourself with very few reasonable choices. So we went, a little reluctantly, for relational SQL stores, with the dream of one day transitioning to document storage. We have played for a while with the idea of building our own document storage on top of SQL databases, and Sébastien implemented something more than decent along those lines, but we had a better way all along that we didn’t notice until recently… In Orchard, there are fields, which are named properties that you can add dynamically to a content part. Because they are so dynamic, we have been storing them as XML into a column on the main content item table. This infoset storage and its associated API are fairly generic, but were only used for fields. The breakthrough was when Sébastien realized how this existing storage could give us the advantages of document storage with minimal changes, while continuing to use relational databases as the substrate. public bool CommercialPrices { get { return this.Retrieve(p => p.CommercialPrices); } set { this.Store(p => p.CommercialPrices, value); } } This code is very compact and efficient because the API can infer from the expression what the type and name of the property are. It is then able to do the proper conversions for you. For this code to work in a content part, there is no need for a record at all. This is particularly nice for site settings: one query on one table and you get everything you need. This shows how the existing infoset solves the data storage problem, but you still need to query. Well, for those properties that need to be filtered and sorted on, you can still use the current record-based relational system. This of course continues to work. We do however provide APIs that make it trivial to store into both record properties and the infoset storage in one operation: public double Price { get { return Retrieve(r => r.Price); } set { Store(r => r.Price, value); } } This code looks strikingly similar to the non-record case above. The difference is that it will manage both the infoset and the record-based storages. The call to the Store method will send the data in both places, keeping them in sync. The call to the Retrieve method does something even cooler: if the property you’re looking for exists in the infoset, it will return it, but if it doesn’t, it will automatically look into the record for it. And if that wasn’t cool enough, it will take that value from the record and store it into the infoset for the next time it’s required. This means that your data will start automagically migrating to infoset storage just by virtue of using the code above instead of the usual: public double Price { get { return Record.Price; } set { Record.Price = value; } } As your users browse the site, it will get faster and faster as Select N+1 issues will optimize themselves away. If you preferred, you could still have explicit migration code, but it really shouldn’t be necessary most of the time. If you do already have code using QueryHints to mitigate Select N+1 issues, you might want to reconsider those, as with the new system, you’ll want to avoid joins that you don’t need for filtering or sorting, further optimizing your queries. There are some rare cases where the storage of the property must be handled differently. Check out this string[] property on SearchSettingsPart for example: public string[] SearchedFields { get { return (Retrieve<string>("SearchedFields") ?? "") .Split(new[] {',', ' '}, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries); } set { Store("SearchedFields", String.Join(", ", value)); } } The array of strings is transformed by the property accessors into and from a comma-separated list stored in a string. The Retrieve and Store overloads used in this case are lower-level versions that explicitly specify the type and name of the attribute to retrieve or store. You may be wondering what this means for code or operations that look directly at the database tables instead of going through the new infoset APIs. Even if there is a record, the infoset version of the property will win if it exists, so it is necessary to keep the infoset up-to-date. It’s not very complicated, but definitely something to keep in mind. Here is what a product record looks like in Nwazet.Commerce for example: And here is the same data in the infoset: The infoset is stored in Orchard_Framework_ContentItemRecord or Orchard_Framework_ContentItemVersionRecord, depending on whether the content type is versionable or not. A good way to find what you’re looking for is to inspect the record table first, as it’s usually easier to read, and then get the item record of the same id. Here is the detailed XML document for this product: <Data> <ProductPart Inventory="40" Price="18" Sku="pi-camera-box" OutOfStockMessage="" AllowBackOrder="false" Weight="0.2" Size="" ShippingCost="null" IsDigital="false" /> <ProductAttributesPart Attributes="" /> <AutoroutePart DisplayAlias="camera-box" /> <TitlePart Title="Nwazet Pi Camera Box" /> <BodyPart Text="[...]" /> <CommonPart CreatedUtc="2013-09-10T00:39:00Z" PublishedUtc="2013-09-14T01:07:47Z" /> </Data> The data is neatly organized under each part. It is easy to see how that document is all you need to know about that content item, all in one table. If you want to modify that data directly in the database, you should be careful to do it in both the record table and the infoset in the content item record. In this configuration, the record is now nothing more than an index, and will only be used for sorting and filtering. Of course, it’s perfectly fine to mix record-backed properties and record-less properties on the same part. It really depends what you think must be sorted and filtered on. In turn, this potentially simplifies migrations considerably. So here it is, the great shift of Orchard to document storage, something that Orchard has been designed for all along, and that we were able to implement with a satisfying and surprising economy of resources. Expect this code to make its way into the 1.8 version of Orchard when that’s available.

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  • SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #034

    - by Pinal Dave
    Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 UDF – User Defined Function to Strip HTML – Parse HTML – No Regular Expression The UDF used in the blog does fantastic task – it scans entire HTML text and removes all the HTML tags. It keeps only valid text data without HTML task. This is one of the quite commonly requested tasks many developers have to face everyday. De-fragmentation of Database at Operating System to Improve Performance Operating system skips MDF file while defragging the entire filesystem of the operating system. It is absolutely fine and there is no impact of the same on performance. Read the entire blog post for my conversation with our network engineers. Delay Function – WAITFOR clause – Delay Execution of Commands How do you delay execution of the commands in SQL Server – ofcourse by using WAITFOR keyword. In this blog post, I explain the same with the help of T-SQL script. Find Length of Text Field To measure the length of TEXT fields the function is DATALENGTH(textfield). Len will not work for text field. As of SQL Server 2005, developers should migrate all the text fields to VARCHAR(MAX) as that is the way forward. Retrieve Current Date Time in SQL Server CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, GETDATE(), {fn NOW()} There are three ways to retrieve the current datetime in SQL SERVER. CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, GETDATE(), {fn NOW()} Explanation and Comparison of NULLIF and ISNULL An interesting observation is NULLIF returns null if it comparison is successful, whereas ISNULL returns not null if its comparison is successful. In one way they are opposite to each other. Here is my question to you - How to create infinite loop using NULLIF and ISNULL? If this is even possible? 2008 Introduction to SERVERPROPERTY and example SERVERPROPERTY is a very interesting system function. It returns many of the system values. I use it very frequently to get different server values like Server Collation, Server Name etc. SQL Server Start Time We can use DMV to find out what is the start time of SQL Server in 2008 and later version. In this blog you can see how you can do the same. Find Current Identity of Table Many times we need to know what is the current identity of the column. I have found one of my developers using aggregated function MAX () to find the current identity. However, I prefer following DBCC command to figure out current identity. Create Check Constraint on Column Some time we just need to create a simple constraint over the table but I have noticed that developers do many different things to make table column follow rules than just creating constraint. I suggest constraint is a very useful concept and every SQL Developer should pay good attention to this subject. 2009 List Schema Name and Table Name for Database This is one of the blog post where I straight forward display script. One of the kind of blog posts, which I still love to read and write. Clustered Index on Separate Drive From Table Location A table devoid of primary key index is called heap, and here data is not arranged in a particular order, which gives rise to issues that adversely affect performance. Data must be stored in some kind of order. If we put clustered index on it then the order will be forced by that index and the data will be stored in that particular order. Understanding Table Hints with Examples Hints are options and strong suggestions specified for enforcement by the SQL Server query processor on DML statements. The hints override any execution plan the query optimizer might select for a query. 2010 Data Pages in Buffer Pool – Data Stored in Memory Cache One of my earlier year article, which I still read it many times and point developers to read it again. It is clear from the Resultset that when more than one index is used, datapages related to both or all of the indexes are stored in Memory Cache separately. TRANSACTION, DML and Schema Locks Can you create a situation where you can see Schema Lock? Well, this is a very simple question, however during the interview I notice over 50 candidates failed to come up with the scenario. In this blog post, I have demonstrated the situation where we can see the schema lock in database. 2011 Solution – Puzzle – Statistics are not updated but are Created Once In this example I have created following situation: Create Table Insert 1000 Records Check the Statistics Now insert 10 times more 10,000 indexes Check the Statistics – it will be NOT updated Auto Update Statistics and Auto Create Statistics for database is TRUE Now I have requested two things in the example 1) Why this is happening? 2) How to fix this issue? Selecting Domain from Email Address This is a straight to script blog post where I explain how to select only domain name from entire email address. Solution – Generating Zero Without using Any Numbers in T-SQL How to get zero digit without using any digit? This is indeed a very interesting question and the answer is even interesting. Try to come up with answer in next 10 minutes and if you can’t come up with the answer the blog post read this post for solution. 2012 Simple Explanation and Puzzle with SOUNDEX Function and DIFFERENCE Function In simple words - SOUNDEX converts an alphanumeric string to a four-character code to find similar-sounding words or names. DIFFERENCE function returns an integer value. The  integer returned is the number of characters in the SOUNDEX values that are the same. Read Only Files and SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) I have come across a very interesting feature in SSMS related to “Read Only” files. I believe it is a little unknown feature as well so decided to write a blog about the same. Identifying Column Data Type of uniqueidentifier without Querying System Tables How do I know if any table has a uniqueidentifier column and what is its value without using any DMV or System Catalogues? Only information you know is the table name and you are allowed to return any kind of error if the table does not have uniqueidentifier column. Read the blog post to find the answer. Solution – User Not Able to See Any User Created Object in Tables – Security and Permissions Issue Interesting question – “When I try to connect to SQL Server, it lets me connect just fine as well let me open and explore the database. I noticed that I do not see any user created instances but when my colleague attempts to connect to the server, he is able to explore the database as well see all the user created tables and other objects. Can you help me fix it?” Importing CSV File Into Database – SQL in Sixty Seconds #018 – Video Here is interesting small 60 second video on how to import CSV file into Database. ColumnStore Index – Batch Mode vs Row Mode Here is the logic behind when Columnstore Index uses Batch Mode and when it uses Row Mode. A batch typically represents about 1000 rows of data. Batch mode processing also uses algorithms that are optimized for the multicore CPUs and increased memory throughput. Follow up – Usage of $rowguid and $IDENTITY This is an excellent follow up blog post of my earlier blog post where I explain where to use $rowguid and $identity.  If you do not know the difference between them, this is a blog with a script example. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • Anatomy of a .NET Assembly - CLR metadata 1

    - by Simon Cooper
    Before we look at the bytes comprising the CLR-specific data inside an assembly, we first need to understand the logical format of the metadata (For this post I only be looking at simple pure-IL assemblies; mixed-mode assemblies & other things complicates things quite a bit). Metadata streams Most of the CLR-specific data inside an assembly is inside one of 5 streams, which are analogous to the sections in a PE file. The name of each section in a PE file starts with a ., and the name of each stream in the CLR metadata starts with a #. All but one of the streams are heaps, which store unstructured binary data. The predefined streams are: #~ Also called the metadata stream, this stream stores all the information on the types, methods, fields, properties and events in the assembly. Unlike the other streams, the metadata stream has predefined contents & structure. #Strings This heap is where all the namespace, type & member names are stored. It is referenced extensively from the #~ stream, as we'll be looking at later. #US Also known as the user string heap, this stream stores all the strings used in code directly. All the strings you embed in your source code end up in here. This stream is only referenced from method bodies. #GUID This heap exclusively stores GUIDs used throughout the assembly. #Blob This heap is for storing pure binary data - method signatures, generic instantiations, that sort of thing. Items inside the heaps (#Strings, #US, #GUID and #Blob) are indexed using a simple binary offset from the start of the heap. At that offset is a coded integer giving the length of that item, then the item's bytes immediately follow. The #GUID stream is slightly different, in that GUIDs are all 16 bytes long, so a length isn't required. Metadata tables The #~ stream contains all the assembly metadata. The metadata is organised into 45 tables, which are binary arrays of predefined structures containing information on various aspects of the metadata. Each entry in a table is called a row, and the rows are simply concatentated together in the file on disk. For example, each row in the TypeRef table contains: A reference to where the type is defined (most of the time, a row in the AssemblyRef table). An offset into the #Strings heap with the name of the type An offset into the #Strings heap with the namespace of the type. in that order. The important tables are (with their table number in hex): 0x2: TypeDef 0x4: FieldDef 0x6: MethodDef 0x14: EventDef 0x17: PropertyDef Contains basic information on all the types, fields, methods, events and properties defined in the assembly. 0x1: TypeRef The details of all the referenced types defined in other assemblies. 0xa: MemberRef The details of all the referenced members of types defined in other assemblies. 0x9: InterfaceImpl Links the types defined in the assembly with the interfaces that type implements. 0xc: CustomAttribute Contains information on all the attributes applied to elements in this assembly, from method parameters to the assembly itself. 0x18: MethodSemantics Links properties and events with the methods that comprise the get/set or add/remove methods of the property or method. 0x1b: TypeSpec 0x2b: MethodSpec These tables provide instantiations of generic types and methods for each usage within the assembly. There are several ways to reference a single row within a table. The simplest is to simply specify the 1-based row index (RID). The indexes are 1-based so a value of 0 can represent 'null'. In this case, which table the row index refers to is inferred from the context. If the table can't be determined from the context, then a particular row is specified using a token. This is a 4-byte value with the most significant byte specifying the table, and the other 3 specifying the 1-based RID within that table. This is generally how a metadata table row is referenced from the instruction stream in method bodies. The third way is to use a coded token, which we will look at in the next post. So, back to the bytes Now we've got a rough idea of how the metadata is logically arranged, we can now look at the bytes comprising the start of the CLR data within an assembly: The first 8 bytes of the .text section are used by the CLR loader stub. After that, the CLR-specific data starts with the CLI header. I've highlighted the important bytes in the diagram. In order, they are: The size of the header. As the header is a fixed size, this is always 0x48. The CLR major version. This is always 2, even for .NET 4 assemblies. The CLR minor version. This is always 5, even for .NET 4 assemblies, and seems to be ignored by the runtime. The RVA and size of the metadata header. In the diagram, the RVA 0x20e4 corresponds to the file offset 0x2e4 Various flags specifying if this assembly is pure-IL, whether it is strong name signed, and whether it should be run as 32-bit (this is how the CLR differentiates between x86 and AnyCPU assemblies). A token pointing to the entrypoint of the assembly. In this case, 06 (the last byte) refers to the MethodDef table, and 01 00 00 refers to to the first row in that table. (after a gap) RVA of the strong name signature hash, which comes straight after the CLI header. The RVA 0x2050 corresponds to file offset 0x250. The rest of the CLI header is mainly used in mixed-mode assemblies, and so is zeroed in this pure-IL assembly. After the CLI header comes the strong name hash, which is a SHA-1 hash of the assembly using the strong name key. After that comes the bodies of all the methods in the assembly concatentated together. Each method body starts off with a header, which I'll be looking at later. As you can see, this is a very small assembly with only 2 methods (an instance constructor and a Main method). After that, near the end of the .text section, comes the metadata, containing a metadata header and the 5 streams discussed above. We'll be looking at this in the next post. Conclusion The CLI header data doesn't have much to it, but we've covered some concepts that will be important in later posts - the logical structure of the CLR metadata and the overall layout of CLR data within the .text section. Next, I'll have a look at the contents of the #~ stream, and how the table data is arranged on disk.

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  • What Makes a Good Design Critic? CHI 2010 Panel Review

    - by Applications User Experience
    Author: Daniel Schwartz, Senior Interaction Designer, Oracle Applications User Experience Oracle Applications UX Chief Evangelist Patanjali Venkatacharya organized and moderated an innovative and stimulating panel discussion titled "What Makes a Good Design Critic? Food Design vs. Product Design Criticism" at CHI 2010, the annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. The panelists included Janice Rohn, VP of User Experience at Experian; Tami Hardeman, a food stylist; Ed Seiber, a restaurant architect and designer; Jonathan Kessler, a food critic and writer at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution; and Larry Powers, Chef de Cuisine at Shaun's restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia. Building off the momentum of his highly acclaimed panel at CHI 2009 on what interaction design can learn from food design (for which I was on the other side as a panelist), Venkatacharya brought together new people with different roles in the restaurant and software interaction design fields. The session was also quite delicious -- but more on that later. Criticism, as it applies to food and product or interaction design, was the tasty topic for this forum and showed that strong parallels exist between food and interaction design criticism. Figure 1. The panelists in discussion: (left to right) Janice Rohn, Ed Seiber, Tami Hardeman, and Jonathan Kessler. The panelists had great insights to share from their respective fields, and they enthusiastically discussed as if they were at a casual collegial dinner. Jonathan Kessler stated that he prefers to have one professional critic's opinion in general than a large sampling of customers, however, "Web sites like Yelp get users excited by the collective approach. People are attracted to things desired by so many." Janice Rohn added that this collective desire was especially true for users of consumer products. Ed Seiber remarked that while people looked to the popular view for their target tastes and product choices, "professional critics like John [Kessler] still hold a big weight on public opinion." Chef Powers indicated that chefs take in feedback from all sources, adding, "word of mouth is very powerful. We also look heavily at the sales of the dishes to see what's moving; what's selling and thus successful." Hearing this discussion validates our design work at Oracle in that we listen to our users (our diners) and industry feedback (our critics) to ensure an optimal user experience of our products. Rohn considers that restaurateur Danny Meyer's book, Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business, which is about creating successful restaurant experiences, has many applicable parallels to user experience design. Meyer actually argues that the customer is not always right, but that "they must always feel heard." Seiber agreed, but noted "customers are not designers," and while designers need to listen to customer feedback, it is the designer's job to synthesize it. Seiber feels it's the critic's job to point out when something is missing or not well-prioritized. In interaction design, our challenges are quite similar, if not parallel. Software tasks are like puzzles that are in search of a solution on how to be best completed. As a food stylist, Tami Hardeman has the demanding and challenging task of presenting food to be as delectable as can be. To present food in its best light requires a lot of creativity and insight into consumer tastes. It's no doubt then that this former fashion stylist came up with the ultimate catch phrase to capture the emotion that clients want to draw from their users: "craveability." The phrase was a hit with the audience and panelists alike. Sometime later in the discussion, Seiber remarked, "designers strive to apply craveability to products, and I do so for restaurants in my case." Craveabilty is also very applicable to interaction design. Creating straightforward and smooth workflows for users of Oracle Applications is a primary goal for my colleagues. We want our users to really enjoy working with our products where it makes them more efficient and better at their jobs. That's our "craveability." Patanjali Venkatacharya asked the panel, "if a design's "craveability" appeals to some cultures but not to others, then what is the impact to the food or product design process?" Rohn stated that "taste is part nature and part nurture" and that the design must take the full context of a product's usage into consideration. Kessler added, "good design is about understanding the context" that the experience necessitates. Seiber remarked how important seat comfort is for diners and how the quality of seating will add so much to the complete dining experience. Sometimes if these non-food factors are not well executed, they can also take away from an otherwise pleasant dining experience. Kessler recounted a time when he was dining at a restaurant that actually had very good food, but the photographs hanging on all the walls did not fit in with the overall décor and created a negative overall dining experience. While the tastiness of the food is critical to a restaurant's success, it is a captivating complete user experience, as in interaction design, which will keep customers coming back and ultimately making the restaurant a hit. Figure 2. Patnajali Venkatacharya enjoyed the Sardian flatbread salad. As a surprise Chef Powers brought out a signature dish from Shaun's restaurant for all the panelists to sample and critique. The Sardinian flatbread dish showcased Atlanta's taste for fresh and local produce and cheese at its finest as a salad served on a crispy flavorful flat bread. Hardeman said it could be photographed from any angle, a high compliment coming from a food stylist. Seiber really enjoyed the colors that the dish brought together and thought it would be served very well in a casual restaurant on a summer's day. The panel really appreciated the taste and quality of the different components and how the rosemary brought all the flavors together. Seiber remarked that "a lot of effort goes into the appearance of simplicity." Rohn indicated that the same notion holds true with software user interface design. A tremendous amount of work goes into crafting straightforward interfaces, including user research, prototyping, design iterations, and usability studies. Design criticism for food and software interfaces clearly share many similarities. Both areas value expert opinions and user feedback. Both areas understand the importance of great design needing to work well in its context. Last but not least, both food and interaction design criticism value "craveability" and how having users excited about experiencing and enjoying the designs is an important goal. Now if we can just improve the taste of software user interfaces, people may choose to dine on their enterprise applications over a fresh organic salad.

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  • PostSharp, Obfuscation, and IL

    - by Simon Cooper
    Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) is a relatively new programming paradigm. Originating at Xerox PARC in 1994, the paradigm was first made available for general-purpose development as an extension to Java in 2001. From there, it has quickly been adapted for use in all the common languages used today. In the .NET world, one of the primary AOP toolkits is PostSharp. Attributes and AOP Normally, attributes in .NET are entirely a metadata construct. Apart from a few special attributes in the .NET framework, they have no effect whatsoever on how a class or method executes within the CLR. Only by using reflection at runtime can you access any attributes declared on a type or type member. PostSharp changes this. By declaring a custom attribute that derives from PostSharp.Aspects.Aspect, applying it to types and type members, and running the resulting assembly through the PostSharp postprocessor, you can essentially declare 'clever' attributes that change the behaviour of whatever the aspect has been applied to at runtime. A simple example of this is logging. By declaring a TraceAttribute that derives from OnMethodBoundaryAspect, you can automatically log when a method has been executed: public class TraceAttribute : PostSharp.Aspects.OnMethodBoundaryAspect { public override void OnEntry(MethodExecutionArgs args) { MethodBase method = args.Method; System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine( String.Format( "Entering {0}.{1}.", method.DeclaringType.FullName, method.Name)); } public override void OnExit(MethodExecutionArgs args) { MethodBase method = args.Method; System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine( String.Format( "Leaving {0}.{1}.", method.DeclaringType.FullName, method.Name)); } } [Trace] public void MethodToLog() { ... } Now, whenever MethodToLog is executed, the aspect will automatically log entry and exit, without having to add the logging code to MethodToLog itself. PostSharp Performance Now this does introduce a performance overhead - as you can see, the aspect allows access to the MethodBase of the method the aspect has been applied to. If you were limited to C#, you would be forced to retrieve each MethodBase instance using Type.GetMethod(), matching on the method name and signature. This is slow. Fortunately, PostSharp is not limited to C#. It can use any instruction available in IL. And in IL, you can do some very neat things. Ldtoken C# allows you to get the Type object corresponding to a specific type name using the typeof operator: Type t = typeof(Random); The C# compiler compiles this operator to the following IL: ldtoken [mscorlib]System.Random call class [mscorlib]System.Type [mscorlib]System.Type::GetTypeFromHandle( valuetype [mscorlib]System.RuntimeTypeHandle) The ldtoken instruction obtains a special handle to a type called a RuntimeTypeHandle, and from that, the Type object can be obtained using GetTypeFromHandle. These are both relatively fast operations - no string lookup is required, only direct assembly and CLR constructs are used. However, a little-known feature is that ldtoken is not just limited to types; it can also get information on methods and fields, encapsulated in a RuntimeMethodHandle or RuntimeFieldHandle: // get a MethodBase for String.EndsWith(string) ldtoken method instance bool [mscorlib]System.String::EndsWith(string) call class [mscorlib]System.Reflection.MethodBase [mscorlib]System.Reflection.MethodBase::GetMethodFromHandle( valuetype [mscorlib]System.RuntimeMethodHandle) // get a FieldInfo for the String.Empty field ldtoken field string [mscorlib]System.String::Empty call class [mscorlib]System.Reflection.FieldInfo [mscorlib]System.Reflection.FieldInfo::GetFieldFromHandle( valuetype [mscorlib]System.RuntimeFieldHandle) These usages of ldtoken aren't usable from C# or VB, and aren't likely to be added anytime soon (Eric Lippert's done a blog post on the possibility of adding infoof, methodof or fieldof operators to C#). However, PostSharp deals directly with IL, and so can use ldtoken to get MethodBase objects quickly and cheaply, without having to resort to string lookups. The kicker However, there are problems. Because ldtoken for methods or fields isn't accessible from C# or VB, it hasn't been as well-tested as ldtoken for types. This has resulted in various obscure bugs in most versions of the CLR when dealing with ldtoken and methods, and specifically, generic methods and methods of generic types. This means that PostSharp was behaving incorrectly, or just plain crashing, when aspects were applied to methods that were generic in some way. So, PostSharp has to work around this. Without using the metadata tokens directly, the only way to get the MethodBase of generic methods is to use reflection: Type.GetMethod(), passing in the method name as a string along with information on the signature. Now, this works fine. It's slower than using ldtoken directly, but it works, and this only has to be done for generic methods. Unfortunately, this poses problems when the assembly is obfuscated. PostSharp and Obfuscation When using ldtoken, obfuscators don't affect how PostSharp operates. Because the ldtoken instruction directly references the type, method or field within the assembly, it is unaffected if the name of the object is changed by an obfuscator. However, the indirect loading used for generic methods was breaking, because that uses the name of the method when the assembly is put through the PostSharp postprocessor to lookup the MethodBase at runtime. If the name then changes, PostSharp can't find it anymore, and the assembly breaks. So, PostSharp needs to know about any changes an obfuscator does to an assembly. The way PostSharp does this is by adding another layer of indirection. When PostSharp obfuscation support is enabled, it includes an extra 'name table' resource in the assembly, consisting of a series of method & type names. When PostSharp needs to lookup a method using reflection, instead of encoding the method name directly, it looks up the method name at a fixed offset inside that name table: MethodBase genericMethod = typeof(ContainingClass).GetMethod(GetNameAtIndex(22)); PostSharp.NameTable resource: ... 20: get_Prop1 21: set_Prop1 22: DoFoo 23: GetWibble When the assembly is later processed by an obfuscator, the obfuscator can replace all the method and type names within the name table with their new name. That way, the reflection lookups performed by PostSharp will now use the new names, and everything will work as expected: MethodBase genericMethod = typeof(#kGy).GetMethod(GetNameAtIndex(22)); PostSharp.NameTable resource: ... 20: #kkA 21: #zAb 22: #EF5a 23: #2tg As you can see, this requires direct support by an obfuscator in order to perform these rewrites. Dotfuscator supports it, and now, starting with SmartAssembly 6.6.4, SmartAssembly does too. So, a relatively simple solution to a tricky problem, with some CLR bugs thrown in for good measure. You don't see those every day!

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  • Communities - The importance of exchange and discussion

    Communication with your environment is an essential part of everyone's life. And it doesn't matter whether you are actually living in a rural area in the middle of nowhere, within the pulsating heart of a big city, or in my case on a wonderful island in the Indian Ocean. The ability to exchange your thoughts, your experience and your worries with another person helps you to get different points of view and new ideas on how to resolve an issue you might be confronted with. Benefits of community work What happens to be common sense in your daily life, also applies to your work environment. Working in IT, or ICT as it is called in Mauritius, requires a lot of reading and learning. Not only during your lectures at the university but with your colleagues in a project assignment and hopefully with 'unknown' pals in the universe of online communities. At least I can say that I learned quite a lot from other developers code, their responses in various forums, their numerous blog articles, and while attending local user group meetings. When I started to work as a professional software developer (or engineer some may say) years ago I immediately checked the existence of communities on the programming language, the database technology and other vital information on software development in general. Luckily, it wasn't too difficult to find. My employer had a subscription of the monthly magazines and newsletters of a national organisation which also run the biggest forum in that area. Getting in touch with other developers and reading their common problems but also solutions was a huge benefit to my growth. Image courtesy of Michael Kappel (CC BY-NC 2.0) Active participation and regular contribution to this community gave me some nice advantages, too. Within three years I was listed as a conference speaker at the annual developer's conference and provided several sessions on different topics during consecutive years. Back in 2004, I took over the responsibility and management of the monthly meetings of a regional user group, and organised it for more than two years. Furthermore, I was invited to the newly-founded community program of Microsoft Germany (Community Leader/Insider Program - CLIP). My website on Active FoxPro Pages was nominated in the second batch of online communities. Due to my community work and providing advice to others, I had the honour to be awarded as Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) - Visual Developer for Visual FoxPro in the years 2006 and 2007. It was a great experience to meet with other like-minded people and I'm really grateful for that. Just in case, more details are listed in my Curriculum Vitae. But this all changed when I moved to Mauritius... Cyber island Mauritius? During the first months in Mauritius I was way too busy to think about community activities at all. First of all, there was the new company that had to be set up, the new staff had to be trained and of course the communication work-flows and so on with the project managers back in Germany had to be sorted out, too. Second, I had to get a grip of my private matters like getting the basics for my new household or exploring the neighbourhood, and last but not least I needed a break from the hectic and intensive work prior to my departure. As soon as the sea literally calmed down, I started to have conversations with my colleagues about communities and user groups. Sadly, it turned out that there were none, or at least no one was aware of any at that time. Oh oh, what did I do? Anyway, having this kind of background and very positive experience with off-line and on-line activities I decided for myself that some day I'm going to found a community in Mauritius for all kind of IT/ICT-related fields. The main focus might be on software development but not on a certain technology or methodology. It was clear to me that it should be an open infrastructure and anyone is welcome to join, to experience, to share and to contribute if they would like to. That was the idea at that time... Ok, fast-forward to recent events. At the end of October 2012 I was invited to an event called Open Days organised by Microsoft Indian Ocean Islands together with other local partners and resellers. There I got in touch with local Technical Evangelist Arnaud Meslier and we had a good conversation on communities during the breaks. Eventually, I left a good impression on him, as we are having chats on Facebook or Skype irregularly. Well, seeing that my personal and professional surroundings have been settled and running smooth, having that great exchange and contact with Microsoft IOI (again), and being really eager to re-animate my intentions from 2007, I recently founded a new community: Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community - #MSCC It took me a while to settle down with the name but it was obvious that the community should not be attached to one single technology, like ie. .NET user group, Oracle developers, or Joomla friends (these are fictitious names). There are several other reasons why I came up with 'Craftsmanship' as the core topic of this community. The expression of 'engineering' didn't feel right with the fields covered. Software development in all kind of facets is a craft, and therefore demands a lot of practice but also guidance from more experienced developers. It also includes the process of designing, modelling and drafting the ideas. Has to deal with various types of tests and test methodologies, and of course should be focused on flexible and agile ways of acting. In order to meet and to excel a customer's request for a solution. Next, I was looking for an easy way to handle the organisation of events and meeting appointments. Using all kind of social media platforms like Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook, Xing, etc. I was never really confident about their features of event handling. More by chance I stumbled upon Meetup.com and in combination with the other entities (G+ Communities, FB Pages or in Groups) I am looking forward to advertise and manage all future activities here: Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community This is a community for those who care and are proud of what they do. For those developers, regardless how experienced they are, who want to improve and master their craft. This is a community for those who believe that being average is just not good enough. I know, there are not many 'craftsmen' yet but it's a start... Let's see how it looks like by the end of the year. There are free smartphone apps for Android and iOS from Meetup.com that allow you to keep track of meetings and to stay informed on latest updates. And last but not least, there will be a Trello workspace to collect and share ideas and provide downloads of slides, etc. Sharing is caring! As mentioned, the #MSCC is present in various social media networks in order to cover as many people as possible here in Mauritius. Following is an overview of the current networks: Twitter - Latest updates and quickies Google+ - Community channel Facebook - Community Page LinkedIn - Community Group Trello - Collaboration workspace to share and develop ideas Hopefully, this covers the majority of computer-related people in Mauritius. Please spread the word about the #MSCC between your colleagues, your friends and other interested 'geeks'. Your future looks bright Running and participating in a user group or any kind of community usually provides quite a number of advantages for anyone. On the one side it is very joyful for me to organise appointments and get in touch with people that might be interested to present a little demo of their projects or their recent problems they had to tackle down, and on the other side there are lots of companies that have various support programs or sponsorships especially tailored for user groups. At the moment, I already have a couple of gimmicks that I would like to hand out in small contests or raffles during one of the upcoming meetings, and as said, companies provide all kind of goodies, books free of charge, or sometimes even licenses for communities. Meeting other software developers or IT guys also opens up your point of view on the local market and there might be interesting projects or job offers available, too. A community like the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community is great for freelancers, self-employed, students and of course employees. Meetings will be organised on a regular basis, and I'm open to all kind of suggestions from you. Please leave a comment here in blog or join the conversations in the above mentioned social networks. Let's get this community up and running, my fellow Mauritians!

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  • How do I restrict concurrent statistics gathering to a small set of tables from a single schema?

    - by Maria Colgan
    I got an interesting question from one of my colleagues in the performance team last week about how to restrict a concurrent statistics gather to a small subset of tables from one schema, rather than the entire schema. I thought I would share the solution we came up with because it was rather elegant, and took advantage of concurrent statistics gathering, incremental statistics, and the not so well known “obj_filter_list” parameter in DBMS_STATS.GATHER_SCHEMA_STATS procedure. You should note that the solution outline below with “obj_filter_list” still applies, even when concurrent statistics gathering and/or incremental statistics gathering is disabled. The reason my colleague had asked the question in the first place was because he wanted to enable incremental statistics for 5 large partitioned tables in one schema. The first time you gather statistics after you enable incremental statistics on a table, you have to gather statistics for all of the existing partitions so that a synopsis may be created for them. If the partitioned table in question is large and contains a lot of partition, this could take a considerable amount of time. Since my colleague only had the Exadata environment at his disposal overnight, he wanted to re-gather statistics on 5 partition tables as quickly as possible to ensure that it all finished before morning. Prior to Oracle Database 11g Release 2, the only way to do this would have been to write a script with an individual DBMS_STATS.GATHER_TABLE_STATS command for each partition, in each of the 5 tables, as well as another one to gather global statistics on the table. Then, run each script in a separate session and manually manage how many of this session could run concurrently. Since each table has over one thousand partitions that would definitely be a daunting task and would most likely keep my colleague up all night! In Oracle Database 11g Release 2 we can take advantage of concurrent statistics gathering, which enables us to gather statistics on multiple tables in a schema (or database), and multiple (sub)partitions within a table concurrently. By using concurrent statistics gathering we no longer have to run individual statistics gathering commands for each partition. Oracle will automatically create a statistics gathering job for each partition, and one for the global statistics on each partitioned table. With the use of concurrent statistics, our script can now be simplified to just five DBMS_STATS.GATHER_TABLE_STATS commands, one for each table. This approach would work just fine but we really wanted to get this down to just one command. So how can we do that? You may be wondering why we didn’t just use the DBMS_STATS.GATHER_SCHEMA_STATS procedure with the OPTION parameter set to ‘GATHER STALE’. Unfortunately the statistics on the 5 partitioned tables were not stale and enabling incremental statistics does not mark the existing statistics stale. Plus how would we limit the schema statistics gather to just the 5 partitioned tables? So we went to ask one of the statistics developers if there was an alternative way. The developer told us the advantage of the “obj_filter_list” parameter in DBMS_STATS.GATHER_SCHEMA_STATS procedure. The “obj_filter_list” parameter allows you to specify a list of objects that you want to gather statistics on within a schema or database. The parameter takes a collection of type DBMS_STATS.OBJECTTAB. Each entry in the collection has 5 feilds; the schema name or the object owner, the object type (i.e., ‘TABLE’ or ‘INDEX’), object name, partition name, and subpartition name. You don't have to specify all five fields for each entry. Empty fields in an entry are treated as if it is a wildcard field (similar to ‘*’ character in LIKE predicates). Each entry corresponds to one set of filter conditions on the objects. If you have more than one entry, an object is qualified for statistics gathering as long as it satisfies the filter conditions in one entry. You first must create the collection of objects, and then gather statistics for the specified collection. It’s probably easier to explain this with an example. I’m using the SH sample schema but needed a couple of additional partitioned table tables to get recreate my colleagues scenario of 5 partitioned tables. So I created SALES2, SALES3, and COSTS2 as copies of the SALES and COSTS table respectively (setup.sql). I also deleted statistics on all of the tables in the SH schema beforehand to more easily demonstrate our approach. Step 0. Delete the statistics on the tables in the SH schema. Step 1. Enable concurrent statistics gathering. Remember, this has to be done at the global level. Step 2. Enable incremental statistics for the 5 partitioned tables. Step 3. Create the DBMS_STATS.OBJECTTAB and pass it to the DBMS_STATS.GATHER_SCHEMA_STATS command. Here, you will notice that we defined two variables of DBMS_STATS.OBJECTTAB type. The first, filter_lst, will be used to pass the list of tables we want to gather statistics on, and will be the value passed to the obj_filter_list parameter. The second, obj_lst, will be used to capture the list of tables that have had statistics gathered on them by this command, and will be the value passed to the objlist parameter. In Oracle Database 11g Release 2, you need to specify the objlist parameter in order to get the obj_filter_list parameter to work correctly due to bug 14539274. Will also needed to define the number of objects we would supply in the obj_filter_list. In our case we ere specifying 5 tables (filter_lst.extend(5)). Finally, we need to specify the owner name and object name for each of the objects in the list. Once the list definition is complete we can issue the DBMS_STATS.GATHER_SCHEMA_STATS command. Step 4. Confirm statistics were gathered on the 5 partitioned tables. Here are a couple of other things to keep in mind when specifying the entries for the  obj_filter_list parameter. If a field in the entry is empty, i.e., null, it means there is no condition on this field. In the above example , suppose you remove the statement Obj_filter_lst(1).ownname := ‘SH’; You will get the same result since when you have specified gather_schema_stats so there is no need to further specify ownname in the obj_filter_lst. All of the names in the entry are normalized, i.e., uppercased if they are not double quoted. So in the above example, it is OK to use Obj_filter_lst(1).objname := ‘sales’;. However if you have a table called ‘MyTab’ instead of ‘MYTAB’, then you need to specify Obj_filter_lst(1).objname := ‘”MyTab”’; As I said before, although we have illustrated the usage of the obj_filter_list parameter for partitioned tables, with concurrent and incremental statistics gathering turned on, the obj_filter_list parameter is generally applicable to any gather_database_stats, gather_dictionary_stats and gather_schema_stats command. You can get a copy of the script I used to generate this post here. +Maria Colgan

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  • Behavior Driven Development (BDD) and DevExpress XAF

    - by Patrick Liekhus
    So in my previous posts I showed you how I used EDMX to quickly build my business objects within XPO and XAF.  But how do you test whether your business objects are actually doing what you want and verify that your business logic is correct?  Well I was reading my monthly MSDN magazine last last year and came across an article about using SpecFlow and WatiN to build BDD tests.  So why not use these same techniques to write SpecFlow style scripts and have them generate EasyTest scripts for use with XAF.  Let me outline and show a few things below.  I plan on releasing this code in a short while, I just wanted to preview what I was thinking. Before we begin… First, if you have not read the article in MSDN, here is the link to the article that I found my inspiration.  It covers the overview of BDD vs. TDD, how to write some of the SpecFlow syntax and how use the “Steps” logic to create your own tests. Second, if you have not heard of EasyTest from DevExpress I strongly recommend you review it here.  It basically takes the power of XAF and the beauty of your application and allows you to create text based files to execute automated commands within your application. Why would we do this?  Because as you will see below, the cucumber syntax is easier for business analysts to interpret and digest the business rules from.  You can find most of the information you will need on Cucumber syntax within The Secret Ninja Cucumber Scrolls located here.  The basics of the syntax are that Given X When Y Then Z.  For example, Given I am at the login screen When I enter my login credentials Then I expect to see the home screen.  Pretty easy syntax to follow. Finally, we will need to download and install SpecFlow.  You can find it on their website here.  Once you have this installed then let’s write our first test. Let’s get started… So where to start.  Create a new testing project within your solution.  I typically call this with a similar naming convention as used by XAF, my project name .FunctionalTests (i.e.  AlbumManager.FunctionalTests).  Remove the basic test that is created for you.  We will not use the default test but rather create our own SpecFlow “Feature” files.  Add a new item to your project and select the SpecFlow Feature file under C#.  Name your feature file as you do your class files after the test they are performing. Now you can crack open your new feature file and write the actual test.  Make sure to have your Ninja Scrolls from above as it provides valuable resources on how to write your test syntax.  In this test below you can see how I defined the documentation in the Feature section.  This is strictly for our purposes of readability and do not effect the test.  The next section is the Scenario Outline which is considered a test template.  You can see the brackets <> around the fields that will be filled in for each test.  So in the example below you can see that Given I am starting a new test and the application is open.  This means I want a new EasyTest file and the windows application generated by XAF is open.  Next When I am at the Albums screen tells XAF to navigate to the Albums list view.  And I click the New:Album button, tells XAF to click the new button on the list grid.  And I enter the following information tells XAF which fields to complete with the mapped values.  And I click the Save and Close button causes the record to be saved and the detail form to be closed.  Then I verify results tests the input data against what is visible in the grid to ensure that your record was created. The Scenarios section gives each test a unique name and then fills in the values for each test.  This way you can use the same test to make multiple passes with different data. Almost there.  Now we must save the feature file and the BDD tests will be written using standard unit test syntax.  This is all handled for you by SpecFlow so just save the file.  What you will see in your Test List Editor is a unit test for each of the above scenarios you just built. You can now use standard unit testing frameworks to execute the test as you desire.  As you would expect then, these BDD SpecFlow tests can be automated into your build process to ensure that your business requirements are satisfied each and every time. How does it work? What we have done is to intercept the testing logic at runtime to interpret the SpecFlow syntax into EasyTest syntax.  This is the basic StepDefinitions that we are working on now.  We expect to put these on CodePlex within the next few days.  You can always override and make your own rules as you see fit for your project.  Follow the MSDN magazine above to start your own.  You can see part of our implementation below. As you can gather from the MSDN article and the code sample below, we have created our own common rules to build the above syntax. The code implementation for these rules basically saves your information from the feature file into an EasyTest file format.  It then executes the EasyTest file and parses the XML results of the test.  If the test succeeds the test is passed.  If the test fails, the EasyTest failure message is logged and the screen shot (as captured by EasyTest) is saved for your review. Again we are working on getting this code ready for mass consumption, but at this time it is not ready.  We will post another message when it is ready with all details about usage and setup. Thanks

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  • PostSharp, Obfuscation, and IL

    - by Simon Cooper
    Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) is a relatively new programming paradigm. Originating at Xerox PARC in 1994, the paradigm was first made available for general-purpose development as an extension to Java in 2001. From there, it has quickly been adapted for use in all the common languages used today. In the .NET world, one of the primary AOP toolkits is PostSharp. Attributes and AOP Normally, attributes in .NET are entirely a metadata construct. Apart from a few special attributes in the .NET framework, they have no effect whatsoever on how a class or method executes within the CLR. Only by using reflection at runtime can you access any attributes declared on a type or type member. PostSharp changes this. By declaring a custom attribute that derives from PostSharp.Aspects.Aspect, applying it to types and type members, and running the resulting assembly through the PostSharp postprocessor, you can essentially declare 'clever' attributes that change the behaviour of whatever the aspect has been applied to at runtime. A simple example of this is logging. By declaring a TraceAttribute that derives from OnMethodBoundaryAspect, you can automatically log when a method has been executed: public class TraceAttribute : PostSharp.Aspects.OnMethodBoundaryAspect { public override void OnEntry(MethodExecutionArgs args) { MethodBase method = args.Method; System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine( String.Format( "Entering {0}.{1}.", method.DeclaringType.FullName, method.Name)); } public override void OnExit(MethodExecutionArgs args) { MethodBase method = args.Method; System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine( String.Format( "Leaving {0}.{1}.", method.DeclaringType.FullName, method.Name)); } } [Trace] public void MethodToLog() { ... } Now, whenever MethodToLog is executed, the aspect will automatically log entry and exit, without having to add the logging code to MethodToLog itself. PostSharp Performance Now this does introduce a performance overhead - as you can see, the aspect allows access to the MethodBase of the method the aspect has been applied to. If you were limited to C#, you would be forced to retrieve each MethodBase instance using Type.GetMethod(), matching on the method name and signature. This is slow. Fortunately, PostSharp is not limited to C#. It can use any instruction available in IL. And in IL, you can do some very neat things. Ldtoken C# allows you to get the Type object corresponding to a specific type name using the typeof operator: Type t = typeof(Random); The C# compiler compiles this operator to the following IL: ldtoken [mscorlib]System.Random call class [mscorlib]System.Type [mscorlib]System.Type::GetTypeFromHandle( valuetype [mscorlib]System.RuntimeTypeHandle) The ldtoken instruction obtains a special handle to a type called a RuntimeTypeHandle, and from that, the Type object can be obtained using GetTypeFromHandle. These are both relatively fast operations - no string lookup is required, only direct assembly and CLR constructs are used. However, a little-known feature is that ldtoken is not just limited to types; it can also get information on methods and fields, encapsulated in a RuntimeMethodHandle or RuntimeFieldHandle: // get a MethodBase for String.EndsWith(string) ldtoken method instance bool [mscorlib]System.String::EndsWith(string) call class [mscorlib]System.Reflection.MethodBase [mscorlib]System.Reflection.MethodBase::GetMethodFromHandle( valuetype [mscorlib]System.RuntimeMethodHandle) // get a FieldInfo for the String.Empty field ldtoken field string [mscorlib]System.String::Empty call class [mscorlib]System.Reflection.FieldInfo [mscorlib]System.Reflection.FieldInfo::GetFieldFromHandle( valuetype [mscorlib]System.RuntimeFieldHandle) These usages of ldtoken aren't usable from C# or VB, and aren't likely to be added anytime soon (Eric Lippert's done a blog post on the possibility of adding infoof, methodof or fieldof operators to C#). However, PostSharp deals directly with IL, and so can use ldtoken to get MethodBase objects quickly and cheaply, without having to resort to string lookups. The kicker However, there are problems. Because ldtoken for methods or fields isn't accessible from C# or VB, it hasn't been as well-tested as ldtoken for types. This has resulted in various obscure bugs in most versions of the CLR when dealing with ldtoken and methods, and specifically, generic methods and methods of generic types. This means that PostSharp was behaving incorrectly, or just plain crashing, when aspects were applied to methods that were generic in some way. So, PostSharp has to work around this. Without using the metadata tokens directly, the only way to get the MethodBase of generic methods is to use reflection: Type.GetMethod(), passing in the method name as a string along with information on the signature. Now, this works fine. It's slower than using ldtoken directly, but it works, and this only has to be done for generic methods. Unfortunately, this poses problems when the assembly is obfuscated. PostSharp and Obfuscation When using ldtoken, obfuscators don't affect how PostSharp operates. Because the ldtoken instruction directly references the type, method or field within the assembly, it is unaffected if the name of the object is changed by an obfuscator. However, the indirect loading used for generic methods was breaking, because that uses the name of the method when the assembly is put through the PostSharp postprocessor to lookup the MethodBase at runtime. If the name then changes, PostSharp can't find it anymore, and the assembly breaks. So, PostSharp needs to know about any changes an obfuscator does to an assembly. The way PostSharp does this is by adding another layer of indirection. When PostSharp obfuscation support is enabled, it includes an extra 'name table' resource in the assembly, consisting of a series of method & type names. When PostSharp needs to lookup a method using reflection, instead of encoding the method name directly, it looks up the method name at a fixed offset inside that name table: MethodBase genericMethod = typeof(ContainingClass).GetMethod(GetNameAtIndex(22)); PostSharp.NameTable resource: ... 20: get_Prop1 21: set_Prop1 22: DoFoo 23: GetWibble When the assembly is later processed by an obfuscator, the obfuscator can replace all the method and type names within the name table with their new name. That way, the reflection lookups performed by PostSharp will now use the new names, and everything will work as expected: MethodBase genericMethod = typeof(#kGy).GetMethod(GetNameAtIndex(22)); PostSharp.NameTable resource: ... 20: #kkA 21: #zAb 22: #EF5a 23: #2tg As you can see, this requires direct support by an obfuscator in order to perform these rewrites. Dotfuscator supports it, and now, starting with SmartAssembly 6.6.4, SmartAssembly does too. So, a relatively simple solution to a tricky problem, with some CLR bugs thrown in for good measure. You don't see those every day!

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  • Translating Your Customizations

    - by Richard Bingham
    This blog post explains the basics of translating the customizations you can make to Fusion Applications products, with the inclusion of information for both composer-based customizations and the generic design-time customizations done via JDeveloper. Introduction Like most Oracle Applications, Fusion Applications installs on-premise with a US-English base language that is, in Release 7, supported by the option to add up to a total of 22 additional language packs (In Oracle Cloud production environments languages are pre-installed already). As such many organizations offer their users the option of working with their local language, and logically that should also apply for any customizations as well. Composer-based UI Customizations Customizations made in Page Composer take into consideration the session LOCALE, as set in the user preferences screen, during all customization work, and stores the customization in the MDS repository accordingly. As such the actual new or changed values used will only apply for the same language under which the customization was made, and text for any other languages requires a separate upload. See the Resource Bundles section below, which incidentally also applies to custom UI changes done in JDeveloper. You may have noticed this when you select the “Select Text Resource” menu option when editing the text on a page. Using this ensures that the resource bundles are used, whereas if you define a static value in Expression Builder it will never be available for translation. Notice in the screenshot below the “What’s New” custom value I have already defined using the ‘Select Text Resource’ feature is internally using the adfBundle groovy function to pull the custom value for my key (RT_S_1) from the ComposerOverrideBundle. Figure 1 – Page Composer showing the override bundle being used. Business Objects Customizing the Business Objects available in the Applications Composer tool for the CRM products, such as adding additional fields, also operates using the session language. Translating these additional values for these fields into other installed languages requires loading additional resource bundles, again as described below. Reports and Analytics Most customizations to Reports and BI Analytics are just essentially reorganizations and visualizations of existing number and text data from the system, and as such will use the appropriate values based on the users session language. Where a translated value or string exists for that session language, it will be used without the need for additional work. Extending through the addition of brand new reports and analytics requires another method of loading the translated strings, as part of what is known as ‘Localizing’ the BI Catalog and Metadata. This time it is via an export/import of XML data through the BI Administrators console, and is described in the OBIEE Admin Guide. Fusion Applications reports based on BI Publisher are already defined in template-per-locale, and in addition provide an extra process for getting the data for translation and reloading. This again uses the standard resource bundle format. Loading a custom report is illustrated in this video from our YouTube channel which shows the screen for both setting the template local and running an export for translation. Fusion Applications Menus Whilst the seeded Navigator and Global Menu values are fully translated when the additional language is installed, if they are customized then the change or new menu item will apply universally, not currently per language. This is set to change in a future release with the new UI Text Editor feature described below. More on Resource Bundles As mentioned above, to provide translations for most of your customizations you need to add values to a resource bundle. This is an industry open standard (OASIS) format XML file with the extension .xliff, and store translated values for the strings used by ADF at run-time. The general process is that these values are exported from the MDS repository, manually edited, and then imported back in again.This needs to be done by an administrator, via either WLST commands or through Enterprise Manager as per the screenshot below. This is detailed out in the Fusion Applications Extensibility Guide. For SaaS environments the Cloud Operations team can assist. Figure 2 – Enterprise Manager’s MDS export used getting resource bundles for manual translation and re-imported on the same screen. All customized strings are stored in an override bundle (xliff file) for each locale, suffixed with the language initials, with English ones being saved to the default. As such each language bundle can be easily identified and updated. Similarly if you used JDeveloper to create your own applications as extensions to Fusion Applications you would use the native support for resource bundles, and add them into the faces-config.xml file for inclusion in your application. An example is this ADF customization video from our YouTube channel. JDeveloper also supports automatic synchronization between your underlying resource bundles and any translatable strings you add – very handy. For more information see chapters on “Using Automatic Resource Bundle Integration in JDeveloper” and “Manually Defining Resource Bundles and Locales” in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Web User Interface Developer’s Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework. FND Messages and Look-ups FND Messages, as defined here, are not used for UI labels (they are known as ‘strings’), but are the responses back to users as a result of an action, such as from a page submit. Each ‘message’ is defined and stored in the related database table (FND_MESSAGES_B), with another (FND_MESSAGES_TL) holding any language-specific values. These come seeded with the additional language installs, however if you customize the messages via the “Manage Messages” task in Functional Setup Manager, or add new ones, then currently (in Release 7) you’ll need to repeat it for each language. Figure 3 – An FND Message defined in an English user session. Similarly Look-ups are stored in a translation table (FND_LOOKUP_VALUES_TL) where appropriate, and can be customized by setting the users session language and making the change  in the Setup and Maintenance task entitled “Manage [Standard|Common] Look-ups”. Online Help Yes, in fact all the seeded help is applied as part of each language pack install as part of the post-install provisioning process. If you are editing or adding custom online help then the Create Help screen provides a drop-down of which language your help customization will apply to. This is shown in the video below from our YouTube channel, and obviously you’ll need to it for each language in use. What is Coming for Translations? Currently planned for Release 8 is something called the User Interface (UI) Text Editor. This tool will allow the editing of all the text shown on the pages and forms of Fusion Application. This will provide a search based on a particular term or word, say “Worker”, and will allow it to be adjusted, say to “Employee”, which then updates all the Resource Bundles that contain it. In the case of multi-language environments, it will use the users session language (locale) to know which Resource Bundles to apply the change to. This capability will also support customization sandboxes, to help ensure changes can be tested and approved.  It is also interesting to note that the design currently allows any page-specific customizations done using Page Composer or Application Composer to over-write the global changes done via the UI Text Editor, allowing for special context-sensitive values to still be used. Further Reading and Resources The following short list provides the mains resources for digging into more detail on translation support for both Composer and JDeveloper customization projects. There is a dedicated chapter entitled “Translating Custom Text” in the Fusion Applications Extensibility Guide. This has good examples and steps for many tasks, especially administering resource bundles. Using localization formatting (numbers, dates etc) for design-time changes is well documented in the Fusion Applications Developer Guide. For more guidelines on general design-time globalization, see either the ‘Internationalizing and Localizing Pages’ chapter in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Web User Interface Developer’s Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle Fusion Applications Edition) or the general Oracle Database Globalization Support Guide. The Oracle Architecture ‘A-Team’ provided a recent post on customizing the user session timeout popup, using design-time changes to resource bundles. It has detailed step-by-step examples which can be a useful illustration.

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  • PostSharp, Obfuscation, and IL

    - by simonc
    Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) is a relatively new programming paradigm. Originating at Xerox PARC in 1994, the paradigm was first made available for general-purpose development as an extension to Java in 2001. From there, it has quickly been adapted for use in all the common languages used today. In the .NET world, one of the primary AOP toolkits is PostSharp. Attributes and AOP Normally, attributes in .NET are entirely a metadata construct. Apart from a few special attributes in the .NET framework, they have no effect whatsoever on how a class or method executes within the CLR. Only by using reflection at runtime can you access any attributes declared on a type or type member. PostSharp changes this. By declaring a custom attribute that derives from PostSharp.Aspects.Aspect, applying it to types and type members, and running the resulting assembly through the PostSharp postprocessor, you can essentially declare 'clever' attributes that change the behaviour of whatever the aspect has been applied to at runtime. A simple example of this is logging. By declaring a TraceAttribute that derives from OnMethodBoundaryAspect, you can automatically log when a method has been executed: public class TraceAttribute : PostSharp.Aspects.OnMethodBoundaryAspect { public override void OnEntry(MethodExecutionArgs args) { MethodBase method = args.Method; System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine( String.Format( "Entering {0}.{1}.", method.DeclaringType.FullName, method.Name)); } public override void OnExit(MethodExecutionArgs args) { MethodBase method = args.Method; System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine( String.Format( "Leaving {0}.{1}.", method.DeclaringType.FullName, method.Name)); } } [Trace] public void MethodToLog() { ... } Now, whenever MethodToLog is executed, the aspect will automatically log entry and exit, without having to add the logging code to MethodToLog itself. PostSharp Performance Now this does introduce a performance overhead - as you can see, the aspect allows access to the MethodBase of the method the aspect has been applied to. If you were limited to C#, you would be forced to retrieve each MethodBase instance using Type.GetMethod(), matching on the method name and signature. This is slow. Fortunately, PostSharp is not limited to C#. It can use any instruction available in IL. And in IL, you can do some very neat things. Ldtoken C# allows you to get the Type object corresponding to a specific type name using the typeof operator: Type t = typeof(Random); The C# compiler compiles this operator to the following IL: ldtoken [mscorlib]System.Random call class [mscorlib]System.Type [mscorlib]System.Type::GetTypeFromHandle( valuetype [mscorlib]System.RuntimeTypeHandle) The ldtoken instruction obtains a special handle to a type called a RuntimeTypeHandle, and from that, the Type object can be obtained using GetTypeFromHandle. These are both relatively fast operations - no string lookup is required, only direct assembly and CLR constructs are used. However, a little-known feature is that ldtoken is not just limited to types; it can also get information on methods and fields, encapsulated in a RuntimeMethodHandle or RuntimeFieldHandle: // get a MethodBase for String.EndsWith(string) ldtoken method instance bool [mscorlib]System.String::EndsWith(string) call class [mscorlib]System.Reflection.MethodBase [mscorlib]System.Reflection.MethodBase::GetMethodFromHandle( valuetype [mscorlib]System.RuntimeMethodHandle) // get a FieldInfo for the String.Empty field ldtoken field string [mscorlib]System.String::Empty call class [mscorlib]System.Reflection.FieldInfo [mscorlib]System.Reflection.FieldInfo::GetFieldFromHandle( valuetype [mscorlib]System.RuntimeFieldHandle) These usages of ldtoken aren't usable from C# or VB, and aren't likely to be added anytime soon (Eric Lippert's done a blog post on the possibility of adding infoof, methodof or fieldof operators to C#). However, PostSharp deals directly with IL, and so can use ldtoken to get MethodBase objects quickly and cheaply, without having to resort to string lookups. The kicker However, there are problems. Because ldtoken for methods or fields isn't accessible from C# or VB, it hasn't been as well-tested as ldtoken for types. This has resulted in various obscure bugs in most versions of the CLR when dealing with ldtoken and methods, and specifically, generic methods and methods of generic types. This means that PostSharp was behaving incorrectly, or just plain crashing, when aspects were applied to methods that were generic in some way. So, PostSharp has to work around this. Without using the metadata tokens directly, the only way to get the MethodBase of generic methods is to use reflection: Type.GetMethod(), passing in the method name as a string along with information on the signature. Now, this works fine. It's slower than using ldtoken directly, but it works, and this only has to be done for generic methods. Unfortunately, this poses problems when the assembly is obfuscated. PostSharp and Obfuscation When using ldtoken, obfuscators don't affect how PostSharp operates. Because the ldtoken instruction directly references the type, method or field within the assembly, it is unaffected if the name of the object is changed by an obfuscator. However, the indirect loading used for generic methods was breaking, because that uses the name of the method when the assembly is put through the PostSharp postprocessor to lookup the MethodBase at runtime. If the name then changes, PostSharp can't find it anymore, and the assembly breaks. So, PostSharp needs to know about any changes an obfuscator does to an assembly. The way PostSharp does this is by adding another layer of indirection. When PostSharp obfuscation support is enabled, it includes an extra 'name table' resource in the assembly, consisting of a series of method & type names. When PostSharp needs to lookup a method using reflection, instead of encoding the method name directly, it looks up the method name at a fixed offset inside that name table: MethodBase genericMethod = typeof(ContainingClass).GetMethod(GetNameAtIndex(22)); PostSharp.NameTable resource: ... 20: get_Prop1 21: set_Prop1 22: DoFoo 23: GetWibble When the assembly is later processed by an obfuscator, the obfuscator can replace all the method and type names within the name table with their new name. That way, the reflection lookups performed by PostSharp will now use the new names, and everything will work as expected: MethodBase genericMethod = typeof(#kGy).GetMethod(GetNameAtIndex(22)); PostSharp.NameTable resource: ... 20: #kkA 21: #zAb 22: #EF5a 23: #2tg As you can see, this requires direct support by an obfuscator in order to perform these rewrites. Dotfuscator supports it, and now, starting with SmartAssembly 6.6.4, SmartAssembly does too. So, a relatively simple solution to a tricky problem, with some CLR bugs thrown in for good measure. You don't see those every day! Cross posted from Simple Talk.

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

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

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  • How to Control Screen Layouts in LightSwitch

    - by ChrisD
    Visual Studio LightSwitch has a bunch of screen templates that you can use to quickly generate screens. They give you good starting points that you can customize further. When you add a new screen to your project you see a set of screen templates that you can choose from. These templates lay out all the related data you choose to put on a screen automatically for you. And don’t under estimate them; they do a great job of laying out controls in a smart way. For instance, a tab control will be used when you select more than one related set of data to display on a screen. However, you’re not limited to taking the layout as is. In fact, the screen designer is pretty flexible and allows you to create stacks of controls in a variety of configurations. You just need to visualize your screen as a series of containers that you can lay out in rows and columns. You then place controls or stacks of controls into these areas to align the screen exactly how you want. If you’re new in Visual Studio LightSwitch, you can see this tutorial. OK, Let’s start with a simple example. I have already designed my data entities for a simple order tracking system similar to the Northwind database. I also have added a Search Data  Screen to search my Products already. Now I will add a new Details Screen for my Products and make it the default screen via the “Add New Screen” dialog: The screen designer picks a simple layout for me based on the single entity I chose, in this case Product. Hit F5 to run the application, select a Product on the search screen to open the Product Details Screen. Notice that it’s pretty simple because my entity is simple. Click the “Customize” button in the top right of the screen so we can start tweaking it. The left side of the screen shows the containership of controls and data bindings (called the content tree) and the right side shows the live preview with data. Notice that we have a simple layout of two rows but only one row is populated (with a vertical stack of controls in this case). The bottom row is empty. You can envision the screen like this: Each container will display a group of data that you select. For instance in the above screen, the top row is set to a vertical stack control and the group of data to display is coming from Product. So when laying out screens you need to think in terms of containers of controls bound to groups of data. To change the data to which a container is bound, select the data item next to the container: You can select the “New Group” item in order to create more containers (or controls) within the current container. For instance to totally control the layout, select the Product in the top row and hit the delete key. This will delete the vertical stack and therefore all the controls on the screen. The content tree will still have two rows, but the rows are now both empty. If you want a layout of four containers (two rows and two columns) then select “New Group” for the data item and then change the vertical stack control to “Two Columns” for both of the rows as shown here: You can keep going on and on by selecting new groups and choosing between rows or columns. Here’s a layout with 8 containers, 4 rows and 2 columns: And here is a layout with 7 content areas; one row across the top of the screen and three rows with two columns below that: When you select Choose Content and select a data item like Product it will populate all the controls within the container (row or column in a vertical stack) however you have complete control on what to display within each group. You can delete fields you don’t want to display and/or change their controls. You can also change the size of controls and how they display by changing the settings in the properties window. If you are in the Screen Designer (and not the customization mode like we are here) you can also drag-drop data items from the left-hand side of the screen to the content tree. Note, however, that not all areas of the tree will allow you to drop a data item if there is a binding already set to a different set of data. For instance you can’t drop a Customer ID into the same group as a Product if they originate from different entities. To get around this, all you need to do is create a new group and content area as shown above. Let’s take a more complex example that deals with more than just product. I want to design a complex screen that displays Products and their Category, as well as all the OrderDetails for which that product is selected. This time I will create a new screen and select List and Details, select the Products screen data, and include the related OrderDetails. However I’m going to totally change the layout so that a Product grid is at the top left and below that is the selected Product detail. Below that will be the Category text fields and image in two columns below. On the right side I want the OrderDetails grid to take up the whole right side of the screen. All this can be done in customization mode while you’re debugging the application. To do this, I first deleted all the content items in the tree and then re-created the content tree as shown in the image below. I also set the image to be larger and the description textbox to be 5 rows using the property window below the live preview. I added the green lines to indicate the containers and show how it maps to the content tree (click to enlarge): I hope this demystifies the screen designer a little bit. Remember that screen templates are excellent starting points – you can take them as-is or customize them further. It takes a little fooling around with customizing screens to get them to do exactly what you want but there are a ton of possibilities once you get the hang of it. Stay tuned for more information on how to create your own screen templates that show up in the “Add New Screen” dialog. Enjoy! The tutorial that might be interested: Adding Custom Control In LightSwitch

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  • How to Plug a Small Hole in NetBeans JSF (Join Table) Code Generation

    - by MarkH
    I was asked recently to provide an assist with designing and building a small-but-vital application that had at its heart some basic CRUD (Create, Read, Update, & Delete) functionality, built upon an Oracle database, to be accessible from various locations. Working from the stated requirements, I fleshed out the basic application and database designs and, once validated, set out to complete the first iteration for review. Using SQL Developer, I created the requisite tables, indices, and sequences for our first run. One of the tables was a many-to-many join table with three fields: one a primary key for that table, the other two being primary keys for the other tables, represented as foreign keys in the join table. Here is a simplified example of the trio of tables: Once the database was in decent shape, I fired up NetBeans to let it have first shot at the code. NetBeans does a great job of generating a mountain of essential code, saving developers what must be millions of hours of effort each year by building a basic foundation with a few clicks and keystrokes. Lest you think it (or any tool) can do everything for you, however, occasionally something tosses a paper clip into the delicate machinery and makes you open things up to fix them. Join tables apparently qualify.  :-) In the case above, the entity class generated for the join table (New Entity Classes from Database) included an embedded object consisting solely of the two foreign key fields as attributes, in addition to an object referencing each one of the "component" tables. The Create page generated (New JSF Pages from Entity Classes) worked well to a point, but when trying to save, we were greeted with an error: Transaction aborted. Hmm. A quick debugger session later and I'd identified the issue: when trying to persist the new join-table object, the embedded "foreign-keys-only" object still had null values for its two (required value) attributes...even though the embedded table objects had populated key attributes. Here's the simple fix: In the join-table controller class, find the public String create() method. It will look something like this:     public String create() {        try {            getFacade().create(current);            JsfUtil.addSuccessMessage(ResourceBundle.getBundle("/Bundle").getString("JoinEntityCreated"));            return prepareCreate();        } catch (Exception e) {            JsfUtil.addErrorMessage(e, ResourceBundle.getBundle("/Bundle").getString("PersistenceErrorOccured"));            return null;        }    } To restore balance to the force, modify the create() method as follows (changes in red):     public String create() {         try {            // Add the next two lines to resolve:            current.getJoinEntityPK().setTbl1id(current.getTbl1().getId().toBigInteger());            current.getJoinEntityPK().setTbl2id(current.getTbl2().getId().toBigInteger());            getFacade().create(current);            JsfUtil.addSuccessMessage(ResourceBundle.getBundle("/Bundle").getString("JoinEntityCreated"));            return prepareCreate();        } catch (Exception e) {            JsfUtil.addErrorMessage(e, ResourceBundle.getBundle("/Bundle").getString("PersistenceErrorOccured"));            return null;        }    } I'll be refactoring this code shortly, but for now, it works. Iteration one is complete and being reviewed, and we've met the milestone. Here's to happy endings (and customers)! All the best,Mark

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  • JavaMail not sending Subject or From under jetty:run-war

    - by Jason Thrasher
    Has anyone seen JavaMail not sending proper MimeMessages to an SMTP server, depending on how the JVM in started? At the end of the day, I can't send JavaMail SMTP messages with Subject: or From: fields, and it appears other headers are missing, only when running the app as a war. The web project is built with Maven and I'm testing sending JavaMail using a browser and a simple mail.jsp to debug and see different behavior when launching the app with: 1) mvn jetty:run (mail sends fine, with proper Subject and From fields) 2) mvn jetty:run-war (mail sends fine, but missing Subject, From, and other fields) I've meticulously run diff on the (verbose) Maven debug output (-X), and there are zero differences in the runtime dependencies between the two. I've also compared System properties, and they are identical. Something else is happening the jetty:run-war case that changes the way JavaMail behaves. What other stones need turning? Curiously, I've tried a debugger in both situations and found that the javax.mail.internet.MimeMessage instance is getting created differently. The webapp is using Spring to send email picked off of an Apache ActiveMQ queue. When running the app as mvn jetty:run the MimeMessage.contentStream variable is used for message content. When running as mvn jetty:run-war, the MimeMessage.content variable is used for the message contents, and the content = ASCIIUtility.getBytes(is); call removes all of the header data from the parsed content. Since this seemed very odd, and debugging Spring/ActiveMQ is a deep dive, I created a simplified test without any of that infrastructure: just a JSP using mail-1.4.2.jar, yet the same headers are missing. Also of note, these headers are missing when running the WAR file under Tomcat 5.5.27. Tomcat behaves just like Jetty when running the WAR, with the same missing headers. With JavaMail debugging turned on, I clearly see different output. GOOD CASE: In the jetty:run (non-WAR) the log output is: DEBUG: JavaMail version 1.4.2 DEBUG: successfully loaded resource: /META-INF/javamail.default.providers DEBUG: Tables of loaded providers DEBUG: Providers Listed By Class Name: {com.sun.mail.smtp.SMTPSSLTransport=javax.mail.Provider[TRANSPORT,smtps,com.sun.mail.smtp.SMTPSSLTransport,Sun Microsystems, Inc], com.sun.mail.smtp.SMTPTransport=javax.mail.Provider[TRANSPORT,smtp,com.sun.mail.smtp.SMTPTransport,Sun Microsystems, Inc], com.sun.mail.imap.IMAPSSLStore=javax.mail.Provider[STORE,imaps,com.sun.mail.imap.IMAPSSLStore,Sun Microsystems, Inc], com.sun.mail.pop3.POP3SSLStore=javax.mail.Provider[STORE,pop3s,com.sun.mail.pop3.POP3SSLStore,Sun Microsystems, Inc], com.sun.mail.imap.IMAPStore=javax.mail.Provider[STORE,imap,com.sun.mail.imap.IMAPStore,Sun Microsystems, Inc], com.sun.mail.pop3.POP3Store=javax.mail.Provider[STORE,pop3,com.sun.mail.pop3.POP3Store,Sun Microsystems, Inc]} DEBUG: Providers Listed By Protocol: {imaps=javax.mail.Provider[STORE,imaps,com.sun.mail.imap.IMAPSSLStore,Sun Microsystems, Inc], imap=javax.mail.Provider[STORE,imap,com.sun.mail.imap.IMAPStore,Sun Microsystems, Inc], smtps=javax.mail.Provider[TRANSPORT,smtps,com.sun.mail.smtp.SMTPSSLTransport,Sun Microsystems, Inc], pop3=javax.mail.Provider[STORE,pop3,com.sun.mail.pop3.POP3Store,Sun Microsystems, Inc], pop3s=javax.mail.Provider[STORE,pop3s,com.sun.mail.pop3.POP3SSLStore,Sun Microsystems, Inc], smtp=javax.mail.Provider[TRANSPORT,smtp,com.sun.mail.smtp.SMTPTransport,Sun Microsystems, Inc]} DEBUG: successfully loaded resource: /META-INF/javamail.default.address.map DEBUG: getProvider() returning javax.mail.Provider[TRANSPORT,smtp,com.sun.mail.smtp.SMTPTransport,Sun Microsystems, Inc] DEBUG SMTP: useEhlo true, useAuth true DEBUG SMTP: trying to connect to host "mail.authsmtp.com", port 465, isSSL false 220 mail.authsmtp.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.14.2/8.14.2/Kp; Thu, 18 Jun 2009 01:35:24 +0100 (BST) DEBUG SMTP: connected to host "mail.authsmtp.com", port: 465 EHLO jmac.local 250-mail.authsmtp.com Hello sul-pubs-3a.Stanford.EDU [171.66.201.2], pleased to meet you 250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES 250-PIPELINING 250-8BITMIME 250-SIZE 52428800 250-AUTH CRAM-MD5 DIGEST-MD5 LOGIN PLAIN 250-DELIVERBY 250 HELP DEBUG SMTP: Found extension "ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES", arg "" DEBUG SMTP: Found extension "PIPELINING", arg "" DEBUG SMTP: Found extension "8BITMIME", arg "" DEBUG SMTP: Found extension "SIZE", arg "52428800" DEBUG SMTP: Found extension "AUTH", arg "CRAM-MD5 DIGEST-MD5 LOGIN PLAIN" DEBUG SMTP: Found extension "DELIVERBY", arg "" DEBUG SMTP: Found extension "HELP", arg "" DEBUG SMTP: Attempt to authenticate DEBUG SMTP: check mechanisms: LOGIN PLAIN DIGEST-MD5 AUTH LOGIN 334 VXNlcm5hjbt7 YWM0MDkwhi== 334 UGFzc3dvjbt7 YXV0aHNtdHAydog3 235 2.0.0 OK Authenticated DEBUG SMTP: use8bit false MAIL FROM:<[email protected]> 250 2.1.0 <[email protected]>... Sender ok RCPT TO:<[email protected]> 250 2.1.5 <[email protected]>... Recipient ok DEBUG SMTP: Verified Addresses DEBUG SMTP: Jason Thrasher <[email protected]> DATA 354 Enter mail, end with "." on a line by itself From: Webmaster <[email protected]> To: Jason Thrasher <[email protected]> Message-ID: <[email protected]> Subject: non-Spring: Hello World MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello World: message body here . 250 2.0.0 n5I0ZOkD085654 Message accepted for delivery QUIT 221 2.0.0 mail.authsmtp.com closing connection BAD CASE: The log output when running as a WAR, with missing headers, is quite different: Loading javamail.default.providers from jar:file:/Users/jason/.m2/repository/javax/mail/mail/1.4.2/mail-1.4.2.jar!/META-INF/javamail.default.providers DEBUG: loading new provider protocol=imap, className=com.sun.mail.imap.IMAPStore, vendor=Sun Microsystems, Inc, version=null DEBUG: loading new provider protocol=imaps, className=com.sun.mail.imap.IMAPSSLStore, vendor=Sun Microsystems, Inc, version=null DEBUG: loading new provider protocol=smtp, className=com.sun.mail.smtp.SMTPTransport, vendor=Sun Microsystems, Inc, version=null DEBUG: loading new provider protocol=smtps, className=com.sun.mail.smtp.SMTPSSLTransport, vendor=Sun Microsystems, Inc, version=null DEBUG: loading new provider protocol=pop3, className=com.sun.mail.pop3.POP3Store, vendor=Sun Microsystems, Inc, version=null DEBUG: loading new provider protocol=pop3s, className=com.sun.mail.pop3.POP3SSLStore, vendor=Sun Microsystems, Inc, version=null Loading javamail.default.providers from jar:file:/Users/jason/Documents/dev/subscribeatron/software/trunk/web/struts/target/work/webapp/WEB-INF/lib/mail-1.4.2.jar!/META-INF/javamail.default.providers DEBUG: loading new provider protocol=imap, className=com.sun.mail.imap.IMAPStore, vendor=Sun Microsystems, Inc, version=null DEBUG: loading new provider protocol=imaps, className=com.sun.mail.imap.IMAPSSLStore, vendor=Sun Microsystems, Inc, version=null DEBUG: loading new provider protocol=smtp, className=com.sun.mail.smtp.SMTPTransport, vendor=Sun Microsystems, Inc, version=null DEBUG: loading new provider protocol=smtps, className=com.sun.mail.smtp.SMTPSSLTransport, vendor=Sun Microsystems, Inc, version=null DEBUG: loading new provider protocol=pop3, className=com.sun.mail.pop3.POP3Store, vendor=Sun Microsystems, Inc, version=null DEBUG: loading new provider protocol=pop3s, className=com.sun.mail.pop3.POP3SSLStore, vendor=Sun Microsystems, Inc, version=null DEBUG: getProvider() returning provider protocol=smtp; type=javax.mail.Provider$Type@98203f; class=com.sun.mail.smtp.SMTPTransport; vendor=Sun Microsystems, Inc DEBUG SMTP: useEhlo true, useAuth false DEBUG SMTP: trying to connect to host "mail.authsmtp.com", port 465, isSSL false 220 mail.authsmtp.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.14.2/8.14.2/Kp; Thu, 18 Jun 2009 01:51:46 +0100 (BST) DEBUG SMTP: connected to host "mail.authsmtp.com", port: 465 EHLO jmac.local 250-mail.authsmtp.com Hello sul-pubs-3a.Stanford.EDU [171.66.201.2], pleased to meet you 250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES 250-PIPELINING 250-8BITMIME 250-SIZE 52428800 250-AUTH CRAM-MD5 DIGEST-MD5 LOGIN PLAIN 250-DELIVERBY 250 HELP DEBUG SMTP: Found extension "ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES", arg "" DEBUG SMTP: Found extension "PIPELINING", arg "" DEBUG SMTP: Found extension "8BITMIME", arg "" DEBUG SMTP: Found extension "SIZE", arg "52428800" DEBUG SMTP: Found extension "AUTH", arg "CRAM-MD5 DIGEST-MD5 LOGIN PLAIN" DEBUG SMTP: Found extension "DELIVERBY", arg "" DEBUG SMTP: Found extension "HELP", arg "" DEBUG SMTP: Attempt to authenticate DEBUG SMTP: check mechanisms: LOGIN PLAIN DIGEST-MD5 AUTH LOGIN 334 VXNlcm5hjbt7 YWM0MDkwhi== 334 UGFzc3dvjbt7 YXV0aHNtdHAydog3 235 2.0.0 OK Authenticated DEBUG SMTP: use8bit false MAIL FROM:<[email protected]> 250 2.1.0 <[email protected]>... Sender ok RCPT TO:<[email protected]> 250 2.1.5 <[email protected]>... Recipient ok DEBUG SMTP: Verified Addresses DEBUG SMTP: Jason Thrasher <[email protected]> DATA 354 Enter mail, end with "." on a line by itself Hello World: message body here . 250 2.0.0 n5I0pkSc090137 Message accepted for delivery QUIT 221 2.0.0 mail.authsmtp.com closing connection Here's the actual mail.jsp that I'm testing war/non-war with. <%@page import="java.util.*"%> <%@page import="javax.mail.internet.*"%> <%@page import="javax.mail.*"%> <% InternetAddress from = new InternetAddress("[email protected]", "Webmaster"); InternetAddress to = new InternetAddress("[email protected]", "Jason Thrasher"); String subject = "non-Spring: Hello World"; String content = "Hello World: message body here"; final Properties props = new Properties(); props.setProperty("mail.transport.protocol", "smtp"); props.setProperty("mail.host", "mail.authsmtp.com"); props.setProperty("mail.port", "465"); props.setProperty("mail.username", "myusername"); props.setProperty("mail.password", "secret"); props.setProperty("mail.debug", "true"); props.setProperty("mail.smtp.auth", "true"); props.setProperty("mail.smtp.socketFactory.class", "javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory"); props.setProperty("mail.smtp.socketFactory.fallback", "false"); Session mailSession = Session.getDefaultInstance(props); Message message = new MimeMessage(mailSession); message.setFrom(from); message.setRecipient(Message.RecipientType.TO, to); message.setSubject(subject); message.setContent(content, "text/plain;charset=UTF-8"); Transport trans = mailSession.getTransport(); trans.connect(props.getProperty("mail.host"), Integer .parseInt(props.getProperty("mail.port")), props .getProperty("mail.username"), props .getProperty("mail.password")); trans.sendMessage(message, message .getRecipients(Message.RecipientType.TO)); trans.close(); %> email was sent SOLUTION: Yes, the problem was transitive dependencies of Apache CXF 2. I had to exclude geronimo-javamail_1.4_spec from the build, and just rely on javax's mail-1.4.jar. <dependency> <groupId>org.apache.cxf</groupId> <artifactId>cxf-rt-frontend-jaxws</artifactId> <version>2.2.6</version> <exclusions> <exclusion> <groupId>org.apache.geronimo.specs</groupId> <artifactId>geronimo-javamail_1.4_spec</artifactId> </exclusion> </exclusions> </dependency> Thanks for all of the answers.

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  • Ajax/PHP contact form not able to send mail

    - by Steph
    The funny thing is it did work for one evening. I contacted my host, and they are saying there's no reason it should not be working. I have also attempted to test it in Firebug, but it seemed to be sending. And I specifically put the email address (hosted in my domain) on my email safe list, so that is not the culprit either. Would anyone here take a look at it for me? I'd be so grateful. In the header I have: <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function() { var options = { target: '#alert' }; $('#contactForm').ajaxForm(options); }); $.fn.clearForm = function() { return this.each(function() { var type = this.type, tag = this.tagName.toLowerCase(); if (tag == 'form') return $(':input',this).clearForm(); if (type == 'text' || type == 'password' || tag == 'textarea') this.value = ''; else if (type == 'checkbox' || type == 'radio') this.checked = false; else if (tag == 'select') this.selectedIndex = -1; }); }; </script> Here is the actual form: <form id="contactForm" method="post" action="sendmail.php"> <fieldset> <p>Email Me</p> <div id="fieldset_container"> <label for="name">Your Name:</label> <input type="text" name="name" id="name" /><br /><br /> <label for="email">Email:</label> <input type="text" name="email" id="email" /><br /><br /> <span style="display:none;"> <label for="last">Honeypot:</label> <input type="text" name="last" value="" id="last" /> </span><br /><br /> <label for="message">Comments &amp; Inquiries:</label> <textarea name="message" id="message" cols="" rows=""></textarea><br/> </div> <div id="submit_button"> <input type="submit" name="submit" id="submit" value="Send It" /> </div> </fieldset> </form> <div class="message"><div id="alert"></div></div> Here is the code from my validating page, sendmail.php: <?php // Who you want to recieve the emails from the form. (Hint: generally you.) $sendto = '[email protected]'; // The subject you'll see in your inbox $subject = 'SH Contact Form'; // Message for the user when he/she doesn't fill in the form correctly. $errormessage = 'There seems to have been a problem. May I suggest...'; // Message for the user when he/she fills in the form correctly. $thanks = "Thanks for the email!"; // Message for the bot when it fills in in at all. $honeypot = "You filled in the honeypot! If you're human, try again!"; // Various messages displayed when the fields are empty. $emptyname = 'Entering your name?'; $emptyemail = 'Entering your email address?'; $emptymessage = 'Entering a message?'; // Various messages displayed when the fields are incorrectly formatted. $alertname = 'Entering your name using only the standard alphabet?'; $alertemail = 'Entering your email in this format: <i>[email protected]</i>?'; $alertmessage = "Making sure you aren't using any parenthesis or other escaping characters in the message? Most URLS are fine though!"; //Setting used variables. $alert = ''; $pass = 0; // Sanitizing the data, kind of done via error messages first. Twice is better! ;-) function clean_var($variable) { $variable = strip_tags(stripslashes(trim(rtrim($variable)))); return $variable; } //The first if for honeypot. if ( empty($_REQUEST['last']) ) { // A bunch of if's for all the fields and the error messages. if ( empty($_REQUEST['name']) ) { $pass = 1; $alert .= "<li>" . $emptyname . "</li>"; } elseif ( ereg( "[][{}()*+?.\\^$|]", $_REQUEST['name'] ) ) { $pass = 1; $alert .= "<li>" . $alertname . "</li>"; } if ( empty($_REQUEST['email']) ) { $pass = 1; $alert .= "<li>" . $emptyemail . "</li>"; } elseif ( !eregi("^[_a-z0-9-]+(.[_a-z0-9-]+)*@[a-z0-9-]+(.[a-z0-9-]+)*(.[a-z]{2,3})$", $_REQUEST['email']) ) { $pass = 1; $alert .= "<li>" . $alertemail . "</li>"; } if ( empty($_REQUEST['message']) ) { $pass = 1; $alert .= "<li>" . $emptymessage . "</li>"; } elseif ( ereg( "[][{}()*+?\\^$|]", $_REQUEST['message'] ) ) { $pass = 1; $alert .= "<li>" . $alertmessage . "</li>"; } //If the user err'd, print the error messages. if ( $pass==1 ) { //This first line is for ajax/javascript, comment it or delete it if this isn't your cup o' tea. echo "<script>$(\".message\").hide(\"slow\").show(\"slow\"); </script>"; echo "<b>" . $errormessage . "</b>"; echo "<ul>"; echo $alert; echo "</ul>"; // If the user didn't err and there is in fact a message, time to email it. } elseif (isset($_REQUEST['message'])) { //Construct the message. $message = "From: " . clean_var($_REQUEST['name']) . "\n"; $message .= "Email: " . clean_var($_REQUEST['email']) . "\n"; $message .= "Message: \n" . clean_var($_REQUEST['message']); $header = 'From:'. clean_var($_REQUEST['email']); //Mail the message - for production mail($sendto, $subject, $message, $header, "[email protected]"); //This is for javascript, echo "<script>$(\".message\").hide(\"slow\").show(\"slow\").animate({opacity: 1.0}, 4000).hide(\"slow\"); $(':input').clearForm() </script>"; echo $thanks; die(); //Echo the email message - for development echo "<br/><br/>" . $message; } //If honeypot is filled, trigger the message that bot likely won't see. } else { echo "<script>$(\".message\").hide(\"slow\").show(\"slow\"); </script>"; echo $honeypot; } ?>

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  • iPad connections to Cisco VPN error -- "Enter your user authentication"

    - by rhart
    Is anyone else having problems with the iPad IPSec (Cisco) VPN configuration? I've configured a Cisco VPN connection to a PIX 501 firewall on a 32GB Wifi Apple iPad. This is done in Settings - General - Network - VPN - Add VPN Configuration - IPSec tab. When everything is set up properly and I attempt to connect I just get a popup that says "Enter your user authentication" with no fields to enter either piece of info, and just OK and Cancel buttons. I've read about similar problems with the VPN client built into Mac OS X and the iPhone 3GS but never with the iPad. Does anybody know a solution? I'm not afraid to change the configuration of my PIX 501 if that's necessary.

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  • Using Roboform with PuTTY

    - by Jake
    I recently discovered and fell in love with Roboform. In less than a week it's become indispensable. So far I've only seen Roboform's ability to fill out fields in web browsers and Windows GUI apps. I'm an app developer and sometimes I need to use Telnet/SSH. My SSH client of choice is PuTTY, but I can't find any way to integrate Roboform with PuTTY. Is this possible? If not, is there another [free] SSH client that will work with Roboform?

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  • Google Contacts and Mac OS X Address Book

    - by dyve
    The sync that Google offers for Google Contacts < Mac OS X Address Book is seriously flawed. It doesn't sync automatically, it doesn't sync all contacts, it doesn't sync all fields. See here for a list of warnings and issues. Is there a better way to sync Google Contacts to Mac Address Book bidirectionally? Preferably free, and preferably without adding extra software. I have tried to do it through Plaxo (which has an excellent Mac Address Book sync, albeit through an extra software install), but Plaxo doesn't handle Google Sync well (no updates). UPDATE: For the new Mac OS X Snow Leopard this shouldn't be an issue. This question is looking for a Leopard answer.

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  • Is MySQL better than PostgreSQL in something?

    - by Massimiliano Torromeo
    I know the question sounds provocative but it really isn't. I'm lately finding MySQL limiting in a lot of areas and liking PostgreSQL more and more. It scales a lot better and it respects the SQL standards a lot more than MySQL. I'm still a newbie in the PostgreSQL world though and since I'm willing to move away from MySQL for all my future projects, what I want to know is: is there any particular feature of MySQL that it is done better (as in more performant or more user friendly etc..) than in PostgreSQL? I'm wondering what I'm gonna miss from MySQL. I already found that the AUTO_INCREMENT fields in MySQL are more handy than SEQUENCES in PostgreSQL and the deployment in windows was problematic in the past (not a problem anymore. never a problem for me). What else? Thanks.

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  • Weird canvas/page size printing problem in Adobe Acrobat

    - by Justin
    I am trying to print a document in Adobe Acrobat. For some reason, Acrobat wants to print my document smaller than it actually is, despite having chosen that I DO NOT want the image to be scaled: http://www.freeimagehosting.net/image.php?945fbb3f41.png See the grey area on the top and left of the preview? That's the area that's getting cut off. Notice that the whole preview (INCLUDING the gray areas) is 8.5x11 in. Also look at the paper size, a nice 8.5x11 in. This happens for any real printer I connect to my computer. However, printing to a "fake" software printer is not a problem: Printing to a software printer: Use the above link but change the image name to this: 769eaf59ab.png Any ideas? I've tried messing with the paper sizes but no luck. I can't use "Shrink to printable area" because ultimately I'm doing this to print to a preprinted form (the same issue occurs when I select "Form fields only" but this demonstrates it better).

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  • Deploy to JBoss 7 using Hudson Deploy plugin

    - by Uluk Biy
    I have 2 machines where one of them contains the Hudson CI and other JBoss 7 AS. In Hudson, I have installed "Deploy Plugin", created new job and filled required JBoss manager user connection fields. When I run the job, the project successfully built however the deployment process to remote JBoss AS is not being triggered. No errors or messages about the deployment in log. What should I do? EDIT The deployment is triggered (at least expected) as "Post-build Action" with parameters: [x] Deploy war/ear to a container WAR/EAR files : **/*.war Container : JBoss 7.x Manager user name : test Manager password : * * * * JBoss URL : http://192.168.1.2 JBoss JMX Management port : 9990 It is not a separate job.

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  • Excel - export sheet to fixed-width text file?

    - by jkohlhepp
    I know that Excel has functionality to import fixed-width text files where it presents a dialog that lets you choose where the begins and ends of fields are which it puts into columns. Does it also have functionality where, given an existing spreadsheet, you can export to a fixed-width text file? If so, how do I access this? I have tried using Save As and choosing Text File but it seems to only save as Tab-delimited which doesn't help me. This is Excel 2003 if it matters. Thanks, ~ Justin

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