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IPgallery banks on Solaris SPARC

- by Frederic Pariente

IPgallery is a global supplier of converged legacy and Next Generation Networks (NGN) products and solutions, including: core network components and cloud-based Value Added Services (VAS) for voice, video and data sessions. IPgallery enables network operators and service providers to offer advanced converged voice, chat, video/content services and rich unified social communications in a combined legacy (fixed/mobile), Over-the-Top (OTT) and Social Community (SC) environments for home and business customers. Technically speaking, this offer is a scalable and robust telco solution enabling operators to offer new services while controlling operating expenses (OPEX). In its solutions, IPgallery leverages the following Oracle components: Oracle Solaris, Netra T4 and SPARC T4 in order to provide a competitive and scalable solution without the price tag often associated with high-end systems. Oracle Solaris Binary Application Guarantee A unique feature of Oracle Solaris is the guaranteed binary compatibility between releases of the Solaris OS. That means, if a binary application runs on Solaris 2.6 or later, it will run on the latest release of Oracle Solaris. IPgallery developed their application on Solaris 9 and Solaris 10 then runs it on Solaris 11, without any code modification or rebuild. The Solaris Binary Application Guarantee helps IPgallery protect their long-term investment in the development, training and maintenance of their applications. Oracle Solaris Image Packaging System (IPS) IPS is a new repository-based package management system that comes with Oracle Solaris 11. It provides a framework for complete software life-cycle management such as installation, upgrade and removal of software packages. IPgallery leverages this new packaging system in order to speed up and simplify software installation for the R&D and production environments. Notably, they use IPS to deliver Solaris Studio 12.3 packages as part of the rapid installation process of R&D environments, and during the production software deployment phase, they ensure software package integrity using the built-in verification feature. Solaris IPS thus improves IPgallery's time-to-market with a faster, more reliable software installation and deployment in production environments. Extreme Network Performance IPgallery saw a huge improvement in application performance both in CPU and I/O, when running on SPARC T4 architecture in compared to UltraSPARC T2 servers. The same application (with the same activation environment) running on T2 consumes 40%-50% CPU, while it consumes only 10% of the CPU on T4. The testing environment comprised of: Softswitch (Call management), TappS (Telecom Application Server) and Billing Server running on same machine and initiating various services in capacity of 1000 CAPS (Call Attempts Per Second). In addition, tests showed a huge improvement in the performance of the TCP/IP stack, which reduces network layer processing and in the end Call Attempts latency. Finally, there is a huge improvement within the file system and disk I/O operations; they ran all tests with maximum logging capability and it didn't influence any benchmark values. "Due to the huge improvements in performance and capacity using the T4-1 architecture, IPgallery has engineered the solution with less hardware. This means instead of deploying the solution on six T2-based machines, we will deploy on 2 redundant machines while utilizing Oracle Solaris Zones and Oracle VM for higher availability and virtualization" Shimon Lichter, VP R&D, IPgallery In conclusion, using the unique combination of Oracle Solaris and SPARC technologies, IPgallery is able to offer solutions with much lower TCO, while providing a higher level of service capacity, scalability and resiliency. This low-OPEX solution enables the operator, the end-customer, to deliver a high quality service while maintaining high profitability.

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How to Add Your Gmail Account to Outlook 2013 Using IMAP

- by Lori Kaufman

If you use Outlook to check and manage your email, you can easily use it to check your Gmail account as well. You can setup your Gmail account to allow you to synchronize email across multiple machines using email clients instead of a browser. We will show you how to use IMAP in your Gmail account so you can synchronize your Gmail account across multiple machines, and then how to add your Gmail account to Outlook 2013. To setup your Gmail account to use IMAP, sign in to your Gmail account and go to Mail. Click the Settings button in the upper, right corner of the window and select Settings from the drop-down menu. On the Settings screen, click Forwarding and POP/IMAP. Scroll down to the IMAP Access section and select Enable IMAP. Click Save Changes at the bottom of the screen. Close your browser and open Outlook. To begin adding your Gmail account, click the File tab. On the Account Information screen, click Add Account. On the Add Account dialog box, you can choose the E-mail Account option which automatically sets up your Gmail account in Outlook. To do this enter your name, email address, and the password for your Gmail account twice. Click Next. The progress of the setup displays. The automatic process may or may not work. If the automatic process fails, select Manual setup or additional server types, instead of E-mail Account, and click Next. On the Choose Service screen, select POP or IMAP and click Next. On the POP and IMAP Account Settings enter the User, Server, and Logon Information. For the Server Information, select IMAP from the Account Type drop-down list and enter the following for the incoming and outgoing server information: Incoming mail server: imap.googlemail.com Outgoing mail server (SMTP): smtp.googlemail.com Make sure you enter your full email address for the User Name and select Remember password if you want Outlook to automatically log you in when checking email. Click More Settings. On the Internet E-mail Settings dialog box, click the Outgoing Server tab. Select the My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication and make sure the Use same settings as my incoming mail server option is selected. While still in the Internet E-mail Settings dialog box, click the Advanced tab. Enter the following information: Incoming server: 993 Incoming server encrypted connection: SSL Outgoing server encrypted connection TLS Outgoing server: 587 NOTE: You need to select the type of encrypted connection for the outgoing server before entering 587 for the Outgoing server (SMTP) port number. If you enter the port number first, the port number will revert back to port 25 when you change the type of encrypted connection. Click OK to accept your changes and close the Internet E-mail Settings dialog box. Click Next. Outlook tests the accounts settings by logging into the incoming mail server and sending a test email message. When the test is finished, click Close. You should see a screen saying “You’re all set!”. Click Finish. Your Gmail address displays in the account list on the left with any other email addresses you have added to Outlook. Click the Inbox to see what’s in your Inbox in your Gmail account. Because you’re using IMAP in your Gmail account and you used IMAP to add the account to Outlook, the messages and folders in Outlook reflect what’s in your Gmail account. Any changes you make to folders and any time you move email messages among folders in Outlook, the same changes are made in your Gmail account, as you will see when you log into your Gmail account in a browser. This works the other way as well. Any changes you make to the structure of your account (folders, etc.) in a browser will be reflected the next time you log into your Gmail account in Outlook.

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Sharing configuration settings between Windows Azure roles

- by theo.spears

If you are working on a medium-large Windows Azure project it's likely it will involve more than one role, for example separate web and worker roles. Unfortunately although all the windows azure configuration settings are stored in a single cscfg file, there is no way to share configuration settings between multiple roles. This means you have to duplicate common settings like connection strings across all your roles. There is an open Connect issue about this topic, but Microsoft have not said when they will fix it. In the mean time I've put together a dirty dirty hack cunning workaround that creates a fake role containing your shared configuration settings, and copies it to all roles as part of the build process. Here's how you set it up: 1. Download the zip file attached to this post, and unzip it into the folder containing your Azure project (not your solution folder). 2. Edit your csdef and cscfg files to include the placeholder project ServiceDefinition.csdef<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceDefinition name="AzureSpendNotifier" http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceDefinition%22"http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceDefinition"> <WorkerRole name="GLOBAL"> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="ExampleSetting" /> </ConfigurationSettings> </WorkerRole> <WorkerRole name="MyWorker"> <ConfigurationSettings> </ConfigurationSettings> </WorkerRole> <WebRole name="MyWeb"> <Sites> <Site name="Web"> <Bindings> <Binding name="WebEndpoint" endpointName="WebEndpoint" /> </Bindings> </Site> </Sites> <ConfigurationSettings> </ConfigurationSettings> </WebRole> </ServiceDefinition> ServiceConfiguration.cscfg<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="AzureSpendNotifier" xmlns=http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration osFamily="1" osVersion="*"> <Role name="GLOBAL"> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="ExampleSetting" value="Hello World" /> </ConfigurationSettings> <Instances count="1" /> </Role> <Role name="MyWorker"> <Instances count="1" /> <ConfigurationSettings> </ConfigurationSettings> </Role> <Role name="MyWeb"> <Instances count="1" /> <ConfigurationSettings> </ConfigurationSettings> </Role> </ServiceConfiguration> It is important that all your roles contain a ConfigurationSettings entry in both cscfg and csdef files, even if it's empty- otherwise the shared configuration settings will not be inserted. 3. Open your azure deployment (.ccproj) project in notepad, and add the highlighted line below: ... <Import Project="$(CloudExtensionsDir)Microsoft.CloudService.targets" /> <Import Project="globalsettings/globalsettings.targets" /> </Project> It is important you add this below the Microsoft.CloudService.targets import line, as it replaces some of the rules defined in that file. Visual studio will prompt you to reload the project, say yes. At this point you will have a new Azure role called 'GLOBAL' with settings you can edit through the visual studio properties panel as normal. This role will never be deployed, but any settings you add to it will be copied to all your other roles when deployed or tested locally within visual studio.

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trying to use mod_proxy with httpd and tomcat

- by techsjs2012

I been trying to use mod_proxy with httpd and tomcat... I have on VirtualBox running Scientific Linux which has httpd and tomcat 6 on it.. I made two nodes of tomcat6. I followed this guide like 10 times and still cant get the 2nd node of tomcat working.. http://www.richardnichols.net/2010/08/5-minute-guide-clustering-apache-tomcat/ Here is the lines from my http.conf file <Proxy balancer://testcluster stickysession=JSESSIONID> BalancerMember ajp://127.0.0.1:8009 min=10 max=100 route=node1 loadfactor=1 BalancerMember ajp://127.0.0.1:8109 min=10 max=100 route=node2 loadfactor=1 </Proxy> ProxyPass /examples balancer://testcluster/examples <Location /balancer-manager> SetHandler balancer-manager AuthType Basic AuthName "Balancer Manager" AuthUserFile "/etc/httpd/conf/.htpasswd" Require valid-user </Location> Now here is my server.xml from node1 <?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>   <Server port="8005" shutdown="SHUTDOWN">  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.AprLifecycleListener" SSLEngine="on" />  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.JasperListener" />  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.JreMemoryLeakPreventionListener" />  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.mbeans.ServerLifecycleListener" /> <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.mbeans.GlobalResourcesLifecycleListener" />  <GlobalNamingResources>  <Resource name="UserDatabase" auth="Container" type="org.apache.catalina.UserDatabase" description="User database that can be updated and saved" factory="org.apache.catalina.users.MemoryUserDatabaseFactory" pathname="conf/tomcat-users.xml" /> </GlobalNamingResources>  <Service name="Catalina">         <Connector port="8009" protocol="AJP/1.3" redirectPort="8443" />   <Engine name="Catalina" defaultHost="localhost" jvmRoute="node1">      <Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.UserDatabaseRealm" resourceName="UserDatabase"/>  <Host name="localhost" appBase="webapps" unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true" xmlValidation="false" xmlNamespaceAware="false">     </Host> </Engine> </Service> </Server> now here is the server.xml file from node2 <?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>   <Server port="8105" shutdown="SHUTDOWN">  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.AprLifecycleListener" SSLEngine="on" />  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.JasperListener" />  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.JreMemoryLeakPreventionListener" />  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.mbeans.ServerLifecycleListener" /> <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.mbeans.GlobalResourcesLifecycleListener" />  <GlobalNamingResources>  <Resource name="UserDatabase" auth="Container" type="org.apache.catalina.UserDatabase" description="User database that can be updated and saved" factory="org.apache.catalina.users.MemoryUserDatabaseFactory" pathname="conf/tomcat-users.xml" /> </GlobalNamingResources>  <Service name="Catalina">         <Connector port="8109" protocol="AJP/1.3" redirectPort="8443" />   <Engine name="Catalina" defaultHost="localhost" jvmRoute="node2">      <Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.UserDatabaseRealm" resourceName="UserDatabase"/>  <Host name="localhost" appBase="webapps" unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true" xmlValidation="false" xmlNamespaceAware="false">     </Host> </Engine> </Service> </Server> I dont know what it is. but I been trying for days

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Do MORE with WebCenter - Webcast Overview & TIES Tour

- by Michael Snow

Today's post is from Michelle Huff, Senior Director, Product Management, Oracle WebCenter ````````````````` In case you missed it, I presented on a webcast yesterday focused on how you can “Do More with Oracle WebCenter – Expand Beyond Content Management.” As you may remember, we rebranded Oracle’s Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Suite, which some people knew by the wonderfully techie three-letter acronyms -- UCM, URM & IPM -- to Oracle WebCenter Content last year. Since it’s a unified ECM platform, I’ve seen many customers over the years continue to expand the number of content-centric solutions and application integrations powered by WebCenter throughout their organizations. But, did you know WebCenter also provides portal, collaboration and web experience management capabilities as well? This enables you to leverage your existing investment in the WebCenter platform as well as the information you’re managing to create engaging sites, collaborative spaces, or self-service portals and composite applications. In the webcast I walked through six different ways that you can do more with WebCenter: Collaborative content contribution and sharing environment Share content across intranets and extranets Combine content in composite applications Create targeted online experiences Manage interactive social experiences Optimize multi-channel customer experiences Joining me on the call was Greg Utecht with TIES. TIES is a joint powers cooperative owned by 46 Minnesota school districts, represents 514 schools – and provides software applications, hardware and software, internet service and professional development designed by educators for education. I was having a lot of fun over the past few days talking with Greg about the TIES implementation and future plans with WebCenter. He joined me on the call for a little Q&A to explain how he’s using WebCenter today for their iContent implementation for document management, records management and archiving. And also covered how they have expanded their implementation to create a collaborative space called their HRPay System with WebCenter to facilitate collaboration and to better engage their users within the school districts. During our conversation a few questions came from the audience about their implementation. They were curious to see how the system looked – so let’s take a peak. This first screenshot shows the screen that a human resources or payroll worker in one of our member districts would see upon logging in, based on their credentials and role in their district. This shows the result of clicking on the SUBSCRIBE link on the main page. It allows the user to subscribe to parts of the portal which will e-mail him/her when those are updated in any way. This shows the screen that a human resources or payroll worker in one of our member districts would see upon clicking on the Resources link. This shows the screen that a human resources or payroll worker in one of our member districts would see upon clicking on the Finance Advisory link. It shows the discussion threads and document sharing areas. This shows the screen that appears when the forum topic on the preceding screen is clicked. This shows the screen portlet up close with shared documents. This shows the screen that appears when a shared document is clicked on. Note that there is also a download button and an update button, meaning people can work on these collaboratively. If you missed the webcast, check it out! You can watch the replay OnDemand HERE. If you attended the webcast, thanks for joining - I hoped you learned a little from the session. I learned that kids are getting digital report cards today! Wow, have times changed with technology. Uh oh, is this when I start saying “You know, back in my days…?”

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Build-time dependency resolving coming to Entity Framework. Now, how about those BI tools too?

- by jamiet

Three months ago I wrote a blog post entitled Some thoughts on Visual Studio database references and how they should be used for SQL Server BI where I shared some thoughts on a feature available to database developers in Visual Studio 2010 that I would love to see added to SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), Analysis Services (SSAS) and Reporting Services (SSRS). In there I said: Over the past few weeks I have been making heavy use of the Database tools in Visual Studio 2010 and one of the features that has most impressed me has been database references. Database references allow you to have stored procedures in your database project that refer to objects (tables, views, stored procedures etc…) that exist in other database projects and hence when you build your database project it is able to resolve those references. It occurred to me that similar functionality would be incredibly useful for SQL Server Integration Services(SSIS), Analysis Services (SSAS) & Reporting Services (SSRS) projects. After all reports, packages and data source views are rife with references to database objects – why shouldn’t we be able to have design-time dependency checking in our BI projects the same way that database and .Net developers do? In that blog post I shared links to three Connect submissions where I requested this feature be added to SSIS, SSAS & SSRS. In addition I also submitted a request that the feature be extended to .Net projects so that any reference to a database object in a .Net assembly can be resolved at build time. That Connect submission is at [Entity FX] Use database references to constrain the EDM and overnight it received this comment from Microsoft: We have been working on this feature for a while and and will be available soon This is really good news - it improves the Microsoft developer ecosystem by ensuring invalid references to database references get caught at build time (ideally as part of a Continuous integration build) rather than run time. [Hopefully it might nip this code-first nonsense in the bud too (Ooo...way to incite flame comments :) ) ]. If you want to see this feature in action then check out a video from Teched Europe last month entitled SQL Server Developer Tools Code-named "Juneau" where it is demo'd by Lance Delano and Tim Laverty. The point of this blog post though is not just to draw attention to this forthcoming feature for .Net developers, it is to ask you to petition Microsoft to get this feature added to SSIS/SSAS/SSRS too. After all, we already know (from the video above) that the feature is coming to this new code-name Juneau development environment plus we also know that Juneau will be the development environment for SSIS/SSAS/SSRS as well - is it really much of a stretch to expect the BI tools to have access to this great feature too? I don't think so and if you agree with me then I urge you to vote and add a comment to the Connection submissions that are requesting this feature. They are at: [SSAS] Declare Object Dependancies [SSRS] Declare Object Dependancies [SSIS] Declare Object Dependancies (Update, Apparently someone at Microsoft has deemed it necassary to set this to private and I am not able to change it back even though I submitted it. You can still vote on the other two though.) Let's close that SQL Developer Gap! @Jamiet

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Azure Mobile Services: lessons learned

- by svdoever

When I first started using Azure Mobile Services I thought of it as a nice way to: authenticate my users - login using Twitter, Google, Facebook, Windows Live create tables, and use the client code to create the columns in the table because that is not possible in the Azure Mobile Services UI run some Javascript code on the table crud actions (Insert, Update, Delete, Read) schedule a Javascript to run any 15 or more minutes I had no idea of the magic that was happening inside… where is the data stored? Is it a kind of big table, are relationships between tables possible? those Javascripts on the table crud actions, is that interpreted, what is that exactly? After working for some time with Azure Mobile Services I became a lot wiser: Those tables are just normal tables in an Azure SQL Server 2012 Creating the table columns through client code sucks, at least from my Javascript code, because the columns are deducted from the sent JSON data, and a datetime field is sent as string in JSON, so a string type column is created instead of a datetime column You can connect with SQL Management Studio to the Azure SQL Server, and although you can’t manage your columns through the SQL Management Studio UI, it is possible to just run SQL scripts to drop and create tables and indices When you create a table through SQL script, add the table with the same name in the Azure Mobile Services UI to hook it up and be able to access the table through the provided abstraction layer You can also go to the SQL Database through the Azure Mobile Services UI, and from there get in a web based SQL management studio where you can create columns and manage your data The table crud scripts and the scheduler scripts are full blown node.js scripts, introducing a lot of power with great performance The web based script editor is really powerful, I do most of my editing currently in the editor which has syntax highlighting and code completing. While editing the code JsHint is used for script validation. The documentation on Azure Mobile Services is… suboptimal. It is such a pity that there is no way to comment on it so the community could fill in the missing holes, like which node modules are already loaded, and which modules are available on Azure Mobile Services. Soon I was hacking away on Azure Mobile Services, creating my own database tables through script, and abusing the read script of an empty table named query to implement my own set of “services”. The latest updates to Azure Mobile Services described in the following posts added some great new features like creating web API’s, use shared code from your scripts, command line tools for managing Azure Mobile Services (upload and download scripts for example), support for node modules and git support: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2013/06/14/windows-azure-major-updates-for-mobile-backend-development.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/carlosfigueira/archive/2013/06/14/custom-apis-in-azure-mobile-services.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/carlosfigueira/archive/2013/06/19/custom-api-in-azure-mobile-services-client-sdks.aspx In the mean time I rewrote all my “service-like” table scripts to API scripts, which works like a breeze. Bad thing with the current state of Azure Mobile Services is that the git support is not working if you are a co-administrator of your Azure subscription, and not and administrator (as in my case). Another bad thing is that Cross Origin Request Sharing (CORS) is not supported for the API yet, so no go yet from the browser client for API’s, which is my case. See http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsazure/en-US/2b79c5ea-d187-4c2b-823a-3f3e0559829d/known-limitations-for-source-control-and-custom-api-features for more on these and other limitations. In his talk at Build 2013 Josh Twist showed that there is a work-around for accessing shared script code from the table scripts as well (another limitation mentioned in the post above). I could not find that code in the Votabl2 code example from the presentation at https://github.com/joshtwist/votabl2, but we can grab it from the presentation when it comes online on Channel9. By the way: you can always express your needs and ideas at http://mobileservices.uservoice.com, that’s the place they are listening to (I hope!).

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Critical Threads Optimization

- by Rafael Vanoni

Background One of the more common issues we've been seeing in the field is the growing difficulty in optimizing performance of multi-threaded applications. A good portion of this difficulty is due to the increasing complexity of modern processors that present various degrees of sharing relationships between hardware components. Take any current CMT processor and you'll find any number of CPUs sharing execution pipelines, floating point units, caches, etc. Consequently, applying the traditional recipe of one software thread for each CPU will have varying degrees of success, according to the layout of the underlying hardware. On top of this increasing complexity we've also seen processors with features that aim at dynamically resourcing software threads according to their utilization. Intel's Turbo Boost allows processors to increase their operating frequency if there is enough thermal headroom available and the processor isn't fully utilized. More recently, the SPARC T4 processor introduced dynamic threading, allowing each core to dynamically allocate more resources to its active CPUs. Both cases are in essence recognizing that current processors will be running a wide mix of workloads, some will be designed for throughput, others for low latency. The hardware is providing mechanisms to dynamically resource threads according to their runtime behavior. We're very aware of these challenges in Solaris, and have been working to provide the best out of box performance while providing mechanisms to further optimize applications when necessary. The Critical Threads Optimzation was introduced in Solaris 10 8/11 and Solaris 11 as one such mechanism that allows customers to both address issues caused by contention over shared hardware resources and explicitly take advantage of features such as T4's dynamic threading. What it is The basic idea is to allow performance critical threads to execute with more exclusive access to hardware resources. For example, when deploying an application that implements a producer/consumer model, it'll likely be advantageous to give the producer more exclusive access to the hardware instead of having it competing for resources with all the consumers. In the case of a T4 based system, we may want to have a producer running by itself on a single core and create one consumer for each of the remaining CPUs. With the Critical Threads Optimization we're extending the semantics of scheduling priorities (which thread should run first) to include priority over shared resources (which thread should have more "space"). Now the scheduler will not only run higher priority threads first: it will also provide them with more exclusive access to hardware resources if they are available. How does it work ? Using the previous example in Solaris 11, all you'd have to do would be to place the producer in the Fixed Priority (FX) scheduling class at priority 60, or in the Real Time (RT) class at any priority and Solaris will try to give it more "hardware space". On both Solaris 10 8/11 and Solaris 11 this can be achieved through the existing priocntl(1,2) and priocntlset(2) interfaces. If your application already assigns these priorities to performance critical threads, there's no additional step you need to take. One important aspect of this optimization is that it requires some level of idleness in the system, either as a result of sizing the application before hand or through periods of transient idleness during runtime. If the system is fully committed, the scheduler will put all the available CPUs to work.Best practices If you're an application developer, we encourage you to look into assigning the right priorities for the different threads in your application. Solaris provides different scheduling classes (Time Share, Interactive, Fair Share, Fixed Priority and Real Time) that offer different policies and behaviors. It is not always simple to figure out which set of threads are critical to the performance of a workload, and it may not always be feasible to take advantage of this optimization, but we believe that this can be correctly (and safely) done during development. Overall, the out of box performance in Solaris should meet your workload's requirements. If you are looking into that extra bit of performance, then the Critical Threads Optimization may be what you're looking for.

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Wisdom Lies in Collaborative Power and Intelligence

- by kellsey.ruppel

By Alakh Verma, Director, Platform Technology Solutions In my recent blog posts, I shared insights on Predictive Analytics (Will Predictive Analytics at 'Speed of Thoughts' Help Businesses?), Real Time Decisions (How critical are Real Time decisions in business today?) and their significance in our lives in general and in businesses today. In the current business paradigm shift- with evolutionary social business, it is paramount that businesses look for wisdom in collaborative power and intelligence and equip their employees with the tools to engage with one another. There is an old time saying that 5 sticks tied together are stronger and unable to break as opposed to an individual stick. We have recently witnessed the power of ordinary people uniting together and fought collaboratively using Facebook and Twitter to topple down dictators in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya—and are threatening absolute rule in Syria. And an India one man’s (Anna Hazare) campaign against corruption went viral, bringing thousands to the streets in support. As anyone who has worked in a sizeable organization knows, there is no guarantee that the organization as a whole will perform efficiently and achieve its goals, even if each employee is individually efficient and every team has a high level of productivity. To achieve enterprise productivity, it is necessary not only for individuals and groups to “do things right” by working productively but also for the enterprise as a whole to “do the right things” - form the right teams, make the right decisions, allocate resources correctly, and effectively coordinate activities across the entire organization. Most organizations fall short of the optimal level of enterprise productivity because of one or more of these reasons, all at a great cost to the business. They are disconnected from themselves with various parts of the organization unintentionally working at cross-purposes with each other. Information that exists is not getting shared or reused. Human talent is not being applied where it is most needed. The same problems are being solved repeatedly by multiple groups. Intelligent collaboration through automated business processes has the ability to alter the course of any important business activity, with a potentially dramatic impact on the financial performance of the business. Whether it is a simple email exchange, a physical or virtual meeting, a task force, or a large-scale project, the activity is inherently collaborative. In fact, collaboration can be defined as the work that takes place among people when a business process is not pre-determining how the work should take place. Collaboration is many things: information sharing, brainstorming, problem solving, best practice negotiation, innovation, coordination of activity, alignment of purpose, and so forth. Collaboration is the “white space” between the business processes; it is the glue that holds an organization together, and the lubricant that allows the machinery to keep running. Real time search and collaborative capabilities of the right people with the right content supported by defined processes will provide unparallel wisdom in the organization in the most competitive business environment today. Interestingly, technologies such as Oracle WebCenter offer these capabilities in our Web based business transactions and compliment in the overall collaborative intelligence and power to truly transform organizations to social businesses. Looking to learn more about engaging your employees to collaborate together and providing a complete user experience for your customers? You won't want to miss our webcast today! Drive Online Engagement with Intuitive Portals and Websites

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EPM troubleshooting Utilities

- by THE

(in via Maurice) "Are you keeping up-to-date with the latest troubleshooting utilities introduced from EPM 11.1.2.2? These are typically not described in product documentation, so you might miss references to them. The following five utilities may be run from the command line.(1) Deployment Report was introduced with EPM 11.1.2.2 (11 April 2012). It details logical web addresses, web servers, application ports, database connections, user directories, database repositories configured for the EPM system, data directories used by EPM system products, instance directories, FMW homes, deployment distory, et cetera. It also helps to keep you honest about whether you made changes to the system and at what times! Download Shared Services patch 13530721 to get the backported functionality in EPM 11.1.2.1. Run it from /Oracle/Middleware/user_projects/epmsystem1/bin/epmsys_registry.sh report deployment (on Unix/Linux)\Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\epmsystem1\bin\epmsys_registry.bat report deployment (on Microsoft Windows). The output is saved under \Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\epmsystem1\diagnostics\reports\deployment_report.html (2) Log Analysis has received more "press". It was released with EPM 11.1.2.3 and helps the user to slice and dice EPM logs. It has many parameters which are documented when run without parameters, when run with the -h parameter, or in the 'Readme' file. It has also been released as a standalone utility for EPM 11.1.2.3 and earlier versions. (Sign in to My Oracle Support, click the 'Patches & Updates' tab, enter the patch number 17425397, and click the Search button. Download the appropriate platform-specific zip file, unzip, and read the 'Readme' file. Note that you must provide a proper value to a JAVA_HOME environment variable [pointer to the mother directory of the Java /bin subdirectory] in the loganalysis.bat | .sh file and use the -d parameter when running standalone.) Run it from /Oracle/Middleware/user_projects/epmsystem1/bin/loganalysis.sh -h (on Unix/Linux)\Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\epmsystem1\bin\loganalysis.bat -h (on Microsoft Windows). The output is saved under the \Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\epmsystem1\diagnostics\reports\ subdirectory. (3) The Registry Cleanup command may be used (without fear!) to clean up various corruptions which can affect the Hyperion (database-based) Repository. Run it from /Oracle/Middleware/user_projects/epmsystem1/bin/registry-cleanup.sh (on Unix/Linux)\Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\epmsystem1\bin\registry-cleanup.bat (on Microsoft Windows). The actions are described on the command line. (4) The Remove Instance Command is only used if there are two or more instances configured on one computer and one of those should be deleted. Run it from /Oracle/Middleware/user_projects/epmsystem1/bin/remove-instance.sh (on Unix/Linux)\Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\epmsystem1\bin\remove-instance.bat (on Microsoft Windows). (5) The Reset Configuration Tool was introduced with EPM 11.1.2.2. It nullifies Shared Services Hyperion Registry settings so that a service may be reconfigured. You may locate the values to substitute for <product> or <task> by scanning registry.html (generated by running epmsys_registry.bat | .sh). Find productNAME in INSTANCE_TASKS_CONFIGURATION and SYSTEM_TASKS_CONFIGURATION nodes and identify tasks by property pairs that have values of 'Configurated' or 'Pending'. Run it from /Oracle/Middleware/user_projects/epmsystem1/bin/resetConfigTask.sh -product <product> -task <task> (on Unix/Linux)\Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\epmsystem1\bin\resetConfigTask.bat -product <product> -task <task> (on Microsoft Windows). "Thanks to Maurice for this collection of utilities.

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Sunshine after the iCloud release?

- by Laila

"Why should I believe them? They're the ones that brought us MobileMe? It was not our finest hour, but we learned a lot." Steve Jobs June 6th 2011 Apple's new cloud service has been met with uncritical excitement by industry commentators. It is wonderful what a rename can do. Apple has had a 'cloud' offering for three years called MobileMe, successor to .MAC and iTools, so iCloud is now the fourth internet service Apple have attempted. If this had been Microsoft, there would have been catcalls all around the blogosphere. I'll admit that there is a lot more functionality announced for iCloud than MobileMe has ever managed to achieve, but then almost anything has more functionality than MobileMe. It's an expensive service (£120 a year in the UK, $90 in the states), launched as far back as June 9, 2008, that has delivered very little and suffered a string of technical problems; the documentation was mainly a community effort, built up gradually by the frustrated and angry users. It was supposed to synchronise PC Outlook calendars but couldn't manage Microsoft Exchange (Google could, of course). It used WebDAV to allow Windows users to attach to the filestore, but didn't document how to do it. The method for downloading and uploading files to the cloud-based filestore was ridiculously clunky. It allowed you to post photos on a public site, but forgot to include a way of deleting photos. I could go on with the list, but you can explore the many sites that have flourished to inhabit the support-vacuum left by Apple. MobileMe should have had all the bright new clever things announced for iCloud. Apple dropped the ball, and allowed services such as Flickr to fill the void. However, their PR skills are such that, a name-change later (the .ME.com email address remains), it has turned a rout into a victory, and hundreds of earnest bloggers have been extolling Apple's expertise in cloud matters. This must be frustrating for the other cloud providers who have quietly got the technology working right. I wish iCloud well, even though I resent the expensive mess they made of MobileMe. Apple promise that iCloud will sync files, apps, app data, and media across all the different iOS5 devices, Macs, and PCs. It also hopes to sync music across devices, but not video content. They've offered existing MobileMe users free use of the MobileMe service for a year as the product is morphed, and they will be able to transfer to iCloud when it is launched in the autumn. On June 30, 2012, MobileMe will die, and Apple's iWeb is also soon to join iTools and .MAC in the hereafter. So why get excited about iCloud? That all depends on the level of PC integration. Whereas iOS5 machines will be full participants in the new world of data-sharing (Sorry iPod Touch users) what about .NET libraries? There is talk of synchronising 'My Pictures' libraries with iOS5 and iMac machines, but little more detail as yet. Apple has a lot to prove with iCloud and anyone with actual experience of their past attempts to get into cloud services will be wary.

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Best Practices - Core allocation

- by jsavit

This post is one of a series of "best practices" notes for Oracle VM Server for SPARC (also called Logical Domains) Introduction SPARC T-series servers currently have up to 4 CPU sockets, each of which has up to 8 or (on SPARC T3) 16 CPU cores, while each CPU core has 8 threads, for a maximum of 512 dispatchable CPUs. The defining feature of Oracle VM Server for SPARC is that each domain is assigned CPU threads or cores for its exclusive use. This avoids the overhead of software-based time-slicing and emulation (or binary rewriting) of system state-changing privileged instructions used in traditional hypervisors. To create a domain, administrators specify either the number of CPU threads or cores that the domain will own, as well as its memory and I/O resources. When CPU resources are assigned at the individual thread level, the logical domains constraint manager attempts to assign threads from the same cores to a domain, and avoid "split core" situations where the same CPU core is used by multiple domains. Sometimes this is unavoidable, especially when domains are allocated and deallocated CPUs in small increments. Why split cores can matter Split core allocations can silenty reduce performance because multiple domains with different address spaces and memory contents are sharing the core's Level 1 cache (L1$). This is called false cache sharing since even identical memory addresses from different domains must point to different locations in RAM. The effect of this is increased contention for the cache, and higher memory latency for each domain using that core. The degree of performance impact can be widely variable. For applications with very small memory working sets, and with I/O bound or low-CPU utilization workloads, it may not matter at all: all machines wait for work at the same speed. If the domains have substantial workloads, or are critical to performance then this can have an important impact: This blog entry was inspired by a customer issue in which one CPU core was split among 3 domains, one of which was the control and service domain. The reported problem was increased I/O latency in guest domains, but the root cause might be higher latency servicing the I/O requests due to the control domain being slowed down. What to do about it Split core situations are easily avoided. In most cases the logical domain constraint manager will avoid it without any administrative action, but it can be entirely prevented by doing one of the several actions: Assign virtual CPUs in multiples of 8 - the number of threads per core. For example: ldm set-vcpu 8 mydomain or ldm add-vcpu 24 mydomain. Each domain will then be allocated on a core boundary. Use the whole core constraint when assigning CPU resources. This allocates CPUs in increments of entire cores instead of virtual CPU threads. The equivalent of the above commands would be ldm set-core 1 mydomain or ldm add-core 3 mydomain. Older syntax does the same thing by adding the -c flag to the add-vcpu, rm-vcpu and set-vcpu commands, but the new syntax is recommended. When whole core allocation is used an attempt to add cores to a domain fails if there aren't enough completely empty cores to satisfy the request. See https://blogs.oracle.com/sharakan/entry/oracle_vm_server_for_sparc4 for an excellent article on this topic by Eric Sharakan. Don't obsess: - if the workloads have minimal CPU requirements and don't need anywhere near a full CPU core, then don't worry about it. If you have low utilization workloads being consolidated from older machines onto a current T-series, then there's no need to worry about this or to assign an entire core to domains that will never use that much capacity. In any case, make sure the most important domains have their own CPU cores, in particular the control domain and any I/O or service domain, and of course any important guests. Summary Split core CPU allocation to domains can potentially have an impact on performance, but the logical domains manager tends to prevent this situation, and it can be completely and simply avoided by allocating virtual CPUs on core boundaries.

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Let Me Show You Something: Instagram, Vine and Snapchat for Brands

- by Mike Stiles

While brands are well aware of how much more impactful images are than text-only posts on social channels, today you’re additionally being presented with platform after additional platform for hosting, doctoring and sharing photos and videos. Can you play in every sandbox? And if you do, can you be brilliant on all of them? As has usually been the case, so far brands are sticking their toes into new platforms while not actually committing to them, or strategizing for them, or resourcing them. TrackMaven found of the 123 F500 companies using Instagram, only 22% of them are active on it. Likewise, research from Simply Measured found brands are indeed jumping in, with the number establishing a presence on Instagram up 55% over the past year. Users want them there…brand engagement has exploded 350%, and over 1/3 of the top brands have at least 10,000 followers. BUT…the top 10 brands are generating 33% of all posts, reaping 83% of all engagement. Things are also growing on Twitter’s Vine, the 6-second looping video app that hit 40 million users in August. The 7th Chamber says 5 tweets a second contain a Vine link. Other studies say branded Vines are 4 times more likely to be shared and seen than rank-and-file branded videos. Why? Users know that even if a video is pure junk, they won’t get robbed of too much of their valuable time. Vine is always upgrading so you can make sure your videos are worth viewers’ time. You can now edit videos, and save & work on several projects concurrently. What you can’t do is upload a finely crafted video into Vine, but you can do that with Instagram. The key to success? Same as with all other content; make it of value. Deliver a laugh or a lesson or both. How-to, behind the scenes peeks, contests, demos, all make sense in the short video format. Or follow Nash Grier’s example, which is to just have fun with and connect to your viewers, earning their trust that your next Vine will be as good as the last. Nash is only 15, has over 1.4 million followers, and adds about 100,000 a week. He broke out when one of his videos was re-Vined by some other kid with 300,000 followers. Make good stuff, get it in front of influencers, and your brand Vines could break out as well. Then there’s Snapchat, the “this photo will self destruct” platform. How can that be of use to brands besides offering coupons that really expire? The jury is out. But with an audience of over 100 million and a valuation of $800 million, media-with-a-time-limit is compelling. Now there’s “Snapchat Stories” that can last 24 hours and be shared to the public at large. You might be able to capitalize on how much more focus gets put on content when there’s a time limit on its availability. The underlying truth to all of this is, these are all tools. Very cool, feature rich tools, but tools. You can give the exact same art kit to 5 different people and you’d get back 5 very different works, ranging from worthless garbage to masterpiece. Brands are being called upon to be still and moving image artists. That’s what your customers are used to seeing, from a variety of sources. Commit to communicating with them accordingly. @mikestiles Photo: stock.xchng

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How to safely copy an object?

- by Prog

This question is going to be a little long. Please bear with me. Something that happened in a project of mine made me think about how to safely copy objects. I'll present the situation I had and then ask a question. There was a class SomeClass: class SomeClass{ Thing[] things; public SomeClass(Thing[] things){ this.things = things; } // irrelevant stuff omitted public SomeClass copy(){ return new SomeClass(things); } } There was another class Processor that takes SomeClass objects, copies them (via someClassInstance.copy()), manipulates the copy's state, and returns the copy. Here it is: class Processor{ public SomeClass processObject(SomeClass object){ SomeClass copy = object.copy(); manipulateTheCopy(copy); return copy; } // irrelevant stuff omitted } I ran this, and it had bugs. I looked into these bugs, and it turned out that the manipulations Processor does on copy actually affect not only the copy, but also the original SomeClass object that was passed into processObject. I found out that it was because the original and the copy shared state - because the original passed it's field things into the copy when creating it. This made me realize that copying objects is harder than simply instantiating them with the same fields as the original. For the two objects to be completely disconnected, without any shared state, each of the fields passed to the copy also has to be copied. And if that object contains other objects - they have to be copied too. And so on. So basically, in order to be able to actually copy an object, each class in the system must have a copy() method, that also invokes copy() on all of it's fields, and so on. So for example, for copy() in SomeClass to work, it needs to look like this: public SomeClass copy(){ Thing[] copyThings = new Thing[things.length]; for(int i=0; i<things.length; i++) copyThings[i] = things[i].copy(); return new SomeClass(copyThings); } And if Thing has object fields of it's own, than it's own copy() method must be appropriate: class Thing{ Apple apple; Pencil pencil; int number; public Thing(Apple apple, Pencil pencil, int number){ this.apple = apple; this.pencil = pencil; this.number = number; } public Thing copy(){ // 'number' is a primitve. return new Thing(apple.getCopy(), pencil.getCopy(), number); } } And so on. Of course, instead of all classes having a copy() method, the copying mechanism can happen in all of the getters and the constructors of classes (unless places where it isn't suitable, for example when the field points to an external object, not to an object that 'is part' of this object). Still, that means that in order to be able to safely copy an object - most classes would have to have copying mechanisms in their getters. My question is divided into two parts: How frequently do you need to get a copy of an object? Is this a regular issue? Is the technique described common and/or reasonable? Or is there a better way to make safe copies of objects? Or is there an easier way to safely copy objects, without them sharing any state?

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DBA Best Practices - A Blog Series: Episode 2 - Password Lists

- by Argenis

Digital World, Digital Locks One of the biggest digital assets that any company has is its secrets. These include passwords, key rings, certificates, and any other digital asset used to protect another asset from tampering or unauthorized access. As a DBA, you are very likely to manage some of these assets for your company - and your employer trusts you with keeping them safe. Probably one of the most important of these assets are passwords. As you well know, the can be used anywhere: for service accounts, credentials, proxies, linked servers, DTS/SSIS packages, symmetrical keys, private keys, etc., etc. Have you given some thought to what you're doing to keep these passwords safe? Are you backing them up somewhere? Who else besides you can access them? Good-Ol’ Post-It Notes Under Your Keyboard If you have a password-protected Excel sheet for your passwords, I have bad news for you: Excel's level of encryption is good for your grandma's budget spreadsheet, not for a list of enterprise passwords. I will try to summarize the main point of this best practice in one sentence: You should keep your passwords on an encrypted, access and version-controlled, backed-up, well-known shared location that every DBA on your team is aware of, and maintain copies of this password "database" on your DBA's workstations. Now I have to break down that statement to you: - Encrypted: what’s the point of saving your passwords on a file that any Windows admin with enough privileges can read? - Access controlled: This one is pretty much self-explanatory. - Version controlled: Passwords change (and I’m really hoping you do change them) and version control would allow you to track what a previous password was if the utility you’ve chosen doesn’t handle that for you. - Backed-up: You want a safe copy of the password list to be kept offline, preferably in long term storage, with relative ease of restoring. - Well-known shared location: This is critical for teams: what good is a password list if only one person in the team knows where it is? I have seen multiple examples of this that work well. They all start with an encrypted database. Certainly you could leverage SQL Server's native encryption solutions like cell encryption for this. I have found such implementations to be impractical, for the most part. Enter The World Of Utilities There are a myriad of open source/free software solutions to help you here. One of my favorites is KeePass, which creates encrypted files that can be saved to a network share, Sharepoint, etc. KeePass has UIs for most operating systems, including Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android and Windows Phone. Other solutions I've used before worth mentioning include PasswordSafe and 1Password, with the latter one being a paid solution – but wildly popular in mobile devices. There are, of course, even more "enterprise-level" solutions available from 3rd party vendors. The truth is that most of the customers that I work with don't need that level of protection of their digital assets, and something like a KeePass database on Sharepoint suits them very well. What are you doing to safeguard your passwords? Leave a comment below, and join the discussion! Cheers, -Argenis

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Free hosting solution for a very low-traffic website [duplicate]

- by user966939

This question already has an answer here: How to find web hosting that meets my requirements? 4 answers I run a very low-traffic website (about 40 users, basically all of which are daily active on the site). I don't see it changing anytime soon either, as there is no way to sign up on the site right now. Until now I have just been using a sub-directory on a friend's host (shared), to host the web site. But in only a few weeks from now, his subscription will end, and he has no plans on renewing it. So of course this means I'll have to move on to something else. But I don't think I'll find someone who'd be willing to share a... shared host with me again. And besides, the software used on that server is ancient (PHP 4.4.9 + MySQL 4.1.22). There's one obvious solution that comes to mind, I guess: choose a better host and pay for it myself. The problem here is that I have no real fixed income, as I'm only a student. So even if the pricing is dirt cheap, I just can't be certain I will be able to afford it, every single month, for... at least 2 years maybe? So I've looked at free hosting solutions instead. The least requirement I had was that it was completely free of ads. But no matter where I look, I always find something in a corner or two ("what can you expect from a free host?" - yeah I know, but I guess it was worth a shot). For example, on Byethost (one of the free hosts I tried), if you trigger a PHP error while error reporting is set to E_ALL, you will spawn some hidden ad... Besides Byethost, I've tried 000Webhost, x10Hosting, 2Freehosting/1Freehosting, Wink.ws, and they are only worse. Okay, I'm running low on ideas. But! What if I just hosted the site myself, on my own computer? That could work. I actually do have my computer on practically 24/7. But not really. Sometimes I need to reboot it, and sometimes we even have power outages. And what if the hardware needs an upgrade? It's not such a big deal for me if the site went down, because I know what's going on; but what about the users? If I do decide to host it myself, is there some way to show users an alternate page instead of them just seeing a generic "server not found" page in the browser when the site is not accessible? Or is there something I have been missing out on? Is there a different kind of "web hosting" solution out there that I haven't heard of? Here is what I'm really looking for: Free (as in, no costs) NO ads Bandwidth enough for a low-traffic forum with roughly 40 users (Semi-)Up-to-date PHP and MySQL (at least not older than a year) No standard (non-extension) PHP functions turned off - such as sleep() The mbstring extension is enabled Disk space: at least 5 MB At least one MySQL database Some bonus points would be: Max execution time of PHP scripts can be set Remote access to MySQL database What would be the best solution for me? Is there one?

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Security Access Control With Solaris Virtualization

- by Thierry Manfe-Oracle

Numerous Solaris customers consolidate multiple applications or servers on a single platform. The resulting configuration consists of many environments hosted on a single infrastructure and security constraints sometimes exist between these environments. Recently, a customer consolidated many virtual machines belonging to both their Intranet and Extranet on a pair of SPARC Solaris servers interconnected through Infiniband. Virtual Machines were mapped to Solaris Zones and one security constraint was to prevent SSH connections between the Intranet and the Extranet. This case study gives us the opportunity to understand how the Oracle Solaris Network Virtualization Technology —a.k.a. Project Crossbow— can be used to control outbound traffic from Solaris Zones. Solaris Zones from both the Intranet and Extranet use an Infiniband network to access a ZFS Storage Appliance that exports NFS shares. Solaris global zones on both SPARC servers mount iSCSI LU exported by the Storage Appliance. Non-global zones are installed on these iSCSI LU. With no security hardening, if an Extranet zone gets compromised, the attacker could try to use the Storage Appliance as a gateway to the Intranet zones, or even worse, to the global zones as all the zones are reachable from this node. One solution consists in using Solaris Network Virtualization Technology to stop outbound SSH traffic from the Solaris Zones. The virtualized network stack provides per-network link flows. A flow classifies network traffic on a specific link. As an example, on the network link used by a Solaris Zone to connect to the Infiniband, a flow can be created for TCP traffic on port 22, thereby a flow for the ssh traffic. A bandwidth can be specified for that flow and, if set to zero, the traffic is blocked. Last but not least, flows are created from the global zone, which means that even with root privileges in a Solaris zone an attacker cannot disable or delete a flow. With the flow approach, the outbound traffic of a Solaris zone is controlled from outside the zone. Schema 1 describes the new network setting once the security has been put in place. Here are the instructions to create a Crossbow flow as used in Schema 1 : (GZ)# zoneadm -z zonename halt ...halts the Solaris Zone. (GZ)# flowadm add-flow -l iblink -a transport=TCP,remote_port=22 -p maxbw=0 sshFilter ...creates a flow on the IB partition "iblink" used by the zone to connect to the Infiniband. This IB partition can be identified by intersecting the output of the commands 'zonecfg -z zonename info net' and 'dladm show-part'. The flow is created on port 22, for the TCP traffic with a zero maximum bandwidth. The name given to the flow is "sshFilter". (GZ)# zoneadm -z zonename boot ...restarts the Solaris zone now that the flow is in place.Solaris Zones and Solaris Network Virtualization enable SSH access control on Infiniband (and on Ethernet) without the extra cost of a firewall. With this approach, no change is required on the Infiniband switch. All the security enforcements are put in place at the Solaris level, minimizing the impact on the overall infrastructure. The Crossbow flows come in addition to many other security controls available with Oracle Solaris such as IPFilter and Role Based Access Control, and that can be used to tackle security challenges.

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MVC Communication Pattern

- by Kedu

This is kind of a follow up question to this http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23743285/model-view-controller-and-callbacks, but I wanted to post it separately, because its kind of a different topic. I'm working on a multiplayer cardgame for the Android platform. I split the project into MVC which fits the needs pretty good, but I'm currently stuck because I can't figure out a good way to communicate between the different parts. I have everything setup and working with the controller being a big state machine, which is called over and over from the gameloop, and calls getter methods from the GUI and the android/network part to get the input. The input itself in the GUI and network is set by inputlisteners that set a local variable which I read in the getter method. So far so good, this is working. But my problem is, the controller has to check every input separately,so if I want to add an input I have to check in which states its valid and call the getter method from all these states. This is not good, and lets the code look pretty ugly, makes additions uncomfortable and adds redundance. So what I've got from the question I mentioned above is that some kind of command or event pattern will fit my needs. What I want to do is to create a shared and threadsafe queue in the controller and instead of calling all these getter methods, I just check the queue for new input and proceed it. On the other side, the GUI and network don't have all these getters, but instead create an event or command and send it to the controller through, for example, observer/observable. Now my problem: I can't figure out a way, for these commands/events to fit a common interface (which the queue can store) and still transport different kind of data (button clicks, cards that are played, the player id the command comes from, synchronization data etc.). If I design the communication as command pattern, I have to stick all the information that is needed to execute the command into it when its created, that's impossible because the GUI or network has no knowledge of all the things the controller needs to execute stuff that needs to be done when for example a card is played. I thought about getting this stuff into the command when executing it. But over all the different commands I have, I would need all the information the controller has, and thus give the command a reference to the controller which would make everything in it public, which is real bad design I guess. So, I could try some kind of event pattern. I have to transport data in the event. So, like the command, I would have an interface, which all events have in common, and can be stored in the shared queue. I could create a big enum with all the different events that a are possible, save one of these enums in the actual event, and build a big switch case for the events, to proceed different stuff for different events. The problem here: I have different data for all the events. But I need a common interface, to store the events in a queue. How do I get the specific data, if I can only access the event through the interface? Even if that wouldn't be a problem, I'm creating another big switch case, which looks ugly, and when i want to add a new event, I have to create the event itself, the case, the enum, and the method that's called with the data. I could of course check the event with the enum and cast it to its type, so I can call event type specific methods that give me the data I need, but that looks like bad design too.

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Faster Memory Allocation Using vmtasks

- by Steve Sistare

You may have noticed a new system process called "vmtasks" on Solaris 11 systems: % pgrep vmtasks 8 % prstat -p 8 PID USERNAME SIZE RSS STATE PRI NICE TIME CPU PROCESS/NLWP 8 root 0K 0K sleep 99 -20 9:10:59 0.0% vmtasks/32 What is vmtasks, and why should you care? In a nutshell, vmtasks accelerates creation, locking, and destruction of pages in shared memory segments. This is particularly helpful for locked memory, as creating a page of physical memory is much more expensive than creating a page of virtual memory. For example, an ISM segment (shmflag & SHM_SHARE_MMU) is locked in memory on the first shmat() call, and a DISM segment (shmflg & SHM_PAGEABLE) is locked using mlock() or memcntl(). Segment operations such as creation and locking are typically single threaded, performed by the thread making the system call. In many applications, the size of a shared memory segment is a large fraction of total physical memory, and the single-threaded initialization is a scalability bottleneck which increases application startup time. To break the bottleneck, we apply parallel processing, harnessing the power of the additional CPUs that are always present on modern platforms. For sufficiently large segments, as many of 16 threads of vmtasks are employed to assist an application thread during creation, locking, and destruction operations. The segment is implicitly divided at page boundaries, and each thread is given a chunk of pages to process. The per-page processing time can vary, so for dynamic load balancing, the number of chunks is greater than the number of threads, and threads grab chunks dynamically as they finish their work. Because the threads modify a single application address space in compressed time interval, contention on locks protecting VM data structures locks was a problem, and we had to re-scale a number of VM locks to get good parallel efficiency. The vmtasks process has 1 thread per CPU and may accelerate multiple segment operations simultaneously, but each operation gets at most 16 helper threads to avoid monopolizing CPU resources. We may reconsider this limit in the future. Acceleration using vmtasks is enabled out of the box, with no tuning required, and works for all Solaris platform architectures (SPARC sun4u, SPARC sun4v, x86). The following tables show the time to create + lock + destroy a large segment, normalized as milliseconds per gigabyte, before and after the introduction of vmtasks: ISM system ncpu before after speedup ------ ---- ------ ----- ------- x4600 32 1386 245 6X X7560 64 1016 153 7X M9000 512 1196 206 6X T5240 128 2506 234 11X T4-2 128 1197 107 11x DISM system ncpu before after speedup ------ ---- ------ ----- ------- x4600 32 1582 265 6X X7560 64 1116 158 7X M9000 512 1165 152 8X T5240 128 2796 198 14X (I am missing the data for T4 DISM, for no good reason; it works fine). The following table separates the creation and destruction times: ISM, T4-2 before after ------ ----- create 702 64 destroy 495 43 To put this in perspective, consider creating a 512 GB ISM segment on T4-2. Creating the segment would take 6 minutes with the old code, and only 33 seconds with the new. If this is your Oracle SGA, you save over 5 minutes when starting the database, and you also save when shutting it down prior to a restart. Those minutes go directly to your bottom line for service availability.

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Using WPF and SlimDx (DirectX 10/11)

- by slurmomatic

I am using SlimDX with WinForms for a while now, but want to make the switch to WPF now. However, I can't figure out how to get DX10/11 working with WPF. The February release of SlimDX provides a WPF example, which only works with DX 9 though. I found the following solution: http://jmorrill.hjtcentral.com/Home/tabid/428/EntryId/437/Direct3D-10-11-Direct2D-in-WPF.aspx but can't get it to work with SlimDX. My main problem is the shared resource handle as I don't know how to retrieve the shared handle from a SlimDX texture. I can't find any information to this topic. In C++ the code looks like this: HRESULT D3DImageEx::GetSharedHandle(IUnknown *pUnknown, HANDLE * pHandle) { HRESULT hr = S_OK; *pHandle = NULL; IDXGIResource* pSurface; if (FAILED(hr = pUnknown->QueryInterface(__uuidof(IDXGIResource), (void**)&pSurface))) return hr; hr = pSurface->GetSharedHandle(pHandle); pSurface->Release(); return hr; } Basically, what I want to do (because I think that this is the solution), is to share a texture between a Direct3d9DeviceEx (for rendering the WPF D3DImage) and a Direct3d10Device (a texture render target for my scene). Any pointers in the right direction are greatly appreciated.

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Cannot import the following keyfile: blah.pfx. The keyfile may be password protected.

- by JasonD

We just upgraded our Visual Studio 2008 projects to VS2010. All of our assemblies were strong signed using a Verisign code signing certificate. Since the upgrade we continuously get the following error: Cannot import the following key file: companyname.pfx. The key file may be password protected. To correct this, try to import the certificate again or manually install the certificate to the Strong Name CSP with the following key container name: VS_KEY_3E185446540E7F7A This happens on some developer machines and not others. Some methods used to fix this that worked some of the time include: re-installing the key file from Windows Explorer (right click on the PFX file and click Install) installing VS2010 on a fresh machine for the first time prompts you for the password the first time you open the project, and then it works. On machines upgraded from VS2008, you don't get this option. I've tried using the SN.EXE utility to register the key with the Strong Name CSP as the error message suggests, but whenever I run the tool with any options using the version that came with VS2010, SN.EXE just lists its command line arguments instead of doing anything. This happens regardless of what arguments I supply. Does anyone know WHY this is happening, and have clear steps to fix it? I'm about to give up on Click Once installs and Microsoft Code Signing. Thanks for any help!

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Very slow performance deserializing using datacontractserializer in a Silverlight Application.

- by caryden

Here is the situation: Silverlight 3 Application hits an asp.net hosted WCF service to get a list of items to display in a grid. Once the list is brought down to the client it is cached in IsolatedStorage. This is done by using the DataContractSerializer to serialize all of these objects to a stream which is then zipped and then encrypted. When the application is relaunched, it first loads from the cache (reversing the process above) and the deserializes the objects using the DataContractSerializer.ReadObject() method. All of this was working wonderfully under all scenarios until recently with the entire "load from cache" path (decrypt/unzip/deserialize) taking hundreds of milliseconds at most. On some development machines but not all (all machines Windows 7) the deserialize process - that is the call to ReadObject(stream) takes several minutes an seems to lock up the entire machine BUT ONLY WHEN RUNNING IN THE DEBUGGER in VS2008. Running the Debug configuration code outside the debugger has no problem. One thing that seems to look suspicious is that when you turn on stop on Exceptions, you can see that the ReadObject() throws many, many System.FormatException's indicating that a number was not in the correct format. When I turn off "Just My Code" thousands of these get dumped to the screen. None go unhandled. These occur both on the read back from the cache AND on a deserialization at the conclusion of a web service call to get the data from the WCF Service. HOWEVER, these same exceptions occur on my laptop development machine that does not experience the slowness at all. And FWIW, my laptop is really old and my desktop is a 4 core, 6GB RAM beast. Again, no problems unless running under the debugger in VS2008. Anyone else seem this? Any thoughts? Here is the bug report link: https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/539609/very-slow-performance-deserializing-using-datacontractserializer-in-a-silverlight-application-only-in-debugger

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Calling WCF service with parameter using jQuery

- by Remi Despres-Smyth

I'm trying to call a WCF web service hosted by IIS using jQuery. I can call it fine without any parameters, and I can also call it fine with a GET request that includes my parameter, but as soon as I try to send in the request via POST, the call is failing. The web service is currently nothing but: [OperationContract, WebInvoke] public ValidationResultSummary TestValidateOn( object day) { return null; } I've set the parameter to object, to make sure the issue isn't something with type coercion. With a breakpoint in the web service, I know the call without parameters as well as the GET call with param succeeds; in the latter the expected value is sent up. Calling code looks like: $.ajax({ // type: "GET", // url: "../Shared/Services/DomainServices.svc/TestValidateOn?day='12/Jan/2010'", type: "POST", url: "../Shared/Services/DomainServices.svc/TestValidateOn", // data: "{ }", --This works if object type param, calls with null data: "{'day': " + selectedDate + "}", // This fails miserably // data: "{'day': '" + selectedDate + "'}", --This also fails miserably contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8", dataType: "json", success: function(data) { displayResults(data.d); }, error: function(xmlHttpReq, status, errThrown) { displayError(xmlHttpReq, status, errThrown); } }); The POST call never reaches my breakpoint, and on the client, error 500 - "Internal Server Error" - is returned. Any help would be appreciated.

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Managing Dependency Hell with WiX and C#

- by Tom the Junglist

We are on the eve of product launch, and at the last minute I am being bombarded with crash reports that appear to be related to our installer, which is a WiX3 project with separate outputs for x86 and x64 builds. These have been an ongoing problem that I always thought were fixed, only to find out that they were still lurking. The product itself is a collection of binaries that communicate with each other via .Net remoting, including a Windows Service and a small COM component that is loaded as an addon in another app. The service runs as SYSTEM, the COM piece runs in a low-rights context, while the other pieces run in normal user contexts. Other pieces include an third-party COM object library DLL and a shared DLL with the .net Remoting interfaces. I've observed flat-out weird behavior with MSI, particularly on version upgrades. Between MS' anal strong-name implementation (specifically, the exact version check before loading a given assembly), a documented WiX/MSI bug that sees critical files erased on upgrades (essentially, if a file in the upgrade MSI has the same version number as the existing install, that file is deleted), and having to work around Wow64 virtualization (x86 MSI can only write to registry/HD locations via Wow64, yet x64 MSIs cannot run on x86 computers...), I am about ready to trash the whole thing and port it over to a different install system. What I am looking for on tips + tricks, techniques, or suggestions on how to properly do things so that I am not fighting with Windows Installer's twisted sense of logic. I am tired of fighting with WiX/MSI/Windows Installer. All it needs to do is place files and registry keys where I tell it to, upgrade them when appropriate, and don't delete anything until the user uninstalls. Instead, dependencies are deleted willy-nilly, bringing up a whole bunch of uncatchable exceptions (can't wrap a try{} block around function declarations) and GPF'ing the whole app. I am particularly interested in 'best practices' and examples regarding shared and dependency DLLs, and any tips on making sure if a file needs to go to GAC, that it actually goes to the GAC and stays there until it is appropriate to remove it. Thanks! Tom

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pylucene: install error

- by Pradeep

I am trying to install Pylucene (pylucene-3.3-3-src.tar.gz) on my ubuntu linux 11.10. I have python 2.7.2. I was able to compile JCC (I think) because I didnt see any error when I installed it. When I tried to install Pylucene I get the following error. Can someone help? Thanks. ICU not installed /usr/bin/python -m jcc --shared --jar lucene-java-3.3/lucene/build/lucene-core-3.3.jar --jar lucene-java-3.3/lucene/build/contrib/analyzers/common/lucene-analyzers-3.3.jar --jar lucene-java-3.3/lucene/build/contrib/memory/lucene-memory-3.3.jar --jar lucene-java-3.3/lucene/build/contrib/highlighter/lucene-highlighter-3.3.jar --jar build/jar/extensions.jar --jar lucene-java-3.3/lucene/build/contrib/queries/lucene-queries-3.3.jar --jar lucene-java-3.3/lucene/build/contrib/grouping/lucene-grouping-3.3.jar --package java.lang java.lang.System java.lang.Runtime --package java.util java.util.Arrays java.util.HashMap java.util.HashSet java.text.SimpleDateFormat java.text.DecimalFormat java.text.Collator --package java.util.regex --package java.io java.io.StringReader java.io.InputStreamReader java.io.FileInputStream --exclude org.apache.lucene.queryParser.Token --exclude org.apache.lucene.queryParser.TokenMgrError --exclude org.apache.lucene.queryParser.QueryParserTokenManager --exclude org.apache.lucene.queryParser.ParseException --exclude org.apache.lucene.search.regex.JakartaRegexpCapabilities --exclude org.apache.regexp.RegexpTunnel --exclude org.apache.lucene.analysis.cn.smart.AnalyzerProfile --python lucene --mapping org.apache.lucene.document.Document 'get:(Ljava/lang/String;)Ljava/lang/String;' --mapping java.util.Properties 'getProperty:(Ljava/lang/String;)Ljava/lang/String;' --sequence java.util.AbstractList 'size:()I' 'get:(I)Ljava/lang/Object;' --rename org.apache.lucene.search.highlight.SpanScorer=HighlighterSpanScorer --version 3.3 --module python/collections.py --module python/ICUNormalizer2Filter.py --module python/ICUFoldingFilter.py --module python/ICUTransformFilter.py --files 3 --build /usr/bin/python: No module named jcc make: *** [compile] Error 1 Here is my Makefile configuration which I uncommented PREFIX_PYTHON=/usr ANT=ant PYTHON=$(PREFIX_PYTHON)/bin/python JCC=$(PYTHON) -m jcc --shared NUM_FILES=3

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