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• Run Windows in Ubuntu with VMware Player

  - by Matthew Guay

  Are you an enthusiast who loves their Ubuntu Linux experience but still needs to use Windows programs?  Here’s how you can get the full Windows experience on Ubuntu with the free VMware Player. Linux has become increasingly consumer friendly, but still, the wide majority of commercial software is only available for Windows and Macs.  Dual-booting between Windows and Linux has been a popular option for years, but this is a frustrating solution since you have to reboot into the other operating system each time you want to run a specific application.  With virtualization, you’ll never have to make this tradeoff.  VMware Player makes it quick and easy to install any edition of Windows in a virtual machine.  With VMware’s great integration tools, you can copy and paste between your Linux and Windows programs and even run native Windows applications side-by-side with Linux ones. Getting Started Download the latest version of VMware Player for Linux, and select either the 32-bit or 64-bit version, depending on your system.  VMware Player is a free download, but requires registration.  Sign in with your VMware account, or create a new one if you don’t already have one. VMware Player is fairly easy to install on Linux, but you will need to start out the installation from the terminal.  First, enter the following to make sure the installer is marked as executable, substituting version/build_number for the version number on the end of the file you downloaded. chmod +x ./VMware-Player-version/build_number.bundle Then, enter the following to start the install, again substituting your version number: gksudo bash ./VMware-Player-version/build_number.bundle You may have to enter your administrator password to start the installation, and then the VMware Player graphical installer will open.  Choose whether you want to check for product updates and submit usage data to VMware, and then proceed with the install as normal. VMware Player installed in only a few minutes in our tests, and was immediately ready to run, no reboot required.  You can now launch it from your Ubuntu menu: click Applications \ System Tools \ VMware Player. You’ll need to accept the license agreement the first time you run it. Welcome to VMware Player!  Now you can create new virtual machines and run pre-built ones on your Ubuntu desktop. Install Windows in VMware Player on Ubuntu Now that you’ve got VMware setup, it’s time to put it to work.  Click the Create a New Virtual Machine as above to start making a Windows virtual machine. In the dialog that opens, select your installer disk or ISO image file that you want to install Windows from.  In this example, we’re select a Windows 7 ISO.  VMware will automatically detect the operating system on the disk or image.  Click Next to continue. Enter your Windows product key, select the edition of Windows to install, and enter your name and password. You can leave the product key field blank and enter it later.  VMware will ask if you want to continue without a product key, so just click Yes to continue. Now enter a name for your virtual machine and select where you want to save it.  Note: This will take up at least 15Gb of space on your hard drive during the install, so make sure to save it on a drive with sufficient storage space. You can choose how large you want your virtual hard drive to be; the default is 40Gb, but you can choose a different size if you wish.  The entire amount will not be used up on your hard drive initially, but the virtual drive will increase in size up to your maximum as you add files.  Additionally, you can choose if you want the virtual disk stored as a single file or as multiple files.  You will see the best performance by keeping the virtual disk as one file, but the virtual machine will be more portable if it is broken into smaller files, so choose the option that will work best for your needs. Finally, review your settings, and if everything looks good, click Finish to create the virtual machine. VMware will take over now, and install Windows without any further input using its Easy Install.  This is one of VMware’s best features, and is the main reason we find it the easiest desktop virtualization solution to use.   Installing VMware Tools VMware Player doesn’t include the VMware Tools by default; instead, it automatically downloads them for the operating system you’re installing.  Once you’ve downloaded them, it will use those tools anytime you install that OS.  If this is your first Windows virtual machine to install, you may be prompted to download and install them while Windows is installing.  Click Download and Install so your Easy Install will finish successfully. VMware will then download and install the tools.  You may need to enter your administrative password to complete the install. Other than this, you can leave your Windows install unattended; VMware will get everything installed and running on its own. Our test setup took about 30 minutes, and when it was done we were greeted with the Windows desktop ready to use, complete with drivers and the VMware tools.  The only thing missing was the Aero glass feature.  VMware Player is supposed to support the Aero glass effects in virtual machines, and although this works every time when we use VMware Player on Windows, we could not get it to work in Linux.  Other than that, Windows is fully ready to use.  You can copy and paste text, images, or files between Ubuntu and Windows, or simply drag-and-drop files between the two. Unity Mode Using Windows in a window is awkward, and makes your Windows programs feel out of place and hard to use.  This is where Unity mode comes in.  Click Virtual Machine in VMware’s menu, and select Enter Unity. Your Windows desktop will now disappear, and you’ll see a new Windows menu underneath your Ubuntu menu.  This works the same as your Windows Start Menu, and you can open your Windows applications and files directly from it. By default, programs from Windows will have a colored border and a VMware badge in the corner.  You can turn this off from the VMware settings pane.  Click Virtual Machine in VMware’s menu and select Virtual Machine Settings.  Select Unity under the Options tab, and uncheck the Show borders and Show badges boxes if you don’t want them. Unity makes your Windows programs feel at home in Ubuntu.  Here we have Word 2010 and IE8 open beside the Ubuntu Help application.  Notice that the Windows applications show up in the taskbar on the bottom just like the Linux programs.  If you’re using the Compiz graphics effects in Ubuntu, your Windows programs will use them too, including the popular wobbly windows effect. You can switch back to running Windows inside VMware Player’s window by clicking the Exit Unity button in the VMware window. Now, whenever you want to run Windows applications in Linux, you can quickly launch it from VMware Player. Conclusion VMware Player is a great way to run Windows on your Linux computer.  It makes it extremely easy to get Windows installed and running, lets you run your Windows programs seamlessly alongside your Linux ones.  VMware products work great in our experience, and VMware Player on Linux was no exception. If you’re a Windows user and you’d like to run Ubuntu on Windows, check out our article on how to Run Ubuntu in Windows with VMware Player. Link Download VMware Player 3 (Registration required) Download Windows 7 Enterprise 90-day trial Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Enable Copy and Paste from Ubuntu VMware GuestInstall VMware Tools on Ubuntu Edgy EftRestart the Ubuntu Gnome User Interface QuicklyHow to Add a Program to the Ubuntu Startup List (After Login)How To Run Ubuntu in Windows 7 with VMware Player TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 Get a free copy of WinUtilities Pro 2010 World Cup Schedule Boot Snooze – Reboot and then Standby or Hibernate Customize Everything Related to Dates, Times, Currency and Measurement in Windows 7 Google Earth replacement Icon (Icons we like) Build Great Charts in Excel with Chart Advisor

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• Using LINQ Distinct: With an Example on ASP.NET MVC SelectListItem

  - by Joe Mayo

  One of the things that might be surprising in the LINQ Distinct standard query operator is that it doesn’t automatically work properly on custom classes. There are reasons for this, which I’ll explain shortly. The example I’ll use in this post focuses on pulling a unique list of names to load into a drop-down list. I’ll explain the sample application, show you typical first shot at Distinct, explain why it won’t work as you expect, and then demonstrate a solution to make Distinct work with any custom class. The technologies I’m using are  LINQ to Twitter, LINQ to Objects, Telerik Extensions for ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET MVC 2, and Visual Studio 2010. The function of the example program is to show a list of people that I follow.  In Twitter API vernacular, these people are called “Friends”; though I’ve never met most of them in real life. This is part of the ubiquitous language of social networking, and Twitter in particular, so you’ll see my objects named accordingly. Where Distinct comes into play is because I want to have a drop-down list with the names of the friends appearing in the list. Some friends are quite verbose, which means I can’t just extract names from each tweet and populate the drop-down; otherwise, I would end up with many duplicate names. Therefore, Distinct is the appropriate operator to eliminate the extra entries from my friends who tend to be enthusiastic tweeters. The sample doesn’t do anything with the drop-down list and I leave that up to imagination for what it’s practical purpose could be; perhaps a filter for the list if I only want to see a certain person’s tweets or maybe a quick list that I plan to combine with a TextBox and Button to reply to a friend. When the program runs, you’ll need to authenticate with Twitter, because I’m using OAuth (DotNetOpenAuth), for authentication, and then you’ll see the drop-down list of names above the grid with the most recent tweets from friends. Here’s what the application looks like when it runs: As you can see, there is a drop-down list above the grid. The drop-down list is where most of the focus of this article will be. There is some description of the code before we talk about the Distinct operator, but we’ll get there soon. This is an ASP.NET MVC2 application, written with VS 2010. Here’s the View that produces this screen: <%@ Page Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/Views/Shared/Site.Master" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage<TwitterFriendsViewModel>" %> <%@ Import Namespace="DistinctSelectList.Models" %> <asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="TitleContent" runat="server">     Home Page </asp:Content><asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent" runat="server">     <fieldset>         <legend>Twitter Friends</legend>         <div>             <%= Html.DropDownListFor(                     twendVM => twendVM.FriendNames,                     Model.FriendNames,                     "<All Friends>") %>         </div>         <div>             <% Html.Telerik().Grid<TweetViewModel>(Model.Tweets)                    .Name("TwitterFriendsGrid")                    .Columns(cols =>                     {                         cols.Template(col =>                             { %>                                 <img src="<%= col.ImageUrl %>"                                      alt="<%= col.ScreenName %>" />                         <% });                         cols.Bound(col => col.ScreenName);                         cols.Bound(col => col.Tweet);                     })                    .Render(); %>         </div>     </fieldset> </asp:Content> As shown above, the Grid is from Telerik’s Extensions for ASP.NET MVC. The first column is a template that renders the user’s Avatar from a URL provided by the Twitter query. Both the Grid and DropDownListFor display properties that are collections from a TwitterFriendsViewModel class, shown below: using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Web.Mvc; namespace DistinctSelectList.Models { /// /// For finding friend info on screen /// public class TwitterFriendsViewModel { /// /// Display names of friends in drop-down list /// public List FriendNames { get; set; } /// /// Display tweets in grid /// public List Tweets { get; set; } } } I created the TwitterFreindsViewModel. The two Lists are what the View consumes to populate the DropDownListFor and Grid. Notice that FriendNames is a List of SelectListItem, which is an MVC class. Another custom class I created is the TweetViewModel (the type of the Tweets List), shown below: namespace DistinctSelectList.Models { /// /// Info on friend tweets /// public class TweetViewModel { /// /// User's avatar /// public string ImageUrl { get; set; } /// /// User's Twitter name /// public string ScreenName { get; set; } /// /// Text containing user's tweet /// public string Tweet { get; set; } } } The initial Twitter query returns much more information than we need for our purposes and this a special class for displaying info in the View.  Now you know about the View and how it’s constructed. Let’s look at the controller next. The controller for this demo performs authentication, data retrieval, data manipulation, and view selection. I’ll skip the description of the authentication because it’s a normal part of using OAuth with LINQ to Twitter. Instead, we’ll drill down and focus on the Distinct operator. However, I’ll show you the entire controller, below,  so that you can see how it all fits together: using System.Linq; using System.Web.Mvc; using DistinctSelectList.Models; using LinqToTwitter; namespace DistinctSelectList.Controllers { [HandleError] public class HomeController : Controller { private MvcOAuthAuthorization auth; private TwitterContext twitterCtx; /// /// Display a list of friends current tweets /// /// public ActionResult Index() { auth = new MvcOAuthAuthorization(InMemoryTokenManager.Instance, InMemoryTokenManager.AccessToken); string accessToken = auth.CompleteAuthorize(); if (accessToken != null) { InMemoryTokenManager.AccessToken = accessToken; } if (auth.CachedCredentialsAvailable) { auth.SignOn(); } else { return auth.BeginAuthorize(); } twitterCtx = new TwitterContext(auth); var friendTweets = (from tweet in twitterCtx.Status where tweet.Type == StatusType.Friends select new TweetViewModel { ImageUrl = tweet.User.ProfileImageUrl, ScreenName = tweet.User.Identifier.ScreenName, Tweet = tweet.Text }) .ToList(); var friendNames = (from tweet in friendTweets select new SelectListItem { Text = tweet.ScreenName, Value = tweet.ScreenName }) .Distinct() .ToList(); var twendsVM = new TwitterFriendsViewModel { Tweets = friendTweets, FriendNames = friendNames }; return View(twendsVM); } public ActionResult About() { return View(); } } } The important part of the listing above are the LINQ to Twitter queries for friendTweets and friendNames. Both of these results are used in the subsequent population of the twendsVM instance that is passed to the view. Let’s dissect these two statements for clarification and focus on what is happening with Distinct. The query for friendTweets gets a list of the 20 most recent tweets (as specified by the Twitter API for friend queries) and performs a projection into the custom TweetViewModel class, repeated below for your convenience: var friendTweets = (from tweet in twitterCtx.Status where tweet.Type == StatusType.Friends select new TweetViewModel { ImageUrl = tweet.User.ProfileImageUrl, ScreenName = tweet.User.Identifier.ScreenName, Tweet = tweet.Text }) .ToList(); The LINQ to Twitter query above simplifies what we need to work with in the View and the reduces the amount of information we have to look at in subsequent queries. Given the friendTweets above, the next query performs another projection into an MVC SelectListItem, which is required for binding to the DropDownList.  This brings us to the focus of this blog post, writing a correct query that uses the Distinct operator. The query below uses LINQ to Objects, querying the friendTweets collection to get friendNames: var friendNames = (from tweet in friendTweets select new SelectListItem { Text = tweet.ScreenName, Value = tweet.ScreenName }) .Distinct() .ToList(); The above implementation of Distinct seems normal, but it is deceptively incorrect. After running the query above, by executing the application, you’ll notice that the drop-down list contains many duplicates.  This will send you back to the code scratching your head, but there’s a reason why this happens. To understand the problem, we must examine how Distinct works in LINQ to Objects. Distinct has two overloads: one without parameters, as shown above, and another that takes a parameter of type IEqualityComparer<T>.  In the case above, no parameters, Distinct will call EqualityComparer<T>.Default behind the scenes to make comparisons as it iterates through the list. You don’t have problems with the built-in types, such as string, int, DateTime, etc, because they all implement IEquatable<T>. However, many .NET Framework classes, such as SelectListItem, don’t implement IEquatable<T>. So, what happens is that EqualityComparer<T>.Default results in a call to Object.Equals, which performs reference equality on reference type objects.  You don’t have this problem with value types because the default implementation of Object.Equals is bitwise equality. However, most of your projections that use Distinct are on classes, just like the SelectListItem used in this demo application. So, the reason why Distinct didn’t produce the results we wanted was because we used a type that doesn’t define its own equality and Distinct used the default reference equality. This resulted in all objects being included in the results because they are all separate instances in memory with unique references. As you might have guessed, the solution to the problem is to use the second overload of Distinct that accepts an IEqualityComparer<T> instance. If you were projecting into your own custom type, you could make that type implement IEqualityComparer<T>, but SelectListItem belongs to the .NET Framework Class Library.  Therefore, the solution is to create a custom type to implement IEqualityComparer<T>, as in the SelectListItemComparer class, shown below: using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Web.Mvc; namespace DistinctSelectList.Models { public class SelectListItemComparer : EqualityComparer { public override bool Equals(SelectListItem x, SelectListItem y) { return x.Value.Equals(y.Value); } public override int GetHashCode(SelectListItem obj) { return obj.Value.GetHashCode(); } } } The SelectListItemComparer class above doesn’t implement IEqualityComparer<SelectListItem>, but rather derives from EqualityComparer<SelectListItem>. Microsoft recommends this approach for consistency with the behavior of generic collection classes. However, if your custom type already derives from a base class, go ahead and implement IEqualityComparer<T>, which will still work. EqualityComparer is an abstract class, that implements IEqualityComparer<T> with Equals and GetHashCode abstract methods. For the purposes of this application, the SelectListItem.Value property is sufficient to determine if two items are equal.   Since SelectListItem.Value is type string, the code delegates equality to the string class. The code also delegates the GetHashCode operation to the string class.You might have other criteria in your own object and would need to define what it means for your object to be equal. Now that we have an IEqualityComparer<SelectListItem>, let’s fix the problem. The code below modifies the query where we want distinct values: var friendNames = (from tweet in friendTweets select new SelectListItem { Text = tweet.ScreenName, Value = tweet.ScreenName }) .Distinct(new SelectListItemComparer()) .ToList(); Notice how the code above passes a new instance of SelectListItemComparer as the parameter to the Distinct operator. Now, when you run the application, the drop-down list will behave as you expect, showing only a unique set of names. In addition to Distinct, other LINQ Standard Query Operators have overloads that accept IEqualityComparer<T>’s, You can use the same techniques as shown here, with SelectListItemComparer, with those other operators as well. Now you know how to resolve problems with getting Distinct to work properly and also have a way to fix problems with other operators that require equality comparisons. @JoeMayo

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• Preventing duplicate Data with ASP.NET AJAX

  - by Yousef_Jadallah

    Some times you need to prevent  User names ,E-mail ID's or other values from being duplicated by a new user during Registration or any other cases,So I will add a simple approach to make the page more user-friendly. Instead the user filled all the Registration fields then press submit after that received a message as a result of PostBack that "THIS USERNAME IS EXIST", Ajax tidies this up by allowing asynchronous querying while the user is still completing the registration form.   ASP.NET enables you to create Web services can be accessed from client script in Web pages by using AJAX technology to make Web service calls. Data is exchanged asynchronously between client and server, typically in JSON format. I’ve added an article to show you step by step  how to use ASP.NET AJAX with Web Services , you can find it here .   Lets go a head with the steps :   1-Create a new project , if you are using VS 2005 you have to create ASP.NET Ajax Enabled Web site.   2-Create your own Database which contain user table that have User_Name field. for Testing I’ve added SQL Server Database that come with Dot Net 2008: Then I’ve created tblUsers:   This table and this structure just for our example, you can use your own table to implement this approach.   3-Add new Item to your project or website, Choose Web Service file, lets say  WebService.cs  .In this Web Service file import System.Data.SqlClient Namespace, Then Add your web method that contain string parameter which received the Username parameter from the Script , Finally don’t forget to qualified the Web Service Class with the ScriptServiceAttribute attribute ([System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptService])     using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; using System.Web.Services; using System.Data.SqlClient;     [WebService(Namespace = "http://tempuri.org/")] [WebServiceBinding(ConformsTo = WsiProfiles.BasicProfile1_1)] [System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptService] public class WebService : System.Web.Services.WebService {     [WebMethod] public int CheckDuplicate(string User_Name) { string strConn = @"Data Source=.\SQLEXPRESS;AttachDbFilename=|DataDirectory|\TestDB.mdf;Integrated Security=True;User Instance=True"; string strQuery = "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM tblUsers WHERE User_Name = @User_Name"; SqlConnection con = new SqlConnection(strConn); SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand(strQuery, con); cmd.Parameters.Add("User_Name", User_Name); con.Open(); int RetVal= (int)cmd.ExecuteScalar(); con.Close(); return RetVal; } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; }   Our Web Method here is CheckDuplicate Which accept User_Name String as a parameter and return number of the rows , if the name will found in the database this method will return 1 else it will return 0. I’ve applied  [WebMethod] Attribute to our method CheckDuplicate, And applied the ScriptService attribute to a Web Service class named WebService.   4-Add this simple Registration form : <fieldset> <table id="TblRegistratoin" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td> User Name </td> <td> <asp:TextBox ID="txtUserName" onblur="CallWebMethod();" runat="server"></asp:TextBox> </td> <td> <asp:Label ID="lblDuplicate" runat="server" ForeColor="Red" Text=""></asp:Label> </td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="3"> <asp:Button ID="btnRegistration" runat="server" Text="Registration" /> </td> </tr> </table> </fieldset> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; }   onblur event is added to the Textbox txtUserName, This event Fires when the Textbox loses the input focus, That mean after the user get focus out from the Textbox CallWebMethod function will be fired. CallWebMethod will be implemented in step 6.   5-Add ScriptManager Control to your aspx file then reference the Web service by adding an asp:ServiceReference child element to the ScriptManager control and setting its path attribute to point to the Web service, That generate a JavaScript proxy class for calling the specified Web service from client script.   <asp:ScriptManager runat="server" ID="scriptManager"> <Services> <asp:ServiceReference Path="WebService.asmx" /> </Services> </asp:ScriptManager> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; }     6-Define the JavaScript code to call the Web Service :   <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">   // This function calls the Web service method // passing simple type parameters and the // callback function function CallWebMethod() { var User_Name = document.getElementById('<%=txtUserName.ClientID %>').value; WebService.CheckDuplicate(User_Name, OnSucceeded, OnError); }   // This is the callback function invoked if the Web service // succeeded function OnSucceeded(result) { var rsltElement = document.getElementById("lblDuplicate"); if (result == 1) rsltElement.innerHTML = "This User Name is exist"; else rsltElement.innerHTML = "";   }   function OnError(error) { // Display the error. alert("Service Error: " + error.get_message()); } </script> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; }   This call references the WebService Class and CheckDuplicate Web Method defined in the service. It passes a User_Name value obtained from a textbox as well as a callback function named OnSucceeded that should be invoked when the asynchronous Web Service call returns. If the Web Service in different Namespace you can refer it before the class name this Main formula may help you :  NameSpaceName.ClassName.WebMethdName(Parameters , Success callback function, Error callback function); Parameters: you can pass one or many parameters. Success callback function :handles returned data from the service . Error callback function :Any errors that occur when the Web Service is called will trigger in this function. Using Error Callback function is optional.   Hope these steps help you to understand this approach.

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• Azure - Part 4 - Table Storage Service in Windows Azure

  - by Shaun

  In Windows Azure platform there are 3 storage we can use to save our data on the cloud. They are the Table, Blob and Queue. Before the Chinese New Year Microsoft announced that Azure SDK 1.1 had been released and it supports a new type of storage – Drive, which allows us to operate NTFS files on the cloud. I will cover it in the coming few posts but now I would like to talk a bit about the Table Storage.   Concept of Table Storage Service The most common development scenario is to retrieve, create, update and remove data from the data storage. In the normal way we communicate with database. When we attempt to move our application over to the cloud the most common requirement should be have a storage service. Windows Azure provides a in-build service that allow us to storage the structured data, which is called Windows Azure Table Storage Service. The data stored in the table service are like the collection of entities. And the entities are similar to rows or records in the tradtional database. An entity should had a partition key, a row key, a timestamp and set of properties. You can treat the partition key as a group name, the row key as a primary key and the timestamp as the identifer for solving the concurrency problem. Different with a table in a database, the table service does not enforce the schema for tables, which means you can have 2 entities in the same table with different property sets. The partition key is being used for the load balance of the Azure OS and the group entity transaction. As you know in the cloud you will never know which machine is hosting your application and your data. It could be moving based on the transaction weight and the number of the requests. If the Azure OS found that there are many requests connect to your Book entities with the partition key equals “Novel” it will move them to another idle machine to increase the performance. So when choosing the partition key for your entities you need to make sure they indecate the category or gourp information so that the Azure OS can perform the load balance as you wish.   Consuming the Table Although the table service looks like a database, you cannot access it through the way you are using now, neither ADO.NET nor ODBC. The table service exposed itself by ADO.NET Data Service protocol, which allows you can consume it through the RESTful style by Http requests. The Azure SDK provides a sets of classes for us to connect it. There are 2 classes we might need: TableServiceContext and TableServiceEntity. The TableServiceContext inherited from the DataServiceContext, which represents the runtime context of the ADO.NET data service. It provides 4 methods mainly used by us: CreateQuery: It will create a IQueryable instance from a given type of entity. AddObject: Add the specified entity into Table Service. UpdateObject: Update an existing entity in the Table Service. DeleteObject: Delete an entity from the Table Service. Beofre you operate the table service you need to provide the valid account information. It’s something like the connect string of the database but with your account name and the account key when you created the storage service on the Windows Azure Development Portal. After getting the CloudStorageAccount you can create the CloudTableClient instance which provides a set of methods for using the table service. A very useful method would be CreateTableIfNotExist. It will create the table container for you if it’s not exsited. And then you can operate the eneities to that table through the methods I mentioned above. Let me explain a bit more through an exmaple. We always like code rather than sentence.   Straightforward Accessing to the Table Here I would like to build a WCF service on the Windows Azure platform, and for now just one requirement: it would allow the client to create an account entity on the table service. The WCF service would have a method named Register and accept an instance of the account which the client wants to create. After perform some validation it will add the entity into the table service. So the first thing I should do is to create a Cloud Application on my VIstial Studio 2010 RC. (The Azure SDK 1.1 only supports VS2008 and VS2010 RC.) The solution should be like this below. Then I added a configuration items for the storage account through the Settings section under the cloud project. (Double click the Services file under Roles folder and navigate to the Setting section.) This setting will be used when to retrieve my storage account information. Since for now I just in the development phase I will select “UseDevelopmentStorage=true”. And then I navigated to the WebRole.cs file under my WCF project. If you have read my previous posts you would know that this file defines the process when the application start, and terminate on the cloud. What I need to do is to when the application start, set the configuration publisher to load my config file with the config name I specified. So the code would be like below. I removed the original service and contract created by the VS template and add my IAccountService contract and its implementation class - AccountService. And I add the service method Register with the parameters: email, password and it will return a boolean value to indicates the result which is very simple. At this moment if I press F5 the application will be established on my local development fabric and I can see my service runs well through the browser. Let’s implement the service method Rigister, add a new entity to the table service. As I said before the entities you want to store in the table service must have 3 properties: partition key, row key and timespan. You can create a class with these 3 properties. The Azure SDK provides us a base class for that named TableServiceEntity in Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient namespace. So what we need to do is more simply, create a class named Account and let it derived from the TableServiceEntity. And I need to add my own properties: Email, Password, DateCreated and DateDeleted. The DateDeleted is a nullable date time value to indecate whether this entity had been deleted and when. Do you notice that I missed something here? Yes it’s the partition key and row key I didn’t assigned. The TableServiceEntity base class defined 2 constructors one was a parameter-less constructor which will be used to fill values into the properties from the table service when retrieving data. The other was one with 2 parameters: partition key and row key. As I said below the partition key may affect the load balance and the row key must be unique so here I would like to use the email as the parition key and the email plus a Guid as the row key. OK now we finished the entity class we need to store onto the table service. The next step is to create a data access class for us to add it. Azure SDK gives us a base class for it named TableServiceContext as I mentioned below. So let’s create a class for operate the Account entities. The TableServiceContext need the storage account information for its constructor. It’s the combination of the storage service URI that we will create on Windows Azure platform, and the relevant account name and key. The TableServiceContext will use this information to find the related address and verify the account to operate the storage entities. Hence in my AccountDataContext class I need to override this constructor and pass the storage account into it. All entities will be saved in the table storage with one or many tables which we call them “table containers”. Before we operate an entity we need to make sure that the table container had been created on the storage. There’s a method we can use for that: CloudTableClient.CreateTableIfNotExist. So in the constructor I will perform it firstly to make sure all method will be invoked after the table had been created. Notice that I passed the storage account enpoint URI and the credentials to specify where my storage is located and who am I. Another advise is that, make your entity class name as the same as the table name when create the table. It will increase the performance when you operate it over the cloud especially querying. Since the Register WCF method will add a new account into the table service, here I will create a relevant method to add the account entity. Before implement, I should add a reference - System.Data.Services.Client to the project. This reference provides some common method within the ADO.NET Data Service which can be used in the Windows Azure Table Service. I will use its AddObject method to create my account entity. Since the table service are not fully implemented the ADO.NET Data Service, there are some methods in the System.Data.Services.Client that TableServiceContext doesn’t support, such as AddLinks, etc. Then I implemented the serivce method to add the account entity through the AccountDataContext. You can see in the service implmentation I load the storage account information through my configuration file and created the account table entity from the parameters. Then I created the AccountDataContext. If it’s my first time to invoke this method the constructor of the AccountDataContext will create a table container for me. Then I use Add method to add the account entity into the table. Next, let’s create a farely simple client application to test this service. I created a windows console application and added a service reference to my WCF service. The metadata information of the WCF service cannot be retrieved if it’s deployed on the Windows Azure even though the <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true"/> had been set. If we need to get its metadata we can deploy it on the local development service and then changed the endpoint to the address which is on the cloud. In the client side app.config file I specified the endpoint to the local development fabric address. And the just implement the client to let me input an email and a password then invoke the WCF service to add my acocunt. Let’s run my application and see the result. Of course it should return TRUE to me. And in the local SQL Express I can see the data had been saved in the table.   Summary In this post I explained more about the Windows Azure Table Storage Service. I also created a small application for demostration of how to connect and consume it through the ADO.NET Data Service Managed Library provided within the Azure SDK. I only show how to create an eneity in the storage service. In the next post I would like to explain about how to query the entities with conditions thruogh LINQ. I also would like to refactor my AccountDataContext class to make it dyamic for any kinds of entities.   Hope this helps, Shaun   All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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• Preventing duplicate Data with ASP.NET AJAX

  - by Yousef_Jadallah

    Some times you need to prevent  User names ,E-mail ID's or other values from being duplicated by a new user during Registration or any other cases,So I will add a simple approach to make the page more user-friendly. Instead the user filled all the Registration fields then press submit after that received a message as a result of PostBack that "THIS USERNAME IS EXIST", Ajax tidies this up by allowing asynchronous querying while the user is still completing the registration form.   ASP.NET enables you to create Web services can be accessed from client script in Web pages by using AJAX technology to make Web service calls. Data is exchanged asynchronously between client and server, typically in JSON format. I’ve added an article to show you step by step  how to use ASP.NET AJAX with Web Services , you can find it here .   Lets go a head with the steps :   1-Create a new project , if you are using VS 2005 you have to create ASP.NET Ajax Enabled Web site.   2-Create your own Database which contain user table that have User_Name field. for Testing I’ve added SQL Server Database that come with Dot Net 2008: Then I’ve created tblUsers:   This table and this structure just for our example, you can use your own table to implement this approach.   3-Add new Item to your project or website, Choose Web Service file, lets say  WebService.cs  .In this Web Service file import System.Data.SqlClient Namespace, Then Add your web method that contain string parameter which received the Username parameter from the Script , Finally don’t forget to qualified the Web Service Class with the ScriptServiceAttribute attribute ([System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptService])     using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; using System.Web.Services; using System.Data.SqlClient;     [WebService(Namespace = "http://tempuri.org/")] [WebServiceBinding(ConformsTo = WsiProfiles.BasicProfile1_1)] [System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptService] public class WebService : System.Web.Services.WebService {     [WebMethod] public int CheckDuplicate(string User_Name) { string strConn = @"Data Source=.\SQLEXPRESS;AttachDbFilename=|DataDirectory|\TestDB.mdf;Integrated Security=True;User Instance=True"; string strQuery = "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM tblUsers WHERE User_Name = @User_Name"; SqlConnection con = new SqlConnection(strConn); SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand(strQuery, con); cmd.Parameters.Add("User_Name", User_Name); con.Open(); int RetVal= (int)cmd.ExecuteScalar(); con.Close(); return RetVal; } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; }   Our Web Method here is CheckDuplicate Which accept User_Name String as a parameter and return number of the rows , if the name will found in the database this method will return 1 else it will return 0. I’ve applied  [WebMethod] Attribute to our method CheckDuplicate, And applied the ScriptService attribute to a Web Service class named WebService.   4-Add this simple Registration form : <fieldset> <table id="TblRegistratoin" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td> User Name </td> <td> <asp:TextBox ID="txtUserName" onblur="CallWebMethod();" runat="server"></asp:TextBox> </td> <td> <asp:Label ID="lblDuplicate" runat="server" ForeColor="Red" Text=""></asp:Label> </td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="3"> <asp:Button ID="btnRegistration" runat="server" Text="Registration" /> </td> </tr> </table> </fieldset> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; }   onblur event is added to the Textbox txtUserName, This event Fires when the Textbox loses the input focus, That mean after the user get focus out from the Textbox CallWebMethod function will be fired. CallWebMethod will be implemented in step 6.   5-Add ScriptManager Control to your aspx file then reference the Web service by adding an asp:ServiceReference child element to the ScriptManager control and setting its path attribute to point to the Web service, That generate a JavaScript proxy class for calling the specified Web service from client script.   <asp:ScriptManager runat="server" ID="scriptManager"> <Services> <asp:ServiceReference Path="WebService.asmx" /> </Services> </asp:ScriptManager> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; }     6-Define the JavaScript code to call the Web Service :   <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">   // This function calls the Web service method // passing simple type parameters and the // callback function function CallWebMethod() { var User_Name = document.getElementById('<%=txtUserName.ClientID %>').value; WebService.CheckDuplicate(User_Name, OnSucceeded, OnError); }   // This is the callback function invoked if the Web service // succeeded function OnSucceeded(result) { var rsltElement = document.getElementById("lblDuplicate"); if (result == 1) rsltElement.innerHTML = "This User Name is exist"; else rsltElement.innerHTML = "";   }   function OnError(error) { // Display the error. alert("Service Error: " + error.get_message()); } </script> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; }   This call references the WebService Class and CheckDuplicate Web Method defined in the service. It passes a User_Name value obtained from a textbox as well as a callback function named OnSucceeded that should be invoked when the asynchronous Web Service call returns. If the Web Service in different Namespace you can refer it before the class name this Main formula may help you :  NameSpaceName.ClassName.WebMethdName(Parameters , Success callback function, Error callback function); Parameters: you can pass one or many parameters. Success callback function :handles returned data from the service . Error callback function :Any errors that occur when the Web Service is called will trigger in this function. Using Error Callback function is optional.   Hope these steps help you to understand this approach.

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• Upgrade Your Existing BI Publisher 11g (11.1.1.3) to 11.1.1.5

  - by Kan Nishida

  It’s already more than a month now since BI Publisher 11.1.1.5 was released at beginning of May. Have you already tried out many of the great new features? If you are already running on the first version of BI Publisher 11g (11.1.1.3) you might wonder how to upgrade the existing BI Publisher to the 11.1.1.5 version. There are two ways to do this, one is ‘Out-Place’ and another is ‘In-Place’. The ‘Out-Place’ would be quite simple. Basically you will need to install the whole BI or just BI Publisher standalone R11.1.1.5 at a different location then you can switch the catalog to the existing one so that all the reports will be there in the new 11.1.1.5 environment. But sometimes things are not that simple, you might have some custom applications or configuration on the original environment and you want to keep all of them with the upgraded environment. For such scenarios, there is the ‘In-Place’ upgrade, which overrides on top of the original environment only the parts relevant for BI and BI Publisher, and that’s what I’m going to talk about today. Here is the basic steps of the ‘In-Place’ upgrade. Upgrade WebLogic Server to 10.3.5 Upgrade BI System to 11.1.1.5 Upgrade Database Schema Re-register BI Components Upgrade FMW (Fusion Middleware) Configuration Upgrade BI Catalog There is a section that talks about this upgrade from 11.1.1.3 to 11.1.1.5 as part of the overall upgrade document. But I hope my blog post summarized it and made it simple for you to cover only what’s necessary. Upgrade Document: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E21764_01/bi.1111/e16452/bi_plan.htm#BABECJJH Before You Start Stop BI System and Backup I can’t emphasize enough, but before you start PLEASE make sure you take a backup of the existing environments first. You want to stop all WebLogic Servers, Node Manager, OPMN, and OPMN-managed system components that are part of your Oracle BI domains. If you’re on Windows you can do this by simply selecting ‘Stop BI Services’ menu. Then backup the whole system. Upgrade WebLogic Server to 10.3.5 Download WebLogic Server 10.3.5 Upgrade Installer With BI 11.1.1.3 installation your WebLogic Server (WLS) is 10.3.3 and you need to upgrade this to 10.3.5 before upgrading the BI part. In order to upgrade you will need this 10.3.5 upgrade version of WLS, which you can download from our support web site (https://support.oracle.com) You can find the detail information about the installation and the patch numbers for the WLS upgrade installer on this document. Just for your short cut, if you are running on Windows or Linux (x86) here is the patch number for your platform. Windows 32 bit: 12395517: Linux: 12395517 Upgrade WebLogic Server 1. After unzip the downloaded file, launch wls1035_upgrade_win32.exe if you’re on Windows. 2. Accept all the default values and keep ‘Next’ till end, and start the upgrade. Once the upgrade process completes you’ll see the following window. Now let’s move to the BI upgrade. Upgrade BI Platform to 11.1.1.5 with Software Only Install Download BI 11.1.1.5 You can download the 11.1.1.5 version from our OTN page for your evaluation or development. For the production use it’s recommended to download from eDelivery. 1. Launch the installer by double click ‘setup.exe’ (for Windows) 2. Select ‘Software Only Install’ option 3. Select your original Oracle Home where you installed BI 11.1.1.3. 4. Click ‘Install’ button to start the installation. And now the software part of the BI has been upgraded to 11.1.1.5. Now let’s move to the database schema upgrade. Upgrade Database Schema with Patch Assistant You need to upgrade the BIPLATFORM and MDS Schemas. You can use the Patch Assistant utility to do this, and here is an example assuming you’ve created the schema with ‘DEV’ prefix, otherwise change it with yours accordingly. Upgrade BIPLATFORM schema (if you created this schema with DEV_ prev) psa.bat -dbConnectString localhost:1521:orcl -dbaUserName sys -schemaUserName DEV_BIPLATFORM Upgrade MDS schema (if you created this schema with DEV_ prev) psa.bat -dbConnectString localhost:1521:orcl -dbaUserName sys -schemaUserName DEV_MDS Re-register BI System components Now you need to re-register your BI system components such as BI Server, BI Presentation Server, etc to the Fusion Middleware system. You can do this by running ‘upgradenonj2eeapp.bat (or .sh)’ command, which can be found at %ORACLE_HOME%/opmn/bin. Before you run, you need to start the WLS Server and make sure your WLS environment is not locked. If it’s locked then you need to release the system from the Fusion Middleware console before you run the following command. Here is the syntax for the ‘upgradenonj2eeapp.bat (or .sh) command.  upgradenonj2eeapp.bat    -oracleInstance Instance_Home_Location    -adminHost WebLogic_Server_Host_Name    -adminPort administration_server_port_number    -adminUsername administration_server_user And here is an example: cd %BI_HOME%\opmn\bin upgradenonj2eeapp.bat -oracleInstance C:\biee11\instances\instance1 -adminHost localhost -adminPort 7001 -adminUsername weblogic Upgrade Fusion Middleware Configuration There are a couple things on the Fusion Middleware need to be upgraded for the BI system to work. Here is a list of the components to upgrade. Upgrade Shared Library (JRF) Upgrade Fusion Middleware Security (OPSS) Upgrade Code Grants Upgrade OWSM Policy Repository Before moving forward, you need to stop the WebLogic Server. Here is an example. cd %MW_HOME%user_projects\domains\bifoundation_domain\binstopWebLogic.cmd And, let’s start with ‘Upgrade Shared Library (JRF)’. Upgrade Shared Library (JRF) You can use updateJRF() WLST command to upgrade the shared libraries in your domain. Before you do this, you need to stop all running instances, Managed Servers, Administration Server, and Node Manager in the domain. Here is an example of the ‘upgradeJRF()’ command: cd %MW_HOME%\oracle_common\common\bin wlst.cmd upgradeJRF('C:/biee11/user_projects/domains/bifoundation_domain') Upgrade Fusion Middleware Security (OPSS) This step is to upgrade the Fusion Middleware security piece. You can use ‘upgradeOpss()’ WLST command. Here is a syntax for the command. upgradeOpss(jpsConfig="existing_jps_config_file", jaznData="system_jazn_data_file") The ‘existing jps-config.xml file can be found under %DOMAIN_HOME%/config/fmwconfig/jps-config.xml and the ‘system_jazn_data_file’ can be found under %MW_HOME%/oracle_common/modules/oracle.jps_11.1.1/domain_config/system-jazn-data.xml. And here is an example: cd %MW_HOME%\oracle_common\common\bin wlst.cmd upgradeOpss(jpsConfig="c:/biee11/user_projects/domains/bifoundation_domain/config/fmwconfig/jps-config.xml", jaznData="c:/biee11/oracle_common/modules/oracle.jps_11.1.1/domain_config/system-jazn-data.xml") exit() Upgrade Code Grants for Oracle BI Domain And this is the last step for the Fusion Middleware platform upgrade task. You need to run this python script ‘bi-upgrade.py‘ script to configure the code grants necessary to ensure that SSL works correctly for Oracle BI. However, even if you don’t use SSL, you still need to run this script. And if you have multiple BI domains (Enterprise deployment) then you need to run this on each domain. Here is an example: cd %MW_HOME%\oracle_common\common\bin wlst c:\biee11\Oracle_BI1\bin\bi-upgrade.py --bioraclehome c:\biee11\Oracle_BI1 --domainhome c:\biee11\user_projects\domains\bifoundation_domain Upgrade OWSM Policy Repository This is to upgrade OWSM (Oracle Web Service Manager) policy repository, you can use WLST command ‘upgradeWSMPolicyRepository()’. In order to run this command you need to have your WebLogic Server up-and-running. Here is an example. cd %MW_HOME%user_projects\domains\bifoundation_domain\binstopWebLogic.cmd cd %MW_HOME%\oracle_common\common\bin wlst.cmd connect ('weblogic','welcome1','t3://localhost:7001') upgradeWSMPolicyRepository() exit() Upgrade BI Catalogs This step is required only when you have your BI Publisher integrated with BIEE. If your BI Publisher is deployed as a standalone then you don’t need to follow this step. Now finally, you can upgrade the BI catalog. This won’t upgrade your BI Publisher reports themselves, but it just upgrades some attributes information inside the catalog. Before you do this upgrade, make sure the BI system components are not running. You can check the status by the command below. opmnctl status You can do the upgrade by updating a configuration file ‘instanceconfig.xml’, which can be found at %BI_HOME%\instances\instance1\config\coreapplication_obips1, and change the value of ‘UpgradeAndExit’ to be ‘true’. Here is an example: <ps:Catalog xmlns:ps="oracle.bi.presentation.services/config/v1.1"> <ps:UpgradeAndExit>true</ps:UpgradeAndExit> </ps:Catalog> After you made the change and save the file, you need to start the BI Presentation Server. This time you want to start only the BI Presentation Server instead of starting all the servers. You can use ‘opmnctl’ to do so, and here is an example. cd %ORACLE_INSTANCE%\bin opmnctl startproc ias-component=coreapplication_obips1 This would upgrade your BI Catalog to be 11.1.1.5. After the catalog is updated, you can stop the BI Presentation Server so that you can modify the instanceconfig.xml file again to revert the upgradeAndExit value back to ‘false’. Start Explore BI Publisher 11.1.1.5 After all the above steps, you can start all the BI Services, access to the same URL, now you have your BI Publisher and/or BI 11.1.1.5 in your hands. Have fun exploring all the new features of R11.1.1.5!

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• Building an HTML5 App with ASP.NET

  - by Stephen Walther

  I’m teaching several JavaScript and ASP.NET workshops over the next couple of months (thanks everyone!) and I thought it would be useful for my students to have a really easy to use JavaScript reference. I wanted a simple interactive JavaScript reference and I could not find one so I decided to put together one of my own. I decided to use the latest features of JavaScript, HTML5 and jQuery such as local storage, offline manifests, and jQuery templates. What could be more appropriate than building a JavaScript Reference with JavaScript? You can try out the application by visiting: http://Superexpert.com/JavaScriptReference Because the app takes advantage of several advanced features of HTML5, it won’t work with Internet Explorer 6 (but really, you should stop using that browser). I have tested it with IE 8, Chrome 8, Firefox 3.6, and Safari 5. You can download the source for the JavaScript Reference application at the end of this article. Superexpert JavaScript Reference Let me provide you with a brief walkthrough of the app. When you first open the application, you see the following lookup screen: As you type the name of something from the JavaScript language, matching results are displayed: You can click the details link for any entry to view details for an entry in a modal dialog: Alternatively, you can click on any of the tabs -- Objects, Functions, Properties, Statements, Operators, Comments, or Directives -- to filter results by type of syntax. For example, you might want to see a list of all JavaScript built-in objects: You can login to the application to make modification to the application: After you login, you can add, update, or delete entries in the reference database: HTML5 Local Storage The application takes advantage of HTML5 local storage to store all of the reference entries on the local browser. IE 8, Chrome 8, Firefox 3.6, and Safari 5 all support local storage. When you open the application for the first time, all of the reference entries are transferred to the browser. The data is stored persistently. Even if you shutdown your computer and return to the application many days later, the data does not need to be transferred again. Whenever you open the application, the app checks with the server to see if any of the entries have been updated on the server. If there have been updates, then only the updates are transferred to the browser and the updates are merged with the existing entries in local storage. After the reference database has been transferred to your browser once, only changes are transferred in the future. You get two benefits from using local storage. First, the application loads very fast and works very fast after the data has been loaded once. The application does not query the server whenever you filter or view entries. All of the data is persisted in the browser. Second, you can browse the JavaScript reference even when you are not connected to the Internet (when you are on the proverbial airplane). The JavaScript Reference works as an offline application for browsers that support offline applications (unfortunately, not IE). When using Google Chrome, you can easily view the contents of local storage by selecting Tools, Developer Tools (CTRL-SHIFT I) and selecting Storage, Local Storage: The JavaScript Reference app stores two items in local storage: entriesLastUpdated and entries. HTML5 Offline App For browsers that support HTML5 offline applications – Chrome 8 and Firefox 3.6 but not Internet Explorer – you do not need to be connected to the Internet to use the JavaScript Reference. The JavaScript Reference can execute entirely on your machine just like any other desktop application. When you first open the application with Firefox, you are presented with the following warning: Notice the notification bar that asks whether you want to accept offline content. If you click the Allow button then all of the files (generated ASPX, images, CSS, JavaScript) needed for the JavaScript Reference will be stored on your local computer. Automatic Script Minification and Combination All of the custom JavaScript files are combined and minified automatically whenever the application is built with Visual Studio. All of the custom scripts are contained in a folder named App_Scripts: When you perform a build, the combine.js and combine.debug.js files are generated. The Combine.config file contains the list of files that should be combined (importantly, it specifies the order in which the files should be combined). Here’s the contents of the Combine.config file:   <?xml version="1.0"?> <combine> <scripts> <file path="compat.js" /> <file path="storage.js" /> <file path="serverData.js" /> <file path="entriesHelper.js" /> <file path="authentication.js" /> <file path="default.js" /> </scripts> </combine>   jQuery and jQuery UI The JavaScript Reference application takes heavy advantage of jQuery and jQuery UI. In particular, the application uses jQuery templates to format and display the reference entries. Each of the separate templates is stored in a separate ASP.NET user control in a folder named Templates: The contents of the user controls (and therefore the templates) are combined in the default.aspx page: <!-- Templates --> <user:EntryTemplate runat="server" /> <user:EntryDetailsTemplate runat="server" /> <user:BrowsersTemplate runat="server" /> <user:EditEntryTemplate runat="server" /> <user:EntryDetailsCloudTemplate runat="server" /> When the default.aspx page is requested, all of the templates are retrieved in a single page. WCF Data Services The JavaScript Reference application uses WCF Data Services to retrieve and modify database data. The application exposes a server-side WCF Data Service named EntryService.svc that supports querying, adding, updating, and deleting entries. jQuery Ajax calls are made against the WCF Data Service to perform the database operations from the browser. The OData protocol makes this easy. Authentication is handled on the server with a ChangeInterceptor. Only authenticated users are allowed to update the JavaScript Reference entry database. JavaScript Unit Tests In order to build the JavaScript Reference application, I depended on JavaScript unit tests. I needed the unit tests, in particular, to write the JavaScript merge functions which merge entry change sets from the server with existing entries in browser local storage. In order for unit tests to be useful, they need to run fast. I ran my unit tests after each build. For this reason, I did not want to run the unit tests within the context of a browser. Instead, I ran the unit tests using server-side JavaScript (the Microsoft Script Control). The source code that you can download at the end of this blog entry includes a project named JavaScriptReference.UnitTests that contains all of the JavaScripts unit tests. JavaScript Integration Tests Because not every feature of an application can be tested by unit tests, the JavaScript Reference application also includes integration tests. I wrote the integration tests using Selenium RC in combination with ASP.NET Unit Tests. The Selenium tests run against all of the target browsers for the JavaScript Reference application: IE 8, Chrome 8, Firefox 3.6, and Safari 5. For example, here is the Selenium test that checks whether authenticating with a valid user name and password correctly switches the application to Admin Mode: [TestMethod] [HostType("ASP.NET")] [UrlToTest("http://localhost:26303/JavaScriptReference")] [AspNetDevelopmentServerHost(@"C:\Users\Stephen\Documents\Repos\JavaScriptReference\JavaScriptReference\JavaScriptReference", "/JavaScriptReference")] public void TestValidLogin() { // Run test for each controller foreach (var controller in this.Controllers) { var selenium = controller.Value; var browserName = controller.Key; // Open reference page. selenium.Open("http://localhost:26303/JavaScriptReference/default.aspx"); // Click login button displays login form selenium.Click("btnLogin"); Assert.IsTrue(selenium.IsVisible("loginForm"), "Login form appears after clicking btnLogin"); // Enter user name and password selenium.Type("userName", "Admin"); selenium.Type("password", "secret"); selenium.Click("btnDoLogin"); // Should set adminMode == true selenium.WaitForCondition("selenium.browserbot.getCurrentWindow().adminMode==true", "30000"); } }   The results for running the Selenium tests appear in the Test Results window just like the unit tests: The Selenium tests take much longer to execute than the unit tests. However, they provide test coverage for actual browsers. Furthermore, if you are using Visual Studio ALM, you can run the tests automatically every night as part of your standard nightly build. You can view the Selenium tests by opening the JavaScriptReference.QATests project. Summary I plan to write more detailed blog entries about this application over the next week. I want to discuss each of the features – HTML5 local storage, HTML5 offline apps, jQuery templates, automatic script combining and minification, JavaScript unit tests, Selenium tests -- in more detail. You can download the source control for the JavaScript Reference Application by clicking the following link: Download You need Visual Studio 2010 and ASP.NET 4 to build the application. Before running the JavaScript unit tests, install the Microsoft Script Control. Before running the Selenium tests, start the Selenium server by running the StartSeleniumServer.bat file located in the JavaScriptReference.QATests project.

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• Integrate Bing Search API into ASP.Net application

  - by sreejukg

  Couple of months back, I wrote an article about how to integrate Bing Search engine (API 2.0) with ASP.Net website. You can refer the article here http://weblogs.asp.net/sreejukg/archive/2012/04/07/integrate-bing-api-for-search-inside-asp-net-web-application.aspx Things are changing rapidly in the tech world and Bing has also changed! The Bing Search API 2.0 will work until August 1, 2012, after that it will not return results. Shocked? Don’t worry the API has moved to Windows Azure market place and available for you to sign up and continue using it and there is a free version available based on your usage. In this article, I am going to explain how you can integrate the new Bing API that is available in the Windows Azure market place with your website. You can access the Windows Azure market place from the below link https://datamarket.azure.com/ There is lot of applications available for you to subscribe and use. Bing is one of them. You can find the new Bing Search API from the below link https://datamarket.azure.com/dataset/5BA839F1-12CE-4CCE-BF57-A49D98D29A44 To get access to Bing Search API, first you need to register an account with Windows Azure market place. Sign in to the Windows Azure market place site using your windows live account. Once you sign in with your windows live account, you need to register to Windows Azure Market place account. From the Windows Azure market place, you will see the sign in button it the top right of the page. Clicking on the sign in button will take you to the Windows live ID authentication page. You can enter a windows live ID here to login. Once logged in you will see the Registration page for the Windows Azure market place as follows. You can agree or disagree for the email address usage by Microsoft. I believe selecting the check box means you will get email about what is happening in Windows Azure market place. Click on continue button once you are done. In the next page, you should accept the terms of use, it is not optional, you must agree to terms and conditions. Scroll down to the page and select the I agree checkbox and click on Register Button. Now you are a registered member of Windows Azure market place. You can subscribe to data applications. In order to use BING API in your application, you must obtain your account Key, in the previous version of Bing you were required an API key, the current version uses Account Key instead. Once you logged in to the Windows Azure market place, you can see “My Account” in the top menu, from the Top menu; go to “My Account” Section. From the My Account section, you can manage your subscriptions and Account Keys. Account Keys will be used by your applications to access the subscriptions from the market place. Click on My Account link, you can see Account Keys in the left menu and then Add an account key or you can use the default Account key available. Creating account key is very simple process. Also you can remove the account keys you create if necessary. The next step is to subscribe to BING Search API. At this moment, Bing Offers 2 APIs for search. The available options are as follows. 1. Bing Search API - https://datamarket.azure.com/dataset/5ba839f1-12ce-4cce-bf57-a49d98d29a44 2. Bing Search API – Web Results only - https://datamarket.azure.com/dataset/8818f55e-2fe5-4ce3-a617-0b8ba8419f65 The difference is that the later will give you only web results where the other you can specify the source type such as image, video, web, news etc. Carefully choose the API based on your application requirements. In this article, I am going to use Web Results Only API, but the steps will be similar to both. Go to the API page https://datamarket.azure.com/dataset/8818f55e-2fe5-4ce3-a617-0b8ba8419f65, you can see the subscription options in the right side. And in the bottom of the page you can see the free option Since I am going to use the free options, just Click the Sign Up link for that. Just select I agree check box and click on the Sign Up button. You will get a recipt pagethat detail your subscription. Now you are ready Bing Search API – Web results. The next step is to integrate the API into your ASP.Net application. Now if you go to the Search API page (as well as in the Receipt page), you can see a .Net C# Class Library link, click on the link, you will get a code file named “BingSearchContainer.cs”. In the following sections I am going to demonstrate the use of Bing Search API from an ASP.Net application. Create an empty ASP.Net web application. In the solution explorer, the application will looks as follows. Now add the downloaded code file (“BingSearchContainer.cs”) to the project. Right click your project in solution explorer, Add -> existing item, then browse to the downloaded location, select the “BingSearchContainer.cs” file and add it to the project. To build the code file you need to add reference to the following library. System.Data.Services.Client You can find the library in the .Net tab, when you select Add -> Reference Try to build your project now; it should build without any errors. Add an ASP.Net page to the project. I have included a text box and a button, then a Grid View to the page. The idea is to Search the text entered and display the results in the gridview. The page will look in the Visual Studio Designer as follows. The markup of the page is as follows. In the button click event handler for the search button, I have used the following code. Now run your project and enter some text in the text box and click the Search button, you will see the results coming from Bing, cool. I entered the text “Microsoft” in the textbox and clicked on the button and I got the following results. Searching Specific Websites If you want to search a particular website, you pass the site url with site:<site url name> and if you have more sites, use pipe (|). e.g. The following search query site:microsoft.com | site:adobe.com design will search the word design and return the results from Microsoft.com and Adobe.com See the sample code that search only Microsoft.com for the text entered for the above sample. var webResults = bingContainer.Web("site:www.Microsoft.com " + txtSearch.Text, null, null, null, null, null, null); Paging the results returned by the API By default the BING API will return 100 results based on your query. The default code file that you downloaded from BING doesn’t include any option for this. You can modify the downloaded code to perform this paging. The BING API supports two parameters $top (for number of results to return) and $skip (for number of records to skip). So if you want 3rd page of results with page size = 10, you need to pass $top = 10 and $skip=20. Open the BingSearchContainer.cs in the editor. You can see the Web method in it as follows. public DataServiceQuery<WebResult> Web(String Query, String Market, String Adult, Double? Latitude, Double? Longitude, String WebFileType, String Options) {  In the method signature, I have added two more parameters public DataServiceQuery<WebResult> Web(String Query, String Market, String Adult, Double? Latitude, Double? Longitude, String WebFileType, String Options, int resultCount, int pageNo) { and in the method, you need to pass the parameters to the query variable. query = query.AddQueryOption("$top", resultCount); query = query.AddQueryOption("$skip", (pageNo -1)*resultCount); return query; Note that I didn’t perform any validation, but you need to check conditions such as resultCount and pageCount should be greater than or equal to 1. If the parameters are not valid, the Bing Search API will throw the error. The modified method is as follows. The changes are highlighted. Now see the following code in the SearchPage.aspx.cs file protected void btnSearch_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) {     var bingContainer = new Bing.BingSearchContainer(new Uri(https://api.datamarket.azure.com/Bing/SearchWeb/));     // replace this value with your account key     var accountKey = "your key";     // the next line configures the bingContainer to use your credentials.     bingContainer.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(accountKey, accountKey);     var webResults = bingContainer.Web("site:microsoft.com" +txtSearch.Text , null, null, null, null, null, null,3,2);     lstResults.DataSource = webResults;     lstResults.DataBind(); } The following code will return 3 results starting from second page (by skipping first 3 results). See the result page as follows. Bing provides complete integration to its offerings. When you develop search based applications, you can use the power of Bing to perform the search. Integrating Bing Search API to ASP.Net application is a simple process and without investing much time, you can develop a good search based application. Make sure you read the terms of use before designing the application and decide which API usage is suitable for you. Further readings BING API Migration Guide http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=248077 Bing API FAQ http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=252146 Bing API Schema Guide http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=252151

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• MVP Summit 2011 summary and thoughts: The &ldquo;I hope I don&rsquo;t cross a line and lose my MVP status&rdquo; post

  - by George Clingerman

  I've been wanting to write this post summarizing my thoughts about the MVP summit but have been dragging my feet since it's a very difficult one to write. However seeing Andy (http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/t/77625.aspx) and Catalin (http://www.catalinzima.com/2011/03/mvp-summit-2011/) and Chris (http://geekswithblogs.net/cwilliams/archive/2011/03/07/144229.aspx) post about it has encouraged me to finally take the plunge. I'm going to have to write carefully though because I'm going to be dancing around a ton of NDA mine fields as well as having to walk the tight-rope of not sending the wrong message or having people read too much into what I'm saying. I want to note that most of what I'm about to say is just based on my observations, they're not thoughts that Microsoft has asked me to pass along and they're not things I heard Microsoft say. It's just me sharing what I think after going to the MVP summit. Let's start off with a short imaginary question and answer session.     Has the App Hub forums and XBLIG management been rather poor by Microsoft? Yes.     Do I think we're going to see changes to that overnight? No.     Will it continue to look bad from the outside? Somewhat. Confusing right? Well that's kind of how things are right now. Lots of confusion. XNA is doing AWESOME. Like, really, really awesome. As a result of that awesomeness, XNA is on three major platforms: Xbox 360, WP7 and PC. This means that internally Microsoft is really excited and invested in the technology. That's fantastic for XNA and really should show you the future the framework has. It's here to stay. So why are Xbox LIVE Indie Game developers feeling so much pain? The ironic thing is that pain is being caused by the success of XNA. When XNA was just a small thing, there was more freedom and more focus. It was just us and them. We were an only child. Now our family has grown and everyone has and wants some time with XNA. This gets XNA pulled in all directions and as it moves onto new platforms, it plays catch up trying to get those platforms up to speed to where Xbox LIVE Indie Games has grown. Forums, documentation, educational content. They all need to be there because Xbox LIVE Indie Games has all of that and more. Along with the catch up in features/documentation/awesomeness there's the catch up that the people on the team have to play. New platforms and new areas of development mean new players and those new guys don't have the history of being around from the beginning. This leads to a lack of understanding at times just how important some things are because they seem so small and insignificant (Rich Text defaulting for new forum profiles would be one things that jumps to mind). If you're not aware that the forums have become more than just a basic Q&A, if you're not aware that they're a central hub to a very active community, then you don't understand why that small change should be prioritized over something else. New people have to get caught up and figure out how to make a framework and central forum site work for everyone it's now serving. So yeah, a lot of our pain this last year has been simply that XNA is doing well and XBLIG is doing well so the focus was shifted to catch other things up. It hurts when a parent seems to not have any time for you and they're spending some much time with your new baby brother. Growing pains. All families and in our case our product family experience it to some degree. I think as WP7 matures we'll see the team figuring out how to give everyone the right amount of attention. While we're talking about some of our growing pains, it is also important to note (although not really an excuse) that the Xbox LIVE Arcade developers complain about many of the same things that we do. If you paid attention to talks and information coming out of GDC 2011, most of the the XBLA guys were saying things that sounded eerily similar to what the XBLIG developers are saying (Scott Nichols from GayGamer.net noticed http://twitter.com/#!/NaviFairyGG/status/43540379206811650). Does this mean we should just accept the status quo since we're being treated exactly the same? No way. However it DOES show that the way we're being treated is no indication of the stability and future of the platform, it's just Microsoft dropping the communication ball on two playing fields. We're not alone and we're not even being treated worse. Not great, but also in a weird way a very good sign. Now on to a few tidbits I think I CAN share from the summit (I'm really crossing my fingers I'm not stepping over some NDA line I shouldn't be). First, I discovered that the XBLIG user base is bigger than I personally had originally estimated. I won't give the exact numbers (although we did beg Microsoft to release some of these numbers so maybe someday?) but it was much larger than my original guestimates and I was pleasantly surprised. Maybe some of you guys had the right number when you were guessing, but I know that mine was much too low. And even MORE importantly the number of users/shoppers is growing at a steady pace as well. Our market is growing! That was fantastic news and really something that I had to share. On to the community manager discussion. It was mentioned. I was mentioned. I blushed. Nothing more to report there than the blush in my cheeks was a light crimson color. If I ever see a job description posted for that position I have a resume waiting in the wings. I can't deny that I think that would be my dream job... ...so after I finished blushing, the MVPs did make it very, very clear that the communication has to improve. Community manager or not the single biggest pain point with the Xbox LIVE Indie Game community has been a lack of communication. I have seen dramatic improvement in the team responding to MVPs and I'm even seeing more communication from them on the forums so I'm hoping that's a long term change. I really think they understood the issue, the problem remains how to open that communication channel in a way that was sustainable. I think they'll get it figured out and hopefully that's sooner rather than later. During the summit, you may have seen me tweeting about how I was "that guy" (http://twitter.com/#!/clingermangw/status/42740432471470081). You also may have noticed that Andy and Catalin both mentioned me in their summit write ups. I may have come on a bit strong while I was there...went a little out of character for myself. I've been agitated for a while with the way things have been and I've been listening to you guys and hearing you guys be agitated. I'm also watching some really awesome indie game developers looking elsewhere and leaving the platform. Some of them we might not have been able to keep even with changes, but others are only leaving because of perceptions and lack of communication from Microsoft. And that pisses me off. And I let Microsoft know that I was pissed off. You made your list and I took that list and verbalized it. I verbalized the hell out of it. [It was actually mentioned that I'm a lot nicer on the forums and in email than I am in person...I felt bad about that, but I couldn't stay silent]. Hopefully it did something guys, I really did try hard to get the message across. Along with my agitation, I also brought some pride. I mentioned several things in person to the team that I was particularly proud of. From people in the community that are doing an awesome job, to the re-launch of XboxIndies that was going on that week and even gamers like Steven Hurdle (http://writingsofmassdeduction.com/) who have purchased one XBLIG every day for over 100 days now. The community is freaking rocking it and I made sure to highlight that. So in conclusion, I'd just like to say hang in there (you know, like that picture of the cat). If you've been worried about investing in Xbox LIVE Indie Games because you think it's on shaky ground. It's not. Dream Build Play being about the Xbox 360 should have helped a little to point that out. The team is really scrambling around trying to figure things out and make improvements all around. There’s quite a few new gals and guys and it's going to take them time to catch up and there are a lot of constantly shifting priorities. We all have one toy, one team and we're fighting for time with it. It's also time for the community to continue spreading our wings and going out on our own more often. The Indie Game Winter Uprising was a fantastic example of that. We took things into our own hands and it got noticed and Microsoft got behind it. They do every time we stand up and do something (look at how many Microsoft employees tweeted, wrote about the re-launch of XboxIndies.com or the support I've gotten from them for my weekly XNA Notes). XNA is here to stay, it's time for us to stop being scared of that and figure out how to make our own games the successes they should be. There's definitely a list of things that need to be fixed, things that should be improved and I think we should definitely keep vocal about that with Microsoft. Keep it short, focused and prioritized. There's also a lot of things we can do ourselves while we're waiting on them to fix and change things. Lots of ways we can compensate for particular weaknesses in the channel. The kind of stuff that we can step up and do ourselves. Do it on our own, you know, the way Indies always do. And I'm really looking forward to watching us do just that.

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• Ajax Control Toolkit May 2012 Release

  - by Stephen.Walther

  I’m happy to announce the May 2012 release of the Ajax Control Toolkit. This newest release of the Ajax Control Toolkit includes a new file upload control which displays file upload progress. We’ve also added several significant enhancements to the existing HtmlEditorExtender control such as support for uploading images and Source View. You can download and start using the newest version of the Ajax Control Toolkit by entering the following command in the Library Package Manager console in Visual Studio: Install-Package AjaxControlToolkit Alternatively, you can download the latest version of the Ajax Control Toolkit from CodePlex: http://AjaxControlToolkit.CodePlex.com The New Ajax File Upload Control The most requested new feature for the Ajax Control Toolkit (according to the CodePlex Issue Tracker) has been support for file upload with progress. We worked hard over the last few months to create an entirely new file upload control which displays upload progress. Here is a sample which illustrates how you can use the new AjaxFileUpload control: <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="01_FileUpload.aspx.cs" Inherits="WebApplication1._01_FileUpload" %> <html> <head runat="server"> <title>Simple File Upload</title> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <div> <ajaxToolkit:ToolkitScriptManager runat="server" /> <ajaxToolkit:AjaxFileUpload id="ajaxUpload1" OnUploadComplete="ajaxUpload1_OnUploadComplete" runat="server" /> </div> </form> </body> </html> The page above includes a ToolkitScriptManager control. This control is required to use any of the controls in the Ajax Control Toolkit because this control is responsible for loading all of the scripts required by a control. The page also contains an AjaxFileUpload control. The UploadComplete event is handled in the code-behind for the page: namespace WebApplication1 { public partial class _01_FileUpload : System.Web.UI.Page { protected void ajaxUpload1_OnUploadComplete(object sender, AjaxControlToolkit.AjaxFileUploadEventArgs e) { // Generate file path string filePath = "~/Images/" + e.FileName; // Save upload file to the file system ajaxUpload1.SaveAs(MapPath(filePath)); } } } The UploadComplete handler saves each uploaded file by calling the AjaxFileUpload control’s SaveAs() method with a full file path. Here’s a video which illustrates the process of uploading a file: Warning: in order to write to the Images folder on a production IIS server, you need Write permissions on the Images folder. You need to provide permissions for the IIS Application Pool account to write to the Images folder. To learn more, see: http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/624/application-pool-identities/ Showing File Upload Progress The new AjaxFileUpload control takes advantage of HTML5 upload progress events (described in the XMLHttpRequest Level 2 standard). This standard is supported by Firefox 8+, Chrome 16+, Safari 5+, and Internet Explorer 10+. In other words, the standard is supported by the most recent versions of all browsers except for Internet Explorer which will support the standard with the release of Internet Explorer 10. The AjaxFileUpload control works with all browsers, even browsers which do not support the new XMLHttpRequest Level 2 standard. If you use the AjaxFileUpload control with a downlevel browser – such as Internet Explorer 9 — then you get a simple throbber image during a file upload instead of a progress indicator. Here’s how you specify a throbber image when declaring the AjaxFileUpload control: <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="02_FileUpload.aspx.cs" Inherits="WebApplication1._02_FileUpload" %> <html> <head id="Head1" runat="server"> <title>File Upload with Throbber</title> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <div> <ajaxToolkit:ToolkitScriptManager ID="ToolkitScriptManager1" runat="server" /> <ajaxToolkit:AjaxFileUpload id="ajaxUpload1" OnUploadComplete="ajaxUpload1_OnUploadComplete" ThrobberID="MyThrobber" runat="server" /> <asp:Image id="MyThrobber" ImageUrl="ajax-loader.gif" Style="display:None" runat="server" /> </div> </form> </body> </html> Notice that the page above includes an image with the Id MyThrobber. This image is displayed while files are being uploaded. I use the website http://AjaxLoad.info to generate animated busy wait images. Drag-And-Drop File Upload If you are using an uplevel browser then you can drag-and-drop the files which you want to upload onto the AjaxFileUpload control. The following video illustrates how drag-and-drop works: Remember that drag-and-drop will not work on Internet Explorer 9 or older. Accepting Multiple Files By default, the AjaxFileUpload control enables you to upload multiple files at a time. When you open the file dialog, use the CTRL or SHIFT key to select multiple files. If you want to restrict the number of files that can be uploaded then use the MaximumNumberOfFiles property like this: <ajaxToolkit:AjaxFileUpload id="ajaxUpload1" OnUploadComplete="ajaxUpload1_OnUploadComplete" ThrobberID="throbber" MaximumNumberOfFiles="1" runat="server" /> In the code above, the maximum number of files which can be uploaded is restricted to a single file. Restricting Uploaded File Types You might want to allow only certain types of files to be uploaded. For example, you might want to accept only image uploads. In that case, you can use the AllowedFileTypes property to provide a list of allowed file types like this: <ajaxToolkit:AjaxFileUpload id="ajaxUpload1" OnUploadComplete="ajaxUpload1_OnUploadComplete" ThrobberID="throbber" AllowedFileTypes="jpg,jpeg,gif,png" runat="server" /> The code above prevents any files except jpeg, gif, and png files from being uploaded. Enhancements to the HTMLEditorExtender Over the past months, we spent a considerable amount of time making bug fixes and feature enhancements to the existing HtmlEditorExtender control. I want to focus on two of the most significant enhancements that we made to the control: support for Source View and support for uploading images. Adding Source View Support to the HtmlEditorExtender When you click the Source View tag, the HtmlEditorExtender changes modes and displays the HTML source of the contents contained in the TextBox being extended. You can use Source View to make fine-grain changes to HTML before submitting the HTML to the server. For reasons of backwards compatibility, the Source View tab is disabled by default. To enable Source View, you need to declare your HtmlEditorExtender with the DisplaySourceTab property like this: <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="05_SourceView.aspx.cs" Inherits="WebApplication1._05_SourceView" %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html> <head id="Head1" runat="server"> <title>HtmlEditorExtender with Source View</title> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <div> <ajaxToolkit:ToolkitScriptManager ID="ToolkitScriptManager1" runat="server" /> <asp:TextBox id="txtComments" TextMode="MultiLine" Columns="60" Rows="10" Runat="server" /> <ajaxToolkit:HtmlEditorExtender id="HEE1" TargetControlID="txtComments" DisplaySourceTab="true" runat="server" /> </div> </form> </body> </html> The page above includes a ToolkitScriptManager, TextBox, and HtmlEditorExtender control. The HtmlEditorExtender extends the TextBox so that it supports rich text editing. Notice that the HtmlEditorExtender includes a DisplaySourceTab property. This property causes a button to appear at the bottom of the HtmlEditorExtender which enables you to switch to Source View: Note: when using the HtmlEditorExtender, we recommend that you set the DOCTYPE for the document. Otherwise, you can encounter weird formatting issues. Accepting Image Uploads We also enhanced the HtmlEditorExtender to support image uploads (another very highly requested feature at CodePlex). The following video illustrates the experience of adding an image to the editor: Once again, for backwards compatibility reasons, support for image uploads is disabled by default. Here’s how you can declare the HtmlEditorExtender so that it supports image uploads: <ajaxToolkit:HtmlEditorExtender id="MyHtmlEditorExtender" TargetControlID="txtComments" OnImageUploadComplete="MyHtmlEditorExtender_ImageUploadComplete" DisplaySourceTab="true" runat="server" > <Toolbar> <ajaxToolkit:Bold /> <ajaxToolkit:Italic /> <ajaxToolkit:Underline /> <ajaxToolkit:InsertImage /> </Toolbar> </ajaxToolkit:HtmlEditorExtender> There are two things that you should notice about the code above. First, notice that an InsertImage toolbar button is added to the HtmlEditorExtender toolbar. This HtmlEditorExtender will render toolbar buttons for bold, italic, underline, and insert image. Second, notice that the HtmlEditorExtender includes an event handler for the ImageUploadComplete event. The code for this event handler is below: using System.Web.UI; using AjaxControlToolkit; namespace WebApplication1 { public partial class _06_ImageUpload : System.Web.UI.Page { protected void MyHtmlEditorExtender_ImageUploadComplete(object sender, AjaxFileUploadEventArgs e) { // Generate file path string filePath = "~/Images/" + e.FileName; // Save uploaded file to the file system var ajaxFileUpload = (AjaxFileUpload)sender; ajaxFileUpload.SaveAs(MapPath(filePath)); // Update client with saved image path e.PostedUrl = Page.ResolveUrl(filePath); } } } Within the ImageUploadComplete event handler, you need to do two things: 1) Save the uploaded image (for example, to the file system, a database, or Azure storage) 2) Provide the URL to the saved image so the image can be displayed within the HtmlEditorExtender In the code above, the uploaded image is saved to the ~/Images folder. The path of the saved image is returned to the client by setting the AjaxFileUploadEventArgs PostedUrl property. Not surprisingly, under the covers, the HtmlEditorExtender uses the AjaxFileUpload. You can get a direct reference to the AjaxFileUpload control used by an HtmlEditorExtender by using the following code: void Page_Load() { var ajaxFileUpload = MyHtmlEditorExtender.AjaxFileUpload; ajaxFileUpload.AllowedFileTypes = "jpg,jpeg"; } The code above illustrates how you can restrict the types of images that can be uploaded to the HtmlEditorExtender. This code prevents anything but jpeg images from being uploaded. Summary This was the most difficult release of the Ajax Control Toolkit to date. We iterated through several designs for the AjaxFileUpload control – with each iteration, the goal was to make the AjaxFileUpload control easier for developers to use. My hope is that we were able to create a control which Web Forms developers will find very intuitive. I want to thank the developers on the Superexpert.com team for their hard work on this release.

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• Windows Azure Root CAs and SSL Client Certificates

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  I ran into some problems while trying to make SSL client certificates work for StarterSTS 1.5. In theory you have to do two things (via startup tasks): Unlock the SSL section in IIS Install all the root certificates for the client certs you want to accept I did that. But it still does not work. While inspecting the event log, I stumbled over an schannel error message that I’ve never seen before: “When asking for client authentication, this server sends a list of trusted certificate authorities to the client. The client uses this list to choose a client certificate that is trusted by the server. Currently, this server trusts so many certificate authorities that the list has grown too long. This list has thus been truncated. The administrator of this machine should review the certificate authorities trusted for client authentication and remove those that do not really need to be trusted.” WTF? And indeed standard Azure (web role) VMs trust 275 root CAs (see attached list). Including kinda obscure ones. I don’t really know why MS made this design decision. It seems just wrong (including breaking the SSL client cert functionality). Deleting like 60% of them made SSL client certs from my CA work. So I guess I now have to find an automated way to attach CTLs to my site…joy. Exported list of trusted CA (as of 30th Dec 2010) AC Raíz Certicámara S.A. (4/2/2030 9:42:02 PM) AC RAIZ FNMT-RCM (1/1/2030 12:00:00 AM) A-CERT ADVANCED (10/23/2011 2:14:14 PM) Actalis Authentication CA G1 (6/25/2022 2:06:00 PM) Agence Nationale de Certification Electronique (8/12/2037 9:03:17 AM) Agence Nationale de Certification Electronique (8/12/2037 9:58:14 AM) Agencia Catalana de Certificacio (NIF Q-0801176-I) (1/7/2031 10:59:59 PM) America Online Root Certification Authority 1 (11/19/2037 8:43:00 PM) America Online Root Certification Authority 2 (9/29/2037 2:08:00 PM) ANCERT Certificados CGN (2/11/2024 5:27:12 PM) ANCERT Certificados Notariales (2/11/2024 3:58:26 PM) ANCERT Corporaciones de Derecho Publico (2/11/2024 5:22:45 PM) A-Trust-nQual-01 (11/30/2014 11:00:00 PM) A-Trust-nQual-03 (8/17/2015 10:00:00 PM) A-Trust-Qual-01 (11/30/2014 11:00:00 PM) A-Trust-Qual-02 (12/2/2014 11:00:00 PM) A-Trust-Qual-03a (4/24/2018 10:00:00 PM) Austria Telekom-Control Kommission (9/24/2005 12:40:00 PM) Austrian Society for Data Protection (2/12/2009 11:30:30 AM) Austrian Society for Data Protection GLOBALTRUST Certification Service (9/18/2036 2:12:35 PM) Autoridad Certificadora Raiz de la Secretaria de Economia (5/9/2025 12:00:00 AM) Autoridad de Certificacion de la Abogacia (6/13/2030 10:00:00 PM) Autoridad de Certificacion Firmaprofesional CIF A62634068 (10/24/2013 10:00:00 PM) Autoridade Certificadora Raiz Brasileira (11/30/2011 11:59:00 PM) Baltimore CyberTrust Root (5/12/2025 11:59:00 PM) BIT AdminCA-CD-T01 (1/25/2016 12:36:19 PM) BIT Admin-Root-CA (11/10/2021 7:51:07 AM) Buypass Class 2 CA 1 (10/13/2016 10:25:09 AM) Buypass Class 3 CA 1 (5/9/2015 2:13:03 PM) CA Disig (3/22/2016 1:39:34 AM) CertEurope (3/27/2037 11:00:00 PM) CERTICAMARA S.A. (2/23/2015 5:10:37 PM) Certicámara S.A. (5/23/2011 10:00:00 PM) Certigna (6/29/2027 3:13:05 PM) Certipost E-Trust Primary Normalised CA (7/26/2020 10:00:00 AM) Certipost E-Trust Primary Qualified CA (7/26/2020 10:00:00 AM) Certipost E-Trust Primary TOP Root CA (7/26/2025 10:00:00 AM) Certisign Autoridade Certificadora AC1S (6/27/2018 12:00:00 AM) Certisign Autoridade Certificadora AC2 (6/27/2018 12:00:00 AM) Certisign Autoridade Certificadora AC3S (7/9/2018 8:56:32 PM) Certisign Autoridade Certificadora AC4 (6/27/2018 12:00:00 AM) CertPlus Class 1 Primary CA (7/6/2020 11:59:59 PM) CertPlus Class 2 Primary CA (7/6/2019 11:59:59 PM) CertPlus Class 3 Primary CA (7/6/2019 11:59:59 PM) CertPlus Class 3P Primary CA (7/6/2019 11:59:59 PM) CertPlus Class 3TS Primary CA (7/6/2019 11:59:59 PM) CertRSA01 (3/3/2010 2:59:59 PM) certSIGN Root CA (7/4/2031 5:20:04 PM) Certum (6/11/2027 10:46:39 AM) Certum Trusted Network CA (12/31/2029 12:07:37 PM) Chambers of Commerce Root - 2008 (7/31/2038 12:29:50 PM) Chambersign Chambers of Commerce Root (9/30/2037 4:13:44 PM) Chambersign Global Root (9/30/2037 4:14:18 PM) Chambersign Public Notary Root (9/30/2037 4:14:49 PM) Chunghwa Telecom Co. Ltd. (12/20/2034 2:31:27 AM) Cisco Systems (5/14/2029 8:25:42 PM) CNNIC Root (4/16/2027 7:09:14 AM) Common Policy (10/15/2027 4:08:00 PM) COMODO (12/31/2028 11:59:59 PM) COMODO (1/18/2038 11:59:59 PM) COMODO (12/31/2029 11:59:59 PM) ComSign Advanced Security CA (3/24/2029 9:55:55 PM) ComSign CA (3/19/2029 3:02:18 PM) ComSign Secured CA (3/16/2029 3:04:56 PM) Correo Uruguayo - Root CA (12/31/2030 2:59:59 AM) Cybertrust Global Root (12/15/2021 8:00:00 AM) DanID (2/11/2037 9:09:30 AM) DanID (4/5/2021 5:03:17 PM) Deutsche Telekom Root CA 2 (7/9/2019 11:59:00 PM) DigiCert (11/10/2031 12:00:00 AM) DigiCert (11/10/2031 12:00:00 AM) DigiCert (11/10/2031 12:00:00 AM) DigiNotar Root CA (3/31/2025 6:19:21 PM) DIRECCION GENERAL DE LA POLICIA (2/8/2036 10:59:59 PM) DST (ABA.ECOM) CA (7/9/2009 5:33:53 PM) DST (ANX Network) CA (12/9/2018 4:16:48 PM) DST (Baltimore EZ) CA (7/3/2009 7:56:53 PM) DST (National Retail Federation) RootCA (12/8/2008 4:14:16 PM) DST (United Parcel Service) RootCA (12/7/2008 12:25:46 AM) DST ACES CA X6 (11/20/2017 9:19:58 PM) DST Root CA X3 (9/30/2021 2:01:15 PM) DST RootCA X1 (11/28/2008 6:18:55 PM) DST RootCA X2 (11/27/2008 10:46:16 PM) DSTCA E1 (12/10/2018 6:40:23 PM) DSTCA E2 (12/9/2018 7:47:26 PM) DST-Entrust GTI CA (12/9/2018 12:32:24 AM) D-TRUST GmbH (5/16/2022 5:20:47 AM) D-TRUST GmbH (6/8/2012 11:47:46 AM) D-TRUST GmbH (5/16/2022 5:20:47 AM) EBG Elektronik Sertifika Hizmet Saglayicisi (8/14/2016 12:31:09 AM) E-Certchile (9/5/2028 7:39:41 PM) Echoworx Root CA2 (10/7/2030 10:49:13 AM) ECRaizEstado (6/23/2030 1:41:27 PM) EDICOM (4/13/2028 4:24:22 PM) E-GÜVEN Elektronik Sertifika Hizmet Saglayicisi (1/4/2017 11:32:48 AM) E-ME SSI (RCA) (5/19/2027 8:48:15 AM) Entrust (11/27/2026 8:53:42 PM) Entrust (5/25/2019 4:39:40 PM) Entrust.net (12/7/2030 5:55:54 PM) Equifax Secure eBusiness CA-1 (6/21/2020 4:00:00 AM) Equifax Secure eBusiness CA-2 (6/23/2019 12:14:45 PM) Equifax Secure Global eBusiness CA-1 (6/21/2020 4:00:00 AM) eSign Australia: eSign Imperito Primary Root CA (5/23/2012 11:59:59 PM) eSign Australia: Gatekeeper Root CA (5/23/2014 11:59:59 PM) eSign Australia: Primary Utility Root CA (5/23/2012 11:59:59 PM) Fabrica Nacional de Moneda y Timbre (3/18/2019 3:26:19 PM) GeoTrust (8/22/2018 4:41:51 PM) GeoTrust (7/16/2036 11:59:59 PM) GeoTrust Global CA (5/21/2022 4:00:00 AM) GeoTrust Global CA 2 (3/4/2019 5:00:00 AM) GeoTrust Primary Certification Authority - G2 (1/18/2038 11:59:59 PM) GeoTrust Primary Certification Authority - G3 (12/1/2037 11:59:59 PM) GeoTrust Universal CA (3/4/2029 5:00:00 AM) GeoTrust Universal CA 2 (3/4/2029 5:00:00 AM) Global Chambersign Root - 2008 (7/31/2038 12:31:40 PM) GlobalSign (1/28/2028 12:00:00 PM) GlobalSign (12/15/2021 8:00:00 AM) Go Daddy Class 2 Certification Authority (6/29/2034 5:06:20 PM) GTE CyberTrust Global Root (8/13/2018 11:59:00 PM) GTE CyberTrust Root (4/3/2004 11:59:00 PM) GTE CyberTrust Root (2/23/2006 11:59:00 PM) Halcom CA FO (6/5/2020 10:33:31 AM) Halcom CA PO 2 (2/7/2019 6:33:31 PM) Hongkong Post Root CA (1/16/2010 11:59:00 PM) Hongkong Post Root CA 1 (5/15/2023 4:52:29 AM) I.CA První certifikacní autorita a.s. (4/1/2018 12:00:00 AM) I.CA První certifikacní autorita a.s. (4/1/2018 12:00:00 AM) InfoNotary (3/6/2026 5:33:05 PM) IPS SERVIDORES (12/29/2009 11:21:07 PM) IZENPE S.A. (1/30/2018 11:00:00 PM) Izenpe.com (12/13/2037 8:27:25 AM) Japan Certification Services, Inc. SecureSign RootCA1 (9/15/2020 2:59:59 PM) Japan Certification Services, Inc. SecureSign RootCA11 (4/8/2029 4:56:47 AM) Japan Certification Services, Inc. SecureSign RootCA2 (9/15/2020 2:59:59 PM) Japan Certification Services, Inc. SecureSign RootCA3 (9/15/2020 2:59:59 PM) Japan Local Government PKI Application CA (3/31/2016 2:59:59 PM) Japanese Government ApplicationCA (12/12/2017 3:00:00 PM) Juur-SK AS Sertifitseerimiskeskus (8/26/2016 2:23:01 PM) KamuSM (8/21/2017 11:37:07 AM) KISA RootCA 1 (8/24/2025 8:05:46 AM) KISA RootCA 3 (11/19/2014 6:39:51 AM) Macao Post eSignTrust (1/29/2013 11:59:59 PM) MicroSec e-Szigno Root CA (4/6/2017 12:28:44 PM) Microsoft Authenticode(tm) Root (12/31/1999 11:59:59 PM) Microsoft Root Authority (12/31/2020 7:00:00 AM) Microsoft Root Certificate Authority (5/9/2021 11:28:13 PM) Microsoft Timestamp Root (12/30/1999 11:59:59 PM) MOGAHA Govt of Korea (4/21/2012 9:07:23 AM) MOGAHA Govt of Korea GPKI (3/15/2017 6:00:04 AM) NetLock Arany (Class Gold) Fotanúsítvány (12/6/2028 3:08:21 PM) NetLock Expressz (Class C) Tanusitvanykiado (2/20/2019 2:08:11 PM) NetLock Kozjegyzoi (Class A) Tanusitvanykiado (2/19/2019 11:14:47 PM) NetLock Minositett Kozjegyzoi (Class QA) Tanusitvanykiado (12/15/2022 1:47:11 AM) NetLock Platina (Class Platinum) Fotanúsítvány (12/6/2028 3:12:44 PM) NetLock Uzleti (Class B) Tanusitvanykiado (2/20/2019 2:10:22 PM) Netrust CA1 (3/30/2021 2:57:45 AM) Network Solutions (12/31/2029 11:59:59 PM) NLB Nova Ljubljanska Banka d.d. Ljubljana (5/15/2023 12:22:45 PM) OISTE WISeKey Global Root GA CA (12/11/2037 4:09:51 PM) Post.Trust Root CA (7/5/2022 9:12:33 AM) Post.Trust Root CA (8/20/2010 1:56:21 PM) Posta CA Root (10/20/2028 12:52:08 PM) POSTarCA (2/7/2023 11:06:58 AM) QuoVadis Root CA 2 (11/24/2031 6:23:33 PM) QuoVadis Root CA 3 (11/24/2031 7:06:44 PM) QuoVadis Root Certification Authority (3/17/2021 6:33:33 PM) Root CA Generalitat Valenciana (7/1/2021 3:22:47 PM) RSA Security 2048 V3 (2/22/2026 8:39:23 PM) SECOM Trust Systems CO LTD (6/6/2037 2:12:32 AM) SECOM Trust Systems CO LTD (6/25/2019 10:23:48 PM) SECOM Trust Systems CO LTD (9/30/2023 4:20:49 AM) Secretaria de Economia Mexico (5/8/2025 12:00:00 AM) Secrétariat Général de la Défense Nationale (10/17/2020 2:29:22 PM) SecureNet CA Class B (10/16/2009 9:59:00 AM) Serasa Certificate Authority I (11/21/2024 2:12:45 PM) Serasa Certificate Authority II (11/21/2024 12:44:48 PM) Serasa Certificate Authority III (11/21/2024 1:24:14 PM) SERVICIOS DE CERTIFICACION - A.N.C. (3/9/2009 9:08:07 PM) Sigen-CA (6/29/2021 9:57:46 PM) Sigov-CA (1/10/2021 2:22:52 PM) Skaitmeninio sertifikavimo centras (12/28/2026 12:05:04 PM) Skaitmeninio sertifikavimo centras (12/25/2026 12:08:26 PM) Skaitmeninio sertifikavimo centras (12/22/2026 12:11:30 PM) Sonera Class1 CA (4/6/2021 10:49:13 AM) Sonera Class2 CA (4/6/2021 7:29:40 AM) Spanish Property & Commerce Registry CA (4/27/2012 9:39:50 AM) Staat der Nederlanden Root CA (12/16/2015 9:15:38 AM) Staat der Nederlanden Root CA - G2 (3/25/2020 11:03:10 AM) Starfield Class 2 Certification Authority (6/29/2034 5:39:16 PM) Starfield Technologies (6/26/2019 12:19:54 AM) Starfield Technologies Inc. (12/31/2029 11:59:59 PM) StartCom Certification Authority (9/17/2036 7:46:36 PM) S-TRUST Authentication and Encryption Root CA 2005:PN (6/21/2030 11:59:59 PM) Swisscom Root CA 1 (8/18/2025 10:06:20 PM) SwissSign (10/25/2036 8:30:35 AM) SwissSign Platinum G2 Root CA (10/25/2036 8:36:00 AM) SwissSign Silver G2 Root CA (10/25/2036 8:32:46 AM) TC TrustCenter Class 1 CA (1/1/2011 11:59:59 AM) TC TrustCenter Class 2 CA (1/1/2011 11:59:59 AM) TC TrustCenter Class 2 CA II (12/31/2025 10:59:59 PM) TC TrustCenter Class 3 CA (1/1/2011 11:59:59 AM) TC TrustCenter Class 3 CA II (12/31/2025 10:59:59 PM) TC TrustCenter Class 4 CA (1/1/2011 11:59:59 AM) TC TrustCenter Class 4 CA II (12/31/2025 10:59:59 PM) TC TrustCenter Time Stamping CA (1/1/2011 11:59:59 AM) TC TrustCenter Universal CA I (12/31/2025 10:59:59 PM) TC TrustCenter Universal CA II (12/31/2030 10:59:59 PM) thawte (12/31/2020 11:59:59 PM) thawte (7/16/2036 11:59:59 PM) thawte (12/31/2020 11:59:59 PM) thawte (12/31/2020 11:59:59 PM) thawte (12/31/2020 11:59:59 PM) thawte (12/31/2020 11:59:59 PM) thawte (12/31/2020 11:59:59 PM) thawte Primary Root CA - G2 (1/18/2038 11:59:59 PM) thawte Primary Root CA - G3 (12/1/2037 11:59:59 PM) Thawte Timestamping CA (12/31/2020 11:59:59 PM) Trustis EVS Root CA (1/9/2027 11:56:00 AM) Trustis FPS Root CA (1/21/2024 11:36:54 AM) Trustwave (1/1/2035 5:37:19 AM) Trustwave (12/31/2029 7:40:55 PM) Trustwave (12/31/2029 7:52:06 PM) TURKTRUST Elektronik Islem Hizmetleri (9/16/2015 12:13:05 PM) TURKTRUST Elektronik Islem Hizmetleri (3/22/2015 10:04:51 AM) TURKTRUST Elektronik Sertifika Hizmet Saglayicisi (9/16/2015 10:07:57 AM) TURKTRUST Elektronik Sertifika Hizmet Saglayicisi (3/22/2015 10:27:17 AM) TÜRKTRUST Elektronik Sertifika Hizmet Saglayicisi (12/22/2017 6:37:19 PM) TW Government Root Certification Authority (12/5/2032 1:23:33 PM) TWCA Root Certification Authority 1 (12/31/2030 3:59:59 PM) TWCA Root Certification Authority 2 (12/31/2030 3:59:59 PM) U.S. Government FBCA (10/6/2010 6:53:56 PM) UCA Global Root (12/31/2037 12:00:00 AM) UCA Root (12/31/2029 12:00:00 AM) USERTrust (7/9/2019 6:40:36 PM) USERTrust (7/9/2019 5:36:58 PM) USERTrust (6/24/2019 7:06:30 PM) USERTrust (7/9/2019 6:19:22 PM) USERTrust (5/30/2020 10:48:38 AM) UTN - USERFirst-Network Applications (7/9/2019 6:57:49 PM) ValiCert Class 3 Policy Validation Authority (6/26/2019 12:22:33 AM) VAS Latvijas Pasts SSI(RCA) (9/13/2024 9:27:57 AM) VeriSign (5/18/2018 11:59:59 PM) VeriSign (7/16/2036 11:59:59 PM) VeriSign (8/1/2028 11:59:59 PM) VeriSign (12/31/1999 9:37:48 AM) VeriSign (1/7/2004 11:59:59 PM) VeriSign (5/18/2018 11:59:59 PM) VeriSign (1/7/2004 11:59:59 PM) VeriSign (8/1/2028 11:59:59 PM) VeriSign (8/1/2028 11:59:59 PM) VeriSign (1/7/2020 11:59:59 PM) VeriSign (12/31/1999 9:35:58 AM) VeriSign (8/1/2028 11:59:59 PM) VeriSign (7/16/2036 11:59:59 PM) VeriSign (1/7/2004 11:59:59 PM) VeriSign (7/16/2036 11:59:59 PM) VeriSign (1/7/2010 11:59:59 PM) VeriSign (5/18/2018 11:59:59 PM) VeriSign (8/1/2028 11:59:59 PM) VeriSign (1/7/2004 11:59:59 PM) VeriSign (7/16/2036 11:59:59 PM) VeriSign (7/16/2036 11:59:59 PM) VeriSign (8/1/2028 11:59:59 PM) VeriSign (5/18/2018 11:59:59 PM) VeriSign Class 3 Public Primary CA (8/1/2028 11:59:59 PM) VeriSign Class 3 Public Primary Certification Authority - G4 (1/18/2038 11:59:59 PM) VeriSign Time Stamping CA (1/7/2004 11:59:59 PM) VeriSign Universal Root Certification Authority (12/1/2037 11:59:59 PM) Visa eCommerce Root (6/24/2022 12:16:12 AM) Visa Information Delivery Root CA (6/29/2025 5:42:42 PM) VRK Gov. Root CA (12/18/2023 1:51:08 PM) Wells Fargo Root Certificate Authority (1/14/2021 4:41:28 PM) WellsSecure Public Certificate Authority (12/14/2022 12:07:54 AM) Xcert EZ by DST (7/11/2009 4:14:18 PM)

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 10, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 10, 2012Popular ReleasesPlayer Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 Metro (BETA): Player Framework for HTML/JavaScript and XAML/C# Metro Style Applications.WPF Application Framework (WAF): WAF for .NET 4.5 (Experimental): Version: 2.5.0.440 (Experimental): This is an experimental release! It can be used to investigate the new .NET Framework 4.5 features. The ideas shown in this release might come in a future release (after 2.5) of the WPF Application Framework (WAF). More information can be found in this dicussion post. Requirements .NET Framework 4.5 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 11) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 11 Professional Changelog All: Upgrade all proje...SSH.NET Library: 2012.3.9: There are still few outstanding issues I wanted to include in this release but since its been a while and there are few new features already I decided to create a new release now. New Features Add SOCKS4, SOCKS5 and HTTP Proxy support when connecting to remote server. For silverlight only IP address can be used for server address when using proxy. Add dynamic port forwarding support using ForwardedPortDynamic class. Add new ShellStream class to work with SSH Shell. Add supports for mu...Test Case Import Utilities for Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio 11 Beta: V1.2 RTM: This release (V1.2 RTM) includes: Support for connecting to Hosted Team Foundation Server Preview. Support for connecting to Team Foundation Server 11 Beta. Fix to issue with read-only attribute being set for LinksMapping-ReportFile which may have led to problems when saving the report file. Fix to issue with “related links” not being set properly in certain conditions. Fix to ensure that tool works fine when the Excel file contained rich text data. Note: Data is still imported in pl...Audio Pitch & Shift: Audio Pitch And Shift 3.5.0: Modules (mod, xm, it, etc..) supportcallisto: callisto 2.0.19: BUG FIX: Autorun.load() function in scripting now has sandboxed path (Thanks Mikey!) BUG FIX: UserObject.Name property now allows full 20 byte string replacements. FEATURE REQUEST: File.* script functions now allow file extensions.EntitiesToDTOs - Entity Framework DTO Generator: EntitiesToDTOs.v2.1: Changelog Fixed template file access issue on Win7. Fix on configuration load when target project was not found and "Use project default namespace" was checked. Minor fix on loading latest configuration at startup. Minor fix in VisualStudioHelper class. DTO's properties accessors are now in one line. Improvements in PropertyHelper to get a cleaner and more performant code. Added Website project type as a not supported project type. Using Error List pane from VS IDE to show Enti...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.01.04: Major Highlights Fixed issue with loading the splash page skin in the login, privacy and terms of use pages Fixed issue when searching for words with special characters in them Fixed redirection issue when the user does not have permissions to access a resource Fixed issue when clearing the cache using the ClearHostCache() function Fixed issue when displaying the site structure in the link to page feature Fixed issue when inline editing the title of modules Fixed issue with ...Mayhem: Mayhem Developer Preview: This is the developer preview of Mayhem. Enjoy!Team Foundation Server Process Template Customization Guidance: v1 - For Visual Studio 11: Welcome to the BETA release of the Team Foundation Server Process Template Customization preview. As this is a BETA release and the quality bar for the final Release has not been achieved, we value your candid feedback and recommend that you do not use or deploy these BETA artifacts in a production environment. Quality-Bar Details Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has not been through an independent technical review Documentation has not been rev...Magelia WebStore Open-source Ecommerce software: Magelia WebStore 1.2: Medium trust compliant lot of small change for medium trust compliance full refactoring of user management refactoring of Client Refactoring of user management Magelia.WebStore.Client no longer reference Magelia.WebStore.Services.Contract Refactoring page category multi parent category added copy category feature added Refactoring page catalog copy catalog feature added variant management improvement ability to define a default variant for a variable product ability to ord...PDFsharp - A .NET library for processing PDF: PDFsharp and MigraDoc Foundation 1.32: PDFsharp and MigraDoc Foundation 1.32 is a stable version that fixes a few bugs that were found with version 1.31. Version 1.32 includes solutions for Visual Studio 2010 only (but it should be possible to add the project files to existing solutions for VS 2005 or VS 2008). Users of VS 2005 or VS 2008 can still download version 1.31 with the solutions for those versions that allow them to easily try the samples that are included. While it may create smaller PDF files than version 1.30 because...Terminals: Version 2.0 - Release: Changes since version 1.9a:New art works New usability in Organize favorites window Improved usability of imports/exports and scans Large number of fixes Improvements in single instance mode Comparing November beta 4, this corrects: New application icons Doesn't show Logon error codes Fixed command line arguments exception for single instance mode Fixed detaching of tabs improved usability in detached window Fixed option settings for Capture manager Fixed system tray noti...MFCMAPI: March 2012 Release: Build: 15.0.0.1032 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the MFCMAPI or MrMAPI, get the executables. If you want to debug them, get the symbol files and the source. The 64 bit builds will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit builds, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeTortoiseHg: TortoiseHg 2.3.1: bugfix releaseSimple Injector: Simple Injector v1.4.1: This release adds two small improvements to the SimpleInjector.Extensions.dll. No changes have been made to the core library. New features and improvements in this release for the SimpleInjector.Extensions.dll The RegisterManyForOpenGeneric extension methods now accept non-generic decorator, as long as they implement the given open generic service type. GetTypesToRegister methods added to the OpenGenericBatchRegistrationExtensions class which allows to customize the behavior. Note that the...CommonLibrary: Code: CodeVidCoder: 1.3.1: Updated HandBrake core to 0.9.6 release (svn 4472). Removed erroneous "None" container choice. Change some logic and help text to stop assuming you have to pick the VIDEO_TS folder for a DVD scan. This should make previewing DVD titles on the Queue Multiple Titles window possible when you've picked the root DVD directory.Google Books Downloader for Windows: Google Books Downloader: Google Books Downloader 1.8ExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.0: ExtAspNet - ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ?????????? ExtAspNet ????? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ??????????。 ExtAspNet ??????? JavaScript，?? CSS，?? UpdatePanel，?? ViewState，?? WebServices ???????。 ??????: IE 7.0, Firefox 3.6, Chrome 3.0, Opera 10.5, Safari 3.0+ ????：Apache License 2.0 (Apache) ??：http://extasp.net/ ??：http://bbs.extasp.net/ ??：http://extaspnet.codeplex.com/ ??：http://sanshi.cnblogs.com/ ????： +2012-03-04 v3.1.0 -??Hidden???????（〓?〓）。 -?PageManager??...New ProjectsAres Backup: Ares Backup is a Backup software which can save bytediffs and provides several storage plugins.BackItUp: Backup-Tool für Visual Studio Projektebinbin domain: binbin domain Blexus Service Plattform: Some cool stuff about Wcf Services. - can communicate files - can communicate xaml objects (generate dynamically Gui) CardPlay - a Solitaire Framework for .Net: CardPlay is a C# framework for developing Solitaire card games. The solution includes a sample WPF client along with over 100 games.Cloud Files Upload: Windows application to script cloud file uploads.Code First API Library, Scaffolding & Guidance for Coded UI Tests: Code first Coded UI Tests for web apps. Library, Scaffolding and Guidance.CPEBook by FMUG & TPAY: CPEBook by MUG & TPAY Projet dot NET CPEBookDot Net Application String Resources Viewer: Dot Net Application String Resources ViewerFilter for SharePoint Web Settings Page: This solution show a simple way to integrate a filter box by using jquery, a global farm feature and a simple delegate control for AdditionalPageHead.Google Books Downloader for Windows: Save Google books in PDF, JPEG or PNG format.GUIToolkit: C++ Windowless GUI，DirectUIHarvest Sports: Harvest SportsInfoPath Analyzer: InfoPath Analyzer makes InfoPath form development and troubleshooting much easier. You're easy to find the relationship between controls and data fields, search data fields or controls by name, edit InfoPath inner html directly.Kinectsignlanguage project: This project will help kinect be used for sign language to speech so that sign language people can be understood while talking to important people. LotteryVote: ????manager123: Trying out CodePlexMcRegister: McRegister is an asp.net mvc 3 razor website that enables you to register users on your minecraft server it works in conjunction with a minecraft mod called EasyAuth.MetroTipi: HelloTipi Sous l'interface Metro de Windows 8Microsoft AppFactory: AppFactory is a powerful data-driven build system for Windows Phone (and soon Windows 8) projects. Its purpose is to help developers start with template projects and turn them into suites of applications.MiniStock: MiniStock is an experimental reference architecture for scalable cloud-based architectures. Implemented in .net.online book shopping: online book shoppingScopa: Carousel Team Scopa per WP7 XNA testtom03092012tfs01: testtom03092012tfs01UsingLib: A library of automatically removed utilities: 1.Changing cursor to hourglass in Windows Forms 2.Logging It's developed in C#WHMCS Library: WHMCS is an all-in-one client management, billing & support solution for online businesses. Handling everything from signup to termination, WHMCS is a powerful business automation tool that puts you firmly in control. The WHMCS Library is a .NET wrapper for the WHMCS API. Written entirely in C# but really easy to port over to VB.NET. Coming from a VB.NET background we tried hard to make sure porting would be simple for VB.NET community members. ZoneEditService: Windows service to update ZoneEdit for dynamic dns.

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• Stream Media and Live TV Across the Internet with Orb

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Looking for a way to stream your media collection across the Internet? Or perhaps watch and record TV remotely? Today we are going to look at how to do all that and more with Orb. Requirements Windows XP / Vista / 7 or Intel based Mac w/ OS X 10.5 or later. 1 GB RAM or more Pentium 4 2.4 GHz or higher / AMD Athlon 3200+ Broadband connections TV Tuner for streaming and recording live TV (optional) Note: Slower internet connections may result in stuttering during playback. Installation and Setup Download and install Orb on your home computer. (Download link below) You’ll want to take the defaults for the initial portion of the install. When we get to the Orb Account setup portion of the install is when we will have to enter information and make some decisions. Choose your language and click Next. We’ll need to create and user account and password. A valid email address is required as we’ll need to confirm the account later. Click Next.   Now you’ll want to choose your media sources. Orb will automatically look for folders that may contain media files. You can add or remove folders click on the (+) or (-) buttons. To remove a folder, click on it once to select it from the list and then click the minus (-) button. To add a folder, click the plus (+) button and browse for the folder. You can add local folders as well as shared folders from networked computers and USB attached storage. Note: Both the host computer running Orb and the networked computer will need to be running to access shared network folders remotely. When you’ve selected all your media files, click Next. Orb will proceed to index your media files… When the indexing is complete, click Next. Orb TV Setup Note: Streaming Live TV to Macs is not currently supported. If you have a TV tuner card connected to your PC, you can opt to configure Orb to stream live or recorded TV. Click Next  to configure TV. Or, choose Skip if you don’t wish to configure Orb for TV.   If you have a Digital tuner card, type in your Zip Code and click Get List to pull your channel listings. Select a TV provider from the list and click Next. If not, click Skip.   You can select or deselect any channels by checking or un-checking the box to each channel. Select Auto Scan to let Orb find more channels or disable the ones with no reception. Click Next when finished.   Next choose an analog provider, if necessary, and click Next.   Select “Yes” or “No” for a set top box and click Next. Just as we did with the Digital tuner, select or deselect any channels by checking or un-checking the box to each channel. Select Auto Scan to let Orb find more channels or disable the ones with no reception. Click Next when finished.   Now we’re finished with the setup. Click Close. Accessing your Media Remotely Media files are accessed through a web-based interface. Before we go any further, however, we’ll need to confirm our username and password. Check your inbox for an email from Orb Networks. Click the enclosed confirmation link. You’ll be prompted to enter the username and password you selected in your browser then click Next.   Your account will be confirmed. Now, we’re ready to enjoy our media remotely. To get started, point your browser to the MyCast website from your remote computer. (See link below) Enter your credentials and click Log In. Once logged in, you’ll be presented with the MyCast Home screen. By default you’ll see a handful of “channels” such as a TV program guide, random audio and photos, video favorites, and weather. You can add, remove, or customize channels. To add additional channels, click on Add Channels at the top right…   …and select from the dropdown list. To access your full media libraries, click Open Application at the top left and select from one of the options. Live and Recorded TV If you have a TV tuner card you configured for Orb, you’ll see your program guide on the TV / Webcams screen. To watch or record a show, click on the program listing to bring up a detail box. Then click the red button to record, or the green button to play. When recording a show, you’ll see a pulsating red icon at the top right of the listing in the program guide. If you want to watch Live TV, you may be prompted to choose your media player, depending on your browser and settings. Playback should begin shortly.   Note for Windows Media Center Users If you try to stream live TV in Orb while Windows Media Center is running on your PC, you’ll get an error message. Click the Stop MediaCenter button and then try again.   Audio On the Audio screen, you’ll find your music files indexed by genre, artist, and album. You can play a selection by clicking once and then clicking the green play button, or by simply double-clicking.   Playback will begin in the default media player for the streaming format.   Video Video works essentially the same as audio. Click on a selection and press the green play button, or double-click on the video title. Video playback will begin in the default media player for the streaming format.   Streaming Formats You can change the default streaming format in the control panel settings. To access the Control Panel, click on Open Applications  and select Control Panel. You can also click Settings at the top right.   Select General from the drop down list and then click on the Streaming Formats tab. You are provided four options. Flash, Windows Media, .SDP, and .PLS.   Creating Playlists To create playlists, drag and drop your media title to the playlist work area on the right, or click Add to playlist on the top menu. Click Save when finished.    Sharing your Media Orb allows you to share media playlists across the Internet with friends and family. There are a few ways to accomplish this. We’ll start by click the Share button at the bottom of the playlist work area after you’ve compiled your playlist. You’ll be prompted to choose a method by which to share your playlist. You’ll have the option to share your playlist publicly or privately. You can share publically through links, blogs, or on your Orb public profile.  By choosing the Public Profile option, Orb will automatically create a profile page for you with a URL like http://public.orb.com/username that anyone can easily access on the Internet. The private sharing option allows you to invite friends by email and requires recipients to register with Orb. You can also give your playlist a custom name, or accept the auto-generated title. Click OK when finished. Users who visit your public profile will be able to view and stream any of your shared playlists to their computer or supported device.   Portable Media Devices and Smartphones Orb can stream media to many portable devices and 3G phones. Streaming audio is supported on the iPhone and iPod Touch through the Safari browser. However, video and live TV streaming requires the Orb Live iPhone App.  Orb Live is available in the App store for $9.99. To stream media to your portable device, go to the MyCast website in your mobile browser and login. Browse for your media or playlist. Make a selection and play the media. Playback will begin. We found streaming music to both the Droid and the iPhone to work quite nicely. Video playback on the Droid, however, left a bit to be desired. The video looked good, but the audio tended to be out of sync. System Tray Control Panel By default Orb runs in the system tray on start up. To access the System Tray Control Panel, right-click on the Orb icon in the system tray and select Control Panel. Login with your Orb username and  password and click OK.   From here you can add or remove media sources, add manage accounts, change your password, and more. If you’d rather not run Orb on Startup, click the General icon.   Unselect the checkbox next to Start Orb when the system starts. Conclusion It may seem like a lot of steps, but getting Orb up and running isn’t terribly difficult. Orb is available for both Windows and Intel based Macs. It also supports streaming to many Game Consoles such as the Wii, PS3, and XBox 360. If you are running Windows 7 on multiple computers, you may want to check out our write-up on how to stream music and video over the Internet with Windows Media Player 12. Downloads Download Orb Logon to MyCast Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Stream Music and Video Over the Internet with Windows Media Player 12Enable Media Streaming in Windows Home Server to Windows Media PlayerStream Media from Windows 7 to XP with VLC Media PlayerShare Digital Media With Other Computers on a Home Network with Windows 7Automatically Start Windows 7 Media Center in Live TV Mode TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Looking for Good Windows Media Player 12 Plug-ins? Find Out the Celebrity You Resemble With FaceDouble Whoa ! Use Printflush to Solve Printing Problems Icelandic Volcano Webcams Open Multiple Links At One Go

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• CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server

  - by The Geek

  Overview CloudBerry Online Backup version 1.5 is a front end application for Amazon S3 storage for backing up your Windows Home Server data. It makes backing up your essential data to Amazon S3 an easy process in the event the disaster strikes. Installation You install the Cloudberry Addin as you do for any addins for Windows Home Server. On a PC on your network, browse to the shared folders on your server and open the Add-Ins folder and copy over WHS_CloudBerryOnlineBackupSetup_v1.5.0.81S3o.msi (link below), then close out of the folder. Next launch the Windows Home Server Console, click Settings, then Add-Ins. Click on the Available tab and click the Install button. It installs very quickly, and when you get the Installation Succeeded dialog click OK. You will lose connection through the Console, just click OK, then reconnect. After reconnecting, you’ll see CloudBerry Backup has been installed, and you can begin using it. You can setup a backup plan right away or find out what’s new with version 1.5. Amazon S3 Account If you don’t already have an Amazon S3 account, you’ll be prompted to create a new one. Click on the Create an account hyperlink, which takes you to the Amazon S3 page where you can sign up. After reviewing the functionality of Amazon S3, click on the Sign Up for Amazon S3 button. Enter in your contact information and accept the Amazon Web Services Customer Agreement. You’re then shown their pricing for storage plans. The amount of storage space you use will depend on your needs. It’s relatively cheap for smaller amounts of data. Just keep in mind the more data you store and download, the more S3 is going to cost. Note: Amazon S3 is introducing Reduced Redundancy Storage which will lower the cost of the data stored on S3. CloudBerry 1.5 will support this new feature. You can find out more about this new pricing structure. Note: Keep in mind that after you first sign up for an Amazon S3 account, it can take up to 24 hours to be authorized. In fact, you may want to sign up for the S3 account before installing the Add-In. After you sign up for your S3 Account, you’ll be given access credentials which you can enter in and create a Storage Bucket name. Features & Use CloudBerry is wizard driven, straight-forward and easy to use. Here we take a look at creating a backup plan. To begin, click on the Setup Backup Plan button to kick off the wizard. Select your backup mode based on the amount of features you want. In our example we’re going to select Advanced Mode as it offers more features than Simple Mode. Select your backup storage account or create a new one. You can select a default account by checking Use currently selected account as default. Now you can go through and select the files and folders you want to backup from your home server. Check the box Show physical drives to get more of a selection of files and folders. This also allows you to backup files from your data drive as well. It has full support for drive extenders so you can backup your shares as well. The cool thing about Cloudberry is it allows you to drill down specific files and folders unlike other WHS backup utilities. Next you can use advanced filters to specify files and/or folders to skip if you want. There are compression and encryption options as well. This will save storage space, bandwidth, and keep your data secure. Purge Options allow you to customize options for getting rid of older files. You can also select the option to delete files from the S3 service that have been deleted locally. Be careful with this option however, as you won’t be able to restore files if you delete them locally. You have some nice scheduling options from running backups manually, specific date and time, or recurring daily, weekly or monthly. Receive email notifications in all cases or when a backup fails. This is a good option so you know if things were successful or something failed, and you need to back it up manually. Email notifications… Give your plan a name… Then if the summary page looks good you can continue, or still go back at this point if something doesn’t look correct and needs adjusting. That’s it! You’re ready to go, and you have an option to start your first backup right away. After you’ve created a backup plan, you can go in and edit, delete, view history, or restore files. Restoring Files using CloudBerry To restore data from your backups kick off the Restore Wizard and select the backup to restore from. You can select the last backup, a specific point in time, or manually browse through the files. Browse through the directory and select the files you need to restore. Choose the destination to restore the files to. You can select from the original location, a specific location, to overwrite existing files, or set the location as the default for future restores. If the files are encrypted, enter in the correct passwords. If the summary looks good, click on Next to start the restore process. You’ll be shown a progress bar at the bottom of the screen while the files are restored. After the process has completed, close out of the Restore Wizard. In this example we restored a couple of music files to the desktop of Windows Home Server… But as shown above you can save them to the original location, other network locations, or WHS shared folders. This can make it a lot easier to keep track of files you’ve restored. You can also access different options for CloudBerry by clicking Settings in WHS Console then CloudBerry Backup. Here you can set up a new storage account, check for updates, app options, Diagnostics, and send feedback. Under Options there are several settings you can tweak to get the best experience for your WHS backups. CloudBerry Web Interface Another nice feature is the CloudBerry Web Interface so you can access your data from anywhere you have an Internet connection. To check it out in WHS Console, click on the Backup Web Interface link…you’ll probably want to bookmark the link in your favorite browser. Note: This feature is still in beta and at the time of this review, the Web Interface wasn’t up and running so we weren’t able to test it out. Performance The Cloudberry app works very well through the Windows Home Server Console. The amount of time it takes to backup or restore your data will depend on the speed of your Internet connection and size of the files. In our tests, backing up 1GB of data to the Amazon S3 account took around an hour, but we were running it on a DSL with limited upload speeds so your mileage will vary. Product Support In our experience, the team at CloudBerry offered great support in a timely manner when contacting them. You can fill out a help request through a form on their website and they also have a community forum. Conclusion We were very pleased with CloudBerry Online Backup for WHS. It’s wizard driven interface makes it extremely easy to use, and offers comprehensive backup choices for your Amazon S3 account. CloudBerry will only backup files that have been modified, so if files haven’t been changed, they won’t be backed up again.They offer a free 15 day trial and is $29.99 after that for a full license. Once you buy the app you own it, and charges to your S3 account will vary depending on the amount of data you upload. If you’re looking for an effective and easy to use front end application to backup your Windows Home Server data to your Amazon S3 account, CloudBerry is a recommended affordable choice. Download CloudBerry for Windows Home Server Sign Up For Amazon S3 Account Rating Installation: 9 Ease of Use: 8 Features: 8 Performance: 8 Product Support: 8 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Restore Files from Backups on Windows Home ServerGMedia Blog: Setting Up a Windows Home ServerBackup Windows Home Server Folders to an External Hard DriveBackup Your Windows Home Server Off-Site with Asus WebstorageRemove a Network Computer from Windows Home Server TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor Gmail Button Addon (Firefox) Hyperwords addon (Firefox) Backup Outlook 2010 Daily Motivator (Firefox)

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• How to Use USER_DEFINED Activity in OWB Process Flow

  - by Jinggen He

  Process Flow is a very important component of Oracle Warehouse Builder. With Process Flow, we can create and control the ETL process by setting all kinds of activities in a well-constructed flow. In Oracle Warehouse Builder 11gR2, there are 28 kinds of activities, which fall into three categories: Control activities, OWB specific activities and Utility activities. For more information about Process Flow activities, please refer to OWB online doc. Most of those activities are pre-defined for some specific use. For example, the Mapping activity allows execution an OWB mapping in Process Flow and the FTP activity allows an interaction between the local host and a remote FTP server. Besides those activities for specific purposes, the User Defined activity enables you to incorporate into a Process Flow an activity that is not defined within Warehouse Builder. So the User Defined activity brings flexibility and extensibility to Process Flow. In this article, we will take an amazing tour of using the User Defined activity. Let's start. Enable execution of User Defined activity Let's start this section from creating a very simple Process Flow, which contains a Start activity, a User Defined activity and an End Success activity. Leave all parameters of activity USER_DEFINED unchanged except that we enter /tmp/test.sh into the Value column of the COMMAND parameter. Then let's create the shell script test.sh in /tmp directory. Here is the content of /tmp/test.sh (this article is demonstrating a scenario in Linux system, and /tmp/test.sh is a Bash shell script): echo Hello World! > /tmp/test.txt Note: don't forget to grant the execution privilege on /tmp/test.sh to OS Oracle user. For simplicity, we just use the following command. chmod +x /tmp/test.sh OK, it's so simple that we’ve almost done it. Now deploy the Process Flow and run it. For a newly installed OWB, we will come across an error saying "RPE-02248: For security reasons, activity operator Shell has been disabled by the DBA". See below. That's because, by default, the User Defined activity is DISABLED. Configuration about this can be found in <ORACLE_HOME>/owb/bin/admin/Runtime.properties: property.RuntimePlatform.0.NativeExecution.Shell.security_constraint=DISABLED The property can be set to three different values: NATIVE_JAVA, SCHEDULER and DISBALED. Where NATIVE_JAVA uses the Java 'Runtime.exec' interface, SCHEDULER uses a DBMS Scheduler external job submitted by the Control Center repository owner which is executed by the default operating system user configured by the DBA. DISABLED prevents execution via these operators. We enable the execution of User Defined activity by setting: property.RuntimePlatform.0.NativeExecution.Shell.security_constraint= NATIVE_JAVA Restart the Control Center service for the change of setting to take effect. cd <ORACLE_HOME>/owb/rtp/sql sqlplus OWBSYS/<password of OWBSYS> @stop_service.sql sqlplus OWBSYS/<password of OWBSYS> @start_service.sql And then run the Process Flow again. We will see that the Process Flow completes successfully. The execution of /tmp/test.sh successfully generated a file /tmp/test.txt, containing the line Hello World!. Pass parameters to User Defined Activity The Process Flow created in the above section has a drawback: the User Defined activity doesn't accept any information from OWB nor does it give any meaningful results back to OWB. That's to say, it lacks interaction. Maybe, sometimes such a Process Flow can fulfill the business requirement. But for most of the time, we need to get the User Defined activity executed according to some information prior to that step. In this section, we will see how to pass parameters to the User Defined activity and pass them into the to-be-executed shell script. First, let's see how to pass parameters to the script. The User Defined activity has an input parameter named PARAMETER_LIST. This is a list of parameters that will be passed to the command. Parameters are separated from one another by a token. The token is taken as the first character on the PARAMETER_LIST string, and the string must also end in that token. Warehouse Builder recommends the '?' character, but any character can be used. For example, to pass 'abc,' 'def,' and 'ghi' you can use the following equivalent: ?abc?def?ghi? or !abc!def!ghi! or |abc|def|ghi| If the token character or '\' needs to be included as part of the parameter, then it must be preceded with '\'. For example '\\'. If '\' is the token character, then '/' becomes the escape character. Let's configure the PARAMETER_LIST parameter as below: And modify the shell script /tmp/test.sh as below: echo $1 is saying hello to $2! > /tmp/test.txt Re-deploy the Process Flow and run it. We will see that the generated /tmp/test.txt contains the following line: Bob is saying hello to Alice! In the example above, the parameters passed into the shell script are static. This case is not so useful because: instead of passing parameters, we can directly write the value of the parameters in the shell script. To make the case more meaningful, we can pass two dynamic parameters, that are obtained from the previous activity, to the shell script. Prepare the Process Flow as below: The Mapping activity MAPPING_1 has two output parameters: FROM_USER, TO_USER. The User Defined activity has two input parameters: FROM_USER, TO_USER. All the four parameters are of String type. Additionally, the Process Flow has two string variables: VARIABLE_FOR_FROM_USER, VARIABLE_FOR_TO_USER. Through VARIABLE_FOR_FROM_USER, the input parameter FROM_USER of USER_DEFINED gets value from output parameter FROM_USER of MAPPING_1. We achieve this by binding both parameters to VARIABLE_FOR_FROM_USER. See the two figures below. In the same way, through VARIABLE_FOR_TO_USER, the input parameter TO_USER of USER_DEFINED gets value from output parameter TO_USER of MAPPING_1. Also, we need to change the PARAMETER_LIST of the User Defined activity like below: Now, the shell script is getting input from the Mapping activity dynamically. Deploy the Process Flow and all of its necessary dependees then run the Process Flow. We see that the generated /tmp/test.txt contains the following line: USER B is saying hello to USER A! 'USER B' and 'USER A' are two outputs of the Mapping execution. Write the shell script within Oracle Warehouse Builder In the previous section, the shell script is located in the /tmp directory. But sometimes, when the shell script is small, or for the sake of maintaining consistency, you may want to keep the shell script inside Oracle Warehouse Builder. We can achieve this by configuring these three parameters of a User Defined activity properly: COMMAND: Set the path of interpreter, by which the shell script will be interpreted. PARAMETER_LIST: Set it blank. SCRIPT: Enter the shell script content. Note that in Linux the shell script content is passed into the interpreter as standard input at runtime. About how to actually pass parameters to the shell script, we can utilize variable substitutions. As in the following figure, ${FROM_USER} will be replaced by the value of the FROM_USER input parameter of the User Defined activity. So will the ${TO_USER} symbol. Besides the custom substitution variables, OWB also provide some system pre-defined substitution variables. You can refer to the online document for that. Deploy the Process Flow and run it. We see that the generated /tmp/test.txt contains the following line: USER B is saying hello to USER A! Leverage the return value of User Defined activity All of the previous sections are connecting the User Defined activity to END_SUCCESS with an unconditional transition. But what should we do if we want different subsequent activities for different shell script execution results? 1.  The simplest way is to add three simple-conditioned out-going transitions for the User Defined activity just like the figure below. In the figure, to simplify the scenario, we connect the User Defined activity to three End activities. Basically, if the shell script ends successfully, the whole Process Flow will end at END_SUCCESS, otherwise, the whole Process Flow will end at END_ERROR (in our case, ending at END_WARNING seldom happens). In the real world, we can add more complex and meaningful subsequent business logic. 2.  Or we can utilize complex conditions to work with different results of the User Defined activity. Previously, in our script, we only have this line: echo ${FROM_USER} is saying hello to ${TO_USER}! > /tmp/test.txt We can add more logic in it and return different values accordingly. echo ${FROM_USER} is saying hello to ${TO_USER}! > /tmp/test.txt if CONDITION_1 ; then ...... exit 0 fi if CONDITION_2 ; then ...... exit 2 fi if CONDITION_3 ; then ...... exit 3 fi After that we can leverage the result by checking RESULT_CODE in condition expression of those out-going transitions. Let's suppose that we have the Process Flow as the following graph (SUB_PROCESS_n stands for more different further processes): We can set complex condition for the transition from USER_DEFINED to SUB_PROCESS_1 like this: Other transitions can be set in the same way. Note that, in our shell script, we return 0, 2 and 3, but not 1. As in Linux system, if the shell script comes across a system error like IO error, the return value will be 1. We can explicitly handle such a return value. Summary Let's summarize what has been discussed in this article: How to create a Process Flow with a User Defined activity in it How to pass parameters from the prior activity to the User Defined activity and finally into the shell script How to write the shell script within Oracle Warehouse Builder How to do variable substitutions How to let the User Defined activity return different values and in what way can we leverage

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• April 2013 Release of the Ajax Control Toolkit

  - by Stephen.Walther

  I’m excited to announce the April 2013 release of the Ajax Control Toolkit. For this release, we focused on improving two controls: the AjaxFileUpload and the MaskedEdit controls. You can download the latest release from CodePlex at http://AjaxControlToolkit.CodePlex.com or, better yet, you can execute the following NuGet command within Visual Studio 2010/2012: There are three builds of the Ajax Control Toolkit: .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, and .NET 4.5. A Better AjaxFileUpload Control We completely rewrote the AjaxFileUpload control for this release. We had two primary goals. First, we wanted to support uploading really large files. In particular, we wanted to support uploading multi-gigabyte files such as video files or application files. Second, we wanted to support showing upload progress on as many browsers as possible. The previous version of the AjaxFileUpload could show upload progress when used with Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox but not when used with Apple Safari or Microsoft Internet Explorer. The new version of the AjaxFileUpload control shows upload progress when used with any browser. Using the AjaxFileUpload Control Let me walk-through using the AjaxFileUpload in the most basic scenario. And then, in following sections, I can explain some of its more advanced features. Here’s how you can declare the AjaxFileUpload control in a page: <ajaxToolkit:ToolkitScriptManager runat="server" /> <ajaxToolkit:AjaxFileUpload ID="AjaxFileUpload1" AllowedFileTypes="mp4" OnUploadComplete="AjaxFileUpload1_UploadComplete" runat="server" /> The exact appearance of the AjaxFileUpload control depends on the features that a browser supports. In the case of Google Chrome, which supports drag-and-drop upload, here’s what the AjaxFileUpload looks like: Notice that the page above includes two Ajax Control Toolkit controls: the AjaxFileUpload and the ToolkitScriptManager control. You always need to include the ToolkitScriptManager with any page which uses Ajax Control Toolkit controls. The AjaxFileUpload control declared in the page above includes an event handler for its UploadComplete event. This event handler is declared in the code-behind page like this: protected void AjaxFileUpload1_UploadComplete(object sender, AjaxControlToolkit.AjaxFileUploadEventArgs e) { // Save uploaded file to App_Data folder AjaxFileUpload1.SaveAs(MapPath("~/App_Data/" + e.FileName)); } This method saves the uploaded file to your website’s App_Data folder. I’m assuming that you have an App_Data folder in your project – if you don’t have one then you need to create one or you will get an error. There is one more thing that you must do in order to get the AjaxFileUpload control to work. The AjaxFileUpload control relies on an HTTP Handler named AjaxFileUploadHandler.axd. You need to declare this handler in your application’s root web.config file like this: <configuration> <system.web> <compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.5" /> <httpRuntime targetFramework="4.5" maxRequestLength="42949672" /> <httpHandlers> <add verb="*" path="AjaxFileUploadHandler.axd" type="AjaxControlToolkit.AjaxFileUploadHandler, AjaxControlToolkit"/> </httpHandlers> </system.web> <system.webServer> <validation validateIntegratedModeConfiguration="false"/> <handlers> <add name="AjaxFileUploadHandler" verb="*" path="AjaxFileUploadHandler.axd" type="AjaxControlToolkit.AjaxFileUploadHandler, AjaxControlToolkit"/> </handlers> <security> <requestFiltering> <requestLimits maxAllowedContentLength="4294967295"/> </requestFiltering> </security> </system.webServer> </configuration> Notice that the web.config file above also contains configuration settings for the maxRequestLength and maxAllowedContentLength. You need to assign large values to these configuration settings — as I did in the web.config file above — in order to accept large file uploads. Supporting Chunked File Uploads Because one of our primary goals with this release was support for large file uploads, we added support for client-side chunking. When you upload a file using a browser which fully supports the HTML5 File API — such as Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox — then the file is uploaded in multiple chunks. You can see chunking in action by opening F12 Developer Tools in your browser and observing the Network tab: Notice that there is a crazy number of distinct post requests made (about 360 distinct requests for a 1 gigabyte file). Each post request looks like this: http://localhost:24338/AjaxFileUploadHandler.axd?contextKey={DA8BEDC8-B952-4d5d-8CC2-59FE922E2923}&fileId=B7CCE31C-6AB1-BB28-2940-49E0C9B81C64 &fileName=Sita_Sings_the_Blues_480p_2150kbps.mp4&chunked=true&firstChunk=false Each request posts another chunk of the file being uploaded. Notice that the request URL includes a chunked=true parameter which indicates that the browser is breaking the file being uploaded into multiple chunks. Showing Upload Progress on All Browsers The previous version of the AjaxFileUpload control could display upload progress only in the case of browsers which fully support the HTML5 File API. The new version of the AjaxFileUpload control can display upload progress in the case of all browsers. If a browser does not fully support the HTML5 File API then the browser polls the server every few seconds with an Ajax request to determine the percentage of the file that has been uploaded. This technique of displaying progress works with any browser which supports making Ajax requests. There is one catch. Be warned that this new feature only works with the .NET 4.0 and .NET 4.5 versions of the AjaxControlToolkit. To show upload progress, we are taking advantage of the new ASP.NET HttpRequest.GetBufferedInputStream() and HttpRequest.GetBufferlessInputStream() methods which are not supported by .NET 3.5. For example, here is what the Network tab looks like when you use the AjaxFileUpload with Microsoft Internet Explorer: Here’s what the requests in the Network tab look like: GET /WebForm1.aspx?contextKey={DA8BEDC8-B952-4d5d-8CC2-59FE922E2923}&poll=1&guid=9206FF94-76F9-B197-D1BC-EA9AD282806B HTTP/1.1 Notice that each request includes a poll=1 parameter. This parameter indicates that this is a polling request to get the size of the file buffered on the server. Here’s what the response body of a request looks like when about 20% of a file has been uploaded: Buffering to a Temporary File When you upload a file using the AjaxFileUpload control, the file upload is buffered to a temporary file located at Path.GetTempPath(). When you call the SaveAs() method, as we did in the sample page above, the temporary file is copied to a new file and then the temporary file is deleted. If you don’t call the SaveAs() method, then you must ensure that the temporary file gets deleted yourself. For example, if you want to save the file to a database then you will never call the SaveAs() method and you are responsible for deleting the file. The easiest way to delete the temporary file is to call the AjaxFileUploadEventArgs.DeleteTemporaryData() method in the UploadComplete handler: protected void AjaxFileUpload1_UploadComplete(object sender, AjaxControlToolkit.AjaxFileUploadEventArgs e) { // Save uploaded file to a database table e.DeleteTemporaryData(); } You also can call the static AjaxFileUpload.CleanAllTemporaryData() method to delete all temporary data and not only the temporary data related to the current file upload. For example, you might want to call this method on application start to ensure that all temporary data is removed whenever your application restarts. A Better MaskedEdit Extender This release of the Ajax Control Toolkit contains bug fixes for the top-voted issues related to the MaskedEdit control. We closed over 25 MaskedEdit issues. Here is a complete list of the issues addressed with this release: · 17302 MaskedEditExtender MaskType=Date, Mask=99/99/99 Undefined JS Error · 11758 MaskedEdit causes error in JScript when working with 2-digits year · 18810 Maskededitextender/validator Date validation issue · 23236 MaskEditValidator does not work with date input using format dd/mm/yyyy · 23042 Webkit based browsers (Safari, Chrome) and MaskedEditExtender · 26685 MaskedEditExtender@(ClearMaskOnLostFocus=false) adds a zero character when you each focused to target textbox · 16109 MaskedEditExtender: Negative amount, followed by decimal, sets value to positive · 11522 MaskEditExtender of AjaxtoolKit-1.0.10618.0 does not work properly for Hungarian Culture · 25988 MaskedEditExtender – CultureName (HU-hu) > DateSeparator · 23221 MaskedEditExtender date separator problem · 15233 Day and month swap in Dynamic user control · 15492 MaskedEditExtender with ClearMaskOnLostFocus and with MaskedEditValidator with ClientValidationFunction · 9389 MaskedEditValidator – when on no entry · 11392 MaskedEdit Number format messed up · 11819 MaskedEditExtender erases all values beyond first comma separtor · 13423 MaskedEdit(Extender/Validator) combo problem · 16111 MaskedEditValidator cannot validate date with DayMonthYear in UserDateFormat of MaskedEditExtender · 10901 MaskedEdit: The months and date fields swap values when you hit submit if UserDateFormat is set. · 15190 MaskedEditValidator can’t make use of MaskedEditExtender’s UserDateFormat property · 13898 MaskedEdit Extender with custom date type mask gives javascript error · 14692 MaskedEdit error in “yy/MM/dd” format. · 16186 MaskedEditExtender does not handle century properly in a date mask · 26456 MaskedEditBehavior. ConvFmtTime : function(input,loadFirst) fails if this._CultureAMPMPlaceholder == “” · 21474 Error on MaskedEditExtender working with number format · 23023 MaskedEditExtender’s ClearMaskOnLostFocus property causes problems for MaskedEditValidator when set to false · 13656 MaskedEditValidator Min/Max Date value issue Conclusion This latest release of the Ajax Control Toolkit required many hours of work by a team of talented developers. I want to thank the members of the Superexpert team for the long hours which they put into this release.

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• Oracle Coherence & Oracle Service Bus: REST API Integration

  - by Nino Guarnacci

  This post aims to highlight one of the features found in Oracle Coherence which allows it to be easily added and integrated inside a wider variety of projects.  The features in question are the REST API exposed by the Coherence nodes, with which you can interact in the wider mode in memory data grid.Oracle Coherence and Oracle Service Bus are natively integrated through a feature found in the Oracle Service Bus, which allows you to use the coherence grid cache during the configuration phase of a business service. This feature allows you to use an intermediate layer of cache to retrieve the answers from previous invocations of the same service, without necessarily having to invoke the real business service again. Directly from the web console of Oracle Service Bus, you can decide the policies of eviction of the objects / answers and define the discriminating parameters that identify their uniqueness.The coherence REST APIs, however, allow you to integrate both products for other necessities enabling realization of new architectures design.  Consider coherence’s node as a simple service which interoperates through the stardard services and in particular REST (with JSON and XML). Thinking of coherence as a company’s shared service, able to have an implementation of a centralized “map and reduce” which you can access  by a huge variety of protocols (transport and envelopes).An amazing step forward for those who still imagine connectors and code. This type of integration does not require writing custom code or complex implementation to be self-supported. The added value is made unique by the incredible value of both products independently, and still more out of their simple and robust integration.As already mentioned this scenario discovers a hidden new door behind the columns of these two products. The door leads to new ideas and perspectives for enterprise architectures that increasingly wink to next-generation applications: simple and dynamic, perhaps towards the mobile and web 2.0.Below, a small and simple demo useful to demonstrate how easily is to integrate these two products using the Coherence REST API. This demo is also intended to imagine new enterprise architectures using this approach.The idea is to create a centralized system of alerting, fed easily from any company’s application, regardless of the technology with which they were built . Then use a representation standard protocol: RSS, using a service exposed by the service bus; So you can browse and search only the alerts that you are interested on, by category, author, title, date, etc etc.. The steps needed to implement this system are very simple and very few. Here they are listed below and described to be easily replicated within your environment. I would remind you that the demo is only meant to demonstrate how easily is to integrate Oracle Coherence and the Oracle Service Bus, and stimulate your imagination to new technological approaches.1) Install the two products: In this demo used (if necessary, consult the installation guides of 2 products)  - Oracle Service Bus ver. 11.1.1.5.0 http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/service-bus/downloads/index.html - Oracle Coherence ver. 3.7.1 http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/coherence/downloads/index.html 2) Because you choose to create a centralized alerting system, we need to define a structure type containing some alerting attributes useful to preserve and organize the information of the various alerts sent by the different applications. Here, then it was built a java class named Alert containing the canonical properties of an alarm information:- Title- Description- System- Time- Severity 3) Therefore, we need to create two configuration files for the coherence node, in order to save the Alert objects within the grid, through the rest/http protocol (more than the native API for Java, C + +, C,. Net). Here are the two minimal configuration files for Coherence:coherence-rest-config.xml resty-server-config.xml This minimum configuration allows me to use a distributed cache named "alerts" that can  also be accessed via http - rest on the host "localhost" over port "8080", objects are of type “oracle.cohsb.Alert”. 4) Below  a simple Java class that represents the type of alert messages: 5) At this point we just need to startup our coherence node, able to listen on http protocol to manage the “alerts” cache, which will receive incoming XML or JSON objects of type Alert. Remember to include in the classpath of the coherence node, the Alert java class and the following coherence libraries and configuration files:  At this point, just run the coherence class node “com.tangosol.net.DefaultCacheServer”advising you to set the following parameters:-Dtangosol.coherence.log.level=9 -Dtangosol.coherence.log=stdout -Dtangosol.coherence.cacheconfig=[PATH_TO_THE_FILE]\resty-server-config.xml 6) Let's create a procedure to test our configuration of Coherence and in order to insert some custom alerts in our cache. The technology with which you want to achieve this functionality is fully not considerable: Javascript, Python, Ruby, Scala, C + +, Java.... Because the protocol to communicate with Coherence is simply HTTP / JSON or XML. For this little demo i choose Java: A method to send/put the alert to the cache: A method to query and view the content of the cache: Finally the main method that execute our methods:  No special library added in the classpath for our class (json struct static defined), when it will be executed, it asks some information such as title, description,... in order to compose and send an alert to the cache and then it will perform an inquiry, to the same cache. At this point, a good exercise at this point, may be to create the same procedure using other technologies, such as a simple html page containing some JavaScript code, and then using Python, Ruby, and so on.7) Now we are ready to start configuring the Oracle Service Bus in order to integrate the two products. First integrate the internal alerting system of Oracle Service Bus with our centralized alerting system based on coherence node. This ensures that by monitoring, or directly from within our Proxy Message Flow, we can throw alerts and save them directly into the Coherence node. To do this I choose to use the jms technology, natively present inside the Oracle Weblogic / Service Bus. Access to the Oracle WebLogic Administration console and create and configure a new JMS connection factory and a new jms destination (queue). Now we should create a new resource of type “alert destination” within our Oracle Service Bus project. The new “alert destination” resource should be configured using the newly created connection factory jms and jms destination. Finally, in order to withdraw the message alert enqueued in our JMS destination and send it to our coherence node, we just need to create a new business service and proxy service within our Oracle Service Bus project.Our business service is responsible for sending a message to our REST service Coherence using as a method action: PUT Finally our proxy service have to collect all messages enqueued on the destination, execute an xquery transformation on those messages  in order to translate them into valid XML / alert objects useful to be sent to our coherence service, through the newly created business service. The message flow pipeline containing the xquery transformation: Incredibly,  we just did a basic first integration between the native alerting system of Oracle Service Bus and our centralized alerting system by simply configuring our coherence node without developing anything.It's time to test it out. To do this I create a proxy service able to generate an alert using our "alert destination", whenever the proxy is invoked. After some invocation to our proxy that generates fake alerts, we could open an Internet browser and type the URL  http://localhost: 8080/alerts/  so we could see what has been inserted within the coherence node. 8) We are ready for the final step.  We would create a new message flow, that can be used to search and display the results in standard mode. To do this I choosen the standard representation of RSS, to display a formatted result on a huge variety of devices such as readers for the iPhone and Android. The inquiry may be defined already at the time of the request able to return only feed / items related to our needs. To do this we need to create a new business service, a new proxy service, and finally a new XQuery Transformation to take care of translating the collection of alerts that will be return from our coherence node in a nicely formatted RSS standard document.So we start right from this resource (xquery), which has the task of transforming a collection of alerts / xml returned from the node coherence in a type well-formatted feed RSS 2.0 our new business service that will search the alerts on our coherence node using the Rest API. And finally, our last resource, the proxy service that will be exposed as an RSS / feeds to various mobile devices and traditional web readers, in which we will intercept any search query, and transform the result returned by the business service in an RSS feed 2.0. The message flow with the transformation phase (Alert TO Feed Items): Finally some little tricks to follow during the routing to the business service, - check for any queries present in the url to require a subset of alerts  - the http header "Accept" to help get an answer XML instead of JSON: In our little demo we also static added some coherence parameters to the request:sort=time:desc;start=0;count=100I would like to get from Coherence that the results will be sorted by date, and starting from 1 up to a maximum of 100.Done!!Just incredible, our centralized alerting system is ready. Inheriting all the qualities and capabilities of the two products involved Oracle Coherence & Oracle Service Bus: - RASP (Reliability, Availability, Scalability, Performance)Now try to use your mobile device, or a normal Internet browser by accessing the RSS just published: Some urls you may test: Search for the last 100 alerts : http://localhost:7001/alarmsSearch for alerts that do not have time set to null (time is not null):http://localhost:7001/alarms?q=time+is+not+nullSearch for alerts that the system property is “Web Browser” (system = ‘Web Browser’):http://localhost:7001/alarms?q=system+%3D+%27Web+Browser%27Search for alerts that the system property is “Web Browser” and the severity property is “Fatal” and the title property contain the word “Javascript”  (system = ‘Web Broser’ and severity = ‘Fatal’ and title like ‘%Javascript%’)http://localhost:8080/alerts?q=system+%3D+%27Web+Browser%27+AND+severity+%3D+%27Fatal%27+AND+title+LIKE+%27%25Javascript%25%27 To compose more complex queries about your need I would suggest you to read the chapter in the coherence documentation inherent the Cohl language (Coherence Query Language) http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E24290_01/coh.371/e22837/api_cq.htm . Some useful links: - Oracle Coherence REST API Documentation http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E24290_01/coh.371/e22839/rest_intro.htm - Oracle Service Bus Documentation http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E21764_01/soa.htm#osb - REST explanation from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfer At this URL could be downloaded the whole materials of this demo http://blogs.oracle.com/slc/resource/cosb/coh-sb-demo.zip Author: Nino Guarnacci.

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• SOA Suite Integration: Part 2: A basic BPEL process

  - by Anthony Shorten

  This is the next in the series about SOA Suite integration with Oracle Utilities Application Framework. One of the first scenarios I am going to illustrate in this series is building a basic BPEL process using Web Service calls to the Oracle Utilities Application Framework. The scenario is this. I will pass in the userid and the BPEL process will call our the AS-User Web Service we created in Part 1. This is just a basic test and illustrate how to import the Web Service into SOA Suite. To use this scenario, you will need access to Oracle SOA Suite, access to a copy of any Oracle Utilities Application Framework based product and Oracle JDeveloper (to build the process). First of all you need to start Oracle JDeveloper and create a new SOA Project to house the BPEL process in. For the purposes of this example I will call the project simpleBPEL and verify that SOA is part of the project. I will select "Composite with BPEL" to denote it as a BPEL process. I can also the same process to create a Mediator or OSB project (refer to the JDeveloper documentation on these technologies). For this example I will use BPEL 1.1 as my specification standard (BPEL 2.0 can also be used if desired). I give the individual BPEL process as simpleBPEL (you can use a different name but I wanted to keep the project and process the same for this example). I will also build a Synchronous BPEL Process as I want a response from the Web Service. I will leave the defaults to save time. I have no have a blank canvas to build my BPEL process against. Note: for simplicity I am going to use as much defaulting as possible. In fact I am not going to specify an input schema for the incoming call as I will use the basic single field used by BPEL as default. The first step is to import the AS-User Web Service into my BPEL project. To do this I use the standard Web Service BPEL component from the Component Palette to import the WSDL into the BPEL project. Now the tricky part (a joke), you drag and drop the component from the Palette onto the right side of the canvas in the Partner Links swim lane. This swim lane is reserved for Partner Links that have a Partner Role (i.e. being called rather than calling). When you drop the Web Service onto the canvas the Create Web Service wizard is invoked to ask for details of the Web Service. At this point you give the BPEL node a name. I have used the name RetrieveUser as a name. I placed the WSDL URL from the XAI Inbound Service screen in the WSDL URL. Once you specify the URL you can press the Find existing WSDL's button to load the information into BPEL from the call. You will notice the Port Type is prefilled with the port from the WSDL. I also suggest that you check copy wsdl and it's dependent artifacts into the project if you intending to work on the BPEL process offline. If you do not check this your target application must be accessible when you work on the BPEL process (that is not always convenient). Note: For the perceptive of you will notice that the URL specified in this example is different to the URL in the last post. The reason is for the demonstrations I shifted to a new server and did not redo all of the past screen captures. If you copy the WSDL into the project you will get an information screen about Localize Files. It is just a confirmation screen. The last confirmation screen is a summary of the partner link (the main tab is locked for editing at this stage). At this stage you have successfully imported the Web Service. To complete the setup of the Web Service you need to set the credentials for the Web Service to use. Refer to the past post on how to do that. Now to use the Web Service. To call the Web Service (as it is just imported not connected to the BPEL process yet), you must add an Invoke action to your BPEL Process. To do this, select Invoke action from the BPEL Constructs zone on the Component Palette and drop it on the edit nodes between the receiveInput and replyOutput nodes This will create an empty Invoke action. You will notice some connectors on the Invoke node. Grab the node closest to your Web Service and drag it to connect the Invoke to your Web Service. This instructs BPEL to use the Invoke to call the Web Service. Once the Invoke action is connected to the Web Service an Edit Invoke edit dialog is displayed. At this point I suggest you name the Invoke node. It is important to name the nodes straightaway and name them appropriately for you to trace the logic. I used InvokeUser as the name in this example. To complete the node configuration you must create Variables to hold the input and output for the call. To do this clock on Automatically Create Input Variable on the Edit Invoke dialog. You will be presented with a default variable name. It uses the node name (that is why it is important to name the node before hitting this button) as a prefix. You can name the variable anything but I usually take the default. Repeat the same for the output variable. You now have a completed node for invoking the service. You have a very basic BPEL process which contains an input, invoke and output node. It is not complete yet though. You need to tell the BPEL process how to pass data from the input to the invoke step and how to take the output from the service call and pass it back to the service. You need to now add an Assign node to assign the input to the Web Service. To do this select Assign activity from BPEL Constructs zone in the Component Palette. Drag and drop the Assign activity between the receiveInput and InvokeUser nodes as you want to pass data between these two nodes. You have now added a new Assign node to your BPEL process Double clicking the node allows you to specify the name of the node. I use AssignUser to describe that I am assigning user data. On the Copy Rules tab you can specify the mapping between the input variable InputVariable/payload/process/input string and the input variable for the Web Service call. We are passing data from the input to BPEL to the relevant input variable on the Web Service. This is simply drag and drop between the two data structures. In the example, I am using the input to pass to the user element in my Web Service as the user is the primary key for the object. The fields become linked (which means data from source will be copied to target). Almost there. You now need to process the output from the Web Service call to the outputVariable of the client call. I have decided to pass back one piece of data, the name associated with the user by concatenating the firstName and lastName elements from the Web Service call. To do this I will use a Transform as it is not just a matter of an Assign action. It is a concatenation operation. This also illustrates how you can use BPEL functionality to transform data from a Web Service call. As with the other components you drag and drop the Transform component to the appropriate place in the BPEL process. In this case we want to transform the output from the Web Service call so we want it after the InvokeUser action and the replyOutput action. The Transform component is actually part of the Oracle Extensions to the BPEL specification. Double clicking the Transform node will allow you to name the node.  In this example I used TransformName. To complete the transform I need to tell the product the source of the transformation and the target of the transform. In the example this is the InvokeUser output variable. I also named the mapper file to TransformName. By clicking the + or pencil icon next to the map I can create the map. The mapping screen is shows the source and target schemas for me to map across. As with the assign I can map the relevant elements. In my example, I first map the firstName from the Web Service to the result element. As I want to concatenate the names, I drop the concat function on the call line. I now attach the last name to the function to indicate the concatenation of the field. By default the names will be concatenated with no space. To make the name legible I add a space between the field by clicking the function and adding a space in the call. I now have a completed mapping. I can now save the whole project as my BPEL process is now complete. As you can see the following happens: We accept input from the client (the userid for the call) in the receiveInput step. We assign that value to the input parameters for the Web Service call in the AssignUser step. We invoke the Web Service call to retrieve the data from the product in the InvokeUser step. We take the output from the InvokeUser step and concatenate the names in the TransformName step. We pass back the data in the replyOutput step. At this point we can deploy the BPEL process to the SOA Suite server. I will not cover this aspect as it really all SOA Suite specific (it is all done via Oracle JDeveloper). Now we need to test the service in SOA Suite. We will use the Fusion Middleware Control test facility. I will assume that credentials have also been setup as per our previous post (else you will get a 401 error). You navigate to the deployed BPEL process within Fusion Middleware Control and select the Test Service option. Specify some test data on the payload at the bottom of the Test Service screen. In my case I am returning my own userid information. On the response tab you will see the result. It works. You can verify the steps using the Audit trace facility on individual calls. As you can see this is a basic BPEL but you get the idea of importing the Web Service is pretty straightforward. You can create more sophisticated BPEL processes using the full facilities in Oracle SOA Suite. I just showed you the basic principals.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, May 13, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, May 13, 2010New ProjectsC# 4.0: VS 2010Collaborative Rich Text Edit Prototype Silverlight on Windows Azure: Working like Google Doc but based on Silverlight/Windows Azure. Multiple users can edit one rich text document simultaneously. This is a POC and my...Consulting Assigment: Proyecto de consultoría para el curso Gestión de proyectos de la UCRCS 105 MP Splitter: Simple program to help with splitting up MPs for grading.DipEngine - graphic engine written on Xen for XNA: DIPEngine makes it easier for developers to use it in your game. It's developed in C# and using Xen for XNADotNetAgent: Agent FrameworkExtending C# editor - Outlining, classification: Extensions to VS C# editor current feautereset. Outlining for switch, for(each), if etc. statements. Classification types for method parameters and...Floe IRC Client: Floe is an IRC client written entirely in C#, using the .NET 4.0 framework with WPF technology. It is inspired largely by both XChat and mIRC, and ...Gestalt.Net: Gestalt.Net is a simple to use library for application configuration. It allows for more flexibility, easier to use, and more powerful than the app...GIM.OnlineChess: An implementation of online long-term chessGoogleTrail: Create and Export using the google map to develop the Trek Trails and Export Those Trails as Garmin Custom Map Compatible MapsGrassidi: What could Grassidi be?HodsAudio: Personal web based music library.Hospital Manage System: Free Hospital Manage SystemHtml Reader: Html Reader makes it easier for WPF WebBrowser users to access the Document property, and retrieve information from HTML pages. You'll no longer ha...Intellitouch.BackOffice: This project is a control for a menu.Jank: JankKooBoo Image Galery: It's a Module for kooboo that implements an image galery admin and view Developed for kooboo 2.1.1.0MoonyDesk (windows desktop widgets): Windows desktop plugin based widgets system written on WPFMSNSharp Application with Video Conferencing Feature: In MSN World, users don’t communicate directly each other.I examined P2P open source video/audio conference systems . After researching, I found Vi...mysample: study sample siteNoteFlyBot: An Intelligent Note Program is: - a 'Post-it' note that accept sNatural Language command to Upload content to EMC Repositories - Start Workflow...OpenGraphNET: A OpenGraphNET is a simple parser for the Open Graph protocol created by Facebook. More information on this can be found at opengraphprotocol.org.POCO - ADO.NET Entity Framework 4.0: The sample shows how to retrieve the data using POCO using EDM 4.0. Database used: Northwind (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa...sqlmx: sqlmxUpgrade Log Parser for SharePoint 2010: This is a simple Upgrade Log Parser for SharePoint 2010. It will add a node in the upgrade section of the central administration and deploy a pag...New ReleasesAMP (Adamo Media Player): AMP (Adamo Media Player): First Release version 0.1.0 Installation Instructions Unzip the package Run Setup.exe Follow Setup instructions File includes .NET Framework ...BeanProxy: BeanProxy 2.8: BeanProxy is a C# (.NET 3.5) library housing classes that facilitates unit testing. Any non-static, public interface/class/or abstract class can be...Begtostudy-Test: Test V1: Download to testCBM-Command: 2010-05-13: Release Notes - 2010-05-13New Features Configuration Manager is complete Changes Had to put CBM-Command on a big-time diet. Ran out of room on the...CS 105 MP Splitter: CS 105 MP Splitter: Uses SharpZipLib for unzipping (http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SharpZipLib/) Uses ILMerge to merge it all into a single executable (http://w...DipEngine - graphic engine written on Xen for XNA: DipGUI: Provides simple controls for use itEvent Scavenger: Collector service update - version 3.2.3: Added additional functionality to check if host/machine is available on the network before trying to open Event log. Also added code to try to use ...ExcelExportLib: ExcelExportLib 1.4.0.0: Solution converted to Visual Studio 2010 - Added support for formulas in cells - Added support for cell naming - Added support for cell's comments...F# Project Extender: V0.9.1.0 (VS2008,VS2010): F# project extender for Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2010. What's new : Now supports both Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio 2008 Fixed...Floe IRC Client: Floe IRC Client 2010-05: Initial release. Note: The .NET Framework v4.0 is required to run this app. It can be downloaded here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details....Fluent Assertions: Release 1.2.1: This is small release with two improvements: You can now use the Enumeration() extension method on a Func<IEnumerable> before calling ShouldThrow<T...Gestalt.Net: Gestalt.Net 1.0: Initial release of Gestalt.Net, a simple to use library for application configuration. It allows for more flexibility, easier to use, and more powe...GPdotNET - Tree Based Genetic Programming Tool: GPdotNETv0.9: This is the same version as previous, but compiled with Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0. You no longer need CTP of ParallelFX.HKGolden Express: HKGoldenExpress (Build 201005122025): New features: (None) Bug fix: (None) Improvements: HKGolden Express now parse JSON data rather than XML document from HKGolden API. This shoul...Jobping Url Shortener: Deploy Code 0.3: Contains only the files for running 0.3 version of the code.Jobping Url Shortener: Source Code 0.3: Feature added: Restriction placed on the domains that the shortener will shorten. Our installation will only shorten www.jobping.com urls. Bug Fix...KooBoo Image Galery: Beta 1: This is the first release and it is divided in some parts Module Install - Is the admin module and an default view Plugin - returns the galery as...LinkedIn® for Windows Mobile: LinkedIn for Windows Mobile v0.8.5: Changes in release 0.8.5 Allow for multiple updatetypes. Add search by Company. 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• Experience your music in a whole new way with Zune for PC

  - by Matthew Guay

  Tired of the standard Media Player look and feel, and want something new and innovative?  Zune offers a fresh, new way to enjoy your music, videos, pictures, and podcasts, whether or not you own a Zune device. Microsoft started out on a new multimedia experience for PCs and mobile devices with the launch of the Zune several years ago.  The Zune devices have been well received and noted for their innovative UI, and the Zune HD’s fluid interface is the foundation for the widely anticipated Windows Phone 7.  But regardless of whether or not you have a Zune Device, you can still use the exciting new UI and services directly from your PC.  Zune for Windows is a very nice media player that offers a music and video store and wide support for multimedia formats including those used in Apple products.  And if you enjoy listening to a wide variety of music, it also offers the Zune Pass which lets you stream an unlimited number of songs to your computer and download 10 songs for keeps per month for $14.99/month. Or you can do a pre-paid music card as well.  It does all this using the new Metro UI which beautifully shows information using text in a whole new way.  Here’s a quick look at setting up and using Zune on your PC. Getting Started Download the installer (link below), and run it to begin setup.  Please note that Zune offers a separate version for computers running the 64 bit version of Windows Vista or 7, so choose it if your computer is running these. Once your download is finished, run the installer to setup Zune on your computer.  Accept the EULA when prompted. If there are any updates available, they will automatically download and install during the setup.  So, if you’re installing Zune from a disk (for example, one packaged with a Zune device), you don’t have to worry if you have the latest version.  Zune will proceed to install on your computer.   It may prompt you to restart your computer after installation; click Restart Now so you can proceed with your Zune setup.  The reboot appears to be for Zune device support, and the program ran fine otherwise without rebooting, so you could possibly skip this step if you’re not using a Zune device.  However, to be on the safe side, go ahead and reboot. After rebooting, launch Zune.  It will play a cute introduction video on first launch; press skip if you don’t want to watch it. Zune will now ask you if you want to keep the default settings or change them.  Choose Start to keep the defaults, or Settings to customize to your wishes.  Do note that the default settings will set Zune as your default media player, so click Settings if you wish to change this. If you choose to change the default settings, you can change how Zune finds and stores media on your computer.  In Windows 7, Zune will by default use your Windows 7 Libraries to manage your media, and will in fact add a new Podcasts library to Windows 7. If your media is stored on another location, such as on a server, then you can add this to the Library.  Please note that this adds the location to your system-wide library, not just the Zune player. There’s one last step.  Enter three of your favorite artists, and Zune will add Smart DJ mixes to your Quickplay list based on these.  Some less famous or popular artists may not be recognized, so you may have to try another if your choice isn’t available.  Or, you can click Skip if you don’t want to do this right now. Welcome to Zune!  This is the default first page, QuickPlay, where you can easily access your pinned and new items.   If you have a Zune account, or would like to create a new one, click Sign In on the top. Creating a new account is quick and simple, and if you’re new to Zune, you can try out a 14 day trial of Zune Pass for free if you want. Zune allows you to share your listening habits and favorites with friends or the world, but you can turn this off or change it if you like. Using Zune for Windows To access your media, click the Collection link on the top left.  Zune will show all the media you already have stored on your computer, organized by artist and album. Right-click on any album, and you choose to have Zune find album art or do a variety of other tasks with the media.   When playing media, you can view it in several unique ways.  First, the default Mix view will show related tracks to the music you’re playing from Smart DJ.  You can either play these fully if you’re a Zune Pass subscriber, or otherwise you can play 30 second previews. Then, for many popular artists, Zune will change the player background to show pictures and information in a unique way while the music is playing.  The information may range from history about the artist to the popularity of the song being played.   Zune also works as a nice viewer for the pictures on your computer. Start a slideshow, and Zune will play your pictures with nice transition effects and music from your library. Zune Store The Zune Store offers a wide variety of music, TV shows, and videos for purchase.  If you’re a Zune Pass subscriber, you can listen to or download any song without purchasing it; otherwise, you can preview a 30 second clip first. Zune also offers a wide selection of Podcasts you can subscribe to for free. Using Zune for PC with a Zune Device If you have a Zune device attached to your computer, you can easily add media files to it by simply dragging them to the Zune device icon in the left corner.  In the future, this will also work with Windows Phone 7 devices. If you have a Zune HD, you can also download and add apps to your device. Here’s the detailed information window for the weather app.  Click Download to add it to your device.   Mini Mode The Zune player generally takes up a large portion of your screen, and is actually most impressive when run maximized.  However, if you’re simply wanting to enjoy your tunes while you’re using your computer, you can use the Mini mode to still view music info and control Zune in a smaller mode.  Click the Mini Player button near the window control buttons in the top right to activate it. Now Zune will take up much less of your desktop.  This window will stay on top of other windows so you can still easily view and control it. Zune will display an image of the artist if one is available, and this shows up in Mini mode more often than it does in the full mode. And, in Windows 7, you could simply minimize Zune as you can control it directly from the taskbar thumbnail preview.   Even more controls are available from Zune’s jumplist in Windows 7.  You can directly access your Quickplay links or choose to shuffle all music without leaving the taskbar. Settings Although Zune is designed to be used without confusing menus and settings, you can tweak the program to your liking from the settings panel.  Click Settings near the top left of the window. Here you can change file storage, types, burn, metadata, and many more settings.  You can also setup Zune to stream media to your XBOX 360 if you have one.   You can also customize Zune’s look with a variety of modern backgrounds and gradients. Conclusion If you’re ready for a fresh way to enjoy your media, Zune is designed for you.  It’s innovative UI definitely sets it apart from standard media players, and is very pleasing to use.  Zune is especially nice if your computer is using XP, Vista Home Basic, or 7 Starter as these versions of Windows don’t include Media Center.  Additionally, the mini player mode is a nice touch that brings a feature of Windows 7’s Media Player to XP and Vista.  Zune is definitely one of our favorite music apps.  Try it out, and get a fresh view of your music today! 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• Windows Azure Evolution &ndash; TFS Integration (WAWS Part 2)

  - by Shaun

  So this is the fourth blog post about the new features of Windows Azure and the second part of Windows Azure Web Sites. But this is not just focus on the WAWS since the function I’m going to introduce is available in both Windows Azure Web Sites and Windows Azure Cloud Service (a.k.a. hosted service). In the previous post I talked about the Windows Azure Web Sites and how to use its gallery to build a WordPress personal blog without coding. Besides the gallery we can create an empty web site and upload our website from vary approaches. And one of the highlighted feature here is that, we can make our web site integrated with a source control service, such as TFS and Git, so that it will be deployed automatically once a new commit or build available.   Create New Empty Web Site In the developer portal when creating a new web site, we can select QUICK CREATE item. This will create an empty web site with only one shared instance without any database associated. Let’s specify the URL, region and subscription and click OK. After a few seconds our website will be ready. And now we can click the BROWSE button to open this empty website. As you can see there is a welcome page available in my website even thought I didn’t upload or deploy anything. This means even though the website will be charged even before anything was deployed, similar as the cloud service (hosted service). It is because once we created a website, Windows Azure platform had arranged a hosting process (w3wp.exe) in the group of virtual machines.   Create Project in TFS Preview Service and Setup Link Currently the Windows Azure Web Sites can integrate with TFS and Git as its deployment source, and it only support the Microsoft TFS Preview Service for now. I will not deep into how to use the TFS preview service in this post but once we click into the website we had just created and then clicked the “Set up TFS publishing”, there will be a dialog helping us to connect to this service. If you don’t have an account you can click the link shown below to request one. Assuming we have already had an account of TFS service then we need to create a new project firstly. Go to your TFS service website and create a new project, giving the project name, description and the process template. Then, back to the developer portal and clicked the “Set up TFS publishing” link. In the popping up window I will provide my TFS service URL and click the “Authorize now” link. Click “Accept” button to allow my windows azure to connect to my TFS service. Then it will be back to the developer portal and list all projects in my account. Just select the one I had just created and click OK. Then our website is linking to the TFS project I specified and finally it will show similar like this below. This means the web site had been linked to the TFS successfully.   Work with TFS Preview Service in VS2010 In the figure above there are some links to guide us how to connect to the TFS server through Visual Studio 2010 and 2012 RC. If you are using Visual Studio 2012 RC, you don’t need any extension. But if you are using Visual Studio 2010 you must have SP1 and KB2581206 installed. To connect to my TFS service just open the Visual Studio and in the Team Explorer, we can add a new TFS server and paste the URL of my TFS service from the developer portal. And select the project I had just created, then it will be listed in my Team Explorer. Now let’s start to build our website. Since the website we are going to build will be deployed to WAWS, it’s NOT a cloud service, NOT a web role. So in this case we need to create a normal ASP.NET web application. For example, an ASP.NET MVC 3 web application. Next, right click on the solution and select “Add Solution to Source Control”, select the project I had just created. Then check my code in. Once the check-in finished we can see that there is a build running in the TFS server. And if we back to the developer portal, we will see in our web site deployment page there’s a deployment running. In fact, once we linked our web site to our TFS then it will create a new build definition in our TFS project. It will be triggered by each check-in and deploy to the web site we linked automatically. So that when our code had been compiled it will be published to our web site from our TFS server. Once the build and deployment finished we can see it’s now active on our developer portal. Now we can see the web site that created from my Visual Studio and deployed by my TFS.   Continue Deployment through VS and TFS A big benefit when using TFS publishing is the continue deployment. Now if I changed some code in my Visual Studio, for example update some text on the home page and check in my changes, then it will trigger an new build and deploy to my WAWS automatically. And even more, if we wanted to rollback to a previous version we can just select an existing deployment listed in the portal and click REDEPLOY at the bottom.   Q&A: Can Web Site use Storage work with a Worker Role? Stacy asked a question in my previous post, which was “can a web site use Windows Azure Storage and furthermore working with a worker role”. Since the web site is deployed on the windows azure virtual machines in data center, it must be able to use all windows azure features such as the storage, SQL databases, CDN, etc.. But since when using web site we normally have a standard ASP.NET web application, PHP website or NodeJS, the windows azure SDK was not referenced by default. But we can add them by ourselves. In our sample project let’s right click on my MVC project and clicked the “Manage NuGet packages”. And in the dialog I will search windows azure packages and select the “Windows Azure Storage” to install. Then we will have the assemblies to access windows azure storage such as tables, queues and blobs. Since I have a storage account already, let’s have a quick demo, just to list all blobs in a container. The code would be like this. 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3: using System.Linq; 4: using System.Web; 5: using System.Web.Mvc; 6: using Microsoft.WindowsAzure; 7: using Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient; 8:  9: namespace WAASTFSDemo.Controllers 10: { 11: public class HomeController : Controller 12: { 13: public ActionResult Index() 14: { 15: ViewBag.Message = "Welcome to Windows Azure!"; 16:  17: var credentials = new StorageCredentialsAccountAndKey("[STORAGE_ACCOUNT]", "[STORAGE_KEY]"); 18: var account = new CloudStorageAccount(credentials, false); 19: var client = account.CreateCloudBlobClient(); 20: var container = client.GetContainerReference("shared"); 21: ViewBag.Blobs = container.ListBlobs().Select(b => b.Uri.AbsoluteUri); 22:  23: return View(); 24: } 25:  26: public ActionResult About() 27: { 28: return View(); 29: } 30: } 31: } 1: @{ 2: ViewBag.Title = "Home Page"; 3: } 4:  5: <h2>@ViewBag.Message</h2> 6: <p> 7: To learn more about ASP.NET MVC visit <a href="http://asp.net/mvc" title="ASP.NET MVC Website">http://asp.net/mvc</a>. 8: </p> 9: <div> 10: <ul> 11: @foreach (var blob in ViewBag.Blobs) 12: { 13: <li>@blob</li> 14: } 15: </ul> 16: </div> And then just check in the code, it will be deployed to my web site. Finally we can see the blobs in my storage.   This is just an example but it proves that web sites can connect to storage, table, blob and queue as well. So the answer to Stacy should be “yes”. The web site can use queue storage to work with worker role.   Summary In this post I demonstrated how to integrate with TFS from Windows Azure Web Sites. You can see our website can be built, uploaded and deployed automatically by TFS service. All we need to do is to provide the TFS name and select the project. Not only the Windows Azure Web Site, in this upgrade the Windows Azure Cloud Services (hosted service) can be published through TFS as well. Very similar as what we have shown below. But currently, only Microsoft TFS Service Preview can be integrated with Windows Azure. But I think in the future we can link the TFS in our enterprise and some 3rd party TFS such as CodePlex to Windows Azure.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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• T-SQL Tuesday #53-Matt's Making Me Do This!

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  Hello everyone! It's that time again, time for T-SQL Tuesday, the wonderful blog series started by Adam Machanic (b|t). This month we are hosted by Matt Velic (b|t) who asks the question, "Why So Serious?", in celebration of April Fool's Day. He asks the contributors for their dirty tricks. And for some reason that escapes me, he and Jeff Verheul (b|t) seem to think I might be able to write about those. Shocked, I am! Nah, not really. They're absolutely right, this one is gonna be fun! I took some inspiration from Matt's suggestions, namely Resource Governor and Login Triggers.  I've done some interesting login trigger stuff for a presentation, but nothing yet with Resource Governor. Best way to learn it! One of my oldest pet peeves is abuse of the sa login. Don't get me wrong, I use it too, but typically only as SQL Agent job owner. It's been a while since I've been stuck with it, but back when I started using SQL Server, EVERY application needed sa to function. It was hard-coded and couldn't be changed. (welllllll, that is if you didn't use a hex editor on the EXE file, but who would do such a thing?) My standard warning applies: don't run anything on this page in production. In fact, back up whatever server you're testing this on, including the master database. Snapshotting a VM is a good idea. Also make sure you have other sysadmin level logins on that server. So here's a standard template for a logon trigger to address those pesky sa users: CREATE TRIGGER SA_LOGIN_PRIORITY ON ALL SERVER WITH ENCRYPTION, EXECUTE AS N'sa' AFTER LOGON AS IF ORIGINAL_LOGIN()<>N'sa' OR APP_NAME() LIKE N'SQL Agent%' RETURN; -- interesting stuff goes here GO   What can you do for "interesting stuff"? Books Online limits itself to merely rolling back the logon, which will throw an error (and alert the person that the logon trigger fired).  That's a good use for logon triggers, but really not tricky enough for this blog.  Some of my suggestions are below: WAITFOR DELAY '23:59:59';   Or: EXEC sp_MSforeach_db 'EXEC sp_detach_db ''?'';'   Or: EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_add_job @job_name=N'`', @enabled=1, @start_step_id=1, @notify_level_eventlog=0, @delete_level=3; EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_add_jobserver @job_name=N'`', @server_name=@@SERVERNAME; EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_add_jobstep @job_name=N'`', @step_id=1, @step_name=N'`', @command=N'SHUTDOWN;'; EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_start_job @job_name=N'`';   Really, I don't want to spoil your own exploration, try it yourself!  The thing I really like about these is it lets me promote the idea that "sa is SLOW, sa is BUGGY, don't use sa!".  Before we get into Resource Governor, make sure to drop or disable that logon trigger. They don't work well in combination. (Had to redo all the following code when SSMS locked up) Resource Governor is a feature that lets you control how many resources a single session can consume. The main goal is to limit the damage from a runaway query. But we're not here to read about its main goal or normal usage! I'm trying to make people stop using sa BECAUSE IT'S SLOW! Here's how RG can do that: USE master; GO CREATE FUNCTION dbo.SA_LOGIN_PRIORITY() RETURNS sysname WITH SCHEMABINDING, ENCRYPTION AS BEGIN RETURN CASE WHEN ORIGINAL_LOGIN()=N'sa' AND APP_NAME() NOT LIKE N'SQL Agent%' THEN N'SA_LOGIN_PRIORITY' ELSE N'default' END END GO CREATE RESOURCE POOL SA_LOGIN_PRIORITY WITH ( MIN_CPU_PERCENT = 0 ,MAX_CPU_PERCENT = 1 ,CAP_CPU_PERCENT = 1 ,AFFINITY SCHEDULER = (0) ,MIN_MEMORY_PERCENT = 0 ,MAX_MEMORY_PERCENT = 1 -- ,MIN_IOPS_PER_VOLUME = 1 ,MAX_IOPS_PER_VOLUME = 1 -- uncomment for SQL Server 2014 ); CREATE WORKLOAD GROUP SA_LOGIN_PRIORITY WITH ( IMPORTANCE = LOW ,REQUEST_MAX_MEMORY_GRANT_PERCENT = 1 ,REQUEST_MAX_CPU_TIME_SEC = 1 ,REQUEST_MEMORY_GRANT_TIMEOUT_SEC = 1 ,MAX_DOP = 1 ,GROUP_MAX_REQUESTS = 1 ) USING SA_LOGIN_PRIORITY; ALTER RESOURCE GOVERNOR WITH (CLASSIFIER_FUNCTION=dbo.SA_LOGIN_PRIORITY); ALTER RESOURCE GOVERNOR RECONFIGURE;   From top to bottom: Create a classifier function to determine which pool the session should go to. More info on classifier functions. Create the pool and provide a generous helping of resources for the sa login. Create the workload group and further prioritize those resources for the sa login. Apply the classifier function and reconfigure RG to use it. I have to say this one is a bit sneakier than the logon trigger, least of all you don't get any error messages.  I heartily recommend testing it in Management Studio, and click around the UI a lot, there's some fun behavior there. And DEFINITELY try it on SQL 2014 with the IO settings included!  You'll notice I made allowances for SQL Agent jobs owned by sa, they'll go into the default workload group.  You can add your own overrides to the classifier function if needed. Some interesting ideas I didn't have time for but expect you to get to before me: Set up different pools/workgroups with different settings and randomize which one the classifier chooses Do the same but base it on time of day (Books Online example covers this)... Or, which workstation it connects from. This can be modified for certain special people in your office who either don't listen, or are attracted (and attractive) to you. And if things go wrong you can always use the following from another sysadmin or Dedicated Admin connection: ALTER RESOURCE GOVERNOR DISABLE;   That will let you go in and either fix (or drop) the pools, workgroups and classifier function. So now that you know these types of things are possible, and if you are tired of your team using sa when they shouldn't, I expect you'll enjoy playing with these quite a bit! Unfortunately, the aforementioned Dedicated Admin Connection kinda poops on the party here.  Books Online for both topics will tell you that the DAC will not fire either feature. So if you have a crafty user who does their research, they can still sneak in with sa and do their bidding without being hampered. Of course, you can still detect their login via various methods, like a server trace, SQL Server Audit, extended events, and enabling "Audit Successful Logins" on the server.  These all have their downsides: traces take resources, extended events and SQL Audit can't fire off actions, and enabling successful logins will bloat your error log very quickly.  SQL Audit is also limited unless you have Enterprise Edition, and Resource Governor is Enterprise-only.  And WORST OF ALL, these features are all available and visible through the SSMS UI, so even a doofus developer or manager could find them. Fortunately there are Event Notifications! Event notifications are becoming one of my favorite features of SQL Server (keep an eye out for more blogs from me about them). They are practically unknown and heinously underutilized.  They are also a great gateway drug to using Service Broker, another great but underutilized feature. Hopefully this will get you to start using them, or at least your enemies in the office will once they read this, and then you'll have to learn them in order to fix things. So here's the setup: USE msdb; GO CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.SA_LOGIN_PRIORITY_act WITH ENCRYPTION AS DECLARE @x XML, @message nvarchar(max); RECEIVE @x=CAST(message_body AS XML) FROM SA_LOGIN_PRIORITY_q; IF @x.value('(//LoginName)[1]','sysname')=N'sa' AND @x.value('(//ApplicationName)[1]','sysname') NOT LIKE N'SQL Agent%' BEGIN -- interesting activation procedure stuff goes here END GO CREATE QUEUE SA_LOGIN_PRIORITY_q WITH STATUS=ON, RETENTION=OFF, ACTIVATION (PROCEDURE_NAME=dbo.SA_LOGIN_PRIORITY_act, MAX_QUEUE_READERS=1, EXECUTE AS OWNER); CREATE SERVICE SA_LOGIN_PRIORITY_s ON QUEUE SA_LOGIN_PRIORITY_q([http://schemas.microsoft.com/SQL/Notifications/PostEventNotification]); CREATE EVENT NOTIFICATION SA_LOGIN_PRIORITY_en ON SERVER WITH FAN_IN FOR AUDIT_LOGIN TO SERVICE N'SA_LOGIN_PRIORITY_s', N'current database' GO   From top to bottom: Create activation procedure for event notification queue. Create queue to accept messages from event notification, and activate the procedure to process those messages when received. Create service to send messages to that queue. Create event notification on AUDIT_LOGIN events that fire the service. I placed this in msdb as it is an available system database and already has Service Broker enabled by default. You should change this to another database if you can guarantee it won't get dropped. So what to put in place for "interesting activation procedure code"?  Hmmm, so far I haven't addressed Matt's suggestion of writing a lengthy script to send an annoying message: SET @[email protected]('(//HostName)[1]','sysname') + N' tried to log in to server ' + @x.value('(//ServerName)[1]','sysname') + N' as SA at ' + @x.value('(//StartTime)[1]','sysname') + N' using the ' + @x.value('(//ApplicationName)[1]','sysname') + N' program. That''s why you''re getting this message and the attached pornography which' + N' is bloating your inbox and violating company policy, among other things. If you know' + N' this person you can go to their desk and hit them, or use the following SQL to end their session: KILL ' + @x.value('(//SPID)[1]','sysname') + N'; Hopefully they''re in the middle of a huge query that they need to finish right away.' EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_send_dbmail @recipients=N'[email protected]', @subject=N'SA Login Alert', @query_result_width=32767, @body=@message, @query=N'EXEC sp_readerrorlog;', @attach_query_result_as_file=1, @query_attachment_filename=N'UtterlyGrossPorn_SeriouslyDontOpenIt.jpg' I'm not sure I'd call that a lengthy script, but the attachment should get pretty big, and I'm sure the email admins will love storing multiple copies of it.  The nice thing is that this also fires on Dedicated Admin connections! You can even identify DAC connections from the event data returned, I leave that as an exercise for you. You can use that info to change the action taken by the activation procedure, and since it's a stored procedure, it can pretty much do anything! Except KILL the SPID, or SHUTDOWN the server directly.  I'm still working on those.

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• Software Engineering Practices &ndash; Different Projects should have different maturity levels

  - by Dylan Smith

  I’ve had a lot of discussions at the office lately about the drastically different sets of software engineering practices used on our various projects, if what we are doing is appropriate, and what factors should you be considering when determining what practices are most appropriate in a given context. I wanted to write up my thoughts in a little more detail on this subject, so here we go: If you compare any two software projects (specifically comparing their codebases) you’ll often see very different levels of maturity in the software engineering practices employed. By software engineering practices, I’m specifically referring to the quality of the code and the amount of technical debt present in the project. Things such as Test Driven Development, Domain Driven Design, Behavior Driven Development, proper adherence to the SOLID principles, etc. are all practices that you would expect at the mature end of the spectrum. At the other end of the spectrum would be the quick-and-dirty solutions that are done using something like an Access Database, Excel Spreadsheet, or maybe some quick “drag-and-drop coding”. For this blog post I’m going to refer to this as the Software Engineering Maturity Spectrum (SEMS). I believe there is a time and a place for projects at every part of that SEMS. The risks and costs associated with under-engineering solutions have been written about a million times over so I won’t bother going into them again here, but there are also (unnecessary) costs with over-engineering a solution. Sometimes putting multiple layers, and IoC containers, and abstracting out the persistence, etc is complete overkill if a one-time use Access database could solve the problem perfectly well. A lot of software developers I talk to seem to automatically jump to the very right-hand side of this SEMS in everything they do. A common rationalization I hear is that it may seem like a small trivial application today, but these things always grow and stick around for many years, then you’re stuck maintaining a big ball of mud. I think this is a cop-out. Sure you can’t always anticipate how an application will be used or grow over its lifetime (can you ever??), but that doesn’t mean you can’t manage it and evolve the underlying software architecture as necessary (even if that means having to toss the code out and re-write it at some point…maybe even multiple times). My thoughts are that we should be making a conscious decision around the start of each project approximately where on the SEMS we want the project to exist. I believe this decision should be based on 3 factors: 1. Importance - How important to the business is this application? What is the impact if the application were to suddenly stop working? 2. Complexity - How complex is the application functionality? 3. Life-Expectancy - How long is this application expected to be in use? Is this a one-time use application, does it fill a short-term need, or is it more strategic and is expected to be in-use for many years to come? Of course this isn’t an exact science. You can’t say that Project X should be at the 73% mark on the SEMS and expect that to be helpful. My point is not that you need to precisely figure out what point on the SEMS the project should be at then translate that into some prescriptive set of practices and techniques you should be using. Rather my point is that we need to be aware that there is a spectrum, and that not everything is going to be (or should be) at the edges of that spectrum, indeed a large number of projects should probably fall somewhere within the middle; and different projects should adopt a different level of software engineering practices and maturity levels based on the needs of that project. To give an example of this way of thinking from my day job: Every couple of years my company plans and hosts a large event where ~400 of our customers all fly in to one location for a multi-day event with various activities. We have some staff whose job it is to organize the logistics of this event, which includes tracking which flights everybody is booked on, arranging for transportation to/from airports, arranging for hotel rooms, name tags, etc The last time we arranged this event all these various pieces of data were tracked in separate spreadsheets and reconciliation and cross-referencing of all the data was literally done by hand using printed copies of the spreadsheets and several people sitting around a table going down each list row by row. Obviously there is some room for improvement in how we are using software to manage the event’s logistics. The next time this event occurs we plan to provide the event planning staff with a more intelligent tool (either an Excel spreadsheet or probably an Access database) that can track all the information in one location and make sure that the various pieces of data are properly linked together (so for example if a person cancels you only need to delete them from one place, and not a dozen separate lists). This solution would fall at or near the very left end of the SEMS meaning that we will just quickly create something with very little attention paid to using mature software engineering practices. If we examine this project against the 3 criteria I listed above for determining it’s place within the SEMS we can see why: Importance – If this application were to stop working the business doesn’t grind to a halt, revenue doesn’t stop, and in fact our customers wouldn’t even notice since it isn’t a customer facing application. The impact would simply be more work for our event planning staff as they revert back to the previous way of doing things (assuming we don’t have any data loss). Complexity – The use cases for this project are pretty straightforward. It simply needs to manage several lists of data, and link them together appropriately. Precisely the task that access (and/or Excel) can do with minimal custom development required. Life-Expectancy – For this specific project we’re only planning to create something to be used for the one event (we only hold these events every 2 years). If it works well this may change (see below). Let’s assume we hack something out quickly and it works great when we plan the next event. We may decide that we want to make some tweaks to the tool and adopt it for planning all future events of this nature. In that case we should examine where the current application is on the SEMS, and make a conscious decision whether something needs to be done to move it further to the right based on the new objectives and goals for this application. This may mean scrapping the access database and re-writing it as an actual web or windows application. In this case, the life-expectancy changed, but let’s assume the importance and complexity didn’t change all that much. We can still probably get away with not adopting a lot of the so-called “best practices”. For example, we can probably still use some of the RAD tooling available and might have an Autonomous View style design that connects directly to the database and binds to typed datasets (we might even choose to simply leave it as an access database and continue using it; this is a decision that needs to be made on a case-by-case basis). At Anvil Digital we have aspirations to become a primarily product-based company. So let’s say we use this tool to plan a handful of events internally, and everybody loves it. Maybe a couple years down the road we decide we want to package the tool up and sell it as a product to some of our customers. In this case the project objectives/goals change quite drastically. Now the tool becomes a source of revenue, and the impact of it suddenly stopping working is significantly less acceptable. Also as we hold focus groups, and gather feedback from customers and potential customers there’s a pretty good chance the feature-set and complexity will have to grow considerably from when we were using it only internally for planning a small handful of events for one company. In this fictional scenario I would expect the target on the SEMS to jump to the far right. Depending on how we implemented the previous release we may be able to refactor and evolve the existing codebase to introduce a more layered architecture, a robust set of automated tests, introduce a proper ORM and IoC container, etc. More likely in this example the jump along the SEMS would be so large we’d probably end up scrapping the current code and re-writing. Although, if it was a slow phased roll-out to only a handful of customers, where we collected feedback, made some tweaks, and then rolled out to a couple more customers, we may be able to slowly refactor and evolve the code over time rather than tossing it out and starting from scratch. The key point I’m trying to get across is not that you should be throwing out your code and starting from scratch all the time. But rather that you should be aware of when and how the context and objectives around a project changes and periodically re-assess where the project currently falls on the SEMS and whether that needs to be adjusted based on changing needs. Note: There is also the idea of “spectrum decay”. Since our industry is rapidly evolving, what we currently accept as mature software engineering practices (the right end of the SEMS) probably won’t be the same 3 years from now. If you have a project that you were to assess at somewhere around the 80% mark on the SEMS today, but don’t touch the code for 3 years and come back and re-assess its position, it will almost certainly have changed since the right end of the SEMS will have moved farther out (maybe the project is now only around 60% due to decay). Developer Skills Another important aspect to this whole discussion is around the skill sets of your architects and lead developers. When talking about the progression of a developers skills from junior->intermediate->senior->… they generally start by only being able to write code that belongs on the left side of the SEMS and as they gain more knowledge and skill they become capable of working at a higher and higher level along the SEMS. We all realize that the learning never stops, but eventually you’ll get to the point where you can comfortably develop at the right-end of the SEMS (the exact practices and techniques that translates to is constantly changing, but that’s not the point here). A critical skill that I’d love to see more evidence of in our industry is the most senior guys not only being able to work at the right-end of the SEMS, but more importantly be able to consciously work at any point along the SEMS as project needs dictate. An even more valuable skill would be if you could make the conscious decision to move a projects code further right on the SEMS (based on changing needs) and do so in an incremental manner without having to start from scratch. An exercise that I’m planning to go through with all of our projects here at Anvil in the near future is to map out where I believe each project currently falls within this SEMS, where I believe the project *should* be on the SEMS based on the business needs, and for those that don’t match up (i.e. most of them) come up with a plan to improve the situation.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 25, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 25, 2011Popular ReleasesMosaic Project: Mosaic Alpha build 252: First public release There are 8 widgets: - Desktop - Gmail - Weather - Control panel - Me - Video - Clock - PicturesUsage Agent: Usage Agent 9.0.8: Latest release. Changes include: - Fixes for Optus - Usage Delta statistic for BigPond - Eliminated the need for UAC prompt at every startupjQuery List DragSort: jQuery List DragSort 0.4.3: Fix item not dropping correctly on Chrome and jQuery 1.6KinectNUI: Jun 25 Alpha Release: Initial public version. No installer needed, just run the EXE.TerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v3.3 [v1.0.5 Compatible]: I have added support for all the new items in Terraria v1.0.5. I have also added the ability to put your character in hardcore mode or take them out via a simple checkbox on the stats tab. If you come across any bugs, please let me know immediately.Terraria World Viewer: Version 1.5: Update June 24th Made compatible with the new tiles found in Terraria 1.0.5Kinect Earth Move: KinectEarthMove sample code: Sample code releasedThis is a sample code for Kinect for Windows SDK beta, which was demonstrated on Channel 9 Kinect for Windows SKD beta launch event on June 17 2011. Using color image and skeleton data from Kinect and user in front of Kinect can manipulate the earth between his/her hands.NetOffice - The easiest way to use Office in .NET: NetOffice Release 0.9b: Changes: - fix critical issue 262334 (AccessViolationException while using events in a COMAddin) - remove x64 Assemblies (not necessary) Includes: - Runtime Binaries and Source Code for .NET Framework:......v2.0, v3.0, v3.5, v4.0 - Tutorials in C# and VB.Net:..............................................................COM Proxy Management, Events, etc. - Examples in C# and VB.Net:............................................................Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access - COMAddi...MiniTwitter: 1.70: MiniTwitter 1.70 ???? ?? ????? xAuth ?? OAuth ??????? 1.70 ??????????????????????????。 ???????????????? Twitter ? Web ??????????、PIN ????????????????????。??????????????????、???????????????????????????。Total Commander SkyDrive File System Plugin (.wfx): Total Commander SkyDrive File System Plugin 0.8.7b: Total Commander SkyDrive File System Plugin version 0.8.7b. Bug fixes: - BROKEN PLUGIN by upgrading SkyDriveServiceClient version 2.0.1b. Please do not forget to express your opinion of the plugin by rating it! Donate (EUR)SkyDrive .Net API Client: SkyDrive .Net API Client 2.0.1b (RELOADED): SkyDrive .Net API Client assembly has been RELOADED in version 2.0.1b as a REAL API. It supports the followings: - Creating root and sub folders - Uploading and downloading files - Renaming and deleting folders and files Bug fixes: - BROKEN API (issue 6834) Please do not forget to express your opinion of the assembly by rating it! Donate (EUR)Mini SQL Query: Mini SQL Query v1.0.0.59794: This release includes the following enhancements: Added a Most Recently Used file list Added Row counts to the query (per tab) and table view windows Added the Command Timeout option, only valid for MSSQL for now - see options If you have no idea what this thing is make sure you check out http://pksoftware.net/MiniSqlQuery/Help/MiniSqlQueryQuickStart.docx for an introduction. PK :-]HydroDesktop - CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System Desktop Application: 1.2.591 Beta Release: 1.2.591 Beta Releasepatterns & practices: Project Silk: Project Silk Community Drop 12 - June 22, 2011: Changes from previous drop: Minor code changes. New "Introduction" chapter. New "Modularity" chapter. Updated "Architecture" chapter. Updated "Server-Side Implementation" chapter. Updated "Client Data Management and Caching" chapter. Guidance Chapters Ready for Review The Word documents for the chapters are included with the source code in addition to the CHM to help you provide feedback. The PDF is provided as a separate download for your convenience. Installation Overview To ins...SQL Server HowTo: Version 1.0: Initial ReleaseDropBox Linker: DropBox Linker 1.3: Added "Get links..." dialog, that provides selective public files links copying Get links link added to tray menu as the default option Fixed URL encoding .NET Framework 4.0 Client Profile requiredDotNetNuke® Community Edition: 06.00.00 Beta: Beta 1 (Build 2300) includes many important enhancements to the user experience. The control panel has been updated for easier access to the most important features and additional forms have been adapted to the new pattern. This release also includes many bug fixes that make it more stable than previous CTP releases. Beta ForumsBlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.5 RC: BlogEngine.NET Hosting - Click Here! 3 Months FREE – BlogEngine.NET Hosting – Click Here! This is a Release Candidate version for BlogEngine.NET 2.5. The most current, stable version of BlogEngine.NET is version 2.0. Find out more about the BlogEngine.NET 2.5 RC here. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. To get started, be sure to check out our installation documentation. If you are upgrading from a previous version, please take a look at ...Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework - a centralized code sample library: All-In-One Code Framework 2011-06-19: Alternatively, you can install Sample Browser or Sample Browser VS extension, and download the code samples from Sample Browser. Improved and Newly Added Examples:For an up-to-date code sample index, please refer to All-In-One Code Framework Sample Catalog. NEW Samples for Windows Azure Sample Description Owner CSAzureStartupTask The sample demonstrates using the startup tasks to install the prerequisites or to modify configuration settings for your environment in Windows Azure Rafe Wu ...IronPython: 2.7.1 Beta 1: This is the first beta release of IronPython 2.7. Like IronPython 54498, this release requires .NET 4 or Silverlight 4. This release will replace any existing IronPython installation. The highlights of this release are: Updated the standard library to match CPython 2.7.2. Add the ast, csv, and unicodedata modules. Fixed several bugs. IronPython Tools for Visual Studio are disabled by default. See http://pytools.codeplex.com for the next generation of Python Visual Studio support. See...New Projects.Net Image Processor: An image processing wrapper around GDI+, allowing you to apply one or more filters against an image source. Out-of-the-box support: * Conversion from one image type to another * Image resizing and various strategies for resolving aspect ratio * Edge detection * GIF support * Chaining filters together to perform complex operations on a single image Filters can be stacked and queued so that they run one after the other in a process queue. The processor can accept filenames, streams o...AsyncGetListSample: Reactive Extensions?????、Twitter??????????????????????????????。Awful for Windows Phone 7: Awful for Windows Phone 7 is a work-in-progress forum reader software for the Something Awful Forums.binzlog2.com: BlogEngine sourceCaffeine Model: A view model framework that specifically targets problems such as change recognition, validation and graph traversal. Provides robust support in these areas and base classes from which to build off of.CxBuild: cxbuildDotNetNuke Scheduler DashboardControl: The DNNSchedulerDashboard control adds a new control to the DotNetNuke Dashboard module that monitors the execution of the tasks in the DNN Scheduler. This control will keep host administrators informed on the tasks that are not executing on time.fkanban: A free Agile tool insist of Product backlog,sprint,Kanban etcKillstone Spycam: A "WebCam Timershot" style application that can take photos from a DirectShow device at a specified interval and save to disk and/or upload via FTP.Live Services for Moodle 1.9: This is a modification to the original Microsoft Live Services for Moodle allowing users to chat through Live Messenger using the web client.MoreEPG: Import of Extern EPG in Windows Media Center (Windows 7)NAntExt: The NAntExt is an extensions library for NAnt. This library includes Tasks and Functions which are much needed in using NAnt, but are not included in NAnt or NAntContrib. The ideal would be to eventually cycle them back into one of these projects. NetSquare - FourSquare C#.NET Open Source Class Library: NetSquare makes it easy to access Foursquare via the new v2 OAuth interface. This will be published as a VS 2010 C# project with associated examples.Power Presenter 2011: Do you want to make a great photo slideshow? Then get Power Presenter the best for showing phothos. Music with a click from the menu of the window. Better for you!!! If you want to join us it is a single rule NO-SEELING & NO-MONEY. It is developed in VB.NET. PowerPackPS: PowerPackPS is a DSV for creating PowerGUI PowerPacks using Powershell instead of the GUI or XML.Resuming Action Results for ASP.NET MVC: Resuming Action Results for MVC provides a similar implementation as the standard FileResult ActionResult objects but with the intelligence to detect range requests and respond appropriately with no need to write a single extra line of code.SoundSwitch: SoundSwitch makes it easier to switch playback devices (sound cards). Normally, to switch a Playback device you need to right click the sound icon in the bottom right corner of your screen (system tray), choose "Playback devices" and then change the default playback device. Every time you want to switch. With SoundSwitch you just configure once between which Playback devices you want to toggle and then you can press Ctrl+Alt+F11 to toggle automatically!StopWatch Plus: This is a simple stopwatch with which you can set a countdown, save and control the various steps imposed by the pause button. The projects will is still under development and not yet possess all the qualities mentioned above, currently is a simple countdown. _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ Questo è un semplice cronometro col quale si potrà impostare un conto alla rovescia, salvare e tenere sotto controllo i vari step ...TFS Reports: The TFS Reports project is about sharing knowledge around the reporting capabilities in TFS and contains both guidance as well as ready to use reports. TRK ATR: Website for TV/Radio channel UpdateTool: A tool used to update client This project is for personal use. Please do not download in now.Windows Service Helper: Helps by creating a Play/Stop/Pause UI when running with a debugger attached, but also allows the windows service to be installed and run by the Windows Services environment as well. All this with one line of code!XNB filetype plugin for Paint.NET: This plugin allows viewing and editing of XNA compiled textures from inside Paint.NET.

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• Integrating NetBeans for Raspberry Pi Java Development

  - by speakjava

  Raspberry Pi IDE Java Development The Raspberry Pi is an incredible device for building embedded Java applications but, despite being able to run an IDE on the Pi it really pushes things to the limit.  It's much better to use a PC or laptop to develop the code and then deploy and test on the Pi.  What I thought I'd do in this blog entry was to run through the steps necessary to set up NetBeans on a PC for Java code development, with automatic deployment to the Raspberry Pi as part of the build process. I will assume that your starting point is a Raspberry Pi with an SD card that has one of the latest Raspbian images on it.  This is good because this now includes the JDK 7 as part of the distro, so no need to download and install a separate JDK.  I will also assume that you have installed the JDK and NetBeans on your PC.  These can be downloaded here. There are numerous approaches you can take to this including mounting the file system from the Raspberry Pi remotely on your development machine.  I tried this and I found that NetBeans got rather upset if the file system disappeared either through network interruption or the Raspberry Pi being turned off.  The following method uses copying over SSH, which will fail more gracefully if the Pi is not responding. Step 1: Enable SSH on the Raspberry Pi To run the Java applications you create you will need to start Java on the Raspberry Pi with the appropriate class name, classpath and parameters.  For non-JavaFX applications you can either do this from the Raspberry Pi desktop or, if you do not have a monitor connected through a remote command line.  To execute the remote command line you need to enable SSH (a secure shell login over the network) and connect using an application like PuTTY. You can enable SSH when you first boot the Raspberry Pi, as the raspi-config program runs automatically.  You can also run it at any time afterwards by running the command: sudo raspi-config This will bring up a menu of options.  Select '8 Advanced Options' and on the next screen select 'A$ SSH'.  Select 'Enable' and the task is complete. Step 2: Configure Raspberry Pi Networking By default, the Raspbian distribution configures the ethernet connection to use DHCP rather than a static IP address.  You can continue to use DHCP if you want, but to avoid having to potentially change settings whenever you reboot the Pi using a static IP address is simpler. To configure this on the Pi you need to edit the /etc/network/interfaces file.  You will need to do this as root using the sudo command, so something like sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces.  In this file you will see this line: iface eth0 inet dhcp This needs to be changed to the following: iface eth0 inet static     address 10.0.0.2     gateway 10.0.0.254     netmask 255.255.255.0 You will need to change the values in red to an appropriate IP address and to match the address of your gateway. Step 3: Create a Public-Private Key Pair On Your Development Machine How you do this will depend on which Operating system you are using: Mac OSX or Linux Run the command: ssh-keygen -t rsa Press ENTER/RETURN to accept the default destination for saving the key.  We do not need a passphrase so simply press ENTER/RETURN for an empty one and once more to confirm. The key will be created in the file .ssh/id_rsa.pub in your home directory.  Display the contents of this file using the cat command: cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub Open a window, SSH to the Raspberry Pi and login.  Change directory to .ssh and edit the authorized_keys file (don't worry if the file does not exist).  Copy and paste the contents of the id_rsa.pub file to the authorized_keys file and save it. Windows Since Windows is not a UNIX derivative operating system it does not include the necessary key generating software by default.  To generate the key I used puttygen.exe which is available from the same site that provides the PuTTY application, here. Download this and run it on your Windows machine.  Follow the instructions to generate a key.  I remove the key comment, but you can leave that if you want. Click "Save private key", confirm that you don't want to use a passphrase and select a filename and location for the key. Copy the public key from the part of the window marked, "Public key for pasting into OpenSSH authorized_keys file".  Use PuTTY to connect to the Raspberry Pi and login.  Change directory to .ssh and edit the authorized_keys file (don't worry if this does not exist).  Paste the key information at the end of this file and save it. Logout and then start PuTTY again.  This time we need to create a saved session using the private key.  Type in the IP address of the Raspberry Pi in the "Hostname (or IP address)" field and expand "SSH" under the "Connection" category.  Select "Auth" (see the screen shot below). Click the "Browse" button under "Private key file for authentication" and select the file you saved from puttygen. Go back to the "Session" category and enter a short name in the saved sessions field, as shown below.  Click "Save" to save the session. Step 4: Test The Configuration You should now have the ability to use scp (Mac/Linux) or pscp.exe (Windows) to copy files from your development machine to the Raspberry Pi without needing to authenticate by typing in a password (so we can automate the process in NetBeans).  It's a good idea to test this using something like: scp /tmp/foo [email protected]:/tmp on Linux or Mac or pscp.exe foo pi@raspi:/tmp on Windows (Note that we use the saved configuration name instead of the IP address or hostname so the public key is picked up). pscp.exe is another tool available from the creators of PuTTY. Step 5: Configure the NetBeans Build Script Start NetBeans and create a new project (or open an existing one that you want to deploy automatically to the Raspberry Pi). Select the Files tab in the explorer window and expand your project.  You will see a build.xml file.  Double click this to edit it. This file will mostly be comments.  At the end (but within the </project> tag) add the XML for <target name="-post-jar">, shown below Here's the code again in case you want to use cut-and-paste: <target name="-post-jar">   <echo level="info" message="Copying dist directory to remote Pi"/>   <exec executable="scp" dir="${basedir}">     <arg line="-r"/>     <arg value="dist"/>     <arg value="[email protected]:NetBeans/CopyTest"/>   </exec>  </target> For Windows it will be slightly different: <target name="-post-jar">   <echo level="info" message="Copying dist directory to remote Pi"/>   <exec executable="C:\pi\putty\pscp.exe" dir="${basedir}">     <arg line="-r"/>     <arg value="dist"/>     <arg value="pi@raspi:NetBeans/CopyTest"/>   </exec> </target> You will also need to ensure that pscp.exe is in your PATH (or specify a fully qualified pathname). From now on when you clean and build the project the dist directory will automatically be copied to the Raspberry Pi ready for testing.

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