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• Customer Experience and BPM – From Efficiency to Engagement

  - by Ajay Khanna

  Over the last few years, focus of BPM has been mainly to improve the businesses efficiency. To create more efficient processes, to remove bottlenecks, to automate processes. That still holds true and why not? Isn’t BPM all about continuous improvement? BPM facilitates and requires business and IT collaboration. But business also requires working with customer. Do we not want to get close to and collaborate with our customers? This is where Social BPM takes BPM a step further. It not only allows people within an organization to collaborate to design exceptional processes, not only lets them collaborate on resolving a case but also let them engage with the customers. Engaging with customer means, first of all, connecting with them on their terms and turf. Take a new account opening process. Can a customer call you and initiate the process? Can a customer email you, or go to the website and initiate the process? Can they tweet you and initiate the process? Can they check the status of process via any channel they like? Can they take a picture of damaged package delivery and kick-off a returns process from their mobile device, with GIS data? Yes, these are various aspects to consider during process design if the goal is better customer experience and engagement. Of course, we want to be efficient and agile, but the focus here needs to be the customer. Now when the customer is tweeting about your products, posting on Facebook and Yelp about their experience with your company (and your process), you need to seek out that information. You need to gather and analyze the customer’s feedback on the social media and use that information to improve the processes and products. This is an excellent source of product and process ideation. So BPM is no longer only about improving back-office process efficiency, it is moving into a new and exciting phase of improving frontline customer facing processes, customer experience and engagement. Let me know how you think BPM can enhance customer experience.

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• Hiring New IT Employees versus Promoting Internally for IT Positions

  Recently I was asked my opinion regarding the hiring of IT professionals in regards to the option of hiring new IT employees versus promoting internally for IT positions. After thinking a little more about this question regarding staffing, specifically pertaining to promoting internally verses new employees; I think my answer to this question is that it truly depends on the situation. However, in most cases I would side with promoting internally. The key factors in this decision should be based on a company/department’s current values, culture, attitude, and existing priorities.  For example if a company values retaining all of its hard earned business knowledge then they would tend to promote existing employees internal over hiring a new employee. Moreover, the company will have to pay to train an existing employee to learn a new technology and the learning curve for some technologies can be very steep. Conversely, if a company values new technologies and technical proficiency over business knowledge then a company would tend to hire new employees because they may already have experience with a technology that the company is planning on using. In this scenario, the company would have to take on the additional overhead of allowing a new employee to learn how the business operates prior to them being fully effective. To illustrate my points above let us look at contractor that builds in ground pools for example.  He has the option to hire employees that are very strong but use small shovels to dig, or employees weak in physical strength but use large shovels to dig. Which employee should the contractor use to dig a hole for a new in ground pool? If we compare the possible candidates for this job we will find that they are very similar to hiring someone internally verses a new hire. The first example represents the existing workers that are very strong regarding the understanding how the business operates and the reasons why in a specific manner. However this employee could be potentially weaker than an outsider pertaining to specific technologies and would need some time to build their technical prowess for a new position much like the strong worker upgrading their shovels in order to remove more dirt at once when digging. The other employee is very similar to hiring a new person that may already have the large shovel but will need to increase their strength in order to use the shovel properly and efficiently so that they can move a maximum amount of dirt in a minimal amount of time. This can be compared to new employ learning how a business operates before they can be fully functional and integrated in the company/department. Another key factor in this dilemma pertains to existing employee and their passion for their work, their ability to accept new responsibility when given, and the willingness to take on responsibilities when they see a need in the business. As much as possible should be considered in this decision down to the mood of the team, the quality of existing staff, learning cure for both technology and business, and the potential side effects of the existing staff.  In addition, there are many more consideration based on the current team/department/companies culture and mood. There are several factors that need to be considered when promoting an individual or hiring new blood for a team. They both can provide great benefits as well as create controversy to a group. Personally, staffing especially in the IT world is like building a large scale system in that all of the components and modules must fit together and preform as one cohesive system in the same way a team must come together using their individually acquired skills so that they can work as one team.  If a module is out of place or is nonexistent then the rest of the team will suffer until the all of its issues are addressed and resolved. Benefits of Promoting Internally Internal promotions give employees a reason to constantly upgrade their technology, business, and communication skills if they want to further their career Employees can control their own destiny based on personal desires Employee already knows how the business operates Companies can save money by promoting internally because the initial overhead of allowing new hires to learn how a company operates is very expensive Newly promoted employees can assist in training their replacements while transitioning to their new role within a company. Existing employees already have a proven track record in regards fitting in with the business culture; this is always an unknown with all new hires Benefits of a New Hire New employees can energize and excite existing employees New employees can bring new ideas and advancements in technology New employees can offer a different perspective on existing issues based on their past experience. As you can see the decision to promote an existing employee from within a company verses hiring a new person should be based on several factors that should ultimately place the business in the best possible situation for the immediate and long term future. How would you handle this situation? Would you hire a new employee or promote from within?

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• How do I free SQLServerCE's COM instance from the current running process?

  - by David Thornley

  It's been a while since I touched COM so be nice ;) This is under WindowsCE 5.0 with SQLServerCE 2.0. After calling this to load SQLServerCE 2.0 : - IDBInitialize *pIDBInitialize = NULL; CoCreateInstance(CLSID_SQLSERVERCE_2_0, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER, IID_IDBInitialize, (void**)&pIDBInitialize); Module load occurs for SSCE20.dll which obviously loads the SQLServerCE engine into the process space. What I don't understand is if I do this immediately after :- pIDBInitialize->Release(); I don't see a dll module unload, so that SSCE20.dll (and friends) are still loaded into my process. Now I tried CoFreeUnusedLibraries() which I figure forces COM to purge any unused libraries, but it doesn't seem to do the trick. At runtime I want to be able to completely unload the SQLServerCE 2.0 dll from the process to streamline an upgrade to 3.5SP1. I suspect this has something to do with the shared dll model that Microsoft use under WindowsCE... but, I might be wrong :) Thanks in advance, David.

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• Creating a process in a non-zero session from a service in windows-2008-server?

  - by Itay Levin

  Hi, I was wondering if there is a simple way for a service to create a process in user session? My service is running as a user(administrator) account and not as a LocalSystem acount, therefore i can't use the WTSQueryUserToken function. i have tried calling OpenProcessToken(GetCurrentProcess,TOKEN_ALL_ACCESS,TokenHandle); but when i use this token to run CreateProcessAsUser(TokenHandle,.....) my process is still running in session 0. how can i resolve this issue? I'm using an Ole automation so i don't really care on which session the process will be running on, as long it is not the session 0 - because the Ole from some reason doesn't create its processes (winword.exe for instance) in session 0, but rather it creates them in other user sessions. Any suggestions will be welcome. Thanks in advance.

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• Why does PowerShell fail to build my .net solutions? ("file is being used by another process")

  - by urig

  I've written a PowerShell script to build several .net solutions one after the other. It simply makes several calls to csc.exe to build the .sln files. Almost every time I run the script one of the solutions fails to build and CSC.exe reports: error CS1606: Assembly signing failed; output may not be signed -- The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process. This happens even though I've closed all instances of Visual Studio holding these solutions and I've none of their exes running on mu machine. A similar batch file that I've written works just fine. It's only PowerShell that complains about the file being used by another process. How can avoid having this happen? Are there any better examples out there of building .net solutions through PowerShell?

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• How can I find which process has opened a specific file?

  - by Hosam Aly

  How can I find which processes have a specific file opened, and their open, access and share modes? Additionally, is it possible to change these values for a process? Or is it even possible to open a file for reading if it is already opened for exclusive access by another process? Please note that I don't want to invalidate the handle of the process having the file opened. I just want to be able to access the file (if possible). (I'm mainly asking about Windows, but solutions for other platforms are welcome, since they contribute to the community's knowledge.) Edit: I found some answers for my first question here and there. Edit 2: Thanks everybody for the tools you mentioned, but I am mainly looking for programmatical techniques (e.g. using Win32 APIs).

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• What happens to stderr/stdout streams after Process#destroy() in Java?

  - by Lajos Nagy

  Here's my problem. I'd like to have a timeout for a process I start from Java. After the timeout, I'd like to kill the process. So far, so good. Problem is, I want to capture stderr/stdout during both normal execution and after a timeout. What happens if I kill the process with destroy()? Can I retrieve the (partial) stderr/stdout produced so far? Or are they gone?

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• How to find all the file handles by a process programmatically?

  - by kumar

  I have a process "x" which uses "system" C function to start ntpd daemon. I observed that ntpd are passed the open file descriptors of "x". ntpd holds on to the file descriptors even after original file is deleted. for ex: Some log files used by "x" are rotated out after sometime, but "ntpd" has file handle opened for these deleted files. Will it cause any problem? Alternatively I thought of setting "FD_CLOEXEC" flag for all the file descriptors before calling "system" function. But as we are running as an extension library to third process "x"( "x" loads our library based on some condition), there is no easy way to know about all the file descriptors process has opened. One way is to read /proc//fd and set "FD_CLOEXEC" for each file handle and reset it back after "system" function returns. I'm using Linux 2.16. Is there any other easy way to find all the file handlers? Thanks,

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• How do I get the output of Win32::Process command in Perl?

  - by rockyurock

  I am using use Win32::Process for my application run as below. It runs fine, but I did not get any way to get the output to a .txt file. I used NORMAL_PRIORITY_CLASS rather than CREATE_NEW_CONSOLE to get the output on the same terminal itself, but I don't know how to redirect it to a txt file. /rocky #!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use Win32::Process; Win32::Process::Create(my $ProcessObj, "iperf.exe", "iperf.exe -u -s -p 5001", 0, NORMAL_PRIORITY_CLASS, ".") || die ErrorReport(); my @command_output; push @command_output,$ProcessObj; open FILE, ">zz.txt" or die $!; print FILE @command_output; close FILE; sleep 10; $ProcessObj->Kill(0); sub ErrorReport{ print Win32::FormatMessage( Win32::GetLastError() ); }

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• How to easily pass a very long string to a worker process under Windows?

  - by sharptooth

  My native C++ Win32 program spawns a worker process and needs to pass a huge configuration string to it. Currently it just passes the string as a command line to CreateProcess(). The problem is the string is getting longer and now it doesn't fit into the 32K characters limitation imposed by Windows. Of course I could do something like complicating the worker process start - I use the RPC server in it anyway and I could introduce an RPC request for passing the configuration string, but this will require a lot of changes and make the solution not so reliable. Saving the data into a file for passing is also not very elegant - the file could be left on the filesystem and become garbage. What other simple ways are there for passing long strings to a worker process started by my program on Windows?

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• Scriptom (groovy) leaves Excel process running - am I doing something wrong?

  - by Alex Stoddard

  I am using the Scriptom extension to Groovy 1.7.0 to automate some processing using Excel 2007 under Windows XP. This always seems to leave an Excel process running despite my calling quit on the excel activeX object. (There is a passing reference to this phenomenon in the Scriptom example documentation too.) Code looks like: import org.codehaus.groovy.scriptom.ActiveXObject; def xls = new ActiveXObject("Excel.Application") xls.Visible = true // do xls stuff xls.Quit() The visible excel window does disappear but an EXCEL process is left in the task manager (and more processes pile up with each run of the script). There are no error message or exceptions. Can anyone explain why the Excel process is left behind and is there any way to prevent it from happening?

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• Can I prevent a user from using windows taskmanager to end a process?

  - by Russ

  I have a c# 4.0 application that I hear grumblings and rumors about problems with. Now, this application has a global unhandled exception handler that reports back to me with errors. I also know that it works because SOME people fill it in, and submit it. It seems though; that a large number of people do NOT fill it in, but instead, use the Windows Taskmanager to end the process. Is it possible to prevent a user from using the Windows Taskmanager to end a specific process? My goal would be that if the application crashes, the form that the user is presented with prevents the process from being ended. I'll also accept steps that would prevent the Windows Taskmanager from being launched.

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• How do I propagate an exception thrown by croak in forked child to parent/foreground process?

  - by Pedro Silva

  Throwing an exception via croak in a forked child process seems to print the error as a background process would. That is, it clobbers the shell prompt. If I die instead of croak, the the error message pops up as a foreground process. I've trying to find out why that is in the Carp documentation without any luck. Here's what I mean. The croak version: $ perl Wrapper.pm $ error: ... does not exist at Wrapper.pm line 624 The die version: $ perl Wrapper.pm error: ... does not exist at Wrapper.pm line 515. I tried trapping the fork and printing $@ to STDERR and exiting, but that didn't have an effect. Any ideas? I'd like to be able to use croak in this particular case.

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• What's the correct way to represent a linear process in CocoaTouch (UIKit)?

  - by UloPe

  I need to represent a linear process (think wizard) in an iPad app. In principle I could use a UINavigationController and just keep pushing new controllers for each step of the process. But this seems rather inefficient since the process I'm modeling has no notion of navigating backwards so all previous views would pointlessly stay around and use up resources. At the moment I keep adding and removing a subview to one "master" viewcontroller and basically swapping out the contents. This works but feels rather clunky and I hope there is some nicer way to achieve this. Additionally there needs to be an animated transition between the views. (I have this working at the moment via beginAnimations / commitAnimations)

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• Can I prevent a user from using windows task manager to end a process?

  - by Russ

  I have a c# 4.0 application that I hear grumblings and rumors about problems with. Now, this application has a global unhandled exception handler that reports back to me with errors. I also know that it works because SOME people fill it in, and submit it. It seems though; that a large number of people do NOT fill it in, but instead, use the Windows Taskmanager to end the process. Is it possible to prevent a user from using the Windows Taskmanager to end a specific process? My goal would be that if the application crashes, the form that the user is presented with prevents the process from being ended. I'll also accept steps that would prevent the Windows Taskmanager from being launched. I know I have seen some processes come up with an "Access Denied" prompt when I try to kill it in TaskManager, however I suspect that the windows team has made this very difficult, if not impossible to achieve.

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• How do I find out which process is locking a file using .NET?

  - by AJ

  I've seen several of answers about using Handle or Process Monitor, but I would like to be able to find out in my own code (C#) which process is locking a file. I have a nasty feeling that I'm going to have to spelunk around in the win32 API, but if anyone has already done this and can put me on the right track, I'd really appreciate the help. Update Links to similar questions How does one figure out what process locked a file using c#? Command line tool Across a Network Locking a USB device Unit test fails with locked file deleting locked file

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• In a SQL XDL File, how do I read the waitresource attribute on process nodes which are deadlocking?

  - by skimania

  On SQL Server 2005, I'm getting a deadlock when updating two different keys in the same table. note from below that these two waitresources have the same beginning part, but different ending parts. waitresource="KEY: 6:72057594090487808 (d900ed5a6cc6)" and waitresource="KEY: 6:72057594090487808 (d900fb5261bb)" These two keys are locking, and I need to figure out why. The question: If the values in parenthesis are different, why are the first half of the key's the same? <deadlock-list> <deadlock victim="processffffffff8f5863e8"> <process-list> <process id="processaf02f8" taskpriority="0" logused="0" waitresource="KEY: 6:72057594090487808 (d900fb5261bb)" waittime="2281" ownerId="1370264705" transactionname="user_transaction" lasttranstarted="2010-06-17T00:35:25.483" XDES="0x69453a70" lockMode="U" schedulerid="3" kpid="7624" status="suspended" spid="339" sbid="0" ecid="0" priority="0" transcount="2" lastbatchstarted="2010-06-17T00:35:25.483" lastbatchcompleted="2010-06-17T00:35:25.483" clientapp=".Net SqlClient Data Provider" hostname="RISKBBG_VM" hostpid="5848" loginname="RiskOpt" isolationlevel="read committed (2)" xactid="1370264705" currentdb="6" lockTimeout="4294967295" clientoption1="671088672" clientoption2="128056"> <executionStack> <frame procname="MKP_RISKDB.dbo.MarketDataCurrentRtUpload" line="14" stmtstart="840" stmtend="1220" sqlhandle="0x03000600005f9d24c8878f00849d00000100000000000000"> UPDATE c WITH (ROWLOCK) SET LastUpdate = t.LastUpdate, Value = t.Value, Source = t.Source FROM MarketDataCurrent c INNER JOIN #TEMPTABLE2 t ON c.MDID = t.mdid; -- Insert new MDID </frame> <frame procname="adhoc" line="1" sqlhandle="0x010006004a58132228bf8d73000000000000000000000000"> MarketDataCurrentBlbgRtUpload </frame> </executionStack> <inputbuf> MarketDataCurrentBlbgRtUpload </inputbuf> </process> <process id="processffffffff8f5863e8" taskpriority="0" logused="0" waitresource="KEY: 6:72057594090487808 (d900ed5a6cc6)" waittime="2281" ownerId="1370264646" transactionname="user_transaction" lasttranstarted="2010-06-17T00:35:25.450" XDES="0x1cb72be8" lockMode="U" schedulerid="5" kpid="1880" status="suspended" spid="287" sbid="0" ecid="0" priority="0" transcount="2" lastbatchstarted="2010-06-17T00:35:25.450" lastbatchcompleted="2010-06-17T00:35:25.450" clientapp=".Net SqlClient Data Provider" hostname="RISKAPPS_VM" hostpid="1424" loginname="RiskOpt" isolationlevel="read committed (2)" xactid="1370264646" currentdb="6" lockTimeout="4294967295" clientoption1="671088672" clientoption2="128056"> <executionStack> <frame procname="MKP_RISKDB.dbo.MarketDataCurrent_BulkUpload" line="28" stmtstart="1062" stmtend="1720" sqlhandle="0x03000600a28e5e4ef4fd8e00849d00000100000000000000"> UPDATE c WITH (ROWLOCK) SET LastUpdate = getdate(), Value = t.Value, Source = @source FROM MarketDataCurrent c INNER JOIN #MDTUP t ON c.MDID = t.mdid WHERE c.lastUpdate &lt; @updateTime and c.mdid not in (select mdid from MarketData where BloombergTicker is not null and PriceSource like &apos;Live.%&apos;) and c.value &lt;&gt; t.value </frame> <frame procname="adhoc" line="1" stmtstart="88" sqlhandle="0x01000600c1653d0598706ca7000000000000000000000000"> exec MarketDataCurrent_BulkUpload @clearBefore, @source </frame> <frame procname="unknown" line="1" sqlhandle="0x000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000"> unknown </frame> </executionStack> <inputbuf> (@clearBefore datetime,@source nvarchar(10))exec MarketDataCurrent_BulkUpload @clearBefore, @source </inputbuf> </process> </process-list> <resource-list> <keylock hobtid="72057594090487808" dbid="6" objectname="MKP_RISKDB.dbo.MarketDataCurrent" indexname="PK_MarketDataCurrent" id="lock64ac7940" mode="U" associatedObjectId="72057594090487808"> <owner-list> <owner id="processffffffff8f5863e8" mode="U"/> </owner-list> <waiter-list> <waiter id="processaf02f8" mode="U" requestType="wait"/> </waiter-list> </keylock> <keylock hobtid="72057594090487808" dbid="6" objectname="MKP_RISKDB.dbo.MarketDataCurrent" indexname="PK_MarketDataCurrent" id="lockffffffffb8d2dd40" mode="U" associatedObjectId="72057594090487808"> <owner-list> <owner id="processaf02f8" mode="U"/> </owner-list> <waiter-list> <waiter id="processffffffff8f5863e8" mode="U" requestType="wait"/> </waiter-list> </keylock> </resource-list> </deadlock> </deadlock-list>

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• What is the purpose of Process class in Java?

  - by Nitesh Panchal

  Runtime objRuntime = Runtime.getRuntime(); String strBackupString = "mysqldump -u " + userName + " -p" + password + " " + dbName; Process objProcess = objRuntime.exec(strBackupString); This is used for backup of database. But what exactly happens? Can anybody make me explain, what is the purpose of Runtime and Process class? Is this class used to act as if we are typing command from command prompt? Then what should i pass to objRuntime.exec() if i want to open notepad? And is the command executed as soon as we call exec method? If yes, then what purpose does Process serve here? I really can't understand these two classes. Please make me understand. Thanks in advance :)

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• TerminateProcess and deadlocks

  - by Tony

  Is it real that the TerminateProcess function in Windows could hang because the threads inside the process were stuck in a deadlock? Example: Process A is running under Process B's control, now Process A gets into a deadlock and Process B detects this and decides to 'Kill' process A using TerminateProcess. Would it be successful in killing the hung Process A?

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• The Changing Face of PASS

  - by Bill Graziano

  I’m starting my sixth year on the PASS Board.  I served two years as the Program Director, two years as the Vice-President of Marketing and I’m starting my second year as the Executive Vice-President of Finance.  There’s a pretty good chance that if PASS has done something you don’t like or is doing something you don’t like, that I’m involved in one way or another. Andy Leonard asked in a comment on his blog if the Board had ever reversed itself based on community input.  He asserted that it hadn’t.  I disagree.  I’m not going to try and list all the changes we make inside portfolios based on feedback from and meetings with the community.  I’m going to focus on major governance issues since I was elected to the Board. Management Company The first big change was our management company.  Our old management company had a standard approach to running a non-profit.  It worked well when PASS was launched.  Having a ready-made structure and process to run the organization enabled the organization to grow quickly.  As time went on we were limited in some of the things we wanted to do.  The more involved you were with PASS, the more you saw these limitations.  Key volunteers were regularly providing feedback that they wanted certain changes that were difficult for us to accomplish.  The Board at that time wanted changes that were difficult or impossible to accomplish under that structure. This was not a simple change.  Imagine a $2.5 million dollar company letting all its employees go on a Friday and starting with a new staff on Monday.  We also had a very narrow window to accomplish that so that we wouldn’t affect the Summit – our only source of revenue.  We spent the year after the change rebuilding processes and putting on the Summit in Denver.  That’s a concrete example of a huge change that PASS made to better serve its members.  And it was a change that many in the community were telling us we needed to make. Financials We heard regularly from our members that they wanted our financials posted.  Today on our web site you can find audited financials going back to 2004.  We publish our budget at the start of each year.  If you ask a question about the financials on the PASS site I do my best to answer it.  I’m also trying to do a better job answering financial questions posted in other locations.  (And yes, I know I owe a few of you some blog posts.) That’s another concrete example of a change that our members asked for that the Board agreed was a good decision. Minutes When I started on the Board the meeting minutes were very limited.  The minutes from a two day Board meeting might fit on one page.  I think we did the bare minimum we were legally required to do.  Today Board meeting minutes run from 5 to 12 pages and go into incredible detail on what we talk about.  There are certain topics that are NDA but where possible we try to list the topic we discussed but that the actual discussion was under NDA.  We also publish the agenda of Board meetings ahead of time. This is another specific example where input from the community influenced the decision.  It was certainly easier to have limited minutes but I think the extra effort helps our members understand what’s going on. Board Q&A At the 2009 Summit the Board held its first public Q&A with our members.  We’d always been available individually to answer questions.  There’s a benefit to getting us all in one room and asking the really hard questions to watch us squirm.  We learn what questions we don’t have good answers for.  We get to see how many people in the crowd look interested in the various questions and answers. I don’t recall the genesis of how this came about.  I’m fairly certain there was some community pressure though. Board Votes Until last November, the Board only reported the vote totals and not how individual Board members voted.  That was one of the topics at a great lunch I had with Tim Mitchell and Kendal van Dyke at the Summit.  That was also the topic of the first question asked at the Board Q&A by Kendal.  Kendal expressed his opposition to to anonymous votes clearly and passionately and without trying to paint anyone into a corner.  Less than 24 hours later the PASS Board voted to make individual votes public unless the topic was under NDA.  That’s another area where the Board decided to change based on feedback from our members. Summit Location While this isn’t actually a governance issue it is one of the more public decisions we make that has taken some public criticism.  There is a significant portion of our members that want the Summit near them.  There is a significant portion of our members that like the Summit in Seattle.  There is a significant portion of our members that think it should move around the country.  I was one that felt strongly that there were significant, tangible benefits to our attendees to being in Seattle every year.  I’m also one that has been swayed by some very compelling arguments that we need to have at least one outside Seattle and then revisit the decision.  I can’t tell you how the Board will vote but I know the opinion of our members weighs heavily on the decision. Elections And that brings us to the grand-daddy of all governance issues.  My thesis for this blog post is that the PASS Board has implemented policy changes in response to member feedback.  It isn’t to defend or criticize our election process.  It’s just to say that is has been under going continuous change since I’ve been on the Board.  I ran for the Board in the fall of 2005.  I don’t know much about what happened before then.  I was actively volunteering for PASS for four years prior to that as a chapter leader and on the program committee.  I don’t recall any complaints about elections but that doesn’t mean they didn’t occur.  The questions from the Nominating Committee (NomCom) were trivial and the selection process rudimentary (For example, “Tell us about your accomplishments”).  I don’t even remember who I ran against or how many other people ran.  I ran for the VP of Marketing in the fall of 2007.  I don’t recall any significant changes the Board made in the election process for that election.  I think a lot of the changes in 2007 came from us asking the management company to work on the election process.  I was expecting a similar set of puff ball questions from my previous election.  Boy, was I in for a shock.  The NomCom had found a much better set of questions and really made the interview portion difficult.  The questions were much more behavioral in nature.  I’d already written about my vision for PASS and my goals.  They wanted to know how I handled adversity, how I handled criticism, how I handled conflict, how I handled troublesome volunteers, how I motivated people and how I responded to motivation. And many, many other things. They grilled me for over an hour.  I’ve done a fair bit of technical sales in my time.  I feel I speak well under pressure addressing pointed questions.  This interview intentionally put me under pressure.  In addition to wanting to know about my interpersonal skills, my work experience, my volunteer experience and my supervisory experience they wanted to see how I’d do under pressure.  They wanted to see who would respond under pressure and who wouldn’t.  It was a bit of a shock. That was the first big change I remember in the election process.  I know there were other improvements around the process but none of them stick in my mind quite like the unexpected hour-long grilling. The next big change I remember was after the 2009 elections.  Andy Warren was unhappy with the election process and wanted to make some changes.  He worked with Hannes at HQ and they came up with a better set of processes.  I think Andy moved PASS in the right direction.  Nonetheless, after the 2010 election even more people were very publicly clamoring for changes to our election process.  In August of 2010 we had a choice to make.  There were numerous bloggers criticizing the Board and our upcoming election.  The easy change would be to announce that we were changing the process in a way that would satisfy our critics.  I believe that a knee-jerk response to criticism is seldom correct. Instead the Board spent August and September and October and November listening to the community.  I visited two SQLSaturdays and asked questions of everyone I could.  I attended chapter meetings and asked questions of as many people as they’d let me.  At Summit I made it a point to introduce myself to strangers and ask them about the election.  At every breakfast I’d sit down at a table full of strangers and ask about the election.  I’m happy to say that I left most tables arguing about the election.  Most days I managed to get 2 or 3 breakfasts in. I spent less time talking to people that had already written about the election.  They were already expressing their opinion.  I wanted to talk to people that hadn’t spoken up.  I wanted to know what the silent majority thought.  The Board all attended the Q&A session where our members expressed their concerns about a variety of issues including the election. The PASS Board also chose to create the Election Review Committee.  We wanted people from the community that had been involved with PASS to look at our election process with fresh eyes while listening to what the community had to say and give us some advice on how we could improve the process.  I’m a part of this as is Andy Warren.  None of the other members are on the Board.  I’ve sat in numerous calls and interviews with this group and attended an open meeting at the Summit.  We asked anyone that wanted to discuss the election to come speak with us.  The ERC held an open meeting at the Summit and invited anyone to attend.  There are forums on the ERC web site where we’ve invited people to participate.  The ERC has reached to key people involved in recent elections.  The years that I haven’t mentioned also saw minor improvements in the election process.  Off the top of my head I don’t recall what exact changes were made each year.  Specifically since the 2010 election we’ve gone out of our way to seek input from the community about the process.  I’m not sure what more we could have done to invite feedback from the community. I think to say that we haven’t “fixed” the election process isn’t a fair criticism at this time.  We haven’t rushed any changes through the process.  If you don’t see any changes in our election process in July or August then I think it’s fair to criticize us for ignoring the community or ask for an explanation for what we’ve done. In Summary Andy’s main point was that the PASS Board hasn’t changed in response to our members wishes.  I think I’ve shown that time and time again the PASS Board has changed in response to what our members want.  There are only two outstanding issues: Summit location and elections.  The 2013 Summit location hasn’t been decided yet.  Our work on the elections is also in progress.  And at every step in the election review we’ve gone out of our way to listen to the community and incorporate their feedback on the process. I also hope I’m not encouraging everyone that wants some change in the organization to organize a “blog rush” against the Board.  We take public suggestions very seriously but we also take the time to evaluate those suggestions and learn what the rest of our members think and make a measured decision.

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• Adventures in Lab Management Configuration: Part 2 of 3

  - by Enrique Lima

  The first post was the high level overview. Now it is time for the details on what was done to the existing CMMI Project based on CMMI v 4.2. The first step was to go into Visual Studio, then from the Team Project Collection Settings and then to the Process Template Manager.  Once there, it was a matter of selecting the appropriate template (MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0) and download to a point I could reference later (for example C:\Templates). Then on to using the steps from the guidance post. Since I was using an x64 deployment, I will make reference to the path as <toolpath>, however the actual path to reference in a 64-bit environment is “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE”. As I mentioned on the previous post, make sure to first perform a backup of the Configuration, Collection and Warehouse DBs.  If you did not apply any changes to the names and such, then you will find those as tfs_Configuration, tfs_DefaultCollection and tfs_Warehouse. Now, the work needed with the witadmin tool: That includes the uploading of the structures that differ from v4.2 to v5.0 There is likely going to be an issue with the naming of some fields. For example, TFS 2010 likes something along the lines of “Area ID”, whereas TFS 2008 would have had it as “AreaID”.  So, this will need to be corrected.  Some posts will have you go through this after the errors pop up.  I would recommend doing this process prior to executing the importwitd process.  witadmin listfields /collection:<path to collection> > c:\ListFields.txt Review the following fields: AreaID, review the Name property and validate if it states “AreaID”, the you will need to rename the Name field to reflect “Area ID”. ExternalLinkCount, RelatedLinkCount, HyperLinkCount, AttachedFileCount and IterationID would be the other fields to check. To correct the issue, then execute the following: witadmin changefield /collection:<path to collection> /n:"System.ExternalLinkCount" /name:"External Link Count" Repeat for Area ID, Related Link Count, Hyperlink Count, Attached File Count and Iteration ID.  Once this is done, proceed with the commands below. witadmin importwitd /collection:<path to collection> /p:<project> /f:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\WorkItem Tracking\TypeDefinitions\TestCase.xml" witadmin importwitd /collection:<path to collection> /p:<project> /f:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\WorkItem Tracking\TypeDefinitions\SharedStep.xml" witadmin importcategories /collection:<path to collection> /p:<project> /f:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\WorkItem Tracking\categories.xml" Modifications to the Bug Definition: First step is to export the existing definition. witadmin exportwitd /collection<path to collection> /p:<project> /n:bug /f:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\MyBug.xml" Make modifications to recently exported MyBug.xml file.  Details for the modification are here:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff452591.aspx#ModifyTask Once the changes are done, proceed with the import command witadmin importwitd /collection:<path to collection> /p: <project> /f:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\MyBug.xml" Repeat the process for the the Scenario or Requirement Type Definition witadmin exportwitd /collection<path to collection> /p:<project> /n:requirement /f:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\MyRequirement.xml" Make modifications to recently exported MyRequirement.xml file.  Details for the modification are here:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff452591.aspx#ModifyTask Once the changes are done, proceed with the import command witadmin importwitd /collection:<path to collection> /p: <project> /f:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\MyRequirement.xml" Provide the Bug Field Mapping definition, after creating the file as specified here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff452591.aspx#TCMBugFieldMapping tcm bugfieldmapping /import /mappingfile:"<path to downloaded template>\MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0\bugfieldmappings.xml" /collection:<path to collection> /teamproject:<project name>

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• Can't Install php5-msql

  - by user210445

  Hello friends I'm finishing the process of installing Apache/Php/mysql installations but this shows up: # sudo apt-get install mysql-server php5-msql Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done E: Unable to locate package php5-msql After some adjustments this happened: angel@Voix:~$ sudo apt-get install mysql-server php5-mysql Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done mysql-server is already the newest version. php5-mysql is already the newest version. The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: gir1.2-ubuntuoneui-3.0 libubuntuoneui-3.0-1 thunderbird-globalmenu Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them. The following extra packages will be installed: mysql-server-5.5 Suggested packages: tinyca mailx The following packages will be upgraded: mysql-server-5.5 1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. 4 not fully installed or removed. Need to get 0 B/8,827 kB of archives. After this operation, 32.7 MB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? debconf: DbDriver "config": /var/cache/debconf/config.dat is locked by another process: Resource temporarily unavailable (Reading database ... dpkg: warning: files list file for package `mysql-server-5.5' missing, assuming package has no files currently installed. (Reading database ... 172971 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to replace mysql-server-5.5 5.5.34-0ubuntu0.12.04.1 (using .../mysql-server-5.5_5.5.34-0ubuntu0.12.04.1_amd64.deb) ... debconf: DbDriver "config": /var/cache/debconf/config.dat is locked by another process: Resource temporarily unavailable dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/mysql-server-5.5_5.5.34-0ubuntu0.12.04.1_amd64.deb (--unpack): subprocess new pre-installation script returned error exit status 1 debconf: DbDriver "config": /var/cache/debconf/config.dat is locked by another process: Resource temporarily unavailable dpkg: error while cleaning up: subprocess new post-removal script returned error exit status 1 Errors were encountered while processing: /var/cache/apt/archives/mysql-server-5.5_5.5.34-0ubuntu0.12.04.1_amd64.deb E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) angel@Voix:~$ sudo apt-get install mysql-server-5.5 Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: gir1.2-ubuntuoneui-3.0 libubuntuoneui-3.0-1 thunderbird-globalmenu Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them. Suggested packages: tinyca mailx The following packages will be upgraded: mysql-server-5.5 1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. 4 not fully installed or removed. Need to get 0 B/8,827 kB of archives. After this operation, 32.7 MB of additional disk space will be used. debconf: DbDriver "config": /var/cache/debconf/config.dat is locked by another process: Resource temporarily unavailable (Reading database ... dpkg: warning: files list file for package `mysql-server-5.5' missing, assuming package has no files currently installed. (Reading database ... 172971 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to replace mysql-server-5.5 5.5.34-0ubuntu0.12.04.1 (using .../mysql-server-5.5_5.5.34-0ubuntu0.12.04.1_amd64.deb) ... debconf: DbDriver "config": /var/cache/debconf/config.dat is locked by another process: Resource temporarily unavailable dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/mysql-server-5.5_5.5.34-0ubuntu0.12.04.1_amd64.deb (--unpack): subprocess new pre-installation script returned error exit status 1 debconf: DbDriver "config": /var/cache/debconf/config.dat is locked by another process: Resource temporarily unavailable dpkg: error while cleaning up: subprocess new post-removal script returned error exit status 1 Errors were encountered while processing: /var/cache/apt/archives/mysql-server-5.5_5.5.34-0ubuntu0.12.04.1_amd64.deb E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) angel@Voix:~$ sudo apt-get install mysql-server php5-mysql Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done mysql-server is already the newest version. php5-mysql is already the newest version. The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: gir1.2-ubuntuoneui-3.0 libubuntuoneui-3.0-1 thunderbird-globalmenu Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them. The following extra packages will be installed: mysql-server-5.5 Suggested packages: tinyca mailx The following packages will be upgraded: mysql-server-5.5 1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. 4 not fully installed or removed. Need to get 0 B/8,827 kB of archives. After this operation, 32.7 MB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y debconf: DbDriver "config": /var/cache/debconf/config.dat is locked by another process: Resource temporarily unavailable (Reading database ... dpkg: warning: files list file for package `mysql-server-5.5' missing, assuming package has no files currently installed. (Reading database ... 172971 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to replace mysql-server-5.5 5.5.34-0ubuntu0.12.04.1 (using .../mysql-server-5.5_5.5.34-0ubuntu0.12.04.1_amd64.deb) ... debconf: DbDriver "config": /var/cache/debconf/config.dat is locked by another process: Resource temporarily unavailable dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/mysql-server-5.5_5.5.34-0ubuntu0.12.04.1_amd64.deb (--unpack): subprocess new pre-installation script returned error exit status 1 debconf: DbDriver "config": /var/cache/debconf/config.dat is locked by another process: Resource temporarily unavailable dpkg: error while cleaning up: subprocess new post-removal script returned error exit status 1 Errors were encountered while processing: /var/cache/apt/archives/mysql-server-5.5_5.5.34-0ubuntu0.12.04.1_amd64.deb E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

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• EBS 11i and R12 certified with DB 11gR2 11.2.0.1 on Windows

  - by Steven Chan

  Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11gR2) version 11.2.0.1 is now certified with Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12 on the following Microsoft Windows Server (32-bit) and Windows x64 (64-bit) operating systems:Windows Server 2003 (32-bit and 64-bit) Windows Server 2003 R2 (32-bit and 64-bit)Windows Server 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit)Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit only)Certified EBS ReleasesOracle E-Business Suite Release 11.5.10.2Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.0.4 or higherOracle E-Business Suite Release  12.1.1 or higher

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• The Importance of a Security Assessment - by Michael Terra, Oracle

  - by Darin Pendergraft

  Today's Blog was written by Michael Terra, who was the Subject Matter Expert for the recently announced Oracle Online Security Assessment. You can take the Online Assessment here: Take the Online Assessment Over the past decade, IT Security has become a recognized and respected Business discipline.  Several factors have contributed to IT Security becoming a core business and organizational enabler including, but not limited to, increased external threats and increased regulatory pressure. Security is also viewed as a key enabler for strategic corporate activities such as mergers and acquisitions.Now, the challenge for senior security professionals is to develop an ongoing dialogue within their organizations about the importance of information security and how it can impact their organization's strategic objectives/mission. The importance of conducting regular “Security Assessments” across the IT and physical infrastructure has become increasingly important. Security standards and frameworks, such as the international standard ISO 27001, are increasingly being adopted by organizations and their business partners as proof of their security posture and “Security Assessments” are a great way to ensure a continued alignment to these frameworks.Oracle offers a number of different security assessment covering a broad range of technologies. Some of these are short engagements conducted for free with our strategic customers and partners. Others are longer term paid engagements delivered by Oracle Consulting Services or one of our partners. The goal of a security assessment, (also known as a security audit or security review), is to ensure that necessary security controls are integrated into the design and implementation of a project, application or technology.  A properly completed security assessment should provide documentation outlining any security gaps that exist in an infrastructure and the associated risks for those gaps. With that knowledge, an organization can choose to either mitigate, transfer, avoid or accept the risk. One example of an Oracle offering is a Security Readiness Assessment:The Oracle Security Readiness Assessment is a practical security architecture review focused on aligning an organization’s enterprise security architecture to their business principals and strategic objectives. The service will establish a multi-phase security architecture roadmap focused on supporting new and existing business initiatives.Offering OverviewThe Security Readiness Assessment will: Define an organization’s current security posture and provide a roadmap to a desired future state architecture by mapping  security solutions to business goals Incorporate commonly accepted security architecture concepts to streamline an organization’s security vision from strategy to implementation Define the people, process and technology implications of the desired future state architecture The objective is to deliver cohesive, best practice security architectures spanning multiple domains that are unique and specific to the context of your organization. Offering DetailsThe Oracle Security Readiness Assessment is a multi-stage process with a dedicated Oracle Security team supporting your organization.  During the course of this free engagement, the team will focus on the following: Review your current business operating model and supporting IT security structures and processes Partner with your organization to establish a future state security architecture leveraging Oracle’s reference architectures, capability maps, and best practices Provide guidance and recommendations on governance practices for the rollout and adoption of your future state security architecture Create an initial business case for the adoption of the future state security architecture If you are interested in finding out more, ask your Sales Consultant or Account Manager for details.

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• Class-Level Model Validation with EF Code First and ASP.NET MVC 3

  - by ScottGu

  Earlier this week the data team released the CTP5 build of the new Entity Framework Code-First library.  In my blog post a few days ago I talked about a few of the improvements introduced with the new CTP5 build.  Automatic support for enforcing DataAnnotation validation attributes on models was one of the improvements I discussed.  It provides a pretty easy way to enable property-level validation logic within your model layer. You can apply validation attributes like [Required], [Range], and [RegularExpression] – all of which are built-into .NET 4 – to your model classes in order to enforce that the model properties are valid before they are persisted to a database.  You can also create your own custom validation attributes (like this cool [CreditCard] validator) and have them be automatically enforced by EF Code First as well.  This provides a really easy way to validate property values on your models.  I showed some code samples of this in action in my previous post. Class-Level Model Validation using IValidatableObject DataAnnotation attributes provides an easy way to validate individual property values on your model classes.  Several people have asked - “Does EF Code First also support a way to implement class-level validation methods on model objects, for validation rules than need to span multiple property values?”  It does – and one easy way you can enable this is by implementing the IValidatableObject interface on your model classes. IValidatableObject.Validate() Method Below is an example of using the IValidatableObject interface (which is built-into .NET 4 within the System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations namespace) to implement two custom validation rules on a Product model class.  The two rules ensure that: New units can’t be ordered if the Product is in a discontinued state New units can’t be ordered if there are already more than 100 units in stock We will enforce these business rules by implementing the IValidatableObject interface on our Product class, and by implementing its Validate() method like so: The IValidatableObject.Validate() method can apply validation rules that span across multiple properties, and can yield back multiple validation errors. Each ValidationResult returned can supply both an error message as well as an optional list of property names that caused the violation (which is useful when displaying error messages within UI). Automatic Validation Enforcement EF Code-First (starting with CTP5) now automatically invokes the Validate() method when a model object that implements the IValidatableObject interface is saved.  You do not need to write any code to cause this to happen – this support is now enabled by default. This new support means that the below code – which violates one of our above business rules – will automatically throw an exception (and abort the transaction) when we call the “SaveChanges()” method on our Northwind DbContext: In addition to reactively handling validation exceptions, EF Code First also allows you to proactively check for validation errors.  Starting with CTP5, you can call the “GetValidationErrors()” method on the DbContext base class to retrieve a list of validation errors within the model objects you are working with.  GetValidationErrors() will return a list of all validation errors – regardless of whether they are generated via DataAnnotation attributes or by an IValidatableObject.Validate() implementation.  Below is an example of proactively using the GetValidationErrors() method to check (and handle) errors before trying to call SaveChanges(): ASP.NET MVC 3 and IValidatableObject ASP.NET MVC 2 included support for automatically honoring and enforcing DataAnnotation attributes on model objects that are used with ASP.NET MVC’s model binding infrastructure.  ASP.NET MVC 3 goes further and also honors the IValidatableObject interface.  This combined support for model validation makes it easy to display appropriate error messages within forms when validation errors occur.  To see this in action, let’s consider a simple Create form that allows users to create a new Product: We can implement the above Create functionality using a ProductsController class that has two “Create” action methods like below: The first Create() method implements a version of the /Products/Create URL that handles HTTP-GET requests - and displays the HTML form to fill-out.  The second Create() method implements a version of the /Products/Create URL that handles HTTP-POST requests - and which takes the posted form data, ensures that is is valid, and if it is valid saves it in the database.  If there are validation issues it redisplays the form with the posted values.  The razor view template of our “Create” view (which renders the form) looks like below: One of the nice things about the above Controller + View implementation is that we did not write any validation logic within it.  The validation logic and business rules are instead implemented entirely within our model layer, and the ProductsController simply checks whether it is valid (by calling the ModelState.IsValid helper method) to determine whether to try and save the changes or redisplay the form with errors. The Html.ValidationMessageFor() helper method calls within our view simply display the error messages our Product model’s DataAnnotations and IValidatableObject.Validate() method returned.  We can see the above scenario in action by filling out invalid data within the form and attempting to submit it: Notice above how when we hit the “Create” button we got an error message.  This was because we ticked the “Discontinued” checkbox while also entering a value for the UnitsOnOrder (and so violated one of our business rules).  You might ask – how did ASP.NET MVC know to highlight and display the error message next to the UnitsOnOrder textbox?  It did this because ASP.NET MVC 3 now honors the IValidatableObject interface when performing model binding, and will retrieve the error messages from validation failures with it. The business rule within our Product model class indicated that the “UnitsOnOrder” property should be highlighted when the business rule we hit was violated: Our Html.ValidationMessageFor() helper method knew to display the business rule error message (next to the UnitsOnOrder edit box) because of the above property name hint we supplied: Keeping things DRY ASP.NET MVC and EF Code First enables you to keep your validation and business rules in one place (within your model layer), and avoid having it creep into your Controllers and Views.  Keeping the validation logic in the model layer helps ensure that you do not duplicate validation/business logic as you add more Controllers and Views to your application.  It allows you to quickly change your business rules/validation logic in one single place (within your model layer) – and have all controllers/views across your application immediately reflect it.  This help keep your application code clean and easily maintainable, and makes it much easier to evolve and update your application in the future. Summary EF Code First (starting with CTP5) now has built-in support for both DataAnnotations and the IValidatableObject interface.  This allows you to easily add validation and business rules to your models, and have EF automatically ensure that they are enforced anytime someone tries to persist changes of them to a database.  ASP.NET MVC 3 also now supports both DataAnnotations and IValidatableObject as well, which makes it even easier to use them with your EF Code First model layer – and then have the controllers/views within your web layer automatically honor and support them as well.  This makes it easy to build clean and highly maintainable applications. You don’t have to use DataAnnotations or IValidatableObject to perform your validation/business logic.  You can always roll your own custom validation architecture and/or use other more advanced validation frameworks/patterns if you want.  But for a lot of applications this built-in support will probably be sufficient – and provide a highly productive way to build solutions. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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