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• Java - Multithreading

  - by Gogi

  Why we call the start() method ,which in turn calls the run() method ? Can't we directly make a call to run() ? Please give e.g if possible. ?

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• Where can I find information on the D* or D* Lite pathfinding algorithm?

  - by tehalynn

  There are links to some papers on D* here, but they're a bit too mathematical for me. Is there any information on D*/D* Lite more geared towards beginners?

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• do has any way to do this not using '__init__'

  - by zjm1126

  class a(object): c=b()# how to call the b method d=4 def __init__(self): print self.c def b(self): return self.d+1 a() how to call the 'b' method not in the __init__ thanks

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• UIWebView from Navigation Bar button

  - by Dixit

  Im having issue with button on a top right hand side of naviogation bar on iOS: I have a button that can launch a app.html file from app itself and show on top of current view and That popup webview can be minimize with dDone button on it, Im having issues doing this, How can i call UIWebView on top of current view and allow it to launch app.html page from app directory. Currently i have: - (BOOL)webView:(UIWebView *)webViewer shouldStartLoadWithRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request navigationType:(UIWebViewNavigationType)navigationType{ } and this is a button that call that function UIBarButtonItem *showAppMenu = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithTitle:@"Help" style:UIBarButtonItemStylePlain target:self action:@selector(webView)];

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• J2EE v6 and .NET 4.0 comparison

  - by sme89288

  We are running our applications on .NET 3.5 and are planning on either updating to .NET 4.0 or switching entirely to the Java platform, J2EE v6, as we've heard from some clients that "it's better." Can anyone either explain some of the large differences between the two platforms and maybe what kind of costs would be associated with switching to Java rather than just updating, or point me to some articles or papers that make such comparisons? Thanks!

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• PHP Pass by reference

  - by Salil

  I am calling this function which is modifying an array by reference: function addWord(&$words, $wordIndex, $word) { $words[$wordIndex] = $word; } At the function call, addWord(&$words, $wordsIndex, $word); ($words is used only during the function call) doesn't work. How do I make this or a similar functionality work? I want the addWord to be a separate function.

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• What is purpose of a this pointer in C++ ?

  - by de costo

  What is purpose of this keyword. Doesn't the methods in a class have access to other peer members in the same class ? WHat is the need to call a this to call peer methods inside a class ??

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• how do you dynamically load a uitableview from a nsarray

  - by darthwillard

  so i have a nsmutablearray that populates from a socket message. problem is, when i call numberofrowsinsection on the uitableview, it will be 0, because it loads from the array. the array has 0 objects, because the incomingMessage hasn't been received yet. i observe this array in my appdelegate, when it changes, i call refreshData on the tableView, but it doesn't refresh. how do you load a uitableview from a dynamic array?

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• C++ sort method

  - by qwead

  I want to sort a vector using std::sort, but my sort method is a static method of a class, and I want to call std::sort outside it, but it seems to be trouble doing it this way. On the class: static int CompareIt(void *sol1, void *sol2) { ... } std::sort call: sort(distanceList.at(q).begin(), distanceList.at(q).end(), &DistanceNodeComparator::CompareIt); Shouldn't it be possible to do this way?

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• XmlWriter: is calling Close() required if using a using block?

  - by P a u l

  Is it sufficient to create an XmlWriter with a using block (with no call to Close()) or is it better to use a try/finally block and call Close() in finally?

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• Howto create own Jquery Like Function in Javascript?

  - by streetparade

  How can i create a function which looks like the jquery callback $ Say i want to call a element with id= "mydiv". i want to be able to call it like var div = $("mydiv").value; i think the function should look like function $(element) { return document.getElementById(element); } Is that the right way to do it, or do you prefer another way to solve it?

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• why doesn't focus() work in the following line of jquery?

  - by jela

  The following code is intended to check if 4 numbers are entered in the blurred field. If not, the field value is deleted, and the field is focused. The deletion works fine, but the the call to focus() does not work. $('input.dateValue').live('blur',function(event){ if (!(/(\d){4}$/.test($(this).attr('value')))) $(this).attr('value','').focus(); }); Why does the call to focus() not focus the field?

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• Metamorphic generator

  - by user222094

  I am trying to find references about different designs of metamorphic generators can someone point me to the right direction. I have gone through some papers in ACM but couldn't find what I am looking for.

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• How to reinstall OEM Windows 98 SE?

  - by Sammy

  I'm trying to install Windows 98 SE on an old PC and it's not going well. I run into this problem. Searching for Boot Record from Floppy..OK Starting Windows 98... TOSHIBA Enhanced-IDE CD/DVD-ROM Device Driver (ATAPI) Version 2.24 (C)Copyright Toshiba Corp. 1995-1999. All rights reserved. Device Name : TOSCD001 Number of units : 1 MSCDEX Version 2.25 Copyright (C) MIcrosoft Corp. 1986-1995. All rights reserved. Drive Z: = Driver TOSCD001 unit 0 TOSHIBA MACHINE Invalid drive specification Path not found - C:\TOOLS\CDROMDRV.SYS Invalid drive specification Invalid drive specification After that last line, it leaves me at a bitmap image displaying instructions to reboot with Ctrl+Alt+Del. It doesn't say why I have to reboot, and it doesn't state any error type, it just want's me to reboot for no apparent reason. After reboot, it just boots up from Floppy again and it cycles through the same thing all over again. The computer has been restored to original specification. Original system recovery "CD-ROM" discs are available and they are not scratched or anything, they are in very good condition. It's a set of 3 CDs, and the first disc labeled "1/3" should be the one holding the OEM version of Windows 98 SE. There is also a boot disk for Windows 98. I'm not sure what the other two discs are for. This computer came with three language support, so those could be holding different language versions or additional OEM discs. But I'm quite sure that the first disc holds the main operating system. BIOS has been set to optimized defaults. Boot priority is as follows; Floppy, IDE-0, CD-ROM. Under Standard CMOS settings, BIOS scans and autoconfigures both the hard drive and the CD/DVD drive. On POST it finds them both, and it finds the DOS bootdisk and starts preparing for installation, as you can see above. So what's this "invalid drive specification" about? Why isn't the installation starting? Updates Update 1 Booting from CD disc 2 In desperation I tried booting from the second CD. Boot order was; Floppy, CD-ROM, IDE-0. It boots normally from floppy disk, just like above, but then returns following. File not found - Z:\3LNGINST\TOOLS\PARTINFO.TXT I accidentally pressed some key on the keyboard, and before I knew it, the following screen showed up. Create Primary DOS Partition Current fixed disk drive: 1 Verifying drive integrity, 16% complete. After completion another screen showed up. Create Primary DOS Partition Current fixed disk drive: 1 Do you wish to use the maximum available size for a Primary DOS Partition and make the partition active (Y/N)?....................? [Y] Verifying drive integrity, 7% complete. I didn't choose Yes, it was set automatically. After completion the computer was automatically rebooted. Then I got a new screen. This is in Norwegian/Swedish/Finnish. Here's the message in Swedish. Hårddisken är inte klar för återställning av programvara. Installationsprogrammet måste skapa nya partitioner (C:, D:, ...). VARNING! ALLT INNEHÅLL PÅ HÅRDDISKEN KOMMER ATT RADERAS! Tryck på en tangent om du vill fortsätta (eller CTRL-C för att avbryta). Let me translate that. Hard drive is not ready for restoring the software. Setup program has to create new partitions (C:, D:, ...). WARNING! ALL CONTENTS ON THE HARD DRIVE WILL BE ERASED! Press any key to continue (or CTRL-C to cancel). I pressed Enter and it started formatting the hard drive. WARNING, ALL DATA ON NON-REMOVABLE DISK DRIVE c: WILL BE LOST! Proceed with Format (Y/N)?y Formatting 14,67.53M 1 percent completed. It automatically sets the "y" option and starts formatting. Rebooting with CD disc 1 After completing this operation it rebooted automatically. I inserted CD disc 1 and there was no issue with "invalid drive specification" anymore. Instead, a bitmap menu was displayed where it asked me to choose a language. And I thought I had it there for a while but it didn't work out. After choosing the language, another menu was displayed asking me to choose a type of recovery (restore pre-installed software OR restore hard drive partitions and pre-installed software). I opted for the second option. Then a data destruction warning showed up where I just pressed 1 to Continue. It did something and then just rebooted and the same formatting screen shows up as before. So something is not right. Am I doing it wrong? I seem to have come past the CD-ROM driver issue at least. But now I'm stuck with this problem... it seems to have something to do with the hard drive. Like... why is is it always trying to format it? Isn't it enough to format it once? By the way, it needs to be formatted as FAT32, right? Windows 98 doesn't support NTFS? I think FDISK should have taken care of this already. I know this is an old hard drive, but I connected to my main computer and it was able to read and write to it without a problem. It does have bad sectors though, but it's expected on an old hard drive like this. Any ideas?.. Update 2 I seem to be repeatedly getting stuck at the format screen where it asks to press any key to continue. So tried to cancel it this time with Ctrl+C. This leaves me at: A:\TOOLS> I can do DIR and CD and I tried to change to Z: drive. I tried running "setup" but there is no such thing. Z:\>setup Bad command or file name Update 3 Floppy structure Here's the file/folder structure of the floppy disk. A:\>dir /s Volume in drive A has no label. Volume Serial Number is 1700-1069 Directory of A:\ 1999-10-11 10:44 <DIR> BMP 1998-05-11 22:01 93 880 COMMAND.COM 1999-10-11 10:44 <DIR> factory 1999-10-11 10:44 <DIR> lang 1999-10-11 10:44 <DIR> TOOLS 2000-05-19 15:32 339 CONFIG.SYS 1999-10-26 13:38 0 BOOTLOG.TXT 2000-06-08 08:32 3 691 AUTOEXEC.BAT 4 File(s) 97 910 bytes Directory of A:\BMP 1999-10-11 10:44 <DIR> . 1999-10-11 10:44 <DIR> .. 0 File(s) 0 bytes Directory of A:\factory 1999-10-11 10:44 <DIR> . 1999-10-11 10:44 <DIR> .. 2000-06-08 13:09 2 662 3LNGINSF.BAT 1 File(s) 2 662 bytes Directory of A:\lang 1999-10-11 10:44 <DIR> . 1999-10-11 10:44 <DIR> .. 1998-11-24 08:02 49 575 FORMAT.COM 1998-11-24 08:02 63 900 FDISK.EXE 2 File(s) 113 475 bytes Directory of A:\TOOLS 1999-10-11 10:44 <DIR> . 1999-10-11 10:44 <DIR> .. 1998-05-06 22:01 49 575 FORMAT.COM 1995-10-27 20:29 28 164 BMPVIEW.EXE 1999-01-26 15:54 15 MAKEPA32.TXT 1998-05-06 22:01 3 878 XCOPY.EXE 1998-05-06 22:01 41 472 XCOPY32.MOD 1998-05-06 22:01 33 191 HIMEM.SYS 1998-05-06 22:01 125 495 EMM386.EXE 1998-05-06 22:01 18 967 SYS.COM 1996-01-31 21:55 18 CLK.COM 1994-04-02 08:20 22 HARDBOOT.COM 1999-02-03 15:46 15 MAKEPA16.TXT 1999-04-14 16:36 7 840 PARTFO32.EXE 2000-05-19 15:01 1 169 PARTFORM.BAT 1996-10-02 01:47 1 642 MBRCLR.COM 1999-07-01 11:58 8 175 BIOSCHKN.EXE 1998-06-23 08:55 5 904 PAR-TYPE.EXE 1998-11-24 08:02 29 271 MODE.COM 1998-11-24 08:02 15 252 ATTRIB.EXE 1998-11-24 08:02 19 083 DELTREE.EXE 1999-04-21 15:01 23 304 NTBB.EXE 1997-05-07 14:19 1 SYS.TXT 1999-07-01 12:23 61 566 F3DCHK.EXE 1998-05-11 20:01 34 566 KEYBOARD.SYS 1998-05-11 20:01 19 927 KEYB.COM 1999-10-26 14:31 910 partinfo.txt 1998-06-16 15:58 5 936 CHKDRVAC.EXE 1998-05-06 22:01 63 900 FDISK.EXE 1998-05-06 22:01 45 379 SMARTDRV.EXE 1992-12-03 19:48 10 695 SCISET.EXE 1997-06-25 15:49 6 YENT 1998-05-06 22:01 25 473 MSCDEX.EXE 1998-05-06 22:01 5 239 CHOICE.COM 1997-07-18 17:41 6 876 MBR.COM 1997-07-01 15:01 6 545 CHK2GB.COM 1998-06-10 20:04 8 128 PARTFORM.EXE 1990-01-04 02:09 19 MAKEPAR2.TXT 1990-01-04 01:00 27 MAKEPAR3.TXT 1990-01-04 01:00 27 MAKEPAR4.TXT 1998-02-13 13:47 15 MAKEPART.TXT 1999-04-14 13:47 5 200 DISKSIZE.EXE 1999-05-06 14:56 7 856 PARTFO16.EXE 1999-01-13 11:13 13 720 CDROMDRV.SYS 42 File(s) 734 463 bytes Total Files Listed: 49 File(s) 948 510 bytes 12 Dir(s) 268 800 bytes free A:\> CONFIG.SYS contents Here's the content of CONFIG.SYS. DEVICE=A:\TOOLS\HIMEM.SYS /TESTMEM:OFF REM I=B000-B7ff for Desktop BIOSes rem DEVICE=A:\TOOLS\EMM386.EXE NOEMS I=B000-B7ff x=C000-D000 DEVICE=A:\TOOLS\EMM386.EXE NOEMS x=C000-D000 DEVICE=A:\TOOLS\CDROMDRV.SYS /D:TOSCD001 BUFFERS=10 FILES=69 DOS=HIGH,UMB STACKS=9,256 LASTDRIVE=Z SWITCHES=/F SHELL=A:\COMMAND.COM /P /E:2048 AUTOEXEC.BAT contents :BEGIN @ECHO OFF PATH=A:\;A:\TOOLS; MSCDEX /D:TOSCD001 /L:Z /M:10 smartdrv 1024 128 SET TOOLS=A:\TOOLS SET COMSPEC=A:\COMMAND.COM SET EXITDRIVE=C: SET EXITPATH=\ CALL Z:\SETENV.BAT > NUL :TOSHCHK BIOSChkN IF NOT ERRORLEVEL 1 goto C_ACCESS BMPVIEW Z:\3LNGINST\BMP\NO_TOSP3.bmp /X=120 /Y=80 PAUSE > NUL SET EXITDRIVE=A: GOTO END :C_ACCESS CALL PARTFORM.BAT :C_EMPTY IF EXIST C:\*.* GOTO C_NOTEMPTY call z:\setenv.bat>nul goto PREPDU :C_NOTEMPTY REM ------------------MENU------------------------ :STARTMENU CLS BMPVIEW Z:\3LNGINST\BMP\LANGSELC.BMP /X=120 /Y=120 CLK CHOICE /C:123 /N >NUL REM L is the language that is selected IF ERRORLEVEL 1 SET L=%LNG1% IF ERRORLEVEL 2 SET L=%LNG2% IF ERRORLEVEL 3 SET L=%LNG3% SET BMP=BMP%L% BMPVIEW Z:\3LNGINST\%bmp%\HDDMENU.BMP /X=72 /Y=82 CLK CHOICE /C:129F /N > NUL IF ERRORLEVEL 4 GOTO FACTORY_MENU IF ERRORLEVEL 3 GOTO EXIT_MENU IF ERRORLEVEL 2 GOTO PARTFORM_MENU IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO FORMAT_MENU GOTO END :FACTORY_MENU BMPVIEW Z:\3LNGINST\%bmp%\qformat.bmp /X=120 /Y=140 CLK choice /c:12 /N >nul IF ERRORLEVEL 2 GOTO STARTMENU IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO FORMATF GOTO END :EXIT_MENU BMPVIEW Z:\3LNGINST\%bmp%\9.bmp /XC /X=96 /Y=267 choice /C:1pause /T:1,01 >nul SET EXITDRIVE=A: SET EXITPATH=\lang cls mode mono rem keyb xx>nul cls GOTO END :PARTFORM_MENU BMPVIEW Z:\3LNGINST\%bmp%\2.bmp /XC /X=96 /Y=216 choice /C:1pause /T:1,01 >nul BMPVIEW Z:\3LNGINST\%bmp%\partform.bmp /X=120 /Y=140 CLK choice /c:12 /N >nul IF ERRORLEVEL 2 GOTO STARTMENU IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO PART_FORM SET EXITDRIVE=A: GOTO END :FORMAT_MENU BMPVIEW Z:\3LNGINST\%bmp%\1.bmp /XC /X=96 /Y=165 choice /C:1pause /T:1,01 >nul BMPVIEW Z:\3LNGINST\%bmp%\qformat.bmp /X=120 /Y=140 CLK choice /c:12 /N >nul IF ERRORLEVEL 2 GOTO STARTMENU IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO FORMAT SET EXITDRIVE=A: GOTO END REM ------------------ MENU END ------------------------ :FORMAT bmpview Z:\3LNGINST\%bmp%\1.bmp /XC /X=145 /Y=235 choice /C:1pause /T:1,01 >nul CLS IF (%QFORMAT%)==(NO) GOTO FULLFO FORMAT C: /Q /V:"" <A:\TOOLS\YENT >NUL call z:\setenv.bat>nul goto PREPDU :FULLFO FORMAT C: /V:"" <A:\TOOLS\YENT call z:\setenv.bat>nul goto PREPDU :FORMATF CLS IF (%QFORMAT%)==(NO) GOTO FULLFO_F FORMAT C: /Q /V:"" <A:\TOOLS\YENT >NUL call z:\setenv.bat>nul goto PREPDU_F :FULLFO_F FORMAT C: /V:"" <A:\TOOLS\YENT call z:\setenv.bat>nul goto PREPDU_F :PART_FORM bmpview Z:\3LNGINST\bmp\1.bmp /XC /X=145 /Y=235 choice /C:1pause /T:1,01 >nul MBR /! HARDBOOT REM ====================== Triple Select ====================== :PREPDU XCOPY z:\3LNGINST\*.* C:\*.* /E /S /V >NUL ATTRIB -H -R -S C:\TOOLS\CDROMDRV.SYS COPY A:\TOOLS\CDROMDRV.SYS C:\TOOLS /Y SYS C: >NUL goto REBOOT :PREPDU_F copy A:\TOOLS\SMARTDRV.EXE C:\ /Y ATTRIB -H -R -S C:\SMARTDRV.EXE copy A:\FACTORY\3LNGINSF.bat c:\ c:\3LNGINSF.bat cls REM ====================== Dual Select END ====================== REM --------------- END ------------------ :REBOOT SMARTDRV.EXE /C bmpview Z:\3LNGINST\BMP\reboot3.bmp /X=120 /Y=140 :FOREVER pause >nul goto FOREVER :END SMARTDRV.EXE /C %EXITDRIVE% cd %EXITPATH% echo on CD structure S:\>dir /s Volume in drive S is T3ELK4SC Volume Serial Number is 2042-5BC9 Directory of S:\ 2000-08-22 14:14 <DIR> 3LNGINSF 2000-08-22 14:14 <DIR> 3LNGINST 2000-06-15 15:57 <DIR> CRC 2000-06-15 12:04 387 667 767 T310C1NO.W98 2000-09-07 15:36 273 setenv.BAT 2 File(s) 387 668 040 bytes Directory of S:\3LNGINSF 1601-01-01 02:00 <DIR> . 1601-01-01 02:00 <DIR> .. 1999-10-27 10:51 1 806 AUTOEXEC.BAT 2000-08-22 14:14 <DIR> BMP 2000-05-19 15:29 265 CONFIG.SYS 2000-08-22 14:14 <DIR> POSTINST 2000-08-22 14:14 <DIR> TOOLS 2000-08-22 14:14 <DIR> WIN98SYS 2 File(s) 2 071 bytes Directory of S:\3LNGINSF\BMP 1601-01-01 02:00 <DIR> . 1601-01-01 02:00 <DIR> .. 1997-04-22 09:43 718 1.BMP 1997-04-22 09:44 718 2.BMP 1999-01-04 02:38 718 3.BMP 2000-07-05 11:22 60 118 Cdchg2.bmp 2000-07-05 11:22 60 118 Cdchg3.bmp 2000-07-05 13:37 60 118 Fin.bmp 2000-07-06 14:18 120 118 Menu.bmp 2000-07-05 13:34 60 118 Nor.bmp 2000-07-05 11:53 35 318 Progress.bmp 2000-07-05 13:40 60 118 Swe.bmp 2000-07-05 12:09 84 118 Wrongcd2.bmp 2000-07-05 12:09 84 118 Wrongcd3.bmp 12 File(s) 626 416 bytes Directory of S:\3LNGINSF\POSTINST 1601-01-01 02:00 <DIR> . 1601-01-01 02:00 <DIR> .. 2000-05-19 09:15 33 POSTINST.BAT 1 File(s) 33 bytes Directory of S:\3LNGINSF\TOOLS 1601-01-01 02:00 <DIR> . 1601-01-01 02:00 <DIR> .. 2000-07-06 14:49 3 593 3LNGINST.BAT 1998-11-24 08:02 15 252 ATTRIB.EXE 1995-10-27 18:29 28 164 BMPVIEW.EXE 1999-01-13 11:13 13 720 CDROMDRV.SYS 1998-05-06 20:01 5 239 CHOICE.COM 1996-01-31 19:55 18 CLK.COM 1998-11-24 08:02 19 083 DELTREE.EXE 1998-05-06 20:01 125 495 EMM386.EXE 1999-07-01 12:23 61 566 F3DCHK.EXE 1998-05-06 20:01 49 575 FORMAT.COM 1994-04-02 06:20 22 HARDBOOT.COM 1998-05-06 20:01 33 191 HIMEM.SYS 1998-05-06 20:01 25 473 MSCDEX.EXE 1998-05-06 20:01 12 663 RAMDRIVE.SYS 1998-05-06 20:01 45 379 SMARTDRV.EXE 1997-05-07 14:19 1 SYS.TXT 1995-09-27 14:25 6 813 VOLCHECK.EXE 1998-05-06 20:01 3 878 XCOPY.EXE 1998-05-06 20:01 41 472 XCOPY32.MOD 1997-06-25 13:49 6 YENT 20 File(s) 490 603 bytes Directory of S:\3LNGINSF\WIN98SYS 1601-01-01 02:00 <DIR> . 1601-01-01 02:00 <DIR> .. 1998-12-04 20:00 222 390 IO.SYS 1998-05-06 20:01 18 967 SYS.COM 1998-05-06 20:01 93 880 command.com 3 File(s) 335 237 bytes Directory of S:\3LNGINST 1601-01-01 02:00 <DIR> . 1601-01-01 02:00 <DIR> .. 1999-05-31 09:51 1 576 AUTOEXEC.BAT 2000-08-22 14:14 <DIR> BMP 2000-08-22 14:14 <DIR> Bmpfin 2000-08-22 14:14 <DIR> Bmpnor 2000-08-22 14:14 <DIR> Bmpswe 2000-05-19 15:30 265 CONFIG.SYS 2000-08-22 14:14 <DIR> POSTINST 2000-08-22 14:14 <DIR> TOOLS 2000-08-22 14:14 <DIR> WIN98SYS 2 File(s) 1 841 bytes Directory of S:\3LNGINST\BMP 1601-01-01 02:00 <DIR> . 1601-01-01 02:00 <DIR> .. 1997-04-22 09:43 718 1.BMP 1997-04-22 09:44 718 2.BMP 1999-01-04 02:38 718 3.BMP 2000-07-05 11:22 60 118 Cdchg2.bmp 2000-07-05 11:22 60 118 Cdchg3.bmp 2000-07-05 13:37 60 118 Fin.bmp 2000-07-06 14:18 120 118 Menu.bmp 2000-07-05 13:34 60 118 Nor.bmp 2000-07-05 11:53 35 318 Progress.bmp 2000-07-06 14:08 40 518 Reboot3.bmp 2000-07-05 13:40 60 118 Swe.bmp 2000-07-05 12:09 84 118 Wrongcd2.bmp 2000-07-05 12:09 84 118 Wrongcd3.bmp 2000-07-05 13:52 48 118 langselc.bmp 2000-07-05 11:47 57 318 no_tosp3.bmp 15 File(s) 772 370 bytes Directory of S:\3LNGINST\Bmpfin 1601-01-01 02:00 <DIR> . 1601-01-01 02:00 <DIR> .. 1997-04-22 09:43 718 1.BMP 1997-04-22 09:44 718 2.BMP 1998-06-13 00:07 718 9.bmp 2000-03-08 15:02 78 486 Hddmenu.bmp 2000-03-08 15:31 25 318 No_tospc.bmp 2000-03-08 15:37 36 518 PARTFORM.BMP 2000-03-08 15:42 36 518 Qformat.bmp 7 File(s) 178 994 bytes Directory of S:\3LNGINST\Bmpnor 1601-01-01 02:00 <DIR> . 1601-01-01 02:00 <DIR> .. 1997-04-22 09:43 718 1.BMP 1997-04-22 09:44 718 2.BMP 1998-06-13 00:07 718 9.bmp 1999-05-05 13:26 78 486 Hddmenu.bmp 1998-07-13 11:36 25 318 No_tospc.bmp 1998-07-13 11:41 36 518 PARTFORM.BMP 1998-07-13 11:45 36 518 Qformat.bmp 7 File(s) 178 994 bytes Directory of S:\3LNGINST\Bmpswe 1601-01-01 02:00 <DIR> . 1601-01-01 02:00 <DIR> .. 1997-04-22 09:43 718 1.BMP 1997-04-22 09:44 718 2.BMP 1998-06-13 00:07 718 9.bmp 1999-05-06 08:14 78 486 Hddmenu.bmp 1998-07-10 16:25 25 318 No_tospc.bmp 1998-07-10 16:29 36 518 PARTFORM.BMP 1998-07-10 17:08 36 518 Qformat.bmp 7 File(s) 178 994 bytes Directory of S:\3LNGINST\POSTINST 1601-01-01 02:00 <DIR> . 1601-01-01 02:00 <DIR> .. 2000-05-19 09:15 33 POSTINST.BAT 1 File(s) 33 bytes Directory of S:\3LNGINST\TOOLS 1601-01-01 02:00 <DIR> . 1601-01-01 02:00 <DIR> .. 2000-05-19 14:52 3 898 3LNGINST.BAT 1995-10-27 18:29 28 164 BMPVIEW.EXE 1999-01-13 11:13 13 720 CDROMDRV.SYS 1998-05-06 20:01 5 239 CHOICE.COM 1996-01-31 19:55 18 CLK.COM 1998-05-06 20:01 125 495 EMM386.EXE 1999-07-01 12:23 61 566 F3DCHK.EXE 1998-05-06 20:01 49 575 FORMAT.COM 1994-04-02 06:20 22 HARDBOOT.COM 1998-05-06 20:01 33 191 HIMEM.SYS 1998-05-06 20:01 25 473 MSCDEX.EXE 2000-07-06 14:41 910 PARTINFO.TXT 1998-05-06 20:01 12 663 RAMDRIVE.SYS 1998-05-06 20:01 45 379 SMARTDRV.EXE 1997-05-07 14:19 1 SYS.TXT 1995-09-27 14:25 6 813 VOLCHECK.EXE 1998-05-06 20:01 3 878 XCOPY.EXE 1998-05-06 20:01 41 472 XCOPY32.MOD 1997-06-25 13:49 6 YENT 19 File(s) 457 483 bytes Directory of S:\3LNGINST\WIN98SYS 1601-01-01 02:00 <DIR> . 1601-01-01 02:00 <DIR> .. 1998-12-04 20:00 222 390 IO.SYS 1998-05-06 20:01 18 967 SYS.COM 1998-05-06 20:01 93 880 command.com 3 File(s) 335 237 bytes Directory of S:\CRC 1601-01-01 02:00 <DIR> . 1601-01-01 02:00 <DIR> .. 2000-06-15 12:07 181 422 T310C1NO.ALL 2000-06-15 12:09 215 427 T310C1NO.CRC 2000-06-15 12:07 2 157 T310C1NO.HID 3 File(s) 399 006 bytes Total Files Listed: 104 File(s) 391 625 352 bytes 42 Dir(s) 0 bytes free S:\> Now which line or lines need to be changed? Do I really have to change drive letter Z: to C:? Proposed solutions Solution #1 Ramhound proposed to change the boot order to following; CD-ROM, IDE-0, Floppy This didn't help. In fact, here is the result of it. Searching for Boot Record from CDROM..Not Found Searching for Boot Record from IDE-0.. OK Missing operating system Any other ideas?... Solution #2 Rik proposed to run Z:\setup. Now that I have found a way to drop to DOS prompt with Ctrl+C as described above (Update 2), I did try running setup but there is no such command or file in there. So that didn't work.

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• BAD DC transfering FSMO Roles to ADC

  - by Suleman

  I have a DC (FQDN:server.icmcpk.local) and an ADC (FQDN:file-server.icmcpk.local). Recently my DC is facing a bad sector problem so I changed the Operation Masters to file-server for all five roles. but when ever i turn off the OLD DC the file-server also stops wroking with AD and GPMC further i m also unable to join any other computer to this domain. For Test purpose i also added a new ADC (FQDN:wds-server.icmcpk.local) but no succes with the old DC off i had to turn the old DC on and then joined it. I m attaching the Dcdiags for all three servers. Kindly help me so that i b able to reinstall new HDD and it can go online again. --------------------------------------- Server --------------------------------------- C:\Program Files\Support Tools>dcdiag Domain Controller Diagnosis Performing initial setup: Done gathering initial info. Doing initial required tests Testing server: Default-First-Site-Name\SERVER Starting test: Connectivity ......................... SERVER passed test Connectivity Doing primary tests Testing server: Default-First-Site-Name\SERVER Starting test: Replications [Replications Check,SERVER] A recent replication attempt failed: From FILE-SERVER to SERVER Naming Context: DC=ForestDnsZones,DC=icmcpk,DC=local The replication generated an error (1908): Could not find the domain controller for this domain. The failure occurred at 2012-05-04 14:07:13. The last success occurred at 2012-05-04 13:48:39. 1 failures have occurred since the last success. Kerberos Error. A KDC was not found to authenticate the call. Check that sufficient domain controllers are available. [Replications Check,SERVER] A recent replication attempt failed: From WDS-SERVER to SERVER Naming Context: DC=ForestDnsZones,DC=icmcpk,DC=local The replication generated an error (1908): Could not find the domain controller for this domain. The failure occurred at 2012-05-04 14:07:13. The last success occurred at 2012-05-04 13:48:39. 1 failures have occurred since the last success. Kerberos Error. A KDC was not found to authenticate the call. Check that sufficient domain controllers are available. [Replications Check,SERVER] A recent replication attempt failed: From FILE-SERVER to SERVER Naming Context: DC=DomainDnsZones,DC=icmcpk,DC=local The replication generated an error (1908): Could not find the domain controller for this domain. The failure occurred at 2012-05-04 14:07:13. The last success occurred at 2012-05-04 13:48:39. 1 failures have occurred since the last success. Kerberos Error. A KDC was not found to authenticate the call. Check that sufficient domain controllers are available. [Replications Check,SERVER] A recent replication attempt failed: From WDS-SERVER to SERVER Naming Context: DC=DomainDnsZones,DC=icmcpk,DC=local The replication generated an error (1908): Could not find the domain controller for this domain. The failure occurred at 2012-05-04 14:07:13. The last success occurred at 2012-05-04 13:48:39. 1 failures have occurred since the last success. Kerberos Error. A KDC was not found to authenticate the call. Check that sufficient domain controllers are available. [Replications Check,SERVER] A recent replication attempt failed: From FILE-SERVER to SERVER Naming Context: CN=Schema,CN=Configuration,DC=icmcpk,DC=local The replication generated an error (1908): Could not find the domain controller for this domain. The failure occurred at 2012-05-04 14:07:13. The last success occurred at 2012-05-04 13:48:39. 1 failures have occurred since the last success. Kerberos Error. A KDC was not found to authenticate the call. Check that sufficient domain controllers are available. [Replications Check,SERVER] A recent replication attempt failed: From WDS-SERVER to SERVER Naming Context: CN=Schema,CN=Configuration,DC=icmcpk,DC=local The replication generated an error (1908): Could not find the domain controller for this domain. The failure occurred at 2012-05-04 14:07:13. The last success occurred at 2012-05-04 13:48:39. 1 failures have occurred since the last success. Kerberos Error. A KDC was not found to authenticate the call. Check that sufficient domain controllers are available. [Replications Check,SERVER] A recent replication attempt failed: From WDS-SERVER to SERVER Naming Context: DC=icmcpk,DC=local The replication generated an error (1908): Could not find the domain controller for this domain. The failure occurred at 2012-05-04 14:07:13. The last success occurred at 2012-05-04 13:48:39. 1 failures have occurred since the last success. Kerberos Error. A KDC was not found to authenticate the call. Check that sufficient domain controllers are available. ......................... SERVER passed test Replications Starting test: NCSecDesc ......................... SERVER passed test NCSecDesc Starting test: NetLogons ......................... SERVER passed test NetLogons Starting test: Advertising ......................... SERVER passed test Advertising Starting test: KnowsOfRoleHolders ......................... SERVER passed test KnowsOfRoleHolders Starting test: RidManager ......................... SERVER passed test RidManager Starting test: MachineAccount ......................... SERVER passed test MachineAccount Starting test: Services ......................... SERVER passed test Services Starting test: ObjectsReplicated ......................... SERVER passed test ObjectsReplicated Starting test: frssysvol ......................... SERVER passed test frssysvol Starting test: frsevent There are warning or error events within the last 24 hours after the SYSVOL has been shared. Failing SYSVOL replication problems may cause Group Policy problems. ......................... SERVER failed test frsevent Starting test: kccevent ......................... SERVER passed test kccevent Starting test: systemlog An Error Event occured. EventID: 0x80001778 Time Generated: 05/04/2012 14:05:39 Event String: The previous system shutdown at 1:26:31 PM on An Error Event occured. EventID: 0x825A0011 Time Generated: 05/04/2012 14:07:45 (Event String could not be retrieved) An Error Event occured. EventID: 0x00000457 Time Generated: 05/04/2012 14:13:40 (Event String could not be retrieved) An Error Event occured. EventID: 0x00000457 Time Generated: 05/04/2012 14:14:25 (Event String could not be retrieved) An Error Event occured. EventID: 0x00000457 Time Generated: 05/04/2012 14:14:25 (Event String could not be retrieved) An Error Event occured. EventID: 0x00000457 Time Generated: 05/04/2012 14:14:38 (Event String could not be retrieved) An Error Event occured. EventID: 0xC1010020 Time Generated: 05/04/2012 14:16:14 Event String: Dependent Assembly Microsoft.VC80.MFCLOC could An Error Event occured. EventID: 0xC101003B Time Generated: 05/04/2012 14:16:14 Event String: Resolve Partial Assembly failed for An Error Event occured. EventID: 0xC101003B Time Generated: 05/04/2012 14:16:14 Event String: Generate Activation Context failed for An Error Event occured. EventID: 0xC1010020 Time Generated: 05/04/2012 14:16:14 Event String: Dependent Assembly Microsoft.VC80.MFCLOC could An Error Event occured. EventID: 0xC101003B Time Generated: 05/04/2012 14:16:14 Event String: Resolve Partial Assembly failed for An Error Event occured. EventID: 0xC101003B Time Generated: 05/04/2012 14:16:14 Event String: Generate Activation Context failed for An Error Event occured. EventID: 0x825A0011 Time Generated: 05/04/2012 14:22:57 (Event String could not be retrieved) An Error Event occured. EventID: 0xC1010020 Time Generated: 05/04/2012 14:22:59 Event String: Dependent Assembly Microsoft.VC80.MFCLOC could An Error Event occured. EventID: 0xC101003B Time Generated: 05/04/2012 14:22:59 Event String: Resolve Partial Assembly failed for An Error Event occured. EventID: 0xC101003B Time Generated: 05/04/2012 14:22:59 Event String: Generate Activation Context failed for An Error Event occured. EventID: 0xC1010020 Time Generated: 05/04/2012 14:22:59 Event String: Dependent Assembly Microsoft.VC80.MFCLOC could An Error Event occured. EventID: 0xC101003B Time Generated: 05/04/2012 14:22:59 Event String: Resolve Partial Assembly failed for An Error Event occured. EventID: 0xC101003B Time Generated: 05/04/2012 14:22:59 Event String: Generate Activation Context failed for ......................... SERVER failed test systemlog Starting test: VerifyReferences ......................... SERVER passed test VerifyReferences Running partition tests on : ForestDnsZones Starting test: CrossRefValidation ......................... ForestDnsZones passed test CrossRefValidation Starting test: CheckSDRefDom ......................... ForestDnsZones passed test CheckSDRefDom Running partition tests on : DomainDnsZones Starting test: CrossRefValidation ......................... DomainDnsZones passed test CrossRefValidation Starting test: CheckSDRefDom ......................... DomainDnsZones passed test CheckSDRefDom Running partition tests on : Schema Starting test: CrossRefValidation ......................... Schema passed test CrossRefValidation Starting test: CheckSDRefDom ......................... Schema passed test CheckSDRefDom Running partition tests on : Configuration Starting test: CrossRefValidation ......................... Configuration passed test CrossRefValidation Starting test: CheckSDRefDom ......................... Configuration passed test CheckSDRefDom Running partition tests on : icmcpk Starting test: CrossRefValidation ......................... icmcpk passed test CrossRefValidation Starting test: CheckSDRefDom ......................... icmcpk passed test CheckSDRefDom Running enterprise tests on : icmcpk.local Starting test: Intersite ......................... icmcpk.local passed test Intersite Starting test: FsmoCheck ......................... icmcpk.local passed test FsmoCheck ---------------------- File-Server ---------------------- C:\Users\Administrator.ICMCPK>dcdiag Directory Server Diagnosis Performing initial setup: Trying to find home server... Home Server = FILE-SERVER * Identified AD Forest. Done gathering initial info. Doing initial required tests Testing server: Default-First-Site-Name\FILE-SERVER Starting test: Connectivity ......................... FILE-SERVER passed test Connectivity Doing primary tests Testing server: Default-First-Site-Name\FILE-SERVER Starting test: Advertising Warning: DsGetDcName returned information for \\Server.icmcpk.local, when we were trying to reach FILE-SERVER. SERVER IS NOT RESPONDING or IS NOT CONSIDERED SUITABLE. ......................... FILE-SERVER failed test Advertising Starting test: FrsEvent ......................... FILE-SERVER passed test FrsEvent Starting test: DFSREvent ......................... FILE-SERVER passed test DFSREvent Starting test: SysVolCheck ......................... FILE-SERVER passed test SysVolCheck Starting test: KccEvent ......................... FILE-SERVER passed test KccEvent Starting test: KnowsOfRoleHolders ......................... FILE-SERVER passed test KnowsOfRoleHolders Starting test: MachineAccount ......................... FILE-SERVER passed test MachineAccount Starting test: NCSecDesc Error NT AUTHORITY\ENTERPRISE DOMAIN CONTROLLERS doesn't have Replicating Directory Changes In Filtered Set access rights for the naming context: DC=ForestDnsZones,DC=icmcpk,DC=local Error NT AUTHORITY\ENTERPRISE DOMAIN CONTROLLERS doesn't have Replicating Directory Changes In Filtered Set access rights for the naming context: DC=DomainDnsZones,DC=icmcpk,DC=local ......................... FILE-SERVER failed test NCSecDesc Starting test: NetLogons Unable to connect to the NETLOGON share! (\\FILE-SERVER\netlogon) [FILE-SERVER] An net use or LsaPolicy operation failed with error 67, The network name cannot be found.. ......................... FILE-SERVER failed test NetLogons Starting test: ObjectsReplicated ......................... FILE-SERVER passed test ObjectsReplicated Starting test: Replications ......................... FILE-SERVER passed test Replications Starting test: RidManager ......................... FILE-SERVER passed test RidManager Starting test: Services ......................... FILE-SERVER passed test Services Starting test: SystemLog An Error Event occurred. EventID: 0x00000469 Time Generated: 05/04/2012 14:01:10 Event String: The processing of Group Policy failed because of lack of network con nectivity to a domain controller. This may be a transient condition. A success m essage would be generated once the machine gets connected to the domain controll er and Group Policy has succesfully processed. If you do not see a success messa ge for several hours, then contact your administrator. An Warning Event occurred. EventID: 0x8000A001 Time Generated: 05/04/2012 14:07:11 Event String: The Security System could not establish a secured connection with th e server ldap/icmcpk.local/[email protected]. No authentication protocol was available. An Warning Event occurred. EventID: 0x00000BBC Time Generated: 05/04/2012 14:30:34 Event String: Windows Defender Real-Time Protection agent has detected changes. Mi crosoft recommends you analyze the software that made these changes for potentia l risks. You can use information about how these programs operate to choose whet her to allow them to run or remove them from your computer. Allow changes only if you trust the program or the software publisher. Windows Defender can't undo changes that you allow. An Warning Event occurred. EventID: 0x00000BBC Time Generated: 05/04/2012 14:30:36 Event String: Windows Defender Real-Time Protection agent has detected changes. Mi crosoft recommends you analyze the software that made these changes for potentia l risks. You can use information about how these programs operate to choose whet her to allow them to run or remove them from your computer. Allow changes only if you trust the program or the software publisher. Windows Defender can't undo changes that you allow. ......................... FILE-SERVER failed test SystemLog Starting test: VerifyReferences ......................... FILE-SERVER passed test VerifyReferences Running partition tests on : ForestDnsZones Starting test: CheckSDRefDom ......................... ForestDnsZones passed test CheckSDRefDom Starting test: CrossRefValidation ......................... ForestDnsZones passed test CrossRefValidation Running partition tests on : DomainDnsZones Starting test: CheckSDRefDom ......................... DomainDnsZones passed test CheckSDRefDom Starting test: CrossRefValidation ......................... DomainDnsZones passed test CrossRefValidation Running partition tests on : Schema Starting test: CheckSDRefDom ......................... Schema passed test CheckSDRefDom Starting test: CrossRefValidation ......................... Schema passed test CrossRefValidation Running partition tests on : Configuration Starting test: CheckSDRefDom ......................... Configuration passed test CheckSDRefDom Starting test: CrossRefValidation ......................... Configuration passed test CrossRefValidation Running partition tests on : icmcpk Starting test: CheckSDRefDom ......................... icmcpk passed test CheckSDRefDom Starting test: CrossRefValidation ......................... icmcpk passed test CrossRefValidation Running enterprise tests on : icmcpk.local Starting test: LocatorCheck ......................... icmcpk.local passed test LocatorCheck Starting test: Intersite ......................... icmcpk.local passed test Intersite --------------------- WDS-Server --------------------- C:\Users\Administrator.ICMCPK>dcdiag Directory Server Diagnosis Performing initial setup: Trying to find home server... Home Server = WDS-SERVER * Identified AD Forest. Done gathering initial info. Doing initial required tests Testing server: Default-First-Site-Name\WDS-SERVER Starting test: Connectivity ......................... WDS-SERVER passed test Connectivity Doing primary tests Testing server: Default-First-Site-Name\WDS-SERVER Starting test: Advertising Warning: DsGetDcName returned information for \\Server.icmcpk.local, when we were trying to reach WDS-SERVER. SERVER IS NOT RESPONDING or IS NOT CONSIDERED SUITABLE. ......................... WDS-SERVER failed test Advertising Starting test: FrsEvent There are warning or error events within the last 24 hours after the SYSVOL has been shared. Failing SYSVOL replication problems may cause Group Policy problems. ......................... WDS-SERVER passed test FrsEvent Starting test: DFSREvent ......................... WDS-SERVER passed test DFSREvent Starting test: SysVolCheck ......................... WDS-SERVER passed test SysVolCheck Starting test: KccEvent ......................... WDS-SERVER passed test KccEvent Starting test: KnowsOfRoleHolders ......................... WDS-SERVER passed test KnowsOfRoleHolders Starting test: MachineAccount ......................... WDS-SERVER passed test MachineAccount Starting test: NCSecDesc Error NT AUTHORITY\ENTERPRISE DOMAIN CONTROLLERS doesn't have Replicating Directory Changes In Filtered Set access rights for the naming context: DC=ForestDnsZones,DC=icmcpk,DC=local Error NT AUTHORITY\ENTERPRISE DOMAIN CONTROLLERS doesn't have Replicating Directory Changes In Filtered Set access rights for the naming context: DC=DomainDnsZones,DC=icmcpk,DC=local ......................... WDS-SERVER failed test NCSecDesc Starting test: NetLogons Unable to connect to the NETLOGON share! (\\WDS-SERVER\netlogon) [WDS-SERVER] An net use or LsaPolicy operation failed with error 67, The network name cannot be found.. ......................... WDS-SERVER failed test NetLogons Starting test: ObjectsReplicated ......................... WDS-SERVER passed test ObjectsReplicated Starting test: Replications ......................... WDS-SERVER passed test Replications Starting test: RidManager ......................... WDS-SERVER passed test RidManager Starting test: Services ......................... WDS-SERVER passed test Services Starting test: SystemLog An Error Event occurred. EventID: 0x0000041E Time Generated: 05/04/2012 14:02:55 Event String: The processing of Group Policy failed. Windows could not obtain the name of a domain controller. This could be caused by a name resolution failure. Verify your Domain Name Sysytem (DNS) is configured and working correctly. An Error Event occurred. EventID: 0x0000041E Time Generated: 05/04/2012 14:08:33 Event String: The processing of Group Policy failed. Windows could not obtain the name of a domain controller. This could be caused by a name resolution failure. Verify your Domain Name Sysytem (DNS) is configured and working correctly. ......................... WDS-SERVER failed test SystemLog Starting test: VerifyReferences ......................... WDS-SERVER passed test VerifyReferences Running partition tests on : ForestDnsZones Starting test: CheckSDRefDom ......................... ForestDnsZones passed test CheckSDRefDom Starting test: CrossRefValidation ......................... ForestDnsZones passed test CrossRefValidation Running partition tests on : DomainDnsZones Starting test: CheckSDRefDom ......................... DomainDnsZones passed test CheckSDRefDom Starting test: CrossRefValidation ......................... DomainDnsZones passed test CrossRefValidation Running partition tests on : Schema Starting test: CheckSDRefDom ......................... Schema passed test CheckSDRefDom Starting test: CrossRefValidation ......................... Schema passed test CrossRefValidation Running partition tests on : Configuration Starting test: CheckSDRefDom ......................... Configuration passed test CheckSDRefDom Starting test: CrossRefValidation ......................... Configuration passed test CrossRefValidation Running partition tests on : icmcpk Starting test: CheckSDRefDom ......................... icmcpk passed test CheckSDRefDom Starting test: CrossRefValidation ......................... icmcpk passed test CrossRefValidation Running enterprise tests on : icmcpk.local Starting test: LocatorCheck ......................... icmcpk.local passed test LocatorCheck Starting test: Intersite ......................... icmcpk.local passed test Intersite

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• Custom ASP.NET Routing to an HttpHandler

  - by Rick Strahl

  As of version 4.0 ASP.NET natively supports routing via the now built-in System.Web.Routing namespace. Routing features are automatically integrated into the HtttpRuntime via a few custom interfaces. New Web Forms Routing Support In ASP.NET 4.0 there are a host of improvements including routing support baked into Web Forms via a RouteData property available on the Page class and RouteCollection.MapPageRoute() route handler that makes it easy to route to Web forms. To map ASP.NET Page routes is as simple as setting up the routes with MapPageRoute:protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes); } void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes) { routes.MapPageRoute("StockQuote", "StockQuote/{symbol}", "StockQuote.aspx"); routes.MapPageRoute("StockQuotes", "StockQuotes/{symbolList}", "StockQuotes.aspx"); } and then accessing the route data in the page you can then use the new Page class RouteData property to retrieve the dynamic route data information:public partial class StockQuote1 : System.Web.UI.Page { protected StockQuote Quote = null; protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { string symbol = RouteData.Values["symbol"] as string; StockServer server = new StockServer(); Quote = server.GetStockQuote(symbol); // display stock data in Page View } } Simple, quick and doesn’t require much explanation. If you’re using WebForms most of your routing needs should be served just fine by this simple mechanism. Kudos to the ASP.NET team for putting this in the box and making it easy! How Routing Works To handle Routing in ASP.NET involves these steps: Registering Routes Creating a custom RouteHandler to retrieve an HttpHandler Attaching RouteData to your HttpHandler Picking up Route Information in your Request code Registering routes makes ASP.NET aware of the Routes you want to handle via the static RouteTable.Routes collection. You basically add routes to this collection to let ASP.NET know which URL patterns it should watch for. You typically hook up routes off a RegisterRoutes method that fires in Application_Start as I did in the example above to ensure routes are added only once when the application first starts up. When you create a route, you pass in a RouteHandler instance which ASP.NET caches and reuses as routes are matched. Once registered ASP.NET monitors the routes and if a match is found just prior to the HttpHandler instantiation, ASP.NET uses the RouteHandler registered for the route and calls GetHandler() on it to retrieve an HttpHandler instance. The RouteHandler.GetHandler() method is responsible for creating an instance of an HttpHandler that is to handle the request and – if necessary – to assign any additional custom data to the handler. At minimum you probably want to pass the RouteData to the handler so the handler can identify the request based on the route data available. To do this you typically add  a RouteData property to your handler and then assign the property from the RouteHandlers request context. This is essentially how Page.RouteData comes into being and this approach should work well for any custom handler implementation that requires RouteData. It’s a shame that ASP.NET doesn’t have a top level intrinsic object that’s accessible off the HttpContext object to provide route data more generically, but since RouteData is directly tied to HttpHandlers and not all handlers support it it might cause some confusion of when it’s actually available. Bottom line is that if you want to hold on to RouteData you have to assign it to a custom property of the handler or else pass it to the handler via Context.Items[] object that can be retrieved on an as needed basis. It’s important to understand that routing is hooked up via RouteHandlers that are responsible for loading HttpHandler instances. RouteHandlers are invoked for every request that matches a route and through this RouteHandler instance the Handler gains access to the current RouteData. Because of this logic it’s important to understand that Routing is really tied to HttpHandlers and not available prior to handler instantiation, which is pretty late in the HttpRuntime’s request pipeline. IOW, Routing works with Handlers but not with earlier in the pipeline within Modules. Specifically ASP.NET calls RouteHandler.GetHandler() from the PostResolveRequestCache HttpRuntime pipeline event. Here’s the call stack at the beginning of the GetHandler() call: which fires just before handler resolution. Non-Page Routing – You need to build custom RouteHandlers If you need to route to a custom Http Handler or other non-Page (and non-MVC) endpoint in the HttpRuntime, there is no generic mapping support available. You need to create a custom RouteHandler that can manage creating an instance of an HttpHandler that is fired in response to a routed request. Depending on what you are doing this process can be simple or fairly involved as your code is responsible based on the route data provided which handler to instantiate, and more importantly how to pass the route data on to the Handler. Luckily creating a RouteHandler is easy by implementing the IRouteHandler interface which has only a single GetHttpHandler(RequestContext context) method. In this method you can pick up the requestContext.RouteData, instantiate the HttpHandler of choice, and assign the RouteData to it. Then pass back the handler and you’re done.Here’s a simple example of GetHttpHandler() method that dynamically creates a handler based on a passed in Handler type./// <summary> /// Retrieves an Http Handler based on the type specified in the constructor /// </summary> /// <param name="requestContext"></param> /// <returns></returns> IHttpHandler IRouteHandler.GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext) { IHttpHandler handler = Activator.CreateInstance(CallbackHandlerType) as IHttpHandler; // If we're dealing with a Callback Handler // pass the RouteData for this route to the Handler if (handler is CallbackHandler) ((CallbackHandler)handler).RouteData = requestContext.RouteData; return handler; } Note that this code checks for a specific type of handler and if it matches assigns the RouteData to this handler. This is optional but quite a common scenario if you want to work with RouteData. If the handler you need to instantiate isn’t under your control but you still need to pass RouteData to Handler code, an alternative is to pass the RouteData via the HttpContext.Items collection:IHttpHandler IRouteHandler.GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext) { IHttpHandler handler = Activator.CreateInstance(CallbackHandlerType) as IHttpHandler; requestContext.HttpContext.Items["RouteData"] = requestContext.RouteData; return handler; } The code in the handler implementation can then pick up the RouteData from the context collection as needed:RouteData routeData = HttpContext.Current.Items["RouteData"] as RouteData This isn’t as clean as having an explicit RouteData property, but it does have the advantage that the route data is visible anywhere in the Handler’s code chain. It’s definitely preferable to create a custom property on your handler, but the Context work-around works in a pinch when you don’t’ own the handler code and have dynamic code executing as part of the handler execution. An Example of a Custom RouteHandler: Attribute Based Route Implementation In this post I’m going to discuss a custom routine implementation I built for my CallbackHandler class in the West Wind Web & Ajax Toolkit. CallbackHandler can be very easily used for creating AJAX, REST and POX requests following RPC style method mapping. You can pass parameters via URL query string, POST data or raw data structures, and you can retrieve results as JSON, XML or raw string/binary data. It’s a quick and easy way to build service interfaces with no fuss. As a quick review here’s how CallbackHandler works: You create an Http Handler that derives from CallbackHandler You implement methods that have a [CallbackMethod] Attribute and that’s it. Here’s an example of an CallbackHandler implementation in an ashx.cs based handler:// RestService.ashx.cs public class RestService : CallbackHandler { [CallbackMethod] public StockQuote GetStockQuote(string symbol) { StockServer server = new StockServer(); return server.GetStockQuote(symbol); } [CallbackMethod] public StockQuote[] GetStockQuotes(string symbolList) { StockServer server = new StockServer(); string[] symbols = symbolList.Split(new char[2] { ',',';' },StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries); return server.GetStockQuotes(symbols); } } CallbackHandler makes it super easy to create a method on the server, pass data to it via POST, QueryString or raw JSON/XML data, and then retrieve the results easily back in various formats. This works wonderful and I’ve used these tools in many projects for myself and with clients. But one thing missing has been the ability to create clean URLs. Typical URLs looked like this: http://www.west-wind.com/WestwindWebToolkit/samples/Rest/StockService.ashx?Method=GetStockQuote&symbol=msfthttp://www.west-wind.com/WestwindWebToolkit/samples/Rest/StockService.ashx?Method=GetStockQuotes&symbolList=msft,intc,gld,slw,mwe&format=xml which works and is clear enough, but also clearly very ugly. It would be much nicer if URLs could look like this: http://www.west-wind.com//WestwindWebtoolkit/Samples/StockQuote/msfthttp://www.west-wind.com/WestwindWebtoolkit/Samples/StockQuotes/msft,intc,gld,slw?format=xml (the Virtual Root in this sample is WestWindWebToolkit/Samples and StockQuote/{symbol} is the route)(If you use FireFox try using the JSONView plug-in make it easier to view JSON content) So, taking a clue from the WCF REST tools that use RouteUrls I set out to create a way to specify RouteUrls for each of the endpoints. The change made basically allows changing the above to: [CallbackMethod(RouteUrl="RestService/StockQuote/{symbol}")] public StockQuote GetStockQuote(string symbol) { StockServer server = new StockServer(); return server.GetStockQuote(symbol); } [CallbackMethod(RouteUrl = "RestService/StockQuotes/{symbolList}")] public StockQuote[] GetStockQuotes(string symbolList) { StockServer server = new StockServer(); string[] symbols = symbolList.Split(new char[2] { ',',';' },StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries); return server.GetStockQuotes(symbols); } where a RouteUrl is specified as part of the Callback attribute. And with the changes made with RouteUrls I can now get URLs like the second set shown earlier. So how does that work? Let’s find out… How to Create Custom Routes As mentioned earlier Routing is made up of several steps: Creating a custom RouteHandler to create HttpHandler instances Mapping the actual Routes to the RouteHandler Retrieving the RouteData and actually doing something useful with it in the HttpHandler In the CallbackHandler routing example above this works out to something like this: Create a custom RouteHandler that includes a property to track the method to call Set up the routes using Reflection against the class Looking for any RouteUrls in the CallbackMethod attribute Add a RouteData property to the CallbackHandler so we can access the RouteData in the code of the handler Creating a Custom Route Handler To make the above work I created a custom RouteHandler class that includes the actual IRouteHandler implementation as well as a generic and static method to automatically register all routes marked with the [CallbackMethod(RouteUrl="…")] attribute. Here’s the code:/// <summary> /// Route handler that can create instances of CallbackHandler derived /// callback classes. The route handler tracks the method name and /// creates an instance of the service in a predictable manner /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TCallbackHandler">CallbackHandler type</typeparam> public class CallbackHandlerRouteHandler : IRouteHandler { /// <summary> /// Method name that is to be called on this route. /// Set by the automatically generated RegisterRoutes /// invokation. /// </summary> public string MethodName { get; set; } /// <summary> /// The type of the handler we're going to instantiate. /// Needed so we can semi-generically instantiate the /// handler and call the method on it. /// </summary> public Type CallbackHandlerType { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Constructor to pass in the two required components we /// need to create an instance of our handler. /// </summary> /// <param name="methodName"></param> /// <param name="callbackHandlerType"></param> public CallbackHandlerRouteHandler(string methodName, Type callbackHandlerType) { MethodName = methodName; CallbackHandlerType = callbackHandlerType; } /// <summary> /// Retrieves an Http Handler based on the type specified in the constructor /// </summary> /// <param name="requestContext"></param> /// <returns></returns> IHttpHandler IRouteHandler.GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext) { IHttpHandler handler = Activator.CreateInstance(CallbackHandlerType) as IHttpHandler; // If we're dealing with a Callback Handler // pass the RouteData for this route to the Handler if (handler is CallbackHandler) ((CallbackHandler)handler).RouteData = requestContext.RouteData; return handler; } /// <summary> /// Generic method to register all routes from a CallbackHandler /// that have RouteUrls defined on the [CallbackMethod] attribute /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TCallbackHandler">CallbackHandler Type</typeparam> /// <param name="routes"></param> public static void RegisterRoutes<TCallbackHandler>(RouteCollection routes) { // find all methods var methods = typeof(TCallbackHandler).GetMethods(BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.Public); foreach (var method in methods) { var attrs = method.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(CallbackMethodAttribute), false); if (attrs.Length < 1) continue; CallbackMethodAttribute attr = attrs[0] as CallbackMethodAttribute; if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(attr.RouteUrl)) continue; // Add the route routes.Add(method.Name, new Route(attr.RouteUrl, new CallbackHandlerRouteHandler(method.Name, typeof(TCallbackHandler)))); } } } The RouteHandler implements IRouteHandler, and its responsibility via the GetHandler method is to create an HttpHandler based on the route data. When ASP.NET calls GetHandler it passes a requestContext parameter which includes a requestContext.RouteData property. This parameter holds the current request’s route data as well as an instance of the current RouteHandler. If you look at GetHttpHandler() you can see that the code creates an instance of the handler we are interested in and then sets the RouteData property on the handler. This is how you can pass the current request’s RouteData to the handler. The RouteData object also has a  RouteData.RouteHandler property that is also available to the Handler later, which is useful in order to get additional information about the current route. In our case here the RouteHandler includes a MethodName property that identifies the method to execute in the handler since that value no longer comes from the URL so we need to figure out the method name some other way. The method name is mapped explicitly when the RouteHandler is created and here the static method that auto-registers all CallbackMethods with RouteUrls sets the method name when it creates the routes while reflecting over the methods (more on this in a minute). The important point here is that you can attach additional properties to the RouteHandler and you can then later access the RouteHandler and its properties later in the Handler to pick up these custom values. This is a crucial feature in that the RouteHandler serves in passing additional context to the handler so it knows what actions to perform. The automatic route registration is handled by the static RegisterRoutes<TCallbackHandler> method. This method is generic and totally reusable for any CallbackHandler type handler. To register a CallbackHandler and any RouteUrls it has defined you simple use code like this in Application_Start (or other application startup code):protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { // Register Routes for RestService CallbackHandlerRouteHandler.RegisterRoutes<RestService>(RouteTable.Routes); } If you have multiple CallbackHandler style services you can make multiple calls to RegisterRoutes for each of the service types. RegisterRoutes internally uses reflection to run through all the methods of the Handler, looking for CallbackMethod attributes and whether a RouteUrl is specified. If it is a new instance of a CallbackHandlerRouteHandler is created and the name of the method and the type are set. routes.Add(method.Name,           new Route(attr.RouteUrl, new CallbackHandlerRouteHandler(method.Name, typeof(TCallbackHandler) )) ); While the routing with CallbackHandlerRouteHandler is set up automatically for all methods that use the RouteUrl attribute, you can also use code to hook up those routes manually and skip using the attribute. The code for this is straightforward and just requires that you manually map each individual route to each method you want a routed: protected void Application_Start(objectsender, EventArgs e){    RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);}void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes) { routes.Add("StockQuote Route",new Route("StockQuote/{symbol}",                     new CallbackHandlerRouteHandler("GetStockQuote",typeof(RestService) ) ) );     routes.Add("StockQuotes Route",new Route("StockQuotes/{symbolList}",                     new CallbackHandlerRouteHandler("GetStockQuotes",typeof(RestService) ) ) );}I think it’s clearly easier to have CallbackHandlerRouteHandler.RegisterRoutes() do this automatically for you based on RouteUrl attributes, but some people have a real aversion to attaching logic via attributes. Just realize that the option to manually create your routes is available as well. Using the RouteData in the Handler A RouteHandler’s responsibility is to create an HttpHandler and as mentioned earlier, natively IHttpHandler doesn’t have any support for RouteData. In order to utilize RouteData in your handler code you have to pass the RouteData to the handler. In my CallbackHandlerRouteHandler when it creates the HttpHandler instance it creates the instance and then assigns the custom RouteData property on the handler:IHttpHandler handler = Activator.CreateInstance(CallbackHandlerType) as IHttpHandler; if (handler is CallbackHandler) ((CallbackHandler)handler).RouteData = requestContext.RouteData; return handler; Again this only works if you actually add a RouteData property to your handler explicitly as I did in my CallbackHandler implementation:/// <summary> /// Optionally store RouteData on this handler /// so we can access it internally /// </summary> public RouteData RouteData {get; set; } and the RouteHandler needs to set it when it creates the handler instance. Once you have the route data in your handler you can access Route Keys and Values and also the RouteHandler. Since my RouteHandler has a custom property for the MethodName to retrieve it from within the handler I can do something like this now to retrieve the MethodName (this example is actually not in the handler but target is an instance pass to the processor): // check for Route Data method name if (target is CallbackHandler) { var routeData = ((CallbackHandler)target).RouteData; if (routeData != null) methodToCall = ((CallbackHandlerRouteHandler)routeData.RouteHandler).MethodName; } When I need to access the dynamic values in the route ( symbol in StockQuote/{symbol}) I can retrieve it easily with the Values collection (RouteData.Values["symbol"]). In my CallbackHandler processing logic I’m basically looking for matching parameter names to Route parameters: // look for parameters in the routeif(routeData != null){    string parmString = routeData.Values[parameter.Name] as string;    adjustedParms[parmCounter] = ReflectionUtils.StringToTypedValue(parmString, parameter.ParameterType);} And with that we’ve come full circle. We’ve created a custom RouteHandler() that passes the RouteData to the handler it creates. We’ve registered our routes to use the RouteHandler, and we’ve utilized the route data in our handler. For completeness sake here’s the routine that executes a method call based on the parameters passed in and one of the options is to retrieve the inbound parameters off RouteData (as well as from POST data or QueryString parameters):internal object ExecuteMethod(string method, object target, string[] parameters, CallbackMethodParameterType paramType, ref CallbackMethodAttribute callbackMethodAttribute) { HttpRequest Request = HttpContext.Current.Request; object Result = null; // Stores parsed parameters (from string JSON or QUeryString Values) object[] adjustedParms = null; Type PageType = target.GetType(); MethodInfo MI = PageType.GetMethod(method, BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.NonPublic); if (MI == null) throw new InvalidOperationException("Invalid Server Method."); object[] methods = MI.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(CallbackMethodAttribute), false); if (methods.Length < 1) throw new InvalidOperationException("Server method is not accessible due to missing CallbackMethod attribute"); if (callbackMethodAttribute != null) callbackMethodAttribute = methods[0] as CallbackMethodAttribute; ParameterInfo[] parms = MI.GetParameters(); JSONSerializer serializer = new JSONSerializer(); RouteData routeData = null; if (target is CallbackHandler) routeData = ((CallbackHandler)target).RouteData; int parmCounter = 0; adjustedParms = new object[parms.Length]; foreach (ParameterInfo parameter in parms) { // Retrieve parameters out of QueryString or POST buffer if (parameters == null) { // look for parameters in the route if (routeData != null) { string parmString = routeData.Values[parameter.Name] as string; adjustedParms[parmCounter] = ReflectionUtils.StringToTypedValue(parmString, parameter.ParameterType); } // GET parameter are parsed as plain string values - no JSON encoding else if (HttpContext.Current.Request.HttpMethod == "GET") { // Look up the parameter by name string parmString = Request.QueryString[parameter.Name]; adjustedParms[parmCounter] = ReflectionUtils.StringToTypedValue(parmString, parameter.ParameterType); } // POST parameters are treated as methodParameters that are JSON encoded else if (paramType == CallbackMethodParameterType.Json) //string newVariable = methodParameters.GetValue(parmCounter) as string; adjustedParms[parmCounter] = serializer.Deserialize(Request.Params["parm" + (parmCounter + 1).ToString()], parameter.ParameterType); else adjustedParms[parmCounter] = SerializationUtils.DeSerializeObject( Request.Params["parm" + (parmCounter + 1).ToString()], parameter.ParameterType); } else if (paramType == CallbackMethodParameterType.Json) adjustedParms[parmCounter] = serializer.Deserialize(parameters[parmCounter], parameter.ParameterType); else adjustedParms[parmCounter] = SerializationUtils.DeSerializeObject(parameters[parmCounter], parameter.ParameterType); parmCounter++; } Result = MI.Invoke(target, adjustedParms); return Result; } The code basically uses Reflection to loop through all the parameters available on the method and tries to assign the parameters from RouteData, QueryString or POST variables. The parameters are converted into their appropriate types and then used to eventually make a Reflection based method call. What’s sweet is that the RouteData retrieval is just another option for dealing with the inbound data in this scenario and it adds exactly two lines of code plus the code to retrieve the MethodName I showed previously – a seriously low impact addition that adds a lot of extra value to this endpoint callback processing implementation. Debugging your Routes If you create a lot of routes it’s easy to run into Route conflicts where multiple routes have the same path and overlap with each other. This can be difficult to debug especially if you are using automatically generated routes like the routes created by CallbackHandlerRouteHandler.RegisterRoutes. Luckily there’s a tool that can help you out with this nicely. Phill Haack created a RouteDebugging tool you can download and add to your project. The easiest way to do this is to grab and add this to your project is to use NuGet (Add Library Package from your Project’s Reference Nodes):   which adds a RouteDebug assembly to your project. Once installed you can easily debug your routes with this simple line of code which needs to be installed at application startup:protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { CallbackHandlerRouteHandler.RegisterRoutes<StockService>(RouteTable.Routes); // Debug your routes RouteDebug.RouteDebugger.RewriteRoutesForTesting(RouteTable.Routes); } Any routed URL then displays something like this: The screen shows you your current route data and all the routes that are mapped along with a flag that displays which route was actually matched. This is useful – if you have any overlap of routes you will be able to see which routes are triggered – the first one in the sequence wins. This tool has saved my ass on a few occasions – and with NuGet now it’s easy to add it to your project in a few seconds and then remove it when you’re done. Routing Around Custom routing seems slightly complicated on first blush due to its disconnected components of RouteHandler, route registration and mapping of custom handlers. But once you understand the relationship between a RouteHandler, the RouteData and how to pass it to a handler, utilizing of Routing becomes a lot easier as you can easily pass context from the registration to the RouteHandler and through to the HttpHandler. The most important thing to understand when building custom routing solutions is to figure out how to map URLs in such a way that the handler can figure out all the pieces it needs to process the request. This can be via URL routing parameters and as I did in my example by passing additional context information as part of the RouteHandler instance that provides the proper execution context. In my case this ‘context’ was the method name, but it could be an actual static value like an enum identifying an operation or category in an application. Basically user supplied data comes in through the url and static application internal data can be passed via RouteHandler property values. Routing can make your application URLs easier to read by non-techie types regardless of whether you’re building Service type or REST applications, or full on Web interfaces. Routing in ASP.NET 4.0 makes it possible to create just about any extensionless URLs you can dream up and custom RouteHanmdler References Sample ProjectIncludes the sample CallbackHandler service discussed here along with compiled versionsof the Westwind.Web and Westwind.Utilities assemblies.  (requires .NET 4.0/VS 2010) West Wind Web Toolkit includes full implementation of CallbackHandler and the Routing Handler West Wind Web Toolkit Source CodeContains the full source code to the Westwind.Web and Westwind.Utilities assemblies usedin these samples. Includes the source described in the post.(Latest build in the Subversion Repository) CallbackHandler Source(Relevant code to this article tree in Westwind.Web assembly) JSONView FireFoxPluginA simple FireFox Plugin to easily view JSON data natively in FireFox.For IE you can use a registry hack to display JSON as raw text.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in ASP.NET  AJAX  HTTP  

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• When is a SQL function not a function?

  - by Rob Farley

  Should SQL Server even have functions? (Oh yeah – this is a T-SQL Tuesday post, hosted this month by Brad Schulz) Functions serve an important part of programming, in almost any language. A function is a piece of code that is designed to return something, as opposed to a piece of code which isn’t designed to return anything (which is known as a procedure). SQL Server is no different. You can call stored procedures, even from within other stored procedures, and you can call functions and use these in other queries. Stored procedures might query something, and therefore ‘return data’, but a function in SQL is considered to have the type of the thing returned, and can be used accordingly in queries. Consider the internal GETDATE() function. SELECT GETDATE(), SomeDatetimeColumn FROM dbo.SomeTable; There’s no logical difference between the field that is being returned by the function and the field that’s being returned by the table column. Both are the datetime field – if you didn’t have inside knowledge, you wouldn’t necessarily be able to tell which was which. And so as developers, we find ourselves wanting to create functions that return all kinds of things – functions which look up values based on codes, functions which do string manipulation, and so on. But it’s rubbish. Ok, it’s not all rubbish, but it mostly is. And this isn’t even considering the SARGability impact. It’s far more significant than that. (When I say the SARGability aspect, I mean “because you’re unlikely to have an index on the result of some function that’s applied to a column, so try to invert the function and query the column in an unchanged manner”) I’m going to consider the three main types of user-defined functions in SQL Server: Scalar Inline Table-Valued Multi-statement Table-Valued I could also look at user-defined CLR functions, including aggregate functions, but not today. I figure that most people don’t tend to get around to doing CLR functions, and I’m going to focus on the T-SQL-based user-defined functions. Most people split these types of function up into two types. So do I. Except that most people pick them based on ‘scalar or table-valued’. I’d rather go with ‘inline or not’. If it’s not inline, it’s rubbish. It really is. Let’s start by considering the two kinds of table-valued function, and compare them. These functions are going to return the sales for a particular salesperson in a particular year, from the AdventureWorks database. CREATE FUNCTION dbo.FetchSales_inline(@salespersonid int, @orderyear int) RETURNS TABLE AS  RETURN (     SELECT e.LoginID as EmployeeLogin, o.OrderDate, o.SalesOrderID     FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader AS o     LEFT JOIN HumanResources.Employee AS e     ON e.EmployeeID = o.SalesPersonID     WHERE o.SalesPersonID = @salespersonid     AND o.OrderDate >= DATEADD(year,@orderyear-2000,'20000101')     AND o.OrderDate < DATEADD(year,@orderyear-2000+1,'20000101') ) ; GO CREATE FUNCTION dbo.FetchSales_multi(@salespersonid int, @orderyear int) RETURNS @results TABLE (     EmployeeLogin nvarchar(512),     OrderDate datetime,     SalesOrderID int     ) AS BEGIN     INSERT @results (EmployeeLogin, OrderDate, SalesOrderID)     SELECT e.LoginID, o.OrderDate, o.SalesOrderID     FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader AS o     LEFT JOIN HumanResources.Employee AS e     ON e.EmployeeID = o.SalesPersonID     WHERE o.SalesPersonID = @salespersonid     AND o.OrderDate >= DATEADD(year,@orderyear-2000,'20000101')     AND o.OrderDate < DATEADD(year,@orderyear-2000+1,'20000101')     ;     RETURN END ; GO You’ll notice that I’m being nice and responsible with the use of the DATEADD function, so that I have SARGability on the OrderDate filter. Regular readers will be hoping I’ll show what’s going on in the execution plans here. Here I’ve run two SELECT * queries with the “Show Actual Execution Plan” option turned on. Notice that the ‘Query cost’ of the multi-statement version is just 2% of the ‘Batch cost’. But also notice there’s trickery going on. And it’s nothing to do with that extra index that I have on the OrderDate column. Trickery. Look at it – clearly, the first plan is showing us what’s going on inside the function, but the second one isn’t. The second one is blindly running the function, and then scanning the results. There’s a Sequence operator which is calling the TVF operator, and then calling a Table Scan to get the results of that function for the SELECT operator. But surely it still has to do all the work that the first one is doing... To see what’s actually going on, let’s look at the Estimated plan. Now, we see the same plans (almost) that we saw in the Actuals, but we have an extra one – the one that was used for the TVF. Here’s where we see the inner workings of it. You’ll probably recognise the right-hand side of the TVF’s plan as looking very similar to the first plan – but it’s now being called by a stack of other operators, including an INSERT statement to be able to populate the table variable that the multi-statement TVF requires. And the cost of the TVF is 57% of the batch! But it gets worse. Let’s consider what happens if we don’t need all the columns. We’ll leave out the EmployeeLogin column. Here, we see that the inline function call has been simplified down. It doesn’t need the Employee table. The join is redundant and has been eliminated from the plan, making it even cheaper. But the multi-statement plan runs the whole thing as before, only removing the extra column when the Table Scan is performed. A multi-statement function is a lot more powerful than an inline one. An inline function can only be the result of a single sub-query. It’s essentially the same as a parameterised view, because views demonstrate this same behaviour of extracting the definition of the view and using it in the outer query. A multi-statement function is clearly more powerful because it can contain far more complex logic. But a multi-statement function isn’t really a function at all. It’s a stored procedure. It’s wrapped up like a function, but behaves like a stored procedure. It would be completely unreasonable to expect that a stored procedure could be simplified down to recognise that not all the columns might be needed, but yet this is part of the pain associated with this procedural function situation. The biggest clue that a multi-statement function is more like a stored procedure than a function is the “BEGIN” and “END” statements that surround the code. If you try to create a multi-statement function without these statements, you’ll get an error – they are very much required. When I used to present on this kind of thing, I even used to call it “The Dangers of BEGIN and END”, and yes, I’ve written about this type of thing before in a similarly-named post over at my old blog. Now how about scalar functions... Suppose we wanted a scalar function to return the count of these. CREATE FUNCTION dbo.FetchSales_scalar(@salespersonid int, @orderyear int) RETURNS int AS BEGIN     RETURN (         SELECT COUNT(*)         FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader AS o         LEFT JOIN HumanResources.Employee AS e         ON e.EmployeeID = o.SalesPersonID         WHERE o.SalesPersonID = @salespersonid         AND o.OrderDate >= DATEADD(year,@orderyear-2000,'20000101')         AND o.OrderDate < DATEADD(year,@orderyear-2000+1,'20000101')     ); END ; GO Notice the evil words? They’re required. Try to remove them, you just get an error. That’s right – any scalar function is procedural, despite the fact that you wrap up a sub-query inside that RETURN statement. It’s as ugly as anything. Hopefully this will change in future versions. Let’s have a look at how this is reflected in an execution plan. Here’s a query, its Actual plan, and its Estimated plan: SELECT e.LoginID, y.year, dbo.FetchSales_scalar(p.SalesPersonID, y.year) AS NumSales FROM (VALUES (2001),(2002),(2003),(2004)) AS y (year) CROSS JOIN Sales.SalesPerson AS p LEFT JOIN HumanResources.Employee AS e ON e.EmployeeID = p.SalesPersonID; We see here that the cost of the scalar function is about twice that of the outer query. Nicely, the query optimizer has worked out that it doesn’t need the Employee table, but that’s a bit of a red herring here. There’s actually something way more significant going on. If I look at the properties of that UDF operator, it tells me that the Estimated Subtree Cost is 0.337999. If I just run the query SELECT dbo.FetchSales_scalar(281,2003); we see that the UDF cost is still unchanged. You see, this 0.0337999 is the cost of running the scalar function ONCE. But when we ran that query with the CROSS JOIN in it, we returned quite a few rows. 68 in fact. Could’ve been a lot more, if we’d had more salespeople or more years. And so we come to the biggest problem. This procedure (I don’t want to call it a function) is getting called 68 times – each one between twice as expensive as the outer query. And because it’s calling it in a separate context, there is even more overhead that I haven’t considered here. The cheek of it, to say that the Compute Scalar operator here costs 0%! I know a number of IT projects that could’ve used that kind of costing method, but that’s another story that I’m not going to go into here. Let’s look at a better way. Suppose our scalar function had been implemented as an inline one. Then it could have been expanded out like a sub-query. It could’ve run something like this: SELECT e.LoginID, y.year, (SELECT COUNT(*)     FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader AS o     LEFT JOIN HumanResources.Employee AS e     ON e.EmployeeID = o.SalesPersonID     WHERE o.SalesPersonID = p.SalesPersonID     AND o.OrderDate >= DATEADD(year,y.year-2000,'20000101')     AND o.OrderDate < DATEADD(year,y.year-2000+1,'20000101')     ) AS NumSales FROM (VALUES (2001),(2002),(2003),(2004)) AS y (year) CROSS JOIN Sales.SalesPerson AS p LEFT JOIN HumanResources.Employee AS e ON e.EmployeeID = p.SalesPersonID; Don’t worry too much about the Scan of the SalesOrderHeader underneath a Nested Loop. If you remember from plenty of other posts on the matter, execution plans don’t push the data through. That Scan only runs once. The Index Spool sucks the data out of it and populates a structure that is used to feed the Stream Aggregate. The Index Spool operator gets called 68 times, but the Scan only once (the Number of Executions property demonstrates this). Here, the Query Optimizer has a full picture of what’s being asked, and can make the appropriate decision about how it accesses the data. It can simplify it down properly. To get this kind of behaviour from a function, we need it to be inline. But without inline scalar functions, we need to make our function be table-valued. Luckily, that’s ok. CREATE FUNCTION dbo.FetchSales_inline2(@salespersonid int, @orderyear int) RETURNS table AS RETURN (SELECT COUNT(*) as NumSales     FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader AS o     LEFT JOIN HumanResources.Employee AS e     ON e.EmployeeID = o.SalesPersonID     WHERE o.SalesPersonID = @salespersonid     AND o.OrderDate >= DATEADD(year,@orderyear-2000,'20000101')     AND o.OrderDate < DATEADD(year,@orderyear-2000+1,'20000101') ); GO But we can’t use this as a scalar. Instead, we need to use it with the APPLY operator. SELECT e.LoginID, y.year, n.NumSales FROM (VALUES (2001),(2002),(2003),(2004)) AS y (year) CROSS JOIN Sales.SalesPerson AS p LEFT JOIN HumanResources.Employee AS e ON e.EmployeeID = p.SalesPersonID OUTER APPLY dbo.FetchSales_inline2(p.SalesPersonID, y.year) AS n; And now, we get the plan that we want for this query. All we’ve done is tell the function that it’s returning a table instead of a single value, and removed the BEGIN and END statements. We’ve had to name the column being returned, but what we’ve gained is an actual inline simplifiable function. And if we wanted it to return multiple columns, it could do that too. I really consider this function to be superior to the scalar function in every way. It does need to be handled differently in the outer query, but in many ways it’s a more elegant method there too. The function calls can be put amongst the FROM clause, where they can then be used in the WHERE or GROUP BY clauses without fear of calling the function multiple times (another horrible side effect of functions). So please. If you see BEGIN and END in a function, remember it’s not really a function, it’s a procedure. And then fix it. @rob_farley

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• Windows Phone 7: Building a simple dictionary web client

  - by TechTwaddle

  Like I mentioned in this post a while back, I came across a dictionary web service called Aonaware that serves up word definitions from various dictionaries and is really easy to use. The services page on their website, http://services.aonaware.com/DictService/DictService.asmx, lists all the operations that are supported by the dictionary service. Here they are, Word Dictionary Web Service The following operations are supported. For a formal definition, please review the Service Description. Define Define given word, returning definitions from all dictionaries DefineInDict Define given word, returning definitions from specified dictionary DictionaryInfo Show information about the specified dictionary DictionaryList Returns a list of available dictionaries DictionaryListExtended Returns a list of advanced dictionaries (e.g. translating dictionaries) Match Look for matching words in all dictionaries using the given strategy MatchInDict Look for matching words in the specified dictionary using the given strategy ServerInfo Show remote server information StrategyList Return list of all available strategies on the server Follow the links above to get more information on each API. In this post we will be building a simple windows phone 7 client which uses this service to get word definitions for words entered by the user. The application will also allow the user to select a dictionary from all the available ones and look up the word definition in that dictionary. So of all the apis above we will be using only two, DictionaryList() to get a list of all supported dictionaries and DefineInDict() to get the word definition from a particular dictionary. Before we get started, a note to you all; I would have liked to implement this application using concepts from data binding, item templates, data templates etc. I have a basic understanding of what they are but, being a beginner, I am not very comfortable with those topics yet so I didn’t use them. I thought I’ll get this version out of the way and maybe in the next version I could give those a try. A somewhat scary mock-up of the what the final application will look like, Select Dictionary is a list picker control from the silverlight toolkit (you need to download and install the toolkit if you haven’t already). Below it is a textbox where the user can enter words to look up and a button beside it to fetch the word definition when clicked. Finally we have a textblock which occupies the remaining area and displays the word definition from the selected dictionary. Create a silverlight application for windows phone 7, AonawareDictionaryClient, and add references to the silverlight toolkit and the web service. From the solution explorer right on References and select Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Toolkit from under the .NET tab, Next, add a reference to the web service. Again right click on References and this time select Add Service Reference In the resulting dialog paste the service url in the Address field and press go, (url –> http://services.aonaware.com/DictService/DictService.asmx) once the service is discovered, provide a name for the NameSpace, in this case I’ve called it AonawareDictionaryService. Press OK. You can now use the classes and functions that are generated in the AonawareDictionaryClient.AonawareDictionaryService namespace. Let’s get the UI done now. In MainPage.xaml add a namespace declaration to use the toolkit controls, xmlns:toolkit="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Phone.Controls;assembly=Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Toolkit" the content of LayoutRoot is changed as follows, (sorry, no syntax highlighting in this post) <StackPanel x:Name="TitlePanel" Grid.Row="0" Margin="12,5,0,5">     <TextBlock x:Name="ApplicationTitle" Text="AONAWARE DICTIONARY CLIENT" Style="{StaticResource PhoneTextNormalStyle}"/>     <!--<TextBlock x:Name="PageTitle" Text="page name" Margin="9,-7,0,0" Style="{StaticResource PhoneTextTitle1Style}"/>--> </StackPanel> <!--ContentPanel - place additional content here--> <Grid x:Name="ContentPanel" Grid.Row="1" Margin="12,0,12,0">     <Grid.RowDefinitions>         <RowDefinition Height="Auto"/>         <RowDefinition Height="Auto"/>         <RowDefinition Height="*"/>     </Grid.RowDefinitions>     <toolkit:ListPicker Grid.Column="1" x:Name="listPickerDictionaryList"                         Header="Select Dictionary :">     </toolkit:ListPicker>     <Grid Grid.Row="1" Margin="0,5,0,0">         <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>             <ColumnDefinition Width="*"/>             <ColumnDefinition Width="Auto" />         </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>         <TextBox x:Name="txtboxInputWord" Grid.Column="0" GotFocus="OnTextboxInputWordGotFocus" />         <Button x:Name="btnGo" Grid.Column="1" Click="OnButtonGoClick" >             <Button.Content>                 <Image Source="/images/button-go.png"/>             </Button.Content>         </Button>     </Grid>     <ScrollViewer Grid.Row="2" x:Name="scrollViewer">         <TextBlock  Margin="12,5,12,5"  x:Name="txtBlockWordMeaning" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch"                    VerticalAlignment="Stretch" TextWrapping="Wrap"                    FontSize="26" />     </ScrollViewer> </Grid> I have commented out the PageTitle as it occupies too much valuable space, and the ContentPanel is changed to contain three rows. First row contains the list picker control, second row contains the textbox and the button, and the third row contains a textblock within a scroll viewer. The designer will now be showing the final ui, Now go to MainPage.xaml.cs, and add the following namespace declarations, using Microsoft.Phone.Controls; using AonawareDictionaryClient.AonawareDictionaryService; using System.IO.IsolatedStorage; A class called DictServiceSoapClient would have been created for you in the background when you added a reference to the web service. This class functions as a wrapper to the services exported by the web service. All the web service functions that we saw at the start can be access through this class, or more precisely through an object of this class. Create a data member of type DictServiceSoapClient in the Mainpage class, and a function which initializes it, DictServiceSoapClient DictSvcClient = null; private DictServiceSoapClient GetDictServiceSoapClient() {     if (null == DictSvcClient)     {         DictSvcClient = new DictServiceSoapClient();     }     return DictSvcClient; } We have two major tasks remaining. First, when the application loads we need to populate the list picker with all the supported dictionaries and second, when the user enters a word and clicks on the arrow button we need to fetch the word’s meaning. Populating the List Picker In the OnNavigatingTo event of the MainPage, we call the DictionaryList() api. This can also be done in the OnLoading event handler of the MainPage; not sure if one has an advantage over the other. Here’s the code for OnNavigatedTo, protected override void OnNavigatedTo(System.Windows.Navigation.NavigationEventArgs e) {     DictServiceSoapClient client = GetDictServiceSoapClient();     client.DictionaryListCompleted += new EventHandler<DictionaryListCompletedEventArgs>(OnGetDictionaryListCompleted);     client.DictionaryListAsync();     base.OnNavigatedTo(e); } Windows Phone 7 supports only async calls to web services. When we added a reference to the dictionary service, asynchronous versions of all the functions were generated automatically. So in the above function we register a handler to the DictionaryListCompleted event which will occur when the call to DictionaryList() gets a response from the server. Then we call the DictionaryListAsynch() function which is the async version of the DictionaryList() api. The result of this api will be sent to the handler OnGetDictionaryListCompleted(), void OnGetDictionaryListCompleted(object sender, DictionaryListCompletedEventArgs e) {     IsolatedStorageSettings settings = IsolatedStorageSettings.ApplicationSettings;     Dictionary[] listOfDictionaries;     if (e.Error == null)     {         listOfDictionaries = e.Result;         PopulateListPicker(listOfDictionaries, settings);     }     else if (settings.Contains("SavedDictionaryList"))     {         listOfDictionaries = settings["SavedDictionaryList"] as Dictionary[];         PopulateListPicker(listOfDictionaries, settings);     }     else     {         MessageBoxResult res = MessageBox.Show("An error occured while retrieving dictionary list, do you want to try again?", "Error", MessageBoxButton.OKCancel);         if (MessageBoxResult.OK == res)         {             GetDictServiceSoapClient().DictionaryListAsync();         }     }     settings.Save(); } I have used IsolatedStorageSettings to store a few things; the entire dictionary list and the dictionary that is selected when the user exits the application, so that the next time when the user starts the application the current dictionary is set to the last selected value. First we check if the api returned any error, if the error object is null e.Result will contain the list (actually array) of Dictionary type objects. If there was an error, we check the isolated storage settings to see if there is a dictionary list stored from a previous instance of the application and if so, we populate the list picker based on this saved list. Note that in this case there are chances that the dictionary list might be out of date if there have been changes on the server. Finally, if none of these cases are true, we display an error message to the user and try to fetch the list again. PopulateListPicker() is passed the array of Dictionary objects and the settings object as well, void PopulateListPicker(Dictionary[] listOfDictionaries, IsolatedStorageSettings settings) {     listPickerDictionaryList.Items.Clear();     foreach (Dictionary dictionary in listOfDictionaries)     {         listPickerDictionaryList.Items.Add(dictionary.Name);     }     settings["SavedDictionaryList"] = listOfDictionaries;     string savedDictionaryName;     if (settings.Contains("SavedDictionary"))     {         savedDictionaryName = settings["SavedDictionary"] as string;     }     else     {         savedDictionaryName = "WordNet (r) 2.0"; //default dictionary, wordnet     }     foreach (string dictName in listPickerDictionaryList.Items)     {         if (dictName == savedDictionaryName)         {             listPickerDictionaryList.SelectedItem = dictName;             break;         }     }     settings["SavedDictionary"] = listPickerDictionaryList.SelectedItem as string; } We first clear all the items from the list picker, add the dictionary names from the array and then create a key in the settings called SavedDictionaryList and store the dictionary list in it. We then check if there is saved dictionary available from a previous instance, if there is, we set it as the selected item in the list picker. And if not, we set “WordNet ® 2.0” as the default dictionary. Before returning, we save the selected dictionary in the “SavedDictionary” key of the isolated storage settings. Fetching word definitions Getting this part done is very similar to the above code. We get the input word from the textbox, call into DefineInDictAsync() to fetch the definition and when DefineInDictAsync completes, we get the result and display it in the textblock. Here is the handler for the button click, private void OnButtonGoClick(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) {     txtBlockWordMeaning.Text = "Please wait..";     IsolatedStorageSettings settings = IsolatedStorageSettings.ApplicationSettings;     if (txtboxInputWord.Text.Trim().Length <= 0)     {         MessageBox.Show("Please enter a word in the textbox and press 'Go'");     }     else     {         Dictionary[] listOfDictionaries = settings["SavedDictionaryList"] as Dictionary[];         string selectedDictionary = listPickerDictionaryList.SelectedItem.ToString();         string dictId = "wn"; //default dictionary is wordnet (wn is the dict id)         foreach (Dictionary dict in listOfDictionaries)         {             if (dict.Name == selectedDictionary)             {                 dictId = dict.Id;                 break;             }         }         DictServiceSoapClient client = GetDictServiceSoapClient();         client.DefineInDictCompleted += new EventHandler<DefineInDictCompletedEventArgs>(OnDefineInDictCompleted);         client.DefineInDictAsync(dictId, txtboxInputWord.Text.Trim());     } } We validate the input and then select the dictionary id based on the currently selected dictionary. We need the dictionary id because the api DefineInDict() expects the dictionary identifier and not the dictionary name. We could very well have stored the dictionary id in isolated storage settings too. Again, same as before, we register a event handler for the DefineInDictCompleted event and call the DefineInDictAsync() method passing in the dictionary id and the input word. void OnDefineInDictCompleted(object sender, DefineInDictCompletedEventArgs e) {     WordDefinition wd = e.Result;     scrollViewer.ScrollToVerticalOffset(0.0f);     if (wd.Definitions.Length == 0)     {         txtBlockWordMeaning.Text = String.Format("No definitions were found for '{0}' in '{1}'", txtboxInputWord.Text.Trim(), listPickerDictionaryList.SelectedItem.ToString().Trim());     }     else     {         foreach (Definition def in wd.Definitions)         {             string str = def.WordDefinition;             str = str.Replace("  ", " "); //some formatting             txtBlockWordMeaning.Text = str;         }     } } When the api completes, e.Result will contain a WordDefnition object. This class is also generated in the background while adding the service reference. We check the word definitions within this class to see if any results were returned, if not, we display a message to the user in the textblock. If a definition was found the text on the textblock is set to display the definition of the word. Adding final touches, we now need to save the current dictionary when the application exits. A small but useful thing is selecting the entire word in the input textbox when the user selects it. This makes sure that if the user has looked up a definition for a really long word, he doesn’t have to press ‘clear’ too many times to enter the next word, protected override void OnNavigatingFrom(System.Windows.Navigation.NavigatingCancelEventArgs e) {     IsolatedStorageSettings settings = IsolatedStorageSettings.ApplicationSettings;     settings["SavedDictionary"] = listPickerDictionaryList.SelectedItem as string;     settings.Save();     base.OnNavigatingFrom(e); } private void OnTextboxInputWordGotFocus(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) {     TextBox txtbox = sender as TextBox;     if (txtbox.Text.Trim().Length > 0)     {         txtbox.SelectionStart = 0;         txtbox.SelectionLength = txtbox.Text.Length;     } } OnNavigatingFrom() is called whenever you navigate away from the MainPage, since our application contains only one page that would mean that it is exiting. I leave you with a short video of the application in action, but before that if you have any suggestions on how to make the code better and improve it please do leave a comment. Until next time…

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• Log message Request and Response in ASP.NET WebAPI

  - by Fredrik N

  By logging both incoming and outgoing messages for services can be useful in many scenarios, such as debugging, tracing, inspection and helping customers with request problems etc.  I have a customer that need to have both incoming and outgoing messages to be logged. They use the information to see strange behaviors and also to help customers when they call in  for help (They can by looking in the log see if the customers sends in data in a wrong or strange way).   Concerns Most loggings in applications are cross-cutting concerns and should not be  a core concern for developers. Logging messages like this:   // GET api/values/5 public string Get(int id) { //Cross-cutting concerns Log(string.Format("Request: GET api/values/{0}", id)); //Core-concern var response = DoSomething(); //Cross-cutting concerns Log(string.Format("Reponse: GET api/values/{0}\r\n{1}", id, response)); return response; } .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; } .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; } will only result in duplication of code, and unnecessarily concerns for the developers to be aware of, if they miss adding the logging code, no logging will take place. Developers should focus on the core-concern, not the cross-cutting concerns. By just focus on the core-concern the above code will look like this: // GET api/values/5 public string Get(int id) { return DoSomething(); } .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; } The logging should then be placed somewhere else so the developers doesn’t need to focus care about the cross-concern. Using Message Handler for logging There are different ways we could place the cross-cutting concern of logging message when using WebAPI. We can for example create a custom ApiController and override the ApiController’s ExecutingAsync method, or add a ActionFilter, or use a Message Handler. The disadvantage with custom ApiController is that we need to make sure we inherit from it, the disadvantage of ActionFilter, is that we need to add the filter to the controllers, both will modify our ApiControllers. By using a Message Handler we don’t need to do any changes to our ApiControllers. So the best suitable place to add our logging would be in a custom Message Handler. A Message Handler will be used before the HttpControllerDispatcher (The part in the WepAPI pipe-line that make sure the right controller is used and called etc). Note: You can read more about message handlers here, it will give you a good understanding of the WebApi pipe-line. To create a Message Handle we can inherit from the DelegatingHandler class and override the SendAsync method: public class MessageHandler : DelegatingHandler { protected override async Task<HttpResponseMessage> SendAsync(HttpRequestMessage request, CancellationToken cancellationToken) { return base.SendAsync(request, cancellationToken); } } .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; }   If we skip the call to the base.SendAsync our ApiController’s methods will never be invoked, nor other Message Handlers. Everything placed before base.SendAsync will be called before the HttpControllerDispatcher (before WebAPI will take a look at the request which controller and method it should be invoke), everything after the base.SendAsync, will be executed after our ApiController method has returned a response. So a message handle will be a perfect place to add cross-cutting concerns such as logging. To get the content of our response within a Message Handler we can use the request argument of the SendAsync method. The request argument is of type HttpRequestMessage and has a Content property (Content is of type HttpContent. The HttpContent has several method that can be used to read the incoming message, such as ReadAsStreamAsync, ReadAsByteArrayAsync and ReadAsStringAsync etc. Something to be aware of is what will happen when we read from the HttpContent. When we read from the HttpContent, we read from a stream, once we read from it, we can’t be read from it again. So if we read from the Stream before the base.SendAsync, the next coming Message Handlers and the HttpControllerDispatcher can’t read from the Stream because it’s already read, so our ApiControllers methods will never be invoked etc. The only way to make sure we can do repeatable reads from the HttpContent is to copy the content into a buffer, and then read from that buffer. This can be done by using the HttpContent’s LoadIntoBufferAsync method. If we make a call to the LoadIntoBufferAsync method before the base.SendAsync, the incoming stream will be read in to a byte array, and then other HttpContent read operations will read from that buffer if it’s exists instead directly form the stream. There is one method on the HttpContent that will internally make a call to the  LoadIntoBufferAsync for us, and that is the ReadAsByteArrayAsync. This is the method we will use to read from the incoming and outgoing message. public abstract class MessageHandler : DelegatingHandler { protected override async Task<HttpResponseMessage> SendAsync(HttpRequestMessage request, CancellationToken cancellationToken) { var requestMessage = await request.Content.ReadAsByteArrayAsync(); var response = await base.SendAsync(request, cancellationToken); var responseMessage = await response.Content.ReadAsByteArrayAsync(); return response; } } .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; } The above code will read the content of the incoming message and then call the SendAsync and after that read from the content of the response message. The following code will add more logic such as creating a correlation id to combine the request with the response, and create a log entry etc: public abstract class MessageHandler : DelegatingHandler { protected override async Task<HttpResponseMessage> SendAsync(HttpRequestMessage request, CancellationToken cancellationToken) { var corrId = string.Format("{0}{1}", DateTime.Now.Ticks, Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId); var requestInfo = string.Format("{0} {1}", request.Method, request.RequestUri); var requestMessage = await request.Content.ReadAsByteArrayAsync(); await IncommingMessageAsync(corrId, requestInfo, requestMessage); var response = await base.SendAsync(request, cancellationToken); var responseMessage = await response.Content.ReadAsByteArrayAsync(); await OutgoingMessageAsync(corrId, requestInfo, responseMessage); return response; } protected abstract Task IncommingMessageAsync(string correlationId, string requestInfo, byte[] message); protected abstract Task OutgoingMessageAsync(string correlationId, string requestInfo, byte[] message); } public class MessageLoggingHandler : MessageHandler { protected override async Task IncommingMessageAsync(string correlationId, string requestInfo, byte[] message) { await Task.Run(() => Debug.WriteLine(string.Format("{0} - Request: {1}\r\n{2}", correlationId, requestInfo, Encoding.UTF8.GetString(message)))); } protected override async Task OutgoingMessageAsync(string correlationId, string requestInfo, byte[] message) { await Task.Run(() => Debug.WriteLine(string.Format("{0} - Response: {1}\r\n{2}", correlationId, requestInfo, Encoding.UTF8.GetString(message)))); } } .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; }   The code above will show the following in the Visual Studio output window when the “api/values” service (One standard controller added by the default WepAPI template) is requested with a Get http method : 6347483479959544375 - Request: GET http://localhost:3208/api/values 6347483479959544375 - Response: GET http://localhost:3208/api/values ["value1","value2"] .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; }   Register a Message Handler To register a Message handler we can use the Add method of the GlobalConfiguration.Configration.MessageHandlers in for example Global.asax: public class WebApiApplication : System.Web.HttpApplication { protected void Application_Start() { GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.MessageHandlers.Add(new MessageLoggingHandler()); ... } } .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; }   Summary By using a Message Handler we can easily remove cross-cutting concerns like logging from our controllers. You can also find the source code used in this blog post on ForkCan.com, feel free to make a fork or add comments, such as making the code better etc. Feel free to follow me on twitter @fredrikn if you want to know when I will write other blog posts etc.

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• 12c - Utl_Call_Stack...

  - by noreply(at)blogger.com (Thomas Kyte)

  Over the next couple of months, I'll be writing about some cool new little features of Oracle Database 12c - things that might not make the front page of Oracle.com.  I'm going to start with a new package - UTL_CALL_STACK.In the past, developers have had access to three functions to try to figure out "where the heck am I in my code", they were:dbms_utility.format_call_stackdbms_utility.format_error_backtracedbms_utility.format_error_stackNow these routines, while useful, were of somewhat limited use.  Let's look at the format_call_stack routine for a reason why.  Here is a procedure that will just print out the current call stack for us:ops$tkyte%ORA12CR1> create or replace  2  procedure Print_Call_Stack  3  is  4  begin  5    DBMS_Output.Put_Line(DBMS_Utility.Format_Call_Stack());  6  end;  7  /Procedure created.Now, if we have a package - with nested functions and even duplicated function names:ops$tkyte%ORA12CR1> create or replace  2  package body Pkg is  3    procedure p  4    is  5      procedure q  6      is  7        procedure r  8        is  9          procedure p is 10          begin 11            Print_Call_Stack(); 12            raise program_error; 13          end p; 14        begin 15          p(); 16        end r; 17      begin 18        r(); 19      end q; 20    begin 21      q(); 22    end p; 23  end Pkg; 24  /Package body created.When we execute the procedure PKG.P - we'll see as a result:ops$tkyte%ORA12CR1> exec pkg.p----- PL/SQL Call Stack -----  object      line  object  handle    number  name0x6e891528         4  procedure OPS$TKYTE.PRINT_CALL_STACK0x6ec4a7c0        10  package body OPS$TKYTE.PKG0x6ec4a7c0        14  package body OPS$TKYTE.PKG0x6ec4a7c0        17  package body OPS$TKYTE.PKG0x6ec4a7c0        20  package body OPS$TKYTE.PKG0x76439070         1  anonymous blockBEGIN pkg.p; END;*ERROR at line 1:ORA-06501: PL/SQL: program errorORA-06512: at "OPS$TKYTE.PKG", line 11ORA-06512: at "OPS$TKYTE.PKG", line 14ORA-06512: at "OPS$TKYTE.PKG", line 17ORA-06512: at "OPS$TKYTE.PKG", line 20ORA-06512: at line 1The bit in red above is the output from format_call_stack whereas the bit in black is the error message returned to the client application (it would also be available to you via the format_error_backtrace API call). As you can see - it contains useful information but to use it you would need to parse it - and that can be trickier than it seems.  The format of those strings is not set in stone, they have changed over the years (I wrote the "who_am_i", "who_called_me" functions, I did that by parsing these strings - trust me, they change over time!).Starting in 12c - we'll have structured access to the call stack and a series of API calls to interrogate this structure.  I'm going to rewrite the print_call_stack function as follows:ops$tkyte%ORA12CR1> create or replace 2  procedure Print_Call_Stack  3  as  4    Depth pls_integer := UTL_Call_Stack.Dynamic_Depth();  5    6    procedure headers  7    is  8    begin  9        dbms_output.put_line( 'Lexical   Depth   Line    Name' ); 10        dbms_output.put_line( 'Depth             Number      ' ); 11        dbms_output.put_line( '-------   -----   ----    ----' ); 12    end headers; 13    procedure print 14    is 15    begin 16        headers; 17        for j in reverse 1..Depth loop 18          DBMS_Output.Put_Line( 19            rpad( utl_call_stack.lexical_depth(j), 10 ) || 20                    rpad( j, 7) || 21            rpad( To_Char(UTL_Call_Stack.Unit_Line(j), '99'), 9 ) || 22            UTL_Call_Stack.Concatenate_Subprogram 23                       (UTL_Call_Stack.Subprogram(j))); 24        end loop; 25    end; 26  begin 27    print; 28  end; 29  /Here we are able to figure out what 'depth' we are in the code (utl_call_stack.dynamic_depth) and then walk up the stack using a loop.  We will print out the lexical_depth, along with the line number within the unit we were executing plus - the unit name.  And not just any unit name, but the fully qualified, all of the way down to the subprogram name within a package.  Not only that - but down to the subprogram name within a subprogram name within a subprogram name.  For example - running the PKG.P procedure again results in:ops$tkyte%ORA12CR1> exec pkg.pLexical   Depth   Line    NameDepth             Number-------   -----   ----    ----1         6       20      PKG.P2         5       17      PKG.P.Q3         4       14      PKG.P.Q.R4         3       10      PKG.P.Q.R.P0         2       26      PRINT_CALL_STACK1         1       17      PRINT_CALL_STACK.PRINTBEGIN pkg.p; END;*ERROR at line 1:ORA-06501: PL/SQL: program errorORA-06512: at "OPS$TKYTE.PKG", line 11ORA-06512: at "OPS$TKYTE.PKG", line 14ORA-06512: at "OPS$TKYTE.PKG", line 17ORA-06512: at "OPS$TKYTE.PKG", line 20ORA-06512: at line 1This time - we get much more than just a line number and a package name as we did previously with format_call_stack.  We not only got the line number and package (unit) name - we got the names of the subprograms - we can see that P called Q called R called P as nested subprograms.  Also note that we can see a 'truer' calling level with the lexical depth, we can see we "stepped" out of the package to call print_call_stack and that in turn called another nested subprogram.This new package will be a nice addition to everyone's error logging packages.  Of course there are other functions in there to get owner names, the edition in effect when the code was executed and more. See UTL_CALL_STACK for all of the details.

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• Nashorn in the Twitterverse, Continued

  - by jlaskey

  After doing the Twitter example, it seemed reasonable to try graphing the result with JavaFX.  At this time the Nashorn project doesn't have an JavaFX shell, so we have to go through some hoops to create an JavaFX application.  I thought showing you some of those hoops might give you some idea about what you can do mixing Nashorn and Java (we'll add a JavaFX shell to the todo list.) First, let's look at the meat of the application.  Here is the repackaged version of the original twitter example. var twitter4j      = Packages.twitter4j; var TwitterFactory = twitter4j.TwitterFactory; var Query          = twitter4j.Query; function getTrendingData() {     var twitter = new TwitterFactory().instance;     var query   = new Query("nashorn OR nashornjs");     query.since("2012-11-21");     query.count = 100;     var data = {};     do {         var result = twitter.search(query);         var tweets = result.tweets;         for each (tweet in tweets) {             var date = tweet.createdAt;             var key = (1900 + date.year) + "/" +                       (1 + date.month) + "/" +                       date.date;             data[key] = (data[key] || 0) + 1;         }     } while (query = result.nextQuery());     return data; } Instead of just printing out tweets, getTrendingData tallies "tweets per date" during the sample period (since "2012-11-21", the date "New Project: Nashorn" was posted.)   getTrendingData then returns the resulting tally object. Next, use JavaFX BarChart to display that data. var javafx         = Packages.javafx; var Stage          = javafx.stage.Stage var Scene          = javafx.scene.Scene; var Group          = javafx.scene.Group; var Chart          = javafx.scene.chart.Chart; var FXCollections  = javafx.collections.FXCollections; var ObservableList = javafx.collections.ObservableList; var CategoryAxis   = javafx.scene.chart.CategoryAxis; var NumberAxis     = javafx.scene.chart.NumberAxis; var BarChart       = javafx.scene.chart.BarChart; var XYChart        = javafx.scene.chart.XYChart; var Series         = XYChart.Series; var Data           = XYChart.Data; function graph(stage, data) {     var root = new Group();     stage.scene = new Scene(root);     var dates = Object.keys(data);     var xAxis = new CategoryAxis();     xAxis.categories = FXCollections.observableArrayList(dates);     var yAxis = new NumberAxis("Tweets", 0.0, 200.0, 50.0);     var series = FXCollections.observableArrayList();     for (var date in data) {         series.add(new Data(date, data[date]));     }     var tweets = new Series("Tweets", series);     var barChartData = FXCollections.observableArrayList(tweets);     var chart = new BarChart(xAxis, yAxis, barChartData, 25.0);     root.children.add(chart); } I should point out that there is a lot of subtlety going on in the background.  For example; stage.scene = new Scene(root) is equivalent to stage.setScene(new Scene(root)). If Nashorn can't find a property (scene), then it searches (via Dynalink) for the Java Beans equivalent (setScene.)  Also note, that Nashorn is magically handling the generic class FXCollections.  Finally,  with the call to observableArrayList(dates), Nashorn is automatically converting the JavaScript array dates to a Java collection.  It really is hard to identify which objects are JavaScript and which are Java.  Does it really matter? Okay, with the meat out of the way, let's talk about the hoops. When working with JavaFX, you start with a main subclass of javafx.application.Application.  This class handles the initialization of the JavaFX libraries and the event processing.  This is what I used for this example; import java.io.IOException; import java.io.InputStream; import java.io.InputStreamReader; import javafx.application.Application; import javafx.stage.Stage; import javax.script.ScriptEngine; import javax.script.ScriptEngineManager; import javax.script.ScriptException; public class TrendingMain extends Application { private static final ScriptEngineManager MANAGER = new ScriptEngineManager(); private final ScriptEngine engine = MANAGER.getEngineByName("nashorn"); private Trending trending; public static void main(String[] args) { launch(args); } @Override public void start(Stage stage) throws Exception { trending = (Trending) load("Trending.js"); trending.start(stage); } @Override public void stop() throws Exception { trending.stop(); } private Object load(String script) throws IOException, ScriptException { try (final InputStream is = TrendingMain.class.getResourceAsStream(script)) { return engine.eval(new InputStreamReader(is, "utf-8")); } } } To initialize Nashorn, we use JSR-223's javax.script.  private static final ScriptEngineManager MANAGER = new ScriptEngineManager(); private final ScriptEngine engine = MANAGER.getEngineByName("nashorn"); This code sets up an instance of the Nashorn engine for evaluating scripts. The  load method reads a script into memory and then gets engine to eval that script.  Note, that load also returns the result of the eval. Now for the fun part.  There are several different approaches we could use to communicate between the Java main and the script.  In this example we'll use a Java interface.  The JavaFX main needs to do at least start and stop, so the following will suffice as an interface; public interface Trending {     public void start(Stage stage) throws Exception;     public void stop() throws Exception; } At the end of the example's script we add; (function newTrending() {     return new Packages.Trending() {         start: function(stage) {             var data = getTrendingData();             graph(stage, data);             stage.show();         },         stop: function() {         }     } })(); which instantiates a new subclass instance of Trending and overrides the start and stop methods.  The result of this function call is what is returned to main via the eval. trending = (Trending) load("Trending.js"); To recap, the script Trending.js contains functions getTrendingData, graph and newTrending, plus the call at the end to newTrending.  Back in the Java code, we cast the result of the eval (call to newTrending) to Trending, thus, we end up with an object that we can then use to call back into the script.  trending.start(stage); Voila. ?

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• Zen and the Art of File and Folder Organization

  - by Mark Virtue

  Is your desk a paragon of neatness, or does it look like a paper-bomb has gone off? If you’ve been putting off getting organized because the task is too huge or daunting, or you don’t know where to start, we’ve got 40 tips to get you on the path to zen mastery of your filing system. For all those readers who would like to get their files and folders organized, or, if they’re already organized, better organized—we have compiled a complete guide to getting organized and staying organized, a comprehensive article that will hopefully cover every possible tip you could want. Signs that Your Computer is Poorly Organized If your computer is a mess, you’re probably already aware of it.  But just in case you’re not, here are some tell-tale signs: Your Desktop has over 40 icons on it “My Documents” contains over 300 files and 60 folders, including MP3s and digital photos You use the Windows’ built-in search facility whenever you need to find a file You can’t find programs in the out-of-control list of programs in your Start Menu You save all your Word documents in one folder, all your spreadsheets in a second folder, etc Any given file that you’re looking for may be in any one of four different sets of folders But before we start, here are some quick notes: We’re going to assume you know what files and folders are, and how to create, save, rename, copy and delete them The organization principles described in this article apply equally to all computer systems.  However, the screenshots here will reflect how things look on Windows (usually Windows 7).  We will also mention some useful features of Windows that can help you get organized. Everyone has their own favorite methodology of organizing and filing, and it’s all too easy to get into “My Way is Better than Your Way” arguments.  The reality is that there is no perfect way of getting things organized.  When I wrote this article, I tried to keep a generalist and objective viewpoint.  I consider myself to be unusually well organized (to the point of obsession, truth be told), and I’ve had 25 years experience in collecting and organizing files on computers.  So I’ve got a lot to say on the subject.  But the tips I have described here are only one way of doing it.  Hopefully some of these tips will work for you too, but please don’t read this as any sort of “right” way to do it. At the end of the article we’ll be asking you, the reader, for your own organization tips. Why Bother Organizing At All? For some, the answer to this question is self-evident. And yet, in this era of powerful desktop search software (the search capabilities built into the Windows Vista and Windows 7 Start Menus, and third-party programs like Google Desktop Search), the question does need to be asked, and answered. I have a friend who puts every file he ever creates, receives or downloads into his My Documents folder and doesn’t bother filing them into subfolders at all.  He relies on the search functionality built into his Windows operating system to help him find whatever he’s looking for.  And he always finds it.  He’s a Search Samurai.  For him, filing is a waste of valuable time that could be spent enjoying life! It’s tempting to follow suit.  On the face of it, why would anyone bother to take the time to organize their hard disk when such excellent search software is available?  Well, if all you ever want to do with the files you own is to locate and open them individually (for listening, editing, etc), then there’s no reason to ever bother doing one scrap of organization.  But consider these common tasks that are not achievable with desktop search software: Find files manually.  Often it’s not convenient, speedy or even possible to utilize your desktop search software to find what you want.  It doesn’t work 100% of the time, or you may not even have it installed.  Sometimes its just plain faster to go straight to the file you want, if you know it’s in a particular sub-folder, rather than trawling through hundreds of search results. Find groups of similar files (e.g. all your “work” files, all the photos of your Europe holiday in 2008, all your music videos, all the MP3s from Dark Side of the Moon, all your letters you wrote to your wife, all your tax returns).  Clever naming of the files will only get you so far.  Sometimes it’s the date the file was created that’s important, other times it’s the file format, and other times it’s the purpose of the file.  How do you name a collection of files so that they’re easy to isolate based on any of the above criteria?  Short answer, you can’t. Move files to a new computer.  It’s time to upgrade your computer.  How do you quickly grab all the files that are important to you?  Or you decide to have two computers now – one for home and one for work.  How do you quickly isolate only the work-related files to move them to the work computer? Synchronize files to other computers.  If you have more than one computer, and you need to mirror some of your files onto the other computer (e.g. your music collection), then you need a way to quickly determine which files are to be synced and which are not.  Surely you don’t want to synchronize everything? Choose which files to back up.  If your backup regime calls for multiple backups, or requires speedy backups, then you’ll need to be able to specify which files are to be backed up, and which are not.  This is not possible if they’re all in the same folder. Finally, if you’re simply someone who takes pleasure in being organized, tidy and ordered (me! me!), then you don’t even need a reason.  Being disorganized is simply unthinkable. Tips on Getting Organized Here we present our 40 best tips on how to get organized.  Or, if you’re already organized, to get better organized. Tip #1.  Choose Your Organization System Carefully The reason that most people are not organized is that it takes time.  And the first thing that takes time is deciding upon a system of organization.  This is always a matter of personal preference, and is not something that a geek on a website can tell you.  You should always choose your own system, based on how your own brain is organized (which makes the assumption that your brain is, in fact, organized). We can’t instruct you, but we can make suggestions: You may want to start off with a system based on the users of the computer.  i.e. “My Files”, “My Wife’s Files”, My Son’s Files”, etc.  Inside “My Files”, you might then break it down into “Personal” and “Business”.  You may then realize that there are overlaps.  For example, everyone may want to share access to the music library, or the photos from the school play.  So you may create another folder called “Family”, for the “common” files. You may decide that the highest-level breakdown of your files is based on the “source” of each file.  In other words, who created the files.  You could have “Files created by ME (business or personal)”, “Files created by people I know (family, friends, etc)”, and finally “Files created by the rest of the world (MP3 music files, downloaded or ripped movies or TV shows, software installation files, gorgeous desktop wallpaper images you’ve collected, etc).”  This system happens to be the one I use myself.  See below:  Mark is for files created by meVC is for files created by my company (Virtual Creations)Others is for files created by my friends and familyData is the rest of the worldAlso, Settings is where I store the configuration files and other program data files for my installed software (more on this in tip #34, below). Each folder will present its own particular set of requirements for further sub-organization.  For example, you may decide to organize your music collection into sub-folders based on the artist’s name, while your digital photos might get organized based on the date they were taken.  It can be different for every sub-folder! Another strategy would be based on “currentness”.  Files you have yet to open and look at live in one folder.  Ones that have been looked at but not yet filed live in another place.  Current, active projects live in yet another place.  All other files (your “archive”, if you like) would live in a fourth folder. (And of course, within that last folder you’d need to create a further sub-system based on one of the previous bullet points). Put some thought into this – changing it when it proves incomplete can be a big hassle!  Before you go to the trouble of implementing any system you come up with, examine a wide cross-section of the files you own and see if they will all be able to find a nice logical place to sit within your system. Tip #2.  When You Decide on Your System, Stick to It! There’s nothing more pointless than going to all the trouble of creating a system and filing all your files, and then whenever you create, receive or download a new file, you simply dump it onto your Desktop.  You need to be disciplined – forever!  Every new file you get, spend those extra few seconds to file it where it belongs!  Otherwise, in just a month or two, you’ll be worse off than before – half your files will be organized and half will be disorganized – and you won’t know which is which! Tip #3.  Choose the Root Folder of Your Structure Carefully Every data file (document, photo, music file, etc) that you create, own or is important to you, no matter where it came from, should be found within one single folder, and that one single folder should be located at the root of your C: drive (as a sub-folder of C:\).  In other words, do not base your folder structure in standard folders like “My Documents”.  If you do, then you’re leaving it up to the operating system engineers to decide what folder structure is best for you.  And every operating system has a different system!  In Windows 7 your files are found in C:\Users\YourName, whilst on Windows XP it was C:\Documents and Settings\YourName\My Documents.  In UNIX systems it’s often /home/YourName. These standard default folders tend to fill up with junk files and folders that are not at all important to you.  “My Documents” is the worst offender.  Every second piece of software you install, it seems, likes to create its own folder in the “My Documents” folder.  These folders usually don’t fit within your organizational structure, so don’t use them!  In fact, don’t even use the “My Documents” folder at all.  Allow it to fill up with junk, and then simply ignore it.  It sounds heretical, but: Don’t ever visit your “My Documents” folder!  Remove your icons/links to “My Documents” and replace them with links to the folders you created and you care about! Create your own file system from scratch!  Probably the best place to put it would be on your D: drive – if you have one.  This way, all your files live on one drive, while all the operating system and software component files live on the C: drive – simply and elegantly separated.  The benefits of that are profound.  Not only are there obvious organizational benefits (see tip #10, below), but when it comes to migrate your data to a new computer, you can (sometimes) simply unplug your D: drive and plug it in as the D: drive of your new computer (this implies that the D: drive is actually a separate physical disk, and not a partition on the same disk as C:).  You also get a slight speed improvement (again, only if your C: and D: drives are on separate physical disks). Warning:  From tip #12, below, you will see that it’s actually a good idea to have exactly the same file system structure – including the drive it’s filed on – on all of the computers you own.  So if you decide to use the D: drive as the storage system for your own files, make sure you are able to use the D: drive on all the computers you own.  If you can’t ensure that, then you can still use a clever geeky trick to store your files on the D: drive, but still access them all via the C: drive (see tip #17, below). If you only have one hard disk (C:), then create a dedicated folder that will contain all your files – something like C:\Files.  The name of the folder is not important, but make it a single, brief word. There are several reasons for this: When creating a backup regime, it’s easy to decide what files should be backed up – they’re all in the one folder! If you ever decide to trade in your computer for a new one, you know exactly which files to migrate You will always know where to begin a search for any file If you synchronize files with other computers, it makes your synchronization routines very simple.   It also causes all your shortcuts to continue to work on the other machines (more about this in tip #24, below). Once you’ve decided where your files should go, then put all your files in there – Everything!  Completely disregard the standard, default folders that are created for you by the operating system (“My Music”, “My Pictures”, etc).  In fact, you can actually relocate many of those folders into your own structure (more about that below, in tip #6). The more completely you get all your data files (documents, photos, music, etc) and all your configuration settings into that one folder, then the easier it will be to perform all of the above tasks. Once this has been done, and all your files live in one folder, all the other folders in C:\ can be thought of as “operating system” folders, and therefore of little day-to-day interest for us. Here’s a screenshot of a nicely organized C: drive, where all user files are located within the \Files folder:   Tip #4.  Use Sub-Folders This would be our simplest and most obvious tip.  It almost goes without saying.  Any organizational system you decide upon (see tip #1) will require that you create sub-folders for your files.  Get used to creating folders on a regular basis. Tip #5.  Don’t be Shy About Depth Create as many levels of sub-folders as you need.  Don’t be scared to do so.  Every time you notice an opportunity to group a set of related files into a sub-folder, do so.  Examples might include:  All the MP3s from one music CD, all the photos from one holiday, or all the documents from one client. It’s perfectly okay to put files into a folder called C:\Files\Me\From Others\Services\WestCo Bank\Statements\2009.  That’s only seven levels deep.  Ten levels is not uncommon.  Of course, it’s possible to take this too far.  If you notice yourself creating a sub-folder to hold only one file, then you’ve probably become a little over-zealous.  On the other hand, if you simply create a structure with only two levels (for example C:\Files\Work) then you really haven’t achieved any level of organization at all (unless you own only six files!).  Your “Work” folder will have become a dumping ground, just like your Desktop was, with most likely hundreds of files in it. Tip #6.  Move the Standard User Folders into Your Own Folder Structure Most operating systems, including Windows, create a set of standard folders for each of its users.  These folders then become the default location for files such as documents, music files, digital photos and downloaded Internet files.  In Windows 7, the full list is shown below: Some of these folders you may never use nor care about (for example, the Favorites folder, if you’re not using Internet Explorer as your browser).  Those ones you can leave where they are.  But you may be using some of the other folders to store files that are important to you.  Even if you’re not using them, Windows will still often treat them as the default storage location for many types of files.  When you go to save a standard file type, it can become annoying to be automatically prompted to save it in a folder that’s not part of your own file structure. But there’s a simple solution:  Move the folders you care about into your own folder structure!  If you do, then the next time you go to save a file of the corresponding type, Windows will prompt you to save it in the new, moved location. Moving the folders is easy.  Simply drag-and-drop them to the new location.  Here’s a screenshot of the default My Music folder being moved to my custom personal folder (Mark): Tip #7.  Name Files and Folders Intelligently This is another one that almost goes without saying, but we’ll say it anyway:  Do not allow files to be created that have meaningless names like Document1.doc, or folders called New Folder (2).  Take that extra 20 seconds and come up with a meaningful name for the file/folder – one that accurately divulges its contents without repeating the entire contents in the name. Tip #8.  Watch Out for Long Filenames Another way to tell if you have not yet created enough depth to your folder hierarchy is that your files often require really long names.  If you need to call a file Johnson Sales Figures March 2009.xls (which might happen to live in the same folder as Abercrombie Budget Report 2008.xls), then you might want to create some sub-folders so that the first file could be simply called March.xls, and living in the Clients\Johnson\Sales Figures\2009 folder. A well-placed file needs only a brief filename! Tip #9.  Use Shortcuts!  Everywhere! This is probably the single most useful and important tip we can offer.  A shortcut allows a file to be in two places at once. Why would you want that?  Well, the file and folder structure of every popular operating system on the market today is hierarchical.  This means that all objects (files and folders) always live within exactly one parent folder.  It’s a bit like a tree.  A tree has branches (folders) and leaves (files).  Each leaf, and each branch, is supported by exactly one parent branch, all the way back to the root of the tree (which, incidentally, is exactly why C:\ is called the “root folder” of the C: drive). That hard disks are structured this way may seem obvious and even necessary, but it’s only one way of organizing data.  There are others:  Relational databases, for example, organize structured data entirely differently.  The main limitation of hierarchical filing structures is that a file can only ever be in one branch of the tree – in only one folder – at a time.  Why is this a problem?  Well, there are two main reasons why this limitation is a problem for computer users: The “correct” place for a file, according to our organizational rationale, is very often a very inconvenient place for that file to be located.  Just because it’s correctly filed doesn’t mean it’s easy to get to.  Your file may be “correctly” buried six levels deep in your sub-folder structure, but you may need regular and speedy access to this file every day.  You could always move it to a more convenient location, but that would mean that you would need to re-file back to its “correct” location it every time you’d finished working on it.  Most unsatisfactory. A file may simply “belong” in two or more different locations within your file structure.  For example, say you’re an accountant and you have just completed the 2009 tax return for John Smith.  It might make sense to you to call this file 2009 Tax Return.doc and file it under Clients\John Smith.  But it may also be important to you to have the 2009 tax returns from all your clients together in the one place.  So you might also want to call the file John Smith.doc and file it under Tax Returns\2009.  The problem is, in a purely hierarchical filing system, you can’t put it in both places.  Grrrrr! Fortunately, Windows (and most other operating systems) offers a way for you to do exactly that:  It’s called a “shortcut” (also known as an “alias” on Macs and a “symbolic link” on UNIX systems).  Shortcuts allow a file to exist in one place, and an icon that represents the file to be created and put anywhere else you please.  In fact, you can create a dozen such icons and scatter them all over your hard disk.  Double-clicking on one of these icons/shortcuts opens up the original file, just as if you had double-clicked on the original file itself. Consider the following two icons: The one on the left is the actual Word document, while the one on the right is a shortcut that represents the Word document.  Double-clicking on either icon will open the same file.  There are two main visual differences between the icons: The shortcut will have a small arrow in the lower-left-hand corner (on Windows, anyway) The shortcut is allowed to have a name that does not include the file extension (the “.docx” part, in this case) You can delete the shortcut at any time without losing any actual data.  The original is still intact.  All you lose is the ability to get to that data from wherever the shortcut was. So why are shortcuts so great?  Because they allow us to easily overcome the main limitation of hierarchical file systems, and put a file in two (or more) places at the same time.  You will always have files that don’t play nice with your organizational rationale, and can’t be filed in only one place.  They demand to exist in two places.  Shortcuts allow this!  Furthermore, they allow you to collect your most often-opened files and folders together in one spot for convenient access.  The cool part is that the original files stay where they are, safe forever in their perfectly organized location. So your collection of most often-opened files can – and should – become a collection of shortcuts! If you’re still not convinced of the utility of shortcuts, consider the following well-known areas of a typical Windows computer: The Start Menu (and all the programs that live within it) The Quick Launch bar (or the Superbar in Windows 7) The “Favorite folders” area in the top-left corner of the Windows Explorer window (in Windows Vista or Windows 7) Your Internet Explorer Favorites or Firefox Bookmarks Each item in each of these areas is a shortcut!  Each of those areas exist for one purpose only:  For convenience – to provide you with a collection of the files and folders you access most often. It should be easy to see by now that shortcuts are designed for one single purpose:  To make accessing your files more convenient.  Each time you double-click on a shortcut, you are saved the hassle of locating the file (or folder, or program, or drive, or control panel icon) that it represents. Shortcuts allow us to invent a golden rule of file and folder organization: “Only ever have one copy of a file – never have two copies of the same file.  Use a shortcut instead” (this rule doesn’t apply to copies created for backup purposes, of course!) There are also lesser rules, like “don’t move a file into your work area – create a shortcut there instead”, and “any time you find yourself frustrated with how long it takes to locate a file, create a shortcut to it and place that shortcut in a convenient location.” So how to we create these massively useful shortcuts?  There are two main ways: “Copy” the original file or folder (click on it and type Ctrl-C, or right-click on it and select Copy):  Then right-click in an empty area of the destination folder (the place where you want the shortcut to go) and select Paste shortcut: Right-drag (drag with the right mouse button) the file from the source folder to the destination folder.  When you let go of the mouse button at the destination folder, a menu pops up: Select Create shortcuts here. Note that when shortcuts are created, they are often named something like Shortcut to Budget Detail.doc (windows XP) or Budget Detail – Shortcut.doc (Windows 7).   If you don’t like those extra words, you can easily rename the shortcuts after they’re created, or you can configure Windows to never insert the extra words in the first place (see our article on how to do this). And of course, you can create shortcuts to folders too, not just to files! Bottom line: Whenever you have a file that you’d like to access from somewhere else (whether it’s convenience you’re after, or because the file simply belongs in two places), create a shortcut to the original file in the new location. Tip #10.  Separate Application Files from Data Files Any digital organization guru will drum this rule into you.  Application files are the components of the software you’ve installed (e.g. Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop or Internet Explorer).  Data files are the files that you’ve created for yourself using that software (e.g. Word Documents, digital photos, emails or playlists). Software gets installed, uninstalled and upgraded all the time.  Hopefully you always have the original installation media (or downloaded set-up file) kept somewhere safe, and can thus reinstall your software at any time.  This means that the software component files are of little importance.  Whereas the files you have created with that software is, by definition, important.  It’s a good rule to always separate unimportant files from important files. So when your software prompts you to save a file you’ve just created, take a moment and check out where it’s suggesting that you save the file.  If it’s suggesting that you save the file into the same folder as the software itself, then definitely don’t follow that suggestion.  File it in your own folder!  In fact, see if you can find the program’s configuration option that determines where files are saved by default (if it has one), and change it. Tip #11.  Organize Files Based on Purpose, Not on File Type If you have, for example a folder called Work\Clients\Johnson, and within that folder you have two sub-folders, Word Documents and Spreadsheets (in other words, you’re separating “.doc” files from “.xls” files), then chances are that you’re not optimally organized.  It makes little sense to organize your files based on the program that created them.  Instead, create your sub-folders based on the purpose of the file.  For example, it would make more sense to create sub-folders called Correspondence and Financials.  It may well be that all the files in a given sub-folder are of the same file-type, but this should be more of a coincidence and less of a design feature of your organization system. Tip #12.  Maintain the Same Folder Structure on All Your Computers In other words, whatever organizational system you create, apply it to every computer that you can.  There are several benefits to this: There’s less to remember.  No matter where you are, you always know where to look for your files If you copy or synchronize files from one computer to another, then setting up the synchronization job becomes very simple Shortcuts can be copied or moved from one computer to another with ease (assuming the original files are also copied/moved).  There’s no need to find the target of the shortcut all over again on the second computer Ditto for linked files (e.g Word documents that link to data in a separate Excel file), playlists, and any files that reference the exact file locations of other files. This applies even to the drive that your files are stored on.  If your files are stored on C: on one computer, make sure they’re stored on C: on all your computers.  Otherwise all your shortcuts, playlists and linked files will stop working! Tip #13.  Create an “Inbox” Folder Create yourself a folder where you store all files that you’re currently working on, or that you haven’t gotten around to filing yet.  You can think of this folder as your “to-do” list.  You can call it “Inbox” (making it the same metaphor as your email system), or “Work”, or “To-Do”, or “Scratch”, or whatever name makes sense to you.  It doesn’t matter what you call it – just make sure you have one! Once you have finished working on a file, you then move it from the “Inbox” to its correct location within your organizational structure. You may want to use your Desktop as this “Inbox” folder.  Rightly or wrongly, most people do.  It’s not a bad place to put such files, but be careful:  If you do decide that your Desktop represents your “to-do” list, then make sure that no other files find their way there.  In other words, make sure that your “Inbox”, wherever it is, Desktop or otherwise, is kept free of junk – stray files that don’t belong there. So where should you put this folder, which, almost by definition, lives outside the structure of the rest of your filing system?  Well, first and foremost, it has to be somewhere handy.  This will be one of your most-visited folders, so convenience is key.  Putting it on the Desktop is a great option – especially if you don’t have any other folders on your Desktop:  the folder then becomes supremely easy to find in Windows Explorer: You would then create shortcuts to this folder in convenient spots all over your computer (“Favorite Links”, “Quick Launch”, etc). Tip #14.  Ensure You have Only One “Inbox” Folder Once you’ve created your “Inbox” folder, don’t use any other folder location as your “to-do list”.  Throw every incoming or created file into the Inbox folder as you create/receive it.  This keeps the rest of your computer pristine and free of randomly created or downloaded junk.  The last thing you want to be doing is checking multiple folders to see all your current tasks and projects.  Gather them all together into one folder. Here are some tips to help ensure you only have one Inbox: Set the default “save” location of all your programs to this folder. Set the default “download” location for your browser to this folder. If this folder is not your desktop (recommended) then also see if you can make a point of not putting “to-do” files on your desktop.  This keeps your desktop uncluttered and Zen-like: (the Inbox folder is in the bottom-right corner) Tip #15.  Be Vigilant about Clearing Your “Inbox” Folder This is one of the keys to staying organized.  If you let your “Inbox” overflow (i.e. allow there to be more than, say, 30 files or folders in there), then you’re probably going to start feeling like you’re overwhelmed:  You’re not keeping up with your to-do list.  Once your Inbox gets beyond a certain point (around 30 files, studies have shown), then you’ll simply start to avoid it.  You may continue to put files in there, but you’ll be scared to look at it, fearing the “out of control” feeling that all overworked, chaotic or just plain disorganized people regularly feel. So, here’s what you can do: Visit your Inbox/to-do folder regularly (at least five times per day). Scan the folder regularly for files that you have completed working on and are ready for filing.  File them immediately. Make it a source of pride to keep the number of files in this folder as small as possible.  If you value peace of mind, then make the emptiness of this folder one of your highest (computer) priorities If you know that a particular file has been in the folder for more than, say, six weeks, then admit that you’re not actually going to get around to processing it, and move it to its final resting place. Tip #16.  File Everything Immediately, and Use Shortcuts for Your Active Projects As soon as you create, receive or download a new file, store it away in its “correct” folder immediately.  Then, whenever you need to work on it (possibly straight away), create a shortcut to it in your “Inbox” (“to-do”) folder or your desktop.  That way, all your files are always in their “correct” locations, yet you still have immediate, convenient access to your current, active files.  When you finish working on a file, simply delete the shortcut. Ideally, your “Inbox” folder – and your Desktop – should contain no actual files or folders.  They should simply contain shortcuts. Tip #17.  Use Directory Symbolic Links (or Junctions) to Maintain One Unified Folder Structure Using this tip, we can get around a potential hiccup that we can run into when creating our organizational structure – the issue of having more than one drive on our computer (C:, D:, etc).  We might have files we need to store on the D: drive for space reasons, and yet want to base our organized folder structure on the C: drive (or vice-versa). Your chosen organizational structure may dictate that all your files must be accessed from the C: drive (for example, the root folder of all your files may be something like C:\Files).  And yet you may still have a D: drive and wish to take advantage of the hundreds of spare Gigabytes that it offers.  Did you know that it’s actually possible to store your files on the D: drive and yet access them as if they were on the C: drive?  And no, we’re not talking about shortcuts here (although the concept is very similar). By using the shell command mklink, you can essentially take a folder that lives on one drive and create an alias for it on a different drive (you can do lots more than that with mklink – for a full rundown on this programs capabilities, see our dedicated article).  These aliases are called directory symbolic links (and used to be known as junctions).  You can think of them as “virtual” folders.  They function exactly like regular folders, except they’re physically located somewhere else. For example, you may decide that your entire D: drive contains your complete organizational file structure, but that you need to reference all those files as if they were on the C: drive, under C:\Files.  If that was the case you could create C:\Files as a directory symbolic link – a link to D:, as follows: mklink /d c:\files d:\ Or it may be that the only files you wish to store on the D: drive are your movie collection.  You could locate all your movie files in the root of your D: drive, and then link it to C:\Files\Media\Movies, as follows: mklink /d c:\files\media\movies d:\ (Needless to say, you must run these commands from a command prompt – click the Start button, type cmd and press Enter) Tip #18. Customize Your Folder Icons This is not strictly speaking an organizational tip, but having unique icons for each folder does allow you to more quickly visually identify which folder is which, and thus saves you time when you’re finding files.  An example is below (from my folder that contains all files downloaded from the Internet): To learn how to change your folder icons, please refer to our dedicated article on the subject. Tip #19.  Tidy Your Start Menu The Windows Start Menu is usually one of the messiest parts of any Windows computer.  Every program you install seems to adopt a completely different approach to placing icons in this menu.  Some simply put a single program icon.  Others create a folder based on the name of the software.  And others create a folder based on the name of the software manufacturer.  It’s chaos, and can make it hard to find the software you want to run. Thankfully we can avoid this chaos with useful operating system features like Quick Launch, the Superbar or pinned start menu items. Even so, it would make a lot of sense to get into the guts of the Start Menu itself and give it a good once-over.  All you really need to decide is how you’re going to organize your applications.  A structure based on the purpose of the application is an obvious candidate.  Below is an example of one such structure: In this structure, Utilities means software whose job it is to keep the computer itself running smoothly (configuration tools, backup software, Zip programs, etc).  Applications refers to any productivity software that doesn’t fit under the headings Multimedia, Graphics, Internet, etc. In case you’re not aware, every icon in your Start Menu is a shortcut and can be manipulated like any other shortcut (copied, moved, deleted, etc). With the Windows Start Menu (all version of Windows), Microsoft has decided that there be two parallel folder structures to store your Start Menu shortcuts.  One for you (the logged-in user of the computer) and one for all users of the computer.  Having two parallel structures can often be redundant:  If you are the only user of the computer, then having two parallel structures is totally redundant.  Even if you have several users that regularly log into the computer, most of your installed software will need to be made available to all users, and should thus be moved out of the “just you” version of the Start Menu and into the “all users” area. To take control of your Start Menu, so you can start organizing it, you’ll need to know how to access the actual folders and shortcut files that make up the Start Menu (both versions of it).  To find these folders and files, click the Start button and then right-click on the All Programs text (Windows XP users should right-click on the Start button itself): The Open option refers to the “just you” version of the Start Menu, while the Open All Users option refers to the “all users” version.  Click on the one you want to organize. A Windows Explorer window then opens with your chosen version of the Start Menu selected.  From there it’s easy.  Double-click on the Programs folder and you’ll see all your folders and shortcuts.  Now you can delete/rename/move until it’s just the way you want it. Note:  When you’re reorganizing your Start Menu, you may want to have two Explorer windows open at the same time – one showing the “just you” version and one showing the “all users” version.  You can drag-and-drop between the windows. Tip #20.  Keep Your Start Menu Tidy Once you have a perfectly organized Start Menu, try to be a little vigilant about keeping it that way.  Every time you install a new piece of software, the icons that get created will almost certainly violate your organizational structure. So to keep your Start Menu pristine and organized, make sure you do the following whenever you install a new piece of software: Check whether the software was installed into the “just you” area of the Start Menu, or the “all users” area, and then move it to the correct area. Remove all the unnecessary icons (like the “Read me” icon, the “Help” icon (you can always open the help from within the software itself when it’s running), the “Uninstall” icon, the link(s)to the manufacturer’s website, etc) Rename the main icon(s) of the software to something brief that makes sense to you.  For example, you might like to rename Microsoft Office Word 2010 to simply Word Move the icon(s) into the correct folder based on your Start Menu organizational structure And don’t forget:  when you uninstall a piece of software, the software’s uninstall routine is no longer going to be able to remove the software’s icon from the Start Menu (because you moved and/or renamed it), so you’ll need to remove that icon manually. Tip #21.  Tidy C:\ The root of your C: drive (C:\) is a common dumping ground for files and folders – both by the users of your computer and by the software that you install on your computer.  It can become a mess. There’s almost no software these days that requires itself to be installed in C:\.  99% of the time it can and should be installed into C:\Program Files.  And as for your own files, well, it’s clear that they can (and almost always should) be stored somewhere else. In an ideal world, your C:\ folder should look like this (on Windows 7): Note that there are some system files and folders in C:\ that are usually and deliberately “hidden” (such as the Windows virtual memory file pagefile.sys, the boot loader file bootmgr, and the System Volume Information folder).  Hiding these files and folders is a good idea, as they need to stay where they are and are almost never needed to be opened or even seen by you, the user.  Hiding them prevents you from accidentally messing with them, and enhances your sense of order and well-being when you look at your C: drive folder. Tip #22.  Tidy Your Desktop The Desktop is probably the most abused part of a Windows computer (from an organization point of view).  It usually serves as a dumping ground for all incoming files, as well as holding icons to oft-used applications, plus some regularly opened files and folders.  It often ends up becoming an uncontrolled mess.  See if you can avoid this.  Here’s why… Application icons (Word, Internet Explorer, etc) are often found on the Desktop, but it’s unlikely that this is the optimum place for them.  The “Quick Launch” bar (or the Superbar in Windows 7) is always visible and so represents a perfect location to put your icons.  You’ll only be able to see the icons on your Desktop when all your programs are minimized.  It might be time to get your application icons off your desktop… You may have decided that the Inbox/To-do folder on your computer (see tip #13, above) should be your Desktop.  If so, then enough said.  Simply be vigilant about clearing it and preventing it from being polluted by junk files (see tip #15, above).  On the other hand, if your Desktop is not acting as your “Inbox” folder, then there’s no reason for it to have any data files or folders on it at all, except perhaps a couple of shortcuts to often-opened files and folders (either ongoing or current projects).  Everything else should be moved to your “Inbox” folder. In an ideal world, it might look like this: Tip #23.  Move Permanent Items on Your Desktop Away from the Top-Left Corner When files/folders are dragged onto your desktop in a Windows Explorer window, or when shortcuts are created on your Desktop from Internet Explorer, those icons are always placed in the top-left corner – or as close as they can get.  If you have other files, folders or shortcuts that you keep on the Desktop permanently, then it’s a good idea to separate these permanent icons from the transient ones, so that you can quickly identify which ones the transients are.  An easy way to do this is to move all your permanent icons to the right-hand side of your Desktop.  That should keep them separated from incoming items. Tip #24.  Synchronize If you have more than one computer, you’ll almost certainly want to share files between them.  If the computers are permanently attached to the same local network, then there’s no need to store multiple copies of any one file or folder – shortcuts will suffice.  However, if the computers are not always on the same network, then you will at some point need to copy files between them.  For files that need to permanently live on both computers, the ideal way to do this is to synchronize the files, as opposed to simply copying them. We only have room here to write a brief summary of synchronization, not a full article.  In short, there are several different types of synchronization: Where the contents of one folder are accessible anywhere, such as with Dropbox Where the contents of any number of folders are accessible anywhere, such as with Windows Live Mesh Where any files or folders from anywhere on your computer are synchronized with exactly one other computer, such as with the Windows “Briefcase”, Microsoft SyncToy, or (much more powerful, yet still free) SyncBack from 2BrightSparks.  This only works when both computers are on the same local network, at least temporarily. A great advantage of synchronization solutions is that once you’ve got it configured the way you want it, then the sync process happens automatically, every time.  Click a button (or schedule it to happen automatically) and all your files are automagically put where they’re supposed to be. If you maintain the same file and folder structure on both computers, then you can also sync files depend upon the correct location of other files, like shortcuts, playlists and office documents that link to other office documents, and the synchronized files still work on the other computer! Tip #25.  Hide Files You Never Need to See If you have your files well organized, you will often be able to tell if a file is out of place just by glancing at the contents of a folder (for example, it should be pretty obvious if you look in a folder that contains all the MP3s from one music CD and see a Word document in there).  This is a good thing – it allows you to determine if there are files out of place with a quick glance.  Yet sometimes there are files in a folder that seem out of place but actually need to be there, such as the “folder art” JPEGs in music folders, and various files in the root of the C: drive.  If such files never need to be opened by you, then a good idea is to simply hide them.  Then, the next time you glance at the folder, you won’t have to remember whether that file was supposed to be there or not, because you won’t see it at all! To hide a file, simply right-click on it and choose Properties: Then simply tick the Hidden tick-box:   Tip #26.  Keep Every Setup File These days most software is downloaded from the Internet.  Whenever you download a piece of software, keep it.  You’ll never know when you need to reinstall the software. Further, keep with it an Internet shortcut that links back to the website where you originally downloaded it, in case you ever need to check for updates. See tip #33 below for a full description of the excellence of organizing your setup files. Tip #27.  Try to Minimize the Number of Folders that Contain Both Files and Sub-folders Some of the folders in your organizational structure will contain only files.  Others will contain only sub-folders.  And you will also have some folders that contain both files and sub-folders.  You will notice slight improvements in how long it takes you to locate a file if you try to avoid this third type of folder.  It’s not always possible, of course – you’ll always have some of these folders, but see if you can avoid it. One way of doing this is to take all the leftover files that didn’t end up getting stored in a sub-folder and create a special “Miscellaneous” or “Other” folder for them. Tip #28.  Starting a Filename with an Underscore Brings it to the Top of a List Further to the previous tip, if you name that “Miscellaneous” or “Other” folder in such a way that its name begins with an underscore “_”, then it will appear at the top of the list of files/folders. The screenshot below is an example of this.  Each folder in the list contains a set of digital photos.  The folder at the top of the list, _Misc, contains random photos that didn’t deserve their own dedicated folder: Tip #29.  Clean Up those CD-ROMs and (shudder!) Floppy Disks Have you got a pile of CD-ROMs stacked on a shelf of your office?  Old photos, or files you archived off onto CD-ROM (or even worse, floppy disks!) because you didn’t have enough disk space at the time?  In the meantime have you upgraded your computer and now have 500 Gigabytes of space you don’t know what to do with?  If so, isn’t it time you tidied up that stack of disks and filed them into your gorgeous new folder structure? So what are you waiting for?  Bite the bullet, copy them all back onto your computer, file them in their appropriate folders, and then back the whole lot up onto a shiny new 1000Gig external hard drive! Useful Folders to Create This next section suggests some useful folders that you might want to create within your folder structure.  I’ve personally found them to be indispensable. The first three are all about convenience – handy folders to create and then put somewhere that you can always access instantly.  For each one, it’s not so important where the actual folder is located, but it’s very important where you put the shortcut(s) to the folder.  You might want to locate the shortcuts: On your Desktop In your “Quick Launch” area (or pinned to your Windows 7 Superbar) In your Windows Explorer “Favorite Links” area Tip #30.  Create an “Inbox” (“To-Do”) Folder This has already been mentioned in depth (see tip #13), but we wanted to reiterate its importance here.  This folder contains all the recently created, received or downloaded files that you have not yet had a chance to file away properly, and it also may contain files that you have yet to process.  In effect, it becomes a sort of “to-do list”.  It doesn’t have to be called “Inbox” – you can call it whatever you want. Tip #31.  Create a Folder where Your Current Projects are Collected Rather than going hunting for them all the time, or dumping them all on your desktop, create a special folder where you put links (or work folders) for each of the projects you’re currently working on. You can locate this folder in your “Inbox” folder, on your desktop, or anywhere at all – just so long as there’s a way of getting to it quickly, such as putting a link to it in Windows Explorer’s “Favorite Links” area: Tip #32.  Create a Folder for Files and Folders that You Regularly Open You will always have a few files that you open regularly, whether it be a spreadsheet of your current accounts, or a favorite playlist.  These are not necessarily “current projects”, rather they’re simply files that you always find yourself opening.  Typically such files would be located on your desktop (or even better, shortcuts to those files).  Why not collect all such shortcuts together and put them in their own special folder? As with the “Current Projects” folder (above), you would want to locate that folder somewhere convenient.  Below is an example of a folder called “Quick links”, with about seven files (shortcuts) in it, that is accessible through the Windows Quick Launch bar: See tip #37 below for a full explanation of the power of the Quick Launch bar. Tip #33.  Create a “Set-ups” Folder A typical computer has dozens of applications installed on it.  For each piece of software, there are often many different pieces of information you need to keep track of, including: The original installation setup file(s).  This can be anything from a simple 100Kb setup.exe file you downloaded from a website, all the way up to a 4Gig ISO file that you copied from a DVD-ROM that you purchased. The home page of the software manufacturer (in case you need to look up something on their support pages, their forum or their online help) The page containing the download link for your actual file (in case you need to re-download it, or download an upgraded version) The serial number Your proof-of-purchase documentation Any other template files, plug-ins, themes, etc that also need to get installed For each piece of software, it’s a great idea to gather all of these files together and put them in a single folder.  The folder can be the name of the software (plus possibly a very brief description of what it’s for – in case you can’t remember what the software does based in its name).  Then you would gather all of these folders together into one place, and call it something like “Software” or “Setups”. If you have enough of these folders (I have several hundred, being a geek, collected over 20 years), then you may want to further categorize them.  My own categorization structure is based on “platform” (operating system): The last seven folders each represents one platform/operating system, while _Operating Systems contains set-up files for installing the operating systems themselves.  _Hardware contains ROMs for hardware I own, such as routers. Within the Windows folder (above), you can see the beginnings of the vast library of software I’ve compiled over the years: An example of a typical application folder looks like this: Tip #34.  Have a “Settings” Folder We all know that our documents are important.  So are our photos and music files.  We save all of these files into folders, and then locate them afterwards and double-click on them to open them.  But there are many files that are important to us that can’t be saved into folders, and then searched for and double-clicked later on.  These files certainly contain important information that we need, but are often created internally by an application, and saved wherever that application feels is appropriate. A good example of this is the “PST” file that Outlook creates for us and uses to store all our emails, contacts, appointments and so forth.  Another example would be the collection of Bookmarks that Firefox stores on your behalf. And yet another example would be the customized settings and configuration files of our all our software.  Granted, most Windows programs store their configuration in the Registry, but there are still many programs that use configuration files to store their settings. Imagine if you lost all of the above files!  And yet, when people are backing up their computers, they typically only back up the files they know about – those that are stored in the “My Documents” folder, etc.  If they had a hard disk failure or their computer was lost or stolen, their backup files would not include some of the most vital files they owned.  Also, when migrating to a new computer, it’s vital to ensure that these files make the journey. It can be a very useful idea to create yourself a folder to store all your “settings” – files that are important to you but which you never actually search for by name and double-click on to open them.  Otherwise, next time you go to set up a new computer just the way you want it, you’ll need to spend hours recreating the configuration of your previous computer! So how to we get our important files into this folder?  Well, we have a few options: Some programs (such as Outlook and its PST files) allow you to place these files wherever you want.  If you delve into the program’s options, you will find a setting somewhere that controls the location of the important settings files (or “personal storage” – PST – when it comes to Outlook) Some programs do not allow you to change such locations in any easy way, but if you get into the Registry, you can sometimes find a registry key that refers to the location of the file(s).  Simply move the file into your Settings folder and adjust the registry key to refer to the new location. Some programs stubbornly refuse to allow their settings files to be placed anywhere other then where they stipulate.  When faced with programs like these, you have three choices:  (1) You can ignore those files, (2) You can copy the files into your Settings folder (let’s face it – settings don’t change very often), or (3) you can use synchronization software, such as the Windows Briefcase, to make synchronized copies of all your files in your Settings folder.  All you then have to do is to remember to run your sync software periodically (perhaps just before you run your backup software!). There are some other things you may decide to locate inside this new “Settings” folder: Exports of registry keys (from the many applications that store their configurations in the Registry).  This is useful for backup purposes or for migrating to a new computer Notes you’ve made about all the specific customizations you have made to a particular piece of software (so that you’ll know how to do it all again on your next computer) Shortcuts to webpages that detail how to tweak certain aspects of your operating system or applications so they are just the way you like them (such as how to remove the words “Shortcut to” from the beginning of newly created shortcuts).  In other words, you’d want to create shortcuts to half the pages on the How-To Geek website! Here’s an example of a “Settings” folder: Windows Features that Help with Organization This section details some of the features of Microsoft Windows that are a boon to anyone hoping to stay optimally organized. Tip #35.  Use the “Favorite Links” Area to Access Oft-Used Folders Once you’ve created your great new filing system, work out which folders you access most regularly, or which serve as great starting points for locating the rest of the files in your folder structure, and then put links to those folders in your “Favorite Links” area of the left-hand side of the Windows Explorer window (simply called “Favorites” in Windows 7):   Some ideas for folders you might want to add there include: Your “Inbox” folder (or whatever you’ve called it) – most important! The base of your filing structure (e.g. C:\Files) A folder containing shortcuts to often-accessed folders on other computers around the network (shown above as Network Folders) A folder containing shortcuts to your current projects (unless that folder is in your “Inbox” folder) Getting folders into this area is very simple – just locate the folder you’re interested in and drag it there! Tip #36.  Customize the Places Bar in the File/Open and File/Save Boxes Consider the screenshot below: The highlighted icons (collectively known as the “Places Bar”) can be customized to refer to any folder location you want, allowing instant access to any part of your organizational structure. Note:  These File/Open and File/Save boxes have been superseded by new versions that use the Windows Vista/Windows 7 “Favorite Links”, but the older versions (shown above) are still used by a surprisingly large number of applications. The easiest way to customize these icons is to use the Group Policy Editor, but not everyone has access to this program.  If you do, open it up and navigate to: User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Explorer > Common Open File Dialog If you don’t have access to the Group Policy Editor, then you’ll need to get into the Registry.  Navigate to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft  \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies \ comdlg32 \ Placesbar It should then be easy to make the desired changes.  Log off and log on again to allow the changes to take effect. Tip #37.  Use the Quick Launch Bar as a Application and File Launcher That Quick Launch bar (to the right of the Start button) is a lot more useful than people give it credit for.  Most people simply have half a dozen icons in it, and use it to start just those programs.  But it can actually be used to instantly access just about anything in your filing system: For complete instructions on how to set this up, visit our dedicated article on this topic. Tip #38.  Put a Shortcut to Windows Explorer into Your Quick Launch Bar This is only necessary in Windows Vista and Windows XP.  The Microsoft boffins finally got wise and added it to the Windows 7 Superbar by default. Windows Explorer – the program used for managing your files and folders – is one of the most useful programs in Windows.  Anyone who considers themselves serious about being organized needs instant access to this program at any time.  A great place to create a shortcut to this program is in the Windows XP and Windows Vista “Quick Launch” bar: To get it there, locate it in your Start Menu (usually under “Accessories”) and then right-drag it down into your Quick Launch bar (and create a copy). Tip #39.  Customize the Starting Folder for Your Windows 7 Explorer Superbar Icon If you’re on Windows 7, your Superbar will include a Windows Explorer icon.  Clicking on the icon will launch Windows Explorer (of course), and will start you off in your “Libraries” folder.  Libraries may be fine as a starting point, but if you have created yourself an “Inbox” folder, then it would probably make more sense to start off in this folder every time you launch Windows Explorer. To change this default/starting folder location, then first right-click the Explorer icon in the Superbar, and then right-click Properties:Then, in Target field of the Windows Explorer Properties box that appears, type %windir%\explorer.exe followed by the path of the folder you wish to start in.  For example: %windir%\explorer.exe C:\Files If that folder happened to be on the Desktop (and called, say, “Inbox”), then you would use the following cleverness: %windir%\explorer.exe shell:desktop\Inbox Then click OK and test it out. Tip #40.  Ummmmm…. No, that’s it.  I can’t think of another one.  That’s all of the tips I can come up with.  I only created this one because 40 is such a nice round number… Case Study – An Organized PC To finish off the article, I have included a few screenshots of my (main) computer (running Vista).  The aim here is twofold: To give you a sense of what it looks like when the above, sometimes abstract, tips are applied to a real-life computer, and To offer some ideas about folders and structure that you may want to steal to use on your own PC. Let’s start with the C: drive itself.  Very minimal.  All my files are contained within C:\Files.  I’ll confine the rest of the case study to this folder: That folder contains the following: Mark: My personal files VC: My business (Virtual Creations, Australia) Others contains files created by friends and family Data contains files from the rest of the world (can be thought of as “public” files, usually downloaded from the Net) Settings is described above in tip #34 The Data folder contains the following sub-folders: Audio:  Radio plays, audio books, podcasts, etc Development:  Programmer and developer resources, sample source code, etc (see below) Humour:  Jokes, funnies (those emails that we all receive) Movies:  Downloaded and ripped movies (all legal, of course!), their scripts, DVD covers, etc. Music:  (see below) Setups:  Installation files for software (explained in full in tip #33) System:  (see below) TV:  Downloaded TV shows Writings:  Books, instruction manuals, etc (see below) The Music folder contains the following sub-folders: Album covers:  JPEG scans Guitar tabs:  Text files of guitar sheet music Lists:  e.g. “Top 1000 songs of all time” Lyrics:  Text files MIDI:  Electronic music files MP3 (representing 99% of the Music folder):  MP3s, either ripped from CDs or downloaded, sorted by artist/album name Music Video:  Video clips Sheet Music:  usually PDFs The Data\Writings folder contains the following sub-folders: (all pretty self-explanatory) The Data\Development folder contains the following sub-folders: Again, all pretty self-explanatory (if you’re a geek) The Data\System folder contains the following sub-folders: These are usually themes, plug-ins and other downloadable program-specific resources. The Mark folder contains the following sub-folders: From Others:  Usually letters that other people (friends, family, etc) have written to me For Others:  Letters and other things I have created for other people Green Book:  None of your business Playlists:  M3U files that I have compiled of my favorite songs (plus one M3U playlist file for every album I own) Writing:  Fiction, philosophy and other musings of mine Mark Docs:  Shortcut to C:\Users\Mark Settings:  Shortcut to C:\Files\Settings\Mark The Others folder contains the following sub-folders: The VC (Virtual Creations, my business – I develop websites) folder contains the following sub-folders: And again, all of those are pretty self-explanatory. Conclusion These tips have saved my sanity and helped keep me a productive geek, but what about you? What tips and tricks do you have to keep your files organized?  Please share them with us in the comments.  Come on, don’t be shy… Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Fix For When Windows Explorer in Vista Stops Showing File NamesWhy Did Windows Vista’s Music Folder Icon Turn Yellow?Print or Create a Text File List of the Contents in a Directory the Easy WayCustomize the Windows 7 or Vista Send To MenuAdd Copy To / Move To on Windows 7 or Vista Right-Click Menu 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 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Track Daily Goals With 42Goals Video Toolbox is a Superb Online Video Editor Fun with 47 charts and graphs Tomorrow is Mother’s Day Check the Average Speed of YouTube Videos You’ve Watched OutlookStatView Scans and Displays General Usage Statistics

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• Parallelism in .NET – Part 10, Cancellation in PLINQ and the Parallel class

  - by Reed

  Many routines are parallelized because they are long running processes.  When writing an algorithm that will run for a long period of time, its typically a good practice to allow that routine to be cancelled.  I previously discussed terminating a parallel loop from within, but have not demonstrated how a routine can be cancelled from the caller’s perspective.  Cancellation in PLINQ and the Task Parallel Library is handled through a new, unified cooperative cancellation model introduced with .NET 4.0. Cancellation in .NET 4 is based around a new, lightweight struct called CancellationToken.  A CancellationToken is a small, thread-safe value type which is generated via a CancellationTokenSource.  There are many goals which led to this design.  For our purposes, we will focus on a couple of specific design decisions: Cancellation is cooperative.  A calling method can request a cancellation, but it’s up to the processing routine to terminate – it is not forced. Cancellation is consistent.  A single method call requests a cancellation on every copied CancellationToken in the routine. Let’s begin by looking at how we can cancel a PLINQ query.  Supposed we wanted to provide the option to cancel our query from Part 6: double min = collection .AsParallel() .Min(item => item.PerformComputation()); .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; } We would rewrite this to allow for cancellation by adding a call to ParallelEnumerable.WithCancellation as follows: var cts = new CancellationTokenSource(); // Pass cts here to a routine that could, // in parallel, request a cancellation try { double min = collection .AsParallel() .WithCancellation(cts.Token) .Min(item => item.PerformComputation()); } catch (OperationCanceledException e) { // Query was cancelled before it finished } .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; } Here, if the user calls cts.Cancel() before the PLINQ query completes, the query will stop processing, and an OperationCanceledException will be raised.  Be aware, however, that cancellation will not be instantaneous.  When cts.Cancel() is called, the query will only stop after the current item.PerformComputation() elements all finish processing.  cts.Cancel() will prevent PLINQ from scheduling a new task for a new element, but will not stop items which are currently being processed.  This goes back to the first goal I mentioned – Cancellation is cooperative.  Here, we’re requesting the cancellation, but it’s up to PLINQ to terminate. If we wanted to allow cancellation to occur within our routine, we would need to change our routine to accept a CancellationToken, and modify it to handle this specific case: public void PerformComputation(CancellationToken token) { for (int i=0; i<this.iterations; ++i) { // Add a check to see if we've been canceled // If a cancel was requested, we'll throw here token.ThrowIfCancellationRequested(); // Do our processing now this.RunIteration(i); } } With this overload of PerformComputation, each internal iteration checks to see if a cancellation request was made, and will throw an OperationCanceledException at that point, instead of waiting until the method returns.  This is good, since it allows us, as developers, to plan for cancellation, and terminate our routine in a clean, safe state. This is handled by changing our PLINQ query to: try { double min = collection .AsParallel() .WithCancellation(cts.Token) .Min(item => item.PerformComputation(cts.Token)); } catch (OperationCanceledException e) { // Query was cancelled before it finished } PLINQ is very good about handling this exception, as well.  There is a very good chance that multiple items will raise this exception, since the entire purpose of PLINQ is to have multiple items be processed concurrently.  PLINQ will take all of the OperationCanceledException instances raised within these methods, and merge them into a single OperationCanceledException in the call stack.  This is done internally because we added the call to ParallelEnumerable.WithCancellation. If, however, a different exception is raised by any of the elements, the OperationCanceledException as well as the other Exception will be merged into a single AggregateException. The Task Parallel Library uses the same cancellation model, as well.  Here, we supply our CancellationToken as part of the configuration.  The ParallelOptions class contains a property for the CancellationToken.  This allows us to cancel a Parallel.For or Parallel.ForEach routine in a very similar manner to our PLINQ query.  As an example, we could rewrite our Parallel.ForEach loop from Part 2 to support cancellation by changing it to: try { var cts = new CancellationTokenSource(); var options = new ParallelOptions() { CancellationToken = cts.Token }; Parallel.ForEach(customers, options, customer => { // Run some process that takes some time... DateTime lastContact = theStore.GetLastContact(customer); TimeSpan timeSinceContact = DateTime.Now - lastContact; // Check for cancellation here options.CancellationToken.ThrowIfCancellationRequested(); // If it's been more than two weeks, send an email, and update... if (timeSinceContact.Days > 14) { theStore.EmailCustomer(customer); customer.LastEmailContact = DateTime.Now; } }); } catch (OperationCanceledException e) { // The loop was cancelled } Notice that here we use the same approach taken in PLINQ.  The Task Parallel Library will automatically handle our cancellation in the same manner as PLINQ, providing a clean, unified model for cancellation of any parallel routine.  The TPL performs the same aggregation of the cancellation exceptions as PLINQ, as well, which is why a single exception handler for OperationCanceledException will cleanly handle this scenario.  This works because we’re using the same CancellationToken provided in the ParallelOptions.  If a different exception was thrown by one thread, or a CancellationToken from a different CancellationTokenSource was used to raise our exception, we would instead receive all of our individual exceptions merged into one AggregateException.

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• WinInet Apps failing when Internet Explorer is set to Offline Mode

  - by Rick Strahl

  Ran into a nasty issue last week when all of a sudden many of my old applications that are using WinInet for HTTP access started failing. Specifically, the WinInet HttpSendRequest() call started failing with an error of 2, which when retrieving the error boils down to: WinInet Error 2: The system cannot find the file specified Now this error can pop up in many legitimate scenarios with WinInet such as when no Internet connection is available or the HTTP configuration (usually configured in Internet Explorer’s options) is misconfigured. The error typically means that the server in question cannot be found or more specifically an Internet connection can’t be established. In this case the problem started suddenly and was causing some of my own applications (old Visual FoxPro apps using my own wwHttp library) and all Adobe Air applications (which apparently uses WinInet for its basic HTTP stack) along with a few more oddball applications to fail instantly when trying to connect via HTTP. Most other applications – all of my installed browsers, email clients, various social network updaters all worked just fine. It seems it was only WinInet apps that were failing. Yet oddly Internet Explorer appeared to be working. So the problem seemed to be isolated to those ‘classic’ applications using WinInet. WinInet’s base configuration uses the Internet Explorer options dialog. To check this out I typically go to the Internet Explorer options and find the Connection tab, and check out the LAN Setup. Make sure there are no rogue proxy settings or configuration scripts that are invalid. Trying with Auto-configuration on and off also can often fix ‘real’ configuration errors. This time however this wasn’t a problem – nothing in the LAN configuration was set (all default). I also played with the Automatic detection of settings which also had no effect. I also tried to use Fiddler to see if that would tell me something. Fiddler has a few additional WinInet configuration options in its configuration. Running Fiddler and hitting an HTTP request using WinInet would never actually hit Fiddler – the failure would occur before WinInet ever fired up the HTTP connection to go through the Fiddler HTTP proxy. And the Culprit is: Internet Explorer’s Work Offline Option The culprit in this situation was Internet Explorer which at some point, unknown to me switched into Offline Mode and was then shut down: When this Offline mode is checked when IE is running *or* if IE gets shut down with this flag set, all applications using WinInet by default assume that it’s running in offline mode. Depending on your caching HTTP headers and whether the page was cached previously you may or may not get a response or an error. For an independent non-browser application this will be highly unpredictable and likely result in failures getting online – especially if the application forces requests to always reload by disabling HTTP caching (as I do on most of my dynamic HTTP clients). What makes this especially tricky is that even when IE is in offline mode in the browser, you can still browse around the Web *if* you have a connection. IE will try to load anything it has cached from the local cache, but as soon as you hit a URL that isn’t cached it will automatically try to access that URL and uncheck the Work Offline option. Conversely if you get knocked off the Internet and browse in IE 9, IE will automatically go into offline mode. I never explicitly set offline mode – it just automatically sets itself on and off depending on the connection. Problem is if you’re not using IE all the time (as I do – rarely and just for testing so usually a few commonly used URLs) and you left it in offline mode when you exit, offline mode stays set which results in the above head scratcher. Ack. This isn’t new behavior in IE 9 BTW – this behavior has always been there, but I think what’s different is that IE now automatically switches between online and offline modes without notifying you at all, so it’s hard to tell when you are offline. Fixing the Issue in your Code If you have an application that is using WinInet, there’s a WinInet option called INTERNET_OPTION_IGNORE_OFFLINE. I just checked this out in my own applications and Internet Explorer 9 and it works, but apparently it’s been broken for some older releases (I can’t confirm how far back though) – lots of posts seem to suggest the flag doesn’t work. However, in IE 9 at least it does seem to work if you call InternetSetOption before you call HttpOpenRequest with the Http Session handle. In FoxPro code I use: DECLARE INTEGER InternetSetOption ;    IN WININET.DLL ;    INTEGER HINTERNET,;    INTEGER dwFlags,;    INTEGER @dwValue,;    INTEGER cbSize lnOptionValue = 1   && BOOL TRUE pass by reference   *** Set needed SSL flags lnResult=InternetSetOption(this.hHttpSession,;    INTERNET_OPTION_IGNORE_OFFLINE ,;  && 77    @lnOptionValue ,4)   DECLARE INTEGER HttpOpenRequest ;    IN WININET.DLL ;    INTEGER hHTTPHandle,;    STRING lpzReqMethod,;    STRING lpzPage,;    STRING lpzVersion,;    STRING lpzReferer,;    STRING lpzAcceptTypes,;    INTEGER dwFlags,;    INTEGER dwContextw     hHTTPResult=HttpOpenRequest(THIS.hHttpsession,;    lcVerb,;    tcPage,;    NULL,NULL,NULL,;    INTERNET_FLAG_RELOAD + ;    IIF(THIS.lsecurelink,INTERNET_FLAG_SECURE,0) + ;    this.nHTTPServiceFlags,0) …  And this fixes the issue at least for IE 9… In my FoxPro wwHttp class I now call this by default to never get bitten by this again… This solves the problem permanently for my HTTP client. I never want to see offline operation in an HTTP client API – it’s just too unpredictable in handling errors and the last thing you want is getting unpredictably stale data. Problem solved but this behavior is – well ugly. But then that’s to be expected from an API that’s based on Internet Explorer, eh?© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in HTTP  Windows  

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• Thursday Community Keynote: "By the Community, For the Community"

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  Sharat Chander, JavaOne Community Chairperson, began Thursday's Community Keynote. As part of the morning’s theme of "By the Community, For the Community," Chander noted that 60% of the material at the 2012 JavaOne conference was presented by Java Community members. "So next year, when the call for papers starts, put-in your submissions," he urged.From there, Gary Frost, Principal Member of Technical Staff, AMD, expanded upon Sunday's Strategy Keynote exploration of Project Sumatra, an OpenJDK project targeted at bringing Java to heterogeneous computing platforms (which combine the CPU and the parallel processor of the GPU into a single piece of silicon). Sumatra entails enhancing the JVM to make maximum use of these advanced platforms. Within this development space, AMD created the Aparapi API, which converts Java bytecode into OpenCL for execution on such GPU devices. The Aparapi API was open sourced in September 2011.Whether it was zooming-in on a Mandelbrot set, "the game of life," or a swarm of 10,000 Dukes in a space-bound gravitational dance, Frost's demos, using an Aparapi/OpenCL implementation, produced stunningly faster display results. He indicated that the Java 9 timeframe is where they see Project Sumatra coming to ultimate fruition, employing the Lamdas of Java 8.Returning to the theme of the keynote, Donald Smith, Director, Java Product Management, Oracle, explored a mind map graphic demonstrating the importance of Community in terms of fostering innovation. "It's the sharing and mixing of culture, the diversity, and the rapid prototyping," he said. Within this topic, Smith, brought up a panel of representatives from Cloudera, Eclipse, Eucalyptus, Perrone Robotics, and Twitter--ideal manifestations of community and innovation in the world of Java.Marten Mickos, CEO, Eucalyptus Systems, explored his company's open source cloud software platform, written in Java, and used by gaming companies, technology companies, media companies, and more. Chris Aniszczyk, Operations Engineering,Twitter, noted the importance of the JVM in terms of their multiple-language development environment. Mike Olson, CEO, Cloudera, described his company's Apache Hadoop-based software, support, and training. Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director, Eclipse Foundation, noted that they have about 270 tools projects at Eclipse, with 267 of them written in Java. Milinkovich added that Eclipse will even be going into space in 2013, as part of the control software on various experiments aboard the International Space Station. Lastly, Paul Perrone, CEO, Perrone Robotics, detailed his company's robotics and automation software platform built 100% on Java, including Java SE and Java ME--"on rat, to cat, to elephant-sized systems." Milinkovic noted that communities are by nature so good at innovation because of their very openness--"The more open you make your innovation process, the more ideas are challenged, and the more developers are focused on justifying their choices all the way through the process."From there, Georges Saab, VP Development Java SE OpenJDK, continued the topic of innovation and helping the Java Community to "Make the Future Java." Martijn Verburg, representing the London Java Community (winner of a Duke's Choice Award 2012 for their activity in OpenJDK and JCP), soon joined Saab onstage. Verburg detailed the LJC's "Adopt a JSR" program--"to get day-to-day developers more involved in the innovation that's happening around them."  From its London launching pad, the innovative program has spread to Brazil, Morocco, Latvia, India, and more.Other active participants in the program joined Verburg onstage--Ben Evans, London Java Community; James Gough, Stackthread; Bruno Souza, SOUJava; Richard Warburton, jClarity; and Cecelia Borg, Oracle--OpenJDK Onboarding. Together, the group explored the goals and tasks inherent in the Adopt a JSR program--from organizing hack days (testing prototype implementations), to managing mailing lists and forums, to triaging issues, to evangelism—all with the goal of fostering greater community/developer involvement, but equally importantly, building better open standards. “Come join us, and make your ecosystem better!" urged Verburg.Paul Perrone returned to profile the latest in his company's robotics work around Java--including the AARDBOTS family of smaller robotic vehicles, running the Perrone MAX platform on top of the Java JVM. Perrone took his "Rumbles" four-wheeled robot out for a spin onstage--a roaming, ARM-based security-bot vehicle, complete with IR, ultrasonic, and "cliff" sensors (the latter, for the raised stage at JavaOne). As an ultimate window into the future of robotics, Perrone displayed a "head-set" controller--a sensor directed at the forehead to monitor brainwaves, for the someday-implementation of brain-to-robot control.Then, just when it seemed this might be the end of the day's futuristic offerings, a mystery voice from offstage pronounced "I've got some toys"--proving to be guest-visitor James Gosling, there to explore his cutting-edge work with Liquid Robotics. While most think of robots as something with wheels or arms or lasers, Gosling explained, the Liquid Robotics vehicle is an entirely new and innovative ocean-going 'bot. Looking like a floating surfboard, with an attached set of underwater wings, the autonomous devices roam the oceans using only the energy of ocean waves to propel them, and a single actuated rudder to steer. "We have to accomplish all guidance just by wiggling the rudder," Gosling said. The devices offer applications from self-installing weather buoy, to pollution monitoring station, to marine mammal monitoring device, to climate change data gathering, to even ocean life genomic sampling. The early versions of the vehicle used C code on very tiny industrial micro controllers, where they had to "count the bytes one at a time."  But the latest generation vehicles, which just hit the water a week or so ago, employ an ARM processor running Linux and the ARM version of JDK 7. Gosling explained that vehicle communication from remote locations is achieved via the Iridium satellite network. But because of the costs of this communication path, the data must be sent in very small bursts--using SBD short burst data. "It costs $1/kb, so that rules everything in the software design,” said Gosling. “If you were trying to stream a Netflix video over this, it would cost a million dollars a movie. …We don't have a 'big data' problem," he quipped. There are currently about 150 Liquid Robotics vehicles out traversing the oceans. Gosling demonstrated real time satellite tracking of several vehicles currently at sea, noting that Java is actually particularly good at AI applications--due to the language having garbage collection, which facilitates complex data structures. To close-out his time onstage, Gosling of course participated in the ceremonial Java tee-shirt toss out to the audience…In parting, Chander passed the JavaOne Community Chairperson baton to Stephen Chin, Java Technology Evangelist, Oracle. Onstage in full motorcycle gear, Chin noted that he'll soon be touring Europe by motorcycle, meeting Java Community Members and streaming live via UStream--the ultimate manifestation of community and technology!  He also reminded attendees of the upcoming JavaOne Latin America 2012, São Paulo, Brazil (December 4-6, 2012), and stated that the CFP (call for papers) at the conference has been extended for one more week. "Remember, December is summer in Brazil!" Chin said.

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