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• VS 2010 SP1 and SQL CE

  - by ScottGu

  Last month we released the Beta of VS 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1).  You can learn more about the VS 2010 SP1 Beta from Jason Zander’s two blog posts about it, and from Scott Hanselman’s blog post that covers some of the new capabilities enabled with it.   You can download and install the VS 2010 SP1 Beta here. Last week I blogged about the new Visual Studio support for IIS Express that we are adding with VS 2010 SP1. In today’s post I’m going to talk about the new VS 2010 SP1 tooling support for SQL CE, and walkthrough some of the cool scenarios it enables.  SQL CE – What is it and why should you care? SQL CE is a free, embedded, database engine that enables easy database storage. No Database Installation Required SQL CE does not require you to run a setup or install a database server in order to use it.  You can simply copy the SQL CE binaries into the \bin directory of your ASP.NET application, and then your web application can use it as a database engine.  No setup or extra security permissions are required for it to run. You do not need to have an administrator account on the machine. Just copy your web application onto any server and it will work. This is true even of medium-trust applications running in a web hosting environment. SQL CE runs in-memory within your ASP.NET application and will start-up when you first access a SQL CE database, and will automatically shutdown when your application is unloaded.  SQL CE databases are stored as files that live within the \App_Data folder of your ASP.NET Applications. Works with Existing Data APIs SQL CE 4 works with existing .NET-based data APIs, and supports a SQL Server compatible query syntax.  This means you can use existing data APIs like ADO.NET, as well as use higher-level ORMs like Entity Framework and NHibernate with SQL CE.  This enables you to use the same data programming skills and data APIs you know today. Supports Development, Testing and Production Scenarios SQL CE can be used for development scenarios, testing scenarios, and light production usage scenarios.  With the SQL CE 4 release we’ve done the engineering work to ensure that SQL CE won’t crash or deadlock when used in a multi-threaded server scenario (like ASP.NET).  This is a big change from previous releases of SQL CE – which were designed for client-only scenarios and which explicitly blocked running in web-server environments.  Starting with SQL CE 4 you can use it in a web-server as well. There are no license restrictions with SQL CE.  It is also totally free. Easy Migration to SQL Server SQL CE is an embedded database – which makes it ideal for development, testing, and light-usage scenarios.  For high-volume sites and applications you’ll probably want to migrate your database to use SQL Server Express (which is free), SQL Server or SQL Azure.  These servers enable much better scalability, more development features (including features like Stored Procedures – which aren’t supported with SQL CE), as well as more advanced data management capabilities. We’ll ship migration tools that enable you to optionally take SQL CE databases and easily upgrade them to use SQL Server Express, SQL Server, or SQL Azure.  You will not need to change your code when upgrading a SQL CE database to SQL Server or SQL Azure.  Our goal is to enable you to be able to simply change the database connection string in your web.config file and have your application just work. New Tooling Support for SQL CE in VS 2010 SP1 VS 2010 SP1 includes much improved tooling support for SQL CE, and adds support for using SQL CE within ASP.NET projects for the first time.  With VS 2010 SP1 you can now: Create new SQL CE Databases Edit and Modify SQL CE Database Schema and Indexes Populate SQL CE Databases within Data Use the Entity Framework (EF) designer to create model layers against SQL CE databases Use EF Code First to define model layers in code, then create a SQL CE database from them, and optionally edit the DB with VS Deploy SQL CE databases to remote servers using Web Deploy and optionally convert them to full SQL Server databases You can take advantage of all of the above features from within both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC based projects. Download You can enable SQL CE tooling support within VS 2010 by first installing VS 2010 SP1 (beta). Once SP1 is installed, you’ll also then need to install the SQL CE Tools for Visual Studio download.  This is a separate download that enables the SQL CE tooling support for VS 2010 SP1. Walkthrough of Two Scenarios In this blog post I’m going to walkthrough how you can take advantage of SQL CE and VS 2010 SP1 using both an ASP.NET Web Forms and an ASP.NET MVC based application. Specifically, we’ll walkthrough: How to create a SQL CE database using VS 2010 SP1, then use the EF4 visual designers in Visual Studio to construct a model layer from it, and then display and edit the data using an ASP.NET GridView control. How to use an EF Code First approach to define a model layer using POCO classes and then have EF Code-First “auto-create” a SQL CE database for us based on our model classes.  We’ll then look at how we can use the new VS 2010 SP1 support for SQL CE to inspect the database that was created, populate it with data, and later make schema changes to it.  We’ll do all this within the context of an ASP.NET MVC based application. You can follow the two walkthroughs below on your own machine by installing VS 2010 SP1 (beta) and then installing the SQL CE Tools for Visual Studio download (which is a separate download that enables SQL CE tooling support for VS 2010 SP1). Walkthrough 1: Create a SQL CE Database, Create EF Model Classes, Edit the Data with a GridView This first walkthrough will demonstrate how to create and define a SQL CE database within an ASP.NET Web Form application.  We’ll then build an EF model layer for it and use that model layer to enable data editing scenarios with an <asp:GridView> control. Step 1: Create a new ASP.NET Web Forms Project We’ll begin by using the File->New Project menu command within Visual Studio to create a new ASP.NET Web Forms project.  We’ll use the “ASP.NET Web Application” project template option so that it has a default UI skin implemented: Step 2: Create a SQL CE Database Right click on the “App_Data” folder within the created project and choose the “Add->New Item” menu command: This will bring up the “Add Item” dialog box.  Select the “SQL Server Compact 4.0 Local Database” item (new in VS 2010 SP1) and name the database file to create “Store.sdf”: Note that SQL CE database files have a .sdf filename extension. Place them within the /App_Data folder of your ASP.NET application to enable easy deployment. When we clicked the “Add” button above a Store.sdf file was added to our project: Step 3: Adding a “Products” Table Double-clicking the “Store.sdf” database file will open it up within the Server Explorer tab.  Since it is a new database there are no tables within it: Right click on the “Tables” icon and choose the “Create Table” menu command to create a new database table.  We’ll name the new table “Products” and add 4 columns to it.  We’ll mark the first column as a primary key (and make it an identify column so that its value will automatically increment with each new row): When we click “ok” our new Products table will be created in the SQL CE database. Step 4: Populate with Data Once our Products table is created it will show up within the Server Explorer.  We can right-click it and choose the “Show Table Data” menu command to edit its data: Let’s add a few sample rows of data to it: Step 5: Create an EF Model Layer We have a SQL CE database with some data in it – let’s now create an EF Model Layer that will provide a way for us to easily query and update data within it. Let’s right-click on our project and choose the “Add->New Item” menu command.  This will bring up the “Add New Item” dialog – select the “ADO.NET Entity Data Model” item within it and name it “Store.edmx” This will add a new Store.edmx item to our solution explorer and launch a wizard that allows us to quickly create an EF model: Select the “Generate From Database” option above and click next.  Choose to use the Store.sdf SQL CE database we just created and then click next again.  The wizard will then ask you what database objects you want to import into your model.  Let’s choose to import the “Products” table we created earlier: When we click the “Finish” button Visual Studio will open up the EF designer.  It will have a Product entity already on it that maps to the “Products” table within our SQL CE database: The VS 2010 SP1 EF designer works exactly the same with SQL CE as it does already with SQL Server and SQL Express.  The Product entity above will be persisted as a class (called “Product”) that we can programmatically work against within our ASP.NET application. Step 6: Compile the Project Before using your model layer you’ll need to build your project.  Do a Ctrl+Shift+B to compile the project, or use the Build->Build Solution menu command. Step 7: Create a Page that Uses our EF Model Layer Let’s now create a simple ASP.NET Web Form that contains a GridView control that we can use to display and edit the our Products data (via the EF Model Layer we just created). Right-click on the project and choose the Add->New Item command.  Select the “Web Form from Master Page” item template, and name the page you create “Products.aspx”.  Base the master page on the “Site.Master” template that is in the root of the project. Add an <h2>Products</h2> heading the new Page, and add an <asp:gridview> control within it: Then click the “Design” tab to switch into design-view. Select the GridView control, and then click the top-right corner to display the GridView’s “Smart Tasks” UI: Choose the “New data source…” drop down option above.  This will bring up the below dialog which allows you to pick your Data Source type: Select the “Entity” data source option – which will allow us to easily connect our GridView to the EF model layer we created earlier.  This will bring up another dialog that allows us to pick our model layer: Select the “StoreEntities” option in the dropdown – which is the EF model layer we created earlier.  Then click next – which will allow us to pick which entity within it we want to bind to: Select the “Products” entity in the above dialog – which indicates that we want to bind against the “Product” entity class we defined earlier.  Then click the “Enable automatic updates” checkbox to ensure that we can both query and update Products.  When you click “Finish” VS will wire-up an <asp:EntityDataSource> to your <asp:GridView> control: The last two steps we’ll do will be to click the “Enable Editing” checkbox on the Grid (which will cause the Grid to display an “Edit” link on each row) and (optionally) use the Auto Format dialog to pick a UI template for the Grid. Step 8: Run the Application Let’s now run our application and browse to the /Products.aspx page that contains our GridView.  When we do so we’ll see a Grid UI of the Products within our SQL CE database. Clicking the “Edit” link for any of the rows will allow us to edit their values: When we click “Update” the GridView will post back the values, persist them through our EF Model Layer, and ultimately save them within our SQL CE database. Learn More about using EF with ASP.NET Web Forms Read this tutorial series on the http://asp.net site to learn more about how to use EF with ASP.NET Web Forms.  The tutorial series uses SQL Express as the database – but the nice thing is that all of the same steps/concepts can also now also be done with SQL CE.   Walkthrough 2: Using EF Code-First with SQL CE and ASP.NET MVC 3 We used a database-first approach with the sample above – where we first created the database, and then used the EF designer to create model classes from the database.  In addition to supporting a designer-based development workflow, EF also enables a more code-centric option which we call “code first development”.  Code-First Development enables a pretty sweet development workflow.  It enables you to: Define your model objects by simply writing “plain old classes” with no base classes or visual designer required Use a “convention over configuration” approach that enables database persistence without explicitly configuring anything Optionally override the convention-based persistence and use a fluent code API to fully customize the persistence mapping Optionally auto-create a database based on the model classes you define – allowing you to start from code first I’ve done several blog posts about EF Code First in the past – I really think it is great.  The good news is that it also works very well with SQL CE. The combination of SQL CE, EF Code First, and the new VS tooling support for SQL CE, enables a pretty nice workflow.  Below is a simple example of how you can use them to build a simple ASP.NET MVC 3 application. Step 1: Create a new ASP.NET MVC 3 Project We’ll begin by using the File->New Project menu command within Visual Studio to create a new ASP.NET MVC 3 project.  We’ll use the “Internet Project” template so that it has a default UI skin implemented: Step 2: Use NuGet to Install EFCodeFirst Next we’ll use the NuGet package manager (automatically installed by ASP.NET MVC 3) to add the EFCodeFirst library to our project.  We’ll use the Package Manager command shell to do this.  Bring up the package manager console within Visual Studio by selecting the View->Other Windows->Package Manager Console menu command.  Then type: install-package EFCodeFirst within the package manager console to download the EFCodeFirst library and have it be added to our project: When we enter the above command, the EFCodeFirst library will be downloaded and added to our application: Step 3: Build Some Model Classes Using a “code first” based development workflow, we will create our model classes first (even before we have a database).  We create these model classes by writing code. For this sample, we will right click on the “Models” folder of our project and add the below three classes to our project: The “Dinner” and “RSVP” model classes above are “plain old CLR objects” (aka POCO).  They do not need to derive from any base classes or implement any interfaces, and the properties they expose are standard .NET data-types.  No data persistence attributes or data code has been added to them.   The “NerdDinners” class derives from the DbContext class (which is supplied by EFCodeFirst) and handles the retrieval/persistence of our Dinner and RSVP instances from a database. Step 4: Listing Dinners We’ve written all of the code necessary to implement our model layer for this simple project.  Let’s now expose and implement the URL: /Dinners/Upcoming within our project.  We’ll use it to list upcoming dinners that happen in the future. We’ll do this by right-clicking on our “Controllers” folder and select the “Add->Controller” menu command.  We’ll name the Controller we want to create “DinnersController”.  We’ll then implement an “Upcoming” action method within it that lists upcoming dinners using our model layer above.  We will use a LINQ query to retrieve the data and pass it to a View to render with the code below: We’ll then right-click within our Upcoming method and choose the “Add-View” menu command to create an “Upcoming” view template that displays our dinners.  We’ll use the “empty” template option within the “Add View” dialog and write the below view template using Razor: Step 4: Configure our Project to use a SQL CE Database We have finished writing all of our code – our last step will be to configure a database connection-string to use. We will point our NerdDinners model class to a SQL CE database by adding the below <connectionString> to the web.config file at the top of our project: EF Code First uses a default convention where context classes will look for a connection-string that matches the DbContext class name.  Because we created a “NerdDinners” class earlier, we’ve also named our connectionstring “NerdDinners”.  Above we are configuring our connection-string to use SQL CE as the database, and telling it that our SQL CE database file will live within the \App_Data directory of our ASP.NET project. Step 5: Running our Application Now that we’ve built our application, let’s run it! We’ll browse to the /Dinners/Upcoming URL – doing so will display an empty list of upcoming dinners: You might ask – but where did it query to get the dinners from? We didn’t explicitly create a database?!? One of the cool features that EF Code-First supports is the ability to automatically create a database (based on the schema of our model classes) when the database we point it at doesn’t exist.  Above we configured  EF Code-First to point at a SQL CE database in the \App_Data\ directory of our project.  When we ran our application, EF Code-First saw that the SQL CE database didn’t exist and automatically created it for us. Step 6: Using VS 2010 SP1 to Explore our newly created SQL CE Database Click the “Show all Files” icon within the Solution Explorer and you’ll see the “NerdDinners.sdf” SQL CE database file that was automatically created for us by EF code-first within the \App_Data\ folder: We can optionally right-click on the file and “Include in Project" to add it to our solution: We can also double-click the file (regardless of whether it is added to the project) and VS 2010 SP1 will open it as a database we can edit within the “Server Explorer” tab of the IDE. Below is the view we get when we double-click our NerdDinners.sdf SQL CE file.  We can drill in to see the schema of the Dinners and RSVPs tables in the tree explorer.  Notice how two tables - Dinners and RSVPs – were automatically created for us within our SQL CE database.  This was done by EF Code First when we accessed the NerdDinners class by running our application above: We can right-click on a Table and use the “Show Table Data” command to enter some upcoming dinners in our database: We’ll use the built-in editor that VS 2010 SP1 supports to populate our table data below: And now when we hit “refresh” on the /Dinners/Upcoming URL within our browser we’ll see some upcoming dinners show up: Step 7: Changing our Model and Database Schema Let’s now modify the schema of our model layer and database, and walkthrough one way that the new VS 2010 SP1 Tooling support for SQL CE can make this easier.  With EF Code-First you typically start making database changes by modifying the model classes.  For example, let’s add an additional string property called “UrlLink” to our “Dinner” class.  We’ll use this to point to a link for more information about the event: Now when we re-run our project, and visit the /Dinners/Upcoming URL we’ll see an error thrown: We are seeing this error because EF Code-First automatically created our database, and by default when it does this it adds a table that helps tracks whether the schema of our database is in sync with our model classes.  EF Code-First helpfully throws an error when they become out of sync – making it easier to track down issues at development time that you might otherwise only find (via obscure errors) at runtime.  Note that if you do not want this feature you can turn it off by changing the default conventions of your DbContext class (in this case our NerdDinners class) to not track the schema version. Our model classes and database schema are out of sync in the above example – so how do we fix this?  There are two approaches you can use today: Delete the database and have EF Code First automatically re-create the database based on the new model class schema (losing the data within the existing DB) Modify the schema of the existing database to make it in sync with the model classes (keeping/migrating the data within the existing DB) There are a couple of ways you can do the second approach above.  Below I’m going to show how you can take advantage of the new VS 2010 SP1 Tooling support for SQL CE to use a database schema tool to modify our database structure.  We are also going to be supporting a “migrations” feature with EF in the future that will allow you to automate/script database schema migrations programmatically. Step 8: Modify our SQL CE Database Schema using VS 2010 SP1 The new SQL CE Tooling support within VS 2010 SP1 makes it easy to modify the schema of our existing SQL CE database.  To do this we’ll right-click on our “Dinners” table and choose the “Edit Table Schema” command: This will bring up the below “Edit Table” dialog.  We can rename, change or delete any of the existing columns in our table, or click at the bottom of the column listing and type to add a new column.  Below I’ve added a new “UrlLink” column of type “nvarchar” (since our property is a string): When we click ok our database will be updated to have the new column and our schema will now match our model classes. Because we are manually modifying our database schema, there is one additional step we need to take to let EF Code-First know that the database schema is in sync with our model classes.  As i mentioned earlier, when a database is automatically created by EF Code-First it adds a “EdmMetadata” table to the database to track schema versions (and hash our model classes against them to detect mismatches between our model classes and the database schema): Since we are manually updating and maintaining our database schema, we don’t need this table – and can just delete it: This will leave us with just the two tables that correspond to our model classes: And now when we re-run our /Dinners/Upcoming URL it will display the dinners correctly: One last touch we could do would be to update our view to check for the new UrlLink property and render a <a> link to it if an event has one: And now when we refresh our /Dinners/Upcoming we will see hyperlinks for the events that have a UrlLink stored in the database: Summary SQL CE provides a free, embedded, database engine that you can use to easily enable database storage.  With SQL CE 4 you can now take advantage of it within ASP.NET projects and applications (both Web Forms and MVC). VS 2010 SP1 provides tooling support that enables you to easily create, edit and modify SQL CE databases – as well as use the standard EF designer against them.  This allows you to re-use your existing skills and data knowledge while taking advantage of an embedded database option.  This is useful both for small applications (where you don’t need the scalability of a full SQL Server), as well as for development and testing scenarios – where you want to be able to rapidly develop/test your application without having a full database instance.  SQL CE makes it easy to later migrate your data to a full SQL Server or SQL Azure instance if you want to – without having to change any code in your application.  All we would need to change in the above two scenarios is the <connectionString> value within the web.config file in order to have our code run against a full SQL Server.  This provides the flexibility to scale up your application starting from a small embedded database solution as needed. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• Guidance: A Branching strategy for Scrum Teams

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Having a good branching strategy will save your bacon, or at least your code. Be careful when deviating from your branching strategy because if you do, you may be worse off than when you started! This is one possible branching strategy for Scrum teams and I will not be going in depth with Scrum but you can find out more about Scrum by reading the Scrum Guide and you can even assess your Scrum knowledge by having a go at the Scrum Open Assessment. You can also read SSW’s Rules to Better Scrum using TFS which have been developed during our own Scrum implementations. Acknowledgements Bill Heys – Bill offered some good feedback on this post and helped soften the language. Note: Bill is a VS ALM Ranger and co-wrote the Branching Guidance for TFS 2010 Willy-Peter Schaub – Willy-Peter is an ex Visual Studio ALM MVP turned blue badge and has been involved in most of the guidance including the Branching Guidance for TFS 2010 Chris Birmele – Chris wrote some of the early TFS Branching and Merging Guidance. Dr Paul Neumeyer, Ph.D Parallel Processes, ScrumMaster and SSW Solution Architect – Paul wanted to have feature branches coming from the release branch as well. We agreed that this is really a spin-off that needs own project, backlog, budget and Team. Scenario: A product is developed RTM 1.0 is released and gets great sales.  Extra features are demanded but the new version will have double to price to pay to recover costs, work is approved by the guys with budget and a few sprints later RTM 2.0 is released.  Sales a very low due to the pricing strategy. There are lots of clients on RTM 1.0 calling out for patches. As I keep getting Reverse Integration and Forward Integration mixed up and Bill keeps slapping my wrists I thought I should have a reminder: You still seemed to use reverse and/or forward integration in the wrong context. I would recommend reviewing your document at the end to ensure that it agrees with the common understanding of these terms merge (forward integration) from parent to child (same direction as the branch), and merge  (reverse integration) from child to parent (the reverse direction of the branch). - one of my many slaps on the wrist from Bill Heys.   As I mentioned previously we are using a single feature branching strategy in our current project. The single biggest mistake developers make is developing against the “Main” or “Trunk” line. This ultimately leads to messy code as things are added and never finished. Your only alternative is to NEVER check in unless your code is 100%, but this does not work in practice, even with a single developer. Your ADD will kick in and your half-finished code will be finished enough to pass the build and the tests. You do use builds don’t you? Sadly, this is a very common scenario and I have had people argue that branching merely adds complexity. Then again I have seen the other side of the universe ... branching  structures from he... We should somehow convince everyone that there is a happy between no-branching and too-much-branching. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft   A key benefit of branching for development is to isolate changes from the stable Main branch. Branching adds sanity more than it adds complexity. We do try to stress in our guidance that it is important to justify a branch, by doing a cost benefit analysis. The primary cost is the effort to do merges and resolve conflicts. A key benefit is that you have a stable code base in Main and accept changes into Main only after they pass quality gates, etc. - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft The second biggest mistake developers make is branching anything other than the WHOLE “Main” line. If you branch parts of your code and not others it gets out of sync and can make integration a nightmare. You should have your Source, Assets, Build scripts deployment scripts and dependencies inside the “Main” folder and branch the whole thing. Some departments within MSFT even go as far as to add the environments used to develop the product in there as well; although I would not recommend that unless you have a massive SQL cluster to house your source code. We tried the “add environment” back in South-Africa and while it was “phenomenal”, especially when having to switch between environments, the disk storage and processing requirements killed us. We opted for virtualization to skin this cat of keeping a ready-to-go environment handy. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft   I think people often think that you should have separate branches for separate environments (e.g. Dev, Test, Integration Test, QA, etc.). I prefer to think of deploying to environments (such as from Main to QA) rather than branching for QA). - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft   You can read about SSW’s Rules to better Source Control for some additional information on what Source Control to use and how to use it. There are also a number of branching Anti-Patterns that should be avoided at all costs: You know you are on the wrong track if you experience one or more of the following symptoms in your development environment: Merge Paranoia—avoiding merging at all cost, usually because of a fear of the consequences. Merge Mania—spending too much time merging software assets instead of developing them. Big Bang Merge—deferring branch merging to the end of the development effort and attempting to merge all branches simultaneously. Never-Ending Merge—continuous merging activity because there is always more to merge. Wrong-Way Merge—merging a software asset version with an earlier version. Branch Mania—creating many branches for no apparent reason. Cascading Branches—branching but never merging back to the main line. Mysterious Branches—branching for no apparent reason. Temporary Branches—branching for changing reasons, so the branch becomes a permanent temporary workspace. Volatile Branches—branching with unstable software assets shared by other branches or merged into another branch. Note   Branches are volatile most of the time while they exist as independent branches. That is the point of having them. The difference is that you should not share or merge branches while they are in an unstable state. Development Freeze—stopping all development activities while branching, merging, and building new base lines. Berlin Wall—using branches to divide the development team members, instead of dividing the work they are performing. -Branching and Merging Primer by Chris Birmele - Developer Tools Technical Specialist at Microsoft Pty Ltd in Australia   In fact, this can result in a merge exercise no-one wants to be involved in, merging hundreds of thousands of change sets and trying to get a consolidated build. Again, we need to find a happy medium. - Willy-Peter Schaub on Merge Paranoia Merge conflicts are generally the result of making changes to the same file in both the target and source branch. If you create merge conflicts, you will eventually need to resolve them. Often the resolution is manual. Merging more frequently allows you to resolve these conflicts close to when they happen, making the resolution clearer. Waiting weeks or months to resolve them, the Big Bang approach, means you are more likely to resolve conflicts incorrectly. - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft   Figure: Main line, this is where your stable code lives and where any build has known entities, always passes and has a happy test that passes as well? Many development projects consist of, a single “Main” line of source and artifacts. This is good; at least there is source control . There are however a couple of issues that need to be considered. What happens if: you and your team are working on a new set of features and the customer wants a change to his current version? you are working on two features and the customer decides to abandon one of them? you have two teams working on different feature sets and their changes start interfering with each other? I just use labels instead of branches? That's a lot of “what if’s”, but there is a simple way of preventing this. Branching… In TFS, labels are not immutable. This does not mean they are not useful. But labels do not provide a very good development isolation mechanism. Branching allows separate code sets to evolve separately (e.g. Current with hotfixes, and vNext with new development). I don’t see how labels work here. - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft   Figure: Creating a single feature branch means you can isolate the development work on that branch.   Its standard practice for large projects with lots of developers to use Feature branching and you can check the Branching Guidance for the latest recommendations from the Visual Studio ALM Rangers for other methods. In the diagram above you can see my recommendation for branching when using Scrum development with TFS 2010. It consists of a single Sprint branch to contain all the changes for the current sprint. The main branch has the permissions changes so contributors to the project can only Branch and Merge with “Main”. This will prevent accidental check-ins or checkouts of the “Main” line that would contaminate the code. The developers continue to develop on sprint one until the completion of the sprint. Note: In the real world, starting a new Greenfield project, this process starts at Sprint 2 as at the start of Sprint 1 you would have artifacts in version control and no need for isolation.   Figure: Once the sprint is complete the Sprint 1 code can then be merged back into the Main line. There are always good practices to follow, and one is to always do a Forward Integration from Main into Sprint 1 before you do a Reverse Integration from Sprint 1 back into Main. In this case it may seem superfluous, but this builds good muscle memory into your developer’s work ethic and means that no bad habits are learned that would interfere with additional Scrum Teams being added to the Product. The process of completing your sprint development: The Team completes their work according to their definition of done. Merge from “Main” into “Sprint1” (Forward Integration) Stabilize your code with any changes coming from other Scrum Teams working on the same product. If you have one Scrum Team this should be quick, but there may have been bug fixes in the Release branches. (we will talk about release branches later) Merge from “Sprint1” into “Main” to commit your changes. (Reverse Integration) Check-in Delete the Sprint1 branch Note: The Sprint 1 branch is no longer required as its useful life has been concluded. Check-in Done But you are not yet done with the Sprint. The goal in Scrum is to have a “potentially shippable product” at the end of every Sprint, and we do not have that yet, we only have finished code.   Figure: With Sprint 1 merged you can create a Release branch and run your final packaging and testing In 99% of all projects I have been involved in or watched, a “shippable product” only happens towards the end of the overall lifecycle, especially when sprints are short. The in-between releases are great demonstration releases, but not shippable. Perhaps it comes from my 80’s brain washing that we only ship when we reach the agreed quality and business feature bar. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft Although you should have been testing and packaging your code all the way through your Sprint 1 development, preferably using an automated process, you still need to test and package with stable unchanging code. This is where you do what at SSW we call a “Test Please”. This is first an internal test of the product to make sure it meets the needs of the customer and you generally use a resource external to your Team. Then a “Test Please” is conducted with the Product Owner to make sure he is happy with the output. You can read about how to conduct a Test Please on our Rules to Successful Projects: Do you conduct an internal "test please" prior to releasing a version to a client?   Figure: If you find a deviation from the expected result you fix it on the Release branch. If during your final testing or your “Test Please” you find there are issues or bugs then you should fix them on the release branch. If you can’t fix them within the time box of your Sprint, then you will need to create a Bug and put it onto the backlog for prioritization by the Product owner. Make sure you leave plenty of time between your merge from the development branch to find and fix any problems that are uncovered. This process is commonly called Stabilization and should always be conducted once you have completed all of your User Stories and integrated all of your branches. Even once you have stabilized and released, you should not delete the release branch as you would with the Sprint branch. It has a usefulness for servicing that may extend well beyond the limited life you expect of it. Note: Don't get forced by the business into adding features into a Release branch instead that indicates the unspoken requirement is that they are asking for a product spin-off. In this case you can create a new Team Project and branch from the required Release branch to create a new Main branch for that product. And you create a whole new backlog to work from.   Figure: When the Team decides it is happy with the product you can create a RTM branch. Once you have fixed all the bugs you can, and added any you can’t to the Product Backlog, and you Team is happy with the result you can create a Release. This would consist of doing the final Build and Packaging it up ready for your Sprint Review meeting. You would then create a read-only branch that represents the code you “shipped”. This is really an Audit trail branch that is optional, but is good practice. You could use a Label, but Labels are not Auditable and if a dispute was raised by the customer you can produce a verifiable version of the source code for an independent party to check. Rare I know, but you do not want to be at the wrong end of a legal battle. Like the Release branch the RTM branch should never be deleted, or only deleted according to your companies legal policy, which in the UK is usually 7 years.   Figure: If you have made any changes in the Release you will need to merge back up to Main in order to finalise the changes. Nothing is really ever done until it is in Main. The same rules apply when merging any fixes in the Release branch back into Main and you should do a reverse merge before a forward merge, again for the muscle memory more than necessity at this stage. Your Sprint is now nearly complete, and you can have a Sprint Review meeting knowing that you have made every effort and taken every precaution to protect your customer’s investment. Note: In order to really achieve protection for both you and your client you would add Automated Builds, Automated Tests, Automated Acceptance tests, Acceptance test tracking, Unit Tests, Load tests, Web test and all the other good engineering practices that help produce reliable software.     Figure: After the Sprint Planning meeting the process begins again. Where the Sprint Review and Retrospective meetings mark the end of the Sprint, the Sprint Planning meeting marks the beginning. After you have completed your Sprint Planning and you know what you are trying to achieve in Sprint 2 you can create your new Branch to develop in. How do we handle a bug(s) in production that can’t wait? Although in Scrum the only work done should be on the backlog there should be a little buffer added to the Sprint Planning for contingencies. One of these contingencies is a bug in the current release that can’t wait for the Sprint to finish. But how do you handle that? Willy-Peter Schaub asked an excellent question on the release activities: In reality Sprint 2 starts when sprint 1 ends + weekend. Should we not cater for a possible parallelism between Sprint 2 and the release activities of sprint 1? It would introduce FI’s from main to sprint 2, I guess. Your “Figure: Merging print 2 back into Main.” covers, what I tend to believe to be reality in most cases. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft I agree, and if you have a single Scrum team then your resources are limited. The Scrum Team is responsible for packaging and release, so at least one run at stabilization, package and release should be included in the Sprint time box. If more are needed on the current production release during the Sprint 2 time box then resource needs to be pulled from Sprint 2. The Product Owner and the Team have four choices (in order of disruption/cost): Backlog: Add the bug to the backlog and fix it in the next Sprint Buffer Time: Use any buffer time included in the current Sprint to fix the bug quickly Make time: Remove a Story from the current Sprint that is of equal value to the time lost fixing the bug(s) and releasing. Note: The Team must agree that it can still meet the Sprint Goal. Cancel Sprint: Cancel the sprint and concentrate all resource on fixing the bug(s) Note: This can be a very costly if the current sprint has already had a lot of work completed as it will be lost. The choice will depend on the complexity and severity of the bug(s) and both the Product Owner and the Team need to agree. In this case we will go with option #2 or #3 as they are uncomplicated but severe bugs. Figure: Real world issue where a bug needs fixed in the current release. If the bug(s) is urgent enough then then your only option is to fix it in place. You can edit the release branch to find and fix the bug, hopefully creating a test so it can’t happen again. Follow the prior process and conduct an internal and customer “Test Please” before releasing. You can read about how to conduct a Test Please on our Rules to Successful Projects: Do you conduct an internal "test please" prior to releasing a version to a client?   Figure: After you have fixed the bug you need to ship again. You then need to again create an RTM branch to hold the version of the code you released in escrow.   Figure: Main is now out of sync with your Release. We now need to get these new changes back up into the Main branch. Do a reverse and then forward merge again to get the new code into Main. But what about the branch, are developers not working on Sprint 2? Does Sprint 2 now have changes that are not in Main and Main now have changes that are not in Sprint 2? Well, yes… and this is part of the hit you take doing branching. But would this scenario even have been possible without branching?   Figure: Getting the changes in Main into Sprint 2 is very important. The Team now needs to do a Forward Integration merge into their Sprint and resolve any conflicts that occur. Maybe the bug has already been fixed in Sprint 2, maybe the bug no longer exists! This needs to be identified and resolved by the developers before they continue to get further out of Sync with Main. Note: Avoid the “Big bang merge” at all costs.   Figure: Merging Sprint 2 back into Main, the Forward Integration, and R0 terminates. Sprint 2 now merges (Reverse Integration) back into Main following the procedures we have already established.   Figure: The logical conclusion. This then allows the creation of the next release. By now you should be getting the big picture and hopefully you learned something useful from this post. I know I have enjoyed writing it as I find these exploratory posts coupled with real world experience really help harden my understanding.  Branching is a tool; it is not a silver bullet. Don’t over use it, and avoid “Anti-Patterns” where possible. Although the diagram above looks complicated I hope showing you how it is formed simplifies it as much as possible.   Technorati Tags: Branching,Scrum,VS ALM,TFS 2010,VS2010

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• An Introduction to Meteor

  - by Stephen.Walther

  The goal of this blog post is to give you a brief introduction to Meteor which is a framework for building Single Page Apps. In this blog entry, I provide a walkthrough of building a simple Movie database app. What is special about Meteor? Meteor has two jaw-dropping features: Live HTML – If you make any changes to the HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or data on the server then every client shows the changes automatically without a browser refresh. For example, if you change the background color of a page to yellow then every open browser will show the new yellow background color without a refresh. Or, if you add a new movie to a collection of movies, then every open browser will display the new movie automatically. With Live HTML, users no longer need a refresh button. Changes to an application happen everywhere automatically without any effort. The Meteor framework handles all of the messy details of keeping all of the clients in sync with the server for you. Latency Compensation – When you modify data on the client, these modifications appear as if they happened on the server without any delay. For example, if you create a new movie then the movie appears instantly. However, that is all an illusion. In the background, Meteor updates the database with the new movie. If, for whatever reason, the movie cannot be added to the database then Meteor removes the movie from the client automatically. Latency compensation is extremely important for creating a responsive web application. You want the user to be able to make instant modifications in the browser and the framework to handle the details of updating the database without slowing down the user. Installing Meteor Meteor is licensed under the open-source MIT license and you can start building production apps with the framework right now. Be warned that Meteor is still in the “early preview” stage. It has not reached a 1.0 release. According to the Meteor FAQ, Meteor will reach version 1.0 in “More than a month, less than a year.” Don’t be scared away by that. You should be aware that, unlike most open source projects, Meteor has financial backing. The Meteor project received an $11.2 million round of financing from Andreessen Horowitz. So, it would be a good bet that this project will reach the 1.0 mark. And, if it doesn’t, the framework as it exists right now is still very powerful. Meteor runs on top of Node.js. You write Meteor apps by writing JavaScript which runs both on the client and on the server. You can build Meteor apps on Windows, Mac, or Linux (Although the support for Windows is still officially unofficial). If you want to install Meteor on Windows then download the MSI from the following URL: http://win.meteor.com/ If you want to install Meteor on Mac/Linux then run the following CURL command from your terminal: curl https://install.meteor.com | /bin/sh Meteor will install all of its dependencies automatically including Node.js. However, I recommend that you install Node.js before installing Meteor by installing Node.js from the following address: http://nodejs.org/ If you let Meteor install Node.js then Meteor won’t install NPM which is the standard package manager for Node.js. If you install Node.js and then you install Meteor then you get NPM automatically. Creating a New Meteor App To get a sense of how Meteor works, I am going to walk through the steps required to create a simple Movie database app. Our app will display a list of movies and contain a form for creating a new movie. The first thing that we need to do is create our new Meteor app. Open a command prompt/terminal window and execute the following command: Meteor create MovieApp After you execute this command, you should see something like the following: Follow the instructions: execute cd MovieApp to change to your MovieApp directory, and run the meteor command. Executing the meteor command starts Meteor on port 3000. Open up your favorite web browser and navigate to http://localhost:3000 and you should see the default Meteor Hello World page: Open up your favorite development environment to see what the Meteor app looks like. Open the MovieApp folder which we just created. Here’s what the MovieApp looks like in Visual Studio 2012: Notice that our MovieApp contains three files named MovieApp.css, MovieApp.html, and MovieApp.js. In other words, it contains a Cascading Style Sheet file, an HTML file, and a JavaScript file. Just for fun, let’s see how the Live HTML feature works. Open up multiple browsers and point each browser at http://localhost:3000. Now, open the MovieApp.html page and modify the text “Hello World!” to “Hello Cruel World!” and save the change. The text in all of the browsers should update automatically without a browser refresh. Pretty amazing, right? Controlling Where JavaScript Executes You write a Meteor app using JavaScript. Some of the JavaScript executes on the client (the browser) and some of the JavaScript executes on the server and some of the JavaScript executes in both places. For a super simple app, you can use the Meteor.isServer and Meteor.isClient properties to control where your JavaScript code executes. For example, the following JavaScript contains a section of code which executes on the server and a section of code which executes in the browser: if (Meteor.isClient) { console.log("Hello Browser!"); } if (Meteor.isServer) { console.log("Hello Server!"); } console.log("Hello Browser and Server!"); When you run the app, the message “Hello Browser!” is written to the browser JavaScript console. The message “Hello Server!” is written to the command/terminal window where you ran Meteor. Finally, the message “Hello Browser and Server!” is execute on both the browser and server and the message appears in both places. For simple apps, using Meteor.isClient and Meteor.isServer to control where JavaScript executes is fine. For more complex apps, you should create separate folders for your server and client code. Here are the folders which you can use in a Meteor app: · client – This folder contains any JavaScript which executes only on the client. · server – This folder contains any JavaScript which executes only on the server. · common – This folder contains any JavaScript code which executes on both the client and server. · lib – This folder contains any JavaScript files which you want to execute before any other JavaScript files. · public – This folder contains static application assets such as images. For the Movie App, we need the client, server, and common folders. Delete the existing MovieApp.js, MovieApp.html, and MovieApp.css files. We will create new files in the right locations later in this walkthrough. Combining HTML, CSS, and JavaScript Files Meteor combines all of your JavaScript files, and all of your Cascading Style Sheet files, and all of your HTML files automatically. If you want to create one humongous JavaScript file which contains all of the code for your app then that is your business. However, if you want to build a more maintainable application, then you should break your JavaScript files into many separate JavaScript files and let Meteor combine them for you. Meteor also combines all of your HTML files into a single file. HTML files are allowed to have the following top-level elements: <head> — All <head> files are combined into a single <head> and served with the initial page load. <body> — All <body> files are combined into a single <body> and served with the initial page load. <template> — All <template> files are compiled into JavaScript templates. Because you are creating a single page app, a Meteor app typically will contain a single HTML file for the <head> and <body> content. However, a Meteor app typically will contain several template files. In other words, all of the interesting stuff happens within the <template> files. Displaying a List of Movies Let me start building the Movie App by displaying a list of movies. In order to display a list of movies, we need to create the following four files: · client\movies.html – Contains the HTML for the <head> and <body> of the page for the Movie app. · client\moviesTemplate.html – Contains the HTML template for displaying the list of movies. · client\movies.js – Contains the JavaScript for supplying data to the moviesTemplate. · server\movies.js – Contains the JavaScript for seeding the database with movies. After you create these files, your folder structure should looks like this: Here’s what the client\movies.html file looks like: <head> <title>My Movie App</title> </head> <body> <h1>Movies</h1> {{> moviesTemplate }} </body>   Notice that it contains <head> and <body> top-level elements. The <body> element includes the moviesTemplate with the syntax {{> moviesTemplate }}. The moviesTemplate is defined in the client/moviesTemplate.html file: <template name="moviesTemplate"> <ul> {{#each movies}} <li> {{title}} </li> {{/each}} </ul> </template> By default, Meteor uses the Handlebars templating library. In the moviesTemplate above, Handlebars is used to loop through each of the movies using {{#each}}…{{/each}} and display the title for each movie using {{title}}. The client\movies.js JavaScript file is used to bind the moviesTemplate to the Movies collection on the client. Here’s what this JavaScript file looks like: // Declare client Movies collection Movies = new Meteor.Collection("movies"); // Bind moviesTemplate to Movies collection Template.moviesTemplate.movies = function () { return Movies.find(); }; The Movies collection is a client-side proxy for the server-side Movies database collection. Whenever you want to interact with the collection of Movies stored in the database, you use the Movies collection instead of communicating back to the server. The moviesTemplate is bound to the Movies collection by assigning a function to the Template.moviesTemplate.movies property. The function simply returns all of the movies from the Movies collection. The final file which we need is the server-side server\movies.js file: // Declare server Movies collection Movies = new Meteor.Collection("movies"); // Seed the movie database with a few movies Meteor.startup(function () { if (Movies.find().count() == 0) { Movies.insert({ title: "Star Wars", director: "Lucas" }); Movies.insert({ title: "Memento", director: "Nolan" }); Movies.insert({ title: "King Kong", director: "Jackson" }); } }); The server\movies.js file does two things. First, it declares the server-side Meteor Movies collection. When you declare a server-side Meteor collection, a collection is created in the MongoDB database associated with your Meteor app automatically (Meteor uses MongoDB as its database automatically). Second, the server\movies.js file seeds the Movies collection (MongoDB collection) with three movies. Seeding the database gives us some movies to look at when we open the Movies app in a browser. Creating New Movies Let me modify the Movies Database App so that we can add new movies to the database of movies. First, I need to create a new template file – named client\movieForm.html – which contains an HTML form for creating a new movie: <template name="movieForm"> <fieldset> <legend>Add New Movie</legend> <form> <div> <label> Title: <input id="title" /> </label> </div> <div> <label> Director: <input id="director" /> </label> </div> <div> <input type="submit" value="Add Movie" /> </div> </form> </fieldset> </template> In order for the new form to show up, I need to modify the client\movies.html file to include the movieForm.html template. Notice that I added {{> movieForm }} to the client\movies.html file: <head> <title>My Movie App</title> </head> <body> <h1>Movies</h1> {{> moviesTemplate }} {{> movieForm }} </body> After I make these modifications, our Movie app will display the form: The next step is to handle the submit event for the movie form. Below, I’ve modified the client\movies.js file so that it contains a handler for the submit event raised when you submit the form contained in the movieForm.html template: // Declare client Movies collection Movies = new Meteor.Collection("movies"); // Bind moviesTemplate to Movies collection Template.moviesTemplate.movies = function () { return Movies.find(); }; // Handle movieForm events Template.movieForm.events = { 'submit': function (e, tmpl) { // Don't postback e.preventDefault(); // create the new movie var newMovie = { title: tmpl.find("#title").value, director: tmpl.find("#director").value }; // add the movie to the db Movies.insert(newMovie); } }; The Template.movieForm.events property contains an event map which maps event names to handlers. In this case, I am mapping the form submit event to an anonymous function which handles the event. In the event handler, I am first preventing a postback by calling e.preventDefault(). This is a single page app, no postbacks are allowed! Next, I am grabbing the new movie from the HTML form. I’m taking advantage of the template find() method to retrieve the form field values. Finally, I am calling Movies.insert() to insert the new movie into the Movies collection. Here, I am explicitly inserting the new movie into the client-side Movies collection. Meteor inserts the new movie into the server-side Movies collection behind the scenes. When Meteor inserts the movie into the server-side collection, the new movie is added to the MongoDB database associated with the Movies app automatically. If server-side insertion fails for whatever reasons – for example, your internet connection is lost – then Meteor will remove the movie from the client-side Movies collection automatically. In other words, Meteor takes care of keeping the client Movies collection and the server Movies collection in sync. If you open multiple browsers, and add movies, then you should notice that all of the movies appear on all of the open browser automatically. You don’t need to refresh individual browsers to update the client-side Movies collection. Meteor keeps everything synchronized between the browsers and server for you. Removing the Insecure Module To make it easier to develop and debug a new Meteor app, by default, you can modify the database directly from the client. For example, you can delete all of the data in the database by opening up your browser console window and executing multiple Movies.remove() commands. Obviously, enabling anyone to modify your database from the browser is not a good idea in a production application. Before you make a Meteor app public, you should first run the meteor remove insecure command from a command/terminal window: Running meteor remove insecure removes the insecure package from the Movie app. Unfortunately, it also breaks our Movie app. We’ll get an “Access denied” error in our browser console whenever we try to insert a new movie. No worries. I’ll fix this issue in the next section. Creating Meteor Methods By taking advantage of Meteor Methods, you can create methods which can be invoked on both the client and the server. By taking advantage of Meteor Methods you can: 1. Perform form validation on both the client and the server. For example, even if an evil hacker bypasses your client code, you can still prevent the hacker from submitting an invalid value for a form field by enforcing validation on the server. 2. Simulate database operations on the client but actually perform the operations on the server. Let me show you how we can modify our Movie app so it uses Meteor Methods to insert a new movie. First, we need to create a new file named common\methods.js which contains the definition of our Meteor Methods: Meteor.methods({ addMovie: function (newMovie) { // Perform form validation if (newMovie.title == "") { throw new Meteor.Error(413, "Missing title!"); } if (newMovie.director == "") { throw new Meteor.Error(413, "Missing director!"); } // Insert movie (simulate on client, do it on server) return Movies.insert(newMovie); } }); The addMovie() method is called from both the client and the server. This method does two things. First, it performs some basic validation. If you don’t enter a title or you don’t enter a director then an error is thrown. Second, the addMovie() method inserts the new movie into the Movies collection. When called on the client, inserting the new movie into the Movies collection just updates the collection. When called on the server, inserting the new movie into the Movies collection causes the database (MongoDB) to be updated with the new movie. You must add the common\methods.js file to the common folder so it will get executed on both the client and the server. Our folder structure now looks like this: We actually call the addMovie() method within our client code in the client\movies.js file. Here’s what the updated file looks like: // Declare client Movies collection Movies = new Meteor.Collection("movies"); // Bind moviesTemplate to Movies collection Template.moviesTemplate.movies = function () { return Movies.find(); }; // Handle movieForm events Template.movieForm.events = { 'submit': function (e, tmpl) { // Don't postback e.preventDefault(); // create the new movie var newMovie = { title: tmpl.find("#title").value, director: tmpl.find("#director").value }; // add the movie to the db Meteor.call( "addMovie", newMovie, function (err, result) { if (err) { alert("Could not add movie " + err.reason); } } ); } }; The addMovie() method is called – on both the client and the server – by calling the Meteor.call() method. This method accepts the following parameters: · The string name of the method to call. · The data to pass to the method (You can actually pass multiple params for the data if you like). · A callback function to invoke after the method completes. In the JavaScript code above, the addMovie() method is called with the new movie retrieved from the HTML form. The callback checks for an error. If there is an error then the error reason is displayed in an alert (please don’t use alerts for validation errors in a production app because they are ugly!). Summary The goal of this blog post was to provide you with a brief walk through of a simple Meteor app. I showed you how you can create a simple Movie Database app which enables you to display a list of movies and create new movies. I also explained why it is important to remove the Meteor insecure package from a production app. I showed you how to use Meteor Methods to insert data into the database instead of doing it directly from the client. I’m very impressed with the Meteor framework. The support for Live HTML and Latency Compensation are required features for many real world Single Page Apps but implementing these features by hand is not easy. Meteor makes it easy.

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• Tips on Migrating from AquaLogic .NET Accelerator to WebCenter WSRP Producer for .NET

  - by user647124

  This year I embarked on a journey to migrate a group of ASP.NET web applications developed to integrate with WebLogic Portal 9.2 via the AquaLogic® Interaction .NET Application Accelerator 1.0 to instead use the Oracle WebCenter WSRP Producer for .NET and integrated with WebLogic Portal 10.3.4. It has been a very winding path and this blog entry is intended to share both the lessons learned and relevant approaches that led to those learnings. Like most journeys of discovery, it was not a direct path, and there are notes to let you know when it is practical to skip a section if you are in a hurry to get from here to there. For the Curious From the perspective of necessity, this section would be better at the end. If it were there, though, it would probably be read by far fewer people, including those that are actually interested in these types of sections. Those in a hurry may skip past and be none the worst for it in dealing with the hands-on bits of performing a migration from .NET Accelerator to WSRP Producer. For others who want to talk about why they did what they did after they did it, or just want to know for themselves, enjoy. A Brief (and edited) History of the WSRP for .NET Technologies (as Relevant to the this Post) Note: This section is for those who are curious about why the migration path is not as simple as many other Oracle technologies. You can skip this section in its entirety and still be just as competent in performing a migration as if you had read it. The currently deployed architecture that was to be migrated and upgraded achieved initial integration between .NET and J2EE over the WSRP protocol through the use of The AquaLogic Interaction .NET Application Accelerator. The .NET Accelerator allowed the applications that were written in ASP.NET and deployed on a Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) to interact with a WebLogic Portal application deployed on a WebLogic (J2EE application) Server (both version 9.2, the state of the art at the time of its creation). At the time this architectural decision for the application was made, both the AquaLogic and WebLogic brands were owned by BEA Systems. The AquaLogic brand included products acquired by BEA through the acquisition of Plumtree, whose flagship product was a portal platform available in both J2EE and .NET versions. As part of this dual technology support an adaptor was created to facilitate the use of WSRP as a communication protocol where customers wished to integrate components from both versions of the Plumtree portal. The adapter evolved over several product generations to include a broad array of both standard and proprietary WSRP integration capabilities. Later, BEA Systems was acquired by Oracle. Over the course of several years Oracle has acquired a large number of portal applications and has taken the strategic direction to migrate users of these myriad (and formerly competitive) products to the Oracle WebCenter technology stack. As part of Oracle’s strategic technology roadmap, older portal products are being schedule for end of life, including the portal products that were part of the BEA acquisition. The .NET Accelerator has been modified over a very long period of time with features driven by users of that product and developed under three different vendors (each a direct competitor in the same solution space prior to merger). The Oracle WebCenter WSRP Producer for .NET was introduced much more recently with the key objective to specifically address the needs of the WebCenter customers developing solutions accessible through both J2EE and .NET platforms utilizing the WSRP specifications. The Oracle Product Development Team also provides these insights on the drivers for developing the WSRP Producer: ***************************************** Support for ASP.NET AJAX. Controls using the ASP.NET AJAX script manager do not function properly in the Application Accelerator for .NET. Support 2 way SSL in WLP. This was not possible with the proxy/bridge set up in the existing Application Accelerator for .NET. Allow developers to code portlets (Web Parts) using the .NET framework rather than a proprietary framework. Developers had to use the Application Accelerator for .NET plug-ins to Visual Studio to manage preferences and profile data. This is now replaced with the .NET Framework Personalization (for preferences) and Profile providers. The WSRP Producer for .NET was created as a new way of developing .NET portlets. It was never designed to be an upgrade path for the Application Accelerator for .NET. .NET developers would create new .NET portlets with the WSRP Producer for .NET and leave any existing .NET portlets running in the Application Accelerator for .NET. ***************************************** The advantage to creating a new solution for WSRP is a product that is far easier for Oracle to maintain and support which in turn improves quality, reliability and maintainability for their customers. No changes to J2EE applications consuming the WSRP portlets previously rendered by the.NET Accelerator is required to migrate from the Aqualogic WSRP solution. For some customers using the .NET Accelerator the challenge is adapting their current .NET applications to work with the WSRP Producer (or any other WSRP adapter as they are proprietary by nature). Part of this adaptation is the need to deploy the .NET applications as a child to the WSRP producer web application as root. Differences between .NET Accelerator and WSRP Producer Note: This section is for those who are curious about why the migration is not as pluggable as something such as changing security providers in WebLogic Server. You can skip this section in its entirety and still be just as competent in performing a migration as if you had read it. The basic terminology used to describe the participating applications in a WSRP environment are the same when applied to either the .NET Accelerator or the WSRP Producer: Producer and Consumer. In both cases the .NET application serves as what is referred to as a WSRP environment as the Producer. The difference lies in how the two adapters create the WSRP translation of the .NET application. The .NET Accelerator, as the name implies, is meant to serve as a quick way of adding WSRP capability to a .NET application. As such, at a high level, the .NET Accelerator behaves as a proxy for requests between the .NET application and the WSRP Consumer. A WSRP request is sent from the consumer to the .NET Accelerator, the.NET Accelerator transforms this request into an ASP.NET request, receives the response, then transforms the response into a WSRP response. The .NET Accelerator is deployed as a stand-alone application on IIS. The WSRP Producer is deployed as a parent application on IIS and all ASP.NET modules that will be made available over WSRP are deployed as children of the WSRP Producer application. In this manner, the WSRP Producer acts more as a Request Filter than a proxy in the WSRP transactions between Producer and Consumer. Highly Recommended Enabling Logging Note: You can skip this section now, but you will most likely want to come back to it later, so why not just read it now? Logging is very helpful in tracking down the causes of any anomalies during testing of migrated portlets. To enable the WSRP Producer logging, update the Application_Start method in the Global.asax.cs for your .NET application by adding log4net.Config.XmlConfigurator.Configure(); IIS logs will usually (in a standard configuration) be in a sub folder under C:\WINDOWS\system32\LogFiles\W3SVC. WSRP Producer logs will be found at C:\Oracle\Middleware\WSRPProducerForDotNet\wsrpdefault\Logs\WSRPProducer.log InputTrace.webinfo and OutputTrace.webinfo are located under C:\Oracle\Middleware\WSRPProducerForDotNet\wsrpdefault and can be useful in debugging issues related to markup transformations. Things You Must Do Merge Web.Config Note: If you have been skipping all the sections that you can, now is the time to stop and pay attention J Because the existing .NET application will become a sub-application to the WSRP Producer, you will want to merge required settings from the existing Web.Config to the one in the WSRP Producer. Use the WSRP Producer Master Page The Master Page installed for the WSRP Producer provides common, hiddenform fields and JavaScripts to facilitate portlet instance management and display configuration when the child page is being rendered over WSRP. You add the Master Page by including it in the <@ Page declaration with MasterPageFile="~/portlets/Resources/MasterPages/WSRP.Master" . You then replace: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" > <HTML> <HEAD> With <asp:Content ID="ContentHead1" ContentPlaceHolderID="wsrphead" Runat="Server"> And </HEAD> <body> <form id="theForm" method="post" runat="server"> With </asp:Content> <asp:Content ID="ContentBody1" ContentPlaceHolderID="Main" Runat="Server"> And finally </form> </body> </HTML> With </asp:Content> In the event you already use Master Pages, adapt your existing Master Pages to be sub masters. See Nested ASP.NET Master Pages for a detailed reference of how to do this. It Happened to Me, It Might Happen to You…Or Not Watch for Use of Session or Request in OnInit In the event the .NET application being modified has pages developed to assume the user has been authenticated in an earlier page request there may be direct or indirect references in the OnInit method to request or session objects that may not have been created yet. This will vary from application to application, so the recommended approach is to test first. If there is an issue with a page running as a WSRP portlet then check for potential references in the OnInit method (including references by methods called within OnInit) to session or request objects. If there are, the simplest solution is to create a new method and then call that method once the necessary object(s) is fully available. I find doing this at the start of the Page_Load method to be the simplest solution. Case Sensitivity .NET languages are not case sensitive, but Java is. This means it is possible to have many variations of SRC= and src= or .JPG and .jpg. The preferred solution is to make these mark up instances all lower case in your .NET application. This will allow the default Rewriter rules in wsrp-producer.xml to work as is. If this is not practical, then make duplicates of any rules where an issue is occurring due to upper or mixed case usage in the .NET application markup and match the case in use with the duplicate rule. For example: <RewriterRule> <LookFor>(href=\"([^\"]+)</LookFor> <ChangeToAbsolute>true</ChangeToAbsolute> <ApplyTo>.axd,.css</ApplyTo> <MakeResource>true</MakeResource> </RewriterRule> May need to be duplicated as: <RewriterRule> <LookFor>(HREF=\"([^\"]+)</LookFor> <ChangeToAbsolute>true</ChangeToAbsolute> <ApplyTo>.axd,.css</ApplyTo> <MakeResource>true</MakeResource> </RewriterRule> While it is possible to write a regular expression that will handle mixed case usage, it would be long and strenous to test and maintain, so the recommendation is to use duplicate rules. Is it Still Relative? Some .NET applications base relative paths with a fixed root location. With the introduction of the WSRP Producer, the root has moved up one level. References to ~/ will need to be updated to ~/portlets and many ../ paths will need another ../ in front. I Can See You But I Can’t Find You This issue was first discovered while debugging modules with code that referenced the form on a page from the code-behind by name and/or id. The initial error presented itself as run-time error that was difficult to interpret over WSRP but seemed clear when run as straight ASP.NET as it indicated that the object with the form name did not exist. Since the form name was no longer valid after implementing the WSRP Master Page, the likely fix seemed to simply update the references in the code. However, as the WSRP Master Page is external to the code, a compile time error resulted: Error      155         The name 'form1' does not exist in the current context                C:\Oracle\Middleware\WSRPProducerForDotNet\wsrpdefault\portlets\legacywebsite\module\Screens \Reporting.aspx.cs                51           52           legacywebsite.module Much hair-pulling research later it was discovered that it was the use of the FindControl method causing the issue. FindControl doesn’t work quite as expected once a Master Page has been introduced as the controls become embedded in controls, require a recursion to find them that is not part of the FindControl method. In code where the page form is referenced by name, there are two steps to the solution. First, the form needs to be referenced in code generically with Page.Form. For example, this: ToggleControl ctrl = new ToggleControl(frmManualEntry, FunctionLibrary.ParseArrayLst(userObj.Roles)); Becomes this: ToggleControl ctrl = new ToggleControl(Page.Form, FunctionLibrary.ParseArrayLst(userObj.Roles)); Generally the form id is referenced in most ASP.NET applications as a path to a control on the form. To reach the control once a MasterPage has been added requires an additional method to recurse through the controls collections within the form and find the control ID. The following method (found at Rick Strahl's Web Log) corrects this very nicely: public static Control FindControlRecursive(Control Root, string Id) { if (Root.ID == Id) return Root; foreach (Control Ctl in Root.Controls) { Control FoundCtl = FindControlRecursive(Ctl, Id); if (FoundCtl != null) return FoundCtl; } return null; } Where the form name is not referenced, simply using the FindControlRecursive method in place of FindControl will be all that is necessary. Following the second part of the example referenced earlier, the method called with Page.Form changes its value extraction code block from this: Label lblErrMsg = (Label)frmRef.FindControl("lblBRMsg" To this: Label lblErrMsg = (Label) FunctionLibrary.FindControlRecursive(frmRef, "lblBRMsg" The Master That Won’t Step Aside In most migrations it is preferable to make as few changes as possible. In one case I ran across an existing Master Page that would not function as a sub-Master Page. While it would probably have been educational to trace down why, the expedient process of updating it to take the place of the WSRP Master Page is the route I took. The changes are highlighted below: … <asp:ContentPlaceHolder ID="wsrphead" runat="server"></asp:ContentPlaceHolder> </head> <body leftMargin="0" topMargin="0"> <form id="TheForm" runat="server"> <input type="hidden" name="key" id="key" value="" /> <input type="hidden" name="formactionurl" id="formactionurl" value="" /> <input type="hidden" name="handle" id="handle" value="" /> <asp:ScriptManager ID="ScriptManager1" runat="server" EnablePartialRendering="true" > </asp:ScriptManager> This approach did not work for all existing Master Pages, but fortunately all of the other existing Master Pages I have run across worked fine as a sub-Master to the WSRP Master Page. Moving On In Enterprise Portals, even after you get everything working, the work is not finished. Next you need to get it where everyone will work with it. Migration Planning Providing that the server where IIS is running is adequately sized, it is possible to run both the .NET Accelerator and the WSRP Producer on the same server during the upgrade process. The upgrade can be performed incrementally, i.e., one portlet at a time, if server administration processes support it. Those processes would include the ability to manage a second producer in the consuming portal and to change over individual portlet instances from one provider to the other. If processes or requirements demand that all portlets be cut over at the same time, it needs to be determined if this cut over should include a new producer, updating all of the portlets in the consumer, or if the WSRP Producer portlet configuration must maintain the naming conventions used by the .NET Accelerator and simply change the WSRP end point configured in the consumer. In some enterprises it may even be necessary to maintain the same WSDL end point, at which point the IIS configuration will be where the updates occur. The downside to such a requirement is that it makes rolling back very difficult, should the need arise. Location, Location, Location Not everyone wants the web application to have the descriptively obvious wsrpdefault location, or needs to create a second WSRP site on the same server. The instructions below are from the product team and, while targeted towards making a second site, will work for creating a site with a different name and then remove the old site. You can also change just the name in IIS. Manually Creating a WSRP Producer Site Instructions (NOTE: all executables used are the same ones used by the installer and “wsrpdev” will be the name of the new instance): 1. Copy C:\Oracle\Middleware\WSRPProducerForDotNet\wsrpdefault to C:\Oracle\Middleware\WSRPProducerForDotNet\wsrpdev. 2. Bring up a command window as an administrator 3. Run C:\Oracle\Middleware\WSRPProducerForDotNet\uninstall_resources\IISAppAccelSiteCreator.exe install WSRPProducers wsrpdev "C:\Oracle\Middleware\WSRPProducerForDotNet\wsrpdev" 8678 2.0.50727 4. Run C:\Oracle\Middleware\WSRPProducerForDotNet\uninstall_resources\PermManage.exe add FileSystem C:\Oracle\Middleware\WSRPProducerForDotNet\wsrpdev "NETWORK SERVICE" 3 1 5. Run C:\Oracle\Middleware\WSRPProducerForDotNet\uninstall_resources\PermManage.exe add FileSystem C:\Oracle\Middleware\WSRPProducerForDotNet\wsrpdev EVERYONE 1 1 6. Open up C:\Oracle\Middleware\WSRPProducerForDotNet\wsdl\1.0\WSRPService.wsdl and replace wsrpdefault with wsrpdev 7. Open up C:\Oracle\Middleware\WSRPProducerForDotNet\wsdl\2.0\WSRPService.wsdl and replace wsrpdefault with wsrpdev Tests: 1. Bring up a browser on the host itself and go to http://localhost:8678/wsrpdev/wsdl/1.0/WSRPService.wsdl and make sure that the URLs in the XML returned include the wsrpdev changes you made in step 6. 2. Bring up a browser on the host itself and see if the default sample comes up: http://localhost:8678/wsrpdev/portlets/ASPNET_AJAX_sample/default.aspx 3. Register the producer in WLP and test the portlet. Changing the Port used by WSRP Producer The pre-configured port for the WSRP Producer is 8678. You can change this port by updating both the IIS configuration and C:\Oracle\Middleware\WSRPProducerForDotNet\[WSRP_APP_NAME]\wsdl\1.0\WSRPService.wsdl. Do You Need to Migrate? Oracle Premier Support ended in November of 2010 for AquaLogic Interaction .NET Application Accelerator 1.x and Extended Support ends in November 2012 (see http://www.oracle.com/us/support/lifetime-support/lifetime-support-software-342730.html for other related dates). This means that integration with products released after November of 2010 is not supported. If having such support is the policy within your enterprise, you do indeed need to migrate. If changes in your enterprise cause your current solution with the .NET Accelerator to no longer function properly, you may need to migrate. Migration is a choice, and if the goals of your enterprise are to take full advantage of newer technologies then migration is certainly one activity you should be planning for.

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• Ancillary Objects: Separate Debug ELF Files For Solaris

  - by Ali Bahrami

  We introduced a new object ELF object type in Solaris 11 Update 1 called the Ancillary Object. This posting describes them, using material originally written during their development, the PSARC arc case, and the Solaris Linker and Libraries Manual. ELF objects contain allocable sections, which are mapped into memory at runtime, and non-allocable sections, which are present in the file for use by debuggers and observability tools, but which are not mapped or used at runtime. Typically, all of these sections exist within a single object file. Ancillary objects allow them to instead go into a separate file. There are different reasons given for wanting such a feature. One can debate whether the added complexity is worth the benefit, and in most cases it is not. However, one important case stands out — customers with very large 32-bit objects who are not ready or able to make the transition to 64-bits. We have customers who build extremely large 32-bit objects. Historically, the debug sections in these objects have used the stabs format, which is limited, but relatively compact. In recent years, the industry has transitioned to the powerful but verbose DWARF standard. In some cases, the size of these debug sections is large enough to push the total object file size past the fundamental 4GB limit for 32-bit ELF object files. The best, and ultimately only, solution to overly large objects is to transition to 64-bits. However, consider environments where: Hundreds of users may be executing the code on large shared systems. (32-bits use less memory and bus bandwidth, and on sparc runs just as fast as 64-bit code otherwise). Complex finely tuned code, where the original authors may no longer be available. Critical production code, that was expensive to qualify and bring online, and which is otherwise serving its intended purpose without issue. Users in these risk adverse and/or high scale categories have good reasons to push 32-bits objects to the limit before moving on. Ancillary objects offer these users a longer runway. Design The design of ancillary objects is intended to be simple, both to help human understanding when examining elfdump output, and to lower the bar for debuggers such as dbx to support them. The primary and ancillary objects have the same set of section headers, with the same names, in the same order (i.e. each section has the same index in both files). A single added section of type SHT_SUNW_ANCILLARY is added to both objects, containing information that allows a debugger to identify and validate both files relative to each other. Given one of these files, the ancillary section allows you to identify the other. Allocable sections go in the primary object, and non-allocable ones go into the ancillary object. A small set of non-allocable objects, notably the symbol table, are copied into both objects. As noted above, most sections are only written to one of the two objects, but both objects have the same section header array. The section header in the file that does not contain the section data is tagged with the SHF_SUNW_ABSENT section header flag to indicate its placeholder status. Compiler writers and others who produce objects can set the SUNW_SHF_PRIMARY section header flag to mark non-allocable sections that should go to the primary object rather than the ancillary. If you don't request an ancillary object, the Solaris ELF format is unchanged. Users who don't use ancillary objects do not pay for the feature. This is important, because they exist to serve a small subset of our users, and must not complicate the common case. If you do request an ancillary object, the runtime behavior of the primary object will be the same as that of a normal object. There is no added runtime cost. The primary and ancillary object together represent a logical single object. This is facilitated by the use of a single set of section headers. One can easily imagine a tool that can merge a primary and ancillary object into a single file, or the reverse. (Note that although this is an interesting intellectual exercise, we don't actually supply such a tool because there's little practical benefit above and beyond using ld to create the files). Among the benefits of this approach are: There is no need for per-file symbol tables to reflect the contents of each file. The same symbol table that would be produced for a standard object can be used. The section contents are identical in either case — there is no need to alter data to accommodate multiple files. It is very easy for a debugger to adapt to these new files, and the processing involved can be encapsulated in input/output routines. Most of the existing debugger implementation applies without modification. The limit of a 4GB 32-bit output object is now raised to 4GB of code, and 4GB of debug data. There is also the future possibility (not currently supported) to support multiple ancillary objects, each of which could contain up to 4GB of additional debug data. It must be noted however that the 32-bit DWARF debug format is itself inherently 32-bit limited, as it uses 32-bit offsets between debug sections, so the ability to employ multiple ancillary object files may not turn out to be useful. Using Ancillary Objects (From the Solaris Linker and Libraries Guide) By default, objects contain both allocable and non-allocable sections. Allocable sections are the sections that contain executable code and the data needed by that code at runtime. Non-allocable sections contain supplemental information that is not required to execute an object at runtime. These sections support the operation of debuggers and other observability tools. The non-allocable sections in an object are not loaded into memory at runtime by the operating system, and so, they have no impact on memory use or other aspects of runtime performance no matter their size. For convenience, both allocable and non-allocable sections are normally maintained in the same file. However, there are situations in which it can be useful to separate these sections. To reduce the size of objects in order to improve the speed at which they can be copied across wide area networks. To support fine grained debugging of highly optimized code requires considerable debug data. In modern systems, the debugging data can easily be larger than the code it describes. The size of a 32-bit object is limited to 4 Gbytes. In very large 32-bit objects, the debug data can cause this limit to be exceeded and prevent the creation of the object. To limit the exposure of internal implementation details. Traditionally, objects have been stripped of non-allocable sections in order to address these issues. Stripping is effective, but destroys data that might be needed later. The Solaris link-editor can instead write non-allocable sections to an ancillary object. This feature is enabled with the -z ancillary command line option. $ ld ... -z ancillary[=outfile] ...By default, the ancillary file is given the same name as the primary output object, with a .anc file extension. However, a different name can be provided by providing an outfile value to the -z ancillary option. When -z ancillary is specified, the link-editor performs the following actions. All allocable sections are written to the primary object. In addition, all non-allocable sections containing one or more input sections that have the SHF_SUNW_PRIMARY section header flag set are written to the primary object. All remaining non-allocable sections are written to the ancillary object. The following non-allocable sections are written to both the primary object and ancillary object. .shstrtab The section name string table. .symtab The full non-dynamic symbol table. .symtab_shndx The symbol table extended index section associated with .symtab. .strtab The non-dynamic string table associated with .symtab. .SUNW_ancillary Contains the information required to identify the primary and ancillary objects, and to identify the object being examined. The primary object and all ancillary objects contain the same array of sections headers. Each section has the same section index in every file. Although the primary and ancillary objects all define the same section headers, the data for most sections will be written to a single file as described above. If the data for a section is not present in a given file, the SHF_SUNW_ABSENT section header flag is set, and the sh_size field is 0. This organization makes it possible to acquire a full list of section headers, a complete symbol table, and a complete list of the primary and ancillary objects from either of the primary or ancillary objects. The following example illustrates the underlying implementation of ancillary objects. An ancillary object is created by adding the -z ancillary command line option to an otherwise normal compilation. The file utility shows that the result is an executable named a.out, and an associated ancillary object named a.out.anc. $ cat hello.c #include <stdio.h> int main(int argc, char **argv) { (void) printf("hello, world\n"); return (0); } $ cc -g -zancillary hello.c $ file a.out a.out.anc a.out: ELF 32-bit LSB executable 80386 Version 1 [FPU], dynamically linked, not stripped, ancillary object a.out.anc a.out.anc: ELF 32-bit LSB ancillary 80386 Version 1, primary object a.out $ ./a.out hello worldThe resulting primary object is an ordinary executable that can be executed in the usual manner. It is no different at runtime than an executable built without the use of ancillary objects, and then stripped of non-allocable content using the strip or mcs commands. As previously described, the primary object and ancillary objects contain the same section headers. To see how this works, it is helpful to use the elfdump utility to display these section headers and compare them. The following table shows the section header information for a selection of headers from the previous link-edit example. Index Section Name Type Primary Flags Ancillary Flags Primary Size Ancillary Size 13 .text PROGBITS ALLOC EXECINSTR ALLOC EXECINSTR SUNW_ABSENT 0x131 0 20 .data PROGBITS WRITE ALLOC WRITE ALLOC SUNW_ABSENT 0x4c 0 21 .symtab SYMTAB 0 0 0x450 0x450 22 .strtab STRTAB STRINGS STRINGS 0x1ad 0x1ad 24 .debug_info PROGBITS SUNW_ABSENT 0 0 0x1a7 28 .shstrtab STRTAB STRINGS STRINGS 0x118 0x118 29 .SUNW_ancillary SUNW_ancillary 0 0 0x30 0x30 The data for most sections is only present in one of the two files, and absent from the other file. The SHF_SUNW_ABSENT section header flag is set when the data is absent. The data for allocable sections needed at runtime are found in the primary object. The data for non-allocable sections used for debugging but not needed at runtime are placed in the ancillary file. A small set of non-allocable sections are fully present in both files. These are the .SUNW_ancillary section used to relate the primary and ancillary objects together, the section name string table .shstrtab, as well as the symbol table.symtab, and its associated string table .strtab. It is possible to strip the symbol table from the primary object. A debugger that encounters an object without a symbol table can use the .SUNW_ancillary section to locate the ancillary object, and access the symbol contained within. The primary object, and all associated ancillary objects, contain a .SUNW_ancillary section that allows all the objects to be identified and related together. $ elfdump -T SUNW_ancillary a.out a.out.anc a.out: Ancillary Section: .SUNW_ancillary index tag value [0] ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM 0x8724 [1] ANC_SUNW_MEMBER 0x1 a.out [2] ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM 0x8724 [3] ANC_SUNW_MEMBER 0x1a3 a.out.anc [4] ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM 0xfbe2 [5] ANC_SUNW_NULL 0 a.out.anc: Ancillary Section: .SUNW_ancillary index tag value [0] ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM 0xfbe2 [1] ANC_SUNW_MEMBER 0x1 a.out [2] ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM 0x8724 [3] ANC_SUNW_MEMBER 0x1a3 a.out.anc [4] ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM 0xfbe2 [5] ANC_SUNW_NULL 0 The ancillary sections for both objects contain the same number of elements, and are identical except for the first element. Each object, starting with the primary object, is introduced with a MEMBER element that gives the file name, followed by a CHECKSUM that identifies the object. In this example, the primary object is a.out, and has a checksum of 0x8724. The ancillary object is a.out.anc, and has a checksum of 0xfbe2. The first element in a .SUNW_ancillary section, preceding the MEMBER element for the primary object, is always a CHECKSUM element, containing the checksum for the file being examined. The presence of a .SUNW_ancillary section in an object indicates that the object has associated ancillary objects. The names of the primary and all associated ancillary objects can be obtained from the ancillary section from any one of the files. It is possible to determine which file is being examined from the larger set of files by comparing the first checksum value to the checksum of each member that follows. Debugger Access and Use of Ancillary Objects Debuggers and other observability tools must merge the information found in the primary and ancillary object files in order to build a complete view of the object. This is equivalent to processing the information from a single file. This merging is simplified by the primary object and ancillary objects containing the same section headers, and a single symbol table. The following steps can be used by a debugger to assemble the information contained in these files. Starting with the primary object, or any of the ancillary objects, locate the .SUNW_ancillary section. The presence of this section identifies the object as part of an ancillary group, contains information that can be used to obtain a complete list of the files and determine which of those files is the one currently being examined. Create a section header array in memory, using the section header array from the object being examined as an initial template. Open and read each file identified by the .SUNW_ancillary section in turn. For each file, fill in the in-memory section header array with the information for each section that does not have the SHF_SUNW_ABSENT flag set. The result will be a complete in-memory copy of the section headers with pointers to the data for all sections. Once this information has been acquired, the debugger can proceed as it would in the single file case, to access and control the running program. Note - The ELF definition of ancillary objects provides for a single primary object, and an arbitrary number of ancillary objects. At this time, the Oracle Solaris link-editor only produces a single ancillary object containing all non-allocable sections. This may change in the future. Debuggers and other observability tools should be written to handle the general case of multiple ancillary objects. ELF Implementation Details (From the Solaris Linker and Libraries Guide) To implement ancillary objects, it was necessary to extend the ELF format to add a new object type (ET_SUNW_ANCILLARY), a new section type (SHT_SUNW_ANCILLARY), and 2 new section header flags (SHF_SUNW_ABSENT, SHF_SUNW_PRIMARY). In this section, I will detail these changes, in the form of diffs to the Solaris Linker and Libraries manual. Part IV ELF Application Binary Interface Chapter 13: Object File Format Object File Format Edit Note: This existing section at the beginning of the chapter describes the ELF header. There's a table of object file types, which now includes the new ET_SUNW_ANCILLARY type. e_type Identifies the object file type, as listed in the following table. NameValueMeaning ET_NONE0No file type ET_REL1Relocatable file ET_EXEC2Executable file ET_DYN3Shared object file ET_CORE4Core file ET_LOSUNW0xfefeStart operating system specific range ET_SUNW_ANCILLARY0xfefeAncillary object file ET_HISUNW0xfefdEnd operating system specific range ET_LOPROC0xff00Start processor-specific range ET_HIPROC0xffffEnd processor-specific range Sections Edit Note: This overview section defines the section header structure, and provides a high level description of known sections. It was updated to define the new SHF_SUNW_ABSENT and SHF_SUNW_PRIMARY flags and the new SHT_SUNW_ANCILLARY section. ... sh_type Categorizes the section's contents and semantics. Section types and their descriptions are listed in Table 13-5. sh_flags Sections support 1-bit flags that describe miscellaneous attributes. Flag definitions are listed in Table 13-8. ... Table 13-5 ELF Section Types, sh_type NameValue . . . SHT_LOSUNW0x6fffffee SHT_SUNW_ancillary0x6fffffee . . . ... SHT_LOSUNW - SHT_HISUNW Values in this inclusive range are reserved for Oracle Solaris OS semantics. SHT_SUNW_ANCILLARY Present when a given object is part of a group of ancillary objects. Contains information required to identify all the files that make up the group. See Ancillary Section. ... Table 13-8 ELF Section Attribute Flags NameValue . . . SHF_MASKOS0x0ff00000 SHF_SUNW_NODISCARD0x00100000 SHF_SUNW_ABSENT0x00200000 SHF_SUNW_PRIMARY0x00400000 SHF_MASKPROC0xf0000000 . . . ... SHF_SUNW_ABSENT Indicates that the data for this section is not present in this file. When ancillary objects are created, the primary object and any ancillary objects, will all have the same section header array, to facilitate merging them to form a complete view of the object, and to allow them to use the same symbol tables. Each file contains a subset of the section data. The data for allocable sections is written to the primary object while the data for non-allocable sections is written to an ancillary file. The SHF_SUNW_ABSENT flag is used to indicate that the data for the section is not present in the object being examined. When the SHF_SUNW_ABSENT flag is set, the sh_size field of the section header must be 0. An application encountering an SHF_SUNW_ABSENT section can choose to ignore the section, or to search for the section data within one of the related ancillary files. SHF_SUNW_PRIMARY The default behavior when ancillary objects are created is to write all allocable sections to the primary object and all non-allocable sections to the ancillary objects. The SHF_SUNW_PRIMARY flag overrides this behavior. Any output section containing one more input section with the SHF_SUNW_PRIMARY flag set is written to the primary object without regard for its allocable status. ... Two members in the section header, sh_link, and sh_info, hold special information, depending on section type. Table 13-9 ELF sh_link and sh_info Interpretation sh_typesh_linksh_info . . . SHT_SUNW_ANCILLARY The section header index of the associated string table. 0 . . . Special Sections Edit Note: This section describes the sections used in Solaris ELF objects, using the types defined in the previous description of section types. It was updated to define the new .SUNW_ancillary (SHT_SUNW_ANCILLARY) section. Various sections hold program and control information. Sections in the following table are used by the system and have the indicated types and attributes. Table 13-10 ELF Special Sections NameTypeAttribute . . . .SUNW_ancillarySHT_SUNW_ancillaryNone . . . ... .SUNW_ancillary Present when a given object is part of a group of ancillary objects. Contains information required to identify all the files that make up the group. See Ancillary Section for details. ... Ancillary Section Edit Note: This new section provides the format reference describing the layout of a .SUNW_ancillary section and the meaning of the various tags. Note that these sections use the same tag/value concept used for dynamic and capabilities sections, and will be familiar to anyone used to working with ELF. In addition to the primary output object, the Solaris link-editor can produce one or more ancillary objects. Ancillary objects contain non-allocable sections that would normally be written to the primary object. When ancillary objects are produced, the primary object and all of the associated ancillary objects contain a SHT_SUNW_ancillary section, containing information that identifies these related objects. Given any one object from such a group, the ancillary section provides the information needed to identify and interpret the others. This section contains an array of the following structures. See sys/elf.h. typedef struct { Elf32_Word a_tag; union { Elf32_Word a_val; Elf32_Addr a_ptr; } a_un; } Elf32_Ancillary; typedef struct { Elf64_Xword a_tag; union { Elf64_Xword a_val; Elf64_Addr a_ptr; } a_un; } Elf64_Ancillary; For each object with this type, a_tag controls the interpretation of a_un. a_val These objects represent integer values with various interpretations. a_ptr These objects represent file offsets or addresses. The following ancillary tags exist. Table 13-NEW1 ELF Ancillary Array Tags NameValuea_un ANC_SUNW_NULL0Ignored ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM1a_val ANC_SUNW_MEMBER2a_ptr ANC_SUNW_NULL Marks the end of the ancillary section. ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM Provides the checksum for a file in the c_val element. When ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM precedes the first instance of ANC_SUNW_MEMBER, it provides the checksum for the object from which the ancillary section is being read. When it follows an ANC_SUNW_MEMBER tag, it provides the checksum for that member. ANC_SUNW_MEMBER Specifies an object name. The a_ptr element contains the string table offset of a null-terminated string, that provides the file name. An ancillary section must always contain an ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM before the first instance of ANC_SUNW_MEMBER, identifying the current object. Following that, there should be an ANC_SUNW_MEMBER for each object that makes up the complete set of objects. Each ANC_SUNW_MEMBER should be followed by an ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM for that object. A typical ancillary section will therefore be structured as: TagMeaning ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUMChecksum of this object ANC_SUNW_MEMBERName of object #1 ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUMChecksum for object #1 . . . ANC_SUNW_MEMBERName of object N ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUMChecksum for object N ANC_SUNW_NULL An object can therefore identify itself by comparing the initial ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM to each of the ones that follow, until it finds a match. Related Other Work The GNU developers have also encountered the need/desire to support separate debug information files, and use the solution detailed at http://sourceware.org/gdb/onlinedocs/gdb/Separate-Debug-Files.html. At the current time, the separate debug file is constructed by building the standard object first, and then copying the debug data out of it in a separate post processing step, Hence, it is limited to a total of 4GB of code and debug data, just as a single object file would be. They are aware of this, and I have seen online comments indicating that they may add direct support for generating these separate files to their link-editor. It is worth noting that the GNU objcopy utility is available on Solaris, and that the Studio dbx debugger is able to use these GNU style separate debug files even on Solaris. Although this is interesting in terms giving Linux users a familiar environment on Solaris, the 4GB limit means it is not an answer to the problem of very large 32-bit objects. We have also encountered issues with objcopy not understanding Solaris-specific ELF sections, when using this approach. The GNU community also has a current effort to adapt their DWARF debug sections in order to move them to separate files before passing the relocatable objects to the linker. The details of Project Fission can be found at http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission. The goal of this project appears to be to reduce the amount of data seen by the link-editor. The primary effort revolves around moving DWARF data to separate .dwo files so that the link-editor never encounters them. The details of modifying the DWARF data to be usable in this form are involved — please see the above URL for details.

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• Alert visualization recipe: Get out your blender, drop in some sp_send_dbmail, Google Charts API, add your favorite colors and sprinkle with html. Blend till it’s smooth and looks pretty enough to taste.

  - by Maria Zakourdaev

    I really like database monitoring. My email inbox have a constant flow of different types of alerts coming from our production servers with all kinds of information, sometimes more useful and sometimes less useful. Usually database alerts look really simple, it’s usually a plain text email saying “Prod1 Database data file on Server X is 80% used. You’d better grow it manually before some query triggers the AutoGrowth process”. Imagine you could have received email like the one below.  In addition to the alert description it could have also included the the database file growth chart over the past 6 months. Wouldn’t it give you much more information whether the data growth is natural or extreme? That’s truly what data visualization is for. Believe it or not, I have sent the graph below from SQL Server stored procedure without buying any additional data monitoring/visualization tool.   Would you like to visualize your database alerts like I do? Then like myself, you’d love the Google Charts. All you need to know is a little HTML and have a mail profile configured on your SQL Server instance regardless of the SQL Server version. First of all, I hope you know that the sp_send_dbmail procedure has a great parameter @body_format = ‘HTML’, which allows us to send rich and colorful messages instead of boring black and white ones. All that we need is to dynamically create HTML code. This is how, for instance, you can create a table and populate it with some data: DECLARE @html varchar(max) SET @html = '<html>' + '<H3><font id="Text" style='color: Green;'>Top Databases: </H3>' + '<table border="1" bordercolor="#3300FF" style='background-color:#DDF8CC' width='70%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='3'>' + '<tr><font color="Green"><th>Database Name</th><th>Size</th><th>Physical Name</th></tr>' + CAST( (SELECT TOP 10                             td = name,'',                             td = size * 8/1024 ,'',                             td = physical_name              FROM sys.master_files               ORDER BY size DESC             FOR XML PATH ('tr'),TYPE ) AS VARCHAR(MAX)) + '</table>' EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_send_dbmail @recipients = '[email protected]', @subject ='Top databases', @body = @html, @body_format = 'HTML' This is the result:   If you want to add more visualization effects, you can use Google Charts Tools https://google-developers.appspot.com/chart/interactive/docs/index which is a free and rich library of data visualization charts, they’re also easy to populate and embed. There are two versions of the Google Charts Image based charts: https://google-developers.appspot.com/chart/image/docs/gallery/chart_gall This is an old version, it’s officially deprecated although it will be up for a next few years or so. I really enjoy using this one because it can be viewed within the email body. For mobile devices you need to change the “Load remote images” property in your email application configuration.           Charts based on JavaScript classes: https://google-developers.appspot.com/chart/interactive/docs/gallery This API is newer, with rich and highly interactive charts, and it’s much more easier to understand and configure. The only downside of it is that they cannot be viewed within the email body. Outlook, Gmail and many other email clients, as part of their security policy, do not run any JavaScript that’s placed within the email body. However, you can still enjoy this API by sending the report as an email attachment. Here is an example of the old version of Google Charts API, sending the same top databases report as in the previous example but instead of a simple table, this script is using a pie chart right from  the T-SQL code DECLARE @html  varchar(8000) DECLARE @Series  varchar(800),@Labels  varchar(8000),@Legend  varchar(8000);     SET @Series = ''; SET @Labels = ''; SET @Legend = ''; SELECT TOP 5 @Series = @Series + CAST(size * 8/1024 as varchar) + ',',                         @Labels = @Labels +CAST(size * 8/1024 as varchar) + 'MB'+'|',                         @Legend = @Legend + name + '|' FROM sys.master_files ORDER BY size DESC SELECT @Series = SUBSTRING(@Series,1,LEN(@Series)-1),         @Labels = SUBSTRING(@Labels,1,LEN(@Labels)-1),         @Legend = SUBSTRING(@Legend,1,LEN(@Legend)-1) SET @html =   '<H3><font color="Green"> '+@@ServerName+' top 5 databases : </H3>'+    '<br>'+    '<img src="http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?'+    'chf=bg,s,DDF8CC&'+    'cht=p&'+    'chs=400x200&'+    'chco=3072F3|7777CC|FF9900|FF0000|4A8C26&'+    'chd=t:'+@Series+'&'+    'chl='+@Labels+'&'+    'chma=0,0,0,0&'+    'chdl='+@Legend+'&'+    'chdlp=b"'+    'alt="'+@@ServerName+' top 5 databases" />'              EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_send_dbmail @recipients = '[email protected]',                             @subject = 'Top databases',                             @body = @html,                             @body_format = 'HTML' This is what you get. Isn’t it great? Chart parameters reference: chf     Gradient fill  bg - backgroud ; s- solid cht     chart type  ( p - pie) chs        chart size width/height chco    series colors chd        chart data string        1,2,3,2 chl        pir chart labels        a|b|c|d chma    chart margins chdl    chart legend            a|b|c|d chdlp    chart legend text        b - bottom of chart   Line graph implementation is also really easy and powerful DECLARE @html varchar(max) DECLARE @Series varchar(max) DECLARE @HourList varchar(max) SET @Series = ''; SET @HourList = ''; SELECT @HourList = @HourList + SUBSTRING(CONVERT(varchar(13),last_execution_time,121), 12,2)  + '|' ,              @Series = @Series + CAST( COUNT(1) as varchar) + ',' FROM sys.dm_exec_query_stats s     CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_sql_text(plan_handle) t WHERE last_execution_time > = getdate()-1 GROUP BY CONVERT(varchar(13),last_execution_time,121) ORDER BY CONVERT(varchar(13),last_execution_time,121) SET @Series = SUBSTRING(@Series,1,LEN(@Series)-1) SET @html = '<img src="http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?'+ 'chco=CA3D05,87CEEB&'+ 'chd=t:'+@Series+'&'+ 'chds=1,350&'+ 'chdl= Proc executions from cache&'+ 'chf=bg,s,1F1D1D|c,lg,0,363433,1.0,2E2B2A,0.0&'+ 'chg=25.0,25.0,3,2&'+ 'chls=3|3&'+ 'chm=d,CA3D05,0,-1,12,0|d,FFFFFF,0,-1,8,0|d,87CEEB,1,-1,12,0|d,FFFFFF,1,-1,8,0&'+ 'chs=600x450&'+ 'cht=lc&'+ 'chts=FFFFFF,14&'+ 'chtt=Executions for from' +(SELECT CONVERT(varchar(16),min(last_execution_time),121)          FROM sys.dm_exec_query_stats          WHERE last_execution_time > = getdate()-1) +' till '+ +(SELECT CONVERT(varchar(16),max(last_execution_time),121)     FROM sys.dm_exec_query_stats) + '&'+ 'chxp=1,50.0|4,50.0&'+ 'chxs=0,FFFFFF,12,0|1,FFFFFF,12,0|2,FFFFFF,12,0|3,FFFFFF,12,0|4,FFFFFF,14,0&'+ 'chxt=y,y,x,x,x&'+ 'chxl=0:|1|350|1:|N|2:|'+@HourList+'3:|Hour&'+ 'chma=55,120,0,0" alt="" />' EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_send_dbmail @recipients = '[email protected]', @subject ='Daily number of executions', @body = @html, @body_format = 'HTML' Chart parameters reference: chco    series colors chd        series data chds    scale format chdl    chart legend chf        background fills chg        grid line chls    line style chm        line fill chs        chart size cht        chart type chts    chart style chtt    chart title chxp    axis label positions chxs    axis label styles chxt    axis tick mark styles chxl    axis labels chma    chart margins If you don’t mind to get your charts as an email attachment, you can enjoy the Java based Google Charts which are even easier to configure, and have much more advanced graphics. In the example below, the sp_send_email procedure uses the parameter @query which will be executed at the time that sp_send_dbemail is executed and the HTML result of this execution will be attached to the email. DECLARE @html varchar(max),@query varchar(max) DECLARE @SeriesDBusers  varchar(800);     SET @SeriesDBusers = ''; SELECT @SeriesDBusers = @SeriesDBusers +  ' ["'+DB_NAME(r.database_id) +'", ' +cast(count(1) as varchar)+'],' FROM sys.dm_exec_requests r GROUP BY DB_NAME(database_id) ORDER BY count(1) desc; SET @SeriesDBusers = SUBSTRING(@SeriesDBusers,1,LEN(@SeriesDBusers)-1) SET @query = ' PRINT '' <html>   <head>     <script type="text/javascript" src="https://www.google.com/jsapi"></script>     <script type="text/javascript">       google.load("visualization", "1", {packages:["corechart"]});        google.setOnLoadCallback(drawChart);       function drawChart() {                      var data = google.visualization.arrayToDataTable([                        ["Database Name", "Active users"],                        '+@SeriesDBusers+'                      ]);                        var options = {                        title: "Active users",                        pieSliceText: "value"                      };                        var chart = new google.visualization.PieChart(document.getElementById("chart_div"));                      chart.draw(data, options);       };     </script>   </head>   <body>     <table>     <tr><td>         <div id="chart_div" style='width: 800px; height: 300px;'></div>         </td></tr>     </table>   </body> </html> ''' EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_send_dbmail    @recipients = '[email protected]',    @subject ='Active users',    @body = @html,    @body_format = 'HTML',    @query = @Query,     @attach_query_result_as_file = 1,     @query_attachment_filename = 'Results.htm' After opening the email attachment in the browser you are getting this kind of report: In fact, the above is not only for database alerts. It can be used for applicative reports if you need high levels of customization that you cannot achieve using standard methods like SSRS. If you need more information on how to customize the charts, you can try the following: Image Based Charts wizard https://google-developers.appspot.com/chart/image/docs/chart_wizard  Live Image Charts Playground https://google-developers.appspot.com/chart/image/docs/chart_playground Image Based Charts Parameters List https://google-developers.appspot.com/chart/image/docs/chart_params Java Script Charts Playground https://code.google.com/apis/ajax/playground/?type=visualization Use the above examples as a starting point for your procedures and I’d be more than happy to hear of your implementations of the above techniques. Yours, Maria

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• ANTS CLR and Memory Profiler In Depth Review (Part 1 of 2 &ndash; CLR Profiler)

  - by ToStringTheory

  One of the things that people might not know about me, is my obsession to make my code as efficient as possible.  Many people might not realize how much of a task or undertaking that this might be, but it is surely a task as monumental as climbing Mount Everest, except this time it is a challenge for the mind…  In trying to make code efficient, there are many different factors that play a part – size of project or solution, tiers, language used, experience and training of the programmer, technologies used, maintainability of the code – the list can go on for quite some time. I spend quite a bit of time when developing trying to determine what is the best way to implement a feature to accomplish the efficiency that I look to achieve.  One program that I have recently come to learn about – Red Gate ANTS Performance (CLR) and Memory profiler gives me tools to accomplish that job more efficiently as well.  In this review, I am going to cover some of the features of the ANTS profiler set by compiling some hideous example code to test against. Notice As a member of the Geeks With Blogs Influencers program, one of the perks is the ability to review products, in exchange for a free license to the program.  I have not let this affect my opinions of the product in any way, and Red Gate nor Geeks With Blogs has tried to influence my opinion regarding this product in any way. Introduction The ANTS Profiler pack provided by Red Gate was something that I had not heard of before receiving an email regarding an offer to review it for a license.  Since I look to make my code efficient, it was a no brainer for me to try it out!  One thing that I have to say took me by surprise is that upon downloading the program and installing it you fill out a form for your usual contact information.  Sure enough within 2 hours, I received an email from a sales representative at Red Gate asking if she could help me to achieve the most out of my trial time so it wouldn’t go to waste.  After replying to her and explaining that I was looking to review its feature set, she put me in contact with someone that setup a demo session to give me a quick rundown of its features via an online meeting.  After having dealt with a massive ordeal with one of my utility companies and their complete lack of customer service, Red Gates friendly and helpful representatives were a breath of fresh air, and something I was thankful for. ANTS CLR Profiler The ANTS CLR profiler is the thing I want to focus on the most in this post, so I am going to dive right in now. Install was simple and took no time at all.  It installed both the profiler for the CLR and Memory, but also visual studio extensions to facilitate the usage of the profilers (click any images for full size images): The Visual Studio menu options (under ANTS menu) Starting the CLR Performance Profiler from the start menu yields this window If you follow the instructions after launching the program from the start menu (Click File > New Profiling Session to start a new project), you are given a dialog with plenty of options for profiling: The New Session dialog.  Lots of options.  One thing I noticed is that the buttons in the lower right were half-covered by the panel of the application.  If I had to guess, I would imagine that this is caused by my DPI settings being set to 125%.  This is a problem I have seen in other applications as well that don’t scale well to different dpi scales. The profiler options give you the ability to profile: .NET Executable ASP.NET web application (hosted in IIS) ASP.NET web application (hosted in IIS express) ASP.NET web application (hosted in Cassini Web Development Server) SharePoint web application (hosted in IIS) Silverlight 4+ application Windows Service COM+ server XBAP (local XAML browser application) Attach to an already running .NET 4 process Choosing each option provides a varying set of other variables/options that one can set including options such as application arguments, operating path, record I/O performance performance counters to record (43 counters in all!), etc…  All in all, they give you the ability to profile many different .Net project types, and make it simple to do so.  In most cases of my using this application, I would be using the built in Visual Studio extensions, as they automatically start a new profiling project in ANTS with the options setup, and start your program, however RedGate has made it easy enough to profile outside of Visual Studio as well. On the flip side of this, as someone who lives most of their work life in Visual Studio, one thing I do wish is that instead of opening an entirely separate application/gui to perform profiling after launching, that instead they would provide a Visual Studio panel with the information, and integrate more of the profiling project information into Visual Studio.  So, now that we have an idea of what options that the profiler gives us, its time to test its abilities and features. Horrendous Example Code – Prime Number Generator One of my interests besides development, is Physics and Math – what I went to college for.  I have especially always been interested in prime numbers, as they are something of a mystery…  So, I decided that I would go ahead and to test the abilities of the profiler, I would write a small program, website, and library to generate prime numbers in the quantity that you ask for.  I am going to start off with some terrible code, and show how I would see the profiler being used as a development tool. First off, the IPrimes interface (all code is downloadable at the end of the post): interface IPrimes { IEnumerable<int> GetPrimes(int retrieve); } Simple enough, right?  Anything that implements the interface will (hopefully) provide an IEnumerable of int, with the quantity specified in the parameter argument.  Next, I am going to implement this interface in the most basic way: public class DumbPrimes : IPrimes { public IEnumerable<int> GetPrimes(int retrieve) { //store a list of primes already found var _foundPrimes = new List<int>() { 2, 3 }; //if i ask for 1 or two primes, return what asked for if (retrieve <= _foundPrimes.Count()) return _foundPrimes.Take(retrieve); //the next number to look at int _analyzing = 4; //since I already determined I don't have enough //execute at least once, and until quantity is sufficed do { //assume prime until otherwise determined bool isPrime = true; //start dividing at 2 //divide until number is reached, or determined not prime for (int i = 2; i < _analyzing && isPrime; i++) { //if (i) goes into _analyzing without a remainder, //_analyzing is NOT prime if (_analyzing % i == 0) isPrime = false; } //if it is prime, add to found list if (isPrime) _foundPrimes.Add(_analyzing); //increment number to analyze next _analyzing++; } while (_foundPrimes.Count() < retrieve); return _foundPrimes; } } This is the simplest way to get primes in my opinion.  Checking each number by the straight definition of a prime – is it divisible by anything besides 1 and itself. I have included this code in a base class library for my solution, as I am going to use it to demonstrate a couple of features of ANTS.  This class library is consumed by a simple non-MVVM WPF application, and a simple MVC4 website.  I will not post the WPF code here inline, as it is simply an ObservableCollection<int>, a label, two textbox’s, and a button. Starting a new Profiling Session So, in Visual Studio, I have just completed my first stint developing the GUI and DumbPrimes IPrimes class, so now I want to check my codes efficiency by profiling it.  All I have to do is build the solution (surprised initiating a profiling session doesn’t do this, but I suppose I can understand it), and then click the ANTS menu, followed by Profile Performance.  I am then greeted by the profiler starting up and already monitoring my program live: You are provided with a realtime graph at the top, and a pane at the bottom giving you information on how to proceed.  I am going to start by asking my program to show me the first 15000 primes: After the program finally began responding again (I did all the work on the main UI thread – how bad!), I stopped the profiler, which did kill the process of my program too.  One important thing to note, is that the profiler by default wants to give you a lot of detail about the operation – line hit counts, time per line, percent time per line, etc…  The important thing to remember is that this itself takes a lot of time.  When running my program without the profiler attached, it can generate the 15000 primes in 5.18 seconds, compared to 74.5 seconds – almost a 1500 percent increase.  While this may seem like a lot, remember that there is a trade off.  It may be WAY more inefficient, however, I am able to drill down and make improvements to specific problem areas, and then decrease execution time all around. Analyzing the Profiling Session After clicking ‘Stop Profiling’, the process running my application stopped, and the entire execution time was automatically selected by ANTS, and the results shown below: Now there are a number of interesting things going on here, I am going to cover each in a section of its own: Real Time Performance Counter Bar (top of screen) At the top of the screen, is the real time performance bar.  As your application is running, this will constantly update with the currently selected performance counters status.  A couple of cool things to note are the fact that you can drag a selection around specific time periods to drill down the detail views in the lower 2 panels to information pertaining to only that period. After selecting a time period, you can bookmark a section and name it, so that it is easy to find later, or after reloaded at a later time.  You can also zoom in, out, or fit the graph to the space provided – useful for drilling down. It may be hard to see, but at the top of the processor time graph below the time ticks, but above the red usage graph, there is a green bar. This bar shows at what times a method that is selected in the ‘Call tree’ panel is called. Very cool to be able to click on a method and see at what times it made an impact. As I said before, ANTS provides 43 different performance counters you can hook into.  Click the arrow next to the Performance tab at the top will allow you to change between different counters if you have them selected: Method Call Tree, ADO.Net Database Calls, File IO – Detail Panel Red Gate really hit the mark here I think. When you select a section of the run with the graph, the call tree populates to fill a hierarchical tree of method calls, with information regarding each of the methods.   By default, methods are hidden where the source is not provided (framework type code), however, Red Gate has integrated Reflector into ANTS, so even if you don’t have source for something, you can select a method and get the source if you want.  Methods are also hidden where the impact is seen as insignificant – methods that are only executed for 1% of the time of the overall calling methods time; in other words, working on making them better is not where your efforts should be focused. – Smart! Source Panel – Detail Panel The source panel is where you can see line level information on your code, showing the code for the currently selected method from the Method Call Tree.  If the code is not available, Reflector takes care of it and shows the code anyways! As you can notice, there does seem to be a problem with how ANTS determines what line is the actual line that a call is completed on.  I have suspicions that this may be due to some of the inline code optimizations that the CLR applies upon compilation of the assembly.  In a method with comments, the problem is much more severe: As you can see here, apparently the most offending code in my base library was a comment – *gasp*!  Removing the comments does help quite a bit, however I hope that Red Gate works on their counter algorithm soon to improve the logic on positioning for statistics: I did a small test just to demonstrate the lines are correct without comments. For me, it isn’t a deal breaker, as I can usually determine the correct placements by looking at the application code in the region and determining what makes sense, but it is something that would probably build up some irritation with time. Feature – Suggest Method for Optimization A neat feature to really help those in need of a pointer, is the menu option under tools to automatically suggest methods to optimize/improve: Nice feature – clicking it filters the call tree and stars methods that it thinks are good candidates for optimization.  I do wish that they would have made it more visible for those of use who aren’t great on sight: Process Integration I do think that this could have a place in my process.  After experimenting with the profiler, I do think it would be a great benefit to do some development, testing, and then after all the bugs are worked out, use the profiler to check on things to make sure nothing seems like it is hogging more than its fair share.  For example, with this program, I would have developed it, ran it, tested it – it works, but slowly. After looking at the profiler, and seeing the massive amount of time spent in 1 method, I might go ahead and try to re-implement IPrimes (I actually would probably rewrite the offending code, but so that I can distribute both sets of code easily, I’m just going to make another implementation of IPrimes).  Using two pieces of knowledge about prime numbers can make this method MUCH more efficient – prime numbers fall into two buckets 6k+/-1 , and a number is prime if it is not divisible by any other primes before it: public class SmartPrimes : IPrimes { public IEnumerable<int> GetPrimes(int retrieve) { //store a list of primes already found var _foundPrimes = new List<int>() { 2, 3 }; //if i ask for 1 or two primes, return what asked for if (retrieve <= _foundPrimes.Count()) return _foundPrimes.Take(retrieve); //the next number to look at int _k = 1; //since I already determined I don't have enough //execute at least once, and until quantity is sufficed do { //assume prime until otherwise determined bool isPrime = true; int potentialPrime; //analyze 6k-1 //assign the value to potential potentialPrime = 6 * _k - 1; //if there are any primes that divise this, it is NOT a prime number //using PLINQ for quick boost isPrime = !_foundPrimes.AsParallel() .Any(prime => potentialPrime % prime == 0); //if it is prime, add to found list if (isPrime) _foundPrimes.Add(potentialPrime); if (_foundPrimes.Count() == retrieve) break; //analyze 6k+1 //assign the value to potential potentialPrime = 6 * _k + 1; //if there are any primes that divise this, it is NOT a prime number //using PLINQ for quick boost isPrime = !_foundPrimes.AsParallel() .Any(prime => potentialPrime % prime == 0); //if it is prime, add to found list if (isPrime) _foundPrimes.Add(potentialPrime); //increment k to analyze next _k++; } while (_foundPrimes.Count() < retrieve); return _foundPrimes; } } Now there are definitely more things I can do to help make this more efficient, but for the scope of this example, I think this is fine (but still hideous)! Profiling this now yields a happy surprise 27 seconds to generate the 15000 primes with the profiler attached, and only 1.43 seconds without.  One important thing I wanted to call out though was the performance graph now: Notice anything odd?  The %Processor time is above 100%.  This is because there is now more than 1 core in the operation.  A better label for the chart in my mind would have been %Core time, but to each their own. Another odd thing I noticed was that the profiler seemed to be spot on this time in my DumbPrimes class with line details in source, even with comments..  Odd. Profiling Web Applications The last thing that I wanted to cover, that means a lot to me as a web developer, is the great amount of work that Red Gate put into the profiler when profiling web applications.  In my solution, I have a simple MVC4 application setup with 1 page, a single input form, that will output prime values as my WPF app did.  Launching the profiler from Visual Studio as before, nothing is really different in the profiler window, however I did receive a UAC prompt for a Red Gate helper app to integrate with the web server without notification. After requesting 500, 1000, 2000, and 5000 primes, and looking at the profiler session, things are slightly different from before: As you can see, there are 4 spikes of activity in the processor time graph, but there is also something new in the call tree: That’s right – ANTS will actually group method calls by get/post operations, so it is easier to find out what action/page is giving the largest problems…  Pretty cool in my mind! Overview Overall, I think that Red Gate ANTS CLR Profiler has a lot to offer, however I think it also has a long ways to go.  3 Biggest Pros: Ability to easily drill down from time graph, to method calls, to source code Wide variety of counters to choose from when profiling your application Excellent integration/grouping of methods being called from web applications by request – BRILLIANT! 3 Biggest Cons: Issue regarding line details in source view Nit pick – Processor time vs. Core time Nit pick – Lack of full integration with Visual Studio Ratings Ease of Use (7/10) – I marked down here because of the problems with the line level details and the extra work that that entails, and the lack of better integration with Visual Studio. Effectiveness (10/10) – I believe that the profiler does EXACTLY what it purports to do.  Especially with its large variety of performance counters, a definite plus! Features (9/10) – Besides the real time performance monitoring, and the drill downs that I’ve shown here, ANTS also has great integration with ADO.Net, with the ability to show database queries run by your application in the profiler.  This, with the line level details, the web request grouping, reflector integration, and various options to customize your profiling session I think create a great set of features! Customer Service (10/10) – My entire experience with Red Gate personnel has been nothing but good.  their people are friendly, helpful, and happy! UI / UX (8/10) – The interface is very easy to get around, and all of the options are easy to find.  With a little bit of poking around, you’ll be optimizing Hello World in no time flat! Overall (8/10) – Overall, I am happy with the Performance Profiler and its features, as well as with the service I received when working with the Red Gate personnel.  I WOULD recommend you trying the application and seeing if it would fit into your process, BUT, remember there are still some kinks in it to hopefully be worked out. My next post will definitely be shorter (hopefully), but thank you for reading up to here, or skipping ahead!  Please, if you do try the product, drop me a message and let me know what you think!  I would love to hear any opinions you may have on the product. Code Feel free to download the code I used above – download via DropBox

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• Using the ASP.NET Cache to cache data in a Model or Business Object layer, without a dependency on System.Web in the layer - Part One.

  - by Rhames

  ASP.NET applications can make use of the System.Web.Caching.Cache object to cache data and prevent repeated expensive calls to a database or other store. However, ideally an application should make use of caching at the point where data is retrieved from the database, which typically is inside a Business Objects or Model layer. One of the key features of using a UI pattern such as Model-View-Presenter (MVP) or Model-View-Controller (MVC) is that the Model and Presenter (or Controller) layers are developed without any knowledge of the UI layer. Introducing a dependency on System.Web into the Model layer would break this independence of the Model from the View. This article gives a solution to this problem, using dependency injection to inject the caching implementation into the Model layer at runtime. This allows caching to be used within the Model layer, without any knowledge of the actual caching mechanism that will be used. Create a sample application to use the caching solution Create a test SQL Server database This solution uses a SQL Server database with the same Sales data used in my previous post on calculating running totals. The advantage of using this data is that it gives nice slow queries that will exaggerate the effect of using caching! To create the data, first create a new SQL database called CacheSample. Next run the following script to create the Sale table and populate it: USE CacheSample GO   CREATE TABLE Sale(DayCount smallint, Sales money) CREATE CLUSTERED INDEX ndx_DayCount ON Sale(DayCount) go INSERT Sale VALUES (1,120) INSERT Sale VALUES (2,60) INSERT Sale VALUES (3,125) INSERT Sale VALUES (4,40)   DECLARE @DayCount smallint, @Sales money SET @DayCount = 5 SET @Sales = 10   WHILE @DayCount < 5000  BEGIN  INSERT Sale VALUES (@DayCount,@Sales)  SET @DayCount = @DayCount + 1  SET @Sales = @Sales + 15  END Next create a stored procedure to calculate the running total, and return a specified number of rows from the Sale table, using the following script: USE [CacheSample] GO   SET ANSI_NULLS ON GO   SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON GO   -- ============================================= -- Author:        Robin -- Create date: -- Description:   -- ============================================= CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[spGetRunningTotals]       -- Add the parameters for the stored procedure here       @HighestDayCount smallint = null AS BEGIN       -- SET NOCOUNT ON added to prevent extra result sets from       -- interfering with SELECT statements.       SET NOCOUNT ON;         IF @HighestDayCount IS NULL             SELECT @HighestDayCount = MAX(DayCount) FROM dbo.Sale                   DECLARE @SaleTbl TABLE (DayCount smallint, Sales money, RunningTotal money)         DECLARE @DayCount smallint,                   @Sales money,                   @RunningTotal money         SET @RunningTotal = 0       SET @DayCount = 0         DECLARE rt_cursor CURSOR       FOR       SELECT DayCount, Sales       FROM Sale       ORDER BY DayCount         OPEN rt_cursor         FETCH NEXT FROM rt_cursor INTO @DayCount,@Sales         WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0 AND @DayCount <= @HighestDayCount        BEGIN        SET @RunningTotal = @RunningTotal + @Sales        INSERT @SaleTbl VALUES (@DayCount,@Sales,@RunningTotal)        FETCH NEXT FROM rt_cursor INTO @DayCount,@Sales        END         CLOSE rt_cursor       DEALLOCATE rt_cursor         SELECT DayCount, Sales, RunningTotal       FROM @SaleTbl   END   GO   Create the Sample ASP.NET application In Visual Studio create a new solution and add a class library project called CacheSample.BusinessObjects and an ASP.NET web application called CacheSample.UI. The CacheSample.BusinessObjects project will contain a single class to represent a Sale data item, with all the code to retrieve the sales from the database included in it for simplicity (normally I would at least have a separate Repository or other object that is responsible for retrieving data, and probably a data access layer as well, but for this sample I want to keep it simple). The C# code for the Sale class is shown below: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Data; using System.Data.SqlClient;   namespace CacheSample.BusinessObjects {     public class Sale     {         public Int16 DayCount { get; set; }         public decimal Sales { get; set; }         public decimal RunningTotal { get; set; }           public static IEnumerable<Sale> GetSales(int? highestDayCount)         {             List<Sale> sales = new List<Sale>();               SqlParameter highestDayCountParameter = new SqlParameter("@HighestDayCount", SqlDbType.SmallInt);             if (highestDayCount.HasValue)                 highestDayCountParameter.Value = highestDayCount;             else                 highestDayCountParameter.Value = DBNull.Value;               string connectionStr = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager .ConnectionStrings["CacheSample"].ConnectionString;               using(SqlConnection sqlConn = new SqlConnection(connectionStr))             using (SqlCommand sqlCmd = sqlConn.CreateCommand())             {                 sqlCmd.CommandText = "spGetRunningTotals";                 sqlCmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;                 sqlCmd.Parameters.Add(highestDayCountParameter);                   sqlConn.Open();                   using (SqlDataReader dr = sqlCmd.ExecuteReader())                 {                     while (dr.Read())                     {                         Sale newSale = new Sale();                         newSale.DayCount = dr.GetInt16(0);                         newSale.Sales = dr.GetDecimal(1);                         newSale.RunningTotal = dr.GetDecimal(2);                           sales.Add(newSale);                     }                 }             }               return sales;         }     } }   The static GetSale() method makes a call to the spGetRunningTotals stored procedure and then reads each row from the returned SqlDataReader into an instance of the Sale class, it then returns a List of the Sale objects, as IEnnumerable<Sale>. A reference to System.Configuration needs to be added to the CacheSample.BusinessObjects project so that the connection string can be read from the web.config file. In the CacheSample.UI ASP.NET project, create a single web page called ShowSales.aspx, and make this the default start up page. This page will contain a single button to call the GetSales() method and a label to display the results. The html mark up and the C# code behind are shown below: ShowSales.aspx <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="ShowSales.aspx.cs" Inherits="CacheSample.UI.ShowSales" %>   <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">   <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head runat="server">     <title>Cache Sample - Show All Sales</title> </head> <body>     <form id="form1" runat="server">     <div>         <asp:Button ID="btnTest1" runat="server" onclick="btnTest1_Click"             Text="Get All Sales" />         &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;         <asp:Label ID="lblResults" runat="server"></asp:Label>         </div>     </form> </body> </html>   ShowSales.aspx.cs using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; using System.Web.UI; using System.Web.UI.WebControls;   using CacheSample.BusinessObjects;   namespace CacheSample.UI {     public partial class ShowSales : System.Web.UI.Page     {         protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)         {         }           protected void btnTest1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)         {             System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch stopWatch = new System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch();             stopWatch.Start();               var sales = Sale.GetSales(null);               var lastSales = sales.Last();               stopWatch.Stop();               lblResults.Text = string.Format( "Count of Sales: {0}, Last DayCount: {1}, Total Sales: {2}. Query took {3} ms", sales.Count(), lastSales.DayCount, lastSales.RunningTotal, stopWatch.ElapsedMilliseconds);         }       } }   Finally we need to add a connection string to the CacheSample SQL Server database, called CacheSample, to the web.config file: <?xmlversion="1.0"?>   <configuration>    <connectionStrings>     <addname="CacheSample"          connectionString="data source=.\SQLEXPRESS;Integrated Security=SSPI;Initial Catalog=CacheSample"          providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />  </connectionStrings>    <system.web>     <compilationdebug="true"targetFramework="4.0" />  </system.web>   </configuration>   Run the application and click the button a few times to see how long each call to the database takes. On my system, each query takes about 450ms. Next I shall look at a solution to use the ASP.NET caching to cache the data returned by the query, so that subsequent requests to the GetSales() method are much faster. Adding Data Caching Support I am going to create my caching support in a separate project called CacheSample.Caching, so the next step is to add a class library to the solution. We shall be using the application configuration to define the implementation of our caching system, so we need a reference to System.Configuration adding to the project. ICacheProvider<T> Interface The first step in adding caching to our application is to define an interface, called ICacheProvider, in the CacheSample.Caching project, with methods to retrieve any data from the cache or to retrieve the data from the data source if it is not present in the cache. Dependency Injection will then be used to inject an implementation of this interface at runtime, allowing the users of the interface (i.e. the CacheSample.BusinessObjects project) to be completely unaware of how the caching is actually implemented. As data of any type maybe retrieved from the data source, it makes sense to use generics in the interface, with a generic type parameter defining the data type associated with a particular instance of the cache interface implementation. The C# code for the ICacheProvider interface is shown below: using System; using System.Collections.Generic;   namespace CacheSample.Caching {     public interface ICacheProvider     {     }       public interface ICacheProvider<T> : ICacheProvider     {         T Fetch(string key, Func<T> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry);           IEnumerable<T> Fetch(string key, Func<IEnumerable<T>> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry);     } }   The empty non-generic interface will be used as a type in a Dictionary generic collection later to store instances of the ICacheProvider<T> implementation for reuse, I prefer to use a base interface when doing this, as I think the alternative of using object makes for less clear code. The ICacheProvider<T> interface defines two overloaded Fetch methods, the difference between these is that one will return a single instance of the type T and the other will return an IEnumerable<T>, providing support for easy caching of collections of data items. Both methods will take a key parameter, which will uniquely identify the cached data, a delegate of type Func<T> or Func<IEnumerable<T>> which will provide the code to retrieve the data from the store if it is not present in the cache, and absolute or relative expiry policies to define when a cached item should expire. Note that at present there is no support for cache dependencies, but I shall be showing a method of adding this in part two of this article. CacheProviderFactory Class We need a mechanism of creating instances of our ICacheProvider<T> interface, using Dependency Injection to get the implementation of the interface. To do this we shall create a CacheProviderFactory static class in the CacheSample.Caching project. This factory will provide a generic static method called GetCacheProvider<T>(), which shall return instances of ICacheProvider<T>. We can then call this factory method with the relevant data type (for example the Sale class in the CacheSample.BusinessObject project) to get a instance of ICacheProvider for that type (e.g. call CacheProviderFactory.GetCacheProvider<Sale>() to get the ICacheProvider<Sale> implementation). The C# code for the CacheProviderFactory is shown below: using System; using System.Collections.Generic;   using CacheSample.Caching.Configuration;   namespace CacheSample.Caching {     public static class CacheProviderFactory     {         private static Dictionary<Type, ICacheProvider> cacheProviders = new Dictionary<Type, ICacheProvider>();         private static object syncRoot = new object();           ///<summary>         /// Factory method to create or retrieve an implementation of the  /// ICacheProvider interface for type <typeparamref name="T"/>.         ///</summary>         ///<typeparam name="T">  /// The type that this cache provider instance will work with  ///</typeparam>         ///<returns>An instance of the implementation of ICacheProvider for type  ///<typeparamref name="T"/>, as specified by the application  /// configuration</returns>         public static ICacheProvider<T> GetCacheProvider<T>()         {             ICacheProvider<T> cacheProvider = null;             // Get the Type reference for the type parameter T             Type typeOfT = typeof(T);               // Lock the access to the cacheProviders dictionary             // so multiple threads can work with it             lock (syncRoot)             {                 // First check if an instance of the ICacheProvider implementation  // already exists in the cacheProviders dictionary for the type T                 if (cacheProviders.ContainsKey(typeOfT))                     cacheProvider = (ICacheProvider<T>)cacheProviders[typeOfT];                 else                 {                     // There is not already an instance of the ICacheProvider in       // cacheProviders for the type T                     // so we need to create one                       // Get the Type reference for the application's implementation of       // ICacheProvider from the configuration                     Type cacheProviderType = Type.GetType(CacheProviderConfigurationSection.Current. CacheProviderType);                     if (cacheProviderType != null)                     {                         // Now get a Type reference for the Cache Provider with the                         // type T generic parameter                         Type typeOfCacheProviderTypeForT = cacheProviderType.MakeGenericType(new Type[] { typeOfT });                         if (typeOfCacheProviderTypeForT != null)                         {                             // Create the instance of the Cache Provider and add it to // the cacheProviders dictionary for future use                             cacheProvider = (ICacheProvider<T>)Activator. CreateInstance(typeOfCacheProviderTypeForT);                             cacheProviders.Add(typeOfT, cacheProvider);                         }                     }                 }             }               return cacheProvider;                 }     } }   As this code uses Activator.CreateInstance() to create instances of the ICacheProvider<T> implementation, which is a slow process, the factory class maintains a Dictionary of the previously created instances so that a cache provider needs to be created only once for each type. The type of the implementation of ICacheProvider<T> is read from a custom configuration section in the application configuration file, via the CacheProviderConfigurationSection class, which is described below. CacheProviderConfigurationSection Class The implementation of ICacheProvider<T> will be specified in a custom configuration section in the application’s configuration. To handle this create a folder in the CacheSample.Caching project called Configuration, and add a class called CacheProviderConfigurationSection to this folder. This class will extend the System.Configuration.ConfigurationSection class, and will contain a single string property called CacheProviderType. The C# code for this class is shown below: using System; using System.Configuration;   namespace CacheSample.Caching.Configuration {     internal class CacheProviderConfigurationSection : ConfigurationSection     {         public static CacheProviderConfigurationSection Current         {             get             {                 return (CacheProviderConfigurationSection) ConfigurationManager.GetSection("cacheProvider");             }         }           [ConfigurationProperty("type", IsRequired=true)]         public string CacheProviderType         {             get             {                 return (string)this["type"];             }         }     } }   Adding Data Caching to the Sales Class We now have enough code in place to add caching to the GetSales() method in the CacheSample.BusinessObjects.Sale class, even though we do not yet have an implementation of the ICacheProvider<T> interface. We need to add a reference to the CacheSample.Caching project to CacheSample.BusinessObjects so that we can use the ICacheProvider<T> interface within the GetSales() method. Once the reference is added, we can first create a unique string key based on the method name and the parameter value, so that the same cache key is used for repeated calls to the method with the same parameter values. Then we get an instance of the cache provider for the Sales type, using the CacheProviderFactory, and pass the existing code to retrieve the data from the database as the retrievalMethod delegate in a call to the Cache Provider Fetch() method. The C# code for the modified GetSales() method is shown below: public static IEnumerable<Sale> GetSales(int? highestDayCount) {     string cacheKey = string.Format("CacheSample.BusinessObjects.GetSalesWithCache({0})", highestDayCount);       return CacheSample.Caching.CacheProviderFactory. GetCacheProvider<Sale>().Fetch(cacheKey,         delegate()         {             List<Sale> sales = new List<Sale>();               SqlParameter highestDayCountParameter = new SqlParameter("@HighestDayCount", SqlDbType.SmallInt);             if (highestDayCount.HasValue)                 highestDayCountParameter.Value = highestDayCount;             else                 highestDayCountParameter.Value = DBNull.Value;               string connectionStr = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager. ConnectionStrings["CacheSample"].ConnectionString;               using (SqlConnection sqlConn = new SqlConnection(connectionStr))             using (SqlCommand sqlCmd = sqlConn.CreateCommand())             {                 sqlCmd.CommandText = "spGetRunningTotals";                 sqlCmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;                 sqlCmd.Parameters.Add(highestDayCountParameter);                   sqlConn.Open();                   using (SqlDataReader dr = sqlCmd.ExecuteReader())                 {                     while (dr.Read())                     {                         Sale newSale = new Sale();                         newSale.DayCount = dr.GetInt16(0);                         newSale.Sales = dr.GetDecimal(1);                         newSale.RunningTotal = dr.GetDecimal(2);                           sales.Add(newSale);                     }                 }             }               return sales;         },         null,         new TimeSpan(0, 10, 0)); }     This example passes the code to retrieve the Sales data from the database to the Cache Provider as an anonymous method, however it could also be written as a lambda. The main advantage of using an anonymous function (method or lambda) is that the code inside the anonymous function can access the parameters passed to the GetSales() method. Finally the absolute expiry is set to null, and the relative expiry set to 10 minutes, to indicate that the cache entry should be removed 10 minutes after the last request for the data. As the ICacheProvider<T> has a Fetch() method that returns IEnumerable<T>, we can simply return the results of the Fetch() method to the caller of the GetSales() method. This should be all that is needed for the GetSales() method to now retrieve data from a cache after the first time the data has be retrieved from the database. Implementing a ASP.NET Cache Provider The final step is to actually implement the ICacheProvider<T> interface, and add the implementation details to the web.config file for the dependency injection. The cache provider implementation needs to have access to System.Web. Therefore it could be placed in the CacheSample.UI project, or in its own project that has a reference to System.Web. Implementing the Cache Provider in a separate project is my favoured approach. Create a new project inside the solution called CacheSample.CacheProvider, and add references to System.Web and CacheSample.Caching to this project. Add a class to the project called AspNetCacheProvider. Make the class a generic class by adding the generic parameter <T> and indicate that the class implements ICacheProvider<T>. The C# code for the AspNetCacheProvider class is shown below: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; using System.Web.Caching;   using CacheSample.Caching;   namespace CacheSample.CacheProvider {     public class AspNetCacheProvider<T> : ICacheProvider<T>     {         #region ICacheProvider<T> Members           public T Fetch(string key, Func<T> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry)         {             return FetchAndCache<T>(key, retrieveData, absoluteExpiry, relativeExpiry);         }           public IEnumerable<T> Fetch(string key, Func<IEnumerable<T>> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry)         {             return FetchAndCache<IEnumerable<T>>(key, retrieveData, absoluteExpiry, relativeExpiry);         }           #endregion           #region Helper Methods           private U FetchAndCache<U>(string key, Func<U> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry)         {             U value;             if (!TryGetValue<U>(key, out value))             {                 value = retrieveData();                 if (!absoluteExpiry.HasValue)                     absoluteExpiry = Cache.NoAbsoluteExpiration;                   if (!relativeExpiry.HasValue)                     relativeExpiry = Cache.NoSlidingExpiration;                   HttpContext.Current.Cache.Insert(key, value, null, absoluteExpiry.Value, relativeExpiry.Value);             }             return value;         }           private bool TryGetValue<U>(string key, out U value)         {             object cachedValue = HttpContext.Current.Cache.Get(key);             if (cachedValue == null)             {                 value = default(U);                 return false;             }             else             {                 try                 {                     value = (U)cachedValue;                     return true;                 }                 catch                 {                     value = default(U);                     return false;                 }             }         }           #endregion       } }   The two interface Fetch() methods call a private method called FetchAndCache(). This method first checks for a element in the HttpContext.Current.Cache with the specified cache key, and if so tries to cast this to the specified type (either T or IEnumerable<T>). If the cached element is found, the FetchAndCache() method simply returns it. If it is not found in the cache, the method calls the retrievalMethod delegate to get the data from the data source, and then adds this to the HttpContext.Current.Cache. The final step is to add the AspNetCacheProvider class to the relevant custom configuration section in the CacheSample.UI.Web.Config file. To do this there needs to be a <configSections> element added as the first element in <configuration>. This will match a custom section called <cacheProvider> with the CacheProviderConfigurationSection. Then we add a <cacheProvider> element, with a type property set to the fully qualified assembly name of the AspNetCacheProvider class, as shown below: <?xmlversion="1.0"?>   <configuration>  <configSections>     <sectionname="cacheProvider" type="CacheSample.Base.Configuration.CacheProviderConfigurationSection, CacheSample.Base" />  </configSections>    <connectionStrings>     <addname="CacheSample"          connectionString="data source=.\SQLEXPRESS;Integrated Security=SSPI;Initial Catalog=CacheSample"          providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />  </connectionStrings>    <cacheProvidertype="CacheSample.CacheProvider.AspNetCacheProvider`1, CacheSample.CacheProvider, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null">  </cacheProvider>    <system.web>     <compilationdebug="true"targetFramework="4.0" />  </system.web>   </configuration>   One point to note is that the fully qualified assembly name of the AspNetCacheProvider class includes the notation `1 after the class name, which indicates that it is a generic class with a single generic type parameter. The CacheSample.UI project needs to have references added to CacheSample.Caching and CacheSample.CacheProvider so that the actual application is aware of the relevant cache provider implementation. Conclusion After implementing this solution, you should have a working cache provider mechanism, that will allow the middle and data access layers to implement caching support when retrieving data, without any knowledge of the actually caching implementation. If the UI is not ASP.NET based, if for example it is Winforms or WPF, the implementation of ICacheProvider<T> would be written around whatever technology is available. It could even be a standalone caching system that takes full responsibility for adding and removing items from a global store. The next part of this article will show how this caching mechanism may be extended to provide support for cache dependencies, such as the System.Web.Caching.SqlCacheDependency. Another possible extension would be to cache the cache provider implementations instead of storing them in a static Dictionary in the CacheProviderFactory. This would prevent a build up of seldom used cache providers in the application memory, as they could be removed from the cache if not used often enough, although in reality there are probably unlikely to be vast numbers of cache provider implementation instances, as most applications do not have a massive number of business object or model types.

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• How to shoot yourself in the foot (DO NOT Read in the office)

  - by TATWORTH

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TATWORTH/archive/2013/06/21/how-to-shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-do-not-read.aspxLet me make it absolutely clear - the following is:merely collated by your Geek from http://www.codeproject.com/Lounge.aspx?msg=3917012#xx3917012xxvery, very very funny so you read it in the presence of others at your own riskso here is the list - you have been warned!C You shoot yourself in the foot.   C++ You accidently create a dozen instances of yourself and shoot them all in the foot. Providing emergency medical assistance is impossible since you can't tell which are bitwise copies and which are just pointing at others and saying "That's me, over there."   FORTRAN You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out of toes, then you read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out of bullets, you continue anyway because you have no exception-handling facility.   Modula-2 After realizing that you can't actually accomplish anything in this language, you shoot yourself in the head.   COBOL USEing a COLT 45 HANDGUN, AIM gun at LEG.FOOT, THEN place ARM.HAND.FINGER on HANDGUN.TRIGGER and SQUEEZE. THEN return HANDGUN to HOLSTER. CHECK whether shoelace needs to be retied.   Lisp You shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds...   BASIC Shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol. On big systems, continue until entire lower body is waterlogged.   Forth Foot yourself in the shoot.   APL You shoot yourself in the foot; then spend all day figuring out how to do it in fewer characters.   Pascal The compiler won't let you shoot yourself in the foot.   Snobol If you succeed, shoot yourself in the left foot. If you fail, shoot yourself in the right foot.   HyperTalk Put the first bullet of the gun into foot left of leg of you. Answer the result.   Prolog You tell your program you want to be shot in the foot. The program figures out how to do it, but the syntax doesn't allow it to explain.   370 JCL You send your foot down to MIS with a 4000-page document explaining how you want it to be shot. Three years later, your foot comes back deep-fried.   FORTRAN-77 You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out of toes, then you read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out of bullets, you continue anyway because you still can't do exception-processing.   Modula-2 (alternative) You perform a shooting on what might be currently a foot with what might be currently a bullet shot by what might currently be a gun.   BASIC (compiled) You shoot yourself in the foot with a BB using a SCUD missile launcher.   Visual Basic You'll really only appear to have shot yourself in the foot, but you'll have so much fun doing it that you won't care.   Forth (alternative) BULLET DUP3 * GUN LOAD FOOT AIM TRIGGER PULL BANG! EMIT DEAD IF DROP ROT THEN (This takes about five bytes of memory, executes in two to ten clock cycles on any processor and can be used to replace any existing function of the language as well as in any future words). (Welcome to bottom up programming - where you, too, can perform compiler pre-processing instead of writing code)   APL (alternative) You hear a gunshot and there's a hole in your foot, but you don't remember enough linear algebra to understand what happened. or @#&^$%&%^ foot   Pascal (alternative) Same as Modula-2 except that the bullet is not the right type for the gun and your hand is blown off.   Snobol (alternative) You grab your foot with your hand, then rewrite your hand to be a bullet. The act of shooting the original foot then changes your hand/bullet into yet another foot (a left foot).   Prolog (alternative) You attempt to shoot yourself in the foot, but the bullet, failing to find its mark, backtracks to the gun, which then explodes in your face.   COMAL You attempt to shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol, but the bore is clogged, and the pressure build-up blows apart both the pistol and your hand. or draw_pistol aim_at_foot(left) pull_trigger hop(swearing)   Scheme As Lisp, but none of the other appendages are aware of this happening.   Algol You shoot yourself in the foot with a musket. The musket is aesthetically fascinating and the wound baffles the adolescent medic in the emergency room.   Ada If you are dumb enough to actually use this language, the United States Department of Defense will kidnap you, stand you up in front of a firing squad and tell the soldiers, "Shoot at the feet." or The Department of Defense shoots you in the foot after offering you a blindfold and a last cigarette. or After correctly packaging your foot, you attempt to concurrently load the gun, pull the trigger, scream and shoot yourself in the foot. When you try, however, you discover that your foot is of the wrong type. or After correctly packing your foot, you attempt to concurrently load the gun, pull the trigger, scream, and confidently aim at your foot knowing it is safe. However the cordite in the round does an Unchecked Conversion, fires and shoots you in the foot anyway.   Eiffel   You create a GUN object, two FOOT objects and a BULLET object. The GUN passes both the FOOT objects a reference to the BULLET. The FOOT objects increment their hole counts and forget about the BULLET. A little demon then drives a garbage truck over your feet and grabs the bullet (both of it) on the way. Smalltalk You spend so much time playing with the graphics and windowing system that your boss shoots you in the foot, takes away your workstation and makes you develop in COBOL on a character terminal. or You send the message shoot to gun, with selectors bullet and myFoot. A window pops up saying Gunpowder doesNotUnderstand: spark. After several fruitless hours spent browsing the methods for Trigger, FiringPin and IdealGas, you take the easy way out and create ShotFoot, a subclass of Foot with an additional instance variable bulletHole. Object Oriented Pascal You perform a shooting on what might currently be a foot with what might currently be a bullet fired from what might currently be a gun.   PL/I You consume all available system resources, including all the offline bullets. The Data Processing & Payroll Department doubles its size, triples its budget, acquires four new mainframes and drops the original one on your foot. Postscript foot bullets 6 locate loadgun aim gun shoot showpage or It takes the bullet ten minutes to travel from the gun to your foot, by which time you're long since gone out to lunch. The text comes out great, though.   PERL You stab yourself in the foot repeatedly with an incredibly large and very heavy Swiss Army knife. or You pick up the gun and begin to load it. The gun and your foot begin to grow to huge proportions and the world around you slows down, until the gun fires. It makes a tiny hole, which you don't feel. Assembly Language You crash the OS and overwrite the root disk. The system administrator arrives and shoots you in the foot. After a moment of contemplation, the administrator shoots himself in the foot and then hops around the room rabidly shooting at everyone in sight. or You try to shoot yourself in the foot only to discover you must first reinvent the gun, the bullet, and your foot.or The bullet travels to your foot instantly, but it took you three weeks to load the round and aim the gun.   BCPL You shoot yourself somewhere in the leg -- you can't get any finer resolution than that. Concurrent Euclid You shoot yourself in somebody else's foot.   Motif You spend days writing a UIL description of your foot, the trajectory, the bullet and the intricate scrollwork on the ivory handles of the gun. When you finally get around to pulling the trigger, the gun jams.   Powerbuilder While attempting to load the gun you discover that the LoadGun system function is buggy; as a work around you tape the bullet to the outside of the gun and unsuccessfully attempt to fire it with a nail. In frustration you club your foot with the butt of the gun and explain to your client that this approximates the functionality of shooting yourself in the foot and that the next version of Powerbuilder will fix it.   Standard ML By the time you get your code to typecheck, you're using a shoot to foot yourself in the gun.   MUMPS You shoot 583149 AK-47 teflon-tipped, hollow-point, armour-piercing bullets into even-numbered toes on odd-numbered feet of everyone in the building -- with one line of code. Three weeks later you shoot yourself in the head rather than try to modify that line.   Java You locate the Gun class, but discover that the Bullet class is abstract, so you extend it and write the missing part of the implementation. Then you implement the ShootAble interface for your foot, and recompile the Foot class. The interface lets the bullet call the doDamage method on the Foot, so the Foot can damage itself in the most effective way. Now you run the program, and call the doShoot method on the instance of the Gun class. First the Gun creates an instance of Bullet, which calls the doFire method on the Gun. The Gun calls the hit(Bullet) method on the Foot, and the instance of Bullet is passed to the Foot. But this causes an IllegalHitByBullet exception to be thrown, and you die.   Unix You shoot yourself in the foot or % ls foot.c foot.h foot.o toe.c toe.o % rm * .o rm: .o: No such file or directory % ls %   370 JCL (alternative) You shoot yourself in the head just thinking about it.   DOS JCL You first find the building you're in in the phone book, then find your office number in the corporate phone book. Then you have to write this down, then describe, in cubits, your exact location, in relation to the door (right hand side thereof). Then you need to write down the location of the gun (loading it is a proprietary utility), then you load it, and the COBOL program, and run them, and, with luck, it may be run tonight.   VMS   $ MOUNT/DENSITY=.45/LABEL=BULLET/MESSAGE="BYE" BULLET::BULLET$GUN SYS$BULLET $ SET GUN/LOAD/SAFETY=OFF/SIGHT=NONE/HAND=LEFT/CHAMBER=1/ACTION=AUTOMATIC/ LOG/ALL/FULL SYS$GUN_3$DUA3:[000000]GUN.GNU $ SHOOT/LOG/AUTO SYS$GUN SYS$SYSTEM:[FOOT]FOOT.FOOT   %DCL-W-ACTIMAGE, error activating image GUN -CLI-E-IMGNAME, image file $3$DUA240:[GUN]GUN.EXE;1 -IMGACT-F-NOTNATIVE, image is not an OpenVMS Alpha AXP image or %SYS-F-FTSHT, foot shot (fifty lines of traceback omitted) sh,csh, etc You can't remember the syntax for anything, so you spend five hours reading manual pages, then your foot falls asleep. You shoot the computer and switch to C.   Apple System 7 Double click the gun icon and a window giving a selection for guns, target areas, plus balloon help with medical remedies, and assorted sound effects. Click "shoot" button and a small bomb appears with note "Error of Type 1 has occurred."   Windows 3.1 Double click the gun icon and wait. Eventually a window opens giving a selection for guns, target areas, plus balloon help with medical remedies, and assorted sound effects. Click "shoot" button and a small box appears with note "Unable to open Shoot.dll, check that path is correct."   Windows 95 Your gun is not compatible with this OS and you must buy an upgrade and install it before you can continue. Then you will be informed that you don't have enough memory.   CP/M I remember when shooting yourself in the foot with a BB gun was a big deal.   DOS You finally found the gun, but can't locate the file with the foot for the life of you.   MSDOS You shoot yourself in the foot, but can unshoot yourself with add-on software.   Access You try to point the gun at your foot, but it shoots holes in all your Borland distribution diskettes instead.   Paradox Not only can you shoot yourself in the foot, your users can too.   dBase You squeeze the trigger, but the bullet moves so slowly that by the time your foot feels the pain, you've forgotten why you shot yourself anyway. or You buy a gun. Bullets are only available from another company and are promised to work so you buy them. Then you find out that the next version of the gun is the one scheduled to actually shoot bullets.   DBase IV, V1.0 You pull the trigger, but it turns out that the gun was a poorly designed hand grenade and the whole building blows up.   SQL You cut your foot off, send it out to a service bureau and when it returns, it has a hole in it but will no longer fit the attachment at the end of your leg. or Insert into Foot Select Bullet >From Gun.Hand Where Chamber = 'LOADED' And Trigger = 'PULLED'   Clipper You grab a bullet, get ready to insert it in the gun so that you can shoot yourself in the foot and discover that the gun that the bullets fits has not yet been built, but should be arriving in the mail _REAL_SOON_NOW_. Oracle The menus for coding foot_shooting have not been implemented yet and you can't do foot shooting in SQL.   English You put your foot in your mouth, then bite it off. (For those who don't know, English is a McDonnell Douglas/PICK query language which allegedly requires 110% of system resources to run happily.) Revelation [an implementation of the PICK Operating System] You'll be able to shoot yourself in the foot just as soon as you figure out what all these bullets are for.   FlagShip Starting at the top of your head, you aim the gun at yourself repeatedly until, half an hour later, the gun is finally pointing at your foot and you pull the trigger. A new foot with a hole in it appears but you can't work out how to get rid of the old one and your gun doesn't work anymore.   FidoNet You put your foot in your mouth, then echo it internationally.   PicoSpan [a UNIX-based computer conferencing system] You can't shoot yourself in the foot because you're not a host. or (host variation) Whenever you shoot yourself in the foot, someone opens a topic in policy about it.   Internet You put your foot in your mouth, shoot it, then spam the bullet so that everybody gets shot in the foot.   troff rmtroff -ms -Hdrwp | lpr -Pwp2 & .*place bullet in footer .B .NR FT +3i .in 4 .bu Shoot! .br .sp .in -4 .br .bp NR HD -2i .*   Genetic Algorithms You create 10,000 strings describing the best way to shoot yourself in the foot. By the time the program produces the optimal solution, humans have evolved wings and the problem is moot.   CSP (Communicating Sequential Processes) You only fail to shoot everything that isn't your foot.   MS-SQL Server MS-SQL Server’s gun comes pre-loaded with an unlimited supply of Teflon coated bullets, and it only has two discernible features: the muzzle and the trigger. If that wasn't enough, MS-SQL Server also puts the gun in your hand, applies local anesthetic to the skin of your forefinger and stitches it to the gun's trigger. Meanwhile, another process has set up a spinal block to numb your lower body. It will then proceeded to surgically remove your foot, cryogenically freeze it for preservation, and attach it to the muzzle of the gun so that no matter where you aim, you will shoot your foot. In order to avoid shooting yourself in the foot, you need to unstitch your trigger finger, remove your foot from the muzzle of the gun, and have it surgically reattached. Then you probably want to get some crutches and go out to buy a book on SQL Server Performance Tuning.   Sybase Sybase's gun requires assembly, and you need to go out and purchase your own clip and bullets to load the gun. Assembly is complicated by the fact that Sybase has hidden the gun behind a big stack of reference manuals, but it hasn't told you where that stack is. While you were off finding the gun, assembling it, buying bullets, etc., Sybase was also busy surgically removing your foot and cryogenically freezing it for preservation. Instead of attaching it to the muzzle of the gun, though, it packed your foot on dry ice and sent it UPS-Ground to an unnamed hookah bar somewhere in the middle east. In order to shoot your foot, you must modify your gun with a GPS system for targeting and hire some guy named "Indy" to find the hookah bar and wire the coordinates back to you. By this time, you've probably become so daunted at the tasks stand between you and shooting your foot that you hire a guy who's read all the books on Sybase to help you shoot your foot. If you're lucky, he'll be smart enough both to find your foot and to stop you from shooting it.   Magic software You spend 1 week looking up the correct syntax for GUN. When you find it, you realise that GUN will not let you shoot in your own foot. It will allow you to shoot almost anything but your foot. You then decide to build your own gun. You can't use the standard barrel since this will only allow for standard bullets, which will not fire if the barrel is pointed at your foot. After four weeks, you have created your own custom gun. It blows up in your hand without warning, because you failed to initialise the safety catch and it doesn't know whether the initial state is "0", 0, NULL, "ZERO", 0.0, 0,0, "0.0", or "0,00". You fix the problem with your remaining hand by nesting 12 safety catches, and then decide to build the gun without safety catch. You then shoot the management and retire to a happy life where you code in languages that will allow you to shoot your foot in under 10 days.FirefoxLets you shoot yourself in as many feet as you'd like, while using multiple great addons! IEA moving target in terms of standard ammunition size and doesn't always work properly with non-Microsoft ammunition, so sometimes you shoot something other than your foot. However, it's the corporate world's standard foot-shooting apparatus. Hackers seem to enjoy rigging websites up to trigger cascading foot-shooting failures. Windows 98 About the same as Windows 95 in terms of overall bullet capacity and triggering mechanisms. Includes updated DirectShot API. A new version was released later on to support USB guns, Windows 98 SE.WPF:You get your baseball glove and a ball and you head out to your backyard, where you throw balls to your pitchback. Then your unkempt-haired-cargo-shorts-and-sandals-with-white-socks-wearing neighbor uses XAML to sculpt your arm into a gun, the ball into a bullet and the pitchback into your foot. By now, however, only the neighbor can get it to work and he's only around from 6:30 PM - 3:30 AM. LOGO: You very carefully lay out the trajectory of the bullet. Then you start the gun, which fires very slowly. You walk precisely to the point where the bullet will travel and wait, but just before it gets to you, your class time is up and one of the other kids has already used the system to hack into Sony's PS3 network. Flash: Someone has designed a beautiful-looking gun that anyone can shoot their feet with for free. It weighs six hundred pounds. All kinds of people are shooting themselves in the feet, and sending the link to everyone else so that they can too. That is, except for the criminals, who are all stealing iOS devices that the gun won't work with.APL: Its (mostly) all greek to me. Lisp: Place ((gun in ((hand sight (foot then shoot))))) (Lots of Insipid Stupid Parentheses)Apple OS/X and iOS Once a year, Steve Jobs returns from sick leave to tell millions of unwavering fans how they will be able to shoot themselves in the foot differently this year. They retweet and blog about it ad nauseam, and wait in line to be the first to experience "shoot different".Windows ME Usually fails, even at shooting you in the foot. Yo dawg, I heard you like shooting yourself in the foot. So I put a gun in your gun, so you can shoot yourself in the foot while you shoot yourself in the foot. (Okay, I'm not especially proud of this joke.) Windows 2000 Now you really do have to log in, before you are allowed to shoot yourself in the foot.Windows XPYou thought you learned your lesson: Don't use Windows ME. Then, along came this new creature, built on top of Windows NT! So you spend the next couple days installing antivirus software, patches and service packs, just so you can get that driver to install, and then proceed to shoot yourself in the foot. Windows Vista Newer! Glossier! Shootier! Windows 7 The bullets come out a lot smoother. Active Directory Each bullet now has an attached Bullet Identifier, and can be uniquely identified. Policies can be applied to dictate fragmentation, and the gun will occasionally have a confusing delay after the trigger has been pulled. PythonYou try to use import foot; foot.shoot() only to realize that's only available in 3.0, to which you can't yet upgrade from 2.7 because of all those extension libs lacking support. Solaris Shoots best when used on SPARC hardware, but still runs the trigger GUI under Java. After weeks of learning the appropriate STOP command to prevent the trigger from automatically being pressed on boot, you think you've got it under control. Then the one time you ever use dtrace, it hits a bug that fires the gun. MySQL The feature that allows you to shoot yourself in the foot has been in development for about 6 years, and they are adding it into the next version, which is coming out REAL SOON NOW, promise! But you can always check it out of source control and try it yourself (just not in any environment where data integrity is important because it will probably explode.) PostgreSQLAllows you to have a smug look on your face while you shoot yourself in the foot, because those MySQL guys STILL don't have that feature. NoSQL Barrel? Who needs a barrel? Just put the bullet on your foot, and strike it with a hammer. See? It's so much simpler and more efficient that way. You can even strike multiple bullets in one swing if you swing with a good enough arc, because hammers are easy to use. Getting them to synchronize is a little difficult, though.Eclipse There are about a dozen different packages for shooting yourself in the foot, with weird interdependencies on outdated components. Once you finally navigate the morass and get one installed, you then have something to look at while you shoot yourself in the foot with that package: You can watch the screen redraw.Outlook Makes it really easy to let everyone know you shot yourself in the foot!Shooting yourself in the foot using delegates.You really need to shoot yourself in the foot but you hate firearms (you don't want any dependency on the specifics of shooting) so you delegate it to somebody else. You don't care how it is done as long is shooting your foot. You can do it asynchronously in case you know you may faint so you are called back/slapped in the face by your shooter/friend (or background worker) when everything is done.C#You prepare the gun and the bullet, carefully modeling all of the physics of a bullet traveling through a foot. Just before you're about to pull the trigger, you stumble on System.Windows.BodyParts.Foot.ShootAt(System.Windows.Firearms.IGun gun) in the extended framework, realize you just wasted the entire afternoon, and shoot yourself in the head.PHP<?phprequire("foot_safety_check.php");?><!DOCTYPE HTML><html><head> <!--Lower!--><title>Shooting me in the foot</title></head> <body> <!--LOWER!!!--><leg> <!--OK, I made this one up...--><footer><?php echo (dungSift($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], "ie"))?("Your foot is safe, but you might want to wear a hard hat!"):("<div class=\"shot\">BANG!</div>"); ?></footer></leg> </body> </html>

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• I need help on my C++ assignment using MS Visual C++

  - by krayzwytie

  Ok, so I don't want you to do my homework for me, but I'm a little lost with this final assignment and need all the help I can get. Learning about programming is tough enough, but doing it online is next to impossible for me... Now, to get to the program, I am going to paste what I have so far. This includes mostly //comments and what I have written so far. If you can help me figure out where all the errors are and how to complete the assignment, I will really appreciate it. Like I said, I don't want you to do my homework for me (it's my final), but any constructive criticism is welcome. This is my final assignment for this class and it is due tomorrow (Sunday before midnight, Arizona time). This is the assignment: Examine the following situation: o Your company, Datamax, Inc., is in the process of automating its payroll systems. Your manager has asked you to create a program that calculates overtime pay for all employees. Your program must take into account the employee’s salary, total hours worked, and hours worked more than 40 in a week, and then provide an output that is useful and easily understood by company management. • Compile your program utilizing the following background information and the code outline in Appendix D (included in the code section). • Submit your project as an attachment including the code and the output. Company Background: o Three employees: Mark, John, and Mary o The end user needs to be prompted for three specific pieces of input—name, hours worked, and hourly wage. o Calculate overtime if input is greater than 40 hours per week. o Provide six test plans to verify the logic within the program. o Plan 1 must display the proper information for employee #1 with overtime pay. o Plan 2 must display the proper information for employee #1 with no overtime pay. o Plans 3-6 are duplicates of plan 1 and 2 but for the other employees. Program Requirements: o Define a base class to use for the entire program. o The class holds the function calls and the variables related to the overtime pay calculations. o Define one object per employee. Note there will be three employees. o Your program must take the objects created and implement calculations based on total salaries, total hours, and the total number of overtime hours. See the Employee Summary Data section of the sample output. Logic Steps to Complete Your Program: o Define your base class. o Define your objects from your base class. o Prompt for user input, updating your object classes for all three users. o Implement your overtime pay calculations. o Display overtime or regular time pay calculations. See the sample output below. o Implement object calculations by summarizing your employee objects and display the summary information in the example below. And this is the code: // Final_Project.cpp : Defines the entry point for the console application. // #include "stdafx.h" #include <iostream> #include <string> #include <iomanip> using namespace std; // //CLASS DECLARATION SECTION // class CEmployee { public: void ImplementCalculations(string EmployeeName, double hours, double wage); void DisplayEmployInformation(void); void Addsomethingup (CEmployee, CEmployee, CEmployee); string EmployeeName ; int hours ; int overtime_hours ; int iTotal_hours ; int iTotal_OvertimeHours ; float wage ; float basepay ; float overtime_pay ; float overtime_extra ; float iTotal_salaries ; float iIndividualSalary ; }; int main() { system("cls"); cout << "Welcome to the Employee Pay Center"; /* Use this section to define your objects. You will have one object per employee. You have only three employees. The format is your class name and your object name. */ std::cout << "Please enter Employee's Name: "; std::cin >> EmployeeName; std::cout << "Please enter Total Hours for (EmployeeName): "; std::cin >> hours; std::cout << "Please enter Base Pay for(EmployeeName): "; std::cin >> basepay; /* Here you will prompt for the first employee’s information. Prompt the employee name, hours worked, and the hourly wage. For each piece of information, you will update the appropriate class member defined above. Example of Prompts Enter the employee name = Enter the hours worked = Enter his or her hourly wage = */ /* Here you will prompt for the second employee’s information. Prompt the employee name, hours worked, and the hourly wage. For each piece of information, you will update the appropriate class member defined above. Enter the employee name = Enter the hours worked = Enter his or her hourly wage = */ /* Here you will prompt for the third employee’s information. Prompt the employee name, hours worked, and the hourly wage. For each piece of information, you will update the appropriate class member defined above. Enter the employee name = Enter the hours worked = Enter his or her hourly wage = */ /* Here you will implement a function call to implement the employ calcuations for each object defined above. You will do this for each of the three employees or objects. The format for this step is the following: [(object name.function name(objectname.name, objectname.hours, objectname.wage)] ; */ /* This section you will send all three objects to a function that will add up the the following information: - Total Employee Salaries - Total Employee Hours - Total Overtime Hours The format for this function is the following: - Define a new object. - Implement function call [objectname.functionname(object name 1, object name 2, object name 3)] /* } //End of Main Function void CEmployee::ImplementCalculations (string EmployeeName, double hours, double wage){ //Initialize overtime variables overtime_hours=0; overtime_pay=0; overtime_extra=0; if (hours > 40) { /* This section is for the basic calculations for calculating overtime pay. - base pay = 40 hours times the hourly wage - overtime hours = hours worked – 40 - overtime pay = hourly wage * 1.5 - overtime extra pay over 40 = overtime hours * overtime pay - salary = overtime money over 40 hours + your base pay */ /* Implement function call to output the employee information. Function is defined below. */ } // if (hours > 40) else { /* Here you are going to calculate the hours less than 40 hours. - Your base pay is = your hours worked times your wage - Salary = your base pay */ /* Implement function call to output the employee information. Function is defined below. */ } // End of the else } //End of Primary Function void CEmployee::DisplayEmployInformation(); { // This function displays all the employee output information. /* This is your cout statements to display the employee information: Employee Name ............. = Base Pay .................. = Hours in Overtime ......... = Overtime Pay Amount........ = Total Pay ................. = */ } // END OF Display Employee Information void CEmployee::Addsomethingup (CEmployee Employ1, CEmployee Employ2) { // Adds two objects of class Employee passed as // function arguments and saves them as the calling object's data member values. /* Add the total hours for objects 1, 2, and 3. Add the salaries for each object. Add the total overtime hours. */ /* Then display the information below. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%% EMPLOYEE SUMMARY DATA%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%% Total Employee Salaries ..... = 576.43 %%%% Total Employee Hours ........ = 108 %%%% Total Overtime Hours......... = 5 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% */ } // End of function

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• How to use Koala Facebook Graph API?

  - by reko

  I am a Rails newbie. I want to use Koala's Graph API. In my controller @graph = Koala::Facebook::API.new('myFacebookAccessToken') @hello = @graph.get_object("my.Name") When I do this, I get something like this { "id"=>"123456", "name"=>"First Middle Last", "first_name"=>"First", "middle_name"=>"Middle", "last_name"=>"Last", "link"=>"http://www.facebook.com/MyName", "username"=>"my.name", "birthday"=>"12/12/1212", "hometown"=>{"id"=>"115200305133358163", "name"=>"City, State"}, "location"=>{"id"=>"1054648928202133335", "name"=>"City, State"}, "bio"=>"This is my awesome Bio.", "quotes"=>"I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul. - William Ernest Henley\r\n\r\n"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.\" - Mark Twain", "work"=>[{"employer"=>{"id"=>"100751133333", "name"=>"Company1"}, "position"=>{"id"=>"105763693332790962", "name"=>"Position1"}, "start_date"=>"2010-08", "end_date"=>"2011-07"}], "sports"=>[{"id"=>"104019549633137", "name"=>"Sport1"}, {"id"=>"103992339636529", "name"=>"Sport2"}], "favorite_teams"=>[{"id"=>"105467226133353743", "name"=>"Fav1"}, {"id"=>"19031343444432369133", "name"=>"Fav2"}, {"id"=>"98027790139333", "name"=>"Fav3"}, {"id"=>"104055132963393331", "name"=>"Fav4"}, {"id"=>"191744431437533310", "name"=>"Fav5"}], "favorite_athletes"=>[{"id"=>"10836600585799922", "name"=>"Fava1"}, {"id"=>"18995689436787722", "name"=>"Fava2"}, {"id"=>"11156342219404022", "name"=>"Fava4"}, {"id"=>"11169998212279347", "name"=>"Fava5"}, {"id"=>"122326564475039", "name"=>"Fava6"}], "inspirational_people"=>[{"id"=>"16383141733798", "name"=>"Fava7"}, {"id"=>"113529011990793335", "name"=>"fava8"}, {"id"=>"112032333138809855566", "name"=>"Fava9"}, {"id"=>"10810367588423324", "name"=>"Fava10"}], "education"=>[{"school"=>{"id"=>"13478880321332322233663", "name"=>"School1"}, "type"=>"High School", "with"=>[{"id"=>"1401052755", "name"=>"Friend1"}]}, {"school"=>{"id"=>"11482777188037224", "name"=>"School2"}, "year"=>{"id"=>"138383069535219", "name"=>"2005"}, "type"=>"High School"}, {"school"=>{"id"=>"10604484633093514", "name"=>"School3"}, "year"=>{"id"=>"142963519060927", "name"=>"2010"}, "concentration"=>[{"id"=>"10407695629335773", "name"=>"c1"}], "type"=>"College"}, {"school"=>{"id"=>"22030497466330708", "name"=>"School4"}, "degree"=>{"id"=>"19233130157477979", "name"=>"c3"}, "year"=>{"id"=>"201638419856163", "name"=>"2011"}, "type"=>"Graduate School"}], "gender"=>"male", "interested_in"=>["female"], "relationship_status"=>"Single", "religion"=>"Religion1", "political"=>"Political1", "email"=>"[email protected]", "timezone"=>-8, "locale"=>"en_US", "languages"=>[{"id"=>"10605952233759137", "name"=>"English"}, {"id"=>"10337617475934611", "name"=>"L2"}, {"id"=>"11296944428713061", "name"=>"L3"}], "verified"=>true, "updated_time"=>"2012-02-24T04:18:05+0000" } How do I show this entire hash in the view in a good format? This is what I did from what ever I learnt.. In my view <% @hello.each do |key, value| %> <li><%=h "#{key.to_s} : #{value.to_s}" %></li> <% end %> This will get the entire thing converted to a list... It works awesome if its just one key.. but how to work with multiple keys and show only the information... something like when it outputs hometown : City, State rather than something like hometown : {"id"=>"115200305133358163", "name"=>"City, State"} Also for education if I just say education[school][name] to display list of schools attended? The error i get is can't convert String into Integer I also tried to do this in my controller, but I get the same error.. @fav_teams = @hello["favorite_teams"]["name"] Also, how can I save all these to the database.. something like just the list of all schools.. not their id no's? Update: The way I plan to save to my database is.. lets say for a user model, i want to save to database as :facebook_id, :facebook_name, :facebook_firstname, ...., :facebook_hometown .. here I only want to save name... when it comes to education.. I want to save.. school, concentration and type.. I have no idea on how to achieve this.. Looking forward for help! thanks!

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• Confusing Java syntax...

  - by posfan12

  I'm trying to convert the following code (from Wikipedia) from Java to JavaScript: /* * 3 June 2003, [[:en:User:Cyp]]: * Maze, generated by my algorithm * 24 October 2006, [[:en:User:quin]]: * Source edited for clarity * 25 January 2009, [[:en:User:DebateG]]: * Source edited again for clarity and reusability * 1 June 2009, [[:en:User:Nandhp]]: * Source edited to produce SVG file when run from the command-line * * This program was originally written by [[:en:User:Cyp]], who * attached it to the image description page for an image generated by * it on en.wikipedia. The image was licensed under CC-BY-SA-3.0/GFDL. */ import java.awt.*; import java.applet.*; import java.util.Random; /* Define the bit masks */ class Constants { public static final int WALL_ABOVE = 1; public static final int WALL_BELOW = 2; public static final int WALL_LEFT = 4; public static final int WALL_RIGHT = 8; public static final int QUEUED = 16; public static final int IN_MAZE = 32; } public class Maze extends java.applet.Applet { /* The width and height (in cells) of the maze */ private int width; private int height; private int maze[][]; private static final Random rnd = new Random(); /* The width in pixels of each cell */ private int cell_width; /* Construct a Maze with the default width, height, and cell_width */ public Maze() { this(20,20,10); } /* Construct a Maze with specified width, height, and cell_width */ public Maze(int width, int height, int cell_width) { this.width = width; this.height = height; this.cell_width = cell_width; } /* Initialization method that will be called when the program is * run from the command-line. Maze will be written as SVG file. */ public static void main(String[] args) { Maze m = new Maze(); m.createMaze(); m.printSVG(); } /* Initialization method that will be called when the program is * run as an applet. Maze will be displayed on-screen. */ public void init() { createMaze(); } /* The maze generation algorithm. */ private void createMaze(){ int x, y, n, d; int dx[] = { 0, 0, -1, 1 }; int dy[] = { -1, 1, 0, 0 }; int todo[] = new int[height * width], todonum = 0; /* We want to create a maze on a grid. */ maze = new int[width][height]; /* We start with a grid full of walls. */ for (x = 0; x < width; ++x) { for (y = 0; y < height; ++y) { if (x == 0 || x == width - 1 || y == 0 || y == height - 1) { maze[x][y] = Constants.IN_MAZE; } else { maze[x][y] = 63; } } } /* Select any square of the grid, to start with. */ x = 1 + rnd.nextInt (width - 2); y = 1 + rnd.nextInt (height - 2); /* Mark this square as connected to the maze. */ maze[x][y] &= ~48; /* Remember the surrounding squares, as we will */ for (d = 0; d < 4; ++d) { if ((maze[][d][][d] & Constants.QUEUED) != 0) { /* want to connect them to the maze. */ todo[todonum++] = ((x + dx[d]) << Constants.QUEUED) | (y + dy[d]); maze[][d][][d] &= ~Constants.QUEUED; } } /* We won't be finished until all is connected. */ while (todonum > 0) { /* We select one of the squares next to the maze. */ n = rnd.nextInt (todonum); x = todo[n] >> 16; /* the top 2 bytes of the data */ y = todo[n] & 65535; /* the bottom 2 bytes of the data */ /* We will connect it, so remove it from the queue. */ todo[n] = todo[--todonum]; /* Select a direction, which leads to the maze. */ do { d = rnd.nextInt (4); } while ((maze[][d][][d] & Constants.IN_MAZE) != 0); /* Connect this square to the maze. */ maze[x][y] &= ~((1 << d) | Constants.IN_MAZE); maze[][d][][d] &= ~(1 << (d ^ 1)); /* Remember the surrounding squares, which aren't */ for (d = 0; d < 4; ++d) { if ((maze[][d][][d] & Constants.QUEUED) != 0) { /* connected to the maze, and aren't yet queued to be. */ todo[todonum++] = ((x + dx[d]) << Constants.QUEUED) | (y + dy[d]); maze[][d][][d] &= ~Constants.QUEUED; } } /* Repeat until finished. */ } /* Add an entrance and exit. */ maze[1][1] &= ~Constants.WALL_ABOVE; maze[width - 2][height - 2] &= ~Constants.WALL_BELOW; } /* Called by the applet infrastructure to display the maze on-screen. */ public void paint(Graphics g) { drawMaze(g); } /* Called to write the maze to an SVG file. */ public void printSVG() { System.out.format("<svg width=\"%d\" height=\"%d\" version=\"1.1\"" + " xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\">\n", width*cell_width, height*cell_width); System.out.println(" <g stroke=\"black\" stroke-width=\"1\"" + " stroke-linecap=\"round\">"); drawMaze(null); System.out.println(" </g>\n</svg>"); } /* Main maze-drawing loop. */ public void drawMaze(Graphics g) { int x, y; for (x = 1; x < width - 1; ++x) { for (y = 1; y < height - 1; ++y) { if ((maze[x][y] & Constants.WALL_ABOVE) != 0) drawLine( x * cell_width, y * cell_width, (x + 1) * cell_width, y * cell_width, g); if ((maze[x][y] & Constants.WALL_BELOW) != 0) drawLine( x * cell_width, (y + 1) * cell_width, (x + 1) * cell_width, (y + 1) * cell_width, g); if ((maze[x][y] & Constants.WALL_LEFT) != 0) drawLine( x * cell_width, y * cell_width, x * cell_width, (y + 1) * cell_width, g); if ((maze[x][y] & Constants.WALL_RIGHT) != 0) drawLine((x + 1) * cell_width, y * cell_width, (x + 1) * cell_width, (y + 1) * cell_width, g); } } } /* Draw a line, either in the SVG file or on the screen. */ public void drawLine(int x1, int y1, int x2, int y2, Graphics g) { if ( g != null ) g.drawLine(x1, y1, x2, y2); else System.out.format(" <line x1=\"%d\" y1=\"%d\"" + " x2=\"%d\" y2=\"%d\" />\n", x1, y1, x2, y2); } } Anyway, I was chugging along fairly quickly when I came to a bit that I just don't understand: /* Remember the surrounding squares, as we will */ for (var d = 0; d < 4; ++d) { if ((maze[][d][][d] & Constants.QUEUED) != 0) { /* want to connect them to the maze. */ todo[todonum++] = ((x + dx[d]) << Constants.QUEUED) | (y + dy[d]); maze[][d][][d] &= ~Constants.QUEUED; } } What I don't get is why there are four sets of brackets following the "maze" parameter instead of just two, since "maze" is a two dimensional array, not a four dimensional array. I'm sure there's a good reason for this. Problem is, I just don't get it. Thanks!

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• How to implement Survey page using ASP.NET MVC?

  - by Aleks

  I need to implement the survey page using ASP.NET MVC (v.4) That functionality has already been implemented in our project using ASP.NET WebForms. (I really searched a lot for real examples of similar functionality implemented via MVC, but failed) Goal: staying on the same page (in webforms -'Survey.aspx') each time user clicks 'Next Page', load next bunch of questions (controls) which user is going to answer. Type of controls in questions are defined only in run-time (retrieved from Data Base). To explain better the question I manually created (rather simple) mark-up below of 'two' pages (two loads of controls): <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Survey.aspx.cs" Inherits="WebSite.Survey" %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head runat="server"> <title></title> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <div><h2>Internal Survey</h2></div> <div><h3>Page 1</h3></div> <div style="padding-bottom: 10px"><div><b>Did you have internet disconnections during last week?</b></div> <asp:RadioButtonList ID="RadioButtonList1" runat="server"> <asp:ListItem>Yes</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>No</asp:ListItem> </asp:RadioButtonList> </div> <div style="padding-bottom: 10px"><div><b>Which days of the week suit you best for meeting up ?</b></div> <asp:CheckBoxList ID="CheckBoxList1" runat="server"> <asp:ListItem>Monday</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>Tuesday</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>Wednesday</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>Thursday</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>Friday</asp:ListItem> </asp:CheckBoxList> </div> <div style="padding-bottom: 10px"> <div><b>How satisfied are you with your job? </b></div> <asp:RadioButtonList ID="RadioButtonList2" runat="server"> <asp:ListItem>Very Good</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>Good</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>Bad</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>Very Bad</asp:ListItem> </asp:RadioButtonList> </div> <div style="padding-bottom: 10px"> <div><b>How satisfied are you with your direct supervisor ? </b></div> <asp:RadioButtonList ID="RadioButtonList3" runat="server"> <asp:ListItem>Not Satisfied</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>Somewhat Satisfied</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>Neutral</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>Satisfied</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>Very Satisfied</asp:ListItem> </asp:RadioButtonList> </div> <div style="padding-bottom: 10px"> <asp:Button ID="Button1" runat="server" Text="Next Page" onclick="Button1_Click" /> </div> </form> </body> </html> PAGE 2 <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Survey.aspx.cs" Inherits="WebSite.Survey" %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head runat="server"> <title></title> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <div><h2>Internal Survey</h2></div> <div><h3>Page 2</h3></div> <div style="padding-bottom: 10px"><div><b>Did admininstators fix your internet connection in time ?</b></div> <asp:RadioButtonList ID="RadioButtonList1" runat="server"> <asp:ListItem>Yes</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>No</asp:ListItem> </asp:RadioButtonList> </div> <div style="padding-bottom: 10px"><div><b>What's your overal impression about the job ?</b></div> <asp:TextBox ID="TextBox1" runat="server" Height="88px" Width="322px"></asp:TextBox> </div> <div style="padding-bottom: 10px"> <div><b>Select day which best suits you for admin support ? </b></div> <asp:DropDownList ID="DropDownList1" runat="server"> <asp:ListItem>Select day</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>Monday</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>Wednesday</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>Friday</asp:ListItem> </asp:DropDownList> </div> <div style="padding-bottom: 10px"> <asp:Button ID="Button1" runat="server" Text="Next Page" onclick="Button1_Click" /> </div> </form> </body> </html>

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• Knight movement.... " how to output all possible moves. "

  - by josh kant

  The following is the code i wrote.. I have to write it for nXn but for easyness i tried to test it for 5X5. It does not display my output... could anybody tell me whats wrong with the following code: { #include <iostream> #include <iomanip> using namespace std; void knight ( int startx, int starty, int n, int p[][5], int used [][5], int &count); int main ( ) { const int n = 5; // no. of cloumns and rows int startx = 0; int starty = 0; int p[5][5]; int used[5][5]; int count = 1; int i= 0; int j = 0; //initializing the array for ( i = 0; i < 5; i++) { for ( j = 0; j < 5; j++) { p[i][j] = 0; used [i][j] = 0; } } //outputting the initialized array.. i=0; while ( i< 5) { for ( j = 0; j < 5; j++) { cout << setw(3) << p[i][j]; } i++; cout << endl; } knight (startx,starty,n,p,used,count); return 0; } void knight ( int x, int y, int n, int p[][5], int used [][5], int &count) { int i = 0; //knight (x,y,n,p,used,count) for ( i = 0; i < n*n; i++) { if ( used [x][y] == 0 ) { used[x][y] = 1; // mark it used; p[x][y] += count; //inserting step no. into the solution //go for the next possible steps; //move 1 //2 squares up and 1 to the left if (x-1 < 0 && y+2 < n && p[x-1][y+2] == 0) { used[x-1][y+2] = 1; p[x-1][y+2] += count; knight (x-1,y+2,n,p,used,count); used[x-1][y+2] = 0; } //move 2 //2 squares up and 1 to the right if ( x+1 < n && y+2 < n && p[x+1][y+2] == 0 ) { used[x+1][y+2] = 1; p[x+1][y+2] += count; knight (x+1,y+2,n,p,used,count); used[x+1][y+2] = 0; } //move 3 //1 square up and 2 to the right if ( x+2 < n && y+1 < n && p[x+2][y+1] == 0 ) { used[x+2][y+1] = 1; p[x+2][y+1] += count; knight (x+2,y+1,n,p,used,count); used[x+2][y+1] = 0; } //move 4 //1 square down and 2 to the right if ( x+2 < n && y-1 < n && p[x+2][y-1] == 0 ) { used[x+2][y-1] = 1; p[x+2][y-1] += count; knight (x+2,y-1,n,p,used,count); used[x+2][y-1] = 0; } //move 5 //2 squares down and 1 to the right if ( x+1 < n && y-2 < n && p[x+1][y-2] == 0 ) { used[x+1][y-2] = 1; p[x+1][y-2] += count; knight (x+1,y-2,n,p,used,count); used[x+1][y-2] = 0; } //move 6 //2 squares down and 1 to the left if ( x-1 < n && y-2 < n && p[x-1][y-2] == 0 ) { used[x-1][y-2] = 1; p[x-1][y-2] += count; knight (x-1,y-2,n,p,used,count); used[x-1][y-2] = 0; } //move 7 //1 square down and 2 to the left if ( x-2 < n && y-1 < n && p[x-2][y-1] == 0 ) { used[x-2][y-1] = 1; p[x-2][y-1] += count; knight (x-2,y-1,n,p,used,count); used[x-2][y-1] = 0; } //move 8 //one square up and 2 to the left if ( x-2 < n && y+1< n && p[x-2][y+1] == 0 ) { used[x-2][y+1] = 1; p[x-2][y+1] += count; knight (x-2,y+1,n,p,used,count); used[x-2][y+1] = 0; } } } if ( x == n-1 && y == n-1) { while ( i != n) { for ( int j = 0; j < n; j++) cout << setw(3) << p[i][j]; i++; } } } Thank you!!

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• Codeigniter: Using URIs with forms

  - by Kevin Brown

  I'm using URIs to direct a function in a library: $id = $this->CI->session->userdata('id'); $URI = $this->CI->uri->uri_string(); $new = "new"; if(strpos($URI, $new) === FALSE){ $method = "update"; } elseif(strpos($URI, $new) !== FALSE){ $method = "create"; } So I have two if statements directing what information to if ($method === 'update') { // Modify form, first load $this->CI->db->from('be_survey'); $this->CI->db->where('user_id' , $id); $survey = $this->CI->db->get(); $user = array_merge($user->row_array(),$survey->row_array()); $this->CI->validation->set_default_value($user); // Display page $data['user'] = $user; } $this->CI->validation->set_rules($rules); if ( $this->CI->validation->run() === FALSE ) { // Output any errors $this->CI->validation->output_errors(); } else { // Submit form $this->_submit($method); } Submit function: function _submit($method) { //Submit and Update for current User $id = $this->CI->session->userdata('id'); $this->CI->db->select('users.id, users.username, users.email, profiles.firstname, profiles.manager_id'); $this->CI->db->from('be_users' . " users"); $this->CI->db->join('be_user_profiles' . " profiles",'users.id=profiles.user_id'); $this->CI->db->having('id', $id); $email_data['user'] = $this->CI->db->get(); $email_data['user'] = $email_data['user']->row(); $manager_id = $email_data['user']->manager_id; $this->CI->db->select('firstname','email')->from('be_user_profiles')->where('user_id', $manager_id); $email_data['manager'] = $this->CI->db->get(); $email_data['manager'] = $email_data['manager']->row(); // Fetch what they entered in the form for($i=1;$i<18;$i++){ $survey["a_".$i]= $this->CI->input->post('a_'.$i); } for($i=1;$i<15;$i++){ $survey["b_".$i]= $this->CI->input->post('b_'.$i); } for($i=1;$i<12;$i++){ $survey["c_".$i]= $this->CI->input->post('c_'.$i); } $profile['firstname'] = $this->CI->input->post('firstname'); $profile['lastname'] = $this->CI->input->post('lastname'); $profile['test_date'] = date ("Y-m-d H:i:s"); $profile['company_name'] = $this->CI->input->post('company_name'); $profile['company_address'] = $this->CI->input->post('company_address'); $profile['company_city'] = $this->CI->input->post('company_city'); $profile['company_phone'] = $this->CI->input->post('company_phone'); $profile['company_state'] = $this->CI->input->post('company_state'); $profile['company_zip'] = $this->CI->input->post('company_zip'); $profile['job_title'] = $this->CI->input->post('job_title'); $profile['job_type'] = $this->CI->input->post('job_type'); $profile['job_time'] = $this->CI->input->post('job_time'); $profile['department'] = $this->CI->input->post('department'); $profile['vision'] = $this->CI->input->post('vision'); $profile['height'] = $this->CI->input->post('height'); $profile['weight'] = $this->CI->input->post('weight'); $profile['hand_dominance'] = $this->CI->input->post('hand_dominance'); $profile['areas_of_fatigue'] = $this->CI->input->post('areas_of_fatigue'); $profile['job_description'] = $this->CI->input->post('job_description'); $profile['injury_review'] = $this->CI->input->post('injury_review'); $profile['job_positive'] = $this->CI->input->post('job_positive'); $profile['risk_factors'] = $this->CI->input->post('risk_factors'); $profile['job_improvement_short'] = $this->CI->input->post('job_improvement_short'); $profile['job_improvement_long'] = $this->CI->input->post('job_improvement_long'); if ($method == "update") { //Begin db transmission $this->CI->db->trans_begin(); $this->CI->home_model->update('Survey',$survey, array('user_id' => $id)); $this->CI->db->update('be_user_profiles',$profile, array('user_id' => $id)); if ($this->CI->db->trans_status() === FALSE) { flashMsg('error','There was a problem entering your test! Please contact an administrator.'); redirect('survey','location'); } else { //Get credits of user and subtract 1 $this->CI->db->set('credits', 'credits -1', FALSE); $this->CI->db->update('be_user_profiles',$profile, array('user_id' => $manager_id)); //Mark the form completed. $this->CI->db->set('test_complete', '1'); $this->CI->db->where('user_id', $id)->update('be_user_profiles'); // Stuff worked... $this->CI->db->trans_commit(); //Get Manager Information $this->CI->db->select('users.id, users.username, users.email, profiles.firstname'); $this->CI->db->from('be_users' . " users"); $this->CI->db->join('be_user_profiles' . " profiles",'users.id=profiles.user_id'); $this->CI->db->having('id', $email_data['user']->manager_id); $email_data['manager'] = $this->CI->db->get(); $email_data['manager'] = $email_data['manager']->row(); //Email User $this->CI->load->library('User_email'); $data_user = array( 'firstname'=>$email_data['user']->firstname, 'email'=> $email_data['user']->email, 'user_completed'=>$email_data['user']->firstname, 'site_name'=>$this->CI->preference->item('site_name'), 'site_url'=>base_url() ); //Email Manager $data_manager = array( 'firstname'=>$email_data['manager']->firstname, 'email'=> $email_data['manager']->email, 'user_completed'=>$email_data['user']->firstname, 'site_name'=>$this->CI->preference->item('site_name'), 'site_url'=>base_url() ); $this->CI->user_email->send($email_data['manager']->email,'Completed the Assessment Tool','public/email_manager_complete',$data_manager); $this->CI->user_email->send($email_data['user']->email,'Completed the Assessment Tool','public/email_user_complete',$data_user); flashMsg('success','You finished the assessment successfully!'); redirect('home','location'); } } //Create New User elseif ($method == "create") { // Build $profile['user_id'] = $id; $profile['manager_id'] = $manager_id; $profile['test_complete'] = '1'; $survey['user_id'] = $id; $this->CI->db->trans_begin(); // Add user_profile details to DB $this->CI->db->insert('be_user_profiles',$profile); $this->CI->db->insert('be_survey',$survey); if ($this->CI->db->trans_status() === FALSE) { // Registration failed $this->CI->db->trans_rollback(); flashMsg('error',$this->CI->lang->line('userlib_registration_failed')); redirect('auth/register','location'); } else { // User registered $this->CI->db->trans_commit(); flashMsg('success',$this->CI->lang->line('userlib_registration_success')); redirect($this->CI->config->item('userlib_action_register'),'location'); } } } The submit function is similar, updating the db if $method == "update", and inserting if the method == "create". The problem is, when the form is submitted, it doesn't take into account the url b/c the form submits to the function "survey", which passes data to the lib function, so things are always updated, never created. *How can I pass $method to the _submit() function correctly?!*

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• scrolling lags in emacs 23.2 with GTK

  - by mefiX

  Hey there, I am using emacs 23.2 with the GTK toolkit. I built emacs from source using the following configure-params: ./configure --prefix=/usr --without-makeinfo --without-sound Which builds emacs with the following configuration: Where should the build process find the source code? /home/****/incoming/emacs-23.2 What operating system and machine description files should Emacs use? `s/gnu-linux.h' and `m/intel386.h' What compiler should emacs be built with? gcc -g -O2 -Wdeclaration-after-statement -Wno-pointer-sign Should Emacs use the GNU version of malloc? yes (Using Doug Lea's new malloc from the GNU C Library.) Should Emacs use a relocating allocator for buffers? yes Should Emacs use mmap(2) for buffer allocation? no What window system should Emacs use? x11 What toolkit should Emacs use? GTK Where do we find X Windows header files? Standard dirs Where do we find X Windows libraries? Standard dirs Does Emacs use -lXaw3d? no Does Emacs use -lXpm? yes Does Emacs use -ljpeg? yes Does Emacs use -ltiff? yes Does Emacs use a gif library? yes -lgif Does Emacs use -lpng? yes Does Emacs use -lrsvg-2? no Does Emacs use -lgpm? yes Does Emacs use -ldbus? yes Does Emacs use -lgconf? no Does Emacs use -lfreetype? yes Does Emacs use -lm17n-flt? no Does Emacs use -lotf? yes Does Emacs use -lxft? yes Does Emacs use toolkit scroll bars? yes When I'm scrolling within files of a common size (about 1000 lines) holding the up/down-keys, emacs almost hangs and produces about 50% CPU-load. I use the following plugins: ido linum tabbar auto-complete-config Starting emacs with -q fixes the problem, but then I don't have any plugins. I can't figure out, which part of my .emacs is responsible for this behaviour. Here's an excerpt of my .emacs-file: (require 'ido) (ido-mode 1) (require 'linum) (global-linum-mode 1) (require 'tabbar) (tabbar-mode 1) (tabbar-local-mode 0) (tabbar-mwheel-mode 0) (setq tabbar-buffer-groups-function (lambda () (list "All"))) (global-set-key [M-left] 'tabbar-backward) (global-set-key [M-right] 'tabbar-forward) ;; hide the toolbar (gtk etc.) (tool-bar-mode -1) ;; Mouse scrolling enhancements (setq mouse-wheel-progressive-speed nil) (setq mouse-wheel-scroll-amount '(5 ((shift) . 5) ((control) . nil))) ;; Smart-HOME (defun smart-beginning-of-line () "Forces the cursor to jump to the first none whitespace char of the current line when pressing HOME" (interactive) (let ((oldpos (point))) (back-to-indentation) (and (= oldpos (point)) (beginning-of-line)))) (put 'smart-beginning-of-line 'CUA 'move) (global-set-key [home] 'smart-beginning-of-line) (custom-set-variables ;; custom-set-variables was added by Custom. ;; If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful. ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance. ;; If there is more than one, they won't work right. '(column-number-mode t) '(cua-mode t nil (cua-base)) '(custom-buffer-indent 4) '(delete-selection-mode nil) '(display-time-24hr-format t) '(display-time-day-and-date 1) '(display-time-mode t) '(global-font-lock-mode t nil (font-lock)) '(inhibit-startup-buffer-menu t) '(inhibit-startup-screen t) '(pc-select-meta-moves-sexps t) '(pc-select-selection-keys-only t) '(pc-selection-mode t nil (pc-select)) '(scroll-bar-mode (quote right)) '(show-paren-mode t) '(standard-indent 4) '(uniquify-buffer-name-style (quote forward) nil (uniquify))) (setq-default tab-width 4) (setq-default indent-tabs-mode t) (setq c-basic-offset 4) ;; Highlighting of the current line (global-hl-line-mode 1) (set-face-background 'hl-line "#E8F2FE") (defalias 'yes-or-no-p 'y-or-n-p) (display-time) (set-language-environment "Latin-1") ;; Change cursor color according to mode (setq djcb-read-only-color "gray") ;; valid values are t, nil, box, hollow, bar, (bar . WIDTH), hbar, ;; (hbar. HEIGHT); see the docs for set-cursor-type (setq djcb-read-only-cursor-type 'hbar) (setq djcb-overwrite-color "red") (setq djcb-overwrite-cursor-type 'box) (setq djcb-normal-color "black") (setq djcb-normal-cursor-type 'bar) (defun djcb-set-cursor-according-to-mode () "change cursor color and type according to some minor modes." (cond (buffer-read-only (set-cursor-color djcb-read-only-color) (setq cursor-type djcb-read-only-cursor-type)) (overwrite-mode (set-cursor-color djcb-overwrite-color) (setq cursor-type djcb-overwrite-cursor-type)) (t (set-cursor-color djcb-normal-color) (setq cursor-type djcb-normal-cursor-type)))) (add-hook 'post-command-hook 'djcb-set-cursor-according-to-mode) (define-key global-map '[C-right] 'forward-sexp) (define-key global-map '[C-left] 'backward-sexp) (define-key global-map '[s-left] 'windmove-left) (define-key global-map '[s-right] 'windmove-right) (define-key global-map '[s-up] 'windmove-up) (define-key global-map '[s-down] 'windmove-down) (define-key global-map '[S-down-mouse-1] 'mouse-stay-and-copy) (define-key global-map '[C-M-S-down-mouse-1] 'mouse-stay-and-swap) (define-key global-map '[S-mouse-2] 'mouse-yank-and-kill) (define-key global-map '[C-S-down-mouse-1] 'mouse-stay-and-kill) (define-key global-map "\C-a" 'mark-whole-buffer) (custom-set-faces ;; custom-set-faces was added by Custom. ;; If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful. ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance. ;; If there is more than one, they won't work right. '(default ((t (:inherit nil :stipple nil :background "#f7f9fa" :foreground "#191919" :inverse-video nil :box nil :strike-through nil :overline nil :underline nil :slant normal :weight normal :height 98 :width normal :foundry "unknown" :family "DejaVu Sans Mono")))) '(font-lock-builtin-face ((((class color) (min-colors 88) (background light)) (:foreground "#642880" :weight bold)))) '(font-lock-comment-face ((((class color) (min-colors 88) (background light)) (:foreground "#3f7f5f")))) '(font-lock-constant-face ((((class color) (min-colors 88) (background light)) (:weight bold)))) '(font-lock-doc-face ((t (:inherit font-lock-string-face :foreground "#3f7f5f")))) '(font-lock-function-name-face ((((class color) (min-colors 88) (background light)) (:foreground "Black" :weight bold)))) '(font-lock-keyword-face ((((class color) (min-colors 88) (background light)) (:foreground "#7f0055" :weight bold)))) '(font-lock-preprocessor-face ((t (:inherit font-lock-builtin-face :foreground "#7f0055" :weight bold)))) '(font-lock-string-face ((((class color) (min-colors 88) (background light)) (:foreground "#0000c0")))) '(font-lock-type-face ((((class color) (min-colors 88) (background light)) (:foreground "#7f0055" :weight bold)))) '(font-lock-variable-name-face ((((class color) (min-colors 88) (background light)) (:foreground "Black")))) '(minibuffer-prompt ((t (:foreground "medium blue")))) '(mode-line ((t (:background "#222222" :foreground "White")))) '(tabbar-button ((t (:inherit tabbar-default :foreground "dark red")))) '(tabbar-button-highlight ((t (:inherit tabbar-default :background "white" :box (:line-width 2 :color "white"))))) '(tabbar-default ((t (:background "gray90" :foreground "gray50" :box (:line-width 3 :color "gray90") :height 100)))) '(tabbar-highlight ((t (:underline t)))) '(tabbar-selected ((t (:inherit tabbar-default :foreground "blue" :weight bold)))) '(tabbar-separator ((t nil))) '(tabbar-unselected ((t (:inherit tabbar-default))))) Any suggestions? Kind regards, mefiX

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• EKCalendar not added to iCal

  - by Alex75

  I have a strange behavior on my iPhone. I'm creating an application that uses calendar events (EventKit). The class that use is as follows: the .h one #import "GenericManager.h" #import <EventKit/EventKit.h> #define oneDay 60*60*24 #define oneHour 60*60 @protocol CalendarManagerDelegate; @interface CalendarManager : GenericManager /* * metodo che aggiunge un evento ad un calendario di nome Name nel giorno onDate. * L'evento da aggiungere viene recuperato tramite il dataSource che è quindi * OBBLIGATORIO (!= nil). * * Restituisce YES solo se il delegate è conforme al protocollo CalendarManagerDataSource. * NO altrimenti */ + (BOOL) addEventForCalendarWithName:(NSString *) name fromDate:(NSDate *)fromDate toDate: (NSDate *) toDate withDelegate:(id<CalendarManagerDelegate>) delegate; /* * metodo che aggiunge un evento per giorno compreso tra fromDate e toDate ad un * calendario di nome Name. L'evento da aggiungere viene recuperato tramite il dataSource * che è quindi OBBLIGATORIO (!= nil). * * Restituisce YES solo se il delegate è conforme al protocollo CalendarManagerDataSource. * NO altrimenti */ + (BOOL) addEventsForCalendarWithName:(NSString *) name fromDate:(NSDate *)fromDate toDate: (NSDate *) toDate withDelegate:(id<CalendarManagerDelegate>) delegate; @end @protocol CalendarManagerDelegate <NSObject> // viene inviato quando il calendario necessita informazioni sull' evento da aggiungere - (void) calendarManagerDidCreateEvent:(EKEvent *) event; @end the .m one // // CalendarManager.m // AppCampeggioSingolo // // Created by CreatiWeb Srl on 12/17/12. // Copyright (c) 2012 CreatiWeb Srl. All rights reserved. // #import "CalendarManager.h" #import "Commons.h" #import <objc/message.h> @interface CalendarManager () @end @implementation CalendarManager + (void)requestToEventStore:(EKEventStore *)eventStore delegate:(id)delegate fromDate:(NSDate *)fromDate toDate: (NSDate *) toDate name:(NSString *)name { if([eventStore respondsToSelector:@selector(requestAccessToEntityType:completion:)]) { // ios >= 6.0 [eventStore requestAccessToEntityType:EKEntityTypeEvent completion:^(BOOL granted, NSError *error) { if (granted) { [self addEventForCalendarWithName:name fromDate: fromDate toDate: toDate inEventStore:eventStore withDelegate:delegate]; } else { } }]; } else if (class_getClassMethod([EKCalendar class], @selector(calendarIdentifier)) != nil) { // ios >= 5.0 && ios < 6.0 [self addEventForCalendarWithName:name fromDate:fromDate toDate:toDate inEventStore:eventStore withDelegate:delegate]; } else { // ios < 5.0 EKCalendar *myCalendar = [eventStore defaultCalendarForNewEvents]; EKEvent *event = [self generateEventForCalendar:myCalendar fromDate: fromDate toDate: toDate inEventStore:eventStore withDelegate:delegate]; [eventStore saveEvent:event span:EKSpanThisEvent error:nil]; } } /* * metodo che recupera l'identificativo del calendario associato all'app o nil se non è mai stato creato. */ + (NSString *) identifierForCalendarName: (NSString *) name { NSString * confFileName = [self pathForFile:kCurrentCalendarFileName]; NSDictionary *confCalendar = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithContentsOfFile:confFileName]; NSString *currentIdentifier = [confCalendar objectForKey:name]; return currentIdentifier; } /* * memorizza l'identifier del calendario */ + (void) saveCalendarIdentifier:(NSString *) identifier andName: (NSString *) name { if (identifier != nil) { NSString * confFileName = [self pathForFile:kCurrentCalendarFileName]; NSMutableDictionary *confCalendar = [NSMutableDictionary dictionaryWithContentsOfFile:confFileName]; if (confCalendar == nil) { confCalendar = [NSMutableDictionary dictionaryWithCapacity:1]; } [confCalendar setObject:identifier forKey:name]; [confCalendar writeToFile:confFileName atomically:YES]; } } + (EKCalendar *)getCalendarWithName:(NSString *)name inEventStore:(EKEventStore *)eventStore withLocalSource: (EKSource *)localSource forceCreation:(BOOL) force { EKCalendar *myCalendar; NSString *identifier = [self identifierForCalendarName:name]; if (force || identifier == nil) { NSLog(@"create new calendar"); if (class_getClassMethod([EKCalendar class], @selector(calendarForEntityType:eventStore:)) != nil) { // da ios 6.0 in avanti myCalendar = [EKCalendar calendarForEntityType:EKEntityTypeEvent eventStore:eventStore]; } else { myCalendar = [EKCalendar calendarWithEventStore:eventStore]; } myCalendar.title = name; myCalendar.source = localSource; NSError *error = nil; BOOL result = [eventStore saveCalendar:myCalendar commit:YES error:&error]; if (result) { NSLog(@"Saved calendar %@ to event store. %@",myCalendar,eventStore); } else { NSLog(@"Error saving calendar: %@.", error); } [self saveCalendarIdentifier:myCalendar.calendarIdentifier andName:name]; } // You can also configure properties like the calendar color etc. The important part is to store the identifier for later use. On the other hand if you already have the identifier, you can just fetch the calendar: else { myCalendar = [eventStore calendarWithIdentifier:identifier]; NSLog(@"fetch an old-one = %@",myCalendar); } return myCalendar; } + (EKCalendar *)addEventForCalendarWithName: (NSString *) name fromDate:(NSDate *)fromDate toDate: (NSDate *) toDate inEventStore:(EKEventStore *)eventStore withDelegate: (id<CalendarManagerDelegate>) delegate { // da ios 5.0 in avanti EKCalendar *myCalendar; EKSource *localSource = nil; for (EKSource *source in eventStore.sources) { if (source.sourceType == EKSourceTypeLocal) { localSource = source; break; } } @synchronized(self) { myCalendar = [self getCalendarWithName:name inEventStore:eventStore withLocalSource:localSource forceCreation:NO]; if (myCalendar == nil) myCalendar = [self getCalendarWithName:name inEventStore:eventStore withLocalSource:localSource forceCreation:YES]; NSLog(@"End synchronized block %@",myCalendar); } EKEvent *event = [self generateEventForCalendar:myCalendar fromDate:fromDate toDate:toDate inEventStore:eventStore withDelegate:delegate]; [eventStore saveEvent:event span:EKSpanThisEvent error:nil]; return myCalendar; } + (EKEvent *) generateEventForCalendar: (EKCalendar *) calendar fromDate:(NSDate *)fromDate toDate: (NSDate *) toDate inEventStore:(EKEventStore *) eventStore withDelegate:(id<CalendarManagerDelegate>) delegate { EKEvent *event = [EKEvent eventWithEventStore:eventStore]; event.startDate=fromDate; event.endDate=toDate; [delegate calendarManagerDidCreateEvent:event]; [event setCalendar:calendar]; // ricerca dell'evento nel calendario, se ne trovo uno uguale non lo inserisco NSPredicate *predicate = [eventStore predicateForEventsWithStartDate:fromDate endDate:toDate calendars:[NSArray arrayWithObject:calendar]]; NSArray *matchEvents = [eventStore eventsMatchingPredicate:predicate]; if ([matchEvents count] > 0) { // ne ho trovati di gia' presenti, vediamo se uno e' quello che vogliamo inserire BOOL found = NO; for (EKEvent *fetchEvent in matchEvents) { if ([fetchEvent.title isEqualToString:event.title] && [fetchEvent.notes isEqualToString:event.notes]) { found = YES; break; } } if (found) { // esiste già e quindi non lo inserisco NSLog(@"OH NOOOOOO!!"); event = nil; } } return event; } #pragma mark - Public Methods + (BOOL) addEventForCalendarWithName:(NSString *) name fromDate:(NSDate *)fromDate toDate: (NSDate *) toDate withDelegate:(id<CalendarManagerDelegate>) delegate { BOOL retVal = YES; EKEventStore *eventStore=[[EKEventStore alloc] init]; if ([delegate conformsToProtocol:@protocol(CalendarManagerDelegate)]) { [self requestToEventStore:eventStore delegate:delegate fromDate:fromDate toDate: toDate name:name]; } else { retVal = NO; } return retVal; } + (BOOL) addEventsForCalendarWithName:(NSString *) name fromDate:(NSDate *)fromDate toDate: (NSDate *) toDate withDelegate:(id<CalendarManagerDelegate>) delegate { BOOL retVal = YES; NSDate *dateCursor = fromDate; EKEventStore *eventStore=[[EKEventStore alloc] init]; if ([delegate conformsToProtocol:@protocol(CalendarManagerDelegate)]) { while (retVal && ([dateCursor compare:toDate] == NSOrderedAscending)) { NSDate *finish = [dateCursor dateByAddingTimeInterval:oneDay]; [self requestToEventStore:eventStore delegate:delegate fromDate: dateCursor toDate: finish name:name]; dateCursor = [dateCursor dateByAddingTimeInterval:oneDay]; } } else { retVal = NO; } return retVal; } @end In practice, on my iphone I get the log: fetch an old-one = (null) 19/12/2012 11:33:09.520 AppCampeggioSingolo [730:8 b1b] create new calendar 19/12/2012 11:33:09.558 AppCampeggioSingolo [730:8 b1b] Saved calendar EKCalendar every time I add an event, then I look and I can not find it on iCal calendar event he added. On the iPhone of a friend of mine, however, everything is working correctly. I doubt that the problem stems from the code, but just do not understand what it could be. I searched all day yesterday and part of today on google but have not found anything yet. Any help will be greatly appreciated EDIT: I forgot the call wich is [CalendarManager addEventForCalendarWithName: @"myCalendar" fromDate:fromDate toDate: toDate withDelegate:self]; in the delegate method simply set title and notes of the event like this - (void) calendarManagerDidCreateEvent:(EKEvent *) event { event.title = @"the title"; event.notes = @"some notes"; }

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• problems with the email body, appearing special characters in emails

  - by tibin mathew

  Hi, I have some issues with my email -body when i send mails I'm using php in my site. My website is a spanish site , when ever i send a mail some special characters are comming in that mail. Always there is an ! mark in that mail, that too in the same place below is the code which i'm using and an email which i got. Code $domain=”http://international.com/”; $subject = "Iinternational :Solicitud de cotización "; $subject = mb_convert_encoding($subject, "UTF-8","AUTO"); $subject = mb_encode_mimeheader($subject); $mail_body ="<table width='719' border='0' align='center'>"; $mail_body .="<tr><td><a href='".$domain."' target='blank' ><img src='".$domain."images/international_s_01.jpg' border='0' width='719' style='border-color=#c8ceae' /></a></td></tr>"; $mail_body .="<tr><td style='padding-left:5px;'><font face='Verdana' size='1px;' color='#6699CC'>Estimado ".$frm_name.",</font></td></tr>"; $mail_body .="<tr><td height='30' align='center' style='padding-left:5px; font-family:Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif; color:#006699; font-weight:bold;font-size:20px;'><u>Solicitud de cotización de Información</u></td></tr>"; $mail_body .="<tr><td align='center'><table border='1' width='690' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' bordercolor='#800040'><tr><td><table border='0' width='690' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0'>"; $mail_body .="<tr height='30'><td align='center' valign='middle' style='font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#6699CC; font-weight:bold; font-size:15px;' width='230'>Nombre del producto</td><td align='center' valign='middle' style='font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#6699CC; font-weight:bold; font-size:15px;' width='230'>Nombre de la subcategoría</td><td align='center' valign='middle' style='font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#6699CC; font-weight:bold; font-size:15px;' width='230'>Nombre de la categoría</td></tr>"; $mail_body .="<tr><td align='left' style='font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#666666;font-weight:normal;font-size:12px;padding-left:5px;' >".$product_name."</td><td style='font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#666666;font-weight:normal;font-size:12px;padding-left:5px;' >".$sub_category_name."</td><td style='font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#666666;font-weight:normal;font-size:12px;padding-left:5px;' >".$category_name."</td></tr>"; $mail_body .="</table></td></tr></table></td></tr>"; $mail_body .="<tr><td height='30' style='font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#666666;font-weight:normal;font-size:12px;' >Gracias<br>Por visitar nuestro sitio y enviarnos su solicitud. Su información de contacto es segura y no será compartida con nadie.<br>Nos pondremos en contacto con usted dentro de 24 horas.</td></tr><tr><td height='20' style='font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#6699CC;font-weight:bold;font-size:15px;padding-left:5px;' ><FONT face=tahoma color=#000000 size=2><a href='".$domain."'>www. international.com</a></font></td></tr>"; $mail_body .="<tr><td height='3'></td></tr></table>"; //$headers = "From: ".$mail_from."\n"; $mail_body = mb_convert_encoding($mail_body, "UTF-8","AUTO"); mb_language("es"); $headers .= "X-Mailer: PHP/" . phpversion()."\n"; // mailer $headers .= "From: " ."".mb_encode_mimeheader (mb_convert_encoding($mail_from,"UTF-8","AUTO")) ."" ."<".$mail_from."> \n"; $headers .= "Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8";// Mime type////charset=UNICODE-1-1-UTF-8 //$headers .= "Reply-To: ". $email."\n"; // Return path for errors //$headers .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 16bit\n"; $success=mail($mail_to, $subject, $mail_body, $headers); $sucess_flag_user = 1;//sent the mail and set the sucess falg to 1 4 the time beigng mail func not called header("Location:./thank-you-quote.php?sucess_flag_admin=".encrypt($sucess_flag_admin )); Email which i received Estimado Thomas, Solicitud de cotización de Información Nombre del producto Nombre de la subcategoría Nombre de la categoría HPDFO - Lente Alta Definición Accesorios VersaLaser® Grac! ias Por visitar nuestro sitio y enviarnos s! u solici tud. Su información de contacto es segura y no será compartida con nadie. Nos pondremos en contacto con usted dentro de 24 horas. www.International.com This is a spanish mail here there are some ! coming inside that mail. I dont now why its comming. Please help me to fix this issue. Thanks in advance

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• I need help on my C++ assignment using Microsoft Visual C++

  - by krayzwytie

  Ok, so I don't want you to do my homework for me, but I'm a little lost with this final assignment and need all the help I can get. Learning about programming is tough enough, but doing it online is next to impossible for me... Now, to get to the program, I am going to paste what I have so far. This includes mostly //comments and what I have written so far. If you can help me figure out where all the errors are and how to complete the assignment, I will really appreciate it. Like I said, I don't want you to do my homework for me (it's my final), but any constructive criticism is welcome. This is my final assignment for this class and it is due tomorrow (Sunday before midnight, Arizona time). This is the assignment: Examine the following situation: Your company, Datamax, Inc., is in the process of automating its payroll systems. Your manager has asked you to create a program that calculates overtime pay for all employees. Your program must take into account the employee’s salary, total hours worked, and hours worked more than 40 in a week, and then provide an output that is useful and easily understood by company management. Compile your program utilizing the following background information and the code outline in Appendix D (included in the code section). Submit your project as an attachment including the code and the output. Company Background: Three employees: Mark, John, and Mary The end user needs to be prompted for three specific pieces of input—name, hours worked, and hourly wage. Calculate overtime if input is greater than 40 hours per week. Provide six test plans to verify the logic within the program. Plan 1 must display the proper information for employee #1 with overtime pay. Plan 2 must display the proper information for employee #1 with no overtime pay. Plans 3-6 are duplicates of plan 1 and 2 but for the other employees. Program Requirements: Define a base class to use for the entire program. The class holds the function calls and the variables related to the overtime pay calculations. Define one object per employee. Note there will be three employees. Your program must take the objects created and implement calculations based on total salaries, total hours, and the total number of overtime hours. See the Employee Summary Data section of the sample output. Logic Steps to Complete Your Program: Define your base class. Define your objects from your base class. Prompt for user input, updating your object classes for all three users. Implement your overtime pay calculations. Display overtime or regular time pay calculations. See the sample output below. Implement object calculations by summarizing your employee objects and display the summary information in the example below. And this is the code: // Final_Project.cpp : Defines the entry point for the console application. // #include "stdafx.h" #include <iostream> #include <string> #include <iomanip> using namespace std; // //CLASS DECLARATION SECTION // class CEmployee { public: void ImplementCalculations(string EmployeeName, double hours, double wage); void DisplayEmployInformation(void); void Addsomethingup (CEmployee, CEmployee, CEmployee); string EmployeeName ; int hours ; int overtime_hours ; int iTotal_hours ; int iTotal_OvertimeHours ; float wage ; float basepay ; float overtime_pay ; float overtime_extra ; float iTotal_salaries ; float iIndividualSalary ; }; int main() { system("cls"); cout << "Welcome to the Employee Pay Center"; /* Use this section to define your objects. You will have one object per employee. You have only three employees. The format is your class name and your object name. */ std::cout << "Please enter Employee's Name: "; std::cin >> EmployeeName; std::cout << "Please enter Total Hours for (EmployeeName): "; std::cin >> hours; std::cout << "Please enter Base Pay for(EmployeeName): "; std::cin >> basepay; /* Here you will prompt for the first employee’s information. Prompt the employee name, hours worked, and the hourly wage. For each piece of information, you will update the appropriate class member defined above. Example of Prompts Enter the employee name = Enter the hours worked = Enter his or her hourly wage = */ /* Here you will prompt for the second employee’s information. Prompt the employee name, hours worked, and the hourly wage. For each piece of information, you will update the appropriate class member defined above. Enter the employee name = Enter the hours worked = Enter his or her hourly wage = */ /* Here you will prompt for the third employee’s information. Prompt the employee name, hours worked, and the hourly wage. For each piece of information, you will update the appropriate class member defined above. Enter the employee name = Enter the hours worked = Enter his or her hourly wage = */ /* Here you will implement a function call to implement the employ calcuations for each object defined above. You will do this for each of the three employees or objects. The format for this step is the following: [(object name.function name(objectname.name, objectname.hours, objectname.wage)] ; */ /* This section you will send all three objects to a function that will add up the the following information: - Total Employee Salaries - Total Employee Hours - Total Overtime Hours The format for this function is the following: - Define a new object. - Implement function call [objectname.functionname(object name 1, object name 2, object name 3)] /* } //End of Main Function void CEmployee::ImplementCalculations (string EmployeeName, double hours, double wage){ //Initialize overtime variables overtime_hours=0; overtime_pay=0; overtime_extra=0; if (hours > 40) { /* This section is for the basic calculations for calculating overtime pay. - base pay = 40 hours times the hourly wage - overtime hours = hours worked – 40 - overtime pay = hourly wage * 1.5 - overtime extra pay over 40 = overtime hours * overtime pay - salary = overtime money over 40 hours + your base pay */ /* Implement function call to output the employee information. Function is defined below. */ } // if (hours > 40) else { /* Here you are going to calculate the hours less than 40 hours. - Your base pay is = your hours worked times your wage - Salary = your base pay */ /* Implement function call to output the employee information. Function is defined below. */ } // End of the else } //End of Primary Function void CEmployee::DisplayEmployInformation(); { // This function displays all the employee output information. /* This is your cout statements to display the employee information: Employee Name ............. = Base Pay .................. = Hours in Overtime ......... = Overtime Pay Amount........ = Total Pay ................. = */ } // END OF Display Employee Information void CEmployee::Addsomethingup (CEmployee Employ1, CEmployee Employ2) { // Adds two objects of class Employee passed as // function arguments and saves them as the calling object's data member values. /* Add the total hours for objects 1, 2, and 3. Add the salaries for each object. Add the total overtime hours. */ /* Then display the information below. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%% EMPLOYEE SUMMARY DATA%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%% Total Employee Salaries ..... = 576.43 %%%% Total Employee Hours ........ = 108 %%%% Total Overtime Hours......... = 5 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% */ } // End of function

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• Strange (Undefined?) Behavior of Free in C

  - by Chris Cirefice

  This is really strange... and I can't debug it (tried for about two hours, debugger starts going haywire after a while...). Anyway, I'm trying to do something really simple: Free an array of strings. The array is in the form: char **myStrings. The array elements are initialized as: myString[index] = malloc(strlen(word)); myString[index] = word; and I'm calling a function like this: free_memory(myStrings, size); where size is the length of the array (I know this is not the problem, I tested it extensively and everything except this function is working). free_memory looks like this: void free_memory(char **list, int size) { for (int i = 0; i < size; i ++) { free(list[i]); } free(list); } Now here comes the weird part. if (size> strlen(list[i])) then the program crashes. For example, imagine that I have a list of strings that looks something like this: myStrings[0] = "Some"; myStrings[1] = "random"; myStrings[2] = "strings"; And thus the length of this array is 3. If I pass this to my free_memory function, strlen(myStrings[0]) > 3 (4 3), and the program crashes. However, if I change myStrings[0] to be "So" instead, then strlen(myStrings[0]) < 3 (2 < 3) and the program does not crash. So it seems to me that free(list[i]) is actually going through the char[] that is at that location and trying to free each character, which I imagine is undefined behavior. The only reason I say this is because I can play around with the size of the first element of myStrings and make the program crash whenever I feel like it, so I'm assuming that this is the problem area. Note: I did try to debug this by stepping through the function that calls free_memory, noting any weird values and such, but the moment I step into the free_memory function, the debugger crashes, so I'm not really sure what is going on. Nothing is out of the ordinary until I enter the function, then the world explodes. Another note: I also posted the shortened version of the source for this program (not too long; Pastebin) here. I am compiling on MinGW with the c99 flag on. PS - I just thought of this. I am indeed passing numUniqueWords to the free function, and I know that this does not actually free the entire piece of memory that I allocated. I've called it both ways, that's not the issue. And I left it how I did because that is the way that I will be calling it after I get it to work in the first place, I need to revise some of my logic in that function. Source, as per request (on-site): #include <stdio.h> #include <string.h> #include <ctype.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include "words.h" int getNumUniqueWords(char text[], int size); int main(int argc, char* argv[]) { setvbuf(stdout, NULL, 4, _IONBF); // For Eclipse... stupid bug. --> does NOT affect the program, just the output to console! int nbr_words; char text[] = "Some - \"text, a stdin\". We'll have! also repeat? We'll also have a repeat!"; int length = sizeof(text); nbr_words = getNumUniqueWords(text, length); return 0; } void free_memory(char **list, int size) { for (int i = 0; i < size; i ++) { // You can see that printing the values is fine, as long as free is not called. // When free is called, the program will crash if (size > strlen(list[i])) //printf("Wanna free value %d w/len of %d: %s\n", i, strlen(list[i]), list[i]); free(list[i]); } free(list); } int getNumUniqueWords(char text[], int length) { int numTotalWords = 0; char *word; printf("Length: %d characters\n", length); char totalWords[length]; strcpy(totalWords, text); word = strtok(totalWords, " ,.-!?()\"0123456789"); while (word != NULL) { numTotalWords ++; printf("%s\n", word); word = strtok(NULL, " ,.-!?()\"0123456789"); } printf("Looks like we counted %d total words\n\n", numTotalWords); char *uniqueWords[numTotalWords]; char *tempWord; int wordAlreadyExists = 0; int numUniqueWords = 0; char totalWordsCopy[length]; strcpy(totalWordsCopy, text); for (int i = 0; i < numTotalWords; i++) { uniqueWords[i] = NULL; } // Tokenize until all the text is consumed. word = strtok(totalWordsCopy, " ,.-!?()\"0123456789"); while (word != NULL) { // Look through the word list for the current token. for (int j = 0; j < numTotalWords; j ++) { // Just for clarity, no real meaning. tempWord = uniqueWords[j]; // The word list is either empty or the current token is not in the list. if (tempWord == NULL) { break; } //printf("Comparing (%s) with (%s)\n", tempWord, word); // If the current token is the same as the current element in the word list, mark and break if (strcmp(tempWord, word) == 0) { printf("\nDuplicate: (%s)\n\n", word); wordAlreadyExists = 1; break; } } // Word does not exist, add it to the array. if (!wordAlreadyExists) { uniqueWords[numUniqueWords] = malloc(strlen(word)); uniqueWords[numUniqueWords] = word; numUniqueWords ++; printf("Unique: %s\n", word); } // Reset flags and continue. wordAlreadyExists = 0; word = strtok(NULL, " ,.-!?()\"0123456789"); } // Print out the array just for funsies - make sure it's working properly. for (int x = 0; x <numUniqueWords; x++) { printf("Unique list %d: %s\n", x, uniqueWords[x]); } printf("\nNumber of unique words: %d\n\n", numUniqueWords); // Right below is where things start to suck. free_memory(uniqueWords, numUniqueWords); return numUniqueWords; }

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• Windows 7 intermittently drops wired internet/lan connection.

  - by CraigTP

  In a nutshell, my Windows 7 Ultimate PC intermittently drops it's internet connection. Why? Background: My PC is wired to my ADSL modem/router which is directly connected to the phone line. I also have wireless connectivity turned on within the router for a laptop to connect wirelessly. Every few hours or so, when using my PC, I find I cannot access the internet and pages will not load. Eventually, Windows7 will update the network icon in the task-tray to show the exclamation mark symbol on the network icon. Opening up the Network And Sharing Centre will show the red cross between the "Multiple Networks" and "The Internet". Here's a picture of the "Network And Sharing Centre" (grabbed when everything was working!) As you can see, I'm running Sun's VirtualBox on this machine and that creates a Network connection for itself. This doesn't seem to affect the intermittent dropping (i.e. the intermittent drops occur whether the VirtualBox connection is in use or not). When the connection does drop, I cannot access any internet pages, nor can I access the router's web admin page at http://192.168.1.1/, so I'm assuming I've lost all local LAN access too. It's definitely not the router (or the internet connection itself) as my laptop, using the wireless connection (and running Vista Home Premium) continues to be able to access the internet (and the router's web admin pages) just fine. Every time this happens, I can immediately restore all internet and LAN access by opening Network Adapter page, disabling the "Local Area Connection" and then re-enabling it. Give it a few seconds and everything is fine again. I assume this is because, beneath the GUI, it's effectively doing an "ipconfig /release" then "ipconfig /renew". Why does this happen in the first place, though? I've googled for this and seen quite a few other people (even on MSDN/Technet forums) experiencing the same or almost the same problem, but with no clear resolution. Suggestions of turning off IPv6 on the LAN adapter, and ensuring there's no power management "sleeping" the network adapter have been tried but do not cure the problem. There does not seem to be any particular sequence of events that cause it to happen either. I've had it go twice in 20 minutes when just randomly browsing the web with no other traffic, and I've also had it go once then not go again for 2-3 hours with the same sort of usage. Can anyone tell me why this is happening and how to make it stop? EDIT: Additional information based upon the answer provided so far: Firstly, I forgot the mention that this is Windows 7 64 bit if that makes any difference at all. I mentioned that I don't think the VirtualBox network adpater is causing this problem in any way, and I also have VirtualBox installed on two other machines, one running Vista Home Premium and the other running XP. Neither of these machine experience the same network connectivity issues as the Windows 7 machine. The IP assignment for the Windows 7 machine is the same both before and after the "drop". I have a DHCP server on the router issuing IP Addresses, however my Windows 7 machine uses a static address. Here's the output from "ipconfig": Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.2(Preferred) Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0 Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1 DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1 NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled Within the system's event logs, the only event that relates to the connection dropping is a "DNS Client Event" and this is generated after the connection has dropped and is an event detailing that DNS information can't be found for whatever website I may be trying to access, just as the connection drops: Log Name: System Source: Microsoft-Windows-DNS-Client Event ID: 1014 Task Category: None Level: Warning Keywords: User: NETWORK SERVICE Description: Name resolution for the name weather.service.msn.com timed out after none of the configured DNS servers responded. The network adapter chipset is Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller and I have confirmed that this is the correct chipset for the motherboard (Asus M4A77TD PRO), and in fact, Windows Update installed an updated driver for this on 12/Jan/2009. The details of the update say that it's a Realtek software update from December 2009. Incidentally, I was still having the same intermittent problems prior to this update. It seems to have made no difference at all. EDIT 2 (1 Feb 2010): In my quest to solve this problem, I have discovered some more interesting information. On another forum, someone suggested that I should try running Windows in "Safe Mode With Networking" and see if the problem continues to occur. This was a fantastic suggestion and I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner myself. So, I proceeded to run in Safe Mode with Networking for a number of hours, and amazingly, the "drops" didn't occur once. It was a positive discovery, however, due to the intermittent nature of the original problem, I wasn't completely convinced that the problem was cured. One thing I did note is that the fan on my GFX card was running alot louder than normal. This is due to the fact that I have an ASUS ENGTS250 graphics card (http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=B6imcoax3MRY42f3) which had a known problem with a noisy fan until a BIOS update fixed the issue. (See the "Manufacturer Response" here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121334 for details). Well, running in safe mode had the fan running (incorrectly) at full speed (as it did before the BIOS update), but with an (apparently) stable network connection. Obviously some driver was not loaded for the GFX card when in Safe Mode so this got me thinking about the GFX card (since the very noisy fan was quite obvious when running in Safe Mode). I rebooted into normal mode, and found that Nvidia had a very up-to-date new driver for my GFX card (only about 1 week old), so I downloaded the appropriate driver and installed it. After installation and a reboot, I was able to use my PC for an entire day with NO NETWORK DROPS!!! This was on Saturday. However, on the Sunday, I also had my PC for pretty much the entire day and experienced 2 network drops. No other changes have been made to my PC in this time. So, the story seems to be that updating my graphics card drivers seems to have improved (if not completely fixed) the issue, however, I'm still searching for a proper fix for this problem. Hopefully, this information may help anyone who may have additional ideas as to why this problem is occuring in the first place. (And why does new GFX card drivers have anything to do with the network?) I appreciate everyone's feedback so far. However, I'll have to ask once more if anyone has any further ideas of how to fix this particular problem? Thanks in advance.

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• Setup VPN issue on Ubuntu Server 12.04

  - by Yozone W.

  I have a problem with setup VPN server on my Ubuntu VPS, here is my server environments: Ubuntu Server 12.04 x86_64 xl2tpd 1.3.1+dfsg-1 pppd 2.4.5-5ubuntu1 openswan 1:2.6.38-1~precise1 After install software and configuration: ipsec verify Checking your system to see if IPsec got installed and started correctly: Version check and ipsec on-path [OK] Linux Openswan U2.6.38/K3.2.0-24-virtual (netkey) Checking for IPsec support in kernel [OK] SAref kernel support [N/A] NETKEY: Testing XFRM related proc values [OK] [OK] [OK] Checking that pluto is running [OK] Pluto listening for IKE on udp 500 [OK] Pluto listening for NAT-T on udp 4500 [OK] Checking for 'ip' command [OK] Checking /bin/sh is not /bin/dash [WARNING] Checking for 'iptables' command [OK] Opportunistic Encryption Support [DISABLED] /var/log/auth.log message: Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [RFC 3947] method set to=115 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike] meth=114, but already using method 115 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-08] meth=113, but already using method 115 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-07] meth=112, but already using method 115 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-06] meth=111, but already using method 115 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-05] meth=110, but already using method 115 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-04] meth=109, but already using method 115 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-03] meth=108, but already using method 115 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-02] meth=107, but already using method 115 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-02_n] meth=106, but already using method 115 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: ignoring Vendor ID payload [FRAGMENTATION 80000000] Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2251: received Vendor ID payload [Dead Peer Detection] Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[5] [My IP Address] #5: responding to Main Mode from unknown peer [My IP Address] Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[5] [My IP Address] #5: transition from state STATE_MAIN_R0 to state STATE_MAIN_R1 Oct 16 06:50:54 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[5] [My IP Address] #5: STATE_MAIN_R1: sent MR1, expecting MI2 Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[5] [My IP Address] #5: NAT-Traversal: Result using draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike (MacOS X): peer is NATed Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[5] [My IP Address] #5: transition from state STATE_MAIN_R1 to state STATE_MAIN_R2 Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[5] [My IP Address] #5: STATE_MAIN_R2: sent MR2, expecting MI3 Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[5] [My IP Address] #5: ignoring informational payload, type IPSEC_INITIAL_CONTACT msgid=00000000 Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[5] [My IP Address] #5: Main mode peer ID is ID_IPV4_ADDR: '192.168.12.52' Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[5] [My IP Address] #5: switched from "L2TP-PSK-NAT" to "L2TP-PSK-NAT" Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: deleting connection "L2TP-PSK-NAT" instance with peer [My IP Address] {isakmp=#0/ipsec=#0} Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: transition from state STATE_MAIN_R2 to state STATE_MAIN_R3 Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: new NAT mapping for #5, was [My IP Address]:2251, now [My IP Address]:2847 Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: STATE_MAIN_R3: sent MR3, ISAKMP SA established {auth=OAKLEY_PRESHARED_KEY cipher=aes_256 prf=oakley_sha group=modp1024} Oct 16 06:50:55 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: Dead Peer Detection (RFC 3706): enabled Oct 16 06:50:56 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: the peer proposed: [My Server IP Address]/32:17/1701 -> 192.168.12.52/32:17/0 Oct 16 06:50:56 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: NAT-Traversal: received 2 NAT-OA. using first, ignoring others Oct 16 06:50:56 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #6: responding to Quick Mode proposal {msgid:8579b1fb} Oct 16 06:50:56 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #6: us: [My Server IP Address]<[My Server IP Address]>:17/1701 Oct 16 06:50:56 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #6: them: [My IP Address][192.168.12.52]:17/65280===192.168.12.52/32 Oct 16 06:50:56 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #6: transition from state STATE_QUICK_R0 to state STATE_QUICK_R1 Oct 16 06:50:56 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #6: STATE_QUICK_R1: sent QR1, inbound IPsec SA installed, expecting QI2 Oct 16 06:50:56 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #6: Dead Peer Detection (RFC 3706): enabled Oct 16 06:50:56 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #6: transition from state STATE_QUICK_R1 to state STATE_QUICK_R2 Oct 16 06:50:56 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #6: STATE_QUICK_R2: IPsec SA established transport mode {ESP=>0x08bda158 <0x4920a374 xfrm=AES_256-HMAC_SHA1 NATOA=192.168.12.52 NATD=[My IP Address]:2847 DPD=enabled} Oct 16 06:51:16 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: received Delete SA(0x08bda158) payload: deleting IPSEC State #6 Oct 16 06:51:16 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: ERROR: netlink XFRM_MSG_DELPOLICY response for flow eroute_connection delete included errno 2: No such file or directory Oct 16 06:51:16 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: received and ignored informational message Oct 16 06:51:16 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address] #5: received Delete SA payload: deleting ISAKMP State #5 Oct 16 06:51:16 vpn pluto[3963]: "L2TP-PSK-NAT"[6] [My IP Address]: deleting connection "L2TP-PSK-NAT" instance with peer [My IP Address] {isakmp=#0/ipsec=#0} Oct 16 06:51:16 vpn pluto[3963]: packet from [My IP Address]:2847: received and ignored informational message xl2tpd -D message: xl2tpd[4289]: Enabling IPsec SAref processing for L2TP transport mode SAs xl2tpd[4289]: IPsec SAref does not work with L2TP kernel mode yet, enabling forceuserspace=yes xl2tpd[4289]: setsockopt recvref[30]: Protocol not available xl2tpd[4289]: This binary does not support kernel L2TP. xl2tpd[4289]: xl2tpd version xl2tpd-1.3.1 started on vpn.netools.me PID:4289 xl2tpd[4289]: Written by Mark Spencer, Copyright (C) 1998, Adtran, Inc. xl2tpd[4289]: Forked by Scott Balmos and David Stipp, (C) 2001 xl2tpd[4289]: Inherited by Jeff McAdams, (C) 2002 xl2tpd[4289]: Forked again by Xelerance (www.xelerance.com) (C) 2006 xl2tpd[4289]: Listening on IP address [My Server IP Address], port 1701 Then it just stopped here, and have no any response. I can't connect VPN on my mac client, the /var/log/system.log message: Oct 16 15:17:36 azone-iMac.local configd[17]: SCNC: start, triggered by SystemUIServer, type L2TP, status 0 Oct 16 15:17:36 azone-iMac.local pppd[3799]: pppd 2.4.2 (Apple version 596.13) started by azone, uid 501 Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local pppd[3799]: L2TP connecting to server 'vpn.netools.me' ([My Server IP Address])... Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local pppd[3799]: IPSec connection started Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: Connecting. Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IPSec Phase1 started (Initiated by me). Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Initiator, Main-Mode message 1). Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: receive success. (Initiator, Main-Mode message 2). Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Initiator, Main-Mode message 3). Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: receive success. (Initiator, Main-Mode message 4). Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Initiator, Main-Mode message 5). Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKEv1 Phase1 AUTH: success. (Initiator, Main-Mode Message 6). Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: receive success. (Initiator, Main-Mode message 6). Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKEv1 Phase1 Initiator: success. (Initiator, Main-Mode). Oct 16 15:17:38 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IPSec Phase1 established (Initiated by me). Oct 16 15:17:39 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IPSec Phase2 started (Initiated by me). Oct 16 15:17:39 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Initiator, Quick-Mode message 1). Oct 16 15:17:39 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: receive success. (Initiator, Quick-Mode message 2). Oct 16 15:17:39 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Initiator, Quick-Mode message 3). Oct 16 15:17:39 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKEv1 Phase2 Initiator: success. (Initiator, Quick-Mode). Oct 16 15:17:39 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IPSec Phase2 established (Initiated by me). Oct 16 15:17:39 azone-iMac.local pppd[3799]: IPSec connection established Oct 16 15:17:59 azone-iMac.local pppd[3799]: L2TP cannot connect to the server Oct 16 15:17:59 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IPSec disconnecting from server [My Server IP Address] Oct 16 15:17:59 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Information message). Oct 16 15:17:59 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKEv1 Information-Notice: transmit success. (Delete IPSEC-SA). Oct 16 15:17:59 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Information message). Oct 16 15:17:59 azone-iMac.local racoon[359]: IKEv1 Information-Notice: transmit success. (Delete ISAKMP-SA). Anyone help? Thanks a million!

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• Tomcat 7 taking ages to start up after upgrade

  - by Lawrence

  I recently updated my server installation from Tomcat 6 to Tomcat 7, in order to take advantage of better connection pooling. My project uses Hibernate, for object persistance, a Mysql 5.5.20 database, and memcached for caching. When I was using Tomcat 6, Tomcat would start in about 8 seconds. After moving to Tomcat 7, it now takes between 75 - 80 seconds to start (this is on a Macbook pro 15", core i7 2Ghz, 8Gb of RAM). The only thing that has really changed between during the move from Tomcat 6 to 7 has been my context.xml file, which controls the connection pooling information: <Context antiJARLocking="true" reloadable="true" path=""> <Resource name="jdbc/test-db" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" factory="org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceFactory" testOnBorrow="true" testOnReturn="false" testWhileIdle="true" validationQuery="SELECT 1" validationQueryTimeout="20000" validationInterval="30000" timeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis="60000" logValidationErrors="true" autoReconnect="true" username="webuser" password="xxxxxxx" driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver" url="jdbc:mysql://databasename.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com:3306/test-db" maxActive="15" minIdle="2" maxIdle="10" maxWait="10000" maxAge="7200000"/> </Context> Now, as you can see, the database is running on Amazon RDS (where our live servers are), and thus is about 200ms round trip time away from my machine. I have already checked that I have security permissions to that database from my machine, (and anyway, it connects after 75 secs, so it cant be that). My initial thought was that Tomcat 7 and hibernate are doing something weird (like pre-instantiating a bunch of connections or something), and the latency to the database is amplifying the effects. While trying to diagnose the problem, I used jstack to get a stack trace of the Tomcat 7 server while its doing its startup thing. Here is the stack trace... Full thread dump Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (20.12-b01-434 mixed mode): "Attach Listener" daemon prio=9 tid=7fa4c0038800 nid=0x10c39a000 waiting on condition [00000000] java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE "Abandoned connection cleanup thread" daemon prio=5 tid=7fa4bb810000 nid=0x10f3ba000 in Object.wait() [10f3b9000] java.lang.Thread.State: WAITING (on object monitor) at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method) - waiting on <7f40a0070> (a java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue$Lock) at java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue.remove(ReferenceQueue.java:118) - locked <7f40a0070> (a java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue$Lock) at java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue.remove(ReferenceQueue.java:134) at com.mysql.jdbc.NonRegisteringDriver$1.run(NonRegisteringDriver.java:93) "PoolCleaner[545768040:1352724902327]" daemon prio=5 tid=7fa4be852800 nid=0x10e772000 in Object.wait() [10e771000] java.lang.Thread.State: TIMED_WAITING (on object monitor) at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method) - waiting on <7f40c7c90> (a java.util.TaskQueue) at java.util.TimerThread.mainLoop(Timer.java:509) - locked <7f40c7c90> (a java.util.TaskQueue) at java.util.TimerThread.run(Timer.java:462) "localhost-startStop-1" daemon prio=5 tid=7fa4bd034800 nid=0x10d66b000 runnable [10d668000] java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE at java.net.SocketInputStream.socketRead0(Native Method) at java.net.SocketInputStream.read(SocketInputStream.java:129) at com.mysql.jdbc.util.ReadAheadInputStream.fill(ReadAheadInputStream.java:114) at com.mysql.jdbc.util.ReadAheadInputStream.readFromUnderlyingStreamIfNecessary(ReadAheadInputStream.java:161) at com.mysql.jdbc.util.ReadAheadInputStream.read(ReadAheadInputStream.java:189) - locked <7f3673be0> (a com.mysql.jdbc.util.ReadAheadInputStream) at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.readFully(MysqlIO.java:3014) at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.reuseAndReadPacket(MysqlIO.java:3467) at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.reuseAndReadPacket(MysqlIO.java:3456) at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.checkErrorPacket(MysqlIO.java:3997) at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.sendCommand(MysqlIO.java:2468) at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.sqlQueryDirect(MysqlIO.java:2629) at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.execSQL(ConnectionImpl.java:2713) - locked <7f366a1c0> (a com.mysql.jdbc.JDBC4Connection) at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.configureClientCharacterSet(ConnectionImpl.java:1930) at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.initializePropsFromServer(ConnectionImpl.java:3571) at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.connectOneTryOnly(ConnectionImpl.java:2445) at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.createNewIO(ConnectionImpl.java:2215) - locked <7f366a1c0> (a com.mysql.jdbc.JDBC4Connection) at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.<init>(ConnectionImpl.java:813) at com.mysql.jdbc.JDBC4Connection.<init>(JDBC4Connection.java:47) at sun.reflect.GeneratedConstructorAccessor10.newInstance(Unknown Source) at sun.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.java:27) at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:513) at com.mysql.jdbc.Util.handleNewInstance(Util.java:411) at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.getInstance(ConnectionImpl.java:399) at com.mysql.jdbc.NonRegisteringDriver.connect(NonRegisteringDriver.java:334) at org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.PooledConnection.connectUsingDriver(PooledConnection.java:278) at org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.PooledConnection.connect(PooledConnection.java:182) at org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.ConnectionPool.createConnection(ConnectionPool.java:699) at org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.ConnectionPool.borrowConnection(ConnectionPool.java:631) at org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.ConnectionPool.init(ConnectionPool.java:485) at org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.ConnectionPool.<init>(ConnectionPool.java:143) at org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceProxy.pCreatePool(DataSourceProxy.java:116) - locked <7f34f0dc8> (a org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSource) at org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceProxy.createPool(DataSourceProxy.java:103) at org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceFactory.createDataSource(DataSourceFactory.java:539) at org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceFactory.getObjectInstance(DataSourceFactory.java:237) at org.apache.naming.factory.ResourceFactory.getObjectInstance(ResourceFactory.java:143) at javax.naming.spi.NamingManager.getObjectInstance(NamingManager.java:304) at org.apache.naming.NamingContext.lookup(NamingContext.java:843) at org.apache.naming.NamingContext.lookup(NamingContext.java:154) at org.apache.naming.NamingContext.lookup(NamingContext.java:831) at org.apache.naming.NamingContext.lookup(NamingContext.java:168) at org.apache.catalina.core.NamingContextListener.addResource(NamingContextListener.java:1061) at org.apache.catalina.core.NamingContextListener.createNamingContext(NamingContextListener.java:671) at org.apache.catalina.core.NamingContextListener.lifecycleEvent(NamingContextListener.java:270) at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleSupport.fireLifecycleEvent(LifecycleSupport.java:119) at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.fireLifecycleEvent(LifecycleBase.java:90) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.startInternal(StandardContext.java:5173) - locked <7f46b07f0> (a org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext) at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:150) - locked <7f46b07f0> (a org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext) at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$StartChild.call(ContainerBase.java:1559) at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$StartChild.call(ContainerBase.java:1549) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:303) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:138) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:886) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:908) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:680) "Catalina-startStop-1" daemon prio=5 tid=7fa4b7a5e800 nid=0x10d568000 waiting on condition [10d567000] java.lang.Thread.State: WAITING (parking) at sun.misc.Unsafe.park(Native Method) - parking to wait for <7f480e970> (a java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync) at java.util.concurrent.locks.LockSupport.park(LockSupport.java:156) at java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.parkAndCheckInterrupt(AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.java:811) at java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.doAcquireSharedInterruptibly(AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.java:969) at java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.acquireSharedInterruptibly(AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.java:1281) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerGet(FutureTask.java:218) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.get(FutureTask.java:83) at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.startInternal(ContainerBase.java:1123) - locked <7f453c630> (a org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.startInternal(StandardHost.java:800) - locked <7f453c630> (a org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost) at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:150) - locked <7f453c630> (a org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost) at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$StartChild.call(ContainerBase.java:1559) at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$StartChild.call(ContainerBase.java:1549) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:303) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:138) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:886) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:908) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:680) "GC Daemon" daemon prio=2 tid=7fa4b9912800 nid=0x10d465000 in Object.wait() [10d464000] java.lang.Thread.State: TIMED_WAITING (on object monitor) at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method) - waiting on <7f4506d28> (a sun.misc.GC$LatencyLock) at sun.misc.GC$Daemon.run(GC.java:100) - locked <7f4506d28> (a sun.misc.GC$LatencyLock) "Low Memory Detector" daemon prio=5 tid=7fa4b480b800 nid=0x10c8ae000 runnable [00000000] java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE "C2 CompilerThread1" daemon prio=9 tid=7fa4b480b000 nid=0x10c7ab000 waiting on condition [00000000] java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE "C2 CompilerThread0" daemon prio=9 tid=7fa4b480a000 nid=0x10c6a8000 waiting on condition [00000000] java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE "Signal Dispatcher" daemon prio=9 tid=7fa4b4809800 nid=0x10c5a5000 runnable [00000000] java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE "Surrogate Locker Thread (Concurrent GC)" daemon prio=5 tid=7fa4b4808800 nid=0x10c4a2000 waiting on condition [00000000] java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE "Finalizer" daemon prio=8 tid=7fa4b793f000 nid=0x10c297000 in Object.wait() [10c296000] java.lang.Thread.State: WAITING (on object monitor) at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method) - waiting on <7f451c8f0> (a java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue$Lock) at java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue.remove(ReferenceQueue.java:118) - locked <7f451c8f0> (a java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue$Lock) at java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue.remove(ReferenceQueue.java:134) at java.lang.ref.Finalizer$FinalizerThread.run(Finalizer.java:159) "Reference Handler" daemon prio=10 tid=7fa4b793e000 nid=0x10c194000 in Object.wait() [10c193000] java.lang.Thread.State: WAITING (on object monitor) at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method) - waiting on <7f452e168> (a java.lang.ref.Reference$Lock) at java.lang.Object.wait(Object.java:485) at java.lang.ref.Reference$ReferenceHandler.run(Reference.java:116) - locked <7f452e168> (a java.lang.ref.Reference$Lock) "main" prio=5 tid=7fa4b7800800 nid=0x104329000 waiting on condition [104327000] java.lang.Thread.State: WAITING (parking) at sun.misc.Unsafe.park(Native Method) - parking to wait for <7f480e9a0> (a java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync) at java.util.concurrent.locks.LockSupport.park(LockSupport.java:156) at java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.parkAndCheckInterrupt(AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.java:811) at java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.doAcquireSharedInterruptibly(AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.java:969) at java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.acquireSharedInterruptibly(AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.java:1281) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerGet(FutureTask.java:218) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.get(FutureTask.java:83) at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.startInternal(ContainerBase.java:1123) - locked <7f451fd90> (a org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine.startInternal(StandardEngine.java:302) - locked <7f451fd90> (a org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine) at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:150) - locked <7f451fd90> (a org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardService.startInternal(StandardService.java:443) - locked <7f451fd90> (a org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine) at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:150) - locked <7f453e810> (a org.apache.catalina.core.StandardService) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardServer.startInternal(StandardServer.java:732) - locked <7f4506d58> (a [Lorg.apache.catalina.Service;) at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:150) - locked <7f44f7ba0> (a org.apache.catalina.core.StandardServer) at org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina.start(Catalina.java:684) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597) at org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.start(Bootstrap.java:322) at org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.main(Bootstrap.java:451) "VM Thread" prio=9 tid=7fa4b7939800 nid=0x10c091000 runnable "Gang worker#0 (Parallel GC Threads)" prio=9 tid=7fa4b7802000 nid=0x10772b000 runnable "Gang worker#1 (Parallel GC Threads)" prio=9 tid=7fa4b7802800 nid=0x10782e000 runnable "Gang worker#2 (Parallel GC Threads)" prio=9 tid=7fa4b7803000 nid=0x107931000 runnable "Gang worker#3 (Parallel GC Threads)" prio=9 tid=7fa4b7804000 nid=0x107a34000 runnable "Gang worker#4 (Parallel GC Threads)" prio=9 tid=7fa4b7804800 nid=0x107b37000 runnable "Gang worker#5 (Parallel GC Threads)" prio=9 tid=7fa4b7805000 nid=0x107c3a000 runnable "Gang worker#6 (Parallel GC Threads)" prio=9 tid=7fa4b7805800 nid=0x107d3d000 runnable "Gang worker#7 (Parallel GC Threads)" prio=9 tid=7fa4b7806800 nid=0x107e40000 runnable "Concurrent Mark-Sweep GC Thread" prio=9 tid=7fa4b78e3800 nid=0x10bd0b000 runnable "Gang worker#0 (Parallel CMS Threads)" prio=9 tid=7fa4b78e2800 nid=0x10b305000 runnable "Gang worker#1 (Parallel CMS Threads)" prio=9 tid=7fa4b78e3000 nid=0x10b408000 runnable "VM Periodic Task Thread" prio=10 tid=7fa4b4815800 nid=0x10c9b1000 waiting on condition "Exception Catcher Thread" prio=10 tid=7fa4b7801800 nid=0x104554000 runnable JNI global references: 919 The only thing I can figure out from this is that it looks like the mysql jdbc drivers might have something to do with the long start up (the various stack traces I took during the start up process all pretty much look the same as this). Could anyone shed some light on what might be causing this? Have I done something dense in my context.xml? Is hibernate perhaps to blame?

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• What's New in ASP.NET 4

  - by Navaneeth

  The .NET Framework version 4 includes enhancements for ASP.NET 4 in targeted areas. Visual Studio 2010 and Microsoft Visual Web Developer Express also include enhancements and new features for improved Web development. This document provides an overview of many of the new features that are included in the upcoming release. This topic contains the following sections: ASP.NET Core Services ASP.NET Web Forms ASP.NET MVC Dynamic Data ASP.NET Chart Control Visual Web Developer Enhancements Web Application Deployment with Visual Studio 2010 Enhancements to ASP.NET Multi-Targeting ASP.NET Core Services ASP.NET 4 introduces many features that improve core ASP.NET services such as output caching and session state storage. Extensible Output Caching Since the time that ASP.NET 1.0 was released, output caching has enabled developers to store the generated output of pages, controls, and HTTP responses in memory. On subsequent Web requests, ASP.NET can serve content more quickly by retrieving the generated output from memory instead of regenerating the output from scratch. However, this approach has a limitation — generated content always has to be stored in memory. On servers that experience heavy traffic, the memory requirements for output caching can compete with memory requirements for other parts of a Web application. ASP.NET 4 adds extensibility to output caching that enables you to configure one or more custom output-cache providers. Output-cache providers can use any storage mechanism to persist HTML content. These storage options can include local or remote disks, cloud storage, and distributed cache engines. Output-cache provider extensibility in ASP.NET 4 lets you design more aggressive and more intelligent output-caching strategies for Web sites. For example, you can create an output-cache provider that caches the "Top 10" pages of a site in memory, while caching pages that get lower traffic on disk. Alternatively, you can cache every vary-by combination for a rendered page, but use a distributed cache so that the memory consumption is offloaded from front-end Web servers. You create a custom output-cache provider as a class that derives from the OutputCacheProvider type. You can then configure the provider in the Web.config file by using the new providers subsection of the outputCache element For more information and for examples that show how to configure the output cache, see outputCache Element for caching (ASP.NET Settings Schema). For more information about the classes that support caching, see the documentation for the OutputCache and OutputCacheProvider classes. By default, in ASP.NET 4, all HTTP responses, rendered pages, and controls use the in-memory output cache. The defaultProvider attribute for ASP.NET is AspNetInternalProvider. You can change the default output-cache provider used for a Web application by specifying a different provider name for defaultProvider attribute. In addition, you can select different output-cache providers for individual control and for individual requests and programmatically specify which provider to use. For more information, see the HttpApplication.GetOutputCacheProviderName(HttpContext) method. The easiest way to choose a different output-cache provider for different Web user controls is to do so declaratively by using the new providerName attribute in a page or control directive, as shown in the following example: <%@ OutputCache Duration="60" VaryByParam="None" providerName="DiskCache" %> Preloading Web Applications Some Web applications must load large amounts of data or must perform expensive initialization processing before serving the first request. In earlier versions of ASP.NET, for these situations you had to devise custom approaches to "wake up" an ASP.NET application and then run initialization code during the Application_Load method in the Global.asax file. To address this scenario, a new application preload manager (autostart feature) is available when ASP.NET 4 runs on IIS 7.5 on Windows Server 2008 R2. The preload feature provides a controlled approach for starting up an application pool, initializing an ASP.NET application, and then accepting HTTP requests. It lets you perform expensive application initialization prior to processing the first HTTP request. For example, you can use the application preload manager to initialize an application and then signal a load-balancer that the application was initialized and ready to accept HTTP traffic. To use the application preload manager, an IIS administrator sets an application pool in IIS 7.5 to be automatically started by using the following configuration in the applicationHost.config file: <applicationPools> <add name="MyApplicationPool" startMode="AlwaysRunning" /> </applicationPools> Because a single application pool can contain multiple applications, you specify individual applications to be automatically started by using the following configuration in the applicationHost.config file: <sites> <site name="MySite" id="1"> <application path="/" serviceAutoStartEnabled="true" serviceAutoStartProvider="PrewarmMyCache" > <!-- Additional content --> </application> </site> </sites> <!-- Additional content --> <serviceAutoStartProviders> <add name="PrewarmMyCache" type="MyNamespace.CustomInitialization, MyLibrary" /> </serviceAutoStartProviders> When an IIS 7.5 server is cold-started or when an individual application pool is recycled, IIS 7.5 uses the information in the applicationHost.config file to determine which Web applications have to be automatically started. For each application that is marked for preload, IIS7.5 sends a request to ASP.NET 4 to start the application in a state during which the application temporarily does not accept HTTP requests. When it is in this state, ASP.NET instantiates the type defined by the serviceAutoStartProvider attribute (as shown in the previous example) and calls into its public entry point. You create a managed preload type that has the required entry point by implementing the IProcessHostPreloadClient interface, as shown in the following example: public class CustomInitialization : System.Web.Hosting.IProcessHostPreloadClient { public void Preload(string[] parameters) { // Perform initialization. } } After your initialization code runs in the Preload method and after the method returns, the ASP.NET application is ready to process requests. Permanently Redirecting a Page Content in Web applications is often moved over the lifetime of the application. This can lead to links to be out of date, such as the links that are returned by search engines. In ASP.NET, developers have traditionally handled requests to old URLs by using the Redirect method to forward a request to the new URL. However, the Redirect method issues an HTTP 302 (Found) response (which is used for a temporary redirect). This results in an extra HTTP round trip. ASP.NET 4 adds a RedirectPermanent helper method that makes it easy to issue HTTP 301 (Moved Permanently) responses, as in the following example: RedirectPermanent("/newpath/foroldcontent.aspx"); Search engines and other user agents that recognize permanent redirects will store the new URL that is associated with the content, which eliminates the unnecessary round trip made by the browser for temporary redirects. Session State Compression By default, ASP.NET provides two options for storing session state across a Web farm. The first option is a session state provider that invokes an out-of-process session state server. The second option is a session state provider that stores data in a Microsoft SQL Server database. Because both options store state information outside a Web application's worker process, session state has to be serialized before it is sent to remote storage. If a large amount of data is saved in session state, the size of the serialized data can become very large. ASP.NET 4 introduces a new compression option for both kinds of out-of-process session state providers. By using this option, applications that have spare CPU cycles on Web servers can achieve substantial reductions in the size of serialized session state data. You can set this option using the new compressionEnabled attribute of the sessionState element in the configuration file. When the compressionEnabled configuration option is set to true, ASP.NET compresses (and decompresses) serialized session state by using the .NET Framework GZipStreamclass. The following example shows how to set this attribute. <sessionState mode="SqlServer" sqlConnectionString="data source=dbserver;Initial Catalog=aspnetstate" allowCustomSqlDatabase="true" compressionEnabled="true" /> ASP.NET Web Forms Web Forms has been a core feature in ASP.NET since the release of ASP.NET 1.0. Many enhancements have been in this area for ASP.NET 4, such as the following: The ability to set meta tags. More control over view state. Support for recently introduced browsers and devices. Easier ways to work with browser capabilities. Support for using ASP.NET routing with Web Forms. More control over generated IDs. The ability to persist selected rows in data controls. More control over rendered HTML in the FormView and ListView controls. Filtering support for data source controls. Enhanced support for Web standards and accessibility Setting Meta Tags with the Page.MetaKeywords and Page.MetaDescription Properties Two properties have been added to the Page class: MetaKeywords and MetaDescription. These two properties represent corresponding meta tags in the HTML rendered for a page, as shown in the following example: <head id="Head1" runat="server"> <title>Untitled Page</title> <meta name="keywords" content="keyword1, keyword2' /> <meta name="description" content="Description of my page" /> </head> These two properties work like the Title property does, and they can be set in the @ Page directive. For more information, see Page.MetaKeywords and Page.MetaDescription. Enabling View State for Individual Controls A new property has been added to the Control class: ViewStateMode. You can use this property to disable view state for all controls on a page except those for which you explicitly enable view state. View state data is included in a page's HTML and increases the amount of time it takes to send a page to the client and post it back. Storing more view state than is necessary can cause significant decrease in performance. In earlier versions of ASP.NET, you could reduce the impact of view state on a page's performance by disabling view state for specific controls. But sometimes it is easier to enable view state for a few controls that need it instead of disabling it for many that do not need it. For more information, see Control.ViewStateMode. Support for Recently Introduced Browsers and Devices ASP.NET includes a feature that is named browser capabilities that lets you determine the capabilities of the browser that a user is using. Browser capabilities are represented by the HttpBrowserCapabilities object which is stored in the HttpRequest.Browser property. Information about a particular browser's capabilities is defined by a browser definition file. In ASP.NET 4, these browser definition files have been updated to contain information about recently introduced browsers and devices such as Google Chrome, Research in Motion BlackBerry smart phones, and Apple iPhone. Existing browser definition files have also been updated. For more information, see How to: Upgrade an ASP.NET Web Application to ASP.NET 4 and ASP.NET Web Server Controls and Browser Capabilities. The browser definition files that are included with ASP.NET 4 are shown in the following list: •blackberry.browser •chrome.browser •Default.browser •firefox.browser •gateway.browser •generic.browser •ie.browser •iemobile.browser •iphone.browser •opera.browser •safari.browser A New Way to Define Browser Capabilities ASP.NET 4 includes a new feature referred to as browser capabilities providers. As the name suggests, this lets you build a provider that in turn lets you write custom code to determine browser capabilities. In ASP.NET version 3.5 Service Pack 1, you define browser capabilities in an XML file. This file resides in a machine-level folder or an application-level folder. Most developers do not need to customize these files, but for those who do, the provider approach can be easier than dealing with complex XML syntax. The provider approach makes it possible to simplify the process by implementing a common browser definition syntax, or a database that contains up-to-date browser definitions, or even a Web service for such a database. For more information about the new browser capabilities provider, see the What's New for ASP.NET 4 White Paper. Routing in ASP.NET 4 ASP.NET 4 adds built-in support for routing with Web Forms. Routing is a feature that was introduced with ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 and lets you configure an application to use URLs that are meaningful to users and to search engines because they do not have to specify physical file names. This can make your site more user-friendly and your site content more discoverable by search engines. For example, the URL for a page that displays product categories in your application might look like the following example: http://website/products.aspx?categoryid=12 By using routing, you can use the following URL to render the same information: http://website/products/software The second URL lets the user know what to expect and can result in significantly improved rankings in search engine results. the new features include the following: The PageRouteHandler class is a simple HTTP handler that you use when you define routes. You no longer have to write a custom route handler. The HttpRequest.RequestContext and Page.RouteData properties make it easier to access information that is passed in URL parameters. The RouteUrl expression provides a simple way to create a routed URL in markup. The RouteValue expression provides a simple way to extract URL parameter values in markup. The RouteParameter class makes it easier to pass URL parameter values to a query for a data source control (similar to FormParameter). You no longer have to change the Web.config file to enable routing. For more information about routing, see the following topics: ASP.NET Routing Walkthrough: Using ASP.NET Routing in a Web Forms Application How to: Define Routes for Web Forms Applications How to: Construct URLs from Routes How to: Access URL Parameters in a Routed Page Setting Client IDs The new ClientIDMode property makes it easier to write client script that references HTML elements rendered for server controls. Increasing use of Microsoft Ajax makes the need to do this more common. For example, you may have a data control that renders a long list of products with prices and you want to use client script to make a Web service call and update individual prices in the list as they change without refreshing the entire page. Typically you get a reference to an HTML element in client script by using the document.GetElementById method. You pass to this method the value of the id attribute of the HTML element you want to reference. In the case of elements that are rendered for ASP.NET server controls earlier versions of ASP.NET could make this difficult or impossible. You were not always able to predict what id values ASP.NET would generate, or ASP.NET could generate very long id values. The problem was especially difficult for data controls that would generate multiple rows for a single instance of the control in your markup. ASP.NET 4 adds two new algorithms for generating id attributes. These algorithms can generate id attributes that are easier to work with in client script because they are more predictable and that are easier to work with because they are simpler. For more information about how to use the new algorithms, see the following topics: ASP.NET Web Server Control Identification Walkthrough: Making Data-Bound Controls Easier to Access from JavaScript Walkthrough: Making Controls Located in Web User Controls Easier to Access from JavaScript How to: Access Controls from JavaScript by ID Persisting Row Selection in Data Controls The GridView and ListView controls enable users to select a row. In previous versions of ASP.NET, row selection was based on the row index on the page. For example, if you select the third item on page 1 and then move to page 2, the third item on page 2 is selected. In most cases, is more desirable not to select any rows on page 2. ASP.NET 4 supports Persisted Selection, a new feature that was initially supported only in Dynamic Data projects in the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. When this feature is enabled, the selected item is based on the row data key. This means that if you select the third row on page 1 and move to page 2, nothing is selected on page 2. When you move back to page 1, the third row is still selected. This is a much more natural behavior than the behavior in earlier versions of ASP.NET. Persisted selection is now supported for the GridView and ListView controls in all projects. You can enable this feature in the GridView control, for example, by setting the EnablePersistedSelection property, as shown in the following example: <asp:GridView id="GridView2" runat="server" PersistedSelection="true"> </asp:GridView> FormView Control Enhancements The FormView control is enhanced to make it easier to style the content of the control with CSS. In previous versions of ASP.NET, the FormView control rendered it contents using an item template. This made styling more difficult in the markup because unexpected table row and table cell tags were rendered by the control. The FormView control supports RenderOuterTable, a property in ASP.NET 4. When this property is set to false, as show in the following example, the table tags are not rendered. This makes it easier to apply CSS style to the contents of the control. <asp:FormView ID="FormView1" runat="server" RenderTable="false"> For more information, see FormView Web Server Control Overview. ListView Control Enhancements The ListView control, which was introduced in ASP.NET 3.5, has all the functionality of the GridView control while giving you complete control over the output. This control has been made easier to use in ASP.NET 4. The earlier version of the control required that you specify a layout template that contained a server control with a known ID. The following markup shows a typical example of how to use the ListView control in ASP.NET 3.5. <asp:ListView ID="ListView1" runat="server"> <LayoutTemplate> <asp:PlaceHolder ID="ItemPlaceHolder" runat="server"></asp:PlaceHolder> </LayoutTemplate> <ItemTemplate> <% Eval("LastName")%> </ItemTemplate> </asp:ListView> In ASP.NET 4, the ListView control does not require a layout template. The markup shown in the previous example can be replaced with the following markup: <asp:ListView ID="ListView1" runat="server"> <ItemTemplate> <% Eval("LastName")%> </ItemTemplate> </asp:ListView> For more information, see ListView Web Server Control Overview. Filtering Data with the QueryExtender Control A very common task for developers who create data-driven Web pages is to filter data. This traditionally has been performed by building Where clauses in data source controls. This approach can be complicated, and in some cases the Where syntax does not let you take advantage of the full functionality of the underlying database. To make filtering easier, a new QueryExtender control has been added in ASP.NET 4. This control can be added to EntityDataSource or LinqDataSource controls in order to filter the data returned by these controls. Because the QueryExtender control relies on LINQ, but you do not to need to know how to write LINQ queries to use the query extender. The QueryExtender control supports a variety of filter options. The following lists QueryExtender filter options. Term Definition SearchExpression Searches a field or fields for string values and compares them to a specified string value. RangeExpression Searches a field or fields for values in a range specified by a pair of values. PropertyExpression Compares a specified value to a property value in a field. If the expression evaluates to true, the data that is being examined is returned. OrderByExpression Sorts data by a specified column and sort direction. CustomExpression Calls a function that defines custom filter in the page. For more information, see QueryExtenderQueryExtender Web Server Control Overview. Enhanced Support for Web Standards and Accessibility Earlier versions of ASP.NET controls sometimes render markup that does not conform to HTML, XHTML, or accessibility standards. ASP.NET 4 eliminates most of these exceptions. For details about how the HTML that is rendered by each control meets accessibility standards, see ASP.NET Controls and Accessibility. CSS for Controls that Can be Disabled In ASP.NET 3.5, when a control is disabled (see WebControl.Enabled), a disabled attribute is added to the rendered HTML element. For example, the following markup creates a Label control that is disabled: <asp:Label id="Label1" runat="server"   Text="Test" Enabled="false" /> In ASP.NET 3.5, the previous control settings generate the following HTML: <span id="Label1" disabled="disabled">Test</span> In HTML 4.01, the disabled attribute is not considered valid on span elements. It is valid only on input elements because it specifies that they cannot be accessed. On display-only elements such as span elements, browsers typically support rendering for a disabled appearance, but a Web page that relies on this non-standard behavior is not robust according to accessibility standards. For display-only elements, you should use CSS to indicate a disabled visual appearance. Therefore, by default ASP.NET 4 generates the following HTML for the control settings shown previously: <span id="Label1" class="aspNetDisabled">Test</span> You can change the value of the class attribute that is rendered by default when a control is disabled by setting the DisabledCssClass property. CSS for Validation Controls In ASP.NET 3.5, validation controls render a default color of red as an inline style. For example, the following markup creates a RequiredFieldValidator control: <asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="RequiredFieldValidator1" runat="server"   ErrorMessage="Required Field" ControlToValidate="RadioButtonList1" /> ASP.NET 3.5 renders the following HTML for the validator control: <span id="RequiredFieldValidator1"   style="color:Red;visibility:hidden;">RequiredFieldValidator</span> By default, ASP.NET 4 does not render an inline style to set the color to red. An inline style is used only to hide or show the validator, as shown in the following example: <span id="RequiredFieldValidator1"   style"visibility:hidden;">RequiredFieldValidator</span> Therefore, ASP.NET 4 does not automatically show error messages in red. For information about how to use CSS to specify a visual style for a validation control, see Validating User Input in ASP.NET Web Pages. CSS for the Hidden Fields Div Element ASP.NET uses hidden fields to store state information such as view state and control state. These hidden fields are contained by a div element. In ASP.NET 3.5, this div element does not have a class attribute or an id attribute. Therefore, CSS rules that affect all div elements could unintentionally cause this div to be visible. To avoid this problem, ASP.NET 4 renders the div element for hidden fields with a CSS class that you can use to differentiate the hidden fields div from others. The new classvalue is shown in the following example: <div class="aspNetHidden"> CSS for the Table, Image, and ImageButton Controls By default, in ASP.NET 3.5, some controls set the border attribute of rendered HTML to zero (0). The following example shows HTML that is generated by the Table control in ASP.NET 3.5: <table id="Table2" border="0"> The Image control and the ImageButton control also do this. Because this is not necessary and provides visual formatting information that should be provided by using CSS, the attribute is not generated in ASP.NET 4. CSS for the UpdatePanel and UpdateProgress Controls In ASP.NET 3.5, the UpdatePanel and UpdateProgress controls do not support expando attributes. This makes it impossible to set a CSS class on the HTMLelements that they render. In ASP.NET 4 these controls have been changed to accept expando attributes, as shown in the following example: <asp:UpdatePanel runat="server" class="myStyle"> </asp:UpdatePanel> The following HTML is rendered for this markup: <div id="ctl00_MainContent_UpdatePanel1" class="expandoclass"> </div> Eliminating Unnecessary Outer Tables In ASP.NET 3.5, the HTML that is rendered for the following controls is wrapped in a table element whose purpose is to apply inline styles to the entire control: FormView Login PasswordRecovery ChangePassword If you use templates to customize the appearance of these controls, you can specify CSS styles in the markup that you provide in the templates. In that case, no extra outer table is required. In ASP.NET 4, you can prevent the table from being rendered by setting the new RenderOuterTable property to false. Layout Templates for Wizard Controls In ASP.NET 3.5, the Wizard and CreateUserWizard controls generate an HTML table element that is used for visual formatting. In ASP.NET 4 you can use a LayoutTemplate element to specify the layout. If you do this, the HTML table element is not generated. In the template, you create placeholder controls to indicate where items should be dynamically inserted into the control. (This is similar to how the template model for the ListView control works.) For more information, see the Wizard.LayoutTemplate property. New HTML Formatting Options for the CheckBoxList and RadioButtonList Controls ASP.NET 3.5 uses HTML table elements to format the output for the CheckBoxList and RadioButtonList controls. To provide an alternative that does not use tables for visual formatting, ASP.NET 4 adds two new options to the RepeatLayout enumeration: UnorderedList. This option causes the HTML output to be formatted by using ul and li elements instead of a table. OrderedList. This option causes the HTML output to be formatted by using ol and li elements instead of a table. For examples of HTML that is rendered for the new options, see the RepeatLayout enumeration. Header and Footer Elements for the Table Control In ASP.NET 3.5, the Table control can be configured to render thead and tfoot elements by setting the TableSection property of the TableHeaderRow class and the TableFooterRow class. In ASP.NET 4 these properties are set to the appropriate values by default. CSS and ARIA Support for the Menu Control In ASP.NET 3.5, the Menu control uses HTML table elements for visual formatting, and in some configurations it is not keyboard-accessible. ASP.NET 4 addresses these problems and improves accessibility in the following ways: The generated HTML is structured as an unordered list (ul and li elements). CSS is used for visual formatting. The menu behaves in accordance with ARIA standards for keyboard access. You can use arrow keys to navigate menu items. (For information about ARIA, see Accessibility in Visual Studio and ASP.NET.) ARIA role and property attributes are added to the generated HTML. (Attributes are added by using JavaScript instead of included in the HTML, to avoid generating HTML that would cause markup validation errors.) Styles for the Menu control are rendered in a style block at the top of the page, instead of inline with the rendered HTML elements. If you want to use a separate CSS file so that you can modify the menu styles, you can set the Menu control's new IncludeStyleBlock property to false, in which case the style block is not generated. Valid XHTML for the HtmlForm Control In ASP.NET 3.5, the HtmlForm control (which is created implicitly by the <form runat="server"> tag) renders an HTML form element that has both name and id attributes. The name attribute is deprecated in XHTML 1.1. Therefore, this control does not render the name attribute in ASP.NET 4. Maintaining Backward Compatibility in Control Rendering An existing ASP.NET Web site might have code in it that assumes that controls are rendering HTML the way they do in ASP.NET 3.5. To avoid causing backward compatibility problems when you upgrade the site to ASP.NET 4, you can have ASP.NET continue to generate HTML the way it does in ASP.NET 3.5 after you upgrade the site. To do so, you can set the controlRenderingCompatibilityVersion attribute of the pages element to "3.5" in the Web.config file of an ASP.NET 4 Web site, as shown in the following example: <system.web>   <pages controlRenderingCompatibilityVersion="3.5"/> </system.web> If this setting is omitted, the default value is the same as the version of ASP.NET that the Web site targets. (For information about multi-targeting in ASP.NET, see .NET Framework Multi-Targeting for ASP.NET Web Projects.) ASP.NET MVC ASP.NET MVC helps Web developers build compelling standards-based Web sites that are easy to maintain because it decreases the dependency among application layers by using the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern. MVC provides complete control over the page markup. It also improves testability by inherently supporting Test Driven Development (TDD). Web sites created using ASP.NET MVC have a modular architecture. This allows members of a team to work independently on the various modules and can be used to improve collaboration. For example, developers can work on the model and controller layers (data and logic), while the designer work on the view (presentation). For tutorials, walkthroughs, conceptual content, code samples, and a complete API reference, see ASP.NET MVC 2. Dynamic Data Dynamic Data was introduced in the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 release in mid-2008. This feature provides many enhancements for creating data-driven applications, such as the following: A RAD experience for quickly building a data-driven Web site. Automatic validation that is based on constraints defined in the data model. The ability to easily change the markup that is generated for fields in the GridView and DetailsView controls by using field templates that are part of your Dynamic Data project. For ASP.NET 4, Dynamic Data has been enhanced to give developers even more power for quickly building data-driven Web sites. For more information, see ASP.NET Dynamic Data Content Map. Enabling Dynamic Data for Individual Data-Bound Controls in Existing Web Applications You can use Dynamic Data features in existing ASP.NET Web applications that do not use scaffolding by enabling Dynamic Data for individual data-bound controls. Dynamic Data provides the presentation and data layer support for rendering these controls. When you enable Dynamic Data for data-bound controls, you get the following benefits: Setting default values for data fields. Dynamic Data enables you to provide default values at run time for fields in a data control. Interacting with the database without creating and registering a data model. Automatically validating the data that is entered by the user without writing any code. For more information, see Walkthrough: Enabling Dynamic Data in ASP.NET Data-Bound Controls. New Field Templates for URLs and E-mail Addresses ASP.NET 4 introduces two new built-in field templates, EmailAddress.ascx and Url.ascx. These templates are used for fields that are marked as EmailAddress or Url using the DataTypeAttribute attribute. For EmailAddress objects, the field is displayed as a hyperlink that is created by using the mailto: protocol. When users click the link, it opens the user's e-mail client and creates a skeleton message. Objects typed as Url are displayed as ordinary hyperlinks. The following example shows how to mark fields. [DataType(DataType.EmailAddress)] public object HomeEmail { get; set; } [DataType(DataType.Url)] public object Website { get; set; } Creating Links with the DynamicHyperLink Control Dynamic Data uses the new routing feature that was added in the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 to control the URLs that users see when they access the Web site. The new DynamicHyperLink control makes it easy to build links to pages in a Dynamic Data site. For information, see How to: Create Table Action Links in Dynamic Data Support for Inheritance in the Data Model Both the ADO.NET Entity Framework and LINQ to SQL support inheritance in their data models. An example of this might be a database that has an InsurancePolicy table. It might also contain CarPolicy and HousePolicy tables that have the same fields as InsurancePolicy and then add more fields. Dynamic Data has been modified to understand inherited objects in the data model and to support scaffolding for the inherited tables. For more information, see Walkthrough: Mapping Table-per-Hierarchy Inheritance in Dynamic Data. Support for Many-to-Many Relationships (Entity Framework Only) The Entity Framework has rich support for many-to-many relationships between tables, which is implemented by exposing the relationship as a collection on an Entity object. New field templates (ManyToMany.ascx and ManyToMany_Edit.ascx) have been added to provide support for displaying and editing data that is involved in many-to-many relationships. For more information, see Working with Many-to-Many Data Relationships in Dynamic Data. New Attributes to Control Display and Support Enumerations The DisplayAttribute has been added to give you additional control over how fields are displayed. The DisplayNameAttribute attribute in earlier versions of Dynamic Data enabled you to change the name that is used as a caption for a field. The new DisplayAttribute class lets you specify more options for displaying a field, such as the order in which a field is displayed and whether a field will be used as a filter. The attribute also provides independent control of the name that is used for the labels in a GridView control, the name that is used in a DetailsView control, the help text for the field, and the watermark used for the field (if the field accepts text input). The EnumDataTypeAttribute class has been added to let you map fields to enumerations. When you apply this attribute to a field, you specify an enumeration type. Dynamic Data uses the new Enumeration.ascx field template to create UI for displaying and editing enumeration values. The template maps the values from the database to the names in the enumeration. Enhanced Support for Filters Dynamic Data 1.0 had built-in filters for Boolean columns and foreign-key columns. The filters did not let you specify the order in which they were displayed. The new DisplayAttribute attribute addresses this by giving you control over whether a column appears as a filter and in what order it will be displayed. An additional enhancement is that filtering support has been rewritten to use the new QueryExtender feature of Web Forms. This lets you create filters without requiring knowledge of the data source control that the filters will be used with. Along with these extensions, filters have also been turned into template controls, which lets you add new ones. Finally, the DisplayAttribute class mentioned earlier allows the default filter to be overridden, in the same way that UIHint allows the default field template for a column to be overridden. For more information, see Walkthrough: Filtering Rows in Tables That Have a Parent-Child Relationship and QueryableFilterRepeater. ASP.NET Chart Control The ASP.NET chart server control enables you to create ASP.NET pages applications that have simple, intuitive charts for complex statistical or financial analysis. The chart control supports the following features: Data series, chart areas, axes, legends, labels, titles, and more. Data binding. Data manipulation, such as copying, splitting, merging, alignment, grouping, sorting, searching, and filtering. Statistical formulas and financial formulas. Advanced chart appearance, such as 3-D, anti-aliasing, lighting, and perspective. Events and customizations. Interactivity and Microsoft Ajax. Support for the Ajax Content Delivery Network (CDN), which provides an optimized way for you to add Microsoft Ajax Library and jQuery scripts to your Web applications. For more information, see Chart Web Server Control Overview. Visual Web Developer Enhancements The following sections provide information about enhancements and new features in Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Web Developer Express. The Web page designer in Visual Studio 2010 has been enhanced for better CSS compatibility, includes additional support for HTML and ASP.NET markup snippets, and features a redesigned version of IntelliSense for JScript. Improved CSS Compatibility The Visual Web Developer designer in Visual Studio 2010 has been updated to improve CSS 2.1 standards compliance. The designer better preserves HTML source code and is more robust than in previous versions of Visual Studio. HTML and JScript Snippets In the HTML editor, IntelliSense auto-completes tag names. The IntelliSense Snippets feature auto-completes whole tags and more. In Visual Studio 2010, IntelliSense snippets are supported for JScript, alongside C# and Visual Basic, which were supported in earlier versions of Visual Studio. Visual Studio 2010 includes over 200 snippets that help you auto-complete common ASP.NET and HTML tags, including required attributes (such as runat="server") and common attributes specific to a tag (such as ID, DataSourceID, ControlToValidate, and Text). You can download additional snippets, or you can write your own snippets that encapsulate the blocks of markup that you or your team use for common tasks. For more information on HTML snippets, see Walkthrough: Using HTML Snippets. JScript IntelliSense Enhancements In Visual 2010, JScript IntelliSense has been redesigned to provide an even richer editing experience. IntelliSense now recognizes objects that have been dynamically generated by methods such as registerNamespace and by similar techniques used by other JavaScript frameworks. Performance has been improved to analyze large libraries of script and to display IntelliSense with little or no processing delay. Compatibility has been significantly increased to support almost all third-party libraries and to support diverse coding styles. Documentation comments are now parsed as you type and are immediately leveraged by IntelliSense. Web Application Deployment with Visual Studio 2010 For Web application projects, Visual Studio now provides tools that work with the IIS Web Deployment Tool (Web Deploy) to automate many processes that had to be done manually in earlier versions of ASP.NET. For example, the following tasks can now be automated: Creating an IIS application on the destination computer and configuring IIS settings. Copying files to the destination computer. Changing Web.config settings that must be different in the destination environment. Propagating changes to data or data structures in SQL Server databases that are used by the Web application. For more information about Web application deployment, see ASP.NET Deployment Content Map. Enhancements to ASP.NET Multi-Targeting ASP.NET 4 adds new features to the multi-targeting feature to make it easier to work with projects that target earlier versions of the .NET Framework. Multi-targeting was introduced in ASP.NET 3.5 to enable you to use the latest version of Visual Studio without having to upgrade existing Web sites or Web services to the latest version of the .NET Framework. In Visual Studio 2008, when you work with a project targeted for an earlier version of the .NET Framework, most features of the development environment adapt to the targeted version. However, IntelliSense displays language features that are available in the current version, and property windows display properties available in the current version. In Visual Studio 2010, only language features and properties available in the targeted version of the .NET Framework are shown. For more information about multi-targeting, see the following topics: .NET Framework Multi-Targeting for ASP.NET Web Projects ASP.NET Side-by-Side Execution Overview How to: Host Web Applications That Use Different Versions of the .NET Framework on the Same Server How to: Deploy Web Site Projects Targeted for Earlier Versions of the .NET Framework

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• Windows CE Chat Transcript (March 30, 2010)

  - by Bruce Eitman

  For those of you who missed the chat today, here is the raw transcript.   By raw, I mean that I copied and pasted the discussion without any edits. This is divided into two parts, the top part is the answers from the Microsoft Experts and the bottom part is the questions from the audience. Answers from Microsoft:   Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:2]: Hi everyone, my name is Karel Danihelka and I am developer in partner response team. Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:2]: Hi, I'm Sing Wee, part of the CoreOS/BSP Test Team. GLanger_MS (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:2]: Hi, I'm Glen Langer, program manager on the Core Team. Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:3]: Q: I need to implement hardware timers on my windows CE 6.0 device to trigger events at microsecond intervals. Where should i start? A: Until you are using CPU with GHz frequency your only chance is use interrupt handler and implement all funcionality there. But it will be really tricky and may reduce system performance. If period will be near to millisecond timeframe you can use normal thread wait for event pattern. Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:5]: Q: I want to partition my NAND Flash device. One partition to use for hive ragistry and the other for the apps and data. The only way to do it is programmatically or setting some registry values ? A: It need to be set in registry - generally you need mark this partition as boot partition. Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:7]: Q: My CPU is Intel celeron M processor 1Ghz. A: In this case you can try use normal approach - in interrupt handler return SYSINTR and start thread in device driver which will spin thread waiting on event attached to this SYSINTR. Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:7]: Q: If i need to implement it using interrupt handlers, What are all the files that I should look at? A: Good quesiton - I would recommend documentation and there was BSP development book to download for free. mikehall_ms (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:8]: Q: Hi guys, what's the formal way to report bugs back to the core team / product team? The mechanism of calling the support phone number every time is really onerous and time-consuming. Is there another mechanism? A: Using product support is the formal way to report bugs/issues - Product support can then create an issue that can be tracked. Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:9]: Q: But the operation for creating the partitions ? A: This is tricky - if you will make it autopartition & autoformat it will be created by filesystem. But generally it depends on your boot loader. mikehall_ms (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:10]: Q: Is Windows Phone 7 related to Windows CE? If so, can you tell me what version of Windows CE is the basis? Is it in fact the new version of Windows Mobile? A: At MIX 2010 Charlie Kindel presented a session that described some of the core technologies that make up Windows Phone 7 Series, including the underlying operating system (Windows CE) and the new ISV programming model based on Silverlight and .NET - check out the Mix Online Videos to get more information. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:10]: Q: Is Windows Phone 7 related to Windows CE? If so, can you tell me what version of Windows CE is the basis? Is it in fact the new version of Windows Mobile? A: This forum is to discussed released products in the industry. Windows Mobile & Windows CE are based on the same Windows CE Kernel/system. Windows CE is focused on deliverying the OS for embedded customers in the market where Windows Mobile is focused on deliverying compelling Windows Phone platform. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:11]: Q: Is Windows Phone 7 related to Windows CE? If so, can you tell me what version of Windows CE is the basis? Is it in fact the new version of Windows Mobile? A: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_CE Wikipedia gives a good breakdown of the version history. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:13]: Q: I created a OS design with KITL and kernel debugger enabled. But I am unable to connect to the target for debugging. I am getting the following error when i try to connect with the device. PB Debugger Cannot initialize the Kernel Debugger. PB Debugger Debugger could not initialize connection. PB Debugger The Kernel Debugger is waiting to connect with target. PB Debugger The Kernel Debugger has been disconnected successfully. A: One possibility is that a rogue cesvchost.exe has co-opted the debugger. I am assuming this is CE 6.0? Can you try exiting visual studio and manually killing the cesvchost.exe process from the Task Manager? davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:14]: Q: Hi guys, what's the formal way to report bugs back to the core team / product team? The mechanism of calling the support phone number every time is really onerous and time-consuming. Is there another mechanism? A: For info on contacting Microsoft support refer to the support page on the Embedded website: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsembedded/dd897633.aspx Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:16]: Q: Do u mean ISR/IST implementation? How can i register an interrupt? What kind of interrupt should i register? A: A good introduction to interrupts in WinCE 6.0 can be found here (aside from the documentation on MSDN): http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/c/f/9cffaa58-4000-48d6-a4b2-5fed9e4e6410/Chapter%206%20-%20Developing%20Device%20Drivers.pdf mikehall_ms (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:16]: Q: What will be different in Windows Compact 7 from CE 6.0? A: Unfortunately we cannot discuss unreleased products on this chat - keep an eye on the Windows Embedded web site and blogs to keep up to date with product announcements. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:16]: Q: I am using CE 6.0. There is no cesvchost process running in my system. A: What operating system are you using? Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:16]: Q: So...I have to modify file system code to create 2 partition at system startup ?!! I haven't understood.... A: You don't need to modify code, there are registry settings to achive this (look to documentation). But you may need to create partition table in boot loader. Unfortunatelly there isn't simple way how to do it. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:18]: Q: I would like to get a handle to a Silverlight screen section, is that possiable? A: Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 includes Sliverlight for Windows Embedded. Refer to New Features overview on the embedded web site. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/en-us/products/windowsce/default.mspx. Silverlight - The power of Silverlight brought to Windows Embedded CE to create rich applications and user interfaces is new part of Windows CE Embedded. mikehall_ms (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:20]: Q: The link for developing device drivers is not working. can u please check that? A: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms923714.aspx davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:20]: Q: I would like to get a handle to a Silverlight screen section, is that possiable? A: Sorry misunderstood the question I thought you were asking if embedded CE could handle Silverlight. Please repost so that the question goes back into the active queue because once answered no way to put the status back to open. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:21]: Q: sorry! Windows XP SP3 A: Can you try exiting VS2005 and confirming cesvchost.exe is not running, then renaming C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\CoreCon\1.0 to 1.0_backup, then restarting VS2005? Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:24]: Q: Can I have the book's name please? A: I believe the downloadable version is related to the last link I sent. If you go to the following website, I believe you can download the whole thing: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsembedded/ce/cc294468.aspx davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:24]: Q: If one has an image on a Silverlight page, it seems to be cached. How would one refresh that cache after changing the underlying image? A: change the URI of the image or use a writeable bitmap if they want to manually toggle the pixels Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:25]: A: Whoops, hit [ENTER] too early. On the right side, you'll see there an "Exam Preparation Kit" link that can be downloaded in several different languages. Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:25]: Q: Can I have the book's name please? A: Whoops, hit [ENTER] too early. On the right side, you'll see there an "Exam Preparation Kit" link that can be downloaded in several different languages. Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:26]: Q: I have a NAND Flash on my target device. On this flash I have the hive registry and an application.I have observed that when the NAND flash is fully, the system startup time is longer....is there a degradation of NAND use that influences the startup time ? Why ? A: Yes - on boot flash abstraction library (old one) read metadata from all sectors to rebuild physical - logical mapping table. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:27]: Q: I would like to get a handle to a Silverlight screen section, is that possiable? A: Need addition info on this question. Can you provide more details on what you are trying to do in Silverlight? davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:27]: Q: If one has an image on a Silverlight page, it seems to be cached. How would one refresh that cache after changing the underlying image? A: Additonal Info: if you want to manually touch the pixels use WriteableBitmap if you want to use the underlying HWND then use IXRVisualHost::GetHWND() davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:28]: Q: Writable bitmap, is there an example of the syntax? A: if you want to manually touch the pixels use WriteableBitmap if you want to use the underlying HWND then use IXRVisualHost::GetHWND() davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:29]: Q: I would like to get a handle to a Silverlight screen section, is that possiable? A: Can I get more information about this question about what you are trying to accomplish in Silverlight? davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:31]: Q: IXRVisualHost::GetHWND() exactly what I needed Thanks, A: Your welcome Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:31]: Q: ok. thanks for the book's link A: No problem. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:32]: Q: Typically for SoC devices you name your hardware specific libraries in the form "SOCDIRNAME_LIBNAME". In our platform "OMAP35XX_TPS659XX_TI_V1" if you do this we cause the catalog parser to die... For example if we have a library "Musbfn_OMAP35XX_TPS659XX_TI_V1.dll" entering this in the catalogs pbcxml file in a <module> section causes the XML parser to fail with : Error 3 The 'urn:Microsoft.PlatformBuilder/Catalog:Module' element is        invalid - The value '012345678901234567890123456789.dll' is invalid         according to its datatype         'urn:Microsoft.PlatformBuilder/Catalog:CatalogFileName' - The actual         length is greater than the MaxLength value. A: There are a couple workarounds I can think of. I believe the Module element is only used when doing SYSGEN parsing to make sure dependent SYSGENs are present when the item is selected, so I believe it is optional to the catalog. The other obvious workaround is to shorten the soc name. I realize neither of these solutions is ideal. This is not something we anticipated when we tested CE6.0, sorry. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:33]: Q: I am getting this error only when I select the KdStub as the debugger in Target device connectivity. A: Right, but KdStub is the debugger that you should use. Have you tried the steps I suggested? Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:36]: Q: If I select Active KTIL, My OS doesn't boots. It says "loading NK.EXE at 0x<xxxxx> location" after that nothing comes in the debug log. A: Can you look at the serial debug output and see what is happening there? Often it can give you a clue to the KITL driver malfunctioning. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:38]: Q: I have tried that and I am getting the same error. A: I am assuming you have a device created in Target -> Connectivity Options in Platform Builder. What are the Kernel download / Kernel transport for your device? Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:40]: Q: KITL: *** Device Name CEPC56059 *** WARN: KITL will run in polling mode VBridge:: built on [Jul 10 2009] time [10:20:14] VBridgeInit()...TX = [16384] bytes -- Rx = [16384] bytes Tx buffer [0xA1B84860] to [0xA1B88860]. Rx buffer [0xA1B88880] to [0xA1B8C880]. VBridge:: NK add MAC: [0-60-65-2-DA-FB] Connecting to Desktop KITL: Connected host IP: 1 Port: 1086 .. this is the output of the serial debug A: This looks reasonable and does not give clues as to why boot would halt at that point. If you capture a network trace or turn on KITL debug zones via dpCurSettings in kitl.dll, do you see KITL active after this? Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:41]: Q: Both is happening via Ethernet. A: Only thing I have left to suggest is a Platform Builder installation Repair, then. Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:42]: Q: Hi, I saw that the ATADISK is quite generic and des not have any optimizations. Do you have any advice to consider while tryin to improve the performance of it? A: If I remember correctly sample code has support for some specific hardware controllers (little obsolete now). This should be good start point (if you will not decide take existing driver as sample and write you own). Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:44]: Q: I didn't do that. I have to try. A: I think that's the next valid step. You need to figure out whether KITL is hanging or the device - use instrumented serial debug messages and network trace to determine this. Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:46]: Q: KITL: *** Device Name CEPC56059 *** WARN: KITL will run in polling mode VBridge:: built on [Jul 10 2009] time [10:20:14] VBridgeInit()...TX = [16384] bytes -- Rx = [16384] bytes Tx buffer [0xA1B84860] to [0xA1B88860]. Rx buffer [0xA1B88880] to [0xA1B8C880]. VBridge:: NK add MAC: [0-60-65-2-DA-FB] Connecting to Desktop KITL: Connected host IP: 1 Port: 1086 .. this is the output of the serial debug A: Neo, have you by any chance tried looking into your firewall to see if it might be blocking traffic on any particular ports? Wireshark/netmon might be able to help you here if that's the issue. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:48]: Q: I lost spell check, how can i get it back A: Hello - can you give additional details about your question? Is this related to a Windows CE Embedded application? masatos_MSFT (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:51]: Q: When attempting to run the CETK cellcore tests the documentation states the pre-requisites include "stinger.ini", "ltk.ini" but windows CE doesn't provide these or document what they fully need to contain. Implicitly you also need "datatrans.xml" which isn't supplied. If you get around this error and steal these from Windows Mobile instead, when you try and run the CETK tests you get a data abort in radiometricsdll.dll. How should we invoke the cellcore parts of CETK? A: Hi Pev, what version of Windows CE and CETK are you using? I do not have the expertise to answer this question, but can find somebody who can. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:52]: Q: I don't see a kitlcore.dll in my OS. is my debug image fails to load because of that? A: kitl.dll should be all that's needed, kitlcore.lib is linked into that. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:55]: Q: I've got a platform (not developed by myself) where I2C bus support has to be provided through the OAL as the kernel needs to talk to devices such as the power management IC and gas gauge so a 'proper' I2C driver hanging off device manager isn't possible. This happens to be a polled driver, so obviously it hits the system hard when either under lots of traffic or an error condition occurs and the driver constantly polls. I originally thought that there was no straightforward way to make such code interrupt driven in the kernel (as it's a cludge) but I realised that that's exactly what ETHDBG drivers do. Is there any reason why I shouldn't have a go at implementing a similar mechanism for our kernel resident I2C driver? If not, are there any obvious pitfalls - I've not seen any other BSP's do this in the past... A: You can make a 'proper' driver that calls down into the OAL to do the actual I2C transactions. Alternatively you can build an interrupt-based version in the OAL where you handle everything in the ISR. There is nothing wrong with that so long as the rest of your drivers and app threads can handle longer times with interrupts off while you are servicing I2C interrupts. Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:55]: Q: I am having trouble with my mouse, I have the microsoft wireless mobile mouse 3000, when I push the scroll button I am suppose to have autoscroll instead it shows other web pages,Can you help me out tell me what to do!!! A: Sorry, this current chat is about Windows Embedded Compact. Hope you're able to find an answer to your question elsewhere. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:56]: Q: Is the Silverlight Animation "Spline" a BezierSpline? A: Spline - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee501495.aspx<BR< a>>   masatos_MSFT (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:57]: Thanks for the info Pev. I will follow up with the CETK experts here and get back to you. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:59]: Q: Spline- bad link A: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee501495.aspx davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 13:0]: Q: Sorry, got to tirm the ">" A: No Worries http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee501495.aspx davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 13:0]: Hello everyone, we are just about out of time. Thank you for joining us for our Windows Embedded CE 6.0 chat today! <http://www.Microsoft.com/Embedded>; A special thank you to the product group members for coming out. The transcript of today’s chat will be posted online as soon as possible, to <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats>;. We’ll see you again for another chat next month. Please check <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats>; for the list of upcoming chats. If you still have unanswered questions, let me suggest that you post them on one of our newsgroups on <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsembedded/ce/default.aspx> -Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 Now Available! <http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/ce/dd630616.aspx>; davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 13:1]: Q: hi everybody. I would like to know if there is something know about a bug in RTC API (VOIP), especially when using SIP. According the to the analysis with application verifyier there is a heap link in rtcdllmedia.dll. All of the unreleased chunks seem to have a size of 6560 bytes. A: I will follow up with the Networking Team for a response. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 13:1]: Q: Hi, we've problems with debugging of applications (= breakpoints in Platform Builder will be ignored) over KITL on Windows CE 5.0, if the PDB files are large (over 60MB). Are there any limitations to size of the PDB files? A: I will follow up with the tools team for a response and post with the transcript. Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 13:1]: Q: I am unable to use the target control in my development environment. any ideas? A: Make sure you have SYSGEN_SHELL=1 set in your build environment. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 13:3]: Q: what are the main differences between Object Store and RAM disk ? They are both in RAM...are there performance differences ? access differences ? A: I will follow up with the Core Team and get a response posted with the transcript to MSDN  The Questions   [2010-3-30 12:57]: Thanks for the info Pev. I will follow up with the CETK experts here and get back to you. [2010-3-30 12:59]:   [2010-3-30 13:0]:   [2010-3-30 13:0]: Hello everyone, we are just about out of time. Thank you for joining us for our Windows Embedded CE 6.0 chat today! <http://www.Microsoft.com/Embedded>; A special thank you to the product group members for coming out. The transcript of today’s chat will be posted online as soon as possible, to <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats>;. We’ll see you again for another chat next month. Please check <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats>; for the list of upcoming chats. If you still have unanswered questions, let me suggest that you post them on one of our newsgroups on <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsembedded/ce/default.aspx> -Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 Now Available! <http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/ce/dd630616.aspx>; [2010-3-30 13:1]: [2010-3-30 13:1]: [2010-3-30 13:1]: [2010-3-30 13:3]: neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:37]: Hi all KellyG (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:37]: Hi KellyG (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:37]: I have a question unrelated to windows Ce embedded, can you please help me?? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:38]: I need to implement hardware timers on my windows CE 6.0 device to trigger events at microsecond intervals! c neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:38]: yes. post it. May be i cud give a try KellyG (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:38]: My Product key listed on my tower is not the product key I need for microsoft office, but that is the only product key listed. neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:39]: I hope this is a chat for windows embedded. please post ur queries in office forums KellyG (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:39]: it is but i could not find a forum for office neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:40]: I think moderators will help u out. @ davbo-msft: can u help this guy? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:41]: Q: I need to implement hardware timers on my windows CE 6.0 device to trigger events at microsecond intervals. Where should i start? davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 11:50]: Our chat today covers the topic of Windows Embedded CE! 1. This chat will last for one hour. During this hour, our Experts will respond to as many questions as they can. Please understand that there may be some questions we cannot respond to due to lack of information or because the information is not yet public. 2. We encourage you to submit questions for our Experts. To do so, type your questions in the send box, select the “ask the Experts” box and click SEND. Questions sent directly to the Guest Chat room will not be answered by the Experts, but we encourage other community members to assist. 3. We ask that you stay on topic for the duration of the chat. This helps the Guests and Experts follow the conversation more easily. We invite you to ask off topic questions after this chat is over, but not during. 4. Please abide by the Chat Code of Conduct. Chat code of conduct: <http://msdn.microsoft.com/chats/chatroom.aspx?ctl=hlp#Conduct>; Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:54]: Evening! davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 11:54]: Hello everyone this is Dave Boyce - I worked in the Multimedia area for Windows CE. neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:55]: hello dave neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:55]: The chat code of conduct link is not working! Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:56]: Best be polite just in case then ;-) neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:56]: davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 11:57]: I'll check out the issue w/ the link paolopat (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:0]: Hello davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:0]: We are pleased to welcome our Experts for today’s chat. I will have them introduce themselves now. Chat will begin in a couple of minutes. <http://www.Microsoft.com/Embedded>; paolopat (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:3]: Hello Experts ! neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:3]: Welcome all! paolopat (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:3]: Q: I want to partition my NAND Flash device. One partition to use for hive ragistry and the other for the apps and data. The only way to do it is programmatically or setting some registry values ? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:3]: Q: I need to implement hardware timers on my windows CE 6.0 device to trigger events at microsecond intervals. Where should i start? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:5]: Q: My CPU is Intel celeron M processor 1Ghz. Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:5]: neo: if your silicon has multiple general purpose timers, pick one that's not in use for the system timer / profiler and set it up to trigger irqs for your purpose. You can't guarantee hard realtime type responses though... GarySwalling (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:5]: Q: Is Windows Phone 7 related to Windows CE? If so, can you tell me what version of Windows CE is the basis? Is it in fact the new version of Windows Mobile? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:6]: Q: Hi guys, what's the formal way to report bugs back to the core team / product team? The mechanism of calling the support phone number every time is really onerous and time-consuming. Is there another mechanism? paolopat (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:6]: Q: But the operation for creating the partitions ? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:6]: Q: If i need to implement it using interrupt handlers, What are all the files that I should look at? GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:6]: Q: I would like to get a handle to a Silverlight screen section, is that possiable? Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:7]: Q: I created a OS design with KITL and kernel debugger enabled. But I am unable to connect to the target for debugging. I am getting the following error when i try to connect with the device. PB Debugger Cannot initialize the Kernel Debugger. PB Debugger Debugger could not initialize connection. PB Debugger The Kernel Debugger is waiting to connect with target. PB Debugger The Kernel Debugger has been disconnected successfully. Charles (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:7]: What will be different in Windows Compact 7 from CE 6.0? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:8]: Can I have the book's name please? kiefs_dev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:8]: Q: hi everybody. I would like to know if there is something know about a bug in RTC API (VOIP), especially when using SIP. According the to the analysis with application verifyier there is a heap link in rtcdllmedia.dll. All of the unreleased chunks seem to have a size of 6560 bytes. paolopat (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:10]: Q: So...I have to modify file system code to create 2 partition at system startup ?!! I haven't understood.... neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:10]: Q: Do u mean ISR/IST implementation? How can i register an interrupt? What kind of interrupt should i register? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:11]: Q: Can I have the book's name please? Charles (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:11]: Q: What will be different in Windows Compact 7 from CE 6.0? PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:11]: neo: I'd say that you really need the docs for YOUR BSP, not generic documents for BSPs in general. Each BSP may be architected differently. If you're using the CEPC BSP, then the documentation that comes with Platform Builder is a reasonable place to look. GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:11]: Q: If one has an image on a Silverlight page, it seems to be cached. How would one refresh that cache after changing the underlying image? Elektrobit (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:12]: Q: Hi, we've problems with debugging of applications (= breakpoints in Platform Builder will be ignored) over KITL on Windows CE 5.0, if the PDB files are large (over 60MB). Are there any limitations to size of the PDB files? Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:15]: Q: I am using CE 6.0. There is no cesvchost process running in my system. alexquisi (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:15]: Q: Hi, I saw that the ATADISK is quite generic and des not have any optimizations. Do you have any advice to consider while tryin to improve the performance of it? Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:17]: Windows XP service pack 1 Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:17]: Q: sorry! Windows XP SP3 neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:19]: Q: The link for developing device drivers is not working. can u please check that? paolopat (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:20]: Q: I have a NAND Flash on my target device. On this flash I have the hive registry and an application.I have observed that when the NAND flash is fully, the system startup time is longer....is there a degradation of NAND use that influences the startup time ? Why ? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:20]: Q: When attempting to run the CETK cellcore tests the documentation states the pre-requisites include "stinger.ini", "ltk.ini" but windows CE doesn't provide these or document what they fully need to contain. Implicitly you also need "datatrans.xml" which isn't supplied. If you get around this error and steal these from Windows Mobile instead, when you try and run the CETK tests you get a data abort in radiometricsdll.dll. How should we invoke the cellcore parts of CETK? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:21]: Hi all, Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:21]: oops Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:21]: :-D Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:24]: Typically for SoC devices you name your hardware specific libraries in the form "SOCDIRNAME_LIBNAME". In our platform "OMAP35XX_TPS659XX_TI_V1" if you do this we cause the catalog parser to die... For example if we have a library "Musbfn_OMAP35XX_TPS659XX_TI_V1.dll" entering this in the catalogs pbcxml file in a <module> section causes the XML parser to fail with : Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:25]: Q: Error 3 The 'urn:Microsoft.PlatformBuilder/Catalog:Module' element is        invalid - The value '012345678901234567890123456789.dll' is invalid         according to its datatype         'urn:Microsoft.PlatformBuilder/Catalog:CatalogFileName' - The actual         length is greater than the MaxLength value. GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:25]: Q: Writable bitmap, is there an example of the syntax? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:25]: Q: Typically for SoC devices you name your hardware specific libraries in the form "SOCDIRNAME_LIBNAME". In our platform "OMAP35XX_TPS659XX_TI_V1" if you do this we cause the catalog parser to die... For example if we have a library "Musbfn_OMAP35XX_TPS659XX_TI_V1.dll" entering this in the catalogs pbcxml file in a <module> section causes the XML parser to fail with : Error 3 The 'urn:Microsoft.PlatformBuilder/Catalog:Module' element is        invalid - The value '012345678901234567890123456789.dll' is invalid         according to its datatype         'urn:Microsoft.PlatformBuilder/Catalog:CatalogFileName' - The actual         length is greater than the MaxLength value. Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:25]: sorry, messed up submission there! GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:26]: Q: I would like to get a handle to a Silverlight screen section, is that possiable? GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:28]: Q: IXRVisualHost::GetHWND() exactly what I needed Thanks, PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:29]: GPM: You don't have to keep submitting the questions. The chat experts have an application that they're using to follow the chat and all Ask the Experts questions are logged. Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:29]: Q: I am getting this error only when I select the KdStub as the debugger in Target device connectivity. neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:30]: Q: ok. thanks for the book's link Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:31]: Hm, did those two I submitted get picked up by anyone? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:33]: Q: If I select Active KTIL, My OS doesn't boots. It says "loading NK.EXE at 0x<xxxxx> location" after that nothing comes in the debug log. PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:34]: Pev: PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:35]: Pev: I'm sure they did. The guys who are actually on the chat may not be experts in that part of things. That's usually the explanation when you don't get an answer in 10 minutes or so. Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:36]: Ah, fair enough Susie (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:36]: My Outlook Express incoming mail is corrput. No ONE has been able to fix the problem, Dell or Norton. I have dial up I'm in a rural area Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:37]: Q: I have tried that and I am getting the same error. Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:37]: Susie : Use Thunderbird instead :-D PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:37]: Susie: Sorry, but this chat is not about Windows, but Embedded (like what runs on a phone). Your best chance is to find a local expert or talk to your ISP. paolopat (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:37]: Q: what are the main differences between Object Store and RAM disk ? They are both in RAM...are there performance differences ? access differences ? Susie (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:38]: My computer knowlege is very limited, what is Thunderbird? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:38]: A different email client :-D neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:39]: Q: KITL: *** Device Name CEPC56059 *** WARN: KITL will run in polling mode VBridge:: built on [Jul 10 2009] time [10:20:14] VBridgeInit()...TX = [16384] bytes -- Rx = [16384] bytes Tx buffer [0xA1B84860] to [0xA1B88860]. Rx buffer [0xA1B88880] to [0xA1B8C880]. VBridge:: NK add MAC: [0-60-65-2-DA-FB] Connecting to Desktop KITL: Connected host IP: 1 Port: 1086 .. this is the output of the serial debug Susie (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:39]: Do I need to uninstall Outlook Express youngboyzie (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:39]: I need to start battery calibration for my new battery for my dell inspiron 1525 laptop and should be able to reach the BIOS screen by hitting f2 but this isnt working... help? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:39]: Nah, you can run it instead - you'll still need help from your ISP to configure it I expect Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:39]: Q: Both is happening via Ethernet. PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:40]: youngboyzie: You're off-topic. This is not a general chat for Windows and certainly not for Dell. You'll have to ask Dell how to get to setup; it's their machine. bill (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:41]: I lost spell check, how can i get et back neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:42]: Q: I didn't do that. I have to try. Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:43]: Q: Ok. I will do it then. bill (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:43]: Q: I lost spell check, how can i get it back PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:44]: bill: This isn't a general Windows chat. There are some Web forums that you might try. GarySwalling (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:45]: Q: Thanks, I found the Phone 7 presentation at http://live.visitmix.com/MIX10/Sessions/CL13 GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:45]: Q: Is the Silverlight Animation "Spline" a BezierSpline? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:46]: Q: ok. I'll do it. thanks Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:46]: Whowever was asking about KITL connection : I've had this loads in the past. I think I started debugging last time by using wireshark to see what was happening on the network then setting up the OAL_ETHER and OAL_FUNC and OAL_VERBOSE as well as OAL_KITL flags to see what was actually happening in the driver.... Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:47]: I'd generally make sure that you're testing though a 10baseT hub (instead of anything faster) and forcing Active KITL in polled mode too... neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:48]: Q: I disabled the firewall in my PC. Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:50]: Q: I've got a platform (not developed by myself) where I2C bus support has to be provided through the OAL as the kernel needs to talk to devices such as the power management IC and gas gauge so a 'proper' I2C driver hanging off device manager isn't possible. This happens to be a polled driver, so obviously it hits the system hard when either under lots of traffic or an error condition occurs and the driver constantly polls. I originally thought that there was no straightforward way to make such code interrupt driven in the kernel (as it's a cludge) but I realised that that's exactly what ETHDBG drivers do. Is there any reason why I shouldn't have a go at implementing a similar mechanism for our kernel resident I2C driver? If not, are there any obvious pitfalls - I've not seen any other BSP's do this in the past... neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:51]: Q: I don't see a kitlcore.dll in my OS. is my debug image fails to load because of that? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:52]: Q: Hi masatos, I'm using Windows Embedded CE 6.0 with R3 and patched to feb 2010's QFE's (with it's associated CETK version) this is a machine with only CE 6.0 on (no conflicts with earlier CE or WM...) neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:54]: ok. Got it neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:54]: Q: ok. Got it Roundman (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:55]: Q: I am having trouble with my mouse, I have the microsoft wireless mobile mouse 3000, when I push the scroll button I am suppose to have autoscroll instead it shows other web pages,Can you help me out tell me what to do!!! Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:55]: Hey neo, debugging kitl issues is really frustrating but dont lose heart :-) neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:55]: @ pev : u fixed the problem of KITL after that? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:56]: I am getting the same error again and again. I even cleaned my environment and tried in a fresh PC. But didn't succeed yet Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:56]: Well, eventually - my experiences probably won't help you as different platforms have different reasons for doing that neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:56]: I think so PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:58]: neo: Have you searched the old messages in microsoft.public.windowsce.platbuilder? It seems to me that there was a packet size situation where it was possible to have problems with KITL connections based on a setting on the PC. Google Groups, groups.google.com, Advanced Groups Search will allow you to search a single newsgroup or a set of newsgroups easily. GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:58]: Q: Spline- bad link PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:58]: GPM: without the > at the end does it work? It seems to for me... neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:58]: But some times if i try to connect to the device again. The Image information is seen in the serial debug. what does that mean?Download BIN file information: ----------------------------------------------------- [0]: Base Address=0x220000 Length=0x18DAADC Received a broadcast message !CheckUDP: Not UDP (proto = 0x00000001) after this i am getting the old errors. PB debugger cannot initialize ... GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:59]: Q: Sorry, got to tirm the ">" neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:59]: ok paul. I ll look into that. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 13:0]: Hello everyone, we are just about out of time. Thank you for joining us for our Windows Embedded CE 6.0 chat today! <http://www.Microsoft.com/Embedded>; A special thank you to the product group members for coming out. The transcript of today’s chat will be posted online as soon as possible, to <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats>;. We’ll see you again for another chat next month. Please check <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats>; for the list of upcoming chats. If you still have unanswered questions, let me suggest that you post them on one of our newsgroups on <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsembedded/ce/default.aspx> -Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 Now Available! <http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/ce/dd630616.aspx>; neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 13:1]: Q: I am unable to use the target control in my development environment. any ideas? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 13:1]: Sure, if KITL isn't connected target control won't work as it runs over kitl... neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 13:1]: ok .thanks pev neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 13:2]: yes. sysgen_shell is set to 1 neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 13:2]: Q: yes. sysgen_shell is set to 1 Marcelovk (Guest)[2010-3-30 13:2]: Q: Is there any way to extract the default command lines of the tests in CETK? I want to have it running unconnected from the desktop.   Copyright © 2010 – Bruce Eitman All Rights Reserved

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