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• Using SQL Source Control with Fortress or Vault &ndash; Part 1

  - by AjarnMark

  I am fanatical when it comes to managing the source code for my company.  Everything that we build (in source form) gets put into our source control management system.  And I’m not just talking about the UI and middle-tier code written in C# and ASP.NET, but also the back-end database stuff, which at times has been a pain.  We even script out our Scheduled Jobs and keep a copy of those under source control. The UI and middle-tier stuff has long been easy to manage as we mostly use Visual Studio which has integration with source control systems built in.  But the SQL code has been a little harder to deal with.  I have been doing this for many years, well before Microsoft came up with Data Dude, so I had already established a methodology that, while not as smooth as VS, nonetheless let me keep things well controlled, and allowed doing my database development in my tool of choice, Query Analyzer in days gone by, and now SQL Server Management Studio.  It just makes sense to me that if I’m going to do database development, let’s use the database tool set.  (Although, I have to admit I was pretty impressed with the demo of Juneau that Don Box did at the PASS Summit this year.)  So as I was saying, I had developed a methodology that worked well for us (and I’ll probably outline in a future post) but it could use some improvement. When Solutions and Projects were first introduced in SQL Management Studio, I thought we were finally going to get our same experience that we have in Visual Studio.  Well, let’s say I was underwhelmed by Version 1 in SQL 2005, and apparently so were enough other people that by the time SQL 2008 came out, Microsoft decided that Solutions and Projects would be deprecated and completely removed from a future version.  So much for that idea. Then I came across SQL Source Control from Red-Gate.  I have used several tools from Red-Gate in the past, including my favorites SQL Compare, SQL Prompt, and SQL Refactor.  SQL Prompt is worth its weight in gold, and the others are great, too.  Earlier this year, we upgraded from our earlier product bundles to the new Developer Bundle, and in the process added SQL Source Control to our collection.  I thought this might really be the golden ticket I was looking for.  But my hopes were quickly dashed when I discovered that it only integrated with Microsoft Team Foundation Server and Subversion as the source code repositories.  We have been using SourceGear’s Vault and Fortress products for years, and I wholeheartedly endorse them.  So I was out of luck for the time being, although there were a number of people voting for Vault/Fortress support on their feedback forum (as did I) so I had hope that maybe next year I could look at it again. But just a couple of weeks ago, I was pleasantly surprised to receive notice in my email that Red-Gate had an Early Access version of SQL Source Control that worked with Vault and Fortress, so I quickly downloaded it and have been putting it through its paces.  So far, I really like what I see, and I have been quite impressed with Red-Gate’s responsiveness when I have contacted them with any issues or concerns that I have had.  I have had several communications with Gyorgy Pocsi at Red-Gate and he has been immensely helpful and responsive. I must say that development with SQL Source Control is very different from what I have been used to.  This post is getting long enough, so I’ll save some of the details for a separate write-up, but the short story is that in my regular mode, it’s all about the script files.  Script files are King and you dare not make a change to the database other than by way of a script file, or you are in deep trouble.  With SQL Source Control, you make your changes to your development database however you like.  I still prefer writing most of my changes in T-SQL, but you can also use any of the GUI functionality of SSMS to make your changes, and SQL Source Control “manages” the script for you.  Basically, when you first link your database to source control, the tool generates scripts for every primary object (tables and their indexes are together in one script, not broken out into separate scripts like DB Projects do) and those scripts are checked into your source control.  So, if you needed to, you could still do a GET from your source control repository and build the database from scratch.  But for the day-to-day work, SQL Source Control uses the same technique as SQL Compare to determine what changes have been made to your development database and how to represent those in your repository scripts.  I think that once I retrain myself to just work in the database and quit worrying about having to find and open the right script file, that this will actually make us more efficient. And for deployment purposes, SQL Source Control integrates with the full SQL Compare utility to produce a synchronization script (or do a live sync).  This is similar in concept to Microsoft’s DACPAC, if you’re familiar with that. If you are not currently keeping your database development efforts under source control, definitely examine this tool.  If you already have a methodology that is working for you, then I still think this is worth a review and comparison to your current approach.  You may find it more efficient.  But remember that the version which integrates with Vault/Fortress is still in pre-release mode, so treat it with a little caution.  I have found it to be fairly stable, but there was one bug that I found which had inconvenient side-effects and could have really been frustrating if I had been running this on my normal active development machine.  However, I can verify that that bug has been fixed in a more recent build version (did I mention Red-Gate’s responsiveness?).

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• Sensible Way to Pass Web Data in XML to a SQL Server Database

  - by Emtucifor

  After exploring several different ways to pass web data to a database for update purposes, I'm wondering if XML might be a good strategy. The database is currently SQL 2000. In a few months it will move to SQL 2005 and I will be able to change things if needed, but I need a SQL 2000 solution now. First of all, the database in question uses the EAV model. I know that this kind of database is generally highly frowned on, so for the purposes of this question, please just accept that this is not going to change. The current update method has the web server inserting values (that have all been converted first to their correct underlying types, then to sql_variant) to a temp table. A stored procedure is then run which expects the temp table to exist and it takes care of updating, inserting, or deleting things as needed. So far, only a single element has needed to be updated at a time. But now, there is a requirement to be able to edit multiple elements at once, and also to support hierarchical elements, each of which can have its own list of attributes. Here's some example XML I hand-typed to demonstrate what I'm thinking of. Note that in this database the Entity is Element and an ID of 0 signifies "create" aka an insert of a new item. <Elements> <Element ID="1234"> <Attr ID="221">Value</Attr> <Attr ID="225">287</Attr> <Attr ID="234"> <Element ID="99825"> <Attr ID="7">Value1</Attr> <Attr ID="8">Value2</Attr> <Attr ID="9" Action="delete" /> </Element> <Element ID="99826" Action="delete" /> <Element ID="0" Type="24"> <Attr ID="7">Value4</Attr> <Attr ID="8">Value5</Attr> <Attr ID="9">Value6</Attr> </Element> <Element ID="0" Type="24"> <Attr ID="7">Value7</Attr> <Attr ID="8">Value8</Attr> <Attr ID="9">Value9</Attr> </Element> </Attr> <Rel ID="3827" Action="delete" /> <Rel ID="2284" Role="parent"> <Element ID="3827" /> <Element ID="3829" /> <Attr ID="665">1</Attr> </Rel> <Rel ID="0" Type="23" Role="child"> <Element ID="3830" /> <Attr ID="67" </Rel> </Element> <Element ID="0" Type="87"> <Attr ID="221">Value</Attr> <Attr ID="225">569</Attr> <Attr ID="234"> <Element ID="0" Type="24"> <Attr ID="7">Value10</Attr> <Attr ID="8">Value11</Attr> <Attr ID="9">Value12</Attr> </Element> </Attr> </Element> <Element ID="1235" Action="delete" /> </Elements> Some Attributes are straight value types, such as AttrID 221. But AttrID 234 is a special "multi-value" type that can have a list of elements underneath it, and each one can have one or more values. Types only need to be presented when a new item is created, since the ElementID fully implies the type if it already exists. I'll probably support only passing in changed items (as detected by javascript). And there may be an Action="Delete" on Attr elements as well, since NULLs are treated as "unselected"--sometimes it's very important to know if a Yes/No question has intentionally been answered No or if no one's bothered to say Yes yet. There is also a different kind of data, a Relationship. At this time, those are updated through individual AJAX calls as things are edited in the UI, but I'd like to include those so that changes to relationships can be canceled (right now, once you change it, it's done). So those are really elements, too, but they are called Rel instead of Element. Relationships are implemented as ElementID1 and ElementID2, so the RelID 2284 in the XML above is in the database as: ElementID 2284 ElementID1 1234 ElementID2 3827 Having multiple children in one relationship isn't currently supported, but it would be nice later. Does this strategy and the example XML make sense? Is there a more sensible way? I'm just looking for some broad critique to help save me from going down a bad path. Any aspect that you'd like to comment on would be helpful. The web language happens to be Classic ASP, but that could change to ASP.Net at some point. A persistence engine like Linq or nHibernate is probably not acceptable right now--I just want to get this already working application enhanced without a huge amount of development time. I'll choose the answer that shows experience and has a balance of good warnings about what not to do, confirmations of what I'm planning to do, and recommendations about something else to do. I'll make it as objective as possible. P.S. I'd like to handle unicode characters as well as very long strings (10k +). UPDATE I have had this working for some time and I used the ADO Recordset Save-To-Stream trick to make creating the XML really easy. The result seems to be fairly fast, though if speed ever becomes a problem I may revisit this. In the meantime, my code works to handle any number of elements and attributes on the page at once, including updating, deleting, and creating new items all in one go. I settled on a scheme like so for all my elements: Existing data elements Example: input name e12345_a678 (element 12345, attribute 678), the input value is the value of the attribute. New elements Javascript copies a hidden template of the set of HTML elements needed for the type into the correct location on the page, increments a counter to get a new ID for this item, and prepends the number to the names of the form items. var newid = 0; function metadataAdd(reference, nameid, value) { var t = document.createElement('input'); t.setAttribute('name', nameid); t.setAttribute('id', nameid); t.setAttribute('type', 'hidden'); t.setAttribute('value', value); reference.appendChild(t); } function multiAdd(target, parentelementid, attrid, elementtypeid) { var proto = document.getElementById('a' + attrid + '_proto'); var instance = document.createElement('p'); target.parentNode.parentNode.insertBefore(instance, target.parentNode); var thisid = ++newid; instance.innerHTML = proto.innerHTML.replace(/{prefix}/g, 'n' + thisid + '_'); instance.id = 'n' + thisid; instance.className += ' new'; metadataAdd(instance, 'n' + thisid + '_p', parentelementid); metadataAdd(instance, 'n' + thisid + '_c', attrid); metadataAdd(instance, 'n' + thisid + '_t', elementtypeid); return false; } Example: Template input name _a678 becomes n1_a678 (a new element, the first one on the page, attribute 678). all attributes of this new element are tagged with the same prefix of n1. The next new item will be n2, and so on. Some hidden form inputs are created: n1_t, value is the elementtype of the element to be created n1_p, value is the parent id of the element (if it is a relationship) n1_c, value is the child id of the element (if it is a relationship) Deleting elements A hidden input is created in the form e12345_t with value set to 0. The existing controls displaying that attribute's values are disabled so they are not included in the form post. So "set type to 0" is treated as delete. With this scheme, every item on the page has a unique name and can be distinguished properly, and every action can be represented properly. When the form is posted, here's a sample of building one of the two recordsets used (classic ASP code): Set Data = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Recordset") Data.Fields.Append "ElementID", adInteger, 4, adFldKeyColumn Data.Fields.Append "AttrID", adInteger, 4, adFldKeyColumn Data.Fields.Append "Value", adLongVarWChar, 2147483647, adFldIsNullable Or adFldMayBeNull Data.CursorLocation = adUseClient Data.CursorType = adOpenDynamic Data.Open This is the recordset for values, the other is for the elements themselves. I step through the posted form and for the element recordset use a Scripting.Dictionary populated with instances of a custom Class that has the properties I need, so that I can add the values piecemeal, since they don't always come in order. New elements are added as negative to distinguish them from regular elements (rather than requiring a separate column to indicate if it is new or addresses an existing element). I use regular expression to tear apart the form keys: "^(e|n)([0-9]{1,10})_(a|p|t|c)([0-9]{0,10})$" Then, adding an attribute looks like this. Data.AddNew ElementID.Value = DataID AttrID.Value = Integerize(Matches(0).SubMatches(3)) AttrValue.Value = Request.Form(Key) Data.Update ElementID, AttrID, and AttrValue are references to the fields of the recordset. This method is hugely faster than using Data.Fields("ElementID").Value each time. I loop through the Dictionary of element updates and ignore any that don't have all the proper information, adding the good ones to the recordset. Then I call my data-updating stored procedure like so: Set Cmd = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Command") With Cmd Set .ActiveConnection = MyDBConn .CommandType = adCmdStoredProc .CommandText = "DataPost" .Prepared = False .Parameters.Append .CreateParameter("@ElementMetadata", adLongVarWChar, adParamInput, 2147483647, XMLFromRecordset(Element)) .Parameters.Append .CreateParameter("@ElementData", adLongVarWChar, adParamInput, 2147483647, XMLFromRecordset(Data)) End With Result.Open Cmd ' previously created recordset object with options set Here's the function that does the xml conversion: Private Function XMLFromRecordset(Recordset) Dim Stream Set Stream = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Stream") Stream.Open Recordset.Save Stream, adPersistXML Stream.Position = 0 XMLFromRecordset = Stream.ReadText End Function Just in case the web page needs to know, the SP returns a recordset of any new elements, showing their page value and their created value (so I can see that n1 is now e12346 for example). Here are some key snippets from the stored procedure. Note this is SQL 2000 for now, though I'll be able to switch to 2005 soon: CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[DataPost] @ElementMetaData ntext, @ElementData ntext AS DECLARE @hdoc int --- snip --- EXEC sp_xml_preparedocument @hdoc OUTPUT, @ElementMetaData, '<xml xmlns:s="uuid:BDC6E3F0-6DA3-11d1-A2A3-00AA00C14882" xmlns:dt="uuid:C2F41010-65B3-11d1-A29F-00AA00C14882" xmlns:rs="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:rowset" xmlns:z="#RowsetSchema" />' INSERT #ElementMetadata (ElementID, ElementTypeID, ElementID1, ElementID2) SELECT * FROM OPENXML(@hdoc, '/xml/rs:data/rs:insert/z:row', 0) WITH ( ElementID int, ElementTypeID int, ElementID1 int, ElementID2 int ) ORDER BY ElementID -- orders negative items (new elements) first so they begin counting at 1 for later ID calculation EXEC sp_xml_removedocument @hdoc --- snip --- UPDATE E SET E.ElementTypeID = M.ElementTypeID FROM Element E INNER JOIN #ElementMetadata M ON E.ElementID = M.ElementID WHERE E.ElementID >= 1 AND M.ElementTypeID >= 1 The following query does the correlation of the negative new element ids to the newly inserted ones: UPDATE #ElementMetadata -- Correlate the new ElementIDs with the input rows SET NewElementID = Scope_Identity() - @@RowCount + DataID WHERE ElementID < 0 Other set-based queries do all the other work of validating that the attributes are allowed, are the correct data type, and inserting, updating, and deleting elements and attributes. I hope this brief run-down is useful to others some day! Converting ADO Recordsets to an XML stream was a huge winner for me as it saved all sorts of time and had a namespace and schema already defined that made the results come out correctly. Using a flatter XML format with 2 inputs was also much easier than sticking to some ideal about having everything in a single XML stream.

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• Sensible Way to Pass Web Data to Sql Server Database

  - by Emtucifor

  After exploring several different ways to pass web data to a database for update purposes, I'm wondering if XML might be a good strategy. The database is currently SQL 2000. In a few months it will move to SQL 2005 and I will be able to change things if needed, but I need a SQL 2000 solution now. First of all, the database in question uses the EAV model. I know that this kind of database is generally highly frowned on, so for the purposes of this question, please just accept that this is not going to change. The current update method has the web server inserting values (that have all been converted first to their correct underlying types, then to sql_variant) to a temp table. A stored procedure is then run which expects the temp table to exist and it takes care of updating, inserting, or deleting things as needed. So far, only a single element has needed to be updated at a time. But now, there is a requirement to be able to edit multiple elements at once, and also to support hierarchical elements, each of which can have its own list of attributes. Here's some example XML I hand-typed to demonstrate what I'm thinking of. Note that in this database the Entity is Element and an ID of 0 signifies "create" aka an insert of a new item. <Elements> <Element ID="1234"> <Attr ID="221">Value</Attr> <Attr ID="225">287</Attr> <Attr ID="234"> <Element ID="99825"> <Attr ID="7">Value1</Attr> <Attr ID="8">Value2</Attr> <Attr ID="9" Action="delete" /> </Element> <Element ID="99826" Action="delete" /> <Element ID="0" Type="24"> <Attr ID="7">Value4</Attr> <Attr ID="8">Value5</Attr> <Attr ID="9">Value6</Attr> </Element> <Element ID="0" Type="24"> <Attr ID="7">Value7</Attr> <Attr ID="8">Value8</Attr> <Attr ID="9">Value9</Attr> </Element> </Attr> <Rel ID="3827" Action="delete" /> <Rel ID="2284" Role="parent"> <Element ID="3827" /> <Element ID="3829" /> <Attr ID="665">1</Attr> </Rel> <Rel ID="0" Type="23" Role="child"> <Element ID="3830" /> <Attr ID="67" </Rel> </Element> <Element ID="0" Type="87"> <Attr ID="221">Value</Attr> <Attr ID="225">569</Attr> <Attr ID="234"> <Element ID="0" Type="24"> <Attr ID="7">Value10</Attr> <Attr ID="8">Value11</Attr> <Attr ID="9">Value12</Attr> </Element> </Attr> </Element> <Element ID="1235" Action="delete" /> </Elements> Some Attributes are straight value types, such as AttrID 221. But AttrID 234 is a special "multi-value" type that can have a list of elements underneath it, and each one can have one or more values. Types only need to be presented when a new item is created, since the ElementID fully implies the type if it already exists. I'll probably support only passing in changed items (as detected by javascript). And there may be an Action="Delete" on Attr elements as well, since NULLs are treated as "unselected"--sometimes it's very important to know if a Yes/No question has intentionally been answered No or if no one's bothered to say Yes yet. There is also a different kind of data, a Relationship. At this time, those are updated through individual AJAX calls as things are edited in the UI, but I'd like to include those so that changes to relationships can be canceled (right now, once you change it, it's done). So those are really elements, too, but they are called Rel instead of Element. Relationships are implemented as ElementID1 and ElementID2, so the RelID 2284 in the XML above is in the database as: ElementID 2284 ElementID1 1234 ElementID2 3827 Having multiple children in one relationship isn't currently supported, but it would be nice later. Does this strategy and the example XML make sense? Is there a more sensible way? I'm just looking for some broad critique to help save me from going down a bad path. Any aspect that you'd like to comment on would be helpful. The web language happens to be Classic ASP, but that could change to ASP.Net at some point. A persistence engine like Linq or nHibernate is probably not acceptable right now--I just want to get this already working application enhanced without a huge amount of development time. I'll choose the answer that shows experience and has a balance of good warnings about what not to do, confirmations of what I'm planning to do, and recommendations about something else to do. I'll make it as objective as possible. P.S. I'd like to handle unicode characters as well as very long strings (10k +). UPDATE I have had this working for some time and I used the ADO Recordset Save-To-Stream trick to make creating the XML really easy. The result seems to be fairly fast, though if speed ever becomes a problem I may revisit this. In the meantime, my code works to handle any number of elements and attributes on the page at once, including updating, deleting, and creating new items all in one go. I settled on a scheme like so for all my elements: Existing data elements Example: input name e12345_a678 (element 12345, attribute 678), the input value is the value of the attribute. New elements Javascript copies a hidden template of the set of HTML elements needed for the type into the correct location on the page, increments a counter to get a new ID for this item, and prepends the number to the names of the form items. var newid = 0; function metadataAdd(reference, nameid, value) { var t = document.createElement('input'); t.setAttribute('name', nameid); t.setAttribute('id', nameid); t.setAttribute('type', 'hidden'); t.setAttribute('value', value); reference.appendChild(t); } function multiAdd(target, parentelementid, attrid, elementtypeid) { var proto = document.getElementById('a' + attrid + '_proto'); var instance = document.createElement('p'); target.parentNode.parentNode.insertBefore(instance, target.parentNode); var thisid = ++newid; instance.innerHTML = proto.innerHTML.replace(/{prefix}/g, 'n' + thisid + '_'); instance.id = 'n' + thisid; instance.className += ' new'; metadataAdd(instance, 'n' + thisid + '_p', parentelementid); metadataAdd(instance, 'n' + thisid + '_c', attrid); metadataAdd(instance, 'n' + thisid + '_t', elementtypeid); return false; } Example: Template input name _a678 becomes n1_a678 (a new element, the first one on the page, attribute 678). all attributes of this new element are tagged with the same prefix of n1. The next new item will be n2, and so on. Some hidden form inputs are created: n1_t, value is the elementtype of the element to be created n1_p, value is the parent id of the element (if it is a relationship) n1_c, value is the child id of the element (if it is a relationship) Deleting elements A hidden input is created in the form e12345_t with value set to 0. The existing controls displaying that attribute's values are disabled so they are not included in the form post. So "set type to 0" is treated as delete. With this scheme, every item on the page has a unique name and can be distinguished properly, and every action can be represented properly. When the form is posted, here's a sample of building one of the two recordsets used (classic ASP code): Set Data = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Recordset") Data.Fields.Append "ElementID", adInteger, 4, adFldKeyColumn Data.Fields.Append "AttrID", adInteger, 4, adFldKeyColumn Data.Fields.Append "Value", adLongVarWChar, 2147483647, adFldIsNullable Or adFldMayBeNull Data.CursorLocation = adUseClient Data.CursorType = adOpenDynamic Data.Open This is the recordset for values, the other is for the elements themselves. I step through the posted form and for the element recordset use a Scripting.Dictionary populated with instances of a custom Class that has the properties I need, so that I can add the values piecemeal, since they don't always come in order. New elements are added as negative to distinguish them from regular elements (rather than requiring a separate column to indicate if it is new or addresses an existing element). I use regular expression to tear apart the form keys: "^(e|n)([0-9]{1,10})_(a|p|t|c)([0-9]{0,10})$" Then, adding an attribute looks like this. Data.AddNew ElementID.Value = DataID AttrID.Value = Integerize(Matches(0).SubMatches(3)) AttrValue.Value = Request.Form(Key) Data.Update ElementID, AttrID, and AttrValue are references to the fields of the recordset. This method is hugely faster than using Data.Fields("ElementID").Value each time. I loop through the Dictionary of element updates and ignore any that don't have all the proper information, adding the good ones to the recordset. Then I call my data-updating stored procedure like so: Set Cmd = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Command") With Cmd Set .ActiveConnection = MyDBConn .CommandType = adCmdStoredProc .CommandText = "DataPost" .Prepared = False .Parameters.Append .CreateParameter("@ElementMetadata", adLongVarWChar, adParamInput, 2147483647, XMLFromRecordset(Element)) .Parameters.Append .CreateParameter("@ElementData", adLongVarWChar, adParamInput, 2147483647, XMLFromRecordset(Data)) End With Result.Open Cmd ' previously created recordset object with options set Here's the function that does the xml conversion: Private Function XMLFromRecordset(Recordset) Dim Stream Set Stream = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Stream") Stream.Open Recordset.Save Stream, adPersistXML Stream.Position = 0 XMLFromRecordset = Stream.ReadText End Function Just in case the web page needs to know, the SP returns a recordset of any new elements, showing their page value and their created value (so I can see that n1 is now e12346 for example). Here are some key snippets from the stored procedure. Note this is SQL 2000 for now, though I'll be able to switch to 2005 soon: CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[DataPost] @ElementMetaData ntext, @ElementData ntext AS DECLARE @hdoc int --- snip --- EXEC sp_xml_preparedocument @hdoc OUTPUT, @ElementMetaData, '<xml xmlns:s="uuid:BDC6E3F0-6DA3-11d1-A2A3-00AA00C14882" xmlns:dt="uuid:C2F41010-65B3-11d1-A29F-00AA00C14882" xmlns:rs="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:rowset" xmlns:z="#RowsetSchema" />' INSERT #ElementMetadata (ElementID, ElementTypeID, ElementID1, ElementID2) SELECT * FROM OPENXML(@hdoc, '/xml/rs:data/rs:insert/z:row', 0) WITH ( ElementID int, ElementTypeID int, ElementID1 int, ElementID2 int ) ORDER BY ElementID -- orders negative items (new elements) first so they begin counting at 1 for later ID calculation EXEC sp_xml_removedocument @hdoc --- snip --- UPDATE E SET E.ElementTypeID = M.ElementTypeID FROM Element E INNER JOIN #ElementMetadata M ON E.ElementID = M.ElementID WHERE E.ElementID >= 1 AND M.ElementTypeID >= 1 The following query does the correlation of the negative new element ids to the newly inserted ones: UPDATE #ElementMetadata -- Correlate the new ElementIDs with the input rows SET NewElementID = Scope_Identity() - @@RowCount + DataID WHERE ElementID < 0 Other set-based queries do all the other work of validating that the attributes are allowed, are the correct data type, and inserting, updating, and deleting elements and attributes. I hope this brief run-down is useful to others some day! Converting ADO Recordsets to an XML stream was a huge winner for me as it saved all sorts of time and had a namespace and schema already defined that made the results come out correctly. Using a flatter XML format with 2 inputs was also much easier than sticking to some ideal about having everything in a single XML stream.

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• How to create a PeopleCode Application Package/Application Class using PeopleTools Tables

  - by Andreea Vaduva

  This article describes how - in PeopleCode (Release PeopleTools 8.50) - to enable a grid without enabling each static column, using a dynamic Application Class. The goal is to disable the following grid with three columns “Effort Date”, ”Effort Amount” and “Charge Back” , when the Check Box “Finished with task” is selected , without referencing each static column; this PeopleCode could be used dynamically with any grid. If the check box “Finished with task” is cleared, the content of the grid columns is editable (and the buttons “+” and “-“ are available): So, you create an Application Package “CLASS_EXTENSIONS” that contains an Application Class “EWK_ROWSET”. This Application Class is defined with Class extends “ Rowset” and you add two news properties “Enabled” and “Visible”: After creating this Application Class, you use it in two PeopleCode Events : Rowinit and FieldChange : This code is very ‘simple’, you write only one command : ” &ERS2.Enabled = False” → and the entire grid is “Enabled”… and you can use this code with any Grid! So, the complete PeopleCode to create the Application Package is (with explanation in [….]) : ******Package CLASS_EXTENSIONS : [Name of the Package: CLASS_EXTENSIONS] --Beginning of the declaration part------------------------------------------------------------------------------ class EWK_ROWSET extends Rowset; [Definition Class EWK_ROWSET as a subclass of Class Rowset] method EWK_ROWSET(&RS As Rowset); [Constructor is the Method with the same name of the Class] property boolean Visible get set; property boolean Enabled get set; [Definition of the property “Enabled” in read/write] private [Before the word “private”, all the declarations are publics] method SetDisplay(&DisplaySW As boolean, &PropName As string, &ChildSW As boolean); instance boolean &EnSW; instance boolean &VisSW; instance Rowset &NextChildRS; instance Row &NextRow; instance Record &NextRec; instance Field &NextFld; instance integer &RowCnt, &RecCnt, &FldCnt, &ChildRSCnt; instance integer &i, &j, &k; instance CLASS_EXTENSIONS:EWK_ROWSET &ERSChild; [For recursion] Constant &VisibleProperty = "VISIBLE"; Constant &EnabledProperty = "ENABLED"; end-class; --End of the declaration part------------------------------------------------------------------------------ method EWK_ROWSET [The Constructor] /+ &RS as Rowset +/ %Super = &RS; end-method; get Enabled /+ Returns Boolean +/; Return &EnSW; end-get; set Enabled /+ &NewValue as Boolean +/; &EnSW = &NewValue; %This.InsertEnabled=&EnSW; %This.DeleteEnabled=&EnSW; %This.SetDisplay(&EnSW, &EnabledProperty, False); [This method is called when you set this property] end-set; get Visible /+ Returns Boolean +/; Return &VisSW; end-get; set Visible /+ &NewValue as Boolean +/; &VisSW = &NewValue; %This.SetDisplay(&VisSW, &VisibleProperty, False); end-set; method SetDisplay [The most important PeopleCode Method] /+ &DisplaySW as Boolean, +/ /+ &PropName as String, +/ /+ &ChildSW as Boolean +/ [Not used in our example] &RowCnt = %This.ActiveRowCount; &NextRow = %This.GetRow(1); [To know the structure of a line ] &RecCnt = &NextRow.RecordCount; For &i = 1 To &RowCnt [Loop for each Line] &NextRow = %This.GetRow(&i); For &j = 1 To &RecCnt [Loop for each Record] &NextRec = &NextRow.GetRecord(&j); &FldCnt = &NextRec.FieldCount; For &k = 1 To &FldCnt [Loop for each Field/Record] &NextFld = &NextRec.GetField(&k); Evaluate Upper(&PropName) When = &VisibleProperty &NextFld.Visible = &DisplaySW; Break; When = &EnabledProperty; &NextFld.Enabled = &DisplaySW; [Enable each Field/Record] Break; When-Other Error "Invalid display property; Must be either VISIBLE or ENABLED" End-Evaluate; End-For; End-For; If &ChildSW = True Then [If recursion] &ChildRSCnt = &NextRow.ChildCount; For &j = 1 To &ChildRSCnt [Loop for each Rowset child] &NextChildRS = &NextRow.GetRowset(&j); &ERSChild = create CLASS_EXTENSIONS:EWK_ROWSET(&NextChildRS); &ERSChild.SetDisplay(&DisplaySW, &PropName, &ChildSW); [For each Rowset child, call Method SetDisplay with the same parameters used with the Rowset parent] End-For; End-If; End-For; end-method; ******End of the Package CLASS_EXTENSIONS:[Name of the Package: CLASS_EXTENSIONS] About the Author: Pascal Thaler joined Oracle University in 2005 where he is a Senior Instructor. His area of expertise is Oracle Peoplesoft Technology and he delivers the following courses: For Developers: PeopleTools Overview, PeopleTools I &II, Batch Application Engine, Language Oriented Object PeopleCode, Administration Security For Administrators : Server Administration & Installation, Database Upgrade & Data Management Tools For Interface Users: Integration Broker (Web Service)

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• IE9 not rendering box-shadow Elements inside of Table Cells

  - by Rick Strahl

  Ran into an annoying problem today with IE 9. Slowly updating some older sites with CSS 3 tags and for the most part IE9 does a reasonably decent job of working with the new CSS 3 features. Not all by a long shot but at least some of the more useful ones like border-radius and box-shadow are supported. Until today I was happy to see that IE supported box-shadow just fine, but I ran into a problem with some old markup that uses tables for its main layout sections. I found that inside of a table cell IE fails to render a box-shadow. Below are images from Chrome (left) and IE 9 (right) of the same content: The download and purchase images are rendered with: <a href="download.asp" style="display:block;margin: 10px;"><img src="../images/download.gif" class="boxshadow roundbox" /></a> where the .boxshadow and .roundbox styles look like this:.boxshadow { -moz-box-shadow: 3px 3px 5px #535353; -webkit-box-shadow: 3px 3px 5px #535353; box-shadow: 3px 3px 5px #535353; } .roundbox { -moz-border-radius: 6px 6px 6px 6px; -webkit-border-radius: 6px; border-radius: 6px 6px 6px 6px; } And the Problem is… collapsed Table Borders Now normally these two styles work just fine in IE 9 when applied to elements. But the box-shadow doesn't work inside of this markup - because the parent container is a table cell.<td class="sidebar" style="border-collapse: collapse"> … <a href="download.asp" style="display:block;margin: 10px;"><img src="../images/download.gif" class="boxshadow roundbox" /></a> …</td> This HTML causes the image to not show a shadow. In actuality I'm not styling inline, but as part of my browser Reset I have the following in my master .css file:table { border-collapse: collapse; border-spacing: 0; } which has the same effect as the inline style. border-collapse by default inherits from the parent and so the TD inherits from table and tr - so TD tags are effectively collapsed. You can check out a test document that demonstrates this behavior here in this CodePaste.net snippet or run it here. How to work around this Issue To get IE9 to render the shadows inside of the TD tag correctly, I can just change the style explicitly NOT to use border-collapse:<td class="sidebar" style="border-collapse: separate; border-width: 0;"> Or better yet (thanks to David's comment below), you can add the border-collapse: separate to the .boxshadow style like this:.boxshadow { -moz-box-shadow: 3px 3px 5px #535353; -webkit-box-shadow: 3px 3px 5px #535353; box-shadow: 3px 3px 5px #535353; border-collapse: separate; } With either of these approaches IE renders the shadows correctly. Do you really need border-collapse? Should you bother with border-collapse? I think so! Collapsed borders render flat as a single fat line if a border-width and border-color are assigned, while separated borders render a thin line with a bunch of weird white space around it or worse render a old skool 3D raised border which is terribly ugly as well. So as a matter of course in any app my browser Reset includes the above code to make sure all tables with borders render the same flat borders. As you probably know, IE has all sorts of rendering issues in tables and on backgrounds (opacity backgrounds or image backgrounds) most of which is caused by the way that IE internally uses ActiveX filters to apply these effects. Apparently collapsed borders are yet one more item that causes problems with rendering. There you have it. Another crappy failure in IE we have to check for now, just one more reason to hate Internet Explorer. Luckily this one has a reasonably easy workaround. I hope this helps out somebody and saves them the hour I spent trying to figure out what caused this problem in the first place. Resources Sample HTML document that demonstrates the behavior Run the Sample© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in HTML  Internet Explorer   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #053 – Final Post in Series

  - by Pinal Dave

  It has been a fantastic journey to write memory lane series for an entire year. This series gave me the opportunity to go back and see what I have contributed to this blog throughout the last 7 years. This was indeed fantastic series as this provided me the opportunity to witness how technology has grown throughout the year and how I have progressed in my career while writing this blog post. This series was indeed fantastic experience readers as many joined during the last few years and were not sure what they have missed in recent years. Let us continue with the final episode of the Memory Lane Series. Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 Get Current User – Get Logged In User Here is the straight script which list logged in SQL Server users. Disable All Triggers on a Database – Disable All Triggers on All Servers Question : How to disable all the triggers for a database? Additionally, how to disable all the triggers for all servers? For answer execute the script in the blog post. Importance of Master Database for SQL Server Startup I have received following questions many times. I will list all the questions here and answer them together. What is the purpose of Master database? Should our backup Master database? Which database is must have database for SQL Server for startup? Which are the default system database created when SQL Server 2005 is installed for the first time? What happens if Master database is corrupted? Answers to all of the questions are very much related. 2008 DECLARE Multiple Variables in One Statement SQL Server is a great product and it has many features which are very unique to SQL Server. Regarding feature of SQL Server where multiple variable can be declared in one statement, it is absolutely possible to do. 2009 How to Enable Index – How to Disable Index – Incorrect syntax near ‘ENABLE’ Many times I have seen that the index is disabled when there is a large update operation on the table. Bulk insert of very large file updates in any table using SSIS is usually preceded by disabling the index and followed by enabling the index. I have seen many developers running the following query to disable the index. 2010 List of all the Views from Database Many emails I received suggesting that they have hundreds of the view and now have no clue what is going on and how many of them have indexes and how many does not have an index. Some even asked me if there is any way they can get a list of the views with the property of Index along with it. Here is the quick script which does exactly the same. You can also include many other columns from the same view. Minimum Maximum Memory – Server Memory Options I was recently reading about SQL Server Memory Options over here. While reading this one line really caught my attention is minimum value allowed for maximum memory options. The default setting for min server memory is 0, and the default setting for max server memory is 2147483647. The minimum amount of memory you can specify for max server memory is 16 megabytes (MB). 2011 Fundamentals of Columnstore Index There are two kinds of storage in a database. Row Store and Column Store. Row store does exactly as the name suggests – stores rows of data on a page – and column store stores all the data in a column on the same page. These columns are much easier to search – instead of a query searching all the data in an entire row whether the data are relevant or not, column store queries need only to search a much lesser number of the columns. How to Ignore Columnstore Index Usage in Query In summary the question in simple words “How can we ignore using the column store index in selective queries?” Very interesting question – you can use I can understand there may be the cases when the column store index is not ideal and needs to be ignored the same. You can use the query hint IGNORE_NONCLUSTERED_COLUMNSTORE_INDEX to ignore the column store index. The SQL Server Engine will use any other index which is best after ignoring the column store index. 2012 Storing Variable Values in Temporary Array or Temporary List SQL Server does not support arrays or a dynamic length storage mechanism like list. Absolutely there are some clever workarounds and few extra-ordinary solutions but everybody can;t come up with such solution. Additionally, sometime the requirements are very simple that doing extraordinary coding is not required. Here is the simple case. Move Database Files MDF and LDF to Another Location It is not common to keep the Database on the same location where OS is installed. Usually Database files are in SAN, Separate Disk Array or on SSDs. This is done usually for performance reason and manageability perspective. Now the challenges comes up when database which was installed at not preferred default location and needs to move to a different location. Here is the quick tutorial how you can do it. UNION ALL and ORDER BY – How to Order Table Separately While Using UNION ALL If your requirement is such that you want your top and bottom query of the UNION resultset independently sorted but in the same result set you can add an additional static column and order by that column. Let us re-create the same scenario. Copy Data from One Table to Another Table – SQL in Sixty Seconds #031 – Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVWIA-ACMNo Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Problems with opening CHM Help files from Network or Internet

  - by Rick Strahl

  As a publisher of a Help Creation tool called Html Help Help Builder, I’ve seen a lot of problems with help files that won't properly display actual topic content and displays an error message for topics instead. Here’s the scenario: You go ahead and happily build your fancy, schmanzy Help File for your application and deploy it to your customer. Or alternately you've created a help file and you let your customers download them off the Internet directly or in a zip file. The customer downloads the file, opens the zip file and copies the help file contained in the zip file to disk. She then opens the help file and finds the following unfortunate result:     The help file  comes up with all topics in the tree on the left, but a Navigation to the WebPage was cancelled or Operation Aborted error in the Help Viewer's content window whenever you try to open a topic. The CHM file obviously opened since the topic list is there, but the Help Viewer refuses to display the content. Looks like a broken help file, right? But it's not - it's merely a Windows security 'feature' that tries to be overly helpful in protecting you. The reason this happens is because files downloaded off the Internet - including ZIP files and CHM files contained in those zip files - are marked as as coming from the Internet and so can potentially be malicious, so do not get browsing rights on the local machine – they can’t access local Web content, which is exactly what help topics are. If you look at the URL of a help topic you see something like this:   mk:@MSITStore:C:\wwapps\wwIPStuff\wwipstuff.chm::/indexpage.htm which points at a special Microsoft Url Moniker that in turn points the CHM file and a relative path within that HTML help file. Try pasting a URL like this into Internet Explorer and you'll see the help topic pop up in your browser (along with a warning most likely). Although the URL looks weird this still equates to a call to the local computer zone, the same as if you had navigated to a local file in IE which by default is not allowed.  Unfortunately, unlike Internet Explorer where you have the option of clicking a security toolbar, the CHM viewer simply refuses to load the page and you get an error page as shown above. How to Fix This - Unblock the Help File There's a workaround that lets you explicitly 'unblock' a CHM help file. To do this: Open Windows Explorer Find your CHM file Right click and select Properties Click the Unblock button on the General tab Here's what the dialog looks like:   Clicking the Unblock button basically, tells Windows that you approve this Help File and allows topics to be viewed.   Is this insecure? Not unless you're running a really old Version of Windows (XP pre-SP1). In recent versions of Windows Internet Explorer pops up various security dialogs or fires script errors when potentially malicious operations are accessed (like loading Active Controls), so it's relatively safe to run local content in the CHM viewer. Since most help files don't contain script or only load script that runs pure JavaScript access web resources this works fine without issues. How to avoid this Problem As an application developer there's a simple solution around this problem: Always install your Help Files with an Installer. The above security warning pop up because Windows can't validate the source of the CHM file. However, if the help file is installed as part of an installation the installation and all files associated with that installation including the help file are trusted. A fully installed Help File of an application works just fine because it is trusted by Windows. Summary It's annoying as all hell that this sort of obtrusive marking is necessary, but it's admittedly a necessary evil because of Microsoft's use of the insecure Internet Explorer engine that drives the CHM Html Engine's topic viewer. Because help files are viewing local content and script is allowed to execute in CHM files there's potential for malicious code hiding in CHM files and the above precautions are supposed to avoid any issues. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012 Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Do you know your ADF "grace period?"

  - by Chris Muir

  What does the term "support" mean to you in context of vendors such as Oracle giving your organization support with our products? Over the last few weeks I'm taken a straw poll to discuss this very question with customers, and I've received a wide array of answers much to my surprise (which I've paraphrased): "Support means my staff can access dedicated resources to assist them solve problems" "Support means I can call Oracle at anytime to request assistance" "Support means we can expect fixes and patches to bugs in Oracle software" The last expectation is the one I'd like to focus on in this post, keep it in mind while reading this blog. From Oracle's perspective as we're in the business of support, we in fact offer numerous services which are captured on the table in the following page. As the text under the table indicates, you should consult the relevant Oracle Lifetime Support brochures to understand the length of time Oracle will support Oracle products. As I'm a product manager for ADF that sits under the FMW tree of Oracle products, let's consider ADF in particular. The FMW brochure is found here. On page 8 and 9 you'll see the current "Application Development Framework 11gR1 (11.1.1.x)" and "Application Development Framework 11gR2 (11.1.2)" releases are supported out to 2017 for Extended Support. This timeframe is pretty standard for Oracle's current released products, though as new releases roll in we should see those dates extended. On page 8 of the PDF note the comment at the end of this page that refers to the Oracle Support document 209768.1: For more-detailed information on bug fix and patch release policies, please refer to the “Error Correction Support Policy” on MyOracle Support. This policy document is important as it introduces Oracle's Error Correction Support Policy which addresses "patches and fixes". You can find it attached the previous Oracle Support document 209768.1. Broadly speaking while Oracle does provide "generalized support" up to 2017 for ADF, the Error Correction Support Policy dictates when Oracle will provide "patches and fixes" for Oracle software, and this is where the concept of the "grace period" comes in. As Oracle releases different versions of Oracle software, say 11.1.1.4.0, you are fully supported for patches and fixes for that specific version. However when we release the next version, say 11.1.1.5.0, Oracle provides at minimum of 3 months to a maximum of 1 year "grace period" where we'll continue to provide patches and fixes for the previous version. This gives you time to move from 11.1.1.4.0 to 11.1.1.5.0 without being unsupported for patches and fixes. The last paragraph does generalize as I've attempted to highlight the concept of the grace period rather than the specific dates for any version. For specific ADF and FMW versions and their respective grace periods and when they terminated you must visit Oracle Support Note 1290894.1. I'd like to include a screenshot here of the relevant table from that Oracle Support Note but as it is will be frequently updated it's better I force you to visit that note. Be careful to heed the comment in the note: According to policy, the Grace Period has passed because a newer Patch Set has been released for more than a year. Its important to note that the Lifetime Support Policy and Error Correction Support Policy documents are the single source of truth, subject to change, and will provide exceptions when required. This My Oracle Support document is providing a summary of the Grace Period dates and time lines for planning purposes. So remember to return to the policy document for all definitions, note 1290894.1 is a summary only and not guaranteed to be up to date or correct. A last point from Oracle's perspective. Why doesn't Oracle provide patches and fixes for all releases as long as they're supported? Amongst other reasons, it's a matter of practicality. Consider JDeveloper 10.1.3 released in 2005. JDeveloper 10.1.3 is still currently supported to 2017, but since that version was released there has been just under 20 newer releases of JDeveloper. Now multiply that across all Oracle's products and imagine the number of releases Oracle would have to provide fixes and patches for, and maintain environments to test them, build them, staff to write them and more, it's simple beyond the capabilities of even a large software vendor like Oracle. So the "grace period" restricts that patches and fixes window to something manageable. In conclusion does the concept of the "grace period" matter to you? If you define support as "getting assistance from Oracle" then maybe not. But if patches and fixes are important to you, then you need to understand the "grace period" and operate within the bounds of Oracle's Error Correction Support Policy. Disclaimer: this blog post was written July 2012. Oracle Support policies do change from time to time so the emphasis is on you to double check the facts presented in this blog.

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• Books are Dead! Long Live the Books!

  - by smisner

  We live in interesting times with regard to the availability of technical material. We have lots of free written material online in the form of vendor documentation online, forums, blogs, and Twitter. And we have written material that we can buy in the form of books, magazines, and training materials. Online videos and training – some free and some not free – are also an option. All of these formats are useful for one need or another. As an author, I pay particular attention to the demand for books, and for now I see no reason to stop authoring books. I assure you that I don’t get rich from the effort, and fortunately that is not my motivation. As someone who likes to refer to books frequently, I am still a big believer in books and have evidence from book sales that there are others like me. If I can do my part to help others learn about the technologies I work with, I will continue to produce content in a variety of formats, including books. (You can view a list of all of my books on the Publications page of my site and my online training videos at Pluralsight.) As a consumer of technical information, I prefer books because a book typically can get into a topic much more deeply than a blog post, and can provide more context than vendor documentation. It comes with a table of contents and a (hopefully accurate) index that helps me zero in on a topic of interest, and of course I can use the Search feature in digital form. Some people suggest that technology books are outdated as soon as they get published. I guess it depends on where you are with technology. Not everyone is able to upgrade to the latest and greatest version at release. I do assume, however, that the SQL Server 7.0 titles in my library have little value for me now, but I’m certain that the minute I discard the book, I’m going to want it for some reason! Meanwhile, as electronic books overtake physical books in sales, my husband is grateful that I can continue to build my collection digitally rather than physically as the books have a way of taking over significant square footage in our house! Blog posts, on the other hand, are useful for describing the scenarios that come up in real-life implementations that wouldn’t fit neatly into a book. As many years that I have working with the Microsoft BI stack, I still run into new problems that require creative thinking. Likewise, people who work with BI and other technologies that I use share what they learn through their blogs. Internet search engines help us find information in blogs that simply isn’t available anywhere else. Another great thing about blogs, also, is the connection to community and the dialog that can ensue between people with common interests. With the trend towards electronic formats for books, I imagine that we’ll see books continue to adapt to incorporate different forms of media and better ways to keep the information current. At the moment, I wish I had a better way to help readers with my last two Reporting Services books. In the case of the Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 Reporting Services Step by Step book, I have heard many cases of readers having problems with the sample database that shipped on CD – either the database was missing or it was corrupt. So I’ve provided a copy of the database on my site for download from http://datainspirations.com/uploads/rs2005sbsDW.zip. Then for the Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2008 Reporting Services Step by Step book, we decided to avoid the database problem by using the AdventureWorks2008 samples that Microsoft published on Codeplex (although code samples are still available on CD). We had this silly idea that the URL for the download would remain constant, but it seems that expectation was ill-founded. Currently, the sample database is found at http://msftdbprodsamples.codeplex.com/releases/view/37109 but I have no idea how long that will remain valid. My latest books (#9 and #10 which are milestones I never anticipated), Building Integrated Business Intelligence Solutions with SQL Server 2008 R2 and Office 2010 (McGraw Hill, 2011) and Business Intelligence in Microsoft SharePoint 2010 (Microsoft Press, 2011), will not ship with a CD, but will provide all code samples for download at a site maintained by the respective publishers. I expect that the URLs for the downloads for the book will remain valid, but there are lots of references to other sites that can change or disappear over time. Does that mean authors shouldn’t make reference to such sites? Personally, I think the benefits to be gained from including links are greater than the risks of the links becoming invalid at some point. Do you think the time for technology books has come to an end? Is the delivery of books in electronic format enough to keep them alive? If technological barriers were no object, what would make a book more valuable to you than other formats through which you can obtain information?

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• Five development tools I can't live without

  - by bconlon

  When applying to join Geeks with Blogs I had to specify the development tools I use every day. That got me thinking, it's taken a long time to whittle my tools of choice down to the selection I use, so it might be worth sharing. Before I begin, I appreciate we all have our preferred development tools, but these are the ones that work for me. Microsoft Visual Studio Microsoft Visual Studio has been my development tool of choice for more years than I care to remember. I first used this when it was Visual C++ 1.5 (hats off to those who started on 1.0) and by 2.2 it had everything I needed from a C++ IDE. Versions 4 and 5 followed and if I had to guess I would expect more Windows applications are written in VC++ 6 and VB6 than any other language. Then came the not so great versions Visual Studio .Net 2002 (7.0) and 2003 (7.1). If I'm honest I was still using v6. 2005 was better and 2008 was simply brilliant. Everything worked, the compiler was super fast and I was happy again...then came 2010...oh dear. 2010 is a big step backwards for me. It's not encouraging for my upcoming WPF exploits that 2010 is fronted in WPF technology, with the forever growing Find/Replace dialog, the issues with C++ intellisense, and the buggy debugger. That said it is still my tool of choice but I hope they sort the issue in SP1. I've tried other IDEs like Visual Age and Eclipse, but for me Visual Studio is the best. A really great tool. Liquid XML Studio XML development is a tricky business. The W3C standards are often difficult to get to the bottom of so it's great to have a graphical tool to help. I first used Liquid Technologies 5 or 6 years back when I needed to process XML data in C++. Their excellent XML Data Binding tool has an easy to use Wizard UI (as compared to Castor or JAXB command line tools) and allows you to generate code from an XML Schema. So instead of having to deal with untyped nodes like with a DOM parser, instead you get an Object Model providing a custom API in C++, C#, VB etc. More recently they developed a graphical XML IDE with XML Editor, XSLT, XQuery debugger and other XML tools. So now I can develop an XML Schema graphically, click a button to generate a Sample XML document, and click another button to run the Wizard to generate code including a Sample Application that will then load my Sample XML document into the generated object model. This is a very cool toolset. Note: XML Data Binding is nothing to do with WPF Data Binding, but I hope to cover both in more detail another time. .Net Reflector Note: I've just noticed that starting form the end of February 2011 this will no longer be a free tool !! .Net Reflector turns .Net byte code back into C# source code. But how can it work this magic? Well the clue is in the name, it uses reflection to inspect a compiled .Net assembly. The assembly is compiled to byte code, it doesn't get compiled to native machine code until its needed using a just-in-time (JIT) compiler. The byte code still has all of the information needed to see classes, variables. methods and properties, so reflector gathers this information and puts it in a handy tree. I have used .Net Reflector for years in order to understand what the .Net Framework is doing as it sometimes has undocumented, quirky features. This really has been invaluable in certain instances and I cannot praise enough kudos on the original developer Lutz Roeder. Smart Assembly In order to stop nosy geeks looking at our code using a tool like .Net Reflector, we need to obfuscate (mess up) the byte code. Smart Assembly is a tool that does this. Again I have used this for a long time. It is very quick and easy to use. Another excellent tool. Coincidentally, .Net Reflector and Smart Assembly are now both owned by Red Gate. Again kudos goes to the original developer Jean-Sebastien Lange. TortoiseSVN SVN (Apache Subversion) is a Source Control System developed as an open source project. TortoiseSVN is a graphical UI wrapper over SVN that hooks into Windows Explorer to enable files to be Updated, Committed, Merged etc. from the right click menu. This is an essential tool for keeping my hard work safe! Many years ago I used Microsoft Source Safe and I disliked CVS type systems. But TortoiseSVN is simply the best source control tool I have ever used. --- So there you have it, my top 5 development tools that I use (nearly) every day and have helped to make my working life a little easier. I'm sure there are other great tools that I wish I used but have never heard of, but if you have not used any of the above, I would suggest you check them out as they are all very, very cool products. #

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• About Solaris 11 and UltraSPARC II/III/IV/IV+

  - by nospam(at)example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp)

  I know that I will get the usual amount of comments like "Oh, Jörg ? you can't be negative about Oracle" for this article. However as usual I want to explain the logic behind my reasoning. Yes ? I know that there is a lot of UltraSPARC III, IV and IV+ gear out there. But there are some very basic questions: Does your application you are currently running on this gear stops running just because you can't run Solaris 11 on it? What is the need to upgrade a system already in production to Solaris 11? I have the impression, that some people think that the systems get useless in the moment Oracle releases Solaris 11. I know that Sun sold UltraSPARC IV+ systems until 2009. The Sun SF490 introduced 2004 for example, that was a Sun SF480 with UltraSPARC IV and later with UltraSPARC IV+. And yes, Sun made some speedbumps. At that time the systems of the UltraSPARC III to IV+ generations were supported on Solaris 8, on Solaris 9 and on Solaris 10. However from my perspective we sold them to customers, which weren't able to migrate to Solaris 10 because they used applications not supported on Solaris 9 or who just didn't wanted to migrate to Solaris 10. Believe it or not ? I personally know two customers that migrated core systems to Solaris 10 in ? well 2008/9. This was especially true when the M3000 was announced in 2008 when it closed the darned single socket gap. It may be different at you site, however that's what I remember about that time when talking with customers. At first: Just because there is no Solaris 11 for UltraSPARC III, IV and IV+, it doesn't mean that Solaris 10 will go away anytime soon. I just want to point you to "Expect Lifetime Support - Hardware and Operating Systems". It states about Premier Support:Maintenance and software upgrades are included for Oracle operating systems and Oracle VM for a minimum of eight years from the general availability date.GA for Solaris 10 was in 2005. Plus 8 years ? 2013 ? at minimum. Then you can still opt for 3 years of "Extended Support" ? 2016 ? at minimum. 2016 your systems purchased in 2009 are 7 years old. Even on systems purchased at the very end of the lifetime of that system generation. That are the rules as written in the linked document. I said minimum The actual dates are even further in the future: Premier Support for Solaris 10 ends in 2015, Extended support ends 2018. Sustaining support ? indefinite. You will find this in the document "Oracle Lifetime Support Policy: Oracle Hardware and Operating Systems".So I don't understand when some people write, that Oracle is less protective about hardware investments than Sun. And for hardware it's the same as with Sun: Service 5 years after EOL as part of Premier Support. I would like to write about a different perspective as well: I have to be a little cautious here, because this is going in the roadmap area, so I will mention the public sources here: John Fowler told last year that we have to expect at at least 3x the single thread performance of T3 for T4. We have 8 cores in T4, as stated by Rick Hetherington. Let's assume for a moment that a T4 core will have the performance of a UltraSPARC core (just to simplify math and not to disclosing anything about the performance, all existing SPARC cores are considered equal). So given this pieces of information, you could consolidate 8 V215, 4 or 8 V245, 2 full blown V445,2 full blown 490, 2 full blown M3000 on a single T4 SPARC processor. The Fowler roadmap prezo talked about 4-socket systems with T4. So 32 V215, 16 to 8 V245, 8 fullblown V445, 8 full blown V490, 8 full blown M3000 in a system image. I think you get the idea. That said, most of the systems we are talking about have already amortized and perhaps it's just time to invest in new systems to yield other advantages like reduced space consumptions, like reduced power consumption, like some of the neat features sun4v gives you, and yes ? reduced number of processor licenses for Oracle and less money for Oracle HW/SW support. As much as I dislike it myself that my own UltraSPARC III and UltraSPARC II based systems won't run on Solaris 11 (and I have quite a few of them in my personal lab), I really think that the impact on production environments will be much less than most people think now. By the way: The reason for this move is a quite significant new feature. I will tell you that it was this feature, when it's out. I assume, telling just a word more could lead to much more time to blog.

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• XmlWriter and lower ASCII characters

  - by Rick Strahl

  Ran into an interesting problem today on my CodePaste.net site: The main RSS and ATOM feeds on the site were broken because one code snippet on the site contained a lower ASCII character (CHR(3)). I don't think this was done on purpose but it was enough to make the feeds fail. After quite a bit of debugging and throwing in a custom error handler into my actual feed generation code that just spit out the raw error instead of running it through the ASP.NET MVC and my own error pipeline I found the actual error. The lovely base exception and error trace I got looked like this: Error: '', hexadecimal value 0x03, is an invalid character. at System.Xml.XmlUtf8RawTextWriter.InvalidXmlChar(Int32 ch, Byte* pDst, Boolean entitize)at System.Xml.XmlUtf8RawTextWriter.WriteElementTextBlock(Char* pSrc, Char* pSrcEnd)at System.Xml.XmlUtf8RawTextWriter.WriteString(String text)at System.Xml.XmlWellFormedWriter.WriteString(String text)at System.Xml.XmlWriter.WriteElementString(String localName, String ns, String value)at System.ServiceModel.Syndication.Rss20FeedFormatter.WriteItemContents(XmlWriter writer, SyndicationItem item, Uri feedBaseUri)at System.ServiceModel.Syndication.Rss20FeedFormatter.WriteItem(XmlWriter writer, SyndicationItem item, Uri feedBaseUri)at System.ServiceModel.Syndication.Rss20FeedFormatter.WriteItems(XmlWriter writer, IEnumerable`1 items, Uri feedBaseUri)at System.ServiceModel.Syndication.Rss20FeedFormatter.WriteFeed(XmlWriter writer)at System.ServiceModel.Syndication.Rss20FeedFormatter.WriteTo(XmlWriter writer)at CodePasteMvc.Controllers.ApiControllerBase.GetFeed(Object instance) in C:\Projects2010\CodePaste\CodePasteMvc\Controllers\ApiControllerBase.cs:line 131 XML doesn't like extended ASCII Characters It turns out the issue is that XML in general does not deal well with lower ASCII characters. According to the XML spec it looks like any characters below 0x09 are invalid. If you generate an XML document in .NET with an embedded &#x3; entity (as mine did to create the error above), you tend to get an XML document error when displaying it in a viewer. For example, here's what the result of my  feed output looks like with the invalid character embedded inside of Chrome which displays RSS feeds as raw XML by default: Other browsers show similar error messages. The nice thing about Chrome is that you can actually view source and jump down to see the line that causes the error which allowed me to track down the actual message that failed. If you create an XML document that contains a 0x03 character the XML writer fails outright with the error: '', hexadecimal value 0x03, is an invalid character. The good news is that this behavior is overridable so XML output can at least be created by using the XmlSettings object when configuring the XmlWriter instance. In my RSS configuration code this looks something like this:MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(); var settings = new XmlWriterSettings() { CheckCharacters = false }; XmlWriter writer = XmlWriter.Create(ms,settings); and voila the feed now generates. Now generally this is probably NOT a good idea, because as mentioned above these characters are illegal and if you view a raw XML document you'll get validation errors. Luckily though most RSS feed readers however don't care and happily accept and display the feed correctly, which is good because it got me over an embarrassing hump until I figured out a better solution. How to handle extended Characters? I was glad to get the feed fixed for the time being, but now I was still stuck with an interesting dilemma. CodePaste.net accepts user input for code snippets and those code snippets can contain just about anything. This means that ASP.NET's standard request filtering cannot be applied to this content. The code content displayed is encoded before display so for the HTML end the CHR(3) input is not really an issue. While invisible characters are hardly useful in user input it's not uncommon that odd characters show up in code snippets. You know the old fat fingering that happens when you're in the middle of a coding session and those invisible characters do end up sometimes in code editors and then end up pasted into the HTML textbox for pasting as a Codepaste.net snippet. The question is how to filter this text? Looking back at the XML Charset Spec it looks like all characters below 0x20 (space) except for 0x09 (tab), 0x0A (LF), 0x0D (CR) are illegal. So applying the following filter with a RegEx should work to remove invalid characters:string code = Regex.Replace(item.Code, @"[\u0000-\u0008,\u000B,\u000C,\u000E-\u001F]", ""); Applying this RegEx to the code snippet (and title) eliminates the problems and the feed renders cleanly.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in .NET  XML   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Solaris 11.2: Functional Deprecation

  - by alanc

  In Solaris 11.1, I updated the system headers to enable use of several attributes on functions, including noreturn and printf format, to give compilers and static analyzers more information about how they are used to give better warnings when building code. In Solaris 11.2, I've gone back in and added one more attribute to a number of functions in the system headers: __attribute__((__deprecated__)). This is used to warn people building software that they’re using function calls we recommend no longer be used. While in many cases the Solaris Binary Compatibility Guarantee means we won't ever remove these functions from the system libraries, we still want to discourage their use. I made passes through both the POSIX and C standards, and some of the Solaris architecture review cases to come up with an initial list which the Solaris architecture review committee accepted to start with. This set is by no means a complete list of Obsolete function interfaces, but should be a reasonable start at functions that are well documented as deprecated and seem useful to warn developers away from. More functions may be flagged in the future as they get deprecated, or if further passes are made through our existing deprecated functions to flag more of them. Header Interface Deprecated by Alternative Documented in <door.h> door_cred(3C) PSARC/2002/188 door_ucred(3C) door_cred(3C) <kvm.h> kvm_read(3KVM), kvm_write(3KVM) PSARC/1995/186 Functions on kvm_kread(3KVM) man page kvm_read(3KVM) <stdio.h> gets(3C) ISO C99 TC3 (Removed in ISO C11), POSIX:2008/XPG7/Unix08 fgets(3C) gets(3C) man page, and just about every gets(3C) reference online from the past 25 years, since the Morris worm proved bad things happen when it’s used. <unistd.h> vfork(2) PSARC/2004/760, POSIX:2001/XPG6/Unix03 (Removed in POSIX:2008/XPG7/Unix08) posix_spawn(3C) vfork(2) man page. <utmp.h> All functions from getutent(3C) man page PSARC/1999/103 utmpx functions from getutentx(3C) man page getutent(3C) man page <varargs.h> varargs.h version of va_list typedef ANSI/ISO C89 standard <stdarg.h> varargs(3EXT) <volmgt.h> All functions PSARC/2005/672 hal(5) API volmgt_check(3VOLMGT), etc. <sys/nvpair.h> nvlist_add_boolean(3NVPAIR), nvlist_lookup_boolean(3NVPAIR) PSARC/2003/587 nvlist_add_boolean_value, nvlist_lookup_boolean_value nvlist_add_boolean(3NVPAIR) & (9F), nvlist_lookup_boolean(3NVPAIR) & (9F). <sys/processor.h> gethomelgroup(3C) PSARC/2003/034 lgrp_home(3LGRP) gethomelgroup(3C) <sys/stat_impl.h> _fxstat, _xstat, _lxstat, _xmknod PSARC/2009/657 stat(2) old functions are undocumented remains of SVR3/COFF compatibility support If the above table is cut off when viewing in the blog, try viewing this standalone copy of the table. To See or Not To See To see these warnings, you will need to be building with either gcc (versions 3.4, 4.5, 4.7, & 4.8 are available in the 11.2 package repo), or with Oracle Solaris Studio 12.4 or later (which like Solaris 11.2, is currently in beta testing). For instance, take this oversimplified (and obviously buggy) implementation of the cat command: #include <stdio.h> int main(int argc, char **argv) { char buf[80]; while (gets(buf) != NULL) puts(buf); return 0; } Compiling it with the Studio 12.4 beta compiler will produce warnings such as: % cc -V cc: Sun C 5.13 SunOS_i386 Beta 2014/03/11 % cc gets_test.c "gets_test.c", line 6: warning: "gets" is deprecated, declared in : "/usr/include/iso/stdio_iso.h", line 221 The exact warning given varies by compilers, and the compilers also have a variety of flags to either raise the warnings to errors, or silence them. Of couse, the exact form of the output is Not An Interface that can be relied on for automated parsing, just shown for example. gets(3C) is actually a special case — as noted above, it is no longer part of the C Standard Library in the C11 standard, so when compiling in C11 mode (i.e. when __STDC_VERSION__ >= 201112L), the <stdio.h> header will not provide a prototype for it, causing the compiler to complain it is unknown: % gcc -std=c11 gets_test.c gets_test.c: In function ‘main’: gets_test.c:6:5: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘gets’ [-Wimplicit-function-declaration] while (gets(buf) != NULL) ^ The gets(3C) function of course is still in libc, so if you ignore the error or provide your own prototype, you can still build code that calls it, you just have to acknowledge you’re taking on the risk of doing so yourself. Solaris Studio 12.4 Beta % cc gets_test.c "gets_test.c", line 6: warning: "gets" is deprecated, declared in : "/usr/include/iso/stdio_iso.h", line 221 % cc -errwarn=E_DEPRECATED_ATT gets_test.c "gets_test.c", line 6: "gets" is deprecated, declared in : "/usr/include/iso/stdio_iso.h", line 221 cc: acomp failed for gets_test.c This warning is silenced in the 12.4 beta by cc -erroff=E_DEPRECATED_ATT No warning is currently issued by Studio 12.3 & earler releases. gcc 3.4.3 % /usr/sfw/bin/gcc gets_test.c gets_test.c: In function `main': gets_test.c:6: warning: `gets' is deprecated (declared at /usr/include/iso/stdio_iso.h:221) Warning is completely silenced with gcc -Wno-deprecated-declarations gcc 4.7.3 % /usr/gcc/4.7/bin/gcc gets_test.c gets_test.c: In function ‘main’: gets_test.c:6:5: warning: ‘gets’ is deprecated (declared at /usr/include/iso/stdio_iso.h:221) [-Wdeprecated-declarations] % /usr/gcc/4.7/bin/gcc -Werror=deprecated-declarations gets_test.c gets_test.c: In function ‘main’: gets_test.c:6:5: error: ‘gets’ is deprecated (declared at /usr/include/iso/stdio_iso.h:221) [-Werror=deprecated-declarations] cc1: some warnings being treated as errors Warning is completely silenced with gcc -Wno-deprecated-declarations gcc 4.8.2 % /usr/bin/gcc gets_test.c gets_test.c: In function ‘main’: gets_test.c:6:5: warning: ‘gets’ is deprecated (declared at /usr/include/iso/stdio_iso.h:221) [-Wdeprecated-declarations] while (gets(buf) != NULL) ^ % /usr/bin/gcc -Werror=deprecated-declarations gets_test.c gets_test.c: In function ‘main’: gets_test.c:6:5: error: ‘gets’ is deprecated (declared at /usr/include/iso/stdio_iso.h:221) [-Werror=deprecated-declarations] while (gets(buf) != NULL) ^ cc1: some warnings being treated as errors Warning is completely silenced with gcc -Wno-deprecated-declarations

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• Is Data Science “Science”?

  - by BuckWoody

  I hold the term “science” in very high esteem. I grew up on the Space Coast in Florida, and eventually worked at the Kennedy Space Center, surrounded by very intelligent people who worked in various scientific fields. Recently a new term has entered the computing dialog – “Data Scientist”. Since it’s not a standard term, it has a lot of definitions, and in fact has been disputed as a correct term. After all, the reasoning goes, if there’s no such thing as “Data Science” then how can there be a Data Scientist? This argument has been made before, albeit with a different term – “Computer Science”. In Peter Denning’s excellent article “Is Computer Science Science” (April  2005/Vol. 48, No. 4 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM) there are many points that separate “science” from “engineering” and even “art”.  I won’t repeat the content of that article here (I recommend you read it on your own) but will leverage the points he makes there. Definition of Science To ask the question “is data science ‘science’” then we need to start with a definition of terms. Various references put the definition into the same basic areas: Study of the physical world Systematic and/or disciplined study of a subject area ...and then they include the things studied, the bodies of knowledge and so on. The word itself comes from Latin, and means merely “to know” or “to study to know”. Greek divides knowledge further into “truth” (episteme), and practical use or effects (tekhne). Normally computing falls into the second realm. Definition of Data Science And now a more controversial definition: Data Science. This term is so new and perhaps so niche that the major dictionaries haven’t yet picked it up (my OED reference is older – can’t afford to pop for the online registration at present). Researching the term's general use I created an amalgam of the definitions this way: “Studying and applying mathematical and other techniques to derive information from complex data sets.” Using this definition, data science certainly seems to be science - it's learning about and studying some object or area using systematic methods. But implicit within the definition is the word “application”, which makes the process more akin to engineering or even technology than science. In fact, I find that using these techniques – and data itself – part of science, not science itself. I leave out the concept of studying data patterns or algorithms as part of this discipline. That is actually a domain I see within research, mathematics or computer science. That of course is a type of science, but does not seek for practical applications. As part of the argument against calling it “Data Science”, some point to the scientific method of creating a hypothesis, testing with controls, testing results against the hypothesis, and documenting for repeatability.  These are not steps that we often take in working with data. We normally start with a question, and fit patterns and algorithms to predict outcomes and find correlations. In this way Data Science is more akin to statistics (and in fact makes heavy use of them) in the process rather than starting with an assumption and following on with it. So, is Data Science “Science”? I’m uncertain – and I’m uncertain it matters. Even if we are facing rampant “title inflation” these days (does anyone introduce themselves as a secretary or supervisor anymore?) I can tolerate the term at least from the intent that we use data to study problems across a wide spectrum, rather than restricting it to a single domain. And I also understand those who have worked hard to achieve the very honorable title of “scientist” who have issues with those who borrow the term without asking. What do you think? Science, or not? Does it matter?

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• Common reasons for the &lsquo;Sys is undefined&rsquo; error in ASP.NET Ajax applications

    In this blog I will try to summarize the most common reasons for getting the famous 'Sys is undefined' error when running an Ajax enabled web site or application (there are almost one milion results on Google for that phrase). Where does it come from? In every Ajax web pages source you will see a code like this: <script type="text/javascript"> //<![CDATA[ Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManager._initialize('ScriptManager1', document.getElementById('form1')); Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManager.getInstance()._updateControls([], [], [], 90); //]]> </script>   This is the initialization script of the ScriptManager. So, if for some reason the Sys namespace is not available when the code executes you get the Sys is undefined error. Here are the most common reasons and solutions for that problem:   1. The error occurs when you have added a control from RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX, but your application is not configured to use ASP.NET AJAX. For example, in VS 2005 you created a new Blank Site instead of a new Ajax-Enabled Web Site and the Sys is undefined message pops up. To fix it you need to follow the steps described at Configuring ASP.NET Ajax article (check the topic called Adding ASP.NET AJAX Configuration Elements to an Existing Web Site) or simply create the Ajax-Enabled Web Site. You can also check my other blog post on the matter: Visual Studio 2008: Where is the new ASP.NET Ajax-Enabled Web Site template?   2. Authentication - as the website denies access to all pages to unauthorized users, access to the Telerik.Web.UI.WebResource.axd handler is unauthorized (this is the default handler of RadScriptManager). This causes the handler to serve the content of the login page instead of the combined scripts, hence the error. To solve it - add a <location> section to the application configuration file to allow access to Telerik.Web.UI.WebResource.axd to all users, like: <configuration> ... <location path="Telerik.Web.UI.WebResource.axd"> <system.web> <authorization> <allow users="*"/> </authorization> </system.web> </location> ... </configuration>   Note that the access to the standard ScriptResource.axd and WebResource.axd is automatically allowed for all users (authenticated and unauthenticated), so if you use the ScriptManager instead of RadScriptManager - you will not face this problem. The authentication problem does not manifest when you disable script combining or use the CDN. Adding the above configuration section will make it work with RadScriptManagers combined script.   3. The IE6 browser fails to load the compressed script. The problem does not appear in any other browser. There is a well known bug in the older versions of IE6 which lose the first 2,048 bytes of data that are sent back from a Web server that uses HTTP compression. Latest versions of RadScriptManager does not compress the output at all if the client is IE6, but in the previous versions you need to manually disable the output compression to prevent the error. So, if you get the Sys is undefined error in IE6 - update to the latest version of RadControls or simply disable the output compression.   4. Requests to the *.axd files returns Error Code 404 - Not Found. This could  be fixed easily: Check in the IIS management console that the .axd extension (the default HTTP handler extension) is allowed:     Also check if the Verify if file exists checkbox is unchecked (click on the Edit button appearing in the previous screenshot to check). More information can be found in our troubleshooting article and from the ASP.NET QA team blog post   5. The virtual directory in IIS is not marked as Web Application. Converting it to Web Application should fix the problem.   6. Check for the <xhtmlConformance mode="Legacy"/> option in your web.config and remove it. It would be rather rare to become a victim of this exact case, but still have it in mind. Scott Guthrie describes it in more details   In the above points I mentioned several times the terms web resources, javascript output, compressed script. If you want to find out more about these please see the Web Resources Demystified series of my friend and colleague Atanas Korchev   I hope that one of the above solutions will help you get rid of the Sys is undefined error.   Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• A Knights Tale

  - by Phil Factor

  There are so many lessons to be learned from the story of Knight Capital losing nearly half a billion dollars as a result of a deployment gone wrong. The Knight Capital Group (KCG N) was an American global financial services firm engaging in market making, electronic execution, and institutional sales and trading. According to the recent order (File No.3.15570) against Knight Capital by U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission?, Knight had, for many years used some software which broke up incoming “parent” orders into smaller “child” orders that were then transmitted to various exchanges or trading venues for execution. A tracking ‘cumulative quantity’ function counted the number of ‘child’ orders and stopped the process once the total of child orders matched the ‘parent’ and so the parent order had been completed. Back in the mists of time, some code had been added to it  which was excuted if a particular flag was set. It was called ‘power peg’ and seems to have had a similar design and purpose, but, one guesses, would have shared the same tracking function. This code had been abandoned in 2003, but never deleted. In 2005, The tracking function was moved to an earlier point in the main process. It would seem from the account that, from that point, had that flag ever been set, the old ‘Power Peg’ would have been executed like Godzilla bursting from the ice, making child orders without limit without any tracking function. It wasn’t, presumably because the software that set the flag was removed. In 2012, nearly a decade after ‘Power Peg’ was abandoned, Knight prepared a new module to their software to cope with the imminent Retail Liquidity Program (RLP) for the New York Stock Exchange. By this time, the flag had remained unused and someone made the fateful decision to reuse it, and replace the old ‘power peg’ code with this new RLP code. Had the two actions been done together in a single automated deployment, and the new deployment tested, all would have been well. It wasn’t. To quote… “Beginning on July 27, 2012, Knight deployed the new RLP code in SMARS in stages by placing it on a limited number of servers in SMARS on successive days. During the deployment of the new code, however, one of Knight’s technicians did not copy the new code to one of the eight SMARS computer servers. Knight did not have a second technician review this deployment and no one at Knight realized that the Power Peg code had not been removed from the eighth server, nor the new RLP code added. Knight had no written procedures that required such a review.” (para 15) “On August 1, Knight received orders from broker-dealers whose customers were eligible to participate in the RLP. The seven servers that received the new code processed these orders correctly. However, orders sent with the repurposed flag to the eighth server triggered the defective Power Peg code still present on that server. As a result, this server began sending child orders to certain trading centers for execution. Because the cumulative quantity function had been moved, this server continuously sent child orders, in rapid sequence, for each incoming parent order without regard to the number of share executions Knight had already received from trading centers. Although one part of Knight’s order handling system recognized that the parent orders had been filled, this information was not communicated to SMARS.” (para 16) SMARS routed millions of orders into the market over a 45-minute period, and obtained over 4 million executions in 154 stocks for more than 397 million shares. By the time that Knight stopped sending the orders, Knight had assumed a net long position in 80 stocks of approximately $3.5 billion and a net short position in 74 stocks of approximately $3.15 billion. Knight’s shares dropped more than 20% after traders saw extreme volume spikes in a number of stocks, including preferred shares of Wells Fargo (JWF) and semiconductor company Spansion (CODE). Both stocks, which see roughly 100,000 trade per day, had changed hands more than 4 million times by late morning. Ultimately, Knight lost over $460 million from this wild 45 minutes of trading. Obviously, I’m interested in all this because, at one time, I used to write trading systems for the City of London. Obviously, the US SEC is in a far better position than any of us to work out the failings of Knight’s IT department, and the report makes for painful reading. I can’t help observing, though, that even with the breathtaking mistakes all along the way, that a robust automated deployment process that was ‘all-or-nothing’, and tested from soup to nuts would have prevented the disaster. The report reads like a Greek Tragedy. All the way along one wants to shout ‘No! not that way!’ and ‘Aargh! Don’t do it!’. As the tragedy unfolds, the audience weeps for the players, trapped by a cruel fate. All application development and deployment requires defense in depth. All IT goes wrong occasionally, but if there is a culture of defensive programming throughout, the consequences are usually containable. For financial systems, these defenses are required by statute, and ignored only by the foolish. Knight’s mistakes weren’t made by just one hapless sysadmin, but were progressive errors by an  IT culture spanning at least ten years.  One can spell these out, but I think they’re obvious. One can only hope that the industry studies what happened in detail, learns from the mistakes, and draws the right conclusions.

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• Is your dream an international experience?

  - by Maria Sandu

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Studying in Poland, having two summer jobs in England, doing one internship in India, working in Thailand for half a year and now working in Prague. Does it seem an adventure? Well it is and I will tell you how I came to have this international experience. Dzien Dobry! My name is Wojciech Jurojc, I am Polish and I am currently a Business Development Consultant within Oracle, based in Prague. I joined Oracle on the 1st of August 2011. I graduated in 2010 and obtained 2 Masters Degrees in Political Science and Economics. I would like to tell you more about my past and how I joined Oracle. In 2005 I began studying at the Faculty of Political Sciences Gdansk University. In 2008, I obtained a Bachelors Degree. During these three years I had the opportunity to go to England twice, where I worked as a Bartender, first in Blackpool and then in Manchester. This allowed me to improve my language skills and become more confident. In the meantime, I joined the International Student Organization-AIESEC, where I was organized conferences and conducted student projects. Also I met a mass of interesting people from around the world. After graduation in 2008, I was able to get an Internship within a big company in Poland. I worked there as an Intern in the Purchase Department. That was my first adventure within a corporate environment. I learnt a lot about purchasing processes and negotiations. In September 2008, I started studying two Masters Faculties: Political Science and Economics. It was very difficult, but it was not impossible. Over the next two years of studying I was able to go on a three month internship to India where I worked as a Marketing Assistant in an NGO. I was travelling around northern India and did presentations to the academic community about green energy and environmental projects. I had the opportunity to visit Nepal and walked in the Himalayas. That was a huge experience as well as a cultural shock. It taught me how to deal with many problems and to appreciate what I have. At the end of 2009 I was working as a Marketing Assistant for a Leasing company, where I learnt useful sales knowledge and improved my objection handling skills. In July 2010, I graduated with a double Masters and found a job in Thailand as Sales Representative in an IT company. I worked in Thailand until the end of January 2011. Besides that, I was working in an International company with interesting people and I had the opportunity to travel around Thailand and visit Cambodia. After this adventure I started looking for jobs in Europe where I could further develop my sales skills. I found Oracle and I don’t regret this decision which I made. I am currently working in Prague in an international Hardware team and I know that is not the end of my adventures. At this moment, I am working in a team of 12 members. Ten of them are based in Prague and 2 others are based in Russia. We come from different countries such as: Czech Republic, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Slovakia and Kazakhstan. I am working on the Polish market, cooperating with our Hardware customers and partners. What do I enjoy the most about my job? I enjoy every challenge that I face in my daily activities as there are always new experiences for me and new things that I learn. As part of Oracle, I gain international exposure and therefore more career opportunities to explore. I have planned my next step for the career path I dream of and I am currently working on it. I recommend you check our Career Page if you’re looking for an international career. If you want to find out more about our job opportunities, follow us on https://campus.oracle.com .

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• Separating text strings into a table of individual words in SQL via XML.

  - by Phil Factor

  p.MsoNormal {margin-top:0cm; margin-right:0cm; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; } Nearly nine years ago, Mike Rorke of the SQL Server 2005 XML team blogged ‘Querying Over Constructed XML Using Sub-queries’. I remember reading it at the time without being able to think of a use for what he was demonstrating. Just a few weeks ago, whilst preparing my article on searching strings, I got out my trusty function for splitting strings into words and something reminded me of the old blog. I’d been trying to think of a way of using XML to split strings reliably into words. The routine I devised turned out to be slightly slower than the iterative word chop I’ve always used in the past, so I didn’t publish it. It was then I suddenly remembered the old routine. Here is my version of it. I’ve unwrapped it from its obvious home in a function or procedure just so it is easy to appreciate. What it does is to chop a text string into individual words using XQuery and the good old nodes() method. I’ve benchmarked it and it is quicker than any of the SQL ways of doing it that I know about. Obviously, you can’t use the trick I described here to do it, because it is awkward to use REPLACE() on 1…n characters of whitespace. I’ll carry on using my iterative function since it is able to tell me the location of each word as a character-offset from the start, and also because this method leaves punctuation in (removing it takes time!). However, I can see other uses for this in passing lists as input or output parameters, or as return values.   if exists (Select * from sys.xml_schema_collections where name like 'WordList')   drop XML SCHEMA COLLECTION WordList go create xml schema collection WordList as ' <xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <xs:element name="words">        <xs:simpleType>               <xs:list itemType="xs:string" />        </xs:simpleType> </xs:element> </xs:schema>'   go   DECLARE @string VARCHAR(MAX) –we'll get some sample data from the great Ogden Nash Select @String='This is a song to celebrate banks, Because they are full of money and you go into them and all you hear is clinks and clanks, Or maybe a sound like the wind in the trees on the hills, Which is the rustling of the thousand dollar bills. Most bankers dwell in marble halls, Which they get to dwell in because they encourage deposits and discourage withdrawals, And particularly because they all observe one rule which woe betides the banker who fails to heed it, Which is you must never lend any money to anybody unless they don''t need it. I know you, you cautious conservative banks! If people are worried about their rent it is your duty to deny them the loan of one nickel, yes, even one copper engraving of the martyred son of the late Nancy Hanks; Yes, if they request fifty dollars to pay for a baby you must look at them like Tarzan looking at an uppity ape in the jungle, And tell them what do they think a bank is, anyhow, they had better go get the money from their wife''s aunt or ungle. But suppose people come in and they have a million and they want another million to pile on top of it, Why, you brim with the milk of human kindness and you urge them to accept every drop of it, And you lend them the million so then they have two million and this gives them the idea that they would be better off with four, So they already have two million as security so you have no hesitation in lending them two more, And all the vice-presidents nod their heads in rhythm, And the only question asked is do the borrowers want the money sent or do they want to take it withm. Because I think they deserve our appreciation and thanks, the jackasses who go around saying that health and happi- ness are everything and money isn''t essential, Because as soon as they have to borrow some unimportant money to maintain their health and happiness they starve to death so they can''t go around any more sneering at good old money, which is nothing short of providential. '   –we now turn it into XML declare @xml_data xml(WordList)  set @xml_data='<words>'+ replace(@string,'&', '&amp;')+'</words>'    select T.ref.value('.', 'nvarchar(100)')  from (Select @xml_data.query('                      for $i in data(/words) return                      element li { $i }               '))  A(list) cross apply A.List.nodes('/li') T(ref)     …which gives (truncated, of course)…

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• Microsoft Sql Server 2008 R2 System Databases

  For a majority of software developers little time is spent understanding the inner workings of the database management systems (DBMS) they use to store data for their applications.  I personally place myself in this grouping. In my case, I have used various versions of Microsoft’s SQL Server (2000, 2005, and 2008 R2) and just recently learned how valuable they really are when I was preparing to deliver a lecture on "SQL Server 2008 R2, System Databases". Microsoft Sql Server 2008 R2 System DatabasesSo what are system databases in MS SQL Server, and why should I know them? Microsoft uses system databases to support the SQL Server DBMS, much like a developer uses config files or database tables to support an application. These system databases individually provide specific functionality that allows MS SQL Server to function. Name Database File Log File Master master.mdf mastlog.ldf Resource mssqlsystemresource.mdf mssqlsystemresource.ldf Model model.mdf modellog.ldf MSDB msdbdata.mdf msdblog.ldf Distribution distmdl.mdf distmdl.ldf TempDB tempdb.mdf templog.ldf Master DatabaseIf you have used MS SQL Server then you should recognize the Master database especially if you used the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) to connect to a user created database. MS SQL Server requires the Master database in order for DBMS to start due to the information that it stores. Examples of data stored in the Master database User Logins Linked Servers Configuration information Information on User Databases Resource DatabaseHonestly, until recently I never knew this database even existed until I started to research SQL Server system databases. The reason for this is due largely to the fact that the resource database is hidden to users. In fact, the database files are stored within the Binn folder instead of the standard MS SQL Server database folder path. This database contains all system objects that can be accessed by all other databases.  In short, this database contains all system views and store procedures that appear in all other user databases regarding system information. One of the many benefits to storing system views and store procedures in a single hidden database is the fact it improves upgrading a SQL Server database; not to mention that maintenance is decreased since only one code base has to be mainlined for all of the system views and procedures. Model DatabaseThe Model database as the name implies is the model for all new databases created by users. This allows for predefining default database objects for all new databases within a MS SQL Server instance. For example, if every database created by a user needs to have an “Audit” table when it is  created then defining the “Audit” table in the model will guarantees that the table will be located in every new database create after the model is altered. MSDB DatabaseThe MSDBdatabase is used by SQL Server Agent, SQL Server Database Mail, SQL Server Service Broker, along with SQL Server. The SQL Server Agent uses this database to store job configurations and SQL job schedules along with SQL Alerts, and Operators. In addition, this database also stores all SQL job parameters along with each job’s execution history.  Finally, this database is also used to store database backup and maintenance plans as well as details pertaining to SQL Log shipping if it is being used. Distribution DatabaseThe Distribution database is only used during replication and stores meta data and history information pertaining to the act of replication data. Furthermore, when transactional replication is used this database also stores information regarding each transaction. It is important to note that replication is not turned on by default in MS SQL Server and that the distribution database is hidden from SSMS. Tempdb DatabaseThe Tempdb as the name implies is used to store temporary data and data objects. Examples of this include temp tables and temp store procedures. It is important to note that when using this database all data and data objects are cleared from this database when SQL Server restarts. This database is also used by SQL Server when it is performing some internal operations. Typically, SQL Server uses this database for the purpose of large sort and index operations. Finally, this database is used to store row versions if row versioning or snapsot isolation transactions are being used by SQL Server. Additionally, I would love to hear from others about their experiences using system databases, tables, and objects in a real world environments.

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• Microsoft Sql Server 2008 R2 System Databases

  For a majority of software developers little time is spent understanding the inner workings of the database management systems (DBMS) they use to store data for their applications.  I personally place myself in this grouping. In my case, I have used various versions of Microsoft’s SQL Server (2000, 2005, and 2008 R2) and just recently learned how valuable they really are when I was preparing to deliver a lecture on "SQL Server 2008 R2, System Databases". Microsoft Sql Server 2008 R2 System DatabasesSo what are system databases in MS SQL Server, and why should I know them? Microsoft uses system databases to support the SQL Server DBMS, much like a developer uses config files or database tables to support an application. These system databases individually provide specific functionality that allows MS SQL Server to function. Name Database File Log File Master master.mdf mastlog.ldf Resource mssqlsystemresource.mdf mssqlsystemresource.ldf Model model.mdf modellog.ldf MSDB msdbdata.mdf msdblog.ldf Distribution distmdl.mdf distmdl.ldf TempDB tempdb.mdf templog.ldf Master DatabaseIf you have used MS SQL Server then you should recognize the Master database especially if you used the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) to connect to a user created database. MS SQL Server requires the Master database in order for DBMS to start due to the information that it stores. Examples of data stored in the Master database User Logins Linked Servers Configuration information Information on User Databases Resource DatabaseHonestly, until recently I never knew this database even existed until I started to research SQL Server system databases. The reason for this is due largely to the fact that the resource database is hidden to users. In fact, the database files are stored within the Binn folder instead of the standard MS SQL Server database folder path. This database contains all system objects that can be accessed by all other databases.  In short, this database contains all system views and store procedures that appear in all other user databases regarding system information. One of the many benefits to storing system views and store procedures in a single hidden database is the fact it improves upgrading a SQL Server database; not to mention that maintenance is decreased since only one code base has to be mainlined for all of the system views and procedures. Model DatabaseThe Model database as the name implies is the model for all new databases created by users. This allows for predefining default database objects for all new databases within a MS SQL Server instance. For example, if every database created by a user needs to have an “Audit” table when it is  created then defining the “Audit” table in the model will guarantees that the table will be located in every new database create after the model is altered. MSDB DatabaseThe MSDBdatabase is used by SQL Server Agent, SQL Server Database Mail, SQL Server Service Broker, along with SQL Server. The SQL Server Agent uses this database to store job configurations and SQL job schedules along with SQL Alerts, and Operators. In addition, this database also stores all SQL job parameters along with each job’s execution history.  Finally, this database is also used to store database backup and maintenance plans as well as details pertaining to SQL Log shipping if it is being used. Distribution DatabaseThe Distribution database is only used during replication and stores meta data and history information pertaining to the act of replication data. Furthermore, when transactional replication is used this database also stores information regarding each transaction. It is important to note that replication is not turned on by default in MS SQL Server and that the distribution database is hidden from SSMS. Tempdb DatabaseThe Tempdb as the name implies is used to store temporary data and data objects. Examples of this include temp tables and temp store procedures. It is important to note that when using this database all data and data objects are cleared from this database when SQL Server restarts. This database is also used by SQL Server when it is performing some internal operations. Typically, SQL Server uses this database for the purpose of large sort and index operations. Finally, this database is used to store row versions if row versioning or snapsot isolation transactions are being used by SQL Server. Additionally, I would love to hear from others about their experiences using system databases, tables, and objects in a real world environments.

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• Redirect Google crawler to different robots.txt via .htaccess

  - by user3474818

  I have googled for the answer all day and still couldn't find an answer. I have a virtual subdomain www.static.example.com which is a mirror site of www.example.com. It means I have just one root folder for subdomain and domain aswell. I want to redirect crawlers to different robots.txt file - robots_static.txt when they see .static in url in which I will forbid indexing via /disallow command. I want to do this because I have duplicated content in Google search results. Subdomain is showing the exact same content as the main domain. Does anyone know how could I achieve that crawlers sees robots_static.txt instead of robots.txt? What I have managed to find so far is this: RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.static.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /.*robots\.txt.*\ HTTP/ [NC] RewriteRule ^robots\.txt /robots_static.txt [NC,L] but when I check in webmaster tools, it still sees robots.txt as my robots file instead of robots_static.txt, so it crawls and index everything twice. What did I do wrong? Thanks EDIT: This is my .htaccess file ## # @package Joomla # @copyright Copyright (C) 2005 - 2013 Open Source Matters. All rights reserved. # @license GNU General Public License version 2 or later; see LICENSE.txt ## ## # READ THIS COMPLETELY IF YOU CHOOSE TO USE THIS FILE! # # The line just below this section: 'Options +FollowSymLinks' may cause problems # with some server configurations. It is required for use of mod_rewrite, but may already # be set by your server administrator in a way that dissallows changing it in # your .htaccess file. If using it causes your server to error out, comment it out (add # to # beginning of line), reload your site in your browser and test your sef url's. If they work, # it has been set by your server administrator and you do not need it set here. ## ## Can be commented out if causes errors, see notes above. Options +FollowSymLinks ## Mod_rewrite in use. RewriteEngine On RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.static.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /.*robots\.txt.*\ HTTP/ [NC] RewriteRule ^robots\.txt /robots_static.txt [NC,L] ## Begin - Rewrite rules to block out some common exploits. # If you experience problems on your site block out the operations listed below # This attempts to block the most common type of exploit `attempts` to Joomla! # # Block out any script trying to base64_encode data within the URL. RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} base64_encode[^(]*\([^)]*\) [OR] # Block out any script that includes a <script> tag in URL. RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (<|%3C)([^s]*s)+cript.*(>|%3E) [NC,OR] # Block out any script trying to set a PHP GLOBALS variable via URL. RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} GLOBALS(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2}) [OR] # Block out any script trying to modify a _REQUEST variable via URL. RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} _REQUEST(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2}) # Return 403 Forbidden header and show the content of the root homepage RewriteRule .* index.php [F] # ## End - Rewrite rules to block out some common exploits. ## Begin - Custom redirects # # If you need to redirect some pages, or set a canonical non-www to # www redirect (or vice versa), place that code here. Ensure those # redirects use the correct RewriteRule syntax and the [R=301,L] flags. # ## End - Custom redirects ## # Uncomment following line if your webserver's URL # is not directly related to physical file paths. # Update Your Joomla! Directory (just / for root). ## # RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET.*index\.php [NC] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} !/system/.* RewriteRule (.*?)index\.php/*(.*) /$1$2 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET ## Begin - Joomla! core SEF Section. # RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}] # # If the requested path and file is not /index.php and the request # has not already been internally rewritten to the index.php script RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/index\.php # and the request is for something within the component folder, # or for the site root, or for an extensionless URL, or the # requested URL ends with one of the listed extensions RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /component/|(/[^.]*|\.(php|html?|feed|pdf|vcf|raw))$ [NC] # and the requested path and file doesn't directly match a physical file RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f # and the requested path and file doesn't directly match a physical folder RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d # internally rewrite the request to the index.php script RewriteRule .* index.php [L] # ## End - Joomla! core SEF Section. <FilesMatch "\.(ico|pdf|flv|jpg|ttf|jpg|jpeg|png|gif|js|css|swf)$"> Header set Expires "Wed, 15 Apr 2020 20:00:00 GMT" Header set Cache-Control "public" </FilesMatch> <ifModule mod_headers.c> Header set Connection keep-alive </ifModule> ########## Begin - Remove Etags # FileETag none # ########## End - Remove Etags

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• "The specified type was not recognized" exception when trying to invoke a webservice call

  - by fretje

  I'm trying to call a third party webservice using WSE 3.0 as a client in Visual Studio 2005. The call works fine and I can see that I get a good response (I have tracing enabled), but apparently the xml parser chokes over it. I always get an InvalidOperationException: There is en error in the XML document. with an InnerException: The specified type was not recognized: name='Map', namespace='http://xml.apache.org/xml-soap', at <bevoegdheid xmlns=''>. This is the relevant part of the response: <SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:ns1="http://xml.apache.org/xml-soap" xmlns:SOAP-ENC="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:ns2="https://acceptatie.cartalk.nl/Soap/Apk" SOAP-ENV:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"> <SOAP-ENV:Body> <SOAP-ENV:opvragenKeurmeesterGegevensResponse> <opvragenKeurmeesterGegevensReturn xsi:type="ns2:Backend_Apk_Result_OpvragenKeurmeesterGegevens"> <naam xsi:type="xsd:string">A name</naam> ... <bevoegdheid SOAP-ENC:arrayType="ns1:Map[2]" xsi:type="SOAP-ENC:Array"> <item xsi:type="ns1:Map"> <item> <key xsi:type="xsd:string">soortBevoegdheid</key> <value xsi:type="xsd:string">AL</value> </item> ... </item> <item> ... </item> </bevoegdheid> <meldingSoort xsi:nil="true" /> <meldingNummer xsi:nil="true" /> <melding xsi:nil="true" /> </opvragenKeurmeesterGegevensReturn> </SOAP-ENV:opvragenKeurmeesterGegevensResponse> </SOAP-ENV:Body> </SOAP-ENV:Envelope> And this is how that "bevoegdheid" is defined in the wsdl: <xsd:element name="bevoegdheid" type="soap-enc:Array" /> There is no mention of a "Map" type anywhere in the wsdl. I have been googling around for this, but the only kind of answer I've found is something along the lines of The service uses rpc/encoded format which is harder to get interoperability with. If you can change the server to document/literal it is better. But as this is a third party service (which is already used by other clients), this is no option for us. Any other suggestions? How can I get the xml parser to recognize that "Map" type?

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• SSRS Report from Oracle DB - Use stored procedure

  - by Emtucifor

  I am developing a report in Sql Server Reporting Services 2005, connecting to an Oracle 11g database. As you post replies perhaps it will help to know that I'm skilled in MSSQL Server and inexperienced in Oracle. I have multiple nested subreports and need to use summary data in outer reports and the same data but in detail in the inner reports. In order to spare the DB server from multiple executions, I thought to populate some temp tables at the beginning and then query just them the multiple times in the report and the subreports. In SSRS, Datasets are evidently executed in the order they appear in the RDL file. And you can have a dataset that doesn't return a rowset. So I created a stored procedure to populate my four temp tables and made this the first Dataset in my report. This SP works when I run it from SQLDeveloper and I can query the data from the temp tables. However, this didn't appear to work out because SSRS was apparently not reusing the same session, so even though the global temporary tables were created with ON COMMIT PRESERVE ROWS my Datasets were empty. I switched to using "real" tables and am now passing in an additional parameter, a GUID in string form, uniquely generated on each new execution, that is part of the primary key of each table, so I can get back just the rows for this execution. Running this from Sql Developer works fine, example: DECLARE ActivityCode varchar2(15) := '1208-0916 '; ExecutionID varchar2(32) := SYS_GUID(); BEGIN CIPProjectBudget (ActivityCode, ExecutionID); END; Never mind that in this example I don't know the GUID, this simply proves it works because rows are inserted to my four tables. But in the SSRS report, I'm still getting no rows in my Datasets and SQL Developer confirms no rows are being inserted. So I'm thinking along the lines of: Oracle uses implicit transactions and my changes aren't getting committed? Even though I can prove that the non-rowset returning SP is executing (because if I leave out the parameter mapping it complains at report rendering time about not having enough parameters) perhaps it's not really executing. Somehow. Wrong execution order isn't the problem or rows would appear in the tables, and they aren't. I'm interested in any ideas about how to accomplish this (especially the part about not running the main queries multiple times). I'll redesign my whole report. I'll stop using a stored procedure. Suggest anything you like! I just need help getting this working and I am stuck. If you want more details, in my SSRS report I have a List object (it's a container that repeats once for each row in a Dataset) that has some header values and then contains a subreport. Eventually, there will be four total reports: one main report, with three nested subreports. Each subreport will be in a List on the parent report.

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• Prevent recursive CTE visiting nodes multiple times

  - by bacar

  Consider the following simple DAG: 1->2->3->4 And a table, #bar, describing this (I'm using SQL Server 2005): parent_id child_id 1 2 2 3 3 4 //... other edges, not connected to the subgraph above Now imagine that I have some other arbitrary criteria that select the first and last edges, i.e. 1-2 and 3-4. I want to use these to find the rest of my graph. I can write a recursive CTE as follows (I'm using terminology from MSDN): with foo(parent_id,child_id) as ( // anchor member that happens to select first and last edges: select parent_id,child_id from #bar where parent_id in (1,3) union all // recursive member: select #bar.* from #bar join foo on #bar.parent_id = foo.child_id ) select parent_id,child_id from foo However, this results in edge 3-4 being selected twice: parent_id child_id 1 2 3 4 2 3 3 4 // 2nd appearance! How can I prevent the query from recursing into subgraphs that have already been described? I could achieve this if, in my "recursive member" part of the query, I could reference all data that has been retrieved by the recursive CTE so far (and supply a predicate indicating in the recursive member excluding nodes already visited). However, I think I can access data that was returned by the last iteration of the recursive member only. This will not scale well when there is a lot of such repetition. Is there a way of preventing this unnecessary additional recursion? Note that I could use "select distinct" in the last line of my statement to achieve the desired results, but this seems to be applied after all the (repeated) recursion is done, so I don't think this is an ideal solution. Edit - hainstech suggests stopping recursion by adding a predicate to exclude recursing down paths that were explicitly in the starting set, i.e. recurse only where foo.child_id not in (1,3). That works for the case above only because it simple - all the repeated sections begin within the anchor set of nodes. It doesn't solve the general case where they may not be. e.g., consider adding edges 1-4 and 4-5 to the above set. Edge 4-5 will be captured twice, even with the suggested predicate. :(

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• Problem using ‘useLegacyV2RuntimeActivationPolicy’ & supportedRuntime in an application

  - by Notre

  Hello, I've modified a couple of different applications' .config file like this: <startup useLegacyV2RuntimeActivationPolicy="true"> <supportedRuntime version="v4.0"/> </startup> When I did this for devenv.exe.config (VS 2005 - don't ask :) ), things work great - most of the Visual Studio used .NET 2.0 but I was able to make use of an assembly targeting .NET 4.0 framework. I tried to do the same thing for a custom .exe, which happens to be based on MS CAB (slightly modified) and has a hybrid mix of WPF and WinForms content. As soon as I modified this application's app config file, I started getting this exception, sometime during application startup: The Undo operation encountered a context that is different from what was applied in the corresponding Set operation. The possible cause is that a context was Set on the thread and not reverted(undone). System.InvalidOperationException: The Undo operation encountered a context that is different from what was applied in the corresponding Set operation. The possible cause is that a context was Set on the thread and not reverted(undone). There's a big long stack trace that doesn't show anything in my application code directly (just a bunch of MS assemblies). If I modify the application's .config file to this: <startup useLegacyV2RuntimeActivationPolicy="true"> </startup> i.e.I remove the supportedRuntime element, then the application doesn't throw this exception. But when I go to the point in my code where I try to load my .NET 4 assembly, if fails with this: System.BadImageFormatException: Could not load file or assembly '' or one of its dependencies. This assembly is built by a runtime newer than the currently loaded runtime and cannot be loaded. I guess this is expected. I have two questions: 1) Any idea why I'm getting the System.InvalidOperationException exception when I modify this application's configuration file to include the supportedRuntime element, adding .NET 4 support and any suggestions on what I can do about it? 2) If the answer is "no idea why/don't know what you can do about it", then is possible for my .NET 3.5 SP1 code (C#) to provide more fine grain support for conditionally adding .NET 4 runtime support for a certain assembly(ies) without converting my entire application to target .NET 4, or without using the declarative config file approach? At some point I would convert the entire application to target .NET 4, but for the short term this is daunting task and I'm hope for some short term solution/hack. Thank you very much for any advice you can give!

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