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• SharePoint For Newbie Developers: Code Scope

  - by Mark Rackley

  So, I continue to try to come up with diagrams and information to help new SharePoint developers wrap their heads around this SharePoint beast, especially when those newer to development are on my team. To that end, I drew up the below diagram to help some of our junior devs understand where/when code is being executed in SharePoint at a high level. Note that I say “High Level”… This is a simplistic diagram that can get a LOT more complicated if you want to dive in deeper.  For the purposes of my lesson it served its purpose well. So, please no comments from you peanut gallery about information 3 levels down that’s missing unless it adds to the discussion.  Thanks So, the diagram below details where code is executed on a page load and gives the basic flow of the page load. There are actually many more steps, but again, we are staying high level here. I just know someone is still going to say something like “Well.. actually… the dlls are getting executed when…”  Anyway, here’s the diagram with some information I like to point out: Code Scope / Where it is executed So, looking at the diagram we see that dlls and XSL are executed on the server and that JavaScript/jQuery are executed on the client. This is the main thing I like to point out for the following reasons: XSL (for the most part) is faster than JavaScript I actually get this question a lot. Since XSL is executed on the server less data is getting passed over the wire and a beefier machine (hopefully) is doing the processing. The outcome of course is better performance. When You are using jQuery and making Web Service calls you are building XML strings and sending them to the server, then ALL the results come back and the client machine has to parse through the XML and use what it needs and ignore the rest (and there is a lot of garbage that comes back from SharePoint Web Service calls). XSL and JavaScript cannot work together in the same scope Let me clarify. JavaScript can send data back to SharePoint in postbacks that XSL can then use. XSL can output JavaScript and initiate JavaScript variables.  However, XSL cannot call a JavaScript method to get a value and JavaScript cannot directly interact with XSL and call its templates. They are executed in there scope only. No crossing of boundaries here. So, what does this all mean? Well, nothing too deep. This is just some basic fundamental information that all SharePoint devs need to understand. It will help you determine what is the best solution for your specific development situation and it will help the new guys understand why they get an error when trying to call a JavaScript Function from within XSL.  Let me know if you think quick little blogs like this are helpful or just add to the noise. I could probably put together several more that are similar.  As always, thanks for stopping by, hope you learned something new.

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• Customizing the Test Status on the TFS 2010 SSRS Stories Overview Report

  - by Bob Hardister

  This post shows how to customize the SQL query used by the Team Foundation Server 2010 SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) Stories Overview Report. The objective is to show test status for the current version while including user story status of the current and prior versions.  Why? Because we don’t copy completed user stories into the next release. We only want one instance of a user story for the product because we believe copies can get out of sync when they are supposed to be the same. In the example below, work items for the current version are on the area path root and prior versions are not on the area path root. However, you can use area path or iteration path criteria in the query as suits your needs. In any case, here’s how you do it: 1. Download a copy of the report RDL file as a backup 2. Open the report by clicking the edit down arrow and selecting “Edit in Report Builder” 3. Right click on the dsOverview Dataset and select Dataset Properties 4. Update the following SQL per the comments in the code: Customization 1 of 3 … -- Get the list deliverable workitems that have Test Cases linked DECLARE @TestCases Table (DeliverableID int, TestCaseID int); INSERT @TestCases     SELECT h.ID, flh.TargetWorkItemID     FROM @Hierarchy h         JOIN FactWorkItemLinkHistory flh             ON flh.SourceWorkItemID = h.ID                 AND flh.WorkItemLinkTypeSK = @TestedByLinkTypeSK                 AND flh.RemovedDate = CONVERT(DATETIME, '9999', 126)                 AND flh.TeamProjectCollectionSK = @TeamProjectCollectionSK         JOIN [CurrentWorkItemView] wi ON flh.TargetWorkItemID = wi.[System_ID]                  AND wi.[System_WorkItemType] = @TestCase             AND wi.ProjectNodeGUID  = @ProjectGuid              --  Customization 1 of 3: only include test status information when test case area path = root. Added the following 2 statements              AND wi.AreaPath = '{the root area path of the team project}'  …          Customization 2 of 3 … -- Get the Bugs linked to the deliverable workitems directly DECLARE @Bugs Table (ID int, ActiveBugs int, ResolvedBugs int, ClosedBugs int, ProposedBugs int) INSERT @Bugs     SELECT h.ID,         SUM (CASE WHEN wi.[System_State] = @Active THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) Active,         SUM (CASE WHEN wi.[System_State] = @Resolved THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) Resolved,         SUM (CASE WHEN wi.[System_State] = @Closed THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) Closed,         SUM (CASE WHEN wi.[System_State] = @Proposed THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) Proposed     FROM @Hierarchy h         JOIN FactWorkItemLinkHistory flh             ON flh.SourceWorkItemID = h.ID             AND flh.TeamProjectCollectionSK = @TeamProjectCollectionSK         JOIN [CurrentWorkItemView] wi             ON wi.[System_WorkItemType] = @Bug             AND wi.[System_Id] = flh.TargetWorkItemID             AND flh.RemovedDate = CONVERT(DATETIME, '9999', 126)             AND wi.[ProjectNodeGUID] = @ProjectGuid              --  Customization 2 of 3: only include test status information when test case area path = root. Added the following statement              AND wi.AreaPath = '{the root area path of the team project}'       GROUP BY h.ID … Customization 2 of 3 … -- Add the Bugs linked to the Test Cases which are linked to the deliverable workitems -- Walks the links from the user stories to test cases (via the tested by link), and then to -- bugs that are linked to the test case. We don't need to join to the test case in the work -- item history view. -- --    [WIT:User Story/Requirement] --> [Link:Tested By]--> [Link:any type] --> [WIT:Bug] INSERT @Bugs SELECT tc.DeliverableID,     SUM (CASE WHEN wi.[System_State] = @Active THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) Active,     SUM (CASE WHEN wi.[System_State] = @Resolved THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) Resolved,     SUM (CASE WHEN wi.[System_State] = @Closed THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) Closed,     SUM (CASE WHEN wi.[System_State] = @Proposed THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) Proposed FROM @TestCases tc     JOIN FactWorkItemLinkHistory flh         ON flh.SourceWorkItemID = tc.TestCaseID         AND flh.RemovedDate = CONVERT(DATETIME, '9999', 126)         AND flh.TeamProjectCollectionSK = @TeamProjectCollectionSK     JOIN [CurrentWorkItemView] wi         ON wi.[System_Id] = flh.TargetWorkItemID         AND wi.[System_WorkItemType] = @Bug         AND wi.[ProjectNodeGUID] = @ProjectGuid         --  Customization 3 of 3: only include test status information when test case area path = root. Added the following statement         AND wi.AreaPath = '{the root area path of the team project}'     GROUP BY tc.DeliverableID … 5. Save the report and you’re all set. Note: you may need to re-apply custom parameter changes like pre-selected sprints.

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• Strategies for invoking subclass methods on generic objects

  - by Brad Patton

  I've run into this issue in a number of places and have solved it a bunch of different ways but looking for other solutions or opinions on how to address. The scenario is when you have a collection of objects all based off of the same superclass but you want to perform certain actions based only on instances of some of the subclasses. One contrived example of this might be an HTML document made up of elements. You could have a superclass named HTMLELement and subclasses of Headings, Paragraphs, Images, Comments, etc. To invoke a common action across all of the objects you declare a virtual method in the superclass and specific implementations in all of the subclasses. So to render the document you could loop all of the different objects in the document and call a common Render() method on each instance. It's the case where again using the same generic objects in the collection I want to perform different actions for instances of specific subclass (or set of subclasses). For example (an remember this is just an example) when iterating over the collection, elements with external links need to be downloaded (e.g. JS, CSS, images) and some might require additional parsing (JS, CSS). What's the best way to handle those special cases. Some of the strategies I've used or seen used include: Virtual methods in the base class. So in the base class you have a virtual LoadExternalContent() method that does nothing and then override it in the specific subclasses that need to implement it. The benefit being that in the calling code there is no object testing you send the same message to each object and let most of them ignore it. Two downsides that I can think of. First it can make the base class very cluttered with methods that have nothing to do with most of the hierarchy. Second it assumes all of the work can be done in the called method and doesn't handle the case where there might be additional context specific actions in the calling code (i.e. you want to do something in the UI and not the model). Have methods on the class to uniquely identify the objects. This could include methods like ClassName() which return a string with the class name or other return values like enums or booleans (IsImage()). The benefit is that the calling code can use if or switch statements to filter objects to perform class specific actions. The downside is that for every new class you need to implement these methods and can look cluttered. Also performance could be less than some of the other options. Use language features to identify objects. This includes reflection and language operators to identify the objects. For example in C# there is the is operator that returns true if the instance matches the specified class. The benefit is no additional code to implement in your object hierarchy. The only downside seems to be the lack of using something like a switch statement and the fact that your calling code is a little more cluttered. Are there other strategies I am missing? Thoughts on best approaches?

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• Customer owes me half my payment. Should I take ownership of his AWS account for charging? How?

  - by Cawas

  Background They paid me my first half (back in April 15th) before even we could get into an agreement. Very nice of him! Then I've finished the 2 weeks job of setting up the servers, using his AWS credentials he had just bought. I waited for another 2 weeks for everything settling up, and it was all running fine. He did what he needed with his sftp account, everyone were happy. Now, it has been almost 2 months since I've finished the job and I still didn't get the 2nd half. I must assume, it's not much money (about U$400, converted), but it would help me pay the bills at least. Heck, the Amazon bills they are paying are little less than that (for now). Measures I'm wondering how I can go to charge him now. First thought, of course, would be taking everything down and say "pay now, or be doomed". If that's not good enough, then I lost it. I have no contracts and I doubt I could get a law suit in this country for such a low value based only on emails. And I don't really want to get too agressive here - there might be a business chance in the future and I don't want to ruin it. Second though would be just changing the password. But then he probably could gain access again by some recovery means. That's where my question may mainly relay. How can I do it and not leaving any room for recovery from his side? I even got the first AWS "your account was created" mail from himself, showing me I could begin my job, back then. Lastly, do you have any other idea on what I can and what I should do in this case? Responding to Answers Please, consider reading the current answers and comments. This is not a very simple case. I've considered many, many options (including all lawful ones) before considering this ones I've listed here, and I am willing to take the loss and all that. That's not the point. The point is being practical here. I will call him again and talk about it. I will do terrorism on getting lawyers and getting contract. I am ready to go all forth while I have time and energy for it. But, in practice, there is this extra thing I can do to assure myself of the work I've done. I can basically take it back and delete everything! I'd only take his password because I can find no other way to do it within Amazon. Maybe, contacting Amazon and explaining the situation? I don't know. Give me ideas on this technical side! And thank everyone for the attention and helping me clarifying the issue so far! :)

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• About the K computer

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

  Okay ? after getting yet another mail because of the new #1 on the Top500 list, I want to add some comments from my side: Yes, the system is using SPARC processor. And that is great news for a SPARC fan like me. It is using the SPARC VIIIfx processor from Fujitsu clocked at 2 GHz. No, it isn't the only one. Most people are saying there are two in the Top500 list using SPARC (#77 JAXA and #1 K) but in fact there are three. The Tianhe-1 (#2 on the Top500 list) super computer contains 2048 Galaxy "FT-1000" 1 GHz 8-core processors. Don't know it? The FeiTeng-1000 ? this proc is a 8 core, 8 threads per core, 1 ghz processor made in China. And it's SPARC based. By the way ? this sounds really familiar to me ? perhaps the people just took the opensourced UltraSPARC-T2 design, because some of the parameters sound just to similar. However it looks like that Tianhe-1 is using the SPARCs as input nodes and not as compute notes. No, I don't see it as the next M-series processor. Simple reason: You can't create SMP systems out of them ? it simply hasn't the functionality to do so. Even when there are multiple CPUs on a single board, they are not connected like an SMP/NUMA machine to a shared memory machine ? they are connected with the cluster interconnect (in this case the Tofu interconnect) and work like a large cluster. Yes, it has a lot of oomph in Linpack ? however I assume a lot came from the extensions to the SPARCv9 standard. No, Linpack has no relevance for any commercial workload ? Linpack is such a special load, that even some HPC people are arguing that it isn't really a good benchmark for HPC. It's embarrassingly parallel, it can work with relatively small interconnects compared to the interconnects in SMP systems (however we get in spheres SMP interconnects where a few years ago). Amdahl isn't hitting that hard when running Linpack. Yes, it's a good move to use SPARC. At some time in the last 10 years, there was an interesting twist in perception: SPARC was considered as proprietary architecture and x86 was the open architecture. However it's vice versa ? try to create a x86 clone and you have a lot of intellectual property problems, create a SPARC clone and you have to spend 100 bucks or so to get the specification from the SPARC Foundation and develop your own SPARC processor. Fujitsu is doing this for a long time now. So they had their own processor, their own know-how. So why was SPARC a good choice? Well ? essentially Fujitsu can do what they want with their core as it is their core, for example adding the extensions to the SPARCv9 chipset ? getting Intel to create extensions to x86 to help you with your product is a little bit harder. So Fujitsu could do they needed to do with their processor in order to create such a supercomputer. No, the K is really using no FPGA or GPU as accelerators. The K is really using the CPU at doing this job. Yes, it has a significantly enhanced FPU capable to execute 8 instructions in parallel. No, it doesn't run Solaris. Yes, it uses Linux. No, it doesn't hurt me ... as my colleague Roland Rambau (he knows a lot about HPC) said once to me ... it doesn't matter which OS is staying out of the way of the workload in HPC.

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• Experimenting with other search engines

  - by Bill Graziano

  I’ve been a Google user so long I can hardly remember what I used before it.  Alta Vista maybe?  Or Yahoo.  I’ve tried Bing off and on but it never really stuck.  I probably care more about search engines than your average user because of their impact on SQLTeam.com.  Lately I’ve been trying two other search engines and actually switched to one of them. I’ve played with Blekko a little in the past.  They have some interesting ways to “slice up” your results.  For example, searching on “SQL Server /blogs /date” should just search all the recently updated blogs.  Those two extra words on the search are slashtags.  The full list of slashtags runs from /forums to just see forums to /twitter to /nikon to /reviews and on and on and on.  I laughed when I saw they had slashtags for both liberal and conservative.  I’d hate to find any search results that don’t match my existing worldview :)  You can also create your own slashtags.  I created a mini-search engine for the SQL Server blogs that I read.  You can search it for “backup” at http://blekko.com/ws/backup+/billgraziano/sql-sites.  I uploaded my OPML and it limited the search to just those sites.  It seems like the site is focusing more on curating results and less on algorithms.  This is an interesting site for those power searchers.  There are some great ways to curate results using slashtags.  For 99% of my searches (type words, click on one of the first few links) slashtags are overkill.  They do have some good information on page and site ranking though so I’ll probably send some time looking through that. Blekko recently got my attention again when they said they were banning “content farms” - and that includes eHow and experts-exchange.  I always feel used when I click on a link to EE and find myself scrolling all the way to the bottom to see if I can find the answer.  Sometimes it’s there but sometimes it tells me I need to pay first.  I’ve longed for a way to always exclude certain sites.  Blekko might be taking a hammer to a problem that needs a scalpel but it’s an interesting choice.  (And some of the comments in the TechCrunch link are interesting if you’re a search nerd.) DuckDuckGo is an odd name for a search engine.  Their big hook is that they don’t have search history.  If you wade through your Google account you can probably find the page where it stores your search history.  It was pretty enlightening to find mine.  It was easy to disable but that got me started looking at other search engines.  DDG (or DukGo) just feels like Google used to in the old days.  The results are good enough and the site is fast. Searches will return a snippet from WikiPedia or other site (like StackOverflow) at the top.  I think the idea is to answer the question without needing to visit the site.  I’m not sure that’s a good thing for SQLTeam.com. The only thing I really miss is image search.  You can add a “!i” at the end of any search and it will search the images on Bing.  Bing doesn’t have a great image search but it works for most of what I need.  They call these exclamation marks “!bangs” and they are kinda, sorta like slashtags.  I’ve been using DuckDuckGo now for a few weeks and I’m pretty happy with it.  I use Chrome for my browser and it was an easy switch to make.  It’s still a little surprising seeing my search results come up in a different format.  I’m starting to get used to it though.

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• concurrency::extent<N> from amp.h

  - by Daniel Moth

  Overview We saw in a previous post how index<N> represents a point in N-dimensional space and in this post we'll see how to define the N-dimensional space itself. With C++ AMP, an N-dimensional space can be specified with the template class extent<N> where you define the size of each dimension. From a look and feel perspective, you'd expect the programmatic interface of a point type and size type to be similar (even though the concepts are different). Indeed, exactly like index<N>, extent<N> is essentially a coordinate vector of N integers ordered from most- to least- significant, BUT each integer represents the size for that dimension (and hence cannot be negative). So, if you read the description of index, you won't be surprised with the below description of extent<N> There is the rank field returning the value of N you passed as the template parameter. You can construct one extent from another (via the copy constructor or the assignment operator), you can construct it by passing an integer array, or via convenience constructor overloads for 1- 2- and 3- dimension extents. Note that the parameterless constructor creates an extent of the specified rank with all bounds initialized to 0. You can access the components of the extent through the subscript operator (passing it an integer). You can perform some arithmetic operations between extent objects through operator overloading, i.e. ==, !=, +=, -=, +, -. There are operator overloads so that you can perform operations between an extent and an integer: -- (pre- and post- decrement), ++ (pre- and post- increment), %=, *=, /=, +=, –= and, finally, there are additional overloads for plus and minus (+,-) between extent<N> and index<N> objects, returning a new extent object as the result. In addition to the usual suspects, extent offers a contains function that tests if an index is within the bounds of the extent (assuming an origin of zero). It also has a size function that returns the total linear size of this extent<N> in units of elements. Example code extent<2> e(3, 4); _ASSERT(e.rank == 2); _ASSERT(e.size() == 3 * 4); e += 3; e[1] += 6; e = e + index<2>(3,-4); _ASSERT(e == extent<2>(9, 9)); _ASSERT( e.contains(index<2>(8, 8))); _ASSERT(!e.contains(index<2>(8, 9))); grid<N> Our upcoming pre-release bits also have a similar type to extent, grid<N>. The way you create a grid is by passing it an extent, e.g. extent<3> e(4,2,6); grid<3> g(e); I am not going to dive deeper into grid, suffice for now to think of grid<N> simply as an alias for the extent<N> object, that you create when you encounter a function that expects a grid object instead of an extent object. Usage The extent class on its own simply defines the size of the N-dimensional space. We'll see in future posts that when you create containers (arrays) and wrappers (array_views) for your data, it is an extent<N> object that you'll need to use to create those (and use an index<N> object to index into them). We'll also see that it is a grid<N> object that you pass to the new parallel_for_each function that I'll cover in the next post. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• In hindsight, is basing XAML on XML a mistake or a good approach?

  - by romkyns

  XAML is essentially a subset of XML. One of the main benefits of basing XAML on XML is said to be that it can be parsed with existing tools. And it can, to a large degree, although the (syntactically non-trivial) attribute values will stay in text form and require further parsing. There are two major alternatives to describing a GUI in an XML-derived language. One is to do what WinForms did, and describe it in real code. There are numerous problems with this, though it’s not completely advantage-free (a question to compare XAML to this approach). The other major alternative is to design a completely new syntax specifically tailored for the task at hand. This is generally known as a domain-specific language. So, in hindsight, and as a lesson for the future generations, was it a good idea to base XAML on XML, or would it have been better as a custom-designed domain-specific language? If we were designing an even better UI framework, should we pick XML or a custom DSL? Since it’s much easier to think positively about the status quo, especially one that is quite liked by the community, I’ll give some example reasons for why building on top of XML might be considered a mistake. Basing a language off XML has one thing going for it: it’s much easier to parse (the core parser is already available), requires much, much less design work, and alternative parsers are also much easier to write for 3rd party developers. But the resulting language can be unsatisfying in various ways. It is rather verbose. If you change the type of something, you need to change it in the closing tag. It has very poor support for comments; it’s impossible to comment out an attribute. There are limitations placed on the content of attributes by XML. The markup extensions have to be built "on top" of the XML syntax, not integrated deeply and nicely into it. And, my personal favourite, if you set something via an attribute, you use completely different syntax than if you set the exact same thing as a content property. It’s also said that since everyone knows XML, XAML requires less learning. Strictly speaking this is true, but learning the syntax is a tiny fraction of the time spent learning a new UI framework; it’s the framework’s concepts that make the curve steep. Besides, the idiosyncracies of an XML-based language might actually add to the "needs learning" basket. Are these disadvantages outweighted by the ease of parsing? Should the next cool framework continue the tradition, or invest the time to design an awesome DSL that can’t be parsed by existing tools and whose syntax needs to be learned by everyone? P.S. Not everyone confuses XAML and WPF, but some do. XAML is the XML-like thing. WPF is the framework with support for bindings, theming, hardware acceleration and a whole lot of other cool stuff.

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• Documentation and Test Assertions in Databases

  - by Phil Factor

  When I first worked with Sybase/SQL Server, we thought our databases were impressively large but they were, by today’s standards, pathetically small. We had one script to build the whole database. Every script I ever read was richly annotated; it was more like reading a document. Every table had a comment block, and every line would be commented too. At the end of each routine (e.g. procedure) was a quick integration test, or series of test assertions, to check that nothing in the build was broken. We simply ran the build script, stored in the Version Control System, and it pulled everything together in a logical sequence that not only created the database objects but pulled in the static data. This worked fine at the scale we had. The advantage was that one could, by reading the source code, reach a rapid understanding of how the database worked and how one could interface with it. The problem was that it was a system that meant that only one developer at the time could work on the database. It was very easy for a developer to execute accidentally the entire build script rather than the selected section on which he or she was working, thereby cleansing the database of everyone else’s work-in-progress and data. It soon became the fashion to work at the object level, so that programmers could check out individual views, tables, functions, constraints and rules and work on them independently. It was then that I noticed the trend to generate the source for the VCS retrospectively from the development server. Tables were worst affected. You can, of course, add or delete a table’s columns and constraints retrospectively, which means that the existing source no longer represents the current object. If, after your development work, you generate the source from the live table, then you get no block or line comments, and the source script is sprinkled with silly square-brackets and other confetti, thereby rendering it visually indigestible. Routines, too, were affected. In our system, every routine had a directly attached string of unit-tests. A retro-generated routine has no unit-tests or test assertions. Yes, one can still commit our test code to the VCS but it’s a separate module and teams end up running the whole suite of tests for every individual change, rather than just the tests for that routine, which doesn’t scale for database testing. With Extended properties, one can get the best of both worlds, and even use them to put blame, praise or annotations into your VCS. It requires a lot of work, though, particularly the script to generate the table. The problem is that there are no conventional names beyond ‘MS_Description’ for the special use of extended properties. This makes it difficult to do splendid things such ensuring the integrity of the build by running a suite of tests that are actually stored in extended properties within the database and therefore the VCS. We have lost the readability of database source code over the years, and largely jettisoned the use of test assertions as part of the database build. This is not unexpected in view of the increasing complexity of the structure of databases and number of programmers working on them. There must, surely, be a way of getting them back, but I sometimes wonder if I’m one of very few who miss them.

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• With a little effort you can &ldquo;SEMI&rdquo;-protect your C# assemblies with obfuscation.

  - by mbcrump

  This method will not protect your assemblies from a experienced hacker. Everyday we see new keygens, cracks, serials being released that contain ways around copy protection from small companies. This is a simple process that will make a lot of hackers quit because so many others use nothing. If you were a thief would you pick the house that has security signs and an alarm or one that has nothing? To so begin: Obfuscation is the concealment of meaning in communication, making it confusing and harder to interpret. Lets begin by looking at the cartoon below:     You are probably familiar with the term and probably ignored this like most programmers ignore user security. Today, I’m going to show you reflection and a way to obfuscate it. Please understand that I am aware of ways around this, but I believe some security is better than no security.  In this sample program below, the code appears exactly as it does in Visual Studio. When the program runs, you get either a true or false in a console window. Sample Program. using System; using System.Diagnostics; using System.Linq;   namespace ObfuscateMe {     class Program     {                static void Main(string[] args)         {               Console.WriteLine(IsProcessOpen("notepad")); //Returns a True or False depending if you have notepad running.             Console.ReadLine();         }             public static bool IsProcessOpen(string name)         {             return Process.GetProcesses().Any(clsProcess => clsProcess.ProcessName.Contains(name));         }     } }   Pretend, that this is a commercial application. The hacker will only have the executable and maybe a few config files, etc. After reviewing the executable, he can determine if it was produced in .NET by examing the file in ILDASM or Redgate’s Reflector. We are going to examine the file using RedGate’s Reflector. Upon launch, we simply drag/drop the exe over to the application. We have the following for the Main method:   and for the IsProcessOpen method:     Without any other knowledge as to how this works, the hacker could export the exe and get vs project build or copy this code in and our application would run. Using Reflector output. using System; using System.Diagnostics; using System.Linq;   namespace ObfuscateMe {     class Program     {                static void Main(string[] args)         {               Console.WriteLine(IsProcessOpen("notepad"));             Console.ReadLine();         }             public static bool IsProcessOpen(string name)         {             return Process.GetProcesses().Any<Process>(delegate(Process clsProcess)             {                 return clsProcess.ProcessName.Contains(name);             });         }       } } The code is not identical, but returns the same value. At this point, with a little bit of effort you could prevent the hacker from reverse engineering your code so quickly by using Eazfuscator.NET. Eazfuscator.NET is just one of many programs built for this. Visual Studio ships with a community version of Dotfoscutor. So download and load Eazfuscator.NET and drag/drop your exectuable/project into the window. It will work for a few minutes depending if you have a quad-core or not. After it finishes, open the executable in RedGate Reflector and you will get the following: Main After Obfuscation IsProcessOpen Method after obfuscation: As you can see with the jumbled characters, it is not as easy as the first example. I am aware of methods around this, but it takes more effort and unless the hacker is up for the challenge, they will just pick another program. This is also helpful if you are a consultant and make clients pay a yearly license fee. This would prevent the average software developer from jumping into your security routine after you have left. I hope this article helped someone. If you have any feedback, please leave it in the comments below.

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• Using HTML5 Today part 3&ndash; Using Polyfills

  - by Steve Albers

  Shims helps when adding semantic tags to older IE browsers, but there is a huge range of other new HTML5 features that having varying support on browsers.  Polyfills are JavaScript code and/or browser plug-ins that can provide older or less featured browsers with API support.  The best polyfills will detect the whether the current browser has native support, and only adds the functionality if necessary.  The Douglas Crockford JSON2.js library is an example of this approach: if the browser already supports the JSON object, nothing changes.  If JSON is not available, the library adds a JSON property in the global object. This approach provides some big benefits: It lets you add great new HTML5 features to your web sites sooner. It lets the developer focus on writing to the up-and-coming standard rather than proprietary APIs. Where most one-off legacy code fixes tends to break down over time, well done polyfills will stop executing over time (as customer browsers natively support the feature) meaning polyfill code may not need to be tested against new browsers since they will execute the native methods instead. Your should also remember that Polyfills represent an entirely separate code path (and sometimes plug-in) that requires testing for support.  Also Polyfills tend to run on older browsers, which often have slower JavaScript performance.  As a result you might find that performance on older browsers is not comparable. When looking for Polyfills you can start by checking the Modernizr GitHub wiki or the HTML5 Please site. For an example of a polyfill consider a page that writes a few geometric shapes on a <canvas> <script src="jquery-1.7.1.min.js"><script> <script> $(document).ready(function () { drawCanvas(); }); function drawCanvas() { var context = $("canvas")[0].getContext('2d'); //background context.fillStyle = "#8B0000"; context.fillRect(5, 5, 300, 100); // emptybox context.strokeStyle = "#B0C4DE"; context.lineWidth = 4; context.strokeRect(20, 15, 80, 80); // circle context.arc(160, 55, 40, 0, Math.PI * 2, false); context.fillStyle = "#4B0082"; context.fill(); </script>   The result is a simple static canvas with a box & a circle:   …to enable this functionality on a pre-canvas browser we can find a polyfill.  A check on html5please.com references  FlashCanvas.  Pull down the zip and extract the files (flashcanvas.js, flash10canvas.swf, etc) to a directory on your site.  Then based on the documentation you need to add a single line to your original HTML file: <!--[if lt IE 9]><script src="flashcanvas.js"></script><![endif]—> …and you have canvas functionality!  The IE conditional comments ensure that the library is only loaded in browsers where it is useful, improving page load & processing time. Like all Polyfills, you should test to verify the functionality matches your expectations across browsers you need to support.  For instance the Flash Canvas home page advertises 70% support of HTML5 Canvas spec tests.

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• Ask the Readers: How Many Monitors Do You Use with Your Computer?

  - by Asian Angel

  Most people have a single monitor for their computers, many have two, and some individuals enjoy “3 monitor plus” goodness. This week we would like to know how many monitors you use with your computer. Photo by DamnedNice. A good majority of people have a single monitor that they use with their computers and that single monitor serves their needs very well. It could be that these individuals do not engage in a heavy amount of work or play on their computers…they just need to do the basics like checking e-mail, using I.M., working with photos, etc. Another possibility is the use of virtual desktop software such as Dexpot, Yodm 3D, or Sysinternals Desktops on Windows systems. Linux systems such as Ubuntu already have that wonderful multi-desktop functionality built in. The wonderful part about virtual desktops is that a single monitor can feel equivalent to a small army of monitors. The ability to separate your open windows into “categories” and spread them out across multiple desktops is definitely nice. With each passing year dual monitor setups are becoming more common. Having twice the screen real-estate visible at the same time can be extremely convenient when you are multi-tasking. Perhaps you like to monitor your system’s stats and an e-mail account on the second monitor while working with software on the first. It certainly beats having windows popping up and down on your screen constantly while keeping on top of everything! Next we have the people who have three or more monitors in use with their computers. This may be a result of the type of work they do, an experiment to see if multiple monitors are right for them, or the cool, geeky factor that comes with having all those monitors. Needless to say these individuals can induce a good amount of envy and/or inspiration in the rest of us when we see their awesome setups. Are you perfectly content with a single monitor? Do you have two or more monitors that you use? If you have two or more monitors are they actually that useful to you? Perhaps you are getting ready even now to add additional monitors to your system. Whatever your situation may be at the moment, let us know your thoughts (and possible multi-monitor plans) in the comments! How-To Geek Polls require Javascript. Please Click Here to View the Poll. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials Is Your Desktop Printer More Expensive Than Printing Services? 20 OS X Keyboard Shortcuts You Might Not Know HTG Explains: Which Linux File System Should You Choose? HTG Explains: Why Does Photo Paper Improve Print Quality? Hidden Tracks Your Stolen Mac; Free Until End of January Why the Other Checkout Line Always Moves Faster World of Warcraft Theme for Windows 7 Ubuntu Font Family Now Available for Download Oh No! WikiLeaks Published Santa Claus’s Naughty List [Video] Remember the Milk Now Supports HTTPS Encryption for the Entire Session

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• Welcome to BlogEngine.NET 2.9 using Microsoft SQL Server

  If you see this post it means that BlogEngine.NET 2.9 is running and the hard part of creating your own blog is done. There is only a few things left to do. Write Permissions To be able to log in to the blog and writing posts, you need to enable write permissions on the App_Data folder. If you’re blog is hosted at a hosting provider, you can either log into your account’s admin page or call the support. You need write permissions on the App_Data folder because all posts, comments, and blog attachments are saved as XML files and placed in the App_Data folder.  If you wish to use a database to to store your blog data, we still encourage you to enable this write access for an images you may wish to store for your blog posts.  If you are interested in using Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, SQL CE, or other databases, please see the BlogEngine wiki to get started. Security When you've got write permissions to the App_Data folder, you need to change the username and password. Find the sign-in link located either at the bottom or top of the page depending on your current theme and click it. Now enter "admin" in both the username and password fields and click the button. You will now see an admin menu appear. It has a link to the "Users" admin page. From there you can change the username and password.  Passwords are hashed by default so if you lose your password, please see the BlogEngine wiki for information on recovery. Configuration and Profile Now that you have your blog secured, take a look through the settings and give your new blog a title.  BlogEngine.NET 2.9 is set up to take full advantage of of many semantic formats and technologies such as FOAF, SIOC and APML. It means that the content stored in your BlogEngine.NET installation will be fully portable and auto-discoverable.  Be sure to fill in your author profile to take better advantage of this. Themes, Widgets & Extensions One last thing to consider is customizing the look of your blog.  We have a few themes available right out of the box including two fully setup to use our new widget framework.  The widget framework allows drop and drag placement on your side bar as well as editing and configuration right in the widget while you are logged in.  Extensions allow you to extend and customize the behaivor of your blog.  Be sure to check the BlogEngine.NET Gallery at dnbegallery.org as the go-to location for downloading widgets, themes and extensions. On the web You can find BlogEngine.NET on the official website. Here you'll find tutorials, documentation, tips and tricks and much more. The ongoing development of BlogEngine.NET can be followed at CodePlex where the daily builds will be published for anyone to download.  Again, new themes, widgets and extensions can be downloaded at the BlogEngine.NET gallery. Good luck and happy writing. The BlogEngine.NET team

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• Does *every* project benefit from written specifications?

  - by nikie

  I know this is holy war territory, so please read the question to the end before answering. There are many cases where written specifications make a lot of sense. For example, if you're a contractor and you want to get paid, you need written specs. If you're working in a team with 20 persons, you need written specs. If you're writing a programming language compiler or interpreter (and it's not perl), you'll usually write a formal specification. I don't doubt that there are many more cases where written specifications are a really good idea. I just think that there are cases where there's so little benefit in written specs, that it doesn't outweigh the costs of writing and maintaining them. EDIT: The close votes say that "it is difficult to say what is asked here", so let me clarify: The usefulness of written, detailed specifications is often claimed like a dogma. (If you want examples, look at the comments.) But I don't see the use of them for the kind of development I'm doing. So what is asked here is: How would written specifications help me? Background information: I work for a small company that's developing vertical market software. If our product is easier to use and has better performance than the competition, it sells. If it's harder to use, even if it behaves 100% as the specification says, it doesn't sell. So there are no "external forces" for having written specs. The advantage would have to be somewhere in the development process. Now, I can see how frozen specifications would make a developer's life easier. But we'll never have frozen specs. If we see in the middle of development that feature X is not intuitive to use the way it's specified, then we can only choose between changing the specification or developing a product that won't sell. You'll probably ask by now: How do you know when you're done? Well, we're continually improving our product. The competition does the same. So (hopefully) we're never done. We keep improving the software, and when we reach a point when the benefits of the improvements we've added since the last release outweigh the costs of an update, we create a new release that is then tested, localized, documented and deployed. This also means that there's rarely any schedule pressure. Nobody has to do overtime to make a deadline. If the feature isn't done by the time we want to release the next version, it'll simply go into the next version. The next question might be: How do your developers know what they're supposed to implement? The answer is: They have a lot of domain knowledge. They know the customers business well enough, so a high-level description of the feature (or even just the problem that the customer needs solved) is enough to implement it. If it's not clear, the developer creates a few fake screens to get feedback from marketing/management or customers, but this is nowhere near the level of detail of actual specifications. This might be inefficient for larger teams, but for a small team with low turnover it works quite well. It has the additional benefit that the developer in question often comes up with a better solution than the person writing the specs might have. This question is already getting very long, but let me address one last point: Testing. Like I said in the beginning, if our software behaves 100% like the spec says, it still can be crap. In fact, if it's so unintuitive that you need a spec to know how to test it, it probably is crap. It makes sense to have fixed, written tests for some core functionality and for regression bugs, but again, this is nowhere near a full written spec of how the software should behave when. The main test is: hand the software to a user who doesn't know it yet and tell him to use the new feature X. If she can figure out how to use it and it works, it works.

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• Why is x=x++ undefined?

  - by ugoren

  It's undefined because the it modifies x twice between sequence points. The standard says it's undefined, therefore it's undefined. That much I know. But why? My understanding is that forbidding this allows compilers to optimize better. This could have made sense when C was invented, but now seems like a weak argument. If we were to reinvent C today, would we do it this way, or can it be done better? Or maybe there's a deeper problem, that makes it hard to define consistent rules for such expressions, so it's best to forbid them? So suppose we were to reinvent C today. I'd like to suggest simple rules for expressions such as x=x++, which seem to me to work better than the existing rules. I'd like to get your opinion on the suggested rules compared to the existing ones, or other suggestions. Suggested Rules: Between sequence points, order of evaluation is unspecified. Side effects take place immediately. There's no undefined behavior involved. Expressions evaluate to this value or that, but surely won't format your hard disk (strangely, I've never seen an implementation where x=x++ formats the hard disk). Example Expressions x=x++ - Well defined, doesn't change x. First, x is incremented (immediately when x++ is evaluated), then it's old value is stored in x. x++ + ++x - Increments x twice, evaluates to 2*x+2. Though either side may be evaluated first, the result is either x + (x+2) (left side first) or (x+1) + (x+1) (right side first). x = x + (x=3) - Unspecified, x set to either x+3 or 6. If the right side is evaluated first, it's x+3. It's also possible that x=3 is evaluated first, so it's 3+3. In either case, the x=3 assignment happens immediately when x=3 is evaluated, so the value stored is overwritten by the other assignment. x+=(x=3) - Well defined, sets x to 6. You could argue that this is just shorthand for the expression above. But I'd say that += must be executed after x=3, and not in two parts (read x, evaluate x=3, add and store new value). What's the Advantage? Some comments raised this good point. It's not that I'm after the pleasure of using x=x++ in my code. It's a strange and misleading expression. What I want is to be able to understand complicated expressions. Normally, a complicated expression is no more than the sum of its parts. If you understand the parts and the operators combining them, you can understand the whole. C's current behavior seems to deviate from this principle. One assignment plus another assignment suddenly doesn't make two assignments. Today, when I look at x=x++, I can't say what it does. With my suggested rules, I can, by simply examining its components and their relations.

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• GameStateManagement and inputs not being recognized

  - by Dave Voyles

  EDIT: I've removed a bit of code from the input class to make this more readable, and updated my StartScreen class, which is now at the bottom. I have the same issues though, but they are explained in my comments on the bottom of this page. It won't let me paste my additional code here (the format comes out crazy), so I've linked to pastebin with the code pastebin I've been trying to implement the MS provided GameStateManagement sample with my game, but it has proven a bit difficult. Really, I'm using Oneksoft's Starter Kit, which uses the MS provided sample, so they are identical, except for my splash screen. I'm able to get the splash screen to launch, where it informs the player to press A to advance the screen, but this doesn't seem to accept any of my inputs. I’ve also added Console.Writeline(“Pressing A”) under the IsMenuPressed method in Input.cs to verify that it is getting called, but for some reason it is constantly spamming my log, rather than just appearing each time I press it. Not sure why this is happening. I have a bit too much code to post it all here, so I’ve attached a link to my .rar with my classes, but I’ll also leave a bit here which I thinkmay be applicable. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6ek4uru2jc2ch0k/JTeBWN_3PQ What do you guys think the issue is? namespace Pong { public class Input { public const int MaxInputs = 4; public readonly KeyboardState[] CurrentKeyboardState; public readonly GamePadState[] CurrentGamePadState; public KeyboardState[] LastKeyboardState; public GamePadState[] LastGamePadState; public readonly bool[] GamePadWasConnected; public Input() { // Get input state CurrentKeyboardState = new KeyboardState[MaxInputs]; CurrentGamePadState = new GamePadState[MaxInputs]; // Preserving last states to check for isKeyUp events LastKeyboardState = CurrentKeyboardState; LastGamePadState = CurrentGamePadState; } /// <summary> /// Checks for a "menu select" input action. /// The controllingPlayer parameter specifies which player to read input for. /// If this is null, it will accept input from any player. When the action /// is detected, the output playerIndex reports which player pressed it. /// </summary> public bool IsMenuSelect(PlayerIndex? controllingPlayer, out PlayerIndex playerIndex) { Console.WriteLine("Pressing A"); return IsNewKeyPress(Keys.Space, controllingPlayer, out playerIndex) || IsNewKeyPress(Keys.Enter, controllingPlayer, out playerIndex) || IsNewButtonPress(Buttons.A, controllingPlayer, out playerIndex) || IsNewButtonPress(Buttons.Start, controllingPlayer, out playerIndex); } /// <summary> /// Checks for a "menu cancel" input action. /// The controllingPlayer parameter specifies which player to read input for. /// If this is null, it will accept input from any player. When the action /// is detected, the output playerIndex reports which player pressed it. /// </summary> public bool IsMenuCancel(PlayerIndex? controllingPlayer, out PlayerIndex playerIndex) { return IsNewKeyPress(Keys.Escape, controllingPlayer, out playerIndex) || IsNewButtonPress(Buttons.B, controllingPlayer, out playerIndex) || IsNewButtonPress(Buttons.Back, controllingPlayer, out playerIndex); }

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• MySQL Enterprise Backup 3.8.2 has been released!

  - by Hema Sridharan

  MySQL Enterprise Backup v3.8.2, a maintenance release of online MySQL backup tool, is now available for download from My Oracle Support  (MOS) website as our latest GA release.  It will also be available via the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud in approximately 1-2 weeks. A brief summary of the changes in MySQL Enterprise Backup version 3.8.2 is given below.   A. Functionality Added or Changed:  MySQL Enterprise Backup has a new --on-disk-full command line option. mysqlbackup could hang when the disk became full, rather than detecting the low space condition. mysqlbackup now monitors disk space when running backup commands, and users can now specify the action to take at a disk-full condition with the --on-disk-full option. For more details, refer this page MySQL Enterprise Backup has a new progress report feature, which periodically outputs short progress indicators on its  operations to user-selected destinations (for example, stdout, stderr, a file, or other choices). For more details on progress report options, refer here   B. Bugs Fixed: When --innodb-file-per-table=ON, if a table was renamed and backup-to-image was in progress, apply-log would fail when being run on the backup. (Bug #16903973)   MySQL Server failed to start after a backup was restored if  there had been online DDL transactions on partitioned tables during the time of backup. (Bug #16924499)   apply-log failed if ALTER TABLE ... REORGANIZE PARTITION was applied to partitioned InnoDB tables during backup. (Bug #16721824, Bug #16903951)  apply-incremental-backup might fail with an assertion error if  the InnoDB tables being backed up were created in Barracuda format and with their KEY_BLOCK_SIZE  values  different from the innodb_page_size . This fix ensures that different KEY_BLOCK_SIZE  values are handled properly during incremental backup and apply-incremental-backup operations.  If a table was renamed following a full backup, a subsequent incremental backup could copy the .frm file with the new name, but not the associated .ibd file with the new name. After a  restore, the InnoDB data dictionary could be in an  inconsistent state. This issue primarily occurred if the table  was not changed between the full backup and the subsequent  incremental backup. Bug #16262690)  After a full backup, if a table was renamed and modified,  apply-incremental-backup would crash when run on the backup directory. (Bug #16262609) The value of the binary log position in backup_variables.txt  could be different from the output displayed during the   backup-and-apply-log operation. (This issue did not occur if  the backup and apply-log steps were done separately.) (Bug  #16195529) When using the --only-innodb-with-frm option, MySQL Enterprise Backup tried to create temporary files at unintended locations in the file system, which might cause a failure when, for example, the user had no write privilege for those locations.   This fix makes sure the paths for the temporary files are  correct. (Bug #14787324)  A backup process might hang when it ran into an LSN mismatch between a data file  and the redo log. This fix makes sure the process does not hang and it displays an error message showing the  name of the problematic data file (Bug #14791645) Please post your questions / comments about Backup in forums. Thanks, MEB Team

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• MySQL Server 5.6 default my.cnf and my.ini

  - by user12626240

  We've introduced a default my.cnf / my.ini file for MySQL Server that you can now see in the 5.6.8 release candidate: # For advice on how to change settings please see # http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/server-configuration-defaults.html [mysqld] # Remove leading # and set to the amount of RAM for the most important data # cache in MySQL. Start at 70% of total RAM for dedicated server, else 10%. # innodb_buffer_pool_size = 128M   # Remove leading # to turn on a very important data integrity option: logging # changes to the binary log between backups. # log_bin   # These are commonly set, remove the # and set as required. # basedir = ..... # datadir = ..... # port = ..... # socket = ..... # server_id = .....   # Remove leading # to set options mainly useful for reporting servers. # The server defaults are faster for transactions and fast SELECTs. # Adjust sizes as needed, experiment to find the optimal values. # join_buffer_size = 128M # sort_buffer_size = 2M # read_rnd_buffer_size = 2M   sql_mode=NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION,STRICT_TRANS_TABLES    There is also a template file called my-default.cnf or my-default.ini that has these lines near the start: # *** DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE. It's a template which will be copied to the # *** default location during install, and will be replaced if you # *** upgrade to a newer version of MySQL.   On Linux systems, the mysql_install_db command will copy the template file to the final location, where the server will read and use the file, removing the extra three lines. On Windows, the installer will create extra settings based on the answers you gave during installation. Neither will overwrite an existing my.cnf or my.ini file. The only initially active setting here is to change the value of  sql_mode from the server default of NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION to NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION,STRICT_TRANS_TABLES. This strict mode changes warnings for some non-standard behaviour into errors. This can cause applications which rely on the non-standard things, like dates that aren't valid, to lose data. If we had just changed the server default, the new setting would affect all servers that lack an explicit sql_mode setting, including those where strict mode is harmful. So we did it in the default file instead because that will only affect new server installations. You should expect that in our next version after 5.6, the server default will include STRICT_TRANS_TABLES. Our Windows installer and some of our connectors already use STRICT_TRANS_TABLES by default. Strict has been our preferred setting for many years and it is good to see some development platforms are using it. If you need the old behaviour, just remove the STRICT_TRANS_TABLES setting. If you do this, please also ask your application provider to make it unnecessary. They can do that by setting the session sql_mode setting in their own connections, so the rest of the applications using the server don't have to have an undesirable default. We've kept this file as small as possible because we found that our old files were too big and confused people. We've also now removed the old my-huge and related example files. One key part of this is the link to the documentation, where we will provide an introduction to some key settings. We'd like to hear your feedback on settings that will benefit most users or are most important to call out for existing users. Please do that by commenting here or if you prefer by adding comments to this bug report.

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• When should I use a Process Model versus a Use Case?

  - by Dave Burke

  This Blog entry is a follow on to https://blogs.oracle.com/oum/entry/oum_is_business_process_and and addresses a question I sometimes get asked…..i.e. “when I am gathering requirements on a Project, should I use a Process Modeling approach, or should I use a Use Case approach?” Not surprisingly, the short answer is “it depends”! Let’s take a scenario where you are working on a Sales Force Automation project. We’ll call the process that is being implemented “Lead-to-Order”. I would typically think of this type of project as being “Process Centric”. In other words, the focus will be on orchestrating a series of human and system related tasks that ultimately deliver value to the business in a cost effective way. Put in even simpler terms……implement an automated pre-sales system. For this type of (Process Centric) project, requirements would typically be gathered through a series of Workshops where the focal point will be on creating, or confirming, the Future-State (To-Be) business process. If pre-defined “best-practice” business process models exist, then of course they could and should be used during the Workshops, but even in their absence, the focus of the Workshops will be to define the optimum series of Tasks, their connections, sequence, and dependencies that will ultimately reflect a business process that meets the needs of the business. Now let’s take another scenario. Assume you are working on a Content Management project that involves automating the creation and management of content for User Manuals, Web Sites, Social Media publications etc. Would you call this type of project “Process Centric”?.......well you could, but it might also fall into the category of complex configuration, plus some custom extensions to a standard software application (COTS). For this type of project it would certainly be worth considering using a Use Case approach in order to 1) understand the requirements, and 2) to capture the functional requirements of the custom extensions. At this point you might be asking “why couldn’t I use a Process Modeling approach for my Content Management project?” Well, of course you could, but you just need to think about which approach is the most effective. Start by analyzing the types of Tasks that will eventually be automated by the system, for example: Best Suited To? Task Name Process Model Use Case Notes Manage outbound calls Ö A series of linked human and system tasks for calling and following up with prospects Manage content revision Ö Updating the content on a website Update User Preferences Ö Updating a users display preferences Assign Lead Ö Reviewing a lead, then assigning it to a sales person Convert Lead to Quote Ö Updating the status of a lead, and then converting it to a sales order As you can see, it’s not an exact science, and either approach is viable for the Tasks listed above. However, where you have a series of interconnected Tasks or Activities, than when combined, deliver value to the business, then that would be a good indicator to lead with a Process Modeling approach. On the other hand, when the Tasks or Activities in question are more isolated and/or do not cross traditional departmental boundaries, then a Use Case approach might be worth considering. Now let’s take one final scenario….. As you captured the To-Be Process flows for the Sales Force automation project, you discover a “Gap” in terms of what the client requires, and what the standard COTS application can provide. Let’s assume that the only way forward is to develop a Custom Extension. This would now be a perfect opportunity to document the functional requirements (behind the Gap) using a Use Case approach. After all, we will be developing some new software, and one of the most effective ways to begin the Software Development Lifecycle is to follow a Use Case approach. As always, your comments are most welcome.

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• Multichannel Digital Engagement: Find Out How Your Organization Measures Up

  - by Michael Snow

  This article was originally published in the September 2013 Edition of the Oracle Information InDepth Newsletter ORACLE WEBCENTER EDITION Thanks to mobile and social technologies, interactive online experiences are now commonplace. Not only that, they give consumers more choices, influence, and control than ever before. So how can you make your organization stand out? The key building blocks for delivering exceptional cross-channel digital experiences are outlined below. Also, a new assessment tool is available to help you measure your organization's ability to deliver such experiences. A clearly defined digital strategy. The customer journey is growing increasingly complex, encompassing multiple touchpoints and channels. It used to be easy to map marketing efforts to specific offline channels; for example, a direct mail piece with an offer to visit a store for a discounted purchase. Now it is more difficult to cultivate and track such clear cause-and-effect relationships. To deliver an integrated digital experience in this more complex world, organizations need a clearly defined and comprehensive digital marketing strategy that is backed up by an integrated set of software, middleware, and hardware solutions. Strong support for business agility and speed-to-market. As both IT and marketing executives know, speed-to-market and business agility are key to competitive advantage. That means marketers need solutions to support the rapid implementation of online marketing initiatives—plus the flexibility to adapt quickly to a changing marketplace. And IT needs tools with the performance, scalability, and ease of integration to support marketing efforts. Both teams benefit when business users are empowered to implement marketing initiatives on their own, with minimal IT intervention. The ability to deliver relevant, personalized content. Delivering a one-size-fits-all online customer experience is no longer acceptable. Customers expect you to know who they are, including their preferences and past relationship with your brand. That means delivering the most relevant content from the moment a visitor enters your site. To make that happen, you need a powerful rules engine so that marketers and business users can easily define site visitor segments and deliver content accordingly. That includes both implicit targeting that is based on the user’s behavior, and explicit targeting that takes a user’s profile information into account. Ideally, the rules engine can also intelligently weight recommendations when multiple segments apply to a specific customer. Support for social interactivity. With the advent of Facebook and LinkedIn, visitors expect to participate in and contribute to your web presence—and share their experience on their own social networks. That requires easy incorporation of user-generated content such as comments, ratings, reviews, polls, and blogs; seamless integration with third-party social networking sites; and support for social login, which helps to remove barriers to social participation. The ability to deliver connected, multichannel experiences that include powerful, flexible mobile capabilities. By 2015, mobile usage is projected to surpass that of PCs and other wired devices. In other words, mobile is an essential element in delivering exceptional online customer experiences. This requires the creation and management of mobile experiences that are optimized for delivery to the thousands of different devices that are in use today. Just as important, organizations must be able to easily extend their traditional web presence to the mobile channel and deliver highly personalized and relevant multichannel marketing initiatives while also managing to minimize the time and effort required to manage mobile sites. Are you curious to know how your organization measures up when it comes to delivering an engaging, multichannel digital experience? If so, take this brief, 15-question online assessment and see how your organization scores in the areas of digital strategy, digital agility, relevance and personalization, social interactivity, and multichannel experience.

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• Mutual SSL Client Authentication

  - by nordisk

  Hi, I'm trying to achieve mutual SSL client authentication but without much success so far. Let me explain my scenario first: I have a client certificate issued by an intermediate CA whose certificate in turn was issued by a root CA (the intermediate and root CAs are within the company's network). This is the certificate I am including as part of my call to the server (using the HttpWebRequest object). The server has imported my client certificate and it is one of the certificates presented to me. An important thing to note is that the server does not trust the intermediate CA or the root for that matter. What we're trying to achieve is authentication against the certificate directly, i.e. mutual authentication using my client certificate. The error I'm getting is: "The request was aborted: Could not create SSL/TLS secure channel." From my trace logs I also get the following: System.Net Information: 0 : [3380] SecureChannel#34868631 - We have user-provided certificates. The server has specified 2 issuer(s). Looking for certificates that match any of the issuers. System.Net Information: 0 : [3380] SecureChannel#34868631 - Left with 0 client certificates to choose from. One of the certificates presented to us from the server is the same as our client certificate but the matching between them seems to fail. It looks like it's trying to verify the issuer. Now to make things even more interesting: If the server trusts and sends back the intermediate CA then everything works fine! (This is not an option for the production environment though I'm told) Using jmeter to test the request works fine too. I can only assume that Java's SSL handshake implementation is somewhat different. So it really comes down to this: Do you need to implement mutual SSL authentication differently from normal client SSL authentication? Any ideas or comments would be greatly appreciated.

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• faster implementation of sum ( for Codility test )

  - by Oscar Reyes

  How can the following simple implementation of sum be faster? private long sum( int [] a, int begin, int end ) { if( a == null ) { return 0; } long r = 0; for( int i = begin ; i < end ; i++ ) { r+= a[i]; } return r; } EDIT Background is in order. Reading latest entry on coding horror, I came to this site: http://codility.com which has this interesting programming test. Anyway, I got 60 out of 100 in my submission, and basically ( I think ) is because this implementation of sum, because those parts where I failed are the performance parts. I'm getting TIME_OUT_ERROR's So, I was wondering if an optimization in the algorithm is possible. So, no built in functions or assembly would be allowed. This my be done in C, C++, C#, Java or pretty much in any other. EDIT As usual, mmyers was right. I did profile the code and I saw most of the time was spent on that function, but I didn't understand why. So what I did was to throw away my implementation and start with a new one. This time I've got an optimal solution [ according to San Jacinto O(n) -see comments to MSN below - ] This time I've got 81% on Codility which I think is good enough. The problem is that I didn't take the 30 mins. but around 2 hrs. but I guess that leaves me still as a good programmer, for I could work on the problem until I found an optimal solution: Here's my result. I never understood what is those "combinations of..." nor how to test "extreme_first"

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• Silverlight nested RadGridView SelectedItem DataContext

  - by Ciaran

  Hi, I'm developing a Silverlight 4 app and am using the 2010 Q1 release 1 RadGridView. I'm developing this app using the MVVM pattern and trying to keep my codebehind to a minimum. On my View I have a RadGridView and this binds to a property on my ViewModel. I am setting a property via the SelectedItem. I have a nested RadGridView and I want to set a property on my ViewModel to the SelectedItem but I cannot. I think the DataContext of my nested grid is the element in the parent's bound collection, rather than my ViewModel. I can easily use codebehind to set my ViewModel property from the SelectionChanged event on the nested grid, but I'd rather not do this. I have tried to use my viewModelName in the ElementName in my nested grid to specify that for SelectedItem, the ViewModel is the DataContext, but I cannot get this to work. Any ideas? Here is my Xaml: <grid:RadGridView x:Name="master" ItemsSource="{Binding EntityClassList, Mode=TwoWay}" SelectedItem="{Binding SelectedEntityClass, Mode=TwoWay}" AutoGenerateColumns="False" > <grid:RadGridView.Columns> <grid:GridViewSelectColumn></grid:GridViewSelectColumn> <grid:GridViewDataColumn DataMemberBinding="{Binding Description}" Header="Description"/. </grid:RadGridView.Columns> <grid:RadGridView.RowDetailsTemplate> <DataTemplate> <grid:RadGridView x:Name="child" ItemsSource="{Binding EntityDetails, Mode=TwoWay}" SelectedItem="{Binding DataContext.SelectedEntityDetail, ElementName='RequestView', Mode=TwoWay}" AutoGenerateColumns="False" > <grid:RadGridView.Columns> <grid:GridViewSelectColumn></grid:GridViewSelectColumn> <grid:GridViewDataColumn DataMemberBinding="{Binding ServiceItem}" Header="Service Item" /> <grid:GridViewDataColumn DataMemberBinding="{Binding Comment}" Header="Comments" /> </grid:RadGridView.Columns> </grid:RadGridView> </DataTemplate> </grid:RadGridView.RowDetailsTemplate> </grid:RadGridView>

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• new ActiveXObject('Word.Application') creates new winword.exe process when IE security does not allo

  - by Mark Ott

  We are using MS Word as a spell checker for a few fields on a private company web site, and when IE security settings are correct it works well. (Zone for the site set to Trusted, and trusted zone modified to allow control to run without prompting.) The script we are using creates a word object and closes it afterward. While the object exists, a winword.exe process runs, but it is destroyed when the word object is closed. If our site is not set in the trusted zone (Internet zone with default security level) the call that creates the word object fails as expected, but the winword.exe process is still created. I do not have any way to interact with this process in the script, so the process stays around until the user logs off (users have no way to manually destroy the process, and it wouldn't be a good solution even if they did.) The call that attempts to create the object is... try { oWordApplication = new ActiveXObject('Word.Application'); } catch(error) { // irrelevant code removed, described in comments.. // notify user spell check cannot be used // disable spell check option } So every time the page is loaded this code may be run again, creating yet another orphan winword.exe process. oWordApplication is, of course, undefined in the catch block. I would like to be able to detect the browser security settings beforehand, but I have done some searching on this and do not think that it is possible. Management here is happy with it as it is. As long as IE security is set correctly it works, and it works well for our purposes. (We may eventually look at other options for spell check functionality, but this was quick, inexpensive, and does everything we need it to do.) This last problem bugs me and I'd like to do something about it, but I'm out of ideas and I have other things that are more in need of my attention. Before I put it aside, I thought I'd ask for suggestions here...

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• Silverlight 4 Overriding the DataForm Autogenerate to insert Combo Boxes bound to Converters.

  - by kmacmahon

  I've been working towards a solution for some time and could use a little help. I know I've seen an example of this before, but tonight I cannot find anything close to what I need. I have a service that provides me all my DropDownLists, either from Cache or from the DomainService. They are presented as IEnumerable, and are requested from the a repository with GetLookup(LookupId). I have created a custom attribute that I have decorated my MetaDataClass that looks something like this: [Lookup(Lookup.Products)] public Guid ProductId I have created a custom Data Form that is set to AutoGenerateFields and I am intercepting the autogenerate fields. I am checking for my CustomAttribute and that works. Given this code in my CustomDataForm (standard comments removed for brevity), what is the next step to override the field generation and place a bound combobox in its place? public class CustomDataForm : DataForm { private Dictionary<string, DataField> fields = new Dictionary<string, DataField>(); public Dictionary<string, DataField> Fields { get { return this.fields; } } protected override void OnAutoGeneratingField(DataFormAutoGeneratingFieldEventArgs e) { PropertyInfo propertyInfo = this.CurrentItem.GetType().GetProperty(e.PropertyName); foreach (Attribute attribute in propertyInfo.GetCustomAttributes(true)) { LookupFieldAttribute lookupFieldAttribute = attribute as LookupFieldAttribute; if (lookupFieldAttribute != null) { // Create a combo box. // Bind it to my Lookup IEnumerable // Set the selected item to my Field's Value // Set the binding two way } } this.fields[e.PropertyName] = e.Field; base.OnAutoGeneratingField(e); } } Any cited working examples for SL4/VS2010 would be appreciated. Thanks

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