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• Partner Blog Series: PwC Perspectives - "Is It Time for an Upgrade?"

  - by Tanu Sood

  Is your organization debating their next step with regard to Identity Management? While all the stakeholders are well aware that the one-size-fits-all doesn’t apply to identity management, just as true is the fact that no two identity management implementations are alike. Oracle’s recent release of Identity Governance Suite 11g Release 2 has innovative features such as a customizable user interface, shopping cart style request catalog and more. However, only a close look at the use cases can help you determine if and when an upgrade to the latest R2 release makes sense for your organization. This post will describe a few of the situations that PwC has helped our clients work through. “Should I be considering an upgrade?” If your organization has an existing identity management implementation, the questions below are a good start to assessing your current solution to see if you need to begin planning for an upgrade: Does the current solution scale and meet your projected identity management needs? Does the current solution have a customer-friendly user interface? Are you completely meeting your compliance objectives? Are you still using spreadsheets? Does the current solution have the features you need? Is your total cost of ownership in line with well-performing similar sized companies in your industry? Can your organization support your existing Identity solution? Is your current product based solution well positioned to support your organization's tactical and strategic direction? Existing Oracle IDM Customers: Several existing Oracle clients are looking to move to R2 in 2013. If your organization is on Sun Identity Manager (SIM) or Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) and if your current assessment suggests that you need to upgrade, you should strongly consider OIM 11gR2. Oracle provides upgrade paths to Oracle Identity Manager 11gR2 from SIM 7.x / 8.x as well as Oracle Identity Manager 10g / 11gR1. The following are some of the considerations for migration: Check the end of product support (for Sun or legacy OIM) schedule There are several new features available in R2 (including common Helpdesk scenarios, profiling of disconnected applications, increased scalability, custom connectors, browser-based UI configurations, portability of configurations during future upgrades, etc) Cost of ownership (for SIM customers)\ Customizations that need to be maintained during the upgrade Time/Cost to migrate now vs. waiting for next version If you are already on an older version of Oracle Identity Manager and actively maintaining your support contract with Oracle, you might be eligible for a free upgrade to OIM 11gR2. Check with your Oracle sales rep for more details. Existing IDM infrastructure in place: In the past year and half, we have seen a surge in IDM upgrades from non-Oracle infrastructure to Oracle. If your organization is looking to improve the end-user experience related to identity management functions, the shopping cart style access request model and browser based personalization features may come in handy. Additionally, organizations that have a large number of applications that include ecommerce, LDAP stores, databases, UNIX systems, mainframes as well as a high frequency of user identity changes and access requests will value the high scalability of the OIM reconciliation and provisioning engine. Furthermore, we have seen our clients like OIM's out of the box (OOB) support for multiple authoritative sources. For organizations looking to integrate applications that do not have an exposed API, the Generic Technology Connector framework supported by OIM will be helpful in quickly generating custom connector using OOB wizard. Similarly, organizations in need of not only flexible on-boarding of disconnected applications but also strict access management to these applications using approval flows will find the flexible disconnected application profiling feature an extremely useful tool that provides a high degree of time savings. Organizations looking to develop custom connectors for home grown or industry specific applications will likewise find that the Identity Connector Framework support in OIM allows them to build and test a custom connector independently before integrating it with OIM. Lastly, most of our clients considering an upgrade to OIM 11gR2 have also expressed interest in the browser based configuration feature that allows an administrator to quickly customize the user interface without adding any custom code. Better yet, code customizations, if any, made to the product are portable across the future upgrades which, is viewed as a big time and money saver by most of our clients. Below are some upgrade methodologies we adopt based on client priorities and the scale of implementation. For illustration purposes, we have assumed that the client is currently on Oracle Waveset (formerly Sun Identity Manager).   Integrated Deployment: The integrated deployment is typically where a client wants to split the implementation to where their current IDM is continuing to handle the front end workflows and OIM takes over the back office operations incrementally. Once all the back office operations are moved completely to OIM, the front end workflows are migrated to OIM. Parallel Deployment: This deployment is typically done where there can be a distinct line drawn between which functionality the platforms are supporting. For example the current IDM implementation is handling the password reset functionality while OIM takes over the access provisioning and RBAC functions. Cutover Deployment: A cutover deployment is typically recommended where a client has smaller less complex implementations and it makes sense to leverage the migration tools to move them over immediately. What does this mean for YOU? There are many variables to consider when making upgrade decisions. For most customers, there is no ‘easy’ button. Organizations looking to upgrade or considering a new vendor should start by doing a mapping of their requirements with product features. The recommended approach is to take stock of both the short term and long term objectives, understand product features, future roadmap, maturity and level of commitment from the R&D and build the implementation plan accordingly. As we said, in the beginning, there is no one-size-fits-all with Identity Management. So, arm yourself with the knowledge, engage in industry discussions, bring in business stakeholders and start building your implementation roadmap. In the next post we will discuss the best practices on R2 implementations. We will be covering the Do's and Don't's and share our thoughts on making implementations successful. Meet the Writers: Dharma Padala is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has been implementing medium to large scale Identity Management solutions across multiple industries including utility, health care, entertainment, retail and financial sectors.   Dharma has 14 years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which he has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past 8 years. Scott MacDonald is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has consulted for several clients across multiple industries including financial services, health care, automotive and retail.   Scott has 10 years of experience in delivering Identity Management solutions. John Misczak is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has experience implementing multiple Identity and Access Management solutions, specializing in Oracle Identity Manager and Business Process Engineering Language (BPEL). Praveen Krishna is a Manager in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  Over the last decade Praveen has helped clients plan, architect and implement Oracle identity solutions across diverse industries.  His experience includes delivering security across diverse topics like network, infrastructure, application and data where he brings a holistic point of view to problem solving. Jenny (Xiao) Zhang is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  She has consulted across multiple industries including financial services, entertainment and retail. Jenny has three years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which she has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past one and a half years.

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• What Makes a Good Design Critic? CHI 2010 Panel Review

  - by Applications User Experience

  Author: Daniel Schwartz, Senior Interaction Designer, Oracle Applications User Experience Oracle Applications UX Chief Evangelist Patanjali Venkatacharya organized and moderated an innovative and stimulating panel discussion titled "What Makes a Good Design Critic? Food Design vs. Product Design Criticism" at CHI 2010, the annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. The panelists included Janice Rohn, VP of User Experience at Experian; Tami Hardeman, a food stylist; Ed Seiber, a restaurant architect and designer; Jonathan Kessler, a food critic and writer at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution; and Larry Powers, Chef de Cuisine at Shaun's restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia. Building off the momentum of his highly acclaimed panel at CHI 2009 on what interaction design can learn from food design (for which I was on the other side as a panelist), Venkatacharya brought together new people with different roles in the restaurant and software interaction design fields. The session was also quite delicious -- but more on that later. Criticism, as it applies to food and product or interaction design, was the tasty topic for this forum and showed that strong parallels exist between food and interaction design criticism. Figure 1. The panelists in discussion: (left to right) Janice Rohn, Ed Seiber, Tami Hardeman, and Jonathan Kessler. The panelists had great insights to share from their respective fields, and they enthusiastically discussed as if they were at a casual collegial dinner. Jonathan Kessler stated that he prefers to have one professional critic's opinion in general than a large sampling of customers, however, "Web sites like Yelp get users excited by the collective approach. People are attracted to things desired by so many." Janice Rohn added that this collective desire was especially true for users of consumer products. Ed Seiber remarked that while people looked to the popular view for their target tastes and product choices, "professional critics like John [Kessler] still hold a big weight on public opinion." Chef Powers indicated that chefs take in feedback from all sources, adding, "word of mouth is very powerful. We also look heavily at the sales of the dishes to see what's moving; what's selling and thus successful." Hearing this discussion validates our design work at Oracle in that we listen to our users (our diners) and industry feedback (our critics) to ensure an optimal user experience of our products. Rohn considers that restaurateur Danny Meyer's book, Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business, which is about creating successful restaurant experiences, has many applicable parallels to user experience design. Meyer actually argues that the customer is not always right, but that "they must always feel heard." Seiber agreed, but noted "customers are not designers," and while designers need to listen to customer feedback, it is the designer's job to synthesize it. Seiber feels it's the critic's job to point out when something is missing or not well-prioritized. In interaction design, our challenges are quite similar, if not parallel. Software tasks are like puzzles that are in search of a solution on how to be best completed. As a food stylist, Tami Hardeman has the demanding and challenging task of presenting food to be as delectable as can be. To present food in its best light requires a lot of creativity and insight into consumer tastes. It's no doubt then that this former fashion stylist came up with the ultimate catch phrase to capture the emotion that clients want to draw from their users: "craveability." The phrase was a hit with the audience and panelists alike. Sometime later in the discussion, Seiber remarked, "designers strive to apply craveability to products, and I do so for restaurants in my case." Craveabilty is also very applicable to interaction design. Creating straightforward and smooth workflows for users of Oracle Applications is a primary goal for my colleagues. We want our users to really enjoy working with our products where it makes them more efficient and better at their jobs. That's our "craveability." Patanjali Venkatacharya asked the panel, "if a design's "craveability" appeals to some cultures but not to others, then what is the impact to the food or product design process?" Rohn stated that "taste is part nature and part nurture" and that the design must take the full context of a product's usage into consideration. Kessler added, "good design is about understanding the context" that the experience necessitates. Seiber remarked how important seat comfort is for diners and how the quality of seating will add so much to the complete dining experience. Sometimes if these non-food factors are not well executed, they can also take away from an otherwise pleasant dining experience. Kessler recounted a time when he was dining at a restaurant that actually had very good food, but the photographs hanging on all the walls did not fit in with the overall décor and created a negative overall dining experience. While the tastiness of the food is critical to a restaurant's success, it is a captivating complete user experience, as in interaction design, which will keep customers coming back and ultimately making the restaurant a hit. Figure 2. Patnajali Venkatacharya enjoyed the Sardian flatbread salad. As a surprise Chef Powers brought out a signature dish from Shaun's restaurant for all the panelists to sample and critique. The Sardinian flatbread dish showcased Atlanta's taste for fresh and local produce and cheese at its finest as a salad served on a crispy flavorful flat bread. Hardeman said it could be photographed from any angle, a high compliment coming from a food stylist. Seiber really enjoyed the colors that the dish brought together and thought it would be served very well in a casual restaurant on a summer's day. The panel really appreciated the taste and quality of the different components and how the rosemary brought all the flavors together. Seiber remarked that "a lot of effort goes into the appearance of simplicity." Rohn indicated that the same notion holds true with software user interface design. A tremendous amount of work goes into crafting straightforward interfaces, including user research, prototyping, design iterations, and usability studies. Design criticism for food and software interfaces clearly share many similarities. Both areas value expert opinions and user feedback. Both areas understand the importance of great design needing to work well in its context. Last but not least, both food and interaction design criticism value "craveability" and how having users excited about experiencing and enjoying the designs is an important goal. Now if we can just improve the taste of software user interfaces, people may choose to dine on their enterprise applications over a fresh organic salad.

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• Small adventure game

  - by Nick Rosencrantz

  I'm making a small adventure game where the player can walk through Dungeons and meet scary characters: The whole thing is 20 java classes and I'm making this a standalone frame while it could very well be an applet I don't want to make another applet since I might want to recode this in C/C++ if the game or game engine turns out a success. The engine is the most interesting part of the game, it controls players and computer-controlled characters such as Zombies, Reptile Warriors, Trolls, Necromancers, and other Persons. These persons can sleep or walk around in the game and also pick up and move things. I didn't add many things so I suppose that is the next thing to do is to add things that can get used now that I already added many different types of walking persons. What do you think I should add and do with things in the game? The things I have so far is: package adventure; /** * The data type for things. Subclasses will be create that takes part of the story */ public class Thing { /** * The name of the Thing. */ public String name; /** * @param name The name of the Thing. */ Thing( String name ) { this.name = name; } } public class Scroll extends Thing { Scroll (String name) { super(name); } } class Key extends Thing { Key (String name) { super(name); } } The key is the way to win the game if you figure our that you should give it to a certain person and the scroll can protect you from necromancers and trolls. If I make this game more Dungeons and Dragons-inspired, do you think will be any good? Any other ideas that you think I could use here? The Threadwhich steps time forward and wakes up persons is called simulation. Do you think I could do something more advanced with this class? package adventure; class Simulation extends Thread { private PriorityQueue Eventqueue; Simulation() { Eventqueue = new PriorityQueue(); start(); } public void wakeMeAfter(Wakeable SleepingObject, double time) { Eventqueue.enqueue(SleepingObject, System.currentTimeMillis()+time); } public void run() { while(true) { try { sleep(5); //Sov i en halv sekund if (Eventqueue.getFirstTime() <= System.currentTimeMillis()) { ((Wakeable)Eventqueue.getFirst()).wakeup(); Eventqueue.dequeue(); } } catch (InterruptedException e ) { } } } } And here is the class that makes up the actual world: package adventure; import java.awt.*; import java.net.URL; /** * Subklass to World that builds up the Dungeon World. */ public class DungeonWorld extends World { /** * * @param a Reference to adventure game. * */ public DungeonWorld(Adventure a) { super ( a ); // Create all places createPlace( "Himlen" ); createPlace( "Stairs3" ); createPlace( "IPLab" ); createPlace( "Dungeon3" ); createPlace( "Stairs5" ); createPlace( "C2M2" ); createPlace( "SANS" ); createPlace( "Macsal" ); createPlace( "Stairs4" ); createPlace( "Dungeon2" ); createPlace( "Datorsalen" ); createPlace( "Dungeon");//, "Ljushallen.gif" ); createPlace( "Cola-automaten", "ColaAutomat.gif" ); createPlace( "Stairs2" ); createPlace( "Fable1" ); createPlace( "Dungeon1" ); createPlace( "Kulverten" ); // Create all connections between places connect( "Stairs3", "Stairs5", "Down", "Up" ); connect( "Dungeon3", "SANS", "Down", "Up" ); connect( "Dungeon3", "IPLab", "West", "East" ); connect( "IPLab", "Stairs3", "West", "East" ); connect( "Stairs5", "Stairs4", "Down", "Up" ); connect( "Macsal", "Stairs5", "South", "Norr" ); connect( "C2M2", "Stairs5", "West", "East" ); connect( "SANS", "C2M2", "West", "East" ); connect( "Stairs4", "Dungeon", "Down", "Up" ); connect( "Datorsalen", "Stairs4", "South", "Noth" ); connect( "Dungeon2", "Stairs4", "West", "East" ); connect( "Dungeon", "Stairs2", "Down", "Up" ); connect( "Dungeon", "Cola-automaten", "South", "North" ); connect( "Stairs2", "Kulverten", "Down", "Up" ); connect( "Stairs2", "Fable1", "East", "West" ); connect( "Fable1", "Dungeon1", "South", "North" ); // Add things // --- Add new things here --- getPlace("Cola-automaten").addThing(new CocaCola("Ljummen cola")); getPlace("Cola-automaten").addThing(new CocaCola("Avslagen Cola")); getPlace("Cola-automaten").addThing(new CocaCola("Iskall Cola")); getPlace("Cola-automaten").addThing(new CocaCola("Cola Light")); getPlace("Cola-automaten").addThing(new CocaCola("Cuba Cola")); getPlace("Stairs4").addThing(new Scroll("Scroll")); getPlace("Dungeon3").addThing(new Key("Key")); Simulation sim = new Simulation(); // Load images to be used as appearance-parameter for persons Image studAppearance = owner.loadPicture( "Person.gif" ); Image asseAppearance = owner.loadPicture( "Asse.gif" ); Image trollAppearance = owner.loadPicture( "Loke.gif" ); Image necromancerAppearance = owner.loadPicture( "Necromancer.gif" ); Image skeletonAppearance = owner.loadPicture( "Reptilewarrior.gif" ); Image reptileAppearance = owner.loadPicture( "Skeleton.gif" ); Image zombieAppearance = owner.loadPicture( "Zombie.gif" ); // --- Add new persons here --- new WalkingPerson(sim, this, "Peter", studAppearance); new WalkingPerson(sim, this, "Zombie", zombieAppearance ); new WalkingPerson(sim, this, "Zombie", zombieAppearance ); new WalkingPerson(sim, this, "Skeleton", skeletonAppearance ); new WalkingPerson(sim, this, "John", studAppearance ); new WalkingPerson(sim, this, "Skeleton", skeletonAppearance ); new WalkingPerson(sim, this, "Skeleton", skeletonAppearance ); new WalkingPerson(sim, this, "Skeleton", skeletonAppearance ); new WalkingPerson(sim, this, "Sean", studAppearance ); new WalkingPerson(sim, this, "Reptile", reptileAppearance ); new LabAssistant(sim, this, "Kate", asseAppearance); new LabAssistant(sim, this, "Jenna", asseAppearance); new Troll(sim, this, "Troll", trollAppearance); new Necromancer(sim, this, "Necromancer", necromancerAppearance); } /** * * The place where persons are placed by default * *@return The default place. * */ public Place defaultPlace() { return getPlace( "Datorsalen" ); } private void connect( String p1, String p2, String door1, String door2) { Place place1 = getPlace( p1 ); Place place2 = getPlace( p2 ); place1.addExit( door1, place2 ); place2.addExit( door2, place1 ); } } Thanks

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• Community Outreach - Where Should I Go

  - by Roger Brinkley

  A few days ago I was talking to person new to community development and they asked me what guidelines I used to determine the worthiness of a particular event. After our conversation was over I thought about it a little bit more and figured out there are three ways to determine if any event (be it conference, blog, podcast or other social medias) is worth doing: Transferability, Multiplication, and Impact. Transferability - Is what I have to say useful to the people that are going to hear it. For instance, consider a company that has product offering that can connect up using a number of languages like Scala, Grovey or Java. Sending a Scala expert to talk about Scala and the product is not transferable to a Java User Group, but a Java expert doing the same talk with a Java slant is. Similarly, talking about JavaFX to any Java User Group meeting in Brazil was pretty much a wasted effort until it was open sourced. Once it was open sourced it was well received. You can also look at transferability in relation to the subject matter that you're dealing with. How transferable is a presentation that I create. Can I, or a technical writer on the staff, turn it into some technical document. Could it be converted into some type of screen cast. If we have a regular podcast can we make a reference to the document, catch the high points or turn it into a interview. Is there a way of using this in the sales group. In other words is the document purely one dimensional or can it be re-purposed in other forms. Multiplication - On every trip I'm looking for 2 to 5 solid connections that I can make with developers. These are long term connections, because I know that once that relationship is established it will lead to another 2 - 5 from that connection and within a couple of years were talking about some 100 connections from just one developer. For instance, when I was working on JavaHelp in 2000 I hired a science teacher with a programming background. We've developed a very tight relationship over the year though we rarely see each other more than once a year. But at this JavaOne, one of his employees came up to me and said, "Richard (Rick Hard in Czech) told me to tell you that he couldn't make it to JavaOne this year but if I saw you to tell you hi". Another example is from my Mobile & Embedded days in Brasil. On our very first FISL trip about 5 years ago there were two university students that had created a project called "Marge". Marge was a Bluetooth framework that made connecting bluetooth devices easier. I invited them to a "Sun" dinner that evening. Originally they were planning on leaving that afternoon, but they changed their plans recognizing the opportunity. Their eyes were as big a saucers when they realized the level of engineers at the meeting. They went home started a JUG in Florianoplis that we've visited more than a couple of times. One of them went to work for Brazilian government lab like Berkley Labs, MIT Lab, John Hopkins Applied Physicas Labs or Lincoln Labs in the US. That presented us with an opportunity to show Embedded Java as a possibility for some of the work they were doing there. Impact - The final criteria is how life changing is what I'm going to say be to the individuals I'm reaching. A t-shirt is just a token, but when I reach down and tug at their developer hearts then I know I've succeeded. I'll never forget one time we flew all night to reach Joan Pasoa in Northern Brazil. We arrived at 2am went immediately to our hotel only to be woken up at 6 am to travel 2 hours by car to the presentation hall. When we arrived we were totally exhausted. Outside the facility there were 500 people lined up to hear 6 speakers for the day. That itself was uplifting.  I delivered one of my favorite talks on "I have passion". It was a talk on golf and embedded java development, "Find your passion". When we finished a couple of first year students came up to me and said how much my talk had inspired them. FISL is another great example. I had been about 4 years in a row. FISL is a very young group of developers so capturing their attention is important. Several of the students will come back 2 or 3 years later and ask me questions about research or jobs. And then there's Louis. Louis is one my favorite Brazilians. I can only describe him as a big Brazilian teddy bear. I see him every year at FISL. He works primarily in Java EE but he's attended every single one of my talks over the last 4 years. I can't tell you why, but he always greets me and gives me a hug. For some reason I've had a real impact. And of course when it comes to impact you don't just measure a presentation but every single interaction you have at an event. It's the hall way conversations, the booth conversations, but more importantly it's the conversations at dinner tables or in the cars when you're getting transported to an event. There's a good story that illustrates this. Last year in the spring I was traveling to Goiânia in Brazil. I've been there many times and leaders there no me well. One young man has picked me up at the airport on more than one occasion. We were going out to dinner one evening and he brought his girl friend along. One thing let to another and I eventually asked him, in front of her, "Why haven't you asked her to marry you?" There were all kinds of excuses and she just looked at him and smiled. When I came back in December for JavaOne he came and sought me. "I just want to tell you that I thought a lot about what you said, and I asked her to marry me. We're getting married next Spring." Sometimes just one presentation is all it takes to make an impact. Other times it takes years. Some impacts are directly related to the company and some are more personal in nature. It doesn't matter which it is because it's having the impact that matters.

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• TGIF: Engagement Wrap-up

  - by Michael Snow

  We've had a very busy week here at Oracle and as we build up to Oracle OpenWorld starting in less than 10 days - it doesn't look like things will be slowing down. Engagement is definitely in the air this week. Our friend, John Mancini published a great article entitled: "The World of Engagement" on his Digital Landfill blog yesterday and we hosted a great webcast with R "Ray" Wang from Constellation Research yesterday on the "9 C's of Engagement". 12.00 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:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} I wanted to wrap-up the week with some key takeaways from our webcast yesterday with Ray Wang. If you missed the webcast yesterday, fear not - it is now available  On-Demand. We'll leave you this week with lots of questions about how to navigate these churning waters of engagement. Stay tuned to the Oracle WebCenter Social Business Thought Leaders Webcast Series as we fuel this dialogue. 12.00 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:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Company Culture Does company support a culture of putting customer satisfaction ahead of profits? Does culture promote creativity and cross functional employee collaboration? Does culture accept different views of multi-generational workforce? Does culture promote employee training and skills development Does culture support upward mobility and long term retention? Does culture support work-life balance? Does the culture provide rewards for employee for outstanding customer support? Channels What are the current primary channels for customer communications? What do you think will be the primary channels in two years? Is company developing support model for emerging channels? Do all channels consistently deliver the same level of customer support? Do you know the cost per transaction across all channels? Do you engage customers proactively across multiple channels? Do all channels have access to the same customer information? Community Does company extend customer support into virtual communities of interest? Does company facilitate educating users through its virtual communities? Does company mine its customer’s experience into useful data? Does company increase the value for customers through using data to deliver new products and services? Does company support two way interactions with its customers through communities of interest? Does company actively support social CRM, online communities and social media markets? Credibility Does company market its trustworthiness through external certificates such as business licenses, BBB certificates or other validations? Does company promote trust through customer testimonials and case studies on ethical business practices? Does company promote truthful market campaigns Does company make it easy for customers to complain? Does company build its reputation for standing behind its products with guarantees for satisfaction? Does company protect its customer data with high security measures> Content What sources do you use to create customer content? Does company mine social media and blogs for customer content? How does your company sort, store and retain its customer content? How frequently does content get updated? What external sources do you use for customer content? How many responses are typically received from a knowledge management system inquiry? Does your company use customer content to design and develop new product and services? Context Does your company market to customers in clusters or individually? Does your company customize its messages and personalize them to specific needs of each individual customer? Does your company store customer data based on their past behaviors, purchases, sentiment analysis and current activities? Does your company manage customer context according to channels used? For example identify personal use channels versus business channels? What is your frequency of collecting customer activities across various touch points? How is your customer data stored and analyzed? Is contextual data used for future customer outreach? Cadence Which channels does your company measure-web site visits, phone calls, IVR, store visits, face to face, social media? Does company make effective use of cross channel marketing to promote more frequent customer engagement? Does your company rate the patterns relevant for your product or service and monitor usage against this pattern? Does your company measure the frequency of both online and offline channels? Does your company apply metrics to the frequency of customer engagements with product or services revenues? Does your company consolidate data for customer engagement across various channels for a complete view of its customer? Catalyst Does company offer coupon discounts? Does company have a customer loyalty program or a VIP membership program? Does company mine customer data to target specific groups of buyers? Do internal employees serve as ambassadors for customer programs? Does company drive loyalty through social media loyalty programs? Does company build rewards based on using loyalty data? Does company offer an employee incentive program to drive customer loyalty?

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• Why people don't patch and upgrade?!?

  - by Mike Dietrich

  Discussing the topic "Why Upgrade" or "Why not Upgrade" is not always fun. Actually the arguments repeat from customer to customer. Typically we hear things such as: A PSU or Patch Set introduces new bugs A new PSU or Patch Set introduces new features which lead to risk and require application verification  Patching means risk Patching changes the execution plans Patching requires too much testing Patching is too much work for our DBAs Patching costs a lot of money and doesn't pay out And to be very honest sometimes it's hard for me to stay calm in such discussions. Let's discuss some of these points a bit more in detail. A PSU or Patch Set introduces new bugsWell, yes, that is true as no software containing more than some lines of code is bug free. This applies to Oracle's code as well as too any application or operating system code. But first of all, does that mean you never patch your OS because the patch may introduce new flaws? And second, what is the point of saying "it introduces new bugs"? Does that mean you will never get rid of the mean issues we know about and we fixed already? Scroll down from MOS Note:161818.1 to the patch release you are on, no matter if it's 10.2.0.4 or 11.2.0.3 and check for the Known Issues And Alerts.Will you take responsibility to know about all these issues and refuse to upgrade to 11.2.0.4? I won't. A new PSU or Patch Set introduces new featuresOk, we can discuss that. Offering new functionality within a database patch set is a dubious thing. It has advantages such as in 11.2.0.4 where we backported Database Redaction to. But this is something you will only use once you have an Advanced Security license. I interpret that statement I've heard quite often from customers in a different way: People don't want to get surprises such as new behaviour. This certainly gives everybody a hard time. And we've had many examples in the past (SESSION_CACHED_CURSROS in 10.2.0.4,  _DATAFILE_WRITE_ERRORS_CRASH_INSTANCE in 11.2.0.2 and others) where those things weren't documented, not even in the README. Thanks to many friends out there I learned about those as well. So new behaviour is the topic people consider as risky - not really new features. And just to point this out: A PSU never brings in new features or new behaviour by definition! Patching means riskDoes it really mean risk? Yes, there were issues in the past (and sometimes in the present as well) where a patch didn't get installed correctly. But personally I consider it way more risky to not patch. Keep that in mind: The day Oracle publishes an PSU (or CPU) containing security fixes all the great security experts out there go public with their findings as well. So from that day on even my grandma can find out about those issues and try to attack somebody. Now a lot of people say: "My database does not face the internet." And I will answer: "The enemy is sitting already behind your firewalls. And knows potentially about these things." My statement: Not patching introduces way more risk to your environment than patching. Seriously! Patching changes the execution plansDo they really? I agree - there's a very small risk for this happening with Patch Sets. But not with PSUs or CPUs as they contain no optimizer fixes changing behaviour (but they may contain fixes curing wrong-query-result-bugs). But what's the point of a changing execution plan? In Oracle Database 11g it is so simple to be prepared. SQL Plan Management is a free EE feature - so once that occurs you'll put the plan into the Plan Baseline. Basta! Yes, you wouldn't like to get such surprises? Than please use the SQL Performance Analyzer (SPA) from Real Application Testing and you'll detect that easily upfront in minutes. And not to forget this, a plan change can also be very positive!Yes, there's a little risk with a database patchset - and we have many possibilites to detect this before patching. Patching requires too much testingWell, does it really? I have seen in the past 12 years how people test. There are very different efforts and approaches on this. I have seen people spending a hell of money on licenses or on project team staffing. And I have seen people sailing blindly without any tests just going the John-Wayne-approach.Proper tools will allow you to test easily without too much efforts. See the paragraph above. We have used Real Application Testing in so many customer projects reducing the amount of work spend on testing by over 50%. But apart from that at some point you will have to stop testing. If you don't you'll get lost and you'll burn money. There's no 100% guaranty. You will have to deal with a little risk as reaching the final 5% of certainty will cost you the same as it did cost to reach 95%. And doing this will lead to abnormal long product cycles that you'll run behind forever. And this will cost even more money. Patching is too much work for our DBAsPatching is a lot of work. I agree. And it's no fun work. It's boring, annoying. You don't learn much from that. That's why you should try to automate this task. Use the Database's Lifecycle Management Pack. And don't cry about the fact that it costs money. Yes it does. But it will ease the process and you'll save a lot of costs as you don't waste your valuable time with patching. Or use Oracle Database 12c Oracle Multitenant and patch either by unplug/plug or patch an entire container database with all PDBs with one patch in one task. We have customer reference cases proofing it saved them 75% of time, effort and cost since they've used Lifecycle Management Pack. So why don't you use it? Patching costs a lot of money and doesn't pay outWell, see my statements in the paragraph above. And it pays out as flying with a database with 100 known critical flaws in it which are already fixed by Oracle (such as in the Oct 2013 PSU for Oracle Database 12c) will cost ways more in case of failure or even data loss. Bet with me? Let me finally ask you some questions. What cell phone are you using and which OS does it run? Do you have an iPhone 5 and did you upgrade already to iOS 7.0.3? I've just encountered on mine that the alarm (which I rely on when traveling) has gotten now a dependency on the physical switch "sound on/off". If it is switched to "off" physically the alarm rings "silently". What a wonderful example of a behaviour change coming in with a patch set. Will this push you to stay with iOS5 or iOS6? No, because those have security flaws which won't be fixed anymore. What browser are you surfing with? Do you use Mozilla 3.6? Well, congratulations to all the hackers. It will be easy for them to attack you and harm your system. I'd guess you have the auto updater on.  Same for Google Chrome, Safari, IE. Right? -Mike The T.htmtableborders, .htmtableborders td, .htmtableborders th {border : 1px dashed lightgrey ! important;} html, body { border: 0px; } body { background-color: #ffffff; } img, hr { cursor: default }

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• Partner Blog Series: PwC Perspectives Part 2 - Jumpstarting your IAM program with R2

  - by Tanu Sood

  Identity and access management (IAM) isn’t a new concept. Over the past decade, companies have begun to address identity management through a variety of solutions that have primarily focused on provisioning. . The new age workforce is converging at a rapid pace with ever increasing demand to use diverse portfolio of applications and systems to interact and interface with their peers in the industry and customers alike. Oracle has taken a significant leap with their release of Identity and Access Management 11gR2 towards enabling this global workforce to conduct their business in a secure, efficient and effective manner. As companies deal with IAM business drivers, it becomes immediately apparent that holistic, rather than piecemeal, approaches better address their needs. When planning an enterprise-wide IAM solution, the first step is to create a common framework that serves as the foundation on which to build the cost, compliance and business process efficiencies. As a leading industry practice, IAM should be established on a foundation of accurate data for identity management, making this data available in a uniform manner to downstream applications and processes. Mature organizations are looking beyond IAM’s basic benefits to harness more advanced capabilities in user lifecycle management. For any organization looking to embark on an IAM initiative, consider the following use cases in managing and administering user access. Expanding the Enterprise Provisioning Footprint Almost all organizations have some helpdesk resources tied up in handling access requests from users, a distraction from their core job of handling problem tickets. This dependency has mushroomed from the traditional acceptance of provisioning solutions integrating and addressing only a portion of applications in the heterogeneous landscape Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) 11gR2 solves this problem by offering integration with third party ticketing systems as “disconnected applications”. It allows for the existing business processes to be seamlessly integrated into the system and tracked throughout its lifecycle. With minimal effort and analysis, an organization can begin integrating OIM with groups or applications that are involved with manually intensive access provisioning and de-provisioning activities. This aspect of OIM allows organizations to on-board applications and associated business processes quickly using out of box templates and frameworks. This is especially important for organizations looking to fold in users and resources from mergers and acquisitions. Simplifying Access Requests Organizations looking to implement access request solutions often find it challenging to get their users to accept and adopt the new processes.. So, how do we improve the user experience, make it intuitive and personalized and yet simplify the user access process? With R2, OIM helps organizations alleviate the challenge by placing the most used functionality front and centre in the new user request interface. Roles, application accounts, and entitlements can all be found in the same interface as catalog items, giving business users a single location to go to whenever they need to initiate, approve or track a request. Furthermore, if a particular item is not relevant to a user’s job function or area inside the organization, it can be hidden so as to not overwhelm or confuse the user with superfluous options. The ability to customize the user interface to suit your needs helps in exercising the business rules effectively and avoiding access proliferation within the organization. Saving Time with Templates A typical use case that is most beneficial to business users is flexibility to place, edit, and withdraw requests based on changing circumstances and business needs. With OIM R2, multiple catalog items can now be added and removed from the shopping cart, an ecommerce paradigm that many users are already familiar with. This feature can be especially useful when setting up a large number of new employees or granting existing department or group access to a newly integrated application. Additionally, users can create their own shopping cart templates in order to complete subsequent requests more quickly. This feature saves the user from having to search for and select items all over again if a request is similar to a previous one. Advanced Delegated Administration A key feature of any provisioning solution should be to empower each business unit in managing their own access requests. By bringing administration closer to the user, you improve user productivity, enable efficiency and alleviate the administration overhead. To do so requires a federated services model so that the business units capable of shouldering the onus of user life cycle management of their business users can be enabled to do so. OIM 11gR2 offers advanced administrative options for creating, managing and controlling business logic and workflows through easy to use administrative interface and tools that can be exposed to delegated business administrators. For example, these business administrators can establish or modify how certain requests and operations should be handled within their business unit based on a number of attributes ranging from the type of request or the risk level of the individual items requested. Closed-Loop Remediation Security continues to be a major concern for most organizations. Identity management solutions bolster security by ensuring only the right users have the right access to the right resources. To prevent unauthorized access and where it already exists, the ability to detect and remediate it, are key requirements of an enterprise-grade proven solution. But the challenge with most solutions today is that some of this information still exists in silos. And when changes are made to systems directly, not all information is captured. With R2, oracle is offering a comprehensive Identity Governance solution that our customer organizations are leveraging for closed loop remediation that allows for an automated way for administrators to revoke unauthorized access. The change is automatically captured and the action noted for continued management. Conclusion While implementing provisioning solutions, it is important to keep the near term and the long term goals in mind. The provisioning solution should always be a part of a larger security and identity management program but with the ability to seamlessly integrate not only with the company’s infrastructure but also have the ability to leverage the information, business models compiled and used by the other identity management solutions. This allows organizations to reduce the cost of ownership, close security gaps and leverage the existing infrastructure. And having done so a multiple clients’ sites, this is the approach we recommend. In our next post, we will take a journey through our experiences of advising clients looking to upgrade to R2 from a previous version or migrating from a different solution. Meet the Writers:   Praveen Krishna is a Manager in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  Over the last decade Praveen has helped clients plan, architect and implement Oracle identity solutions across diverse industries.  His experience includes delivering security across diverse topics like network, infrastructure, application and data where he brings a holistic point of view to problem solving. Dharma Padala is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has been implementing medium to large scale Identity Management solutions across multiple industries including utility, health care, entertainment, retail and financial sectors.   Dharma has 14 years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which he has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past 8 years. Scott MacDonald is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has consulted for several clients across multiple industries including financial services, health care, automotive and retail.   Scott has 10 years of experience in delivering Identity Management solutions. John Misczak is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has experience implementing multiple Identity and Access Management solutions, specializing in Oracle Identity Manager and Business Process Engineering Language (BPEL). Jenny (Xiao) Zhang is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  She has consulted across multiple industries including financial services, entertainment and retail. Jenny has three years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which she has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past one and a half years.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, September 03, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, September 03, 2012Popular ReleasesMetodología General Ajustada - MGA: 03.01.03: Cambios Aury: Ajuste del margen del reporte. Visualización de la columna de Supuestos en la parte del módulo de Decisión. Cambios John: Integración de código con cambios enviados por Aury Niño. Generación de instaladores. Soporte técnico por correo electrónico y telefónico.Iveely Search Engine: Iveely Search Engine （0.2.0）: ????ISE?0.1.0??，?????，ISE?0.2.0?????????，???????，????????20???follow?ISE，????，??ISE??????????，??????????，?????????，?????????0.2.0??????，??????????。 Iveely Search Engine ?0.2.0?????????“??????????”，??????，?????????，???????，???????????????????，????、????????????。???0.1.0????????????： 1. ??“????” ??。??????????，?????????，???????????????????。??：????????，????????????，??????????????????。??????。 2. ??“????”??。?0.1.0??????，???????，???????????????，?????????????，????????，?0.2.0?，???????...Thisismyusername's codeplex page.: HTML5 Mulititouch Fruit Ninja Proof of Concept: This is an example of how you could create a game such as Fruit Ninja using HTML5's multitouch capabilities. Sorry this example doesn't have great graphics. If I had my own webpage, I could store some graphics and upload the game there and it might look halfway decent, but since I'm only using a Codeplex page and most mobile devices can't open .zip files, the fruits are just circles. I hope you enjoy reading the source code anyway.GmailDefaultMaker: GmailDefaultMaker 3.0.0.2: Add QQ Mail BugfixSmart Data Access layer: Smart Data access Layer Ver 3: In this version support executing inline query is added. Check Documentation section for detail.TSQL Code Smells Finder: POC 1.01: Proof of concept 1.01 TSQLDomTest.ps1 and Errors.Txt are requiredConfuser: Confuser build 76542: This is a build of changeset 76542.Reactive State Machine: ReactiveStateMachine-beta: TouchStateMachine now supports Microsoft Surface 2.0 SDK. The TouchStateMachine is an extension to the Reactive State Machine. Reactive State Machine uses NuGet for dependency managementSharePoint Column & View Permission: SharePoint Column and View Permission v1.2: Version 1.2 of this project. If you will find any bugs please let me know at enti@zoznam.sk or post your findings in Issue TrackerMihmojsos OS: Mihmojsos OS 3 (Smart Rabbit): !Mihmojsos OS 3 Smart Rabbit Mihmojsos Smart Rabbit is now availableDotNetNuke Translator: 01.00.00 Beta: First release of the project.YNA: YNA 0.2 alpha: Wath's new since 0.1 alpha ? A lot of changes but there are the most interresting : StateManager is now better and faster Mouse events for all YnObjects (Sprites, Images, texts) A really big improvement for YnGroup Gamepad support And the news : Tiled Map support (need refactoring) Isometric tiled map support (need refactoring) Transition effect like "FadeIn" and "FadeOut" (YnTransition) Timers (YnTimer) Path management (YnPath, need more refactoring) Downloads All downloads...Audio Pitch & Shift: Audio Pitch And Shift 5.1.0.2: fixed several issues with streaming modeUrlPager: UrlPager 1.2: Fixed bug in which url parameters will lost after paging; ????????url???bug；Sofire Suite: Sofire v1.5.0.0: Sofire v1.5.0.0 ?? ???????? ?????： 1、?? 2、????EntLib.com????????: EntLib.com???????? v3.0: EntLib eCommerce Solution ???Microsoft .Net Framework?????????????????????。Coevery - Free CRM: Coevery 1.0.0.24: Add a sample database, and installation instructions.Math.NET Numerics: Math.NET Numerics v2.2.1: Major linear algebra rework since v2.1, now available on Codeplex as well (previous versions were only available via NuGet). Since v2.2.0: Student-T density more robust for very large degrees of freedom Sparse Kronecker product much more efficient (now leverages sparsity) Direct access to raw matrix storage implementations for advanced extensibility Now also separate package for signed core library with a strong name (we dropped strong names in v2.2.0) Also available as NuGet packages...Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks Databases – 2012, 2008R2 and 2008: About this release This release consolidates AdventureWorks databases for SQL Server 2012, 2008R2 and 2008 versions to one page. Each zip file contains an mdf database file and ldf log file. This should make it easier to find and download AdventureWorks databases since all OLTP versions are on one page. There are no database schema changes. For each release of the product, there is a light-weight and full version of the AdventureWorks sample database. The light-weight version is denoted by ...Christoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Template: DotNetNuke Project Templates V1.1 for VS2012: This release is specifically for Visual Studio 2012 Support, distributed through the Visual Studio Extensions gallery at http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/ After you build in Release mode the installable packages (source/install) can be found in the INSTALL folder now, within your module's folder, not the packages folder anymore Check out the blog post for all of the details about this release. http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Resources/Blogs/EntryId/3471/New-Visual-Studio-2012-Projec...New ProjectsBPVote4PPT: BPVote For PowerPointCosmo OS: La semplicità in un OSFinancial Analytic Tools: C#.Net Financial Analytic ToolsGeminiMVC: An Open Source CMS written in ASP.net MVC 4 with speed, extensibility, and ease-of-us in mind.JQuery SharePoint Autocomplete People Picker: This JQUery bundle provides an autocomplete people picker based on SharePoint profiles. It can be hosted on the SharePoint itself or on remote applications.Kerbal Space Program PartModule Library: This project is designed to add various functionalities to custom parts for the space program simulation game Kerbal Space Program.KeyboardRemapper: This tool to remaps keys in the keyboard. If you have more than one keyboard or an additional keypad, you can remap the keys of the each keyboard independentlyKHStudent: ??????Localized DataAnnotations with T4 templates: Simplified DataAnnotations localization using T4 templates.MfcLightToolkit: Supports development for small and simple MFC application. Provides asynchronous programming model like .NET, file download, easy control resizing, and so on.Müslüm ÖZTÜRK Code Lib: Test amaçli olusturulan projemdirPolska: Testproject in how a polish grammerprogram can look like.QueueLessApp: Here is the codeRusIS.CMS: aaaSGPS: Projeto de controle de produtos e serviçosStemmersNet: Stemmers pack for .Net FrameworkTrabajo Final de Ingenieria - Javier Vallejos: Tesis Final de la carrera de Ingenieria - Universidad Abierta Interamericana.TSQL Code Smells Finder: TSQL 'smells' findersXNA and Data Driven Design: This project includes links for XNA and Data Driven DesignXNA and System Testing: This project includes code for XNA and System TestingYUGI-AR Project: an open source project for yugioh based augmented reality???????? ? ?????????????: ???? ??????? ??????? ?????????????? ??????????? ?????????? ??? ? ????? ?????? ? ? ??? ??? ????? ? ??? ?????????? ????????????.

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• Partner Blog Series: PwC Perspectives - Looking at R2 for Customer Organizations

  - by Tanu Sood

  Welcome to the first of our partner blog series. November Mondays are all about PricewaterhouseCoopers' perespective on Identity and R2. In this series, we have identity management experts from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) share their perspective on (and experiences with) the recent identity management release, Oracle Identity Management R2. The purpose of the series is to discuss real world identity use cases that helped shape the innovations in the recent R2 release and the implementation strategies that customers are employing today with expertise from PwC. Part 1: Looking at R2 for Customer Organizations In this inaugural post, we will discuss some of the new features of the R2 release of Oracle Identity Manager that some of our customer organizations are implementing today and the business rationale for those. Oracle's R2 Security portfolio represents a solid step forward for a platform that is already market-leading.  Prior to R2, Oracle was an industry titan in security with reliable products, expansive compatibility, and a large customer base.  Oracle has taken their identity platform to the next level in their latest version, R2.  The new features include a customizable UI, a request catalog, flexible security, and enhancements for its connectors, and more. Oracle customers will be impressed by the new Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) business-friendly UI.  Without question, Oracle has invested significant time in responding to customer feedback about making access requests and related activities easier for non-IT users.  The flexibility to add information to screens, hide fields that are not important to a particular customer, and adjust web themes to suit a company's preference make Oracle's Identity Manager stand out among its peers.  Customers can also expect to carry UI configurations forward with minimal migration effort to future versions of OIM.  Oracle's flexible UI will benefit many organizations looking for a customized feel with out-of-the-box configurations. Organizations looking to extend their services to end users will benefit significantly from new usability features like OIM’s ‘Catalog.’  Customers familiar with Oracle Identity Analytics' 'Glossary' feature will be able to relate to the concept.  It will enable Roles, Entitlements, Accounts, and Resources to be requested through the out-of-the-box UI.  This is an industry-changing feature as customers can make the process to request access easier than ever.  For additional ease of use, Oracle has introduced a shopping cart style request interface that further simplifies the experience for end users.  Common requests can be setup as profiles to save time.  All of this is combined with the approval workflow engine introduced in R1 that provides the flexibility customers need to meet their compliance requirements. Enhanced security was also on the list of features Oracle wanted to deliver to its customers.  The new end-user UI provides additional granular access controls.  Common Help Desk use cases can be implemented with ease by updating the application profiles.  Access can be rolled out so that administrators can only manage a certain department or organization.  Further, OIM can be more easily configured to select which fields can be read-only vs. updated.  Finally, this security model can be used to limit search results for roles and entitlements intended for a particular department.  Every customer has a different need for access and OIM now matches this need with a flexible security model. One of the important considerations when selecting an Identity Management platform is compatibility.  The number of supported platform connectors and how well it can integrate with non-supported platforms is a key consideration for selecting an identity suite.  Oracle has a long list of supported connectors.  When a customer has a requirement for a platform not on that list, Oracle has a solution too.  Oracle is introducing a simplified architecture called Identity Connector Framework (ICF), which holds the potential to simplify custom connectors.  Finally, Oracle has introduced a simplified process to profile new disconnected applications from the web browser.  This is a useful feature that enables administrators to profile applications quickly as well as empowering the application owner to fulfill requests from their web browser.  Support will still be available for connectors based on previous versions in R2. Oracle Identity Manager's new R2 version has delivered many new features customers have been asking for.  Oracle has matured their platform with R2, making it a truly distinctive platform among its peers. In our next post, expect a deep dive into use cases for a customer considering R2 as their new Enterprise identity solution. In the meantime, we look forward to hearing from you about the specific challenges you are facing and your experience in solving those. Meet the Writers Dharma Padala is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has been implementing medium to large scale Identity Management solutions across multiple industries including utility, health care, entertainment, retail and financial sectors.   Dharma has 14 years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which he has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past 8 years. Scott MacDonald is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has consulted for several clients across multiple industries including financial services, health care, automotive and retail.   Scott has 10 years of experience in delivering Identity Management solutions. John Misczak is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has experience implementing multiple Identity and Access Management solutions, specializing in Oracle Identity Manager and Business Process Engineering Language (BPEL). Jenny (Xiao) Zhang is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  She has consulted across multiple industries including financial services, entertainment and retail. Jenny has three years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which she has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past one and a half years. Praveen Krishna is a Manager in the Advisory  Security practice within PwC.  Over the last decade Praveen has helped clients plan, architect and implement Oracle identity solutions across diverse industries.  His experience includes delivering security across diverse topics like network, infrastructure, application and data where he brings a holistic point of view to problem solving.

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• Online ALTER TABLE in MySQL 5.6

  - by Marko Mäkelä

  This is the low-level view of data dictionary language (DDL) operations in the InnoDB storage engine in MySQL 5.6. John Russell gave a more high-level view in his blog post April 2012 Labs Release – Online DDL Improvements. MySQL before the InnoDB Plugin Traditionally, the MySQL storage engine interface has taken a minimalistic approach to data definition language. The only natively supported operations were CREATE TABLE, DROP TABLE and RENAME TABLE. Consider the following example: CREATE TABLE t(a INT); INSERT INTO t VALUES (1),(2),(3); CREATE INDEX a ON t(a); DROP TABLE t; The CREATE INDEX statement would be executed roughly as follows: CREATE TABLE temp(a INT, INDEX(a)); INSERT INTO temp SELECT * FROM t; RENAME TABLE t TO temp2; RENAME TABLE temp TO t; DROP TABLE temp2; You could imagine that the database could crash when copying all rows from the original table to the new one. For example, it could run out of file space. Then, on restart, InnoDB would roll back the huge INSERT transaction. To fix things a little, a hack was added to ha_innobase::write_row for committing the transaction every 10,000 rows. Still, it was frustrating that even a simple DROP INDEX would make the table unavailable for modifications for a long time. Fast Index Creation in the InnoDB Plugin of MySQL 5.1 MySQL 5.1 introduced a new interface for CREATE INDEX and DROP INDEX. The old table-copying approach can still be forced by SET old_alter_table=0. This interface is used in MySQL 5.5 and in the InnoDB Plugin for MySQL 5.1. Apart from the ability to do a quick DROP INDEX, the main advantage is that InnoDB will execute a merge-sort algorithm before inserting the index records into each index that is being created. This should speed up the insert into the secondary index B-trees and potentially result in a better B-tree fill factor. The 5.1 ALTER TABLE interface was not perfect. For example, DROP FOREIGN KEY still invoked the table copy. Renaming columns could conflict with InnoDB foreign key constraints. Combining ADD KEY and DROP KEY in ALTER TABLE was problematic and not atomic inside the storage engine. The ALTER TABLE interface in MySQL 5.6 The ALTER TABLE storage engine interface was completely rewritten in MySQL 5.6. Instead of introducing a method call for every conceivable operation, MySQL 5.6 introduced a handful of methods, and data structures that keep track of the requested changes. In MySQL 5.6, online ALTER TABLE operation can be requested by specifying LOCK=NONE. Also LOCK=SHARED and LOCK=EXCLUSIVE are available. The old-style table copying can be requested by ALGORITHM=COPY. That one will require at least LOCK=SHARED. From the InnoDB point of view, anything that is possible with LOCK=EXCLUSIVE is also possible with LOCK=SHARED. Most ALGORITHM=INPLACE operations inside InnoDB can be executed online (LOCK=NONE). InnoDB will always require an exclusive table lock in two phases of the operation. The execution phases are tied to a number of methods: handler::check_if_supported_inplace_alter Checks if the storage engine can perform all requested operations, and if so, what kind of locking is needed. handler::prepare_inplace_alter_table InnoDB uses this method to set up the data dictionary cache for upcoming CREATE INDEX operation. We need stubs for the new indexes, so that we can keep track of changes to the table during online index creation. Also, crash recovery would drop any indexes that were incomplete at the time of the crash. handler::inplace_alter_table In InnoDB, this method is used for creating secondary indexes or for rebuilding the table. This is the ‘main’ phase that can be executed online (with concurrent writes to the table). handler::commit_inplace_alter_table This is where the operation is committed or rolled back. Here, InnoDB would drop any indexes, rename any columns, drop or add foreign keys, and finalize a table rebuild or index creation. It would also discard any logs that were set up for online index creation or table rebuild. The prepare and commit phases require an exclusive lock, blocking all access to the table. If MySQL times out while upgrading the table meta-data lock for the commit phase, it will roll back the ALTER TABLE operation. In MySQL 5.6, data definition language operations are still not fully atomic, because the data dictionary is split. Part of it is inside InnoDB data dictionary tables. Part of the information is only available in the *.frm file, which is not covered by any crash recovery log. But, there is a single commit phase inside the storage engine. Online Secondary Index Creation It may occur that an index needs to be created on a new column to speed up queries. But, it may be unacceptable to block modifications on the table while creating the index. It turns out that it is conceptually not so hard to support online index creation. All we need is some more execution phases: Set up a stub for the index, for logging changes. Scan the table for index records. Sort the index records. Bulk load the index records. Apply the logged changes. Replace the stub with the actual index. Threads that modify the table will log the operations to the logs of each index that is being created. Errors, such as log overflow or uniqueness violations, will only be flagged by the ALTER TABLE thread. The log is conceptually similar to the InnoDB change buffer. The bulk load of index records will bypass record locking. We still generate redo log for writing the index pages. It would suffice to log page allocations only, and to flush the index pages from the buffer pool to the file system upon completion. Native ALTER TABLE Starting with MySQL 5.6, InnoDB supports most ALTER TABLE operations natively. The notable exceptions are changes to the column type, ADD FOREIGN KEY except when foreign_key_checks=0, and changes to tables that contain FULLTEXT indexes. The keyword ALGORITHM=INPLACE is somewhat misleading, because certain operations cannot be performed in-place. For example, changing the ROW_FORMAT of a table requires a rebuild. Online operation (LOCK=NONE) is not allowed in the following cases: when adding an AUTO_INCREMENT column, when the table contains FULLTEXT indexes or a hidden FTS_DOC_ID column, or when there are FOREIGN KEY constraints referring to the table, with ON…CASCADE or ON…SET NULL option. The FOREIGN KEY limitations are needed, because MySQL does not acquire meta-data locks on the child or parent tables when executing SQL statements. Theoretically, InnoDB could support operations like ADD COLUMN and DROP COLUMN in-place, by lazily converting the table to a newer format. This would require that the data dictionary keep multiple versions of the table definition. For simplicity, we will copy the entire table, even for DROP COLUMN. The bulk copying of the table will bypass record locking and undo logging. For facilitating online operation, a temporary log will be associated with the clustered index of table. Threads that modify the table will also write the changes to the log. When altering the table, we skip all records that have been marked for deletion. In this way, we can simply discard any undo log records that were not yet purged from the original table. Off-page columns, or BLOBs, are an important consideration. We suspend the purge of delete-marked records if it would free any off-page columns from the old table. This is because the BLOBs can be needed when applying changes from the log. We have special logging for handling the ROLLBACK of an INSERT that inserted new off-page columns. This is because the columns will be freed at rollback.

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• C to C++ Conversion [closed]

  - by Annalyne

  Can someone convert this code to C++, pretty please? :( #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <time.h> #define WEAPON_ROPE 10 #define WEAPON_REVOLVER 20 #define WEAPON_LEADPIPE 30 #define WEAPON_CANDLESTICK 40 #define WEAPON_KNIFE 50 #define WEAPON_WRENCH 60 #define PEOPLE_MRGREEN 100 #define PEOPLE_MSSCARLET 200 #define PEOPLE_CONLMUSTARD 300 #define PEOPLE_PROFPLUM 400 #define PEOPLE_MISPEACOCK 500 #define PEOPLE_MISWHITE 600 #define PLACE_KITCHEN 1 #define PLACE_HALL 2 #define PLACE_POOLROOM 3 #define PLACE_STUDY 4 #define PLACE_LOUNG 5 #define PLACE_LIBRARY 6 #define PLACE_CONSERVATORY 7 #define PLACE_DINING 8 #define PLACE_BILLIARDS 9 int main() { int die = 0; int players[6][9] = {{0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}}; int allCards[] = {WEAPON_ROPE, WEAPON_REVOLVER, WEAPON_LEADPIPE, WEAPON_CANDLESTICK, WEAPON_CANDLESTICK, WEAPON_KNIFE, WEAPON_WRENCH, PEOPLE_MRGREEN, PEOPLE_MSSCARLET, PEOPLE_CONLMUSTARD, PEOPLE_CONLMUSTARD, PEOPLE_PROFPLUM, PEOPLE_MISPEACOCK, PEOPLE_MISWHITE, PLACE_KITCHEN, PLACE_HALL, PLACE_POOLROOM, PLACE_STUDY, PLACE_LOUNG, PLACE_LIBRARY, PLACE_CONSERVATORY, PLACE_DINING, PLACE_BILLIARDS}; int deckSize = 23; // number of cards in allCards array int count; for (count = 0; count < deckSize; ++count) { printf(", %d", allCards[count]); } // End for // These three array's are so you can put a card back, if need be... int weaponCards[] = {WEAPON_ROPE, WEAPON_REVOLVER, WEAPON_LEADPIPE, WEAPON_CANDLESTICK, WEAPON_CANDLESTICK, WEAPON_KNIFE, WEAPON_WRENCH}; int weaponDeckSize = 7; int peopleCards[] = {PEOPLE_MRGREEN, PEOPLE_MSSCARLET, PEOPLE_CONLMUSTARD, PEOPLE_CONLMUSTARD, PEOPLE_PROFPLUM, PEOPLE_MISPEACOCK, PEOPLE_MISWHITE}; int peopleDeckSize = 7; int placeCards[] = {PLACE_KITCHEN, PLACE_HALL, PLACE_POOLROOM, PLACE_STUDY, PLACE_LOUNG, PLACE_LIBRARY, PLACE_CONSERVATORY, PLACE_DINING, PLACE_BILLIARDS}; int placeDeckSize = 9; srand(clock()); // seed rand() using clock() which gives // the current tick your processor is at... int killer[3]; // no need to initialize yet. killer[0-2] will initialize int deckShuffle = rand() % weaponDeckSize; // picks one number out of the deck killer[0] = weaponCards[deckShuffle]; allCards[deckShuffle] = 0; // Card drawn. No longer exists in deck deckShuffle = rand() % peopleDeckSize; // picks another random card out of the deck killer[1] = peopleCards[deckShuffle]; allCards[deckShuffle + weaponDeckSize] = 0; // Card drawn. No longer exists in deck deckShuffle = rand() % placeDeckSize; // randomly picks the last card needed killer[2] = placeCards[deckShuffle]; allCards[deckShuffle + weaponDeckSize + peopleDeckSize] = 0; // Card drawn. No longer exists in deck int numberOfCards = 0; printf("CLUE\n"); printf("written by John Schintone\n"); printf("Origonal game delvoped by Hasbro\n"); int numberOfPlayers = 0; while ((numberOfPlayers < 3) || (numberOfPlayers > 6)) { printf("How many players are Going to play :\n"); printf("[number] > "); scanf("%d",&numberOfPlayers); // A very fast if statement which only uses integers/char's switch(numberOfPlayers) { case 6: { numberOfCards = 3; } break; case 5: { numberOfCards = 4; } break; case 4: { numberOfCards = 5; } break; case 3: { numberOfCards = 6; } break; default: { printf("You must enter a number between 3 and 6...\n"); } // End default } // End switch } // End while int index1, index2; // Note: ++index1; is faster than index1++; and will almost always // produce better code (index1++ happens after this statement line. // ++index1 increments index1 before this statement line) for (index1 = 0; index1 < numberOfPlayers; ++index1) { printf("Player %d", index1); for (index2 = 0; index2 < numberOfCards; ++index2) { // Remember that allCards[deckShuffle] == 0 because we removed that // card ages ago... works out well, just don't forget you did that : ) while (allCards[deckShuffle] == 0) { deckShuffle = rand() % deckSize; } // End while players[index1][index2] = allCards[deckShuffle]; allCards[deckShuffle] = 0; // Card removed for after loop... printf(", %d", players[index1][index2]); switch(players[index1][index2]) { case WEAPON_ROPE: { } break; // Add more... case PEOPLE_MRGREEN: { } break; // Add more... case PLACE_KITCHEN: { } break; // Add more... default: { printf("Program has caught player %d cheating...", index1); } // End default } // End switch } // End for printf("\n"); } // End for printf("The killer is %d, with the %d, and in the %d \n\n", killer[0], killer[1], killer[2]); printf("Type h for this help... \n"); printf("Type e to escape... \n"); printf("Type r to roll the die... \n"); char command = '\0'; // \0 represents zero, or the null character while (command != 'e') { printf("[one character] > "); scanf("%c", &command); if (command == 'r') { die = rand() % 6 + 1; printf("Your number is: %d \n", die); } // end while if (command == 'h') { printf("Type h for this help... \n"); printf("Type e to escape... \n"); printf("Type r to roll the die... \n"); } // End if printf("\n"); } // End while return(0); // Success. Program worked ok } // End main() Function

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• How to read from path in wpf comboboxitem and write into path of binding

  - by Chrik

  Hi, I tried to make up an example to show my problem. My combobox has a list of objects as itemssource. In my example it's a list of Persons. In the combobox i want to show the first name and the last name of the person. But i want to save the last name of the person in the "owner" property of the house-object. My guess was that i bind the SelectedValue to my property and the SelectedValuePath to the name of the property in the comboboxitem. I already googled and tried a view other versions but nothing worked. If i use SelectedItem instead of SelectedValue with the same binding at least the value of the "tostring" function get's written in the property. Sadly that solution doesn't fit in the Rest of my Program because i don't want to override "ToString". The Xaml: <Window x:Class="MultiColumnCombobox.Window1" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" Title="Window1" Height="300" Width="300" x:Name="window"> <Grid> <ComboBox Height="23" Margin="72,12,86,0" Name="ComboBox1" VerticalAlignment="Top" SelectedValue="{Binding CurrentHouse.Owner, ElementName=window, Mode=TwoWay}" SelectedValuePath="LastName" ItemsSource="{Binding PersonList, ElementName=window, Mode=Default}"> <ComboBox.ItemTemplate> <DataTemplate> <WrapPanel Orientation="Horizontal"> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=FirstName}" Padding="10,0,0,0" /> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=LastName}" Padding="10,0,0,0" /> </WrapPanel> </DataTemplate> </ComboBox.ItemTemplate> </ComboBox> <Button Height="23" Click="PrintButton_Click" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="12,0,0,9" Name="PrintButton" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Width="75">Print</Button> </Grid> The C# using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Windows; using System; namespace MultiColumnCombobox { public partial class Window1 : Window { private List _PersonList = new List(); public List PersonList { get { return _PersonList; } set { _PersonList = value; } } private House _CurrentHouse = new House { Owner = "Green", Number = "11" }; public House CurrentHouse { get { return _CurrentHouse; } } public Window1() { InitializeComponent(); PersonList.Add(new Person {FirstName = "Peter", LastName = "Smith"}); PersonList.Add(new Person {FirstName = "John", LastName = "Meyer"}); PersonList.Add(new Person {FirstName = "Fritz", LastName = "Green"}); } private void PrintButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { MessageBox.Show(CurrentHouse.Owner + ":" + CurrentHouse.Number); } } public class House { public string Owner { get; set; } public string Number { get; set; } } public class Person { public string FirstName { get; set; } public string LastName { get; set; } } } Maybe someone has an idea, Christian

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• terminating java applet thread on page unload

  - by Hammad Tariq

  Hello, I have got a problem here in terminating the threads. The problem is that I am using applet thread to access JS DOM and manipulate innerHTML of a span to right the Thread Name as the innerHTML. It works fine until I keep refreshing the page but if I dont give it a sleep of like 200ms and go to another page which dont have any applet on it, it will give me an error in firebug console: document.getElementById("userName") is null What I am suspecting is, although I send an interrupt on stop and I have also tried the same by setting a flag variable of running in run while loop, the thread executes much faster than the time JVM takes to unload it and I get my page changed in browser but applet is still trying to find an element with id userName. Is that true? Is there any work around of it? Is there any way to know how many threads are running at the moment? Is there any kill all command to send on destroy()? I have searched a lot, seen all the API of java threads and applets, couldn't get this to work. Below is the code: import java.applet.Applet; import netscape.javascript.*; //No need to extend JApplet, since we don't add any components; //we just paint. public class firstApplet extends Applet { /** * */ private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L; firstThread first; boolean running = false; public class firstThread extends Thread{ JSObject win; JSObject doc; firstThread second; public firstThread(JSObject window){ this.win = window; } public void run() { try{ System.out.println("running... "); while (!isInterrupted()){ doc = (JSObject) win.getMember("document"); String userName = Thread.currentThread().getName(); //String userName = "John Doe"; String S = "document.getElementById(\"userName\").innerHTML = \""+userName+"\";"; doc.eval(S); Thread.sleep(5); } }catch(Exception e){ System.out.println("exception in first thread... "); e.printStackTrace(); } } } public void init() { System.out.println("initializing... "); } public void start() { System.out.println("starting... "); JSObject window = JSObject.getWindow(this); first = new firstThread(window); first.start(); running = true; } public void stop() { first.interrupt(); first = null; System.out.println("stopping... "); } public void destroy() { if(first != null){ first = null; } System.out.println("preparing for unloading..."); } } Thanks

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• Mule xml to soap problem

  - by kevfuzz

  Hi, I'm not sure if there many Mule users on here but I'm hoping someone might be able to help me! I'm having a problem calling a webservice from Mule using Axis. I've created a fairly simple example where I have xml in a file being read by Mule, it's then transformed into a Document and sent to the webservice. The relevant code in the mule config looks like this: <inbound> <file:inbound-endpoint path="./files/initial" transformer-refs="FileToString xmlToDom" connector-ref="fileConnector" /> </inbound> <outbound> <pass-through-router> <axis:outbound-endpoint address="http://localhost:8081/holidayService?method=echoXXXX" synchronous="true" style="DOCUMENT" use="LITERAL" /> </pass-through-router> </outbound> However the call for the webservice fails as the above config is generating a SOAP message with an tag just after the tag and closes it just before the tag. The generated SOAP message looks like this: POST /holidayService?method=echoXXXX HTTP/1.1 Content-Type: text/xml X-MULE_ENDPOINT: http://localhost:8081/holidayService?method=echoXXXX SOAPAction: http://localhost:8081/holidayService?method=echoXXXX directory: D:\bea\weblogic92\samples\domains\wl_server\files\processed filename: HolidayRequest.xml method: echoXXXX originalFilename: HolidayRequest.xml style: document use: literal User-Agent: Jakarta Commons-HttpClient/3.1 Host: 127.0.0.1:8081 Content-Length: 1183 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <soapenv:Header> <mule:header soapenv:actor="http://www.muleumo.org/providers/soap/1.0" soapenv:mustUnderstand="0" xmlns:mule="http://www.muleumo.org/providers/soap/1.0"> <mule:MULE_CORRELATION_ID>D:\bea\weblogic92\samples\domains\wl_server\files\processed\HolidayRequest.xml</mule:MULE_CORRELATION_ID> <mule:MULE_CORRELATION_GROUP_SIZE>-1</mule:MULE_CORRELATION_GROUP_SIZE> <mule:MULE_CORRELATION_SEQUENCE>-1</mule:MULE_CORRELATION_SEQUENCE> </mule:header> </soapenv:Header> <soapenv:Body> <value0 xsi:type="ns1:DocumentImpl" xmlns="" xmlns:ns1="http://dom.internal.xerces.apache.org.sun.com"> <sch:HolidayRequest xmlns:sch="http://mycompany.com/hr/schemas"> <sch:Holiday> <sch:StartDate>2009-08-13</sch:StartDate> <sch:EndDate>1988-12-12</sch:EndDate> </sch:Holiday> <sch:Employee> <sch:Number>3434</sch:Number> <sch:FirstName>John</sch:FirstName> <sch:LastName>Smith</sch:LastName> </sch:Employee> </sch:HolidayRequest> </value0> </soapenv:Body> </soapenv:Envelope> The webservice works fine in SOAPUI without the tag and from what I've read on the Mule website I don't know why it's being inserted. Any help would be much appreciated, Kevin.

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• How to display only necessary information from xml

  - by fakson

  I have xml table: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <table> <user> <id>1</id> <info> <more> <nick>John</nick> <adress>blabla</adress> </more> <more> <nick>Mike</nick> <adress>blablabla</adress> <tel>blablabla</tel> </more> </info> </user> <user> <id>2</id> <info> <more> <nick>Fake</nick> <adress>blablabla</adress> <tel>blablabla</tel> </more> </info> </user> </table> And i need to read data from it. I made such parser. <?php $xml = simplexml_load_file("test.xml"); echo $xml->getName() . "<br /><br />"; echo '<hr />'; foreach ($xml->children() as $child1){ //echo $child1->getName() . ": " . $child1 . "<br />"; //el foreach($child1->children() as $child2){ if ((string)$child2 == '2') { echo "<strong>" .$child2 . "</strong><br />"; foreach($child2->children() as $child3){ echo "<strong>".$child3->getName()."</strong>:" . $child3 . "<br />"; foreach($child3->children() as $child4){ echo $child4->getName() . ": " . $child4 . "<br />"; } } } } echo '<hr />'; echo '<br />'; } ?> I want to make search in xml file, for example get all information about user with id 2, i try to realize it with if function but i get only id. What is wrong?. Any suggestions??

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• Why does my Ajax function returns my entire code?

  - by JDelage

  I'm playing with sample code from the book "Head first Ajax". Here are the salient pieces of code: Index.php - html piece: <body> <div id="wrapper"> <div id="thumbnailPane"> <img src="images/itemGuitar.jpg" width="301" height="105" alt="guitar" title="itemGuitar" id="itemGuitar" onclick="getDetails(this)"/> <img src="images/itemShades.jpg" alt="sunglasses" width="301" height="88" title="itemShades" id="itemShades" onclick="getDetails(this)" /> <img src="images/itemCowbell.jpg" alt="cowbell" width="301" height="126" title="itemCowbell" id="itemCowbell" onclick="getDetails(this)" /> <img src="images/itemHat.jpg" alt="hat" width="300" height="152" title="itemHat" id="itemHat" onclick="getDetails(this)" /> </div> <div id="detailsPane"> <img src="images/blank-detail.jpg" width="346" height="153" id="itemDetail" /> <div id="description"></div> </div> </div> </body> Index.php - script: function getDetails(img){ var title = img.title; request = createRequest(); if (request == null) { alert("Unable to create request"); return; } var url= "getDetails.php?ImageID=" + escape(title); request.open("GET", url, true); request.onreadystatechange = displayDetails; request.send(null); } function displayDetails() { if (request.readyState == 4) { if (request.status == 200) { detailDiv = document.getElementById("description"); detailDiv.innerHTML = request.responseText; }else{ return; } }else{ return; } request.send(null); } And Index.php: <?php $details = array ( 'itemGuitar' => "<p>Pete Townshend once played this guitar while his own axe was in the shop having bits of drumkit removed from it.</p>", 'itemShades' => "<p>Yoko Ono's sunglasses. While perhaps not valued much by Beatles fans, this pair is rumored to have been licked by John Lennon.</p>", 'itemCowbell' => "<p>Remember the famous \"more cowbell\" skit from Saturday Night Live? Well, this is the actual cowbell.</p>", 'itemHat' => "<p>Michael Jackson's hat, as worn in the \"Billie Jean\" video. Not really rock memorabilia, but it smells better than Slash's tophat.</p>" ); if (isset($_REQUEST['ImageID'])){echo $details[$_REQUEST['ImageID']];} ?> All this code does is that when someone clicks on a thumbnail, a corresponding text description appears on the page. Here is my question. I have tried to bring the getDetails.php code inside Index.php, and modify the getDetails function so that the var url be "Index.php?ImageID="... . When I do that, I get the following problem: the function does not display the snippet of text in the array, as it should. Instead it reproduces the entire code - the webpage, etc - and then at the bottom the expected snippet of text. Why is that?

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• JOptionPane opening another JFrame

  - by mike_hornbeck

  So I'm continuing my fight with this : http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2923545/creating-java-dialogs/2926126 task. Now my JOptionPane opens new window with envelope overfiew, but I can't change size of this window. Also I wanted to have sender's data in upper left corner, and receiver's data in bottom right. How can I achieve that ? There is also issue with OptionPane itself. After I click 'OK' it opens small window in the upper left corner of the screen. What is this and why it's appearing ? My code: import java.awt.*; import java.awt.Font; import javax.swing.*; public class Main extends JFrame { private static JTextField nameField = new JTextField(20); private static JTextField surnameField = new JTextField(); private static JTextField addr1Field = new JTextField(); private static JTextField addr2Field = new JTextField(); private static JComboBox sizes = new JComboBox(new String[] { "small", "medium", "large", "extra-large" }); public Main(){ JPanel mainPanel = new JPanel(); mainPanel.setLayout(new BoxLayout(mainPanel, BoxLayout.Y_AXIS)); getContentPane().add(mainPanel); JPanel addrPanel = new JPanel(new GridLayout(0, 1)); addrPanel.setBorder(BorderFactory.createTitledBorder("Receiver")); addrPanel.add(new JLabel("Name")); addrPanel.add(nameField); addrPanel.add(new JLabel("Surname")); addrPanel.add(surnameField); addrPanel.add(new JLabel("Address 1")); addrPanel.add(addr1Field); addrPanel.add(new JLabel("Address 2")); addrPanel.add(addr2Field); mainPanel.add(addrPanel); mainPanel.add(new JLabel(" ")); mainPanel.add(sizes); String[] buttons = { "OK", "Cancel"}; int c = JOptionPane.showOptionDialog( null, mainPanel, "My Panel", JOptionPane.DEFAULT_OPTION, JOptionPane.PLAIN_MESSAGE, null, buttons, buttons[0] ); if(c ==0){ new Envelope(nameField.getText(), surnameField.getText(), addr1Field.getText() , addr2Field.getText(), sizes.getSelectedIndex()); } setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE); pack(); setVisible(true); } public static void main(String[] args) { new Main(); } } class Envelope extends JFrame { private final int SMALL=0; private final int MEDIUM=1; private final int LARGE=2; private final int XLARGE=3; public Envelope(String n, String s, String a1, String a2, int i){ Container content = getContentPane(); JPanel mainPanel = new JPanel(); mainPanel.setLayout(new BoxLayout(mainPanel, BoxLayout.Y_AXIS)); mainPanel.add(new JLabel("John Doe")); mainPanel.add(new JLabel("FooBar str 14")); mainPanel.add(new JLabel("Newark, 45-99")); JPanel dataPanel = new JPanel(); dataPanel.setFont(new Font("sansserif", Font.PLAIN, 32)); //set size from i mainPanel.setLayout(new BoxLayout(mainPanel, BoxLayout.Y_AXIS)); mainPanel.setBackground(Color.ORANGE); mainPanel.add(new JLabel("Mr "+n+" "+s)); mainPanel.add(new JLabel(a1)); mainPanel.add(new JLabel(a2)); content.setSize(450, 600); content.setBackground(Color.ORANGE); content.add(mainPanel, BorderLayout.NORTH); content.add(dataPanel, BorderLayout.SOUTH); setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE); pack(); setVisible(true); } }

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• mediaelement.js control sizes are wrong when clip nested in a hidden element

  - by Martin Francis

  It's a nasty one this. In an audio control placed within a container element whose display property is initially set to none, the audio clip does NOT correctly size the progress bar when it is initialised. This is clear when the container's display property is changed from 'none' to '' (which is equivalent to 'static'). But who would ever do that? I make extensive use of 'tabbed' display arrangements on community sites like this one: http://www.churchesInBracebridge.ca Owing to the page arrangement, the audio controls which you see under 'sermons' (which at the time of writing still using Flash rather than John's excellent library here) are initially rendered in a div that is hidden. Simplified Test case Rather than have anyone have to wade through all of that, here's a much simplified test case: http://jsfiddle.net/sJL6T/36 Here's the full page source for those who'd prefer to work with it that way. <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"/> <title>MediaElementPlayer.js</title> <script type="text/javascript" src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.9.1/jquery.min.js"></script> <script src="http://mediaelementjs.com/js/mejs-2.13.1/mediaelement-and-player.js"></script> <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://mediaelementjs.com/js/mejs-2.13.1/mediaelementplayer.css" /> <script type="text/javascript"> function toggle(id){ document.getElementById(id).style.display= (document.getElementById(id).style.display=='none' ? '' : 'none'); } </script> </head> <body> <h1>MediaElementPlayer.js</h1> <h2 onclick="return toggle('test1')">Initially Hidden (Click to toggle)</h2> <div id='test1' style='display:none'> <audio controls="controls"> <source src="http://mediaelementjs.com/media/AirReview-Landmarks-02-ChasingCorporate.mp3" type="audio/mp3" /> </audio> </div> <h2 onclick="return toggle('test2')">Initially Shown (Click to toggle)</h2> <div id='test2' style=''> <audio controls="controls"> <source src="http://mediaelementjs.com/media/AirReview-Landmarks-02-ChasingCorporate.mp3" type="audio/mp3" /> </audio> </div> <script> $('audio').mediaelementplayer(); </script> </body> </html> Possible Workarounds Now I know that Google maps has the same quirk and there are two possible ways I've used to deal with that: Use absolute positioning in a displayed div to place the element 10,000px to the left then bring it onto the stage when we want to see it Have the map pane displayed when loading then hide it as soon as it's loaded (ugly I know, but it usually works) However either approach would be a pain to do, as I have a lot of legacy code using the simpler div hiding method. I know that JQuery can get the dimensions of an element event if it is hidden - someone thoughtfully fiddled that and it does work: http://jsfiddle.net/sJL6T/9 Perhaps it may be possible to modify the actual library to find correct dimensions, even if the container itself is hidden? That would be wonderful, if it can be done! Initial experiments on mediaelement-and-player.js code I found that when I provided a fixed value in the setControlsSize function for railWidth, I got consistent results with both controls in the test case above (and obviously I'm working with my own copy of the library to do that, not the one stored at mediaelementjs.com): // outer area rail.width(railWidth); Change to this: // outer area railWidth=216; rail.width(railWidth); Many thanks in anticipation! Martin Francis <<

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• Trouble with datasource not being called from viewWillAppear

  - by user278859

  A little background. I have taken GCCalendar which only works in portrait orientation and extended it to work in landscape similar to how the iPhone's Calendar app works. I did this by duplicating the main view class and modifying it to work in landscape. So when the phone is in portrait orientation the CGCalendar is instantiated from the apps main view controller using the original portrait view class and when in landscape orientation using the new modified landscape view class. Most of the other classes in GCCalendar are shared without modification. A few had to be duplicated as well. I got it all working great except for an issue with the datasource. The datasource is called when the calendar is first loaded and each time the user changes the dates being viewed. Problem is I can't get the datasource call to work on the first call. I am stumped as it works fine in portrait orientation and I cannot find any difference between the 2 versions. Following is some of the code that shows how it gets to the datasource call the first time. Subsequent calls removes all the calendar subviews and instantiates them again with the new dates. The duplicated landscape class names end in LS. Otherwise as you can see they are identical. Does anyone has any idea of where else I might look to resolve this issue? Thanks, John -------------------------------- //App main view controller - (void)showLandscapeCalendar { GCCalendarLandscapeView *calendar = [[[GCCalendarLandscapeView alloc] init] autorelease]; calendar.dataSource = self; calendar.delegate = self; navigationController = [[UINavigationController alloc] initWithRootViewController:calendar]; [self presentModalViewController:navigationController animated:YES]; } - (void)showPortraitCalendar { GCCalendarPortraitView *calendar = [[[GCCalendarPortraitView alloc] init] autorelease]; calendar.dataSource = self; calendar.delegate = self; navigationController = [[UINavigationController alloc] initWithRootViewController:calendar]; [self presentModalViewController:navigationController animated:YES]; } - (NSArray *)calendarEventsForDate:(NSDate *)date{ //build and return the events array //this is the protocol datasource method //It is supposed to run every time the date changes in the calendar } ------------------------------- // GCCalendarLandscapeView... - (void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated { [super viewWillAppear:animated]; if (viewDirty) { [self reloadDayAnimated:NO context:NULL]; viewDirty = NO; } viewVisible = YES; } - (void)reloadDayAnimated:(BOOL)animated context:(void *)context { GCCalendarDayViewLS *nextDayView = [[GCCalendarDayViewLS alloc] initWithCalendarView:self]; } ------------------------------- //GCCalendarDayViewLS - (id)initWithCalendarView:(GCCalendarView *)view { if (self = [super init]) { dataSource = view.dataSource; } return self; } - (void)reloadData { //** first time through the dataSource method does not run events = [dataSource calendarEventsForDate:date]; } ------------------------------- // GCCalendarPortraitView... - (void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated { [super viewWillAppear:animated]; if (viewDirty) { [self reloadDayAnimated:NO context:NULL]; viewDirty = NO; } viewVisible = YES; } - (void)reloadDayAnimated:(BOOL)animated context:(void *)context { GCCalendarDayView *nextDayView = [[GCCalendarDayView alloc] initWithCalendarView:self]; } ------------------------------- //GCCalendarDayView - (id)initWithCalendarView:(GCCalendarView *)view { if (self = [super init]) { dataSource = view.dataSource; } return self; } - (void)reloadData { **//this one works every time events = [dataSource calendarEventsForDate:date]; }

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• Dynamic 'twitter style' urls with ASP.NET

  - by Desiny

  I am looking to produce an MVC site which has complete control of the url structure using routing. The specific requirements are: www.mysite.com/ = homepage (home controller) www.mysite.com/common/about = content page (common controller) www.mysite.com/common/contact = content page (common controller) www.mysite.com/john = twitter style user page (dynamic controller) www.mysite.com/sarah = twitter style user page (dynamic controller) www.mysite.com/me = premium style user page (premium controller) www.mysite.com/oldpage.html = 301 redirect to new page www.mysite.com/oldpage.asp?id=3333 = 301 redirect to new page My routes look as follows: routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}"); routes.MapRoute( "Common", "common/{action}/{id}", new { controller = "common", action = "Index", id = "" } ); routes.MapRoute( "Home", "", new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = "" } ); routes.MapRoute( "Dynamic", "{id}", new { controller = "dynamic", action = "Index", id = "" } ); In order to handle the 301 rredirct, I have a database defining the old pages and their new page urls and a stored procdure to handle the lookup. The code (handler) looks like this: public class AspxCatchHandler : IHttpHandler, IRequiresSessionState { #region IHttpHandler Members public bool IsReusable { get { return true; } } public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) { if (context.Request.Url.AbsolutePath.Contains("aspx") && !context.Request.Url.AbsolutePath.ToLower().Contains("default.aspx")) { string strurl = context.Request.Url.PathAndQuery.ToString(); string chrAction = ""; string chrDest = ""; try { DataTable dtRedirect = SqlFactory.Execute( ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["emptum"].ConnectionString, "spGetRedirectAction", new SqlParameter[] { new SqlParameter("@chrURL", strurl) }, true); chrAction = dtRedirect.Rows[0]["chrAction"].ToString(); chrDest = dtRedirect.Rows[0]["chrDest"].ToString(); chrDest = context.Request.Url.Host.ToString() + "/" + chrDest; chrDest = "http://" + chrDest; if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(strurl)) context.Response.Redirect("~/"); } catch { chrDest = "/";// context.Request.Url.Host.ToString(); } context.Response.Clear(); context.Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently"; context.Response.AddHeader("Location", chrDest); context.Response.End(); } else { string originalPath = context.Request.Path; HttpContext.Current.RewritePath("/", false); IHttpHandler httpHandler = new MvcHttpHandler(); httpHandler.ProcessRequest(HttpContext.Current); HttpContext.Current.RewritePath(originalPath, false); } } #endregion } It is very simple to look up a user and in fact the above code does this. My problem is in the dynamic / premium part. I am trying to do the following: 1) in the dynamic controller, lookup the username. 2) if the username is in the user list (database), show the Index ActionResult of the Dynamic controller. 3) if the username is not found, look up the username in the premium list 4) if the username is fund in the premium list (database) then show the Index ActionResult of the Preium controller. 5) If all else fails jump to the 404 page (which will ask the user to sign up) Is this possible? Looking up the user twice is a bad idea for performance? How do I do this without redirecting?

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• With NHibernate, how can I add a child object when updating a parent object?

  - by BMZ

  I have a simple Parent/Child relationship between a Person object and an Address object. The Person object exists in the DB. After doing a Get on the Person, I add a new Address object to the Address sub-object list of the parent, and do some other updates to the Person object. Finally, I do an Update on the Person object. With a SQL trace window, I can see the update to the Person object to the Person table and the Insert of the Address record to the Address table. The issue is that, after the update is performed, the AddressId (primary key on the Address object) is still set to 0, which is what it defaults to when you first initialize the Address object. I have verified that when I do an Add, this value is set correctly. Is this a known issue when trying to add sub-objects as part of an NHibernate UPDATE? Sample code and mapping files are below Thanks <hibernate-mapping xmlns="urn:nhibernate-mapping-2.2"> <class name="BusinessEntities.Wellness.Person,BusinessEntities.Wellness" table="Person" lazy="true" dynamic-insert="true" dynamic-update="false"> <id name="Personid" column="PersonID" type="int"> <generator class="native" /> </id> <version type="binary" generated="always" name="RecordVersion" column="`RecordVersion`"/> <property type="int" not-null="true" name="Customerid" column="`CustomerID`" /> <property type="AnsiString" not-null="true" length="9" name="Ssn" column="`SSN`" /> <property type="AnsiString" not-null="true" length="30" name="FirstName" column="`FirstName`" /> <property type="AnsiString" not-null="true" length="35" name="LastName" column="`LastName`" /> <property type="AnsiString" length="1" name="MiddleInitial" column="`MiddleInitial`" /> <property type="DateTime" name="DateOfBirth" column="`DateOfBirth`" /> <bag name="PersonAddresses" inverse="true" lazy="true" cascade="all"> <key column="PersonID" /> <one-to-many class="BusinessEntities.Wellness.PersonAddress,BusinessEntities.Wellness" / </bag> </class> </hibernate-mapping> <hibernate-mapping xmlns="urn:nhibernate-mapping-2.2"> <class name="BusinessEntities.Wellness.PersonAddress,BusinessEntities.Wellness" table="PersonAddress" lazy="true" dynamic-insert="true" dynamic-update="false"> <id name="PersonAddressId" column="PersonAddressID" type="int"> <generator class="native" /> </id> <version type="binary" generated="always" name="RecordVersion" column="`RecordVersion`" /> <property type="AnsiString" not-null="true" length="1" name="AddressTypeid" column="`AddressTypeID`" /> <property type="AnsiString" not-null="true" length="60" name="AddressLine1" column="`AddressLine1`" /> <property type="AnsiString" length="60" name="AddressLine2" column="`AddressLine2`" /> <property type="AnsiString" length="60" name="City" column="`City`" /> <property type="AnsiString" length="2" name="UsStateId" column="`USStateID`" /> <property type="AnsiString" length="5" name="UsPostalCodeId" column="`USPostalCodeID`" /> <many-to-one name="Person" cascade="none" column="PersonID" /> </class> </hibernate-mapping> Person newPerson = new Person(); newPerson.PersonName = "John Doe"; newPerson.SSN = "111111111"; newPerson.CreatedBy = "RJC"; newPerson.CreatedDate = DateTime.Today; personDao.AddPerson(newPerson); Person updatePerson = personDao.GetPerson(newPerson.PersonId); updatePerson.PersonAddresses = new List<PersonAddress>(); PersonAddress addr = new PersonAddress(); addr.AddressLine1 = "1 Main St"; addr.City = "Boston"; addr.State = "MA"; addr.Zip = "12345"; updatePerson.PersonAddresses.Add(addr); personDao.UpdatePerson(updatePerson); int addressID = updatePerson.PersonAddresses[0].AddressId;

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• how to mount partitions from USB drives in Windows using Delphi?

  - by user569556

  Hi. I'm a Delphi programmer. I want to mount all partitions from USB drives in Windows (XP). The OS is doing this automatically but there are situations when such a program is useful. I know how to find if a drive is on USB or not. My code so far is: type STORAGE_QUERY_TYPE = (PropertyStandardQuery = 0, PropertyExistsQuery, PropertyMaskQuery, PropertyQueryMaxDefined); TStorageQueryType = STORAGE_QUERY_TYPE; STORAGE_PROPERTY_ID = (StorageDeviceProperty = 0, StorageAdapterProperty); TStoragePropertyID = STORAGE_PROPERTY_ID; STORAGE_PROPERTY_QUERY = packed record PropertyId: STORAGE_PROPERTY_ID; QueryType: STORAGE_QUERY_TYPE; AdditionalParameters: array[0..9] of AnsiChar; end; TStoragePropertyQuery = STORAGE_PROPERTY_QUERY; STORAGE_BUS_TYPE = (BusTypeUnknown = 0, BusTypeScsi, BusTypeAtapi, BusTypeAta, BusType1394, BusTypeSsa, BusTypeFibre, BusTypeUsb, BusTypeRAID, BusTypeiScsi, BusTypeSas, BusTypeSata, BusTypeMaxReserved = $7F); TStorageBusType = STORAGE_BUS_TYPE; STORAGE_DEVICE_DESCRIPTOR = packed record Version: DWORD; Size: DWORD; DeviceType: Byte; DeviceTypeModifier: Byte; RemovableMedia: Boolean; CommandQueueing: Boolean; VendorIdOffset: DWORD; ProductIdOffset: DWORD; ProductRevisionOffset: DWORD; SerialNumberOffset: DWORD; BusType: STORAGE_BUS_TYPE; RawPropertiesLength: DWORD; RawDeviceProperties: array[0..0] of AnsiChar; end; TStorageDeviceDescriptor = STORAGE_DEVICE_DESCRIPTOR; const IOCTL_STORAGE_QUERY_PROPERTY = $002D1400; var i: Integer; H: THandle; USBDrives: array of Byte; Query: TStoragePropertyQuery; dwBytesReturned: DWORD; Buffer: array[0..1023] of Byte; sdd: TStorageDeviceDescriptor absolute Buffer; begin SetLength(UsbDrives, 0); SetErrorMode(SEM_FAILCRITICALERRORS); for i := 0 to 99 do begin H := CreateFile(PChar('\\.\PhysicalDrive' + IntToStr(i)), 0, FILE_SHARE_READ or FILE_SHARE_WRITE, nil, OPEN_EXISTING, 0, 0); if H <> INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE then begin try dwBytesReturned := 0; FillChar(Query, SizeOf(Query), 0); FillChar(Buffer, SizeOf(Buffer), 0); sdd.Size := SizeOf(Buffer); Query.PropertyId := StorageDeviceProperty; Query.QueryType := PropertyStandardQuery; if DeviceIoControl(H, IOCTL_STORAGE_QUERY_PROPERTY, @Query, SizeOf(Query), @Buffer, SizeOf(Buffer), dwBytesReturned, nil) then if sdd.BusType = BusTypeUsb then begin SetLength(USBDrives, Length(USBDrives) + 1); UsbDrives[High(USBDrives)] := Byte(i); end; finally CloseHandle(H); end; end; end; for i := 0 to High(USBDrives) do begin // end; end. But I don't know how to access partitions on each drive and mounts them. Can you please help me? I searched before I asked and I couldn't find a working code. But if I did not properly then I'm sorry and please show me that topic. Best regards, John

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• jQuery Templates and Data Linking (and Microsoft contributing to jQuery)

  - by ScottGu

  The jQuery library has a passionate community of developers, and it is now the most widely used JavaScript library on the web today. Two years ago I announced that Microsoft would begin offering product support for jQuery, and that we’d be including it in new versions of Visual Studio going forward. By default, when you create new ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC projects with VS 2010 you’ll find jQuery automatically added to your project. A few weeks ago during my second keynote at the MIX 2010 conference I announced that Microsoft would also begin contributing to the jQuery project.  During the talk, John Resig -- the creator of the jQuery library and leader of the jQuery developer team – talked a little about our participation and discussed an early prototype of a new client templating API for jQuery. In this blog post, I’m going to talk a little about how my team is starting to contribute to the jQuery project, and discuss some of the specific features that we are working on such as client-side templating and data linking (data-binding). Contributing to jQuery jQuery has a fantastic developer community, and a very open way to propose suggestions and make contributions.  Microsoft is following the same process to contribute to jQuery as any other member of the community. As an example, when working with the jQuery community to improve support for templating to jQuery my team followed the following steps: We created a proposal for templating and posted the proposal to the jQuery developer forum (http://forum.jquery.com/topic/jquery-templates-proposal and http://forum.jquery.com/topic/templating-syntax ). After receiving feedback on the forums, the jQuery team created a prototype for templating and posted the prototype at the Github code repository (http://github.com/jquery/jquery-tmpl ). We iterated on the prototype, creating a new fork on Github of the templating prototype, to suggest design improvements. Several other members of the community also provided design feedback by forking the templating code. There has been an amazing amount of participation by the jQuery community in response to the original templating proposal (over 100 posts in the jQuery forum), and the design of the templating proposal has evolved significantly based on community feedback. The jQuery team is the ultimate determiner on what happens with the templating proposal – they might include it in jQuery core, or make it an official plugin, or reject it entirely.  My team is excited to be able to participate in the open source process, and make suggestions and contributions the same way as any other member of the community. jQuery Template Support Client-side templates enable jQuery developers to easily generate and render HTML UI on the client.  Templates support a simple syntax that enables either developers or designers to declaratively specify the HTML they want to generate.  Developers can then programmatically invoke the templates on the client, and pass JavaScript objects to them to make the content rendered completely data driven.  These JavaScript objects can optionally be based on data retrieved from a server. Because the jQuery templating proposal is still evolving in response to community feedback, the final version might look very different than the version below. This blog post gives you a sense of how you can try out and use templating as it exists today (you can download the prototype by the jQuery core team at http://github.com/jquery/jquery-tmpl or the latest submission from my team at http://github.com/nje/jquery-tmpl).  jQuery Client Templates You create client-side jQuery templates by embedding content within a <script type="text/html"> tag.  For example, the HTML below contains a <div> template container, as well as a client-side jQuery “contactTemplate” template (within the <script type="text/html"> element) that can be used to dynamically display a list of contacts: The {{= name }} and {{= phone }} expressions are used within the contact template above to display the names and phone numbers of “contact” objects passed to the template. We can use the template to display either an array of JavaScript objects or a single object. The JavaScript code below demonstrates how you can render a JavaScript array of “contact” object using the above template. The render() method renders the data into a string and appends the string to the “contactContainer” DIV element: When the page is loaded, the list of contacts is rendered by the template.  All of this template rendering is happening on the client-side within the browser:   Templating Commands and Conditional Display Logic The current templating proposal supports a small set of template commands - including if, else, and each statements. The number of template commands was deliberately kept small to encourage people to place more complicated logic outside of their templates. Even this small set of template commands is very useful though. Imagine, for example, that each contact can have zero or more phone numbers. The contacts could be represented by the JavaScript array below: The template below demonstrates how you can use the if and each template commands to conditionally display and loop the phone numbers for each contact: If a contact has one or more phone numbers then each of the phone numbers is displayed by iterating through the phone numbers with the each template command: The jQuery team designed the template commands so that they are extensible. If you have a need for a new template command then you can easily add new template commands to the default set of commands. Support for Client Data-Linking The ASP.NET team recently submitted another proposal and prototype to the jQuery forums (http://forum.jquery.com/topic/proposal-for-adding-data-linking-to-jquery). This proposal describes a new feature named data linking. Data Linking enables you to link a property of one object to a property of another object - so that when one property changes the other property changes.  Data linking enables you to easily keep your UI and data objects synchronized within a page. If you are familiar with the concept of data-binding then you will be familiar with data linking (in the proposal, we call the feature data linking because jQuery already includes a bind() method that has nothing to do with data-binding). Imagine, for example, that you have a page with the following HTML <input> elements: The following JavaScript code links the two INPUT elements above to the properties of a JavaScript “contact” object that has a “name” and “phone” property: When you execute this code, the value of the first INPUT element (#name) is set to the value of the contact name property, and the value of the second INPUT element (#phone) is set to the value of the contact phone property. The properties of the contact object and the properties of the INPUT elements are also linked – so that changes to one are also reflected in the other. Because the contact object is linked to the INPUT element, when you request the page, the values of the contact properties are displayed: More interesting, the values of the linked INPUT elements will change automatically whenever you update the properties of the contact object they are linked to. For example, we could programmatically modify the properties of the “contact” object using the jQuery attr() method like below: Because our two INPUT elements are linked to the “contact” object, the INPUT element values will be updated automatically (without us having to write any code to modify the UI elements): Note that we updated the contact object above using the jQuery attr() method. In order for data linking to work, you must use jQuery methods to modify the property values. Two Way Linking The linkBoth() method enables two-way data linking. The contact object and INPUT elements are linked in both directions. When you modify the value of the INPUT element, the contact object is also updated automatically. For example, the following code adds a client-side JavaScript click handler to an HTML button element. When you click the button, the property values of the contact object are displayed using an alert() dialog: The following demonstrates what happens when you change the value of the Name INPUT element and click the Save button. Notice that the name property of the “contact” object that the INPUT element was linked to was updated automatically: The above example is obviously trivially simple.  Instead of displaying the new values of the contact object with a JavaScript alert, you can imagine instead calling a web-service to save the object to a database. The benefit of data linking is that it enables you to focus on your data and frees you from the mechanics of keeping your UI and data in sync. Converters The current data linking proposal also supports a feature called converters. A converter enables you to easily convert the value of a property during data linking. For example, imagine that you want to represent phone numbers in a standard way with the “contact” object phone property. In particular, you don’t want to include special characters such as ()- in the phone number - instead you only want digits and nothing else. In that case, you can wire-up a converter to convert the value of an INPUT element into this format using the code below: Notice above how a converter function is being passed to the linkFrom() method used to link the phone property of the “contact” object with the value of the phone INPUT element. This convertor function strips any non-numeric characters from the INPUT element before updating the phone property.  Now, if you enter the phone number (206) 555-9999 into the phone input field then the value 2065559999 is assigned to the phone property of the contact object: You can also use a converter in the opposite direction also. For example, you can apply a standard phone format string when displaying a phone number from a phone property. Combining Templating and Data Linking Our goal in submitting these two proposals for templating and data linking is to make it easier to work with data when building websites and applications with jQuery. Templating makes it easier to display a list of database records retrieved from a database through an Ajax call. Data linking makes it easier to keep the data and user interface in sync for update scenarios. Currently, we are working on an extension of the data linking proposal to support declarative data linking. We want to make it easy to take advantage of data linking when using a template to display data. For example, imagine that you are using the following template to display an array of product objects: Notice the {{link name}} and {{link price}} expressions. These expressions enable declarative data linking between the SPAN elements and properties of the product objects. The current jQuery templating prototype supports extending its syntax with custom template commands. In this case, we are extending the default templating syntax with a custom template command named “link”. The benefit of using data linking with the above template is that the SPAN elements will be automatically updated whenever the underlying “product” data is updated.  Declarative data linking also makes it easier to create edit and insert forms. For example, you could create a form for editing a product by using declarative data linking like this: Whenever you change the value of the INPUT elements in a template that uses declarative data linking, the underlying JavaScript data object is automatically updated. Instead of needing to write code to scrape the HTML form to get updated values, you can instead work with the underlying data directly – making your client-side code much cleaner and simpler. Downloading Working Code Examples of the Above Scenarios You can download this .zip file to get with working code examples of the above scenarios.  The .zip file includes 4 static HTML page: Listing1_Templating.htm – Illustrates basic templating. Listing2_TemplatingConditionals.htm – Illustrates templating with the use of the if and each template commands. Listing3_DataLinking.htm – Illustrates data linking. Listing4_Converters.htm – Illustrates using a converter with data linking. You can un-zip the file to the file-system and then run each page to see the concepts in action. Summary We are excited to be able to begin participating within the open-source jQuery project.  We’ve received lots of encouraging feedback in response to our first two proposals, and we will continue to actively contribute going forward.  These features will hopefully make it easier for all developers (including ASP.NET developers) to build great Ajax applications. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu]

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• Silverlight 4 Training Kit

  - by ScottGu

  We recently released a new free Silverlight 4 Training Kit that walks you through building business applications with Silverlight 4.  You can browse the training kit online or alternatively download an entire offline version of the training kit.  The training material is structured on teaching how to use the new Silverlight 4 features to build an end to end business application. The training kit includes 8 modules, 25 videos, and several hands on labs. Below is a breakdown and links to all of the content. [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] Module 1: Introduction Click here to watch this module. In this video John Papa and Ian Griffiths discuss the key areas that the Building Business Applications with Silverlight 4 course focuses on. This module is the overview of the course and covers many key scenarios that are faced when building business applications, and how Silverlight can help address them. Module 2: WCF RIA Services Click here to explore this module. In this lab, you will create a web site for managing conferences that will be the basis for the other labs in this course. Don’t worry if you don’t complete a particular lab in the series – all lab manual instructions are accompanied by completed solutions, so you can either build your own solution from start to finish, or dive straight in at any point using the solutions provided as a starting point. In this lab you will learn how to set up WCF RIA Services, create bindings to the domain context, filter using the domain data source, and create domain service queries. Online Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 2.1 - WCF RIA Services Ian Griffiths sets up the Entity Framework and WCF RIA Services for the sample Event Manager application for the course. He covers how to set up the services, how the Domain Services work and the role that the DomainContext plays in the sample application. He also reviews the metadata classes and integrating the navigation framework. Module 2.2 – Using WCF RIA Services to Edit Entities Ian Griffiths discusses how he adds the ability to edit and create individual entities with the features built into WCF RIA Services into the sample Event Manager application. He covers data binding fundamentals, IQueryable, LINQ, the DomainDataSource, navigation to a single entity using the navigation framework, and how to use the Visual Studio designer to do much of the work . Module 2.3 – Showing Master/Details Records Using WCF RIA Services Ian Griffiths reviews how to display master/detail records for the sample Event Manager application using WCF RIA Services. He covers how to use the Include attribute to indicate which elements to serialize back to the client. Ian also demonstrates how to use the Data Sources window in the designer to add and bind controls to specific data elements. He wraps up by showing how to create custom services to the Domain Services. Module 3 – Authentication, Validation, MVVM, Commands, Implicit Styles and RichTextBox Click here to visit this module. This lab demonstrates how to build a login screen, integrate ASP.NET authentication, and perform validation on data elements. Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) is introduced and used in this lab as a pattern to help separate the UI and business logic. You will also learn how to use implicit styling and the new RichTextBox control. Online Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 3.1 – Authentication Ian Griffiths covers how to integrate a login screen and authentication into the sample Event Manager application. Ian shows how to use the ASP.NET authentication and integrate it into WCF RIA Services and the Silverlight presentation layer. Module 3.2 – MVVM Ian Griffiths covers how to Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) patterns into the sample Event Manager application. He discusses why MVVM exists, what separated presentation means, and why it is important. He shows how to connect the View to the ViewModel, why data binding is important in this symbiosis, and how everything fits together in the overall application. Module 3.3 –Validation Ian Griffiths discusses how validation of user input can be integrated into the sample Event Manager application. He demonstrates how to use the DataAnnotations, the INotifyDataErrorInfo interface, binding markup extensions, and WCF RIA Services in concert to achieve great validation in the sample application. He discusses how this technique allows for property level validation, entity level validation, and asynchronous server side validation. Module 3.4 – Implicit Styles Ian Griffiths discusses how why implicit styles are important and how they can be integrated into the sample Event Manager application. He shows how implicit styles defined in a resource dictionary can be applied to all elements of a particular kind throughout the application. Module 3.5 – RichTextBox Ian Griffiths discusses how the new RichTextBox control and it can be integrated into the sample Event Manager application. He demonstrates how the RichTextBox can provide editing for the event information and how it can display the rich text for selection and copying. Module 4 – User Profiles, Drop Targets, Webcam and Clipboard Click here to visit this module. This lab builds new features into the sample application to take the user's photo. It teaches you how to use the webcam to capture an image, use Silverlight as a drop target, and take advantage of programmatic access to the clipboard. Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 4.1 – Webcam Ian Griffiths demonstrates how the webcam adds value to the sample Event Manager application by capturing an image of the attendee. He discusses the VideoCaptureDevice, the CaptureDviceConfiguration, and the CaptureSource classes and how they allow audio and video to be captured so you can grab an image from the capture device and save it. Module 4.2 - Drag and Drop in Silverlight Ian Griffiths demonstrates how to capture and handle the Drop in the sample Event Manager application so the user can drag a photo from a file and drop it into the application. Ian reviews the AllowDrop property, the Drop event, how to access the file that can be dropped, and the other drag related events. He also reviews how to make this work across browsers and the challenges for this. Module 5 – Schedule Planner and Right Mouse Click Click here to visit this module. This lab builds on the application to allow grouping in the DataGrid and implement right mouse click features to add context menu support. Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 5.1 – Grouping and Binding Ian Griffiths demonstrates how to use the grouping features for data binding in the DataGrid and how it applies to the sample Event Manager application. He reviews the role of the CollectionViewSource in grouping, customizing the templates for headers, and how to work with grouping with ItemsControls. Module 5.2 – Layout Visual States Ian Griffiths demonstrates how to use the Fluid UI animation support for visual states in the ListBox control DataGrid and how it applies to the sample Event Manager application. He reviews the 3 visual states of BeforeLoaded, AfterLoaded, and BeforeUnloaded. Module 5.3 – Right Mouse Click Ian Griffiths demonstrates how to add support for handling the right mouse button click event to display a context menu for the Event Manager application. He demonstrates how to handle the event, show a custom context menu control, and integrate it into the scheduling portion of the application. Module 6 – Printing the Schedule Click here to visit this module. This lab teaches how to use the new printing features in Silverlight 4. The lab walks through the PrintDocument class and the ViewBox control, while showing how to print multiple pages of content using them. Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 6.1 – Printing and the Viewbox Ian Griffiths demonstrates how to add the ability to print the schedule to the sample Event Manager application. He walks through the importance of the PrintDocument class and its members. He also shows how to handle printing the visual tree and how the ViewBox control can help. Module 6.2 – Multi Page Printing Ian Griffiths expands on his printing discussion by showing how to handle printing multiple pages of content for the sample Event Manager application. He shows how to paginate the content and points out various tips to keep in mind when determining the printable area. Module 7 – Running the Event Dashboard Out of Browser Click here to visit this module. This lab builds a dashboard for the sample application while explaining the fundamentals of the out of browser features, how to handle authentication, displaying notifications (toasts), and how to use native integration to use COM Interop with Silverlight. Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 7.1 – Out of Browser Ian Griffiths discusses the role of an Out of Browser application for administrators to manage the events and users in the sample Event Manager application. He discusses several reasons why out of browser applications may better suit your needs including custom chrome, toasts, window placement, cross domain access, and file access. He demonstrates the basic technique to take your application and make it work out of browser using the tools. Module 7.2 – NotificationWindow (Toasts) for Elevated Trust Out of Browser Applications Ian Griffiths discusses the how toasts can be used in the sample Event Manager application to show information that may require the user's attention. Ian covers how to create a toast using the NotificationWindow, security implications, and how to make the toast appear as needed. Module 7.3 – Out of Browser Window Placement Ian Griffiths discusses the how to manage the window positioning when building an out of browser application, handling the windows state, and controlling and handling activation of the window. Module 7.4 – Out of Browser Elevated Trust Application Overview Ian Griffiths discusses the implications of creating trusted out of browser application for the Event Manager sample application. He reviews why you might want to use elevated trust, what features is opens to you, and how to take advantage of them. Topics Ian covers include the dynamic keyword in C# 4, the AutomationFactory class, the API to check if you are in a trusted application, and communicating with Excel. Module 8 – Advanced Out of Browser and MEF Click here to visit this module. This hands-on lab walks through the creation of a trusted out of browser application and the new functionality that comes with that. You will learn to use COM Automation, handle the window closing event, set custom window chrome, digitally sign your Silverlight out of browser trusted application, create a silent install option, and take advantage of MEF. Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 8.1 – Custom Window Chrome for Elevated Trust Out of Browser Applications Ian Griffiths discusses how to replace the standard operating system window chrome with customized chrome for an elevated trusted out of browser application. He covers how it is important to handle close, resize, minimize, and maximize events. Ian mentions that the tooling was not ready when he shot this video, but the good news is that the tooling now supports setting the custom chrome directly from the property page for the Silverlight application. Module 8.2 – Window Closing Event for Out of Browser Applications Ian Griffiths discusses the WindowClosing event and how to handle and optionally cancel the event. Module 8.3 – Silent Install of Out of Browser Applications Ian Griffiths discusses how to use the SLLauncher executable to install an out of browser application. He discusses the optional command line switches that can be set including how the emulate switch can help you emulate the install process. Ian also shows how to setup a shortcut for the application and tell the application where it should look for future updates online. Module 8.4 – Digitally Signing Out of Browser Application Ian Griffiths discusses how and why to digitally sign an out of browser application using the signtool program. He covers what trusted certificates are, the implications of signing (or not signing), and the effect on the user experience. Module 8.5 – The Value of MEF with Silverlight Ian Griffiths discusses what MEF is, how your application can benefit from it, and the fundamental features it puts at your disposal. He covers the 3 step import, export and compose process as well as how to dynamically import XAP files using MEF. Summary As you can probably tell from the long list above – this series contains a ton of great content, and hopefully provides a nice end-to-end walkthrough that helps explain how to take advantage of Silverlight 4 (and all its new features).  Hope this helps, Scott

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• ASP.NET GZip Encoding Caveats

  - by Rick Strahl

  GZip encoding in ASP.NET is pretty easy to accomplish using the built-in GZipStream and DeflateStream classes and applying them to the Response.Filter property.  While applying GZip and Deflate behavior is pretty easy there are a few caveats that you have watch out for as I found out today for myself with an application that was throwing up some garbage data. But before looking at caveats let’s review GZip implementation for ASP.NET. ASP.NET GZip/Deflate Basics Response filters basically are applied to the Response.OutputStream and transform it as data is written to it through the ASP.NET Response object. So a Response.Write eventually gets written into the output stream which if a filter is also written through the filter stream’s interface. To perform the actual GZip (and Deflate) encoding typically used by Web pages .NET includes the GZipStream and DeflateStream stream classes which can be readily assigned to the Repsonse.OutputStream. With these two stream classes in place it’s almost trivially easy to create a couple of reusable methods that allow you to compress your HTTP output. In my standard WebUtils utility class (from the West Wind West Wind Web Toolkit) created two static utility methods – IsGZipSupported and GZipEncodePage – that check whether the client supports GZip encoding and then actually encodes the current output (note that although the method includes ‘Page’ in its name this code will work with any ASP.NET output). /// <summary> /// Determines if GZip is supported /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public static bool IsGZipSupported() { string AcceptEncoding = HttpContext.Current.Request.Headers["Accept-Encoding"]; if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(AcceptEncoding) && (AcceptEncoding.Contains("gzip") || AcceptEncoding.Contains("deflate"))) return true; return false; } /// <summary> /// Sets up the current page or handler to use GZip through a Response.Filter /// IMPORTANT: /// You have to call this method before any output is generated! /// </summary> public static void GZipEncodePage() { HttpResponse Response = HttpContext.Current.Response; if (IsGZipSupported()) { string AcceptEncoding = HttpContext.Current.Request.Headers["Accept-Encoding"]; if (AcceptEncoding.Contains("deflate")) { Response.Filter = new System.IO.Compression.DeflateStream(Response.Filter, System.IO.Compression.CompressionMode.Compress); Response.Headers.Remove("Content-Encoding"); Response.AppendHeader("Content-Encoding", "deflate"); } else { Response.Filter = new System.IO.Compression.GZipStream(Response.Filter, System.IO.Compression.CompressionMode.Compress); Response.Headers.Remove("Content-Encoding"); Response.AppendHeader("Content-Encoding", "gzip"); } } } As you can see the actual assignment of the Filter is as simple as: Response.Filter = new DeflateStream(Response.Filter, System.IO.Compression.CompressionMode.Compress); which applies the filter to the OutputStream. You also need to ensure that your response reflects the new GZip or Deflate encoding and ensure that any pages that are cached in Proxy servers can differentiate between pages that were encoded with the various different encodings (or no encoding). To use this utility function now is trivially easy: In any ASP.NET code that wants to compress its Response output you simply use: protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { WebUtils.GZipEncodePage(); Entry = WebLogFactory.GetEntry(); var entries = Entry.GetLastEntries(App.Configuration.ShowEntryCount, "pk,Title,SafeTitle,Body,Entered,Feedback,Location,ShowTopAd", "TEntries"); if (entries == null) throw new ApplicationException("Couldn't load WebLog Entries: " + Entry.ErrorMessage); this.repEntries.DataSource = entries; this.repEntries.DataBind(); } Here I use an ASP.NET page, but the above WebUtils.GZipEncode() method call will work in any ASP.NET application type including HTTP Handlers. The only requirement is that the filter needs to be applied before any other output is sent to the OutputStream. For example, in my CallbackHandler service implementation by default output over a certain size is GZip encoded. The output that is generated is JSON or XML and if the output is over 5k in size I apply WebUtils.GZipEncode(): if (sbOutput.Length > GZIP_ENCODE_TRESHOLD) WebUtils.GZipEncodePage(); Response.ContentType = ControlResources.STR_JsonContentType; HttpContext.Current.Response.Write(sbOutput.ToString()); Ok, so you probably get the idea: Encoding GZip/Deflate content is pretty easy. Hold on there Hoss –Watch your Caching Or is it? There are a few caveats that you need to watch out for when dealing with GZip content. The fist issue is that you need to deal with the fact that some clients don’t support GZip or Deflate content. Most modern browsers support it, but if you have a programmatic Http client accessing your content GZip/Deflate support is by no means guaranteed. For example, WinInet Http clients don’t support GZip out of the box – it has to be explicitly implemented. Other low level HTTP clients on other platforms too don’t support GZip out of the box. The problem is that your application, your Web Server and Proxy Servers on the Internet might be caching your generated content. If you return content with GZip once and then again without, either caching is not applied or worse the wrong type of content is returned back to the client from a cache or proxy. The result is an unreadable response for *some clients* which is also very hard to debug and fix once in production. You already saw the issue of Proxy servers addressed in the GZipEncodePage() function: // Allow proxy servers to cache encoded and unencoded versions separately Response.AppendHeader("Vary", "Content-Encoding"); This ensures that any Proxy servers also check for the Content-Encoding HTTP Header to cache their content – not just the URL. The same thing applies if you do OutputCaching in your own ASP.NET code. If you generate output for GZip on an OutputCached page the GZipped content will be cached (either by ASP.NET’s cache or in some cases by the IIS Kernel Cache). But what if the next client doesn’t support GZip? She’ll get served a cached GZip page that won’t decode and she’ll get a page full of garbage. Wholly undesirable. To fix this you need to add some custom OutputCache rules by way of the GetVaryByCustom() HttpApplication method in your global_ASAX file: public override string GetVaryByCustomString(HttpContext context, string custom) { // Override Caching for compression if (custom == "GZIP") { string acceptEncoding = HttpContext.Current.Response.Headers["Content-Encoding"]; if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(acceptEncoding)) return ""; else if (acceptEncoding.Contains("gzip")) return "GZIP"; else if (acceptEncoding.Contains("deflate")) return "DEFLATE"; return ""; } return base.GetVaryByCustomString(context, custom); } In a page that use Output caching you then specify: <%@ OutputCache Duration="180" VaryByParam="none" VaryByCustom="GZIP" %> To use that custom rule. It’s all Fun and Games until ASP.NET throws an Error Ok, so you’re up and running with GZip, you have your caching squared away and your pages that you are applying it to are jamming along. Then BOOM, something strange happens and you get a lovely garbled page that look like this: Lovely isn’t it? What’s happened here is that I have WebUtils.GZipEncode() applied to my page, but there’s an error in the page. The error falls back to the ASP.NET error handler and the error handler removes all existing output (good) and removes all the custom HTTP headers I’ve set manually (usually good, but very bad here). Since I applied the Response.Filter (via GZipEncode) the output is now GZip encoded, but ASP.NET has removed my Content-Encoding header, so the browser receives the GZip encoded content without a notification that it is encoded as GZip. The result is binary output. Here’s what Fiddler says about the raw HTTP header output when an error occurs when GZip encoding was applied: HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error Cache-Control: private Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2011 22:21:08 GMT Content-Length: 2138 Connection: close ?`I?%&/m?{J?J??t??` … binary output striped here Notice: no Content-Encoding header and that’s why we’re seeing this garbage. ASP.NET has stripped the Content-Encoding header but left our filter intact. So how do we fix this? In my applications I typically have a global Application_Error handler set up and in this case I’ve been using that. One thing that you can do in the Application_Error handler is explicitly clear out the Response.Filter and set it to null at the top: protected void Application_Error(object sender, EventArgs e) { // Remove any special filtering especially GZip filtering Response.Filter = null; … } And voila I get my Yellow Screen of Death or my custom generated error output back via uncompressed content. BTW, the same is true for Page level errors handled in Page_Error or ASP.NET MVC Error handling methods in a controller. Another and possibly even better solution is to check whether a filter is attached just before the headers are sent to the client as pointed out by Adam Schroeder in the comments: protected void Application_PreSendRequestHeaders() { // ensure that if GZip/Deflate Encoding is applied that headers are set // also works when error occurs if filters are still active HttpResponse response = HttpContext.Current.Response; if (response.Filter is GZipStream && response.Headers["Content-encoding"] != "gzip") response.AppendHeader("Content-encoding", "gzip"); else if (response.Filter is DeflateStream && response.Headers["Content-encoding"] != "deflate") response.AppendHeader("Content-encoding", "deflate"); } This uses the Application_PreSendRequestHeaders() pipeline event to check for compression encoding in a filter and adjusts the content accordingly. This is actually a better solution since this is generic – it’ll work regardless of how the content is cleaned up. For example, an error Response.Redirect() or short error display might get changed and the filter not cleared and this code actually handles that. Sweet, thanks Adam. It’s unfortunate that ASP.NET doesn’t natively clear out Response.Filters when an error occurs just as it clears the Response and Headers. I can’t see where leaving a Filter in place in an error situation would make any sense, but hey - this is what it is and it’s easy enough to fix as long as you know where to look. Riiiight! IIS and GZip I should also mention that IIS 7 includes good support for compression natively. If you can defer encoding to let IIS perform it for you rather than doing it in your code by all means you should do it! Especially any static or semi-dynamic content that can be made static should be using IIS built-in compression. Dynamic caching is also supported but is a bit more tricky to judge in terms of performance and footprint. John Forsyth has a great article on the benefits and drawbacks of IIS 7 compression which gives some detailed performance comparisons and impact reviews. I’ll post another entry next with some more info on IIS compression since information on it seems to be a bit hard to come by. Related Content Built-in GZip/Deflate Compression in IIS 7.x HttpWebRequest and GZip Responses © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in ASP.NET   IIS7  

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