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  • How and where to implement basic authentication in Kibana 3

    - by Jabb
    I have put my elasticsearch server behind a Apache reverse proxy that provides basic authentication. Authenticating to Apache directly from the browser works fine. However, when I use Kibana 3 to access the server, I receive authentication errors. Obviously because no auth headers are sent along with Kibana's Ajax calls. I added the below to elastic-angular-client.js in the Kibana vendor directory to implement authentication quick and dirty. But for some reason it does not work. $http.defaults.headers.common.Authorization = 'Basic ' + Base64Encode('user:Password'); What is the best approach and place to implement basic authentication in Kibana? /*! elastic.js - v1.1.1 - 2013-05-24 * https://github.com/fullscale/elastic.js * Copyright (c) 2013 FullScale Labs, LLC; Licensed MIT */ /*jshint browser:true */ /*global angular:true */ 'use strict'; /* Angular.js service wrapping the elastic.js API. This module can simply be injected into your angular controllers. */ angular.module('elasticjs.service', []) .factory('ejsResource', ['$http', function ($http) { return function (config) { var // use existing ejs object if it exists ejs = window.ejs || {}, /* results are returned as a promise */ promiseThen = function (httpPromise, successcb, errorcb) { return httpPromise.then(function (response) { (successcb || angular.noop)(response.data); return response.data; }, function (response) { (errorcb || angular.noop)(response.data); return response.data; }); }; // check if we have a config object // if not, we have the server url so // we convert it to a config object if (config !== Object(config)) { config = {server: config}; } // set url to empty string if it was not specified if (config.server == null) { config.server = ''; } /* implement the elastic.js client interface for angular */ ejs.client = { server: function (s) { if (s == null) { return config.server; } config.server = s; return this; }, post: function (path, data, successcb, errorcb) { $http.defaults.headers.common.Authorization = 'Basic ' + Base64Encode('user:Password'); console.log($http.defaults.headers); path = config.server + path; var reqConfig = {url: path, data: data, method: 'POST'}; return promiseThen($http(angular.extend(reqConfig, config)), successcb, errorcb); }, get: function (path, data, successcb, errorcb) { $http.defaults.headers.common.Authorization = 'Basic ' + Base64Encode('user:Password'); path = config.server + path; // no body on get request, data will be request params var reqConfig = {url: path, params: data, method: 'GET'}; return promiseThen($http(angular.extend(reqConfig, config)), successcb, errorcb); }, put: function (path, data, successcb, errorcb) { $http.defaults.headers.common.Authorization = 'Basic ' + Base64Encode('user:Password'); path = config.server + path; var reqConfig = {url: path, data: data, method: 'PUT'}; return promiseThen($http(angular.extend(reqConfig, config)), successcb, errorcb); }, del: function (path, data, successcb, errorcb) { $http.defaults.headers.common.Authorization = 'Basic ' + Base64Encode('user:Password'); path = config.server + path; var reqConfig = {url: path, data: data, method: 'DELETE'}; return promiseThen($http(angular.extend(reqConfig, config)), successcb, errorcb); }, head: function (path, data, successcb, errorcb) { $http.defaults.headers.common.Authorization = 'Basic ' + Base64Encode('user:Password'); path = config.server + path; // no body on HEAD request, data will be request params var reqConfig = {url: path, params: data, method: 'HEAD'}; return $http(angular.extend(reqConfig, config)) .then(function (response) { (successcb || angular.noop)(response.headers()); return response.headers(); }, function (response) { (errorcb || angular.noop)(undefined); return undefined; }); } }; return ejs; }; }]); UPDATE 1: I implemented Matts suggestion. However, the server returns a weird response. It seems that the authorization header is not working. Could it have to do with the fact, that I am running Kibana on port 81 and elasticsearch on 8181? OPTIONS /solar_vendor/_search HTTP/1.1 Host: 46.252.46.173:8181 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:25.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/25.0 Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8 Accept-Language: de-de,de;q=0.8,en-us;q=0.5,en;q=0.3 Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate Origin: http://46.252.46.173:81 Access-Control-Request-Method: POST Access-Control-Request-Headers: authorization,content-type Connection: keep-alive Pragma: no-cache Cache-Control: no-cache This is the response HTTP/1.1 401 Authorization Required Date: Fri, 08 Nov 2013 23:47:02 GMT WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="Username/Password" Vary: Accept-Encoding Content-Encoding: gzip Content-Length: 346 Connection: close Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 UPDATE 2: Updated all instances with the modified headers in these Kibana files root@localhost:/var/www/kibana# grep -r 'ejsResource(' . ./src/app/controllers/dash.js: $scope.ejs = ejsResource({server: config.elasticsearch, headers: {'Access-Control-Request-Headers': 'Accept, Origin, Authorization', 'Authorization': 'Basic XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=='}}); ./src/app/services/querySrv.js: var ejs = ejsResource({server: config.elasticsearch, headers: {'Access-Control-Request-Headers': 'Accept, Origin, Authorization', 'Authorization': 'Basic XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=='}}); ./src/app/services/filterSrv.js: var ejs = ejsResource({server: config.elasticsearch, headers: {'Access-Control-Request-Headers': 'Accept, Origin, Authorization', 'Authorization': 'Basic XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=='}}); ./src/app/services/dashboard.js: var ejs = ejsResource({server: config.elasticsearch, headers: {'Access-Control-Request-Headers': 'Accept, Origin, Authorization', 'Authorization': 'Basic XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=='}}); And modified my vhost conf for the reverse proxy like this <VirtualHost *:8181> ProxyRequests Off ProxyPass / http://127.0.0.1:9200/ ProxyPassReverse / https://127.0.0.1:9200/ <Location /> Order deny,allow Allow from all AuthType Basic AuthName “Username/Password” AuthUserFile /var/www/cake2.2.4/.htpasswd Require valid-user Header always set Access-Control-Allow-Methods "GET, POST, DELETE, OPTIONS, PUT" Header always set Access-Control-Allow-Headers "Content-Type, X-Requested-With, X-HTTP-Method-Override, Origin, Accept, Authorization" Header always set Access-Control-Allow-Credentials "true" Header always set Cache-Control "max-age=0" Header always set Access-Control-Allow-Origin * </Location> ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log </VirtualHost> Apache sends back the new response headers but the request header still seems to be wrong somewhere. Authentication just doesn't work. Request Headers OPTIONS /solar_vendor/_search HTTP/1.1 Host: 46.252.26.173:8181 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:25.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/25.0 Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8 Accept-Language: de-de,de;q=0.8,en-us;q=0.5,en;q=0.3 Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate Origin: http://46.252.26.173:81 Access-Control-Request-Method: POST Access-Control-Request-Headers: authorization,content-type Connection: keep-alive Pragma: no-cache Cache-Control: no-cache Response Headers HTTP/1.1 401 Authorization Required Date: Sat, 09 Nov 2013 08:48:48 GMT Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, POST, DELETE, OPTIONS, PUT Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Content-Type, X-Requested-With, X-HTTP-Method-Override, Origin, Accept, Authorization Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true Cache-Control: max-age=0 Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="Username/Password" Vary: Accept-Encoding Content-Encoding: gzip Content-Length: 346 Connection: close Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 SOLUTION: After doing some more research, I found out that this is definitely a configuration issue with regard to CORS. There are quite a few posts available regarding that topic but it appears that in order to solve my problem, it would be necessary to to make some very granular configurations on apache and also make sure that the right stuff is sent from the browser. So I reconsidered the strategy and found a much simpler solution. Just modify the vhost reverse proxy config to move the elastisearch server AND kibana on the same http port. This also adds even better security to Kibana. This is what I did: <VirtualHost *:8181> ProxyRequests Off ProxyPass /bigdatadesk/ http://127.0.0.1:81/bigdatadesk/src/ ProxyPassReverse /bigdatadesk/ http://127.0.0.1:81/bigdatadesk/src/ ProxyPass / http://127.0.0.1:9200/ ProxyPassReverse / https://127.0.0.1:9200/ <Location /> Order deny,allow Allow from all AuthType Basic AuthName “Username/Password” AuthUserFile /var/www/.htpasswd Require valid-user </Location> ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log </VirtualHost>

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  • How to capture live camera frames in RGB with DirectShow

    - by Jonny Boy
    I'm implementing live video capture through DirectShow for live processing and display. (Augmented Reality app). I can access the pixels easily enough, but it seems I can't get the SampleGrabber to provide RGB data. The device (an iSight -- running VC++ Express in VMWare) only reports MEDIASUBTYPE_YUY2. After extensive Googling, I still can't figure out whether DirectShow is supposed to provide built-in color space conversion for this sort of thing. Some sites report that there is no YUV<-RGB conversion built in, others report that you just have to call SetMediaType on your ISampleGrabber with an RGB subtype. Any advice is greatly appreciated, I'm going nuts on this one. Code provided below. Please note that The code works, except that it doesn't provide RGB data I'm aware that I can implement my own conversion filter, but this is not feasible because I'd have to anticipate every possible device format, and this is a relatively small project // Playback IGraphBuilder *pGraphBuilder = NULL; ICaptureGraphBuilder2 *pCaptureGraphBuilder2 = NULL; IMediaControl *pMediaControl = NULL; IBaseFilter *pDeviceFilter = NULL; IAMStreamConfig *pStreamConfig = NULL; BYTE *videoCaps = NULL; AM_MEDIA_TYPE **mediaTypeArray = NULL; // Device selection ICreateDevEnum *pCreateDevEnum = NULL; IEnumMoniker *pEnumMoniker = NULL; IMoniker *pMoniker = NULL; ULONG nFetched = 0; HRESULT hr = CoInitializeEx(NULL, COINIT_MULTITHREADED); // Create CreateDevEnum to list device hr = CoCreateInstance(CLSID_SystemDeviceEnum, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER, IID_ICreateDevEnum, (PVOID *)&pCreateDevEnum); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; // Create EnumMoniker to list devices hr = pCreateDevEnum->CreateClassEnumerator(CLSID_VideoInputDeviceCategory, &pEnumMoniker, 0); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; pEnumMoniker->Reset(); // Find desired device while (pEnumMoniker->Next(1, &pMoniker, &nFetched) == S_OK) { IPropertyBag *pPropertyBag; TCHAR devname[256]; // bind to IPropertyBag hr = pMoniker-&gt;BindToStorage(0, 0, IID_IPropertyBag, (void **)&amp;pPropertyBag); if (FAILED(hr)) { pMoniker-&gt;Release(); continue; } VARIANT varName; VariantInit(&amp;varName); HRESULT hr = pPropertyBag-&gt;Read(L"DevicePath", &amp;varName, 0); if (FAILED(hr)) { pMoniker-&gt;Release(); pPropertyBag-&gt;Release(); continue; } char devicePath[DeviceInfo::STRING_LENGTH_MAX] = ""; wcstombs(devicePath, varName.bstrVal, DeviceInfo::STRING_LENGTH_MAX); if (strcmp(devicePath, deviceId) == 0) { // Bind Moniker to Filter pMoniker-&gt;BindToObject(0, 0, IID_IBaseFilter, (void**)&amp;pDeviceFilter); break; } pMoniker-&gt;Release(); pPropertyBag-&gt;Release(); } if (pDeviceFilter == NULL) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; // Create sample grabber IBaseFilter *pGrabberF = NULL; hr = CoCreateInstance(CLSID_SampleGrabber, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER, IID_IBaseFilter, (void**)&pGrabberF); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; hr = pGrabberF->QueryInterface(IID_ISampleGrabber, (void**)&pGrabber); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; // Create FilterGraph hr = CoCreateInstance(CLSID_FilterGraph, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC, IID_IGraphBuilder, (LPVOID *)&pGraphBuilder); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; // create CaptureGraphBuilder2 hr = CoCreateInstance(CLSID_CaptureGraphBuilder2, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC, IID_ICaptureGraphBuilder2, (LPVOID *)&pCaptureGraphBuilder2); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; // set FilterGraph hr = pCaptureGraphBuilder2->SetFiltergraph(pGraphBuilder); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; // get MediaControl interface hr = pGraphBuilder->QueryInterface(IID_IMediaControl, (LPVOID *)&pMediaControl); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; // Add filters hr = pGraphBuilder->AddFilter(pDeviceFilter, L"Device Filter"); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; hr = pGraphBuilder->AddFilter(pGrabberF, L"Sample Grabber"); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; // Set sampe grabber options AM_MEDIA_TYPE mt; ZeroMemory(&mt, sizeof(AM_MEDIA_TYPE)); mt.majortype = MEDIATYPE_Video; mt.subtype = MEDIASUBTYPE_RGB32; hr = pGrabber->SetMediaType(&mt); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; hr = pGrabber->SetOneShot(FALSE); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; hr = pGrabber->SetBufferSamples(TRUE); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; // Get stream config interface hr = pCaptureGraphBuilder2->FindInterface(NULL, &MEDIATYPE_Video, pDeviceFilter, IID_IAMStreamConfig, (void **)&pStreamConfig); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; int streamCapsCount = 0, capsSize, bestFit = -1, bestFitPixelDiff = 1000000000, desiredPixelCount = _width * _height, bestFitWidth = 0, bestFitHeight = 0; float desiredAspectRatio = (float)_width / (float)_height; hr = pStreamConfig->GetNumberOfCapabilities(&streamCapsCount, &capsSize); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; videoCaps = (BYTE *)malloc(capsSize * streamCapsCount); mediaTypeArray = (AM_MEDIA_TYPE **)malloc(sizeof(AM_MEDIA_TYPE *) * streamCapsCount); for (int i = 0; i < streamCapsCount; i++) { hr = pStreamConfig->GetStreamCaps(i, &mediaTypeArray[i], videoCaps + capsSize * i); if (FAILED(hr)) continue; VIDEO_STREAM_CONFIG_CAPS *currentVideoCaps = (VIDEO_STREAM_CONFIG_CAPS *)(videoCaps + capsSize * i); int closestWidth = MAX(currentVideoCaps-&gt;MinOutputSize.cx, MIN(currentVideoCaps-&gt;MaxOutputSize.cx, width)); int closestHeight = MAX(currentVideoCaps-&gt;MinOutputSize.cy, MIN(currentVideoCaps-&gt;MaxOutputSize.cy, height)); int pixelDiff = ABS(desiredPixelCount - closestWidth * closestHeight); if (pixelDiff &lt; bestFitPixelDiff &amp;&amp; ABS(desiredAspectRatio - (float)closestWidth / (float)closestHeight) &lt; 0.1f) { bestFit = i; bestFitPixelDiff = pixelDiff; bestFitWidth = closestWidth; bestFitHeight = closestHeight; } } if (bestFit == -1) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; AM_MEDIA_TYPE *mediaType; hr = pStreamConfig->GetFormat(&mediaType); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; VIDEOINFOHEADER *videoInfoHeader = (VIDEOINFOHEADER *)mediaType->pbFormat; videoInfoHeader->bmiHeader.biWidth = bestFitWidth; videoInfoHeader->bmiHeader.biHeight = bestFitHeight; //mediaType->subtype = MEDIASUBTYPE_RGB32; hr = pStreamConfig->SetFormat(mediaType); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; pStreamConfig->Release(); pStreamConfig = NULL; free(videoCaps); videoCaps = NULL; free(mediaTypeArray); mediaTypeArray = NULL; // Connect pins IPin *pDeviceOut = NULL, *pGrabberIn = NULL; if (FindPin(pDeviceFilter, PINDIR_OUTPUT, 0, &pDeviceOut) && FindPin(pGrabberF, PINDIR_INPUT, 0, &pGrabberIn)) { hr = pGraphBuilder->Connect(pDeviceOut, pGrabberIn); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; } else { goto ReleaseDataAndFail; } // start playing hr = pMediaControl->Run(); if (FAILED(hr)) goto ReleaseDataAndFail; hr = pGrabber->GetConnectedMediaType(&mt); // Set dimensions width = bestFitWidth; height = bestFitHeight; _width = bestFitWidth; _height = bestFitHeight; // Allocate pixel buffer pPixelBuffer = (unsigned *)malloc(width * height * 4); // Release objects pGraphBuilder->Release(); pGraphBuilder = NULL; pEnumMoniker->Release(); pEnumMoniker = NULL; pCreateDevEnum->Release(); pCreateDevEnum = NULL; return true;

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  • program not working as expected!

    - by wilson88
    Can anyone just help spot why my program is not returning the expected output.related to my previous question.Am passing a vector by refrence, I want to see whats in the container before I copy them to another loaction.if u remove comments on loadRage, u will see bids are generated by the trader. #include <iostream> #include <vector> #include <string> #include <algorithm> #include <cstdlib> #include <iomanip> using namespace std; const int NUMSELLER = 1; const int NUMBUYER = 1; const int NUMBIDS = 20; const int MINQUANTITY = 1; const int MAXQUANTITY = 30; const int MINPRICE =100; const int MAXPRICE = 150; int s=0; int trdId; // Bid, simple container for values struct Bid { int bidId, trdId, qty, price; char type; // for sort and find. bool operator<(const Bid &other) const { return price < other.price; } bool operator==(int bidId) const { return this->bidId == bidId; } }; // alias to the list, make type consistent typedef vector<Bid> BidList; // this class generates bids! class Trader { private: int nextBidId; public: Trader(); Bid getNextBid(); Bid getNextBid(char type); // generate a number of bids void loadRange(BidList &, int size); void loadRange(BidList &, char type, int size); void setVector(); }; Trader::Trader() : nextBidId(1) {} #define RAND_RANGE(min, max) ((rand() % (max-min+1)) + min) Bid Trader::getNextBid() { char type = RAND_RANGE('A','B'); return getNextBid(type); } Bid Trader::getNextBid(char type) { for(int i = 0; i < NUMSELLER+NUMBUYER; i++) { // int trdId = RAND_RANGE(1,9); if (s<10){trdId=0;type='A';} else {trdId=1;type='B';} s++; int qty = RAND_RANGE(MINQUANTITY, MAXQUANTITY); int price = RAND_RANGE(MINPRICE, MAXPRICE); Bid bid = {nextBidId++, trdId, qty, price, type}; return bid; } } //void Trader::loadRange(BidList &list, int size) { // for (int i=0; i<size; i++) { list.push_back(getNextBid()); } //} // //void Trader::loadRange(BidList &list, char type, int size) { // for (int i=0; i<size; i++) { list.push_back(getNextBid(type)); } //} //---------------------------AUCTIONEER------------------------------------------- class Auctioneer { vector<Auctioneer> List; Trader trader; vector<Bid> list; public: Auctioneer(){}; void accept_bids(const BidList& bid); }; typedef vector<Auctioneer*> bidlist; void Auctioneer::accept_bids(const BidList& bid){ BidList list; //copy (BidList.begin(),BidList.end(),list); } //all the happy display commands void show(const Bid &bid) { cout << "\tBid\t(" << setw(3) << bid.bidId << "\t " << setw(3) << bid.trdId << "\t " << setw(3) << bid.type <<"\t " << setw(3) << bid.qty <<"\t " << setw(3) << bid.price <<")\t\n " ; } void show(const BidList &list) { cout << "\t\tBidID | TradID | Type | Qty | Price \n\n"; for(BidList::const_iterator itr=list.begin(); itr != list.end(); ++itr) { //cout <<"\t\t"; show(*itr); cout << endl; } cout << endl; } //search now checks for failure void show(const char *msg, const BidList &list) { cout << msg << endl; show(list); } void searchTest(BidList &list, int bidId) { cout << "Searching for Bid " << bidId << endl; BidList::const_iterator itr = find(list.begin(), list.end(), bidId); if (itr==list.end()) { cout << "Bid not found."; } else { cout << "Bid has been found. Its : "; show(*itr); } cout << endl; } //comparator function for price: returns true when x belongs before y bool compareBidList(Bid one, Bid two) { if (one.type == 'A' && two.type == 'B') return (one.price < two.price); return false; } void sort(BidList &bidlist) { sort(bidlist.begin(), bidlist.end(), compareBidList); } int main(int argc, char **argv) { Trader trader; BidList bidlist; Auctioneer auctioneer; //bidlist list; auctioneer.accept_bids(bidlist); //trader.loadRange(bidlist, NUMBIDS); show("Bids before sort:", bidlist); sort(bidlist); show("Bids after sort:", bidlist); system("pause"); return 0; }

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  • Inverse Kinematics with OpenGL/Eigen3 : unstable jacobian pseudoinverse

    - by SigTerm
    I'm trying to implement simple inverse kinematics test using OpenGL, Eigen3 and "jacobian pseudoinverse" method. The system works fine using "jacobian transpose" algorithm, however, as soon as I attempt to use "pseudoinverse", joints become unstable and start jerking around (eventually they freeze completely - unless I use "jacobian transpose" fallback computation). I've investigated the issue and turns out that in some cases jacobian.inverse()*jacobian has zero determinant and cannot be inverted. However, I've seen other demos on the internet (youtube) that claim to use same method and they do not seem to have this problem. So I'm uncertain where is the cause of the issue. Code is attached below: *.h: struct Ik{ float targetAngle; float ikLength; VectorXf angles; Vector3f root, target; Vector3f jointPos(int ikIndex); size_t size() const; Vector3f getEndPos(int index, const VectorXf& vec); void resize(size_t size); void update(float t); void render(); Ik(): targetAngle(0), ikLength(10){ } }; *.cpp: size_t Ik::size() const{ return angles.rows(); } Vector3f Ik::getEndPos(int index, const VectorXf& vec){ Vector3f pos(0, 0, 0); while(true){ Eigen::Affine3f t; float radAngle = pi*vec[index]/180.0f; t = Eigen::AngleAxisf(radAngle, Vector3f(-1, 0, 0)) * Eigen::Translation3f(Vector3f(0, 0, ikLength)); pos = t * pos; if (index == 0) break; index--; } return pos; } void Ik::resize(size_t size){ angles.resize(size); angles.setZero(); } void drawMarker(Vector3f p){ glBegin(GL_LINES); glVertex3f(p[0]-1, p[1], p[2]); glVertex3f(p[0]+1, p[1], p[2]); glVertex3f(p[0], p[1]-1, p[2]); glVertex3f(p[0], p[1]+1, p[2]); glVertex3f(p[0], p[1], p[2]-1); glVertex3f(p[0], p[1], p[2]+1); glEnd(); } void drawIkArm(float length){ glBegin(GL_LINES); float f = 0.25f; glVertex3f(0, 0, length); glVertex3f(-f, -f, 0); glVertex3f(0, 0, length); glVertex3f(f, -f, 0); glVertex3f(0, 0, length); glVertex3f(f, f, 0); glVertex3f(0, 0, length); glVertex3f(-f, f, 0); glEnd(); glBegin(GL_LINE_LOOP); glVertex3f(f, f, 0); glVertex3f(-f, f, 0); glVertex3f(-f, -f, 0); glVertex3f(f, -f, 0); glEnd(); } void Ik::update(float t){ targetAngle += t * pi*2.0f/10.0f; while (t > pi*2.0f) t -= pi*2.0f; target << 0, 8 + 3*sinf(targetAngle), cosf(targetAngle)*4.0f+5.0f; Vector3f tmpTarget = target; Vector3f targetDiff = tmpTarget - root; float l = targetDiff.norm(); float maxLen = ikLength*(float)angles.size() - 0.01f; if (l > maxLen){ targetDiff *= maxLen/l; l = targetDiff.norm(); tmpTarget = root + targetDiff; } Vector3f endPos = getEndPos(size()-1, angles); Vector3f diff = tmpTarget - endPos; float maxAngle = 360.0f/(float)angles.size(); for(int loop = 0; loop < 1; loop++){ MatrixXf jacobian(diff.rows(), angles.rows()); jacobian.setZero(); float step = 1.0f; for (int i = 0; i < angles.size(); i++){ Vector3f curRoot = root; if (i) curRoot = getEndPos(i-1, angles); Vector3f axis(1, 0, 0); Vector3f n = endPos - curRoot; float l = n.norm(); if (l) n /= l; n = n.cross(axis); if (l) n *= l*step*pi/180.0f; //std::cout << n << "\n"; for (int j = 0; j < 3; j++) jacobian(j, i) = n[j]; } std::cout << jacobian << std::endl; MatrixXf jjt = jacobian.transpose()*jacobian; //std::cout << jjt << std::endl; float d = jjt.determinant(); MatrixXf invJ; float scale = 0.1f; if (!d /*|| true*/){ invJ = jacobian.transpose(); scale = 5.0f; std::cout << "fallback to jacobian transpose!\n"; } else{ invJ = jjt.inverse()*jacobian.transpose(); std::cout << "jacobian pseudo-inverse!\n"; } //std::cout << invJ << std::endl; VectorXf add = invJ*diff*step*scale; //std::cout << add << std::endl; float maxSpeed = 15.0f; for (int i = 0; i < add.size(); i++){ float& cur = add[i]; cur = std::max(-maxSpeed, std::min(maxSpeed, cur)); } angles += add; for (int i = 0; i < angles.size(); i++){ float& cur = angles[i]; if (i) cur = std::max(-maxAngle, std::min(maxAngle, cur)); } } } void Ik::render(){ glPushMatrix(); glTranslatef(root[0], root[1], root[2]); for (int i = 0; i < angles.size(); i++){ glRotatef(angles[i], -1, 0, 0); drawIkArm(ikLength); glTranslatef(0, 0, ikLength); } glPopMatrix(); drawMarker(target); for (int i = 0; i < angles.size(); i++) drawMarker(getEndPos(i, angles)); } Any help will be appreciated.

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  • NoClassDefFoundError and Netty

    - by Dmytro Leonenko
    Hi. First to say I'm n00b in Java. I can understand most concepts but in my situation I want somebody to help me. I'm using JBoss Netty to handle simple http request and using MemCachedClient check existence of client ip in memcached. import org.jboss.netty.channel.ChannelHandler; import static org.jboss.netty.handler.codec.http.HttpHeaders.*; import static org.jboss.netty.handler.codec.http.HttpHeaders.Names.*; import static org.jboss.netty.handler.codec.http.HttpResponseStatus.*; import static org.jboss.netty.handler.codec.http.HttpVersion.*; import com.danga.MemCached.*; import java.util.List; import java.util.Map; import java.util.Map.Entry; import java.util.Set; import org.jboss.netty.buffer.ChannelBuffer; import org.jboss.netty.buffer.ChannelBuffers; import org.jboss.netty.channel.ChannelFuture; import org.jboss.netty.channel.ChannelFutureListener; import org.jboss.netty.channel.ChannelHandlerContext; import org.jboss.netty.channel.ExceptionEvent; import org.jboss.netty.channel.MessageEvent; import org.jboss.netty.channel.SimpleChannelUpstreamHandler; import org.jboss.netty.handler.codec.http.Cookie; import org.jboss.netty.handler.codec.http.CookieDecoder; import org.jboss.netty.handler.codec.http.CookieEncoder; import org.jboss.netty.handler.codec.http.DefaultHttpResponse; import org.jboss.netty.handler.codec.http.HttpChunk; import org.jboss.netty.handler.codec.http.HttpChunkTrailer; import org.jboss.netty.handler.codec.http.HttpRequest; import org.jboss.netty.handler.codec.http.HttpResponse; import org.jboss.netty.handler.codec.http.HttpResponseStatus; import org.jboss.netty.handler.codec.http.QueryStringDecoder; import org.jboss.netty.util.CharsetUtil; /** * @author <a href="http://www.jboss.org/netty/">The Netty Project</a> * @author Andy Taylor ([email protected]) * @author <a href="http://gleamynode.net/">Trustin Lee</a> * * @version $Rev: 2368 $, $Date: 2010-10-18 17:19:03 +0900 (Mon, 18 Oct 2010) $ */ @SuppressWarnings({"ALL"}) public class HttpRequestHandler extends SimpleChannelUpstreamHandler { private HttpRequest request; private boolean readingChunks; /** Buffer that stores the response content */ private final StringBuilder buf = new StringBuilder(); protected MemCachedClient mcc = new MemCachedClient(); private static SockIOPool poolInstance = null; static { // server list and weights String[] servers = { "lcalhost:11211" }; //Integer[] weights = { 3, 3, 2 }; Integer[] weights = {1}; // grab an instance of our connection pool SockIOPool pool = SockIOPool.getInstance(); // set the servers and the weights pool.setServers(servers); pool.setWeights(weights); // set some basic pool settings // 5 initial, 5 min, and 250 max conns // and set the max idle time for a conn // to 6 hours pool.setInitConn(5); pool.setMinConn(5); pool.setMaxConn(250); pool.setMaxIdle(21600000); //1000 * 60 * 60 * 6 // set the sleep for the maint thread // it will wake up every x seconds and // maintain the pool size pool.setMaintSleep(30); // set some TCP settings // disable nagle // set the read timeout to 3 secs // and don't set a connect timeout pool.setNagle(false); pool.setSocketTO(3000); pool.setSocketConnectTO(0); // initialize the connection pool pool.initialize(); // lets set some compression on for the client // compress anything larger than 64k //mcc.setCompressEnable(true); //mcc.setCompressThreshold(64 * 1024); } @Override public void messageReceived(ChannelHandlerContext ctx, MessageEvent e) throws Exception { HttpRequest request = this.request = (HttpRequest) e.getMessage(); if(mcc.get(request.getHeader("X-Real-Ip")) != null) { HttpResponse response = new DefaultHttpResponse(HTTP_1_1, OK); response.setHeader("X-Accel-Redirect", request.getUri()); ctx.getChannel().write(response).addListener(ChannelFutureListener.CLOSE); } else { sendError(ctx, NOT_FOUND); } } private void writeResponse(MessageEvent e) { // Decide whether to close the connection or not. boolean keepAlive = isKeepAlive(request); // Build the response object. HttpResponse response = new DefaultHttpResponse(HTTP_1_1, OK); response.setContent(ChannelBuffers.copiedBuffer(buf.toString(), CharsetUtil.UTF_8)); response.setHeader(CONTENT_TYPE, "text/plain; charset=UTF-8"); if (keepAlive) { // Add 'Content-Length' header only for a keep-alive connection. response.setHeader(CONTENT_LENGTH, response.getContent().readableBytes()); } // Encode the cookie. String cookieString = request.getHeader(COOKIE); if (cookieString != null) { CookieDecoder cookieDecoder = new CookieDecoder(); Set<Cookie> cookies = cookieDecoder.decode(cookieString); if(!cookies.isEmpty()) { // Reset the cookies if necessary. CookieEncoder cookieEncoder = new CookieEncoder(true); for (Cookie cookie : cookies) { cookieEncoder.addCookie(cookie); } response.addHeader(SET_COOKIE, cookieEncoder.encode()); } } // Write the response. ChannelFuture future = e.getChannel().write(response); // Close the non-keep-alive connection after the write operation is done. if (!keepAlive) { future.addListener(ChannelFutureListener.CLOSE); } } @Override public void exceptionCaught(ChannelHandlerContext ctx, ExceptionEvent e) throws Exception { e.getCause().printStackTrace(); e.getChannel().close(); } private void sendError(ChannelHandlerContext ctx, HttpResponseStatus status) { HttpResponse response = new DefaultHttpResponse(HTTP_1_1, status); response.setHeader(CONTENT_TYPE, "text/plain; charset=UTF-8"); response.setContent(ChannelBuffers.copiedBuffer( "Failure: " + status.toString() + "\r\n", CharsetUtil.UTF_8)); // Close the connection as soon as the error message is sent. ctx.getChannel().write(response).addListener(ChannelFutureListener.CLOSE); } } When I try to send request like http://127.0.0.1:8090/1/2/3 I'm getting java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/danga/MemCached/MemCachedClient at httpClientValidator.server.HttpRequestHandler.<clinit>(HttpRequestHandler.java:66) I believe it's not related to classpath. May be it's related to context in which mcc doesn't exist. Any help appreciated EDIT: Original code http://docs.jboss.org/netty/3.2/xref/org/jboss/netty/example/http/snoop/package-summary.html I've modified some parts to fit my needs.

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  • TSQL Conditionally Select Specific Value

    - by Dzejms
    This is a follow-up to #1644748 where I successfully answered my own question, but Quassnoi helped me to realize that it was the wrong question. He gave me a solution that worked for my sample data, but I couldn't plug it back into the parent stored procedure because I fail at SQL 2005 syntax. So here is an attempt to paint the broader picture and ask what I actually need. This is part of a stored procedure that returns a list of items in a bug tracking application I've inherited. There are are over 100 fields and 26 joins so I'm pulling out only the mostly relevant bits. SELECT tickets.ticketid, tickets.tickettype, tickets_tickettype_lu.tickettypedesc, tickets.stage, tickets.position, tickets.sponsor, tickets.dev, tickets.qa, DATEDIFF(DAY, ticket_history_assignment.savedate, GETDATE()) as 'daysinqueue' FROM dbo.tickets WITH (NOLOCK) LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.tickets_tickettype_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON tickets.tickettype = tickets_tickettype_lu.tickettypeid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.tickets_history_assignment WITH (NOLOCK) ON tickets_history_assignment.ticketid = tickets.ticketid AND tickets_history_assignment.historyid = ( SELECT MAX(historyid) FROM dbo.tickets_history_assignment WITH (NOLOCK) WHERE tickets_history_assignment.ticketid = tickets.ticketid GROUP BY tickets_history_assignment.ticketid ) WHERE tickets.sponsor = @sponsor The area of interest is the daysinqueue subquery mess. The tickets_history_assignment table looks roughly as follows declare @tickets_history_assignment table ( historyid int, ticketid int, sponsor int, dev int, qa int, savedate datetime ) insert into @tickets_history_assignment values (1521402, 92774,20,14, 20, '2009-10-27 09:17:59.527') insert into @tickets_history_assignment values (1521399, 92774,20,14, 42, '2009-08-31 12:07:52.917') insert into @tickets_history_assignment values (1521311, 92774,100,14, 42, '2008-12-08 16:15:49.887') insert into @tickets_history_assignment values (1521336, 92774,100,14, 42, '2009-01-16 14:27:43.577') Whenever a ticket is saved, the current values for sponsor, dev and qa are stored in the tickets_history_assignment table with the ticketid and a timestamp. So it is possible for someone to change the value for qa, but leave sponsor alone. What I want to know, based on all of these conditions, is the historyid of the record in the tickets_history_assignment table where the sponsor value was last changed so that I can calculate the value for daysinqueue. If a record is inserted into the history table, and only the qa value has changed, I don't want that record. So simply relying on MAX(historyid) won't work for me. Quassnoi came up with the following which seemed to work with my sample data, but I can't plug it into the larger query, SQL Manager bitches about the WITH statement. ;WITH rows AS ( SELECT *, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY ticketid ORDER BY savedate DESC) AS rn FROM @Table ) SELECT rl.sponsor, ro.savedate FROM rows rl CROSS APPLY ( SELECT TOP 1 rc.savedate FROM rows rc JOIN rows rn ON rn.ticketid = rc.ticketid AND rn.rn = rc.rn + 1 AND rn.sponsor <> rc.sponsor WHERE rc.ticketid = rl.ticketid ORDER BY rc.rn ) ro WHERE rl.rn = 1 I played with it yesterday afternoon and got nowhere because I don't fundamentally understand what is going on here and how it should fit into the larger context. So, any takers? UPDATE Ok, here's the whole thing. I've been switching some of the table and column names in an attempt to simplify things so here's the full unedited mess. snip - old bad code Here are the errors: Msg 102, Level 15, State 1, Procedure usp_GetProjectRecordsByAssignment, Line 159 Incorrect syntax near ';'. Msg 102, Level 15, State 1, Procedure usp_GetProjectRecordsByAssignment, Line 179 Incorrect syntax near ')'. Line numbers are of course not correct but refer to ;WITH rows AS And the ')' char after the WHERE rl.rn = 1 ) Respectively Is there a tag for extra super long question? UPDATE #2 Here is the finished query for anyone who may need this: CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[usp_GetProjectRecordsByAssignment] ( @assigned numeric(18,0), @assignedtype numeric(18,0) ) AS SET NOCOUNT ON WITH rows AS ( SELECT *, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY recordid ORDER BY savedate DESC) AS rn FROM projects_history_assignment ) SELECT projects_records.recordid, projects_records.recordtype, projects_recordtype_lu.recordtypedesc, projects_records.stage, projects_stage_lu.stagedesc, projects_records.position, projects_position_lu.positiondesc, CASE projects_records.clientrequested WHEN '1' THEN 'Yes' WHEN '0' THEN 'No' END AS clientrequested, projects_records.reportingmethod, projects_reportingmethod_lu.reportingmethoddesc, projects_records.clientaccess, projects_clientaccess_lu.clientaccessdesc, projects_records.clientnumber, projects_records.project, projects_lu.projectdesc, projects_records.version, projects_version_lu.versiondesc, projects_records.projectedversion, projects_version_lu_projected.versiondesc AS projectedversiondesc, projects_records.sitetype, projects_sitetype_lu.sitetypedesc, projects_records.title, projects_records.module, projects_module_lu.moduledesc, projects_records.component, projects_component_lu.componentdesc, projects_records.loginusername, projects_records.loginpassword, projects_records.assistedusername, projects_records.browsername, projects_browsername_lu.browsernamedesc, projects_records.browserversion, projects_records.osname, projects_osname_lu.osnamedesc, projects_records.osversion, projects_records.errortype, projects_errortype_lu.errortypedesc, projects_records.gsipriority, projects_gsipriority_lu.gsiprioritydesc, projects_records.clientpriority, projects_clientpriority_lu.clientprioritydesc, projects_records.scheduledstartdate, projects_records.scheduledcompletiondate, projects_records.projectedhours, projects_records.actualstartdate, projects_records.actualcompletiondate, projects_records.actualhours, CASE projects_records.billclient WHEN '1' THEN 'Yes' WHEN '0' THEN 'No' END AS billclient, projects_records.billamount, projects_records.status, projects_status_lu.statusdesc, CASE CAST(projects_records.assigned AS VARCHAR(5)) WHEN '0' THEN 'N/A' WHEN '10000' THEN 'Unassigned' WHEN '20000' THEN 'Client' WHEN '30000' THEN 'Tech Support' WHEN '40000' THEN 'LMI Tech Support' WHEN '50000' THEN 'Upload' WHEN '60000' THEN 'Spider' WHEN '70000' THEN 'DB Admin' ELSE rtrim(users_assigned.nickname) + ' ' + rtrim(users_assigned.lastname) END AS assigned, CASE CAST(projects_records.assigneddev AS VARCHAR(5)) WHEN '0' THEN 'N/A' WHEN '10000' THEN 'Unassigned' ELSE rtrim(users_assigneddev.nickname) + ' ' + rtrim(users_assigneddev.lastname) END AS assigneddev, CASE CAST(projects_records.assignedqa AS VARCHAR(5)) WHEN '0' THEN 'N/A' WHEN '10000' THEN 'Unassigned' ELSE rtrim(users_assignedqa.nickname) + ' ' + rtrim(users_assignedqa.lastname) END AS assignedqa, CASE CAST(projects_records.assignedsponsor AS VARCHAR(5)) WHEN '0' THEN 'N/A' WHEN '10000' THEN 'Unassigned' ELSE rtrim(users_assignedsponsor.nickname) + ' ' + rtrim(users_assignedsponsor.lastname) END AS assignedsponsor, projects_records.clientcreated, CASE projects_records.clientcreated WHEN '1' THEN 'Yes' WHEN '0' THEN 'No' END AS clientcreateddesc, CASE projects_records.clientcreated WHEN '1' THEN rtrim(clientusers_createuser.firstname) + ' ' + rtrim(clientusers_createuser.lastname) + ' (Client)' ELSE rtrim(users_createuser.nickname) + ' ' + rtrim(users_createuser.lastname) END AS createuser, projects_records.createdate, projects_records.savedate, projects_resolution.sitesaffected, projects_sitesaffected_lu.sitesaffecteddesc, DATEDIFF(DAY, projects_history_assignment.savedate, GETDATE()) as 'daysinqueue', projects_records.iOnHitList, projects_records.changetype FROM dbo.projects_records WITH (NOLOCK) LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_recordtype_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.recordtype = projects_recordtype_lu.recordtypeid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_stage_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.stage = projects_stage_lu.stageid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_position_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.position = projects_position_lu.positionid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_reportingmethod_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.reportingmethod = projects_reportingmethod_lu.reportingmethodid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.project = projects_lu.projectid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_version_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.version = projects_version_lu.versionid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_version_lu projects_version_lu_projected WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.projectedversion = projects_version_lu_projected.versionid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_sitetype_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.sitetype = projects_sitetype_lu.sitetypeid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_module_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.module = projects_module_lu.moduleid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_component_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.component = projects_component_lu.componentid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_browsername_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.browsername = projects_browsername_lu.browsernameid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_osname_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.osname = projects_osname_lu.osnameid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_errortype_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.errortype = projects_errortype_lu.errortypeid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_resolution WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.recordid = projects_resolution.recordid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_sitesaffected_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_resolution.sitesaffected = projects_sitesaffected_lu.sitesaffectedid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_gsipriority_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.gsipriority = projects_gsipriority_lu.gsipriorityid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_clientpriority_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.clientpriority = projects_clientpriority_lu.clientpriorityid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_status_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.status = projects_status_lu.statusid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_clientaccess_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.clientaccess = projects_clientaccess_lu.clientaccessid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.users users_assigned WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.assigned = users_assigned.userid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.users users_assigneddev WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.assigneddev = users_assigneddev.userid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.users users_assignedqa WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.assignedqa = users_assignedqa.userid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.users users_assignedsponsor WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.assignedsponsor = users_assignedsponsor.userid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.users users_createuser WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.createuser = users_createuser.userid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.clientusers clientusers_createuser WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.createuser = clientusers_createuser.userid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_history_assignment WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_history_assignment.recordid = projects_records.recordid AND projects_history_assignment.historyid = ( SELECT ro.historyid FROM rows rl CROSS APPLY ( SELECT TOP 1 rc.historyid FROM rows rc JOIN rows rn ON rn.recordid = rc.recordid AND rn.rn = rc.rn + 1 AND rn.assigned <> rc.assigned WHERE rc.recordid = rl.recordid ORDER BY rc.rn ) ro WHERE rl.rn = 1 AND rl.recordid = projects_records.recordid ) WHERE (@assignedtype='0' and projects_records.assigned = @assigned) OR (@assignedtype='1' and projects_records.assigneddev = @assigned) OR (@assignedtype='2' and projects_records.assignedqa = @assigned) OR (@assignedtype='3' and projects_records.assignedsponsor = @assigned) OR (@assignedtype='4' and projects_records.createuser = @assigned)

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  • Font serialization in vb.net

    - by jovany
    Hello all, as the title says , I need to serialize my font. I have tried the following approach unfortunately to no avail. This is what I have and what happens; I have a drawing application and certain variables and properties need to be serialized. (So , Xml.Serialization has been used.) Now this has already been done in a huge portion and I've created some other attributes which needed to be serialized and it works. There is one base class and classes such as drawablestar, drawableeclipse ,etc. all inherit from this class. As does my drawabletextboxclass. The base class is Serializable as can be seen in the sample below. It looks like this... Imports System.Xml.Serialization <Serializable()> _ Public MustInherit Class Drawable ' Drawing characteristics. 'Font characteristics <XmlIgnore()> Public FontFamily As String <XmlIgnore()> Public FontSize As Integer <XmlIgnore()> Public FontType As Integer <XmlIgnore()> Public ForeColor As Color <XmlIgnore()> Public FillColor As Color <XmlAttributeAttribute()> Public LineWidth As Integer = 0 <XmlAttributeAttribute()> Public X1 As Integer <XmlAttributeAttribute()> Public Y1 As Integer <XmlAttributeAttribute()> Public X2 As Integer <XmlAttributeAttribute()> Public Y2 As Integer ' attributes for size textbox <XmlAttributeAttribute()> Public widthLabel As Integer <XmlAttributeAttribute()> Public heightLabel As Integer '<XmlTextAttribute()> Public FontFamily As String '<XmlAttributeAttribute()> Public FontSize As Integer 'this should actually not be here.. <XmlAttributeAttribute()> Public s_InsertLabel As String ' Indicates whether we should draw as selected. <XmlIgnore()> Public IsSelected As Boolean = False ' Constructors. Public Sub New() ForeColor = Color.Black FillColor = Color.White 'FontFamily = "Impact" 'FontSize = 12 End Sub Friend WriteOnly Property _Label() As String Set(ByVal Value As String) s_InsertLabel = Value End Set End Property Public Sub New(ByVal fore_color As Color, ByVal fill_color As Color, Optional ByVal line_width As Integer = 0) LineWidth = line_width ForeColor = fore_color FillColor = fill_color ' FontFamily = Font_Family ' FontSize = Font_Size End Sub ' Property procedures to serialize and ' deserialize ForeColor and FillColor. <XmlAttributeAttribute("ForeColor")> _ Public Property ForeColorArgb() As Integer Get Return ForeColor.ToArgb() End Get Set(ByVal Value As Integer) ForeColor = Color.FromArgb(Value) End Set End Property <XmlAttributeAttribute("BackColor")> _ Public Property FillColorArgb() As Integer Get Return FillColor.ToArgb() End Get Set(ByVal Value As Integer) FillColor = Color.FromArgb(Value) End Set End Property 'Property procedures to serialize and 'deserialize Font <XmlAttributeAttribute("InsertLabel")> _ Public Property InsertLabel_() As String Get Return s_InsertLabel End Get Set(ByVal value As String) s_InsertLabel = value End Set End Property <XmlAttributeAttribute("FontSize")> _ Public Property FontSizeGet() As Integer Get Return FontSize End Get Set(ByVal value As Integer) FontSize = value End Set End Property <XmlAttributeAttribute("FontFamily")> _ Public Property FontFamilyGet() As String Get Return FontFamily End Get Set(ByVal value As String) FontFamily = value End Set End Property <XmlAttributeAttribute("FontType")> _ Public Property FontType_() As Integer Get Return FontType End Get Set(ByVal value As Integer) FontType = value End Set End Property #Region "Methods to override" Public MustOverride Sub Draw(ByVal gr As Graphics) ' Return the object's bounding rectangle. Public MustOverride Function GetBounds() As Rectangle ...... ........ ..... End Class [/code] My textbox class which looks like this , is the one that needs to save it's font. Imports System.Math Imports System.Xml.Serialization Imports System.Windows.Forms <Serializable()> _ Public Class DrawableTextBox Inherits Drawable Private i_StringLength As Integer Private i_StringWidth As Integer Private drawFont As Font = New Font(FontFamily, 12, FontStyle.Regular) Private brsTextColor As Brush = Brushes.Black Private s_insertLabelTextbox As String = "label" ' Constructors. Public Sub New() End Sub Public Sub New(ByVal objCanvas As PictureBox, ByVal fore_color As Color, ByVal fill_color As Color, Optional ByVal line_width As Integer = 0, Optional ByVal new_x1 As Integer = 0, Optional ByVal new_y1 As Integer = 0, Optional ByVal new_x2 As Integer = 1, Optional ByVal new_y2 As Integer = 1) MyBase.New(fore_color, fill_color, line_width) Dim objGraphics As Graphics = objCanvas.CreateGraphics() X1 = new_x1 Y1 = new_y1 'Only rectangles ,circles and stars can resize for now b_Movement b_Movement = True Dim frm As New frmTextbox frm.MyFont = drawFont frm.ShowDialog() If frm.DialogResult = DialogResult.OK Then FontFamily = frm.MyFont.FontFamily.Name FontSize = frm.MyFont.Size FontType = frm.MyFont.Style 'drawFont = frm.MyFont drawFont = New Font(FontFamily, FontSize) drawFont = FontAttributes() brsTextColor = New SolidBrush(frm.txtLabel.ForeColor) s_InsertLabel = frm.txtLabel.Text i_StringLength = s_InsertLabel.Length 'gefixtf Dim objSizeF As SizeF = objGraphics.MeasureString(s_InsertLabel, drawFont, New PointF(X2 - X1, Y2 - Y1), New StringFormat(StringFormatFlags.NoClip)) Dim objPoint As Point = objCanvas.PointToClient(New Point(X1 + objSizeF.Width, Y1 + objSizeF.Height)) widthLabel = objSizeF.Width heightLabel = objSizeF.Height X2 = X1 + widthLabel Y2 = Y1 + heightLabel Else Throw New ApplicationException() End If End Sub ' Draw the object on this Graphics surface. Public Overrides Sub Draw(ByVal gr As System.Drawing.Graphics) ' Make a Rectangle representing this rectangle. Dim rectString As Rectangle rectString = New Rectangle(X1, Y1, widthLabel, heightLabel) rectString = GetBounds() ' See if we're selected. If IsSelected Then gr.DrawString(s_InsertLabel, drawFont, brsTextColor, X1, Y1) 'gr.DrawRectangle(Pens.Black, rect) ' Pens.Transparent gr.DrawRectangle(Pens.Black, rectString) ' Draw grab handles. DrawGrabHandle(gr, X1, Y1) DrawGrabHandle(gr, X1, Y2) DrawGrabHandle(gr, X2, Y2) DrawGrabHandle(gr, X2, Y1) Else gr.DrawString(s_InsertLabel, drawFont, brsTextColor, X1, Y1) 'gr.DrawRectangle(Pens.Black, rect) ' Pens.Transparent gr.DrawRectangle(Pens.Black, rectString) End If End Sub 'get fontattributes Public Function FontAttributes() As Font Return New Font(FontFamily, 12, FontStyle.Regular) End Function ' Return the object's bounding rectangle. Public Overrides Function GetBounds() As System.Drawing.Rectangle Return New Rectangle( _ Min(X1, X1), _ Min(Y1, Y1), _ Abs(widthLabel), _ Abs(heightLabel)) End Function ' Return True if this point is on the object. Public Overrides Function IsAt(ByVal x As Integer, ByVal y As Integer) As Boolean Return (x >= Min(X1, X2)) AndAlso _ (x <= Max(X1, X2)) AndAlso _ (y >= Min(Y1, Y2)) AndAlso _ (y <= Max(Y1, Y2)) End Function ' Move the second point. Public Overrides Sub NewPoint(ByVal x As Integer, ByVal y As Integer) X2 = x Y2 = y End Sub ' Return True if the object is empty (e.g. a zero-length line). Public Overrides Function IsEmpty() As Boolean Return (X1 = X2) AndAlso (Y1 = Y2) End Function End Class The coordinates ( X1 ,X2,Y1, Y2 ) are needed to draw a circle , rectangle etc. ( in the other classes ).This all works. If I load my saved file it shows me the correct location and correct size of drawn objects. If I open my xml file I can see all values are correctly saved ( including my FontFamily ). Also the color which can be adjusted is saved and then properly displayed when I load a previously saved drawing. Of course because the coordinates work, if I insert a textField ,the location where it is being displayed is correct. However here comes the problem , my fontSize and fontfamily don't work. As you can see I created them in the base class, However this does not work. Is my approach completely off? What can I do ? Before saving img14.imageshack.us/i/beforeos.jpg/ After loading the Font jumps back to Sans serif and size 12. I could really use some help here.. Edit: I've been using the sample from this website http://www.vb-helper.com/howto_net_drawing_framework.html

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  • parallelizing code using openmp

    - by anubhav
    Hi, The function below contains nested for loops. There are 3 of them. I have given the whole function below for easy understanding. I want to parallelize the code in the innermost for loop as it takes maximum CPU time. Then i can think about outer 2 for loops. I can see dependencies and internal inline functions in the innermost for loop . Can the innermost for loop be rewritten to enable parallelization using openmp pragmas. Please tell how. I am writing just the loop which i am interested in first and then the full function where this loop exists for referance. Interested in parallelizing the loop mentioned below. //* LOOP WHICH I WANT TO PARALLELIZE *// for (y = 0; y < 4; y++) { refptr = PelYline_11 (ref_pic, abs_y++, abs_x, img_height, img_width); LineSadBlk0 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; LineSadBlk0 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; LineSadBlk0 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; LineSadBlk0 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; LineSadBlk1 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; LineSadBlk1 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; LineSadBlk1 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; LineSadBlk1 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; LineSadBlk2 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; LineSadBlk2 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; LineSadBlk2 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; LineSadBlk2 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; LineSadBlk3 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; LineSadBlk3 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; LineSadBlk3 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; LineSadBlk3 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; } The full function where this loop exists is below for referance. /*! *********************************************************************** * \brief * Setup the fast search for an macroblock *********************************************************************** */ void SetupFastFullPelSearch (short ref, int list) // <-- reference frame parameter, list0 or 1 { short pmv[2]; pel_t orig_blocks[256], *orgptr=orig_blocks, *refptr, *tem; // created pointer tem int offset_x, offset_y, x, y, range_partly_outside, ref_x, ref_y, pos, abs_x, abs_y, bindex, blky; int LineSadBlk0, LineSadBlk1, LineSadBlk2, LineSadBlk3; int max_width, max_height; int img_width, img_height; StorablePicture *ref_picture; pel_t *ref_pic; int** block_sad = BlockSAD[list][ref][7]; int search_range = max_search_range[list][ref]; int max_pos = (2*search_range+1) * (2*search_range+1); int list_offset = ((img->MbaffFrameFlag)&&(img->mb_data[img->current_mb_nr].mb_field))? img->current_mb_nr%2 ? 4 : 2 : 0; int apply_weights = ( (active_pps->weighted_pred_flag && (img->type == P_SLICE || img->type == SP_SLICE)) || (active_pps->weighted_bipred_idc && (img->type == B_SLICE))); ref_picture = listX[list+list_offset][ref]; //===== Use weighted Reference for ME ==== if (apply_weights && input->UseWeightedReferenceME) ref_pic = ref_picture->imgY_11_w; else ref_pic = ref_picture->imgY_11; max_width = ref_picture->size_x - 17; max_height = ref_picture->size_y - 17; img_width = ref_picture->size_x; img_height = ref_picture->size_y; //===== get search center: predictor of 16x16 block ===== SetMotionVectorPredictor (pmv, enc_picture->ref_idx, enc_picture->mv, ref, list, 0, 0, 16, 16); search_center_x[list][ref] = pmv[0] / 4; search_center_y[list][ref] = pmv[1] / 4; if (!input->rdopt) { //--- correct center so that (0,0) vector is inside --- search_center_x[list][ref] = max(-search_range, min(search_range, search_center_x[list][ref])); search_center_y[list][ref] = max(-search_range, min(search_range, search_center_y[list][ref])); } search_center_x[list][ref] += img->opix_x; search_center_y[list][ref] += img->opix_y; offset_x = search_center_x[list][ref]; offset_y = search_center_y[list][ref]; //===== copy original block for fast access ===== for (y = img->opix_y; y < img->opix_y+16; y++) for (x = img->opix_x; x < img->opix_x+16; x++) *orgptr++ = imgY_org [y][x]; //===== check if whole search range is inside image ===== if (offset_x >= search_range && offset_x <= max_width - search_range && offset_y >= search_range && offset_y <= max_height - search_range ) { range_partly_outside = 0; PelYline_11 = FastLine16Y_11; } else { range_partly_outside = 1; } //===== determine position of (0,0)-vector ===== if (!input->rdopt) { ref_x = img->opix_x - offset_x; ref_y = img->opix_y - offset_y; for (pos = 0; pos < max_pos; pos++) { if (ref_x == spiral_search_x[pos] && ref_y == spiral_search_y[pos]) { pos_00[list][ref] = pos; break; } } } //===== loop over search range (spiral search): get blockwise SAD ===== **// =====THIS IS THE PART WHERE NESTED FOR STARTS=====** for (pos = 0; pos < max_pos; pos++) // OUTERMOST FOR LOOP { abs_y = offset_y + spiral_search_y[pos]; abs_x = offset_x + spiral_search_x[pos]; if (range_partly_outside) { if (abs_y >= 0 && abs_y <= max_height && abs_x >= 0 && abs_x <= max_width ) { PelYline_11 = FastLine16Y_11; } else { PelYline_11 = UMVLine16Y_11; } } orgptr = orig_blocks; bindex = 0; for (blky = 0; blky < 4; blky++) // SECOND FOR LOOP { LineSadBlk0 = LineSadBlk1 = LineSadBlk2 = LineSadBlk3 = 0; for (y = 0; y < 4; y++) //INNERMOST FOR LOOP WHICH I WANT TO PARALLELIZE { refptr = PelYline_11 (ref_pic, abs_y++, abs_x, img_height, img_width); LineSadBlk0 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; LineSadBlk0 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; LineSadBlk0 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; LineSadBlk0 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; LineSadBlk1 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; LineSadBlk1 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; LineSadBlk1 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; LineSadBlk1 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; LineSadBlk2 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; LineSadBlk2 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; LineSadBlk2 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; LineSadBlk2 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; LineSadBlk3 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; LineSadBlk3 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; LineSadBlk3 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; LineSadBlk3 += byte_abs [*refptr++ - *orgptr++]; } block_sad[bindex++][pos] = LineSadBlk0; block_sad[bindex++][pos] = LineSadBlk1; block_sad[bindex++][pos] = LineSadBlk2; block_sad[bindex++][pos] = LineSadBlk3; } } //===== combine SAD's for larger block types ===== SetupLargerBlocks (list, ref, max_pos); //===== set flag marking that search setup have been done ===== search_setup_done[list][ref] = 1; } #endif // _FAST_FULL_ME_

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  • Using glDrawElements does not draw my .obj file

    - by Hallik
    I am trying to correctly import an .OBJ file from 3ds Max. I got this working using glBegin() & glEnd() from a previous question on here, but had really poor performance obviously, so I am trying to use glDrawElements now. I am importing a chessboard, its game pieces, etc. The board, each game piece, and each square on the board is stored in a struct GroupObject. The way I store the data is like this: struct Vertex { float position[3]; float texCoord[2]; float normal[3]; float tangent[4]; float bitangent[3]; }; struct Material { float ambient[4]; float diffuse[4]; float specular[4]; float shininess; // [0 = min shininess, 1 = max shininess] float alpha; // [0 = fully transparent, 1 = fully opaque] std::string name; std::string colorMapFilename; std::string bumpMapFilename; std::vector<int> indices; int id; }; //A chess piece or square struct GroupObject { std::vector<Material *> materials; std::string objectName; std::string groupName; int index; }; All vertices are triangles, so there are always 3 points. When I am looping through the faces f section in the obj file, I store the v0, v1, & v2 in the Material-indices. (I am doing v[0-2] - 1 to account for obj files being 1-based and my vectors being 0-based. So when I get to the render method, I am trying to loop through every object, which loops through every material attached to that object. I set the material information and try and use glDrawElements. However, the screen is black. I was able to draw the model just fine when I looped through each distinct material with all the indices associated with that material, and it drew the model fine. This time around, so I can use the stencil buffer for selecting GroupObjects, I changed up the loop, but the screen is black. Here is my render loop. The only thing I changed was the for loop(s) so they go through each object, and each material in the object in turn. void GLEngine::drawModel() { glEnable(GL_BLEND); glBlendFunc(GL_SRC_ALPHA, GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA); // Vertex arrays setup glEnableClientState( GL_VERTEX_ARRAY ); glVertexPointer(3, GL_FLOAT, model.getVertexSize(), model.getVertexBuffer()->position); glEnableClientState( GL_NORMAL_ARRAY ); glNormalPointer(GL_FLOAT, model.getVertexSize(), model.getVertexBuffer()->normal); glClientActiveTexture( GL_TEXTURE0 ); glEnableClientState( GL_TEXTURE_COORD_ARRAY ); glTexCoordPointer(2, GL_FLOAT, model.getVertexSize(), model.getVertexBuffer()->texCoord); glUseProgram(blinnPhongShader); objects = model.getObjects(); // Loop through objects... for( int i=0 ; i < objects.size(); i++ ) { ModelOBJ::GroupObject *object = objects[i]; // Loop through materials used by object... for( int j=0 ; j<object->materials.size() ; j++ ) { ModelOBJ::Material *pMaterial = object->materials[j]; glMaterialfv(GL_FRONT_AND_BACK, GL_AMBIENT, pMaterial->ambient); glMaterialfv(GL_FRONT_AND_BACK, GL_DIFFUSE, pMaterial->diffuse); glMaterialfv(GL_FRONT_AND_BACK, GL_SPECULAR, pMaterial->specular); glMaterialf(GL_FRONT_AND_BACK, GL_SHININESS, pMaterial->shininess * 128.0f); // Draw faces, letting OpenGL loop through them glDrawElements( GL_TRIANGLES, pMaterial->indices.size(), GL_UNSIGNED_INT, &pMaterial->indices ); } } if (model.hasNormals()) glDisableClientState(GL_NORMAL_ARRAY); if (model.hasTextureCoords()) { glClientActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE0); glDisableClientState(GL_TEXTURE_COORD_ARRAY); } if (model.hasPositions()) glDisableClientState(GL_VERTEX_ARRAY); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0); glUseProgram(0); glDisable(GL_BLEND); } I don't know what I am missing that's important. If it's also helpful, here is where I read a 'f' face line and store the info in the obj importer in the pMaterial-indices. else if (sscanf(buffer, "%d/%d/%d", &v[0], &vt[0], &vn[0]) == 3) // v/vt/vn { fscanf(pFile, "%d/%d/%d", &v[1], &vt[1], &vn[1]); fscanf(pFile, "%d/%d/%d", &v[2], &vt[2], &vn[2]); v[0] = (v[0] < 0) ? v[0] + numVertices - 1 : v[0] - 1; v[1] = (v[1] < 0) ? v[1] + numVertices - 1 : v[1] - 1; v[2] = (v[2] < 0) ? v[2] + numVertices - 1 : v[2] - 1; currentMaterial->indices.push_back(v[0]); currentMaterial->indices.push_back(v[1]); currentMaterial->indices.push_back(v[2]); Again, this worked drawing it all together only separated by materials, so I haven't changed code anywhere else except added the indices to the materials within objects, and the loop in the draw method. Before everything was showing up black, now with the setup as above, I am getting an unhandled exception write violation on the glDrawElements line. I did a breakpoint there, and there are over 600 elements in the pMaterial-indices array, so it's not empty, it has indices to use. When I set the glDrawElements like this, it gives me the black screen but no errors glDrawElements( GL_TRIANGLES, pMaterial->indices.size(), GL_UNSIGNED_INT, &pMaterial->indices[0] ); I have also tried adding this when I loop through the faces on import if ( currentMaterial->startIndex == -1 ) currentMaterial->startIndex = v[0]; currentMaterial->triangleCount++; And when drawing... //in draw method glDrawElements( GL_TRIANGLES, pMaterial->triangleCount * 3, GL_UNSIGNED_INT, model.getIndexBuffer() + pMaterial->startIndex );

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  • Committed JDO writes do not apply on local GAE HRD, or possibly reused transaction

    - by eeeeaaii
    I'm using JDO 2.3 on app engine. I was using the Master/Slave datastore for local testing and recently switched over to using the HRD datastore for local testing, and parts of my app are breaking (which is to be expected). One part of the app that's breaking is where it sends a lot of writes quickly - that is because of the 1-second limit thing, it's failing with a concurrent modification exception. Okay, so that's also to be expected, so I have the browser retry the writes again later when they fail (maybe not the best hack but I'm just trying to get it working quickly). But a weird thing is happening. Some of the writes which should be succeeding (the ones that DON'T get the concurrent modification exception) are also failing, even though the commit phase completes and the request returns my success code. I can see from the log that the retried requests are working okay, but these other requests that seem to have committed on the first try are, I guess, never "applied." But from what I read about the Apply phase, writing again to that same entity should force the apply... but it doesn't. Code follows. Some things to note: I am attempting to use automatic JDO caching. So this is where JDO uses memcache under the covers. This doesn't actually work unless you wrap everything in a transaction. all the requests are doing is reading a string out of an entity, modifying part of the string, and saving that string back to the entity. If these requests weren't in transactions, you'd of course have the "dirty read" problem. But with transactions, isolation is supposed to be at the level of "serializable" so I don't see what's happening here. the entity being modified is a root entity (not in a group) I have cross-group transactions enabled Another weird thing is happening. If the concurrent modification thing happens, and I subsequently edit more than 5 more entities (this is the max for cross-group transactions), then nothing happens right away, but when I stop and restart the server I get "IllegalArgumentException: operating on too many entity groups in a single transaction". Could it be possible that the PMF is returning the same PersistenceManager every time, or the PM is reusing the same transaction every time? I don't see how I could possibly get the above error otherwise. The code inside the transaction just edits one root entity. I can't think of any other way that GAE would give me the "too many entity groups" error. The relevant code (this is a simplified version) PersistenceManager pm = PMF.getManager(); Transaction tx = pm.currentTransaction(); String responsetext = ""; try { tx.begin(); // I have extra calls to "makePersistent" because I found that relying // on pm.close didn't always write the objects to cache, maybe that // was only a DataNucleus 1.x issue though Key userkey = obtainUserKeyFromCookie(); User u = pm.getObjectById(User.class, userkey); pm.makePersistent(u); // to make sure it gets cached for next time Key mapkey = obtainMapKeyFromQueryString(); // this is NOT a java.util.Map, just FYI Map currentmap = pm.getObjectById(Map.class, mapkey); Text mapData = currentmap.getMapData(); // mapData is JSON stored in the entity Text newMapData = parseModifyAndReturn(mapData); // transform the map currentmap.setMapData(newMapData); // mutate the Map object pm.makePersistent(currentmap); // make sure to persist so there is a cache hit tx.commit(); responsetext = "OK"; } catch (JDOCanRetryException jdoe) { // log jdoe responsetext = "RETRY"; } catch (Exception e) { // log e responsetext = "ERROR"; } finally { if (tx.isActive()) { tx.rollback(); } pm.close(); } resp.getWriter().println(responsetext); EDIT: so I have verified that it fails after exactly 5 transactions. Here's what I do: I create a Foo (root entity), do a bunch of concurrent operations on that Foo, and some fail and get retried, and some commit but don't apply (as described above). Then, I start creating more Foos, and do a few operations on those new Foos. If I only create four Foos, stopping and restarting app engine does NOT give me the IllegalArgumentException. However if I create five Foos (which is the limit for cross-group transactions), then when I stop and restart app engine, I do get the exception. So it seems that somehow these new Foos I am creating are counting toward the limit of 5 max entities per transaction, even though they are supposed to be handled by separate transactions. It's as if a transaction is still open and is being reused by the servlet when it handles the new requests for the 2nd through 5th Foos. EDIT2: it looks like the IllegalArgument thing is independent of the other bug. In other words, it always happens when I create five Foos, even if I don't get the concurrent modification exception. I don't know if it's a symptom of the same problem or if it's unrelated. EDIT3: I found out what was causing the (unrelated) IllegalArgumentException, it was a dumb mistake on my part. But the other issue is still happening. EDIT4: added pseudocode for the datastore access EDIT5: I am pretty sure I know why this is happening, but I will still award the bounty to anyone who can confirm it. Basically, I think the problem is that transactions are not really implemented in the local version of the datastore. References: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/google-appengine-java/gVMS1dFSpcU https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/google-appengine-java/deGasFdIO-M https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups=#!msg/google-appengine-java/4YuNb6TVD6I/gSttMmHYwo0J Because transactions are not implemented, rollback is essentially a no-op. Therefore, I get a dirty read when two transactions try to modify the record at the same time. In other words, A reads the data and B reads the data at the same time. A attempts to modify the data, and B attempts to modify a different part of the data. A writes to the datastore, then B writes, obliterating A's changes. Then B is "rolled back" by app engine, but since rollbacks are a no-op when running on the local datastore, B's changes stay, and A's do not. Meanwhile, since B is the thread that threw the exception, the client retries B, but does not retry A (since A was supposedly the transaction that succeeded).

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  • Use IIS Application Initialization for keeping ASP.NET Apps alive

    - by Rick Strahl
    I've been working quite a bit with Windows Services in the recent months, and well, it turns out that Windows Services are quite a bear to debug, deploy, update and maintain. The process of getting services set up,  debugged and updated is a major chore that has to be extensively documented and or automated specifically. On most projects when a service is built, people end up scrambling for the right 'process' to use for administration. Web app deployment and maintenance on the other hand are common and well understood today, as we are constantly dealing with Web apps. There's plenty of infrastructure and tooling built into Web Tools like Visual Studio to facilitate the process. By comparison Windows Services or anything self-hosted for that matter seems convoluted.In fact, in a recent blog post I mentioned that on a recent project I'd been using self-hosting for SignalR inside of a Windows service, because the application is in fact a 'service' that also needs to send out lots of messages via SignalR. But the reality is that it could just as well be an IIS application with a service component that runs in the background. Either way you look at it, it's either a Windows Service with a built in Web Server, or an IIS application running a Service application, neither of which follows the standard Service or Web App template.Personally I much prefer Web applications. Running inside of IIS I get all the benefits of the IIS platform including service lifetime management (crash and restart), controlled shutdowns, the whole security infrastructure including easy certificate support, hot-swapping of code and the the ability to publish directly to IIS from within Visual Studio with ease.Because of these benefits we set out to move from the self hosted service into an ASP.NET Web app instead.The Missing Link for ASP.NET as a Service: Auto-LoadingI've had moments in the past where I wanted to run a 'service like' application in ASP.NET because when you think about it, it's so much easier to control a Web application remotely. Services are locked into start/stop operations, but if you host inside of a Web app you can write your own ticket and control it from anywhere. In fact nearly 10 years ago I built a background scheduling application that ran inside of ASP.NET and it worked great and it's still running doing its job today.The tricky part for running an app as a service inside of IIS then and now, is how to get IIS and ASP.NET launched so your 'service' stays alive even after an Application Pool reset. 7 years ago I faked it by using a web monitor (my own West Wind Web Monitor app) I was running anyway to monitor my various web sites for uptime, and having the monitor ping my 'service' every 20 seconds to effectively keep ASP.NET alive or fire it back up after a reload. I used a simple scheduler class that also includes some logic for 'self-reloading'. Hacky for sure, but it worked reliably.Luckily today it's much easier and more integrated to get IIS to launch ASP.NET as soon as an Application Pool is started by using the Application Initialization Module. The Application Initialization Module basically allows you to turn on Preloading on the Application Pool and the Site/IIS App, which essentially fires a request through the IIS pipeline as soon as the Application Pool has been launched. This means that effectively your ASP.NET app becomes active immediately, Application_Start is fired making sure your app stays up and running at all times. All the other features like Application Pool recycling and auto-shutdown after idle time still work, but IIS will then always immediately re-launch the application.Getting started with Application InitializationAs of IIS 8 Application Initialization is part of the IIS feature set. For IIS 7 and 7.5 there's a separate download available via Web Platform Installer. Using IIS 8 Application Initialization is an optional install component in Windows or the Windows Server Role Manager: This is an optional component so make sure you explicitly select it.IIS Configuration for Application InitializationInitialization needs to be applied on the Application Pool as well as the IIS Application level. As of IIS 8 these settings can be made through the IIS Administration console.Start with the Application Pool:Here you need to set both the Start Automatically which is always set, and the StartMode which should be set to AlwaysRunning. Both have to be set - the Start Automatically flag is set true by default and controls the starting of the application pool itself while Always Running flag is required in order to launch the application. Without the latter flag set the site settings have no effect.Now on the Site/Application level you can specify whether the site should pre load: Set the Preload Enabled flag to true.At this point ASP.NET apps should auto-load. This is all that's needed to pre-load the site if all you want is to get your site launched automatically.If you want a little more control over the load process you can add a few more settings to your web.config file that allow you to show a static page while the App is starting up. This can be useful if startup is really slow, so rather than displaying blank screen while the user is fiddling their thumbs you can display a static HTML page instead: <system.webServer> <applicationInitialization remapManagedRequestsTo="Startup.htm" skipManagedModules="true"> <add initializationPage="ping.ashx" /> </applicationInitialization> </system.webServer>This allows you to specify a page to execute in a dry run. IIS basically fakes request and pushes it directly into the IIS pipeline without hitting the network. You specify a page and IIS will fake a request to that page in this case ping.ashx which just returns a simple OK string - ie. a fast pipeline request. This request is run immediately after Application Pool restart, and while this request is running and your app is warming up, IIS can display an alternate static page - Startup.htm above. So instead of showing users an empty loading page when clicking a link on your site you can optionally show some sort of static status page that says, "we'll be right back".  I'm not sure if that's such a brilliant idea since this can be pretty disruptive in some cases. Personally I think I prefer letting people wait, but at least get the response they were supposed to get back rather than a random page. But it's there if you need it.Note that the web.config stuff is optional. If you don't provide it IIS hits the default site link (/) and even if there's no matching request at the end of that request it'll still fire the request through the IIS pipeline. Ideally though you want to make sure that an ASP.NET endpoint is hit either with your default page, or by specify the initializationPage to ensure ASP.NET actually gets hit since it's possible for IIS fire unmanaged requests only for static pages (depending how your pipeline is configured).What about AppDomain Restarts?In addition to full Worker Process recycles at the IIS level, ASP.NET also has to deal with AppDomain shutdowns which can occur for a variety of reasons:Files are updated in the BIN folderWeb Deploy to your siteweb.config is changedHard application crashThese operations don't cause the worker process to restart, but they do cause ASP.NET to unload the current AppDomain and start up a new one. Because the features above only apply to Application Pool restarts, AppDomain restarts could also cause your 'ASP.NET service' to stop processing in the background.In order to keep the app running on AppDomain recycles, you can resort to a simple ping in the Application_End event:protected void Application_End() { var client = new WebClient(); var url = App.AdminConfiguration.MonitorHostUrl + "ping.aspx"; client.DownloadString(url); Trace.WriteLine("Application Shut Down Ping: " + url); }which fires any ASP.NET url to the current site at the very end of the pipeline shutdown which in turn ensures that the site immediately starts back up.Manual Configuration in ApplicationHost.configThe above UI corresponds to the following ApplicationHost.config settings. If you're using IIS 7, there's no UI for these flags so you'll have to manually edit them.When you install the Application Initialization component into IIS it should auto-configure the module into ApplicationHost.config. Unfortunately for me, with Mr. Murphy in his best form for me, the module registration did not occur and I had to manually add it.<globalModules> <add name="ApplicationInitializationModule" image="%windir%\System32\inetsrv\warmup.dll" /> </globalModules>Most likely you won't need ever need to add this, but if things are not working it's worth to check if the module is actually registered.Next you need to configure the ApplicationPool and the Web site. The following are the two relevant entries in ApplicationHost.config.<system.applicationHost> <applicationPools> <add name="West Wind West Wind Web Connection" autoStart="true" startMode="AlwaysRunning" managedRuntimeVersion="v4.0" managedPipelineMode="Integrated"> <processModel identityType="LocalSystem" setProfileEnvironment="true" /> </add> </applicationPools> <sites> <site name="Default Web Site" id="1"> <application path="/MPress.Workflow.WebQueueMessageManager" applicationPool="West Wind West Wind Web Connection" preloadEnabled="true"> <virtualDirectory path="/" physicalPath="C:\Clients\…" /> </application> </site> </sites> </system.applicationHost>On the Application Pool make sure to set the autoStart and startMode flags to true and AlwaysRunning respectively. On the site make sure to set the preloadEnabled flag to true.And that's all you should need. You can still set the web.config settings described above as well.ASP.NET as a Service?In the particular application I'm working on currently, we have a queue manager that runs as standalone service that polls a database queue and picks out jobs and processes them on several threads. The service can spin up any number of threads and keep these threads alive in the background while IIS is running doing its own thing. These threads are newly created threads, so they sit completely outside of the IIS thread pool. In order for this service to work all it needs is a long running reference that keeps it alive for the life time of the application.In this particular app there are two components that run in the background on their own threads: A scheduler that runs various scheduled tasks and handles things like picking up emails to send out outside of IIS's scope and the QueueManager. Here's what this looks like in global.asax:public class Global : System.Web.HttpApplication { private static ApplicationScheduler scheduler; private static ServiceLauncher launcher; protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { // Pings the service and ensures it stays alive scheduler = new ApplicationScheduler() { CheckFrequency = 600000 }; scheduler.Start(); launcher = new ServiceLauncher(); launcher.Start(); // register so shutdown is controlled HostingEnvironment.RegisterObject(launcher); }}By keeping these objects around as static instances that are set only once on startup, they survive the lifetime of the application. The code in these classes is essentially unchanged from the Windows Service code except that I could remove the various overrides required for the Windows Service interface (OnStart,OnStop,OnResume etc.). Otherwise the behavior and operation is very similar.In this application ASP.NET serves two purposes: It acts as the host for SignalR and provides the administration interface which allows remote management of the 'service'. I can start and stop the service remotely by shutting down the ApplicationScheduler very easily. I can also very easily feed stats from the queue out directly via a couple of Web requests or (as we do now) through the SignalR service.Registering a Background Object with ASP.NETNotice also the use of the HostingEnvironment.RegisterObject(). This function registers an object with ASP.NET to let it know that it's a background task that should be notified if the AppDomain shuts down. RegisterObject() requires an interface with a Stop() method that's fired and allows your code to respond to a shutdown request. Here's what the IRegisteredObject::Stop() method looks like on the launcher:public void Stop(bool immediate = false) { LogManager.Current.LogInfo("QueueManager Controller Stopped."); Controller.StopProcessing(); Controller.Dispose(); Thread.Sleep(1500); // give background threads some time HostingEnvironment.UnregisterObject(this); }Implementing IRegisterObject should help with reliability on AppDomain shutdowns. Thanks to Justin Van Patten for pointing this out to me on Twitter.RegisterObject() is not required but I would highly recommend implementing it on whatever object controls your background processing to all clean shutdowns when the AppDomain shuts down.Testing it outI'm still in the testing phase with this particular service to see if there are any side effects. But so far it doesn't look like it. With about 50 lines of code I was able to replace the Windows service startup to Web start up - everything else just worked as is. An honorable mention goes to SignalR 2.0's oWin hosting, because with the new oWin based hosting no code changes at all were required, merely a couple of configuration file settings and an assembly directive needed, to point at the SignalR startup class. Sweet!It also seems like SignalR is noticeably faster running inside of IIS compared to self-host. Startup feels faster because of the preload.Starting and Stopping the 'Service'Because the application is running as a Web Server, it's easy to have a Web interface for starting and stopping the services running inside of the service. For our queue manager the SignalR service and front monitoring app has a play and stop button for toggling the queue.If you want more administrative control and have it work more like a Windows Service you can also stop the application pool explicitly from the command line which would be equivalent to stopping and restarting a service.To start and stop from the command line you can use the IIS appCmd tool. To stop:> %windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd stop apppool /apppool.name:"Weblog"and to start> %windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd start apppool /apppool.name:"Weblog"Note that when you explicitly force the AppPool to stop running either in the UI (on the ApplicationPools page use Start/Stop) or via command line tools, the application pool will not auto-restart immediately. You have to manually start it back up.What's not to like?There are certainly a lot of benefits to running a background service in IIS, but… ASP.NET applications do have more overhead in terms of memory footprint and startup time is a little slower, but generally for server applications this is not a big deal. If the application is stable the service should fire up and stay running indefinitely. A lot of times this kind of service interface can simply be attached to an existing Web application, or if scalability requires be offloaded to its own Web server.Easier to work withBut the ultimate benefit here is that it's much easier to work with a Web app as opposed to a service. While developing I can simply turn off the auto-launch features and launch the service on demand through IIS simply by hitting a page on the site. If I want to shut down an IISRESET -stop will shut down the service easily enough. I can then attach a debugger anywhere I want and this works like any other ASP.NET application. Yes you end up on a background thread for debugging but Visual Studio handles that just fine and if you stay on a single thread this is no different than debugging any other code.SummaryUsing ASP.NET to run background service operations is probably not a super common scenario, but it probably should be something that is considered carefully when building services. Many applications have service like features and with the auto-start functionality of the Application Initialization module, it's easy to build this functionality into ASP.NET. Especially when combined with the notification features of SignalR it becomes very, very easy to create rich services that can also communicate their status easily to the outside world.Whether it's existing applications that need some background processing for scheduling related tasks, or whether you just create a separate site altogether just to host your service it's easy to do and you can leverage the same tool chain you're already using for other Web projects. If you have lots of service projects it's worth considering… give it some thought…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2013Posted in ASP.NET  SignalR  IIS   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • LVM / Device Mapper maps wrong device

    - by DaDaDom
    Hi, I run a LVM setup on a raid1 created by mdadm. md2 is based on sda6 (major:minor 8:6) and sdb6 (8:22). md2 is partition 9:2. The VG on top of md2 has 4 LVs, var, home, usr, tmp. First the problem: While booting it seems as if the device mapper takes the wrong partition for the mapping! Immediately after boot the information is like ~# dmsetup table systemlvm-home: 0 4194304 linear 8:22 384 systemlvm-home: 4194304 16777216 linear 8:22 69206400 systemlvm-home: 20971520 8388608 linear 8:22 119538048 systemlvm-home: 29360128 6291456 linear 8:22 243270016 systemlvm-tmp: 0 2097152 linear 8:22 41943424 systemlvm-usr: 0 10485760 linear 8:22 20971904 systemlvm-var: 0 10485760 linear 8:22 10486144 systemlvm-var: 10485760 6291456 linear 8:22 4194688 systemlvm-var: 16777216 4194304 linear 8:22 44040576 systemlvm-var: 20971520 10485760 linear 8:22 31457664 systemlvm-var: 31457280 20971520 linear 8:22 48234880 systemlvm-var: 52428800 33554432 linear 8:22 85983616 systemlvm-var: 85983232 115343360 linear 8:22 127926656 ~# cat /proc/mdstat Personalities : [raid1] md2 : active (auto-read-only) raid1 sda6[0] 151798080 blocks [2/1] [U_] md0 : active raid1 sda1[0] sdb1[1] 96256 blocks [2/2] [UU] md1 : active raid1 sda2[0] sdb2[1] 2931776 blocks [2/2] [UU] I have to manually "lvchange -an" all LVs, add /dev/sdb6 back to the raid and reactivate the LVs, then all is fine. But it prevents me from automounting the partitions and obviously leads to a bunch of other problems. If everything works fine, the information is like ~$ cat /proc/mdstat Personalities : [raid1] md2 : active raid1 sdb6[1] sda6[0] 151798080 blocks [2/2] [UU] ... ~# dmsetup table systemlvm-home: 0 4194304 linear 9:2 384 systemlvm-home: 4194304 16777216 linear 9:2 69206400 systemlvm-home: 20971520 8388608 linear 9:2 119538048 systemlvm-home: 29360128 6291456 linear 9:2 243270016 systemlvm-tmp: 0 2097152 linear 9:2 41943424 systemlvm-usr: 0 10485760 linear 9:2 20971904 systemlvm-var: 0 10485760 linear 9:2 10486144 systemlvm-var: 10485760 6291456 linear 9:2 4194688 systemlvm-var: 16777216 4194304 linear 9:2 44040576 systemlvm-var: 20971520 10485760 linear 9:2 31457664 systemlvm-var: 31457280 20971520 linear 9:2 48234880 systemlvm-var: 52428800 33554432 linear 9:2 85983616 systemlvm-var: 85983232 115343360 linear 9:2 127926656 I think that LVM for some reason just "takes" /dev/sdb6 which is then missing in the raid. I tried almost all options in the lvm.conf but none seems to work. Below is some more information, like config files. Does anyone have any idea about what is going on here and how to prevent that? If you need any additional information, please let me know Thanks in advance! Dominik The information (off a "repaired" system): ~# cat /etc/debian_version 5.0.4 ~# uname -a Linux kermit 2.6.26-2-686 #1 SMP Wed Feb 10 08:59:21 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux ~# lvm version LVM version: 2.02.39 (2008-06-27) Library version: 1.02.27 (2008-06-25) Driver version: 4.13.0 ~# cat /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf DEVICE partitions ARRAY /dev/md1 level=raid1 num-devices=2 metadata=00.90 UUID=11e9dc6c:1da99f3f:b3088ca6:c6fe60e9 ARRAY /dev/md0 level=raid1 num-devices=2 metadata=00.90 UUID=92ed1e4b:897361d3:070682b3:3baa4fa1 ARRAY /dev/md2 level=raid1 num-devices=2 metadata=00.90 UUID=601d4642:39dc80d7:96e8bbac:649924ba ~# mount /dev/md1 on / type ext3 (rw,errors=remount-ro) tmpfs on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755) proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) procbususb on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw) udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755) tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev) devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=620) /dev/md0 on /boot type ext3 (rw) /dev/mapper/systemlvm-usr on /usr type reiserfs (rw) /dev/mapper/systemlvm-tmp on /tmp type reiserfs (rw) /dev/mapper/systemlvm-home on /home type reiserfs (rw) /dev/mapper/systemlvm-var on /var type reiserfs (rw) ~# grep -v ^$ /etc/lvm/lvm.conf | grep -v "#" devices { dir = "/dev" scan = [ "/dev" ] preferred_names = [ ] filter = [ "a|/dev/md.*|", "r/.*/" ] cache_dir = "/etc/lvm/cache" cache_file_prefix = "" write_cache_state = 1 sysfs_scan = 1 md_component_detection = 1 ignore_suspended_devices = 0 } log { verbose = 0 syslog = 1 overwrite = 0 level = 0 indent = 1 command_names = 0 prefix = " " } backup { backup = 1 backup_dir = "/etc/lvm/backup" archive = 1 archive_dir = "/etc/lvm/archive" retain_min = 10 retain_days = 30 } shell { history_size = 100 } global { umask = 077 test = 0 units = "h" activation = 1 proc = "/proc" locking_type = 1 fallback_to_clustered_locking = 1 fallback_to_local_locking = 1 locking_dir = "/lib/init/rw" } activation { missing_stripe_filler = "/dev/ioerror" reserved_stack = 256 reserved_memory = 8192 process_priority = -18 mirror_region_size = 512 readahead = "auto" mirror_log_fault_policy = "allocate" mirror_device_fault_policy = "remove" } :~# vgscan -vvv Processing: vgscan -vvv O_DIRECT will be used Setting global/locking_type to 1 File-based locking selected. Setting global/locking_dir to /lib/init/rw Locking /lib/init/rw/P_global WB Wiping cache of LVM-capable devices /dev/block/1:0: Added to device cache /dev/block/1:1: Added to device cache /dev/block/1:10: Added to device cache /dev/block/1:11: Added to device cache /dev/block/1:12: Added to device cache /dev/block/1:13: Added to device cache /dev/block/1:14: Added to device cache /dev/block/1:15: Added to device cache /dev/block/1:2: Added to device cache /dev/block/1:3: Added to device cache /dev/block/1:4: Added to device cache /dev/block/1:5: Added to device cache /dev/block/1:6: Added to device cache /dev/block/1:7: Added to device cache /dev/block/1:8: Added to device cache /dev/block/1:9: Added to device cache /dev/block/253:0: Added to device cache /dev/block/253:1: Added to device cache /dev/block/253:2: Added to device cache /dev/block/253:3: Added to device cache /dev/block/8:0: Added to device cache /dev/block/8:1: Added to device cache /dev/block/8:16: Added to device cache /dev/block/8:17: Added to device cache /dev/block/8:18: Added to device cache /dev/block/8:19: Added to device cache /dev/block/8:2: Added to device cache /dev/block/8:21: Added to device cache /dev/block/8:22: Added to device cache /dev/block/8:3: Added to device cache /dev/block/8:5: Added to device cache /dev/block/8:6: Added to device cache /dev/block/9:0: Already in device cache /dev/block/9:1: Already in device cache /dev/block/9:2: Already in device cache /dev/bsg/0:0:0:0: Not a block device /dev/bsg/1:0:0:0: Not a block device /dev/bus/usb/001/001: Not a block device [... many more "not a block device"] /dev/core: Not a block device /dev/cpu_dma_latency: Not a block device /dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_HD160JJ_S08HJ10L507895: Aliased to /dev/block/8:16 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_HD160JJ_S08HJ10L507895-part1: Aliased to /dev/block/8:17 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_HD160JJ_S08HJ10L507895-part2: Aliased to /dev/block/8:18 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_HD160JJ_S08HJ10L507895-part3: Aliased to /dev/block/8:19 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_HD160JJ_S08HJ10L507895-part5: Aliased to /dev/block/8:21 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_HD160JJ_S08HJ10L507895-part6: Aliased to /dev/block/8:22 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_HD160JJ_S08HJ10L526800: Aliased to /dev/block/8:0 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_HD160JJ_S08HJ10L526800-part1: Aliased to /dev/block/8:1 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_HD160JJ_S08HJ10L526800-part2: Aliased to /dev/block/8:2 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_HD160JJ_S08HJ10L526800-part3: Aliased to /dev/block/8:3 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_HD160JJ_S08HJ10L526800-part5: Aliased to /dev/block/8:5 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_HD160JJ_S08HJ10L526800-part6: Aliased to /dev/block/8:6 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/dm-name-systemlvm-home: Aliased to /dev/block/253:2 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/dm-name-systemlvm-tmp: Aliased to /dev/block/253:3 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/dm-name-systemlvm-usr: Aliased to /dev/block/253:1 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/dm-name-systemlvm-var: Aliased to /dev/block/253:0 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/dm-uuid-LVM-rL8Oq2dA7oeRYeu1orJA7Ufnb1kjOyvr25N7CRZpUMzR18NfS6zeSeAVnVT98LuU: Aliased to /dev/block/253:0 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/dm-uuid-LVM-rL8Oq2dA7oeRYeu1orJA7Ufnb1kjOyvr3TpFXtLjYGEwn79IdXsSCZPl8AxmqbmQ: Aliased to /dev/block/253:1 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/dm-uuid-LVM-rL8Oq2dA7oeRYeu1orJA7Ufnb1kjOyvrc5MJ4KolevMjt85PPBrQuRTkXbx6NvTi: Aliased to /dev/block/253:3 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/dm-uuid-LVM-rL8Oq2dA7oeRYeu1orJA7Ufnb1kjOyvrYXrfdg5OSYDVkNeiQeQksgCI849Z2hx8: Aliased to /dev/block/253:2 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/md-uuid-11e9dc6c:1da99f3f:b3088ca6:c6fe60e9: Already in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/md-uuid-601d4642:39dc80d7:96e8bbac:649924ba: Already in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/md-uuid-92ed1e4b:897361d3:070682b3:3baa4fa1: Already in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_SAMSUNG_HD160JJS08HJ10L507895: Aliased to /dev/block/8:16 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_SAMSUNG_HD160JJS08HJ10L507895-part1: Aliased to /dev/block/8:17 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_SAMSUNG_HD160JJS08HJ10L507895-part2: Aliased to /dev/block/8:18 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_SAMSUNG_HD160JJS08HJ10L507895-part3: Aliased to /dev/block/8:19 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_SAMSUNG_HD160JJS08HJ10L507895-part5: Aliased to /dev/block/8:21 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_SAMSUNG_HD160JJS08HJ10L507895-part6: Aliased to /dev/block/8:22 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_SAMSUNG_HD160JJS08HJ10L526800: Aliased to /dev/block/8:0 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_SAMSUNG_HD160JJS08HJ10L526800-part1: Aliased to /dev/block/8:1 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_SAMSUNG_HD160JJS08HJ10L526800-part2: Aliased to /dev/block/8:2 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_SAMSUNG_HD160JJS08HJ10L526800-part3: Aliased to /dev/block/8:3 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_SAMSUNG_HD160JJS08HJ10L526800-part5: Aliased to /dev/block/8:5 in device cache /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_SAMSUNG_HD160JJS08HJ10L526800-part6: Aliased to /dev/block/8:6 in device cache /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:0f.0-scsi-0:0:0:0: Aliased to /dev/block/8:0 in device cache /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:0f.0-scsi-0:0:0:0-part1: Aliased to /dev/block/8:1 in device cache /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:0f.0-scsi-0:0:0:0-part2: Aliased to /dev/block/8:2 in device cache /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:0f.0-scsi-0:0:0:0-part3: Aliased to /dev/block/8:3 in device cache /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:0f.0-scsi-0:0:0:0-part5: Aliased to /dev/block/8:5 in device cache /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:0f.0-scsi-0:0:0:0-part6: Aliased to /dev/block/8:6 in device cache /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:0f.0-scsi-1:0:0:0: Aliased to /dev/block/8:16 in device cache /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:0f.0-scsi-1:0:0:0-part1: Aliased to /dev/block/8:17 in device cache /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:0f.0-scsi-1:0:0:0-part2: Aliased to /dev/block/8:18 in device cache /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:0f.0-scsi-1:0:0:0-part3: Aliased to /dev/block/8:19 in device cache /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:0f.0-scsi-1:0:0:0-part5: Aliased to /dev/block/8:21 in device cache /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:0f.0-scsi-1:0:0:0-part6: Aliased to /dev/block/8:22 in device cache /dev/disk/by-uuid/13c1262b-e06f-40ce-b088-ce410640a6dc: Aliased to /dev/block/253:3 in device cache /dev/disk/by-uuid/379f57b0-2e03-414c-808a-f76160617336: Aliased to /dev/block/253:2 in device cache /dev/disk/by-uuid/4fb2d6d3-bd51-48d3-95ee-8e404faf243d: Already in device cache /dev/disk/by-uuid/5c6728ec-82c1-49c0-93c5-f6dbd5c0d659: Aliased to /dev/block/8:5 in device cache /dev/disk/by-uuid/a13cdfcd-2191-4185-a727-ffefaf7a382e: Aliased to /dev/block/253:1 in device cache /dev/disk/by-uuid/e0d5893d-ff88-412f-b753-9e3e9af3242d: Aliased to /dev/block/8:21 in device cache /dev/disk/by-uuid/e79c9da6-8533-4e55-93ec-208876671edc: Aliased to /dev/block/253:0 in device cache /dev/disk/by-uuid/f3f176f5-12f7-4af8-952a-c6ac43a6e332: Already in device cache /dev/dm-0: Aliased to /dev/block/253:0 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/dm-1: Aliased to /dev/block/253:1 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/dm-2: Aliased to /dev/block/253:2 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/dm-3: Aliased to /dev/block/253:3 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/fd: Symbolic link to directory /dev/full: Not a block device /dev/hpet: Not a block device /dev/initctl: Not a block device /dev/input/by-path/platform-i8042-serio-0-event-kbd: Not a block device /dev/input/event0: Not a block device /dev/input/mice: Not a block device /dev/kmem: Not a block device /dev/kmsg: Not a block device /dev/log: Not a block device /dev/loop/0: Added to device cache /dev/MAKEDEV: Not a block device /dev/mapper/control: Not a block device /dev/mapper/systemlvm-home: Aliased to /dev/dm-2 in device cache /dev/mapper/systemlvm-tmp: Aliased to /dev/dm-3 in device cache /dev/mapper/systemlvm-usr: Aliased to /dev/dm-1 in device cache /dev/mapper/systemlvm-var: Aliased to /dev/dm-0 in device cache /dev/md0: Already in device cache /dev/md1: Already in device cache /dev/md2: Already in device cache /dev/mem: Not a block device /dev/net/tun: Not a block device /dev/network_latency: Not a block device /dev/network_throughput: Not a block device /dev/null: Not a block device /dev/port: Not a block device /dev/ppp: Not a block device /dev/psaux: Not a block device /dev/ptmx: Not a block device /dev/pts/0: Not a block device /dev/ram0: Aliased to /dev/block/1:0 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/ram1: Aliased to /dev/block/1:1 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/ram10: Aliased to /dev/block/1:10 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/ram11: Aliased to /dev/block/1:11 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/ram12: Aliased to /dev/block/1:12 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/ram13: Aliased to /dev/block/1:13 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/ram14: Aliased to /dev/block/1:14 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/ram15: Aliased to /dev/block/1:15 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/ram2: Aliased to /dev/block/1:2 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/ram3: Aliased to /dev/block/1:3 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/ram4: Aliased to /dev/block/1:4 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/ram5: Aliased to /dev/block/1:5 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/ram6: Aliased to /dev/block/1:6 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/ram7: Aliased to /dev/block/1:7 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/ram8: Aliased to /dev/block/1:8 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/ram9: Aliased to /dev/block/1:9 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/random: Not a block device /dev/root: Already in device cache /dev/rtc: Not a block device /dev/rtc0: Not a block device /dev/sda: Aliased to /dev/block/8:0 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/sda1: Aliased to /dev/block/8:1 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/sda2: Aliased to /dev/block/8:2 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/sda3: Aliased to /dev/block/8:3 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/sda5: Aliased to /dev/block/8:5 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/sda6: Aliased to /dev/block/8:6 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/sdb: Aliased to /dev/block/8:16 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/sdb1: Aliased to /dev/block/8:17 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/sdb2: Aliased to /dev/block/8:18 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/sdb3: Aliased to /dev/block/8:19 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/sdb5: Aliased to /dev/block/8:21 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/sdb6: Aliased to /dev/block/8:22 in device cache (preferred name) /dev/shm/network/ifstate: Not a block device /dev/snapshot: Not a block device /dev/sndstat: stat failed: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden /dev/stderr: Not a block device /dev/stdin: Not a block device /dev/stdout: Not a block device /dev/systemlvm/home: Aliased to /dev/dm-2 in device cache /dev/systemlvm/tmp: Aliased to /dev/dm-3 in device cache /dev/systemlvm/usr: Aliased to /dev/dm-1 in device cache /dev/systemlvm/var: Aliased to /dev/dm-0 in device cache /dev/tty: Not a block device /dev/tty0: Not a block device [... many more "not a block device"] /dev/vcsa6: Not a block device /dev/xconsole: Not a block device /dev/zero: Not a block device Wiping internal VG cache lvmcache: initialised VG #orphans_lvm1 lvmcache: initialised VG #orphans_pool lvmcache: initialised VG #orphans_lvm2 Reading all physical volumes. This may take a while... Finding all volume groups /dev/ram0: Skipping (regex) /dev/loop/0: Skipping (sysfs) /dev/sda: Skipping (regex) Opened /dev/md0 RO /dev/md0: size is 192512 sectors Closed /dev/md0 /dev/md0: size is 192512 sectors Opened /dev/md0 RW O_DIRECT /dev/md0: block size is 1024 bytes Closed /dev/md0 Using /dev/md0 Opened /dev/md0 RW O_DIRECT /dev/md0: block size is 1024 bytes /dev/md0: No label detected Closed /dev/md0 /dev/dm-0: Skipping (regex) /dev/ram1: Skipping (regex) /dev/sda1: Skipping (regex) Opened /dev/md1 RO /dev/md1: size is 5863552 sectors Closed /dev/md1 /dev/md1: size is 5863552 sectors Opened /dev/md1 RW O_DIRECT /dev/md1: block size is 4096 bytes Closed /dev/md1 Using /dev/md1 Opened /dev/md1 RW O_DIRECT /dev/md1: block size is 4096 bytes /dev/md1: No label detected Closed /dev/md1 /dev/dm-1: Skipping (regex) /dev/ram2: Skipping (regex) /dev/sda2: Skipping (regex) Opened /dev/md2 RO /dev/md2: size is 303596160 sectors Closed /dev/md2 /dev/md2: size is 303596160 sectors Opened /dev/md2 RW O_DIRECT /dev/md2: block size is 4096 bytes Closed /dev/md2 Using /dev/md2 Opened /dev/md2 RW O_DIRECT /dev/md2: block size is 4096 bytes /dev/md2: lvm2 label detected lvmcache: /dev/md2: now in VG #orphans_lvm2 (#orphans_lvm2) /dev/md2: Found metadata at 39936 size 2632 (in area at 2048 size 194560) for systemlvm (rL8Oq2-dA7o-eRYe-u1or-JA7U-fnb1-kjOyvr) lvmcache: /dev/md2: now in VG systemlvm with 1 mdas lvmcache: /dev/md2: setting systemlvm VGID to rL8Oq2dA7oeRYeu1orJA7Ufnb1kjOyvr lvmcache: /dev/md2: VG systemlvm: Set creation host to rescue. Closed /dev/md2 /dev/dm-2: Skipping (regex) /dev/ram3: Skipping (regex) /dev/sda3: Skipping (regex) /dev/dm-3: Skipping (regex) /dev/ram4: Skipping (regex) /dev/ram5: Skipping (regex) /dev/sda5: Skipping (regex) /dev/ram6: Skipping (regex) /dev/sda6: Skipping (regex) /dev/ram7: Skipping (regex) /dev/ram8: Skipping (regex) /dev/ram9: Skipping (regex) /dev/ram10: Skipping (regex) /dev/ram11: Skipping (regex) /dev/ram12: Skipping (regex) /dev/ram13: Skipping (regex) /dev/ram14: Skipping (regex) /dev/ram15: Skipping (regex) /dev/sdb: Skipping (regex) /dev/sdb1: Skipping (regex) /dev/sdb2: Skipping (regex) /dev/sdb3: Skipping (regex) /dev/sdb5: Skipping (regex) /dev/sdb6: Skipping (regex) Locking /lib/init/rw/V_systemlvm RB Finding volume group "systemlvm" Opened /dev/md2 RW O_DIRECT /dev/md2: block size is 4096 bytes /dev/md2: lvm2 label detected lvmcache: /dev/md2: now in VG #orphans_lvm2 (#orphans_lvm2) with 1 mdas /dev/md2: Found metadata at 39936 size 2632 (in area at 2048 size 194560) for systemlvm (rL8Oq2-dA7o-eRYe-u1or-JA7U-fnb1-kjOyvr) lvmcache: /dev/md2: now in VG systemlvm with 1 mdas lvmcache: /dev/md2: setting systemlvm VGID to rL8Oq2dA7oeRYeu1orJA7Ufnb1kjOyvr lvmcache: /dev/md2: VG systemlvm: Set creation host to rescue. Using cached label for /dev/md2 Read systemlvm metadata (19) from /dev/md2 at 39936 size 2632 /dev/md2 0: 0 16: home(0:0) /dev/md2 1: 16 24: var(40:0) /dev/md2 2: 40 40: var(0:0) /dev/md2 3: 80 40: usr(0:0) /dev/md2 4: 120 40: var(80:0) /dev/md2 5: 160 8: tmp(0:0) /dev/md2 6: 168 16: var(64:0) /dev/md2 7: 184 80: var(120:0) /dev/md2 8: 264 64: home(16:0) /dev/md2 9: 328 128: var(200:0) /dev/md2 10: 456 32: home(80:0) /dev/md2 11: 488 440: var(328:0) /dev/md2 12: 928 24: home(112:0) /dev/md2 13: 952 206: NULL(0:0) Found volume group "systemlvm" using metadata type lvm2 Read volume group systemlvm from /etc/lvm/backup/systemlvm Unlocking /lib/init/rw/V_systemlvm Closed /dev/md2 Unlocking /lib/init/rw/P_global ~# vgdisplay --- Volume group --- VG Name systemlvm System ID Format lvm2 Metadata Areas 1 Metadata Sequence No 19 VG Access read/write VG Status resizable MAX LV 0 Cur LV 4 Open LV 4 Max PV 0 Cur PV 1 Act PV 1 VG Size 144,75 GB PE Size 128,00 MB Total PE 1158 Alloc PE / Size 952 / 119,00 GB Free PE / Size 206 / 25,75 GB VG UUID rL8Oq2-dA7o-eRYe-u1or-JA7U-fnb1-kjOyvr ~# pvdisplay --- Physical volume --- PV Name /dev/md2 VG Name systemlvm PV Size 144,77 GB / not usable 16,31 MB Allocatable yes PE Size (KByte) 131072 Total PE 1158 Free PE 206 Allocated PE 952 PV UUID ZSAzP5-iBvr-L7jy-wB8T-AiWz-0g3m-HLK66Y :~# lvdisplay --- Logical volume --- LV Name /dev/systemlvm/home VG Name systemlvm LV UUID YXrfdg-5OSY-DVkN-eiQe-Qksg-CI84-9Z2hx8 LV Write Access read/write LV Status available # open 2 LV Size 17,00 GB Current LE 136 Segments 4 Allocation inherit Read ahead sectors auto - currently set to 256 Block device 253:2 --- Logical volume --- LV Name /dev/systemlvm/var VG Name systemlvm LV UUID 25N7CR-ZpUM-zR18-NfS6-zeSe-AVnV-T98LuU LV Write Access read/write LV Status available # open 2 LV Size 96,00 GB Current LE 768 Segments 7 Allocation inherit Read ahead sectors auto - currently set to 256 Block device 253:0 --- Logical volume --- LV Name /dev/systemlvm/usr VG Name systemlvm LV UUID 3TpFXt-LjYG-Ewn7-9IdX-sSCZ-Pl8A-xmqbmQ LV Write Access read/write LV Status available # open 2 LV Size 5,00 GB Current LE 40 Segments 1 Allocation inherit Read ahead sectors auto - currently set to 256 Block device 253:1 --- Logical volume --- LV Name /dev/systemlvm/tmp VG Name systemlvm LV UUID c5MJ4K-olev-Mjt8-5PPB-rQuR-TkXb-x6NvTi LV Write Access read/write LV Status available # open 2 LV Size 1,00 GB Current LE 8 Segments 1 Allocation inherit Read ahead sectors auto - currently set to 256 Block device 253:3

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  • How to install SharePoint Server 2013 Preview

    - by ybbest
    The Office 2013 and SharePoint Server 2013 Preview is announced yesterday and as a SharePoint Developer, I am really excited to learn all the new features and capabilities. Today I will show you how to install the preview. 1. Create a service account called SP2013Install and give this account Dbcreator and SecurityAdmin in SQL Server 2012 2. You need to run the following script to set the ‘maxdegree of parellism’ setting to the required value of 1 in SQL Server 2012(using sysadmin privilege) before configure the SharePoint Farm. Otherwise , you might get the error ‘This SQL Server Instance does not have the required maxdegree of parellism setting of 1’ sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1; GO RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE; GO sp_configure 'max degree of parallelism', 1; GO RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE; GO 3. Download the SharePoint preview from here and I am going to install it on Windows Server 2008R2 with SQL2012. 4. Click the Install software prerequisites, this works fine with the internet connection. (However, if you do not have internet connection, it is a bit tricky to install window azure AppFabric as it has to be installed using the prerequisite installer. Your computer might reboot a few times in the process.) 5.After the prerequisites are installed `completely, you can then install the Preview. Click the Install SharePoint Server and Enter the Product key you get from the Preview download page. 6. Accept the License terms and Click Next. 7. Leave the default path for the file location. 8. You can now start the installation process 9. After binary files are installed, you then can configure your farm using the farm configuration wizard. 10.Specify the Database server and the install account 11. Specify SharePoint farm passphrase. 12 Specify the port number , you should choose your own favorite port number. 13. Choose Create a New Server Farm and click next. 14. Double-check with the settings and click Next to Configure the farm install. 15. Finally, your farm is configured successfully and you now are able to go to your Central Admin site http://sp2010:6666/ 16. You should configure the services manually or automate using PowerShell (If you like to understand why,you can read the blog post here) ,however I will use the wizard to configure automatically here  as  this is a test machine. After the configuration is complete, you now be able to see your SharePoint Site. 17.To start the evaluate the Preview , you need to install Visual Studio 2012 RC , Microsoft Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012,SharePoint 2013 Designer Preview , Office 2013 Preview. References: Download SharePoint2013 Server 2013 Download Microsoft Visio Professional 2013 Preview Install SharePoint 2013 Preview Hardware and software requirements for SharePoint 2013 Preview SharePoint 2013 IT Pro and Developer training materials released Plan for SharePoint 2013 Preview Microsoft Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012 SharePoint 2013 Preview Office365 for the SharePoint 2013 preview SharePoint Designer 2013 Download: Microsoft Office 2013 Preview Language Pack Try Office

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  • SQL SERVER – Reducing CXPACKET Wait Stats for High Transactional Database

    - by pinaldave
    While engaging in a performance tuning consultation for a client, a situation occurred where they were facing a lot of CXPACKET Waits Stats. The client asked me if I could help them reduce this huge number of wait stats. I usually receive this kind of request from other client as well, but the important thing to understand is whether this question has any merits or benefits, or not. Before we continue the resolution, let us understand what CXPACKET Wait Stats are. The official definition suggests that CXPACKET Wait Stats occurs when trying to synchronize the query processor exchange iterator. You may consider lowering the degree of parallelism if a conflict concerning this wait type develops into a problem. (from BOL) In simpler words, when a parallel operation is created for SQL Query, there are multiple threads for a single query. Each query deals with a different set of the data (or rows). Due to some reasons, one or more of the threads lag behind, creating the CXPACKET Wait Stat. Threads which came first have to wait for the slower thread to finish. The Wait by a specific completed thread is called CXPACKET Wait Stat. Note that CXPACKET Wait is done by completed thread and not the one which are unfinished. “Note that not all the CXPACKET wait types are bad. You might experience a case when it totally makes sense. There might also be cases when this is also unavoidable. If you remove this particular wait type for any query, then that query may run slower because the parallel operations are disabled for the query.” Now let us see what the best practices to reduce the CXPACKET Wait Stats are. The suggestions, with which you will find that if you search online through the browser, would play a major role as and might be asked about their jobs In addition, might tell you that you should set ‘maximum degree of parallelism’ to 1. I do agree with these suggestions, too; however, I think this is not the final resolutions. As soon as you set your entire query to run on single CPU, you will get a very bad performance from the queries which are actually performing okay when using parallelism. The best suggestion to this is that you set ‘the maximum degree of parallelism’ to a lower number or 1 (be very careful with this – it can create more problems) but tune the queries which can be benefited from multiple CPU’s. You can use query hint OPTION (MAXDOP 0) to run the server to use parallelism. Here is the two-quick script which helps to resolve these issues: Change MAXDOP at Server Level EXEC sys.sp_configure N'max degree of parallelism', N'1' GO RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE GO Run Query with all the CPU (using parallelism) USE AdventureWorks GO SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail ORDER BY ProductID OPTION (MAXDOP 0) GO Below is the blog post which will help you to find all the parallel query in your server. SQL SERVER – Find Queries using Parallelism from Cached Plan Please note running Queries in single CPU may worsen your performance and it is not recommended at all. Infect this can be very bad advise. I strongly suggest that you identify the queries which are offending and tune them instead of following any other suggestions. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Optimization, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL White Papers, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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  • Inequality joins, Asynchronous transformations and Lookups : SSIS

    - by jamiet
    It is pretty much accepted by SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) developers that synchronous transformations are generally quicker than asynchronous transformations (for a description of synchronous and asynchronous transformations go read Asynchronous and synchronous data flow components). Notice I said “generally” and not “always”; there are circumstances where using asynchronous transformations can be beneficial and in this blog post I’ll demonstrate such a scenario, one that is pretty common when building data warehouses. Imagine I have a [Customer] dimension table that manages information about all of my customers as a slowly-changing dimension. If that is a type 2 slowly changing dimension then you will likely have multiple rows per customer in that table. Furthermore you might also have datetime fields that indicate the effective time period of each member record. Here is such a table that contains data for four dimension members {Terry, Max, Henry, Horace}: Notice that we have multiple records per customer and that the [SCDStartDate] of a record is equivalent to the [SCDEndDate] of the record that preceded it (if there was one). (Note that I am on record as saying I am not a fan of this technique of storing an [SCDEndDate] but for the purposes of clarity I have included it here.) Anyway, the idea here is that we will have some incoming data containing [CustomerName] & [EffectiveDate] and we need to use those values to lookup [Customer].[CustomerId]. The logic will be: Lookup a [CustomerId] WHERE [CustomerName]=[CustomerName] AND [SCDStartDate] <= [EffectiveDate] AND [EffectiveDate] <= [SCDEndDate] The conventional approach to this would be to use a full cached lookup but that isn’t an option here because we are using inequality conditions. The obvious next step then is to use a non-cached lookup which enables us to change the SQL statement to use inequality operators: Let’s take a look at the dataflow: Notice these are all synchronous components. This approach works just fine however it does have the limitation that it has to issue a SQL statement against your lookup set for every row thus we can expect the execution time of our dataflow to increase linearly in line with the number of rows in our dataflow; that’s not good. OK, that’s the obvious method. Let’s now look at a different way of achieving this using an asynchronous Merge Join transform coupled with a Conditional Split. I’ve shown it post-execution so that I can include the row counts which help to illustrate what is going on here: Notice that there are more rows output from our Merge Join component than on the input. That is because we are joining on [CustomerName] and, as we know, we have multiple records per [CustomerName] in our lookup set. Notice also that there are two asynchronous components in here (the Sort and the Merge Join). I have embedded a video below that compares the execution times for each of these two methods. The video is just over 8minutes long. View on Vimeo  For those that can’t be bothered watching the video I’ll tell you the results here. The dataflow that used the Lookup transform took 36 seconds whereas the dataflow that used the Merge Join took less than two seconds. An illustration in case it is needed: Pretty conclusive proof that in some scenarios it may be quicker to use an asynchronous component than a synchronous one. Your mileage may of course vary. The scenario outlined here is analogous to performance tuning procedural SQL that uses cursors. It is common to eliminate cursors by converting them to set-based operations and that is effectively what we have done here. Our non-cached lookup is performing a discrete operation for every single row of data, exactly like a cursor does. By eliminating this cursor-in-disguise we have dramatically sped up our dataflow. I hope all of that proves useful. You can download the package that I demonstrated in the video from my SkyDrive at http://cid-550f681dad532637.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/BlogShare/20100514/20100514%20Lookups%20and%20Merge%20Joins.zip Comments are welcome as always. @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • Transformation of Product Management in Telecommunications for Rapid Launch of Next Generation Products

    - by raul.goycoolea
    @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }a:link, span.MsoHyperlink { color: blue; text-decoration: underline; }a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed { color: purple; text-decoration: underline; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } The Telecom industry continues to evolve through disruptive products, uncertain markets, shorter product lifecycles and convergence of technologies. Today’s market has moved from network centric to consumer centric and focuses primarily on the customer experience. It has resulted in several product management challenges such as an increased complexity and volume of offerings, creating product variants, accelerating time-to-market, ability to provide multiple product views for varied stakeholders, leveraging OSS intelligence to BSS layer, product co-creation and increasing audit and security concerns for service providers. The document discusses how enterprise product management enabled by PLM-based product catalogue solutions helps to launch next generation products rapidly in the context of the Telecommunication Industry.   1.0.       Introduction   Figure 1: Business Scenario   Modern business demands the launch of complex products in a very short timeframe and effecting changes in the price plan faster without IT intervention. One of the key transformation initiatives companies are focusing on is in the area of product management transformation and operational efficiency improvement. As part of these initiatives, companies are investing in best- in-class COTs-based Product Management solutions developed on industry-wide standards.   The new COTs packages are planned to integrate with existing or new B/OSS systems to provide a strategic end-to-end agile solution for reduced time-to-market and order journey time. In addition, system rationalization is being undertaken to phase out legacy systems and migrate to strategic systems.   2.0.       An Overview of Product Management in Telecom   Product data in telecom is multi- dimensional and difficult to manage. It increased significantly due to the complexity of the product, product offerings on the converged network, increased volume of offerings, bundled offering structures and ever increasing regulatory requirements.   In addition, the shrinking product lifecycle in telecom makes it difficult to manage the dynamic product data. Mergers and acquisitions coupled with organic growth pose major challenges in product portfolio management. It is a roadblock in the journey towards becoming an agile organization.       Figure 2: Complexity in Product Management   Network Technology’ is the new dimension in telecom product management where the same products are realized through different networks i.e., Soiled network to Converged network. Consequently, the product solution is different.     Figure 3: Current Scenario - Pain Points in Product Management   The major business implications arising out of the current scenario are slow time-to-market and an inefficient process that affects innovation.   3.0. Transformation of Next Generation Product Management   Companies must focus on their Product Management Transformation Journey in the areas of:   ·       Management of single truth of product information across the organization/geographies which is currently managed in heterogeneous systems   ·       Management of the Intellectual Property (IP) on the product concept and partnership in the design of discrete components to integrate into the system   ·       Leveraging structured and unstructured product data within the extended enterprise to extract consumer insights and drive innovation   ·       Management of effective operational separation to comply with regulatory bodies   ·       Reuse of existing designs and add relevant features such as value-added services to enable effective product bundling     Figure 4: Next generation needs   PLM-based Enterprise Product Catalogue solutions efficiently address the above requirements and act as an enabler towards product management transformation and rapid product launch.   4.0. PLM-based Enterprise Product Management     Figure 5: PLM-based Enterprise Product Mastering   Enterprise Product Management (EPM) enables the business to manage complex product attributes of data in complex environments. Product Mastering helps create a 'single view' of the product by creating a business-driven, IT-supported environment where a global 'single truth record' is created, managed and reused.   4.1 The Business Case for Telco PLM-based solutions for Enterprise Product Management   ·       Telco PLM-based Product Mastering solutions provide a centralized authoring environment for product definition and control of all product data and rules   ·       PLM packages are designed to support multiple perspectives of product data (ordering perspective, billing perspective, provisioning perspective)   ·       Maintains relationships/links between different elements of the entire product definition   ·       Telco PLM packages are specialized in next generation lifecycle management requirements of products such as revision and state management, test and release management, role management and impact analysis)   ·       Takes into consideration all aspects of OSS product requirements compared to CRM product catalogue solutions where the product data managed is mostly order oriented and transactional     ·       New breed of Telco PLM packages are designed with 'open' standards such as SID and eTOM. They are interoperable, support integration frameworks such as subscription and notification.   ·       Telco PLM packages have developed good collaboration frameworks to integrate suppliers and partners into the product development value chain   4.2 Various Architectures/Approaches for Product Mastering using Telco PLM systems   4. 2.a Single Central Product Management (Mastering) Approach   Figure 6: Single Central Product Management (Master) Approach       This approach is implemented across verticals such as aerospace and automotive. It focuses on a physically centralized product master to which other sources are dependent on. The product definition data (Product bundles, service bundles, price plans, offers and discounts, product configuration rules and market campaigns) is created and maintained physically in a centralized environment. In addition, the product definition/authoring environment is centralized. The existing legacy product definition data available in CRM product catalogue, billing catalogue and the legacy product catalogue is migrated to the centralized PLM-based Enterprise Product Management solution.   Architectural changes must be made in the existing business landscape of applications to create and revise data because the applications have to refer to the central repository for approvals and validation of product configurations. It is achieved by modifying how the applications write data or how the applications can be adapted to use the rules to be managed and published.   Complete product configuration validation will be done in enterprise / central product catalogue and final configuration will be sent to the B/OSS system through the SOA compliant product distribution architecture. The approach/architecture enables greater control in terms of product data management and product data governance.   4.2.b Federated Product Management (Mastering) Architecture     Figure 7: Federated Product Management (Mastering) Architecture   In the federated product mastering approach, the basic unique product definition data (product id, description product hierarchy, basic price plans and simple product design rules) will be centrally created and will be maintained. And, the advanced product definition (Product bundling, promotions, offers & discount plans) will be created in respective down stream OSS systems. The advanced product definition (Product bundling, promotions, offers and discount plans) will be created in respective downstream OSS systems.   For example, basic product definitions such as attributes, product hierarchy and basic price plans will be created and maintained in Enterprise/Central product reference catalogue and distributed to downstream OSS systems. Respective downstream OSS systems build product bundles, promotions, advanced price plans over the basic product definition and master the advanced product definition. Central reference database accesses the respective other source product master data and assembles a point-in-time consolidated view of the product. The approach is typically adapted in some merger and acquisition scenarios where there is a low probability of a central physical authority managing the data. In addition, the migration effort in this case is minimal and there are no big architectural changes to the organization application landscape. However, this approach will not result in better product data management and data governance.   5.0 Customer Scenario – Before EPC deployment   A leading global telecommunications service provider wanted to launch a quad play and triple play service offering in the shortest possible lead time. The service provider was offering Broadband and VoIP services to customers. The company wanted to reuse a majority of the Broadband services and price plans and bundle them with new wireless and IPTV services for quad play and triple play. The challenges in launching the new service offerings were:       Figure 8: Triple Play Plan   ·       Broadband product data was stored in multiple product catalogues (CRM catalogue, Billing catalogue, spread sheets)   ·       Product managers spent a lot of time performing tasks involving duplication or re-keying of data. Manual effort caused errors, cost and time over-runs.   ·       No effective product and price data governance mechanism. Price change issues arising from the lack of data consistency across systems resulted in leakage of customer value and revenue.   ·       Product data had re-usability issues and was not in a structured format. It resulted in uncontrolled product portfolio creation and product management issues.   ·       Lack of enterprise product model resulted into product distribution challenges and thus delays in product launch.   ·       Designers are constrained by existing legacy product management solutions to model product/service requirements and product configuration rules such as upgrading, downgrading and cross selling.    5.1 Customer Scenario - After EPC deployment     Figure 9: SOA-based end-to-end EPC Solution   The company deployed PLM-based Enterprise Product Catalogue solutions to launch quad play service after evaluating various product catalogues. The broadband product offering, service and price data were migrated to the new system, and the product and price plan hierarchy for new offerings were created using the entities defined in the Enterprise Product Model. Supplier product catalogue data such as routers and set up boxes were loaded onto the new solution through SOA-based web service. Price plans and configuration rules were built in the new system. The validated final product configurations were extracted from the product catalogue in a SID format and were distributed to the downstream B/OSS systems through exposed SOA-based web services. The transformations required for the B/OSS system were handled using the transformation layer as part of the solution.   6.0 How PLM enabled Product Management Transformation         Figure 10: Product Management Transformation     PLM-based Product Catalogue Solution helped the customer reduce the product launch cycle time by 30% and enable transformation of Product Management for next generation services.   7.0 Conclusion   On the one hand, the telecom industry is undergoing changes due to disruptions, uncertain product markets and increased complexity of products. On the other hand, the ARPU is decreasing year-on-year. Communications Service Providers are embarking on convergence, bundled service offerings, flexibility to cross-sell and up-sell, introduce new value-added services, leverage Web 2.0 concepts and network capabilities. Consequently, large scale IT transformation initiatives to improve their ARPU supporting network and business transformations are a business imperative. Product Management has become a focus area. Companies are investing in best-in- class COTS solutions to reduce time-to-market, ensure rapid service delivery and improve operational efficiency. An efficient PLM-based enterprise product mastering solution plays a key role in achieving zero touch automation and rapid product launch.   References:   1.     Preston G.Smith, Donald G.Reineristsem, Van Nostrand Reinhold “Developing Products in Half the time”.   2.     John G. Innes, "Achieving Successful Product Change", Pitman Publishing.   3.     D T Pham and R M Setchi (16th Jan, 2001) "Authoring environment for documentation development" University of Wales Cardiff, U.K., Proceedings on Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Vol. 215, Part B.   4.     Oracle Product Hub for Communications:   http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/master-data-management/product-hub-082059.html  

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  • Ambient occlusion shader just shows models as all white

    - by dvds414
    Okay so I have this shader for ambient occlusion. It loads to world correctly, but it just shows all the models as being white. I do not know why. I am just running the shader while the model is rendering, is that correct? or do I need to make a render target or something? If so then how? I'm using C++. Here is my shader: float sampleRadius; float distanceScale; float4x4 xProjection; float4x4 xView; float4x4 xWorld; float3 cornerFustrum; struct VS_OUTPUT { float4 pos : POSITION; float2 TexCoord : TEXCOORD0; float3 viewDirection : TEXCOORD1; }; VS_OUTPUT VertexShaderFunction( float4 Position : POSITION, float2 TexCoord : TEXCOORD0) { VS_OUTPUT Out = (VS_OUTPUT)0; float4 WorldPosition = mul(Position, xWorld); float4 ViewPosition = mul(WorldPosition, xView); Out.pos = mul(ViewPosition, xProjection); Position.xy = sign(Position.xy); Out.TexCoord = (float2(Position.x, -Position.y) + float2( 1.0f, 1.0f ) ) * 0.5f; float3 corner = float3(-cornerFustrum.x * Position.x, cornerFustrum.y * Position.y, cornerFustrum.z); Out.viewDirection = corner; return Out; } texture depthTexture; texture randomTexture; sampler2D depthSampler = sampler_state { Texture = <depthTexture>; ADDRESSU = CLAMP; ADDRESSV = CLAMP; MAGFILTER = LINEAR; MINFILTER = LINEAR; }; sampler2D RandNormal = sampler_state { Texture = <randomTexture>; ADDRESSU = WRAP; ADDRESSV = WRAP; MAGFILTER = LINEAR; MINFILTER = LINEAR; }; float4 PixelShaderFunction(VS_OUTPUT IN) : COLOR0 { float4 samples[16] = { float4(0.355512, -0.709318, -0.102371, 0.0 ), float4(0.534186, 0.71511, -0.115167, 0.0 ), float4(-0.87866, 0.157139, -0.115167, 0.0 ), float4(0.140679, -0.475516, -0.0639818, 0.0 ), float4(-0.0796121, 0.158842, -0.677075, 0.0 ), float4(-0.0759516, -0.101676, -0.483625, 0.0 ), float4(0.12493, -0.0223423, -0.483625, 0.0 ), float4(-0.0720074, 0.243395, -0.967251, 0.0 ), float4(-0.207641, 0.414286, 0.187755, 0.0 ), float4(-0.277332, -0.371262, 0.187755, 0.0 ), float4(0.63864, -0.114214, 0.262857, 0.0 ), float4(-0.184051, 0.622119, 0.262857, 0.0 ), float4(0.110007, -0.219486, 0.435574, 0.0 ), float4(0.235085, 0.314707, 0.696918, 0.0 ), float4(-0.290012, 0.0518654, 0.522688, 0.0 ), float4(0.0975089, -0.329594, 0.609803, 0.0 ) }; IN.TexCoord.x += 1.0/1600.0; IN.TexCoord.y += 1.0/1200.0; normalize (IN.viewDirection); float depth = tex2D(depthSampler, IN.TexCoord).a; float3 se = depth * IN.viewDirection; float3 randNormal = tex2D( RandNormal, IN.TexCoord * 200.0 ).rgb; float3 normal = tex2D(depthSampler, IN.TexCoord).rgb; float finalColor = 0.0f; for (int i = 0; i < 16; i++) { float3 ray = reflect(samples[i].xyz,randNormal) * sampleRadius; //if (dot(ray, normal) < 0) // ray += normal * sampleRadius; float4 sample = float4(se + ray, 1.0f); float4 ss = mul(sample, xProjection); float2 sampleTexCoord = 0.5f * ss.xy/ss.w + float2(0.5f, 0.5f); sampleTexCoord.x += 1.0/1600.0; sampleTexCoord.y += 1.0/1200.0; float sampleDepth = tex2D(depthSampler, sampleTexCoord).a; if (sampleDepth == 1.0) { finalColor ++; } else { float occlusion = distanceScale* max(sampleDepth - depth, 0.0f); finalColor += 1.0f / (1.0f + occlusion * occlusion * 0.1); } } return float4(finalColor/16, finalColor/16, finalColor/16, 1.0f); } technique SSAO { pass P0 { VertexShader = compile vs_3_0 VertexShaderFunction(); PixelShader = compile ps_3_0 PixelShaderFunction(); } }

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  • OBIEE 11.1.1 - User Interface (UI) Performance Is Slow With Internet Explorer 8

    - by Ahmed A
    The OBIEE 11g UI is performance is slow in IE 8 and faster in Firefox.  For VPN or WAN users, it takes long time to display links on Dashboards via IE 8. Cause is IE 8 generates many HTTP 304 return calls and this caused the 11g UI slower when compared to the Mozilla FireFox browser. To resolve this issue, you can implement HTTP compression and caching. This is a best practice.Why use Web Server Compression / Caching for OBIEE? Bandwidth Savings: Enabling HTTP compression can have a dramatic improvement on the latency of responses. By compressing static files and dynamic application responses, it will significantly reduce the remote (high latency) user response time. Improves request/response latency: Caching makes it possible to suppress the payload of the HTTP reply using the 304 status code.  Minimizing round trips over the Web to re-validate cached items can make a huge difference in browser page load times. This screen shot depicts the flow and where the compression and decompression occurs: Solution: a. How to Enable HTTP Caching / Compression in Oracle HTTP Server (OHS) 11.1.1.x 1. To implement HTTP compression / caching, install and configure Oracle HTTP Server (OHS) 11.1.1.x for the bi_serverN Managed Servers (refer to "OBIEE Enterprise Deployment Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence" document for details). 2. On the OHS machine, open the file HTTP Server configuration file (httpd.conf) for editing. This file is located in the OHS installation directory.For example: ORACLE_HOME/Oracle_WT1/instances/instance1/config/OHS/ohs13. In httpd.conf file, verify that the following directives are included and not commented out: LoadModule expires_module "${ORACLE_HOME}/ohs/modules/mod_expires.soLoadModule deflate_module "${ORACLE_HOME}/ohs/modules/mod_deflate.so 4. Add the following lines in httpd.conf file below the directive LoadModule section and restart the OHS: Note: For the Windows platform, you will need to enclose any paths in double quotes ("), for example:Alias "/analytics ORACLE_HOME/bifoundation/web/app"<Directory "ORACLE_HOME/bifoundation/web/app"> Alias /analytics ORACLE_HOME/bifoundation/web/app#Pls replace the ORACLE_HOME with your actual BI ORACLE_HOME path<Directory ORACLE_HOME/bifoundation/web/app>#We don't generate proper cross server ETags so disable themFileETag noneSetOutputFilter DEFLATE# Don't compress imagesSetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png)$ no-gzip dont-vary<FilesMatch "\.(gif|jpeg|png|js|x-javascript|javascript|css)$">#Enable future expiry of static filesExpiresActive onExpiresDefault "access plus 1 week"     #1 week, this will stops the HTTP304 calls i.e. generated by IE 8Header set Cache-Control "max-age=604800"</FilesMatch>DirectoryIndex default.jsp</Directory>#Restrict access to WEB-INF<Location /analytics/WEB-INF>Order Allow,DenyDeny from all</Location> Note: Make sure you replace above placeholder "ORACLE_HOME" to your correct path for BI ORACLE_HOME.For example: my BI Oracle Home path is /Oracle/BIEE11g/Oracle_BI1/bifoundation/web/app Important Notes: Above caching rules restricted to static files found inside the /analytics directory(/web/app). This approach is safer instead of setting static file caching globally. In some customer environments you may not get 100% performance gains in IE 8.0 browser. So in that case you need to extend caching rules to other directories with static files content. If OHS is installed on separate dedicated machine, make sure static files in your BI ORACLE_HOME (../Oracle_BI1/bifoundation/web/app) is accessible to the OHS instance. The following screen shot summarizes the before and after results and improvements after enabling compression and caching:

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  • Grouping data in LINQ with the help of group keyword

    - by vik20000in
    While working with any kind of advanced query grouping is a very important factor. Grouping helps in executing special function like sum, max average etc to be performed on certain groups of data inside the date result set. Grouping is done with the help of the Group method. Below is an example of the basic group functionality.     int[] numbers = { 5, 4, 1, 3, 9, 8, 6, 7, 2, 0 };         var numberGroups =         from num in numbers         group num by num % 5 into numGroup         select new { Remainder = numGroup.Key, Numbers = numGroup };  In the above example we have grouped the values based on the reminder left over when divided by 5. First we are grouping the values based on the reminder when divided by 5 into the numgroup variable.  numGroup.Key gives the value of the key on which the grouping has been applied. And the numGroup itself contains all the records that are contained in that group. Below is another example to explain the same. string[] words = { "blueberry", "abacus", "banana", "apple", "cheese" };         var wordGroups =         from num in words         group num by num[0] into grp         select new { FirstLetter = grp.Key, Words = grp }; In the above example we are grouping the value with the first character of the string (num[0]). Just like the order operator the group by clause also allows us to write our own logic for the Equal comparison (That means we can group Item by ignoring case also by writing out own implementation). For this we need to pass an object that implements the IEqualityComparer<string> interface. Below is an example. public class AnagramEqualityComparer : IEqualityComparer<string> {     public bool Equals(string x, string y) {         return getCanonicalString(x) == getCanonicalString(y);     }      public int GetHashCode(string obj) {         return getCanonicalString(obj).GetHashCode();     }         private string getCanonicalString(string word) {         char[] wordChars = word.ToCharArray();         Array.Sort<char>(wordChars);         return new string(wordChars);     } }  string[] anagrams = {"from   ", " salt", " earn", "  last   ", " near "}; var orderGroups = anagrams.GroupBy(w => w.Trim(), new AnagramEqualityComparer()); Vikram  

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  • SQL SERVER – DMV – sys.dm_os_wait_stats Explanation – Wait Type – Day 3 of 28

    - by pinaldave
    The key Dynamic Management View (DMV) that helps us to understand wait stats is sys.dm_os_wait_stats; this DMV gives us all the information that we need to know regarding wait stats. However, the interpretation is left to us. This is a challenge as understanding wait stats can often be quite tricky. Anyway, we will cover few wait stats in one of the future articles. Today we will go over the basic understanding of the DMV. The Official Book OnLine Reference for DMV is over here: sys.dm_os_wait_stats. I suggest you all to refer this for all the accuracy. Following is a statement from the online book: “Specific types of wait times during query execution can indicate bottlenecks or stall points within the query. Similarly, high wait times, or wait counts server wide can indicate bottlenecks or hot spots in interaction query interactions within the server instance.” This is the statement which has inspired me to write this series. Let us first run the following statement from DMV. SELECT * FROM sys.dm_os_wait_stats ORDER BY wait_time_ms DESC GO Above statement will show us few of the columns. Here it is quick explanation of each of the column. wait_type – this is the name of the wait type. There can be three different kinds of wait types – resource, queue and external. waiting_tasks_count – this incremental counter is a good indication of frequent the wait is happening. If this number is very high, it is good indication for us to investigate that particular wait type. It is quite possible that the wait time is considerably low, but the frequency of the wait is much high. wait_time_ms – this is total wait accumulated for any type of wait. This is the total wait time and includes singal_wait_time_ms. max_wait_time_ms – this indicates the maximum wait type ever occurred for that particular wait type. Using this, one can estimate the intensity of the wait type in past. Again, it is not necessary that this max wait time will occur every time; so do not over invest yourself here. signal_wait_time_ms – this is the wait time when thread is marked as runnable and it gets to the running state. If the runnable queue is very long, you will find that this wait time becomes high. Additionally, please note that this DMV does not show current wait type or wait stats. This is cumulative view of the all the wait stats since server (instance) restarted or wait stats have been cleared. In future blog post, we will also cover two more DMVs which can be helpful to identify wait-related issues. ?sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks sys.dm_exec_requests Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL DMV, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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  • Time to stop using &ldquo;Execute Package Task&rdquo;&ndash; a way to execute package in SSIS catalog taking advantage of the new project deployment model ,and the logging and reporting feature

    - by Kevin Shyr
    I set out to find a way to dynamically call package in SSIS 2012.  The following are 2 excellent blogs I found; I used them heavily.  The code below has some addition to parameter types and message types, but was made essentially derived entirely from the blogs. http://sqlblog.com/blogs/jamie_thomson/archive/2011/07/16/ssis-logging-in-denali.aspx http://www.ssistalk.com/2012/07/24/quick-tip-run-ssis-2012-packages-synchronously-and-other-execution-options/   The code: Every package will be called by a PackageController package.  The packageController is initialized with some information on which package to run and what information to pass in.   The following is the stored procedure called from the “Execute SQL Task”.  Here is the highlight of the stored procedure It takes in packageName, project name, and folder name (folder in SSIS project deployment to SSIS catalog) The stored procedure sets the package variables of the upcoming package execution Execute package in SSIS Catalog Get the status of the execution.  Also, if exists, get the error message’s message_id and store them in the management database. Return value to “Execute SQL Task” to manage failure properly CREATE PROCEDURE [AUDIT].[LaunchPackageExecutionInSSISCatalog]        @PackageName NVARCHAR(255)        , @ProjectFolder NVARCHAR(255)        , @ProjectName NVARCHAR(255)        , @AuditKey INT        , @DisableNotification BIT        , @PackageExecutionLogID INT AS BEGIN TRY        DECLARE @execution_id BIGINT = 0;        -- Create a package execution        EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[create_execution]                     @package_name=@PackageName,                     @execution_id=@execution_id OUTPUT,                     @folder_name=@ProjectFolder,                     @project_name=@ProjectName,                     @use32bitruntime=False;          UPDATE [AUDIT].[PackageInstanceExecutionLog] WITH(ROWLOCK)        SET [SSISCatalogExecutionID] = @execution_id        WHERE [PackageInstanceExecutionLogID] = @PackageExecutionLogID          -- this is to set the execution synchronized so that I can check the result in the end        EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value]                     @execution_id,                      @object_type=50,                     @parameter_name=N'SYNCHRONIZED',                     @parameter_value=1; -- true          /********************************************************         ********************************************************              Section: setting parameters                     Source table:  SSISDB.internal.object_parameters              object_type list:                     20: project level variables                     30: package level variables                     50: execution parameter         ********************************************************         ********************************************************/        EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value]                     @execution_id,                      @object_type=30,                     @parameter_name=N'FromParent_AuditKey',                     @parameter_value=@AuditKey; -- true          EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value]                     @execution_id,                      @object_type=30,                     @parameter_name=N'FromParent_DisableNotification',                     @parameter_value=@DisableNotification; -- true          EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value]                     @execution_id,                      @object_type=30,                     @parameter_name=N'FromParent_PackageInstanceExecutionID',                     @parameter_value=@PackageExecutionLogID; -- true        /********************************************************         ********************************************************              Section: setting variables END         ********************************************************         ********************************************************/            /* This section is carried over from example code           I don't see a reason to change them yet        */        -- Set our package parameters        EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value]                     @execution_id,                      @object_type=50,                     @parameter_name=N'DUMP_ON_EVENT',                     @parameter_value=1; -- true          EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value]                     @execution_id,                      @object_type=50,                     @parameter_name=N'DUMP_EVENT_CODE',                     @parameter_value=N'0x80040E4D;0x80004005';          EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value]                     @execution_id,                      @object_type=50,                     @parameter_name=N'LOGGING_LEVEL',                     @parameter_value= 1; -- Basic          EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value]                     @execution_id,                      @object_type=50,                     @parameter_name=N'DUMP_ON_ERROR',                     @parameter_value=1; -- true                              /********************************************************         ********************************************************              Section: EXECUTING         ********************************************************         ********************************************************/        EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[start_execution]                     @execution_id;        /********************************************************         ********************************************************              Section: EXECUTING END         ********************************************************         ********************************************************/            /********************************************************         ********************************************************              Section: checking execution result                     Source table:  [SSISDB].[catalog].[executions]              status:                     1: created                     2: running                     3: cancelled                     4: failed                     5: pending                     6: ended unexpectedly                     7: succeeded                     8: stopping                     9: completed         ********************************************************         ********************************************************/        if EXISTS(SELECT TOP 1 1                            FROM [SSISDB].[catalog].[executions] WITH(NOLOCK)                            WHERE [execution_id] = @execution_id                                  AND [status] NOT IN (2, 7, 9)) BEGIN                /********************************************************               ********************************************************                     Section: logging error messages                            Source table:  [SSISDB].[internal].[operation_messages]                     message type:                            10:  OnPreValidate                             20:  OnPostValidate                             30:  OnPreExecute                             40:  OnPostExecute                             60:  OnProgress                             70:  OnInformation                             90:  Diagnostic                             110:  OnWarning                            120:  OnError                            130:  Failure                            140:  DiagnosticEx                             200:  Custom events                             400:  OnPipeline                     message source type:                            10:  Messages logged by the entry APIs (e.g. T-SQL, CLR Stored procedures)                             20:  Messages logged by the external process used to run package (ISServerExec)                             30:  Messages logged by the package-level objects                             40:  Messages logged by tasks in the control flow                             50:  Messages logged by containers (For, ForEach, Sequence) in the control flow                             60:  Messages logged by the Data Flow Task                                    ********************************************************               ********************************************************/                INSERT INTO AUDIT.PackageInstanceExecutionOperationErrorLink                     SELECT @PackageExecutionLogID                                  ,[operation_message_id]                            FROM [SSISDB].[internal].[operation_messages] WITH(NOLOCK)                            WHERE operation_id = @execution_id                                  AND message_type IN (120, 130)                           EXEC [AUDIT].[FailPackageInstanceExecution] @PackageExecutionLogID, 'SSISDB Internal operation_messages found'                GOTO ReturnTrueAsErrorFlag                /********************************************************               ********************************************************                     Section: checking messages END               ********************************************************               ********************************************************/                /* This part is not really working, so now using rowcount to pass status              --DECLARE @PackageErrorMessage NVARCHAR(4000)              --SET @PackageErrorMessage = @PackageName + 'failed with executionID: ' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(20), @execution_id)                --RAISERROR (@PackageErrorMessage -- Message text.              --     , 18 -- Severity,              --     , 1 -- State,              --     , N'check table AUDIT.PackageInstanceExecutionErrorMessages' -- First argument.              --     );              */        END        ELSE BEGIN              GOTO ReturnFalseAsErrorFlagToSignalSuccess        END        /********************************************************         ********************************************************              Section: checking execution result END         ********************************************************         ********************************************************/ END TRY BEGIN CATCH        DECLARE @SSISCatalogCallError NVARCHAR(MAX)        SELECT @SSISCatalogCallError = ERROR_MESSAGE()          EXEC [AUDIT].[FailPackageInstanceExecution] @PackageExecutionLogID, @SSISCatalogCallError          GOTO ReturnTrueAsErrorFlag END CATCH;     /********************************************************  ********************************************************    Section: end result  ********************************************************  ********************************************************/ ReturnTrueAsErrorFlag:        SELECT CONVERT(BIT, 1) AS PackageExecutionErrorExists ReturnFalseAsErrorFlagToSignalSuccess:        SELECT CONVERT(BIT, 0) AS PackageExecutionErrorExists   GO

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  • SOA Community Newsletter: nouvelle lettre !

    - by mseika
    SOA PARTNER COMMUNITY NEWSLETTERAUGUST 2012 Dear SOA partner community member Have you submitted your feedback on SOA Partner Community Survey 2012? This is the last chance to participate in the survey. We recommend you to complete the survey and help us to improve our SOA Community. Thanks to all attendees and trainers for their participation in the excellent Fusion Middleware Summer Camps held in Lisbon and Munich. I would also like to thank you for the great feedback and the nice reports provided by AMIS Technology Blog & Middleware by Link Consulting. Most of our courses have been overbooked, if you did not get a chance or missed it, we offer a wide range of online training and the course material. Key take-away from the advanced BPM course is to become an expert in ADF. Here is the course from Grant Ronald Learn Advanced ADF online available. The Link Consulting Team became experts in SOA Governance with EAMS and Oracle Enterprise Repository! We always encourage our community members to share their best practices and are very keen to publish it. Please let us know if you want to share your best practices through this medium.We encourage you to make use of the Specialization benefits - this month we are giving an opportunity to Promote Your SOA & BPM Events. Jürgen KressOracle SOA & BPM Partner Adoption EMEA NEW CONTENT Presentations & Training material OFM Summer CampsPromote Your SOA & BPM Events Advanced ADF Online, For Free By Grant BPM 11g Customer Stories & Solution Catalog & Process Accelerators Delivering SOA Governance with EAMS by Link Consulting Team WebLogic Server Provisioning and Patching News from our Partners & CommunityUpdated material by Oracle Connect and Network SOA Blogs SOA on Facebook SOA on LinkedIn SOA on Twitter Mix SOA Forum SOA Workspace PRESENTATIONS & TRAINING MATERIAL OFM SUMMER CAMPS Thanks to all attendees who invested their time and utilized the opportunity to attend the Summer Camps! Due to high demand of our most of the trainings, we had a long waiting list with more numbers of partners who are keen to attend it. We would like to give our special thanks to all trainers, who delivered excellent workshops! Most of the presentations and course material have been posted on our SOA Community Workspaceand WebLogic Community Workspace. You can access the content only if you are a registered community member. To register for the SOA Community please click here. You can register for the WebLogic Community here. To find out the first impressions of the event please visit our Facebook pages:www.facebook.com/WebLogicCommunity &www.facebook.com/soacommunity or Picasa AlbumThanks for the excellent blog posts from AMIS Technology Blog & Middleware by Link Consulting. Let us know if you published a twitter blog on@soacommunity & @wlscommunity. We will be pleased to publish it in our Newsletters. BPM Course Quotes “Its always easy, if you know, what you are doing” - Torsten Winterberg, Opitz“ The best ideas are the ideas from the best” - Filipe Sequeria, Primesoft “Best invest in the education in the last 12 months” - Richard Schaller, IPT “Practice best practice with the best instructor” - Graham Lamond Capgemini “If you have basic BPM knowledge, this is the course to really mater it” - Diogo Henriques Link Consulting “Very good trainers lot of work. Lot of fun as well” - Matthias Gris Workflow Factory “If you like to accelerate in Oracle come to the training to bring it all together” - Marcel van der Glind, Amis ADF Course Quotes "Excellent training, great opportunity to network!" - Frank Houweling, Amis "Lots of fun and good ideas" - Ana Santiago, GFI "Learn ADF, worth it Fusion Apps is the future" - Miguel Delgadillo, STO Consulting "The best way to learn Fusion Middleware from the #1" Alexandro Montantes, STO Consulting "Be advanced to to be the first” - Dimitar Petrov Fadata "Great opportunity to suck all the knowledge out of some very experienced product managers” - Wilfred von der Deijl, The Future Group WebLogic Course Quotes “Oracle trainings are the best” - Pedro Neto Novobas“ "Excellent training, well organized” - Pedro Antunh, Capgemini “This course dives you into Oracle WebLogic giving you a quick start on benefiting from Fusion Apps” - Leonardo Fernandes, Outsystems Additional Quotes “Thanks a lot again for organizing such a great and informative Summer Camp. Both training and networking were organized very professionally. I have gained tons of very useful Info, which will definitely help to increase quality of our future projects.” - Daniel Fasko fss-group.com I didn’t get the chance yesterday to thank you for a most enjoyable and thoroughly educational time I had in Munich over the last few days.” - Jeroen Bakker Ordina “Just to congratulate you on a great event, not only today but also in the previous days of training. As we know, a very good organization and, as a native Portuguese that knows Lisbon very good, a nice choice of places to visit. Looking forward to come again next year.” Pedro Miguel Neto, Novobase PROMOTE YOUR SOA & BPM EVENTS The Partner Event Publisher has just been made available to all SOA & BPM specialized partners in EMEA. Partners now have the opportunity to publish their events to theOracle.com/events site and spread the word on their upcoming live in-person and/or live webcast events. See the demo below and click here to read more information. ADVANCED ADF ONLINE, FOR FREE BY GRANT The second part of the advanced ADF online eCourse is Live now! This covers the advanced topics of region and region interaction as well as getting down and dirty with some of the layout features of ADF Faces, skinning and DVT components. The aim of this course is to give you a self-paced learning aid which covers the more advanced topics of ADF development. The content is developed by Product Management and our Curriculum development teams and is based on advanced training material we have been running internally for about 18 months. We will get started on the next chapter, but in the meantime, please have a look at chapters one and two. Back to top BPM 11G CUSTOMER STORIES & SOLUTION CATALOG & PROCESS ACCELERATORS Stories Everyone loves a good story on planning or implementing a BPM strategy. Everyone wants to hear how it was done before?, what worked?, what was achieved? If you have achieved success with BPM, we are very keen to hear your stories and examples of how your customers use it. We receive lots of requests from people who are thinking of using BPM to solve a specific problem or in combination with a specific technology to talk to someone who has done it before. These stories are invaluable. Drop down the details of anything you think is relevant with a bit of detail and we will follow up on it. As one good deed deserves another, we will do our best to give you stories if you need them to show that where you are going, others have treaded before. Send your stories to us using this e-mail link and we will share them among other like minded people. Solution Catalogue This summer, Oracle is launching a solution catalogue specifically intended for partners. If you have delivered a successful implementation in BPM and think it could be reused and applied again in a similar scenario in the same industry or in a similar environment, then we ware keen to know about it and will add it to the solution catalogue. The solution catalogue will showcase successful BPM solutions both inside and outside Oracle. Be in touch with us on this e-mail link and we will make sure to add your solution. Process AcceleratorsFinally if you have specific processes that you are expert on, you have implemented at a customer and you want to work with us on getting these productised, then we would love to know about it. The process accelerator programme is explained in the most recent SOA/BPM Community Newsletter but again feel free to contact us if you want to get involved. Good luck with BPM and let us know how we can help. Barry O'Reilly Director BPM [email protected] DELIVERING SOA GOVERNANCE WITH EAMS BY LINK CONSULTING TEAM In the last 12 years Link Consulting has been making its presence in specific areas such as Governance and Architecture, both in terms of practices and methodologies, products, know-how and technological expertise. The Enterprise Architecture Management System - Oracle Enterprise Edition (EAMS - OER Edition) is the result of this experience and combines the architecture management solution with OER in order to deliver a product specialized for SOA Governance that gathers the better of two worlds in solution that enables SOA Governance projects, initiatives and programs. Enterprise Architecture Management System Enterprise Architecture Management System (EAMS), is an automation based solution that enables the efficient management of Enterprise Architectures. The solution uses configured enterprise repositories and takes advantages of its features to provide automation capabilities to the users. EAMS provides capabilities to create/customize/analyze repository data, architectural blueprints, reports and analytic charts. Oracle Enterprise Repository Oracle Enterprise Repository (OER) is one of the major and central elements of the Oracle SOA Governance solution. Oracle Enterprise Repository provides the tools to manage and govern the metadata for any type of software asset, from business processes and services to patterns, frameworks, applications, components, and models. OER maps the relationships and inter-dependencies that connect those assets to improve impact analysis, promote and optimize their reuse, and measure their impact on the bottom line. It provides the visibility, feedback, controls, and analytics to keep your SOA on track to deliver business value. The intense focus on automation helps to overcome barriers to SOA adoption and streamline governance throughout the lifecycle. Core capabilities of the OER include: Asset Management Asset Lifecycle Management Usage Tracking Service Discovery Version Management Dependency Analysis Portfolio Management EAMS - OER Edition The solution takes the advantages and features from both products and combines them in a symbiotic tool that enhances the quality of SOA Governance Initiatives and Programs. EAMS is able to produce a vast number of outputs by combining its analytical engine, SOA-specific configurations and the assets in OER and other related tools, catalogs and repositories. The configurations encompass not only the extendable parametrization of the metadata but also fully configurable blueprints, PowerPoint reports, charts and queries. The SOA blueprints The solution comes with a set of predefined architectural representations that help the organization better perceive their SOA landscape. More blueprints can be easily created in order to accommodate the organizations needs in terms of detail, audience and metadata. Charts & Dashboards The solution encompasses a set of predefined charts and dashboards that promote a more agile way to control and explore the assets. Time Based Visualization All representations are time bound, and with EAMS - OER you can truly govern SOA with a complete view of the Past, Present and Future; The solution delivers Gap Analysis, a project oriented approach while taking into consideration the As-Was, As-Is an To-Be. Time based visualization differentiating factors: Extensive automation and maintenance of architectural representations Organization wide solution. Easy access and navigation to and between all architectural artifacts and representations. Flexible meta-model, customization and extensibility capabilities. Lifecycle management and enforcement of the time dimension over all the repository content. Profile based customization. Comprehensive visibility Architectural alignment Friendly and striking user interfaces For more information on EAMS visit us here. For more information on SOA visit us here. WEBLOGIC SERVER PROVISIONING AND PATCHING For access to the Oracle demo systems please visit OPN and talk to your Partner Expert.SOA Suite and BPM Suite runs on WebLogic! We are pleased to announce the availability of a WebLogic Server Management demo that showcases some of the key provisioning and patching capabilities of WebLogic Server Management Pack Enterprise Edition (EE). To learn more about these features - as well as other features of the pack - please visit the pack's saleskit page.Demo Highlights The demo showcases the following capabilities: Patching Oracle WebLogic Servers Standardizing WebLogic Server Patch Rollouts Creating a WebLogic Domain Provisioning Profile Cloning a WebLogic Domain from a Provisioning Profile Deploying a Java EE Application Scaling Out an Oracle WebLogic Cluster Demo Instructions Go to the DSS website for Oracle Partners. On the Standard Demo Launchpad page, under the “Software Lifecycle Automation” section, click on the link “EM Cloud Control 12c WLS Provisioning and Patching” (tagged as “NEW”). Specific demo launchpad page contains a link to the detailed demo script with instructions on how to show the demo.

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  • July, the 31 Days of SQL Server DMO’s – Day 22 (sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats)

    - by Tamarick Hill
    The sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats Dynamic Management Function is used to return information about the fragmentation levels, page counts, depth, number of levels, record counts, etc. about the indexes on your database instance. One row is returned for each level in a given index, which we will discuss more later. The function takes a total of 5 input parameters which are (1) database_id, (2) object_id, (3) index_id, (4) partition_number, and (5) the mode of the scan level that you would like to run. Let’s use this function with our AdventureWorks2012 database to better illustrate the information it provides. SELECT * FROM sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats(db_id('AdventureWorks2012'), NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL) As you can see from the result set, there is a lot of beneficial information returned from this DMF. The first couple of columns in the result set (database_id, object_id, index_id, partition_number, index_type_desc, alloc_unit_type_desc) are either self-explanatory or have been explained in our previous blog sessions so I will not go into detail about these at this time. The next column in the result set is the index_depth which represents how deep the index goes. For example, If we have a large index that contains 1 root page, 3 intermediate levels, and 1 leaf level, our index depth would be 5. The next column is the index_level which refers to what level (of the depth) a particular row is referring to. Next is probably one of the most beneficial columns in this result set, which is the avg_fragmentation_in_percent. This column shows you how fragmented a particular level of an index may be. Many people use this column within their index maintenance jobs to dynamically determine whether they should do REORG’s or full REBUILD’s of a given index. The fragment count represents the number of fragments in a leaf level while the avg_fragment_size_in_pages represents the number of pages in a fragment. The page_count column tells you how many pages are in a particular index level. From my result set above, you see the the remaining columns all have NULL values. This is because I did not specify a ‘mode’ in my query and as a result it used the ‘LIMITED’ mode by default. The LIMITED mode is meant to be lightweight so it does collect information for every column in the result set. I will re-run my query again using the ‘DETAILED’ mode and you will see we now have results for these rows. SELECT * FROM sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats(db_id('AdventureWorks2012'), NULL, NULL, NULL, ‘DETAILED’)   From the remaining columns, you see we get even more detailed information such as how many records are in a particular index level (record_count). We have a column for ghost_record_count which represents the number of records that have been marked for deletion, but have not physically been removed by the background ghost cleanup process. We later see information on the MIN, MAX, and AVG record size in bytes. The forwarded_record_count column refers to records that have been updated and now no longer fit within the row on the page anymore and thus have to be moved. A forwarded record is left in the original location with a pointer to the new location. The last column in the result set is the compressed_page_count column which tells you how many pages in your index have been compressed. This is a very powerful DMF that returns good information about the current indexes in your system. However, based on the mode you select, it could be a very resource intensive function so be careful with how you use it. For more information on this Dynamic Management Function, please see the below Books Online link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188917.aspx Follow me on Twitter @PrimeTimeDBA

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  • Designing for the future

    - by Dennis Vroegop
    User interfaces and user experience design is a fast moving field. It’s something that changes pretty quick: what feels fresh today will look outdated tomorrow. I remember the day I first got a beta version of Windows 95 and I felt swept away by the user interface of the OS. It felt so modern! If I look back now, it feels old. Well, it should: the design is 17 years old which is an eternity in our field. Of course, this is not limited to UI. Same goes for many industries. I want you to think back of the cars that amazed you when you were in your teens (if you are in your teens then this may not apply to you). Didn’t they feel like part of the future? Didn’t you think that this was the ultimate in designs? And aren’t those designs hopelessly outdated today (again, depending on your age, it may just be me)? Let’s review the Win95 design: And let’s compare that to Windows 7: There are so many differences here, I wouldn’t even know where to start explaining them. The general feeling however is one of more usability: studies have shown Windows 7 is much easier to understand for new users than the older versions of Windows did. Of course, experienced Windows users didn’t like it: people are usually afraid of changes and like to stick to what they know. But for new users this was a huge improvement. And that is what UX design is all about: make a product easier to use, with less training required and make users feel more productive. Still, there are areas where this doesn’t hold up. There are plenty examples of designs from the past that are still fresh today. But if you look closely at them, you’ll notice some subtle differences. This differences are what keep the designs fresh. A good example is the signs you’ll find on the road. They haven’t changed much over the years (otherwise people wouldn’t recognize them anymore) but they have been changing gradually to reflect changes in traffic. The same goes for computer interfaces. With each new product or version of a product, the UI and UX is changed gradually. Every now and then however, a bigger change is needed. Just think about the introduction of the Ribbon in Microsoft Office 2007: the whole UI was redesigned. A lot of old users (not in age, but in times of using older versions) didn’t like it a bit, but new users or casual users seem to be more efficient using the product. Which, of course, is exactly the reason behind the changes. I believe that a big engine behind the changes in User Experience design has been the web. In the old days (i.e. before the explosion of the internet) user interface design in Windows applications was limited to choosing the margins between your battleship gray buttons. When the web came along, and especially the web 2.0 where the browsers started to act more and more as application platforms, designers stepped in and made a huge impact. In the browser, they could do whatever they wanted. In the beginning this was limited to the darn blink tag but gradually people really started to think about UX. Even more so: the design of the UI and the whole experience was taken away from the developers and put into the hands of people who knew what they were doing: UX designers. This caused some problems. Everyone who has done a web project in the early 2000’s must have had the same experience: the designers give you a set of Photoshop files and tell you to translate it to HTML. Which, of course, is very hard to do. However, with new tooling and new standards this became much easier. The latest version of HTML and CSS has taken the responsibility for the design away from the developers and placed them in the capable hands of the designers. And that’s where that responsibility belongs, after all, I don’t want a designer to muck around in my c# code just as much as he or she doesn’t want me to poke in the sites style definitions. This change in responsibilities resulted in good looking but more important: better thought out user interfaces in websites. And when websites became more and more interactive, people started to expect the same sort of look and feel from their desktop applications. But that didn’t really happen. Most business applications still have that battleship gray look and feel. Ok, they may use a different color but we’re not talking colors here but usability. Now, you may not be able to read the Dutch captions, but even if you did you wouldn’t understand what was going on. At least, not when you first see it. You have to scan the screen, read all the labels, see how they are related to the other elements on the screen and then figure out what they do. If you’re an experienced user of this application however, this might be a good thing: you know what to do and you get all the information you need in one single screen. But for most applications this isn’t the case. A lot of people only use their computer for a limited time a day (a weird concept for me, but it happens) and need it to get something done and then get on with their lives. For them, a user interface experience like the above isn’t working. (disclaimer: I just picked a screenshot, I am not saying this is bad software but it is an example of about 95% of the Windows applications out there). For the knowledge worker, this isn’t a problem. They use one or two systems and they know exactly what they need to do to achieve their goal. They don’t want any clutter on their screen that distracts them from their task, they just want to be as efficient as possible. When they know the systems they are very productive. The point is, how long does it take to become productive? And: could they be even more productive if the UX was better? Are there things missing that they don’t know about? Are there better ways to achieve what they want to achieve? Also: could a system be designed in such a way that it is not only much more easy to work with but also less tiring? in the example above you need to switch between the keyboard and mouse a lot, something that we now know can be very tiring. The goal of most applications (being client apps or websites on any kind of device) is to provide information. Information is data that when given to the right people, on the right time, in the right place and when it is correct adds value for that person (please, remember that definition: I still hear the statement “the information was wrong” which doesn’t make sense: data can be wrong, information cannot be). So if a system provides data, how can we make sure the chances of becoming information is as high as possible? A good example of a well thought-out system that attempts this is the Zune client. It is a very good application, and I think the UX is much better than it’s main competitor iTunes. Have a look at both: On the left you see the iTunes screenshot, on the right the Zune. As you notice, the Zune screen has more images but less chrome (chrome being visuals not part of the data you want to show, i.e. edges around buttons). The whole thing is text oriented or image oriented, where that text or image is part of the information you need. What is important is big, what’s less important is smaller. Yet, everything you need to know at that point is present and your attention is drawn immediately to what you’re trying to achieve: information about music. You can easily switch between the content on your machine and content on your Zune player but clicking on the image of the player. But if you didn’t know that, you’d find out soon enough: the whole UX is designed in such a way that it invites you to play around. So sooner or later (probably sooner) you’d click on that image and you would see what it does. In the iTunes version it’s harder to find: the discoverability is a lot lower. For inexperienced people the Zune player feels much more natural than the iTunes player, and they get up to speed a lot faster. How does this all work? Why is this UX better? The answer lies in a project from Microsoft with the codename (it seems to be becoming the official name though) “Metro”. Metro is a design language, based on certain principles. When they thought about UX they took a good long look around them and went out in search of metaphors. And they found them. The team noticed that signage in streets, airports, roads, buildings and so on are usually very clear and very precise. These signs give you the information you need and nothing more. It’s simple, clearly understood and fast to understand. A good example are airport signs. Airports can be intimidating places, especially for the non-experienced traveler. In the early 1990’s Amsterdam Airport Schiphol decided to redesign all the signage to make the traveller feel less disoriented. They developed a set of guidelines for signs and implemented those. Soon, most airports around the world adopted these ideas and you see variations of the Dutch signs everywhere on the globe. The signs are text-oriented. Yes, there are icons explaining what it all means for the people who can’t read or don’t understand the language, but the basic sign language is text. It’s clear, it’s high-contrast and it’s easy to understand. One look at the sign and you know where to go. The only thing I don’t like is the green sign pointing to the emergency exit, but since this is the default style for emergency exits I understand why they did this. If you look at the Zune UI again, you’ll notice the similarities. Text oriented, little or no icons, clear usage of fonts and all the information you need. This design language has a set of principles: Clean, light, open and fast Content, not chrome Soulful and alive These are just a couple of the principles, you can read the whole philosophy behind Metro for Windows Phone 7 here. These ideas seem to work. I love my Windows Phone 7. It’s easy to use, it’s clear, there’s no clutter that I do not need. It works for me. And I noticed it works for a lot of other people as well, especially people who aren’t as proficient with computers as I am. You see these ideas in a lot other places. Corning, a manufacturer of glass, has made a video of possible usages of their products. It’s their glimpse into the future. You’ll notice that a lot of the UI in the screens look a lot like what Microsoft is doing with Metro (not coincidentally Corning is the supplier for the Gorilla glass display surface on the new SUR40 device (or Surface v2.0 as a lot of people call it)). The idea behind this vision is that data should be available everywhere where you it. Systems should be available at all times and data is presented in a clear and light manner so that you can turn that data into information. You don’t need a lot of fancy animations that only distract from the data. You want the data and you want it fast. Have a look at this truly inspiring video that made: This is what I believe the future will look like. Of course, not everything is possible, or even desirable. But it is a nice way to think about the future . I feel very strongly about designing applications in such a way that they add value to the user. Designing applications that turn data into information. Applications that make the user feel happy to use them. So… when are you going to drop the battleship-gray designs? Tags van Technorati: surface,design,windows phone 7,wp7,metro

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  • Boost Netbook Speed with an SD Card & ReadyBoost

    - by Matthew Guay
    Looking for a way to increase the performance of your netbook?  Here’s how you can use a standard SD memory card or a USB flash drive to boost performance with ReadyBoost. Most netbooks ship with 1Gb of Ram, and many older netbooks shipped with even less.  Even if you want to add more ram, often they can only be upgraded to a max of 2GB.  With ReadyBoost in Windows 7, it’s easy to boost your system’s performance with flash memory.  If your netbook has an SD card slot, you can insert a memory card into it and just leave it there to always boost your netbook’s memory; otherwise, you can use a standard USB flash drive the same way. Also, you can use ReadyBoost on any desktop or laptop; ones with limited memory will see the most performance increase from using it. Please Note:  ReadyBoost requires at least 256Mb of free space on your flash drive, and also requires minimum read/write speeds.  Most modern memory cards or flash drives meet these requirements, but be aware that an old card may not work with it. Using ReadyBoost Insert an SD card into your card reader, or connect a USB flash drive to a USB port on your computer.  Windows will automatically see if your flash memory is ReadyBoost capable, and if so, you can directly choose to speed up your computer with ReadyBoost. The ReadyBoost settings dialog will open when you select this.  Choose “Use this device” and choose how much space you want ReadyBoost to use. Click Ok, and Windows will setup ReadyBoost and start using it to speed up your computer.  It will automatically use ReadyBoost whenever the card is connected to the computer. When you view your SD card or flash drive in Explorer, you will notice a ReadyBoost file the size you chose before.  This will be deleted when you eject your card or flash drive. If you need to remove your drive to use elsewhere, simply eject as normal. Windows will inform you that the drive is currently being used.  Make sure you have closed any programs or files you had open from the drive, and then press Continue to stop ReadyBoost and eject your drive. If you remove the drive without ejecting it, the ReadyBoost file may still remain on the drive.  You can delete this to save space on the drive, and the cache will be recreated when you use ReadyBoost next time. Conclusion Although ReadyBoost may not make your netbook feel like a Core i7 laptop with 6GB of RAM, it will still help performance and make multitasking even easier.  Also, if you have, say, a memory stick and a flash drive, you can use both of them with ReadyBoost for the maximum benefit.  We have even noticed better battery life when multitasking with ReadyBoost, as it lets you use your hard drive less.  SD cards and thumb drives are relatively cheap today, and many of us have several already, so this is a great way to improve netbook performance cheaply. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Speed up Your Windows Vista Computer with ReadyBoostSet the Speed Dial as the Opera Startup PageAsk the Readers: What are Your Computer’s Hardware Specs?Understanding Windows Vista Aero Glass RequirementsReplace Google Chrome’s New Tab Page with Speed Dial TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Recycle ! Find That Elusive Icon with FindIcons Looking for Good Windows Media Player 12 Plug-ins? Find Out the Celebrity You Resemble With FaceDouble Whoa ! Use Printflush to Solve Printing Problems

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