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  • help with fixing fwts errors log

    - by jasmines
    Here is an extract of results.log: MTRR validation. Test 1 of 3: Validate the kernel MTRR IOMEM setup. FAILED [MEDIUM] MTRRIncorrectAttr: Test 1, Memory range 0xc0000000 to 0xdfffffff (PCI Bus 0000:00) has incorrect attribute Write-Combining. FAILED [MEDIUM] MTRRIncorrectAttr: Test 1, Memory range 0xfee01000 to 0xffffffff (PCI Bus 0000:00) has incorrect attribute Write-Protect. ==================================================================================================== Test 1 of 1: Kernel log error check. Kernel message: [ 0.208079] [Firmware Bug]: ACPI: BIOS _OSI(Linux) query ignored ADVICE: This is not exactly a failure mode but a warning from the kernel. The _OSI() method has implemented a match to the 'Linux' query in the DSDT and this is redundant because the ACPI driver matches onto the Windows _OSI strings by default. FAILED [HIGH] KlogACPIErrorMethodExecutionParse: Test 1, HIGH Kernel message: [ 3.512783] ACPI Error : Method parse/execution failed [\_SB_.PCI0.GFX0._DOD] (Node f7425858), AE_AML_PACKAGE_LIMIT (20110623/psparse-536) ADVICE: This is a bug picked up by the kernel, but as yet, the firmware test suite has no diagnostic advice for this particular problem. Found 1 unique errors in kernel log. ==================================================================================================== Check if system is using latest microcode. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cannot read microcode file /usr/share/misc/intel-microcode.dat. Aborted test, initialisation failed. ==================================================================================================== MSR register tests. FAILED [MEDIUM] MSRCPUsInconsistent: Test 1, MSR SYSENTER_ESP (0x175) has 1 inconsistent values across 2 CPUs for (shift: 0 mask: 0xffffffffffffffff). MSR CPU 0 -> 0xf7bb9c40 vs CPU 1 -> 0xf7bc7c40 FAILED [MEDIUM] MSRCPUsInconsistent: Test 1, MSR MISC_ENABLE (0x1a0) has 1 inconsistent values across 2 CPUs for (shift: 0 mask: 0x400c51889). MSR CPU 0 -> 0x850088 vs CPU 1 -> 0x850089 ==================================================================================================== Checks firmware has set PCI Express MaxReadReq to a higher value on non-motherboard devices. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Test 1 of 1: Check firmware settings MaxReadReq for PCI Express devices. MaxReadReq for pci://00:00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03) is low (128) [Audio device]. MaxReadReq for pci://00:02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 5100 AGN [Shiloh] Network Connection is low (128) [Network controller]. FAILED [LOW] LowMaxReadReq: Test 1, 2 devices have low MaxReadReq settings. Firmware may have configured these too low. ADVICE: The MaxReadRequest size is set too low and will affect performance. It will provide excellent bus sharing at the cost of bus data transfer rates. Although not a critical issue, it may be worth considering setting the MaxReadRequest size to 256 or 512 to increase throughput on the PCI Express bus. Some drivers (for example the Brocade Fibre Channel driver) allow one to override the firmware settings. Where possible, this BIOS configuration setting is worth increasing it a little more for better performance at a small reduction of bus sharing. ==================================================================================================== PCIe ASPM check. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Test 1 of 2: PCIe ASPM ACPI test. PCIE ASPM is not controlled by Linux kernel. ADVICE: BIOS reports that Linux kernel should not modify ASPM settings that BIOS configured. It can be intentional because hardware vendors identified some capability bugs between the motherboard and the add-on cards. Test 2 of 2: PCIe ASPM registers test. WARNING: Test 2, RP 00h:1Ch.01h L0s not enabled. WARNING: Test 2, RP 00h:1Ch.01h L1 not enabled. WARNING: Test 2, Device 02h:00h.00h L0s not enabled. WARNING: Test 2, Device 02h:00h.00h L1 not enabled. PASSED: Test 2, PCIE aspm setting matched was matched. WARNING: Test 2, RP 00h:1Ch.05h L0s not enabled. WARNING: Test 2, RP 00h:1Ch.05h L1 not enabled. WARNING: Test 2, Device 85h:00h.00h L0s not enabled. WARNING: Test 2, Device 85h:00h.00h L1 not enabled. PASSED: Test 2, PCIE aspm setting matched was matched. ==================================================================================================== Extract and analyse Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). Test 1 of 2: Check Windows Management Instrumentation in DSDT Found WMI Method WMAA with GUID: 5FB7F034-2C63-45E9-BE91-3D44E2C707E4, Instance 0x01 Found WMI Event, Notifier ID: 0x80, GUID: 95F24279-4D7B-4334-9387-ACCDC67EF61C, Instance 0x01 PASSED: Test 1, GUID 95F24279-4D7B-4334-9387-ACCDC67EF61C is handled by driver hp-wmi (Vendor: HP). Found WMI Event, Notifier ID: 0xa0, GUID: 2B814318-4BE8-4707-9D84-A190A859B5D0, Instance 0x01 FAILED [MEDIUM] WMIUnknownGUID: Test 1, GUID 2B814318-4BE8-4707-9D84-A190A859B5D0 is unknown to the kernel, a driver may need to be implemented for this GUID. ADVICE: A WMI driver probably needs to be written for this event. It can checked for using: wmi_has_guid("2B814318-4BE8-4707-9D84-A190A859B5D0"). One can install a notify handler using wmi_install_notify_handler("2B814318-4BE8-4707-9D84-A190A859B5D0", handler, NULL). http://lwn.net/Articles/391230 describes how to write an appropriate driver. Found WMI Object, Object ID AB, GUID: 05901221-D566-11D1-B2F0-00A0C9062910, Instance 0x01, Flags: 00 Found WMI Method WMBA with GUID: 1F4C91EB-DC5C-460B-951D-C7CB9B4B8D5E, Instance 0x01 Found WMI Object, Object ID BC, GUID: 2D114B49-2DFB-4130-B8FE-4A3C09E75133, Instance 0x7f, Flags: 00 Found WMI Object, Object ID BD, GUID: 988D08E3-68F4-4C35-AF3E-6A1B8106F83C, Instance 0x19, Flags: 00 Found WMI Object, Object ID BE, GUID: 14EA9746-CE1F-4098-A0E0-7045CB4DA745, Instance 0x01, Flags: 00 Found WMI Object, Object ID BF, GUID: 322F2028-0F84-4901-988E-015176049E2D, Instance 0x01, Flags: 00 Found WMI Object, Object ID BG, GUID: 8232DE3D-663D-4327-A8F4-E293ADB9BF05, Instance 0x01, Flags: 00 Found WMI Object, Object ID BH, GUID: 8F1F6436-9F42-42C8-BADC-0E9424F20C9A, Instance 0x00, Flags: 00 Found WMI Object, Object ID BI, GUID: 8F1F6435-9F42-42C8-BADC-0E9424F20C9A, Instance 0x00, Flags: 00 Found WMI Method WMAC with GUID: 7391A661-223A-47DB-A77A-7BE84C60822D, Instance 0x01 Found WMI Object, Object ID BJ, GUID: DF4E63B6-3BBC-4858-9737-C74F82F821F3, Instance 0x05, Flags: 00 ==================================================================================================== Disassemble DSDT to check for _OSI("Linux"). ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Test 1 of 1: Disassemble DSDT to check for _OSI("Linux"). This is not strictly a failure mode, it just alerts one that this has been defined in the DSDT and probably should be avoided since the Linux ACPI driver matches onto the Windows _OSI strings { If (_OSI ("Linux")) { Store (0x03E8, OSYS) } If (_OSI ("Windows 2001")) { Store (0x07D1, OSYS) } If (_OSI ("Windows 2001 SP1")) { Store (0x07D1, OSYS) } If (_OSI ("Windows 2001 SP2")) { Store (0x07D2, OSYS) } If (_OSI ("Windows 2006")) { Store (0x07D6, OSYS) } If (LAnd (MPEN, LEqual (OSYS, 0x07D1))) { TRAP (0x01, 0x48) } TRAP (0x03, 0x35) } WARNING: Test 1, DSDT implements a deprecated _OSI("Linux") test. ==================================================================================================== 0 passed, 0 failed, 1 warnings, 0 aborted, 0 skipped, 0 info only. ==================================================================================================== ACPI DSDT Method Semantic Tests. ACPICA Exception AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP during execution of method COMP Failed to install global event handler. Test 22 of 93: Check _PSR (Power Source). ACPICA Exception AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP during execution of method COMP WARNING: Test 22, Detected an infinite loop when evaluating method '\_SB_.AC__._PSR'. ADVICE: This may occur because we are emulating the execution in this test environment and cannot handshake with the embedded controller or jump to the BIOS via SMIs. However, the fact that AML code spins forever means that lockup conditions are not being checked for in the AML bytecode. PASSED: Test 22, \_SB_.AC__._PSR correctly acquired and released locks 16 times. Test 35 of 93: Check _TMP (Thermal Zone Current Temp). ACPICA Exception AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP during execution of method COMP WARNING: Test 35, Detected an infinite loop when evaluating method '\_TZ_.DTSZ._TMP'. ADVICE: This may occur because we are emulating the execution in this test environment and cannot handshake with the embedded controller or jump to the BIOS via SMIs. However, the fact that AML code spins forever means that lockup conditions are not being checked for in the AML bytecode. PASSED: Test 35, \_TZ_.DTSZ._TMP correctly acquired and released locks 14 times. ACPICA Exception AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP during execution of method COMP WARNING: Test 35, Detected an infinite loop when evaluating method '\_TZ_.CPUZ._TMP'. ADVICE: This may occur because we are emulating the execution in this test environment and cannot handshake with the embedded controller or jump to the BIOS via SMIs. However, the fact that AML code spins forever means that lockup conditions are not being checked for in the AML bytecode. PASSED: Test 35, \_TZ_.CPUZ._TMP correctly acquired and released locks 10 times. ACPICA Exception AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP during execution of method COMP WARNING: Test 35, Detected an infinite loop when evaluating method '\_TZ_.SKNZ._TMP'. ADVICE: This may occur because we are emulating the execution in this test environment and cannot handshake with the embedded controller or jump to the BIOS via SMIs. However, the fact that AML code spins forever means that lockup conditions are not being checked for in the AML bytecode. PASSED: Test 35, \_TZ_.SKNZ._TMP correctly acquired and released locks 10 times. PASSED: Test 35, _TMP correctly returned sane looking value 0x00000b4c (289.2 degrees K) PASSED: Test 35, \_TZ_.BATZ._TMP correctly acquired and released locks 9 times. PASSED: Test 35, _TMP correctly returned sane looking value 0x00000aac (273.2 degrees K) PASSED: Test 35, \_TZ_.FDTZ._TMP correctly acquired and released locks 7 times. Test 46 of 93: Check _DIS (Disable). FAILED [MEDIUM] MethodShouldReturnNothing: Test 46, \_SB_.PCI0.LPCB.SIO_.COM1._DIS returned values, but was expected to return nothing. Object returned: INTEGER: 0x00000000 ADVICE: This probably won't cause any errors, but it should be fixed as the AML code is not conforming to the expected behaviour as described in the ACPI specification. FAILED [MEDIUM] MethodShouldReturnNothing: Test 46, \_SB_.PCI0.LPCB.SIO_.LPT0._DIS returned values, but was expected to return nothing. Object returned: INTEGER: 0x00000000 ADVICE: This probably won't cause any errors, but it should be fixed as the AML code is not conforming to the expected behaviour as described in the ACPI specification. Test 61 of 93: Check _WAK (System Wake). Test _WAK(1) System Wake, State S1. ACPICA Exception AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP during execution of method COMP WARNING: Test 61, Detected an infinite loop when evaluating method '\_WAK'. ADVICE: This may occur because we are emulating the execution in this test environment and cannot handshake with the embedded controller or jump to the BIOS via SMIs. However, the fact that AML code spins forever means that lockup conditions are not being checked for in the AML bytecode. Test _WAK(2) System Wake, State S2. ACPICA Exception AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP during execution of method COMP WARNING: Test 61, Detected an infinite loop when evaluating method '\_WAK'. ADVICE: This may occur because we are emulating the execution in this test environment and cannot handshake with the embedded controller or jump to the BIOS via SMIs. However, the fact that AML code spins forever means that lockup conditions are not being checked for in the AML bytecode. Test _WAK(3) System Wake, State S3. ACPICA Exception AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP during execution of method COMP WARNING: Test 61, Detected an infinite loop when evaluating method '\_WAK'. ADVICE: This may occur because we are emulating the execution in this test environment and cannot handshake with the embedded controller or jump to the BIOS via SMIs. However, the fact that AML code spins forever means that lockup conditions are not being checked for in the AML bytecode. Test _WAK(4) System Wake, State S4. ACPICA Exception AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP during execution of method COMP WARNING: Test 61, Detected an infinite loop when evaluating method '\_WAK'. ADVICE: This may occur because we are emulating the execution in this test environment and cannot handshake with the embedded controller or jump to the BIOS via SMIs. However, the fact that AML code spins forever means that lockup conditions are not being checked for in the AML bytecode. Test _WAK(5) System Wake, State S5. ACPICA Exception AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP during execution of method COMP WARNING: Test 61, Detected an infinite loop when evaluating method '\_WAK'. ADVICE: This may occur because we are emulating the execution in this test environment and cannot handshake with the embedded controller or jump to the BIOS via SMIs. However, the fact that AML code spins forever means that lockup conditions are not being checked for in the AML bytecode. Test 87 of 93: Check _BCL (Query List of Brightness Control Levels Supported). Package has 2 elements: 00: INTEGER: 0x00000000 01: INTEGER: 0x00000000 FAILED [MEDIUM] Method_BCLElementCount: Test 87, Method _BCL should return a package of more than 2 integers, got just 2. Test 88 of 93: Check _BCM (Set Brightness Level). ACPICA Exception AE_AML_PACKAGE_LIMIT during execution of method _BCM FAILED [CRITICAL] AEAMLPackgeLimit: Test 88, Detected error 'Package limit' when evaluating '\_SB_.PCI0.GFX0.DD02._BCM'. ==================================================================================================== ACPI table settings sanity checks. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Test 1 of 1: Check ACPI tables. PASSED: Test 1, Table APIC passed. Table ECDT not present to check. FAILED [MEDIUM] FADT32And64BothDefined: Test 1, FADT 32 bit FIRMWARE_CONTROL is non-zero, and X_FIRMWARE_CONTROL is also non-zero. Section 5.2.9 of the ACPI specification states that if the FIRMWARE_CONTROL is non-zero then X_FIRMWARE_CONTROL must be set to zero. ADVICE: The FADT FIRMWARE_CTRL is a 32 bit pointer that points to the physical memory address of the Firmware ACPI Control Structure (FACS). There is also an extended 64 bit version of this, the X_FIRMWARE_CTRL pointer that also can point to the FACS. Section 5.2.9 of the ACPI specification states that if the X_FIRMWARE_CTRL field contains a non zero value then the FIRMWARE_CTRL field *must* be zero. This error is also detected by the Linux kernel. If FIRMWARE_CTRL and X_FIRMWARE_CTRL are defined, then the kernel just uses the 64 bit version of the pointer. PASSED: Test 1, Table HPET passed. PASSED: Test 1, Table MCFG passed. PASSED: Test 1, Table RSDT passed. PASSED: Test 1, Table RSDP passed. Table SBST not present to check. PASSED: Test 1, Table XSDT passed. ==================================================================================================== Re-assemble DSDT and find syntax errors and warnings. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Test 1 of 2: Disassemble and reassemble DSDT FAILED [HIGH] AMLAssemblerError4043: Test 1, Assembler error in line 2261 Line | AML source ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 02258| 0x00000000, // Range Minimum 02259| 0xFEDFFFFF, // Range Maximum 02260| 0x00000000, // Translation Offset 02261| 0x00000000, // Length | ^ | error 4043: Invalid combination of Length and Min/Max fixed flags 02262| ,, _Y0E, AddressRangeMemory, TypeStatic) 02263| DWordMemory (ResourceProducer, PosDecode, MinFixed, MaxFixed, Cacheable, ReadWrite, 02264| 0x00000000, // Granularity ==================================================================================================== ADVICE: (for error #4043): This occurs if the length is zero and just one of the resource MIF/MAF flags are set, or the length is non-zero and resource MIF/MAF flags are both set. These are illegal combinations and need to be fixed. See section 6.4.3.5 Address Space Resource Descriptors of version 4.0a of the ACPI specification for more details. FAILED [HIGH] AMLAssemblerError4050: Test 1, Assembler error in line 2268 Line | AML source ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 02265| 0xFEE01000, // Range Minimum 02266| 0xFFFFFFFF, // Range Maximum 02267| 0x00000000, // Translation Offset 02268| 0x011FEFFF, // Length | ^ | error 4050: Length is not equal to fixed Min/Max window 02269| ,, , AddressRangeMemory, TypeStatic) 02270| }) 02271| Method (_CRS, 0, Serialized) ==================================================================================================== ADVICE: (for error #4050): The minimum address is greater than the maximum address. This is illegal. FAILED [HIGH] AMLAssemblerError1104: Test 1, Assembler error in line 8885 Line | AML source ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 08882| Method (_DIS, 0, NotSerialized) 08883| { 08884| DSOD (0x02) 08885| Return (0x00) | ^ | warning level 0 1104: Reserved method should not return a value (_DIS) 08886| } 08887| 08888| Method (_SRS, 1, NotSerialized) ==================================================================================================== FAILED [HIGH] AMLAssemblerError1104: Test 1, Assembler error in line 9195 Line | AML source ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 09192| Method (_DIS, 0, NotSerialized) 09193| { 09194| DSOD (0x01) 09195| Return (0x00) | ^ | warning level 0 1104: Reserved method should not return a value (_DIS) 09196| } 09197| 09198| Method (_SRS, 1, NotSerialized) ==================================================================================================== FAILED [HIGH] AMLAssemblerError1127: Test 1, Assembler error in line 9242 Line | AML source ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 09239| CreateWordField (CRES, \_SB.PCI0.LPCB.SIO.LPT0._CRS._Y21._MAX, MAX2) 09240| CreateByteField (CRES, \_SB.PCI0.LPCB.SIO.LPT0._CRS._Y21._LEN, LEN2) 09241| CreateWordField (CRES, \_SB.PCI0.LPCB.SIO.LPT0._CRS._Y22._INT, IRQ0) 09242| CreateWordField (CRES, \_SB.PCI0.LPCB.SIO.LPT0._CRS._Y23._DMA, DMA0) | ^ | warning level 0 1127: ResourceTag smaller than Field (Tag: 8 bits, Field: 16 bits) 09243| If (RLPD) 09244| { 09245| Store (0x00, Local0) ==================================================================================================== FAILED [HIGH] AMLAssemblerError1128: Test 1, Assembler error in line 18682 Line | AML source ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 18679| Store (0x01, Index (DerefOf (Index (Local0, 0x02)), 0x01)) 18680| If (And (WDPE, 0x40)) 18681| { 18682| Wait (\_SB.BEVT, 0x10) | ^ | warning level 0 1128: Result is not used, possible operator timeout will be missed 18683| } 18684| 18685| Store (BRID, Index (DerefOf (Index (Local0, 0x02)), 0x02)) ==================================================================================================== ADVICE: (for warning level 0 #1128): The operation can possibly timeout, and hence the return value indicates an timeout error. However, because the return value is not checked this very probably indicates that the code is buggy. A possible scenario is that a mutex times out and the code attempts to access data in a critical region when it should not. This will lead to undefined behaviour. This should be fixed. Table DSDT (0) reassembly: Found 2 errors, 4 warnings. Test 2 of 2: Disassemble and reassemble SSDT PASSED: Test 2, SSDT (0) reassembly, Found 0 errors, 0 warnings. FAILED [HIGH] AMLAssemblerError1104: Test 2, Assembler error in line 60 Line | AML source ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 00057| { 00058| Store (CPDC (Arg0), Local0) 00059| GCAP (Local0) 00060| Return (Local0) | ^ | warning level 0 1104: Reserved method should not return a value (_PDC) 00061| } 00062| 00063| Method (_OSC, 4, NotSerialized) ==================================================================================================== FAILED [HIGH] AMLAssemblerError1104: Test 2, Assembler error in line 174 Line | AML source ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 00171| { 00172| Store (\_PR.CPU0.CPDC (Arg0), Local0) 00173| GCAP (Local0) 00174| Return (Local0) | ^ | warning level 0 1104: Reserved method should not return a value (_PDC) 00175| } 00176| 00177| Method (_OSC, 4, NotSerialized) ==================================================================================================== FAILED [HIGH] AMLAssemblerError1104: Test 2, Assembler error in line 244 Line | AML source ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 00241| { 00242| Store (\_PR.CPU0.CPDC (Arg0), Local0) 00243| GCAP (Local0) 00244| Return (Local0) | ^ | warning level 0 1104: Reserved method should not return a value (_PDC) 00245| } 00246| 00247| Method (_OSC, 4, NotSerialized) ==================================================================================================== FAILED [HIGH] AMLAssemblerError1104: Test 2, Assembler error in line 290 Line | AML source ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 00287| { 00288| Store (\_PR.CPU0.CPDC (Arg0), Local0) 00289| GCAP (Local0) 00290| Return (Local0) | ^ | warning level 0 1104: Reserved method should not return a value (_PDC) 00291| } 00292| 00293| Method (_OSC, 4, NotSerialized) ==================================================================================================== Table SSDT (1) reassembly: Found 0 errors, 4 warnings. PASSED: Test 2, SSDT (2) reassembly, Found 0 errors, 0 warnings. PASSED: Test 2, SSDT (3) reassembly, Found 0 errors, 0 warnings. ==================================================================================================== 3 passed, 10 failed, 0 warnings, 0 aborted, 0 skipped, 0 info only. ==================================================================================================== Critical failures: 1 method test, at 1 log line: 1449: Detected error 'Package limit' when evaluating '\_SB_.PCI0.GFX0.DD02._BCM'. High failures: 11 klog test, at 1 log line: 121: HIGH Kernel message: [ 3.512783] ACPI Error: Method parse/execution failed [\_SB_.PCI0.GFX0._DOD] (Node f7425858), AE_AML_PACKAGE_LIMIT (20110623/psparse-536) syntaxcheck test, at 1 log line: 1668: Assembler error in line 2261 syntaxcheck test, at 1 log line: 1687: Assembler error in line 2268 syntaxcheck test, at 1 log line: 1703: Assembler error in line 8885 syntaxcheck test, at 1 log line: 1716: Assembler error in line 9195 syntaxcheck test, at 1 log line: 1729: Assembler error in line 9242 syntaxcheck test, at 1 log line: 1742: Assembler error in line 18682 syntaxcheck test, at 1 log line: 1766: Assembler error in line 60 syntaxcheck test, at 1 log line: 1779: Assembler error in line 174 syntaxcheck test, at 1 log line: 1792: Assembler error in line 244 syntaxcheck test, at 1 log line: 1805: Assembler error in line 290 Medium failures: 9 mtrr test, at 1 log line: 76: Memory range 0xc0000000 to 0xdfffffff (PCI Bus 0000:00) has incorrect attribute Write-Combining. mtrr test, at 1 log line: 78: Memory range 0xfee01000 to 0xffffffff (PCI Bus 0000:00) has incorrect attribute Write-Protect. msr test, at 1 log line: 165: MSR SYSENTER_ESP (0x175) has 1 inconsistent values across 2 CPUs for (shift: 0 mask: 0xffffffffffffffff). msr test, at 1 log line: 173: MSR MISC_ENABLE (0x1a0) has 1 inconsistent values across 2 CPUs for (shift: 0 mask: 0x400c51889). wmi test, at 1 log line: 528: GUID 2B814318-4BE8-4707-9D84-A190A859B5D0 is unknown to the kernel, a driver may need to be implemented for this GUID. method test, at 1 log line: 1002: \_SB_.PCI0.LPCB.SIO_.COM1._DIS returned values, but was expected to return nothing. method test, at 1 log line: 1011: \_SB_.PCI0.LPCB.SIO_.LPT0._DIS returned values, but was expected to return nothing. method test, at 1 log line: 1443: Method _BCL should return a package of more than 2 integers, got just 2. acpitables test, at 1 log line: 1643: FADT 32 bit FIRMWARE_CONTROL is non-zero, and X_FIRMWARE_CONTROL is also non-zero. Se

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  • Dynamically loading Assemblies to reduce Runtime Depencies

    - by Rick Strahl
    I've been working on a request to the West Wind Application Configuration library to add JSON support. The config library is a very easy to use code-first approach to configuration: You create a class that holds the configuration data that inherits from a base configuration class, and then assign a persistence provider at runtime that determines where and how the configuration data is store. Currently the library supports .NET Configuration stores (web.config/app.config), XML files, SQL records and string storage.About once a week somebody asks me about JSON support and I've deflected this question for the longest time because frankly I think that JSON as a configuration store doesn't really buy a heck of a lot over XML. Both formats require the user to perform some fixup of the plain configuration data - in XML into XML tags, with JSON using JSON delimiters for properties and property formatting rules. Sure JSON is a little less verbose and maybe a little easier to read if you have hierarchical data, but overall the differences are pretty minor in my opinion. And yet - the requests keep rolling in.Hard Link Issues in a Component LibraryAnother reason I've been hesitant is that I really didn't want to pull in a dependency on an external JSON library - in this case JSON.NET - into the core library. If you're not using JSON.NET elsewhere I don't want a user to have to require a hard dependency on JSON.NET unless they want to use the JSON feature. JSON.NET is also sensitive to versions and doesn't play nice with multiple versions when hard linked. For example, when you have a reference to V4.4 in your project but the host application has a reference to version 4.5 you can run into assembly load problems. NuGet's Update-Package can solve some of this *if* you can recompile, but that's not ideal for a component that's supposed to be just plug and play. This is no criticism of JSON.NET - this really applies to any dependency that might change.  So hard linking the DLL can be problematic for a number reasons, but the primary reason is to not force loading of JSON.NET unless you actually need it when you use the JSON configuration features of the library.Enter Dynamic LoadingSo rather than adding an assembly reference to the project, I decided that it would be better to dynamically load the DLL at runtime and then use dynamic typing to access various classes. This allows me to run without a hard assembly reference and allows more flexibility with version number differences now and in the future.But there are also a couple of downsides:No assembly reference means only dynamic access - no compiler type checking or IntellisenseRequirement for the host application to have reference to JSON.NET or else get runtime errorsThe former is minor, but the latter can be problematic. Runtime errors are always painful, but in this case I'm willing to live with this. If you want to use JSON configuration settings JSON.NET needs to be loaded in the project. If this is a Web project, it'll likely be there already.So there are a few things that are needed to make this work:Dynamically create an instance and optionally attempt to load an Assembly (if not loaded)Load types into dynamic variablesUse Reflection for a few tasks like statics/enumsThe dynamic keyword in C# makes the formerly most difficult Reflection part - method calls and property assignments - fairly painless. But as cool as dynamic is it doesn't handle all aspects of Reflection. Specifically it doesn't deal with object activation, truly dynamic (string based) member activation or accessing of non instance members, so there's still a little bit of work left to do with Reflection.Dynamic Object InstantiationThe first step in getting the process rolling is to instantiate the type you need to work with. This might be a two step process - loading the instance from a string value, since we don't have a hard type reference and potentially having to load the assembly. Although the host project might have a reference to JSON.NET, that instance might have not been loaded yet since it hasn't been accessed yet. In ASP.NET this won't be a problem, since ASP.NET preloads all referenced assemblies on AppDomain startup, but in other executable project, assemblies are just in time loaded only when they are accessed.Instantiating a type is a two step process: Finding the type reference and then activating it. Here's the generic code out of my ReflectionUtils library I use for this:/// <summary> /// Creates an instance of a type based on a string. Assumes that the type's /// </summary> /// <param name="typeName">Common name of the type</param> /// <param name="args">Any constructor parameters</param> /// <returns></returns> public static object CreateInstanceFromString(string typeName, params object[] args) { object instance = null; Type type = null; try { type = GetTypeFromName(typeName); if (type == null) return null; instance = Activator.CreateInstance(type, args); } catch { return null; } return instance; } /// <summary> /// Helper routine that looks up a type name and tries to retrieve the /// full type reference in the actively executing assemblies. /// </summary> /// <param name="typeName"></param> /// <returns></returns> public static Type GetTypeFromName(string typeName) { Type type = null; // Let default name binding find it type = Type.GetType(typeName, false); if (type != null) return type; // look through assembly list var assemblies = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies(); // try to find manually foreach (Assembly asm in assemblies) { type = asm.GetType(typeName, false); if (type != null) break; } return type; } To use this for loading JSON.NET I have a small factory function that instantiates JSON.NET and sets a bunch of configuration settings on the generated object. The startup code also looks for failure and tries loading up the assembly when it fails since that's the main reason the load would fail. Finally it also caches the loaded instance for reuse (according to James the JSON.NET instance is thread safe and quite a bit faster when cached). Here's what the factory function looks like in JsonSerializationUtils:/// <summary> /// Dynamically creates an instance of JSON.NET /// </summary> /// <param name="throwExceptions">If true throws exceptions otherwise returns null</param> /// <returns>Dynamic JsonSerializer instance</returns> public static dynamic CreateJsonNet(bool throwExceptions = true) { if (JsonNet != null) return JsonNet; lock (SyncLock) { if (JsonNet != null) return JsonNet; // Try to create instance dynamic json = ReflectionUtils.CreateInstanceFromString("Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializer"); if (json == null) { try { var ass = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.Load("Newtonsoft.Json"); json = ReflectionUtils.CreateInstanceFromString("Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializer"); } catch (Exception ex) { if (throwExceptions) throw; return null; } } if (json == null) return null; json.ReferenceLoopHandling = (dynamic) ReflectionUtils.GetStaticProperty("Newtonsoft.Json.ReferenceLoopHandling", "Ignore"); // Enums as strings in JSON dynamic enumConverter = ReflectionUtils.CreateInstanceFromString("Newtonsoft.Json.Converters.StringEnumConverter"); json.Converters.Add(enumConverter); JsonNet = json; } return JsonNet; }This code's purpose is to return a fully configured JsonSerializer instance. As you can see the code tries to create an instance and when it fails tries to load the assembly, and then re-tries loading.Once the instance is loaded some configuration occurs on it. Specifically I set the ReferenceLoopHandling option to not blow up immediately when circular references are encountered. There are a host of other small config setting that might be useful to set, but the default seem to be good enough in recent versions. Note that I'm setting ReferenceLoopHandling which requires an Enum value to be set. There's no real easy way (short of using the cardinal numeric value) to set a property or pass parameters from static values or enums. This means I still need to use Reflection to make this work. I'm using the same ReflectionUtils class I previously used to handle this for me. The function looks up the type and then uses Type.InvokeMember() to read the static property.Another feature I need is have Enum values serialized as strings rather than numeric values which is the default. To do this I can use the StringEnumConverter to convert enums to strings by adding it to the Converters collection.As you can see there's still a bit of Reflection to be done even in C# 4+ with dynamic, but with a few helpers this process is relatively painless.Doing the actual JSON ConversionFinally I need to actually do my JSON conversions. For the Utility class I need serialization that works for both strings and files so I created four methods that handle these tasks two each for serialization and deserialization for string and file.Here's what the File Serialization looks like:/// <summary> /// Serializes an object instance to a JSON file. /// </summary> /// <param name="value">the value to serialize</param> /// <param name="fileName">Full path to the file to write out with JSON.</param> /// <param name="throwExceptions">Determines whether exceptions are thrown or false is returned</param> /// <param name="formatJsonOutput">if true pretty-formats the JSON with line breaks</param> /// <returns>true or false</returns> public static bool SerializeToFile(object value, string fileName, bool throwExceptions = false, bool formatJsonOutput = false) { dynamic writer = null; FileStream fs = null; try { Type type = value.GetType(); var json = CreateJsonNet(throwExceptions); if (json == null) return false; fs = new FileStream(fileName, FileMode.Create); var sw = new StreamWriter(fs, Encoding.UTF8); writer = Activator.CreateInstance(JsonTextWriterType, sw); if (formatJsonOutput) writer.Formatting = (dynamic)Enum.Parse(FormattingType, "Indented"); writer.QuoteChar = '"'; json.Serialize(writer, value); } catch (Exception ex) { Debug.WriteLine("JsonSerializer Serialize error: " + ex.Message); if (throwExceptions) throw; return false; } finally { if (writer != null) writer.Close(); if (fs != null) fs.Close(); } return true; }You can see more of the dynamic invocation in this code. First I grab the dynamic JsonSerializer instance using the CreateJsonNet() method shown earlier which returns a dynamic. I then create a JsonTextWriter and configure a couple of enum settings on it, and then call Serialize() on the serializer instance with the JsonTextWriter that writes the output to disk. Although this code is dynamic it's still fairly short and readable.For full circle operation here's the DeserializeFromFile() version:/// <summary> /// Deserializes an object from file and returns a reference. /// </summary> /// <param name="fileName">name of the file to serialize to</param> /// <param name="objectType">The Type of the object. Use typeof(yourobject class)</param> /// <param name="binarySerialization">determines whether we use Xml or Binary serialization</param> /// <param name="throwExceptions">determines whether failure will throw rather than return null on failure</param> /// <returns>Instance of the deserialized object or null. Must be cast to your object type</returns> public static object DeserializeFromFile(string fileName, Type objectType, bool throwExceptions = false) { dynamic json = CreateJsonNet(throwExceptions); if (json == null) return null; object result = null; dynamic reader = null; FileStream fs = null; try { fs = new FileStream(fileName, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read); var sr = new StreamReader(fs, Encoding.UTF8); reader = Activator.CreateInstance(JsonTextReaderType, sr); result = json.Deserialize(reader, objectType); reader.Close(); } catch (Exception ex) { Debug.WriteLine("JsonNetSerialization Deserialization Error: " + ex.Message); if (throwExceptions) throw; return null; } finally { if (reader != null) reader.Close(); if (fs != null) fs.Close(); } return result; }This code is a little more compact since there are no prettifying options to set. Here JsonTextReader is created dynamically and it receives the output from the Deserialize() operation on the serializer.You can take a look at the full JsonSerializationUtils.cs file on GitHub to see the rest of the operations, but the string operations are very similar - the code is fairly repetitive.These generic serialization utilities isolate the dynamic serialization logic that has to deal with the dynamic nature of JSON.NET, and any code that uses these functions is none the wiser that JSON.NET is dynamically loaded.Using the JsonSerializationUtils WrapperThe final consumer of the SerializationUtils wrapper is an actual ConfigurationProvider, that is responsible for handling reading and writing JSON values to and from files. The provider is simple a small wrapper around the SerializationUtils component and there's very little code to make this work now:The whole provider looks like this:/// <summary> /// Reads and Writes configuration settings in .NET config files and /// sections. Allows reading and writing to default or external files /// and specification of the configuration section that settings are /// applied to. /// </summary> public class JsonFileConfigurationProvider<TAppConfiguration> : ConfigurationProviderBase<TAppConfiguration> where TAppConfiguration: AppConfiguration, new() { /// <summary> /// Optional - the Configuration file where configuration settings are /// stored in. If not specified uses the default Configuration Manager /// and its default store. /// </summary> public string JsonConfigurationFile { get { return _JsonConfigurationFile; } set { _JsonConfigurationFile = value; } } private string _JsonConfigurationFile = string.Empty; public override bool Read(AppConfiguration config) { var newConfig = JsonSerializationUtils.DeserializeFromFile(JsonConfigurationFile, typeof(TAppConfiguration)) as TAppConfiguration; if (newConfig == null) { if(Write(config)) return true; return false; } DecryptFields(newConfig); DataUtils.CopyObjectData(newConfig, config, "Provider,ErrorMessage"); return true; } /// <summary> /// Return /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TAppConfig"></typeparam> /// <returns></returns> public override TAppConfig Read<TAppConfig>() { var result = JsonSerializationUtils.DeserializeFromFile(JsonConfigurationFile, typeof(TAppConfig)) as TAppConfig; if (result != null) DecryptFields(result); return result; } /// <summary> /// Write configuration to XmlConfigurationFile location /// </summary> /// <param name="config"></param> /// <returns></returns> public override bool Write(AppConfiguration config) { EncryptFields(config); bool result = JsonSerializationUtils.SerializeToFile(config, JsonConfigurationFile,false,true); // Have to decrypt again to make sure the properties are readable afterwards DecryptFields(config); return result; } }This incidentally demonstrates how easy it is to create a new provider for the West Wind Application Configuration component. Simply implementing 3 methods will do in most cases.Note this code doesn't have any dynamic dependencies - all that's abstracted away in the JsonSerializationUtils(). From here on, serializing JSON is just a matter of calling the static methods on the SerializationUtils class.Already, there are several other places in some other tools where I use JSON serialization this is coming in very handy. With a couple of lines of code I was able to add JSON.NET support to an older AJAX library that I use replacing quite a bit of code that was previously in use. And for any other manual JSON operations (in a couple of apps I use JSON Serialization for 'blob' like document storage) this is also going to be handy.Performance?Some of you might be thinking that using dynamic and Reflection can't be good for performance. And you'd be right… In performing some informal testing it looks like the performance of the native code is nearly twice as fast as the dynamic code. Most of the slowness is attributable to type lookups. To test I created a native class that uses an actual reference to JSON.NET and performance was consistently around 85-90% faster with the referenced code. That being said though - I serialized 10,000 objects in 80ms vs. 45ms so this isn't hardly slouchy. For the configuration component speed is not that important because both read and write operations typically happen once on first access and then every once in a while. But for other operations - say a serializer trying to handle AJAX requests on a Web Server one would be well served to create a hard dependency.Dynamic Loading - Worth it?On occasion dynamic loading makes sense. But there's a price to be paid in added code complexity and a performance hit. But for some operations that are not pivotal to a component or application and only used under certain circumstances dynamic loading can be beneficial to avoid having to ship extra files and loading down distributions. These days when you create new projects in Visual Studio with 30 assemblies before you even add your own code, trying to keep file counts under control seems a good idea. It's not the kind of thing you do on a regular basis, but when needed it can be a useful tool. Hopefully some of you find this information useful…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2013Posted in .NET  C#   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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  • Dynamically loading Assemblies to reduce Runtime Dependencies

    - by Rick Strahl
    I've been working on a request to the West Wind Application Configuration library to add JSON support. The config library is a very easy to use code-first approach to configuration: You create a class that holds the configuration data that inherits from a base configuration class, and then assign a persistence provider at runtime that determines where and how the configuration data is store. Currently the library supports .NET Configuration stores (web.config/app.config), XML files, SQL records and string storage.About once a week somebody asks me about JSON support and I've deflected this question for the longest time because frankly I think that JSON as a configuration store doesn't really buy a heck of a lot over XML. Both formats require the user to perform some fixup of the plain configuration data - in XML into XML tags, with JSON using JSON delimiters for properties and property formatting rules. Sure JSON is a little less verbose and maybe a little easier to read if you have hierarchical data, but overall the differences are pretty minor in my opinion. And yet - the requests keep rolling in.Hard Link Issues in a Component LibraryAnother reason I've been hesitant is that I really didn't want to pull in a dependency on an external JSON library - in this case JSON.NET - into the core library. If you're not using JSON.NET elsewhere I don't want a user to have to require a hard dependency on JSON.NET unless they want to use the JSON feature. JSON.NET is also sensitive to versions and doesn't play nice with multiple versions when hard linked. For example, when you have a reference to V4.4 in your project but the host application has a reference to version 4.5 you can run into assembly load problems. NuGet's Update-Package can solve some of this *if* you can recompile, but that's not ideal for a component that's supposed to be just plug and play. This is no criticism of JSON.NET - this really applies to any dependency that might change.  So hard linking the DLL can be problematic for a number reasons, but the primary reason is to not force loading of JSON.NET unless you actually need it when you use the JSON configuration features of the library.Enter Dynamic LoadingSo rather than adding an assembly reference to the project, I decided that it would be better to dynamically load the DLL at runtime and then use dynamic typing to access various classes. This allows me to run without a hard assembly reference and allows more flexibility with version number differences now and in the future.But there are also a couple of downsides:No assembly reference means only dynamic access - no compiler type checking or IntellisenseRequirement for the host application to have reference to JSON.NET or else get runtime errorsThe former is minor, but the latter can be problematic. Runtime errors are always painful, but in this case I'm willing to live with this. If you want to use JSON configuration settings JSON.NET needs to be loaded in the project. If this is a Web project, it'll likely be there already.So there are a few things that are needed to make this work:Dynamically create an instance and optionally attempt to load an Assembly (if not loaded)Load types into dynamic variablesUse Reflection for a few tasks like statics/enumsThe dynamic keyword in C# makes the formerly most difficult Reflection part - method calls and property assignments - fairly painless. But as cool as dynamic is it doesn't handle all aspects of Reflection. Specifically it doesn't deal with object activation, truly dynamic (string based) member activation or accessing of non instance members, so there's still a little bit of work left to do with Reflection.Dynamic Object InstantiationThe first step in getting the process rolling is to instantiate the type you need to work with. This might be a two step process - loading the instance from a string value, since we don't have a hard type reference and potentially having to load the assembly. Although the host project might have a reference to JSON.NET, that instance might have not been loaded yet since it hasn't been accessed yet. In ASP.NET this won't be a problem, since ASP.NET preloads all referenced assemblies on AppDomain startup, but in other executable project, assemblies are just in time loaded only when they are accessed.Instantiating a type is a two step process: Finding the type reference and then activating it. Here's the generic code out of my ReflectionUtils library I use for this:/// <summary> /// Creates an instance of a type based on a string. Assumes that the type's /// </summary> /// <param name="typeName">Common name of the type</param> /// <param name="args">Any constructor parameters</param> /// <returns></returns> public static object CreateInstanceFromString(string typeName, params object[] args) { object instance = null; Type type = null; try { type = GetTypeFromName(typeName); if (type == null) return null; instance = Activator.CreateInstance(type, args); } catch { return null; } return instance; } /// <summary> /// Helper routine that looks up a type name and tries to retrieve the /// full type reference in the actively executing assemblies. /// </summary> /// <param name="typeName"></param> /// <returns></returns> public static Type GetTypeFromName(string typeName) { Type type = null; // Let default name binding find it type = Type.GetType(typeName, false); if (type != null) return type; // look through assembly list var assemblies = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies(); // try to find manually foreach (Assembly asm in assemblies) { type = asm.GetType(typeName, false); if (type != null) break; } return type; } To use this for loading JSON.NET I have a small factory function that instantiates JSON.NET and sets a bunch of configuration settings on the generated object. The startup code also looks for failure and tries loading up the assembly when it fails since that's the main reason the load would fail. Finally it also caches the loaded instance for reuse (according to James the JSON.NET instance is thread safe and quite a bit faster when cached). Here's what the factory function looks like in JsonSerializationUtils:/// <summary> /// Dynamically creates an instance of JSON.NET /// </summary> /// <param name="throwExceptions">If true throws exceptions otherwise returns null</param> /// <returns>Dynamic JsonSerializer instance</returns> public static dynamic CreateJsonNet(bool throwExceptions = true) { if (JsonNet != null) return JsonNet; lock (SyncLock) { if (JsonNet != null) return JsonNet; // Try to create instance dynamic json = ReflectionUtils.CreateInstanceFromString("Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializer"); if (json == null) { try { var ass = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.Load("Newtonsoft.Json"); json = ReflectionUtils.CreateInstanceFromString("Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializer"); } catch (Exception ex) { if (throwExceptions) throw; return null; } } if (json == null) return null; json.ReferenceLoopHandling = (dynamic) ReflectionUtils.GetStaticProperty("Newtonsoft.Json.ReferenceLoopHandling", "Ignore"); // Enums as strings in JSON dynamic enumConverter = ReflectionUtils.CreateInstanceFromString("Newtonsoft.Json.Converters.StringEnumConverter"); json.Converters.Add(enumConverter); JsonNet = json; } return JsonNet; }This code's purpose is to return a fully configured JsonSerializer instance. As you can see the code tries to create an instance and when it fails tries to load the assembly, and then re-tries loading.Once the instance is loaded some configuration occurs on it. Specifically I set the ReferenceLoopHandling option to not blow up immediately when circular references are encountered. There are a host of other small config setting that might be useful to set, but the default seem to be good enough in recent versions. Note that I'm setting ReferenceLoopHandling which requires an Enum value to be set. There's no real easy way (short of using the cardinal numeric value) to set a property or pass parameters from static values or enums. This means I still need to use Reflection to make this work. I'm using the same ReflectionUtils class I previously used to handle this for me. The function looks up the type and then uses Type.InvokeMember() to read the static property.Another feature I need is have Enum values serialized as strings rather than numeric values which is the default. To do this I can use the StringEnumConverter to convert enums to strings by adding it to the Converters collection.As you can see there's still a bit of Reflection to be done even in C# 4+ with dynamic, but with a few helpers this process is relatively painless.Doing the actual JSON ConversionFinally I need to actually do my JSON conversions. For the Utility class I need serialization that works for both strings and files so I created four methods that handle these tasks two each for serialization and deserialization for string and file.Here's what the File Serialization looks like:/// <summary> /// Serializes an object instance to a JSON file. /// </summary> /// <param name="value">the value to serialize</param> /// <param name="fileName">Full path to the file to write out with JSON.</param> /// <param name="throwExceptions">Determines whether exceptions are thrown or false is returned</param> /// <param name="formatJsonOutput">if true pretty-formats the JSON with line breaks</param> /// <returns>true or false</returns> public static bool SerializeToFile(object value, string fileName, bool throwExceptions = false, bool formatJsonOutput = false) { dynamic writer = null; FileStream fs = null; try { Type type = value.GetType(); var json = CreateJsonNet(throwExceptions); if (json == null) return false; fs = new FileStream(fileName, FileMode.Create); var sw = new StreamWriter(fs, Encoding.UTF8); writer = Activator.CreateInstance(JsonTextWriterType, sw); if (formatJsonOutput) writer.Formatting = (dynamic)Enum.Parse(FormattingType, "Indented"); writer.QuoteChar = '"'; json.Serialize(writer, value); } catch (Exception ex) { Debug.WriteLine("JsonSerializer Serialize error: " + ex.Message); if (throwExceptions) throw; return false; } finally { if (writer != null) writer.Close(); if (fs != null) fs.Close(); } return true; }You can see more of the dynamic invocation in this code. First I grab the dynamic JsonSerializer instance using the CreateJsonNet() method shown earlier which returns a dynamic. I then create a JsonTextWriter and configure a couple of enum settings on it, and then call Serialize() on the serializer instance with the JsonTextWriter that writes the output to disk. Although this code is dynamic it's still fairly short and readable.For full circle operation here's the DeserializeFromFile() version:/// <summary> /// Deserializes an object from file and returns a reference. /// </summary> /// <param name="fileName">name of the file to serialize to</param> /// <param name="objectType">The Type of the object. Use typeof(yourobject class)</param> /// <param name="binarySerialization">determines whether we use Xml or Binary serialization</param> /// <param name="throwExceptions">determines whether failure will throw rather than return null on failure</param> /// <returns>Instance of the deserialized object or null. Must be cast to your object type</returns> public static object DeserializeFromFile(string fileName, Type objectType, bool throwExceptions = false) { dynamic json = CreateJsonNet(throwExceptions); if (json == null) return null; object result = null; dynamic reader = null; FileStream fs = null; try { fs = new FileStream(fileName, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read); var sr = new StreamReader(fs, Encoding.UTF8); reader = Activator.CreateInstance(JsonTextReaderType, sr); result = json.Deserialize(reader, objectType); reader.Close(); } catch (Exception ex) { Debug.WriteLine("JsonNetSerialization Deserialization Error: " + ex.Message); if (throwExceptions) throw; return null; } finally { if (reader != null) reader.Close(); if (fs != null) fs.Close(); } return result; }This code is a little more compact since there are no prettifying options to set. Here JsonTextReader is created dynamically and it receives the output from the Deserialize() operation on the serializer.You can take a look at the full JsonSerializationUtils.cs file on GitHub to see the rest of the operations, but the string operations are very similar - the code is fairly repetitive.These generic serialization utilities isolate the dynamic serialization logic that has to deal with the dynamic nature of JSON.NET, and any code that uses these functions is none the wiser that JSON.NET is dynamically loaded.Using the JsonSerializationUtils WrapperThe final consumer of the SerializationUtils wrapper is an actual ConfigurationProvider, that is responsible for handling reading and writing JSON values to and from files. The provider is simple a small wrapper around the SerializationUtils component and there's very little code to make this work now:The whole provider looks like this:/// <summary> /// Reads and Writes configuration settings in .NET config files and /// sections. Allows reading and writing to default or external files /// and specification of the configuration section that settings are /// applied to. /// </summary> public class JsonFileConfigurationProvider<TAppConfiguration> : ConfigurationProviderBase<TAppConfiguration> where TAppConfiguration: AppConfiguration, new() { /// <summary> /// Optional - the Configuration file where configuration settings are /// stored in. If not specified uses the default Configuration Manager /// and its default store. /// </summary> public string JsonConfigurationFile { get { return _JsonConfigurationFile; } set { _JsonConfigurationFile = value; } } private string _JsonConfigurationFile = string.Empty; public override bool Read(AppConfiguration config) { var newConfig = JsonSerializationUtils.DeserializeFromFile(JsonConfigurationFile, typeof(TAppConfiguration)) as TAppConfiguration; if (newConfig == null) { if(Write(config)) return true; return false; } DecryptFields(newConfig); DataUtils.CopyObjectData(newConfig, config, "Provider,ErrorMessage"); return true; } /// <summary> /// Return /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TAppConfig"></typeparam> /// <returns></returns> public override TAppConfig Read<TAppConfig>() { var result = JsonSerializationUtils.DeserializeFromFile(JsonConfigurationFile, typeof(TAppConfig)) as TAppConfig; if (result != null) DecryptFields(result); return result; } /// <summary> /// Write configuration to XmlConfigurationFile location /// </summary> /// <param name="config"></param> /// <returns></returns> public override bool Write(AppConfiguration config) { EncryptFields(config); bool result = JsonSerializationUtils.SerializeToFile(config, JsonConfigurationFile,false,true); // Have to decrypt again to make sure the properties are readable afterwards DecryptFields(config); return result; } }This incidentally demonstrates how easy it is to create a new provider for the West Wind Application Configuration component. Simply implementing 3 methods will do in most cases.Note this code doesn't have any dynamic dependencies - all that's abstracted away in the JsonSerializationUtils(). From here on, serializing JSON is just a matter of calling the static methods on the SerializationUtils class.Already, there are several other places in some other tools where I use JSON serialization this is coming in very handy. With a couple of lines of code I was able to add JSON.NET support to an older AJAX library that I use replacing quite a bit of code that was previously in use. And for any other manual JSON operations (in a couple of apps I use JSON Serialization for 'blob' like document storage) this is also going to be handy.Performance?Some of you might be thinking that using dynamic and Reflection can't be good for performance. And you'd be right… In performing some informal testing it looks like the performance of the native code is nearly twice as fast as the dynamic code. Most of the slowness is attributable to type lookups. To test I created a native class that uses an actual reference to JSON.NET and performance was consistently around 85-90% faster with the referenced code. This will change though depending on the size of objects serialized - the larger the object the more processing time is spent inside the actual dynamically activated components and the less difference there will be. Dynamic code is always slower, but how much it really affects your application primarily depends on how frequently the dynamic code is called in relation to the non-dynamic code executing. In most situations where dynamic code is used 'to get the process rolling' as I do here the overhead is small enough to not matter.All that being said though - I serialized 10,000 objects in 80ms vs. 45ms so this is hardly slouchy performance. For the configuration component speed is not that important because both read and write operations typically happen once on first access and then every once in a while. But for other operations - say a serializer trying to handle AJAX requests on a Web Server one would be well served to create a hard dependency.Dynamic Loading - Worth it?Dynamic loading is not something you need to worry about but on occasion dynamic loading makes sense. But there's a price to be paid in added code  and a performance hit which depends on how frequently the dynamic code is accessed. But for some operations that are not pivotal to a component or application and are only used under certain circumstances dynamic loading can be beneficial to avoid having to ship extra files adding dependencies and loading down distributions. These days when you create new projects in Visual Studio with 30 assemblies before you even add your own code, trying to keep file counts under control seems like a good idea. It's not the kind of thing you do on a regular basis, but when needed it can be a useful option in your toolset… © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2013Posted in .NET  C#   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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  • Informed TDD &ndash; Kata &ldquo;To Roman Numerals&rdquo;

    - by Ralf Westphal
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/theArchitectsNapkin/archive/2014/05/28/informed-tdd-ndash-kata-ldquoto-roman-numeralsrdquo.aspxIn a comment on my article on what I call Informed TDD (ITDD) reader gustav asked how this approach would apply to the kata “To Roman Numerals”. And whether ITDD wasn´t a violation of TDD´s principle of leaving out “advanced topics like mocks”. I like to respond with this article to his questions. There´s more to say than fits into a commentary. Mocks and TDD I don´t see in how far TDD is avoiding or opposed to mocks. TDD and mocks are orthogonal. TDD is about pocess, mocks are about structure and costs. Maybe by moving forward in tiny red+green+refactor steps less need arises for mocks. But then… if the functionality you need to implement requires “expensive” resource access you can´t avoid using mocks. Because you don´t want to constantly run all your tests against the real resource. True, in ITDD mocks seem to be in almost inflationary use. That´s not what you usually see in TDD demonstrations. However, there´s a reason for that as I tried to explain. I don´t use mocks as proxies for “expensive” resource. Rather they are stand-ins for functionality not yet implemented. They allow me to get a test green on a high level of abstraction. That way I can move forward in a top-down fashion. But if you think of mocks as “advanced” or if you don´t want to use a tool like JustMock, then you don´t need to use mocks. You just need to stand the sight of red tests for a little longer ;-) Let me show you what I mean by that by doing a kata. ITDD for “To Roman Numerals” gustav asked for the kata “To Roman Numerals”. I won´t explain the requirements again. You can find descriptions and TDD demonstrations all over the internet, like this one from Corey Haines. Now here is, how I would do this kata differently. 1. Analyse A demonstration of TDD should never skip the analysis phase. It should be made explicit. The requirements should be formalized and acceptance test cases should be compiled. “Formalization” in this case to me means describing the API of the required functionality. “[D]esign a program to work with Roman numerals” like written in this “requirement document” is not enough to start software development. Coding should only begin, if the interface between the “system under development” and its context is clear. If this interface is not readily recognizable from the requirements, it has to be developed first. Exploration of interface alternatives might be in order. It might be necessary to show several interface mock-ups to the customer – even if that´s you fellow developer. Designing the interface is a task of it´s own. It should not be mixed with implementing the required functionality behind the interface. Unfortunately, though, this happens quite often in TDD demonstrations. TDD is used to explore the API and implement it at the same time. To me that´s a violation of the Single Responsibility Principle (SRP) which not only should hold for software functional units but also for tasks or activities. In the case of this kata the API fortunately is obvious. Just one function is needed: string ToRoman(int arabic). And it lives in a class ArabicRomanConversions. Now what about acceptance test cases? There are hardly any stated in the kata descriptions. Roman numerals are explained, but no specific test cases from the point of view of a customer. So I just “invent” some acceptance test cases by picking roman numerals from a wikipedia article. They are supposed to be just “typical examples” without special meaning. Given the acceptance test cases I then try to develop an understanding of the problem domain. I´ll spare you that. The domain is trivial and is explain in almost all kata descriptions. How roman numerals are built is not difficult to understand. What´s more difficult, though, might be to find an efficient solution to convert into them automatically. 2. Solve The usual TDD demonstration skips a solution finding phase. Like the interface exploration it´s mixed in with the implementation. But I don´t think this is how it should be done. I even think this is not how it really works for the people demonstrating TDD. They´re simplifying their true software development process because they want to show a streamlined TDD process. I doubt this is helping anybody. Before you code you better have a plan what to code. This does not mean you have to do “Big Design Up-Front”. It just means: Have a clear picture of the logical solution in your head before you start to build a physical solution (code). Evidently such a solution can only be as good as your understanding of the problem. If that´s limited your solution will be limited, too. Fortunately, in the case of this kata your understanding does not need to be limited. Thus the logical solution does not need to be limited or preliminary or tentative. That does not mean you need to know every line of code in advance. It just means you know the rough structure of your implementation beforehand. Because it should mirror the process described by the logical or conceptual solution. Here´s my solution approach: The arabic “encoding” of numbers represents them as an ordered set of powers of 10. Each digit is a factor to multiply a power of ten with. The “encoding” 123 is the short form for a set like this: {1*10^2, 2*10^1, 3*10^0}. And the number is the sum of the set members. The roman “encoding” is different. There is no base (like 10 for arabic numbers), there are just digits of different value, and they have to be written in descending order. The “encoding” XVI is short for [10, 5, 1]. And the number is still the sum of the members of this list. The roman “encoding” thus is simpler than the arabic. Each “digit” can be taken at face value. No multiplication with a base required. But what about IV which looks like a contradiction to the above rule? It is not – if you accept roman “digits” not to be limited to be single characters only. Usually I, V, X, L, C, D, M are viewed as “digits”, and IV, IX etc. are viewed as nuisances preventing a simple solution. All looks different, though, once IV, IX etc. are taken as “digits”. Then MCMLIV is just a sum: M+CM+L+IV which is 1000+900+50+4. Whereas before it would have been understood as M-C+M+L-I+V – which is more difficult because here some “digits” get subtracted. Here´s the list of roman “digits” with their values: {1, I}, {4, IV}, {5, V}, {9, IX}, {10, X}, {40, XL}, {50, L}, {90, XC}, {100, C}, {400, CD}, {500, D}, {900, CM}, {1000, M} Since I take IV, IX etc. as “digits” translating an arabic number becomes trivial. I just need to find the values of the roman “digits” making up the number, e.g. 1954 is made up of 1000, 900, 50, and 4. I call those “digits” factors. If I move from the highest factor (M=1000) to the lowest (I=1) then translation is a two phase process: Find all the factors Translate the factors found Compile the roman representation Translation is just a look-up. Finding, though, needs some calculation: Find the highest remaining factor fitting in the value Remember and subtract it from the value Repeat with remaining value and remaining factors Please note: This is just an algorithm. It´s not code, even though it might be close. Being so close to code in my solution approach is due to the triviality of the problem. In more realistic examples the conceptual solution would be on a higher level of abstraction. With this solution in hand I finally can do what TDD advocates: find and prioritize test cases. As I can see from the small process description above, there are two aspects to test: Test the translation Test the compilation Test finding the factors Testing the translation primarily means to check if the map of factors and digits is comprehensive. That´s simple, even though it might be tedious. Testing the compilation is trivial. Testing factor finding, though, is a tad more complicated. I can think of several steps: First check, if an arabic number equal to a factor is processed correctly (e.g. 1000=M). Then check if an arabic number consisting of two consecutive factors (e.g. 1900=[M,CM]) is processed correctly. Then check, if a number consisting of the same factor twice is processed correctly (e.g. 2000=[M,M]). Finally check, if an arabic number consisting of non-consecutive factors (e.g. 1400=[M,CD]) is processed correctly. I feel I can start an implementation now. If something becomes more complicated than expected I can slow down and repeat this process. 3. Implement First I write a test for the acceptance test cases. It´s red because there´s no implementation even of the API. That´s in conformance with “TDD lore”, I´d say: Next I implement the API: The acceptance test now is formally correct, but still red of course. This will not change even now that I zoom in. Because my goal is not to most quickly satisfy these tests, but to implement my solution in a stepwise manner. That I do by “faking” it: I just “assume” three functions to represent the transformation process of my solution: My hypothesis is that those three functions in conjunction produce correct results on the API-level. I just have to implement them correctly. That´s what I´m trying now – one by one. I start with a simple “detail function”: Translate(). And I start with all the test cases in the obvious equivalence partition: As you can see I dare to test a private method. Yes. That´s a white box test. But as you´ll see it won´t make my tests brittle. It serves a purpose right here and now: it lets me focus on getting one aspect of my solution right. Here´s the implementation to satisfy the test: It´s as simple as possible. Right how TDD wants me to do it: KISS. Now for the second equivalence partition: translating multiple factors. (It´a pattern: if you need to do something repeatedly separate the tests for doing it once and doing it multiple times.) In this partition I just need a single test case, I guess. Stepping up from a single translation to multiple translations is no rocket science: Usually I would have implemented the final code right away. Splitting it in two steps is just for “educational purposes” here. How small your implementation steps are is a matter of your programming competency. Some “see” the final code right away before their mental eye – others need to work their way towards it. Having two tests I find more important. Now for the next low hanging fruit: compilation. It´s even simpler than translation. A single test is enough, I guess. And normally I would not even have bothered to write that one, because the implementation is so simple. I don´t need to test .NET framework functionality. But again: if it serves the educational purpose… Finally the most complicated part of the solution: finding the factors. There are several equivalence partitions. But still I decide to write just a single test, since the structure of the test data is the same for all partitions: Again, I´m faking the implementation first: I focus on just the first test case. No looping yet. Faking lets me stay on a high level of abstraction. I can write down the implementation of the solution without bothering myself with details of how to actually accomplish the feat. That´s left for a drill down with a test of the fake function: There are two main equivalence partitions, I guess: either the first factor is appropriate or some next. The implementation seems easy. Both test cases are green. (Of course this only works on the premise that there´s always a matching factor. Which is the case since the smallest factor is 1.) And the first of the equivalence partitions on the higher level also is satisfied: Great, I can move on. Now for more than a single factor: Interestingly not just one test becomes green now, but all of them. Great! You might say, then I must have done not the simplest thing possible. And I would reply: I don´t care. I did the most obvious thing. But I also find this loop very simple. Even simpler than a recursion of which I had thought briefly during the problem solving phase. And by the way: Also the acceptance tests went green: Mission accomplished. At least functionality wise. Now I´ve to tidy up things a bit. TDD calls for refactoring. Not uch refactoring is needed, because I wrote the code in top-down fashion. I faked it until I made it. I endured red tests on higher levels while lower levels weren´t perfected yet. But this way I saved myself from refactoring tediousness. At the end, though, some refactoring is required. But maybe in a different way than you would expect. That´s why I rather call it “cleanup”. First I remove duplication. There are two places where factors are defined: in Translate() and in Find_factors(). So I factor the map out into a class constant. Which leads to a small conversion in Find_factors(): And now for the big cleanup: I remove all tests of private methods. They are scaffolding tests to me. They only have temporary value. They are brittle. Only acceptance tests need to remain. However, I carry over the single “digit” tests from Translate() to the acceptance test. I find them valuable to keep, since the other acceptance tests only exercise a subset of all roman “digits”. This then is my final test class: And this is the final production code: Test coverage as reported by NCrunch is 100%: Reflexion Is this the smallest possible code base for this kata? Sure not. You´ll find more concise solutions on the internet. But LOC are of relatively little concern – as long as I can understand the code quickly. So called “elegant” code, however, often is not easy to understand. The same goes for KISS code – especially if left unrefactored, as it is often the case. That´s why I progressed from requirements to final code the way I did. I first understood and solved the problem on a conceptual level. Then I implemented it top down according to my design. I also could have implemented it bottom-up, since I knew some bottom of the solution. That´s the leaves of the functional decomposition tree. Where things became fuzzy, since the design did not cover any more details as with Find_factors(), I repeated the process in the small, so to speak: fake some top level, endure red high level tests, while first solving a simpler problem. Using scaffolding tests (to be thrown away at the end) brought two advantages: Encapsulation of the implementation details was not compromised. Naturally private methods could stay private. I did not need to make them internal or public just to be able to test them. I was able to write focused tests for small aspects of the solution. No need to test everything through the solution root, the API. The bottom line thus for me is: Informed TDD produces cleaner code in a systematic way. It conforms to core principles of programming: Single Responsibility Principle and/or Separation of Concerns. Distinct roles in development – being a researcher, being an engineer, being a craftsman – are represented as different phases. First find what, what there is. Then devise a solution. Then code the solution, manifest the solution in code. Writing tests first is a good practice. But it should not be taken dogmatic. And above all it should not be overloaded with purposes. And finally: moving from top to bottom through a design produces refactored code right away. Clean code thus almost is inevitable – and not left to a refactoring step at the end which is skipped often for different reasons.   PS: Yes, I have done this kata several times. But that has only an impact on the time needed for phases 1 and 2. I won´t skip them because of that. And there are no shortcuts during implementation because of that.

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  • htaccess on remote server issues - password prompt not accepting input

    - by pying saucepan
    EDIT: I will contact the university about my problem after labor day weekend, but I thought if someone knew a quick fix that I haven't tried, or if the problem has an obvious fix then I could hope to try my luck here, thanks! TLDR: Sorry its a long post, I thought I should be... thorough. I am having a common issue (found a dead thread through google with no solution to the same problem) with the prompt to enter in a username and password via htaccess rights, but this prompt will keep popping up asking for a username and password when trying to access my home directory on my university's server which has the .htaccess and .htpasswd files. It does not matter if I enter in correct or incorrect credentials, the prompt will keep asking me for input without displaying my home directory. Ever since I have included these ht files I have never once been able to get past the username/password no matter what I have tried, save for removing them from the directory I am trying to access (my top level directory that I own). This kind of served my original goal of making the top level directory inaccessible to casual users, but if I wanted to use this method on other places, I would want it to work as intended. And I also like it when computers do what I wish they would, so any help is appreciated. Some things I have tried: Changing the file/directory access rights: they told me to try these commands if people can't access my files cd ~/public_html find ./ -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \; find ./ -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \; enter in the single character name/pw at least twenty times in a row, no cheddar. so I changed directory with cd ~ in hopes that this would be my home directory, since my home directory contains the "public_html" directory, so logic tells me that the ~ tilde symbol is the top level directory that I have ownership of. Then I did those two commands to change the rights on the files inside, I am still having no luck. How I got to this point: I have been following the instructions given to me through my university's website for setting up my little directory. A link on how they describe how to password protect the home directory is given below: "Protect Web Directories" instructions I have everything in order except for one small detail that I feel probably does not matter. I am on windows and so I am using winSCP to remote control my allocated server space. The small detail is that as the instructions indicate (on step 3) that I should use the command htpasswd -c .htpasswd {username} where {username} is my folder that holds my allocated server space. But this command requires further input through the terminal, and unfortunately winSCP does not offer this kind of functionality. So I looked up some basic instructions on using htaccess and it is formatted correctly such that the .htaccess file appears as follows: AuthType Basic AuthName "Verify" AuthUserFile /correctpath/.htpasswd require valid-user and this file is in the root directory for my server space as well as the .htpasswd file which has only this data inside: username:password I know for sure that these two files must be formatted correctly, at least according to their tutorial, because before my path was incorrectly formatted via including some curly { braces } without knowing the correct way to do this at first. And the password prompt that shows up when accessing my directory responded by loading an error page indicating to contact OSU admin or something not important. But now that I have everything like it 'should' be. I know this because when I enter in my credentials "username and password" the prompt pops up for my username and password again and again whether or not I enter in correct information. The only exception is that if I click cancel it will direct me to a page saying that I need to enter in a username and password. Note that I am very inexperienced at server-related buisness, two days ago I couldn't have told you what a website actually consists of. So, if you use some technical jargon I may or may not need to look it up and get back to you before I actually understand what you mean, but I am a quick learner and it probably wont matter.

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  • Dynamic Type to do away with Reflection

    - by Rick Strahl
    The dynamic type in C# 4.0 is a welcome addition to the language. One thing I’ve been doing a lot with it is to remove explicit Reflection code that’s often necessary when you ‘dynamically’ need to walk and object hierarchy. In the past I’ve had a number of ReflectionUtils that used string based expressions to walk an object hierarchy. With the introduction of dynamic much of the ReflectionUtils code can be removed for cleaner code that runs considerably faster to boot. The old Way - Reflection Here’s a really contrived example, but assume for a second, you’d want to dynamically retrieve a Page.Request.Url.AbsoluteUrl based on a Page instance in an ASP.NET Web Page request. The strongly typed version looks like this: string path = Page.Request.Url.AbsolutePath; Now assume for a second that Page wasn’t available as a strongly typed instance and all you had was an object reference to start with and you couldn’t cast it (right I said this was contrived :-)) If you’re using raw Reflection code to retrieve this you’d end up writing 3 sets of Reflection calls using GetValue(). Here’s some internal code I use to retrieve Property values as part of ReflectionUtils: /// <summary> /// Retrieve a property value from an object dynamically. This is a simple version /// that uses Reflection calls directly. It doesn't support indexers. /// </summary> /// <param name="instance">Object to make the call on</param> /// <param name="property">Property to retrieve</param> /// <returns>Object - cast to proper type</returns> public static object GetProperty(object instance, string property) { return instance.GetType().GetProperty(property, ReflectionUtils.MemberAccess).GetValue(instance, null); } If you want more control over properties and support both fields and properties as well as array indexers a little more work is required: /// <summary> /// Parses Properties and Fields including Array and Collection references. /// Used internally for the 'Ex' Reflection methods. /// </summary> /// <param name="Parent"></param> /// <param name="Property"></param> /// <returns></returns> private static object GetPropertyInternal(object Parent, string Property) { if (Property == "this" || Property == "me") return Parent; object result = null; string pureProperty = Property; string indexes = null; bool isArrayOrCollection = false; // Deal with Array Property if (Property.IndexOf("[") > -1) { pureProperty = Property.Substring(0, Property.IndexOf("[")); indexes = Property.Substring(Property.IndexOf("[")); isArrayOrCollection = true; } // Get the member MemberInfo member = Parent.GetType().GetMember(pureProperty, ReflectionUtils.MemberAccess)[0]; if (member.MemberType == MemberTypes.Property) result = ((PropertyInfo)member).GetValue(Parent, null); else result = ((FieldInfo)member).GetValue(Parent); if (isArrayOrCollection) { indexes = indexes.Replace("[", string.Empty).Replace("]", string.Empty); if (result is Array) { int Index = -1; int.TryParse(indexes, out Index); result = CallMethod(result, "GetValue", Index); } else if (result is ICollection) { if (indexes.StartsWith("\"")) { // String Index indexes = indexes.Trim('\"'); result = CallMethod(result, "get_Item", indexes); } else { // assume numeric index int index = -1; int.TryParse(indexes, out index); result = CallMethod(result, "get_Item", index); } } } return result; } /// <summary> /// Returns a property or field value using a base object and sub members including . syntax. /// For example, you can access: oCustomer.oData.Company with (this,"oCustomer.oData.Company") /// This method also supports indexers in the Property value such as: /// Customer.DataSet.Tables["Customers"].Rows[0] /// </summary> /// <param name="Parent">Parent object to 'start' parsing from. Typically this will be the Page.</param> /// <param name="Property">The property to retrieve. Example: 'Customer.Entity.Company'</param> /// <returns></returns> public static object GetPropertyEx(object Parent, string Property) { Type type = Parent.GetType(); int at = Property.IndexOf("."); if (at < 0) { // Complex parse of the property return GetPropertyInternal(Parent, Property); } // Walk the . syntax - split into current object (Main) and further parsed objects (Subs) string main = Property.Substring(0, at); string subs = Property.Substring(at + 1); // Retrieve the next . section of the property object sub = GetPropertyInternal(Parent, main); // Now go parse the left over sections return GetPropertyEx(sub, subs); } As you can see there’s a fair bit of code involved into retrieving a property or field value reliably especially if you want to support array indexer syntax. This method is then used by a variety of routines to retrieve individual properties including one called GetPropertyEx() which can walk the dot syntax hierarchy easily. Anyway with ReflectionUtils I can  retrieve Page.Request.Url.AbsolutePath using code like this: string url = ReflectionUtils.GetPropertyEx(Page, "Request.Url.AbsolutePath") as string; This works fine, but is bulky to write and of course requires that I use my custom routines. It’s also quite slow as the code in GetPropertyEx does all sorts of string parsing to figure out which members to walk in the hierarchy. Enter dynamic – way easier! .NET 4.0’s dynamic type makes the above really easy. The following code is all that it takes: object objPage = Page; // force to object for contrivance :) dynamic page = objPage; // convert to dynamic from untyped object string scriptUrl = page.Request.Url.AbsolutePath; The dynamic type assignment in the first two lines turns the strongly typed Page object into a dynamic. The first assignment is just part of the contrived example to force the strongly typed Page reference into an untyped value to demonstrate the dynamic member access. The next line then just creates the dynamic type from the Page reference which allows you to access any public properties and methods easily. It also lets you access any child properties as dynamic types so when you look at Intellisense you’ll see something like this when typing Request.: In other words any dynamic value access on an object returns another dynamic object which is what allows the walking of the hierarchy chain. Note also that the result value doesn’t have to be explicitly cast as string in the code above – the compiler is perfectly happy without the cast in this case inferring the target type based on the type being assigned to. The dynamic conversion automatically handles the cast when making the final assignment which is nice making for natural syntnax that looks *exactly* like the fully typed syntax, but is completely dynamic. Note that you can also use indexers in the same natural syntax so the following also works on the dynamic page instance: string scriptUrl = page.Request.ServerVariables["SCRIPT_NAME"]; The dynamic type is going to make a lot of Reflection code go away as it’s simply so much nicer to be able to use natural syntax to write out code that previously required nasty Reflection syntax. Another interesting thing about the dynamic type is that it actually works considerably faster than Reflection. Check out the following methods that check performance: void Reflection() { Stopwatch stop = new Stopwatch(); stop.Start(); for (int i = 0; i < reps; i++) { // string url = ReflectionUtils.GetProperty(Page,"Title") as string;// "Request.Url.AbsolutePath") as string; string url = Page.GetType().GetProperty("Title", ReflectionUtils.MemberAccess).GetValue(Page, null) as string; } stop.Stop(); Response.Write("Reflection: " + stop.ElapsedMilliseconds.ToString()); } void Dynamic() { Stopwatch stop = new Stopwatch(); stop.Start(); dynamic page = Page; for (int i = 0; i < reps; i++) { string url = page.Title; //Request.Url.AbsolutePath; } stop.Stop(); Response.Write("Dynamic: " + stop.ElapsedMilliseconds.ToString()); } The dynamic code runs in 4-5 milliseconds while the Reflection code runs around 200+ milliseconds! There’s a bit of overhead in the first dynamic object call but subsequent calls are blazing fast and performance is actually much better than manual Reflection. Dynamic is definitely a huge win-win situation when you need dynamic access to objects at runtime.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in .NET  CSharp  

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  • How would you rewrite/refactor this ?

    - by frostings
    Old application that is used by 50-60.000 paying customers. Company is several hundred people big. Application has a lot of business critical code (30% of all code) written in classic asp. Application has a lot more .net code. Application has a COM+ bridge for enabling asp to "talk" to .net Organization lacks some/a lot knowledge on what is causing the 10-20% server-reset per day (might be due to COM+ ?) There is no red line through the application; no architecture, no real patterns etc. The application has been like this for at least 5 years. The asp code base is increasing, slowly but certainly. I have read refactoring stories and I have knowledge on why you some of the times should not re-write a system. I would love for the old asp code to vanish as well as the COM+ component. But the pain is that no one really knows what is going on inside the asp classic code and the attitude inside all the teams are "this is just how it is". Down the line, this causes a lot of other issues like recruiting, dev effeciency, business needs that cannot be met, scale etc. With these little facts, does that justify a re-write of the asp code and the removal of the COM+ component ? How would you go about it ?

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  • PERC H710 mini raid controller advanced settings (BIOS)

    - by gregg
    I upgraded from a PERC h310 to an H710 controller on my Dell R620 but didnt get any increase in performance. This is a ESXi host with a 5 disk RAID 5. I noticed when going to the RAID BIOS that the advanced settings section was not activated/checked off. In that section is the strip element size: 64kb (default) read policy: no read ahead and the write policy: write-through. Will checking that section do any harm to the existing raid array or will it simply enable those policies and hopefully boost performance? Or, lastly, is it already using those policies and the checkmark is simply to activate them for changes

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  • PPTP server stuck at "GRE: Bad checksum from pppd"

    - by user92516
    I am a network engineer having quite limited experience with Ubuntu. I have been following up these online instructions to set up a pptp server but without much luck to get it to work. My server is a vm running an Apple Xserve behind a Cisco firewall. I made sure tcp 1723 and GRE are opened for the box. Below is the syslog output, looks like I always got stuck at GRE: Bad checksum from pppd. I'm running Ubuntu 10.04. Sep 24 13:21:53 ubuntu pptpd[1231]: CTRL: PTY read or GRE write failed (pty,gre)=(6,7) Sep 24 13:21:53 ubuntu pptpd[1231]: CTRL: Reaping child PPP[1232] Sep 24 13:21:53 ubuntu pptpd[1231]: CTRL: Client 166.137.85.165 control connection finished Sep 24 13:22:41 ubuntu pptpd[1276]: MGR: connections limit (100) reached, extra IP addresses ignored Sep 24 13:22:41 ubuntu pptpd[1277]: MGR: Manager process started Sep 24 13:22:41 ubuntu pptpd[1277]: MGR: Maximum of 100 connections available Sep 24 13:22:50 ubuntu pptpd[1278]: CTRL: Client 166.137.85.165 control connection started Sep 24 13:22:51 ubuntu pptpd[1278]: CTRL: Starting call (launching pppd, opening GRE) Sep 24 13:22:51 ubuntu pppd[1279]: Plugin /usr/lib/pptpd/pptpd-logwtmp.so loaded. Sep 24 13:22:51 ubuntu pppd[1279]: pppd 2.4.5 started by root, uid 0 Sep 24 13:22:51 ubuntu pppd[1279]: Using interface ppp0 Sep 24 13:22:51 ubuntu pppd[1279]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/pts/1 Sep 24 13:22:51 ubuntu pptpd[1278]: GRE: Bad checksum from pppd. Sep 24 13:23:21 ubuntu pppd[1279]: LCP: timeout sending Config-Requests Sep 24 13:23:21 ubuntu pppd[1279]: Connection terminated. Sep 24 13:23:21 ubuntu pppd[1279]: Modem hangup Sep 24 13:23:21 ubuntu pppd[1279]: Exit. Sep 24 13:23:21 ubuntu pptpd[1278]: GRE: read(fd=6,buffer=805a540,len=8196) from PTY failed: status = -1 error = Input/output error, usually caused by unexpected termination of pppd, check option syntax and pppd logs Sep 24 13:23:21 ubuntu pptpd[1278]: CTRL: PTY read or GRE write failed (pty,gre)=(6,7) Sep 24 13:23:21 ubuntu pptpd[1278]: CTRL: Reaping child PPP[1279] Sep 24 13:23:21 ubuntu pptpd[1278]: CTRL: Client 166.137.85.165 control connection finished

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  • start apache2 in chroot environment

    - by xero
    This is my first time I am trying to install Apache2 HTTP server in a chroot environment. That's why i decided to follow this procedure : http://www.symantec.com/connect/articles/securing-apache-2-step-step my web server start with successful : root@ubuntu:/usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl start [Tue Oct 29 01:49:15.879868 2013] [core:warn] [pid 10835] AH00117: Ignoring deprecated use of DefaultType in line 60 of /usr/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf. AH00548: NameVirtualHost has no effect and will be removed in the next release /usr/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf:81 AH00558: httpd: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1. Set the 'ServerName' directive globally to suppress this message root@ubuntu:/chroot/httpd/etc# netstat -antu Active Internet connections (servers and established) Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:80 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN But at the end of part "Chrooting the server" i have always the same problem. When i try to start apache2 in chroot i have always this error : root@ubuntu:/chroot/httpd/etc# chroot /chroot/httpd /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl chroot: failed to run command `/usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl': No such file or directory however my apachectl file exist : root@ubuntu:/chroot/httpd/etc# ls -l /chroot/httpd/usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3437 Oct 29 02:28 /chroot/httpd/usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl when I use strace to debug, there are errors with coreutils.mo and libc.mo : root@ubuntu:/chroot/httpd/etc# chroot /chroot/httpd /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd group hosts nsswitch.conf passwd passwords resolv.conf root@ubuntu:/chroot/httpd/etc# strace chroot /chroot/httpd /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl execve("/usr/sbin/chroot", ["chroot", "/chroot/httpd", "/usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl"], [/* 18 vars */]) = 0 brk(0) = 0x1e46000 access("/etc/ld.so.nohwcap", F_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) mmap(NULL, 8192, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7fe89563b000 access("/etc/ld.so.preload", R_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3 fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=18263, ...}) = 0 mmap(NULL, 18263, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0x7fe895636000 close(3) = 0 access("/etc/ld.so.nohwcap", F_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3 read(3, "\177ELF\2\1\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0>\0\1\0\0\0\200\30\2\0\0\0\0\0"..., 832) = 832 fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=1815224, ...}) = 0 mmap(NULL, 3929304, PROT_READ|PROT_EXEC, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_DENYWRITE, 3, 0) = 0x7fe89505b000 mprotect(0x7fe895210000, 2097152, PROT_NONE) = 0 mmap(0x7fe895410000, 24576, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED|MAP_DENYWRITE, 3, 0x1b5000) = 0x7fe895410000 mmap(0x7fe895416000, 17624, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7fe895416000 close(3) = 0 mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7fe895635000 mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7fe895634000 mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7fe895633000 arch_prctl(ARCH_SET_FS, 0x7fe895634700) = 0 mprotect(0x7fe895410000, 16384, PROT_READ) = 0 mprotect(0x606000, 4096, PROT_READ) = 0 mprotect(0x7fe89563d000, 4096, PROT_READ) = 0 munmap(0x7fe895636000, 18263) = 0 brk(0) = 0x1e46000 brk(0x1e67000) = 0x1e67000 open("/usr/lib/locale/locale-archive", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3 fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=2919792, ...}) = 0 mmap(NULL, 2919792, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0x7fe894d92000 close(3) = 0 chroot("/chroot/httpd") = 0 chdir("/") = 0 execve("/usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl", ["/usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl"], [/* 18 vars */]) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/share/locale/locale.alias", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/share/locale/en_US.UTF-8/LC_MESSAGES/coreutils.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/share/locale/en_US.utf8/LC_MESSAGES/coreutils.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/share/locale/en_US/LC_MESSAGES/coreutils.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/share/locale/en.UTF-8/LC_MESSAGES/coreutils.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/share/locale/en.utf8/LC_MESSAGES/coreutils.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/share/locale/en/LC_MESSAGES/coreutils.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/share/locale-langpack/en_US.UTF-8/LC_MESSAGES/coreutils.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/share/locale-langpack/en_US.utf8/LC_MESSAGES/coreutils.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/share/locale-langpack/en_US/LC_MESSAGES/coreutils.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/share/locale-langpack/en.UTF-8/LC_MESSAGES/coreutils.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/share/locale-langpack/en.utf8/LC_MESSAGES/coreutils.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/share/locale-langpack/en/LC_MESSAGES/coreutils.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) write(2, "chroot: ", 8chroot: ) = 8 write(2, "failed to run command `/usr/loca"..., 56failed to run command `/usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl') = 56 open("/usr/share/locale/en_US.UTF-8/LC_MESSAGES/libc.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/share/locale/en_US.utf8/LC_MESSAGES/libc.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/share/locale/en_US/LC_MESSAGES/libc.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/share/locale/en.UTF-8/LC_MESSAGES/libc.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/share/locale/en.utf8/LC_MESSAGES/libc.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/share/locale/en/LC_MESSAGES/libc.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/share/locale-langpack/en_US.UTF-8/LC_MESSAGES/libc.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/share/locale-langpack/en_US.utf8/LC_MESSAGES/libc.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/share/locale-langpack/en_US/LC_MESSAGES/libc.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/share/locale-langpack/en.UTF-8/LC_MESSAGES/libc.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/share/locale-langpack/en.utf8/LC_MESSAGES/libc.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/share/locale-langpack/en/LC_MESSAGES/libc.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) write(2, ": No such file or directory", 27: No such file or directory) = 27 write(2, "\n", 1 ) = 1 close(1) = 0 close(2) = 0 exit_group(127) = ? using the tutorial I did not find and copie libraries following on my server. I suppose there is no link with coreutils.mo and libc.mo : /usr/libexec/ld-elf.so.1 /var/run/ld-elf.so.hints I don't understand what files i forgot to copy in my chroot environment to be able to start my apache2. Any ideas ?

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  • OpenGL extension vs OpenGL core

    - by user209347
    I was doubting: I'm writing a cross-platform engine OpenGL C++, I figured out windows forces the developers to access OpenGL features above 1.1 through extensions. Now the thing is, on Linux, I know that I can directly access functions if the version supports it through glext.h and opengl version. The problem is that if on Linux, the core doesn't support it, is it possible there is an extensions that supports the same functionality, in my case vertex buffer objects? I'm doing something like this: Windows: (hashdeck) define glFunction functionpointer_to_the_extension (apparently the layout changes font size if I use #) Linux: Since glext already defined glFunction, I can write in client code glFunction, and compile it both on Windows AND Linux without changing a single line in my client code using the engine (my goal). Now the thing is, I saw a tutorial use only the extension on Linux, and not checking for the opengl implementation version. If the functionality is available in the core, is it also available as extension (VBO's e.g.)? Or is an extension something you never know is available? I want to write an engine that gets all the possibilities on hardware, so I need to check (on Linux) for extensions as well as core version for possible functionality implementation.

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  • Enum.HasFlag method in C# 4.0

    - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama
    Enums in dot net programming is a great facility and we all used it to increase code readability. In earlier version of .NET framework we don’t have any method anything that will check whether a value is assigned to it or not. In C# 4.0 we have new static method called HasFlag which will check that particular value is assigned or not. Let’s take an example for that. First I have created a enum called PaymentType which could have two values Credit Card or Debit Card. Just like following. public enum PaymentType { DebitCard=1, CreditCard=2 } Now We are going to assigned one of the value to this enum instance and then with the help of HasFlag method we are going to check whether particular value is assigned to enum or not like following. protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { PaymentType paymentType = PaymentType.CreditCard; if (paymentType.HasFlag(PaymentType.DebitCard)) { Response.Write("Process Debit Card"); } if (paymentType.HasFlag(PaymentType.CreditCard)) { Response.Write("Process Credit Card"); } } Now Let’s check out in browser as following. As expected it will print process Credit Card as we have assigned that value to enum. That’s it It’s so simple and cool. Stay tuned for more.. Happy Programming.. Technorati Tags: Enum,C#4.0,ASP.NET 4.0

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  • MVP Summit 2011 summary and thoughts: The &ldquo;I hope I don&rsquo;t cross a line and lose my MVP status&rdquo; post

    - by George Clingerman
    I've been wanting to write this post summarizing my thoughts about the MVP summit but have been dragging my feet since it's a very difficult one to write. However seeing Andy (http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/t/77625.aspx) and Catalin (http://www.catalinzima.com/2011/03/mvp-summit-2011/) and Chris (http://geekswithblogs.net/cwilliams/archive/2011/03/07/144229.aspx) post about it has encouraged me to finally take the plunge. I'm going to have to write carefully though because I'm going to be dancing around a ton of NDA mine fields as well as having to walk the tight-rope of not sending the wrong message or having people read too much into what I'm saying. I want to note that most of what I'm about to say is just based on my observations, they're not thoughts that Microsoft has asked me to pass along and they're not things I heard Microsoft say. It's just me sharing what I think after going to the MVP summit. Let's start off with a short imaginary question and answer session.     Has the App Hub forums and XBLIG management been rather poor by Microsoft? Yes.     Do I think we're going to see changes to that overnight? No.     Will it continue to look bad from the outside? Somewhat. Confusing right? Well that's kind of how things are right now. Lots of confusion. XNA is doing AWESOME. Like, really, really awesome. As a result of that awesomeness, XNA is on three major platforms: Xbox 360, WP7 and PC. This means that internally Microsoft is really excited and invested in the technology. That's fantastic for XNA and really should show you the future the framework has. It's here to stay. So why are Xbox LIVE Indie Game developers feeling so much pain? The ironic thing is that pain is being caused by the success of XNA. When XNA was just a small thing, there was more freedom and more focus. It was just us and them. We were an only child. Now our family has grown and everyone has and wants some time with XNA. This gets XNA pulled in all directions and as it moves onto new platforms, it plays catch up trying to get those platforms up to speed to where Xbox LIVE Indie Games has grown. Forums, documentation, educational content. They all need to be there because Xbox LIVE Indie Games has all of that and more. Along with the catch up in features/documentation/awesomeness there's the catch up that the people on the team have to play. New platforms and new areas of development mean new players and those new guys don't have the history of being around from the beginning. This leads to a lack of understanding at times just how important some things are because they seem so small and insignificant (Rich Text defaulting for new forum profiles would be one things that jumps to mind). If you're not aware that the forums have become more than just a basic Q&A, if you're not aware that they're a central hub to a very active community, then you don't understand why that small change should be prioritized over something else. New people have to get caught up and figure out how to make a framework and central forum site work for everyone it's now serving. So yeah, a lot of our pain this last year has been simply that XNA is doing well and XBLIG is doing well so the focus was shifted to catch other things up. It hurts when a parent seems to not have any time for you and they're spending some much time with your new baby brother. Growing pains. All families and in our case our product family experience it to some degree. I think as WP7 matures we'll see the team figuring out how to give everyone the right amount of attention. While we're talking about some of our growing pains, it is also important to note (although not really an excuse) that the Xbox LIVE Arcade developers complain about many of the same things that we do. If you paid attention to talks and information coming out of GDC 2011, most of the the XBLA guys were saying things that sounded eerily similar to what the XBLIG developers are saying (Scott Nichols from GayGamer.net noticed http://twitter.com/#!/NaviFairyGG/status/43540379206811650). Does this mean we should just accept the status quo since we're being treated exactly the same? No way. However it DOES show that the way we're being treated is no indication of the stability and future of the platform, it's just Microsoft dropping the communication ball on two playing fields. We're not alone and we're not even being treated worse. Not great, but also in a weird way a very good sign. Now on to a few tidbits I think I CAN share from the summit (I'm really crossing my fingers I'm not stepping over some NDA line I shouldn't be). First, I discovered that the XBLIG user base is bigger than I personally had originally estimated. I won't give the exact numbers (although we did beg Microsoft to release some of these numbers so maybe someday?) but it was much larger than my original guestimates and I was pleasantly surprised. Maybe some of you guys had the right number when you were guessing, but I know that mine was much too low. And even MORE importantly the number of users/shoppers is growing at a steady pace as well. Our market is growing! That was fantastic news and really something that I had to share. On to the community manager discussion. It was mentioned. I was mentioned. I blushed. Nothing more to report there than the blush in my cheeks was a light crimson color. If I ever see a job description posted for that position I have a resume waiting in the wings. I can't deny that I think that would be my dream job... ...so after I finished blushing, the MVPs did make it very, very clear that the communication has to improve. Community manager or not the single biggest pain point with the Xbox LIVE Indie Game community has been a lack of communication. I have seen dramatic improvement in the team responding to MVPs and I'm even seeing more communication from them on the forums so I'm hoping that's a long term change. I really think they understood the issue, the problem remains how to open that communication channel in a way that was sustainable. I think they'll get it figured out and hopefully that's sooner rather than later. During the summit, you may have seen me tweeting about how I was "that guy" (http://twitter.com/#!/clingermangw/status/42740432471470081). You also may have noticed that Andy and Catalin both mentioned me in their summit write ups. I may have come on a bit strong while I was there...went a little out of character for myself. I've been agitated for a while with the way things have been and I've been listening to you guys and hearing you guys be agitated. I'm also watching some really awesome indie game developers looking elsewhere and leaving the platform. Some of them we might not have been able to keep even with changes, but others are only leaving because of perceptions and lack of communication from Microsoft. And that pisses me off. And I let Microsoft know that I was pissed off. You made your list and I took that list and verbalized it. I verbalized the hell out of it. [It was actually mentioned that I'm a lot nicer on the forums and in email than I am in person...I felt bad about that, but I couldn't stay silent]. Hopefully it did something guys, I really did try hard to get the message across. Along with my agitation, I also brought some pride. I mentioned several things in person to the team that I was particularly proud of. From people in the community that are doing an awesome job, to the re-launch of XboxIndies that was going on that week and even gamers like Steven Hurdle (http://writingsofmassdeduction.com/) who have purchased one XBLIG every day for over 100 days now. The community is freaking rocking it and I made sure to highlight that. So in conclusion, I'd just like to say hang in there (you know, like that picture of the cat). If you've been worried about investing in Xbox LIVE Indie Games because you think it's on shaky ground. It's not. Dream Build Play being about the Xbox 360 should have helped a little to point that out. The team is really scrambling around trying to figure things out and make improvements all around. There’s quite a few new gals and guys and it's going to take them time to catch up and there are a lot of constantly shifting priorities. We all have one toy, one team and we're fighting for time with it. It's also time for the community to continue spreading our wings and going out on our own more often. The Indie Game Winter Uprising was a fantastic example of that. We took things into our own hands and it got noticed and Microsoft got behind it. They do every time we stand up and do something (look at how many Microsoft employees tweeted, wrote about the re-launch of XboxIndies.com or the support I've gotten from them for my weekly XNA Notes). XNA is here to stay, it's time for us to stop being scared of that and figure out how to make our own games the successes they should be. There's definitely a list of things that need to be fixed, things that should be improved and I think we should definitely keep vocal about that with Microsoft. Keep it short, focused and prioritized. There's also a lot of things we can do ourselves while we're waiting on them to fix and change things. Lots of ways we can compensate for particular weaknesses in the channel. The kind of stuff that we can step up and do ourselves. Do it on our own, you know, the way Indies always do. And I'm really looking forward to watching us do just that.

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  • Html Agility Pack for Reading “Real World” HTML

    - by WeigeltRo
    In an ideal world, all data you need from the web would be available via well-designed services. In the real world you sometimes have to scrape the data off a web page. Ugly, dirty – but if you really want that data, you have no choice. Just don’t write (yet another) HTML parser. I stumbled across the Html Agility Pack (HAP) a long time ago, but just now had the need for a robust way to read HTML. A quote from the website: This is an agile HTML parser that builds a read/write DOM and supports plain XPATH or XSLT (you actually don't HAVE to understand XPATH nor XSLT to use it, don't worry...). It is a .NET code library that allows you to parse "out of the web" HTML files. The parser is very tolerant with "real world" malformed HTML. The object model is very similar to what proposes System.Xml, but for HTML documents (or streams). Using the HAP was a simple matter of getting the Nuget package, taking a look at the example and dusting off some of my XPath knowledge from years ago. The documentation on the Codeplex site is non-existing, but if you’ve queried a DOM or used XPath or XSLT before you shouldn’t have problems finding your way around using Intellisense (ReSharper tip: Press Ctrl+Shift+F1 on class members for reading the full doc comments).

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  • Z axis in isometric tilemap

    - by gyhgowvi
    I'm experimenting with isometric tile maps in JavaScript and HTML5 Canvas. I'm storing tile map data in JavaScript 2D array. // 0 - Grass // 1 - Dirt // ... var mapData = [ [0, 0, 0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 1, 0, 0, ... ] and draw for(var i = 0; i < mapData.length; i++) { for(var j = 0; j < mapData[i].length; j++) { var p = iso2screen(i, j, 0); // X, Y, Z context.drawImage(tileArray[mapData[i][j]], p.x, p.y); } } but this function mean's all tile Z axis is equal to zero. var p = iso2screen(i, j, 0); Maybe anyone have idea and how to do something like mapData[0][0] Z axis equal to 3 mapData[5][5] Z axis equal to 5? I have idea: Write function for grass, dirt and store this function to 2D array and draw and later mapData[0][0].setZ(3); But it is good idea to write functions for each tiles?

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  • Can any web-based email program let user paste an image (not link) as part of the email instead of a

    - by Jian Lin
    I think back in the old days, some email programs let users Paste an image right inside the email content. (maybe WinMail or Outlook?) So for example, we can write some text, embed an image, and then write some more text, and embed another image. The recipient will get the email content in the above text-image-text-image order (instead of having all images attached at the end of email) Can any web-based email program do that? Note that the image is not just a link, but a complete file. For example, Gmail lets us paste an image, but it is actually just a link to some web location. Can the actual file content be embedded instead?

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  • I have only two languages on my resume - how bad is this?

    - by Karl
    Hi there! I have a question that can be best answered here, given the vast experience some of you guys have! I am going to finish my bachelor's degree in CS and let's face it, I am just comfortable with C++ and Python. C++ - I have no experience to show for and I can't quote the C++ standard like some of the guys on SO do but yet I am comfortable with the language basics and the stuff that mostly matters. With Python, I have demonstrated work experience with a good company, so I can safely put that. I have never touched C, though I have been meaning to do it now. So I cannot write C on my resume because I have not done it ever. Sure I can finish K & R and get a sense of the language in a month, but I don't feel like writing it cause that would be being unfaithful to myself. So the big question is, are two languages on a a resume considered OK or that is usually a bad sign? Most resumes I have seen mention lots of languages and hence my question. Under the language section of my resume, I just mention: C++ and Python and that kinda looks empty! What are your views on this and what do you feel about such a situation? PS: I really don't want to write every single library or API I am familiar with. Or should I?

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  • SQL SERVER – Difference Between DATETIME and DATETIME2 – WITH GETDATE

    - by pinaldave
    Earlier I wrote blog post SQL SERVER – Difference Between GETDATE and SYSDATETIME which inspired me to write SQL SERVER – Difference Between DATETIME and DATETIME2. Now earlier two blog post inspired me to write this blog post (and 4 emails and 3 reads from readers). I previously populated DATETIME and DATETIME2 field with SYSDATETIME, which gave me very different behavior as SYSDATETIME was rounded up/down for the DATETIME datatype. I just ran the same experiment but instead of populating SYSDATETIME in this script I will be using GETDATE function. DECLARE @Intveral INT SET @Intveral = 10000 CREATE TABLE #TimeTable (FirstDate DATETIME, LastDate DATETIME2) WHILE (@Intveral > 0) BEGIN INSERT #TimeTable (FirstDate, LastDate) VALUES (GETDATE(), GETDATE()) SET @Intveral = @Intveral - 1 END GO SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT FirstDate) D_FirstDate, COUNT(DISTINCT LastDate) D_LastDate FROM #TimeTable GO SELECT DISTINCT a.FirstDate, b.LastDate FROM #TimeTable a INNER JOIN #TimeTable b ON a.FirstDate = b.LastDate GO SELECT * FROM #TimeTable GO DROP TABLE #TimeTable GO Let us run above script and observe the results. You will find that the values of GETDATE which is populated in both the columns FirstDate and LastDate are very much same. This is because GETDATE is of datatype DATETIME and the precision of the GETDATE is smaller than DATETIME2 there is no rounding happening. In other word, this experiment is pointless. I have included this as I got 4 emails and 3 twitter questions on this subject. If your datatype of variable is smaller than column datatype there is no manipulation of data, if data type of variable is larger than column datatype the data is rounded. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://www.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL DateTime, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • Learn Domain-Driven Design

    - by Ben Griswold
    I just wrote about how I like to present on unfamiliar topics. With this said, Domain-Driven Design (DDD) is no exception. This is yet another area I knew enough about to be dangerous but I certainly was no expert.  As it turns out, researching this topic wasn’t easy. I could be wrong, but it is as if DDD is a secret to which few are privy. If you search the Interwebs, you will likely find little information about DDD until you start rolling over rocks to find that one great write-up, a handful of podcasts and videos and the Readers’ Digest version of the Blue Book which apparently you must read if you really want to get the complete, unabridged skinny on DDD.  Even Wikipedia’s write-up is skimpy which I didn’t know was possible…   Here’s a list of valuable resources.  If you, too, are interested in DDD, this is a good starting place.  Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software by Eric Evans Domain-Driven Design Quickly, by Abel Avram & Floyd Marinescu An Introduction to Domain-Driven Design by David Laribee Talking Domain-Driven Design with David Laribee Part 1, Deep Fried Bytes Talking Domain-Driven Design with David Laribee Part 2, Deep Fried Bytes Eric Evans on Domain Driven Design, .NET Rocks Domain-Driven Design Community Eric Evans on Domain Driven Design Jimmy Nilsson on Domain Driven Design Domain-Driven Design Wikipedia What I’ve Learned About DDD Since the Book, Eric Evans Domain Driven Design, Alt.Net Podcast Applying Domain-Driven Design and Patterns: With Examples in C# and .NET, Jimmy Nilsson Domain-Driven Design Discussion Group DDD: Putting the Model to Work by Eric Evans The Official DDD Site

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  • SQL SERVER – Guest Post – Jonathan Kehayias – Wait Type – Day 16 of 28

    - by pinaldave
    Jonathan Kehayias (Blog | Twitter) is a MCITP Database Administrator and Developer, who got started in SQL Server in 2004 as a database developer and report writer in the natural gas industry. After spending two and a half years working in TSQL, in late 2006, he transitioned to the role of SQL Database Administrator. His primary passion is performance tuning, where he frequently rewrites queries for better performance and performs in depth analysis of index implementation and usage. Jonathan blogs regularly on SQLBlog, and was a coauthor of Professional SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting. On a personal note, I think Jonathan is extremely positive person. In every conversation with him I have found that he is always eager to help and encourage. Every time he finds something needs to be approved, he has contacted me without hesitation and guided me to improve, change and learn. During all the time, he has not lost his focus to help larger community. I am honored that he has accepted to provide his views on complex subject of Wait Types and Queues. Currently I am reading his series on Extended Events. Here is the guest blog post by Jonathan: SQL Server troubleshooting is all about correlating related pieces of information together to indentify where exactly the root cause of a problem lies. In my daily work as a DBA, I generally get phone calls like, “So and so application is slow, what’s wrong with the SQL Server.” One of the funny things about the letters DBA is that they go so well with Default Blame Acceptor, and I really wish that I knew exactly who the first person was that pointed that out to me, because it really fits at times. A lot of times when I get this call, the problem isn’t related to SQL Server at all, but every now and then in my initial quick checks, something pops up that makes me start looking at things further. The SQL Server is slow, we see a number of tasks waiting on ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION, IO_COMPLETION, or PAGEIOLATCH_* waits in sys.dm_exec_requests and sys.dm_exec_waiting_tasks. These are also some of the highest wait types in sys.dm_os_wait_stats for the server, so it would appear that we have a disk I/O bottleneck on the machine. A quick check of sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats() and tempdb shows a high write stall rate, while our user databases show high read stall rates on the data files. A quick check of some performance counters and Page Life Expectancy on the server is bouncing up and down in the 50-150 range, the Free Page counter consistently hits zero, and the Free List Stalls/sec counter keeps jumping over 10, but Buffer Cache Hit Ratio is 98-99%. Where exactly is the problem? In this case, which happens to be based on a real scenario I faced a few years back, the problem may not be a disk bottleneck at all; it may very well be a memory pressure issue on the server. A quick check of the system spec’s and it is a dual duo core server with 8GB RAM running SQL Server 2005 SP1 x64 on Windows Server 2003 R2 x64. Max Server memory is configured at 6GB and we think that this should be enough to handle the workload; or is it? This is a unique scenario because there are a couple of things happening inside of this system, and they all relate to what the root cause of the performance problem is on the system. If we were to query sys.dm_exec_query_stats for the TOP 10 queries, by max_physical_reads, max_logical_reads, and max_worker_time, we may be able to find some queries that were using excessive I/O and possibly CPU against the system in their worst single execution. We can also CROSS APPLY to sys.dm_exec_sql_text() and see the statement text, and also CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_query_plan() to get the execution plan stored in cache. Ok, quick check, the plans are pretty big, I see some large index seeks, that estimate 2.8GB of data movement between operators, but everything looks like it is optimized the best it can be. Nothing really stands out in the code, and the indexing looks correct, and I should have enough memory to handle this in cache, so it must be a disk I/O problem right? Not exactly! If we were to look at how much memory the plan cache is taking by querying sys.dm_os_memory_clerks for the CACHESTORE_SQLCP and CACHESTORE_OBJCP clerks we might be surprised at what we find. In SQL Server 2005 RTM and SP1, the plan cache was allowed to take up to 75% of the memory under 8GB. I’ll give you a second to go back and read that again. Yes, you read it correctly, it says 75% of the memory under 8GB, but you don’t have to take my word for it, you can validate this by reading Changes in Caching Behavior between SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005 RTM and SQL Server 2005 SP2. In this scenario the application uses an entirely adhoc workload against SQL Server and this leads to plan cache bloat, and up to 4.5GB of our 6GB of memory for SQL can be consumed by the plan cache in SQL Server 2005 SP1. This in turn reduces the size of the buffer cache to just 1.5GB, causing our 2.8GB of data movement in this expensive plan to cause complete flushing of the buffer cache, not just once initially, but then another time during the queries execution, resulting in excessive physical I/O from disk. Keep in mind that this is not the only query executing at the time this occurs. Remember the output of sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats() showed high read stalls on the data files for our user databases versus higher write stalls for tempdb? The memory pressure is also forcing heavier use of tempdb to handle sorting and hashing in the environment as well. The real clue here is the Memory counters for the instance; Page Life Expectancy, Free List Pages, and Free List Stalls/sec. The fact that Page Life Expectancy is fluctuating between 50 and 150 constantly is a sign that the buffer cache is experiencing constant churn of data, once every minute to two and a half minutes. If you add to the Page Life Expectancy counter, the consistent bottoming out of Free List Pages along with Free List Stalls/sec consistently spiking over 10, and you have the perfect memory pressure scenario. All of sudden it may not be that our disk subsystem is the problem, but is instead an innocent bystander and victim. Side Note: The Page Life Expectancy counter dropping briefly and then returning to normal operating values intermittently is not necessarily a sign that the server is under memory pressure. The Books Online and a number of other references will tell you that this counter should remain on average above 300 which is the time in seconds a page will remain in cache before being flushed or aged out. This number, which equates to just five minutes, is incredibly low for modern systems and most published documents pre-date the predominance of 64 bit computing and easy availability to larger amounts of memory in SQL Servers. As food for thought, consider that my personal laptop has more memory in it than most SQL Servers did at the time those numbers were posted. I would argue that today, a system churning the buffer cache every five minutes is in need of some serious tuning or a hardware upgrade. Back to our problem and its investigation: There are two things really wrong with this server; first the plan cache is excessively consuming memory and bloated in size and we need to look at that and second we need to evaluate upgrading the memory to accommodate the workload being performed. In the case of the server I was working on there were a lot of single use plans found in sys.dm_exec_cached_plans (where usecounts=1). Single use plans waste space in the plan cache, especially when they are adhoc plans for statements that had concatenated filter criteria that is not likely to reoccur with any frequency.  SQL Server 2005 doesn’t natively have a way to evict a single plan from cache like SQL Server 2008 does, but MVP Kalen Delaney, showed a hack to evict a single plan by creating a plan guide for the statement and then dropping that plan guide in her blog post Geek City: Clearing a Single Plan from Cache. We could put that hack in place in a job to automate cleaning out all the single use plans periodically, minimizing the size of the plan cache, but a better solution would be to fix the application so that it uses proper parameterized calls to the database. You didn’t write the app, and you can’t change its design? Ok, well you could try to force parameterization to occur by creating and keeping plan guides in place, or we can try forcing parameterization at the database level by using ALTER DATABASE <dbname> SET PARAMETERIZATION FORCED and that might help. If neither of these help, we could periodically dump the plan cache for that database, as discussed as being a problem in Kalen’s blog post referenced above; not an ideal scenario. The other option is to increase the memory on the server to 16GB or 32GB, if the hardware allows it, which will increase the size of the plan cache as well as the buffer cache. In SQL Server 2005 SP1, on a system with 16GB of memory, if we set max server memory to 14GB the plan cache could use at most 9GB  [(8GB*.75)+(6GB*.5)=(6+3)=9GB], leaving 5GB for the buffer cache.  If we went to 32GB of memory and set max server memory to 28GB, the plan cache could use at most 16GB [(8*.75)+(20*.5)=(6+10)=16GB], leaving 12GB for the buffer cache. Thankfully we have SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2, 3, and 4 these days which include the changes in plan cache sizing discussed in the Changes to Caching Behavior between SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005 RTM and SQL Server 2005 SP2 blog post. In real life, when I was troubleshooting this problem, I spent a week trying to chase down the cause of the disk I/O bottleneck with our Server Admin and SAN Admin, and there wasn’t much that could be done immediately there, so I finally asked if we could increase the memory on the server to 16GB, which did fix the problem. It wasn’t until I had this same problem occur on another system that I actually figured out how to really troubleshoot this down to the root cause.  I couldn’t believe the size of the plan cache on the server with 16GB of memory when I actually learned about this and went back to look at it. SQL Server is constantly telling a story to anyone that will listen. As the DBA, you have to sit back and listen to all that it’s telling you and then evaluate the big picture and how all the data you can gather from SQL about performance relate to each other. One of the greatest tools out there is actually a free in the form of Diagnostic Scripts for SQL Server 2005 and 2008, created by MVP Glenn Alan Berry. Glenn’s scripts collect a majority of the information that SQL has to offer for rapid troubleshooting of problems, and he includes a lot of notes about what the outputs of each individual query might be telling you. When I read Pinal’s blog post SQL SERVER – ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION – Wait Type – Day 11 of 28, I noticed that he referenced Checking Memory Related Performance Counters in his post, but there was no real explanation about why checking memory counters is so important when looking at an I/O related wait type. I thought I’d chat with him briefly on Google Talk/Twitter DM and point this out, and offer a couple of other points I noted, so that he could add the information to his blog post if he found it useful.  Instead he asked that I write a guest blog for this. I am honored to be a guest blogger, and to be able to share this kind of information with the community. The information contained in this blog post is a glimpse at how I do troubleshooting almost every day of the week in my own environment. SQL Server provides us with a lot of information about how it is running, and where it may be having problems, it is up to us to play detective and find out how all that information comes together to tell us what’s really the problem. This blog post is written by Jonathan Kehayias (Blog | Twitter). Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: MVP, Pinal Dave, PostADay, Readers Contribution, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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  • How to study for 70-573 Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Application Development

    - by ybbest
    I just passed my 70-573 exam today and would like to Share my experience on learning SharePoint 2010 as a beginner. 1. Book Microsoft SharePoint 2010: Building Solutions for SharePoint 2010 by Sahil Malik http://apress.com/book/view/1430228652 Sahil is an expert and MVP in SharePoint 2010.He certainly know his field and the book is well written. More importantly Sahil has got very good sense of humor in delivering the knowledge. 2.A development machine It is of great importance to have a dev machine , you cannot learn a new technology by just reading a book nor by watching some training videos. You need get your hands dirty with SharePoint a lot. 3.Training videos Since I have one year subscription with learndev , I use them as my learning resources. It is quite cheap , only cost US $99 for a year subscription and you will get not only the SharePoint training but the whole training library .The videos are from Appdev . Appdev training is of high quality. http://www.appdev.com/ http://www.learndevnow.com/ You can also get the videos from Microsoft SharePoint site. They are pretty good too. But bear in mind , by just watching these videos you will not learn much , you need to build a SharePoint 2010 machine and play with it .Try to write the sample code yourself and not just copy and paste. 4. Write blogs about your learning. This will motive you in your long journey with SharePoint learning. 5. Do check out the patterns & practices SharePoint Guidance on codeplex. http://spg.codeplex.com/ 6.Thanks for Becky Bertram,who kindly put up all the exam requirements with links to MSDN http://blog.beckybertram.com/Lists/Exam%2070573%20Study%20Guide/AllItems.aspx

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  • SQLAuthority News – Happy Deepavali and Happy News Year

    - by pinaldave
    Diwali or Deepavali is popularly known as the festival of lights. It literally means “array of light” or “row of lamps“. Today we build a small clay maps and fill it with oil and light it up. The significance of lighting the lamp is the triumph of good over evil. I work every single day in a year but today I am spending my time with family and little one. I make sure that my daughter is aware of our culture and she learns to celebrate the festival with the same passion and values which I have. Every year on this day, I do not write a long blog post but rather write a small post with various SQL Tips and Tricks. After reading them you should quickly get back to your friends and family – it is the most important festival day. Here are a few tips and tricks: Take regular full backup of your database Avoid cursors if they can be replaced by set based process Keep your index maintenance script handy and execute them at intervals Consider Solid State Drive (SDD) for crucial database and tempdb placement Update statistics for OLTP transactions at intervals I guess that’s it for today. If you still have more time to learn. Here are few things you should consider. Get FREE Books by Sign up for tomorrow’s webcast by Rick Morelan Watch SQL in Sixty Seconds Series – FREE SQL Learning Read my earlier 2300+ articles Well, I am sure that will keep you busy for the rest of the day! Happy Diwali to All of You! Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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  • Building services with .Net Part 1

    - by Allan Rwakatungu
    On the 26th of May 2010 , I made a presentation to the .NET user group meeting (thanks to Malisa Ncube for organizing this event every month … ). If you missed my presentation , we talked about why we should all be building services … better still using the .NET framework. This blog post is an introduction to services , why you would want to build services and how you can build services using the .NET framework. What is a service? OASIS defines service as "a mechanism to enable access to one or more capabilities, where the access is provided using a prescribed interface and is exercised consistent with constraints and policies as specified by the service description." [1]. If the above definition sounds to academic , you can also define a service as loosely coupled units of functionality that have no calls to each other embedded in the. Instead of services embedding calls to each other in their service code they use defined protocols that describe how services pass and parse messages. This is a good way to think about services if you’re from an objected oriented background. While in object oriented programming functions make calls to each other, in service oriented programming, functions pass messages between each other. Why would you want to use services? 1. If your enterprise architecture looks like this   Services are the building blocks for SOA . With SOA you can move away from the sphaggetti infrastructure that is common in most enterprises. The complexity or lack of visibility of the integration points in your enterprises makes it difficult and costly to implement new initiatives and changes into the business - and even impossible in some cases - as it is not possible to identify the impact a change in one system might have to other systems. With services you can move to an architecture like this Your building blocks from Spaghetti infrastructure to something that is more well-defined and manageable to achieve cost efficiency and not least business agility - enabling you to react to changes in the market with speed and achieve operational efficiency and control are services. 2. If you want to become the Gates or Zuckerburger. Have you heard about Web 2.0 ? Mashups? Software as a service (SAAS) ? Cloud computing ?   They all offer you the opportunity to have scalable but low cost business models and they built using services.  Some of my favorite companies that leverage services for their business models include  https://www.salesforce.com/ (cloud CRM) http://www. twitter.com (more people use twitter clients built by 3rd parties than their official clients) http://www.kayak.com/ (compares data from other travel sites to give information to users in one location) Services with the .NET framework      If you are a .NET developer and you want to develop services, Windows Communication Framework (WCF) is the tool for you. WCF is Microsoft’s unified programming model (service model) for building service oriented applications. ( Before .NET 3.0 you had several models for programming services in .NET including .NET remoting, Web services (ASMX), COM +, Microsoft Messaging queuing (MSMQ) etc, after .NET 3.0 the programming model was unified into one i.e. WCF ). Windows Communication Framework (WCF) provides you 1. An Software Development Kit (SDK) for creating SOA applications 2. A runtime for running services on the Windows platform Why should you use Windows Communication Foundation if you’re programming services?   1. It supports interoperable and open standards e.g. WS* protocols for programming SOAP services 2. It has a unified programming model. Whether you use TCP or Http or Pipes or transmitting using Messaging Queues, programmers need to learn just one way to program. Previously you had .NET remoting, MSMQ, Web services, COM+ and they were all done differently 3. Productive programming model You don’t have to worry about all the plumbing involved to write services. You have a rich declarative programming model to add stuff like logging, transactions, and reliable messages in-built in the Windows Communication Framework. Understanding services in WCF The basic principles of WCF are as easy as ABC A – Address This is where the service is located B- Binding This describes how you communicate with the service e.g. Use TCP, HTTP or both. How to exchange security information with the service etc. C – Contract This defines what the service can do. E.g. Pay water bill, Make a phone call A - Addresses In WCF, an address is a combination of transport, server name, port and path Example addresses may include http://localhost:8001 net.tcp://localhost:8002/MyService net.pipe://localhost/MyPipe net.msmq://localhost/private/MyService net.msmq://localhost/MyService B- Binding   There are numerous ways to communicate with services , different ways that a message can be formatted/sent/secured, that allows you to tailor your service for the compatibility/performance you require for your solution. Transport You can use HTTP TCP MSMQ , Named pipes, Your own custom transport etc Message You  can send a plain text binary, Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism (MTOM) message Communication security No security Transport security Message security Authenticating and authorizing callers etc Behaviour You service can support Transactions Be reliable Use queues Support ajax etc C - Contract You define what your service can do using Service contracts :- Define operations that your service can do, communications and behaviours Data contracts :- Define the messages that are passed from and into your service and how they are formatted Fault contracts :- Defines errors types in your service   As an example, suppose your service service shows money. You define your service contract using a interface [ServiceContract] public interface IShowMeTheMoney {   [OperationContract]    Money Show(); } You define the data contract by annotating a class it with the Data Contract attribute and fields you want to pass in the message as Data Members. (Note:- In the latest versions of WCF you dont have to use attributes if you passing all the objects properties in the message) [DataContract] public Money {   [DataMember]   public string Currency { get; set; }   [DataMember]   public Decimal Amount { get; set; }   public string Comment { get; set; } } Features of Windows Communication Foundation Windows Communication Foundation is not only simple but feature rich , offering you several options to tweak your service to fit your business requirements. Some of the features of WCF include 1. Workflow services You can combine WCF with Windows WorkFlow Foundation (WWF) to write workflow type services 2. Control how your data (messages) are transferred and serialized e.g. you can serialize your business objects as XML or binary 3. control over session management , instance creation and concurrency management without writing code if you like 4. Queues and reliable sessions. You can store messages from the sending client and later forward them to the receiving application. You can also guarantee that messages will arrive at their destincation. 5.Transactions:  You can have different services participate in a transaction operations that can be rolled back if needed 6. Security. WCF has rich features for authorization and authentication  as well as keep audit trails 7. Web programming model. WCF allows developers to expose services as non SOAP endpoints 8. Inbuilt features that you can use to write JSON and services that support AJAX applications And lots more In my next blog I will show you how you can use WCF features to write a real world business service.               Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 ]] /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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  • 10 Useful CSS Tips And Tutorials

    - by Jyoti
    CSS is a technology that web designers use everyday, but yet it is something that most struggle with as well. Whether it’s keeping stylesheets for large sites manageable or creating image effects that are cross browser compatible, there are plenty of things to cause frustration. This article is an attempt to provide you with a few resources that might help you with your CSS or introduce you to a few tricks you didn’t know about. Organizing Your Stylesheet Using CSS Edit: Rob Soule of Viget Labs shows you how to organize your style sheets using CSS Edit, a powerful CSS editor built exclusively for the mac. Tips For Organizing Your CSS: A set of practical tips for organizing your style sheets. Write A Well Structured CSS File: A detailed and well written post about how to write a well structured CSS file. Expandable CSS Tabs Tutorials: A tutorial on creating expandable CSS tabs. Simple Round CSS Buttons: Learn how to create rounded corner buttons with only One Image and One CSS file. Beautiful CSS Buttons With Icons Set: Learn how to create a clean set of buttons with CSS and an icon set. Scalable CSS Buttons Using PNG And Background Colors: Create Resizing Thumbnails Using Overflow Property: Learn how to create a cool resizing thumbnail effect. CSS Decorative Gallery: Decorate your images and photo galleries without editing the source images. Placing Text Over Image Using CSS Position Property: A simple technique for placing text over an image.

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  • Writing a Book, and Moving my Blog

    - by Ben Nevarez
    I started blogging about SQL Server here at SQLblog back in July, 2009 and it was a lot of fun, I enjoyed it a lot. Then later, after a series of blog posts about the Query Optimizer, I was invited to write an entire book about that same topic. But after a few months I realized that it was going to be hard to continue both blogging and writing chapters for a book, this in addition to my regular day job, so I decided to stop blogging for a little while.   Now that I have finished the last chapter of the book and I am working on the final chapter reviews, I decided to start blogging again. This time I am moving my blog to   http://www.benjaminnevarez.com   Same as my previous posts I plan to write about my topics of interest, like the relational engine, and basically anything related to SQL Server. Hopefully you find my new blog interesting and useful.   Finally, I would like to thank Adam for allowing me to blog here. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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