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• Tools and Utilities for the .NET Developer

  - by mbcrump

  Tweet this list! Add a link to my site to your bookmarks to quickly find this page again! Add me to twitter! This is a list of the tools/utilities that I use to do my job/hobby. I wanted this page to load fast and contain information that only you care about. If I have missed a tool that you like, feel free to contact me and I will add it to the list. Also, this list took a lot of time to complete. Please do not steal my work, if you like the page then please link back to my site. I will keep the links/information updated as new tools/utilities are created.  Windows/.NET Development – This is a list of tools that any Windows/.NET developer should have in his bag. I have used at some point in my career everything listed on this page and below is the tools worth keeping. Name Description License AnkhSVN Subversion support for Visual Studio. It also works with VS2010. Free Aurora XAML Designer One of the best XAML creation tools available. Has a ton of built in templates that you can copy/paste into VS2010. COST/Trial BeyondCompare Beyond Compare 3 is the ideal tool for comparing files and folders on your Windows or Linux system. Visualize changes in your code and carefully reconcile them. COST/Trial BuildIT Automated Task Tool Its main purpose is to automate tasks, whether it is the final packaging of a product, an automated daily build, maybe sending out a mailing list, even backing-up files. Free C Sharper for VB Convert VB to C#. COST CLRProfiler Analyze and improve the behavior of your .NET app. Free CodeRush Direct competitor to ReSharper, contains similar feature. This is one of those decide for yourself. COST/Trial Disk2VHD Disk2vhd is a utility that creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk - Microsoft's Virtual Machine disk format) versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs). Free Eazfuscator.NET Is a free obfuscator for .NET. The main purpose is to protect intellectual property of software. Free EQATEC Profiler Make your .NET app run faster. No source code changes are needed. Just point the profiler to your app, run the modified code, and get a visual report. COST Expression Studio 3/4 Comes with Web, Blend, Sketch Flow and more. You can create websites, produce beautiful XAML and more. COST/Trial Expresso The award-winning Expresso editor is equally suitable as a teaching tool for the beginning user of regular expressions or as a full-featured development environment for the experienced programmer or web designer with an extensive knowledge of regular expressions. Free Fiddler Fiddler is a web debugging proxy which logs all HTTP(s) traffic between your computer and the internet. Free Firebug Powerful Web development tool. If you build websites, you will need this. Free FxCop FxCop is an application that analyzes managed code assemblies (code that targets the .NET Framework common language runtime) and reports information about the assemblies, such as possible design, localization, performance, and security improvements. Free GAC Browser and Remover Easy way to remove multiple assemblies from the GAC. Assemblies registered by programs like Install Shield can also be removed. Free GAC Util The Global Assembly Cache tool allows you to view and manipulate the contents of the global assembly cache and download cache. Free HelpScribble Help Scribble is a full-featured, easy-to-use help authoring tool for creating help files from start to finish. You can create Win Help (.hlp) files, HTML Help (.chm) files, a printed manual and online documentation (on a web site) all from the same Help Scribble project. COST/Trial IETester IETester is a free Web Browser that allows you to have the rendering and JavaScript engines of IE9 preview, IE8, IE7 IE 6 and IE5.5 on Windows 7, Vista and XP, as well as the installed IE in the same process. Free iTextSharp iText# (iTextSharp) is a port of the iText open source java library for PDF generation written entirely in C# for the .NET platform. Use the iText mailing list to get support. Free Kaxaml Kaxaml is a lightweight XAML editor that gives you a "split view" so you can see both your XAML and your rendered content. Free LINQPad LinqPad lets you interactively query databases in a LINQ. Free Linquer Many programmers are familiar with SQL and will need a help in the transition to LINQ. Sometimes there are complicated queries to be written and Linqer can help by converting SQL scripts to LINQ. COST/Trial LiquidXML Liquid XML Studio 2010 is an advanced XML developers toolkit and IDE, containing all the tools needed for designing and developing XML schema and applications. COST/Trial Log4Net log4net is a tool to help the programmer output log statements to a variety of output targets. log4net is a port of the excellent log4j framework to the .NET runtime. We have kept the framework similar in spirit to the original log4j while taking advantage of new features in the .NET runtime. For more information on log4net see the features document. Free Microsoft Web Platform Installer The Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 (Web PI) is a free tool that makes getting the latest components of the Microsoft Web Platform, including Internet Information Services (IIS), SQL Server Express, .NET Framework and Visual Web Developer easy. Free Mono Development Don't have Visual Studio - no problem! This is an open Source C# and .NET development environment for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X Free Net Mass Downloader While it’s great that Microsoft has released the .NET Reference Source Code, you can only get it one file at a time while you’re debugging. If you’d like to batch download it for reading or to populate the cache, you’d have to write a program that instantiated and called each method in the Framework Class Library. Fortunately, .NET Mass Downloader comes to the rescue! Free nMap Nmap ("Network Mapper") is a free and open source (license) utility for network exploration or security auditing. Many systems and network administrators also find it useful for tasks such as network inventory, managing service upgrade schedules, and monitoring host or service uptime. Free NoScript (Firefox add-in) The NoScript Firefox extension provides extra protection for Firefox, Flock, Seamonkey and other Mozilla-based browsers: this free, open source add-on allows JavaScript, Java and Flash and other plug-ins to be executed only by trusted web sites of your choice (e.g. your online bank), and provides the most powerful Anti-XSS protection available in a browser. Free NotePad 2 Notepad2, a fast and light-weight Notepad-like text editor with syntax highlighting. This program can be run out of the box without installation, and does not touch your system's registry. Free PageSpy PageSpy is a small add-on for Internet Explorer that allows you to select any element within a webpage, select an option in the context menu, and view detailed information about both the coding behind the page and the element you selected. Free Phrase Express PhraseExpress manages your frequently used text snippets in customizable categories for quick access. Free PowerGui PowerGui is a free community for PowerGUI, a graphical user interface and script editor for Microsoft Windows PowerShell! Free Powershell Comes with Win7, but you can automate tasks by using the .NET Framework. Great for network admins. Free Process Explorer Ever wondered which program has a particular file or directory open? Now you can find out. Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded. Also, included in the SysInterals Suite. Free Process Monitor Process Monitor is an advanced monitoring tool for Windows that shows real-time file system, Registry and process/thread activity. Free Reflector Explore and analyze compiled .NET assemblies, viewing them in C#, Visual Basic, and IL. This is an Essential for any .NET developer. Free Regular Expression Library Stuck on a Regular Expression but you think someone has already figured it out? Chances are they have. Free Regulator Regulator makes Regular Expressions easy. This is a must have for a .NET Developer. Free RenameMaestro RenameMaestro is probably the easiest batch file renamer you'll find to instantly rename multiple files COST ReSharper The one program that I cannot live without. Supports VS2010 and offers simple refactoring, code analysis/assistance/cleanup/templates. One of the few applications that is worth the $$$. COST/Trial ScrewTurn Wiki ScrewTurn Wiki allows you to create, manage and share wikis. A wiki is a collaboratively-edited, information-centered website: the most famous is Wikipedia. Free SharpDevelop What is #develop? SharpDevelop is a free IDE for C# and VB.NET projects on Microsoft's .NET platform. Free Show Me The Template Show Me The Template is a tool for exploring the templates, be their data, control or items panel, that comes with the controls built into WPF for all 6 themes. Free SnippetCompiler Compiles code snippets without opening Visual Studio. It does not support .NET 4. Free SQL Prompt SQL Prompt is a plug-in that increases how fast you can work with SQL. It provides code-completion for SQL server, reformatting, db schema information and snippets. Awesome! COST/Trial SQLinForm SQLinForm is an automatic SQL code formatter for all major databases  including ORACLE, SQL Server, DB2, UDB, Sybase, Informix, PostgreSQL, Teradata, MySQL, MS Access etc. with over 70 formatting options. COST/OnlineFree SSMS Tools SSMS Tools Pack is an add-in for Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) including SSMS Express. Free Storm STORM is a free and open source tool for testing web services. Free Telerik Code Convertor Convert code from VB to C Sharp and Vice Versa. Free TurtoiseSVN TortoiseSVN is a really easy to use Revision control / version control / source control software for Windows.Since it's not an integration for a specific IDE you can use it with whatever development tools you like. Free UltraEdit UltraEdit is the ideal text, HTML and hex editor, and an advanced PHP, Perl, Java and JavaScript editor for programmers. UltraEdit is also an XML editor including a tree-style XML parser. An industry-award winner, UltraEdit supports disk-based 64-bit file handling (standard) on 32-bit Windows platforms (Windows 2000 and later). COST/Trial Virtual Windows XP Comes with some W7 version and allows you to run WinXP along side W7. Free VirtualBox Virtualization by Sun Microsystems. You can virtualize Windows, Linux and more. Free Visual Log Parser SQL queries against a variety of log files and other system data sources. Free WinMerge WinMerge is an Open Source differencing and merging tool for Windows. WinMerge can compare both folders and files, presenting differences in a visual text format that is easy to understand and handle. Free Wireshark Wireshark is one of the best network protocol analyzer's for Unix and windows. This has been used several times to get me out of a bind. Free XML Notepad 07 Old, but still one of my favorite XML viewers. Free Productivity Tools – This is the list of tools that I use to save time or quickly navigate around Windows. Name Description License AutoHotKey Automate almost anything by sending keystrokes and mouse clicks. You can write a mouse or keyboard macro by hand or use the macro recorder. Free CLCL CLCL is clipboard caching utility. Free Ditto Ditto is an extension to the standard windows clipboard. It saves each item placed on the clipboard allowing you access to any of those items at a later time. Ditto allows you to save any type of information that can be put on the clipboard, text, images, html, custom formats, ..... Free Evernote Remember everything from notes to photos. It will synch between computers/devices. Free InfoRapid Inforapid is a search tool that will display all you search results in a html like browser. If you click on a word in that browser, it will start another search to the word you clicked on. Handy if you want to trackback something to it's true origin. The word you looked for will be highlighted in red. Clicking on the red word will open the containing file in a text based viewer. Clicking on any word in the opened document will start another search on that word. Free KatMouse The prime purpose of the KatMouse utility is to enhance the functionality of mice with a scroll wheel, offering 'universal' scrolling: moving the mouse wheel will scroll the window directly beneath the mouse cursor (not the one with the keyboard focus, which is default on Windows OSes). This is a major increase in the usefulness of the mouse wheel. Free ScreenR Instant Screencast with nothing to download. Works with Mac or PC and free. Free Start++ Start++ is an enhancement for the Start Menu in Windows Vista. It also extends the Run box and the command-line with customizable commands.  For example, typing "w Windows Vista" will take you to the Windows Vista page on Wikipedia! Free Synergy Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It's intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitor(s). Free Texter Texter lets you define text substitution hot strings that, when triggered, will replace hotstring with a larger piece of text. By entering your most commonly-typed snippets of text into Texter, you can save countless keystrokes in the course of the day. Free Total Commander File handling, FTP, Archive handling and much more. Even works with Win3.11. COST/Trial Available Wizmouse WizMouse is a mouse enhancement utility that makes your mouse wheel work on the window currently under the mouse pointer, instead of the currently focused window. This means you no longer have to click on a window before being able to scroll it with the mouse wheel. This is a far more comfortable and practical way to make use of the mouse wheel. Free Xmarks Bookmark sync and search between computers. Free General Utilities – This is a list for power user users or anyone that wants more out of Windows. I usually install a majority of these whenever I get a new system. Name Description License µTorrent µTorrent is a lightweight and efficient BitTorrent client for Windows or Mac with many features. I use this for downloading LEGAL media. Free Audacity Audacity® is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. Learn more about Audacity... Also check our Wiki and Forum for more information. Free AVast Free FREE Antivirus. Free CD Burner XP Pro CDBurnerXP is a free application to burn CDs and DVDs, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs. It also includes the feature to burn and create ISOs, as well as a multilanguage interface. Free CDEX You can extract digital audio CDs into mp3/wav. Free Combofix Combofix is a freeware (a legitimate spyware remover created by sUBs), Combofix was designed to scan a computer for known malware, spyware (SurfSideKick, QooLogic, and Look2Me as well as any other combination of the mentioned spyware applications) and remove them. Free Cpu-Z Provides information about some of the main devices of your system. Free Cropper Cropper is a screen capture utility written in C#. It makes it fast and easy to grab parts of your screen. Use it to easily crop out sections of vector graphic files such as Fireworks without having to flatten the files or open in a new editor. Use it to easily capture parts of a web site, including text and images. It's also great for writing documentation that needs images of your application or web site. Free DropBox Drag and Drop files to sync between computers. Free DVD-Fab Converts/Copies DVDs/Blu-Ray to different formats. (like mp4, mkv, avi) COST/Trial Available FastStone Capture FastStone Capture is a powerful, lightweight, yet full-featured screen capture tool that allows you to easily capture and annotate anything on the screen including windows, objects, menus, full screen, rectangular/freehand regions and even scrolling windows/web pages. Free ffdshow FFDShow is a DirectShow decoding filter for decompressing DivX, XviD, H.264, FLV1, WMV, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, MPEG-4 movies. Free Filezilla FileZilla Client is a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive graphical user interface. You can also download a server version. Free FireFox Web Browser, do you really need an explanation? Free FireGestures A customizable mouse gestures extension which enables you to execute various commands and user scripts with five types of gestures. Free FoxIt Reader Light weight PDF viewer. You should install this with the advanced setting or it will install a toolbar and setup some shortcuts. Free gSynchIt Synch Gmail and Outlook. Even supports Outlook 2010 32/64 bit COST/Trial Available Hulu Desktop At home or in a hotel, this has replaced my cable/satellite subscription. Free ImgBurn ImgBurn is a lightweight CD / DVD / HD DVD / Blu-ray burning application that everyone should have in their toolkit! Free Infrarecorder InfraRecorder is a free CD/DVD burning solution for Microsoft Windows. It offers a wide range of powerful features; all through an easy to use application interface and Windows Explorer integration. Free KeePass KeePass is a free open source password manager, which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. Free LastPass Another password management, synchronize between browsers, automatic form filling and more. Free Live Essentials One download and lots of programs including Mail, Live Writer, Movie Maker and more! Free Monitores MonitorES is a small windows utility that helps you to turnoff monitor display when you lock down your machine.Also when you lock your machine, it will pause all your running media programs & set your IM status message to "Away" / Custom message(via options) and restore it back to normal when you back. Free mRemote mRemote is a full-featured, multi-tab remote connections manager. Free Open Office OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose. Free Paint.NET Simple, intuitive, and innovative user interface for editing photos. Free Picasa Picasa is free photo editing software from Google that makes your pictures look great. Free Pidgin Pidgin is an easy to use and free chat client used by millions. Connect to AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and more chat networks all at once. Free PING PING is a live Linux ISO, based on the excellent Linux From Scratch (LFS) documentation. It can be burnt on a CD and booted, or integrated into a PXE / RIS environment. Free Putty PuTTY is an SSH and telnet client, developed originally by Simon Tatham for the Windows platform. Free Revo Uninstaller Revo Uninstaller Pro helps you to uninstall software and remove unwanted programs installed on your computer easily! Even if you have problems uninstalling and cannot uninstall them from "Windows Add or Remove Programs" control panel applet.Revo Uninstaller is a much faster and more powerful alternative to "Windows Add or Remove Programs" applet! It has very powerful features to uninstall and remove programs. Free Security Essentials Microsoft Security Essentials is a new, free consumer anti-malware solution for your computer. Free SetupVirtualCloneDrive Virtual CloneDrive works and behaves just like a physical CD/DVD drive, however it exists only virtually. Point to the .ISO file and it appears in Windows Explorer as a Drive. Free Shark 007 Codec Pack Play just about any file format with this download. Also includes my W7 Media Playlist Generator. Free Snagit 9 Screen Capture on steroids. Add arrows, captions, etc to any screenshot. COST/Trial Available SysinternalsSuite Go ahead and download the entire sys internals suite. I have mentioned multiple programs in this suite already. Free TeraCopy TeraCopy is a compact program designed to copy and move files at the maximum possible speed, providing the user with a lot of features. Free for Home TrueCrypt Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows 7/Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux Free TweetDeck Fully featured Twitter client. Free UltraVNC UltraVNC is a powerful, easy to use and free software that can display the screen of another computer (via internet or network) on your own screen. The program allows you to use your mouse and keyboard to control the other PC remotely. It means that you can work on a remote computer, as if you were sitting in front of it, right from your current location. Free Unlocker Unlocks locked files. Pretty simple right? Free VLC Media Player VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player and multimedia framework capable of reading most audio and video formats Free Windows 7 Media Playlist This program is special to my heart because I wrote it. It has been mentioned on podcast and various websites. It allows you to quickly create wvx video playlist for Windows Media Center. Free WinRAR WinRAR is a powerful archive manager. It can backup your data and reduce the size of email attachments, decompress RAR, ZIP and other files downloaded from Internet and create new archives in RAR and ZIP file format. COST/Trial Available Blogging – I use the following for my blog. Name Description License Insert Code for Windows Live Writer Insert Code for Windows Live Writer will format a snippet of text in a number of programming languages such as C#, HTML, MSH, JavaScript, Visual Basic and TSQL. Free LiveWriter Included in Live Essentials, but the ultimate in Windows Blogging Free PasteAsVSCode Plug-in for Windows Live Writer that pastes clipboard content as Visual Studio code. Preserves syntax highlighting, indentation and background color. Converts RTF, outputted by Visual Studio, into HTML. Free Desktop Management – The list below represent the best in Windows Desktop Management. Name Description License 7 Stacks Allows users to have "stacks" of icons in their taskbar. Free Executor Executor is a multi purpose launcher and a more advanced and customizable version of windows run. Free Fences Fences is a program that helps you organize your desktop and can hide your icons when they are not in use. Free RocketDock Rocket Dock is a smoothly animated, alpha blended application launcher. It provides a nice clean interface to drop shortcuts on for easy access and organization. With each item completely customizable there is no end to what you can add and launch from the dock. Free WindowsTab Tabbing is an essential feature of modern web browsers. Window Tabs brings the productivity of tabbed window management to all of your desktop applications. Free

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• How To Configure Remote Desktop To Hyper-V Guest Virtual Machines

  - by Brian Jackett

  Configuring Remote Desktop (RDP) from a host Hyper-V machine to a guest virtual machine can be tricky, so this post is dedicated to the issues and resolution steps I went through to allow RDP.  Cutting to the point, below are the things to look for followed by some explanation about my scenario if you care to read.  This is not an exhaustive list of what is required, just the items that were causing problems for my particular scenario. Requirements Allow Remote Desktop Connections in guest OS. The network adapter type must allow communication with host machine (e.g. use an “Internal” virtual adapter.) If running Server 2008 R2 on guest, network discovery mode must be turned on. If running Server 2008 R2 on guest, the services supporting network discovery mode must be running: - DNS Client - Function Discovery Resource Publication - SSDP Discovery - UPnP Device Host My Environment     A quick word about my environment.  I am running Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper V on my laptop and numerous guest VMs running Windows Server 2003 R2 or Windows Server 2008 R2.  I run a domain controller VM and then 1 or 2 SharePoint servers depending on my work needs.  I’ve found this setup to work well except when it comes to the display window for my VMs. The Issue     Ever since I began running Hyper-V I haven’t been able to RDP to my guest VMs which means the resolution for my connection windows ha been limited to what the native Hyper-V connections allow.  During personal use I can put the resolution up to 1152 x 864, but during presentations I am usually limited to a measly 800 x 600.  That is until today when I decided to fully investigate why I couldn’t connect via RDP.     First a thank you to John Ross (@johnrossjr), Christina Wheeler (@cwheeler76) and Clayton Cobb (@warrtalon) for various suggestions while I was researching tonight.  As it turns out I had not 1, not 2, but 3 items preventing me from using RDP.  Let’s dig into the requirements above. Allow RDP Connection     This item I had previously taken care of, but it bears repeating because by default Windows Server 2008 R2 does not allow RDP connections.  Change the setting from “Don’t allow…” to whichever “Allow connections…” setting suits your needs.  I chose the less secure option as this is just my dev laptop. Network Adapter Type     When I originally configured my VMs I configured each to use 2 network adapters: one using the physical ethernet adapter for internet use and a virtual private adapter for communication between the VMs.  The connection for the ethernet adapter is an "”External” adapter and thus doesn’t connect between the host and guest.  The virtual private adapter allowed communication ONLY between the VMs and not to my host.  There is a third option “Internal” which allows communication between VMs as well as to the host.  After finding out this distinction I promptly created an Internal network adapter and assigned that to my VMs. Turn On Network Discovery     Seems like a pretty common sense thing, but in order to allow remote desktop connections the target computer must able to be found by the source computer (explained here.)  One of the settings that controls if a computer can be found on the network is aptly named Network Discovery.  By default Windows Server 2008 R2 turns Network Discovery off for security purposes.  To enable it open up the Network and Sharing Center.  Click “Change Advanced Sharing Settings” on the left.  On the following screen select “Turn on network discovery” for the currently used profile and click Save Settings.  You may notice though that your selection to turn on network discovery doesn’t save.  If this is the case then you most likely don’t have the supporting services running (as was my case.) Network Discovery Supporting Services     There are a total of 4 services (listed again below) that need to be running before you can turn on network discovery (explained here.)  The below images highlight these services.  In my guest VM I found that I had DNS Client already running while the other 3 were disabled.  I set them all to enabled and started the ones that were stopped.  After this change I returned to the Sharing settings screen and found that Network Discovery was turned on.  I’m not sure whether this was picking up my attempt to turn it on previously or if starting those services turned it on.  Either way the end result was a success. - DNS Client - Function Discovery Resource Publication - SSDP Discovery - UPnP Device Host Before and After Results     The first image is the smaller square shaped viewing window used by the Hyper-V native connection.  The second is the full-screen RDP connection in all its widescreen glory. Conclusion     Over the past few months I’ve found Hyper-V to be very useful for virtualizing my development environments, but I’ve also had a steep learning curve to get various items configured just right.  Allowing RDP connections to guest VMs was one area that I hadn’t been able to get right for the longest time.  Now that I resolved these issues I hope that others can avoid the pitfalls that I ran into.  If you know of any other items I left off feel free to let me know.        -Frog Out   Links Turning on Network Discovery http://sqlblog.com/blogs/john_paul_cook/archive/2009/08/15/remote-desktop-connection-on-windows-server-2008-r2.aspx Services required for Network Discovery http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winservergen/thread/2e1fea01-3f2b-4c46-a631-a8db34ed4f84

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• Is this right in the use case of exec method of child_process? is there away to cody the envirorment along with the require module too?

  - by L2L2L

  I'm learning node. I am using child_process to move data to another script to be executed. But it seem that it does not copy the hold environment or I could be doing something wrong. To copy the hold environment --require modules too-- or is this when I use spawn, I'm not so clear or understanding spawn exec and execfile --although execfile is like what I'm doing at the bottom, but with exec... right?-- And I would just love to have some clarity on this matter. Please anyone? Thank you. parent.js - "use strict"; var fs, path, _err; fs = require("fs"), path = require("path"), _err = require("./err.js"); var url; url= process.argv[1]; var dirname, locate_r; dirname = path.dirname(url); locate_r = dirname + "/" + "test.json";//path.join(dirname,"/", "test.json"); var flag, str; flag = "r", str = ""; fs.open(locate_r, flag, function opd(error, fd){ if (error){_err(error, function(){ fs.close(fd,function(){ process.stderr.write("\n" + "In Finally Block: File Closed!" + "\n");});})} var readBuff, buffOffset, buffLength, filePos; readBuff = new Buffer(15), buffOffset = 0, buffLength = readBuff.length, filePos = 0; fs.read(fd, readBuff, buffOffset, buffLength, filePos, function rd(error, readBytes){ error&&_err(error, fd); str = readBuff.toString("utf8"); process.env.str = str; process.stdout.write("str: "+ str + "\n" + "readBuff: " + readBuff + "\n"); fs.close(fd, function(){process.stdout.write( "Read and Closed File." + "\n" )}); //write(str); //run test for process.exec** var env, varName, envCopy, exec; env = process.env, varName, envCopy = {}, exec = require("child_process").exec; for(varName in env){ envCopy[varName] = env[varName]; } process.env.fs = fs, process.env.path = path, process.env.dirname = dirname, process.env.flag = flag, process.env.str = str, process.env._err = _err; process.env.fd = fd; exec("node child.js", env, function(error, stdout, stderr){ if(error){throw (new Error(error));} }); }); }); child.js - "use strict"; var fs, path, _err; fs = require("fs"), path = require("path"), _err = require("./err.js"); var fd, fs, flag, path, dirname, str, _err; fd = process.env.fd, //fs = process.env.fs, //path = process.env.path, dirname = process.env.dirname, flag = process.env.flag, str = process.env.str, _err = process.env._err; var url; url= process.argv[1]; var locate_r; dirname = path.dirname(url); locate_r = dirname + "/" + "test.json";//path.join(dirname,"/", "test.json"); //function write(str){ var locate_a; locate_a = dirname + "/" + "test.json"; //path.join(dirname,"/", "test.json"); flag = "a"; fs.open(locate_a, flag, function opd(error, fd){ error&&_err(error, fs, fd); var writeBuff, buffPos, buffLgh, filePs; writeBuff = new Buffer(str), process.stdout.write( "writeBuff: " + writeBuff + "\n" + "str: " + str + "\n"), buffPos = 0, buffLgh = writeBuff.length, filePs = buffLgh;//null; fs.write(fd, writeBuff, buffPos, buffLgh, filePs-3, function(error, written){ error&&_err(error, function(){ fs.close(fd,function(){ process.stderr.write("\n" + "In Finally Block: File Closed!" + "\n"); }); }); fs.close(fd, function(){process.stdout.write( "Written and Closed File." + "\n");}); }); }); //} err.js - "use strict"; var fs; fs = require("fs"); module.exports = function _err(err, scp, cd){ try{ throw (new Error(err)); }catch(e){ process.stderr.write(e + "\n"); }finally{ cd; } }

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• LWJGL - Eclipse error [on hold]

  - by Zarkopafilis

  When I try to run my lwjgl project, an error pops . Here is the log file: # A fatal error has been detected by the Java Runtime Environment: # EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION (0xc0000005) at pc=0x6d8fcc0a, pid=5612, tid=900 # JRE version: 6.0_16-b01 Java VM: Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (14.2-b01 mixed mode windows-x86 ) Problematic frame: V [jvm.dll+0xfcc0a] # If you would like to submit a bug report, please visit: http://java.sun.com/webapps/bugreport/crash.jsp # --------------- T H R E A D --------------- Current thread (0x016b9000): JavaThread "main" [_thread_in_vm, id=900, stack(0x00160000,0x001b0000)] siginfo: ExceptionCode=0xc0000005, reading address 0x00000000 Registers: EAX=0x00000000, EBX=0x00000000, ECX=0x00000006, EDX=0x00000000 ESP=0x001af4d4, EBP=0x001af524, ESI=0x016b9000, EDI=0x016b9110 EIP=0x6d8fcc0a, EFLAGS=0x00010246 Top of Stack: (sp=0x001af4d4) 0x001af4d4: 6da44bd8 016b9110 00000000 001af668 0x001af4e4: ffffffff 22200000 001af620 76ec39c2 0x001af4f4: 001af524 6d801086 0000000b 001afd34 0x001af504: 016b9000 016dd990 016b9000 00000000 0x001af514: 001af5f4 6d9ee000 6d9ef2f0 ffffffff 0x001af524: 001af58c 10008c85 016b9110 00000000 0x001af534: 00000000 000a0554 00000000 00000024 0x001af544: 00000000 00000000 001af6ac 00000000 Instructions: (pc=0x6d8fcc0a) 0x6d8fcbfa: e8 e8 d0 1d 08 00 8b 45 10 c7 45 d8 0b 00 00 00 0x6d8fcc0a: 8b 00 8b 48 08 0f b7 51 26 8b 40 0c 8b 4c 90 20 Stack: [0x00160000,0x001b0000], sp=0x001af4d4, free space=317k Native frames: (J=compiled Java code, j=interpreted, Vv=VM code, C=native code) V [jvm.dll+0xfcc0a] C [lwjgl.dll+0x8c85] C [USER32.dll+0x18876] C [USER32.dll+0x170f4] C [USER32.dll+0x1119e] C [ntdll.dll+0x460ce] C [USER32.dll+0x10e29] C [USER32.dll+0x10e84] C [lwjgl.dll+0x1cf0] j org.lwjgl.opengl.WindowsDisplay.createWindow(Lorg/lwjgl/opengl/DrawableLWJGL;Lorg/lwjgl/opengl/DisplayMode;Ljava/awt/Canvas;II)V+102 j org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.createWindow()V+71 j org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.create(Lorg/lwjgl/opengl/PixelFormat;Lorg/lwjgl/opengl/Drawable;Lorg/lwjgl/opengl/ContextAttribs;)V+72 j org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.create(Lorg/lwjgl/opengl/PixelFormat;)V+12 j org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.create()V+7 j zarkopafilis.koding.io.javafx.Main.main([Ljava/lang/String;)V+16 v ~StubRoutines::call_stub V [jvm.dll+0xecf9c] V [jvm.dll+0x1741e1] V [jvm.dll+0xed01d] V [jvm.dll+0xf5be5] V [jvm.dll+0xfd83d] C [javaw.exe+0x2155] C [javaw.exe+0x833e] C [kernel32.dll+0x51154] C [ntdll.dll+0x5b2b9] C [ntdll.dll+0x5b28c] Java frames: (J=compiled Java code, j=interpreted, Vv=VM code) j org.lwjgl.opengl.WindowsDisplay.nCreateWindow(IIIIZZJ)J+0 j org.lwjgl.opengl.WindowsDisplay.createWindow(Lorg/lwjgl/opengl/DrawableLWJGL;Lorg/lwjgl/opengl/DisplayMode;Ljava/awt/Canvas;II)V+102 j org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.createWindow()V+71 j org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.create(Lorg/lwjgl/opengl/PixelFormat;Lorg/lwjgl/opengl/Drawable;Lorg/lwjgl/opengl/ContextAttribs;)V+72 j org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.create(Lorg/lwjgl/opengl/PixelFormat;)V+12 j org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.create()V+7 j zarkopafilis.koding.io.javafx.Main.main([Ljava/lang/String;)V+16 v ~StubRoutines::call_stub --------------- P R O C E S S --------------- Java Threads: ( = current thread ) 0x0179a400 JavaThread "Low Memory Detector" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=4460, stack(0x0b900000,0x0b950000)] 0x01795400 JavaThread "CompilerThread0" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=5264, stack(0x0b8b0000,0x0b900000)] 0x01790c00 JavaThread "Attach Listener" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=6080, stack(0x0b860000,0x0b8b0000)] 0x01786400 JavaThread "Signal Dispatcher" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=1204, stack(0x0b810000,0x0b860000)] 0x01759c00 JavaThread "Finalizer" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=5772, stack(0x0b7c0000,0x0b810000)] 0x01755000 JavaThread "Reference Handler" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=4696, stack(0x01640000,0x01690000)] =0x016b9000 JavaThread "main" [_thread_in_vm, id=900, stack(0x00160000,0x001b0000)] Other Threads: 0x01751c00 VMThread [stack: 0x015f0000,0x01640000] [id=4052] 0x0179c800 WatcherThread [stack: 0x0b950000,0x0b9a0000] [id=3340] VM state:not at safepoint (normal execution) VM Mutex/Monitor currently owned by a thread: None Heap def new generation total 960K, used 816K [0x037c0000, 0x038c0000, 0x03ca0000) eden space 896K, 91% used [0x037c0000, 0x0388c2c0, 0x038a0000) from space 64K, 0% used [0x038a0000, 0x038a0000, 0x038b0000) to space 64K, 0% used [0x038b0000, 0x038b0000, 0x038c0000) tenured generation total 4096K, used 0K [0x03ca0000, 0x040a0000, 0x077c0000) the space 4096K, 0% used [0x03ca0000, 0x03ca0000, 0x03ca0200, 0x040a0000) compacting perm gen total 12288K, used 2143K [0x077c0000, 0x083c0000, 0x0b7c0000) the space 12288K, 17% used [0x077c0000, 0x079d7e38, 0x079d8000, 0x083c0000) No shared spaces configured. Dynamic libraries: 0x00400000 - 0x00424000 C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\bin\javaw.exe 0x77550000 - 0x7768e000 C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll 0x75a80000 - 0x75b54000 C:\Windows\system32\kernel32.dll 0x758d0000 - 0x7591b000 C:\Windows\system32\KERNELBASE.dll 0x759e0000 - 0x75a80000 C:\Windows\system32\ADVAPI32.dll 0x76070000 - 0x7611c000 C:\Windows\system32\msvcrt.dll 0x77250000 - 0x77269000 C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\sechost.dll 0x771a0000 - 0x77241000 C:\Windows\system32\RPCRT4.dll 0x76eb0000 - 0x76f79000 C:\Windows\system32\USER32.dll 0x76e60000 - 0x76eae000 C:\Windows\system32\GDI32.dll 0x77770000 - 0x7777a000 C:\Windows\system32\LPK.dll 0x75fd0000 - 0x7606e000 C:\Windows\system32\USP10.dll 0x770b0000 - 0x770cf000 C:\Windows\system32\IMM32.DLL 0x770d0000 - 0x7719c000 C:\Windows\system32\MSCTF.dll 0x7c340000 - 0x7c396000 C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\bin\msvcr71.dll 0x6d800000 - 0x6da8b000 C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\bin\client\jvm.dll 0x73a00000 - 0x73a32000 C:\Windows\system32\WINMM.dll 0x75610000 - 0x7565b000 C:\Windows\system32\apphelp.dll 0x6d7b0000 - 0x6d7bc000 C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\bin\verify.dll 0x6d330000 - 0x6d34f000 C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\bin\java.dll 0x6d290000 - 0x6d298000 C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\bin\hpi.dll 0x776e0000 - 0x776e5000 C:\Windows\system32\PSAPI.DLL 0x6d7f0000 - 0x6d7ff000 C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\bin\zip.dll 0x10000000 - 0x1004c000 C:\Users\theo\Desktop\workspace\JavaFX1\lib\natives\windows\lwjgl.dll 0x5d170000 - 0x5d238000 C:\Windows\system32\OPENGL32.dll 0x6e7b0000 - 0x6e7d2000 C:\Windows\system32\GLU32.dll 0x70620000 - 0x70707000 C:\Windows\system32\DDRAW.dll 0x70610000 - 0x70616000 C:\Windows\system32\DCIMAN32.dll 0x75b60000 - 0x75cfd000 C:\Windows\system32\SETUPAPI.dll 0x759b0000 - 0x759d7000 C:\Windows\system32\CFGMGR32.dll 0x76d70000 - 0x76dff000 C:\Windows\system32\OLEAUT32.dll 0x75db0000 - 0x75f0c000 C:\Windows\system32\ole32.dll 0x758b0000 - 0x758c2000 C:\Windows\system32\DEVOBJ.dll 0x74060000 - 0x74073000 C:\Windows\system32\dwmapi.dll 0x74b60000 - 0x74b69000 C:\Windows\system32\VERSION.dll 0x745f0000 - 0x7478e000 C:\Windows\WinSxS\x86_microsoft.windows.common-controls_6595b64144ccf1df_6.0.7600.16661_none_420fe3fa2b8113bd\COMCTL32.dll 0x75d50000 - 0x75da7000 C:\Windows\system32\SHLWAPI.dll 0x74370000 - 0x743b0000 C:\Windows\system32\uxtheme.dll 0x22200000 - 0x22206000 C:\Program Files\ESET\ESET Smart Security\eplgHooks.dll VM Arguments: jvm_args: -Djava.library.path=C:\Users\theo\Desktop\workspace\JavaFX1\lib\natives\windows -Dfile.encoding=Cp1253 java_command: zarkopafilis.koding.io.javafx.Main Launcher Type: SUN_STANDARD Environment Variables: PATH=C:/Program Files/Java/jre6/bin/client;C:/Program Files/Java/jre6/bin;C:/Program Files/Java/jre6/lib/i386;C:\Perl\site\bin;C:\Perl\bin;C:\Ruby200\bin;C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Windows Live;C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Shared;C:\Users\theo\Desktop\eclipse; USERNAME=theo OS=Windows_NT PROCESSOR_IDENTIFIER=x86 Family 6 Model 37 Stepping 5, GenuineIntel --------------- S Y S T E M --------------- OS: Windows 7 Build 7600 CPU:total 4 (8 cores per cpu, 2 threads per core) family 6 model 37 stepping 5, cmov, cx8, fxsr, mmx, sse, sse2, sse3, ssse3, sse4.1, sse4.2, ht Memory: 4k page, physical 2097151k(1257972k free), swap 4194303k(4194303k free) vm_info: Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (14.2-b01) for windows-x86 JRE (1.6.0_16-b01), built on Jul 31 2009 11:26:58 by "java_re" with MS VC++ 7.1 time: Wed Oct 23 22:00:12 2013 elapsed time: 0 seconds Code: Display.setDisplayMode(new DisplayMode(800,600)); Display.create();//Error here I am using JDK 6

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• Secure wipe of a hard drive using WinPE.

  - by Derek Meier

  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-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} The wiping of a hard drive is typically seen as fairly trivial.  There are tons of applications out there that will do it for you.  Point àClickàGlobal-Thermo Nuclear War. However, these applications are typically expensive or unreliable.  Plus, if you have a laptop or lack a secondary computer to put the hard drive into – how on earth do you wipe it quickly and easily while still conforming to a 7 pass rule (this means that every possible bit on the hard drive is set to 0 and then to 1 seven times in a row)?  Yes, one pass should be enough – as turning every bit from a 1 to a zero will wipe the data from existence.  But, we’re dealing with tinfoil hat wearing types here people.  DOD standards dictate at least 3 passes, and typically 7 is the preferred amount.  I’m not going to argue about data recovery.  I have been told to use 7 passes, and so I will.  So say we all! Quite some time ago I used to make a BartPE XP-based boot cd for the original purpose of securely wiping data.  I loved BartPE and integrated so many plugins into my builds that I could do pretty much anything directly from CD.  Reset passwords, uninstall security updates, wipe drives, chkdsk, remove spyware, install Windows, etc.  However, with the newer multi-core systems and new chipsets coming out from vendors, I found that BartPE was rather difficult to keep up to date.  I have since switched to WinPE 3.0 (Windows Preinstallation Environment). http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc748933(WS.10).aspx  It is fairly simple to create your own CD, and I have made a few helpful scripts to easily integrate drivers and rebuild the ISO file for you.  I’ll cover making your own boot CD utilizing WinPE 3.0 in a later post – I can talk about WinPE forever and need to collect my thoughts!!  My wife loves talking about WinPE almost as much as talking about Doctor Who.  Wait, did I say loves?  Hmmmm, I may have meant loathes. The topic at hand?  Right. Wiping a drive! I must have drunk too much coffee this morning.  I like to use a simple batch script that calls a combination of diskpart.exe from Microsoft® and Sdelete.exe created by our friend Mark Russinovich. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897443.aspx All of the following files are located within the same directory on my WinPE boot CD. Here are the contents of wipe_me.bat, script.txt and sdelete.reg. Wipe_me.bat:   @echo off echo. echo     I will completely wipe the local hard drives using echo     7 individual wipes. The data will NOT echo     be recoverable.  I will begin after you pause echo. echo Preparing to partition and format disk. Diskpart.exe /s "script.txt" REM I was annoyed by not having a completely automated script – and Sdelete wants you to accept the license agreement. So, I added a registry file to skip doing that. regedit /S sdelete.reg rem sdelete options selected are: -p (passes) -c (zero free space) -s (recurse through subdirectories, if any) -z (clean free space) [drive letter] sdelete.exe -p 7 -c -s -z c: echo. echo Pass seven complete. echo. echo Wiping complete. Pause exit script.txt: list disk select disk 0 clean create partition primary select partition 1 active format FS=NTFS LABEL="New Volume" QUICK assign letter=c exit *Notes: This script assumes one local hard drive – change the script as you see fit for your environment.  The clean command will overwrite the master boot record and any hidden sector information – so be careful!   sdelete.reg: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sysinternals\SDelete] "EulaAccepted"=dword:00000001   With a combination of WinPE, sdelete.exe and your friendly neighborhood text editor you can begin wiping drives as quickly and easily as possible!  I hope this helps, I get asked this a lot in my line of work. Best of luck, Derek

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• Windows Azure: Announcing Support for Windows Server 2012 R2 + Some Nice Price Cuts

  - by ScottGu

  Today we released some great updates to Windows Azure: Virtual Machines: Support for Windows Server 2012 R2 Cloud Services: Support for Windows Server 2012 R2 and .NET 4.5.1 Windows Azure Pack: Use Windows Azure features on-premises using Windows Server 2012 R2 Price Cuts: Up to 22% Price Reduction on Memory-Intensive Instances Below are more details about each of the improvements: Virtual Machines: Support for Windows Server 2012 R2 This morning we announced the release of Windows Server 2012 R2 – which is a fantastic update to Windows Server and includes a ton of great enhancements. This morning we are also excited to announce that the general availability image of Windows Server 2012 RC is now supported on Windows Azure.  Windows Azure is the first cloud provider to offer the final release of Windows Server 2012 R2, and it is incredibly easy to launch your own Windows Server 2012 R2 instance with it. To create a new Windows Server 2012 R2 instance simply choose New->Compute->Virtual Machine within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  You can select the “Windows Server 2012 R2” image and create a new Virtual Machine using the “Quick Create” option: Or alternatively click the “From Gallery” option if you want to customize even more configuration options (endpoints, remote powershell, availability set, etc): Creating and instantiating a new Virtual Machine on Windows Azure is very fast.  In fact, the Windows Server 2012 R2 image now deploys and runs 30% faster than previous versions of Windows Server. Once the VM is deployed you can drill into it to track its health and manage its settings: Clicking the “Connect” button allows you to remote desktop into the VM – at which point you can customize and manage it as a full administrator however you want: If you haven’t tried Windows Server 2012 R2 yet – give it a try with Windows Azure.  There is no easier way to get an instance of it up and running! Cloud Services: Support for using Windows Server 2012 R2 with Web and Worker Roles Today’s Windows Azure release also allows you to now use Windows Server 2012 R2 and .NET 4.5.1 within Web and Worker Roles within Cloud Service based applications.  Enabling this is easy.  You can configure existing existing Cloud Service application to use Windows Server 2012 R2 by updating your Cloud Service Configuration File (.cscfg) to use the new “OS Family 4” setting: Or alternatively you can use the Windows Azure Management Portal to update cloud services that are already deployed on Windows Azure.  Simply choose the configure tab on them and select Windows Server 2012 R2 in the Operating System Family dropdown: The approaches above enable you to immediately take advantage of Windows Server 2012 R2 and .NET 4.5.1 and all the great features they provide. Windows Azure Pack: Use Windows Azure features on Windows Server 2012 R2 Today we also made generally available the Windows Azure Pack, which is a free download that enables you to run Windows Azure Technology within your own datacenter, an on-premises private cloud environment, or with one of our service provider/hosting partners who run Windows Server. Windows Azure Pack enables you to use a management portal that has the exact same UI as the Windows Azure Management Portal, and within which you can create and manage Virtual Machines, Web Sites, and Service Bus – all of which can run on Windows Server and System Center.  The services provided with the Windows Azure Pack are consistent with the services offered within our Windows Azure public cloud offering.  This consistency enables organizations and developers to build applications and solutions that can run in any hosting environment – and which use the same development and management approach.  The end result is an offering with incredible flexibility. You can learn more about Windows Azure Pack and download/deploy it today here. Price Cuts: Up to 22% Reduction on Memory Intensive Instances Today we are also reducing prices by up to 22% on our memory-intensive VM instances (specifically our A5, A6, and A7 instances).  These price reductions apply to both Windows and Linux VM instances, as well as for Cloud Service based applications: These price reductions will take effect in November, and will enable you to run applications that demand larger memory (such as SharePoint, Databases, in-memory analytics, etc) even more cost effectively. Summary Today’s release enables you to start using Windows Server 2012 R2 within Windows Azure immediately, and take advantage of our Cloud OS vision both within our datacenters – and using the Windows Azure Pack within both your existing datacenters and those of our partners. If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today.  Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• Database Vault 11gR2 11.2.0.1 Certified with Oracle E-Business Suite

  - by Steven Chan

  Oracle Database Vault allows security administrators to protect a database from privileged account access to application data.  Database objects can be placed in protected realms, which can be accessed only if a specific set of conditions are met.  Oracle Database Vault 11gR2 11.2.0.1 is now certified with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i and 12.You can now enable Database Vault 11gR2 on your existing E-Business Suite 11.2.0.1 Database instance.  If you already have DB Vault 10gR2 or 11gR1 enabled in your E-Business Suite environment, you can now upgrade to the 11gR2 Database.  We also support EBS patching with Database Vault 11.2.0.1 enabled. Our DB Vault realm creation and grants-related scripts have been updated to reduce patching downtimes.

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• Ruby Drag-n-Drop IDE and Ruby programming related

  - by RPK

  I am writing a small desktop GUI application using Ruby and Gtk2. I am using RubyMine 3 on Linux (Fedora). I created a simple class to create a Gtk Window but now I feel it takes more time to just keep adding code for a Button, Drop Down and TextBox etc. I need to write even more code if the DropDown needs to be populated at run-time. Is there any Ruby Gtk IDE which supports adding Controls with simple drag-n-drop? At least I can focus on the business logic instead of just defining position and sizes of controls. One more question. I subscribed to Ruby-Forum mailing list but it is often flooded with Spam. Which is the official Ruby forum? Recently NetBeans has withdrawn support for Ruby. Is it worth to learn Ruby seriously and use it in commercial environment or not?

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• Guidance: A Branching strategy for Scrum Teams

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Having a good branching strategy will save your bacon, or at least your code. Be careful when deviating from your branching strategy because if you do, you may be worse off than when you started! This is one possible branching strategy for Scrum teams and I will not be going in depth with Scrum but you can find out more about Scrum by reading the Scrum Guide and you can even assess your Scrum knowledge by having a go at the Scrum Open Assessment. You can also read SSW’s Rules to Better Scrum using TFS which have been developed during our own Scrum implementations. Acknowledgements Bill Heys – Bill offered some good feedback on this post and helped soften the language. Note: Bill is a VS ALM Ranger and co-wrote the Branching Guidance for TFS 2010 Willy-Peter Schaub – Willy-Peter is an ex Visual Studio ALM MVP turned blue badge and has been involved in most of the guidance including the Branching Guidance for TFS 2010 Chris Birmele – Chris wrote some of the early TFS Branching and Merging Guidance. Dr Paul Neumeyer, Ph.D Parallel Processes, ScrumMaster and SSW Solution Architect – Paul wanted to have feature branches coming from the release branch as well. We agreed that this is really a spin-off that needs own project, backlog, budget and Team. Scenario: A product is developed RTM 1.0 is released and gets great sales.  Extra features are demanded but the new version will have double to price to pay to recover costs, work is approved by the guys with budget and a few sprints later RTM 2.0 is released.  Sales a very low due to the pricing strategy. There are lots of clients on RTM 1.0 calling out for patches. As I keep getting Reverse Integration and Forward Integration mixed up and Bill keeps slapping my wrists I thought I should have a reminder: You still seemed to use reverse and/or forward integration in the wrong context. I would recommend reviewing your document at the end to ensure that it agrees with the common understanding of these terms merge (forward integration) from parent to child (same direction as the branch), and merge  (reverse integration) from child to parent (the reverse direction of the branch). - one of my many slaps on the wrist from Bill Heys.   As I mentioned previously we are using a single feature branching strategy in our current project. The single biggest mistake developers make is developing against the “Main” or “Trunk” line. This ultimately leads to messy code as things are added and never finished. Your only alternative is to NEVER check in unless your code is 100%, but this does not work in practice, even with a single developer. Your ADD will kick in and your half-finished code will be finished enough to pass the build and the tests. You do use builds don’t you? Sadly, this is a very common scenario and I have had people argue that branching merely adds complexity. Then again I have seen the other side of the universe ... branching  structures from he... We should somehow convince everyone that there is a happy between no-branching and too-much-branching. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft   A key benefit of branching for development is to isolate changes from the stable Main branch. Branching adds sanity more than it adds complexity. We do try to stress in our guidance that it is important to justify a branch, by doing a cost benefit analysis. The primary cost is the effort to do merges and resolve conflicts. A key benefit is that you have a stable code base in Main and accept changes into Main only after they pass quality gates, etc. - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft The second biggest mistake developers make is branching anything other than the WHOLE “Main” line. If you branch parts of your code and not others it gets out of sync and can make integration a nightmare. You should have your Source, Assets, Build scripts deployment scripts and dependencies inside the “Main” folder and branch the whole thing. Some departments within MSFT even go as far as to add the environments used to develop the product in there as well; although I would not recommend that unless you have a massive SQL cluster to house your source code. We tried the “add environment” back in South-Africa and while it was “phenomenal”, especially when having to switch between environments, the disk storage and processing requirements killed us. We opted for virtualization to skin this cat of keeping a ready-to-go environment handy. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft   I think people often think that you should have separate branches for separate environments (e.g. Dev, Test, Integration Test, QA, etc.). I prefer to think of deploying to environments (such as from Main to QA) rather than branching for QA). - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft   You can read about SSW’s Rules to better Source Control for some additional information on what Source Control to use and how to use it. There are also a number of branching Anti-Patterns that should be avoided at all costs: You know you are on the wrong track if you experience one or more of the following symptoms in your development environment: Merge Paranoia—avoiding merging at all cost, usually because of a fear of the consequences. Merge Mania—spending too much time merging software assets instead of developing them. Big Bang Merge—deferring branch merging to the end of the development effort and attempting to merge all branches simultaneously. Never-Ending Merge—continuous merging activity because there is always more to merge. Wrong-Way Merge—merging a software asset version with an earlier version. Branch Mania—creating many branches for no apparent reason. Cascading Branches—branching but never merging back to the main line. Mysterious Branches—branching for no apparent reason. Temporary Branches—branching for changing reasons, so the branch becomes a permanent temporary workspace. Volatile Branches—branching with unstable software assets shared by other branches or merged into another branch. Note   Branches are volatile most of the time while they exist as independent branches. That is the point of having them. The difference is that you should not share or merge branches while they are in an unstable state. Development Freeze—stopping all development activities while branching, merging, and building new base lines. Berlin Wall—using branches to divide the development team members, instead of dividing the work they are performing. -Branching and Merging Primer by Chris Birmele - Developer Tools Technical Specialist at Microsoft Pty Ltd in Australia   In fact, this can result in a merge exercise no-one wants to be involved in, merging hundreds of thousands of change sets and trying to get a consolidated build. Again, we need to find a happy medium. - Willy-Peter Schaub on Merge Paranoia Merge conflicts are generally the result of making changes to the same file in both the target and source branch. If you create merge conflicts, you will eventually need to resolve them. Often the resolution is manual. Merging more frequently allows you to resolve these conflicts close to when they happen, making the resolution clearer. Waiting weeks or months to resolve them, the Big Bang approach, means you are more likely to resolve conflicts incorrectly. - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft   Figure: Main line, this is where your stable code lives and where any build has known entities, always passes and has a happy test that passes as well? Many development projects consist of, a single “Main” line of source and artifacts. This is good; at least there is source control . There are however a couple of issues that need to be considered. What happens if: you and your team are working on a new set of features and the customer wants a change to his current version? you are working on two features and the customer decides to abandon one of them? you have two teams working on different feature sets and their changes start interfering with each other? I just use labels instead of branches? That's a lot of “what if’s”, but there is a simple way of preventing this. Branching… In TFS, labels are not immutable. This does not mean they are not useful. But labels do not provide a very good development isolation mechanism. Branching allows separate code sets to evolve separately (e.g. Current with hotfixes, and vNext with new development). I don’t see how labels work here. - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft   Figure: Creating a single feature branch means you can isolate the development work on that branch.   Its standard practice for large projects with lots of developers to use Feature branching and you can check the Branching Guidance for the latest recommendations from the Visual Studio ALM Rangers for other methods. In the diagram above you can see my recommendation for branching when using Scrum development with TFS 2010. It consists of a single Sprint branch to contain all the changes for the current sprint. The main branch has the permissions changes so contributors to the project can only Branch and Merge with “Main”. This will prevent accidental check-ins or checkouts of the “Main” line that would contaminate the code. The developers continue to develop on sprint one until the completion of the sprint. Note: In the real world, starting a new Greenfield project, this process starts at Sprint 2 as at the start of Sprint 1 you would have artifacts in version control and no need for isolation.   Figure: Once the sprint is complete the Sprint 1 code can then be merged back into the Main line. There are always good practices to follow, and one is to always do a Forward Integration from Main into Sprint 1 before you do a Reverse Integration from Sprint 1 back into Main. In this case it may seem superfluous, but this builds good muscle memory into your developer’s work ethic and means that no bad habits are learned that would interfere with additional Scrum Teams being added to the Product. The process of completing your sprint development: The Team completes their work according to their definition of done. Merge from “Main” into “Sprint1” (Forward Integration) Stabilize your code with any changes coming from other Scrum Teams working on the same product. If you have one Scrum Team this should be quick, but there may have been bug fixes in the Release branches. (we will talk about release branches later) Merge from “Sprint1” into “Main” to commit your changes. (Reverse Integration) Check-in Delete the Sprint1 branch Note: The Sprint 1 branch is no longer required as its useful life has been concluded. Check-in Done But you are not yet done with the Sprint. The goal in Scrum is to have a “potentially shippable product” at the end of every Sprint, and we do not have that yet, we only have finished code.   Figure: With Sprint 1 merged you can create a Release branch and run your final packaging and testing In 99% of all projects I have been involved in or watched, a “shippable product” only happens towards the end of the overall lifecycle, especially when sprints are short. The in-between releases are great demonstration releases, but not shippable. Perhaps it comes from my 80’s brain washing that we only ship when we reach the agreed quality and business feature bar. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft Although you should have been testing and packaging your code all the way through your Sprint 1 development, preferably using an automated process, you still need to test and package with stable unchanging code. This is where you do what at SSW we call a “Test Please”. This is first an internal test of the product to make sure it meets the needs of the customer and you generally use a resource external to your Team. Then a “Test Please” is conducted with the Product Owner to make sure he is happy with the output. You can read about how to conduct a Test Please on our Rules to Successful Projects: Do you conduct an internal "test please" prior to releasing a version to a client?   Figure: If you find a deviation from the expected result you fix it on the Release branch. If during your final testing or your “Test Please” you find there are issues or bugs then you should fix them on the release branch. If you can’t fix them within the time box of your Sprint, then you will need to create a Bug and put it onto the backlog for prioritization by the Product owner. Make sure you leave plenty of time between your merge from the development branch to find and fix any problems that are uncovered. This process is commonly called Stabilization and should always be conducted once you have completed all of your User Stories and integrated all of your branches. Even once you have stabilized and released, you should not delete the release branch as you would with the Sprint branch. It has a usefulness for servicing that may extend well beyond the limited life you expect of it. Note: Don't get forced by the business into adding features into a Release branch instead that indicates the unspoken requirement is that they are asking for a product spin-off. In this case you can create a new Team Project and branch from the required Release branch to create a new Main branch for that product. And you create a whole new backlog to work from.   Figure: When the Team decides it is happy with the product you can create a RTM branch. Once you have fixed all the bugs you can, and added any you can’t to the Product Backlog, and you Team is happy with the result you can create a Release. This would consist of doing the final Build and Packaging it up ready for your Sprint Review meeting. You would then create a read-only branch that represents the code you “shipped”. This is really an Audit trail branch that is optional, but is good practice. You could use a Label, but Labels are not Auditable and if a dispute was raised by the customer you can produce a verifiable version of the source code for an independent party to check. Rare I know, but you do not want to be at the wrong end of a legal battle. Like the Release branch the RTM branch should never be deleted, or only deleted according to your companies legal policy, which in the UK is usually 7 years.   Figure: If you have made any changes in the Release you will need to merge back up to Main in order to finalise the changes. Nothing is really ever done until it is in Main. The same rules apply when merging any fixes in the Release branch back into Main and you should do a reverse merge before a forward merge, again for the muscle memory more than necessity at this stage. Your Sprint is now nearly complete, and you can have a Sprint Review meeting knowing that you have made every effort and taken every precaution to protect your customer’s investment. Note: In order to really achieve protection for both you and your client you would add Automated Builds, Automated Tests, Automated Acceptance tests, Acceptance test tracking, Unit Tests, Load tests, Web test and all the other good engineering practices that help produce reliable software.     Figure: After the Sprint Planning meeting the process begins again. Where the Sprint Review and Retrospective meetings mark the end of the Sprint, the Sprint Planning meeting marks the beginning. After you have completed your Sprint Planning and you know what you are trying to achieve in Sprint 2 you can create your new Branch to develop in. How do we handle a bug(s) in production that can’t wait? Although in Scrum the only work done should be on the backlog there should be a little buffer added to the Sprint Planning for contingencies. One of these contingencies is a bug in the current release that can’t wait for the Sprint to finish. But how do you handle that? Willy-Peter Schaub asked an excellent question on the release activities: In reality Sprint 2 starts when sprint 1 ends + weekend. Should we not cater for a possible parallelism between Sprint 2 and the release activities of sprint 1? It would introduce FI’s from main to sprint 2, I guess. Your “Figure: Merging print 2 back into Main.” covers, what I tend to believe to be reality in most cases. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft I agree, and if you have a single Scrum team then your resources are limited. The Scrum Team is responsible for packaging and release, so at least one run at stabilization, package and release should be included in the Sprint time box. If more are needed on the current production release during the Sprint 2 time box then resource needs to be pulled from Sprint 2. The Product Owner and the Team have four choices (in order of disruption/cost): Backlog: Add the bug to the backlog and fix it in the next Sprint Buffer Time: Use any buffer time included in the current Sprint to fix the bug quickly Make time: Remove a Story from the current Sprint that is of equal value to the time lost fixing the bug(s) and releasing. Note: The Team must agree that it can still meet the Sprint Goal. Cancel Sprint: Cancel the sprint and concentrate all resource on fixing the bug(s) Note: This can be a very costly if the current sprint has already had a lot of work completed as it will be lost. The choice will depend on the complexity and severity of the bug(s) and both the Product Owner and the Team need to agree. In this case we will go with option #2 or #3 as they are uncomplicated but severe bugs. Figure: Real world issue where a bug needs fixed in the current release. If the bug(s) is urgent enough then then your only option is to fix it in place. You can edit the release branch to find and fix the bug, hopefully creating a test so it can’t happen again. Follow the prior process and conduct an internal and customer “Test Please” before releasing. You can read about how to conduct a Test Please on our Rules to Successful Projects: Do you conduct an internal "test please" prior to releasing a version to a client?   Figure: After you have fixed the bug you need to ship again. You then need to again create an RTM branch to hold the version of the code you released in escrow.   Figure: Main is now out of sync with your Release. We now need to get these new changes back up into the Main branch. Do a reverse and then forward merge again to get the new code into Main. But what about the branch, are developers not working on Sprint 2? Does Sprint 2 now have changes that are not in Main and Main now have changes that are not in Sprint 2? Well, yes… and this is part of the hit you take doing branching. But would this scenario even have been possible without branching?   Figure: Getting the changes in Main into Sprint 2 is very important. The Team now needs to do a Forward Integration merge into their Sprint and resolve any conflicts that occur. Maybe the bug has already been fixed in Sprint 2, maybe the bug no longer exists! This needs to be identified and resolved by the developers before they continue to get further out of Sync with Main. Note: Avoid the “Big bang merge” at all costs.   Figure: Merging Sprint 2 back into Main, the Forward Integration, and R0 terminates. Sprint 2 now merges (Reverse Integration) back into Main following the procedures we have already established.   Figure: The logical conclusion. This then allows the creation of the next release. By now you should be getting the big picture and hopefully you learned something useful from this post. I know I have enjoyed writing it as I find these exploratory posts coupled with real world experience really help harden my understanding.  Branching is a tool; it is not a silver bullet. Don’t over use it, and avoid “Anti-Patterns” where possible. Although the diagram above looks complicated I hope showing you how it is formed simplifies it as much as possible.   Technorati Tags: Branching,Scrum,VS ALM,TFS 2010,VS2010

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• SQLAuthority News – SQL Server 2008 R2 Hosted Trial

  - by pinaldave

  This is a bit old news but for me but it will new for many of you know. SQLPASS, Dell, Microsoft and MaximumASP has come together and build hosted environment for free to all of us to use and experiment with. Register now to try out up to seven labs: SQL Server 2008 R2 – Multi Server Management SQL Server 2008 R2 – PowerPivot SQL Server 2008 R2 – Reporting Services SQL Server 2008 R2 – Master Data Services SQL Server 2008 R2 – StreamInsight SQL Server Integration Services – Introduction SQL Server Integration Services – Intermediate to Advanced Now this is indeed wonderful opportunity as you do not need to buy anything and get world class experience with this products. Register here. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: SQL PASS

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• New Product: Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 – Small, Smart, Connected

  - by terrencebarr

  The Internet of Things (IoT) is coming. And, with todays launch of the Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 product, Java is going to play an even greater role in it. Java in the Internet of Things By all accounts, intelligent embedded devices are penetrating the world around us – driving industrial processes, monitoring environmental conditions, providing better health care, analyzing and processing data, and much more. And these devices are becoming increasingly connected, adding another dimension of utility. Welcome to the Internet of Things. As I blogged yesterday, this is a huge opportunity for the Java technology and ecosystem. To enable and utilize these billions of devices effectively you need a programming model, tools, and protocols which provide a feature-rich, consistent, scalable, manageable, and interoperable platform.  Java technology is ideally suited to address these technical and business problems, enabling you eliminate many of the typical challenges in designing embedded solutions. By using Java you can focus on building smarter, more valuable embedded solutions faster. To wit, Java technology is already powering around 10 billion devices worldwide. Delivering on this vision and accelerating the growth of embedded Java solutions, Oracle is today announcing a brand-new product: Oracle Java Micro Edition (ME) Embedded 3.2, accompanied by an update release of the Java ME Software Development Kit (SDK) to version 3.2. What is Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2? Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 is a complete Java runtime client, optimized for ARM architecture connected microcontrollers and other resource-constrained systems. The product provides dedicated embedded functionality and is targeted for low-power, limited memory devices requiring support for a range of network services and I/O interfaces.  What features and APIs are provided by Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2? Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 is a Java ME runtime based on CLDC 1.1 (JSR-139) and IMP-NG (JSR-228). The runtime and virtual machine (VM) are highly optimized for embedded use. Also included in the product are the following optional JSRs and Oracle APIs: File I/O API’s (JSR-75)  Wireless Messaging API’s (JSR-120) Web Services (JSR-172) Security and Trust Services subset (JSR-177) Location API’s (JSR-179) XML API’s (JSR-280)  Device Access API Application Management System (AMS) API AccessPoint API Logging API Additional embedded features are: Remote application management system Support for continuous 24×7 operation Application monitoring, auto-start, and system recovery Application access to peripheral interfaces such as GPIO, I2C, SPIO, memory mapped I/O Application level logging framework, including option for remote logging Headless on-device debugging – source level Java application debugging over IP Connection Remote configuration of the Java VM What type of platforms are targeted by Oracle Java ME 3.2 Embedded? The product is designed for embedded, always-on, resource-constrained, headless (no graphics/no UI), connected (wired or wireless) devices with a variety of peripheral I/O.  The high-level system requirements are as follows: System based on ARM architecture SOCs Memory footprint (approximate) from 130 KB RAM/350KB ROM (for a minimal, customized configuration) to 700 KB RAM/1500 KB ROM (for the full, standard configuration)  Very simple embedded kernel, or a more capable embedded OS/RTOS At least one type of network connection (wired or wireless) The initial release of the product is delivered as a device emulation environment for x86/Windows desktop computers, integrated with the Java ME SDK 3.2. A standard binary of Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 for ARM KEIL development boards based on ARM Cortex M-3/4 (KEIL MCBSTM32F200 using ST Micro SOC STM32F207IG) will soon be available for download from the Oracle Technology Network (OTN).  What types of applications can I develop with Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2? The Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 product is a full-featured embedded Java runtime supporting applications based on the IMP-NG application model, which is derived from the well-known MIDP 2 application model. The runtime supports execution of multiple concurrent applications, remote application management, versatile connectivity, and a rich set of APIs and features relevant for embedded use cases, including the ability to interact with peripheral I/O directly from Java applications. This rich feature set, coupled with familiar and best-in class software development tools, allows developers to quickly build and deploy sophisticated embedded solutions for a wide range of use cases. Target markets well supported by Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 include wireless modules for M2M, industrial and building control, smart grid infrastructure, home automation, and environmental sensors and tracking. What tools are available for embedded application development for Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2? Along with the release of Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2, Oracle is also making available an updated version of the Java ME Software Development Kit (SDK), together with plug-ins for the NetBeans and Eclipse IDEs, to deliver a complete development environment for embedded application development.  OK – sounds great! Where can I find out more? And how do I get started? There is a complete set of information, data sheet, API documentation, “Getting Started Guide”, FAQ, and download links available: For an overview of Oracle Embeddable Java, see here. For the Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 press release, see here. For the Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 data sheet, see here. For the Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 landing page, see here. For the Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 documentation page, including a “Getting Started Guide” and FAQ, see here. For the Oracle Java ME SDK 3.2 landing and download page, see here. Finally, to ask more questions, please see the OTN “Java ME Embedded” forum To get started, grab the “Getting Started Guide” and download the Java ME SDK 3.2, which includes the Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 device emulation.  Can I learn more about Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 at JavaOne and/or Java Embedded @ JavaOne? Glad you asked Both conferences, JavaOne and Java Embedded @ JavaOne, will feature a host of content and information around the new Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 product, from technical and business sessions, to hands-on tutorials, and demos. Stay tuned, I will post details shortly. Cheers, – Terrence Filed under: Mobile & Embedded Tagged: "Oracle Java ME Embedded", Connected, embedded, Embedded Java, Java Embedded @ JavaOne, JavaOne, Smart

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• Creating STA COM compatible ASP.NET Applications

  - by Rick Strahl

  When building ASP.NET applications that interface with old school COM objects like those created with VB6 or Visual FoxPro (MTDLL), it's extremely important that the threads that are serving requests use Single Threaded Apartment Threading. STA is a COM built-in technology that allows essentially single threaded components to operate reliably in a multi-threaded environment. STA's guarantee that COM objects instantiated on a specific thread stay on that specific thread and any access to a COM object from another thread automatically marshals that thread to the STA thread. The end effect is that you can have multiple threads, but a COM object instance lives on a fixed never changing thread. ASP.NET by default uses MTA (multi-threaded apartment) threads which are truly free spinning threads that pay no heed to COM object marshaling. This is vastly more efficient than STA threading which has a bit of overhead in determining whether it's OK to run code on a given thread or whether some sort of thread/COM marshaling needs to occur. MTA COM components can be very efficient, but STA COM components in a multi-threaded environment always tend to have a fair amount of overhead. It's amazing how much COM Interop I still see today so while it seems really old school to be talking about this topic, it's actually quite apropos for me as I have many customers using legacy COM systems that need to interface with other .NET applications. In this post I'm consolidating some of the hacks I've used to integrate with various ASP.NET technologies when using STA COM Components. STA in ASP.NET Support for STA threading in the ASP.NET framework is fairly limited. Specifically only the original ASP.NET WebForms technology supports STA threading directly via its STA Page Handler implementation or what you might know as ASPCOMPAT mode. For WebForms running STA components is as easy as specifying the ASPCOMPAT attribute in the @Page tag:<%@ Page Language="C#" AspCompat="true" %> which runs the page in STA mode. Removing it runs in MTA mode. Simple. Unfortunately all other ASP.NET technologies built on top of the core ASP.NET engine do not support STA natively. So if you want to use STA COM components in MVC or with class ASMX Web Services, there's no automatic way like the ASPCOMPAT keyword available. So what happens when you run an STA COM component in an MTA application? In low volume environments - nothing much will happen. The COM objects will appear to work just fine as there are no simultaneous thread interactions and the COM component will happily run on a single thread or multiple single threads one at a time. So for testing running components in MTA environments may appear to work just fine. However as load increases and threads get re-used by ASP.NET COM objects will end up getting created on multiple different threads. This can result in crashes or hangs, or data corruption in the STA components which store their state in thread local storage on the STA thread. If threads overlap this global store can easily get corrupted which in turn causes problems. STA ensures that any COM object instance loaded always stays on the same thread it was instantiated on. What about COM+? COM+ is supposed to address the problem of STA in MTA applications by providing an abstraction with it's own thread pool manager for COM objects. It steps in to the COM instantiation pipeline and hands out COM instances from its own internally maintained STA Thread pool. This guarantees that the COM instantiation threads are STA threads if using STA components. COM+ works, but in my experience the technology is very, very slow for STA components. It adds a ton of overhead and reduces COM performance noticably in load tests in IIS. COM+ can make sense in some situations but for Web apps with STA components it falls short. In addition there's also the need to ensure that COM+ is set up and configured on the target machine and the fact that components have to be registered in COM+. COM+ also keeps components up at all times, so if a component needs to be replaced the COM+ package needs to be unloaded (same is true for IIS hosted components but it's more common to manage that). COM+ is an option for well established components, but native STA support tends to provide better performance and more consistent usability, IMHO. STA for non supporting ASP.NET Technologies As mentioned above only WebForms supports STA natively. However, by utilizing the WebForms ASP.NET Page handler internally it's actually possible to trick various other ASP.NET technologies and let them work with STA components. This is ugly but I've used each of these in various applications and I've had minimal problems making them work with FoxPro STA COM components which is about as dififcult as it gets for COM Interop in .NET. In this post I summarize several STA workarounds that enable you to use STA threading with these ASP.NET Technologies: ASMX Web Services ASP.NET MVC WCF Web Services ASP.NET Web API ASMX Web Services I start with classic ASP.NET ASMX Web Services because it's the easiest mechanism that allows for STA modification. It also clearly demonstrates how the WebForms STA Page Handler is the key technology to enable the various other solutions to create STA components. Essentially the way this works is to override the WebForms Page class and hijack it's init functionality for processing requests. Here's what this looks like for Web Services:namespace FoxProAspNet { public class WebServiceStaHandler : System.Web.UI.Page, IHttpAsyncHandler { protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e) { IHttpHandler handler = new WebServiceHandlerFactory().GetHandler( this.Context, this.Context.Request.HttpMethod, this.Context.Request.FilePath, this.Context.Request.PhysicalPath); handler.ProcessRequest(this.Context); this.Context.ApplicationInstance.CompleteRequest(); } public IAsyncResult BeginProcessRequest( HttpContext context, AsyncCallback cb, object extraData) { return this.AspCompatBeginProcessRequest(context, cb, extraData); } public void EndProcessRequest(IAsyncResult result) { this.AspCompatEndProcessRequest(result); } } public class AspCompatWebServiceStaHandlerWithSessionState : WebServiceStaHandler, IRequiresSessionState { } } This class overrides the ASP.NET WebForms Page class which has a little known AspCompatBeginProcessRequest() and AspCompatEndProcessRequest() method that is responsible for providing the WebForms ASPCOMPAT functionality. These methods handle routing requests to STA threads. Note there are two classes - one that includes session state and one that does not. If you plan on using ASP.NET Session state use the latter class, otherwise stick to the former. This maps to the EnableSessionState page setting in WebForms. This class simply hooks into this functionality by overriding the BeginProcessRequest and EndProcessRequest methods and always forcing it into the AspCompat methods. The way this works is that BeginProcessRequest() fires first to set up the threads and starts intializing the handler. As part of that process the OnInit() method is fired which is now already running on an STA thread. The code then creates an instance of the actual WebService handler factory and calls its ProcessRequest method to start executing which generates the Web Service result. Immediately after ProcessRequest the request is stopped with Application.CompletRequest() which ensures that the rest of the Page handler logic doesn't fire. This means that even though the fairly heavy Page class is overridden here, it doesn't end up executing any of its internal processing which makes this code fairly efficient. In a nutshell, we're highjacking the Page HttpHandler and forcing it to process the WebService process handler in the context of the AspCompat handler behavior. Hooking up the Handler Because the above is an HttpHandler implementation you need to hook up the custom handler and replace the standard ASMX handler. To do this you need to modify the web.config file (here for IIS 7 and IIS Express): <configuration> <system.webServer> <handlers> <remove name="WebServiceHandlerFactory-Integrated-4.0" /> <add name="Asmx STA Web Service Handler" path="*.asmx" verb="*" type="FoxProAspNet.WebServiceStaHandler" precondition="integrated"/> </handlers> </system.webServer> </configuration> (Note: The name for the WebServiceHandlerFactory-Integrated-4.0 might be slightly different depending on your server version. Check the IIS Handler configuration in the IIS Management Console for the exact name or simply remove the handler from the list there which will propagate to your web.config). For IIS 5 & 6 (Windows XP/2003) or the Visual Studio Web Server use:<configuration> <system.web> <httpHandlers> <remove path="*.asmx" verb="*" /> <add path="*.asmx" verb="*" type="FoxProAspNet.WebServiceStaHandler" /> </httpHandlers> </system.web></configuration> To test, create a new ASMX Web Service and create a method like this: [WebService(Namespace = "http://foxaspnet.org/")] [WebServiceBinding(ConformsTo = WsiProfiles.BasicProfile1_1)] public class FoxWebService : System.Web.Services.WebService { [WebMethod] public string HelloWorld() { return "Hello World. Threading mode is: " + System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.GetApartmentState(); } } Run this before you put in the web.config configuration changes and you should get: Hello World. Threading mode is: MTA Then put the handler mapping into Web.config and you should see: Hello World. Threading mode is: STA And you're on your way to using STA COM components. It's a hack but it works well! I've used this with several high volume Web Service installations with various customers and it's been fast and reliable. ASP.NET MVC ASP.NET MVC has quickly become the most popular ASP.NET technology, replacing WebForms for creating HTML output. MVC is more complex to get started with, but once you understand the basic structure of how requests flow through the MVC pipeline it's easy to use and amazingly flexible in manipulating HTML requests. In addition, MVC has great support for non-HTML output sources like JSON and XML, making it an excellent choice for AJAX requests without any additional tools. Unlike WebForms ASP.NET MVC doesn't support STA threads natively and so some trickery is needed to make it work with STA threads as well. MVC gets its handler implementation through custom route handlers using ASP.NET's built in routing semantics. To work in an STA handler requires working in the Page Handler as part of the Route Handler implementation. As with the Web Service handler the first step is to create a custom HttpHandler that can instantiate an MVC request pipeline properly:public class MvcStaThreadHttpAsyncHandler : Page, IHttpAsyncHandler, IRequiresSessionState { private RequestContext _requestContext; public MvcStaThreadHttpAsyncHandler(RequestContext requestContext) { if (requestContext == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("requestContext"); _requestContext = requestContext; } public IAsyncResult BeginProcessRequest(HttpContext context, AsyncCallback cb, object extraData) { return this.AspCompatBeginProcessRequest(context, cb, extraData); } protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e) { var controllerName = _requestContext.RouteData.GetRequiredString("controller"); var controllerFactory = ControllerBuilder.Current.GetControllerFactory(); var controller = controllerFactory.CreateController(_requestContext, controllerName); if (controller == null) throw new InvalidOperationException("Could not find controller: " + controllerName); try { controller.Execute(_requestContext); } finally { controllerFactory.ReleaseController(controller); } this.Context.ApplicationInstance.CompleteRequest(); } public void EndProcessRequest(IAsyncResult result) { this.AspCompatEndProcessRequest(result); } public override void ProcessRequest(HttpContext httpContext) { throw new NotSupportedException("STAThreadRouteHandler does not support ProcessRequest called (only BeginProcessRequest)"); } } This handler code figures out which controller to load and then executes the controller. MVC internally provides the information needed to route to the appropriate method and pass the right parameters. Like the Web Service handler the logic occurs in the OnInit() and performs all the processing in that part of the request. Next, we need a RouteHandler that can actually pick up this handler. Unlike the Web Service handler where we simply registered the handler, MVC requires a RouteHandler to pick up the handler. RouteHandlers look at the URL's path and based on that decide on what handler to invoke. The route handler is pretty simple - all it does is load our custom handler: public class MvcStaThreadRouteHandler : IRouteHandler { public IHttpHandler GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext) { if (requestContext == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("requestContext"); return new MvcStaThreadHttpAsyncHandler(requestContext); } } At this point you can instantiate this route handler and force STA requests to MVC by specifying a route. The following sets up the ASP.NET Default Route:Route mvcRoute = new Route("{controller}/{action}/{id}", new RouteValueDictionary( new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }), new MvcStaThreadRouteHandler()); RouteTable.Routes.Add(mvcRoute);   To make this code a little easier to work with and mimic the behavior of the routes.MapRoute() functionality extension method that MVC provides, here is an extension method for MapMvcStaRoute(): public static class RouteCollectionExtensions { public static void MapMvcStaRoute(this RouteCollection routeTable, string name, string url, object defaults = null) { Route mvcRoute = new Route(url, new RouteValueDictionary(defaults), new MvcStaThreadRouteHandler()); RouteTable.Routes.Add(mvcRoute); } } With this the syntax to add  route becomes a little easier and matches the MapRoute() method:RouteTable.Routes.MapMvcStaRoute( name: "Default", url: "{controller}/{action}/{id}", defaults: new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } ); The nice thing about this route handler, STA Handler and extension method is that it's fully self contained. You can put all three into a single class file and stick it into your Web app, and then simply call MapMvcStaRoute() and it just works. Easy! To see whether this works create an MVC controller like this: public class ThreadTestController : Controller { public string ThreadingMode() { return Thread.CurrentThread.GetApartmentState().ToString(); } } Try this test both with only the MapRoute() hookup in the RouteConfiguration in which case you should get MTA as the value. Then change the MapRoute() call to MapMvcStaRoute() leaving all the parameters the same and re-run the request. You now should see STA as the result. You're on your way using STA COM components reliably in ASP.NET MVC. WCF Web Services running through IIS WCF Web Services provide a more robust and wider range of services for Web Services. You can use WCF over HTTP, TCP, and Pipes, and WCF services support WS* secure services. There are many features in WCF that go way beyond what ASMX can do. But it's also a bit more complex than ASMX. As a basic rule if you need to serve straight SOAP Services over HTTP I 'd recommend sticking with the simpler ASMX services especially if COM is involved. If you need WS* support or want to serve data over non-HTTP protocols then WCF makes more sense. WCF is not my forte but I found a solution from Scott Seely on his blog that describes the progress and that seems to work well. I'm copying his code below so this STA information is all in one place and quickly explain. Scott's code basically works by creating a custom OperationBehavior which can be specified via an [STAOperation] attribute on every method. Using his attribute you end up with a class (or Interface if you separate the contract and class) that looks like this: [ServiceContract] public class WcfService { [OperationContract] public string HelloWorldMta() { return Thread.CurrentThread.GetApartmentState().ToString(); } // Make sure you use this custom STAOperationBehavior // attribute to force STA operation of service methods [STAOperationBehavior] [OperationContract] public string HelloWorldSta() { return Thread.CurrentThread.GetApartmentState().ToString(); } } Pretty straight forward. The latter method returns STA while the former returns MTA. To make STA work every method needs to be marked up. The implementation consists of the attribute and OperationInvoker implementation. Here are the two classes required to make this work from Scott's post:public class STAOperationBehaviorAttribute : Attribute, IOperationBehavior { public void AddBindingParameters(OperationDescription operationDescription, System.ServiceModel.Channels.BindingParameterCollection bindingParameters) { } public void ApplyClientBehavior(OperationDescription operationDescription, System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ClientOperation clientOperation) { // If this is applied on the client, well, it just doesn’t make sense. // Don’t throw in case this attribute was applied on the contract // instead of the implementation. } public void ApplyDispatchBehavior(OperationDescription operationDescription, System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.DispatchOperation dispatchOperation) { // Change the IOperationInvoker for this operation. dispatchOperation.Invoker = new STAOperationInvoker(dispatchOperation.Invoker); } public void Validate(OperationDescription operationDescription) { if (operationDescription.SyncMethod == null) { throw new InvalidOperationException("The STAOperationBehaviorAttribute " + "only works for synchronous method invocations."); } } } public class STAOperationInvoker : IOperationInvoker { IOperationInvoker _innerInvoker; public STAOperationInvoker(IOperationInvoker invoker) { _innerInvoker = invoker; } public object[] AllocateInputs() { return _innerInvoker.AllocateInputs(); } public object Invoke(object instance, object[] inputs, out object[] outputs) { // Create a new, STA thread object[] staOutputs = null; object retval = null; Thread thread = new Thread( delegate() { retval = _innerInvoker.Invoke(instance, inputs, out staOutputs); }); thread.SetApartmentState(ApartmentState.STA); thread.Start(); thread.Join(); outputs = staOutputs; return retval; } public IAsyncResult InvokeBegin(object instance, object[] inputs, AsyncCallback callback, object state) { // We don’t handle async… throw new NotImplementedException(); } public object InvokeEnd(object instance, out object[] outputs, IAsyncResult result) { // We don’t handle async… throw new NotImplementedException(); } public bool IsSynchronous { get { return true; } } } The key in this setup is the Invoker and the Invoke method which creates a new thread and then fires the request on this new thread. Because this approach creates a new thread for every request it's not super efficient. There's a bunch of overhead involved in creating the thread and throwing it away after each thread, but it'll work for low volume requests and insure each thread runs in STA mode. If better performance is required it would be useful to create a custom thread manager that can pool a number of STA threads and hand off threads as needed rather than creating new threads on every request. If your Web Service needs are simple and you need only to serve standard SOAP 1.x requests, I would recommend sticking with ASMX services. It's easier to set up and work with and for STA component use it'll be significantly better performing since ASP.NET manages the STA thread pool for you rather than firing new threads for each request. One nice thing about Scotts code is though that it works in any WCF environment including self hosting. It has no dependency on ASP.NET or WebForms for that matter. STA - If you must STA components are a  pain in the ass and thankfully there isn't too much stuff out there anymore that requires it. But when you need it and you need to access STA functionality from .NET at least there are a few options available to make it happen. Each of these solutions is a bit hacky, but they work - I've used all of them in production with good results with FoxPro components. I hope compiling all of these in one place here makes it STA consumption a little bit easier. I feel your pain :-) Resources Download STA Handler Code Examples Scott Seely's original STA WCF OperationBehavior Article© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in FoxPro   ASP.NET  .NET  COM   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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• Linux-Containers — Part 1: Overview

  - by Lenz Grimmer

  "Containers" by Jean-Pierre Martineau (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0). Linux Containers (LXC) provide a means to isolate individual services or applications as well as of a complete Linux operating system from other services running on the same host. To accomplish this, each container gets its own directory structure, network devices, IP addresses and process table. The processes running in other containers or the host system are not visible from inside a container. Additionally, Linux Containers allow for fine granular control of resources like RAM, CPU or disk I/O. Generally speaking, Linux Containers use a completely different approach than "classicial" virtualization technologies like KVM or Xen (on which Oracle VM Server for x86 is based on). An application running inside a container will be executed directly on the operating system kernel of the host system, shielded from all other running processes in a sandbox-like environment. This allows a very direct and fair distribution of CPU and I/O-resources. Linux containers can offer the best possible performance and several possibilities for managing and sharing the resources available. Similar to Containers (or Zones) on Oracle Solaris or FreeBSD jails, the same kernel version runs on the host as well as in the containers; it is not possible to run different Linux kernel versions or other operating systems like Microsoft Windows or Oracle Solaris for x86 inside a container. However, it is possible to run different Linux distribution versions (e.g. Fedora Linux in a container on top of an Oracle Linux host), provided it supports the version of the Linux kernel that runs on the host. This approach has one caveat, though - if any of the containers causes a kernel crash, it will bring down all other containers (and the host system) as well. For example, Oracle's Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 (2.6.39) is supported for both Oracle Linux 5 and 6. This makes it possible to run Oracle Linux 5 and 6 container instances on top of an Oracle Linux 6 system. Since Linux Containers are fully implemented on the OS level (the Linux kernel), they can be easily combined with other virtualization technologies. It's certainly possible to set up Linux containers within a virtualized Linux instance that runs inside Oracle VM Server for Oracle VM Virtualbox. Some use cases for Linux Containers include: Consolidation of multiple separate Linux systems on one server: instances of Linux systems that are not performance-critical or only see sporadic use (e.g. a fax or print server or intranet services) do not necessarily need a dedicated server for their operations. These can easily be consolidated to run inside containers on a single server, to preserve energy and rack space. Running multiple instances of an application in parallel, e.g. for different users or customers. Each user receives his "own" application instance, with a defined level of service/performance. This prevents that one user's application could hog the entire system and ensures, that each user only has access to his own data set. It also helps to save main memory — if multiple instances of a same process are running, the Linux kernel can share memory pages that are identical and unchanged across all application instances. This also applies to shared libraries that applications may use, they are generally held in memory once and mapped to multiple processes. Quickly creating sandbox environments for development and testing purposes: containers that have been created and configured once can be archived as templates and can be duplicated (cloned) instantly on demand. After finishing the activity, the clone can safely be discarded. This allows to provide repeatable software builds and test environments, because the system will always be reset to its initial state for each run. Linux Containers also boot significantly faster than "classic" virtual machines, which can save a lot of time when running frequent build or test runs on applications. Safe execution of an individual application: if an application running inside a container has been compromised because of a security vulnerability, the host system and other containers remain unaffected. The potential damage can be minimized, analyzed and resolved directly from the host system. Note: Linux Containers on Oracle Linux 6 with the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 (2.6.39) are still marked as Technology Preview - their use is only recommended for testing and evaluation purposes. The Open-Source project "Linux Containers" (LXC) is driving the development of the technology behind this, which is based on the "Control Groups" (CGroups) and "Name Spaces" functionality of the Linux kernel. Oracle is actively involved in the Linux Containers development and contributes patches to the upstream LXC code base. Control Groups provide means to manage and monitor the allocation of resources for individual processes or process groups. Among other things, you can restrict the maximum amount of memory, CPU cycles as well as the disk and network throughput (in MB/s or IOP/s) that are available for an application. Name Spaces help to isolate process groups from each other, e.g. the visibility of other running processes or the exclusive access to a network device. It's also possible to restrict a process group's access and visibility of the entire file system hierarchy (similar to a classic "chroot" environment). CGroups and Name Spaces provide the foundation on which Linux containers are based on, but they can actually be used independently as well. A more detailed description of how Linux Containers can be created and managed on Oracle Linux will be explained in the second part of this article. Additional links related to Linux Containers: OTN Article: The Role of Oracle Solaris Zones and Linux Containers in a Virtualization Strategy Linux Containers on Wikipedia - Lenz Grimmer Follow me on: Personal Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Linux Blog |

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• Test Drive Windows 7 Online with Virtual Labs

  - by Matthew Guay

  Did you miss out on the Windows 7 public beta and want to try it out before you actually make the leap and upgrade? Maybe you want to learn how to deploy new features in a business environment. Here’s how you can test drive Windows 7 directly from your browser. Whether you manage 10,000 desktops or simply manage your own laptop, it’s usually best to test out a new OS before installing it.  If you’re upgrading from Windows XP you may find many things unfamiliar.  Microsoft has setup a special Windows 7 Test Drive website with resources to help IT professionals test and deploy Windows 7 in their workplaces.  This is a great resource to try out Windows 7 from the comfort of your browser, and look at some of the new features without even installing it. Please note that the online version is not nearly as responsive as a full standard install of Windows 7.  It also does not run the full Aero interface or desktop effects, and may refresh slowly depending on your Internet connection.  So don’t judge Windows 7’s performance based on this virtual lab, but use it as a way to learn more about Windows 7 without installing it. Getting Started To test drive Windows 7, visit Microsoft’s Windows 7 Test Drive website (link below).  You will need to run the Windows 7 Test Drive in Internet Explorer, as it requires Active X support.  We received this error when attempting to run the Test Drive in Firefox: Now, click the “Take a Test Drive” link on the bottom left of the page. This site includes several test drives to demonstrate different features of Windows 7 and its related ecosystem of products including Windows Server 2008 R2, some of which, including the XP Mode test drive, are not yet ready.  For this test, we selected the MED-V Test drive, as this includes Office 2007 and 2010 so you can test them in Windows 7 as well.  Simply select the test drive you want, and click “Try it now!”   If you haven’t run a Windows test drive before, you will be asked to install an ActiveX control.  Click the link to install. Click the yellow bar at the top of the page in Internet Explorer, and select to Install the add-on.  You may have to approve a UAC prompt to finish the install. Once this is finished, click the link on the bottom of the page to return to your test drive.  The test drive page should automatically refresh; if it doesn’t, click refresh to reload it. Now the test drive will load the components.   Once its fully loaded, click the link to launch Windows 7 in a new window. You may see a prompt warning that the server may have been impersonated.  Simply click Yes to proceed. The test lab will give you some getting started directions; click Close Window when you’re ready to try out Windows 7. Here’s the default desktop in the Windows 7 test drive.  You can use it just like a normal Windows computer, but do note that it may function slowly depending on your internet connection.   This test drive includes both Office 2007 and Office 2010 Tech Preview, so you can try out both in Windows 7 as well. You can try out the new Windows 7 applications such as the reworked Paint with the Ribbon interface from Office. Or you can even test the newest version of Media Center, though it will warn you that it may not function good with the down-scaled graphics in the test drive.   Most importantly, you can try out the new features in Windows 7, such as Jumplists and even Aero Snap.  Once again, these features will not function the quickest, but it does let you test them out. While working with the Virtual Lab, there are different tasks it walks you through. You can also download a copy of the lab manual in PDF format to help you navigate through the various objectives. The test drive system is running Microsoft Forefront Security, the enterprise security solution from which Microsoft Security Essentials has adapted components from. Conclusion These virtual labs are great for tech students, or those of you who want to get a first-hand trial of the new features. Also, if you’re not sure on how to deploy something and want to practice in a virtual environment, these labs are quite valuable.While these labs are geared toward IT professionals, it’s a good way for anyone to try out Windows 7 features from the comfort of your current computer. Test Drive Windows 7 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Mount Multiple ISO Images Using Virtual CloneDriveHow To Delete a VHD in Windows 7Keyboard Shortcuts for VMware WorkstationMount an ISO image in Windows 7 or VistaHow To Turn a Physical Computer Into A Virtual Machine with Disk2vhd TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 If it were only this easy SyncToy syncs Files and Folders across Computers on a Network (or partitions on the same drive) Classic Cinema Online offers 100’s of OnDemand Movies OutSync will Sync Photos of your Friends on Facebook and Outlook Windows 7 Easter Theme YoWindoW, a real time weather screensaver

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• 8 Mac System Features You Can Access in Recovery Mode

  - by Chris Hoffman

  A Mac’s Recovery Mode is for more than just reinstalling Mac OS X. You’ll find many other useful troubleshooting utilities here — you can use these even if your Mac can’t boot normally. To access Recovery Mode, restart your Mac and press and hold the Command + R keys during the boot-up process. This is one of several hidden startup options on a Mac. Reinstall Mac OS X Most people know Recovery Mode as the place you go to reinstall OS X on your Mac. Recovery Mode will download the OS X installer files from teh Intenret if you don’t have them locally, so they don’t take up space on your disk and you’ll never have to hunt for an opearign system disc. Better yet, it will download up-to-date installation files so you don’t have to spend hours installing operating system updates later. Microsoft could learn a lot from Apple here. Restore From a Time Machine Backup Instead of reinstalling OS X, you can choose to restore your Mac from a time machine backup. This is like restoring a system image on another operating system. You’ll need an external disk containing a backup image created on the current computer to do this. Browse the Web The Get Help Online link opens the Safari web browser to Apple’s documentation site. It’s not limited to Apple’s website, though — you can navigate to any website you like. This feature allows you to access and use a browser on your Mac even if it isn’t booting properly. It’s ideal for looking up troubleshooting information. Manage Your Disks The Disk Utility option opens the same Disk Utility you can access from within Mac OS X. It allows you to partition disks, format them, scan disks for problems, wipe drives, and set up drives in a RAID configuration. If you need to edit partitions from outside your operating system, you can just boot into the recovery environment — you don’t have to download a special partitioning tool and boot into it. Choose the Default Startup Disk Click the Apple menu on the bar at the top of your screen and select Startup Disk to access the Choose Startup Disk tool. Use this tool to choose your computer’s default startup disk and reboot into another operating system. For example, it’s useful if you have Windows installed alongside Mac OS X with Boot Camp. Add or Remove an EFI Firmware Password You can also add a firmware password to your Mac. This works like a BIOS password or UEFI password on a Windows or Linux PC. Click the Utilities menu on the bar at the top of your screen and select Firmware Password Utility to open this tool. Use the tool to turn on a firmware password, which will prevent your computer from starting up from a different hard disk, CD, DVD, or USB drive without the password you provide. This prevents people form booting up your Mac with an unauthorized operating system. If you’ve already enabled a firmware password, you can remove it from here. Use Network Tools to Troubleshoot Your Connection Select Utilities > Network Utility to open a network diagnostic tool. This utility provides a graphical way to view your network connection information. You can also use the netstat, ping, lookup, traceroute, whois, finger, and port scan utilities from here. These can be helpful to troubleshoot Internet connection problems. For example, the ping command can demonstrate whether you can communicate with a remote host and show you if you’re experiencing packet loss, while the traceroute command can show you where a connection is failing if you can’t connect to a remote server. Open a Terminal If you’d like to get your hands dirty, you can select Utilities > Terminal to open a terminal from here. This terminal allows you to do more advanced troubleshooting. Mac OS X uses the bash shell, just as typical Linux distributions do. Most people will just need to use the Reinstall Mac OS X option here, but there are many other tools you can benefit from. If the Recovery Mode files on your Mac are damaged or unavailable, your Mac will automatically download them from Apple so you can use the full recovery environment.

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• Best Practices around Oracle VM with RAC: RAC SIG webcast - Thursday, March 18th -

  - by adam.hawley

  The RAC SIG will be hosting an interesting webcast this Thursday, March 18th at 9am pacific time (5pm GMT) on: Best Practices around Oracle VM with RAC The adaptation of virtualization technology has risen tremendously and continues to grow due to the rapid change and growth rate of IT infrastructures. With this in mind, this seminar focuses on configuration best practices, examining how Oracle RAC scales & performs in a virtualized environment, and evaluating Oracle VM Server's ease of use. Roger Lopez from Dell IT will be presenting. This Week's Webcast Connection Info: ==================================== Webcast URL (use Internet Explorer): https://ouweb.webex.com/ouweb/k2/j.php?ED=134103137&UID=1106345812&RT=MiM0 Voice can either be heard via the webconference or via the following dial in: Participant Dial-In 877-671-0452 International Dial-In 706-634-9644 International Dial-In No Link http://www.intercall.com/national/oracleuniversity/gdnam.html Intercall Password 86336

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• New Whitepaper: Advanced Compression 11gR1 Benchmarks with EBS 12

  - by Steven Chan

  In my opinion, if there's any reason to upgrade an E-Business Suite environment to the 11gR1 or 11gR2 database, it's the Advanced Compression database option.  Oracle Advanced Compression was introduced in Oracle Database 11g, and allows you to compress structured data (numbers, characters) as well as unstructured data (documents, spreadsheets, XML and other files).  It provides enhanced compression for database backups and also includes network compression for faster synchronization with standby databases.In other words, the promise of Advanced Compression is that it can make your E-Business Suite database smaller and faster.  But how well does it actually deliver on that promise?Apps 12 + Advanced Compression Benchmarks now availableThree of my colleagues, Uday Moogala, Lester Gutierrez, and Andy Tremayne, have been benchmarking Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 with Advanced Compression 11gR1.  They've just released a detailed whitepaper with their benchmarking results and recommendations.This whitepaper is available in two locations:Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 with Oracle Database 11g Advanced Compression (Note 1110648.1) (requires My Oracle Support access)Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 with Oracle Database 11g Advanced Compression (Applications Benchmark website, PDF, 500K)

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• SQL SERVER – Fix: Error: File cannot be loaded because the execution of scripts is disabled on this system. Please see “get-help about_signing” for more details

  - by pinaldave

  Yesterday I formatted my computer and did fresh install as it was due from long time. After the fresh install when I tried to install Semantic Search application using powershell, I was stopped by following error. File cannot be loaded because the execution of scripts is disabled on this system. Please see “get-help about_signing” for more details Fix/Solution/Workaround: The solution is very simple. Open the Powershell window and type following two lines and everything will fine right after that. Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned Again, this is I have done for my environment where I am very careful what I will run. You can change the policy back to original restricted policy if you want to restrict future execution of the powershell scripts. Simple – isn’t it? Well all complex looking problems are very simple to solve. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Error Messages, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Powershell

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• Node.js Adventure - Host Node.js on Windows Azure Worker Role

  - by Shaun

  In my previous post I demonstrated about how to develop and deploy a Node.js application on Windows Azure Web Site (a.k.a. WAWS). WAWS is a new feature in Windows Azure platform. Since it’s low-cost, and it provides IIS and IISNode components so that we can host our Node.js application though Git, FTP and WebMatrix without any configuration and component installation. But sometimes we need to use the Windows Azure Cloud Service (a.k.a. WACS) and host our Node.js on worker role. Below are some benefits of using worker role. - WAWS leverages IIS and IISNode to host Node.js application, which runs in x86 WOW mode. It reduces the performance comparing with x64 in some cases. - WACS worker role does not need IIS, hence there’s no restriction of IIS, such as 8000 concurrent requests limitation. - WACS provides more flexibility and controls to the developers. For example, we can RDP to the virtual machines of our worker role instances. - WACS provides the service configuration features which can be changed when the role is running. - WACS provides more scaling capability than WAWS. In WAWS we can have at most 3 reserved instances per web site while in WACS we can have up to 20 instances in a subscription. - Since when using WACS worker role we starts the node by ourselves in a process, we can control the input, output and error stream. We can also control the version of Node.js.   Run Node.js in Worker Role Node.js can be started by just having its execution file. This means in Windows Azure, we can have a worker role with the “node.exe” and the Node.js source files, then start it in Run method of the worker role entry class. Let’s create a new windows azure project in Visual Studio and add a new worker role. Since we need our worker role execute the “node.exe” with our application code we need to add the “node.exe” into our project. Right click on the worker role project and add an existing item. By default the Node.js will be installed in the “Program Files\nodejs” folder so we can navigate there and add the “node.exe”. Then we need to create the entry code of Node.js. In WAWS the entry file must be named “server.js”, which is because it’s hosted by IIS and IISNode and IISNode only accept “server.js”. But here as we control everything we can choose any files as the entry code. For example, I created a new JavaScript file named “index.js” in project root. Since we created a C# Windows Azure project we cannot create a JavaScript file from the context menu “Add new item”. We have to create a text file, and then rename it to JavaScript extension. After we added these two files we should set their “Copy to Output Directory” property to “Copy Always”, or “Copy if Newer”. Otherwise they will not be involved in the package when deployed. Let’s paste a very simple Node.js code in the “index.js” as below. As you can see I created a web server listening at port 12345. 1: var http = require("http"); 2: var port = 12345; 3:  4: http.createServer(function (req, res) { 5: res.writeHead(200, { "Content-Type": "text/plain" }); 6: res.end("Hello World\n"); 7: }).listen(port); 8:  9: console.log("Server running at port %d", port); Then we need to start “node.exe” with this file when our worker role was started. This can be done in its Run method. I found the Node.js and entry JavaScript file name, and then create a new process to run it. Our worker role will wait for the process to be exited. If everything is OK once our web server was opened the process will be there listening for incoming requests, and should not be terminated. The code in worker role would be like this. 1: public override void Run() 2: { 3: // This is a sample worker implementation. Replace with your logic. 4: Trace.WriteLine("NodejsHost entry point called", "Information"); 5:  6: // retrieve the node.exe and entry node.js source code file name. 7: var node = Environment.ExpandEnvironmentVariables(@"%RoleRoot%\approot\node.exe"); 8: var js = "index.js"; 9:  10: // prepare the process starting of node.exe 11: var info = new ProcessStartInfo(node, js) 12: { 13: CreateNoWindow = false, 14: ErrorDialog = true, 15: WindowStyle = ProcessWindowStyle.Normal, 16: UseShellExecute = false, 17: WorkingDirectory = Environment.ExpandEnvironmentVariables(@"%RoleRoot%\approot") 18: }; 19: Trace.WriteLine(string.Format("{0} {1}", node, js), "Information"); 20:  21: // start the node.exe with entry code and wait for exit 22: var process = Process.Start(info); 23: process.WaitForExit(); 24: } Then we can run it locally. In the computer emulator UI the worker role started and it executed the Node.js, then Node.js windows appeared. Open the browser to verify the website hosted by our worker role. Next let’s deploy it to azure. But we need some additional steps. First, we need to create an input endpoint. By default there’s no endpoint defined in a worker role. So we will open the role property window in Visual Studio, create a new input TCP endpoint to the port we want our website to use. In this case I will use 80. Even though we created a web server we should add a TCP endpoint of the worker role, since Node.js always listen on TCP instead of HTTP. And then changed the “index.js”, let our web server listen on 80. 1: var http = require("http"); 2: var port = 80; 3:  4: http.createServer(function (req, res) { 5: res.writeHead(200, { "Content-Type": "text/plain" }); 6: res.end("Hello World\n"); 7: }).listen(port); 8:  9: console.log("Server running at port %d", port); Then publish it to Windows Azure. And then in browser we can see our Node.js website was running on WACS worker role. We may encounter an error if we tried to run our Node.js website on 80 port at local emulator. This is because the compute emulator registered 80 and map the 80 endpoint to 81. But our Node.js cannot detect this operation. So when it tried to listen on 80 it will failed since 80 have been used.   Use NPM Modules When we are using WAWS to host Node.js, we can simply install modules we need, and then just publish or upload all files to WAWS. But if we are using WACS worker role, we have to do some extra steps to make the modules work. Assuming that we plan to use “express” in our application. Firstly of all we should download and install this module through NPM command. But after the install finished, they are just in the disk but not included in the worker role project. If we deploy the worker role right now the module will not be packaged and uploaded to azure. Hence we need to add them to the project. On solution explorer window click the “Show all files” button, select the “node_modules” folder and in the context menu select “Include In Project”. But that not enough. We also need to make all files in this module to “Copy always” or “Copy if newer”, so that they can be uploaded to azure with the “node.exe” and “index.js”. This is painful step since there might be many files in a module. So I created a small tool which can update a C# project file, make its all items as “Copy always”. The code is very simple. 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: if (args.Length < 1) 4: { 5: Console.WriteLine("Usage: copyallalways [project file]"); 6: return; 7: } 8:  9: var proj = args[0]; 10: File.Copy(proj, string.Format("{0}.bak", proj)); 11:  12: var xml = new XmlDocument(); 13: xml.Load(proj); 14: var nsManager = new XmlNamespaceManager(xml.NameTable); 15: nsManager.AddNamespace("pf", "http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003"); 16:  17: // add the output setting to copy always 18: var contentNodes = xml.SelectNodes("//pf:Project/pf:ItemGroup/pf:Content", nsManager); 19: UpdateNodes(contentNodes, xml, nsManager); 20: var noneNodes = xml.SelectNodes("//pf:Project/pf:ItemGroup/pf:None", nsManager); 21: UpdateNodes(noneNodes, xml, nsManager); 22: xml.Save(proj); 23:  24: // remove the namespace attributes 25: var content = xml.InnerXml.Replace("<CopyToOutputDirectory xmlns=\"\">", "<CopyToOutputDirectory>"); 26: xml.LoadXml(content); 27: xml.Save(proj); 28: } 29:  30: static void UpdateNodes(XmlNodeList nodes, XmlDocument xml, XmlNamespaceManager nsManager) 31: { 32: foreach (XmlNode node in nodes) 33: { 34: var copyToOutputDirectoryNode = node.SelectSingleNode("pf:CopyToOutputDirectory", nsManager); 35: if (copyToOutputDirectoryNode == null) 36: { 37: var n = xml.CreateNode(XmlNodeType.Element, "CopyToOutputDirectory", null); 38: n.InnerText = "Always"; 39: node.AppendChild(n); 40: } 41: else 42: { 43: if (string.Compare(copyToOutputDirectoryNode.InnerText, "Always", true) != 0) 44: { 45: copyToOutputDirectoryNode.InnerText = "Always"; 46: } 47: } 48: } 49: } Please be careful when use this tool. I created only for demo so do not use it directly in a production environment. Unload the worker role project, execute this tool with the worker role project file name as the command line argument, it will set all items as “Copy always”. Then reload this worker role project. Now let’s change the “index.js” to use express. 1: var express = require("express"); 2: var app = express(); 3:  4: var port = 80; 5:  6: app.configure(function () { 7: }); 8:  9: app.get("/", function (req, res) { 10: res.send("Hello Node.js!"); 11: }); 12:  13: app.get("/User/:id", function (req, res) { 14: var id = req.params.id; 15: res.json({ 16: "id": id, 17: "name": "user " + id, 18: "company": "IGT" 19: }); 20: }); 21:  22: app.listen(port); Finally let’s publish it and have a look in browser.   Use Windows Azure SQL Database We can use Windows Azure SQL Database (a.k.a. WACD) from Node.js as well on worker role hosting. Since we can control the version of Node.js, here we can use x64 version of “node-sqlserver” now. This is better than if we host Node.js on WAWS since it only support x86. Just install the “node-sqlserver” module from NPM, copy the “sqlserver.node” from “Build\Release” folder to “Lib” folder. Include them in worker role project and run my tool to make them to “Copy always”. Finally update the “index.js” to use WASD. 1: var express = require("express"); 2: var sql = require("node-sqlserver"); 3:  4: var connectionString = "Driver={SQL Server Native Client 10.0};Server=tcp:{SERVER NAME}.database.windows.net,1433;Database={DATABASE NAME};Uid={LOGIN}@{SERVER NAME};Pwd={PASSWORD};Encrypt=yes;Connection Timeout=30;"; 5: var port = 80; 6:  7: var app = express(); 8:  9: app.configure(function () { 10: app.use(express.bodyParser()); 11: }); 12:  13: app.get("/", function (req, res) { 14: sql.open(connectionString, function (err, conn) { 15: if (err) { 16: console.log(err); 17: res.send(500, "Cannot open connection."); 18: } 19: else { 20: conn.queryRaw("SELECT * FROM [Resource]", function (err, results) { 21: if (err) { 22: console.log(err); 23: res.send(500, "Cannot retrieve records."); 24: } 25: else { 26: res.json(results); 27: } 28: }); 29: } 30: }); 31: }); 32:  33: app.get("/text/:key/:culture", function (req, res) { 34: sql.open(connectionString, function (err, conn) { 35: if (err) { 36: console.log(err); 37: res.send(500, "Cannot open connection."); 38: } 39: else { 40: var key = req.params.key; 41: var culture = req.params.culture; 42: var command = "SELECT * FROM [Resource] WHERE [Key] = '" + key + "' AND [Culture] = '" + culture + "'"; 43: conn.queryRaw(command, function (err, results) { 44: if (err) { 45: console.log(err); 46: res.send(500, "Cannot retrieve records."); 47: } 48: else { 49: res.json(results); 50: } 51: }); 52: } 53: }); 54: }); 55:  56: app.get("/sproc/:key/:culture", function (req, res) { 57: sql.open(connectionString, function (err, conn) { 58: if (err) { 59: console.log(err); 60: res.send(500, "Cannot open connection."); 61: } 62: else { 63: var key = req.params.key; 64: var culture = req.params.culture; 65: var command = "EXEC GetItem '" + key + "', '" + culture + "'"; 66: conn.queryRaw(command, function (err, results) { 67: if (err) { 68: console.log(err); 69: res.send(500, "Cannot retrieve records."); 70: } 71: else { 72: res.json(results); 73: } 74: }); 75: } 76: }); 77: }); 78:  79: app.post("/new", function (req, res) { 80: var key = req.body.key; 81: var culture = req.body.culture; 82: var val = req.body.val; 83:  84: sql.open(connectionString, function (err, conn) { 85: if (err) { 86: console.log(err); 87: res.send(500, "Cannot open connection."); 88: } 89: else { 90: var command = "INSERT INTO [Resource] VALUES ('" + key + "', '" + culture + "', N'" + val + "')"; 91: conn.queryRaw(command, function (err, results) { 92: if (err) { 93: console.log(err); 94: res.send(500, "Cannot retrieve records."); 95: } 96: else { 97: res.send(200, "Inserted Successful"); 98: } 99: }); 100: } 101: }); 102: }); 103:  104: app.listen(port); Publish to azure and now we can see our Node.js is working with WASD through x64 version “node-sqlserver”.   Summary In this post I demonstrated how to host our Node.js in Windows Azure Cloud Service worker role. By using worker role we can control the version of Node.js, as well as the entry code. And it’s possible to do some pre jobs before the Node.js application started. It also removed the IIS and IISNode limitation. I personally recommended to use worker role as our Node.js hosting. But there are some problem if you use the approach I mentioned here. The first one is, we need to set all JavaScript files and module files as “Copy always” or “Copy if newer” manually. The second one is, in this way we cannot retrieve the cloud service configuration information. For example, we defined the endpoint in worker role property but we also specified the listening port in Node.js hardcoded. It should be changed that our Node.js can retrieve the endpoint. But I can tell you it won’t be working here. In the next post I will describe another way to execute the “node.exe” and Node.js application, so that we can get the cloud service configuration in Node.js. I will also demonstrate how to use Windows Azure Storage from Node.js by using the Windows Azure Node.js SDK.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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• ODI SDK: Retrieving Information From the Logs

  - by Christophe Dupupet

  It is fairly common to want to retrieve data from the ODI logs: statistics, execution status, even the generated code can be retrieved from the logs. The ODI SDK provides a robust set of APIs to parse the repository and retreve such information. To locate the information you are looking for, you have to keep in mind the structure of the logs: sessions contain steps; steps containt tasks. The session is the execution unit: basically, each time you execute something (interface, package, procedure, scenario) you create a new session. The steps are the individual entries found in a session: these will be the icons in your package for instance. Or if you are running an interface, you will have one single step: the interface itself. The tasks will represent the more atomic elements of the steps: the individual DDL, DML, scripts and so forth that are generated by ODI, along with all the detailed statistics for that task. All these details can be retrieved with the SDK. Because I had a question recently on the API ODIStepReport, I focus explicitly in this code on Scenario logs, but a lot more can be done with these APIs. Here is the code sample (you can just cut and paste that code in your ODI 11.1.1.6 Groovy console). Just save, adapt the code to your environment (in particular to connect to your repository) and hit "run" //Created by ODI Studioimport oracle.odi.core.OdiInstanceimport oracle.odi.core.config.OdiInstanceConfigimport oracle.odi.core.config.MasterRepositoryDbInfo import oracle.odi.core.config.WorkRepositoryDbInfo import oracle.odi.core.security.Authentication  import oracle.odi.core.config.PoolingAttributes import oracle.odi.domain.runtime.scenario.finder.IOdiScenarioFinder import oracle.odi.domain.runtime.scenario.OdiScenario import java.util.Collection import java.io.* /* ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Simple sample code to list all executions of the last version of a scenario,along with detailed steps information----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- */ /* update the following parameters to match your environment => */def url = "jdbc:oracle:thin:@myserver:1521:orcl"def driver = "oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver"def schema = "ODIM1116"def schemapwd = "ODIM1116PWD"def workrep = "WORKREP1116"def odiuser= "SUPERVISOR"def odiuserpwd = "SUNOPSIS" // Rather than hardcoding the project code and folder name, // a great improvement here would be to parse the entire repository def scenario_name = "LOAD_DWH" /*Scenario Name*/ /* <=End of the update section */ //--------------------------------------//Connection to the repository// Note for ODI 11.1.1.6: you could use predefined odiInstance variable if you are // running the script from a Studio that is already connected to the repository def masterInfo = new MasterRepositoryDbInfo(url, driver, schema, schemapwd.toCharArray(), new PoolingAttributes())def workInfo = new WorkRepositoryDbInfo(workrep, new PoolingAttributes())def odiInstance = OdiInstance.createInstance(new OdiInstanceConfig(masterInfo, workInfo)) //--------------------------------------// In all cases, we need to make sure we have authorized access to the repositorydef auth = odiInstance.getSecurityManager().createAuthentication(odiuser, odiuserpwd.toCharArray())odiInstance.getSecurityManager().setCurrentThreadAuthentication(auth) //--------------------------------------// Retrieve the scenario we are looking fordef odiScenario = ((IOdiScenarioFinder)odiInstance.getTransactionalEntityManager().getFinder(OdiScenario.class)).findLatestByName(scenario_name) if (odiScenario == null){    println("Error: cannot find scenario "+scenario_name);    return} //--------------------------------------// Retrieve all reports for the scenario def OdiScenarioReportsList = odiScenario.getScenarioReports() println("*** Listing all reports for Scenario \""+scenario_name+"\" ") //--------------------------------------// For each report, print the folowing:// - start time// - duration// - status// - step reports: selection of details for (s in OdiScenarioReportsList){        println("\tStart time: " + s.getSessionStartTime())        println("\tDuration: " + s.getSessionDuration())        println("\tStatus: " + s.getSessionStatus())                def OdiScenarioStepReportsList = s.getStepReports()        for (st in OdiScenarioStepReportsList){            println("\t\tStep Name: " + st.getStepName())            println("\t\tStep Resource Name: " + st.getStepResourceName())            println("\t\tStep Start time: " + st.getStepStartTime())            println("\t\tStep Duration: " + st.getStepDuration())            println("\t\tStep Status: " + st.getStepStatus())            println("\t\tStep # of inserts: " + st.getStepInsertCount())            println("\t\tStep # of updates: " + st.getStepUpdateCount()+'\n')      }      println("\t")}

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• XAML Controls in WinForms

  - by Nathan Friesen

  We're considering converting our WinForms application to a WPF application. Part of the reason is that WPF/XAML seem to be the future. We are also using third party controls that we would like to be able to phase out. Making this conversion seems like a pretty big and time consuming undertaking, though. Would it make sense to develop XAML controls that could be used in our WinForms application as a first step in the process? My thinking is that the same controls would then be used in the WPF application and all of the look, feel, and functionality would be built into the controls in either environment.

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• CRM@Oracle Series: Showcasing Innovation with Oracle Customer Hub

  - by tony.berk

  When is having too many customers a challenge? It is not something too many people would complain about. But from a data perspective, one challenge is to keep each customer's data consistent across multiple enterprise systems such as CRM, ERP, and all of your other related applications. Buckle your seat belts, we are going a bit technical today... If you have ever tried it, you know it isn't easy. If you haven't, don't go there alone! Customer data integration projects are challenging and, depending on the environment, require sharp, innovative people to succeed. Want to hear from some guys who have done it and succeeded? Here is an interview with Dan Lanir and Afzal Asif from Oracle's Applications IT CRM Systems group on implementing Oracle Customer Hub and innovation. For more interesting discussions on innovation, check out the Oracle Innovation Showcase.

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• Significance of Bresenhams Line of Sight algorithm

  - by GamDroid

  What is the significance of Bresenhams Line of Sight algorithm in chasing and evading in games? As far as i know and implemented this algorithm calulates the straight line between two given points. However while implementing it in game development i stored the points calculated using this algorithm in an array.Then im traversing this array for chasing and evading purpose. This looks to be working good with some angles only.In an pixel based environment/tile based. What if there are some obstacles added in the paths of the two points? then this algorithm will not work right? How well can we use the Bresenhams Line algorithm in game development?

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• Book Review Charlene Li's New Book: Open Leadership

  - by david.talamelli

  A few weeks ago, I was surprised when I looked in our mail box. I had received an Advance Copy of Charlene Li's new book titled "Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead". Charlene sent a tweet a while back asking anyone interested in receiving the book to submit their details. I sent off my details and didn't think I would hear anything back, so it was a pleasant surprise. With that I almost feel bad that it has taken me 3 weeks to read her book. It took this long mainly because it has been hard to fit in some quality reading time for myself with work, the kids, volunteering, etc..... I am happy to report I have finished her book and wanted to run through my initial thoughts with you. I first came across Charlene Li after reading her book "Groundswell" a few years ago, her latest book "Open Leadership" is a follow on from Groundswell and to me it seems like a natural progression from the question "Ok the business landscape is changing, what do we do now?" For me these two books have a different writing style to them. Groundswell from memory spoke about broad social media concepts and adoption and alerted us to some of the changes taking place in the SM landscape. Open Leadership seems to be focussed on taking those broad concepts and finding ways to implement them into your environment. That is breaking broad concepts down into individual action items that can be measured and analysed. As the business world changes Leaders must change their approach and let go of control to more control. One of the things I love reading about is seeing real life examples of how people and organisations are making these things happen. In this book Charlene has collected some great collateral and case studies from companies such as Cisco, Best Buy, The Red Cross and The State Bank of India (as a side-note, I wish now that I submitted my input for the Leaders I work with here at Oracle - there are some great examples here of people who empower their staff). As society becomes more adept at using social media it is inevitable that Leaders must become open with their employees, clients and partners. From the book some of the key points I took away are (I actually took away a lot more from this book, this is just an overview) : 1) Organisations should encourage risk taking. Without being a "hacker", how can we improve ourselves, our processes, our business, etc... The old saying you only fail by not trying applies here. If Leaders create a culture where people are afraid to stick their neck out - how will you innovate? 2) Leaders need to lead by example - if you want to promote an open and transparent business, a Leader needs to exemplify the traits they would like to see out of their employees. 3) The definition of a Leader is changing, open leadership is about being a catalyst to change that uses networks to spread a vision as opposed to traditional leadership that is viewed as a role. 4) There is a cultural and business shift taking place. Information is more wide-spread and is being disseminated faster than any other time in the past. Leaders who are open and transparent will thrive in this new business environment. 5) Leadership is not defined by a title - it is defined by a person's actions. Also anyone can be a Leader or has Leadership potential in them- it is a matter of drawing that out of people. I found this book useful and I also found myself looking at my own actions and the actions of others around me (including my management) to see how open and transparent I am in my work. For me I am glad I read this book as it validated my own thoughts of the changes we are seeing take place. This book has certainly given me some new ideas and helped me push my own boundaries of what I can do. The book has a number of action plans at the end of some of the chapters such as "Conducting you Openness Audit" that I think have helped me take thoughts and ideas and turn them into concrete action items. I have included a link to the introduction of the book here if anyone wants to have a read of it. If anyone else has read this book, it would be great to hear your thoughts/comments/review. Leave your comments below. This article was originally posted on David Talamelli's Blog - David's Journal on Tap

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• Surface development: it&rsquo;s just like software development

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  Surface is magic. Everyone using it seems to think that way. And I have to be honest, after working for almost 2 years with the platform I still get that special feeling the moment I turn on the unit to do some more work. The whole user experience, the rich environment of the SDK, the touch, even the look and feel of the Surface environment is so much different from the stuff I’ve been working on all my career that I am still bewildered by it. But… and this is a big but.. in the end we’re still talking about a computer and that needs software to become useful. Deep down the magic of the Surface unit there is a PC somewhere, running Windows Vista and the .net framework 3.5. When you write that magic software that makes the platform come alive you’re still working with .net, WPF/XNA, C#, VB.Net and all those other tools and technologies you know so well. Sure, the whole user experience is different from what you’ve known. And the way of thinking about users, their interaction and the positioning of screen elements requires a whole new paradigm. And that takes time. It took me about half a year before I had the feeling I got it nailed down. But when that moment came (about 18 months ago…) I realized that everything I had learned so far on software development still is true when it comes to Surface. The last 6 months I have been working with some people with a different background to start a new company. The idea was that the new company would be focussing on Surface and Surface only. These people come from a marketing background and had some good ideas for some applications. And I have to admit: their ideas were good. Very good. Where it all fell down of course is that these ideas need to be implemented in a piece of software. And creating great software takes skilled developers and a lot of time and money. That’s where things went wrong: the marketing guys didn’t realize and didn’t want to realize that software development is a job that takes skill. You can’t just hire a bunch of developers and expect them to deliver the best sort of software, especially not when it comes to Surface. I tried to explain that yes, their User Interface in Photoshop looked great, but no: I couldn’t develop an application like that in a weeks time. Even worse: the while backend of the software (WCF for communications, SQL Server for the database, etc) would take a lot more time than the frontend. They didn’t understand. It took them a couple of days to drawn the UI in Photoshop so in Blend I should be able to build the software in about the same amount of time. Well, you and I know that it doesn’t work that way. Software is hard to write, and even harder to write well, and it takes skill and dedication. It’s not something you can do as fast as you can draw a mock up for a Surface application in Photohop. The same holds true for web applications of course. A lot of designers there fail to appreciate the hard work that goes into writing the plumbing for a good web app that can handle thousands of users. Although the UI is very important, it’s not all there is to it. And in Surface development this is the same. The UI should create the feeling of magic, but the software behind it is what makes it come alive. And that takes time. A lot of time. So brush of you skills and don’t throw them away if you start developing for Surface. Because projects (and colaborations) can fail there as hard as they can in any other area of software development. On a side note: we decided to stop the colaboration (something the other parties involved didn’t appreciate and were very angry about) and decided to hire a designer for the Surface projects. The focus is back where it belongs: on the software development we know so well and have been doing very well for 13 years. UI is just a part of the whole project and not the end product. So my company Detrio is still going strong when it comes to develivering Surface solutions but once again from a technological background, not a marketing background.

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