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• UPDATE FOR BI PUBLISHER ENTERPRISE 10.1.3.4.1 MARCH 2010

  - by Tim Dexter

  Latest roll up patch for 10.1.3.4.1 is now out in the wild. Yep, there are bug fixes but the guys have implemented some great enhancements. I'll be covering some of them over the coming weeks, from collapsing bookmarks in your PDFs to better MS AD support to 'true' Excel templates, yes you read that correctly! Patch is available from Oracle's support site. Just search for patch 9546699. Here's the contents and readme, apologies for the big list but at least you can search against it for a particular fix. This patch contains backports of following bugs for BI Publisher Enterprise 10.1.3.4.0 and 10.1.3.4.1. 6193342 - REG:SAMPLE DATA FILE FOR PDF FORM MAPPING IS NOT VALIDATED 6261875 - ERRONEOUS PRECISION VALIDATION ON ONLINE ANALYZER 6439437 - NULL POINTER EXCEPTION WHEN PROCESSING TABLE OF CONTENT 6460974 - BACS EFT PAYMENT INSTRUCTION OUTPUT FILE IS EMPTY 6939721 - BIP: REPORT BUSTING DELIVERY KEY VALUES CANNOT CONTAIN SEVERAL SPECIAL CHARACTER 6996069 - USING XML DB FOR BI REPOSITORY FAILS WITH RESOURCENOTFOUNDEXCEPTION 7207434 - TIMEZONE:SHOULD NOT DO TIMEZONE CONVERSION AGAINST CANONICAL DATE YYYY-MM-DD 7371531 - SUPPORT FOR CSV OUTPUT FOR STRUCTURED XML AND NON SQL DATA SOURCES 7596148 - ER: LDAP FOR MS AD TO SEARCH FROM AD ROOT 7646139 - WEBSERVICES ERROR 7829516 - BIP STANDALONE FAILS TO BURST USING XSL-FO TEMPLATES 8219848 - PDF TEMPLATE REPORT NOT PERFORMING PAGE BREAK 8232116 - PARAMETER VALUE IS PASSED AS NULL,IF IT CONTAINS 'AND' WITHIN THE STRING 8250690 - NOT ABLE TO UPLOAD TEMPLATE VIA BIP API 8288459 - ER: QUERY BUILDER OPTION TO NOT INCLUDE TABLENAME. PREFIX IN SQL 8289600 - REPORT TITLE AND DESCRIPTION CAN'T SUPPORT MULTIPLE LANGUAGES 8327080 - CAN NOT CONFIGURE ORACLE EBUSINESS SUITE SECURITY MODEL WITH ORACLE RAC 8332164 - AN XDO PROPERTY TO ENABLE DEBUG LOGGING 8333289 - WEB SERVICE JOBS FAIL AFTER BIP STARTED UP 8340239 - HTTP NOTIFY IS MISSING IN SCHEDULEREPORTREQUEST 8360933 - UNABLE TO USE LOGGED IN BI USER AS THE WSSECURITY USERNAME IN A VARIABLE FORMAT 8400744 - ADMINISTRATOR USER DOES NOT HAVE FULL ADMINISTRATOR RIGHTS 8402436 - CRASH CAUSED BY UNDETERMINED ATTRKEY ERROR IN MULTI-THREADED 8403779 - IMPOSSIBLE TO CONFIGURE PARAMETER FOR A REPORT 8412259 - PDF, RTF OUTPUT NOT HANDLING THE TABLE BORDER AND CONTENT OVERFLOWS TO NEXT PAGE 8483919 - DYNAMIC DATASOURCE WEBSERVICE SHOULD WORK WITH SERVERSIDE CONNECTIONS 8444382 - ID ATTRIBUTE IN TITLE-PAGE DOES NOT WORK WITH SELECTACTION PROPERTY 8446681 - UI LANGUAGE IS NOT REFLECTED AT THE FIRST LOG IN 8449884 - PUBLICREPORTSERVICE FAILS ON EMAIL DELIVERY USING BIP 10.1.3.4.0D+ - NPE 8454858 - DB: XMLP_ADMIN CAN SEE ALL THE FOLDERS BUT ONLY HAS VIEW PERMISSIONS 8458818 - PDFBOOKBINDER FAILS WITH OUTOFMEMORY ERROR WHEN TRYING TO BIND > 1500 PDFS 8463992 - INCORRECT IMPLEMENTATION OF XLIFF SPECIFICATION 8468777 - BI PUBLISHER QUERY BUILDER NOT LOADING SCHEMA OBJECTS 8477310 - QUERY BUILDER NOT WORK WITH SSL ON STANDALONE OC4J 8506701 - POSITIVE PAY FILE WITH OPTIONS NOT CREATING FILE CHECKS OVER 2500 8506761 - PERFORMANCE: PDFBOOKBINDER CLASS TAKES 4 HOURS TO BIND 4000 PAGES 8535604 - NPE WHEN CLICKING "ANALYZER FOR EXCEL" BUTTON IN ALL_* REPORTS 8536246 - REMOVE-PDF-FIELDS DOES NOT WORK WITH CHECKBOXES WITH OPT ARRAY 8541792 - NULLPOINTER EXCEPTION WHILE USING SFTP PROTOCOL 8554443 - LOGGING TIME STAMP IN 10G: THE HOUR PART IS WRONG 8558007 - UNABLE TO LOGIN BIP WITH UNPRIVILEGED USER WHEN XDB IS USED FOR REPORSITORY STOR 8565758 - NEED TO CONNECT IMPERSONATION TO DATA SOURCE WITH PL/SQL FUNCTION 8567235 - EFTPROCESSOR AND XDO DEBUG ENABLED CAUSES ORG.XML.SAX.SAXPARSEEXCEPTION 8572216 - EFTPROCESSOR NOT THREAD SAFE - CAUSING CORRUPTED REPORTS TO BE GENERATED 8575776 - LANDSCAPE REPORT ORIENTAION NOT SELECTED WHEN REPORT IS PRINTED WITH PS 8588330 - XLIFF GENERATING WITH WRONG MAXWIDTH ATTRIBUTE IN SOME TRANS-UNITS 8584446 - EFTGENERATOR DOES NOT USE XSLT SCALABILITY - JAVA.LANG.OUTOFMEMORY EXCEPTION 8594954 - ENG: BIP NOTIFY MESSAGE BECOMES ENGLISH 8599646 - ER:EXTRA SPACE ADDED BELOW IMAGE IN A TABLE CELL OF TEMPLATE IN FIREFOX 8605110 - PDFSIGNATURE API ENCOUNTERS JAVA.LANG.NULLPOINTEREXCEPTION ON PDF WITH WATERMARK 8660915 - BURSTING WITH DATA TEMPLATE NOT WORKING WITH OPTION: VALUE=FALSE 8660920 - ER: EXTRACT XHTML DATA USING XDODTEXE IN XHTML FORMAT 8667150 - PROBLEM WITH 3RD APPLICATION ABOUT PDF GENERATED WITH BI PUBLISHER 8683547 - "CLICK VIEW REPORT BUTTON TO GENERATE THE REPORT" MESSAGE IS DISPLAYED 8713080 - SEARCH" PARAMETER IS NOT SHOWING NON ENGLISH DATA IN INTERNET EXPLORER 8724778 - EXCEL ANALYZER PARAMETERS DO NOT WORK WITH EXCEL 2007 8725450 - UIX 2.3.6.6 UPTAKE FOR 10.1.3.4.1 8728807 - DYNAMIC JDBC DATA SOURCE WITH PRE-PROCESS FUNCTION BASED ON EXISTING DATA SOURCE 8759558 - XDO TEMPLATE SHOWS CURRENCY IN WRONG FORMAT FOR DUNNING 8792894 - EFTPROCESSOR DOES NOT SUPPORT XSL TEMPLATE AS INPUTSTREAM 8793550 - BIP GENERATES CSV REPORTS OUTPUT FORMAT WITH EXTENTION .OUT NOT .CSV IN EMAIL 8819869 - PERIOD CLOSE VALUE SUMMARY REPORT (XML) RUNNING INTO WARNING 8825732 - MY FOLDERS LINK BROKEN WITH USER NAME THAT INCLUDES A SLASH (/) OBIEE SECURITY 8831948 - TRYING TO GENERATE A SCATTER PLOT USING THE CHART WIZARD 8842299 - SEEDED QUERY ALWAYS RETURNS RESULTS BASED ON FIRST COLUMN 8858027 - NODE.GETTEXTCONTEXT() NOT AVAILABLE IN 10G UNDER OC4J 8859957 - REPORT TITLE ALIGNMENT GOES BAD FOR REPORTS WITH XLIFF FILE ATTACHED 8860957 - ER: IMPROVE PERFORMANCE OF ANSWERS PARAMETERS 8891537 - GETREPORTPARAMETERS WEB SERVICE API ISSUES WITH OAAM REPORTS 8891558 - GETTING SQLEXCEPTION IN GENERATEREPORT WEB SERVICE API ON OAAM REPORTS 8927796 - ER: DYANAMIC DATA SOURCE SUPPORT BY DATA SOURCE NAME 8969898 - BI PUBLISHER WEB SERVICE GETREPORTPARAMETERS DOES NOT TRANSLATE PARAMETER LABEL 8998967 - MULTIPLE XSL PREDICATES ELEMENT[A='A'] [B='B'] CAUSES XML-22019 ERROR 9012511 - SCALABLE MODE IS NOT WORKING IN XMLPUBLISHER 10.1.3.4 9016976 - ER: PRINT XSL-T AND FOPROCESSING TIMING INFORMATION 9018580 - WEB SERVICE CALL FAILS WHEN REPORT INCLUDES SEARCH TYPE 9018657 - JOB FAILS WHEN LOV QUERY CONTAINS BIND VARIABLES :XDO_USER_UI_LOCALE 9021224 - PERFORMANCE ISSUE TO VIEW DASHBOARD PAGE WITH BIP REPORT LINKS 9022440 - ER: SUPPORT "COMB OF N CHARACTERS" FEATURE PDF FORM TEXT FIELDS 9026236 - XPATH DOES NOT WORK CORRECTLY IN 10.1.3.4.1 9051652 - FILE EXTENSION OF CSV OUTPUT IS TXT WHEN IT IS EXPORTED FROM REPORT VIEWER 9053770 - WHEN SENDING CSV REPORT OUTPUT BY EMAIL SOMETIMES IT IS SENT WITHOUT EXTENSION 9066483 - PDFBOOKBINDER LEAVE SOME TEMPORARY FILES AFTER MERGING TITLE PAGE OR TOC 9102420 - USE RELATIVE PATHS IN HYPERLINKS 9127185 - CHECKBOX NOT WORK ON SUB TEMPLATE 9149679 - BASE URL IS NOT PASSED CORRECTLY 9149691 - PROVIDE A WAY TO DISABLE THE ABILITY TO CREATE SCHEDULED REPORT JOB "PUBLIC" 9167822 - NOTIFICATION URL BREAKS ON FOLDER NAMES WITH SPACES 9167913 - CHARTS ARE MISSING IN PDF OUTPUTS WHEN THE DEFAULT OUTPUT FORMAT IS NOT A PDF 9217965 - REPORT HISTORY TAKES LONG TIME TO RENDER THE PAGE 9236674 - BI PUBLISHER PARAMETERS DO NOT CASCADE REFRESH AFTER SECOND PARAMETER 9283933 - OPTION TO COLLAPSE PDF OUTPUT BOOKMARKS BY DEFAULT 9287245 - SAVE COMPLETED SCHEDULED REPORTS IN ITS REPORT NAME AND NOT IN A GENERIC NAME 9348862 - ADD FEATURE TO DISABLE THE XSLT1.0-COMPATIBILITY IN RTF TEMPLATE 9355897 - ER: NEED A SAFE DIVIDE FUNCTION 9364169 - UIX 2.3.6.6 PATCH UPTAKE FOR 10.1.3.4.1 9365153 - LEADING WHITESPACE CHARACTERS IN A FIELD TRIMMED WHEN RUN VIEW OR EXPORT TO .CSV 9389039 - LONG TEXT IS NOT WRAPPED PROPERLY IN THE AUTOSHAPE ON RTF TEMPLATE 9475697 - ENH: SUB-TEMPLATE:DYNAMIC VARIABLE WITH PARAMETER VALUE IN CALL-TEMPLATE CLAUSE 9484549 - CHANGE DEFAULT FOR "XSLT1.0-COMPATIBILITY" TO FALSE FOR 10G 9508499 - UNABLE TO READ EXCEL FILE IF MORE THAN 1800 ROWS GENERATED 9546078 - EMAIL DELIVERY INFORMATION SHOULD NOT BE SAVED AND AUTO-FED IN JOB SUBMISSION 9546101 - EXCEPTION OCCURS WHEN SFTP/FTP REMOTE FILENAME DOSE NOT CONTAIN A SLASH '/' 9546117 - SFTP REPORT DELIVERY FAILS WITH NO CLASS DEF FOUND EXCEPTION ON WEBLOGIC 9.2 Following bugs are included in 10.1.3.4.1 and they are only applied to 10.1.3.4.0. 4612604 - FROM EDGE ATTRIBUTE OF HEADER AND FOOTER IS NOT PRESERVED 6621006 - PARAMNAMEVALUE ELEMENT DEFINITION SHOULD HAVE PARAMETER TYPE 6811967 - DATE PARAMETER NOT HANDLING DATE OFFSET WHEN PASSED UPPERCASE Z FOR OFFSET 6864451 - WHEN BIP REPORTS TIMEOUT, THE PROCESS TO LOG BACK IN IS NOT USER FRIENDLY 6869887 - FUSION CURRENCY BRD:4.1.4/4.1.6 OVERRIDINDG MASK /W XSLT._XDOCURMASKS /W SYMBOL 6959078 - "TEXT FIELD CONTAINS COMMA-SEPARATED VALUES" DOESN'T WORK IN CASE OF STRING 6994647 - GETTING ERROR MESSAGE SAYING JOB FAILED EVEN THOUGH WORKS OK IN BI PUBLISHER 7133143 - ENABLE USER TO ENTER 'TODAY' AS VALUE TO DATE PARAMETER IN SCHEDULE REPORT UI 7165117 - QA_BIP_FUNC:-CLOSED LIFE TIME REPORT ERROR MESSAGE IN CMD 7167068 - LEADER-LENGTH OR RULE-THICKNESS PROPRTY IS TOO LARGE 7219517 - NEED EXTENSION FUNCTIONS TO URL ENCODE TEXT STRING. 7269228 - TEMPLATEHELPER PRODUCES A GARBLED OUTPUT WHEN INVOKED BY MULTIPLE THREADS 7276813 - GETREPORTPARAMETERSRETURN ELEMENT SHOULD HAVE DEFAULT VALUE 7279046 - SCHDEULER:UNABLE TO DELETE A JOB USING API 7280336 - ER: BI PUBLISHER - SITEMINDER SUPPORT - GENERIC NON-ORACLE SSO SUPPORT 7281468 - MODIFY SQL SERVER PROPERTIES TO USE HYP DATA DIRECT IN JDBCDEFAULTS.XML 7281495 - PLEASE ADD SUPPORTED DBS TO JDBCDEFAULT.XML AND LIST EACH DB VERSION SEPARATELY 7282456 - FUSION CURRENCY BRD 4.1.9.2: CURRENCY AMOUTS SHOULD NOT BE WRAPPED. MINUS SIGN 7282507 - FUSION CURRENCY BRD4.1.2.5:DISPLAY CURRENCY AND LOCALE DERIVED CURRENCY SYMBOL 7284780 - FUSION CURRENCY BRD 4.1.12.4 CORRECTLY ALIGN NEGATIVE CURRENCY AMOUNTS 7306874 - OPP ERROR - JAVA.LANG.OUTOFMEMORYERROR: ZIP002:OUTOFMEMORYERROR, MEM_ERROR 7309596 - SIEBELCRM: BIP ENHANCEMENT REQUEST FOR SIEBEL PARAMETERIZATION 7337173 - UI LOCALE IS ALWAYS REWRITTEN TO EN WHEN MOVE FROM DASHBOARD 7338349 - REG:ANALYZER REPORT WITH AVERAGE FUNCTION FAIL TO RUN FOR NON INTERACTIVE FORMAT 7343757 - OUTPUT FORMAT OF TEMPLATES IS NOT SAVING 7345989 - SET XDK REPLACEILLEGALCHARS AND ENHANCE XSLTWRAPPER WARNING 7354775 - UNEXPECTED BEHAVIOR OF LAYOUT TEMPLATE PARAMETER OF RUNREPORT WEBSERVICES API 7354798 - SEQUENCE ORDER OF PARAMETERS FOR THE RUNREPORT WEBSERVICES API 7358973 - PARALLEL SFTP DELIVERY FAILS DUE TO SSHEXCEPTION: CORRUPT MAC ON INPUT 7370110 - REGN:FAIL WHEN USE JNDI TO XMLDB REPORT REPOSITORY 7375859 - NEW WEBSERVICE REQUIRED FOR RUNREPORT 7375892 - REQUIRE NEW WEBSERVICE TO CHECK IF REPORTFOLDER EXISTS 7377686 - TEXT-ALIGN NOT APPLIED IN PDF IN HEBREW LOCALE 7413722 - RUNREPORT API DOES NOT PASS BACK ANY GENERATED EXCEPTIONS TO SCHEDULEREPORT 7435420 - FUSION CURRENCY: SUPPORT MICROSOFT(JAVA) FORMAT MASK WITH CURRENCY 7441486 - ER: ADD PARAMETER FOR SFTP TO BURSTING QUERY 7458169 - SSO WITH OID LDAP COULD NOT FETCH OID ROLES 7461161 - EMAIL DELIVERY FAILS - DELIVERYEXCEPTION: 0 BYTE AVAILABLE IN THE GIVEN INPU 7580715 - INCORRECT FORMATTING OF DATES IN TIMEZONE GMT+13 7582694 - INVALID MAXWIDTH VALUE CAUSES NLS FAILURES 7583693 - JAVA.LANG.NULLPOINTEREXCEPTION RAISED WHEN GENERATING HRMS BENEFITS PDF REPORT 7587998 - NEWLY CREATED USERS IN OID CANT ACCESS REPORTS UNTILL BI PUBLISHER IS RESTARTED 7588317 - TABLE OF CONTENT ALWAYS IN THE SAME FONT 7590084 - REMOVING THE BIP ENTERPRISE BANNER BUT KEEPING THE REPORTS & SCHEDULES TAB 7590112 - SOMEONE NOT PRIVILEGED ACCESS BIP DIRECTLY SHOULD GET A CUSTOM PAGE 7590125 - AUTOMATING CREATION OF USERS AND ROLES 7597902 - TIMEZONE SUPPORT IN RUNREPORT WEBSERVICE API 7599031 - XML PUBLISHER SUM(CURRENT-GROUP()) FAILS 7609178 - ISSUE WITH TAGS EXTRACTED FROM RTF TEMPLATE 7613024 - HEADER/FOOTER SETTINGS OF RTF TEMPLATE ARE NOT RETAINING IN THE RTF OUTPUT 7623988 - ADD XSLT FUNCTION TO PRINT XDO PROPERTIES 7625975 - RETRIEVING PARAMETER LOV FROM RTF TEMPLATE 7629445 - SPELL OUT A NUMBER INTO WORDS 7641827 - ANALYTICS FROZED AFTER PAGE TAB WHICH INCLUDES [BI PUBLISHER REPORT] WERE CLICKE 7645504 - BIP REPORT FROZED AFTER THE SAME DASHBOARD BIP REPORTS WERE CLICKED SIMULTANEOUS 7649561 - RECEIVE 'TO MANY OPEN FILE HANDLES' ERROR CAUSING BI TO CRASH 7654155 - BIP REMOVES THE FIRST FILE SEPARATOR WHEN RE-ENTER REPOSITORY LOCATION IN ADMIN 7656834 - NEED AN OPTION TO NOT APPEND SCHEMA NAME IN GENERATED QUERY 7660292 - ER: XDOPARSER UPGRADE TO XDK 11G 7687862 - BIP DATA EXTRACTING ENHANCEMENT FOR SIEBEL BIP INTEGRATION 7694875 - ADMINISTRATOR IS SUPER USER WHETHER CONFIGURED MANDATORY_USER_ROLE OR NOT 7697592 - BI PUBLISHER STRINGINDEXOUTOFBOUNDSEXCEPTION WHEN PRINTING LABEL FROM SIM 7702372 - ARABIC/ENGLISH NUMBER/DATE PROBLEM, TOTAL PAGE NUMBER NOT RENDERED IN ENGLISH 7707987 - OUTOFMEMORY BURSTING A BI PUBLISHER REPORT BI SERVER DATA SOURCE 7712026 - ER: CHANGE CHART OUTPUT FORMAT TO PNG IN HTML OUTPUT 7833732 - THE 'SEARCH' PARAMETER TYPE CANNOT BE USED IN IE6 UNDER WINDOWS 8214839 - ER: INCREASE COLUMN SIZE IN SCHEDULER TABLE XMLP_SCHED_JOB 8218271 - ISSUES WHILE CONVERTING EXCEL TO XML 8218452 - BI PUBLISHER STANDALONE : GRAPHICS WITHOUT COLORS IF MORE THAN 33 PAGES 8250980 - USER WITH XMLP_ADMIN RESPONSIBILITY IS NOT ABLE TO EDIT REPORT IN BIP 8262410 - IMPOSSIBLE TO PRINT PDF CREATED BY BI PUBLISHER VIA 3RD PARTY PDF APPLICATION 8274369 - QA: CANNOT DELETE EMAIL SERVER UNDER DELIVERY CONFIGURATION 8284173 - FO:VISIBILITY="HIDDEN" DOESN'T WORK WITH FO:PAGE-NUMBER-CITATION 8288421 - THE VALUE OF VIEW BY GO BACK TO MY HISTORY IN SCHEDULES TAB 8299212 - REG: THE SPECIFICAL BI USER DIDN'T GET THE CORRECT REPORT HISTORY 8301767 - ORA-01795 ERROR OCCURED AFTER ACCESSING DASHBOARD PAGE WHICH INCLUDES BIP 8304944 - ADD SIEBEL SECURITY MODEL IN BI PUBLISHER 10.1.3.4.1 8312814 - QA:HOT:OBI SERVER JDBC DRIVER BIJDBC14.JAR IN XMLPSERVER.WAR IS INCORRECT 8323679 - BI PUBLISHER SENDS HTML REPORT TO OUTLOOK CLIENT AS ATTACHMENT NOT INLINE 8370794 - HISTORY OF COMPLETED SCHEDULER JOBS STILL SHOW ONE AS RUNNING ON CLUSTER ENV 8390970 - OUT OF MEMORY EXCEPTION RAISED, WHILE SAVING THE DATA 8393681 - CHECKBOX IS SHOWING UP AS CHECKED WHEN DATA IS NOT CHECKED VALUE 8725450 - UIX 2.3.6.6 UPTAKE FOR 10.1.3.4.1 UIX fixes: 6866363 - SUPPORT FOR JAVA DATE FORMAT AS PER JDK 1.4 AND ABOVE 6829124 - DATE PARAMETER NOT HANDLING DATE OFFSET AS PER JAVA STANDARDS ---------------------------- INSTALLATION FOR ENTERPRISE ---------------------------- Upgrade from 10.1.3.4.0d (patch 8284524, 8398280) and 10.1.3.4.1 does not require step 8 and step 9. 1 - Make a backup copy of the xmlp-server-config.xml file located in <application installation>/WEB-INF/ directory, where your application server unpacked the BI Publisher war or ear file. Example: In an Oracle AS/OC4J 10.1.3 deployment, the location is <ORACLE_HOME>/j2ee/home/applications/xmlpserver/xmlpserver/WEB-INF/xmlp-server-config.xml 2 - Back up all the directories under the BI Publisher repository (for example: {Oracle_Home}/xmlp/XMLP). 3 - If you are using Scheduling, back up your existing BI Publisher Scheduler schema. 4 - Shut down BI Publisher. 5 - Undeploy the BI Publisher application ("xmlpserver") from your J2EE application server. See your application server documentation for instructions how to undeploy an application. 6 - Deploy the 10.1.3.4 xmlpserver.ear or xmlpserver.war to your application server. See "Manually Installing BI Publisher to Your J2EE Application Server" secition of BI Publisher Installation Guide for guidelines for your application server type. 7 - Copy the saved backup copy of the xmlp-server-config.xml file from step 1 to the newly created BI Publisher <application installation>/WEB-INF/ directory, where your application server unpacked the BI Publisher war or ear file. Example: In an Oracle AS/OC4J 10.1.3 deployment, the location is <ORACLE_HOME>/j2ee/home/applications/xmlpserver/xmlpserver/WEB-INF/xmlp-server-config.xml 8 - Copy ssodefaults.xml to the following directory. And replace [host]:[port] with your server's information. Default values for other properties can be updated depending on your configuration. <Existing Repository>\XMLP\Admin\Security 9 - Copy database-config.xml to the following directory. <Existing Repository>\XMLP\Admin\Scheduler 10 - Restart xmlpserver application or Application Server ---------------------------------- IBM WEBSPHERE 6.1 DEPLOYMENT NOTE ---------------------------------- When users fail to log on to BI Publisher with "HTTP 500 Internal Server Error" on WebSphere 6.1, you must change Class Loader configuration to avoid the error. (bug7506253 - XMLPSERVER WON'T START AFTER DEPLOYMENT TO WEBSPHERE 6.1) SystemErr.log: java.lang.VerifyError: class loading constraint violated (class: oracle/xml/parser/v2/XMLNode method: xdkSetQxName(Loracle/xml/util/QxName;)V) at pc: 0 .... Class Loader Configuration Steps: 1 - Login to WebSphere Admin console. Click Enterprise Applications under Applications menu 2 - Click xmlpserver application name from the list 3 - Select "Class loading and update detection" 4 - Update class loader configuration as follows in Class Loader -> General Properties * Polling interval for updated files: [0] Seconds * Class loader order: [x] Classes loaded with application class loader first * WAR class loader policy: [x] Single class loader for application 5 - Apply this change and save the new configuration. 6 - Restart xmlpserver application Please refer to WebSphere 6.1 documentation for more details. "http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wasinfo/v6r1/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.websphere.base.doc/info/aes/ae/trun_classload_entapp.html"> http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wasinfo/v6r1/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.websphere.base.doc/info/aes/ae/trun_classload_entapp.html ------------------------------------------------------- Oracle WebLogic Server 11g R1 (10.3.1) Deployment NOTE ------------------------------------------------------- If you are deploying BI Publisher to WebLogic Server 10.3.1, you must add the following setting at startup for the domain that contains the BI Publisher server in the /weblogic_home/user_projects/domains/base_domain/bin/startWebLogic.sh script : -Dtoplink.xml.platform=oracle.toplink.platform.xml.jaxp.JAXPPlatform This setting is required to enable BI Publisher to find the TopLink JAR files to create the Scheduler tables.

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

  - by Rick Strahl

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

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• Inheritance Mapping Strategies with Entity Framework Code First CTP5 Part 1: Table per Hierarchy (TPH)

  - by mortezam

  A simple strategy for mapping classes to database tables might be “one table for every entity persistent class.” This approach sounds simple enough and, indeed, works well until we encounter inheritance. Inheritance is such a visible structural mismatch between the object-oriented and relational worlds because object-oriented systems model both “is a” and “has a” relationships. SQL-based models provide only "has a" relationships between entities; SQL database management systems don’t support type inheritance—and even when it’s available, it’s usually proprietary or incomplete. There are three different approaches to representing an inheritance hierarchy: Table per Hierarchy (TPH): Enable polymorphism by denormalizing the SQL schema, and utilize a type discriminator column that holds type information. Table per Type (TPT): Represent "is a" (inheritance) relationships as "has a" (foreign key) relationships. Table per Concrete class (TPC): Discard polymorphism and inheritance relationships completely from the SQL schema.I will explain each of these strategies in a series of posts and this one is dedicated to TPH. In this series we'll deeply dig into each of these strategies and will learn about "why" to choose them as well as "how" to implement them. Hopefully it will give you a better idea about which strategy to choose in a particular scenario. Inheritance Mapping with Entity Framework Code FirstAll of the inheritance mapping strategies that we discuss in this series will be implemented by EF Code First CTP5. The CTP5 build of the new EF Code First library has been released by ADO.NET team earlier this month. EF Code-First enables a pretty powerful code-centric development workflow for working with data. I’m a big fan of the EF Code First approach, and I’m pretty excited about a lot of productivity and power that it brings. When it comes to inheritance mapping, not only Code First fully supports all the strategies but also gives you ultimate flexibility to work with domain models that involves inheritance. The fluent API for inheritance mapping in CTP5 has been improved a lot and now it's more intuitive and concise in compare to CTP4. A Note For Those Who Follow Other Entity Framework ApproachesIf you are following EF's "Database First" or "Model First" approaches, I still recommend to read this series since although the implementation is Code First specific but the explanations around each of the strategies is perfectly applied to all approaches be it Code First or others. A Note For Those Who are New to Entity Framework and Code-FirstIf you choose to learn EF you've chosen well. If you choose to learn EF with Code First you've done even better. To get started, you can find a great walkthrough by Scott Guthrie here and another one by ADO.NET team here. In this post, I assume you already setup your machine to do Code First development and also that you are familiar with Code First fundamentals and basic concepts. You might also want to check out my other posts on EF Code First like Complex Types and Shared Primary Key Associations. A Top Down Development ScenarioThese posts take a top-down approach; it assumes that you’re starting with a domain model and trying to derive a new SQL schema. Therefore, we start with an existing domain model, implement it in C# and then let Code First create the database schema for us. However, the mapping strategies described are just as relevant if you’re working bottom up, starting with existing database tables. I’ll show some tricks along the way that help you dealing with nonperfect table layouts. Let’s start with the mapping of entity inheritance. -- The Domain ModelIn our domain model, we have a BillingDetail base class which is abstract (note the italic font on the UML class diagram below). We do allow various billing types and represent them as subclasses of BillingDetail class. As for now, we support CreditCard and BankAccount: Implement the Object Model with Code First As always, we start with the POCO classes. Note that in our DbContext, I only define one DbSet for the base class which is BillingDetail. Code First will find the other classes in the hierarchy based on Reachability Convention. public abstract class BillingDetail  {     public int BillingDetailId { get; set; }     public string Owner { get; set; }             public string Number { get; set; } } public class BankAccount : BillingDetail {     public string BankName { get; set; }     public string Swift { get; set; } } public class CreditCard : BillingDetail {     public int CardType { get; set; }                     public string ExpiryMonth { get; set; }     public string ExpiryYear { get; set; } } public class InheritanceMappingContext : DbContext {     public DbSet<BillingDetail> BillingDetails { get; set; } } This object model is all that is needed to enable inheritance with Code First. If you put this in your application you would be able to immediately start working with the database and do CRUD operations. Before going into details about how EF Code First maps this object model to the database, we need to learn about one of the core concepts of inheritance mapping: polymorphic and non-polymorphic queries. Polymorphic Queries LINQ to Entities and EntitySQL, as object-oriented query languages, both support polymorphic queries—that is, queries for instances of a class and all instances of its subclasses, respectively. For example, consider the following query: IQueryable<BillingDetail> linqQuery = from b in context.BillingDetails select b; List<BillingDetail> billingDetails = linqQuery.ToList(); Or the same query in EntitySQL: string eSqlQuery = @"SELECT VAlUE b FROM BillingDetails AS b"; ObjectQuery<BillingDetail> objectQuery = ((IObjectContextAdapter)context).ObjectContext                                                                          .CreateQuery<BillingDetail>(eSqlQuery); List<BillingDetail> billingDetails = objectQuery.ToList(); linqQuery and eSqlQuery are both polymorphic and return a list of objects of the type BillingDetail, which is an abstract class but the actual concrete objects in the list are of the subtypes of BillingDetail: CreditCard and BankAccount. Non-polymorphic QueriesAll LINQ to Entities and EntitySQL queries are polymorphic which return not only instances of the specific entity class to which it refers, but all subclasses of that class as well. On the other hand, Non-polymorphic queries are queries whose polymorphism is restricted and only returns instances of a particular subclass. In LINQ to Entities, this can be specified by using OfType<T>() Method. For example, the following query returns only instances of BankAccount: IQueryable<BankAccount> query = from b in context.BillingDetails.OfType<BankAccount>() select b; EntitySQL has OFTYPE operator that does the same thing: string eSqlQuery = @"SELECT VAlUE b FROM OFTYPE(BillingDetails, Model.BankAccount) AS b"; In fact, the above query with OFTYPE operator is a short form of the following query expression that uses TREAT and IS OF operators: string eSqlQuery = @"SELECT VAlUE TREAT(b as Model.BankAccount)                       FROM BillingDetails AS b                       WHERE b IS OF(Model.BankAccount)"; (Note that in the above query, Model.BankAccount is the fully qualified name for BankAccount class. You need to change "Model" with your own namespace name.) Table per Class Hierarchy (TPH)An entire class hierarchy can be mapped to a single table. This table includes columns for all properties of all classes in the hierarchy. The concrete subclass represented by a particular row is identified by the value of a type discriminator column. You don’t have to do anything special in Code First to enable TPH. It's the default inheritance mapping strategy: This mapping strategy is a winner in terms of both performance and simplicity. It’s the best-performing way to represent polymorphism—both polymorphic and nonpolymorphic queries perform well—and it’s even easy to implement by hand. Ad-hoc reporting is possible without complex joins or unions. Schema evolution is straightforward. Discriminator Column As you can see in the DB schema above, Code First has to add a special column to distinguish between persistent classes: the discriminator. This isn’t a property of the persistent class in our object model; it’s used internally by EF Code First. By default, the column name is "Discriminator", and its type is string. The values defaults to the persistent class names —in this case, “BankAccount” or “CreditCard”. EF Code First automatically sets and retrieves the discriminator values. TPH Requires Properties in SubClasses to be Nullable in the Database TPH has one major problem: Columns for properties declared by subclasses will be nullable in the database. For example, Code First created an (INT, NULL) column to map CardType property in CreditCard class. However, in a typical mapping scenario, Code First always creates an (INT, NOT NULL) column in the database for an int property in persistent class. But in this case, since BankAccount instance won’t have a CardType property, the CardType field must be NULL for that row so Code First creates an (INT, NULL) instead. If your subclasses each define several non-nullable properties, the loss of NOT NULL constraints may be a serious problem from the point of view of data integrity. TPH Violates the Third Normal FormAnother important issue is normalization. We’ve created functional dependencies between nonkey columns, violating the third normal form. Basically, the value of Discriminator column determines the corresponding values of the columns that belong to the subclasses (e.g. BankName) but Discriminator is not part of the primary key for the table. As always, denormalization for performance can be misleading, because it sacrifices long-term stability, maintainability, and the integrity of data for immediate gains that may be also achieved by proper optimization of the SQL execution plans (in other words, ask your DBA). Generated SQL QueryLet's take a look at the SQL statements that EF Code First sends to the database when we write queries in LINQ to Entities or EntitySQL. For example, the polymorphic query for BillingDetails that you saw, generates the following SQL statement: SELECT  [Extent1].[Discriminator] AS [Discriminator],  [Extent1].[BillingDetailId] AS [BillingDetailId],  [Extent1].[Owner] AS [Owner],  [Extent1].[Number] AS [Number],  [Extent1].[BankName] AS [BankName],  [Extent1].[Swift] AS [Swift],  [Extent1].[CardType] AS [CardType],  [Extent1].[ExpiryMonth] AS [ExpiryMonth],  [Extent1].[ExpiryYear] AS [ExpiryYear] FROM [dbo].[BillingDetails] AS [Extent1] WHERE [Extent1].[Discriminator] IN ('BankAccount','CreditCard') Or the non-polymorphic query for the BankAccount subclass generates this SQL statement: SELECT  [Extent1].[BillingDetailId] AS [BillingDetailId],  [Extent1].[Owner] AS [Owner],  [Extent1].[Number] AS [Number],  [Extent1].[BankName] AS [BankName],  [Extent1].[Swift] AS [Swift] FROM [dbo].[BillingDetails] AS [Extent1] WHERE [Extent1].[Discriminator] = 'BankAccount' Note how Code First adds a restriction on the discriminator column and also how it only selects those columns that belong to BankAccount entity. Change Discriminator Column Data Type and Values With Fluent API Sometimes, especially in legacy schemas, you need to override the conventions for the discriminator column so that Code First can work with the schema. The following fluent API code will change the discriminator column name to "BillingDetailType" and the values to "BA" and "CC" for BankAccount and CreditCard respectively: protected override void OnModelCreating(System.Data.Entity.ModelConfiguration.ModelBuilder modelBuilder) {     modelBuilder.Entity<BillingDetail>()                 .Map<BankAccount>(m => m.Requires("BillingDetailType").HasValue("BA"))                 .Map<CreditCard>(m => m.Requires("BillingDetailType").HasValue("CC")); } Also, changing the data type of discriminator column is interesting. In the above code, we passed strings to HasValue method but this method has been defined to accepts a type of object: public void HasValue(object value); Therefore, if for example we pass a value of type int to it then Code First not only use our desired values (i.e. 1 & 2) in the discriminator column but also changes the column type to be (INT, NOT NULL): modelBuilder.Entity<BillingDetail>()             .Map<BankAccount>(m => m.Requires("BillingDetailType").HasValue(1))             .Map<CreditCard>(m => m.Requires("BillingDetailType").HasValue(2)); SummaryIn this post we learned about Table per Hierarchy as the default mapping strategy in Code First. The disadvantages of the TPH strategy may be too serious for your design—after all, denormalized schemas can become a major burden in the long run. Your DBA may not like it at all. In the next post, we will learn about Table per Type (TPT) strategy that doesn’t expose you to this problem. References ADO.NET team blog Java Persistence with Hibernate book a { text-decoration: none; } a:visited { color: Blue; } .title { padding-bottom: 5px; font-family: Segoe UI; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: bold; padding-top: 15px; } .code, .typeName { font-family: consolas; } .typeName { color: #2b91af; } .padTop5 { padding-top: 5px; } .padTop10 { padding-top: 10px; } p.MsoNormal { margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 0in; line-height: 115%; font-size: 11.0pt; font-family: "Calibri" , "sans-serif"; }

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• Oracle WebCenter Portal: Pagelet Producer – What’s New in 11.1.1.6.0 Release

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  Igor Plyakov, Sr. Principal Product Marketing Manager is back to share what's new in Oracle WebCenter Portal: Pagelet Producer. In February 2012 Oracle released 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.6.0) for WebCenter Portal. Pagelet Producer (aka Ensemble) that came out with this release added support for several new capabilities that are described in this post. As of 11.1.1.5.0 release the Pagelet Producer can expose WSRP and JPDK portlets as pagelets that can then be consumed in any portal or any third-party application that does not have a WSRP consumer. Now Pagelet Producer team is working on simplifying use of pagelets in WebCenter Sites. To expose WSRP portlets a new Producer should be registered with Pagelet Producer which can be done using Enterprise Manager, WLST or the Pagelet Producer Administration Console (for details see Section 25.9 of Administrator’s Guide for Oracle WebCenter Portal). If the producer requires authentication, Pagelet Producer allows you to select and use one of standard WSS token profiles.  After registration is finished a new resource is created and automatically populated with pagelets that represent the portlets associated with the WSRP endpoint.  For 11.1.1.6.0 release we completed extensive testing of consuming all WebCenter Services that are exposed as WSRP portlets by E2.0 Producer and delivery them as pagelets to WebCenter Interaction portal. In Pagelet Producer 11.1.1.6.0 release we added OpenSocial container that allows consuming gadgets from other OpenSocial containers, e.g. iGoogle, and expose them as pagelets. You can also use Pagelet Producer to host OpenSocial gadgets that could leverage OpenSocial APIs that it supports – People, Activities, Appdata and Pub-Sub features. Note that People and Activities expose the People Connections and Activity Stream from WebCenter Portal, i.e. to use these features Pagelet Producer requires connection to WebCenter Portal schema. Pub-Sub allows leveraging OpenAJAX Hub API for inter-gadget communication. In addition to these major new additions in Pagelet Producer 11.1.1.6.0 release we also extended several functional modules: The Clipping module was extended to support clipping of multiple regions on web resource page and then re-assembly of these separately clipped regions into a single pagelet. The auto-login feature can now be applied to web resources protected with Kerberos authentication; you would find this new functionality handy for consuming SharePoint web parts The logging module now supports full HTTP traffic between the Pagelet Producer and proxied web resource. At last, as the rest of WebCenter Portal stack the Pagelet Producer 11.1.1.6.0 can run on IBM WebSphere Application Server.

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• TinyMCE with AJAX (Update Panel) never has a value.

  - by sah302

  I wanted to use a Rich Text Editor for a text area inside an update panel. I found this post: http://www.queness.com/post/212/10-jquery-and-non-jquery-javascript-rich-text-editors via this question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1207382/need-asp-net-mvc-rich-text-editor Decided to go with TinyMCE as I used it before in non AJAX situations, and it says in that list it is AJAX compatible. Alright I do the good ol' tinyMCE.init({ //settings here }); Test it out and it disappears after doing a update panel update. I figure out from a question on here that it should be in the page_load function so it gets run even on async postbacks. Alright do that and the panel stays. However, upon trying to submit the value from my textarea, the text of it always comes back as empty because my form validator always says "You must enter a description" even when I enter text into it. This happens the first time the page loads and after async postbacks have been done to the page. Alright I find this http://www.dallasjclark.com/using-tinymce-with-ajax/ and http://stackoverflow.com/questions/699615/cant-post-twice-from-the-same-ajax-tinymce-textarea. I try to add this code into my page load function right after the tinyMCE.init. Doing this breaks all my jquery being called also in the page_load after it, and it still has the same problem. I am still pretty beginner to client side scripting stuff, so maybe I need to put the code in a different spot than page_load? Not sure the posts I linked weren't very clue on where to put that code. My Javascript: <script type="text/javascript"> var redirectUrl = '<%= redirectUrl %>'; function pageLoad() { tinyMCE.init({ mode: "exact", elements: "ctl00_mainContent_tbDescription", theme: "advanced", plugins: "table,advhr,advimage,iespell,insertdatetime,preview,searchreplace,print,contextmenu,paste,fullscreen", theme_advanced_buttons1_add_before: "preview,separator", theme_advanced_buttons1: "bold,italic,underline,separator,justifyleft,justifycenter,justifyright, justifyfull,bullist,numlist,undo,redo,link,unlink,separator,styleselect,formatselect", theme_advanced_buttons2: "cut,copy,paste,pastetext,pasteword,separator,removeformat,cleanup,charmap,search,replace,separator,iespell,code,fullscreen", theme_advanced_buttons2_add_before: "", theme_advanced_buttons3: "", theme_advanced_toolbar_location: "top", theme_advanced_toolbar_align: "left", extended_valid_elements: "a[name|href|target|title|onclick],img[class|src|border=0|alt|title|hspace|vspace|width|height|align|onmouseover|onmouseout|name],hr[class|width|size|noshade],font[face|size|color|style],span[class|align|style]", paste_auto_cleanup_on_paste: true, paste_convert_headers_to_strong: true, button_tile_map: true }); tinyMCE.triggerSave(false, true); tiny_mce_editor = tinyMCE.get('ctl00_mainContent_tbDescription'); var newData = tiny_mce_editor.getContent(); tinyMCE.execCommand('mceRemoveControl', false, 'your_textarea_name'); //QJqueryUI dialog stuff }</script> Now my current code doesn't have the tinyMCE.execCommand("mceAddControl",true,'content'); which that one question indicated should also be added. I did try adding it but, again, wasn't sure where to put it and just putting it in the page_load seemed to have no effect. Textbox control: <asp:TextBox ID="tbDescription" runat="server" TextMode="MultiLine" Width="500px" Height="175px"></asp:TextBox><br /> How can I get these values so that the code behind can actually get what is typed in the textarea and my validator won't come up as saying it's empty? Even after async postbacks, since I have multiple buttons on the form that update it prior to actual submission. Thanks! Edit: For further clarification I have form validation on the back-end like so: If tbDescription.Text = "" Or tbDescription.Text Is Nothing Then lblDescriptionError.Text = "You must enter a description." isError = True Else lblDescriptionError.Text = "" End If And this error will always cause the error message to be dispalyed. Edit: Alright I am getting desperate here, I have spent hours on this. I finally found what I thought to be a winner on experts exchange which states the following (there was a part about encoding the value in xml, but I skipped that): For anyone who wants to use tinyMCE with AJAX.Net: Append begin/end handlers to the AJAX Request object. These will remove the tinyMCE control before sending the data (begin), and it will recreate the tinyMCE control (end): Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManager.getInstance().add_beginRequest(function(sender, args) { var edID = "<%=this.ClientID%>_rte_tmce"; // the id of your textbox/textarea. var ed = tinyMCE.getInstanceById(edID); if (ed) { tinyMCE.execCommand('mceFocus', false, edID); tinyMCE.execCommand('mceRemoveControl', false, edID); } }); Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManager.getInstance().add_endRequest(function(sender, args) { var edID = "<%=this.ClientID%>_rte_tmce"; var ed = tinyMCE.getInstanceById(edID); if (ed) { tinyMCE.execCommand('mceAddControl', false, edID); } }); When the user changes/blurs from the tinyMCE control, we want to ensure that the textarea/textbox gets updated properly: ed.onChange.add(function(ed, l) { tinyMCE.triggerSave(true, true); }); Now I have tried this code putting it in its own script tag, putting the begin and end requests into their own script tags and putting the ed.onChange in the page_load, putting everything in the page_load, and putting all 3 in it's own script tag. In all cases it never worked, and even sometimes broke the jquery that is also in my page_load... (and yes I changed the above code to fit my page) Can anyone get this to work or offer a solution?

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• 10 Essential Tools for building ASP.NET Websites

  - by Stephen Walther

  I recently put together a simple public website created with ASP.NET for my company at Superexpert.com. I was surprised by the number of free tools that I ended up using to put together the website. Therefore, I thought it would be interesting to create a list of essential tools for building ASP.NET websites. These tools work equally well with both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC. Performance Tools After reading Steve Souders two (very excellent) books on front-end website performance High Performance Web Sites and Even Faster Web Sites, I have been super sensitive to front-end website performance. According to Souders’ Performance Golden Rule: “Optimize front-end performance first, that's where 80% or more of the end-user response time is spent” You can use the tools below to reduce the size of the images, JavaScript files, and CSS files used by an ASP.NET application. 1. Sprite and Image Optimization Framework CSS sprites were first described in an article written for A List Apart entitled CSS sprites: Image Slicing’s Kiss of Death. When you use sprites, you combine multiple images used by a website into a single image. Next, you use CSS trickery to display particular sub-images from the combined image in a webpage. The primary advantage of sprites is that they reduce the number of requests required to display a webpage. Requesting a single large image is faster than requesting multiple small images. In general, the more resources – images, JavaScript files, CSS files – that must be moved across the wire, the slower your website. However, most people avoid using sprites because they require a lot of work. You need to combine all of the images and write just the right CSS rules to display the sub-images. The Microsoft Sprite and Image Optimization Framework enables you to avoid all of this work. The framework combines the images for you automatically. Furthermore, the framework includes an ASP.NET Web Forms control and an ASP.NET MVC helper that makes it easy to display the sub-images. You can download the Sprite and Image Optimization Framework from CodePlex at http://aspnet.codeplex.com/releases/view/50869. The Sprite and Image Optimization Framework was written by Morgan McClean who worked in the office next to mine at Microsoft. Morgan was a scary smart Intern from Canada and we discussed the Framework while he was building it (I was really excited to learn that he was working on it). Morgan added some great advanced features to this framework. For example, the Sprite and Image Optimization Framework supports something called image inlining. When you use image inlining, the actual image is stored in the CSS file. Here’s an example of what image inlining looks like: .Home_StephenWalther_small-jpg { width:75px; height:100px; background: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAEsAAABkCAIAAABB1lpeAAAAB GdBTUEAALGOfPtRkwAAACBjSFJNAACHDwAAjA8AAP1SAACBQAAAfXkAAOmLAAA85QAAGcxzPIV3AAAKL s+zNfREAAAAASUVORK5CYII=) no-repeat 0% 0%; } The actual image (in this case a picture of me that is displayed on the home page of the Superexpert.com website) is stored in the CSS file. If you visit the Superexpert.com website then very few separate images are downloaded. For example, all of the images with a red border in the screenshot below take advantage of CSS sprites: Unfortunately, there are some significant Gotchas that you need to be aware of when using the Sprite and Image Optimization Framework. There are workarounds for these Gotchas. I plan to write about these Gotchas and workarounds in a future blog entry. 2. Microsoft Ajax Minifier Whenever possible you should combine, minify, compress, and cache with a far future header all of your JavaScript and CSS files. The Microsoft Ajax Minifier makes it easy to minify JavaScript and CSS files. Don’t confuse minification and compression. You need to do both. According to Souders, you can reduce the size of a JavaScript file by an additional 20% (on average) by minifying a JavaScript file after you compress the file. When you minify a JavaScript or CSS file, you use various tricks to reduce the size of the file before you compress the file. For example, you can minify a JavaScript file by replacing long JavaScript variables names with short variables names and removing unnecessary white space and comments. You can minify a CSS file by doing such things as replacing long color names such as #ffffff with shorter equivalents such as #fff. The Microsoft Ajax Minifier was created by Microsoft employee Ron Logan. Internally, this tool was being used by several large Microsoft websites. We also used the tool heavily on the ASP.NET team. I convinced Ron to publish the tool on CodePlex so that everyone in the world could take advantage of it. You can download the tool from the ASP.NET Ajax website and read documentation for the tool here. I created the installer for the Microsoft Ajax Minifier. When creating the installer, I also created a Visual Studio build task to make it easy to minify all of your JavaScript and CSS files whenever you do a build within Visual Studio automatically. Read the Ajax Minifier Quick Start to learn how to configure the build task. 3. ySlow The ySlow tool is a free add-on for Firefox created by Yahoo that enables you to test the front-end of your website. For example, here are the current test results for the Superexpert.com website: The Superexpert.com website has an overall score of B (not perfect but not bad). The ySlow tool is not perfect. For example, the Superexpert.com website received a failing grade of F for not using a Content Delivery Network even though the website using the Microsoft Ajax Content Delivery Network for JavaScript files such as jQuery. Uptime After publishing a website live to the world, you want to ensure that the website does not encounter any issues and that it stays live. I use the following tools to monitor the Superexpert.com website now that it is live. 4. ELMAH ELMAH stands for Error Logging Modules and Handlers for ASP.NET. ELMAH enables you to record any errors that happen at your website so you can review them in the future. You can download ELMAH for free from the ELMAH project website. ELMAH works great with both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC. You can configure ELMAH to store errors in a number of different stores including XML files, the Event Log, an Access database, a SQL database, an Oracle database, or in computer RAM. You also can configure ELMAH to email error messages to you when they happen. By default, you can access ELMAH by requesting the elmah.axd page from a website with ELMAH installed. Here’s what the elmah page looks like from the Superexpert.com website (this page is password-protected because secret information can be revealed in an error message): If you click on a particular error message, you can view the original Yellow Screen ASP.NET error message (even when the error message was never displayed to the actual user). I installed ELMAH by taking advantage of the new package manager for ASP.NET named NuGet (originally named NuPack). You can read the details about NuGet in the following blog entry by Scott Guthrie. You can download NuGet from CodePlex. 5. Pingdom I use Pingdom to verify that the Superexpert.com website is always up. You can sign up for Pingdom by visiting Pingdom.com. You can use Pingdom to monitor a single website for free. At the Pingdom website, you configure the frequency that your website gets pinged. I verify that the Superexpert.com website is up every 5 minutes. I have the Pingdom service verify that it can retrieve the string “Contact Us” from the website homepage. If your website goes down, you can configure Pingdom so that it sends an email, Twitter, SMS, or iPhone alert. I use the Pingdom iPhone app which looks like this: 6. Host Tracker If your website does go down then you need some way of determining whether it is a problem with your local network or if your website is down for everyone. I use a website named Host-Tracker.com to check how badly a website is down. Here’s what the Host-Tracker website displays for the Superexpert.com website when the website can be successfully pinged from everywhere in the world: Notice that Host-Tracker pinged the Superexpert.com website from 68 locations including Roubaix, France and Scranton, PA. Debugging I mean debugging in the broadest possible sense. I use the following tools when building a website to verify that I have not made a mistake. 7. HTML Spell Checker Why doesn’t Visual Studio have a built-in spell checker? Don’t know – I’ve always found this mysterious. Fortunately, however, a former member of the ASP.NET team wrote a free spell checker that you can use with your ASP.NET pages. I find a spell checker indispensible. It is easy to delude yourself that you are capable of perfect spelling. I’m always super embarrassed when I actually run the spell checking tool and discover all of my spelling mistakes. The fastest way to add the HTML Spell Checker extension to Visual Studio is to select the menu option Tools, Extension Manager within Visual Studio. Click on Online Gallery and search for HTML Spell Checker: 8. IIS SEO Toolkit If people cannot find your website through Google then you should not even bother to create it. Microsoft has a great extension for IIS named the IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit that you can use to identify issue with your website that would hurt its page rank. You also can use this tool to quickly create a sitemap for your website that you can submit to Google or Bing. You can even generate the sitemap for an ASP.NET MVC website. Here’s what the report overview for the Superexpert.com website looks like: Notice that the Sueprexpert.com website had plenty of violations. For example, there are 65 cases in which a page has a broken hyperlink. You can drill into these violations to identity the exact page and location where these violations occur. 9. LinqPad If your ASP.NET website accesses a database then you should be using LINQ to Entities with the Entity Framework. Using LINQ involves some magic. LINQ queries written in C# get converted into SQL queries for you. If you are not careful about how you write your LINQ queries, you could unintentionally build a really badly performing website. LinqPad is a free tool that enables you to experiment with your LINQ queries. It even works with Microsoft SQL CE 4 and Azure. You can use LinqPad to execute a LINQ to Entities query and see the results. You also can use it to see the resulting SQL that gets executed against the database: 10. .NET Reflector I use .NET Reflector daily. The .NET Reflector tool enables you to take any assembly and disassemble the assembly into C# or VB.NET code. You can use .NET Reflector to see the “Source Code” of an assembly even when you do not have the actual source code. You can download a free version of .NET Reflector from the Redgate website. I use .NET Reflector primarily to help me understand what code is doing internally. For example, I used .NET Reflector with the Sprite and Image Optimization Framework to better understand how the MVC Image helper works. Here’s part of the disassembled code from the Image helper class: Summary In this blog entry, I’ve discussed several of the tools that I used to create the Superexpert.com website. These are tools that I use to improve the performance, improve the SEO, verify the uptime, or debug the Superexpert.com website. All of the tools discussed in this blog entry are free. Furthermore, all of these tools work with both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC. Let me know if there are any tools that you use daily when building ASP.NET websites.

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• Measuring Social Media Efforts

  - by David Dorf

  So you're on the bandwagon and you've created a Facebook page, you're tweeting everyday, and maybe you've even got a YouTube channel. Now what? After you put any program in place, you need to measure, set new goals, then execute and this is no different. But how does one measure social media efforts? First, I guess we need some goals. Typical ones might be to acquire customers, engage them, then convert them. So that translates to: Increase Facebook fans and Twitter followers Increase comments/posting and retweets Increase redemption of offers via Facebook and Twitter Counting fans and followers is easy, and tracking the redemption of coupons isn't that hard either, but measuring engagement is a tough one. How do you know whether your fans are reading your posts, and whether your posts have any meaning to them? For Facebook, the fan page administrator has access to analytics called Facebook Insights. There you can check weekly metrics such as total fans, new fans, lost fans, demographics of fans, number of postings, numbers clicks, etc. Not nearly as comprehensive as Google Analytics, but well on its way. For Twitter, getting information is a little tougher. Again, its easy to track followers and you can use tools like TweetMeme to encourage and track retweets. An interesting website called WeFollow tries to measure influence for certain topics. For example, the top three influencers for the topic "retail" are retailweek, retailwire, and retailerdaily. Other notables are #10 BestBuy, #11 GapOfficial, #12 JeffPR, and #17 OracleRetail. I assume influence is calculated based on number of followers, number of retweets, frequency of tweets, and perhaps depth of dialogs. If you want to get serious about monitoring and measuring social marketing efforts, you'd be wise to invest in a strong tool. Several are listed on this wiki, including big ones like Radian6, Nielsen, Omniture, and Buzzient. Buzzient might be particularly interesting because its integrated with Oracle CRM OnDemand -- see the demo. As always, I'm interested in hearing how others approach goal setting and monitoring of social media efforts, so feel free to post comments.

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• AxCMS.net 10 with Microsoft Silverlight 4 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2010

  - by Axinom

  Axinom, European WCM vendor, today announced the next version of its WCM solution AxCMS.net 10, which streamlines the processes involved in creating, managing and distributing corporate content on the internet. The new solution helps reducing ongoing costs for managing and distributing to large audiences, while at the same time drastically reducing time-to-market and one-time setup costs. http://www.AxCMS.net Axinom’s WCM portfolio, based on the Microsoft .NET Framework 4, Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and Microsoft Silverlight 4, allows enterprises to increase process efficiency, reduce operating costs and more effectively manage delivery of rich media assets on the Web and mobile devices. Axinom solutions are widely used by major European online brands in IT, telco, retail, media and entertainment industries such as Siemens, American Express, Microsoft Corp., ZDF, Pro7Sat1 Media, and Deutsche Post. Brand New User Interface built with Silverlight 4By using Silverlight 4, Axinom’s team created a new user interface for AxCMS.net 10 that is optimized for improved usability and speed. WYSIWYG mode, integrated image editor, extended list views, and detail views of objects allow a substantial acceleration of typical editor tasks. Axinom’s team worked with Silverlight Rough Cut Editor for video management and Silverlight Analytics Framework for extended reporting to complete the wide range of capabilities included in the new release. “Axinom’s release of AxCMS.net 10 enables developers to take advantage of the latest features in Silverlight 4,” said Brian Goldfarb, director of the developer platform group at Microsoft Corp. “Microsoft is excited about the opportunity this creates for Web developers to streamline the creating, managing and distributing of online corporate content using AxCMS.net 10 and Silverlight.” Rapid Web Development with Visual Studio 2010AxCMS.net 10 is extended by additional products that enable developers to get productive quickly and help solve typical customer scenarios. AxCMS.net template projects come with documented source code that help kick-start projects and learn best practices in all aspects of Web application development. AxCMS.net overcomes many hard-to-solve technical obstacles in an out-of-the-box manner by providing a set of ready-to-use vertical solutions such as corporate Web site, Web shop, Web campaign management, email marketing, multi-channel distribution, management of rich Internet applications, and Web business intelligence. Extended Multi-Site ManagementAxCMS.net has been supporting the management of an unlimited number of Web sites for a long time. The new version 10 of AxCMS.net will further improve multi-site management and provide features to editors and developers that will simplify and accelerate multi-site and multi-language management. Extended publication workflow will take into account additional dependencies of dynamic objects, pages, and documents. “The customer requests evolved from static html pages to dynamic Web applications content with the emergence of rich media assets seamlessly combined across many channels including Web, mobile and IPTV. With the.NET Framework 4 and Silverlight 4, we’re on the fast track to making the three screen strategy a reality for our customers,” said Damir Tomicic, CEO of Axinom Group. “Our customers enjoy substantial competitive advantages of using latest Microsoft technologies. We have a long-standing, relationship with Microsoft and are committed to continued development using Microsoft tools and technologies to deliver innovative Web solutions in the future.”  

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• How many people will be with you during 24HOP?

  - by Rob Farley

  In less than a week, SQLPASS hosts another 24 Hours of PASS event, this time with an array of 24 female speakers (in honour of this month being Women’s History Month). Interestingly, the committee has had a few people ask if there are rules about how the event can be viewed, such as “How many people from any one organisation can watch it?” or “Does it matter if a few people are crowded around the same screen?” From a licensing and marketing perspective, there is value in knowing how many people are watching the event, but there are no restrictions about how the thing is viewed. In fact – if you’re planning to watch any of these events, I want to suggest an idea: Book a meeting room in your office with a projector, and watch 24HOP in there. If you’re planning to have it streaming in the background while you work, obviously this makes life a bit trickier. But if you’re planning to treat it as a training event (a 2-day conference if you like) and block out a bit of time for it (as well you should – there’s going to be some great stuff in there), then why not do it in a way that makes it so that other people can see that you’re watching it, and potentially join you. When an event like this runs, we can see how many different ‘people’ are attending each LiveMeeting session. What we can’t tell is how many actual people there are represented. Jessica Moss spoke to the Adelaide SQL Server User Group a few weeks ago via LiveMeeting, and LiveMeeting told us there were less than a dozen people attending. Really there were at least three times that number, because all the people in the room with me weren’t included. I’d love to imagine that every LiveMeeting attendee represented a crowd in a room, watching a shared screen. So there’s my challenge – don’t let your LiveMeeting session represent just you. Find a way of involving other people. At the very least, you’ll be able to discuss it with them afterwards. Now stick a comment on this post to let me know how many people are going to be joining you. :) If you’re not registered for the event yet, get yourself over to the SQLPASS site and make it happen.

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• Customization: It’s Wanted in Enterprise Tech Platforms Too

  - by Mike Stiles

  Did you know that every customer service person does their job the exact same way in every business organization?  And did you know that every business organization cares about the exact same metrics? I hope not, because both those things couldn’t be farther from the truth. And if there are different needs and approaches in different enterprises, it stands to reason technology platforms must become increasingly customizable. Oracle Social Cloud sees that coming and is doing something about it, at least in terms of social media management. Today we introduce Social Station, a customizable user experience workspace within the Oracle Social Relationship Management (SRM) platform. We think a lot about customer-centricity and customer experience around here, and we know our own customers are ready to start moving forward in being able to set up their work environments in the ways that work best for them. That kind of thing increases productivity, helps deliver on social objectives faster, and generally just makes life more pleasant. A recent IDG Enterprise report says that enterprises currently investing in more consumerized, easy-to-use technologies experience a 56% increase in employee productivity and a 46% increase in customer satisfaction. Imagine that. When you make it easier and more pleasant for employees to help customers, more customers get helped and everyone ends up happier. So what does this Social Station do and what does it mean, exactly? It’s an innovative move to take some pretty high-end tech (take a bow developers) and simplify it, making things more intuitive: Drag and drop lets you easily build out and personalize your social workspace with different modules. The new Custom Analytics module can mix and match over 120 metrics with thousands of customizable reporting options. You can check constantly refreshed updates and keep a real-time eye on the numbers you’re trying to move. One-click sharing and annotation in the Custom Analytics module improves sharing and collaboration across teams, departments and executives. Multi-view layout helps you leverage social insights by letting you monitor conversations by network, stream, metric, graph type, date range, and relative time period. The Enhanced Calendar is a better visual representation of content, posts, networks and views, letting you easily toggle between functions and views. The Oracle Social Station sets us up to always be developing & launching additional social modules for you, covering areas like content curation, influencer engagement, and command center creation. Oracle Social Cloud Group VP Meg Bear says, “Consumers today have high expectations of their technology application capabilities and usability, and those expectations don’t stop when they enter their workplaces.” In other words, internal enterprise technology platforms must reflect the personalization and customization being called for in consumer products and marketing. “One size fits all” is becoming an endangered concept. @mikestiles @oraclesocial

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• Fidelity Investments Life Insurance Executive Weighs in on Policy Administration Modernization

  - by helen.pitts(at)oracle.com

  James Klauer, vice president of Client Services Technology at Fidelity Investment Life Insurance, weighs in on the rationale and challenges associated with policy administration system replacement in this month's digital issue of Insurance Networking News.    In "The Policy Administration Replacement Quandary"  Klauer shared the primary business benefit that can be realized by adopting a modern policy administration system--a timely topic given that recent industry analyst surveys indicate policy administration replacement and modernization will continue to be a top priority for insurers this year.    "Modern policy administration systems are more flexible than systems of the past," Klauer says in the article. " This has allowed us to shorten our delivery time for new products and product changes.  We have also had a greater ability to integrate with other systems and to deliver process efficiencies."   Klauer goes on to advise that insurers ensure they have a solid understanding of the requirements when replacing their legacy policy administration system. "If you can afford the time, take the opportunity to re-engineer your business processes.  We were able to drastically change our death processes, introducing automation and error-proofing." Click here to read more of Klauer's insights and recommendations for best practices in the publication's "Ask & Answered" column.   You also can learn more the benefits of an adaptive, rules-driven approach to policy administration and how to mitigate risks associated with system replacement by attending the free Oracle Insurance Virtual Summit:  Fueling the Adaptive Insurance Enterprise, 10:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. EST, Wednesday, January 26.      Insurance Networking News and Oracle Insurance have teamed up to bring you this first-of-its-kind event. This year's theme, "Fueling the Adaptive Insurance Enterprise," will focus on bringing you information about exciting new technology concepts, which can help your company react more quickly to new market opportunities and, ultimately, grow the business.    Visit virtual booths and chat online with Oracle product specialists, network with other insurers, learn about exciting new product announcements, win prizes, and much more--all without leaving your office.  Be sure and attend the on-demand session, "Adapt, Transform and Grow: Accelerate Speed to Market with Adaptive Insurance Policy Administration," hosted by Kate Fowler, product strategy director for Oracle Insurance Policy Administration for Life and Annuity.   Register Now!   Helen Pitts is senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance's life and annuities solutions.

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• What was missing from the Content Strategy Forum?

  - by Roger Hart

  In April, Paris hosted the first ever Content Strategy Forum. The event's website proudly proclaims: 170 attendees, 18 nationalities, 17 speakers, 1 volcano... Content Strategy Forum 2010 rocked the world! The volcano was in Iceland, and the closest we came to rocking the world was a cursory mention in the Huffington Post, but I'll grant the event was awesome. One thing missing from that list, however, is "94 companies" (Plus a couple of universities and freelancers, and what have you). A glance through the attendees directory reveals a fairly wide organisational turnout - 24 students from two Parisian universities, countless design and marketing agencies, a series of tech firms, small and large. Two delegates from IBM, two from ARM, an appearance from RIM, Skype, and Facebook; twelve from the various bits of eBay. Oh, and, err, nobody from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon, Play, Twitter, LinkedIn, Craigslist, the BBC, no banks I noticed, and I didn't spot a newspaper. You get the idea. Facebook notwithstanding, you have to scroll through a few pages to Alexa rankings to find company names from the attendee list. I find this interesting, and I'm not wholly sure what to make of it. Of the large, web-centric, content-rich organizations conspicuously absent, at least one of two things is true: They didn't know about the event They didn't care about the event Maybe these guys all have content strategy completely sorted, and it's an utterly naturalised part of their business process. Maybe nobody at say, Apple or Play.com ever publishes a single piece of content that isn't neatly tailored to their (clearly defined, of course) user and business goals. Wouldn't that be lovely? The thing is, in that rosy and beatific world, there's still a case for those folks to join the community. There are bound to be other perspectives, and things to learn. You see, the other thing achingly conspicuous by its absence was case studies. In her keynote address, Kristina Halvorson made the point that what content strategy really needs is some big, loud success stories. A point I'd firmly second as a content strategist working within an organisation. Sarah Cancilla's presentation on content strategy at Facebook included some very neat, specific examples, and was richer for it. It didn't hurt that the example was Facebook - you're getting impressively big numbers off base. What about the other big boys? Is there anybody out there with a perspective? Do we all just look very silly to you, fretting away over text and images and users and purposes? Is content validation and maintenance so accustomed a part of your business that calling attention to it is like sniffing the air and saying "Hmm, a lot of nitrogen about today."? And if it is, do you have any wisdom to share?

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• Three Principles to Fix Your Broken Organization

  - by Michael Snow

  Everyone's organization is broken in some capacity. For some this is painfully visible both inside and outside their organization. For others, there are cracks noticed by only the keenest trained eyes used to looking for problems in the midst of perfection. We all know that there is often incredible hope in the despair of chaos and recognition of your problems is the first step on the road to recovery. Let us help you in your path to recovery. Join our very own, Christian Finn,  this Thursday (11/15), as he guides you through three important principles you can take back to the office to start the mending process. (Above Image Credits: the BEST site on the web to make fun of our organizations and ourselves: http://www.despair.com/ ) His three principles are NOT "TeamWork", "Ignorance" and "Tradition", but - before jumping lower on this blog post to click and register for the upcoming webcast - I thought it would be a good opportunity to give you a little taste of what we have to offer beyond the array of our fabulous On-Demand webcasts from our Social Business Thought Leader Webcast Series featuring Christian as the host. Instead, here's a snippet from our marketing team friends across the pond in Europe, where they hosted a Social Business Forum recently and featured Christian in a segment.  Simple. Powerful. Proven. Face it, your organization is broken. Customers are not the focus they should be. Processes are running amok. Your intranet is a ghost town. And colleagues wonder why it’s easier to get things done on the Web than at work. What’s the solution?Join us for this Webcast. Christian Finn will talk about three simple, powerful, and proven principles for improving your organization through collaboration. Each principle will be illustrated by real-world examples. Discover: How to dramatically improve workplace collaboration Why improved employee engagement creates better business results What’s the value of a fully engaged customer Time to Fix What’s Broken Register now for this Webcast—the tenth in the Oracle Social Business Thought Leaders Series. Register Now Thurs., Nov. 15, 2012 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET Presented by: Christian Finn Senior Director, Product Management, Oracle Copyright © 2012, Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Contact Us | Legal Notices and Terms of Use | Privacy Statement

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• Oracle SOA Partner Community Forum Lisbon, Portugal - 21/Apr/10

  - by Claudia Costa

    We would like to invite you to attend our SOA Partner Community Forum that will be in held in Lisbon, April 21, 2010 The Oracle SOA Partner Community Forum is a wonderful opportunity to: Meet with Oracle SOA and BPM Product management Exchange thoughts and knowledge with SOA and BPM experts Learn from successful SOA implementation Network within the Oracle SOA Partner Community During this highly informative event you can learn about partner success stories, participate in an array of breakout sessions, exchange information with other partners and enjoy a vibrant panel discussion. Places are limited, so register today. Registration only takes a few minutes and it is free of charge. By registration you will confirm that you will attend to the event. Seminar is free. In the event that you cancel your registration after April 16th 2010 Oracle may request that you will pay late cancellation fee of € 150. Please visit our website for further information. Alternatively, if you require assistance or have any queries please contact Jürgen Kress. Agenda 10:00     Welcome & Introduction 10:15     SOA Cloud presentation 11:15     SOA Partner Sales Campaign 12:30     Lunch break 13:15     Partner Reference Case 14:15     BPMN 2.0 15:00     Cocktail reception   Become a member of the SOA Partner Community - free of charge! Please first login at http://partner.oracle.com and then visit: http://www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soaThe goal of the SOA Partner Community is to provide you with the latest information on Oracle's SOA and BPM offerings and to facilitate the exchange of experience around Oracle SOA between community members.   The SOA Partner Community keeps you informed about: ·         News & Events ·         Product Information ·         Education & Certification ·         Analyst Report ·         Marketing & Sales ·         Monthly SOA Newsletter ·         Monthly SOA Webcast ·         SOA Community Forum ------------------------------------------------   Location: Lagoas Park Hotel 2740-245, Porto Salvo, Oeiras  

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• Oracle Customer Hub - Directions, Roadmap and Customer Success

  - by Mala Narasimharajan

   By Gurinder Bahl With less than a week from OOW 2012, I would like to introduce you all to the core Oracle Customer MDM Strategy sessions. Fragmentation of customer data across disparate systems prohibits companies from achieving a complete and accurate view of their customers. Oracle Customer Hub provide a comprehensive set of services, utilities and applications to create and maintain a trusted master customer system of record across the enterprise. Customer Hub centralizes customer data from disparate systems across your enterprise into a master repository. Existing systems are integrated in real-time or via batch with the Hub, allowing you to leverage legacy platform investments while capitalizing on the benefits of a single customer identity. Don’t miss out on two sessions geared towards Oracle Customer Hub:   1) Attend session CON9747 - Turn Customer Data into an Enterprise Asset with Oracle Fusion Customer Hub Applications at Oracle Open World 2012 on Monday, Oct 1st, 10:45 AM - 11:45 AM @ Moscone West – 2008. Manouj Tahiliani, Sr. Director MDM Product Management will provide insight into the vision of Oracle Fusion Customer Hub solutions, and review the roadmap. You will discover how Fusion Customer MDM can help your enterprise improve data quality, create accurate and complete customer information,  manage governance and help create great customer experiences. You will also understand how to leverage data quality capabilities and create a sophisticated customer foundation within Oracle Fusion Applications. You will also hear Danette Patterson, Group Lead, Church Pension Group talk about how Oracle Fusion Customer Hub applications provide a modern, next-generation, multi-domain foundation for managing customer information in a private cloud. 2)  Don't miss session  CON9692 - Customer MDM is key to Strategic Business Success and Customer Experience Management at Oracle Open World 2012 on Wednesday, October 3rd 2012 from 3:30-4:30pm @ Westin San Francisco Metropolitan 1. JP Hurtado, Director, Customer Systems, will provide insight on how RCCL overcame challenges of data quality, guest recognition & centralized customer view to provide consolidated customer view to multiple reservation, CRM, marketing, service, sales, data warehouse and loyalty systems. You will learn how Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines (RCCL), which has over 30 million customer and maintain multiple brands, leveraged Oracle Customer Hub (Siebel UCM) as backbone to customer data management strategy for past 5 years. Gurinder Bahl from MDM Product Management will provide an update on Oracle Customer Hub strategy, what we have achieved since last Open World and our future plans for the Oracle Customer Hub. You will learn about Customer Hub Data Quality capabilities around data analysis, cleansing, matching, address validation as well as reporting and monitoring capabilities. The MDM track at Oracle Open World covers variety of topics related to MDM. In addition to the product management team presenting product updates and roadmap, we have several Customer Panels, and Conference sessions. You can see an overview of MDM sessions here.  Looking forward to see you at Open World, the perfect opportunity to learn about cutting edge Oracle technologies. 

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• Microsoft Technical Computing

  - by Daniel Moth

  In the past I have described the team I belong to here at Microsoft (Parallel Computing Platform) in terms of contributing to Visual Studio and related products, e.g. .NET Framework. To be more precise, our team is part of the Technical Computing group, which is still part of the Developer Division. This was officially announced externally earlier this month in an exec email (from Bob Muglia, the president of STB, to which DevDiv belongs). Here is an extract: "… As we build the Technical Computing initiative, we will invest in three core areas: 1. Technical computing to the cloud: Microsoft will play a leading role in bringing technical computing power to scientists, engineers and analysts through the cloud. Existing high- performance computing users will benefit from the ability to augment their on-premises systems with cloud resources that enable ‘just-in-time’ processing. This platform will help ensure processing resources are available whenever they are needed—reliably, consistently and quickly. 2. Simplify parallel development: Today, computers are shipping with more processing power than ever, including multiple cores, but most modern software only uses a small amount of the available processing power. Parallel programs are extremely difficult to write, test and trouble shoot. However, a consistent model for parallel programming can help more developers unlock the tremendous power in today’s modern computers and enable a new generation of technical computing. We are delivering new tools to automate and simplify writing software through parallel processing from the desktop… to the cluster… to the cloud. 3. Develop powerful new technical computing tools and applications: We know scientists, engineers and analysts are pushing common tools (i.e., spreadsheets and databases) to the limits with complex, data-intensive models. They need easy access to more computing power and simplified tools to increase the speed of their work. We are building a platform to do this. Our development efforts will yield new, easy-to-use tools and applications that automate data acquisition, modeling, simulation, visualization, workflow and collaboration. This will allow them to spend more time on their work and less time wrestling with complicated technology. …" Our Parallel Computing Platform team is directly responsible for item #2, and we work very closely with the teams delivering items #1 and #3. At the same time as the exec email, our marketing team unveiled a website with interviews that I invite you to check out: Modeling the World. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• Angry Bird Makers: Developers Love iOS Over Android To Make Money

  - by Gopinath

  These days web is buzzing with Apple iOS vs Google Android debates. Recently Fortune predicted that Android is going to explode in 2011 and it will surpass Apple’s iOS market share. Yes Android is set to spread its wings across all the devices – smartphones, TVs, set top boxes, in car entertainment devices, what not. Think of any device that requires operating system, Android can be used. On the other than iOS is only available on very selective Apple devices – iPods, iPhones and iPads. When it comes to the count of devices running on a specific OS, Android will be far ahead of iOS but when you consider a quality of devices and providing an eco system for business to make money iOS seems to be the winner. That is what experts and analysts are saysing. Here is an excerpt from Peter Vesterbacka, maker of the popular Angry Birds game, interview to Tech N Marketing site.  He says Apple will be the number one platform for a long time from a developer perspective, they have gotten so many things right. And they know what they are doing and they call the shots. Android is growing, but it’s also growing complexity at the same time. Device fragmentation not the issue, but rather the fragmentation of the ecosystem. So many different shops, so many different models. The carriers messing with the experience again. Open but not really open, a very Google centric ecosystem. And paid content just doesn’t work on Android. Peter says developer prefer iOS over Android as it’s not very easy to make money on Android market. That’s why they released a free version of Angry Birds game with ads support for Android devices. Free is the way to go with Android. Nobody has been successful selling content on Android. We will offer a way to remove the ads by paying for the app, but we don’t expect that to be a huge revenue stream. You can read full interview here. cc image credit: flickr/johanl This article titled,Angry Bird Makers: Developers Love iOS Over Android To Make Money, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• Future of Active FoxPro Pages - secured

  Finally some official news about Active FoxPro Pages, aka AFP. The German company BvL Bürosysteme Vertriebs GmbH bought all rights of Active FoxPro Pages from the insolvency stock. Being a former customer and intensive user of AFP since version 2.0 BvL has own interest in the continuation of AFP on current and future web servers. Together with their partners Christof Wollenhaupt (Foxpert Software Development & Consulting) and Jochen Kirstätter (IOS Indian Ocean Software Ltd) BvL will continue with development, support and marketing of AFP in the upcoming weeks. There will be an updated version of AFP, the relaunch of the website, re-enabling of activation server, re-establishment of support channel, and much more... Personally, I am relieved that this superb product made its way out of the dust of the past years. And of course, to be involved (again) in the development and support of Active FoxPro Pages gives me a big smile. Rest assured that there will be more articles on AFP soon! Here is the original announcement of 27th September 2010 from the online forum of German FoxPro Usergroup (dFPUG) - section Active FoxPro Pages: Liebe AFP Anwender, liebe FoxPro Gemeinde, nach den Insolvenzen der ProLib Software GmbH und der ProLib Tools GmbH gab es einige Verunsicherung über die Zukunft der Active FoxPro Pages. Wir können euch nun mitteilen, dass eine für alle Beteiligten positive Lösung gefunden wurde. Wir, die BvL Bürosysteme Vertriebs GmbH aus Berlin, haben sämtliche Rechte an der AFP aus der Insolvenzmasse vom Insolvenzverwalter abgekauft. Bereits 1987 wurde die BvL Bürosysteme Vertriebs GmbH gegründet und hat sich seit dem erfolgreich im Markt bewährt. Wir gehören auch schon seit Foxpro2.0 zur Foxpro-Gemeinde und auch mit der AFP2.0 haben wir unseren Einstieg in die AFP-Gemeinde vollzogen. Wir wollen die AFP nicht in irgendeine Schublade packen, sondern unser Ziel ist es, die AFP weiterzuentwickeln, speziell auch auf die kommenden Serverversionen. Unter der Homepage www.active-foxpro-pages.de wird es demnächst einen neuen Auftritt geben. An den Preisen soll sich nichts groß verändern, das Handbuch soll anständig aufgelegt werden und selbstverständlich soll der Support und die Weiterentwicklung eine große Aufmerksamkeit bekommen. Mit Christof Wollenhaupt und Jochen Kirstätter haben wir zwei Partner an Bord, die sich um den Support und die Weiterentwicklung kümmern werden. Christof Wollenhaupt wird maßgeblich und federführend an der Weiterentwicklung beteiligt sein. Über Christof Wollenhaupt können auch ab sofort Lizenzen gekauft werden, Christof Wollenhaupt ist für den Online-Vertrieb zuständig, der gerade aufgebaut wird. Sollte ein AFP Server aktiviert werden müssen, können sich alle bisherigen Lizenzinhaber auch direkt an Christof Wollenhaupt wenden. In den nächsten Wochen werden wir die AFP wieder auf Touren bringen. Eine aktuelle Version, eine neue Webseite, der Aktivierungsserver, ein Überblick über das leicht geänderte Lizensierungsmodell, und vieles mehr ist gerade in Arbeit. Die Zukunft und die Weiterentwicklung der AFP sind jetzt gesichert! Mit freundlichen Grüßen Ralph-Norman von Loesch Source: http://forum.dfpug.de/bodyframe.afp?msgid=728069

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• MSCC: Global Windows Azure Bootcamp

  Mauritius participated and contributed to the Global Windows Azure Bootcamp 2014 (GWAB). Again! And this time stronger than ever, and together with 137 other locations in 56 countries world-wide. We had 62 named registrations, 7 guest additions and approximately 10 offline participants prior to the event day. Most interestingly the organisation of the GWAB through the MSCC helped to increased the number of craftsmen. The Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community has currently 138 registered members - in less than one year! Only with those numbers we can proudly say that all the preparations and hard work towards this event already paid off. Personally, I'm really grateful that we had this kind of response and the feedback from some attendees confirmed that the MSCC is on the right track here on Cyber Island Mauritius. Inspired and motivated by the success of this event, rest assured that there will be more public events like the GWAB. This time it took some time to reflect on our meetup, following my first impression right on spot: "Wow, what an experience to organise and participate in this global event. Overall, I've been very pleased with the preparations and the event itself. Surely, there have been some nicks that we have to address and to improve for future activities like this. Quite frankly, we are not professional event organisers (not yet) but we learned a lot over the past couple of days. A big Thank You to our event sponsors, namely Microsoft Indian Ocean Islands & French Pacific, Ceridian Mauritius and Emtel. Without them this event wouldn't have happened - Thank You! And to the cool team members of Microsoft Student Partners (MSPs). You geeks did a great job! Thanks!" So, how many attendees did we actually have? 61! - Awesome - 61 cloud computing instances to help on the research of diabetes. During Saturday afternoon there was even an online publication on L'Express: Les développeurs mauriciens se joignent au combat contre le diabète Reactions of other attendees Don't take my word for granted... Here are some impressions and feedback from our participants: "Awesome event, really appreciated the presentations :-)" -- Kevin on event comments "very interesting and enriching." -- Diana on event comments "#gwab #gwabmru 2014 great success. Looking forward for gwab 2015" -- Wasiim on Twitter "Was there till the end. Awesome Event. I'll surely join upcoming meetup sessions :)" -- Luchmun on event comments "#gwabmru was not that cool. left early" -- Mohammad on Twitter The overall feedback is positive but we are absolutely aware that there quite a number of problems we had to face. We are already looking into that and ideas / action plans on how we will be able to improve it for future events. The sessions We started the day with welcoming speeches by Thierry Coret, Sr. Marketing Manager of Microsoft Indian Ocean Islands & French Pacific and Vidia Mooneegan, Managing Director and Sr. Vice President of Ceridian Mauritius. The clear emphasis was on the endless possibilities of cloud computing and how it can enable any kind of sectors here in the country. Then it was about time to set up the cloud computing services in order to contribute each attendees cloud computing resources to the global research of diabetes, a step by step guide presented by Arnaud Meslier, Technical Evangelist at Microsoft. Given a rendering package and a configuration file it was very interesting to follow the single steps in Windows Azure. Also, during the day we were not sure whether the set up had been correctly, as Mauritius didn't show up on the results board - which should have been the case after approximately 20 to 30 minutes. Anyways, let the minions work... Next, Arnaud gave a brief overview of the variety of services Windows Azure has to offer. Whether you need a development environment for your websites or mobiles app, running a virtual machine with your existing applications or simply putting a SQL database online. No worries, Windows Azure has the right packages available and the online management portal is really easy t handle. After this, we got a little bit more business oriented while Wasiim Hosenbocus, employee at Ceridian, took the attendees through the inerts of a real-life application, and demoed a couple of the existing features. He did a great job by showing how the different services of Windows Azure can be created and pulled together. After the lunch break it is always tough to keep the audience awake... And it was my turn. I gave a brief overview on operating and managing a SQL database on Windows Azure. Well, there are actually two options available and depending on your individual requirements you should be aware of both. The simpler version is called SQL Database and while provisioning only takes a couple of seconds, you should take into consideration that SQL Database has a number of constraints, like limitations on the actual database size - up to 5 GB as web edition and up to 150 GB maximum as business edition -, among others. Next, it was Chervine Bhiwoo's session on Windows Azure Mobile Services. It was absolutely amazing to see that the mobiles services directly offers you various project templates, like Windows 8 Store App, Android app, iOS app, and even Xamarin cross-platform app development. So, within a couple of minutes you can have your first mobile app active and running on Windows Azure. Furthermore, Chervine showed the attendees that adding another user interface, like Web Sites running on ASP.NET MVC 4 only takes a couple of minutes, too. And last but not least, we rounded up the day with Windows Azure Websites and hosting of Virtual Machines presented by some members of the local Microsoft Students Partners programme. Surely, one of the big advantages using Windows Azure is the availability of pre-defined installation packages of known web applications, like WordPress, Joomla!, or Ghost. Compared to running your own web site with a traditional web hoster it is surely en par, and depending on your personal level of expertise, Windows Azure provides you more liberty in terms of configuration than maybe a shared hosting environment. Running a pre-defined web application is one thing but in case that you would like to have more control over your hosting environment it is highly advised to opt for a virtual machine. Provisioning of an Ubuntu 12.04 LTS system was very simple to do but it takes some more minutes than you might expect. So, please be patient and take your time while Windows Azure gets everything in place for you. Afterwards, you can use a SecureShell (ssh) client like Putty in case of a Linux-based machine, or Remote Desktop Services when operating a Windows Server system to log in into your virtual machine. At the end of the day we had a great Q&A session and we finalised the event with our raffle of goodies. Participation in the raffle was bound to submission of the session survey and most gratefully we had a give-away for everyone. What a nice coincidence to finish of the day. Note: All session slides (and demo codes) will be made available on the MSCC event page. Please, check the Files section over there. (Some) Visual impressions from the event Just to give you an idea about what has happened during the GWAB 2014 at Ebene... Speakers and Microsoft Student Partners are getting ready for the Global Windows Azure Bootcamp 2014 GWAB 2014 attendees are fully integrated into the hands-on-labs and setting up their individuals cloud computing services 60 attendees at the GWAB 2014. Despite some technical difficulties we had a great time running the event GWAB 2014: Using the lunch break for networking and exchange of ideas - Great conversations and topics amongst attendees There are more pictures on the original event page: Questions & Answers Following are a couple of questions which have been asked and didn't get an answer during the event: Q: Is it possible to upload static pages via FTP? A: Yes, you can. Have a look at the right side column on the dashboard of your website. There you'll find information about the FTP and SFTP host names. You can use any FTP client, like ie. FileZilla to log in. FTP also gives you access to your log files. Q: What are the size limitations on SQL Database? A: 5 GB on the Web Edition, and 150 GB on the business edition. A maximum 150 databases (inclusing 'master') per SQL Database server. More details here: General Guidelines and Limitations (Azure SQL Database) Q: What's the maximum size of a SQL Server running in a Virtual Machine? A: The maximum Windows Azure VM has currently 8 CPU cores, 14 or 56 GB of RAM and 16x 1 TB hard drives. More details here: Virtual Machine and Cloud Service Sizes for Azure Q: How can we register for Windows Azure? A: Mauritius is currently not listed for phone verification. Please get in touch with Arnaud Meslier at Microsoft IOI & FP Q: Can I use my own domain name for Windows Azure websites? A: Yes, you can. But this might require to upscale your account to Standard. In case that I missed a question and answer, please use the comment section at the end of the article. Thanks! Final results Every participant was instructed during the hands-on-lab session on how to set up a cloud computing service in their account. Of course, I won't keep the results from you... Global Azure Lab GWAB 2014: Our cloud computing contribution to the research of diabetes And I would say Mauritius did a good job! Upcoming Events What are the upcoming events here in Mauritius? So far, we have the following ones (incomplete list as usual) in chronological order: Launch of Microsoft SQL Server 2014 (15.4.2014) Corsair Hackers Reboot (19.4.2014) WebCup (TBA ~ June 2014) Developers Conference (TBA ~ July 2014) Linuxfest 2014 (TBA ~ November 2014) Hopefully, there will be more announcements during the next couple of weeks and months. If you know about any other event, like a bootcamp, a code challenge or hackathon here in Mauritius, please drop me a note in the comment section below this article. Thanks! Networking and job/project opportunities Despite having technical presentations on Windows Azure an event like this always offers a great bunch of possibilities and opportunities to get in touch with new people in IT, have an exchange of experience with other like-minded people. As I already wrote about Communities - The importance of exchange and discussion - I had a great conversation with representatives of the University des Mascareignes which are currently embracing cloud infrastructure and cloud computing for their various campuses in the Indian Ocean. As for the MSCC it would be a great experience to stay in touch with them, and to work on upcoming, common activities. Furthermore, I had a very good conversation with Thierry and Ludovic of Microsoft IOI & FP on the necessity of user groups and IT communities here on the island. It's great to see that the MSCC is currently on a run and that local companies are sharing our thoughts on promoting IT careers and exchange of IT knowledge in such an open way. I'm also looking forward to be able to participate and to contribute on more events in the near future. My resume of the day We learned a lot today and there is always room for improvement! It was an awesome event and quite frankly it was a pleasure to spend the day with so many enthuastic IT people in the same room. It was a great experience to organise such event locally and participate on a global scale to support the GlyQ-IQ Technology in their research on diabetes. I was so pleased to see the involvement of new MSCC members in taking the opportunity to share and learn about the power of cloud computing. The Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community is on the right way and this year's bootcamp on Windows Azure only marked the beginning of our journey. Thank you to our sponsors and my kudos to the MSPs! Update: Media coverage The event has been reported in local media, too. Following are some resources: Orange - Local - Business: Le cloud, pour des recherches approfondies sur le diabète Maurice Info.mu: Le cloud, pour des recherches approfondies sur le diabète Le Quotidien Pg 2: Global Windows Azure Bootcamp 2014 - Le cloud pour des recherches approfondies sur le diabète The Observer Pg 12: Le cloud, pour des recherches approfondies sur le diabète

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• ODUG lands DotNetNuke guru Nik Kalyani as a speaker

  - by Brian Scarbeau

  If you are in the Orlando, FL area during the first week of May then you should head over to the Orlando DotNetNuke user group meeting. Nik Kalyani will be the speaker and you will learn a great deal from him. DotNetNuke Module Development with the MVP Pattern This session focuses on introducing attendees to the Model-View-Presenter pattern, support for which was recently introduced in the DotNetNuke Core. We'll start with a quick overview of the pattern, compare it to MVC, and then dive right into code. We will start with fundamentals and then develop a full-featured module using this pattern. In order to do justice to the pattern, we will use ASP.NET WebForms controls minimally and implement most of the UI using jQuery plug-ins. Finally, to increase audience participation (both present at the meeting and remote), we will use a hackathon-style model and allow anybody, anywhere to follow along with the presentation and code their own MVP-based solution that they can share online during or after the session. A URL with full instructions for the hackathon will be posted online a few days prior to the meeting. About Our Speaker Nik Kalyani is Co-founder and Strategic Advisor for DotNetNuke Corp., the company that manages the DotNetNuke Open Source project. Kalyani is also Founder and CEO of HyperCrunch. He is a technology entrepreneur with over 18 years of experience in the software industry. He is irrationally exuberant about technology, especially if it has anything to do with the Internet. HyperCrunch is his latest startup business that builds on his knowledge and experience from prior startups, two of them venture-funded. Kalyani is a creative tinkerer perpetually interested in looking around the corner and figuring out new and interesting ways to make the world a better place. An experienced web developer, he finds the business strategy and marketing aspects of the software business more exciting than writing code. When he does create software, his primary expertise is in creating products with compelling user experiences. Kalyani is most proficient with Microsoft technologies, but has no religious fanaticism about them. Kalyani has a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Western Michigan University. He is a frequent speaker at technology conferences and user group meetings. He lives in Mountain View, California with his wife and daughters. He blogs at http://www.kalyani.com and is @techbubble on Twitter.

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• Tellago announces SQL Server 2008 R2 BI quick adoption programs

  - by Vishal

  During the last year, we (Tellago) have been involved in various business intelligence initiatives that leverage some emerging BI techniques such as self-service BI or complex event processing (CEP). Specifically, in the last few months, we have partnered with Microsoft to deliver a series of events across the country where we present the different technologies of the SQL Server 2008 R2 BI stack such as PowerPivot, StreamInsight, Ad-Hoc Reporting and Master Data Services. As part of those events, we try to go beyond the traditional technology presentation and provide a series of best practices and lessons we have learned on real world BI projects that leverage these technologies. Now that SQL Server 2008 R2 has been released to manufacturing, we have launched a series of quick adoption programs that are designed to help customers understand how they can embrace the newest additions to Microsoft's BI stack as part of their IT initiatives. The programs are also designed to help customers understand how the new SQL Server features interact with established technologies such as SQL Server Analysis Services or SQL Server Integration Services. We try to keep these adoption programs very practical by doing a lot of prototyping and design sessions that will give our customers a practical glimpse of the capabilities of the technologies and how they can fit in their enterprise architecture roadmap. Here is our official announcement (you can blame my business partner, BI enthusiast, and Tellago's CEO Elizabeth Redding for the marketing pitch ;)): Tellago Marks Microsoft's SQL Server 2008 R2 Launch With Business Intelligence Quick Adoption Program Microsoft launched SQL Server 2008 R2 last week, which delivers several breakthrough business intelligence (BI) capabilities that enable organizations to:  Efficiently process, analyze and mine data Improve IT and developer efficiency Enable highly scalable and well-managed Business Intelligence on a self-service basis for business users The release offers a new feature called PowerPivot, which enables self service BI through connecting business users directly to enterprise data sources and providing improved reporting and analytics. The release also offers Master Data Management which helps enterprises centrally manage critical data assets company-wide and across diverse systems, enabling increased integrity of information over time. Finally, the release includes StreamInsight, which is a framework for implementing Complex Event Processing (CEP) applications on the Microsoft platform. With StreamInsight, IT organizations can implement the infrastructure to process a large volume of events near real time, execute continuous queries against event streams and enable real time business intelligence. As a thought leader in the Business Intelligence community, Tellago has recognized the occasion by launching a series of quick adoption programs to enable the adoption of this new BI technology stack in your enterprise. Our Quick Adoption programs are designed to help you: Brainstorm BI solution options  Architect initial infrastructure components Prototype key features of a solution As a 2-3 day program, our approach is more efficient and cost effective than a traditional Proof of Concept because it allows you to understand the new SQL Server 2008 R2 feature set  while seeing directly how you can leverage it for your business intelligence needs. If you are interested in learning more about the BI capabilities of Microsoft's Business Intelligence stack, including SQL Server 2008 R2, we can help.  As industry experts and software content advisers to Microsoft, Tellago is the place where ideas meet technology expertise.  Let us help you see for yourself the advantages that you can gain from Microsoft's  SQL Server 2008 R2. Email or call for more information - [email protected] or 847-925-2399.

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• Oracle Data Integrator 11.1.1.5 Complex Files as Sources and Targets

  - by Alex Kotopoulis

  Overview ODI 11.1.1.5 adds the new Complex File technology for use with file sources and targets. The goal is to read or write file structures that are too complex to be parsed using the existing ODI File technology. This includes: Different record types in one list that use different parsing rules Hierarchical lists, for example customers with nested orders Parsing instructions in the file data, such as delimiter types, field lengths, type identifiers Complex headers such as multiple header lines or parseable information in header Skipping of lines  Conditional or choice fields Similar to the ODI File and XML File technologies, the complex file parsing is done through a JDBC driver that exposes the flat file as relational table structures. Complex files are mapped to one or more table structures, as opposed to the (simple) file technology, which always has a one-to-one relationship between file and table. The resulting set of tables follows the same concept as the ODI XML driver, table rows have additional PK-FK relationships to express hierarchy as well as order values to maintain the file order in the resulting table.   The parsing instruction format used for complex files is the nXSD (native XSD) format that is already in use with Oracle BPEL. This format extends the XML Schema standard by adding additional parsing instructions to each element. Using nXSD parsing technology, the native file is converted into an internal XML format. It is important to understand that the XML is streamed to improve performance; there is no size limitation of the native file based on memory size, the XML data is never fully materialized.  The internal XML is then converted to relational schema using the same mapping rules as the ODI XML driver. How to Create an nXSD file Complex file models depend on the nXSD schema for the given file. This nXSD file has to be created using a text editor or the Native Format Builder Wizard that is part of Oracle BPEL. BPEL is included in the ODI Suite, but not in standalone ODI Enterprise Edition. The nXSD format extends the standard XSD format through nxsd attributes. NXSD is a valid XML Schema, since the XSD standard allows extra attributes with their own namespaces. The following is a sample NXSD schema: <?xml version="1.0"?> <xsd:schema xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:nxsd="http://xmlns.oracle.com/pcbpel/nxsd" elementFormDefault="qualified" xmlns:tns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/pcbpel/demoSchema/csv" targetNamespace="http://xmlns.oracle.com/pcbpel/demoSchema/csv" attributeFormDefault="unqualified" nxsd:encoding="US-ASCII" nxsd:stream="chars" nxsd:version="NXSD"> <xsd:element name="Root">         <xsd:complexType><xsd:sequence>       <xsd:element name="Header">                 <xsd:complexType><xsd:sequence>                         <xsd:element name="Branch" type="xsd:string" nxsd:style="terminated" nxsd:terminatedBy=","/>                         <xsd:element name="ListDate" type="xsd:string" nxsd:style="terminated" nxsd:terminatedBy="${eol}"/>                         </xsd:sequence></xsd:complexType>                         </xsd:element>                 </xsd:sequence></xsd:complexType>         <xsd:element name="Customer" maxOccurs="unbounded">                 <xsd:complexType><xsd:sequence>                 <xsd:element name="Name" type="xsd:string" nxsd:style="terminated" nxsd:terminatedBy=","/>                         <xsd:element name="Street" type="xsd:string" nxsd:style="terminated" nxsd:terminatedBy="," />                         <xsd:element name="City" type="xsd:string" nxsd:style="terminated" nxsd:terminatedBy="${eol}" />                         </xsd:sequence></xsd:complexType>                         </xsd:element>                 </xsd:sequence></xsd:complexType> </xsd:element> </xsd:schema> The nXSD schema annotates elements to describe their position and delimiters within the flat text file. The schema above uses almost exclusively the nxsd:terminatedBy instruction to look for the next terminator chars. There are various constructs in nXSD to parse fixed length fields, look ahead in the document for string occurences, perform conditional logic, use variables to remember state, and many more. nXSD files can either be written manually using an XML Schema Editor or created using the Native Format Builder Wizard. Both Native Format Builder Wizard as well as the nXSD language are described in the Application Server Adapter Users Guide. The way to start the Native Format Builder in BPEL is to create a new File Adapter; in step 8 of the Adapter Configuration Wizard a new Schema for Native Format can be created:   The Native Format Builder guides through a number of steps to generate the nXSD based on a sample native file. If the format is complex, it is often a good idea to “approximate” it with a similar simple format and then add the complex components manually.  The resulting *.xsd file can be copied and used as the format for ODI, other BPEL constructs such as the file adapter definition are not relevant for ODI. Using this technique it is also possible to parse the same file format in SOA Suite and ODI, for example using SOA for small real-time messages, and ODI for large batches. This nXSD schema in this example describes a file with a header row containing data and 3 string fields per row delimited by commas, for example: Redwood City Downtown Branch, 06/01/2011 Ebeneezer Scrooge, Sandy Lane, Atherton Tiny Tim, Winton Terrace, Menlo Park The ODI Complex File JDBC driver exposes the file structure through a set of relational tables with PK-FK relationships. The tables for this example are: Table ROOT (1 row): ROOTPK Primary Key for root element SNPSFILENAME Name of the file SNPSFILEPATH Path of the file SNPSLOADDATE Date of load Table HEADER (1 row): ROOTFK Foreign Key to ROOT record ROWORDER Order of row in native document BRANCH Data BRANCHORDER Order of Branch within row LISTDATE Data LISTDATEORDER Order of ListDate within row Table ADDRESS (2 rows): ROOTFK Foreign Key to ROOT record ROWORDER Order of row in native document NAME Data NAMEORDER Oder of Name within row STREET Data STREETORDER Order of Street within row CITY Data CITYORDER Order of City within row Every table has PK and/or FK fields to reflect the document hierarchy through relationships. In this example this is trivial since the HEADER and all CUSTOMER records point back to the PK of ROOT. Deeper nested documents require this to identify parent elements. All tables also have a ROWORDER field to define the order of rows, as well as order fields for each column, in case the order of columns varies in the original document and needs to be maintained. If order is not relevant, these fields can be ignored. How to Create an Complex File Data Server in ODI After creating the nXSD file and a test data file, and storing it on the local file system accessible to ODI, you can go to the ODI Topology Navigator to create a Data Server and Physical Schema under the Complex File technology. This technology follows the conventions of other ODI technologies and is very similar to the XML technology. The parsing settings such as the source native file, the nXSD schema file, the root element, as well as the external database can be set in the JDBC URL: The use of an external database defined by dbprops is optional, but is strongly recommended for production use. Ideally, the staging database should be used for this. Also, when using a complex file exclusively for read purposes, it is recommended to use the ro=true property to ensure the file is not unnecessarily synchronized back from the database when the connection is closed. A data file is always required to be present  at the filename path during design-time. Without this file, operations like testing the connection, reading the model data, or reverse engineering the model will fail.  All properties of the Complex File JDBC Driver are documented in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Connectivity and Knowledge Modules Guide for Oracle Data Integrator in Appendix C: Oracle Data Integrator Driver for Complex Files Reference. David Allan has created a great viewlet Complex File Processing - 0 to 60 which shows the creation of a Complex File data server as well as a model based on this server. How to Create Models based on an Complex File Schema Once physical schema and logical schema have been created, the Complex File can be used to create a Model as if it were based on a database. When reverse-engineering the Model, data stores(tables) for each XSD element of complex type will be created. Use of complex files as sources is straightforward; when using them as targets it has to be made sure that all dependent tables have matching PK-FK pairs; the same applies to the XML driver as well. Debugging and Error Handling There are different ways to test an nXSD file. The Native Format Builder Wizard can be used even if the nXSD wasn’t created in it; it will show issues related to the schema and/or test data. In ODI, the nXSD  will be parsed and run against the existing test XML file when testing a connection in the Dataserver. If either the nXSD has an error or the data is non-compliant to the schema, an error will be displayed. Sample error message: Error while reading native data. [Line=1, Col=5] Not enough data available in the input, when trying to read data of length "19" for "element with name D1" from the specified position, using "style" as "fixedLength" and "length" as "". Ensure that there is enough data from the specified position in the input. Complex File FAQ Is the size of the native file limited by available memory? No, since the native data is streamed through the driver, only the available space in the staging database limits the size of the data. There are limits on individual field sizes, though; a single large object field needs to fit in memory. Should I always use the complex file driver instead of the file driver in ODI now? No, use the file technology for all simple file parsing tasks, for example any fixed-length or delimited files that just have one row format and can be mapped into a simple table. Because of its narrow assumptions the ODI file driver is easy to configure within ODI and can stream file data without writing it into a database. The complex file driver should be used whenever the use case cannot be handled through the file driver. Are we generating XML out of flat files before we write it into a database? We don’t materialize any XML as part of parsing a flat file, either in memory or on disk. The data produced by the XML parser is streamed in Java objects that just use XSD-derived nXSD schema as its type system. We use the nXSD schema because is the standard for describing complex flat file metadata in Oracle Fusion Middleware, and enables users to share schemas across products. Is the nXSD file interchangeable with SOA Suite? Yes, ODI can use the same nXSD files as SOA Suite, allowing mixed use cases with the same data format. Can I start the Native Format Builder from the ODI Studio? No, the Native Format Builder has to be started from a JDeveloper with BPEL instance. You can get BPEL as part of the SOA Suite bundle. Users without SOA Suite can manually develop nXSD files using XSD editors. When is the database data written back to the native file? Data is synchronized using the SYNCHRONIZE and CREATE FILE commands, and when the JDBC connection is closed. It is recommended to set the ro or read_only property to true when a file is exclusively used for reading so that no unnecessary write-backs occur. Is the nXSD metadata part of the ODI Master or Work Repository? No, the data server definition in the master repository only contains the JDBC URL with file paths; the nXSD files have to be accessible on the file systems where the JDBC driver is executed during production, either by copying or by using a network file system. Where can I find sample nXSD files? The Application Server Adapter Users Guide contains nXSD samples for various different use cases.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, March 04, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, March 04, 2012Popular ReleasesWDTVHubGen - Adds Metadata, thumbnails and subtitles to WDTV Live Hubs: v2.1.2 (Maintenance Release): This release was added to add a quick feature to allow renaming the processed video file back to its original name as a "just in case" when you process all and it screws up the directory. This is a "right click" option in the menu over the file that is screwed up. I wouldn't download this unless you need this fix, or you just want the latest latest latest version. I am in the process of adding a lot of fixes and changes to the existing system and releasing it with an alternate interface, s...People's Note: People's Note 0.38: Version 0.38 allows you to choose "All Notebooks" to browse, search, and sync all your notebooks together. To install: copy the appropriate CAB file onto your WM device and run it.ASP.NET MVC Framework - Abstracting Data Annotations, HTML5, Knockout JS techs: Version 1.0: Please download the source code. I am not associating any dll for release.ExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.0: ExtAspNet - ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ?????????? ExtAspNet ????? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ??????????。 ExtAspNet ??????? JavaScript，?? CSS，?? UpdatePanel，?? ViewState，?? WebServices ???????。 ??????: IE 7.0, Firefox 3.6, Chrome 3.0, Opera 10.5, Safari 3.0+ ????：Apache License 2.0 (Apache) ??：http://extasp.net/ ??：http://bbs.extasp.net/ ??：http://extaspnet.codeplex.com/ ??：http://sanshi.cnblogs.com/ ????： +2012-03-04 v3.1.0 -??Hidden???????（〓?〓）。 -?PageManager??...AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.9.1: ?? ●AcDown??????????、??、??????，????1M，????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????????????????????????，???，???????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? ??????????????，??????????： ??"AcDo...Windows Phone Commands for VS2010: Version 1.0: Initial Release Version 1.0 Connect from device or emulator (Monitors the connection) Show Device information (Plataform, build , version, avaliable memory, total memory, architeture Manager installed applications (Launch, uninstall and explorer isolate storage files) Manager core applications (Launch blocked applications from emulator (Office, Calculator, alarm, calendar , etc) Manager blocked settings from emulator (Airplane Mode, Celullar Network, Wifi, etc) Deploy and update ap...DNN Metro7 style Skin package: Metro7 style Skin for DotNetNuke 06.01.00: Changes on Version 06.01.00 Fixed issue on GraySmallTitle container, that breaks the layout Fixed issue on Blue Metro7 Skin where the Search, Login, Register, Date is missing Fixed issue with the Version numbers on the target file Fixed issue where the jQuery and jQuery-UI files not deleted on upgrade from Version 01.00.00 Added a internal page where the Image Slider would be replaces with a BannerPaneMedia Companion: MC 3.433b Release: General More GUI tweaks (mostly imperceptible!) Updates for mc_com.exe TV The 'Watched' button has been re-instigated Added TV Menu sub-option to search ALL for new Episodes (includes locked shows) Movies Added 'Source' field (eg DVD, Bluray, HDTV), customisable in Advanced Preferences (try it out, let us know how it works!) Added HTML <<format>> tag with optional parameters for video container, source, and resolution (updated HTML tags to be added to Documentation shortly) Known Issu...Picturethrill: Version 2.3.2.0: Release includes Self-Update feature for Picturethrill. What that means for users is that they are always guaranteed to have a fresh copy of Picturethrill on their computers with all latest fixes. When Picturethrill adds a new website to get pictures from, you will get it too!Simple MVVM Toolkit for Silverlight, WPF and Windows Phone: Simple MVVM Toolkit v3.0.0.0: Added support for Silverlight 5.0 and Windows Phone 7.1. Upgraded project templates and samples. Upgraded installer. There are some new prerequisites required for this version, namely Silverlight 5 Tools, Expression Blend Preview for Silverlight 5 (until the SDK is released), Windows Phone 7.1 SDK. Because it is in the experimental band, I have also removed the dependency on the Silverlight Testing Framework. You can use it if you wish, but the Ria Services project template no longer uses ...CODE Framework: 4.0.20301: The latest version adds a number of new features to the WPF system (such as stylable and testable messagebox support) as well as various new features throughout the system (especially in the Utilities namespace).MyRouter (Virtual WiFi Router): MyRouter 1.0.1 (Beta): A friendlier User Interface. A logger file to catch exceptions so you may send it to use to improve and fix any bugs that may occur. A feedback form because we always love hearing what you guy's think of MyRouter. Check for update menu item for you to stay up to date will the latest changes. Facebook fan page so you may spread the word and share MyRouter with friends and family And Many other exciting features were sure your going to love!WPF Sound Visualization Library: WPF SVL 0.3 (Source, Binaries, Examples, Help): Version 0.3 of WPFSVL. This includes three new controls: an equalizer, a digital clock, and a time editor.Orchard Project: Orchard 1.4: Please read our release notes for Orchard 1.4: http://docs.orchardproject.net/Documentation/Orchard-1-4-Release-NotesFluentData -Micro ORM with a fluent API that makes it simple to query a database: FluentData version 1.2: New features: - QueryValues method - Added support for automapping to enumerations (both int and string are supported). Fixed 2 reported issues.NetSqlAzMan - .NET SQL Authorization Manager: 3.6.0.15: 3.6.0.15 28-Feb-2012 • Fix: The communication object, System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel, cannot be used for communication because it is in the Faulted state. Work Item 10435: http://netsqlazman.codeplex.com/workitem/10435 • Fix: Made StorageCache thread safe. Thanks to tangrl. • Fix: Members property of SqlAzManApplicationGroup is not functioning. Thanks to tangrl. Work Item 10267: http://netsqlazman.codeplex.com/workitem/10267 • Fix: Indexer are making database calls. Thanks to t...SCCM Client Actions Tool: Client Actions Tool v1.1: SCCM Client Actions Tool v1.1 is the latest version. It comes with following changes since last version: Added stop button to stop the ongoing process. Added action "Query update status". Added option "saveOnlineComputers" in config.ini to enable saving list of online computers from last session. Default value for "LatestClientVersion" set to SP2 R3 (4.00.6487.2157). Wuauserv service manual startup mode is considered healthy on Windows 7. Errors are now suppressed in checkReleases...SharpCompress - a fully native C# library for RAR, 7Zip, Zip, Tar, GZip, BZip2: SharpCompress 0.8: API Updates: SOLID Extract Method for Archives (7Zip and RAR). ExtractAllEntries method on Archive classes will extract archives as a streaming file. This can offer better 7Zip extraction performance if any of the entries are solid. The IsSolid method on 7Zip archives will return true if any are solid. Removed IExtractionListener was removed in favor of events. Unit tests show example. Bug fixes: PPMd passes tests plus other fixes (Thanks Pavel) Zip used to always write a Post Descri...SQL Live Monitor: SQL Live Monitor 1.31: A quick fix to make it this version work with SQL 2012. Version 2 already has 2012 working, but am still developing the UI in version 2, so this is just an interim fix to allow user to monitor SQL 2012.DotNet.Highcharts: DotNet.Highcharts 1.1 with Examples: Fixed small bug in JsonSerializer about the numbers represented as string. Fixed Issue 310: decimal values don't work Fixed Issue 345: Disable Animation Refactored Highcharts class. Implemented Issue 341: More charts on one page. Added new class Container which can combine and display multiple charts. Usage: new Container(new[] { chart1, chart2, chart3, chart4 }) Implemented Feature 302: Inside an UpdatePanel - Added method (InFunction) which create the Highchart inside JavaScript f...New ProjectsAddress Manager: Projet pour ma mémoireAkumuLogger: AkumuLogger is a configurable C++ logger for windows. Developed for educational purposes in association with the GoDevMental blog.ASP.NET MVC Framework - Abstracting Data Annotations, HTML5, Knockout JS techs: ASP.NET MVC Framework that abstracts Data Annotations, HTML5, Knockout JS technologies and gives super power to front end developer.BabySmash! Html5: HTML5 port of http://babysmash.codeplex.com/ using canvas, svg and audio.Business Solutions On SharePoint: A series of seed solutions for business solutions based on SharePoint 2010. First solution is an HR On-boarding solution.C# Psp Emulator: A C# Psp EmulatorClear Mine: The classic minesweeper game that implemented by WPF, trying to demonstrate a few practices in WPF programming to make application localized decoupled, extensible and support skin. DancingSite: It's time to dance.DynamicMVVM: Dynamic MVVM enables you to quickly build a functional MVVM application, based on WPF without ICommand and XAML and viewmodel Validation.flickerwin8: flicker client sample for windows 8Form and List Plus: Form and List plus 5.1.3 with more data typesHappyFunTimes :): wtf nigga ?Kavand WPF Kit: Kavand.WpfKit makes it easier for WPF developers to develop MVVM-based applications. It also contains some useful controls. It's developed in C#.NET 4Library Management System: ??????—??????MPTrackWP7: First attempt at Converting the ModPlug application written by Olivier Lapicue for Windows Phone 7 in C#My Note Pal: MyNotePal is a personal financial management tool on your Phone.Nhom: demolam nhomPrabor jQuery Plugins: Little but helpful jQuery plugins from Prabor teamReSharper GammaXaml Plugin: A plugin for JetBrains ReSharper 6.1 that enhances XAML editing and working with WPF and Silverlight in general.Road Trip 2012: Just my code for appharborSharePoint Optimizer: Tool to optimize SharePointYALV! - Yet Another Log4Net Viewer: YALV! is a log viewer for Log4Net that allow to compare multiple logs file simultaneously; include features like merging, filtering, open most recently used files, items sorting. It is a WPF Application based on .NET Framework 4.0 and written with C# language.

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• Prepping a conference

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  I have had the chance to talk at many conferences these past few years, and came up with a way to prepare them which works really well for me. Most importantly, it would make it quite easy to overcome an emergency (for example if my laptop would suddenly lose data). The whole code as well as the slides and other documents are in the cloud. I also use source control for my demos, so that I always have the latest and the greatest, but also a history of changes I made to my demos. Finally I have a system of code snippets which works great, and I often had very positive remarks from the audience regarding that. Putting everything in the cloud The one thing I used to be the most scared of was a sudden crash of my laptop, and being unable to restore in time for a conference. Most conferences ask speakers to send slides a few days (or weeks…) in advance, but let's face it, we all have last minute changes to our talks and I always come in the conference with updated slides that I pass to the management team. The answer to that dilemma used to be working off memory sticks, and that worked not bad. However last year I started putting all the documents relating to a conference in a DropBox folder, and that works great too. Obviously DropBox works only if you have connectivity, so if I for instance update slides while on an international flight, I cannot save to the cloud. The obvious answer to that is to backup everything on a memory stick… but I have to admit, I have been trusting my luck and working off my laptop HD and then synching everything to the cloud after landing. Of course on some US national flights you get WiFi on board, so in that case it is even simpler :) Usually after the conference is done, I remove the files from DropBox and copy them to their "final destination". They are backed up from there to BackBlaze, the great online backup service I am using routinely (I currently have about 90GB of data in BackBlaze). Outlining the presentations I like to have a written outline of my presentations written somewhere. I keep it simple, just write the various sections of the presentation with timing. I guess it is a remnant of the time when I was a private pilot, and using checklists for flight preparation. For example: Demo about designability 15' (0:37) Switch to Blend Open MainPage.xaml Create a DataTemplate ... Here I can immediately see during the presentation if I am taking too much time for my demo (0:37 is where I need to be when I am done with this section of the presentation, and 15' is the time that this particular section takes). I keep these sections reasonable, I don't detail every step of the preparation. Typically I have one such section for every 10-15 minutes of my talks. Yes, I am timing my presentations. I keep adjusting these numbers when I rehearse, and this really helps to feel more confident during the presentations. This is especially important for presentations that are long, like my MIX11 demo which clocked at 57 minutes (I had a lot of stuff to show…). Such presentations are risky, because if anything goes wrong, you will have to cut stuff, so the answer to that is: Rehearse, rehearse and when you're done rehearsing, rehearse a little more. I also have a "Preparation" section where I outline what I need to do before a presentation. For instance: Preparation Reboot in VHD Make sure MSN and Twitter are not running. Open VS10 and load demo Open Blend and load demo Run the WP7 emulator ... I typically start preparing my laptop an hour before the talk, starting everything I need to start and then putting my laptop to sleep. Saving and printing the outline, Timing Printing is a real problem because it is really hard to find a printer at most conference venues, and also quite hard in hotels. To solve that, I simply write everything in OneNote (synched to the cloud, now you start to know what I like ;) and then I print it to a PDF (I use CutePDFWriter) that I save to my Kindle. During the presentation, I read the outline off the Kindle (I mostly just need a quick check to see how I am timing). For timing during the presentation, I use the free tool ChronoGPS on my Windows Phone 7, but of course any phone these days has a clock/chrono application. In some conferences, they even have timers that the presenters can see, but they tend to count down and I prefer to count up… so I just use my own :) Source control for demos For demos, I create a separate folder and use Mercurial as source control. Mercurial has the huge advantage (over SVN or TFS) to work offline too, so I can commit while on a plane, and all the history is saved. Then when I have connectivity I push everything to the cloud (I am using the fantastic Trunksapp.com for my private repositories). Here too the obvious downside is the risk of losing my last changes if my laptop crashes before I can push to the cloud, and here too the obvious answer would be to work from a memory stick… though I have to admit I didn't do that lately (except when I was writing Silverlight 4 Unleashed, where I was really paranoid…) And code snippets? I am one of these presenters who hates to type in front of an audience. I can type really fast (writing two books has this advantage, it really teaches you to touch type and be fast at it) but in the context of an audience, on a stage where it is often damn cold (an issue I had a lot in past conferences, air conditioning can freeze your fingers and make it really hard to type), it doesn't work as well. I don't know for you, but I really dislike seeing a presentation where the speaker uses the backspace key more often than others ;) To solve that, I like to have my code ready in snippets, and drag them to the screen. Then I can spend time explaining each code snippet, while highlighting portions of the code (always highlight what you talk about, the audience often doesn't even see the cursor and doesn't know where you are on the screen!) Over the years I have used various solutions for code snippets, and now I have one which works really well… if you take a few precautions! I use the Visual Studio Toolbox. Preparing the code snippets You can store code snippets in the Toolbox for anything, XAML, C# etc. I arrange the snippets in the order in which I need them, which is a great way to remember what comes next in the presentation. I also separate them by topic, to make it easier to find them, for example when I switch to the slides and then back to the code. Remember that no matter how experienced you are, you will feel more nervous on stage than while you are preparing, so any way to make it easier for you is going to be beneficial to the audience. To store a code snippet, I do the following: Open the final demo that you want to show to the audience in Visual Studio. In your code, select a snippet of code that you want to explain in particular. Make sure that the Visual Studio Toolbox is open (menu View, Toolbox or Ctrl-Alt-X). Drag the selected snippet from the code window to the toolbox. (if needed) drag the snippet to the correct location (for example between two other code snippets so that you can access it as you speak through the demo). Right click on the snippet and select Rename Item from the context menu. Select a meaningful name. For me I use the following conventions: If it is a method, I use the method's name. If it is not a whole method, I use a descriptive name. If it is the content of a method (i.e. the body only, without the method's signature), I use "-> MethodName". This reminds me during the presentation that this is only the body, and that I need to insert that into an existing signature. This is the case, for instance, when I use Visual Studio to automatically generate the members of an interface’s implementation; then I only need to insert my snippet inside the generated method body. Saving the snippets This is the most important!! It happened to me a few times that VS10 lost its settings. When that happens, the snippets are lost too! Yeah that really sucks, especially (as it happened once) when this is the case about an hour before a talk… Stress and sweat follows, not good conditions to start a talk in front of an audience believe me. Thankfully, saving snippets is really easy with the following steps: Select the menu Tools, Import and Export Settings. Select Export selected environment settings and press Next. Uncheck All Settings. Then expand General Settings and select Toolbox (only!). Press Next. Select your source control folder and save under a meaningful name (for instance Snippets.vssettings). Commit to source control and push to the cloud. By the way, this also has the advantage of applying source control to the snippets file (which is an XML file), so you get history for free on that file! Reimporting the snippets If VS loses its settings and you need to reimport the snippets, this can be done super easily and very fast. Make sure that the Toolbox is empty. When you import snippets, they are merged with existing ones, they do not replace the content of the Toolbox. Unless merging is really what you want, make sure that your Toolbox is clean before you import, it is really easier. Select the menu Tools, Import and Export Settings. Select Import selected environment settings and press Next. Select No, just import new settings and press Next. Press Browse and select the Snippets.vssettings file. Press Finish. Et voila, all your snippets appear again in the Toolbox. Whew, the worst was averted and you can start your demo without sweating! (I had to do that once literally 5 minutes before the start of a demo, while my laptop was already hooked to the projector, and it went just fine). What about special tools? When using special tools (for example beta versions of tools you have an early access to), or a special configuration of your laptop, things can get tricky because you cannot really be sure that you will get a laptop with the same tools and the same configuration at the conference. To solve that, I use the following precautions: I make my demos from a Virtual Hard Disk. The great John Papa made a very easy-to-follow web page where he explains how to create a VHD and install Win7 to it. This gives you the full power of your laptop (as fast as booting from the metal). For me, I have a basic configuration that I saved on a USB harddrive (Win7 plus drivers, basic settings for desktop, folder options, taskbar etc) and Visual Studio 2010 SP1 on it. When preparing, I start by copying this "basis VHD" to my laptop. I install additional tools and configurations. I save the VHD back to the USB harddrive in a different folder. This would allow me to reinstall my demo environment quite fast, for example in case of harddrive failure. Replace the harddrive, copy the VHD to it, configure the BCD and you can start. Unfortunately this only works if the laptop itself still works. In the worst case of total failure, my security is to back all the installers up: The installers I use are synched on all my laptops and backed up to BackBlaze. If the worst happens and my laptop is absolutely broken, I can download the installer from BackBlaze and install on another laptop. This of course takes some time, and if that happens 5 minutes before a presentation, well… I don't have an answer to that, except of course crossing my fingers. Still, all that gives me additional security. Conclusion Remember folks, talking to an audience, large or small, will make you nervous. Just ask Scott Hanselman :) The goal here is to create the best possible conditions for you, and to create an environment where everything is saved and easy to restore, where everything is well known and provides you with additional confidence. The cooler you feel before the presentation (and during ;)), the better your presentation will be. Here too, the goal is to provide the best user experience you can have, which in turn will make it more enjoyable for your audience! Happy presenting :) Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• Oracle WebCenter @ OpenWorld 2012

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  This week, we want to focus on giving our blog readers a preview of Oracle WebCenter related events and activities happening at Oracle OpenWorld this year! Today's guest post comes from Jamie Rancourt, Senior Manager of Product Management for Oracle WebCenter. Are you registered to attend OpenWorld 2012 in San Francisco from September 30 – October 4?  If not, the conference details and registration information can be found at http://oracle.com/openworld!  Here’s a brief run down of the planned activities for Oracle WebCenter at this year’s event. WebCenter Sessions This year WebCenter will be featured in 36 sessions across the following tracks: Web Experience Management, Portals, Content Management and Social Network Middleware for Enterprise Applications Financial Management Oracle ADF and Fusion Application Development Applications Tools and Technology Applications Strategy Life Sciences Customer Relationship Management Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service Siebel Applications SOA and Business Process Management Oracle Fusion Applications Oracle Commerce Retail Social Business Cloud Computing Here are a few of the sessions to wet your appetite: Oracle WebCenter Strategy: Engaging your Customers.  Empowering your Business Oracle WebCenter Sites Strategy & Vision Oracle WebCenter Content Strategy & Vision Oracle WebCenter Portal Strategy & Vision Oracle Social Network Strategy & Vision Develop a Mobile Strategy with Oracle WebCenter: Engage Customers, Employees, and Partners Oracle WebCenter’s Cloud Strategy: From Social and Platform Services to Mash-ups We also have 4 interactive customer panels planned for the event: Using Web Experience Management to Drive Online Marketing Success Land Mines, Potholes, and Dirt Roads: Navigating the Way to ECM Nirvana Becoming a Social Business: Stories from the Front Lines of Change Building Next-Generation Portals: An Interactive Customer Panel Discussion And there are many more sessions for you to attend to learn everything there is to know about Oracle WebCenter from our product experts and partners. Make sure to visit the Content Catalog for the complete session details Labs and Demos This year’s event also features 4 WebCenter hands on labs, each focusing on a different product area including Portal, Content, Sites and Social Network.  In addition to the labs, there will be 6 demos featuring Oracle WebCenter in both the Fusion Middleware and Cloud pavilions.  Make sure you stop by to see the latest demos and meet our knowledgeable product managers! And don't forget about the Oracle WebCenter Customer Appreciation Event, which is sponsored by our Partners and will take place on Tuesday, October 2nd at The Palace Hotel. Be sure to watch the blog for more information in the coming months with how to register! We look forward to seeing you at Oracle OpenWorld 2012!

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