Search Results

Search found 5784 results on 232 pages for 'points'.

Page 218/232 | < Previous Page | 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 | Next Page >

DevConnections Spring 2010 Speaker Evals and Tips

As a conference speaker, I always look forward to hearing from attendees whether they felt my sessions were valuable and worth their time. Its always gratifying get a high score, but of course its the (preferably constructive) criticism thats key to continued improvement. Im by no means the best technical presenter around, and Im always looking for ways to improve. Ive recently spoken at a few events, including TechEd and an Ohio event called Stir Trek. DevConnections was actually back in April, but theyre just getting their final evals out to speakers. TechEd, of course, does online evals so immediately after your talks you can see what people think. Ill try and post my TechEd evals in the next week or so. I gave 3 talks at DevConnections Spring 2010 / VS2010 Launch which I discussed in this previous blog post. In this follow-up, Im just going to share some eval info and my thoughts on it, albeit a couple of months later. Pragmatic ASP.NET Tips, Tricks, and Tools Evals Turned In: 27 Overall Eval: 3.74 Average Score: 3.47 89% found the technical level Just Right. 7.4% thought it was too basic (3.6% did not respond). Since nobody thought the content was Too complex, I could perhaps have added some more complex material, but having about 90% say its Just Right is pretty good. 92% said at least 50% of the material was new to them. 36% said 75% or more was new. Thats also pretty good, I think. 77.8% can use the information immediately; 15% can use it within 2-6 months (7.2 % no response). Overall 78% rated the session Excellent, 18% Good, 4% Fair. All comments (9): Steve did a great job Excellent session! It was good. Im now super excited to attend Steves other sessions later today. Very useful. One of the best speakers here. Bring him back to future conferences please. Continue to have this session with new and old stuff. I always find something I did not know about. Excellent! This was the best session Ive seen all week. Did not increase font on all pages could not see. For Steve to have had more sessions. Note to self make the fonts bigger across the board. Otherwise, this is all good for my ego. :) This is always a very popular session and one I really enjoy giving. Tips and Tricks talks are pretty easy because you dont have to go in depth with any particular thing, and theyre almost always with existing technology so youre not dealing with betas, lack of documentation, and other issues. Its an easy session to do well, in my experience, and one which I think attendees definitely appreciate. Whats New in ASP.NET MVC 2 Evals Turned In: 23 Overall Eval: 3.77 Average Score: 3.47 (wow, I cant believe I scored better on this talk than the tips and tricks talk, which Ive given many times and was more excited about) 96% found the technical level Just Right. 90% found 50% or more of the material to be new. 43% can use the info immediately, and another 43% can use it within 2-6 months I guess that speaks to adoption rates of MVC 2 among my attendees Overall 74% said the session was Excellent, 22% Good. 4% No Response. All Comments (6): Great job, thank you. Great speaker! Really good, a little lost in the code at some points, but great information. Speaker needs to repeat questions from audience for everyone to hear. Exceeded my expectations. Great speaker, very informative. I really do try to religiously repeat questions from the audience for everyone to hear, but obviously I didnt do it 100% of the time. Note to self remember to repeat questions. That and making fonts big are really basic speaker best practices, which just goes to prove that fundamentals are always something that can be perfected. SOLIDify Your ASP.NET MVC 2 Application Evals Turned In: 8 (!) Overall Eval: 3.63 Average Score: 3.47 As I recall this was one of the last talks of the day / show, which might account for the low number of evals turned in. I dont recall speaking to an empty room for this talk, although it certainly wasnt as crowded as the tips and tricks talk. 100% found the technical level Just Right. 100% found at least half the material new. 62.5% can use it at once and 37.5% within 2-6 months. 62.5% rated the session Excellent overall; 37.5% Good. Im thinking there were 5 evals with all 4s checked and 3 with all 3s checked (4 = Excellent, 3 = Good) All Comments (3): This covered many topics Ive read about recently, and it helped reinforce them. It was a nice overview of the solid principle, but I thought there might be specifics for MVC2. I am glad there is not. Move a little slower. Ok, so another fundamental dont go too fast. Looks like I got one fundamental tip from the comments of each talk. My Take-Aways Remember the fundamentals. Its worth going through a checklist prior to presenting to make sure these things are fresh in your mind. Increase all font sizes. Repeat all questions from audience members without microphones (this is also a great way to stall for time, btw). Resist the urge to move too quickly especially if youre nervous or short of time. Writing this up in a blog post also further reinforces these fundamentals for me, which is one of the main reasons why I do it I retain things better when I write them, and even moreso when I write them for public consumption since I have to really think about what Im saying. And maybe a few of you find this interesting or helpful, which is a bonus. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

Read the article
Probation is Over: PASS Board Year 1, Q2

- by Denise McInerney

Though it's not always official every job begins with a probation period. You start out with lots of questions and every day you find out how much more you have to learn. Usually after a few months you discover that you can actually answer some questions and have at least an idea of what you are supposed to be doing. Now at the end of my second quarter on the "job" of serving on the PASS Board I have reached that point. My probation period is over. The last three months were busy for the entire Board with the budget process, an in-person meeting and moving forward with PASS Global Growth plans. I had also set a specific goal for myself for my 2nd quarter: to see the Board to adopt a Code of Conduct for the PASS Summit. Code of Conduct When I ran for the Board I included my desire to see PASS establish a code of conduct in my campaign platform. I was motivated to do this for a few reasons. Other technical conferences have had incidents of harassment. Most of these did not have a policy in place prior to having a problem, though several conference organizers have since adopted anti-harassment policies or codes of conduct. I felt it would be in PASS' interest to establish a policy so we would be prepared should there be an incident. "This is Community" Adopting a code of conduct would reinforce our community orientation and send a message about the positive character of the Summit. PASS is a leader among technical organizations for its promotion and support of women. Adopting a code of conduct would further demonstrate our leadership in this area. After researching similar polices from other organizations I published a first draft in April. I solicited feedback from the Board, HQ staff and some PASS members. Incorporating that feedback I presented version 4 at the May Board meeting, where we had a good discussion. You can read the meeting minutes for details. I incorporated points from the Board discussion as well as feedback from a legal review to produce a final version which has been submitted to the Board. It will be discussed at the Board meeting July 12. You can read the full text at the end of this post. Virtual Chapters In the first quarter we started ramping up marketing support for the Virtual Chapters. Since then each edition of the Connector has highlighted a different VC to help get out the message about the variety of eductional opporutnities that are offered. These VC profiles will continue in the coming months. I was very pleased to welcome the new DBA Fundamentals VC which is geared toward new DBAs, people who are considering entering the field and those transitioning from a different IT role. Thanks to the contributions of Erin Stellato, Michelle Nalliah and Karla Landrum we published a "Virtual Chapter Guidebook". This document includes great advice on how to build and promote a VC. It's also a reference for how things work, from budgets to webinar hosting. I think this document will be extremely valuable to all our VC leaders and am grateful to those who put it together. Board Meeting/SQL Rally The Board met in May in Dallas. Among the items discussed were Global Growth, the budget, future events and the upcoming elections. We covered a lot of ground in two days and I will again refer you to the meeting minutes for details. The meeting schedule allowed us to participate in the SQL Rally networking events and one full day of the conference. I enjoyed having the opportunity to meet and talk with many PASS members. And my hat is off to the SQL Rally organizers who put on an outstanding event. Global Growth PASS has undertaken a major intitiative to reach and engage SQL Server professionals around the world. This Global Growth plan is ambitious and will have a significant impact on the strategic direction of the organization. We have been reaching out to the community for feedback, including hosting Twitter chats and live Town Hall meetings. I co-hosted two of these events and appreciated hearing the different perspectives of the people who participated If you have not done so I encourage you to read about the Global Growth vision and proposed governance changes and submit your feedback. FY13 Budget July 1 is the beginning of PASS' fiscal year, which makes the end of June the deadline for approving a budget. Each director submits a budget for his or her portfolio. For the Virtual Chapter portfolio I focused on how we can allocate resources to grow the VCs. Budgeting is a give-and-take process, and while I didn't get everything I asked for I'm pleased the FY13 budget includes a significant increase in financial support for the Virtual Chapters. Many people put a lot of work into the budget, but no two people deserve credit more than VP of Finance Douglas McDowell and Accounting Manager Sandy Cherry. Thanks to both of them for getting us across the goal line on time. SQL Saturday I attended SQL Saturdays in Orange Co. CA and Phoenix. It's always inspiring to see the enthusiasm in the community for learning and networking. These events are successful due to the hard work of many volunteers. Thanks to the organizers in both cities for all your efforts. Next Up This quarter we'll be gearing up plans for the VCs at the Summit and exploring ways the VCs can best support PASS' Global Growth work. I'll also be wrapping up work on the Code of Conduct and attending a Board meeting in September. And I will be at SQL Saturday #144 in Sacramento later this month. Here is the language of the Code of Conduct I have submitted to the Board for consideration: PASS Code of Conduct The PASS Summit provides database professionals from a variety of backgrounds with an opportunity to connect, share and learn. We value the strong sense of community that characterizes this event and we seek to foster an inclusive, professional atmosphere. We are dedicated to providing a harassment-free conference experience for everyone, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, religion or any other protected classification. Everyone at the Summit is expected to follow the Code of Conduct. This includes but is not limited to: PASS Staff, Exhibitors, Speakers, Attendees and anyone affiliated with the event. Participants are expected to follow the Code of Conduct at all Summit events, including PASS-sponsored social events. Participant behavior Harassment includes, but is not limited to, offensive verbal comments related to gender, race, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, religion, or any other protected classification. Intimidation, threats, stalking, harassing photography or recording, sustained disruption of talks or other events, inappropriate physical contact and unwelcome attention will also be considered harassment. Similarly, sexual, racist, derogatory, threatening or other inappropriate language and imagery are not appropriate for any conference venue, including sessions. Recourse If a participant engages in any conduct that is prohibited under this Code of Conduct, the conference organizers may take any action they deem appropriate, including warning the offender or expelling the offender from the conference. No refunds will be granted to attendees expelled from the Summit due to violations of the Code of Conduct. If you are being harassed, witness harassment, or have any other concerns, please contact a member of conference staff immediately. Conference staff can be identified by their “Headquarters/Staff” shirts and are trained to handle the situation appropriately. A Code of Conduct Committee (CCC) made up of the Executive Manager and three members of the Board of Directors designated by the President will be authorized to take action in response to an incident or behavior that violates the Code of Conduct.

Read the article
Not attending the LUGM mini-meetup - 05. Oct 2013

Not attending a meeting of the LUGM can be fun, too. It's getting a bit of a habit that Ish is organising small gatherings, aka mini-meetups, of the Linux User Group Mauritius/Meta (LUGM) almost every Saturday. There they mainly discuss and talk about various elements of using Linux as ones main operating systems and the possibilities you are going to have. On top of course, some tips & tricks about mastering the command line and initial steps in scripting or even writing HTML. In general, sounds like a good portion of fun and great spirit of community. Unfortunately, I'm usually quite busy with private and family matters during the weekend and so I already signalised that I wouldn't be around. Well, at least not physically... But this Saturday a couple of things worked out faster than expected and so I was hanging out on my machine. I made virtual contact with one of Pawan's messages over on Facebook... And somehow that kicked off some kind of an online game fun on basic configuration of Apache HTTPd 2.2.x, PHP 5.x and how to improve the overall performance of a newly installed blog based on WordPress. Default configuration files Nitin's website finally came alive and despite the dark theme and the hidden Apple 'fanboy' advertisement I was more interested in the technical situation. As with any new installation there is usually quite some adjustment to be done. And Nitin's page was no exception. Unfortunately, out of the box installations of Apache httpd and PHP are too verbose and expose too much information under the hood. You might think that this isn't really a problem at all, well, think about it again after completely reading this article. First, I checked the HTTP response headers - using either Chrome Developer Tools or Firefox Web Developer extension - of Nitin's page and based on that I advised him to lower the noise levels a little bit. It's not really necessary that detailed information about web server software and scripting language has to be published in every response made. Quite a number of script kiddies and exploits actually check for version specifics prior to an attack. So, removing at least version details hardens the system a little bit. In particular, I'm talking about these response values: Server X-Powered-By How to achieve that? By tweaking the configuration files... Namely, we are going to look into the following ones: apache2.conf httpd.conf .htaccess php.ini The above list contains some additional files, I'm talking about in the next paragraphs. Anyway, those are the ones involved. Tweaking Apache Open your favourite text editor and start to modify the apache2.conf. Eventually, you might like to have a quick peak at the file to see whether it is necessary to adjust it or not. Following is a handy combination of commands to get an overview of your active directives: # sudo grep -v '#' /etc/apache2/apache2.conf | grep -v '^$' | less There you keep an eye on those two Apache directives: ServerSignature Off ServerTokens Prod If that's not the case, change them as highlighted above. In order to activate your modifications you have to restart Apache httpd server. On Debian and Ubuntu you might use apache2ctl for that, on other distributions you might have to use service or run the init-scripts again: # sudo apache2ctl configtestSyntax OK# sudo apache2ctl restart Refresh your website and check the HTTP response header. Tweaking PHP5 (a little bit) Next, check your php.ini file with the following statement: # sudo grep -v ';' /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini | grep -v '^$' | less And check the value of expose_php = Off Again, if it's not as highlighted, change it... Some more Apache love Okay, back to Apache it might also be interesting to improve the situation about browser caching and removing more obsolete information. When you run your website against the usual performance checks like Google Page Speed and Yahoo YSlow you might see those check points with bad grades on a standard, default configuration. Well, this can be done easily. Configure entity tags (ETags) ETags are only interesting when you run your websites on a farm of multiple web servers. Removing this data for your static resources is very simple in Apache. As we are going to deal with the HTTP response header information you have to ensure that Apache is capable to manipulate them. First, check your enabled modules: # sudo ls -al /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/ | grep headers And in case that the 'headers' module is not listed, you have to enable it from the available ones: # sudo a2enmod headers Second, check your httpd.conf file (in case it exists): # sudo grep -v '#' /etc/apache2/httpd.conf | grep -v '^$' | less In newer (better said fresh) installations you might have to create a new configuration file below your conf.d folder with your favourite text editor like so: # sudo nano /etc/apache2/conf.d/headers.conf Then, in order to tweak your HTTP responses either check for those lines or add them: Header unset ETagFileETag None In case that your file doesn't exist or those lines are missing, feel free to create/add them. Afterwards, check your Apache configuration syntax and restart your running instances as already shown above: # sudo apache2ctl configtestSyntax OK# sudo apache2ctl restart Add Expires headers To improve the loading performance of your website, you should take some care into the proper configuration of how to leverage the browser's ability to cache certain resources and files. This is done by adding an Expires: value to the HTTP response header. Generally speaking it is advised that you specify a near-future, read: 1 week or a little bit more, for your static content like JavaScript files or Cascading Style Sheets. One solution to adjust this is to put some instructions into the .htaccess file in the root folder of your web site. Of course, this could also be placed into a more generic location of your Apache installation but honestly, I'd like to keep this at the web site level. Following some adjustments I'm currently using on this blog site: # Turn on Expires and set default to 0ExpiresActive OnExpiresDefault A0 # Set up caching on media files for 1 year (forever?)<FilesMatch "\.(flv|ico|pdf|avi|mov|ppt|doc|mp3|wmv|wav)$">ExpiresDefault A29030400Header append Cache-Control "public"</FilesMatch> # Set up caching on media files for 1 week<FilesMatch "\.(js|css)$">ExpiresDefault A604800Header append Cache-Control "public"</FilesMatch> # Set up caching on media files for 31 days<FilesMatch "\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png|swf)$">ExpiresDefault A2678400Header append Cache-Control "public"</FilesMatch> As we are editing the .htaccess files, it is not necessary to restart Apache. In case that your web site doesn't load anymore or you're experiencing an error while trying to restart your httpd, check that the 'expires' module is actually an enabled module: # ls -al /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/ | grep expires# sudo a2enmod expires Of course, the instructions above a re not feature complete but I hope that they might provide a better default configuration for your LAMP stack. Resume of the day Within a couple of hours, and while being occupied with an eLearning course on SQL Server 2012, I had some good fun in helping and assisting other LUGM members while they were some kilometers away at Bagatelle. According to other blog articles it seems that Nitin had quite some moments of desperation. Just for the records: At no time it was my intention to either kick his butt or pull a leg on him. Simply, providing some input based on the lessons I've learned over the last couple of years configuring Apache HTTPd and PHP. Check out the other blogs, too: LUGM mini-meetup... Epic! Superb Saturday Linux Meetup And last but not least, the man himself: The end of a new beginning Cheers, and happy community'ing! Updates Due to our weekly Code & Coffee sessions in the MSCC community, I had a chance to talk to Nitin directly and he showed me the problems directly on his machine. This led to update this article hence the paragraphs on enabling the modules 'headers' and 'expires'.

Read the article
Community Outreach - Where Should I Go

- by Roger Brinkley

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

Read the article
Combining Shared Secret and Username Token – Azure Service Bus

- by Michael Stephenson

As discussed in the introduction article this walkthrough will explain how you can implement WCF security with the Windows Azure Service Bus to ensure that you can protect your endpoint in the cloud with a shared secret but also flow through a username token so that in your listening WCF service you will be able to identify who sent the message. This could either be in the form of an application or a user depending on how you want to use your token. Prerequisites Before going into the walk through I want to explain a few assumptions about the scenario we are implementing but to keep the article shorter I am not going to walk through all of the steps in how to setup some of this. In the solution we have a simple console application which will represent the client application. There is also the services WCF application which contains the WCF service we will expose via the Windows Azure Service Bus. The WCF Service application in this example was hosted in IIS 7 on Windows 2008 R2 with AppFabric Server installed and configured to auto-start the WCF listening services. I am not going to go through significant detail around the IIS setup because it should not matter in relation to this article however if you want to understand more about how to configure WCF and IIS for such a scenario please refer to the following paper which goes into a lot of detail about how to configure this. The link is: http://tinyurl.com/8s5nwrz The Service Component To begin with let's look at the service component and how it can be configured to listen to the service bus using a shared secret but to also accept a username token from the client. In the sample the service component is called Acme.Azure.ServiceBus.Poc.UN.Services. It has a single service which is the Visual Studio template for a WCF service when you add a new WCF Service Application so we have a service called Service1 with its Echo method. Nothing special so far!.... The next step is to look at the web.config file to see how we have configured the WCF service. In the services section of the WCF configuration you can see I have created my service and I have created a local endpoint which I simply used to do a little bit of diagnostics and to check it was working, but more importantly there is the Windows Azure endpoint which is using the ws2007HttpRelayBinding (note that this should also work just the same if your using netTcpRelayBinding). The key points to note on the above picture are the service behavior called MyServiceBehaviour and the service bus endpoints behavior called MyEndpointBehaviour. We will go into these in more detail later. The Relay Binding The relay binding for the service has been configured to use the TransportWithMessageCredential security mode. This is the important bit where the transport security really relates to the interaction between the service and listening to the Azure Service Bus and the message credential is where we will use our username token like we have specified in the message/clientCrentialType attribute. Note also that we have left the relayClientAuthenticationType set to RelayAccessToken. This means that authentication will be made against ACS for accessing the service bus and messages will not be accepted from any sender who has not been authenticated by ACS. The Endpoint Behaviour In the below picture you can see the endpoint behavior which is configured to use the shared secret client credential for accessing the service bus and also for diagnostic purposes I have included the service registry element. Hopefully if you are familiar with using Windows Azure Service Bus relay feature the above is very familiar to you and this is a very common setup for this section. There is nothing specific to the username token implementation here. The Service Behaviour Now we come to the bit with most of the username token bits in it. When you configure the service behavior I have included the serviceCredentials element and then setup to use userNameAuthentication and you can see that I have created my own custom username token validator. This setup means that WCF will hand off to my class for validating the username token details. I have also added the serviceSecurityAudit element to give me a simple auditing of access capability. My UsernamePassword Validator The below picture shows you the details of the username password validator class I have implemented. WCF will hand off to this class when validating the token and give me a nice way to check the token credentials against an on-premise store. You have all of the validation features with a non-service bus WCF implementation available such as validating the username password against active directory or ASP.net membership features or as in my case above something much simpler. The Client Now let's take a look at the client side of this solution and how we can configure the client to authenticate against ACS but also send a username token over to the service component so it can implement additional security checks on-premise. I have a console application and in the program class I want to use the proxy generated with Add Service Reference to send a message via the Azure Service Bus. You can see in my WCF client configuration below I have setup my details for the azure service bus url and am using the ws2007HttpRelayBinding. Next is my configuration for the relay binding. You can see below I have configured security to use TransportWithMessageCredential so we will flow the username token with the message and also the RelayAccessToken relayClientAuthenticationType which means the component will validate against ACS before being allowed to access the relay endpoint to send a message. After the binding we need to configure the endpoint behavior like in the below picture. This is the normal configuration to use a shared secret for accessing a Service Bus endpoint. Finally below we have the code of the client in the console application which will call the service bus. You can see that we have created our proxy and then made a normal call to a WCF service but this time we have also set the ClientCredentials to use the appropriate username and password which will be flown through the service bus and to our service which will validate them. Conclusion As you can see from the above walkthrough it is not too difficult to configure a service to use both a shared secret and username token at the same time. This gives you the power and protection offered by the access control service in the cloud but also the ability to flow additional tokens to the on-premise component for additional security features to be implemented. Sample The sample used in this post is available at the following location: https://s3.amazonaws.com/CSCBlogSamples/Acme.Azure.ServiceBus.Poc.UN.zip

Read the article
SpriteFont Exception, no such character?

- by Michal Bozydar Pawlowski

I have such spriteFont: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>  <XnaContent xmlns:Graphics="Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.Pipeline.Graphics"> <Asset Type="Graphics:FontDescription">  <FontName>Segoe UI</FontName>  <Size>20</Size>  <Spacing>0</Spacing>  <UseKerning>true</UseKerning>  <Style>Regular</Style>    <CharacterRegions> <CharacterRegion> <Start>	</Start> <End>	</End> </CharacterRegion> <CharacterRegion> <Start> </Start> <End>Ұ</End> </CharacterRegion> </CharacterRegions> </Asset> </XnaContent> It has the character regions (32-1200) And I get this exception: A first chance exception of type 'System.ArgumentException' occurred in Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics.ni.dll The character '?' (0x0441) is not available in this SpriteFont. If applicable, adjust the font's start and end CharacterRegions to include this character. Parameter name: character Why? I'm drawing the string like this: spriteBatch.DrawString(font24, zasadyText, zasadyTextPos, kolorCzcionki1, -0.05f, Vector2.Zero, 1.0f, SpriteEffects.None, 0.5f) I even changed the spriteFont to cyrillic: <CharacterRegions> <CharacterRegion> <Start>	</Start> <End>	</End> </CharacterRegion> <CharacterRegion> <Start> </Start> <End>ſ</End> </CharacterRegion> <CharacterRegion> <Start>А</Start> <End>ї</End> </CharacterRegion> </CharacterRegions> </Asset> </XnaContent> and it still doesn't work. I got the (0x441 = char) exception -- EDIT -- Ok, I got the solution. It was a letter mistake in language. I had this: if (jezyk == "ru_RU") { font14 = Content.Load<SpriteFont>("ru_font14"); font24 = Content.Load<SpriteFont>("ru_font24"); font12 = Content.Load<SpriteFont>("ru_czcionkaFloty"); font10 = Content.Load<SpriteFont>("ru_font10"); font28 = Content.Load<SpriteFont>("ru_font28"); font20 = Content.Load<SpriteFont>("ru_font20"); } else { font14 = Content.Load<SpriteFont>("font14"); font24 = Content.Load<SpriteFont>("font24"); font12 = Content.Load<SpriteFont>("czcionkaFloty"); font10 = Content.Load<SpriteFont>("font10"); font28 = Content.Load<SpriteFont>("font28"); font20 = Content.Load<SpriteFont>("font20"); } and there should be not "ru_RU" but "ru-RU" I have no idea. I changed the spriteFont to cyrillic: <CharacterRegions> <CharacterRegion> <Start>	</Start> <End>	</End> </CharacterRegion> <CharacterRegion> <Start> </Start> <End>ſ</End> </CharacterRegion> <CharacterRegion> <Start>А</Start> <End>ї</End> </CharacterRegion> </CharacterRegions> </Asset> </XnaContent> and it still doesn't work. I got the (0x441 = char) exception

Read the article
5 Ways Android Still Disappoints (Me)

- by TStewartDev

Let me make this clear: I'm annoyed with Apple. I don't like their current policies and I don't like where Steve Jobs is taking the company. In general, I don't like it when any one company gets too much control in a market. When that happens, the leading company dictates the game and as consumers, our options all but disappear. That said, I'm still going to buy a new iPhone next week. My Apple-hating friends seem to desperately want me to go Android instead, but frankly, it's not good enough for me, and here are the reasons why. The Modern WinMo One of the reasons that Microsoft has identified for Windows Mobile's rapid decline is the breadth of hardware. They exercised little control over manufacturer's implementations. In theory, that sounds great. We as consumers have lots of choice. In practice, though, it meant among other things that updates to the devices were left up to the manufacturers. As a result, that rarely happened. (I'm still bitter at Toshiba for leaving me hanging back in 2002.) And now, Google is doing the same thing with Android. Case in point: my wife has a Motorola Backflip that we bought in April. It was released in March. Motorola says it will get Android 2.1 "sometime in Q3". Great. Meanwhile, I pull down the latest version of iPhone OS (now iOS) and install it the same day it's released. You may say that I can't judge Android by one lazy manufacturer. Yup, I sure can. With Apple, my original iPhone has been supported perfectly for 3 years. With Android, I will have to wait for upgrades after Google releases them, possibly indefinitely. Not cool. AT&T We signed a new contract with AT&T in April to get my wife's phone. I've had a reasonable experience with them. I don't imagine my experience with Verizon would be any better, and I'm relatively confident that Sprint doesn't have the coverage it takes to work well for us. The fact is, AT&T, for whatever reason, doesn't have jack for Android phones. May not be Android's fault, but it's still a shortcoming that prevents me from having it just like the iPhone's exclusivity keeps some folks on other networks from having it. Innovation? What Innovation? Android has a nice dashboard and a great notification system and… nothing else original. I keep reading about how disappointing the iPhone is nowadays. "It has no innovation," people say. Who does? Android has modeled its behavior after the iPhone. That's fine, but if all you've got is a similar product and I'm invested both skill-wise and app-wise in my current platform, why should I change? Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 looks somewhat innovative, and I'm pretty excited to see what they'll bring to the table, but that's another six months away, at least. I've got a 3 year old phone that has some annoying issues now (thanks to recent encounters with water). I need a new phone now. Is This Going to Work? There's no shortage of criticism of Apple over its App Store policies, and I've vented my own anger about it. However, I will give them credit: their screening of apps has done a great job of weeding out the crap and gives an excellent indication that the app will work on my device. How about Android? Nope. It might work on your phone. Maybe. You'll have to try it to see. Get burned by it? Well, write a nasty review to try to keep others from making the mistake you did. If you don't mind doing that stuff, then Android is the platform for you. Personally, I'd rather have a receptionist screening out the telemarketing and survey calls than hang up on them myself, but that's your call. Slow, Slowing, Slower All this yapping about multitasking. This is an area I've been on Apple's side from the beginning. Sorry folks, but this is the number one reason I hated Windows Mobile: the longer you use it, the slower it gets because it doesn't kill apps. I'm with Steve Jobs on this one: if you see a task manager, we're doing it wrong. I don't want to have to manually kill apps. I hate doing that on Windows let alone on a mobile device. To me, priority one should be keeping the device speedy. Waiting for your device to respond is unacceptable. Bonus! Taken from iPhone Letdown? 8 Things Apple Didn't Announce, here are my responses: 4G Yeah, let me know if your area actually has it. I live in Lincoln, Nebraska. No carrier is going to have 4G here for at least 3 years. Meanwhile, you still get to pay for it. Yay! Cloud iTunes/OTA Sync You got me here. Of course, whether or not your Android device will be able to do it is always a good question. 3G Video Chat You got me here, too. I'm sure you spent countless hours in front of your phone with video chat. Also, I can't wait for the "No Video Chat While Driving" laws. Mobile Hotspot This is a neat feature, but as the author points out, it's left up to the carrier whether to implement it or not. Pretty sure any Android phones that come to AT&T won't have this enabled in the foreseeable future. Is Verizon even allowing this? I just figured Sprint was because they're failing so hard at keeping customers. Free MobileMe I use Google's services with my iPhone. The only people I know who use MobileMe are Apple fanboys and fangirls. If you choose to pay for a service that you can get for free, that's your decision, not Apple's. Voice Input Voice input has been available on phones (even "dumb" phones) for years now. iPhone does have the ability, though limited. Why don't I hear people telling their phones what to do? Maybe because it's still easier to use your fingers than talk to it. Get back to me when this becomes an important feature. Free Navigation Maybe this will be a bigger deal to me now that I'm getting a phone with GPS, but when using my buddy's 3gs, Google maps has worked just fine. Maybe I just don't trust turn-by-turn navigation enough to want it. Dashboard The only legitimate complaint on this list, to me. iPhone's home screen is pathetic, doubly so for the iPad. What a waste of perfectly usable space. I also want to add notifications to this list. Android's notification panel is far superior to the iPhone's. I don't want to hunt all over my screen to find little red dots. Put 'em in one place, Apple.

Read the article
TGIF: Engagement Wrap-up

- by Michael Snow

We've had a very busy week here at Oracle and as we build up to Oracle OpenWorld starting in less than 10 days - it doesn't look like things will be slowing down. Engagement is definitely in the air this week. Our friend, John Mancini published a great article entitled: "The World of Engagement" on his Digital Landfill blog yesterday and we hosted a great webcast with R "Ray" Wang from Constellation Research yesterday on the "9 C's of Engagement". 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} I wanted to wrap-up the week with some key takeaways from our webcast yesterday with Ray Wang. If you missed the webcast yesterday, fear not - it is now available On-Demand. We'll leave you this week with lots of questions about how to navigate these churning waters of engagement. Stay tuned to the Oracle WebCenter Social Business Thought Leaders Webcast Series as we fuel this dialogue. 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Company Culture Does company support a culture of putting customer satisfaction ahead of profits? Does culture promote creativity and cross functional employee collaboration? Does culture accept different views of multi-generational workforce? Does culture promote employee training and skills development Does culture support upward mobility and long term retention? Does culture support work-life balance? Does the culture provide rewards for employee for outstanding customer support? Channels What are the current primary channels for customer communications? What do you think will be the primary channels in two years? Is company developing support model for emerging channels? Do all channels consistently deliver the same level of customer support? Do you know the cost per transaction across all channels? Do you engage customers proactively across multiple channels? Do all channels have access to the same customer information? Community Does company extend customer support into virtual communities of interest? Does company facilitate educating users through its virtual communities? Does company mine its customer’s experience into useful data? Does company increase the value for customers through using data to deliver new products and services? Does company support two way interactions with its customers through communities of interest? Does company actively support social CRM, online communities and social media markets? Credibility Does company market its trustworthiness through external certificates such as business licenses, BBB certificates or other validations? Does company promote trust through customer testimonials and case studies on ethical business practices? Does company promote truthful market campaigns Does company make it easy for customers to complain? Does company build its reputation for standing behind its products with guarantees for satisfaction? Does company protect its customer data with high security measures> Content What sources do you use to create customer content? Does company mine social media and blogs for customer content? How does your company sort, store and retain its customer content? How frequently does content get updated? What external sources do you use for customer content? How many responses are typically received from a knowledge management system inquiry? Does your company use customer content to design and develop new product and services? Context Does your company market to customers in clusters or individually? Does your company customize its messages and personalize them to specific needs of each individual customer? Does your company store customer data based on their past behaviors, purchases, sentiment analysis and current activities? Does your company manage customer context according to channels used? For example identify personal use channels versus business channels? What is your frequency of collecting customer activities across various touch points? How is your customer data stored and analyzed? Is contextual data used for future customer outreach? Cadence Which channels does your company measure-web site visits, phone calls, IVR, store visits, face to face, social media? Does company make effective use of cross channel marketing to promote more frequent customer engagement? Does your company rate the patterns relevant for your product or service and monitor usage against this pattern? Does your company measure the frequency of both online and offline channels? Does your company apply metrics to the frequency of customer engagements with product or services revenues? Does your company consolidate data for customer engagement across various channels for a complete view of its customer? Catalyst Does company offer coupon discounts? Does company have a customer loyalty program or a VIP membership program? Does company mine customer data to target specific groups of buyers? Do internal employees serve as ambassadors for customer programs? Does company drive loyalty through social media loyalty programs? Does company build rewards based on using loyalty data? Does company offer an employee incentive program to drive customer loyalty?

Read the article
Why people don't patch and upgrade?!?

- by Mike Dietrich

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

Read the article
<%: %>, HtmlEncode, IHtmlString and MvcHtmlString

- by Shaun

One of my colleague and friend, Robin is playing and struggling with the ASP.NET MVC 2 on a project these days while I’m struggling with a annoying client. Since it’s his first time to use ASP.NET MVC he was meetings with a lot of problem and I was very happy to share my experience to him. Yesterday he asked me when he attempted to insert a <br /> element into his page he found that the page was rendered like this which is bad. He found his <br /> was shown as a part of the string rather than creating a new line. After checked a bit in his code I found that it’s because he utilized a new ASP.NET markup supported in .NET 4.0 – “<%: %>”. If you have been using ASP.NET MVC 1 or in .NET 3.5 world it would be very common that using <%= %> to show something on the page from the backend code. But when you do it you must ensure that the string that are going to be displayed should be Html-safe, which means all the Html markups must be encoded. Otherwise this might cause an XSS (cross-site scripting) problem. So that you’d better use the code like this below to display anything on the page. In .NET 4.0 Microsoft introduced a new markup to solve this problem which is <%: %>. It will encode the content automatically so that you will no need to check and verify your code manually for the XSS issue mentioned below. But this also means that it will encode all things, include the Html element you want to be rendered. So I changed his code like this and it worked well. After helped him solved this problem and finished a spreadsheet for my boring project I considered a bit more on the <%: %>. Since it will encode all thing why it renders correctly when we use “<%: Html.TextBox(“name”) %>” to show a text box? As you know the Html.TextBox will render a “<input name="name" id="name" type="text"/>” element on the page. If <%: %> will encode everything it should not display a text box. So I dig into the source code of the MVC and found some comments in the class MvcHtmlString. 1: // In ASP.NET 4, a new syntax <%: %> is being introduced in WebForms pages, where <%: expression %> is equivalent to 2: // <%= HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(expression) %>. The intent of this is to reduce common causes of XSS vulnerabilities 3: // in WebForms pages (WebForms views in the case of MVC). This involves the addition of an interface 4: // System.Web.IHtmlString and a static method overload System.Web.HttpUtility::HtmlEncode(object). The interface 5: // definition is roughly: 6: // public interface IHtmlString { 7: // string ToHtmlString(); 8: // } 9: // And the HtmlEncode(object) logic is roughly: 10: // - If the input argument is an IHtmlString, return argument.ToHtmlString(), 11: // - Otherwise, return HtmlEncode(Convert.ToString(argument)). 12: // 13: // Unfortunately this has the effect that calling <%: Html.SomeHelper() %> in an MVC application running on .NET 4 14: // will end up encoding output that is already HTML-safe. As a result, we're changing out HTML helpers to return 15: // MvcHtmlString where appropriate. <%= Html.SomeHelper() %> will continue to work in both .NET 3.5 and .NET 4, but 16: // changing the return types to MvcHtmlString has the added benefit that <%: Html.SomeHelper() %> will also work 17: // properly in .NET 4 rather than resulting in a double-encoded output. MVC developers in .NET 4 will then be able 18: // to use the <%: %> syntax almost everywhere instead of having to remember where to use <%= %> and where to use 19: // <%: %>. This should help developers craft more secure web applications by default. 20: // 21: // To create an MvcHtmlString, use the static Create() method instead of calling the protected constructor. The comment said the encoding rule of the <%: %> would be: If the type of the content is IHtmlString it will NOT encode since the IHtmlString indicates that it’s Html-safe. Otherwise it will use HtmlEncode to encode the content. If we check the return type of the Html.TextBox method we will find that it’s MvcHtmlString, which was implemented the IHtmlString interface dynamically. That is the reason why the “<input name="name" id="name" type="text"/>” was not encoded by <%: %>. So if we want to tell ASP.NET MVC, or I should say the ASP.NET runtime that the content is Html-safe and no need, or should not be encoded we can convert the content into IHtmlString. So another resolution would be like this. Also we can create an extension method as well for better developing experience. 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3: using System.Linq; 4: using System.Web; 5: using System.Web.Mvc; 6: 7: namespace ShaunXu.Blogs.IHtmlStringIssue 8: { 9: public static class Helpers 10: { 11: public static MvcHtmlString IsHtmlSafe(this string content) 12: { 13: return MvcHtmlString.Create(content); 14: } 15: } 16: } Then the view would be like this. And the page rendered correctly. Summary In this post I explained a bit about the new markup in .NET 4.0 – <%: %> and its usage. I also explained a bit about how to control the page content, whether it should be encoded or not. We can see the ASP.NET MVC gives us more points to control the web pages. Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

Read the article
We've completed the first iteration

- by CliveT

There are a lot of features in C# that are implemented by the compiler and not by the underlying platform. One such feature is a lambda expression. Since local variables cannot be accessed once the current method activation finishes, the compiler has to go out of its way to generate a new class which acts as a home for any variable whose lifetime needs to be extended past the activation of the procedure. Take the following example: Random generator = new Random(); Func func = () = generator.Next(10); In this case, the compiler generates a new class called c_DisplayClass1 which is marked with the CompilerGenerated attribute. [CompilerGenerated] private sealed class c__DisplayClass1 { // Fields public Random generator; // Methods public int b__0() { return this.generator.Next(10); } } Two quick comments on this: (i) A display was the means that compilers for languages like Algol recorded the various lexical contours of the nested procedure activations on the stack. I imagine that this is what has led to the name. (ii) It is a shame that the same attribute is used to mark all compiler generated classes as it makes it hard to figure out what they are being used for. Indeed, you could imagine optimisations that the runtime could perform if it knew that classes corresponded to certain high level concepts. We can see that the local variable generator has been turned into a field in the class, and the body of the lambda expression has been turned into a method of the new class. The code that builds the Func object simply constructs an instance of this class and initialises the fields to their initial values. c__DisplayClass1 class2 = new c__DisplayClass1(); class2.generator = new Random(); Func func = new Func(class2.b__0); Reflector already contains code to spot this pattern of code and reproduce the form containing the lambda expression, so this is example is correctly decompiled. The use of compiler generated code is even more spectacular in the case of iterators. C# introduced the idea of a method that could automatically store its state between calls, so that it can pick up where it left off. The code can express the logical flow with yield return and yield break denoting places where the method should return a particular value and be prepared to resume. { yield return 1; yield return 2; yield return 3; } Of course, there was already a .NET pattern for expressing the idea of returning a sequence of values with the computation proceeding lazily (in the sense that the work for the next value is executed on demand). This is expressed by the IEnumerable interface with its Current property for fetching the current value and the MoveNext method for forcing the computation of the next value. The sequence is terminated when this method returns false. The C# compiler links these two ideas together so that an IEnumerator returning method using the yield keyword causes the compiler to produce the implementation of an Iterator. Take the following piece of code. IEnumerable GetItems() { yield return 1; yield return 2; yield return 3; } The compiler implements this by defining a new class that implements a state machine. This has an integer state that records which yield point we should go to if we are resumed. It also has a field that records the Current value of the enumerator and a field for recording the thread. This latter value is used for optimising the creation of iterator instances. [CompilerGenerated] private sealed class d__0 : IEnumerable, IEnumerable, IEnumerator, IEnumerator, IDisposable { // Fields private int 1__state; private int 2__current; public Program 4__this; private int l__initialThreadId; The body gets converted into the code to construct and initialize this new class. private IEnumerable GetItems() { d__0 d__ = new d__0(-2); d__.4__this = this; return d__; } When the class is constructed we set the state, which was passed through as -2 and the current thread. public d__0(int 1__state) { this.1__state = 1__state; this.l__initialThreadId = Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId; } The state needs to be set to 0 to represent a valid enumerator and this is done in the GetEnumerator method which optimises for the usual case where the returned enumerator is only used once. IEnumerator IEnumerable.GetEnumerator() { if ((Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId == this.l__initialThreadId) && (this.1__state == -2)) { this.1__state = 0; return this; } The state machine itself is implemented inside the MoveNext method. private bool MoveNext() { switch (this.1__state) { case 0: this.1__state = -1; this.2__current = 1; this.1__state = 1; return true; case 1: this.1__state = -1; this.2__current = 2; this.1__state = 2; return true; case 2: this.1__state = -1; this.2__current = 3; this.1__state = 3; return true; case 3: this.1__state = -1; break; } return false; } At each stage, the current value of the state is used to determine how far we got, and then we generate the next value which we return after recording the next state. Finally we return false from the MoveNext to signify the end of the sequence. Of course, that example was really simple. The original method body didn't have any local variables. Any local variables need to live between the calls to MoveNext and so they need to be transformed into fields in much the same way that we did in the case of the lambda expression. More complicated MoveNext methods are required to deal with resources that need to be disposed when the iterator finishes, and sometimes the compiler uses a temporary variable to hold the return value. Why all of this explanation? We've implemented the de-compilation of iterators in the current EAP version of Reflector (7). This contrasts with previous version where all you could do was look at the MoveNext method and try to figure out the control flow. There's a fair amount of things we have to do. We have to spot the use of a CompilerGenerated class which implements the Enumerator pattern. We need to go to the class and figure out the fields corresponding to the local variables. We then need to go to the MoveNext method and try to break it into the various possible states and spot the state transitions. We can then take these pieces and put them back together into an object model that uses yield return to show the transition points. After that Reflector can carry on optimising using its usual optimisations. The pattern matching is currently a little too sensitive to changes in the code generation, and we only do a limited analysis of the MoveNext method to determine use of the compiler generated fields. In some ways, it is a pity that iterators are compiled away and there is no metadata that reflects the original intent. Without it, we are always going to dependent on our knowledge of the compiler's implementation. For example, we have noticed that the Async CTP changes the way that iterators are code generated, so we'll have to do some more work to support that. However, with that warning in place, we seem to do a reasonable job of decompiling the iterators that are built into the framework. Hopefully, the EAP will give us a chance to find examples where we don't spot the pattern correctly or regenerate the wrong code, and we can improve things. Please give it a go, and report any problems.

Read the article
Agilist, Heal Thyself!

- by Dylan Smith

I’ve been meaning to blog about a great experience I had earlier in the year at Prairie Dev Con Calgary. Myself and Steve Rogalsky did a session that we called “Agilist, Heal Thyself!”. We used a format that was new to me, but that Steve had seen used at another conference. What we did was start by asking the audience to give us a list of challenges they had had when adopting agile. We wrote them all down, then had everybody vote on the most interesting ones. Then we split into two groups, and each group was assigned one of the agile challenges. We had 20 minutes to discuss the challenge, and suggest solutions or approaches to improve things. At the end of the 20 minutes, each of the groups gave a brief summary of their discussion and learning's, then we mixed up the groups and repeated with another 2 challenges. The 2 groups I was part of had some really interesting discussions, and suggestions: Unfinished Stories at the end of Sprints The first agile challenge we tackled, was something that every single Scrum team I have worked with has struggled with. What happens when you get to the end of a Sprint, and there are some stories that are only partially completed. The team in question was getting very de-moralized as they felt that every Sprint was a failure as they never had a set of fully completed stories. How do you avoid this? and/or what do you do when it happens? There were 2 pieces of advice that were well received: 1. Try to bring stories to completion before starting new ones. This is advice I give all my Scrum teams. If you have a 3-week sprint, what happens all too often is you get to the end of week 2, and a lot of stories are almost done; but almost none are completely done. This is a Bad Thing. I encourage the teams I work with to only start a new story as a very last resort. If you finish your task look at the stories in progress and see if there’s anything you can do to help before moving onto a new story. In the daily standup, put a focus on seeing what stories got completed yesterday, if a few days go by with none getting completed, be sure this fact is visible to the team and do something about it. Something I’ve been doing recently is introducing WIP (Work In Progress) limits while using Scrum. My current team has 2-week sprints, and we usually have about a dozen or stories in a sprint. We instituted a WIP limit of 4 stories. If 4 stories have been started but not finished then nobody is allowed to start new stories. This made it obvious very quickly that our QA tasks were our bottleneck (we have 4 devs, but only 1.5 testers). The WIP limit forced the developers to start to pickup QA tasks before moving onto the next dev tasks, and we ended our sprints with many more stories completely finished than we did before introducing WIP limits. 2. Rather than using time-boxed sprints, why not just do away with them altogether and go to a continuous flow type approach like KanBan. Limit WIP to keep things under control, but don’t have a fixed time box at the end of which all tasks are supposed to be done. This eliminates the problem almost entirely. At some points in the project (releases) you need to be able to burn down all the half finished stories to get a stable release build, but this probably occurs less often than every sprint, and there are alternative approaches to achieve it using branching strategies rather than forcing your team to try to get to Zero WIP every 2-weeks (e.g. when you are ready for a release, create a new branch for any new stories, but finish all existing stories in the current branch and release it). Trying to Introduce Agile into a team with previous Bad Agile Experiences One of the agile adoption challenges somebody described, was he was in a leadership role on a team he had recently joined – lets call him Dave. This team was currently very waterfall in their ALM process, but they were about to start on a new green-field project. Dave wanted to use this new project as an opportunity to do things the “right way”, using an Agile methodology like Scrum, adopting TDD, automated builds, proper branching strategies, etc. The problem he was facing is everybody else on the team had previously gone through an “Agile Adoption” that was a horrible failure. Dave blamed this failure on the consultant brought in previously to lead this agile transition, but regardless of the reason, the team had very negative feelings towards agile, and was very resistant to trying it out again. Dave possibly had the authority to try to force the team to adopt Agile practices, but we all know that doesn’t work very well. What was Dave to do? Ultimately, the best advice was to question *why* did Dave want to adopt all these various practices. Rather than trying to convince his team that these were the “right way” to run a dev project, and trying to do a Big Bang approach to introducing change. He would be better served by identifying problems the team currently faces, have a discussion with the team to get everybody to agree that specific problems existed, then have an open discussion about ways to address those problems. This way Dave could incrementally introduce agile practices, and he doesn’t even need to identify them as “agile” practices if he doesn’t want to. For example, when we discussed with Dave, he said probably the teams biggest problem was long periods without feedback from users, then finding out too late that the software is not going to meet their needs. Rather than Dave jumping right to introducing Scrum and all it entails, it would be easier to get buy-in from team if he framed it as a discussion of existing problems, and brainstorming possible solutions. And possibly most importantly, don’t try to do massive changes all at once with a team that has not bought-into those changes. Taking an incremental approach has a greater chance of success. I see something similar in my day job all the time too. Clients who for one reason or another claim to not be fans of agile (or not ready for agile yet). But then they go on to ask me to help them get shorter feedback cycles, quicker delivery cycles, iterative development processes, etc. It’s kind of funny at times, sometimes you just need to phrase the suggestions in terms they are using and avoid the word “agile”. PS – I haven’t blogged all that much over the past couple of years, but in an attempt to motivate myself, a few of us have accepted a blogger challenge. There’s 6 of us who have all put some money into a pool, and the agreement is that we each need to blog at least once every 2-weeks. The first 2-week period that we miss we’re eliminated. Last person standing gets the money. So expect at least one blog post every couple of weeks for the near future (I hope!). And check out the blogs of the other 5 people in this blogger challenge: Steve Rogalsky: http://winnipegagilist.blogspot.ca Aaron Kowall: http://www.geekswithblogs.net/caffeinatedgeek Tyler Doerkson: http://blog.tylerdoerksen.com David Alpert: http://www.spinthemoose.com Dave White: http://www.agileramblings.com (note: site not available yet. should be shortly or he owes me some money!)

Read the article
WIF, ADFS 2 and WCF–Part 2: The Service

- by Your DisplayName here!

OK – so let’s first start with a simple WCF service and connect that to ADFS 2 for authentication. The service itself simply echoes back the user’s claims – just so we can make sure it actually works and to see how the ADFS 2 issuance rules emit claims for the service: [ServiceContract(Namespace = "urn:leastprivilege:samples")] public interface IService { [OperationContract] List<ViewClaim> GetClaims(); } public class Service : IService { public List<ViewClaim> GetClaims() { var id = Thread.CurrentPrincipal.Identity as IClaimsIdentity; return (from c in id.Claims select new ViewClaim { ClaimType = c.ClaimType, Value = c.Value, Issuer = c.Issuer, OriginalIssuer = c.OriginalIssuer }).ToList(); } } The ViewClaim data contract is simply a DTO that holds the claim information. Next is the WCF configuration – let’s have a look step by step. First I mapped all my http based services to the federation binding. This is achieved by using .NET 4.0’s protocol mapping feature (this can be also done the 3.x way – but in that scenario all services will be federated): <protocolMapping> <add scheme="http" binding="ws2007FederationHttpBinding" /> </protocolMapping> Next, I provide a standard configuration for the federation binding: <bindings> <ws2007FederationHttpBinding> <binding> <security mode="TransportWithMessageCredential"> <message establishSecurityContext="false"> <issuerMetadata address="https://server/adfs/services/trust/mex" /> </message> </security> </binding> </ws2007FederationHttpBinding> </bindings> This binding points to our ADFS 2 installation metadata endpoint. This is all that is needed for svcutil (aka “Add Service Reference”) to generate the required client configuration. I also chose mixed mode security (SSL + basic message credential) for best performance. This binding also disables session – you can control that via the establishSecurityContext setting on the binding. This has its pros and cons. Something for a separate blog post, I guess. Next, the behavior section adds support for metadata and WIF: <behaviors> <serviceBehaviors> <behavior> <serviceMetadata httpsGetEnabled="true" /> <federatedServiceHostConfiguration /> </behavior> </serviceBehaviors> </behaviors> The next step is to add the WIF specific configuration (in <microsoft.identityModel />). First we need to specify the key material that we will use to decrypt the incoming tokens. This is optional for web applications but for web services you need to protect the proof key – so this is mandatory (at least for symmetric proof keys, which is the default): <serviceCertificate> <certificateReference storeLocation="LocalMachine" storeName="My" x509FindType="FindBySubjectDistinguishedName" findValue="CN=Service" /> </serviceCertificate> You also have to specify which incoming tokens you trust. This is accomplished by registering the thumbprint of the signing keys you want to accept. You get this information from the signing certificate configured in ADFS 2: <issuerNameRegistry type="...ConfigurationBasedIssuerNameRegistry"> <trustedIssuers> <add thumbprint="d1 … db" name="ADFS" /> </trustedIssuers> </issuerNameRegistry> The last step (promised) is to add the allowed audience URIs to the configuration – WCF clients use (by default – and we’ll come back to this) the endpoint address of the service: <audienceUris> <add value="https://machine/soapadfs/service.svc" /> </audienceUris> OK – that’s it – now we have a basic WCF service that uses ADFS 2 for authentication. The next step will be to set-up ADFS to issue tokens for this service. Afterwards we can explore various options on how to use this service from a client. Stay tuned… (if you want to have a look at the full source code or peek at the upcoming parts – you can download the complete solution here)

Read the article
Unable to connect to Wireless after installing Ubuntu 12.10

- by Moulik

I am using Asus U56E laptop and after installing Ubuntu 12.10 alongside Windows 8, I am unable to connect to the Wireless. I have been trying to solve this problem since two weeks and couldn't solve it. Please help. Any answer would be appreciated. Here are some command-line results. lspci -v | grep -iA 7 network ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ lspci -v | grep -iA 7 network 02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Wireless-N + WiMAX 6150 (rev 67) Subsystem: Intel Corporation Centrino Wireless-N + WiMAX 6150 BGN Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 52 Memory at de800000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: iwlwifi Kernel modules: iwlwifi lsmod | grep iwlwifi ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ lsmod | grep iwlwifi iwlwifi 386826 0 mac80211 539908 1 iwlwifi cfg80211 206566 2 iwlwifi,mac80211 ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ dmesg | grep iwlwifi [ 57.846261] iwlwifi: Intel(R) Wireless WiFi Link AGN driver for Linux, in-tree: [ 57.846264] iwlwifi: Copyright(c) 2003-2012 Intel Corporation [ 57.846336] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >pci_resource_len = 0x00002000 [ 57.846338] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >pci_resource_base = ffffc90000c7c000 [ 57.846341] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >HW Revision ID = 0x67 [ 57.846438] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >irq 52 for MSI/MSI-X [ 59.558335] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >loaded firmware version 41.28.5.1 build 33926 [ 59.558514] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEBUG disabled [ 59.558516] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEBUGFS enabled [ 59.558517] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEVICE_TRACING enabled [ 59.558519] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEVICE_TESTMODE enabled [ 59.558520] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >CONFIG_IWLWIFI_P2P disabled [ 59.558522] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >Detected Intel(R) Centrino(R) Wireless-N + WiMAX 6150 BGN, REV=0x84 [ 59.558583] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >L1 Disabled; Enabling L0S [ 59.569083] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >device EEPROM VER=0x557, CALIB=0x6 [ 59.569085] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >Device SKU: 0x150 [ 59.569087] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >Valid Tx ant: 0x1, Valid Rx ant: 0x3 [ 59.569100] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >Tunable channels: 13 802.11bg, 0 802.11a channels [ 70.208469] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >L1 Disabled; Enabling L0S [ 70.208648] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >Radio type=0x1-0x2-0x0 [ 70.366319] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >L1 Disabled; Enabling L0S [ 70.366470] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: >Radio type=0x1-0x2-0x0 sudo lshw -c network ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo lshw -c network *-network description: Wireless interface product: Centrino Wireless-N + WiMAX 6150 vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0 logical name: wlan0 version: 67 serial: 40:25:c2:84:99:c4 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi driverversion=3.5.0-17-generic firmware=41.28.5.1 build 33926 latency=0 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bgn resources: irq:52 memory:de800000-de801fff *-network description: Ethernet interface product: AR8151 v2.0 Gigabit Ethernet vendor: Atheros Communications Inc. physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:04:00.0 logical name: eth0 version: c0 serial: 54:04:a6:2b:6a:ef capacity: 1Gbit/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress vpd bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=atl1c driverversion=1.0.1.0-NAPI latency=0 link=no multicast=yes port=twisted pair resources: irq:54 memory:dd400000-dd43ffff ioport:a000(size=128) ifconfig ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ ifconfig eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 54:04:a6:2b:6a:ef UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B) lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:176 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:176 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:14368 (14.3 KB) TX bytes:14368 (14.3 KB) wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 40:25:c2:84:99:c4 UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B) iwconfig ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ iwconfig eth0 no wireless extensions. lo no wireless extensions. wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:off/any Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=15 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off iwlist scan ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ iwlist scan eth0 Interface doesn't support scanning. lo Interface doesn't support scanning. wlan0 No scan results nm-tool ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ nm-tool NetworkManager Tool State: disconnected - Device: eth0 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Type: Wired Driver: atl1c State: unavailable Default: no HW Address: 54:04:A6:2B:6A:EF Capabilities: Carrier Detect: yes Wired Properties Carrier: off - Device: wlan0 ---------------------------------------------------------------- Type: 802.11 WiFi Driver: iwlwifi State: disconnected Default: no HW Address: 40:25:C2:84:99:C4 Capabilities: Wireless Properties WEP Encryption: yes WPA Encryption: yes WPA2 Encryption: yes Wireless Access Points hypeness2: Infra, 00:21:29:DA:08:4F, Freq 2462 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 42 WPA love: Infra, 68:7F:74:17:02:66, Freq 2412 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 19 WPA WPA2 DIRECT-MwSCX-3400Pamela: Infra, 02:15:99:A3:3F:AC, Freq 2412 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 22 WPA2 router: Infra, 1C:AF:F7:D6:76:F3, Freq 2417 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 20 WPA2 wing: Infra, E8:40:F2:34:E4:F7, Freq 2437 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 20 WPA WPA2 132LINKSYS: Infra, 00:1A:70:80:1F:E9, Freq 2437 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 57 WEP VMITTAL: Infra, E0:46:9A:3C:F0:C4, Freq 2412 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 27 WEP HP-Print-10-LaserJet 1025: Infra, 7C:E9:D3:7E:F8:10, Freq 2437 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 59 ACNBB: Infra, 00:26:75:22:A6:2F, Freq 2437 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 20 SATKAIVAL: Infra, 00:18:E7:CE:69:A6, Freq 2412 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 69 WPA WPA2 hypeness: Infra, B8:E6:25:24:C3:B1, Freq 2437 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 54 WPA WPA2 CSNetwork: Infra, BC:14:01:58:C5:88, Freq 2437 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 25 WPA WPA2 tharma: Infra, BC:14:01:E2:06:18, Freq 2412 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 15 WPA WPA2 Active2.4: Infra, 10:6F:3F:0E:F3:8E, Freq 2462 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 17 WPA WPA2 ACNBB: Infra, 00:26:75:58:4E:7A, Freq 2437 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 85 KO: Infra, BC:14:01:2E:AF:A8, Freq 2452 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 22 WPA WPA2 FEAR: Infra, 00:18:4D:C0:BC:58, Freq 2462 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 17 WPA Pamela: Infra, BC:14:01:52:F6:F8, Freq 2412 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 24 WPA WPA2 bvrk2: Infra, 78:CD:8E:7B:3C:79, Freq 2457 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 19 WPA WPA2 BELL030: Infra, D8:6C:E9:17:AF:09, Freq 2462 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 22 WPA2 Desai: Infra, 00:1D:7E:52:FB:C5, Freq 2437 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 14 WEP Sritharan: Infra, BC:14:01:E5:59:78, Freq 2462 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 19 WPA WPA2 PFN: Infra, 00:13:10:8B:CF:45, Freq 2437 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 19 WEP rfkill list all ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ rfkill list all 0: asus-wlan: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 1: asus-wimax: WiMAX Soft blocked: yes Hard blocked: no 2: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no so these are some more results sudo modprobe -r iwlwifi ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo modprobe -r iwlwifi sudo modprobe iwlwifi 11n_disable=1 ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo modprobe iwlwifi 11n_disable=1 echo "blacklist asus_wmi" | sudo tee -a /etcmodprobe.d/blacklist.conf ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ echo "blacklist asus_wmi" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf blacklist asus_wmi echo "options iwlwifi 11n_disable=1" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/iwlwifi.conf ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ echo "options iwlwifi 11n_disable=1" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/iwlwifi.conf options iwlwifi 11n_disable=1 sudo modprobe -rfv iwlwifi ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo modprobe -rfv iwlwifi rmmod /lib/modules/3.5.0-17-generic/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/iwlwifi/iwlwifi.ko rmmod /lib/modules/3.5.0-17-generic/kernel/net/mac80211/mac80211.ko rmmod /lib/modules/3.5.0-17-generic/kernel/net/wireless/cfg80211.ko sudo modprobe -v iwlwifi ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo modprobe -v iwlwifi insmod /lib/modules/3.5.0-17-generic/kernel/net/wireless/cfg80211.ko insmod /lib/modules/3.5.0-17-generic/kernel/net/mac80211/mac80211.ko insmod /lib/modules/3.5.0-17-generic/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/iwlwifi/iwlwifi.ko 11n_disable=1

Read the article
5 Lessons learnt in localization / multi language support in WPF

- by MarkPearl

For the last few months I have been secretly working away at the second version of an application that we initially released a few years ago. It’s called MaxCut and it is a free panel/cut optimizer for the woodwork, glass and metal industry. One of the motivations for writing MaxCut was to get an end to end experience in developing an application for general consumption. From the early days of v1 of MaxCut I would get the odd email thanking me for the software and then listing a few suggestions on how to improve it. Two of the most dominant suggestions that we received were… Support for imperial measurements (the original program only supported the metric system) Multi language support (we had someone who volunteered to translate the program into Japanese for us). I am not going to dive into the Imperial to Metric support in todays blog post, but I would like to cover a few brief lessons we learned in adding support for multi-language functionality in the software. I have sectioned them below under different lessons. Lesson 1 – Build multi-language support in from the start So the first lesson I learnt was if you know you are going to do multi language support – build it in from the very beginning! One of the power points of WPF/Silverlight is data binding in XAML and so while it wasn’t to painful to retro fit multi language support into the programing, it was still time consuming and a bit tedious to go through mounds and mounds of views and would have been a minor job to have implemented this while the form was being designed. Lesson 2 – Accommodate for varying word lengths using Grids The next lesson was a little harder to learn and was learnt a bit further down the road in the development cycle. We developed everything in English, assuming that other languages would have similar character length words for equivalent meanings… don’t!. A word that is short in your language may be of varying character lengths in other languages. Some language like Dutch and German allow for concatenation of nouns which has the potential to create really long words. We picked up a few places where our views had been structured incorrectly so that if a word was to long it would get clipped off or cut out. To get around this we began using the WPF grid extensively with column widths that would automatically expand if they needed to. Generally speaking the grid replacement got round this hurdle, and if in future you have a choice between a stack panel or a grid – think twice before going for the easier option… often the grid will be a bit more work to setup, but will be more flexible. Lesson 3 – Separate the separators Our initial run through moving the words to a resource dictionary led us to make what I thought was one potential mistake. If we had a label like the following… “length : “ In the resource dictionary we put it as a single entry. This is fine until you start using a word more than once. For instance in our scenario we used the word “length’ frequently. with different variations of the word with grammar and separators included in the resource we ended up having what I would consider a bloated dictionary. When we removed the separators from the words and put them as their own resources we saw a dramatic reduction in dictionary size… so something that looked like this… “length : “ “length. “ “length?” Was reduced to… “length” “:” “?” “.” While this may not seem like a reduction at first glance, consider that the separators “:?.” are used everywhere and suddenly you see a real reduction in bloat. Lesson 4 – Centralize the Language Dictionary This lesson was learnt at the very end of the project after we had already had a release candidate out in the wild. Because our translations would be done on a volunteer basis and remotely, we wanted it to be really simple for someone to translate our program into another language. As a common design practice we had tiered the application so that we had a business logic layer, a ui layer, etc. The problem was in several of these layers we had resource files specific for that layer. What this resulted in was us having multiple resource files that we would need to send to our translators. To add to our problems, some of the wordings were duplicated in different resource files, which would result in additional frustration from our translators as they felt they were duplicating work. Eventually the workaround was to make a separate project in VS2010 with just the language translations. We then exposed the dictionary as public within this project and made it as a reference to the other projects within the solution. This solved out problem as now we had a central dictionary and could remove any duplication's. Lesson 5 – Make a dummy translation file to test that you haven’t missed anything The final lesson learnt about multi language support in WPF was when checking if you had forgotten to translate anything in the inline code, make a test resource file with dummy data. Ideally you want the data for each word to be identical. In our instance we made one which had all the resource key values pointing to a value of test. This allowed us point the language file to our test resource file and very quickly browse through the program and see if we had missed any linking. The alternative to this approach is to have two language files and swap between the two while running the program to make sure that you haven’t missed anything, but the downside of dual language file approach is that it is much a lot harder spotting a mistake if everything is different – almost like playing Where’s Wally / Waldo. It is much easier spotting variance in uniformity – meaning when you put the “test’ keyword for everything, anything that didn’t say “test” stuck out like a sore thumb. So these are my top five lessons learnt on implementing multi language support in WPF. Feel free to make any suggestions in the comments section if you feel maybe something is more important than one of these or if I got it wrong!

Read the article
Webcast Q&A: Qualcomm Provides a Seamless Experience for Customers with Oracle WebCenter

- by kellsey.ruppel

Last Thursday we had the second webcast in our WebCenter in Action webcast series, "Qualcomm Provides a Seamless Experience for Customers with Oracle WebCenter, where customer Michael Chander from Qualcomm and Vince Casarez & Gourav Goyal from Oracle Partner Keste shared how Oracle WebCenter is powering Qualcomm’s externally facing website and providing a seamless experience for their customers. In case you missed it, here's a recap of the Q&A. Mike Chandler, Qualcomm Q: Did you run into any issues when integrating all of the different applications together?A: Definitely, our main challenges were in the area of user provisioning and security propagation, all the standard stuff you might expect when hooking up SSO for authentication and authorization. In addition, we spent several iterations getting the UI’s in sync. While everyone was given the same digital material to build too, each team interpreted and implemented it their own way. Initially as a user navigated, if you were looking for it, you could slight variations in color or font or width , stuff like that. So we had to pull all the developers responsible for the UI together and get pixel level agreement on a lot of things so we could ensure seamless transitions across applications. Q: What has been the biggest benefit your end users have seen?A: Wow, there have been several. An SSO enabled environment was huge a win for our users. The portal application that this replaced had not really been invested in by the business. With this project, we had full business participation and backing, and it really showed in some key areas like the shopping experience. For example, while ordering in the previous site, the items did not have any pictures or really usable descriptions. A tremendous amount of work was done to try and make the site more intuitive and user friendly. Site performance has also drastically improved thanks to new hardware, improved database design, and of course the fact that ADF has made great strides in runtime performance. Q: Was there any resistance internally when implementing the solution? If so, how did you overcome that?A: Within a large company, I’m sure there is always going to be competition for large projects, as there was here. Once we got through the technical analysis and settled on the technology choices, it was actually no resistance to implementing the solution. This project was fully driven by the business with the aim of long term growth. I can confidently say that the fact that this project was given the utmost importance by both the business and IT really help put down any resistance that you would typically see while implementing a new solution. Q: Given the performance, what do you estimate to be the top end capacity of the system? A:I think our top end capacity is really only limited by our hardware. I’m comfortable saying we could grow 10x on our current hardware, both in terms of transactions and users. We can easily spin up new JVM instances if needed. We already use less JVM’s than we had planned. In addition, ADF is doing a very good job with his connection pooling and application module pooling, so we see a very good ratio of users connected to the systems vs db connections, without impacting performace. Q: What's the overview or summary of feedback from the users interacting with the site?A: Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive from both the business and our customers. They’re very happy with the new SSO environment , the new LAF, and the performance of the site. Of course, it’s not all roses. No matter what, there are always going to be people that don’t like the layout or the color scheme, etc. By and large though, customers are happy and the business is happy. Q: Can you describe the impressions about the site before and after the project within Qualcomm?A: Before the project, the site worked and people were using it, but most people were not happy with it. It was slow and tended to be a bit tempermental, for example a user would perform a transaction and the system would throw and unexpected error. The user could back up and retry the steps and things would work fine, so why didn’t work the first time?. From a UI perspective, we’d hear comments like it looked like it was built by a high school student. Vince Casarez & Gourav Goyal, Keste Q: Did you run into any obstacles when implementing the solution?A: It's interesting some people call them "obstacles" on this project we just called them "dependencies". There were both technical and business related dependencies that we had to work out. Mike points out the SSO dependencies and the coordination and synchronization between the teams to have a seamless login experience and a seamless end user experience. There was also a set of dependencies on the User Acceptance testing to make sure that everyone understood the use cases for how the system would be used. With a branching into a new market and trying to match a simple user experience as many consumer sites have today, there was always a tendency for the team members to provide their suggestions on how things could be simpler. But with all the work up front on the user design and getting the business driving this set of experiences, this minimized the downstream suggestions that tend to distract a team. In this case, all the work up front allowed us to enumerate the "dependencies" and keep the distractions to a minimum. Q: Was there a lot of custom work that needed to be done for this particular solution?A: The focus for this particular solution was really on the custom processes. The interesting thing is that with the data flows and the integration with applications, there are some pre-built integrations, but realistically for the process flow, we had to build those. The framework and tooling we used made things easier so we didn’t have to implement core functionality, like transitioning from screen to screen or from flow to flow. The design feature of Task Flows really helped speed the development and keep the component infrastructure in line with the dynamic processes. Task flows and other elements like Skins are core to the infrastructure or technology stack of Oracle. This then allowed the team to center the project focus around the business flows and use cases to meet the core requirements and keep the project on time. Q: What do you think were the keys to success for rolling out WebCenter?A: The 5 main keys to success were: 1) Sponsorship from the whole organization around this project from senior executive agreement, business owners driving functionality, and IT development alignment; 2) Upfront design planning and use case definition to clearly define the project scope and requirements; 3) Focussed development and project management aligned with the top level goals and drivers; 4) User acceptance and usability testing along the way to identify potential issues and direct resolution of the issues; and 5) Constant prioritization of the issues for development to fix by the business. It also helps to have great team chemistry and really smart people working on the project. If you missed the webcast, be sure to catch the replay to see a live demonstration of WebCenter in action! Qualcomm Provides a Seamless Experience for Customers with Oracle WebCenter from Oracle WebCenter

Read the article
The True Cost of a Solution

- by D'Arcy Lussier

I had a Twitter chat recently with someone suggesting Oracle and SQL Server were losing out to OSS (Open Source Software) in the enterprise due to their issues with scaling or being too generic (one size fits all). I challenged that a bit, as my experience with enterprise sized clients has been different – adverse to OSS but receptive to an established vendor. The response I got was: Found it easier to influence change by showing how X can’t solve our problems or X is extremely costly to scale. Money talks. I think this is definitely the right approach for anyone pitching an alternate or alien technology as part of a solution: identify the issue, identify the solution, then present pros and cons including a cost/benefit analysis. What can happen though is we get tunnel vision and don’t present a full view of the costs associated with a solution. An “Acura”te Example (I’m so clever…) This is my dream vehicle, a Crystal Black Pearl coloured Acura MDX with the SH-AWD package! We’re a family of 4 (5 if my daughters ever get their wish of adding a dog), and I’ve always wanted a luxury type of vehicle, so this is a perfect replacement in a few years when our Rav 4 has hit the 8 – 10 year mark. MSRP – $62,890 But as we all know, that’s not *really* the cost of the vehicle. There’s taxes and fees added on, there’s the extended warranty if I choose to purchase it, there’s the finance rate that needs to be factored in… MSRP – $62,890 Taxes – $7,546 Warranty - $2,500 SubTotal – $72,936 Finance Charge – $ 1094.04 Grand Total – $74,030 Well! Glad we did that exercise – we discovered an extra $11k added on to the MSRP! Well now we have our true price…or do we? Lifetime of the Vehicle I’m expecting to have this vehicle for 7 – 10 years. While the hard cost of the vehicle is known and dealt with, the costs to run and maintain the vehicle are on top of this. I did some research, and here’s what I’ve found: Fuel and Mileage Gas prices are high as it is for regular fuel, but getting into an MDX will require that I *only* purchase premium fuel, which comes at a premium price. I need to expect my bill at the pump to be higher. Comparing the MDX to my 2007 Rav4 also shows I’ll be gassing up more often. The Rav4 has a city MPG of 21, while the MDX plummets to 16! The MDX does have a bigger fuel tank though, so all in all the number of times I hit the pumps might even out. Still, I estimate I’ll be spending approximately $8000 – $10000 more on gas over a 10 year period than my current Rav4. Service Options Limited Although I have options with my Toyota here in Winnipeg (we have 4 Toyota dealerships), I do go to my original dealer for any service work. Still, I like the fact that I have options. However, there’s only one Acura dealership in all of Winnipeg! So if, for whatever reason, I’m not satisfied with the level of service I’m stuck. Non Warranty Service Work Also let’s not forget that there’s a bulk of work required every year that is *not* covered under warranty – oil changes, tire rotations, brake pads, etc. I expect I’ll need to get new tires at the 5 years mark as well, which can easily be $1200 – $1500 (I just paid $1000 for new tires for the Rav4 and we’re at the 5 year mark). Now these aren’t going to be *new* costs that I’m not used to from our existing vehicles, but they should still be factored in. I’d budget $500/year, or $5000 over the 10 years I’ll own the vehicle. Final Assessment So let’s re-assess the true cost of my dream MDX: MSRP $62,890 Taxes $7,546 Warranty $2,500 Finance Charge $1094 Gas $10,000 Service Work $5000 Grand Total $89,030 So now I have a better idea of 10 year cost overall, and I’ve identified some concerns with local service availability. And there’s now much more to consider over the original $62,890 price tag. Tying This Back to Technology Solutions The process that we just went through is no different than what organizations do when considering implementing a new system, technology, or technology based solution, within their environments. It’s easy to tout the short term cost savings of particular product/platform/technology in a vacuum. But its when you consider the wider impact that the true cost comes into play. Let’s create a scenario: A company is not happy with its current data reporting suite. An employee suggests moving to an open source solution. The selling points are: - Because its open source its free - The organization would have access to the source code so they could alter it however they wished - It provided features not available with the current reporting suite At first this sounds great to the management and executive, but then they start asking some questions and uncover more information: - The OSS product is built on a technology not used anywhere within the organization - There are no vendors offering product support for the OSS product - The OSS product requires a specific server platform to operate on, one that’s not standard in the organization All of a sudden, the true cost of implementing this solution is starting to become clearer. The company might save money on licensing costs, but their training costs would increase significantly – developers would need to learn how to develop in the technology the OSS solution was built on, IT staff must learn how to set up and maintain a new server platform within their existing infrastructure, and if a problem was found there was no vendor to contact for support. The true cost of implementing a “free” OSS solution is actually spinning up a project to implement it within the organization – no small cost. And that’s just the short-term cost. Now the organization must ensure they maintain trained staff who can make changes to the OSS reporting solution and IT staff that will stay knowledgeable in the new server platform. If those skills are very niche, then higher labour costs could be incurred if those people are hard to find or if trained employees use that knowledge as leverage for higher pay. Maybe a vendor exists that will contract out support, but then there are those costs to consider as well. And let’s not forget end-user training – in our example, anyone that runs reports will need to be trained on how to use the new system. Here’s the Point We still tend to look at software in an “off the shelf” kind of way. It’s very easy to say “oh, this product is better than vendor x’s product – and its free because its OSS!” but the reality is that implementing any new technology within an organization has a cost regardless of the retail price of the product. Training, integration, support – these are real costs that impact an organization and span multiple departments. Whether you’re pitching an improved business process, a new system, or a new technology, you need to consider the bigger picture costs of implementation. What you define as success (in our example, having better reporting functionality) might not be what others define as success if implementing your solution causes them issues. A true enterprise solution needs to consider the entire enterprise.

Read the article
PASS Summit – looking back on my first time

- by Fatherjack

So I was lucky enough to get my first experience of PASS Summit this year and took some time beforehand to read some blogs and reference material to get an idea on what to do and how to get the best out of my visit. Having been to other conferences – technical and non-technical – I had a reasonable idea on the routine and what to expect in general. Here is a list of a few things that I have learned/remembered as the week has gone by. Wear comfortable shoes. This actually needs to be broadened to Take several pairs of comfortable shoes. You will be spending many many hours, for several days one after another. Having comfortable feet that can literally support you for the duration will make the week in general a whole lot better. Not only at the conference but getting to and from you could well be walking. In the evenings you will be walking around town and standing talking in various bars and clubs. Looking back, on some days I was on my feet for over 20 hours. Make friends. This is a given for the long term benefits it brings but there is also an immediate reward in being at a conference with a friend or two. Some events are bigger and more popular than others and some have the type of session that every single attendee will want to be in. This is great for those that get in but if you are in the bathroom or queuing for coffee and you miss out it sucks. Having a friend that can get in to a room and reserve you a seat is a great advantage to make sure you get the content that you want to see and still have the coffee that you need. Don’t go to every session you want to see This might sound counter intuitive and it relies on the sessions being recorded in some way to guarantee you don’t totally miss out. Both PASS Summit and SQL Bits sessions are recorded (summit is audio, SQLBits is video) and this means that if you get into a good conversation with someone over a coffee you don’t have to break it up to go to a session. Obviously there is a trade-off here and you need to decide on the tipping point for yourself but a conversation at a place like this could make a big difference to the next contract or employer you have or it might simply be great catching up with some friends you don’t see so often. Go to at least one session you don’t want to Again, this will seem to be contrary to normal logic but there is no reason why you shouldn’t learn about a part of SQL Server that isn’t part of your daily routine. Not only will you learn something new but you will also pick up on the feelings and attitudes of the people in the session. So, if you are a DBA, head off to a BI session and so on. You’ll hear BI speakers speaking to a BI audience and get to understand their point of view and reasoning for making the decisions they do. You will also appreciate the way that your decisions and instructions affect the way they have to work. This will help you a lot when you are on a project, working with multiple teams and make you all more productive. Socialise While you are at the conference venue, speak to people. Ask questions, be interested in whoever you are speaking to. You get chances to talk to new friends at breakfast, dinner and every break between sessions. The only people that might not talk to you would be speakers that are about to go and give a session, in most cases speakers like peace and quiet before going on stage. Other than that the people around you are just waiting for someone to talk to them so make the first move. There is a whole lot going on outside of the conference hours and you should make an effort to join in with some of this too. At karaoke evenings or just out for a quiet drink with a few of the people you meet at the conference. Either way, don’t be a recluse and hide in your room or be alone out in the town. Don’t talk to people Once again this sounds wrong but stay with me. I have spoken to a number of speakers since Summit 2013 finished and they have all mentioned the time it has taken them to move about the conference venue due to people stopping them for a chat or to ask a question. 45 minutes to walk from a session room to the speaker room in one case. Wow. While none of the speakers were upset about this sort of delay I think delegates should take the situation into account and possibly defer their question to an email or to a time when the person they want is clearly less in demand. Give them a chance to enjoy the conference in the same way that you are, they may actually want to go to a session or just have a rest after giving their session – talking for 75 minutes is hard work, taking an extra 45 minutes right after is unbelievable. I certainly hope that they get good feedback on their sessions and perhaps if you spoke to a speaker outside a session you can give them a mention in the ‘any other comments’ part of the feedback, just to convey your gratitude for them giving up their time and expertise for free. Say thank you I just mentioned giving the speakers a clear, visible ‘thank you’ in the feedback but there are plenty of people that help make any conference the success it is that would really appreciate hearing that their efforts are valued. People on the registration desk, volunteers giving schedule guidance and directions, people on the community zone are all volunteers giving their time to help you have the best experience possible. Send an email to PASS and convey your thoughts about the work that was done. Maybe you want to be a volunteer next time so you could enquire how you get into that position at the same time. This isn’t an exclusive list and you may agree or disagree with the points I have made, please add anything you think is good advice in the comments. I’d like to finish by saying a huge thank you to all the people involved in planning, facilitating and executing the PASS Summit 2013, it was an excellent event and I know many others think it was a totally worthwhile event to attend.

Read the article
BI Applications overview

- by sv744

Welcome to Oracle BI applications blog! This blog will talk about various features, general roadmap, description of functionality and implementation steps related to Oracle BI applications. In the first post we start with an overview of the BI apps and will delve deeper into some of the topics below in the upcoming weeks and months. If there are other topics you would like us to talk about, pl feel free to provide feedback on that. The Oracle BI applications are a set of pre-built applications that enable pervasive BI by providing role-based insight for each functional area, including sales, service, marketing, contact center, finance, supplier/supply chain, HR/workforce, and executive management. For example, Sales Analytics includes role-based applications for sales executives, sales management, as well as front-line sales reps, each of whom have different needs. The applications integrate and transform data from a range of enterprise sources—including Siebel, Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP, and others—into actionable intelligence for each business function and user role. This blog starts with the key benefits and characteristics of Oracle BI applications. In a series of subsequent blogs, each of these points will be explained in detail. Why BI apps? Demonstrate the value of BI to a business user, show reports / dashboards / model that can answer their business questions as part of the sales cycle. Demonstrate technical feasibility of BI project and significantly lower risk and improve success Build Vs Buy benefit Don’t have to start with a blank sheet of paper. Help consolidate disparate systems Data integration in M&A situations Insulate BI consumers from changes in the OLTP Present OLTP data and highlight issues of poor data / missing data – and improve data quality and accuracy Prebuilt Integrations BI apps support prebuilt integrations against leading ERP sources: Fusion Applications, E- Business Suite, Peoplesoft, JD Edwards, Siebel, SAP Co-developed with inputs from functional experts in BI and Applications teams. Out of the box dimensional model to source model mappings Multi source and Multi Instance support Rich Data Model BI apps have a very rich dimensionsal data model built over 10 years that incorporates best practises from BI modeling perspective as well as reflect the source system complexities Thanks for reading a long post, and be on the lookout for future posts. We will look forward to your valuable feedback on these topics as well as suggestions on what other topics would you like us to cover. I Conformed dimensional model across all business subject areas allows cross functional reporting, e.g. customer / supplier 360 Over 360 fact tables across 7 product areas CRM – 145, SCM – 47, Financials – 28, Procurement – 20, HCM – 27, Projects – 18, Campus Solutions – 21, PLM - 56 Supported by 300 physical dimensions Support for extensive calendars; Gregorian, enterprise and ledger based Conformed data model and metrics for real time vs warehouse based reporting Multi-tenant enabled Extensive BI related transformations BI apps ETL and data integration support various transformations required for dimensional models and reporting requirements. All these have been distilled into common patterns and abstracted logic which can be readily reused across different modules Slowly Changing Dimension support Hierarchy flattening support Row / Column Hybrid Hierarchy Flattening As Is vs. As Was hierarchy support Currency Conversion :- Support for 3 corporate, CRM, ledger and transaction currencies UOM conversion Internationalization / Localization Dynamic Data translations Code standardization (Domains) Historical Snapshots Cycle and process lifecycle computations Balance Facts Equalization of GL accounting chartfields/segments Standardized values for categorizing GL accounts Reconciliation between GL and subledgers to track accounted/transferred/posted transactions to GL Materialization of data only available through costly and complex APIs e.g. Fusion Payroll, EBS / Fusion Accruals Complex event Interpretation of source data – E.g. o What constitutes a transfer o Deriving supervisors via position hierarchy o Deriving primary assignment in PSFT o Categorizing and transposition to measures of Payroll Balances to specific metrics to support side by side comparison of measures of for example Fixed Salary, Variable Salary, Tax, Bonus, Overtime Payments. o Counting of Events – E.g. converting events to fact counters so that for example the number of hires can easily be added up and compared alongside the total transfers and terminations. Multi pass processing of multiple sources e.g. headcount, salary, promotion, performance to allow side to side comparison. Adding value to data to aid analysis through banding, additional domain classifications and groupings to allow higher level analytical reporting and data discovery Calculation of complex measures examples: o COGs, DSO, DPO, Inventory turns etc o Transfers within a Hierarchy or out of / into a hierarchy relative to view point in hierarchy. Configurability and Extensibility support BI apps offer support for extensibility for various entities as automated extensibility or part of extension methodology Key Flex fields and Descriptive Flex support Extensible attribute support (JDE) Conformed Domains ETL Architecture BI apps offer a modular adapter architecture which allows support of multiple product lines into a single conformed model Multi Source Multi Technology Orchestration – creates load plan taking into account task dependencies and customers deployment to generate a plan based on a customers of multiple complex etl tasks Plan optimization allowing parallel ETL tasks Oracle: Bit map indexes and partition management High availability support Follow the sun support. TCO BI apps support several utilities / capabilities that help with overall total cost of ownership and ensure a rapid implementation Improved cost of ownership – lower cost to deploy On-going support for new versions of the source application Task based setups flows Data Lineage Functional setup performed in Web UI by Functional person Configuration Test to Production support Security BI apps support both data and object security enabling implementations to quickly configure the application as per the reporting security needs Fine grain object security at report / dashboard and presentation catalog level Data Security integration with source systems Extensible to support external data security rules Extensive Set of KPIs Over 7000 base and derived metrics across all modules Time series calculations (YoY, % growth etc) Common Currency and UOM reporting Cross subject area KPIs (analyzing HR vs GL data, drill from GL to AP/AR, etc) Prebuilt reports and dashboards 3000+ prebuilt reports supporting a large number of industries Hundreds of role based dashboards Dynamic currency conversion at dashboard level Highly tuned Performance The BI apps have been tuned over the years for both a very performant ETL and dashboard performance. The applications use best practises and advanced database features to enable the best possible performance. Optimized data model for BI and analytic queries Prebuilt aggregates& the ability for customers to create their own aggregates easily on warehouse facts allows for scalable end user performance Incremental extracts and loads Incremental Aggregate build Automatic table index and statistics management Parallel ETL loads Source system deletes handling Low latency extract with Golden Gate Micro ETL support Bitmap Indexes Partitioning support Modularized deployment, start small and add other subject areas seamlessly Source Specfic Staging and Real Time Schema Support for source specific operational reporting schema for EBS, PSFT, Siebel and JDE Application Integrations The BI apps also allow for integration with source systems as well as other applications that provide value add through BI and enable BI consumption during operational decision making Embedded dashboards for Fusion, EBS and Siebel applications Action Link support Marketing Segmentation Sales Predictor Dashboard Territory Management External Integrations The BI apps data integration choices include support for loading extenral data External data enrichment choices : UNSPSC, Item class etc. Extensible Spend Classification Broad Deployment Choices Exalytics support Databases : Oracle, Exadata, Teradata, DB2, MSSQL ETL tool of choice : ODI (coming), Informatica Extensible and Customizable Extensible architecture and Methodology to add custom and external content Upgradable across releases

Read the article
How to follow object on CatmullRomSplines at constant speed (e.g. train and train carriage)?

- by Simon

I have a CatmullRomSpline, and using the very good example at https://github.com/libgdx/libgdx/wiki/Path-interface-%26-Splines I have my object moving at an even pace over the spline. Using a simple train and carriage example, I now want to have the carriage follow the train at the same speed as the train (not jolting along as it does with my code below). This leads into my main questions: How can I make the carriage have the same constant speed as the train and make it non jerky (it has something to do with the derivative I think, I don't understand how that part works)? Why do I need to divide by the line length to convert to metres per second, and is that correct? It wasn't done in the linked examples? I have used the example I linked to above, and modified for my specific example: private void process(CatmullRomSpline catmullRomSpline) { // Render path with precision of 1000 points renderPath(catmullRomSpline, 1000); float length = catmullRomSpline.approxLength(catmullRomSpline.spanCount * 1000); // Render the "train" Vector2 trainDerivative = new Vector2(); Vector2 trainLocation = new Vector2(); catmullRomSpline.derivativeAt(trainDerivative, current); // For some reason need to divide by length to convert from pixel speed to metres per second but I do not // really understand why I need it, it wasn't done in the examples??????? current += (Gdx.graphics.getDeltaTime() * speed / length) / trainDerivative.len(); catmullRomSpline.valueAt(trainLocation, current); renderCircleAtLocation(trainLocation); if (current >= 1) { current -= 1; } // Render the "carriage" Vector2 carriageLocation = new Vector2(); float carriagePercentageCovered = (((current * length) - 1f) / length); // I would like it to follow at 1 metre behind carriagePercentageCovered = Math.max(carriagePercentageCovered, 0); catmullRomSpline.valueAt(carriageLocation, carriagePercentageCovered); renderCircleAtLocation(carriageLocation); } private void renderPath(CatmullRomSpline catmullRomSpline, int k) { // catMulPoints would normally be cached when initialising, but for sake of example... Vector2[] catMulPoints = new Vector2[k]; for (int i = 0; i < k; ++i) { catMulPoints[i] = new Vector2(); catmullRomSpline.valueAt(catMulPoints[i], ((float) i) / ((float) k - 1)); } SHAPE_RENDERER.begin(ShapeRenderer.ShapeType.Line); SHAPE_RENDERER.setColor(Color.NAVY); for (int i = 0; i < k - 1; ++i) { SHAPE_RENDERER.line((Vector2) catMulPoints[i], (Vector2) catMulPoints[i + 1]); } SHAPE_RENDERER.end(); } private void renderCircleAtLocation(Vector2 location) { SHAPE_RENDERER.begin(ShapeRenderer.ShapeType.Filled); SHAPE_RENDERER.setColor(Color.YELLOW); SHAPE_RENDERER.circle(location.x, location.y, .5f); SHAPE_RENDERER.end(); } To create a decent sized CatmullRomSpline for testing this out: Vector2[] controlPoints = makeControlPointsArray(); CatmullRomSpline myCatmull = new CatmullRomSpline(controlPoints, false); .... private Vector2[] makeControlPointsArray() { Vector2[] pointsArray = new Vector2[78]; pointsArray[0] = new Vector2(1.681817f, 10.379999f); pointsArray[1] = new Vector2(2.045455f, 10.379999f); pointsArray[2] = new Vector2(2.663636f, 10.479999f); pointsArray[3] = new Vector2(3.027272f, 10.700000f); pointsArray[4] = new Vector2(3.663636f, 10.939999f); pointsArray[5] = new Vector2(4.245455f, 10.899999f); pointsArray[6] = new Vector2(4.736363f, 10.720000f); pointsArray[7] = new Vector2(4.754545f, 10.339999f); pointsArray[8] = new Vector2(4.518181f, 9.860000f); pointsArray[9] = new Vector2(3.790908f, 9.340000f); pointsArray[10] = new Vector2(3.172727f, 8.739999f); pointsArray[11] = new Vector2(3.300000f, 8.340000f); pointsArray[12] = new Vector2(3.700000f, 8.159999f); pointsArray[13] = new Vector2(4.227272f, 8.520000f); pointsArray[14] = new Vector2(4.681818f, 8.819999f); pointsArray[15] = new Vector2(5.081817f, 9.200000f); pointsArray[16] = new Vector2(5.463636f, 9.460000f); pointsArray[17] = new Vector2(5.972727f, 9.300000f); pointsArray[18] = new Vector2(6.063636f, 8.780000f); pointsArray[19] = new Vector2(6.027272f, 8.259999f); pointsArray[20] = new Vector2(5.700000f, 7.739999f); pointsArray[21] = new Vector2(5.300000f, 7.440000f); pointsArray[22] = new Vector2(4.645454f, 7.179999f); pointsArray[23] = new Vector2(4.136363f, 6.940000f); pointsArray[24] = new Vector2(3.427272f, 6.720000f); pointsArray[25] = new Vector2(2.572727f, 6.559999f); pointsArray[26] = new Vector2(1.900000f, 7.100000f); pointsArray[27] = new Vector2(2.336362f, 7.440000f); pointsArray[28] = new Vector2(2.590908f, 7.940000f); pointsArray[29] = new Vector2(2.318181f, 8.500000f); pointsArray[30] = new Vector2(1.663636f, 8.599999f); pointsArray[31] = new Vector2(1.209090f, 8.299999f); pointsArray[32] = new Vector2(1.118181f, 7.700000f); pointsArray[33] = new Vector2(1.045455f, 6.880000f); pointsArray[34] = new Vector2(1.154545f, 6.100000f); pointsArray[35] = new Vector2(1.281817f, 5.580000f); pointsArray[36] = new Vector2(1.700000f, 5.320000f); pointsArray[37] = new Vector2(2.190908f, 5.199999f); pointsArray[38] = new Vector2(2.900000f, 5.100000f); pointsArray[39] = new Vector2(3.700000f, 5.100000f); pointsArray[40] = new Vector2(4.372727f, 5.220000f); pointsArray[41] = new Vector2(4.827272f, 5.220000f); pointsArray[42] = new Vector2(5.463636f, 5.160000f); pointsArray[43] = new Vector2(5.554545f, 4.700000f); pointsArray[44] = new Vector2(5.245453f, 4.340000f); pointsArray[45] = new Vector2(4.445455f, 4.280000f); pointsArray[46] = new Vector2(3.609091f, 4.260000f); pointsArray[47] = new Vector2(2.718181f, 4.160000f); pointsArray[48] = new Vector2(1.990908f, 4.140000f); pointsArray[49] = new Vector2(1.427272f, 3.980000f); pointsArray[50] = new Vector2(1.609090f, 3.580000f); pointsArray[51] = new Vector2(2.136363f, 3.440000f); pointsArray[52] = new Vector2(3.227272f, 3.280000f); pointsArray[53] = new Vector2(3.972727f, 3.340000f); pointsArray[54] = new Vector2(5.027272f, 3.360000f); pointsArray[55] = new Vector2(5.718181f, 3.460000f); pointsArray[56] = new Vector2(6.100000f, 4.240000f); pointsArray[57] = new Vector2(6.209091f, 4.500000f); pointsArray[58] = new Vector2(6.118181f, 5.320000f); pointsArray[59] = new Vector2(5.772727f, 5.920000f); pointsArray[60] = new Vector2(4.881817f, 6.140000f); pointsArray[61] = new Vector2(5.318181f, 6.580000f); pointsArray[62] = new Vector2(6.263636f, 7.020000f); pointsArray[63] = new Vector2(6.645453f, 7.420000f); pointsArray[64] = new Vector2(6.681817f, 8.179999f); pointsArray[65] = new Vector2(6.627272f, 9.080000f); pointsArray[66] = new Vector2(6.572727f, 9.699999f); pointsArray[67] = new Vector2(6.263636f, 10.820000f); pointsArray[68] = new Vector2(5.754546f, 11.479999f); pointsArray[69] = new Vector2(4.536363f, 11.599998f); pointsArray[70] = new Vector2(3.572727f, 11.700000f); pointsArray[71] = new Vector2(2.809090f, 11.660000f); pointsArray[72] = new Vector2(1.445455f, 11.559999f); pointsArray[73] = new Vector2(0.936363f, 11.280000f); pointsArray[74] = new Vector2(0.754545f, 10.879999f); pointsArray[75] = new Vector2(0.700000f, 9.939999f); pointsArray[76] = new Vector2(0.918181f, 9.620000f); pointsArray[77] = new Vector2(1.463636f, 9.600000f); return pointsArray; } Disclaimer: My math is very rusty, so please explain in lay mans terms....

Read the article
How To: Using SimpleMembserhipProvider with MySql Connector/Net.

- by Francisco Tirado

Now on Connector/Net 6.9 the users will have the ability to use SimpleMembership Provider on MVC4 templates. The configuration is very simple and also have compatibility with OAuth, in this post we'll explain step by step how to configure it in a MVC 4 Web Application. Requirements The requirements to use SimpleMembership with Connector/Net are: Install Connector/Net 6.9, or download the No Install version. Net Framework 4.0 or greater. MVC 4 Visual Studio 2012 or newer version Creating and configuring a new project In this example we'll use VS2012 to create the project basis on the Internet Aplication template and using Entity Framework to manage the User model. Open VS 2012 and create a new project, we'll create a new MVC 4 Web Application and configure the project to use Net Framework 4.5. Type a name for the project and then click “Ok”. In the next dialog we'll choose the “Internet Application” template and use Razor as engine without creating a test project. Click “Ok” to continue. Now we have a new project with the templates necessaries to run a Web Application with the default values. We'll use the current files to continue working. If you have installed Connector/Net you can skip this step, if you don't have installed but you're planning to do it, please install it and continue with the next step. If you're using the No Install version of Connector/Net we'll need to add the references to our project, the assemblies needed are: MySql.Data, MySql.Data.Entities and MySql.Web. Be sure that the assemblies chosen match the Net Framework version used in our project and the MySql.Data.Entities is compatible with EF5 (EF5 is the default added by the project). Now open the “web.config” file, and under the <connectionStrings> node add a connection string that points to a MySql instance. We'll use the following connection configuration: <add name="MyConnection" connectionString="server=localhost;UserId=root;password=pass;database=MySqlSimpleMembership;" providerName="MySql.Data.MySqlClient"/> Under the node <system.web> we'll add the following configuration: <membership defaultProvider="MySqlSimpleMembershipProvider"><providers><clear/><add name="MySqlSimpleMembershipProvider" type="MySql.Web.Security.MySqlSimpleMembershipProvider,MySql.Web,Version=6.9.3.0,Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=c5687fc88969c44d" applicationName="MySqlSimpleMembershipTest" description="MySQLdefaultapplication" connectionStringName="MyConnection" userTableName="UserProfile" userIdColumn="UserId" userNameColumn="UserName" autoGenerateTables="True"/></providers></membership> In the previous configuration the mandatory properties are: connectionStringName, userTableName, userIdColumn, userNameColumn and autoGenerateTables. If the other properties are not provided a default value is set to it but if the mandatory properties are not set a ProviderException will be thrown. The valid properties for the MySqlSimpleMembership are the same used for MySqlMembership plus the mandatory fields. UserTableName: Name of the table where will be stored the user, this table is independent from the schema generated by the provider and can be edited later by the user. UserId: name of the column that will store the id for the records in the userTableName. UserName : name of the column that will store the name/user for the records in the userTableName. The connectionStringName property must match a connection string defined in web.config file. Once the configuration is done in web.config, we need to be sure that our database context for the Users Table point to the right connection string. In our case we just need to update the class UsersContext in the file AcountModel.cs in the Models folder. The file also contains the UserProfile class which match the configuration for our UserTable. Other class that needs to be updated is the SimpleMembershipInitializer in the file InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute.cs in the Filters folder. In that class we'll see a call to the method “WebSecurity.InitializeDatabaseConnection”, in that call is where we need to update the parameters to match our configuration. If the database that you configure in your connection string doesn't exists, you need to create it empty. Now we're ready to run our web application, press F5 or the Run button in the tool bar. You'll see the following screen: If you go to your database used by the application you'll see some tables created, now we are using SimpleMembership. Now create a user, click on “Register” at the top-right in the web page. Type your user name and password, then click on “Register”. You'll be redirected to the home page and you'll see the name of your user at the top-right page. If you take a look on the tables just created in your database you will find the data about the user you just register. In our case the tables that contains the information are UserProfile and Webpages_Membership. Configuring OAuth Other option to access your website will be using OAuth, so you can validate an user using an external account like Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. In this post we'll enable the authentication for Google account in our application. Go to the class AuthConfig.cs in the folder App_Start. In the method “RegisterAuth” uncomment the last line where is the call to the method “OauthWebSecurity.RegisterGoogleClient”. Run the application. Once the application is running click on “Login”. You will see at the right side the option to login using a Google account, click on “Google”. You will be asked for Google credentials. If your login is successful you'll see a message asking for your approval to give permission to your site to access your information. Click on “Accept”. Now a page to register your user will be shown, click on “Register”. Now your new user is logged in in your application. You can take a look of the user information created in the tables UserProfile and Webpages_OauthMembership. If you want to use another external option to authenticate users you must enable the client in the same class where we enable the Google authentication, but for others providers is mandatory to register your Application in their site. Once you have register your application they will give you a token/key and the id for your application, that information you're going to use it to register the client. Thanks for reading.

Read the article
Let your Signature Experience drive IT-decision making

- by Tania Le Voi

Today’s CIO job description: ‘’Align IT infrastructure and solutions with business goals and objectives ; AND while doing so reduce costs; BUT ALSO, be innovative, ensure the architectures are adaptable and agile as we need to act today on the changes that we may request tomorrow.” Sound like an unachievable request? The fact is, reality dictates that CIO’s are put under this type of pressure to deliver more with less. In a past career phase I spent a few years as an IT Relationship Manager for a large Insurance company. This is a role that we see all too infrequently in many of our customers, and it’s a shame. The purpose of this role was to build a bridge, a relationship between IT and the business. Key to achieving that goal was to ensure the same language was being spoken and more importantly that objectives were commonly understood - hence service and projects were delivered to time, to budget and actually solved the business problems. In reality IT and the business are already married, but the relationship is most often defined as ‘supplier’ of IT rather than a ‘trusted partner’. To deliver business value they need to understand how to work together effectively to attain this next level of partnership. The Business cannot compete if they do not get a new product to market ahead of the competition, or for example act in a timely manner to address a new industry problem such as a legislative change. An even better example is when the Application or Service fails and the Business takes a hit by bad publicity, being trending topics on social media and losing direct revenue from online channels. For this reason alone Business and IT need the alignment of their priorities and deliverables now more than ever! Take a look at Forrester’s recent study that found ‘many IT respondents considering themselves to be trusted partners of the business but their efforts are impaired by the inadequacy of tools and organizations’. IT Meet the Business; Business Meet IT So what is going on? We talk about aligning the business with IT but the reality is it’s difficult to do. Like any relationship each side has different goals and needs and language can be a barrier; business vs. technology jargon! What if we could translate the needs of both sides into actionable information, backed by data both sides understand, presented in a meaningful way? Well now we can with the Business-Driven Application Management capabilities in Oracle Enterprise Manager 12cR2! Enterprise Manager’s Business-Driven Application Management capabilities provide the information that IT needs to understand the impact of its decisions on business criteria. No longer does IT need to be focused solely on speeds and feeds, performance and throughput – now IT can understand IT’s impact on business KPIs like inventory turns, order-to-cash cycle, pipeline-to-forecast, and similar. Similarly, now the line of business can understand which IT services are most critical for the KPIs they care about. There are a good deal of resources on Oracle Technology Network that describe the functionality of these products, so I won’t’ rehash them here. What I want to talk about is what you do with these products. What’s next after we meet? Where do you start? Step 1: Identify the Signature Experience. This is THE business process (or set of processes) that is core to the business, the one that drives the economic engine, the process that a customer recognises the company brand for, reputation, the customer experience, the process that a CEO would state as his number one priority. The crème de la crème of your business! Once you have nailed this it gets easy as Enterprise Manager 12c makes it easy. Step 2: Map the Signature Experience to underlying IT. Taking the signature experience, map out the touch points of the components that play a part in ensuring this business transaction is successful end to end, think of it like mapping out a critical path; the applications, middleware, databases and hardware. Use the wealth of Enterprise Manager features such as Systems, Services, Business Application Targets and Business Transaction Management (BTM) to assist you. Adding Real User Experience Insight (RUEI) into the mix will make the end to end customer satisfaction story transparent. Work with the business and define meaningful key performance indicators (KPI’s) and thresholds to enable you to report and action upon. Step 3: Observe the data over time. You now have meaningful insight into every step enabling your signature experience and you understand the implication of that experience on your underlying IT. Watch if for a few months, see what happens and reconvene with your business stakeholders and set clear and measurable targets which can re-define service levels. Step 4: Change the information about which you and the business communicate. It’s amazing what happens when you and the business speak the same language. You’ll be able to make more informed business and IT decisions. From here IT can identify where/how budget is spent whether on the level of support, performance, capacity, HA, DR, certification etc. IT SLA’s no longer need be focused on metrics such as %availability but structured around business process requirements. The power of this way of thinking doesn’t end here. IT staff get to see and understand how their own role contributes to the business making them accountable for the business service. Take a step further and appraise your staff on the business competencies that are linked to the service availability. For the business, the language barrier is removed by producing targeted reports on the signature experience core to the business and therefore key to the CEO. Chargeback or show back becomes easier to justify as the ‘cost of day per outage’ can be more easily calculated; the business will be able to translate the cost to the business to the cost/value of the underlying IT that supports it. Used this way, Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c is a key enabler to a harmonious relationship between the end customer the business and IT to deliver ultimate service and satisfaction. Just engage with the business upfront, make the signature experience visible and let Enterprise Manager 12c do the rest. In the next blog entry we will cover some of the Enterprise Manager features mentioned to enable you to implement this new way of working.

Read the article
Getting Started with jqChart for ASP.NET Web Forms

- by jqChart

Official Site | Samples | Download | Documentation | Forum | Twitter Introduction jqChart takes advantages of HTML5 Canvas to deliver high performance client-side charts and graphs across browsers (IE 6+, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari) and devices, including iOS and Android mobile devices. Some of the key features are: High performance rendering. Animaitons. Scrolling/Zoooming. Support for unlimited number of data series and data points. Support for unlimited number of chart axes. True DateTime Axis. Logarithmic and Reversed axis scale. Large set of chart types - Bar, Column, Pie, Line, Spline, Area, Scatter, Bubble, Radar, Polar. Financial Charts - Stock Chart and Candlestick Chart. The different chart types can be easily combined. System Requirements Browser Support jqChart supports all major browsers: Internet Explorer - 6+ Firefox Google Chrome Opera Safari jQuery version support jQuery JavaScript framework is required. We recommend using the latest official stable version of the jQuery library. Visual Studio Support jqChart for ASP.NET does not require using Visual Studio. You can use your favourite code editor. Still, the product has been tested with several versions of Visual Studio .NET and you can find the list of supported versions below: Visual Studio 2008 Visual Studio 2010 Visual Studio 2012 ASP.NET Web Forms support Supported version - ASP.NET Web Forms 3.5, 4.0 and 4.5 Installation Download and unzip the contents of the archive to any convenient location. The package contains the following folders: [bin] - Contains the assembly DLLs of the product (JQChart.Web.dll) for WebForms 3.5, 4.0 and 4.5. This is the assembly that you can reference directly in your web project (or better yet, add it to your ToolBox and then drag & drop it from there). [js] - The javascript files of jqChart and jqRangeSlider (and the needed libraries). You need to include them in your ASPX page, in order to gain the client side functionality of the chart. The first file is "jquery-1.5.1.min.js" - this is the official jQuery library. jqChart is built upon jQuery library version 1.4.3. The second file you need is the "excanvas.js" javascript file. It is used from the versions of IE, which dosn't support canvas graphics. The third is the jqChart javascript code itself, located in "jquery.jqChart.min.js". The last one is the jqRangeSlider javascript, located in "jquery.jqRangeSlider.min.js". It is used when the chart zooming is enabled. [css] - Contains the Css files that the jqChart and the jqRangeSlider need. [samples] - Contains some examples that use the jqChart. For full list of samples plese visit - jqChart for ASP.NET Samples. [themes] - Contains the themes shipped with the products. It is used from the jqRangeSlider. Since jqRangeSlider supports jQuery UI Themeroller, any theme compatible with jQuery UI ThemeRoller will work for jqRangeSlider as well. You can download any additional themes directly from jQuery UI's ThemeRoller site available here: http://jqueryui.com/themeroller/ or reference them from Microsoft's / Google's CDN. <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://ajax.aspnetcdn.com/ajax/jquery.ui/1.8.21/themes/smoothness/jquery-ui.css" /> The final result you will have in an ASPX page containing jqChart would be something similar to that (assuming you have copied the [js] to the Script folder and [css] to Content folder of your ASP.NET site respectively). <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="samples_cs.Default" %> <%@ Register Assembly="JQChart.Web" Namespace="JQChart.Web.UI.WebControls" TagPrefix="jqChart" %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html > <head runat="server"> <title>jqChart ASP.NET Sample</title> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="~/Content/jquery.jqChart.css" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="~/Content/jquery.jqRangeSlider.css" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="~/Content/themes/smoothness/jquery-ui-1.8.21.css" /> <script src="<% = ResolveUrl("~/Scripts/jquery-1.5.1.min.js") %>" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="<% = ResolveUrl("~/Scripts/jquery.jqRangeSlider.min.js") %>" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="<% = ResolveUrl("~/Scripts/jquery.jqChart.min.js") %>" type="text/javascript"></script>  </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <asp:ObjectDataSource ID="ObjectDataSource1" runat="server" SelectMethod="GetData" TypeName="SamplesBrowser.Models.ChartData"></asp:ObjectDataSource> <jqChart:Chart ID="Chart1" Width="500px" Height="300px" runat="server" DataSourceID="ObjectDataSource1"> <Title Text="Chart Title"></Title> <Animation Enabled="True" Duration="00:00:01" /> <Axes> <jqChart:CategoryAxis Location="Bottom" ZoomEnabled="true"> </jqChart:CategoryAxis> </Axes> <Series> <jqChart:ColumnSeries XValuesField="Label" YValuesField="Value1" Title="Column"> </jqChart:ColumnSeries> <jqChart:LineSeries XValuesField="Label" YValuesField="Value2" Title="Line"> </jqChart:LineSeries> </Series> </jqChart:Chart> </form> </body> </html> Official Site | Samples | Download | Documentation | Forum | Twitter

Read the article
Struct Method for Loops Problem

- by Annalyne

I have tried numerous times how to make a do-while loop using the float constructor for my code but it seems it does not work properly as I wanted. For summary, I am making a TBRPG in C++ and I encountered few problems. But before that, let me post my code. #include <iostream> #include <string> #include <ctime> #include <cstdlib> using namespace std; int char_level = 1; //the starting level of the character. string town; //town string town_name; //the name of the town the character is in. string charname; //holds the character's name upon the start of the game int gems = 0; //holds the value of the games the character has. const int MAX_ITEMS = 15; //max items the character can carry string inventory [MAX_ITEMS]; //the inventory of the character in game int itemnum = 0; //number of items that the character has. bool GameOver = false; //boolean intended for the game over scr. string monsterTroop [] = {"Slime", "Zombie", "Imp", "Sahaguin, Hounds, Vampire"}; //monster name float monsterTroopHealth [] = {5.0f, 10.0f, 15.0f, 20.0f, 25.0f}; // the health of the monsters int monLifeBox; //life carrier of the game's enemy troops int enemNumber; //enemy number //inventory[itemnum++] = "Sword"; class RPG_Game_Enemy { public: void enemyAppear () { srand(time(0)); enemNumber = 1+(rand()%3); if (enemNumber == 1) cout << monsterTroop[1]; //monster troop 1 else if (enemNumber == 2) cout << monsterTroop[2]; //monster troop 2 else if (enemNumber == 3) cout << monsterTroop[3]; //monster troop 3 else if (enemNumber == 4) cout << monsterTroop[4]; //monster troop 4 } void enemDefeat () { cout << "The foe has been defeated. You are victorious." << endl; } void enemyDies() { //if the enemy dies: //collapse declaration cout << "The foe vanished and you are victorious!" << endl; } }; class RPG_Scene_Battle { public: RPG_Scene_Battle(float ini_health) : health (ini_health){}; float getHealth() { return health; } void setHealth(float rpg_val){ health = rpg_val;}; private: float health; }; //---------------------------------------------------------------// // Conduct Damage for the Scene Battle's Damage //---------------------------------------------------------------// float conductDamage(RPG_Scene_Battle rpg_tr, float damage) { rpg_tr.setHealth(rpg_tr.getHealth() - damage); return rpg_tr.getHealth(); }; // ------------------------------------------------------------- // void RPG_Scene_DisplayItem () { cout << "Items: \n"; for (int i=0; i < itemnum; ++i) cout << inventory[i] <<endl; }; In this code I have so far, the problem I have is the battle scene. For example, the player battles a Ghost with 10 HP, when I use a do while loop to subtract the HP of the character and the enemy, it only deducts once in the do while. Some people said I should use a struct, but I have no idea how to make it. Is there a way someone can display a code how to implement it on my game? Edit: I made the do-while by far like this: do RPG_Scene_Battle (player, 20.0f); RPG_Scene_Battle (enemy, 10.0f); cout << "Battle starts!" <<endl; cout << "You used a blade skill and deducted 2 hit points to the enemy!" conductDamage (enemy, 2.0f); while (enemy!=0) also, I made something like this: #include <iostream> using namespace std; int gems = 0; class Entity { public: Entity(float startingHealth) : health(startingHealth){}; // initialize health float getHealth(){return health;} void setHealth(float value){ health = value;}; private: float health; }; float subtractHealthFrom(Entity& ent, float damage) { ent.setHealth(ent.getHealth() - damage); return ent.getHealth(); }; int main () { Entity character(10.0f); Entity enemy(10.0f); cout << "Hero Life: "; cout << subtractHealthFrom(character, 2.0f) <<endl; cout << "Monster Life: "; cout << subtractHealthFrom(enemy, 2.0f) <<endl; cout << "Hero Life: "; cout << subtractHealthFrom(character, 2.0f) <<endl; cout << "Monster Life: "; cout << subtractHealthFrom(enemy, 2.0f) <<endl; }; Struct method, they say, should solve this problem. How can I continously deduct hp from the enemy? Whenever I deduct something, it would return to its original value -_-

Read the article
Combining Shared Secret and Certificates

- by Michael Stephenson

As discussed in the introduction article this walkthrough will explain how you can implement WCF security with the Windows Azure Service Bus to ensure that you can protect your endpoint in the cloud with a shared secret but also combine this with certificates so that you can identify the sender of the message. Prerequisites As in the previous article before going into the walk through I want to explain a few assumptions about the scenario we are implementing but to keep the article shorter I am not going to walk through all of the steps in how to setup some of this. In the solution we have a simple console application which will represent the client application. There is also the services WCF application which contains the WCF service we will expose via the Windows Azure Service Bus. The WCF Service application in this example was hosted in IIS 7 on Windows 2008 R2 with AppFabric Server installed and configured to auto-start the WCF listening services. I am not going to go through significant detail around the IIS setup because it should not matter in relation to this article however if you want to understand more about how to configure WCF and IIS for such a scenario please refer to the following paper which goes into a lot of detail about how to configure this. The link is: http://tinyurl.com/8s5nwrz Setting up the Certificates To keep the post and sample simple I am going to use the local computer store for all certificates but this bit is really just the same as setting up certificates for an example where you are using WCF without using Windows Azure Service Bus. In the sample I have included two batch files which you can use to create the sample certificates or remove them. Basically you will end up with: A certificate called PocServerCert in the personal store for the local computer which will be used by the WCF Service component A certificate called PocClientCert in the personal store for the local computer which will be used by the client application A root certificate in the Root store called PocRootCA with its associated revocation list which is the root from which the client and server certificates were created For the sample Im just using development certificates like you would normally, and you can see exactly how these are configured and placed in the stores from the batch files in the solution using makecert and certmgr. The Service Component To begin with let's look at the service component and how it can be configured to listen to the service bus using a shared secret but to also accept a username token from the client. In the sample the service component is called Acme.Azure.ServiceBus.Poc.Cert.Services. It has a single service which is the Visual Studio template for a WCF service when you add a new WCF Service Application so we have a service called Service1 with its Echo method. Nothing special so far!.... The next step is to look at the web.config file to see how we have configured the WCF service. In the services section of the WCF configuration you can see I have created my service and I have created a local endpoint which I simply used to do a little bit of diagnostics and to check it was working, but more importantly there is the Windows Azure endpoint which is using the ws2007HttpRelayBinding (note that this should also work just the same if your using netTcpRelayBinding). The key points to note on the above picture are the service behavior called MyServiceBehaviour and the service bus endpoints behavior called MyEndpointBehaviour. We will go into these in more detail later. The Relay Binding The relay binding for the service has been configured to use the TransportWithMessageCredential security mode. This is the important bit where the transport security really relates to the interaction between the service and listening to the Azure Service Bus and the message credential is where we will use our certificate like we have specified in the message/clientCrentialType attribute. Note also that we have left the relayClientAuthenticationType set to RelayAccessToken. This means that authentication will be made against ACS for accessing the service bus and messages will not be accepted from any sender who has not been authenticated by ACS. The Endpoint Behaviour In the below picture you can see the endpoint behavior which is configured to use the shared secret client credential for accessing the service bus and also for diagnostic purposes I have included the service registry element. Hopefully if you are familiar with using Windows Azure Service Bus relay feature the above is very familiar to you and this is a very common setup for this section. There is nothing specific to the username token implementation here. The Service Behaviour Now we come to the bit with most of the certificate stuff in it. When you configure the service behavior I have included the serviceCredentials element and then setup to use the clientCertificate check and also specifying the serviceCertificate with information on how to find the servers certificate in the store. I have also added a serviceAuthorization section where I will implement my own authorization component to perform additional security checks after the service has validated that the message was signed with a good certificate. I also have the same serviceSecurityAudit configuration to log access to my service. My Authorization Manager The below picture shows you implementation of my authorization manager. WCF will eventually hand off the message to my authorization component before it calls the service code. This is where I can perform some logic to check if the identity is allowed to access resources. In this case I am simple rejecting messages from anyone except the PocClientCertificate. The Client Now let's take a look at the client side of this solution and how we can configure the client to authenticate against ACS but also send a certificate over to the service component so it can implement additional security checks on-premise. I have a console application and in the program class I want to use the proxy generated with Add Service Reference to send a message via the Azure Service Bus. You can see in my WCF client configuration below I have setup my details for the azure service bus url and am using the ws2007HttpRelayBinding. Next is my configuration for the relay binding. You can see below I have configured security to use TransportWithMessageCredential so we will flow the token from a certificate with the message and also the RelayAccessToken relayClientAuthenticationType which means the component will validate against ACS before being allowed to access the relay endpoint to send a message. After the binding we need to configure the endpoint behavior like in the below picture. This contains the normal transportClientEndpointBehaviour to setup the ACS shared secret configuration but we have also configured the clientCertificate to look for the PocClientCert. Finally below we have the code of the client in the console application which will call the service bus. You can see that we have created our proxy and then made a normal call to a WCF in exactly the normal way but the configuration will jump in and ensure that a token is passed representing the client certificate. Conclusion As you can see from the above walkthrough it is not too difficult to configure a service to use both a shared secret and certificate based token at the same time. This gives you the power and protection offered by the access control service in the cloud but also the ability to flow additional tokens to the on-premise component for additional security features to be implemented. Sample The sample used in this post is available at the following location: https://s3.amazonaws.com/CSCBlogSamples/Acme.Azure.ServiceBus.Poc.Cert.zip

Read the article

Search Results

Search found 5784 results on 232 pages for 'points'.

Page 218/232 | < Previous Page | 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 | Next Page >

- by Denise McInerney

- by Roger Brinkley

- by Michael Stephenson

- by Michal Bozydar Pawlowski

- by TStewartDev

- by Michael Snow

- by Mike Dietrich

- by Shaun

- by CliveT

- by Dylan Smith

- by Your DisplayName here!

- by Moulik

- by MarkPearl

- by kellsey.ruppel

- by D'Arcy Lussier

- by Fatherjack

- by sv744

- by Simon

- by Francisco Tirado

- by Tania Le Voi

- by jqChart

- by Annalyne

- by Michael Stephenson

< Previous Page | 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 | Next Page >