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• Troubleshooting latency spikes on ESXi NFS datastores

  - by exo_cw

  I'm experiencing fsync latencies of around five seconds on NFS datastores in ESXi, triggered by certain VMs. I suspect this might be caused by VMs using NCQ/TCQ, as this does not happen with virtual IDE drives. This can be reproduced using fsync-tester (by Ted Ts'o) and ioping. For example using a Grml live system with a 8GB disk: Linux 2.6.33-grml64: root@dynip211 /mnt/sda # ./fsync-tester fsync time: 5.0391 fsync time: 5.0438 fsync time: 5.0300 fsync time: 0.0231 fsync time: 0.0243 fsync time: 5.0382 fsync time: 5.0400 [... goes on like this ...] That is 5 seconds, not milliseconds. This is even creating IO-latencies on a different VM running on the same host and datastore: root@grml /mnt/sda/ioping-0.5 # ./ioping -i 0.3 -p 20 . 4096 bytes from . (reiserfs /dev/sda): request=1 time=7.2 ms 4096 bytes from . (reiserfs /dev/sda): request=2 time=0.9 ms 4096 bytes from . (reiserfs /dev/sda): request=3 time=0.9 ms 4096 bytes from . (reiserfs /dev/sda): request=4 time=0.9 ms 4096 bytes from . (reiserfs /dev/sda): request=5 time=4809.0 ms 4096 bytes from . (reiserfs /dev/sda): request=6 time=1.0 ms 4096 bytes from . (reiserfs /dev/sda): request=7 time=1.2 ms 4096 bytes from . (reiserfs /dev/sda): request=8 time=1.1 ms 4096 bytes from . (reiserfs /dev/sda): request=9 time=1.3 ms 4096 bytes from . (reiserfs /dev/sda): request=10 time=1.2 ms 4096 bytes from . (reiserfs /dev/sda): request=11 time=1.0 ms 4096 bytes from . (reiserfs /dev/sda): request=12 time=4950.0 ms When I move the first VM to local storage it looks perfectly normal: root@dynip211 /mnt/sda # ./fsync-tester fsync time: 0.0191 fsync time: 0.0201 fsync time: 0.0203 fsync time: 0.0206 fsync time: 0.0192 fsync time: 0.0231 fsync time: 0.0201 [... tried that for one hour: no spike ...] Things I've tried that made no difference: Tested several ESXi Builds: 381591, 348481, 260247 Tested on different hardware, different Intel and AMD boxes Tested with different NFS servers, all show the same behavior: OpenIndiana b147 (ZFS sync always or disabled: no difference) OpenIndiana b148 (ZFS sync always or disabled: no difference) Linux 2.6.32 (sync or async: no difference) It makes no difference if the NFS server is on the same machine (as a virtual storage appliance) or on a different host Guest OS tested, showing problems: Windows 7 64 Bit (using CrystalDiskMark, latency spikes happen mostly during preparing phase) Linux 2.6.32 (fsync-tester + ioping) Linux 2.6.38 (fsync-tester + ioping) I could not reproduce this problem on Linux 2.6.18 VMs. Another workaround is to use virtual IDE disks (vs SCSI/SAS), but that is limiting performance and the number of drives per VM. Update 2011-06-30: The latency spikes seem to happen more often if the application writes in multiple small blocks before fsync. For example fsync-tester does this (strace output): pwrite(3, "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"..., 1048576, 0) = 1048576 fsync(3) = 0 ioping does this while preparing the file: [lots of pwrites] pwrite(3, "********************************"..., 4096, 1036288) = 4096 pwrite(3, "********************************"..., 4096, 1040384) = 4096 pwrite(3, "********************************"..., 4096, 1044480) = 4096 fsync(3) = 0 The setup phase of ioping almost always hangs, while fsync-tester sometimes works fine. Is someone capable of updating fsync-tester to write multiple small blocks? My C skills suck ;) Update 2011-07-02: This problem does not occur with iSCSI. I tried this with the OpenIndiana COMSTAR iSCSI server. But iSCSI does not give you easy access to the VMDK files so you can move them between hosts with snapshots and rsync. Update 2011-07-06: This is part of a wireshark capture, captured by a third VM on the same vSwitch. This all happens on the same host, no physical network involved. I've started ioping around time 20. There were no packets sent until the five second delay was over: No. Time Source Destination Protocol Info 1082 16.164096 192.168.250.10 192.168.250.20 NFS V3 WRITE Call (Reply In 1085), FH:0x3eb56466 Offset:0 Len:84 FILE_SYNC 1083 16.164112 192.168.250.10 192.168.250.20 NFS V3 WRITE Call (Reply In 1086), FH:0x3eb56f66 Offset:0 Len:84 FILE_SYNC 1084 16.166060 192.168.250.20 192.168.250.10 TCP nfs > iclcnet-locate [ACK] Seq=445 Ack=1057 Win=32806 Len=0 TSV=432016 TSER=769110 1085 16.167678 192.168.250.20 192.168.250.10 NFS V3 WRITE Reply (Call In 1082) Len:84 FILE_SYNC 1086 16.168280 192.168.250.20 192.168.250.10 NFS V3 WRITE Reply (Call In 1083) Len:84 FILE_SYNC 1087 16.168417 192.168.250.10 192.168.250.20 TCP iclcnet-locate > nfs [ACK] Seq=1057 Ack=773 Win=4163 Len=0 TSV=769110 TSER=432016 1088 23.163028 192.168.250.10 192.168.250.20 NFS V3 GETATTR Call (Reply In 1089), FH:0x0bb04963 1089 23.164541 192.168.250.20 192.168.250.10 NFS V3 GETATTR Reply (Call In 1088) Directory mode:0777 uid:0 gid:0 1090 23.274252 192.168.250.10 192.168.250.20 TCP iclcnet-locate > nfs [ACK] Seq=1185 Ack=889 Win=4163 Len=0 TSV=769821 TSER=432716 1091 24.924188 192.168.250.10 192.168.250.20 RPC Continuation 1092 24.924210 192.168.250.10 192.168.250.20 RPC Continuation 1093 24.924216 192.168.250.10 192.168.250.20 RPC Continuation 1094 24.924225 192.168.250.10 192.168.250.20 RPC Continuation 1095 24.924555 192.168.250.20 192.168.250.10 TCP nfs > iclcnet_svinfo [ACK] Seq=6893 Ack=1118613 Win=32625 Len=0 TSV=432892 TSER=769986 1096 24.924626 192.168.250.10 192.168.250.20 RPC Continuation 1097 24.924635 192.168.250.10 192.168.250.20 RPC Continuation 1098 24.924643 192.168.250.10 192.168.250.20 RPC Continuation 1099 24.924649 192.168.250.10 192.168.250.20 RPC Continuation 1100 24.924653 192.168.250.10 192.168.250.20 RPC Continuation 2nd Update 2011-07-06: There seems to be some influence from TCP window sizes. I was not able to reproduce this problem using FreeNAS (based on FreeBSD) as a NFS server. The wireshark captures showed TCP window updates to 29127 bytes in regular intervals. I did not see them with OpenIndiana, which uses larger window sizes by default. I can no longer reproduce this problem if I set the following options in OpenIndiana and restart the NFS server: ndd -set /dev/tcp tcp_recv_hiwat 8192 # default is 128000 ndd -set /dev/tcp tcp_max_buf 1048575 # default is 1048576 But this kills performance: Writing from /dev/zero to a file with dd_rescue goes from 170MB/s to 80MB/s. Update 2011-07-07: I've uploaded this tcpdump capture (can be analyzed with wireshark). In this case 192.168.250.2 is the NFS server (OpenIndiana b148) and 192.168.250.10 is the ESXi host. Things I've tested during this capture: Started "ioping -w 5 -i 0.2 ." at time 30, 5 second hang in setup, completed at time 40. Started "ioping -w 5 -i 0.2 ." at time 60, 5 second hang in setup, completed at time 70. Started "fsync-tester" at time 90, with the following output, stopped at time 120: fsync time: 0.0248 fsync time: 5.0197 fsync time: 5.0287 fsync time: 5.0242 fsync time: 5.0225 fsync time: 0.0209 2nd Update 2011-07-07: Tested another NFS server VM, this time NexentaStor 3.0.5 community edition: Shows the same problems. Update 2011-07-31: I can also reproduce this problem on the new ESXi build 4.1.0.433742.

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• SQL IO and SAN troubles

  - by James

  We are running two servers with identical software setup but different hardware. The first one is a VM on VMWare on a normal tower server with dual core xeons, 16 GB RAM and a 7200 RPM drive. The second one is a VM on XenServer on a powerful brand new rack server, with 4 core xeons and shared storage. We are running Dynamics AX 2012 and SQL Server 2008 R2. When I insert 15 000 records into a table on the slow tower server (as a test), it does so in 13 seconds. On the fast server it takes 33 seconds. I re-ran these tests several times with the same results. I have a feeling it is some sort of IO bottleneck, so I ran SQLIO on both. Here are the results for the slow tower server: C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>test.bat C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kW -t8 -s120 -o8 -frandom -b8 -BH -LS C:\Tes tFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 14318180 counts per second 8 threads writing for 120 secs to file C:\TestFile.dat using 8KB random IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) using current size: 5120 MB for file: C:\TestFile.dat initialization done CUMULATIVE DATA: throughput metrics: IOs/sec: 226.97 MBs/sec: 1.77 latency metrics: Min_Latency(ms): 0 Avg_Latency(ms): 281 Max_Latency(ms): 467 histogram: ms: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24+ %: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 99 C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kR -t8 -s120 -o8 -frandom -b8 -BH -LS C:\Tes tFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 14318180 counts per second 8 threads reading for 120 secs from file C:\TestFile.dat using 8KB random IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) using current size: 5120 MB for file: C:\TestFile.dat initialization done CUMULATIVE DATA: throughput metrics: IOs/sec: 91.34 MBs/sec: 0.71 latency metrics: Min_Latency(ms): 14 Avg_Latency(ms): 699 Max_Latency(ms): 1124 histogram: ms: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24+ %: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 100 C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kW -t8 -s120 -o8 -fsequential -b64 -BH -LS C :\TestFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 14318180 counts per second 8 threads writing for 120 secs to file C:\TestFile.dat using 64KB sequential IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) using current size: 5120 MB for file: C:\TestFile.dat initialization done CUMULATIVE DATA: throughput metrics: IOs/sec: 1094.50 MBs/sec: 68.40 latency metrics: Min_Latency(ms): 0 Avg_Latency(ms): 58 Max_Latency(ms): 467 histogram: ms: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24+ %: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 100 C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kR -t8 -s120 -o8 -fsequential -b64 -BH -LS C :\TestFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 14318180 counts per second 8 threads reading for 120 secs from file C:\TestFile.dat using 64KB sequential IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) using current size: 5120 MB for file: C:\TestFile.dat initialization done CUMULATIVE DATA: throughput metrics: IOs/sec: 1155.31 MBs/sec: 72.20 latency metrics: Min_Latency(ms): 17 Avg_Latency(ms): 55 Max_Latency(ms): 205 histogram: ms: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24+ %: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 100 Here are the results of the fast rack server: C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>test.bat C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kW -t8 -s120 -o8 -frandom -b8 -BH -LS E:\Tes tFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 62500000 counts per second 8 threads writing for 120 secs to file E:\TestFile.dat using 8KB random IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) open_file: CreateFile (E:\TestFile.dat for write): The system cannot find the pa th specified. exiting C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kR -t8 -s120 -o8 -frandom -b8 -BH -LS E:\Tes tFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 62500000 counts per second 8 threads reading for 120 secs from file E:\TestFile.dat using 8KB random IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) open_file: CreateFile (E:\TestFile.dat for read): The system cannot find the pat h specified. exiting C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kW -t8 -s120 -o8 -fsequential -b64 -BH -LS E :\TestFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 62500000 counts per second 8 threads writing for 120 secs to file E:\TestFile.dat using 64KB sequential IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) open_file: CreateFile (E:\TestFile.dat for write): The system cannot find the pa th specified. exiting C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kR -t8 -s120 -o8 -fsequential -b64 -BH -LS E :\TestFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 62500000 counts per second 8 threads reading for 120 secs from file E:\TestFile.dat using 64KB sequential IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) open_file: CreateFile (E:\TestFile.dat for read): The system cannot find the pat h specified. exiting C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>test.bat C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kW -t8 -s120 -o8 -frandom -b8 -BH -LS c:\Tes tFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 62500000 counts per second 8 threads writing for 120 secs to file c:\TestFile.dat using 8KB random IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) using current size: 5120 MB for file: c:\TestFile.dat initialization done CUMULATIVE DATA: throughput metrics: IOs/sec: 2575.77 MBs/sec: 20.12 latency metrics: Min_Latency(ms): 1 Avg_Latency(ms): 24 Max_Latency(ms): 655 histogram: ms: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24+ %: 0 0 0 5 8 9 9 9 8 5 3 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 37 C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kR -t8 -s120 -o8 -frandom -b8 -BH -LS c:\Tes tFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 62500000 counts per second 8 threads reading for 120 secs from file c:\TestFile.dat using 8KB random IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) using current size: 5120 MB for file: c:\TestFile.dat initialization done CUMULATIVE DATA: throughput metrics: IOs/sec: 1141.39 MBs/sec: 8.91 latency metrics: Min_Latency(ms): 1 Avg_Latency(ms): 55 Max_Latency(ms): 652 histogram: ms: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24+ %: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 91 C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kW -t8 -s120 -o8 -fsequential -b64 -BH -LS c :\TestFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 62500000 counts per second 8 threads writing for 120 secs to file c:\TestFile.dat using 64KB sequential IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) using current size: 5120 MB for file: c:\TestFile.dat initialization done CUMULATIVE DATA: throughput metrics: IOs/sec: 341.37 MBs/sec: 21.33 latency metrics: Min_Latency(ms): 5 Avg_Latency(ms): 186 Max_Latency(ms): 120037 histogram: ms: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24+ %: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 100 C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kR -t8 -s120 -o8 -fsequential -b64 -BH -LS c :\TestFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 62500000 counts per second 8 threads reading for 120 secs from file c:\TestFile.dat using 64KB sequential IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) using current size: 5120 MB for file: c:\TestFile.dat initialization done CUMULATIVE DATA: throughput metrics: IOs/sec: 1024.07 MBs/sec: 64.00 latency metrics: Min_Latency(ms): 5 Avg_Latency(ms): 61 Max_Latency(ms): 81632 histogram: ms: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24+ %: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 100 Three of the four tests are, to my mind, within reasonable parameters for the rack server. However, the 64 write test is incredibly slow on the rack server. (68 mb/sec on the slow tower vs 21 mb/s on the rack). The read speed for 64k also seems slow. Is this enough to say there is some sort of bottleneck with the shared storage? I need to know if I can take this evidence and say we need to launch an investigation into this. Any help is appreciated.

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• The Incremental Architect&acute;s Napkin - #1 - It&acute;s about the money, stupid

  - by Ralf Westphal

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/theArchitectsNapkin/archive/2014/05/24/the-incremental-architectacutes-napkin---1---itacutes-about-the.aspx Software development is an economic endeavor. A customer is only willing to pay for value. What makes a software valuable is required to become a trait of the software. We as software developers thus need to understand and then find a way to implement requirements. Whether or in how far a customer really can know beforehand what´s going to be valuable for him/her in the end is a topic of constant debate. Some aspects of the requirements might be less foggy than others. Sometimes the customer does not know what he/she wants. Sometimes he/she´s certain to want something - but then is not happy when that´s delivered. Nevertheless requirements exist. And developers will only be paid if they deliver value. So we better focus on doing that. Although is might sound trivial I think it´s important to state the corollary: We need to be able to trace anything we do as developers back to some requirement. You decide to use Go as the implementation language? Well, what´s the customer´s requirement this decision is linked to? You decide to use WPF as the GUI technology? What´s the customer´s requirement? You decide in favor of a layered architecture? What´s the customer´s requirement? You decide to put code in three classes instead of just one? What´s the customer´s requirement behind that? You decide to use MongoDB over MySql? What´s the customer´s requirement behind that? etc. I´m not saying any of these decisions are wrong. I´m just saying whatever you decide be clear about the requirement that´s driving your decision. You have to be able to answer the question: Why do you think will X deliver more value to the customer than the alternatives? Customers are not interested in romantic ideals of hard working, good willing, quality focused craftsmen. They don´t care how and why you work - as long as what you deliver fulfills their needs. They want to trust you to recognize this as your top priority - and then deliver. That´s all. Fundamental aspects of requirements If you´re like me you´re probably not used to such scrutinization. You want to be trusted as a professional developer - and decide quite a few things following your gut feeling. Or by relying on “established practices”. That´s ok in general and most of the time - but still… I think we should be more conscious about our decisions. Which would make us more responsible, even more professional. But without further guidance it´s hard to reason about many of the myriad decisions we´ve to make over the course of a software project. What I found helpful in this situation is structuring requirements into fundamental aspects. Instead of one large heap of requirements then there are smaller blobs. With them it´s easier to check if a decisions falls in their scope. Sure, every project has it´s very own requirements. But all of them belong to just three different major categories, I think. Any requirement either pertains to functionality, non-functional aspects or sustainability. For short I call those aspects: Functionality, because such requirements describe which transformations a software should offer. For example: A calculator software should be able to add and multiply real numbers. An auction website should enable you to set up an auction anytime or to find auctions to bid for. Quality, because such requirements describe how functionality is supposed to work, e.g. fast or secure. For example: A calculator should be able to calculate the sinus of a value much faster than you could in your head. An auction website should accept bids from millions of users. Security of Investment, because functionality and quality need not just be delivered in any way. It´s important to the customer to get them quickly - and not only today but over the course of several years. This aspect introduces time into the “requrements equation”. Security of Investments (SoI) sure is a non-functional requirement. But I think it´s important to not subsume it under the Quality (Q) aspect. That´s because SoI has quite special properties. For one, SoI for software means something completely different from what it means for hardware. If you buy hardware (a car, a hair blower) you find that a worthwhile investment, if the hardware does not change it´s functionality or quality over time. A car still running smoothly with hardly any rust spots after 10 years of daily usage would be a very secure investment. So for hardware (or material products, if you like) “unchangeability” (in the face of usage) is desirable. With software you want the contrary. Software that cannot be changed is a waste. SoI for software means “changeability”. You want to be sure that the software you buy/order today can be changed, adapted, improved over an unforseeable number of years so as fit changes in its usage environment. But that´s not the only reason why the SoI aspect is special. On top of changeability[1] (or evolvability) comes immeasurability. Evolvability cannot readily be measured by counting something. Whether the changeability is as high as the customer wants it, cannot be determined by looking at metrics like Lines of Code or Cyclomatic Complexity or Afferent Coupling. They may give a hint… but they are far, far from precise. That´s because of the nature of changeability. It´s different from performance or scalability. Also it´s because a customer cannot tell upfront, “how much” evolvability he/she wants. Whether requirements regarding Functionality (F) and Q have been met, a customer can tell you very quickly and very precisely. A calculation is missing, the calculation takes too long, the calculation time degrades with increased load, the calculation is accessible to the wrong users etc. That´s all very or at least comparatively easy to determine. But changeability… That´s a whole different thing. Nevertheless over time the customer will develop a feedling if changeability is good enough or degrading. He/she just has to check the development of the frequency of “WTF”s from developers ;-) F and Q are “timeless” requirement categories. Customers want us to deliver on them now. Just focusing on the now, though, is rarely beneficial in the long run. So SoI adds a counterweight to the requirements picture. Customers want SoI - whether they know it or not, whether they state if explicitly or not. In closing A customer´s requirements are not monolithic. They are not all made the same. Rather they fall into different categories. We as developers need to recognize these categories when confronted with some requirement - and take them into account. Only then can we make true professional decisions, i.e. conscious and responsible ones. I call this fundamental trait of software “changeability” and not “flexibility” to distinguish to whom it´s a concern. “Flexibility” to me means, software as is can easily be adapted to a change in its environment, e.g. by tweaking some config data or adding a library which gets picked up by a plug-in engine. “Flexibiltiy” thus is a matter of some user. “Changeability”, on the other hand, to me means, software can easily be changed in its structure to adapt it to new requirements. That´s a matter of the software developer. ?

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• SQL SERVER – Faster SQL Server Databases and Applications – Power and Control with SafePeak Caching Options

  - by Pinal Dave

  Update: This blog post is written based on the SafePeak, which is available for free download. Today, I’d like to examine more closely one of my preferred technologies for accelerating SQL Server databases, SafePeak. Safepeak’s software provides a variety of advanced data caching options, techniques and tools to accelerate the performance and scalability of SQL Server databases and applications. I’d like to look more closely at some of these options, as some of these capabilities could help you address lagging database and performance on your systems. To better understand the available options, it is best to start by understanding the difference between the usual “Basic Caching” vs. SafePeak’s “Dynamic Caching”. Basic Caching Basic Caching (or the stale and static cache) is an ability to put the results from a query into cache for a certain period of time. It is based on TTL, or Time-to-live, and is designed to stay in cache no matter what happens to the data. For example, although the actual data can be modified due to DML commands (update/insert/delete), the cache will still hold the same obsolete query data. Meaning that with the Basic Caching is really static / stale cache.  As you can tell, this approach has its limitations. Dynamic Caching Dynamic Caching (or the non-stale cache) is an ability to put the results from a query into cache while maintaining the cache transaction awareness looking for possible data modifications. The modifications can come as a result of: DML commands (update/insert/delete), indirect modifications due to triggers on other tables, executions of stored procedures with internal DML commands complex cases of stored procedures with multiple levels of internal stored procedures logic. When data modification commands arrive, the caching system identifies the related cache items and evicts them from cache immediately. In the dynamic caching option the TTL setting still exists, although its importance is reduced, since the main factor for cache invalidation (or cache eviction) become the actual data updates commands. Now that we have a basic understanding of the differences between “basic” and “dynamic” caching, let’s dive in deeper. SafePeak: A comprehensive and versatile caching platform SafePeak comes with a wide range of caching options. Some of SafePeak’s caching options are automated, while others require manual configuration. Together they provide a complete solution for IT and Data managers to reach excellent performance acceleration and application scalability for  a wide range of business cases and applications. Automated caching of SQL Queries: Fully/semi-automated caching of all “read” SQL queries, containing any types of data, including Blobs, XMLs, Texts as well as all other standard data types. SafePeak automatically analyzes the incoming queries, categorizes them into SQL Patterns, identifying directly and indirectly accessed tables, views, functions and stored procedures; Automated caching of Stored Procedures: Fully or semi-automated caching of all read” stored procedures, including procedures with complex sub-procedure logic as well as procedures with complex dynamic SQL code. All procedures are analyzed in advance by SafePeak’s  Metadata-Learning process, their SQL schemas are parsed – resulting with a full understanding of the underlying code, objects dependencies (tables, views, functions, sub-procedures) enabling automated or semi-automated (manually review and activate by a mouse-click) cache activation, with full understanding of the transaction logic for cache real-time invalidation; Transaction aware cache: Automated cache awareness for SQL transactions (SQL and in-procs); Dynamic SQL Caching: Procedures with dynamic SQL are pre-parsed, enabling easy cache configuration, eliminating SQL Server load for parsing time and delivering high response time value even in most complicated use-cases; Fully Automated Caching: SQL Patterns (including SQL queries and stored procedures) that are categorized by SafePeak as “read and deterministic” are automatically activated for caching; Semi-Automated Caching: SQL Patterns categorized as “Read and Non deterministic” are patterns of SQL queries and stored procedures that contain reference to non-deterministic functions, like getdate(). Such SQL Patterns are reviewed by the SafePeak administrator and in usually most of them are activated manually for caching (point and click activation); Fully Dynamic Caching: Automated detection of all dependent tables in each SQL Pattern, with automated real-time eviction of the relevant cache items in the event of “write” commands (a DML or a stored procedure) to one of relevant tables. A default setting; Semi Dynamic Caching: A manual cache configuration option enabling reducing the sensitivity of specific SQL Patterns to “write” commands to certain tables/views. An optimization technique relevant for cases when the query data is either known to be static (like archive order details), or when the application sensitivity to fresh data is not critical and can be stale for short period of time (gaining better performance and reduced load); Scheduled Cache Eviction: A manual cache configuration option enabling scheduling SQL Pattern cache eviction based on certain time(s) during a day. A very useful optimization technique when (for example) certain SQL Patterns can be cached but are time sensitive. Example: “select customers that today is their birthday”, an SQL with getdate() function, which can and should be cached, but the data stays relevant only until 00:00 (midnight); Parsing Exceptions Management: Stored procedures that were not fully parsed by SafePeak (due to too complex dynamic SQL or unfamiliar syntax), are signed as “Dynamic Objects” with highest transaction safety settings (such as: Full global cache eviction, DDL Check = lock cache and check for schema changes, and more). The SafePeak solution points the user to the Dynamic Objects that are important for cache effectiveness, provides easy configuration interface, allowing you to improve cache hits and reduce cache global evictions. Usually this is the first configuration in a deployment; Overriding Settings of Stored Procedures: Override the settings of stored procedures (or other object types) for cache optimization. For example, in case a stored procedure SP1 has an “insert” into table T1, it will not be allowed to be cached. However, it is possible that T1 is just a “logging or instrumentation” table left by developers. By overriding the settings a user can allow caching of the problematic stored procedure; Advanced Cache Warm-Up: Creating an XML-based list of queries and stored procedure (with lists of parameters) for periodically automated pre-fetching and caching. An advanced tool allowing you to handle more rare but very performance sensitive queries pre-fetch them into cache allowing high performance for users’ data access; Configuration Driven by Deep SQL Analytics: All SQL queries are continuously logged and analyzed, providing users with deep SQL Analytics and Performance Monitoring. Reduce troubleshooting from days to minutes with database objects and SQL Patterns heat-map. The performance driven configuration helps you to focus on the most important settings that bring you the highest performance gains. Use of SafePeak SQL Analytics allows continuous performance monitoring and analysis, easy identification of bottlenecks of both real-time and historical data; Cloud Ready: Available for instant deployment on Amazon Web Services (AWS). As you can see, there are many options to configure SafePeak’s SQL Server database and application acceleration caching technology to best fit a lot of situations. If you’re not familiar with their technology, they offer free-trial software you can download that comes with a free “help session” to help get you started. You can access the free trial here. Also, SafePeak is available to use on Amazon Cloud. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• Packaging Swing apps with integrated JavaFX content

  - by igor

  JavaFX provides a lot of interesting capabilities for developing rich client applications in Java, but what if you are working on an existing Swing application and you want to take advantage of these new features?  Maybe you want to use one or two controls like the LineChart or a MediaView.  Maybe you want to embed a large Scene Graph as an initial step in porting your application to FX.  A hybrid Swing/FX application might just be the answer. Developing a hybrid Swing + JavaFX application is not terribly difficult, but until recently the deployment of hybrid applications has not simple as a "pure" JavaFX application.  The existing tools focused on packaging FX Applications, or Swing applications - they did not account for hybrid applications. But with JavaFX 2.2 the tools include support for this hybrid application use case.  Solution  In JavaFX 2.2 we extended the packaging ant tasks to greatly simplify deploying hybrid applications.  You now use the same deployment approach as you would for pure JavaFX applications.  Just bundle your main application jar with the fx:jar ant task and then generate html/jnlp files using fx:deploy.  The only difference is setting toolkit attribute for the fx:application tag as shown below: <fx:application id="swingFXApp" mainClass="${main.class}" toolkit="swing"/>  The value of ${main.class} in the example above is your application class which has a main method.  It does not need to extend JavaFX Application class. The resulting package provides support for the same set of execution modes as a package for a JavaFX application, although the packages which are created are not identical to the packages created for a pure FX application.  You will see two JNLP files generated in the case of a hybrid application - one for use from Swing applet and another for the webstart launch.  Note that these improvements do not alter the set of features available to Swing applications. The packaging tools just make it easier to use the advanced features of JavaFX in your Swing application. The same limits still apply, for example a Swing application can not use JavaFX Preloaders and code changes are necessary to support HTML splash screens. Why should I use the JavaFX ant tasks for packaging my Swing application?  While using FX packaging tool for a Swing application may seem like a mismatch at face value, there are some really good reasons to use this approach.  The primary justification for our packaging tools is to simplify the creation of your application artifacts, and to reduce manual errors.  Plus, no one should have to write JNLP by hand. Some specific benefits include: Your application jar will include a launcher program.  This improves your standalone launch by: checking for the JavaFX runtime guiding the user through any necessary installations setting the system proxy for Java The ant tasks will generate JNLP and HTML files for your swing app: avoids learning unnecessary details about JNLP, and eliminates the error-prone hand editing of JNLP files simplifies using advanced features like embedding JNLP and signing jars as BLOBs to improve launch performance.you can also embed the signing certificate details to improve the user's experience  allows the use of web page templates to inject the generated code directly into your actual web page instead of being forced to copy/paste the generated code snippets. What about native packing? Absolutely!  The very same ant task can generate a native bundle for a Swing application with JavaFX content.  Try running one of these sample native bundles for the "SwingInterop" FX example: exe and dmg.   I also used another feature on these examples: a click-through license agreement for .exe installers and OS X DMG drag installers. Small Caveat This packaging procedure is optimized around using the JavaFX packaging tools for your entire Swing application.  If you are trying to embed JavaFX content into existing project (with an existing build/packing process) then you may need to experiment in order to find the best way to integrate the JavaFX packaging steps into your existing build procedure. As long as you can use ant in your build process this should be a workable approach. It some cases solution could be less than ideal. For example, you need to use fx:jar to package your main jar file in order to produce a double-clickable jar or a native bundle.  The jar will be created from scratch, but you may already be creating the main jar file with a custom manifest.  This may lead to some redundant steps in your build process.  Hopefully the benefits will outweigh the problems. This is an area of ongoing development for the team, and we will continue to refine and improve both the tools and the process. Please share your experiences and suggestions with us.  You can comment here on the blog or file issues to JIRA. Sample code Here is the full ant code used to package SwingInterop.  You can grab latest JavaFX samples and try it yourself:  <target name="-post-jar"> <taskdef resource="com/sun/javafx/tools/ant/antlib.xml" uri="javafx:com.sun.javafx.tools.ant" classpath="${javafx.tools.ant.jar}"/> <!-- Mark application as Swing-based --> <fx:application id="swingFXApp" mainClass="${main.class}" toolkit="swing"/> <!-- Create doubleclickable jar file with embedded launcher --> <fx:jar destfile="${dist.jar}"> <fileset dir="${build.classes.dir}"/> <fx:application refid="swingFXApp" name="SwingInterop"/> <manifest> <attribute name="Implementation-Vendor" value="${application.vendor}"/> <attribute name="Implementation-Title" value="${application.title}"/> <attribute name="Implementation-Version" value="1.0"/> </manifest> </fx:jar> <!-- sign application jar. Use new self signed certificate --> <delete file="${build.dir}/test.keystore"/> <genkey alias="TestAlias" storepass="xyz123" keystore="${build.dir}/test.keystore" dname="CN=Samples, OU=JavaFX Dev, O=Oracle, C=US"/> <fx:signjar keystore="${build.dir}/test.keystore" alias="TestAlias" storepass="xyz123"> <fileset file="${dist.jar}"/> </fx:signjar> <!-- generate JNLPs, HTML and native bundles --> <fx:deploy width="960" height="720" includeDT="true" nativeBundles="all" outdir="${basedir}/${dist.dir}" embedJNLP="true" outfile="${application.title}"> <fx:application refId="swingFXApp"/> <fx:resources> <fx:fileset dir="${basedir}/${dist.dir}" includes="SwingInterop.jar"/> </fx:resources> <fx:permissions/> <info title="Sample app: ${application.title}" vendor="${application.vendor}"/> </fx:deploy> </target>

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• Anatomy of a .NET Assembly - Custom attribute encoding

  - by Simon Cooper

  In my previous post, I covered how field, method, and other types of signatures are encoded in a .NET assembly. Custom attribute signatures differ quite a bit from these, which consequently affects attribute specifications in C#. Custom attribute specifications In C#, you can apply a custom attribute to a type or type member, specifying a constructor as well as the values of fields or properties on the attribute type: public class ExampleAttribute : Attribute { public ExampleAttribute(int ctorArg1, string ctorArg2) { ... } public Type ExampleType { get; set; } } [Example(5, "6", ExampleType = typeof(string))] public class C { ... } How does this specification actually get encoded and stored in an assembly? Specification blob values Custom attribute specification signatures use the same building blocks as other types of signatures; the ELEMENT_TYPE structure. However, they significantly differ from other types of signatures, in that the actual parameter values need to be stored along with type information. There are two types of specification arguments in a signature blob; fixed args and named args. Fixed args are the arguments to the attribute type constructor, named arguments are specified after the constructor arguments to provide a value to a field or property on the constructed attribute type (PropertyName = propValue) Values in an attribute blob are limited to one of the basic types (one of the number types, character, or boolean), a reference to a type, an enum (which, in .NET, has to use one of the integer types as a base representation), or arrays of any of those. Enums and the basic types are easy to store in a blob - you simply store the binary representation. Strings are stored starting with a compressed integer indicating the length of the string, followed by the UTF8 characters. Array values start with an integer indicating the number of elements in the array, then the item values concatentated together. Rather than using a coded token, Type values are stored using a string representing the type name and fully qualified assembly name (for example, MyNs.MyType, MyAssembly, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=0123456789abcdef). If the type is in the current assembly or mscorlib then just the type name can be used. This is probably done to prevent direct references between assemblies solely because of attribute specification arguments; assemblies can be loaded in the reflection-only context and attribute arguments still processed, without loading the entire assembly. Fixed and named arguments Each entry in the CustomAttribute metadata table contains a reference to the object the attribute is applied to, the attribute constructor, and the specification blob. The number and type of arguments to the constructor (the fixed args) can be worked out by the method signature referenced by the attribute constructor, and so the fixed args can simply be concatenated together in the blob without any extra type information. Named args are different. These specify the value to assign to a field or property once the attribute type has been constructed. In the CLR, fields and properties can be overloaded just on their type; different fields and properties can have the same name. Therefore, to uniquely identify a field or property you need: Whether it's a field or property (indicated using byte values 0x53 and 0x54, respectively) The field or property type The field or property name After the fixed arg values is a 2-byte number specifying the number of named args in the blob. Each named argument has the above information concatenated together, mostly using the basic ELEMENT_TYPE values, in the same way as a method or field signature. A Type argument is represented using the byte 0x50, and an enum argument is represented using the byte 0x55 followed by a string specifying the name and assembly of the enum type. The named argument property information is followed by the argument value, using the same encoding as fixed args. Boxed objects This would be all very well, were it not for object and object[]. Arguments and properties of type object allow a value of any allowed argument type to be specified. As a result, more information needs to be specified in the blob to interpret the argument bytes as the correct type. So, the argument value is simple prepended with the type of the value by specifying the ELEMENT_TYPE or name of the enum the value represents. For named arguments, a field or property of type object is represented using the byte 0x51, with the actual type specified in the argument value. Some examples... All property signatures start with the 2-byte value 0x0001. Similar to my previous post in the series, names in capitals correspond to a particular byte value in the ELEMENT_TYPE structure. For strings, I'll simply give the string value, rather than the length and UTF8 encoding in the actual blob. I'll be using the following enum and attribute types to demonstrate specification encodings: class AttrAttribute : Attribute { public AttrAttribute() {} public AttrAttribute(Type[] tArray) {} public AttrAttribute(object o) {} public AttrAttribute(MyEnum e) {} public AttrAttribute(ushort x, int y) {} public AttrAttribute(string str, Type type1, Type type2) {} public int Prop1 { get; set; } public object Prop2 { get; set; } public object[] ObjectArray; } enum MyEnum : int { Val1 = 1, Val2 = 2 } Now, some examples: Here, the the specification binds to the (ushort, int) attribute constructor, with fixed args only. The specification blob starts off with a prolog, followed by the two constructor arguments, then the number of named arguments (zero): [Attr(42, 84)] 0x0001 0x002a 0x00000054 0x0000 An example of string and type encoding: [Attr("MyString", typeof(Array), typeof(System.Windows.Forms.Form))] 0x0001 "MyString" "System.Array" "System.Windows.Forms.Form, System.Windows.Forms, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" 0x0000 As you can see, the full assembly specification of a type is only needed if the type isn't in the current assembly or mscorlib. Note, however, that the C# compiler currently chooses to fully-qualify mscorlib types anyway. An object argument (this binds to the object attribute constructor), and two named arguments (a null string is represented by 0xff and the empty string by 0x00) [Attr((ushort)40, Prop1 = 12, Prop2 = "")] 0x0001 U2 0x0028 0x0002 0x54 I4 "Prop1" 0x0000000c 0x54 0x51 "Prop2" STRING 0x00 Right, more complicated now. A type array as a fixed argument: [Attr(new[] { typeof(string), typeof(object) })] 0x0001 0x00000002 // the number of elements "System.String" "System.Object" 0x0000 An enum value, which is simply represented using the underlying value. The CLR works out that it's an enum using information in the attribute constructor signature: [Attr(MyEnum.Val1)] 0x0001 0x00000001 0x0000 And finally, a null array, and an object array as a named argument: [Attr((Type[])null, ObjectArray = new object[] { (byte)2, typeof(decimal), null, MyEnum.Val2 })] 0x0001 0xffffffff 0x0001 0x53 SZARRAY 0x51 "ObjectArray" 0x00000004 U1 0x02 0x50 "System.Decimal" STRING 0xff 0x55 "MyEnum" 0x00000002 As you'll notice, a null object is encoded as a null string value, and a null array is represented using a length of -1 (0xffffffff). How does this affect C#? So, we can now explain why the limits on attribute arguments are so strict in C#. Attribute specification blobs are limited to basic numbers, enums, types, and arrays. As you can see, this is because the raw CLR encoding can only accommodate those types. Special byte patterns have to be used to indicate object, string, Type, or enum values in named arguments; you can't specify an arbitary object type, as there isn't a generalised way of encoding the resulting value in the specification blob. In particular, decimal values can't be encoded, as it isn't a 'built-in' CLR type that has a native representation (you'll notice that decimal constants in C# programs are compiled as several integer arguments to DecimalConstantAttribute). Jagged arrays also aren't natively supported, although you can get around it by using an array as a value to an object argument: [Attr(new object[] { new object[] { new Type[] { typeof(string) } }, 42 })] Finally... Phew! That was a bit longer than I thought it would be. Custom attribute encodings are complicated! Hopefully this series has been an informative look at what exactly goes on inside a .NET assembly. In the next blog posts, I'll be carrying on with the 'Inside Red Gate' series.

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• Building a better mouse-trap &ndash; Improving the creation of XML Message Requests using Reflection, XML &amp; XSLT

  - by paulschapman

  Introduction The way I previously created messages to send to the GovTalk service I used the XMLDocument to create the request. While this worked it left a number of problems; not least that for every message a special function would need to created. This is OK for the short term but the biggest cost in any software project is maintenance and this would be a headache to maintain. So the following is a somewhat better way of achieving the same thing. For the purposes of this article I am going to be using the CompanyNumberSearch request of the GovTalk service – although this technique would work for any service that accepted XML. The C# functions which send and receive the messages remain the same. The magic sauce in this is the XSLT which defines the structure of the request, and the use of objects in conjunction with reflection to provide the content. It is a bit like Sweet Chilli Sauce added to Chicken on a bed of rice. So on to the Sweet Chilli Sauce The Sweet Chilli Sauce The request to search for a company based on it’s number is as follows; <GovTalkMessage xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/CM/envelope http://xmlgw.companieshouse.gov.uk/v1-0/schema/Egov_ch-v2-0.xsd" xmlns="http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/CM/envelope" xmlns:dsig="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#" xmlns:gt="http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/schemas/govtalk/core" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" > <EnvelopeVersion>1.0</EnvelopeVersion> <Header> <MessageDetails> <Class>NumberSearch</Class> <Qualifier>request</Qualifier> <TransactionID>1</TransactionID> </MessageDetails> <SenderDetails> <IDAuthentication> <SenderID>????????????????????????????????</SenderID> <Authentication> <Method>CHMD5</Method> <Value>????????????????????????????????</Value> </Authentication> </IDAuthentication> </SenderDetails> </Header> <GovTalkDetails> <Keys/> </GovTalkDetails> <Body> <NumberSearchRequest xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="http://xmlgw.companieshouse.gov.uk/v1-0/schema/NumberSearch.xsd"> <PartialCompanyNumber>99999999</PartialCompanyNumber> <DataSet>LIVE</DataSet> <SearchRows>1</SearchRows> </NumberSearchRequest> </Body> </GovTalkMessage> This is the XML that we send to the GovTalk Service and we get back a list of companies that match the criteria passed A message is structured in two parts; The envelope which identifies the person sending the request, with the name of the request, and the body which gives the detail of the company we are looking for. The Chilli What makes it possible is the use of XSLT to define the message – and serialization to convert each request object into XML. To start we need to create an object which will represent the contents of the message we are sending. However there is a common properties in all the messages that we send to Companies House. These properties are as follows SenderId – the id of the person sending the message SenderPassword – the password associated with Id TransactionId – Unique identifier for the message AuthenticationValue – authenticates the request Because these properties are unique to the Companies House message, and because they are shared with all messages they are perfect candidates for a base class. The class is as follows; using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; using System.Security.Cryptography; using System.Text; using System.Text.RegularExpressions; using Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime; namespace CompanyHub.Services { public class GovTalkRequest { public GovTalkRequest() { try { SenderID = RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue("SenderId"); SenderPassword = RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue("SenderPassword"); TransactionId = DateTime.Now.Ticks.ToString(); AuthenticationValue = EncodePassword(String.Format("{0}{1}{2}", SenderID, SenderPassword, TransactionId)); } catch (System.Exception ex) { throw ex; } } /// <summary> /// returns the Sender ID to be used when communicating with the GovTalk Service /// </summary> public String SenderID { get; set; } /// <summary> /// return the password to be used when communicating with the GovTalk Service /// </summary> public String SenderPassword { get; set; } // end SenderPassword /// <summary> /// Transaction Id - uses the Time and Date converted to Ticks /// </summary> public String TransactionId { get; set; } // end TransactionId /// <summary> /// calculate the authentication value that will be used when /// communicating with /// </summary> public String AuthenticationValue { get; set; } // end AuthenticationValue property /// <summary> /// encodes password(s) using MD5 /// </summary> /// <param name="clearPassword"></param> /// <returns></returns> public static String EncodePassword(String clearPassword) { MD5CryptoServiceProvider md5Hasher = new MD5CryptoServiceProvider(); byte[] hashedBytes; UTF32Encoding encoder = new UTF32Encoding(); hashedBytes = md5Hasher.ComputeHash(ASCIIEncoding.Default.GetBytes(clearPassword)); String result = Regex.Replace(BitConverter.ToString(hashedBytes), "-", "").ToLower(); return result; } } } There is nothing particularly clever here, except for the EncodePassword method which hashes the value made up of the SenderId, Password and Transaction id. Each message inherits from this object. So for the Company Number Search in addition to the properties above we need a partial number, which dataset to search – for the purposes of the project we only need to search the LIVE set so this can be set in the constructor and the SearchRows. Again all are set as properties. With the SearchRows and DataSet initialized in the constructor. public class CompanyNumberSearchRequest : GovTalkRequest, IDisposable { /// <summary> /// /// </summary> public CompanyNumberSearchRequest() : base() { DataSet = "LIVE"; SearchRows = 1; } /// <summary> /// Company Number to search against /// </summary> public String PartialCompanyNumber { get; set; } /// <summary> /// What DataSet should be searched for the company /// </summary> public String DataSet { get; set; } /// <summary> /// How many rows should be returned /// </summary> public int SearchRows { get; set; } public void Dispose() { DataSet = String.Empty; PartialCompanyNumber = String.Empty; DataSet = "LIVE"; SearchRows = 1; } } As well as inheriting from our base class, I have also inherited from IDisposable – not just because it is just plain good practice to dispose of objects when coding, but it gives also gives us more versatility when using the object. There are four stages in making a request and this is reflected in the four methods we execute in making a call to the Companies House service; Create a request Send a request Check the status If OK then get the results of the request I’ve implemented each of these stages within a static class called Toolbox – which also means I don’t need to create an instance of the class to use it. When making a request there are three stages; Get the template for the message Serialize the object representing the message Transform the serialized object using a predefined XSLT file. Each of my templates I have defined as an embedded resource. When retrieving a resource of this kind we have to include the full namespace to the resource. In making the code re-usable as much as possible I defined the full ‘path’ within the GetRequest method. requestFile = String.Format("CompanyHub.Services.Schemas.{0}", RequestFile); So we now have the full path of the file within the assembly. Now all we need do is retrieve the assembly and get the resource. asm = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly(); sr = asm.GetManifestResourceStream(requestFile); Once retrieved  So this can be returned to the calling function and we now have a stream of XSLT to define the message. Time now to serialize the request to create the other side of this message. // Serialize object containing Request, Load into XML Document t = Obj.GetType(); ms = new MemoryStream(); serializer = new XmlSerializer(t); xmlTextWriter = new XmlTextWriter(ms, Encoding.ASCII); serializer.Serialize(xmlTextWriter, Obj); ms = (MemoryStream)xmlTextWriter.BaseStream; GovTalkRequest = Toolbox.ConvertByteArrayToString(ms.ToArray()); First off we need the type of the object so we make a call to the GetType method of the object containing the Message properties. Next we need a MemoryStream, XmlSerializer and an XMLTextWriter so these can be initialized. The object is serialized by making the call to the Serialize method of the serializer object. The result of that is then converted into a MemoryStream. That MemoryStream is then converted into a string. ConvertByteArrayToString This is a fairly simple function which uses an ASCIIEncoding object found within the System.Text namespace to convert an array of bytes into a string. public static String ConvertByteArrayToString(byte[] bytes) { System.Text.ASCIIEncoding enc = new System.Text.ASCIIEncoding(); return enc.GetString(bytes); } I only put it into a function because I will be using this in various places. The Sauce When adding support for other messages outside of creating a new object to store the properties of the message, the C# components do not need to change. It is in the XSLT file that the versatility of the technique lies. The XSLT file determines the format of the message. For the CompanyNumberSearch the XSLT file is as follows; <?xml version="1.0"?> <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"> <xsl:template match="/"> <GovTalkMessage xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/CM/envelope http://xmlgw.companieshouse.gov.uk/v1-0/schema/Egov_ch-v2-0.xsd" xmlns="http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/CM/envelope" xmlns:dsig="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#" xmlns:gt="http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/schemas/govtalk/core" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" > <EnvelopeVersion>1.0</EnvelopeVersion> <Header> <MessageDetails> <Class>NumberSearch</Class> <Qualifier>request</Qualifier> <TransactionID> <xsl:value-of select="CompanyNumberSearchRequest/TransactionId"/> </TransactionID> </MessageDetails> <SenderDetails> <IDAuthentication> <SenderID><xsl:value-of select="CompanyNumberSearchRequest/SenderID"/></SenderID> <Authentication> <Method>CHMD5</Method> <Value> <xsl:value-of select="CompanyNumberSearchRequest/AuthenticationValue"/> </Value> </Authentication> </IDAuthentication> </SenderDetails> </Header> <GovTalkDetails> <Keys/> </GovTalkDetails> <Body> <NumberSearchRequest xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="http://xmlgw.companieshouse.gov.uk/v1-0/schema/NumberSearch.xsd"> <PartialCompanyNumber> <xsl:value-of select="CompanyNumberSearchRequest/PartialCompanyNumber"/> </PartialCompanyNumber> <DataSet> <xsl:value-of select="CompanyNumberSearchRequest/DataSet"/> </DataSet> <SearchRows> <xsl:value-of select="CompanyNumberSearchRequest/SearchRows"/> </SearchRows> </NumberSearchRequest> </Body> </GovTalkMessage> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> The outer two tags define that this is a XSLT stylesheet and the root tag from which the nodes are searched for. The GovTalkMessage is the format of the message that will be sent to Companies House. We first set up the XslCompiledTransform object which will transform the XSLT template and the serialized object into the request to Companies House. xslt = new XslCompiledTransform(); resultStream = new MemoryStream(); writer = new XmlTextWriter(resultStream, Encoding.ASCII); doc = new XmlDocument(); The Serialize method require XmlTextWriter to write the XML (writer) and a stream to place the transferred object into (writer). The XML will be loaded into an XMLDocument object (doc) prior to the transformation. // create XSLT Template xslTemplate = Toolbox.GetRequest(Template); xslTemplate.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin); templateReader = XmlReader.Create(xslTemplate); xslt.Load(templateReader); I have stored all the templates as a series of Embedded Resources and the GetRequestCall takes the name of the template and extracts the relevent XSLT file. /// <summary> /// Gets the framwork XML which makes the request /// </summary> /// <param name="RequestFile"></param> /// <returns></returns> public static Stream GetRequest(String RequestFile) { String requestFile = String.Empty; Stream sr = null; Assembly asm = null; try { requestFile = String.Format("CompanyHub.Services.Schemas.{0}", RequestFile); asm = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly(); sr = asm.GetManifestResourceStream(requestFile); } catch (Exception) { throw; } finally { asm = null; } return sr; } // end private static stream GetRequest We first take the template name and expand it to include the full namespace to the Embedded Resource I like to keep all my schemas in the same directory and so the namespace reflects this. The rest is the default namespace for the project. Then we get the currently executing assembly (which will contain the resources with the call to GetExecutingAssembly() ) Finally we get a stream which contains the XSLT file. We use this stream and then load an XmlReader with the contents of the template, and that is in turn loaded into the XslCompiledTransform object. We convert the object containing the message properties into Xml by serializing it; calling the Serialize() method of the XmlSerializer object. To set up the object we do the following; t = Obj.GetType(); ms = new MemoryStream(); serializer = new XmlSerializer(t); xmlTextWriter = new XmlTextWriter(ms, Encoding.ASCII); We first determine the type of the object being transferred by calling GetType() We create an XmlSerializer object by passing the type of the object being serialized. The serializer writes to a memory stream and that is linked to an XmlTextWriter. Next job is to serialize the object and load it into an XmlDocument. serializer.Serialize(xmlTextWriter, Obj); ms = (MemoryStream)xmlTextWriter.BaseStream; xmlRequest = new XmlTextReader(ms); GovTalkRequest = Toolbox.ConvertByteArrayToString(ms.ToArray()); doc.LoadXml(GovTalkRequest); Time to transform the XML to construct the full request. xslt.Transform(doc, writer); resultStream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin); request = Toolbox.ConvertByteArrayToString(resultStream.ToArray()); So that creates the full request to be sent  to Companies House. Sending the request So far we have a string with a request for the Companies House service. Now we need to send the request to the Companies House Service. Configuration within an Azure project There are entire blog entries written about configuration within an Azure project – most of this is out of scope for this article but the following is a summary. Configuration is defined in two files within the parent project *.csdef which contains the definition of configuration setting. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceDefinition name="OnlineCompanyHub" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceDefinition"> <WebRole name="CompanyHub.Host"> <InputEndpoints> <InputEndpoint name="HttpIn" protocol="http" port="80" /> </InputEndpoints> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="DiagnosticsConnectionString" /> <Setting name="DataConnectionString" /> </ConfigurationSettings> </WebRole> <WebRole name="CompanyHub.Services"> <InputEndpoints> <InputEndpoint name="HttpIn" protocol="http" port="8080" /> </InputEndpoints> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="DiagnosticsConnectionString" /> <Setting name="SenderId"/> <Setting name="SenderPassword" /> <Setting name="GovTalkUrl"/> </ConfigurationSettings> </WebRole> <WorkerRole name="CompanyHub.Worker"> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="DiagnosticsConnectionString" /> </ConfigurationSettings> </WorkerRole> </ServiceDefinition>   Above is the configuration definition from the project. What we are interested in however is the ConfigurationSettings tag of the CompanyHub.Services WebRole. There are four configuration settings here, but at the moment we are interested in the second to forth settings; SenderId, SenderPassword and GovTalkUrl The value of these settings are defined in the ServiceDefinition.cscfg file; <?xml version="1.0"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="OnlineCompanyHub" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration"> <Role name="CompanyHub.Host"> <Instances count="2" /> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="DiagnosticsConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" /> <Setting name="DataConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" /> </ConfigurationSettings> </Role> <Role name="CompanyHub.Services"> <Instances count="2" /> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="DiagnosticsConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" /> <Setting name="SenderId" value="UserID"/> <Setting name="SenderPassword" value="Password"/> <Setting name="GovTalkUrl" value="http://xmlgw.companieshouse.gov.uk/v1-0/xmlgw/Gateway"/> </ConfigurationSettings> </Role> <Role name="CompanyHub.Worker"> <Instances count="2" /> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="DiagnosticsConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" /> </ConfigurationSettings> </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>   Look for the Role tag that contains our project name (CompanyHub.Services). Having configured the parameters we can now transmit the request. This is done by ‘POST’ing a stream of XML to the Companies House servers. govTalkUrl = RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue("GovTalkUrl"); request = WebRequest.Create(govTalkUrl); request.Method = "POST"; request.ContentType = "text/xml"; writer = new StreamWriter(request.GetRequestStream()); writer.WriteLine(RequestMessage); writer.Close(); We use the WebRequest object to send the object. Set the method of sending to ‘POST’ and the type of data as text/xml. Once set up all we do is write the request to the writer – this sends the request to Companies House. Did the Request Work Part I – Getting the response Having sent a request – we now need the result of that request. response = request.GetResponse(); reader = response.GetResponseStream(); result = Toolbox.ConvertByteArrayToString(Toolbox.ReadFully(reader));   The WebRequest object has a GetResponse() method which allows us to get the response sent back. Like many of these calls the results come in the form of a stream which we convert into a string. Did the Request Work Part II – Translating the Response Much like XSLT and XML were used to create the original request, so it can be used to extract the response and by deserializing the result we create an object that contains the response. Did it work? It would be really great if everything worked all the time. Of course if it did then I don’t suppose people would pay me and others the big bucks so that our programmes do not a) Collapse in a heap (this is an area of memory) b) Blow every fuse in the place in a shower of sparks (this will probably not happen this being real life and not a Hollywood movie, but it was possible to blow the sound system of a BBC Model B with a poorly coded setting) c) Go nuts and trap everyone outside the airlock (this was from a movie, and unless NASA get a manned moon/mars mission set up unlikely to happen) d) Go nuts and take over the world (this was also from a movie, but please note life has a habit of being of exceeding the wildest imaginations of Hollywood writers (note writers – Hollywood executives have no imagination and judging by recent output of that town have turned plagiarism into an art form). e) Freeze in total confusion because the cleaner pulled the plug to the internet router (this has happened) So anyway – we need to check to see if our request actually worked. Within the GovTalk response there is a section that details the status of the message and a description of what went wrong (if anything did). I have defined an XSLT template which will extract these into an XML document. <?xml version="1.0"?> <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:ev="http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/CM/envelope" xmlns:gt="http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/schemas/govtalk/core" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <xsl:template match="/"> <GovTalkStatus xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <Status> <xsl:value-of select="ev:GovTalkMessage/ev:Header/ev:MessageDetails/ev:Qualifier"/> </Status> <Text> <xsl:value-of select="ev:GovTalkMessage/ev:GovTalkDetails/ev:GovTalkErrors/ev:Error/ev:Text"/> </Text> <Location> <xsl:value-of select="ev:GovTalkMessage/ev:GovTalkDetails/ev:GovTalkErrors/ev:Error/ev:Location"/> </Location> <Number> <xsl:value-of select="ev:GovTalkMessage/ev:GovTalkDetails/ev:GovTalkErrors/ev:Error/ev:Number"/> </Number> <Type> <xsl:value-of select="ev:GovTalkMessage/ev:GovTalkDetails/ev:GovTalkErrors/ev:Error/ev:Type"/> </Type> </GovTalkStatus> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet>   Only thing different about previous XSL files is the references to two namespaces ev & gt. These are defined in the GovTalk response at the top of the response; xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/CM/envelope http://xmlgw.companieshouse.gov.uk/v1-0/schema/Egov_ch-v2-0.xsd" xmlns="http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/CM/envelope" xmlns:dsig="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#" xmlns:gt="http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/schemas/govtalk/core" If we do not put these references into the XSLT template then  the XslCompiledTransform object will not be able to find the relevant tags. Deserialization is a fairly simple activity. encoder = new ASCIIEncoding(); ms = new MemoryStream(encoder.GetBytes(statusXML)); serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(GovTalkStatus)); xmlTextWriter = new XmlTextWriter(ms, Encoding.ASCII); messageStatus = (GovTalkStatus)serializer.Deserialize(ms);   We set up a serialization object using the object type containing the error state and pass to it the results of a transformation between the XSLT above and the GovTalk response. Now we have an object containing any error state, and the error message. All we need to do is check the status. If there is an error then we can flag an error. If not then  we extract the results and pass that as an object back to the calling function. We go this by guess what – defining an XSLT template for the result and using that to create an Xml Stream which can be deserialized into a .Net object. In this instance the XSLT to create the result of a Company Number Search is; <?xml version="1.0" encoding="us-ascii"?> <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:ev="http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/CM/envelope" xmlns:sch="http://xmlgw.companieshouse.gov.uk/v1-0/schema" exclude-result-prefixes="ev"> <xsl:template match="/"> <CompanySearchResult xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <CompanyNumber> <xsl:value-of select="ev:GovTalkMessage/ev:Body/sch:NumberSearch/sch:CoSearchItem/sch:CompanyNumber"/> </CompanyNumber> <CompanyName> <xsl:value-of select="ev:GovTalkMessage/ev:Body/sch:NumberSearch/sch:CoSearchItem/sch:CompanyName"/> </CompanyName> </CompanySearchResult> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> and the object definition is; using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; namespace CompanyHub.Services { public class CompanySearchResult { public CompanySearchResult() { CompanyNumber = String.Empty; CompanyName = String.Empty; } public String CompanyNumber { get; set; } public String CompanyName { get; set; } } } Our entire code to make calls to send a request, and interpret the results are; String request = String.Empty; String response = String.Empty; GovTalkStatus status = null; fault = null; try { using (CompanyNumberSearchRequest requestObj = new CompanyNumberSearchRequest()) { requestObj.PartialCompanyNumber = CompanyNumber; request = Toolbox.CreateRequest(requestObj, "CompanyNumberSearch.xsl"); response = Toolbox.SendGovTalkRequest(request); status = Toolbox.GetMessageStatus(response); if (status.Status.ToLower() == "error") { fault = new HubFault() { Message = status.Text }; } else { Object obj = Toolbox.GetGovTalkResponse(response, "CompanyNumberSearchResult.xsl", typeof(CompanySearchResult)); } } } catch (FaultException<ArgumentException> ex) { fault = new HubFault() { FaultType = ex.Detail.GetType().FullName, Message = ex.Detail.Message }; } catch (System.Exception ex) { fault = new HubFault() { FaultType = ex.GetType().FullName, Message = ex.Message }; } finally { } Wrap up So there we have it – a reusable set of functions to send and interpret XML results from an internet based service. The code is reusable with a little change with any service which uses XML as a transport mechanism – and as for the Companies House GovTalk service all I need to do is create various objects for the result and message sent and the relevent XSLT files. I might need minor changes for other services but something like 70-90% will be exactly the same.

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• Announcing release of ASP.NET MVC 3, IIS Express, SQL CE 4, Web Farm Framework, Orchard, WebMatrix

  - by ScottGu

  I’m excited to announce the release today of several products: ASP.NET MVC 3 NuGet IIS Express 7.5 SQL Server Compact Edition 4 Web Deploy and Web Farm Framework 2.0 Orchard 1.0 WebMatrix 1.0 The above products are all free. They build upon the .NET 4 and VS 2010 release, and add a ton of additional value to ASP.NET (both Web Forms and MVC) and the Microsoft Web Server stack. ASP.NET MVC 3 Today we are shipping the final release of ASP.NET MVC 3.  You can download and install ASP.NET MVC 3 here.  The ASP.NET MVC 3 source code (released under an OSI-compliant open source license) can also optionally be downloaded here. ASP.NET MVC 3 is a significant update that brings with it a bunch of great features.  Some of the improvements include: Razor ASP.NET MVC 3 ships with a new view-engine option called “Razor” (in addition to continuing to support/enhance the existing .aspx view engine).  Razor minimizes the number of characters and keystrokes required when writing a view template, and enables a fast, fluid coding workflow. Unlike most template syntaxes, with Razor you do not need to interrupt your coding to explicitly denote the start and end of server blocks within your HTML. The Razor parser is smart enough to infer this from your code. This enables a compact and expressive syntax which is clean, fast and fun to type.  You can learn more about Razor from some of the blog posts I’ve done about it over the last 6 months Introducing Razor New @model keyword in Razor Layouts with Razor Server-Side Comments with Razor Razor’s @: and <text> syntax Implicit and Explicit code nuggets with Razor Layouts and Sections with Razor Today’s release supports full code intellisense support for Razor (both VB and C#) with Visual Studio 2010 and the free Visual Web Developer 2010 Express. JavaScript Improvements ASP.NET MVC 3 enables richer JavaScript scenarios and takes advantage of emerging HTML5 capabilities. The AJAX and Validation helpers in ASP.NET MVC 3 now use an Unobtrusive JavaScript based approach.  Unobtrusive JavaScript avoids injecting inline JavaScript into HTML, and enables cleaner separation of behavior using the new HTML 5 “data-“ attribute convention (which conveniently works on older browsers as well – including IE6). This keeps your HTML tight and clean, and makes it easier to optionally swap out or customize JS libraries.  ASP.NET MVC 3 now includes built-in support for posting JSON-based parameters from client-side JavaScript to action methods on the server.  This makes it easier to exchange data across the client and server, and build rich JavaScript front-ends.  We think this capability will be particularly useful going forward with scenarios involving client templates and data binding (including the jQuery plugins the ASP.NET team recently contributed to the jQuery project).  Previous releases of ASP.NET MVC included the core jQuery library.  ASP.NET MVC 3 also now ships the jQuery Validate plugin (which our validation helpers use for client-side validation scenarios).  We are also now shipping and including jQuery UI by default as well (which provides a rich set of client-side JavaScript UI widgets for you to use within projects). Improved Validation ASP.NET MVC 3 includes a bunch of validation enhancements that make it even easier to work with data. Client-side validation is now enabled by default with ASP.NET MVC 3 (using an onbtrusive javascript implementation).  Today’s release also includes built-in support for Remote Validation - which enables you to annotate a model class with a validation attribute that causes ASP.NET MVC to perform a remote validation call to a server method when validating input on the client. The validation features introduced within .NET 4’s System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations namespace are now supported by ASP.NET MVC 3.  This includes support for the new IValidatableObject interface – which enables you to perform model-level validation, and allows you to provide validation error messages specific to the state of the overall model, or between two properties within the model.  ASP.NET MVC 3 also supports the improvements made to the ValidationAttribute class in .NET 4.  ValidationAttribute now supports a new IsValid overload that provides more information about the current validation context, such as what object is being validated.  This enables richer scenarios where you can validate the current value based on another property of the model.  We’ve shipped a built-in [Compare] validation attribute  with ASP.NET MVC 3 that uses this support and makes it easy out of the box to compare and validate two property values. You can use any data access API or technology with ASP.NET MVC.  This past year, though, we’ve worked closely with the .NET data team to ensure that the new EF Code First library works really well for ASP.NET MVC applications.  These two posts of mine cover the latest EF Code First preview and demonstrates how to use it with ASP.NET MVC 3 to enable easy editing of data (with end to end client+server validation support).  The final release of EF Code First will ship in the next few weeks. Today we are also publishing the first preview of a new MvcScaffolding project.  It enables you to easily scaffold ASP.NET MVC 3 Controllers and Views, and works great with EF Code-First (and is pluggable to support other data providers).  You can learn more about it – and install it via NuGet today - from Steve Sanderson’s MvcScaffolding blog post. Output Caching Previous releases of ASP.NET MVC supported output caching content at a URL or action-method level. With ASP.NET MVC V3 we are also enabling support for partial page output caching – which allows you to easily output cache regions or fragments of a response as opposed to the entire thing.  This ends up being super useful in a lot of scenarios, and enables you to dramatically reduce the work your application does on the server.  The new partial page output caching support in ASP.NET MVC 3 enables you to easily re-use cached sub-regions/fragments of a page across multiple URLs on a site.  It supports the ability to cache the content either on the web-server, or optionally cache it within a distributed cache server like Windows Server AppFabric or memcached. I’ll post some tutorials on my blog that show how to take advantage of ASP.NET MVC 3’s new output caching support for partial page scenarios in the future. Better Dependency Injection ASP.NET MVC 3 provides better support for applying Dependency Injection (DI) and integrating with Dependency Injection/IOC containers. With ASP.NET MVC 3 you no longer need to author custom ControllerFactory classes in order to enable DI with Controllers.  You can instead just register a Dependency Injection framework with ASP.NET MVC 3 and it will resolve dependencies not only for Controllers, but also for Views, Action Filters, Model Binders, Value Providers, Validation Providers, and Model Metadata Providers that you use within your application. This makes it much easier to cleanly integrate dependency injection within your projects. Other Goodies ASP.NET MVC 3 includes dozens of other nice improvements that help to both reduce the amount of code you write, and make the code you do write cleaner.  Here are just a few examples: Improved New Project dialog that makes it easy to start new ASP.NET MVC 3 projects from templates. Improved Add->View Scaffolding support that enables the generation of even cleaner view templates. New ViewBag property that uses .NET 4’s dynamic support to make it easy to pass late-bound data from Controllers to Views. Global Filters support that allows specifying cross-cutting filter attributes (like [HandleError]) across all Controllers within an app. New [AllowHtml] attribute that allows for more granular request validation when binding form posted data to models. Sessionless controller support that allows fine grained control over whether SessionState is enabled on a Controller. New ActionResult types like HttpNotFoundResult and RedirectPermanent for common HTTP scenarios. New Html.Raw() helper to indicate that output should not be HTML encoded. New Crypto helpers for salting and hashing passwords. And much, much more… Learn More about ASP.NET MVC 3 We will be posting lots of tutorials and samples on the http://asp.net/mvc site in the weeks ahead.  Below are two good ASP.NET MVC 3 tutorials available on the site today: Build your First ASP.NET MVC 3 Application: VB and C# Building the ASP.NET MVC 3 Music Store We’ll post additional ASP.NET MVC 3 tutorials and videos on the http://asp.net/mvc site in the future. Visit it regularly to find new tutorials as they are published. How to Upgrade Existing Projects ASP.NET MVC 3 is compatible with ASP.NET MVC 2 – which means it should be easy to update existing MVC projects to ASP.NET MVC 3.  The new features in ASP.NET MVC 3 build on top of the foundational work we’ve already done with the MVC 1 and MVC 2 releases – which means that the skills, knowledge, libraries, and books you’ve acquired are all directly applicable with the MVC 3 release.  MVC 3 adds new features and capabilities – it doesn’t obsolete existing ones. You can upgrade existing ASP.NET MVC 2 projects by following the manual upgrade steps in the release notes.  Alternatively, you can use this automated ASP.NET MVC 3 upgrade tool to easily update your  existing projects. Localized Builds Today’s ASP.NET MVC 3 release is available in English.  We will be releasing localized versions of ASP.NET MVC 3 (in 9 languages) in a few days.  I’ll blog pointers to the localized downloads once they are available. NuGet Today we are also shipping NuGet – a free, open source, package manager that makes it easy for you to find, install, and use open source libraries in your projects. It works with all .NET project types (including ASP.NET Web Forms, ASP.NET MVC, WPF, WinForms, Silverlight, and Class Libraries).  You can download and install it here. NuGet enables developers who maintain open source projects (for example, .NET projects like Moq, NHibernate, Ninject, StructureMap, NUnit, Windsor, Raven, Elmah, etc) to package up their libraries and register them with an online gallery/catalog that is searchable.  The client-side NuGet tools – which include full Visual Studio integration – make it trivial for any .NET developer who wants to use one of these libraries to easily find and install it within the project they are working on. NuGet handles dependency management between libraries (for example: library1 depends on library2). It also makes it easy to update (and optionally remove) libraries from your projects later. It supports updating web.config files (if a package needs configuration settings). It also allows packages to add PowerShell scripts to a project (for example: scaffold commands). Importantly, NuGet is transparent and clean – and does not install anything at the system level. Instead it is focused on making it easy to manage libraries you use with your projects. Our goal with NuGet is to make it as simple as possible to integrate open source libraries within .NET projects.  NuGet Gallery This week we also launched a beta version of the http://nuget.org web-site – which allows anyone to easily search and browse an online gallery of open source packages available via NuGet.  The site also now allows developers to optionally submit new packages that they wish to share with others.  You can learn more about how to create and share a package here. There are hundreds of open-source .NET projects already within the NuGet Gallery today.  We hope to have thousands there in the future. IIS Express 7.5 Today we are also shipping IIS Express 7.5.  IIS Express is a free version of IIS 7.5 that is optimized for developer scenarios.  It works for both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC project types. We think IIS Express combines the ease of use of the ASP.NET Web Server (aka Cassini) currently built-into Visual Studio today with the full power of IIS.  Specifically: It’s lightweight and easy to install (less than 5Mb download and a quick install) It does not require an administrator account to run/debug applications from Visual Studio It enables a full web-server feature set – including SSL, URL Rewrite, and other IIS 7.x modules It supports and enables the same extensibility model and web.config file settings that IIS 7.x support It can be installed side-by-side with the full IIS web server as well as the ASP.NET Development Server (they do not conflict at all) It works on Windows XP and higher operating systems – giving you a full IIS 7.x developer feature-set on all Windows OS platforms IIS Express (like the ASP.NET Development Server) can be quickly launched to run a site from a directory on disk.  It does not require any registration/configuration steps. This makes it really easy to launch and run for development scenarios.  You can also optionally redistribute IIS Express with your own applications if you want a lightweight web-server.  The standard IIS Express EULA now includes redistributable rights. Visual Studio 2010 SP1 adds support for IIS Express.  Read my VS 2010 SP1 and IIS Express blog post to learn more about what it enables.  SQL Server Compact Edition 4 Today we are also shipping SQL Server Compact Edition 4 (aka SQL CE 4).  SQL CE is a free, embedded, database engine that enables easy database storage. No Database Installation Required SQL CE does not require you to run a setup or install a database server in order to use it.  You can simply copy the SQL CE binaries into the \bin directory of your ASP.NET application, and then your web application can use it as a database engine.  No setup or extra security permissions are required for it to run. You do not need to have an administrator account on the machine. Just copy your web application onto any server and it will work. This is true even of medium-trust applications running in a web hosting environment. SQL CE runs in-memory within your ASP.NET application and will start-up when you first access a SQL CE database, and will automatically shutdown when your application is unloaded.  SQL CE databases are stored as files that live within the \App_Data folder of your ASP.NET Applications. Works with Existing Data APIs SQL CE 4 works with existing .NET-based data APIs, and supports a SQL Server compatible query syntax.  This means you can use existing data APIs like ADO.NET, as well as use higher-level ORMs like Entity Framework and NHibernate with SQL CE.  This enables you to use the same data programming skills and data APIs you know today. Supports Development, Testing and Production Scenarios SQL CE can be used for development scenarios, testing scenarios, and light production usage scenarios.  With the SQL CE 4 release we’ve done the engineering work to ensure that SQL CE won’t crash or deadlock when used in a multi-threaded server scenario (like ASP.NET).  This is a big change from previous releases of SQL CE – which were designed for client-only scenarios and which explicitly blocked running in web-server environments.  Starting with SQL CE 4 you can use it in a web-server as well. There are no license restrictions with SQL CE.  It is also totally free. Tooling Support with VS 2010 SP1 Visual Studio 2010 SP1 adds support for SQL CE 4 and ASP.NET Projects.  Read my VS 2010 SP1 and SQL CE 4 blog post to learn more about what it enables.  Web Deploy and Web Farm Framework 2.0 Today we are also releasing Microsoft Web Deploy V2 and Microsoft Web Farm Framework V2.  These services provide a flexible and powerful way to deploy ASP.NET applications onto either a single server, or across a web farm of machines. You can learn more about these capabilities from my previous blog posts on them: Introducing the Microsoft Web Farm Framework Automating Deployment with Microsoft Web Deploy Visit the http://iis.net website to learn more and install them. Both are free. Orchard 1.0 Today we are also releasing Orchard v1.0.  Orchard is a free, open source, community based project.  It provides Content Management System (CMS) and Blogging System support out of the box, and makes it possible to easily create and manage web-sites without having to write code (site owners can customize a site through the browser-based editing tools built-into Orchard).  Read these tutorials to learn more about how you can setup and manage your own Orchard site. Orchard itself is built as an ASP.NET MVC 3 application using Razor view templates (and by default uses SQL CE 4 for data storage).  Developers wishing to extend an Orchard site with custom functionality can open and edit it as a Visual Studio project – and add new ASP.NET MVC Controllers/Views to it.  WebMatrix 1.0 WebMatrix is a new, free, web development tool from Microsoft that provides a suite of technologies that make it easier to enable website development.  It enables a developer to start a new site by browsing and downloading an app template from an online gallery of web applications (which includes popular apps like Umbraco, DotNetNuke, Orchard, WordPress, Drupal and Joomla).  Alternatively it also enables developers to create and code web sites from scratch. WebMatrix is task focused and helps guide developers as they work on sites.  WebMatrix includes IIS Express, SQL CE 4, and ASP.NET - providing an integrated web-server, database and programming framework combination.  It also includes built-in web publishing support which makes it easy to find and deploy sites to web hosting providers. You can learn more about WebMatrix from my Introducing WebMatrix blog post this summer.  Visit http://microsoft.com/web to download and install it today. Summary I’m really excited about today’s releases – they provide a bunch of additional value that makes web development with ASP.NET, Visual Studio and the Microsoft Web Server a lot better.  A lot of folks worked hard to share this with you today. On behalf of my whole team – we hope you enjoy them! Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• June 26th Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, .NET and NuGet

  - by ScottGu

  Here is the latest in my link-listing series.  Also check out my Best of 2010 Summary for links to 100+ other posts I’ve done in the last year. [I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] ASP.NET Introducing new ASP.NET Universal Providers: Great post from Scott Hanselman on the new System.Web.Providers we are working on.  This release delivers new ASP.NET Membership, Role Management, Session, Profile providers that work with SQL Server, SQL CE and SQL Azure. CSS Sprites and the ASP.NET Sprite and Image Optimization Library: Great post from Scott Mitchell that talks about a free library for ASP.NET that you can use to optimize your CSS and images to reduce HTTP requests and speed up your site. Better HTML5 Support for the VS 2010 Editor: Another great post from Scott Hanselman on an update several people on my team did that enables richer HTML5 editing support within Visual Studio 2010. Install the Ajax Control Toolkit from NuGet: Nice post by Stephen Walther on how you can now use NuGet to install the Ajax Control Toolkit within your applications.  This makes it much easier to reference and use. May 2011 Release of the Ajax Control Toolkit: Another great post from Stephen Walther that talks about the May release of the Ajax Control Toolkit. It includes a bunch of nice enhancements and fixes. SassAndCoffee 0.9 Released: Paul Betts blogs about the latest release of his SassAndCoffee extension (available via NuGet). It enables you to easily use Sass and Coffeescript within your ASP.NET applications (both MVC and Webforms). ASP.NET MVC ASP.NET MVC Mini-Profiler: The folks at StackOverflow.com (a great site built with ASP.NET MVC) have released a nice (free) profiler they’ve built that enables you to easily profile your ASP.NET MVC 3 sites and tune them for performance.  Globalization, Internationalization and Localization in ASP.NET MVC 3: Great post from Scott Hanselman on how to enable internationalization, globalization and localization support within your ASP.NET MVC 3 and jQuery solutions. Precompile your MVC Razor Views: Great post from David Ebbo that discusses a new Razor Generator tool that enables you to pre-compile your razor view templates as assemblies – which enables a bunch of cool scenarios. Unit Testing Razor Views: Nice post from David Ebbo that shows how to use his new Razor Generator to enable unit testing of razor view templates with ASP.NET MVC. Bin Deploying ASP.NET MVC 3: Nice post by Phil Haack that covers a cool feature added to VS 2010 SP1 that makes it really easy to \bin deploy ASP.NET MVC and Razor within your application. This enables you to easily deploy the app to servers that don’t have ASP.NET MVC 3 installed. .NET Table Splitting with EF 4.1 Code First: Great post from Morteza Manavi that discusses how to split up a single database table across multiple EF entity classes.  This shows off some of the power behind EF 4.1 and is very useful when working with legacy database schemas. Choosing the Right Collection Class: Nice post from James Michael Hare that talks about the different collection class options available within .NET.  A nice overview for people who haven’t looked at all of the support now built into the framework. Little Wonders: Empty(), DefaultIfEmpty() and Count() helper methods: Another in James Michael Hare’s excellent series on .NET/C# “Little Wonders”.  This post covers some of the great helper methods now built-into .NET that make coding even easier. NuGet NuGet 1.4 Released: Learn all about the latest release of NuGet – which includes a bunch of cool new capabilities.  It takes only seconds to update to it – go for it! NuGet in Depth: Nice presentation from Scott Hanselman all about NuGet and some of the investments we are making to enable a better open source ecosystem within .NET. NuGet for the Enterprise – NuGet in a Continuous Integration Automated Build System: Great post from Scott Hanselman on how to integrate NuGet within enterprise build environments and enable it with CI solutions. Hope this helps, Scott

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• SQLAuthority News – Interview with SQL Server MVP Madhivanan – A Real Problem Solver

  - by pinaldave

  Madhivanan (SQL Server MVP) is a real community hero. He is known for his two skills – 1) Help Community and 2) Help Community. I have met him many times and every time I feel if anybody in online world needs help Madhinvanan does his best to reach them out and solve problem. His name is not new if you are ready this blog or have ever asked a question in any online SQL forum. He is always there to help. When Madhivanan has time he even helps people on this blog as well. He spends his valuable time to help community only. He recently crossed over 1000 helpful comments on this blog. On that occasion, I have interviewed him to find out if he has any life outside SQL. Q 1. Tell us something about your self. I am Madhivanan ,an MSc computer Science graduate from Chennai, India and working as a Lead Analyst-Project at Ellaar Infotek Solutions Private Limited. I am basically a developer started with Visual Basic 6.0, SQL Server 2000 and Crystal Report 8. As years go on I started working more on writing queries in SQL Server in most of the projects developed in my company. I have some good level of knowledge in ORACLE, MySQL and PostgreSQL as well. Now I am leading a project develeoped in Windows Azure. Q 2. What motivates you to help people on community and forums. When I got some errors during the application development in my early days of my career, I got good solutions from online forums and weblogs. So I decided to help others if possible. When I visit forums and help people if I know the answer to the questions. I am one of the leading posters at www.sqlteam.com and also a moderator at www.sql-server-performance.com. I also take part in Visual Basic and Crystal Reports forums. I have been SQL Server MVP since 2007. Q 3. Your personal life is not much known. Tell us something about your personal life. I am happily married person. My wife is a B.Pharm graduate. I have a son who is now 18 months old. Q 4. Where can we read further for your community activity. I have a blog at http://beyondrelational.com/blogs/madhivanan where you can find most of my T-sql stuffs Q 5. When not working with SQL what do you do? When not working with SQL, I spend time playing with my son, reading some magazines and watching TV. Madhivanan for your work and help to community, a true salute to you. Hats off my friend. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: MVP, Readers Contribution, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL Server – Learning SQL Server Performance: Indexing Basics – Video

  - by pinaldave

  Today I remember one of my older cartoon years ago created for Indexing and Performance. Every single time when Performance is discussed, Indexes are mentioned along with it. In recent times, data and application complexity is continuously growing.  The demand for faster query response, performance, and scalability by organizations is increasing and developers and DBAs need to now write efficient code to achieve this. DBA and Developers A DBA’s role is critical, because a production environment has to run 24×7, hence maintenance, trouble shooting, and quick resolutions are the need of the hour.  The first baby step into any performance tuning exercise in SQL Server involves creating, analysing, and maintaining indexes. Though we have learnt indexing concepts from our college days, indexing implementation inside SQL Server can vary.  Understanding this behaviour and designing our applications appropriately will make sure the application is performed to its highest potential. Video Learning Vinod Kumar and myself we often thought about this and realized that practical understanding of the indexes is very important. One can not master every single aspects of the index. However there are some minimum expertise one should gain if performance is one of the concern. We decided to build a course which just addresses the practical aspects of the performance. In this course, we explored some of these indexing fundamentals and we elaborated on how SQL Server goes about using indexes.  At the end of this course of you will know the basic structure of indexes, practical insights into implementation, and maintenance tips and tricks revolving around indexes.  Finally, we will introduce SQL Server 2012 column store indexes.  We have refrained from discussing internal storage structure of the indexes but have taken a more practical, demo-oriented approach to explain these core concepts. Course Outline Here are salient topics of the course. We have explained every single concept along with a practical demonstration. Additionally shared our personal scripts along with the same. Introduction Fundamentals of Indexing Index Fundamentals Index Fundamentals – Visual Representation Practical Indexing Implementation Techniques Primary Key Over Indexing Duplicate Index Clustered Index Unique Index Included Columns Filtered Index Disabled Index Index Maintenance and Defragmentation Introduction to Columnstore Index Indexing Practical Performance Tips and Tricks Index and Page Types Index and Non Deterministic Columns Index and SET Values Importance of Clustered Index Effect of Compression and Fillfactor Index and Functions Dynamic Management Views (DMV) – Fillfactor Table Scan, Index Scan and Index Seek Index and Order of Columns Final Checklist: Index and Performance Well, we believe we have done our part, now waiting for your comments and feedback. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Index, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology, Video

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• How to install SharePoint Server 2013 Preview

  - by ybbest

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

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• Silverlight Cream for April 29, 2010 -- #851

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Carlos Figueira(-2-), Subodh Pushpak, Gergely Orosz, John Papa, Mike Snow(-2-), Rishi, Tim Heuer, Stefan Olson, and David Anson. Shoutouts: Josh Holmes blogged about a cool app the City of Miami has up: Miami 311: Built on Windows Azure Gergely Orosz reports on the state of a bug he found pre SL4: Silverlight 4 still displays large elements incorrectly Laura Foy and Charlie Kindel discuss WP7 on Channel 9: Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools Refresh Announced Charlie Kindel has an announcement, good instructions, and what's new notes on the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP Refresh! Tim Heuer mentioned the workaround for this in his post (below), but I thought you might like to read Brandon Watson's debrief of what it's all about: Signed Assemblies Bug in the Windows Phone Tools CTP Refresh Laurent Bugnion posted about interrelations between versions of Blend and WP7 code... read it closely: Be careful when installing the Blend Windows Phone 7 Add-In From SilverlightCream.com: Consuming REST/POX services in Silverlight 4 Carlos Figueira has a pair of posts up about consuming services in Silverlight 4. This first one is about consuming REST/POX services. He provides a Service Contract that can be used with either and the full project code is available as well. Consuming REST/JSON services in Silverlight 4 In the second post, Carlos Figueira provides the code to allow WCF and Silverlight 4 to consume strongly-typed REST/JSON... and again, all the code is available. Silverlight and WCF caching Subodh Pushpak has a post up discussing caching in WCF, and has code demonstrating turning caching on at run-time. Detecting Silverlight Version Installed Gergely Orosz said it right when he said "Detecting the Silverlight version installed on a client machine isn’t entirely straightforward." ... and after reading this post, if you take the link to his ScottLogic blog, you'll get a full break-out of how it's done. Silverlight TV 22: Tim Heuer on Extending the SMF It's Thursday, and that means Silverlight TV! ... this week, John Papa has on Tim Heuer who has always been out there pushing media... and he's talking about SMF or Silverlight Media Framework for the uninitiated, and also extending it. Silverlight Tip of the Day #7 – Localized Resources Mike Snow has Tip Number 7 up and it's about localization... good end-to-end discussion and demonstration. Just thought I should use that to prove to my daughter that the tatoo she had put on the back of her neck actually reads "Eat More Broccoli" :) Silverlight Tip of the Day #8 – Detecting Alt, Shift, Control, Window & Apple Keys Combinations I just realized Mike Snow's site logo reads "Silverlight Tips of the Day" (bolding mine) ... that answers why I'm seeing more than one -- sorry Mike, couldn't pass it up :) ... Mike's second tip today and number 8 in the series is on detecting all the mouse button and ctl/alt/shift combinations in Silverlight. nRoute: More Wholesomeness, with SL 4 and .NET 4.0 Rishi has a post up announcing a new nRoute release for Silverlight 4 and .NET 4.0 He's tweaked the code to take advantages of enhancements in the new platforms, so check it out. Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools April 2010 Refresh Booya... Tim Heuer announced the release of the next drop in the WP7 tools ... dang wish I was at home today :) ... be sure to read the post for info such as the notes about Authenticode Assemblies and the release notes. Updates to Silverlight Multi-binding support Stefan Olson points up a SL4 change to Multi-binding support that he had previously blogged about. He shows the previous non-working example, and what you have to do to make it work now. Using XAML to create a custom wallpaper image for your mobile device David Anson has a solution for those pesky lost devices, and let me go on the record right now saying if anyone finds a WP7 phone laying around, just call me, it's mine :) [think that'd work??] ... ok, David's solution is a WPF app "MobileDeviceHomeScreenMaker" that you get the info set and it produces a png you then put on your device. But seriously about that lost phone... Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Oracle Service Registry 11gR1 Support for Oracle Fusion Middleware/SOA Suite 11g PatchSet 2

  - by Dave Berry

  As you might be aware, a few days back we released Patchset 2 (PS2) for several products in the Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g Release 1 stack including WebLogic Server and SOA Suite. Though there was no patchset released for Oracle Service Registry (OSR) 11g, being an integral part of Fusion Middleware & SOA, OSR 11g R1 ( 11.1.1.2 ) is fully certified with this release. Below is some recommended reading before installing OSR 11g with the new PS2 : OSR 11g R1 & SOA Suite 11g PS2 in a Shared WebLogic Domain If you intend to deploy OSR 11g in the same domain as the SOA Suite 11g, the primary recommendation is to install OSR 11g in its own Managed Server within the same Weblogic Domain as the SOA Suite, as the following diagram depicts : An important pre-requisite for this setup is to apply Patch 9499508, after installation. It basically replaces a registry library - wasp.jar - in the registry application deployed on your server, so as to enable co-deployment of OSR 11g & SOA Suite 11g in the same WLS Domain. The patch fixes a java.lang.LinkageError: loader constraint violation that appears in your OSR system log and is now available for download. The second, equally important, pre-requisite is to modify the setDomainEnv.sh/.cmd file for your WebLogic Domain to conditionally set the CLASSPATH so that the oracle.soa.fabric.jar library is not included in it for the Managed Server(s) hosting OSR 11g. Both these pre-requisites and other OSR 11g Topology Best Practices are covered in detail in the new Knowledge Base article Oracle Service Registry 11g Topology : Best Practices. Architecting an OSR 11g High Availability Setup Typically you would want to create a High Availability (HA) OSR 11g setup, especially on your production system. The following illustrates the recommended topology. The article, Hands-on Guide to Creating an Oracle Service Registry 11g High-Availability Setup on Oracle WebLogic Server 11g on OTN provides step-by-step instructions for creating such an active-active HA setup of multiple OSR 11g nodes with a Load Balancer in an Oracle WebLogic Server cluster environment. Additional Info The OSR Home Page on OTN is the hub for OSR and is regularly updated with latest information, articles, white papers etc. For further reading, this FAQ answers some common questions on OSR. The OSR Certification Matrix lists the Application Servers, Databases, Artifact Storage Tools, Web Browsers, IDEs, etc... that OSR 11g is certified against. If you hit any problems during OSR 11g installation, design time or runtime, the first place to look into is the logs. To find more details about which logs to check when & where, take a look at Where to find Oracle Service Registry Logs? Finally, if you have any questions or problems, there are various ways to reach us - on the SOA Governance forum on OTN, on the Community Forums or by contacting Oracle Support. Yogesh Sontakke and Dave Berry

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• Don&rsquo;t Forget! In-Memory Databases are Hot

  - by andrewbrust

  If you’re left scratching your head over SAP’s intention to acquire Sybase for almost $6 million, you’re not alone.  Despite Sybase’s 1990s reign as the supreme database standard in certain sectors (including Wall Street), the company’s flagship product has certainly fallen from grace.  Why would SAP pay a greater than 50% premium over Sybase’s closing price on the day of the announcement just to acquire a relational database which is firmly stuck in maintenance mode? Well there’s more to Sybase than the relational database product.  Take, for example, its mobile application platform.  It hit Gartner’s “Leaders’ Quadrant” in January of last year, and SAP needs a good mobile play.  Beyond the platform itself, Sybase has a slew of mobile services; click this link to look them over. There’s a second major asset that Sybase has though, and I wonder if it figured prominently into SAP’s bid: Sybase IQ.  Sybase IQ is a columnar database.  Columnar databases place values from a given database column contiguously, unlike conventional relational databases, which store all of a row’s data in close proximity.  Storing column values together works well in aggregation reporting scenarios, because the figures to be aggregated can be scanned in one efficient step.  It also makes for high rates of compression because values from a single column tend to be close to each other in magnitude and may contain long sequences of repeating values.  Highly compressible databases use much less disk storage and can be largely or wholly loaded into memory, resulting in lighting fast query performance.  For an ERP company like SAP, with its own legacy BI platform (SAP BW) and the entire range of Business Objects and Crystal Reports BI products (which it acquired in 2007) query performance is extremely important. And it’s a competitive necessity too.  QlikTech has built an entire company on a columnar, in-memory BI product (QlikView).  So too has startup company Vertica.  IBM’s TM1 product has been doing in-memory OLAP for years.  And guess who else has the in-memory religion?  Microsoft does, in the form of its new PowerPivot product.  I expect the technology in PowerPivot to become strategic to the full-blown SQL Server Analysis Services product and the entire Microsoft BI stack.  I sure don’t blame SAP for jumping on the in-memory bandwagon, if indeed the Sybase acquisition is, at least in part, motivated by that. It will be interesting to watch and see what SAP does with Sybase’s product line-up (assuming the acquisition closes), including the core database, the mobile platform, IQ, and even tools like PowerBuilder.  It is also fascinating to watch columnar’s encroachment on relational.  Perhaps this acquisition will be columnar’s tipping point and people will no longer see it as a fad.  Are you listening Larry Ellison?

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• POP Forums v9 Beta 1 for ASP.NET MVC 3 posted to CodePlex!

  - by Jeff

  As promised, I posted a beta build of my forum app for ASP.NET MVC 3. Get the new goodies here: http://popforums.codeplex.com/releases/view/58228 This is the first beta for the ASP.NET MVC 3 version of POP Forums. It is nearly feature complete, and ready for testing and feedback. For previous release notes, look here, here and here.Check out the live preview: http://preview.popforums.com/ForumsSetup instructions are on the home page of this project. The new hotness in the beta, or what has been done since the last preview: All views converted to use Razor E-mail subscription/notification of new posts New post indicators/mark read buttons Permalinks to posts Jump to newest post (from new post indicators) Recent topics Favorite topics Moderator functions for topics (pin/close/delete, plus move and rename) Search, ported from v8. Not a ton of optimization here, or new unit testing, but the old version worked pretty well User posts (topics the user posted in) Forgot password Vanity items (signatures and avatars) Hide vanity items per user preference Some minor data caching where appropriate A little bit of UI refinement Lots-o-bug fixes Lots-o-unit tests What's next? The plan between now and the next beta is as follows: Continue working through features/tasks, and fix bugs as they're reported Integrate the forum into a real, production site Refine the UI Refactor as much as possible... the code organization is not entirely logical in some places After the second beta, a release candidate will follow, with a real "final" release after that. Subsequent releases should come relatively frequently and without a lot of risk. The trick in building this thing has been that it mostly tossed the previous WebForms version, which was all full of crusties. The time table for this is a little harder to pin down, as day jobs and families will have their effect. Other notes Refactoring will be a priority. As the features of MVC have evolved, so have my desires to use it in a fashion that makes things clear and easy to follow. I don't even know if anyone will ever start mucking around in the code, but on the off chance they do, I'd like what they find to not suck. Other nice-to-haves are builds to target Windows Azure and SQL CE. A nice setup UI would be super too. I think the ASP.NET MVC world has gone long enough without a decent forum.The biggest challenge that I've found is making the forum something that can be dropped in any app. While it does rope its views into an area, areas are mostly just routing details. I haven't thought of a clever way yet to limit dependency injection, for example, to just the forum bits. I mean, everyone should be using Ninject, but how realistic is that? ;)How much time and effort should you spend on POP Forums in its current state? Change is inevitable, but at this point I'm reasonably committed to not changing the database schema. I really think it will stay as-is. All bets are off for the various interfaces throughout the app, but the data should generally resist change. It's not even that different from v8, which was one of the original goals because I didn't want to rewrite SQL or introduce a new ORM or whatever. My point is that if you wanted to build a site around this today, even though it's not entirely functional, I think it's low risk in terms of data loss. I can't vouch for whether or not you know what you're doing.I've been having some chats with people lately about quoting posts, and honestly there has to be something better and straight forward. That continues to be a holy grail of mine, and some day, I hope to find it.Enjoy... it's starting to feel more real every day!

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• Silverlight Cream for May 02, 2010 -- #854

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Michael Washington, Jason Young(-2-, -3-), Phil Middlemiss, Jeremy Likness, Victor Gaudioso, Kunal Chowdhury, Antoni Dol, and Jacek Ciereszko(-2-). Shoutout: Victor Gaudioso has aggregated All of My Silverlight Video Tutorials in One Place (revised again 05.02.10) From SilverlightCream.com: Unit Testing A Silverlight 'Simplified MVVM' Modal Popup Michael Washington's latest 'Simplified MVVM' post is published at The Code Project and is on Unit Testing with MVVM. Input Localization in Silverlight without IValueConverter Jason Young sent me some links to posts I've not seen... this first one is on localization by using the Language property of the Root Visual. MVVM – The Model - Part 1 – INotifyPropertyChanged Jason Young's next archive post is the first of a series on MVVM and Silverlight 4 ... implementing a simple ViewModel base class. Silverlight, WCF, and ASP.Net Configuration Gotchas Jason Young worked at tracking down the answers to some forum questions and in the process has produced a post of 'gotchas' with using WCF in Silverlight. A Chrome and Glass Theme - Part 5 Phil Middlemiss has part 5 of his Chrome and Glass Theme tutorial up ... in this one, he's looking at the Progress Bar and Slider. Download the files and play along. Silverlight Out of Browser (OOB) Versions, Images, and Isolated Storage Jeremy Likness has a post up responding to his 3 major questions about OOB apps, and he has to code up for the sample too. New Silverlight Video Tutorial: How to Make a Slide In/Out Navigation Bar – All in Blend Victor Gaudioso's latest video tutorial is on building a Behavior for a Slide in/out Navigation bar... kinda like the menu sliders on my GlyphMap Utility... only easier! Command Binding in Silverlight 4 (Step-by-Step) Kunal Chowdhury has another post up at DotNetFunda, and this time he's talking about Command Binding in Silverlight 4 with an eye toward MVVM usage. The Silverlight PageCurl implementation Antoni Dol has a post up about doing a Page Curl effect in Silverlight. He has a manual up on the effect and full application code. How to center and scale Silverlight applications using ViewBox control Jacek Ciereszko has a couple posts up about centering and scaling your app with the ViewBox control. This first one is a code solution. Source is available, as is a Polish version. Silverlight Center And Scale Behavior Jacek Ciereszko's 2nd post, he provides a Behavior that handles the scaling and centering of the previous post. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Call Webservices&hellip;Maybe!?

  - by MOSSLover

  So I have been doing preliminary work for my iOS talk for a while, but did not get into the meat of the project until recently.  One day I envision my talk uploading pictures from a camera on an iPhone or iPad into SharePoint and telling people how I did it.  As you know with my Silverlight talk and any new technology, building new talks with new technologies always ends up with some pain points that you must jump over just to grab data.  So step 1 always starts out with how do we even access a webservice using the new technology. I started out watching every single SPC video available on oAuth and Rest Webservices in SharePoint 2013.  I also sent an email to Eric Shupps about some REST and 2013 examples.  The videos further confused me, because all the videos were on SharePoint hosted apps (provider and autohosted).  I did not want to create a SharePoint hosted app, but instead a mobile app outside of the SharePoint context altogether.  Nick Swan sent me his code and it was great for a starting point on how the JSON calls would look like on iOS, but I was still missing a piece.  Nick does a great job on showing how to use the REST/JSON calls in a non-MS tech, however his presentation uses the SharePoint context and can grab the SPAppToken.  At this point I had to ask the question how do you grab the SAML token outside of SharePoint 2013 in iOS using Objective-C?  After reading all the MSDN documentation, some documentation on Restkit and Objective-C/oAuth calls, and some SharePoint 2013 blog post my head was swimming.  I was dreaming about REST and iOS in SharePoint 2013.  SAML tokens were taunting me.  I was nowhere near understanding 2013. I started talking to my friend, Pedro Jimenez, who is also playing with Objective-C and went to SPC.  He found me a couple good MSDN posts with REST/JSON calls that basically showed the accessToken was all I needed (at this point I was still thinking iOS needed to be a provider hosted app which is wrong).  So then again I had to ask the SAML token question…How do you get a SAML token outside of SharePoint without the TokenHelper class? So then I started talking to people and thinking why do I need to completely avoid TokenHelper…The solution in concept is basically create a webservice in Azure wrapped into a Provider Hosted App in SharePoint.  Wictor Wilen created a helper webservice in the following blog post: http://www.wictorwilen.se/Post/How-to-do-active-authentication-to-Office-365-and-SharePoint-Online.aspx. So now I have to basically stand up the webservice, the SharePoint app wrapper, and then use Restkit to call the first webservice to grab the token and then the second webservice to pass in the token and grab some SharePoint data.  What this means is that you can no longer just pass credentials into SharePoint webservices and get data back.  You have to pass in a SAML token with every single webservice call to SharePoint.  The theory is that this token is associated with the permissions the app can handle (read, write, whatever).  It seems like a ton of pain and a lot of work, but this is step 1 in my crusade to pull some piece of data into iOS from SharePoint and show people how to do it themselves.  In the upcoming months hopefully I can get halfway to my end goal. Technorati Tags: SharePoint 2013,REST,oAuth,Objective-C,iOS

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• Virtual Box - How to open a .VDI Virtual Machine

  - by [email protected]

   How to open a .VDI Virtual MachineSometimes someone share with us one Virtual machine with extension .VDI, after that we can wonder how and what with?Well the answer is... It is a VirtualBox - Virtual Machine. If you have not downloaded it you can do this easily just follow this post.http://listeningoracle.blogspot.com/2010/04/que-es-virtualbox.htmlor http://oracleoforacle.wordpress.com/2010/04/14/ques-es-virtualbox/Ok, Now with VirtualBox Installed open it and proceed with the following:1. Open the Virtual File Manager. 2. Click on Actions ? Add and select the .VDI file Click "Ok"3. Now we can register the new Virtual Machine - Click New, and Click Next4. Write down a Name for the virtual Machine a proceed to select a Operating System and Version. (In this case it is a Linux (Oracle Enterprise Linux or RedHat)Click Next5. Select the memory amount base for the Virtual Machine (Minimal 1280 for our case) - Click Next6. Select the Disk 11GR2_OEL5_32GB.vdi it was added in the virtual media manager in the step 2. Dont forget let selected Boot hard Disk (Primary Master) . Given it is the only disk assigned to the virtual machine.Click Next7. Click Finish8. This step is important. Once you have click on the settings Button.9. On General option click the advanced settings. Here you must change the default directory to save your Snapshots; my recommendation set it to the same directory where the .Vdi file is. Otherwise you can have the same Virtual Machine and its snapshots in different paths.10. Now Click on System, and proceed to assign the correct memory (If you did not before) Note: Enable "Enable IO APIC" if you are planning to assign more than one CPU to the Virtual Machine.Define the processors for the Virtual machine. If you processor is dual core choose 211. Select the video memory amount you want to assign to the Virtual Machine 12. Associated more storage disk to the Virtual machine, if you have more VDI files. (Not our case)The disk must be selected as IDE Primary Master. 13. Well you can verify the other options, but with these changes you will be able to start the VM.Note: Sometime the VM owner may share some instructions, if so follow his instructions.14. Finally Start the Virtual Machine (Click > Start)

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• ASP.NET MVC, Web API, Razor, e Open Source (Código Aberto)

  - by Leniel Macaferi

  A Microsoft tornou o código fonte da ASP.NET MVC disponível sob uma licença open source (de código aberto) desde a primeira versão V1. Nós também integramos uma série de grandes tecnologias de código aberto no produto, e agora entregamos jQuery, jQuery UI, jQuery Mobile, jQuery Validation, Modernizr.js, NuGet, Knockout.js e JSON.NET como parte integrante dos lançamentos da ASP.NET MVC. Estou muito animado para anunciar hoje que também iremos liberar o código fonte da ASP.NET Web API e ASP.NET Web Pages (também conhecido como Razor) sob uma licença open source (Apache 2.0), e que iremos aumentar a transparência do desenvolvimento de todos os três projetos hospedando seus repositórios de código no CodePlex (usando o novo suporte ao Git anunciado na semana passada - em Inglês). Isso permitirá um modelo de desenvolvimento mais aberto, onde toda a comunidade será capaz de participar e fornecer feedback nos checkins (envios de código), corrigir bugs, desenvolver novos recursos, e construir e testar os produtos diariamente usando a versão do código-fonte e testes mais atualizada possível. Nós também pela primeira vez permitiremos que os desenvolvedores de fora da Microsoft enviem correções e contribuições de código que a equipe de desenvolvimento da Microsoft irá rever para potencial inclusão nos produtos. Nós anunciamos uma abordagem de desenvolvimento semelhantemente aberta com o Windows Azure SDK em Dezembro passado, e achamos que essa abordagem é um ótimo caminho para estreitar as relações, pois permite um excelente ciclo de feedback com os desenvolvedores - e, finalmente, permite a entrega de produtos ainda melhores, como resultado. Muito importante - ASP.NET MVC, Web API e o Razor continuarão a ser totalmente produtos suportados pela Microsoft que são lançados tanto independentemente, bem como parte do Visual Studio (exatamente da mesma maneira como é feito hoje em dia). Eles também continuarão a ser desenvolvidos pelos mesmos desenvolvedores da Microsoft que os constroem hoje (na verdade, temos agora muito mais desenvolvedores da Microsoft trabalhando na equipe da ASP.NET). Nosso objetivo com o anúncio de hoje é aumentar ainda mais o ciclo de feedback/retorno sobre os produtos, para nos permitir oferecer produtos ainda melhores. Estamos realmente entusiasmados com as melhorias que isso trará. Saiba mais Agora você pode navegar, sincronizar e construir a árvore de código fonte da ASP.NET MVC, Web API, e Razor através do website http://aspnetwebstack.codeplex.com.  O repositório Git atual no site refere-se à árvore de desenvolvimento do marco RC (release candidate/candidata a lançamento) na qual equipe vem trabalhando nas últimas semanas, e esta mesma árvore contém ambos o código fonte e os testes, e pode ser construída e testada por qualquer pessoa. Devido aos binários produzidos serem bin-deployable (DLLs instaladas diretamente na pasta bin sem demais dependências), isto permite a você compilar seus próprios builds e experimentar as atualizações do produto, tão logo elas sejam adicionadas no repositório. Agora você também pode contribuir diretamente para o desenvolvimento dos produtos através da revisão e envio de feedback sobre os checkins de código, enviando bugs e ajudando-nos a verificar as correções tão logo elas sejam enviadas para o repositório, sugerindo e dando feedback sobre os novos recursos enquanto eles são implementados, bem como enviando suas próprias correções ou contribuições de código. Note que todas as submissões de código serão rigorosamente analisadas ??e testadas pelo Time da ASP.NET MVC, e apenas aquelas que atenderem a um padrão elevado de qualidade e adequação ao roadmap (roteiro) definido para as próximas versões serão incorporadas ao código fonte do produto. Sumário Todos nós da equipe estamos realmente entusiasmados com o anúncio de hoje - isto é algo no qual nós estivemos trabalhando por muitos anos. O estreitamento no relacionamento entre a comunidade e os desenvolvedores nos permitirá construir produtos ainda melhores levando a ASP.NET para o próximo nível em termos de inovação e foco no cliente. Obrigado! Scott P.S. Além do blog, eu uso o Twitter para disponibilizar posts rápidos e para compartilhar links. Meu apelido no Twitter é: @scottgu Texto traduzido do post original por Leniel Macaferi.

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• To File Share or to not File Share, that is the Question.

  To file share or to not file share, that is the question. The concept of the internet was developed in the 1960’s as a revolutionary idea to share information and data amongst a group of computers. The original concept was to allow universities and the United States Military share data for research and field operations. This network of computers was designed to provide redundant data storage and communications in case one or more locations were destroyed. Since the inception of the internet, people have attempted to use it for sharing data. As the Internet has evolved so did the users and the information they wanted to share. In today’s modern internet people can share information through various avenues, for example: websites, social networks, email, documents, executable files, data files and much more.  Unfortunately, as the internet and its users have grown, some industries have not paid attention. Currently, there are several industries that have really fallen behind in keeping up with current trends, and are severely paying the price for their lack of action. A current example of this is with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and file sharing. RIAA contends that customers who purchase music can only listen to the music and cannot share it with others. This can be seen when the RIAA sued Napster for distributing copyrighted music through a technology called file sharing. File sharing as defined by the Media Awareness Network is downloadable software that permits users to share music, video, image or book files directly with peers. Users of file sharing networks simply had to extract the music from a CD into a music compatible format. Typically most music files at that time where saved as MPEG file format. Once the users got music in this format it was very easy share their music with others. The big question now is who actually owns the music, does the music industry still retain the rights of the music regarding who has access to listen to it, or is it up to the owner of the music CD.  According to the First – Sale Doctrine, it is the right of the purchaser of the CD to decide who can access the information on the CD. In addition, the original owner looses all rights to the music once it has been sold.  The importance of defining who actually owns the music has a great impact on the future of the industry. If the industry is determined to be the actual owner of the music then anyone who has shared at least 1 fine with another is guilty of violating the copyright. However, if the owners of the CD are determined to be the owners of the music then the music industry will have to figure out some other way to protect their music so that it is more lucrative for them or they will go out of business. References: http://www.walthowe.com/navnet/history.html http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/resources/special_initiatives/wa_resources/wa_shared/backgrounders/internet_glossary.cfm#F

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• Oracle anuncia resultados de Q3 FY10

  - by Paulo Folgado

  Oracle Reports GAAP EPS of $0.23, Non-GAAP EPS of $0.38New Software Licenses Up 13%, Applications New Licenses Up 21%Oracle Corporation today announced fiscal 2010 Q3 GAAP total revenues were up 17% to $6.4 billion, while non-GAAP total revenues were up 18% to $6.5 billion. Excluding the impact of Sun Microsystems, Inc., which Oracle acquired on January 26, 2010, GAAP total revenue grew 7%. GAAP new software license revenues were up 13% to $1.7 billion, and up 10% to $1.7 billion excluding Sun. GAAP software license updates and product support revenues were up 13% to $3.3 billion, while non-GAAP software license updates and product support revenues were up 12% to $3.3 billion. GAAP operating income was down 5% to $1.8 billion, and GAAP operating margin was 29%. Non-GAAP operating income was up 13% to $2.9 billion, and non-GAAP operating margin was 45%. GAAP net income was down 10% to $1.2 billion, while non-GAAP net income was up 9% to $1.9 billion. GAAP earnings per share were $0.23, down 11% compared to last year while non-GAAP earnings per share were up 9% to $0.38. GAAP operating cash flow on a trailing twelve-month basis was $8.2 billion. "Our solid top line growth, coupled with disciplined expense management, was key in generating $8.0 billion of free cash flow over the last twelve months," said Oracle CFO Jeff Epstein."The Sun integration is going even better than we expected," said Oracle President, Safra Catz. "We believe that Sun will make a significant contribution to our fourth quarter earnings per share as well as meet the profitability goals we set for next year.""Exadata is the fastest growing product in Oracle's history," said Oracle President, Charles Phillips. "Introduced a little over a year ago, the Exadata pipeline is now approaching $400 million with Q4 bookings forecast at nearly $100 million. This strengthens both sales growth and profitability in our Sun server and storage businesses.""Every quarter we grab huge chunks of market share from SAP," said Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison. "SAP's most recent quarter was the best quarter of their year, only down 15%, while Oracle's application sales were up 21%. But SAP is well ahead of us in the number of CEOs for this year, announcing their third and fourth, while we only had one."In addition, Oracle's Board of Directors declared a cash dividend of $0.05 per share of outstanding common stock to be paid to stockholders of record as of the close of business on April 14, 2010, with a payment date of May 5, 2010. Future declarations of quarterly dividends and the establishment of future record and payment dates are subject to the final determination of Oracle's Board of Directors.Q3 Earnings Conference Call and WebcastOracle will hold a conference call and web broadcast today to discuss these results at 2:00 p.m. Pacific. You may listen to the call by dialing (800) 214-0694 or (719) 955-1425, Passcode: 567035. To access the live Web broadcast of this event, please visit the Oracle Investor Relations Web site at http://www.oracle.com/investor.

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• Announcing Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite 11g

  - by [email protected]

  Today Oracle announced Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite 11g. This is a major release for us, and reinforces our three key themes at Oracle: Complete New in this release - Oracle ECM Suite 11g is built on a single, unified repository. Every piece of content - documents, HTML pages, digital assets, scanned images - is stored and accessbile directly from the repository, whether you are working on websites, creating brand logos, processing accounts payable invoices, or running records and retention functions. It makes complete, end-to-end management of content possible, from the point it enters the organization, through its entire lifecycle. Also new in this release, the installation, access, monitoring and administration of Oracle ECM Suite 11g is centralized. As a complete system, organizations can lower the costs of training and usage by having a centralized source of information that is easily administered. As part of this new unified repository release, Oracle has released a benchmarking white paper that shows the extreme performance and scalability of Oracle ECM Suite. When tested on a two node UCM Server running on Sun Oracle DB Machine Half Rack Hardware with an Exadata storage server, Oracle ECM Suite 11g is able to ingest over 178 million documents per day. Open Oracle ECM Suite 11g is built on a service-oriented architecture. All functions are available through standards-based services calls in Web Services or Java. In this release Oracle unveils Open Web Content Management. Open Web Content Management is a revolutionary approach to web content management that decouples the content management process from the process of creating web applications. One piece of this approach is our one-click web content management. With one click, a web application builder can drag content services into their application, enabling their users to also edit content with just one click. Open Web Content Management is also open because it enables Web developers to add Web content management to new and existing JavaServer Pages (JSP), JavaServer Faces (JSF) and Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) Faces applications Open content distribution - Oracle ECM Suite 11g offers flexible deployment options with a built-in smart cache so organizations can deliver Web sites or Web applications without requiring Oracle ECM Suite as part of the delivery system Integrated Oracle ECM Suite 11g also offers a series of next generation desktop integrations, providing integrations such as: New MS Office integration with menus to access managed content, insert managed links, and compare managed documents using standard MS Office reviewing tools Automatic identity tagging of documents on download - to help users understand which versions they are viewing and prevent duplicate content items in the content repository. New "smart productivity folders" to show a users workflow inbox, saved searches and checked out content directly from Windows Explorer Drag and drop metadata pop-ups Check in and check out for all file formats with any standard WebDAV server As part of Oracle's Enterprise Application Documents initiative, Oracle Content Management 11g also provides certified application integrations with solution templates You can read the press release here. You can see more assets at the launch center here. You can sign up for the announcement webinar and hear more about the new features here. You can read the benchmarking study here.

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• New Netra SPARC T3 Servers

  - by Ferhat Hatay

  Today at the Mobile World Congress 2011, Oracle announced two new carrier-grade NEBS Level 3- certified servers: Oracle’s Netra SPARC T3-1 rackmount server and Oracle’s Netra SPARC T3-1BA ATCA blade server bringing the performance, scalability and power efficiency of the newest SPARC T3 processor to the communications market.    The Netra SPARC T3-1 server enclosure has a compact 20inch-deep carrier-grade rack-optimized design The new Netra SPARC T3 servers further expand Oracle’s complete portfolio for the communications industry, which includes carrier-grade servers, storage and application software to run operations support systems and service delivery platforms with easy migration capabilities and unmatched investment protection via the binary compatibility guarantee of the Oracle Solaris operating system. With advanced reliability, networking and security features built-in to Oracle Solaris – the most widely deployed carrier-grade OS – the systems announced today are uniquely suited for mission-critical core network infrastructure and service delivery. The world’s first carrier-grade system using the 16-core, 128-thread SPARC T3 processor, the Netra SPARC T3-1 server supports 2x the I/O bandwidth, 2x the memory and is 35 percent faster than the previous generation. With integrated on-chip 10 Gigabit Ethernet, on-chip cryptographic acceleration, and built-in, no-cost Oracle VM Server for SPARC and Oracle Solaris Containers for virtualization, the Netra SPARC T3-1 server is an ideal platform for consolidation, offering 128 virtual systems in a single server. As the next generation Netra SPARC ATCA blade, Netra SPARC T3-1BA ATCA blade server brings the PICMG 3.0 compatibility, NEBS Level 3 Certification, ETSI compliance and the Netra business practices to the customer solution. The Netra SPARC T3-1BA ATCA blade server can be mixed in the Sun Netra CT900 blade chassis with other ATCA UltraSPARC and x86 blades.     The Netra SPARC T3-1BA ATCA blade server   The Netra SPARC T3-1BA ATCA blade server delivers industry-leading scalability, density and cost efficiency with up to 36 SPARC T3 processors (3456 processing threads) in a single rack – a 50 percent increase over the previous generation. The Netra SPARC T3-1BA blade server also offers high-bandwidth and high-capacity I/O, with greater memory capacity to tackle the increasing business demands of the communications industry. For service providers faced with the rapid growth of broadband networks and the dramatic surge in global smartphone adoption, the new Netra SPARC T3 systems deliver continuous availability with massive scalability, tested and certified to run in the harshest conditions. More information Oracle’s Sun Netra Servers Scaling Throughput and Managing TCO with Oracle’s Netra SPARC T3-1 Servers Enabling End-to-End 10 Gigabit Ethernet in Oracle's Sun Netra ATCA Product Family Data Sheet: Netra SPARC T3-1BA ATCA Blade Server Data Sheet: Netra SPARC T3-1 Server Oracle Solaris: The Carrier Grade Operating System

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• Japan Welcomes Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c

  - by Anand Akela

  Following Oracle’s grand unveiling of Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c at Oracle OpenWorld 2011 in San Francisco, Oracle Japan just completed their launch for the product. Leng Tan, Oracle VP of Products, delivered the keynote with collaboration from a number of key partners in the region. From left to right: Leng Tan, VP of Products, Oracle; Shinyashiki-san, Assistant General Manager, NEC; Fuketa-san, General Manager, HITACHI; Fujii-san, General Manager, Fujitsu; Misawa-san, VP of Alliances, Oracle Japan NEC, Hitachi and Fujitsu have been among Oracle’s most active partners in the Japan region. They have received key awards from Oracle Japan for their efforts. NEC received the partner of the year award for 2010 and 2011. Hitachi received the partner of the year award for Oracle Enterprise Manager in 2011. Fujitsu received awards in the areas of Database and Oracle Exadata in 2011. All three partners were active participants in Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c beta program. According to Hirai-san, the technical lead at the event, there were over 200 attendees. “The event was so well-attended; there was no room to stand.” Said Hirai-san. Hirai-san demonstrating Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c at the Oracle Japan launch Here’s the highlight of the presentations made by the Oracle partners during this launch. NEC has developed an Oracle Enterprise Manager Plug-in for iStorage (NEC SAN Storage product). Additionally, NEC’s WebSAM Invariant Analyzer management tool is now capable of integrating with Oracle Enterprise Manager HITACHI demonstrated monitoring capabilities for Oracle Exadata through Oracle Enterprise Manager in their JP1 system management tool Fujitsu’s Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g adapter for their SystemWalker tool has now been enhanced to work with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. Following a very successful launch in Japan, Oracle’s Total Cloud Control road show and additional Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c launches continue in the EMEA and Asia Pacific regions. This week Sushil Kumar, VP of Product Strategy and Business Development is scheduled to deliver the keynotes at several cities in India. Also this week, Richard Sarwal, SVP of Products, is scheduled to deliver a keynote at the DOAG conference in Nuremburg, Germany. Richard is also delivering the Oracle Enterprise Manger 12c launch event keynote in Paris on November 18th. Check out our event schedule for Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c events across the globe! For more information, please go to Oracle Enterprise Manager  web page or  follow us at :  Twitter   Facebook YouTube Linkedin

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