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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, May 15, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, May 15, 2014Popular ReleasesVisualizers: Visualizer: This dll is the core of the project just copy and paste it in the following folder %Microsoft Visual Studio%\Common7\Packages\Debugger\Visualizers where %Microsoft Visual Studio% is the Visual studio installation folderQuickMon: Version 3.10: Adding the ability to see 'history' of Collector states (including details of errors or warnings at that time). The history size is configurable (default is switched off) and the Windows Service completely ignores keeping history (no UI or user to access it anyway). The Collector stats window now displays this history plus multiple collector stats windows can be opened at the same time. Additionally fixed a bug in the event log collector that reported an 'Error' state when an 'out of bounds' ...xFunc: xFunc 2.15.4: Fixed bug in Processor.csTFS Planning and Disaster Recovery Avoidance Guide: v1.4.BETA - TFS, DR and Azure IaaS Planning Guides: Welcome to the TFS Planning and DR Avoidance Guidance What is new? A new crisper, more compact style, which is easier to consume on multiple devices without sacrificing any content. Also included are the new TFS on Azure IaaS guide and supplementary guides. Note Capacity planning workbook and posters are included in the Everything Zip package. Quality-Bar Detail Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has been through an independent technical review ...WinAudit: WinAudit Freeware v3.0: WinAudit.exe v3.0 MD5: 88750CCF49FF7418199B2645755830FA Known Issues: 1. Report creation can be very slow when right-to-left (Hebrew) characters are present. 2. Emsisoft Anti-Malware may stop and/or quarantine WinAudit. This happens when WinAudit attempts to obtain a list if running programmes. You will need to set an exception rule in Emsisoft to allow WinAudit to run.MVCwCMS - ASP.NET MVC CMS: MVCwCMS 2.2.2: Updated CKFinder config. For the installation instructions visit the documentation page: https://mvcwcms.codeplex.com/documentationTerraMap (Terraria World Map Viewer): TerraMap 1.0.4: Added support for the new Terraria v1.2.4 update. New items, walls, and tiles Fixed Issue 35206: Hightlight/Find doesn't work for Demon Altars Fixed finding Demon Hearts/Shadow Orbs Added ability to find Enchanted Swords (in the stone) and Water Bolt books Fixed installer not uninstalling older versions The setup file will make sure .NET 4 is installed, install TerraMap, create desktop and start menu shortcuts, add a .wld file association, and launch TerraMap. If you prefer the zip ...WPF Localization Extension: v2.2.1: Issue #9277 Issue #9292 Issue #9311 Issue #9312 Issue #9313 Issue #9314CtrlAltStudio Viewer: CtrlAltStudio Viewer 1.2.1.41167 Release: This release of the CtrlAltStudio Viewer includes the following significant features: Oculus Rift support. Stereoscopic 3D display support. Variable walking / flying speed. Xbox 360 Controller support. Kinect for Windows support. Based on Firestorm viewer 4.6.5 codebase. For more details, see the release notes linked to below. Release notes: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/release-notes/1-2-1-41167-release Support info: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/support Privacy policy: http:/...ExtJS based ASP.NET Controls: FineUI v4.0.6: FineUI（???） ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET ??? FineUI??? ?? No JavaScript，No CSS，No UpdatePanel，No ViewState，No WebServices ??????? ?????? IE 8.0+、Chrome、Firefox、Opera、Safari ???? Apache License v2.0 ?：ExtJS ?? GPL v3 ?????(http://www.sencha.com/license) ???? ??：http://fineui.com/ ??：http://fineui.com/bbs/ ??：http://fineui.com/demo/ ??：http://fineui.com/doc/ ??：http://fineui.codeplex.com/ FineUI ???? ExtJS ????????，???? ExtJS ?，?????： 1. ????? FineUI ? ExtJS ? http://fineui.com/bbs/forum.ph...Office App Model Samples: Office App Model Samples v2.0: Office App Model Samples v2.0Readable Passphrase Generator: KeePass Plugin 0.13.0: Version 0.13.0 Added "mutators" which add uppercase and numbers to passphrases (to help complying with upper, lower, number complexity rules). Additional API methods which help consuming the generator from 3rd party c# projects. 13,160 words in the default dictionary (~600 more than previous release).CS-Script for Notepad++ (C# intellisense and code execution): Release v1.0.25.0: Release v1.0.25.0 MemberInfo/MethodInfo popup is now positioned properly to fit the screen In MethodInfo popup method signatures are word-wrapped Implemented Debug text value visualizer Pining sub-values from Watch PanelWrapper for the PAYMILL API: Paymill API Wrapper: Add Description in PreauthorizationHow to develop an autodialer / predictive dialer in C#: VoIP AutoDialer in C Sharp: This is the downloadable source code for this example project that is intended to help you in developing your own VoIP autodialer application in C#.R.NET: R.NET 1.5.12: R.NET 1.5.12 is a beta release towards R.NET 1.6. You are encouraged to use 1.5.12 now and give feedback. See the documentation for setup and usage instructions. Main changes for R.NET 1.5.12: The C stack limit was not disabled on Windows. For reasons possibly peculiar to R, this means that non-concurrent access to R from multiple threads was not stable. This is now fixed, with the fix validated with a unit test. Thanks to Odugen, skyguy94, and previously others (evolvedmicrobe, tomasp) fo...SEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.029.006 Release 1: Fix to allow keyboard search on load dialog. (type the first few letters of your save) Fixed check for new release. Changed the way ship details are loaded to alleviate load time for worlds with very large ships (100,000+ blocks). Fixed Image importer, was incorrectly listing 'Asteroid' as import option. Minor changes to menus (text and appearance) for clarity and OS consistency. Added in reading of world palette for color dialog editor. WIP on subsystem editor. Can now multiselec...Thaumcraft4 Research: Alpha 2 release, lots of awesome improvements: Performance inprovements asynchronous running of the search Search result-cap ( usefull for long routes, it wont try to find 3000 results ) statistics addedTiny Wifi Host: Tiny Wifi Host 3.0.0.0: Tiny Wifi Hotspot Creator (Portable) v3 size: 50KB-140KB New Features: Friendly name for connected devices instead of Mac-Address (Double click selected device to enter friendly name) Saves device names to devices.xml Better error reporting+solutions Warning sound when number of connected devices exceed a certain number. (useful when only certain number of devices must be connected at a time) Many Bug Fixes. NoAudio files does not include connect, disconnect and warning audio to dec...Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.597b: Thank you for being patient, againThere are a number of fixes in place with this release. and some new features added. Most are self explanatory, so check out the options in Preferences. Couple of new Features:* Movie - Allow save Title and Sort Title in Title Case format. * Movie - Allow save fanart.jpg if movie in folder. * TV - display episode source. Get episode source from episode filename. Fixed:* Movie - Added Fill Tags from plot keywords to Batch Rescraper. * Movie - Fixed TMDB s...New ProjectsBLADE View Engine - An independent RAZOR alternative: An alternative parser and view engine to Asp.net Razor that does not depend on Asp.net or .NET 4.5BPL++: A basic object orientated programming language built upon a virtual machine using C#Caedisi - A Cellular Automata Editor and Simulator for Network Decontamination: A research tool that explores the use of cellular automata in order to decontaminate a network attacked or infected by a virus. Cosmos Software Distrobution 1.0: No content until project released!ETCQuality: ETC QUALITY STAT SYSTEM. ????????????，??????????????。F.A.Q.: F.A.Q. project about Frequently asked questions. Help Viewer Redirector: Enables use of Help Viewer 2.0 or 2.1 with SQL Server instead of Help Viewer 1.0Jet.Payment.Cielo: Projeto contém integração com o serviço e-commerce Cielo, desenvolvido em C#. Criamos esse Helper para nossa própria necessidade. Nos ajude a melhorá-lo.Learning with Pati: Learning Javascript with PatiLeRenard: LeRenard is a collection of solutions (from core helper, extension methods) to libraries, all written in C# to help build applications.MCMP.NET: MCMP.NET allows ASP.NET applications to be added as contexts using mod_cluster.PowerShell Deployment Automation Framework: This project contains resources related to my blog at www.powershellcoach.compravda-f: ??????????? ? ?????? ??? ?????????? ??????sdir: Colorful, sorted and optionally rich directory enumeration for Windows.SienSchoofsProject: school project for .NET ExpertSorting collection of any type by several fields: Sorting collection of any type by several fields with using Reflection and Expression TreesTPS BarCode Scanner: This is going to be a collaboration platform for TPS team. We want to develop a simple low cost bar code generator and scanner system. This project is currentlVerifyDomainOutlookAddIn: ??????????????????????????????。Ynote Packages: Ynote Packages are a collection of tools which a play a crucial role in extending Ynote Classic and understanding it's true potential.??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????????,???、???!???????,????????????????,????????????,???! ?????-?????【??】?????????: ????????????、?????、?????、?????、?????、????,???????????,?????,??????！ ?????-?????【??】?????????: ???????????????,?????????????? ??。??????????、????、????、?????????? ???????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????????,?????,???????,???????????,??????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????、??????、????、?????、?????!????,????????????????!????。 ?????-?????【??】?????????: ???????????????????,?????????????????????,?????,????,???????. ?????-?????【??】?????????: ???????????????????、????????、????????、????????、???????,????????????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????、?????、?????、????、?????,??????????。????????????????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????????????????:????、????、??????????????,????????。????????! ????-????【??】????????: ?????????????????????,????????????,?????、??、????,?????,??????！ ?????-?????【??】?????????: ???????????????????,??????????,????????、????,??????????,??????????。 ?????-?????【??】?????????: ???????,??????:?????,?????,??????,??????????,????????。????????! ????: ????????，????????????????????????，?????????，????????????????。????????????????????，??????????????，?????????????。 ????????????，?： 　　?????？ 　　?????？ 　　???????？ 　　??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????????????,???????????????,????????????????????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????????、????,??100%????,??????,????????????,???????????! ????-????【??】????????: ???????????、??????????????????,????????,?????,??????,????,????,????! ?????-?????【??】?????????: ????????????????,??????????、??????,??????????、????、????、???????。 ?????--?????【??】?????????: ?????????????????????,???????????????,???????,?????,?????,????? !!!

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, January 30, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, January 30, 2011Popular ReleasesWPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.3: Version: 2.0.0.3 (Milestone 3): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Remark The sample applications are using Microsoft’s IoC container MEF. However, the WPF Application Framework (WAF) doesn’t force you to use the same IoC container in your application. You can use ...Rawr: Rawr 4.0.17 Beta: Rawr is now web-based. The link to use Rawr4 is: http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.phpThis is the Cataclysm Beta Release. More details can be found at the following link http://rawr.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=237262 and on the Version Notes page: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes As of the 4.0.16 release, you can now also begin using the new Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!This is a pre-alpha release of the WPF version, there are likely to be a lot of issues. If you...VivoSocial: VivoSocial 7.4.2: Version 7.4.2 of VivoSocial has been released. If you experienced any issues with the previous version, please update your modules to the 7.4.2 release and see if they persist. If you have any questions about this release, please post them in our Support forums. If you are experiencing a bug or would like to request a new feature, please submit it to our issue tracker. Web Controls * Updated Business Objects and added a new SQL Data Provider File. Groups * Fixed a security issue whe...PHP Manager for IIS: PHP Manager 1.1.1 for IIS 7: This is a minor release of PHP Manager for IIS 7. It contains all the functionality available in 56962 plus several bug fixes (see change list for more details). Also, this release includes Russian language support. SHA1 codes for the downloads are: PHPManagerForIIS-1.1.0-x86.msi - 6570B4A8AC8B5B776171C2BA0572C190F0900DE2 PHPManagerForIIS-1.1.0-x64.msi - 12EDE004EFEE57282EF11A8BAD1DC1ADFD66A654VFPX: VFP2C32 2.0.0.8 Release Candidate: This release includes several bugfixes, new functions and finally a CHM help file for the complete library.EnhSim: EnhSim 2.3.3 ALPHA: 2.3.3 ALPHAThis release supports WoW patch 4.06 at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Added back in a p...DB>doc for Microsoft SQL Server: 1.0.0.0: Initial release Supported output HTML WikiPlex markup Raw XML Supported objects Tables Primary Keys Foreign Keys ViewsmojoPortal: 2.3.6.1: see release notes on mojoportal.com http://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2361-released.aspx Note that we have separate deployment packages for .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0 The deployment package downloads on this page are pre-compiled and ready for production deployment, they contain no C# source code. To download the source code see the Source Code Tab I recommend getting the latest source code using TortoiseHG, you can get the source code corresponding to this release here.Office Web.UI: Alpha preview: This is the first alpha release. Very exciting moment... This download is just the demo application : "Contoso backoffice Web App". No source included for the moment, just the app, for testing purposes and for feedbacks !! This package includes a set of official MS Office icons (143 png 16x16 and 132 png 32x32) to really make a great app ! Please rate and give feedback ThanksParallel Programming with Microsoft Visual C++: Drop 6 - Chapters 4 and 5: This is Drop 6. It includes: Drafts of the Preface, Introduction, Chapters 2-7, Appendix B & C and the glossary Sample code for chapters 2-7 and Appendix A & B. The new material we'd like feedback on is: Chapter 4 - Parallel Aggregation Chapter 5 - Futures The source code requires Visual Studio 2010 in order to run. There is a known bug in the A-Dash sample when the user attempts to cancel a parallel calculation. We are working to fix this.Catel - WPF and Silverlight MVVM library: 1.1: (+) Styles can now be changed dynamically, see Examples application for a how-to (+) ViewModelBase class now have a constructor that allows services injection (+) ViewModelBase services can now be configured by IoC (via Microsoft.Unity) (+) All ViewModelBase services now have a unit test implementation (+) Added IProcessService to run processes from a viewmodel with directly using the process class (which makes it easier to unit test view models) (*) If the HasErrors property of DataObjec...NodeXL: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel: NodeXL Excel Template, version 1.0.1.160: The NodeXL Excel template displays a network graph using edge and vertex lists stored in an Excel 2007 or Excel 2010 workbook. What's NewThis release improves NodeXL's Twitter and Pajek features. See the Complete NodeXL Release History for details. Installation StepsFollow these steps to install and use the template: Download the Zip file. Unzip it into any folder. Use WinZip or a similar program, or just right-click the Zip file in Windows Explorer and select "Extract All." Close Ex...Kooboo CMS: Kooboo CMS 3.0 CTP: Files in this downloadkooboo_CMS.zip: The kooboo application files Content_DBProvider.zip: Additional content database implementation of MSSQL, RavenDB and SQLCE. Default is XML based database. To use them, copy the related dlls into web root bin folder and remove old content provider dlls. Content provider has the name like "Kooboo.CMS.Content.Persistence.SQLServer.dll" View_Engines.zip: Supports of Razor, webform and NVelocity view engine. Copy the dlls into web root bin folder to enable...UOB & ME: UOB ME 2.6: UOB ME 2.6????: ???? V1.0: ???? V1.0 ??Password Generator: 2.2: Parallel password generation Password strength calculation ( Same method used by Microsoft here : https://www.microsoft.com/protect/fraud/passwords/checker.aspx ) Minor code refactoringVisual Studio 2010 Architecture Tooling Guidance: Spanish - Architecture Guidance: Francisco Fagas http://geeks.ms/blogs/ffagas, Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP), localized the Visual Studio 2010 Quick Reference Guidance for the Spanish communities, based on http://vsarchitectureguide.codeplex.com/releases/view/47828. Release Notes The guidance is available in a xps-only (default) or complete package. The complete package contains the files in xps, pdf and Office 2007 formats. 2011-01-24 Publish version 1.0 of the Spanish localized bits.ASP.NET MVC Project Awesome, jQuery Ajax helpers (controls): 1.6.2: A rich set of helpers (controls) that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled Web applications. These helpers include Autocomplete, AjaxDropdown, Lookup, Confirm Dialog, Popup Form, Popup and Pager the html generation has been optimized, the html page size is much smaller nowFacebook Graph Toolkit: Facebook Graph Toolkit 0.6: new Facebook Graph objects: Application, Page, Post, Comment Improved Intellisense documentation new Graph Api connections: albums, photos, posts, feed, home, friends JSON Toolkit upgraded to version 0.9 (beta release) with bug fixes and new features bug fixed: error when handling empty JSON arrays bug fixed: error when handling JSON array with square or large brackets in the message bug fixed: error when handling JSON obejcts with double quotation in the message bug fixed: erro...Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework: Visual Studio 2008 Code Samples 2011-01-23: Code samples for Visual Studio 2008New ProjectsAnaida - WebSocket Client/Adapter: Anaida is a WebSocket Client Library/Adapter. With 3 versions for Java, Silverlight and C#CutPasteAssign: Visual Studio extension to assist in the common refactoring of assigning parameters to local variables.Drori Photos: Photos of Drori the photographerD-Solution: App de D-SolutionEnigma Home Inventory: Most consumers do not have an itemized list of proof of ownership. Enigma Home Inventory may take the hassle out of arguing with the insurance companies. This project is aimed to be for a simple inventory program for end users who are not computer savvy.FastKnow: is a CMS & wikiFileSignatures: FileSignatures aims to create a class library that can identify the file format based on file contents. The project is written in C# 3.0, and can be used in .NET 3.5 and 4.0 projects.Genrsis: The aim of the Genrsis project is to be a suite of products that you can use to build things, starting with a workflow-based project management tool. Built in C#, it should be a one-stop place to get well-integrated products to get you up and running.MVC Demos: MVC 2 and MVC 3 examples with ajax and json.MVC Templates for DevExpress: Scaffolding templates for use in ASP.NET MVC 2 with DevExpress MVC Extensions for ASP.NET MVCPixel Replacer: The Pixel Replacer is a simple library for replacing pixel colors with a new color, by setting a filter rule.ReviewPal - The Code Review Companion for .Net.: ReviewPal, the Code Review Companion for .Net. This is an Add-In / Extension for Visual Studio 2008 & Visual Studio 2010. The aim of the Add-In / Extension is to do a source code review within the Visual Studio IDE where code makes more sense and most readable.SMVector3: Vector3 class implemented as float array or with SIMD instructions with the same interface so it is transparant whether you decide to use one version or another. You can also chance version during the life cycle of the projects.uRibbon - Office 2007 Ribbon control for VB.NET: Office 2007 ribbon control, with Orb and graphic transitions. After searching for many day looking for an Office 2007-like ribbon bar, I finally gave up and decided to write my own. It's in decent shape as-is. But anyone interested in helping me to continue the devlopment??vtcheck: This will read a target binary and check to see if it is detected by VirusTotal.Web Scheduled Task Framework: A simple set of classes intended to allow the standalone scheduling of tasks (arbitrary code to execute) on a .net website without requiring access to the operating system.WP7 codeproject app: A Windows Phone 7 app for browsing codeproject.com.zhongjh: ?????????，???????。???????????: ???????????

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• .NET Code Evolution

  - by Alois Kraus

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/akraus1/archive/2013/07/24/153504.aspxAt my day job I do look at a lot of code written by other people. Most of the code is quite good and some is even a masterpiece. And there is also code which makes you think WTF… oh it was written by me. Hm not so bad after all. There are many excuses reasons for bad code. Most often it is time pressure followed by not enough ambition (who cares) or insufficient training. Normally I do care about code quality quite a lot which makes me a (perceived) slow worker who does write many tests and refines the code quite a lot because of the design deficiencies. Most of the deficiencies I do find by putting my design under stress while checking for invariants. It does also help a lot to step into the code with a debugger (sometimes also Windbg). I do this much more often when my tests are red. That way I do get a much better understanding what my code really does and not what I think it should be doing. This time I do want to show you how code can evolve over the years with different .NET Framework versions. Once there was  time where .NET 1.1 was new and many C++ programmers did switch over to get rid of not initialized pointers and memory leaks. There were also nice new data structures available such as the Hashtable which is fast lookup table with O(1) time complexity. All was good and much code was written since then. At 2005 a new version of the .NET Framework did arrive which did bring many new things like generics and new data structures. The “old” fashioned way of Hashtable were coming to an end and everyone used the new Dictionary<xx,xx> type instead which was type safe and faster because the object to type conversion (aka boxing) was no longer necessary. I think 95% of all Hashtables and dictionaries use string as key. Often it is convenient to ignore casing to make it easy to look up values which the user did enter. An often followed route is to convert the string to upper case before putting it into the Hashtable. Hashtable Table = new Hashtable(); void Add(string key, string value) { Table.Add(key.ToUpper(), value); } This is valid and working code but it has problems. First we can pass to the Hashtable a custom IEqualityComparer to do the string matching case insensitive. Second we can switch over to the now also old Dictionary type to become a little faster and we can keep the the original keys (not upper cased) in the dictionary. Dictionary<string, string> DictTable = new Dictionary<string, string>(StringComparer.OrdinalIgnoreCase); void AddDict(string key, string value) { DictTable.Add(key, value); } Many people do not user the other ctors of Dictionary because they do shy away from the overhead of writing their own comparer. They do not know that .NET has for strings already predefined comparers at hand which you can directly use. Today in the many core area we do use threads all over the place. Sometimes things break in subtle ways but most of the time it is sufficient to place a lock around the offender. Threading has become so mainstream that it may sound weird that in the year 2000 some guy got a huge incentive for the idea to reduce the time to process calibration data from 12 hours to 6 hours by using two threads on a dual core machine. Threading does make it easy to become faster at the expense of correctness. Correct and scalable multithreading can be arbitrarily hard to achieve depending on the problem you are trying to solve. Lets suppose we want to process millions of items with two threads and count the processed items processed by all threads. A typical beginners code might look like this: int Counter; void IJustLearnedToUseThreads() { var t1 = new Thread(ThreadWorkMethod); t1.Start(); var t2 = new Thread(ThreadWorkMethod); t2.Start(); t1.Join(); t2.Join(); if (Counter != 2 * Increments) throw new Exception("Hmm " + Counter + " != " + 2 * Increments); } const int Increments = 10 * 1000 * 1000; void ThreadWorkMethod() { for (int i = 0; i < Increments; i++) { Counter++; } } It does throw an exception with the message e.g. “Hmm 10.222.287 != 20.000.000” and does never finish. The code does fail because the assumption that Counter++ is an atomic operation is wrong. The ++ operator is just a shortcut for Counter = Counter + 1 This does involve reading the counter from a memory location into the CPU, incrementing value on the CPU and writing the new value back to the memory location. When we do look at the generated assembly code we will see only inc dword ptr [ecx+10h] which is only one instruction. Yes it is one instruction but it is not atomic. All modern CPUs have several layers of caches (L1,L2,L3) which try to hide the fact how slow actual main memory accesses are. Since cache is just another word for redundant copy it can happen that one CPU does read a value from main memory into the cache, modifies it and write it back to the main memory. The problem is that at least the L1 cache is not shared between CPUs so it can happen that one CPU does make changes to values which did change in meantime in the main memory. From the exception you can see we did increment the value 20 million times but half of the changes were lost because we did overwrite the already changed value from the other thread. This is a very common case and people do learn to protect their  data with proper locking.   void Intermediate() { var time = Stopwatch.StartNew(); Action acc = ThreadWorkMethod_Intermediate; var ar1 = acc.BeginInvoke(null, null); var ar2 = acc.BeginInvoke(null, null); ar1.AsyncWaitHandle.WaitOne(); ar2.AsyncWaitHandle.WaitOne(); if (Counter != 2 * Increments) throw new Exception(String.Format("Hmm {0:N0} != {1:N0}", Counter, 2 * Increments)); Console.WriteLine("Intermediate did take: {0:F1}s", time.Elapsed.TotalSeconds); } void ThreadWorkMethod_Intermediate() { for (int i = 0; i < Increments; i++) { lock (this) { Counter++; } } } This is better and does use the .NET Threadpool to get rid of manual thread management. It does give the expected result but it can result in deadlocks because you do lock on this. This is in general a bad idea since it can lead to deadlocks when other threads use your class instance as lock object. It is therefore recommended to create a private object as lock object to ensure that nobody else can lock your lock object. When you read more about threading you will read about lock free algorithms. They are nice and can improve performance quite a lot but you need to pay close attention to the CLR memory model. It does make quite weak guarantees in general but it can still work because your CPU architecture does give you more invariants than the CLR memory model. For a simple counter there is an easy lock free alternative present with the Interlocked class in .NET. As a general rule you should not try to write lock free algos since most likely you will fail to get it right on all CPU architectures. void Experienced() { var time = Stopwatch.StartNew(); Task t1 = Task.Factory.StartNew(ThreadWorkMethod_Experienced); Task t2 = Task.Factory.StartNew(ThreadWorkMethod_Experienced); t1.Wait(); t2.Wait(); if (Counter != 2 * Increments) throw new Exception(String.Format("Hmm {0:N0} != {1:N0}", Counter, 2 * Increments)); Console.WriteLine("Experienced did take: {0:F1}s", time.Elapsed.TotalSeconds); } void ThreadWorkMethod_Experienced() { for (int i = 0; i < Increments; i++) { Interlocked.Increment(ref Counter); } } Since time does move forward we do not use threads explicitly anymore but the much nicer Task abstraction which was introduced with .NET 4 at 2010. It is educational to look at the generated assembly code. The Interlocked.Increment method must be called which does wondrous things right? Lets see: lock inc dword ptr [eax] The first thing to note that there is no method call at all. Why? Because the JIT compiler does know very well about CPU intrinsic functions. Atomic operations which do lock the memory bus to prevent other processors to read stale values are such things. Second: This is the same increment call prefixed with a lock instruction. The only reason for the existence of the Interlocked class is that the JIT compiler can compile it to the matching CPU intrinsic functions which can not only increment by one but can also do an add, exchange and a combined compare and exchange operation. But be warned that the correct usage of its methods can be tricky. If you try to be clever and look a the generated IL code and try to reason about its efficiency you will fail. Only the generated machine code counts. Is this the best code we can write? Perhaps. It is nice and clean. But can we make it any faster? Lets see how good we are doing currently. Level Time in s IJustLearnedToUseThreads Flawed Code Intermediate 1,5 (lock) Experienced 0,3 (Interlocked.Increment) Master 0,1 (1,0 for int[2]) That lock free thing is really a nice thing. But if you read more about CPU cache, cache coherency, false sharing you can do even better. int[] Counters = new int[12]; // Cache line size is 64 bytes on my machine with an 8 way associative cache try for yourself e.g. 64 on more modern CPUs void Master() { var time = Stopwatch.StartNew(); Task t1 = Task.Factory.StartNew(ThreadWorkMethod_Master, 0); Task t2 = Task.Factory.StartNew(ThreadWorkMethod_Master, Counters.Length - 1); t1.Wait(); t2.Wait(); Counter = Counters[0] + Counters[Counters.Length - 1]; if (Counter != 2 * Increments) throw new Exception(String.Format("Hmm {0:N0} != {1:N0}", Counter, 2 * Increments)); Console.WriteLine("Master did take: {0:F1}s", time.Elapsed.TotalSeconds); } void ThreadWorkMethod_Master(object number) { int index = (int) number; for (int i = 0; i < Increments; i++) { Counters[index]++; } } The key insight here is to use for each core its own value. But if you simply use simply an integer array of two items, one for each core and add the items at the end you will be much slower than the lock free version (factor 3). Each CPU core has its own cache line size which is something in the range of 16-256 bytes. When you do access a value from one location the CPU does not only fetch one value from main memory but a complete cache line (e.g. 16 bytes). This means that you do not pay for the next 15 bytes when you access them. This can lead to dramatic performance improvements and non obvious code which is faster although it does have many more memory reads than another algorithm. So what have we done here? We have started with correct code but it was lacking knowledge how to use the .NET Base Class Libraries optimally. Then we did try to get fancy and used threads for the first time and failed. Our next try was better but it still had non obvious issues (lock object exposed to the outside). Knowledge has increased further and we have found a lock free version of our counter which is a nice and clean way which is a perfectly valid solution. The last example is only here to show you how you can get most out of threading by paying close attention to your used data structures and CPU cache coherency. Although we are working in a virtual execution environment in a high level language with automatic memory management it does pay off to know the details down to the assembly level. Only if you continue to learn and to dig deeper you can come up with solutions no one else was even considering. I have studied particle physics which does help at the digging deeper part. Have you ever tried to solve Quantum Chromodynamics equations? Compared to that the rest must be easy ;-). Although I am no longer working in the Science field I take pride in discovering non obvious things. This can be a very hard to find bug or a new way to restructure data to make something 10 times faster. Now I need to get some sleep ….

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, November 06, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, November 06, 2013Popular ReleasesWin_8 (??? Devel Studio 2 ??? 3): Win8 0.8 + Sample (.dvs): ???????------------------------------------------ 1. ????????? ??????????? ????????? ??????. 2. ?????????? ???? , ????????? ? ?????????? ???? ????. 3. ?????????? ?????? ??????. 4. ?????????? ????????? ???????????. 5. ????????????? ??? . English----------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Added ability to load icons. 2. Fixed bugs related to obtaining names of shapes. 3. Fixed a memory leak. 4. Fixed some defects. 5. Optimized code. ---------------------------...NWTCompiler: NWTCompiler v2.4.0: This version fixes a bug with Pinyin and adds support for the 2013 English NWT.ConEmu - Windows console with tabs: ConEmu 131105 [Alpha]: ConEmu - developer build x86 and x64 versions. Written in C++, no additional packages required. Run "ConEmu.exe" or "ConEmu64.exe". Some useful information you may found: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/conemu http://code.google.com/p/conemu-maximus5/wiki/ConEmuFAQ http://code.google.com/p/conemu-maximus5/wiki/TableOfContents If you want to use ConEmu in portable mode, just create empty "ConEmu.xml" file near to "ConEmu.exe"CS-Script for Notepad++ (C# intellisense and code execution): Release v1.0.9.0: Implemented Recent Scripts list Added checking for plugin updates from AboutBox Multiple formatting improvements/fixes Implemented selection of the CLR version when preparing distribution package Added project panel button for showing plugin shortcuts list Added 'What's New?' panel Fixed auto-formatting scrolling artifact Implemented navigation to "logical" file (vs. auto-generated) file from output panel To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.Home Access Plus+: v9.7: Updated: JSON.net Fixed: Issue with the Windows 8 App Added: Windows 8.1 App Added: Win: Self Signed HAP+ Install Support Added: Win: Delete File Support Added: Timeout for the Logon Tracker Removed: Error Dialogs on the User Card Fixed: Green line showing over the booking form Note: a web.config file update is requiredWPF Extended DataGrid: WPF Extended DataGrid 2.0.0.10 binaries: Now row summaries are updated whenever autofilter value sis modified.Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V55 (LiveConnect): This is a which can be used with the new LiveConnect authentication and the MSDN forums. It fixed a bug where the authentication does not work after 1 hour. A logfile will be stored in "%AppData%\Community\CommunityForumsNNTPServer". If you have any problems please feel free to sent me the file "LogFile.txt" or attached it to a issue.xUnit.net - Unit testing framework for C# and .NET (a successor to NUnit): xUnit.net Visual Studio Runner: A placeholder for downloading Visual Studio runner VSIX files, in case the Gallery is down (or you want to downgrade to older versions).Social Network Importer for NodeXL: SocialNetImporter(v.1.9.1): This new version includes: - Include me option is back - Fixed the login bug reported latelyVeraCrypt: VeraCrypt version 1.0c: Changes between 1.0b and 1.0c (11 November 2013) : Set correctly the minimum required version in volumes header (this value must always follow the program version after any major changes). This also solves also the hidden volume issueCaptcha MVC: Captcha MVC 2.5: v 2.5: Added support for MVC 5. The DefaultCaptchaManager is no longer throws an error if the captcha values was entered incorrectly. Minor changes. v 2.4.1: Fixed issues with deleting incorrect values of the captcha token in the SessionStorageProvider. This could lead to a situation when the captcha was not working with the SessionStorageProvider. Minor changes. v 2.4: Changed the IIntelligencePolicy interface, added ICaptchaManager as parameter for all methods. Improved font size ...Role Based Views in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: Role Based Views in CRM 2011 - 1.0.0.0: Set the default view for a user for a particular entity based on security role Hide/ Show views for a user for a particular entity based on his security role Choose the preferred role for a user for view configuration when the user have more than one security role in the system. Ability to exclude/ include a user from view configuration as per business requirementsDuplica: duplica 0.2.498: this is first stable releaseDNN Blog: 06.00.01: 06.00.01 ReleaseThis is the first bugfix release of the new v6 blog module. These are the changes: Added some robustness in v5-v6 scripts to cater for some rare upgrade scenarios Changed the name of the module definition to avoid clash with Evoq Social Addition of sitemap providerStock Track: Version 1.2 Stable: Overhaul and re-think of the user interface in normal mode. Added stock history view in normal mode. Allows user to enter orders in normal mode. Allow advanced user to run database queries within the program. Improved sales statistics feature, able to calculate against a single category. Updated database script file. Now compatible with lower version of SQL Server.VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.50: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImageHostHQ.com" links NEW: Added Support for "ImgMoney.net" links NEW: Added Support for "ImgSavy.com" links NEW: Added Support for "PixTreat.com" links Bug fixesVidCoder: 1.5.11 Beta: Added Encode Details window. Exposes elapsed time, ETA, current and average FPS, running file size, current pass and pass progress. Open it by going to Windows -> Encode Details while an encode is running. Subtitle dialog now disables the "Burn In" checkbox when it's either unavailable or it's the only option. It also disables the "Forced Only" when the subtitle type doesn't support the "Forced" flag. Updated HandBrake core to SVN 5872. Fixed crash in the preview window when a source fil...Wsus Package Publisher: Release v1.3.1311.02: Add three new Actions in Custom Updates : Work with Files (Copy, Delete, Rename), Work with Folders (Add, Delete, Rename) and Work with Registry Keys (Add, Delete, Rename). Fix a bug, where after resigning an update, the display is not refresh. Modify the way WPP sort rows in 'Updates Detail Viewer' and 'Computer List Viewer' so that dates are correctly sorted. Add a Tab in the settings form to set Proxy settings when WPP needs to go on Internet. Fix a bug where 'Manage Catalogs Subsc...uComponents: uComponents v6.0.0: This release of uComponents will compile against and support the new API in Umbraco v6.1.0. What's new in uComponents v6.0.0? New DataTypesImage Point XML DropDownList XPath Templatable List New features / Resolved issuesThe following workitems have been implemented and/or resolved: 14781 14805 14808 14818 14854 14827 14868 14859 14790 14853 14790 DataType Grid 14788 14810 14873 14833 14864 14855 / 14860 14816 14823 Drag & Drop support for rows Su...SmartStore.NET - Free ASP.NET MVC Ecommerce Shopping Cart Solution: SmartStore.NET 1.2.1: New FeaturesAdded option Limit to current basket subtotal to HadSpentAmount discount rule Items in product lists can be labelled as NEW for a configurable period of time Product templates can optionally display a discount sign when discounts were applied Added the ability to set multiple favicons depending on stores and/or themes Plugin management: multiple plugins can now be (un)installed in one go Added a field for the HTML body id to store entity (Developer) New property 'Extra...New Projects.Net PG: Just university projectA2D: 1. Cache System 2. Event System 3. IoC 4. Sql Dispatcher System 5. Session System 6. ???Command Bus 7. ????Advantage Browser: A web browser made in Visual Basic 2010 for all to add and learn from or just use.BarCoder: BarCoder is C# Web app for creating EAN-8 and EAN-16 bar codec in vector graphic image format.CLIDE .NET: CLIDE .NET The Command Line IDE for .NET Because Code is just CodeDevcken Java Library: Devcken's Java LibraryDouble Sides Flipping Control - Windows Phone: Double Sides Flipping Control The Control features the following: Two Sides Control which flipping across its center in Both Directions based on horizontal geFigTree FHMS (Funeral Home Management System): FigTree FHMS (Funeral Home Management System) application is outfitted for daily operations of your funeral home.InChatter: InChatter is a Instant messaging communication module for a desktop application programmed by C#. And the server is a WCF program.Mod.Training: Some helpful examples about Orchardy stuffPlupload MVC4 Demo: This project shows how to implement Plupload with an MVC applicationQuality Control Management System: QCMS is a web-based Test Management systemQuan Ly Nha Thuoc: Project Qu?n Lý Ti?m Thu?c Tây Email: phuoc.nh2953@sinhvien.hoasen.edu.vnRandomchaos DX11 Engine: An open source C++ DX 11 EngineService Gateway: The service gateway enables composition and agility for web sites and services.Sortable objects: Sortable objects server and client sideSTSADM ExportCrawlLog - SP Foundation 2010: STSADM extension to see/export SharePoint Fiundation 2010 MSSearch configuration and Crawl LogsTACACS Plus Extended: tacacs+ updates to support subnet specific configurations and reduced configuration with ldap access.TKinect: Framework for Testing Kinect ApplicationsWebApi Data Wrapper: This project - a collection of wrapper for WebAPI.WPF ExpressionEditor: Control representing expression editor. Allows usage of custom expression parsers.

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• CUDA linking error - Visual Express 2008 - nvcc fatal due to (null) configuration file

  - by Josh

  Hi, I've been searching extensively for a possible solution to my error for the past 2 weeks. I have successfully installed the Cuda 64-bit compiler (tools) and SDK as well as the 64-bit version of Visual Studio Express 2008 and Windows 7 SDK with Framework 3.5. I'm using windows XP 64-bit. I have confirmed that VSE is able to compile in 64-bit as I have all of the 64-bit options available to me using the steps on the following website: (since Visual Express does not inherently include the 64-bit packages) http://jenshuebel.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/visual-c-2008-express-edition-and-64-bit-targets/ I have confirmed the 64-bit compile ability since the "x64" is available from the pull-down menu under "Tools-Options-VC++ Directories" and compiling in 64-bit does not result in the entire project being "skipped". I have included all the needed directories for 64-bit cuda tools, 64 SDK and Visual Express (\VC\bin\amd64). Here's the error message I receive when trying to compile in 64-bit: 1>------ Build started: Project: New, Configuration: Release x64 ------ 1>Compiling with CUDA Build Rule... 1>"C:\CUDA\bin64\nvcc.exe" -arch sm_10 -ccbin "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\bin" -Xcompiler "/EHsc /W3 /nologo /O2 /Zi /MT " -maxrregcount=32 --compile -o "x64\Release\template.cu.obj" "c:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\NVIDIA Corporation\NVIDIA GPU Computing SDK\C\src\CUDA_Walkthrough_DeviceKernels\template.cu" 1>nvcc fatal : Visual Studio configuration file '(null)' could not be found for installation at 'C:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0/VC/bin/../..' 1>Linking... 1>LINK : fatal error LNK1181: cannot open input file '.\x64\Release\template.cu.obj' 1>Build log was saved at "file://c:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects\New\New\x64\Release\BuildLog.htm" 1>New - 1 error(s), 0 warning(s) ========== Build: 0 succeeded, 1 failed, 0 up-to-date, 0 skipped ========== Here's the simple code I'm trying to compile/run in 64-bit: #include <stdlib.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <string.h> #include <math.h> #include <cuda.h> void mypause () { printf ( "Press [Enter] to continue . . ." ); fflush ( stdout ); getchar(); } __global__ void VecAdd1_Kernel(float* A, float* B, float* C, int N) { int i = blockDim.x*blockIdx.x+threadIdx.x; if (i<N) C[i] = A[i] + B[i]; //result should be a 16x1 array of 250s } __global__ void VecAdd2_Kernel(float* B, float* C, int N) { int i = blockDim.x*blockIdx.x+threadIdx.x; if (i<N) C[i] = C[i] + B[i]; //result should be a 16x1 array of 400s } int main() { int N = 16; float A[16];float B[16]; size_t size = N*sizeof(float); for(int i=0; i<N; i++) { A[i] = 100.0; B[i] = 150.0; } // Allocate input vectors h_A and h_B in host memory float* h_A = (float*)malloc(size); float* h_B = (float*)malloc(size); float* h_C = (float*)malloc(size); //Initialize Input Vectors memset(h_A,0,size);memset(h_B,0,size); h_A = A;h_B = B; printf("SUM = %f\n",A[1]+B[1]); //simple check for initialization //Allocate vectors in device memory float* d_A; cudaMalloc((void**)&d_A,size); float* d_B; cudaMalloc((void**)&d_B,size); float* d_C; cudaMalloc((void**)&d_C,size); //Copy vectors from host memory to device memory cudaMemcpy(d_A,h_A,size,cudaMemcpyHostToDevice); cudaMemcpy(d_B,h_B,size,cudaMemcpyHostToDevice); //Invoke kernel int threadsPerBlock = 256; int blocksPerGrid = (N+threadsPerBlock-1)/threadsPerBlock; VecAdd1(blocksPerGrid, threadsPerBlock,d_A,d_B,d_C,N); VecAdd2(blocksPerGrid, threadsPerBlock,d_B,d_C,N); //Copy results from device memory to host memory //h_C contains the result in host memory cudaMemcpy(h_C,d_C,size,cudaMemcpyDeviceToHost); for(int i=0; i<N; i++) //output result from the kernel "VecAdd" { printf("%f ", h_C[i] ); printf("\n"); } printf("\n"); cudaFree(d_A); cudaFree(d_B); cudaFree(d_C); free(h_A); free(h_B); free(h_C); mypause(); return 0; }

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• NerdDinner form validation DataAnnotations ERROR in MVC2 when a form field is left blank.

  - by Edward Burns

  Platform: Windows 7 Ultimate IDE: Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Web Environment: ASP.NET MVC 2 Database: SQL Server 2008 R2 Express Data Access: Entity Framework 4 Form Validation: DataAnnotations Sample App: NerdDinner from Wrox Pro ASP.NET MVC 2 Book: Wrox Professional MVC 2 Problem with Chapter 1 - Section: "Integrating Validation and Business Rule Logic with Model Classes" (pages 33 to 35) ERROR Synopsis: NerdDinner form validation ERROR with DataAnnotations and db nulls. DataAnnotations in sample code does not work when the database fields are set to not allow nulls. ERROR occurs with the code from the book and with the sample code downloaded from codeplex. Help! I'm really frustrated by this!! I can't believe something so simple just doesn't work??? Steps to reproduce ERROR: Set Database fields to not allow NULLs (See Picture) Set NerdDinnerEntityModel Dinner class fields' Nullable property to false (See Picture) Add DataAnnotations for Dinner_Validation class (CODE A) Create Dinner repository class (CODE B) Add CREATE action to DinnerController (CODE C) This is blank form before posting (See Picture) This null ERROR occurs when posting a blank form which should be intercepted by the Dinner_Validation class DataAnnotations. Note ERROR message says that "This property cannot be set to a null value. WTH??? (See Picture) The next ERROR occurs during the edit process. Here is the Edit controller action (CODE D) This is the "Edit" form with intentionally wrong input to test Dinner Validation DataAnnotations (See Picture) The ERROR occurs again when posting the edit form with blank form fields. The post request should be intercepted by the Dinner_Validation class DataAnnotations. Same null entry error. WTH??? (See Picture) See screen shots at: http://www.intermedia4web.com/temp/nerdDinner/StackOverflowNerdDinnerQuestionshort.png CODE A: [MetadataType(typeof(Dinner_Validation))] public partial class Dinner { } [Bind(Include = "Title, EventDate, Description, Address, Country, ContactPhone, Latitude, Longitude")] public class Dinner_Validation { [Required(ErrorMessage = "Title is required")] [StringLength(50, ErrorMessage = "Title may not be longer than 50 characters")] public string Title { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage = "Description is required")] [StringLength(265, ErrorMessage = "Description must be 256 characters or less")] public string Description { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage="Event date is required")] public DateTime EventDate { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage = "Address is required")] public string Address { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage = "Country is required")] public string Country { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage = "Contact phone is required")] public string ContactPhone { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage = "Latitude is required")] public double Latitude { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage = "Longitude is required")] public double Longitude { get; set; } } CODE B: public class DinnerRepository { private NerdDinnerEntities _NerdDinnerEntity = new NerdDinnerEntities(); // Query Method public IQueryable<Dinner> FindAllDinners() { return _NerdDinnerEntity.Dinners; } // Query Method public IQueryable<Dinner> FindUpcomingDinners() { return from dinner in _NerdDinnerEntity.Dinners where dinner.EventDate > DateTime.Now orderby dinner.EventDate select dinner; } // Query Method public Dinner GetDinner(int id) { return _NerdDinnerEntity.Dinners.FirstOrDefault(d => d.DinnerID == id); } // Insert Method public void Add(Dinner dinner) { _NerdDinnerEntity.Dinners.AddObject(dinner); } // Delete Method public void Delete(Dinner dinner) { foreach (var rsvp in dinner.RSVPs) { _NerdDinnerEntity.RSVPs.DeleteObject(rsvp); } _NerdDinnerEntity.Dinners.DeleteObject(dinner); } // Persistence Method public void Save() { _NerdDinnerEntity.SaveChanges(); } } CODE C: // ************************************** // GET: /Dinners/Create/ // ************************************** public ActionResult Create() { Dinner dinner = new Dinner() { EventDate = DateTime.Now.AddDays(7) }; return View(dinner); } // ************************************** // POST: /Dinners/Create/ // ************************************** [HttpPost] public ActionResult Create(Dinner dinner) { if (ModelState.IsValid) { dinner.HostedBy = "The Code Dude"; _dinnerRepository.Add(dinner); _dinnerRepository.Save(); return RedirectToAction("Details", new { id = dinner.DinnerID }); } else { return View(dinner); } } CODE D: // ************************************** // GET: /Dinners/Edit/{id} // ************************************** public ActionResult Edit(int id) { Dinner dinner = _dinnerRepository.GetDinner(id); return View(dinner); } // ************************************** // POST: /Dinners/Edit/{id} // ************************************** [HttpPost] public ActionResult Edit(int id, FormCollection formValues) { Dinner dinner = _dinnerRepository.GetDinner(id); if (TryUpdateModel(dinner)){ _dinnerRepository.Save(); return RedirectToAction("Details", new { id=dinner.DinnerID }); } return View(dinner); } I have sent Wrox and one of the authors a request for help but have not heard back from anyone. Readers of the book cannot even continue to finish the rest of chapter 1 because of these errors. Even if I download the latest build from Codeplex, it still has the same errors. Can someone please help me and tell me what needs to be fixed? Thanks - Ed.

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• Solving embarassingly parallel problems using Python multiprocessing

  - by gotgenes

  How does one use multiprocessing to tackle embarrassingly parallel problems? Embarassingly parallel problems typically consist of three basic parts: Read input data (from a file, database, tcp connection, etc.). Run calculations on the input data, where each calculation is independent of any other calculation. Write results of calculations (to a file, database, tcp connection, etc.). We can parallelize the program in two dimensions: Part 2 can run on multiple cores, since each calculation is independent; order of processing doesn't matter. Each part can run independently. Part 1 can place data on an input queue, part 2 can pull data off the input queue and put results onto an output queue, and part 3 can pull results off the output queue and write them out. This seems a most basic pattern in concurrent programming, but I am still lost in trying to solve it, so let's write a canonical example to illustrate how this is done using multiprocessing. Here is the example problem: Given a CSV file with rows of integers as input, compute their sums. Separate the problem into three parts, which can all run in parallel: Process the input file into raw data (lists/iterables of integers) Calculate the sums of the data, in parallel Output the sums Below is traditional, single-process bound Python program which solves these three tasks: #!/usr/bin/env python # -*- coding: UTF-8 -*- # basicsums.py """A program that reads integer values from a CSV file and writes out their sums to another CSV file. """ import csv import optparse import sys def make_cli_parser(): """Make the command line interface parser.""" usage = "\n\n".join(["python %prog INPUT_CSV OUTPUT_CSV", __doc__, """ ARGUMENTS: INPUT_CSV: an input CSV file with rows of numbers OUTPUT_CSV: an output file that will contain the sums\ """]) cli_parser = optparse.OptionParser(usage) return cli_parser def parse_input_csv(csvfile): """Parses the input CSV and yields tuples with the index of the row as the first element, and the integers of the row as the second element. The index is zero-index based. :Parameters: - `csvfile`: a `csv.reader` instance """ for i, row in enumerate(csvfile): row = [int(entry) for entry in row] yield i, row def sum_rows(rows): """Yields a tuple with the index of each input list of integers as the first element, and the sum of the list of integers as the second element. The index is zero-index based. :Parameters: - `rows`: an iterable of tuples, with the index of the original row as the first element, and a list of integers as the second element """ for i, row in rows: yield i, sum(row) def write_results(csvfile, results): """Writes a series of results to an outfile, where the first column is the index of the original row of data, and the second column is the result of the calculation. The index is zero-index based. :Parameters: - `csvfile`: a `csv.writer` instance to which to write results - `results`: an iterable of tuples, with the index (zero-based) of the original row as the first element, and the calculated result from that row as the second element """ for result_row in results: csvfile.writerow(result_row) def main(argv): cli_parser = make_cli_parser() opts, args = cli_parser.parse_args(argv) if len(args) != 2: cli_parser.error("Please provide an input file and output file.") infile = open(args[0]) in_csvfile = csv.reader(infile) outfile = open(args[1], 'w') out_csvfile = csv.writer(outfile) # gets an iterable of rows that's not yet evaluated input_rows = parse_input_csv(in_csvfile) # sends the rows iterable to sum_rows() for results iterable, but # still not evaluated result_rows = sum_rows(input_rows) # finally evaluation takes place as a chain in write_results() write_results(out_csvfile, result_rows) infile.close() outfile.close() if __name__ == '__main__': main(sys.argv[1:]) Let's take this program and rewrite it to use multiprocessing to parallelize the three parts outlined above. Below is a skeleton of this new, parallelized program, that needs to be fleshed out to address the parts in the comments: #!/usr/bin/env python # -*- coding: UTF-8 -*- # multiproc_sums.py """A program that reads integer values from a CSV file and writes out their sums to another CSV file, using multiple processes if desired. """ import csv import multiprocessing import optparse import sys NUM_PROCS = multiprocessing.cpu_count() def make_cli_parser(): """Make the command line interface parser.""" usage = "\n\n".join(["python %prog INPUT_CSV OUTPUT_CSV", __doc__, """ ARGUMENTS: INPUT_CSV: an input CSV file with rows of numbers OUTPUT_CSV: an output file that will contain the sums\ """]) cli_parser = optparse.OptionParser(usage) cli_parser.add_option('-n', '--numprocs', type='int', default=NUM_PROCS, help="Number of processes to launch [DEFAULT: %default]") return cli_parser def main(argv): cli_parser = make_cli_parser() opts, args = cli_parser.parse_args(argv) if len(args) != 2: cli_parser.error("Please provide an input file and output file.") infile = open(args[0]) in_csvfile = csv.reader(infile) outfile = open(args[1], 'w') out_csvfile = csv.writer(outfile) # Parse the input file and add the parsed data to a queue for # processing, possibly chunking to decrease communication between # processes. # Process the parsed data as soon as any (chunks) appear on the # queue, using as many processes as allotted by the user # (opts.numprocs); place results on a queue for output. # # Terminate processes when the parser stops putting data in the # input queue. # Write the results to disk as soon as they appear on the output # queue. # Ensure all child processes have terminated. # Clean up files. infile.close() outfile.close() if __name__ == '__main__': main(sys.argv[1:]) These pieces of code, as well as another piece of code that can generate example CSV files for testing purposes, can be found on github. I would appreciate any insight here as to how you concurrency gurus would approach this problem. Here are some questions I had when thinking about this problem. Bonus points for addressing any/all: Should I have child processes for reading in the data and placing it into the queue, or can the main process do this without blocking until all input is read? Likewise, should I have a child process for writing the results out from the processed queue, or can the main process do this without having to wait for all the results? Should I use a processes pool for the sum operations? If yes, what method do I call on the pool to get it to start processing the results coming into the input queue, without blocking the input and output processes, too? apply_async()? map_async()? imap()? imap_unordered()? Suppose we didn't need to siphon off the input and output queues as data entered them, but could wait until all input was parsed and all results were calculated (e.g., because we know all the input and output will fit in system memory). Should we change the algorithm in any way (e.g., not run any processes concurrently with I/O)?

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• Architecture choice about representation of collections in Business Objects

  - by Rajarshi

  I have made certain choices in my architecture which I request the community to review and comment. I am breaking up the post in smaller sections to make it easier to understand the context and then suggest/comment. I am sorry that the post is long, but is required to explain the context. What am I building A typical business application where there are application users, security roles, business operation/action rights based on roles and several business modules like Stock Receive, Stock Transfer, Sale Order, Sale Invoice, Sale Return, Stock Audit etc. and several reports. The application is a WinForm application since it has a lot of rich and responsive UI requirements and has to operate in disconnected mode (with a local SQL Server), most of the time. What have I done I have built a framework - nothing to boast about, but just a set of libraries that serves the repetative requirements of my application, e.g. authentication, role based authorization, data access, validation, exception handling, logging, change status tracking, presentation model compliance and reasonable loose coupling between components. No, I have not written everything from scratch, you can say I have consolidated many things together like some concepts from CSLA, Martin Fowler for Presentation Model, blocks from Enterprise Library, Unity etc. to build a set of libraries that will help my developers be productive quickly without having to look up Google for many of the technical requirements. I have tried to keep the framework generic so that it can be used in typical business applications and also tried to follow some best practices that will support the same Business Objects to be used in an ASP.NET MVC environment also. My present architecture serves my objectives well, and have built several modules (on WinForm) without much trouble. The architecture also lent itself well to build some usable prototype on ASP.NET MVC with the same set of business objects, without changing a single line of code. My Dilemma I have used Custom Business Objects since that gives me a clearer OOP representation of the problem scope in my solution scope, and helps me visualize my entire solution as collection of objects with data and behavior rather than having a set of relational data (DataSet) and implement behaviours (business logic, validation) etc. separately. With rich databinding support in .NET 2.0 binding Custom Business Objects to UI was a breeze. Now while building my business objects, I am still in a dilemma about representation of collections in business objects. Currently I am using DataSets to represent collections while I have seen many suggestions to implement custom collections. For example, in my vision, a typical Sale Invoice Object will contain 'Sales Invoice Items' as a collection. Now theoritically, I can accept that the each 'Sales Invoice Item' should have its own behavior along with their data (ItemCode, Name, Qty, Price etc.) but typically managing of Sale Invoice Items in a Sale Invoice is handled by the Sale Invoice Object itself, e.g. adding/removing Items from collection. Additionally, we can also put business logic/rules for the Sales Invoice Items like "Qty should not be greater than the ordered qty", "Price should be max 10% above the price in Sale Order" etc. in the Sale Invoice object itself. With that kind of a vision, I felt that most business object child collections can be managed by the parent itself, including add/remove from collection as well and implementing business logic for the collection items, hence the collection items hold nothing but data. Additionally, typical collections are represented in UI in Grids, where ability to support DataBinding becomes very important for any collection. Implementing a custom collection, in that case would also mean, I have to implement robust DataBinding support as well, for the collection, which is of course time consuming. Now, considering child collection behaviors are implemented in the parent and the need for DataBinding of child collections, I chose DataSet to represent any child collection in my business objects. In the above example of Sale Invoice I will have 'Invoice Number', 'Date', 'Customer' etc. as attributes of the 'Sale Invoice' but 'InvoiceItems' as a DataSet. Of course, when I say DataSet, it is not a vanilla dataset but an extended DataSet that supports business rule validation and the same role based security model of my framework to allow/deny any business operation to rows/columns of the DataSet, automatically. This approach has allowed easier collection management and databinding in my business objects and my developers are able to deliver modules rapidly. Questions Do you feel that the approach is reasonable? Do you see any shortcomings of this approach? I am recently thinking of using 'Typed DataSets' as child collections, for easier representation in code, that will allow me to write 'currentInvoice.InvoiceItems' (for the DataTable) and 'invoiceItem.ProductCode' or 'invoiceItem.Qty', instead of 'drow["ProductCode"].ToString()' or '(int)drow["Qty"]' etc. Does this choice have any demerits? Thank you if you have read so far and a salute if you still have the Energy to answer.

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• How should I model the database for this problem? And which ORM can handle it?

  - by Kristof Claes

  I need to build some sort of a custom CMS for a client of ours. These are some of the functional requirements: Must be able to manage the list of Pages in the site Each Page can contain a number of ColumnGroups A ColumnGroup is nothing more than a list of Columns in a certain ColumnGroupLayout. For example: "one column taking up the entire width of the page", "two columns each taking up half of the width", ... Each Column can contain a number ContentBlocks Examples of a ContentBlock are: TextBlock, NewsBlock, PictureBlock, ... ContentBlocks can be given a certain sorting within a Column A ContentBlock can be put in different Columns so that content can be reused without having to be duplicated. My first quick draft of how this could look like in C# code (we're using ASP.NET 4.0 to develop the CMS) can be found at the bottom of my question. One of the technical requirements is that it must be as easy as possible to add new types of ContentBlocks to the CMS. So I would like model everything as flexible as possible. Unfortunately, I'm already stuck at trying to figure out how the database should look like. One of the problems I'm having has to do with sorting different types of ContentBlocks in a Column. I guess each type of ContentBlock (like TextBlock, NewsBlock, PictureBlock, ...) should have it's own table in the database because each has it's own different fields. A TextBlock might only have a field called Text whereas a NewsBlock might have fields for the Text, the Summary, the PublicationDate, ... Since one Column can have ContentBlocks located in different tables, I guess I'll have to create a many-to-many association for each type of ContentBlock. For example: ColumnTextBlocks, ColumnNewsBlocks and ColumnPictureBlocks. The problem I have with this setup is the sorting of the different ContentBlocks in a column. This could be something like this: TextBlock NewsBlock TextBlock TextBlock PictureBlock Where do I store the sorting number? If I store them in the associaton tables, I'll have to update a lot of tables when changing the sorting order of ContentBlocks in a Column. Is this a good approach to the problem? Basically, my question is: What is the best way to model this keeping in mind that it should be easy to add new types of ContentBlocks? My next question is: What ORM can deal with that kind of modeling? To be honest, we are ORM-virgins at work. I have been reading a bit about Linq-to-SQL and NHibernate, but we have no experience with them. Because of the IList in the Column class (see code below) I think we can rule out Linq-to-SQL, right? Can NHibernate handle the mapping of data from many different tables to one IList? Also keep in mind that this is just a very small portion of the domain. Other parts are Users belonging to a certain UserGroup having certain Permissions on Pages, ColumnGroups, Columns and ContentBlocks. The code (just a quick first draft): public class Page { public int PageID { get; set; } public string Title { get; set; } public string Description { get; set; } public string Keywords { get; set; } public IList<ColumnGroup> ColumnGroups { get; set; } } public class ColumnGroup { public enum ColumnGroupLayout { OneColumn, HalfHalf, NarrowWide, WideNarrow } public int ColumnGroupID { get; set; } public ColumnGroupLayout Layout { get; set; } public IList<Column> Columns { get; set; } } public class Column { public int ColumnID { get; set; } public IList<IContentBlock> ContentBlocks { get; set; } } public interface IContentBlock { string GetSummary(); } public class TextBlock : IContentBlock { public string GetSummary() { return "I am a piece of text."; } } public class NewsBlock : IContentBlock { public string GetSummary() { return "I am a news item."; } }

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• Zend_Form validation problem

  - by GrumpyCanuck

  I am having problems getting validation to work for a form built using Zend_Form. The idea is this: I have two dropdown. One is a list of players. The other is a list of free agents who play the same position as the player. I am using an onChange javascript callback to run some Ajax code that replaces the free agent list dropdown with a new one at the position of the player they've selected from the player dropdown. Now, perhaps this is the wrong way, but I built the form by creating an instance of Zend_Form and then creating all these setX methods that add elements to the form. My reasoning was that I wanted to display certain elements in specific places on the page, not just output $this-form on my template. The problem appears to be when I get the form post back, the validator seems to not know about the validation rule I set up for the free agent drop down. Here's some relevant code to look at. I'm a relative ZF n00b so feel free to tell me I am not doing things the ZF way if it leaps out at you. The action in the controller: public function indexAction() { if ($this->getRequest()->isPost()) { $form = new Baseball_Form_Transactions(); if ($form->isValid($this->_request->getPost())) { $data = $this->_request->getPost(); $leagueInfo = Doctrine::getTable('League')->findOneByShortName($data['shortLeagueName'])->toArray(); // Create the request top drop an existing player $transactionInfo = array( 'league_id' => $leagueInfo['id'], 'team_id' => $data['teamId'], 'player_id' => $data['players'], 'type' => 'drop', 'target_team_id' => 0, 'transaction_date' => date('Y-m-d H:m:s') ); $transaction = new Transaction(); $transaction->fromArray($transactionInfo); $transaction->save(); // Now we do the request to add a player $transactionInfo['team_id'] = 0; $transactionInfo['player_id'] = $data['freeAgents']; $transactionInfo['target_team_id'] = $data['teamId']; $transactionInfo['type'] = 'add'; $transaction = new Transaction(); $transaction->fromArray($transactionInfo); $transaction->save(); $this->_flashMessenger->addMessage('Added transaction'); } } $options = array( 'teamId' => $this->teamId, 'position' => 'C', 'leagueShortName' => $this->league ); $this->transactionForm->setMyPlayers($options); $this->transactionForm->setFreeAgents($options); $this->transactionForm->setTeamId($options); $this->transactionForm->setShortLeagueName($options); $this->view->transactionForm = $this->transactionForm; $this->view->messages = $this->_flashMessenger->getMessages(); $transaction = new Transaction(); $this->view->transactions = $transaction->byTeam($options); } Next we have the form itself public function setMyPlayers($options) { $data = Doctrine::getTable('Team')->find($options['teamId']); $players = array(); foreach ($data->Players->toArray() as $player) { $players[$player['id']] = "{$player['position']} - {$player['first_name']} {$player['last_name']}"; } $playersSelect = new Zend_Form_Element_Select( 'players', array( 'required' => true, 'label' => 'Players', 'multiOptions' => $players, ) ); $this->addElement($playersSelect); } public function setFreeAgents($options) { $q = Doctrine_Query::create() ->select('CONCAT(p.first_name, " ", p.last_name) as full_name, p.id, p.position') ->from('Player p') ->leftJoin('p.Teams t') ->leftJoin('t.League l ON l.short_name = ?', $options['leagueShortName']) ->where('t.id IS NULL') ->andWhere('p.position = ?', $options['position']) ->orderBy('p.last_name'); $q->setHydrationMode(Doctrine_Core::HYDRATE_ARRAY); $data = $q->execute(); $freeAgents = array(); foreach ($data as $player) { $freeAgents[$player['id']] = $player['full_name']; } $freeAgentsSelect = new Zend_Form_Element_Select( 'freeAgents', array( 'label' => 'Free Agents', 'multiOptions' => $freeAgents, 'size' => 15 ) ); $freeAgentsSelect->setRequired(true); $this->addElement($freeAgentsSelect); } public function setShortLeagueName($options) { $shortLeagueNameHidden = new Zend_Form_Element_Hidden( 'shortLeagueName', array('value' => $options['leagueShortName']) ); $this->addElement($shortLeagueNameHidden); } public function setTeamId($options) { $teamIdHidden = new Zend_Form_Element_Hidden( 'teamId', array('value' => $options['teamId']) ); $this->addElement($teamIdHidden); } There is no init or __construct() method in the form. My problem seems simple enough: reject the form contents as invalid if they have not selected someone from the free agent list. Right now, it sails through as valid. I've spent some considerable time searching online for an answer, and haven't been able to find it. Thanks in advance for any help.

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• Bridge or Factory and How

  - by Chris

  I'm trying to learn patterns and I've got a job that is screaming for a pattern, I just know it but I can't figure it out. I know the filter type is something that can be abstracted and possibly bridged. I'M NOT LOOKING FOR A CODE REWRITE JUST SUGGESTIONS. I'm not looking for someone to do my job. I would like to know how patterns could be applied to this example. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Data; using System.IO; using System.Xml; using System.Text.RegularExpressions; namespace CopyTool { class CopyJob { public enum FilterType { TextFilter, RegExFilter, NoFilter } public FilterType JobFilterType { get; set; } private string _jobName; public string JobName { get { return _jobName; } set { _jobName = value; } } private int currentIndex; public int CurrentIndex { get { return currentIndex; } } private DataSet ds; public int MaxJobs { get { return ds.Tables["Job"].Rows.Count; } } private string _filter; public string Filter { get { return _filter; } set { _filter = value; } } private string _fromFolder; public string FromFolder { get { return _fromFolder; } set { if (Directory.Exists(value)) { _fromFolder = value; } else { throw new DirectoryNotFoundException(String.Format("Folder not found: {0}", value)); } } } private List<string> _toFolders; public List<string> ToFolders { get { return _toFolders; } } public CopyJob() { Initialize(); } private void Initialize() { if (ds == null) { ds = new DataSet(); } ds.ReadXml(Properties.Settings.Default.ConfigLocation); LoadValues(0); } public void Execute() { ExecuteJob(FromFolder, _toFolders, Filter, JobFilterType); } public void ExecuteAll() { string OrigPath; List<string> DestPaths; string FilterText; FilterType FilterWay; foreach (DataRow rw in ds.Tables["Job"].Rows) { OrigPath = rw["FromFolder"].ToString(); FilterText = rw["FilterText"].ToString(); switch (rw["FilterType"].ToString()) { case "TextFilter": FilterWay = FilterType.TextFilter; break; case "RegExFilter": FilterWay = FilterType.RegExFilter; break; default: FilterWay = FilterType.NoFilter; break; } DestPaths = new List<string>(); foreach (DataRow crw in rw.GetChildRows("Job_ToFolder")) { DestPaths.Add(crw["FolderPath"].ToString()); } ExecuteJob(OrigPath, DestPaths, FilterText, FilterWay); } } private void ExecuteJob(string OrigPath, List<string> DestPaths, string FilterText, FilterType FilterWay) { FileInfo[] files; switch (FilterWay) { case FilterType.RegExFilter: files = GetFilesByRegEx(new Regex(FilterText), OrigPath); break; case FilterType.TextFilter: files = GetFilesByFilter(FilterText, OrigPath); break; default: files = new DirectoryInfo(OrigPath).GetFiles(); break; } foreach (string fld in DestPaths) { CopyFiles(files, fld); } } public void MoveToJob(int RecordNumber) { Save(); LoadValues(RecordNumber - 1); } public void AddToFolder(string folderPath) { if (Directory.Exists(folderPath)) { _toFolders.Add(folderPath); } else { throw new DirectoryNotFoundException(String.Format("Folder not found: {0}", folderPath)); } } public void DeleteToFolder(int index) { _toFolders.RemoveAt(index); } public void Save() { DataRow rw = ds.Tables["Job"].Rows[currentIndex]; rw["JobName"] = _jobName; rw["FromFolder"] = _fromFolder; rw["FilterText"] = _filter; switch (JobFilterType) { case FilterType.RegExFilter: rw["FilterType"] = "RegExFilter"; break; case FilterType.TextFilter: rw["FilterType"] = "TextFilter"; break; default: rw["FilterType"] = "NoFilter"; break; } DataRow[] ToFolderRows = ds.Tables["Job"].Rows[currentIndex].GetChildRows("Job_ToFolder"); for (int i = 0; i <= ToFolderRows.GetUpperBound(0); i++) { ToFolderRows[i].Delete(); } foreach (string fld in _toFolders) { DataRow ToFolderRow = ds.Tables["ToFolder"].NewRow(); ToFolderRow["JobId"] = ds.Tables["Job"].Rows[currentIndex]["JobId"]; ToFolderRow["Job_Id"] = ds.Tables["Job"].Rows[currentIndex]["Job_Id"]; ToFolderRow["FolderPath"] = fld; ds.Tables["ToFolder"].Rows.Add(ToFolderRow); } } public void Delete() { ds.Tables["Job"].Rows.RemoveAt(currentIndex); LoadValues(currentIndex++); } public void MoveNext() { Save(); currentIndex++; LoadValues(currentIndex); } public void MovePrevious() { Save(); currentIndex--; LoadValues(currentIndex); } public void MoveFirst() { Save(); LoadValues(0); } public void MoveLast() { Save(); LoadValues(ds.Tables["Job"].Rows.Count - 1); } public void CreateNew() { Save(); int MaxJobId = 0; Int32.TryParse(ds.Tables["Job"].Compute("Max(JobId)", "").ToString(), out MaxJobId); DataRow rw = ds.Tables["Job"].NewRow(); rw["JobId"] = MaxJobId + 1; ds.Tables["Job"].Rows.Add(rw); LoadValues(ds.Tables["Job"].Rows.IndexOf(rw)); } public void Commit() { Save(); ds.WriteXml(Properties.Settings.Default.ConfigLocation); } private void LoadValues(int index) { if (index > ds.Tables["Job"].Rows.Count - 1) { currentIndex = ds.Tables["Job"].Rows.Count - 1; } else if (index < 0) { currentIndex = 0; } else { currentIndex = index; } DataRow rw = ds.Tables["Job"].Rows[currentIndex]; _jobName = rw["JobName"].ToString(); _fromFolder = rw["FromFolder"].ToString(); _filter = rw["FilterText"].ToString(); switch (rw["FilterType"].ToString()) { case "TextFilter": JobFilterType = FilterType.TextFilter; break; case "RegExFilter": JobFilterType = FilterType.RegExFilter; break; default: JobFilterType = FilterType.NoFilter; break; } if (_toFolders == null) _toFolders = new List<string>(); _toFolders.Clear(); foreach (DataRow crw in rw.GetChildRows("Job_ToFolder")) { AddToFolder(crw["FolderPath"].ToString()); } } private static FileInfo[] GetFilesByRegEx(Regex rgx, string locPath) { DirectoryInfo d = new DirectoryInfo(locPath); FileInfo[] fullFileList = d.GetFiles(); List<FileInfo> filteredList = new List<FileInfo>(); foreach (FileInfo fi in fullFileList) { if (rgx.IsMatch(fi.Name)) { filteredList.Add(fi); } } return filteredList.ToArray(); } private static FileInfo[] GetFilesByFilter(string filter, string locPath) { DirectoryInfo d = new DirectoryInfo(locPath); FileInfo[] fi = d.GetFiles(filter); return fi; } private void CopyFiles(FileInfo[] files, string destPath) { foreach (FileInfo fi in files) { bool success = false; int i = 0; string copyToName = fi.Name; string copyToExt = fi.Extension; string copyToNameWithoutExt = Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(fi.FullName); while (!success && i < 100) { i++; try { if (File.Exists(Path.Combine(destPath, copyToName))) throw new CopyFileExistsException(); File.Copy(fi.FullName, Path.Combine(destPath, copyToName)); success = true; } catch (CopyFileExistsException ex) { copyToName = String.Format("{0} ({1}){2}", copyToNameWithoutExt, i, copyToExt); } } } } } public class CopyFileExistsException : Exception { public string Message; } }

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• Creating static NAT blocks outbound traffic Cisco ASA

  - by natediggs

  Hi Everyone, I have two web servers sitting behind a Cisco ASA 5505, which I don't have much experience with. I'm trying to create two static NATs. One static NAT that goes to xx.xx.xx.150 and another that goes to xx.xx.xx.151. I've created the static NAT for the .150 web server and it works FINE. Incoming and outgoing traffic work great. This is the staging web server. I now need to duplicate the setup for the production web server. So, I connect the webserver to the firewall, change the public IP address on one of the NICs reboot the server and I have outbound internet access. Then I run the command: static (inside,outside) xx.xx.xx.150 192.168.1.x which is successful. I then run the command: access-list acl-outside permit tcp any host xx.xx.xx.150 eq 80 Which is successful. I then try to browse the internet and I get nothing. I try to telnet in through port 80 and I get nothing (though I'm guessing because the response to the telnet request is being blocked). I've tried this with the production web server and then I tried it with another web server that is for internal testing and have the exact same problem. Both work fine until I run the static NAT rule and then no outbound internet access. I have a feeling that it's something simple that I'm missing, but my limited experience with this device is killing me. Below I've pasted the current configuration. I'm currently trying to get this to work on the .153 server which is the internal testing server. Once I can verify that works, I'll try it with production. : Saved : ASA Version 8.2(4) ! hostname QG domain-name XX.com enable password passwd names ! interface Ethernet0/0 switchport access vlan 2 ! interface Ethernet0/1 ! interface Ethernet0/2 ! interface Ethernet0/3 ! interface Ethernet0/4 ! interface Ethernet0/5 ! interface Ethernet0/6 ! interface Ethernet0/7 ! interface Vlan1 nameif inside security-level 100 ip address 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0 ! interface Vlan2 nameif outside security-level 0 ip address XX.XX.XX.148 255.255.255.0 ! interface Vlan3 shutdown no forward interface Vlan1 nameif dmz security-level 50 ip address dhcp ! boot system disk0:/asa824.bin ftp mode passive clock timezone EST -5 clock summer-time EDT recurring dns server-group DefaultDNS domain-name fw.XXgroup.com same-security-traffic permit inter-interface access-list acl-outside extended permit tcp any host XX.XX.XX.150 eq www access-list acl-outside extended permit tcp any host XX.XX.XX.150 eq https access-list acl-outside extended permit tcp any host XX.XX.XX.151 eq www access-list acl-outside extended permit tcp any host XX.XX.XX.151 eq https access-list acl-outside extended permit tcp any host XX.XX.XX.153 eq www access-list inside_access_in extended permit ip 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0 any access-list inside_nat0_outbound extended permit ip any 192.168.1.32 255.255.255.240 pager lines 24 logging enable logging asdm informational mtu inside 1500 mtu outside 1500 mtu dmz 1500 ip local pool VPNIPs 192.168.1.35-192.168.1.44 mask 255.255.255.0 icmp unreachable rate-limit 1 burst-size 1 asdm image disk0:/asdm-635.bin no asdm history enable arp timeout 14400 global (outside) 1 interface nat (inside) 0 access-list inside_nat0_outbound nat (inside) 1 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 static (inside,outside) XX.XX.XX150 192.168.1.100 netmask 255.255.255.255 static (inside,outside) XX.XX.XX153 192.168.1.102 netmask 255.255.255.255 access-group acl-outside in interface outside route outside 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 XX.XX.XX129 1 timeout xlate 3:00:00 timeout conn 1:00:00 half-closed 0:10:00 udp 0:02:00 icmp 0:00:02 timeout sunrpc 0:10:00 h323 0:05:00 h225 1:00:00 mgcp 0:05:00 mgcp-pat 0:05:00 timeout sip 0:30:00 sip_media 0:02:00 sip-invite 0:03:00 sip-disconnect 0:02:00 timeout sip-provisional-media 0:02:00 uauth 0:05:00 absolute timeout tcp-proxy-reassembly 0:01:00 dynamic-access-policy-record DfltAccessPolicy aaa authorization command LOCAL http server enable http 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0 inside http 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 outside no snmp-server location no snmp-server contact snmp-server enable traps snmp authentication linkup linkdown coldstart crypto ipsec transform-set ESP-3DES-SHA esp-3des esp-sha-hmac crypto ipsec security-association lifetime seconds 28800 crypto ipsec security-association lifetime kilobytes 4608000 crypto dynamic-map outside_dyn_map 20 set pfs group1 crypto dynamic-map outside_dyn_map 20 set transform-set ESP-3DES-SHA crypto map outside_map 65535 ipsec-isakmp dynamic outside_dyn_map crypto map outside_map interface outside crypto isakmp enable outside crypto isakmp policy 10 authentication crack encryption 3des hash sha group 2 lifetime 86400 no crypto isakmp nat-traversal client-update enable telnet timeout 5 ssh timeout 5 console timeout 0 dhcpd auto_config outside ! dhcpd address 192.168.1.2-192.168.1.33 inside dhcpd dns 208.77.88.4 interface inside dhcpd enable inside ! threat-detection basic-threat threat-detection statistics access-list no threat-detection statistics tcp-intercept webvpn enable outside svc image disk0:/sslclient-win-1.1.0.154.pkg 1 svc image disk0:/anyconnect-win-2.5.2019-k9.pkg 2 svc enable group-policy ATSAdmin internal group-policy ATSAdmin attributes dns-server value 208.77.88.4 208.85.174.9 vpn-tunnel-protocol IPSec svc webvpn webvpn url-list none svc keep-installer installed svc rekey method ssl svc ask enable username qgadmin password /oHfeGQ/R.bd3KPR encrypted privilege 15 username benl password 0HNIGQNI0uruJvhW encrypted privilege 0 username benl attributes vpn-group-policy ATSAdmin username kuzma password rH7MM7laoynyvf9U encrypted privilege 0 username kuzma attributes vpn-group-policy ATSAdmin username nate password BXHOURyT37e4O5mt encrypted privilege 0 username nate attributes vpn-group-policy ATSAdmin tunnel-group ATSAdmin type remote-access tunnel-group ATSAdmin general-attributes address-pool VPNIPs default-group-policy ATSAdmin tunnel-group SSLVPN type remote-access tunnel-group SSLVPN general-attributes address-pool VPNIPs default-group-policy ATSAdmin ! class-map inspection_default match default-inspection-traffic ! ! policy-map type inspect dns preset_dns_map parameters message-length maximum 512 policy-map global_policy class inspection_default inspect dns preset_dns_map inspect ftp inspect h323 h225 inspect h323 ras inspect rsh inspect rtsp inspect esmtp inspect sqlnet inspect skinny inspect sunrpc inspect xdmcp inspect sip inspect netbios inspect tftp inspect ip-options ! service-policy global_policy global privilege cmd level 3 mode exec command perfmon privilege cmd level 3 mode exec command ping privilege cmd level 3 mode exec command who privilege cmd level 3 mode exec command logging privilege cmd level 3 mode exec command failover privilege show level 5 mode exec command running-config privilege show level 3 mode exec command reload privilege show level 3 mode exec command mode privilege show level 3 mode exec command firewall privilege show level 3 mode exec command interface privilege show level 3 mode exec command clock privilege show level 3 mode exec command dns-hosts privilege show level 3 mode exec command access-list privilege show level 3 mode exec command logging privilege show level 3 mode exec command ip privilege show level 3 mode exec command failover privilege show level 3 mode exec command asdm privilege show level 3 mode exec command arp privilege show level 3 mode exec command route privilege show level 3 mode exec command ospf privilege show level 3 mode exec command aaa-server privilege show level 3 mode exec command aaa privilege show level 3 mode exec command crypto privilege show level 3 mode exec command vpn-sessiondb privilege show level 3 mode exec command ssh privilege show level 3 mode exec command dhcpd privilege show level 3 mode exec command vpn privilege show level 3 mode exec command blocks privilege show level 3 mode exec command uauth privilege show level 3 mode configure command interface privilege show level 3 mode configure command clock privilege show level 3 mode configure command access-list privilege show level 3 mode configure command logging privilege show level 3 mode configure command ip privilege show level 3 mode configure command failover privilege show level 5 mode configure command asdm privilege show level 3 mode configure command arp privilege show level 3 mode configure command route privilege show level 3 mode configure command aaa-server privilege show level 3 mode configure command aaa privilege show level 3 mode configure command crypto privilege show level 3 mode configure command ssh privilege show level 3 mode configure command dhcpd privilege show level 5 mode configure command privilege privilege clear level 3 mode exec command dns-hosts privilege clear level 3 mode exec command logging privilege clear level 3 mode exec command arp privilege clear level 3 mode exec command aaa-server privilege clear level 3 mode exec command crypto privilege cmd level 3 mode configure command failover privilege clear level 3 mode configure command logging privilege clear level 3 mode configure command arp privilege clear level 3 mode configure command crypto privilege clear level 3 mode configure command aaa-server prompt hostname context call-home profile CiscoTAC-1 no active destination address http https://tools.cisco.com/its/service/oddce/services/DDCEService destination address email [email protected] destination transport-method http subscribe-to-alert-group diagnostic subscribe-to-alert-group environment subscribe-to-alert-group inventory periodic monthly subscribe-to-alert-group configuration periodic monthly subscribe-to-alert-group telemetry periodic daily Cryptochecksum:0ed0580e151af288d865f4f3603d792a : end asdm image disk0:/asdm-635.bin no asdm history enable

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• Async ignored on AJAX requests on Nginx server

  - by eComEvo

  Despite sending an async request to the server over AJAX, the server will not respond until the previous unrelated request has finished. The following code is only broken in this way on Nginx, but runs perfectly on Apache. This call will start a background process and it waits for it to complete so it can display the final result. $.ajax({ type: 'GET', async: true, url: $(this).data('route'), data: $('input[name=data]').val(), dataType: 'json', success: function (data) { /* do stuff */} error: function (data) { /* handle errors */} }); The below is called after the above, which on Apache requires 100ms to execute and repeats itself, showing progress for data being written in the background: checkStatusInterval = setInterval(function () { $.ajax({ type: 'GET', async: false, cache: false, url: '/process-status?process=' + currentElement.attr('id'), dataType: 'json', success: function (data) { /* update progress bar and status message */ } }); }, 1000); Unfortunately, when this script is run from nginx, the above progress request never even finishes a single request until the first AJAX request that sent the data is done. If I change the async to TRUE in the above, it executes one every interval, but none of them complete until that very first AJAX request finishes. Here is the main nginx conf file: #user nobody; worker_processes 1; #error_log logs/error.log; #error_log logs/error.log notice; #error_log logs/error.log info; #pid logs/nginx.pid; events { worker_connections 1024; } http { include mime.types; default_type application/octet-stream; server_names_hash_bucket_size 64; # configure temporary paths # nginx is started with param -p, setting nginx path to serverpack installdir fastcgi_temp_path temp/fastcgi; uwsgi_temp_path temp/uwsgi; scgi_temp_path temp/scgi; client_body_temp_path temp/client-body 1 2; proxy_temp_path temp/proxy; log_format main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" ' '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" ' '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"'; #access_log logs/access.log main; # Sendfile copies data between one FD and other from within the kernel. # More efficient than read() + write(), since the requires transferring data to and from the user space. sendfile on; # Tcp_nopush causes nginx to attempt to send its HTTP response head in one packet, # instead of using partial frames. This is useful for prepending headers before calling sendfile, # or for throughput optimization. tcp_nopush on; # don't buffer data-sends (disable Nagle algorithm). Good for sending frequent small bursts of data in real time. tcp_nodelay on; types_hash_max_size 2048; # Timeout for keep-alive connections. Server will close connections after this time. keepalive_timeout 90; # Number of requests a client can make over the keep-alive connection. This is set high for testing. keepalive_requests 100000; # allow the server to close the connection after a client stops responding. Frees up socket-associated memory. reset_timedout_connection on; # send the client a "request timed out" if the body is not loaded by this time. Default 60. client_header_timeout 20; client_body_timeout 60; # If the client stops reading data, free up the stale client connection after this much time. Default 60. send_timeout 60; # Size Limits client_body_buffer_size 64k; client_header_buffer_size 4k; client_max_body_size 8M; # FastCGI fastcgi_connect_timeout 60; fastcgi_send_timeout 120; fastcgi_read_timeout 300; # default: 60 secs; when step debugging with XDEBUG, you need to increase this value fastcgi_buffer_size 64k; fastcgi_buffers 4 64k; fastcgi_busy_buffers_size 128k; fastcgi_temp_file_write_size 128k; # Caches information about open FDs, freqently accessed files. open_file_cache max=200000 inactive=20s; open_file_cache_valid 30s; open_file_cache_min_uses 2; open_file_cache_errors on; # Turn on gzip output compression to save bandwidth. # http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpGzipModule gzip on; gzip_disable "MSIE [1-6]\.(?!.*SV1)"; gzip_http_version 1.1; gzip_vary on; gzip_proxied any; #gzip_proxied expired no-cache no-store private auth; gzip_comp_level 6; gzip_buffers 16 8k; gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/x-javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript application/javascript; # show all files and folders autoindex on; server { # access from localhost only listen 127.0.0.1:80; server_name localhost; root www; # the following default "catch-all" configuration, allows access to the server from outside. # please ensure your firewall allows access to tcp/port 80. check your "skype" config. # listen 80; # server_name _; log_not_found off; charset utf-8; access_log logs/access.log main; # handle files in the root path /www location / { index index.php index.html index.htm; } #error_page 404 /404.html; # redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html # error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html; location = /50x.html { root www; } # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9100 # location ~ \.php$ { try_files $uri =404; fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9100; fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; include fastcgi_params; } # add expire headers location ~* ^.+.(gif|ico|jpg|jpeg|png|flv|swf|pdf|mp3|mp4|xml|txt|js|css)$ { expires 30d; } # deny access to .htaccess files (if Apache's document root concurs with nginx's one) # deny access to git & svn repositories location ~ /(\.ht|\.git|\.svn) { deny all; } } # include config files of "enabled" domains include domains-enabled/*.conf; } Here is the enabled domain conf file: access_log off; access_log C:/server/www/test.dev/logs/access.log; error_log C:/server/www/test.dev/logs/error.log; # HTTP Server server { listen 127.0.0.1:80; server_name test.dev; root C:/server/www/test.dev/public; index index.php; rewrite_log on; default_type application/octet-stream; #include /etc/nginx/mime.types; # Include common configurations. include domains-common/location.conf; } # HTTPS server server { listen 443 ssl; server_name test.dev; root C:/server/www/test.dev/public; index index.php; rewrite_log on; default_type application/octet-stream; #include /etc/nginx/mime.types; # Include common configurations. include domains-common/location.conf; include domains-common/ssl.conf; } Contents of ssl.conf: # OpenSSL for HTTPS connections. ssl on; ssl_certificate C:/server/bin/openssl/certs/cert.pem; ssl_certificate_key C:/server/bin/openssl/certs/cert.key; ssl_session_timeout 5m; ssl_protocols SSLv3 TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2; ssl_ciphers HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5; ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on; # Pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9100 location ~ \.php$ { try_files $uri =404; fastcgi_param HTTPS on; fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9100; fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; include fastcgi_params; } Contents of location.conf: # Remove trailing slash to please Laravel routing system. if (!-d $request_filename) { rewrite ^/(.+)/$ /$1 permanent; } location / { try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string; } # We don't need .ht files with nginx. location ~ /(\.ht|\.git|\.svn) { deny all; } # Added cache headers for images. location ~* \.(png|jpg|jpeg|gif)$ { expires 30d; log_not_found off; } # Only 3 hours on CSS/JS to allow me to roll out fixes during early weeks. location ~* \.(js|css)$ { expires 3h; log_not_found off; } # Add expire headers. location ~* ^.+.(gif|ico|jpg|jpeg|png|flv|swf|pdf|mp3|mp4|xml|txt)$ { expires 30d; } # Pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9100 location ~ \.php$ { try_files $uri /index.php =404; fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; include fastcgi_params; fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9100; } Any ideas where this is going wrong?

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• cannot access localhost using ip

  - by Robert

  I have done a small web development project using eclipse. It runs well when I try running it on browser with url localhost:8080/myproject/home.html. But if I want to access it on another machine (laptop, mobile, etc. using the same wifi) it is not possible; it is not able to connect. After Googling for a while found out that I have to use the IP address instead of 'localhost'. So I tried 10.0.0.4:8080/myproject/home.html, but still does not work. In fact i am unable to open that url on the same machine (where localhost:8080/myproject/home.html works fine). I also added a new Inbound rule in control panel firewall settings, allowing access to all ports for protocol TCP. Still have problem in running application with the url 10.0.0.4:8080/myproject/home.html (both on same machine as well as laptop and mobile). FYI i am using Eclipse Indigo, Apache tomcat 6.0 and server.xml file contents is as below: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!-- Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License. --><!-- Note: A "Server" is not itself a "Container", so you may not define subcomponents such as "Valves" at this level. Documentation at /docs/config/server.html --><Server port="8005" shutdown="SHUTDOWN"> <!--APR library loader. Documentation at /docs/apr.html --> <Listener SSLEngine="on" className="org.apache.catalina.core.AprLifecycleListener"/> <!--Initialize Jasper prior to webapps are loaded. Documentation at /docs/jasper-howto.html --> <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.JasperListener"/> <!-- Prevent memory leaks due to use of particular java/javax APIs--> <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.JreMemoryLeakPreventionListener"/> <!-- JMX Support for the Tomcat server. Documentation at /docs/non-existent.html --> <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.mbeans.ServerLifecycleListener"/> <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.mbeans.GlobalResourcesLifecycleListener"/> <!-- Global JNDI resources Documentation at /docs/jndi-resources-howto.html --> <GlobalNamingResources> <!-- Editable user database that can also be used by UserDatabaseRealm to authenticate users --> <Resource auth="Container" description="User database that can be updated and saved" factory="org.apache.catalina.users.MemoryUserDatabaseFactory" name="UserDatabase" pathname="conf/tomcat-users.xml" type="org.apache.catalina.UserDatabase"/> </GlobalNamingResources> <!-- A "Service" is a collection of one or more "Connectors" that share a single "Container" Note: A "Service" is not itself a "Container", so you may not define subcomponents such as "Valves" at this level. Documentation at /docs/config/service.html --> <Service name="Catalina"> <!--The connectors can use a shared executor, you can define one or more named thread pools--> <!-- <Executor name="tomcatThreadPool" namePrefix="catalina-exec-" maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="4"/> --> <!-- A "Connector" represents an endpoint by which requests are received and responses are returned. Documentation at : Java HTTP Connector: /docs/config/http.html (blocking & non-blocking) Java AJP Connector: /docs/config/ajp.html APR (HTTP/AJP) Connector: /docs/apr.html Define a non-SSL HTTP/1.1 Connector on port 8080 --> <Connector port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1" address="10.0.0.4" connectionTimeout="20000" redirectPort="8443" /> <!-- A "Connector" using the shared thread pool--> <!-- <Connector executor="tomcatThreadPool" port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1" connectionTimeout="20000" redirectPort="8443" /> --> <!-- Define a SSL HTTP/1.1 Connector on port 8443 This connector uses the JSSE configuration, when using APR, the connector should be using the OpenSSL style configuration described in the APR documentation --> <!-- <Connector port="8443" protocol="HTTP/1.1" SSLEnabled="true" maxThreads="150" scheme="https" secure="true" clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLS" /> --> <!-- Define an AJP 1.3 Connector on port 8009 --> <Connector port="8009" protocol="AJP/1.3" redirectPort="8443"/> <!-- An Engine represents the entry point (within Catalina) that processes every request. The Engine implementation for Tomcat stand alone analyzes the HTTP headers included with the request, and passes them on to the appropriate Host (virtual host). Documentation at /docs/config/engine.html --> <!-- You should set jvmRoute to support load-balancing via AJP ie : <Engine name="Catalina" defaultHost="localhost" jvmRoute="jvm1"> --> <Engine defaultHost="localhost" name="Catalina"> <!--For clustering, please take a look at documentation at: /docs/cluster-howto.html (simple how to) /docs/config/cluster.html (reference documentation) --> <!-- <Cluster className="org.apache.catalina.ha.tcp.SimpleTcpCluster"/> --> <!-- The request dumper valve dumps useful debugging information about the request and response data received and sent by Tomcat. Documentation at: /docs/config/valve.html --> <!-- <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.RequestDumperValve"/> --> <!-- This Realm uses the UserDatabase configured in the global JNDI resources under the key "UserDatabase". Any edits that are performed against this UserDatabase are immediately available for use by the Realm. --> <Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.UserDatabaseRealm" resourceName="UserDatabase"/> <!-- Define the default virtual host Note: XML Schema validation will not work with Xerces 2.2. --> <Host appBase="webapps" autoDeploy="true" name="localhost" unpackWARs="true" xmlNamespaceAware="false" xmlValidation="false"> <!-- SingleSignOn valve, share authentication between web applications Documentation at: /docs/config/valve.html --> <!-- <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.authenticator.SingleSignOn" /> --> <!-- Access log processes all example. Documentation at: /docs/config/valve.html --> <!-- <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve" directory="logs" prefix="localhost_access_log." suffix=".txt" pattern="common" resolveHosts="false"/> --> <Context docBase="myproject" path="/myproject" reloadable="true" source="org.eclipse.jst.jee.server:myproject"/></Host> </Engine> </Service> </Server>

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• IIS SSL Certificate Renewal Pain

  - by Rick Strahl

  I’m in the middle of my annual certificate renewal for the West Wind site and I can honestly say that I hate IIS’s certificate system.  When it works it’s fine, but when it doesn’t man can it be a pain. Because I deal with public certificates on my site merely once a year, and you have to perform the certificate dance just the right way, I seem to run into some sort of trouble every year, thinking that Microsoft surely must have addressed the issues I ran into previously – HA! Not so. Don’t ever use the Renew Certificate Feature in IIS! The first rule that I should have never forgotten is that certificate renewals in IIS (7 is what I’m using but I think it’s no different in 7.5 and 8), simply don’t work if you’re submitting to get a public certificate from a certificate authority. I use DNSimple for my DNS domain management and SSL certificates because they provide ridiculously easy domain management and good prices for SSL certs – especially wildcard certificates, which is what I use on west-wind.com. Certificates in IIS can be found pegged to the machine root. If you go into the IIS Manager, go to the machine root the tree and then click on certificates and you then get various certificate options: Both of these options create a new Certificate request (CSR), which is just a text file. But if you’re silly enough like me to click on the Renew button on your old certificate, you’ll find that you end up generating a very long Certificate Request that looks nothing like the original certificate request and the format that’s used for this is not accepted by most certificate authorities. While I’m not sure exactly what the problem is, it simply looks like IIS is respecting none of your original certificate bit size choices and is generating a huge certificate request that is 3 times the size of a ‘normal’ certificate request. The end result is (and I’ve done this at least twice now) is that the certificate processor is likely to fail processing those renewals. Always create a new Certificate While it’s a little more work and you have to remember how to fill out the certificate request properly, this is the safe way to make sure your certificate generates properly. First comes the Distinguished Name Properties dialog: Ah yes you have to love the nomenclature of this stuff. Distinguished name, Common name – WTF is a common name? It doesn’t look common to me! Make sure this form gets filled out correctly. Common NameThis is the domain name of the Web site. In my case I’m creating a wildcard certificate so I’m using the * prefix. If you’re purchasing a certificate for a specific domain use www.west-wind.com or store.west-wind.com for example. Make sure this matches the EXACT domain you’re trying to use secure access on because that’s all the certificate is going to work on unless you get a wildcard certificate. Organization Is the name of your company or organization. Depending on the kind of certificate you purchase this name will show up on your certificate. Most low end SSL certificates (ie. those that cost under $100 for single domains) don’t list the organization, the higher signature certificates that also require extensive validation by the cert authority do. Regardless you should make sure this matches the right company/organization. Organizational Unit This can be anything. Not really sure what this is for, but traditionally I’ve always set this to Web because – well this is a Web thing after all right? I’ve never seen this used anywhere that I can tell other than to internally reference the cert. State and CountryPretty obvious. Should reflect the location of the business/organization/person or site.   Next you have to configure the bit size used for the certificate: The default on this dialog is 1024, but I’ve found that most providers these days request a minimum bit length of 2048, as did my DNSimple provider. Again check with the provider when you submit to make sure. Bit length mismatches can cause problems if you use a size that isn’t supported by the provider. I had that happen last year when I submitted my CSR and it got rejected quite a bit later, when the certs usually are issued within an hour or less. When you’re done here, the certificate is saved to disk as a .txt file and it should look something like this (this is a 2048 bit length CSR):-----BEGIN NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- MIIEVGCCAz0CAQAwdjELMAkGA1UEBhMCVVMxDzANBgNVBAgMBkhhd2FpaTENMAsG A1UEBwwEUGFpYTEfMB0GA1UECgwWV2VzdCBXaW5kIFRlY2hub2xvZ2llczEMMAoG B1UECwwDV2ViMRgwFgYDVQQDDA8qLndlc3Qtd2luZC5jb20wggEiMA0GCSqGSIb3 DQEBAQUAA4IBDwAwggEKAoIBAQDIPWOFMkMVRp2Ftj9w/cCVV4OYYhoZYtl+8lTk oqDwKca0xWHLgioX/9v0rZLS6a82MHqKEBxVXu+cuCmSE4AQtB/1YH9lS4tpc/be OZDvnTotP6l4MCEzzAfROcw4CiIg6X0RMSnl8IATAvv2V5LQM9TDdt9oDdMpX2IY +vVC9RZ7PMHBmR9kwI2i/lrKitzhQKaHgpmKcRlM6iqpALUiX28w5HJaDKK1MDHN 607tyFJLHijuJKx7PdTqZYf50KkC3NupfZ2avVycf18Q13jHWj59tvwEOczoVzRL l4LQivAqbhyiqMpWnrZunIOUZta5aGm+jo7O1knGWJjxuraTAgMBAAGgggGYMBoG CisGAQQBgjcNAgMxDBYKNi4yLjkyMDAuMjA0BgkrBgEEAYI3FRQxJzAlAgEFDAZS QVNYUFMMC1JBU1hQU1xSaWNrDAtJbmV0TWdyLmV4ZTByBgorBgEEAYI3DQICMWQw YgIBAR5aAE0AaQBjAHIAbwBzAG8AZgB0ACAAUgBTAEEAIABTAEMAaABhAG4AbgBl AGwAIABDAHIAeQBwAHQAbwBnAHIAYQBwAGgAaQBjACAAUAByAG8AdgBpAGQAZQBy AwEAMIHPBgkqhkiG9w0BCQ4xgcEwgb4wDgYDVR0PAQH/BAQDAgTwMBMGA1UdJQQM MAoGCCsGAQUFBwMBMHgGCSqGSIb3DQEJDwRrMGkwDgYIKoZIhvcNAwICAgCAMA4G CCqGSIb3DQMEAgIAgDALBglghkgBZQMEASowCwYJYIZIAWUDBAEtMAsGCWCGSAFl AwQBAjALBglghkgBZQMEAQUwBwYFKw4DAgcwCgYIKoZIhvcNAwcwHQYDVR0OBBYE FD/yOsTbXE+GVFCFMmldzQvyloz9MA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBQUAA4IBAQCK6LlsCuIM 1AU0niB6QZ9v0FTsGFxP1dYvVUnJyY6VEKNiGFiQjZac7UCs0p58yScdXWEFOE8V OsjAYD3xYNc05+ckyD67UHRGEUAVB9RBvbKW23KeR/8kBmEzc8PemD52YOgExxAJ 57xWmAwEHAvbgYzQvhO8AOzH3TGvvHbg5UKM1pYgNmuwZq5DkL/IDoeIJwfk/wrI wghNTuxxIFgbH4YrgLgv4PRvrS/LaTCRBdboaCgzATMczaOb1nd/DVNR+3fCtMhM W0psTAjzRbmXF3nJyAQa7jF/52gkY0RfFX2lG5tJnG+XDsVNvKNvh9Qa5Tlmkm06 ILKCm9ciWCKk -----END NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- You can take that certificate request and submit that to your certificate provider. Since this is base64 encoded you can typically just paste it into a text box on the submission page, or some providers will ask you to upload the CSR as a file. What does a Renewal look like? Note the length of the CSR will vary somewhat with key strength, but compare this to a renewal request that IIS generated from my existing site:-----BEGIN NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- MIIPpwYFKoZIhvcNAQcCoIIPmDCCD5QCAQExCzAJBgUrDgMCGgUAMIIIqAYJKoZI hvcNAQcBoIIImQSCCJUwggiRMIIH+gIBADBdMSEwHwYDVQQLDBhEb21haW4gQ29u dHJvbCBWYWxpFGF0ZWQxHjAcBgNVBAsMFUVzc2VudGlhbFNTTCBXaWxkY2FyZDEY MBYGA1UEAwwPKi53ZXN0LXdpbmQuY29tMIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCB iQKBgQCK4OuIOR18Wb8tNMGRZiD1c9X57b332Lj7DhbckFqLs0ys8kVDHrTXSj+T Ye9nmAvfPpZmBtE5p9qRNN79rUYugAdl+qEtE4IJe1bRfxXzcKa1SXa8+TEs3zQa zYSmcR2dDuC8om1eAdeCtt0NnkvANgm1VLwGOor/UHMASaEhCQIDAQABoIIG8jAa BgorBgEEAYI3DQIDMQwWCjYuMi45MjAwLjIwNAYJKwYBBAGCNxUUMScwJQIBBQwG UkFTWFBTDAtSQVNYUFNcUmljawwLSW5ldE1nci5leGUwZgYKKwYBBAGCNw0CAjFY MFYCAQIeTgBNAGkAYwByAG8AcwBvAGYAdAAgAFMAdAByAG8AbgBnACAAQwByAHkA cAB0AG8AZwByAGEAcABoAGkAYwAgAFAAcgBvAHYAaQBkAGUAcgMBADCCAQAGCSqG SIb3DQEJDjGB8jCB7zAOBgNVHQ8BAf8EBAMCBaAwDAYDVR0TAQH/BAIwADA0BgNV 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And it didn’t work. IIS creates a custom CSR that is encoded in a format that no certificate authority I’ve ever used uses. If you want the gory details of what’s in there look at this ServerFault question (thanks to Mika in the comments). In the end it doesn’t matter  though – no certificate authority knows what to do with this CSR. So create a new CSR and skip the renewal. Always! Use the same Server Keep in mind that on IIS at least you should always create your certificate on a single server and then when you receive the final certificate from your provider import it on that server. IIS tracks the CSR it created and requires it in order to import the final certificate properly. So if for some reason you try to install the certificate on another server, it won’t work. I’ve also run into trouble trying to install the same certificate twice – this time around I didn’t give my certificate the proper friendly name and IIS failed to allow me to assign the certificate to any of my Web sites. So I removed the certificate and tried to import again, only to find it failed the second time around. There are other ways to fix this, but in my case I had to have the certificate re-issued to work – not what you want to do. Regardless of what you do though, when you import make sure you do it right the first time by crossing all your t’s and dotting your i's– it’ll save you a lot of grief! You don’t actually have to use the server that the certificate gets installed on to generate the CSR and first install it, but it is generally a good idea to do so just so you can get the certificate installed into the right place right away. If you have access to the server where you need to install the certificate you might as well use it. But you can use another machine to generated the and install the certificate, then export the certificate and move it to another machine as needed. So you can use your Dev machine to create a certificate then export it and install it on a live server. More on installation and back up/export later. Installing the Certificate Once you’ve submitted a CSR request your provider will process the request and eventually issue you a new final certificate that contains another text file with the final key to import into your certificate store. IIS does this by combining the content in your certificate request with the original CSR. If all goes well your new certificate shows up in the certificate list and you’re ready to assign the certificate to your sites. Make sure you use a friendly name that matches domain name of your site. So use *.mysite.com or www.mysite.com or store.mysite.com to ensure IIS recognizes the certificate. I made the mistake of not naming my friendly name this way and found that IIS was unable to link my sites to my wildcard certificate. It needed to have the *. as part of the certificate otherwise the Hostname input field was blanked out. Changing the Friendly Name If you by accidentally used an invalid friendly name you can change it later in the Windows certificate store. Bring up a Run Box Type MMC File | Add/Remove Snap In Add Certificates | Computer Account | Local Computer Drill into Certificates | Personal | Certificates Find your Certificate | Right Click | Properties Edit the Friendly Name | Click OK Backing up your Certificate The first thing you should do once your certificate is successfully installed is to back it up! In case your server crashes or you otherwise lose your configuration this will ensure you have an easy way to recover and reinstall your certificate either on the same server or a different one. If you’re running a server farm or using a wildcard certificate you also need to get the certificate onto other machines and a PFX file import is the easiest way to do this. To back up your certificate select your certificate and choose Export from the context or sidebar menu: The Export Certificate option allows you to export a password protected binary file that you can import in a single step. You can copy the resulting binary PFX file to back up or copy to other machines to install on. Importing the certificate on another machine is as easy as pointing at the PFX file and specifying the password. IIS handles the rest. Assigning a new certificate to your Site Once you have the new certificate installed, all that’s left to do is assign it to your site. In IIS select your Web site and bring up the Site Bindings from the right sidebar. Add a new binding for https, bind it to port 443, specify your hostname and pick the certificate from the pick list. If you’re using a root site make sure to set up your certificate for www.yoursite.com and also for yoursite.com so that both work properly with SSL. Note that you need to explicitly configure each hostname for a certificate if you plan to use SSL. Luckily if you update your SSL certificate in the following year, IIS prompts you and asks whether you like to update all other sites that are using the existing cert to the newer cert. And you’re done. So what’s the Pain? So, all of this is old hat and it doesn’t look all that bad right? So what’s the pain here? Well if you follow the instructions and do everything right, then the process is about as straight forward as you would expect it to be. You create a cert request, you import it and assign it to your sites. That’s the basic steps and to be perfectly fair it works well – if nothing goes wrong. However, renewing tends to be the problem. The first unintuitive issue is that you simply shouldn’t renew but create a new CSR and generate your new certificate from that. Over the years I’ve fallen prey to the belief that Microsoft eventually will fix this so that the renewal creates the same type of CSR as the old cert, but apparently that will just never happen. Booo! The other problem I ran into is that I accidentally misnamed my imported certificate which in turn set off a chain of events that caused my originally issued certificate to become uninstallable. When I received my completed certificate I installed it and it installed just fine, but the friendly name was wrong. As a result IIS refused to assign the certificate to any of my host headered sites. That’s strike number one. Why the heck should the friendly name have any effect on the ability to attach the certificate??? Next I uninstalled the certificate because I figured that would be the easiest way to make sure I get it right. But I found that I could not reinstall my certificate. I kept getting these stop errors: "ASN1 bad tag value met" that would prevent the installation from completion. After searching around for this error and reading countless long messages on forums, I found that this error supposedly does not actually mean the install failed, but the list wouldn’t refresh. Commodo has this to say: Note: There is a known issue in IIS 7 giving the following error: "Cannot find the certificate request associated with this certificate file. A certificate request must be completed on the computer where it was created." You may also receive a message stating "ASN1 bad tag value met". If this is the same server that you generated the CSR on then, in most cases, the certificate is actually installed. Simply cancel the dialog and press "F5" to refresh the list of server certificates. If the new certificate is now in the list, you can continue with the next step. If it is not in the list, you will need to reissue your certificate using a new CSR (see our CSR creation instructions for IIS 7). After creating a new CSR, login to your Comodo account and click the 'replace' button for your certificate. Not sure if this issue is fixed in IIS 8 but that’s an insane bug to have crop up. As it turns out, in my case the refresh didn’t work and the certificate didn’t show up in the IIS list after the reinstall. In fact when looking at the certificate store I could see my certificate was installed in the right place, but the private key is missing which is most likely why IIS is not picking it up. It looks like IIS could not match the final cert to the original CSR generated. But again some sort of message to that affect might be helpful instead of ASN1 bad tag value met. Recovering the Private Key So it turns out my original problem was that I received the published key, but when I imported the private key was missing. There’s a relatively easy way to recover from this. If your certificate doesn’t show up in IIS check in the certificate store for the local machine (see steps above on how to bring this up). If you look at the certificate in Certificates/Personal/Certificates make sure you see the key as shown in the image below: if the key is missing it means that the certificate is missing the private key most likely. To fix a certificate you can do the following: Double click the certificate Go to the Details Tab Copy down the Serial number You can copy the serial number from the area blurred out above. The serial number will be in a format like ?00 a7 9b a1 a4 9d 91 63 57 d6 9f 26 b8 ee 79 b5 cb and you’ll need to strip out the spaces in order to use it in the next step. Next open up an Administrative command prompt and issue the following command: certutil -repairstore my 00a79ba1a49d916357d69f26b8ee79b5cb You should get a confirmation message that the repair worked. If you now go back to the certificate store you should now see the key icon show up on the certificate. Your certificate is fixed. Now go back into IIS Manager and refresh the list of certificates and if all goes well you should see all the certificates that showed in the cert store now: Remember – back up the key first then map to your site… Summary I deal with a lot of customers who run their own IIS servers, and I can’t tell you how often I hear about botched SSL installations. When I posted some of my issues on Twitter yesterday I got a hell storm of “me too” responses. I’m clearly not the only one, who’s run into this especially with renewals. I feel pretty comfortable with IIS configuration and I do a lot of it for support purposes, but the SSL configuration is one that never seems to go seamlessly. This blog post is meant as reminder to myself to read next time I do a renewal. So I can dot my i's and dash my t’s before I get caught in the mess I’m dealing with today. Hopefully some of you find this useful as well.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2014Posted in IIS7  Security   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Creating STA COM compatible ASP.NET Applications

  - by Rick Strahl

  When building ASP.NET applications that interface with old school COM objects like those created with VB6 or Visual FoxPro (MTDLL), it's extremely important that the threads that are serving requests use Single Threaded Apartment Threading. STA is a COM built-in technology that allows essentially single threaded components to operate reliably in a multi-threaded environment. STA's guarantee that COM objects instantiated on a specific thread stay on that specific thread and any access to a COM object from another thread automatically marshals that thread to the STA thread. The end effect is that you can have multiple threads, but a COM object instance lives on a fixed never changing thread. ASP.NET by default uses MTA (multi-threaded apartment) threads which are truly free spinning threads that pay no heed to COM object marshaling. This is vastly more efficient than STA threading which has a bit of overhead in determining whether it's OK to run code on a given thread or whether some sort of thread/COM marshaling needs to occur. MTA COM components can be very efficient, but STA COM components in a multi-threaded environment always tend to have a fair amount of overhead. It's amazing how much COM Interop I still see today so while it seems really old school to be talking about this topic, it's actually quite apropos for me as I have many customers using legacy COM systems that need to interface with other .NET applications. In this post I'm consolidating some of the hacks I've used to integrate with various ASP.NET technologies when using STA COM Components. STA in ASP.NET Support for STA threading in the ASP.NET framework is fairly limited. Specifically only the original ASP.NET WebForms technology supports STA threading directly via its STA Page Handler implementation or what you might know as ASPCOMPAT mode. For WebForms running STA components is as easy as specifying the ASPCOMPAT attribute in the @Page tag:<%@ Page Language="C#" AspCompat="true" %> which runs the page in STA mode. Removing it runs in MTA mode. Simple. Unfortunately all other ASP.NET technologies built on top of the core ASP.NET engine do not support STA natively. So if you want to use STA COM components in MVC or with class ASMX Web Services, there's no automatic way like the ASPCOMPAT keyword available. So what happens when you run an STA COM component in an MTA application? In low volume environments - nothing much will happen. The COM objects will appear to work just fine as there are no simultaneous thread interactions and the COM component will happily run on a single thread or multiple single threads one at a time. So for testing running components in MTA environments may appear to work just fine. However as load increases and threads get re-used by ASP.NET COM objects will end up getting created on multiple different threads. This can result in crashes or hangs, or data corruption in the STA components which store their state in thread local storage on the STA thread. If threads overlap this global store can easily get corrupted which in turn causes problems. STA ensures that any COM object instance loaded always stays on the same thread it was instantiated on. What about COM+? COM+ is supposed to address the problem of STA in MTA applications by providing an abstraction with it's own thread pool manager for COM objects. It steps in to the COM instantiation pipeline and hands out COM instances from its own internally maintained STA Thread pool. This guarantees that the COM instantiation threads are STA threads if using STA components. COM+ works, but in my experience the technology is very, very slow for STA components. It adds a ton of overhead and reduces COM performance noticably in load tests in IIS. COM+ can make sense in some situations but for Web apps with STA components it falls short. In addition there's also the need to ensure that COM+ is set up and configured on the target machine and the fact that components have to be registered in COM+. COM+ also keeps components up at all times, so if a component needs to be replaced the COM+ package needs to be unloaded (same is true for IIS hosted components but it's more common to manage that). COM+ is an option for well established components, but native STA support tends to provide better performance and more consistent usability, IMHO. STA for non supporting ASP.NET Technologies As mentioned above only WebForms supports STA natively. However, by utilizing the WebForms ASP.NET Page handler internally it's actually possible to trick various other ASP.NET technologies and let them work with STA components. This is ugly but I've used each of these in various applications and I've had minimal problems making them work with FoxPro STA COM components which is about as dififcult as it gets for COM Interop in .NET. In this post I summarize several STA workarounds that enable you to use STA threading with these ASP.NET Technologies: ASMX Web Services ASP.NET MVC WCF Web Services ASP.NET Web API ASMX Web Services I start with classic ASP.NET ASMX Web Services because it's the easiest mechanism that allows for STA modification. It also clearly demonstrates how the WebForms STA Page Handler is the key technology to enable the various other solutions to create STA components. Essentially the way this works is to override the WebForms Page class and hijack it's init functionality for processing requests. Here's what this looks like for Web Services:namespace FoxProAspNet { public class WebServiceStaHandler : System.Web.UI.Page, IHttpAsyncHandler { protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e) { IHttpHandler handler = new WebServiceHandlerFactory().GetHandler( this.Context, this.Context.Request.HttpMethod, this.Context.Request.FilePath, this.Context.Request.PhysicalPath); handler.ProcessRequest(this.Context); this.Context.ApplicationInstance.CompleteRequest(); } public IAsyncResult BeginProcessRequest( HttpContext context, AsyncCallback cb, object extraData) { return this.AspCompatBeginProcessRequest(context, cb, extraData); } public void EndProcessRequest(IAsyncResult result) { this.AspCompatEndProcessRequest(result); } } public class AspCompatWebServiceStaHandlerWithSessionState : WebServiceStaHandler, IRequiresSessionState { } } This class overrides the ASP.NET WebForms Page class which has a little known AspCompatBeginProcessRequest() and AspCompatEndProcessRequest() method that is responsible for providing the WebForms ASPCOMPAT functionality. These methods handle routing requests to STA threads. Note there are two classes - one that includes session state and one that does not. If you plan on using ASP.NET Session state use the latter class, otherwise stick to the former. This maps to the EnableSessionState page setting in WebForms. This class simply hooks into this functionality by overriding the BeginProcessRequest and EndProcessRequest methods and always forcing it into the AspCompat methods. The way this works is that BeginProcessRequest() fires first to set up the threads and starts intializing the handler. As part of that process the OnInit() method is fired which is now already running on an STA thread. The code then creates an instance of the actual WebService handler factory and calls its ProcessRequest method to start executing which generates the Web Service result. Immediately after ProcessRequest the request is stopped with Application.CompletRequest() which ensures that the rest of the Page handler logic doesn't fire. This means that even though the fairly heavy Page class is overridden here, it doesn't end up executing any of its internal processing which makes this code fairly efficient. In a nutshell, we're highjacking the Page HttpHandler and forcing it to process the WebService process handler in the context of the AspCompat handler behavior. Hooking up the Handler Because the above is an HttpHandler implementation you need to hook up the custom handler and replace the standard ASMX handler. To do this you need to modify the web.config file (here for IIS 7 and IIS Express): <configuration> <system.webServer> <handlers> <remove name="WebServiceHandlerFactory-Integrated-4.0" /> <add name="Asmx STA Web Service Handler" path="*.asmx" verb="*" type="FoxProAspNet.WebServiceStaHandler" precondition="integrated"/> </handlers> </system.webServer> </configuration> (Note: The name for the WebServiceHandlerFactory-Integrated-4.0 might be slightly different depending on your server version. Check the IIS Handler configuration in the IIS Management Console for the exact name or simply remove the handler from the list there which will propagate to your web.config). For IIS 5 & 6 (Windows XP/2003) or the Visual Studio Web Server use:<configuration> <system.web> <httpHandlers> <remove path="*.asmx" verb="*" /> <add path="*.asmx" verb="*" type="FoxProAspNet.WebServiceStaHandler" /> </httpHandlers> </system.web></configuration> To test, create a new ASMX Web Service and create a method like this: [WebService(Namespace = "http://foxaspnet.org/")] [WebServiceBinding(ConformsTo = WsiProfiles.BasicProfile1_1)] public class FoxWebService : System.Web.Services.WebService { [WebMethod] public string HelloWorld() { return "Hello World. Threading mode is: " + System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.GetApartmentState(); } } Run this before you put in the web.config configuration changes and you should get: Hello World. Threading mode is: MTA Then put the handler mapping into Web.config and you should see: Hello World. Threading mode is: STA And you're on your way to using STA COM components. It's a hack but it works well! I've used this with several high volume Web Service installations with various customers and it's been fast and reliable. ASP.NET MVC ASP.NET MVC has quickly become the most popular ASP.NET technology, replacing WebForms for creating HTML output. MVC is more complex to get started with, but once you understand the basic structure of how requests flow through the MVC pipeline it's easy to use and amazingly flexible in manipulating HTML requests. In addition, MVC has great support for non-HTML output sources like JSON and XML, making it an excellent choice for AJAX requests without any additional tools. Unlike WebForms ASP.NET MVC doesn't support STA threads natively and so some trickery is needed to make it work with STA threads as well. MVC gets its handler implementation through custom route handlers using ASP.NET's built in routing semantics. To work in an STA handler requires working in the Page Handler as part of the Route Handler implementation. As with the Web Service handler the first step is to create a custom HttpHandler that can instantiate an MVC request pipeline properly:public class MvcStaThreadHttpAsyncHandler : Page, IHttpAsyncHandler, IRequiresSessionState { private RequestContext _requestContext; public MvcStaThreadHttpAsyncHandler(RequestContext requestContext) { if (requestContext == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("requestContext"); _requestContext = requestContext; } public IAsyncResult BeginProcessRequest(HttpContext context, AsyncCallback cb, object extraData) { return this.AspCompatBeginProcessRequest(context, cb, extraData); } protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e) { var controllerName = _requestContext.RouteData.GetRequiredString("controller"); var controllerFactory = ControllerBuilder.Current.GetControllerFactory(); var controller = controllerFactory.CreateController(_requestContext, controllerName); if (controller == null) throw new InvalidOperationException("Could not find controller: " + controllerName); try { controller.Execute(_requestContext); } finally { controllerFactory.ReleaseController(controller); } this.Context.ApplicationInstance.CompleteRequest(); } public void EndProcessRequest(IAsyncResult result) { this.AspCompatEndProcessRequest(result); } public override void ProcessRequest(HttpContext httpContext) { throw new NotSupportedException("STAThreadRouteHandler does not support ProcessRequest called (only BeginProcessRequest)"); } } This handler code figures out which controller to load and then executes the controller. MVC internally provides the information needed to route to the appropriate method and pass the right parameters. Like the Web Service handler the logic occurs in the OnInit() and performs all the processing in that part of the request. Next, we need a RouteHandler that can actually pick up this handler. Unlike the Web Service handler where we simply registered the handler, MVC requires a RouteHandler to pick up the handler. RouteHandlers look at the URL's path and based on that decide on what handler to invoke. The route handler is pretty simple - all it does is load our custom handler: public class MvcStaThreadRouteHandler : IRouteHandler { public IHttpHandler GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext) { if (requestContext == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("requestContext"); return new MvcStaThreadHttpAsyncHandler(requestContext); } } At this point you can instantiate this route handler and force STA requests to MVC by specifying a route. The following sets up the ASP.NET Default Route:Route mvcRoute = new Route("{controller}/{action}/{id}", new RouteValueDictionary( new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }), new MvcStaThreadRouteHandler()); RouteTable.Routes.Add(mvcRoute);   To make this code a little easier to work with and mimic the behavior of the routes.MapRoute() functionality extension method that MVC provides, here is an extension method for MapMvcStaRoute(): public static class RouteCollectionExtensions { public static void MapMvcStaRoute(this RouteCollection routeTable, string name, string url, object defaults = null) { Route mvcRoute = new Route(url, new RouteValueDictionary(defaults), new MvcStaThreadRouteHandler()); RouteTable.Routes.Add(mvcRoute); } } With this the syntax to add  route becomes a little easier and matches the MapRoute() method:RouteTable.Routes.MapMvcStaRoute( name: "Default", url: "{controller}/{action}/{id}", defaults: new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } ); The nice thing about this route handler, STA Handler and extension method is that it's fully self contained. You can put all three into a single class file and stick it into your Web app, and then simply call MapMvcStaRoute() and it just works. Easy! To see whether this works create an MVC controller like this: public class ThreadTestController : Controller { public string ThreadingMode() { return Thread.CurrentThread.GetApartmentState().ToString(); } } Try this test both with only the MapRoute() hookup in the RouteConfiguration in which case you should get MTA as the value. Then change the MapRoute() call to MapMvcStaRoute() leaving all the parameters the same and re-run the request. You now should see STA as the result. You're on your way using STA COM components reliably in ASP.NET MVC. WCF Web Services running through IIS WCF Web Services provide a more robust and wider range of services for Web Services. You can use WCF over HTTP, TCP, and Pipes, and WCF services support WS* secure services. There are many features in WCF that go way beyond what ASMX can do. But it's also a bit more complex than ASMX. As a basic rule if you need to serve straight SOAP Services over HTTP I 'd recommend sticking with the simpler ASMX services especially if COM is involved. If you need WS* support or want to serve data over non-HTTP protocols then WCF makes more sense. WCF is not my forte but I found a solution from Scott Seely on his blog that describes the progress and that seems to work well. I'm copying his code below so this STA information is all in one place and quickly explain. Scott's code basically works by creating a custom OperationBehavior which can be specified via an [STAOperation] attribute on every method. Using his attribute you end up with a class (or Interface if you separate the contract and class) that looks like this: [ServiceContract] public class WcfService { [OperationContract] public string HelloWorldMta() { return Thread.CurrentThread.GetApartmentState().ToString(); } // Make sure you use this custom STAOperationBehavior // attribute to force STA operation of service methods [STAOperationBehavior] [OperationContract] public string HelloWorldSta() { return Thread.CurrentThread.GetApartmentState().ToString(); } } Pretty straight forward. The latter method returns STA while the former returns MTA. To make STA work every method needs to be marked up. The implementation consists of the attribute and OperationInvoker implementation. Here are the two classes required to make this work from Scott's post:public class STAOperationBehaviorAttribute : Attribute, IOperationBehavior { public void AddBindingParameters(OperationDescription operationDescription, System.ServiceModel.Channels.BindingParameterCollection bindingParameters) { } public void ApplyClientBehavior(OperationDescription operationDescription, System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ClientOperation clientOperation) { // If this is applied on the client, well, it just doesn’t make sense. // Don’t throw in case this attribute was applied on the contract // instead of the implementation. } public void ApplyDispatchBehavior(OperationDescription operationDescription, System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.DispatchOperation dispatchOperation) { // Change the IOperationInvoker for this operation. dispatchOperation.Invoker = new STAOperationInvoker(dispatchOperation.Invoker); } public void Validate(OperationDescription operationDescription) { if (operationDescription.SyncMethod == null) { throw new InvalidOperationException("The STAOperationBehaviorAttribute " + "only works for synchronous method invocations."); } } } public class STAOperationInvoker : IOperationInvoker { IOperationInvoker _innerInvoker; public STAOperationInvoker(IOperationInvoker invoker) { _innerInvoker = invoker; } public object[] AllocateInputs() { return _innerInvoker.AllocateInputs(); } public object Invoke(object instance, object[] inputs, out object[] outputs) { // Create a new, STA thread object[] staOutputs = null; object retval = null; Thread thread = new Thread( delegate() { retval = _innerInvoker.Invoke(instance, inputs, out staOutputs); }); thread.SetApartmentState(ApartmentState.STA); thread.Start(); thread.Join(); outputs = staOutputs; return retval; } public IAsyncResult InvokeBegin(object instance, object[] inputs, AsyncCallback callback, object state) { // We don’t handle async… throw new NotImplementedException(); } public object InvokeEnd(object instance, out object[] outputs, IAsyncResult result) { // We don’t handle async… throw new NotImplementedException(); } public bool IsSynchronous { get { return true; } } } The key in this setup is the Invoker and the Invoke method which creates a new thread and then fires the request on this new thread. Because this approach creates a new thread for every request it's not super efficient. There's a bunch of overhead involved in creating the thread and throwing it away after each thread, but it'll work for low volume requests and insure each thread runs in STA mode. If better performance is required it would be useful to create a custom thread manager that can pool a number of STA threads and hand off threads as needed rather than creating new threads on every request. If your Web Service needs are simple and you need only to serve standard SOAP 1.x requests, I would recommend sticking with ASMX services. It's easier to set up and work with and for STA component use it'll be significantly better performing since ASP.NET manages the STA thread pool for you rather than firing new threads for each request. One nice thing about Scotts code is though that it works in any WCF environment including self hosting. It has no dependency on ASP.NET or WebForms for that matter. STA - If you must STA components are a  pain in the ass and thankfully there isn't too much stuff out there anymore that requires it. But when you need it and you need to access STA functionality from .NET at least there are a few options available to make it happen. Each of these solutions is a bit hacky, but they work - I've used all of them in production with good results with FoxPro components. I hope compiling all of these in one place here makes it STA consumption a little bit easier. I feel your pain :-) Resources Download STA Handler Code Examples Scott Seely's original STA WCF OperationBehavior Article© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in FoxPro   ASP.NET  .NET  COM   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• The broken Promise of the Mobile Web

  - by Rick Strahl

  High end mobile devices have been with us now for almost 7 years and they have utterly transformed the way we access information. Mobile phones and smartphones that have access to the Internet and host smart applications are in the hands of a large percentage of the population of the world. In many places even very remote, cell phones and even smart phones are a common sight. I’ll never forget when I was in India in 2011 I was up in the Southern Indian mountains riding an elephant out of a tiny local village, with an elephant herder in front riding atop of the elephant in front of us. He was dressed in traditional garb with the loin wrap and head cloth/turban as did quite a few of the locals in this small out of the way and not so touristy village. So we’re slowly trundling along in the forest and he’s lazily using his stick to guide the elephant and… 10 minutes in he pulls out his cell phone from his sash and starts texting. In the middle of texting a huge pig jumps out from the side of the trail and he takes a picture running across our path in the jungle! So yeah, mobile technology is very pervasive and it’s reached into even very buried and unexpected parts of this world. Apps are still King Apps currently rule the roost when it comes to mobile devices and the applications that run on them. If there’s something that you need on your mobile device your first step usually is to look for an app, not use your browser. But native app development remains a pain in the butt, with the requirement to have to support 2 or 3 completely separate platforms. There are solutions that try to bridge that gap. Xamarin is on a tear at the moment, providing their cross-device toolkit to build applications using C#. While Xamarin tools are impressive – and also *very* expensive – they only address part of the development madness that is app development. There are still specific device integration isssues, dealing with the different developer programs, security and certificate setups and all that other noise that surrounds app development. There’s also PhoneGap/Cordova which provides a hybrid solution that involves creating local HTML/CSS/JavaScript based applications, and then packaging them to run in a specialized App container that can run on most mobile device platforms using a WebView interface. This allows for using of HTML technology, but it also still requires all the set up, configuration of APIs, security keys and certification and submission and deployment process just like native applications – you actually lose many of the benefits that  Web based apps bring. The big selling point of Cordova is that you get to use HTML have the ability to build your UI once for all platforms and run across all of them – but the rest of the app process remains in place. Apps can be a big pain to create and manage especially when we are talking about specialized or vertical business applications that aren’t geared at the mainstream market and that don’t fit the ‘store’ model. If you’re building a small intra department application you don’t want to deal with multiple device platforms and certification etc. for various public or corporate app stores. That model is simply not a good fit both from the development and deployment perspective. Even for commercial, big ticket apps, HTML as a UI platform offers many advantages over native, from write-once run-anywhere, to remote maintenance, single point of management and failure to having full control over the application as opposed to have the app store overloads censor you. In a lot of ways Web based HTML/CSS/JavaScript applications have so much potential for building better solutions based on existing Web technologies for the very same reasons a lot of content years ago moved off the desktop to the Web. To me the Web as a mobile platform makes perfect sense, but the reality of today’s Mobile Web unfortunately looks a little different… Where’s the Love for the Mobile Web? Yet here we are in the middle of 2014, nearly 7 years after the first iPhone was released and brought the promise of rich interactive information at your fingertips, and yet we still don’t really have a solid mobile Web platform. I know what you’re thinking: “But we have lots of HTML/JavaScript/CSS features that allows us to build nice mobile interfaces”. I agree to a point – it’s actually quite possible to build nice looking, rich and capable Web UI today. We have media queries to deal with varied display sizes, CSS transforms for smooth animations and transitions, tons of CSS improvements in CSS 3 that facilitate rich layout, a host of APIs geared towards mobile device features and lately even a number of JavaScript framework choices that facilitate development of multi-screen apps in a consistent manner. Personally I’ve been working a lot with AngularJs and heavily modified Bootstrap themes to build mobile first UIs and that’s been working very well to provide highly usable and attractive UI for typical mobile business applications. From the pure UI perspective things actually look very good. Not just about the UI But it’s not just about the UI - it’s also about integration with the mobile device. When it comes to putting all those pieces together into what amounts to a consolidated platform to build mobile Web applications, I think we still have a ways to go… there are a lot of missing pieces to make it all work together and integrate with the device more smoothly, and more importantly to make it work uniformly across the majority of devices. I think there are a number of reasons for this. Slow Standards Adoption HTML standards implementations and ratification has been dreadfully slow, and browser vendors all seem to pick and choose different pieces of the technology they implement. The end result is that we have a capable UI platform that’s missing some of the infrastructure pieces to make it whole on mobile devices. There’s lots of potential but what is lacking that final 10% to build truly compelling mobile applications that can compete favorably with native applications. Some of it is the fragmentation of browsers and the slow evolution of the mobile specific HTML APIs. A host of mobile standards exist but many of the standards are in the early review stage and they have been there stuck for long periods of time and seem to move at a glacial pace. Browser vendors seem even slower to implement them, and for good reason – non-ratified standards mean that implementations may change and vendor implementations tend to be experimental and  likely have to be changed later. Neither Vendors or developers are not keen on changing standards. This is the typical chicken and egg scenario, but without some forward momentum from some party we end up stuck in the mud. It seems that either the standards bodies or the vendors need to carry the torch forward and that doesn’t seem to be happening quickly enough. Mobile Device Integration just isn’t good enough Current standards are not far reaching enough to address a number of the use case scenarios necessary for many mobile applications. While not every application needs to have access to all mobile device features, almost every mobile application could benefit from some integration with other parts of the mobile device platform. Integration with GPS, phone, media, messaging, notifications, linking and contacts system are benefits that are unique to mobile applications and could be widely used, but are mostly (with the exception of GPS) inaccessible for Web based applications today. Unfortunately trying to do most of this today only with a mobile Web browser is a losing battle. Aside from PhoneGap/Cordova’s app centric model with its own custom API accessing mobile device features and the token exception of the GeoLocation API, most device integration features are not widely supported by the current crop of mobile browsers. For example there’s no usable messaging API that allows access to SMS or contacts from HTML. Even obvious components like the Media Capture API are only implemented partially by mobile devices. There are alternatives and workarounds for some of these interfaces by using browser specific code, but that’s might ugly and something that I thought we were trying to leave behind with newer browser standards. But it’s not quite working out that way. It’s utterly perplexing to me that mobile standards like Media Capture and Streams, Media Gallery Access, Responsive Images, Messaging API, Contacts Manager API have only minimal or no traction at all today. Keep in mind we’ve had mobile browsers for nearly 7 years now, and yet we still have to think about how to get access to an image from the image gallery or the camera on some devices? Heck Windows Phone IE Mobile just gained the ability to upload images recently in the Windows 8.1 Update – that’s feature that HTML has had for 20 years! These are simple concepts and common problems that should have been solved a long time ago. It’s extremely frustrating to see build 90% of a mobile Web app with relative ease and then hit a brick wall for the remaining 10%, which often can be show stoppers. The remaining 10% have to do with platform integration, browser differences and working around the limitations that browsers and ‘pinned’ applications impose on HTML applications. The maddening part is that these limitations seem arbitrary as they could easily work on all mobile platforms. For example, SMS has a URL Moniker interface that sort of works on Android, works badly with iOS (only works if the address is already in the contact list) and not at all on Windows Phone. There’s no reason this shouldn’t work universally using the same interface – after all all phones have supported SMS since before the year 2000! But, it doesn’t have to be this way Change can happen very quickly. Take the GeoLocation API for example. Geolocation has taken off at the very beginning of the mobile device era and today it works well, provides the necessary security (a big concern for many mobile APIs), and is supported by just about all major mobile and even desktop browsers today. It handles security concerns via prompts to avoid unwanted access which is a model that would work for most other device APIs in a similar fashion. One time approval and occasional re-approval if code changes or caches expire. Simple and only slightly intrusive. It all works well, even though GeoLocation actually has some physical limitations, such as representing the current location when no GPS device is present. Yet this is a solved problem, where other APIs that are conceptually much simpler to implement have failed to gain any traction at all. Technically none of these APIs should be a problem to implement, but it appears that the momentum is just not there. Inadequate Web Application Linking and Activation Another important piece of the puzzle missing is the integration of HTML based Web applications. Today HTML based applications are not first class citizens on mobile operating systems. When talking about HTML based content there’s a big difference between content and applications. Content is great for search engine discovery and plain browser usage. Content is usually accessed intermittently and permanent linking is not so critical for this type of content.  But applications have different needs. Applications need to be started up quickly and must be easily switchable to support a multi-tasking user workflow. Therefore, it’s pretty crucial that mobile Web apps are integrated into the underlying mobile OS and work with the standard task management features. Unfortunately this integration is not as smooth as it should be. It starts with actually trying to find mobile Web applications, to ‘installing’ them onto a phone in an easily accessible manner in a prominent position. The experience of discovering a Mobile Web ‘App’ and making it sticky is by no means as easy or satisfying. Today the way you’d go about this is: Open the browser Search for a Web Site in the browser with your search engine of choice Hope that you find the right site Hope that you actually find a site that works for your mobile device Click on the link and run the app in a fully chrome’d browser instance (read tiny surface area) Pin the app to the home screen (with all the limitations outline above) Hope you pointed at the right URL when you pinned Even for you and me as developers, there are a few steps in there that are painful and annoying, but think about the average user. First figuring out how to search for a specific site or URL? And then pinning the app and hopefully from the right location? You’ve probably lost more than half of your audience at that point. This experience sucks. For developers too this process is painful since app developers can’t control the shortcut creation directly. This problem often gets solved by crazy coding schemes, with annoying pop-ups that try to get people to create shortcuts via fancy animations that are both annoying and add overhead to each and every application that implements this sort of thing differently. And that’s not the end of it - getting the link onto the home screen with an application icon varies quite a bit between browsers. Apple’s non-standard meta tags are prominent and they work with iOS and Android (only more recent versions), but not on Windows Phone. Windows Phone instead requires you to create an actual screen or rather a partial screen be captured for a shortcut in the tile manager. Who had that brilliant idea I wonder? Surprisingly Chrome on recent Android versions seems to actually get it right – icons use pngs, pinning is easy and pinned applications properly behave like standalone apps and retain the browser’s active page state and content. Each of the platforms has a different way to specify icons (WP doesn’t allow you to use an icon image at all), and the most widely used interface in use today is a bunch of Apple specific meta tags that other browsers choose to support. The question is: Why is there no standard implementation for installing shortcuts across mobile platforms using an official format rather than a proprietary one? Then there’s iOS and the crazy way it treats home screen linked URLs using a crazy hybrid format that is neither as capable as a Web app running in Safari nor a WebView hosted application. Moving off the Web ‘app’ link when switching to another app actually causes the browser and preview it to ‘blank out’ the Web application in the Task View (see screenshot on the right). Then, when the ‘app’ is reactivated it ends up completely restarting the browser with the original link. This is crazy behavior that you can’t easily work around. In some situations you might be able to store the application state and restore it using LocalStorage, but for many scenarios that involve complex data sources (like say Google Maps) that’s not a possibility. The only reason for this screwed up behavior I can think of is that it is deliberate to make Web apps a pain in the butt to use and forcing users trough the App Store/PhoneGap/Cordova route. App linking and management is a very basic problem – something that we essentially have solved in every desktop browser – yet on mobile devices where it arguably matters a lot more to have easy access to web content we have to jump through hoops to have even a remotely decent linking/activation experience across browsers. Where’s the Money? It’s not surprising that device home screen integration and Mobile Web support in general is in such dismal shape – the mobile OS vendors benefit financially from App store sales and have little to gain from Web based applications that bypass the App store and the cash cow that it presents. On top of that, platform specific vendor lock-in of both end users and developers who have invested in hardware, apps and consumables is something that mobile platform vendors actually aspire to. Web based interfaces that are cross-platform are the anti-thesis of that and so again it’s no surprise that the mobile Web is on a struggling path. But – that may be changing. More and more we’re seeing operations shifting to services that are subscription based or otherwise collect money for usage, and that may drive more progress into the Web direction in the end . Nothing like the almighty dollar to drive innovation forward. Do we need a Mobile Web App Store? As much as I dislike moderated experiences in today’s massive App Stores, they do at least provide one single place to look for apps for your device. I think we could really use some sort of registry, that could provide something akin to an app store for mobile Web apps, to make it easier to actually find mobile applications. This could take the form of a specialized search engine, or maybe a more formal store/registry like structure. Something like apt-get/chocolatey for Web apps. It could be curated and provide at least some feedback and reviews that might help with the integrity of applications. Coupled to that could be a native application on each platform that would allow searching and browsing of the registry and then also handle installation in the form of providing the home screen linking, plus maybe an initial security configuration that determines what features are allowed access to for the app. I’m not holding my breath. In order for this sort of thing to take off and gain widespread appeal, a lot of coordination would be required. And in order to get enough traction it would have to come from a well known entity – a mobile Web app store from a no name source is unlikely to gain high enough usage numbers to make a difference. In a way this would eliminate some of the freedom of the Web, but of course this would also be an optional search path in addition to the standard open Web search mechanisms to find and access content today. Security Security is a big deal, and one of the perceived reasons why so many IT professionals appear to be willing to go back to the walled garden of deployed apps is that Apps are perceived as safe due to the official review and curation of the App stores. Curated stores are supposed to protect you from malware, illegal and misleading content. It doesn’t always work out that way and all the major vendors have had issues with security and the review process at some time or another. Security is critical, but I also think that Web applications in general pose less of a security threat than native applications, by nature of the sandboxed browser and JavaScript environments. Web applications run externally completely and in the HTML and JavaScript sandboxes, with only a very few controlled APIs allowing access to device specific features. And as discussed earlier – security for any device interaction can be granted the same for mobile applications through a Web browser, as they can for native applications either via explicit policies loaded from the Web, or via prompting as GeoLocation does today. Security is important, but it’s certainly solvable problem for Web applications even those that need to access device hardware. Security shouldn’t be a reason for Web apps to be an equal player in mobile applications. Apps are winning, but haven’t we been here before? So now we’re finding ourselves back in an era of installed app, rather than Web based and managed apps. Only it’s even worse today than with Desktop applications, in that the apps are going through a gatekeeper that charges a toll and censors what you can and can’t do in your apps. Frankly it’s a mystery to me why anybody would buy into this model and why it’s lasted this long when we’ve already been through this process. It’s crazy… It’s really a shame that this regression is happening. We have the technology to make mobile Web apps much more prominent, but yet we’re basically held back by what seems little more than bureaucracy, partisan bickering and self interest of the major parties involved. Back in the day of the desktop it was Internet Explorer’s 98+%  market shareholding back the Web from improvements for many years – now it’s the combined mobile OS market in control of the mobile browsers. If mobile Web apps were allowed to be treated the same as native apps with simple ways to install and run them consistently and persistently, that would go a long way to making mobile applications much more usable and seriously viable alternatives to native apps. But as it is mobile apps have a severe disadvantage in placement and operation. There are a few bright spots in all of this. Mozilla’s FireFoxOs is embracing the Web for it’s mobile OS by essentially building every app out of HTML and JavaScript based content. It supports both packaged and certified package modes (that can be put into the app store), and Open Web apps that are loaded and run completely off the Web and can also cache locally for offline operation using a manifest. Open Web apps are treated as full class citizens in FireFoxOS and run using the same mechanism as installed apps. Unfortunately FireFoxOs is getting a slow start with minimal device support and specifically targeting the low end market. We can hope that this approach will change and catch on with other vendors, but that’s also an uphill battle given the conflict of interest with platform lock in that it represents. Recent versions of Android also seem to be working reasonably well with mobile application integration onto the desktop and activation out of the box. Although it still uses the Apple meta tags to find icons and behavior settings, everything at least works as you would expect – icons to the desktop on pinning, WebView based full screen activation, and reliable application persistence as the browser/app is treated like a real application. Hopefully iOS will at some point provide this same level of rudimentary Web app support. What’s also interesting to me is that Microsoft hasn’t picked up on the obvious need for a solid Web App platform. Being a distant third in the mobile OS war, Microsoft certainly has nothing to lose and everything to gain by using fresh ideas and expanding into areas that the other major vendors are neglecting. But instead Microsoft is trying to beat the market leaders at their own game, fighting on their adversary’s terms instead of taking a new tack. Providing a kick ass mobile Web platform that takes the lead on some of the proposed mobile APIs would be something positive that Microsoft could do to improve its miserable position in the mobile device market. Where are we at with Mobile Web? It sure sounds like I’m really down on the Mobile Web, right? I’ve built a number of mobile apps in the last year and while overall result and response has been very positive to what we were able to accomplish in terms of UI, getting that final 10% that required device integration dialed was an absolute nightmare on every single one of them. Big compromises had to be made and some features were left out or had to be modified for some devices. In two cases we opted to go the Cordova route in order to get the integration we needed, along with the extra pain involved in that process. Unless you’re not integrating with device features and you don’t care deeply about a smooth integration with the mobile desktop, mobile Web development is fraught with frustration. So, yes I’m frustrated! But it’s not for lack of wanting the mobile Web to succeed. I am still a firm believer that we will eventually arrive a much more functional mobile Web platform that allows access to the most common device features in a sensible way. It wouldn't be difficult for device platform vendors to make Web based applications first class citizens on mobile devices. But unfortunately it looks like it will still be some time before this happens. So, what’s your experience building mobile Web apps? Are you finding similar issues? Just giving up on raw Web applications and building PhoneGap apps instead? Completely skipping the Web and going native? Leave a comment for discussion. Resources Rick Strahl on DotNet Rocks talking about Mobile Web© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2014Posted in HTML5  Mobile   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Tips on Migrating from AquaLogic .NET Accelerator to WebCenter WSRP Producer for .NET

  - by user647124

  This year I embarked on a journey to migrate a group of ASP.NET web applications developed to integrate with WebLogic Portal 9.2 via the AquaLogic® Interaction .NET Application Accelerator 1.0 to instead use the Oracle WebCenter WSRP Producer for .NET and integrated with WebLogic Portal 10.3.4. It has been a very winding path and this blog entry is intended to share both the lessons learned and relevant approaches that led to those learnings. Like most journeys of discovery, it was not a direct path, and there are notes to let you know when it is practical to skip a section if you are in a hurry to get from here to there. For the Curious From the perspective of necessity, this section would be better at the end. If it were there, though, it would probably be read by far fewer people, including those that are actually interested in these types of sections. Those in a hurry may skip past and be none the worst for it in dealing with the hands-on bits of performing a migration from .NET Accelerator to WSRP Producer. For others who want to talk about why they did what they did after they did it, or just want to know for themselves, enjoy. A Brief (and edited) History of the WSRP for .NET Technologies (as Relevant to the this Post) Note: This section is for those who are curious about why the migration path is not as simple as many other Oracle technologies. You can skip this section in its entirety and still be just as competent in performing a migration as if you had read it. The currently deployed architecture that was to be migrated and upgraded achieved initial integration between .NET and J2EE over the WSRP protocol through the use of The AquaLogic Interaction .NET Application Accelerator. The .NET Accelerator allowed the applications that were written in ASP.NET and deployed on a Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) to interact with a WebLogic Portal application deployed on a WebLogic (J2EE application) Server (both version 9.2, the state of the art at the time of its creation). At the time this architectural decision for the application was made, both the AquaLogic and WebLogic brands were owned by BEA Systems. The AquaLogic brand included products acquired by BEA through the acquisition of Plumtree, whose flagship product was a portal platform available in both J2EE and .NET versions. As part of this dual technology support an adaptor was created to facilitate the use of WSRP as a communication protocol where customers wished to integrate components from both versions of the Plumtree portal. The adapter evolved over several product generations to include a broad array of both standard and proprietary WSRP integration capabilities. Later, BEA Systems was acquired by Oracle. Over the course of several years Oracle has acquired a large number of portal applications and has taken the strategic direction to migrate users of these myriad (and formerly competitive) products to the Oracle WebCenter technology stack. As part of Oracle’s strategic technology roadmap, older portal products are being schedule for end of life, including the portal products that were part of the BEA acquisition. The .NET Accelerator has been modified over a very long period of time with features driven by users of that product and developed under three different vendors (each a direct competitor in the same solution space prior to merger). The Oracle WebCenter WSRP Producer for .NET was introduced much more recently with the key objective to specifically address the needs of the WebCenter customers developing solutions accessible through both J2EE and .NET platforms utilizing the WSRP specifications. The Oracle Product Development Team also provides these insights on the drivers for developing the WSRP Producer: ***************************************** Support for ASP.NET AJAX. Controls using the ASP.NET AJAX script manager do not function properly in the Application Accelerator for .NET. Support 2 way SSL in WLP. This was not possible with the proxy/bridge set up in the existing Application Accelerator for .NET. Allow developers to code portlets (Web Parts) using the .NET framework rather than a proprietary framework. Developers had to use the Application Accelerator for .NET plug-ins to Visual Studio to manage preferences and profile data. This is now replaced with the .NET Framework Personalization (for preferences) and Profile providers. The WSRP Producer for .NET was created as a new way of developing .NET portlets. It was never designed to be an upgrade path for the Application Accelerator for .NET. .NET developers would create new .NET portlets with the WSRP Producer for .NET and leave any existing .NET portlets running in the Application Accelerator for .NET. ***************************************** The advantage to creating a new solution for WSRP is a product that is far easier for Oracle to maintain and support which in turn improves quality, reliability and maintainability for their customers. No changes to J2EE applications consuming the WSRP portlets previously rendered by the.NET Accelerator is required to migrate from the Aqualogic WSRP solution. For some customers using the .NET Accelerator the challenge is adapting their current .NET applications to work with the WSRP Producer (or any other WSRP adapter as they are proprietary by nature). Part of this adaptation is the need to deploy the .NET applications as a child to the WSRP producer web application as root. Differences between .NET Accelerator and WSRP Producer Note: This section is for those who are curious about why the migration is not as pluggable as something such as changing security providers in WebLogic Server. You can skip this section in its entirety and still be just as competent in performing a migration as if you had read it. The basic terminology used to describe the participating applications in a WSRP environment are the same when applied to either the .NET Accelerator or the WSRP Producer: Producer and Consumer. In both cases the .NET application serves as what is referred to as a WSRP environment as the Producer. The difference lies in how the two adapters create the WSRP translation of the .NET application. The .NET Accelerator, as the name implies, is meant to serve as a quick way of adding WSRP capability to a .NET application. As such, at a high level, the .NET Accelerator behaves as a proxy for requests between the .NET application and the WSRP Consumer. A WSRP request is sent from the consumer to the .NET Accelerator, the.NET Accelerator transforms this request into an ASP.NET request, receives the response, then transforms the response into a WSRP response. The .NET Accelerator is deployed as a stand-alone application on IIS. The WSRP Producer is deployed as a parent application on IIS and all ASP.NET modules that will be made available over WSRP are deployed as children of the WSRP Producer application. In this manner, the WSRP Producer acts more as a Request Filter than a proxy in the WSRP transactions between Producer and Consumer. Highly Recommended Enabling Logging Note: You can skip this section now, but you will most likely want to come back to it later, so why not just read it now? Logging is very helpful in tracking down the causes of any anomalies during testing of migrated portlets. To enable the WSRP Producer logging, update the Application_Start method in the Global.asax.cs for your .NET application by adding log4net.Config.XmlConfigurator.Configure(); IIS logs will usually (in a standard configuration) be in a sub folder under C:\WINDOWS\system32\LogFiles\W3SVC. WSRP Producer logs will be found at C:\Oracle\Middleware\WSRPProducerForDotNet\wsrpdefault\Logs\WSRPProducer.log InputTrace.webinfo and OutputTrace.webinfo are located under C:\Oracle\Middleware\WSRPProducerForDotNet\wsrpdefault and can be useful in debugging issues related to markup transformations. Things You Must Do Merge Web.Config Note: If you have been skipping all the sections that you can, now is the time to stop and pay attention J Because the existing .NET application will become a sub-application to the WSRP Producer, you will want to merge required settings from the existing Web.Config to the one in the WSRP Producer. Use the WSRP Producer Master Page The Master Page installed for the WSRP Producer provides common, hiddenform fields and JavaScripts to facilitate portlet instance management and display configuration when the child page is being rendered over WSRP. You add the Master Page by including it in the <@ Page declaration with MasterPageFile="~/portlets/Resources/MasterPages/WSRP.Master" . You then replace: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" > <HTML> <HEAD> With <asp:Content ID="ContentHead1" ContentPlaceHolderID="wsrphead" Runat="Server"> And </HEAD> <body> <form id="theForm" method="post" runat="server"> With </asp:Content> <asp:Content ID="ContentBody1" ContentPlaceHolderID="Main" Runat="Server"> And finally </form> </body> </HTML> With </asp:Content> In the event you already use Master Pages, adapt your existing Master Pages to be sub masters. See Nested ASP.NET Master Pages for a detailed reference of how to do this. It Happened to Me, It Might Happen to You…Or Not Watch for Use of Session or Request in OnInit In the event the .NET application being modified has pages developed to assume the user has been authenticated in an earlier page request there may be direct or indirect references in the OnInit method to request or session objects that may not have been created yet. This will vary from application to application, so the recommended approach is to test first. If there is an issue with a page running as a WSRP portlet then check for potential references in the OnInit method (including references by methods called within OnInit) to session or request objects. If there are, the simplest solution is to create a new method and then call that method once the necessary object(s) is fully available. I find doing this at the start of the Page_Load method to be the simplest solution. Case Sensitivity .NET languages are not case sensitive, but Java is. This means it is possible to have many variations of SRC= and src= or .JPG and .jpg. The preferred solution is to make these mark up instances all lower case in your .NET application. This will allow the default Rewriter rules in wsrp-producer.xml to work as is. If this is not practical, then make duplicates of any rules where an issue is occurring due to upper or mixed case usage in the .NET application markup and match the case in use with the duplicate rule. For example: <RewriterRule> <LookFor>(href=\"([^\"]+)</LookFor> <ChangeToAbsolute>true</ChangeToAbsolute> <ApplyTo>.axd,.css</ApplyTo> <MakeResource>true</MakeResource> </RewriterRule> May need to be duplicated as: <RewriterRule> <LookFor>(HREF=\"([^\"]+)</LookFor> <ChangeToAbsolute>true</ChangeToAbsolute> <ApplyTo>.axd,.css</ApplyTo> <MakeResource>true</MakeResource> </RewriterRule> While it is possible to write a regular expression that will handle mixed case usage, it would be long and strenous to test and maintain, so the recommendation is to use duplicate rules. Is it Still Relative? Some .NET applications base relative paths with a fixed root location. With the introduction of the WSRP Producer, the root has moved up one level. References to ~/ will need to be updated to ~/portlets and many ../ paths will need another ../ in front. I Can See You But I Can’t Find You This issue was first discovered while debugging modules with code that referenced the form on a page from the code-behind by name and/or id. The initial error presented itself as run-time error that was difficult to interpret over WSRP but seemed clear when run as straight ASP.NET as it indicated that the object with the form name did not exist. Since the form name was no longer valid after implementing the WSRP Master Page, the likely fix seemed to simply update the references in the code. However, as the WSRP Master Page is external to the code, a compile time error resulted: Error      155         The name 'form1' does not exist in the current context                C:\Oracle\Middleware\WSRPProducerForDotNet\wsrpdefault\portlets\legacywebsite\module\Screens \Reporting.aspx.cs                51           52           legacywebsite.module Much hair-pulling research later it was discovered that it was the use of the FindControl method causing the issue. FindControl doesn’t work quite as expected once a Master Page has been introduced as the controls become embedded in controls, require a recursion to find them that is not part of the FindControl method. In code where the page form is referenced by name, there are two steps to the solution. First, the form needs to be referenced in code generically with Page.Form. For example, this: ToggleControl ctrl = new ToggleControl(frmManualEntry, FunctionLibrary.ParseArrayLst(userObj.Roles)); Becomes this: ToggleControl ctrl = new ToggleControl(Page.Form, FunctionLibrary.ParseArrayLst(userObj.Roles)); Generally the form id is referenced in most ASP.NET applications as a path to a control on the form. To reach the control once a MasterPage has been added requires an additional method to recurse through the controls collections within the form and find the control ID. The following method (found at Rick Strahl's Web Log) corrects this very nicely: public static Control FindControlRecursive(Control Root, string Id) { if (Root.ID == Id) return Root; foreach (Control Ctl in Root.Controls) { Control FoundCtl = FindControlRecursive(Ctl, Id); if (FoundCtl != null) return FoundCtl; } return null; } Where the form name is not referenced, simply using the FindControlRecursive method in place of FindControl will be all that is necessary. Following the second part of the example referenced earlier, the method called with Page.Form changes its value extraction code block from this: Label lblErrMsg = (Label)frmRef.FindControl("lblBRMsg" To this: Label lblErrMsg = (Label) FunctionLibrary.FindControlRecursive(frmRef, "lblBRMsg" The Master That Won’t Step Aside In most migrations it is preferable to make as few changes as possible. In one case I ran across an existing Master Page that would not function as a sub-Master Page. While it would probably have been educational to trace down why, the expedient process of updating it to take the place of the WSRP Master Page is the route I took. The changes are highlighted below: … <asp:ContentPlaceHolder ID="wsrphead" runat="server"></asp:ContentPlaceHolder> </head> <body leftMargin="0" topMargin="0"> <form id="TheForm" runat="server"> <input type="hidden" name="key" id="key" value="" /> <input type="hidden" name="formactionurl" id="formactionurl" value="" /> <input type="hidden" name="handle" id="handle" value="" /> <asp:ScriptManager ID="ScriptManager1" runat="server" EnablePartialRendering="true" > </asp:ScriptManager> This approach did not work for all existing Master Pages, but fortunately all of the other existing Master Pages I have run across worked fine as a sub-Master to the WSRP Master Page. Moving On In Enterprise Portals, even after you get everything working, the work is not finished. Next you need to get it where everyone will work with it. Migration Planning Providing that the server where IIS is running is adequately sized, it is possible to run both the .NET Accelerator and the WSRP Producer on the same server during the upgrade process. The upgrade can be performed incrementally, i.e., one portlet at a time, if server administration processes support it. Those processes would include the ability to manage a second producer in the consuming portal and to change over individual portlet instances from one provider to the other. If processes or requirements demand that all portlets be cut over at the same time, it needs to be determined if this cut over should include a new producer, updating all of the portlets in the consumer, or if the WSRP Producer portlet configuration must maintain the naming conventions used by the .NET Accelerator and simply change the WSRP end point configured in the consumer. In some enterprises it may even be necessary to maintain the same WSDL end point, at which point the IIS configuration will be where the updates occur. The downside to such a requirement is that it makes rolling back very difficult, should the need arise. Location, Location, Location Not everyone wants the web application to have the descriptively obvious wsrpdefault location, or needs to create a second WSRP site on the same server. The instructions below are from the product team and, while targeted towards making a second site, will work for creating a site with a different name and then remove the old site. You can also change just the name in IIS. Manually Creating a WSRP Producer Site Instructions (NOTE: all executables used are the same ones used by the installer and “wsrpdev” will be the name of the new instance): 1. Copy C:\Oracle\Middleware\WSRPProducerForDotNet\wsrpdefault to C:\Oracle\Middleware\WSRPProducerForDotNet\wsrpdev. 2. Bring up a command window as an administrator 3. Run C:\Oracle\Middleware\WSRPProducerForDotNet\uninstall_resources\IISAppAccelSiteCreator.exe install WSRPProducers wsrpdev "C:\Oracle\Middleware\WSRPProducerForDotNet\wsrpdev" 8678 2.0.50727 4. Run C:\Oracle\Middleware\WSRPProducerForDotNet\uninstall_resources\PermManage.exe add FileSystem C:\Oracle\Middleware\WSRPProducerForDotNet\wsrpdev "NETWORK SERVICE" 3 1 5. Run C:\Oracle\Middleware\WSRPProducerForDotNet\uninstall_resources\PermManage.exe add FileSystem C:\Oracle\Middleware\WSRPProducerForDotNet\wsrpdev EVERYONE 1 1 6. Open up C:\Oracle\Middleware\WSRPProducerForDotNet\wsdl\1.0\WSRPService.wsdl and replace wsrpdefault with wsrpdev 7. Open up C:\Oracle\Middleware\WSRPProducerForDotNet\wsdl\2.0\WSRPService.wsdl and replace wsrpdefault with wsrpdev Tests: 1. Bring up a browser on the host itself and go to http://localhost:8678/wsrpdev/wsdl/1.0/WSRPService.wsdl and make sure that the URLs in the XML returned include the wsrpdev changes you made in step 6. 2. Bring up a browser on the host itself and see if the default sample comes up: http://localhost:8678/wsrpdev/portlets/ASPNET_AJAX_sample/default.aspx 3. Register the producer in WLP and test the portlet. Changing the Port used by WSRP Producer The pre-configured port for the WSRP Producer is 8678. You can change this port by updating both the IIS configuration and C:\Oracle\Middleware\WSRPProducerForDotNet\[WSRP_APP_NAME]\wsdl\1.0\WSRPService.wsdl. Do You Need to Migrate? Oracle Premier Support ended in November of 2010 for AquaLogic Interaction .NET Application Accelerator 1.x and Extended Support ends in November 2012 (see http://www.oracle.com/us/support/lifetime-support/lifetime-support-software-342730.html for other related dates). This means that integration with products released after November of 2010 is not supported. If having such support is the policy within your enterprise, you do indeed need to migrate. If changes in your enterprise cause your current solution with the .NET Accelerator to no longer function properly, you may need to migrate. Migration is a choice, and if the goals of your enterprise are to take full advantage of newer technologies then migration is certainly one activity you should be planning for.

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• The Incremental Architect&acute;s Napkin &ndash; #3 &ndash; Make Evolvability inevitable

  - by Ralf Westphal

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/theArchitectsNapkin/archive/2014/06/04/the-incremental-architectacutes-napkin-ndash-3-ndash-make-evolvability-inevitable.aspxThe easier something to measure the more likely it will be produced. Deviations between what is and what should be can be readily detected. That´s what automated acceptance tests are for. That´s what sprint reviews in Scrum are for. It´s no small wonder our software looks like it looks. It has all the traits whose conformance with requirements can easily be measured. And it´s lacking traits which cannot easily be measured. Evolvability (or Changeability) is such a trait. If an operation is correct, if an operation if fast enough, that can be checked very easily. But whether Evolvability is high or low, that cannot be checked by taking a measure or two. Evolvability might correlate with certain traits, e.g. number of lines of code (LOC) per function or Cyclomatic Complexity or test coverage. But there is no threshold value signalling “evolvability too low”; also Evolvability is hardly tangible for the customer. Nevertheless Evolvability is of great importance - at least in the long run. You can get away without much of it for a short time. Eventually, though, it´s needed like any other requirement. Or even more. Because without Evolvability no other requirement can be implemented. Evolvability is the foundation on which all else is build. Such fundamental importance is in stark contrast with its immeasurability. To compensate this, Evolvability must be put at the very center of software development. It must become the hub around everything else revolves. Since we cannot measure Evolvability, though, we cannot start watching it more. Instead we need to establish practices to keep it high (enough) at all times. Chefs have known that for long. That´s why everybody in a restaurant kitchen is constantly seeing after cleanliness. Hygiene is important as is to have clean tools at standardized locations. Only then the health of the patrons can be guaranteed and production efficiency is constantly high. Still a kitchen´s level of cleanliness is easier to measure than software Evolvability. That´s why important practices like reviews, pair programming, or TDD are not enough, I guess. What we need to keep Evolvability in focus and high is… to continually evolve. Change must not be something to avoid but too embrace. To me that means the whole change cycle from requirement analysis to delivery needs to be gone through more often. Scrum´s sprints of 4, 2 even 1 week are too long. Kanban´s flow of user stories across is too unreliable; it takes as long as it takes. Instead we should fix the cycle time at 2 days max. I call that Spinning. No increment must take longer than from this morning until tomorrow evening to finish. Then it should be acceptance checked by the customer (or his/her representative, e.g. a Product Owner). For me there are several resasons for such a fixed and short cycle time for each increment: Clear expectations Absolute estimates (“This will take X days to complete.”) are near impossible in software development as explained previously. Too much unplanned research and engineering work lurk in every feature. And then pervasive interruptions of work by peers and management. However, the smaller the scope the better our absolute estimates become. That´s because we understand better what really are the requirements and what the solution should look like. But maybe more importantly the shorter the timespan the more we can control how we use our time. So much can happen over the course of a week and longer timespans. But if push comes to shove I can block out all distractions and interruptions for a day or possibly two. That´s why I believe we can give rough absolute estimates on 3 levels: Noon Tonight Tomorrow Think of a meeting with a Product Owner at 8:30 in the morning. If she asks you, how long it will take you to implement a user story or bug fix, you can say, “It´ll be fixed by noon.”, or you can say, “I can manage to implement it until tonight before I leave.”, or you can say, “You´ll get it by tomorrow night at latest.” Yes, I believe all else would be naive. If you´re not confident to get something done by tomorrow night (some 34h from now) you just cannot reliably commit to any timeframe. That means you should not promise anything, you should not even start working on the issue. So when estimating use these four categories: Noon, Tonight, Tomorrow, NoClue - with NoClue meaning the requirement needs to be broken down further so each aspect can be assigned to one of the first three categories. If you like absolute estimates, here you go. But don´t do deep estimates. Don´t estimate dozens of issues; don´t think ahead (“Issue A is a Tonight, then B will be a Tomorrow, after that it´s C as a Noon, finally D is a Tonight - that´s what I´ll do this week.”). Just estimate so Work-in-Progress (WIP) is 1 for everybody - plus a small number of buffer issues. To be blunt: Yes, this makes promises impossible as to what a team will deliver in terms of scope at a certain date in the future. But it will give a Product Owner a clear picture of what to pull for acceptance feedback tonight and tomorrow. Trust through reliability Our trade is lacking trust. Customers don´t trust software companies/departments much. Managers don´t trust developers much. I find that perfectly understandable in the light of what we´re trying to accomplish: delivering software in the face of uncertainty by means of material good production. Customers as well as managers still expect software development to be close to production of houses or cars. But that´s a fundamental misunderstanding. Software development ist development. It´s basically research. As software developers we´re constantly executing experiments to find out what really provides value to users. We don´t know what they need, we just have mediated hypothesises. That´s why we cannot reliably deliver on preposterous demands. So trust is out of the window in no time. If we switch to delivering in short cycles, though, we can regain trust. Because estimates - explicit or implicit - up to 32 hours at most can be satisfied. I´d say: reliability over scope. It´s more important to reliably deliver what was promised then to cover a lot of requirement area. So when in doubt promise less - but deliver without delay. Deliver on scope (Functionality and Quality); but also deliver on Evolvability, i.e. on inner quality according to accepted principles. Always. Trust will be the reward. Less complexity of communication will follow. More goodwill buffer will follow. So don´t wait for some Kanban board to show you, that flow can be improved by scheduling smaller stories. You don´t need to learn that the hard way. Just start with small batch sizes of three different sizes. Fast feedback What has been finished can be checked for acceptance. Why wait for a sprint of several weeks to end? Why let the mental model of the issue and its solution dissipate? If you get final feedback after one or two weeks, you hardly remember what you did and why you did it. Resoning becomes hard. But more importantly youo probably are not in the mood anymore to go back to something you deemed done a long time ago. It´s boring, it´s frustrating to open up that mental box again. Learning is harder the longer it takes from event to feedback. Effort can be wasted between event (finishing an issue) and feedback, because other work might go in the wrong direction based on false premises. Checking finished issues for acceptance is the most important task of a Product Owner. It´s even more important than planning new issues. Because as long as work started is not released (accepted) it´s potential waste. So before starting new work better make sure work already done has value. By putting the emphasis on acceptance rather than planning true pull is established. As long as planning and starting work is more important, it´s a push process. Accept a Noon issue on the same day before leaving. Accept a Tonight issue before leaving today or first thing tomorrow morning. Accept a Tomorrow issue tomorrow night before leaving or early the day after tomorrow. After acceptance the developer(s) can start working on the next issue. Flexibility As if reliability/trust and fast feedback for less waste weren´t enough economic incentive, there is flexibility. After each issue the Product Owner can change course. If on Monday morning feature slices A, B, C, D, E were important and A, B, C were scheduled for acceptance by Monday evening and Tuesday evening, the Product Owner can change her mind at any time. Maybe after A got accepted she asks for continuation with D. But maybe, just maybe, she has gotten a completely different idea by then. Maybe she wants work to continue on F. And after B it´s neither D nor E, but G. And after G it´s D. With Spinning every 32 hours at latest priorities can be changed. And nothing is lost. Because what got accepted is of value. It provides an incremental value to the customer/user. Or it provides internal value to the Product Owner as increased knowledge/decreased uncertainty. I find such reactivity over commitment economically very benefical. Why commit a team to some workload for several weeks? It´s unnecessary at beast, and inflexible and wasteful at worst. If we cannot promise delivery of a certain scope on a certain date - which is what customers/management usually want -, we can at least provide them with unpredecented flexibility in the face of high uncertainty. Where the path is not clear, cannot be clear, make small steps so you´re able to change your course at any time. Premature completion Customers/management are used to premeditating budgets. They want to know exactly how much to pay for a certain amount of requirements. That´s understandable. But it does not match with the nature of software development. We should know that by now. Maybe there´s somewhere in the world some team who can consistently deliver on scope, quality, and time, and budget. Great! Congratulations! I, however, haven´t seen such a team yet. Which does not mean it´s impossible, but I think it´s nothing I can recommend to strive for. Rather I´d say: Don´t try this at home. It might hurt you one way or the other. However, what we can do, is allow customers/management stop work on features at any moment. With spinning every 32 hours a feature can be declared as finished - even though it might not be completed according to initial definition. I think, progress over completion is an important offer software development can make. Why think in terms of completion beyond a promise for the next 32 hours? Isn´t it more important to constantly move forward? Step by step. We´re not running sprints, we´re not running marathons, not even ultra-marathons. We´re in the sport of running forever. That makes it futile to stare at the finishing line. The very concept of a burn-down chart is misleading (in most cases). Whoever can only think in terms of completed requirements shuts out the chance for saving money. The requirements for a features mostly are uncertain. So how does a Product Owner know in the first place, how much is needed. Maybe more than specified is needed - which gets uncovered step by step with each finished increment. Maybe less than specified is needed. After each 4–32 hour increment the Product Owner can do an experient (or invite users to an experiment) if a particular trait of the software system is already good enough. And if so, she can switch the attention to a different aspect. In the end, requirements A, B, C then could be finished just 70%, 80%, and 50%. What the heck? It´s good enough - for now. 33% money saved. Wouldn´t that be splendid? Isn´t that a stunning argument for any budget-sensitive customer? You can save money and still get what you need? Pull on practices So far, in addition to more trust, more flexibility, less money spent, Spinning led to “doing less” which also means less code which of course means higher Evolvability per se. Last but not least, though, I think Spinning´s short acceptance cycles have one more effect. They excert pull-power on all sorts of practices known for increasing Evolvability. If, for example, you believe high automated test coverage helps Evolvability by lowering the fear of inadverted damage to a code base, why isn´t 90% of the developer community practicing automated tests consistently? I think, the answer is simple: Because they can do without. Somehow they manage to do enough manual checks before their rare releases/acceptance checks to ensure good enough correctness - at least in the short term. The same goes for other practices like component orientation, continuous build/integration, code reviews etc. None of that is compelling, urgent, imperative. Something else always seems more important. So Evolvability principles and practices fall through the cracks most of the time - until a project hits a wall. Then everybody becomes desperate; but by then (re)gaining Evolvability has become as very, very difficult and tedious undertaking. Sometimes up to the point where the existence of a project/company is in danger. With Spinning that´s different. If you´re practicing Spinning you cannot avoid all those practices. With Spinning you very quickly realize you cannot deliver reliably even on your 32 hour promises. Spinning thus is pulling on developers to adopt principles and practices for Evolvability. They will start actively looking for ways to keep their delivery rate high. And if not, management will soon tell them to do that. Because first the Product Owner then management will notice an increasing difficulty to deliver value within 32 hours. There, finally there emerges a way to measure Evolvability: The more frequent developers tell the Product Owner there is no way to deliver anything worth of feedback until tomorrow night, the poorer Evolvability is. Don´t count the “WTF!”, count the “No way!” utterances. In closing For sustainable software development we need to put Evolvability first. Functionality and Quality must not rule software development but be implemented within a framework ensuring (enough) Evolvability. Since Evolvability cannot be measured easily, I think we need to put software development “under pressure”. Software needs to be changed more often, in smaller increments. Each increment being relevant to the customer/user in some way. That does not mean each increment is worthy of shipment. It´s sufficient to gain further insight from it. Increments primarily serve the reduction of uncertainty, not sales. Sales even needs to be decoupled from this incremental progress. No more promises to sales. No more delivery au point. Rather sales should look at a stream of accepted increments (or incremental releases) and scoup from that whatever they find valuable. Sales and marketing need to realize they should work on what´s there, not what might be possible in the future. But I digress… In my view a Spinning cycle - which is not easy to reach, which requires practice - is the core practice to compensate the immeasurability of Evolvability. From start to finish of each issue in 32 hours max - that´s the challenge we need to accept if we´re serious increasing Evolvability. Fortunately higher Evolvability is not the only outcome of Spinning. Customer/management will like the increased flexibility and “getting more bang for the buck”.

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• Informed TDD &ndash; Kata &ldquo;To Roman Numerals&rdquo;

  - by Ralf Westphal

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

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• Windows Start Menu Not Staying on Top

  - by Jeff Rapp

  Hey everyone. I've had this problem since Windows Vista. I did a clean install with Windows 7 and hoped it would fix the problem. Also swapped out the video card just to rule out a strange driver issue. Here's what's happening. After running for some period of time (usually a few hours), the Start button/orb will loose it's "Chrome" and turn into a plain button that just says "Start." It will work fine for a while, but then the start menu will just stop showing. Additionally, when I hit Win+D to show the desktop, the entire taskbar completely disappears. I can get it back usually by moving/minimizing windows that may be overlapping where the start menu should show. Otherwise, it requires either a full reboot or I'll end up killing & restarting the explorer.exe process. I realize that this is a strange issue - I took a video of it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B3WwT0uyr4 Thanks! --Edit-- Here's my HijackThis log: Logfile of Trend Micro HijackThis v2.0.3 (BETA) Scan saved at 4:19:00 PM, on 12/16/2009 Platform: Unknown Windows (WinNT 6.01.3504) MSIE: Internet Explorer v8.00 (8.00.7600.16385) Boot mode: Normal Running processes: C:\Program Files (x86)\Pantone\hueyPRO\hueyPROTray.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat 9.0\Acrobat\acrotray.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\iTunes\iTunesHelper.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\bin\jusched.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\MagicDisc\MagicDisc.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Trillian\trillian.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Binn\VSShell\Common7\IDE\Ssms.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\DevServer\9.0\WebDev.WebServer.EXE C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\notepad++.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Fiddler2\Fiddler.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\mspdbsrv.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\iTunes\iTunes.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CS4\Support Files\Contents\Windows\Illustrator.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\ColorPic 4.1\ColorPic.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat 9.0\Acrobat\Acrobat.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Help 9\dexplore.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Help 9\dexplore.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\eBay\Blackthorne\bin\BT.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE C:\Program Files (x86)\CamStudio\Recorder.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\CamStudio\Playplus.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Beta 3\firefox.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\CamStudio\Playplus.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\PuTTY\putty.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\CamStudio\Playplus.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\CamStudio\Playplus.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\TrendMicro\HiJackThis\HiJackThis.exe R1 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Search Page = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=54896 R0 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Start Page = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=69157 R1 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Default_Page_URL = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=69157 R1 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Default_Search_URL = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=54896 R1 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Search Page = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=54896 R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Start Page = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=69157 R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Search,SearchAssistant = R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Search,CustomizeSearch = R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Local Page = C:\Windows\SysWOW64\blank.htm R0 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar,LinksFolderName = F2 - REG:system.ini: UserInit=userinit.exe O2 - 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HKLM\..\Run: [SunJavaUpdateSched] "C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\bin\jusched.exe" O4 - HKUS\S-1-5-19\..\Run: [Sidebar] %ProgramFiles%\Windows Sidebar\Sidebar.exe /autoRun (User 'LOCAL SERVICE') O4 - HKUS\S-1-5-19\..\RunOnce: [mctadmin] C:\Windows\System32\mctadmin.exe (User 'LOCAL SERVICE') O4 - HKUS\S-1-5-20\..\Run: [Sidebar] %ProgramFiles%\Windows Sidebar\Sidebar.exe /autoRun (User 'NETWORK SERVICE') O4 - HKUS\S-1-5-20\..\RunOnce: [mctadmin] C:\Windows\System32\mctadmin.exe (User 'NETWORK SERVICE') O4 - Startup: ChatNowDesktop.appref-ms O4 - Startup: MagicDisc.lnk = C:\Program Files (x86)\MagicDisc\MagicDisc.exe O4 - Startup: Trillian.lnk = C:\Program Files (x86)\Trillian\trillian.exe O4 - Global Startup: Digsby.lnk = C:\Program Files (x86)\Digsby\digsby.exe O4 - Global Startup: hueyPROTray.lnk = C:\Program Files (x86)\Pantone\hueyPRO\hueyPROTray.exe O4 - Global Startup: OfficeSAS.lnk = ? O8 - Extra context menu item: Append Link Target to Existing PDF - res://C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Acrobat\ActiveX\AcroIEFavClient.dll/AcroIEAppendSelLinks.html O8 - Extra context menu item: Append to Existing PDF - res://C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Acrobat\ActiveX\AcroIEFavClient.dll/AcroIEAppend.html O8 - Extra context menu item: Convert Link Target to Adobe PDF - res://C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Acrobat\ActiveX\AcroIEFavClient.dll/AcroIECaptureSelLinks.html O8 - Extra context menu item: Convert to Adobe PDF - res://C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Acrobat\ActiveX\AcroIEFavClient.dll/AcroIECapture.html O8 - Extra context menu item: E&xport to Microsoft Excel - res://C:\PROGRA~1\MICROS~1\Office14\EXCEL.EXE/3000 O8 - Extra context menu item: S&end to OneNote - res://C:\PROGRA~1\MICROS~1\Office14\ONBttnIE.dll/105 O9 - Extra button: Send to OneNote - {2670000A-7350-4f3c-8081-5663EE0C6C49} - C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\ONBttnIE.dll O9 - Extra 'Tools' menuitem: Se&nd to OneNote - {2670000A-7350-4f3c-8081-5663EE0C6C49} - C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\ONBttnIE.dll O9 - Extra button: OneNote Lin&ked Notes - {789FE86F-6FC4-46A1-9849-EDE0DB0C95CA} - C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\ONBttnIELinkedNotes.dll O9 - Extra 'Tools' menuitem: OneNote Lin&ked Notes - {789FE86F-6FC4-46A1-9849-EDE0DB0C95CA} - C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\ONBttnIELinkedNotes.dll O9 - Extra button: Fiddler2 - {CF819DA3-9882-4944-ADF5-6EF17ECF3C6E} - "C:\Program Files (x86)\Fiddler2\Fiddler.exe" (file missing) O9 - Extra 'Tools' menuitem: Fiddler2 - {CF819DA3-9882-4944-ADF5-6EF17ECF3C6E} - "C:\Program Files (x86)\Fiddler2\Fiddler.exe" (file missing) O13 - Gopher Prefix: O16 - DPF: {5554DCB0-700B-498D-9B58-4E40E5814405} (RSClientPrint 2008 Class) - http://reportserver/Reports/Reserved.ReportViewerWebControl.axd?ReportSession=oxadkhfvfvt1hzf2eh3y1ay2&ControlID=b89e27f15e734f3faee1308eebdfab2a&Culture=1033&UICulture=9&ReportStack=1&OpType=PrintCab&Arch=X86 O16 - DPF: {82774781-8F4E-11D1-AB1C-0000F8773BF0} (DLC Class) - https://transfers.ds.microsoft.com/FTM/TransferSource/grTransferCtrl.cab O16 - DPF: {D27CDB6E-AE6D-11CF-96B8-444553540000} (Shockwave Flash Object) - http://fpdownload2.macromedia.com/get/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab O17 - HKLM\System\CCS\Services\Tcpip\Parameters: Domain = LapkoSoft.local O17 - HKLM\System\CCS\Services\Tcpip\..\{5992B87A-643B-4385-A914-249B98BF7129}: NameServer = 192.168.1.10 O17 - HKLM\System\CS1\Services\Tcpip\Parameters: Domain = LapkoSoft.local O17 - HKLM\System\CS2\Services\Tcpip\Parameters: Domain = LapkoSoft.local O18 - Filter hijack: text/xml - {807573E5-5146-11D5-A672-00B0D022E945} - C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\OFFICE14\MSOXMLMF.DLL O23 - Service: Adobe Version Cue CS4 - Adobe Systems Incorporated - C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Adobe Version Cue CS4\Server\bin\VersionCueCS4.exe O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\Alg.exe,-112 (ALG) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\System32\alg.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: Apple Mobile Device - Apple Inc. - C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Apple\Mobile Device Support\bin\AppleMobileDeviceService.exe O23 - Service: ASP.NET State Service (aspnet_state) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_state.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: Bonjour Service - Apple Inc. - C:\Program Files (x86)\Bonjour\mDNSResponder.exe O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\efssvc.dll,-100 (EFS) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\System32\lsass.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%systemroot%\system32\fxsresm.dll,-118 (Fax) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\fxssvc.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: FLEXnet Licensing Service - Acresso Software Inc. - C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Macrovision Shared\FLEXnet Publisher\FNPLicensingService.exe O23 - Service: FLEXnet Licensing Service 64 - Acresso Software Inc. - C:\Program Files\Common Files\Macrovision Shared\FLEXnet Publisher\FNPLicensingService64.exe O23 - Service: @%windir%\system32\inetsrv\iisres.dll,-30007 (IISADMIN) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\inetsrv\inetinfo.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: iPod Service - Apple Inc. - C:\Program Files\iPod\bin\iPodService.exe O23 - Service: @keyiso.dll,-100 (KeyIso) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\lsass.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @comres.dll,-2797 (MSDTC) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\System32\msdtc.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\System32\netlogon.dll,-102 (Netlogon) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\lsass.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: NVIDIA Performance Driver Service - Unknown owner - C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\Performance Drivers\nvPDsvc.exe O23 - Service: NVIDIA Display Driver Service (nvsvc) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\nvvsvc.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%systemroot%\system32\psbase.dll,-300 (ProtectedStorage) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\lsass.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%systemroot%\system32\Locator.exe,-2 (RpcLocator) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\locator.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\samsrv.dll,-1 (SamSs) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\lsass.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\snmptrap.exe,-3 (SNMPTRAP) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\System32\snmptrap.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%systemroot%\system32\spoolsv.exe,-1 (Spooler) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\System32\spoolsv.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\sppsvc.exe,-101 (sppsvc) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\sppsvc.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: TeamViewer 5 (TeamViewer5) - TeamViewer GmbH - C:\Program Files (x86)\TeamViewer\Version5\TeamViewer_Service.exe O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\ui0detect.exe,-101 (UI0Detect) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\UI0Detect.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\vaultsvc.dll,-1003 (VaultSvc) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\lsass.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\vds.exe,-100 (vds) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\System32\vds.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%systemroot%\system32\vssvc.exe,-102 (VSS) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\vssvc.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%systemroot%\system32\wbengine.exe,-104 (wbengine) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\wbengine.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%Systemroot%\system32\wbem\wmiapsrv.exe,-110 (wmiApSrv) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\wbem\WmiApSrv.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%PROGRAMFILES%\Windows Media Player\wmpnetwk.exe,-101 (WMPNetworkSvc) - Unknown owner - C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Media Player\wmpnetwk.exe (file missing)

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• FreeBSD 8.1 unstable network connection

  - by frankcheong

  I have three FreeBSD 8.1 running on three different hardware and therefore consist of different network adapter as well (bce, bge and igb). I found that the network connection is kind of unstable which I have tried to scp some 10MB file and found that I cannot always get the files completed successfully. I have further checked with my network admin and he claim that the problem is being caused by the network driver which cannot support the load whereby he tried to ping using huge packet size (around 15k) and my server will drop packet consistently at a regular interval. I found that this statement may not be valid since the three server is using three different network drive and it would be quite impossible that the same problem is being caused by three different network adapter and thus different network driver. Since then I have tried to tune up the performance by playing around with the /etc/sysctl.conf figures with no luck. kern.ipc.somaxconn=1024 kern.ipc.shmall=3276800 kern.ipc.shmmax=1638400000 # Security net.inet.ip.redirect=0 net.inet.ip.sourceroute=0 net.inet.ip.accept_sourceroute=0 net.inet.icmp.maskrepl=0 net.inet.icmp.log_redirect=0 net.inet.icmp.drop_redirect=1 net.inet.tcp.drop_synfin=1 # Security net.inet.udp.blackhole=1 net.inet.tcp.blackhole=2 # Required by pf net.inet.ip.forwarding=1 #Network Performance Tuning kern.ipc.maxsockbuf=16777216 net.inet.tcp.rfc1323=1 net.inet.tcp.sendbuf_max=16777216 net.inet.tcp.recvbuf_max=16777216 # Setting specifically for 1 or even 10Gbps network net.local.stream.sendspace=262144 net.local.stream.recvspace=262144 net.inet.tcp.local_slowstart_flightsize=10 net.inet.tcp.nolocaltimewait=1 net.inet.tcp.mssdflt=1460 net.inet.tcp.sendbuf_auto=1 net.inet.tcp.sendbuf_inc=16384 net.inet.tcp.recvbuf_auto=1 net.inet.tcp.recvbuf_inc=524288 net.inet.tcp.sendspace=262144 net.inet.tcp.recvspace=262144 net.inet.udp.recvspace=262144 kern.ipc.maxsockbuf=16777216 kern.ipc.nmbclusters=32768 net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack=1 net.inet.tcp.delacktime=100 net.inet.tcp.slowstart_flightsize=179 net.inet.tcp.inflight.enable=1 net.inet.tcp.inflight.min=6144 # Reduce the cache size of slow start connection net.inet.tcp.hostcache.expire=1 Our network admin also claim that they see quite a lot of network up and down from their cisco switch log while I cannot find any up down message inside the dmesg. Have further checked the netstat -s but dont have concrete idea. tcp: 133695291 packets sent 39408539 data packets (3358837321 bytes) 61868 data packets (89472844 bytes) retransmitted 24 data packets unnecessarily retransmitted 0 resends initiated by MTU discovery 50756141 ack-only packets (2148 delayed) 0 URG only packets 0 window probe packets 4372385 window update packets 39781869 control packets 134898031 packets received 72339403 acks (for 3357601899 bytes) 190712 duplicate acks 0 acks for unsent data 59339201 packets (3647021974 bytes) received in-sequence 114 completely duplicate packets (135202 bytes) 27 old duplicate packets 0 packets with some dup. data (0 bytes duped) 42090 out-of-order packets (60817889 bytes) 0 packets (0 bytes) of data after window 0 window probes 3953896 window update packets 64181 packets received after close 0 discarded for bad checksums 0 discarded for bad header offset fields 0 discarded because packet too short 45192 discarded due to memory problems 19945391 connection requests 1323420 connection accepts 0 bad connection attempts 0 listen queue overflows 0 ignored RSTs in the windows 21133581 connections established (including accepts) 21268724 connections closed (including 32737 drops) 207874 connections updated cached RTT on close 207874 connections updated cached RTT variance on close 132439 connections updated cached ssthresh on close 42392 embryonic connections dropped 72339338 segments updated rtt (of 69477829 attempts) 390871 retransmit timeouts 0 connections dropped by rexmit timeout 0 persist timeouts 0 connections dropped by persist timeout 0 Connections (fin_wait_2) dropped because of timeout 13990 keepalive timeouts 2 keepalive probes sent 13988 connections dropped by keepalive 173044 correct ACK header predictions 36947371 correct data packet header predictions 1323420 syncache entries added 0 retransmitted 0 dupsyn 0 dropped 1323420 completed 0 bucket overflow 0 cache overflow 0 reset 0 stale 0 aborted 0 badack 0 unreach 0 zone failures 1323420 cookies sent 0 cookies received 1864 SACK recovery episodes 18005 segment rexmits in SACK recovery episodes 26066896 byte rexmits in SACK recovery episodes 147327 SACK options (SACK blocks) received 87473 SACK options (SACK blocks) sent 0 SACK scoreboard overflow 0 packets with ECN CE bit set 0 packets with ECN ECT(0) bit set 0 packets with ECN ECT(1) bit set 0 successful ECN handshakes 0 times ECN reduced the congestion window udp: 5141258 datagrams received 0 with incomplete header 0 with bad data length field 0 with bad checksum 1 with no checksum 0 dropped due to no socket 129616 broadcast/multicast datagrams undelivered 0 dropped due to full socket buffers 0 not for hashed pcb 5011642 delivered 5016050 datagrams output 0 times multicast source filter matched sctp: 0 input packets 0 datagrams 0 packets that had data 0 input SACK chunks 0 input DATA chunks 0 duplicate DATA chunks 0 input HB chunks 0 HB-ACK chunks 0 input ECNE chunks 0 input AUTH chunks 0 chunks missing AUTH 0 invalid HMAC ids received 0 invalid secret ids received 0 auth failed 0 fast path receives all one chunk 0 fast path multi-part data 0 output packets 0 output SACKs 0 output DATA chunks 0 retransmitted DATA chunks 0 fast retransmitted DATA chunks 0 FR's that happened more than once to same chunk 0 intput HB chunks 0 output ECNE chunks 0 output AUTH chunks 0 ip_output error counter Packet drop statistics: 0 from middle box 0 from end host 0 with data 0 non-data, non-endhost 0 non-endhost, bandwidth rep only 0 not enough for chunk header 0 not enough data to confirm 0 where process_chunk_drop said break 0 failed to find TSN 0 attempt reverse TSN lookup 0 e-host confirms zero-rwnd 0 midbox confirms no space 0 data did not match TSN 0 TSN's marked for Fast Retran Timeouts: 0 iterator timers fired 0 T3 data time outs 0 window probe (T3) timers fired 0 INIT timers fired 0 sack timers fired 0 shutdown timers fired 0 heartbeat timers fired 0 a cookie timeout fired 0 an endpoint changed its cookiesecret 0 PMTU timers fired 0 shutdown ack timers fired 0 shutdown guard timers fired 0 stream reset timers fired 0 early FR timers fired 0 an asconf timer fired 0 auto close timer fired 0 asoc free timers expired 0 inp free timers expired 0 packet shorter than header 0 checksum error 0 no endpoint for port 0 bad v-tag 0 bad SID 0 no memory 0 number of multiple FR in a RTT window 0 RFC813 allowed sending 0 RFC813 does not allow sending 0 times max burst prohibited sending 0 look ahead tells us no memory in interface 0 numbers of window probes sent 0 times an output error to clamp down on next user send 0 times sctp_senderrors were caused from a user 0 number of in data drops due to chunk limit reached 0 number of in data drops due to rwnd limit reached 0 times a ECN reduced the cwnd 0 used express lookup via vtag 0 collision in express lookup 0 times the sender ran dry of user data on primary 0 same for above 0 sacks the slow way 0 window update only sacks sent 0 sends with sinfo_flags !=0 0 unordered sends 0 sends with EOF flag set 0 sends with ABORT flag set 0 times protocol drain called 0 times we did a protocol drain 0 times recv was called with peek 0 cached chunks used 0 cached stream oq's used 0 unread messages abandonded by close 0 send burst avoidance, already max burst inflight to net 0 send cwnd full avoidance, already max burst inflight to net 0 number of map array over-runs via fwd-tsn's ip: 137814085 total packets received 0 bad header checksums 0 with size smaller than minimum 0 with data size < data length 0 with ip length > max ip packet size 0 with header length < data size 0 with data length < header length 0 with bad options 0 with incorrect version number 1200 fragments received 0 fragments dropped (dup or out of space) 0 fragments dropped after timeout 300 packets reassembled ok 137813009 packets for this host 530 packets for unknown/unsupported protocol 0 packets forwarded (0 packets fast forwarded) 61 packets not forwardable 0 packets received for unknown multicast group 0 redirects sent 137234598 packets sent from this host 0 packets sent with fabricated ip header 685307 output packets dropped due to no bufs, etc. 52 output packets discarded due to no route 300 output datagrams fragmented 1200 fragments created 0 datagrams that can't be fragmented 0 tunneling packets that can't find gif 0 datagrams with bad address in header icmp: 0 calls to icmp_error 0 errors not generated in response to an icmp message Output histogram: echo reply: 305 0 messages with bad code fields 0 messages less than the minimum length 0 messages with bad checksum 0 messages with bad length 0 multicast echo requests ignored 0 multicast timestamp requests ignored Input histogram: destination unreachable: 530 echo: 305 305 message responses generated 0 invalid return addresses 0 no return routes ICMP address mask responses are disabled igmp: 0 messages received 0 messages received with too few bytes 0 messages received with wrong TTL 0 messages received with bad checksum 0 V1/V2 membership queries received 0 V3 membership queries received 0 membership queries received with invalid field(s) 0 general queries received 0 group queries received 0 group-source queries received 0 group-source queries dropped 0 membership reports received 0 membership reports received with invalid field(s) 0 membership reports received for groups to which we belong 0 V3 reports received without Router Alert 0 membership reports sent arp: 376748 ARP requests sent 3207 ARP replies sent 245245 ARP requests received 80845 ARP replies received 326090 ARP packets received 267712 total packets dropped due to no ARP entry 108876 ARP entrys timed out 0 Duplicate IPs seen ip6: 2226633 total packets received 0 with size smaller than minimum 0 with data size < data length 0 with bad options 0 with incorrect version number 0 fragments received 0 fragments dropped (dup or out of space) 0 fragments dropped after timeout 0 fragments that exceeded limit 0 packets reassembled ok 2226633 packets for this host 0 packets forwarded 0 packets not forwardable 0 redirects sent 2226633 packets sent from this host 0 packets sent with fabricated ip header 0 output packets dropped due to no bufs, etc. 8 output packets discarded due to no route 0 output datagrams fragmented 0 fragments created 0 datagrams that can't be fragmented 0 packets that violated scope rules 0 multicast packets which we don't join Input histogram: UDP: 2226633 Mbuf statistics: 962679 one mbuf 1263954 one ext mbuf 0 two or more ext mbuf 0 packets whose headers are not continuous 0 tunneling packets that can't find gif 0 packets discarded because of too many headers 0 failures of source address selection Source addresses selection rule applied: icmp6: 0 calls to icmp6_error 0 errors not generated in response to an icmp6 message 0 errors not generated because of rate limitation 0 messages with bad code fields 0 messages < minimum length 0 bad checksums 0 messages with bad length Histogram of error messages to be generated: 0 no route 0 administratively prohibited 0 beyond scope 0 address unreachable 0 port unreachable 0 packet too big 0 time exceed transit 0 time exceed reassembly 0 erroneous header field 0 unrecognized next header 0 unrecognized option 0 redirect 0 unknown 0 message responses generated 0 messages with too many ND options 0 messages with bad ND options 0 bad neighbor solicitation messages 0 bad neighbor advertisement messages 0 bad router solicitation messages 0 bad router advertisement messages 0 bad redirect messages 0 path MTU changes rip6: 0 messages received 0 checksum calculations on inbound 0 messages with bad checksum 0 messages dropped due to no socket 0 multicast messages dropped due to no socket 0 messages dropped due to full socket buffers 0 delivered 0 datagrams output netstat -m 516/5124/5640 mbufs in use (current/cache/total) 512/1634/2146/32768 mbuf clusters in use (current/cache/total/max) 512/1536 mbuf+clusters out of packet secondary zone in use (current/cache) 0/1303/1303/12800 4k (page size) jumbo clusters in use (current/cache/total/max) 0/0/0/6400 9k jumbo clusters in use (current/cache/total/max) 0/0/0/3200 16k jumbo clusters in use (current/cache/total/max) 1153K/9761K/10914K bytes allocated to network (current/cache/total) 0/0/0 requests for mbufs denied (mbufs/clusters/mbuf+clusters) 0/0/0 requests for jumbo clusters denied (4k/9k/16k) 0/8/6656 sfbufs in use (current/peak/max) 0 requests for sfbufs denied 0 requests for sfbufs delayed 0 requests for I/O initiated by sendfile 0 calls to protocol drain routines Anyone got an idea what might be the possible cause?

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• Help with Java Program for Prime numbers

  - by Ben

  Hello everyone, I was wondering if you can help me with this program. I have been struggling with it for hours and have just trashed my code because the TA doesn't like how I executed it. I am completely hopeless and if anyone can help me out step by step, I would greatly appreciate it. In this project you will write a Java program that reads a positive integer n from standard input, then prints out the first n prime numbers. We say that an integer m is divisible by a non-zero integer d if there exists an integer k such that m = k d , i.e. if d divides evenly into m. Equivalently, m is divisible by d if the remainder of m upon (integer) division by d is zero. We would also express this by saying that d is a divisor of m. A positive integer p is called prime if its only positive divisors are 1 and p. The one exception to this rule is the number 1 itself, which is considered to be non-prime. A positive integer that is not prime is called composite. Euclid showed that there are infinitely many prime numbers. The prime and composite sequences begin as follows: Primes: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, … Composites: 1, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, … There are many ways to test a number for primality, but perhaps the simplest is to simply do trial divisions. Begin by dividing m by 2, and if it divides evenly, then m is not prime. Otherwise, divide by 3, then 4, then 5, etc. If at any point m is found to be divisible by a number d in the range 2 d m-1, then halt, and conclude that m is composite. Otherwise, conclude that m is prime. A moment’s thought shows that one need not do any trial divisions by numbers d which are themselves composite. For instance, if a trial division by 2 fails (i.e. has non-zero remainder, so m is odd), then a trial division by 4, 6, or 8, or any even number, must also fail. Thus to test a number m for primality, one need only do trial divisions by prime numbers less than m. Furthermore, it is not necessary to go all the way up to m-1. One need only do trial divisions of m by primes p in the range 2 p m . To see this, suppose m 1 is composite. Then there exist positive integers a and b such that 1 < a < m, 1 < b < m, and m = ab . But if both a m and b m , then ab m, contradicting that m = ab . Hence one of a or b must be less than or equal to m . To implement this process in java you will write a function called isPrime() with the following signature: static boolean isPrime(int m, int[] P) This function will return true or false according to whether m is prime or composite. The array argument P will contain a sufficient number of primes to do the testing. Specifically, at the time isPrime() is called, array P must contain (at least) all primes p in the range 2 p m . For instance, to test m = 53 for primality, one must do successive trial divisions by 2, 3, 5, and 7. We go no further since 11 53 . Thus a precondition for the function call isPrime(53, P) is that P[0] = 2 , P[1] = 3 , P[2] = 5, and P[3] = 7 . The return value in this case would be true since all these divisions fail. Similarly to test m =143 , one must do trial divisions by 2, 3, 5, 7, and 11 (since 13 143 ). The precondition for the function call isPrime(143, P) is therefore P[0] = 2 , P[1] = 3 , P[2] = 5, P[3] = 7 , and P[4] =11. The return value in this case would be false since 11 divides 143. Function isPrime() should contain a loop that steps through array P, doing trial divisions. This loop should terminate when 2 either a trial division succeeds, in which case false is returned, or until the next prime in P is greater than m , in which case true is returned. Function main() in this project will read the command line argument n, allocate an int array of length n, fill the array with primes, then print the contents of the array to stdout according to the format described below. In the context of function main(), we will refer to this array as Primes[]. Thus array Primes[] plays a dual role in this project. On the one hand, it is used to collect, store, and print the output data. On the other hand, it is passed to function isPrime() to test new integers for primality. Whenever isPrime() returns true, the newly discovered prime will be placed at the appropriate position in array Primes[]. This process works since, as explained above, the primes needed to test an integer m range only up to m , and all of these primes (and more) will already be stored in array Primes[] when m is tested. Of course it will be necessary to initialize Primes[0] = 2 manually, then proceed to test 3, 4, … for primality using function isPrime(). The following is an outline of the steps to be performed in function main(). • Check that the user supplied exactly one command line argument which can be interpreted as a positive integer n. If the command line argument is not a single positive integer, your program will print a usage message as specified in the examples below, then exit. • Allocate array Primes[] of length n and initialize Primes[0] = 2 . • Enter a loop which will discover subsequent primes and store them as Primes[1] , Primes[2], Primes[3] , ……, Primes[n -1] . This loop should contain an inner loop which walks through successive integers and tests them for primality by calling function isPrime() with appropriate arguments. • Print the contents of array Primes[] to stdout, 10 to a line separated by single spaces. In other words Primes[0] through Primes[9] will go on line 1, Primes[10] though Primes[19] will go on line 2, and so on. Note that if n is not a multiple of 10, then the last line of output will contain fewer than 10 primes. Your program, which will be called Prime.java, will produce output identical to that of the sample runs below. (As usual % signifies the unix prompt.) % java Prime Usage: java Prime [PositiveInteger] % java Prime xyz Usage: java Prime [PositiveInteger] % java Prime 10 20 Usage: java Prime [PositiveInteger] % java Prime 75 2 3 5 7 11 13 17 19 23 29 31 37 41 43 47 53 59 61 67 71 73 79 83 89 97 101 103 107 109 113 127 131 137 139 149 151 157 163 167 173 179 181 191 193 197 199 211 223 227 229 233 239 241 251 257 263 269 271 277 281 283 293 307 311 313 317 331 337 347 349 353 359 367 373 379 % 3 As you can see, inappropriate command line argument(s) generate a usage message which is similar to that of many unix commands. (Try doing the more command with no arguments to see such a message.) Your program will include a function called Usage() having signature static void Usage() that prints this message to stderr, then exits. Thus your program will contain three functions in all: main(), isPrime(), and Usage(). Each should be preceded by a comment block giving it’s name, a short description of it’s operation, and any necessary preconditions (such as those for isPrime().) See examples on the webpage.

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• Am I just not understanding TDD unit testing (Asp.Net MVC project)?

  - by KallDrexx

  I am trying to figure out how to correctly and efficiently unit test my Asp.net MVC project. When I started on this project I bought the Pro ASP.Net MVC, and with that book I learned about TDD and unit testing. After seeing the examples, and the fact that I work as a software engineer in QA in my current company, I was amazed at how awesome TDD seemed to be. So I started working on my project and went gun-ho writing unit tests for my database layer, business layer, and controllers. Everything got a unit test prior to implementation. At first I thought it was awesome, but then things started to go downhill. Here are the issues I started encountering: I ended up writing application code in order to make it possible for unit tests to be performed. I don't mean this in a good way as in my code was broken and I had to fix it so the unit test pass. I mean that abstracting out the database to a mock database is impossible due to the use of linq for data retrieval (using the generic repository pattern). The reason is that with linq-sql or linq-entities you can do joins just by doing: var objs = select p from _container.Projects select p.Objects; However, if you mock the database layer out, in order to have that linq pass the unit test you must change the linq to be var objs = select p from _container.Projects join o in _container.Objects on o.ProjectId equals p.Id select o; Not only does this mean you are changing your application logic just so you can unit test it, but you are making your code less efficient for the sole purpose of testability, and getting rid of a lot of advantages using an ORM has in the first place. Furthermore, since a lot of the IDs for my models are database generated, I proved to have to write additional code to handle the non-database tests since IDs were never generated and I had to still handle those cases for the unit tests to pass, yet they would never occur in real scenarios. Thus I ended up throwing out my database unit testing. Writing unit tests for controllers was easy as long as I was returning views. However, the major part of my application (and the one that would benefit most from unit testing) is a complicated ajax web application. For various reasons I decided to change the app from returning views to returning JSON with the data I needed. After this occurred my unit tests became extremely painful to write, as I have not found any good way to write unit tests for non-trivial json. After pounding my head and wasting a ton of time trying to find a good way to unit test the JSON, I gave up and deleted all of my controller unit tests (all controller actions are focused on this part of the app so far). So finally I was left with testing the Service layer (BLL). Right now I am using EF4, however I had this issue with linq-sql as well. I chose to do the EF4 model-first approach because to me, it makes sense to do it that way (define my business objects and let the framework figure out how to translate it into the sql backend). This was fine at the beginning but now it is becoming cumbersome due to relationships. For example say I have Project, User, and Object entities. One Object must be associated to a project, and a project must be associated to a user. This is not only a database specific rule, these are my business rules as well. However, say I want to do a unit test that I am able to save an object (for a simple example). I now have to do the following code just to make sure the save worked: User usr = new User { Name = "Me" }; _userService.SaveUser(usr); Project prj = new Project { Name = "Test Project", Owner = usr }; _projectService.SaveProject(prj); Object obj = new Object { Name = "Test Object" }; _objectService.SaveObject(obj); // Perform verifications There are many issues with having to do all this just to perform one unit test. There are several issues with this. For starters, if I add a new dependency, such as all projects must belong to a category, I must go into EVERY single unit test that references a project, add code to save the category then add code to add the category to the project. This can be a HUGE effort down the road for a very simple business logic change, and yet almost none of the unit tests I will be modifying for this requirement are actually meant to test that feature/requirement. If I then add verifications to my SaveProject method, so that projects cannot be saved unless they have a name with at least 5 characters, I then have to go through every Object and Project unit test to make sure that the new requirement doesn't make any unrelated unit tests fail. If there is an issue in the UserService.SaveUser() method it will cause all project, and object unit tests to fail and it the cause won't be immediately noticeable without having to dig through the exceptions. Thus I have removed all service layer unit tests from my project. I could go on and on, but so far I have not seen any way for unit testing to actually help me and not get in my way. I can see specific cases where I can, and probably will, implement unit tests, such as making sure my data verification methods work correctly, but those cases are few and far between. Some of my issues can probably be mitigated but not without adding extra layers to my application, and thus making more points of failure just so I can unit test. Thus I have no unit tests left in my code. Luckily I heavily use source control so I can get them back if I need but I just don't see the point. Everywhere on the internet I see people talking about how great TDD unit tests are, and I'm not just talking about the fanatical people. The few people who dismiss TDD/Unit tests give bad arguments claiming they are more efficient debugging by hand through the IDE, or that their coding skills are amazing that they don't need it. I recognize that both of those arguments are utter bullocks, especially for a project that needs to be maintainable by multiple developers, but any valid rebuttals to TDD seem to be few and far between. So the point of this post is to ask, am I just not understanding how to use TDD and automatic unit tests?

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• o write a C++ program to encrypt and decrypt certain codes.

  - by Amber

  Step 1: Write a function int GetText(char[],int); which fills a character array from a requested file. That is, the function should prompt the user to input the filename, and then read up to the number of characters given as the second argument, terminating when the number has been reached or when the end of file is encountered. The file should then be closed. The number of characters placed in the array is then returned as the value of the function. Every character in the file should be transferred to the array. Whitespace should not be removed. When testing, assume that no more than 5000 characters will be read. The function should be placed in a file called coding.cpp while the main will be in ass5.cpp. To enable the prototypes to be accessible, the file coding.h contains the prototypes for all the functions that are to be written in coding.cpp for this assignment. (You may write other functions. If they are called from any of the functions in coding.h, they must appear in coding.cpp where their prototypes should also appear. Do not alter coding.h. Any other functions written for this assignment should be placed, along with their prototypes, with the main function.) Step 2: Write a function int SimplifyText(char[],int); which simplifies the text in the first argument, an array containing the number of characters as given in the second argument, by converting all alphabetic characters to lower case, removing all non-alpha characters, and replacing multiple whitespace by one blank. Any leading whitespace at the beginning of the array should be removed completely. The resulting number of characters should be returned as the value of the function. Note that another array cannot appear in the function (as the file does not contain one). For example, if the array contained the 29 characters "The 39 Steps" by John Buchan (with the " appearing in the array), the simplified text would be the steps by john buchan of length 24. The array should not contain a null character at the end. Step 3: Using the file test.txt, test your program so far. You will need to write a function void PrintText(const char[],int,int); that prints out the contents of the array, whose length is the second argument, breaking the lines to exactly the number of characters in the third argument. Be warned that, if the array contains newlines (as it would when read from a file), lines will be broken earlier than the specified length. Step 4: Write a function void Caesar(const char[],int,char[],int); which takes the first argument array, with length given by the second argument and codes it into the third argument array, using the shift given in the fourth argument. The shift must be performed cyclicly and must also be able to handle negative shifts. Shifts exceeding 26 can be reduced by modulo arithmetic. (Is C++'s modulo operations on negative numbers a problem here?) Demonstrate that the test file, as simplified, can be coded and decoded using a given shift by listing the original input text, the simplified text (indicating the new length), the coded text and finally the decoded text. Step 5: The permutation cypher does not limit the character substitution to just a shift. In fact, each of the 26 characters is coded to one of the others in an arbitrary way. So, for example, a might become f, b become q, c become d, but a letter never remains the same. How the letters are rearranged can be specified using a seed to the random number generator. The code can then be decoded, if the decoder has the same random number generator and knows the seed. Write the function void Permute(const char[],int,char[],unsigned long); with the same first three arguments as Caesar above, with the fourth argument being the seed. The function will have to make up a permutation table as follows: To find what a is coded as, generate a random number from 1 to 25. Add that to a to get the coded letter. Mark that letter as used. For b, generate 1 to 24, then step that many letters after b, ignoring the used letter if encountered. For c, generate 1 to 23, ignoring a or b's codes if encountered. Wrap around at z. Here's an example, for only the 6 letters a, b, c, d, e, f. For the letter a, generate, from 1-5, a 2. Then a - c. c is marked as used. For the letter b, generate, from 1-4, a 3. So count 3 from b, skipping c (since it is marked as used) yielding the coding of b - f. Mark f as used. For c, generate, from 1-3, a 3. So count 3 from c, skipping f, giving a. Note the wrap at the last letter back to the first. And so on, yielding a - c b - f c - a d - b (it got a 2) e - d f - e Thus, for a given seed, a translation table is required. To decode a piece of text, we need the table generated to be re-arranged so that the right hand column is in order. In fact you can just store the table in the reverse way (e.g., if a gets encoded to c, put a opposite c is the table). Write a function called void DePermute(const char[],int,char[], unsigned long); to reverse the permutation cypher. Again, test your functions using the test file. At this point, any main program used to test these functions will not be required as part of the assignment. The remainder of the assignment uses some of these functions, and needs its own main function. When submitted, all the above functions will be tested by the marker's own main function. Step 6: If the seed number is unknown, decoding is difficult. Write a main program which: (i) reads in a piece of text using GetText; (ii) simplifies the text using SimplifyText; (iii) prints the text using PrintText; (iv) requests two letters to swap. If we think 'a' in the text should be 'q' we would type aq as input. The text would be modified by swapping the a's and q's, and the text reprinted. Repeat this last step until the user considers the text is decoded, when the input of the same letter twice (requesting a letter to be swapped with itself) terminates the program. Step 7: If we have a large enough sample of coded text, we can use knowledge of English to aid in finding the permutation. The first clue is in the frequency of occurrence of each letter. Write a function void LetterFreq(const char[],int,freq[]); which takes the piece of text given as the first two arguments (same as above) and returns in the 26 long array of structs (the third argument), the table of the frequency of the 26 letters. This frequency table should be in decreasing order of popularity. A simple Selection Sort will suffice. (This will be described in lectures.) When printed, this summary would look something like v x r s z j p t n c l h u o i b w d g e a q y k f m 168106 68 66 59 54 48 45 44 35 26 24 22 20 20 20 17 13 12 12 4 4 1 0 0 0 The formatting will require the use of input/output manipulators. See the header file for the definition of the struct called freq. Modify the program so that, before each swap is requested, the current frequency of the letters is printed. This does not require further calls to LetterFreq, however. You may use the traditional order of regular letter frequencies (E T A I O N S H R D L U) as a guide when deciding what characters to exchange. Step 8: The decoding process can be made more difficult if blank is also coded. That is, consider the alphabet to be 27 letters. Rewrite LetterFreq and your main program to handle blank as another character to code. In the above frequency order, space usually comes first.

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