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• What Every Developer Should Know About MSI Components

  - by Alois Kraus

  Hopefully nothing. But if you have to do more than simple XCopy deployment and you need to support updates, upgrades and perhaps side by side scenarios there is no way around MSI. You can create Msi files with a Visual Studio Setup project which is severely limited or you can use the Windows Installer Toolset. I cannot talk about WIX with my German colleagues because WIX has a very special meaning. It is funny to always use the long name when I talk about deployment possibilities. Alternatively you can buy commercial tools which help you to author Msi files but I am not sure how good they are. Given enough pain with existing solutions you can also learn the MSI Apis and create your own packaging solution. If I were you I would use either a commercial visual tool when you do easy deployments or use the free Windows Installer Toolset. Once you know the WIX schema you can create well formed wix xml files easily with any editor. Then you can “compile” from the wxs files your Msi package. Recently I had the “pleasure” to get my hands dirty with C++ (again) and the MSI technology. Installation is a complex topic but after several month of digging into arcane MSI issues I can safely say that there should exist an easier way to install and update files as today. I am not alone with this statement as John Robbins (creator of the cool tool Paraffin) states: “.. It's a brittle and scary API in Windows …”. To help other people struggling with installation issues I present you the advice I (and others) found useful and what will happen if you ignore this advice. What is a MSI file? A MSI file is basically a database with tables which reference each other to control how your un/installation should work. The basic idea is that you declare via these tables what you want to install and MSI controls the how to get your stuff onto or off your machine. Your “stuff” consists usually of files, registry keys, shortcuts and environment variables. Therefore the most important tables are File, Registry, Environment and Shortcut table which define what will be un/installed. The key to master MSI is that every resource (file, registry key ,…) is associated with a MSI component. The actual payload consists of compressed files in the CAB format which can either be embedded into the MSI file or reside beside the MSI file or in a subdirectory below it. To examine MSI files you need Orca a free MSI editor provided by MS. There is also another free editor called Super Orca which does support diffs between MSI and it does not lock the MSI files. But since Orca comes with a shell extension I tend to use only Orca because it is so easy to right click on a MSI file and open it with this tool. How Do I Install It? Double click it. This does work for fresh installations as well as major upgrades. Updates need to be installed via the command line via msiexec /i <msi> REINSTALL=ALL REINSTALLMODE=vomus   This tells the installer to reinstall all already installed features (new features will NOT be installed). The reinstallmode letters do force an overwrite of the old cached package in the %WINDIR%\Installer folder. All files, shortcuts and registry keys are redeployed if they are missing or need to be replaced with a newer version. When things did go really wrong and you want to overwrite everything unconditionally use REINSTALLMODE=vamus. How To Enable MSI Logs? You can download a MSI from Microsoft which installs some registry keys to enable full MSI logging. The log files can be found in your %TEMP% folder and are called MSIxxxx.log. Alternatively you can add to your msiexec command line the option msiexec …. /l*vx <LogFileName> Personally I find it rather strange that * does not mean full logging. To really get all logs I need to add v and x which is documented in the msiexec help but I still find this behavior unintuitive. What are MSI components? The whole MSI logic is bound to the concept of MSI components. Nearly every msi table has a Component column which binds an installable resource to a component. Below are the screenshots of the FeatureComponents and Component table of an example MSI. The Feature table defines basically the feature hierarchy.  To find out what belongs to a feature you need to look at the FeatureComponents table where for each feature the components are listed which will be installed when a feature is installed. The MSI components are defined in the  Component table. This table has as first column the component name and as second column the component id which is a GUID. All resources you want to install belong to a MSI component. Therefore nearly all MSI tables have a Component_ column which contains the component name. If you look e.g. a the File table you see that every file belongs to a component which is true for all other tables which install resources. The component table is the glue between all other tables which contain the resources you want to install. So far so easy. Why is MSI then so complex? Most MSI problems arise from the fact that you did violate a MSI component rule in one or the other way. When you install a feature the reference count for all components belonging to this feature will increase by one. If your component is installed by more than one feature it will get a higher refcount. When you uninstall a feature its refcount will drop by one. Interesting things happen if the component reference count reaches zero: Then all associated resources will be deleted. That looks like a reasonable thing and it is. What it makes complex are the strange component rules you have to follow. Below are some important component rules from the Tao of the Windows Installer … Rule 16: Follow Component Rules Components are a very important part of the Installer technology. They are the means whereby the Installer manages the resources that make up your application. The SDK provides the following guidelines for creating components in your package: Never create two components that install a resource under the same name and target location. If a resource must be duplicated in multiple components, change its name or target location in each component. This rule should be applied across applications, products, product versions, and companies. Two components must not have the same key path file. This is a consequence of the previous rule. The key path value points to a particular file or folder belonging to the component that the installer uses to detect the component. If two components had the same key path file, the installer would be unable to distinguish which component is installed. Two components however may share a key path folder. Do not create a version of a component that is incompatible with all previous versions of the component. This rule should be applied across applications, products, product versions, and companies. Do not create components containing resources that will need to be installed into more than one directory on the user’s system. The installer installs all of the resources in a component into the same directory. It is not possible to install some resources into subdirectories. Do not include more than one COM server per component. If a component contains a COM server, this must be the key path for the component. Do not specify more than one file per component as a target for the Start menu or a Desktop shortcut. … And these rules do not even talk about component ids, update packages and upgrades which you need to understand as well. Lets suppose you install two MSIs (MSI1 and MSI2) which have the same ComponentId but different component names. Both do install the same file. What will happen when you uninstall MSI2?   Hm the file should stay there. But the component names are different. Yes and yes. But MSI uses not use the component name as key for the refcount. Instead the ComponentId column of the Component table which contains a GUID is used as identifier under which the refcount is stored. The components Comp1 and Comp2 are identical from the MSI perspective. After the installation of both MSIs the Component with the Id {100000….} has a refcount of two. After uninstallation of one MSI there is still a refcount of one which drops to zero just as expected when we uninstall the last msi. Then the file which was the same for both MSIs is deleted. You should remember that MSI keeps a refcount across MSIs for components with the same component id. MSI does manage components not the resources you did install. The resources associated with a component are then and only then deleted when the refcount of the component reaches zero.   The dependencies between features, components and resources can be described as relations. m,k are numbers >= 1, n can be 0. Inside a MSI the following relations are valid Feature    1  –> n Components Component    1 –> m Features Component      1  –>  k Resources These relations express that one feature can install several components and features can share components between them. Every (meaningful) component will install at least one resource which means that its name (primary key to stay in database speak) does occur in some other table in the Component column as value which installs some resource. Lets make it clear with an example. We want to install with the feature MainFeature some files a registry key and a shortcut. We can then create components Comp1..3 which are referenced by the resources defined in the corresponding tables.   Feature Component Registry File Shortcuts MainFeature Comp1 RegistryKey1     MainFeature Comp2   File.txt   MainFeature Comp3   File2.txt Shortcut to File2.txt   It is illegal that the same resource is part of more than one component since this would break the refcount mechanism. Lets illustrate this:            Feature ComponentId Resource Reference Count Feature1 {1000-…} File1.txt 1 Feature2 {2000-….} File1.txt 1 The installation part works well but what happens when you uninstall Feature2? Component {20000…} gets a refcount of zero where MSI deletes all resources belonging to this component. In this case File1.txt will be deleted. But Feature1 still has another component {10000…} with a refcount of one which means that the file was deleted too early. You just have ruined your installation. To fix it you then need to click on the Repair button under Add/Remove Programs to let MSI reinstall any missing registry keys, files or shortcuts. The vigilant reader might has noticed that there is more in the Component table. Beside its name and GUID it has also an installation directory, attributes and a KeyPath. The KeyPath is a reference to a file or registry key which is used to detect if the component is already installed. This becomes important when you repair or uninstall a component. To find out if the component is already installed MSI checks if the registry key or file referenced by the KeyPath property does exist. When it does not exist it assumes that it was either already uninstalled (can lead to problems during uninstall) or that it is already installed and all is fine. Why is this detail so important? Lets put all files into one component. The KeyPath should be then one of the files of your component to check if it was installed or not. When your installation becomes corrupt because a file was deleted you cannot repair it with the Repair button under Add/Remove Programs because MSI checks the component integrity via the Resource referenced by its KeyPath. As long as you did not delete the KeyPath file MSI thinks all resources with your component are installed and never executes any repair action. You get even more trouble when you try to remove files during an upgrade (you cannot remove files during an update) from your super component which contains all files. The only way out and therefore best practice is to assign for every resource you want to install an extra component. This ensures painless updatability and repairs and you have much less effort to remove specific files during an upgrade. In effect you get this best practice relation Feature 1  –> n Components Component   1  –>  1 Resources MSI Component Rules Rule 1 – One component per resource Every resource you want to install (file, registry key, value, environment value, shortcut, directory, …) must get its own component which does never change between versions as long as the install location is the same. Penalty If you add more than one resources to a component you will break the repair capability of MSI because the KeyPath is used to check if the component needs repair. MSI ComponentId Files MSI 1.0 {1000} File1-5 MSI 2.0 {2000} File2-5 You want to remove File1 in version 2.0 of your MSI. Since you want to keep the other files you create a new component and add them there. MSI will delete all files if the component refcount of {1000} drops to zero. The files you want to keep are added to the new component {2000}. Ok that does work if your upgrade does uninstall the old MSI first. This will cause the refcount of all previously installed components to reach zero which means that all files present in version 1.0 are deleted. But there is a faster way to perform your upgrade by first installing your new MSI and then remove the old one.  If you choose this upgrade path then you will loose File1-5 after your upgrade and not only File1 as intended by your new component design.   Rule 2 – Only add, never remove resources from a component If you did follow rule 1 you will not need Rule 2. You can add in a patch more resources to one component. That is ok. But you can never remove anything from it. There are tricky ways around that but I do not want to encourage bad component design. Penalty Lets assume you have 2 MSI files which install under the same component one file   MSI1 MSI2 {1000} - ComponentId {1000} – ComponentId File1.txt File2.txt   When you install and uninstall both MSIs you will end up with an installation where either File1 or File2 will be left. Why? It seems that MSI does not store the resources associated with each component in its internal database. Instead Windows will simply query the MSI that is currently uninstalled for all resources belonging to this component. Since it will find only one file and not two it will only uninstall one file. That is the main reason why you never can remove resources from a component!   Rule 3 Never Remove A Component From an Update MSI. This is the same as if you change the GUID of a component by accident for your new update package. The resulting update package will not contain all components from the previously installed package. Penalty When you remove a component from a feature MSI will set the feature state during update to Advertised and log a warning message into its log file when you did enable MSI logging. SELMGR: ComponentId '{2DCEA1BA-3E27-E222-484C-D0D66AEA4F62}' is registered to feature 'xxxxxxx, but is not present in the Component table.  Removal of components from a feature is not supported! MSI (c) (24:44) [07:53:13:436]: SELMGR: Removal of a component from a feature is not supported Advertised means that MSI treats all components of this feature as not installed. As a consequence during uninstall nothing will be removed since it is not installed! This is not only bad because uninstall does no longer work but this feature will also not get the required patches. All other features which have followed component versioning rules for update packages will be updated but the one faulty feature will not. This results in very hard to find bugs why an update was only partially successful. Things got better with Windows Installer 4.5 but you cannot rely on that nobody will use an older installer. It is a good idea to add to your update msiexec call MSIENFORCEUPGRADECOMPONENTRULES=1 which will abort the installation if you did violate this rule.

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• Red Gate Coder interviews: Robin Hellen

  - by Michael Williamson

  Robin Hellen is a test engineer here at Red Gate, and is also the latest coder I’ve interviewed. We chatted about debugging code, the roles of software engineers and testers, and why Vala is currently his favourite programming language. How did you get started with programming?It started when I was about six. My dad’s a professional programmer, and he gave me and my sister one of his old computers and taught us a bit about programming. It was an old Amiga 500 with a variant of BASIC. I don’t think I ever successfully completed anything! It was just faffing around. I didn’t really get anywhere with it.But then presumably you did get somewhere with it at some point.At some point. The PC emerged as the dominant platform, and I learnt a bit of Visual Basic. I didn’t really do much, just a couple of quick hacky things. A bit of demo animation. Took me a long time to get anywhere with programming, really.When did you feel like you did start to get somewhere?I think it was when I started doing things for someone else, which was my sister’s final year of university project. She called up my dad two days before she was due to submit, saying “We need something to display a graph!”. Dad says, “I’m too busy, go talk to your brother”. So I hacked up this ugly piece of code, sent it off and they won a prize for that project. Apparently, the graph, the bit that I wrote, was the reason they won a prize! That was when I first felt that I’d actually done something that was worthwhile. That was my first real bit of code, and the ugliest code I’ve ever written. It’s basically an array of pre-drawn line elements that I shifted round the screen to draw a very spikey graph.When did you decide that programming might actually be something that you wanted to do as a career?It’s not really a decision I took, I always wanted to do something with computers. And I had to take a gap year for uni, so I was looking for twelve month internships. I applied to Red Gate, and they gave me a job as a tester. And that’s where I really started having to write code well. To a better standard that I had been up to that point.How did you find coming to Red Gate and working with other coders?I thought it was really nice. I learnt so much just from other people around. I think one of the things that’s really great is that people are just willing to help you learn. Instead of “Don’t you know that, you’re so stupid”, it’s “You can just do it this way”.If you could go back to the very start of that internship, is there something that you would tell yourself?Write shorter code. I have a tendency to write massive, many-thousand line files that I break out of right at the end. And then half-way through a project I’m doing something, I think “Where did I write that bit that does that thing?”, and it’s almost impossible to find. I wrote some horrendous code when I started. Just that principle, just keep things short. Even if looks a bit crazy to be jumping around all over the place all of the time, it’s actually a lot more understandable.And how do you hold yourself to that?Generally, if a function’s going off my screen, it’s probably too long. That’s what I tell myself, and within the team here we have code reviews, so the guys I’m with at the moment are pretty good at pulling me up on, “Doesn’t that look like it’s getting a bit long?”. It’s more just the subjective standard of readability than anything.So you’re an advocate of code review?Yes, definitely. Both to spot errors that you might have made, and to improve your knowledge. The person you’re reviewing will say “Oh, you could have done it that way”. That’s how we learn, by talking to others, and also just sharing knowledge of how your project works around the team, or even outside the team. Definitely a very firm advocate of code reviews.Do you think there’s more we could do with them?I don’t know. We’re struggling with how to add them as part of the process without it becoming too cumbersome. We’ve experimented with a few different ways, and we’ve not found anything that just works.To get more into the nitty gritty: how do you like to debug code?The first thing is to do it in my head. I’ll actually think what piece of code is likely to have caused that error, and take a quick look at it, just to see if there’s anything glaringly obvious there. The next thing I’ll probably do is throw in print statements, or throw some exceptions from various points, just to check: is it going through the code path I expect it to? A last resort is to actually debug code using a debugger.Why is the debugger the last resort?Probably because of the environments I learnt programming in. VB and early BASIC didn’t have much of a debugger, the only way to find out what your program was doing was to add print statements. Also, because a lot of the stuff I tend to work with is non-interactive, if it’s something that takes a long time to run, I can throw in the print statements, set a run off, go and do something else, and look at it again later, rather than trying to remember what happened at that point when I was debugging through it. So it also gives me the record of what happens. I hate just sitting there pressing F5, F5, continually. If you’re having to find out what your code is doing at each line, you’ve probably got a very wrong mental model of what your code’s doing, and you can find that out just as easily by inspecting a couple of values through the print statements.If I were on some codebase that you were also working on, what should I do to make it as easy as possible to understand?I’d say short and well-named methods. The one thing I like to do when I’m looking at code is to find out where a value comes from, and the more layers of indirection there are, particularly DI [dependency injection] frameworks, the harder it is to find out where something’s come from. I really hate that. I want to know if the value come from the user here or is a constant here, and if I can’t find that out, that makes code very hard to understand for me.As a tester, where do you think the split should lie between software engineers and testers?I think the split is less on areas of the code you write and more what you’re designing and creating. The developers put a structure on the code, while my major role is to say which tests we should have, whether we should test that, or it’s not worth testing that because it’s a tiny function in code that nobody’s ever actually going to see. So it’s not a split in the code, it’s a split in what you’re thinking about. Saying what code we should write, but alternatively what code we should take out.In your experience, do the software engineers tend to do much testing themselves?They tend to control the lowest layer of tests. And, depending on how the balance of people is in the team, they might write some of the higher levels of test. Or that might go to the testers. I’m the only tester on my team with three other developers, so they’ll be writing quite a lot of the actual test code, with input from me as to whether we should test that functionality, whereas on other teams, where it’s been more equal numbers, the testers have written pretty much all of the high level tests, just because that’s the best use of resource.If you could shuffle resources around however you liked, do you think that the developers should be writing those high-level tests?I think they should be writing them occasionally. It helps when they have an understanding of how testing code works and possibly what assumptions we’ve made in tests, and they can say “actually, it doesn’t work like that under the hood so you’ve missed this whole area”. It’s one of those agile things that everyone on the team should be at least comfortable doing the various jobs. So if the developers can write test code then I think that’s a very good thing.So you think testers should be able to write production code?Yes, although given most testers skills at coding, I wouldn’t advise it too much! I have written a few things, and I did make a few changes that have actually gone into our production code base. They’re not necessarily running every time but they are there. I think having that mix of skill sets is really useful. In some ways we’re using our own product to test itself, so being able to make those changes where it’s not working saves me a round-trip through the developers. It can be really annoying if the developers have no time to make a change, and I can’t touch the code.If the software engineers are consistently writing tests at all levels, what role do you think the role of a tester is?I think on a team like that, those distinctions aren’t quite so useful. There’ll be two cases. There’s either the case where the developers think they’ve written good tests, but you still need someone with a test engineer mind-set to go through the tests and validate that it’s a useful set, or the correct set for that code. Or they won’t actually be pure developers, they’ll have that mix of test ability in there.I think having slightly more distinct roles is useful. When it starts to blur, then you lose that view of the tests as a whole. The tester job is not to create tests, it’s to validate the quality of the product, and you don’t do that just by writing tests. There’s more things you’ve got to keep in your mind. And I think when you blur the roles, you start to lose that end of the tester.So because you’re working on those features, you lose that holistic view of the whole system?Yeah, and anyone who’s worked on the feature shouldn’t be testing it. You always need to have it tested it by someone who didn’t write it. Otherwise you’re a bit too close and you assume “yes, people will only use it that way”, but the tester will come along and go “how do people use this? How would our most idiotic user use this?”. I might not test that because it might be completely irrelevant. But it’s coming in and trying to have a different set of assumptions.Are you a believer that it should all be automated if possible?Not entirely. So an automated test is always better than a manual test for the long-term, but there’s still nothing that beats a human sitting in front of the application and thinking “What could I do at this point?”. The automated test is very good but they follow that strict path, and they never check anything off the path. The human tester will look at things that they weren’t expecting, whereas the automated test can only ever go “Is that value correct?” in many respects, and it won’t notice that on the other side of the screen you’re showing something completely wrong. And that value might have been checked independently, but you always find a few odd interactions when you’re going through something manually, and you always need to go through something manually to start with anyway, otherwise you won’t know where the important bits to write your automation are.When you’re doing that manual testing, do you think it’s important to do that across the entire product, or just the bits that you’ve touched recently?I think it’s important to do it mostly on the bits you’ve touched, but you can’t ignore the rest of the product. Unless you’re dealing with a very, very self-contained bit, you’re almost always encounter other bits of the product along the way. Most testers I know, even if they are looking at just one path, they’ll keep open and move around a bit anyway, just because they want to find something that’s broken. If we find that your path is right, we’ll go out and hunt something else.How do you think this fits into the idea of continuously deploying, so long as the tests pass?With deploying a website it’s a bit different because you can always pull it back. If you’re deploying an application to customers, when you’ve released it, it’s out there, you can’t pull it back. Someone’s going to keep it, no matter how hard you try there will be a few installations that stay around. So I’d always have at least a human element on that path. With websites, you could probably automate straight out, or at least straight out to an internal environment or a single server in a cloud of fifty that will serve some people. But I don’t think you should release to everyone just on automated tests passing.You’ve already mentioned using BASIC and C# — are there any other languages that you’ve used?I’ve used a few. That’s something that has changed more recently, I’ve become familiar with more languages. Before I started at Red Gate I learnt a bit of C. Then last year, I taught myself Python which I actually really enjoyed using. I’ve also come across another language called Vala, which is sort of a C#-like language. It’s basically a pre-processor for C, but it has very nice syntax. I think that’s currently my favourite language.Any particular reason for trying Vala?I have a completely Linux environment at home, and I’ve been looking for a nice language, and C# just doesn’t cut it because I won’t touch Mono. So, I was looking for something like C# but that was useable in an open source environment, and Vala’s what I found. C#’s got a few features that Vala doesn’t, and Vala’s got a few features where I think “It would be awesome if C# had that”.What are some of the features that it’s missing?Extension methods. And I think that’s the only one that really bugs me. I like to use them when I’m writing C# because it makes some things really easy, especially with libraries that you can’t touch the internals of. It doesn’t have method overloading, which is sometimes annoying.Where it does win over C#?Everything is non-nullable by default, you never have to check that something’s unexpectedly null.Also, Vala has code contracts. This is starting to come in C# 4, but the way it works in Vala is that you specify requirements in short phrases as part of your function signature and they stick to the signature, so that when you inherit it, it has exactly the same code contract as the base one, or when you inherit from an interface, you have to match the signature exactly. Just using those makes you think a bit more about how you’re writing your method, it’s not an afterthought when you’ve got contracts from base classes given to you, you can’t change it. Which I think is a lot nicer than the way C# handles it. When are those actually checked?They’re checked both at compile and run-time. The compile-time checking isn’t very strong yet, it’s quite a new feature in the compiler, and because it compiles down to C, you can write C code and interface with your methods, so you can bypass that compile-time check anyway. So there’s an extra runtime check, and if you violate one of the contracts at runtime, it’s game over for your program, there’s no exception to catch, it’s just goodbye!One thing I dislike about C# is the exceptions. You write a bit of code and fifty exceptions could come from any point in your ten lines, and you can’t mentally model how those exceptions are going to come out, and you can’t even predict them based on the functions you’re calling, because if you’ve accidentally got a derived class there instead of a base class, that can throw a completely different set of exceptions. So I’ve got no way of mentally modelling those, whereas in Vala they’re checked like Java, so you know only these exceptions can come out. You know in advance the error conditions.I think Raymond Chen on Old New Thing says “the only thing you know when you throw an exception is that you’re in an invalid state somewhere in your program, so just kill it and be done with it!”You said you’ve also learnt bits of Python. How did you find that compared to Vala and C#?Very different because of the dynamic typing. I’ve been writing a website for my own use. I’m quite into photography, so I take photos off my camera, post-process them, dump them in a file, and I get a webpage with all my thumbnails. So sort of like Picassa, but written by myself because I wanted something to learn Python with. There are some things that are really nice, I just found it really difficult to cope with the fact that I’m not quite sure what this object type that I’m passed is, I might not ever be sure, so it can randomly blow up on me. But once I train myself to ignore that and just say “well, I’m fairly sure it’s going to be something that looks like this, so I’ll use it like this”, then it’s quite nice.Any particular features that you’ve appreciated?I don’t like any particular feature, it’s just very straightforward to work with. It’s very quick to write something in, particularly as you don’t have to worry that you’ve changed something that affects a different part of the program. If you have, then that part blows up, but I can get this part working right now.If you were doing a big project, would you be willing to do it in Python rather than C# or Vala?I think I might be willing to try something bigger or long term with Python. We’re currently doing an ASP.NET MVC project on C#, and I don’t like the amount of reflection. There’s a lot of magic that pulls values out, and it’s all done under the scenes. It’s almost managed to put a dynamic type system on top of C#, which in many ways destroys the language to me, whereas if you’re already in a dynamic language, having things done dynamically is much more natural. In many ways, you get the worst of both worlds. I think for web projects, I would go with Python again, whereas for anything desktop, command-line or GUI-based, I’d probably go for C# or Vala, depending on what environment I’m in.It’s the fact that you can gain from the strong typing in ways that you can’t so much on the web app. Or, in a web app, you have to use dynamic typing at some point, or you have to write a hell of a lot of boilerplate, and I’d rather use the dynamic typing than write the boilerplate.What do you think separates great programmers from everyone else?Probably design choices. Choosing to write it a piece of code one way or another. For any given program you ask me to write, I could probably do it five thousand ways. A programmer who is capable will see four or five of them, and choose one of the better ones. The excellent programmer will see the largest proportion and manage to pick the best one very quickly without having to think too much about it. I think that’s probably what separates, is the speed at which they can see what’s the best path to write the program in. More Red Gater Coder interviews

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• Security Issues with Single Page Apps

  - by Stephen.Walther

  Last week, I was asked to do a code review of a Single Page App built using the ASP.NET Web API, Durandal, and Knockout (good stuff!). In particular, I was asked to investigate whether there any special security issues associated with building a Single Page App which are not present in the case of a traditional server-side ASP.NET application. In this blog entry, I discuss two areas in which you need to exercise extra caution when building a Single Page App. I discuss how Single Page Apps are extra vulnerable to both Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks and Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks. This goal of this blog post is NOT to persuade you to avoid writing Single Page Apps. I’m a big fan of Single Page Apps. Instead, the goal is to ensure that you are fully aware of some of the security issues related to Single Page Apps and ensure that you know how to guard against them. Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) Attacks According to WhiteHat Security, over 65% of public websites are open to XSS attacks. That’s bad. By taking advantage of XSS holes in a website, a hacker can steal your credit cards, passwords, or bank account information. Any website that redisplays untrusted information is open to XSS attacks. Let me give you a simple example. Imagine that you want to display the name of the current user on a page. To do this, you create the following server-side ASP.NET page located at http://MajorBank.com/SomePage.aspx: <%@Page Language="C#" %> <html> <head> <title>Some Page</title> </head> <body> Welcome <%= Request["username"] %> </body> </html> Nothing fancy here. Notice that the page displays the current username by using Request[“username”]. Using Request[“username”] displays the username regardless of whether the username is present in a cookie, a form field, or a query string variable. Unfortunately, by using Request[“username”] to redisplay untrusted information, you have now opened your website to XSS attacks. Here’s how. Imagine that an evil hacker creates the following link on another website (hackers.com): <a href="/SomePage.aspx?username=<script src=Evil.js></script>">Visit MajorBank</a> Notice that the link includes a query string variable named username and the value of the username variable is an HTML <SCRIPT> tag which points to a JavaScript file named Evil.js. When anyone clicks on the link, the <SCRIPT> tag will be injected into SomePage.aspx and the Evil.js script will be loaded and executed. What can a hacker do in the Evil.js script? Anything the hacker wants. For example, the hacker could display a popup dialog on the MajorBank.com site which asks the user to enter their password. The script could then post the password back to hackers.com and now the evil hacker has your secret password. ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC have two automatic safeguards against this type of attack: Request Validation and Automatic HTML Encoding. Protecting Coming In (Request Validation) In a server-side ASP.NET app, you are protected against the XSS attack described above by a feature named Request Validation. If you attempt to submit “potentially dangerous” content — such as a JavaScript <SCRIPT> tag — in a form field or query string variable then you get an exception. Unfortunately, Request Validation only applies to server-side apps. Request Validation does not help in the case of a Single Page App. In particular, the ASP.NET Web API does not pay attention to Request Validation. You can post any content you want – including <SCRIPT> tags – to an ASP.NET Web API action. For example, the following HTML page contains a form. When you submit the form, the form data is submitted to an ASP.NET Web API controller on the server using an Ajax request: <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title></title> </head> <body> <form data-bind="submit:submit"> <div> <label> User Name: <input data-bind="value:user.userName" /> </label> </div> <div> <label> Email: <input data-bind="value:user.email" /> </label> </div> <div> <input type="submit" value="Submit" /> </div> </form> <script src="Scripts/jquery-1.7.1.js"></script> <script src="Scripts/knockout-2.1.0.js"></script> <script> var viewModel = { user: { userName: ko.observable(), email: ko.observable() }, submit: function () { $.post("/api/users", ko.toJS(this.user)); } }; ko.applyBindings(viewModel); </script> </body> </html> The form above is using Knockout to bind the form fields to a view model. When you submit the form, the view model is submitted to an ASP.NET Web API action on the server. Here’s the server-side ASP.NET Web API controller and model class: public class UsersController : ApiController { public HttpResponseMessage Post(UserViewModel user) { var userName = user.UserName; return Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK); } } public class UserViewModel { public string UserName { get; set; } public string Email { get; set; } } If you submit the HTML form, you don’t get an error. The “potentially dangerous” content is passed to the server without any exception being thrown. In the screenshot below, you can see that I was able to post a username form field with the value “<script>alert(‘boo’)</script”. So what this means is that you do not get automatic Request Validation in the case of a Single Page App. You need to be extra careful in a Single Page App about ensuring that you do not display untrusted content because you don’t have the Request Validation safety net which you have in a traditional server-side ASP.NET app. Protecting Going Out (Automatic HTML Encoding) Server-side ASP.NET also protects you from XSS attacks when you render content. By default, all content rendered by the razor view engine is HTML encoded. For example, the following razor view displays the text “<b>Hello!</b>” instead of the text “Hello!” in bold: @{ var message = "<b>Hello!</b>"; } @message   If you don’t want to render content as HTML encoded in razor then you need to take the extra step of using the @Html.Raw() helper. In a Web Form page, if you use <%: %> instead of <%= %> then you get automatic HTML Encoding: <%@ Page Language="C#" %> <% var message = "<b>Hello!</b>"; %> <%: message %> This automatic HTML Encoding will prevent many types of XSS attacks. It prevents <script> tags from being rendered and only allows &lt;script&gt; tags to be rendered which are useless for executing JavaScript. (This automatic HTML encoding does not protect you from all forms of XSS attacks. For example, you can assign the value “javascript:alert(‘evil’)” to the Hyperlink control’s NavigateUrl property and execute the JavaScript). The situation with Knockout is more complicated. If you use the Knockout TEXT binding then you get HTML encoded content. On the other hand, if you use the HTML binding then you do not: <!-- This JavaScript DOES NOT execute --> <div data-bind="text:someProp"></div> <!-- This Javacript DOES execute --> <div data-bind="html:someProp"></div> <script src="Scripts/jquery-1.7.1.js"></script> <script src="Scripts/knockout-2.1.0.js"></script> <script> var viewModel = { someProp : "<script>alert('Evil!')<" + "/script>" }; ko.applyBindings(viewModel); </script>   So, in the page above, the DIV element which uses the TEXT binding is safe from XSS attacks. According to the Knockout documentation: “Since this binding sets your text value using a text node, it’s safe to set any string value without risking HTML or script injection.” Just like server-side HTML encoding, Knockout does not protect you from all types of XSS attacks. For example, there is nothing in Knockout which prevents you from binding JavaScript to a hyperlink like this: <a data-bind="attr:{href:homePageUrl}">Go</a> <script src="Scripts/jquery-1.7.1.min.js"></script> <script src="Scripts/knockout-2.1.0.js"></script> <script> var viewModel = { homePageUrl: "javascript:alert('evil!')" }; ko.applyBindings(viewModel); </script> In the page above, the value “javascript:alert(‘evil’)” is bound to the HREF attribute using Knockout. When you click the link, the JavaScript executes. Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) Attacks Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks rely on the fact that a session cookie does not expire until you close your browser. In particular, if you visit and login to MajorBank.com and then you navigate to Hackers.com then you will still be authenticated against MajorBank.com even after you navigate to Hackers.com. Because MajorBank.com cannot tell whether a request is coming from MajorBank.com or Hackers.com, Hackers.com can submit requests to MajorBank.com pretending to be you. For example, Hackers.com can post an HTML form from Hackers.com to MajorBank.com and change your email address at MajorBank.com. Hackers.com can post a form to MajorBank.com using your authentication cookie. After your email address has been changed, by using a password reset page at MajorBank.com, a hacker can access your bank account. To prevent CSRF attacks, you need some mechanism for detecting whether a request is coming from a page loaded from your website or whether the request is coming from some other website. The recommended way of preventing Cross-Site Request Forgery attacks is to use the “Synchronizer Token Pattern” as described here: https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Cross-Site_Request_Forgery_%28CSRF%29_Prevention_Cheat_Sheet When using the Synchronizer Token Pattern, you include a hidden input field which contains a random token whenever you display an HTML form. When the user opens the form, you add a cookie to the user’s browser with the same random token. When the user posts the form, you verify that the hidden form token and the cookie token match. Preventing Cross-Site Request Forgery Attacks with ASP.NET MVC ASP.NET gives you a helper and an action filter which you can use to thwart Cross-Site Request Forgery attacks. For example, the following razor form for creating a product shows how you use the @Html.AntiForgeryToken() helper: @model MvcApplication2.Models.Product <h2>Create Product</h2> @using (Html.BeginForm()) { @Html.AntiForgeryToken(); <div> @Html.LabelFor( p => p.Name, "Product Name:") @Html.TextBoxFor( p => p.Name) </div> <div> @Html.LabelFor( p => p.Price, "Product Price:") @Html.TextBoxFor( p => p.Price) </div> <input type="submit" /> } The @Html.AntiForgeryToken() helper generates a random token and assigns a serialized version of the same random token to both a cookie and a hidden form field. (Actually, if you dive into the source code, the AntiForgeryToken() does something a little more complex because it takes advantage of a user’s identity when generating the token). Here’s what the hidden form field looks like: <input name=”__RequestVerificationToken” type=”hidden” value=”NqqZGAmlDHh6fPTNR_mti3nYGUDgpIkCiJHnEEL59S7FNToyyeSo7v4AfzF2i67Cv0qTB1TgmZcqiVtgdkW2NnXgEcBc-iBts0x6WAIShtM1″ /> And here’s what the cookie looks like using the Google Chrome developer toolbar: You use the [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] action filter on the controller action which is the recipient of the form post to validate that the token in the hidden form field matches the token in the cookie. If the tokens don’t match then validation fails and you can’t post the form: public ActionResult Create() { return View(); } [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] [HttpPost] public ActionResult Create(Product productToCreate) { if (ModelState.IsValid) { // save product to db return RedirectToAction("Index"); } return View(); } How does this all work? Let’s imagine that a hacker has copied the Create Product page from MajorBank.com to Hackers.com – the hacker grabs the HTML source and places it at Hackers.com. Now, imagine that the hacker trick you into submitting the Create Product form from Hackers.com to MajorBank.com. You’ll get the following exception: The Cross-Site Request Forgery attack is blocked because the anti-forgery token included in the Create Product form at Hackers.com won’t match the anti-forgery token stored in the cookie in your browser. The tokens were generated at different times for different users so the attack fails. Preventing Cross-Site Request Forgery Attacks with a Single Page App In a Single Page App, you can’t prevent Cross-Site Request Forgery attacks using the same method as a server-side ASP.NET MVC app. In a Single Page App, HTML forms are not generated on the server. Instead, in a Single Page App, forms are loaded dynamically in the browser. Phil Haack has a blog post on this topic where he discusses passing the anti-forgery token in an Ajax header instead of a hidden form field. He also describes how you can create a custom anti-forgery token attribute to compare the token in the Ajax header and the token in the cookie. See: http://haacked.com/archive/2011/10/10/preventing-csrf-with-ajax.aspx Also, take a look at Johan’s update to Phil Haack’s original post: http://johan.driessen.se/posts/Updated-Anti-XSRF-Validation-for-ASP.NET-MVC-4-RC (Other server frameworks such as Rails and Django do something similar. For example, Rails uses an X-CSRF-Token to prevent CSRF attacks which you generate on the server – see http://excid3.com/blog/rails-tip-2-include-csrf-token-with-every-ajax-request/#.UTFtgDDkvL8 ). For example, if you are creating a Durandal app, then you can use the following razor view for your one and only server-side page: @{ Layout = null; } <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Index</title> </head> <body> @Html.AntiForgeryToken() <div id="applicationHost"> Loading app.... </div> @Scripts.Render("~/scripts/vendor") <script type="text/javascript" src="~/App/durandal/amd/require.js" data-main="/App/main"></script> </body> </html> Notice that this page includes a call to @Html.AntiForgeryToken() to generate the anti-forgery token. Then, whenever you make an Ajax request in the Durandal app, you can retrieve the anti-forgery token from the razor view and pass the token as a header: var csrfToken = $("input[name='__RequestVerificationToken']").val(); $.ajax({ headers: { __RequestVerificationToken: csrfToken }, type: "POST", dataType: "json", contentType: 'application/json; charset=utf-8', url: "/api/products", data: JSON.stringify({ name: "Milk", price: 2.33 }), statusCode: { 200: function () { alert("Success!"); } } }); Use the following code to create an action filter which you can use to match the header and cookie tokens: using System.Linq; using System.Net.Http; using System.Web.Helpers; using System.Web.Http.Controllers; namespace MvcApplication2.Infrastructure { public class ValidateAjaxAntiForgeryToken : System.Web.Http.AuthorizeAttribute { protected override bool IsAuthorized(HttpActionContext actionContext) { var headerToken = actionContext .Request .Headers .GetValues("__RequestVerificationToken") .FirstOrDefault(); ; var cookieToken = actionContext .Request .Headers .GetCookies() .Select(c => c[AntiForgeryConfig.CookieName]) .FirstOrDefault(); // check for missing cookie or header if (cookieToken == null || headerToken == null) { return false; } // ensure that the cookie matches the header try { AntiForgery.Validate(cookieToken.Value, headerToken); } catch { return false; } return base.IsAuthorized(actionContext); } } } Notice that the action filter derives from the base AuthorizeAttribute. The ValidateAjaxAntiForgeryToken only works when the user is authenticated and it will not work for anonymous requests. Add the action filter to your ASP.NET Web API controller actions like this: [ValidateAjaxAntiForgeryToken] public HttpResponseMessage PostProduct(Product productToCreate) { // add product to db return Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK); } After you complete these steps, it won’t be possible for a hacker to pretend to be you at Hackers.com and submit a form to MajorBank.com. The header token used in the Ajax request won’t travel to Hackers.com. This approach works, but I am not entirely happy with it. The one thing that I don’t like about this approach is that it creates a hard dependency on using razor. Your single page in your Single Page App must be generated from a server-side razor view. A better solution would be to generate the anti-forgery token in JavaScript. Unfortunately, until all browsers support a way to generate cryptographically strong random numbers – for example, by supporting the window.crypto.getRandomValues() method — there is no good way to generate anti-forgery tokens in JavaScript. So, at least right now, the best solution for generating the tokens is the server-side solution with the (regrettable) dependency on razor. Conclusion The goal of this blog entry was to explore some ways in which you need to handle security differently in the case of a Single Page App than in the case of a traditional server app. In particular, I focused on how to prevent Cross-Site Scripting and Cross-Site Request Forgery attacks in the case of a Single Page App. I want to emphasize that I am not suggesting that Single Page Apps are inherently less secure than server-side apps. Whatever type of web application you build – regardless of whether it is a Single Page App, an ASP.NET MVC app, an ASP.NET Web Forms app, or a Rails app – you must constantly guard against security vulnerabilities.

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• Using TPL and PLINQ to raise performance of feed aggregator

  - by DigiMortal

  In this posting I will show you how to use Task Parallel Library (TPL) and PLINQ features to boost performance of simple RSS-feed aggregator. I will use here only very basic .NET classes that almost every developer starts from when learning parallel programming. Of course, we will also measure how every optimization affects performance of feed aggregator. Feed aggregator Our feed aggregator works as follows: Load list of blogs Download RSS-feed Parse feed XML Add new posts to database Our feed aggregator is run by task scheduler after every 15 minutes by example. We will start our journey with serial implementation of feed aggregator. Second step is to use task parallelism and parallelize feeds downloading and parsing. And our last step is to use data parallelism to parallelize database operations. We will use Stopwatch class to measure how much time it takes for aggregator to download and insert all posts from all registered blogs. After every run we empty posts table in database. Serial aggregation Before doing parallel stuff let’s take a look at serial implementation of feed aggregator. All tasks happen one after other. internal class FeedClient {     private readonly INewsService _newsService;     private const int FeedItemContentMaxLength = 255;       public FeedClient()     {          ObjectFactory.Initialize(container =>          {              container.PullConfigurationFromAppConfig = true;          });           _newsService = ObjectFactory.GetInstance<INewsService>();     }       public void Execute()     {         var blogs = _newsService.ListPublishedBlogs();           for (var index = 0; index <blogs.Count; index++)         {              ImportFeed(blogs[index]);         }     }       private void ImportFeed(BlogDto blog)     {         if(blog == null)             return;         if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(blog.RssUrl))             return;           var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl);         SyndicationContentFormat feedFormat;           feedFormat = SyndicationDiscoveryUtility.SyndicationContentFormatGet(uri);           if (feedFormat == SyndicationContentFormat.Rss)             ImportRssFeed(blog);         if (feedFormat == SyndicationContentFormat.Atom)             ImportAtomFeed(blog);                 }       private void ImportRssFeed(BlogDto blog)     {         var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl);         var feed = RssFeed.Create(uri);           foreach (var item in feed.Channel.Items)         {             SaveRssFeedItem(item, blog.Id, blog.CreatedById);         }     }       private void ImportAtomFeed(BlogDto blog)     {         var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl);         var feed = AtomFeed.Create(uri);           foreach (var item in feed.Entries)         {             SaveAtomFeedEntry(item, blog.Id, blog.CreatedById);         }     } } Serial implementation of feed aggregator downloads and inserts all posts with 25.46 seconds. Task parallelism Task parallelism means that separate tasks are run in parallel. You can find out more about task parallelism from MSDN page Task Parallelism (Task Parallel Library) and Wikipedia page Task parallelism. Although finding parts of code that can run safely in parallel without synchronization issues is not easy task we are lucky this time. Feeds import and parsing is perfect candidate for parallel tasks. We can safely parallelize feeds import because importing tasks doesn’t share any resources and therefore they don’t also need any synchronization. After getting the list of blogs we iterate through the collection and start new TPL task for each blog feed aggregation. internal class FeedClient {     private readonly INewsService _newsService;     private const int FeedItemContentMaxLength = 255;       public FeedClient()     {          ObjectFactory.Initialize(container =>          {              container.PullConfigurationFromAppConfig = true;          });           _newsService = ObjectFactory.GetInstance<INewsService>();     }       public void Execute()     {         var blogs = _newsService.ListPublishedBlogs();                var tasks = new Task[blogs.Count];           for (var index = 0; index <blogs.Count; index++)         {             tasks[index] = new Task(ImportFeed, blogs[index]);             tasks[index].Start();         }           Task.WaitAll(tasks);     }       private void ImportFeed(object blogObject)     {         if(blogObject == null)             return;         var blog = (BlogDto)blogObject;         if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(blog.RssUrl))             return;           var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl);         SyndicationContentFormat feedFormat;           feedFormat = SyndicationDiscoveryUtility.SyndicationContentFormatGet(uri);           if (feedFormat == SyndicationContentFormat.Rss)             ImportRssFeed(blog);         if (feedFormat == SyndicationContentFormat.Atom)             ImportAtomFeed(blog);                }       private void ImportRssFeed(BlogDto blog)     {          var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl);          var feed = RssFeed.Create(uri);           foreach (var item in feed.Channel.Items)          {              SaveRssFeedItem(item, blog.Id, blog.CreatedById);          }     }     private void ImportAtomFeed(BlogDto blog)     {         var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl);         var feed = AtomFeed.Create(uri);           foreach (var item in feed.Entries)         {             SaveAtomFeedEntry(item, blog.Id, blog.CreatedById);         }     } } You should notice first signs of the power of TPL. We made only minor changes to our code to parallelize blog feeds aggregating. On my machine this modification gives some performance boost – time is now 17.57 seconds. Data parallelism There is one more way how to parallelize activities. Previous section introduced task or operation based parallelism, this section introduces data based parallelism. By MSDN page Data Parallelism (Task Parallel Library) data parallelism refers to scenario in which the same operation is performed concurrently on elements in a source collection or array. In our code we have independent collections we can process in parallel – imported feed entries. As checking for feed entry existence and inserting it if it is missing from database doesn’t affect other entries the imported feed entries collection is ideal candidate for parallelization. internal class FeedClient {     private readonly INewsService _newsService;     private const int FeedItemContentMaxLength = 255;       public FeedClient()     {          ObjectFactory.Initialize(container =>          {              container.PullConfigurationFromAppConfig = true;          });           _newsService = ObjectFactory.GetInstance<INewsService>();     }       public void Execute()     {         var blogs = _newsService.ListPublishedBlogs();                var tasks = new Task[blogs.Count];           for (var index = 0; index <blogs.Count; index++)         {             tasks[index] = new Task(ImportFeed, blogs[index]);             tasks[index].Start();         }           Task.WaitAll(tasks);     }       private void ImportFeed(object blogObject)     {         if(blogObject == null)             return;         var blog = (BlogDto)blogObject;         if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(blog.RssUrl))             return;           var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl);         SyndicationContentFormat feedFormat;           feedFormat = SyndicationDiscoveryUtility.SyndicationContentFormatGet(uri);           if (feedFormat == SyndicationContentFormat.Rss)             ImportRssFeed(blog);         if (feedFormat == SyndicationContentFormat.Atom)             ImportAtomFeed(blog);                }       private void ImportRssFeed(BlogDto blog)     {         var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl);         var feed = RssFeed.Create(uri);           feed.Channel.Items.AsParallel().ForAll(a =>         {             SaveRssFeedItem(a, blog.Id, blog.CreatedById);         });      }        private void ImportAtomFeed(BlogDto blog)      {         var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl);         var feed = AtomFeed.Create(uri);           feed.Entries.AsParallel().ForAll(a =>         {              SaveAtomFeedEntry(a, blog.Id, blog.CreatedById);         });      } } We did small change again and as the result we parallelized checking and saving of feed items. This change was data centric as we applied same operation to all elements in collection. On my machine I got better performance again. Time is now 11.22 seconds. Results Let’s visualize our measurement results (numbers are given in seconds). As we can see then with task parallelism feed aggregation takes about 25% less time than in original case. When adding data parallelism to task parallelism our aggregation takes about 2.3 times less time than in original case. More about TPL and PLINQ Adding parallelism to your application can be very challenging task. You have to carefully find out parts of your code where you can safely go to parallel processing and even then you have to measure the effects of parallel processing to find out if parallel code performs better. If you are not careful then troubles you will face later are worse than ones you have seen before (imagine error that occurs by average only once per 10000 code runs). Parallel programming is something that is hard to ignore. Effective programs are able to use multiple cores of processors. Using TPL you can also set degree of parallelism so your application doesn’t use all computing cores and leaves one or more of them free for host system and other processes. And there are many more things in TPL that make it easier for you to start and go on with parallel programming. In next major version all .NET languages will have built-in support for parallel programming. There will be also new language constructs that support parallel programming. Currently you can download Visual Studio Async to get some idea about what is coming. Conclusion Parallel programming is very challenging but good tools offered by Visual Studio and .NET Framework make it way easier for us. In this posting we started with feed aggregator that imports feed items on serial mode. With two steps we parallelized feed importing and entries inserting gaining 2.3 times raise in performance. Although this number is specific to my test environment it shows clearly that parallel programming may raise the performance of your application significantly.

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• PTLQueue : a scalable bounded-capacity MPMC queue

  - by Dave

  Title: Fast concurrent MPMC queue -- I've used the following concurrent queue algorithm enough that it warrants a blog entry. I'll sketch out the design of a fast and scalable multiple-producer multiple-consumer (MPSC) concurrent queue called PTLQueue. The queue has bounded capacity and is implemented via a circular array. Bounded capacity can be a useful property if there's a mismatch between producer rates and consumer rates where an unbounded queue might otherwise result in excessive memory consumption by virtue of the container nodes that -- in some queue implementations -- are used to hold values. A bounded-capacity queue can provide flow control between components. Beware, however, that bounded collections can also result in resource deadlock if abused. The put() and take() operators are partial and wait for the collection to become non-full or non-empty, respectively. Put() and take() do not allocate memory, and are not vulnerable to the ABA pathologies. The PTLQueue algorithm can be implemented equally well in C/C++ and Java. Partial operators are often more convenient than total methods. In many use cases if the preconditions aren't met, there's nothing else useful the thread can do, so it may as well wait via a partial method. An exception is in the case of work-stealing queues where a thief might scan a set of queues from which it could potentially steal. Total methods return ASAP with a success-failure indication. (It's tempting to describe a queue or API as blocking or non-blocking instead of partial or total, but non-blocking is already an overloaded concurrency term. Perhaps waiting/non-waiting or patient/impatient might be better terms). It's also trivial to construct partial operators by busy-waiting via total operators, but such constructs may be less efficient than an operator explicitly and intentionally designed to wait. A PTLQueue instance contains an array of slots, where each slot has volatile Turn and MailBox fields. The array has power-of-two length allowing mod/div operations to be replaced by masking. We assume sensible padding and alignment to reduce the impact of false sharing. (On x86 I recommend 128-byte alignment and padding because of the adjacent-sector prefetch facility). Each queue also has PutCursor and TakeCursor cursor variables, each of which should be sequestered as the sole occupant of a cache line or sector. You can opt to use 64-bit integers if concerned about wrap-around aliasing in the cursor variables. Put(null) is considered illegal, but the caller or implementation can easily check for and convert null to a distinguished non-null proxy value if null happens to be a value you'd like to pass. Take() will accordingly convert the proxy value back to null. An advantage of PTLQueue is that you can use atomic fetch-and-increment for the partial methods. We initialize each slot at index I with (Turn=I, MailBox=null). Both cursors are initially 0. All shared variables are considered "volatile" and atomics such as CAS and AtomicFetchAndIncrement are presumed to have bidirectional fence semantics. Finally T is the templated type. I've sketched out a total tryTake() method below that allows the caller to poll the queue. tryPut() has an analogous construction. Zebra stripping : alternating row colors for nice-looking code listings. See also google code "prettify" : https://code.google.com/p/google-code-prettify/ Prettify is a javascript module that yields the HTML/CSS/JS equivalent of pretty-print. -- pre:nth-child(odd) { background-color:#ff0000; } pre:nth-child(even) { background-color:#0000ff; } border-left: 11px solid #ccc; margin: 1.7em 0 1.7em 0.3em; background-color:#BFB; font-size:12px; line-height:65%; " // PTLQueue : Put(v) : // producer : partial method - waits as necessary assert v != null assert Mask = 1 && (Mask & (Mask+1)) == 0 // Document invariants // doorway step // Obtain a sequence number -- ticket // As a practical concern the ticket value is temporally unique // The ticket also identifies and selects a slot auto tkt = AtomicFetchIncrement (&PutCursor, 1) slot * s = &Slots[tkt & Mask] // waiting phase : // wait for slot's generation to match the tkt value assigned to this put() invocation. // The "generation" is implicitly encoded as the upper bits in the cursor // above those used to specify the index : tkt div (Mask+1) // The generation serves as an epoch number to identify a cohort of threads // accessing disjoint slots while s-Turn != tkt : Pause assert s-MailBox == null s-MailBox = v // deposit and pass message Take() : // consumer : partial method - waits as necessary auto tkt = AtomicFetchIncrement (&TakeCursor,1) slot * s = &Slots[tkt & Mask] // 2-stage waiting : // First wait for turn for our generation // Acquire exclusive "take" access to slot's MailBox field // Then wait for the slot to become occupied while s-Turn != tkt : Pause // Concurrency in this section of code is now reduced to just 1 producer thread // vs 1 consumer thread. // For a given queue and slot, there will be most one Take() operation running // in this section. // Consumer waits for producer to arrive and make slot non-empty // Extract message; clear mailbox; advance Turn indicator // We have an obvious happens-before relation : // Put(m) happens-before corresponding Take() that returns that same "m" for T v = s-MailBox if v != null : s-MailBox = null ST-ST barrier s-Turn = tkt + Mask + 1 // unlock slot to admit next producer and consumer return v Pause tryTake() : // total method - returns ASAP with failure indication for auto tkt = TakeCursor slot * s = &Slots[tkt & Mask] if s-Turn != tkt : return null T v = s-MailBox // presumptive return value if v == null : return null // ratify tkt and v values and commit by advancing cursor if CAS (&TakeCursor, tkt, tkt+1) != tkt : continue s-MailBox = null ST-ST barrier s-Turn = tkt + Mask + 1 return v The basic idea derives from the Partitioned Ticket Lock "PTL" (US20120240126-A1) and the MultiLane Concurrent Bag (US8689237). The latter is essentially a circular ring-buffer where the elements themselves are queues or concurrent collections. You can think of the PTLQueue as a partitioned ticket lock "PTL" augmented to pass values from lock to unlock via the slots. Alternatively, you could conceptualize of PTLQueue as a degenerate MultiLane bag where each slot or "lane" consists of a simple single-word MailBox instead of a general queue. Each lane in PTLQueue also has a private Turn field which acts like the Turn (Grant) variables found in PTL. Turn enforces strict FIFO ordering and restricts concurrency on the slot mailbox field to at most one simultaneous put() and take() operation. PTL uses a single "ticket" variable and per-slot Turn (grant) fields while MultiLane has distinct PutCursor and TakeCursor cursors and abstract per-slot sub-queues. Both PTL and MultiLane advance their cursor and ticket variables with atomic fetch-and-increment. PTLQueue borrows from both PTL and MultiLane and has distinct put and take cursors and per-slot Turn fields. Instead of a per-slot queues, PTLQueue uses a simple single-word MailBox field. PutCursor and TakeCursor act like a pair of ticket locks, conferring "put" and "take" access to a given slot. PutCursor, for instance, assigns an incoming put() request to a slot and serves as a PTL "Ticket" to acquire "put" permission to that slot's MailBox field. To better explain the operation of PTLQueue we deconstruct the operation of put() and take() as follows. Put() first increments PutCursor obtaining a new unique ticket. That ticket value also identifies a slot. Put() next waits for that slot's Turn field to match that ticket value. This is tantamount to using a PTL to acquire "put" permission on the slot's MailBox field. Finally, having obtained exclusive "put" permission on the slot, put() stores the message value into the slot's MailBox. Take() similarly advances TakeCursor, identifying a slot, and then acquires and secures "take" permission on a slot by waiting for Turn. Take() then waits for the slot's MailBox to become non-empty, extracts the message, and clears MailBox. Finally, take() advances the slot's Turn field, which releases both "put" and "take" access to the slot's MailBox. Note the asymmetry : put() acquires "put" access to the slot, but take() releases that lock. At any given time, for a given slot in a PTLQueue, at most one thread has "put" access and at most one thread has "take" access. This restricts concurrency from general MPMC to 1-vs-1. We have 2 ticket locks -- one for put() and one for take() -- each with its own "ticket" variable in the form of the corresponding cursor, but they share a single "Grant" egress variable in the form of the slot's Turn variable. Advancing the PutCursor, for instance, serves two purposes. First, we obtain a unique ticket which identifies a slot. Second, incrementing the cursor is the doorway protocol step to acquire the per-slot mutual exclusion "put" lock. The cursors and operations to increment those cursors serve double-duty : slot-selection and ticket assignment for locking the slot's MailBox field. At any given time a slot MailBox field can be in one of the following states: empty with no pending operations -- neutral state; empty with one or more waiting take() operations pending -- deficit; occupied with no pending operations; occupied with one or more waiting put() operations -- surplus; empty with a pending put() or pending put() and take() operations -- transitional; or occupied with a pending take() or pending put() and take() operations -- transitional. The partial put() and take() operators can be implemented with an atomic fetch-and-increment operation, which may confer a performance advantage over a CAS-based loop. In addition we have independent PutCursor and TakeCursor cursors. Critically, a put() operation modifies PutCursor but does not access the TakeCursor and a take() operation modifies the TakeCursor cursor but does not access the PutCursor. This acts to reduce coherence traffic relative to some other queue designs. It's worth noting that slow threads or obstruction in one slot (or "lane") does not impede or obstruct operations in other slots -- this gives us some degree of obstruction isolation. PTLQueue is not lock-free, however. The implementation above is expressed with polite busy-waiting (Pause) but it's trivial to implement per-slot parking and unparking to deschedule waiting threads. It's also easy to convert the queue to a more general deque by replacing the PutCursor and TakeCursor cursors with Left/Front and Right/Back cursors that can move either direction. Specifically, to push and pop from the "left" side of the deque we would decrement and increment the Left cursor, respectively, and to push and pop from the "right" side of the deque we would increment and decrement the Right cursor, respectively. We used a variation of PTLQueue for message passing in our recent OPODIS 2013 paper. ul { list-style:none; padding-left:0; padding:0; margin:0; margin-left:0; } ul#myTagID { padding: 0px; margin: 0px; list-style:none; margin-left:0;} -- -- There's quite a bit of related literature in this area. I'll call out a few relevant references: Wilson's NYU Courant Institute UltraComputer dissertation from 1988 is classic and the canonical starting point : Operating System Data Structures for Shared-Memory MIMD Machines with Fetch-and-Add. Regarding provenance and priority, I think PTLQueue or queues effectively equivalent to PTLQueue have been independently rediscovered a number of times. See CB-Queue and BNPBV, below, for instance. But Wilson's dissertation anticipates the basic idea and seems to predate all the others. Gottlieb et al : Basic Techniques for the Efficient Coordination of Very Large Numbers of Cooperating Sequential Processors Orozco et al : CB-Queue in Toward high-throughput algorithms on many-core architectures which appeared in TACO 2012. Meneghin et al : BNPVB family in Performance evaluation of inter-thread communication mechanisms on multicore/multithreaded architecture Dmitry Vyukov : bounded MPMC queue (highly recommended) Alex Otenko : US8607249 (highly related). John Mellor-Crummey : Concurrent queues: Practical fetch-and-phi algorithms. Technical Report 229, Department of Computer Science, University of Rochester Thomasson : FIFO Distributed Bakery Algorithm (very similar to PTLQueue). Scott and Scherer : Dual Data Structures I'll propose an optimization left as an exercise for the reader. Say we wanted to reduce memory usage by eliminating inter-slot padding. Such padding is usually "dark" memory and otherwise unused and wasted. But eliminating the padding leaves us at risk of increased false sharing. Furthermore lets say it was usually the case that the PutCursor and TakeCursor were numerically close to each other. (That's true in some use cases). We might still reduce false sharing by incrementing the cursors by some value other than 1 that is not trivially small and is coprime with the number of slots. Alternatively, we might increment the cursor by one and mask as usual, resulting in a logical index. We then use that logical index value to index into a permutation table, yielding an effective index for use in the slot array. The permutation table would be constructed so that nearby logical indices would map to more distant effective indices. (Open question: what should that permutation look like? Possibly some perversion of a Gray code or De Bruijn sequence might be suitable). As an aside, say we need to busy-wait for some condition as follows : "while C == 0 : Pause". Lets say that C is usually non-zero, so we typically don't wait. But when C happens to be 0 we'll have to spin for some period, possibly brief. We can arrange for the code to be more machine-friendly with respect to the branch predictors by transforming the loop into : "if C == 0 : for { Pause; if C != 0 : break; }". Critically, we want to restructure the loop so there's one branch that controls entry and another that controls loop exit. A concern is that your compiler or JIT might be clever enough to transform this back to "while C == 0 : Pause". You can sometimes avoid this by inserting a call to a some type of very cheap "opaque" method that the compiler can't elide or reorder. On Solaris, for instance, you could use :"if C == 0 : { gethrtime(); for { Pause; if C != 0 : break; }}". It's worth noting the obvious duality between locks and queues. If you have strict FIFO lock implementation with local spinning and succession by direct handoff such as MCS or CLH,then you can usually transform that lock into a queue. Hidden commentary and annotations - invisible : * And of course there's a well-known duality between queues and locks, but I'll leave that topic for another blog post. * Compare and contrast : PTLQ vs PTL and MultiLane * Equivalent : Turn; seq; sequence; pos; position; ticket * Put = Lock; Deposit Take = identify and reserve slot; wait; extract & clear; unlock * conceptualize : Distinct PutLock and TakeLock implemented as ticket lock or PTL Distinct arrival cursors but share per-slot "Turn" variable provides exclusive role-based access to slot's mailbox field put() acquires exclusive access to a slot for purposes of "deposit" assigns slot round-robin and then acquires deposit access rights/perms to that slot take() acquires exclusive access to slot for purposes of "withdrawal" assigns slot round-robin and then acquires withdrawal access rights/perms to that slot At any given time, only one thread can have withdrawal access to a slot at any given time, only one thread can have deposit access to a slot Permissible for T1 to have deposit access and T2 to simultaneously have withdrawal access * round-robin for the purposes of; role-based; access mode; access role mailslot; mailbox; allocate/assign/identify slot rights; permission; license; access permission; * PTL/Ticket hybrid Asymmetric usage ; owner oblivious lock-unlock pairing K-exclusion add Grant cursor pass message m from lock to unlock via Slots[] array Cursor performs 2 functions : + PTL ticket + Assigns request to slot in round-robin fashion Deconstruct protocol : explication put() : allocate slot in round-robin fashion acquire PTL for "put" access store message into slot associated with PTL index take() : Acquire PTL for "take" access // doorway step seq = fetchAdd (&Grant, 1) s = &Slots[seq & Mask] // waiting phase while s-Turn != seq : pause Extract : wait for s-mailbox to be full v = s-mailbox s-mailbox = null Release PTL for both "put" and "take" access s-Turn = seq + Mask + 1 * Slot round-robin assignment and lock "doorway" protocol leverage the same cursor and FetchAdd operation on that cursor FetchAdd (&Cursor,1) + round-robin slot assignment and dispersal + PTL/ticket lock "doorway" step waiting phase is via "Turn" field in slot * PTLQueue uses 2 cursors -- put and take. Acquire "put" access to slot via PTL-like lock Acquire "take" access to slot via PTL-like lock 2 locks : put and take -- at most one thread can access slot's mailbox Both locks use same "turn" field Like multilane : 2 cursors : put and take slot is simple 1-capacity mailbox instead of queue Borrow per-slot turn/grant from PTL Provides strict FIFO Lock slot : put-vs-put take-vs-take at most one put accesses slot at any one time at most one put accesses take at any one time reduction to 1-vs-1 instead of N-vs-M concurrency Per slot locks for put/take Release put/take by advancing turn * is instrumental in ... * P-V Semaphore vs lock vs K-exclusion * See also : FastQueues-excerpt.java dice-etc/queue-mpmc-bounded-blocking-circular-xadd/ * PTLQueue is the same as PTLQB - identical * Expedient return; ASAP; prompt; immediately * Lamport's Bakery algorithm : doorway step then waiting phase Threads arriving at doorway obtain a unique ticket number Threads enter in ticket order * In the terminology of Reed and Kanodia a ticket lock corresponds to the busy-wait implementation of a semaphore using an eventcount and a sequencer It can also be thought of as an optimization of Lamport's bakery lock was designed for fault-tolerance rather than performance Instead of spinning on the release counter, processors using a bakery lock repeatedly examine the tickets of their peers --

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• Using the ASP.NET Cache to cache data in a Model or Business Object layer, without a dependency on System.Web in the layer - Part One.

  - by Rhames

  ASP.NET applications can make use of the System.Web.Caching.Cache object to cache data and prevent repeated expensive calls to a database or other store. However, ideally an application should make use of caching at the point where data is retrieved from the database, which typically is inside a Business Objects or Model layer. One of the key features of using a UI pattern such as Model-View-Presenter (MVP) or Model-View-Controller (MVC) is that the Model and Presenter (or Controller) layers are developed without any knowledge of the UI layer. Introducing a dependency on System.Web into the Model layer would break this independence of the Model from the View. This article gives a solution to this problem, using dependency injection to inject the caching implementation into the Model layer at runtime. This allows caching to be used within the Model layer, without any knowledge of the actual caching mechanism that will be used. Create a sample application to use the caching solution Create a test SQL Server database This solution uses a SQL Server database with the same Sales data used in my previous post on calculating running totals. The advantage of using this data is that it gives nice slow queries that will exaggerate the effect of using caching! To create the data, first create a new SQL database called CacheSample. Next run the following script to create the Sale table and populate it: USE CacheSample GO   CREATE TABLE Sale(DayCount smallint, Sales money) CREATE CLUSTERED INDEX ndx_DayCount ON Sale(DayCount) go INSERT Sale VALUES (1,120) INSERT Sale VALUES (2,60) INSERT Sale VALUES (3,125) INSERT Sale VALUES (4,40)   DECLARE @DayCount smallint, @Sales money SET @DayCount = 5 SET @Sales = 10   WHILE @DayCount < 5000  BEGIN  INSERT Sale VALUES (@DayCount,@Sales)  SET @DayCount = @DayCount + 1  SET @Sales = @Sales + 15  END Next create a stored procedure to calculate the running total, and return a specified number of rows from the Sale table, using the following script: USE [CacheSample] GO   SET ANSI_NULLS ON GO   SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON GO   -- ============================================= -- Author:        Robin -- Create date: -- Description:   -- ============================================= CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[spGetRunningTotals]       -- Add the parameters for the stored procedure here       @HighestDayCount smallint = null AS BEGIN       -- SET NOCOUNT ON added to prevent extra result sets from       -- interfering with SELECT statements.       SET NOCOUNT ON;         IF @HighestDayCount IS NULL             SELECT @HighestDayCount = MAX(DayCount) FROM dbo.Sale                   DECLARE @SaleTbl TABLE (DayCount smallint, Sales money, RunningTotal money)         DECLARE @DayCount smallint,                   @Sales money,                   @RunningTotal money         SET @RunningTotal = 0       SET @DayCount = 0         DECLARE rt_cursor CURSOR       FOR       SELECT DayCount, Sales       FROM Sale       ORDER BY DayCount         OPEN rt_cursor         FETCH NEXT FROM rt_cursor INTO @DayCount,@Sales         WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0 AND @DayCount <= @HighestDayCount        BEGIN        SET @RunningTotal = @RunningTotal + @Sales        INSERT @SaleTbl VALUES (@DayCount,@Sales,@RunningTotal)        FETCH NEXT FROM rt_cursor INTO @DayCount,@Sales        END         CLOSE rt_cursor       DEALLOCATE rt_cursor         SELECT DayCount, Sales, RunningTotal       FROM @SaleTbl   END   GO   Create the Sample ASP.NET application In Visual Studio create a new solution and add a class library project called CacheSample.BusinessObjects and an ASP.NET web application called CacheSample.UI. The CacheSample.BusinessObjects project will contain a single class to represent a Sale data item, with all the code to retrieve the sales from the database included in it for simplicity (normally I would at least have a separate Repository or other object that is responsible for retrieving data, and probably a data access layer as well, but for this sample I want to keep it simple). The C# code for the Sale class is shown below: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Data; using System.Data.SqlClient;   namespace CacheSample.BusinessObjects {     public class Sale     {         public Int16 DayCount { get; set; }         public decimal Sales { get; set; }         public decimal RunningTotal { get; set; }           public static IEnumerable<Sale> GetSales(int? highestDayCount)         {             List<Sale> sales = new List<Sale>();               SqlParameter highestDayCountParameter = new SqlParameter("@HighestDayCount", SqlDbType.SmallInt);             if (highestDayCount.HasValue)                 highestDayCountParameter.Value = highestDayCount;             else                 highestDayCountParameter.Value = DBNull.Value;               string connectionStr = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager .ConnectionStrings["CacheSample"].ConnectionString;               using(SqlConnection sqlConn = new SqlConnection(connectionStr))             using (SqlCommand sqlCmd = sqlConn.CreateCommand())             {                 sqlCmd.CommandText = "spGetRunningTotals";                 sqlCmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;                 sqlCmd.Parameters.Add(highestDayCountParameter);                   sqlConn.Open();                   using (SqlDataReader dr = sqlCmd.ExecuteReader())                 {                     while (dr.Read())                     {                         Sale newSale = new Sale();                         newSale.DayCount = dr.GetInt16(0);                         newSale.Sales = dr.GetDecimal(1);                         newSale.RunningTotal = dr.GetDecimal(2);                           sales.Add(newSale);                     }                 }             }               return sales;         }     } }   The static GetSale() method makes a call to the spGetRunningTotals stored procedure and then reads each row from the returned SqlDataReader into an instance of the Sale class, it then returns a List of the Sale objects, as IEnnumerable<Sale>. A reference to System.Configuration needs to be added to the CacheSample.BusinessObjects project so that the connection string can be read from the web.config file. In the CacheSample.UI ASP.NET project, create a single web page called ShowSales.aspx, and make this the default start up page. This page will contain a single button to call the GetSales() method and a label to display the results. The html mark up and the C# code behind are shown below: ShowSales.aspx <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="ShowSales.aspx.cs" Inherits="CacheSample.UI.ShowSales" %>   <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">   <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head runat="server">     <title>Cache Sample - Show All Sales</title> </head> <body>     <form id="form1" runat="server">     <div>         <asp:Button ID="btnTest1" runat="server" onclick="btnTest1_Click"             Text="Get All Sales" />         &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;         <asp:Label ID="lblResults" runat="server"></asp:Label>         </div>     </form> </body> </html>   ShowSales.aspx.cs using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; using System.Web.UI; using System.Web.UI.WebControls;   using CacheSample.BusinessObjects;   namespace CacheSample.UI {     public partial class ShowSales : System.Web.UI.Page     {         protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)         {         }           protected void btnTest1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)         {             System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch stopWatch = new System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch();             stopWatch.Start();               var sales = Sale.GetSales(null);               var lastSales = sales.Last();               stopWatch.Stop();               lblResults.Text = string.Format( "Count of Sales: {0}, Last DayCount: {1}, Total Sales: {2}. Query took {3} ms", sales.Count(), lastSales.DayCount, lastSales.RunningTotal, stopWatch.ElapsedMilliseconds);         }       } }   Finally we need to add a connection string to the CacheSample SQL Server database, called CacheSample, to the web.config file: <?xmlversion="1.0"?>   <configuration>    <connectionStrings>     <addname="CacheSample"          connectionString="data source=.\SQLEXPRESS;Integrated Security=SSPI;Initial Catalog=CacheSample"          providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />  </connectionStrings>    <system.web>     <compilationdebug="true"targetFramework="4.0" />  </system.web>   </configuration>   Run the application and click the button a few times to see how long each call to the database takes. On my system, each query takes about 450ms. Next I shall look at a solution to use the ASP.NET caching to cache the data returned by the query, so that subsequent requests to the GetSales() method are much faster. Adding Data Caching Support I am going to create my caching support in a separate project called CacheSample.Caching, so the next step is to add a class library to the solution. We shall be using the application configuration to define the implementation of our caching system, so we need a reference to System.Configuration adding to the project. ICacheProvider<T> Interface The first step in adding caching to our application is to define an interface, called ICacheProvider, in the CacheSample.Caching project, with methods to retrieve any data from the cache or to retrieve the data from the data source if it is not present in the cache. Dependency Injection will then be used to inject an implementation of this interface at runtime, allowing the users of the interface (i.e. the CacheSample.BusinessObjects project) to be completely unaware of how the caching is actually implemented. As data of any type maybe retrieved from the data source, it makes sense to use generics in the interface, with a generic type parameter defining the data type associated with a particular instance of the cache interface implementation. The C# code for the ICacheProvider interface is shown below: using System; using System.Collections.Generic;   namespace CacheSample.Caching {     public interface ICacheProvider     {     }       public interface ICacheProvider<T> : ICacheProvider     {         T Fetch(string key, Func<T> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry);           IEnumerable<T> Fetch(string key, Func<IEnumerable<T>> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry);     } }   The empty non-generic interface will be used as a type in a Dictionary generic collection later to store instances of the ICacheProvider<T> implementation for reuse, I prefer to use a base interface when doing this, as I think the alternative of using object makes for less clear code. The ICacheProvider<T> interface defines two overloaded Fetch methods, the difference between these is that one will return a single instance of the type T and the other will return an IEnumerable<T>, providing support for easy caching of collections of data items. Both methods will take a key parameter, which will uniquely identify the cached data, a delegate of type Func<T> or Func<IEnumerable<T>> which will provide the code to retrieve the data from the store if it is not present in the cache, and absolute or relative expiry policies to define when a cached item should expire. Note that at present there is no support for cache dependencies, but I shall be showing a method of adding this in part two of this article. CacheProviderFactory Class We need a mechanism of creating instances of our ICacheProvider<T> interface, using Dependency Injection to get the implementation of the interface. To do this we shall create a CacheProviderFactory static class in the CacheSample.Caching project. This factory will provide a generic static method called GetCacheProvider<T>(), which shall return instances of ICacheProvider<T>. We can then call this factory method with the relevant data type (for example the Sale class in the CacheSample.BusinessObject project) to get a instance of ICacheProvider for that type (e.g. call CacheProviderFactory.GetCacheProvider<Sale>() to get the ICacheProvider<Sale> implementation). The C# code for the CacheProviderFactory is shown below: using System; using System.Collections.Generic;   using CacheSample.Caching.Configuration;   namespace CacheSample.Caching {     public static class CacheProviderFactory     {         private static Dictionary<Type, ICacheProvider> cacheProviders = new Dictionary<Type, ICacheProvider>();         private static object syncRoot = new object();           ///<summary>         /// Factory method to create or retrieve an implementation of the  /// ICacheProvider interface for type <typeparamref name="T"/>.         ///</summary>         ///<typeparam name="T">  /// The type that this cache provider instance will work with  ///</typeparam>         ///<returns>An instance of the implementation of ICacheProvider for type  ///<typeparamref name="T"/>, as specified by the application  /// configuration</returns>         public static ICacheProvider<T> GetCacheProvider<T>()         {             ICacheProvider<T> cacheProvider = null;             // Get the Type reference for the type parameter T             Type typeOfT = typeof(T);               // Lock the access to the cacheProviders dictionary             // so multiple threads can work with it             lock (syncRoot)             {                 // First check if an instance of the ICacheProvider implementation  // already exists in the cacheProviders dictionary for the type T                 if (cacheProviders.ContainsKey(typeOfT))                     cacheProvider = (ICacheProvider<T>)cacheProviders[typeOfT];                 else                 {                     // There is not already an instance of the ICacheProvider in       // cacheProviders for the type T                     // so we need to create one                       // Get the Type reference for the application's implementation of       // ICacheProvider from the configuration                     Type cacheProviderType = Type.GetType(CacheProviderConfigurationSection.Current. CacheProviderType);                     if (cacheProviderType != null)                     {                         // Now get a Type reference for the Cache Provider with the                         // type T generic parameter                         Type typeOfCacheProviderTypeForT = cacheProviderType.MakeGenericType(new Type[] { typeOfT });                         if (typeOfCacheProviderTypeForT != null)                         {                             // Create the instance of the Cache Provider and add it to // the cacheProviders dictionary for future use                             cacheProvider = (ICacheProvider<T>)Activator. CreateInstance(typeOfCacheProviderTypeForT);                             cacheProviders.Add(typeOfT, cacheProvider);                         }                     }                 }             }               return cacheProvider;                 }     } }   As this code uses Activator.CreateInstance() to create instances of the ICacheProvider<T> implementation, which is a slow process, the factory class maintains a Dictionary of the previously created instances so that a cache provider needs to be created only once for each type. The type of the implementation of ICacheProvider<T> is read from a custom configuration section in the application configuration file, via the CacheProviderConfigurationSection class, which is described below. CacheProviderConfigurationSection Class The implementation of ICacheProvider<T> will be specified in a custom configuration section in the application’s configuration. To handle this create a folder in the CacheSample.Caching project called Configuration, and add a class called CacheProviderConfigurationSection to this folder. This class will extend the System.Configuration.ConfigurationSection class, and will contain a single string property called CacheProviderType. The C# code for this class is shown below: using System; using System.Configuration;   namespace CacheSample.Caching.Configuration {     internal class CacheProviderConfigurationSection : ConfigurationSection     {         public static CacheProviderConfigurationSection Current         {             get             {                 return (CacheProviderConfigurationSection) ConfigurationManager.GetSection("cacheProvider");             }         }           [ConfigurationProperty("type", IsRequired=true)]         public string CacheProviderType         {             get             {                 return (string)this["type"];             }         }     } }   Adding Data Caching to the Sales Class We now have enough code in place to add caching to the GetSales() method in the CacheSample.BusinessObjects.Sale class, even though we do not yet have an implementation of the ICacheProvider<T> interface. We need to add a reference to the CacheSample.Caching project to CacheSample.BusinessObjects so that we can use the ICacheProvider<T> interface within the GetSales() method. Once the reference is added, we can first create a unique string key based on the method name and the parameter value, so that the same cache key is used for repeated calls to the method with the same parameter values. Then we get an instance of the cache provider for the Sales type, using the CacheProviderFactory, and pass the existing code to retrieve the data from the database as the retrievalMethod delegate in a call to the Cache Provider Fetch() method. The C# code for the modified GetSales() method is shown below: public static IEnumerable<Sale> GetSales(int? highestDayCount) {     string cacheKey = string.Format("CacheSample.BusinessObjects.GetSalesWithCache({0})", highestDayCount);       return CacheSample.Caching.CacheProviderFactory. GetCacheProvider<Sale>().Fetch(cacheKey,         delegate()         {             List<Sale> sales = new List<Sale>();               SqlParameter highestDayCountParameter = new SqlParameter("@HighestDayCount", SqlDbType.SmallInt);             if (highestDayCount.HasValue)                 highestDayCountParameter.Value = highestDayCount;             else                 highestDayCountParameter.Value = DBNull.Value;               string connectionStr = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager. ConnectionStrings["CacheSample"].ConnectionString;               using (SqlConnection sqlConn = new SqlConnection(connectionStr))             using (SqlCommand sqlCmd = sqlConn.CreateCommand())             {                 sqlCmd.CommandText = "spGetRunningTotals";                 sqlCmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;                 sqlCmd.Parameters.Add(highestDayCountParameter);                   sqlConn.Open();                   using (SqlDataReader dr = sqlCmd.ExecuteReader())                 {                     while (dr.Read())                     {                         Sale newSale = new Sale();                         newSale.DayCount = dr.GetInt16(0);                         newSale.Sales = dr.GetDecimal(1);                         newSale.RunningTotal = dr.GetDecimal(2);                           sales.Add(newSale);                     }                 }             }               return sales;         },         null,         new TimeSpan(0, 10, 0)); }     This example passes the code to retrieve the Sales data from the database to the Cache Provider as an anonymous method, however it could also be written as a lambda. The main advantage of using an anonymous function (method or lambda) is that the code inside the anonymous function can access the parameters passed to the GetSales() method. Finally the absolute expiry is set to null, and the relative expiry set to 10 minutes, to indicate that the cache entry should be removed 10 minutes after the last request for the data. As the ICacheProvider<T> has a Fetch() method that returns IEnumerable<T>, we can simply return the results of the Fetch() method to the caller of the GetSales() method. This should be all that is needed for the GetSales() method to now retrieve data from a cache after the first time the data has be retrieved from the database. Implementing a ASP.NET Cache Provider The final step is to actually implement the ICacheProvider<T> interface, and add the implementation details to the web.config file for the dependency injection. The cache provider implementation needs to have access to System.Web. Therefore it could be placed in the CacheSample.UI project, or in its own project that has a reference to System.Web. Implementing the Cache Provider in a separate project is my favoured approach. Create a new project inside the solution called CacheSample.CacheProvider, and add references to System.Web and CacheSample.Caching to this project. Add a class to the project called AspNetCacheProvider. Make the class a generic class by adding the generic parameter <T> and indicate that the class implements ICacheProvider<T>. The C# code for the AspNetCacheProvider class is shown below: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; using System.Web.Caching;   using CacheSample.Caching;   namespace CacheSample.CacheProvider {     public class AspNetCacheProvider<T> : ICacheProvider<T>     {         #region ICacheProvider<T> Members           public T Fetch(string key, Func<T> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry)         {             return FetchAndCache<T>(key, retrieveData, absoluteExpiry, relativeExpiry);         }           public IEnumerable<T> Fetch(string key, Func<IEnumerable<T>> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry)         {             return FetchAndCache<IEnumerable<T>>(key, retrieveData, absoluteExpiry, relativeExpiry);         }           #endregion           #region Helper Methods           private U FetchAndCache<U>(string key, Func<U> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry)         {             U value;             if (!TryGetValue<U>(key, out value))             {                 value = retrieveData();                 if (!absoluteExpiry.HasValue)                     absoluteExpiry = Cache.NoAbsoluteExpiration;                   if (!relativeExpiry.HasValue)                     relativeExpiry = Cache.NoSlidingExpiration;                   HttpContext.Current.Cache.Insert(key, value, null, absoluteExpiry.Value, relativeExpiry.Value);             }             return value;         }           private bool TryGetValue<U>(string key, out U value)         {             object cachedValue = HttpContext.Current.Cache.Get(key);             if (cachedValue == null)             {                 value = default(U);                 return false;             }             else             {                 try                 {                     value = (U)cachedValue;                     return true;                 }                 catch                 {                     value = default(U);                     return false;                 }             }         }           #endregion       } }   The two interface Fetch() methods call a private method called FetchAndCache(). This method first checks for a element in the HttpContext.Current.Cache with the specified cache key, and if so tries to cast this to the specified type (either T or IEnumerable<T>). If the cached element is found, the FetchAndCache() method simply returns it. If it is not found in the cache, the method calls the retrievalMethod delegate to get the data from the data source, and then adds this to the HttpContext.Current.Cache. The final step is to add the AspNetCacheProvider class to the relevant custom configuration section in the CacheSample.UI.Web.Config file. To do this there needs to be a <configSections> element added as the first element in <configuration>. This will match a custom section called <cacheProvider> with the CacheProviderConfigurationSection. Then we add a <cacheProvider> element, with a type property set to the fully qualified assembly name of the AspNetCacheProvider class, as shown below: <?xmlversion="1.0"?>   <configuration>  <configSections>     <sectionname="cacheProvider" type="CacheSample.Base.Configuration.CacheProviderConfigurationSection, CacheSample.Base" />  </configSections>    <connectionStrings>     <addname="CacheSample"          connectionString="data source=.\SQLEXPRESS;Integrated Security=SSPI;Initial Catalog=CacheSample"          providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />  </connectionStrings>    <cacheProvidertype="CacheSample.CacheProvider.AspNetCacheProvider`1, CacheSample.CacheProvider, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null">  </cacheProvider>    <system.web>     <compilationdebug="true"targetFramework="4.0" />  </system.web>   </configuration>   One point to note is that the fully qualified assembly name of the AspNetCacheProvider class includes the notation `1 after the class name, which indicates that it is a generic class with a single generic type parameter. The CacheSample.UI project needs to have references added to CacheSample.Caching and CacheSample.CacheProvider so that the actual application is aware of the relevant cache provider implementation. Conclusion After implementing this solution, you should have a working cache provider mechanism, that will allow the middle and data access layers to implement caching support when retrieving data, without any knowledge of the actually caching implementation. If the UI is not ASP.NET based, if for example it is Winforms or WPF, the implementation of ICacheProvider<T> would be written around whatever technology is available. It could even be a standalone caching system that takes full responsibility for adding and removing items from a global store. The next part of this article will show how this caching mechanism may be extended to provide support for cache dependencies, such as the System.Web.Caching.SqlCacheDependency. Another possible extension would be to cache the cache provider implementations instead of storing them in a static Dictionary in the CacheProviderFactory. This would prevent a build up of seldom used cache providers in the application memory, as they could be removed from the cache if not used often enough, although in reality there are probably unlikely to be vast numbers of cache provider implementation instances, as most applications do not have a massive number of business object or model types.

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• Nagging As A Strategy For Better Linking: -z guidance

  - by user9154181

  The link-editor (ld) in Solaris 11 has a new feature that we call guidance that is intended to help you build better objects. The basic idea behind guidance is that if (and only if) you request it, the link-editor will issue messages suggesting better options and other changes you might make to your ld command to get better results. You can choose to take the advice, or you can disable specific types of guidance while acting on others. In some ways, this works like an experienced friend leaning over your shoulder and giving you advice — you're free to take it or leave it as you see fit, but you get nudged to do a better job than you might have otherwise. We use guidance to build the core Solaris OS, and it has proven to be useful, both in improving our objects, and in making sure that regressions don't creep back in later. In this article, I'm going to describe the evolution in thinking and design that led to the implementation of the -z guidance option, as well as give a brief description of how it works. The guidance feature issues non-fatal warnings. However, experience shows that once developers get used to ignoring warnings, it is inevitable that real problems will be lost in the noise and ignored or missed. This is why we have a zero tolerance policy against build noise in the core Solaris OS. In order to get maximum benefit from -z guidance while maintaining this policy, I added the -z fatal-warnings option at the same time. Much of the material presented here is adapted from the arc case: PSARC 2010/312 Link-editor guidance The History Of Unfortunate Link-Editor Defaults The Solaris link-editor is one of the oldest Unix commands. It stands to reason that this would be true — in order to write an operating system, you need the ability to compile and link code. The original link-editor (ld) had defaults that made sense at the time. As new features were needed, command line option switches were added to let the user use them, while maintaining backward compatibility for those who didn't. Backward compatibility is always a concern in system design, but is particularly important in the case of the tool chain (compilers, linker, and related tools), since it is a basic building block for the entire system. Over the years, applications have grown in size and complexity. Important concepts like dynamic linking that didn't exist in the original Unix system were invented. Object file formats changed. In the case of System V Release 4 Unix derivatives like Solaris, the ELF (Extensible Linking Format) was adopted. Since then, the ELF system has evolved to provide tools needed to manage today's larger and more complex environments. Features such as lazy loading, and direct bindings have been added. In an ideal world, many of these options would be defaults, with rarely used options that allow the user to turn them off. However, the reality is exactly the reverse: For backward compatibility, these features are all options that must be explicitly turned on by the user. This has led to a situation in which most applications do not take advantage of the many improvements that have been made in linking over the last 20 years. If their code seems to link and run without issue, what motivation does a developer have to read a complex manpage, absorb the information provided, choose the features that matter for their application, and apply them? Experience shows that only the most motivated and diligent programmers will make that effort. We know that most programs would be improved if we could just get you to use the various whizzy features that we provide, but the defaults conspire against us. We have long wanted to do something to make it easier for our users to use the linkers more effectively. There have been many conversations over the years regarding this issue, and how to address it. They always break down along the following lines: Change ld Defaults Since the world would be a better place the newer ld features were the defaults, why not change things to make it so? This idea is simple, elegant, and impossible. Doing so would break a large number of existing applications, including those of ISVs, big customers, and a plethora of existing open source packages. In each case, the owner of that code may choose to follow our lead and fix their code, or they may view it as an invitation to reconsider their commitment to our platform. Backward compatibility, and our installed base of working software, is one of our greatest assets, and not something to be lightly put at risk. Breaking backward compatibility at this level of the system is likely to do more harm than good. But, it sure is tempting. New Link-Editor One might create a new linker command, not called 'ld', leaving the old command as it is. The new one could use the same code as ld, but would offer only modern options, with the proper defaults for features such as direct binding. The resulting link-editor would be a pleasure to use. However, the approach is doomed to niche status. There is a vast pile of exiting code in the world built around the existing ld command, that reaches back to the 1970's. ld use is embedded in large and unknown numbers of makefiles, and is used by name by compilers that execute it. A Unix link-editor that is not named ld will not find a majority audience no matter how good it might be. Finally, a new linker command will eventually cease to be new, and will accumulate its own burden of backward compatibility issues. An Option To Make ld Do The Right Things Automatically This line of reasoning is best summarized by a CR filed in 2005, entitled 6239804 make it easier for ld(1) to do what's best The idea is to have a '-z best' option that unchains ld from its backward compatibility commitment, and allows it to turn on the "best" set of features, as determined by the authors of ld. The specific set of features enabled by -z best would be subject to change over time, as requirements change. This idea is more realistic than the other two, but was never implemented because it has some important issues that we could never answer to our satisfaction: The -z best proposal assumes that the user can turn it on, and trust it to select good options without the user needing to be aware of the options being applied. This is a fallacy. Features such as direct bindings require the user to do some analysis to ensure that the resulting program will still operate properly. A user who is willing to do the work to verify that what -z best does will be OK for their application is capable of turning on those features directly, and therefore gains little added benefit from -z best. The intent is that when a user opts into -z best, that they understand that z best is subject to sometimes incompatible evolution. Experience teaches us that this won't work. People will use this feature, the meaning of -z best will change, code that used to build will fail, and then there will be complaints and demands to retract the change. When (not if) this occurs, we will of course defend our actions, and point at the disclaimer. We'll win some of those debates, and lose others. Ultimately, we'll end up with -z best2 (-z better), or other compromises, and our goal of simplifying the world will have failed. The -z best idea rolls up a set of features that may or may not be related to each other into a unit that must be taken wholesale, or not at all. It could be that only a subset of what it does is compatible with a given application, in which case the user is expected to abandon -z best and instead set the options that apply to their application directly. In doing so, they lose one of the benefits of -z best, that if you use it, future versions of ld may choose a different set of options, and automatically improve the object through the act of rebuilding it. I drew two conclusions from the above history: For a link-editor, backward compatibility is vital. If a given command line linked your application 10 years ago, you have every reason to expect that it will link today, assuming that the libraries you're linking against are still available and compatible with their previous interfaces. For an application of any size or complexity, there is no substitute for the work involved in examining the code and determining which linker options apply and which do not. These options are largely orthogonal to each other, and it can be reasonable not to use any or all of them, depending on the situation, even in modern applications. It is a mistake to tie them together. The idea for -z guidance came from consideration of these points. By decoupling the advice from the act of taking the advice, we can retain the good aspects of -z best while avoiding its pitfalls: -z guidance gives advice, but the decision to take that advice remains with the user who must evaluate its merit and make a decision to take it or not. As such, we are free to change the specific guidance given in future releases of ld, without breaking existing applications. The only fallout from this will be some new warnings in the build output, which can be ignored or dealt with at the user's convenience. It does not couple the various features given into a single "take it or leave it" option, meaning that there will never be a need to offer "-zguidance2", or other such variants as things change over time. Guidance has the potential to be our final word on this subject. The user is given the flexibility to disable specific categories of guidance without losing the benefit of others, including those that might be added to future versions of the system. Although -z fatal-warnings stands on its own as a useful feature, it is of particular interest in combination with -z guidance. Used together, the guidance turns from advice to hard requirement: The user must either make the suggested change, or explicitly reject the advice by specifying a guidance exception token, in order to get a build. This is valuable in environments with high coding standards. ld Command Line Options The guidance effort resulted in new link-editor options for guidance and for turning warnings into fatal errors. Before I reproduce that text here, I'd like to highlight the strategic decisions embedded in the guidance feature: In order to get guidance, you have to opt in. We hope you will opt in, and believe you'll get better objects if you do, but our default mode of operation will continue as it always has, with full backward compatibility, and without judgement. Guidance suggestions always offers specific advice, and not vague generalizations. You can disable some guidance without turning off the entire feature. When you get guidance warnings, you can choose to take the advice, or you can specify a keyword to disable guidance for just that category. This allows you to get guidance for things that are useful to you, without being bothered about things that you've already considered and dismissed. As the world changes, we will add new guidance to steer you in the right direction. All such new guidance will come with a keyword that let's you turn it off. In order to facilitate building your code on different versions of Solaris, we quietly ignore any guidance keywords we don't recognize, assuming that they are intended for newer versions of the link-editor. If you want to see what guidance tokens ld does and does not recognize on your system, you can use the ld debugging feature as follows: % ld -Dargs -z guidance=foo,nodefs debug: debug: Solaris Linkers: 5.11-1.2275 debug: debug: arg[1] option=-D: option-argument: args debug: arg[2] option=-z: option-argument: guidance=foo,nodefs debug: warning: unrecognized -z guidance item: foo The -z fatal-warning option is straightforward, and generally useful in environments with strict coding standards. Note that the GNU ld already had this feature, and we accept their option names as synonyms: -z fatal-warnings | nofatal-warnings --fatal-warnings | --no-fatal-warnings The -z fatal-warnings and the --fatal-warnings option cause the link-editor to treat warnings as fatal errors. The -z nofatal-warnings and the --no-fatal-warnings option cause the link-editor to treat warnings as non-fatal. This is the default behavior. The -z guidance option is defined as follows: -z guidance[=item1,item2,...] Provide guidance messages to suggest ld options that can improve the quality of the resulting object, or which are otherwise considered to be beneficial. The specific guidance offered is subject to change over time as the system evolves. Obsolete guidance offered by older versions of ld may be dropped in new versions. Similarly, new guidance may be added to new versions of ld. Guidance therefore always represents current best practices. It is possible to enable guidance, while preventing specific guidance messages, by providing a list of item tokens, representing the class of guidance to be suppressed. In this way, unwanted advice can be suppressed without losing the benefit of other guidance. Unrecognized item tokens are quietly ignored by ld, allowing a given ld command line to be executed on a variety of older or newer versions of Solaris. The guidance offered by the current version of ld, and the item tokens used to disable these messages, are as follows. Specify Required Dependencies Dynamic executables and shared objects should explicitly define all of the dependencies they require. Guidance recommends the use of the -z defs option, should any symbol references remain unsatisfied when building dynamic objects. This guidance can be disabled with -z guidance=nodefs. Do Not Specify Non-Required Dependencies Dynamic executables and shared objects should not define any dependencies that do not satisfy the symbol references made by the dynamic object. Guidance recommends that unused dependencies be removed. This guidance can be disabled with -z guidance=nounused. Lazy Loading Dependencies should be identified for lazy loading. Guidance recommends the use of the -z lazyload option should any dependency be processed before either a -z lazyload or -z nolazyload option is encountered. This guidance can be disabled with -z guidance=nolazyload. Direct Bindings Dependencies should be referenced with direct bindings. Guidance recommends the use of the -B direct, or -z direct options should any dependency be processed before either of these options, or the -z nodirect option is encountered. This guidance can be disabled with -z guidance=nodirect. Pure Text Segment Dynamic objects should not contain relocations to non-writable, allocable sections. Guidance recommends compiling objects with Position Independent Code (PIC) should any relocations against the text segment remain, and neither the -z textwarn or -z textoff options are encountered. This guidance can be disabled with -z guidance=notext. Mapfile Syntax All mapfiles should use the version 2 mapfile syntax. Guidance recommends the use of the version 2 syntax should any mapfiles be encountered that use the version 1 syntax. This guidance can be disabled with -z guidance=nomapfile. Library Search Path Inappropriate dependencies that are encountered by ld are quietly ignored. For example, a 32-bit dependency that is encountered when generating a 64-bit object is ignored. These dependencies can result from incorrect search path settings, such as supplying an incorrect -L option. Although benign, this dependency processing is wasteful, and might hide a build problem that should be solved. Guidance recommends the removal of any inappropriate dependencies. This guidance can be disabled with -z guidance=nolibpath. In addition, -z guidance=noall can be used to entirely disable the guidance feature. See Chapter 7, Link-Editor Quick Reference, in the Linker and Libraries Guide for more information on guidance and advice for building better objects. Example The following example demonstrates how the guidance feature is intended to work. We will build a shared object that has a variety of shortcomings: Does not specify all it's dependencies Specifies dependencies it does not use Does not use direct bindings Uses a version 1 mapfile Contains relocations to the readonly allocable text (not PIC) This scenario is sadly very common — many shared objects have one or more of these issues. % cat hello.c #include <stdio.h> #include <unistd.h> void hello(void) { printf("hello user %d\n", getpid()); } % cat mapfile.v1 # This version 1 mapfile will trigger a guidance message % cc hello.c -o hello.so -G -M mapfile.v1 -lelf As you can see, the operation completes without error, resulting in a usable object. However, turning on guidance reveals a number of things that could be better: % cc hello.c -o hello.so -G -M mapfile.v1 -lelf -zguidance ld: guidance: version 2 mapfile syntax recommended: mapfile.v1 ld: guidance: -z lazyload option recommended before first dependency ld: guidance: -B direct or -z direct option recommended before first dependency Undefined first referenced symbol in file getpid hello.o (symbol belongs to implicit dependency /lib/libc.so.1) printf hello.o (symbol belongs to implicit dependency /lib/libc.so.1) ld: warning: symbol referencing errors ld: guidance: -z defs option recommended for shared objects ld: guidance: removal of unused dependency recommended: libelf.so.1 warning: Text relocation remains referenced against symbol offset in file .rodata1 (section) 0xa hello.o getpid 0x4 hello.o printf 0xf hello.o ld: guidance: position independent (PIC) code recommended for shared objects ld: guidance: see ld(1) -z guidance for more information Given the explicit advice in the above guidance messages, it is relatively easy to modify the example to do the right things: % cat mapfile.v2 # This version 2 mapfile will not trigger a guidance message $mapfile_version 2 % cc hello.c -o hello.so -Kpic -G -Bdirect -M mapfile.v2 -lc -zguidance There are situations in which the guidance does not fit the object being built. For instance, you want to build an object without direct bindings: % cc -Kpic hello.c -o hello.so -G -M mapfile.v2 -lc -zguidance ld: guidance: -B direct or -z direct option recommended before first dependency ld: guidance: see ld(1) -z guidance for more information It is easy to disable that specific guidance warning without losing the overall benefit from allowing the remainder of the guidance feature to operate: % cc -Kpic hello.c -o hello.so -G -M mapfile.v2 -lc -zguidance=nodirect Conclusions The linking guidelines enforced by the ld guidance feature correspond rather directly to our standards for building the core Solaris OS. I'm sure that comes as no surprise. It only makes sense that we would want to build our own product as well as we know how. Solaris is usually the first significant test for any new linker feature. We now enable guidance by default for all builds, and the effect has been very positive. Guidance helps us find suboptimal objects more quickly. Programmers get concrete advice for what to change instead of vague generalities. Even in the cases where we override the guidance, the makefile rules to do so serve as documentation of the fact. Deciding to use guidance is likely to cause some up front work for most code, as it forces you to consider using new features such as direct bindings. Such investigation is worthwhile, but does not come for free. However, the guidance suggestions offer a structured and straightforward way to tackle modernizing your objects, and once that work is done, for keeping them that way. The investment is often worth it, and will replay you in terms of better performance and fewer problems. I hope that you find guidance to be as useful as we have.

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• iPhone SDK vs. Windows Phone 7 Series SDK Challenge, Part 2: MoveMe

  In this series, I will be taking sample applications from the iPhone SDK and implementing them on Windows Phone 7 Series.  My goal is to do as much of an apples-to-apples comparison as I can.  This series will be written to not only compare and contrast how easy or difficult it is to complete tasks on either platform, how many lines of code, etc., but Id also like it to be a way for iPhone developers to either get started on Windows Phone 7 Series development, or for developers in general to learn the platform. Heres my methodology: Run the iPhone SDK app in the iPhone Simulator to get a feel for what it does and how it works, without looking at the implementation Implement the equivalent functionality on Windows Phone 7 Series using Silverlight. Compare the two implementations based on complexity, functionality, lines of code, number of files, etc. Add some functionality to the Windows Phone 7 Series app that shows off a way to make the scenario more interesting or leverages an aspect of the platform, or uses a better design pattern to implement the functionality. You can download Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone CTP here, and the Expression Blend 4 Beta here. If youre seeing this series for the first time, check out Part 1: Hello World. A note on methodologyin the prior post there was some feedback about lines of code not being a very good metric for this exercise.  I dont really disagree, theres a lot more to this than lines of code but I believe that is a relevant metric, even if its not the ultimate one.  And theres no perfect answer here.  So I am going to continue to report the number of lines of code that I, as a developer would need to write in these apps as a data point, and Ill leave it up to the reader to determine how that fits in with overall complexity, etc.  The first example was so basic that I think it was difficult to talk about in real terms.  I think that as these apps get more complex, the subjective differences in concept count and will be more important.  MoveMe The MoveMe app is the main end-to-end app writing example in the iPhone SDK, called Creating an iPhone Application.  This application demonstrates a few concepts, including handling touch input, how to do animations, and how to do some basic transforms. The behavior of the application is pretty simple.  User touches the button: The button does a throb type animation where it scales up and then back down briefly. User drags the button: After a touch begins, moving the touch point will drag the button around with the touch. User lets go of the button: The button animates back to its original position, but does a few small bounces as it reaches its original point, which makes the app fun and gives it an extra bit of interactivity. Now, how would I write an app that meets this spec for Windows Phone 7 Series, and how hard would it be?  Lets find out!     Implementing the UI Okay, lets build the UI for this application.  In the HelloWorld example, we did all the UI design in Visual Studio and/or by hand in XAML.  In this example, were going to use the Expression Blend 4 Beta. You might be wondering when to use Visual Studio, when to use Blend, and when to do XAML by hand.  Different people will have different takes on this, but heres mine: XAML by hand simple UI that doesnt contain animations, gradients, etc., and or UI that I want to really optimize and craft when I know exactly what I want to do. Visual Studio Basic UI layout, property setting, data binding, etc. Blend Any serious design work needs to be done in Blend, including animations, handling states and transitions, styling and templating, editing resources. As in Part 1, go ahead and fire up Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone (yes, soon it will take longer to say the name of our products than to start them up!), and create a new Windows Phone Application.  As in Part 1, clear out the XAML from the designer.  An easy way to do this is to just: Click on the design surface Hit Control+A Hit Delete Theres a little bit left over (the Grid.RowDefinitions element), just go ahead and delete that element so were starting with a clean state of only one outer Grid element. To use Blend, we need to save this project.  See, when you create a project with Visual Studio Express, it doesnt commit it to the disk (well, in a place where you can find it, at least) until you actually save the project.  This is handy if youre doing some fooling around, because it doesnt clutter your disk with WindowsPhoneApplication23-like directories.  But its also kind of dangerous, since when you close VS, if you dont save the projectits all gone.  Yes, this has bitten me since I was saving files and didnt remember that, so be careful to save the project/solution via Save All, at least once. So, save and note the location on disk.  Start Expression Blend 4 Beta, and chose File > Open Project/Solution, and load your project.  You should see just about the same thing you saw over in VS: a blank, black designer surface. Now, thinking about this application, we dont really need a button, even though it looks like one.  We never click it.  So were just going to create a visual and use that.  This is also true in the iPhone example above, where the visual is actually not a button either but a jpg image with a nice gradient and round edges.  Well do something simple here that looks pretty good. In Blend, look in the tool pane on the left for the icon that looks like the below (the highlighted one on the left), and hold it down to get the popout menu, and choose Border:    Okay, now draw out a box in the middle of the design surface of about 300x100.  The Properties Pane to the left should show the properties for this item. First, lets make it more visible by giving it a border brush.  Set the BorderBrush to white by clicking BorderBrush and dragging the color selector all the way to the upper right in the palette.  Then, down a bit farther, make the BorderThickness 4 all the way around, and the CornerRadius set to 6. In the Layout section, do the following to Width, Height, Horizontal and Vertical Alignment, and Margin (all 4 margin values): Youll see the outline now is in the middle of the design surface.  Now lets give it a background color.  Above BorderBrush select Background, and click the third tab over: Gradient Brush.  Youll see a gradient slider at the bottom, and if you click the markers, you can edit the gradient stops individually (or add more).  In this case, you can select something you like, but wheres what I chose: Left stop: #BFACCFE2 (I just picked a spot on the palette and set opacity to 75%, no magic here, feel free to fiddle these or just enter these numbers into the hex area and be done with it) Right stop: #FF3E738F Okay, looks pretty good.  Finally set the name of the element in the Name field at the top of the Properties pane to welcome. Now lets add some text.  Just hit T and itll select the TextBlock tool automatically: Now draw out some are inside our welcome visual and type Welcome!, then click on the design surface (to exit text entry mode) and hit V to go back into selection mode (or the top item in the tool pane that looks like a mouse pointer).  Click on the text again to select it in the tool pane.  Just like the border, we want to center this.  So set HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment to Center, and clear the Margins: Thats it for the UI.  Heres how it looks, on the design surface: Not bad!  Okay, now the fun part Adding Animations Using Blend to build animations is a lot of fun, and its easy.  In XAML, I can not only declare elements and visuals, but also I can declare animations that will affect those visuals.  These are called Storyboards. To recap, well be doing two animations: The throb animation when the element is touched The center animation when the element is released after being dragged. The throb animation is just a scale transform, so well do that first.  In the Objects and Timeline Pane (left side, bottom half), click the little + icon to add a new Storyboard called touchStoryboard: The timeline view will appear.  In there, click a bit to the right of 0 to create a keyframe at .2 seconds: Now, click on our welcome element (the Border, not the TextBlock in it), and scroll to the bottom of the Properties Pane.  Open up Transform, click the third tab ("Scale), and set X and Y to 1.2: This all of this says that, at .2 seconds, I want the X and Y size of this element to scale to 1.2. In fact you can see this happen.  Push the Play arrow in the timeline view, and youll see the animation run! Lets make two tweaks.  First, we want the animation to automatically reverse so it scales up then back down nicely. Click in the dropdown that says touchStoryboard in Objects and Timeline, then in the Properties pane check Auto Reverse: Now run it again, and youll see it go both ways. Lets even make it nicer by adding an easing function. First, click on the Render Transform item in the Objects tree, then, in the Property Pane, youll see a bunch of easing functions to choose from.  Feel free to play with this, then seeing how each runs.  I chose Circle In, but some other ones are fun.  Try them out!  Elastic In is kind of fun, but well stick with Circle In.  Thats it for that animation. Now, we also want an animation to move the Border back to its original position when the user ends the touch gesture.  This is exactly the same process as above, but just targeting a different transform property. Create a new animation called releaseStoryboard Select a timeline point at 1.2 seconds. Click on the welcome Border element again Scroll to the Transforms panel at the bottom of the Properties Pane Choose the first tab (Translate), which may already be selected Set both X and Y values to 0.0 (we do this just to make the values stick, because the value is already 0 and we need Blend to know we want to save that value) Click on RenderTransform in the Objects tree In the properties pane, choose Bounce Out Set Bounces to 6, and Bounciness to 4 (feel free to play with these as well) Okay, were done. Note, if you want to test this Storyboard, you have to do something a little tricky because the final value is the same as the initial value, so playing it does nothing.  If you want to play with it, do the following: Next to the selection dropdown, hit the little "x (Close Storyboard) Go to the Translate Transform value for welcome Set X,Y to 50, 200, respectively (or whatever) Select releaseStoryboard again from the dropdown Hit play, see it run Go into the object tree and select RenderTransform to change the easing function. When youre done, hit the Close Storyboard x again and set the values in Transform/Translate back to 0 Wiring Up the Animations Okay, now go back to Visual Studio.  Youll get a prompt due to the modification of MainPage.xaml.  Hit Yes. In the designer, click on the welcome Border element.  In the Property Browser, hit the Events button, then double click each of ManipulationStarted, ManipulationDelta, ManipulationCompleted.  Youll need to flip back to the designer from code, after each double click. Its code time.  Here we go. Here, three event handlers have been created for us: welcome_ManipulationStarted: This will execute when a manipulation begins.  Think of it as MouseDown. welcome_ManipulationDelta: This executes each time a manipulation changes.  Think MouseMove. welcome_ManipulationCompleted: This will  execute when the manipulation ends. Think MouseUp. Now, in ManipuliationStarted, we want to kick off the throb animation that we called touchAnimation.  Thats easy: 1: private void welcome_ManipulationStarted(object sender, ManipulationStartedEventArgs e) 2: { 3: touchStoryboard.Begin(); 4: } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Likewise, when the manipulation completes, we want to re-center the welcome visual with our bounce animation: 1: private void welcome_ManipulationCompleted(object sender, ManipulationCompletedEventArgs e) 2: { 3: releaseStoryboard.Begin(); 4: } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Note there is actually a way to kick off these animations from Blend directly via something called Triggers, but I think its clearer to show whats going on like this.  A Trigger basically allows you to say When this event fires, trigger this Storyboard, so its the exact same logical process as above, but without the code. But how do we get the object to move?  Well, for that we really dont want an animation because we want it to respond immediately to user input. We do this by directly modifying the transform to match the offset for the manipulation, and then well let the animation bring it back to zero when the manipulation completes.  The manipulation events do a great job of keeping track of all the stuff that you usually had to do yourself when doing drags: where you started from, how far youve moved, etc. So we can easily modify the position as below: 1: private void welcome_ManipulationDelta(object sender, ManipulationDeltaEventArgs e) 2: { 3: CompositeTransform transform = (CompositeTransform)welcome.RenderTransform; 4:   5: transform.TranslateX = e.CumulativeManipulation.Translation.X; 6: transform.TranslateY = e.CumulativeManipulation.Translation.Y; 7: } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Thats it! Go ahead and run the app in the emulator.  I suggest running without the debugger, its a little faster (CTRL+F5).  If youve got a machine that supports DirectX 10, youll see nice smooth GPU accelerated graphics, which also what it looks like on the phone, running at about 60 frames per second.  If your machine does not support DX10 (like the laptop Im writing this on!), it wont be quite a smooth so youll have to take my word for it! Comparing Against the iPhone This is an example where the flexibility and power of XAML meets the tooling of Visual Studio and Blend, and the whole experience really shines.  So, for several things that are declarative and 100% toolable with the Windows Phone 7 Series, this example does them with code on the iPhone.  In parens is the lines of code that I count to do these operations. PlacardView.m: 19 total LOC Creating the view that hosts the button-like image and the text Drawing the image that is the background of the button Drawing the Welcome text over the image (I think you could technically do this step and/or the prior one using Interface Builder) MoveMeView.m:  63 total LOC Constructing and running the scale (throb) animation (25) Constructing the path describing the animation back to center plus bounce effect (38) Beyond the code count, yy experience with doing this kind of thing in code is that its VERY time intensive.  When I was a developer back on Windows Forms, doing GDI+ drawing, we did this stuff a lot, and it took forever!  You write some code and even once you get it basically working, you see its not quite right, you go back, tweak the interval, or the math a bit, run it again, etc.  You can take a look at the iPhone code here to judge for yourself.  Scroll down to animatePlacardViewToCenter toward the bottom.  I dont think this code is terribly complicated, but its not what Id call simple and its not at all simple to get right. And then theres a few other lines of code running around for setting up the ViewController and the Views, about 15 lines between MoveMeAppDelegate, PlacardView, and MoveMeView, plus the assorted decls in the h files. Adding those up, I conservatively get something like 100 lines of code (19+63+15+decls) on iPhone that I have to write, by hand, to make this project work. The lines of code that I wrote in the examples above is 5 lines of code on Windows Phone 7 Series. In terms of incremental concept counts beyond the HelloWorld app, heres a shot at that: iPhone: Drawing Images Drawing Text Handling touch events Creating animations Scaling animations Building a path and animating along that Windows Phone 7 Series: Laying out UI in Blend Creating & testing basic animations in Blend Handling touch events Invoking animations from code This was actually the first example I tried converting, even before I did the HelloWorld, and I was pretty surprised.  Some of this is luck that this app happens to match up with the Windows Phone 7 Series platform just perfectly.  In terms of time, I wrote the above application, from scratch, in about 10 minutes.  I dont know how long it would take a very skilled iPhone developer to write MoveMe on that iPhone from scratch, but if I was to write it on Silverlight in the same way (e.g. all via code), I think it would likely take me at least an hour or two to get it all working right, maybe more if I ended up picking the wrong strategy or couldnt get the math right, etc. Making Some Tweaks Silverlight contains a feature called Projections to do a variety of 3D-like effects with a 2D surface. So lets play with that a bit. Go back to Blend and select the welcome Border in the object tree.  In its properties, scroll down to the bottom, open Transform, and see Projection at the bottom.  Set X,Y,Z to 90.  Youll see the element kind of disappear, replaced by a thin blue line. Now Create a new animation called startupStoryboard. Set its key time to .5 seconds in the timeline view Set the projection values above to 0 for X, Y, and Z. Save Go back to Visual Studio, and in the constructor, add the following bold code (lines 7-9 to the constructor: 1: public MainPage() 2: { 3: InitializeComponent(); 4:   5: SupportedOrientations = SupportedPageOrientation.Portrait; 6:   7: this.Loaded += (s, e) => 8: { 9: startupStoryboard.Begin(); 10: }; 11: } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } If the code above looks funny, its using something called a lambda in C#, which is an inline anonymous method.  Its just a handy shorthand for creating a handler like the manipulation ones above. So with this youll get a nice 3D looking fly in effect when the app starts up.  Here it is, in flight: Pretty cool!Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Mouse Clicks, Reactive Extensions and StreamInsight Mashup

  I had an hour spare this afternoon so I wanted to have another play with Reactive Extensions in .Net and StreamInsight.  I also didn’t want to simply use a console window as a way of gathering events so I decided to use a windows form instead. The task I set myself was this. Whenever I click on my form I want to subscribe to the event and output its location to the console window and also the timestamp of the event.  In addition to this I want to know for every mouse click I do, how many mouse clicks have happened in the last 5 seconds. The second point here is really interesting.  I have often found this when working with people on problems.  It is how you ask the question that determines how you tackle the problem.  I will show 2 ways of possibly answering the second question depending on how the question was interpreted. As a side effect of this example I will show how time in StreamInsight can stand still.  This is an important concept and we can see it in the output later. Now to the code.  I will break it all down in this blogpost but you can download the solution and see it all together. I created a Console application and then instantiate a windows form.   frm = new Form(); Thread g = new Thread(CallUI); g.SetApartmentState(ApartmentState.STA); g.Start();   Call UI looks like this   static void CallUI() { System.Windows.Forms.Application.Run(frm); frm.Activate(); frm.BringToFront(); }   Now what we need to do is create an observable from the MouseClick event on the form.  For this we use the Reactive Extensions.   var lblevt = Observable.FromEvent<MouseEventArgs>(frm, "MouseClick").Timestamp();   As mentioned earlier I have two objectives in this example and to solve the first I am going to again use the Reactive extensions.  Let’s subscribe to the MouseClick event and output the location and timestamp to the console. lblevt.Subscribe(evt => { Console.WriteLine("Clicked: {0}, {1} ", evt.Value.EventArgs.Location,evt.Timestamp); }); That should take care of obective #1 but what about the second objective.  For that we need some temporal windowing and this means StreamInsight.  First we need to turn our Observable collection of MouseClick events into a PointStream Server s = Server.Create("Default"); Microsoft.ComplexEventProcessing.Application a = s.CreateApplication("MouseClicks"); var input = lblevt.ToPointStream( a, evt => PointEvent.CreateInsert( evt.Timestamp, new { loc = evt.Value.EventArgs.Location.ToString(), ts = evt.Timestamp.ToLocalTime().ToString() }), AdvanceTimeSettings.IncreasingStartTime);   Now that we have created out PointStream we need to do something with it and this is where we get to our second objective.  It is pretty clear that we want some kind of windowing but what? Here is one way of doing it.  It might not be what you wanted but again it is how the second objective is interpreted   var q = from i in input.TumblingWindow(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5), HoppingWindowOutputPolicy.ClipToWindowEnd) select new { CountOfClicks = i.Count() };   The above code creates tumbling windows of 5 seconds and counts the number of events in the windows.  If there are no events in the window then no result is output.  Likewise until an event (MouseClick) is issued then we do not see anything in the output (that is not strictly true because it is the CTI strapped to our MouseClick events that flush the events through the StreamInsight engine not the events themselves).  This approach is centred around the windows and not the events.  Until the windows complete and a CTI is issued then no events are pushed through. An alternate way of answering our second question is below   var q = from i in input.AlterEventDuration(evt => TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5)).SnapshotWindow(SnapshotWindowOutputPolicy.Clip) select new { CountOfClicks = i.Count() };   In this code we extend the duration of each MouseClick to five seconds.  We then create  Snapshot Windows over those events.  Snapshot windows are discussed in detail here.  With this solution we are centred around the events.  It is the events that are driving the output.  Let’s have a look at the output from this solution as it may be a little confusing. First though let me show how we get the output from StreamInsight into the Console window. foreach (var x in q.ToPointEnumerable().Where(e => e.EventKind != EventKind.Cti)) { Console.WriteLine(x.Payload.CountOfClicks); }   Ok so now to the output.   The table at the top shows the output from our routine and the table at the bottom helps to explain the output.  One of the things that will help as well is, you will note that for our PointStream we set the issuing of CTIs to be IncreasingStartTime.  What this means is that the CTI is placed right at the start of the event so will not flush the event with which it was issued but will flush those prior to it.  In the bottom table the Blue fill is where we issued a click.  Yellow fill is the duration and boundaries of our events.  The numbers at the bottom indicate the count of events   Clicked 22:40:16                                 Clicked 23:40:18                                 1                                   Clicked 23:40:20                                 2                                   Clicked 23:40:22                                 3                                   2                                   Clicked 23:40:24                                 3                                   2                                   Clicked 23:40:32                                 3                                   2                                   1                                                                                                         secs 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32                                                                                                                                                                                                                         counts   1   2 3 2 3 2 3   2   1           What we can see here in the output is that the counts include all the end edges that have occurred between the mouse clicks.  If we look specifically at the mouse click at 22:40:32. then we see that 3 events are returned to us. These include the following End Edge count at 22:40:25 End Edge count at 22:40:27 End Edge count at 22:40:29 Another thing we notice is that until we actually issue a CTI at 22:40:32 then those last 3 snapshot window counts will never be reported. Hopefully this has helped to explain  a few concepts around StreamInsight and the IObservable() pattern.   You can download this solution from here and play.  You will need the Reactive Framework from here and StreamInsight 1.1

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• Inbound SIP calls through Cisco 881 NAT hang up after a few seconds

  - by MasterRoot24

  I've recently moved to a Cisco 881 router for my WAN link. I was previously using a Cisco Linksys WAG320N as my modem/router/WiFi AP/NAT firewall. The WAG320N is now running in bridged mode, so it's simply acting as a modem with one of it's LAN ports connected to FE4 WAN on my Cisco 881. The Cisco 881 get's a DHCP provided IP from my ISP. My LAN is part of default Vlan 1 (192.168.1.0/24). General internet connectivity is working great, I've managed to setup static NAT rules for my HTTP/HTTPS/SMTP/etc. services which are running on my LAN. I don't know whether it's worth mentioning that I've opted to use NVI NAT (ip nat enable as opposed to the traditional ip nat outside/ip nat inside) setup. My reason for this is that NVI allows NAT loopback from my LAN to the WAN IP and back in to the necessary server on the LAN. I run an Asterisk 1.8 PBX on my LAN, which connects to a SIP provider on the internet. Both inbound and outbound calls through the old setup (WAG320N providing routing/NAT) worked fine. However, since moving to the Cisco 881, inbound calls drop after around 10 seconds, whereas outbound calls work fine. The following message is logged on my Asterisk PBX: [Dec 9 15:27:45] WARNING[27734]: chan_sip.c:3641 retrans_pkt: Retransmission timeout reached on transmission [email protected] for seqno 1 (Critical Response) -- See https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/display/AST/SIP+Retransmissions Packet timed out after 6528ms with no response [Dec 9 15:27:45] WARNING[27734]: chan_sip.c:3670 retrans_pkt: Hanging up call [email protected] - no reply to our critical packet (see https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/display/AST/SIP+Retransmissions). (I know that this is quite a common issue - I've spend the best part of 2 days solid on this, trawling Google.) I've done as I am told and checked https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/display/AST/SIP+Retransmissions. Referring to the section "Other SIP requests" in the page linked above, I believe that the hangup to be caused by the ACK from my SIP provider not being passed back through NAT to Asterisk on my PBX. I tried to ascertain this by dumping the packets on my WAN interface on the 881. I managed to obtain a PCAP dump of packets in/out of my WAN interface. Here's an example of an ACK being reveived by the router from my provider: 689 21.219999 193.x.x.x 188.x.x.x SIP 502 Request: ACK sip:[email protected] | However a SIP trace on the Asterisk server show's that there are no ACK's received in response to the 200 OK from my PBX: http://pastebin.com/wwHpLPPz In the past, I have been strongly advised to disable any sort of SIP ALGs on routers and/or firewalls and the many posts regarding this issue on the internet seem to support this. However, I believe on Cisco IOS, the config command to disable SIP ALG is no ip nat service sip udp port 5060 however, this doesn't appear to help the situation. To confirm that config setting is set: Router1#show running-config | include sip no ip nat service sip udp port 5060 Another interesting twist: for a short period of time, I tried another provider. Luckily, my trial account with them is still available, so I reverted my Asterisk config back to the revision before I integrated with my current provider. I then dialled in to the DDI associated with the trial trunk and the call didn't get hung up and I didn't get the error above! To me, this points at the provider, however I know, like all providers do, will say "There's no issues with our SIP proxies - it's your firewall." I'm tempted to agree with this, as this issue was not apparent with the old WAG320N router when it was doing the NAT'ing. I'm sure you'll want to see my running-config too: ! ! Last configuration change at 15:55:07 UTC Sun Dec 9 2012 by xxx version 15.2 no service pad service tcp-keepalives-in service tcp-keepalives-out service timestamps debug datetime msec localtime show-timezone service timestamps log datetime msec localtime show-timezone no service password-encryption service sequence-numbers ! hostname Router1 ! boot-start-marker boot-end-marker ! ! security authentication failure rate 10 log security passwords min-length 6 logging buffered 4096 logging console critical enable secret 4 xxx ! aaa new-model ! ! aaa authentication login local_auth local ! ! ! ! ! aaa session-id common ! memory-size iomem 10 ! crypto pki trustpoint TP-self-signed-xxx enrollment selfsigned subject-name cn=IOS-Self-Signed-Certificate-xxx revocation-check none rsakeypair TP-self-signed-xxx ! ! crypto pki certificate chain TP-self-signed-xxx certificate self-signed 01 quit no ip source-route no ip gratuitous-arps ip auth-proxy max-login-attempts 5 ip admission max-login-attempts 5 ! ! ! ! ! no ip bootp server ip domain name dmz.merlin.local ip domain list dmz.merlin.local ip domain list merlin.local ip name-server x.x.x.x ip inspect audit-trail ip inspect udp idle-time 1800 ip inspect dns-timeout 7 ip inspect tcp idle-time 14400 ip inspect name autosec_inspect ftp timeout 3600 ip inspect name autosec_inspect http timeout 3600 ip inspect name autosec_inspect rcmd timeout 3600 ip inspect name autosec_inspect realaudio timeout 3600 ip inspect name autosec_inspect smtp timeout 3600 ip inspect name autosec_inspect tftp timeout 30 ip inspect name autosec_inspect udp timeout 15 ip inspect name autosec_inspect tcp timeout 3600 ip cef login block-for 3 attempts 3 within 3 no ipv6 cef ! ! multilink bundle-name authenticated license udi pid CISCO881-SEC-K9 sn ! ! username xxx privilege 15 secret 4 xxx username xxx secret 4 xxx ! ! ! ! ! ip ssh time-out 60 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! interface FastEthernet0 no ip address ! interface FastEthernet1 no ip address ! interface FastEthernet2 no ip address ! interface FastEthernet3 switchport access vlan 2 no ip address ! interface FastEthernet4 ip address dhcp no ip redirects no ip unreachables no ip proxy-arp ip nat enable duplex auto speed auto ! interface Vlan1 ip address 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0 no ip redirects no ip unreachables no ip proxy-arp ip nat enable ! interface Vlan2 ip address 192.168.0.2 255.255.255.0 ! ip forward-protocol nd ip http server ip http access-class 1 ip http authentication local ip http secure-server ip http timeout-policy idle 60 life 86400 requests 10000 ! ! no ip nat service sip udp port 5060 ip nat source list 1 interface FastEthernet4 overload ip nat source static tcp x.x.x.x 80 interface FastEthernet4 80 ip nat source static tcp x.x.x.x 443 interface FastEthernet4 443 ip nat source static tcp x.x.x.x 25 interface FastEthernet4 25 ip nat source static tcp x.x.x.x 587 interface FastEthernet4 587 ip nat source static tcp x.x.x.x 143 interface FastEthernet4 143 ip nat source static tcp x.x.x.x 993 interface FastEthernet4 993 ip nat source static tcp x.x.x.x 1723 interface FastEthernet4 1723 ! ! logging trap debugging logging facility local2 access-list 1 permit 192.168.1.0 0.0.0.255 access-list 1 permit 192.168.0.0 0.0.0.255 no cdp run ! ! ! ! control-plane ! ! banner motd Authorized Access only ! line con 0 login authentication local_auth length 0 transport output all line aux 0 exec-timeout 15 0 login authentication local_auth transport output all line vty 0 1 access-class 1 in logging synchronous login authentication local_auth length 0 transport preferred none transport input telnet transport output all line vty 2 4 access-class 1 in login authentication local_auth length 0 transport input ssh transport output all ! ! end ...and, if it's of any use, here's my Asterisk SIP config: [general] context=default ; Default context for calls allowoverlap=no ; Disable overlap dialing support. (Default is yes) udpbindaddr=0.0.0.0 ; IP address to bind UDP listen socket to (0.0.0.0 binds to all) ; Optionally add a port number, 192.168.1.1:5062 (default is port 5060) tcpenable=no ; Enable server for incoming TCP connections (default is no) tcpbindaddr=0.0.0.0 ; IP address for TCP server to bind to (0.0.0.0 binds to all interfaces) ; Optionally add a port number, 192.168.1.1:5062 (default is port 5060) srvlookup=yes ; Enable DNS SRV lookups on outbound calls ; Note: Asterisk only uses the first host ; in SRV records ; Disabling DNS SRV lookups disables the ; ability to place SIP calls based on domain ; names to some other SIP users on the Internet ; Specifying a port in a SIP peer definition or ; when dialing outbound calls will supress SRV ; lookups for that peer or call. directmedia=no ; Don't allow direct RTP media between extensions (doesn't work through NAT) externhost=<MY DYNDNS HOSTNAME> ; Our external hostname to resolve to IP and be used in NAT'ed packets localnet=192.168.1.0/24 ; Define our local network so we know which packets need NAT'ing qualify=yes ; Qualify peers by default dtmfmode=rfc2833 ; Set the default DTMF mode disallow=all ; Disallow all codecs by default allow=ulaw ; Allow G.711 u-law allow=alaw ; Allow G.711 a-law ; ---------------------- ; SIP Trunk Registration ; ---------------------- ; Orbtalk register => <MY SIP PROVIDER USER NAME>:[email protected]/<MY DDI> ; Main Orbtalk number ; ---------- ; Trunks ; ---------- [orbtalk] ; Main Orbtalk trunk type=peer insecure=invite host=sipgw3.orbtalk.co.uk nat=yes username=<MY SIP PROVIDER USER NAME> defaultuser=<MY SIP PROVIDER USER NAME> fromuser=<MY SIP PROVIDER USER NAME> secret=xxx context=inbound I really don't know where to go with this. If anyone can help me find out why these calls are being dropped off, I'd be grateful if you could chime in! Please let me know if any further info is required.

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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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• Knight movement.... " how to output all possible moves. "

  - by josh kant

  hi tried the following code and is still not working. it is having problem on backtracking. it just fills the squares of a board with numbers but not in expected order. The code is as follows : include include using namespace std; int i=0; int permuteno = 0; bool move(int *p[], int *used[] ,int x, int y,int n, int count); bool knights (int *p[], int *used[],int x,int y,int n, int count); void output(int *p[],int n); int main(char argc, char *argv[]) { int count = 1; int n; //for size of board int x,y; // starting pos int **p; // to hold no. of combinations int **used; // to keep track of used squares on the board if ( argc != 5) { cout << "Very few arguments. Please try again."; cout << endl; return 0; } n = atoi(argv[2]); if( argv[1] <= 0 ) { cout << " Invalid board size. "; return 0; } x = atoi(argv[4]); y = atoi(argv[4]); cout << "board size: " << n << ", "<< n << endl; cout << "starting pos: " << x << ", " << y << endl; //dynamic allocation of arrays to hold permutation p = new int *[n]; for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) p[i] = new int [n]; //dynamic allocation of used arrays used = new int*[n]; for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) used[i] = new int [n]; //initializing board int i, j; for (i=0; i output(p,n); if (knights(p,used,x, y, n, count)) { cout << "solution found: " << endl < int i, j; for (i=0; i else { cout << "Solution not found" << endl; output (p, n); } knights (p,used, x, y, n, 1); //knights (p,used,x, y, n, count); cout << "no. perm " << permuteno << endl; return 0; } void output(int *p[],int n) { int i = 0,j; while ( i !=n) { for ( j=0; j bool move(int *p[], int *used[] ,int x, int y,int n,int count) { if (x < 0 || x = n) { return false; } if ( y < 0 || y = n) { return false; } if( used[x][y] != 0) { return false; } if( p[x][y] != 0) { return false; } count++; return true; } bool knights (int *p[], int *used[], int x,int y,int n ,int count) { //used[x][y] = 1; if (!move(p,used,x,y,n, count)) { return false; } if (move(p,used,x,y,n, count)) { i++; } p[x][y] = count; used[x][y] = 1; cout << "knight moved " << x << ", " << y << " " << count << endl; if(n*n == count) { return true; } //move 1 if (!knights (p,used, x-1, y-2, n, count+1)) { used[x][y] = 0; //p[x][y] = 0; } //move 2 if (!knights (p,used, x+1, y-2, n, count+1)) { used[x][y] = 0; //p[x][y] = 0; } //move 3 if (!knights (p,used, x+2, y-1, n, count+1)) { used[x][y] = 0; //p[x][y] = 0; } //move 4 if (!knights (p,used, x+2, y+1, n, count+1)) { used[x][y] = 0; //p[x][y] = 0; } //move 5 if (!knights (p,used, x+1, y+2, n, count+1)) { used[x][y] = 0; //p[x][y] = 0; } //move 6 if (!knights (p,used, x-1, y+2, n, count+1)) { used[x][y] = 0; //p[x][y] = 0; } //move 7 if (!knights (p,used, x-2, y+1, n, count+1)) { used[x][y] = 0; //p[x][y] = 0; } //move 8 if (!knights (p,used, x-2, y-1, n, count+1)) { used[x][y] = 0; //p[x][y] = 0; } permuteno++; //return true; //}while ( x*y != n*n ); return false; } I has to output all the possible combinations of the knight in a nXn board.. any help would be appreciated...

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• How to make radio button options dependent on other radio button choices using Mootools?

  - by Mike Crittenden

  I have a form where there are 6 items, each of which can be ranked from 1-6 in order of importance. Here's a screenshot. Basically, I need to set it up so that if one item gets a ranking of 3 (for example), then "3" becomes disabled for all the other items. Therefore, the user should only be able to select a number that hasn't already been selected for each item (so we can ensure that the items really will be ranked 1-6 and no numbers will be repeated for different items). Here's the markup I'm working with (minus the presentational divs): <label for="importantProductQuality">Product Quality</label> <input id="importantProductQuality_0" name="importantProductQuality" value="1" type="radio"> <label for="importantProductQuality_0">1</label> <input id="importantProductQuality_1" name="importantProductQuality" value="2" type="radio"> <label for="importantProductQuality_1">2</label> <input id="importantProductQuality_2" name="importantProductQuality" value="3" type="radio"> <label for="importantProductQuality_2">3</label> <input id="importantProductQuality_3" name="importantProductQuality" value="4" type="radio"> <label for="importantProductQuality_3">4</label> <input id="importantProductQuality_4" name="importantProductQuality" value="5" type="radio"> <label for="importantProductQuality_4">5</label> <input id="importantProductQuality_5" name="importantProductQuality" value="6" type="radio"> <label for="importantProductQuality_5">6</label> <label for="importantPrice">Price</label> <input id="importantPrice_0" name="importantPrice" value="1" type="radio"> <label for="importantPrice_0">1</label> <input id="importantPrice_1" name="importantPrice" value="2" type="radio"> <label for="importantPrice_1">2</label> <input id="importantPrice_2" name="importantPrice" value="3" type="radio"> <label for="importantPrice_2">3</label> <input id="importantPrice_3" name="importantPrice" value="4" type="radio"> <label for="importantPrice_3">4</label> <input id="importantPrice_4" name="importantPrice" value="5" type="radio"> <label for="importantPrice_4">5</label> <input id="importantPrice_5" name="importantPrice" value="6" type="radio"> <label for="importantPrice_5">6</label> <label for="importantCustomerService">Customer Service</label> <input id="importantCustomerService_0" name="importantCustomerService" value="1" type="radio"> <label for="importantCustomerService_0">1</label> <input id="importantCustomerService_1" name="importantCustomerService" value="2" type="radio"> <label for="importantCustomerService_1">2</label> <input id="importantCustomerService_2" name="importantCustomerService" value="3" type="radio"> <label for="importantCustomerService_2">3</label> <input id="importantCustomerService_3" name="importantCustomerService" value="4" type="radio"> <label for="importantCustomerService_3">4</label> <input id="importantCustomerService_4" name="importantCustomerService" value="5" type="radio"> <label for="importantCustomerService_4">5</label> <input id="importantCustomerService_5" name="importantCustomerService" value="6" type="radio"> <label for="importantCustomerService_5">6</label> <label for="importantLeadTimes">Lead Times</label> <input id="importantLeadTimes_0" name="importantLeadTimes" value="1" type="radio"> <label for="importantLeadTimes_0">1</label> <input id="importantLeadTimes_1" name="importantLeadTimes" value="2" type="radio"> <label for="importantLeadTimes_1">2</label> <input id="importantLeadTimes_2" name="importantLeadTimes" value="3" type="radio"> <label for="importantLeadTimes_2">3</label> <input id="importantLeadTimes_3" name="importantLeadTimes" value="4" type="radio"> <label for="importantLeadTimes_3">4</label> <input id="importantLeadTimes_4" name="importantLeadTimes" value="5" type="radio"> <label for="importantLeadTimes_4">5</label> <input id="importantLeadTimes_5" name="importantLeadTimes" value="6" type="radio"> <label for="importantLeadTimes_5">6</label> <label for="importantMinimumOrderQuantities">Min Order Quantities</label> <input id="importantMinimumOrderQuantities_0" name="importantMinimumOrderQuantities" value="1" type="radio"> <label for="importantMinimumOrderQuantities_0">1</label> <input id="importantMinimumOrderQuantities_1" name="importantMinimumOrderQuantities" value="2" type="radio"> <label for="importantMinimumOrderQuantities_1">2</label> <input id="importantMinimumOrderQuantities_2" name="importantMinimumOrderQuantities" value="3" type="radio"> <label for="importantMinimumOrderQuantities_2">3</label> <input id="importantMinimumOrderQuantities_3" name="importantMinimumOrderQuantities" value="4" type="radio"> <label for="importantMinimumOrderQuantities_3">4</label> <input id="importantMinimumOrderQuantities_4" name="importantMinimumOrderQuantities" value="5" type="radio"> <label for="importantMinimumOrderQuantities_4">5</label> <input id="importantMinimumOrderQuantities_5" name="importantMinimumOrderQuantities" value="6" type="radio"> <label for="importantMinimumOrderQuantities_5">6</label> <label for="importantAccountManager">Account Manager</label> <input id="importantAccountManager_0" name="importantAccountManager" value="1" type="radio"> <label for="importantAccountManager_0">1</label> <input id="importantAccountManager_1" name="importantAccountManager" value="2" type="radio"> <label for="importantAccountManager_1">2</label> <input id="importantAccountManager_2" name="importantAccountManager" value="3" type="radio"> <label for="importantAccountManager_2">3</label> <input id="importantAccountManager_3" name="importantAccountManager" value="4" type="radio"> <label for="importantAccountManager_3">4</label> <input id="importantAccountManager_4" name="importantAccountManager" value="5" type="radio"> <label for="importantAccountManager_4">5</label> <input id="importantAccountManager_5" name="importantAccountManager" value="6" type="radio"> <label for="importantAccountManager_5">6</label> Any ideas?

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• Project Euler #15

  - by Aistina

  Hey everyone, Last night I was trying to solve challenge #15 from Project Euler: Starting in the top left corner of a 2×2 grid, there are 6 routes (without backtracking) to the bottom right corner. How many routes are there through a 20×20 grid? I figured this shouldn't be so hard, so I wrote a basic recursive function: const int gridSize = 20; // call with progress(0, 0) static int progress(int x, int y) { int i = 0; if (x < gridSize) i += progress(x + 1, y); if (y < gridSize) i += progress(x, y + 1); if (x == gridSize && y == gridSize) return 1; return i; } I verified that it worked for a smaller grids such as 2×2 or 3×3, and then set it to run for a 20×20 grid. Imagine my surprise when, 5 hours later, the program was still happily crunching the numbers, and only about 80% done (based on examining its current position/route in the grid). Clearly I'm going about this the wrong way. How would you solve this problem? I'm thinking it should be solved using an equation rather than a method like mine, but that's unfortunately not a strong side of mine. Update: I now have a working version. Basically it caches results obtained before when a n×m block still remains to be traversed. Here is the code along with some comments: // the size of our grid static int gridSize = 20; // the amount of paths available for a "NxM" block, e.g. "2x2" => 4 static Dictionary<string, long> pathsByBlock = new Dictionary<string, long>(); // calculate the surface of the block to the finish line static long calcsurface(long x, long y) { return (gridSize - x) * (gridSize - y); } // call using progress (0, 0) static long progress(long x, long y) { // first calculate the surface of the block remaining long surface = calcsurface(x, y); long i = 0; // zero surface means only 1 path remains // (we either go only right, or only down) if (surface == 0) return 1; // create a textual representation of the remaining // block, for use in the dictionary string block = (gridSize - x) + "x" + (gridSize - y); // if a same block has not been processed before if (!pathsByBlock.ContainsKey(block)) { // calculate it in the right direction if (x < gridSize) i += progress(x + 1, y); // and in the down direction if (y < gridSize) i += progress(x, y + 1); // and cache the result! pathsByBlock[block] = i; } // self-explanatory :) return pathsByBlock[block]; } Calling it 20 times, for grids with size 1×1 through 20×20 produces the following output: There are 2 paths in a 1 sized grid 0,0110006 seconds There are 6 paths in a 2 sized grid 0,0030002 seconds There are 20 paths in a 3 sized grid 0 seconds There are 70 paths in a 4 sized grid 0 seconds There are 252 paths in a 5 sized grid 0 seconds There are 924 paths in a 6 sized grid 0 seconds There are 3432 paths in a 7 sized grid 0 seconds There are 12870 paths in a 8 sized grid 0,001 seconds There are 48620 paths in a 9 sized grid 0,0010001 seconds There are 184756 paths in a 10 sized grid 0,001 seconds There are 705432 paths in a 11 sized grid 0 seconds There are 2704156 paths in a 12 sized grid 0 seconds There are 10400600 paths in a 13 sized grid 0,001 seconds There are 40116600 paths in a 14 sized grid 0 seconds There are 155117520 paths in a 15 sized grid 0 seconds There are 601080390 paths in a 16 sized grid 0,0010001 seconds There are 2333606220 paths in a 17 sized grid 0,001 seconds There are 9075135300 paths in a 18 sized grid 0,001 seconds There are 35345263800 paths in a 19 sized grid 0,001 seconds There are 137846528820 paths in a 20 sized grid 0,0010001 seconds 0,0390022 seconds in total I'm accepting danben's answer, because his helped me find this solution the most. But upvotes also to Tim Goodman and Agos :) Bonus update: After reading Eric Lippert's answer, I took another look and rewrote it somewhat. The basic idea is still the same but the caching part has been taken out and put in a separate function, like in Eric's example. The result is some much more elegant looking code. // the size of our grid const int gridSize = 20; // magic. static Func<A1, A2, R> Memoize<A1, A2, R>(this Func<A1, A2, R> f) { // Return a function which is f with caching. var dictionary = new Dictionary<string, R>(); return (A1 a1, A2 a2) => { R r; string key = a1 + "x" + a2; if (!dictionary.TryGetValue(key, out r)) { // not in cache yet r = f(a1, a2); dictionary.Add(key, r); } return r; }; } // calculate the surface of the block to the finish line static long calcsurface(long x, long y) { return (gridSize - x) * (gridSize - y); } // call using progress (0, 0) static Func<long, long, long> progress = ((Func<long, long, long>)((long x, long y) => { // first calculate the surface of the block remaining long surface = calcsurface(x, y); long i = 0; // zero surface means only 1 path remains // (we either go only right, or only down) if (surface == 0) return 1; // calculate it in the right direction if (x < gridSize) i += progress(x + 1, y); // and in the down direction if (y < gridSize) i += progress(x, y + 1); // self-explanatory :) return i; })).Memoize(); By the way, I couldn't think of a better way to use the two arguments as a key for the dictionary. I googled around a bit, and it seems this is a common solution. Oh well.

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• problem solving [closed]

  - by Suresh S

  Problem Statement The Sports Associations in India (SAI) wants to choose 2 teams of 4 people each to send to Asian games. There are 13 people who want to be members of the teams. The SAI tries grouping them in various ways to see which athletes perform well together. Each grouping gets one test run on the test track and their time is recorded. Your task is to help the SAI choose two disjoint teams of 4 such that the sum of their practice times is minimal. Input There will be several input instances. The first line of each instance gives the total number of practice runs. This will be followed by n lines. Each of those lines will contain 5 numbers: p1 p2 p3 p4 t t is the time taken (in milliseconds) by the team consisting of p1, p2, p3 and p4. The time taken will not be more than 2 minutes. The end of the input will be indicated by a line with n=0. Output Output the best total and the two teams that you choose. If it is impossible to choose two disjoint teams from the test runs given, output -1. Sample Input 6 1 2 3 4 30000 10 11 12 13 15000 5 6 7 8 37800 1 5 10 12 20000 5 6 9 11 43000 1 9 12 13 11000 3 1 4 7 9 10000 3 5 7 11 17890 6 7 12 13 20000 0 Sample Output 45000 -1 Input to the problem 40 2 8 11 9 15532 1 13 11 9 57629 10 12 1 5 43406 6 10 1 2 43904 8 3 4 11 12473 6 12 5 11 19826 3 9 10 11 48347 6 12 13 1 45854 5 4 9 7 34452 9 8 12 2 5596 4 10 2 7 6778 3 6 8 5 32858 13 12 8 6 42457 12 9 2 5 49530 6 8 10 7 51453 1 3 11 9 18620 6 2 5 11 5153 4 1 9 8 37336 10 5 1 12 59524 4 5 3 2 1318 2 13 6 8 7839 12 4 9 5 30697 4 10 13 1 25249 4 2 9 13 52359 8 11 1 9 36437 7 5 11 6 58522 9 1 12 6 58837 7 6 8 5 37826 13 1 11 3 1841 11 3 5 13 50000 2 8 7 12 10137 1 4 12 5 32558 8 5 6 7 39021 1 7 10 13 5979 9 2 11 6 29661 13 12 9 7 7219 12 1 11 9 37354 5 1 10 9 47948 8 1 2 10 11071 2 11 1 8 3074 80 3 5 8 10 37873 1 2 3 5 27633 10 13 3 11 8645 13 1 9 6 2167 5 11 13 8 30862 8 7 9 6 47591 3 11 13 8 33823 2 13 7 5 36668 12 3 11 6 53711 6 13 3 7 52412 3 6 7 5 3850 1 5 11 12 35483 1 7 6 10 50943 11 3 6 8 40191 12 8 13 7 4529 4 10 5 1 43280 4 12 10 5 35142 12 4 5 10 37242 9 7 13 2 2661 3 9 2 10 453 3 8 12 9 12479 3 10 11 5 30047 9 1 11 2 40883 6 5 1 2 8774 11 7 9 1 37701 8 3 4 6 32970 4 12 7 10 55109 8 11 13 12 44713 2 10 8 5 37763 13 10 12 2 53628 7 2 5 10 53197 3 2 1 11 14916 1 2 3 10 50756 3 13 5 6 6959 10 6 1 4 2948 4 7 13 9 14146 8 13 10 2 16784 3 2 6 5 30337 1 6 7 8 14239 2 6 11 5 13749 12 1 10 5 30827 4 6 11 8 18780 9 10 8 5 6336 7 9 1 3 3101 10 3 4 13 56678 7 6 3 8 8258 11 7 12 6 19046 13 6 9 8 46356 9 5 11 13 56570 9 1 10 5 6193 8 6 9 11 16854 3 7 4 9 53573 8 12 10 1 28135 10 3 8 4 31411 11 1 3 12 34534 8 6 4 13 3527 1 6 10 9 52307 11 7 1 12 2886 12 11 1 6 17659 13 5 6 8 48834 11 2 1 10 52951 3 9 13 7 21054 1 5 11 9 14507 11 5 12 4 42040 1 6 12 7 46414 5 12 3 10 26239 6 10 7 8 40762 8 11 6 10 38538 13 1 10 7 31140 9 10 13 4 34164 13 6 7 12 49696 6 13 3 5 36003 8 9 13 6 58409 3 10 7 9 20693 2 1 11 12 22653 5 8 4 7 49888 5 3 2 11 29911 8 12 6 9 30964 8 3 13 6 23597 4 1 6 7 31657 4 6 8 7 13 33639 13 8 10 3 27863 5 2 1 12 1408 4 11 1 12 59010 63 10 11 9 8 23611 10 8 6 11 12410 4 6 7 9 44390 8 4 1 6 16543 1 2 8 10 37452 11 12 6 13 28968 11 12 2 8 59617 1 9 11 2 28631 11 6 5 1 27251 2 7 10 4 42503 7 8 10 3 13673 9 13 11 7 30308 6 1 12 9 4888 13 1 9 8 19475 8 7 3 5 34187 8 1 12 3 46266 6 10 12 5 32855 3 7 13 1 38427 2 5 13 3 59487 6 11 1 13 2098 1 4 13 6 22239 13 7 12 3 28703 12 3 7 4 32 9 8 2 13 35271 10 13 6 12 36422 12 6 9 8 44303 1 9 13 11 22962 11 13 6 12 39518 5 6 13 11 47909 4 13 1 8 10654 11 8 12 4 31956 7 12 9 13 35923 4 9 3 2 34736 13 2 10 1 22945 7 10 8 13 36947 1 4 12 13 19432 7 12 13 4 48718 9 5 13 11 18827 11 2 1 12 45444 8 12 6 13 33175 4 2 11 13 56186 2 9 3 11 33218 12 13 8 1 50727 13 1 8 2 48138 7 1 5 3 1926 6 4 10 1 40997 11 3 1 4 26033 6 10 13 1 40988 11 12 5 4 25199 4 3 1 10 23498 3 6 12 7 24306 13 10 12 3 53255 3 13 4 12 14517 7 10 9 3 29925 9 11 12 13 28333 3 5 13 6 13602 13 12 9 6 10394 8 4 12 6 57471 9 3 4 7 34723 11 9 5 3 38480 12 9 10 11 48048 4 3 6 7 31884 2 10 4 5 57654 86 1 6 5 13 56577 6 8 2 5 20429 11 13 9 3 2243 3 1 10 12 55231 9 5 7 8 29964 5 11 8 1 29624 6 9 3 1 43055 12 13 10 8 52132 10 8 4 1 5729 7 3 6 8 53097 11 12 7 1 18711 12 7 6 13 44397 10 12 5 7 53574 5 3 4 13 27078 11 2 5 10 43623 3 7 1 8 57350 10 12 4 9 19752 5 13 9 3 59380 4 7 13 6 32575 7 5 6 11 13593 13 7 12 6 38282 13 7 6 2 45430 6 2 5 10 38082 2 11 13 7 53557 10 6 7 13 40461 6 11 7 1 22007 4 7 2 3 22386 9 7 11 10 35337 2 6 11 7 4129 6 13 5 3 31813 1 11 6 9 11749 5 11 8 13 21858 5 12 9 11 2470 13 10 6 11 14503 8 4 1 3 10783 1 10 12 7 47116 11 1 8 10 25034 8 1 4 9 23350 3 10 1 9 56717 13 2 8 12 5825 12 3 13 7 35628 10 6 1 12 26901 2 13 3 5 2775 1 8 9 7 1294 7 13 12 2 48170 11 9 13 1 34311 9 6 3 13 30663 8 3 10 6 5853 1 10 2 4 19880 9 2 3 12 48990 3 7 11 4 51558 8 13 2 4 9698 9 4 5 1 6834 3 4 12 2 20941 11 3 9 7 40108 13 11 2 4 2594 8 9 10 13 12242 1 8 10 5 42413 7 1 11 3 17779 1 5 8 3 6934 4 9 8 11 10235 8 11 10 2 18879 11 4 8 2 12691 9 7 5 2 44947 3 2 5 4 30042 2 7 12 4 27185 6 5 10 1 28695 12 9 1 5 53813 8 12 9 3 24719 6 1 4 11 22716 1 13 10 8 39981 12 11 5 2 22412 6 11 2 4 14457 4 11 5 3 39658 10 11 2 1 33056 1 3 6 9 16958 6 11 12 7 50779 8 10 6 13 24824 7 10 1 13 35692 13 4 8 9 32885 7 6 4 3 10948 4 5 7 1 36875 5 10 6 7 58746 10 7 8 12 39453 8 4 12 1 46674 11 3 1 8 48103 0

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• xml to xsl transformation

  - by amirin

  Hi, I have a requirement to extract the uniquie values from the different nodes of the given xml using xsl transformation. XML FILE:- var IPClaimCausesNice = ""; function changeIPClaimCause(){ if(CommJob.client.policy.Insurance.Coverages.Coverage[0].Claim.IPClaimCause == "Diagnosis") { IPClaimCausesNice = "diagnosis" } if(CommJob.client.policy.Insurance.Coverages.Coverage[0].Claim.IPClaimCause == "Illness") { IPClaimCausesNice = "illness" } if(CommJob.client.policy.Insurance.Coverages.Coverage[0].Claim.IPClaimCause == "Accident") { IPClaimCausesNice = "accident" } return IPClaimCausesNice; } <section id="1903879316" name="Logos"> <fraglink id="605609862" resid="1235000151"> <argvalue name="CommJob"> <var name="CommJob" type="Th_1235001170_CommJob" /> </argvalue> </fraglink> </section> <section id="13483397" name="Address Block"> <fraglink id="563800610" resid="986000123"> <argvalue name="PersonInformation"> <var name="AddresseePersonInformation" type="Th_1235000929_PersonInformation" /> </argvalue> </fraglink> </section> <section id="1093480468" name="Details"> <fraglink id="460316501" resid="1195000163"> <argvalue name="currentDateTime"> <var name="getSystemVariables.getCurrentDate" type="date" /> </argvalue> <argvalue name="CommJob"> <var name="CommJob" type="Th_1235000929_CommJob" /> </argvalue> <argvalue name="ShowDOB" /> <argvalue name="ShowYourRef" /> <argvalue name="YourRefLabel" /> </fraglink> <fraglink id="1026044336" resid="1235000070"> <argvalue name="brandKey"> <var name="CommJob.commJobDetails.brandingKey" type="string" /> </argvalue> <argvalue name="brandSponsor"> <var name="CommJob.client.policy.policyDetails.brandSponsor" type="string" /> </argvalue> </fraglink> </section> <section id="2092948772" name="Important info"> <frag id="1180564368" name="frag" no-match="error" type="text"> <edition id="1178777425" name="Any" withdrawn="False"> <edition-content> <p style="bodyTableHeader" align="left" xml:space="preserve">Important information</p> <p style="body" xml:space="preserve">In accordance with the terms and conditions of your policy, your claim has been classified as a <iif><expression><script language="JavaScript">CommJob.client.policy.Insurance.Coverages.Coverage[0].Claim.IPClaimCause == "Diagnosis" || CommJob.client.policy.Insurance.Coverages.Coverage[0].Claim.IPClaimCause == "Ill health"</script><description>the IPClaimCause of the CommJob's client policy insurances Insurance Coverages IPCover Claim equals "Diagnosis" or the IPClaimCause of the CommJob's client policy insurances Insurance Coverages IPCover Claim equals "Ill health"sicknessCommJob.client.policy.Insurance.Coverages.Coverage[0].Claim.IPClaimCause == "Accident"the IPClaimCause of the CommJob's client policy insurances Insurance Coverages IPCover Claim equals "Accident"accident. Please assist us Please quote your policy and claim numbers / when returning your forms. Your claim has been received Your Thank you for sending your Initial Claim Form which we received on . We are sorry to hear of your recent . Our assessmentThe attending doctor’s statement indicates you are claiming benefits as a result of , CommJob.client.policy.Insurance.Coverages.Coverage[0].Claim.IPClaimCause == "Diagnosis"the IPClaimCause of the CommJob's client policy Insurance Coverages first Coverage Claim equals "Diagnosis"which was diagnosedCommJob.client.policy.Insurance.Coverages.Coverage[0].Claim.IPClaimCause == "Accident"the IPClaimCause of the CommJob's client policy Insurance Coverages first Coverage Claim equals "Accident"which first occuredCommJob.client.policy.Insurance.Coverages.Coverage[0].Claim.IPClaimCause == "Ill health"the IPClaimCause of the CommJob's client policy Insurance Coverages first Coverage Claim equals "Ill health"with symptoms commencing on . We note you ceased all work on and consulted your doctor IsNotMissing(CommJob.placeHolders.date.date5)the date5 of the CommJob's placeHolders date is not missingon this day also regarding your condition. Further information is required We’ve enclosed the following forms. Please complete these and return them to us so that we can continue assessing your claim. Progress claim form Attached questionnaire Authority to the Health Insurance Commission Medical authority <<other/ free format>> <<other/ free format>> Please be advised we’ve CommJob.placeHolders._boolean.boolean1 == truethe CommJob's placeHolders boolean is boolean1also requested the following information: Medical report from Dr Medicare history report from the Health Insurance Commission <<other/ free format>> <<other/ free format>> As your claim forms have been submitted months after you ceased work, our ability to properly assess your claim may have been prejudiced. In order to complete our assessment of your claim, the following information is required within 30 days of this letter: Reason for late lodgement of claim. Reason(s) you ceased work on (eg redundancy or due to medical condition). Name and contact details of all doctors and specialists you have consulted since you ceased work. Copies of any medical, radiology, pathology or other reports in your possession. Details of all treatment you have received since you ceased work. Whether you returned to work (paid or unpaid) in either a full-time or part-time capacity. If so, please provide the dates you worked, hours you worked, duties you performed and any income you received. Financial information for any other related entities (if applicable). If you are unable to supply the above information, please contact us by WriteText(FormatDateTime(DateAdd(getSystemVariables.getCurrentDate,"day",30),"dd MMMM yyyy")). To help in the ongoing assessment of your claim, you are required to be under the regular care and attendance of a medical practitioner. We’ve enclosed a Progress Claim Form which needs to be completed and returned to us by . False False False CC: Different nodes to pick the values:- 1. 2.path form 5. Values to be picked form the xml node and display in HTML is like CommJob.client.policy.Insurance.Coverages.Coverage[0].Claim.IPClaimCause CommJob.commJobDetails.stockType CommJob.commJobDetails.targetClient.targetClientName CommJob.client.policy.policyDetails.policyStatus CommJob.client.policy.policyDetails.productType CommJob.commJobDetails.targetClient.targetClientName ........etc can any one help me to provide the solution. This xsl transformation doesn't pick correctly only the values <xsl:template match="@*"/> Any help on this will great.

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• XSLT big integer (int64) handling msxml

  - by Farid Z

  When trying to do math on an big integer (int64) large number in xslt template I get the wrong result since there is no native 64-bit integer support in xslt (xslt number is 64-bit double). I am using msxml 6.0 on Windows XP SP3. Are there any work around for this on Windows? <tables> <table> <table_schem>REPADMIN</table_schem> <table_name>TEST_DESCEND_IDENTITY_BIGINT</table_name> <column> <col_name>COL1</col_name> <identity> <col_min_val>9223372036854775805</col_min_val> <col_max_val>9223372036854775805</col_max_val> <autoincrementvalue>9223372036854775807</autoincrementvalue> <autoincrementstart>9223372036854775807</autoincrementstart> <autoincrementinc>-1</autoincrementinc> </identity> </column> </table> </tables> This test returns true due to overflow (I am assuming) but actually is false if I could tell the xslt processor somehow to use int64 rather than the default 64-bit double for the data since big integer is the actual data type for the numbers in the xml input. <xsl:when test="autoincrementvalue = (col_min_val + autoincrementinc)"> <xsl:value-of select="''"/> </xsl:when> here is the complete template <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" > <!--Reseed Derby identity column--> <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration='yes' method='text' /> <xsl:param name="stmtsep">;</xsl:param> <xsl:param name="schemprefix"></xsl:param> <xsl:template match="tables"> <xsl:variable name="identitycount" select="count(table/column/identity)"></xsl:variable> <xsl:for-each select="table/column/identity"> <xsl:variable name="table_schem" select="../../table_schem"></xsl:variable> <xsl:variable name="table_name" select="../../table_name"></xsl:variable> <xsl:variable name="tablespec"> <xsl:if test="$schemprefix"> <xsl:value-of select="$table_schem"/>.</xsl:if><xsl:value-of select="$table_name"/></xsl:variable> <xsl:variable name="col_name" select="../col_name"></xsl:variable> <xsl:variable name="newstart"> <xsl:choose> <xsl:when test="autoincrementinc > 0"> <xsl:choose> <xsl:when test="col_max_val = '' and autoincrementvalue = autoincrementstart"> <xsl:value-of select="''"/> </xsl:when> <xsl:when test="col_max_val = ''"> <xsl:value-of select="autoincrementstart"/> </xsl:when> <xsl:when test="autoincrementvalue = (col_max_val + autoincrementinc)"> <xsl:value-of select="''"/> </xsl:when> <xsl:when test="(col_max_val + autoincrementinc) &lt; autoincrementstart"> <xsl:value-of select="autoincrementstart"/> </xsl:when> <xsl:otherwise> <xsl:value-of select="col_max_val + autoincrementinc"/> </xsl:otherwise> </xsl:choose> </xsl:when> <xsl:when test="autoincrementinc &lt; 0"> <xsl:choose> <xsl:when test="col_min_val = '' and autoincrementvalue = autoincrementstart"> <xsl:value-of select="''"/> </xsl:when> <xsl:when test="col_min_val = ''"> <xsl:value-of select="autoincrementstart"/> </xsl:when> <xsl:when test="autoincrementvalue = (col_min_val + autoincrementinc)"> <xsl:value-of select="''"/> </xsl:when> <xsl:when test="(col_min_val + autoincrementinc) > autoincrementstart"> <xsl:value-of select="autoincrementstart"/> </xsl:when> <xsl:otherwise> <xsl:value-of select="col_min_val + autoincrementinc"/> </xsl:otherwise> </xsl:choose> </xsl:when> </xsl:choose> </xsl:variable> <xsl:if test="not(position()=1)"><xsl:text> </xsl:text></xsl:if> <xsl:choose> <!--restart with ddl changes both the next identity value AUTOINCREMENTVALUE and the identity start number AUTOINCREMENTSTART eventhough in this casewe only want to change only the next identity number--> <xsl:when test="$newstart != '' and $newstart != autoincrementvalue">alter table <xsl:value-of select="$tablespec"/> alter column <xsl:value-of select="$col_name"/> restart with <xsl:value-of select="$newstart"/><xsl:if test="$identitycount>1">;</xsl:if></xsl:when> <xsl:otherwise>-- reseed <xsl:value-of select="$tablespec"/> is not necessary</xsl:otherwise> </xsl:choose> </xsl:for-each> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet>

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• Optimizing a lot of Scanner.findWithinHorizon(pattern, 0) calls

  - by darvids0n

  I'm building a process which extracts data from 6 csv-style files and two poorly laid out .txt reports and builds output CSVs, and I'm fully aware that there's going to be some overhead searching through all that whitespace thousands of times, but I never anticipated converting about about 50,000 records would take 12 hours. Excerpt of my manual matching code (I know it's horrible that I use lists of tokens like that, but it was the best thing I could think of): public static String lookup(List<String> tokensBefore, List<String> tokensAfter) { String result = null; while(_match(tokensBefore)) { // block until all input is read if(id.hasNext()) { result = id.next(); // capture the next token that matches if(_matchImmediate(tokensAfter)) // try to match tokensAfter to this result return result; } else return null; // end of file; no match } return null; // no matches } private static boolean _match(List<String> tokens) { return _match(tokens, true); } private static boolean _match(List<String> tokens, boolean block) { if(tokens != null && !tokens.isEmpty()) { if(id.findWithinHorizon(tokens.get(0), 0) == null) return false; for(int i = 1; i <= tokens.size(); i++) { if (i == tokens.size()) { // matches all tokens return true; } else if(id.hasNext() && !id.next().matches(tokens.get(i))) { break; // break to blocking behaviour } } } else { return true; // empty list always matches } if(block) return _match(tokens); // loop until we find something or nothing else return false; // return after just one attempted match } private static boolean _matchImmediate(List<String> tokens) { if(tokens != null) { for(int i = 0; i <= tokens.size(); i++) { if (i == tokens.size()) { // matches all tokens return true; } else if(!id.hasNext() || !id.next().matches(tokens.get(i))) { return false; // doesn't match, or end of file } } return false; // we have some serious problems if this ever gets called } else { return true; // empty list always matches } } Basically wondering how I would work in an efficient string search (Boyer-Moore or similar). My Scanner id is scanning a java.util.String, figured buffering it to memory would reduce I/O since the search here is being performed thousands of times on a relatively small file. The performance increase compared to scanning a BufferedReader(FileReader(File)) was probably less than 1%, the process still looks to be taking a LONG time. I've also traced execution and the slowness of my overall conversion process is definitely between the first and last like of the lookup method. In fact, so much so that I ran a shortcut process to count the number of occurrences of various identifiers in the .csv-style files (I use 2 lookup methods, this is just one of them) and the process completed indexing approx 4 different identifiers for 50,000 records in less than a minute. Compared to 12 hours, that's instant. Some notes (updated): I don't necessarily need the pattern-matching behaviour, I only get the first field of a line of text so I need to match line breaks or use Scanner.nextLine(). All ID numbers I need start at position 0 of a line and run through til the first block of whitespace, after which is the name of the corresponding object. I would ideally want to return a String, not an int locating the line number or start position of the result, but if it's faster then it will still work just fine. If an int is being returned, however, then I would now have to seek to that line again just to get the ID; storing the ID of every line that is searched sounds like a way around that. Anything to help me out, even if it saves 1ms per search, will help, so all input is appreciated. Thankyou! Usage scenario 1: I have a list of objects in file A, who in the old-style system have an id number which is not in file A. It is, however, POSSIBLY in another csv-style file (file B) or possibly still in a .txt report (file C) which each also contain a bunch of other information which is not useful here, and so file B needs to be searched through for the object's full name (1 token since it would reside within the second column of any given line), and then the first column should be the ID number. If that doesn't work, we then have to split the search token by whitespace into separate tokens before doing a search of file C for those tokens as well. Generalised code: String field; for (/* each record in file A */) { /* construct the rest of this object from file A info */ // now to find the ID, if we can List<String> objectName = new ArrayList<String>(1); objectName.add(Pattern.quote(thisObject.fullName)); field = lookup(objectSearchToken, objectName); // search file B if(field == null) // not found in file B { lookupReset(false); // initialise scanner to check file C objectName.clear(); // not using the full name String[] tokens = thisObject.fullName.split(id.delimiter().pattern()); for(String s : tokens) objectName.add(Pattern.quote(s)); field = lookup(objectSearchToken, objectName); // search file C lookupReset(true); // back to file B } else { /* found it, file B specific processing here */ } if(field != null) // found it in B or C thisObject.ID = field; } The objectName tokens are all uppercase words with possible hyphens or apostrophes in them, separated by spaces. Much like a person's name. As per a comment, I will pre-compile the regex for my objectSearchToken, which is just [\r\n]+. What's ending up happening in file C is, every single line is being checked, even the 95% of lines which don't contain an ID number and object name at the start. Would it be quicker to use ^[\r\n]+.*(objectname) instead of two separate regexes? It may reduce the number of _match executions. The more general case of that would be, concatenate all tokensBefore with all tokensAfter, and put a .* in the middle. It would need to be matching backwards through the file though, otherwise it would match the correct line but with a huge .* block in the middle with lots of lines. The above situation could be resolved if I could get java.util.Scanner to return the token previous to the current one after a call to findWithinHorizon. I have another usage scenario. Will put it up asap.

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• TSQL Conditionally Select Specific Value

  - by Dzejms

  This is a follow-up to #1644748 where I successfully answered my own question, but Quassnoi helped me to realize that it was the wrong question. He gave me a solution that worked for my sample data, but I couldn't plug it back into the parent stored procedure because I fail at SQL 2005 syntax. So here is an attempt to paint the broader picture and ask what I actually need. This is part of a stored procedure that returns a list of items in a bug tracking application I've inherited. There are are over 100 fields and 26 joins so I'm pulling out only the mostly relevant bits. SELECT tickets.ticketid, tickets.tickettype, tickets_tickettype_lu.tickettypedesc, tickets.stage, tickets.position, tickets.sponsor, tickets.dev, tickets.qa, DATEDIFF(DAY, ticket_history_assignment.savedate, GETDATE()) as 'daysinqueue' FROM dbo.tickets WITH (NOLOCK) LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.tickets_tickettype_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON tickets.tickettype = tickets_tickettype_lu.tickettypeid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.tickets_history_assignment WITH (NOLOCK) ON tickets_history_assignment.ticketid = tickets.ticketid AND tickets_history_assignment.historyid = ( SELECT MAX(historyid) FROM dbo.tickets_history_assignment WITH (NOLOCK) WHERE tickets_history_assignment.ticketid = tickets.ticketid GROUP BY tickets_history_assignment.ticketid ) WHERE tickets.sponsor = @sponsor The area of interest is the daysinqueue subquery mess. The tickets_history_assignment table looks roughly as follows declare @tickets_history_assignment table ( historyid int, ticketid int, sponsor int, dev int, qa int, savedate datetime ) insert into @tickets_history_assignment values (1521402, 92774,20,14, 20, '2009-10-27 09:17:59.527') insert into @tickets_history_assignment values (1521399, 92774,20,14, 42, '2009-08-31 12:07:52.917') insert into @tickets_history_assignment values (1521311, 92774,100,14, 42, '2008-12-08 16:15:49.887') insert into @tickets_history_assignment values (1521336, 92774,100,14, 42, '2009-01-16 14:27:43.577') Whenever a ticket is saved, the current values for sponsor, dev and qa are stored in the tickets_history_assignment table with the ticketid and a timestamp. So it is possible for someone to change the value for qa, but leave sponsor alone. What I want to know, based on all of these conditions, is the historyid of the record in the tickets_history_assignment table where the sponsor value was last changed so that I can calculate the value for daysinqueue. If a record is inserted into the history table, and only the qa value has changed, I don't want that record. So simply relying on MAX(historyid) won't work for me. Quassnoi came up with the following which seemed to work with my sample data, but I can't plug it into the larger query, SQL Manager bitches about the WITH statement. ;WITH rows AS ( SELECT *, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY ticketid ORDER BY savedate DESC) AS rn FROM @Table ) SELECT rl.sponsor, ro.savedate FROM rows rl CROSS APPLY ( SELECT TOP 1 rc.savedate FROM rows rc JOIN rows rn ON rn.ticketid = rc.ticketid AND rn.rn = rc.rn + 1 AND rn.sponsor <> rc.sponsor WHERE rc.ticketid = rl.ticketid ORDER BY rc.rn ) ro WHERE rl.rn = 1 I played with it yesterday afternoon and got nowhere because I don't fundamentally understand what is going on here and how it should fit into the larger context. So, any takers? UPDATE Ok, here's the whole thing. I've been switching some of the table and column names in an attempt to simplify things so here's the full unedited mess. snip - old bad code Here are the errors: Msg 102, Level 15, State 1, Procedure usp_GetProjectRecordsByAssignment, Line 159 Incorrect syntax near ';'. Msg 102, Level 15, State 1, Procedure usp_GetProjectRecordsByAssignment, Line 179 Incorrect syntax near ')'. Line numbers are of course not correct but refer to ;WITH rows AS And the ')' char after the WHERE rl.rn = 1 ) Respectively Is there a tag for extra super long question? UPDATE #2 Here is the finished query for anyone who may need this: CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[usp_GetProjectRecordsByAssignment] ( @assigned numeric(18,0), @assignedtype numeric(18,0) ) AS SET NOCOUNT ON WITH rows AS ( SELECT *, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY recordid ORDER BY savedate DESC) AS rn FROM projects_history_assignment ) SELECT projects_records.recordid, projects_records.recordtype, projects_recordtype_lu.recordtypedesc, projects_records.stage, projects_stage_lu.stagedesc, projects_records.position, projects_position_lu.positiondesc, CASE projects_records.clientrequested WHEN '1' THEN 'Yes' WHEN '0' THEN 'No' END AS clientrequested, projects_records.reportingmethod, projects_reportingmethod_lu.reportingmethoddesc, projects_records.clientaccess, projects_clientaccess_lu.clientaccessdesc, projects_records.clientnumber, projects_records.project, projects_lu.projectdesc, projects_records.version, projects_version_lu.versiondesc, projects_records.projectedversion, projects_version_lu_projected.versiondesc AS projectedversiondesc, projects_records.sitetype, projects_sitetype_lu.sitetypedesc, projects_records.title, projects_records.module, projects_module_lu.moduledesc, projects_records.component, projects_component_lu.componentdesc, projects_records.loginusername, projects_records.loginpassword, projects_records.assistedusername, projects_records.browsername, projects_browsername_lu.browsernamedesc, projects_records.browserversion, projects_records.osname, projects_osname_lu.osnamedesc, projects_records.osversion, projects_records.errortype, projects_errortype_lu.errortypedesc, projects_records.gsipriority, projects_gsipriority_lu.gsiprioritydesc, projects_records.clientpriority, projects_clientpriority_lu.clientprioritydesc, projects_records.scheduledstartdate, projects_records.scheduledcompletiondate, projects_records.projectedhours, projects_records.actualstartdate, projects_records.actualcompletiondate, projects_records.actualhours, CASE projects_records.billclient WHEN '1' THEN 'Yes' WHEN '0' THEN 'No' END AS billclient, projects_records.billamount, projects_records.status, projects_status_lu.statusdesc, CASE CAST(projects_records.assigned AS VARCHAR(5)) WHEN '0' THEN 'N/A' WHEN '10000' THEN 'Unassigned' WHEN '20000' THEN 'Client' WHEN '30000' THEN 'Tech Support' WHEN '40000' THEN 'LMI Tech Support' WHEN '50000' THEN 'Upload' WHEN '60000' THEN 'Spider' WHEN '70000' THEN 'DB Admin' ELSE rtrim(users_assigned.nickname) + ' ' + rtrim(users_assigned.lastname) END AS assigned, CASE CAST(projects_records.assigneddev AS VARCHAR(5)) WHEN '0' THEN 'N/A' WHEN '10000' THEN 'Unassigned' ELSE rtrim(users_assigneddev.nickname) + ' ' + rtrim(users_assigneddev.lastname) END AS assigneddev, CASE CAST(projects_records.assignedqa AS VARCHAR(5)) WHEN '0' THEN 'N/A' WHEN '10000' THEN 'Unassigned' ELSE rtrim(users_assignedqa.nickname) + ' ' + rtrim(users_assignedqa.lastname) END AS assignedqa, CASE CAST(projects_records.assignedsponsor AS VARCHAR(5)) WHEN '0' THEN 'N/A' WHEN '10000' THEN 'Unassigned' ELSE rtrim(users_assignedsponsor.nickname) + ' ' + rtrim(users_assignedsponsor.lastname) END AS assignedsponsor, projects_records.clientcreated, CASE projects_records.clientcreated WHEN '1' THEN 'Yes' WHEN '0' THEN 'No' END AS clientcreateddesc, CASE projects_records.clientcreated WHEN '1' THEN rtrim(clientusers_createuser.firstname) + ' ' + rtrim(clientusers_createuser.lastname) + ' (Client)' ELSE rtrim(users_createuser.nickname) + ' ' + rtrim(users_createuser.lastname) END AS createuser, projects_records.createdate, projects_records.savedate, projects_resolution.sitesaffected, projects_sitesaffected_lu.sitesaffecteddesc, DATEDIFF(DAY, projects_history_assignment.savedate, GETDATE()) as 'daysinqueue', projects_records.iOnHitList, projects_records.changetype FROM dbo.projects_records WITH (NOLOCK) LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_recordtype_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.recordtype = projects_recordtype_lu.recordtypeid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_stage_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.stage = projects_stage_lu.stageid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_position_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.position = projects_position_lu.positionid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_reportingmethod_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.reportingmethod = projects_reportingmethod_lu.reportingmethodid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.project = projects_lu.projectid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_version_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.version = projects_version_lu.versionid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_version_lu projects_version_lu_projected WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.projectedversion = projects_version_lu_projected.versionid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_sitetype_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.sitetype = projects_sitetype_lu.sitetypeid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_module_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.module = projects_module_lu.moduleid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_component_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.component = projects_component_lu.componentid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_browsername_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.browsername = projects_browsername_lu.browsernameid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_osname_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.osname = projects_osname_lu.osnameid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_errortype_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.errortype = projects_errortype_lu.errortypeid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_resolution WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.recordid = projects_resolution.recordid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_sitesaffected_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_resolution.sitesaffected = projects_sitesaffected_lu.sitesaffectedid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_gsipriority_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.gsipriority = projects_gsipriority_lu.gsipriorityid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_clientpriority_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.clientpriority = projects_clientpriority_lu.clientpriorityid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_status_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.status = projects_status_lu.statusid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_clientaccess_lu WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.clientaccess = projects_clientaccess_lu.clientaccessid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.users users_assigned WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.assigned = users_assigned.userid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.users users_assigneddev WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.assigneddev = users_assigneddev.userid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.users users_assignedqa WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.assignedqa = users_assignedqa.userid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.users users_assignedsponsor WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.assignedsponsor = users_assignedsponsor.userid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.users users_createuser WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.createuser = users_createuser.userid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.clientusers clientusers_createuser WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_records.createuser = clientusers_createuser.userid LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.projects_history_assignment WITH (NOLOCK) ON projects_history_assignment.recordid = projects_records.recordid AND projects_history_assignment.historyid = ( SELECT ro.historyid FROM rows rl CROSS APPLY ( SELECT TOP 1 rc.historyid FROM rows rc JOIN rows rn ON rn.recordid = rc.recordid AND rn.rn = rc.rn + 1 AND rn.assigned <> rc.assigned WHERE rc.recordid = rl.recordid ORDER BY rc.rn ) ro WHERE rl.rn = 1 AND rl.recordid = projects_records.recordid ) WHERE (@assignedtype='0' and projects_records.assigned = @assigned) OR (@assignedtype='1' and projects_records.assigneddev = @assigned) OR (@assignedtype='2' and projects_records.assignedqa = @assigned) OR (@assignedtype='3' and projects_records.assignedsponsor = @assigned) OR (@assignedtype='4' and projects_records.createuser = @assigned)

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• getelementbyid does not work in firefox

  - by gaurab

  hi, this below mentioned code works perfect in internet explorer but not in firefox... i get an error in line in firefox: document.getElementById("supplier_no").value= values_array[0]; that getElementById returns null. how to solve the problem? var winName; //variable for the popup window var g_return_destination = null ; //variable to track where the data gets sent back to. // Set the value in the original pages text box. function f_set_home_value( as_Value ) { if (document.getElementById(g_return_destination[0]).name == "netbank_supplier_name_info" ) { //clear the old values for (selnum = 1; selnum <= 5; selnum++) { document.getElementById("expense_account"+selnum).value = ""; document.getElementById("expense_account_name"+selnum).value = ""; document.getElementById("expense_vat_flag"+selnum).value = "off"; document.getElementById("expense_vat_flag"+selnum).checked = ""; document.getElementById("expense_vat_amount"+selnum).value = ""; document.getElementById("expense_vat_code"+selnum).value = ""; document.getElementById("expense_period"+selnum).value = ""; document.getElementById("expense_date"+selnum).value = ""; if (selnum!=1) {//these are sometimes defaulted in, and in any case you will always have line1 document.getElementById("expense_more_dept"+selnum).value = ""; document.getElementById("expense_more_prj"+selnum).value = ""; document.getElementById("expense_more_subj"+selnum).value = ""; } document.getElementById("expense_amount"+selnum).value = ""; } var values_array = as_Value[0].split("!"); document.getElementById("supplier_no").value= values_array[0]; document.getElementById("supplier_bankAccount_no").value= values_array[1]; str = values_array[2] ; str = str.split(";sp;").join(" "); document.getElementById("default_expense_account").value= str; document.getElementById("expense_account1").value= str; document.getElementById("expense_more_sok1").disabled= false; str = values_array[3] ; str = str.split(";sp;").join(" "); document.getElementById("payment_term").value= str; strPeriod = calcPeriod(str,document.getElementById("due_date").value); document.getElementById("expense_period1").value = (strPeriod); strExpenseDate = calcExpenseDate(str,document.getElementById("due_date").value); document.getElementById("expense_date1").value = (strExpenseDate); str = values_array[4] ; str = str.split(";sp;").join(" "); document.getElementById("expense_account_name1").value= str; str = values_array[5] ; str = str.split(";sp;").join(" "); document.getElementById("expense_vat_code1").value= str; if (str == 0) { document.getElementById("expense_vat_flag1").checked= ''; document.getElementById("expense_vat_flag1").disabled= true; }else{ document.getElementById("expense_vat_flag1").checked= 'yes'; document.getElementById("expense_vat_flag1").value= 'on'; document.getElementById("expense_vat_flag1").disabled= false; } str = values_array[6] ; str = str.split(";sp;").join(" "); document.getElementById("supplier_name").value= str; var str = values_array[7]; str = str.split(";sp;").join(" "); str = str.split("&cr;").join("\r"); document.getElementById("netbank_supplier_name_info").value= str; strx = justNumberNF(document.getElementById("amount").value); document.all["expense_vat_amount1"].value = NetbankToDollarsAndCents(strx * (24/124)) ; document.getElementById("amount").value=NetbankToDollarsAndCents(strx); document.getElementById("expense_amount1").value = document.getElementById("amount").value; document.getElementById("expense_amount2").value = ''; document.getElementById("expense_account2").value= ''; //document.getElementById("expense_vat_flag2").value= ''; document.getElementById("expense_vat_amount2").value= ''; document.getElementById("expense_amount3").value = ''; document.getElementById("expense_account3").value= ''; //.getElementById("expense_vat_flag3").value= ''; document.getElementById("expense_vat_amount3").value= ''; document.getElementById("expense_amount4").value = ''; document.getElementById("expense_account4").value= ''; //document.getElementById("expense_vat_flag4").value= ''; document.getElementById("expense_vat_amount4").value= ''; document.getElementById("expense_amount5").value = ''; document.getElementById("expense_account5").value= ''; //document.getElementById("expense_vat_flag5").value= ''; document.getElementById("expense_vat_amount5").value= ''; str = values_array[8] ; str = str.split(";sp;").join(" "); if (str=="2"){ document.frmName.ButtonSelPeriodisering1.disabled=false; document.frmName.ButtonSelPeriodisering1.click(); } winName.close(); } } //Pass Data Back to original window function f_popup_return(as_Value) { var l_return = new Array(1); l_return[0] = as_Value; f_set_home_value(l_return); } function justNumberNF(val){ val = (val==null) ? 0 : val; // check if a number, otherwise try taking out non-number characters. if (isNaN(val)) { var newVal = parseFloat(val.replace(/[^\d\.\-]/g, '.')); // check if still not a number. Might be undefined, '', etc., so just replace with 0. return (isNaN(newVal) ? 0 : newVal); } // return 0 in place of infinite numbers. else if (!isFinite(val)) { return 0; } return val; }; function NetbankToDollarsAndCents(n) { var s = "" + Math.round(n * 100) / 100 ; var i = s.indexOf('.') ; if (i < 0) {return s + ",00" } ; var t = s.substring(0, i + 1) + s.substring(i + 1, i + 3) ; if (i + 2 == s.length) {t += "0"} ; return t.replace('.',',') ; }

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• Axis value changes in barchart while swapping the phone using Achartengine

  - by Vasu

  Hi I have included the Barchart using AchartEngine API .When I swap the orientation of the screen the yaxis value is altered as same values. For eg. initially it is (0,10) , (10,25) but after swapping its changes to (0,10), (10,10) i could not understand why it is happening . And I have place string in x axis instead of numbers , I used addtextlabel method but the string is overlapped on the number . I need to display only the names. could you help on this. I have included my code here. public class Analytics extends Activity implements OnClickListener { private Button settings_btn; private RelativeLayout relativeLayout3; private boolean isClicked = false; private static final int SERIES_NR = 1; static int multiple_of_five; private GraphicalView mChartView; XYMultipleSeriesRenderer renderer; static int value=20; @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.analytics); settings_btn = (Button) findViewById(R.id.settings_btn); relativeLayout3 = (RelativeLayout) findViewById(R.id.relativeLayout3); settings_btn.setOnClickListener(this); if (SharedValues.isClicked) { relativeLayout3.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE); } else { relativeLayout3.setVisibility(View.GONE); } renderer = getBarDemoRenderer(); setChartSettings(renderer); if (mChartView == null) { RelativeLayout layout = (RelativeLayout) findViewById(R.id.relativeLayout5); // mChartView= ChartFactory.getLineChartView(this, getDemoDataset(), getDemoRenderer()); mChartView = ChartFactory.getBarChartView(getApplicationContext(),getBarDemoDataset(),renderer,Type.DEFAULT); layout.addView(mChartView,new LayoutParams(LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT, 280)); } else { mChartView.repaint(); } // Intent intent = ChartFactory.getLineChartIntent(this, getDemoDataset(), getDemoRenderer()); // intent = ChartFactory.getBarChartIntent(this, getBarDemoDataset(), renderer, Type.DEFAULT); // startActivity(intent); } @Override protected void onResume() { super.onResume(); } public XYMultipleSeriesRenderer getBarDemoRenderer() { XYMultipleSeriesRenderer renderer = new XYMultipleSeriesRenderer(); renderer.setAxisTitleTextSize(16); renderer.setChartTitleTextSize(20); renderer.setLabelsTextSize(15); renderer.setLegendTextSize(15); // renderer.setApplyBackgroundColor(true); // renderer.setBackgroundColor(R.color.chart_bg); // renderer.setMarginsColor(R.color.settings_bg_color); // renderer.setBackgroundColor(getResources().getColor(R.color.background)); renderer.setPanEnabled(false, false); renderer.setZoomEnabled(false, false); renderer.setMargins(new int[] {0, 10, 0, 0}); SimpleSeriesRenderer r = new SimpleSeriesRenderer(); // r.setColor(Color.MAGENTA); // renderer.addSeriesRenderer(r); r = new SimpleSeriesRenderer(); r.setColor(Color.CYAN); renderer.addSeriesRenderer(r); return renderer; } private void setChartSettings(XYMultipleSeriesRenderer renderer) { // renderer.setChartTitle("Chart demo"); // renderer.setXTitle("x values"); // renderer.setYTitle("y values"); renderer.setXAxisMin(2); renderer.setMarginsColor(Color.parseColor("#00F5DA81")); renderer.addXTextLabel(1.0, "Q1"); renderer.addXTextLabel(3.0, "Q2"); renderer.addXTextLabel(5.0, "Q3"); renderer.addXTextLabel(7.0, "Q4"); renderer.addXTextLabel(9.0, "Q5"); renderer.setXAxisMax(20); renderer.setYAxisMin(0); renderer.setYAxisMax(100); renderer.setZoomEnabled(false, false); // renderer.setApplyBackgroundColor(true); // renderer.setMarginsColor(R.color.settings_bg_color); renderer.setBackgroundColor(Color.TRANSPARENT); // renderer.setBackgroundColor(R.color.chart_bg); } private XYMultipleSeriesDataset getDemoDataset() { XYMultipleSeriesDataset dataset = new XYMultipleSeriesDataset(); final int nr = 10; Random r = new Random(); for (int i = 0; i < SERIES_NR; i++) { XYSeries series = new XYSeries(""); for (int k = 0; k < nr; k++) { if(k%2==1) { series.add(0, 0); } else { series.add(k, 20); } } dataset.addSeries(series); } return dataset; } private XYMultipleSeriesRenderer getDemoRenderer() { XYMultipleSeriesRenderer renderer = new XYMultipleSeriesRenderer(); renderer.setAxisTitleTextSize(6); renderer.setChartTitleTextSize(10); renderer.setLabelsTextSize(5); renderer.setLegendTextSize(5); renderer.setPointSize(5f); // renderer.setMarginsColor(R.color.settings_bg_color); // renderer.setApplyBackgroundColor(true); // renderer.setBackgroundColor(R.color.chart_bg); renderer.setMargins(new int[] {20, 30, 15, 0}); XYSeriesRenderer r = new XYSeriesRenderer(); r.setColor(Color.BLUE); r.setPointStyle(PointStyle.SQUARE); r.setFillBelowLine(true); r.setFillBelowLineColor(Color.WHITE); r.setFillPoints(true); renderer.addSeriesRenderer(r); r = new XYSeriesRenderer(); r.setPointStyle(PointStyle.CIRCLE); r.setColor(Color.GREEN); r.setFillPoints(true); renderer.addSeriesRenderer(r); renderer.setAxesColor(Color.DKGRAY); renderer.setLabelsColor(Color.LTGRAY); return renderer; } private XYMultipleSeriesDataset getBarDemoDataset() { XYMultipleSeriesDataset dataset = new XYMultipleSeriesDataset(); final int nr = 10; Random r = new Random(); for (int i = 0; i < SERIES_NR; i++) { CategorySeries series = new CategorySeries("Quadrant"); for (int k = 0; k < nr; k++) { value=value+5; // multiple_of_five=k+5; // Log.i("multiple_of_five", ""+multiple_of_five); // series.add(20 +multiple_of_five ); if(k%2==1){ series.add(value ); } else { series.add(0); } } dataset.addSeries(series.toXYSeries()); } return dataset; } @Override public void onClick(View v) { if (v == settings_btn) { if (SharedValues.isClicked) { relativeLayout3.setVisibility(View.GONE); SharedValues.isClicked = false; } else { relativeLayout3.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE); SharedValues.isClicked = true; } } } }

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• C++ assignment operators dynamic arrays

  - by user2905445

  First off i know the multiplying part is wrong but i have some questions about the code. 1. When i am overloading my operator+ i print out the matrix using cout << *this then right after i return *this and when i do a+b on matix a and matix b it doesnt give me the same thing this is very confusing. 2. When i make matrix c down in my main i cant use my default constructor for some reason because when i go to set it = using my assignment operator overloaded function it gives me an error saying "expression must be a modifiable value. although using my constructor that sets the row and column numbers is the same as my default constructor using (0,0). 3. My assignment operator= function uses a copy constructor to make a new matrix using the values on the right hand side of the equal sign and when i print out c it doesn't give me anything Any help would be great this is my hw for a algorithm class which i still need to do the algorithm for the multiplying matrices but i need to solve these issues first and im having a lot of trouble please help. //Programmer: Eric Oudin //Date: 10/21/2013 //Description: Working with matricies #include <iostream> using namespace std; class matrixType { public: friend ostream& operator<<(ostream&, const matrixType&); const matrixType& operator*(const matrixType&); matrixType& operator+(const matrixType&); matrixType& operator-(const matrixType&); const matrixType& operator=(const matrixType&); void fillMatrix(); matrixType(); matrixType(int, int); matrixType(const matrixType&); ~matrixType(); private: int **matrix; int rowSize; int columnSize; }; ostream& operator<< (ostream& osObject, const matrixType& matrix) { osObject << endl; for (int i=0;i<matrix.rowSize;i++) { for (int j=0;j<matrix.columnSize;j++) { osObject << matrix.matrix[i][j] <<", "; } osObject << endl; } return osObject; } const matrixType& matrixType::operator=(const matrixType& matrixRight) { matrixType temp(matrixRight); cout << temp; return temp; } const matrixType& matrixType::operator*(const matrixType& matrixRight) { matrixType temp(rowSize*matrixRight.columnSize, columnSize*matrixRight.rowSize); if(rowSize == matrixRight.columnSize) { for (int i=0;i<rowSize;i++) { for (int j=0;j<columnSize;j++) { temp.matrix[i][j] = matrix[i][j] * matrixRight.matrix[i][j]; } } } else { cout << "Cannot multiply matricies that have different size rows from the others columns." << endl; } return temp; } matrixType& matrixType::operator+(const matrixType& matrixRight) { if(rowSize == matrixRight.rowSize && columnSize == matrixRight.columnSize) { for (int i=0;i<rowSize;i++) { for (int j=0;j<columnSize;j++) { matrix[i][j] += matrixRight.matrix[i][j]; } } } else { cout << "Cannot add matricies that are different sizes." << endl; } cout << *this; return *this; } matrixType& matrixType::operator-(const matrixType& matrixRight) { matrixType temp(rowSize, columnSize); if(rowSize == matrixRight.rowSize && columnSize == matrixRight.columnSize) { for (int i=0;i<rowSize;i++) { for (int j=0;j<columnSize;j++) { matrix[i][j] -= matrixRight.matrix[i][j]; } } } else { cout << "Cannot subtract matricies that are different sizes." << endl; } return *this; } void matrixType::fillMatrix() { for (int i=0;i<rowSize;i++) { for (int j=0;j<columnSize;j++) { cout << "Enter the matix number at (" << i << "," << j << "):"; cin >> matrix[i][j]; } } } matrixType::matrixType() { rowSize=0; columnSize=0; matrix = new int*[rowSize]; for (int i=0; i < rowSize; i++) { matrix[i] = new int[columnSize]; } } matrixType::matrixType(int setRows, int setColumns) { rowSize=setRows; columnSize=setColumns; matrix = new int*[rowSize]; for (int i=0; i < rowSize; i++) { matrix[i] = new int[columnSize]; } } matrixType::matrixType(const matrixType& otherMatrix) { rowSize=otherMatrix.rowSize; columnSize=otherMatrix.columnSize; matrix = new int*[rowSize]; for (int i = 0; i < rowSize; i++) { for (int j = 0; j < columnSize; j++) { matrix[i]=new int[columnSize]; matrix[i][j]=otherMatrix.matrix[i][j]; } } } matrixType::~matrixType() { delete [] matrix; } int main() { matrixType a(2,2); matrixType b(2,2); matrixType c(0,0); cout << "fill matrix a:"<< endl;; a.fillMatrix(); cout << "fill matrix b:"<< endl;; b.fillMatrix(); cout << a; cout << b; c = a+b; cout <<"matrix a + matrix b =" << c; system("PAUSE"); return 0; }

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• li element background colors and overflow scrolling

  - by user17753

  I created a simple html source, and applied a small CSS style sheet to it: html { width: 100%; } body { font-family: Calibri, Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif; padding: 20px; } pre { padding: 0; margin: 0 auto; border: 1px solid #888; font-family: Menlo,Monaco,Consolas,monospace; color: #000; width: 80%; overflow: auto; } pre li { white-space: pre; } ol { margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0; /* IE indents via margin-left */ color: #979797; background: #E3E3E3; } .li1 { background: #F5F5F5 } .li2 { background: #eee } I have an ordered list inside a pre-formatted tag. Every other list element is either given the class attribute li1 or li2 (the purpose of which is to alternate the colors). The list elements need the white-space: pre because the white space before and after the text node is important. The pre is to be 80% of the containing element (which ends up being 80% of the window's width). In the event of overflow in the x dimension, I want scrolling. I did all this in the above CSS, and it almost works. The issue I am having is that the background colors of the list elements don't extend with the content. They seem to be capped to the original width of the pre and/or ol element as demonstrated in the following picture where I scroll all the way right as possible: I tinkered with the CSS for a while, but I cannot determine the root cause for this or the fix. Looking for some advice on this one, thanks. Complete source with the issue is as below, NOTE: to would-be editors of the below code the pre element is intended to be on a single line as it's pre-formatted text, and formatting it otherwise would change things. <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <title>Test Site</title> <style type="text/css"> html { width: 100%; } body { font-family: Calibri, Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif; padding: 20px; } pre { padding: 0; margin: 0 auto; border: 1px solid #888; font-family: Menlo,Monaco,Consolas,monospace; color: #000; width: 80%; overflow: auto; } pre li { white-space: pre; } ol { margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0; /* IE indents via margin-left */ color: #979797; background: #E3E3E3; } .li1 { background: #F5F5F5 } .li2 { background: #eee } </style> </head> <body> <pre class="php"><ol><li class="li1">pre a &#123; text-decoration: none &#125;</li><li class="li2">pre a:hover &#123; background: #C8C8C8 }</li><li class="li1">pre li &#123; white-space: pre; &#125;</li><li class="li2">&nbsp;</li><li class="li1">.php ol &#123; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0; /* IE indents via margin-left */</li><li class="li2"> color: #979797; background: #E3E3E3; }</li><li class="li1">&nbsp;</li><li class="li2">&nbsp;</li><li class="li1">&nbsp;</li><li class="li2">.php .li1 &#123; background: #F5F5F5 }</li><li class="li1">.php .li2 &#123; background: #eee }</li><li class="li2">&nbsp;</li><li class="li1">&nbsp;</li><li class="li2">.php .st0 &#123; color: #C0C } /* string content */</li><li class="li1">.php .st_h &#123; color: #F0C } /* string content single quoted */</li><li class="li2">.php .sy0 &#123; color: #000 } /* semi-colon, operators */ </li><li class="li1">.php .br0 &#123; color: #000 } /* parens */</li><li class="li2">.php .kw2 &#123; color: #00F } /* php tags */</li><li class="li1">.php .sy1 &#123; color: #00F } /* php tags */</li><li class="li2">.php .nu0 &#123; color: #F00 } /* numbers */</li><li class="li1">.php .kw3 &#123; color: #096 } /* core language functions */</li><li class="li2">.php .re0 &#123; color: #09F; font-weight: bold; } /* variables */</li><li class="li1">.php .kw1 &#123; color: #069; font-weight: bold; } /* control statements? */</li><li class="li2">.php .kw4 &#123; color: #069; font-weight: bold; } /* bool? */</li><li class="li1">.php .co1 &#123; color: #FF8400 } /* Forward slash comments */</li></ol></pre> </body> </html>

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• Dealing with external processes

  - by Jesse Aldridge

  I've been working on a gui app that needs to manage external processes. Working with external processes leads to a lot of issues that can make a programmer's life difficult. I feel like maintenence on this app is taking an unacceptably long time. I've been trying to list the things that make working with external processes difficult so that I can come up with ways of mitigating the pain. This kind of turned into a rant which I thought I'd post here in order to get some feedback and to provide some guidance to anybody thinking about sailing into these very murky waters. Here's what I've got so far: Output from the child can get mixed up with output from the parent. This can make both outputs misleading and hard to read. It can be hard to tell what came from where. It becomes harder to figure out what's going on when things are asynchronous. Here's a contrived example: import textwrap, os, time from subprocess import Popen test_path = 'test_file.py' with open(test_path, 'w') as file: file.write(textwrap.dedent(''' import time for i in range(3): print 'Hello %i' % i time.sleep(1)''')) proc = Popen('python -B "%s"' % test_path) for i in range(3): print 'Hello %i' % i time.sleep(1) os.remove(test_path) I guess I could have the child process write its output to a file. But it can be annoying to have to open up a file every time I want to see the result of a print statement. If I have code for the child process I could add a label, something like print 'child: Hello %i', but it can be annoying to do that for every print. And it adds some noise to the output. And of course I can't do it if I don't have access to the code. I could manually manage the process output. But then you open up a huge can of worms with threads and polling and stuff like that. A simple solution is to treat processes like synchronous functions, that is, no further code executes until the process completes. In other words, make the process block. But that doesn't work if you're building a gui app. Which brings me to the next problem... Blocking processes cause the gui to become unresponsive. import textwrap, sys, os from subprocess import Popen from PyQt4.QtGui import * from PyQt4.QtCore import * test_path = 'test_file.py' with open(test_path, 'w') as file: file.write(textwrap.dedent(''' import time for i in range(3): print 'Hello %i' % i time.sleep(1)''')) app = QApplication(sys.argv) button = QPushButton('Launch process') def launch_proc(): # Can't move the window until process completes proc = Popen('python -B "%s"' % test_path) proc.communicate() button.connect(button, SIGNAL('clicked()'), launch_proc) button.show() app.exec_() os.remove(test_path) Qt provides a process wrapper of its own called QProcess which can help with this. You can connect functions to signals to capture output relatively easily. This is what I'm currently using. But I'm finding that all these signals behave suspiciously like goto statements and can lead to spaghetti code. I think I want to get sort-of blocking behavior by having the 'finished' signal from QProcess call a function containing all the code that comes after the process call. I think that should work but I'm still a bit fuzzy on the details... Stack traces get interrupted when you go from the child process back to the parent process. If a normal function screws up, you get a nice complete stack trace with filenames and line numbers. If a subprocess screws up, you'll be lucky if you get any output at all. You end up having to do a lot more detective work everytime something goes wrong. Speaking of which, output has a way of disappearing when dealing external processes. Like if you run something via the windows 'cmd' command, the console will pop up, execute the code, and then disappear before you have a chance to see the output. You have to pass the /k flag to make it stick around. Similar issues seem to crop up all the time. I suppose both problems 3 and 4 have the same root cause: no exception handling. Exception handling is meant to be used with functions, it doesn't work with processes. Maybe there's some way to get something like exception handling for processes? I guess that's what stderr is for? But dealing with two different streams can be annoying in itself. Maybe I should look into this more... Processes can hang and stick around in the background without you realizing it. So you end up yelling at your computer cuz it's going so slow until you finally bring up your task manager and see 30 instances of the same process hanging out in the background. Also, hanging background processes can interefere with other instances of the process in various fun ways, such as causing permissions errors by holding a handle to a file or someting like that. It seems like an easy solution to this would be to have the parent process kill the child process on exit if the child process didn't close itself. But if the parent process crashes, cleanup code might not get called and the child can be left hanging. Also, if the parent waits for the child to complete, and the child is in an infinite loop or something, you can end up with two hanging processes. This problem can tie in to problem 2 for extra fun, causing your gui to stop responding entirely and force you to kill everything with the task manager. F***ing quotes Parameters often need to be passed to processes. This is a headache in itself. Especially if you're dealing with file paths. Say... 'C:/My Documents/whatever/'. If you don't have quotes, the string will often be split at the space and interpreted as two arguments. If you need nested quotes you can use ' and ". But if you need to use more than two layers of quotes, you have to do some nasty escaping, for example: "cmd /k 'python \'path 1\' \'path 2\''". A good solution to this problem is passing parameters as a list rather than as a single string. Subprocess allows you to do this. Can't easily return data from a subprocess. You can use stdout of course. But what if you want to throw a print in there for debugging purposes? That's gonna screw up the parent if it's expecting output formatted a certain way. In functions you can print one string and return another and everything works just fine. Obscure command-line flags and a crappy terminal based help system. These are problems I often run into when using os level apps. Like the /k flag I mentioned, for holding a cmd window open, who's idea was that? Unix apps don't tend to be much friendlier in this regard. Hopefully you can use google or StackOverflow to find the answer you need. But if not, you've got a lot of boring reading and frusterating trial and error to do. External factors. This one's kind of fuzzy. But when you leave the relatively sheltered harbor of your own scripts to deal with external processes you find yourself having to deal with the "outside world" to a much greater extent. And that's a scary place. All sorts of things can go wrong. Just to give a random example: the cwd in which a process is run can modify it's behavior. There are probably other issues, but those are the ones I've written down so far. Any other snags you'd like to add? Any suggestions for dealing with these problems?

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• Validating textboxes and checkboxes then add the values of those checkboxes

  - by TiTi Nguyen

  I am very new to Javascript. I am running to a problem and don't know how to solve it. Could you please help? Basically, I want to create some textboxes and checkboxes in a form. Then I have to validate those fields, and add the values of the checkboxes if they are selected. One of the textboxes asking for how many semesters attended, and 3 checkboxes with value of 100, 1000, and 750. Whichever checkbox is selected, it should multiply its value to the number of semesters attended. For example if the first two checkboxes are selected then totalCost = (100+1000)* semester. Here is my code: User Name: <label>User Address: <input type = "text" id ="address" size = "30"/></label> <br/><br/> <label> User E-mail address: <input type = "text" id ="email" size = "30"/></label> <br/><br/> <label> User Phone number: <input type = "text" id ="phone" size = "30"/></label> <br/><br/> <label> User area code: <input type = "text" id ="area" size = "30"/></label> <br/><br/> <label> User SSN: <input type = "text" id ="ssn" size = "30"/></label> <br/><br/> <label> User Birthday: <input type = "text" id ="birthday" size = "30"/></label> <br/><br/> <label> Number of semester attended: <input type = "text" id ="semester" size = "3"/></label> <br/><br/> <label><input type="checkbox" id="box_book" value="100"/>Books $100 per semester</label> <br/> <label><input type="checkbox" id="box_tuition" value="1000"/>Tuition $1000 per semester</label> <br/> <label><input type="checkbox" id="box_room" value="750"/>Room and Board $750 per semester</label> <br/> <input type="reset" id="reset"/> <input type="submit" id="submit" onclick="checking()"/> <p/> </form> function checking() { var name=document.forms["myForm"]["name"].value; var address=document.forms["myForm"]["address"].value; var email=document.forms["myForm"]["email"].value; var atpos=email.indexOf("@"); var dotpos=email.lastIndexOf("."); var phone=document.forms["myForm"]["phone"].value; var area=document.forms["myForm"]["area"].value; var ssn=document.forms["myForm"]["ssn"].value; var birth=document.forms["myForm"]["birthday"].value; var semester=document.forms["myForm"]["semester"].value; var boxBook = document.forms["myForm"]["box_book"].value; var boxTuition = document.forms["myForm"]["box_tuition"].value; var boxRoom = document.forms["myForm"]["box_room"].value; if (name==null || name=="") { alert("Please fill in your name."); return false; } if (address==null || address=="") { alert("Please fill in your address."); return false; } if (atpos<1 || dotpos<atpos+2 || dotpos+2>=email.length) { alert("The email (" + email + ") is not a valid e-mail address. Please reenter your email address."); return false; } if(phone.length!=10) { alert("Phone number entered in incorrect form. Please reenter phone number in the correct form which contains 10 numbers."); return false; } if (area==null || area=="") { alert("Please fill in the area code"); return false; } if(ssn.length!=9) { alert("SSN entered in incorrect form. Please reenter SSN."); return false; } if (birth==null || birth=="") { alert("Please fill in your date of birth."); return false; } if (semester==null || semester=="") { alert("How many semester have you attended?"); return false; } if (document.getElementById("box_book").checked == false && document.getElementById("box_tuition").checked == false && document.getElementById("box_room").checked == false) { alert("You must select one of the checkboxes"); return false; } if (document.getElementById("box_book").checked ==true) { var subcost = boxBook; var totalcost = subcost * semester; alert ("Your total cost is: $" + totalcost); } if (document.getElementById("box_book").checked == true && document.getElementById("box_tuition").checked == true) { var subcost = boxBook + boxTuition; var totalcost = subcost * semester; alert ("Your total cost is: $" + totalcost); } if (document.getElementById("box_book").checked == true && document.getElementById("box_tuition").checked == true && document.getElementById("box_room").checked == true) { var subcost = boxBook + boxTuition + boxRoom; var totalcost = subcost * semester; alert ("Your total cost is: $" + totalcost); } if (document.getElementById("box_tuition").checked ==true) { var subcost = boxTuition; var totalcost = subcost * semester; alert ("Your total cost is: $" + totalcost); } if (document.getElementById("box_tuition").checked == true && document.getElementById("box_room").checked == true) { var subcost = boxTuition + boxRoom; var totalcost = subcost * semester; alert ("Your total cost is: $" + totalcost); } if (document.getElementById("box_room").checked ==true) { var subcost = boxRoom; var totalcost = subcost * semester; alert ("Your total cost is: $" + totalcost); } if (document.getElementById("box_book").checked == true && document.getElementById("box_room").checked == true) { var subcost = boxBook + boxRoom; var totalcost = subcost * semester; alert ("Your total cost is: $" + totalcost); } else return false; } When I hit the submit button, nothing happens!! Please help.

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