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• Handling android player errors

  - by stack hoss

  I am anew android developer and i made ashoutcast radio player and work good but when i open app it work for afew time but suddenly stop and need to press stop and play again but i need Handling android player errors to automatic restart on errors package com.test.test; import java.io.IOException; import android.app.Notification; import android.app.NotificationManager; import android.app.PendingIntent; import android.app.Service; import android.content.Context; import android.content.Intent; import android.content.SharedPreferences; import android.media.AudioManager; import android.media.AudioManager.OnAudioFocusChangeListener; import android.media.MediaPlayer; import android.os.IBinder; import android.preference.PreferenceManager; import android.util.Log; public class StreamService extends Service { private static final String TAG = "StreamService"; MediaPlayer mp; boolean isPlaying; Intent MainActivity; SharedPreferences prefs; SharedPreferences.Editor editor; Notification n; NotificationManager notificationManager; // Change this int to some number specifically for this app int notifId = 85; private OnAudioFocusChangeListener focusChangeListener = new OnAudioFocusChangeListener() { public void onAudioFocusChange(int focusChange) { switch (focusChange) { case (AudioManager.AUDIOFOCUS_LOSS_TRANSIENT_CAN_DUCK) : // Lower the volume while ducking. mp.setVolume(0.2f, 0.2f); break; case (AudioManager.AUDIOFOCUS_LOSS_TRANSIENT) : mp.pause(); break; case (AudioManager.AUDIOFOCUS_LOSS) : mp.stop(); break; case (AudioManager.AUDIOFOCUS_GAIN) : // Return the volume to normal and resume if paused. mp.setVolume(1f, 1f); mp.start(); break; default: break; } } }; @Override public IBinder onBind(Intent arg0) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub return null; } @SuppressWarnings("deprecation") @Override public void onCreate() { super.onCreate(); Log.d(TAG, "onCreate"); // Init the SharedPreferences and Editor prefs = PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(getApplicationContext()); editor = prefs.edit(); // Set up the buffering notification notificationManager = (NotificationManager) getApplicationContext() .getSystemService(NOTIFICATION_SERVICE); Context context = getApplicationContext(); String notifTitle = context.getResources().getString(R.string.app_name); String notifMessage = context.getResources().getString(R.string.buffering); n = new Notification(); n.icon = R.drawable.ic_launcher; n.tickerText = "Buffering"; n.when = System.currentTimeMillis(); Intent nIntent = new Intent(context, MainActivity.class); nIntent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK | Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_SINGLE_TOP); PendingIntent pIntent = PendingIntent.getActivity(context, 0, nIntent, 0); n.setLatestEventInfo(context, notifTitle, notifMessage, pIntent); notificationManager.notify(notifId, n); // It's very important that you put the IP/URL of your ShoutCast stream here // Otherwise you'll get Webcom Radio String url = "http://47.182.19.93:9888/"; mp = new MediaPlayer(); mp.setAudioStreamType(AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC); try { mp.reset(); mp.setDataSource(url); mp.prepare(); mp.start(); } catch (IllegalArgumentException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block e.printStackTrace(); } catch (SecurityException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block Log.e(TAG, "SecurityException"); } catch (IllegalStateException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block Log.e(TAG, "IllegalStateException"); } catch (IOException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block Log.e(TAG, "IOException"); } } @SuppressWarnings("deprecation") @Override public void onStart(Intent intent, int startId) { Log.d(TAG, "onStart"); mp.start(); // Set the isPlaying preference to true editor.putBoolean("isPlaying", true); editor.commit(); Context context = getApplicationContext(); String notifTitle = context.getResources().getString(R.string.app_name); String notifMessage = context.getResources().getString(R.string.now_playing); n.icon = R.drawable.ic_launcher; n.tickerText = notifMessage; n.flags = Notification.FLAG_NO_CLEAR; n.when = System.currentTimeMillis(); Intent nIntent = new Intent(context, MainActivity.class); PendingIntent pIntent = PendingIntent.getActivity(context, 0, nIntent, 0); n.setLatestEventInfo(context, notifTitle, notifMessage, pIntent); // Change 5315 to some nother number notificationManager.notify(notifId, n); AudioManager am = (AudioManager)getSystemService(Context.AUDIO_SERVICE); // Request audio focus for playback int result = am.requestAudioFocus(focusChangeListener, // Use the music stream. AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC, // Request permanent focus. AudioManager.AUDIOFOCUS_GAIN); if (result == AudioManager.AUDIOFOCUS_REQUEST_GRANTED) { // other app had stopped playing song now , so u can do u stuff now . } } @Override public void onDestroy() { Log.d(TAG, "onDestroy"); mp.stop(); mp.release(); mp = null; editor.putBoolean("isPlaying", false); editor.commit(); notificationManager.cancel(notifId); AudioManager am = (AudioManager)getSystemService(Context.AUDIO_SERVICE); am.abandonAudioFocus(focusChangeListener); } }

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• Trying to get these list items to display inline

  - by Joel

  I have several unordered lists that I want to display like this: <ul> <li><img></li> <li><p></li> //inline </ul> //linebreak <ul> <li><img></li> <li><p></li> //inline </ul> ...etc I'm not able to get the li items to be inline with eachother. They are stacking vertically. I have stripped away most styling but still can't figure out what I'm doing wrong: html: <ul class="instrument"> <li class="imagebox"><img src="/images/matepe.jpg" width="247" height="228" alt="Matepe" /></li> <li class="textbox"><p>The matepe is a 24 key instrument that is played by the Kore-Kore people in North-Eastern Zimbabwe and Mozambique. It utilizes four fingers-each playing an individual melody. These melodies also interwieve to create resultant melodies that can be manipulated thru accenting different fingers. The matepe is used in Rattletree as the bridge from the physical world to the spirit world. The matepe is used in the Kore-Kore culture to summon the Mhondoro spirits which are thought to be able to communicate directly with Mwari (God) without the need of an intermediary.</p></li> </ul> <ul class="instrument"> <li class="imagebox"><img src="/images/soprano_little.jpg" border="0" width="247" height="170" alt="Soprano" /></li> <li class="textbox"><p>The highest voice of the Rattletree Marimba orchestra is the Soprano marimba. The soprano is used to whip up the energy on the dancefloor and help people reach ecstatic state with it's high and clear singing voice. The range of these sopranos goes much lower than 'typical' Zimbabwean style sopranos. The sopranos play the range of the right hand of the matepe and go two notes higher and five notes lower. Rattletree uses two sopranos.</p></li> </ul> <ul class="instrument"> <li class="imagebox"><img src="/images/bari_little.jpg" border="0" width="247" height="170" alt="Baritone" /></li> <li class="textbox"><p>The Baritone is the next lower voice in the orchestra. The bari is where the funk is. Generally bubbling over the Bass line, the baritone creates the syncopations and polyrhythms that messes with the 'minds' of the dancers and helps seperate the listener from the physical realm of thought. The range of the baritone covers the full range of the left hand side of the matepe.</p></li> </ul> <ul class="instrument"> <li class="imagebox"><img src="/images/darren_littlebass.jpg" border="0" width="247" height="195" alt="Bass"/><strong>Bass Marimba</strong></li> <li class="textbox"><p>The towering Bass Marimba is the foundation of the Rattletree Marimba sound. Putting out frequencies as low as 22hZ, the bass creates the drive that gets the dancefloor moving. It is 5.5' tall, 9' long, and 4' deep. It is played by standing on a platform and struck with mallets that have lacross-ball size heads (they are actually made with rubber dog balls). The Bass marimba's range covers the lowest five notes of the matepe and goes another five notes lower.</p></li> </ul> <ul class="instrument"> <li class="imagebox"><img src="/images/wayne_little.jpg" border="0" width="247" height="177" alt="Drums"/><strong>Drumset</strong></li> <li class="textbox"><p>All the intricate polyrhythms are held together tastefully with the drumset. The drums provides the consistancy and grounding that the dancers need to keep going all night. While the steady kick and high-hat provide that grounding function, the toms and snare and allowed to be another voice in the poylrhythmic texture-helping the dancers abandon the concept of a "one" within this cyclical music.</p></li> </ul> css: ul.instrument { text-align:left; display:inline; } ul.instrument li { list-style-type: none; } li.imagebox { } li.textbox { } li.textbox p{ width: 247px; }

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• Neural Network Always Produces Same/Similar Outputs for Any Input

  - by l33tnerd

  I have a problem where I am trying to create a neural network for Tic-Tac-Toe. However, for some reason, training the neural network causes it to produce nearly the same output for any given input. I did take a look at Artificial neural networks benchmark, but my network implementation is built for neurons with the same activation function for each neuron, i.e. no constant neurons. To make sure the problem wasn't just due to my choice of training set (1218 board states and moves generated by a genetic algorithm), I tried to train the network to reproduce XOR. The logistic activation function was used. Instead of using the derivative, I multiplied the error by output*(1-output) as some sources suggested that this was equivalent to using the derivative. I can put the Haskell source on HPaste, but it's a little embarrassing to look at. The network has 3 layers: the first layer has 2 inputs and 4 outputs, the second has 4 inputs and 1 output, and the third has 1 output. Increasing to 4 neurons in the second layer didn't help, and neither did increasing to 8 outputs in the first layer. I then calculated errors, network output, bias updates, and the weight updates by hand based on http://hebb.mit.edu/courses/9.641/2002/lectures/lecture04.pdf to make sure there wasn't an error in those parts of the code (there wasn't, but I will probably do it again just to make sure). Because I am using batch training, I did not multiply by x in equation (4) there. I am adding the weight change, though http://www.faqs.org/faqs/ai-faq/neural-nets/part2/section-2.html suggests to subtract it instead. The problem persisted, even in this simplified network. For example, these are the results after 500 epochs of batch training and of incremental training. Input |Target|Output (Batch) |Output(Incremental) [1.0,1.0]|[0.0] |[0.5003781562785173]|[0.5009731800870864] [1.0,0.0]|[1.0] |[0.5003740346965251]|[0.5006347214672715] [0.0,1.0]|[1.0] |[0.5003734471544522]|[0.500589332376345] [0.0,0.0]|[0.0] |[0.5003674110937019]|[0.500095157458231] Subtracting instead of adding produces the same problem, except everything is 0.99 something instead of 0.50 something. 5000 epochs produces the same result, except the batch-trained network returns exactly 0.5 for each case. (Heck, even 10,000 epochs didn't work for batch training.) Is there anything in general that could produce this behavior? Also, I looked at the intermediate errors for incremental training, and the although the inputs of the hidden/input layers varied, the error for the output neuron was always +/-0.12. For batch training, the errors were increasing, but extremely slowly and the errors were all extremely small (x10^-7). Different initial random weights and biases made no difference, either. Note that this is a school project, so hints/guides would be more helpful. Although reinventing the wheel and making my own network (in a language I don't know well!) was a horrible idea, I felt it would be more appropriate for a school project (so I know what's going on...in theory, at least. There doesn't seem to be a computer science teacher at my school). EDIT: Two layers, an input layer of 2 inputs to 8 outputs, and an output layer of 8 inputs to 1 output, produces much the same results: 0.5+/-0.2 (or so) for each training case. I'm also playing around with pyBrain, seeing if any network structure there will work. Edit 2: I am using a learning rate of 0.1. Sorry for forgetting about that. Edit 3: Pybrain's "trainUntilConvergence" doesn't get me a fully trained network, either, but 20000 epochs does, with 16 neurons in the hidden layer. 10000 epochs and 4 neurons, not so much, but close. So, in Haskell, with the input layer having 2 inputs & 2 outputs, hidden layer with 2 inputs and 8 outputs, and output layer with 8 inputs and 1 output...I get the same problem with 10000 epochs. And with 20000 epochs. Edit 4: I ran the network by hand again based on the MIT PDF above, and the values match, so the code should be correct unless I am misunderstanding those equations. Some of my source code is at http://hpaste.org/42453/neural_network__not_working; I'm working on cleaning my code somewhat and putting it in a Github (rather than a private Bitbucket) repository. All of the relevant source code is now at https://github.com/l33tnerd/hsann.

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• ASP.NET MVC + MySql Membership Provider, user cannot login

  - by Jason Miesionczek

  Hello, I've been playing around with using MySql as the membership provider for asp.net mvc forms authentication. I've got things configured correctly as far as i can tell, and i can create users via both the register action and asp.net web config site. however, when i try to login with one of the users, it does not work. it returns an error as if i had entered a wrong password, or if the account doesn't exist. i have verified in the database that the account does exist. I've followed the instructions here for reference: http://blog.tchami.com/post/ASPNET-MVC-2-and-MySQL-Membership-Provider.aspx here is my web.config: <?xml version="1.0"?> <!-- For more information on how to configure your ASP.NET application, please visit http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=152368 --> <configuration> <connectionStrings> <add name="MySQLConn" connectionString="Server=localhost;Database=intereditor;Uid=<user>;Pwd=<password>;"/> </connectionStrings> <system.web> <compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.0"> <assemblies> <add assembly="System.Web.Abstractions, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" /> <add assembly="System.Web.Routing, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" /> <add assembly="System.Web.Mvc, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" /> </assemblies> </compilation> <authentication mode="Forms"> <forms loginUrl="~/Account/LogOn" timeout="2880" name=".ASPXFORM$" path="/" requireSSL="false" slidingExpiration="true" enableCrossAppRedirects="false" /> </authentication> <membership defaultProvider="MySqlMembershipProvider"> <providers> <clear/> <add name="MySqlMembershipProvider" type="MySql.Web.Security.MySQLMembershipProvider,MySql.Web,Version=6.3.4.0, Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=c5687fc88969c44d" autogenerateschema="true" connectionStringName="MySQLConn" enablePasswordRetrieval="false" enablePasswordReset="true" requiresQuestionAndAnswer="false" requiresUniqueEmail="false" passwordFormat="Hashed" maxInvalidPasswordAttempts="5" minRequiredPasswordLength="6" minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters="0" passwordAttemptWindow="10" passwordStrengthRegularExpression="" applicationName="/" /> </providers> </membership> <profile defaultProvider="MySqlProfileProvider"> <providers> <clear/> <add name="MySqlProfileProvider" type="MySql.Web.Profile.MySQLProfileProvider,MySql.Web,Version=6.3.4.0,Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=c5687fc88969c44d" connectionStringName="MySQLConn" applicationName="/" /> </providers> </profile> <roleManager enabled="true" defaultProvider="MySqlRoleProvider"> <providers> <clear /> <add name="MySqlRoleProvider" type="MySql.Web.Security.MySQLRoleProvider,MySql.Web,Version=6.3.4.0,Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=c5687fc88969c44d" connectionStringName="MySQLConn" applicationName="/" /> </providers> </roleManager> <pages> <namespaces> <add namespace="System.Web.Mvc" /> <add namespace="System.Web.Mvc.Ajax" /> <add namespace="System.Web.Mvc.Html" /> <add namespace="System.Web.Routing" /> </namespaces> </pages> </system.web> <system.webServer> <validation validateIntegratedModeConfiguration="false"/> <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true"/> </system.webServer> <runtime> <assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1"> <dependentAssembly> <assemblyIdentity name="System.Web.Mvc" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" /> <bindingRedirect oldVersion="1.0.0.0" newVersion="2.0.0.0" /> </dependentAssembly> </assemblyBinding> </runtime> </configuration> Can anyone please help me identify what is wrong so that users can login? UPDATE So after debugging the login process in the code of the membership provider itself, i discovered that there is a bug in the provider. There is a discrepancy between the password hash that is stored in the database, and the has that is generated based on the inputted password. As a workaround for my issue, i changed the password format to 'encrpyted' and added a machine key to my web.config. I am still interested in figuring out the issue with the hashed format in the provider, and will spend some more time debugging it, and if i can figure out the problem, i will put together a patch and submit it.

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• Android draw using SurfaceView and Thread

  - by Morten Høgseth

  I am trying to draw a ball to my screen using 3 classes. I have read a little about this and I found a code snippet that works using the 3 classes on one page, Playing with graphics in Android I altered the code so that I have a ball that is moving and shifts direction when hitting the wall like the picture below (this is using the code in the link). Now I like to separate the classes into 3 different pages for not making everything so crowded, everything is set up the same way. Here are the 3 classes I have. BallActivity.java Ball.java BallThread.java package com.brick.breaker; import android.app.Activity; import android.os.Bundle; import android.view.Window; import android.view.WindowManager; public class BallActivity extends Activity { private Ball ball; @Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_NO_TITLE); getWindow().setFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_FULLSCREEN,WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_FULLSCREEN); ball = new Ball(this); setContentView(ball); } @Override protected void onPause() { // TODO Auto-generated method stub super.onPause(); setContentView(null); ball = null; finish(); } } package com.brick.breaker; import android.content.Context; import android.graphics.Bitmap; import android.graphics.BitmapFactory; import android.graphics.Canvas; import android.view.SurfaceHolder; import android.view.SurfaceView; public class Ball extends SurfaceView implements SurfaceHolder.Callback { private BallThread ballThread = null; private Bitmap bitmap; private float x, y; private float vx, vy; public Ball(Context context) { super(context); // TODO Auto-generated constructor stub bitmap = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), R.drawable.ball); x = 50.0f; y = 50.0f; vx = 10.0f; vy = 10.0f; getHolder().addCallback(this); ballThread = new BallThread(getHolder(), this); } protected void onDraw(Canvas canvas) { update(canvas); canvas.drawBitmap(bitmap, x, y, null); } public void update(Canvas canvas) { checkCollisions(canvas); x += vx; y += vy; } public void checkCollisions(Canvas canvas) { if(x - vx < 0) { vx = Math.abs(vx); } else if(x + vx > canvas.getWidth() - getBitmapWidth()) { vx = -Math.abs(vx); } if(y - vy < 0) { vy = Math.abs(vy); } else if(y + vy > canvas.getHeight() - getBitmapHeight()) { vy = -Math.abs(vy); } } public int getBitmapWidth() { if(bitmap != null) { return bitmap.getWidth(); } else { return 0; } } public int getBitmapHeight() { if(bitmap != null) { return bitmap.getHeight(); } else { return 0; } } public void surfaceChanged(SurfaceHolder holder, int format, int width, int height) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub } public void surfaceCreated(SurfaceHolder holder) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub ballThread.setRunnable(true); ballThread.start(); } public void surfaceDestroyed(SurfaceHolder holder) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub boolean retry = true; ballThread.setRunnable(false); while(retry) { try { ballThread.join(); retry = false; } catch(InterruptedException ie) { //Try again and again and again } break; } ballThread = null; } } package com.brick.breaker; import android.graphics.Canvas; import android.view.SurfaceHolder; public class BallThread extends Thread { private SurfaceHolder sh; private Ball ball; private Canvas canvas; private boolean run = false; public BallThread(SurfaceHolder _holder,Ball _ball) { sh = _holder; ball = _ball; } public void setRunnable(boolean _run) { run = _run; } public void run() { while(run) { canvas = null; try { canvas = sh.lockCanvas(null); synchronized(sh) { ball.onDraw(canvas); } } finally { if(canvas != null) { sh.unlockCanvasAndPost(canvas); } } } } public Canvas getCanvas() { if(canvas != null) { return canvas; } else { return null; } } } Here is a picture that shows the outcome of these classes. I've tried to figure this out but since I am pretty new to Android development I thought I could ask for help. Does any one know what is causing the ball to be draw like that? The code is pretty much the same as the one in the link and I have tried to experiment to find a solution but no luck. Thx in advance for any help=)

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• Using a boost::fusion::map in boost::spirit::karma

  - by user1097105

  I am using boost spirit to parse some text files into a data structure and now I am beginning to generate text from this data structure (using spirit karma). One attempt at a data structure is a boost::fusion::map (as suggested in an answer to this question). But although I can use boost::spirit::qi::parse() and get data in it easily, when I tried to generate text from it using karma, I failed. Below is my attempt (look especially at the "map_data" type). After some reading and playing around with other fusion types, I found boost::fusion::vector and BOOST_FUSION_DEFINE_ASSOC_STRUCT. I succeeded to generate output with both of them, but they don't seem ideal: in vector you cannot access a member using a name (it is like a tuple) -- and in the other solution, I don't think I need both ways (member name and key type) to access the members. #include <iostream> #include <string> #include <boost/spirit/include/karma.hpp> #include <boost/fusion/include/map.hpp> #include <boost/fusion/include/make_map.hpp> #include <boost/fusion/include/vector.hpp> #include <boost/fusion/include/as_vector.hpp> #include <boost/fusion/include/transform.hpp> struct sb_key; struct id_key; using boost::fusion::pair; typedef boost::fusion::map < pair<sb_key, int> , pair<id_key, unsigned long> > map_data; typedef boost::fusion::vector < int, unsigned long > vector_data; #include <boost/fusion/include/define_assoc_struct.hpp> BOOST_FUSION_DEFINE_ASSOC_STRUCT( (), assocstruct_data, (int, a, sb_key) (unsigned long, b, id_key)) namespace karma = boost::spirit::karma; template <typename X> std::string to_string ( const X& data ) { std::string generated; std::back_insert_iterator<std::string> sink(generated); karma::generate_delimited ( sink, karma::int_ << karma::ulong_, karma::space, data ); return generated; } int main() { map_data d1(boost::fusion::make_map<sb_key, id_key>(234, 35314988526ul)); vector_data d2(boost::fusion::make_vector(234, 35314988526ul)); assocstruct_data d3(234,35314988526ul); std::cout << "map_data as_vector: " << boost::fusion::as_vector(d1) << std::endl; //std::cout << "map_data to_string: " << to_string(d1) << std::endl; //*FAIL No 1* std::cout << "at_key (sb_key): " << boost::fusion::at_key<sb_key>(d1) << boost::fusion::at_c<0>(d1) << std::endl << std::endl; std::cout << "vector_data: " << d2 << std::endl; std::cout << "vector_data to_string: " << to_string(d2) << std::endl << std::endl; std::cout << "assoc_struct as_vector: " << boost::fusion::as_vector(d3) << std::endl; std::cout << "assoc_struct to_string: " << to_string(d3) << std::endl; std::cout << "at_key (sb_key): " << boost::fusion::at_key<sb_key>(d3) << d3.a << boost::fusion::at_c<0>(d3) << std::endl; return 0; } Including the commented line gives lots of pages of compilation errors, among which notably something like: no known conversion for argument 1 from ‘boost::fusion::pair’ to ‘double’ no known conversion for argument 1 from ‘boost::fusion::pair’ to ‘float’ Might it be that to_string needs the values of the map_data, and not the pairs? Though I am not good with templates, I tried to get a vector from a map using transform in the following way template <typename P> struct take_second { typename P::second_type operator() (P p) { return p.second; } }; // ... inside main() pair <char, int> ff(32); std::cout << "take_second (expect 32): " << take_second<pair<char,int>>()(ff) << std::endl; std::cout << "transform map_data and to_string: " << to_string(boost::fusion::transform(d1, take_second<>())); //*FAIL No 2* But I don't know what types am I supposed to give when instantiating take_second and anyway I think there must be an easier way to get (iterate over) the values of a map (is there?) If you answer this question, please also give your opinion on whether using an ASSOC_STRUCT or a map is better.

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• Trouble with copying dictionaries and using deepcopy on an SQLAlchemy ORM object

  - by Az

  Hi there, I'm doing a Simulated Annealing algorithm to optimise a given allocation of students and projects. This is language-agnostic pseudocode from Wikipedia: s ? s0; e ? E(s) // Initial state, energy. sbest ? s; ebest ? e // Initial "best" solution k ? 0 // Energy evaluation count. while k < kmax and e > emax // While time left & not good enough: snew ? neighbour(s) // Pick some neighbour. enew ? E(snew) // Compute its energy. if enew < ebest then // Is this a new best? sbest ? snew; ebest ? enew // Save 'new neighbour' to 'best found'. if P(e, enew, temp(k/kmax)) > random() then // Should we move to it? s ? snew; e ? enew // Yes, change state. k ? k + 1 // One more evaluation done return sbest // Return the best solution found. The following is an adaptation of the technique. My supervisor said the idea is fine in theory. First I pick up some allocation (i.e. an entire dictionary of students and their allocated projects, including the ranks for the projects) from entire set of randomised allocations, copy it and pass it to my function. Let's call this allocation aOld (it is a dictionary). aOld has a weight related to it called wOld. The weighting is described below. The function does the following: Let this allocation, aOld be the best_node From all the students, pick a random number of students and stick in a list Strip (DEALLOCATE) them of their projects ++ reflect the changes for projects (allocated parameter is now False) and lecturers (free up slots if one or more of their projects are no longer allocated) Randomise that list Try assigning (REALLOCATE) everyone in that list projects again Calculate the weight (add up ranks, rank 1 = 1, rank 2 = 2... and no project rank = 101) For this new allocation aNew, if the weight wNew is smaller than the allocation weight wOld I picked up at the beginning, then this is the best_node (as defined by the Simulated Annealing algorithm above). Apply the algorithm to aNew and continue. If wOld < wNew, then apply the algorithm to aOld again and continue. The allocations/data-points are expressed as "nodes" such that a node = (weight, allocation_dict, projects_dict, lecturers_dict) Right now, I can only perform this algorithm once, but I'll need to try for a number N (denoted by kmax in the Wikipedia snippet) and make sure I always have with me, the previous node and the best_node. So that I don't modify my original dictionaries (which I might want to reset to), I've done a shallow copy of the dictionaries. From what I've read in the docs, it seems that it only copies the references and since my dictionaries contain objects, changing the copied dictionary ends up changing the objects anyway. So I tried to use copy.deepcopy().These dictionaries refer to objects that have been mapped with SQLA. Questions: I've been given some solutions to the problems faced but due to my über green-ness with using Python, they all sound rather cryptic to me. Deepcopy isn't playing nicely with SQLA. I've been told thatdeepcopy on ORM objects probably has issues that prevent it from working as you'd expect. Apparently I'd be better off "building copy constructors, i.e. def copy(self): return FooBar(....)." Can someone please explain what that means? I checked and found out that deepcopy has issues because SQLAlchemy places extra information on your objects, i.e. an _sa_instance_state attribute, that I wouldn't want in the copy but is necessary for the object to have. I've been told: "There are ways to manually blow away the old _sa_instance_state and put a new one on the object, but the most straightforward is to make a new object with __init__() and set up the attributes that are significant, instead of doing a full deep copy." What exactly does that mean? Do I create a new, unmapped class similar to the old, mapped one? An alternate solution is that I'd have to "implement __deepcopy__() on your objects and ensure that a new _sa_instance_state is set up, there are functions in sqlalchemy.orm.attributes which can help with that." Once again this is beyond me so could someone kindly explain what it means? A more general question: given the above information are there any suggestions on how I can maintain the information/state for the best_node (which must always persist through my while loop) and the previous_node, if my actual objects (referenced by the dictionaries, therefore the nodes) are changing due to the deallocation/reallocation taking place? That is, without using copy?

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• [Android] Force close when trying to parse JSON with AsyncTask in the background

  - by robs

  Hello everyone, i'm new to android development and i'm playing around with json data. I managed to get the parsing to work. I want to show a ProgressDialog and i read that i need to use AsyncTask that. But for some reason i get a force close as soon as i put the same working code inside doInBackground() eventhough eclipse says everything is fine. Here is the source code: public class HomeActivity extends Activity { public class BackgroundAsyncTask extends AsyncTask<Void, Integer, Void> { ProgressDialog dialog = new ProgressDialog (HomeActivity.this); @Override protected void onPreExecute() { dialog.setMessage("Loading...please wait"); dialog.setIndeterminate(true); dialog.setCancelable(false); dialog.show(); } protected void onPostExecute() { dialog.dismiss(); } @Override protected Void doInBackground(Void... params) { try { URL json = new URL("http://www.corps-marchia.de/jsontest.php"); URLConnection tc = json.openConnection(); BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(tc.getInputStream())); String line; while ((line = in.readLine()) != null) { JSONArray ja = new JSONArray(line); JSONObject jo = (JSONObject) ja.get(0); TextView txtView = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.TextView01); txtView.setText(jo.getString("text")); } } catch (MalformedURLException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } catch (IOException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } catch (JSONException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } return null; } } @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.main); new BackgroundAsyncTask().execute(); } } Here is the error log: 01-08 12:33:48.225: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(815): FATAL EXCEPTION: AsyncTask #1 01-08 12:33:48.225: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(815): java.lang.RuntimeException: An error occured while executing doInBackground() 01-08 12:33:48.225: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(815): at android.os.AsyncTask$3.done(AsyncTask.java:200) 01-08 12:33:48.225: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(815): at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerSetException(FutureTask.java:274) 01-08 12:33:48.225: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(815): at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.setException(FutureTask.java:125) 01-08 12:33:48.225: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(815): at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:308) 01-08 12:33:48.225: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(815): at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:138) 01-08 12:33:48.225: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(815): at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1088) 01-08 12:33:48.225: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(815): at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:581) 01-08 12:33:48.225: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(815): at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:1019) 01-08 12:33:48.225: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(815): Caused by: android.view.ViewRoot$CalledFromWrongThreadException: Only the original thread that created a view hierarchy can touch its views. 01-08 12:33:48.225: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(815): at android.view.ViewRoot.checkThread(ViewRoot.java:2932) 01-08 12:33:48.225: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(815): at android.view.ViewRoot.requestLayout(ViewRoot.java:629) 01-08 12:33:48.225: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(815): at android.view.View.requestLayout(View.java:8267) 01-08 12:33:48.225: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(815): at android.view.View.requestLayout(View.java:8267) 01-08 12:33:48.225: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(815): at android.view.View.requestLayout(View.java:8267) 01-08 12:33:48.225: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(815): at android.view.View.requestLayout(View.java:8267) 01-08 12:33:48.225: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(815): at android.view.View.requestLayout(View.java:8267) 01-08 12:33:48.225: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(815): at android.widget.TextView.checkForRelayout(TextView.java:5521) 01-08 12:33:48.225: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(815): at android.widget.TextView.setText(TextView.java:2724) 01-08 12:33:48.225: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(815): at android.widget.TextView.setText(TextView.java:2592) 01-08 12:33:48.225: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(815): at android.widget.TextView.setText(TextView.java:2567) 01-08 12:33:48.225: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(815): at net.ajzele.demo.andy1.HomeActivity$BackgroundAsyncTask.doInBackground(HomeActivity.java:52) 01-08 12:33:48.225: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(815): at net.ajzele.demo.andy1.HomeActivity$BackgroundAsyncTask.doInBackground(HomeActivity.java:1) 01-08 12:33:48.225: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(815): at android.os.AsyncTask$2.call(AsyncTask.java:185) 01-08 12:33:48.225: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(815): at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:306) 01-08 12:33:48.225: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(815): ... 4 more 01-08 12:33:51.605: ERROR/WindowManager(815): Activity net.ajzele.demo.andy1.HomeActivity has leaked window com.android.internal.policy.impl.PhoneWindow$DecorView@4051d0c0 that was originally added here 01-08 12:33:51.605: ERROR/WindowManager(815): android.view.WindowLeaked: Activity net.ajzele.demo.andy1.HomeActivity has leaked window com.android.internal.policy.impl.PhoneWindow$DecorView@4051d0c0 that was originally added here 01-08 12:33:51.605: ERROR/WindowManager(815): at android.view.ViewRoot.<init>(ViewRoot.java:258) 01-08 12:33:51.605: ERROR/WindowManager(815): at android.view.WindowManagerImpl.addView(WindowManagerImpl.java:148) 01-08 12:33:51.605: ERROR/WindowManager(815): at android.view.WindowManagerImpl.addView(WindowManagerImpl.java:91) 01-08 12:33:51.605: ERROR/WindowManager(815): at android.view.Window$LocalWindowManager.addView(Window.java:424) 01-08 12:33:51.605: ERROR/WindowManager(815): at android.app.Dialog.show(Dialog.java:241) 01-08 12:33:51.605: ERROR/WindowManager(815): at net.ajzele.demo.andy1.HomeActivity$BackgroundAsyncTask.onPreExecute(HomeActivity.java:33) 01-08 12:33:51.605: ERROR/WindowManager(815): at android.os.AsyncTask.execute(AsyncTask.java:391) 01-08 12:33:51.605: ERROR/WindowManager(815): at net.ajzele.demo.andy1.HomeActivity.onCreate(HomeActivity.java:72) 01-08 12:33:51.605: ERROR/WindowManager(815): at android.app.Instrumentation.callActivityOnCreate(Instrumentation.java:1047) 01-08 12:33:51.605: ERROR/WindowManager(815): at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:1586) 01-08 12:33:51.605: ERROR/WindowManager(815): at android.app.ActivityThread.handleLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:1638) 01-08 12:33:51.605: ERROR/WindowManager(815): at android.app.ActivityThread.access$1500(ActivityThread.java:117) 01-08 12:33:51.605: ERROR/WindowManager(815): at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:928) 01-08 12:33:51.605: ERROR/WindowManager(815): at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99) 01-08 12:33:51.605: ERROR/WindowManager(815): at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:123) 01-08 12:33:51.605: ERROR/WindowManager(815): at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:3647) 01-08 12:33:51.605: ERROR/WindowManager(815): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) 01-08 12:33:51.605: ERROR/WindowManager(815): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:507) 01-08 12:33:51.605: ERROR/WindowManager(815): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:839) 01-08 12:33:51.605: ERROR/WindowManager(815): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:597) 01-08 12:33:51.605: ERROR/WindowManager(815): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method) Any hints? I hope you can help me out ive searched the net and didnt find any working solution...Thanks in advance

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• JTabbedPane: only first tab is drawn, the second is always empty (newbie Q)

  - by paul

  I created a very simple JTabbedPane by first creating an empty JTabbedPane object, then 2 JPanels that I later add. Each JPanel is holding a object that extends JButton and implements MouseListener. Each of these holds a different image loaded from a file; the image is held locally as a buffered image and as an image icon, etc., all of which works great. The point of all that is to allow resizing of the image when the button is resized (using getscaledinstance()), because the panel is resized, because the JTabbedPane is resized, etc., within the JFrame that holds everything. I override paintComponent() to accomplish this in the class that extends JButton. I am using MigLayout Manager, and all is well on that front controlling layout constraints, growing, filling, initial sizes, preferred sizes, etc. The images the buttons hold are of different sizes and proportions, but this caused no trouble before. Up until 2 days ago everything worked fairly well. I made some changes trying to tweak some resizing issues as I was picking up MigLayout manager. At the time I was playing around with setting various min, max, and preferred sizes using the methods provided for by the components, not the layout manager. I also fooled a bit with pack(), validate(), visible(), opaque() etc., and yes I read the article about Swing and AWT painting here: http://java.sun.com/products/jfc/tsc/articles/painting/ , and I switched to relying more and more on MigLayout. On an unrelated note, it appears JFrame's do not honor maxsize? Somehow, today, with and without using any of these methods provided by swing, with or without using MigLayout manager to handle some of these matters instead, I now have a JTabbedPane that correctly displays the FIRST JPanel I add, but NOT THE SECOND JPanel--which, while present as a tab--does not show when selected. I have switched the order of which panel is added first, and this still holds true regardless of which JPanel I add first, telling me the JPanels are ok, and the problem is most likely in the JTabbedPane. I click on the second tab, the JTabbedPane switches, but I have what appears to be a blank button in the JPanel. A few console system-out statements reveal the following: a) that the second panel and its button are constructed b) no mouse events are being captured when I click on where the second panel and button should reside, as if it didn't exist at that point; c) when I switch to the second tab, the overrided paintComponent() method of the button within that second JPanel is never called, so it is in fact never being painted despite the tab in which it resides becoming visible; d) the JTabbpedPane getComponentCount() returns a correct value of 2 after adding the 2nd panel; e) MigLayout manager actually rocks, but I digress... I cannot now revert to my older code, and despite my best efforts to undo whatever changes caused this, I cannot fix my new problem. I've commented out everything but the most essential calls: constructors for each object--with MigLayout; add() for placing the buttons on the panels using string-arguments appropriate for MigLayout; add() for placing the panels on the JTabbedPane, also with MigLayout string arguments; setting the default op on close for the JFrame; and setting the JFrame visible. This means I do not fiddle with optimization settings, double buffering settings, opaque settings, but leave them as default, and still, no fix; the second panel will not show itself. Each panel, I should add, when it is the first to be loaded, works fine, again re-affirming that the panels and buttons are themselves ok. Here is part of what I am doing: //Note: BuildaButton is a class that merely constructs my instances File f = new File("/foo.jpg"); button1 = new BuildaButton().BuildaButton(f).buildfoo1Button(); f = new File("/foo2.jpg"); button2 = new BuildaButton().BuildaButton(f).buildfoo2Button(); MigLayout ml = new MigLayout("wrap 1", "[fill, grow]0[fill, grow]", "[fill, grow]0[fill, grow]"); MigLayout ml2 = new MigLayout("wrap 2", "[fill, grow]5[fill, grow]", "[fill, grow]0[fill, grow]"); foo1panel = new JPanel(ml); foo1panel.add(button1, "w 234:945:, h 200:807:"); foo2panel = new JPanel(ml); foo2panel.add(button2, "w 186:752:, h 200:807:"); tabs.add("foo1", foo1panel); tabs.add("foo2", foo2panel); System.out.println("contents of tabs: " + tabs.getComponentCount() + " elements"); mainframe.setLayout(ml2); mainframe.setMinimumSize(new Dimension(850,800)); mainframe.add(tabs, "w 600:800:, h 780:780:"); //controlpanel is a still blank jpanel that holds nothing--it is a space holder for now & will be utilized mainframe.add(controlpanel, "w 200:200:200, h 780:780:"); mainframe.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE); mainframe.setVisible(true); Thank you in advance for any help you can give.

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• Losing NSManaged Objects in my Application

  - by Wayfarer

  I've been doing quite a bit of work on a fun little iPhone app. At one point, I get a bunch of player objects from my Persistant store, and then display them on the screen. I also have the options of adding new player objects (their just custom UIButtons) and removing selected players. However, I believe I'm running into some memory management issues, in that somehow the app is not saving which "players" are being displayed. Example: I have 4 players shown, I select them all and then delete them all. They all disappear. But if I exit and then reopen the application, they all are there again. As though they had never left. So somewhere in my code, they are not "really" getting removed. MagicApp201AppDelegate *appDelegate = [[UIApplication sharedApplication] delegate]; context = [appDelegate managedObjectContext]; NSFetchRequest *request = [[NSFetchRequest alloc] init]; NSEntityDescription *desc = [NSEntityDescription entityForName:@"Player" inManagedObjectContext:context]; [request setEntity:desc]; NSError *error; NSMutableArray *objects = [[[context executeFetchRequest:request error:&error] mutableCopy] autorelease]; if (objects == nil) { NSLog(@"Shit man, there was an error taking out the single player object when the view did load. ", error); } int j = 0; while (j < [objects count]) { if ([[[objects objectAtIndex:j] valueForKey:@"currentMultiPlayer"] boolValue] == NO) { [objects removeObjectAtIndex:j]; j--; } else { j++; } } [self setPlayers:objects]; //This is a must, it NEEDS to work Objects are all the players playing So in this snippit (in the viewdidLoad method), I grab the players out of the persistant store, and then remove the objects I don't want (those whose boolValue is NO), and the rest are kept. This works, I'm pretty sure. I think the issue is where I remove the players. Here is that code: NSLog(@"Remove players"); /** For each selected player: Unselect them (remove them from SelectedPlayers) Remove the button from the view Remove the button object from the array Remove the player from Players */ NSLog(@"Debugging Removal: %d", [selectedPlayers count]); for (int i=0; i < [selectedPlayers count]; i++) { NSManagedObject *rPlayer = [selectedPlayers objectAtIndex:i]; [rPlayer setValue:[NSNumber numberWithBool:NO] forKey:@"currentMultiPlayer"]; int index = [players indexOfObjectIdenticalTo:rPlayer]; //this is the index we need for (int j = (index + 1); j < [players count]; j++) { UIButton *tempButton = [playerButtons objectAtIndex:j]; tempButton.tag--; } NSError *error; if ([context hasChanges] && ![context save:&error]) { NSLog(@"Unresolved error %@, %@", error, [error userInfo]); abort(); } UIButton *aButton = [playerButtons objectAtIndex:index]; [players removeObjectAtIndex:index]; [aButton removeFromSuperview]; [playerButtons removeObjectAtIndex:index]; } [selectedPlayers removeAllObjects]; NSError *error; if ([context hasChanges] && ![context save:&error]) { NSLog(@"Unresolved error %@, %@", error, [error userInfo]); abort(); } NSLog(@"About to refresh YES"); [self refreshAllPlayers:YES]; The big part in the second code snippet is I set them to NO for currentMultiPlayer. NO NO NO NO NO, they should NOT come back when the view does load, NEVER ever ever. Not until I say so. No other relevant part of the code sets that to YES. Which makes me think... perhaps they aren't being saved. Perhaps that doesn't save, perhaps those objects aren't being managed anymore, and so they don't get saved in. Is there a lifetime (metaphorically) of NSManaged object? The Players array is the same I set in the "viewDidLoad" method, and SelectedPlayers holds players that are selected, references to NSManagedObjects. Does it have something to do with Removing them from the array? I'm so confused, some insight would be greatly appreciated!!

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• java.lang.NullPointerException exception in my controller file (using Spring Hibernate Maven)

  - by mrjayviper

  The problem doesn't seemed to have anything to do with Hibernate. As I've commented the Hibernate stuff but I'm still getting it. If I comment out this line message = staffDAO.searchForStaff(search); in my controller file, it goes through ok. But I don't see anything wrong with searchForStaff function. It's a very simple function that just returns the string "test" and run system.out.println("test"). Can you please help? thanks But this is the error that I'm getting: SEVERE: Servlet.service() for servlet [spring] in context with path [/directorymaven] threw exception [Request processing failed; nested exception is java.lang.NullPointerException] with root cause java.lang.NullPointerException at org.flinders.staffdirectory.controllers.SearchController.showSearchResults(SearchController.java:25) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:601) at org.springframework.web.method.support.InvocableHandlerMethod.invoke(InvocableHandlerMethod.java:219) at org.springframework.web.method.support.InvocableHandlerMethod.invokeForRequest(InvocableHandlerMethod.java:132) at org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.ServletInvocableHandlerMethod.invokeAndHandle(ServletInvocableHandlerMethod.java:100) at org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.RequestMappingHandlerAdapter.invokeHandlerMethod(RequestMappingHandlerAdapter.java:604) at org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.RequestMappingHandlerAdapter.handleInternal(RequestMappingHandlerAdapter.java:565) at org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.AbstractHandlerMethodAdapter.handle(AbstractHandlerMethodAdapter.java:80) at org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet.doDispatch(DispatcherServlet.java:923) at org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet.doService(DispatcherServlet.java:852) at org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.processRequest(FrameworkServlet.java:882) at org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.doGet(FrameworkServlet.java:778) at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:621) at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:728) at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:305) at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:210) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:222) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:123) at org.apache.catalina.authenticator.AuthenticatorBase.invoke(AuthenticatorBase.java:472) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:171) at org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:99) at org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve.invoke(AccessLogValve.java:931) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:118) at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:407) at org.apache.coyote.http11.AbstractHttp11Processor.process(AbstractHttp11Processor.java:1004) at org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol$AbstractConnectionHandler.process(AbstractProtocol.java:589) at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.JIoEndpoint$SocketProcessor.run(JIoEndpoint.java:310) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1110) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:603) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:722) My spring-servlet xml <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context" xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc" xmlns:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p" xmlns:tx="http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx" xsi:schemaLocation=" http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx/spring-tx.xsd"> <context:component-scan base-package="org.flinders.staffdirectory.controllers" /> <mvc:annotation-driven /> <mvc:resources mapping="/resources/**" location="/resources/" /> <tx:annotation-driven /> <bean id="propertyConfigurer" class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer" p:location="/WEB-INF/spring.properties" /> <bean id="dataSource" class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource" destroy-method="close" p:driverClassName="${jdbc.driverClassName}" p:url="${jdbc.databaseurl}" p:username="${jdbc.username}" p:password="${jdbc.password}" /> <bean id="sessionFactory" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate4.LocalSessionFactoryBean" p:dataSource-ref="dataSource" p:configLocation="${hibernate.config}" p:packagesToScan="org.flinders.staffdirectory"/> <bean id="transactionManager" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate4.HibernateTransactionManager" p:sessionFactory-ref="sessionFactory" /> <bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.UrlBasedViewResolver" p:viewClass="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesView" /> <bean id="tilesConfigurer" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesConfigurer" p:definitions="/WEB-INF/tiles.xml" /> <bean id="staffDAO" class="org.flinders.staffdirectory.dao.StaffDAO" p:sessionFactory-ref="sessionFactory" /> <!-- <bean id="staffService" class="org.flinders.staffdirectory.services.StaffServiceImpl" p:staffDAO-ref="staffDAO" />--> </beans> This is my controller file package org.flinders.staffdirectory.controllers; import java.util.List; //import org.flinders.staffdirectory.models.database.SearchResult; import org.flinders.staffdirectory.models.misc.Search; import org.flinders.staffdirectory.dao.StaffDAO; //import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired; import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller; import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.ModelAttribute; import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping; import org.springframework.web.servlet.ModelAndView; @Controller public class SearchController { //@Autowired private StaffDAO staffDAO; private String message; @RequestMapping("/SearchStaff") public ModelAndView showSearchResults(@ModelAttribute Search search) { //List<SearchResult> searchResults = message = staffDAO.searchForStaff(search); //System.out.println(search.getSurname()); return new ModelAndView("search/SearchForm", "Search", new Search()); //return new ModelAndView("search/SearchResults", "searchResults", searchResults); } @RequestMapping("/SearchForm") public ModelAndView showSearchForm() { return new ModelAndView("search/SearchForm", "search", new Search()); } } my dao class package org.flinders.staffdirectory.dao; import java.util.List; import org.hibernate.SessionFactory; //import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired; import org.flinders.staffdirectory.models.database.SearchResult; import org.flinders.staffdirectory.models.misc.Search; public class StaffDAO { //@Autowired private SessionFactory sessionFactory; public void setSessionFactory(SessionFactory sessionFactory) { this.sessionFactory = sessionFactory; } public String searchForStaff(Search search) { /*String SQL = "select distinct telsumm_id as id, telsumm_parent_id as parentId, telsumm_name_title as title, (case when substr(telsumm_surname, length(telsumm_surname) - 1, 1) = ',' then substr(telsumm_surname, 1, length(telsumm_surname) - 1) else telsumm_surname end) as surname, telsumm_preferred_name as firstname, nvl(telsumm_tele_number, '-') as telephoneNumber, nvl(telsumm_role, '-') as role, telsumm_display_department as department, lower(telsumm_entity_type) as entityType from teldirt.teld_summary where (telsumm_search_surname is not null) and not (nvl(telsumm_tele_directory,'xxx') IN ('N','S','D')) and not (telsumm_tele_number IS NULL AND telsumm_alias IS NULL) and (telsumm_alias_list = 'Y' OR (telsumm_tele_directory IN ('A','B'))) and ((nvl(telsumm_system_id_end,sysdate+1) > SYSDATE and telsumm_entity_type = 'P') or (telsumm_entity_type = 'N')) and (telsumm_search_department NOT like 'SPONSOR%')"; if (search.getSurname().length() > 0) { SQL += " and (telsumm_search_surname like '" + search.getSurname().toUpperCase() + "%')"; } if (search.getSurnameLike().length() > 0) { SQL += " and (telsumm_search_soundex like soundex(('%" + search.getSurnameLike().toUpperCase() + "%'))"; } if (search.getFirstname().length() > 0) { SQL += " and (telsumm_search_preferred_name like '" + search.getFirstname().toUpperCase() + "%' or telsumm_search_first_name like '" + search.getFirstname() + "%')"; } if (search.getTelephoneNumber().length() > 0) { SQL += " and (telsumm_tele_number like '" + search.getTelephoneNumber() + "%')"; } if (search.getDepartment().length() > 0) { SQL += " and (telsumm_search_department like '" + search.getDepartment().toUpperCase() + "%')"; } if (search.getRole().length() > 0) { SQL += " and (telsumm_search_role like '" + search.getRole().toUpperCase() + "%')"; } SQL += " order by surname, firstname"; List<Object[]> list = (List<Object[]>) sessionFactory.getCurrentSession().createQuery(SQL).list(); for(int j=0;j<list.size();j++){ Object [] obj= (Object[])list.get(j); for(int i=0;i<obj.length;i++) System.out.println(obj[i]); }*/ System.out.println("test"); return "test"; } }

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• php foreach looping twice

  - by Jack

  Hi, I am trying to loop through some data from my database but it is outputting it twice. $fields = 'field1, field2, field3, field4'; $idFields = 'id_field1, id_field2, id_field3, id_field4'; $tables = 'table1, table2, table3, table4'; $table = explode(', ', $tables); $field = explode(', ', $fields); $id = explode(', ', $idFields); $str = 'Egg'; $i=1; while ($i<4) { $f = $field[$i]; $idd = $id[$i]; $sql = $writeConn->select()->from($table[$i], array($f, $idd))->where($f . " LIKE ?", '%' . $str . '%'); $string = '<a title="' . $str . '" href="' . $currentProductUrl . '">' . $str . '</a>'; $result = $writeConn->fetchAssoc($sql); foreach ($result as $row) { echo 'Success! Found ' . $str . ' in ' . $f . '. ID: ' . $row[$idd] . '.<br>'; } $i++; } Outputting: Success! Found Egg in field3. ID: 5. Success! Found Egg in field3. ID: 5. Could someone please explain why it is looping through both the indexed and associative values? UPDATE I did some more playing around and tried the following. $fields = 'field1, field2, field3, field4'; $idFields = 'id_field1, id_field2, id_field3, id_field4'; $tables = 'table1, table2, table3, table4'; $table = explode(', ', $tables); $field = explode(', ', $fields); $id = explode(', ', $idFields); $str = 'Egg'; $i=1; while ($i<4) { $f = $field[$i]; $idd = $id[$i]; $sql = $writeConn->select()->from($table[$i], array($f, $idd))->where($f . " LIKE ?", '%' . $str . '%'); $string = '<a title="' . $str . '" href="' . $currentProductUrl . '">' . $str . '</a>'; $sth = $writeConn->prepare($sql); $sth->execute(); $result = $sth->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC); foreach ($result as $row) { echo 'Success! Found ' . $str . ' in ' . $f . '. ID: ' . $row[$idd] . '.<br>'; } $i++; } The interesting thing is that this outputs the below: Success! Found Egg in field3. ID: E. Success! Found Egg in field3. ID: E. Success! Found Egg in field3. ID: 5. Success! Found Egg in field3. ID: 5. Success! Found Egg in field3. ID: E. Success! Found Egg in field3. ID: E. Success! Found Egg in field3. ID: 5. Success! Found Egg in field3. ID: 5. I have also tried adding $i to the output and this outputs 2 as expected. If I change fetch(PDO::FETCH_BOTH) to fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC) the output is as follows: Success! Found Egg in field3. ID: E. Success! Found Egg in field3. ID: E. Success! Found Egg in field3. ID: 5. Success! Found Egg in field3. ID: 5. This has been bugging me for too long, so if anyone could help I would be very appreciative!

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• Why does decorating a class break the descriptor protocol, thus preventing staticmethod objects from behaving as expected?

  - by Robru

  I need a little bit of help understanding the subtleties of the descriptor protocol in Python, as it relates specifically to the behavior of staticmethod objects. I'll start with a trivial example, and then iteratively expand it, examining it's behavior at each step: class Stub: @staticmethod def do_things(): """Call this like Stub.do_things(), with no arguments or instance.""" print "Doing things!" At this point, this behaves as expected, but what's going on here is a bit subtle: When you call Stub.do_things(), you are not invoking do_things directly. Instead, Stub.do_things refers to a staticmethod instance, which has wrapped the function we want up inside it's own descriptor protocol such that you are actually invoking staticmethod.__get__, which first returns the function that we want, and then gets called afterwards. >>> Stub <class __main__.Stub at 0x...> >>> Stub.do_things <function do_things at 0x...> >>> Stub.__dict__['do_things'] <staticmethod object at 0x...> >>> Stub.do_things() Doing things! So far so good. Next, I need to wrap the class in a decorator that will be used to customize class instantiation -- the decorator will determine whether to allow new instantiations or provide cached instances: def deco(cls): def factory(*args, **kwargs): # pretend there is some logic here determining # whether to make a new instance or not return cls(*args, **kwargs) return factory @deco class Stub: @staticmethod def do_things(): """Call this like Stub.do_things(), with no arguments or instance.""" print "Doing things!" Now, naturally this part as-is would be expected to break staticmethods, because the class is now hidden behind it's decorator, ie, Stub not a class at all, but an instance of factory that is able to produce instances of Stub when you call it. Indeed: >>> Stub <function factory at 0x...> >>> Stub.do_things Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> AttributeError: 'function' object has no attribute 'do_things' >>> Stub() <__main__.Stub instance at 0x...> >>> Stub().do_things <function do_things at 0x...> >>> Stub().do_things() Doing things! So far I understand what's happening here. My goal is to restore the ability for staticmethods to function as you would expect them to, even though the class is wrapped. As luck would have it, the Python stdlib includes something called functools, which provides some tools just for this purpose, ie, making functions behave more like other functions that they wrap. So I change my decorator to look like this: def deco(cls): @functools.wraps(cls) def factory(*args, **kwargs): # pretend there is some logic here determining # whether to make a new instance or not return cls(*args, **kwargs) return factory Now, things start to get interesting: >>> Stub <function Stub at 0x...> >>> Stub.do_things <staticmethod object at 0x...> >>> Stub.do_things() Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> TypeError: 'staticmethod' object is not callable >>> Stub() <__main__.Stub instance at 0x...> >>> Stub().do_things <function do_things at 0x...> >>> Stub().do_things() Doing things! Wait.... what? functools copies the staticmethod over to the wrapping function, but it's not callable? Why not? What did I miss here? I was playing around with this for a bit and I actually came up with my own reimplementation of staticmethod that allows it to function in this situation, but I don't really understand why it was necessary or if this is even the best solution to this problem. Here's the complete example: class staticmethod(object): """Make @staticmethods play nice with decorated classes.""" def __init__(self, func): self.func = func def __call__(self, *args, **kwargs): """Provide the expected behavior inside decorated classes.""" return self.func(*args, **kwargs) def __get__(self, obj, objtype=None): """Re-implement the standard behavior for undecorated classes.""" return self.func def deco(cls): @functools.wraps(cls) def factory(*args, **kwargs): # pretend there is some logic here determining # whether to make a new instance or not return cls(*args, **kwargs) return factory @deco class Stub: @staticmethod def do_things(): """Call this like Stub.do_things(), with no arguments or instance.""" print "Doing things!" Indeed it works exactly as expected: >>> Stub <function Stub at 0x...> >>> Stub.do_things <__main__.staticmethod object at 0x...> >>> Stub.do_things() Doing things! >>> Stub() <__main__.Stub instance at 0x...> >>> Stub().do_things <function do_things at 0x...> >>> Stub().do_things() Doing things! What approach would you take to make a staticmethod behave as expected inside a decorated class? Is this the best way? Why doesn't the builtin staticmethod implement __call__ on it's own in order for this to just work without any fuss? Thanks.

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• SQL Server Express 2008 R2 Installation error at Windows 7

  - by Shai Sherman

  Hello, I created install script that will install SQL Server 2008 R2 on windows XP SP3, windows vista and windows 7. One of the command that i used in the installation is for silent installation of SQL Server 2008 R2. When i install it on windows XP everything works just fine but when i try to install it on Windows 7 i get an error. What am I doing wrong? Here is the command line that i use: "Setup.exe /ConfigurationFile=Mysetup.ini" Mysetup.ini file: -------------------------------------Start of ini file --------------------------------- ;SQL SERVER 2008 R2 Configuration File ;Version 1.0, 5 May 2010 ; [SQLSERVER2008] ; Specify the Instance ID for the SQL Server features you have specified. SQL Server directory structure, registry structure, and service names will reflect the instance ID of the SQL Server instance. INSTANCEID="MSSQLSERVER" ; Specifies a Setup work flow, like INSTALL, UNINSTALL, or UPGRADE. This is a required parameter. ACTION="Install" ; Specifies features to install, uninstall, or upgrade. The list of top-level features include SQL, AS, RS, IS, and Tools. The SQL feature will install the database engine, replication, and full-text. The Tools feature will install Management Tools, Books online, Business Intelligence Development Studio, and other shared components. FEATURES=SQLENGINE ; Displays the command line parameters usage HELP="False" ; Specifies that the detailed Setup log should be piped to the console. INDICATEPROGRESS="False" ; Setup will not display any user interface. QUIET="False" ; Setup will display progress only without any user interaction. QUIETSIMPLE="True" ; Specifies that Setup should install into WOW64. This command line argument is not supported on an IA64 or a 32-bit system. ;X86="False" ; Specifies the path to the installation media folder where setup.exe is located. ;MEDIASOURCE="z:\" ; Detailed help for command line argument ENU has not been defined yet. ENU="True" ; Parameter that controls the user interface behavior. Valid values are Normal for the full UI, and AutoAdvance for a simplied UI. ; UIMODE="Normal" ; Specify if errors can be reported to Microsoft to improve future SQL Server releases. Specify 1 or True to enable and 0 or False to disable this feature. ERRORREPORTING="False" ; Specify the root installation directory for native shared components. ;INSTALLSHAREDDIR="D:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server" ; Specify the root installation directory for the WOW64 shared components. ;INSTALLSHAREDWOWDIR="D:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server" ; Specify the installation directory. ;INSTANCEDIR="D:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server" ; Specify that SQL Server feature usage data can be collected and sent to Microsoft. Specify 1 or True to enable and 0 or False to disable this feature. SQMREPORTING="False" ; Specify a default or named instance. MSSQLSERVER is the default instance for non-Express editions and SQLExpress for Express editions. This parameter is required when installing the SQL Server Database Engine (SQL), Analysis Services (AS), or Reporting Services (RS). INSTANCENAME="SQLEXPRESS" SECURITYMODE=SQL SAPWD=SystemAdmin ; Agent account name AGTSVCACCOUNT="NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE" ; Auto-start service after installation. AGTSVCSTARTUPTYPE="Manual" ; Startup type for Integration Services. ;ISSVCSTARTUPTYPE="Automatic" ; Account for Integration Services: Domain\User or system account. ;ISSVCACCOUNT="NT AUTHORITY\NetworkService" ; Controls the service startup type setting after the service has been created. ;ASSVCSTARTUPTYPE="Automatic" ; The collation to be used by Analysis Services. ;ASCOLLATION="Latin1_General_CI_AS" ; The location for the Analysis Services data files. ;ASDATADIR="Data" ; The location for the Analysis Services log files. ;ASLOGDIR="Log" ; The location for the Analysis Services backup files. ;ASBACKUPDIR="Backup" ; The location for the Analysis Services temporary files. ;ASTEMPDIR="Temp" ; The location for the Analysis Services configuration files. ;ASCONFIGDIR="Config" ; Specifies whether or not the MSOLAP provider is allowed to run in process. ;ASPROVIDERMSOLAP="1" ; A port number used to connect to the SharePoint Central Administration web application. ;FARMADMINPORT="0" ; Startup type for the SQL Server service. SQLSVCSTARTUPTYPE="Automatic" ; Level to enable FILESTREAM feature at (0, 1, 2 or 3). FILESTREAMLEVEL="0" ; Set to "1" to enable RANU for SQL Server Express. ENABLERANU="1" ; Specifies a Windows collation or an SQL collation to use for the Database Engine. SQLCOLLATION="SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS" ; Account for SQL Server service: Domain\User or system account. SQLSVCACCOUNT="NT Authority\System" ; Default directory for the Database Engine user databases. ;SQLUSERDBDIR="K:\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL\Data" ; Default directory for the Database Engine user database logs. ;SQLUSERDBLOGDIR="L:\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL\Data\Logs" ; Directory for Database Engine TempDB files. ;SQLTEMPDBDIR="T:\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL\Data" ; Directory for the Database Engine TempDB log files. ;SQLTEMPDBLOGDIR="T:\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL\Data\Logs" ; Provision current user as a Database Engine system administrator for SQL Server 2008 R2 Express. ADDCURRENTUSERASSQLADMIN="True" ; Specify 0 to disable or 1 to enable the TCP/IP protocol. TCPENABLED="1" ; Specify 0 to disable or 1 to enable the Named Pipes protocol. NPENABLED="0" ; Startup type for Browser Service. BROWSERSVCSTARTUPTYPE="Automatic" ; Specifies how the startup mode of the report server NT service. When ; Manual - Service startup is manual mode (default). ; Automatic - Service startup is automatic mode. ; Disabled - Service is disabled ;RSSVCSTARTUPTYPE="Automatic" ; Specifies which mode report server is installed in. ; Default value: “FilesOnly” ;RSINSTALLMODE="FilesOnlyMode" ; Accept SQL Server 2008 R2 license terms IACCEPTSQLSERVERLICENSETERMS="TRUE" ;setup.exe /CONFIGURATIONFILE=Mysetup.ini /INDICATEPROGRESS --------------------------- End of ini file ------------------------------------- And i get this error: 2010-08-31 18:05:53 Slp: Error result: -2068119551 2010-08-31 18:05:53 Slp: Result facility code: 1211 2010-08-31 18:05:53 Slp: Result error code: 1 2010-08-31 18:05:53 Slp: Sco: Attempting to create base registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, machine 2010-08-31 18:05:53 Slp: Sco: Attempting to open registry subkey 2010-08-31 18:05:53 Slp: Sco: Attempting to open registry subkey Software\Microsoft\PCHealth\ErrorReporting\DW\Installed 2010-08-31 18:05:53 Slp: Sco: Attempting to get registry value DW0200 2010-08-31 18:05:53 Slp: Submitted 1 of 1 failures to the Watson data repository What the meaning of this? What do i need to do to fix that problem? Here is the Summary file: Overall summary: Final result: SQL Server installation failed. To continue, investigate the reason for the failure, correct the problem, uninstall SQL Server, and then rerun SQL Server Setup. Exit code (Decimal): -2068119551 Exit facility code: 1211 Exit error code: 1 Exit message: SQL Server installation failed. To continue, investigate the reason for the failure, correct the problem, uninstall SQL Server, and then rerun SQL Server Setup. Start time: 2010-08-31 18:03:44 End time: 2010-08-31 18:05:51 Requested action: Install Log with failure: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\Log\20100831_180236\Detail.txt Exception help link: http%3a%2f%2fgo.microsoft.com%2ffwlink%3fLinkId%3d20476%26ProdName%3dMicrosoft%2bSQL%2bServer%26EvtSrc%3dsetup.rll%26EvtID%3d50000%26ProdVer%3d10.50.1600.1%26EvtType%3d0x6121810A%400xC24842DB Machine Properties: Machine name: NVR Machine processor count: 2 OS version: Windows 7 OS service pack: OS region: United States OS language: English (United States) OS architecture: x86 Process architecture: 32 Bit OS clustered: No Product features discovered: Product Instance Instance ID Feature Language Edition Version Clustered Package properties: Description: SQL Server Database Services 2008 R2 ProductName: SQL Server 2008 R2 Type: RTM Version: 10 SPLevel: 0 Installation location: C:\Disk1\setupsql\x86\setup\ Installation edition: EXPRESS User Input Settings: ACTION: Install ADDCURRENTUSERASSQLADMIN: True AGTSVCACCOUNT: NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE AGTSVCPASSWORD: * AGTSVCSTARTUPTYPE: Disabled ASBACKUPDIR: Backup ASCOLLATION: Latin1_General_CI_AS ASCONFIGDIR: Config ASDATADIR: Data ASDOMAINGROUP: ASLOGDIR: Log ASPROVIDERMSOLAP: 1 ASSVCACCOUNT: ASSVCPASSWORD: * ASSVCSTARTUPTYPE: Automatic ASSYSADMINACCOUNTS: ASTEMPDIR: Temp BROWSERSVCSTARTUPTYPE: Automatic CONFIGURATIONFILE: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\Log\20100831_180236\ConfigurationFile.ini CUSOURCE: ENABLERANU: True ENU: True ERRORREPORTING: False FARMACCOUNT: FARMADMINPORT: 0 FARMPASSWORD: * FEATURES: SQLENGINE FILESTREAMLEVEL: 0 FILESTREAMSHARENAME: FTSVCACCOUNT: FTSVCPASSWORD: * HELP: False IACCEPTSQLSERVERLICENSETERMS: True INDICATEPROGRESS: False INSTALLSHAREDDIR: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\ INSTALLSHAREDWOWDIR: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\ INSTALLSQLDATADIR: INSTANCEDIR: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\ INSTANCEID: MSSQLSERVER INSTANCENAME: SQLEXPRESS ISSVCACCOUNT: NT AUTHORITY\NetworkService ISSVCPASSWORD: * ISSVCSTARTUPTYPE: Automatic NPENABLED: 0 PASSPHRASE: * PCUSOURCE: PID: * QUIET: False QUIETSIMPLE: True ROLE: AllFeatures_WithDefaults RSINSTALLMODE: FilesOnlyMode RSSVCACCOUNT: NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE RSSVCPASSWORD: * RSSVCSTARTUPTYPE: Automatic SAPWD: * SECURITYMODE: SQL SQLBACKUPDIR: SQLCOLLATION: SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS SQLSVCACCOUNT: NT Authority\System SQLSVCPASSWORD: * SQLSVCSTARTUPTYPE: Automatic SQLSYSADMINACCOUNTS: SQLTEMPDBDIR: SQLTEMPDBLOGDIR: SQLUSERDBDIR: SQLUSERDBLOGDIR: SQMREPORTING: False TCPENABLED: 1 UIMODE: AutoAdvance X86: False Configuration file: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\Log\20100831_180236\ConfigurationFile.ini Detailed results: Feature: Database Engine Services Status: Failed: see logs for details MSI status: Passed Configuration status: Failed: see details below Configuration error code: 0x0A2FBD17@1211@1 Configuration error description: The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process. Configuration log: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\Log\20100831_180236\Detail.txt Rules with failures: Global rules: Scenario specific rules: Rules report file: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\Log\20100831_180236\SystemConfigurationCheck_Report.htm What should I do and why does this problem occur? Thanks , Shai.

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• Cisco SR520w FE - WAN Port Stops Working

  - by Mike Hanley

  I have setup a Cisco SR520W and everything appears to be working. After about 1-2 days, it looks like the WAN port stops forwarding traffic to the Internet gateway IP of the device. If I unplug and then plug in the network cable connecting the WAN port of the SR520W to my Comcast Cable Modem, traffic startings flowing again. Also, if I restart the SR520W, the traffic will flow again. Any ideas? Here is the running config: Current configuration : 10559 bytes ! version 12.4 no service pad no service timestamps debug uptime service timestamps log datetime msec no service password-encryption ! hostname hostname.mydomain.com ! boot-start-marker boot-end-marker ! logging message-counter syslog no logging rate-limit enable secret 5 <removed> ! aaa new-model ! ! aaa authentication login default local aaa authorization exec default local ! ! aaa session-id common clock timezone PST -8 clock summer-time PDT recurring ! crypto pki trustpoint TP-self-signed-334750407 enrollment selfsigned subject-name cn=IOS-Self-Signed-Certificate-334750407 revocation-check none rsakeypair TP-self-signed-334750407 ! ! crypto pki certificate chain TP-self-signed-334750407 certificate self-signed 01 <removed> quit dot11 syslog ! dot11 ssid <removed> vlan 75 authentication open authentication key-management wpa guest-mode wpa-psk ascii 0 <removed> ! ip source-route ! ! ip dhcp excluded-address 172.16.0.1 172.16.0.10 ! ip dhcp pool inside import all network 172.16.0.0 255.240.0.0 default-router 172.16.0.1 dns-server 10.0.0.15 10.0.0.12 domain-name mydomain.com ! ! ip cef ip domain name mydomain.com ip name-server 68.87.76.178 ip name-server 66.240.48.9 ip port-map user-ezvpn-remote port udp 10000 ip ips notify SDEE ip ips name sdm_ips_rule ! ip ips signature-category category all retired true category ios_ips basic retired false ! ip inspect log drop-pkt no ipv6 cef ! multilink bundle-name authenticated parameter-map type inspect z1-z2-pmap audit-trail on password encryption aes ! ! username admin privilege 15 secret 5 <removed> ! crypto key pubkey-chain rsa named-key realm-cisco.pub key-string <removed> quit ! ! ! ! ! ! crypto ipsec client ezvpn EZVPN_REMOTE_CONNECTION_1 connect auto group EZVPN_GROUP_1 key <removed> mode client peer 64.1.208.90 virtual-interface 1 username admin password <removed> xauth userid mode local ! ! archive log config logging enable logging size 600 hidekeys ! ! ! class-map type inspect match-any SDM_AH match access-group name SDM_AH class-map type inspect match-any SDM-Voice-permit match protocol sip class-map type inspect match-any SDM_ESP match access-group name SDM_ESP class-map type inspect match-any SDM_EASY_VPN_REMOTE_TRAFFIC match protocol isakmp match protocol ipsec-msft match class-map SDM_AH match class-map SDM_ESP match protocol user-ezvpn-remote class-map type inspect match-all SDM_EASY_VPN_REMOTE_PT match class-map SDM_EASY_VPN_REMOTE_TRAFFIC match access-group 101 class-map type inspect match-any Easy_VPN_Remote_VT match access-group 102 class-map type inspect match-any sdm-cls-icmp-access match protocol icmp match protocol tcp match protocol udp class-map type inspect match-any sdm-cls-insp-traffic match protocol cuseeme match protocol dns match protocol ftp match protocol h323 match protocol https match protocol icmp match protocol imap match protocol pop3 match protocol netshow match protocol shell match protocol realmedia match protocol rtsp match protocol smtp extended match protocol sql-net match protocol streamworks match protocol tftp match protocol vdolive match protocol tcp match protocol udp class-map type inspect match-any L4-inspect-class match protocol icmp class-map type inspect match-all sdm-invalid-src match access-group 100 class-map type inspect match-all dhcp_out_self match access-group name dhcp-resp-permit class-map type inspect match-all dhcp_self_out match access-group name dhcp-req-permit class-map type inspect match-all sdm-protocol-http match protocol http ! ! policy-map type inspect sdm-permit-icmpreply class type inspect dhcp_self_out pass class type inspect sdm-cls-icmp-access inspect class class-default pass policy-map type inspect sdm-permit_VT class type inspect Easy_VPN_Remote_VT pass class class-default drop policy-map type inspect sdm-inspect class type inspect SDM-Voice-permit pass class type inspect sdm-cls-insp-traffic inspect class type inspect sdm-invalid-src drop log class type inspect sdm-protocol-http inspect z1-z2-pmap class class-default pass policy-map type inspect sdm-inspect-voip-in class type inspect SDM-Voice-permit pass class class-default drop policy-map type inspect sdm-permit class type inspect SDM_EASY_VPN_REMOTE_PT pass class type inspect dhcp_out_self pass class class-default drop ! zone security ezvpn-zone zone security out-zone zone security in-zone zone-pair security sdm-zp-in-ezvpn1 source in-zone destination ezvpn-zone service-policy type inspect sdm-permit_VT zone-pair security sdm-zp-out-ezpn1 source out-zone destination ezvpn-zone service-policy type inspect sdm-permit_VT zone-pair security sdm-zp-ezvpn-out1 source ezvpn-zone destination out-zone service-policy type inspect sdm-permit_VT zone-pair security sdm-zp-self-out source self destination out-zone service-policy type inspect sdm-permit-icmpreply zone-pair security sdm-zp-out-in source out-zone destination in-zone service-policy type inspect sdm-inspect-voip-in zone-pair security sdm-zp-ezvpn-in1 source ezvpn-zone destination in-zone service-policy type inspect sdm-permit_VT zone-pair security sdm-zp-out-self source out-zone destination self service-policy type inspect sdm-permit zone-pair security sdm-zp-in-out source in-zone destination out-zone service-policy type inspect sdm-inspect ! bridge irb ! ! interface FastEthernet0 switchport access vlan 75 ! interface FastEthernet1 switchport access vlan 75 ! interface FastEthernet2 switchport access vlan 75 ! interface FastEthernet3 switchport access vlan 75 ! interface FastEthernet4 description $FW_OUTSIDE$ ip address 75.149.48.76 255.255.255.240 ip nat outside ip ips sdm_ips_rule out ip virtual-reassembly zone-member security out-zone duplex auto speed auto crypto ipsec client ezvpn EZVPN_REMOTE_CONNECTION_1 ! interface Virtual-Template1 type tunnel no ip address ip virtual-reassembly zone-member security ezvpn-zone tunnel mode ipsec ipv4 ! interface Dot11Radio0 no ip address ! encryption vlan 75 mode ciphers aes-ccm ! ssid <removed> ! speed basic-1.0 basic-2.0 basic-5.5 6.0 9.0 basic-11.0 12.0 18.0 24.0 36.0 48.0 54.0 station-role root ! interface Dot11Radio0.75 encapsulation dot1Q 75 native ip virtual-reassembly bridge-group 75 bridge-group 75 subscriber-loop-control bridge-group 75 spanning-disabled bridge-group 75 block-unknown-source no bridge-group 75 source-learning no bridge-group 75 unicast-flooding ! interface Vlan1 no ip address ip virtual-reassembly bridge-group 1 ! interface Vlan75 no ip address ip virtual-reassembly bridge-group 75 bridge-group 75 spanning-disabled ! interface BVI1 no ip address ip nat inside ip virtual-reassembly ! interface BVI75 description $FW_INSIDE$ ip address 172.16.0.1 255.240.0.0 ip nat inside ip ips sdm_ips_rule in ip virtual-reassembly zone-member security in-zone crypto ipsec client ezvpn EZVPN_REMOTE_CONNECTION_1 inside ! ip forward-protocol nd ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 75.149.48.78 2 ! ip http server ip http authentication local ip http secure-server ip http timeout-policy idle 60 life 86400 requests 10000 ip nat inside source list 1 interface FastEthernet4 overload ! ip access-list extended SDM_AH remark SDM_ACL Category=1 permit ahp any any ip access-list extended SDM_ESP remark SDM_ACL Category=1 permit esp any any ip access-list extended dhcp-req-permit remark SDM_ACL Category=1 permit udp any eq bootpc any eq bootps ip access-list extended dhcp-resp-permit remark SDM_ACL Category=1 permit udp any eq bootps any eq bootpc ! access-list 1 remark SDM_ACL Category=2 access-list 1 permit 172.16.0.0 0.15.255.255 access-list 100 remark SDM_ACL Category=128 access-list 100 permit ip host 255.255.255.255 any access-list 100 permit ip 127.0.0.0 0.255.255.255 any access-list 100 permit ip 75.149.48.64 0.0.0.15 any access-list 101 remark SDM_ACL Category=128 access-list 101 permit ip host 64.1.208.90 any access-list 102 remark SDM_ACL Category=1 access-list 102 permit ip any any ! ! ! ! snmp-server community <removed> RO ! control-plane ! bridge 1 protocol ieee bridge 1 route ip bridge 75 route ip banner login ^CSR520 Base Config - MFG 1.0 ^C ! line con 0 no modem enable line aux 0 line vty 0 4 transport input telnet ssh ! scheduler max-task-time 5000 end I also ran some diagnostics when the WAN port stopped working: 1. show interface fa4 FastEthernet4 is up, line protocol is up Hardware is PQUICC_FEC, address is 0026.99c5.b434 (bia 0026.99c5.b434) Description: $FW_OUTSIDE$ Internet address is 75.149.48.76/28 MTU 1500 bytes, BW 100000 Kbit/sec, DLY 100 usec, reliability 255/255, txload 1/255, rxload 1/255 Encapsulation ARPA, loopback not set Keepalive set (10 sec) Full-duplex, 100Mb/s, 100BaseTX/FX ARP type: ARPA, ARP Timeout 04:00:00 Last input 01:08:15, output 00:00:00, output hang never Last clearing of "show interface" counters never Input queue: 0/75/23/0 (size/max/drops/flushes); Total output drops: 0 Queueing strategy: fifo Output queue: 0/40 (size/max) 5 minute input rate 0 bits/sec, 0 packets/sec 5 minute output rate 1000 bits/sec, 0 packets/sec 336446 packets input, 455403158 bytes Received 23 broadcasts, 0 runts, 0 giants, 37 throttles 41 input errors, 0 CRC, 0 frame, 0 overrun, 41 ignored 0 watchdog 0 input packets with dribble condition detected 172529 packets output, 23580132 bytes, 0 underruns 0 output errors, 0 collisions, 2 interface resets 0 unknown protocol drops 0 babbles, 0 late collision, 0 deferred 0 lost carrier, 0 no carrier 0 output buffer failures, 0 output buffers swapped out 2. show ip route Gateway of last resort is 75.149.48.78 to network 0.0.0.0 C 192.168.75.0/24 is directly connected, BVI75 64.0.0.0/32 is subnetted, 1 subnets S 64.1.208.90 [1/0] via 75.149.48.78 S 192.168.10.0/24 is directly connected, BVI75 75.0.0.0/28 is subnetted, 1 subnets C 75.149.48.64 is directly connected, FastEthernet4 S* 0.0.0.0/0 [2/0] via 75.149.48.78 3. show ip arp Protocol Address Age (min) Hardware Addr Type Interface Internet 75.149.48.65 69 001e.2a39.7b08 ARPA FastEthernet4 Internet 75.149.48.76 - 0026.99c5.b434 ARPA FastEthernet4 Internet 75.149.48.78 93 0022.2d6c.ae36 ARPA FastEthernet4 Internet 192.168.75.1 - 0027.0d58.f5f0 ARPA BVI75 Internet 192.168.75.12 50 7c6d.62c7.8c0a ARPA BVI75 Internet 192.168.75.13 0 001b.6301.1227 ARPA BVI75 4. sh ip cef Prefix Next Hop Interface 0.0.0.0/0 75.149.48.78 FastEthernet4 0.0.0.0/8 drop 0.0.0.0/32 receive 64.1.208.90/32 75.149.48.78 FastEthernet4 75.149.48.64/28 attached FastEthernet4 75.149.48.64/32 receive FastEthernet4 75.149.48.65/32 attached FastEthernet4 75.149.48.76/32 receive FastEthernet4 75.149.48.78/32 attached FastEthernet4 75.149.48.79/32 receive FastEthernet4 127.0.0.0/8 drop 192.168.10.0/24 attached BVI75 192.168.75.0/24 attached BVI75 192.168.75.0/32 receive BVI75 192.168.75.1/32 receive BVI75 192.168.75.12/32 attached BVI75 192.168.75.13/32 attached BVI75 192.168.75.255/32 receive BVI75 224.0.0.0/4 drop 224.0.0.0/24 receive 240.0.0.0/4 drop 255.255.255.255/32 receive Thanks in advance, -Mike

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• What's New in ASP.NET 4

  - by Navaneeth

  The .NET Framework version 4 includes enhancements for ASP.NET 4 in targeted areas. Visual Studio 2010 and Microsoft Visual Web Developer Express also include enhancements and new features for improved Web development. This document provides an overview of many of the new features that are included in the upcoming release. This topic contains the following sections: ASP.NET Core Services ASP.NET Web Forms ASP.NET MVC Dynamic Data ASP.NET Chart Control Visual Web Developer Enhancements Web Application Deployment with Visual Studio 2010 Enhancements to ASP.NET Multi-Targeting ASP.NET Core Services ASP.NET 4 introduces many features that improve core ASP.NET services such as output caching and session state storage. Extensible Output Caching Since the time that ASP.NET 1.0 was released, output caching has enabled developers to store the generated output of pages, controls, and HTTP responses in memory. On subsequent Web requests, ASP.NET can serve content more quickly by retrieving the generated output from memory instead of regenerating the output from scratch. However, this approach has a limitation — generated content always has to be stored in memory. On servers that experience heavy traffic, the memory requirements for output caching can compete with memory requirements for other parts of a Web application. ASP.NET 4 adds extensibility to output caching that enables you to configure one or more custom output-cache providers. Output-cache providers can use any storage mechanism to persist HTML content. These storage options can include local or remote disks, cloud storage, and distributed cache engines. Output-cache provider extensibility in ASP.NET 4 lets you design more aggressive and more intelligent output-caching strategies for Web sites. For example, you can create an output-cache provider that caches the "Top 10" pages of a site in memory, while caching pages that get lower traffic on disk. Alternatively, you can cache every vary-by combination for a rendered page, but use a distributed cache so that the memory consumption is offloaded from front-end Web servers. You create a custom output-cache provider as a class that derives from the OutputCacheProvider type. You can then configure the provider in the Web.config file by using the new providers subsection of the outputCache element For more information and for examples that show how to configure the output cache, see outputCache Element for caching (ASP.NET Settings Schema). For more information about the classes that support caching, see the documentation for the OutputCache and OutputCacheProvider classes. By default, in ASP.NET 4, all HTTP responses, rendered pages, and controls use the in-memory output cache. The defaultProvider attribute for ASP.NET is AspNetInternalProvider. You can change the default output-cache provider used for a Web application by specifying a different provider name for defaultProvider attribute. In addition, you can select different output-cache providers for individual control and for individual requests and programmatically specify which provider to use. For more information, see the HttpApplication.GetOutputCacheProviderName(HttpContext) method. The easiest way to choose a different output-cache provider for different Web user controls is to do so declaratively by using the new providerName attribute in a page or control directive, as shown in the following example: <%@ OutputCache Duration="60" VaryByParam="None" providerName="DiskCache" %> Preloading Web Applications Some Web applications must load large amounts of data or must perform expensive initialization processing before serving the first request. In earlier versions of ASP.NET, for these situations you had to devise custom approaches to "wake up" an ASP.NET application and then run initialization code during the Application_Load method in the Global.asax file. To address this scenario, a new application preload manager (autostart feature) is available when ASP.NET 4 runs on IIS 7.5 on Windows Server 2008 R2. The preload feature provides a controlled approach for starting up an application pool, initializing an ASP.NET application, and then accepting HTTP requests. It lets you perform expensive application initialization prior to processing the first HTTP request. For example, you can use the application preload manager to initialize an application and then signal a load-balancer that the application was initialized and ready to accept HTTP traffic. To use the application preload manager, an IIS administrator sets an application pool in IIS 7.5 to be automatically started by using the following configuration in the applicationHost.config file: <applicationPools> <add name="MyApplicationPool" startMode="AlwaysRunning" /> </applicationPools> Because a single application pool can contain multiple applications, you specify individual applications to be automatically started by using the following configuration in the applicationHost.config file: <sites> <site name="MySite" id="1"> <application path="/" serviceAutoStartEnabled="true" serviceAutoStartProvider="PrewarmMyCache" > <!-- Additional content --> </application> </site> </sites> <!-- Additional content --> <serviceAutoStartProviders> <add name="PrewarmMyCache" type="MyNamespace.CustomInitialization, MyLibrary" /> </serviceAutoStartProviders> When an IIS 7.5 server is cold-started or when an individual application pool is recycled, IIS 7.5 uses the information in the applicationHost.config file to determine which Web applications have to be automatically started. For each application that is marked for preload, IIS7.5 sends a request to ASP.NET 4 to start the application in a state during which the application temporarily does not accept HTTP requests. When it is in this state, ASP.NET instantiates the type defined by the serviceAutoStartProvider attribute (as shown in the previous example) and calls into its public entry point. You create a managed preload type that has the required entry point by implementing the IProcessHostPreloadClient interface, as shown in the following example: public class CustomInitialization : System.Web.Hosting.IProcessHostPreloadClient { public void Preload(string[] parameters) { // Perform initialization. } } After your initialization code runs in the Preload method and after the method returns, the ASP.NET application is ready to process requests. Permanently Redirecting a Page Content in Web applications is often moved over the lifetime of the application. This can lead to links to be out of date, such as the links that are returned by search engines. In ASP.NET, developers have traditionally handled requests to old URLs by using the Redirect method to forward a request to the new URL. However, the Redirect method issues an HTTP 302 (Found) response (which is used for a temporary redirect). This results in an extra HTTP round trip. ASP.NET 4 adds a RedirectPermanent helper method that makes it easy to issue HTTP 301 (Moved Permanently) responses, as in the following example: RedirectPermanent("/newpath/foroldcontent.aspx"); Search engines and other user agents that recognize permanent redirects will store the new URL that is associated with the content, which eliminates the unnecessary round trip made by the browser for temporary redirects. Session State Compression By default, ASP.NET provides two options for storing session state across a Web farm. The first option is a session state provider that invokes an out-of-process session state server. The second option is a session state provider that stores data in a Microsoft SQL Server database. Because both options store state information outside a Web application's worker process, session state has to be serialized before it is sent to remote storage. If a large amount of data is saved in session state, the size of the serialized data can become very large. ASP.NET 4 introduces a new compression option for both kinds of out-of-process session state providers. By using this option, applications that have spare CPU cycles on Web servers can achieve substantial reductions in the size of serialized session state data. You can set this option using the new compressionEnabled attribute of the sessionState element in the configuration file. When the compressionEnabled configuration option is set to true, ASP.NET compresses (and decompresses) serialized session state by using the .NET Framework GZipStreamclass. The following example shows how to set this attribute. <sessionState mode="SqlServer" sqlConnectionString="data source=dbserver;Initial Catalog=aspnetstate" allowCustomSqlDatabase="true" compressionEnabled="true" /> ASP.NET Web Forms Web Forms has been a core feature in ASP.NET since the release of ASP.NET 1.0. Many enhancements have been in this area for ASP.NET 4, such as the following: The ability to set meta tags. More control over view state. Support for recently introduced browsers and devices. Easier ways to work with browser capabilities. Support for using ASP.NET routing with Web Forms. More control over generated IDs. The ability to persist selected rows in data controls. More control over rendered HTML in the FormView and ListView controls. Filtering support for data source controls. Enhanced support for Web standards and accessibility Setting Meta Tags with the Page.MetaKeywords and Page.MetaDescription Properties Two properties have been added to the Page class: MetaKeywords and MetaDescription. These two properties represent corresponding meta tags in the HTML rendered for a page, as shown in the following example: <head id="Head1" runat="server"> <title>Untitled Page</title> <meta name="keywords" content="keyword1, keyword2' /> <meta name="description" content="Description of my page" /> </head> These two properties work like the Title property does, and they can be set in the @ Page directive. For more information, see Page.MetaKeywords and Page.MetaDescription. Enabling View State for Individual Controls A new property has been added to the Control class: ViewStateMode. You can use this property to disable view state for all controls on a page except those for which you explicitly enable view state. View state data is included in a page's HTML and increases the amount of time it takes to send a page to the client and post it back. Storing more view state than is necessary can cause significant decrease in performance. In earlier versions of ASP.NET, you could reduce the impact of view state on a page's performance by disabling view state for specific controls. But sometimes it is easier to enable view state for a few controls that need it instead of disabling it for many that do not need it. For more information, see Control.ViewStateMode. Support for Recently Introduced Browsers and Devices ASP.NET includes a feature that is named browser capabilities that lets you determine the capabilities of the browser that a user is using. Browser capabilities are represented by the HttpBrowserCapabilities object which is stored in the HttpRequest.Browser property. Information about a particular browser's capabilities is defined by a browser definition file. In ASP.NET 4, these browser definition files have been updated to contain information about recently introduced browsers and devices such as Google Chrome, Research in Motion BlackBerry smart phones, and Apple iPhone. Existing browser definition files have also been updated. For more information, see How to: Upgrade an ASP.NET Web Application to ASP.NET 4 and ASP.NET Web Server Controls and Browser Capabilities. The browser definition files that are included with ASP.NET 4 are shown in the following list: •blackberry.browser •chrome.browser •Default.browser •firefox.browser •gateway.browser •generic.browser •ie.browser •iemobile.browser •iphone.browser •opera.browser •safari.browser A New Way to Define Browser Capabilities ASP.NET 4 includes a new feature referred to as browser capabilities providers. As the name suggests, this lets you build a provider that in turn lets you write custom code to determine browser capabilities. In ASP.NET version 3.5 Service Pack 1, you define browser capabilities in an XML file. This file resides in a machine-level folder or an application-level folder. Most developers do not need to customize these files, but for those who do, the provider approach can be easier than dealing with complex XML syntax. The provider approach makes it possible to simplify the process by implementing a common browser definition syntax, or a database that contains up-to-date browser definitions, or even a Web service for such a database. For more information about the new browser capabilities provider, see the What's New for ASP.NET 4 White Paper. Routing in ASP.NET 4 ASP.NET 4 adds built-in support for routing with Web Forms. Routing is a feature that was introduced with ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 and lets you configure an application to use URLs that are meaningful to users and to search engines because they do not have to specify physical file names. This can make your site more user-friendly and your site content more discoverable by search engines. For example, the URL for a page that displays product categories in your application might look like the following example: http://website/products.aspx?categoryid=12 By using routing, you can use the following URL to render the same information: http://website/products/software The second URL lets the user know what to expect and can result in significantly improved rankings in search engine results. the new features include the following: The PageRouteHandler class is a simple HTTP handler that you use when you define routes. You no longer have to write a custom route handler. The HttpRequest.RequestContext and Page.RouteData properties make it easier to access information that is passed in URL parameters. The RouteUrl expression provides a simple way to create a routed URL in markup. The RouteValue expression provides a simple way to extract URL parameter values in markup. The RouteParameter class makes it easier to pass URL parameter values to a query for a data source control (similar to FormParameter). You no longer have to change the Web.config file to enable routing. For more information about routing, see the following topics: ASP.NET Routing Walkthrough: Using ASP.NET Routing in a Web Forms Application How to: Define Routes for Web Forms Applications How to: Construct URLs from Routes How to: Access URL Parameters in a Routed Page Setting Client IDs The new ClientIDMode property makes it easier to write client script that references HTML elements rendered for server controls. Increasing use of Microsoft Ajax makes the need to do this more common. For example, you may have a data control that renders a long list of products with prices and you want to use client script to make a Web service call and update individual prices in the list as they change without refreshing the entire page. Typically you get a reference to an HTML element in client script by using the document.GetElementById method. You pass to this method the value of the id attribute of the HTML element you want to reference. In the case of elements that are rendered for ASP.NET server controls earlier versions of ASP.NET could make this difficult or impossible. You were not always able to predict what id values ASP.NET would generate, or ASP.NET could generate very long id values. The problem was especially difficult for data controls that would generate multiple rows for a single instance of the control in your markup. ASP.NET 4 adds two new algorithms for generating id attributes. These algorithms can generate id attributes that are easier to work with in client script because they are more predictable and that are easier to work with because they are simpler. For more information about how to use the new algorithms, see the following topics: ASP.NET Web Server Control Identification Walkthrough: Making Data-Bound Controls Easier to Access from JavaScript Walkthrough: Making Controls Located in Web User Controls Easier to Access from JavaScript How to: Access Controls from JavaScript by ID Persisting Row Selection in Data Controls The GridView and ListView controls enable users to select a row. In previous versions of ASP.NET, row selection was based on the row index on the page. For example, if you select the third item on page 1 and then move to page 2, the third item on page 2 is selected. In most cases, is more desirable not to select any rows on page 2. ASP.NET 4 supports Persisted Selection, a new feature that was initially supported only in Dynamic Data projects in the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. When this feature is enabled, the selected item is based on the row data key. This means that if you select the third row on page 1 and move to page 2, nothing is selected on page 2. When you move back to page 1, the third row is still selected. This is a much more natural behavior than the behavior in earlier versions of ASP.NET. Persisted selection is now supported for the GridView and ListView controls in all projects. You can enable this feature in the GridView control, for example, by setting the EnablePersistedSelection property, as shown in the following example: <asp:GridView id="GridView2" runat="server" PersistedSelection="true"> </asp:GridView> FormView Control Enhancements The FormView control is enhanced to make it easier to style the content of the control with CSS. In previous versions of ASP.NET, the FormView control rendered it contents using an item template. This made styling more difficult in the markup because unexpected table row and table cell tags were rendered by the control. The FormView control supports RenderOuterTable, a property in ASP.NET 4. When this property is set to false, as show in the following example, the table tags are not rendered. This makes it easier to apply CSS style to the contents of the control. <asp:FormView ID="FormView1" runat="server" RenderTable="false"> For more information, see FormView Web Server Control Overview. ListView Control Enhancements The ListView control, which was introduced in ASP.NET 3.5, has all the functionality of the GridView control while giving you complete control over the output. This control has been made easier to use in ASP.NET 4. The earlier version of the control required that you specify a layout template that contained a server control with a known ID. The following markup shows a typical example of how to use the ListView control in ASP.NET 3.5. <asp:ListView ID="ListView1" runat="server"> <LayoutTemplate> <asp:PlaceHolder ID="ItemPlaceHolder" runat="server"></asp:PlaceHolder> </LayoutTemplate> <ItemTemplate> <% Eval("LastName")%> </ItemTemplate> </asp:ListView> In ASP.NET 4, the ListView control does not require a layout template. The markup shown in the previous example can be replaced with the following markup: <asp:ListView ID="ListView1" runat="server"> <ItemTemplate> <% Eval("LastName")%> </ItemTemplate> </asp:ListView> For more information, see ListView Web Server Control Overview. Filtering Data with the QueryExtender Control A very common task for developers who create data-driven Web pages is to filter data. This traditionally has been performed by building Where clauses in data source controls. This approach can be complicated, and in some cases the Where syntax does not let you take advantage of the full functionality of the underlying database. To make filtering easier, a new QueryExtender control has been added in ASP.NET 4. This control can be added to EntityDataSource or LinqDataSource controls in order to filter the data returned by these controls. Because the QueryExtender control relies on LINQ, but you do not to need to know how to write LINQ queries to use the query extender. The QueryExtender control supports a variety of filter options. The following lists QueryExtender filter options. Term Definition SearchExpression Searches a field or fields for string values and compares them to a specified string value. RangeExpression Searches a field or fields for values in a range specified by a pair of values. PropertyExpression Compares a specified value to a property value in a field. If the expression evaluates to true, the data that is being examined is returned. OrderByExpression Sorts data by a specified column and sort direction. CustomExpression Calls a function that defines custom filter in the page. For more information, see QueryExtenderQueryExtender Web Server Control Overview. Enhanced Support for Web Standards and Accessibility Earlier versions of ASP.NET controls sometimes render markup that does not conform to HTML, XHTML, or accessibility standards. ASP.NET 4 eliminates most of these exceptions. For details about how the HTML that is rendered by each control meets accessibility standards, see ASP.NET Controls and Accessibility. CSS for Controls that Can be Disabled In ASP.NET 3.5, when a control is disabled (see WebControl.Enabled), a disabled attribute is added to the rendered HTML element. For example, the following markup creates a Label control that is disabled: <asp:Label id="Label1" runat="server"   Text="Test" Enabled="false" /> In ASP.NET 3.5, the previous control settings generate the following HTML: <span id="Label1" disabled="disabled">Test</span> In HTML 4.01, the disabled attribute is not considered valid on span elements. It is valid only on input elements because it specifies that they cannot be accessed. On display-only elements such as span elements, browsers typically support rendering for a disabled appearance, but a Web page that relies on this non-standard behavior is not robust according to accessibility standards. For display-only elements, you should use CSS to indicate a disabled visual appearance. Therefore, by default ASP.NET 4 generates the following HTML for the control settings shown previously: <span id="Label1" class="aspNetDisabled">Test</span> You can change the value of the class attribute that is rendered by default when a control is disabled by setting the DisabledCssClass property. CSS for Validation Controls In ASP.NET 3.5, validation controls render a default color of red as an inline style. For example, the following markup creates a RequiredFieldValidator control: <asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="RequiredFieldValidator1" runat="server"   ErrorMessage="Required Field" ControlToValidate="RadioButtonList1" /> ASP.NET 3.5 renders the following HTML for the validator control: <span id="RequiredFieldValidator1"   style="color:Red;visibility:hidden;">RequiredFieldValidator</span> By default, ASP.NET 4 does not render an inline style to set the color to red. An inline style is used only to hide or show the validator, as shown in the following example: <span id="RequiredFieldValidator1"   style"visibility:hidden;">RequiredFieldValidator</span> Therefore, ASP.NET 4 does not automatically show error messages in red. For information about how to use CSS to specify a visual style for a validation control, see Validating User Input in ASP.NET Web Pages. CSS for the Hidden Fields Div Element ASP.NET uses hidden fields to store state information such as view state and control state. These hidden fields are contained by a div element. In ASP.NET 3.5, this div element does not have a class attribute or an id attribute. Therefore, CSS rules that affect all div elements could unintentionally cause this div to be visible. To avoid this problem, ASP.NET 4 renders the div element for hidden fields with a CSS class that you can use to differentiate the hidden fields div from others. The new classvalue is shown in the following example: <div class="aspNetHidden"> CSS for the Table, Image, and ImageButton Controls By default, in ASP.NET 3.5, some controls set the border attribute of rendered HTML to zero (0). The following example shows HTML that is generated by the Table control in ASP.NET 3.5: <table id="Table2" border="0"> The Image control and the ImageButton control also do this. Because this is not necessary and provides visual formatting information that should be provided by using CSS, the attribute is not generated in ASP.NET 4. CSS for the UpdatePanel and UpdateProgress Controls In ASP.NET 3.5, the UpdatePanel and UpdateProgress controls do not support expando attributes. This makes it impossible to set a CSS class on the HTMLelements that they render. In ASP.NET 4 these controls have been changed to accept expando attributes, as shown in the following example: <asp:UpdatePanel runat="server" class="myStyle"> </asp:UpdatePanel> The following HTML is rendered for this markup: <div id="ctl00_MainContent_UpdatePanel1" class="expandoclass"> </div> Eliminating Unnecessary Outer Tables In ASP.NET 3.5, the HTML that is rendered for the following controls is wrapped in a table element whose purpose is to apply inline styles to the entire control: FormView Login PasswordRecovery ChangePassword If you use templates to customize the appearance of these controls, you can specify CSS styles in the markup that you provide in the templates. In that case, no extra outer table is required. In ASP.NET 4, you can prevent the table from being rendered by setting the new RenderOuterTable property to false. Layout Templates for Wizard Controls In ASP.NET 3.5, the Wizard and CreateUserWizard controls generate an HTML table element that is used for visual formatting. In ASP.NET 4 you can use a LayoutTemplate element to specify the layout. If you do this, the HTML table element is not generated. In the template, you create placeholder controls to indicate where items should be dynamically inserted into the control. (This is similar to how the template model for the ListView control works.) For more information, see the Wizard.LayoutTemplate property. New HTML Formatting Options for the CheckBoxList and RadioButtonList Controls ASP.NET 3.5 uses HTML table elements to format the output for the CheckBoxList and RadioButtonList controls. To provide an alternative that does not use tables for visual formatting, ASP.NET 4 adds two new options to the RepeatLayout enumeration: UnorderedList. This option causes the HTML output to be formatted by using ul and li elements instead of a table. OrderedList. This option causes the HTML output to be formatted by using ol and li elements instead of a table. For examples of HTML that is rendered for the new options, see the RepeatLayout enumeration. Header and Footer Elements for the Table Control In ASP.NET 3.5, the Table control can be configured to render thead and tfoot elements by setting the TableSection property of the TableHeaderRow class and the TableFooterRow class. In ASP.NET 4 these properties are set to the appropriate values by default. CSS and ARIA Support for the Menu Control In ASP.NET 3.5, the Menu control uses HTML table elements for visual formatting, and in some configurations it is not keyboard-accessible. ASP.NET 4 addresses these problems and improves accessibility in the following ways: The generated HTML is structured as an unordered list (ul and li elements). CSS is used for visual formatting. The menu behaves in accordance with ARIA standards for keyboard access. You can use arrow keys to navigate menu items. (For information about ARIA, see Accessibility in Visual Studio and ASP.NET.) ARIA role and property attributes are added to the generated HTML. (Attributes are added by using JavaScript instead of included in the HTML, to avoid generating HTML that would cause markup validation errors.) Styles for the Menu control are rendered in a style block at the top of the page, instead of inline with the rendered HTML elements. If you want to use a separate CSS file so that you can modify the menu styles, you can set the Menu control's new IncludeStyleBlock property to false, in which case the style block is not generated. Valid XHTML for the HtmlForm Control In ASP.NET 3.5, the HtmlForm control (which is created implicitly by the <form runat="server"> tag) renders an HTML form element that has both name and id attributes. The name attribute is deprecated in XHTML 1.1. Therefore, this control does not render the name attribute in ASP.NET 4. Maintaining Backward Compatibility in Control Rendering An existing ASP.NET Web site might have code in it that assumes that controls are rendering HTML the way they do in ASP.NET 3.5. To avoid causing backward compatibility problems when you upgrade the site to ASP.NET 4, you can have ASP.NET continue to generate HTML the way it does in ASP.NET 3.5 after you upgrade the site. To do so, you can set the controlRenderingCompatibilityVersion attribute of the pages element to "3.5" in the Web.config file of an ASP.NET 4 Web site, as shown in the following example: <system.web>   <pages controlRenderingCompatibilityVersion="3.5"/> </system.web> If this setting is omitted, the default value is the same as the version of ASP.NET that the Web site targets. (For information about multi-targeting in ASP.NET, see .NET Framework Multi-Targeting for ASP.NET Web Projects.) ASP.NET MVC ASP.NET MVC helps Web developers build compelling standards-based Web sites that are easy to maintain because it decreases the dependency among application layers by using the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern. MVC provides complete control over the page markup. It also improves testability by inherently supporting Test Driven Development (TDD). Web sites created using ASP.NET MVC have a modular architecture. This allows members of a team to work independently on the various modules and can be used to improve collaboration. For example, developers can work on the model and controller layers (data and logic), while the designer work on the view (presentation). For tutorials, walkthroughs, conceptual content, code samples, and a complete API reference, see ASP.NET MVC 2. Dynamic Data Dynamic Data was introduced in the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 release in mid-2008. This feature provides many enhancements for creating data-driven applications, such as the following: A RAD experience for quickly building a data-driven Web site. Automatic validation that is based on constraints defined in the data model. The ability to easily change the markup that is generated for fields in the GridView and DetailsView controls by using field templates that are part of your Dynamic Data project. For ASP.NET 4, Dynamic Data has been enhanced to give developers even more power for quickly building data-driven Web sites. For more information, see ASP.NET Dynamic Data Content Map. Enabling Dynamic Data for Individual Data-Bound Controls in Existing Web Applications You can use Dynamic Data features in existing ASP.NET Web applications that do not use scaffolding by enabling Dynamic Data for individual data-bound controls. Dynamic Data provides the presentation and data layer support for rendering these controls. When you enable Dynamic Data for data-bound controls, you get the following benefits: Setting default values for data fields. Dynamic Data enables you to provide default values at run time for fields in a data control. Interacting with the database without creating and registering a data model. Automatically validating the data that is entered by the user without writing any code. For more information, see Walkthrough: Enabling Dynamic Data in ASP.NET Data-Bound Controls. New Field Templates for URLs and E-mail Addresses ASP.NET 4 introduces two new built-in field templates, EmailAddress.ascx and Url.ascx. These templates are used for fields that are marked as EmailAddress or Url using the DataTypeAttribute attribute. For EmailAddress objects, the field is displayed as a hyperlink that is created by using the mailto: protocol. When users click the link, it opens the user's e-mail client and creates a skeleton message. Objects typed as Url are displayed as ordinary hyperlinks. The following example shows how to mark fields. [DataType(DataType.EmailAddress)] public object HomeEmail { get; set; } [DataType(DataType.Url)] public object Website { get; set; } Creating Links with the DynamicHyperLink Control Dynamic Data uses the new routing feature that was added in the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 to control the URLs that users see when they access the Web site. The new DynamicHyperLink control makes it easy to build links to pages in a Dynamic Data site. For information, see How to: Create Table Action Links in Dynamic Data Support for Inheritance in the Data Model Both the ADO.NET Entity Framework and LINQ to SQL support inheritance in their data models. An example of this might be a database that has an InsurancePolicy table. It might also contain CarPolicy and HousePolicy tables that have the same fields as InsurancePolicy and then add more fields. Dynamic Data has been modified to understand inherited objects in the data model and to support scaffolding for the inherited tables. For more information, see Walkthrough: Mapping Table-per-Hierarchy Inheritance in Dynamic Data. Support for Many-to-Many Relationships (Entity Framework Only) The Entity Framework has rich support for many-to-many relationships between tables, which is implemented by exposing the relationship as a collection on an Entity object. New field templates (ManyToMany.ascx and ManyToMany_Edit.ascx) have been added to provide support for displaying and editing data that is involved in many-to-many relationships. For more information, see Working with Many-to-Many Data Relationships in Dynamic Data. New Attributes to Control Display and Support Enumerations The DisplayAttribute has been added to give you additional control over how fields are displayed. The DisplayNameAttribute attribute in earlier versions of Dynamic Data enabled you to change the name that is used as a caption for a field. The new DisplayAttribute class lets you specify more options for displaying a field, such as the order in which a field is displayed and whether a field will be used as a filter. The attribute also provides independent control of the name that is used for the labels in a GridView control, the name that is used in a DetailsView control, the help text for the field, and the watermark used for the field (if the field accepts text input). The EnumDataTypeAttribute class has been added to let you map fields to enumerations. When you apply this attribute to a field, you specify an enumeration type. Dynamic Data uses the new Enumeration.ascx field template to create UI for displaying and editing enumeration values. The template maps the values from the database to the names in the enumeration. Enhanced Support for Filters Dynamic Data 1.0 had built-in filters for Boolean columns and foreign-key columns. The filters did not let you specify the order in which they were displayed. The new DisplayAttribute attribute addresses this by giving you control over whether a column appears as a filter and in what order it will be displayed. An additional enhancement is that filtering support has been rewritten to use the new QueryExtender feature of Web Forms. This lets you create filters without requiring knowledge of the data source control that the filters will be used with. Along with these extensions, filters have also been turned into template controls, which lets you add new ones. Finally, the DisplayAttribute class mentioned earlier allows the default filter to be overridden, in the same way that UIHint allows the default field template for a column to be overridden. For more information, see Walkthrough: Filtering Rows in Tables That Have a Parent-Child Relationship and QueryableFilterRepeater. ASP.NET Chart Control The ASP.NET chart server control enables you to create ASP.NET pages applications that have simple, intuitive charts for complex statistical or financial analysis. The chart control supports the following features: Data series, chart areas, axes, legends, labels, titles, and more. Data binding. Data manipulation, such as copying, splitting, merging, alignment, grouping, sorting, searching, and filtering. Statistical formulas and financial formulas. Advanced chart appearance, such as 3-D, anti-aliasing, lighting, and perspective. Events and customizations. Interactivity and Microsoft Ajax. Support for the Ajax Content Delivery Network (CDN), which provides an optimized way for you to add Microsoft Ajax Library and jQuery scripts to your Web applications. For more information, see Chart Web Server Control Overview. Visual Web Developer Enhancements The following sections provide information about enhancements and new features in Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Web Developer Express. The Web page designer in Visual Studio 2010 has been enhanced for better CSS compatibility, includes additional support for HTML and ASP.NET markup snippets, and features a redesigned version of IntelliSense for JScript. Improved CSS Compatibility The Visual Web Developer designer in Visual Studio 2010 has been updated to improve CSS 2.1 standards compliance. The designer better preserves HTML source code and is more robust than in previous versions of Visual Studio. HTML and JScript Snippets In the HTML editor, IntelliSense auto-completes tag names. The IntelliSense Snippets feature auto-completes whole tags and more. In Visual Studio 2010, IntelliSense snippets are supported for JScript, alongside C# and Visual Basic, which were supported in earlier versions of Visual Studio. Visual Studio 2010 includes over 200 snippets that help you auto-complete common ASP.NET and HTML tags, including required attributes (such as runat="server") and common attributes specific to a tag (such as ID, DataSourceID, ControlToValidate, and Text). You can download additional snippets, or you can write your own snippets that encapsulate the blocks of markup that you or your team use for common tasks. For more information on HTML snippets, see Walkthrough: Using HTML Snippets. JScript IntelliSense Enhancements In Visual 2010, JScript IntelliSense has been redesigned to provide an even richer editing experience. IntelliSense now recognizes objects that have been dynamically generated by methods such as registerNamespace and by similar techniques used by other JavaScript frameworks. Performance has been improved to analyze large libraries of script and to display IntelliSense with little or no processing delay. Compatibility has been significantly increased to support almost all third-party libraries and to support diverse coding styles. Documentation comments are now parsed as you type and are immediately leveraged by IntelliSense. Web Application Deployment with Visual Studio 2010 For Web application projects, Visual Studio now provides tools that work with the IIS Web Deployment Tool (Web Deploy) to automate many processes that had to be done manually in earlier versions of ASP.NET. For example, the following tasks can now be automated: Creating an IIS application on the destination computer and configuring IIS settings. Copying files to the destination computer. Changing Web.config settings that must be different in the destination environment. Propagating changes to data or data structures in SQL Server databases that are used by the Web application. For more information about Web application deployment, see ASP.NET Deployment Content Map. Enhancements to ASP.NET Multi-Targeting ASP.NET 4 adds new features to the multi-targeting feature to make it easier to work with projects that target earlier versions of the .NET Framework. Multi-targeting was introduced in ASP.NET 3.5 to enable you to use the latest version of Visual Studio without having to upgrade existing Web sites or Web services to the latest version of the .NET Framework. In Visual Studio 2008, when you work with a project targeted for an earlier version of the .NET Framework, most features of the development environment adapt to the targeted version. However, IntelliSense displays language features that are available in the current version, and property windows display properties available in the current version. In Visual Studio 2010, only language features and properties available in the targeted version of the .NET Framework are shown. For more information about multi-targeting, see the following topics: .NET Framework Multi-Targeting for ASP.NET Web Projects ASP.NET Side-by-Side Execution Overview How to: Host Web Applications That Use Different Versions of the .NET Framework on the Same Server How to: Deploy Web Site Projects Targeted for Earlier Versions of the .NET Framework

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• Building applications with WPF, MVVM and Prism(aka CAG)

  - by skjagini

  In this article I am going to walk through an application using WPF and Prism (aka composite application guidance, CAG) which simulates engaging a taxi (cab).  The rules are simple, the app would have3 screens A login screen to authenticate the user An information screen. A screen to engage the cab and roam around and calculating the total fare Metered Rate of Fare The meter is required to be engaged when a cab is occupied by anyone $3.00 upon entry $0.35 for each additional unit The unit fare is: one-fifth of a mile, when the cab is traveling at 6 miles an hour or more; or 60 seconds when not in motion or traveling at less than 12 miles per hour. Night surcharge of $.50 after 8:00 PM & before 6:00 AM Peak hour Weekday Surcharge of $1.00 Monday - Friday after 4:00 PM & before 8:00 PM New York State Tax Surcharge of $.50 per ride. Example: Friday (2010-10-08) 5:30pm Start at Lexington Ave & E 57th St End at Irving Pl & E 15th St Start = $3.00 Travels 2 miles at less than 6 mph for 15 minutes = $3.50 Travels at more than 12 mph for 5 minutes = $1.75 Peak hour Weekday Surcharge = $1.00 (ride started at 5:30 pm) New York State Tax Surcharge = $0.50 Before we dive into the app, I would like to give brief description about the framework.  If you want to jump on to the source code, scroll all the way to the end of the post. MVVM MVVM pattern is in no way related to the usage of PRISM in your application and should be considered if you are using WPF irrespective of PRISM or not. Lets say you are not familiar with MVVM, your typical UI would involve adding some UI controls like text boxes, a button, double clicking on the button,  generating event handler, calling a method from business layer and updating the user interface, it works most of the time for developing small scale applications. The problem with this approach is that there is some amount of code specific to business logic wrapped in UI specific code which is hard to unit test it, mock it and MVVM helps to solve the exact problem. MVVM stands for Model(M) – View(V) – ViewModel(VM),  based on the interactions with in the three parties it should be called VVMM,  MVVM sounds more like MVC (Model-View-Controller) so the name. Why it should be called VVMM: View – View Model - Model WPF allows to create user interfaces using XAML and MVVM takes it to the next level by allowing complete separation of user interface and business logic. In WPF each view will have a property, DataContext when set to an instance of a class (which happens to be your view model) provides the data the view is interested in, i.e., view interacts with view model and at the same time view model interacts with view through DataContext. Sujith, if view and view model are interacting directly with each other how does MVVM is helping me separation of concerns? Well, the catch is DataContext is of type Object, since it is of type object view doesn’t know exact type of view model allowing views and views models to be loosely coupled. View models aggregate data from models (data access layer, services, etc) and make it available for views through properties, methods etc, i.e., View Models interact with Models. PRISM Prism is provided by Microsoft Patterns and Practices team and it can be downloaded from codeplex for source code,  samples and documentation on msdn.  The name composite implies, to compose user interface from different modules (views) without direct dependencies on each other, again allowing  loosely coupled development. Well Sujith, I can already do that with user controls, why shall I learn another framework?  That’s correct, you can decouple using user controls, but you still have to manage some amount of coupling, like how to do you communicate between the controls, how do you subscribe/unsubscribe, loading/unloading views dynamically. Prism is not a replacement for user controls, provides the following features which greatly help in designing the composite applications. Dependency Injection (DI)/ Inversion of Control (IoC) Modules Regions Event Aggregator  Commands Simply put, MVVM helps building a single view and Prism helps building an application using the views There are other open source alternatives to Prism, like MVVMLight, Cinch, take a look at them as well. Lets dig into the source code.  1. Solution The solution is made of the following projects Framework: Holds the common functionality in building applications using WPF and Prism TaxiClient: Start up project, boot strapping and app styling TaxiCommon: Helps with the business logic TaxiModules: Holds the meat of the application with views and view models TaxiTests: To test the application 2. DI / IoC Dependency Injection (DI) as the name implies refers to injecting dependencies and Inversion of Control (IoC) means the calling code has no direct control on the dependencies, opposite of normal way of programming where dependencies are passed by caller, i.e inversion; aside from some differences in terminology the concept is same in both the cases. The idea behind DI/IoC pattern is to reduce the amount of direct coupling between different components of the application, the higher the dependency the more tightly coupled the application resulting in code which is hard to modify, unit test and mock.  Initializing Dependency Injection through BootStrapper TaxiClient is the starting project of the solution and App (App.xaml)  is the starting class that gets called when you run the application. From the App’s OnStartup method we will invoke BootStrapper.   namespace TaxiClient { /// <summary> /// Interaction logic for App.xaml /// </summary> public partial class App : Application { protected override void OnStartup(StartupEventArgs e) { base.OnStartup(e);   (new BootStrapper()).Run(); } } } BootStrapper is your contact point for initializing the application including dependency injection, creating Shell and other frameworks. We are going to use Unity for DI and there are lot of open source DI frameworks like Spring.Net, StructureMap etc with different feature set  and you can choose a framework based on your preferences. Note that Prism comes with in built support for Unity, for example we are deriving from UnityBootStrapper in our case and for any other DI framework you have to extend the Prism appropriately   namespace TaxiClient { public class BootStrapper: UnityBootstrapper { protected override IModuleCatalog CreateModuleCatalog() { return new ConfigurationModuleCatalog(); } protected override DependencyObject CreateShell() { Framework.FrameworkBootStrapper.Run(Container, Application.Current.Dispatcher);   Shell shell = new Shell(); shell.ResizeMode = ResizeMode.NoResize; shell.Show();   return shell; } } } Lets take a look into  FrameworkBootStrapper to check out how to register with unity container. namespace Framework { public class FrameworkBootStrapper { public static void Run(IUnityContainer container, Dispatcher dispatcher) { UIDispatcher uiDispatcher = new UIDispatcher(dispatcher); container.RegisterInstance<IDispatcherService>(uiDispatcher);   container.RegisterType<IInjectSingleViewService, InjectSingleViewService>( new ContainerControlledLifetimeManager());   . . . } } } In the above code we are registering two components with unity container. You shall observe that we are following two different approaches, RegisterInstance and RegisterType.  With RegisterInstance we are registering an existing instance and the same instance will be returned for every request made for IDispatcherService   and with RegisterType we are requesting unity container to create an instance for us when required, i.e., when I request for an instance for IInjectSingleViewService, unity will create/return an instance of InjectSingleViewService class and with RegisterType we can configure the life time of the instance being created. With ContaienrControllerLifetimeManager, the unity container caches the instance and reuses for any subsequent requests, without recreating a new instance. Lets take a look into FareViewModel.cs and it’s constructor. The constructor takes one parameter IEventAggregator and if you try to find all references in your solution for IEventAggregator, you will not find a single location where an instance of EventAggregator is passed directly to the constructor. The compiler still finds an instance and works fine because Prism is already configured when used with Unity container to return an instance of EventAggregator when requested for IEventAggregator and in this particular case it is called constructor injection. public class FareViewModel:ObservableBase, IDataErrorInfo { ... private IEventAggregator _eventAggregator;   public FareViewModel(IEventAggregator eventAggregator) { _eventAggregator = eventAggregator; InitializePropertyNames(); InitializeModel(); PropertyChanged += OnPropertyChanged; } ... 3. Shell Shells are very similar in operation to Master Pages in asp.net or MDI in Windows Forms. And shells contain regions which display the views, you can have as many regions as you wish in a given view. You can also nest regions. i.e, one region can load a view which in itself may contain other regions. We have to create a shell at the start of the application and are doing it by overriding CreateShell method from BootStrapper From the following Shell.xaml you shall notice that we have two content controls with Region names as ‘MenuRegion’ and ‘MainRegion’.  The idea here is that you can inject any user controls into the regions dynamically, i.e., a Menu User Control for MenuRegion and based on the user action you can load appropriate view into MainRegion.    <Window x:Class="TaxiClient.Shell" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:Regions="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Practices.Prism.Regions;assembly=Microsoft.Practices.Prism" Title="Taxi" Height="370" Width="800"> <Grid Margin="2"> <ContentControl Regions:RegionManager.RegionName="MenuRegion" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" HorizontalContentAlignment="Stretch" VerticalContentAlignment="Stretch" />   <ContentControl Grid.Row="1" Regions:RegionManager.RegionName="MainRegion" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" HorizontalContentAlignment="Stretch" VerticalContentAlignment="Stretch" /> <!--<Border Grid.ColumnSpan="2" BorderThickness="2" CornerRadius="3" BorderBrush="LightBlue" />-->   </Grid> </Window> 4. Modules Prism provides the ability to build composite applications and modules play an important role in it. For example if you are building a Mortgage Loan Processor application with 3 components, i.e. customer’s credit history,  existing mortgages, new home/loan information; and consider that the customer’s credit history component involves gathering data about his/her address, background information, job details etc. The idea here using Prism modules is to separate the implementation of these 3 components into their own visual studio projects allowing to build components with no dependency on each other and independently. If we need to add another component to the application, the component can be developed by in house team or some other team in the organization by starting with a new Visual Studio project and adding to the solution at the run time with very little knowledge about the application. Prism modules are defined by implementing the IModule interface and each visual studio project to be considered as a module should implement the IModule interface.  From the BootStrapper.cs you shall observe that we are overriding the method by returning a ConfiguratingModuleCatalog which returns the modules that are registered for the application using the app.config file  and you can also add module using code. Lets take a look into configuration file.   <?xml version="1.0"?> <configuration> <configSections> <section name="modules" type="Microsoft.Practices.Prism.Modularity.ModulesConfigurationSection, Microsoft.Practices.Prism"/> </configSections> <modules> <module assemblyFile="TaxiModules.dll" moduleType="TaxiModules.ModuleInitializer, TaxiModules" moduleName="TaxiModules"/> </modules> </configuration> Here we are adding TaxiModules project to our solution and TaxiModules.ModuleInitializer implements IModule interface   5. Module Mapper With Prism modules you can dynamically add or remove modules from the regions, apart from that Prism also provides API to control adding/removing the views from a region within the same module. Taxi Information Screen: Engage the Taxi Screen: The sample application has two screens, ‘Taxi Information’ and ‘Engage the Taxi’ and they both reside in same module, TaxiModules. ‘Engage the Taxi’ is again made of two user controls, FareView on the left and TotalView on the right. We have created a Shell with two regions, MenuRegion and MainRegion with menu loaded into MenuRegion. We can create a wrapper user control called EngageTheTaxi made of FareView and TotalView and load either TaxiInfo or EngageTheTaxi into MainRegion based on the user action. Though it will work it tightly binds the user controls and for every combination of user controls, we need to create a dummy wrapper control to contain them. Instead we can apply the principles we learned so far from Shell/regions and introduce another template (LeftAndRightRegionView.xaml) made of two regions Region1 (left) and Region2 (right) and load  FareView and TotalView dynamically.  To help with loading of the views dynamically I have introduce an helper an interface, IInjectSingleViewService,  idea suggested by Mike Taulty, a must read blog for .Net developers. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.ComponentModel;   namespace Framework.PresentationUtility.Navigation {   public interface IInjectSingleViewService : INotifyPropertyChanged { IEnumerable<CommandViewDefinition> Commands { get; } IEnumerable<ModuleViewDefinition> Modules { get; }   void RegisterViewForRegion(string commandName, string viewName, string regionName, Type viewType); void ClearViewFromRegion(string viewName, string regionName); void RegisterModule(string moduleName, IList<ModuleMapper> moduleMappers); } } The Interface declares three methods to work with views: RegisterViewForRegion: Registers a view with a particular region. You can register multiple views and their regions under one command.  When this particular command is invoked all the views registered under it will be loaded into their regions. ClearViewFromRegion: To unload a specific view from a region. RegisterModule: The idea is when a command is invoked you can load the UI with set of controls in their default position and based on the user interaction, you can load different contols in to different regions on the fly.  And it is supported ModuleViewDefinition and ModuleMappers as shown below. namespace Framework.PresentationUtility.Navigation { public class ModuleViewDefinition { public string ModuleName { get; set; } public IList<ModuleMapper> ModuleMappers; public ICommand Command { get; set; } }   public class ModuleMapper { public string ViewName { get; set; } public string RegionName { get; set; } public Type ViewType { get; set; } } } 6. Event Aggregator Prism event aggregator enables messaging between components as in Observable pattern, Notifier notifies the Observer which receives notification it is interested in. When it comes to Observable pattern, Observer has to unsubscribes for notifications when it no longer interested in notifications, which allows the Notifier to remove the Observer’s reference from it’s local cache. Though .Net has managed garbage collection it cannot remove inactive the instances referenced by an active instance resulting in memory leak, keeping the Observers in memory as long as Notifier stays in memory.  Developers have to be very careful to unsubscribe when necessary and it often gets overlooked, to overcome these problems Prism Event Aggregator uses weak references to cache the reference (Observer in this case)  and releases the reference (memory) once the instance goes out of scope. Using event aggregator is very simple, declare a generic type of CompositePresenationEvent by inheriting from it. using Microsoft.Practices.Prism.Events; using TaxiCommon.BAO;   namespace TaxiCommon.CompositeEvents { public class TaxiOnMoveEvent:CompositePresentationEvent<TaxiOnMove> { } }   TaxiOnMove.cs includes the properties which we want to exchange between the parties, FareView and TotalView. using System;   namespace TaxiCommon.BAO { public class TaxiOnMove { public TimeSpan MinutesAtTweleveMPH { get; set; } public double MilesAtSixMPH { get; set; } } }   Lets take a look into FareViewodel (Notifier) and how it raises the event.  Here we are raising the event by getting the event through GetEvent<..>() and publishing it with the payload private void OnAddMinutes(object obj) { TaxiOnMove payload = new TaxiOnMove(); if(MilesAtSixMPH != null) payload.MilesAtSixMPH = MilesAtSixMPH.Value; if(MinutesAtTweleveMPH != null) payload.MinutesAtTweleveMPH = new TimeSpan(0,0,MinutesAtTweleveMPH.Value,0);   _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiOnMoveEvent>().Publish(payload); ResetMinutesAndMiles(); } And TotalViewModel(Observer) subscribes to notifications by getting the event through GetEvent<..>() namespace TaxiModules.ViewModels { public class TotalViewModel:ObservableBase { .... private IEventAggregator _eventAggregator;   public TotalViewModel(IEventAggregator eventAggregator) { _eventAggregator = eventAggregator; ... }   private void SubscribeToEvents() { _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiStartedEvent>() .Subscribe(OnTaxiStarted, ThreadOption.UIThread,false,(filter) => true); _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiOnMoveEvent>() .Subscribe(OnTaxiMove, ThreadOption.UIThread, false, (filter) => true); _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiResetEvent>() .Subscribe(OnTaxiReset, ThreadOption.UIThread, false, (filter) => true); }   ... private void OnTaxiMove(TaxiOnMove taxiOnMove) { OnMoveFare fare = new OnMoveFare(taxiOnMove); Fares.Add(fare); SetTotalFare(new []{fare}); }   .... 7. MVVM through example In this section we are going to look into MVVM implementation through example.  I have all the modules declared in a single project, TaxiModules, again it is not necessary to have them into one project. Once the user logs into the application, will be greeted with the ‘Engage the Taxi’ screen which is made of two user controls, FareView.xaml and TotalView.Xaml. As you can see from the solution explorer, each of them have their own code behind files and  ViewModel classes, FareViewMode.cs, TotalViewModel.cs Lets take a look in to the FareView and how it interacts with FareViewModel using MVVM implementation. FareView.xaml acts as a view and FareViewMode.cs is it’s view model. The FareView code behind class   namespace TaxiModules.Views { /// <summary> /// Interaction logic for FareView.xaml /// </summary> public partial class FareView : UserControl { public FareView(FareViewModel viewModel) { InitializeComponent(); this.Loaded += (s, e) => { this.DataContext = viewModel; }; } } } The FareView is bound to FareViewModel through the data context  and you shall observe that DataContext is of type Object, i.e. the FareView doesn’t really know the type of ViewModel (FareViewModel). This helps separation of View and ViewModel as View and ViewModel are independent of each other, you can bind FareView to FareViewModel2 as well and the application compiles just fine. Lets take a look into FareView xaml file  <UserControl x:Class="TaxiModules.Views.FareView" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:Toolkit="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Windows.Controls;assembly=WPFToolkit" xmlns:Commands="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Practices.Prism.Commands;assembly=Microsoft.Practices.Prism"> <Grid Margin="10" > ....   <Border Style="{DynamicResource innerBorder}" Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="0" Grid.RowSpan="11" Grid.ColumnSpan="2" Panel.ZIndex="1"/>   <Label Grid.Row="0" Content="Engage the Taxi" Style="{DynamicResource innerHeader}"/> <Label Grid.Row="1" Content="Select the State"/> <ComboBox Grid.Row="1" Grid.Column="1" ItemsSource="{Binding States}" Height="auto"> <ComboBox.ItemTemplate> <DataTemplate> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Name}"/> </DataTemplate> </ComboBox.ItemTemplate> <ComboBox.SelectedItem> <Binding Path="SelectedState" Mode="TwoWay"/> </ComboBox.SelectedItem> </ComboBox> <Label Grid.Row="2" Content="Select the Date of Entry"/> <Toolkit:DatePicker Grid.Row="2" Grid.Column="1" SelectedDate="{Binding DateOfEntry, ValidatesOnDataErrors=true}" /> <Label Grid.Row="3" Content="Enter time 24hr format"/> <TextBox Grid.Row="3" Grid.Column="1" Text="{Binding TimeOfEntry, TargetNullValue=''}"/> <Button Grid.Row="4" Grid.Column="1" Content="Start the Meter" Commands:Click.Command="{Binding StartMeterCommand}" />   <Label Grid.Row="5" Content="Run the Taxi" Style="{DynamicResource innerHeader}"/> <Label Grid.Row="6" Content="Number of Miles &lt;@6mph"/> <TextBox Grid.Row="6" Grid.Column="1" Text="{Binding MilesAtSixMPH, TargetNullValue='', ValidatesOnDataErrors=true}"/> <Label Grid.Row="7" Content="Number of Minutes @12mph"/> <TextBox Grid.Row="7" Grid.Column="1" Text="{Binding MinutesAtTweleveMPH, TargetNullValue=''}"/> <Button Grid.Row="8" Grid.Column="1" Content="Add Minutes and Miles " Commands:Click.Command="{Binding AddMinutesCommand}"/> <Label Grid.Row="9" Content="Other Operations" Style="{DynamicResource innerHeader}"/> <Button Grid.Row="10" Grid.Column="1" Content="Reset the Meter" Commands:Click.Command="{Binding ResetCommand}"/>   </Grid> </UserControl> The highlighted code from the above code shows data binding, for example ComboBox which displays list of states has it’s ItemsSource bound to States property, with DataTemplate bound to Name and SelectedItem  to SelectedState. You might be wondering what are all these properties and how it is able to bind to them.  The answer lies in data context, i.e., when you bound a control, WPF looks for data context on the root object (Grid in this case) and if it can’t find data context it will look into root’s root, i.e. FareView UserControl and it is bound to FareViewModel.  Each of those properties have be declared on the ViewModel for the View to bind correctly. To put simply, View is bound to ViewModel through data context of type object and every control that is bound on the View actually binds to the public property on the ViewModel. Lets look into the ViewModel code (the following code is not an exact copy of FareViewMode.cs, pasted relevant code for this section)   namespace TaxiModules.ViewModels { public class FareViewModel:ObservableBase, IDataErrorInfo { public List<USState> States { get { return USStates.StateList; } }   public USState SelectedState { get { return _selectedState; } set { _selectedState = value; RaisePropertyChanged(_selectedStatePropertyName); } }   public DateTime? DateOfEntry { get { return _dateOfEntry; } set { _dateOfEntry = value; RaisePropertyChanged(_dateOfEntryPropertyName); } }   public TimeSpan? TimeOfEntry { get { return _timeOfEntry; } set { _timeOfEntry = value; RaisePropertyChanged(_timeOfEntryPropertyName); } }   public double? MilesAtSixMPH { get { return _milesAtSixMPH; } set { _milesAtSixMPH = value; RaisePropertyChanged(_distanceAtSixMPHPropertyName); } }   public int? MinutesAtTweleveMPH { get { return _minutesAtTweleveMPH; } set { _minutesAtTweleveMPH = value; RaisePropertyChanged(_minutesAtTweleveMPHPropertyName); } }   public ICommand StartMeterCommand { get { if(_startMeterCommand == null) { _startMeterCommand = new DelegateCommand<object>(OnStartMeter, CanStartMeter); } return _startMeterCommand; } }   public ICommand AddMinutesCommand { get { if(_addMinutesCommand == null) { _addMinutesCommand = new DelegateCommand<object>(OnAddMinutes, CanAddMinutes); } return _addMinutesCommand; } }   public ICommand ResetCommand { get { if(_resetCommand == null) { _resetCommand = new DelegateCommand<object>(OnResetCommand); } return _resetCommand; } }   } private void OnStartMeter(object obj) { _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiStartedEvent>().Publish( new TaxiStarted() { EngagedOn = DateOfEntry.Value.Date + TimeOfEntry.Value, EngagedState = SelectedState.Value });   _isMeterStarted = true; OnPropertyChanged(this,null); } And views communicate user actions like button clicks, tree view item selections, etc using commands. When user clicks on ‘Start the Meter’ button it invokes the method StartMeterCommand, which calls the method OnStartMeter which publishes the event to TotalViewModel using event aggregator  and TaxiStartedEvent. namespace TaxiModules.ViewModels { public class TotalViewModel:ObservableBase { ... private IEventAggregator _eventAggregator;   public TotalViewModel(IEventAggregator eventAggregator) { _eventAggregator = eventAggregator;   InitializePropertyNames(); InitializeModel(); SubscribeToEvents(); }   public decimal? TotalFare { get { return _totalFare; } set { _totalFare = value; RaisePropertyChanged(_totalFarePropertyName); } } .... private void SubscribeToEvents() { _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiStartedEvent>().Subscribe(OnTaxiStarted, ThreadOption.UIThread,false,(filter) => true); _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiOnMoveEvent>().Subscribe(OnTaxiMove, ThreadOption.UIThread, false, (filter) => true); _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiResetEvent>().Subscribe(OnTaxiReset, ThreadOption.UIThread, false, (filter) => true); }   private void OnTaxiStarted(TaxiStarted taxiStarted) { Fares.Add(new EntryFare()); Fares.Add(new StateTaxFare(taxiStarted)); Fares.Add(new NightSurchargeFare(taxiStarted)); Fares.Add(new PeakHourWeekdayFare(taxiStarted));   SetTotalFare(Fares); }   private void SetTotalFare(IEnumerable<IFare> fares) { TotalFare = (_totalFare ?? 0) + TaxiFareHelper.GetTotalFare(fares); } ....   } }   TotalViewModel subscribes to events, TaxiStartedEvent and rest. When TaxiStartedEvent gets invoked it calls the OnTaxiStarted method which sets the total fare which includes entry fee, state tax, nightly surcharge, peak hour weekday fare.   Note that TotalViewModel derives from ObservableBase which implements the method RaisePropertyChanged which we are invoking in Set of TotalFare property, i.e, once we update the TotalFare property it raises an the event that  allows the TotalFare text box to fetch the new value through the data context. ViewModel is communicating with View through data context and it has no knowledge about View, helping in loose coupling of ViewModel and View.   I have attached the source code (.Net 4.0, Prism 4.0, VS 2010) , download and play with it and don’t forget to leave your comments.  

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• 26 Days: Countdown to Oracle OpenWorld 2012

  - by Michael Snow

  Welcome to our countdown to Oracle OpenWorld! Oracle OpenWorld 2012 is just around the corner. In less than 26 days, San Francisco will be invaded by an expected 50,000 people from all over the world. Here on the Oracle WebCenter team, we’ve all been working to help make the experience a great one for all our WebCenter customers. For a sneak peak  – we’ll be spending this week giving you a teaser of what to look forward to if you are joining us in San Francisco from September 30th through October 4th. We have Oracle WebCenter sessions covering all topics imaginable. Take a look and use the tools we provide to build out your schedule in advance and reserve your seats in your favorite sessions.  That gives you plenty of time to plan for your week with us in San Francisco. If unfortunately, your boss denied your request to attend - there are still some ways that you can join in the experience virtually On-Demand. This year - we are expanding even more up North of Market Street and will be taking over Union Square as well. Check out this map of San Francisco to get a sense of how much of a footprint Oracle OpenWorld has grown to this year. With so much to see and so many sessions to learn from - its no wonder that people get excited. Add to that a good mix of fun and all of the possible WebCenter sessions you could attend - you won't want to sleep at all to take full advantage of such an opportunity. We'll also have our annual WebCenter Customer Appreciation reception - stay tuned this week for some more info on registration to make sure you'll be able to join us. If you've been following the America's Cup at all and believe in EXTREME PERFORMANCE you'll definitely want to take a look at this video from last year's OpenWorld Keynote. 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Important OpenWorld Links:  Attendee / Presenters Toolkit Oracle Schedule Builder WebCenter Sessions (listed in the catalog under Fusion Middleware as "Portals, Sites, Content, and Collaboration" ) Oracle Music Festival - AMAZING Line up!!  Oracle Customer Appreciation Night -LOOK HERE!! Oracle OpenWorld LIVE On-Demand Here are all the WebCenter sessions broken down by day for your viewing pleasure. Monday, October 1st CON8885 - Simplify CRM Engagement with Contextual Collaboration Are your sales teams disconnected and disengaged? Do you want a tool for easily connecting expertise across your organization and providing visibility into the complete sales process? Do you want a way to enhance and retain organization knowledge? Oracle Social Network is the answer. Attend this session to learn how to make CRM easy, effective, and efficient for use across virtual sales teams. Also learn how Oracle Social Network can drive sales force collaboration with natural conversations throughout the sales cycle, promote sales team productivity through purposeful social networking without the noise, and build cross-team knowledge by integrating conversations with CRM and other business applications. CON8268 - Oracle WebCenter Strategy: Engaging Your Customers. Empowering Your Business Oracle WebCenter is a user engagement platform for social business, connecting people and information. Attend this session to learn about the Oracle WebCenter strategy, and understand where Oracle is taking the platform to help companies engage customers, empower employees, and enable partners. Business success starts with ensuring that everyone is engaged with the right people and the right information and can access what they need through the channel of their choice—Web, mobile, or social. Are you giving customers, employees, and partners the best-possible experience? Come learn how you can! ¶ HOL10208 - Add Social Capabilities to Your Enterprise Applications Oracle Social Network enables you to add real-time collaboration capabilities into your enterprise applications, so that conversations can happen directly within your business systems. In this hands-on lab, you will try out the Oracle Social Network product to collaborate with other attendees, using real-time conversations with document sharing capabilities. Next you will embed social capabilities into a sample Web-based enterprise application, using embedded UI components. Experts will also write simple REST-based integrations, using the Oracle Social Network API to programmatically create social interactions. ¶ CON8893 - Improve Employee Productivity with Intuitive and Social Work Environments Social technologies have already transformed the ways customers, employees, partners, and suppliers communicate and stay informed. Forward-thinking organizations today need technologies and infrastructures to help them advance to the next level and integrate social activities with business applications to deliver a user experience that simplifies business processes and enterprise application engagement. Attend this session to hear from an innovative Oracle Social Network customer and learn how you can improve productivity with intuitive and social work environments and empower your employees with innovative social tools to enable contextual access to content and dynamic personalization of solutions. ¶ CON8270 - Oracle WebCenter Content Strategy and Vision Oracle WebCenter provides a strategic content infrastructure for managing documents, images, e-mails, and rich media files. With a single repository, organizations can address any content use case, such as accounts payable, HR onboarding, document management, compliance, records management, digital asset management, or Website management. In this session, learn about future plans for how Oracle WebCenter will address new use cases as well as new integrations with Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Applications, leveraging your investments by making your users more productive and error-free. ¶ CON8269 - Oracle WebCenter Sites Strategy and Vision Oracle’s Web experience management solution, Oracle WebCenter Sites, enables organizations to use the online channel to drive customer acquisition and brand loyalty. It helps marketers and business users easily create and manage contextually relevant, social, interactive online experiences across multiple channels on a global scale. In this session, learn about future plans for how Oracle WebCenter Sites will provide you with the tools, capabilities, and integrations you need in order to continue to address your customers’ evolving requirements for engaging online experiences and keep moving your business forward. ¶ CON8896 - Living with SharePoint SharePoint is a popular platform, but it’s not always the best fit for Oracle customers. In this session, you’ll discover the technical and nontechnical limitations and pitfalls of SharePoint and learn about Oracle alternatives for collaboration, portals, enterprise and Web content management, social computing, and application integration. The presentation shows you how to integrate with SharePoint when business or IT requirements dictate and covers cloud-based (Office 365) and on-premises versions of SharePoint. Presented by a former Microsoft director of SharePoint product management and backed by independent customer research, this session will prepare you to answer the question “Why don’t we just use SharePoint for that?’ the next time it comes up in your organization. ¶ CON7843 - Content-Enabling Enterprise Processes with Oracle WebCenter Organizations today continually strive to automate business processes, reduce costs, and improve efficiency. Many business processes are content-intensive and unstructured, requiring ad hoc collaboration, and distributed in nature, requiring many approvals and generating huge volumes of paper. In this session, learn how Oracle and SYSTIME have partnered to help a customer content-enable its enterprise with Oracle WebCenter Content and Oracle WebCenter Imaging 11g and integrate them with Oracle Applications. ¶ CON6114 - Tape Robotics’ Newest Superhero: Now Fueled by Oracle Software For small, midsize, and rapidly growing businesses that want the most energy-efficient, scalable storage infrastructure to meet their rapidly growing data demands, Oracle’s most recent addition to its award-winning tape portfolio leverages several pieces of Oracle software. With Oracle Linux, Oracle WebLogic, and Oracle Fusion Middleware tools, the library achieves a higher level of usability than previous products while offering customers a familiar interface for management, plus ease of use. This session examines the competitive advantages of the tape library and how Oracle software raises customer satisfaction. Learn how the combination of Oracle engineered systems, Oracle Secure Backup, and Oracle’s StorageTek tape libraries provide end-to-end coverage of your data. ¶ CON9437 - Mobile Access Management With more than five billion mobile devices on the planet and an increasing number of users using their own devices to access corporate data and applications, securely extending identity management to mobile devices has become a hot topic. This session focuses on how to extend your existing identity management infrastructure and policies to securely and seamlessly enable mobile user access. CON7815 - Customer Experience Online in Cloud: Oracle WebCenter Sites, Oracle ATG Apps, Oracle Exalogic Oracle WebCenter Sites and Oracle’s ATG product line together can provide a compelling marketing and e-commerce experience. When you couple them with the extreme performance of Oracle Exalogic, you’ll see unmatched scalability that provides you with a true cloud-based solution. In this session, you’ll learn how running Oracle WebCenter Sites and ATG applications on Oracle Exalogic delivers both a private and a public cloud experience. Find out what it takes to get these systems working together and delivering engaging Web experiences. Even if you aren’t considering Oracle Exalogic today, the rich Web experience of Oracle WebCenter, paired with the depth of the ATG product line, can provide your business full support, from merchandising through sale completion. ¶ CON8271 - Oracle WebCenter Portal Strategy and Vision To innovate and keep a competitive edge, organizations need to leverage the power of agile and responsive Web applications. Oracle WebCenter Portal enables you to do just that, by delivering intuitive user experiences for enterprise applications to drive innovation with composite applications and mashups. Attend this session to learn firsthand from customers how Oracle WebCenter Portal extends the value of existing enterprise applications, business processes, and content; delivers a superior business user experience; and maximizes limited IT resources. ¶ CON8880 - The Connected Customer Experience Begins with the Online Channel There’s a lot of talk these days about how to connect the customer journey across various touchpoints—from Websites and e-commerce to call centers and in-store—to provide experiences that are more relevant and engaging and ultimately gain competitive edge. Doing it all at once isn’t a realistic objective, so where do you start? Come to this session, and hear about three steps you can take that can help you begin your journey toward delivering the connected customer experience. You’ll hear how Oracle now has an integrated digital marketing platform for your corporate Website, your e-commerce site, your self-service portal, and your marketing and loyalty campaigns, and you’ll learn what you can do today to begin executing on your customer experience initiatives. ¶ GEN11451 - General Session: Building Mobile Applications with Oracle Cloud With the prevalence of smart mobile devices, companies are facing an increased demand to provide access to data and applications from new channels. However, developing applications for mobile devices poses some unique challenges. Come to this session to learn how Oracle addresses these challenges, offering a simpler way to develop and deploy cross-device mobile applications. See how Oracle Cloud enables you to access applications, data, and services from mobile channels in an easier way.  CON8272 - Oracle Social Network Strategy and Vision One key way of increasing employee productivity is by bringing people, processes, and information together—providing new social capabilities to enable business users to quickly correspond and collaborate on business activities. Oracle WebCenter provides a user engagement platform with social and collaborative technologies to empower business users to focus on their key business processes, applications, and content in the context of their role and process. Attend this session to hear how the latest social capabilities in Oracle Social Network are enabling organizations to transform themselves into social businesses.  --- Tuesday, October 2nd HOL10194 - Enterprise Content Management Simplified: Oracle WebCenter Content’s Next-Generation UI Regardless of the nature of your business, unstructured content underpins many of its daily functions. Whether you are working with traditional presentations, spreadsheets, or text documents—or even with digital assets such as images and multimedia files—your content needs to be accessible and manageable in convenient and intuitive ways to make working with the content easier. Additionally, you need the ability to easily share documents with coworkers to facilitate a collaborative working environment. Come to this session to see how Oracle WebCenter Content’s next-generation user interface helps modern knowledge workers easily manage personal and enterprise documents in a collaborative environment.¶ CON8877 - Develop a Mobile Strategy with Oracle WebCenter: Engage Customers, Employees, and Partners Mobile technology has gone from nice-to-have to a cornerstone of user engagement. Mobile access enables users to have information available at their fingertips, enabling them to take action the moment they make a decision, interact in the moment of convenience, and take advantage of new service offerings in their preferred channels. All your employees have your mobile applications in their pocket; now what are you going to do? It is a critical step for companies to think through what their employees, customers, and partners really need on their devices. Attend this session to see how Oracle WebCenter enables you to better engage your customers, employees, and partners by providing a unified experience across multiple channels. ¶ CON9447 - Enabling Access for Hundreds of Millions of Users How do you grow your business by identifying, authenticating, authorizing, and federating users on the Web, leveraging social identity and the open source OAuth protocol? How do you scale your access management solution to support hundreds of millions of users? With social identity support out of the box, Oracle’s access management solution is also benchmarked for 250-million-user deployment according to real-world customer scenarios. In this session, you will learn about the social identity capability and the 250-million-user benchmark testing of Oracle Access Manager and Oracle Adaptive Access Manager running on Oracle Exalogic and Oracle Exadata. ¶ HOL10207 - Build an Intranet Portal with Oracle WebCenter In this hands-on lab, you’ll work with Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle WebCenter Content to build out an enterprise portal that maximizes the productivity of teams and individual contributors. Using browser-based tools, you’ll manage site resources such as page styles, templates, and navigation. You’ll edit content stored in Oracle WebCenter Content directly from your portal. You’ll also experience the latest features that promote collaboration, social networking, and personal productivity. ¶ CON2906 - Get Proactive: Best Practices for Maintaining Oracle Fusion Middleware You chose Oracle Fusion Middleware products to help your organization deliver superior business results. Now learn how to take full advantage of your software with all the great tools, resources, and product updates you’re entitled to through Oracle Support. In this session, Oracle product experts provide proven best practices to help you work more efficiently, plan and prepare for upgrades and patching more effectively, and manage risk. Topics include configuration management tools, remote diagnostics, My Oracle Support Community, and My Oracle Support Lifecycle Advisors. New users and Oracle Fusion Middleware experts alike are guaranteed to leave with fresh ideas and practical, easy-to-implement next steps. ¶ CON8878 - Oracle WebCenter’s Cloud Strategy: From Social and Platform Services to Mashups Cloud computing represents a paradigm shift in how we build applications, automate processes, collaborate, and share and in how we secure our enterprise. Additionally, as you adopt cloud-based services in your organization, it’s likely that you will still have many critical on-premises applications running. With these mixed environments, multiple user interfaces, different security, and multiple datasources and content sources, how do you start evolving your strategy to account for these challenges? Oracle WebCenter offers a complete array of technologies enabling you to solve these challenges and prepare you for the cloud. Attend this session to learn how you can use Oracle WebCenter in the cloud as well as create on-premises and cloud application mash-ups. ¶ CON8901 - Optimize Enterprise Business Processes with Oracle WebCenter and Oracle BPM Do you have business processes that span multiple applications? Are you grappling with how to have visibility across these business processes; how to manage content that is associated with these processes; and, most importantly, how to model and optimize these business processes? Attend this session to hear how Oracle WebCenter and Oracle Business Process Management provide a unique set of integrated solutions to provide a composite application dashboard across these business processes and offer a solution for content-centric business processes. ¶ CON8883 - Deliver Engaging Interfaces to Oracle Applications with Oracle WebCenter Critical business processes live within enterprise applications, and application users need to manage and execute these processes as effectively as possible. Oracle provides a comprehensive user engagement platform to increase user productivity and optimize overall processes within Oracle Applications—Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle’s Siebel, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards product families—and third-party applications. Attend this session to learn how you can integrate these applications with Oracle WebCenter to deliver composite application dashboards to your end users—whether they are your customers, partners, or employees—for enhanced usability and Web 2.0–enabled enterprise portals.¶ Wednesday, October 3rd CON8895 - Future-Ready Intranets: How Aramark Re-engineered the Application Landscape There are essential techniques and technologies you can use to deliver employee portals that garner higher productivity, improve business efficiency, and increase user engagement. Attend this session to learn how you can leverage Oracle WebCenter Portal as a user engagement platform for bringing together business process management, enterprise content management, and business intelligence into a highly relevant and integrated experience. Hear how Aramark has leveraged Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle WebCenter Content to deliver a unified workspace providing simpler navigation and processing, consolidation of tools, easy access to information, integrated search, and single sign-on. ¶ CON8886 - Content Consolidation: Save Money, Increase Efficiency, and Eliminate Silos Organizations are looking for ways to save money and be more efficient. With content in many different places, it’s difficult to know where to look for a document and whether the document is the most current version. With Oracle WebCenter, content can be consolidated into one best-of-breed repository that is secure, scalable, and integrated with your business processes and applications. Users can find the content they need, where they need it, and ensure that it is the right content. This session covers content challenges that affect your business; content consolidation that can lead to savings in storage and administration costs and can lower risks; and how companies are realizing savings. ¶ CON8911 - Improve Online Experiences for Customers and Partners with Self-Service Portals Are you able to provide your customers and partners an easy-to-use online self-service experience? Are you processing high-volume transactions and struggling with call center bottlenecks or back-end systems that won’t integrate, causing order delays and customer frustration? Are you looking to target content such as product and service offerings to your end users? This session shares approaches to providing targeted delivery as well as strategies and best practices for transforming your business by providing an intuitive user experience for your customers and partners. ¶ CON6156 - Top 10 Ways to Integrate Oracle WebCenter Content This session covers 10 common ways to integrate Oracle WebCenter Content with other enterprise applications and middleware. It discusses out-of-the-box modules that provide expanded features in Oracle WebCenter Content—such as enterprise search, SOA, and BPEL—as well as developer tools you can use to create custom integrations. The presentation also gives guidance on which integration option may work best in your environment. ¶ HOL10207 - Build an Intranet Portal with Oracle WebCenter In this hands-on lab, you’ll work with Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle WebCenter Content to build out an enterprise portal that maximizes the productivity of teams and individual contributors. Using browser-based tools, you’ll manage site resources such as page styles, templates, and navigation. You’ll edit content stored in Oracle WebCenter Content directly from your portal. You’ll also experience the latest features that promote collaboration, social networking, and personal productivity. ¶ CON7817 - Migration to Oracle WebCenter Imaging 11g Customers today continually strive to automate business processes, reduce costs, and improve efficiency. The accounts payable process—which is often distributed in nature, requires many approvals, and generates huge volumes of paper invoices—is automated by many customers. In this session, learn how Oracle and SYSTIME have partnered to help a customer migrate its existing Oracle Imaging and Process Management Release 7.6 to the latest Oracle WebCenter Imaging 11g and integrate it with Oracle’s JD Edwards family of products. ¶ CON8910 - How to Engage Customers Across Web, Mobile, and Social Channels Whether on desktops at the office, on tablets at home, or on mobile phones when on the go, today’s customers are always connected. To engage today’s customers, you need to make the online customer experience connected and consistent across a host of devices and multiple channels, including Web, mobile, and social networks. Managing this multichannel environment can result in lots of headaches without the right tools. Attend this session to learn how Oracle WebCenter Sites solves the challenge of multichannel customer engagement. ¶ HOL10206 - Oracle WebCenter Sites 11g: Transforming the Content Contributor Experience Oracle WebCenter Sites 11g makes it easy for marketers and business users to contribute to and manage Websites with the new visual, contextual, and intuitive Web authoring interface. In this hands-on lab, you will create and manage content for a sports-themed Website, using many of the new and enhanced features of the 11g release. ¶ CON8900 - Building Next-Generation Portals: An Interactive Customer Panel Discussion Social and collaborative technologies have changed how people interact, learn, and collaborate, and providing a modern, social Web presence is imperative to remain competitive in today’s market. Can your business benefit from a more collaborative and interactive portal environment for employees, customers, and partners? Attend this session to hear from Oracle WebCenter Portal customers as they share their strategies and best practices for providing users with a modern experience that adapts to their needs and includes personalized access to content in context. The panel also addresses how customers have benefited from creating next-generation portals by migrating from older portal technologies to Oracle WebCenter Portal. ¶ CON9625 - Taking Control of Oracle WebCenter Security Organizations are increasingly looking to extend their Oracle WebCenter portal for social business, to serve external users and provide seamless access to the right information. In particular, many organizations are extending Oracle WebCenter in a business-to-business scenario requiring secure identification and authorization of business partners and their users. This session focuses on how customers are leveraging, securing, and providing access control to Oracle WebCenter portal and mobile solutions. You will learn best practices and hear real-world examples of how to provide flexible and granular access control for Oracle WebCenter deployments, using Oracle Platform Security Services and Oracle Access Management Suite product offerings. ¶ CON8891 - Extending Social into Enterprise Applications and Business Processes Oracle Social Network is an extensible social platform that enables contextual collaboration within enterprise applications and business processes, providing relevant data from across various enterprise systems in one place. Attend this session to see how an Oracle Social Network customer is integrating multiple applications—such as CRM, HCM, and business processes—into Oracle Social Network and Oracle WebCenter to enable individuals and teams to solve complex cross-organizational business problems more effectively by utilizing the social enterprise. ¶ Thursday, October 4th CON8899 - Becoming a Social Business: Stories from the Front Lines of Change What does it really mean to be a social business? How can you change our organization to embrace social approaches? What pitfalls do you need to avoid? In this lively panel discussion, customer and industry thought leaders in social business explore these topics and more as they share their stories of the good, the bad, and the ugly that can happen when embracing social methods and technologies to improve business success. Using moderated questions and open Q&A from the audience, the panel discusses vital topics such as the critical factors for success, the major issues to avoid, how to gain senior executive support for social efforts, how to handle undesired behavior, and how to measure business impact. It takes a thought-provoking look at becoming a social business from the inside. ¶ CON6851 - Oracle WebCenter and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition to Create Vendor Portals Large manufacturers of grocery items routinely find themselves depending on the inventory management expertise of their wholesalers and distributors. Inventory costs can be managed more efficiently by the manufacturers if they have better insight into the inventory levels of items carried by their distributors. This creates a unique opportunity for distributors and wholesalers to leverage this knowledge into a revenue-generating subscription service. Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition and Oracle WebCenter Portal play a key part in enabling creation of business-managed business intelligence portals for vendors. This session discusses one customer that implemented this by leveraging Oracle WebCenter and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. ¶ CON8879 - Provide a Personalized and Consistent Customer Experience in Your Websites and Portals Your customers engage with your company online in different ways throughout their journey—from prospecting by acquiring information on your corporate Website to transacting through self-service applications on your customer portal—and then the cycle begins again when they look for new products and services. Ensuring that the customer experience is consistent and personalized across online properties—from branding and content to interactions and transactions—can be a daunting task. Oracle WebCenter enables you to speak and interact with your customers with one voice across your Websites and portals by providing an integrated platform for delivery of self-service and engagement that unifies and personalizes the online experience. Learn more in this session. ¶ CON8898 - Land Mines, Potholes, and Dirt Roads: Navigating the Way to ECM Nirvana Ten years ago, people were predicting that by this time in history, we’d be some kind of utopian paperless society. As we all know, we’re not there yet, but are we getting closer? What is keeping companies from driving down the road to enterprise content management bliss? Most people understand that using ECM as a central platform enables organizations to expedite document-centric processes, but most business processes in organizations are still heavily paper-based. Many of these processes could be automated and improved with an ECM platform infrastructure. In this panel discussion, you’ll hear from Oracle WebCenter customers that have already solved some of these challenges as they share their strategies for success and roads to avoid along your journey. ¶ CON8908 - Oracle WebCenter Portal: Creating and Using Content Presenter Templates Oracle WebCenter Portal applications use task flows to display and integrate content stored in the Oracle WebCenter Content server. Among the most flexible task flows is Content Presenter, which renders various types of content on an Oracle WebCenter Portal page. Although Oracle WebCenter Portal comes with a set of predefined Content Presenter templates, developers can create their own templates for specific rendering needs. This session shows the lifecycle of developing Content Presenter task flows, including how to create, package, import, modify at runtime, and use such templates. In addition to simple examples with Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) UI elements to render the content, it shows how to use other UI technologies, CSS files, and JavaScript libraries. ¶ CON8897 - Using Web Experience Management to Drive Online Marketing Success Every year, the online channel becomes more imperative for driving organizational top-line revenue, but for many companies, mastering how to best market their products and services in a fast-evolving online world with high customer expectations for personalized experiences can be a complex proposition. Come to this panel discussion, and hear directly from online marketers how they are succeeding today by using Web experience management to drive marketing success, using capabilities such as targeting and optimization, user-generated content, mobile site publishing, and site visitor personalization to deliver engaging online experiences. ¶ CON8892 - Oracle’s Journey to Social Business Social business is a revolution, one that is causing rapidly accelerating change in how companies and customers engage with one another and how employees work together. Oracle’s goal in becoming a social business is to create a socially connected organization in which working collaboratively across geographical locations, lines of business, and management chains is second nature, enabling innovative solutions to business challenges. We can achieve this by connecting the right people, finding the right content, communicating with the right people, collaborating at the right time, and building the right communities in the right context—all ready in the CLOUD. Attend this session to see how Oracle is transforming itself into a social business. ¶  ------------ If you've read all the way to the end here - we are REALLY looking forward to seeing you in San Francisco.

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• New features of C# 4.0

  This article covers New features of C# 4.0. Article has been divided into below sections. Introduction. Dynamic Lookup. Named and Optional Arguments. Features for COM interop. Variance. Relationship with Visual Basic. Resources. Other interested readings… 22 New Features of Visual Studio 2008 for .NET Professionals 50 New Features of SQL Server 2008 IIS 7.0 New features Introduction It is now close to a year since Microsoft Visual C# 3.0 shipped as part of Visual Studio 2008. In the VS Managed Languages team we are hard at work on creating the next version of the language (with the unsurprising working title of C# 4.0), and this document is a first public description of the planned language features as we currently see them. Please be advised that all this is in early stages of production and is subject to change. Part of the reason for sharing our plans in public so early is precisely to get the kind of feedback that will cause us to improve the final product before it rolls out. Simultaneously with the publication of this whitepaper, a first public CTP (community technology preview) of Visual Studio 2010 is going out as a Virtual PC image for everyone to try. Please use it to play and experiment with the features, and let us know of any thoughts you have. We ask for your understanding and patience working with very early bits, where especially new or newly implemented features do not have the quality or stability of a final product. The aim of the CTP is not to give you a productive work environment but to give you the best possible impression of what we are working on for the next release. The CTP contains a number of walkthroughs, some of which highlight the new language features of C# 4.0. Those are excellent for getting a hands-on guided tour through the details of some common scenarios for the features. You may consider this whitepaper a companion document to these walkthroughs, complementing them with a focus on the overall language features and how they work, as opposed to the specifics of the concrete scenarios. C# 4.0 The major theme for C# 4.0 is dynamic programming. Increasingly, objects are “dynamic” in the sense that their structure and behavior is not captured by a static type, or at least not one that the compiler knows about when compiling your program. Some examples include a. objects from dynamic programming languages, such as Python or Ruby b. COM objects accessed through IDispatch c. ordinary .NET types accessed through reflection d. objects with changing structure, such as HTML DOM objects While C# remains a statically typed language, we aim to vastly improve the interaction with such objects. A secondary theme is co-evolution with Visual Basic. Going forward we will aim to maintain the individual character of each language, but at the same time important new features should be introduced in both languages at the same time. They should be differentiated more by style and feel than by feature set. The new features in C# 4.0 fall into four groups: Dynamic lookup Dynamic lookup allows you to write method, operator and indexer calls, property and field accesses, and even object invocations which bypass the C# static type checking and instead gets resolved at runtime. Named and optional parameters Parameters in C# can now be specified as optional by providing a default value for them in a member declaration. When the member is invoked, optional arguments can be omitted. Furthermore, any argument can be passed by parameter name instead of position. COM specific interop features Dynamic lookup as well as named and optional parameters both help making programming against COM less painful than today. On top of that, however, we are adding a number of other small features that further improve the interop experience. Variance It used to be that an IEnumerable<string> wasn’t an IEnumerable<object>. Now it is – C# embraces type safe “co-and contravariance” and common BCL types are updated to take advantage of that. Dynamic Lookup Dynamic lookup allows you a unified approach to invoking things dynamically. With dynamic lookup, when you have an object in your hand you do not need to worry about whether it comes from COM, IronPython, the HTML DOM or reflection; you just apply operations to it and leave it to the runtime to figure out what exactly those operations mean for that particular object. This affords you enormous flexibility, and can greatly simplify your code, but it does come with a significant drawback: Static typing is not maintained for these operations. A dynamic object is assumed at compile time to support any operation, and only at runtime will you get an error if it wasn’t so. Oftentimes this will be no loss, because the object wouldn’t have a static type anyway, in other cases it is a tradeoff between brevity and safety. In order to facilitate this tradeoff, it is a design goal of C# to allow you to opt in or opt out of dynamic behavior on every single call. The dynamic type C# 4.0 introduces a new static type called dynamic. When you have an object of type dynamic you can “do things to it” that are resolved only at runtime: dynamic d = GetDynamicObject(…); d.M(7); The C# compiler allows you to call a method with any name and any arguments on d because it is of type dynamic. At runtime the actual object that d refers to will be examined to determine what it means to “call M with an int” on it. The type dynamic can be thought of as a special version of the type object, which signals that the object can be used dynamically. It is easy to opt in or out of dynamic behavior: any object can be implicitly converted to dynamic, “suspending belief” until runtime. Conversely, there is an “assignment conversion” from dynamic to any other type, which allows implicit conversion in assignment-like constructs: dynamic d = 7; // implicit conversion int i = d; // assignment conversion Dynamic operations Not only method calls, but also field and property accesses, indexer and operator calls and even delegate invocations can be dispatched dynamically: dynamic d = GetDynamicObject(…); d.M(7); // calling methods d.f = d.P; // getting and settings fields and properties d[“one”] = d[“two”]; // getting and setting thorugh indexers int i = d + 3; // calling operators string s = d(5,7); // invoking as a delegate The role of the C# compiler here is simply to package up the necessary information about “what is being done to d”, so that the runtime can pick it up and determine what the exact meaning of it is given an actual object d. Think of it as deferring part of the compiler’s job to runtime. The result of any dynamic operation is itself of type dynamic. Runtime lookup At runtime a dynamic operation is dispatched according to the nature of its target object d: COM objects If d is a COM object, the operation is dispatched dynamically through COM IDispatch. This allows calling to COM types that don’t have a Primary Interop Assembly (PIA), and relying on COM features that don’t have a counterpart in C#, such as indexed properties and default properties. Dynamic objects If d implements the interface IDynamicObject d itself is asked to perform the operation. Thus by implementing IDynamicObject a type can completely redefine the meaning of dynamic operations. This is used intensively by dynamic languages such as IronPython and IronRuby to implement their own dynamic object models. It will also be used by APIs, e.g. by the HTML DOM to allow direct access to the object’s properties using property syntax. Plain objects Otherwise d is a standard .NET object, and the operation will be dispatched using reflection on its type and a C# “runtime binder” which implements C#’s lookup and overload resolution semantics at runtime. This is essentially a part of the C# compiler running as a runtime component to “finish the work” on dynamic operations that was deferred by the static compiler. Example Assume the following code: dynamic d1 = new Foo(); dynamic d2 = new Bar(); string s; d1.M(s, d2, 3, null); Because the receiver of the call to M is dynamic, the C# compiler does not try to resolve the meaning of the call. Instead it stashes away information for the runtime about the call. This information (often referred to as the “payload”) is essentially equivalent to: “Perform an instance method call of M with the following arguments: 1. a string 2. a dynamic 3. a literal int 3 4. a literal object null” At runtime, assume that the actual type Foo of d1 is not a COM type and does not implement IDynamicObject. In this case the C# runtime binder picks up to finish the overload resolution job based on runtime type information, proceeding as follows: 1. Reflection is used to obtain the actual runtime types of the two objects, d1 and d2, that did not have a static type (or rather had the static type dynamic). The result is Foo for d1 and Bar for d2. 2. Method lookup and overload resolution is performed on the type Foo with the call M(string,Bar,3,null) using ordinary C# semantics. 3. If the method is found it is invoked; otherwise a runtime exception is thrown. Overload resolution with dynamic arguments Even if the receiver of a method call is of a static type, overload resolution can still happen at runtime. This can happen if one or more of the arguments have the type dynamic: Foo foo = new Foo(); dynamic d = new Bar(); var result = foo.M(d); The C# runtime binder will choose between the statically known overloads of M on Foo, based on the runtime type of d, namely Bar. The result is again of type dynamic. The Dynamic Language Runtime An important component in the underlying implementation of dynamic lookup is the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR), which is a new API in .NET 4.0. The DLR provides most of the infrastructure behind not only C# dynamic lookup but also the implementation of several dynamic programming languages on .NET, such as IronPython and IronRuby. Through this common infrastructure a high degree of interoperability is ensured, but just as importantly the DLR provides excellent caching mechanisms which serve to greatly enhance the efficiency of runtime dispatch. To the user of dynamic lookup in C#, the DLR is invisible except for the improved efficiency. However, if you want to implement your own dynamically dispatched objects, the IDynamicObject interface allows you to interoperate with the DLR and plug in your own behavior. This is a rather advanced task, which requires you to understand a good deal more about the inner workings of the DLR. For API writers, however, it can definitely be worth the trouble in order to vastly improve the usability of e.g. a library representing an inherently dynamic domain. Open issues There are a few limitations and things that might work differently than you would expect. · The DLR allows objects to be created from objects that represent classes. However, the current implementation of C# doesn’t have syntax to support this. · Dynamic lookup will not be able to find extension methods. Whether extension methods apply or not depends on the static context of the call (i.e. which using clauses occur), and this context information is not currently kept as part of the payload. · Anonymous functions (i.e. lambda expressions) cannot appear as arguments to a dynamic method call. The compiler cannot bind (i.e. “understand”) an anonymous function without knowing what type it is converted to. One consequence of these limitations is that you cannot easily use LINQ queries over dynamic objects: dynamic collection = …; var result = collection.Select(e => e + 5); If the Select method is an extension method, dynamic lookup will not find it. Even if it is an instance method, the above does not compile, because a lambda expression cannot be passed as an argument to a dynamic operation. There are no plans to address these limitations in C# 4.0. Named and Optional Arguments Named and optional parameters are really two distinct features, but are often useful together. Optional parameters allow you to omit arguments to member invocations, whereas named arguments is a way to provide an argument using the name of the corresponding parameter instead of relying on its position in the parameter list. Some APIs, most notably COM interfaces such as the Office automation APIs, are written specifically with named and optional parameters in mind. Up until now it has been very painful to call into these APIs from C#, with sometimes as many as thirty arguments having to be explicitly passed, most of which have reasonable default values and could be omitted. Even in APIs for .NET however you sometimes find yourself compelled to write many overloads of a method with different combinations of parameters, in order to provide maximum usability to the callers. Optional parameters are a useful alternative for these situations. Optional parameters A parameter is declared optional simply by providing a default value for it: public void M(int x, int y = 5, int z = 7); Here y and z are optional parameters and can be omitted in calls: M(1, 2, 3); // ordinary call of M M(1, 2); // omitting z – equivalent to M(1, 2, 7) M(1); // omitting both y and z – equivalent to M(1, 5, 7) Named and optional arguments C# 4.0 does not permit you to omit arguments between commas as in M(1,,3). This could lead to highly unreadable comma-counting code. Instead any argument can be passed by name. Thus if you want to omit only y from a call of M you can write: M(1, z: 3); // passing z by name or M(x: 1, z: 3); // passing both x and z by name or even M(z: 3, x: 1); // reversing the order of arguments All forms are equivalent, except that arguments are always evaluated in the order they appear, so in the last example the 3 is evaluated before the 1. Optional and named arguments can be used not only with methods but also with indexers and constructors. Overload resolution Named and optional arguments affect overload resolution, but the changes are relatively simple: A signature is applicable if all its parameters are either optional or have exactly one corresponding argument (by name or position) in the call which is convertible to the parameter type. Betterness rules on conversions are only applied for arguments that are explicitly given – omitted optional arguments are ignored for betterness purposes. If two signatures are equally good, one that does not omit optional parameters is preferred. M(string s, int i = 1); M(object o); M(int i, string s = “Hello”); M(int i); M(5); Given these overloads, we can see the working of the rules above. M(string,int) is not applicable because 5 doesn’t convert to string. M(int,string) is applicable because its second parameter is optional, and so, obviously are M(object) and M(int). M(int,string) and M(int) are both better than M(object) because the conversion from 5 to int is better than the conversion from 5 to object. Finally M(int) is better than M(int,string) because no optional arguments are omitted. Thus the method that gets called is M(int). Features for COM interop Dynamic lookup as well as named and optional parameters greatly improve the experience of interoperating with COM APIs such as the Office Automation APIs. In order to remove even more of the speed bumps, a couple of small COM-specific features are also added to C# 4.0. Dynamic import Many COM methods accept and return variant types, which are represented in the PIAs as object. In the vast majority of cases, a programmer calling these methods already knows the static type of a returned object from context, but explicitly has to perform a cast on the returned value to make use of that knowledge. These casts are so common that they constitute a major nuisance. In order to facilitate a smoother experience, you can now choose to import these COM APIs in such a way that variants are instead represented using the type dynamic. In other words, from your point of view, COM signatures now have occurrences of dynamic instead of object in them. This means that you can easily access members directly off a returned object, or you can assign it to a strongly typed local variable without having to cast. To illustrate, you can now say excel.Cells[1, 1].Value = "Hello"; instead of ((Excel.Range)excel.Cells[1, 1]).Value2 = "Hello"; and Excel.Range range = excel.Cells[1, 1]; instead of Excel.Range range = (Excel.Range)excel.Cells[1, 1]; Compiling without PIAs Primary Interop Assemblies are large .NET assemblies generated from COM interfaces to facilitate strongly typed interoperability. They provide great support at design time, where your experience of the interop is as good as if the types where really defined in .NET. However, at runtime these large assemblies can easily bloat your program, and also cause versioning issues because they are distributed independently of your application. The no-PIA feature allows you to continue to use PIAs at design time without having them around at runtime. Instead, the C# compiler will bake the small part of the PIA that a program actually uses directly into its assembly. At runtime the PIA does not have to be loaded. Omitting ref Because of a different programming model, many COM APIs contain a lot of reference parameters. Contrary to refs in C#, these are typically not meant to mutate a passed-in argument for the subsequent benefit of the caller, but are simply another way of passing value parameters. It therefore seems unreasonable that a C# programmer should have to create temporary variables for all such ref parameters and pass these by reference. Instead, specifically for COM methods, the C# compiler will allow you to pass arguments by value to such a method, and will automatically generate temporary variables to hold the passed-in values, subsequently discarding these when the call returns. In this way the caller sees value semantics, and will not experience any side effects, but the called method still gets a reference. Open issues A few COM interface features still are not surfaced in C#. Most notably these include indexed properties and default properties. As mentioned above these will be respected if you access COM dynamically, but statically typed C# code will still not recognize them. There are currently no plans to address these remaining speed bumps in C# 4.0. Variance An aspect of generics that often comes across as surprising is that the following is illegal: IList<string> strings = new List<string>(); IList<object> objects = strings; The second assignment is disallowed because strings does not have the same element type as objects. There is a perfectly good reason for this. If it were allowed you could write: objects[0] = 5; string s = strings[0]; Allowing an int to be inserted into a list of strings and subsequently extracted as a string. This would be a breach of type safety. However, there are certain interfaces where the above cannot occur, notably where there is no way to insert an object into the collection. Such an interface is IEnumerable<T>. If instead you say: IEnumerable<object> objects = strings; There is no way we can put the wrong kind of thing into strings through objects, because objects doesn’t have a method that takes an element in. Variance is about allowing assignments such as this in cases where it is safe. The result is that a lot of situations that were previously surprising now just work. Covariance In .NET 4.0 the IEnumerable<T> interface will be declared in the following way: public interface IEnumerable<out T> : IEnumerable { IEnumerator<T> GetEnumerator(); } public interface IEnumerator<out T> : IEnumerator { bool MoveNext(); T Current { get; } } The “out” in these declarations signifies that the T can only occur in output position in the interface – the compiler will complain otherwise. In return for this restriction, the interface becomes “covariant” in T, which means that an IEnumerable<A> is considered an IEnumerable<B> if A has a reference conversion to B. As a result, any sequence of strings is also e.g. a sequence of objects. This is useful e.g. in many LINQ methods. Using the declarations above: var result = strings.Union(objects); // succeeds with an IEnumerable<object> This would previously have been disallowed, and you would have had to to some cumbersome wrapping to get the two sequences to have the same element type. Contravariance Type parameters can also have an “in” modifier, restricting them to occur only in input positions. An example is IComparer<T>: public interface IComparer<in T> { public int Compare(T left, T right); } The somewhat baffling result is that an IComparer<object> can in fact be considered an IComparer<string>! It makes sense when you think about it: If a comparer can compare any two objects, it can certainly also compare two strings. This property is referred to as contravariance. A generic type can have both in and out modifiers on its type parameters, as is the case with the Func<…> delegate types: public delegate TResult Func<in TArg, out TResult>(TArg arg); Obviously the argument only ever comes in, and the result only ever comes out. Therefore a Func<object,string> can in fact be used as a Func<string,object>. Limitations Variant type parameters can only be declared on interfaces and delegate types, due to a restriction in the CLR. Variance only applies when there is a reference conversion between the type arguments. For instance, an IEnumerable<int> is not an IEnumerable<object> because the conversion from int to object is a boxing conversion, not a reference conversion. Also please note that the CTP does not contain the new versions of the .NET types mentioned above. In order to experiment with variance you have to declare your own variant interfaces and delegate types. COM Example Here is a larger Office automation example that shows many of the new C# features in action. using System; using System.Diagnostics; using System.Linq; using Excel = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel; using Word = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word; class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { var excel = new Excel.Application(); excel.Visible = true; excel.Workbooks.Add(); // optional arguments omitted excel.Cells[1, 1].Value = "Process Name"; // no casts; Value dynamically excel.Cells[1, 2].Value = "Memory Usage"; // accessed var processes = Process.GetProcesses() .OrderByDescending(p =&gt; p.WorkingSet) .Take(10); int i = 2; foreach (var p in processes) { excel.Cells[i, 1].Value = p.ProcessName; // no casts excel.Cells[i, 2].Value = p.WorkingSet; // no casts i++; } Excel.Range range = excel.Cells[1, 1]; // no casts Excel.Chart chart = excel.ActiveWorkbook.Charts. Add(After: excel.ActiveSheet); // named and optional arguments chart.ChartWizard( Source: range.CurrentRegion, Title: "Memory Usage in " + Environment.MachineName); //named+optional chart.ChartStyle = 45; chart.CopyPicture(Excel.XlPictureAppearance.xlScreen, Excel.XlCopyPictureFormat.xlBitmap, Excel.XlPictureAppearance.xlScreen); var word = new Word.Application(); word.Visible = true; word.Documents.Add(); // optional arguments word.Selection.Paste(); } } The code is much more terse and readable than the C# 3.0 counterpart. Note especially how the Value property is accessed dynamically. This is actually an indexed property, i.e. a property that takes an argument; something which C# does not understand. However the argument is optional. Since the access is dynamic, it goes through the runtime COM binder which knows to substitute the default value and call the indexed property. Thus, dynamic COM allows you to avoid accesses to the puzzling Value2 property of Excel ranges. Relationship with Visual Basic A number of the features introduced to C# 4.0 already exist or will be introduced in some form or other in Visual Basic: · Late binding in VB is similar in many ways to dynamic lookup in C#, and can be expected to make more use of the DLR in the future, leading to further parity with C#. · Named and optional arguments have been part of Visual Basic for a long time, and the C# version of the feature is explicitly engineered with maximal VB interoperability in mind. · NoPIA and variance are both being introduced to VB and C# at the same time. VB in turn is adding a number of features that have hitherto been a mainstay of C#. As a result future versions of C# and VB will have much better feature parity, for the benefit of everyone. Resources All available resources concerning C# 4.0 can be accessed through the C# Dev Center. Specifically, this white paper and other resources can be found at the Code Gallery site. Enjoy! span.fullpost {display:none;}

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• Syncing Data with a Server using Silverlight and HTTP Polling Duplex

  - by dwahlin

  Many applications have the need to stay in-sync with data provided by a service. Although web applications typically rely on standard polling techniques to check if data has changed, Silverlight provides several interesting options for keeping an application in-sync that rely on server “push” technologies. A few years back I wrote several blog posts covering different “push” technologies available in Silverlight that rely on sockets or HTTP Polling Duplex. We recently had a project that looked like it could benefit from pushing data from a server to one or more clients so I thought I’d revisit the subject and provide some updates to the original code posted. If you’ve worked with AJAX before in Web applications then you know that until browsers fully support web sockets or other duplex (bi-directional communication) technologies that it’s difficult to keep applications in-sync with a server without relying on polling. The problem with polling is that you have to check for changes on the server on a timed-basis which can often be wasteful and take up unnecessary resources. With server “push” technologies, data can be pushed from the server to the client as it changes. Once the data is received, the client can update the user interface as appropriate. Using “push” technologies allows the client to listen for changes from the data but stay 100% focused on client activities as opposed to worrying about polling and asking the server if anything has changed. Silverlight provides several options for pushing data from a server to a client including sockets, TCP bindings and HTTP Polling Duplex.  Each has its own strengths and weaknesses as far as performance and setup work with HTTP Polling Duplex arguably being the easiest to setup and get going.  In this article I’ll demonstrate how HTTP Polling Duplex can be used in Silverlight 4 applications to push data and show how you can create a WCF server that provides an HTTP Polling Duplex binding that a Silverlight client can consume.   What is HTTP Polling Duplex? Technologies that allow data to be pushed from a server to a client rely on duplex functionality. Duplex (or bi-directional) communication allows data to be passed in both directions.  A client can call a service and the server can call the client. HTTP Polling Duplex (as its name implies) allows a server to communicate with a client without forcing the client to constantly poll the server. It has the benefit of being able to run on port 80 making setup a breeze compared to the other options which require specific ports to be used and cross-domain policy files to be exposed on port 943 (as with sockets and TCP bindings). Having said that, if you’re looking for the best speed possible then sockets and TCP bindings are the way to go. But, they’re not the only game in town when it comes to duplex communication. The first time I heard about HTTP Polling Duplex (initially available in Silverlight 2) I wasn’t exactly sure how it was any better than standard polling used in AJAX applications. I read the Silverlight SDK, looked at various resources and generally found the following definition unhelpful as far as understanding the actual benefits that HTTP Polling Duplex provided: "The Silverlight client periodically polls the service on the network layer, and checks for any new messages that the service wants to send on the callback channel. The service queues all messages sent on the client callback channel and delivers them to the client when the client polls the service." Although the previous definition explained the overall process, it sounded as if standard polling was used. Fortunately, Microsoft’s Scott Guthrie provided me with a more clear definition several years back that explains the benefits provided by HTTP Polling Duplex quite well (used with his permission): "The [HTTP Polling Duplex] duplex support does use polling in the background to implement notifications – although the way it does it is different than manual polling. It initiates a network request, and then the request is effectively “put to sleep” waiting for the server to respond (it doesn’t come back immediately). The server then keeps the connection open but not active until it has something to send back (or the connection times out after 90 seconds – at which point the duplex client will connect again and wait). This way you are avoiding hitting the server repeatedly – but still get an immediate response when there is data to send." After hearing Scott’s definition the light bulb went on and it all made sense. A client makes a request to a server to check for changes, but instead of the request returning immediately, it parks itself on the server and waits for data. It’s kind of like waiting to pick up a pizza at the store. Instead of calling the store over and over to check the status, you sit in the store and wait until the pizza (the request data) is ready. Once it’s ready you take it back home (to the client). This technique provides a lot of efficiency gains over standard polling techniques even though it does use some polling of its own as a request is initially made from a client to a server. So how do you implement HTTP Polling Duplex in your Silverlight applications? Let’s take a look at the process by starting with the server. Creating an HTTP Polling Duplex WCF Service Creating a WCF service that exposes an HTTP Polling Duplex binding is straightforward as far as coding goes. Add some one way operations into an interface, create a client callback interface and you’re ready to go. The most challenging part comes into play when configuring the service to properly support the necessary binding and that’s more of a cut and paste operation once you know the configuration code to use. To create an HTTP Polling Duplex service you’ll need to expose server-side and client-side interfaces and reference the System.ServiceModel.PollingDuplex assembly (located at C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v4.0\Libraries\Server on my machine) in the server project. For the demo application I upgraded a basketball simulation service to support the latest polling duplex assemblies. The service simulates a simple basketball game using a Game class and pushes information about the game such as score, fouls, shots and more to the client as the game changes over time. Before jumping too far into the game push service, it’s important to discuss two interfaces used by the service to communicate in a bi-directional manner. The first is called IGameStreamService and defines the methods/operations that the client can call on the server (see Listing 1). The second is IGameStreamClient which defines the callback methods that a server can use to communicate with a client (see Listing 2).   [ServiceContract(Namespace = "Silverlight", CallbackContract = typeof(IGameStreamClient))] public interface IGameStreamService { [OperationContract(IsOneWay = true)] void GetTeamData(); } Listing 1. The IGameStreamService interface defines server operations that can be called on the server.   [ServiceContract] public interface IGameStreamClient { [OperationContract(IsOneWay = true)] void ReceiveTeamData(List<Team> teamData); [OperationContract(IsOneWay = true, AsyncPattern=true)] IAsyncResult BeginReceiveGameData(GameData gameData, AsyncCallback callback, object state); void EndReceiveGameData(IAsyncResult result); } Listing 2. The IGameStreamClient interfaces defines client operations that a server can call.   The IGameStreamService interface is decorated with the standard ServiceContract attribute but also contains a value for the CallbackContract property.  This property is used to define the interface that the client will expose (IGameStreamClient in this example) and use to receive data pushed from the service. Notice that each OperationContract attribute in both interfaces sets the IsOneWay property to true. This means that the operation can be called and passed data as appropriate, however, no data will be passed back. Instead, data will be pushed back to the client as it’s available.  Looking through the IGameStreamService interface you can see that the client can request team data whereas the IGameStreamClient interface allows team and game data to be received by the client. One interesting point about the IGameStreamClient interface is the inclusion of the AsyncPattern property on the BeginReceiveGameData operation. I initially created this operation as a standard one way operation and it worked most of the time. However, as I disconnected clients and reconnected new ones game data wasn’t being passed properly. After researching the problem more I realized that because the service could take up to 7 seconds to return game data, things were getting hung up. By setting the AsyncPattern property to true on the BeginReceivedGameData operation and providing a corresponding EndReceiveGameData operation I was able to get around this problem and get everything running properly. I’ll provide more details on the implementation of these two methods later in this post. Once the interfaces were created I moved on to the game service class. The first order of business was to create a class that implemented the IGameStreamService interface. Since the service can be used by multiple clients wanting game data I added the ServiceBehavior attribute to the class definition so that I could set its InstanceContextMode to InstanceContextMode.Single (in effect creating a Singleton service object). Listing 3 shows the game service class as well as its fields and constructor.   [ServiceBehavior(ConcurrencyMode = ConcurrencyMode.Multiple, InstanceContextMode = InstanceContextMode.Single)] public class GameStreamService : IGameStreamService { object _Key = new object(); Game _Game = null; Timer _Timer = null; Random _Random = null; Dictionary<string, IGameStreamClient> _ClientCallbacks = new Dictionary<string, IGameStreamClient>(); static AsyncCallback _ReceiveGameDataCompleted = new AsyncCallback(ReceiveGameDataCompleted); public GameStreamService() { _Game = new Game(); _Timer = new Timer { Enabled = false, Interval = 2000, AutoReset = true }; _Timer.Elapsed += new ElapsedEventHandler(_Timer_Elapsed); _Timer.Start(); _Random = new Random(); }} Listing 3. The GameStreamService implements the IGameStreamService interface which defines a callback contract that allows the service class to push data back to the client. By implementing the IGameStreamService interface, GameStreamService must supply a GetTeamData() method which is responsible for supplying information about the teams that are playing as well as individual players.  GetTeamData() also acts as a client subscription method that tracks clients wanting to receive game data.  Listing 4 shows the GetTeamData() method. public void GetTeamData() { //Get client callback channel var context = OperationContext.Current; var sessionID = context.SessionId; var currClient = context.GetCallbackChannel<IGameStreamClient>(); context.Channel.Faulted += Disconnect; context.Channel.Closed += Disconnect; IGameStreamClient client; if (!_ClientCallbacks.TryGetValue(sessionID, out client)) { lock (_Key) { _ClientCallbacks[sessionID] = currClient; } } currClient.ReceiveTeamData(_Game.GetTeamData()); //Start timer which when fired sends updated score information to client if (!_Timer.Enabled) { _Timer.Enabled = true; } } Listing 4. The GetTeamData() method subscribes a given client to the game service and returns. The key the line of code in the GetTeamData() method is the call to GetCallbackChannel<IGameStreamClient>().  This method is responsible for accessing the calling client’s callback channel. The callback channel is defined by the IGameStreamClient interface shown earlier in Listing 2 and used by the server to communicate with the client. Before passing team data back to the client, GetTeamData() grabs the client’s session ID and checks if it already exists in the _ClientCallbacks dictionary object used to track clients wanting callbacks from the server. If the client doesn’t exist it adds it into the collection. It then pushes team data from the Game class back to the client by calling ReceiveTeamData().  Since the service simulates a basketball game, a timer is then started if it’s not already enabled which is then used to randomly send data to the client. When the timer fires, game data is pushed down to the client. Listing 5 shows the _Timer_Elapsed() method that is called when the timer fires as well as the SendGameData() method used to send data to the client. void _Timer_Elapsed(object sender, ElapsedEventArgs e) { int interval = _Random.Next(3000, 7000); lock (_Key) { _Timer.Interval = interval; _Timer.Enabled = false; } SendGameData(_Game.GetGameData()); } private void SendGameData(GameData gameData) { var cbs = _ClientCallbacks.Where(cb => ((IContextChannel)cb.Value).State == CommunicationState.Opened); for (int i = 0; i < cbs.Count(); i++) { var cb = cbs.ElementAt(i).Value; try { cb.BeginReceiveGameData(gameData, _ReceiveGameDataCompleted, cb); } catch (TimeoutException texp) { //Log timeout error } catch (CommunicationException cexp) { //Log communication error } } lock (_Key) _Timer.Enabled = true; } private static void ReceiveGameDataCompleted(IAsyncResult result) { try { ((IGameStreamClient)(result.AsyncState)).EndReceiveGameData(result); } catch (CommunicationException) { // empty } catch (TimeoutException) { // empty } } LIsting 5. _Timer_Elapsed is used to simulate time in a basketball game. When _Timer_Elapsed() fires the SendGameData() method is called which iterates through the clients wanting to be notified of changes. As each client is identified, their respective BeginReceiveGameData() method is called which ultimately pushes game data down to the client. Recall that this method was defined in the client callback interface named IGameStreamClient shown earlier in Listing 2. Notice that BeginReceiveGameData() accepts _ReceiveGameDataCompleted as its second parameter (an AsyncCallback delegate defined in the service class) and passes the client callback as the third parameter. The initial version of the sample application had a standard ReceiveGameData() method in the client callback interface. However, sometimes the client callbacks would work properly and sometimes they wouldn’t which was a little baffling at first glance. After some investigation I realized that I needed to implement an asynchronous pattern for client callbacks to work properly since 3 – 7 second delays are occurring as a result of the timer. Once I added the BeginReceiveGameData() and ReceiveGameDataCompleted() methods everything worked properly since each call was handled in an asynchronous manner. The final task that had to be completed to get the server working properly with HTTP Polling Duplex was adding configuration code into web.config. In the interest of brevity I won’t post all of the code here since the sample application includes everything you need. However, Listing 6 shows the key configuration code to handle creating a custom binding named pollingDuplexBinding and associate it with the service’s endpoint.   <bindings> <customBinding> <binding name="pollingDuplexBinding"> <binaryMessageEncoding /> <pollingDuplex maxPendingSessions="2147483647" maxPendingMessagesPerSession="2147483647" inactivityTimeout="02:00:00" serverPollTimeout="00:05:00"/> <httpTransport /> </binding> </customBinding> </bindings> <services> <service name="GameService.GameStreamService" behaviorConfiguration="GameStreamServiceBehavior"> <endpoint address="" binding="customBinding" bindingConfiguration="pollingDuplexBinding" contract="GameService.IGameStreamService"/> <endpoint address="mex" binding="mexHttpBinding" contract="IMetadataExchange" /> </service> </services>   Listing 6. Configuring an HTTP Polling Duplex binding in web.config and associating an endpoint with it. Calling the Service and Receiving “Pushed” Data Calling the service and handling data that is pushed from the server is a simple and straightforward process in Silverlight. Since the service is configured with a MEX endpoint and exposes a WSDL file, you can right-click on the Silverlight project and select the standard Add Service Reference item. After the web service proxy is created you may notice that the ServiceReferences.ClientConfig file only contains an empty configuration element instead of the normal configuration elements created when creating a standard WCF proxy. You can certainly update the file if you want to read from it at runtime but for the sample application I fed the service URI directly to the service proxy as shown next: var address = new EndpointAddress("http://localhost.:5661/GameStreamService.svc"); var binding = new PollingDuplexHttpBinding(); _Proxy = new GameStreamServiceClient(binding, address); _Proxy.ReceiveTeamDataReceived += _Proxy_ReceiveTeamDataReceived; _Proxy.ReceiveGameDataReceived += _Proxy_ReceiveGameDataReceived; _Proxy.GetTeamDataAsync(); This code creates the proxy and passes the endpoint address and binding to use to its constructor. It then wires the different receive events to callback methods and calls GetTeamDataAsync().  Calling GetTeamDataAsync() causes the server to store the client in the server-side dictionary collection mentioned earlier so that it can receive data that is pushed.  As the server-side timer fires and game data is pushed to the client, the user interface is updated as shown in Listing 7. Listing 8 shows the _Proxy_ReceiveGameDataReceived() method responsible for handling the data and calling UpdateGameData() to process it.   Listing 7. The Silverlight interface. Game data is pushed from the server to the client using HTTP Polling Duplex. void _Proxy_ReceiveGameDataReceived(object sender, ReceiveGameDataReceivedEventArgs e) { UpdateGameData(e.gameData); } private void UpdateGameData(GameData gameData) { //Update Score this.tbTeam1Score.Text = gameData.Team1Score.ToString(); this.tbTeam2Score.Text = gameData.Team2Score.ToString(); //Update ball visibility if (gameData.Action != ActionsEnum.Foul) { if (tbTeam1.Text == gameData.TeamOnOffense) { AnimateBall(this.BB1, this.BB2); } else //Team 2 { AnimateBall(this.BB2, this.BB1); } } if (this.lbActions.Items.Count > 9) this.lbActions.Items.Clear(); this.lbActions.Items.Add(gameData.LastAction); if (this.lbActions.Visibility == Visibility.Collapsed) this.lbActions.Visibility = Visibility.Visible; } private void AnimateBall(Image onBall, Image offBall) { this.FadeIn.Stop(); Storyboard.SetTarget(this.FadeInAnimation, onBall); Storyboard.SetTarget(this.FadeOutAnimation, offBall); this.FadeIn.Begin(); } Listing 8. As the server pushes game data, the client’s _Proxy_ReceiveGameDataReceived() method is called to process the data. In a real-life application I’d go with a ViewModel class to handle retrieving team data, setup data bindings and handle data that is pushed from the server. However, for the sample application I wanted to focus on HTTP Polling Duplex and keep things as simple as possible.   Summary Silverlight supports three options when duplex communication is required in an application including TCP bindins, sockets and HTTP Polling Duplex. In this post you’ve seen how HTTP Polling Duplex interfaces can be created and implemented on the server as well as how they can be consumed by a Silverlight client. HTTP Polling Duplex provides a nice way to “push” data from a server while still allowing the data to flow over port 80 or another port of your choice.   Sample Application Download

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• ASP.NET MVC 2 Model Binding for a Collection

  - by nmarun

  Yes, my yet another post on Model Binding (previous one is here), but this one uses features presented in MVC 2. How I got to writing this blog? Well, I’m on a project where we’re doing some MVC things for a shopping cart. Let me show you what I was working with. Below are my model classes: 1: public class Product 2: { 3: public int Id { get; set; } 4: public string Name { get; set; } 5: public int Quantity { get; set; } 6: public decimal UnitPrice { get; set; } 7: } 8:   9: public class Totals 10: { 11: public decimal SubTotal { get; set; } 12: public decimal Tax { get; set; } 13: public decimal Total { get; set; } 14: } 15:   16: public class Basket 17: { 18: public List<Product> Products { get; set; } 19: public Totals Totals { get; set;} 20: } The view looks as below:  1: <h2>Shopping Cart</h2> 2:   3: <% using(Html.BeginForm()) { %> 4: 5: <h3>Products</h3> 6: <% for (int i = 0; i < Model.Products.Count; i++) 7: { %> 8: <div style="width: 100px;float:left;">Id</div> 9: <div style="width: 100px;float:left;"> 10: <%= Html.TextBox("ID", Model.Products[i].Id) %> 11: </div> 12: <div style="clear:both;"></div> 13: <div style="width: 100px;float:left;">Name</div> 14: <div style="width: 100px;float:left;"> 15: <%= Html.TextBox("Name", Model.Products[i].Name) %> 16: </div> 17: <div style="clear:both;"></div> 18: <div style="width: 100px;float:left;">Quantity</div> 19: <div style="width: 100px;float:left;"> 20: <%= Html.TextBox("Quantity", Model.Products[i].Quantity)%> 21: </div> 22: <div style="clear:both;"></div> 23: <div style="width: 100px;float:left;">Unit Price</div> 24: <div style="width: 100px;float:left;"> 25: <%= Html.TextBox("UnitPrice", Model.Products[i].UnitPrice)%> 26: </div> 27: <div style="clear:both;"><hr /></div> 28: <% } %> 29: 30: <h3>Totals</h3> 31: <div style="width: 100px;float:left;">Sub Total</div> 32: <div style="width: 100px;float:left;"> 33: <%= Html.TextBox("SubTotal", Model.Totals.SubTotal)%> 34: </div> 35: <div style="clear:both;"></div> 36: <div style="width: 100px;float:left;">Tax</div> 37: <div style="width: 100px;float:left;"> 38: <%= Html.TextBox("Tax", Model.Totals.Tax)%> 39: </div> 40: <div style="clear:both;"></div> 41: <div style="width: 100px;float:left;">Total</div> 42: <div style="width: 100px;float:left;"> 43: <%= Html.TextBox("Total", Model.Totals.Total)%> 44: </div> 45: <div style="clear:both;"></div> 46: <p /> 47: <input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Submit" /> 48: <% } %> .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; } .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; } Nothing fancy, just a bunch of div’s containing textboxes and a submit button. Just make note that the textboxes have the same name as the property they are going to display. Yea, yea, I know. I’m displaying unit price as a textbox instead of a label, but that’s beside the point (and trust me, this will not be how it’ll look on the production site!!). The way my controller works is that initially two dummy products are added to the basked object and the Totals are calculated based on what products were added in what quantities and their respective unit price. So when the page loads in edit mode, where the user can change the quantity and hit the submit button. In the ‘post’ version of the action method, the Totals get recalculated and the new total will be displayed on the screen. Here’s the code: 1: public ActionResult Index() 2: { 3: Product product1 = new Product 4: { 5: Id = 1, 6: Name = "Product 1", 7: Quantity = 2, 8: UnitPrice = 200m 9: }; 10:   11: Product product2 = new Product 12: { 13: Id = 2, 14: Name = "Product 2", 15: Quantity = 1, 16: UnitPrice = 150m 17: }; 18:   19: List<Product> products = new List<Product> { product1, product2 }; 20:   21: Basket basket = new Basket 22: { 23: Products = products, 24: Totals = ComputeTotals(products) 25: }; 26: return View(basket); 27: } 28:   29: [HttpPost] 30: public ActionResult Index(Basket basket) 31: { 32: basket.Totals = ComputeTotals(basket.Products); 33: return View(basket); 34: } .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; } That’s that. Now I run the app, I see two products with the totals section below them. I look at the view source and I see that the input controls have the right ID, the right name and the right value as well. 1: <input id="ID" name="ID" type="text" value="1" /> 2: <input id="Name" name="Name" type="text" value="Product 1" /> 3: ... 4: <input id="ID" name="ID" type="text" value="2" /> 5: <input id="Name" name="Name" type="text" value="Product 2" /> .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; } So just as a regular user would do, I change the quantity value of one of the products and hit the submit button. The ‘post’ version of the Index method gets called and I had put a break-point on line 32 in the above snippet. When I hovered my mouse on the ‘basked’ object, happily assuming that the object would be all bound and ready for use, I was surprised to see both basket.Products and basket.Totals were null. Huh? A little research and I found out that the reason the DefaultModelBinder could not do its job is because of a naming mismatch on the input controls. What I mean is that when you have to bind to a custom .net type, you need more than just the property name. You need to pass a qualified name to the name property of the input control. I modified my view and the emitted code looked as below: 1: <input id="Product_Name" name="Product.Name" type="text" value="Product 1" /> 2: ... 3: <input id="Product_Name" name="Product.Name" type="text" value="Product 2" /> 4: ... 5: <input id="Totals_SubTotal" name="Totals.SubTotal" type="text" value="550" /> .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; } Now, I update the quantity and hit the submit button and I see that the Totals object is populated, but the Products list is still null. Once again I went: ‘Hmm.. time for more research’. I found out that the way to do this is to provide the name as: 1: <%= Html.TextBox(string.Format("Products[{0}].ID", i), Model.Products[i].Id) %> 2: <!-- this will be rendered as --> 3: <input id="Products_0__ID" name="Products[0].ID" type="text" value="1" /> .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; } It was only now that I was able to see both the products and the totals being properly bound in the ‘post’ action method. Somehow, I feel this is kinda ‘clunky’ way of doing things. Seems like people at MS felt in a similar way and offered us a much cleaner way to solve this issue. The simple solution is that instead of using a Textbox, we can either use a TextboxFor or an EditorFor helper method. This one directly spits out the name of the input property as ‘Products[0].ID and so on. Cool right? I totally fell for this and changed my UI to contain EditorFor helper method. At this point, I ran the application, changed the quantity field and pressed the submit button. Of course my basket object parameter in my action method was correctly bound after these changes. I let the app complete the rest of the lines in the action method. When the page finally rendered, I did see that the quantity was changed to what I entered before the post. But, wait a minute, the totals section did not reflect the changes and showed the old values. My status: COMPLETELY PUZZLED! Just to recap, this is what my ‘post’ Index method looked like: 1: [HttpPost] 2: public ActionResult Index(Basket basket) 3: { 4: basket.Totals = ComputeTotals(basket.Products); 5: return View(basket); 6: } .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; } A careful debug confirmed that the basked.Products[0].Quantity showed the updated value and the ComputeTotals() method also returns the correct totals. But still when I passed this basket object, it ended up showing the old totals values only. I began playing a bit with the code and my first guess was that the input controls got their values from the ModelState object. For those who don’t know, the ModelState is a temporary storage area that ASP.NET MVC uses to retain incoming attempted values plus binding and validation errors. Also, the fact that input controls populate the values using data taken from: Previously attempted values recorded in the ModelState["name"].Value.AttemptedValue Explicitly provided value (<%= Html.TextBox("name", "Some value") %>) ViewData, by calling ViewData.Eval("name") FYI: ViewData dictionary takes precedence over ViewData's Model properties – read more here. These two indicators led to my guess. It took me quite some time, but finally I hit this post where Brad brilliantly explains why this is the preferred behavior. My guess was right and I, accordingly modified my code to reflect the following way: 1: [HttpPost] 2: public ActionResult Index(Basket basket) 3: { 4: // read the following posts to see why the ModelState 5: // needs to be cleared before passing it the view 6: // http://forums.asp.net/t/1535846.aspx 7: // http://forums.asp.net/p/1527149/3687407.aspx 8: if (ModelState.IsValid) 9: { 10: ModelState.Clear(); 11: } 12:   13: basket.Totals = ComputeTotals(basket.Products); 14: return View(basket); 15: } .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; } What this does is that in the case where your ModelState IS valid, it clears the dictionary. This enables the values to be read from the model directly and not from the ModelState. So the verdict is this: If you need to pass other parameters (like html attributes and the like) to your input control, use 1: <%= Html.TextBox(string.Format("Products[{0}].ID", i), Model.Products[i].Id) %> .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; } Since, in EditorFor, there is no direct and simple way of passing this information to the input control. If you don’t have to pass any such ‘extra’ piece of information to the control, then go the EditorFor way. The code used in the post can be found here.

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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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• How to shoot yourself in the foot (DO NOT Read in the office)

  - by TATWORTH

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TATWORTH/archive/2013/06/21/how-to-shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-do-not-read.aspxLet me make it absolutely clear - the following is:merely collated by your Geek from http://www.codeproject.com/Lounge.aspx?msg=3917012#xx3917012xxvery, very very funny so you read it in the presence of others at your own riskso here is the list - you have been warned!C You shoot yourself in the foot.   C++ You accidently create a dozen instances of yourself and shoot them all in the foot. Providing emergency medical assistance is impossible since you can't tell which are bitwise copies and which are just pointing at others and saying "That's me, over there."   FORTRAN You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out of toes, then you read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out of bullets, you continue anyway because you have no exception-handling facility.   Modula-2 After realizing that you can't actually accomplish anything in this language, you shoot yourself in the head.   COBOL USEing a COLT 45 HANDGUN, AIM gun at LEG.FOOT, THEN place ARM.HAND.FINGER on HANDGUN.TRIGGER and SQUEEZE. THEN return HANDGUN to HOLSTER. CHECK whether shoelace needs to be retied.   Lisp You shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds...   BASIC Shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol. On big systems, continue until entire lower body is waterlogged.   Forth Foot yourself in the shoot.   APL You shoot yourself in the foot; then spend all day figuring out how to do it in fewer characters.   Pascal The compiler won't let you shoot yourself in the foot.   Snobol If you succeed, shoot yourself in the left foot. If you fail, shoot yourself in the right foot.   HyperTalk Put the first bullet of the gun into foot left of leg of you. Answer the result.   Prolog You tell your program you want to be shot in the foot. The program figures out how to do it, but the syntax doesn't allow it to explain.   370 JCL You send your foot down to MIS with a 4000-page document explaining how you want it to be shot. Three years later, your foot comes back deep-fried.   FORTRAN-77 You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out of toes, then you read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out of bullets, you continue anyway because you still can't do exception-processing.   Modula-2 (alternative) You perform a shooting on what might be currently a foot with what might be currently a bullet shot by what might currently be a gun.   BASIC (compiled) You shoot yourself in the foot with a BB using a SCUD missile launcher.   Visual Basic You'll really only appear to have shot yourself in the foot, but you'll have so much fun doing it that you won't care.   Forth (alternative) BULLET DUP3 * GUN LOAD FOOT AIM TRIGGER PULL BANG! EMIT DEAD IF DROP ROT THEN (This takes about five bytes of memory, executes in two to ten clock cycles on any processor and can be used to replace any existing function of the language as well as in any future words). (Welcome to bottom up programming - where you, too, can perform compiler pre-processing instead of writing code)   APL (alternative) You hear a gunshot and there's a hole in your foot, but you don't remember enough linear algebra to understand what happened. or @#&^$%&%^ foot   Pascal (alternative) Same as Modula-2 except that the bullet is not the right type for the gun and your hand is blown off.   Snobol (alternative) You grab your foot with your hand, then rewrite your hand to be a bullet. The act of shooting the original foot then changes your hand/bullet into yet another foot (a left foot).   Prolog (alternative) You attempt to shoot yourself in the foot, but the bullet, failing to find its mark, backtracks to the gun, which then explodes in your face.   COMAL You attempt to shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol, but the bore is clogged, and the pressure build-up blows apart both the pistol and your hand. or draw_pistol aim_at_foot(left) pull_trigger hop(swearing)   Scheme As Lisp, but none of the other appendages are aware of this happening.   Algol You shoot yourself in the foot with a musket. The musket is aesthetically fascinating and the wound baffles the adolescent medic in the emergency room.   Ada If you are dumb enough to actually use this language, the United States Department of Defense will kidnap you, stand you up in front of a firing squad and tell the soldiers, "Shoot at the feet." or The Department of Defense shoots you in the foot after offering you a blindfold and a last cigarette. or After correctly packaging your foot, you attempt to concurrently load the gun, pull the trigger, scream and shoot yourself in the foot. When you try, however, you discover that your foot is of the wrong type. or After correctly packing your foot, you attempt to concurrently load the gun, pull the trigger, scream, and confidently aim at your foot knowing it is safe. However the cordite in the round does an Unchecked Conversion, fires and shoots you in the foot anyway.   Eiffel   You create a GUN object, two FOOT objects and a BULLET object. The GUN passes both the FOOT objects a reference to the BULLET. The FOOT objects increment their hole counts and forget about the BULLET. A little demon then drives a garbage truck over your feet and grabs the bullet (both of it) on the way. Smalltalk You spend so much time playing with the graphics and windowing system that your boss shoots you in the foot, takes away your workstation and makes you develop in COBOL on a character terminal. or You send the message shoot to gun, with selectors bullet and myFoot. A window pops up saying Gunpowder doesNotUnderstand: spark. After several fruitless hours spent browsing the methods for Trigger, FiringPin and IdealGas, you take the easy way out and create ShotFoot, a subclass of Foot with an additional instance variable bulletHole. Object Oriented Pascal You perform a shooting on what might currently be a foot with what might currently be a bullet fired from what might currently be a gun.   PL/I You consume all available system resources, including all the offline bullets. The Data Processing & Payroll Department doubles its size, triples its budget, acquires four new mainframes and drops the original one on your foot. Postscript foot bullets 6 locate loadgun aim gun shoot showpage or It takes the bullet ten minutes to travel from the gun to your foot, by which time you're long since gone out to lunch. The text comes out great, though.   PERL You stab yourself in the foot repeatedly with an incredibly large and very heavy Swiss Army knife. or You pick up the gun and begin to load it. The gun and your foot begin to grow to huge proportions and the world around you slows down, until the gun fires. It makes a tiny hole, which you don't feel. Assembly Language You crash the OS and overwrite the root disk. The system administrator arrives and shoots you in the foot. After a moment of contemplation, the administrator shoots himself in the foot and then hops around the room rabidly shooting at everyone in sight. or You try to shoot yourself in the foot only to discover you must first reinvent the gun, the bullet, and your foot.or The bullet travels to your foot instantly, but it took you three weeks to load the round and aim the gun.   BCPL You shoot yourself somewhere in the leg -- you can't get any finer resolution than that. Concurrent Euclid You shoot yourself in somebody else's foot.   Motif You spend days writing a UIL description of your foot, the trajectory, the bullet and the intricate scrollwork on the ivory handles of the gun. When you finally get around to pulling the trigger, the gun jams.   Powerbuilder While attempting to load the gun you discover that the LoadGun system function is buggy; as a work around you tape the bullet to the outside of the gun and unsuccessfully attempt to fire it with a nail. In frustration you club your foot with the butt of the gun and explain to your client that this approximates the functionality of shooting yourself in the foot and that the next version of Powerbuilder will fix it.   Standard ML By the time you get your code to typecheck, you're using a shoot to foot yourself in the gun.   MUMPS You shoot 583149 AK-47 teflon-tipped, hollow-point, armour-piercing bullets into even-numbered toes on odd-numbered feet of everyone in the building -- with one line of code. Three weeks later you shoot yourself in the head rather than try to modify that line.   Java You locate the Gun class, but discover that the Bullet class is abstract, so you extend it and write the missing part of the implementation. Then you implement the ShootAble interface for your foot, and recompile the Foot class. The interface lets the bullet call the doDamage method on the Foot, so the Foot can damage itself in the most effective way. Now you run the program, and call the doShoot method on the instance of the Gun class. First the Gun creates an instance of Bullet, which calls the doFire method on the Gun. The Gun calls the hit(Bullet) method on the Foot, and the instance of Bullet is passed to the Foot. But this causes an IllegalHitByBullet exception to be thrown, and you die.   Unix You shoot yourself in the foot or % ls foot.c foot.h foot.o toe.c toe.o % rm * .o rm: .o: No such file or directory % ls %   370 JCL (alternative) You shoot yourself in the head just thinking about it.   DOS JCL You first find the building you're in in the phone book, then find your office number in the corporate phone book. Then you have to write this down, then describe, in cubits, your exact location, in relation to the door (right hand side thereof). Then you need to write down the location of the gun (loading it is a proprietary utility), then you load it, and the COBOL program, and run them, and, with luck, it may be run tonight.   VMS   $ MOUNT/DENSITY=.45/LABEL=BULLET/MESSAGE="BYE" BULLET::BULLET$GUN SYS$BULLET $ SET GUN/LOAD/SAFETY=OFF/SIGHT=NONE/HAND=LEFT/CHAMBER=1/ACTION=AUTOMATIC/ LOG/ALL/FULL SYS$GUN_3$DUA3:[000000]GUN.GNU $ SHOOT/LOG/AUTO SYS$GUN SYS$SYSTEM:[FOOT]FOOT.FOOT   %DCL-W-ACTIMAGE, error activating image GUN -CLI-E-IMGNAME, image file $3$DUA240:[GUN]GUN.EXE;1 -IMGACT-F-NOTNATIVE, image is not an OpenVMS Alpha AXP image or %SYS-F-FTSHT, foot shot (fifty lines of traceback omitted) sh,csh, etc You can't remember the syntax for anything, so you spend five hours reading manual pages, then your foot falls asleep. You shoot the computer and switch to C.   Apple System 7 Double click the gun icon and a window giving a selection for guns, target areas, plus balloon help with medical remedies, and assorted sound effects. Click "shoot" button and a small bomb appears with note "Error of Type 1 has occurred."   Windows 3.1 Double click the gun icon and wait. Eventually a window opens giving a selection for guns, target areas, plus balloon help with medical remedies, and assorted sound effects. Click "shoot" button and a small box appears with note "Unable to open Shoot.dll, check that path is correct."   Windows 95 Your gun is not compatible with this OS and you must buy an upgrade and install it before you can continue. Then you will be informed that you don't have enough memory.   CP/M I remember when shooting yourself in the foot with a BB gun was a big deal.   DOS You finally found the gun, but can't locate the file with the foot for the life of you.   MSDOS You shoot yourself in the foot, but can unshoot yourself with add-on software.   Access You try to point the gun at your foot, but it shoots holes in all your Borland distribution diskettes instead.   Paradox Not only can you shoot yourself in the foot, your users can too.   dBase You squeeze the trigger, but the bullet moves so slowly that by the time your foot feels the pain, you've forgotten why you shot yourself anyway. or You buy a gun. Bullets are only available from another company and are promised to work so you buy them. Then you find out that the next version of the gun is the one scheduled to actually shoot bullets.   DBase IV, V1.0 You pull the trigger, but it turns out that the gun was a poorly designed hand grenade and the whole building blows up.   SQL You cut your foot off, send it out to a service bureau and when it returns, it has a hole in it but will no longer fit the attachment at the end of your leg. or Insert into Foot Select Bullet >From Gun.Hand Where Chamber = 'LOADED' And Trigger = 'PULLED'   Clipper You grab a bullet, get ready to insert it in the gun so that you can shoot yourself in the foot and discover that the gun that the bullets fits has not yet been built, but should be arriving in the mail _REAL_SOON_NOW_. Oracle The menus for coding foot_shooting have not been implemented yet and you can't do foot shooting in SQL.   English You put your foot in your mouth, then bite it off. (For those who don't know, English is a McDonnell Douglas/PICK query language which allegedly requires 110% of system resources to run happily.) Revelation [an implementation of the PICK Operating System] You'll be able to shoot yourself in the foot just as soon as you figure out what all these bullets are for.   FlagShip Starting at the top of your head, you aim the gun at yourself repeatedly until, half an hour later, the gun is finally pointing at your foot and you pull the trigger. A new foot with a hole in it appears but you can't work out how to get rid of the old one and your gun doesn't work anymore.   FidoNet You put your foot in your mouth, then echo it internationally.   PicoSpan [a UNIX-based computer conferencing system] You can't shoot yourself in the foot because you're not a host. or (host variation) Whenever you shoot yourself in the foot, someone opens a topic in policy about it.   Internet You put your foot in your mouth, shoot it, then spam the bullet so that everybody gets shot in the foot.   troff rmtroff -ms -Hdrwp | lpr -Pwp2 & .*place bullet in footer .B .NR FT +3i .in 4 .bu Shoot! .br .sp .in -4 .br .bp NR HD -2i .*   Genetic Algorithms You create 10,000 strings describing the best way to shoot yourself in the foot. By the time the program produces the optimal solution, humans have evolved wings and the problem is moot.   CSP (Communicating Sequential Processes) You only fail to shoot everything that isn't your foot.   MS-SQL Server MS-SQL Server’s gun comes pre-loaded with an unlimited supply of Teflon coated bullets, and it only has two discernible features: the muzzle and the trigger. If that wasn't enough, MS-SQL Server also puts the gun in your hand, applies local anesthetic to the skin of your forefinger and stitches it to the gun's trigger. Meanwhile, another process has set up a spinal block to numb your lower body. It will then proceeded to surgically remove your foot, cryogenically freeze it for preservation, and attach it to the muzzle of the gun so that no matter where you aim, you will shoot your foot. In order to avoid shooting yourself in the foot, you need to unstitch your trigger finger, remove your foot from the muzzle of the gun, and have it surgically reattached. Then you probably want to get some crutches and go out to buy a book on SQL Server Performance Tuning.   Sybase Sybase's gun requires assembly, and you need to go out and purchase your own clip and bullets to load the gun. Assembly is complicated by the fact that Sybase has hidden the gun behind a big stack of reference manuals, but it hasn't told you where that stack is. While you were off finding the gun, assembling it, buying bullets, etc., Sybase was also busy surgically removing your foot and cryogenically freezing it for preservation. Instead of attaching it to the muzzle of the gun, though, it packed your foot on dry ice and sent it UPS-Ground to an unnamed hookah bar somewhere in the middle east. In order to shoot your foot, you must modify your gun with a GPS system for targeting and hire some guy named "Indy" to find the hookah bar and wire the coordinates back to you. By this time, you've probably become so daunted at the tasks stand between you and shooting your foot that you hire a guy who's read all the books on Sybase to help you shoot your foot. If you're lucky, he'll be smart enough both to find your foot and to stop you from shooting it.   Magic software You spend 1 week looking up the correct syntax for GUN. When you find it, you realise that GUN will not let you shoot in your own foot. It will allow you to shoot almost anything but your foot. You then decide to build your own gun. You can't use the standard barrel since this will only allow for standard bullets, which will not fire if the barrel is pointed at your foot. After four weeks, you have created your own custom gun. It blows up in your hand without warning, because you failed to initialise the safety catch and it doesn't know whether the initial state is "0", 0, NULL, "ZERO", 0.0, 0,0, "0.0", or "0,00". You fix the problem with your remaining hand by nesting 12 safety catches, and then decide to build the gun without safety catch. You then shoot the management and retire to a happy life where you code in languages that will allow you to shoot your foot in under 10 days.FirefoxLets you shoot yourself in as many feet as you'd like, while using multiple great addons! IEA moving target in terms of standard ammunition size and doesn't always work properly with non-Microsoft ammunition, so sometimes you shoot something other than your foot. However, it's the corporate world's standard foot-shooting apparatus. Hackers seem to enjoy rigging websites up to trigger cascading foot-shooting failures. Windows 98 About the same as Windows 95 in terms of overall bullet capacity and triggering mechanisms. Includes updated DirectShot API. A new version was released later on to support USB guns, Windows 98 SE.WPF:You get your baseball glove and a ball and you head out to your backyard, where you throw balls to your pitchback. Then your unkempt-haired-cargo-shorts-and-sandals-with-white-socks-wearing neighbor uses XAML to sculpt your arm into a gun, the ball into a bullet and the pitchback into your foot. By now, however, only the neighbor can get it to work and he's only around from 6:30 PM - 3:30 AM. LOGO: You very carefully lay out the trajectory of the bullet. Then you start the gun, which fires very slowly. You walk precisely to the point where the bullet will travel and wait, but just before it gets to you, your class time is up and one of the other kids has already used the system to hack into Sony's PS3 network. Flash: Someone has designed a beautiful-looking gun that anyone can shoot their feet with for free. It weighs six hundred pounds. All kinds of people are shooting themselves in the feet, and sending the link to everyone else so that they can too. That is, except for the criminals, who are all stealing iOS devices that the gun won't work with.APL: Its (mostly) all greek to me. Lisp: Place ((gun in ((hand sight (foot then shoot))))) (Lots of Insipid Stupid Parentheses)Apple OS/X and iOS Once a year, Steve Jobs returns from sick leave to tell millions of unwavering fans how they will be able to shoot themselves in the foot differently this year. They retweet and blog about it ad nauseam, and wait in line to be the first to experience "shoot different".Windows ME Usually fails, even at shooting you in the foot. Yo dawg, I heard you like shooting yourself in the foot. So I put a gun in your gun, so you can shoot yourself in the foot while you shoot yourself in the foot. (Okay, I'm not especially proud of this joke.) Windows 2000 Now you really do have to log in, before you are allowed to shoot yourself in the foot.Windows XPYou thought you learned your lesson: Don't use Windows ME. Then, along came this new creature, built on top of Windows NT! So you spend the next couple days installing antivirus software, patches and service packs, just so you can get that driver to install, and then proceed to shoot yourself in the foot. Windows Vista Newer! Glossier! Shootier! Windows 7 The bullets come out a lot smoother. Active Directory Each bullet now has an attached Bullet Identifier, and can be uniquely identified. Policies can be applied to dictate fragmentation, and the gun will occasionally have a confusing delay after the trigger has been pulled. PythonYou try to use import foot; foot.shoot() only to realize that's only available in 3.0, to which you can't yet upgrade from 2.7 because of all those extension libs lacking support. Solaris Shoots best when used on SPARC hardware, but still runs the trigger GUI under Java. After weeks of learning the appropriate STOP command to prevent the trigger from automatically being pressed on boot, you think you've got it under control. Then the one time you ever use dtrace, it hits a bug that fires the gun. MySQL The feature that allows you to shoot yourself in the foot has been in development for about 6 years, and they are adding it into the next version, which is coming out REAL SOON NOW, promise! But you can always check it out of source control and try it yourself (just not in any environment where data integrity is important because it will probably explode.) PostgreSQLAllows you to have a smug look on your face while you shoot yourself in the foot, because those MySQL guys STILL don't have that feature. NoSQL Barrel? Who needs a barrel? Just put the bullet on your foot, and strike it with a hammer. See? It's so much simpler and more efficient that way. You can even strike multiple bullets in one swing if you swing with a good enough arc, because hammers are easy to use. Getting them to synchronize is a little difficult, though.Eclipse There are about a dozen different packages for shooting yourself in the foot, with weird interdependencies on outdated components. Once you finally navigate the morass and get one installed, you then have something to look at while you shoot yourself in the foot with that package: You can watch the screen redraw.Outlook Makes it really easy to let everyone know you shot yourself in the foot!Shooting yourself in the foot using delegates.You really need to shoot yourself in the foot but you hate firearms (you don't want any dependency on the specifics of shooting) so you delegate it to somebody else. You don't care how it is done as long is shooting your foot. You can do it asynchronously in case you know you may faint so you are called back/slapped in the face by your shooter/friend (or background worker) when everything is done.C#You prepare the gun and the bullet, carefully modeling all of the physics of a bullet traveling through a foot. Just before you're about to pull the trigger, you stumble on System.Windows.BodyParts.Foot.ShootAt(System.Windows.Firearms.IGun gun) in the extended framework, realize you just wasted the entire afternoon, and shoot yourself in the head.PHP<?phprequire("foot_safety_check.php");?><!DOCTYPE HTML><html><head> <!--Lower!--><title>Shooting me in the foot</title></head> <body> <!--LOWER!!!--><leg> <!--OK, I made this one up...--><footer><?php echo (dungSift($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], "ie"))?("Your foot is safe, but you might want to wear a hard hat!"):("<div class=\"shot\">BANG!</div>"); ?></footer></leg> </body> </html>

  Read the article

• "Error in the Site Data Web Service." when performing crawl

  - by Janis Veinbergs

  Installed SharePoint Services v3 (SP2, october 2009 cumulative updates, Language Pack), attached to a content database I had previously (all works). Installed Search server 2008 Express (with language pack) on top of WSS and crawl does not work. However it works for newly created web application + database. Was playing around with accounts, permissions to try get it working. Currently I have WSS_Crawler account with such permissions: Office Search Server runs with WSS_Crawler account Config database has read permissions for WSS_Crawler Content database has read permissions for WSS_Crawler WSS_Crawler is owner of search database. Added WSS_Crawler to SQL server browser user group and administrator Yes, i'v given more permissions than needed, but it doesn't even work with that and i don't know if its permission problem or what. Crawl log says there is Error in the Site Data Web Service., nothing more. There were known issues with a similar error: Error in the Site Data Web Service. (Value does not fall within the expected range.), but this is not the case as thats an old issue and i hope it has been included in SP2... Logs are from olders to newest (descending order). They don't appear to be very helpful. Crawl log http://serveris Crawled Local Office SharePoint Server sites 3/15/2010 9:39 AM sts3://serveris Crawled Local Office SharePoint Server sites 3/15/2010 9:39 AM sts3://serveris/contentdbid={55180cfa-9d2d-46e4... Crawled Local Office SharePoint Server sites 3/15/2010 9:39 AM http://serveris/test Error in the Site Data Web Service. Local Office SharePoint Server sites 3/15/2010 9:39 AM http://serveris Error in the Site Data Web Service. Local Office SharePoint Server sites 3/15/2010 9:39 AM EventLog No errors in EventLog, just some Information events that Office Server Search provides The search service started. Successfully stored the application configuration registry snapshot in the database. Context: Application 'SharedServices Component: da1288b2-4109-4219-8c0c-3a22802eb842 Catalog: Portal_Content. A master merge was started due to an external request. Component: da1288b2-4109-4219-8c0c-3a22802eb842 A master merge has completed for catalog Portal_Content. Component: da1288b2-4109-4219-8c0c-3a22802eb842 Catalog: AnchorProject. A master merge was started due to an external request. Component: da1288b2-4109-4219-8c0c-3a22802eb842 A master merge has completed for catalog AnchorProject. ULS Log Just some information, but no exceptions, unexpected errors 03/15/2010 09:03:28.28 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x0E8C Search Server Common GatherStatus 0 Monitorable Insert crawl 771 to inprogress queue hr 0x00000000 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:6591 03/15/2010 09:03:28.28 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x0E8C Search Server Common GatherStatus 0 Monitorable Request Start Crawl 1, project Portal_Content, crawl 771 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:2875 03/15/2010 09:03:28.28 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x0E8C Search Server Common GatherStatus 0 Monitorable Advise status change 1, project Portal_Content, crawl 771 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:4853 03/15/2010 09:03:28.28 w3wp.exe (0x1D98) 0x0958 Search Server Common MS Search Administration 8wn6 Information A full crawl was started on 'Local Office SharePoint Server sites' by BALTICOVO\janis.veinbergs. 03/15/2010 09:03:28.43 mssdmn.exe (0x1750) 0x10F8 ULS Logging Unified Logging Service 8wsv High ULS Init Completed (mssdmn.exe, Microsoft.Office.Server.Native.dll) 03/15/2010 09:03:30.48 mssdmn.exe (0x1750) 0x09C0 Search Server Common MS Search Indexing 8z0v Medium Create CCache 03/15/2010 09:03:30.56 mssdmn.exe (0x1750) 0x09C0 Search Server Common MS Search Indexing 8z0z Medium Create CUserCatalogCache 03/15/2010 09:03:32.06 w3wp.exe (0x1D98) 0x0958 Search Server Common MS Search Administration 90ge Medium SQL: dbo.proc_MSS_PropagationGetQueryServers 03/15/2010 09:03:32.09 w3wp.exe (0x1D98) 0x0958 Search Server Common MS Search Administration 7phq High GetProtocolConfigHelper failed in GetNotesInterface(). 03/15/2010 09:03:34.26 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x16A4 Search Server Common GatherStatus 0 Monitorable Advise status change 12, project Portal_Content, crawl -1 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:4853 03/15/2010 09:03:35.92 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x16A4 Search Server Common GatherStatus 0 Monitorable Advise status change 12, project Portal_Content, crawl -1 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:4853 03/15/2010 09:03:37.32 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x16A4 Search Server Common GatherStatus 0 Monitorable Advise status change 12, project Portal_Content, crawl -1 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:4853 03/15/2010 09:03:37.23 mssdmn.exe (0x1750) 0x1850 Search Server Common MS Search Indexing 8z14 Medium Test TRACE (NULL):(null), (NULL)(null), (CrLf): , end 03/15/2010 09:03:39.04 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x16A4 Search Server Common GatherStatus 0 Monitorable Advise status change 12, project Portal_Content, crawl -1 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:4853 03/15/2010 09:03:40.98 mssdmn.exe (0x1750) 0x0B24 Search Server Common MS Search Indexing 7how Monitorable GetWebDefaultPage fail. error 2147755542, strWebUrl http://serveris 03/15/2010 09:03:41.87 mssdmn.exe (0x1750) 0x1260 Search Server Common PHSts 0 Monitorable CSTS3Accessor::GetSubWebListItemAccessURL GetAccessURL failed: Return error to caller, hr=80042616 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\protocols\sts3\sts3acc.cxx Line:505 03/15/2010 09:03:41.87 mssdmn.exe (0x1750) 0x1260 Search Server Common PHSts 0 Monitorable CSTS3Accessor::Init: GetSubWebListItemAccessURL failed. Return error to caller, hr=80042616 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\protocols\sts3\sts3acc.cxx Line:348 03/15/2010 09:03:41.87 mssdmn.exe (0x1750) 0x1260 Search Server Common PHSts 0 Monitorable CSTS3Accessor::Init fails, Url sts3://serveris/siteurl=test/siteid={390611b2-55f3-4a99-8600-778727177a28}/weburl=/webid={fb0e4bff-65d5-4ded-98d5-fd099456962b}, hr=80042616 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\protocols\sts3\sts3handler.cxx Line:243 03/15/2010 09:03:41.87 mssdmn.exe (0x1750) 0x1260 Search Server Common PHSts 0 Monitorable CSTS3Handler::CreateAccessorExB: Return error to caller, hr=80042616 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\protocols\sts3\sts3handler.cxx Line:261 03/15/2010 09:03:40.98 mssdmn.exe (0x1750) 0x1260 Search Server Common MS Search Indexing 7how Monitorable GetWebDefaultPage fail. error 2147755542, strWebUrl http://serveris/test 03/15/2010 09:03:41.90 mssdmn.exe (0x1750) 0x0B24 Search Server Common PHSts 0 Monitorable CSTS3Accessor::GetSubWebListItemAccessURL GetAccessURL failed: Return error to caller, hr=80042616 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\protocols\sts3\sts3acc.cxx Line:505 03/15/2010 09:03:41.90 mssdmn.exe (0x1750) 0x0B24 Search Server Common PHSts 0 Monitorable CSTS3Accessor::Init: GetSubWebListItemAccessURL failed. Return error to caller, hr=80042616 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\protocols\sts3\sts3acc.cxx Line:348 03/15/2010 09:03:41.90 mssdmn.exe (0x1750) 0x0B24 Search Server Common PHSts 0 Monitorable CSTS3Accessor::Init fails, Url sts3://serveris/siteurl=/siteid={505443fa-ef12-4f1e-a04b-d5450c939b78}/weburl=/webid={c5a4f8aa-9561-4527-9e1a-b3c23200f11c}, hr=80042616 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\protocols\sts3\sts3handler.cxx Line:243 03/15/2010 09:03:41.90 mssdmn.exe (0x1750) 0x0B24 Search Server Common PHSts 0 Monitorable CSTS3Handler::CreateAccessorExB: Return error to caller, hr=80042616 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\protocols\sts3\sts3handler.cxx Line:261 03/15/2010 09:03:43.26 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x0750 Search Server Common GatherStatus 0 Monitorable Advise status change 24, project Portal_Content, crawl 771 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:4853 03/15/2010 09:03:43.26 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x1804 Search Server Common GatherStatus 0 Monitorable Remove crawl 771 from inprogress queue - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:6722 03/15/2010 09:03:43.26 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x0750 Search Server Common GatherStatus 0 Monitorable Advise status change 12, project Portal_Content, crawl -1 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:4853 03/15/2010 09:03:44.65 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x1804 Search Server Common GatherStatus 0 Monitorable Insert crawl 772 to inprogress queue hr 0x00000000 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:6591 03/15/2010 09:03:44.65 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x1804 Search Server Common GatherStatus 0 Monitorable Request Start Crawl 0, project AnchorProject, crawl 772 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:2875 03/15/2010 09:03:44.65 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x1804 Search Server Common GatherStatus 0 Monitorable Advise status change 0, project AnchorProject, crawl 772 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:4853 03/15/2010 09:03:44.65 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x1804 Search Server Common GatherStatus 0 Monitorable Unlock Queue, project Portal_Content - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:2922 03/15/2010 09:03:44.82 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x1DD0 Search Server Common GathererSql 0 Monitorable CGatherer::LoadTransactionsFromCrawlInternal Flush anchor, count 0 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:4943 03/15/2010 09:03:44.95 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x0750 Search Server Common GatherStatus 0 Monitorable Advise status change 12, project AnchorProject, crawl -1 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:4853 03/15/2010 09:03:46.51 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x0750 Search Server Common GatherStatus 0 Monitorable Advise status change 12, project AnchorProject, crawl -1 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:4853 03/15/2010 09:03:46.39 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x1E4C Search Server Common GathererSql 0 Monitorable CGatherer::LoadTransactionsFromCrawlInternal Flush anchor, count 0 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:4943 03/15/2010 09:03:49.01 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x1C6C Search Server Common GathererSql 0 Monitorable CGatherer::LoadTransactionsFromCrawlInternal Flush anchor, count 1 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:4943 03/15/2010 09:03:49.87 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x155C Search Server Common GathererSql 0 Monitorable CGatherer::LoadTransactionsFromCrawlInternal Flush anchor, count 1 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:4943 03/15/2010 09:03:49.29 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x155C Search Server Common GathererSql 0 Monitorable CGatherer::LoadTransactionsFromCrawlInternal Flush anchor, count 1 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:4943 03/15/2010 09:03:49.53 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x155C Search Server Common GathererSql 0 Monitorable CGatherer::LoadTransactionsFromCrawlInternal Flush anchor, count 1 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:4943 03/15/2010 09:03:49.67 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x155C Search Server Common GathererSql 0 Monitorable CGatherer::LoadTransactionsFromCrawlInternal Flush anchor, count 1 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:4943 03/15/2010 09:03:49.82 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x155C Search Server Common GathererSql 0 Monitorable CGatherer::LoadTransactionsFromCrawlInternal Flush anchor, count 1 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:4943 03/15/2010 09:03:49.84 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x155C Search Server Common GathererSql 0 Monitorable CGatherer::LoadTransactionsFromCrawlInternal Flush anchor, count 0 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:4943 03/15/2010 09:03:49.89 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x155C Search Server Common GathererSql 0 Monitorable CGatherer::LoadTransactionsFromCrawlInternal Flush anchor, count 0 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:4943 03/15/2010 09:03:49.90 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x0750 Search Server Common GatherStatus 0 Monitorable Advise status change 12, project AnchorProject, crawl -1 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:4853 03/15/2010 09:03:51.42 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x1E4C Search Server Common GatherStatus 0 Monitorable Advise status change 4, project AnchorProject, crawl 772 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:4853 03/15/2010 09:03:51.00 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x1E4C Search Server Common GathererSql 0 Monitorable CGatherer::LoadTransactionsFromCrawlInternal Flush anchor, count 0 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:4943 03/15/2010 09:03:51.42 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x1CCC Search Server Common GatherStatus 0 Monitorable Remove crawl 772 from inprogress queue - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:6722 03/15/2010 09:03:52.96 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x1CCC Search Server Common GatherStatus 0 Monitorable Insert crawl 773 to inprogress queue hr 0x00000000 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:6591 03/15/2010 09:03:52.96 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x1CCC Search Server Common GatherStatus 0 Monitorable Request Start Crawl 0, project AnchorProject, crawl 773 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:2875 03/15/2010 09:03:55.29 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x1CCC Search Server Common GatherStatus 0 Monitorable Unlock Queue, project AnchorProject - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:2922 03/15/2010 09:03:55.29 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x1CCC Search Server Common GatherStatus 0 Monitorable Removed start crawl request from Queue 0, crawl 773 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:2942 03/15/2010 09:03:55.29 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x1CCC Search Server Common GatherStatus 0 Monitorable Request Start Crawl 0, project AnchorProject, crawl 773 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:2875 03/15/2010 09:03:55.29 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x1CCC Search Server Common GatherStatus 0 Monitorable Advise status change 0, project AnchorProject, crawl 773 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:4853 03/15/2010 09:03:55.37 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x1CCC Search Server Common GathererSql 0 Monitorable CGatherer::LoadTransactionsFromCrawlInternal Flush anchor, count 0 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:4943 03/15/2010 09:03:55.37 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x0750 Search Server Common GatherStatus 0 Monitorable Advise status change 12, project AnchorProject, crawl -1 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:4853 03/15/2010 09:03:56.71 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x1E4C Search Server Common GathererSql 0 Monitorable CGatherer::LoadTransactionsFromCrawlInternal Flush anchor, count 0 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:4943 03/15/2010 09:03:56.78 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x0750 Search Server Common GatherStatus 0 Monitorable Advise status change 12, project AnchorProject, crawl -1 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:4853 03/15/2010 09:03:58.40 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x155C Search Server Common GathererSql 0 Monitorable CGatherer::LoadTransactionsFromCrawlInternal Flush anchor, count 0 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:4943 03/15/2010 09:03:58.89 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x155C Search Server Common GatherStatus 0 Monitorable Advise status change 4, project AnchorProject, crawl 773 - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:4853 03/15/2010 09:03:58.89 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x1130 Search Server Common GatherStatus 0 Monitorable Remove crawl 773 from inprogress queue - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:6722 03/15/2010 09:03:58.89 mssearch.exe (0x1B2C) 0x1130 Search Server Common GatherStatus 0 Monitorable Unlock Queue, project AnchorProject - File:d:\office\source\search\search\gather\server\gatherobj.cxx Line:2922 What could be wrong here - any clues?

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• Slow NFS and GFS2 performance

  - by Tiago

  Recently I've designed and configured a 4 node cluster for a webapp that does lots of file handling. The cluster have been broken down into 2 main roles, webserver and storage. Each role is replicated to a second server using drbd in active/passive mode. The webserver does a NFS mount of the data directory of the storage server and the latter also has a webserver running to serve files to browser clients. In the storage servers I've created a GFS2 FS to hold the data which is wired to drbd. I've chose GFS2 mainly because the announced performance and also because the volume size which has to be pretty high. Since we entered production I've been facing two problems that I think are deeply connected. First of all, the NFS mount on the webservers keeps hanging for a minute or so and then resumes normal operations. By analyzing the logs I've found out that NFS stops answering for a while and outputs the following log lines: Oct 15 18:15:42 <server hostname> kernel: nfs: server active.storage.vlan not responding, still trying Oct 15 18:15:44 <server hostname> kernel: nfs: server active.storage.vlan not responding, still trying Oct 15 18:15:46 <server hostname> kernel: nfs: server active.storage.vlan not responding, still trying Oct 15 18:15:47 <server hostname> kernel: nfs: server active.storage.vlan not responding, still trying Oct 15 18:15:47 <server hostname> kernel: nfs: server active.storage.vlan not responding, still trying Oct 15 18:15:47 <server hostname> kernel: nfs: server active.storage.vlan not responding, still trying Oct 15 18:15:48 <server hostname> kernel: nfs: server active.storage.vlan not responding, still trying Oct 15 18:15:48 <server hostname> kernel: nfs: server active.storage.vlan not responding, still trying Oct 15 18:15:51 <server hostname> kernel: nfs: server active.storage.vlan not responding, still trying Oct 15 18:15:52 <server hostname> kernel: nfs: server active.storage.vlan not responding, still trying Oct 15 18:15:52 <server hostname> kernel: nfs: server active.storage.vlan not responding, still trying Oct 15 18:15:55 <server hostname> kernel: nfs: server active.storage.vlan not responding, still trying Oct 15 18:15:55 <server hostname> kernel: nfs: server active.storage.vlan not responding, still trying Oct 15 18:15:58 <server hostname> kernel: nfs: server active.storage.vlan OK Oct 15 18:15:59 <server hostname> kernel: nfs: server active.storage.vlan OK Oct 15 18:15:59 <server hostname> kernel: nfs: server active.storage.vlan OK Oct 15 18:15:59 <server hostname> kernel: nfs: server active.storage.vlan OK Oct 15 18:15:59 <server hostname> kernel: nfs: server active.storage.vlan OK Oct 15 18:15:59 <server hostname> kernel: nfs: server active.storage.vlan OK Oct 15 18:15:59 <server hostname> kernel: nfs: server active.storage.vlan OK Oct 15 18:15:59 <server hostname> kernel: nfs: server active.storage.vlan OK Oct 15 18:15:59 <server hostname> kernel: nfs: server active.storage.vlan OK Oct 15 18:15:59 <server hostname> kernel: nfs: server active.storage.vlan OK Oct 15 18:15:59 <server hostname> kernel: nfs: server active.storage.vlan OK Oct 15 18:15:59 <server hostname> kernel: nfs: server active.storage.vlan OK Oct 15 18:15:59 <server hostname> kernel: nfs: server active.storage.vlan OK In this case, the hang lasted for 16 seconds but sometimes it takes 1 or 2 minutes to resume normal operations. My first guess was this was happening due to heavy load of the NFS mount and that by increasing RPCNFSDCOUNT to a higher value, this would become stable. I've increased it several times and apparently, after a while, the logs started appearing less times. The value is now on 32. After further investigating the issue, I've came across a different hang, despite the NFS messages still appear in the logs. Sometimes, the GFS2 FS simply hangs which causes both the NFS and the storage webserver to serve files. Both stay hang for a while and then they resume normal operations. This hangs leaves no trace on client side (also leaves no NFS ... not responding messages) and, on the storage side, the log system appears to be empty, even though the rsyslogd is running. The nodes connect themselves through a 10Gbps non-dedicated connection but I don't think this is an issue because the GFS2 hang is confirmed but connecting directly to the active storage server. I've been trying to solve this for a while now and I've tried different NFS configuration options, before I've found out the GFS2 FS is also hanging. The NFS mount is exported as such: /srv/data/ <ip_address>(rw,async,no_root_squash,no_all_squash,fsid=25) And the NFS client mounts with: mount -o "async,hard,intr,wsize=8192,rsize=8192" active.storage.vlan:/srv/data /srv/data After some tests, these were the configurations that yielded more performance to the cluster. I am desperate to find a solution for this as the cluster is already in production mode and I need to fix this so that this hangs won't happen in the future and I don't really know for sure what and how I should be benchmarking. What I can tell is that this is happening due to heavy loads as I have tested the cluster earlier and this problems weren't happening at all. Please tell me if you need me to provide configuration details of the cluster, and which do you want me to post. As last resort I can migrate the files to a different FS but I need some solid pointers on whether this will solve this problems as the volume size is extremely large at this point. The servers are being hosted by a third-party enterprise and I don't have physical access to them. Best regards. EDIT 1: The servers are physical servers and their specs are: Webservers: Intel Bi Xeon E5606 2x4 2.13GHz 24GB DDR3 Intel SSD 320 2 x 120GB Raid 1 Storage: Intel i5 3550 3.3GHz 16GB DDR3 12 x 2TB SATA Initially there was a VRack setup between the servers but we've upgraded one of the storage servers to have more RAM and it wasn't inside the VRack. They connect through a shared 10Gbps connection between them. Please note that it is the same connection that is used for public access. They use a single IP (using IP Failover) to connect between them and to allow for a graceful failover. NFS is therefore over a public connection and not under any private network (it was before the upgrade, were the problem still existed). The firewall was configured and tested thoroughly but I disabled it for a while to see if the problem still occurred, and it did. From my knowledge the hosting provider isn't blocking or limiting the connection between either the servers and the public domain (at least under a given bandwidth consumption threshold that hasn't been reached yet). Hope this helps figuring out the problem. EDIT 2: Relevant software versions: CentOS 2.6.32-279.9.1.el6.x86_64 nfs-utils-1.2.3-26.el6.x86_64 nfs-utils-lib-1.1.5-4.el6.x86_64 gfs2-utils-3.0.12.1-32.el6_3.1.x86_64 kmod-drbd84-8.4.2-1.el6_3.elrepo.x86_64 drbd84-utils-8.4.2-1.el6.elrepo.x86_64 DRBD configuration on storage servers: #/etc/drbd.d/storage.res resource storage { protocol C; on <server1 fqdn> { device /dev/drbd0; disk /dev/vg_storage/LV_replicated; address <server1 ip>:7788; meta-disk internal; } on <server2 fqdn> { device /dev/drbd0; disk /dev/vg_storage/LV_replicated; address <server2 ip>:7788; meta-disk internal; } } NFS Configuration in storage servers: #/etc/sysconfig/nfs RPCNFSDCOUNT=32 STATD_PORT=10002 STATD_OUTGOING_PORT=10003 MOUNTD_PORT=10004 RQUOTAD_PORT=10005 LOCKD_UDPPORT=30001 LOCKD_TCPPORT=30001 (can there be any conflict in using the same port for both LOCKD_UDPPORT and LOCKD_TCPPORT?) GFS2 configuration: # gfs2_tool gettune <mountpoint> incore_log_blocks = 1024 log_flush_secs = 60 quota_warn_period = 10 quota_quantum = 60 max_readahead = 262144 complain_secs = 10 statfs_slow = 0 quota_simul_sync = 64 statfs_quantum = 30 quota_scale = 1.0000 (1, 1) new_files_jdata = 0 Storage network environment: eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr <mac address> inet addr:<ip address> Bcast:<bcast address> Mask:<ip mask> inet6 addr: <ip address> Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:957025127 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:1473338731 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:2630984979622 (2.3 TiB) TX bytes:1648430431523 (1.4 TiB) eth0:0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr <mac address> inet addr:<ip failover address> Bcast:<bcast address> Mask:<ip mask> UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 The IP addresses are statically assigned with the given network configurations: DEVICE="eth0" BOOTPROTO="static" HWADDR=<mac address> ONBOOT="yes" TYPE="Ethernet" IPADDR=<ip address> NETMASK=<net mask> and DEVICE="eth0:0" BOOTPROTO="static" HWADDR=<mac address> IPADDR=<ip failover> NETMASK=<net mask> ONBOOT="yes" BROADCAST=<bcast address> Hosts file to allow for a graceful NFS failover in conjunction with NFS option fsid=25 set on both storage servers: #/etc/hosts <storage ip failover address> active.storage.vlan <webserver ip failover address> active.service.vlan As you can see, packet errors are down to 0. I've also ran ping for a long time without any packet loss. MTU size is the normal 1500. As there is no VLan by now, this is the MTU used to communicate between servers. The webservers' network environment is similar. One thing I forgot to mention is that the storage servers handle ~200GB of new files each day through the NFS connection, which is a key point for me to think this is some kind of heavy load problem with either NFS or GFS2. If you need further configuration details please tell me. EDIT 3: Earlier today we had a major filesystem crash on the storage server. I couldn't get the details of the crash right away because the server stop responding. After the reboot, I noticed the filesystem was extremely slow, and I was not being able to serve a single file through either NFS or httpd, perhaps due to cache warming or so. Nevertheless, I've been monitoring the server closely and the following error came up in dmesg. The source of the problem is clearly GFS, which is waiting for a lock and ends up starving after a while. INFO: task nfsd:3029 blocked for more than 120 seconds. "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message. nfsd D 0000000000000000 0 3029 2 0x00000080 ffff8803814f79e0 0000000000000046 0000000000000000 ffffffff8109213f ffff880434c5e148 ffff880624508d88 ffff8803814f7960 ffffffffa037253f ffff8803815c1098 ffff8803814f7fd8 000000000000fb88 ffff8803815c1098 Call Trace: [<ffffffff8109213f>] ? wake_up_bit+0x2f/0x40 [<ffffffffa037253f>] ? gfs2_holder_wake+0x1f/0x30 [gfs2] [<ffffffff814ff42e>] __mutex_lock_slowpath+0x13e/0x180 [<ffffffff814ff2cb>] mutex_lock+0x2b/0x50 [<ffffffffa0379f21>] gfs2_log_reserve+0x51/0x190 [gfs2] [<ffffffffa0390da2>] gfs2_trans_begin+0x112/0x1d0 [gfs2] [<ffffffffa0369b05>] ? gfs2_dir_check+0x35/0xe0 [gfs2] [<ffffffffa0377943>] gfs2_createi+0x1a3/0xaa0 [gfs2] [<ffffffff8121aab1>] ? avc_has_perm+0x71/0x90 [<ffffffffa0383d1e>] gfs2_create+0x7e/0x1a0 [gfs2] [<ffffffffa037783f>] ? gfs2_createi+0x9f/0xaa0 [gfs2] [<ffffffff81188cf4>] vfs_create+0xb4/0xe0 [<ffffffffa04217d6>] nfsd_create_v3+0x366/0x4c0 [nfsd] [<ffffffffa0429703>] nfsd3_proc_create+0x123/0x1b0 [nfsd] [<ffffffffa041a43e>] nfsd_dispatch+0xfe/0x240 [nfsd] [<ffffffffa025a5d4>] svc_process_common+0x344/0x640 [sunrpc] [<ffffffff810602a0>] ? default_wake_function+0x0/0x20 [<ffffffffa025ac10>] svc_process+0x110/0x160 [sunrpc] [<ffffffffa041ab62>] nfsd+0xc2/0x160 [nfsd] [<ffffffffa041aaa0>] ? nfsd+0x0/0x160 [nfsd] [<ffffffff81091de6>] kthread+0x96/0xa0 [<ffffffff8100c14a>] child_rip+0xa/0x20 [<ffffffff81091d50>] ? kthread+0x0/0xa0 [<ffffffff8100c140>] ? child_rip+0x0/0x20

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