Search Results

Search found 17487 results on 700 pages for 'static members'.

Page 254/700 | < Previous Page | 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261  | Next Page >

• Thursday Community Keynote: "By the Community, For the Community"

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  Sharat Chander, JavaOne Community Chairperson, began Thursday's Community Keynote. As part of the morning’s theme of "By the Community, For the Community," Chander noted that 60% of the material at the 2012 JavaOne conference was presented by Java Community members. "So next year, when the call for papers starts, put-in your submissions," he urged.From there, Gary Frost, Principal Member of Technical Staff, AMD, expanded upon Sunday's Strategy Keynote exploration of Project Sumatra, an OpenJDK project targeted at bringing Java to heterogeneous computing platforms (which combine the CPU and the parallel processor of the GPU into a single piece of silicon). Sumatra entails enhancing the JVM to make maximum use of these advanced platforms. Within this development space, AMD created the Aparapi API, which converts Java bytecode into OpenCL for execution on such GPU devices. The Aparapi API was open sourced in September 2011.Whether it was zooming-in on a Mandelbrot set, "the game of life," or a swarm of 10,000 Dukes in a space-bound gravitational dance, Frost's demos, using an Aparapi/OpenCL implementation, produced stunningly faster display results. He indicated that the Java 9 timeframe is where they see Project Sumatra coming to ultimate fruition, employing the Lamdas of Java 8.Returning to the theme of the keynote, Donald Smith, Director, Java Product Management, Oracle, explored a mind map graphic demonstrating the importance of Community in terms of fostering innovation. "It's the sharing and mixing of culture, the diversity, and the rapid prototyping," he said. Within this topic, Smith, brought up a panel of representatives from Cloudera, Eclipse, Eucalyptus, Perrone Robotics, and Twitter--ideal manifestations of community and innovation in the world of Java.Marten Mickos, CEO, Eucalyptus Systems, explored his company's open source cloud software platform, written in Java, and used by gaming companies, technology companies, media companies, and more. Chris Aniszczyk, Operations Engineering,Twitter, noted the importance of the JVM in terms of their multiple-language development environment. Mike Olson, CEO, Cloudera, described his company's Apache Hadoop-based software, support, and training. Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director, Eclipse Foundation, noted that they have about 270 tools projects at Eclipse, with 267 of them written in Java. Milinkovich added that Eclipse will even be going into space in 2013, as part of the control software on various experiments aboard the International Space Station. Lastly, Paul Perrone, CEO, Perrone Robotics, detailed his company's robotics and automation software platform built 100% on Java, including Java SE and Java ME--"on rat, to cat, to elephant-sized systems." Milinkovic noted that communities are by nature so good at innovation because of their very openness--"The more open you make your innovation process, the more ideas are challenged, and the more developers are focused on justifying their choices all the way through the process."From there, Georges Saab, VP Development Java SE OpenJDK, continued the topic of innovation and helping the Java Community to "Make the Future Java." Martijn Verburg, representing the London Java Community (winner of a Duke's Choice Award 2012 for their activity in OpenJDK and JCP), soon joined Saab onstage. Verburg detailed the LJC's "Adopt a JSR" program--"to get day-to-day developers more involved in the innovation that's happening around them."  From its London launching pad, the innovative program has spread to Brazil, Morocco, Latvia, India, and more.Other active participants in the program joined Verburg onstage--Ben Evans, London Java Community; James Gough, Stackthread; Bruno Souza, SOUJava; Richard Warburton, jClarity; and Cecelia Borg, Oracle--OpenJDK Onboarding. Together, the group explored the goals and tasks inherent in the Adopt a JSR program--from organizing hack days (testing prototype implementations), to managing mailing lists and forums, to triaging issues, to evangelism—all with the goal of fostering greater community/developer involvement, but equally importantly, building better open standards. “Come join us, and make your ecosystem better!" urged Verburg.Paul Perrone returned to profile the latest in his company's robotics work around Java--including the AARDBOTS family of smaller robotic vehicles, running the Perrone MAX platform on top of the Java JVM. Perrone took his "Rumbles" four-wheeled robot out for a spin onstage--a roaming, ARM-based security-bot vehicle, complete with IR, ultrasonic, and "cliff" sensors (the latter, for the raised stage at JavaOne). As an ultimate window into the future of robotics, Perrone displayed a "head-set" controller--a sensor directed at the forehead to monitor brainwaves, for the someday-implementation of brain-to-robot control.Then, just when it seemed this might be the end of the day's futuristic offerings, a mystery voice from offstage pronounced "I've got some toys"--proving to be guest-visitor James Gosling, there to explore his cutting-edge work with Liquid Robotics. While most think of robots as something with wheels or arms or lasers, Gosling explained, the Liquid Robotics vehicle is an entirely new and innovative ocean-going 'bot. Looking like a floating surfboard, with an attached set of underwater wings, the autonomous devices roam the oceans using only the energy of ocean waves to propel them, and a single actuated rudder to steer. "We have to accomplish all guidance just by wiggling the rudder," Gosling said. The devices offer applications from self-installing weather buoy, to pollution monitoring station, to marine mammal monitoring device, to climate change data gathering, to even ocean life genomic sampling. The early versions of the vehicle used C code on very tiny industrial micro controllers, where they had to "count the bytes one at a time."  But the latest generation vehicles, which just hit the water a week or so ago, employ an ARM processor running Linux and the ARM version of JDK 7. Gosling explained that vehicle communication from remote locations is achieved via the Iridium satellite network. But because of the costs of this communication path, the data must be sent in very small bursts--using SBD short burst data. "It costs $1/kb, so that rules everything in the software design,” said Gosling. “If you were trying to stream a Netflix video over this, it would cost a million dollars a movie. …We don't have a 'big data' problem," he quipped. There are currently about 150 Liquid Robotics vehicles out traversing the oceans. Gosling demonstrated real time satellite tracking of several vehicles currently at sea, noting that Java is actually particularly good at AI applications--due to the language having garbage collection, which facilitates complex data structures. To close-out his time onstage, Gosling of course participated in the ceremonial Java tee-shirt toss out to the audience…In parting, Chander passed the JavaOne Community Chairperson baton to Stephen Chin, Java Technology Evangelist, Oracle. Onstage in full motorcycle gear, Chin noted that he'll soon be touring Europe by motorcycle, meeting Java Community Members and streaming live via UStream--the ultimate manifestation of community and technology!  He also reminded attendees of the upcoming JavaOne Latin America 2012, São Paulo, Brazil (December 4-6, 2012), and stated that the CFP (call for papers) at the conference has been extended for one more week. "Remember, December is summer in Brazil!" Chin said.

  Read the article

• Getting MySQL work with Entity Framework 4.0

  - by DigiMortal

  Does MySQL work with Entity Framework 4.0? The answer is: yes, it works! I just put up one experimental project to play with MySQL and Entity Framework 4.0 and in this posting I will show you how to get MySQL data to EF. Also I will give some suggestions how to deploy your applications to hosting and cloud environments. MySQL stuff As you may guess you need MySQL running somewhere. I have MySQL installed to my development machine so I can also develop stuff when I’m offline. The other thing you need is MySQL Connector for .NET Framework. Currently there is available development version of MySQL Connector/NET 6.3.5 that supports Visual Studio 2010. Before you start download MySQL and Connector/NET: MySQL Community Server Connector/NET 6.3.5 If you are not big fan of phpMyAdmin then you can try out free desktop client for MySQL – HeidiSQL. I am using it and I am really happy with this program. NB! If you just put up MySQL then create also database with couple of table there. To use all features of Entity Framework 4.0 I suggest you to use InnoDB or other engine that has support for foreign keys. Connecting MySQL to Entity Framework 4.0 Now create simple console project using Visual Studio 2010 and go through the following steps. 1. Add new ADO.NET Entity Data Model to your project. For model insert the name that is informative and that you are able later recognize. Now you can choose how you want to create your model. Select “Generate from database” and click OK. 2. Set up database connection Change data connection and select MySQL Database as data source. You may also need to set provider – there is only one choice. Select it if data provider combo shows empty value. Click OK and insert connection information you are asked about. Don’t forget to click test connection button to see if your connection data is okay. If everything works then click OK. 3. Insert context name Now you should see the following dialog. Insert your data model name for application configuration file and click OK. Click next button. 4. Select tables for model Now you can select tables and views your classes are based on. I have small database with events data. Uncheck the checkbox “Include foreign key columns in the model” – it is damn annoying to get them away from model later. Also insert informative and easy to remember name for your model. Click finish button. 5. Define your classes Now it’s time to define your classes. Here you can see what Entity Framework generated for you. Relations were detected automatically – that’s why we needed foreign keys. The names of classes and their members are not nice yet. After some modifications my class model looks like on the following diagram. Note that I removed attendees navigation property from person class. Now my classes look nice and they follow conventions I am using when naming classes and their members. NB! Don’t forget to see properties of classes (properties windows) and modify their set names if set names contain numbers (I changed set name for Entity from Entity1 to Entities). 6. Let’s test! Now let’s write simple testing program to see if MySQL data runs through Entity Framework 4.0 as expected. My program looks for events where I attended. using(var context = new MySqlEntities()) {     var myEvents = from e in context.Events                     from a in e.Attendees                     where a.Person.FirstName == "Gunnar" &&                             a.Person.LastName == "Peipman"                     select e;       Console.WriteLine("My events: ");       foreach(var e in myEvents)     {         Console.WriteLine(e.Title);     } }   Console.ReadKey(); And when I run it I get the result shown on screenshot on right. I checked out from database and these results are correct. At first run connector seems to work slow but this is only the effect of first run. As connector is loaded to memory by Entity Framework it works fast from this point on. Now let’s see what we have to do to get our program work in hosting and cloud environments where MySQL connector is not installed. Deploying application to hosting and cloud environments If your hosting or cloud environment has no MySQL connector installed you have to provide MySQL connector assemblies with your project. Add the following assemblies to your project’s bin folder and include them to your project (otherwise they are not packaged by WebDeploy and Azure tools): MySQL.Data MySQL.Data.Entity MySQL.Web You can also add references to these assemblies and mark references as local so these assemblies are copied to binary folder of your application. If you have references to these assemblies then you don’t have to include them to your project from bin folder. Also add the following block to your application configuration file. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <configuration> ...   <system.data>     <DbProviderFactories>         <add              name=”MySQL Data Provider”              invariant=”MySql.Data.MySqlClient”              description=”.Net Framework Data Provider for MySQL”              type=”MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlClientFactory, MySql.Data,                   Version=6.2.0.0, Culture=neutral,                   PublicKeyToken=c5687fc88969c44d”          />     </DbProviderFactories>   </system.data> ... </configuration> Conclusion It was not hard to get MySQL connector installed and MySQL connected to Entity Framework 4.0. To use full power of Entity Framework we used InnoDB engine because it supports foreign keys. It was also easy to query our model. To get our project online we needed some easy modifications to our project and configuration files.

  Read the article

• An Xml Serializable PropertyBag Dictionary Class for .NET

  - by Rick Strahl

  I don't know about you but I frequently need property bags in my applications to store and possibly cache arbitrary data. Dictionary<T,V> works well for this although I always seem to be hunting for a more specific generic type that provides a string key based dictionary. There's string dictionary, but it only works with strings. There's Hashset<T> but it uses the actual values as keys. In most key value pair situations for me string is key value to work off. Dictionary<T,V> works well enough, but there are some issues with serialization of dictionaries in .NET. The .NET framework doesn't do well serializing IDictionary objects out of the box. The XmlSerializer doesn't support serialization of IDictionary via it's default serialization, and while the DataContractSerializer does support IDictionary serialization it produces some pretty atrocious XML. What doesn't work? First off Dictionary serialization with the Xml Serializer doesn't work so the following fails: [TestMethod] public void DictionaryXmlSerializerTest() { var bag = new Dictionary<string, object>(); bag.Add("key", "Value"); bag.Add("Key2", 100.10M); bag.Add("Key3", Guid.NewGuid()); bag.Add("Key4", DateTime.Now); bag.Add("Key5", true); bag.Add("Key7", new byte[3] { 42, 45, 66 }); TestContext.WriteLine(this.ToXml(bag)); } public string ToXml(object obj) { if (obj == null) return null; StringWriter sw = new StringWriter(); XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(obj.GetType()); ser.Serialize(sw, obj); return sw.ToString(); } The error you get with this is: System.NotSupportedException: The type System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2[[System.String, mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089],[System.Object, mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089]] is not supported because it implements IDictionary. Got it! BTW, the same is true with binary serialization. Running the same code above against the DataContractSerializer does work: [TestMethod] public void DictionaryDataContextSerializerTest() { var bag = new Dictionary<string, object>(); bag.Add("key", "Value"); bag.Add("Key2", 100.10M); bag.Add("Key3", Guid.NewGuid()); bag.Add("Key4", DateTime.Now); bag.Add("Key5", true); bag.Add("Key7", new byte[3] { 42, 45, 66 }); TestContext.WriteLine(this.ToXmlDcs(bag)); } public string ToXmlDcs(object value, bool throwExceptions = false) { var ser = new DataContractSerializer(value.GetType(), null, int.MaxValue, true, false, null); MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(); ser.WriteObject(ms, value); return Encoding.UTF8.GetString(ms.ToArray(), 0, (int)ms.Length); } This DOES work but produces some pretty heinous XML (formatted with line breaks and indentation here): <ArrayOfKeyValueOfstringanyType xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/Arrays" xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>key</Key> <Value i:type="a:string" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">Value</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>Key2</Key> <Value i:type="a:decimal" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">100.10</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>Key3</Key> <Value i:type="a:guid" xmlns:a="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/">2cd46d2a-a636-4af4-979b-e834d39b6d37</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>Key4</Key> <Value i:type="a:dateTime" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">2011-09-19T17:17:05.4406999-07:00</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>Key5</Key> <Value i:type="a:boolean" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">true</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>Key7</Key> <Value i:type="a:base64Binary" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">Ki1C</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> </ArrayOfKeyValueOfstringanyType> Ouch! That seriously hurts the eye! :-) Worse though it's extremely verbose with all those repetitive namespace declarations. It's good to know that it works in a pinch, but for a human readable/editable solution or something lightweight to store in a database it's not quite ideal. Why should I care? As a little background, in one of my applications I have a need for a flexible property bag that is used on a free form database field on an otherwise static entity. Basically what I have is a standard database record to which arbitrary properties can be added in an XML based string field. I intend to expose those arbitrary properties as a collection from field data stored in XML. The concept is pretty simple: When loading write the data to the collection, when the data is saved serialize the data into an XML string and store it into the database. When reading the data pick up the XML and if the collection on the entity is accessed automatically deserialize the XML into the Dictionary. (I'll talk more about this in another post). While the DataContext Serializer would work, it's verbosity is problematic both for size of the generated XML strings and the fact that users can manually edit this XML based property data in an advanced mode. A clean(er) layout certainly would be preferable and more user friendly. Custom XMLSerialization with a PropertyBag Class So… after a bunch of experimentation with different serialization formats I decided to create a custom PropertyBag class that provides for a serializable Dictionary. It's basically a custom Dictionary<TType,TValue> implementation with the keys always set as string keys. The result are PropertyBag<TValue> and PropertyBag (which defaults to the object type for values). The PropertyBag<TType> and PropertyBag classes provide these features: Subclassed from Dictionary<T,V> Implements IXmlSerializable with a cleanish XML format ToXml() and FromXml() methods to export and import to and from XML strings Static CreateFromXml() method to create an instance It's simple enough as it's merely a Dictionary<string,object> subclass but that supports serialization to a - what I think at least - cleaner XML format. The class is super simple to use: [TestMethod] public void PropertyBagTwoWayObjectSerializationTest() { var bag = new PropertyBag(); bag.Add("key", "Value"); bag.Add("Key2", 100.10M); bag.Add("Key3", Guid.NewGuid()); bag.Add("Key4", DateTime.Now); bag.Add("Key5", true); bag.Add("Key7", new byte[3] { 42,45,66 } ); bag.Add("Key8", null); bag.Add("Key9", new ComplexObject() { Name = "Rick", Entered = DateTime.Now, Count = 10 }); string xml = bag.ToXml(); TestContext.WriteLine(bag.ToXml()); bag.Clear(); bag.FromXml(xml); Assert.IsTrue(bag["key"] as string == "Value"); Assert.IsInstanceOfType( bag["Key3"], typeof(Guid)); Assert.IsNull(bag["Key8"]); //Assert.IsNull(bag["Key10"]); Assert.IsInstanceOfType(bag["Key9"], typeof(ComplexObject)); } This uses the PropertyBag class which uses a PropertyBag<string,object> - which means it returns untyped values of type object. I suspect for me this will be the most common scenario as I'd want to store arbitrary values in the PropertyBag rather than one specific type. The same code with a strongly typed PropertyBag<decimal> looks like this: [TestMethod] public void PropertyBagTwoWayValueTypeSerializationTest() { var bag = new PropertyBag<decimal>(); bag.Add("key", 10M); bag.Add("Key1", 100.10M); bag.Add("Key2", 200.10M); bag.Add("Key3", 300.10M); string xml = bag.ToXml(); TestContext.WriteLine(bag.ToXml()); bag.Clear(); bag.FromXml(xml); Assert.IsTrue(bag.Get("Key1") == 100.10M); Assert.IsTrue(bag.Get("Key3") == 300.10M); } and produces typed results of type decimal. The types can be either value or reference types the combination of which actually proved to be a little more tricky than anticipated due to null and specific string value checks required - getting the generic typing right required use of default(T) and Convert.ChangeType() to trick the compiler into playing nice. Of course the whole raison d'etre for this class is the XML serialization. You can see in the code above that we're doing a .ToXml() and .FromXml() to serialize to and from string. The XML produced for the first example looks like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <properties> <item> <key>key</key> <value>Value</value> </item> <item> <key>Key2</key> <value type="decimal">100.10</value> </item> <item> <key>Key3</key> <value type="___System.Guid"> <guid>f7a92032-0c6d-4e9d-9950-b15ff7cd207d</guid> </value> </item> <item> <key>Key4</key> <value type="datetime">2011-09-26T17:45:58.5789578-10:00</value> </item> <item> <key>Key5</key> <value type="boolean">true</value> </item> <item> <key>Key7</key> <value type="base64Binary">Ki1C</value> </item> <item> <key>Key8</key> <value type="nil" /> </item> <item> <key>Key9</key> <value type="___Westwind.Tools.Tests.PropertyBagTest+ComplexObject"> <ComplexObject> <Name>Rick</Name> <Entered>2011-09-26T17:45:58.5789578-10:00</Entered> <Count>10</Count> </ComplexObject> </value> </item> </properties>   The format is a bit cleaner than the DataContractSerializer. Each item is serialized into <key> <value> pairs. If the value is a string no type information is written. Since string tends to be the most common type this saves space and serialization processing. All other types are attributed. Simple types are mapped to XML types so things like decimal, datetime, boolean and base64Binary are encoded using their Xml type values. All other types are embedded with a hokey format that describes the .NET type preceded by a three underscores and then are encoded using the XmlSerializer. You can see this best above in the ComplexObject encoding. For custom types this isn't pretty either, but it's more concise than the DCS and it works as long as you're serializing back and forth between .NET clients at least. The XML generated from the second example that uses PropertyBag<decimal> looks like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <properties> <item> <key>key</key> <value type="decimal">10</value> </item> <item> <key>Key1</key> <value type="decimal">100.10</value> </item> <item> <key>Key2</key> <value type="decimal">200.10</value> </item> <item> <key>Key3</key> <value type="decimal">300.10</value> </item> </properties>   How does it work As I mentioned there's nothing fancy about this solution - it's little more than a subclass of Dictionary<T,V> that implements custom Xml Serialization and a couple of helper methods that facilitate getting the XML in and out of the class more easily. But it's proven very handy for a number of projects for me where dynamic data storage is required. Here's the code: /// <summary> /// Creates a serializable string/object dictionary that is XML serializable /// Encodes keys as element names and values as simple values with a type /// attribute that contains an XML type name. Complex names encode the type /// name with type='___namespace.classname' format followed by a standard xml /// serialized format. The latter serialization can be slow so it's not recommended /// to pass complex types if performance is critical. /// </summary> [XmlRoot("properties")] public class PropertyBag : PropertyBag<object> { /// <summary> /// Creates an instance of a propertybag from an Xml string /// </summary> /// <param name="xml">Serialize</param> /// <returns></returns> public static PropertyBag CreateFromXml(string xml) { var bag = new PropertyBag(); bag.FromXml(xml); return bag; } } /// <summary> /// Creates a serializable string for generic types that is XML serializable. /// /// Encodes keys as element names and values as simple values with a type /// attribute that contains an XML type name. Complex names encode the type /// name with type='___namespace.classname' format followed by a standard xml /// serialized format. The latter serialization can be slow so it's not recommended /// to pass complex types if performance is critical. /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TValue">Must be a reference type. For value types use type object</typeparam> [XmlRoot("properties")] public class PropertyBag<TValue> : Dictionary<string, TValue>, IXmlSerializable { /// <summary> /// Not implemented - this means no schema information is passed /// so this won't work with ASMX/WCF services. /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchema GetSchema() { return null; } /// <summary> /// Serializes the dictionary to XML. Keys are /// serialized to element names and values as /// element values. An xml type attribute is embedded /// for each serialized element - a .NET type /// element is embedded for each complex type and /// prefixed with three underscores. /// </summary> /// <param name="writer"></param> public void WriteXml(System.Xml.XmlWriter writer) { foreach (string key in this.Keys) { TValue value = this[key]; Type type = null; if (value != null) type = value.GetType(); writer.WriteStartElement("item"); writer.WriteStartElement("key"); writer.WriteString(key as string); writer.WriteEndElement(); writer.WriteStartElement("value"); string xmlType = XmlUtils.MapTypeToXmlType(type); bool isCustom = false; // Type information attribute if not string if (value == null) { writer.WriteAttributeString("type", "nil"); } else if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(xmlType)) { if (xmlType != "string") { writer.WriteStartAttribute("type"); writer.WriteString(xmlType); writer.WriteEndAttribute(); } } else { isCustom = true; xmlType = "___" + value.GetType().FullName; writer.WriteStartAttribute("type"); writer.WriteString(xmlType); writer.WriteEndAttribute(); } // Actual deserialization if (!isCustom) { if (value != null) writer.WriteValue(value); } else { XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(value.GetType()); ser.Serialize(writer, value); } writer.WriteEndElement(); // value writer.WriteEndElement(); // item } } /// <summary> /// Reads the custom serialized format /// </summary> /// <param name="reader"></param> public void ReadXml(System.Xml.XmlReader reader) { this.Clear(); while (reader.Read()) { if (reader.NodeType == XmlNodeType.Element && reader.Name == "key") { string xmlType = null; string name = reader.ReadElementContentAsString(); // item element reader.ReadToNextSibling("value"); if (reader.MoveToNextAttribute()) xmlType = reader.Value; reader.MoveToContent(); TValue value; if (xmlType == "nil") value = default(TValue); // null else if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(xmlType)) { // value is a string or object and we can assign TValue to value string strval = reader.ReadElementContentAsString(); value = (TValue) Convert.ChangeType(strval, typeof(TValue)); } else if (xmlType.StartsWith("___")) { while (reader.Read() && reader.NodeType != XmlNodeType.Element) { } Type type = ReflectionUtils.GetTypeFromName(xmlType.Substring(3)); //value = reader.ReadElementContentAs(type,null); XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(type); value = (TValue)ser.Deserialize(reader); } else value = (TValue)reader.ReadElementContentAs(XmlUtils.MapXmlTypeToType(xmlType), null); this.Add(name, value); } } } /// <summary> /// Serializes this dictionary to an XML string /// </summary> /// <returns>XML String or Null if it fails</returns> public string ToXml() { string xml = null; SerializationUtils.SerializeObject(this, out xml); return xml; } /// <summary> /// Deserializes from an XML string /// </summary> /// <param name="xml"></param> /// <returns>true or false</returns> public bool FromXml(string xml) { this.Clear(); // if xml string is empty we return an empty dictionary if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(xml)) return true; var result = SerializationUtils.DeSerializeObject(xml, this.GetType()) as PropertyBag<TValue>; if (result != null) { foreach (var item in result) { this.Add(item.Key, item.Value); } } else // null is a failure return false; return true; } /// <summary> /// Creates an instance of a propertybag from an Xml string /// </summary> /// <param name="xml"></param> /// <returns></returns> public static PropertyBag<TValue> CreateFromXml(string xml) { var bag = new PropertyBag<TValue>(); bag.FromXml(xml); return bag; } } } The code uses a couple of small helper classes SerializationUtils and XmlUtils for mapping Xml types to and from .NET, both of which are from the WestWind,Utilities project (which is the same project where PropertyBag lives) from the West Wind Web Toolkit. The code implements ReadXml and WriteXml for the IXmlSerializable implementation using old school XmlReaders and XmlWriters (because it's pretty simple stuff - no need for XLinq here). Then there are two helper methods .ToXml() and .FromXml() that basically allow your code to easily convert between XML and a PropertyBag object. In my code that's what I use to actually to persist to and from the entity XML property during .Load() and .Save() operations. It's sweet to be able to have a string key dictionary and then be able to turn around with 1 line of code to persist the whole thing to XML and back. Hopefully some of you will find this class as useful as I've found it. It's a simple solution to a common requirement in my applications and I've used the hell out of it in the  short time since I created it. Resources You can find the complete code for the two classes plus the helpers in the Subversion repository for Westwind.Utilities. You can grab the source files from there or download the whole project. You can also grab the full Westwind.Utilities assembly from NuGet and add it to your project if that's easier for you. PropertyBag Source Code SerializationUtils and XmlUtils Westwind.Utilities Assembly on NuGet (add from Visual Studio) © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in .NET  CSharp   Tweet (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

  Read the article

• Creating a Dynamic DataRow for easier DataRow Syntax

  - by Rick Strahl

  I've been thrown back into an older project that uses DataSets and DataRows as their entity storage model. I have several applications internally that I still maintain that run just fine (and I sometimes wonder if this wasn't easier than all this ORM crap we deal with with 'newer' improved technology today - but I disgress) but use this older code. For the most part DataSets/DataTables/DataRows are abstracted away in a pseudo entity model, but in some situations like queries DataTables and DataRows are still surfaced to the business layer. Here's an example. Here's a business object method that runs dynamic query and the code ends up looping over the result set using the ugly DataRow Array syntax:public int UpdateAllSafeTitles() { int result = this.Execute("select pk, title, safetitle from " + Tablename + " where EntryType=1", "TPks"); if (result < 0) return result; result = 0; foreach (DataRow row in this.DataSet.Tables["TPks"].Rows) { string title = row["title"] as string; string safeTitle = row["safeTitle"] as string; int pk = (int)row["pk"]; string newSafeTitle = this.GetSafeTitle(title); if (newSafeTitle != safeTitle) { this.ExecuteNonQuery("update " + this.Tablename + " set safeTitle=@safeTitle where pk=@pk", this.CreateParameter("@safeTitle",newSafeTitle), this.CreateParameter("@pk",pk) ); result++; } } return result; } The problem with looping over DataRow objecs is two fold: The array syntax is tedious to type and not real clear to look at, and explicit casting is required in order to do anything useful with the values. I've highlighted the place where this matters. Using the DynamicDataRow class I'll show in a minute this code can be changed to look like this:public int UpdateAllSafeTitles() { int result = this.Execute("select pk, title, safetitle from " + Tablename + " where EntryType=1", "TPks"); if (result < 0) return result; result = 0; foreach (DataRow row in this.DataSet.Tables["TPks"].Rows) { dynamic entry = new DynamicDataRow(row); string newSafeTitle = this.GetSafeTitle(entry.title); if (newSafeTitle != entry.safeTitle) { this.ExecuteNonQuery("update " + this.Tablename + " set safeTitle=@safeTitle where pk=@pk", this.CreateParameter("@safeTitle",newSafeTitle), this.CreateParameter("@pk",entry.pk) ); result++; } } return result; } The code looks much a bit more natural and describes what's happening a little nicer as well. Well, using the new dynamic features in .NET it's actually quite easy to implement the DynamicDataRow class. Creating your own custom Dynamic Objects .NET 4.0 introduced the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) and opened up a whole bunch of new capabilities for .NET applications. The dynamic type is an easy way to avoid Reflection and directly access members of 'dynamic' or 'late bound' objects at runtime. There's a lot of very subtle but extremely useful stuff that dynamic does (especially for COM Interop scenearios) but in its simplest form it often allows you to do away with manual Reflection at runtime. In addition you can create DynamicObject implementations that can perform  custom interception of member accesses and so allow you to provide more natural access to more complex or awkward data structures like the DataRow that I use as an example here. Bascially you can subclass DynamicObject and then implement a few methods (TryGetMember, TrySetMember, TryInvokeMember) to provide the ability to return dynamic results from just about any data structure using simple property/method access. In the code above, I created a custom DynamicDataRow class which inherits from DynamicObject and implements only TryGetMember and TrySetMember. Here's what simple class looks like:/// <summary> /// This class provides an easy way to turn a DataRow /// into a Dynamic object that supports direct property /// access to the DataRow fields. /// /// The class also automatically fixes up DbNull values /// (null into .NET and DbNUll to DataRow) /// </summary> public class DynamicDataRow : DynamicObject { /// <summary> /// Instance of object passed in /// </summary> DataRow DataRow; /// <summary> /// Pass in a DataRow to work off /// </summary> /// <param name="instance"></param> public DynamicDataRow(DataRow dataRow) { DataRow = dataRow; } /// <summary> /// Returns a value from a DataRow items array. /// If the field doesn't exist null is returned. /// DbNull values are turned into .NET nulls. /// /// </summary> /// <param name="binder"></param> /// <param name="result"></param> /// <returns></returns> public override bool TryGetMember(GetMemberBinder binder, out object result) { result = null; try { result = DataRow[binder.Name]; if (result == DBNull.Value) result = null; return true; } catch { } result = null; return false; } /// <summary> /// Property setter implementation tries to retrieve value from instance /// first then into this object /// </summary> /// <param name="binder"></param> /// <param name="value"></param> /// <returns></returns> public override bool TrySetMember(SetMemberBinder binder, object value) { try { if (value == null) value = DBNull.Value; DataRow[binder.Name] = value; return true; } catch {} return false; } } To demonstrate the basic features here's a short test: [TestMethod] [ExpectedException(typeof(RuntimeBinderException))] public void BasicDataRowTests() { DataTable table = new DataTable("table"); table.Columns.Add( new DataColumn() { ColumnName = "Name", DataType=typeof(string) }); table.Columns.Add( new DataColumn() { ColumnName = "Entered", DataType=typeof(DateTime) }); table.Columns.Add(new DataColumn() { ColumnName = "NullValue", DataType = typeof(string) }); DataRow row = table.NewRow(); DateTime now = DateTime.Now; row["Name"] = "Rick"; row["Entered"] = now; row["NullValue"] = null; // converted in DbNull dynamic drow = new DynamicDataRow(row); string name = drow.Name; DateTime entered = drow.Entered; string nulled = drow.NullValue; Assert.AreEqual(name, "Rick"); Assert.AreEqual(entered,now); Assert.IsNull(nulled); // this should throw a RuntimeBinderException Assert.AreEqual(entered,drow.enteredd); } The DynamicDataRow requires a custom constructor that accepts a single parameter that sets the DataRow. Once that's done you can access property values that match the field names. Note that types are automatically converted - no type casting is needed in the code you write. The class also automatically converts DbNulls to regular nulls and vice versa which is something that makes it much easier to deal with data returned from a database. What's cool here isn't so much the functionality - even if I'd prefer to leave DataRow behind ASAP -  but the fact that we can create a dynamic type that uses a DataRow as it's 'DataSource' to serve member values. It's pretty useful feature if you think about it, especially given how little code it takes to implement. By implementing these two simple methods we get to provide two features I was complaining about at the beginning that are missing from the DataRow: Direct Property Syntax Automatic Type Casting so no explicit casts are required Caveats As cool and easy as this functionality is, it's important to understand that it doesn't come for free. The dynamic features in .NET are - well - dynamic. Which means they are essentially evaluated at runtime (late bound). Rather than static typing where everything is compiled and linked by the compiler/linker, member invokations are looked up at runtime and essentially call into your custom code. There's some overhead in this. Direct invocations - the original code I showed - is going to be faster than the equivalent dynamic code. However, in the above code the difference of running the dynamic code and the original data access code was very minor. The loop running over 1500 result records took on average 13ms with the original code and 14ms with the dynamic code. Not exactly a serious performance bottleneck. One thing to remember is that Microsoft optimized the DLR code significantly so that repeated calls to the same operations are routed very efficiently which actually makes for very fast evaluation. The bottom line for performance with dynamic code is: Make sure you test and profile your code if you think that there might be a performance issue. However, in my experience with dynamic types so far performance is pretty good for repeated operations (ie. in loops). While usually a little slower the perf hit is a lot less typically than equivalent Reflection work. Although the code in the second example looks like standard object syntax, dynamic is not static code. It's evaluated at runtime and so there's no type recognition until runtime. This means no Intellisense at development time, and any invalid references that call into 'properties' (ie. fields in the DataRow) that don't exist still cause runtime errors. So in the case of the data row you still get a runtime error if you mistype a column name:// this should throw a RuntimeBinderException Assert.AreEqual(entered,drow.enteredd); Dynamic - Lots of uses The arrival of Dynamic types in .NET has been met with mixed emotions. Die hard .NET developers decry dynamic types as an abomination to the language. After all what dynamic accomplishes goes against all that a static language is supposed to provide. On the other hand there are clearly scenarios when dynamic can make life much easier (COM Interop being one place). Think of the possibilities. What other data structures would you like to expose to a simple property interface rather than some sort of collection or dictionary? And beyond what I showed here you can also implement 'Method missing' behavior on objects with InvokeMember which essentially allows you to create dynamic methods. It's all very flexible and maybe just as important: It's easy to do. There's a lot of power hidden in this seemingly simple interface. Your move…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in CSharp  .NET   Tweet (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

  Read the article

• Interview with Lenz Grimmer about MySQL Connect

  - by Keith Larson

  Keith Larson: Thank you for allowing me to do this interview with you.  I have been talking with a few different Oracle ACEs   about the MySQL Connect Conference. I figured the MySQL community might be missing you as well. You have been very busy with Oracle Linux but I know you still have an eye on the MySQL Community. How have things been?Lenz Grimmer: Thanks for including me in this series of interviews, I feel honored! I've read the other interviews, and really liked them. I still try to follow what's going on over in the MySQL community and it's good to see that many of the familiar faces are still around. Over the course of the 9 years that I was involved with MySQL, many colleagues and contacts turned into good friends and we still maintain close relationships.It's been almost 1.5 years ago that I moved into my new role here in the Linux team at Oracle, and I really enjoy working on a Linux distribution again (I worked for SUSE before I joined MySQL AB in 2002). I'm still learning a lot - Linux in the data center has greatly evolved in so many ways and there are a lot of new and exciting technologies to explore. Keith Larson: What were your thoughts when you heard that Oracle was going to deliver the MySQL Connect conference to the MySQL Community?Lenz Grimmer: I think it's testament to the fact that Oracle deeply cares about MySQL, despite what many skeptics may say. What started as "MySQL Sunday" two years ago has now evolved into a full-blown sub-conference, with 80 sessions at one of the largest corporate IT events in the world. I find this quite telling, not many products at Oracle enjoy this level of exposure! So it certainly makes me feel proud to see how far MySQL has come. Keith Larson: Have you had a chance to look over the sessions? What are your thoughts on them?Lenz Grimmer: I did indeed look at the final schedule.The content committee did a great job with selecting these sessions. I'm glad to see that the content selection was influenced by involving well-known and respected members of the MySQL community. The sessions cover a broad range of topics and technologies, both covering established topics as well as recent developments. Keith Larson: When you get a chance, what sessions do you plan on attending?Lenz Grimmer: I will actually be manning the Oracle booth in the exhibition area on one of these days, so I'm not sure if I'll have a lot of time attending sessions. But if I do, I'd love to see the keynotes and catch some of the sessions that talk about recent developments and new features in MySQL, High Availability and Clustering . Quite a lot has happened and it's hard to keep up with this constant flow of new MySQL releases.In particular, the following sessions caught my attention: MySQL Connect Keynote: The State of the Dolphin Evaluating MySQL High-Availability Alternatives CERN’s MySQL “as a Service” Deployment with Oracle VM: Empowering Users MySQL 5.6 Replication: Taking Scalability and High Availability to the Next Level What’s New in MySQL Server 5.6? MySQL Security: Past and Present MySQL at Twitter: Development and Deployment MySQL Community BOF MySQL Connect Keynote: MySQL Perspectives Keith Larson: So I will ask you just like I have asked the others I have interviewed, any tips that you would give to people for handling the long hours at conferences?Lenz Grimmer: Wear comfortable shoes and make sure to drink a lot! Also prepare a plan of the sessions you would like to attend beforehand and familiarize yourself with the venue, so you can get to the next talk in time without scrambling to find the location. The good thing about piggybacking on such a large conference like Oracle OpenWorld is that you benefit from the whole infrastructure. For example, there is a nice schedule builder that helps you to keep track of your sessions of interest. Other than that, bring enough business cards and talk to people, build up your network among your peers and other MySQL professionals! Keith Larson: What features of the MySQL 5.6 release do you look forward to the most ?Lenz Grimmer: There has been solid progress in so many areas like the InnoDB Storage Engine, the Optimizer, Replication or Performance Schema, it's hard for me to really highlight anything in particular. All in all, MySQL 5.6 sounds like a very promising release. I'm confident it will follow the tradition that Oracle already established with MySQL 5.5, which received a lot of praise even from very critical members of the MySQL community. If I had to name a single feature, I'm particularly and personally happy that the precise GIS functions have finally made it into a GA release - that was long overdue. Keith Larson:  In your opinion what is the best reason for someone to attend this event?Lenz Grimmer: This conference is an excellent opportunity to get in touch with the key people in the MySQL community and ecosystem and to get facts and information from the domain experts and developers that work on MySQL. The broad range of topics should attract people from a variety of roles and relations to MySQL, beginning with Developers and DBAs, to CIOs considering MySQL as a viable solution for their requirements. Keith Larson: You will be attending MySQL Connect and have some Oracle Linux Demos, do you see a growing demand for MySQL on Oracle Linux ?Lenz Grimmer: Yes! Oracle Linux is our recommended Linux distribution and we have a good relationship to the MySQL engineering group. They use Oracle Linux as a base Linux platform for development and QA, so we make sure that MySQL and Oracle Linux are well tested together. Setting up a MySQL server on Oracle Linux can be done very quickly, and many customers recognize the benefits of using them both in combination.Because Oracle Linux is available for free (including free bug fixes and errata), it's an ideal choice for running MySQL in your data center. You can run the same Linux distribution on both your development/staging systems as well as on the production machines, you decide which of these should be covered by a support subscription and at which level of support. This gives you flexibility and provides some really attractive cost-saving opportunities. Keith Larson: Since I am a Linux user and fan, what is on the horizon for  Oracle Linux?Lenz Grimmer: We're working hard on broadening the ecosystem around Oracle Linux, building up partnerships with ISVs and IHVs to certify Oracle Linux as a fully supported platform for their products. We also continue to collaborate closely with the Linux kernel community on various projects, to make sure that Linux scales and performs well on large systems and meets the demands of today's data centers. These improvements and enhancements will then rolled into the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel, which is the key ingredient that sets Oracle Linux apart from other distributions. We also have a number of ongoing projects which are making good progress, and I'm sure you'll hear more about this at the upcoming OpenWorld conference :) Keith Larson: What is something that more people should be aware of when it comes to Oracle Linux and MySQL ?Lenz Grimmer: Many people assume that Oracle Linux is just tuned for Oracle products, such as the Oracle Database or our Engineered Systems. While it's of course true that we do a lot of testing and optimization for these workloads, Oracle Linux is and will remain a general-purpose Linux distribution that is a very good foundation for setting up a LAMP-Stack, for example. We also provide MySQL RPM packages for Oracle Linux, so you can easily stay up to date if you need something newer than what's included in the stock distribution.One more thing that is really unique to Oracle Linux is Ksplice, which allows you to apply security patches to the running Linux kernel, without having to reboot. This ensures that your MySQL database server keeps up and running and is not affected by any downtime. Keith Larson: What else would you like to add ?Lenz Grimmer: Thanks again for getting in touch with me, I appreciated the opportunity. I'm looking forward to MySQL Connect and Oracle OpenWorld and to meet you and many other people from the MySQL community that I haven't seen for quite some time! Keith Larson:  Thank you Lenz!

  Read the article

• Code Camp 2011 – Summary

  - by hajan

  Waiting whole twelve months to come this year’s Code Camp 2011 event was something which all Microsoft technologies (and even non-Microsoft techs.) developers were doing in the past year. Last year’s success was enough big to be heard and to influence everything around our developer community and beyond. Code Camp 2011 was nothing else but a invincible success which will remain in our memory for a long time from now. Darko Milevski (president of MKDOT.NET UG and SharePoint MVP) said something interesting at the event keynote that up to now we were looking at the past by saying what we did… now we will focus on the future and how to develop our community more and more in the future days, weeks, months and I hope so for many years… Even though it was held only two days ago (26th of November 2011), I already feel the nostalgia for everything that happened there and for the excellent time we have spent all together. ORGANIZED BY ENTHUSIASTS AND EXPERTS Code Camp 2011 was organized by number of community enthusiasts and experts who have unselfishly contributed with all their free time to make the best of this event. The event was organized by a known community group called MKDOT.NET User Group, name of a user group which is known not only in Macedonia, but also in many countries abroad. Organization mainly consists of software developers, technical leaders, team leaders in several known companies in Macedonia, as well as Microsoft MVPs. SPEAKERS There were 24 speakers at five parallel tracks. At Code Camp 2011 we had two groups of speakers: Professional Experts in various technologies and Student Speakers. The new interesting thing here is the Student Speakers, which draw attention a lot, especially to other students who were interested to see what their colleagues are going to speak about and how do they use Microsoft technologies in different coding scenarios and practices, in different topics. From the rest of the professional speakers, there were 7 Microsoft MVPs: Two ASP.NET/IIS MVPs, Two C# MVPs, and One MVP in SharePoint, SQL Server and Exchange Server. I must say that besides the MVP Speakers, who definitely did a great job as always… there were other excellent speakers as well, which were speaking on various technologies, such as: Web Development, Windows Phone Development, XNA, Windows 8, Games Development, Entity Framework, Event-driven programming, SOLID, SQLCLR, T-SQL, e.t.c. SESSIONS There were 25 sessions mainly all related to Microsoft technologies, but ranging from Windows 8, WP7, ASP.NET till Games Development, XNA and Event-driven programming. Sessions were going in five parallel tracks named as Red, Yellow, Green, Blue and Student track. Five presentations in each track, each with level 300 or 400. More info MY SESSION (ASP.NET MVC Best Practices) I must say that from the big number of speaking engagements I have had, this was one of my best performances and definitely I have set new records of attendees at my sessions and probably overall. I spoke on topic ASP.NET MVC Best Practices, where I have shown tips, tricks, guidelines and best practices on what to use and what to avoid by developing with one of the best web development frameworks nowadays, ASP.NET MVC. I had approximately 350+ attendees, the hall was full so that there was no room for staying at feet. Besides .NET developers, there were a lot of other technology oriented developers, who has also received the presentation very well and I really hope I gave them reason to think about ASP.NET as one of the best options for web development nowadays (if you ask me, it’s the best one ;-)). I have included 10 tips in using ASP.NET MVC each of them followed by a demo. Besides these 10 tips, I have briefly introduced the concept of ASP.NET MVC for those that haven’t been working with the framework and at the end some bonus tips. I must say there was lot of laugh for some funny sentences I have stated, like “If you code ASP.NET MVC, girls will love you more” – same goes for girls, only replace girls with boys :). [LINK TO SESSION WILL GO HERE, ONCE SESSIONS ARE AVAILABLE ON MK CODECAMP WEBSITE] VOLUNTEERS Without strong organization, such events wouldn’t be able to gather hundreds of attendees at one place and still stay perfectly organized to the smallest details, without dedicated organization and volunteers. I would like to dedicate this space in my blog to them and to say one big THANK YOU for supporting us before the event and during the whole day in the event. With such young and dedicated volunteers, we couldn’t achieve anything but great results. THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR YOUR CONTRIBUTION! NETWORKING One of the main reasons why we do such events is to gather all professionals in one place. Networking is what everyone wants because through this way of networking, we can meet incredible people in one place. It is amazing feeling to share your knowledge with others and exchange thoughts on various topics. Meet and talk to interesting people. I have had very special moments with many attendees especially after my presentation. Special Thank You to all of them who come to meet me in person, whether to ask a question, say congrats for my session or simply meet me and just smile :)… everything counts! Thank You! TWITTER During the event, twitter was one of the most useful event-wide communication tool where everyone could tweet with hash tag #mkcodecamp or #mkdotnet and say what he/she wants to say about the current state and happenings at that moment… In my next blog post I will list the top craziest tweets that were posted at this event… FUTURE OF MKDOT.NET Having such strong community around MKDOT.NET, the future seems very bright. The initial plans are to have sub-groups in several technologies, however all these sub-groups will belong to the MKDOT.NET UG which will be, somehow, the HEAD of these sub-groups. We are doing this to provide better divisions by technologies and organize ourselves better since our community is very big, around 500 members in MKDOT.NET.We will have five sub-groups:- Web User Group (Lead:Hajan Selmani - me)- Mobile User Group (Lead: Filip Kerazovski)- Visual C# User Group (Lead: Vekoslav Stefanovski)- SharePoint User Group (Lead: Darko Milevski)- Dynamics User Group (Lead: Vladimir Senih) SUMMARY Online registered attendees: ~1.200 Event attendees: ~800 Number of members in organization: 40+ Organized by: MKDOT.NET User Group Number of tracks: 5 Number of speakers: 24 Number of sessions: 25 Event official website: http://codecamp.mkdot.net Total number of sponsors: 20 Platinum Sponsors: Microsoft, INETA, Telerik Place held: FON University City and Country: Skopje, Macedonia THANK YOU FOR BEING PART OF THE BEST EVENT IN MACEDONIA, CODE CAMP 2011. Regards, Hajan

  Read the article

• Visiting the Emtel Data Centre

  Back in February at the first event of the Emtel Knowledge Series (EKS) I spoke to various people at Emtel about their data centre here on the island. I was trying to see whether it would be possible to arrange a meeting over there for a selected group of our community members. Well, let's say it like this... My first approach wasn't that promising and far from successful but during the following months there were more and more occasions to get in touch with the "right" contact persons at Emtel to make it happen... Setting up an appointment and pre-requisites The major improvement came during a Boot Camp for Windows Phone 8.1 App development organised by Microsoft Indian Ocean Islands in cooperation with Emtel at the Emtel World, Ebene. Apart from learning bits and pieces regarding Universal Apps I took the opportunity to get in touch with Arvin Lockee, Sales Executive - Data, during our lunch break. And this really kicked off the whole procedure. Prior to get access to the Emtel data centre it is requested that you provide full name and National ID of anyone going to visit. Also, it should be noted that there was only a limited amount of seats available. Anyways, packed with this information I posted through the usual social media channels. Responses came in very quickly and based on First-come, first-serve (FCFS) principle I noted down the details and forwarded them to Emtel in order to fix a date and time for the visit. In preparation on our side, all attendees exchanged contact details and we organised transport options to go to the data centre in Arsenal. The day before and on the day of our meeting, Arvin send me a reminder to check whether everything is still confirmed and ready to go... Of course, it was! Arriving at the Emtel Data Centre As I'm coming from Flic En Flac towards the North, we agreed that I'm going to pick up a couple of young fellows near the old post office in Port Louis. All went well, except that Sean eventually might be living in another time zone compared to the rest of us. Anyway, after some extended stop we were complete and arrived just in time in Arsenal to meet and greet with Ish and Veer. Again, Emtel is taking access procedures to their data centre very serious and the gate stayed close until all our IDs had been noted and compared to the list of registered attendees. Despite having a good laugh at the mixture of old and new ID cards it was a straight-forward processing. The ward was very helpful and guided us to the waiting area at the entrance section of the building. Shortly after we were welcomed by Kamlesh Bokhoree, the Data Centre Officer. He gave us brief introduction into the rules and regulations during our visit, like no photography allowed, not touching the buttons, and following his instructions through the whole visit. Of course! Inside the data centre Next, he explained us the multi-factor authentication system using a combination of bio-metric data, like finger print reader, and "classic" pin panel. The Emtel data centre provides multiple services and next to co-location for your own hardware they also offer storage options for your backup and archive data in their massive, fire-resistant vault. Very impressive to get to know about the considerations that have been done in choosing the right location and how to set up the whole premises. It should also be noted that there is 24/7 CCTV surveillance inside and outside the buildings. Strengths of the Emtel TIER 3 Data Centre, Mauritius Finally, we were guided into the first server room. And wow, the whole setup is cleverly planned and outlined in the architecture. From the false floor and ceilings in order to provide optimum air flow, over to the separation of cold and hot aisles between the full-size server racks, and of course the monitored air conditions in order to analyse and watch changes in temperature, smoke detection and other parameters. And not surprisingly everything has been implemented in two independent circuits. There is a standardised classification for the construction and operation of data centres world-wide, and the Emtel's one has been designed to be a TIER 4 building but due to the lack of an alternative power supplier on the island it is officially registered as a TIER 3 compliant data centre. Maybe in the long run there might be a second supplier of energy next to CEB... time will tell. Luckily, the data centre is integrated into the National Fibre Optic Gigabit Ring and Emtel already connects internationally through diverse undersea cable routes like SAFE & LION/LION2 out of Mauritius and through several other providers for onwards connectivity. The data centre is part of the National Fibre Optic Gigabit Ring and has redundant internet connectivity onwards. Meanwhile, Arvin managed to join our little group of geeks and he supported Kamlesh in answering our technical questions regarding the capacities and general operation of the data centre. Visiting the NOC and its dedicated team of IT professionals was surely one of the visual highlights. Seeing their wall of screens to monitor any kind of activities on the data lines, the managed servers and the activity in and around the building was great. Even though I'm using a multi-head setup since years I cannot keep it up with that setup... ;-) But I got a couple of ideas on how to improve my work spaces here at the office. Clear advantages of hosting your e-commerce and mobile backends locally After the completely isolated NOC area we continued our Q&A session with Kamlesh and Arvin in the second server room which is dedictated to shared environments. On first thought it should be well-noted that there is lots of space for full-sized racks and therefore co-location of your own hardware. Actually, given the feedback that there will be upcoming changes in prices the facilities at the Emtel data centre are getting more and more competitive and interesting for local companies, especially small and medium enterprises. After seeing this world-class infrastructure available on the island, I'm already considering of moving one of my root servers abroad to be co-located here on the island. This would provide an improved user experience in terms of site performance and latency. This would be a good improvement, especially for upcoming e-commerce solutions for two of my local clients. Later on, we actually started the conversation of additional services that could be a catalyst for the local market in order to attract more small and medium companies to take the data centre into their evaluations regarding online activities. Until today Emtel does not provide virtualised server environments but there might be ongoing plans in the future to cover this field as well. Emtel is a mobile operator and internet connectivity provider in the first place, entering a market of managed and virtualised server infrastructures including capacities in terms of cloud storage and computing are rather new and there is a continuous learning curve at Emtel, too. You cannot just jump into a new market and see how it works out... And I appreciate Emtel's approach towards a solid fundament and then building new services on top of that. Emtel as a future one-stop-shop service provider for all your internet and telecommunications needs. Emtel's promotional video about their TIER 3 data centre in Arsenal, Mauritius More details are thoroughly described in Emtel's brochure of their data centre. Check out their PDF document here. Thanks for this opportunity Visiting and walking through the Emtel data centre for more than 2 hours was a great experience. As representative of the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community (MSCC) I would like to thank anyone at Emtel involved in the process of making it happen, and especially to Arvin Lockee and Kamlesh Bokhoree for their time and patience in explaining the infrastructure and answering all the endless questions from our members. Thank You!

  Read the article

• Java JRE 7 Certified with Oracle E-Business Suite

  - by Steven Chan (Oracle Development)

  Java Runtime Environment 7u10 (a.k.a. JRE 1.7.0_10 build 18) and later updates on the JRE 7 codeline are now certified with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i and 12 Windows-based desktop clients. What's needed to enable EBS environments for JRE 7? EBS customers should ensure that they are running JRE 7u10, at minimum, on Windows desktop clients. Of the compatibility issues identified with JRE 7, the most critical is an issue that prevents E-Business Suite Forms-based products from launching on Windows desktops that are running JRE 7.  Customers can prevent this issue -- and all other JRE 7 compatibility issues -- by ensuring that they have applied the latest certified patches documented for JRE 7 configurations to their EBS application tier servers.  These are summarized here for convenience. If the requirements change over time, please check the Notes for the authoritative list of patches: Apply Forms patch 14615390 to EBS 11i environments (Note 125767.1) Apply Forms patch 14614795 to EBS 12.0 and 12.1 environments (Note 437878.1) These patches are compatible with JRE 6 and 7, production ready, and fully-tested with the E-Business Suite.  These patches may be applied immediately to all E-Business Suite environments. All other Forms prerequisites documented in the Notes above should also be applied.  Where are the official patch requirements documented? All patches required for ensuring full compatibility of the E-Business Suite with JRE 7 are documented in these Notes: For EBS 11i: Deploying Sun JRE (Native Plug-in) for Windows Clients in Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i (Note 290807.1) Upgrading Developer 6i with Oracle E-Business Suite 11i (Note 125767.1) For EBS 12 Deploying Sun JRE (Native Plug-in) for Windows Clients in Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (Note 393931.1) Upgrading OracleAS 10g Forms and Reports in Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (Note 437878.1) Prerequisites for 32-bit and 64-bit JRE certifications JRE 1.70_10 32-bit + EBS 11.5.10.2 Windows XP SP3 Windows Vista SP1 and SP2 Windows 7 and Windows 7 SP1  Forms 6.0.8.28.x patch 14615390 (Note 125767.1) JRE 1.70_10 32-bit + EBS 12.0 & 12.1 Windows XP SP3 Windows Vista SP1 and SP2 Windows 7 and Windows 7 SP1 Forms 10g overlay patch 14614795 (Note 437878.1) SSL Users:  10.1.0.5 version of Patch 6370967 applied to AS 10.1.3 with OPatch. Note: This fix is already included in the April 2011 AS 10.1.3.5 CPU patch and later. JRE 1.7.0_10 64-bit + EBS 11.5.10.2 Windows 7 (64-bit) and Windows 7 SP1 (64-bit) Forms 6.0.8.28.x patch 14615390 (Note 125767.1) JRE 1.70_10 64-bit + EBS 12.0 & 12.1 Windows 7 (64-bit) and Windows 7 SP1 (64-bit) Forms 10g overlay patch 14614795 (Note 437878.1) SSL Users:  10.1.0.5 version of Patch 6370967 applied to AS 10.1.3 with OPatch. Note: This fix is already included in the April 2011 AS 10.1.3.5 CPU patch and later.  EBS + Discoverer 11g Users JRE 1.7.0_10 (7u10) is certified for Discoverer 11g in E-Business Suite environments with the following minimum requirements: Discoverer (11g) 11.1.1.6 plus Patch 13877486 and later  Reference: How To Find Oracle BI Discoverer 10g and 11g Certification Information (Document 233047.1) Worried about the 'mismanaged session cookie' issue? No need to worry -- it's fixed.  To recap: JRE releases 1.6.0_18 through 1.6.0_22 had issues with mismanaging session cookies that affected some users in some circumstances. The fix for those issues was first included in JRE 1.6.0_23. These fixes will carry forward and continue to be fixed in all future JRE releases on the JRE 6 and 7 codelines.  In other words, if you wish to avoid the mismanaged session cookie issue, you should apply any release after JRE 1.6.0_22 on the JRE 6 codeline, and JRE 7u10 and later JRE 7 codeline updates. All JRE 6 and 7 releases are certified with EBS upon release Our standard policy is that all E-Business Suite customers can apply all JRE updates to end-user desktops from JRE 1.6.0_03 and later updates on the 1.6 codeline, and from JRE 7u10 and later updates on the JRE 7 codeline.  We test all new JRE 1.6 and JRE 7 releases in parallel with the JRE development process, so all new JRE 1.6 and 7 releases are considered certified with the E-Business Suite on the same day that they're released by our Java team.  You do not need to wait for a certification announcement before applying new JRE 1.6 or JRE 7 releases to your EBS users' desktops. Implications of Java 6 End of Public Updates for EBS Users The Support Roadmap for Oracle Java is published here: Oracle Java SE Support Roadmap The latest updates to that page (as of Sept. 19, 2012) state (emphasis added): Java SE 6 End of Public Updates Notice After February 2013, Oracle will no longer post updates of Java SE 6 to its public download sites. Existing Java SE 6 downloads already posted as of February 2013 will remain accessible in the Java Archive on Oracle Technology Network. Developers and end-users are encouraged to update to more recent Java SE versions that remain available for public download. For enterprise customers, who need continued access to critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for Java SE 6 or older versions, long term support is available through Oracle Java SE Support . What does this mean for Oracle E-Business Suite users? EBS users fall under the category of "enterprise users" above.  Java is an integral part of the Oracle E-Business Suite technology stack, so EBS users will continue to receive Java SE 6 updates after February 2013. In other words, nothing will change for EBS users after February 2013.  EBS users will continue to receive critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for Java SE 6. These Java SE 6 updates will be made available to EBS users for the Extended Support periods documented in the Oracle Lifetime Support policy document for Oracle Applications (PDF): EBS 11i Extended Support ends November 2013 EBS 12.0 Extended Support ends January 2015 EBS 12.1 Extended Support ends December 2018 Will EBS users be forced to upgrade to JRE 7 for Windows desktop clients? No. This upgrade is highly recommended but currently remains optional. JRE 6 will be available to Windows users to run with EBS for the duration of your respective EBS Extended Support period.  Updates will be delivered via My Oracle Support, where you can continue to receive critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for JRE 6 desktop clients.  Coexistence of JRE 6 and JRE 7 on Windows desktops The upgrade to JRE 7 is highly recommended for EBS users, but some users may need to run both JRE 6 and 7 on their Windows desktops for reasons unrelated to the E-Business Suite. Most EBS configurations with IE and Firefox use non-static versioning by default. JRE 7 will be invoked instead of JRE 6 if both are installed on a Windows desktop. For more details, see "Appendix B: Static vs. Non-static Versioning and Set Up Options" in Notes 290801.1 and 393931.1. Applying Updates to JRE 6 and JRE 7 to Windows desktops Auto-update will keep JRE 7 up-to-date for Windows users with JRE 7 installed. Auto-update will only keep JRE 7 up-to-date for Windows users with both JRE 6 and 7 installed.  JRE 6 users are strongly encouraged to apply the latest Critical Patch Updates as soon as possible after each release. The Jave SE CPUs will be available via My Oracle Support.  EBS users can find more information about JRE 6 and 7 updates here: Information Center: Installation & Configuration for Oracle Java SE (Note 1412103.2) The dates for future Java SE CPUs can be found on the Critical Patch Updates, Security Alerts and Third Party Bulletin.  An RSS feed is available on that site for those who would like to be kept up-to-date. What will Mac users need? Oracle will provide updates to JRE 7 for Mac OS X users. EBS users running Macs will need to upgrade to JRE 7 to receive JRE updates. The certification of Oracle E-Business Suite with JRE 7 for Mac-based desktop clients accessing EBS Forms-based content is underway. Mac users waiting for that certification may find this article useful: How to Reenable Apple Java 6 Plug-in for Mac EBS Users Will EBS users be forced to upgrade to JDK 7 for EBS application tier servers? No. This upgrade will be highly recommended but will be optional for EBS application tier servers running on Windows, Linux, and Solaris.  You can choose to remain on JDK 6 for the duration of your respective EBS Extended Support period.  If you remain on JDK 6, you will continue to receive critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for JDK 6. The certification of Oracle E-Business Suite with JDK 7 for EBS application tier servers on Windows, Linux, and Solaris as well as other platforms such as IBM AIX and HP-UX is planned.  Customers running platforms other than Windows, Linux, and Solaris should refer to their Java vendors's sites for more information about their support policies. References Recommended Browsers for Oracle Applications 11i (Metalink Note 285218.1) Upgrading Sun JRE (Native Plug-in) with Oracle Applications 11i for Windows Clients (Metalink Note 290807.1) Recommended Browsers for Oracle Applications 12 (MetaLink Note 389422.1) Upgrading JRE Plugin with Oracle Applications R12 (MetaLink Note 393931.1) Related Articles Mismanaged Session Cookie Issue Fixed for EBS in JRE 1.6.0_23 Roundup: Oracle JInitiator 1.3 Desupported for EBS Customers in July 2009

  Read the article

• Performance Optimization &ndash; It Is Faster When You Can Measure It

  - by Alois Kraus

  Performance optimization in bigger systems is hard because the measured numbers can vary greatly depending on the measurement method of your choice. To measure execution timing of specific methods in your application you usually use Time Measurement Method Potential Pitfalls Stopwatch Most accurate method on recent processors. Internally it uses the RDTSC instruction. Since the counter is processor specific you can get greatly different values when your thread is scheduled to another core or the core goes into a power saving mode. But things do change luckily: Intel's Designer's vol3b, section 16.11.1 "16.11.1 Invariant TSC The time stamp counter in newer processors may support an enhancement, referred to as invariant TSC. Processor's support for invariant TSC is indicated by CPUID.80000007H:EDX[8]. The invariant TSC will run at a constant rate in all ACPI P-, C-. and T-states. This is the architectural behavior moving forward. On processors with invariant TSC support, the OS may use the TSC for wall clock timer services (instead of ACPI or HPET timers). TSC reads are much more efficient and do not incur the overhead associated with a ring transition or access to a platform resource." DateTime.Now Good but it has only a resolution of 16ms which can be not enough if you want more accuracy.   Reporting Method Potential Pitfalls Console.WriteLine Ok if not called too often. Debug.Print Are you really measuring performance with Debug Builds? Shame on you. Trace.WriteLine Better but you need to plug in some good output listener like a trace file. But be aware that the first time you call this method it will read your app.config and deserialize your system.diagnostics section which does also take time.   In general it is a good idea to use some tracing library which does measure the timing for you and you only need to decorate some methods with tracing so you can later verify if something has changed for the better or worse. In my previous article I did compare measuring performance with quantum mechanics. This analogy does work surprising well. When you measure a quantum system there is a lower limit how accurately you can measure something. The Heisenberg uncertainty relation does tell us that you cannot measure of a quantum system the impulse and location of a particle at the same time with infinite accuracy. For programmers the two variables are execution time and memory allocations. If you try to measure the timings of all methods in your application you will need to store them somewhere. The fastest storage space besides the CPU cache is the memory. But if your timing values do consume all available memory there is no memory left for the actual application to run. On the other hand if you try to record all memory allocations of your application you will also need to store the data somewhere. This will cost you memory and execution time. These constraints are always there and regardless how good the marketing of tool vendors for performance and memory profilers are: Any measurement will disturb the system in a non predictable way. Commercial tool vendors will tell you they do calculate this overhead and subtract it from the measured values to give you the most accurate values but in reality it is not entirely true. After falling into the trap to trust the profiler timings several times I have got into the habit to Measure with a profiler to get an idea where potential bottlenecks are. Measure again with tracing only the specific methods to check if this method is really worth optimizing. Optimize it Measure again. Be surprised that your optimization has made things worse. Think harder Implement something that really works. Measure again Finished! - Or look for the next bottleneck. Recently I have looked into issues with serialization performance. For serialization DataContractSerializer was used and I was not sure if XML is really the most optimal wire format. After looking around I have found protobuf-net which uses Googles Protocol Buffer format which is a compact binary serialization format. What is good for Google should be good for us. A small sample app to check out performance was a matter of minutes: using ProtoBuf; using System; using System.Diagnostics; using System.IO; using System.Reflection; using System.Runtime.Serialization; [DataContract, Serializable] class Data { [DataMember(Order=1)] public int IntValue { get; set; } [DataMember(Order = 2)] public string StringValue { get; set; } [DataMember(Order = 3)] public bool IsActivated { get; set; } [DataMember(Order = 4)] public BindingFlags Flags { get; set; } } class Program { static MemoryStream _Stream = new MemoryStream(); static MemoryStream Stream { get { _Stream.Position = 0; _Stream.SetLength(0); return _Stream; } } static void Main(string[] args) { DataContractSerializer ser = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(Data)); Data data = new Data { IntValue = 100, IsActivated = true, StringValue = "Hi this is a small string value to check if serialization does work as expected" }; var sw = Stopwatch.StartNew(); int Runs = 1000 * 1000; for (int i = 0; i < Runs; i++) { //ser.WriteObject(Stream, data); Serializer.Serialize<Data>(Stream, data); } sw.Stop(); Console.WriteLine("Did take {0:N0}ms for {1:N0} objects", sw.Elapsed.TotalMilliseconds, Runs); Console.ReadLine(); } } The results are indeed promising: Serializer Time in ms N objects protobuf-net   807 1000000 DataContract 4402 1000000 Nearly a factor 5 faster and a much more compact wire format. Lets use it! After switching over to protbuf-net the transfered wire data has dropped by a factor two (good) and the performance has worsened by nearly a factor two. How is that possible? We have measured it? Protobuf-net is much faster! As it turns out protobuf-net is faster but it has a cost: For the first time a type is de/serialized it does use some very smart code-gen which does not come for free. Lets try to measure this one by setting of our performance test app the Runs value not to one million but to 1. Serializer Time in ms N objects protobuf-net 85 1 DataContract 24 1 The code-gen overhead is significant and can take up to 200ms for more complex types. The break even point where the code-gen cost is amortized by its faster serialization performance is (assuming small objects) somewhere between 20.000-40.000 serialized objects. As it turned out my specific scenario involved about 100 types and 1000 serializations in total. That explains why the good old DataContractSerializer is not so easy to take out of business. The final approach I ended up was to reduce the number of types and to serialize primitive types via BinaryWriter directly which turned out to be a pretty good alternative. It sounded good until I measured again and found that my optimizations so far do not help much. After looking more deeper at the profiling data I did found that one of the 1000 calls did take 50% of the time. So how do I find out which call it was? Normal profilers do fail short at this discipline. A (totally undeserved) relatively unknown profiler is SpeedTrace which does unlike normal profilers create traces of your applications by instrumenting your IL code at runtime. This way you can look at the full call stack of the one slow serializer call to find out if this stack was something special. Unfortunately the call stack showed nothing special. But luckily I have my own tracing as well and I could see that the slow serializer call did happen during the serialization of a bool value. When you encounter after much analysis something unreasonable you cannot explain it then the chances are good that your thread was suspended by the garbage collector. If there is a problem with excessive GCs remains to be investigated but so far the serialization performance seems to be mostly ok.  When you do profile a complex system with many interconnected processes you can never be sure that the timings you just did measure are accurate at all. Some process might be hitting the disc slowing things down for all other processes for some seconds as well. There is a big difference between warm and cold startup. If you restart all processes you can basically forget the first run because of the OS disc cache, JIT and GCs make the measured timings very flexible. When you are in need of a random number generator you should measure cold startup times of a sufficiently complex system. After the first run you can try again getting different and much lower numbers. Now try again at least two times to get some feeling how stable the numbers are. Oh and try to do the same thing the next day. It might be that the bottleneck you found yesterday is gone today. Thanks to GC and other random stuff it can become pretty hard to find stuff worth optimizing if no big bottlenecks except bloatloads of code are left anymore. When I have found a spot worth optimizing I do make the code changes and do measure again to check if something has changed. If it has got slower and I am certain that my change should have made it faster I can blame the GC again. The thing is that if you optimize stuff and you allocate less objects the GC times will shift to some other location. If you are unlucky it will make your faster working code slower because you see now GCs at times where none were before. This is where the stuff does get really tricky. A safe escape hatch is to create a repro of the slow code in an isolated application so you can change things fast in a reliable manner. Then the normal profilers do also start working again. As Vance Morrison does point out it is much more complex to profile a system against the wall clock compared to optimize for CPU time. The reason is that for wall clock time analysis you need to understand how your system does work and which threads (if you have not one but perhaps 20) are causing a visible delay to the end user and which threads can wait a long time without affecting the user experience at all. Next time: Commercial profiler shootout.

  Read the article

• Caching NHibernate Named Queries

  - by TStewartDev

  I recently started a new job and one of my first tasks was to implement a "popular products" design. The parameters were that it be done with NHibernate and be cached for 24 hours at a time because the query will be pretty taxing and the results do not need to be constantly up to date. This ended up being tougher than it sounds. The database schema meant a minimum of four joins with filtering and ordering criteria. I decided to use a stored procedure rather than letting NHibernate create the SQL for me. Here is a summary of what I learned (even if I didn't ultimately use all of it): You can't, at the time of this writing, use Fluent NHibernate to configure SQL named queries or imports You can return persistent entities from a stored procedure and there are a couple ways to do that You can populate POCOs using the results of a stored procedure, but it isn't quite as obvious You can reuse your named query result mapping other places (avoid duplication) Caching your query results is not at all obvious Testing to see if your cache is working is a pain NHibernate does a lot of things right. Having unified, up-to-date, comprehensive, and easy-to-find documentation is not one of them. By the way, if you're new to this, I'll use the terms "named query" and "stored procedure" (from NHibernate's perspective) fairly interchangeably. Technically, a named query can execute any SQL, not just a stored procedure, and a stored procedure doesn't have to be executed from a named query, but for reusability, it seems to me like the best practice. If you're here, chances are good you're looking for answers to a similar problem. You don't want to read about the path, you just want the result. So, here's how to get this thing going. The Stored Procedure NHibernate has some guidelines when using stored procedures. For Microsoft SQL Server, you have to return a result set. The scalar value that the stored procedure returns is ignored as are any result sets after the first. Other than that, it's nothing special. CREATE PROCEDURE GetPopularProducts @StartDate DATETIME, @MaxResults INT AS BEGIN SELECT [ProductId], [ProductName], [ImageUrl] FROM SomeTableWithJoinsEtc END The Result Class - PopularProduct You have two options to transport your query results to your view (or wherever is the final destination): you can populate an existing mapped entity class in your model, or you can create a new entity class. If you go with the existing model, the advantage is that the query will act as a loader and you'll get full proxied access to the domain model. However, this can be a disadvantage if you require access to the related entities that aren't loaded by your results. For example, my PopularProduct has image references. Unless I tie them into the query (thus making it even more complicated and expensive to run), they'll have to be loaded on access, requiring more trips to the database. Since we're trying to avoid trips to the database by using a second-level cache, we should use the second option, which is to create a separate entity for results. This approach is (I believe) in the spirit of the Command-Query Separation principle, and it allows us to flatten our data and optimize our report-generation process from data source to view. public class PopularProduct { public virtual int ProductId { get; set; } public virtual string ProductName { get; set; } public virtual string ImageUrl { get; set; } } The NHibernate Mappings (hbm) Next up, we need to let NHibernate know about the query and where the results will go. Below is the markup for the PopularProduct class. Notice that I'm using the <resultset> element and that it has a name attribute. The name allows us to drop this into our query map and any others, giving us reusability. Also notice the <import> element which lets NHibernate know about our entity class. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <hibernate-mapping xmlns="urn:nhibernate-mapping-2.2"> <import class="PopularProduct, Infrastructure.NHibernate, Version=1.0.0.0"/> <resultset name="PopularProductResultSet"> <return-scalar column="ProductId" type="System.Int32"/> <return-scalar column="ProductName" type="System.String"/> <return-scalar column="ImageUrl" type="System.String"/> </resultset> </hibernate-mapping>  And now the PopularProductsMap: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <hibernate-mapping xmlns="urn:nhibernate-mapping-2.2"> <sql-query name="GetPopularProducts" resultset-ref="PopularProductResultSet" cacheable="true" cache-mode="normal"> <query-param name="StartDate" type="System.DateTime" /> <query-param name="MaxResults" type="System.Int32" /> exec GetPopularProducts @StartDate = :StartDate, @MaxResults = :MaxResults </sql-query> </hibernate-mapping>  The two most important things to notice here are the resultset-ref attribute, which links in our resultset mapping, and the cacheable attribute. The Query Class – PopularProductsQuery So far, this has been fairly obvious if you're familiar with NHibernate. This next part, maybe not so much. You can implement your query however you want to; for me, I wanted a self-encapsulated Query class, so here's what it looks like: public class PopularProductsQuery : IPopularProductsQuery { private static readonly IResultTransformer ResultTransformer; private readonly ISessionBuilder _sessionBuilder;   static PopularProductsQuery() { ResultTransformer = Transformers.AliasToBean<PopularProduct>(); }   public PopularProductsQuery(ISessionBuilder sessionBuilder) { _sessionBuilder = sessionBuilder; }   public IList<PopularProduct> GetPopularProducts(DateTime startDate, int maxResults) { var session = _sessionBuilder.GetSession(); var popularProducts = session .GetNamedQuery("GetPopularProducts") .SetCacheable(true) .SetCacheRegion("PopularProductsCacheRegion") .SetCacheMode(CacheMode.Normal) .SetReadOnly(true) .SetResultTransformer(ResultTransformer) .SetParameter("StartDate", startDate.Date) .SetParameter("MaxResults", maxResults) .List<PopularProduct>();   return popularProducts; } }  Okay, so let's look at each line of the query execution. The first, GetNamedQuery, matches up with our NHibernate mapping for the sql-query. Next, we set it as cacheable (this is probably redundant since our mapping also specified it, but it can't hurt, right?). Then we set the cache region which we'll get to in the next section. Set the cache mode (optional, I believe), and my cache is read-only, so I set that as well. The result transformer is very important. This tells NHibernate how to transform your query results into a non-persistent entity. You can see I've defined ResultTransformer in the static constructor using the AliasToBean transformer. The name is obviously leftover from Java/Hibernate. Finally, set your parameters and then call a result method which will execute the query. Because this is set to cached, you execute this statement every time you run the query and NHibernate will know based on your parameters whether to use its cached version or a fresh version. The Configuration – hibernate.cfg.xml and Web.config You need to explicitly enable second-level caching in your hibernate configuration: <hibernate-configuration xmlns="urn:nhibernate-configuration-2.2"> <session-factory> [...] <property name="dialect">NHibernate.Dialect.MsSql2005Dialect</property> <property name="cache.provider_class">NHibernate.Caches.SysCache.SysCacheProvider,NHibernate.Caches.SysCache</property> <property name="cache.use_query_cache">true</property> <property name="cache.use_second_level_cache">true</property> [...] </session-factory> </hibernate-configuration> Both properties "use_query_cache" and "use_second_level_cache" are necessary. As this is for a web deployement, we're using SysCache which relies on ASP.NET's caching. Be aware of this if you're not deploying to the web! You'll have to use a different cache provider. We also need to tell our cache provider (in this cache, SysCache) about our caching region: <syscache> <cache region="PopularProductsCacheRegion" expiration="86400" priority="5" /> </syscache> Here I've set the cache to be valid for 24 hours. This XML snippet goes in your Web.config (or in a separate file referenced by Web.config, which helps keep things tidy). The Payoff That should be it! At this point, your queries should run once against the database for a given set of parameters and then use the cache thereafter until it expires. You can, of course, adjust settings to work in your particular environment. Testing Testing your application to ensure it is using the cache is a pain, but if you're like me, you want to know that it's actually working. It's a bit involved, though, so I'll create a separate post for it if comments indicate there is interest.

  Read the article

• Integrating NetBeans for Raspberry Pi Java Development

  - by speakjava

  Raspberry Pi IDE Java Development The Raspberry Pi is an incredible device for building embedded Java applications but, despite being able to run an IDE on the Pi it really pushes things to the limit.  It's much better to use a PC or laptop to develop the code and then deploy and test on the Pi.  What I thought I'd do in this blog entry was to run through the steps necessary to set up NetBeans on a PC for Java code development, with automatic deployment to the Raspberry Pi as part of the build process. I will assume that your starting point is a Raspberry Pi with an SD card that has one of the latest Raspbian images on it.  This is good because this now includes the JDK 7 as part of the distro, so no need to download and install a separate JDK.  I will also assume that you have installed the JDK and NetBeans on your PC.  These can be downloaded here. There are numerous approaches you can take to this including mounting the file system from the Raspberry Pi remotely on your development machine.  I tried this and I found that NetBeans got rather upset if the file system disappeared either through network interruption or the Raspberry Pi being turned off.  The following method uses copying over SSH, which will fail more gracefully if the Pi is not responding. Step 1: Enable SSH on the Raspberry Pi To run the Java applications you create you will need to start Java on the Raspberry Pi with the appropriate class name, classpath and parameters.  For non-JavaFX applications you can either do this from the Raspberry Pi desktop or, if you do not have a monitor connected through a remote command line.  To execute the remote command line you need to enable SSH (a secure shell login over the network) and connect using an application like PuTTY. You can enable SSH when you first boot the Raspberry Pi, as the raspi-config program runs automatically.  You can also run it at any time afterwards by running the command: sudo raspi-config This will bring up a menu of options.  Select '8 Advanced Options' and on the next screen select 'A$ SSH'.  Select 'Enable' and the task is complete. Step 2: Configure Raspberry Pi Networking By default, the Raspbian distribution configures the ethernet connection to use DHCP rather than a static IP address.  You can continue to use DHCP if you want, but to avoid having to potentially change settings whenever you reboot the Pi using a static IP address is simpler. To configure this on the Pi you need to edit the /etc/network/interfaces file.  You will need to do this as root using the sudo command, so something like sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces.  In this file you will see this line: iface eth0 inet dhcp This needs to be changed to the following: iface eth0 inet static     address 10.0.0.2     gateway 10.0.0.254     netmask 255.255.255.0 You will need to change the values in red to an appropriate IP address and to match the address of your gateway. Step 3: Create a Public-Private Key Pair On Your Development Machine How you do this will depend on which Operating system you are using: Mac OSX or Linux Run the command: ssh-keygen -t rsa Press ENTER/RETURN to accept the default destination for saving the key.  We do not need a passphrase so simply press ENTER/RETURN for an empty one and once more to confirm. The key will be created in the file .ssh/id_rsa.pub in your home directory.  Display the contents of this file using the cat command: cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub Open a window, SSH to the Raspberry Pi and login.  Change directory to .ssh and edit the authorized_keys file (don't worry if the file does not exist).  Copy and paste the contents of the id_rsa.pub file to the authorized_keys file and save it. Windows Since Windows is not a UNIX derivative operating system it does not include the necessary key generating software by default.  To generate the key I used puttygen.exe which is available from the same site that provides the PuTTY application, here. Download this and run it on your Windows machine.  Follow the instructions to generate a key.  I remove the key comment, but you can leave that if you want. Click "Save private key", confirm that you don't want to use a passphrase and select a filename and location for the key. Copy the public key from the part of the window marked, "Public key for pasting into OpenSSH authorized_keys file".  Use PuTTY to connect to the Raspberry Pi and login.  Change directory to .ssh and edit the authorized_keys file (don't worry if this does not exist).  Paste the key information at the end of this file and save it. Logout and then start PuTTY again.  This time we need to create a saved session using the private key.  Type in the IP address of the Raspberry Pi in the "Hostname (or IP address)" field and expand "SSH" under the "Connection" category.  Select "Auth" (see the screen shot below). Click the "Browse" button under "Private key file for authentication" and select the file you saved from puttygen. Go back to the "Session" category and enter a short name in the saved sessions field, as shown below.  Click "Save" to save the session. Step 4: Test The Configuration You should now have the ability to use scp (Mac/Linux) or pscp.exe (Windows) to copy files from your development machine to the Raspberry Pi without needing to authenticate by typing in a password (so we can automate the process in NetBeans).  It's a good idea to test this using something like: scp /tmp/foo [email protected]:/tmp on Linux or Mac or pscp.exe foo pi@raspi:/tmp on Windows (Note that we use the saved configuration name instead of the IP address or hostname so the public key is picked up). pscp.exe is another tool available from the creators of PuTTY. Step 5: Configure the NetBeans Build Script Start NetBeans and create a new project (or open an existing one that you want to deploy automatically to the Raspberry Pi). Select the Files tab in the explorer window and expand your project.  You will see a build.xml file.  Double click this to edit it. This file will mostly be comments.  At the end (but within the </project> tag) add the XML for <target name="-post-jar">, shown below Here's the code again in case you want to use cut-and-paste: <target name="-post-jar">   <echo level="info" message="Copying dist directory to remote Pi"/>   <exec executable="scp" dir="${basedir}">     <arg line="-r"/>     <arg value="dist"/>     <arg value="[email protected]:NetBeans/CopyTest"/>   </exec>  </target> For Windows it will be slightly different: <target name="-post-jar">   <echo level="info" message="Copying dist directory to remote Pi"/>   <exec executable="C:\pi\putty\pscp.exe" dir="${basedir}">     <arg line="-r"/>     <arg value="dist"/>     <arg value="pi@raspi:NetBeans/CopyTest"/>   </exec> </target> You will also need to ensure that pscp.exe is in your PATH (or specify a fully qualified pathname). From now on when you clean and build the project the dist directory will automatically be copied to the Raspberry Pi ready for testing.

  Read the article

• Underwriting in a New Frontier: Spurring Innovation

  - by [email protected]

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} Susan Keuer, product strategy manager for Oracle Insurance, shares her experiences and insight from the 2010 Association of Home Office Underwriters (AHOU) Annual Conference, April 11-14, in San Antonio, Texas    How can I be more innovative in underwriting?  It's a common question I hear from insurance carriers, producers and others, so it was no surprise that it was the key theme at the recent 2010 AHOU Annual Conference.  This year's event drew more than 900 insurance professionals involved in the underwriting process across life and annuities, property and casualty and reinsurance from around the globe, including the U.S., Canada, Australia, Bahamas, and more, to San Antonio - a Texas city where innovation transformed a series of downtown drainage canals into its premiere River Walk tourist destination.   CNN's Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta kicked off the conference with a phenomenal opening session that drove home the theme of the conference, "Underwriting in a New Frontier:  Spurring Innovation."   Drawing from his own experience as a neurosurgeon treating critically injured medical patients in the field in Iraq, Gupta inspired audience members to think outside the box during the underwriting process. He shared a compelling story of operating on a soldier who had suffered a head-related trauma in a field hospital.  With minimal supplies available Gupta used a Black and Decker saw to operate on the soldier's head and reduce pressure on his swelling brain. Drawing from this example, Gupta encouraged underwriters to think creatively, be innovative, and consider new tools and sources of information, such as social networking sites, during the underwriting process. So as you are looking at risk take into consideration all resources you have available.    Gupta also stressed the concept of IKIGAI - noting that individuals who believe that their life is worth living are less likely to die than are their counterparts without this belief.  How does one quantify this approach to life or thought process when evaluating risk?  Could this be something to consider as a "category" in the near future? How can this same belief in your own work spur innovation?   The role of technology was a hot topic of discussion throughout the conference.  Sessions delved into the latest in underwriting software to the rise of social media and how it is being increasingly integrated into underwriting process and solutions.  In one session a trio of panelists representing the carrier, producer and vendor communities stressed the importance to underwriters of leveraging new technology and the plethora of online information sources, which all could be used to accurately, honestly and consistently evaluate the risk throughout the underwriting process.   Another focused on the explosion of social media noting:  1.    Social media is growing exponentially - About eight percent of Americans used social media five years ago. Today about 46 percent of Americans do so, with 85 percent of financial services professionals using social media in their work.  2.    It will impact your business - Underwriters reconfirmed over and over that they are increasingly using "free" tools that are available in cyberspace in lieu of more costly solutions, such as inspection reports conducted by individuals in the field.  3.    Information is instantly available on the Web, anytime, anywhere - LinkedIn was mentioned as a way to connect to peers in the underwriting community and producers alike.  Many carriers and agents also are using Facebook to promote their company to customers - and as a point-of-entry to allow them to perform some functionality - such as accessing product marketing information versus directing users to go to the carrier's own proprietary website.  Other carriers have released their tight brand marketing to allow their producers to drive more business to their personal Facebook site where they offer innovative tools such as Application Capture or asking medical information in a more relaxed fashion.     Other key topics at the conference included the economy, ongoing industry consolidation, real-estate valuations as an asset and input into the underwriting process, and producer trends.  All stressed a "back to basics" approach for low cost, term products.   Finally, Connie Merritt, RN, PHN, entertained the large group of atttendees with audience-engaging insight on how to "Tame the Lions in Your Life - Dealing with Complainers, Bullies, Grump and Curmudgeon." Merritt noted "we are too busy for our own good." She shared how her overachieving personality had impacted her life.  Audience members then were asked to pick red, yellow, blue, or green shapes, without knowing that each one represented a specific personality trait.  For example, those who picked blue were the peacemakers. Those who choose yellow were social - the hint was to "Be Quiet Longer."  She then offered these "lion taming" steps:   1.    Admit It 2.    Accept It 3.    Let Go 4.    Be Present (which paralleled Gupta's IKIGAI concept)   When thinking about underwriting I encourage you to be present in the moment and think creatively, but don't be afraid to look ahead to the future and be an innovator.  I hope to see you at next year's AHOU Annual Conference, May 1-4, 2011 at The Mirage in Las Vegas, Nev.     Susan Keuer is the product strategy manager for new business underwriting.  She brings more than 20 years of insurance industry experience working with leading insurance carriers and technology companies to her role on the product strategy team for life/annuities solutions within the Oracle Insurance Global Business Unit  

  Read the article

• 500 Internal Server Error with PHP application

  - by James

  I have written a PHP application using Windows and XAMPP. I've been trying to run it on Ubuntu 10.10 with Lighttpd 1.4.26. Parts of the application work fine, but whenever I try to log in, I get a 500 - Internal Server Error page. The only thing that shows up in /var/log/lighttpd/error.log is 2011-02-25 13:43:13: (mod_fastcgi.c.2582) unexpected end-of-file (perhaps the fastcgi process died): pid: 1169 socket: unix:/tmp/php.socket-0 2011-02-25 13:43:13: (mod_fastcgi.c.3367) response not received, request sent: 1596 on socket: unix:/tmp/php.socket-0 for /~denton/customer-facing-portal/index.php?, closing connection If I had any output whatsoever from PHP, this would be a lot easier to debug. Any ideas on how to get some? Here is my /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf file: # Debian lighttpd configuration file # ############ Options you really have to take care of #################### ## modules to load server.modules = ( "mod_alias", "mod_compress", # "mod_rewrite", # "mod_redirect", # "mod_usertrack", # "mod_expire", # "mod_flv_streaming", # "mod_evasive", "mod_setenv" ) ## a static document-root, for virtual-hosting take look at the ## server.virtual-* options server.document-root = "/var/www/" ## where to upload files to, purged daily. server.upload-dirs = ( "/var/cache/lighttpd/uploads" ) ## where to send error-messages to server.errorlog = "/var/log/lighttpd/error.log" ## files to check for if .../ is requested index-file.names = ( "index.php", "index.html", "index.htm", "default.htm", "index.lighttpd.html" ) ## Use the "Content-Type" extended attribute to obtain mime type if possible # mimetype.use-xattr = "enable" ## # which extensions should not be handle via static-file transfer # # .php, .pl, .fcgi are most often handled by mod_fastcgi or mod_cgi static-file.exclude-extensions = ( ".php", ".pl", ".fcgi" ) ######### Options that are good to be but not neccesary to be changed ####### ## Use ipv6 only if available. (disabled for while, check #560837) #include_shell "/usr/share/lighttpd/use-ipv6.pl" ## bind to port (default: 80) # server.port = 81 ## bind to localhost only (default: all interfaces) ## server.bind = "localhost" ## error-handler for status 404 #server.error-handler-404 = "/error-handler.html" #server.error-handler-404 = "/error-handler.php" ## to help the rc.scripts server.pid-file = "/var/run/lighttpd.pid" ## ## Format: <errorfile-prefix><status>.html ## -> ..../status-404.html for 'File not found' #server.errorfile-prefix = "/var/www/" ## virtual directory listings dir-listing.encoding = "utf-8" server.dir-listing = "enable" ### only root can use these options # # chroot() to directory (default: no chroot() ) #server.chroot = "/" ## change uid to <uid> (default: don't change) server.username = "www-data" ## change gid to <gid> (default: don't change) server.groupname = "www-data" #### compress module compress.cache-dir = "/var/cache/lighttpd/compress/" compress.filetype = ("text/plain", "text/html", "application/x-javascript", "text/css") #### url handling modules (rewrite, redirect, access) # url.rewrite = ( "^/$" => "/server-status" ) # url.redirect = ( "^/wishlist/(.+)" => "http://www.123.org/$1" ) #### expire module # expire.url = ( "/buggy/" => "access 2 hours", "/asdhas/" => "access plus 1 seconds 2 minutes") #### external configuration files ## mimetype mapping include_shell "/usr/share/lighttpd/create-mime.assign.pl" ## load enabled configuration files, ## read /etc/lighttpd/conf-available/README first include_shell "/usr/share/lighttpd/include-conf-enabled.pl" ## Set environment variables setenv.add-environment = ( "DB_URL__DEMO" => "192.168.1.231", "DB_NAME_DEMO" => "demo", "DB_USER_DEMO" => "user", "DB_PASS_DEMO" => "password", "DB_AGENCY_DEMO" => "demo" ) Here is my /etc/php5/cgi/php.ini file (sans 1641 lines of comments): [PHP] register_long_arrays = Off short_open_tag = Off engine = On short_open_tag = Off asp_tags = Off precision = 14 y2k_compliance = On output_buffering = 4096 zlib.output_compression = Off implicit_flush = Off unserialize_callback_func = serialize_precision = 100 allow_call_time_pass_reference = Off safe_mode = Off safe_mode_gid = Off safe_mode_include_dir = safe_mode_exec_dir = safe_mode_allowed_env_vars = PHP_ safe_mode_protected_env_vars = LD_LIBRARY_PATH disable_functions = disable_classes = expose_php = On max_execution_time = 30 max_input_time = 60 memory_limit = 128M error_reporting = E_ALL & ~E_DEPRECATED & ~E_STRICT display_errors = On display_startup_errors = On log_errors = On log_errors_max_len = 1024 ignore_repeated_errors = Off ignore_repeated_source = Off report_memleaks = On track_errors = On html_errors = On variables_order = "GPCS" request_order = "GP" register_globals = Off register_long_arrays = Off register_argc_argv = Off auto_globals_jit = On post_max_size = 8M magic_quotes_gpc = Off magic_quotes_runtime = Off magic_quotes_sybase = Off auto_prepend_file = auto_append_file = default_mimetype = "text/html" doc_root = user_dir = enable_dl = Off cgi.fix_pathinfo=1 file_uploads = On upload_max_filesize = 2M max_file_uploads = 20 allow_url_fopen = On allow_url_include = Off default_socket_timeout = 60 [Date] date.timezone = "America/Chicago" [filter] [iconv] [intl] [sqlite] [sqlite3] [Pcre] [Pdo] [Pdo_mysql] pdo_mysql.cache_size = 2000 pdo_mysql.default_socket= [Phar] [Syslog] define_syslog_variables = Off [mail function] SMTP = localhost smtp_port = 25 mail.add_x_header = On [SQL] sql.safe_mode = Off [ODBC] odbc.allow_persistent = On odbc.check_persistent = On odbc.max_persistent = -1 odbc.max_links = -1 odbc.defaultlrl = 4096 odbc.defaultbinmode = 1 [Interbase] ibase.allow_persistent = 1 ibase.max_persistent = -1 ibase.max_links = -1 ibase.timestampformat = "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S" ibase.dateformat = "%Y-%m-%d" ibase.timeformat = "%H:%M:%S" [MySQL] mysql.allow_local_infile = On mysql.allow_persistent = On mysql.cache_size = 2000 mysql.max_persistent = -1 mysql.max_links = -1 mysql.default_port = mysql.default_socket = mysql.default_host = mysql.default_user = mysql.default_password = mysql.connect_timeout = 60 mysql.trace_mode = Off [MySQLi] mysqli.max_persistent = -1 mysqli.allow_persistent = On mysqli.max_links = -1 mysqli.cache_size = 2000 mysqli.default_port = 3306 mysqli.default_socket = mysqli.default_host = mysqli.default_user = mysqli.default_pw = mysqli.reconnect = Off [mysqlnd] mysqlnd.collect_statistics = On mysqlnd.collect_memory_statistics = Off [OCI8] [PostgresSQL] pgsql.allow_persistent = On pgsql.auto_reset_persistent = Off pgsql.max_persistent = -1 pgsql.max_links = -1 pgsql.ignore_notice = 0 pgsql.log_notice = 0 [Sybase-CT] sybct.allow_persistent = On sybct.max_persistent = -1 sybct.max_links = -1 sybct.min_server_severity = 10 sybct.min_client_severity = 10 [bcmath] bcmath.scale = 0 [browscap] [Session] session.save_handler = files session.use_cookies = 1 session.use_only_cookies = 1 session.name = PHPSESSID session.auto_start = 0 session.cookie_lifetime = 0 session.cookie_path = / session.cookie_domain = session.cookie_httponly = session.serialize_handler = php session.gc_probability = 1 session.gc_divisor = 1000 session.gc_maxlifetime = 1440 session.bug_compat_42 = Off session.bug_compat_warn = Off session.referer_check = session.entropy_length = 0 session.cache_limiter = nocache session.cache_expire = 180 session.use_trans_sid = 0 session.hash_function = 0 session.hash_bits_per_character = 5 url_rewriter.tags = "a=href,area=href,frame=src,input=src,form=fakeentry" [MSSQL] mssql.allow_persistent = On mssql.max_persistent = -1 mssql.max_links = -1 mssql.min_error_severity = 10 mssql.min_message_severity = 10 mssql.compatability_mode = Off mssql.secure_connection = Off [Assertion] [COM] [mbstring] [gd] [exif] [Tidy] tidy.clean_output = Off [soap] soap.wsdl_cache_enabled=1 soap.wsdl_cache_dir="/tmp" soap.wsdl_cache_ttl=86400 soap.wsdl_cache_limit = 5 [sysvshm] [ldap] ldap.max_links = -1 [mcrypt] [dba] Update: here is /etc/lighttpd/conf-enabled/15-fastcgi-php.conf As far as I know, it's just the default config file the Ubuntu package installed. ## FastCGI programs have the same functionality as CGI programs, ## but are considerably faster through lower interpreter startup ## time and socketed communication ## ## Documentation: /usr/share/doc/lighttpd-doc/fastcgi.txt.gz ## http://redmine.lighttpd.net/projects/lighttpd/wiki/Docs:ConfigurationOptions#mod_fastcgi-fastcgi ## Start an FastCGI server for php (needs the php5-cgi package) fastcgi.server += ( ".php" => (( "bin-path" => "/usr/bin/php-cgi", "socket" => "/tmp/php.socket", "max-procs" => 1, "idle-timeout" => 20, "bin-environment" => ( "PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN" => "4", "PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS" => "10000" ), "bin-copy-environment" => ( "PATH", "SHELL", "USER" ), "broken-scriptfilename" => "enable" )) )

  Read the article

• Proper network configuration for a KVM guest to be on the same networks at the host

  - by Steve Madsen

  I am running a Debian Linux server on Lenny. Within it, I am running another Lenny instance using KVM. Both servers are externally available, with public IPs, as well as a second interface with private IPs for the LAN. Everything works fine, except the VM sees all network traffic as originating from the host server. I suspect this might have something to do with the iptables-based firewall I'm running on the host. What I'd like to figure out is: how to I properly configure the host's networking such that all of these requirements are met? Both host and VMs have 2 network interfaces (public and private). Both host and VMs can be independently firewalled. Ideally, VM traffic does not have to traverse the host firewall. VMs see real remote IP addresses, not the host's. Currently, the host's network interfaces are configured as bridges. eth0 and eth1 do not have IP addresses assigned to them, but br0 and br1 do. /etc/network/interfaces on the host: # The primary network interface auto br1 iface br1 inet static address 24.123.138.34 netmask 255.255.255.248 network 24.123.138.32 broadcast 24.123.138.39 gateway 24.123.138.33 bridge_ports eth1 bridge_stp off auto br1:0 iface br1:0 inet static address 24.123.138.36 netmask 255.255.255.248 network 24.123.138.32 broadcast 24.123.138.39 # Internal network auto br0 iface br0 inet static address 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 network 192.168.1.0 broadcast 192.168.1.255 bridge_ports eth0 bridge_stp off This is the libvirt/qemu configuration file for the VM: <domain type='kvm'> <name>apps</name> <uuid>636b6620-0949-bc88-3197-37153b88772e</uuid> <memory>393216</memory> <currentMemory>393216</currentMemory> <vcpu>1</vcpu> <os> <type arch='i686' machine='pc'>hvm</type> <boot dev='hd'/> </os> <features> <acpi/> <apic/> <pae/> </features> <clock offset='utc'/> <on_poweroff>destroy</on_poweroff> <on_reboot>restart</on_reboot> <on_crash>restart</on_crash> <devices> <emulator>/usr/bin/kvm</emulator> <disk type='file' device='cdrom'> <target dev='hdc' bus='ide'/> <readonly/> </disk> <disk type='file' device='disk'> <source file='/raid/kvm-images/apps.qcow2'/> <target dev='vda' bus='virtio'/> </disk> <interface type='bridge'> <mac address='54:52:00:27:5e:02'/> <source bridge='br0'/> <model type='virtio'/> </interface> <interface type='bridge'> <mac address='54:52:00:40:cc:7f'/> <source bridge='br1'/> <model type='virtio'/> </interface> <serial type='pty'> <target port='0'/> </serial> <console type='pty'> <target port='0'/> </console> <input type='mouse' bus='ps2'/> <graphics type='vnc' port='-1' autoport='yes' keymap='en-us'/> </devices> </domain> Along with the rest of my firewall rules, the firewalling script includes this command to pass packets destined for a KVM guest: # Allow bridged packets to pass (for KVM guests). iptables -A FORWARD -m physdev --physdev-is-bridged -j ACCEPT (Not applicable to this question, but a side-effect of my bridging configuration appears to be that I can't ever shut down cleanly. The kernel eventually tells me "unregister_netdevice: waiting for br1 to become free" and I have to hard reset the system. Maybe a sign I've done something dumb?)

  Read the article

• Emit Knowledge - social network for knowledge sharing

  - by hajan

  Emit Knowledge, as the words refer - it's a social network for emitting / sharing knowledge from users by users. Those who can benefit the most out of this network is perhaps all of YOU who have something to share with others and contribute to the knowledge world. I've been closely communicating with the core team of this very, very interesting, brand new social network (with specific purpose!) about the concept, idea and the vision they have for their product and I can say with a lot of confidence that this network has real potential to become something from which we will all benefit. I won't speak much about that and would prefer to give you link and try it yourself - http://www.emitknowledge.com Mainly, through the past few months I've been testing this network and it is getting improved all the time. The user experience is great, you can easily find out what you need and it follows some known patterns that are common for all social networks. They have some real good ideas and plans that are already under development for the next updates of their product. You can do micro blogging or you can do regular normal blogging… it’s up to you, and the way it works, it is seamless. Here is a short Question and Answers (QA) interview I made with the lead of the team, Marijan Nikolovski: 1. Can you please explain us briefly, what is Emit Knowledge? Emit Knowledge is a brand new knowledge based social network, delivering quality content from users to users. We believe that people’s knowledge, experience and professional thoughts compose quality content, worth sharing among millions around the world. Therefore, we created the platform that matches people’s need to share and gain knowledge in the most suitable and comfortable way. Easy to work with, Emit Knowledge lets you to smoothly craft and emit knowledge around the globe. 2. How 'old' is Emit Knowledge? In hamster’s years we are almost five years old start-up :). Just kidding. We’ve released our public beta about three months ago. Our official release date is 27 of June 2012. 3. How did you come up with this idea? Everything started from a simple idea to solve a complex problem. We’ve seen that the social web has become polluted with data and is on the right track to lose its base principles – socialization and common cause. That was our start point. We’ve gathered the team, drew some sketches and started to mind map the idea. After several idea refactoring’s Emit Knowledge was born. 4. Is there any competition out there in the market? Currently we don't have any competitors that share the same cause. What makes our platform different is the ideology that our product promotes and the functionalities that our platform offers for easy socialization based on interests and knowledge sharing. 5. What are the main technologies used to build Emit Knowledge? Emit Knowledge was built on a heterogeneous pallet of technologies. Currently, we have four of separation: UI – Built on ASP.NET MVC3 and Knockout.js; Messaging infrastructure – Build on top of RabbitMQ; Background services – Our in-house solution for job distribution, orchestration and processing; Data storage – Build on top of MongoDB; What are the main reasons you've chosen ASP.NET MVC? Since all of our team members are .NET engineers, the decision was very natural. ASP.NET MVC is the only Microsoft web stack that sticks to the HTTP behavioral standards. It is easy to work with, have a tiny learning curve and everyone who is familiar with the HTTP will understand its architecture and convention without any difficulties. 6. What are the main reasons for choosing ASP.NET MVC? Since all of our team members are .NET engineers, the decision was very natural. ASP.NET MVC is the only Microsoft web stack that sticks to the HTTP behavioral standards. It is easy to work with, have a tiny learning curve and everyone who is familiar with the HTTP will understand its architecture and convention without any difficulties. 7. Did you use some of the latest Microsoft technologies? If yes, which ones? Yes, we like to rock the cutting edge tech house. Currently we are using Microsoft’s latest technologies like ASP.NET MVC, Web API (work in progress) and the best for the last; we are utilizing Windows Azure IaaS to the bone. 8. Can you please tell us shortly, what would be the benefit of regular bloggers in other blogging platforms to join Emit Knowledge? Well, unless you are some of the smoking ace gurus whose blogs are followed by a large number of users, our platform offers knowledge based segregated community equipped with tools that will enable both current and future users to expand their relations and to self-promote in the community based on their activity and knowledge sharing. 10. I see you are working very intensively and there is already integration with some third-party services to make the process of sharing and emitting knowledge easier, which services did you integrate until now and what do you plan do to next? We have “reemit” functionality for internal sharing and we also support external services like: Twitter; LinkedIn; Facebook; For the regular bloggers we have an extra cream, Windows Live Writer support for easy blog posts emitting. 11. What should we expect next? Currently, we are working on a new fancy community feature. This means that we are going to support user groups to be formed. So for all existing communities and user groups out there, wait us a little bit, we are coming for rescue :). One of the top next features they are developing is the Community Feature. It means, if you have your own User Group, Community Group or any other Group on which you and your users are mostly blogging or sharing (emitting) knowledge in various ways, Emit Knowledge as a platform will help you have everything you need to promote your group, make new followers and host all the necessary stuff that you have had need of. I would invite you to try the network and start sharing knowledge in a way that will help you gather new followers and spread your knowledge faster, easier and in a more efficient way! Let’s Emit Knowledge!

  Read the article

• Two network interfaces and two IP addresses on the same subnet in Linux

  - by Scott Duckworth

  I recently ran into a situation where I needed two IP addresses on the same subnet assigned to one Linux host so that we could run two SSL/TLS sites. My first approach was to use IP aliasing, e.g. using eth0:0, eth0:1, etc, but our network admins have some fairly strict settings in place for security that squashed this idea: They use DHCP snooping and normally don't allow static IP addresses. Static addressing is accomplished by using static DHCP entries, so the same MAC address always gets the same IP assignment. This feature can be disabled per switchport if you ask and you have a reason for it (thankfully I have a good relationship with the network guys and this isn't hard to do). With the DHCP snooping disabled on the switchport, they had to put in a rule on the switch that said MAC address X is allowed to have IP address Y. Unfortunately this had the side effect of also saying that MAC address X is ONLY allowed to have IP address Y. IP aliasing required that MAC address X was assigned two IP addresses, so this didn't work. There may have been a way around these issues on the switch configuration, but in an attempt to preserve good relations with the network admins I tried to find another way. Having two network interfaces seemed like the next logical step. Thankfully this Linux system is a virtual machine, so I was able to easily add a second network interface (without rebooting, I might add - pretty cool). A few keystrokes later I had two network interfaces up and running and both pulled IP addresses from DHCP. But then the problem came in: the network admins could see (on the switch) the ARP entry for both interfaces, but only the first network interface that I brought up would respond to pings or any sort of TCP or UDP traffic. After lots of digging and poking, here's what I came up with. It seems to work, but it also seems to be a lot of work for something that seems like it should be simple. Any alternate ideas out there? Step 1: Enable ARP filtering on all interfaces: # sysctl -w net.ipv4.conf.all.arp_filter=1 # echo "net.ipv4.conf.all.arp_filter = 1" >> /etc/sysctl.conf From the file networking/ip-sysctl.txt in the Linux kernel docs: arp_filter - BOOLEAN 1 - Allows you to have multiple network interfaces on the same subnet, and have the ARPs for each interface be answered based on whether or not the kernel would route a packet from the ARP'd IP out that interface (therefore you must use source based routing for this to work). In other words it allows control of which cards (usually 1) will respond to an arp request. 0 - (default) The kernel can respond to arp requests with addresses from other interfaces. This may seem wrong but it usually makes sense, because it increases the chance of successful communication. IP addresses are owned by the complete host on Linux, not by particular interfaces. Only for more complex setups like load- balancing, does this behaviour cause problems. arp_filter for the interface will be enabled if at least one of conf/{all,interface}/arp_filter is set to TRUE, it will be disabled otherwise Step 2: Implement source-based routing I basically just followed directions from http://lartc.org/howto/lartc.rpdb.multiple-links.html, although that page was written with a different goal in mind (dealing with two ISPs). Assume that the subnet is 10.0.0.0/24, the gateway is 10.0.0.1, the IP address for eth0 is 10.0.0.100, and the IP address for eth1 is 10.0.0.101. Define two new routing tables named eth0 and eth1 in /etc/iproute2/rt_tables: ... top of file omitted ... 1 eth0 2 eth1 Define the routes for these two tables: # ip route add default via 10.0.0.1 table eth0 # ip route add default via 10.0.0.1 table eth1 # ip route add 10.0.0.0/24 dev eth0 src 10.0.0.100 table eth0 # ip route add 10.0.0.0/24 dev eth1 src 10.0.0.101 table eth1 Define the rules for when to use the new routing tables: # ip rule add from 10.0.0.100 table eth0 # ip rule add from 10.0.0.101 table eth1 The main routing table was already taken care of by DHCP (and it's not even clear that its strictly necessary in this case), but it basically equates to this: # ip route add default via 10.0.0.1 dev eth0 # ip route add 130.127.48.0/23 dev eth0 src 10.0.0.100 # ip route add 130.127.48.0/23 dev eth1 src 10.0.0.101 And voila! Everything seems to work just fine. Sending pings to both IP addresses works fine. Sending pings from this system to other systems and forcing the ping to use a specific interface works fine (ping -I eth0 10.0.0.1, ping -I eth1 10.0.0.1). And most importantly, all TCP and UDP traffic to/from either IP address works as expected. So again, my question is: is there a better way to do this? This seems like a lot of work for a seemingly simple problem.

  Read the article

• J2EE Applications, SPARC T4, Solaris Containers, and Resource Pools

  - by user12620111

  I've obtained a substantial performance improvement on a SPARC T4-2 Server running a J2EE Application Server Cluster by deploying the cluster members into Oracle Solaris Containers and binding those containers to cores of the SPARC T4 Processor. This is not a surprising result, in fact, it is consistent with other results that are available on the Internet. See the "references", below, for some examples. Nonetheless, here is a summary of my configuration and results. (1.0) Before deploying a J2EE Application Server Cluster into a virtualized environment, many decisions need to be made. I'm not claiming that all of the decisions that I have a made will work well for every environment. In fact, I'm not even claiming that all of the decisions are the best possible for my environment. I'm only claiming that of the small sample of configurations that I've tested, this is the one that is working best for me. Here are some of the decisions that needed to be made: (1.1) Which virtualization option? There are several virtualization options and isolation levels that are available. Options include: Hard partitions:  Dynamic Domains on Sun SPARC Enterprise M-Series Servers Hypervisor based virtualization such as Oracle VM Server for SPARC (LDOMs) on SPARC T-Series Servers OS Virtualization using Oracle Solaris Containers Resource management tools in the Oracle Solaris OS to control the amount of resources an application receives, such as CPU cycles, physical memory, and network bandwidth. Oracle Solaris Containers provide the right level of isolation and flexibility for my environment. To borrow some words from my friends in marketing, "The SPARC T4 processor leverages the unique, no-cost virtualization capabilities of Oracle Solaris Zones"  (1.2) How to associate Oracle Solaris Containers with resources? There are several options available to associate containers with resources, including (a) resource pool association (b) dedicated-cpu resources and (c) capped-cpu resources. I chose to create resource pools and associate them with the containers because I wanted explicit control over the cores and virtual processors.  (1.3) Cluster Topology? Is it best to deploy (a) multiple application servers on one node, (b) one application server on multiple nodes, or (c) multiple application servers on multiple nodes? After a few quick tests, it appears that one application server per Oracle Solaris Container is a good solution. (1.4) Number of cluster members to deploy? I chose to deploy four big 64-bit application servers. I would like go back a test many 32-bit application servers, but that is left for another day. (2.0) Configuration tested. (2.1) I was using a SPARC T4-2 Server which has 2 CPU and 128 virtual processors. To understand the physical layout of the hardware on Solaris 10, I used the OpenSolaris psrinfo perl script available at http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/download/Community+Group+performance/files/psrinfo.pl: test# ./psrinfo.pl -pv The physical processor has 8 cores and 64 virtual processors (0-63) The core has 8 virtual processors (0-7)   The core has 8 virtual processors (8-15)   The core has 8 virtual processors (16-23)   The core has 8 virtual processors (24-31)   The core has 8 virtual processors (32-39)   The core has 8 virtual processors (40-47)   The core has 8 virtual processors (48-55)   The core has 8 virtual processors (56-63)     SPARC-T4 (chipid 0, clock 2848 MHz) The physical processor has 8 cores and 64 virtual processors (64-127)   The core has 8 virtual processors (64-71)   The core has 8 virtual processors (72-79)   The core has 8 virtual processors (80-87)   The core has 8 virtual processors (88-95)   The core has 8 virtual processors (96-103)   The core has 8 virtual processors (104-111)   The core has 8 virtual processors (112-119)   The core has 8 virtual processors (120-127)     SPARC-T4 (chipid 1, clock 2848 MHz) (2.2) The "before" test: without processor binding. I started with a 4-member cluster deployed into 4 Oracle Solaris Containers. Each container used a unique gigabit Ethernet port for HTTP traffic. The containers shared a 10 gigabit Ethernet port for JDBC traffic. (2.3) The "after" test: with processor binding. I ran one application server in the Global Zone and another application server in each of the three non-global zones (NGZ):  (3.0) Configuration steps. The following steps need to be repeated for all three Oracle Solaris Containers. (3.1) Stop AppServers from the BUI. (3.2) Stop the NGZ. test# ssh test-z2 init 5 (3.3) Enable resource pools: test# svcadm enable pools (3.4) Create the resource pool: test# poolcfg -dc 'create pool pool-test-z2' (3.5) Create the processor set: test# poolcfg -dc 'create pset pset-test-z2' (3.6) Specify the maximum number of CPU's that may be addd to the processor set: test# poolcfg -dc 'modify pset pset-test-z2 (uint pset.max=32)' (3.7) bash syntax to add Virtual CPUs to the processor set: test# (( i = 64 )); while (( i < 96 )); do poolcfg -dc "transfer to pset pset-test-z2 (cpu $i)"; (( i = i + 1 )) ; done (3.8) Associate the resource pool with the processor set: test# poolcfg -dc 'associate pool pool-test-z2 (pset pset-test-z2)' (3.9) Tell the zone to use the resource pool that has been created: test# zonecfg -z test-z1 set pool=pool-test-z2 (3.10) Boot the Oracle Solaris Container test# zoneadm -z test-z2 boot (3.11) Save the configuration to /etc/pooladm.conf test# pooladm -s (4.0) Results. Using the resource pools improves both throughput and response time: (5.0) References: System Administration Guide: Oracle Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Oracle Solaris Zones Capitalizing on large numbers of processors with WebSphere Portal on Solaris WebSphere Application Server and T5440 (Dileep Kumar's Weblog)  http://www.brendangregg.com/zones.html Reuters Market Data System, RMDS 6 Multiple Instances (Consolidated), Performance Test Results in Solaris, Containers/Zones Environment on Sun Blade X6270 by Amjad Khan, 2009.

  Read the article

• PowerShell Script to Enumerate SharePoint 2010 or 2013 Permissions and Active Directory Group Membership

  - by Brian T. Jackett

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/bjackett/archive/2013/07/01/powershell-script-to-enumerate-sharepoint-2010-or-2013-permissions-and.aspx   In this post I will present a script to enumerate SharePoint 2010 or 2013 permissions across the entire farm down to the site (SPWeb) level.  As a bonus this script also recursively expands the membership of any Active Directory (AD) group including nested groups which you wouldn’t be able to find through the SharePoint UI.   History     Back in 2009 (over 4 years ago now) I published one my most read blog posts about enumerating SharePoint 2007 permissions.  I finally got around to updating that script to remove deprecated APIs, supporting the SharePoint 2010 commandlets, and fixing a few bugs.  There are 2 things that script did that I had to remove due to major architectural or procedural changes in the script. Indenting the XML output Ability to search for a specific user    I plan to add back the ability to search for a specific user but wanted to get this version published first.  As for indenting the XML that could be added but would take some effort.  If there is user demand for it (let me know in the comments or email me using the contact button at top of blog) I’ll move it up in priorities.    As a side note you may also notice that I’m not using the Active Directory commandlets.  This was a conscious decision since not all environments have them available.  Instead I’m relying on the older [ADSI] type accelerator and APIs.  It does add a significant amount of code to the script but it is necessary for compatibility.  Hopefully in a few years if I need to update again I can remove that legacy code.   Solution    Below is the script to enumerate SharePoint 2010 and 2013 permissions down to site level.  You can also download it from my SkyDrive account or my posting on the TechNet Script Center Repository. SkyDrive TechNet Script Center Repository http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Enumerate-SharePoint-2010-35976bdb   001 002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009 010 011 012 013 014 015 016 017 018 019 020 021 022 023 024 025 026 027 028 029 030 031 032 033 034 035 036 037 038 039 040 041 042 043 044 045 046 047 048 049 050 051 052 053 054 055 056 057 058 059 060 061 062 063 064 065 066 067 068 069 070 071 072 073 074 075 076 077 078 079 080 081 082 083 084 085 086 087 088 089 090 091 092 093 094 095 096 097 098 099 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 ########################################################### #DisplaySPWebApp8.ps1 # #Author: Brian T. Jackett #Last Modified Date: 2013-07-01 # #Traverse the entire web app site by site to display # hierarchy and users with permissions to site. ########################################################### function Expand-ADGroupMembership {     Param     (         [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,                    Position=0)]         [string]         $ADGroupName,         [Parameter(Position=1)]         [string]         $RoleBinding     )     Process     {         $roleBindingText = ""         if(-not [string]::IsNullOrEmpty($RoleBinding))         {             $roleBindingText = " RoleBindings=`"$roleBindings`""         }         Write-Output "<ADGroup Name=`"$($ADGroupName)`"$roleBindingText>"         $domain = $ADGroupName.substring(0, $ADGroupName.IndexOf("\") + 1)         $groupName = $ADGroupName.Remove(0, $ADGroupName.IndexOf("\") + 1)                                     #BEGIN - CODE ADAPTED FROM SCRIPT CENTER SAMPLE CODE REPOSITORY         #http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/scripts/powershell/search/users/srch106.mspx         #GET AD GROUP FROM DIRECTORY SERVICES SEARCH         $strFilter = "(&(objectCategory=Group)(name="+($groupName)+"))"         $objDomain = New-Object System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryEntry         $objSearcher = New-Object System.DirectoryServices.DirectorySearcher         $objSearcher.SearchRoot = $objDomain         $objSearcher.Filter = $strFilter         # specify properties to be returned         $colProplist = ("name","member","objectclass")         foreach ($i in $colPropList)         {             $catcher = $objSearcher.PropertiesToLoad.Add($i)         }         $colResults = $objSearcher.FindAll()         #END - CODE ADAPTED FROM SCRIPT CENTER SAMPLE CODE REPOSITORY         foreach ($objResult in $colResults)         {             if($objResult.Properties["Member"] -ne $null)             {                 foreach ($member in $objResult.Properties["Member"])                 {                     $indMember = [adsi] "LDAP://$member"                     $fullMemberName = $domain + ($indMember.Name)                                         #if($indMember["objectclass"]                         # if child AD group continue down chain                         if(($indMember | Select-Object -ExpandProperty objectclass) -contains "group")                         {                             Expand-ADGroupMembership -ADGroupName $fullMemberName                         }                         elseif(($indMember | Select-Object -ExpandProperty objectclass) -contains "user")                         {                             Write-Output "<ADUser>$fullMemberName</ADUser>"                         }                 }             }         }                 Write-Output "</ADGroup>"     } } #end Expand-ADGroupMembership # main portion of script if((Get-PSSnapin -Name microsoft.sharepoint.powershell) -eq $null) {     Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell } $farm = Get-SPFarm Write-Output "<Farm Guid=`"$($farm.Id)`">" $webApps = Get-SPWebApplication foreach($webApp in $webApps) {     Write-Output "<WebApplication URL=`"$($webApp.URL)`" Name=`"$($webApp.Name)`">"     foreach($site in $webApp.Sites)     {         Write-Output "<SiteCollection URL=`"$($site.URL)`">"                 foreach($web in $site.AllWebs)         {             Write-Output "<Site URL=`"$($web.URL)`">"             # if site inherits permissions from parent then stop processing             if($web.HasUniqueRoleAssignments -eq $false)             {                 Write-Output "<!-- Inherits role assignments from parent -->"             }             # else site has unique permissions             else             {                 foreach($assignment in $web.RoleAssignments)                 {                     if(-not [string]::IsNullOrEmpty($assignment.Member.Xml))                     {                         $roleBindings = ($assignment.RoleDefinitionBindings | Select-Object -ExpandProperty name) -join ","                         # check if assignment is SharePoint Group                         if($assignment.Member.XML.StartsWith('<Group') -eq "True")                         {                             Write-Output "<SPGroup Name=`"$($assignment.Member.Name)`" RoleBindings=`"$roleBindings`">"                             foreach($SPGroupMember in $assignment.Member.Users)                             {                                 # if SharePoint group member is an AD Group                                 if($SPGroupMember.IsDomainGroup)                                 {                                     Expand-ADGroupMembership -ADGroupName $SPGroupMember.Name                                 }                                 # else SharePoint group member is an AD User                                 else                                 {                                     # remove claim portion of user login                                     #Write-Output "<ADUser>$($SPGroupMember.UserLogin.Remove(0,$SPGroupMember.UserLogin.IndexOf("|") + 1))</ADUser>"                                     Write-Output "<ADUser>$($SPGroupMember.UserLogin)</ADUser>"                                 }                             }                             Write-Output "</SPGroup>"                         }                         # else an indivdually listed AD group or user                         else                         {                             if($assignment.Member.IsDomainGroup)                             {                                 Expand-ADGroupMembership -ADGroupName $assignment.Member.Name -RoleBinding $roleBindings                             }                             else                             {                                 # remove claim portion of user login                                 #Write-Output "<ADUser>$($assignment.Member.UserLogin.Remove(0,$assignment.Member.UserLogin.IndexOf("|") + 1))</ADUser>"                                                                 Write-Output "<ADUser RoleBindings=`"$roleBindings`">$($assignment.Member.UserLogin)</ADUser>"                             }                         }                     }                 }             }             Write-Output "</Site>"             $web.Dispose()         }         Write-Output "</SiteCollection>"         $site.Dispose()     }     Write-Output "</WebApplication>" } Write-Output "</Farm>"      The output from the script can be sent to an XML which you can then explore using the [XML] type accelerator.  This lets you explore the XML structure however you see fit.  See the screenshot below for an example.      If you do view the XML output through a text editor (Notepad++ for me) notice the format.  Below we see a SharePoint site that has a SharePoint group Demo Members with Edit permissions assigned.  Demo Members has an AD group corp\developers as a member.  corp\developers has a child AD group called corp\DevelopersSub with 1 AD user in that sub group.  As you can see the script recursively expands the AD hierarchy.   Conclusion    It took me 4 years to finally update this script but I‘m happy to get this published.  I was able to fix a number of errors and smooth out some rough edges.  I plan to develop this into a more full fledged tool over the next year with more features and flexibility (copy permissions, search for individual user or group, optional enumerate lists / items, etc.).  If you have any feedback, feature requests, or issues running it please let me know.  Enjoy the script!         -Frog Out

  Read the article

• Day 6 - Game Menuing Woes and Future Screen Sneak Peeks

  - by dapostolov

  So, after my last post on Day 5 I dabbled with my game class design. I took the approach where each game objects is tightly coupled with a graphic. The good news is I got the menu working but not without some hard knocks and game growing pains. I'll explain later, but for now...here is a class diagram of my first stab at my class structure and some code...   Ok, there are few mistakes, however, I'm going to leave it as is for now... As you can see I created an inital abstract base class called GameSprite. This class when inherited will provide a simple virtual default draw method:        public virtual void DrawSprite(SpriteBatch spriteBatch)         {             spriteBatch.Draw(Sprite, Position, Color.White);         } The benefits of coding it this way allows me to inherit the class and utilise the method in the screen draw method...So regardless of what the graphic object type is it will now have the ability to render a static image on the screen. Example: public class MyStaticTreasureChest : GameSprite {} If you remember the window draw method from Day 3's post, we could use the above code as follows...         protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime)         {             GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.CornflowerBlue);             spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteBlendMode.AlphaBlend);             foreach(var gameSprite in ListOfGameObjects)            {                 gameSprite.DrawSprite(spriteBatch);            }             spriteBatch.End();             base.Draw(gameTime);         } I have to admit the GameSprite object is pretty plain as with its DrawSprite method... But ... we now have the ability to render 3 static menu items on the screen ... BORING! I want those menu items to do something exciting, which of course involves animation... So, let's have a peek at AnimatedGameSprite in the above game diagram. The idea with the AnimatedGameSprite is that it has an image to animate...such as ... characters, fireballs, and... menus! So after inheriting from GameSprite class, I added a few more options such as UpdateSprite...         public virtual void UpdateSprite(float elapsed)         {             _totalElapsed += elapsed;             if (_totalElapsed > _timePerFrame)             {                 _frame++;                 _frame = _frame % _framecount;                 _totalElapsed -= _timePerFrame;             }         }  And an overidden DrawSprite...         public override void DrawSprite(SpriteBatch spriteBatch)         {             int FrameWidth = Sprite.Width / _framecount;             Rectangle sourcerect = new Rectangle(FrameWidth * _frame, 0, FrameWidth, Sprite.Height);             spriteBatch.Draw(Sprite, Position, sourcerect, Color.White, _rotation, _origin, _scale, SpriteEffects.None, _depth);         } With these two methods...I can animate and image, all I had to do was add a few more lines to the screens Update Method (From Day 3), like such:             float elapsed = (float) gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds;             foreach (var item in ListOfAnimatedGameObjects)             {                 item.UpdateSprite(elapsed);             } And voila! My images begin to animate in one spot, on the screen... Hmm, but how do I interact with the menu items using a mouse...well the mouse cursor was easy enough... this.IsMouseVisible = true; But, to have it "interact" with an image was a bit more tricky...I had to perform collision detection!             mouseStateCurrent = Mouse.GetState();             var uiEnabledSprites = (from s in menuItems                                    where s.IsEnabled                                    select s).ToList();             foreach (var item in uiEnabledSprites)             {                 var r = new Rectangle((int)item.Position.X, (int)item.Position.Y, item.Sprite.Width, item.Sprite.Height);                 item.MenuState = MenuState.Normal;                 if (r.Intersects(new Rectangle(mouseStateCurrent.X, mouseStateCurrent.Y, 0, 0)))                 {                     item.MenuState = MenuState.Hover;                     if (mouseStatePrevious.LeftButton == ButtonState.Pressed                         && mouseStateCurrent.LeftButton == ButtonState.Released)                     {                         item.MenuState = MenuState.Pressed;                     }                 }             }             mouseStatePrevious = mouseStateCurrent; So, basically, what it is doing above is iterating through all my interactive objects and detecting a rectangle collision and the object , plays the state animation (or static image).  Lessons Learned, Time Burned... So, I think I did well to start, but after I hammered out my prototype...well...things got sloppy and I began to realise some design flaws... At the time: I couldn't seem to figure out how to open another window, such as the character creation screen Input was not event based and it was bugging me My menu design relied heavily on mouse input and I couldn't use keyboard. Mouse input, is tightly bound with graphic rendering / positioning, so its logic will have to be in each scene. Menu animations would stop mid frame, then continue when the action occured again. This is bad, because...what if I had a sword sliding onthe screen? Then it would slide a quarter of the way, then stop due to another action, then render again mid-slide... it just looked sloppy. Menu, Solved!? To solve the above problems I did a little research and I found some great code in the XNA forums. The one worth mentioning was the GameStateManagementSample. With this sample, you can create a basic "text based" menu system which allows you to swap screens, popup screens, play the game, and quit....basic game state management... In my next post I'm going to dwelve a bit more into this code and adapt it with my code from this prototype. Text based menus just won't cut it for me, for now...however, I'm still going to stick with my animated menu item idea. A sneak peek using the Game State Management Sample...with no changes made... Cool Things to Mention: At work ... I tend to break out in random conversations every-so-often and I get talking about some of my challenges with this game (or some stupid observation about something... stupid) During one conversation I was discussing how I should animate my images; I explained that I knew I had to use the Update method provided, but I didn't know how (at the time) to render an image at an appropriate "pace" and how many frames to use, etc.. I also got thinking that if a machine rendered my images faster / slower, that was surely going to f-up my animations. To which a friend, Sheldon,  answered, surely the Draw method is like a camera taking a snapshot of a scene in time. Then it clicked...I understood the big picture of the game engine... After some research I discovered that the Draw method attempts to keep a framerate of 60 fps. From what I understand, the game engine will even leave out a few calls to the draw method if it begins to slow down. This is why we want to put our sprite updates in the update method. Then using a game timer (provided by the engine), we want to render the scene based on real time passed, not framerate. So even the engine renders at 20 fps, the animations will still animate at the same real time speed! Which brings up another point. Why 60 fps? I'm speculating that Microsoft capped it because LCD's dont' refresh faster than 60 fps? On another note, If the game engine knows its falling behind in rendering...then surely we can harness this to speed up our games. Maybe I can find some flag which tell me if the game is lagging, and what the current framerate is, etc...(instead of coding it like I did last time) Sheldon, suggested maybe I can render like WoW does, in prioritised layers...I think he's onto something, however I don't think I'll have that many graphics to worry about such a problem of graphic latency. We'll see. People to Mention: Well,as you are aware I hadn't posted in a couple days and I was surprised to see a few emails and messenger queries about my game progress (and some concern as to why I stopped). I want to thank everyone for their kind words of support and put everyone at ease by stating that I do intend on completing this project. Granted I only have a few hours each night, but, I'll do it. Thank you to Garth for mailing in my next screen! That was a nice surprise! The Sneek Peek you've been waiting for... Garth has also volunteered to render me some wizard images. He was a bit shocked when I asked for them in 2D animated strips. He said I was going backward (and that I have really bad Game Development Lingo). But, I advised Garth that I will use 3D images later...for now...2D images. Garth also had some great game design ideas to add on. I advised him that I will save his ideas and include them in the future design document (for the 3d version?). Lastly, my best friend Alek, is going to join me in developing this game. This was a project we started eons ago but never completed because of our careers. Now, priorities change and we have some spare time on our hands. Let's see what trouble Alek and I can get into! Tonight I'll be uploading my prototypes and base game to a source control for both of us to work off of. D.

  Read the article

• Getting your bearings and defining the project objective

  - by johndoucette

  I wrote this two years ago and thought it was worth posting… Some may think this is a daunting task and some may even say “what a waste of time” and want to open MS Project and start typing out tasks because someone asked for an estimate and a task list. Hell, maybe you even use Excel and pump out a spreadsheet with some real scientific formula for guessing how long it will take to code a bunch of classes. However, this short exercise will provide the basis for the entire project, whether small or large and be a great friend when communicating to anyone on your team or even your client. I call this the Project Brief. If you find yourself going beyond a single page, then you must decompose the sections and summarize your findings so there is a complete and clear picture of the project you are working on in a relatively short statement. Here is a great quote from the PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) relative to what a project is;   A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result. With this in mind, the project brief should encompass the entirety (objective) of the endeavor in its explanation and what it will take (goals) to create the product, service or result (deliverables). Normally the process of identifying the project objective is done during the first stage of a project called the Project Kickoff, but you can perform this very important step anytime to help you get a bearing. There are many more parts to helping a project stay on course, but this is usually the foundation where it can be grounded on. Through a series of 3 exercises, you should be able to come up with the objective, goals and deliverables on your project. Follow these steps, and in no time (about &frac12; hour), you will have the foundation of your project plan. (See examples below) Exercise 1 – Objectives Begin with the end in mind. Think about your project in business terms with a couple things to help you understand the objective; Reference the business benefit in terms of cost, speed and / or quality, Provide a higher level of what the outcome will look like (future sense) It should be non-measurable, that’s what the goals are all about The output should be a single paragraph with three sentences and take 10 minutes to write. *Typically, agreement must be reached on the objectives of the project before you would proceed to the next steps of the project. Exercise 2 – Goals A project goal is a statement that answers questions about who, what, why, where and when. A good project goal statement; Answers the five “W” questions for the project Is measurable in each of its parts Is published and agreed on by all the owners This helps the Project Manager receive confirmation on defining the project target. Using the established project objective done in the first exercise, think about the things it will take to get the job done. Think about tangible activities which are the top level tasks in a typical Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). The overall goal statement plus all the deliverables (next exercise) can be seen as the project team’s contract with the project owners. Write 3 - 5 goals in about 10 minutes. You should not write the words “Who, what, why, where and when, but merely be able to answer the questions when you read a goal. Exercise 3 – Deliverables Every project creates some type of output and these outputs are called deliverables. There are two classes of deliverables; Internal – produced for project team members to meet their goals External – produced for project owners to meet their expectations The list you enter here provides a checklist for the team’s delivery and/or is a statement of all the expectations of the project owners. Here are some typical project deliverables; Product and product documentation End product/system Requirements/feature documents Installation guides Demo/prototype System design documents User guides/help files Plans Project plan Training plan Conversion/installation/delivery plan Test plans Documentation plan Communication plan Reports and general documentation Progress reports System acceptance tests Outstanding bug list Procedures Risk and issue logs Project history Deliverables should go with each of the goals. Have 3-5 deliverables for each goal. When you are done, you will have established a great foundation for the clarity of your project. This exercise can take some time, but with practice, you should be able to whip this one out in 10 minutes as well, especially if you are intimate with an ongoing project. Samples  Objective [Client] is implementing a series of MOSS sites to support external public (Internet), internal employee (Intranet) and an external secure (password protected Internet) applications. This project will focus on the public-facing web site and will provide [Client] with architectural recommendations based on the current design being done by their design partner [Partner] and the internal Content Team. In addition, it will provide [Client] with a development plan and confidence they need to deploy a world class public Internet website. Goals 1.  [Consultant] will provide technical guidance and set project team expectations for the implementation of the MOSS Internet site based on provided features/functions within three weeks. 2.  [Consultant] will understand phase 2 secure password-protected Internet site design and provide recommendations.   Deliverables 1.1  Public Internet (unsecure) Architectural Recommendation Plan 1.2  Physical Site construction Work Breakdown Structure and plan (Time, cost and resources needed) 2.1  Two Factor authentication recommendation document   Objective [Client] is currently using an application developed by [Consultant] many years ago called "XXX". This application, although functional, does not meet their new updated business requirements and contains a few defects which [Client] has developed work-around processes. [Client] would like to have a "new and improved" system to support their membership management needs by expanding membership and subscription capabilities, provide accounting integration with internal (GL) and external (VeriSign) systems, and implement hooks to the current CRM solution. This effort will take place through a series of phases, beginning with envisioning. Goals 1. Through discussions with users, [Consultant] will discover current issues/bugs which need to be resolved which must meet the current functionality requirements within three weeks. 2. [Consultant] will gather requirements from the users about what is "needed" vs. "what they have" for enhancements and provide a high level document supporting their needs. 3. [Consultant] will meet with the team members through a series of meetings and help define the overall project plan to deliver a new and improved solution. Deliverables 1.1 Prioritized list of Current application issues/bugs that need to be resolved 1.2 Provide a resolution plan on the issues/bugs identified in the current application 1.3 Risk Assessment Document 2.1 Deliver a Requirements Document showing high-level [Client] needs for the new XXX application. · New feature functionality not in the application today · Existing functionality that will remain in the new functionality 2.2 Reporting Requirements Document 3.1 A Project Plan showing the deliverables and cost for the next (second) phase of this project. 3.2 A Statement of Work for the next (second) phase of this project. 3.3 An Estimate of any work that would need to follow the second phase.

  Read the article

• Adding Vertices to a dynamic mesh via Method Call

  - by Raven Dreamer

  I have a C# Struct with a static method, "Get Shape" which populates a List with the vertices of a polyhedron. Method Signature: public static void GetShape(Block b, int x, int y, int z, List<Vector3> vertices, List<int> triangles, List<Vector2> uvs, List<Vector2> uv2s) Adding directly to the vertices list (via vertices.Add(vector3) ), the code works as expected, and the new polyhedron appears when I trigger the method. However, I want to do some processing on the vertices I'm adding (a rotation), and the most sensible way I can think to do that is by creating a separate list of Vector3s, and then combining the lists when I'm done. However, vertices.AddRange(newVerts) does not add the shape to the mesh, nor does a foreach loop with verts.Add(vertices[i]). And this is before I've added in any of the processing! I have a feeling this might stem from passing the list of vertices in as a parameter, rather than returning a list and then adding to the vertices in the calling object, but since I'm filling 4 lists, I was trying to avoid having to create a data struct to return all four at once. Any ideas? The working version of the method is reprinted below, in full: public static void GetShape(Block b, int x, int y, int z, List<Vector3> vertices, List<int> triangles, List<Vector2> uvs, List<Vector2> uv2s) { //List<Vector3> vertices = new List<Vector3>(); int l_blockShape = b.blockShape; int l_blockType = b.blockType; //CheckFace checks if the block is empty //if this block is empty, don't draw anything. int vertexIndex; //only y faces need to be hidden. //if((l_blockShape & BlockShape.NegZFace) == BlockShape.NegZFace) { vertexIndex = vertices.Count; //top left, top right, bottom right, bottom left vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.2f, y + 1, z+.2f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.8f, y + 1, z+.2f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.8f, y , z+.2f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.2f, y , z+.2f)); // first triangle for the face triangles.Add(vertexIndex); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+1); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+3); // second triangle for the face triangles.Add(vertexIndex+1); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+2); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+3); //UVs for the face uvs.Add( new Vector2(0,1)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(1,1)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(1,0)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(0,0)); //UV2s (lightmapping?) uv2s.Add( new Vector2(0,1)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(1,1)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(1,0)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(0,0)); } //XY Z+1 face //if((l_blockShape & BlockShape.PosZFace) == BlockShape.PosZFace) { vertexIndex = vertices.Count; //top left, top right, bottom right, bottom left vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.8f, y + 1, z+.8f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.2f, y + 1, z+.8f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.2f, y , z+.8f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.8f, y , z+.8f)); // first triangle for the face triangles.Add(vertexIndex); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+1); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+3); // second triangle for the face triangles.Add(vertexIndex+1); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+2); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+3); //UVs for the face uvs.Add( new Vector2(0,1)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(1,1)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(1,0)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(0,0)); //UV2s (lightmapping?) uv2s.Add( new Vector2(0,1)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(1,1)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(1,0)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(0,0)); } //ZY face //if((l_blockShape & BlockShape.NegXFace) == BlockShape.NegXFace) { vertexIndex = vertices.Count; //top left, top right, bottom right, bottom left vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.2f, y + 1, z+.8f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.2f, y + 1, z+.2f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.2f, y , z+.2f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.2f, y , z+.8f)); // first triangle for the face triangles.Add(vertexIndex); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+1); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+3); // second triangle for the face triangles.Add(vertexIndex+1); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+2); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+3); //UVs for the face uvs.Add( new Vector2(0,1)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(1,1)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(1,0)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(0,0)); //UV2s (lightmapping?) uv2s.Add( new Vector2(0,1)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(1,1)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(1,0)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(0,0)); } //ZY X+1 face // if((l_blockShape & BlockShape.PosXFace) == BlockShape.PosXFace) { vertexIndex = vertices.Count; //top left, top right, bottom right, bottom left vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.8f, y + 1, z+.2f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.8f, y + 1, z+.8f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.8f, y , z+.8f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.8f, y , z+.2f)); // first triangle for the face triangles.Add(vertexIndex); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+1); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+3); // second triangle for the face triangles.Add(vertexIndex+1); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+2); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+3); //UVs for the face uvs.Add( new Vector2(0,1)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(1,1)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(1,0)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(0,0)); //UV2s (lightmapping?) uv2s.Add( new Vector2(0,1)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(1,1)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(1,0)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(0,0)); } //ZX face if((l_blockShape & BlockShape.NegYFace) == BlockShape.NegYFace) { vertexIndex = vertices.Count; //top left, top right, bottom right, bottom left vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.8f, y , z+.8f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.8f, y , z+.2f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.2f, y , z+.2f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.2f, y , z+.8f)); // first triangle for the face triangles.Add(vertexIndex+3); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+1); triangles.Add(vertexIndex); // second triangle for the face triangles.Add(vertexIndex+3); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+2); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+1); //UVs for the face uvs.Add( new Vector2(0,1)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(1,1)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(1,0)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(0,0)); //UV2s (lightmapping?) uv2s.Add( new Vector2(0,1)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(1,1)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(1,0)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(0,0)); } //ZX + 1 face if((l_blockShape & BlockShape.PosYFace) == BlockShape.PosYFace) { vertexIndex = vertices.Count; //top left, top right, bottom right, bottom left vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.8f, y+1 , z+.2f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.8f, y+1 , z+.8f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.2f, y+1 , z+.8f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.2f, y+1 , z+.2f)); // first triangle for the face triangles.Add(vertexIndex+3); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+1); triangles.Add(vertexIndex); // second triangle for the face triangles.Add(vertexIndex+3); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+2); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+1); //UVs for the face uvs.Add( new Vector2(0,1)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(1,1)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(1,0)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(0,0)); //UV2s (lightmapping?) uv2s.Add( new Vector2(0,1)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(1,1)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(1,0)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(0,0)); } }

  Read the article

• Oracle Tutor: Top 10 to Implement Sustainable Policies and Procedures

  - by emily.chorba(at)oracle.com

  Overview Your organization (executives, managers, and employees) understands the value of having written business process documents (process maps, procedures, instructions, reference documents, and form abstracts). Policies and procedures should be documented because they help to reduce the range of individual decisions and encourage management by exception: the manager only needs to give special attention to unusual problems, not covered by a specific policy or procedure. As more and more procedures are written to cover recurring situations, managers will begin to make decisions which will be consistent from one functional area to the next.Companies should take a project management approach when implementing an environment for a sustainable documentation program and do the following:1. Identify an Executive Champion2. Put together a winning team3. Assign ownership4. Centralize publishing5. Establish the Document Maintenance Process Up Front6. Document critical activities only7. Document actual practice8. Minimize documentation9. Support continuous improvement10. Keep it simple 1. Identify an Executive ChampionAppoint a top down driver. Select one key individual to be a mentor for the procedure planning team. The individual should be a senior manager, such as your company president, CIO, CFO, the vice-president of quality, manufacturing, or engineering. Written policies and procedures can be important supportive aids when known to express the thinking for the chief executive officer and / or the president and to have his or her full support. 2. Put Together a Winning TeamChoose a strong Project Management Leader and staff the procedure planning team with management members from cross functional groups. Make sure team members have the responsibility - and the authority - to make things happen.The winning team should consist of the Documentation Project Manager, Document Owners (one for each functional area), a Document Controller, and Document Specialists (as needed). The Tutor Implementation Guide has complete job descriptions for these roles. 3. Assign Ownership It is virtually impossible to keep process documentation simple and meaningful if employees who are far removed from the activity itself create it. It is impossible to keep documentation up-to-date when responsibility for the document is not clearly understood.Key to the Tutor methodology, therefore, is the concept of ownership. Each document has a single owner, who is responsible for ensuring that the document is necessary and that it reflects actual practice. The owner must be a person who is knowledgeable about the activity and who has the authority to build consensus among the persons who participate in the activity as well as the authority to define or change the way an activity is performed. The owner must be an advocate of the performers and negotiate, not dictate practices.In the Tutor environment, a document's owner is the only person with the authority to approve an update to that document. 4. Centralize Publishing Although it is tempting (especially in a networked environment and with document management software solutions) to decentralize the control of all documents -- with each owner updating and distributing his own -- Tutor promotes centralized publishing by assigning the Document Administrator (gate keeper) to manage the updates and distribution of the procedures library. 5. Establish a Document Maintenance Process Up Front (and stick to it) Everyone in your organization should know they are invited to suggest changes to procedures and should understand exactly what steps to take to do so. Tutor provides a set of procedures to help your company set up a healthy document control system. There are many document management products available to automate some of the document change and maintenance steps. Depending on the size of your organization, a simple document management system can reduce the effort it takes to track and distribute document changes and updates. Whether your company decides to store the written policies and procedures on a file server or in a database, the essential tasks for maintaining documents are the same, though some tasks are automated. 6. Document Critical Activities Only The best way to keep your documentation simple is to reduce the number of process documents to a bare minimum and to include in those documents only as much detail as is absolutely necessary. The first step to reducing process documentation is to document only those activities that are deemed critical. Not all activities require documentation. In fact, some critical activities cannot and should not be standardized. Others may be sufficiently documented with an instruction or a checklist and may not require a procedure. A document should only be created when it enhances the performance of the employee performing the activity. If it does not help the employee, then there is no reason to maintain the document. Activities that represent little risk (such as project status), activities that cannot be defined in terms of specific tasks (such as product research), and activities that can be performed in a variety of ways (such as advertising) often do not require documentation. Sometimes, an activity will evolve to the point where documentation is necessary. For example, an activity performed by single employee may be straightforward and uncomplicated -- that is, until the activity is performed by multiple employees. Sometimes, it is the interaction between co-workers that necessitates documentation; sometimes, it is the complexity or the diversity of the activity.7. Document Actual Practices The only reason to maintain process documentation is to enhance the performance of the employee performing the activity. And documentation can only enhance performance if it reflects reality -- that is, current best practice. Documentation that reflects an unattainable ideal or outdated practices will end up on the shelf, unused and forgotten.Documenting actual practice means (1) auditing the activity to understand how the work is really performed, (2) identifying best practices with employees who are involved in the activity, (3) building consensus so that everyone agrees on a common method, and (4) recording that consensus.8. Minimize Documentation One way to keep it simple is to document at the highest level possible. That is, include in your documents only as much detail as is absolutely necessary.When writing a document, you should ask yourself, What is the purpose of this document? That is, what problem will it solve?By focusing on this question, you can target the critical information.• What questions are the end users likely to have?• What level of detail is required?• Is any of this information extraneous to the document's purpose? Short, concise documents are user friendly and they are easier to keep up to date. 9. Support Continuous Improvement Employees who perform an activity are often in the best position to identify improvements to the process. In other words, continuous improvement is a natural byproduct of the work itself -- but only if the improvements are communicated to all employees who are involved in the process, and only if there is consensus among those employees.Traditionally, process documentation has been used to dictate performance, to limit employees' actions. In the Tutor environment, process documents are used to communicate improvements identified by employees. How does this work? The Tutor methodology requires a process document to reflect actual practice, so the owner of a document must routinely audit its content -- does the document match what the employees are doing? If it doesn't, the owner has the responsibility to evaluate the process, to build consensus among the employees, to identify "best practices," and to communicate these improvements via a document update. Continuous improvement can also be an outgrowth of corrective action -- but only if the solutions to problems are communicated effectively. The goal should be to solve a problem once and only once, which means not only identifying the solution, but ensuring that the solution becomes part of the process. The Tutor system provides the method through which improvements and solutions are documented and communicated to all affected employees in a cost-effective, timely manner; it ensures that improvements are not lost or confined to a single employee. 10. Keep it Simple Process documents don't have to be complex and unfriendly. In fact, the simpler the format and organization, the more likely the documents will be used. And the simpler the method of maintenance, the more likely the documents will be kept up-to-date. Keep it simply by:• Minimizing skills and training required• Following the established Tutor document format and layout• Avoiding technology just for technology's sake No other rule has as major an impact on the success of your internal documentation as -- keep it simple. Learn More For more information about Tutor, visit Oracle.Com or the Tutor Blog. Post your questions at the Tutor Forum.   Emily Chorba Principle Product Manager Oracle Tutor & BPM 

  Read the article

• Java JRE 1.7.0_60 Certified with Oracle E-Business Suite

  - by Steven Chan (Oracle Development)

  Java Runtime Environment 7u60 (a.k.a. JRE 7u60-b19) and later updates on the JRE 7 codeline are now certified with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i and 12.0, 12.1, and 12.2 for Windows-based desktop clients. Effects of new support dates on Java upgrades for EBS environments Support dates for the E-Business Suite and Java have changed.  Please review the sections below for more details: What does this mean for Oracle E-Business Suite users? Will EBS users be forced to upgrade to JRE 7 for Windows desktop clients? Will EBS users be forced to upgrade to JDK 7 for EBS application tier servers? All JRE 6 and 7 releases are certified with EBS upon release Our standard policy is that all E-Business Suite customers can apply all JRE updates to end-user desktops from JRE 1.6.0_03 and later updates on the 1.6 codeline, and from JRE 7u10 and later updates on the JRE 7 codeline.  We test all new JRE 1.6 and JRE 7 releases in parallel with the JRE development process, so all new JRE 1.6 and 7 releases are considered certified with the E-Business Suite on the same day that they're released by our Java team.  You do not need to wait for a certification announcement before applying new JRE 1.6 or JRE 7 releases to your EBS users' desktops. What's new in JRE 1.7.0_60? JDK 7u60 contains IANA time zone data version 2014b. For more information, refer to Timezone Data Versions in the JRE Software. It is strongly recommended that all customers upgrade to this release.  Details about update in this release are listed in the release notes. 32-bit and 64-bit versions certified This certification includes both the 32-bit and 64-bit JRE versions for various Windows operating systems. See the respective Recommended Browser documentation for your EBS release for details. Where are the official patch requirements documented? All patches required for ensuring full compatibility of the E-Business Suite with JRE 7 are documented in these Notes: For EBS 11i: Deploying Sun JRE (Native Plug-in) for Windows Clients in Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i (Note 290807.1) Upgrading Developer 6i with Oracle E-Business Suite 11i (Note 125767.1) For EBS 12.0, 12.1, 12.2 Deploying Sun JRE (Native Plug-in) for Windows Clients in Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (Note 393931.1) Upgrading OracleAS 10g Forms and Reports in Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (Note 437878.1) EBS + Discoverer 11g Users JRE 1.7.0_60 is certified for Discoverer 11g in E-Business Suite environments with the following minimum requirements: Discoverer (11g) 11.1.1.6 plus Patch 13877486 and later  Reference: How To Find Oracle BI Discoverer 10g and 11g Certification Information (Document 233047.1) Worried about the 'mismanaged session cookie' issue? No need to worry -- it's fixed.  To recap: JRE releases 1.6.0_18 through 1.6.0_22 had issues with mismanaging session cookies that affected some users in some circumstances. The fix for those issues was first included in JRE 1.6.0_23. These fixes will carry forward and continue to be fixed in all future JRE releases on the JRE 6 and 7 codelines.  In other words, if you wish to avoid the mismanaged session cookie issue, you should apply any release after JRE 1.6.0_22 on the JRE 6 codeline, and JRE 7u10 and later JRE 7 codeline updates. Implications of Java 6 End of Public Updates for EBS Users The Support Roadmap for Oracle Java is published here: Oracle Java SE Support Roadmap The latest updates to that page (as of Sept. 19, 2012) state (emphasis added): Java SE 6 End of Public Updates Notice After February 2013, Oracle will no longer post updates of Java SE 6 to its public download sites. Existing Java SE 6 downloads already posted as of February 2013 will remain accessible in the Java Archive on Oracle Technology Network. Developers and end-users are encouraged to update to more recent Java SE versions that remain available for public download. For enterprise customers, who need continued access to critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for Java SE 6 or older versions, long term support is available through Oracle Java SE Support . What does this mean for Oracle E-Business Suite users? EBS users fall under the category of "enterprise users" above.  Java is an integral part of the Oracle E-Business Suite technology stack, so EBS users will continue to receive Java SE 6 updates from February 2013 to the end of Java SE 6 Extended Support in June 2017. In other words, nothing changes for EBS users after February 2013.  EBS users will continue to receive critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for Java SE 6 until the end of Java SE 6 Extended Support in June 2017. How can EBS customers obtain Java 6 updates after the public end-of-life? EBS customers can download Java 6 patches from My Oracle Support.  For a complete list of all Java SE patch numbers, see: All Java SE Downloads on MOS (Note 1439822.1) Both JDK and JRE packages are contained in a single combined download after 6u45.  Download the "JDK" package for both the desktop client JRE and the server-side JDK package.  Will EBS users be forced to upgrade to JRE 7 for Windows desktop clients? This upgrade is highly recommended but remains optional while Java 6 is covered by Extended Support. Updates will be delivered via My Oracle Support, where you can continue to receive critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for JRE 6 desktop clients.  Java 6 is covered by Extended Support until June 2017.  All E-Business Suite customers must upgrade to JRE 7 by June 2017. Coexistence of JRE 6 and JRE 7 on Windows desktops The upgrade to JRE 7 is highly recommended for EBS users, but some users may need to run both JRE 6 and 7 on their Windows desktops for reasons unrelated to the E-Business Suite. Most EBS configurations with IE and Firefox use non-static versioning by default. JRE 7 will be invoked instead of JRE 6 if both are installed on a Windows desktop. For more details, see "Appendix B: Static vs. Non-static Versioning and Set Up Options" in Notes 290807.1 and 393931.1. Applying Updates to JRE 6 and JRE 7 to Windows desktops Auto-update will keep JRE 7 up-to-date for Windows users with JRE 7 installed. Auto-update will only keep JRE 7 up-to-date for Windows users with both JRE 6 and 7 installed.  JRE 6 users are strongly encouraged to apply the latest Critical Patch Updates as soon as possible after each release. The Jave SE CPUs will be available via My Oracle Support.  EBS users can find more information about JRE 6 and 7 updates here: Information Center: Installation & Configuration for Oracle Java SE (Note 1412103.2) The dates for future Java SE CPUs can be found on the Critical Patch Updates, Security Alerts and Third Party Bulletin.  An RSS feed is available on that site for those who would like to be kept up-to-date. What do Mac users need? Mac users running Mac OS X 10.9 can run JRE 7 plug-ins.  See this article: EBS Release 12 Certified with Mac OS X 10.9 with Safari 7 and JRE 7 Will EBS users be forced to upgrade to JDK 7 for EBS application tier servers? JRE is used for desktop clients.  JDK is used for application tier servers JDK upgrades for E-Business Suite application tier servers are highly recommended but currently remain optional while Java 6 is covered by Extended Support. Updates will be delivered via My Oracle Support, where you can continue to receive critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for JDK 6 for application tier servers.  Java SE 6 is covered by Extended Support until June 2017.  All EBS customers with application tier servers on Windows, Solaris, and Linux must upgrade to JDK 7 by June 2017. EBS customers running their application tier servers on other operating systems should check with their respective vendors for the support dates for those platforms. JDK 7 is certified with E-Business Suite 12.  See: Java (JDK) 7 Certified for E-Business Suite 12.0 and 12.1 Servers Java (JDK) 7 Certified with E-Business Suite 12.2 Servers References Recommended Browsers for Oracle Applications 11i (Metalink Note 285218.1) Upgrading Sun JRE (Native Plug-in) with Oracle Applications 11i for Windows Clients (Metalink Note 290807.1) Recommended Browsers for Oracle Applications 12 (MetaLink Note 389422.1) Upgrading JRE Plugin with Oracle Applications R12 (MetaLink Note 393931.1) Related Articles Mismanaged Session Cookie Issue Fixed for EBS in JRE 1.6.0_23 Roundup: Oracle JInitiator 1.3 Desupported for EBS Customers in July 2009

  Read the article

• What&rsquo;s new in MVVM Light V3

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  V3 of the MVVM Light Toolkit was released during MIX10, after quite a long alpha stage. This post lists the new features in MVVM Light V3. Compatibility MVVM Light Toolkit V3 can be installed for the following tools and framework versions: Visual Studio 2008 SP1, Expression Blend 3 Windows Presentation Foundation 3.5 SP1 Silverlight 3 Visual Studio 2010 RC, Expression Blend 4 beta Windows Presentation Foundation 3.5 SP1 Windows Presentation Foundation 4 RC Silverlight 3 Silverlight 4 RC For more information about installing the MVVM Light Toolkit V3, please visit this page. For cleaning up existing installation, see this page. New in V3 RTM The following features have been added after V3 alpha3: Project template for the Windows Phone 7 series (Silverlight) This new template allows you to create a new MVVM Light application in Visual Studio 2010 RC and to run it in the Windows Phone 7 series emulator. This template uses the Silverlight 3 version of the MVVM Light Toolkit V3. At this time, only the essentials features of the GalaSoft.MvvmLight.dll assembly are supported on the phone. New in V3 alpha3 The following features have been added after V3 alpha2: New logo An awesome logo has been designed for MVVM Light by Philippe Schutz. DispatcherHelper class (in GalaSoft.MvvmLight.Extras.dll) This class is useful when you work on multi-threaded WPF or Silverlight applications. Initializing: The DispatcherHelper class must be initialized in the UI thread. For example, you can initialize the class in a Silverlight application’s Application_Startup event handler, or in the WPF application’s static App constructor (in App.xaml). // Initializing in Silverlight (in App.xaml) private void Application_Startup( object sender, StartupEventArgs e) { RootVisual = new MainPage(); DispatcherHelper.Initialize(); } // Initializing in WPF (in App.xaml) static App() { DispatcherHelper.Initialize(); } Verifying if a property exists The ViewModelBase.RaisePropertyChanged method now checks if a given property name exists on the ViewModel class, and throws an exception if that property cannot be found. This is useful to detect typos in a property name, for example during a refactoring. Note that the check is only done in DEBUG mode. Replacing IDisposable with ICleanup The IDisposable implementation in the ViewModelBase class has been marked obsolete. Instead, the ICleanup interface (and its Cleanup method) has been added. Implementing IDisposable in a ViewModel is still possible, but must be done explicitly. IDisposable in ViewModelBase was a bad practice, because it supposes that the ViewModel is garbage collected after Dispose is called. instead, the Cleanup method does not have such expectation. The ViewModelLocator class (created when an MVVM Light project template is used in Visual Studio or Expression Blend) exposes a static Cleanup method, which should in turn call each ViewModel’s Cleanup method. The ViewModel is free to override the Cleanup method if local cleanup must be performed. Passing EventArgs to command with EventToCommand The EventToCommand class is used to bind any event to an ICommand (typically on the ViewModel). In this case, it can be useful to pass the event’s EventArgs parameter to the command in the ViewModel. For example, for the MouseEnter event, you can pass the MouseEventArgs to a RelayCommand<MouseEventArgs> as shown in the next listings. Note: Bringing UI specific classes (such as EventArgs) into the ViewModel reduces the testability of the ViewModel, and thus should be used with care. Setting EventToCommand and PassEventArgsToCommand: <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot"> <i:Interaction.Triggers> <i:EventTrigger EventName="MouseEnter"> <cmd:EventToCommand Command="{Binding MyCommand}" PassEventArgsToCommand="True" /> </i:EventTrigger> </i:Interaction.Triggers> </Grid> Getting the EventArgs in the command public RelayCommand<MouseEventArgs> MyCommand { get; private set; } public MainViewModel() { MyCommand = new RelayCommand<MouseEventArgs>(e => { // e is of type MouseEventArgs }); } Changes to templates Various changes have been made to project templates and item templates to make them more compatible with Silverlight 4 and to improve their visibility in Visual Studio and Expression Blend. Bug corrections When a message is sent through the Messenger class using the method Messenger.Default.Send<T>(T message, object token), and the token is a simple value (for example int), the message was not sent correctly. This bug is now corrected. New in V3 The following features have been added after V2. Sending messages with callback Certain classes have been added to the GalaSoft.MvvmLight.Messaging namespace, allowing sending a message and getting a callback from the recipient. These classes are: NotificationMessageWithCallback: Base class for messages with callback. NotificationMessageAction: A class with string notification, and a parameterless callback. NotificationMessageAction<T>: A class with string notification, and a callback with a parameter of type T. To send a message with callback, use the following code: var message = new NotificationMessageAction<bool>( "Hello world", callbackMessage => { // This is the callback code if (callbackMessage) { // ... } }); Messenger.Default.Send(message); To register and receive a message with callback, use the following code: Messenger.Default.Register<NotificationMessageAction<bool>>( this, message => { // Do something // Execute the callback message.Execute(true); }); Messenger.Default can be overriden The Messenger.Default property can also be replaced, for example for unit testing purposes, by using the Messenger.OverrideDefault method. All the public methods of the Messenger class have been made virtual, and can be overridden in the test messenger class. Sending messages to interfaces In V2, it was possible to deliver messages targeted to instances of a given class. in V3 it is still possible, but in addition you can deliver a message to instances that implement a certain interface. The message will not be delivered to other recipients. Use the overload Messenger.Default.Send<TMessage, TTarget>(TMessage message) where TTarget is, in fact, an interface (for example IDisposable). Of course the recipient must register to receive the type of message TMessage. Sending messages with a token Messages can now be sent through the Messenger with a token. To send a message with token, use the method overload Send<TMessage>(TMessage message, object token). To receive a message with token, use the methods Register<TMessage>(object recipient, object token, Action<TMessage> action) or Register<TMessage>(object recipient, object token, bool receiveDerivedMessagesToo, Action<TMessage> action) The token can be a simple value (int, string, etc…) or an instance of a class. The message is not delivered to recipients who registered with a different token, or with no token at all. Renaming CommandMessage to NotificationMessage To avoid confusion with ICommand and RelayCommand, the CommandMessage class has been renamed to NotificationMessage. This message class can be used to deliver a notification (of type string) to a recipient. ViewModelBase constructor with IMessenger The ViewModelBase class now accepts an IMessenger parameter. If this constructor is used instead of the default empty constructor, the IMessenger passed as parameter will be used to broadcast a PropertyChangedMessage when the method RaisePropertyChanged<T>(string propertyName, T oldValue, T newValue, bool broadcast) is used. In the default ViewModelBase constructor is used, the Messenger.Default instance will be used instead. EventToCommand behavior The EventToCommand behavior has been added in V3. It can be used to bind any event of any FrameworkElement to any ICommand (for example a RelayCommand located in the ViewModel). More information about the EventToCommand behavior can be found here and here. Updated the project templates to remove the sample application The project template has been updated to remove the sample application that was created every time that a new MVVM Light application was created in Visual Studio or Blend. This makes the creation of a new application easier, because you don’t need to remove code before you can start writing code. Bug corrections Some bugs that were in Version 2 have been corrected: In some occasions, an exception could be thrown when a recipient was registered for a message at the same time as a message was received. New names for DLLs If you upgrade an existing installation, you will need to change the reference to the DLLs in C:\Program Files\Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft)\Mvvm Light Toolkit\Binaries. The assemblies have been moved, and the versions for Silverlight 4 and for WPF4 have been renamed, to avoid some confusion. It is now easier to make sure that you are using the correct DLL. WPF3.5SP1, Silverlight 3 When using the DLLs, make sure that you use the correct versions. WPF4, Silverlight 4 When using the DLLs, make sure that you use the correct versions.   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

  Read the article

• Agile Testing Days 2012 – Day 3 – Agile or agile?

  - by Chris George

  Another early start for my last Lean Coffee of the conference, and again it was not wasted. We had some really interesting discussions around how to determine what test automation is useful, if agile is not faster, why do it? and a rather existential discussion on whether unicorns exist! First keynote of the day was entitled “Fast Feedback Teams” by Ola Ellnestam. Again this relates nicely to the releasing faster talk on day 2, and something that we are looking at and some teams are actively trying. Introducing the notion of feedback, Ola describes a game he wrote for his eldest child. It was a simple game where every time he clicked a button, it displayed “You’ve Won!”. He then changed it to be a Win-Lose-Win-Lose pattern and watched the feedback from his son who then twigged the pattern and got his younger brother to play, alternating turns… genius! (must do that with my children). The idea behind this was that you need that feedback loop to learn and progress. If you are not getting the feedback you need to close that loop. An interesting point Ola made was to solve problems BEFORE writing software. It may be that you don’t have to write anything at all, perhaps it’s a communication/training issue? Perhaps the problem can be solved another way. Writing software, although it’s the business we are in, is expensive, and this should be taken into account. He again mentions frequent releases, and how they should be made as soon as stuff is ready to be released, don’t leave stuff on the shelf cause it’s not earning you anything, money or data. I totally agree with this and it’s something that we will be aiming for moving forwards. “Exceptions, Assumptions and Ambiguity: Finding the truth behind the story” by David Evans started off very promising by making references to ‘Grim up North’ referring to the north of England. Not sure it was appreciated by most of the audience, but it made me laugh! David explained how there are always risks associated with exceptions, giving the example of a one-way road near where he lives, with an exception sign giving rights to coaches to go the wrong way. Therefore you could merrily swing around the corner of the one way road straight into a coach! David showed the danger in making assumptions with lyrical quotes from Lola by The Kinks “I’m glad I’m a man, and so is Lola” and with a picture of a toilet flush that needed instructions to operate the full and half flush. With this particular flush, you pulled the handle all the way down to half flush, and half way down to full flush! hmmm, a bit of a crappy user experience methinks! Then through a clever use of a passage from the Jabberwocky, David then went onto show how mis-translation/ambiguity is the can completely distort the original meaning of something, and this is a real enemy of software development. This was all helping to demonstrate that the term Story is often heavily overloaded in the Agile world, and should really be stripped back to what it is really for, stating a business problem, and offering a technical solution. Therefore a story could be worded as “In order to {make some improvement}, we will { do something}”. The first ‘in order to’ statement is stakeholder neutral, and states the problem through requesting an improvement to the software/process etc. The second part of the story is the verb, the doing bit. So to achieve the ‘improvement’ which is not currently true, we will do something to make this true in the future. My PM is very interested in this, and he’s observed some of the problems of overloading stories so I’m hoping between us we can use some of David’s suggestions to help clarify our stories better. The second keynote of the day (and our last) proved to be the most entertaining and exhausting of the conference for me. “The ongoing evolution of testing in agile development” by Scott Barber. I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing Scott before… OMG I would love to have even half of the energy he has! What struck me during this presentation was Scott’s explanation of how testing has become the role/job that it is (largely) today, and how this has led to the need for ‘methodologies’ to make dev and test work! The argument that we should be trying to converge the roles again is a very valid one, and one that a couple of the teams at work are actively doing with great results. Making developers as responsible for quality as testers is something that has been lost over the years, but something that we are now striving to achieve. The idea that we (testers) should be testing experts/specialists, not testing ‘union members’, supports this idea so the entire team works on all aspects of a feature/product, with the ‘specialists’ taking the lead and advising/coaching the others. This leads to better propagation of information around the team, a greater holistic understanding of the project and it allows the team to continue functioning if some of it’s members are off sick, for example. Feeling somewhat drained from Scott’s keynote (but at the same time excited that alot of the points he raised supported actions we are taking at work), I headed into my last presentation for Agile Testing Days 2012 before having to make my way to Tegel to catch the flight home. “Thinking and working agile in an unbending world” with Pete Walen was a talk I was not going to miss! Having spoken to Pete several times during the past few days, I was looking forward to hearing what he was going to say, and I was not disappointed. Pete started off by trying to separate the definitions of ‘Agile’ as in the methodology, and ‘agile’ as in the adjective by pronouncing them the ‘english’ and ‘american’ ways. So Agile pronounced (Ajyle) and agile pronounced (ajul). There was much confusion around what the hell he was talking about, although I thought it was quite clear. Agile – Software development methodology agile – Marked by ready ability to move with quick easy grace; Having a quick resourceful and adaptable character. Anyway, that aside (although it provided a few laughs during the presentation), the point was that many teams that claim to be ‘Agile’ but are not, in fact, ‘agile’ by nature. Implementing ‘Agile’ methodologies that are so prescriptive actually goes against the very nature of Agile development where a team should anticipate, adapt and explore. Pete made a valid point that very few companies intentionally put up roadblocks to impede work, so if work is being blocked/delayed, why? This is where being agile as a team pays off because the team can inspect what’s going on, explore options and adapt their processes. It is through experimentation (and that means trying and failing as well as trying and succeeding) that a team will improve and grow leading to focussing on what really needs to be done to achieve X. So, that was it, the last talk of our conference. I was gutted that we had to miss the closing keynote from Matt Heusser, as Matt was another person I had spoken too a few times during the conference, but the flight would not wait, and just as well we left when we did because the traffic was a nightmare! My Takeaway Triple from Day 3: Release often and release small – don’t leave stuff on the shelf Keep the meaning of the word ‘agile’ in mind when working in ‘Agile Look at testing as more of a skill than a role  

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261  | Next Page >