dual layer - Page 258 - Developer IT

Why Fusion Middleware matters to Oracle Applications and Fusion Applications customers?

- by Harish Gaur

Did you miss this general session on Monday morning presented by Amit Zavery, VP of Oracle Fusion Middleware Product Management? There will be a recording made available shortly and in the meanwhile, here is a recap. Amit presented 5 strategies customers can leverage today to extend their applications. Figure 1: 5 Oracle Fusion Middleware strategies to extend Oracle Applications & Oracle Fusion Apps 1. Engage Everyone – Provide intuitive and social experience for application users using Oracle WebCenter 2. Extend Enterprise – Extend Oracle Applications to mobile devices using Oracle ADF Mobile 3. Orchestrate Processes – Automate key organization processes across on-premise & cloud applications using Oracle BPM Suite & Oracle SOA Suite 4. Secure the core – Provide single sign-on and self-service provisioning across multiple apps using Oracle Identity Management 5. Optimize Performance – Leverage Exalogic stack to consolidate multiple instance and improve performance of Oracle Applications Session included 3 demonstrations to illustrate these strategies. 1. First demo highlighted significance of mobile applications for unlocking existing investment in Applications such as EBS. Using a native iPhone application interacting with e-Business Suite, demo showed how expense approval can be mobile enabled with enhanced visibility using BI dashboards. 2. Second demo showed how you can extend a banking process in Siebel and Oracle Policy Automation with Oracle BPM Suite.Process starts in Siebel with a customer requesting a loan, and then jumps to OPA for loan recommendations and decision making and loan processing with approvals in handled in BPM Suite. Once approvals are completed Siebel is updated to complete the process. 3. Final demo showcased FMW components inside Fusion Applications, specifically WebCenter. Boeing, Underwriter Laboratories and Electronic Arts joined this quest and discussed 3 different approaches of leveraging Fusion Middleware stack to maximize their investment in Oracle Applications and/or Fusion Applications technology. Let’s briefly review what these customers shared during the session: 1. Extend Fusion Applications We know that Oracle Fusion Middleware is the underlying technology infrastructure for Oracle Fusion Applications. Architecturally, Oracle Fusion Apps leverages several components of Oracle Fusion Middleware from Oracle WebCenter for rich collaborative interface, Oracle SOA Suite & Oracle BPM Suite for orchestrating key underlying processes to Oracle BIEE for dash boarding and analytics. Boeing talked about how they are using Oracle BPM Suite 11g, a key component of Oracle Fusion Middleware with Oracle Fusion Apps to transform their supply chain. Tim Murnin, Director of Supply Chain talked about Boeing’s 5 year supply chain transformation journey. Boeing’s Integrated and Information Management division began with automation of critical RFQ process using Oracle BPM Suite. This 1st phase resulted in 38% reduction in labor costs for RFP. As a next step in this effort, Boeing is now creating a platform to enable electronic Order Management. Fusion Apps are playing a significant role in this phase. Boeing has gone live with Oracle Fusion Product Hub and efforts are underway with Oracle Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration (DOO). So, where does Oracle BPM Suite 11g fit in this equation? Let me explain. Business processes within Fusion Apps are designed using 2 standards: Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) and Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN). These processes can be easily configured using declarative set of tools. Boeing leverages Oracle BPM Suite 11g (which supports BPMN 2.0) and Oracle SOA Suite (which supports BPEL) to “extend” these applications. Traditionally, customizations are done within an app using native technologies. But, instead of making process changes within Fusion Apps, Boeing has taken an approach of building “extensions” layer on top of the application. Fig 2: Boeing’s use of Oracle BPM Suite to orchestrate key supply chain processes across Fusion Apps 2. Maximize Oracle Applications investment Fusion Middleware appeals not only to Fusion Apps customers, but is also leveraged by Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel and JD Edwards customers significantly. Using Oracle BPM Suite and Oracle SOA Suite is the recommended extension strategy for Oracle Fusion Apps and Oracle Applications Unlimited customers. Electronic Arts, E-Business Suite customer, spoke about their strategy to transform their order-to-cash process using Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle Foundation Packs and Oracle BAM. Udesh Naicker, Sr Director of IT at Elecronic Arts (EA), discussed how growth of social and digital gaming had started to put tremendous pressure on EA’s existing IT infrastructure. He discussed the challenge with millions of micro-transactions coming from several sources – Microsoft Xbox, Paypal, several service providers. EA found Order-2-Cash processes stretched to their limits. They lacked visibility into these transactions across the entire value chain. EA began by consolidating their E-Business Suite R11 instances into single E-Business Suite R12. EA needed to cater to a variety of service requirements, connectivity methods, file formats, and information latency. Their integration strategy was tactical, i.e., using file uploads, TIBCO, SQL scripts. After consolidating E-Business suite, EA standardized their integration approach with Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle AIA Foundation Pack. Oracle SOA Suite is the platform used to extend E-Business Suite R12 and standardize 60+ interfaces across several heterogeneous systems including PeopleSoft, Demantra, SF.com, Workday, and Managed EDI services spanning on-premise, hosted and cloud applications. EA believes that Oracle SOA Suite 11g based extension strategy has helped significantly in the followings ways: - It helped them keep customizations out of E-Business Suite, thereby keeping EBS R12 vanilla and upgrade safe - Developers are now proficient in technology which is also leveraged by Fusion Apps. This has helped them prepare for adoption of Fusion Apps in the future Fig 3: Using Oracle SOA Suite & Oracle e-Business Suite, Electronic Arts built new platform for order processing 3. Consolidate apps and improve scalability Exalogic is an optimal platform for customers to consolidate their application deployments and enhance performance. Underwriter Laboratories talked about their strategy to run their mission critical applications including e-Business Suite on Exalogic. Christian Anschuetz, CIO of Underwriter Laboratories (UL) shared how UL is on a growth path - $1B to $2.5B in 5 years- and planning a significant business transformation from a not-for-profit to a for-profit business. To support this growth, UL is planning to simplify its IT environment and the deployment complexity associated with ERP applications and technology it runs on. Their current applications were deployed on variety of hardware platforms and lacked comprehensive disaster recovery architecture. UL embarked on a mission to deploy E-Business Suite on Exalogic. UL’s solution is unique because it is one of the first to deploy a large number of Oracle applications and related Fusion Middleware technologies (SOA, BI, Analytical Applications AIA Foundation Pack and AIA EBS to Siebel UCM prebuilt integration) on the combined Exalogic and Exadata environment. UL is planning to move to a virtualized architecture toward the end of 2012 to securely host external facing applications like iStore Fig 4: Underwrites Labs deployed e-Business Suite on Exalogic to achieve performance gains Key takeaways are: - Fusion Middleware platform is certified with major Oracle Applications Unlimited offerings. Fusion Middleware is the underlying technological infrastructure for Fusion Apps - Customers choose Oracle Fusion Middleware to extend their applications (Apps Unlimited or Fusion Apps) to keep applications upgrade safe and prepare for Fusion Apps - Exalogic is an optimum platform to consolidate applications deployments and enhance performance TAGS: Fusion Apps, Exalogic, BPM Suite, SOA Suite, e-Business Suite Integration

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How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop

- by Eric Z Goodnight

You might think that it’s a complicated process to remove objects from photographs. But really Photoshop makes it quite simple, even when removing all traces of a person from digital photographs. Read on to see just how easy it is. Photoshop was originally created to be an image editing program, and it excels at it. With hardly any Photoshop experience, any beginner can begin removing objects or people from their photos. Have some friends that photobombed an otherwise great pic? Tell them to say their farewells, because here’s how to get rid of them with Photoshop! Tools for Removing Objects Removing an object is not really “magical” work. Your goal is basically to cover up the information you don’t want in an image with information you do want. In this sample image, we want to remove the cigar smoking man, and leave the geisha. Here’s a couple of the tools that can be useful to work with when attempting this kind of task. Clone Stamp and Pattern Stamp Tool: Samples parts of your image from your background, and allows you to paint into your image with your mouse or stylus. Eraser and Brush Tools: Paint flat colors and shapes, and erase cloned layers of image information. Basic, down and dirty photo editing tools. Pen, Quick Selection, Lasso, and Crop tools: Select, isolate, and remove parts of your image with these selection tools. All useful in their own way. Some, like the pen tool, are nightmarishly tough on beginners. Remove a Person with the Clone Stamp Tool (Video) The video above uses the Clone Stamp tool to sample and paint with the background texture. It’s a simple tool to use, although it can be confusing, possibly counter-intuitive. Here’s some pointers, in addition to the video above. Select shortcut key to choose the Clone tool stamp from the Tools Panel. Always create a copy of your background layer before doing heavy edits by right clicking on the background in your Layers Panel and selecting “Duplicate.” Hold with the Clone Tool selected, and click anywhere in your image to sample that area. When you’re sampling an area, your cursor is “Aligned” with your sample area. When you paint, your sample area moves. You can turn the “Aligned” setting off by clicking the in the Options Panel at the top of your screen if you want. Change your brush size and hardness as shown in the video by right-clicking in your image. Use your lasso to copy and paste pieces of your image in order to cover up any parts that seem appropriate. Photoshop Magic with the “Content-Aware Fill” One of the hallmark features of CS5 is the “Content-Aware Fill.” Content aware fill can be an excellent shortcut to removing objects and even people in Photoshop, but it is somewhat limited, and can get confused. Here’s a basic rundown on how it works. Select an object using your Lasso tool, shortcut key . The Lasso works fine as this selection can be rough. Navigate to Edit > Fill, and select “Content-Aware,” as illustrated above, from the pull-down menu. It’s surprisingly simple. After some processing, Photoshop has done the work of removing the object for you. It takes a few moments, and it is not perfect, so be prepared to touch it up with some Copy-Paste, or some Clone stamp action. Content Aware Fill Has Its Limits Keep in mind that the Content Aware Fill is meant to be used with other techniques in mind. It doesn’t always perform perfectly, but can give you a great starting point. Take this image for instance. It is actually plausible to hide this figure and make this image look like he was never there at all. With a selection made with the Lasso tool, navigate to Edit > Fill and select “Content Aware” again. The result is surprisingly good, but as you can see, worthy of some touch up. With a result like this one, you’ll have to get your hands dirty with copy-paste to create believable lines in the background. With many photographs, Content Aware Fill will simply get confused and give you results you won’t be happy with. Additional Touch Up for Bad Background Textures with the Pattern Stamp Tool For the perfectionist, cleaning up the lumpy looking textures that the Clone Stamp can leave is fairly simple using the Pattern Stamp Tool. Sample an piece of your image with your Marquee Tool, shortcut key . Navigate to Edit > Define Pattern to create a new Pattern from your selection. Click OK to continue. Click and hold down on the Clone Stamp tool in your Tools Panel until you can select the Pattern Stamp Tool. Pick your new pattern from the Options at the top of your screen, in the Options Panel. Then simply right click in your image in order to pick as soft a brush as possible to paint with. Paint into your image until your background is as smooth as you want it to be, making your painted out object more and more invisible. If you get lines from your repeated texture, experiment turning the on and off and paint over them. In addition to this, simple use of the Crop Tool, shortcut , can recompose an image, making it look as if it never had another object in it at all. Combine these techniques to find a method that works best for your images. Have questions or comments concerning Graphics, Photos, Filetypes, or Photoshop? Send your questions to [email protected], and they may be featured in a future How-To Geek Graphics article. Image Credits: Geisha Kyoto Gion by Todd Laracuenta via Wikipedia, used under Creative Commons. Moai Rano raraku by Aurbina, in Public Domain. Chris Young visits Wrigley by TonyTheTiger, via Wikipedia, used under Creative Commons. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware How to Change the Default Application for Android Tasks Stop Believing TV’s Lies: The Real Truth About "Enhancing" Images The How-To Geek Valentine’s Day Gift Guide CyanogenMod Updates; Rolls out Android 2.3 to the Less Fortunate MyPaint is an Open-Source Graphics App for Digital Painters Can the Birds and Pigs Really Be Friends in the End? [Angry Birds Video] Add the 2D Version of the New Unity Interface to Ubuntu 10.10 and 11.04 MightyMintyBoost Is a 3-in-1 Gadget Charger Watson Ties Against Human Jeopardy Opponents

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, May 16, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, May 16, 2010New Projects3D Calculator: 3D Calc is a simple calculator application for Windows Phone 7, the purpose of this project is to demo the 3D animations capabilities of WP7 and sh...azaleas: AzaleasBlueset Studio Opensource Projects: Only for Opensource projects form Blueset Studio.Breck: A Phoenix and Jumper Moneky Production: Breck is a first person non-violent shooter developed in C++ and Dark GDK. After the main game is developed we are looking into making a sequel or...Discuz! Forum SDK: This project is use to login in and post or reply topic on discuz forum.Dominion.NET: Evolving Dominion source code originally written in VB6 and posted by "jatill" on Collectible Card Game Headquarters. Migration of the design and s...EkspSys2010-ITR: A mini project for the course Experimental System devolopment in spring 2010Facebook Graph Toolkit: This project is a .Net implementation of the Facebook Graph API. The aim of this project is to be a replacement to the existing Facebook Toolkit (h...iFree: This is a solution for Vietnamese network socialInfoPath Editor for Developer: InfoPath Editor for developer allows user to modify the html text directly inside InfoPath designer or filler and push the change back to InfoPath ...iZeit: Run your own online calendar, with blog integration, recurrence, todo list and categories.machgos dotNet Tests: Just some little test-projects for learningmim: TBAMinePost: MinePost is a game made for the first 48 hour Reddit Game Jam.Mockina: Mockina is a mock framework. Expression tree syntax is used to specify which members to mock, both public and non-public. The code is easy to under...MSBuild Launch Pad (mPad): This is just another shell extension for MSBuild to enable quick execution of MSBuild scripts via Windows Explorer context menu. (C) 2010 Lex LiPeacock: A browser like tabbed applicationPrimeCalculation: PrimeCalculation is a .NET app to calculate primes in a given range. Speed on Core2Duo 2,4GHZ: Found all primes from 0 to 1 billion in 35 seconds (...Slightly Silverlight: A Framework that leverages Silverlight for processing, business logic but standard HTML for the presentation layer.Stopwatch: Stopwatch is a tool for measuring the time. To start and pause stopwatch you only need to press a key on the keyboard. An additional context menu a...YAXLib: Yet Another XML Serialization Library for the .NET Framework: YAXLib is an XML Serialization library which helps you structure freely the XML result, choose among private and public fields to be serialized, an...New ReleasesActivate Your Glutes: v1.0.3.0: This release is a migration to VS2010, .Net 4, MVC2 and Entity Framework 4. The code has also been considerably cleaned up - taking advantage of E...AnyCAD: AnyCAD.Free.ENU.v1.1: http://www.anycad.net Modeling •2D: Line, Rectangle, Arc, Arch, Circle, Spline, Polygon •Feature: Extrude, Loft, Chamfer, Sweep, Revol •Boolean: ...Blueset Studio Opensource Projects: 多功能计算器 3.5: 稳定版本。Code for Rapid C# Windows Development eBook: LLBLGen LINQPad Data Context Driver Ver 1.0.0.0: First release of a Static LLBLGen Pro Data Context Driver for LINQPad I recommend LINQPad 4 as it seems more stable with this driver than LINQPad 2.DSQLT - Dynamic SQL Templates: Release 1.2. Some behaviour has changed!!: Attention. Some behaviour has changed! Now its necessary to use WildCards in the pattern-parameter for DSQLT.AllSourceContains DSQLT.Databases DSQ...FDS AutoCAD plug-in: FDS to AutoCAD plug-in: Basic functionality was implemented. Some routines like setting fds executable location are still not automated.Feature Builder Guidance Extensions: FBGX 2 - Standalone FX: Background: The Feature Builder Guidance is extensible and displays guidance content supplied by all the Feature Builder Guidance Extensions (FBGX...Floe IRC Client: Floe IRC Client 2010-05 R3: - You can now right click on the input box to get options for toggling bold, underline, colors, etc. - The size of the nickname column is now saved...Floe IRC Client: Floe IRC Client 2010-05 R4: - A user's channel status now appears next to their nick when they talk (e.g. @Nick or +Nick) - Fixed an error where certain kinds of network probl...HD-Trailers.NET Downloader: HD-Trailers.NET Downloader v1.0: Version 1.0 Thanks to Wolfgang for all his help. I let this project languish for too long while focusing on other things, but his involvement has ...InfoPath Editor for Developer: InfoPath Editor Beta 1: Intial Release: Can load InfoPath inner html. Can edit InfoPath inner html. InfoPath 2007 only.LinkSharp: LinkSharp 0.1.0: First release of LinkSharp. Set up iis, and use the sql script to create a new database.PowerAuras: PowerAuras V3.0.0F: This version adds better integration with GTFO New Flags Added PvP flag In 5-Man Instance In Raid Instance In Battleground In ArenaRx Contrib: V1.4: Add the ability to catch internal exception and the ability to publish error by queue adaptersSEO SiteMap: SEO SiteMap RC1: -SevenZipLib Library: v9.13.2: Stable release associated with 7z.dll 9.13 beta. Ability to create and update archives not implemente yet.Silverlight / WPF Controls: Upload, FlipPanel, DeepZoom, Animation, Encryption: Code Camp Demonstration: This code example demonstrates MVVM/MEF with WPF with attached properties,security and custom ICommand class.SQL Data Capture - Black Box Application Testing: SQLDataCapture V1.2: Added Entity Framework Support to CRUD generator (Insert Stored Procedure) and switched to VS 2010 for development.Stopwatch: Stopwatch 0.1: Stopwatch Release 0.1VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30515.0: Automatic drop of latest buildYet another developer blog - Examples: Asynchronous TreeView in ASP.NET MVC: This sample application shows how to use jQuery TreeView plugin for creating an asynchronous TreeView in ASP.NET MVC. This application is accompani...Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)patterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesPHPExcelASP.NETMost Active Projectspatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryRawrPHPExcelBlogEngine.NETMicrosoft Biology FoundationCustomer Portal Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRMWindows Azure Command-line Tools for PHP DevelopersMirror Testing SystemN2 CMSStyleCop

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Master Data Management and Cloud Computing

- by david.butler(at)oracle.com

Cloud Computing is all the rage these days. There are many reasons why this is so. But like its predecessor, Service Oriented Architecture, it can fall on hard times if the underlying data is left unmanaged. Master Data Management is the perfect Cloud companion. It can materially increase the chances for successful Cloud initiatives. In this blog, I'll review the nature of the Cloud and show how MDM fits in. Here's the National Institute of Standards and Technology Cloud definition: • Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. Cloud architectures have three main layers: applications or Software as a Service (SaaS), Platforms as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). SaaS generally refers to applications that are delivered to end-users over the Internet. Oracle CRM On Demand is an example of a SaaS application. Today there are hundreds of SaaS providers covering a wide variety of applications including Salesforce.com, Workday, and Netsuite. Oracle MDM applications are located in this layer of Oracle's On Demand enterprise Cloud platform. We call it Master Data as a Service (MDaaS). PaaS generally refers to an application deployment platform delivered as a service. They are often built on a grid computing architecture and include database and middleware. Oracle Fusion Middleware is in this category and includes the SOA and Data Integration products used to connect SaaS applications including MDM. Finally, IaaS generally refers to computing hardware (servers, storage and network) delivered as a service. This typically includes the associated software as well: operating systems, virtualization, clustering, etc. Cloud Computing benefits are compelling for a large number of organizations. These include significant cost savings, increased flexibility, and fast deployments. Cost advantages include paying for just what you use. This is especially critical for organizations with variable or seasonal usage. Companies don't have to invest to support peak computing periods. Costs are also more predictable and controllable. Increased agility includes access to the latest technology and experts without making significant up front investments. While Cloud Computing is certainly very alluring with a clear value proposition, it is not without its challenges. An IDC survey of 244 IT executives/CIOs and their line-of-business (LOB) colleagues identified a number of issues: Security - 74% identified security as an issue involving data privacy and resource access control. Integration - 61% found that it is hard to integrate Cloud Apps with in-house applications. Operational Costs - 50% are worried that On Demand will actually cost more given the impact of poor data quality on the rest of the enterprise. Compliance - 49% felt that compliance with required regulatory, legal and general industry requirements (such as PCI, HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley) would be a major issue. When control is lost, the ability of a provider to directly manage how and where data is deployed, used and destroyed is negatively impacted. There are others, but I singled out these four top issues because Master Data Management, properly incorporated into a Cloud Computing infrastructure, can significantly ameliorate all of these problems. Cloud Computing can literally rain raw data across the enterprise. According to fellow blogger, Mike Ferguson, "the fracturing of data caused by the adoption of cloud computing raises the importance of MDM in keeping disparate data synchronized." David Linthicum, CTO Blue Mountain Labs blogs that "the lack of MDM will become more of an issue as cloud computing rises. We're moving from complex federated on-premise systems, to complex federated on-premise and cloud-delivered systems." Left unmanaged, non-standard, inconsistent, ungoverned data with questionable quality can pollute analytical systems, increase operational costs, and reduce the ROI in Cloud and On-Premise applications. As cloud computing becomes more relevant, and more data, applications, services, and processes are moved out to cloud computing platforms, the need for MDM becomes ever more important. Oracle's MDM suite is designed to deal with all four of the above Cloud issues listed in the IDC survey. Security - MDM manages all master data attribute privacy and resource access control issues. Integration - MDM pre-integrates Cloud Apps with each other and with On Premise applications at the data level. Operational Costs - MDM significantly reduces operational costs by increasing data quality, thereby improving enterprise business processes efficiency. Compliance - MDM, with its built in Data Governance capabilities, insures that the data is governed according to organizational standards. This facilitates rapid and accurate reporting for compliance purposes. Oracle MDM creates governed high quality master data. A unified cleansed and standardized data view is produced. The Oracle Customer Hub creates a single view of the customer. The Oracle Product Hub creates high quality product data designed to support all go-to-market processes. Oracle Supplier Hub dramatically reduces the chances of 'supplier exceptions'. Oracle Site Hub masters locations. And Oracle Hyperion Data Relationship Management masters financial reference data and manages enterprise hierarchies across operational areas from ERP to EPM and CRM to SCM. Oracle Fusion Middleware connects Cloud and On Premise applications to MDM Hubs and brings high quality master data to your enterprise business processes. An independent analyst once said "Poor data quality is like dirt on the windshield. You may be able to drive for a long time with slowly degrading vision, but at some point, you either have to stop and clear the windshield or risk everything." Cloud Computing has the potential to significantly degrade data quality across the enterprise over time. Deploying a Master Data Management solution prior to or in conjunction with a move to the Cloud can insure that the data flowing into the enterprise from the Cloud is clean and governed. This will in turn insure that expected returns on the investment in Cloud Computing will be realized. Oracle MDM has proven its metal in this area and has the customers to back that up. In fact, I will be hosting a webcast on Tuesday, April 10th at 10 am PT with one of our top Cloud customers, the Church Pension Group. They have moved all mainline applications to a hosted model and use Oracle MDM to insure the master data is managed and cleansed before it is propagated to other cloud and internal systems. I invite you join Martin Hossfeld, VP, IT Operations, and Danette Patterson, Enterprise Data Manager as they review business drivers for MDM and hosted applications, how they did it, the benefits achieved, and lessons learned. You can register for this free webcast here. Hope to see you there.

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, June 01, 2011

CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, June 01, 2011Popular ReleasesVidCoder: 0.9.1: Added color coding to the Log window. Errors are highlighted in red, HandBrake logs are in black and VidCoder logs are in dark blue. Moved enqueue button to the right with the other control buttons. Added logic to report failures when errors are logged during the encode or when the encode finishes prematurely. Added Copy button to Log window. Adjusted audio track selection box to always show the full track name. Changed encode job progress bar to also be colored yellow when the enco...Terraria Map Generator: TerrariaMapTool 1.0.0.3 Beta: 1) Catch all exception from the gui app. 2) Fixed the use of the graphics device to really use reach.AutoLoL: AutoLoL v2.0.1: - Fixed a small bug in Auto Login - Fixed the updaterEPPlus-Create advanced Excel 2007 spreadsheets on the server: EPPlus 2.9.0.1: EPPlus-Create advanced Excel 2007 spreadsheets on the server This version has been updated to .Net Framework 3.5 New Features Data Validation. PivotTables (Basic functionalliy...) Support for worksheet data sources. Column, Row, Page and Data fields. Date and Numeric grouping Build in styles. ...and more And some minor new features... Ranges Text-Property|Get the formated value AutofitColumns-method to set the column width from the content of the range LoadFromCollection-metho...jQuery ASP.Net MVC Controls: Version 1.4.0.0: Version 1.4.0.0 contains the following additions: Upgraded to MVC 3.0 Upgraded to jQuery 1.6.1 (Though the project supports all jQuery version from 1.4.x onwards) Upgraded to jqGrid 3.8 Better Razor View-Engine support Better Pager support, includes support for custom pagers Added jqGrid toolbar buttons support Search module refactored, with full suport for multiple filters and ordering And Code cleanup, bug-fixes and better controller configuration support.Restbucks on .Net: RestBucks Alpha 1: This is the first release of the application.Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v6.0: Version 6.0 of Nearforums, the ASP.NET MVC Forum Engine, containing new features: Authentication using Membership Provider for SQL Server and MySql Spam prevention: Flood Control Moderation: Flag messages Content management: Pages: Create pages (about us/contact/texts) through web administration Allow nearforums to run as an IIS subapp Migrated Facebook Connect to OAuth 2.0 Visit the project Roadmap for more details.NetOffice - The easiest way to use Office in .NET: NetOffice Release 0.8b: Changes: - fix critical issue 15922(AccessViolationException) once and for all update is strongly recommended Includes: - Runtime Binaries and Source Code for .NET Framework:......v2.0, v3.0, v3.5, v4.0 - Tutorials in C# and VB.Net:..............................................................COM Proxy Management, Events, etc. - Examples in C# and VB.Net:............................................................Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access - COMAddin Examples in C# and VB....Facebook Graph Toolkit: Facebook Graph Toolkit 1.5.4186: Updates the API in response to Facebook's recent change of policy: All Graph Api accessing feeds or posts must provide a AccessToken.SharePoint Farm Poster: SharePoint Farm Poster: SharePoint Farm Poster is generated by a PowerShell Script. Run this script under the Farm Admin Account. After downloading, unblock the file in the Property Window. Current version is beta : v0.3.4Serviio for Windows Home Server: Beta Release 0.5.2.0: Ready for widespread beta. Synchronized build number to Serviio version to avoid confusion.AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.0 Beta4: ??AcDown?????????????，??????????????，????、????。?????Acfun????? ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)?.NET Framework 2.0???(x64)，?????"?????????"??? ??v3.0 Beta4 2011-5-31?? ???Bilibili.us????? ???? ?? ???"????" ???Bilibili.us??? ??????? ?? ??????? ?? ???????? ?? ?? ???Bilibili.us?????(??????????????????) ??????(6.cn)?????(????) ?? ?????Acfun?????????? ?????????????? ???QQ???????? ????????????Discussion...EnhSim: EnhSim 2.4.5 ALPHA: 2.4.5 ALPHAThis release supports WoW patch 4.1 at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Added in the T12 s...TerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v2.4.1: Added Piggy Bank editor and fixed some minor bugs.Kooboo CMS: Kooboo CMS 3.02: What is new in kooboo cms 3.02 The most important updates of this version is the Kooboo site builder, an unique and creative web design tool, design an professional website and export to Kooboo CMS. See: http://www.sitekin.com Add Version contorl on View, Layout and other elements. Add user CMS language selection, user can select a language to use on their CMS backend. Add User profile provider, you can use now stop website user information on a SQL database. Previously it stored on XML...mojoPortal: 2.3.6.6: see release notes on mojoportal.com http://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2366-released Note that we have separate deployment packages for .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0 The deployment package downloads on this page are pre-compiled and ready for production deployment, they contain no C# source code. To download the source code see the Source Code Tab I recommend getting the latest source code using TortoiseHG, you can get the source code corresponding to this release here.Terraria World Creator: Terraria World Creator: Version 1.01 Fixed a bug that would cause the application to crash. Re-named the Application.Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework - a centralized code sample library: All-In-One Code Framework 2011-05-26: Alternatively, you can install Sample Browser or Sample Browser VS extension, and download the code samples from Sample Browser. Improved and Newly Added Examples:For an up-to-date code sample index, please refer to All-In-One Code Framework Sample Catalog. NEW Samples for Dynamics Sample Description Owner CSDynamicsNAVWebServices The code sample shows syntax for calling Dynamics NAV Web Services. Lars Lohndorf-Larsen NEW Samples for WPF Sample Description Owner CSWPFDataGridCustomS...Terraria World Viewer: Version 1.1: Update May 26th Added Chest Filtering, this allows chests only containing certain items to have their symbol drawn. (Its under advanced settings tab) GUI elements (checkboxes/etc) are persistant between uses of the application Beta Worlds (i.e. Release #38) will work properly Symbols can be enabled or disabled on a per symbol basis Chest Information tab which is just a dump of the current chest information Meterorite is now visible as a bright magenta pink Application defaults to ...MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 1.1 RC: *Added: Compatibility with jQuery 1.6.1 Rendering of enumerables with images and/or customizable strings improved the client side tempate engine added new parameters to the template definition binding all new knockout bindings helpers have been fully implemented added a new overload for defining the client-side ViewModel The SetTme method has the option to store the theme in a permanent cookie If no CSS class is provided for the watermark of a TypedTextBox the watermark class of the current t...New ProjectsAlumnus SI Machung: ExSis Alumnus Website makes it easier for Alumni of Ma Chung University, that located at Malang, East Java, Indonesia. You'll no longer have to find your friend that separated in so many years. It's developed in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. Check our website at kriswanto90.charlezzzz.comb9b18a35-a80a-440c-bb8c-195be0225cfa: b9b18a35-a80a-440c-bb8c-195be0225cfaCustomer Care Portal - SharePoint 2010 for Internet Sites: The Customer Care Portal demonstrates cooperation of Microsoft SharePoint 2010 with several technologies, such as: • Silverlight • Windows Server AppFabric • Business Data Connectivity • Microsoft InfoPath 2010 DBServer Folder Browser: DBServer Folder Browser It's developed in C#Dual Development: A place for colloboration.EVMDOCS ASP.NET: EVMDOCS project for ECM.VSTU.RU FCNS.Money: FCNS.Money?????????????。???，?????????????，??????????????。???????????????? ??，?FCNS.Money??????????????，???????????，????????????????，??????????，???? ???????????。HDBMS: Attempt to implement a hierarchical database that can participate in a distributed 2PCHRO: 3D FPS in a secret underwater soviet bunkerIstream: Istream is a new web browser for windows computers. We have designed the browser so you have everything right at your fingertips. Download it today and discover a new browsing experience, we have a range of features avaialble just now and its only the first release. istream.imLaptop Battery Usage Pattern: Figures out battery discharge and recharge pattern. Suggests estimated discharge time and recharge time based on past history. Also alerts when it detects considerable degradation of battery life. Mediawiki tools for Office: The current version installs an Outlook 2007 plugin. This plugin adds a send to wiki command to the outlook context menu. The functionality is very similar to the behavior of the One Note plugin which is installed in office 2007. PW API Library: The PW API Library provides a .NET interface to the ProgrammableWeb's API library. This is a personal project built using the ProgrammableWeb internal API and is not provided by the ProgrammableWeb team. It's developed in C# using .NET 4.0 framework.Restbucks on .Net: Implementation of the RestBucks example; from the book "Rest on Practice" on the .Net plattaform.SharePoint Farm Poster: View the entire SharePoint Farm configuration as a single HTML Poster.Simple Silverlight Bounce Effect: Simple bounce effect in Silverlight. A demo of this project can be seen at http://www.voltar.ch/en/results/technologieSistema Gestor Escolar: Aquesta aplicacio permet gestionar activitats pròpies d'una escolaSmart WCF Client Wrapper: This is a smart WCF client wrapper that keeps your code clean, and hides common beginner mistakes from the end user. This code handles - EventHandler Cleanup - Exception Managment - Reliable and efficient reuse of the proxy - Cleanup of the proxy - Clean "using(...)" methodSSIS Extensions - SFTP Task, PGP Task, Zip Task: A set of custom tasks to extend SSIS. Includes a SFTP task, PGP encryption task and zip/unzip task.TFS On The Road: TFS On The Road is a TFS client for Windows Phone 7. With it you can have a good view from your TFS even if you are "on the road". It allows you to access projects, work items(including attachments), changesets, builds, branches, and work item queries.Todo.txt .NET: .NET version of Todo.txt. The project goals are a Windows application as well as a PowerShell commands.

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How to configure VPN in Windows XP

- by SAMIR BHOGAYTA

VPN Overview A VPN is a private network created over a public one. It’s done with encryption, this way, your data is encapsulated and secure in transit – this creates the ‘virtual’ tunnel. A VPN is a method of connecting to a private network by a public network like the Internet. An internet connection in a company is common. An Internet connection in a Home is common too. With both of these, you could create an encrypted tunnel between them and pass traffic, safely - securely. If you want to create a VPN connection you will have to use encryption to make sure that others cannot intercept the data in transit while traversing the Internet. Windows XP provides a certain level of security by using Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) or Layer Two Tunneling Protocol (L2TP). They are both considered tunneling protocols – simply because they create that virtual tunnel just discussed, by applying encryption. Configure a VPN with XP If you want to configure a VPN connection from a Windows XP client computer you only need what comes with the Operating System itself, it's all built right in. To set up a connection to a VPN, do the following: 1. On the computer that is running Windows XP, confirm that the connection to the Internet is correctly configured. • You can try to browse the internet • Ping a known host on the Internet, like yahoo.com, something that isn’t blocking ICMP 2. Click Start, and then click Control Panel. 3. In Control Panel, double click Network Connections 4. Click Create a new connection in the Network Tasks task pad 5. In the Network Connection Wizard, click Next. 6. Click Connect to the network at my workplace, and then click Next. 7. Click Virtual Private Network connection, and then click Next. 8. If you are prompted, you need to select whether you will use a dialup connection or if you have a dedicated connection to the Internet either via Cable, DSL, T1, Satellite, etc. Click Next. 9. Type a host name, IP or any other description you would like to appear in the Network Connections area. You can change this later if you want. Click Next. 10. Type the host name or the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the computer that you want to connect to, and then click Next. 11. You may be asked if you want to use a Smart Card or not. 12. You are just about done, the rest of the screens just verify your connection, click Next. 13. Click to select the Add a shortcut to this connection to my desktop check box if you want one, if not, then leave it unchecked and click finish. 14. You are now done making your connection, but by default, it may try to connect. You can either try the connection now if you know its valid, if not, then just close it down for now. 15. In the Network Connections window, right-click the new connection and select properties. Let’s take a look at how you can customize this connection before it’s used. 16. The first tab you will see if the General Tab. This only covers the name of the connection, which you can also rename from the Network Connection dialog box by right clicking the connection and selecting to rename it. You can also configure a First connect, which means that Windows can connect the public network (like the Internet) before starting to attempt the ‘VPN’ connection. This is a perfect example as to when you would have configured the dialup connection; this would have been the first thing that you would have to do. It's simple, you have to be connected to the Internet first before you can encrypt and send data over it. This setting makes sure that this is a reality for you. 17. The next tab is the Options Tab. It is The Options tab has a lot you can configure in it. For one, you have the option to connect to a Windows Domain, if you select this check box (unchecked by default), then your VPN client will request Windows logon domain information while starting to work up the VPN connection. Also, you have options here for redialing. Redial attempts are configured here if you are using a dial up connection to get to the Internet. It is very handy to redial if the line is dropped as dropped lines are very common. 18. The next tab is the Security Tab. This is where you would configure basic security for the VPN client. This is where you would set any advanced IPSec configurations other security protocols as well as requiring encryption and credentials. 19. The next tab is the Networking Tab. This is where you can select what networking items are used by this VPN connection. 20. The Last tab is the Advanced Tab. This is where you can configure options for configuring a firewall, and/or sharing. Connecting to Corporate Now that you have your XP VPN client all set up and ready, the next step is to attempt a connection to the Remote Access or VPN server set up at the corporate office. To use the connection follow these simple steps. To open the client again, go back to the Network Connections dialog box. 1. One you are in the Network Connection dialog box, double-click, or right click and select ‘Connect’ from the menu – this will initiate the connection to the corporate office. 2. Type your user name and password, and then click Connect. Properties bring you back to what we just discussed in this article, all the global settings for the VPN client you are using. 3. To disconnect from a VPN connection, right-click the icon for the connection, and then click “Disconnect” Summary In this article we covered the basics of building a VPN connection using Windows XP. This is very handy when you have a VPN device but don’t have the ‘client’ that may come with it. If the VPN Server doesn’t use highly proprietary protocols, then you can use the XP client to connect with. In a future article I will get into the nuts and bolts of both IPSec and more detail on how to configure the advanced options in the Security tab of this client. 678: The remote computer did not respond. 930: The authentication server did not respond to authentication requests in a timely fashion. 800: Unable to establish the VPN connection. 623: The system could not find the phone book entry for this connection. 720: A connection to the remote computer could not be established. More on : http://www.windowsecurity.com/articles/Configure-VPN-Connection-Windows-XP.html

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Installing SharePoint 2010 and PowerPivot for SharePoint on Windows 7

- by smisner

Many people like me want (or need) to do their business intelligence development work on a laptop. As someone who frequently speaks at various events or teaches classes on all subjects related to the Microsoft business intelligence stack, I need a way to run multiple server products on my laptop with reasonable performance. Once upon a time, that requirement meant only that I had to load the current version of SQL Server and the client tools of choice. In today's post, I'll review my latest experience with trying to make the newly released Microsoft BI products work with a Windows 7 operating system. The entrance of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 into the BI stack complicated matters and I started using Virtual Server to establish a "suitable" environment. As part of the team that delivered a lot of education as part of the Yukon pre-launch activities (that would be SQL Server 2005 for the uninitiated), I was working with four - yes, four - virtual servers. That was a pretty brutal workload for a 2GB laptop, which worked if I was very, very careful. It could also be a finicky and unreliable configuration as I learned to my dismay at one TechEd session several years ago when I had to reboot a very carefully cached set of servers just minutes before my session started. Although it worked, it came back to life very, very slowly much to the displeasure of the audience. They couldn't possibly have been less pleased than me. At that moment, I resolved to get the beefiest environment I could afford and consolidate to a single virtual server. Enter the 4GB 64-bit laptop to preserve my sanity and my livelihood. Likewise, for SQL Server 2008, I managed to keep everything within a single virtual server and I could function reasonably well with this approach. Now we have SQL Server 2008 R2 plus Office SharePoint Server 2010. That means a 64-bit operating system. Period. That means no more Virtual Server. That means I must use Hyper-V or another alternative. I've heard alternatives exist, but my few dabbles in this area did not yield positive results. It might have been just me having issues rather than any failure of those technologies to adequately support the requirements. My first run at working with the new BI stack configuration was to set up a 64-bit 4GB laptop with a dual-boot to run Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V. However, I was generally not happy with running Windows Server 2008 R2 on my laptop. For one, I couldn't put it into sleep mode, which is helpful if I want to prepare for a presentation beforehand and then walk to the podium without the need to hold my laptop in its open state along the way (my strategy at the TechEd session long, long ago). Secondly, it was finicky with projectors. I had issues from time to time and while I always eventually got it to work, I didn't appreciate those nerve-wracking moments wondering whether this would be the time that it wouldn't work. Somewhere along the way, I learned that it was possible to load SharePoint 2010 in a Windows 7 which piqued my interest. I had just acquired a new laptop running Windows 7 64-bit, and thought surely running the BI stack natively on my laptop must be better than running Hyper-V. (I have not tried booting to Hyper-V VHD yet, but that's on my list of things to try so the jury of one is still out on this approach.) Recently, I had to build up a server with the RTM versions of SQL Server 2008 R2 and Sharepoint Server 2010 and decided to follow suit on my Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit laptop. The process is slightly different, but I'm happy to report that it IS possible, although I had some fits and starts along the way. DISCLAIMER: These products are NOT intended to be run in production mode on the Windows 7 operating system. The configuration described in this post is strictly for development or learning purposes and not supported by Microsoft. If you have trouble, you will NOT get help from them. I might be able to help, but I provide no guarantees of my ability or availablity to help. I won't provide the step-by-step instructions in this post as there are other resources that provide these details, but I will provide an overview of my approach, point you to the relevant resources, describe some of the problems I encountered, and explain how I addressed those problems to achieve my desired goal. Because my goal was not simply to set up SharePoint Server 2010 on my laptop, but specifically PowerPivot for SharePoint, I started out by referring to the installation instructions at the PowerPiovt-Info site, but mainly to confirm that I was performing steps in the proper sequence. I didn't perform the steps in Part 1 because those steps are applicable only to a server operating system which I am not running on my laptop. Then, the instructions in Part 2, won't work exactly as written for the same reason. Instead, I followed the instructions on MSDN, Setting Up the Development Environment for SharePoint 2010 on Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008. In general, I found the following differences in installation steps from the steps at PowerPivot-Info: You must copy the SharePoint installation media to the local drive so that you can edit the config.xml to allow installation on a Windows client. You also have to manually install the prerequisites. The instructions provides links to each item that you must manually install and provides a command-line instruction to execute which enables required Windows features. I will digress for a moment to save you some grief in the sequence of steps to perform. I discovered later that a missing step in the MSDN instructions is to install the November CTP Reporting Services add-in for SharePoint. When I went to test my SharePoint site (I believe I tested after I had a successful PowerPivot installation), I ran into the following error: Could not load file or assembly 'RSSharePointSoapProxy, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89845dcd8080cc91' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. I was rather surprised that Reporting Services was required. Then I found an article by Alan le Marquand, Working Together: SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services Integration in SharePoint 2010,that instructed readers to install the November add-in. My first reaction was, "Really?!?" But I confirmed it in another TechNet article on hardware and software requirements for SharePoint Server 2010. It doesn't refer explicitly to the November CTP but following the link took me there. (Interestingly, I retested today and there's no longer any reference to the November CTP. Here's the link to download the latest and greatest Reporting Services Add-in for SharePoint Technologies 2010.) You don't need to download the add-in anymore if you're doing a regular server-based installation of SharePoint because it installs as part of the prerequisites automatically. When it was time to start the installation of SharePoint, I deviated from the MSDN instructions and from the PowerPivot-Info instructions: On the Choose the installation you want page of the installation wizard, I chose Server Farm. On the Server Type page, I chose Complete. At the end of the installation, I did not run the configuration wizard. Returning to the PowerPivot-Info instructions, I tried to follow the instructions in Part 3 which describe installing SQL Server 2008 R2 with the PowerPivot option. These instructions tell you to choose the New Server option on the Setup Role page where you add PowerPivot for SharePoint. However, I ran into problems with this approach and got installation errors at the end. It wasn't until much later as I was investigating an error that I encountered Dave Wickert's post that installing PowerPivot for SharePoint on Windows 7 is unsupported. Uh oh. But he did want to hear about it if anyone succeeded, so I decided to take the plunge. Perseverance paid off, and I can happily inform Dave that it does work so far. I haven't tested absolutely everything with PowerPivot for SharePoint but have successfully deployed a workbook and viewed the PowerPivot Management Dashboard. I have not yet tested the data refresh feature, but I have installed. Continue reading to see how I accomplished my objective. I unintalled SQL Server 2008 R2 and started again. I had different problems which I don't recollect now. However, I uninstalled again and approached installation from a different angle and my next attempt succeeded. The downside of this approach is that you must do all of the things yourself that are done automatically when you install PowerPivot as a new server. Here are the steps that I followed: Install SQL Server 2008 R2 to get a database engine instance installed. Run the SharePoint configuration wizard to set up the SharePoint databases. In Central Administration, create a Web application using classic mode authentication as per a TechNet article on PowerPivot Authentication and Authorization. Then I followed the steps I found at How to: Install PowerPivot for SharePoint on an Existing SharePoint Server. Especially important to note - you must launch setup by using Run as administrator. I did not have to manually deploy the PowerPivot solution as the instructions specify, but it's good to know about this step because it tells you where to look in Central Administration to confirm a successful deployment. I did spot some incorrect steps in the instructions (at the time of this writing) in How To: Configure Stored Credentials for PowerPivot Data Refresh. Specifically, in the section entitled Step 1: Create a target application and set the credentials, both steps 10 and 12 are incorrect. They tell you to provide an actual Windows user name and password on the page where you are simply defining the prompts for your application in the Secure Store Service. To add the Windows user name and password that you want to associate with the application - after you have successfully created the target application - you select the target application and then click Set credentials in the ribbon. Lastly, I followed the instructions at How to: Install Office Data Connectivity Components on a PowerPivot server. However, I have yet to test this in my current environment. I did have several stops and starts throughout this process and edited those out to spare you from reading non-essential information. I believe the explanation I have provided here accurately reflect the steps I followed to produce a working configuration. If you follow these steps and get a different result, please let me know so that together we can work through the issue and correct these instructions. I'm sure there are many other folks in the Microsoft BI community that will appreciate the ability to set up the BI stack in a Windows 7 environment for development or learning purposes. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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C#: Does an IDisposable in a Halted Iterator Dispose?

- by James Michael Hare

If that sounds confusing, let me give you an example. Let's say you expose a method to read a database of products, and instead of returning a List<Product> you return an IEnumerable<Product> in iterator form (yield return). This accomplishes several good things: The IDataReader is not passed out of the Data Access Layer which prevents abstraction leak and resource leak potentials. You don't need to construct a full List<Product> in memory (which could be very big) if you just want to forward iterate once. If you only want to consume up to a certain point in the list, you won't incur the database cost of looking up the other items. This could give us an example like: 1: // a sample data access object class to do standard CRUD operations. 2: public class ProductDao 3: { 4: private DbProviderFactory _factory = SqlClientFactory.Instance 5: 6: // a method that would retrieve all available products 7: public IEnumerable<Product> GetAvailableProducts() 8: { 9: // must create the connection 10: using (var con = _factory.CreateConnection()) 11: { 12: con.ConnectionString = _productsConnectionString; 13: con.Open(); 14: 15: // create the command 16: using (var cmd = _factory.CreateCommand()) 17: { 18: cmd.Connection = con; 19: cmd.CommandText = _getAllProductsStoredProc; 20: cmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure; 21: 22: // get a reader and pass back all results 23: using (var reader = cmd.ExecuteReader()) 24: { 25: while(reader.Read()) 26: { 27: yield return new Product 28: { 29: Name = reader["product_name"].ToString(), 30: ... 31: }; 32: } 33: } 34: } 35: } 36: } 37: } The database details themselves are irrelevant. I will say, though, that I'm a big fan of using the System.Data.Common classes instead of your provider specific counterparts directly (SqlCommand, OracleCommand, etc). This lets you mock your data sources easily in unit testing and also allows you to swap out your provider in one line of code. In fact, one of the shared components I'm most proud of implementing was our group's DatabaseUtility library that simplifies all the database access above into one line of code in a thread-safe and provider-neutral way. I went with my own flavor instead of the EL due to the fact I didn't want to force internal company consumers to use the EL if they didn't want to, and it made it easy to allow them to mock their database for unit testing by providing a MockCommand, MockConnection, etc that followed the System.Data.Common model. One of these days I'll blog on that if anyone's interested. Regardless, you often have situations like the above where you are consuming and iterating through a resource that must be closed once you are finished iterating. For the reasons stated above, I didn't want to return IDataReader (that would force them to remember to Dispose it), and I didn't want to return List<Product> (that would force them to hold all products in memory) -- but the first time I wrote this, I was worried. What if you never consume the last item and exit the loop? Are the reader, command, and connection all disposed correctly? Of course, I was 99.999999% sure the creators of C# had already thought of this and taken care of it, but inspection in Reflector was difficult due to the nature of the state machines yield return generates, so I decided to try a quick example program to verify whether or not Dispose() will be called when an iterator is broken from outside the iterator itself -- i.e. before the iterator reports there are no more items. So I wrote a quick Sequencer class with a Dispose() method and an iterator for it. Yes, it is COMPLETELY contrived: 1: // A disposable sequence of int -- yes this is completely contrived... 2: internal class Sequencer : IDisposable 3: { 4: private int _i = 0; 5: private readonly object _mutex = new object(); 6: 7: // Constructs an int sequence. 8: public Sequencer(int start) 9: { 10: _i = start; 11: } 12: 13: // Gets the next integer 14: public int GetNext() 15: { 16: lock (_mutex) 17: { 18: return _i++; 19: } 20: } 21: 22: // Dispose the sequence of integers. 23: public void Dispose() 24: { 25: // force output immediately (flush the buffer) 26: Console.WriteLine("Disposed with last sequence number of {0}!", _i); 27: Console.Out.Flush(); 28: } 29: } And then I created a generator (infinite-loop iterator) that did the using block for auto-Disposal: 1: // simply defines an extension method off of an int to start a sequence 2: public static class SequencerExtensions 3: { 4: // generates an infinite sequence starting at the specified number 5: public static IEnumerable<int> GetSequence(this int starter) 6: { 7: // note the using here, will call Dispose() when block terminated. 8: using (var seq = new Sequencer(starter)) 9: { 10: // infinite loop on this generator, means must be bounded by caller! 11: while(true) 12: { 13: yield return seq.GetNext(); 14: } 15: } 16: } 17: } This is really the same conundrum as the database problem originally posed. Here we are using iteration (yield return) over a large collection (infinite sequence of integers). If we cut the sequence short by breaking iteration, will that using block exit and hence, Dispose be called? Well, let's see: 1: // The test program class 2: public class IteratorTest 3: { 4: // The main test method. 5: public static void Main() 6: { 7: Console.WriteLine("Going to consume 10 of infinite items"); 8: Console.Out.Flush(); 9: 10: foreach(var i in 0.GetSequence()) 11: { 12: // could use TakeWhile, but wanted to output right at break... 13: if(i >= 10) 14: { 15: Console.WriteLine("Breaking now!"); 16: Console.Out.Flush(); 17: break; 18: } 19: 20: Console.WriteLine(i); 21: Console.Out.Flush(); 22: } 23: 24: Console.WriteLine("Done with loop."); 25: Console.Out.Flush(); 26: } 27: } So, what do we see? Do we see the "Disposed" message from our dispose, or did the Dispose get skipped because from an "eyeball" perspective we should be locked in that infinite generator loop? Here's the results: 1: Going to consume 10 of infinite items 2: 0 3: 1 4: 2 5: 3 6: 4 7: 5 8: 6 9: 7 10: 8 11: 9 12: Breaking now! 13: Disposed with last sequence number of 11! 14: Done with loop. Yes indeed, when we break the loop, the state machine that C# generates for yield iterate exits the iteration through the using blocks and auto-disposes the IDisposable correctly. I must admit, though, the first time I wrote one, I began to wonder and that led to this test. If you've never seen iterators before (I wrote a previous entry here) the infinite loop may throw you, but you have to keep in mind it is not a linear piece of code, that every time you hit a "yield return" it cedes control back to the state machine generated for the iterator. And this state machine, I'm happy to say, is smart enough to clean up the using blocks correctly. I suspected those wily guys and gals at Microsoft engineered it well, and I wasn't disappointed. But, I've been bitten by assumptions before, so it's good to test and see. Yes, maybe you knew it would or figured it would, but isn't it nice to know? And as those campy 80s G.I. Joe cartoon public service reminders always taught us, "Knowing is half the battle...". Technorati Tags: C#,.NET

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 23, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 23, 2010New Projects.NET StarCraft II Replay Parser: A .NET 3.5 Library used to parse StarCraft II replays. Developed in C# 3.5.BackToBasics "B2B" Chat: With technology and software getting more and more complicated, why not get back to basics with BackToBasicsChat. B2B allows you to chat over a ser...Dark Neuron Game Engine: Dark Neuron allows you to easily create fun and interesting games with no need of developing basic game components. This engine is developed for C#...DeepZoom Pivot Constructor: Library to make building DeepZoom images and Pivot displays simpler.ePaper reader: The project is aimed at creating a tool which helps in reading electronic editions of news papers(pdf/flash)FSharpPageProvider for EPiServer CMS 6: This project starts as the port of EPiServer XmlPageProvider to F# programming language. Hammock for REST: Hammock is a REST library for .NET that greatly simplifies consuming and wrapping RESTful services.Kirill Osenkov: Various small projects, tools, utilities and samples by Kirill OsenkovliveDB: liveDB - web client for sql serverLucilla Framework: lucilla frameworkMVC Foolproof Validation: MVC Foolproof Validation aims to extend the Data Annotation validation provided in ASP.NET MVC. Initial efforts are focused on adding contingent va...MVC2Forums: MVC2Forums is simply a forum system based upon MVC2.Mvvm Foundation Silverlight: Mvvm Foundation Silverlight is a library of classes that are helpful when building Silverlight applications based in the MVVM pattern. This librar...MyPersonalWebsite: This is my personal web site developed using ASP.NET MVC 2Planner: Planner makes it easier for all peoples to plan your tasks. It's developed in Delphi.Prose: Prose is an playground for an experimental JavaScript like language compiler. Eventually it will implement 0-CFA, CFA2, and a Tracing JITQuestTracker: QuestTracker is a todo list presented in the format of a quest tracking list such as the one in World of Warcraft.SevenZipLib: SevenZipLib is a C# interface to the 7-zip library.SimpleGeo .Net: .Net Client library for the SimpleGeo.com serviceNew ReleasesAutenticar no OpenLDAP utilizando pGIna: DLL LDAPAuth Plus: New Group: No LoginBMap.NET: BMap.NET 2: This is the 2nd version of BMap.NET. It has included these tags: Bing Maps, and "About BMap.NET".Cronos: Version 2.04: This is primarily a bug-fix release. Several numerical issues have been resolved, and a resource leak (of MS Windows graphics objects) has been fi...EV Dashboard: v1.0: This release includes support for an App.config file and Auto Connect, which will connect to the specified BMS at startup. Note: You still have to ...GKO Libraries: GKO Libraries 0.1 Beta: 0.1 Beta Added More utilities and functions RefactoringsGLB Virtual Player Builder: 0.4.2 Beta: Beta build that includes a new player creator.HKGolden Express: HKGoldenExpress (Build 201003222215): New features: (None) Bug fix: Fixed bugs of unable to parse XML file stream returned from HKGolden API, as the encoding of XML file stream chang...jQuery Web Controls ASP.Net: jQueryWebControls 1.1.1.2: En esta versión se han corregido problemas existentes en la ejecución de los scripts de jquery cuando se utilizaban MasterPage y/o Ajax Control Too...LightKit: Version 0.2.2: Fixed: fixed bug when CollectionItemsEditor ditermines IsChanged property incorrectly fixed ObjectEditor`a thisstring propertyName method wrong l...LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter Beta v2.0.8: New items added since v1.1 include: Support for OAuth (via DotNetOpenAuth), secure communication via https, VB language support, serialization of ...MapWindow6: MapWindow 6.0 msi (March 22): This version fixes the icons for the desktop installer and changes the install directory to Program Files\MapWindow instead of Program Files\ISU.Math.NET Numerics: 2010.3.22.1334 Build: Latest alpha buildMiniCalendar Web Part: MiniCalendar Web Part 1.8: A small web part to display links to events stored in a list (or document library) in a mini calendar (in month view mode). It shows tooltips for t...OCInject: Release Two: This release brings some missing features such as Singleton support, Func<T> factories and child containers. It, also, has an updated constructor ...Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 2.0 (March 2010): Installer of the latest binaries of Phalanger 2.0 (March 2010) and its integration into Visual Studio 2008. Easy installer with automatic IIS int...Planner: Planner: firstQuestTracker: QuestTracker 0.1: This is the preliminary release of QuestTracker. There's not much documentation or many features yet, but it is functional. Any feedback would be a...QuestTracker: QuestTracker 0.1.1: Bugfix for QuestTracker 0.1QuestTracker: QuestTracker 0.1.2: Fixes an issue with saving the quest list.Rawr: Rawr 2.3.13: We're pleased to announce that, after long last, Rawr3 has entered public beta. You're still welcome to continue using Rawr2 (that's what you're re...Single Web Session: Alpha Model Plugin: !How to use Single Web Session add following line into your web config <httpModules> <add name="SingleSession" type="SingleWebSession.Model.W...SMIL - SharePoint Map Integration Layer: SMIL 1.0: Custom data field Extracts Lat/Lon from EXIF from images being uploaded. Map Web Part Filter with SharePoint views Filter by connecting to...sTASKedit: sTASKedit 42532 (Developer Alpha): This release is only to verify the currently decoded task structure... 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Writing the tests for FluentPath

- by Bertrand Le Roy

Writing the tests for FluentPath is a challenge. The library is a wrapper around a legacy API (System.IO) that wasn’t designed to be easily testable. If it were more testable, the sensible testing methodology would be to tell System.IO to act against a mock file system, which would enable me to verify that my code is doing the expected file system operations without having to manipulate the actual, physical file system: what we are testing here is FluentPath, not System.IO. Unfortunately, that is not an option as nothing in System.IO enables us to plug a mock file system in. As a consequence, we are left with few options. A few people have suggested me to abstract my calls to System.IO away so that I could tell FluentPath – not System.IO – to use a mock instead of the real thing. That in turn is getting a little silly: FluentPath already is a thin abstraction around System.IO, so layering another abstraction between them would double the test surface while bringing little or no value. I would have to test that new abstraction layer, and that would bring us back to square one. Unless I’m missing something, the only option I have here is to bite the bullet and test against the real file system. Of course, the tests that do that can hardly be called unit tests. They are more integration tests as they don’t only test bits of my code. They really test the successful integration of my code with the underlying System.IO. In order to write such tests, the techniques of BDD work particularly well as they enable you to express scenarios in natural language, from which test code is generated. Integration tests are being better expressed as scenarios orchestrating a few basic behaviors, so this is a nice fit. The Orchard team has been successfully using SpecFlow for integration tests for a while and I thought it was pretty cool so that’s what I decided to use. Consider for example the following scenario: Scenario: Change extension Given a clean test directory When I change the extension of bar\notes.txt to foo Then bar\notes.txt should not exist And bar\notes.foo should exist This is human readable and tells you everything you need to know about what you’re testing, but it is also executable code. What happens when SpecFlow compiles this scenario is that it executes a bunch of regular expressions that identify the known Given (set-up phases), When (actions) and Then (result assertions) to identify the code to run, which is then translated into calls into the appropriate methods. Nothing magical. Here is the code generated by SpecFlow: [NUnit.Framework.TestAttribute()] [NUnit.Framework.DescriptionAttribute("Change extension")] public virtual void ChangeExtension() { TechTalk.SpecFlow.ScenarioInfo scenarioInfo = new TechTalk.SpecFlow.ScenarioInfo("Change extension", ((string[])(null))); #line 6 this.ScenarioSetup(scenarioInfo); #line 7 testRunner.Given("a clean test directory"); #line 8 testRunner.When("I change the extension of " + "bar\\notes.txt to foo"); #line 9 testRunner.Then("bar\\notes.txt should not exist"); #line 10 testRunner.And("bar\\notes.foo should exist"); #line hidden testRunner.CollectScenarioErrors();} The #line directives are there to give clues to the debugger, because yes, you can put breakpoints into a scenario: The way you usually write tests with SpecFlow is that you write the scenario first, let it fail, then write the translation of your Given, When and Then into code if they don’t already exist, which results in running but failing tests, and then you write the code to make your tests pass (you implement the scenario). In the case of FluentPath, I built a simple Given method that builds a simple file hierarchy in a temporary directory that all scenarios are going to work with: [Given("a clean test directory")] public void GivenACleanDirectory() { _path = new Path(SystemIO.Path.GetTempPath()) .CreateSubDirectory("FluentPathSpecs") .MakeCurrent(); _path.GetFileSystemEntries() .Delete(true); _path.CreateFile("foo.txt", "This is a text file named foo."); var bar = _path.CreateSubDirectory("bar"); bar.CreateFile("baz.txt", "bar baz") .SetLastWriteTime(DateTime.Now.AddSeconds(-2)); bar.CreateFile("notes.txt", "This is a text file containing notes."); var barbar = bar.CreateSubDirectory("bar"); barbar.CreateFile("deep.txt", "Deep thoughts"); var sub = _path.CreateSubDirectory("sub"); sub.CreateSubDirectory("subsub"); sub.CreateFile("baz.txt", "sub baz") .SetLastWriteTime(DateTime.Now); sub.CreateFile("binary.bin", new byte[] {0x00, 0x01, 0x02, 0x03, 0x04, 0x05, 0xFF}); } Then, to implement the scenario that you can read above, I had to write the following When: [When("I change the extension of (.*) to (.*)")] public void WhenIChangeTheExtension( string path, string newExtension) { var oldPath = Path.Current.Combine(path.Split('\\')); oldPath.Move(p => p.ChangeExtension(newExtension)); } As you can see, the When attribute is specifying the regular expression that will enable the SpecFlow engine to recognize what When method to call and also how to map its parameters. For our scenario, “bar\notes.txt” will get mapped to the path parameter, and “foo” to the newExtension parameter. And of course, the code that verifies the assumptions of the scenario: [Then("(.*) should exist")] public void ThenEntryShouldExist(string path) { Assert.IsTrue(_path.Combine(path.Split('\\')).Exists); } [Then("(.*) should not exist")] public void ThenEntryShouldNotExist(string path) { Assert.IsFalse(_path.Combine(path.Split('\\')).Exists); } These steps should be written with reusability in mind. They are building blocks for your scenarios, not implementation of a specific scenario. Think small and fine-grained. In the case of the above steps, I could reuse each of those steps in other scenarios. Those tests are easy to write and easier to read, which means that they also constitute a form of documentation. Oh, and SpecFlow is just one way to do this. Rob wrote a long time ago about this sort of thing (but using a different framework) and I highly recommend this post if I somehow managed to pique your interest: http://blog.wekeroad.com/blog/make-bdd-your-bff-2/ And this screencast (Rob always makes excellent screencasts): http://blog.wekeroad.com/mvc-storefront/kona-3/ (click the “Download it here” link)

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Tailoring the Oracle Fusion Applications User Interface with Oracle Composer

- by mvaughan

By Killian Evers, Oracle Applications User Experience Changing the user interface (UI) is one of the most common modifications customers perform to Oracle Fusion Applications. Typically, customers add or remove a field based on their needs. Oracle makes the process of tailoring easier for customers, and reduces the burden for their IT staff, which you can read about on the Usable Apps website or in an earlier VoX post.This is the first in a series of posts that will talk about the tools that Oracle has provided for tailoring with its family of composers. These tools are designed for business systems analysts, and they allow employees other than IT staff to make changes in an upgrade-safe and patch-friendly manner. Let’s take a deep dive into one of these composers, the Oracle Composer. Oracle Composer allows business users to modify existing UIs after they have been deployed and are in use. It is an integral component of our SaaS offering. Using Oracle Composer, users can control: • Who sees the changes • When the changes are made • What changes are made Change for me, change for you, change for all of youOne of the most powerful aspects of Oracle Composer is its flexibility. Oracle uses Oracle Composer to make changes for a user or group of users – those who see the changes. A user of Oracle Fusion Applications can make changes to the user interface at runtime via Oracle Composer, and these changes will remain every time they log into the system. For example, they can rearrange certain objects on a page, add and remove designated content, and save queries.Business systems analysts can make changes to Oracle Fusion Application UIs for groups of users or all users. Oracle’s Fusion Middleware Metadata Services (MDS) stores these changes and retrieves them at runtime, merging customizations with the base metadata and revealing the final experience to the end user. A tailored application can have multiple customization layers, and some layers can be specific to certain Fusion Applications. Some examples of customization layers are: site, organization, country, or role. Customization layers are applied in a specific order of precedence on top of the base application metadata. This image illustrates how customization layers are applied.What time is it?Users make changes to UIs at design time, runtime, and design time at runtime. Design time changes are typically made by application developers using an integrated development environment, or IDE, such as Oracle JDeveloper. Once made, these changes are then deployed to managed servers by application administrators. Oracle Composer covers the other two areas: Runtime changes and design time at runtime changes. When we say users are making changes at runtime, we mean that the changes are made within the running application and take effect immediately in the running application. A prime example of this ability is users who make changes to their running application that only affect the UIs they see. What is new with Oracle Composer is the last area: Design time at runtime. A business systems analyst can make changes to the UIs at runtime but does not have to make those changes immediately to the application. These changes are stored as metadata, separate from the base application definitions. Customizations made at runtime can be saved in a sandbox so that the changes can be isolated and validated before being published into an environment, without the need to redeploy the application. What can I do?Oracle Composer can be run in one of two modes. Depending on which mode is chosen, you may have different capabilities available for changing the UIs. The first mode is view mode, the most common default mode for most pages. This is the mode that is used for personalizations or user customizations. Users can access this mode via the Personalization link (see below) in the global region on Oracle Fusion Applications pages. In this mode, you can rearrange components on a page with drag-and-drop, collapse or expand components, add approved external content, and change the overall layout of a page. However, all of the changes made this way are exclusive to that particular user.The second mode, edit mode, is typically made available to select users with access privileges to edit page content. We call these folks business systems analysts. This mode is used to make UI changes for groups of users. Users with appropriate privileges can access the edit mode of Oracle Composer via the Administration menu (see below) in the global region on Oracle Fusion Applications pages. In edit mode, users can also add components, delete components, and edit component properties. While in edit mode in Oracle Composer, there are two views that assist the business systems analyst with making UI changes: Design View and Source View (see below). Design View, the default view, is a WYSIWYG rendering of the page and its content. The business systems analyst can perform these actions: Add content – including custom content like a portlet displaying news or stock quotes, or predefined content delivered from Oracle Fusion Applications (including ADF components and task flows) Rearrange content – performed via drag-and-drop on the page or by using the actions menu of a component or portlet to move content around Edit component properties and parameters – for specific components, control the visual properties such as text or display labels, or parameters such as RSS feeds Hide or show components – hidden components can be re-shown Delete components Change page layout – users can select from eight pre-defined layouts Edit page properties – create or edit a page’s parameters and display properties Reset page customizations – remove edits made to the page in the current layer and/or reset the page to a previous state. Detailed information on each of these capabilities and the additional actions not covered in the list above can be found in the Oracle® Fusion Middleware Developer's Guide for Oracle WebCenter.This image shows what the screen looks like in Design View.Source View, the second option in the edit mode of Oracle Composer, provides a WYSIWYG and a hierarchical rendering of page components in a component navigator. In Source View, users can access and modify properties of components that are not otherwise selectable in Design View. For example, many ADF Faces components can be edited only in Source View. Users can also edit components within a task flow. This image shows what the screen looks like in Source View.Detailed information on Source View can be found in the Oracle® Fusion Middleware Developer's Guide for Oracle WebCenter.Oracle Composer enables any application or portal to be customized or personalized after it has been deployed and is in use. It is designed to be extremely easy to use so that both business systems analysts and users can edit Oracle Fusion Applications pages with a few clicks of the mouse. Oracle Composer runs in all modern browsers and provides a rich, dynamic way to edit JSF application and portal pages.From the editor: The next post in this series about composers will be on Data Composer. You can also catch Killian speaking about extensibility at OpenWorld 2012 and in her Faces of Fusion video.

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Integrating Coherence & Java EE 6 Applications using ActiveCache

- by Ricardo Ferreira

OK, so you are a developer and are starting a new Java EE 6 application using the most wonderful features of the Java EE platform like Enterprise JavaBeans, JavaServer Faces, CDI, JPA e another cool stuff technologies. And your architecture need to hold piece of data into distributed caches to improve application's performance, scalability and reliability? If this is your current facing scenario, maybe you should look closely in the solutions provided by Oracle WebLogic Server. Oracle had integrated WebLogic Server and its champion data caching technology called Oracle Coherence. This seamless integration between this two products provides a comprehensive environment to develop applications without the complexity of extra Java code to manage cache as a dependency, since Oracle provides an DI ("Dependency Injection") mechanism for Coherence, the same DI mechanism available in standard Java EE applications. This feature is called ActiveCache. In this article, I will show you how to configure ActiveCache in WebLogic and at your Java EE application. Configuring WebLogic to manage Coherence Before you start changing your application to use Coherence, you need to configure your Coherence distributed cache. The good news is, you can manage all this stuff without writing a single line of code of XML or even Java. This configuration can be done entirely in the WebLogic administration console. The first thing to do is the setup of a Coherence cluster. A Coherence cluster is a set of Coherence JVMs configured to form one single view of the cache. This means that you can insert or remove members of the cluster without the client application (the application that generates or consume data from the cache) knows about the changes. This concept allows your solution to scale-out without changing the application server JVMs. You can growth your application only in the data grid layer. To start the configuration, you need to configure an machine that points to the server in which you want to execute the Coherence JVMs. WebLogic Server allows you to do this very easily using the Administration Console. In this example, I will call the machine as "coherence-server". Remember that in order to the machine concept works, you need to ensure that the NodeManager are being executed in the target server that the machine points to. The NodeManager executable can be found in <WLS_HOME>/server/bin/startNodeManager.sh. The next thing to do is to configure a Coherence cluster. In the WebLogic administration console, go to Environment > Coherence Clusters and click in "New". Call this Coherence cluster of "my-coherence-cluster". Click in next. Specify a valid cluster address and port. The Coherence members will communicate with each other through this address and port. Our Coherence cluster are now configured. Now it is time to configure the Coherence members and add them to this cluster. In the WebLogic administration console, go to Environment > Coherence Servers and click in "New". In the field "Name" set to "coh-server-1". In the field "Machine", associate this Coherence server to the machine "coherence-server". In the field "Cluster", associate this Coherence server to the cluster named "my-coherence-cluster". Click in "Finish". Start the Coherence server using the "Control" tab of WebLogic administration console. This will instruct WebLogic to start a new JVM of Coherence in the target machine that should join the pre-defined Coherence cluster. Configuring your Java EE Application to Access Coherence Now lets pass to the funny part of the configuration. The first thing to do is to inform your Java EE application which Coherence cluster to join. Oracle had updated WebLogic server deployment descriptors so you will not have to change your code or the containers deployment descriptors like application.xml, ejb-jar.xml or web.xml. In this example, I will show you how to enable DI ("Dependency Injection") to a Coherence cache from a Servlet 3.0 component. In the WEB-INF/weblogic.xml deployment descriptor, put the following metadata information: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <wls:weblogic-web-app xmlns:wls="http://xmlns.oracle.com/weblogic/weblogic-web-app" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd http://xmlns.oracle.com/weblogic/weblogic-web-app http://xmlns.oracle.com/weblogic/weblogic-web-app/1.4/weblogic-web-app.xsd"> <wls:context-root>myWebApp</wls:context-root> <wls:coherence-cluster-ref> <wls:coherence-cluster-name>my-coherence-cluster</wls:coherence-cluster-name> </wls:coherence-cluster-ref> </wls:weblogic-web-app> As you can see, using the "coherence-cluster-name" tag, we are informing our Java EE application that it should join the "my-coherence-cluster" when it loads in the web container. Without this information, the application will not be able to access the predefined Coherence cluster. It will form its own Coherence cluster without any members. So never forget to put this information. Now put the coherence.jar and active-cache-1.0.jar dependencies at your WEB-INF/lib application classpath. You need to deploy this dependencies so ActiveCache can automatically take care of the Coherence cluster join phase. This dependencies can be found in the following locations: - <WLS_HOME>/common/deployable-libraries/active-cache-1.0.jar - <COHERENCE_HOME>/lib/coherence.jar Finally, you need to write down the access code to the Coherence cache at your Servlet. In the following example, we have a Servlet 3.0 component that access a Coherence cache named "transactions" and prints into the browser output the content (the ammount property) of one specific transaction. package com.oracle.coherence.demo.activecache; import java.io.IOException; import javax.annotation.Resource; import javax.servlet.ServletException; import javax.servlet.annotation.WebServlet; import javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet; import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest; import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse; import com.tangosol.net.NamedCache; @WebServlet("/demo/specificTransaction") public class TransactionServletExample extends HttpServlet { @Resource(mappedName = "transactions") NamedCache transactions; protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException { int transId = Integer.parseInt(request.getParameter("transId")); Transaction transaction = (Transaction) transactions.get(transId); response.getWriter().println("<center>" + transaction.getAmmount() + "</center>"); } } Thats it! No more configuration is necessary and you have all set to start producing and getting data to/from Coherence. As you can see in the example code, the Coherence cache are treated as a normal dependency in the Java EE container. The magic happens behind the scenes when the ActiveCache allows your application to join the defined Coherence cluster. The most interesting thing about this approach is, no matter which type of Coherence cache your are using (Distributed, Partitioned, Replicated, WAN-Remote) for the client application, it is just a simple attribute member of com.tangosol.net.NamedCache type. And its all managed by the Java EE container as an dependency. This means that if you inject the same dependency (the Coherence cache named "transactions") in another Java EE component (JSF managed-bean, Stateless EJB) the cache will be the same. Cool isn't it? Thanks to the CDI technology, we can extend the same support for non-Java EE standards components like simple POJOs. This means that you are not forced to only use Servlets, EJBs or JSF in order to inject Coherence caches. You can do the same approach for regular POJOs created for you and managed by lightweight containers like Spring or Seam.

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Security in Software

The term security has many meanings based on the context and perspective in which it is used. Security from the perspective of software/system development is the continuous process of maintaining confidentiality, integrity, and availability of a system, sub-system, and system data. This definition at a very high level can be restated as the following: Computer security is a continuous process dealing with confidentiality, integrity, and availability on multiple layers of a system. Key Aspects of Software Security Integrity Confidentiality Availability Integrity within a system is the concept of ensuring only authorized users can only manipulate information through authorized methods and procedures. An example of this can be seen in a simple lead management application. If the business decided to allow each sales member to only update their own leads in the system and sales managers can update all leads in the system then an integrity violation would occur if a sales member attempted to update someone else’s leads. An integrity violation occurs when a team member attempts to update someone else’s lead because it was not entered by the sales member. This violates the business rule that leads can only be update by the originating sales member. Confidentiality within a system is the concept of preventing unauthorized access to specific information or tools. In a perfect world the knowledge of the existence of confidential information/tools would be unknown to all those who do not have access. When this this concept is applied within the context of an application only the authorized information/tools will be available. If we look at the sales lead management system again, leads can only be updated by originating sales members. If we look at this rule then we can say that all sales leads are confidential between the system and the sales person who entered the lead in to the system. The other sales team members would not need to know about the leads let alone need to access it. Availability within a system is the concept of authorized users being able to access the system. A real world example can be seen again from the lead management system. If that system was hosted on a web server then IP restriction can be put in place to limit access to the system based on the requesting IP address. If in this example all of the sales members where accessing the system from the 192.168.1.23 IP address then removing access from all other IPs would be need to ensure that improper access to the system is prevented while approved users can access the system from an authorized location. In essence if the requesting user is not coming from an authorized IP address then the system will appear unavailable to them. This is one way of controlling where a system is accessed. Through the years several design principles have been identified as being beneficial when integrating security aspects into a system. These principles in various combinations allow for a system to achieve the previously defined aspects of security based on generic architectural models. Security Design Principles Least Privilege Fail-Safe Defaults Economy of Mechanism Complete Mediation Open Design Separation Privilege Least Common Mechanism Psychological Acceptability Defense in Depth Least Privilege Design PrincipleThe Least Privilege design principle requires a minimalistic approach to granting user access rights to specific information and tools. Additionally, access rights should be time based as to limit resources access bound to the time needed to complete necessary tasks. The implications of granting access beyond this scope will allow for unnecessary access and the potential for data to be updated out of the approved context. The assigning of access rights will limit system damaging attacks from users whether they are intentional or not. This principle attempts to limit data changes and prevents potential damage from occurring by accident or error by reducing the amount of potential interactions with a resource. Fail-Safe Defaults Design PrincipleThe Fail-Safe Defaults design principle pertains to allowing access to resources based on granted access over access exclusion. This principle is a methodology for allowing resources to be accessed only if explicit access is granted to a user. By default users do not have access to any resources until access has been granted. This approach prevents unauthorized users from gaining access to resource until access is given. Economy of Mechanism Design PrincipleThe Economy of mechanism design principle requires that systems should be designed as simple and small as possible. Design and implementation errors result in unauthorized access to resources that would not be noticed during normal use. Complete Mediation Design PrincipleThe Complete Mediation design principle states that every access to every resource must be validated for authorization. Open Design Design PrincipleThe Open Design Design Principle is a concept that the security of a system and its algorithms should not be dependent on secrecy of its design or implementation Separation Privilege Design PrincipleThe separation privilege design principle requires that all resource approved resource access attempts be granted based on more than a single condition. For example a user should be validated for active status and has access to the specific resource. Least Common Mechanism Design PrincipleThe Least Common Mechanism design principle declares that mechanisms used to access resources should not be shared. Psychological Acceptability Design PrincipleThe Psychological Acceptability design principle refers to security mechanisms not make resources more difficult to access than if the security mechanisms were not present Defense in Depth Design PrincipleThe Defense in Depth design principle is a concept of layering resource access authorization verification in a system reduces the chance of a successful attack. This layered approach to resource authorization requires unauthorized users to circumvent each authorization attempt to gain access to a resource. When designing a system that requires meeting a security quality attribute architects need consider the scope of security needs and the minimum required security qualities. Not every system will need to use all of the basic security design principles but will use one or more in combination based on a company’s and architect’s threshold for system security because the existence of security in an application adds an additional layer to the overall system and can affect performance. That is why the definition of minimum security acceptably is need when a system is design because this quality attributes needs to be factored in with the other system quality attributes so that the system in question adheres to all qualities based on the priorities of the qualities. Resources: Barnum, Sean. Gegick, Michael. (2005). Least Privilege. Retrieved on August 28, 2011 from https://buildsecurityin.us-cert.gov/bsi/articles/knowledge/principles/351-BSI.html Saltzer, Jerry. (2011). BASIC PRINCIPLES OF INFORMATION PROTECTION. Retrieved on August 28, 2011 from http://web.mit.edu/Saltzer/www/publications/protection/Basic.html Barnum, Sean. Gegick, Michael. (2005). Defense in Depth. Retrieved on August 28, 2011 from https://buildsecurityin.us-cert.gov/bsi/articles/knowledge/principles/347-BSI.html Bertino, Elisa. (2005). Design Principles for Security. Retrieved on August 28, 2011 from http://homes.cerias.purdue.edu/~bhargav/cs526/security-9.pdf

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Use BGInfo to Build a Database of System Information of Your Network Computers

- by Sysadmin Geek

One of the more popular tools of the Sysinternals suite among system administrators is BGInfo which tacks real-time system information to your desktop wallpaper when you first login. For obvious reasons, having information such as system memory, available hard drive space and system up time (among others) right in front of you is very convenient when you are managing several systems. A little known feature about this handy utility is the ability to have system information automatically saved to a SQL database or some other data file. With a few minutes of setup work you can easily configure BGInfo to record system information of all your network computers in a centralized storage location. You can then use this data to monitor or report on these systems however you see fit. BGInfo Setup If you are familiar with BGInfo, you can skip this section. However, if you have never used this tool, it takes just a few minutes to setup in order to capture the data you are looking for. When you first open BGInfo, a timer will be counting down in the upper right corner. Click the countdown button to keep the interface up so we can edit the settings. Now edit the information you want to capture from the available fields on the right. Since all the output will be redirected to a central location, don’t worry about configuring the layout or formatting. Configuring the Storage Database BGInfo supports the ability to store information in several database formats: SQL Server Database, Access Database, Excel and Text File. To configure this option, open File > Database. Using a Text File The simplest, and perhaps most practical, option is to store the BGInfo data in a comma separated text file. This format allows for the file to be opened in Excel or imported into a database. To use a text file or any other file system type (Excel or MS Access), simply provide the UNC to the respective file. The account running the task to write to this file will need read/write access to both the share and NTFS file permissions. When using a text file, the only option is to have BGInfo create a new entry each time the capture process is run which will add a new line to the respective CSV text file. Using a SQL Database If you prefer to have the data dropped straight into a SQL Server database, BGInfo support this as well. This requires a bit of additional configuration, but overall it is very easy. The first step is to create a database where the information will be stored. Additionally, you will want to create a user account to fill data into this table (and this table only). For your convenience, this script creates a new database and user account (run this as Administrator on your SQL Server machine): @SET Server=%ComputerName%.@SET Database=BGInfo@SET UserName=BGInfo@SET Password=passwordSQLCMD -S “%Server%” -E -Q “Create Database [%Database%]“SQLCMD -S “%Server%” -E -Q “Create Login [%UserName%] With Password=N’%Password%’, DEFAULT_DATABASE=[%Database%], CHECK_EXPIRATION=OFF, CHECK_POLICY=OFF”SQLCMD -S “%Server%” -E -d “%Database%” -Q “Create User [%UserName%] For Login [%UserName%]“SQLCMD -S “%Server%” -E -d “%Database%” -Q “EXEC sp_addrolemember N’db_owner’, N’%UserName%’” Note the SQL user account must have ‘db_owner’ permissions on the database in order for BGInfo to work correctly. This is why you should have a SQL user account specifically for this database. Next, configure BGInfo to connect to this database by clicking on the SQL button. Fill out the connection properties according to your database settings. Select the option of whether or not to only have one entry per computer or keep a history of each system. The data will then be dropped directly into a table named “BGInfoTable” in the respective database. Configure User Desktop Options While the primary function of BGInfo is to alter the user’s desktop by adding system info as part of the wallpaper, for our use here we want to leave the user’s wallpaper alone so this process runs without altering any of the user’s settings. Click the Desktops button. Configure the Wallpaper modifications to not alter anything. Preparing the Deployment Now we are all set for deploying the configuration to the individual machines so we can start capturing the system data. If you have not done so already, click the Apply button to create the first entry in your data repository. If all is configured correctly, you should be able to open your data file or database and see the entry for the respective machine. Now click the File > Save As menu option and save the configuration as “BGInfoCapture.bgi”. Deploying to Client Machines Deployment to the respective client machines is pretty straightforward. No installation is required as you just need to copy the BGInfo.exe and the BGInfoCapture.bgi to each machine and place them in the same directory. Once in place, just run the command: BGInfo.exe BGInfoCapture.bgi /Timer:0 /Silent /NoLicPrompt Of course, you probably want to schedule the capture process to run on a schedule. This command creates a Scheduled Task to run the capture process at 8 AM every morning and assumes you copied the required files to the root of your C drive: SCHTASKS /Create /SC DAILY /ST 08:00 /TN “System Info” /TR “C:\BGInfo.exe C:\BGInfoCapture.bgi /Timer:0 /Silent /NoLicPrompt” Adjust as needed, but the end result is the scheduled task command should look something like this: Download BGInfo from Sysinternals Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Create Your Own Custom ASCII Art from Any Image How To Process Camera Raw Without Paying for Adobe Photoshop How Do You Block Annoying Text Message (SMS) Spam? How to Use and Master the Notoriously Difficult Pen Tool in Photoshop HTG Explains: What Are the Differences Between All Those Audio Formats? How To Use Layer Masks and Vector Masks to Remove Complex Backgrounds in Photoshop Bring Summer Back to Your Desktop with the LandscapeTheme for Chrome and Iron The Prospector – Home Dash Extension Creates a Whole New Browsing Experience in Firefox KinEmote Links Kinect to Windows Why Nobody Reads Web Site Privacy Policies [Infographic] Asian Temple in the Snow Wallpaper 10 Weird Gaming Records from the Guinness Book

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, May 23, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, May 23, 2010New ProjectsA2Command: Apple 2 port of CBM-Command (http://cbmcommand.codeplex.com)AgUnit: AgUnit is a plugin for Jetbrains ReSharper (R#) that allows you to run and debug Silverlight unit tests from within Visual Studio.BSonPosh Powershell Module: A collection of useful Powershell functions I have written and collected over the years. It is a Powershell v2 Module composed of mostly scripts.DB Restriker: Simple tool for lookup, parsing, searching some standard databases using wildcards and pattern recognition.Entity Framework Repository & Unit of Work Template: T4 Template for Entity Framework 4 for creating a data access layer using the repository and unit of work patterns. Designed to work well with dep...Fiction Catalog: A catalog project designed to store information about fictional literature.Giving a Presentation: Useful for people doing presentations, this application hides desktop icons, disables screensaver, closes chosen programs when presentation starts,...glueless: Glueless is a local message bus which allows architect to design highly decoupled systems and applications. Glueless is a step beyond dependency i...HtmlCodeIt: Take any code and format it so that it can be viewed properly on a web browser, blog post or website.just testproject :): just have a test!KanbanTaskboard: The aim of the project is to design and implement a functional prototype for visualizing and operating a multi-platform virtual "Kanban Taskboard”Life System: Life SystemOaSys Project: Project Oasys is a project that aims to help solve desertification. Scoring of pingPong Game: Scoring of pingPong GameSilverlight Web Comic: The Silverlight Web Comic makes easier for the people create your own comic with your own pictures o drawings, and add the globes of text like the ...TickSharp: C# Wrapper for http://TickSpot.com RESTful API.Traductor: El Traductor es una aplicación de escritorio para traducción de frases entre distintos idiomas basada en la plataforma Silverlight Out Of Browser y...WatchersNET.SkinObjects.ModulActionsMenu: Displays the Module Actions Menu as a Unsorted CSS Menu.xxfd1r4w96: testingNew ReleasesAgUnit: AgUnit 0.1: Initial release of AgUnit. Copy the extracted files from AgUnit-0.1.zip into the "Bin\Plugins\" folder of your ReSharper installation (default C:...ASP.NET MVC | SCAFFOLD: ASP.NET MVC SCAFFOLD - Beta 1.0: Release versão betaBizTalk Server 2006 Documenter: Documenter_v3.4.0.0: This is the new release of the documenter which has the following highlights Support for 64 bit systems Support for SxS scenarios (so now the sys...CassiniDev - Cassini 3.5/4.0 Developers Edition: CassiniDev 3.5.1 Beta 2- VS 2008 Replacement: The CassiniDev Visual Studio build is a fully compatibly Visual Studio 2008/2010 Development server drop-in replacement with all CassiniDev enhance...CBM-Command: 2010-05-22 Beta: Release Notes - 2010-05-22 BetaNew Features Simple text file viewer. Now when you use SHIFT-RETURN to open a file, it will ask if you want to view...Easy Validation: Documentation: Documentation for easyVal was created and presented at University of Texas at Austin in May of 2010.Entity Framework Repository & Unit of Work Template: 1.0: Initial ReleaseFrotz.NET: FrotzNet 1.0 beta: Many, many changes, including: - Got Adaptive Palette working for graphics - Got undo working - Implemented all zcodes - Added scripting as well as...Giving a Presentation: CTP: This release includes basic extensibility infrastructure and three extensions: hides desktop icons, disables screensaver, closes chosen programs wh...Gov 2.0 Kit: SharePoint 2010 MyPeeps Mysite Accelerators: SharePoint 2010 MyPeeps Mysite Accelerators. Attached are the installation and documentations files.HKGolden Express: HKGoldenExpress (Build 201005221900): New features: (None) Bug fix: Hong Kong special characters now can be posted without encoding problem. Improvements: (None) Other changes: (None) K...Intellibox - A WPF auto complete textbox search control: Beta 2: Updated the namespace of the Intellibox control from "System.Windows.Controls" to "FeserWard.Controls". Empty binding Path properties now work on...MDownloader: MDownloader-0.15.14.59111: Fixed DepositFile provider. Fixed FileFactory provider. Added simple fakeness detector (can check if .rar, .zip, .7z files have valid signature...Mute4: V1: Initial version of Mute4NLog - Advanced .NET Logging: Nightly Build 2010.05.22.003: Changes since the last build:No changes. Unit test results:Passed 191/191 (100%) Passed 191/191 (100%) Passed 214/214 (100%) Passed 216/216 (100%)...NSIS Autorun: NSIS Autorun 0.1.9: This release includes source code, executable binaries and example materials.Silverlight Gantt Chart: Silverlight Gantt Chart 1.3 (SL4): The latest release mainly makes the Gantt Chart useful in Silverlight 4 applications.SqlServerExtensions: V 0.2 beta: V 0.2 Beta release: New features available TrimStart - trim leading characters TrimEnd - trim trailing characters Remove - remove characters f...Traductor: Version 3.1: Nuevo en esta versión: El Traductor ahora permite escoger entre los motores de Microsoft y Google. El Text to Speech is es ahora habilitado por...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30522.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVDialer Add-In for Outlook 2007 & 2010 - Dial your Vonage phone from Outlook: VDialer Add-In 1.0.3: This release adds new features related to Journal and use of Vonage API Changes in version 1.0.3 Added configurable option to automatically open J...WatchersNET.SkinObjects.ModulActionsMenu: ModulActionsMenu 01.00.00: First Release For Informations How To Install, the Skin Object Read the DocumentationMost Popular ProjectsCodeComment.NETRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)patterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryPHPExcelMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesMost Active ProjectsRawrpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryCaliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and Silverlightpatterns & practices: Windows Azure Security GuidanceCassiniDev - Cassini 3.5/4.0 Developers EditionGMap.NET - Great Maps for Windows Forms & PresentationNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleSQL Server PowerShell ExtensionsBlogEngine.NETCodeReview

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Microsoft Business Intelligence Seminar 2011

- by DavidWimbush

I was lucky enough to attend the maiden presentation of this at Microsoft Reading yesterday. It was pretty gripping stuff not only because of what was said but also because of what could only be hinted at. Here's what I took away from the day. (Disclaimer: I'm not a BI guru, just a reasonably experienced BI developer, so I may have misunderstood or misinterpreted a few things. Particularly when so much of the talk was about the vision and subtle hints of what is coming. Please comment if you think I've got anything wrong. I'm also not going to even try to cover Master Data Services as I struggled to imagine how you would actually use it.) I was a bit worried when I learned that the whole day was going to be presented by one guy but Rafal Lukawiecki is a very engaging speaker. He's going to be presenting this about 20 times around the world over the coming months. If you get a chance to hear him speak, I say go for it. No doubt some of the hints will become clearer as Denali gets closer to RTM. Firstly, things are definitely happening in the SQL Server Reporting and BI world. Traditionally IT would build a data warehouse, then cubes on top of that, and then publish them in a structured and controlled way. But, just as with many IT projects in general, by the time it's finished the business has moved on and the system no longer meets their requirements. This not sustainable and something more agile is needed but there has to be some control. Apparently we're going to be hearing the catchphrase 'Balancing agility with control' a lot. More users want more access to more data. Can they define what they want? Of course not, but they'll recognise it when they see it. It's estimated that only 28% of potential BI users have meaningful access to the data they need, so there is a real pent-up demand. The answer looks like: give them some self-service tools so they can experiment and see what works, and then IT can help to support the results. It's estimated that 32% of Excel users are comfortable with its analysis tools such as pivot tables. It's the power user's preferred tool. Why fight it? That's why PowerPivot is an Excel add-in and that's why they released a Data Mining add-in for it as well. It does appear that the strategy is going to be to use Reporting Services (in SharePoint mode), PowerPivot, and possibly something new (smiles and hints but no details) to create reports and explore data. Everything will be published and managed in SharePoint which gives users the ability to mash-up, share and socialise what they've found out. SharePoint also gives IT tools to understand what people are looking at and where to concentrate effort. If PowerPivot report X becomes widely used, it's time to check that it shows what they think it does and perhaps get it a bit more under central control. There was more SharePoint detail that went slightly over my head regarding where Excel Services and Excel Web Application fit in, the differences between them, and the suggestion that it is likely they will one day become one (but not in the immediate future). That basic pattern is set to be expanded upon by further exploiting Vertipaq (the columnar indexing engine that enables PowerPivot to store and process a lot of data fast and in a small memory footprint) to provide scalability 'from the desktop to the data centre', and some yet to be detailed advances in 'frictionless deployment' (part of which is about making the difference between local and the cloud pretty much irrelevant). Excel looks like becoming Microsoft's primary BI client. It already has: the ability to consume cubes strong visualisation tools slicers (which are part of Excel not PowerPivot) a data mining add-in PowerPivot A major hurdle for self-service BI is presenting the data in a consumable format. You can't just give users PowerPivot and a server with a copy of the OLTP database(s). Building cubes is labour intensive and doesn't always give the user what they need. This is where the BI Semantic Model (BISM) comes in. I gather it's a layer of metadata you define that can combine multiple data sources (and types of data source) into a clear 'interface' that users can work with. It comes with a new query language called DAX. SSAS cubes are unlikely to go away overnight because, with their pre-calculated results, they are still the most efficient way to work with really big data sets. A few other random titbits that came up: Reporting Services is going to get some good new stuff in Denali. Keep an eye on www.projectbotticelli.com for the slides. You can also view last year's seminar sessions which covered a lot of the same ground as far as the overall strategy is concerned. They plan to add more material as Denali's features are publicly exposed. Check out the PASS keynote address for a showing of Yahoo's SQL BI servers. Apparently they wheeled the rack out on stage still plugged in and running! Check out the Excel 2010 Data Mining Add-Ins. 32 bit only at present but 64 bit is on the way. There are lots of data sets, many of them free, at the Windows Azure Marketplace Data Market (where you can also get ESRI shape files). If you haven't already seen it, have a look at the Silverlight Pivot Viewer (http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/06/29/silverlight-pivotviewer-now-available.aspx). The Bing Maps Data Connector is worth a look if you're into spatial stuff (http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/maps/archive/2010/07/13/data-connector-sql-server-2008-spatial-amp-bing-maps.aspx).

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Performance Enhancement in Full-Text Search Query

- by Calvin Sun

Ever since its first release, we are continuing consolidating and developing InnoDB Full-Text Search feature. There is one recent improvement that worth blogging about. It is an effort with MySQL Optimizer team that simplifies some common queries’ Query Plans and dramatically shorted the query time. I will describe the issue, our solution and the end result by some performance numbers to demonstrate our efforts in continuing enhancement the Full-Text Search capability. The Issue: As we had discussed in previous Blogs, InnoDB implements Full-Text index as reversed auxiliary tables. The query once parsed will be reinterpreted into several queries into related auxiliary tables and then results are merged and consolidated to come up with the final result. So at the end of the query, we’ll have all matching records on hand, sorted by their ranking or by their Doc IDs. Unfortunately, MySQL’s optimizer and query processing had been initially designed for MyISAM Full-Text index, and sometimes did not fully utilize the complete result package from InnoDB. Here are a couple examples: Case 1: Query result ordered by Rank with only top N results: mysql> SELECT FTS_DOC_ID, MATCH (title, body) AGAINST ('database') AS SCORE FROM articles ORDER BY score DESC LIMIT 1; In this query, user tries to retrieve a single record with highest ranking. It should have a quick answer once we have all the matching documents on hand, especially if there are ranked. However, before this change, MySQL would almost retrieve rankings for almost every row in the table, sort them and them come with the top rank result. This whole retrieve and sort is quite unnecessary given the InnoDB already have the answer. In a real life case, user could have millions of rows, so in the old scheme, it would retrieve millions of rows' ranking and sort them, even if our FTS already found there are two 3 matched rows. Apparently, the million ranking retrieve is done in vain. In above case, it should just ask for 3 matched rows' ranking, all other rows' ranking are 0. If it want the top ranking, then it can just get the first record from our already sorted result. Case 2: Select Count(*) on matching records: mysql> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM articles WHERE MATCH (title,body) AGAINST ('database' IN NATURAL LANGUAGE MODE); In this case, InnoDB search can find matching rows quickly and will have all matching rows. However, before our change, in the old scheme, every row in the table was requested by MySQL one by one, just to check whether its ranking is larger than 0, and later comes up a count. In fact, there is no need for MySQL to fetch all rows, instead InnoDB already had all the matching records. The only thing need is to call an InnoDB API to retrieve the count The difference can be huge. Following query output shows how big the difference can be: mysql> select count(*) from searchindex_inno where match(si_title, si_text) against ('people') +----------+ | count(*) | +----------+ | 666877 | +----------+ 1 row in set (16 min 17.37 sec) So the query took almost 16 minutes. Let’s see how long the InnoDB can come up the result. In InnoDB, you can obtain extra diagnostic printout by turning on “innodb_ft_enable_diag_print”, this will print out extra query info: Error log: keynr=2, 'people' NL search Total docs: 10954826 Total words: 0 UNION: Searching: 'people' Processing time: 2 secs: row(s) 666877: error: 10 ft_init() ft_init_ext() keynr=2, 'people' NL search Total docs: 10954826 Total words: 0 UNION: Searching: 'people' Processing time: 3 secs: row(s) 666877: error: 10 Output shows it only took InnoDB only 3 seconds to get the result, while the whole query took 16 minutes to finish. So large amount of time has been wasted on the un-needed row fetching. The Solution: The solution is obvious. MySQL can skip some of its steps, optimize its plan and obtain useful information directly from InnoDB. Some of savings from doing this include: 1) Avoid redundant sorting. Since InnoDB already sorted the result according to ranking. MySQL Query Processing layer does not need to sort to get top matching results. 2) Avoid row by row fetching to get the matching count. InnoDB provides all the matching records. All those not in the result list should all have ranking of 0, and no need to be retrieved. And InnoDB has a count of total matching records on hand. No need to recount. 3) Covered index scan. InnoDB results always contains the matching records' Document ID and their ranking. So if only the Document ID and ranking is needed, there is no need to go to user table to fetch the record itself. 4) Narrow the search result early, reduce the user table access. If the user wants to get top N matching records, we do not need to fetch all matching records from user table. We should be able to first select TOP N matching DOC IDs, and then only fetch corresponding records with these Doc IDs. Performance Results and comparison with MyISAM The result by this change is very obvious. I includes six testing result performed by Alexander Rubin just to demonstrate how fast the InnoDB query now becomes when comparing MyISAM Full-Text Search. These tests are base on the English Wikipedia data of 5.4 Million rows and approximately 16G table. The test was performed on a machine with 1 CPU Dual Core, SSD drive, 8G of RAM and InnoDB_buffer_pool is set to 8 GB. Table 1: SELECT with LIMIT CLAUSE mysql> SELECT si_title, match(si_title, si_text) against('family') as rel FROM si WHERE match(si_title, si_text) against('family') ORDER BY rel desc LIMIT 10; InnoDB MyISAM Times Faster Time for the query 1.63 sec 3 min 26.31 sec 127 You can see for this particular query (retrieve top 10 records), InnoDB Full-Text Search is now approximately 127 times faster than MyISAM. Table 2: SELECT COUNT QUERY mysql>select count(*) from si where match(si_title, si_text) against('family‘); +----------+ | count(*) | +----------+ | 293955 | +----------+ InnoDB MyISAM Times Faster Time for the query 1.35 sec 28 min 59.59 sec 1289 In this particular case, where there are 293k matching results, InnoDB took only 1.35 second to get all of them, while take MyISAM almost half an hour, that is about 1289 times faster!. Table 3: SELECT ID with ORDER BY and LIMIT CLAUSE for selected terms mysql> SELECT <ID>, match(si_title, si_text) against(<TERM>) as rel FROM si_<TB> WHERE match(si_title, si_text) against (<TERM>) ORDER BY rel desc LIMIT 10; Term InnoDB (time to execute) MyISAM(time to execute) Times Faster family 0.5 sec 5.05 sec 10.1 family film 0.95 sec 25.39 sec 26.7 Pizza restaurant orange county California 0.93 sec 32.03 sec 34.4 President united states of America 2.5 sec 36.98 sec 14.8 Table 4: SELECT title and text with ORDER BY and LIMIT CLAUSE for selected terms mysql> SELECT <ID>, si_title, si_text, ... as rel FROM si_<TB> WHERE match(si_title, si_text) against (<TERM>) ORDER BY rel desc LIMIT 10; Term InnoDB (time to execute) MyISAM(time to execute) Times Faster family 0.61 sec 41.65 sec 68.3 family film 1.15 sec 47.17 sec 41.0 Pizza restaurant orange county california 1.03 sec 48.2 sec 46.8 President united states of america 2.49 sec 44.61 sec 17.9 Table 5: SELECT ID with ORDER BY and LIMIT CLAUSE for selected terms mysql> SELECT <ID>, match(si_title, si_text) against(<TERM>) as rel FROM si_<TB> WHERE match(si_title, si_text) against (<TERM>) ORDER BY rel desc LIMIT 10; Term InnoDB (time to execute) MyISAM(time to execute) Times Faster family 0.5 sec 5.05 sec 10.1 family film 0.95 sec 25.39 sec 26.7 Pizza restaurant orange county califormia 0.93 sec 32.03 sec 34.4 President united states of america 2.5 sec 36.98 sec 14.8 Table 6: SELECT COUNT(*) mysql> SELECT count(*) FROM si_<TB> WHERE match(si_title, si_text) against (<TERM>) LIMIT 10; Term InnoDB (time to execute) MyISAM(time to execute) Times Faster family 0.47 sec 82 sec 174.5 family film 0.83 sec 131 sec 157.8 Pizza restaurant orange county califormia 0.74 sec 106 sec 143.2 President united states of america 1.96 sec 220 sec 112.2 Again, table 3 to table 6 all showing InnoDB consistently outperform MyISAM in these queries by a large margin. It becomes obvious the InnoDB has great advantage over MyISAM in handling large data search. Summary: These results demonstrate the great performance we could achieve by making MySQL optimizer and InnoDB Full-Text Search more tightly coupled. I think there are still many cases that InnoDB’s result info have not been fully taken advantage of, which means we still have great room to improve. And we will continuously explore the area, and get more dramatic results for InnoDB full-text searches. Jimmy Yang, September 29, 2012

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Cloud Computing = Elasticity * Availability

- by Herve Roggero

What is cloud computing? Is hosting the same thing as cloud computing? Are you running a cloud if you already use virtual machines? What is the difference between Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and a cloud provider? And the list goes on… these questions keep coming up and all try to fundamentally explain what “cloud” means relative to other concepts. At the risk of over simplification, answering these questions becomes simpler once you understand the primary foundations of cloud computing: Elasticity and Availability. Elasticity The basic value proposition of cloud computing is to pay as you go, and to pay for what you use. This implies that an application can expand and contract on demand, across all its tiers (presentation layer, services, database, security…). This also implies that application components can grow independently from each other. So if you need more storage for your database, you should be able to grow that tier without affecting, reconfiguring or changing the other tiers. Basically, cloud applications behave like a sponge; when you add water to a sponge, it grows in size; in the application world, the more customers you add, the more it grows. Pure IaaS providers will provide certain benefits, specifically in terms of operating costs, but an IaaS provider will not help you in making your applications elastic; neither will Virtual Machines. The smallest elasticity unit of an IaaS provider and a Virtual Machine environment is a server (physical or virtual). While adding servers in a datacenter helps in achieving scale, it is hardly enough. The application has yet to use this hardware. If the process of adding computing resources is not transparent to the application, the application is not elastic. As you can see from the above description, designing for the cloud is not about more servers; it is about designing an application for elasticity regardless of the underlying server farm. Availability The fact of the matter is that making applications highly available is hard. It requires highly specialized tools and trained staff. On top of it, it's expensive. Many companies are required to run multiple data centers due to high availability requirements. In some organizations, some data centers are simply on standby, waiting to be used in a case of a failover. Other organizations are able to achieve a certain level of success with active/active data centers, in which all available data centers serve incoming user requests. While achieving high availability for services is relatively simple, establishing a highly available database farm is far more complex. In fact it is so complex that many companies establish yearly tests to validate failover procedures. To a certain degree certain IaaS provides can assist with complex disaster recovery planning and setting up data centers that can achieve successful failover. However the burden is still on the corporation to manage and maintain such an environment, including regular hardware and software upgrades. Cloud computing on the other hand removes most of the disaster recovery requirements by hiding many of the underlying complexities. Cloud Providers A cloud provider is an infrastructure provider offering additional tools to achieve application elasticity and availability that are not usually available on-premise. For example Microsoft Azure provides a simple configuration screen that makes it possible to run 1 or 100 web sites by clicking a button or two on a screen (simplifying provisioning), and soon SQL Azure will offer Data Federation to allow database sharding (which allows you to scale the database tier seamlessly and automatically). Other cloud providers offer certain features that are not available on-premise as well, such as the Amazon SC3 (Simple Storage Service) which gives you virtually unlimited storage capabilities for simple data stores, which is somewhat equivalent to the Microsoft Azure Table offering (offering a server-independent data storage model). Unlike IaaS providers, cloud providers give you the necessary tools to adopt elasticity as part of your application architecture. Some cloud providers offer built-in high availability that get you out of the business of configuring clustered solutions, or running multiple data centers. Some cloud providers will give you more control (which puts some of that burden back on the customers' shoulder) and others will tend to make high availability totally transparent. For example, SQL Azure provides high availability automatically which would be very difficult to achieve (and very costly) on premise. Keep in mind that each cloud provider has its strengths and weaknesses; some are better at achieving transparent scalability and server independence than others. Not for Everyone Note however that it is up to you to leverage the elasticity capabilities of a cloud provider, as discussed previously; if you build a website that does not need to scale, for which elasticity is not important, then you can use a traditional host provider unless you also need high availability. Leveraging the technologies of cloud providers can be difficult and can become a journey for companies that build their solutions in a scale up fashion. Cloud computing promises to address cost containment and scalability of applications with built-in high availability. If your application does not need to scale or you do not need high availability, then cloud computing may not be for you. In fact, you may pay a premium to run your applications with cloud providers due to the underlying technologies built specifically for scalability and availability requirements. And as such, the cloud is not for everyone. Consistent Customer Experience, Predictable Cost With all its complexities, buzz and foggy definition, cloud computing boils down to a simple objective: consistent customer experience at a predictable cost. The objective of a cloud solution is to provide the same user experience to your last customer than the first, while keeping your operating costs directly proportional to the number of customers you have. Making your applications elastic and highly available across all its tiers, with as much automation as possible, achieves the first objective of a consistent customer experience. And the ability to expand and contract the infrastructure footprint of your application dynamically achieves the cost containment objectives. Herve Roggero is a SQL Azure MVP and co-author of Pro SQL Azure (APress). He is the co-founder of Blue Syntax Consulting (www.bluesyntax.net), a company focusing on cloud computing technologies helping customers understand and adopt cloud computing technologies. For more information contact herve at hroggero @ bluesyntax.net .

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, October 26, 2012

CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, October 26, 2012Popular ReleasesPowerShell Community Extensions: 2.1 Production: PowerShell Community Extensions 2.1 Release NotesOct 25, 2012 This version of PSCX supports both Windows PowerShell 2.0 and 3.0. See the ReleaseNotes.txt download above for more information.Building Windows 8 Apps with C# and XAML: Full Source Chapters 1 - 10 for Windows 8 Fix 001: This is the full source from all chapters of the book, compiled and tested on Windows 8 RTM. Includes a fix for the Netflix example from Chapter 6 that was missing a service reference.PdfReport: PdfReport 1.3: - Removed the limitation of defining non duplicate column names. See DuplicateColumns sample for more info. - Added horizontal stack panel mode. See CharacterMap sample for more info. - Added pdfStamper to onFillAcroForm of PdfTemplate. See QuestionsAcroForm sample for more info. Added 6 new samples (http://pdfreport.codeplex.com/SourceControl/BrowseLatest): - AccountingBalanceColumn - CharacterMap - CustomPriceNumber - DuplicateColumns - QuestionsAcroForm - QuestionsFormuComponents: uComponents v5.1.0: Continuing our mammoth 88341 release, we bring you v5.1 What's new in uComponents v5.1?New Data Types: SQL AutoComplete SQL DropDownList XPath AutoComplete New component: uMapper Umbraco compatibilityThis release is compatible with Umbraco 4.8.0 (and above). For previous versions, please use 90019 with Umbraco 4.5.2+ and 93259 with Umbraco 4.7.1+ (To reiterate: this release does not work with Umbraco 4.7.2 and earlier versions.) Legacy and retirementThere are a number of components t...Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.9.1: Umbraco 4.9.1 is a bugfix release to fix major issues in 4.9.0 BugfixesThe full list of fixes can be found in the issue tracker's filtered results. A summary: Split buttons work again, you can now also scroll easier when the list is too long for the screen Media and Content pickers have information of the full path of the picked item Fixed: Publish status may not be accurate on nodes with large doctypes Fixed: 2 media folders and recycle bins after upgrade to 4.9 The template/code ...AcDown????? - AcDown Downloader Framework: AcDown????? v4.2.2: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown??????????????????，????????????????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ???? 32??64? ???Linux ????(1)????????Windows XP???，????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? (2)???????????Linux???，????????Mono?? ??2...WPF About Box: WPF About Box 1.2.1.1: Using more established names.Rawr: Rawr 5.0.2: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.3.5: Changelog for 2.3.5 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Fixed a bug causing MCEBuddy to crash during or after installation on Windows XP 2. Bugfix for resource leak with UPnP which would lead to a failure after many days 3. Increased the UPnP discovery re-scan interval from 10 minutes to 30 minutes 4. 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GUI Taskbar Animated mouse Font Open SAL Open SplitOS Application Language Compiler ( very unstable! )Readable Passphrase Generator: KeePass Plugin 0.8.0: Changes: Interrogative phrases (questions) like why did the statesman burgle amidst lucid sunlamps Support transitive / intransitive verbs (whether a verb needs a subject or not). Change adverbs to be either before or after the verb, at random. Add an "equal" version of each strength, where each possibility is equally likely (for password purists). 3401 words in the default dictionary (~400 more than previous release) Fixed bugs when choosing verb tensesMicrosoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.72: Fix for Issue #18819 - bad optimization of return/assign operator.DNN Module Creator: 01.01.00: Updated templates for DNN7 ( ie. DAL2, Web Service API ). Numerous bug fixes and enhancements.WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.5.0.390: Version 2.5.0.390 (Release Candidate): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Changelog Legend: [B] Breaking change; [O] Marked member as obsolete WAF: Fix recent file list remove issue. WAF: Minor code improvements. BookLibrary: Fix Blend design time support o...Fiskalizacija za developere: FiskalizacijaDev 1.1: Ovo je prva nadogradnja ovog projekta nakon inicijalnog predstavljanja - dodali smo nekoliko feature-a, bilo zato što smo sami primijetili da bi ih bilo dobro dodati, bilo na osnovu vaših sugestija - hvala svima koji su se ukljucili :) Ovo su stvari riješene u v1.1.: 1. Bilo bi dobro da se XML dokument koji se šalje u CIS može snimiti u datoteku (http://fiskalizacija.codeplex.com/workitem/612) 2. Podrška za COM DLL (VB6) (http://fiskalizacija.codeplex.com/workitem/613) 3. Podrška za DOS (unu...Liberty: v3.4.0.0 Release 20th October 2012: Change Log -Added -Halo 4 support (invincibility, ammo editing) -Reach A warning dialog now shows up when you first attempt to swap a weapon -Fixed -A few minor bugsClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.68.1: ClosedXML now resolves formulas! Yes it finally happened. If you call cell.Value and it has a formula the library will try to evaluate the formula and give you the result. For example: var wb = new XLWorkbook(); var ws = wb.AddWorksheet("Sheet1"); ws.Cell("A1").SetValue(1).CellBelow().SetValue(1); ws.Cell("B1").SetValue(1).CellBelow().SetValue(1); ws.Cell("C1").FormulaA1 = "\"The total value is: \" & SUM(A1:B2)"; var...New Projects40FINGERS DotNetNuke Windows8 Pin: 40FINGERS Windows8 Pin is a DotNetNuke Module that will enable pinning of your website to the Windows 8 Start Screen.clowncar: a tool for sharing your utils folder and keeping it up to dateConnection Strings for .NET 2: Merupakan class yang berisi beberapa connection string khusus untuk aplikasi .NET, class ini menggunakan referensi dari http://connectionstrings.comCRM 2011 Web Resource Linker/Publisher: This tool is a visual studio 2012 add-in that allows developers to quickly link and publish web resources to dynamics crm 2011 while inside the VS 2012 IDE.Dice Roller: A simple simulator of a dice roller.EFTracing & Logging: Demonstrates using the “Entity Framework Tracing” ElFinder.Net Connector: .NET connector for elfinder file manager version 2.x. Project contain library and ASP.NET MVC sample. Excel and PowerPivot Refresh Service: A Windows Service for periodically refreshing the data in Excel files, along with any embedded PowerPivot cubes.finalwebsite: This is my final website project.Flickr Reranking ASP.NET MVC: ASP.NET MVC, .NET, Flickr APIglobulin: videojuegoHealthVault ASP.NET MVC Sample: This project provides an object model for building HealthVault-connected applications with ASP.NET MVCHuman resource management - WFA: This project made solution that allows you to control, human resource management at the company.Is a comprehensive system of recruitment planning, tracking...jFluent: jFluent is a Fluent style, light-weight validation framework for client-side validation. 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Compiling your .ts files is just a click away!OpenMVCRM: Open source CRM project built on ASP.NET MVCpFinance: This is the application to facilitate individuals in managing their finance.Posh for Jammer: Jammer is are some PowerShell Functions calling the Yammer API.Quick Encoding Utility: This is a quick desktop utility which would provide a sneak preview of base64 string encoding (both to and from)ResearchWM: This is a new projecttestddhg1025201201: ertesttom10252012git01: fdstesttom10252012git02: fdstesttom10252012tfs01: dsa dsaUniSync: blah blahUnits for .NET: Strongly typed physical quantities and unit conversion.Web Crop Image (Restored): Cem Sisman was the original author of WebCropImage. After he deleted the project from CodePlex, I brought it back... along with over 50 bug fixes.

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ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0

- by James Michael Hare

I had always been a fan of ANTS products (Reflector is absolutely invaluable, and their performance profiler is great as well – very easy to use!), so I was curious to see what the ANTS Memory Profiler could show me. Background While a performance profiler will track how much time is typically spent in each unit of code, a memory profiler gives you much more detail on how and where your memory is being consumed and released in a program. As an example, I’d been working on a data access layer at work to call a market data web service. This web service would take a list of symbols to quote and would return back the quote data. To help consolidate the thousands of web requests per second we get and reduce load on the web services, we implemented a 5-second cache of quote data. Not quite long enough to where customers will typically notice a quote go “stale”, but just long enough to be able to collapse multiple quote requests for the same symbol in a short period of time. A 5-second cache may not sound like much, but it actually pays off by saving us roughly 42% of our web service calls, while still providing relatively up-to-date information. The question is whether or not the extra memory involved in maintaining the cache was worth it, so I decided to fire up the ANTS Memory Profiler and take a look at memory usage. First Impressions The main thing I’ve always loved about the ANTS tools is their ease of use. Pretty much everything is right there in front of you in a way that makes it easy for you to find what you need with little digging required. I’ve worked with other, older profilers before (that shall remain nameless other than to hint it was created by a very large chip maker) where it was a mind boggling experience to figure out how to do simple tasks. Not so with AMP. The opening dialog is very straightforward. You can choose from here whether to debug an executable, a web application (either in IIS or from VS’s web development server), windows services, etc. So I chose a .NET Executable and navigated to the build location of my test harness. Then began profiling. At this point while the application is running, you can see a chart of the memory as it ebbs and wanes with allocations and collections. At any given point in time, you can take snapshots (to compare states) zoom in, or choose to stop at any time. Snapshots Taking a snapshot also gives you a breakdown of the managed memory heaps for each generation so you get an idea how many objects are staying around for extended periods of time (as an object lives and survives collections, it gets promoted into higher generations where collection becomes less frequent). Generating a snapshot brings up an analysis view with very handy graphs that show your generation sizes. Almost all my memory is in Generation 1 in the managed memory component of the first graph, which is good news to me, because Gen 2 collections are much rarer. I once3 made the mistake once of caching data for 30 minutes and found it didn’t get collected very quick after I released my reference because it had been promoted to Gen 2 – doh! Analysis It looks like (from the second pie chart) that the majority of the allocations were in the string class. This also is expected for me because the majority of the memory allocated is in the web service responses, so it doesn’t seem the entities I’m adapting to (to prevent being too tightly coupled to the web service proxy classes, which can change easily out from under me) aren’t taking a significant portion of memory. I also appreciate that they have clear summary text in key places such as “No issues with large object heap fragmentation were detected”. For novice users, this type of summary information can be critical to getting them to use a tool and develop a good working knowledge of it. There is also a handy link at the bottom for “What to look for on the summary” which loads a web page of help on key points to look for. Clicking over to the session overview, it’s easy to compare the samples at each snapshot to see how your memory is growing, shrinking, or staying relatively the same. Looking at my snapshots, I’m pretty happy with the fact that memory allocation and heap size seems to be fairly stable and in control: Once again, you can check on the large object heap, generation one heap, and generation two heap across each snapshot to spot trends. Back on the analysis tab, we can go to the [Class List] button to get an idea what classes are making up the majority of our memory usage. As was little surprise to me, System.String was the clear majority of my allocations, though I found it surprising that the System.Reflection.RuntimeMehtodInfo came in second. I was curious about this, so I selected it and went into the [Instance Categorizer]. This view let me see where these instances to RuntimeMehtodInfo were coming from. So I scrolled back through the graph, and discovered that these were being held by the System.ServiceModel.ChannelFactoryRefCache and I was satisfied this was just an artifact of my WCF proxy. I also like that down at the bottom of the Instance Categorizer it gives you a series of filters and offers to guide you on which filter to use based on the problem you are trying to find. For example, if I suspected a memory leak, I might try to filter for survivors in growing classes. This means that for instances of a class that are growing in memory (more are being created than cleaned up), which ones are survivors (not collected) from garbage collection. This might allow me to drill down and find places where I’m holding onto references by mistake and not freeing them! Finally, if you want to really see all your instances and who is holding onto them (preventing collection), you can go to the “Instance Retention Graph” which creates a graph showing what references are being held in memory and who is holding onto them. Visual Studio Integration Of course, VS has its own profiler built in – and for a free bundled profiler it is quite capable – but AMP gives a much cleaner and easier-to-use experience, and when you install it you also get the option of letting it integrate directly into VS. So once you go back into VS after installation, you’ll notice an ANTS menu which lets you launch the ANTS profiler directly from Visual Studio. Clicking on one of these options fires up the project in the profiler immediately, allowing you to get right in. It doesn’t integrate with the Visual Studio windows themselves (like the VS profiler does), but still the plethora of information it provides and the clear and concise manner in which it presents it makes it well worth it. Summary If you like the ANTS series of tools, you shouldn’t be disappointed with the ANTS Memory Profiler. It was so easy to use that I was able to jump in with very little product knowledge and get the information I was looking it for. I’ve used other profilers before that came with 3-inch thick tomes that you had to read in order to get anywhere with the tool, and this one is not like that at all. It’s built for your everyday developer to get in and find their problems quickly, and I like that! Tweet Technorati Tags: Influencers,ANTS,Memory,Profiler

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Custom Lookup Provider For NetBeans Platform CRUD Tutorial

- by Geertjan

For a long time I've been planning to rewrite the second part of the NetBeans Platform CRUD Application Tutorial to integrate the loosely coupled capabilities introduced in a seperate series of articles based on articles by Antonio Vieiro (a great series, by the way). Nothing like getting into the Lookup stuff right from the get go (rather than as an afterthought)! The question, of course, is how to integrate the loosely coupled capabilities in a logical way within that tutorial. Today I worked through the tutorial from scratch, up until the point where the prototype is completed, i.e., there's a JTextArea displaying data pulled from a database. That brought me to the place where I needed to be. In fact, as soon as the prototype is completed, i.e., the database connection has been shown to work, the whole story about Lookup.Provider and InstanceContent should be introduced, so that all the subsequent sections, i.e., everything within "Integrating CRUD Functionality" will be done by adding new capabilities to the Lookup.Provider. However, before I perform open heart surgery on that tutorial, I'd like to run the scenario by all those reading this blog who understand what I'm trying to do! (I.e., probably anyone who has read this far into this blog entry.) So, this is what I propose should happen and in this order: Point out the fact that right now the database access code is found directly within our TopComponent. Not good. Because you're mixing view code with data code and, ideally, the developers creating the user interface wouldn't need to know anything about the data access layer. Better to separate out the data access code into a separate class, within the CustomerLibrary module, i.e., far away from the module providing the user interface, with this content: public class CustomerDataAccess { public List<Customer> getAllCustomers() { return Persistence.createEntityManagerFactory("CustomerLibraryPU"). createEntityManager().createNamedQuery("Customer.findAll").getResultList(); } } Point out the fact that there is a concept of "Lookup" (which readers of the tutorial should know about since they should have followed the NetBeans Platform Quick Start), which is a registry into which objects can be published and to which other objects can be listening. In the same way as a TopComponent provides a Lookup, as demonstrated in the NetBeans Platform Quick Start, your own object can also provide a Lookup. So, therefore, let's provide a Lookup for Customer objects. import org.openide.util.Lookup; import org.openide.util.lookup.AbstractLookup; import org.openide.util.lookup.InstanceContent; public class CustomerLookupProvider implements Lookup.Provider { private Lookup lookup; private InstanceContent instanceContent; public CustomerLookupProvider() { // Create an InstanceContent to hold capabilities... instanceContent = new InstanceContent(); // Create an AbstractLookup to expose the InstanceContent... lookup = new AbstractLookup(instanceContent); // Add a "Read" capability to the Lookup of the provider: //...to come... // Add a "Update" capability to the Lookup of the provider: //...to come... // Add a "Create" capability to the Lookup of the provider: //...to come... // Add a "Delete" capability to the Lookup of the provider: //...to come... } @Override public Lookup getLookup() { return lookup; } } Point out the fact that, in the same way as we can publish an object into the Lookup of a TopComponent, we can now also publish an object into the Lookup of our CustomerLookupProvider. Instead of publishing a String, as in the NetBeans Platform Quick Start, we'll publish an instance of our own type. And here is the type: public interface ReadCapability { public void read() throws Exception; } And here is an implementation of our type added to our Lookup: public class CustomerLookupProvider implements Lookup.Provider { private Set<Customer> customerSet; private Lookup lookup; private InstanceContent instanceContent; public CustomerLookupProvider() { customerSet = new HashSet<Customer>(); // Create an InstanceContent to hold capabilities... instanceContent = new InstanceContent(); // Create an AbstractLookup to expose the InstanceContent... lookup = new AbstractLookup(instanceContent); // Add a "Read" capability to the Lookup of the provider: instanceContent.add(new ReadCapability() { @Override public void read() throws Exception { ProgressHandle handle = ProgressHandleFactory.createHandle("Loading..."); handle.start(); customerSet.addAll(new CustomerDataAccess().getAllCustomers()); handle.finish(); } }); // Add a "Update" capability to the Lookup of the provider: //...to come... // Add a "Create" capability to the Lookup of the provider: //...to come... // Add a "Delete" capability to the Lookup of the provider: //...to come... } @Override public Lookup getLookup() { return lookup; } public Set<Customer> getCustomers() { return customerSet; } } Point out that we can now create a new instance of our Lookup (in some other module, so long as it has a dependency on the module providing the CustomerLookupProvider and the ReadCapability), retrieve the ReadCapability, and then do something with the customers that are returned, here in the rewritten constructor of the TopComponent, without needing to know anything about how the database access is actually achieved since that is hidden in the implementation of our type, above: public CustomerViewerTopComponent() { initComponents(); setName(Bundle.CTL_CustomerViewerTopComponent()); setToolTipText(Bundle.HINT_CustomerViewerTopComponent()); // EntityManager entityManager = Persistence.createEntityManagerFactory("CustomerLibraryPU").createEntityManager(); // Query query = entityManager.createNamedQuery("Customer.findAll"); // List<Customer> resultList = query.getResultList(); // for (Customer c : resultList) { // jTextArea1.append(c.getName() + " (" + c.getCity() + ")" + "\n"); // } CustomerLookupProvider lookup = new CustomerLookupProvider(); ReadCapability rc = lookup.getLookup().lookup(ReadCapability.class); try { rc.read(); for (Customer c : lookup.getCustomers()) { jTextArea1.append(c.getName() + " (" + c.getCity() + ")" + "\n"); } } catch (Exception ex) { Exceptions.printStackTrace(ex); } } Does the above make as much sense to others as it does to me, including the naming of the classes? Feedback would be appreciated! Then I'll integrate into the tutorial and do the same for the other sections, i.e., "Create", "Update", and "Delete". (By the way, of course, the tutorial ends up showing that, rather than using a JTextArea to display data, you can use Nodes and explorer views to do so.)

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PostSharp, Obfuscation, and IL

- by Simon Cooper

Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) is a relatively new programming paradigm. Originating at Xerox PARC in 1994, the paradigm was first made available for general-purpose development as an extension to Java in 2001. From there, it has quickly been adapted for use in all the common languages used today. In the .NET world, one of the primary AOP toolkits is PostSharp. Attributes and AOP Normally, attributes in .NET are entirely a metadata construct. Apart from a few special attributes in the .NET framework, they have no effect whatsoever on how a class or method executes within the CLR. Only by using reflection at runtime can you access any attributes declared on a type or type member. PostSharp changes this. By declaring a custom attribute that derives from PostSharp.Aspects.Aspect, applying it to types and type members, and running the resulting assembly through the PostSharp postprocessor, you can essentially declare 'clever' attributes that change the behaviour of whatever the aspect has been applied to at runtime. A simple example of this is logging. By declaring a TraceAttribute that derives from OnMethodBoundaryAspect, you can automatically log when a method has been executed: public class TraceAttribute : PostSharp.Aspects.OnMethodBoundaryAspect { public override void OnEntry(MethodExecutionArgs args) { MethodBase method = args.Method; System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine( String.Format( "Entering {0}.{1}.", method.DeclaringType.FullName, method.Name)); } public override void OnExit(MethodExecutionArgs args) { MethodBase method = args.Method; System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine( String.Format( "Leaving {0}.{1}.", method.DeclaringType.FullName, method.Name)); } } [Trace] public void MethodToLog() { ... } Now, whenever MethodToLog is executed, the aspect will automatically log entry and exit, without having to add the logging code to MethodToLog itself. PostSharp Performance Now this does introduce a performance overhead - as you can see, the aspect allows access to the MethodBase of the method the aspect has been applied to. If you were limited to C#, you would be forced to retrieve each MethodBase instance using Type.GetMethod(), matching on the method name and signature. This is slow. Fortunately, PostSharp is not limited to C#. It can use any instruction available in IL. And in IL, you can do some very neat things. Ldtoken C# allows you to get the Type object corresponding to a specific type name using the typeof operator: Type t = typeof(Random); The C# compiler compiles this operator to the following IL: ldtoken [mscorlib]System.Random call class [mscorlib]System.Type [mscorlib]System.Type::GetTypeFromHandle( valuetype [mscorlib]System.RuntimeTypeHandle) The ldtoken instruction obtains a special handle to a type called a RuntimeTypeHandle, and from that, the Type object can be obtained using GetTypeFromHandle. These are both relatively fast operations - no string lookup is required, only direct assembly and CLR constructs are used. However, a little-known feature is that ldtoken is not just limited to types; it can also get information on methods and fields, encapsulated in a RuntimeMethodHandle or RuntimeFieldHandle: // get a MethodBase for String.EndsWith(string) ldtoken method instance bool [mscorlib]System.String::EndsWith(string) call class [mscorlib]System.Reflection.MethodBase [mscorlib]System.Reflection.MethodBase::GetMethodFromHandle( valuetype [mscorlib]System.RuntimeMethodHandle) // get a FieldInfo for the String.Empty field ldtoken field string [mscorlib]System.String::Empty call class [mscorlib]System.Reflection.FieldInfo [mscorlib]System.Reflection.FieldInfo::GetFieldFromHandle( valuetype [mscorlib]System.RuntimeFieldHandle) These usages of ldtoken aren't usable from C# or VB, and aren't likely to be added anytime soon (Eric Lippert's done a blog post on the possibility of adding infoof, methodof or fieldof operators to C#). However, PostSharp deals directly with IL, and so can use ldtoken to get MethodBase objects quickly and cheaply, without having to resort to string lookups. The kicker However, there are problems. Because ldtoken for methods or fields isn't accessible from C# or VB, it hasn't been as well-tested as ldtoken for types. This has resulted in various obscure bugs in most versions of the CLR when dealing with ldtoken and methods, and specifically, generic methods and methods of generic types. This means that PostSharp was behaving incorrectly, or just plain crashing, when aspects were applied to methods that were generic in some way. So, PostSharp has to work around this. Without using the metadata tokens directly, the only way to get the MethodBase of generic methods is to use reflection: Type.GetMethod(), passing in the method name as a string along with information on the signature. Now, this works fine. It's slower than using ldtoken directly, but it works, and this only has to be done for generic methods. Unfortunately, this poses problems when the assembly is obfuscated. PostSharp and Obfuscation When using ldtoken, obfuscators don't affect how PostSharp operates. Because the ldtoken instruction directly references the type, method or field within the assembly, it is unaffected if the name of the object is changed by an obfuscator. However, the indirect loading used for generic methods was breaking, because that uses the name of the method when the assembly is put through the PostSharp postprocessor to lookup the MethodBase at runtime. If the name then changes, PostSharp can't find it anymore, and the assembly breaks. So, PostSharp needs to know about any changes an obfuscator does to an assembly. The way PostSharp does this is by adding another layer of indirection. When PostSharp obfuscation support is enabled, it includes an extra 'name table' resource in the assembly, consisting of a series of method & type names. When PostSharp needs to lookup a method using reflection, instead of encoding the method name directly, it looks up the method name at a fixed offset inside that name table: MethodBase genericMethod = typeof(ContainingClass).GetMethod(GetNameAtIndex(22)); PostSharp.NameTable resource: ... 20: get_Prop1 21: set_Prop1 22: DoFoo 23: GetWibble When the assembly is later processed by an obfuscator, the obfuscator can replace all the method and type names within the name table with their new name. That way, the reflection lookups performed by PostSharp will now use the new names, and everything will work as expected: MethodBase genericMethod = typeof(#kGy).GetMethod(GetNameAtIndex(22)); PostSharp.NameTable resource: ... 20: #kkA 21: #zAb 22: #EF5a 23: #2tg As you can see, this requires direct support by an obfuscator in order to perform these rewrites. Dotfuscator supports it, and now, starting with SmartAssembly 6.6.4, SmartAssembly does too. So, a relatively simple solution to a tricky problem, with some CLR bugs thrown in for good measure. You don't see those every day!

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Day 3 - XNA: Hacking around with images

- by dapostolov

Yay! Today I'm going to get into some code! My mind has been on this all day! I find it amusing how I practice, daily, to be "in the moment" or "present" and the excitement and anticipation of this project seems to snatch it away from me frequently. WELL!!! (Shakes Excitedly) Let's do this =)! Let's code! For these next few days it is my intention to better understand image rendering using XNA; after said prototypes are complete I should (fingers crossed) be able to dive into my game code using the design document I hammered out the other night. On a personal note, I think the toughest thing right now is finding the time to do this project. Each night, after my little ones go to bed I can only really afford a couple hours of work on this project. However, I hope to utilise this time as best as I can because this is the first time in a while I've found a project that I've been passionate about. A friend recently asked me if I intend to go 3D or extend the game design. Yes. For now I'm keeping it simple. Lastly, just as a note, as I was doing some further research into image rendering this morning I came across some other XNA content and lessons learned. I believe this content could have probably been posted in the first couple of posts, however, I will share the new content as I learn it at the end of each day. Maybe I'll take some time later to fix the posts but for now Installation and Deployment - Lessons Learned I had installed the XNA studio (Day 1) and the site instructions were pretty easy to follow. However, I had a small difficulty with my development environment. You see, I run a virtual desktop development environment. Even though I was able to code and compile all the tutorials the game failed to run...because I lacked a 3D capable card; it was not detected on the virtual box... First Lesson: The XNA runtime needs to "see" the 3D card! No sweat, Il copied the files over to my parent box and executed the program. ERROR. Hmm... Second Lesson (which I should have probably known but I let the excitement get the better of me): you need the XNA runtime on the client PC to run the game, oh, and don't forget the .Net Runtime! Sprite, it ain't just a Soft Drink... With these prototypes I intend to understand and perform the following tasks. learn game development terminology how to place and position (rotate) a static image on the screen how to layer static images on the screen understand image scaling can we reuse images? understand how framerate is handled in XNA how to display text , basic shapes, and colors on the screen how to interact with an image (collision of user input?) how to animate an image and understand basic animation techniques how to detect colliding images or screen edges how to manipulate the image, lets say colors, stretching how to focus on a segment of an image...like only displaying a frame on a film reel what's the best way to manage images (compression, storage, location, prevent artwork theft, etc.) Well, let's start with this "prototype" task list for now...Today, let's get an image on the screen and maybe I can mark a few of the tasks as completed... C# Prototype1 New Visual Studio Project Select the XNA Game Studio 3.1 Project Type Select the Windows Game 3.1 Template Type Prototype1 in the Name textbox provided Press OK. At this point code has auto-magically been created. Feel free to press the F5 key to run your first XNA program. You should have a blue screen infront of you. Without getting into the nitty gritty right, the code that was generated basically creates some basic code to clear the window content with the lovely CornFlowerBlue color. Something to notice, when you move your mouse into the window...nothing. ooooo spoooky. Let's put an image on that screen! Step A - Get an Image into the solution Under "Content" in your Solution Explorer, right click and add a new folder and name it "Sprites". Copy a small image in there; I copied a "Royalty Free" wizard hat from a quick google search and named it wizards_hat.jpg (rightfully so!) Step B - Add the sprite and position fields Now, open/edit Game1.cs Locate the following line: SpriteBatch spriteBatch; Under this line type the following: SpriteBatch spriteBatch; // the line you are looking for... Texture2D sprite; Vector2 position; Step C - Load the image asset Locate the "Load Content" Method and duplicate the following: protected override void LoadContent() { spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice); // your image name goes here... sprite = Content.Load<Texture2D>("Sprites\\wizards_hat"); position = new Vector2(200, 100); base.LoadContent(); } Step D - Draw the image Locate the "Draw" Method and duplicate the following: protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.CornflowerBlue); spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteBlendMode.AlphaBlend); spriteBatch.Draw(sprite, position, Color.White); spriteBatch.End(); base.Draw(gameTime); } Step E - Compile and Run Engage! (F5) - Debug! Your image should now display on a cornflowerblue window about 200 pixels from the left and 100 pixels from the top. Awesome! =) Pretty cool how we only coded a few lines to display an image, but believe me, there is plenty going on behind the scenes. However, for now, I'm going to call it a night here. Blogging all this progress certainly takes time... However, tomorrow night I'm going to detail what we just did, plus start checking off points on that list! I'm wondering right now if I should add pictures / code to this post...let me know if you want them =) Best Regards, D.

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Intermittent temporary GUI freeze in Ubuntu 11.10

- by Oscar

I've been using Ubuntu 11.10 for a month or so. In the last week it's started freezing randomly (every few hours or minutes). I can still move the mouse and switch to other terminals with ctrl+alt. I thought this was purely a gui issue as I could continue entering commands (mouse clicks and keys) which seem to be processed once the system resumes (generally 30 seconds to a few minutes). I'm using gnome and metacity. I can't identify anything in particular that triggers the freezes. Saving a file in LibreOffice causes the system to hang. I tried disabling most of the services I've installed (dropbox, autokey, etc.) but doesn't help. Switching to another terminal and running top, the CPU column is shared equally among all of my processes (i.e. non-root). I have no idea what that signifies. My PC is unusable in this state. CPU model name : Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU E6700 @ 3.20GHz [7m PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND [0;10m[39;49m[K [0;10m[0;10m 1499 ogga 20 0 404m 32m 13m R 10 0.8 0:28.19 python [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1501 ogga 20 0 216m 13m 6224 R 10 0.3 0:18.28 ibus-x11 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1679 ogga 20 0 449m 34m 15m R 10 0.9 0:41.10 gnome-panel [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1710 ogga 20 0 350m 15m 8324 R 10 0.4 0:18.25 bluetooth-apple [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1752 ogga 20 0 458m 37m 13m R 10 0.9 0:22.62 autokey-gtk [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 2081 ogga 20 0 354m 17m 9800 R 10 0.5 0:16.36 update-notifier [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 5439 ogga 20 0 640m 104m 38m R 10 2.6 0:45.17 chromium-browse [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 5586 ogga 20 0 381m 42m 21m R 10 1.1 0:20.17 chromium-browse [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 6422 ogga 20 0 529m 59m 18m R 10 1.5 0:28.15 sublime_text [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1362 ogga 20 0 264m 14m 7884 R 8 0.4 0:18.29 gnome-session [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1673 ogga 20 0 351m 17m 9768 R 8 0.4 0:21.78 metacity [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1708 ogga 20 0 249m 13m 7156 R 8 0.3 0:18.23 gnome-fallback- [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1709 ogga 20 0 572m 28m 15m R 8 0.7 0:18.37 nautilus [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1722 ogga 20 0 467m 18m 9m R 8 0.5 0:18.43 nm-applet [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1727 ogga 20 0 225m 12m 6304 R 8 0.3 0:18.24 polkit-gnome-au [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1731 ogga 20 0 422m 19m 10m R 8 0.5 0:26.62 gnome-sound-app [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1735 ogga 20 0 306m 31m 13m R 8 0.8 0:18.37 python [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1754 ogga 20 0 286m 16m 8912 R 8 0.4 0:18.90 vino-server [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1798 ogga 20 0 246m 15m 7476 R 8 0.4 0:18.25 gnome-screensav [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1851 ogga 20 0 185m 14m 7256 R 8 0.4 0:18.18 gdu-notificatio [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1923 ogga 20 0 251m 28m 11m R 8 0.7 0:17.96 applet.py [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 4085 ogga 20 0 378m 22m 11m R 8 0.6 0:18.19 gnome-terminal [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 4213 ogga 20 0 263m 73m 15m S 2 1.9 3:57.44 skype [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 1 root 20 0 24188 1492 1320 S 0 0.0 0:00.45 init [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 3 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:02.27 ksoftirqd/0 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 6 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 7 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/1 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 9 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:01.97 ksoftirqd/1 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 10 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:01.16 kworker/0:1 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 11 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 cpuset [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 12 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 13 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 netns [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 15 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 sync_supers [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 16 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 bdi-default [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 17 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kintegrityd [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 18 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kblockd [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 19 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ata_sff [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 20 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 khubd [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 21 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 md [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 23 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 khungtaskd [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 24 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.14 kswapd0 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 25 root 25 5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ksmd [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 26 root 39 19 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 khugepaged [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 27 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 fsnotify_mark [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 28 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ecryptfs-kthrea [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 29 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 crypto [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 37 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kthrotld [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 38 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_0 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 39 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_1 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 41 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_2 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 42 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_3 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 64 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:02.98 kworker/0:2 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 242 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.39 jbd2/sdb1-8 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 243 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ext4-dio-unwrit [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 288 root 20 0 17236 448 448 S 0 0.0 0:00.04 upstart-udev-br [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 295 root 20 0 21752 884 796 S 0 0.0 0:00.06 udevd And at another time: [7m PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND [0;10m[39;49m[K [0;10m[0;10m 1757 ogga 20 0 222m 9932 6300 R 13 0.2 0:05.69 polkit-gnome-au [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1559 ogga 20 0 152m 9764 6112 R 13 0.2 0:05.77 ibus-x11 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1786 ogga 20 0 457m 33m 13m R 13 0.9 0:06.10 autokey-gtk [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1395 ogga 20 0 262m 12m 7880 R 12 0.3 0:05.88 gnome-session [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1557 ogga 20 0 403m 31m 13m R 12 0.8 0:14.95 python [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1745 ogga 20 0 247m 11m 7196 R 12 0.3 0:05.69 gnome-fallback- [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1767 ogga 20 0 237m 26m 11m R 12 0.7 0:05.87 python [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1713 ogga 20 0 440m 25m 13m R 12 0.6 0:13.76 gnome-panel [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1747 ogga 20 0 348m 13m 8328 R 11 0.3 0:05.22 bluetooth-apple [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1754 ogga 20 0 465m 16m 10m R 11 0.4 0:05.21 nm-applet [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1710 ogga 20 0 167m 11m 7564 R 11 0.3 0:05.21 metacity [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1761 ogga 20 0 406m 17m 9928 R 11 0.4 0:12.71 gnome-sound-app [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1789 ogga 20 0 283m 13m 8852 R 11 0.3 0:05.55 vino-server [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1815 ogga 20 0 243m 11m 7452 R 11 0.3 0:05.17 gnome-screensav [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1885 ogga 20 0 182m 11m 7256 R 11 0.3 0:05.18 gdu-notificatio [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 1957 ogga 20 0 249m 25m 11m R 11 0.7 0:05.32 applet.py [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 2067 ogga 20 0 260m 12m 7828 R 11 0.3 0:05.21 update-notifier [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 1975 ogga 20 0 292m 48m 11m S 0 1.2 0:08.28 ubuntuone-syncd [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m[0;10m 2363 ogga 20 0 21468 1384 988 R 0 0.0 0:00.01 top [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 1 root 20 0 24284 2296 1320 S 0 0.1 0:00.46 init [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 3 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.05 ksoftirqd/0 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 4 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kworker/0:0 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 5 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.19 kworker/u:0 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 6 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 7 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/1 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 8 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kworker/1:0 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 9 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.06 ksoftirqd/1 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 10 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.09 kworker/0:1 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 11 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 cpuset [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 12 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 13 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 netns [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 14 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.25 kworker/u:1 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 15 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 sync_supers [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 16 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 bdi-default [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 17 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kintegrityd [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 18 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kblockd [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 19 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ata_sff [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 20 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 khubd [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 21 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 md [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 22 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.22 kworker/1:1 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 23 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 khungtaskd [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 24 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kswapd0 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 25 root 25 5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ksmd [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 26 root 39 19 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 khugepaged [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 27 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 fsnotify_mark [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 28 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ecryptfs-kthrea [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 29 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 crypto [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 37 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kthrotld [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 38 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_0 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 39 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_1 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 40 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kworker/u:2 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 41 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_2 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 42 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_3 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 43 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kworker/u:3 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 44 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kworker/u:4 [0;10m[39;49m [0;10m 45 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kworker/u:5 [0;10m[39;49m[6;1H[K Sorry about the horrible formatting. Thanks for any suggestions... Edit: I notice that my virtual computer (win7 64 on virtualbox) continues to respond most of the time during these 'freezes' Edit2: I suspect this is something to do with UI priority being too low... but I don't know enough about linux to know how to address that.

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EM12c Release 4: Database as a Service Enhancements

- by Adeesh Fulay

Oracle Enterprise Manager 12.1.0.4 (or simply put EM12c R4) is the latest update to the product. As previous versions, this release provides tons of enhancements and bug fixes, attributing to improved stability and quality. One of the areas that is most exciting and has seen tremendous growth in the last few years is that of Database as a Service. EM12c R4 provides a significant update to Database as a Service. The key themes are: Comprehensive Database Service Catalog (includes single instance, RAC, and Data Guard) Additional Storage Options for Snap Clone (includes support for Database feature CloneDB) Improved Rapid Start Kits Extensible Metering and Chargeback Miscellaneous Enhancements 1. Comprehensive Database Service Catalog Before we get deep into implementation of a service catalog, lets first understand what it is and what benefits it provides. Per ITIL, a service catalog is an exhaustive list of IT services that an organization provides or offers to its employees or customers. Service catalogs have been widely popular in the space of cloud computing, primarily as the medium to provide standardized and pre-approved service definitions. There is already some good collateral out there that talks about Oracle database service catalogs. The two whitepapers i recommend reading are: Service Catalogs: Defining Standardized Database Service High Availability Best Practices for Database Consolidation: The Foundation for Database as a Service [Oracle MAA] EM12c comes with an out-of-the-box service catalog and self service portal since release 1. For the customers, it provides the following benefits: Present a collection of standardized database service definitions, Define standardized pools of hardware and software for provisioning, Role based access to cater to different class of users, Automated procedures to provision the predefined database definitions, Setup chargeback plans based on service tiers and database configuration sizes, etc Starting Release 4, the scope of services offered via the service catalog has been expanded to include databases with varying levels of availability - Single Instance (SI) or Real Application Clusters (RAC) databases with multiple data guard based standby databases. Some salient points of the data guard integration: Standby pools can now be defined across different datacenters or within the same datacenter as the primary (this helps in modelling the concept of near and far DR sites) The standby databases can be single instance, RAC, or RAC One Node databases Multiple standby databases can be provisioned, where the maximum limit is determined by the version of database software The standby databases can be in either mount or read only (requires active data guard option) mode All database versions 10g to 12c supported (as certified with EM 12c) All 3 protection modes can be used - Maximum availability, performance, security Log apply can be set to sync or async along with the required apply lag The different service levels or service tiers are popularly represented using metals - Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze, and so on. The Oracle MAA whitepaper (referenced above) calls out the various service tiers as defined by Oracle's best practices, but customers can choose any logical combinations from the table below: Primary Standby [1 or more] EM 12cR4 SI - SI SI RAC - RAC SI RAC RAC RON - RON RON where RON = RAC One Node is supported via custom post-scripts in the service template A sample service catalog would look like the image below. Here we have defined 4 service levels, which have been deployed across 2 data centers, and have 3 standardized sizes. Again, it is important to note that this is just an example to get the creative juices flowing. I imagine each customer would come up with their own catalog based on the application requirements, their RTO/RPO goals, and the product licenses they own. In the screenwatch titled 'Build Service Catalog using EM12c DBaaS', I walk through the complete steps required to setup this sample service catalog in EM12c. 2. Additional Storage Options for Snap Clone In my previous blog posts, i have described the snap clone feature in detail. Essentially, it provides a storage agnostic, self service, rapid, and space efficient approach to solving your data cloning problems. The net benefit is that you get incredible amounts of storage savings (on average 90%) all while cloning databases in a matter of minutes. Space and Time, two things enterprises would love to save on. This feature has been designed with the goal of providing data cloning capabilities while protecting your existing investments in server, storage, and software. With this in mind, we have pursued with the dual solution approach of Hardware and Software. In the hardware approach, we connect directly to your storage appliances and perform all low level actions required to rapidly clone your databases. While in the software approach, we use an intermediate software layer to talk to any storage vendor or any storage configuration to perform the same low level actions. Thus delivering the benefits of database thin cloning, without requiring you to drastically changing the infrastructure or IT's operating style. In release 4, we expand the scope of options supported by snap clone with the addition of database CloneDB. While CloneDB is not a new feature, it was first introduced in 11.2.0.2 patchset, it has over the years become more stable and mature. CloneDB leverages a combination of Direct NFS (or dNFS) feature of the database, RMAN image copies, sparse files, and copy-on-write technology to create thin clones of databases from existing backups in a matter of minutes. It essentially has all the traits that we want to present to our customers via the snap clone feature. For more information on cloneDB, i highly recommend reading the following sources: Blog by Tim Hall: Direct NFS (DNFS) CloneDB in Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Oracle OpenWorld Presentation by Cern: Efficient Database Cloning using Direct NFS and CloneDB The advantages of the new CloneDB integration with EM12c Snap Clone are: Space and time savings Ease of setup - no additional software is required other than the Oracle database binary Works on all platforms Reduce the dependence on storage administrators Cloning process fully orchestrated by EM12c, and delivered to developers/DBAs/QA Testers via the self service portal Uses dNFS to delivers better performance, availability, and scalability over kernel NFS Complete lifecycle of the clones managed by EM12c - performance, configuration, etc 3. Improved Rapid Start Kits DBaaS deployments tend to be complex and its setup requires a series of steps. These steps are typically performed across different users and different UIs. The Rapid Start Kit provides a single command solution to setup Database as a Service (DBaaS) and Pluggable Database as a Service (PDBaaS). One command creates all the Cloud artifacts like Roles, Administrators, Credentials, Database Profiles, PaaS Infrastructure Zone, Database Pools and Service Templates. Once the Rapid Start Kit has been successfully executed, requests can be made to provision databases and PDBs from the self service portal. Rapid start kit can create complex topologies involving multiple zones, pools and service templates. It also supports standby databases and use of RMAN image backups. The Rapid Start Kit in reality is a simple emcli script which takes a bunch of xml files as input and executes the complete automation in a matter of seconds. On a full rack Exadata, it took only 40 seconds to setup PDBaaS end-to-end. This kit works for both Oracle's engineered systems like Exadata, SuperCluster, etc and also on commodity hardware. One can draw parallel to the Exadata One Command script, which again takes a bunch of inputs from the administrators and then runs a simple script that configures everything from network to provisioning the DB software. Steps to use the kit: The kit can be found under the SSA plug-in directory on the OMS: EM_BASE/oracle/MW/plugins/oracle.sysman.ssa.oms.plugin_12.1.0.8.0/dbaas/setup It can be run from this default location or from any server which has emcli client installed For most scenarios, you would use the script dbaas/setup/database_cloud_setup.py For Exadata, special integration is provided to reduce the number of inputs even further. The script to use for this scenario would be dbaas/setup/exadata_cloud_setup.py The database_cloud_setup.py script takes two inputs: Cloud boundary xml: This file defines the cloud topology in terms of the zones and pools along with host names, oracle home locations or container database names that would be used as infrastructure for provisioning database services. This file is optional in case of Exadata, as the boundary is well know via the Exadata system target available in EM. Input xml: This file captures inputs for users, roles, profiles, service templates, etc. Essentially, all inputs required to define the DB services and other settings of the self service portal. Once all the xml files have been prepared, invoke the script as follows for PDBaaS: emcli @database_cloud_setup.py -pdbaas -cloud_boundary=/tmp/my_boundary.xml -cloud_input=/tmp/pdb_inputs.xml The script will prompt for passwords a few times for key users like sysman, cloud admin, SSA admin, etc. Once complete, you can simply log into EM as the self service user and request for databases from the portal. More information available in the Rapid Start Kit chapter in Cloud Administration Guide. 4. Extensible Metering and Chargeback Last but not the least, Metering and Chargeback in release 4 has been made extensible in all possible regards. The new extensibility features allow customer, partners, system integrators, etc to : Extend chargeback to any target type managed in EM Promote any metric in EM as a chargeback entity Extend list of charge items via metric or configuration extensions Model abstract entities like no. of backup requests, job executions, support requests, etc A slew of emcli verbs have also been added that allows administrators to create, edit, delete, import/export charge plans, and assign cost centers all via the command line. More information available in the Chargeback API chapter in Cloud Administration Guide. 5. Miscellaneous Enhancements There are other miscellaneous, yet important, enhancements that are worth a mention. These mostly have been asked by customers like you. These are: Custom naming of DB Services Self service users can provide custom names for DB SID, DB service, schemas, and tablespaces Every custom name is validated for uniqueness in EM 'Create like' of Service Templates Now creating variants of a service template is only a click away. This would be vital when you publish service templates to represent different database sizes or service levels. Profile viewer View the details of a profile like datafile, control files, snapshot ids, export/import files, etc prior to its selection in the service template Cleanup automation - for failed and successful requests Single emcli command to cleanup all remnant artifacts of a failed request Cleanup can be performed on a per request bases or by the entire pool As an extension, you can also delete successful requests Improved delete user workflow Allows administrators to reassign cloud resources to another user or delete all of them Support for multiple tablespaces for schema as a service In addition to multiple schemas, user can also specify multiple tablespaces per request I hope this was a good introduction to the new Database as a Service enhancements in EM12c R4. I encourage you to explore many of these new and existing features and give us feedback. Good luck! References: Cloud Management Page on OTN Cloud Administration Guide [Documentation] -- Adeesh Fulay (@adeeshf)

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