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• Windows Azure VMs - New "Stopped" VM Options Provide Cost-effective Flexibility for On-Demand Workloads

  - by KeithMayer

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/KeithMayer/archive/2013/06/22/windows-azure-vms---new-stopped-vm-options-provide-cost-effective.aspxDidn’t make it to TechEd this year? Don’t worry!  This month, we’ll be releasing a new article series that highlights the Best of TechEd announcements and technical information for IT Pros.  Today’s article focuses on a new, much-heralded enhancement to Windows Azure Infrastructure Services to make it more cost-effective for spinning VMs up and down on-demand on the Windows Azure cloud platform. NEW! VMs that are shutdown from the Windows Azure Management Portal will no longer continue to accumulate compute charges while stopped! Previous to this enhancement being available, the Azure platform maintained fabric resource reservations for VMs, even in a shutdown state, to ensure consistent resource availability when starting those VMs in the future.  And, this meant that VMs had to be exported and completely deprovisioned when not in use to avoid compute charges. In this article, I'll provide more details on the scenarios that this enhancement best fits, and I'll also review the new options and considerations that we now have for performing safe shutdowns of Windows Azure VMs. Which scenarios does the new enhancement best fit? Being able to easily shutdown VMs from the Windows Azure Management Portal without continued compute charges is a great enhancement for certain cloud use cases, such as: On-demand dev/test/lab environments - Freely start and stop lab VMs so that they are only accumulating compute charges when being actively used.  "Bursting" load-balanced web applications - Provision a number of load-balanced VMs, but keep the minimum number of VMs running to support "normal" loads. Easily start-up the remaining VMs only when needed to support peak loads. Disaster Recovery - Start-up "cold" VMs when needed to recover from disaster scenarios. BUT ... there is a consideration to keep in mind when using the Windows Azure Management Portal to shutdown VMs: although performing a VM shutdown via the Windows Azure Management Portal causes that VM to no longer accumulate compute charges, it also deallocates the VM from fabric resources to which it was previously assigned.  These fabric resources include compute resources such as virtual CPU cores and memory, as well as network resources, such as IP addresses.  This means that when the VM is later started after being shutdown from the portal, the VM could be assigned a different IP address or placed on a different compute node within the fabric. In some cases, you may want to shutdown VMs using the old approach, where fabric resource assignments are maintained while the VM is in a shutdown state.  Specifically, you may wish to do this when temporarily shutting down or restarting a "7x24" VM as part of a maintenance activity.  Good news - you can still revert back to the old VM shutdown behavior when necessary by using the alternate VM shutdown approaches listed below.  Let's walk through each approach for performing a VM Shutdown action on Windows Azure so that we can understand the benefits and considerations of each... How many ways can I shutdown a VM? In Windows Azure Infrastructure Services, there's three general ways that can be used to safely shutdown VMs: Shutdown VM via Windows Azure Management Portal Shutdown Guest Operating System inside the VM Stop VM via Windows PowerShell using Windows Azure PowerShell Module Although each of these options performs a safe shutdown of the guest operation system and the VM itself, each option handles the VM shutdown end state differently. Shutdown VM via Windows Azure Management Portal When clicking the Shutdown button at the bottom of the Virtual Machines page in the Windows Azure Management Portal, the VM is safely shutdown and "deallocated" from fabric resources.  Shutdown button on Virtual Machines page in Windows Azure Management Portal  When the shutdown process completes, the VM will be shown on the Virtual Machines page with a "Stopped ( Deallocated )" status as shown in the figure below. Virtual Machine in a "Stopped (Deallocated)" Status "Deallocated" means that the VM configuration is no longer being actively associated with fabric resources, such as virtual CPUs, memory and networks. In this state, the VM will not continue to allocate compute charges, but since fabric resources are deallocated, the VM could receive a different internal IP address ( called "Dynamic IPs" or "DIPs" in Windows Azure ) the next time it is started.  TIP: If you are leveraging this shutdown option and consistency of DIPs is important to applications running inside your VMs, you should consider using virtual networks with your VMs.  Virtual networks permit you to assign a specific IP Address Space for use with VMs that are assigned to that virtual network.  As long as you start VMs in the same order in which they were originally provisioned, each VM should be reassigned the same DIP that it was previously using. What about consistency of External IP Addresses? Great question! External IP addresses ( called "Virtual IPs" or "VIPs" in Windows Azure ) are associated with the cloud service in which one or more Windows Azure VMs are running.  As long as at least 1 VM inside a cloud service remains in a "Running" state, the VIP assigned to a cloud service will be preserved.  If all VMs inside a cloud service are in a "Stopped ( Deallocated )" status, then the cloud service may receive a different VIP when VMs are next restarted. TIP: If consistency of VIPs is important for the cloud services in which you are running VMs, consider keeping one VM inside each cloud service in the alternate VM shutdown state listed below to preserve the VIP associated with the cloud service. Shutdown Guest Operating System inside the VM When performing a Guest OS shutdown or restart ( ie., a shutdown or restart operation initiated from the Guest OS running inside the VM ), the VM configuration will not be deallocated from fabric resources. In the figure below, the VM has been shutdown from within the Guest OS and is shown with a "Stopped" VM status rather than the "Stopped ( Deallocated )" VM status that was shown in the previous figure. Note that it may require a few minutes for the Windows Azure Management Portal to reflect that the VM is in a "Stopped" state in this scenario, because we are performing an OS shutdown inside the VM rather than through an Azure management endpoint. Virtual Machine in a "Stopped" Status VMs shown in a "Stopped" status will continue to accumulate compute charges, because fabric resources are still being reserved for these VMs.  However, this also means that DIPs and VIPs are preserved for VMs in this state, so you don't have to worry about VMs and cloud services getting different IP addresses when they are started in the future. Stop VM via Windows PowerShell In the latest version of the Windows Azure PowerShell Module, a new -StayProvisioned parameter has been added to the Stop-AzureVM cmdlet. This new parameter provides the flexibility to choose the VM configuration end result when stopping VMs using PowerShell: When running the Stop-AzureVM cmdlet without the -StayProvisioned parameter specified, the VM will be safely stopped and deallocated; that is, the VM will be left in a "Stopped ( Deallocated )" status just like the end result when a VM Shutdown operation is performed via the Windows Azure Management Portal.  When running the Stop-AzureVM cmdlet with the -StayProvisioned parameter specified, the VM will be safely stopped but fabric resource reservations will be preserved; that is the VM will be left in a "Stopped" status just like the end result when performing a Guest OS shutdown operation. So, with PowerShell, you can choose how Windows Azure should handle VM configuration and fabric resource reservations when stopping VMs on a case-by-case basis. TIP: It's important to note that the -StayProvisioned parameter is only available in the latest version of the Windows Azure PowerShell Module.  So, if you've previously downloaded this module, be sure to download and install the latest version to get this new functionality. Want to Learn More about Windows Azure Infrastructure Services? To learn more about Windows Azure Infrastructure Services, be sure to check-out these additional FREE resources: Become our next "Early Expert"! Complete the Early Experts "Cloud Quest" and build a multi-VM lab network in the cloud for FREE!  Build some cool scenarios! Check out our list of over 20+ Step-by-Step Lab Guides based on key scenarios that IT Pros are implementing on Windows Azure Infrastructure Services TODAY!  Looking forward to seeing you in the Cloud! - Keith Build Your Lab! Download Windows Server 2012 Don’t Have a Lab? Build Your Lab in the Cloud with Windows Azure Virtual Machines Want to Get Certified? Join our Windows Server 2012 "Early Experts" Study Group

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• SQL Server Master class winner

  - by Testas

   The winner of the SQL Server MasterClass competition courtesy of the UK SQL Server User Group and SQL Server Magazine!    Steve Hindmarsh     There is still time to register for the seminar yourself at:  www.regonline.co.uk/kimtrippsql     More information about the seminar     Where: Radisson Edwardian Heathrow Hotel, London  When: Thursday 17th June 2010  This one-day MasterClass will focus on many of the top issues companies face when implementing and maintaining a SQL Server-based solution. In the case where a company has no dedicated DBA, IT managers sometimes struggle to keep the data tier performing well and the data available. This can be especially troublesome when the development team is unfamiliar with the affect application design choices have on database performance. The Microsoft SQL Server MasterClass 2010 is presented by Paul S. Randal and Kimberly L. Tripp, two of the most experienced and respected people in the SQL Server world. Together they have over 30 years combined experience working with SQL Server in the field, and on the SQL Server product team itself. This is a unique opportunity to hear them present at a UK event which will: Debunk many of the ingrained misconceptions around SQL Server's behaviour    Show you disaster recovery techniques critical to preserving your company's life-blood - the data    Explain how a common application design pattern can wreak havoc in the database Walk through the top-10 points to follow around operations and maintenance for a well-performing and available data tier! Please Note: Agenda may be subject to change  Sessions Abstracts  KEYNOTE: Bridging the Gap Between Development and Production    Applications are commonly developed with little regard for how design choices will affect performance in production. This is often because developers don't realize the implications of their design on how SQL Server will be able to handle a high workload (e.g. blocking, fragmentation) and/or because there's no full-time trained DBA that can recognize production problems and help educate developers. The keynote sets the stage for the rest of the day. Discussing some of the issues that can arise, explaining how some can be avoided and highlighting some of the features in SQL 2008 that can help developers and DBAs make better use of SQL Server, and troubleshoot when things go wrong.   SESSION ONE: SQL Server Mythbusters  It's amazing how many myths and misconceptions have sprung up and persisted over the years about SQL Server - after many years helping people out on forums, newsgroups, and customer engagements, Paul and Kimberly have heard it all. Are there really non-logged operations? Can interrupting shrinks or rebuilds cause corruption? Can you override the server's MAXDOP setting? Will the server always do a table-scan to get a row count? Many myths lead to poor design choices and inappropriate maintenance practices so these are just a few of many, many myths that Paul and Kimberly will debunk in this fast-paced session on how SQL Server operates and should be managed and maintained.   SESSION TWO: Database Recovery Techniques Demo-Fest  Even if a company has a disaster recovery strategy in place, they need to practice to make sure that the plan will work when a disaster does strike. In this fast-paced demo session Paul and Kimberly will repeatedly do nasty things to databases and then show how they are recovered - demonstrating many techniques that can be used in production for disaster recovery. Not for the faint-hearted!   SESSION THREE: GUIDs: Use, Abuse, and How To Move Forward   Since the addition of the GUID (Microsoft’s implementation of the UUID), my life as a consultant and "tuner" has been busy. I’ve seen databases designed with GUID keys run fairly well with small workloads but completely fall over and fail because they just cannot scale. And, I know why GUIDs are chosen - it simplifies the handling of parent/child rows in your batches so you can reduce round-trips or avoid dealing with identity values. And, yes, sometimes it's even for distributed databases and/or security that GUIDs are chosen. I'm not entirely against ever using a GUID but overusing and abusing GUIDs just has to be stopped! Please, please, please let me give you better solutions and explanations on how to deal with your parent/child rows, round-trips and clustering keys!   SESSION 4: Essential Database Maintenance  In this session, Paul and Kimberly will run you through their top-ten database maintenance recommendations, with a lot of tips and tricks along the way. These are distilled from almost 30 years combined experience working with SQL Server customers and are geared towards making your databases more performant, more available, and more easily managed (to save you time!). Everything in this session will be practical and applicable to a wide variety of databases. Topics covered include: backups, shrinks, fragmentation, statistics, and much more! Focus will be on 2005 but we'll explain some of the key differences for 2000 and 2008 as well. Speaker Biographies     Kimberley L. Tripp Paul and Kimberly are a husband-and-wife team who own and run SQLskills.com, a world-renowned SQL Server consulting and training company. They are both SQL Server MVPs and Microsoft Regional Directors, with over 30 years of combined experience on SQL Server. Paul worked on the SQL Server team for nine years in development and management roles, writing many of the DBCC commands, and ultimately with responsibility for core Storage Engine for SQL Server 2008. Paul writes extensively on his blog (SQLskills.com/blogs/Paul) and for TechNet Magazine, for which he is also a Contributing Editor. Kimberly worked on the SQL Server team in the early 1990s as a tester and writer before leaving to found SQLskills and embrace her passion for teaching and consulting. Kimberly has been a staple at worldwide conferences since she first presented at TechEd in 1996, and she blogs at SQLskills.com/blogs/Kimberly. They have written Microsoft whitepapers and books for SQL Server 2000, 2005 and 2008, and are regular, top-rated presenters worldwide on database maintenance, high availability, disaster recovery, performance tuning, and SQL Server internals. Together they teach the SQL MCM certification and throughout Microsoft.In their spare time, they like to find frogfish in remote corners of the world.   Speaker Testimonials  "To call them good trainers is an epic understatement. They know how to deliver technical material in ways that illustrate it well. I had to stop Paul at one point and ask him how long it took to build a particular slide because the animations were so good at conveying a hard-to-describe process." "These are not beginner presenters, and they put an extreme amount of preparation and attention to detail into everything that they do. Completely, utterly professional." "When it comes to the instructors themselves, Kimberly and Paul simply have no equal. Not only are they both ultimate authorities, but they have endless enthusiasm about the material, and spot on delivery. If either ever got tired they never showed it, even after going all day and all week. We witnessed countless demos over the course of the week, some extremely involved, multi-step processes, and I can’t recall one that didn’t go the way it was supposed to." "You might think that with this extreme level of skill comes extreme levels of egotism and lack of patience. Nothing could be further from the truth. ... They simply know how to teach, and are approachable, humble, and patient." "The experience Paul and Kimberly have had with real live customers yields a lot more information and things to watch out for than you'd ever get from documentation alone." “Kimberly, I just wanted to send you an email to let you know how awesome you are! I have applied some of your indexing strategies to our website’s homegrown CMS and we are experiencing a significant performance increase. WOW....amazing tips delivered in an exciting way!  Thanks again” 

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• 24+ Coda Alternatives for Windows and Linux

  - by Matt

  Coda plays an important role in designing layout on Mac. There are numerous coda alternatives for windows and Linux too. It is not possible to describe each and everyone so some of the coda alternatives, which work on both windows and Linux platforms, are discussed below. EditPlus $35.00 Good thing about EditPlus is that it highlights URLs and email addresses, activating them when you ‘crtl + double-click’. It also has a built in browser for previewing HTML, and FTP and SFTP support. Also supports Macros and RegEx find and replace. UltraEdit $49.99 It is another good coda alternative for windows and Linux. It is the best suited editor for text, HTML and HEX. It also plays an advanced PHP, Perl, Java and JavaScript editor for programmers. It supports disk-based 64-bit or standard file handling on 32-bit Windows platforms or window 2000 and later versions. HippoEdit $39.95 HippoEDIT has the best autocomplete it gives pop a ‘tooltip’ above your cursor as you type, suggesting words you’ve already typed. It does syntax highlighting for over 2 dozen language. Sublime Text $59.00 Sublime Text awesome ‘zoomed out’ view of the file lets you focus on the area you want. It lets you open a local file when you right-click on its link, and there are a few automation features, so this would make a solid choice of a text editor. Textpad $24.70 TextPad is simple editor with nifty features such as column select, drag-and-drop text between files, and hyperlink support. It also supports large files. Aptana Free Aptana Studio is one of the best editors working on both windows and Linux. It is a complete web development setting that has a nice blend of powerful authoring tools with a collection of online hosting and collaboration services. It is quite helpful as it support for PHP, CSS, FTP, and more. SciTE Free It is a SCIntilla based Text Editor. It has gradually developed as a generally useful editor. It provides for building and running programs. It is best to be used for jobs with simple configurations. SciTE is currently available for Intel Win32 and Linux compatible operating systems with GTK+. It has been run on Windows XP and on Fedora 8 and Ubuntu 7.10 with GTK+ 2.12 E Text Editor $34.96 E Text Editor is a new text editor for Windows, which also works on Linux as well. It has powerful editing features and also some unique abilities. It makes text manipulation quite fast and easy, and makes user focus on his writing as it automatically does all the manual work. It can be extend it in any language. It supports Text Mate bundles, thus allows the user to tap into a huge and active community. Editra Free Editra is an upcoming editor, with some fantastic features such as user profiles, auto-completion, session saving, and syntax highlighing for 60+ languages. Plugins can extend the feature set, offering an integrated python console, FTP client, file browser, and calculator, among others. PSPad Free PSPad is a good Template for writing CSS, as it an internal web browser, and a macro recorder to the table. It also supports hex editing, and some degree of code compiling. JEdit Free It is a mature programmer’s text editor and has taken a good deal of time to be developed as it is today. It is better than many costlier development tools due to its features and simplicity of use. It has been released as free software with full source code, provided under the terms of the GPL 2.0. Which also adds to its attractiveness. NEdit Free It is a multi-purpose text editor for the X Window System, which also works on Linux. It combines a standard, easy to use, graphical user interface with the full functionality and stability required by users who edit text for long period a day. It also provides for thorough support for development in various languages. It also facilitates the use of text processors, and other tools at the same time. It can be used productively by anyone who needs to edit text. It is quite a user-friendly tool. Its salient features include syntax highlighting with built in pattern, auto indent, tab emulation, block indentation adjustment etc. As of version 5.1, NEdit may be freely distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. MadEdit Free Mad Edit is an Open-Source and Cross-Platform Text/Hex Editor. It is written in C++ and wxWidgets. MadEdit can edit files in Text/Column/Hex modes. It also supports many useful functions, such as Syntax Highlighting, Word Wrap, Encoding for UTF8/16/32,and others. It also supports word count, which makes it quite a useful text editor for both windows and Linux. It has been recently modified on 10/09/2010. KompoZer Free Kompozer is a complete web authoring system that has a combination of web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing. KompoZer has been designed to be completely and extensively easy to use. It is thus an ideal tool for non-technical computer users who want to create an attractive, professional-looking web site without knowing HTML or web coding. It is based on the NVU source code. Vim Free Vim or “Vi IMproved” is an advanced text editor. Its salient features are syntax highlighting, word completion and it also has a huge amount of contributed content. Vim has several “modes” on offer for editing, which adds to the efficiency in editing. Thus it becomes a non-user-friendly application but it is also strength for its users. The normal mode binds alphanumeric keys to task-oriented commands. The visual mode highlights text. More tools for search & replace, defining functions, etc. are offered through command line mode. Vim comes with complete help. NotePad ++ Free One of the the best free text editor for Windows out there; with support for simple things—like syntax highlighting and folding—all the way up to FTP, Notepad++ should tick most of the boxes Notepad2 Free Notepad2 is also based on the Scintilla editing engine, but it’s much simpler than Notepad++. It bills itself as being fast, light-weight, and Notepad-like. Crimson Editor Free Crimson Editor has the ability to edit remote files, using a built-in FTP client; there’s also a spell checker. TotalEdit Free TotalEdit allows file comparison, RegEx search and replace, and has multiple options for file backup / versioning. For cleanup, it offers (X)HTML and XML customizable formatting, and a spell checker. In-Type Free ConTEXT Free SourceEdit Free SourceEdit includes features such as clipboard history, syntax highlighting and autocompletion for a decent set of languages. A hex editor and FTP client. RJ TextED Free RJ TextED supports integration with TopStyle Lite. Provides HTML validation and formatting. It includes an FTP client, a file browser, and a code browser, as well as a character map and support for email. GEDIT Free It is one of the best coda alternatives for windows and Linux. It has syntax highlighting and is best suitable for programming. It has many attractive features such as full support for UTF-8, undo/redo, and clipboard support, search and replace, configurable syntax highlighting for various languages and many more supportive features. It is extensible with plug ins. Other important coda alternatives for windows and Linux are Redcar, Bluefish Editor, NVU, Ruby Mine, Slick Edit, Geany, Editra, txt2html and CSSED. There are many more. Its up to user to decide which one suits best to his requirements. Related posts:10 Useful Text Editor For Developer Applications to Install & Run Windows on Linux Open Source WYSIWYG Text Editors

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• Native packaging for JavaFX

  - by igor

  JavaFX 2.2 adds new packaging option for JavaFX applications, allowing you to package your application as a "native bundle". This gives your users a way to install and run your application without any external dependencies on a system JRE or FX SDK. I'd like to give you an overview of what is it, motivation behind it, and finally explain how to get started with it. Screenshots may give you some idea of user experience but first hand experience is always the best. Before we go into all of the boring details, here are few different flavors of Ensemble for you to try: exe, msi, dmg, rpm installers and zip of linux bundle for non-rpm aware systems. Alternatively, check out native packages for JFXtras 2. Whats wrong with existing deployment options? JavaFX 2 applications are easy to distribute as a standalone application or as an application deployed on the web (embedded in the web page or as link to launch application from the webpage). JavaFX packaging tools, such as ant tasks and javafxpackager utility, simplify the creation of deployment packages even further. Why add new deployment options? JavaFX applications have implicit dependency on the availability of Java and JavaFX runtimes, and while existing deployment methods provide a means to validate the system requirements are met -- and even guide user to perform required installation/upgrades -- they do not fully address all of the important scenarios. In particular, here are few examples: the user may not have admin permissions to install new system software if the application was certified to run in the specific environment (fixed version of Java and JavaFX) then it may be hard to ensure user has this environment due to an autoupdate of the system version of Java/JavaFX (to ensure they are secure). Potentially, other apps may have a requirement for a different JRE or FX version that your app is incompatible with. your distribution channel may disallow dependencies on external frameworks (e.g. Mac AppStore) What is a "native package" for JavaFX application? In short it is  A Wrapper for your JavaFX application that makes is into a platform-specific application bundle Each Bundle is self-contained and includes your application code and resources (same set as need to launch standalone application from jar) Java and JavaFX runtimes (private copies to be used by this application only) native application launcher  metadata (icons, etc.) No separate installation is needed for Java and JavaFX runtimes Can be distributed as .zip or packaged as platform-specific installer No application changes, the same jar app binaries can be deployed as a native bundle, double-clickable jar, applet, or web start app What is good about it: Easy deployment of your application on fresh systems, without admin permissions when using .zip or a user-level installer No-hassle compatibility.  Your application is using a private copy of Java and JavaFX. The developer (you!) controls when these are updated. Easily package your application for Mac AppStore (or Windows, or...) Process name of running application is named after your application (and not just java.exe)  Easily deploy your application using enterprise deployment tools (e.g. deploy as MSI) Support is built in into JDK 7u6 (that includes JavaFX 2.2) Is it a silver bullet for the deployment that other deployment options will be deprecated? No.  There are no plans to deprecate other deployment options supported by JavaFX, each approach addresses different needs. Deciding whether native packaging is a best way to deploy your application depends on your requirements. A few caveats to consider: "Download and run" user experienceUnlike web deployment, the user experience is not about "launch app from web". It is more of "download, install and run" process, and the user may need to go through additional steps to get application launched - e.g. accepting a browser security dialog or finding and launching the application installer from "downloads" folder. Larger download sizeIn general size of bundled application will be noticeably higher than size of unbundled app as a private copy of the JRE and JavaFX are included.  We're working to reduce the size through compression and customizable "trimming", but it will always be substantially larger than than an app that depends on a "system JRE". Bundle per target platformBundle formats are platform specific. Currently a native bundle can only be produced for the same system you are building on.  That is, if you want to deliver native app bundles on Windows, Linux and Mac you will have to build your project on all three platforms. Application updates are the responsibility of developerWeb deployed Java applications automatically download application updates from the web as soon as they are available. The Java Autoupdate mechanism takes care of updating the Java and JavaFX runtimes to latest secure version several times every year. There is no built in support for this in for bundled applications. It is possible to use 3rd party libraries (like Sparkle on Mac) to add autoupdate support at application level.  In a future version of JavaFX we may include built-in support for autoupdate (add yourself as watcher for RT-22211 if you are interested in this) Getting started with native bundles First, you need to get the latest JDK 7u6 beta build (build 14 or later is recommended). On Windows/Mac/Linux it comes with JavaFX 2.2 SDK as part of JDK installation and contains JavaFX packaging tools, including: bin/javafxpackagerCommand line utility to produce JavaFX packages. lib/ant-javafx.jar Set of ant tasks to produce JavaFX packages (most recommended way to deploy apps) For general information on how to use them refer to the Deploying JavaFX Application guide. Once you know how use these tools to package your JavaFX application for other deployment methods there are only a few minor tweaks necessary to produce native bundles: make sure java is used from JDK7u6 bundle you have installed adjust your PATH settings if needed  if you are using ant tasks add "nativeBundles=all" attribute to fx:deploy task if you are using javafxpackager pass "-native" option to deploy command or if you are using makeall command then it will try build native packages by default result bundles will be in the "bundles" folder next to other deployment artifacts Note that building some types of native packages (e.g. .exe or .msi) may require additional free 3rd party software to be installed and available on PATH. As of JDK 7u6 build 14 you could build following types of packages: Windows bundle image EXE Inno Setup 5 or later is required Result exe will perform user level installation (no admin permissions are required) At least one shortcut will be created (menu or desktop) Application will be launched at the end of install MSI WiX 3.0 or later is required Result MSI will perform user level installation (no admin permissions are required) At least one shortcut will be created (menu or desktop)  MacOS bundle image dmg (drag and drop) installer Linux bundle image rpm rpmbuild is required shortcut will be added to the programs menu If you are using Netbeans for producing the deployment packages then you will need to add custom build step to the build.xml to execute the fx:deploy task with native bundles enabled. Here is what we do for BrickBreaker sample: <target name="-post-jfx-deploy"> <fx:deploy width="${javafx.run.width}" height="${javafx.run.height}" nativeBundles="all" outdir="${basedir}/${dist.dir}" outfile="${application.title}"> <fx:application name="${application.title}" mainClass="${javafx.main.class}"> <fx:resources> <fx:fileset dir="${basedir}/${dist.dir}" includes="BrickBreaker.jar"/> </fx:resources> <info title="${application.title}" vendor="${application.vendor}"/> </fx:application> </fx:deploy> </target> This is pretty much regular use of fx:deploy task, the only special thing here is nativeBundles="all". Perhaps the easiest way to try building native bundles is to download the latest JavaFX samples bundle and build Ensemble, BrickBreaker or SwingInterop. Please give it a try and share your experience. We need your feedback! BTW, do not hesitate to file bugs and feature requests to JavaFX bug database! Wait! How can i ... This entry is not a comprehensive guide into native bundles, and we plan to post on this topic more. However, I am sure that once you play with native bundles you will have a lot of questions. We may not have all the answers, but please do not hesitate to ask! Knowing all of the questions is the first step to finding all of the answers.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 20, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 20, 2010New ProjectsaMaze Mapa Generator: Parte do Projeto aMazeASP.Net RIA Controls: Simple ASP.Net server controls to integrate Flash and Silverlight controls into your web applications. Included controls don't use any JavaScript,...BMap.NET: BMaps.NET is a .NET application written in C#, for access Bing Maps from your computer without web browsers. With it you can access to Bing Maps an...DaliNet: A .NET API for the Tridonic.Atco DALI USB device.Fabrica7: This is the main project of Fabrica 7 Corp.Image Ripper: A Winform application parse & fetch various HD pictures in specific photo galleries.IoCWrap: Provides interfaces which wrap various IoC container implementations so that it is possible to switch to a different provider without changing any ...NetSockets: NetSockets is a .NET class library that provides easy-to-use, multi-threaded, event-based, client and server network communication.Network Backup: Network Backup is a home and small company backup solution for workstations and a backup server. It incorporates a backup service, scheduler, data ...NUnit.Specs: Specification extensions for NUnit.Nutrivida: Sistema para avaliação de especialização.OHTB Snake: OHTB Snake is a multiplayer game. In this incarnation, snakes may eat 3 types of powerups: standard berries, causing them to grow; sawberries, caus...Playground TDrouen: Tjerk's PlaygroundPower Plan Chooser: This is my first endeavor into a C# Windows application with XAML. The program sits in the notification area (task bar) and lets you quickly activa...Search IMDB in C#: In lack of an IMDB API most of us resort to screen scraping utilities to query the Internet Movie Database. This one is written in C# (.NET 2.0 sta...SIGPRO Desktop: FUNCERNSql2008 PerfMonCounter Fix: Small console application to Fix the SQL 2008 Express Edition installation error: Pequena aplicação para Corrigir o seguinte erro de Instalação do...TwiztedTracker: TwiztedTracker designed to make your bug tracking easy.UmbracoXsltLogHelper: I needed a way to easily add log rows from my xslt macros, and added a single-line-extension for that reason. Then I played around with the umbraco...VisualStock: VisualStock is stock data visualization, analysis application build on the Micorsoft Composite Application Library.WHS File Mover: A Windows Home Server Plugin to move files from a local directory ("drop" or "staging" directory to a folder share)XML based Content Deployment in SharePoint: XML based Content Deployment in Sharepoint helps you to easy deploy content into SharePoint, including webs, lists, items, files and folder. You wi...New ReleasesASP.Net RIA Controls: Version 1.0 Beta: The first functionnal version.BMap.NET: BMap.NET 1: This is the 1st version of BMap.NETDigital Media Processing Project 1: Image Processor: Image Processor 1.0: All features implemented. 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Changes the red ball and green ball images to red cross a...Sql2008 PerfMonCounter Fix: Sql2008FIx_PerfMonCounter.zip: Small console application to Fix the SQL 2008 Express Edition installation error: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300956 Rule Name PerfMonCounter...UmbracoXsltLogHelper: 0.9 Working Beta: First version. XsltLogHelper09 is the installable package.VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30319.0: Automatic drop of latest buildWCF RIA Services Contrib: RIA Services Contrib RC Release: This version is recompiled against the RC release of WCF RIA Services.XML based Content Deployment in SharePoint: SPContentDeployment 1.0.0.0: The first link contains the resources and a sample project. The second link contains everything included in the first package and an additional fo...Yet Another GPS: YAGPS Alfa.2: Yet another GPS tracker is a very powerful GPS track application for Windows Mobile Speed Guage, Sat Count number, KML for google map file formatZGuideTV.NET: ZGuideTV.NET 0.92: Vendredi 19 mars 2010 (ZGuideTV.NET bêta 9 build 0.92) - English below Corrections : - Gestion de certains contrôles dans l'écran principal. - Div...Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpRawrWBFS ManagerSilverlight ToolkitASP.NET Ajax LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseAJAX Control ToolkitLiveUpload to FacebookWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMost Active ProjectsLINQ to TwitterRawrOData SDK for PHPjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesDirectQPHPExcelpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryBlogEngine.NETFarseer Physics EngineNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Module

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• The Internet of Things & Commerce: Part 2 -- Interview with Brian Celenza, Commerce Innovation Strategist

  - by Katrina Gosek, Director | Commerce Product Strategy-Oracle

  Internet of Things & Commerce Series: Part 2 (of 3) Welcome back to the second installation of my three part series on the Internet of Things & Commerce. A few weeks ago, I wrote “The Next 7,000 Days” about how we’ve become embedded in a digital architecture in the last 7,000 days since the birth of the internet – an architecture that everyday ties the massive expanse of the internet evermore closely with our physical lives. This blog series explores how this new blend of virtual and material will change how we shop and how businesses sell. Now enjoy reading my interview with Brian Celenza, one of the chief strategists in our Oracle Commerce innovation group. He comments on the past, present, and future of the how the growing Internet of Things relates and will relate to the buying and selling of goods on and offline. -------------------------------------------- QUESTION: You probably have one of the coolest jobs on our team, Brian – and frankly, one of the coolest jobs in our industry. As part of the innovation team for Oracle Commerce, you’re regularly working on bold features and groundbreaking commerce-focused experiences for our vision demos. As you look back over the past couple of years, what is the biggest trend (or trends) you’ve seen in digital commerce that started to bring us closer to this idea of what people are calling an “Internet of Things”? Brian: Well as you look back over the last couple of years, the speed at which change in our industry has moved looks like one of those blurred movement photos – you know the ones where the landscape blurs because the observer is moving so quickly your eye focus can’t keep up. But one thing that is absolutely clear is that the biggest catalyst for that speed of change – especially over the last three years – has been mobile. Mobile technology changed everything. Over the last three years the entire thought process of how to sell on (and offline) has shifted because of mobile technology advances. Particularly for eCommerce professionals who have started to move past the notion of “channels” for selling goods to this notion of “Mobile First”… then the Web site. Or more accurately, that everything – smartphones, web, store, tablet – is just one channel or has to act like one singular access point to the same product catalog, information and content. The most innovative eCommerce professionals realized some time ago that it’s not ideal to build an eCommerce Web site and then build everything on top of or off of it. Rather, they want to build an eCommerce API and then integrate it will all other systems. To accomplish this, they are leveraging all the latest mobile technologies or possibilities mobile technology has opened up: 4G and LTE, GPS, bluetooth, touch screens, apps, html5… How has this all started to come together for shopping experiences on and offline? Well to give you a personal example, I remember visiting an Apple store a few years ago and being amazed that I didn’t have to wait in line because a store associate knew everything about me from my ID – right there on the sales floor – and could check me out anywhere. Then just a few months later (when like any good addict) I went back to get the latest and greatest new gadget, I felt like I was stealing it because I could check myself out with my smartphone. I didn’t even need to see a sales associate OR go to a cash register. Amazing. And since then, all sort sorts of companies across all different types of industries – from food service to apparel –  are starting to see mobile payments in the billions of dollars now thanks not only to the convenience factor but to smart loyalty rewards programs as well. These are just some really simple current examples that come to mind. So many different things have happened in the last couple of years, it’s hard to really absorb all of the quickly – because as soon as you do, everything changes again! Just like that blurry speed photo image. For eCommerce, however, this type of new environment underscores the importance of building an eCommerce API – a platform that has services you can tap in to and build on as the landscape changes at a fever pitch. It’s a mobile first perspective. A web service perspective – particularly if you are thinking of how to engage customers across digital and physical spaces. —— QUESTION: Thanks for bringing us into the present – some really great examples you gave there to put things into perspective. So what do you see as the biggest trend right now around the “Internet of Things” – and what’s coming next few years? Brian: Honestly, even sitting where I am in the innovation group – it’s hard to look out even 12 months because, well, I don’t even think we’ve fully caught up with what is possible now. But I can definitely say that in the last 12 months and in the coming 12 months, in the technology and eCommerce world it’s all about iBeacons. iBeacons are awesome tools we have right now to tie together physical and digital shopping experiences. They know exactly where you are as a shopper and can communicate that to businesses. Currently there seem to be two camps of thought around iBeacons. First, many people are thinking of them like an “indoor GPS”, which to be fair they literally are. The use case this first camp envisions for iBeacons is primarily for advertising and marketing. So they use iBeacons to push location-based promotions to customers if they are close to a store or in a store. You may have seen these types of mobile promotions start to pop up occasionally on your smart phone as you pass by a store you’ve bought from in the past. That’s the work of iBeacons. But in my humble opinion, these promotions probably come too early in the customer journey and although they may be well timed and work to “convert” in some cases, I imagine in most they are just eroding customer trust because they are kind of a “one-size-fits-all” solution rather than one that is taking into account what exactly the customer might be looking for in that particular moment. Maybe they just want more information and a promotion is way too soon for that type of customer. The second camp is more in line with where my thinking falls. In this case, businesses take a more sensitive approach with iBeacons to customers’ needs. Instead of throwing out a “one-size-fits-all” to any passer by with iBeacons, the use case is more around looking at the physical proximity of a customer as an opportunity to provide a service: show expert reviews on a product they may be looking at in a particular aisle of a store, offer the opportunity to compare prices (and then offer a promotion), signal an in-store associate if a customer has been in the store for more than 10 minutes in one place. These are all less intrusive more value-driven uses of iBeacons. And they are more about building customer trust through service. To take this example a bit further into the future realm of “Big Data” and “Internet of Things” businesses could actually use the Oracle Commerce Platform and iBeacons to “silently” track customer movement w/in the store to provide higher quality service. And this doesn’t have to be creepy or intrusive. Simply if a customer has been in a particular department or aisle for more than a 5 or 10 minutes, an in-store associate could come over an offer some assistance already knowing customer preferences from their online profile and maybe even seeing the items in a shopping cart they started at home. None of this has to be revealed to the customer, but it certainly could boost the level of service an in-store sales associate could provide. Or, in another futuristic example, stores could use the digital footprint of the physical store transmitted by iBeacons to generate heat maps of the store that could be tracked over time. Imagine how much you could find out about which parts of the store are more busy during certain parts of the day or seasons. This could completely revolutionize how physical merchandising is deployed or where certain high value / new items are placed. And / or this use of iBeacons could also help businesses figure out if customers are getting held up in certain parts of the store during busy days like Black Friday. If long lines are causing customers to bounce from a physical store and leave those holiday gifts behind, maybe having employees with mobile check as an option could remove the cash register bottleneck. But going to back to my original statement, it’s all still very early in the story for iBeacons. The hardware manufacturers are still very new and there is still not one clear standard.  Honestly, it all goes back to building and maintaining an extensible and flexible platform for anywhere engagement. What you’re building today should allow you to rapidly take advantage of whatever unimaginable use cases wait around the corner. ------------------------------------------------------ I hope you enjoyed the brief interview with Brian. It’s really awesome to have such smart and innovation-minded individuals on our Oracle Commerce innovation team. Please join me again in a few weeks for Part 3 of this series where I interview one of the product managers on our team about how the blending of digital and in-store selling in influencing our product development and vision.

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• Does HTML 5 &ldquo;Rich vs. Reach&rdquo; a False Choice?

  - by andrewbrust

  The competition between the Web and proprietary rich platforms, including Windows, Mac OS, iPhone/iPad, Adobe’s Flash/AIR and Microsoft’s Silverlight, is not new. But with the emergence of HTML 5 and imminent support for it in the next release of the major Web browsers, the battle is heating up. And with the announcements made Wednesday at Google's I/O conference, it's getting kicked up yet another notch. The impact of this platform battle on companies in the media and advertising world, and the developers who serve them, is significant. The most prominent question is whether video and rich media online will shift towards pure HTML and away from plug-ins like Flash and Silverlight. In fact, certain features in HTML 5 make it suitable for development for line of business applications as well, further threatening those plug-in technologies. So what's the deal? Is this real or hype? To answer that question, I've done my own research into HTML 5's features and talked to several media-focused, New York area developers to get their opinions. I present my findings to you in this post. Before bearing down into HTML 5 specifics and practitioners’ quotes, let's set the context. To understand what HTML 5 can do, take a look at this video of Sports Illustrated’s HTML 5 prototype. This should start to get you bought into the idea that HTML 5 could be a game-changer. Next, if you happen to have installed the beta version of Google's Chrome 5 browser, take a look at the page linked to below, and in that page, click on any of the game thumbnails to see what's possible, without a plug-in, in this brave new world. (Note, although the instructions for each game tell you to press the A key to start, press the Z key instead.). Here's the link: http://www.kesiev.com/akihabara As an adjunct to what's enabled by HTML 5, consider the various transforms that are part of CSS 3. If you're running Safari as your browser, the following link will showcase this live; if not, you'll see a bitmap that will give you an idea of what's possible: http://webkit.org/blog/386/3d-transforms Are you starting to get the picture (literally)? What has up until now required browser plug-ins and other patches to HTML, most typically Flash, will soon be renderable, natively, in all major browsers. Moreover, it's looking likely that developers will be able to deliver such content and experiences in these browsers using one base of markup and script code (using straight JavaScript and/or jQuery), without resorting to browser-specific code and workarounds. If you're skeptical of this, I wouldn't blame you, especially with respect to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. However, i can tell you with confidence that even Microsoft is dedicated to full-on HTML 5 support in version 9 of that browser, which is currently under development. So what’s new in HTML 5, specifically, that makes sites like this possible?  The specification documents go into deep detail, and there’s no sense in rehashing them here, but a summary is probably in order.   Here is a non-authoritative, but useful, list of the major new feature areas in HTML 5: 2D drawing capabilities and 3D transforms. 2D drawing instructions can be embedded statically into a Web page; application interactivity and animation can be achieved through script.  As mentioned above, 3D transforms are technically part of version 3 of the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) spec, rather than HTML 5, but they can nonetheless be thought of as part of the bundle.  They allow for rendering of 3D images and animations that, together with 2D drawing, make HTML-based games much more feasible than they are presently, as the links above demonstrate. Embedded audio and video. A media player can appear directly in a rendered Web page, using HTML markup and no plug-ins. Alternately, player controls can be hidden and the content can play automatically. Major enhancements to form-based input. This includes such things as specification of required fields, embedding of text “hints” into a control, limiting valid input on a field to dates, email addresses or a list of values.  There’s more to this, but the gist is that line-of-business applications, with complicated input and data validation, are supported directly Offline caching, local storage and client-side SQL database. These facilities allow Web applications to function more like native apps, even if no internet connection is available. User-defined data. Data (or metadata – data about data) can easily be embedded statically and/or retrieved and updated with Javascript code. This avoids having to embed that data in a separate file, or within script code. Taken together, these features position HTML to compete with, and perhaps overtake, Adobe’s Flash/AIR (and Microsoft’s Silverlight) as a viable Web platform for media, RIAs (rich internet applications – apps that function more like desktop software than Web sites) and interactive Web content, including games. What do players in the media world think about this?  From the embedded video above, we know what Sports Illustrated (and, therefore, Time Warner) think.  Hulu, the major Internet site for broadcast TV content, is on record as saying HTML5 video does not pass muster with them, at least not yet.  YouTube, on the other hand, already has an experimental HTML 5-based version of their site.  TechCrunch has reported that NetFlix is flirting with HTML 5 too, especially as it pertains to embedded browsers in TV-based devices.  And the New York Times’ Web site now embeds some video clips without resorting to Flash.  They have to – otherwise iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad users couldn’t see them in the Mobile Safari browser. What do media-focused developers think about all this?  I talked to several to get their opinions. Michael Pinto is CEO and Founder of Very Memorable Design whose primary focus has been to help marketing directors get traction online.  The firm’s client roster includes the likes Time, Inc., Scholastic and PBS.  Pinto predicts that “More and more microsites that were done entirely in Flash will be done more and more using jQuery. I can also see slideshows and video now being done without Flash. However if you needed to create a game or highly interactive activity Flash would still be the way to go for the web.” A dissenting view comes from Jesse Erlbaum, CEO of The Erlbaum Group, LLC, which serves numerous clients in the magazine publishing sector.  When I asked Erlbaum whether he thought HTML 5 and jQuery/JavaScript would steal significant market share from Flash, he responded “Not at all!  In particular, not for media and advertising customers!  These sectors are not generally in the business of making highly functional applications, which is the one place where HTML5/jQuery/etc really shines.” Ironically, Pinto’s firm is a heavy user of Flash for its projects and Erlbaum’s develops atop the “LAMP” (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP/Perl) stack.  For whatever reason, each firm seems to see the other’s toolset as a more viable choice.  But both agree that the developer tool story around HTML 5 is deficient.  Pinto explains “What’s lost with [HTML 5 and Javascript] techniques is that there isn’t a single widely favored easy-to-use tool of choice for authoring. So with Flash you can get up and running right away and not worry about what is different from one browser to the next.“  Erlbaum agrees, saying: “HTML5/Javascript lacks a sophisticated integrated development environment (IDE) which is an essential part of Flash.  If what someone is trying to make is primarily animation, it's a waste of time…to do this in Javascript.  It can be done much more easily in Flash, and with greater cross-browser compatibility and consistency due to the ubiquity of Flash.” Adobe (maker of Flash since its 2005 acquisition of Macromedia) likely agrees.  And for better or worse, they’ve decided to address this shortcoming of HTML 5, even at risk of diminishing their Flash platfrom. Yesterday Adobe announced that their hugely popular Deamweaver Web design authoring tool would directly support HTML 5 and CSS 3 development.  In fact, the Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 HTML5 Pack is downloadable now from Adobe Labs. Maybe Adobe is bowing to pressure from ardent Web professionals like Scott Kellum, Lead Designer at Channel V Media,  a digital and offline branding firm, serving the media and marketing sectors, among others.  Kellum told me that HTML 5 “…will definitely move people away from Flash. It has many of the same functionalities with faster load times and better accessibility. HTML5 will help Flash as well: with the new caching methods you can now even run Flash apps offline.” Although all three Web developers I interviewed would agree that Flash is still required for more sophisticated applications, Kellum seems to have put his finger on why HTML 5 may nonetheless dominate.  In his view, much of the Web development out there has little need for high-end capabilities: “Most people want to add a little punch to a navigation bar or some video and now you can get the biggest bang for your buck with HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript.” I’ve already mentioned that Google’s ongoing I/O conference, at the Moscone West center in San Francisco, is driving the HTML 5 news cycle, big time.  And Google made many announcements of their own, including the open sourcing of their VP8 video codec, new enterprise-oriented capabilities for its App Engine cloud offering, and the creation of the Chrome Web Store, which the company says will make it easier to find and “install” Web applications, in a fashion similar to  the way users procure native apps on various mobile platforms. HTML 5 looks to be disruptive, especially to the media world.  And even if the technology ends up disappointing, the chatter around it alone is causing big changes in the technology world.  If the richness it promises delivers, then magazine publishers and non-text digital advertisers may indeed have a platform for creating compelling content that loads quickly, is standards-based and will render identically in (the newest versions of) all major Web browsers.  Can this development in the digital arena save the titans of the print world?  I can’t predict, but it’s going to be fun to watch, and the competitive innovation from all players in both industries will likely be immense.

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• Announcing Windows Azure Mobile Services

  - by ScottGu

  I’m excited to announce a new capability we are adding to Windows Azure today: Windows Azure Mobile Services Windows Azure Mobile Services makes it incredibly easy to connect a scalable cloud backend to your client and mobile applications.  It allows you to easily store structured data in the cloud that can span both devices and users, integrate it with user authentication, as well as send out updates to clients via push notifications. Today’s release enables you to add these capabilities to any Windows 8 app in literally minutes, and provides a super productive way for you to quickly build out your app ideas.  We’ll also be adding support to enable these same scenarios for Windows Phone, iOS, and Android devices soon. Read this getting started tutorial to walkthrough how you can build (in less than 5 minutes) a simple Windows 8 “Todo List” app that is cloud enabled using Windows Azure Mobile Services.  Or watch this video of me showing how to do it step by step. Getting Started If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign up for a no-obligation Free Trial.  Once you are signed-up, click the “preview features” section under the “account” tab of the www.windowsazure.com website and enable your account to support the “Mobile Services” preview.   Instructions on how to enable this can be found here. Once you have the mobile services preview enabled, log into the Windows Azure Portal, click the “New” button and choose the new “Mobile Services” icon to create your first mobile backend.  Once created, you’ll see a quick-start page like below with instructions on how to connect your mobile service to an existing Windows 8 client app you have already started working on, or how to create and connect a brand-new Windows 8 client app with it: Read this getting started tutorial to walkthrough how you can build (in less than 5 minutes) a simple Windows 8 “Todo List” app  that stores data in Windows Azure. Storing Data in the Cloud Storing data in the cloud with Windows Azure Mobile Services is incredibly easy.  When you create a Windows Azure Mobile Service, we automatically associate it with a SQL Database inside Windows Azure.  The Windows Azure Mobile Service backend then provides built-in support for enabling remote apps to securely store and retrieve data from it (using secure REST end-points utilizing a JSON-based ODATA format) – without you having to write or deploy any custom server code.  Built-in management support is provided within the Windows Azure portal for creating new tables, browsing data, setting indexes, and controlling access permissions. This makes it incredibly easy to connect client applications to the cloud, and enables client developers who don’t have a server-code background to be productive from the very beginning.  They can instead focus on building the client app experience, and leverage Windows Azure Mobile Services to provide the cloud backend services they require.  Below is an example of client-side Windows 8 C#/XAML code that could be used to query data from a Windows Azure Mobile Service.  Client-side C# developers can write queries like this using LINQ and strongly typed POCO objects, which are then translated into HTTP REST queries that run against a Windows Azure Mobile Service.   Developers don’t have to write or deploy any custom server-side code in order to enable client-side code below to execute and asynchronously populate their client UI: Because Mobile Services is part of Windows Azure, developers can later choose to augment or extend their initial solution and add custom server functionality and more advanced logic if they want.  This provides maximum flexibility, and enables developers to grow and extend their solutions to meet any needs. User Authentication and Push Notifications Windows Azure Mobile Services also make it incredibly easy to integrate user authentication/authorization and push notifications within your applications.  You can use these capabilities to enable authentication and fine grain access control permissions to the data you store in the cloud, as well as to trigger push notifications to users/devices when the data changes.  Windows Azure Mobile Services supports the concept of “server scripts” (small chunks of server-side script that executes in response to actions) that make it really easy to enable these scenarios. Below are some tutorials that walkthrough common authentication/authorization/push scenarios you can do with Windows Azure Mobile Services and Windows 8 apps: Enabling User Authentication Authorizing Users  Get Started with Push Notifications Push Notifications to multiple Users Manage and Monitor your Mobile Service Just like with every other service in Windows Azure, you can monitor usage and metrics of your mobile service backend using the “Dashboard” tab within the Windows Azure Portal. The dashboard tab provides a built-in monitoring view of the API calls, Bandwidth, and server CPU cycles of your Windows Azure Mobile Service.   You can also use the “Logs” tab within the portal to review error messages.  This makes it easy to monitor and track how your application is doing. Scale Up as Your Business Grows Windows Azure Mobile Services now allows every Windows Azure customer to create and run up to 10 Mobile Services in a free, shared/multi-tenant hosting environment (where your mobile backend will be one of multiple apps running on a shared set of server resources).  This provides an easy way to get started on projects at no cost beyond the database you connect your Windows Azure Mobile Service to (note: each Windows Azure free trial account also includes a 1GB SQL Database that you can use with any number of apps or Windows Azure Mobile Services). If your client application becomes popular, you can click the “Scale” tab of your Mobile Service and switch from “Shared” to “Reserved” mode.  Doing so allows you to isolate your apps so that you are the only customer within a virtual machine.  This allows you to elastically scale the amount of resources your apps use – allowing you to scale-up (or scale-down) your capacity as your traffic grows: With Windows Azure you pay for compute capacity on a per-hour basis – which allows you to scale up and down your resources to match only what you need.  This enables a super flexible model that is ideal for new mobile app scenarios, as well as startups who are just getting going.  Summary I’ve only scratched the surface of what you can do with Windows Azure Mobile Services – there are a lot more features to explore.  With Windows Azure Mobile Services you’ll be able to build mobile app experiences faster than ever, and enable even better user experiences – by connecting your client apps to the cloud. Visit the Windows Azure Mobile Services development center to learn more, and build your first Windows 8 app connected with Windows Azure today.  And read this getting started tutorial to walkthrough how you can build (in less than 5 minutes) a simple Windows 8 “Todo List” app that is cloud enabled using Windows Azure Mobile Services. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• On StringComparison Values

  - by Jesse

  When you use the .NET Framework’s String.Equals and String.Compare methods do you use an overloStringComparison enumeration value? If not, you should be because the value provided for that StringComparison argument can have a big impact on the results of your string comparison. The StringComparison enumeration defines values that fall into three different major categories: Culture-sensitive comparison using a specific culture, defaulted to the Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture value (StringComparison.CurrentCulture and StringComparison.CurrentCutlureIgnoreCase) Invariant culture comparison (StringComparison.InvariantCulture and StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase) Ordinal (byte-by-byte) comparison of  (StringComparison.Ordinal and StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase) There is a lot of great material available that detail the technical ins and outs of these different string comparison approaches. If you’re at all interested in the topic these two MSDN articles are worth a read: Best Practices For Using Strings in the .NET Framework: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd465121.aspx How To Compare Strings: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc165449.aspx Those articles cover the technical details of string comparison well enough that I’m not going to reiterate them here other than to say that the upshot is that you typically want to use the culture-sensitive comparison whenever you’re comparing strings that were entered by or will be displayed to users and the ordinal comparison in nearly all other cases. So where does that leave the invariant culture comparisons? The “Best Practices For Using Strings in the .NET Framework” article has the following to say: “On balance, the invariant culture has very few properties that make it useful for comparison. It does comparison in a linguistically relevant manner, which prevents it from guaranteeing full symbolic equivalence, but it is not the choice for display in any culture. One of the few reasons to use StringComparison.InvariantCulture for comparison is to persist ordered data for a cross-culturally identical display. For example, if a large data file that contains a list of sorted identifiers for display accompanies an application, adding to this list would require an insertion with invariant-style sorting.” I don’t know about you, but I feel like that paragraph is a bit lacking. Are there really any “real world” reasons to use the invariant culture comparison? I think the answer to this question is, “yes”, but in order to understand why we should first think about what the invariant culture comparison really does. The invariant culture comparison is really just a culture-sensitive comparison using a special invariant culture (Michael Kaplan has a great post on the history of the invariant culture on his blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2004/12/29/344136.aspx). This means that the invariant culture comparison will apply the linguistic customs defined by the invariant culture which are guaranteed not to differ between different machines or execution contexts. This sort of consistently does prove useful if you needed to maintain a list of strings that are sorted in a meaningful and consistent way regardless of the user viewing them or the machine on which they are being viewed. Example: Prototype Names Let’s say that you work for a large multi-national toy company with branch offices in 10 different countries. Each year the company would work on 15-25 new toy prototypes each of which is assigned a “code name” while it is under development. Coming up with fun new code names is a big part of the company culture that everyone really enjoys, so to be fair the CEO of the company spent a lot of time coming up with a prototype naming scheme that would be fun for everyone to participate in, fair to all of the different branch locations, and accessible to all members of the organization regardless of the country they were from and the language that they spoke. Each new prototype will get a code name that begins with a letter following the previously created name using the alphabetical order of the Latin/Roman alphabet. Each new year prototype names would start back at “A”. The country that leads the prototype development effort gets to choose the name in their native language. (An appropriate Romanization system will be used for countries where the primary language is not written in the Latin/Roman alphabet. For example, the Pinyin system could be used for Chinese). To avoid repeating names, a list of all current and past prototype names will be maintained on each branch location’s company intranet site. Assuming that maintaining a single pre-sorted list is not feasible among all of the highly distributed intranet implementations, what string comparison method would you use to sort each year’s list of prototype names so that the list is both meaningful and consistent regardless of the country within which the list is being viewed? Sorting the list with a culture-sensitive comparison using the default configured culture on each country’s intranet server the list would probably work most of the time, but subtle differences between cultures could mean that two different people would see a list that was sorted slightly differently. The CEO wants the prototype names to be a unifying aspect of company culture and is adamant that everyone see the the same list sorted in the same order and there’s no way to guarantee a consistent sort across different cultures using the culture-sensitive string comparison rules. The culture-sensitive sort would produce a meaningful list for the specific user viewing it, but it wouldn’t always be consistent between different users. Sorting with the ordinal comparison would certainly be consistent regardless of the user viewing it, but would it be meaningful? Let’s say that the current year’s prototype name list looks like this: Antílope (Spanish) Babouin (French) Cahoun (Czech) Diamond (English) Flosse (German) If you were to sort this list using ordinal rules you’d end up with: Antílope Babouin Diamond Flosse Cahoun This sort is no good because the entry for “C” appears the bottom of the list after “F”. This is because the Czech entry for the letter “C” makes use of a diacritic (accent mark). The ordinal string comparison does a byte-by-byte comparison of the code points that make up each character in the string and the code point for the “C” with the diacritic mark is higher than any letter without a diacritic mark, which pushes that entry to the bottom of the sorted list. The CEO wants each country to be able to create prototype names in their native language, which means we need to allow for names that might begin with letters that have diacritics, so ordinal sorting kills the meaningfulness of the list. As it turns out, this situation is actually well-suited for the invariant culture comparison. The invariant culture accounts for linguistically relevant factors like the use of diacritics but will provide a consistent sort across all machines that perform the sort. Now that we’ve walked through this example, the following line from the “Best Practices For Using Strings in the .NET Framework” makes a lot more sense: One of the few reasons to use StringComparison.InvariantCulture for comparison is to persist ordered data for a cross-culturally identical display That line describes the prototype name example perfectly: we need a way to persist ordered data for a cross-culturally identical display. While this example is 100% made-up, I think it illustrates that there are indeed real-world situations where the invariant culture comparison is useful.

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• VLC 2.0.3 on Lubuntu 12.04: No audio?

  - by drezabek

  I am on Lubuntu 12.04, and I have installed VLC media player version 2.0.3. When I try and play an audio file, it appears to load fine, and the media position bar displays the progress, and it says it is playing, but I can't here any thing through my speakers. I can hear game audio, web audio, and audio from SMPlayer just fine, but with VLC, I can't here anything. Below is the "Messages" output with the verbosity option set to "2 (debug)" main debug: processing request item: The Bottom, node: Playlist, skip: 0 main debug: resyncing on The Bottom main debug: The Bottom is at 0 main debug: starting playback of the new playlist item main debug: resyncing on The Bottom main debug: The Bottom is at 0 main debug: creating new input thread main debug: Creating an input for 'The Bottom' main debug: TIMER input launching for 'Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack - 01 The Bottom.flac' : 23.706 ms - Total 23.706 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 23.706 ms) main debug: using timeshift granularity of 50 MiB, in path '/tmp' main debug: `file:///home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack%20-%2001%20The%20Bottom.flac' gives access `file' demux `' path `/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack%20-%2001%20The%20Bottom.flac' main debug: creating demux: access='file' demux='' location='/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack%20-%2001%20The%20Bottom.flac' file='/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack - 01 The Bottom.flac' main debug: looking for access_demux module: 3 candidates main debug: no access_demux module matching "file" could be loaded main debug: TIMER module_need() : 2.332 ms - Total 2.332 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 2.332 ms) main debug: creating access 'file' location='/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack%20-%2001%20The%20Bottom.flac', path='/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack - 01 The Bottom.flac' main debug: looking for access module: 2 candidates filesystem debug: opening file `/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack - 01 The Bottom.flac' main debug: using access module "filesystem" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.762 ms - Total 0.762 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.762 ms) main debug: Using stream method for AStream* main debug: starting pre-buffering main debug: received first data after 0 ms main debug: pre-buffering done 1024 bytes in 0s - 43478 KiB/s main debug: looking for stream_filter module: 7 candidates main debug: no stream_filter module matching "any" could be loaded main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.236 ms - Total 0.236 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.236 ms) main debug: looking for stream_filter module: 1 candidate main debug: using stream_filter module "stream_filter_record" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.156 ms - Total 0.156 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.156 ms) main debug: creating demux: access='file' demux='' location='/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack%20-%2001%20The%20Bottom.flac' file='/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack - 01 The Bottom.flac' main debug: looking for demux module: 54 candidates flacsys debug: Picture type=3 mime=image/png description='' file length=679371 qt4 debug: IM: Setting an input main debug: looking for packetizer module: 21 candidates main debug: using packetizer module "packetizer_flac" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.211 ms - Total 0.211 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.211 ms) main debug: using demux module "flacsys" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 4.023 ms - Total 4.023 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 4.023 ms) main debug: looking for a subtitle file in /home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack/ main debug: looking for meta reader module: 2 candidates main debug: using meta reader module "taglib" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 5.245 ms - Total 5.245 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 5.245 ms) main debug: removing module "taglib" main debug: `file:///home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack%20-%2001%20The%20Bottom.flac' successfully opened main debug: selecting program id=0 main debug: looking for decoder module: 30 candidates main debug: using decoder module "flac" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.442 ms - Total 0.442 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.442 ms) main debug: Buffering 0% flac debug: decode STREAMINFO flac debug: channels:2 samplerate:44100 bitspersamples:16 flac debug: STREAMINFO decoded main debug: Buffering 30% main debug: recycling audio output main debug: looking for audio output module: 3 candidates main debug: Buffering 61% pulse debug: using stereo channel map pulse debug: using library version 1.1.0 pulse debug: (compiled with version 1.1.0, protocol 26) main debug: Buffering 92% main debug: Stream buffering done (371 ms in 2 ms) pulse debug: connected locally to unix:/home/doug/.pulse/dce22254e867f905188a2ce200000003-runtime/native as client #14 pulse debug: using protocol 26, server protocol 26 pulse debug: using buffer metrics: maxlength=4194304, tlength=9880, prebuf=0, minreq=3528 pulse debug: connected to sink 0: alsa_output.pci-0000_00_14.2.analog-stereo main debug: using audio output module "pulse" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 4.571 ms - Total 4.571 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 4.571 ms) main debug: output 's16l' 44100 Hz Stereo frame=1 samples/4 bytes main debug: mixer 'f32l' 44100 Hz Stereo frame=1 samples/8 bytes main debug: filter(s) 'f32l'->'s16l' 44100 Hz->44100 Hz Stereo->Stereo main debug: looking for audio filter module: 14 candidates audio_format debug: f32l->s16l, bits per sample: 32->16 main debug: using audio filter module "audio_format" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.187 ms - Total 0.187 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.187 ms) main debug: conversion pipeline completed main debug: looking for audio mixer module: 2 candidates main debug: using audio mixer module "float32_mixer" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.125 ms - Total 0.125 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.125 ms) main debug: input 's16l' 44100 Hz Stereo frame=1 samples/4 bytes main debug: looking for audio filter module: 1 candidate scaletempo debug: format: 44100 rate, 2 nch, 4 bps, fl32 scaletempo debug: params: 30 stride, 0.200 overlap, 14 search scaletempo debug: 1.000 scale, 1323.000 stride_in, 1323 stride_out, 1059 standing, 264 overlap, 617 search, 2204 queue, fl32 mode main debug: using audio filter module "scaletempo" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.233 ms - Total 0.233 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.233 ms) main debug: filter(s) 's16l'->'f32l' 44100 Hz->44100 Hz Stereo->Stereo pulse debug: listing sink alsa_output.pci-0000_00_14.2.analog-stereo (0): Built-in Audio Analog Stereo main debug: looking for audio filter module: 14 candidates audio_format debug: s16l->f32l, bits per sample: 16->32 main debug: using audio filter module "audio_format" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.147 ms - Total 0.147 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.147 ms) main debug: conversion pipeline completed pulse debug: base volume: 65536 main debug: looking for audio filter module: 1 candidate equalizer debug: equalizer loaded for 44100 Hz with 10 bands 2 pass equalizer debug: 60 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.003013 beta:0.993973 gamma:1.993901 equalizer debug: 170 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.008490 beta:0.983019 gamma:1.982437 equalizer debug: 310 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.015374 beta:0.969252 gamma:1.967331 equalizer debug: 600 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.029328 beta:0.941343 gamma:1.934254 equalizer debug: 1000 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.047918 beta:0.904163 gamma:1.884869 equalizer debug: 3000 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.130408 beta:0.739184 gamma:1.582718 equalizer debug: 6000 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.226555 beta:0.546889 gamma:1.015267 equalizer debug: 12000 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.344937 beta:0.310127 gamma:-0.181410 equalizer debug: 14000 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.366438 beta:0.267123 gamma:-0.521151 equalizer debug: 16000 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.379009 beta:0.241981 gamma:-0.808451 main debug: using audio filter module "equalizer" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.353 ms - Total 0.353 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.353 ms) main debug: filter(s) 'f32l'->'f32l' 44100 Hz->44100 Hz Stereo->Stereo main debug: conversion pipeline completed main debug: looking for visualization2 module: 1 candidate main debug: looking for text renderer module: 2 candidates freetype debug: Building font databases. freetype debug: Took 0 microseconds freetype debug: Using Serif Bold as font from file /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSans.ttf freetype debug: using fontsize: 2 main debug: using text renderer module "freetype" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 3.278 ms - Total 3.278 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 3.278 ms) main debug: looking for video filter2 module: 18 candidates swscale debug: 32x32 chroma: YUVA -> 16x16 chroma: RGBA with scaling using Bicubic (good quality) main debug: using video filter2 module "swscale" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 1.037 ms - Total 1.037 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 1.037 ms) main debug: looking for video filter2 module: 18 candidates yuvp debug: YUVP to YUVA converter main debug: using video filter2 module "yuvp" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.156 ms - Total 0.156 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.156 ms) main debug: Deinterlacing available main debug: deinterlace 0, mode blend, is_needed 0 main debug: Opening vout display wrapper main debug: looking for vout display module: 6 candidates main debug: looking for vout window xid module: 4 candidates qt4 debug: requesting video... qt4 debug: Video was requested 0, 0 main debug: using vout window xid module "qt4" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 61.671 ms - Total 61.671 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 61.671 ms) main debug: looking for inhibit module: 2 candidates main debug: using inhibit module "xdg_screensaver" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.336 ms - Total 0.336 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.336 ms) xdg_screensaver debug: started xdg-screensaver (PID = 6682) xcb_xv debug: connected to X11.0 server xcb_xv debug: vendor : The X.Org Foundation xcb_xv debug: version: 11103000 xcb_xv debug: using screen 0x15a xcb_xv debug: using XVideo extension v2.2 xcb_xv debug: using adaptor NV17 Video Texture xcb_xv debug: using port 310 xcb_xv debug: using image format 0x30323449 xcb_xv debug: using X11 visual ID 0x21 (depth: 24) xcb_xv debug: using X11 window 0x03400000 xcb_xv debug: using X11 graphic context 0x03400002 main debug: VoutDisplayEvent 'fullscreen' 0 main debug: VoutDisplayEvent 'resize' 800x500 window main debug: using vout display module "xcb_xv" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 69.890 ms - Total 69.890 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 69.890 ms) main debug: original format sz 800x500, of (0,0), vsz 800x500, 4cc I420, sar 1:1, msk r0x0 g0x0 b0x0 main debug: removing module "freetype" main debug: looking for text renderer module: 2 candidates freetype debug: Building font databases. freetype debug: Took 0 microseconds freetype debug: Using Serif Bold as font from file /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSans.ttf freetype debug: using fontsize: 2 main debug: using text renderer module "freetype" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 4.552 ms - Total 4.552 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 4.552 ms) main debug: using visualization2 module "visual" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 84.104 ms - Total 84.104 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 84.104 ms) main debug: filter(s) 'f32l'->'f32l' 44100 Hz->44100 Hz Stereo->Stereo main debug: conversion pipeline completed main debug: filter(s) 'f32l'->'f32l' 44100 Hz->44100 Hz Stereo->Stereo main debug: conversion pipeline completed main debug: filter(s) 'f32l'->'f32l' 48510 Hz->44100 Hz Stereo->Stereo main debug: looking for audio filter module: 14 candidates main debug: using audio filter module "samplerate" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.375 ms - Total 0.375 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.375 ms) main debug: conversion pipeline completed main debug: End of audio preroll main debug: Decoder buffering done in 91 ms main warning: PTS is out of range (-9269), dropping buffer pulse debug: deferring start (190703 us) main debug: looking for video blending module: 1 candidate main debug: using video blending module "blend" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.275 ms - Total 0.275 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.275 ms) main debug: Detected interlaced video main debug: deinterlace 0, mode blend, is_needed 1 xcb_xv debug: display is visible pulse debug: starting deferred pulse warning: too late by 93760 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44186 Hz pulse debug: started pulse warning: too late by 94474 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44229 Hz pulse warning: too late by 93532 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44272 Hz pulse warning: too late by 92829 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44315 Hz pulse warning: too late by 92132 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44358 Hz xcb_xv debug: display is visible pulse warning: too late by 91534 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44401 Hz xcb_xv debug: display is visible pulse warning: too late by 89482 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44440 Hz xcb_xv debug: display is visible xcb_xv debug: display is visible pulse warning: too late by 87529 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44479 Hz pulse warning: too late by 84577 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44504 Hz main debug: auto hiding mouse cursor pulse warning: too late by 78562 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44492 Hz pulse warning: too late by 68015 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44422 Hz xcb_xv debug: display is visible xcb_xv debug: display is visible xcb_xv debug: display is visible xcb_xv debug: display is visible main debug: auto hiding mouse cursor pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44336 Hz xcb_xv debug: display is visible xcb_xv debug: display is visible xcb_xv debug: display is visible main debug: auto hiding mouse cursor I have had issues with VLC in the past- the audio quality was extremely crackly, as if the headphone jack was plugged in only half way, and the sounds were extremely sharp and caused my speakers to make a ringing/vibrating noise... It would eventually start working after I messed around with the audio settings, but it happened every restart. I eventually switched to SMPlayer, but now I need some of the features that VLC offers, but I still can't use VLC. At this point, the audio can not be heard at all, and the method I used before, messing around with the audio settings, isn't getting me anywhere. (note, I reposted this on VideoLan's forums, link is here: http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=104726) Please let me know if you need more information, or are confused by something I posted! Thanks!

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• General monitoring for SQL Server Analysis Services using Performance Monitor

  - by Testas

  A recent customer engagement required a setup of a monitoring solution for SSAS, due to the time restrictions placed upon this, native Windows Performance Monitor (Perfmon) and SQL Server Profiler Monitoring Tools was used as using a third party tool would have meant the customer providing an additional monitoring server that was not available.I wanted to outline the performance monitoring counters that was used to monitor the system on which SSAS was running. Due to the slow query performance that was occurring during certain scenarios, perfmon was used to establish if any pressure was being placed on the Disk, CPU or Memory subsystem when concurrent connections access the same query, and Profiler to pinpoint how the query was being managed within SSAS, profiler I will leave for another blogThis guide is not designed to provide a definitive list of what should be used when monitoring SSAS, different situations may require the addition or removal of counters as presented by the situation. However I hope that it serves as a good basis for starting your monitoring of SSAS. I would also like to acknowledge Chris Webb’s awesome chapters from “Expert Cube Development” that also helped shape my monitoring strategy:http://cwebbbi.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!7B84B0F2C239489A!6657.entrySimulating ConnectionsTo simulate the additional connections to the SSAS server whilst monitoring, I used ascmd to simulate multiple connections to the typical and worse performing queries that were identified by the customer. A similar sript can be downloaded from codeplex at http://www.codeplex.com/SQLSrvAnalysisSrvcs.     File name: ASCMD_StressTestingScripts.zip. Performance MonitorWithin performance monitor,  a counter log was created that contained the list of counters below. The important point to note when running the counter log is that the RUN AS property within the counter log properties should be changed to an account that has rights to the SSAS instance when monitoring MSAS counters. Failure to do so means that the counter log runs under the system account, no errors or warning are given while running the counter log, and it is not until you need to view the MSAS counters that they will not be displayed if run under the default account that has no right to SSAS. If your connection simulation takes hours, this could prove quite frustrating if not done beforehand JThe counters used……  Object Counter Instance Justification System Processor Queue legnth N/A Indicates how many threads are waiting for execution against the processor. If this counter is consistently higher than around 5 when processor utilization approaches 100%, then this is a good indication that there is more work (active threads) available (ready for execution) than the machine's processors are able to handle. System Context Switches/sec N/A Measures how frequently the processor has to switch from user- to kernel-mode to handle a request from a thread running in user mode. The heavier the workload running on your machine, the higher this counter will generally be, but over long term the value of this counter should remain fairly constant. If this counter suddenly starts increasing however, it may be an indicating of a malfunctioning device, especially if the Processor\Interrupts/sec\(_Total) counter on your machine shows a similar unexplained increase Process % Processor Time sqlservr Definately should be used if Processor\% Processor Time\(_Total) is maxing at 100% to assess the effect of the SQL Server process on the processor Process % Processor Time msmdsrv Definately should be used if Processor\% Processor Time\(_Total) is maxing at 100% to assess the effect of the SQL Server process on the processor Process Working Set sqlservr If the Memory\Available bytes counter is decreaing this counter can be run to indicate if the process is consuming larger and larger amounts of RAM. Process(instance)\Working Set measures the size of the working set for each process, which indicates the number of allocated pages the process can address without generating a page fault. Process Working Set msmdsrv If the Memory\Available bytes counter is decreaing this counter can be run to indicate if the process is consuming larger and larger amounts of RAM. Process(instance)\Working Set measures the size of the working set for each process, which indicates the number of allocated pages the process can address without generating a page fault. Processor % Processor Time _Total and individual cores measures the total utilization of your processor by all running processes. If multi-proc then be mindful only an average is provided Processor % Privileged Time _Total To see how the OS is handling basic IO requests. If kernel mode utilization is high, your machine is likely underpowered as it's too busy handling basic OS housekeeping functions to be able to effectively run other applications. Processor % User Time _Total To see how the applications is interacting from a processor perspective, a high percentage utilisation determine that the server is dealing with too many apps and may require increasing thje hardware or scaling out Processor Interrupts/sec _Total  The average rate, in incidents per second, at which the processor received and serviced hardware interrupts. Shoulr be consistant over time but a sudden unexplained increase could indicate a device malfunction which can be confirmed using the System\Context Switches/sec counter Memory Pages/sec N/A Indicates the rate at which pages are read from or written to disk to resolve hard page faults. This counter is a primary indicator of the kinds of faults that cause system-wide delays, this is the primary counter to watch for indication of possible insufficient RAM to meet your server's needs. A good idea here is to configure a perfmon alert that triggers when the number of pages per second exceeds 50 per paging disk on your system. May also want to see the configuration of the page file on the Server Memory Available Mbytes N/A is the amount of physical memory, in bytes, available to processes running on the computer. if this counter is greater than 10% of the actual RAM in your machine then you probably have more than enough RAM. monitor it regularly to see if any downward trend develops, and set an alert to trigger if it drops below 2% of the installed RAM. Physical Disk Disk Transfers/sec for each physical disk If it goes above 10 disk I/Os per second then you've got poor response time for your disk. Physical Disk Idle Time _total If Disk Transfers/sec is above  25 disk I/Os per second use this counter. which measures the percent time that your hard disk is idle during the measurement interval, and if you see this counter fall below 20% then you've likely got read/write requests queuing up for your disk which is unable to service these requests in a timely fashion. Physical Disk Disk queue legnth For the OLAP and SQL physical disk A value that is consistently less than 2 means that the disk system is handling the IO requests against the physical disk Network Interface Bytes Total/sec For the NIC Should be monitored over a period of time to see if there is anb increase/decrease in network utilisation Network Interface Current Bandwidth For the NIC is an estimate of the current bandwidth of the network interface in bits per second (BPS). MSAS 2005: Memory Memory Limit High KB N/A Shows (as a percentage) the high memory limit configured for SSAS in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSAS10.MSSQLSERVER\OLAP\Config\msmdsrv.ini MSAS 2005: Memory Memory Limit Low KB N/A Shows (as a percentage) the low memory limit configured for SSAS in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSAS10.MSSQLSERVER\OLAP\Config\msmdsrv.ini MSAS 2005: Memory Memory Usage KB N/A Displays the memory usage of the server process. MSAS 2005: Memory File Store KB N/A Displays the amount of memory that is reserved for the Cache. Note if total memory limit in the msmdsrv.ini is set to 0, no memory is reserved for the cache MSAS 2005: Storage Engine Query Queries from Cache Direct / sec N/A Displays the rate of queries answered from the cache directly MSAS 2005: Storage Engine Query Queries from Cache Filtered / Sec N/A Displays the Rate of queries answered by filtering existing cache entry. MSAS 2005: Storage Engine Query Queries from File / Sec N/A Displays the Rate of queries answered from files. MSAS 2005: Storage Engine Query Average time /query N/A Displays the average time of a query MSAS 2005: Connection Current connections N/A Displays the number of connections against the SSAS instance MSAS 2005: Connection Requests / sec N/A Displays the rate of query requests per second MSAS 2005: Locks Current Lock Waits N/A Displays thhe number of connections waiting on a lock MSAS 2005: Threads Query Pool job queue Length N/A The number of queries in the job queue MSAS 2005:Proc Aggregations Temp file bytes written/sec N/A Shows the number of bytes of data processed in a temporary file MSAS 2005:Proc Aggregations Temp file rows written/sec N/A Shows the number of bytes of data processed in a temporary file 

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• Parallel LINQ - PLINQ

  - by nmarun

  Turns out now with .net 4.0 we can run a query like a multi-threaded application. Say you want to query a collection of objects and return only those that meet certain conditions. Until now, we basically had one ‘control’ that iterated over all the objects in the collection, checked the condition on each object and returned if it passed. We obviously agree that if we can ‘break’ this task into smaller ones, assign each task to a different ‘control’ and ask all the controls to do their job - in-parallel, the time taken the finish the entire task will be much lower. Welcome to PLINQ. Let’s take some examples. I have the following method that uses our good ol’ LINQ. 1: private static void Linq(int lowerLimit, int upperLimit) 2: { 3: // populate an array with int values from lowerLimit to the upperLimit 4: var source = Enumerable.Range(lowerLimit, upperLimit); 5:  6: // Start a timer 7: Stopwatch stopwatch = new Stopwatch(); 8: stopwatch.Start(); 9:  10: // set the expectation => build the expression tree 11: var evenNumbers =   from num in source 12: where IsDivisibleBy(num, 2) 13: select num; 14: 15: // iterate over and print the returned items 16: foreach (var number in evenNumbers) 17: { 18: Console.WriteLine(string.Format("** {0}", number)); 19: } 20:  21: stopwatch.Stop(); 22:  23: // check the metrics 24: Console.WriteLine(String.Format("Elapsed {0}ms", stopwatch.ElapsedMilliseconds)); 25: } I’ve added comments for the major steps, but the only thing I want to talk about here is the IsDivisibleBy() method. I know I could have just included the logic directly in the where clause. I called a method to add ‘delay’ to the execution of the query - to simulate a loooooooooong operation (will be easier to compare the results). 1: private static bool IsDivisibleBy(int number, int divisor) 2: { 3: // iterate over some database query 4: // to add time to the execution of this method; 5: // the TableB has around 10 records 6: for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) 7: { 8: DataClasses1DataContext dataContext = new DataClasses1DataContext(); 9: var query = from b in dataContext.TableBs select b; 10: 11: foreach (var row in query) 12: { 13: // Do NOTHING (wish my job was like this) 14: } 15: } 16:  17: return number % divisor == 0; 18: } Now, let’s look at how to modify this to PLINQ. 1: private static void Plinq(int lowerLimit, int upperLimit) 2: { 3: // populate an array with int values from lowerLimit to the upperLimit 4: var source = Enumerable.Range(lowerLimit, upperLimit); 5:  6: // Start a timer 7: Stopwatch stopwatch = new Stopwatch(); 8: stopwatch.Start(); 9:  10: // set the expectation => build the expression tree 11: var evenNumbers = from num in source.AsParallel() 12: where IsDivisibleBy(num, 2) 13: select num; 14:  15: // iterate over and print the returned items 16: foreach (var number in evenNumbers) 17: { 18: Console.WriteLine(string.Format("** {0}", number)); 19: } 20:  21: stopwatch.Stop(); 22:  23: // check the metrics 24: Console.WriteLine(String.Format("Elapsed {0}ms", stopwatch.ElapsedMilliseconds)); 25: } That’s it, this is now in PLINQ format. Oh and if you haven’t found the difference, look line 11 a little more closely. You’ll see an extension method ‘AsParallel()’ added to the ‘source’ variable. Couldn’t be more simpler right? So this is going to improve the performance for us. Let’s test it. So in my Main method of the Console application that I’m working on, I make a call to both. 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: // set lower and upper limits 4: int lowerLimit = 1; 5: int upperLimit = 20; 6: // call the methods 7: Console.WriteLine("Calling Linq() method"); 8: Linq(lowerLimit, upperLimit); 9: 10: Console.WriteLine(); 11: Console.WriteLine("Calling Plinq() method"); 12: Plinq(lowerLimit, upperLimit); 13:  14: Console.ReadLine(); // just so I get enough time to read the output 15: } YMMV, but here are the results that I got:    It’s quite obvious from the above results that the Plinq() method is taking considerably less time than the Linq() version. I’m sure you’ve already noticed that the output of the Plinq() method is not in order. That’s because, each of the ‘control’s we sent to fetch the results, reported with values as and when they obtained them. This is something about parallel LINQ that one needs to remember – the collection cannot be guaranteed to be undisturbed. This could be counted as a negative about PLINQ (emphasize ‘could’). Nevertheless, if we want the collection to be sorted, we can use a SortedSet (.net 4.0) or build our own custom ‘sorter’. Either way we go, there’s a good chance we’ll end up with a better performance using PLINQ. And there’s another negative of PLINQ (depending on how you see it). This is regarding the CPU cycles. See the usage for Linq() method (used ResourceMonitor): I have dual CPU’s and see the height of the peak in the bottom two blocks and now compare to what happens when I run the Plinq() method. The difference is obvious. Higher usage, but for a shorter duration (width of the peak). Both these points make sense in both cases. Linq() runs for a longer time, but uses less resources whereas Plinq() runs for a shorter time and consumes more resources. Even after knowing all these, I’m still inclined towards PLINQ. PLINQ rocks! (no hard feelings LINQ)

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• Oracle Expands Sun Blade Portfolio for Cloud and Highly Virtualized Environments

  - by Ferhat Hatay

  Oracle announced the expansion of Sun Blade Portfolio for cloud and highly virtualized environments that deliver powerful performance and simplified management as tightly integrated systems.  Along with the SPARC T3-1B blade server, Oracle VM blade cluster reference configuration and Oracle's optimized solution for Oracle WebLogic Suite, Oracle introduced the dual-node Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module with some impressive benchmark results.   Benchmarks on the Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module demonstrate the outstanding performance characteristics critical for running varied commercial applications used in cloud and highly virtualized environments.  These include best-in-class SPEC CPU2006 results with the Intel Xeon processor 5600 series, six Fluent world records and 1.8 times the price-performance of the IBM Power 755 running NAMD, a prominent bio-informatics workload.   Benchmarks for Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module  SPEC CPU2006  The Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module demonstrated best in class SPECint_rate2006 results for all published results using the Intel Xeon processor 5600 series, with a result of 679.  This result is 97% better than the HP BL460c G7 blade, 80% better than the IBM HS22V blade, and 79% better than the Dell M710 blade.  This result demonstrates the density advantage of the new Oracle's server module for space-constrained data centers.     Sun Blade X6275M2 (2 Nodes, Intel Xeon X5670 2.93GHz) - 679 SPECint_rate2006; HP ProLiant BL460c G7 (2.93 GHz, Intel Xeon X5670) - 347 SPECint_rate2006; IBM BladeCenter HS22V (Intel Xeon X5680)  - 377 SPECint_rate2006; Dell PowerEdge M710 (Intel Xeon X5680, 3.33 GHz) - 380 SPECint_rate2006.  SPEC, SPECint, SPECfp reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Results from www.spec.org as of 11/24/2010 and this report.    For more specifics about these results, please go to see http://blogs.sun.com/BestPerf   Fluent The Sun Fire X6275 M2 server module produced world-record results on each of the six standard cases in the current "FLUENT 12" benchmark test suite at 8-, 12-, 24-, 32-, 64- and 96-core configurations. These results beat the most recent QLogic score with IBM DX 360 M series platforms and QLogic "Truescale" interconnects.  Results on sedan_4m test case on the Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module are 23% better than the HP C7000 system, and 20% better than the IBM DX 360 M2; Dell has not posted a result for this test case.  Results can be found at the FLUENT website.   ANSYS's FLUENT software solves fluid flow problems, and is based on a numerical technique called computational fluid dynamics (CFD), which is used in the automotive, aerospace, and consumer products industries. The FLUENT 12 benchmark test suite consists of seven models that are well suited for multi-node clustered environments and representative of modern engineering CFD clusters. Vendors benchmark their systems with the principal objective of providing comparative performance information for FLUENT software that, among other things, depends on compilers, optimization, interconnect, and the performance characteristics of the hardware.   FLUENT application performance is representative of other commercial applications that require memory and CPU resources to be available in a scalable cluster-ready format.  FLUENT benchmark has six conventional test cases (eddy_417k, turbo_500k, aircraft_2m, sedan_4m, truck_14m, truck_poly_14m) at various core counts.   All information on the FLUENT website (http://www.fluent.com) is Copyrighted1995-2010 by ANSYS Inc. Results as of November 24, 2010. For more specifics about these results, please go to see http://blogs.sun.com/BestPerf   NAMD Results on the Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module running NAMD (a parallel molecular dynamics code designed for high-performance simulation of large biomolecular systems) show up to a 1.8X better price/performance than IBM's Power 7-based system.  For space-constrained environments, the ultra-dense Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module provides a 1.7X better price/performance per rack unit than IBM's system.     IBM Power 755 4-way Cluster (16U). Total price for cluster: $324,212. See IBM United States Hardware Announcement 110-008, dated February 9, 2010, pp. 4, 21 and 39-46.  Sun Blade X6275 M2 8-Blade Cluster (10U). Total price for cluster:  $193,939. Price/performance and performance/RU comparisons based on f1ATPase molecule test results. Sun Blade X6275 M2 cluster: $3,568/step/sec, 5.435 step/sec/RU. IBM Power 755 cluster: $6,355/step/sec, 3.189 step/sec/U. See http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/reports/system_perf.html. See http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/namd/performance.html for more information, results as of 11/24/10.   For more specifics about these results, please go to see http://blogs.sun.com/BestPerf   Reverse Time Migration The Reverse Time Migration is heavily used in geophysical imaging and modeling for Oil & Gas Exploration.  The Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module showed up to a 40% performance improvement over the previous generation server module with super-linear scalability to 16 nodes for the 9-Point Stencil used in this Reverse Time Migration computational kernel.  The balanced combination of Oracle's Sun Storage 7410 system with the Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module cluster showed linear scalability for the total application throughput, including the I/O and MPI communication, to produce a final 3-D seismic depth imaged cube for interpretation. The final image write time from the Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module nodes to Oracle's Sun Storage 7410 system achieved 10GbE line speed of 1.25 GBytes/second or better performance. Between subsequent runs, the effects of I/O buffer caching on the Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module nodes and write optimized caching on the Sun Storage 7410 system gave up to 1.8 GBytes/second effective write performance. The performance results and characterization of this Reverse Time Migration benchmark could serve as a useful measure for many other I/O intensive commercial applications. 3D VTI Reverse Time Migration Seismic Depth Imaging, see http://blogs.sun.com/BestPerf/entry/3d_vti_reverse_time_migration for more information, results as of 11/14/2010.                            

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #035

  - by Pinal Dave

  Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 Row Overflow Data Explanation  In SQL Server 2005 one table row can contain more than one varchar(8000) fields. One more thing, the exclusions has exclusions also the limit of each individual column max width of 8000 bytes does not apply to varchar(max), nvarchar(max), varbinary(max), text, image or xml data type columns. Comparison Index Fragmentation, Index De-Fragmentation, Index Rebuild – SQL SERVER 2000 and SQL SERVER 2005 An old but like a gold article. Talks about lots of concepts related to Index and the difference from earlier version to the newer version. I strongly suggest that everyone should read this article just to understand how SQL Server has moved forward with the technology. Improvements in TempDB SQL Server 2005 had come up with quite a lots of improvements and this blog post describes them and explains the same. If you ask me what is my the most favorite article from early career. I must point out to this article as when I wrote this one I personally have learned a lot of new things. Recompile All The Stored Procedure on Specific TableI prefer to recompile all the stored procedure on the table, which has faced mass insert or update. sp_recompiles marks stored procedures to recompile when they execute next time. This blog post explains the same with the help of a script.  2008 SQLAuthority Download – SQL Server Cheatsheet You can download and print this cheat sheet and use it for your personal reference. If you have any suggestions, please let me know and I will see if I can update this SQL Server cheat sheet. Difference Between DBMS and RDBMS What is the difference between DBMS and RDBMS? DBMS – Data Base Management System RDBMS – Relational Data Base Management System or Relational DBMS High Availability – Hot Add Memory Hot Add CPU and Hot Add Memory are extremely interesting features of the SQL Server, however, personally I have not witness them heavily used. These features also have few restriction as well. I blogged about them in detail. 2009 Delete Duplicate Rows I have demonstrated in this blog post how one can identify and delete duplicate rows. Interesting Observation of Logon Trigger On All Servers – Solution The question I put forth in my previous article was – In single login why the trigger fires multiple times; it should be fired only once. I received numerous answers in thread as well as in my MVP private news group. Now, let us discuss the answer for the same. The answer is – It happens because multiple SQL Server services are running as well as intellisense is turned on. Blog post demonstrates how we can do the same with the help of SQL scripts. Management Studio New Features I have selected my favorite 5 features and blogged about it. IntelliSense for Query Editing Multi Server Query Query Editor Regions Object Explorer Enhancements Activity Monitors Maximum Number of Index per Table One of the questions I asked in my user group was – What is the maximum number of Index per table? I received lots of answers to this question but only two answers are correct. Let us now take a look at them in this blog post. 2010 Default Statistics on Column – Automatic Statistics on Column The truth is, Statistics can be in a table even though there is no Index in it. If you have the auto- create and/or auto-update Statistics feature turned on for SQL Server database, Statistics will be automatically created on the Column based on a few conditions. Please read my previously posted article, SQL SERVER – When are Statistics Updated – What triggers Statistics to Update, for the specific conditions when Statistics is updated. 2011 T-SQL Scripts to Find Maximum between Two Numbers In this blog post there are two different scripts listed which demonstrates way to find the maximum number between two numbers. I need your help, which one of the script do you think is the most accurate way to find maximum number? Find Details for Statistics of Whole Database – DMV – T-SQL Script I was recently asked is there a single script which can provide all the necessary details about statistics for any database. This question made me write following script. I was initially planning to use sp_helpstats command but I remembered that this is marked to be deprecated in future. 2012 Introduction to Function SIGN SIGN Function is very fundamental function. It will return the value 1, -1 or 0. If your value is negative it will return you negative -1 and if it is positive it will return you positive +1. Let us start with a simple small example. Template Browser – A Very Important and Useful Feature of SSMS Templates are like a quick cheat sheet or quick reference. Templates are available to create objects like databases, tables, views, indexes, stored procedures, triggers, statistics, and functions. Templates are also available for Analysis Services as well. The template scripts contain parameters to help you customize the code. You can Replace Template Parameters dialog box to insert values into the script. An invalid floating point operation occurred If you run any of the above functions they will give you an error related to invalid floating point. Honestly there is no workaround except passing the function appropriate values. SQRT of a negative number will give you result in real numbers which is not supported at this point of time as well LOG of a negative number is not possible (because logarithm is the inverse function of an exponential function and the exponential function is NEVER negative). Validating Spatial Object with IsValidDetailed Function SQL Server 2012 has introduced the new function IsValidDetailed(). This function has made my life very easy. In simple words, this function will check if the spatial object passed is valid or not. If it is valid it will give information that it is valid. If the spatial object is not valid it will return the answer that it is not valid and the reason for the same. This makes it very easy to debug the issue and make the necessary correction. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, May 17, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, May 17, 2010New Projects.NET Essentials Course: .NET Essentials course @ Telerik Academy Training project for the studentsAU/NZ Office 2010 Launch Demos: The AU/NZ Office 2010 Launch Demos are a collection of code samples that were used as part of the Office/SharePoint 2010 launch parties in Australi...CybennyCMS: Very simple CMS system for building sites with ASP.NET with templates for lay-out, content pages with only html content and a xml file for the site...essionPIM: essionPIMGIStance: A library for finding "nearest neighbor" among an in-memory set of positions, in C# and F#. A radius must be specified for making a meaningful s...IP Informer: IP Informer is IP Informer.Kurumsal Ofis Paketi: Kurumsal Ofis Paketi (KOP), Microsoft Ofis 2010 ürünleri için geliştirilmiş eklenti yazılımıdır. KOP, Word ve Excel’de bulunan işlevlerinin genişle...Mockup to XAML: Convert Balsamiq Mockups to XAML. This project supports BMML mockup control conversion using plugins. A standard set of controls are included wit...Open XML Validator: This WPF app give you a brief resume about errors in your Open XML documents.Paint.NET Bulk Image Processor: PDNBulkUpdater is a plug-in for Paint.NET that allows you to efficiently perform operations such as resizing and converting multiple images at the ...PiPiBugNet: PiPiBugNet是一套全新的开源Bug管理系统Roleplay character generator: The roleplay character generator allows the creation of characters for different roleplaying gamesSharePoint User Search WebParts: This project contains SharePoint webparts which provide advanced search configuration and experience for SharePoint 2007. It will be upgrade in few...Spodi: Spodi is created on 22-04-2010TfsPolicyPack: This project will provide a few checkin policies for VS 2010.vccodesandobx: vccodesandobxvccodesandobxvccodesandobxWhiteNile: test project using codeplexNew ReleasesAnimeStore.Net: 1.0.3.0: Build 1.0.3.0 Changes Move some functionality to features (MEF) Filter / Search functionality. Anime hard-copy records storage (e.g Disk Storage ...AU/NZ Office 2010 Launch Demos: Twitter map web part: This is the main twitter map web part download, see the Twitter Map web part page for all the information.Blueset Studio Opensource Projects: 推来: 稳定版本BUtil: BUtil 5.0 Alpha2: The initial implementation of multitasking (except ghost)CassiniDev - Cassini 3.5/4.0 Developers Edition: CassiniDev 3.5.1 and 4.0.1 beta: Beta 2 is released here: url http://cassinidev.codeplex.com/releases/view/45456 New in CassiniDev v3.5.1.0/v4.0.1.0 Added .Net 4 / VS10 build. ...CBM-Command: 2010-05-16: Release Notes - 2010-05-16New Features New navigation options: Page Up, Page Down, Top of Directory, Bottom of Directory. See documentation (http:...CCNet Conditional Plugin: CCNet Conditional for CCNet 1.5: A (quick) build of the plugin for CCNet 1.5 to fix the 17365 bug reported by Beakster. This also adds a new condition "timeCondition"CybennyCMS: Cybenny CMS beta 1: The first beta. Includes a small demo site.Data Extracting SDK: Data Extracting SDK v.1.1 RTM: RTM version of Data Extracting SDK.Duckworth Lewis Professional Edition Calculator: DLcalc 2.0: This software can perform all D/L calculations 100% accurately. From version 2.0 onwards, tables for par scores can also be produced.EPiServer CMS Page Type Builder: Page Type Builder 1.2: Release notes can be found in this blog post.Floe IRC Client: Floe IRC Client 2010-05 R5: - Many new context menu options for @s - Ability to select multiple users in the nick list for some operations (kick, ban) - Bunch of minor bug fix...Graffiti CMS Events Plugin: Version 1.0.1: Minor update to previous version to fix bug where deleted posts were still showing in the calendar.Microsoft Research Boogie: 2010-05-16: Binary release of Boogie and Dafny. (Note, Chalice is not pre-built as part of this binary release. To obtain it, you need to build it yourself f...MSBuild Launch Pad (mPad): 1.0 Beta 2: Basic support for sln, csproj, vbproj, vcxproj, shfbproj, ccproj, oxygene and proj files are added. Basic settings (Show Prompt, and Auto Hide) are...Multi-Language Words Memorizer: Memorizer 1.1: Issues fix, XML db update with new words.NShader - HLSL - GLSL - CG - Shader Syntax Highlighter AddIn for Visual Studio: NShader 1.1: New release of NShader! New : - a Visual Studio 2010 port can be installed through the new extension manager : you just have to download NShaderV...PHPExcel: PHPExcel 1.7.3 Production: Want to contribute?Please refer the Contribute page. DonationsDonate via PayPal. If you want to, we can also add your name / company on our Donati...Rollback - A social backup tool.: Rollback Setup 0.5.1.2 Build 48360: Bug fixes for backing up files which are hidden/system. Changes to make builds on 64 bit Windows 7 using VS 2010 Express edition.Rollback - A social backup tool.: Rollback Setup 0.5.1.3: Updated version number.Shake - C# Make: Shake v0.1.20: New: Simple console logger Changes: Command line params helper writes out syntax and samples (like msbuild) Fixes: Assembly info, file task and r...SharePoint User Search WebParts: v0.1 Friendly MOSS 2007 Search WebPart: Very first version of this webpart. A more stabilized version will follow in few days.Team Deploy: Team Deploy 2010 Beta 1: This is the initial release for Team Deploy 2010 for TFS Team Build 2010. All features from Team Build 2.x are functional in this version. Comp...Team Foundation Server Administration Tool: 2.0: TFS Administration Tool 2.0 TFS Administration Tool 2.0 is built on top of the Team Foundation Server 2008 object model and in order to connect to...The Ping Master: v0.9.0.0: Installer for The Ping Master binariesUseful Office Macros: All Macro Downloads: Please find above the downloads related to this project. Each Excel Workbook below works independently of the others, so you only need to download...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30516.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVisual Studio DSite: Advanced Digital Board Game (Visual C++ 2008): An advanced digital board game made in visual c 2008.YUI Compressor Custom Tool for Visual Studio: YUI Compressor Custom Tool Full Version: Version 1.0 The following changes have been made: Merged classes to automatically sense if the target file is Javascript or CSS. Cleaned up setu...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 LibraryPHPExcelBlogEngine.NETRawrMicrosoft Biology FoundationCustomer Portal Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRMWindows Azure Command-line Tools for PHP DevelopersDotNetZip LibraryCaliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and SilverlightSQL Server PowerShell Extensions

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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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• Clustering for Mere Mortals (Pt 3)

  - by Geoff N. Hiten

  The Controller Now we get to the meat of the matter.  You want a virtual cluster, the first thing you have to do is create your own portable domain.  Start with a plain vanilla install of Windows 2003 R2 Standard on a semi-default VM. (1 GB RAM, 2 cores, 2 NICs, 128GB dynamically expanding VHD file).  I chose this because it had the smallest disk and memory footprint of any current supported Microsoft Server product.  I created the VM with a single dynamically expanding VHD, one fixed 16 GB VHD, and two NICs.  One NIC is connected to the outside world and the other one is part of an internal-only network.  The first NIC is set up as a DHCP client.  We will get to the other one later. I actually tried this with Windows 2008 R2, but it failed miserably.  Not sure whether it was 2008 R2 or the fact I tried to use cloned VMs in the cluster.  Clustering is one place where NewSID would really come in handy.  Too bad Microsoft bought and buried it. Load and Patch the OS (hence the need for the outside connection).This is a good time to go get dinner.  Maybe a movie too.  There are close to a hundred patches that need to be downloaded and applied.  Avoiding that mess was why I put so much time into trying to get the 2008 R2 version working.  Maybe next time.  Don’t forget to add the extensions for VMLite (or whatever virtualization product you prefer). Set a fixed IP address on the internal-only NIC.  Do not give it a gateway.  Put the same IP address for the NIC and for the DNS Server.  This IP should be in a range that is never available on your public network.  You will need all the addresses in the range available.  See the previous post for the exact settings I used. I chose 10.97.230.1 as the server.  The rest of the 10.97.230 range is what I will use later.  For the curious, those numbers are based on elements of my home address.  Not truly random, but good enough for this project. Do not bridge the network connections.  I never allowed the cluster nodes direct access to any public network. Format the fixed VHD and leave it alone for now. Promote the VM to a Domain Controller.  If you have never done this, don’t worry.  The only meaningful decision is what to call the new domain.  I prefer a bogus name that does not correspond to a real Top-Level Domain (TLD).  .com, .biz., .net, .org  are all TLDs that we know and love.  I chose .test as the TLD since it is descriptive AND it does not exist in the real world.  The domain is called MicroAD.  This gives me MicroAD.Test as my domain. During the promotion process, you will be prompted to install DNS as part of the Domain creation process.  You want to accept this option.  The installer will automatically assign this DNS server as the authoritative owner of the MicroAD.test DNS domain (not to be confused with the MicroAD.test Active Directory domain.) For the rest of the DCPROMO process, just accept the defaults. Now let’s make our IP address management easy.  Add the DHCP Role to the server.  Add the server (10.97.230.1 in this case) as the default gateway to assign to DHCP clients.  Here is where you have to be VERY careful and bind it ONLY to the Internal NIC.  Trust me, your network admin will NOT like an extra DHCP server “helping” out on her network.  Go ahead and create a range of 10-20 IP Addresses in your scope.  You might find other uses for a pocket domain controller <cough> Mirroring </cough> than just for building a cluster.  And Clustering in SQL 2008 and Windows 2008 R2 fully supports DHCP addresses. Now we have three of the five key roles ready.  Two more to go. Next comes file sharing.  Since your cluster node VMs will not have access to any outside, you have to have some way to get files into these VMs.  I simply go to the root of C: and create a “Shared” folder.  I then share it out and grant full control to “Everyone” to both the share and to the underlying NTFS folder.   This will be immensely useful for Service Packs, demo databases, and any other software that isn’t packaged as an ISO that we can mount to the VM. Finally we need to create a block-level multi-connect storage device.  The kind folks at Starwinds Software (http://www.starwindsoftware.com/) graciously gave me a non-expiring demo license for expressly this purpose.  Their iSCSI SAN software lets you create an iSCSI target from nearly any storage medium.  Refreshingly, their product does exactly what they say it does.  Thanks. Remember that 16 GB VHD file?  That is where we are going to carve into our LUNs.  I created an iSCSI folder off the root, just so I can keep everything organized.  I then carved 5 ea. 2 GB iSCSI targets from that folder.  I chose a fixed VHD for performance.  I tried this earlier with a dynamically expanding VHD, but too many layers of abstraction and sparseness combined to make it unusable even for a demo.  Stick with a fixed VHD so there is a one-to-one mapping between abstract and physical storage.  If you read the previous post, you know what I named these iSCSI LUNs and why.  Yes, I do have some left over space.  Always leave yourself room for future growth or options. This gets us up to where we can actually build the nodes and install SQL.  As with most clusters, the real work happens long before the individual nodes get installed and configured.  At least it does if you want the cluster to be a true high-availability platform.

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• Clustering for Mere Mortals (Pt3)

  - by Geoff N. Hiten

  The Controller Now we get to the meat of the matter.  You want a virtual cluster, the first thing you have to do is create your own portable domain.  IStart with a plain vanilla install of Windows 2003 R2 Standard on a semi-default VM. (1 GB RAM, 2 cores, 2 NICs, 128GB dynamically expanding VHD file).  I chose this because it had the smallest disk and memory footprint of any current supported Microsoft Server product.  I created the VM with a single dynamically expanding VHD, one fixed 16 GB VHD, and two NICs.  One NIC is connected to the outside world and the other one is part of an internal-only network.  The first NIC is set up as a DHCP client.  We will get to the other one later. I actually tried this with Windows 2008 R2, but it failed miserably.  Not sure whether it was 2008 R2 or the fact I tried to use cloned VMs in the cluster.  Clustering is one place where NewSID would really come in handy.  Too bad Microsoft bought and buried it. Load and Patch the OS (hence the need for the outside connection).This is a good time to go get dinner.  Maybe a movie too.  There are close to a hundred patches that need to be downloaded and applied.  Avoiding that mess was why I put so much time into trying to get the 2008 R2 version working.  Maybe next time.  Don’t forget to add the extensions for VMLite (or whatever virtualization product you prefer). Set a fixed IP address on the internal-only NIC.  Do not give it a gateway.  Put the same IP address for the NIC and for the DNS Server.  This IP should be in a range that is never available on your public network.  You will need all the addresses in the range available.  See the previous post for the exact settings I used. I chose 10.97.230.1 as the server.  The rest of the 10.97.230 range is what I will use later.  For the curious, those numbers are based on elements of my home address.  Not truly random, but good enough for this project. Do not bridge the network connections.  I never allowed the cluster nodes direct access to any public network. Format the fixed VHD and leave it alone for now. Promote the VM to a Domain Controller.  If you have never done this, don’t worry.  The only meaningful decision is what to call the new domain.  I prefer a bogus name that does not correspond to a real Top-Level Domain (TLD).  .com, .biz., .net, .org  are all TLDs that we know and love.  I chose .test as the TLD since it is descriptive AND it does not exist in the real world.  The domain is called MicroAD.  This gives me MicroAD.Test as my domain. During the promotion process, you will be prompted to install DNS as part of the Domain creation process.  You want to accept this option.  The installer will automatically assign this DNS server as the authoritative owner of the MicroAD.test DNS domain (not to be confused with the MicroAD.test Active Directory domain.) For the rest of the DCPROMO process, just accept the defaults. Now let’s make our IP address management easy.  Add the DHCP Role to the server.  Add the server (10.97.230.1 in this case) as the default gateway to assign to DHCP clients.  Here is where you have to be VERY careful and bind it ONLY to the Internal NIC.  Trust me, your network admin will NOT like an extra DHCP server “helping” out on her network.  Go ahead and create a range of 10-20 IP Addresses in your scope.  You might find other uses for a pocket domain controller <cough> Mirroring </cough> than just for building a cluster.  And Clustering in SQL 2008 and Windows 2008 R2 fully supports DHCP addresses. Now we have three of the five key roles ready.  Two more to go. Next comes file sharing.  Since your cluster node VMs will not have access to any outside, you have to have some way to get files into these VMs.  I simply go to the root of C: and create a “Shared” folder.  I then share it out and grant full control to “Everyone” to both the share and to the underlying NTFS folder.   This will be immensely useful for Service Packs, demo databases, and any other software that isn’t packaged as an ISO that we can mount to the VM. Finally we need to create a block-level multi-connect storage device.  The kind folks at Starwinds Software (http://www.starwindsoftware.com/) graciously gave me a non-expiring demo license for expressly this purpose.  Their iSCSI SAN software lets you create an iSCSI target from nearly any storage medium.  Refreshingly, their product does exactly what they say it does.  Thanks. Remember that 16 GB VHD file?  That is where we are going to carve into our LUNs.  I created an iSCSI folder off the root, just so I can keep everything organized.  I then carved 5 ea. 2 GB iSCSI targets from that folder.  I chose a fixed VHD for performance.  I tried this earlier with a dynamically expanding VHD, but too many layers of abstraction and sparseness combined to make it unusable even for a demo.  Stick with a fixed VHD so there is a one-to-one mapping between abstract and physical storage.  If you read the previous post, you know what I named these iSCSI LUNs and why.  Yes, I do have some left over space.  Always leave yourself room for future growth or options. This gets us up to where we can actually build the nodes and install SQL.  As with most clusters, the real work happens long before the individual nodes get installed and configured.  At least it does if you want the cluster to be a true high-availability platform.

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• Establishing WebLogic Server HTTPS Trust of IIS Using a Microsoft Local Certificate Authority

  - by user647124

  Everyone agrees that self-signed and demo certificates for SSL and HTTPS should never be used in production and preferred not to be used elsewhere. Most self-signed and demo certificates are provided by vendors with the intention that they are used only to integrate within the same environment. In a vendor’s perfect world all application servers in a given enterprise are from the same vendor, which makes this lack of interoperability in a non-production environment an advantage. For us working in the real world, where not only do we not use a single vendor everywhere but have to make do with self-signed certificates for all but production, testing HTTPS between an IIS ASP.NET service provider and a WebLogic J2EE consumer application can be very frustrating to set up. It was for me, especially having found many blogs and discussion threads where various solutions were described but did not quite work and were all mostly similar but just a little bit different. To save both you and my future (who always seems to forget the hardest-won lessons) all of the pain and suffering, I am recording the steps that finally worked here for reference and sanity. How You Know You Need This The first cold clutches of dread that tells you it is going to be a long day is when you attempt to a WSDL published by IIS in WebLogic over HTTPS and you see the following: <Jul 30, 2012 2:51:31 PM EDT> <Warning> <Security> <BEA-090477> <Certificate chain received from myserver.mydomain.com - 10.555.55.123 was not trusted causing SSL handshake failure.> weblogic.wsee.wsdl.WsdlException: Failed to read wsdl file from url due to -- javax.net.ssl.SSLKeyException: [Security:090477]Certificate chain received from myserver02.mydomain.com - 10.555.55.123 was not trusted causing SSL handshake failure. The above is what started a three day sojourn into searching for a solution. Even people who had solved it before would tell me how they did, and then shrug when I demonstrated that the steps did not end in the success they claimed I would experience. Rather than torture you with the details of everything I did that did not work, here is what finally did work. Export the Certificates from IE First, take the offending WSDL URL and paste it into IE (if you have an internal Microsoft CA, you have IE, even if you don’t use it in favor of some other browser). To state the semi-obvious, if you received the error above there is a certificate configured for the IIS host of the service and the SSL port has been configured properly. Otherwise there would be a different error, usually about the site not found or connection failed. Once the WSDL loads, to the right of the address bar there will be a lock icon. Click the lock and then click View Certificates in the resulting dialog (if you do not have a lock icon but do have a Certificate Error message, see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931850 for steps to install the certificate then you can continue from the point of finding the lock icon). Figure 1: View Certificates in IE Next, select the Details tab in the resulting dialog Figure 2: Use Certificate Details to Export Certificate Click Copy to File, then Next, then select the Base-64 encoded option for the format Figure 3: Select the Base-64 encoded option for the format For the sake of simplicity, I choose to save this to the root of the WebLogic domain. It will work from anywhere, but later you will need to type in the full path rather than just the certificate name if you save it elsewhere. Figure 4: Browse to Save Location Figure 5: Save the Certificate to the Domain Root for Convenience This is the point where I ran into some confusion. Some articles mentioned exporting the entire chain of certificates. This supposedly works for some types of certificates, or if you have a few other tools and the time to learn them. For the SSL experts out there, they already have these tools, know how to use them well, and should not be wasting their time reading this article meant for folks who just want to get things wired up and back to unit testing and development. For the rest of us, the easiest way to make sure things will work is to just export all the links in the chain individually and let WebLogic Server worry about re-assembling them into a chain (which it does quite nicely). While perhaps not the most elegant solution, the multi-step process is easy to repeat and uses only tools that are immediately available and require no learning curve. So… Next, go to Tools then Internet Options then the Content tab and click Certificates. Go to the Trust Root Certificate Authorities tab and find the certificate root for your Microsoft CA cert (look for the Issuer of the certificate you exported earlier). Figure 6: Trusted Root Certification Authorities Tab Export this one the same way as before, with a different name Figure 7: Use a Unique Name for Each Certificate Repeat this once more for the Intermediate Certificate tab. Import the Certificates to the WebLogic Domain Now, open an command prompt, navigate to [WEBLOGIC_DOMAIN_ROOT]\bin and execute setDomainEnv. You should then be in the root of the domain. If not, CD to the domain root. Assuming you saved the certificate in the domain root, execute the following: keytool -importcert -alias [ALIAS-1] -trustcacerts -file [FULL PATH TO .CER 1] -keystore truststore.jks -storepass [PASSWORD] An example with the variables filled in is: keytool -importcert -alias IIS-1 -trustcacerts -file microsftcert.cer -keystore truststore.jks -storepass password After several lines out output you will be prompted with: Trust this certificate? [no]: The correct answer is ‘yes’ (minus the quotes, of course). You’ll you know you were successful if the response is: Certificate was added to keystore If not, check your typing, as that is generally the source of an error at this point. Repeat this for all three of the certificates you exported, changing the [ALIAS-1] and [FULL PATH TO .CER 1] value each time. For example: keytool -importcert -alias IIS-1 -trustcacerts -file microsftcert.cer -keystore truststore.jks -storepass password keytool -importcert -alias IIS-2 -trustcacerts -file microsftcertRoot.cer -keystore truststore.jks -storepass password keytool -importcert -alias IIS-3 -trustcacerts -file microsftcertIntermediate.cer -keystore truststore.jks -storepass password In the above we created a new JKS key store. You can re-use an existing one by changing the name of the JKS file to one you already have and change the password to the one that matches that JKS file. For the DemoTrust.jks  that is included with WebLogic the password is DemoTrustKeyStorePassPhrase. An example here would be: keytool -importcert -alias IIS-1 -trustcacerts -file microsoft.cer -keystore DemoTrust.jks -storepass DemoTrustKeyStorePassPhrase keytool -importcert -alias IIS-2 -trustcacerts -file microsoftRoot.cer -keystore DemoTrust.jks -storepass DemoTrustKeyStorePassPhrase keytool -importcert -alias IIS-2 -trustcacerts -file microsoftInter.cer -keystore DemoTrust.jks -storepass DemoTrustKeyStorePassPhrase Whichever keystore you use, you can check your work with: keytool -list -keystore truststore.jks -storepass password Where “truststore.jks” and “password” can be replaced appropriately if necessary. The output will look something like this: Figure 8: Output from keytool -list -keystore Update the WebLogic Keystore Configuration If you used an existing keystore rather than creating a new one, you can restart your WebLogic Server and skip the rest of this section. For those of us who created a new one because that is the instructions we found online… Next, we need to tell WebLogic to use the JKS file (truststore.jks) we just created. Log in to the WebLogic Server Administration Console and navigate to Servers > AdminServer > Configuration > Keystores. Scroll down to “Custom Trust Keystore:” and change the value to “truststore.jks” and the value of “Custom Trust Keystore Passphrase:” and “Confirm Custom Trust Keystore Passphrase:” to the password you used when earlier, then save your changes. You will get a nice message similar to the following: Figure 9: To Be Safe, Restart Anyways The “No restarts are necessary” is somewhat of an exaggeration. If you want to be able to use the keystore you may need restart the server(s). To save myself aggravation, I always do. Your mileage may vary. Conclusion That should get you there. If there are some erroneous steps included for your situation in particular, I will offer up a semi-apology as the process described above does not take long at all and if there is one step that could be dropped from it, is still much faster than trying to figure this out from other sources.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 01, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 01, 2014Popular ReleasesSandcastle Help File Builder: Help File Builder and Tools v2014.5.31.0: General InformationIMPORTANT: On some systems, the content of the ZIP file is blocked and the installer may fail to run. Before extracting it, right click on the ZIP file, select Properties, and click on the Unblock button if it is present in the lower right corner of the General tab in the properties dialog. This release completes removal of the branding transformations and implements the new VS2013 presentation style that utilizes the new lightweight website format. Several breaking cha...Tooltip Web Preview: ToolTip Web Preview: Version 1.0Database Helper: Release 1.0.0.0: First Release of Database HelperCoMaSy: CoMaSy1.0.2: !Contact Management SystemImage View Slider: Image View Slider: This is a .NET component. We create this using VB.NET. Here you can use an Image Viewer with several properties to your application form. We wish somebody to improve freely. Try this out! Author : Steven Renaldo Antony Yustinus Arjuna Purnama Putra Andre Wijaya P Martin Lidau PBK GENAP 2014 - TI UKDWAspose for Apache POI: Missing Features of Apache POI WP - v 1.1: Release contain the Missing Features in Apache POI WP SDK in Comparison with Aspose.Words for dealing with Microsoft Word. What's New ?Following Examples: Insert Picture in Word Document Insert Comments Set Page Borders Mail Merge from XML Data Source Moving the Cursor Feedback and Suggestions Many more examples are yet to come here. Keep visiting us. Raise your queries and suggest more examples via Aspose Forums or via this social coding site.babelua: V1.5.6.0: V1.5.6.0 - 2014.5.30New feature: support quick-cocos2d-x project now; support text search in scripts folder now, you can use this function in Search Result Window;SEToolbox: 01.032.014 Release 1: Added fix when loading game Textures for icons causing 'Unable to read beyond the end of the stream'. Added new Resource Report, that displays all in game resources in a concise report. Added in temp directory cleaner, to keep excess files from building up. Fixed use of colors on the windows, to work better with desktop schemes. Adding base support for multilingual resources. This will allow loading of the Space Engineers resources to show localized names, and display localized date a...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.71.2: More memory and performance improvements. Fixed an issue with pivot table field order.Fancontroller: Fancontroller: Initial releaseVi-AIO SearchBar: Vi – AIO Search Bar: Version 1.0Top Verses ( Ayat Emas ): Binary Top Verses: This one is the bin folder of the component. the .dll component is inside.Traditional Calendar Component: Traditional Calender Converter: Duta Wacana Christian University This file containing Traditional Calendar Component and Demo Aplication that using Traditional Calendar Component. This component made with .NET Framework 4 and the programming language is C# .SQLSetupHelper: 1.0.0.0: First Stable Version of SQL SetupComposite Iconote: Composite Iconote: This is a composite has been made by Microsoft Visual Studio 2013. Requirement: To develop this composite or use this component in your application, your computer must have .NET framework 4.5 or newer.Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.9.101: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.9.1. Breaking changes: - Int/short Set methods of WritablePixelCollection are now unsigned. - The Q16 build no longer uses HDRI, switch to the new Q16-HDRI build if you need HDRI.fnr.exe - Find And Replace Tool: 1.7: Bug fixes Refactored logic for encoding text values to command line to handle common edge cases where find/replace operation works in GUI but not in command line Fix for bug where selection in Encoding drop down was different when generating command line in some cases. It was reported in: https://findandreplace.codeplex.com/workitem/34 Fix for "Backslash inserted before dot in replacement text" reported here: https://findandreplace.codeplex.com/discussions/541024 Fix for finding replacing...VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.59: changes NEW: Added Support for 'GokoImage.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'ViperII.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'PixxxView.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgRex.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'PixLiv.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'imgsee.me' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgS.it' linksToolbox for Dynamics CRM 2011/2013: XrmToolBox (v1.2014.5.28): XrmToolbox improvement XrmToolBox updates (v1.2014.5.28)Fix connecting to a connection with custom authentication without saved password Tools improvement New tool!Solution Components Mover (v1.2014.5.22) Transfer solution components from one solution to another one Import/Export NN relationships (v1.2014.3.7) Allows you to import and export many to many relationships Tools updatesAttribute Bulk Updater (v1.2014.5.28) Audit Center (v1.2014.5.28) View Layout Replicator (v1.2014.5.28) Scrip...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 5.10: Fix for Issue #20875 - echo switch doesn't work for CSS CSS should honor the SASS source-file comments JS should allow multi-line comment directivesNew ProjectsCet MicroWPF: WPF-like library for simple graphic-UI application using Netduino (Plus) 2 and the FTDI FT800 Eve board.Fakemons: Some Fakmons, powered by XML, XSLT, CSS and JavascriptFling OS: Fling OS is a C# operating system project aiming to create a new, managed operating system from the ground up.MudRoom: Experimental tool sets in mud parsing and area definitionOOP-2112110158: My name's NgocDungRoslynResearch: Roslyn ResearchTHD - Control de Usuarios: control de usuarios y permisosWPF Kinect User Controls: WPF Kinect User Control project provide simple Tilt and Skeleton Tracking Parameter Controls.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, March 19, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, March 19, 2012Popular ReleasesHarness: Harness 2.0.1: working on Windows 7 (x64) (not used shell32.dll) Speed ​​up operation Vista/IE7 support (x86 and x64) Minor bug fixesSCCM Client Actions Tool: SCCM Client Actions Tool v1.11: SCCM Client Actions Tool v1.11 is the latest version. It comes with following changes since last version: Fixed a bug when ping and cmd.exe kept running in endless loop after action progress was finished. Fixed update checking from Codeplex RSS feed. The tool is downloadable as a ZIP file that contains four files: ClientActionsTool.hta – The tool itself. Cmdkey.exe – command line tool for managing cached credentials. This is needed for alternate credentials feature when running the HTA...Krempel's Windows Phone 7 project: DelayLoadImage release: For documentation check; http://thewp7dev.wordpress.com The source code depends on the HTMLAgilityPack wich can be downloaded here http://htmlagilitypack.codeplex.com/SourceControl/changeset/changes/94773. And the System.Xml.XPath.dll wich is part of the Silverlight SDK and located in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v4.0\Libraries\Client" or in "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v4.0\Libraries\Client".SQL Monitor - managing sql server performance: SQLMon 4.2 alpha 11: 1. added process visualizer to show the internal process model of SQL Server through hierachical chart. 2. fixed a few bugs, sorry.WebSocket4Net: WebSocket4Net 0.5: Changes in this release fixed the wss's default port bug improved JsonWebSocket supported set client access policy protocol for silverlight fixed a handshake issue in Silverlight fixed a bug that "Host" field in handshake hadn't contained port if the port is not default supported passing in Origin parameter for handshaking supported reacting pings from server side fixed a bug in data sending fixed the bug sending a closing handshake with no message which would cause an excepti...SuperWebSocket, a .NET WebSocket Server: SuperWebSocket 0.5: Changes included in this release: supported closing handshake queue checking improved JSON subprotocol supported sending ping from server to client fixed a bug about sending a closing handshake with no message refactored the code to improve protocol compatibility fixed a bug about sub protocol configuration loading in Mono improved BasicSubProtocol added JsonWebSocketSessionDaun Management Studio: Daun Management Studio 0.1 (Alpha Version): These are these the alpha application packages for Daun Management Studio to manage MongoDB Server. Please visit our official website http://www.daun-project.comRiP-Ripper & PG-Ripper: RiP-Ripper 2.9.28: changes NEW: Added Support for "PixHub.eu" linksSmartNet: V1.0.0.0: DY SmartNet ?????? V1.0callisto: callisto 2.0.21: Added an option to disable local host detection.MyRouter (Virtual WiFi Router): MyRouter 1.0.6: This release should be more stable there were a few bug fixes including the x64 issue as well as an error popping up when MyRouter started this was caused by a NULL valuePulse: Pulse Beta 4: This version is still in development but should include: Logging and error handling have been greatly improved. If you run into an error or Pulse crashes make sure to check the Log folder for a recently modified log file so you can report the details of the issue A bunch of new features for the Wallbase.cc provider. Cleaner separation between inputs, downloading and output. Input and downloading are fairly clean now but outputs are still mixed up in the mix which I'm trying to resolve ...Google Books Downloader for Windows: Google Books Downloader-2.0.0.0.: Google Books DownloaderFinestra Virtual Desktops: 2.5.4501: This is a very minor update release. Please see the information about the 2.5 and 2.5.4500 releases for more information on recent changes. This update did not even have an automatic update triggered for it. Adds error checking and reporting to all threads, not only those with message loopsAcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.9.2: ?? ●AcDown??????????、??、??????，????1M，????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????????????????????????，???，???????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? ??????????????，??????????： ??"AcDo...ArcGIS Editor for OpenStreetMap: ArcGIS Editor for OSM 2.0 Release Candidate: Your feedback is welcome - and this is your last chance to get your fixes in for this version! Includes installer for both Feature Server extension and Desktop extension, enhanced functionality for the Desktop tools, and enhanced built-in Javascript Editor for the Feature Server component. This release candidate includes fixes to beta 4 that accommodate domain users for setting up the Server Component, and fixes for reporting/uploading references tracked in the revision table. See Code In-P...C.B.R. : Comic Book Reader: CBR 0.6: 20 Issue trackers are closed and a lot of bugs too Localize view is now MVVM and delete is working. Added the unused flag (take care that it goes to true only when displaying screen elements) Backstage - new input/output format choice control for the conversion Backstage - Add display, behaviour and register file type options in the extended options dialog Explorer list view has been transformed to a custom control. New group header, colunms order and size are saved Single insta...Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 Consumer Prv: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 Consumer Preview - Preview Release v1.2.1Minor updates to setup experience: Check for WebPI before install Dependency Check updated to support the following VS 11 and VS 2010 SKUs Ultimate, Premium, Professional and Express Certs Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 Consumer Preview - Preview Release v1.2.0 Please download this for Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 functionality on Windows 8 Consumer Preview. The core features of the toolkit include:...Facebook Graph Toolkit: Facebook Graph Toolkit 3.0: ships with JSON Toolkit v3.0, offering parse speed up to 10 times of last version supports Facebook's new auth dialog supports new extend access token endpoint new example Page Tab app filter Graph Api connections using dates fixed bugs in Page Tab appsScintillaNET: ScintillaNET 2.4: 3/12/2012 Jacob Slusser Added support for annotations. Issues Fixed with this Release Issue # Title 25012 25012 25018 25018 25023 25023 25014 25014 New ProjectsAlt Info Revised: Alt Info Revised is a modification for Heroes of Newerth which provides additional information and improved visuals.Android XML parser for .NET: A library for parsing Android binary XML format. You could use it to parse AndroidManifest.xml inside the APK files.C++ DSV Filter Library: The C++ DSV Filter Library is a simple to use, easy to integrate and extremely efficient and fast CSV/DSV in-memory data store processing library. The DSV filter allows for the efficient evaluation of complex expressions on a per row basis upon the loaded DSV store.CDSHOPMVC: CD Shop Project.Computation Visualizer: ???????????? ????????Create Hyper-V Server USB Memory: A simple application to automate the preparation process for booting Hyper-V Server 2008 R2. USB Flash Memory. csv viewer for large files: designed specifically for geonames.org file. this file lists all cities in the world excepts usa cities. this software allow reading in columns large file in a jtable. the other class generates a png with this coordinates latitude and longitude. a point is plot for each city.FIM CM Tools: FIM CM Tools are tools and samples written in C# for the Microsoft Forefront Identity Manager - Certificate Management Component. Based on FIMCM 2010. Currently it consists of: - Logging notification handlerFONIS telefonski imenik: FONIS telefonski imenik je program koji Vam omogucava da napravite i održavate telefonski imenik na Vašem racunaru. Program je razvijen u C#. Za instaliranje i pokretanje ovog programa, potrebno je instalirati .NET Framework 4.helmi: projet pfe helmi et moezHNQS: HNQSHow to Tie a Tie: A simple How to tie a tie appLiuyi.Phone.PhoneScreenSaver: PhoneScreenSaver Liuyi.Phone.PhoneScreenSaver windows phonemasterapp: Centraliza a informação de vários sites.POC using ASP.NET Web API: A Simple POC which uses : ASP.NET WebAPI AdventureWorksLT2008R2 Table AutoFac ( Dependancy Injection ) Restful Service JQuery Template Functionality : User search for a product Add/remove product to cart user can register himself for a new account Submit an orderRayBullet .Net Enterprise Application Libraries: RayBullet .Net Enterprise Application Libraries is a set of libraries for enterprise application development on Microsoft .Net framework platform. ReflectInsight Logging Extensions: ReflectInsight logging library extensions for 3rd party integration with Log4net, NLog, PostSharp, Enterprise Library and Visual Studio Trace. The ReflectInsight logging extentions make it easier to integrate you existing application logging infrastructure with the ReflectInsight viewer. You'll never need to look at your logging files in a text editor again and you'll have the full power of our viewer for searching, filtering and navigating your log files. The extensions are developed i...Responsive MVVM: MVVM is a great framework for Silverlight and WPF development. But the major flaw with MVVM is with its responsiveness. When the number of user controls increase beyond a certain limit, the UI gets very slow. Responsive MVVM framework aims to make the UI more responsive.road traffic modelling: Program simullates road traffic and managementSharePoint CAML Query Helper for 2007 and 2010: Use this program to help build and test SharePoint CAML Queries (Collaborative Application Markup Language). Compatible with WSS 3.0, MOSS 2007, Foundation 2010, and SharePoint 2010. Uses the SharePoint Object Model to connect to a site (using a URL). Gets all webs in a site, all lists in a web, and all fields/columns in a list. Can export field information to CSV. Also provides interface for building XML CAML Queries, with tools to make it easier managing field names (using drag-drop and cop...Speed up Printer migration using PrintBrm and it's configuration files: This tool is used to create the BrmConfig.XML file that can be used for quickly restoring all the print queues using the Generic / Text Only driver when migrating from a 32bit to a 64bit server.Ultimate Framework (Silverlight Navigation with Prism and Unity): Ultimate framework enables you to easily implement URL driven Silverlight LOB Application, leveraging Prism 4 and Unity for a Modular / Decoupled approach. Supporting nested and parallel frames navigation in Silverlight with any UserControl object within Silverlight.Windows 8 Metro WinRT Channel9 Viewer: Sample Metro App for viewing Channel 9 Videos.

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• Oracle's Global Single Schema

  - by david.butler(at)oracle.com

  Maximizing business process efficiencies in a heterogeneous environment is very difficult. The difficulty stems from the fact that the various applications across the Information Technology (IT) landscape employ different integration standards, different message passing strategies, and different workflow engines. Vendors such as Oracle and others are delivering tools to help IT organizations manage the complexities introduced by these differences. But the one remaining intractable problem impacting efficient operations is the fact that these applications have different definitions for the same business data. Business data is your business information codified for computer programs to use. A good data model will represent the way your organization does business. The computer applications your organization deploys to improve operational efficiency are built to operate on the business data organized into this schema.  If the schema does not represent how you do business, the applications on that schema cannot provide the features you need to achieve the desired efficiencies. Business processes span these applications. Data problems break these processes rendering them far less efficient than they need to be to achieve organization goals. Thus, the expected return on the investment in these applications is never realized. The success of all business processes depends on the availability of accurate master data.  Clearly, the solution to this problem is to consolidate all the master data an organization uses to run its business. Then clean it up, augment it, govern it, and connect it back to the applications that need it. Until now, this obvious solution has been difficult to achieve because no one had defined a data model sufficiently broad, deep and flexible enough to support transaction processing on all key business entities and serve as a master superset to all other operational data models deployed in heterogeneous IT environments. Today, the situation has changed. Oracle has created an operational data model (aka schema) that can support accurate and consistent master data across heterogeneous IT systems. This is foundational for providing a way to consolidate and integrate master data without having to replace investments in existing applications. This Global Single Schema (GSS) represents a revolutionary breakthrough that allows for true master data consolidation. Oracle has deep knowledge of applications dating back to the early 1990s.  It developed applications in the areas of Supply Chain Management (SCM), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Human Capital Management (HCM), Financials and Manufacturing. In addition, Oracle applications were delivered for key industries such as Communications, Financial Services, Retail, Public Sector, High Tech Manufacturing (HTM) and more. Expertise in all these areas drove requirements for GSS. The following figure illustrates Oracle's unique position that enabled the creation of the Global Single Schema. GSS Requirements Gathering GSS defines all the key business entities and attributes including Customers, Contacts, Suppliers, Accounts, Products, Services, Materials, Employees, Installed Base, Sites, Assets, and Inventory to name just a few. In addition, Oracle delivers GSS pre-integrated with a wide variety of operational applications.  Business Process Automation EBusiness is about maximizing operational efficiency. At the highest level, these 'operations' span all that you do as an organization.  The following figure illustrates some of these high-level business processes. Enterprise Business Processes Supplies are procured. Assets are maintained. Materials are stored. Inventory is accumulated. Products and Services are engineered, produced and sold. Customers are serviced. And across this entire spectrum, Employees do the procuring, supporting, engineering, producing, selling and servicing. Not shown, but not to be overlooked, are the accounting and the financial processes associated with all this procuring, manufacturing, and selling activity. Supporting all these applications is the master data. When this data is fragmented and inconsistent, the business processes fail and inefficiencies multiply. But imagine having all the data under these operational business processes in one place. ·            The same accurate and timely customer data will be provided to all your operational applications from the call center to the point of sale. ·            The same accurate and timely supplier data will be provided to all your operational applications from supply chain planning to procurement. ·            The same accurate and timely product information will be available to all your operational applications from demand chain planning to marketing. You would have a single version of the truth about your assets, financial information, customers, suppliers, employees, products and services to support your business automation processes as they flow across your business applications. All company and partner personnel will access the same exact data entity across all your channels and across all your lines of business. Oracle's Global Single Schema enables this vision of a single version of the truth across the heterogeneous operational applications supporting the entire enterprise. Global Single Schema Oracle's Global Single Schema organizes hundreds of thousands of attributes into 165 major schema objects supporting over 180 business application modules. It is designed for international operations, and extensibility.  The schema is delivered with a full set of public Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and an Integration Repository with modern Service Oriented Architecture interfaces to make data available as a services (DaaS) to business processes and enable operations in heterogeneous IT environments. ·         Key tables can be extended with unlimited numbers of additional attributes and attribute groups for maximum flexibility.  o    This enables model extensions that reflect business entities unique to your organization's operations. ·         The schema is multi-organization enabled so data manipulation can be controlled along organizational boundaries. ·         It uses variable byte Unicode to support over 31 languages. ·         The schema encodes flexible date and flexible address formats for easy localizations. No matter how complex your business is, Oracle's Global Single Schema can hold your business objects and support your global operations. Oracle's Global Single Schema identifies and defines the business objects an enterprise needs within the context of its business operations. The interrelationships between the business objects are also contained within the GSS data model. Their presence expresses fundamental business rules for the interaction between business entities. The following figure illustrates some of these connections.   Interconnected Business Entities Interconnecte business processes require interconnected business data. No other MDM vendor has this capability. Everyone else has either one entity they can master or separate disconnected models for various business entities. Higher level integrations are made available, but that is a weak architectural alternative to data level integration in this critically important aspect of Master Data Management.    

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• No root file system is defined error after installation

  - by LearnCode

  I installed ubuntu through Wubi and once i rebooted I get no root file system defined error. here's the output of the boot_info_script.Could anyone point me out where the error is. Boot Info Script 0.60 from 17 May 2011 ============================= Boot Info Summary: =============================== => Windows is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda. => Windows is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdb. sda1: __________________________________________________________________________ File system: ntfs Boot sector type: Windows Vista/7 Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block. Operating System: Windows 7 Boot files: /bootmgr /Boot/BCD /Windows/System32/winload.exe /ntldr /ntdetect.com /wubildr /ubuntu/winboot/wubildr /wubildr.mbr /ubuntu/winboot/wubildr.mbr /ubuntu/disks/root.disk /ubuntu/disks/swap.disk sda1/Wubi: _____________________________________________________________________ File system: Boot sector type: Unknown Boot sector info: Mounting failed: mount: unknown filesystem type '' sda2: __________________________________________________________________________ File system: vfat Boot sector type: Unknown Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block. Operating System: Boot files: /boot.ini /ntldr /NTDETECT.COM sdb1: __________________________________________________________________________ File system: ntfs Boot sector type: Windows Vista/7 Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block. Operating System: Boot files: ============================ Drive/Partition Info: ============================= Drive: sda _____________________________________________________________________ Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes 240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 20673 cylinders, total 312581808 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Partition Boot Start Sector End Sector # of Sectors Id System /dev/sda1 * 63 301,250,879 301,250,817 7 NTFS / exFAT / HPFS /dev/sda2 301,250,943 312,575,759 11,324,817 c W95 FAT32 (LBA) GUID Partition Table detected, but does not seem to be used. Partition Start Sector End Sector # of Sectors System /dev/sda1 323,465,741,313,502,988275,962,973,585-323,465,465,350,529,402 - /dev/sda2 242,728,591,638,290,720578,721,383,108,845,578335,992,791,470,554,859 - /dev/sda3 1,827,498,311,425,204,2562,091,935,274,843,009,907264,436,963,417,805,652 - /dev/sda4 579,711,218,081,401,3572,006,665,459,744,645,1521,426,954,241,663,243,796 - /dev/sda11 270,286,346,402,038,1183,786,543,326,404,525,9543,516,256,980,002,487,837 - /dev/sda12 4,179,681,002,230,769,6684,179,389,374,010,033,387-291,628,220,736,280 - /dev/sda13 232,556,480,979,456,1311,160,152,593,793,119,235927,596,112,813,663,105 - /dev/sda14 98,342,784,050,266,9183,691,264,578,843,725,1953,592,921,794,793,458,278 - /dev/sda15 2,307,845,219,957,882,4961,850,841,032,955,276,350-457,004,187,002,606,145 - /dev/sda16 512,592,046,878,946,497368,458,231,024,779,444-144,133,815,854,167,052 - /dev/sda17 2,504,135,232,870,384,3923,665,087,872,719,320,8291,160,952,639,848,936,438 - /dev/sda18 3,783,181,605,270,691,304122,034,509,624,708,942-3,661,147,095,645,982,361 - /dev/sda19 3,519,661,520,275,829,5122,376,243,094,723,723,587-1,143,418,425,552,105,924 - /dev/sda20 3,867,920,076,859,0744,494,691,111,933,625,1044,490,823,191,856,766,031 - /dev/sda21 1,500,144,061,909,253,7612,511,182,033,846,676,3401,011,037,971,937,422,580 - /dev/sda22 13,035,625,499,900,0062,360,168,613,941,394,9472,347,132,988,441,494,942 - /dev/sda23 4,228,978,682,068,599,48813,159,423,631,648,263-4,215,819,258,436,951,224 - /dev/sda24 3,695,955,742,872,046,9084,561,928,726,501,845,776865,972,983,629,798,869 - /dev/sda25 1,297,460,286,683,948,0461,444,350,486,339,417,957146,890,199,655,469,912 - /dev/sda26 1,228,858,248,533,131,831 0-1,228,858,248,533,131,830 - /dev/sda121 3,189,184,846,146,487,1461,849,820,258,006,914,852-1,339,364,588,139,572,293 - /dev/sda122 1,226,215,547,991,800,578389,781,518,734,546,300-836,434,029,257,254,277 - /dev/sda123 3,851,660,168,574,583,4654,046,215,657,583,031,556194,555,489,008,448,092 - /dev/sda124 1,197,460,980,174,153,341699,103,965,005,093,246-498,357,015,169,060,094 - Drive: sdb _____________________________________________________________________ Disk /dev/sdb: 750.2 GB, 750153367552 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91200 cylinders, total 1465143296 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Partition Boot Start Sector End Sector # of Sectors Id System /dev/sdb1 2,048 1,465,143,295 1,465,141,248 7 NTFS / exFAT / HPFS "blkid" output: ________________________________________________________________ Device UUID TYPE LABEL /dev/loop0 iso9660 Ubuntu 11.04 amd64 /dev/loop1 squashfs /dev/sda1 E814B55B14B52E06 ntfs /dev/sda2 01CD-023B vfat HP_RECOVERY /dev/sdb1 7836F22A36F1E8D0 ntfs Elements ================================ Mount points: ================================= Device Mount_Point Type Options /dev/loop0 /cdrom iso9660 (ro,noatime) /dev/loop1 /rofs squashfs (ro,noatime) /dev/sdb1 /mnt fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096) ================================ sda2/boot.ini: ================================ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [boot loader] timeout=0 default=C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ======================== Unknown MBRs/Boot Sectors/etc: ======================== Unknown GPT Partiton Type c104043000e9b9040dff24b580010100 Unknown GPT Partiton Type 46313020746f20737461727420746865 Unknown GPT Partiton Type 65727920706172746974696f6e207761 Unknown GPT Partiton Type 727920706172746974696f6e0d0a0000 Unknown GPT Partiton Type 000f84e5f7668b162404e82804744066 Unknown GPT Partiton Type ce01e8dc038bfe66391624047505e8d9 Unknown GPT Partiton Type 0345086603f0e881030bd2740333d240 Unknown GPT Partiton Type bece01e8db0287fec645041266895508 Unknown GPT Partiton Type 01f60634010175078b363b01e854f5e8 Unknown GPT Partiton Type 313825740ffec03865107408fec03824 Unknown GPT Partiton Type 02f60634014074088bfdbece01e85101 Unknown GPT Partiton Type 263401f9e894f30f858ef4e8e201e8ec Unknown GPT Partiton Type f7e960f35245434f5645525966606633 Unknown GPT Partiton Type 660faf1e00106603dac3668b0e001066 Unknown GPT Partiton Type 8bfd386d04740583c710e2f6c36660c6 Unknown GPT Partiton Type 04ebf132c0b91000f3aac3bf0c04ebf3 Unknown GPT Partiton Type 02662bc1660fb71e0e02662bc366031e Unknown GPT Partiton Type f4b40ebb0700b901003c08751381ff25 Unknown GPT Partiton Type 534f465448494e4b90653f62011b0100 Unknown GPT Partiton Type 0b050900027777772e68702e636f6d00 Unknown GPT Partiton Type d441a0f5030003000ecb744a08bb3746 Unknown GPT Partiton Type f8579a116b4a7aa931cde97a4b9b5c09 Unknown GPT Partiton Type 7229990415b77c0a1970e7e824237a3a Unknown GPT Partiton Type afb6e34d6b4bd8c7c0eada19a9786cc3 Unknown BootLoader on sda1/Wubi 00000000 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 |0000000000000000| * 00000200 Unknown BootLoader on sda2 00000000 e9 a7 00 52 45 43 4f 56 45 52 59 00 02 08 20 00 |...RECOVERY... .| 00000010 02 00 00 00 00 f8 00 00 3f 00 f0 00 7f b9 f4 11 |........?.......| 00000020 8c cd ac 00 1e 2b 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 |.....+..........| 00000030 01 00 06 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................| 00000040 80 00 29 3b 02 cd 01 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 |..);... | 00000050 20 20 46 41 54 33 32 20 20 20 8b d0 c1 e2 02 80 | FAT32 ......| 00000060 e6 01 66 c1 e8 07 66 3b 46 f8 74 2a 66 89 46 f8 |..f...f;F.t*f.F.| 00000070 66 03 46 f4 66 0f b6 5e 28 80 e3 0f 74 0f 3a 5e |f.F.f..^(...t.:^| 00000080 10 0f 83 90 00 66 0f af 5e 24 66 03 c3 bb e0 07 |.....f..^$f.....| 00000090 b9 01 00 e8 cf 00 8b da 66 8b 87 00 7e 66 25 ff |........f...~f%.| 000000a0 ff ff 0f 66 3d f8 ff ff 0f c3 33 c9 8e d9 8e c1 |...f=.....3.....| 000000b0 8e d1 66 bc f4 7b 00 00 bd 00 7c 66 0f b6 46 10 |..f..{....|f..F.| 000000c0 66 f7 66 24 66 0f b7 56 0e 66 03 56 1c 66 89 56 |f.f$f..V.f.V.f.V| 000000d0 f4 66 03 c2 66 89 46 fc 66 c7 46 f8 ff ff ff ff |.f..f.F.f.F.....| 000000e0 66 8b 46 2c 66 50 e8 af 00 bb 70 00 b9 01 00 e8 |f.F,fP....p.....| 000000f0 73 00 bf 00 07 b1 0b be a9 7d f3 a6 74 2a 03 f9 |s........}..t*..| 00000100 83 c7 15 81 ff 00 09 72 ec 66 40 4a 75 db 66 58 |[email protected]| 00000110 e8 47 ff 72 cf be b4 7d ac 84 c0 74 09 b4 0e bb |.G.r...}...t....| 00000120 07 00 cd 10 eb f2 cd 19 66 58 ff 75 09 ff 75 0f |........fX.u..u.| 00000130 66 58 bb 00 20 66 83 f8 02 72 da 66 3d f8 ff ff |fX.. f...r.f=...| 00000140 0f 73 d2 66 50 e8 50 00 0f b6 4e 0d e8 16 00 c1 |.s.fP.P...N.....| 00000150 e1 05 03 d9 66 58 53 e8 00 ff 5b 72 d8 8a 56 40 |....fXS...[r..V@| 00000160 ea 00 00 00 20 66 60 66 6a 00 66 50 53 6a 00 66 |.... f`fj.fPSj.f| 00000170 68 10 00 01 00 8b f4 b8 00 42 8a 56 40 cd 13 be |h........B.V@...| 00000180 c7 7d 72 94 67 83 44 24 06 20 66 67 ff 44 24 08 |.}r.g.D$. fg.D$.| 00000190 e2 e3 83 c4 10 66 61 c3 66 48 66 48 66 0f b6 56 |.....fa.fHfHf..V| 000001a0 0d 66 f7 e2 66 03 46 fc c3 4e 54 4c 44 52 20 20 |.f..f.F..NTLDR | 000001b0 20 20 20 20 0d 0a 4e 6f 20 53 79 73 74 65 6d 20 | ..No System | 000001c0 44 69 73 6b 20 6f 72 0d 0a 44 69 73 6b 20 49 2f |Disk or..Disk I/| 000001d0 4f 20 65 72 72 6f 72 0d 0a 50 72 65 73 73 20 61 |O error..Press a| 000001e0 20 6b 65 79 20 74 6f 20 72 65 73 74 61 72 74 0d | key to restart.| 000001f0 0a 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 55 aa |..............U.| 00000200 =============================== StdErr Messages: =============================== umount: /isodevice: device is busy. (In some cases useful info about processes that use the device is found by lsof(8) or fuser(1))

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• 14+ WordPress Portfolio Themes

  - by Edward

  There are various portfolio themes for WordPress out there, with this collection we are trying to help you choose the best one. These themes can be used to create any type of personal, photography, art or corporate portfolio. Display 3 in 1 Display 3 in 1 – Business & Portfolio WordPress Theme. Features a fantastic 3D Image slideshow that can be controlled from your backend with a custom tool. The Theme has a huge wordpress custom backend (8 additional Admin Pages) that make customization of the Theme easy for those who dont know much about coding or wordpress. Price: $40 View Demo Download DeepFocus Tempting features such as automatic separation of blog and portfolio content by template, publishing of most important information on homepage, styles to choose from and many more such features. It also provides for page templates for blog, portfolio, blog archive, tags etc. It has the best feature that helps you to manage everything from one place. Price: $39 (Package includes more than 55 themes) View Demo Download SimplePress Simple, yet awesome. One of the best portfolio theme. Price: $39 (Package includes more than 55 themes) View Demo Download Graphix Graphix is one of best word press portfolio themes. It is most suited to aspiring designers, developers, artists and photographers who’d like a framework theme, which has a great-looking portfolio with a feature-rich blog. It has theme option page, 5-color style, SEO option, featured content blocks, drop down multi-level menu, social profile link custom widgets, custom post, custom page template etc. Price: $69 Single & $149 Developer Package View Demo Download Bizznizz It boasts of many features such as custom homepage, custom post types, custom widgets, portfolio templates, alternative styles and many more. View Demo Download Showtime Ultimate WordPress Theme for you to create your web portfolio, It has 3 different styles for you to choose from. Price: $40 View Demo Download Montana WP Horizontal Portfolio Theme Montana Theme – WP Horizontal Portfolio Theme, best suited for creative studios to showcase design, photography, illustration, paintings and art. Price: $30 View Demo Download OverALL OverALL Premium WordPress Blog & Portfolio Theme, is low priced & has amazing tons of features. Price: $17 View Demo Download Habitat Habitat – Blog and Portfolio Theme. Unique Portfolio Sorting/Filtering with a custom jQuery script (each entry supports multiple images or a video) Multiple Featured Images for each post to generate individual Slideshows per Post, or the option to directly embed video content from youtube, vimeo, hulu etc. Price: $35 View Demo Download Fresh Folio Fresh Folio from WooThemes, can be used as both portfolio and a premium WordPress theme. The theme is a remix of the Fresh News Theme and Proud Folio Theme which combines all the best elements of the respective blog and portfolio style themes. View Demo Download Fresh Folio Features: Can be used to create an impressive portfolio. 7 diverse theme styles to choose from (default, blue, red, grunge light, grunge floral, antique, blue creamer, nightlife) The template will automatically (visually) separate your blog & portfolio content, making this an amazing theme for aspiring designers, developers, artists, photographers etc. Unique page templates types for the portfolio, blog, blog archives, tags & search results. Integrated Theme Options (for WordPress) to tweak the layout, colour scheme etc. for the theme Optional Automatic Image Resize, which is used to dynamically create the thumbnails and featured images Includes Widget enabled Sidebars. eGallery eGallery is a theme made to transform your wordpress blog into a fully functional online portfolio. Theme is perfectly designed to emphasize the artwork you choose to showcase. The design has been greatly enhanced using javascript, and is easy to implement. Price: $39 (Package includes more than 55 themes) View Demo Download ProudFolio ProudFolio is a portfolio premium WordPress theme from Woo Themes. The theme is for designers, developers, artists and photographers who would like a showcase theme which would depict as a portfolio and also serves a purpose of blog. ProudFolio puts a strong emphasis on the portfolio pieces, allowing for decent-sized thumbnails, huge fullscreen views via Lightbox, and full details on the single page. The theme file also contains a choice of three different background images and color schemes. Price: $70 Single $150 Developer License View Demo Download Features: The template will automatically (visually) separate your blog & portfolio content. An unique homepage layout, which publishes only the most important information; Unique page templates for the portfolio, blog, blog archives, tags & search results. Integrated Theme Options (for WordPress) to tweak the layout, colour scheme etc. for the theme; Built-in video panel, which you can use to publish any web-based Flash videos; Automatic Image Resize, which is used to dynamically create the thumbnails and featured images; Custom Page Templates for Archives, Sitemap & Image Gallery; Built-in Gravatar Support for Authors & Comments; Integrated Banner Management script to display randomized banner ads of your choice site-wide; Pretty drop down navigation everywhere; and Widget Enabled Sidebars. Porftolio WordPress Theme A FREE wordpress theme designed for web portfolios and (for now) just for web portfolios. It is coming with an Administrative Panel from where you can edit the head quote text, you can edit all theme colors, font families, font sizes and you can fill a curriculum vitae and display it into a special page. Theme demo and download can be found here Viz | Biz Viz | Biz is a premium WordPress photo gallery and portfolio theme designed specifically for photographers, graphic designers and web designers who want to display their creative work online, market their services, as well as have a typical text blog, using the power and flexibility of WordPress. It is priced for $79.95. Theme Features: Premium quality portfolio template Custom logo uploader to replace the standard graphic with your own unique look from the WP Dashboard Integrated blog component (front images are custom fields and thumbnails, but you can also have a typical blog) Four tabbed feature areas (About Me, Services, Recent Posts, and Tags) Two home page feature photos (You choose which photos to feature using a WP category) Manage your online portfolio through the WordPress CMS Crop two sizes of your work: One for the front page thumbnails and another full size version and upload to WP Search engine optimized. Related posts:14 WordPress Photo Blog & Portfolio Themes 6 PhotoBlog Portfolio WordPress Themes Professional WordPress Business Themes

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• Curing the Database-Application mismatch

  - by Phil Factor

  If an application requires access to a database, then you have to be able to deploy it so as to be version-compatible with the database, in phase. If you can deploy both together, then the application and database must normally be deployed at the same version in which they, together, passed integration and functional testing.  When a single database supports more than one application, then the problem gets more interesting. I’ll need to be more precise here. It is actually the application-interface definition of the database that needs to be in a compatible ‘version’.  Most databases that get into production have no separate application-interface; in other words they are ‘close-coupled’.  For this vast majority, the whole database is the application-interface, and applications are free to wander through the bowels of the database scot-free.  If you’ve spurned the perceived wisdom of application architects to have a defined application-interface within the database that is based on views and stored procedures, any version-mismatch will be as sensitive as a kitten.  A team that creates an application that makes direct access to base tables in a database will have to put a lot of energy into keeping Database and Application in sync, to say nothing of having to tackle issues such as security and audit. It is not the obvious route to development nirvana. I’ve been in countless tense meetings with application developers who initially bridle instinctively at the apparent restrictions of being ‘banned’ from the base tables or routines of a database.  There is no good technical reason for needing that sort of access that I’ve ever come across.  Everything that the application wants can be delivered via a set of views and procedures, and with far less pain for all concerned: This is the application-interface.  If more than zero developers are creating a database-driven application, then the project will benefit from the loose-coupling that an application interface brings. What is important here is that the database development role is separated from the application development role, even if it is the same developer performing both roles. The idea of an application-interface with a database is as old as I can remember. The big corporate or government databases generally supported several applications, and there was little option. When a new application wanted access to an existing corporate database, the developers, and myself as technical architect, would have to meet with hatchet-faced DBAs and production staff to work out an interface. Sure, they would talk up the effort involved for budgetary reasons, but it was routine work, because it decoupled the database from its supporting applications. We’d be given our own stored procedures. One of them, I still remember, had ninety-two parameters. All database access was encapsulated in one application-module. If you have a stable defined application-interface with the database (Yes, one for each application usually) you need to keep the external definitions of the components of this interface in version control, linked with the application source,  and carefully track and negotiate any changes between database developers and application developers.  Essentially, the application development team owns the interface definition, and the onus is on the Database developers to implement it and maintain it, in conformance.  Internally, the database can then make all sorts of changes and refactoring, as long as source control is maintained.  If the application interface passes all the comprehensive integration and functional tests for the particular version they were designed for, nothing is broken. Your performance-testing can ‘hang’ on the same interface, since databases are judged on the performance of the application, not an ‘internal’ database process. The database developers have responsibility for maintaining the application-interface, but not its definition,  as they refactor the database. This is easily tested on a daily basis since the tests are normally automated. In this setting, the deployment can proceed if the more stable application-interface, rather than the continuously-changing database, passes all tests for the version of the application. Normally, if all goes well, a database with a well-designed application interface can evolve gracefully without changing the external appearance of the interface, and this is confirmed by integration tests that check the interface, and which hopefully don’t need to be altered at all often.  If the application is rapidly changing its ‘domain model’  in the light of an increased understanding of the application domain, then it can change the interface definitions and the database developers need only implement the interface rather than refactor the underlying database.  The test team will also have to redo the functional and integration tests which are, of course ‘written to’ the definition.  The Database developers will find it easier if these tests are done before their re-wiring  job to implement the new interface. If, at the other extreme, an application receives no further development work but survives unchanged, the database can continue to change and develop to keep pace with the requirements of the other applications it supports, and needs only to take care that the application interface is never broken. Testing is easy since your automated scripts to test the interface do not need to change. The database developers will, of course, maintain their own source control for the database, and will be likely to maintain versions for all major releases. However, this will not need to be shared with the applications that the database servers. On the other hand, the definition of the application interfaces should be within the application source. Changes in it have to be subject to change-control procedures, as they will require a chain of tests. Once you allow, instead of an application-interface, an intimate relationship between application and database, we are in the realms of impedance mismatch, over and above the obvious security problems.  Part of this impedance problem is a difference in development practices. Whereas the application has to be regularly built and integrated, this isn’t necessarily the case with the database.  An RDBMS is inherently multi-user and self-integrating. If the developers work together on the database, then a subsequent integration of the database on a staging server doesn’t often bring nasty surprises. A separate database-integration process is only needed if the database is deliberately built in a way that mimics the application development process, but which hampers the normal database-development techniques.  This process is like demanding a official walking with a red flag in front of a motor car.  In order to closely coordinate databases with applications, entire databases have to be ‘versioned’, so that an application version can be matched with a database version to produce a working build without errors.  There is no natural process to ‘version’ databases.  Each development project will have to define a system for maintaining the version level. A curious paradox occurs in development when there is no formal application-interface. When the strains and cracks happen, the extra meetings, bureaucracy, and activity required to maintain accurate deployments looks to IT management like work. They see activity, and it looks good. Work means progress.  Management then smile on the design choices made. In IT, good design work doesn’t necessarily look good, and vice versa.

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