almost surely - Page 267

CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, April 11, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, April 11, 2010New ProjectsArkzia: This Silverlight game.CodePlex Wiki Editor: CodePlex Wiki Editor makes it easier for CodePlex users to create their wiki documentations. This project offer a rich interface for the edition...Evaluate: Evaluate & Comet DWR like .NET library with powerfull Evaluate and Ajax Comet support. Also, you may use Evaluate library in your own .Net applicat...FamAccountor: 家庭记账薄Horadric: This is common tools freamwork!K8061.Managed: This is a solution to use the Velleman Extended K8061 USB Interface board with .net and to have a nice wrapper handling most of the overhead for us...Latent semantic analysis: all you need is to use!: Baggr is feed aggregator with web interface, user rating and LSA filter. Enjoy it!LIF7 ==> RISK : TOWER DEFENSE: Université Lyon 1, L2 MATH-INFO 2009-2010 Semestre de printemps Projet RISK : TOWER DEFENSE Membres : Jessica El Melhem, Vincent Sébille, et Jonat...Managed ESL Suite: Managed ESL Suite using C# for FreeSWITCH Omni-Tool - A program version concept of the tool used in Mass Effect.: A program version concept of the tool used in Mass Effect. It will support little apps (plugins) that run inside the UI. Its talor mainly at develo...PdxCodeCamp: Web application for Portland Code CampProjeto Vírus: Desenvolvimento do Jogo Virus em XNAsilverlight control - stars with rounded corners: Draw stars and cogs including rounded cornersSilverlight MathParser: Implementation of mathematical expressions parser to compute and functions.turing machine simulator: Project for JCE in course SW engeenering. Turing Machine simulator with GUI.WpD - Wallpapers Downloader: You can easy download wallpapers to your computer without any advertising or registration. On 5 minutes you can download so many wallpapers!New ReleasesAJAX Control Framework: v1.0.0.0: New AJAX project that helps you create AJAX enabled controls. Make use of control level AJAX methods, a Script Manager that works like you'd expect...AutoFixture: Version 1.1: This is version 1.1 of AutoFixture. This release contains no known bugs. Compared to Release Candidate 1 for version 1.1, there are no changes. Ho...AutoPoco: AutoPoco 0.3: Method Invocation in configuration Custom type providers during configuration Method invocation for generationBacicworx (Basic Services Framework): 3.0.10.410 (Beta): Major update, winnowing, and recode of the library. Removed redundant classses and methods which have similar functionality to those available in ...Bluetooth Radar: Version 1.5: Mostly UI and Animation Changes.BUtil: BUtil 4.9: 1. Icons of kneo are almost removed 2. Deployment was moved to codeplex.com 3. Adding of storages was unavailable when any of storages are used FIXEDcrudwork library: crudwork 2.2.0.3: few bug fixes new object viewer - allow the user to view and change an object through the property grid and/or the simple XML editor pivot table ...EnhSim: Release v1.9.8.5: Release v1.9.8.5Removed the debugging output from the Armor Penetration change.EnhSim: Release v1.9.8.6: Release v1.9.8.6Updated release to include the correct version of EnhSimGUIEvaluate: Evaluate Library: This file contains Evaluate library source code under Visual Studio project. Also, there is a sample project to see the use.ExcelDna: ExcelDna Version 0.25: This is an important bugfix release, with the following changes: Fix case where unpacked .config temp file might not be deleted. Fix compiler pro...FamAccountor: 家庭账薄预览版v0.0.1: 家庭账薄预览版v0.0.1 该版本提供基本功能，还有待扩展! Feature: 实现基本添加、编辑、删除功能。FamAccountor: 家庭账薄预览版v0.0.2: 家庭账薄预览版v0.0.2 该版本提供基本功能，还有待扩展! Feature: 添加账户管理功能。Folder Bookmarks: Folder Bookmarks 1.4.2: This is the latest version of Folder Bookmarks (1.4.2), with general improvements. It has an installer - it will create a directory 'CPascoe' in My...GKO Libraries: GKO Libraries 0.3 Beta: Added Silverlight support for Gko.Utils Added ExtensionsHash Calculator: HashCalculator 1.2: HashCalculator 1.2HD-Trailers.NET Downloader: Version: TrailersOnly if set to 'true' only titles with 'trailer' in the title will be download MinTrailerSize Added a minimum trailer size, this avoids t...Home Access Plus+: v3.2.6.0: v3.2.5.1 Release Change Log: Add lesson naming Fixed a bug in the help desk which was rendering the wrong URL for tickets Planning has started ...HTML Ruby: 6.20.0: All new concept, all new code. Because this release does not support complex ruby annotations, "Furigana Injector" is not supported by this release...HTML Ruby: 6.20.1: Fixed problem where ruby with closed tags but no rb tag will result in empty page Added support for complex ruby annotation (limited single ruby)...K8061.Managed: K8061.Managed: This is a pre-compilled K8061.Managed.DLL file release 1.0.Kooboo CMS: Kooboo CMS 2.1.0.0: Users of Kooboo CMS 2.0, please use the "Check updates" feature under System to upgrade New featuresWebDav support You can now use tools like w...Kooboo forum: Kooboo Forum Module for 2.1.0.0: Compatible with Kooboo cms 2.1.0.0 Upgrade to MVC 2Kooboo GoogleAnalytics: Kooboo GoogleAnalytics Module for 2.1.0.0: Compatible with Kooboo cms 2.1.0.0 Upgrade to MVC 2Kooboo wiki: Kooboo CMS Wiki module for 2.1.0.0: Compatible with Kooboo cms 2.1.0.0 Upgrade to MVC 2Mavention: Mavention Simple SiteMapPath: Mavention Simple SiteMapPath is a custom control that renders breadcrumbs as an unordered list what makes it a perfect solution for breadcrumbs on ...MetaSharp: MetaSharp v0.3: MetaSharp v0.3 Roadmap: Oslo Independence Custom Grammar library Improved build environment dogfooding Project structure simplificationsRoTwee: RoTwee (10.0.0.7): New feature of this version is support for mouse wheel. You can rotate tweets rotating mouse wheel.silverlight control - stars with rounded corners: first step: These are the first examples.Silverlight MathParser: Silverlight MathParser 1.0: Implementation of mathematical expressions parser to compute and functions.SimpleGeo.NET: SimpleGeo.NET example website project: ConfigurationYou must change these three configuration values in AppSettings.config: Google Maps API key: for the maps on the test site. Get one he...StickyTweets: 0.6.0: Version 0.6.0 Code - PERFORMANCE Hook into Async WinInet to perform async requests without adding an additional thread Code - Verify that async r...System.Html: Version 1.3; fixed bugs and improved performance: This release incorporates bug fixes, a new normalize method proposed by RudolfHenning of Codeplex.VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30410.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVFPX: FoxTabs 0.9.2: The following issues were addressed: 26744 24954 24767Visual Studio DSite: Advanced Guessing Number Game (Visual C++ 2008): A guessing number game made in visual c 2008.WpD - Wallpapers Downloader: WpD v0.1: My first release, I hope you enjoyMost Popular ProjectsWBFS ManagerRawrASP.NET Ajax LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseAJAX Control ToolkitSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesFacebook Developer ToolkitMost Active ProjectsRawrnopCommerce. Open Source online shop e-commerce solution.AutoPocopatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryShweet: SharePoint 2010 Team Messaging built with PexFarseer Physics EngineNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterBlogEngine.NETBeanProxy

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SQL SERVER – Guest Post – Jonathan Kehayias – Wait Type – Day 16 of 28

- by pinaldave

Jonathan Kehayias (Blog | Twitter) is a MCITP Database Administrator and Developer, who got started in SQL Server in 2004 as a database developer and report writer in the natural gas industry. After spending two and a half years working in TSQL, in late 2006, he transitioned to the role of SQL Database Administrator. His primary passion is performance tuning, where he frequently rewrites queries for better performance and performs in depth analysis of index implementation and usage. Jonathan blogs regularly on SQLBlog, and was a coauthor of Professional SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting. On a personal note, I think Jonathan is extremely positive person. In every conversation with him I have found that he is always eager to help and encourage. Every time he finds something needs to be approved, he has contacted me without hesitation and guided me to improve, change and learn. During all the time, he has not lost his focus to help larger community. I am honored that he has accepted to provide his views on complex subject of Wait Types and Queues. Currently I am reading his series on Extended Events. Here is the guest blog post by Jonathan: SQL Server troubleshooting is all about correlating related pieces of information together to indentify where exactly the root cause of a problem lies. In my daily work as a DBA, I generally get phone calls like, “So and so application is slow, what’s wrong with the SQL Server.” One of the funny things about the letters DBA is that they go so well with Default Blame Acceptor, and I really wish that I knew exactly who the first person was that pointed that out to me, because it really fits at times. A lot of times when I get this call, the problem isn’t related to SQL Server at all, but every now and then in my initial quick checks, something pops up that makes me start looking at things further. The SQL Server is slow, we see a number of tasks waiting on ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION, IO_COMPLETION, or PAGEIOLATCH_* waits in sys.dm_exec_requests and sys.dm_exec_waiting_tasks. These are also some of the highest wait types in sys.dm_os_wait_stats for the server, so it would appear that we have a disk I/O bottleneck on the machine. A quick check of sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats() and tempdb shows a high write stall rate, while our user databases show high read stall rates on the data files. A quick check of some performance counters and Page Life Expectancy on the server is bouncing up and down in the 50-150 range, the Free Page counter consistently hits zero, and the Free List Stalls/sec counter keeps jumping over 10, but Buffer Cache Hit Ratio is 98-99%. Where exactly is the problem? In this case, which happens to be based on a real scenario I faced a few years back, the problem may not be a disk bottleneck at all; it may very well be a memory pressure issue on the server. A quick check of the system spec’s and it is a dual duo core server with 8GB RAM running SQL Server 2005 SP1 x64 on Windows Server 2003 R2 x64. Max Server memory is configured at 6GB and we think that this should be enough to handle the workload; or is it? This is a unique scenario because there are a couple of things happening inside of this system, and they all relate to what the root cause of the performance problem is on the system. If we were to query sys.dm_exec_query_stats for the TOP 10 queries, by max_physical_reads, max_logical_reads, and max_worker_time, we may be able to find some queries that were using excessive I/O and possibly CPU against the system in their worst single execution. We can also CROSS APPLY to sys.dm_exec_sql_text() and see the statement text, and also CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_query_plan() to get the execution plan stored in cache. Ok, quick check, the plans are pretty big, I see some large index seeks, that estimate 2.8GB of data movement between operators, but everything looks like it is optimized the best it can be. Nothing really stands out in the code, and the indexing looks correct, and I should have enough memory to handle this in cache, so it must be a disk I/O problem right? Not exactly! If we were to look at how much memory the plan cache is taking by querying sys.dm_os_memory_clerks for the CACHESTORE_SQLCP and CACHESTORE_OBJCP clerks we might be surprised at what we find. In SQL Server 2005 RTM and SP1, the plan cache was allowed to take up to 75% of the memory under 8GB. I’ll give you a second to go back and read that again. Yes, you read it correctly, it says 75% of the memory under 8GB, but you don’t have to take my word for it, you can validate this by reading Changes in Caching Behavior between SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005 RTM and SQL Server 2005 SP2. In this scenario the application uses an entirely adhoc workload against SQL Server and this leads to plan cache bloat, and up to 4.5GB of our 6GB of memory for SQL can be consumed by the plan cache in SQL Server 2005 SP1. This in turn reduces the size of the buffer cache to just 1.5GB, causing our 2.8GB of data movement in this expensive plan to cause complete flushing of the buffer cache, not just once initially, but then another time during the queries execution, resulting in excessive physical I/O from disk. Keep in mind that this is not the only query executing at the time this occurs. Remember the output of sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats() showed high read stalls on the data files for our user databases versus higher write stalls for tempdb? The memory pressure is also forcing heavier use of tempdb to handle sorting and hashing in the environment as well. The real clue here is the Memory counters for the instance; Page Life Expectancy, Free List Pages, and Free List Stalls/sec. The fact that Page Life Expectancy is fluctuating between 50 and 150 constantly is a sign that the buffer cache is experiencing constant churn of data, once every minute to two and a half minutes. If you add to the Page Life Expectancy counter, the consistent bottoming out of Free List Pages along with Free List Stalls/sec consistently spiking over 10, and you have the perfect memory pressure scenario. All of sudden it may not be that our disk subsystem is the problem, but is instead an innocent bystander and victim. Side Note: The Page Life Expectancy counter dropping briefly and then returning to normal operating values intermittently is not necessarily a sign that the server is under memory pressure. The Books Online and a number of other references will tell you that this counter should remain on average above 300 which is the time in seconds a page will remain in cache before being flushed or aged out. This number, which equates to just five minutes, is incredibly low for modern systems and most published documents pre-date the predominance of 64 bit computing and easy availability to larger amounts of memory in SQL Servers. As food for thought, consider that my personal laptop has more memory in it than most SQL Servers did at the time those numbers were posted. I would argue that today, a system churning the buffer cache every five minutes is in need of some serious tuning or a hardware upgrade. Back to our problem and its investigation: There are two things really wrong with this server; first the plan cache is excessively consuming memory and bloated in size and we need to look at that and second we need to evaluate upgrading the memory to accommodate the workload being performed. In the case of the server I was working on there were a lot of single use plans found in sys.dm_exec_cached_plans (where usecounts=1). Single use plans waste space in the plan cache, especially when they are adhoc plans for statements that had concatenated filter criteria that is not likely to reoccur with any frequency. SQL Server 2005 doesn’t natively have a way to evict a single plan from cache like SQL Server 2008 does, but MVP Kalen Delaney, showed a hack to evict a single plan by creating a plan guide for the statement and then dropping that plan guide in her blog post Geek City: Clearing a Single Plan from Cache. We could put that hack in place in a job to automate cleaning out all the single use plans periodically, minimizing the size of the plan cache, but a better solution would be to fix the application so that it uses proper parameterized calls to the database. You didn’t write the app, and you can’t change its design? Ok, well you could try to force parameterization to occur by creating and keeping plan guides in place, or we can try forcing parameterization at the database level by using ALTER DATABASE <dbname> SET PARAMETERIZATION FORCED and that might help. If neither of these help, we could periodically dump the plan cache for that database, as discussed as being a problem in Kalen’s blog post referenced above; not an ideal scenario. The other option is to increase the memory on the server to 16GB or 32GB, if the hardware allows it, which will increase the size of the plan cache as well as the buffer cache. In SQL Server 2005 SP1, on a system with 16GB of memory, if we set max server memory to 14GB the plan cache could use at most 9GB [(8GB*.75)+(6GB*.5)=(6+3)=9GB], leaving 5GB for the buffer cache. If we went to 32GB of memory and set max server memory to 28GB, the plan cache could use at most 16GB [(8*.75)+(20*.5)=(6+10)=16GB], leaving 12GB for the buffer cache. Thankfully we have SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2, 3, and 4 these days which include the changes in plan cache sizing discussed in the Changes to Caching Behavior between SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005 RTM and SQL Server 2005 SP2 blog post. In real life, when I was troubleshooting this problem, I spent a week trying to chase down the cause of the disk I/O bottleneck with our Server Admin and SAN Admin, and there wasn’t much that could be done immediately there, so I finally asked if we could increase the memory on the server to 16GB, which did fix the problem. It wasn’t until I had this same problem occur on another system that I actually figured out how to really troubleshoot this down to the root cause. I couldn’t believe the size of the plan cache on the server with 16GB of memory when I actually learned about this and went back to look at it. SQL Server is constantly telling a story to anyone that will listen. As the DBA, you have to sit back and listen to all that it’s telling you and then evaluate the big picture and how all the data you can gather from SQL about performance relate to each other. One of the greatest tools out there is actually a free in the form of Diagnostic Scripts for SQL Server 2005 and 2008, created by MVP Glenn Alan Berry. Glenn’s scripts collect a majority of the information that SQL has to offer for rapid troubleshooting of problems, and he includes a lot of notes about what the outputs of each individual query might be telling you. When I read Pinal’s blog post SQL SERVER – ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION – Wait Type – Day 11 of 28, I noticed that he referenced Checking Memory Related Performance Counters in his post, but there was no real explanation about why checking memory counters is so important when looking at an I/O related wait type. I thought I’d chat with him briefly on Google Talk/Twitter DM and point this out, and offer a couple of other points I noted, so that he could add the information to his blog post if he found it useful. Instead he asked that I write a guest blog for this. I am honored to be a guest blogger, and to be able to share this kind of information with the community. The information contained in this blog post is a glimpse at how I do troubleshooting almost every day of the week in my own environment. SQL Server provides us with a lot of information about how it is running, and where it may be having problems, it is up to us to play detective and find out how all that information comes together to tell us what’s really the problem. This blog post is written by Jonathan Kehayias (Blog | Twitter). Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: MVP, Pinal Dave, PostADay, Readers Contribution, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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C# Neural Networks with Encog

- by JoshReuben

Neural Networks · I recently read a book Introduction to Neural Networks for C# , by Jeff Heaton. http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Neural-Networks-C-2nd/dp/1604390093/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1296821004&sr=8-2-spell. Not the 1st ANN book I've perused, but a nice revision. · Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) are a mechanism of machine learning – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_neural_network , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Machine_learning · Problems Not Suited to a Neural Network Solution- Programs that are easily written out as flowcharts consisting of well-defined steps, program logic that is unlikely to change, problems in which you must know exactly how the solution was derived. · Problems Suited to a Neural Network – pattern recognition, classification, series prediction, and data mining. Pattern recognition - network attempts to determine if the input data matches a pattern that it has been trained to recognize. Classification - take input samples and classify them into fuzzy groups. · As far as machine learning approaches go, I thing SVMs are superior (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Support_vector_machine ) - a neural network has certain disadvantages in comparison: an ANN can be overtrained, different training sets can produce non-deterministic weights and it is not possible to discern the underlying decision function of an ANN from its weight matrix – they are black box. · In this post, I'm not going to go into internals (believe me I know them). An autoassociative network (e.g. a Hopfield network) will echo back a pattern if it is recognized. · Under the hood, there is very little maths. In a nutshell - Some simple matrix operations occur during training: the input array is processed (normalized into bipolar values of 1, -1) - transposed from input column vector into a row vector, these are subject to matrix multiplication and then subtraction of the identity matrix to get a contribution matrix. The dot product is taken against the weight matrix to yield a boolean match result. For backpropogation training, a derivative function is required. In learning, hill climbing mechanisms such as Genetic Algorithms and Simulated Annealing are used to escape local minima. For unsupervised training, such as found in Self Organizing Maps used for OCR, Hebbs rule is applied. · The purpose of this post is not to mire you in technical and conceptual details, but to show you how to leverage neural networks via an abstraction API - Encog Encog · Encog is a neural network API · Links to Encog: http://www.encog.org , http://www.heatonresearch.com/encog, http://www.heatonresearch.com/forum · Encog requires .Net 3.5 or higher – there is also a Silverlight version. Third-Party Libraries – log4net and nunit. · Encog supports feedforward, recurrent, self-organizing maps, radial basis function and Hopfield neural networks. · Encog neural networks, and related data, can be stored in .EG XML files. · Encog Workbench allows you to edit, train and visualize neural networks. The Encog Workbench can generate code. Synapses and layers · the primary building blocks - Almost every neural network will have, at a minimum, an input and output layer. In some cases, the same layer will function as both input and output layer. · To adapt a problem to a neural network, you must determine how to feed the problem into the input layer of a neural network, and receive the solution through the output layer of a neural network. · The Input Layer - For each input neuron, one double value is stored. An array is passed as input to a layer. Encog uses the interface INeuralData to hold these arrays. The class BasicNeuralData implements the INeuralData interface. Once the neural network processes the input, an INeuralData based class will be returned from the neural network's output layer. · convert a double array into an INeuralData object : INeuralData data = new BasicNeuralData(= new double[10]); · the Output Layer- The neural network outputs an array of doubles, wraped in a class based on the INeuralData interface. · The real power of a neural network comes from its pattern recognition capabilities. The neural network should be able to produce the desired output even if the input has been slightly distorted. · Hidden Layers– optional. between the input and output layers. very much a “black box”. If the structure of the hidden layer is too simple it may not learn the problem. If the structure is too complex, it will learn the problem but will be very slow to train and execute. Some neural networks have no hidden layers. The input layer may be directly connected to the output layer. Further, some neural networks have only a single layer. A single layer neural network has the single layer self-connected. · connections, called synapses, contain individual weight matrixes. These values are changed as the neural network learns. Constructing a Neural Network · the XOR operator is a frequent “first example” -the “Hello World” application for neural networks. · The XOR Operator- only returns true when both inputs differ. 0 XOR 0 = 0 1 XOR 0 = 1 0 XOR 1 = 1 1 XOR 1 = 0 · Structuring a Neural Network for XOR - two inputs to the XOR operator and one output. · input: 0.0,0.0 1.0,0.0 0.0,1.0 1.0,1.0 · Expected output: 0.0 1.0 1.0 0.0 · A Perceptron - a simple feedforward neural network to learn the XOR operator. · Because the XOR operator has two inputs and one output, the neural network will follow suit. Additionally, the neural network will have a single hidden layer, with two neurons to help process the data. The choice for 2 neurons in the hidden layer is arbitrary, and often comes down to trial and error. · Neuron Diagram for the XOR Network · · The Encog workbench displays neural networks on a layer-by-layer basis. · Encog Layer Diagram for the XOR Network: · Create a BasicNetwork - Three layers are added to this network. the FinalizeStructure method must be called to inform the network that no more layers are to be added. The call to Reset randomizes the weights in the connections between these layers. var network = new BasicNetwork(); network.AddLayer(new BasicLayer(2)); network.AddLayer(new BasicLayer(2)); network.AddLayer(new BasicLayer(1)); network.Structure.FinalizeStructure(); network.Reset(); · Neural networks frequently start with a random weight matrix. This provides a starting point for the training methods. These random values will be tested and refined into an acceptable solution. However, sometimes the initial random values are too far off. Sometimes it may be necessary to reset the weights again, if training is ineffective. These weights make up the long-term memory of the neural network. Additionally, some layers have threshold values that also contribute to the long-term memory of the neural network. Some neural networks also contain context layers, which give the neural network a short-term memory as well. The neural network learns by modifying these weight and threshold values. · Now that the neural network has been created, it must be trained. Training a Neural Network · construct a INeuralDataSet object - contains the input array and the expected output array (of corresponding range). Even though there is only one output value, we must still use a two-dimensional array to represent the output. public static double[][] XOR_INPUT ={ new double[2] { 0.0, 0.0 }, new double[2] { 1.0, 0.0 }, new double[2] { 0.0, 1.0 }, new double[2] { 1.0, 1.0 } }; public static double[][] XOR_IDEAL = { new double[1] { 0.0 }, new double[1] { 1.0 }, new double[1] { 1.0 }, new double[1] { 0.0 } }; INeuralDataSet trainingSet = new BasicNeuralDataSet(XOR_INPUT, XOR_IDEAL); · Training is the process where the neural network's weights are adjusted to better produce the expected output. Training will continue for many iterations, until the error rate of the network is below an acceptable level. Encog supports many different types of training. Resilient Propagation (RPROP) - general-purpose training algorithm. All training classes implement the ITrain interface. The RPROP algorithm is implemented by the ResilientPropagation class. Training the neural network involves calling the Iteration method on the ITrain class until the error is below a specific value. The code loops through as many iterations, or epochs, as it takes to get the error rate for the neural network to be below 1%. Once the neural network has been trained, it is ready for use. ITrain train = new ResilientPropagation(network, trainingSet); for (int epoch=0; epoch < 10000; epoch++) { train.Iteration(); Debug.Print("Epoch #" + epoch + " Error:" + train.Error); if (train.Error > 0.01) break; } Executing a Neural Network · Call the Compute method on the BasicNetwork class. Console.WriteLine("Neural Network Results:"); foreach (INeuralDataPair pair in trainingSet) { INeuralData output = network.Compute(pair.Input); Console.WriteLine(pair.Input[0] + "," + pair.Input[1] + ", actual=" + output[0] + ",ideal=" + pair.Ideal[0]); } · The Compute method accepts an INeuralData class and also returns a INeuralData object. Neural Network Results: 0.0,0.0, actual=0.002782538818034049,ideal=0.0 1.0,0.0, actual=0.9903741937121177,ideal=1.0 0.0,1.0, actual=0.9836807956566187,ideal=1.0 1.0,1.0, actual=0.0011646072586172778,ideal=0.0 · the network has not been trained to give the exact results. This is normal. Because the network was trained to 1% error, each of the results will also be within generally 1% of the expected value.

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How to Use USER_DEFINED Activity in OWB Process Flow

- by Jinggen He

Process Flow is a very important component of Oracle Warehouse Builder. With Process Flow, we can create and control the ETL process by setting all kinds of activities in a well-constructed flow. In Oracle Warehouse Builder 11gR2, there are 28 kinds of activities, which fall into three categories: Control activities, OWB specific activities and Utility activities. For more information about Process Flow activities, please refer to OWB online doc. Most of those activities are pre-defined for some specific use. For example, the Mapping activity allows execution an OWB mapping in Process Flow and the FTP activity allows an interaction between the local host and a remote FTP server. Besides those activities for specific purposes, the User Defined activity enables you to incorporate into a Process Flow an activity that is not defined within Warehouse Builder. So the User Defined activity brings flexibility and extensibility to Process Flow. In this article, we will take an amazing tour of using the User Defined activity. Let's start. Enable execution of User Defined activity Let's start this section from creating a very simple Process Flow, which contains a Start activity, a User Defined activity and an End Success activity. Leave all parameters of activity USER_DEFINED unchanged except that we enter /tmp/test.sh into the Value column of the COMMAND parameter. Then let's create the shell script test.sh in /tmp directory. Here is the content of /tmp/test.sh (this article is demonstrating a scenario in Linux system, and /tmp/test.sh is a Bash shell script): echo Hello World! > /tmp/test.txt Note: don't forget to grant the execution privilege on /tmp/test.sh to OS Oracle user. For simplicity, we just use the following command. chmod +x /tmp/test.sh OK, it's so simple that we’ve almost done it. Now deploy the Process Flow and run it. For a newly installed OWB, we will come across an error saying "RPE-02248: For security reasons, activity operator Shell has been disabled by the DBA". See below. That's because, by default, the User Defined activity is DISABLED. Configuration about this can be found in <ORACLE_HOME>/owb/bin/admin/Runtime.properties: property.RuntimePlatform.0.NativeExecution.Shell.security_constraint=DISABLED The property can be set to three different values: NATIVE_JAVA, SCHEDULER and DISBALED. Where NATIVE_JAVA uses the Java 'Runtime.exec' interface, SCHEDULER uses a DBMS Scheduler external job submitted by the Control Center repository owner which is executed by the default operating system user configured by the DBA. DISABLED prevents execution via these operators. We enable the execution of User Defined activity by setting: property.RuntimePlatform.0.NativeExecution.Shell.security_constraint= NATIVE_JAVA Restart the Control Center service for the change of setting to take effect. cd <ORACLE_HOME>/owb/rtp/sql sqlplus OWBSYS/<password of OWBSYS> @stop_service.sql sqlplus OWBSYS/<password of OWBSYS> @start_service.sql And then run the Process Flow again. We will see that the Process Flow completes successfully. The execution of /tmp/test.sh successfully generated a file /tmp/test.txt, containing the line Hello World!. Pass parameters to User Defined Activity The Process Flow created in the above section has a drawback: the User Defined activity doesn't accept any information from OWB nor does it give any meaningful results back to OWB. That's to say, it lacks interaction. Maybe, sometimes such a Process Flow can fulfill the business requirement. But for most of the time, we need to get the User Defined activity executed according to some information prior to that step. In this section, we will see how to pass parameters to the User Defined activity and pass them into the to-be-executed shell script. First, let's see how to pass parameters to the script. The User Defined activity has an input parameter named PARAMETER_LIST. This is a list of parameters that will be passed to the command. Parameters are separated from one another by a token. The token is taken as the first character on the PARAMETER_LIST string, and the string must also end in that token. Warehouse Builder recommends the '?' character, but any character can be used. For example, to pass 'abc,' 'def,' and 'ghi' you can use the following equivalent: ?abc?def?ghi? or !abc!def!ghi! or |abc|def|ghi| If the token character or '\' needs to be included as part of the parameter, then it must be preceded with '\'. For example '\\'. If '\' is the token character, then '/' becomes the escape character. Let's configure the PARAMETER_LIST parameter as below: And modify the shell script /tmp/test.sh as below: echo $1 is saying hello to $2! > /tmp/test.txt Re-deploy the Process Flow and run it. We will see that the generated /tmp/test.txt contains the following line: Bob is saying hello to Alice! In the example above, the parameters passed into the shell script are static. This case is not so useful because: instead of passing parameters, we can directly write the value of the parameters in the shell script. To make the case more meaningful, we can pass two dynamic parameters, that are obtained from the previous activity, to the shell script. Prepare the Process Flow as below: The Mapping activity MAPPING_1 has two output parameters: FROM_USER, TO_USER. The User Defined activity has two input parameters: FROM_USER, TO_USER. All the four parameters are of String type. Additionally, the Process Flow has two string variables: VARIABLE_FOR_FROM_USER, VARIABLE_FOR_TO_USER. Through VARIABLE_FOR_FROM_USER, the input parameter FROM_USER of USER_DEFINED gets value from output parameter FROM_USER of MAPPING_1. We achieve this by binding both parameters to VARIABLE_FOR_FROM_USER. See the two figures below. In the same way, through VARIABLE_FOR_TO_USER, the input parameter TO_USER of USER_DEFINED gets value from output parameter TO_USER of MAPPING_1. Also, we need to change the PARAMETER_LIST of the User Defined activity like below: Now, the shell script is getting input from the Mapping activity dynamically. Deploy the Process Flow and all of its necessary dependees then run the Process Flow. We see that the generated /tmp/test.txt contains the following line: USER B is saying hello to USER A! 'USER B' and 'USER A' are two outputs of the Mapping execution. Write the shell script within Oracle Warehouse Builder In the previous section, the shell script is located in the /tmp directory. But sometimes, when the shell script is small, or for the sake of maintaining consistency, you may want to keep the shell script inside Oracle Warehouse Builder. We can achieve this by configuring these three parameters of a User Defined activity properly: COMMAND: Set the path of interpreter, by which the shell script will be interpreted. PARAMETER_LIST: Set it blank. SCRIPT: Enter the shell script content. Note that in Linux the shell script content is passed into the interpreter as standard input at runtime. About how to actually pass parameters to the shell script, we can utilize variable substitutions. As in the following figure, ${FROM_USER} will be replaced by the value of the FROM_USER input parameter of the User Defined activity. So will the ${TO_USER} symbol. Besides the custom substitution variables, OWB also provide some system pre-defined substitution variables. You can refer to the online document for that. Deploy the Process Flow and run it. We see that the generated /tmp/test.txt contains the following line: USER B is saying hello to USER A! Leverage the return value of User Defined activity All of the previous sections are connecting the User Defined activity to END_SUCCESS with an unconditional transition. But what should we do if we want different subsequent activities for different shell script execution results? 1. The simplest way is to add three simple-conditioned out-going transitions for the User Defined activity just like the figure below. In the figure, to simplify the scenario, we connect the User Defined activity to three End activities. Basically, if the shell script ends successfully, the whole Process Flow will end at END_SUCCESS, otherwise, the whole Process Flow will end at END_ERROR (in our case, ending at END_WARNING seldom happens). In the real world, we can add more complex and meaningful subsequent business logic. 2. Or we can utilize complex conditions to work with different results of the User Defined activity. Previously, in our script, we only have this line: echo ${FROM_USER} is saying hello to ${TO_USER}! > /tmp/test.txt We can add more logic in it and return different values accordingly. echo ${FROM_USER} is saying hello to ${TO_USER}! > /tmp/test.txt if CONDITION_1 ; then ...... exit 0 fi if CONDITION_2 ; then ...... exit 2 fi if CONDITION_3 ; then ...... exit 3 fi After that we can leverage the result by checking RESULT_CODE in condition expression of those out-going transitions. Let's suppose that we have the Process Flow as the following graph (SUB_PROCESS_n stands for more different further processes): We can set complex condition for the transition from USER_DEFINED to SUB_PROCESS_1 like this: Other transitions can be set in the same way. Note that, in our shell script, we return 0, 2 and 3, but not 1. As in Linux system, if the shell script comes across a system error like IO error, the return value will be 1. We can explicitly handle such a return value. Summary Let's summarize what has been discussed in this article: How to create a Process Flow with a User Defined activity in it How to pass parameters from the prior activity to the User Defined activity and finally into the shell script How to write the shell script within Oracle Warehouse Builder How to do variable substitutions How to let the User Defined activity return different values and in what way can we leverage

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Advantages of SQL Backup Pro

- by Grant Fritchey

Getting backups of your databases in place is a fundamental issue for protection of the business. Yes, I said business, not data, not databases, but business. Because of a lack of good, tested, backups, companies have gone completely out of business or suffered traumatic financial loss. That’s just a simple fact (outlined with a few examples here). So you want to get backups right. That’s a big part of why we make Red Gate SQL Backup Pro work the way it does. Yes, you could just use native backups, but you’ll be missing a few advantages that we provide over and above what you get out of the box from Microsoft. Let’s talk about them. Guidance If you’re a hard-core DBA with 20+ years of experience on every version of SQL Server and several other data platforms besides, you may already know what you need in order to get a set of tested backups in place. But, if you’re not, maybe a little help would be a good thing. To set up backups for your servers, we supply a wizard that will step you through the entire process. It will also act to guide you down good paths. For example, if your databases are in Full Recovery, you should set up transaction log backups to run on a regular basis. When you choose a transaction log backup from the Backup Type you’ll see that only those databases that are in Full Recovery will be listed: This makes it very easy to be sure you have a log backup set up for all the databases you should and none of the databases where you won’t be able to. There are other examples of guidance throughout the product. If you have the responsibility of managing backups but very little knowledge or time, we can help you out. Throughout the software you’ll notice little green question marks. You can see two in the screen above and more in each of the screens in other topics below this one. Clicking on these will open a window with additional information about the topic in question which should help to guide you through some of the tougher decisions you may have to make while setting up your backup jobs. Here’s an example: Backup Copies As a part of the wizard you can choose to make a copy of your backup on your network. This process runs as part of the Red Gate SQL Backup engine. It will copy your backup, after completing the backup so it doesn’t cause any additional blocking or resource use within the backup process, to the network location you define. Creating a copy acts as a mechanism of protection for your backups. You can then backup that copy or do other things with it, all without affecting the original backup file. This requires either an additional backup or additional scripting to get it done within the native Microsoft backup engine. Offsite Storage Red Gate offers you the ability to immediately copy your backup to the cloud as a further, off-site, protection of your backups. It’s a service we provide and expose through the Backup wizard. Your backup will complete first, just like with the network backup copy, then an asynchronous process will copy that backup to cloud storage. Again, this is built right into the wizard or even the command line calls to SQL Backup, so it’s part a single process within your system. With native backup you would need to write additional scripts, possibly outside of T-SQL, to make this happen. Before you can use this with your backups you’ll need to do a little setup, but it’s built right into the product to get this done. You’ll be directed to the web site for our hosted storage where you can set up an account. Compression If you have SQL Server 2008 Enterprise, or you’re on SQL Server 2008R2 or greater and you have a Standard or Enterprise license, then you have backup compression. It’s built right in and works well. But, if you need even more compression then you might want to consider Red Gate SQL Backup Pro. We offer four levels of compression within the product. This means you can get a little compression faster, or you can just sacrifice some CPU time and get even more compression. You decide. For just a simple example I backed up AdventureWorks2012 using both methods of compression. The resulting file from native was 53mb. Our file was 33mb. That’s a file that is smaller by 38%, not a small number when we start talking gigabytes. We even provide guidance here to help you determine which level of compression would be right for you and your system: So for this test, if you wanted maximum compression with minimum CPU use you’d probably want to go with Level 2 which gets you almost as much compression as Level 3 but will use fewer resources. And that compression is still better than the native one by 10%. Restore Testing Backups are vital. But, a backup is just a file until you restore it. How do you know that you can restore that backup? Of course, you’ll use CHECKSUM to validate that what was read from disk during the backup process is what gets written to the backup file. You’ll also use VERIFYONLY to check that the backup header and the checksums on the backup file are valid. But, this doesn’t do a complete test of the backup. The only complete test is a restore. So, what you really need is a process that tests your backups. This is something you’ll have to schedule separately from your backups, but we provide a couple of mechanisms to help you out here. First, when you create a backup schedule, all done through our wizard which gives you as much guidance as you get when running backups, you get the option of creating a reminder to create a job to test your restores. You can enable this or disable it as you choose when creating your scheduled backups. Once you’re ready to schedule test restores for your databases, we have a wizard for this as well. After you choose the databases and restores you want to test, all configurable for automation, you get to decide if you’re going to restore to a specified copy or to the original database: If you’re doing your tests on a new server (probably the best choice) you can just overwrite the original database if it’s there. If not, you may want to create a new database each time you test your restores. Another part of validating your backups is ensuring that they can pass consistency checks. So we have DBCC built right into the process. You can even decide how you want DBCC run, which error messages to include, limit or add to the checks being run. With this you could offload some DBCC checks from your production system so that you only run the physical checks on your production box, but run the full check on this backup. That makes backup testing not just a general safety process, but a performance enhancer as well: Finally, assuming the tests pass, you can delete the database, leave it in place, or delete it regardless of the tests passing. All this is automated and scheduled through the SQL Agent job on your servers. Running your databases through this process will ensure that you don’t just have backups, but that you have tested backups. Single Point of Management If you have more than one server to maintain, getting backups setup could be a tedious process. But, with Red Gate SQL Backup Pro you can connect to multiple servers and then manage all your databases and all your servers backups from a single location. You’ll be able to see what is scheduled, what has run successfully and what has failed, all from a single interface without having to connect to different servers. Log Shipping Wizard If you want to set up log shipping as part of a disaster recovery process, it can frequently be a pain to get configured correctly. We supply a wizard that will walk you through every step of the process including setting up alerts so you’ll know should your log shipping fail. Summary You want to get your backups right. As outlined above, Red Gate SQL Backup Pro will absolutely help you there. We supply a number of processes and functionalities above and beyond what you get with SQL Server native. Plus, with our guidance, hints and reminders, you will get your backups set up in a way that protects your business.

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Using RIA DomainServices with ASP.NET and MVC 2

- by Bobby Diaz

Recently, I started working on a new ASP.NET MVC 2 project and I wanted to reuse the data access (LINQ to SQL) and business logic methods (WCF RIA Services) that had been developed for a previous project that used Silverlight for the front-end. I figured that I would be able to instantiate the various DomainService classes from within my controller’s action methods, because after all, the code for those services didn’t look very complicated. WRONG! I didn’t realize at first that some of the functionality is handled automatically by the framework when the domain services are hosted as WCF services. After some initial searching, I came across an invaluable post by Joe McBride, which described how to get RIA Service .svc files to work in an MVC 2 Web Application, and another by Brad Abrams. Unfortunately, Brad’s solution was for an earlier preview release of RIA Services and no longer works with the version that I am running (PDC Preview). I have not tried the RC version of WCF RIA Services, so I am not sure if any of the issues I am having have been resolved, but I wanted to come up with a way to reuse the shared libraries so I wouldn’t have to write a non-RIA version that basically did the same thing. The classes I came up with work with the scenarios I have encountered so far, but I wanted to go ahead and post the code in case someone else is having the same trouble I had. Hopefully this will save you a few headaches! 1. Querying When I first tried to use a DomainService class to perform a query inside one of my controller’s action methods, I got an error stating that “This DomainService has not been initialized.” To solve this issue, I created an extension method for all DomainServices that creates the required DomainServiceContext and passes it to the service’s Initialize() method. Here is the code for the extension method; notice that I am creating a sort of mock HttpContext for those cases when the service is running outside of IIS, such as during unit testing! public static class ServiceExtensions { /// <summary> /// Initializes the domain service by creating a new <see cref="DomainServiceContext"/> /// and calling the base DomainService.Initialize(DomainServiceContext) method. /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TService">The type of the service.</typeparam> /// <param name="service">The service.</param> /// <returns></returns> public static TService Initialize<TService>(this TService service) where TService : DomainService { var context = CreateDomainServiceContext(); service.Initialize(context); return service; } private static DomainServiceContext CreateDomainServiceContext() { var provider = new ServiceProvider(new HttpContextWrapper(GetHttpContext())); return new DomainServiceContext(provider, DomainOperationType.Query); } private static HttpContext GetHttpContext() { var context = HttpContext.Current; #if DEBUG // create a mock HttpContext to use during unit testing... if ( context == null ) { var writer = new StringWriter(); var request = new SimpleWorkerRequest("/", "/", String.Empty, String.Empty, writer); context = new HttpContext(request) { User = new GenericPrincipal(new GenericIdentity("debug"), null) }; } #endif return context; } } With that in place, I can use it almost as normally as my first attempt, except with a call to Initialize(): public ActionResult Index() { var service = new NorthwindService().Initialize(); var customers = service.GetCustomers(); return View(customers); } 2. Insert / Update / Delete Once I got the records showing up, I was trying to insert new records or update existing data when I ran into the next issue. I say issue because I wasn’t getting any kind of error, which made it a little difficult to track down. But once I realized that that the DataContext.SubmitChanges() method gets called automatically at the end of each domain service submit operation, I could start working on a way to mimic the behavior of a hosted domain service. What I came up with, was a base class called LinqToSqlRepository<T> that basically sits between your implementation and the default LinqToSqlDomainService<T> class. [EnableClientAccess()] public class NorthwindService : LinqToSqlRepository<NorthwindDataContext> { public IQueryable<Customer> GetCustomers() { return this.DataContext.Customers; } public void InsertCustomer(Customer customer) { this.DataContext.Customers.InsertOnSubmit(customer); } public void UpdateCustomer(Customer currentCustomer) { this.DataContext.Customers.TryAttach(currentCustomer, this.ChangeSet.GetOriginal(currentCustomer)); } public void DeleteCustomer(Customer customer) { this.DataContext.Customers.TryAttach(customer); this.DataContext.Customers.DeleteOnSubmit(customer); } } Notice the new base class name (just change LinqToSqlDomainService to LinqToSqlRepository). I also added a couple of DataContext (for Table<T>) extension methods called TryAttach that will check to see if the supplied entity is already attached before attempting to attach it, which would cause an error! 3. LinqToSqlRepository<T> Below is the code for the LinqToSqlRepository class. The comments are pretty self explanatory, but be aware of the [IgnoreOperation] attributes on the generic repository methods, which ensures that they will be ignored by the code generator and not available in the Silverlight client application. /// <summary> /// Provides generic repository methods on top of the standard /// <see cref="LinqToSqlDomainService<TContext>"/> functionality. /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TContext">The type of the context.</typeparam> public abstract class LinqToSqlRepository<TContext> : LinqToSqlDomainService<TContext> where TContext : System.Data.Linq.DataContext, new() { /// <summary> /// Retrieves an instance of an entity using it's unique identifier. /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TEntity">The type of the entity.</typeparam> /// <param name="keyValues">The key values.</param> /// <returns></returns> [IgnoreOperation] public virtual TEntity GetById<TEntity>(params object[] keyValues) where TEntity : class { var table = this.DataContext.GetTable<TEntity>(); var mapping = this.DataContext.Mapping.GetTable(typeof(TEntity)); var keys = mapping.RowType.IdentityMembers .Select((m, i) => m.Name + " = @" + i) .ToArray(); return table.Where(String.Join(" && ", keys), keyValues).FirstOrDefault(); } /// <summary> /// Creates a new query that can be executed to retrieve a collection /// of entities from the <see cref="DataContext"/>. /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TEntity">The type of the entity.</typeparam> /// <returns></returns> [IgnoreOperation] public virtual IQueryable<TEntity> GetEntityQuery<TEntity>() where TEntity : class { return this.DataContext.GetTable<TEntity>(); } /// <summary> /// Inserts the specified entity. /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TEntity">The type of the entity.</typeparam> /// <param name="entity">The entity.</param> /// <returns></returns> [IgnoreOperation] public virtual bool Insert<TEntity>(TEntity entity) where TEntity : class { //var table = this.DataContext.GetTable<TEntity>(); //table.InsertOnSubmit(entity); return this.Submit(entity, null, DomainOperation.Insert); } /// <summary> /// Updates the specified entity. /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TEntity">The type of the entity.</typeparam> /// <param name="entity">The entity.</param> /// <returns></returns> [IgnoreOperation] public virtual bool Update<TEntity>(TEntity entity) where TEntity : class { return this.Update(entity, null); } /// <summary> /// Updates the specified entity. /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TEntity">The type of the entity.</typeparam> /// <param name="entity">The entity.</param> /// <param name="original">The original.</param> /// <returns></returns> [IgnoreOperation] public virtual bool Update<TEntity>(TEntity entity, TEntity original) where TEntity : class { if ( original == null ) { original = GetOriginal(entity); } var table = this.DataContext.GetTable<TEntity>(); table.TryAttach(entity, original); return this.Submit(entity, original, DomainOperation.Update); } /// <summary> /// Deletes the specified entity. /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TEntity">The type of the entity.</typeparam> /// <param name="entity">The entity.</param> /// <returns></returns> [IgnoreOperation] public virtual bool Delete<TEntity>(TEntity entity) where TEntity : class { //var table = this.DataContext.GetTable<TEntity>(); //table.TryAttach(entity); //table.DeleteOnSubmit(entity); return this.Submit(entity, null, DomainOperation.Delete); } protected virtual bool Submit(Object entity, Object original, DomainOperation operation) { var entry = new ChangeSetEntry(0, entity, original, operation); var changes = new ChangeSet(new ChangeSetEntry[] { entry }); return base.Submit(changes); } private TEntity GetOriginal<TEntity>(TEntity entity) where TEntity : class { var context = CreateDataContext(); var table = context.GetTable<TEntity>(); return table.FirstOrDefault(e => e == entity); } } 4. Conclusion So there you have it, a fully functional Repository implementation for your RIA Domain Services that can be consumed by your ASP.NET and MVC applications. I have uploaded the source code along with unit tests and a sample web application that queries the Customers table from inside a Controller, as well as a Silverlight usage example. As always, I welcome any comments or suggestions on the approach I have taken. If there is enough interest, I plan on contacting Colin Blair or maybe even the man himself, Brad Abrams, to see if this is something worthy of inclusion in the WCF RIA Services Contrib project. What do you think? Enjoy!

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, March 04, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, March 04, 2010New ProjectsAcPrac: A educational program designed to run on Windows. It is fully customizable. It is developed in C# 2008.argo: Linguistic Tool Camelot: A simple utility for testing cross site data queries in SharePointdelta: Delta is a difference tool for large files. Delta will have several clients, including AJAX and Silverlight. You can view differences in a scroll...EF Dorsal: A dorsal spine for Entity Framework based project. This code generator provides a powerfull Business Layer with almost all high important best p...Excel formatting: Excel formatting projectEyes Recognition: eye recognitionGameOfLife: The Game of Life is a the best example of a cellular automaton. It's developed in C#, SilverLight.GKO Libraries: .NET tool libraries written in C# that we have used in our projectsHello Demo: A simple Hello World application, used to demonstrate access to CodePlex using Team Explorerjog.Portal: jogportal lays the foundation for an extensible portal solution leveraging the latest technology including linq and silver lightKM Brasil: k-meleon, km, gecko, brasil, browser, web, web browser, navegador, navegação, kmeleon, k meleonLost in Translation: Ever find yourself in a foreign country eager (or clueless) to what is written on a shop sign or restaurant menu? With your trusty phone, its came...Machine Learning for .NET: Machine Learning Library for .NET. Initial inclusions will be binary and multi-class classification as well as standard clustering algorithms.Maito: Iron Kingdoms Name GeneratorManPowerEngine: ManPowerEngine is a Silverlight 2D Game Engine. It has an game application framework and supports game object hierarchy management, 2D physics simu...Marvin's Arena: Marvin's Arena is a free and entertaining programming game. The game is designed to easily learn programming in any .NET compatible language. It is...MultiMediaPlayer: 整合我们的内容NCacheD - A Simple Distributed .NET Cache using the TPL and WCF: NCacheD is a simple distributed cache system written in .NET. NCacheD offers functionality similar to that of MemcacheD but scaled back. NCacheD ...NDAP: OPeNDAP is a client/server system for making local scientific data accessible to remote locations without regard to the local or remote storage for...Open Guide CMS: Open Guide makes your traveling through city more adventurous, mode educational and more funny. You can support us by lines of code, by interesti...Rollback - A social backup tool.: Rollback is a simple and intuitive social backup application. You can create multiple backup jobs with a few mouse clicks and even schedule it to ...sELedit: An editor for elements.data file of the popular MMORPG Perfect World.SharePoint Theme Applicator: SharePoint Theme Applicator will give SharePoint administrators the ability to apply a theme accross a whole web application (i.e. apply a theme to...sPATCH: ! sPATCH - Perfect World Client Autopatcher This beta patcher is an alternative to the default perfect world patcher. It offers easy client patc...Wiggle: A-life investigation. Let's make little squirmies!WPFSLBlendModeFx: A blend mode library for WPF & Silverlight.休息提醒: 程序员们，尤其是像我这样对程序痴狂的程序员们。一旦研究起自己感兴趣的程序时，觉得上厕所都是浪费时间。这个程序是在设定的时间后锁定计算机或关闭显示器，从而从某种程度强迫程序员们去休息New ReleasesAMFParser: 1.1.0: Add handling of DSK object when using BlazeDS Add handling of string references Add handling of DateTime values Correct handling of Double values B...Camelot: Camelot 0.1 Alpha: Early release: 1) Query by content type, optionally list or base template 2) Query by list or base templateDictionary Translator for Umbraco: Dictionary Translator 1.1: This is a minor release that fixes a bug that Thomas Hohler found on the first day of release This package is to be used with the ASP.NET open sou...Dynamic Configuration: Sample Application Release 1: These binaries demonstrate the effect of using DynamicConfigurationManager. The source-code for these binaries is available in the 'Source Code' t...EF Dorsal: EFDorsal v0.3b: Second real version. This version add suport to types and entity sets in tree-view.Enterprise Library Extensions: Release 1.0: This is the initial release of the package. The release will contain one feature only, as being able to deploy the project itself it the milestone ...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts v3.0.4 beta 2 Released: Hi, Today’s release contains fix for the following issues: * In WPF application chart was throwing exception as VisualStateGroup was not foun...GameOfLife: Game of life: First release of the game. PublishedGameStore League Manager: League Manager 1.0 release 2.: Fixes crashing bugs from the first release. To use: 1. Install SQL Server Express 2005 http://www.microsoft.com/Sqlserver/2005/en/us/express-down....Marvin's Arena: Version 0.0.5.0: Code Editor (development of robots without Visual Studio - no debugging) * Rounds * 3D Battle Engine: Skybox * 3D Battle Engine: Robot...Morphfolia - ASP.NET CMS and Framework: Morphfolia v2.4.1.1: Morphfolia v2.4.1.1 - New Release Includes: Better support for browsers other than IE (Chrome, Firefox, Safari - all tested on Windows) Supports ...NCacheD - A Simple Distributed .NET Cache using the TPL and WCF: NCacheD Version 1: Getting Started To get up and running, open two instances of Visual Studio 2010. In one window open the NCacheD client solution and then open the ...Papercut: Papercut 2010-3-3: This release includes a few bug fixes and updates, several of which were contributed patches (thanks!). Feature: Added support for embedded images...PE-file Reader Writer API (PERWAPI): PERWAPI-1.1.4: Perwapi version 1.1.4 is the complete distribution package. It contains Binary files, pdb files and xml files for the PERWAPI and SymbolRW compone...Prolog.NET: Prolog.NET 1.0 Beta 1.2: Installer includes: primary Prolog.NET assembly Prolog.NET Workbench PrologTest console application all required dependencies Beta 1.2 in...Protoforma | Tactica Adversa: Skilful 0.2.4.320: BetaRoTwee: RoTwee 6.1.0.0: 16604 "Post playing tune feature" is added. Using this new feature, you can tweet tune playing in iTunes. 16625 Error processing for network error...sELedit: sELedit v1.0: -SharePoint 2007 Deployment Wizard: Support for SharePoint Server and Foundation 2010: This release encompasses the supported install paths for the default install of SPS 2010 (the 14 hive). All three versions are now supported (60 h...SharePoint Theme Applicator: SharePoint Theme Applicator: SharePoint Theme Applicator was built using C# and WPF, it includes the following features: Provides the total number of site collections in the g...Shinkansen: compress, crunch, combine, and cache JavaScript and CSS: Shinkansen 1.0.0.030310: Build 1.0.0.030310, binaries onlysPATCH: sPatcher v0.8: sPatch - Server Example *Contains a sample Patch that "downgrades" PWI 1.4.2 Client to an 1.3.6 ClientTFS Code Comment Checking Policy (CCCP): CCCP 3.0 for VSTS 2008 SP1: This release includes NRefactory 3.2.0.5571 and is built against VSTS 2008 SP1 (.NET 3.5 is required). New: horizontal scrollbar in listboxes for ...TortoiseHg: Beta for TortoiseHg 1.0 (0.9.31254): Please backup your user Mercurial.ini file and then uninstall any 0.9.X release before installing Use the x86 msi file for 32 bit platforms and th...TwitEclipseAPI: TwitEclipseAPI 0.9: 0.9 Release of TwitEclipseAPI Moved API calls to the api.Twitter.com URL. Moved API calls to the versioning API. Now uses the increased Rate Limit...TwitterVB - A .NET Twitter Library: TwitterVB-2.3: Patch 5151: Added BlockedUsers function to get a page other then the first Patch 5420: The ListMembers function will now return more then just th...休息提醒: 初始版本: 初始版本Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)Microsoft SQL Server Community & SamplesASP.NETLiveUpload to FacebookMost Active ProjectsRawrBlogEngine.NETMapWindow GISpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesMDT Web FrontEndsvn2tfsDiffPlex - a .NET Diff GeneratorIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterFarseer Physics Engine

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Node.js Adventure - Node.js on Windows

- by Shaun

Two weeks ago I had had a talk with Wang Tao, a C# MVP in China who is currently running his startup company and product named worktile. He asked me to figure out a synchronization solution which helps his product in the future. And he preferred me implementing the service in Node.js, since his worktile is written in Node.js. Even though I have some experience in ASP.NET MVC, HTML, CSS and JavaScript, I don’t think I’m an expert of JavaScript. In fact I’m very new to it. So it scared me a bit when he asked me to use Node.js. But after about one week investigate I have to say Node.js is very easy to learn, use and deploy, even if you have very limited JavaScript skill. And I think I became love Node.js. Hence I decided to have a series named “Node.js Adventure”, where I will demonstrate my story of learning and using Node.js in Windows and Windows Azure. And this is the first one. (Brief) Introduction of Node.js I don’t want to have a fully detailed introduction of Node.js. There are many resource on the internet we can find. But the best one is its homepage. Node.js was created by Ryan Dahl, sponsored by Joyent. It’s consist of about 80% C/C++ for core and 20% JavaScript for API. It utilizes CommonJS as the module system which we will explain later. The official definition of Node.js is Node.js is a platform built on Chrome's JavaScript runtime for easily building fast, scalable network applications. Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices. First of all, Node.js utilizes JavaScript as its development language and runs on top of V8 engine, which is being used by Chrome. It brings JavaScript, a client-side language into the backend service world. So many people said, even though not that actually, “Node.js is a server side JavaScript”. Additionally, Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking IO model. This means in Node.js there’s no way to block currently working thread. Every operation in Node.js executed asynchronously. This is a huge benefit especially if our code needs IO operations such as reading disks, connect to database, consuming web service, etc.. Unlike IIS or Apache, Node.js doesn’t utilize the multi-thread model. In Node.js there’s only one working thread serves all users requests and resources response, as the ST star in the figure below. And there is a POSIX async threads pool in Node.js which contains many async threads (AT stars) for IO operations. When a user have an IO request, the ST serves it but it will not do the IO operation. Instead the ST will go to the POSIX async threads pool to pick up an AT, pass this operation to it, and then back to serve any other requests. The AT will actually do the IO operation asynchronously. Assuming before the AT complete the IO operation there is another user comes. The ST will serve this new user request, pick up another AT from the POSIX and then back. If the previous AT finished the IO operation it will take the result back and wait for the ST to serve. ST will take the response and return the AT to POSIX, and then response to the user. And if the second AT finished its job, the ST will response back to the second user in the same way. As you can see, in Node.js there’s only one thread serve clients’ requests and POSIX results. This thread looping between the users and POSIX and pass the data back and forth. The async jobs will be handled by POSIX. This is the event-driven non-blocking IO model. The performance of is model is much better than the multi-threaded blocking model. For example, Apache is built in multi-threaded blocking model while Nginx is in event-driven non-blocking mode. Below is the performance comparison between them. And below is the memory usage comparison between them. These charts are captured from the video NodeJS Basics: An Introductory Training, which presented at Cloud Foundry Developer Advocate. Node.js on Windows To execute Node.js application on windows is very simple. First of you we need to download the latest Node.js platform from its website. After installed, it will register its folder into system path variant so that we can execute Node.js at anywhere. To confirm the Node.js installation, just open up a command windows and type “node”, then it will show the Node.js console. As you can see this is a JavaScript interactive console. We can type some simple JavaScript code and command here. To run a Node.js JavaScript application, just specify the source code file name as the argument of the “node” command. For example, let’s create a Node.js source code file named “helloworld.js”. Then copy a sample code from Node.js website. 1: var http = require("http"); 2: 3: http.createServer(function (req, res) { 4: res.writeHead(200, {"Content-Type": "text/plain"}); 5: res.end("Hello World\n"); 6: }).listen(1337, "127.0.0.1"); 7: 8: console.log("Server running at http://127.0.0.1:1337/"); This code will create a web server, listening on 1337 port and return “Hello World” when any requests come. Run it in the command windows. Then open a browser and navigate to http://localhost:1337/. As you can see, when using Node.js we are not creating a web application. In fact we are likely creating a web server. We need to deal with request, response and the related headers, status code, etc.. And this is one of the benefit of using Node.js, lightweight and straightforward. But creating a website from scratch again and again is not acceptable. The good news is that, Node.js utilizes CommonJS as its module system, so that we can leverage some modules to simplify our job. And furthermore, there are about ten thousand of modules available n the internet, which covers almost all areas in server side application development. NPM and Node.js Modules Node.js utilizes CommonJS as its module system. A module is a set of JavaScript files. In Node.js if we have an entry file named “index.js”, then all modules it needs will be located at the “node_modules” folder. And in the “index.js” we can import modules by specifying the module name. For example, in the code we’ve just created, we imported a module named “http”, which is a build-in module installed alone with Node.js. So that we can use the code in this “http” module. Besides the build-in modules there are many modules available at the NPM website. Thousands of developers are contributing and downloading modules at this website. Hence this is another benefit of using Node.js. There are many modules we can use, and the numbers of modules increased very fast, and also we can publish our modules to the community. When I wrote this post, there are totally 14,608 modules at NPN and about 10 thousand downloads per day. Install a module is very simple. Let’s back to our command windows and input the command “npm install express”. This command will install a module named “express”, which is a MVC framework on top of Node.js. And let’s create another JavaScript file named “helloweb.js” and copy the code below in it. I imported the “express” module. And then when the user browse the home page it will response a text. If the incoming URL matches “/Echo/:value” which the “value” is what the user specified, it will pass it back with the current date time in JSON format. And finally my website was listening at 12345 port. 1: var express = require("express"); 2: var app = express(); 3: 4: app.get("/", function(req, res) { 5: res.send("Hello Node.js and Express."); 6: }); 7: 8: app.get("/Echo/:value", function(req, res) { 9: var value = req.params.value; 10: res.json({ 11: "Value" : value, 12: "Time" : new Date() 13: }); 14: }); 15: 16: console.log("Web application opened."); 17: app.listen(12345); For more information and API about the “express”, please have a look here. Start our application from the command window by command “node helloweb.js”, and then navigate to the home page we can see the response in the browser. And if we go to, for example http://localhost:12345/Echo/Hello Shaun, we can see the JSON result. The “express” module is very populate in NPM. It makes the job simple when we need to build a MVC website. There are many modules very useful in NPM. - underscore: A utility module covers many common functionalities such as for each, map, reduce, select, etc.. - request: A very simple HTT request client. - async: Library for coordinate async operations. - wind: Library which enable us to control flow with plain JavaScript for asynchronous programming (and more) without additional pre-compiling steps. Node.js and IIS I demonstrated how to run the Node.js application from console. Since we are in Windows another common requirement would be, “can I host Node.js in IIS?” The answer is “Yes”. Tomasz Janczuk created a project IISNode at his GitHub space we can find here. And Scott Hanselman had published a blog post introduced about it. Summary In this post I provided a very brief introduction of Node.js, includes it official definition, architecture and how it implement the event-driven non-blocking model. And then I described how to install and run a Node.js application on windows console. I also described the Node.js module system and NPM command. At the end I referred some links about IISNode, an IIS extension that allows Node.js application runs on IIS. Node.js became a very popular server side application platform especially in this year. By leveraging its non-blocking IO model and async feature it’s very useful for us to build a highly scalable, asynchronously service. I think Node.js will be used widely in the cloud application development in the near future. In the next post I will explain how to use SQL Server from Node.js. Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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Windows Azure AppFabric: ServiceBus Queue WPF Sample

- by xamlnotes

The latest version of the AppFabric ServiceBus now has support for queues and topics. Today I will show you a bit about using queues and also talk about some of the best practices in using them. If you are just getting started, you can check out this site for more info on Windows Azure. One of the 1st things I thought if when Azure was announced back when was how we handle fault tolerance. Web sites hosted in Azure are no much of an issue unless they are using SQL Azure and then you must account for potential fault or latency issues. Today I want to talk a bit about ServiceBus and how to handle fault tolerance. And theres stuff like connecting to the servicebus and so on you have to take care of. To demonstrate some of the things you can do, let me walk through this sample WPF app that I am posting for you to download. To start off, the application is going to need things like the servicenamespace, issuer details and so forth to make everything work. To facilitate this I created settings in the wpf app for all of these items. Then I mapped a static class to them and set the values when the program loads like so: StaticElements.ServiceNamespace = Convert.ToString(Properties.Settings.Default["ServiceNamespace"]); StaticElements.IssuerName = Convert.ToString(Properties.Settings.Default["IssuerName"]); StaticElements.IssuerKey = Convert.ToString(Properties.Settings.Default["IssuerKey"]); StaticElements.QueueName = Convert.ToString(Properties.Settings.Default["QueueName"]); Now I can get to each of these elements plus some other common values or instances directly from the StaticElements class. Now, lets look at the application. The application looks like this when it starts: The blue graphic represents the queue we are going to use. The next figure shows the form after items were added and the queue stats were updated . You can see how the queue has grown: To add an item to the queue, click the Add Order button which displays the following dialog: After you fill in the form and press OK, the order is published to the ServiceBus queue and the form closes. The application also allows you to read the queued items by clicking the Process Orders button. As you can see below, the form shows the queued items in a list and the queue has disappeared as its now empty. In real practice we normally would use a Windows Service or some other automated process to subscribe to the queue and pull items from it. I created a class named ServiceBusQueueHelper that has the core queue features we need. There are three public methods: * GetOrCreateQueue – Gets an instance of the queue description if the queue exists. if not, it creates the queue and returns a description instance. * SendMessageToQueue = This method takes an order instance and sends it to the queue. The call to the queue is wrapped in the ExecuteAction method from the Transient Fault Tolerance Framework and handles all the retry logic for the queue send process. * GetOrderFromQueue – Grabs an order from the queue and returns a typed order from the queue. It also marks the message complete so the queue can remove it. Now lets turn to the WPF window code (MainWindow.xaml.cs). The constructor contains the 4 lines shown about to setup the static variables and to perform other initialization tasks. The next few lines setup certain features we need for the ServiceBus: TokenProvider credentials = TokenProvider.CreateSharedSecretTokenProvider(StaticElements.IssuerName, StaticElements.IssuerKey); Uri serviceUri = ServiceBusEnvironment.CreateServiceUri("sb", StaticElements.ServiceNamespace, string.Empty); StaticElements.CurrentNamespaceManager = new NamespaceManager(serviceUri, credentials); StaticElements.CurrentMessagingFactory = MessagingFactory.Create(serviceUri, credentials); The next two lines update the queue name label and also set the timer to 20 seconds. QueueNameLabel.Content = StaticElements.QueueName; _timer.Interval = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(20); Next I call the UpdateQueueStats to initialize the UI for the queue: UpdateQueueStats(); _timer.Tick += new EventHandler(delegate(object s, EventArgs a) { UpdateQueueStats(); }); _timer.Start(); } The UpdateQueueStats method shown below. You can see that it uses the GetOrCreateQueue method mentioned earlier to grab the queue description, then it can get the MessageCount property. private void UpdateQueueStats() { _queueDescription = _serviceBusQueueHelper.GetOrCreateQueue(); QueueCountLabel.Content = "(" + _queueDescription.MessageCount + ")"; long count = _queueDescription.MessageCount; long queueWidth = count * 20; QueueRectangle.Width = queueWidth; QueueTickCount += 1; TickCountlabel.Content = QueueTickCount.ToString(); } The ReadQueueItemsButton_Click event handler calls the GetOrderFromQueue method and adds the order to the listbox. If you look at the SendQueueMessageController, you can see the SendMessage method that sends an order to the queue. Its pretty simple as it just creates a new CustomerOrderEntity instance,fills it and then passes it to the SendMessageToQueue. As you can see, all of our interaction with the queue is done through the helper class (ServiceBusQueueHelper). Now lets dig into the helper class. First, before you create anything like this, download the Transient Fault Handling Framework. Microsoft provides this free and they also provide the C# source. Theres a great article that shows how to use this framework with ServiceBus. I included the entire ServiceBusQueueHelper class in List 1. Notice the using statements for TransientFaultHandling: using Microsoft.AzureCAT.Samples.TransientFaultHandling; using Microsoft.AzureCAT.Samples.TransientFaultHandling.ServiceBus; The SendMessageToQueue in Listing 1 shows how to use the async send features of ServiceBus with them wrapped in the Transient Fault Handling Framework. It is not much different than plain old ServiceBus calls but it sure makes it easy to have the fault tolerance added almost for free. The GetOrderFromQueue uses the standard synchronous methods to access the queue. The best practices article walks through using the async approach for a receive operation also. Notice that this method makes a call to Receive to get the message then makes a call to GetBody to get a new strongly typed instance of CustomerOrderEntity to return. Listing 1 using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.AzureCAT.Samples.TransientFaultHandling; using Microsoft.AzureCAT.Samples.TransientFaultHandling.ServiceBus; using Microsoft.ServiceBus; using Microsoft.ServiceBus.Messaging; using System.Xml.Serialization; using System.Diagnostics; namespace WPFServicebusPublishSubscribeSample { class ServiceBusQueueHelper { RetryPolicy currentPolicy = new RetryPolicy<ServiceBusTransientErrorDetectionStrategy>(RetryPolicy.DefaultClientRetryCount); QueueClient currentQueueClient; public QueueDescription GetOrCreateQueue() { QueueDescription queue = null; bool createNew = false; try { // First, let's see if a queue with the specified name already exists. queue = currentPolicy.ExecuteAction<QueueDescription>(() => { return StaticElements.CurrentNamespaceManager.GetQueue(StaticElements.QueueName); }); createNew = (queue == null); } catch (MessagingEntityNotFoundException) { // Looks like the queue does not exist. We should create a new one. createNew = true; } // If a queue with the specified name doesn't exist, it will be auto-created. if (createNew) { try { var newqueue = new QueueDescription(StaticElements.QueueName); queue = currentPolicy.ExecuteAction<QueueDescription>(() => { return StaticElements.CurrentNamespaceManager.CreateQueue(newqueue); }); } catch (MessagingEntityAlreadyExistsException) { // A queue under the same name was already created by someone else, // perhaps by another instance. Let's just use it. queue = currentPolicy.ExecuteAction<QueueDescription>(() => { return StaticElements.CurrentNamespaceManager.GetQueue(StaticElements.QueueName); }); } } currentQueueClient = StaticElements.CurrentMessagingFactory.CreateQueueClient(StaticElements.QueueName); return queue; } public void SendMessageToQueue(CustomerOrderEntity Order) { BrokeredMessage msg = null; GetOrCreateQueue(); // Use a retry policy to execute the Send action in an asynchronous and reliable fashion. currentPolicy.ExecuteAction ( (cb) => { // A new BrokeredMessage instance must be created each time we send it. Reusing the original BrokeredMessage instance may not // work as the state of its BodyStream cannot be guaranteed to be readable from the beginning. msg = new BrokeredMessage(Order); // Send the event asynchronously. currentQueueClient.BeginSend(msg, cb, null); }, (ar) => { try { // Complete the asynchronous operation. // This may throw an exception that will be handled internally by the retry policy. currentQueueClient.EndSend(ar); } finally { // Ensure that any resources allocated by a BrokeredMessage instance are released. if (msg != null) { msg.Dispose(); msg = null; } } }, (ex) => { // Always dispose the BrokeredMessage instance even if the send // operation has completed unsuccessfully. if (msg != null) { msg.Dispose(); msg = null; } // Always log exceptions. Trace.TraceError(ex.Message); } ); } public CustomerOrderEntity GetOrderFromQueue() { CustomerOrderEntity Order = new CustomerOrderEntity(); QueueClient myQueueClient = StaticElements.CurrentMessagingFactory.CreateQueueClient(StaticElements.QueueName, ReceiveMode.PeekLock); BrokeredMessage message; ServiceBusQueueHelper serviceBusQueueHelper = new ServiceBusQueueHelper(); QueueDescription queueDescription; queueDescription = serviceBusQueueHelper.GetOrCreateQueue(); if (queueDescription.MessageCount > 0) { message = myQueueClient.Receive(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(90)); if (message != null) { try { Order = message.GetBody<CustomerOrderEntity>(); message.Complete(); } catch (Exception ex) { throw ex; } } else { throw new Exception("Did not receive the messages"); } } return Order; } } } I will post a link to the download demo in a separate post soon.

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Restful Services, oData, and Rest Sharp

- by jkrebsbach

After a great presentation by Jason Sheehan at MDC about RestSharp, I decided to implement it. RestSharp is a .Net framework for consuming restful data sources via either Json or XML. My first step was to put together a Restful data source for RestSharp to consume. Staying entirely withing .Net, I decided to use Microsoft's oData implementation, built on System.Data.Services.DataServices. Natively, these support Json, or atom+pub xml. (XML with a few bells and whistles added on) There are three main steps for creating an oData data source: 1) override CreateDSPMetaData This is where the metadata data is returned. The meta data defines the structure of the data to return. The structure contains the relationships between data objects, along with what properties the objects expose. The meta data can and should be somehow cached so that the structure is not rebuild with every data request. 2) override CreateDataSource The context contains the data the data source will publish. This method is the conduit which will populate the metadata objects to be returned to the requestor. 3) implement static InitializeService At this point we can set up security, along with setting up properties of the web service (versioning, etc) Here is a web service which publishes stock prices for various Products (stocks) in various Categories. namespace RestService { public class RestServiceImpl : DSPDataService<DSPContext> { private static DSPContext _context; private static DSPMetadata _metadata; /// <summary> /// Populate traversable data source /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> protected override DSPContext CreateDataSource() { if (_context == null) { _context = new DSPContext(); Category utilities = new Category(0); utilities.Name = "Electric"; Category financials = new Category(1); financials.Name = "Financial"; IList products = _context.GetResourceSetEntities("Products"); Product electric = new Product(0, utilities); electric.Name = "ABC Electric"; electric.Description = "Electric Utility"; electric.Price = 3.5; products.Add(electric); Product water = new Product(1, utilities); water.Name = "XYZ Water"; water.Description = "Water Utility"; water.Price = 2.4; products.Add(water); Product banks = new Product(2, financials); banks.Name = "FatCat Bank"; banks.Description = "A bank that's almost too big"; banks.Price = 19.9; // This will never get to the client products.Add(banks); IList categories = _context.GetResourceSetEntities("Categories"); categories.Add(utilities); categories.Add(financials); utilities.Products.Add(electric); utilities.Products.Add(electric); financials.Products.Add(banks); } return _context; } /// <summary> /// Setup rules describing published data structure - relationships between data, /// key field, other searchable fields, etc. /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> protected override DSPMetadata CreateDSPMetadata() { if (_metadata == null) { _metadata = new DSPMetadata("DemoService", "DataServiceProviderDemo"); // Define entity type product ResourceType product = _metadata.AddEntityType(typeof(Product), "Product"); _metadata.AddKeyProperty(product, "ProductID"); // Only add properties we wish to share with end users _metadata.AddPrimitiveProperty(product, "Name"); _metadata.AddPrimitiveProperty(product, "Description"); EntityPropertyMappingAttribute att = new EntityPropertyMappingAttribute("Name", SyndicationItemProperty.Title, SyndicationTextContentKind.Plaintext, true); product.AddEntityPropertyMappingAttribute(att); att = new EntityPropertyMappingAttribute("Description", SyndicationItemProperty.Summary, SyndicationTextContentKind.Plaintext, true); product.AddEntityPropertyMappingAttribute(att); // Define products as a set of product entities ResourceSet products = _metadata.AddResourceSet("Products", product); // Define entity type category ResourceType category = _metadata.AddEntityType(typeof(Category), "Category"); _metadata.AddKeyProperty(category, "CategoryID"); _metadata.AddPrimitiveProperty(category, "Name"); _metadata.AddPrimitiveProperty(category, "Description"); // Define categories as a set of category entities ResourceSet categories = _metadata.AddResourceSet("Categories", category); att = new EntityPropertyMappingAttribute("Name", SyndicationItemProperty.Title, SyndicationTextContentKind.Plaintext, true); category.AddEntityPropertyMappingAttribute(att); att = new EntityPropertyMappingAttribute("Description", SyndicationItemProperty.Summary, SyndicationTextContentKind.Plaintext, true); category.AddEntityPropertyMappingAttribute(att); // A product has a category, a category has products _metadata.AddResourceReferenceProperty(product, "Category", categories); _metadata.AddResourceSetReferenceProperty(category, "Products", products); } return _metadata; } /// <summary> /// Based on the requesting user, can set up permissions to Read, Write, etc. /// </summary> /// <param name="config"></param> public static void InitializeService(DataServiceConfiguration config) { config.SetEntitySetAccessRule("*", EntitySetRights.All); config.DataServiceBehavior.MaxProtocolVersion = DataServiceProtocolVersion.V2; config.DataServiceBehavior.AcceptProjectionRequests = true; } } } The objects prefixed with DSP come from the samples on the oData site: http://www.odata.org/developers The products and categories objects are POCO business objects with no special modifiers. Three main options are available for defining the MetaData of data sources in .Net: 1) Generate Entity Data model (Potentially directly from SQL Server database). This requires the least amount of manual interaction, and uses the edmx WYSIWYG editor to generate a data model. This can be directly tied to the SQL Server database and generated from the database if you want a data access layer tightly coupled with your database. 2) Object model decorations. If you already have a POCO data layer, you can decorate your objects with properties to statically inform the compiler how the objects are related. The disadvantage is there are now tags strewn about your business layer that need to be updated as the business rules change. 3) Programmatically construct metadata object. This is the object illustrated above in CreateDSPMetaData. This puts all relationship information into one central programmatic location. Here business rules are constructed when the DSPMetaData response object is returned. Once you have your service up and running, RestSharp is designed for XML / Json, along with the native Microsoft library. There are currently some differences between how Jason made RestSharp expect XML with how atom+pub works, so I found better results currently with the Json implementation - modifying the RestSharp XML parser to make an atom+pub parser is fairly trivial though, so use what implementation works best for you. I put together a sample console app which calls the RestSvcImpl.svc service defined above (and assumes it to be running on port 2000). I used both RestSharp as a client, and also the default Microsoft oData client tools. namespace RestConsole { class Program { private static DataServiceContext _ctx; private enum DemoType { Xml, Json } static void Main(string[] args) { // Microsoft implementation _ctx = new DataServiceContext(new System.Uri("http://localhost:2000/RestServiceImpl.svc")); var msProducts = RunQuery<Product>("Products").ToList(); var msCategory = RunQuery<Category>("/Products(0)/Category").AsEnumerable().Single(); var msFilteredProducts = RunQuery<Product>("/Products?$filter=length(Name) ge 4").ToList(); // RestSharp implementation DemoType demoType = DemoType.Json; var client = new RestClient("http://localhost:2000/RestServiceImpl.svc"); client.ClearHandlers(); // Remove all available handlers // Set up handler depending on what situation dictates if (demoType == DemoType.Json) client.AddHandler("application/json", new RestSharp.Deserializers.JsonDeserializer()); else if (demoType == DemoType.Xml) { client.AddHandler("application/atom+xml", new RestSharp.Deserializers.XmlDeserializer()); } var request = new RestRequest(); if (demoType == DemoType.Json) request.RootElement = "d"; // service root element for json else if (demoType == DemoType.Xml) { request.XmlNamespace = "http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"; } // Return all products request.Resource = "/Products?$orderby=Name"; RestResponse<List<Product>> productsResp = client.Execute<List<Product>>(request); List<Product> products = productsResp.Data; // Find category for product with ProductID = 1 request.Resource = string.Format("/Products(1)/Category"); RestResponse<Category> categoryResp = client.Execute<Category>(request); Category category = categoryResp.Data; // Specialized queries request.Resource = string.Format("/Products?$filter=ProductID eq {0}", 1); RestResponse<Product> productResp = client.Execute<Product>(request); Product product = productResp.Data; request.Resource = string.Format("/Products?$filter=Name eq '{0}'", "XYZ Water"); productResp = client.Execute<Product>(request); product = productResp.Data; } private static IEnumerable<TElement> RunQuery<TElement>(string queryUri) { try { return _ctx.Execute<TElement>(new Uri(queryUri, UriKind.Relative)); } catch (Exception ex) { throw ex; } } } } Feel free to step through the code a few times and to attach a debugger to the service as well to see how and where the context and metadata objects are constructed and returned. Pay special attention to the response object being returned by the oData service - There are several properties of the RestRequest that can be used to help troubleshoot when the structure of the response is not exactly what would be expected.

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, April 05, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, April 05, 2010New Projects.Net Data Form Wizard: A Basic .Net application that will connect to a SQL Server, allow you to select a database, then select from the user created tables, read the tabl...Agilisa Data.Controls: Agilisa DataControls provides ready to use Databound controls, encapsulating the data connection logic, caching, for ASP.NET Controls. Just drop th...algoritmia: A Python 3.1+ library of Data Structures and Algorithms. This library is being used to teach a course on Algorithms in my university. It contains ...Bag of Tricks: The original WPF Bag of tricks, now maintained by your friends at Pixel Lab.DIMIS: It is a simple asp.net system, just for practice!DotNetNuke® Postgres Data Provider: DNN PG Provider is a DotNetNuke® 4.9.2 Data Provider for PostgreSQL, an enterprise class open source database system. With DNN PG DataProvider y...Home Finance: This project develop to manage your home finance.House Repair Management System: House Repair Management SystemLaunchpadNET: LaunchpadNET is a C# library for interfacing your .NET program with the Novation Launchpad controller.Mapsui - UI for maps: Mapsui is a UI library for mapping applications. It is based on BruTile and SharpMap. It is designed to be fast and responsive.micronovo: micronovomicronovomicronovomicronovoNPlurk: The project goal is to provide a .NET implemented Plurk API wrapper. PowerExt: PowerExt is a Windows Explorer add-in written in C++. Primarily targeted at programmers, it adds an additional .NET tab to the File Properties dial...Python Multiple Dispatch: Multiple dispatch (AKA multimethods) for Python 3 via a metaclass and type annotations.SpugDisposeCheck - Visual Studio Addin for validating Sharepoint dispose objects: AddIn that wraps the SPDisposeCheck Tool from Microsoft and fully integrate it with Visual Studio.System.Tuples: System.Tuples is a small tuple library. It uses T4 to generate tuples, and is made to be compatible with .net 2.0, .net 3.0 and .net 3.5.WebStatistics Server for Windows Server: WebStatistics Server for Windows Server is a tool to create visitor and traffic statistics of a Windows Server running IIS Webserver. It includes a...whileActivity Test: This is a temporary project to test the whileActivity and the updateResourceActivity (Forefront Identity Manager 2010 rtm)XBMC NFO Exporter: XBMC Nfo Exporter is a simple utility that allows you to create reports based on your media XMBC NFO files.XML Flattener: A simple tool to flatten "pretty"-printed XML files into a single line for use in web service test situations, etc. xvanneste: Sources et exemples utilisés sur le site http://www.xvanneste.com et http://media.xvanneste.comzhengym: 这是我个人的测试项目New Releases.Net Data Form Wizard: Alpha: I am only providing the logical code at this point. I will release a completed project once it has basic functionality, at the moment it only gener....Net Data Form Wizard: Alpha Code: This is only the basic VB code to create a form from the database information.Alter gear SQL index Management: Setup 1.1.1: Changes : Added ability to save / delete connection stringsExcelDna: ExcelDna Version 0.24: This versions adds packing support for .config files, and fixes a bug where temp files were not cleaned up.Hash Calculator: HashCalculator 1.1: Added drag-and-drop support Fixed some bugsHeadCounter: HeadCounter 1.2.4 'Vaelastrasz': Added a basic bbcode option for forum posting to sites that do not support full bbcode implementations (e.g. Guild Portal)Home Access Plus+: v3.2.5.0: v3.2.5.0 Release Change Log: Added the booking system File Changes: ~/app_data/* ~/bin/CHS.dll ~/bin/CHS.pdb ~/bin/CHS Extranet.dll ~/bin/...Home Access Plus+: v3.2.5.1: v3.2.5.1 Release Change Log: Fixed access to the booking system for non domain admin File Changes: ~/bin/CHS Extranet.dll ~/bin/CHS Extranet.pdb...Howard van Rooijen's Code Samples: Getting Started with MongoDB and NoRM: Code to accompany the blog post A .NET Developer Guide to: MongoDB and NoRM This download contains the a solution with the following structure: G...iExporter - iTunes playlist exporting: iExporter gui v2.5.1.0 - console v1.2.1.0: Paypal donate! Fixed small bug for iExporter Gui When pressing the Select button more then once, the Deselect button would not disable the Export...IST435: Lab 2 Demo Solution: Lab 2 Demo Solution - OverviewThis is a demo solution for Lab 2 which meets the basic requirements of the lab. Note that this solution has the foll...JSINQ - LINQ to Objects for JavaScript: JSINQ 1.0.0.1: Minor bugfixes with the Enumerable and Dictionary implementations.Mavention: Mavention Instant Page Create: Mavention Instant Page Create allows you to create new Publishing Pages with a single mouse click. 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PASS Summit Feedback

- by Rob Farley

PASS Feedback came in last week. I also saw my dentist for some fillings... At the PASS Summit this year, I delivered a couple of regular sessions and a Lightning Talk. People told me they enjoyed it, but when the rankings came out, they showed that I didn’t score particularly well. Brent Ozar was keen to discuss it with me. Brent: PASS speaker feedback is out. You did two sessions and a Lightning Talk. How did you go? Rob: Not so well actually, thanks for asking. Brent: Ha! Sorry. Of course you know that's why I wanted to discuss this with you. I was in one of your sessions at SQLBits in the UK a month before PASS, and I thought you rocked. You've got a really good and distinctive delivery style. Then I noticed your talks were ranked in the bottom quarter of the Summit ratings and wanted to discuss it. Rob: Yeah, I know. You did ask me if we could do this... I should explain – my presentation style is not the stereotypical IT conference one. I throw in jokes, and try to engage the audience thoroughly. I find many talks amazingly dry, and I guess I try to buck that trend. I also run training courses, and find that I get a lot of feedback from people thanking me for keeping things interesting. That said, I also get feedback criticising me for my style, and that’s basically what’s happened here. For the rest of this discussion, let’s focus on my talk about the Incredible Shrinking Execution Plan, which I considered to be my main talk. Brent: I thought that session title was the very best one at the entire Summit, and I had it on my recommended sessions list. In four words, you managed to sum up the topic and your sense of humor. I read that and immediately thought, "People need to be in this session," and then it didn't score well. Tell me about your scores. Rob: The questions on the feedback form covered the usefulness of the information, the speaker’s presentation skills, their knowledge of the subject, how well the session was described, the amount of time allocated, and the quality of the presentation materials. Brent: Presentation materials? But you don’t do slides. Did they rate your thong? Rob: No-one saw my flip-flops in this talk, Brent. I created a script in Management Studio, and published that afterwards, but I think people will have scored that question based on the lack of slides. I wasn’t expecting to do particularly well on that one. That was the only section that didn’t have 5/5 as the most popular score. Brent: See, that sucks, because cookbook-style scripts are often some of my favorites. Adam Machanic's Service Broker workbench series helped me immensely when I was prepping for the MCM. As an attendee, I'd rather have a commented script than a slide deck. So how did you rank so low? Rob: When I look at the scores that you got (based on your blog post), you got very few scores below 3 – people that felt strong enough about your talk to post a negative score. In my scores, between 5% and 10% were below 3 (except on the question about whether I knew my stuff – I guess I came as knowledgeable). Brent: Wow – so quite a few people really didn’t like your talk then? Rob: Yeah. Mind you, based on the comments, some people really loved it. I’d like to think that there would be a certain portion of the room who may have rated the talk as one of the best of the conference. Some of my comments included “amazing!”, “Best presentation so far!”, “Wow, best session yet”, “fantastic” and “Outstanding!”. I think lots of talks can be “Great”, but not so many talks can be “Outstanding” without the word losing its meaning. One wrote “Pretty amazing presentation, considering it was completely extemporaneous.” Brent: Extemporaneous, eh? Rob: Yeah. I guess they don’t realise how much preparation goes into coming across as unprepared. In many ways it’s much easier to give a written speech than to deliver a presentation without slides as a prompt. Brent: That delivery style, the really relaxed, casual, college-professor approach was one of the things I really liked about your presentation at SQLbits. As somebody who presents a lot, I "get" it - I know how hard it is to come off as relaxed and comfortable with your own material. It's like improv done by jazz players and comedians - if you've never tried it, you don't realize how hard it is. People also don't realize how hard it is to make a tough subject fun. Rob: Yeah well... There will be people writing comments on this post that say I wasn't trying to make the subject fun, and that I was making it all about me. Sometimes the style works, sometimes it doesn't. Most of the comments mentioned the fact that I tell jokes, some in a nice way, but some not so much (and it wasn't just a PASS thing - that's the mix of feedback I generally get). One comment at PASS was: “great stand up comedian - not what I'm looking for at pass”, and there were certainly a few that said “too many jokes”. I’m not trying to do stand-up – jokes are my way of engaging with the audience while I demonstrate some of the amazing things that the Query Optimizer can do if you write your queries the right way. Some people didn’t think it was technical enough, but I’ve also had some people tell me that the concepts I’m explaining are deep and profound. Brent: To me, that's a hallmark of a great explanation - when someone says, "But of course it has to work that way - how could it work any other way? It seems so simple and logical." Well, sure it does when it's explained correctly, but now pick up any number of thick SQL Server books and try to understand the Redundant Joins concept. I guarantee it'll take more than 45 minutes. Rob: Some people in my audiences realise that, but definitely not everyone. There's only so much you can tell someone that something is profound. Generally it's something that they either have an epiphany on or not. I like to lull my audience into knowing what's going on, and do something that surprises them. Gain their trust, build a rapport, and then show them the deeper truth of what just happened. Brent: So you've learned your lesson about presentation scores, right? From here on out, you're going to be dry, humorless, and all your presentations will consist of you reading bullet points off the screen. Rob: No Brent, I’m not. I'm also not going to suggest that most presentations at PASS are like that. No-one tries to present like that. There's a big space to occupy between what "dry and humourless" and me. My difference is to focus on the relationship I have with the crowd, rather than focussing on delivering the perfect session. I want to see people smiling and know they're relaxed. I think most presenters focus on the material, which is completely reasonable and safe. I remember once hearing someone talking about product creation. They talked about mediocrity. They said that one of the worst things that people can ever say about your product is that it’s “good”. What you want is for 10% of the world to love it enough to want to buy it. If 10% the world gave me a dollar, I’d have more money than I could ever use (assuming it wasn’t the SAME dollar they were giving me I guess). Brent: It's the Raving Fans theory. It's better to have a small number of raving customers than a large number of almost-but-not-really customers who don't care that much about your product or service. I know exactly how you feel - when I got survey feedback from my Quest video presentation when I was dressed up in a Richard Simmons costume, some of the attendees said I was unprofessional and distracting. Some of the attendees couldn't get enough and Photoshopped all kinds of stuff into the screen captures. On a whole, I probably didn't score that well, and I'm fine with that. It sucks to look at the scores though - do those lower scores bother you? Rob: Of course they do. It hurts deeply. I open myself up and give presentations in a very personal way. All presenters do that, and we all feel the pain of negative feedback. I hate coming 146th & 162nd out of 185, but have to acknowledge that many sessions did worse still. Plus, once I feel the wounds have healed, I’ll be able to remember that there are people in the world that rave about my presentation style, and figure that people will hopefully talk about me. One day maybe those people that don’t like my presentation style will stay away and I might be able to score better. You don’t pay to hear country music if you prefer western... Lots of people find chili too spicy, but it’s still a popular food. Brent: But don’t you want to appeal to everyone? Rob: I do, but I don’t want to be lukewarm as in Revelation 3:16. I’d rather disgust and be discussed. Well, maybe not ‘disgust’, but I don’t want to conform. Conformity just isn’t the same any more. I’m not sure I’ve ever been one to do that. I try not to offend, but definitely like to be different. Brent: Count me among your raving fans, sir. Where can we see you next? Rob: Considering I live in Adelaide in Australia, I’m not about to appear at anyone’s local SQL Saturday. I’m still trying to plan which events I’ll get to in 2011. I’ve submitted abstracts for TechEd North America, but won’t hold my breath. I’m also considering the SQLBits conferences in the UK in April, PASS in October, and I’m sure I’ll do some LiveMeeting presentations for user groups. Online, people download some of my recent SQLBits presentations at http://bit.ly/RFSarg and http://bit.ly/Simplification though. And they can download a 5-minute MP3 of my Lightning Talk at http://www.lobsterpot.com.au/files/Collation.mp3, in which I try to explain the idea behind collation, using thongs as an example. Brent: I was in the audience for http://bit.ly/RFSarg. That was a great presentation. Rob: Thanks, Brent. Now where’s my dollar?

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Announcing ASP.NET MVC 3 (Release Candidate 2)

- by ScottGu

Earlier today the ASP.NET team shipped the final release candidate (RC2) for ASP.NET MVC 3. You can download and install it here. Almost there… Today’s RC2 release is the near-final release of ASP.NET MVC 3, and is a true “release candidate” in that we are hoping to not make any more code changes with it. We are publishing it today so that people can do final testing with it, let us know if they find any last minute “showstoppers”, and start updating their apps to use it. We will officially ship the final ASP.NET MVC 3 “RTM” build in January. Works with both VS 2010 and VS 2010 SP1 Beta Today’s ASP.NET MVC 3 RC2 release works with both the shipping version of Visual Studio 2010 / Visual Web Developer 2010 Express, as well as the newly released VS 2010 SP1 Beta. This means that you do not need to install VS 2010 SP1 (or the SP1 beta) in order to use ASP.NET MVC 3. It works just fine with the shipping Visual Studio 2010. I’ll do a blog post next week, though, about some of the nice additional feature goodies that come with VS 2010 SP1 (including IIS Express and SQL CE support within VS) which make the dev experience for both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC even better. Bugs and Perf Fixes Today’s ASP.NET MVC 3 RC2 build contains many bug fixes and performance optimizations. Our latest performance tests indicate that ASP.NET MVC 3 is now faster than ASP.NET MVC 2, and that existing ASP.NET MVC applications will experience a slight performance increase when updated to run using ASP.NET MVC 3. Final Tweaks and Fit-N-Finish In addition to bug fixes and performance optimizations, today’s RC2 build contains a number of last-minute feature tweaks and “fit-n-finish” changes for the new ASP.NET MVC 3 features. The feedback and suggestions we’ve received during the public previews has been invaluable in guiding these final tweaks, and we really appreciate people’s support in sending this feedback our way. Below is a short-list of some of the feature changes/tweaks made between last month’s ASP.NET MVC 3 RC release and today’s ASP.NET MVC 3 RC2 release: jQuery updates and addition of jQuery UI The default ASP.NET MVC 3 project templates have been updated to include jQuery 1.4.4 and jQuery Validation 1.7. We are also excited to announce today that we are including jQuery UI within our default ASP.NET project templates going forward. jQuery UI provides a powerful set of additional UI widgets and capabilities. It will be added by default to your project’s \scripts folder when you create new ASP.NET MVC 3 projects. Improved View Scaffolding The T4 templates used for scaffolding views with the Add-View dialog now generates views that use Html.EditorFor instead of helpers such as Html.TextBoxFor. This change enables you to optionally annotate models with metadata (using data annotation attributes) to better customize the output of your UI at runtime. The Add View scaffolding also supports improved detection and usage of primary key information on models (including support for naming conventions like ID, ProductID, etc). For example: the Add View dialog box uses this information to ensure that the primary key value is not scaffold as an editable form field, and that links between views are auto-generated correctly with primary key information. The default Edit and Create templates also now include references to the jQuery scripts needed for client validation. Scaffold form views now support client-side validation by default (no extra steps required). Client-side validation with ASP.NET MVC 3 is also done using an unobtrusive javascript approach – making pages fast and clean. [ControllerSessionState] –> [SessionState] ASP.NET MVC 3 adds support for session-less controllers. With the initial RC you used a [ControllerSessionState] attribute to specify this. We shortened this in RC2 to just be [SessionState]: Note that in addition to turning off session state, you can also set it to be read-only (which is useful for webfarm scenarios where you are reading but not updating session state on a particular request). [SkipRequestValidation] –> [AllowHtml] ASP.NET MVC includes built-in support to protect against HTML and Cross-Site Script Injection Attacks, and will throw an error by default if someone tries to post HTML content as input. Developers need to explicitly indicate that this is allowed (and that they’ve hopefully built their app to securely support it) in order to enable it. With ASP.NET MVC 3, we are also now supporting a new attribute that you can apply to properties of models/viewmodels to indicate that HTML input is enabled, which enables much more granular protection in a DRY way. In last month’s RC release this attribute was named [SkipRequestValidation]. With RC2 we renamed it to [AllowHtml] to make it more intuitive: Setting the above [AllowHtml] attribute on a model/viewmodel will cause ASP.NET MVC 3 to turn off HTML injection protection when model binding just that property. Html.Raw() helper method The new Razor view engine introduced with ASP.NET MVC 3 automatically HTML encodes output by default. This helps provide an additional level of protection against HTML and Script injection attacks. With RC2 we are adding a Html.Raw() helper method that you can use to explicitly indicate that you do not want to HTML encode your output, and instead want to render the content “as-is”: ViewModel/View –> ViewBag ASP.NET MVC has (since V1) supported a ViewData[] dictionary within Controllers and Views that enables developers to pass information from a Controller to a View in a late-bound way. This approach can be used instead of, or in combination with, a strongly-typed model class. The below code demonstrates a common use case – where a strongly typed Product model is passed to the view in addition to two late-bound variables via the ViewData[] dictionary: With ASP.NET MVC 3 we are introducing a new API that takes advantage of the dynamic type support within .NET 4 to set/retrieve these values. It allows you to use standard “dot” notation to specify any number of additional variables to be passed, and does not require that you create a strongly-typed class to do so. With earlier previews of ASP.NET MVC 3 we exposed this API using a dynamic property called “ViewModel” on the Controller base class, and with a dynamic property called “View” within view templates. A lot of people found the fact that there were two different names confusing, and several also said that using the name ViewModel was confusing in this context – since often you create strongly-typed ViewModel classes in ASP.NET MVC, and they do not use this API. With RC2 we are exposing a dynamic property that has the same name – ViewBag – within both Controllers and Views. It is a dynamic collection that allows you to pass additional bits of data from your controller to your view template to help generate a response. Below is an example of how we could use it to pass a time-stamp message as well as a list of all categories to our view template: Below is an example of how our view template (which is strongly-typed to expect a Product class as its model) can use the two extra bits of information we passed in our ViewBag to generate the response. In particular, notice how we are using the list of categories passed in the dynamic ViewBag collection to generate a dropdownlist of friendly category names to help set the CategoryID property of our Product object. The above Controller/View combination will then generate an HTML response like below. Output Caching Improvements ASP.NET MVC 3’s output caching system no longer requires you to specify a VaryByParam property when declaring an [OutputCache] attribute on a Controller action method. MVC3 now automatically varies the output cached entries when you have explicit parameters on your action method – allowing you to cleanly enable output caching on actions using code like below: In addition to supporting full page output caching, ASP.NET MVC 3 also supports partial-page caching – which allows you to cache a region of output and re-use it across multiple requests or controllers. The [OutputCache] behavior for partial-page caching was updated with RC2 so that sub-content cached entries are varied based on input parameters as opposed to the URL structure of the top-level request – which makes caching scenarios both easier and more powerful than the behavior in the previous RC. @model declaration does not add whitespace In earlier previews, the strongly-typed @model declaration at the top of a Razor view added a blank line to the rendered HTML output. This has been fixed so that the declaration does not introduce whitespace. Changed "Html.ValidationMessage" Method to Display the First Useful Error Message The behavior of the Html.ValidationMessage() helper was updated to show the first useful error message instead of simply displaying the first error. During model binding, the ModelState dictionary can be populated from multiple sources with error messages about the property, including from the model itself (if it implements IValidatableObject), from validation attributes applied to the property, and from exceptions thrown while the property is being accessed. When the Html.ValidationMessage() method displays a validation message, it now skips model-state entries that include an exception, because these are generally not intended for the end user. Instead, the method looks for the first validation message that is not associated with an exception and displays that message. If no such message is found, it defaults to a generic error message that is associated with the first exception. RemoteAttribute “Fields” -> “AdditionalFields” ASP.NET MVC 3 includes built-in remote validation support with its validation infrastructure. This means that the client-side validation script library used by ASP.NET MVC 3 can automatically call back to controllers you expose on the server to determine whether an input element is indeed valid as the user is editing the form (allowing you to provide real-time validation updates). You can accomplish this by decorating a model/viewmodel property with a [Remote] attribute that specifies the controller/action that should be invoked to remotely validate it. With the RC this attribute had a “Fields” property that could be used to specify additional input elements that should be sent from the client to the server to help with the validation logic. To improve the clarity of what this property does we have renamed it to “AdditionalFields” with today’s RC2 release. ViewResult.Model and ViewResult.ViewBag Properties The ViewResult class now exposes both a “Model” and “ViewBag” property off of it. This makes it easier to unit test Controllers that return views, and avoids you having to access the Model via the ViewResult.ViewData.Model property. Installation Notes You can download and install the ASP.NET MVC 3 RC2 build here. It can be installed on top of the previous ASP.NET MVC 3 RC release (it should just replace the bits as part of its setup). The one component that will not be updated by the above setup (if you already have it installed) is the NuGet Package Manager. If you already have NuGet installed, please go to the Visual Studio Extensions Manager (via the Tools –> Extensions menu option) and click on the “Updates” tab. You should see NuGet listed there – please click the “Update” button next to it to have VS update the extension to today’s release. If you do not have NuGet installed (and did not install the ASP.NET MVC RC build), then NuGet will be installed as part of your ASP.NET MVC 3 setup, and you do not need to take any additional steps to make it work. Summary We are really close to the final ASP.NET MVC 3 release, and will deliver the final “RTM” build of it next month. It has been only a little over 7 months since ASP.NET MVC 2 shipped, and I’m pretty amazed by the huge number of new features, improvements, and refinements that the team has been able to add with this release (Razor, Unobtrusive JavaScript, NuGet, Dependency Injection, Output Caching, and a lot, lot more). I’ll be doing a number of blog posts over the next few weeks talking about many of them in more depth. 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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SOA Suite Integration: Part 2: A basic BPEL process

- by Anthony Shorten

This is the next in the series about SOA Suite integration with Oracle Utilities Application Framework. One of the first scenarios I am going to illustrate in this series is building a basic BPEL process using Web Service calls to the Oracle Utilities Application Framework. The scenario is this. I will pass in the userid and the BPEL process will call our the AS-User Web Service we created in Part 1. This is just a basic test and illustrate how to import the Web Service into SOA Suite. To use this scenario, you will need access to Oracle SOA Suite, access to a copy of any Oracle Utilities Application Framework based product and Oracle JDeveloper (to build the process). First of all you need to start Oracle JDeveloper and create a new SOA Project to house the BPEL process in. For the purposes of this example I will call the project simpleBPEL and verify that SOA is part of the project. I will select "Composite with BPEL" to denote it as a BPEL process. I can also the same process to create a Mediator or OSB project (refer to the JDeveloper documentation on these technologies). For this example I will use BPEL 1.1 as my specification standard (BPEL 2.0 can also be used if desired). I give the individual BPEL process as simpleBPEL (you can use a different name but I wanted to keep the project and process the same for this example). I will also build a Synchronous BPEL Process as I want a response from the Web Service. I will leave the defaults to save time. I have no have a blank canvas to build my BPEL process against. Note: for simplicity I am going to use as much defaulting as possible. In fact I am not going to specify an input schema for the incoming call as I will use the basic single field used by BPEL as default. The first step is to import the AS-User Web Service into my BPEL project. To do this I use the standard Web Service BPEL component from the Component Palette to import the WSDL into the BPEL project. Now the tricky part (a joke), you drag and drop the component from the Palette onto the right side of the canvas in the Partner Links swim lane. This swim lane is reserved for Partner Links that have a Partner Role (i.e. being called rather than calling). When you drop the Web Service onto the canvas the Create Web Service wizard is invoked to ask for details of the Web Service. At this point you give the BPEL node a name. I have used the name RetrieveUser as a name. I placed the WSDL URL from the XAI Inbound Service screen in the WSDL URL. Once you specify the URL you can press the Find existing WSDL's button to load the information into BPEL from the call. You will notice the Port Type is prefilled with the port from the WSDL. I also suggest that you check copy wsdl and it's dependent artifacts into the project if you intending to work on the BPEL process offline. If you do not check this your target application must be accessible when you work on the BPEL process (that is not always convenient). Note: For the perceptive of you will notice that the URL specified in this example is different to the URL in the last post. The reason is for the demonstrations I shifted to a new server and did not redo all of the past screen captures. If you copy the WSDL into the project you will get an information screen about Localize Files. It is just a confirmation screen. The last confirmation screen is a summary of the partner link (the main tab is locked for editing at this stage). At this stage you have successfully imported the Web Service. To complete the setup of the Web Service you need to set the credentials for the Web Service to use. Refer to the past post on how to do that. Now to use the Web Service. To call the Web Service (as it is just imported not connected to the BPEL process yet), you must add an Invoke action to your BPEL Process. To do this, select Invoke action from the BPEL Constructs zone on the Component Palette and drop it on the edit nodes between the receiveInput and replyOutput nodes This will create an empty Invoke action. You will notice some connectors on the Invoke node. Grab the node closest to your Web Service and drag it to connect the Invoke to your Web Service. This instructs BPEL to use the Invoke to call the Web Service. Once the Invoke action is connected to the Web Service an Edit Invoke edit dialog is displayed. At this point I suggest you name the Invoke node. It is important to name the nodes straightaway and name them appropriately for you to trace the logic. I used InvokeUser as the name in this example. To complete the node configuration you must create Variables to hold the input and output for the call. To do this clock on Automatically Create Input Variable on the Edit Invoke dialog. You will be presented with a default variable name. It uses the node name (that is why it is important to name the node before hitting this button) as a prefix. You can name the variable anything but I usually take the default. Repeat the same for the output variable. You now have a completed node for invoking the service. You have a very basic BPEL process which contains an input, invoke and output node. It is not complete yet though. You need to tell the BPEL process how to pass data from the input to the invoke step and how to take the output from the service call and pass it back to the service. You need to now add an Assign node to assign the input to the Web Service. To do this select Assign activity from BPEL Constructs zone in the Component Palette. Drag and drop the Assign activity between the receiveInput and InvokeUser nodes as you want to pass data between these two nodes. You have now added a new Assign node to your BPEL process Double clicking the node allows you to specify the name of the node. I use AssignUser to describe that I am assigning user data. On the Copy Rules tab you can specify the mapping between the input variable InputVariable/payload/process/input string and the input variable for the Web Service call. We are passing data from the input to BPEL to the relevant input variable on the Web Service. This is simply drag and drop between the two data structures. In the example, I am using the input to pass to the user element in my Web Service as the user is the primary key for the object. The fields become linked (which means data from source will be copied to target). Almost there. You now need to process the output from the Web Service call to the outputVariable of the client call. I have decided to pass back one piece of data, the name associated with the user by concatenating the firstName and lastName elements from the Web Service call. To do this I will use a Transform as it is not just a matter of an Assign action. It is a concatenation operation. This also illustrates how you can use BPEL functionality to transform data from a Web Service call. As with the other components you drag and drop the Transform component to the appropriate place in the BPEL process. In this case we want to transform the output from the Web Service call so we want it after the InvokeUser action and the replyOutput action. The Transform component is actually part of the Oracle Extensions to the BPEL specification. Double clicking the Transform node will allow you to name the node. In this example I used TransformName. To complete the transform I need to tell the product the source of the transformation and the target of the transform. In the example this is the InvokeUser output variable. I also named the mapper file to TransformName. By clicking the + or pencil icon next to the map I can create the map. The mapping screen is shows the source and target schemas for me to map across. As with the assign I can map the relevant elements. In my example, I first map the firstName from the Web Service to the result element. As I want to concatenate the names, I drop the concat function on the call line. I now attach the last name to the function to indicate the concatenation of the field. By default the names will be concatenated with no space. To make the name legible I add a space between the field by clicking the function and adding a space in the call. I now have a completed mapping. I can now save the whole project as my BPEL process is now complete. As you can see the following happens: We accept input from the client (the userid for the call) in the receiveInput step. We assign that value to the input parameters for the Web Service call in the AssignUser step. We invoke the Web Service call to retrieve the data from the product in the InvokeUser step. We take the output from the InvokeUser step and concatenate the names in the TransformName step. We pass back the data in the replyOutput step. At this point we can deploy the BPEL process to the SOA Suite server. I will not cover this aspect as it really all SOA Suite specific (it is all done via Oracle JDeveloper). Now we need to test the service in SOA Suite. We will use the Fusion Middleware Control test facility. I will assume that credentials have also been setup as per our previous post (else you will get a 401 error). You navigate to the deployed BPEL process within Fusion Middleware Control and select the Test Service option. Specify some test data on the payload at the bottom of the Test Service screen. In my case I am returning my own userid information. On the response tab you will see the result. It works. You can verify the steps using the Audit trace facility on individual calls. As you can see this is a basic BPEL but you get the idea of importing the Web Service is pretty straightforward. You can create more sophisticated BPEL processes using the full facilities in Oracle SOA Suite. I just showed you the basic principals.

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SQL Spatial: Getting “nearest” calculations working properly

- by Rob Farley

If you’ve ever done spatial work with SQL Server, I hope you’ve come across the ‘nearest’ problem. You have five thousand stores around the world, and you want to identify the one that’s closest to a particular place. Maybe you want the store closest to the LobsterPot office in Adelaide, at -34.925806, 138.605073. Or our new US office, at 42.524929, -87.858244. Or maybe both! You know how to do this. You don’t want to use an aggregate MIN or MAX, because you want the whole row, telling you which store it is. You want to use TOP, and if you want to find the closest store for multiple locations, you use APPLY. Let’s do this (but I’m going to use addresses in AdventureWorks2012, as I don’t have a list of stores). Oh, and before I do, let’s make sure we have a spatial index in place. I’m going to use the default options. CREATE SPATIAL INDEX spin_Address ON Person.Address(SpatialLocation); And my actual query: WITH MyLocations AS (SELECT * FROM (VALUES ('LobsterPot Adelaide', geography::Point(-34.925806, 138.605073, 4326)), ('LobsterPot USA', geography::Point(42.524929, -87.858244, 4326)) ) t (Name, Geo)) SELECT l.Name, a.AddressLine1, a.City, s.Name AS [State], c.Name AS Country FROM MyLocations AS l CROSS APPLY ( SELECT TOP (1) * FROM Person.Address AS ad ORDER BY l.Geo.STDistance(ad.SpatialLocation) ) AS a JOIN Person.StateProvince AS s ON s.StateProvinceID = a.StateProvinceID JOIN Person.CountryRegion AS c ON c.CountryRegionCode = s.CountryRegionCode ; Great! This is definitely working. I know both those City locations, even if the AddressLine1s don’t quite ring a bell. I’m sure I’ll be able to find them next time I’m in the area. But of course what I’m concerned about from a querying perspective is what’s happened behind the scenes – the execution plan. This isn’t pretty. It’s not using my index. It’s sucking every row out of the Address table TWICE (which sucks), and then it’s sorting them by the distance to find the smallest one. It’s not pretty, and it takes a while. Mind you, I do like the fact that it saw an indexed view it could use for the State and Country details – that’s pretty neat. But yeah – users of my nifty website aren’t going to like how long that query takes. The frustrating thing is that I know that I can use the index to find locations that are within a particular distance of my locations quite easily, and Microsoft recommends this for solving the ‘nearest’ problem, as described at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-au/library/ff929109.aspx. Now, in the first example on this page, it says that the query there will use the spatial index. But when I run it on my machine, it does nothing of the sort. I’m not particularly impressed. But what we see here is that parallelism has kicked in. In my scenario, it’s split the data up into 4 threads, but it’s still slow, and not using my index. It’s disappointing. But I can persuade it with hints! If I tell it to FORCESEEK, or use my index, or even turn off the parallelism with MAXDOP 1, then I get the index being used, and it’s a thing of beauty! Part of the plan is here: It’s massive, and it’s ugly, and it uses a TVF… but it’s quick. The way it works is to hook into the GeodeticTessellation function, which is essentially finds where the point is, and works out through the spatial index cells that surround it. This then provides a framework to be able to see into the spatial index for the items we want. You can read more about it at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb895265.aspx#tessellation – including a bunch of pretty diagrams. One of those times when we have a much more complex-looking plan, but just because of the good that’s going on. This tessellation stuff was introduced in SQL Server 2012. But my query isn’t using it. When I try to use the FORCESEEK hint on the Person.Address table, I get the friendly error: Msg 8622, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 Query processor could not produce a query plan because of the hints defined in this query. Resubmit the query without specifying any hints and without using SET FORCEPLAN. And I’m almost tempted to just give up and move back to the old method of checking increasingly large circles around my location. After all, I can even leverage multiple OUTER APPLY clauses just like I did in my recent Lookup post. WITH MyLocations AS (SELECT * FROM (VALUES ('LobsterPot Adelaide', geography::Point(-34.925806, 138.605073, 4326)), ('LobsterPot USA', geography::Point(42.524929, -87.858244, 4326)) ) t (Name, Geo)) SELECT l.Name, COALESCE(a1.AddressLine1,a2.AddressLine1,a3.AddressLine1), COALESCE(a1.City,a2.City,a3.City), s.Name AS [State], c.Name AS Country FROM MyLocations AS l OUTER APPLY ( SELECT TOP (1) * FROM Person.Address AS ad WHERE l.Geo.STDistance(ad.SpatialLocation) < 1000 ORDER BY l.Geo.STDistance(ad.SpatialLocation) ) AS a1 OUTER APPLY ( SELECT TOP (1) * FROM Person.Address AS ad WHERE l.Geo.STDistance(ad.SpatialLocation) < 5000 AND a1.AddressID IS NULL ORDER BY l.Geo.STDistance(ad.SpatialLocation) ) AS a2 OUTER APPLY ( SELECT TOP (1) * FROM Person.Address AS ad WHERE l.Geo.STDistance(ad.SpatialLocation) < 20000 AND a2.AddressID IS NULL ORDER BY l.Geo.STDistance(ad.SpatialLocation) ) AS a3 JOIN Person.StateProvince AS s ON s.StateProvinceID = COALESCE(a1.StateProvinceID,a2.StateProvinceID,a3.StateProvinceID) JOIN Person.CountryRegion AS c ON c.CountryRegionCode = s.CountryRegionCode ; But this isn’t friendly-looking at all, and I’d use the method recommended by Isaac Kunen, who uses a table of numbers for the expanding circles. It feels old-school though, when I’m dealing with SQL 2012 (and later) versions. So why isn’t my query doing what it’s supposed to? Remember the query... WITH MyLocations AS (SELECT * FROM (VALUES ('LobsterPot Adelaide', geography::Point(-34.925806, 138.605073, 4326)), ('LobsterPot USA', geography::Point(42.524929, -87.858244, 4326)) ) t (Name, Geo)) SELECT l.Name, a.AddressLine1, a.City, s.Name AS [State], c.Name AS Country FROM MyLocations AS l CROSS APPLY ( SELECT TOP (1) * FROM Person.Address AS ad ORDER BY l.Geo.STDistance(ad.SpatialLocation) ) AS a JOIN Person.StateProvince AS s ON s.StateProvinceID = a.StateProvinceID JOIN Person.CountryRegion AS c ON c.CountryRegionCode = s.CountryRegionCode ; Well, I just wasn’t reading http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff929109.aspx properly. The following requirements must be met for a Nearest Neighbor query to use a spatial index: A spatial index must be present on one of the spatial columns and the STDistance() method must use that column in the WHERE and ORDER BY clauses. The TOP clause cannot contain a PERCENT statement. The WHERE clause must contain a STDistance() method. If there are multiple predicates in the WHERE clause then the predicate containing STDistance() method must be connected by an AND conjunction to the other predicates. The STDistance() method cannot be in an optional part of the WHERE clause. The first expression in the ORDER BY clause must use the STDistance() method. Sort order for the first STDistance() expression in the ORDER BY clause must be ASC. All the rows for which STDistance returns NULL must be filtered out. Let’s start from the top. 1. Needs a spatial index on one of the columns that’s in the STDistance call. Yup, got the index. 2. No ‘PERCENT’. Yeah, I don’t have that. 3. The WHERE clause needs to use STDistance(). Ok, but I’m not filtering, so that should be fine. 4. Yeah, I don’t have multiple predicates. 5. The first expression in the ORDER BY is my distance, that’s fine. 6. Sort order is ASC, because otherwise we’d be starting with the ones that are furthest away, and that’s tricky. 7. All the rows for which STDistance returns NULL must be filtered out. But I don’t have any NULL values, so that shouldn’t affect me either. ...but something’s wrong. I do actually need to satisfy #3. And I do need to make sure #7 is being handled properly, because there are some situations (eg, differing SRIDs) where STDistance can return NULL. It says so at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb933808.aspx – “STDistance() always returns null if the spatial reference IDs (SRIDs) of the geography instances do not match.” So if I simply make sure that I’m filtering out the rows that return NULL… …then it’s blindingly fast, I get the right results, and I’ve got the complex-but-brilliant plan that I wanted. It just wasn’t overly intuitive, despite being documented. @rob_farley

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Collaborate 2010 Recap: A lot of Excitement for Oracle Content Management 11g

- by [email protected]

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Collaborate brought me to Las Vegas last week and what a week it was. Each day was jam packed with Oracle Content Management sessions, and almost every session I attended was full. Across the 35+ sessions that were given by my Oracle peers, Oracle partners, and Oracle customers, the majority of the discussion and questions that were asked had to do with the release of Oracle Content Management 11g. Just to bring everyone up-to-speed, the first wave of Oracle Content Management 11g releases happened this past January as Oracle Imaging & Process Management and Oracle Information Rights Management went GA. The next wave, which should be released soon, includes Oracle Universal Content Management and Oracle Universal Records Management. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Andy MacMillan and Roel Stalman kicked off these discussions last Monday, as they presented Oracle Content Management's product strategy and roadmap. It seemed that the attendees liked what they heard regarding the strategy and future direction, but the question that seems to always come up after roadmap presentations is "when will the product be released"? This is a question that none of us have the power to answer, but soon customers will be able to enjoy these new product capabilities: Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Unified content repository across ECMCentralized installation, access, administration & monitoringCertified application integrations with solution templatesOpen Web Content Management Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Stay tuned for more news about the release of Oracle Universal Content Management and Oracle Records Management. There are a lot of new assets currently being built that will help get everyone up-to-speed quickly. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Outside of the sessions that were presented, there were a lot of other activities that took place at Collaborate. The Enterprise 2.0 solutions demo pod was busy, and attendees were anxious to see demonstrations of Oracle's end-to-end document imaging solution, WebCenter Spaces, and web site creation using Oracle Universal Content Management. I also want to thank our partners (Fishbowl Solutions, Redstone Content Solutions, Bezzotech, Team Informatics, and DTI) for their efforts in creating detailed, insightful presentations. Also, special thanks are in order to Thomas Feldmeier and Markus Neubauer of Silbury IT-Beratung GmbH for their participation. It seems that Thomas and Markus were doomed to be stranded in Frankfurt after the Icelandic ash storm. They couldn't get a flight out of their native Germany, and with fear that they would miss Collaborate, they rented a car and drove to Rome - some 800 miles (1,200 kilometers). Anyway, they made it safe and sound to Las Vegas, and although probably a bit tired, they gave 2 Oracle Content Management presentations. Talk about commitment. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Finally, a very special thanks to Al Hoof and Dave Chaffee of the Oracle Content Management Special Interest Group (SIG). Al and Dave did most of the heavy lifting for Collaborate, including the coordination of all the sessions. The Independent Oracle Users Group presented Al with the Chris Wooldridge award, recognizing him as the volunteer of the year. Here is Al with his award: Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} I hope to see you next year at Collaborate as the show returns to Orlando.

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In Which We Demystify A Few Docupresentment Settings And Learn the Ethos of the Author

- by Andy Little

It's no secret that Docupresentment (part of the Oracle Documaker suite) is powerful tool for integrating on-demand and interactive applications for publishing with the Oracle Documaker framework. It's also no secret there are are many details with respect to the configuration of Docupresentment that can elude even the most erudite of of techies. To be sure, Docupresentment will work for you right out of the box, and in most cases will suit your needs without toying with a configuration file. But, where's the adventure in that? With this inaugural post to That's The Way, I'm going to introduce myself, and what my aim is with this blog. If you didn't figure it out already by checking out my profile, my name is Andy and I've been with Oracle (nee Skywire Software nee Docucorp nee Formmaker) since the formative years of 1998. Strangely, it doesn't seem that long ago, but it's certainly a lifetime in the age of technology. I recall running a BBS from my parent's basement on a 1200 baud modem, and the trepidation and sweaty-palmed excitement of upgrading to the power and speed of 2400 baud! Fine, I'll admit that perhaps I'm inflating the experience a bit, but I was kid! This is the stuff of War Games and King's Quest I and the demise of TI-99 4/A. Exciting times. So fast-forward a bit and I'm 12 years into a career in the world of document automation and publishing working for the best (IMHO) software company on the planet. With That's The Way I hope to shed a little light and peek under the covers of some of the more interesting aspects of implementations involving the tech space within the Oracle Insurance Global Business Unit (IGBU), which includes Oracle Documaker, Rating & Underwriting, and Policy Administration to name a few. I may delve off course a bit, and you'll likely get a dose of humor (at least in my mind) but I hope you'll glean at least a tidbit of usefulness with each post. Feel free to comment as I'm a fairly conversant guy and happy to talk -- it's stopping the talking that's the hard part... So, back to our regularly-scheduled post, already in progress. By this time you've visited Oracle's E-Delivery site and acquired your properly-licensed version of Oracle Documaker. Wait -- you didn't find it? Understandable -- navigating the voluminous download library within Oracle can be a daunting task. It's pretty simple once you’ve done it a few times. Login to the e-delivery site, and accept the license terms and restrictions. Then, you’ll be able to select the Oracle Insurance Applications product pack and your appropriate platform. Click Go and you’ll see a list of applicable products, and you’ll click on Oracle Documaker Media Pack (as I went to press with this article the version is 11.4): Finally, click the Download button next to Docupresentment (again, version at press time is 2.2 p5). This should give you a ZIP file that contains the installation packages for the Docupresentment Server and Client, cryptically named IDSServer22P05W32.exe and IDSClient22P05W32.exe. At this time, I’d like to take a little detour and explain that the world of Oracle, like most technical companies, is rife with acronyms. One of the reasons Skywire Software was a appealing to Oracle was our use of many acronyms, including the occasional use of multiple acronyms with the same meaning. I apologize in advance and will try to point these out along the way. Here’s your first sticky note to go along with that: IDS = Internet Document Server = Docupresentment Once you’ve completed the installation, you’ll have a shiny new Docupresentment server and client, and if you installed the default location it will be living in c:\docserv. Unix users, I’m one of you! You’ll find it by default in ~/docupresentment/docserv. Forging onward with the meat of this post is learning about some special configuration options. By now you’ve read the documentation included with the download (specifically ids_book.pdf) which goes into some detail of the rubric of the configuration file and in fact there’s even a handy utility that provides an interface to the configuration file (see Running IDSConfig in the documentation). But who wants to deal with a configuration utility when we have the tools and technology to edit the file <gasp> by hand! I shall now proceed with the standard Information Technology Under the Hood Disclaimer: Please remember to back up any files before you make changes. I am not responsible for any havoc you may wreak! Go to your installation directory, and locate your docserv.xml file. Open it in your favorite XML editor. I happen to be fond of Notepad++ with the XML Tools plugin. Almost immediately you will behold the splendor of the configuration file. Just take a moment and let that sink in. Ok – moving on. If you reviewed the documentation you know that inside the root <configuration> node there are multiple <section> nodes, each containing a specific group of settings. Let’s take a look at <section name=”DocumentServer”>: There are a few entries I’d like to discuss. First, <entry name=”StartCommand”>. This should be pretty self-explanatory; it’s the name of the executable that’s run when you fire up Docupresentment. Immediately following that is <entry name=”StartArguments”> and as you might imagine these are the arguments passed to the executable. A few things to point out: The –Dids.configuration=docserv.xml parameter specifies the name of your configuration file. The –Dlogging.configuration=logconf.xml parameter specifies the name of your logging configuration file (this uses log4j so bone up on that before you delve here). The -Djava.endorsed.dirs=lib/endorsed parameter specifies the path where 3rd party Java libraries can be located for use with Docupresentment. More on that in another post. The <entry name=”Instances”> allows you to specify the number of instances of Docupresentment that will be started. By default this is two, and generally two instances per CPU is adequate, however you will always need to perform load testing to determine the sweet spot based on your hardware and types of transactions. You may have many, many more instances than 2. Time for a sidebar on instances. An instance is nothing more than a separate process of Docupresentment. The Docupresentment service that you fire up with docserver.bat or docserver.sh actually starts a watchdog process, which is then responsible for starting up the actual Docupresentment processes. Each of these act independently from one another, so if one crashes, it does not affect any others. In the case of a crashed process, the watchdog will start up another instance so the number of configured instances are always running. Bottom line: instance = Docupresentment process. And now, finally, to the settings which gave me pause on an not-too-long-ago implementation! Docupresentment includes a feature that watches configuration files (such as docserv.xml and logconf.xml) and will automatically restart its instances to load the changes. You can configure the time that Docupresentment waits to check these files using the setting <entry name=”FileWatchTimeMillis”>. By default the number is 12000ms, or 12 seconds. You can save yourself a few CPU cycles by extending this time, or by disabling the check altogether by setting the value to 0. This may or may not be appropriate for your environment; if you have 100% uptime requirements then you probably don’t want to bring down an entire set of processes just to accept a new configuration value, so it’s best to leave this somewhere between 12 seconds to a few minutes. Another point to keep in mind: if you are using Documaker real-time processing under Docupresentment the Master Resource Library (MRL) files and INI options are cached, and if you need to affect a change, you’ll have to “restart” Docupresentment. Touching the docserv.xml file is an easy way to do this (other methods including using the RSS request, but that’s another post). The next item up: <entry name=”FilePurgeTimeSeconds”>. You may already know that the Docupresentment system can generate many temporary files based on certain request types that are processed through the system. What you may not know is how those files are cleaned up. There are many rules in Docupresentment that cause the creation of temporary files. When these files are created, Docupresentment writes an entry into a properties file called the file cache. This file contains the name, creation date, and expiration time of each temporary file created by each instance of Docupresentment. Periodically Docupresentment will check the file cache to determine if there are files that are past the expiration time, not unlike that block of cheese festering away in the back of my refrigerator. However, unlike my ‘fridge cleaning tendencies, Docupresentment is quick to remove files that are past their expiration time. You, my friend, have the power to control how often Docupresentment inspects the file cache. Simply set the value for <entry name=”FilePurgeTimeSeconds”> to the number of seconds appropriate for your requirements and you’re set. Note that file purging happens on a separate thread from normal request processing, so this shouldn’t interfere with response times unless the CPU happens to be really taxed at the point of cache processing. Finally, after all of this, we get to the final setting I’m going to address in this post: <entry name=”FilePurgeList”>. The default is “filecache.properties”. This establishes the root name for the Docupresentment file cache that I mentioned previously. Docupresentment creates a separate cache file for each instance based on this setting. If you have two instances, you’ll see two files created: filecache.properties.1 and filecache.properties.2. Feel free to open these up and check them out. I hope you’ve enjoyed this first foray into the configuration file of Docupresentment. If you did enjoy it, feel free to drop a comment, I welcome feedback. If you have ideas for other posts you’d like to see, please do let me know. You can reach me at [email protected]. ‘Til next time! ###

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When Your Boss Doesn't Want you to Succeed

- by Phil Factor

You're working hard to get an application finished. You are programming long into the evenings sometimes, and eating sandwiches at your desk instead of taking a lunch break. Then one day you glance up at the IT manager, serene in his mysterious round of meetings, and think 'Does he actually care whether this project succeeds or not?'. The question may seem absurd. Of course the project must succeed. The truth, as always, is often far more complex. Your manager may even be doing his best to make sure you don't succeed. Why? There have always been rich pickings for the unscrupulous in IT. In extreme cases, where administrators struggle with scarcely-comprehended technical issues, huge sums of money can be lost and gained without any perceptible results. In a very few cases can fraud be proven: most of the time, the intricacies of the 'game' are such that one can do little more than harbor suspicion. Where does over-enthusiastic salesmanship end and fraud begin? The Business of Information Technology provides rich opportunities for White-collar crime. The poor developer has his, or her, hands full with the task of wrestling with the sheer complexity of building an application. He, or she, has no time for following the complexities of the chicanery of the management that is directing affairs. Most likely, the developers wouldn't even suspect that their company management had ulterior motives. I'll illustrate what I mean with an entirely fictional, hypothetical, example. The Opportunist and the Aged Charities often do good, unexciting work that is funded by the income from a bequest that dates back maybe hundreds of years. In our example, it isn't exciting work, for it involves the welfare of elderly people who have fallen on hard times. Volunteers visit, giving a smile and a chat, and check that they are all right, but are able to spend a little money on their discretion to ameliorate any pressing needs for these old folk. The money is made to work very hard and the charity averts a great deal of suffering and eases the burden on the state. Daisy hears the garden gate creak as Mrs Rainer comes up the path. She looks forward to her twice-weekly visit from the nice lady from the trust. She always asked ‘is everything all right, Love’. Cheeky but nice. She likes her cheery manner. She seems interested in hearing her memories, and talking about her far-away family. She helps her with those chores in the house that she couldn’t manage and once even paid to fill the back-shed with coke, the other year. Nice, Mrs. Rainer is, she thought as she goes to open the door. The trustees are getting on in years themselves, and worry about the long-term future of the charity: is it relevant to modern society? Is it likely to attract a new generation of workers to take it on. They are instantly attracted by the arrival to the board of a smartly dressed University lecturer with the ear of the present Government. Alain 'Stalin' Jones is earnest, persuasive and energetic. The trustees welcome him to the board and quickly forgive his humorless political-correctness. He talks of 'diversity', 'relevance', 'social change', 'equality' and 'communities', but his eye is on that huge bequest. Alain first came to notice as a Trotskyite union official, who insinuated himself into one of the duller Trades Unions and turned it, through his passionate leadership, into a radical, headline-grabbing organization. Middle age, and the rise of European federal socialism, had brought him quiet prosperity and charcoal suits, an ear in the current government, and a wide influence as a member of various Quangos (government bodies staffed by well-paid unelected courtiers). He was employed as a 'consultant' by several organizations that relied on government contracts. After gaining the confidence of the trustees, and showing a surprising knowledge of mundane processes and the regulatory framework of charities, Alain launches his plan. The trust will expand their work by means of a bold IT initiative that will coordinate the interventions of several 'caring agencies', and provide emergency cover, a special Website so anxious relatives can see how their elderly charges are doing, and a vastly more efficient way of coordinating the work of the volunteer carers. It will also provide a special-purpose site that gives 'social networking' facilities, rather like Facebook, to the few elderly folk on the lists with access to the internet. The trustees perk up. Their own experience of the internet is restricted to the occasional scanning of railway timetables, but they can see that it is 'relevant'. In his next report to the other trustees, Alain proudly announces that all this glamorous and exciting technology can be paid for by a grant from the government. He admits darkly that he has influence. True to his word, the government promises a grant of a size that is an order of magnitude greater than any budget that the trustees had ever handled. There was the understandable proviso that the company that would actually do the IT work would have to be one of the government's preferred suppliers and the work would need to be tendered under EU competition rules. The only company that tenders, a multinational IT company with a long track record of government work, quotes ten million pounds for the work. A trustee questions the figure as it seems enormous for the reasonably trivial internet facilities being built, but the IT Salesmen dazzle them with presentations and three-letter acronyms until they subside into quiescent acceptance. After all, they can’t stay locked in the Twentieth century practices can they? The work is put in hand with a large project team, in a splendid glass building near west London. The trustees see rooms of programmers working diligently at screens, and who talk with enthusiasm of the project. Paul, the project manager, looked through his resource schedule with growing unease. His initial excitement at being given his first major project hadn’t lasted. He’d been allocated a lackluster team of developers whose skills didn’t seem right, and he was allowed only a couple of contractors to make good the deficit. Strangely, the presentation he’d given to his management, where he’d saved time and resources with a OTS solution to a great deal of the development work, and a sound conservative architecture, hadn’t gone down nearly as big as he’d hoped. He almost got the feeling they wanted a more radical and ambitious solution. The project starts slipping its dates. The costs build rapidly. There are certain uncomfortable extra charges that appear, such as the £600-a-day charge by the 'Business Manager' appointed to act as a point of liaison between the charity and the IT Company. When he appeared, his face permanently split by a 'Mr Sincerity' smile, they'd thought he was provided at the cost of the IT Company. Derek, the DBA, didn’t have to go to the server room quite some much as he did: but It got him away from the poisonous despair of the development group. Wave after wave of events had conspired to delay the project. Why the management had imposed hideous extra bureaucracy to cover ISO 9000 and 9001:2008 accreditation just as the project was struggling to get back on-schedule was beyond belief. Then the Business manager was coming back with endless changes in scope, sorrowing saying that the Trustees were very insistent, though hopelessly out in touch with the reality of technical challenges. Suddenly, the costs mount to the point of consuming the government grant in its entirety. The project remains tantalizingly just out of reach. Alain Jones gives an emotional rallying speech at the trustees review meeting, urging them not to lose their nerve. Sadly, the trustees dip into the accumulated capital of the trust, the seed-corn of all their revenues, in order to save the IT project. A few months later it is all over. The IT project is never delivered, even though it had seemed so incredibly close. With the trust's capital all gone, the activities it funded have to be terminated and the trust becomes just a shell. There aren't even the funds to mount a legal challenge against the IT company, even had the trust's solicitor advised such a foolish thing. Alain leaves as suddenly as he had arrived, only to pop up a few months later, bronzed and rested, at another charity. The IT workers who were permanent employees are dispersed to other projects, and the contractors leave to other contracts. Within months the entire project is but a vague memory. One or two developers remain puzzled that their managers had been so obstructive when they should have welcomed progress toward completion of the project, but they put it down to incompetence and testosterone. Few suspected that they were actively preventing the project from getting finished. The relationships between the IT consultancy, and the government of the day are intricate, and made more complex by the Private Finance initiatives and political patronage. The losers in this case were the taxpayers, and the beneficiaries of the trust, and, perhaps the soul of the original benefactor of the trust, whose bid to give his name some immortality had been scuppered by smooth-talking white-collar political apparatniks. Even now, nobody is certain whether a crime was ever committed. The perfect heist, I guess. Where’s the victim? "I hear that Daisy’s cottage is up for sale. She’s had to go into a care home. She didn’t want to at all, but then there is nobody to keep an eye on her since she had that minor stroke a while back. A charity used to help out. The ‘social’ don’t have the funding, evidently for community care. Yes, her old cat was put down. There was a good clearout, and now the house is all scrubbed and cleared ready for sale. The skip was full of old photos and letters, memories. No room in her new ‘home’."

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C#/.NET Little Wonders: The EventHandler and EventHandler<TEventArgs> delegates

- by James Michael Hare

Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. In the last two weeks, we examined the Action family of delegates (and delegates in general), and the Func family of delegates and how they can be used to support generic, reusable algorithms and classes. So this week, we are going to look at a handy pair of delegates that can be used to eliminate the need for defining custom delegates when creating events: the EventHandler and EventHandler<TEventArgs> delegates. Events and delegates Before we begin, let’s quickly consider events in .NET. According to the MSDN: An event in C# is a way for a class to provide notifications to clients of that class when some interesting thing happens to an object. So, basically, you can create an event in a type so that users of that type can subscribe to notifications of things of interest. How is this different than some of the delegate programming that we talked about in the last two weeks? Well, you can think of an event as a special access modifier on a delegate. Some differences between the two are: Events are a special access case of delegates They behave much like delegates instances inside the type they are declared in, but outside of that type they can only be (un)subscribed to. Events can specify add/remove behavior explicitly If you want to do additional work when someone subscribes or unsubscribes to an event, you can specify the add and remove actions explicitly. Events have access modifiers, but these only specify the access level of those who can (un)subscribe A public event, for example, means anyone can (un)subscribe, but it does not mean that anyone can raise (invoke) the event directly. Events can only be raised by the type that contains them In contrast, if a delegate is visible, it can be invoked outside of the object (not even in a sub-class!). Events tend to be for notifications only, and should be treated as optional Semantically speaking, events typically don’t perform work on the the class directly, but tend to just notify subscribers when something of note occurs. My basic rule-of-thumb is that if you are just wanting to notify any listeners (who may or may not care) that something has happened, use an event. However, if you want the caller to provide some function to perform to direct the class about how it should perform work, make it a delegate. Declaring events using custom delegates To declare an event in a type, we simply use the event keyword and specify its delegate type. For example, let’s say you wanted to create a new TimeOfDayTimer that triggers at a given time of the day (as opposed to on an interval). We could write something like this: 1: public delegate void TimeOfDayHandler(object source, ElapsedEventArgs e); 2: 3: // A timer that will fire at time of day each day. 4: public class TimeOfDayTimer : IDisposable 5: { 6: // Event that is triggered at time of day. 7: public event TimeOfDayHandler Elapsed; 8: 9: // ... 10: } The first thing to note is that the event is a delegate type, which tells us what types of methods may subscribe to it. The second thing to note is the signature of the event handler delegate, according to the MSDN: The standard signature of an event handler delegate defines a method that does not return a value, whose first parameter is of type Object and refers to the instance that raises the event, and whose second parameter is derived from type EventArgs and holds the event data. If the event does not generate event data, the second parameter is simply an instance of EventArgs. Otherwise, the second parameter is a custom type derived from EventArgs and supplies any fields or properties needed to hold the event data. So, in a nutshell, the event handler delegates should return void and take two parameters: An object reference to the object that raised the event. An EventArgs (or a subclass of EventArgs) reference to event specific information. Even if your event has no additional information to provide, you are still expected to provide an EventArgs instance. In this case, feel free to pass the EventArgs.Empty singleton instead of creating new instances of EventArgs (to avoid generating unneeded memory garbage). The EventHandler delegate Because many events have no additional information to pass, and thus do not require custom EventArgs, the signature of the delegates for subscribing to these events is typically: 1: // always takes an object and an EventArgs reference 2: public delegate void EventHandler(object sender, EventArgs e) It would be insane to recreate this delegate for every class that had a basic event with no additional event data, so there already exists a delegate for you called EventHandler that has this very definition! Feel free to use it to define any events which supply no additional event information: 1: public class Cache 2: { 3: // event that is raised whenever the cache performs a cleanup 4: public event EventHandler OnCleanup; 5: 6: // ... 7: } This will handle any event with the standard EventArgs (no additional information). But what of events that do need to supply additional information? Does that mean we’re out of luck for subclasses of EventArgs? That’s where the generic for of EventHandler comes into play… The generic EventHandler<TEventArgs> delegate Starting with the introduction of generics in .NET 2.0, we have a generic delegate called EventHandler<TEventArgs>. Its signature is as follows: 1: public delegate void EventHandler<TEventArgs>(object sender, TEventArgs e) 2: where TEventArgs : EventArgs This is similar to EventHandler except it has been made generic to support the more general case. Thus, it will work for any delegate where the first argument is an object (the sender) and the second argument is a class derived from EventArgs (the event data). For example, let’s say we wanted to create a message receiver, and we wanted it to have a few events such as OnConnected that will tell us when a connection is established (probably with no additional information) and OnMessageReceived that will tell us when a new message arrives (probably with a string for the new message text). So for OnMessageReceived, our MessageReceivedEventArgs might look like this: 1: public sealed class MessageReceivedEventArgs : EventArgs 2: { 3: public string Message { get; set; } 4: } And since OnConnected needs no event argument type defined, our class might look something like this: 1: public class MessageReceiver 2: { 3: // event that is called when the receiver connects with sender 4: public event EventHandler OnConnected; 5: 6: // event that is called when a new message is received. 7: public event EventHandler<MessageReceivedEventArgs> OnMessageReceived; 8: 9: // ... 10: } Notice, nowhere did we have to define a delegate to fit our event definition, the EventHandler and generic EventHandler<TEventArgs> delegates fit almost anything we’d need to do with events. Sidebar: Thread-safety and raising an event When the time comes to raise an event, we should always check to make sure there are subscribers, and then only raise the event if anyone is subscribed. This is important because if no one is subscribed to the event, then the instance will be null and we will get a NullReferenceException if we attempt to raise the event. 1: // This protects against NullReferenceException... or does it? 2: if (OnMessageReceived != null) 3: { 4: OnMessageReceived(this, new MessageReceivedEventArgs(aMessage)); 5: } The above code seems to handle the null reference if no one is subscribed, but there’s a problem if this is being used in multi-threaded environments. For example, assume we have thread A which is about to raise the event, and it checks and clears the null check and is about to raise the event. However, before it can do that thread B unsubscribes to the event, which sets the delegate to null. Now, when thread A attempts to raise the event, this causes the NullReferenceException that we were hoping to avoid! To counter this, the simplest best-practice method is to copy the event (just a multicast delegate) to a temporary local variable just before we raise it. Since we are inside the class where this event is being raised, we can copy it to a local variable like this, and it will protect us from multi-threading since multicast delegates are immutable and assignments are atomic: 1: // always make copy of the event multi-cast delegate before checking 2: // for null to avoid race-condition between the null-check and raising it. 3: var handler = OnMessageReceived; 4: 5: if (handler != null) 6: { 7: handler(this, new MessageReceivedEventArgs(aMessage)); 8: } The very slight trade-off is that it’s possible a class may get an event after it unsubscribes in a multi-threaded environment, but this is a small risk and classes should be prepared for this possibility anyway. For a more detailed discussion on this, check out this excellent Eric Lippert blog post on Events and Races. Summary Generic delegates give us a lot of power to make generic algorithms and classes, and the EventHandler delegate family gives us the flexibility to create events easily, without needing to redefine delegates over and over. Use them whenever you need to define events with or without specialized EventArgs. Tweet Technorati Tags: .NET, C#, CSharp, Little Wonders, Generics, Delegates, EventHandler

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 20, 2011

CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 20, 2011Popular ReleasesBlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.5 RC: BlogEngine.NET Hosting - Click Here! 3 Months FREE – BlogEngine.NET Hosting – Click Here! This is a Release Candidate version for BlogEngine.NET 2.5. The most current, stable version of BlogEngine.NET is version 2.0. Find out more about the BlogEngine.NET 2.5 RC here. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. Also, please note at this time the Mercurial source code repository on the Source Code tab is having issues, but will be fixed shortly. I...Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework - a centralized code sample library: All-In-One Code Framework 2011-06-19: Alternatively, you can install Sample Browser or Sample Browser VS extension, and download the code samples from Sample Browser. Improved and Newly Added Examples:For an up-to-date code sample index, please refer to All-In-One Code Framework Sample Catalog. NEW Samples for Windows Azure Sample Description Owner CSAzureStartupTask The sample demonstrates using the startup tasks to install the prerequisites or to modify configuration settings for your environment in Windows Azure Rafe Wu ...Facebook C# SDK: 5.0.40: This is a RTW release which adds new features to v5.0.26 RTW. Support for multiple FacebookMediaObjects in one request. Allow FacebookMediaObjects in batch requests. Removes support for Cassini WebServer (visual studio inbuilt web server). Better support for unit testing and mocking. updated SimpleJson to v0.6 Refer to CHANGES.txt for details. For more information about this release see the following blog posts: Facebook C# SDK - Multiple file uploads in Batch Requests Faceb...Candescent NUI: Candescent NUI (7774): This is the binary version of the source code in change set 7774.Media Companion: MC 3.408b weekly: Some minor fixes..... Fixed messagebox coming up during batch scrape Added <originaltitle></originaltitle> to movie nfo's - when a new movie is scraped, the original title will be set as the returned title. The end user can of course change the title in MC, however the original title will not change. The original title can be seen by hovering over the movie title in the right pane of the main movie tab. To update all of your current nfo's to add the original title the same as your current ...NLog - Advanced .NET Logging: NLog 2.0 Release Candidate: Release notes for NLog 2.0 RC can be found at http://nlog-project.org/nlog-2-rc-release-notesGendering Add-In for Microsoft Office Word 2010: Gendering Add-In: This is the first stable Version of the Gendering Add-In. Unzip the package and start "setup.exe". The .reg file shows how to config an alternate path for suggestion table.TerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v3.1 [Terraria Inventory Editor]: This version adds tool tips. Almost every picture box you mouse over will tell you what item is in that box. I have also cleaned up the GUI a little more to make things easier on my end. There are various bug fixes including ones associated with opening different characters in the same instance of the program. As always, please bring any bugs you find to my attention.Kinect Paint: KinectPaint V1.0: This is version 1.0 of Kinect Paint. To run it, follow the steps: Install the Kinect SDK for Windows (available at http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/kinectsdk/download.aspx) Connect your Kinect device to the computer and to the power. Download the Zip file. Unblock the Zip file by right clicking on it, and pressing the Unblock button in the file properties (if available). Extract the content of the Zip file. Run KinectPaint.exe.CommonLibrary.NET: CommonLibrary.NET - 0.9.7 Beta: A collection of very reusable code and components in C# 3.5 ranging from ActiveRecord, Csv, Command Line Parsing, Configuration, Holiday Calendars, Logging, Authentication, and much more. Samples in <root>\src\Lib\CommonLibrary.NET\Samples CommonLibrary.NET 0.9.7Documentation 6738 6503 New 6535 Enhancements 6583 6737DropBox Linker: DropBox Linker 1.2: Public sub-folders are now monitored for changes as well (thanks to mcm69) Automatic public sync folder detection (thanks to mcm69) Non-Latin and special characters encoded correctly in URLs Pop-ups are now slot-based (use first free slot and will never be overlapped — test it while previewing timeout) Public sync folder setting is hidden when auto-detected Timeout interval is displayed in popup previews A lot of major and minor code refactoring performed .NET Framework 4.0 Client...Terraria World Viewer: Version 1.3.1: Update June 20th Removed "Draw Markers" checkbox from main window because of redundancy/confusing. (Select all or no items from the Settings tab for the same effect.) Fixed Marker preferences not being saved. It is now possible to render more than one map without having to restart the application. World file will not be locked while the world is being rendered. Note: The World Viewer might render an inaccurate map or even crash if Terraria decides to modify the World file during the pro...MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 1.1.5 RC: Added Extended Dropdown allows a prompt item to be inserted as first element. RequiredAttribute, if present, trggers if no element is chosen Client side javascript function to set/get the values of DateTimeInput, TypedTextBox, TypedEditDisplay, and to bind/unbind a "change" handler The selected page in the pager is applied the attribute selected-page="selected" that can be used in the definition of CSS rules to style the selected page items controls now interpret a null value as an empr...Umbraco CMS: Umbraco CMS 5.0 CTP 1: Umbraco 5 Community Technology Preview Umbraco 5 will be the next version of everyone's favourite, friendly ASP.NET CMS that already powers over 100,000 websites worldwide. Try out our first CTP of version 5 today! If you're new to Umbraco and would like to get a quick low-down on our popular and easy-to-learn approach to content management, check out our intro video here. What's in the v5 CTP box? This is a preview version of version 5 and includes support for the following familiar Umbr...Ribbon Browser for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: Ribbon Browser (1.0.514.30): Initial releaseCoding4Fun Kinect Toolkit: Coding4Fun.Kinect Toolkit: Version 1.0Kinect Mouse Cursor: Kinect Mouse Cursor v1.0: The initial release of the Kinect Mouse Cursor project!patterns & practices: Project Silk: Project Silk Community Drop 11 - June 14, 2011: Changes from previous drop: Many code changes: please see the readme.mht for details. New "Client Data Management and Caching" chapter. Updated "Application Notifications" chapter. Updated "Architecture" chapter. Updated "jQuery UI Widget" chapter. Updated "Widget QuickStart" appendix and code. Guidance Chapters Ready for Review The Word documents for the chapters are included with the source code in addition to the CHM to help you provide feedback. The PDF is provided as a separat...Orchard Project: Orchard 1.2: Build: 1.2.41 Published: 6/14/2010 How to Install Orchard To install Orchard using Web PI, follow these instructions: http://www.orchardproject.net/docs/Installing-Orchard.ashx. Web PI will detect your hardware environment and install the application. Alternatively, to install the release manually, download the Orchard.Web.1.2.41.zip file. http://orchardproject.net/docs/Manually-installing-Orchard-zip-file.ashx The zip contents are pre-built and ready-to-run. Simply extract the contents o...Snippet Designer: Snippet Designer 1.4.0: Snippet Designer 1.4.0 for Visual Studio 2010 Change logSnippet Explorer ChangesReworked language filter UI to work better in the side bar. Added result count drop down which lets you choose how many results to see. Language filter and result count choices are persisted after Visual Studio is closed. Added file name to search criteria. Search is now case insensitive. Snippet Editor Changes Snippet Editor ChangesAdded menu option for the $end$ symbol which indicates where the c...New Projects.NET Dev Tools Dashboard: .NET Dev Tools Dashboard is a WPF application that implements the Prism 4 standards. Modules can be added at runtime and after install of the base Dashboard shell. The first module is a WPF Gui for NAnt based on Colin Svingen's Gui for NAnt open source app for Windows Forms.Chutzpah - A JavaScript Test Runner: Chutzpah helps you integrate JavaScript unit testing into your website. It enables you to run JavaScript unit tests from the command line and from inside of Visual Studio. It also supports running in the TeamCity continuous integration server.Cow connect: Ziel des Projektes Cow connect, ist es ein Tool zu schrieben das Verschiedene Datenbanken, unterschiedlicher Herdenmanagement Tool z.b: Helm Multikuh, Westfalia C21, Holdi,…. Synchron zu halten. oder eine neue Datenbank zu GenerrierenCqrs CWDNUG Demo: A very simple CQRS demo for a presentation at the Canary Wharf Dot Net User Group. Uses Ncqrs, ASP.NET MVC 3. Not best practices - just something to get your teeth into if you're new to CQRS and Event Sourcing.Down123: down123EssionCalendar: EssionCal EssionCalGuardian: Protects reference type parameters and return values from NULL values.Honest Flex Time Management System: A Japanese time management system to handle worker hourlies. Will include some basic reporting functions as well.iStatServer.NET: Server implementation for iPhone iStat app. Windows analogue to iStat Server on OS x or iStatd on linux/solaris. Keolis Service Wrapper: Keolis Service WrapperKinectContrib: A set of extensions and helpers that will facilitate the use of the Microsoft Kinect motion sensor with the Kinect SDK.kingdomwp7: kingdomwp7Laboratório de Engenharia de Software - Projeto: Criado para estudar e aplicar novas tecnologias web.Multi Touch Digit OCR With Matlab Neural Network Wpf Project: Multi Touch Digit OCR Project is a wpf project that works on multi touch devices but it works well on normal devices , this project uses matlab core , that creates 4 feed forward neural network and train them with Back Propagation Algorithm for detecting numbers that you draw .PhoneGap Extensions - Alpha Version: This project was created to solve some issues about PhoneGap. The first issue to solve is how to reuse HTML code through include files. SABnzbd UI: This application is a Windows 7 enabled UI for SABnzbd, so that you don't have to navigate to the website, but instead you can view a slick UI on your desktop.SP:Social: A community project for providing integration points between SharePoint and other social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Live etc.Whisk: An extremely simplistic but cross-platform network rending environment for Blender.Windows phone 7, Game framewok: Windows phone 7, Game framewokWP7 - Multi Select Wrapped ListBox: Its a WP 7.1 project which contains a list box that can wrap listBoxItems and can scroll vertically.

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New Bundling and Minification Support (ASP.NET 4.5 Series)

- by ScottGu

This is the sixth in a series of blog posts I'm doing on ASP.NET 4.5. The next release of .NET and Visual Studio include a ton of great new features and capabilities. With ASP.NET 4.5 you'll see a bunch of really nice improvements with both Web Forms and MVC - as well as in the core ASP.NET base foundation that both are built upon. Today’s post covers some of the work we are doing to add built-in support for bundling and minification into ASP.NET - which makes it easy to improve the performance of applications. This feature can be used by all ASP.NET applications, including both ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Web Forms solutions. Basics of Bundling and Minification As more and more people use mobile devices to surf the web, it is becoming increasingly important that the websites and apps we build perform well with them. We’ve all tried loading sites on our smartphones – only to eventually give up in frustration as it loads slowly over a slow cellular network. If your site/app loads slowly like that, you are likely losing potential customers because of bad performance. Even with powerful desktop machines, the load time of your site and perceived performance can make an enormous customer perception. Most websites today are made up of multiple JavaScript and CSS files to separate the concerns and keep the code base tight. While this is a good practice from a coding point of view, it often has some unfortunate consequences for the overall performance of the website. Multiple JavaScript and CSS files require multiple HTTP requests from a browser – which in turn can slow down the performance load time. Simple Example Below I’ve opened a local website in IE9 and recorded the network traffic using IE’s built-in F12 developer tools. As shown below, the website consists of 5 CSS and 4 JavaScript files which the browser has to download. Each file is currently requested separately by the browser and returned by the server, and the process can take a significant amount of time proportional to the number of files in question. Bundling ASP.NET is adding a feature that makes it easy to “bundle” or “combine” multiple CSS and JavaScript files into fewer HTTP requests. This causes the browser to request a lot fewer files and in turn reduces the time it takes to fetch them. Below is an updated version of the above sample that takes advantage of this new bundling functionality (making only one request for the JavaScript and one request for the CSS): The browser now has to send fewer requests to the server. The content of the individual files have been bundled/combined into the same response, but the content of the files remains the same - so the overall file size is exactly the same as before the bundling. But notice how even on a local dev machine (where the network latency between the browser and server is minimal), the act of bundling the CSS and JavaScript files together still manages to reduce the overall page load time by almost 20%. Over a slow network the performance improvement would be even better. Minification The next release of ASP.NET is also adding a new feature that makes it easy to reduce or “minify” the download size of the content as well. This is a process that removes whitespace, comments and other unneeded characters from both CSS and JavaScript. The result is smaller files, which will download and load in a browser faster. The graph below shows the performance gain we are seeing when both bundling and minification are used together: Even on my local dev box (where the network latency is minimal), we now have a 40% performance improvement from where we originally started. On slow networks (and especially with international customers), the gains would be even more significant. Using Bundling and Minification inside ASP.NET The upcoming release of ASP.NET makes it really easy to take advantage of bundling and minification within projects and see performance gains like in the scenario above. The way it does this allows you to avoid having to run custom tools as part of your build process – instead ASP.NET has added runtime support to perform the bundling/minification for you dynamically (caching the results to make sure perf is great). This enables a really clean development experience and makes it super easy to start to take advantage of these new features. Let’s assume that we have a simple project that has 4 JavaScript files and 6 CSS files: Bundling and Minifying the .css files Let’s say you wanted to reference all of the stylesheets in the “Styles” folder above on a page. Today you’d have to add multiple CSS references to get all of them – which would translate into 6 separate HTTP requests: The new bundling/minification feature now allows you to instead bundle and minify all of the .css files in the Styles folder – simply by sending a URL request to the folder (in this case “styles”) with an appended “/css” path after it. For example: This will cause ASP.NET to scan the directory, bundle and minify the .css files within it, and send back a single HTTP response with all of the CSS content to the browser. You don’t need to run any tools or pre-processor to get this behavior. This enables you to cleanly separate your CSS into separate logical .css files and maintain a very clean development experience – while not taking a performance hit at runtime for doing so. The Visual Studio designer will also honor the new bundling/minification logic as well – so you’ll still get a WYSWIYG designer experience inside VS as well. Bundling and Minifying the JavaScript files Like the CSS approach above, if we wanted to bundle and minify all of our JavaScript into a single response we could send a URL request to the folder (in this case “scripts”) with an appended “/js” path after it: This will cause ASP.NET to scan the directory, bundle and minify the .js files within it, and send back a single HTTP response with all of the JavaScript content to the browser. Again – no custom tools or builds steps were required in order to get this behavior. And it works with all browsers. Ordering of Files within a Bundle By default, when files are bundled by ASP.NET they are sorted alphabetically first, just like they are shown in Solution Explorer. Then they are automatically shifted around so that known libraries and their custom extensions such as jQuery, MooTools and Dojo are loaded before anything else. So the default order for the merged bundling of the Scripts folder as shown above will be: Jquery-1.6.2.js Jquery-ui.js Jquery.tools.js a.js By default, CSS files are also sorted alphabetically and then shifted around so that reset.css and normalize.css (if they are there) will go before any other file. So the default sorting of the bundling of the Styles folder as shown above will be: reset.css content.css forms.css globals.css menu.css styles.css The sorting is fully customizable, though, and can easily be changed to accommodate most use cases and any common naming pattern you prefer. The goal with the out of the box experience, though, is to have smart defaults that you can just use and be successful with. Any number of directories/sub-directories supported In the example above we just had a single “Scripts” and “Styles” folder for our application. This works for some application types (e.g. single page applications). Often, though, you’ll want to have multiple CSS/JS bundles within your application – for example: a “common” bundle that has core JS and CSS files that all pages use, and then page specific or section specific files that are not used globally. You can use the bundling/minification support across any number of directories or sub-directories in your project – this makes it easy to structure your code so as to maximize the bunding/minification benefits. Each directory by default can be accessed as a separate URL addressable bundle. Bundling/Minification Extensibility ASP.NET’s bundling and minification support is built with extensibility in mind and every part of the process can be extended or replaced. Custom Rules In addition to enabling the out of the box - directory-based - bundling approach, ASP.NET also supports the ability to register custom bundles using a new programmatic API we are exposing. The below code demonstrates how you can register a “customscript” bundle using code within an application’s Global.asax class. The API allows you to add/remove/filter files that go into the bundle on a very granular level: The above custom bundle can then be referenced anywhere within the application using the below <script> reference: Custom Processing You can also override the default CSS and JavaScript bundles to support your own custom processing of the bundled files (for example: custom minification rules, support for Saas, LESS or Coffeescript syntax, etc). In the example below we are indicating that we want to replace the built-in minification transforms with a custom MyJsTransform and MyCssTransform class. They both subclass the CSS and JavaScript minifier respectively and can add extra functionality: The end result of this extensibility is that you can plug-into the bundling/minification logic at a deep level and do some pretty cool things with it. 2 Minute Video of Bundling and Minification in Action Mads Kristensen has a great 90 second video that shows off using the new Bundling and Minification feature. You can watch the 90 second video here. Summary The new bundling and minification support within the next release of ASP.NET will make it easier to build fast web applications. It is really easy to use, and doesn’t require major changes to your existing dev workflow. It is also supports a rich extensibility API that enables you to customize it however you want. You can easily take advantage of this new support within ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET Web Pages based applications. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I use Twitter to-do quick posts and share links. My Twitter handle is: @scottgu

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Windows Azure Evolution – Preview Developer Portal

- by Shaun

With the MEET Windows Azure event on 7th June, there are many new features and updates in windows azure platform. In the coming several posts I will try to cover some of them. And in the first post here I would like to just have a quick walkthrough of the new preview developer portal. History of the Developer Portal If you have been working with windows azure since 2009 or 2010, you should remember the first version of the developer portal. It was built in HTML with very limited features. I have the impression when I was using is old one. The layout is not that attractive and you have very limited features. On November, 2010 alone with the SDK 1.3 release, the developer portal was getting a big jump. In order to give more usability and features this it turned to be built on Silverlight. Hence it runs like a desktop application with many windows, lists, commands and context menus. From 2010 till now many features were involved into this portal, such as the remote desktop, co-admin, virtual connect, VM role, etc.. And the portal itself became more and more complicated. But it brought some problems by using the Silverlight. The first one is the browser capability. As you know in most mobile and tablet device the browser doesn’t allow the rich content plugin, such as Flash and Silverlight. This means people cannot open and configure their azure services from their iPad, iPhone and Windows Phone, etc., even though what they need may just be restart a hosted service, or view the status of their databases. Another problem is the performance. Silverlight provides rich experience to the users, but also needs more bandwidth. So in this upgrade the preview developer portal will be back to use HTML, with JavaScript, as a mobile friendly, cross browser, interactively web site. Preview Portal vs. Silverlight Portal Before I started to talk about the new preview portal I’d better highlight that, this preview portal is a PREVIEW version, which means even though you can do almost all features that already in the old one, as long as some cool new features I will mention in the coming several posts, there are something still under developed and migrated. So sometimes you need to switch back to the old one. For example, in preview portal there is no co-admin manage function, no remote desktop function and the SQL database manage function will take you back to the old SQL Azure Manage Portal. But as Microsoft said these missing features will be moved in the preview portal in the couple of next few months. Since the public URL of the developer portal, https://windows.azure.com/, had been changed to point to this preview one, you need to click to preview button on top of the page and click the “Take me to the previous portal” link. Overview There are four parts in the preview portal. On the top is the header which shows the account you are currently logging in. If you click on the header it will show the top menu of windows azure, where you can navigate to the windows azure home page, the price information page, community and account, etc.. The navigation bar is on the left hand side, with the categories listed below. ALL ITEMS All items in your windows azure account, includes the web sites, services, databases, etc.. WEB SITES The web sites in your windows azure account. It will only show the web sites you have. The linked resources will be shown if you drill down into a web site. VIRTUAL MACHINES The virtual machines that you had been deployed to azure. CLOUD SERVICES All windows azure hosted services in your account. SQL DATABASES All SQL databases (SQL Azure) in your account. STORAGE All windows azure storage services in your account. NETWORKS The virtual network (Windows Azure Connect) you had been created. The available items will be listed in the main part of the page based on which category your currently selected. If there’s no item it will show the link to you to quick create. At the bottom of the page there will be the command and information bar. Based on what is selected and what is performed by the user, it will show the related information and commands. For example, in the image below when I was creating a new web site, the information bar told me that my web site is being provisioned; and there are two commands in the command bar. And once it ready the command bar will show some commands that I can do to my new web site. The “Web Sites” is a new feature introduced alone with this upgrade. It gives us an easier and quicker way to establish a website from the scratch or from some existing library. I will introduce it more details in the coming next post. Also in the command bar you can create a service by clicking the NEW button. It will slide the creation panel up to you. Where’s My Hosted Services The Windows Azure Hosted Services had been renamed to the Cloud Services. Create a new service would be very easy. Just click the NEW button at the bottom of the page, and select the CLOUD SERVICE and QIUICK CREATE. This will create a blank hosted service without deployment and certificate. It just needs you to specify the service URL and the affinity/region. Then the service will be shown in the list. If you clicked the item all information will be shown in the main part. Since there’s no package deployed to this service so currently we cannot see any information about it. But we can upload the package by using the command at the bottom. And as you can see, we could manage the configuration, instances, certificates and we can scale up and down (change the VM size), in and out (increase and decrease the instance count) to our service. Assuming I had created an ASP.NET MVC 3 web role project in Visual Studio and completed the package. Then I can click the UPLOAD button in this page to deploy my package. In the popping up window I just specify my deployment name, package file and configure file. Also I can check the box below so that it will NOT warn me if only one instance of this deployment. Once we clicked the OK button our package will be uploaded and provisioned by the platform. After a while we can see the service was ready from the information bar. We can have the basic information about this service and deployment if we to the dashboard page. For example the usage overview diagram, status, URL, public IP address, etc.. In the configure page we can view and change the CSCFG content such as the monitor setting, connection strings, OS family. In scale page we can increase and decrease the count of the instances. And in the instances page we can view all instances status. And, if your services is using some SQL databases and storages they will be shown as the linked resources under the linked resources page. And you can manage the certificates of this service as well under the certificates page. How About My Storage Services The storage service can be managed by clicking into the STORAGES link in the navigation bar. And we can create a new storage service from the NEW button. After specify the storage name and region it will be previsioned by the platform. If you want to copy or manage the storage key you can just click the Manage Keys button at the bottom, which is very easy. What I want to highlight here is that, you can monitor your storage service by enabling the monitor configuration. Click the storage item in the list and navigate to the configure page. As you can see in the page you can enable the monitoring for blob, table and queue. And you can also enable the logging when any requests come to the storage. But as the tooltip shown in the page, enabling the monitoring and logging will increase the usage of the storage, which means increase the bill of them. So make sure you enable them properly. And My SQL Databases (SQL Azure) The last thing I want to quick introduce is the SQL databases, which was formally named SQL Azure. You can create a new SQL Database Server and a new database by clicking the ADD button under the SQL Database navigation item. In the popping up windows just specify the database name, the edition, size, collation and the server. You can select an existing SQL Database Server if you have, or cerate a new one. If you selected to create a new server, there will be another step you need to do, which is specify the server login, password and the region. Once it ready you can mange your databases as well as the servers in the portal. In a particular server you can update the firewall settings in its Configure page. So, What Else There are some other area on the preview portal I didn’t cover, such as the virtual machines, virtual network and web sites. Regarding the virtual machines and web sites I will talk about them in the future separated post. Regarding the virtual network, it the Windows Azure Connect we are familiar with. But as I mention in the beginning of this post, the preview portal is still under developed. Some features are not available here. For example, you cannot manage the co-admin of your subscriptions, you cannot open the remote desktop on your hosted services, and you cannot navigate to the Windows Azure Service Bus, Access Control and Caching, which formally named Windows Azure AppFabric directly. In these cases you need to navigate back to the old portal. So in the coming several months we might need to use both these two sites. Summary In this post I quick introduced the new windows azure developer portal. Since it had been rearranged and renamed I demonstrated some features that existing in the old portal, such as how to create and deploy a hosted service, how to provision a storage service and SQL database. All features in the old portal had been, is being and will be migrated into this new portal, but some of them were in a different category and page we need to figure out. Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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ODEE Green Field (Windows) Part 5 - Deployment and Validation

- by AndyL-Oracle

And here we are, almost finished with our installation of Oracle Documaker Enterprise Edition ("ODEE") in a Windows green field environment. Let's recap what we've done so far: In part 1, I went over the basic process that I intended to show with installing an ODEE on a green field server. I walked you through the basic installation of Oracle 11g database In part 2, I covered the installation of WebLogic application server. In part 3, I showed you how to install SOA Suite for WebLogic. In part 4, we did the first part of the installation of ODEE itself. What remains after all of that, is the deployment of the ODEE components onto the database and application server - so let's get to it! DATABASE First, we'll deploy the schemas to the database. The schemas are created during the ODEE installation according to the responses provided during the install process. To deploy the schemas, you'll need to login to the database server in your green field environment. Open a command line and CD into ODEE_HOME\documaker\database\oracle11g.Run SQLPLUS as SYSDBA and execute dmkr_admin.sql: sqlplus / as sysdba @dmkr_admin.sql Execute dmkr_asline.sql, dmkr_admin_correspondence_example.sql. If you require additional languages, run the appropriate SQL scripts (e.g. dmkr_asline_es.sql for Spanish). APPLICATION SERVER Next, we'll deploy the WebLogic domain and it's components - Documaker web services, Documaker Interactive, Documaker dashboard, and more. To deploy the components, you'll need to login to the application server in your green field environment. 1. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to ODEE_HOME\documaker\j2ee\weblogic\oracle11g\scripts.2. Using a text editor such as Notepad++, modify weblogic_installation_properties and set location of MIDDLEWARE_HOME and ODEE HOME. If you have used the defaults you’ll probably need to change the E: to C: and that’s it. Save the changes.3. Continuing in the same directory, use your text editor to modify set_middleware_env.cmd and set the drive and path to MIDDLEWARE_HOME. If you have used the defaults you’ll probably need to just change E: to C: and that’s it. Save the changes.4. In the same directory, execute wls_create_domain.cmd by double-clicking it. This should run to completion. If it does not, review any errors and correct them, and rerun the script.5. In the same directory, execute wls_add_correspondence.cmd by double-clicking it - again this should run to completion. 6. Next, we'll start the AdminServer - this is the main WebLogic domain server. To start it, use Windows Explorer and navigate to MIDDLEWARE_HOME\user_projects\domains\idocumaker_domain. Double-click startWebLogic.cmd and the server startup will begin. Once you see output that indicates that the server status changed to RUNNING you may proceed. a. Note: if you saw database connection errors, you probably didn’t make sure your database name and connection type match. You can change this manually in the WebLogic Console. Open a browser and navigate to http://localhost:7001/console (replace localhost with the name of your application server host if you aren't opening the browser on the server), and login with the the weblogic credential you provided in the ODEE installation process. b. Once you're logged in, open Services?Data Sources. Select dmkr_admin and click Connection Pool. c. The end of the URL should match the connection type you chose. If you chose ServiceName, the URL should be: jdbc:oracle:thin:@//<hostname>:1521/<serviceName> and if you chose SID, the URL should be: jdbc:oracle:thin:@//<hostname>:1521/<SIDname> d. An example serviceName is a fully qualified DNS-style name, e.g. "idmaker.us.oracle.com". (It does not need to actually resolve in DNS). An example SID is just a name, e.g. IDMAKER. e. Save the change and repeat for the data source dmkr_asline. f. You will also need to make the same changes in the ODEE_HOME/documaker/docfactory/config/context/.bindings file - open the file in a text editor, locate the URL lines and make the appropriate change, then save the file. 7. Back in the ODEE_HOME\documaker\j2ee\weblogic\oracle11g\scripts directory, execute create_users_groups.cmd. 8. In the same directory, execute create_users_groups_correspondence_example.cmd. 9. Open a browser and navigate to http://localhost:7001/jpsquery. Replace localhost with the name of your application server host if you aren't running the browser on the application server. If you changed the default port for the AdminServer from 7001, use the port you changed it to. You should see output like this: 10. Start the WebLogic managed servers by opening a command prompt and navigating to MIDDLEWARE_HOME/user_projects/domains/idocumaker_domain/bin/. When you start the servers listed below, you will be prompted to enter the WebLogic credentials to start the server. You can prevent this by providing the credential in the startManagedwebLogic.cmd file for the WLS_USER and WLS_PASS values. Note that the credential will be stored in cleartext. To start the server, type in the command shown. a. Start the JMS Server: ./startManagedWebLogic.cmd jms_server b. Start Dashboard/Documaker Administrator: ./startManagedWebLogic.cmd dmkr_server c. Start Documaker Interactive for Correspondence: ./startManagedWebLogic.cmd idm_server SOA Composites If you're planning on testing out the approval process components of BPEL that can be used with Documaker Interactive, then use the following steps to deploy the SOA composites. If you're not going to use BPEL, you can skip to the next section.1. Stop the servers listed in the previous section (Step 10) in the reverse order that they were started.2. Run the Domain configuration command: navigate to and execute MIDDLEWARE_HOME/wlserver_10.3/common/bin/config.cmd.3. Select Extend and click next. 4. Select the iDocumaker Domain and click Next. 5. Select the Oracle SOA Suite – 11.1.1.0 (this may automatically select other components which is OK). Click Next. 6. View the Configure JDBC resources screen. You should not make any changes. Click Next. 7. Check both connections and click Test Connections. After successful test, click Next. If the tests fail, something is broken. Go back to configure JDBC resources and check your service name/SID. 8. Check all schemas. Set a password (will be the same for all schemas). Enter the database information (service name, host name, port). Click Next. 9. Connections should test successfully. If not, go back and fix any errors. Click Next. 10. Click Next to pass through Optional Configuration. 11. Click Extend. 12. Click Done. 13. Open a terminal window and navigate to/execute: ODEE_HOME/documaker/j2ee/weblogic/oracle11g/bpel/antbuild.cmd14. Start the WebLogic Servers – AdminServer, jms_server, dmkr_server, idm_server. If you forgot how to do this, see the previous section Step 10. Note: if you previously changed the startManagedWebLogic.cmd script for WLS_USER and WLS_PASS you will need to make those changes again. 15. Start the WebLogic server soa_server1: MIDDLEWARE_HOME/user_projects/domains/idocumaker_domain/bin/startManagedWebLogic.cmd soa_server116. Open a browser to http://localhost:7001/console and login. 17. Navigate to Services?Data Sources and select DMKR_ASLINE. 18. Click the Targets tab. Check soa_server1, then click Save. Repeat for the DMKR_ADMIN data source. 19. Open a command prompt and navigate to ODEE_HOME/j2ee/weblogic/oracle11g/scripts, then execute deploy_soa.cmd. That's it! (As if that wasn't enough?) DOCUMAKER Deploy the sample MRL resources by navigating to/executing ODEE_HOME/documaker/mstrres/dmres/deploysamplemrl.bat. You should see approximately 500 resources deployed into the database. Start the Factory Services. Start?Run?services.msc. Locate the service named "ODDF xxxx" and right-click, select Start. Note that each Assembly Line has a separate Factory setup, including its own Factory service and Docupresentment service. The services are named for the assembly line and the machine on which they are installed (because you could have multiple machines servicing a single assembly line, so this allows for easy scripting to control all the services if you choose to do so. Repeat for the Docupresentment service. Note that each Assembly Line has a separate Docupresentment. Using Windows Explorer, navigate to ODEE_HOME/documaker/mstrres/dmres/input and select one of the XML files, and copy it into ODEE_HOME/documaker/hotdirectory. Note: if you chose a different hot directory during installation, copy the file there instead. Momentarily you should see the XML file disappear! Open browser and navigate to http://localhost:10001/DocumakerDashboard (previous versions 12.0-12.2 use http://localhost:10001/dashboard) and verify that job processed successfully. Note that some transactions may fail if you do not have a properly configured email server, and this is ok. You can set up a simple SMTP server (just search the internet for "SMTP developer" and you'll get several to choose from. So... that's it? Where are we at this point? You now have a completely functional ODEE installation, from soup to nuts as they say. You can further expand your installation by doing some of the following activities: clustering WebLogic services configuring WebLogic for redundancy configuring Oracle 11g for RAC adding additional Factory servers for redundancy/processing capacity setting up a real MRL (instead of the sample resources) testing Documaker Web Services for job submission and more! I certainly hope you've enjoyed this and find it useful. If you find yourself running into trouble, visit the Oracle Community for Documaker - there is plenty of activity there and you can ask questions. For more concentrated assistance, you can engage an Oracle consultant who is a subject matter expert to assist you. Feel free to email me [andy (dot) little (at) oracle (dot) com] and I can connect you with the appropriate resource to get started. Best of luck! -Andy

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Software Engineering Practices – Different Projects should have different maturity levels

- by Dylan Smith

I’ve had a lot of discussions at the office lately about the drastically different sets of software engineering practices used on our various projects, if what we are doing is appropriate, and what factors should you be considering when determining what practices are most appropriate in a given context. I wanted to write up my thoughts in a little more detail on this subject, so here we go: If you compare any two software projects (specifically comparing their codebases) you’ll often see very different levels of maturity in the software engineering practices employed. By software engineering practices, I’m specifically referring to the quality of the code and the amount of technical debt present in the project. Things such as Test Driven Development, Domain Driven Design, Behavior Driven Development, proper adherence to the SOLID principles, etc. are all practices that you would expect at the mature end of the spectrum. At the other end of the spectrum would be the quick-and-dirty solutions that are done using something like an Access Database, Excel Spreadsheet, or maybe some quick “drag-and-drop coding”. For this blog post I’m going to refer to this as the Software Engineering Maturity Spectrum (SEMS). I believe there is a time and a place for projects at every part of that SEMS. The risks and costs associated with under-engineering solutions have been written about a million times over so I won’t bother going into them again here, but there are also (unnecessary) costs with over-engineering a solution. Sometimes putting multiple layers, and IoC containers, and abstracting out the persistence, etc is complete overkill if a one-time use Access database could solve the problem perfectly well. A lot of software developers I talk to seem to automatically jump to the very right-hand side of this SEMS in everything they do. A common rationalization I hear is that it may seem like a small trivial application today, but these things always grow and stick around for many years, then you’re stuck maintaining a big ball of mud. I think this is a cop-out. Sure you can’t always anticipate how an application will be used or grow over its lifetime (can you ever??), but that doesn’t mean you can’t manage it and evolve the underlying software architecture as necessary (even if that means having to toss the code out and re-write it at some point…maybe even multiple times). My thoughts are that we should be making a conscious decision around the start of each project approximately where on the SEMS we want the project to exist. I believe this decision should be based on 3 factors: 1. Importance - How important to the business is this application? What is the impact if the application were to suddenly stop working? 2. Complexity - How complex is the application functionality? 3. Life-Expectancy - How long is this application expected to be in use? Is this a one-time use application, does it fill a short-term need, or is it more strategic and is expected to be in-use for many years to come? Of course this isn’t an exact science. You can’t say that Project X should be at the 73% mark on the SEMS and expect that to be helpful. My point is not that you need to precisely figure out what point on the SEMS the project should be at then translate that into some prescriptive set of practices and techniques you should be using. Rather my point is that we need to be aware that there is a spectrum, and that not everything is going to be (or should be) at the edges of that spectrum, indeed a large number of projects should probably fall somewhere within the middle; and different projects should adopt a different level of software engineering practices and maturity levels based on the needs of that project. To give an example of this way of thinking from my day job: Every couple of years my company plans and hosts a large event where ~400 of our customers all fly in to one location for a multi-day event with various activities. We have some staff whose job it is to organize the logistics of this event, which includes tracking which flights everybody is booked on, arranging for transportation to/from airports, arranging for hotel rooms, name tags, etc The last time we arranged this event all these various pieces of data were tracked in separate spreadsheets and reconciliation and cross-referencing of all the data was literally done by hand using printed copies of the spreadsheets and several people sitting around a table going down each list row by row. Obviously there is some room for improvement in how we are using software to manage the event’s logistics. The next time this event occurs we plan to provide the event planning staff with a more intelligent tool (either an Excel spreadsheet or probably an Access database) that can track all the information in one location and make sure that the various pieces of data are properly linked together (so for example if a person cancels you only need to delete them from one place, and not a dozen separate lists). This solution would fall at or near the very left end of the SEMS meaning that we will just quickly create something with very little attention paid to using mature software engineering practices. If we examine this project against the 3 criteria I listed above for determining it’s place within the SEMS we can see why: Importance – If this application were to stop working the business doesn’t grind to a halt, revenue doesn’t stop, and in fact our customers wouldn’t even notice since it isn’t a customer facing application. The impact would simply be more work for our event planning staff as they revert back to the previous way of doing things (assuming we don’t have any data loss). Complexity – The use cases for this project are pretty straightforward. It simply needs to manage several lists of data, and link them together appropriately. Precisely the task that access (and/or Excel) can do with minimal custom development required. Life-Expectancy – For this specific project we’re only planning to create something to be used for the one event (we only hold these events every 2 years). If it works well this may change (see below). Let’s assume we hack something out quickly and it works great when we plan the next event. We may decide that we want to make some tweaks to the tool and adopt it for planning all future events of this nature. In that case we should examine where the current application is on the SEMS, and make a conscious decision whether something needs to be done to move it further to the right based on the new objectives and goals for this application. This may mean scrapping the access database and re-writing it as an actual web or windows application. In this case, the life-expectancy changed, but let’s assume the importance and complexity didn’t change all that much. We can still probably get away with not adopting a lot of the so-called “best practices”. For example, we can probably still use some of the RAD tooling available and might have an Autonomous View style design that connects directly to the database and binds to typed datasets (we might even choose to simply leave it as an access database and continue using it; this is a decision that needs to be made on a case-by-case basis). At Anvil Digital we have aspirations to become a primarily product-based company. So let’s say we use this tool to plan a handful of events internally, and everybody loves it. Maybe a couple years down the road we decide we want to package the tool up and sell it as a product to some of our customers. In this case the project objectives/goals change quite drastically. Now the tool becomes a source of revenue, and the impact of it suddenly stopping working is significantly less acceptable. Also as we hold focus groups, and gather feedback from customers and potential customers there’s a pretty good chance the feature-set and complexity will have to grow considerably from when we were using it only internally for planning a small handful of events for one company. In this fictional scenario I would expect the target on the SEMS to jump to the far right. Depending on how we implemented the previous release we may be able to refactor and evolve the existing codebase to introduce a more layered architecture, a robust set of automated tests, introduce a proper ORM and IoC container, etc. More likely in this example the jump along the SEMS would be so large we’d probably end up scrapping the current code and re-writing. Although, if it was a slow phased roll-out to only a handful of customers, where we collected feedback, made some tweaks, and then rolled out to a couple more customers, we may be able to slowly refactor and evolve the code over time rather than tossing it out and starting from scratch. The key point I’m trying to get across is not that you should be throwing out your code and starting from scratch all the time. But rather that you should be aware of when and how the context and objectives around a project changes and periodically re-assess where the project currently falls on the SEMS and whether that needs to be adjusted based on changing needs. Note: There is also the idea of “spectrum decay”. Since our industry is rapidly evolving, what we currently accept as mature software engineering practices (the right end of the SEMS) probably won’t be the same 3 years from now. If you have a project that you were to assess at somewhere around the 80% mark on the SEMS today, but don’t touch the code for 3 years and come back and re-assess its position, it will almost certainly have changed since the right end of the SEMS will have moved farther out (maybe the project is now only around 60% due to decay). Developer Skills Another important aspect to this whole discussion is around the skill sets of your architects and lead developers. When talking about the progression of a developers skills from junior->intermediate->senior->… they generally start by only being able to write code that belongs on the left side of the SEMS and as they gain more knowledge and skill they become capable of working at a higher and higher level along the SEMS. We all realize that the learning never stops, but eventually you’ll get to the point where you can comfortably develop at the right-end of the SEMS (the exact practices and techniques that translates to is constantly changing, but that’s not the point here). A critical skill that I’d love to see more evidence of in our industry is the most senior guys not only being able to work at the right-end of the SEMS, but more importantly be able to consciously work at any point along the SEMS as project needs dictate. An even more valuable skill would be if you could make the conscious decision to move a projects code further right on the SEMS (based on changing needs) and do so in an incremental manner without having to start from scratch. An exercise that I’m planning to go through with all of our projects here at Anvil in the near future is to map out where I believe each project currently falls within this SEMS, where I believe the project *should* be on the SEMS based on the business needs, and for those that don’t match up (i.e. most of them) come up with a plan to improve the situation.

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Craftsmanship is ALL that Matters

- by Wayne Molina

Today, I'm going to talk about a touchy subject: the notion of working in a company that doesn't use the prescribed "best practices" in its software development endeavours. Over the years I have, using a variety of pseudonyms, asked this question on popular programming forums. Although I always add in some minor variation of the story to avoid suspicion that it's the same person posting, the crux of the tale remains the same: A Programmer’s Tale A junior software developer has just started a new job at an average company, creating average line-of-business applications for internal use (the most typical scenario programmers find themselves in). This hypothetical newbie has spent a lot of time reading up on the "theory" of software development, devouring books, blogs and screencasts from well-known and respected software developers in the community in order to broaden his knowledge and "do what the pros do". He begins his new job, eager to apply what he's learned on a real-world project only to discover that his new teammates doesn't use any of those concepts and techniques. They hack their way through development, or in a best-case scenario use some homebrew, thrown-together semblance of a framework for their applications that follows not one of the best practices suggested by the “elite” in the software community - things like TDD (TDD as a "best practice" is the only subjective part of this post, but it's included here due to a very large following of respected developers who consider it one), the SOLID principles, well-known and venerable tools, even version control in a worst case and truly nightmarish scenario. Our protagonist is frustrated that he isn't doing things the "proper" way - a way he's spent personal time digesting and learning about and, more importantly, a way that some of the top developers in the industry advocate - and turns to a forum to ask the advice of his peers. Invariably the answer I, in the guise of the concerned newbie, will receive is that A) I don't know anything and should just shut my mouth and sling code the bad way like everybody else on the team, and B) These "best practices" are fade or a joke, and the only thing that matters is shipping software to your customers. I am here today to say that anyone who says this, or anything like it, is not only full of crap but indicative of exactly the type of “developer” that has helped to give our industry a bad name. Here is why: One Who Knows Nothing, Understands Nothing On one hand, you have the cognoscenti of the .NET development world. Guys like James Avery, Jeremy Miller, Ayende Rahien and Rob Conery; all well-respected and noted programmers that are pretty much our version of celebrities. These guys write blogs, books, and post videos outlining the "correct" way of writing software to make sure it not only works but is maintainable and extensible and a joy to work with. They tout the virtues of the SOLID principles, or of using TDD/BDD, or using a mature ORM like NHibernate, Subsonic or even Entity Framework. On the other hand, you have Joe Everyman, Lead Software Developer at Initrode Corporation - in our hypothetical story Joe is the junior developer's new boss. Joe's been with Initrode for 10 years, starting as the company’s very first programmer and over the years building up a little fiefdom of his own until at the present he’s in charge of all Initrode’s software development. Joe writes code the same way he always has, without bothering to learn much, if anything. He looked at NHibernate once and found it was "too hard", so he uses a primitive implementation of the TableDataGateway pattern as a wrapper around SqlClient.SqlConnection and SqlClient.SqlCommand instead of an actual ORM (or, in a better case scenario, has created his own ORM); the thought of using LINQ or Entity Framework or really anything other than his own hastily homebrew solution has never occurred to him. He doesn't understand TDD and considers “testing” to be using the .NET debugger to step through code, or simply loading up an app and entering some values to see if it works. He doesn't really understand SOLID, and he doesn't care to. He's worked as a programmer for years, and that's all that counts. Right? WRONG. Who would you rather trust? Someone with years of experience and who writes books, creates well-known software and is akin to a celebrity, or someone with no credibility outside their own minute environment who throws around their clout and company seniority as the "proof" of their ability? Joe Everyman may have years of experience at Initrode as a programmer, and says to do things "his way" but someone like Jeremy Miller or Ayende Rahien have years of experience at companies just like Initrode, THEY know ten times more than Joe Everyman knows or could ever hope to know, and THEY say to do things "this way". Here's another way of thinking about it: If you wanted to get into politics and needed advice on the best way to do it, would you rather listen to the mayor of Hicktown, USA or Barack Obama? One is a small-time nobody while the other is very well-known and, as such, would probably have much more accurate and beneficial advice. NOTE: The selection of Barack Obama as an example in no way, shape, or form suggests a political affiliation or political bent to this post or blog, and no political innuendo should be mistakenly read from it; the intent was merely to compare a small-time persona with a well-known persona in a non-software field. Feel free to replace the name "Barack Obama" with any well-known Congressman, Senator or US President of your choice. DIY Considered Harmful I will say right now that the homebrew development environment is the WORST one for an aspiring programmer, because it relies on nothing outside it's own little box - no useful skill outside of the small pond. If you are forced to use some half-baked, homebrew ORM created by your Director of Software, you are not learning anything valuable you can take with you in the future; now, if you plan to stay at Initrode for 10 years like Joe Everyman, this is fine and dandy. However if, like most of us, you want to advance your career outside a very narrow space you will do more harm than good by sticking it out in an environment where you, to be frank, know better than everybody else because you are aware of alternative and, in almost most cases, better tools for the job. A junior developer who understands why the SOLID principles are good to follow, or why TDD is beneficial, or who knows that it's better to use NHibernate/Subsonic/EF/LINQ/well-known ORM versus some in-house one knows better than a senior developer with 20 years experience who doesn't understand any of that, plain and simple. Anyone who disagrees is either a liar, or someone who, just like Joe Everyman, Lead Developer, relies on seniority and tenure rather than adapting their knowledge as things evolve. In many cases, the Joe Everymans of the world act this way out of fear - they cannot possibly fathom that a “junior” could know more than them; after all, they’ve spent 10 or more years in the same company, doing the same job, cranking out the same shoddy software. And here comes a newbie who hasn’t spent 10+ years doing the same things, with a fresh and often radical take on the craft, and Joe Everyman is afraid he might have to put some real effort into his career again instead of just pointing to his 10 years of service at Initrode as “proof” that he’s good, or that he might have to learn something new to improve; in most cases the problem is Joe Everyman, and by extension Initrode itself, has a mentality of just being “good enough”, and mediocrity is the rule of the day. A Thorn Bush is No Place for a Phoenix My advice is that if you work on a team where they don't use the best practices that some of the most famous developers in our field say is the "right" way to do things (and have legions of people who agree), and YOU are aware of these practices and can see why they work, then LEAVE the company. Find a company where they DO care about quality, and craftsmanship, otherwise you will never be happy. There is no point in "dumbing" yourself down to the level of your co-workers and slinging code without care to craftsmanship. In 95% of these situations there will be no point in bringing it to the attention of Joe Everyman because he won't listen; he might even get upset that someone is trying to "upstage" him and fire the newbie, and replace someone with loads of untapped potential with a drone that will just nod affirmatively and grind out the tasks assigned without question. Find a company that has people smart enough to listen to the "best and brightest", and be happy. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT waste away in a job working for ignorant people. At the end of the day software development IS a craft, and a level of craftsmanship is REQUIRED for any serious professional. When you have knowledgeable people with the credibility to back it up saying one thing, and small-time people who are, to put it bluntly, nobodies in the field saying and doing something totally different because they can't comprehend it, leave the nobodies to their own devices to fade into obscurity. Work for a company that uses REAL software engineering techniques and really cares about craftsmanship. The biggest issue affecting our career, and the reason software development has never been the respected, white-collar career it was meant to be, is because hacks and charlatans can pass themselves off as professional programmers without following a lick of good advice from programmers much better at the craft than they are. These modern day snake-oil salesmen entrench themselves in companies by hoodwinking non-technical businesspeople and customers with their shoddy wares, end up in senior/lead/executive positions, and push their lack of knowledge on everybody unfortunate enough to work with/for/under them, crushing any dissent or voices of reason and change under their tyrannical heel and leaving behind a trail of dismayed and, often, unemployed junior developers who were made examples of to keep up the facade and avoid the shadow of doubt being cast upon them. To sum this up another way: If you surround yourself with learned people, you will learn. Surround yourself with ignorant people who can't, as the saying goes, see the forest through the trees, and you'll learn nothing of any real value. There is more to software development than just writing code, and the end goal should not be just "shipping software", it should be shipping software that is extensible, maintainable, and above all else software whose creation has broadened your knowledge in some capacity, even if a minor one. An eager newbie who knows theory and thirsts for knowledge can easily be moulded and taught the advanced topics, but the same can't be said of someone who only cares about the finish line. This industry needs more people espousing the benefits of software craftsmanship and proper software engineering techniques, and less Joe Everymans who are unwilling to adapt or foster new ways of thinking. Conclusion - I Cast “Protection from Fire” I am fairly certain this post will spark some controversy and might even invite the flames. Please keep in mind these are opinions and nothing more. A little healthy rant and subsequent flamewar can be good for the soul once in a while. To paraphrase The Godfather: It helps to get rid of the bad blood.

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