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• plupload variable upload path?

  - by SoulieBaby

  Hi all, I'm using plupload to upload files to my server (http://www.plupload.com/index.php), however I wanted to know if there was any way of making the upload path variable. Basically I need to select the upload path folder first, then choose the files using plupload and then upload to the initially selected folder. I've tried a few different ways but I can't seem to pass along the variable folder path to the upload.php file. I'm using the flash version of plupload. If someone could help me out, that would be fantastic!! :) Here's my plupload jquery: jQuery.noConflict(); jQuery(document).ready(function() { jQuery("#flash_uploader").pluploadQueue({ // General settings runtimes: 'flash', url: '/assets/upload/upload.php', max_file_size: '10mb', chunk_size: '1mb', unique_names: false, // Resize images on clientside if we can resize: {width: 500, height: 350, quality: 100}, // Flash settings flash_swf_url: '/assets/upload/flash/plupload.flash.swf' }); }); And here's the upload.php file: <?php /** * upload.php * * Copyright 2009, Moxiecode Systems AB * Released under GPL License. * * License: http://www.plupload.com/license * Contributing: http://www.plupload.com/contributing */ // HTTP headers for no cache etc header('Content-type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8'); header("Expires: Mon, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT"); header("Last-Modified: ".gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s")." GMT"); header("Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate"); header("Cache-Control: post-check=0, pre-check=0", false); header("Pragma: no-cache"); // Settings $targetDir = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."/tmp/uploads"; //temp directory <- need these to be variable $finalDir = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."/tmp/uploads2"; //final directory <- need these to be variable $cleanupTargetDir = true; // Remove old files $maxFileAge = 60 * 60; // Temp file age in seconds // 5 minutes execution time @set_time_limit(5 * 60); // usleep(5000); // Get parameters $chunk = isset($_REQUEST["chunk"]) ? $_REQUEST["chunk"] : 0; $chunks = isset($_REQUEST["chunks"]) ? $_REQUEST["chunks"] : 0; $fileName = isset($_REQUEST["name"]) ? $_REQUEST["name"] : ''; // Clean the fileName for security reasons $fileName = preg_replace('/[^\w\._]+/', '', $fileName); // Create target dir if (!file_exists($targetDir)) @mkdir($targetDir); // Remove old temp files if (is_dir($targetDir) && ($dir = opendir($targetDir))) { while (($file = readdir($dir)) !== false) { $filePath = $targetDir . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . $file; // Remove temp files if they are older than the max age if (preg_match('/\\.tmp$/', $file) && (filemtime($filePath) < time() - $maxFileAge)) @unlink($filePath); } closedir($dir); } else die('{"jsonrpc" : "2.0", "error" : {"code": 100, "message": "Failed to open temp directory."}, "id" : "id"}'); // Look for the content type header if (isset($_SERVER["HTTP_CONTENT_TYPE"])) $contentType = $_SERVER["HTTP_CONTENT_TYPE"]; if (isset($_SERVER["CONTENT_TYPE"])) $contentType = $_SERVER["CONTENT_TYPE"]; if (strpos($contentType, "multipart") !== false) { if (isset($_FILES['file']['tmp_name']) && is_uploaded_file($_FILES['file']['tmp_name'])) { // Open temp file $out = fopen($targetDir . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . $fileName, $chunk == 0 ? "wb" : "ab"); if ($out) { // Read binary input stream and append it to temp file $in = fopen($_FILES['file']['tmp_name'], "rb"); if ($in) { while ($buff = fread($in, 4096)) fwrite($out, $buff); } else die('{"jsonrpc" : "2.0", "error" : {"code": 101, "message": "Failed to open input stream."}, "id" : "id"}'); fclose($out); unlink($_FILES['file']['tmp_name']); } else die('{"jsonrpc" : "2.0", "error" : {"code": 102, "message": "Failed to open output stream."}, "id" : "id"}'); } else die('{"jsonrpc" : "2.0", "error" : {"code": 103, "message": "Failed to move uploaded file."}, "id" : "id"}'); } else { // Open temp file $out = fopen($targetDir . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . $fileName, $chunk == 0 ? "wb" : "ab"); if ($out) { // Read binary input stream and append it to temp file $in = fopen("php://input", "rb"); if ($in) { while ($buff = fread($in, 4096)){ fwrite($out, $buff); } } else die('{"jsonrpc" : "2.0", "error" : {"code": 101, "message": "Failed to open input stream."}, "id" : "id"}'); fclose($out); } else die('{"jsonrpc" : "2.0", "error" : {"code": 102, "message": "Failed to open output stream."}, "id" : "id"}'); } //Moves the file from $targetDir to $finalDir after receiving the final chunk if($chunk == ($chunks-1)){ rename($targetDir . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . $fileName, $finalDir . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . $fileName); } // Return JSON-RPC response die('{"jsonrpc" : "2.0", "result" : null, "id" : "id"}'); ?>

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• From HttpRuntime.Cache to Windows Azure Caching (Preview)

  - by Jeff

  I don’t know about you, but the announcement of Windows Azure Caching (Preview) (yes, the parentheses are apparently part of the interim name) made me a lot more excited about using Azure. Why? Because one of the great performance tricks of any Web app is to cache frequently used data in memory, so it doesn’t have to hit the database, a service, or whatever. When you run your Web app on one box, HttpRuntime.Cache is a sweet and stupid-simple solution. Somewhere in the data fetching pieces of your app, you can see if an object is available in cache, and return that instead of hitting the data store. I did this quite a bit in POP Forums, and it dramatically cuts down on the database chatter. The problem is that it falls apart if you run the app on many servers, in a Web farm, where one server may initiate a change to that data, and the others will have no knowledge of the change, making it stale. Of course, if you have the infrastructure to do so, you can use something like memcached or AppFabric to do a distributed cache, and achieve the caching flavor you desire. You could do the same thing in Azure before, but it would cost more because you’d need to pay for another role or VM or something to host the cache. Now, you can use a portion of the memory from each instance of a Web role to act as that cache, with no additional cost. That’s huge. So if you’re using a percentage of memory that comes out to 100 MB, and you have three instances running, that’s 300 MB available for caching. For the uninitiated, a Web role in Azure is essentially a VM that runs a Web app (worker roles are the same idea, only without the IIS part). You can spin up many instances of the role, and traffic is load balanced to the various instances. It’s like adding or removing servers to a Web farm all willy-nilly and at your discretion, and it’s what the cloud is all about. I’d say it’s my favorite thing about Windows Azure. The slightly annoying thing about developing for a Web role in Azure is that the local emulator that’s launched by Visual Studio is a little on the slow side. If you’re used to using the built-in Web server, you’re used to building and then alt-tabbing to your browser and refreshing a page. If you’re just changing an MVC view, you’re not even doing the building part. Spinning up the simulated Azure environment is too slow for this, but ideally you want to code your app to use this fantastic distributed cache mechanism. So first off, here’s the link to the page showing how to code using the caching feature. If you’re used to using HttpRuntime.Cache, this should be pretty familiar to you. Let’s say that you want to use the Azure cache preview when you’re running in Azure, but HttpRuntime.Cache if you’re running local, or in a regular IIS server environment. Through the magic of dependency injection, we can get there pretty quickly. First, design an interface to handle the cache insertion, fetching and removal. Mine looks like this: public interface ICacheProvider {     void Add(string key, object item, int duration);     T Get<T>(string key) where T : class;     void Remove(string key); } Now we’ll create two implementations of this interface… one for Azure cache, one for HttpRuntime: public class AzureCacheProvider : ICacheProvider {     public AzureCacheProvider()     {         _cache = new DataCache("default"); // in Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching, see how-to      }         private readonly DataCache _cache;     public void Add(string key, object item, int duration)     {         _cache.Add(key, item, new TimeSpan(0, 0, 0, 0, duration));     }     public T Get<T>(string key) where T : class     {         return _cache.Get(key) as T;     }     public void Remove(string key)     {         _cache.Remove(key);     } } public class LocalCacheProvider : ICacheProvider {     public LocalCacheProvider()     {         _cache = HttpRuntime.Cache;     }     private readonly System.Web.Caching.Cache _cache;     public void Add(string key, object item, int duration)     {         _cache.Insert(key, item, null, DateTime.UtcNow.AddMilliseconds(duration), System.Web.Caching.Cache.NoSlidingExpiration);     }     public T Get<T>(string key) where T : class     {         return _cache[key] as T;     }     public void Remove(string key)     {         _cache.Remove(key);     } } Feel free to expand these to use whatever cache features you want. I’m not going to go over dependency injection here, but I assume that if you’re using ASP.NET MVC, you’re using it. Somewhere in your app, you set up the DI container that resolves interfaces to concrete implementations (Ninject call is a “kernel” instead of a container). For this example, I’ll show you how StructureMap does it. It uses a convention based scheme, where if you need to get an instance of IFoo, it looks for a class named Foo. You can also do this mapping explicitly. The initialization of the container looks something like this: ObjectFactory.Initialize(x =>             {                 x.Scan(scan =>                         {                             scan.AssembliesFromApplicationBaseDirectory();                             scan.WithDefaultConventions();                         });                 if (Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime.RoleEnvironment.IsAvailable)                     x.For<ICacheProvider>().Use<AzureCacheProvider>();                 else                     x.For<ICacheProvider>().Use<LocalCacheProvider>();             }); If you use Ninject or Windsor or something else, that’s OK. Conceptually they’re all about the same. The important part is the conditional statement that checks to see if the app is running in Azure. If it is, it maps ICacheProvider to AzureCacheProvider, otherwise it maps to LocalCacheProvider. Now when a request comes into your MVC app, and the chain of dependency resolution occurs, you can see to it that the right caching code is called. A typical design may have a call stack that goes: Controller –> BusinessLogicClass –> Repository. Let’s say your repository class looks like this: public class MyRepo : IMyRepo {     public MyRepo(ICacheProvider cacheProvider)     {         _context = new MyDataContext();         _cache = cacheProvider;     }     private readonly MyDataContext _context;     private readonly ICacheProvider _cache;     public SomeType Get(int someTypeID)     {         var key = "somename-" + someTypeID;         var cachedObject = _cache.Get<SomeType>(key);         if (cachedObject != null)         {             _context.SomeTypes.Attach(cachedObject);             return cachedObject;         }         var someType = _context.SomeTypes.SingleOrDefault(p => p.SomeTypeID == someTypeID);         _cache.Add(key, someType, 60000);         return someType;     } ... // more stuff to update, delete or whatever, being sure to remove // from cache when you do so  When the DI container gets an instance of the repo, it passes an instance of ICacheProvider to the constructor, which in this case will be whatever implementation was specified when the container was initialized. The Get method first tries to hit the cache, and of course doesn’t care what the underlying implementation is, Azure, HttpRuntime, or otherwise. If it finds the object, it returns it right then. If not, it hits the database (this example is using Entity Framework), and inserts the object into the cache before returning it. The important thing not pictured here is that other methods in the repo class will construct the key for the cached object, in this case “somename-“ plus the ID of the object, and then remove it from cache, in any method that alters or deletes the object. That way, no matter what instance of the role is processing the request, it won’t find the object if it has been made stale, that is, updated or outright deleted, forcing it to attempt to hit the database. So is this good technique? Well, sort of. It depends on how you use it, and what your testing looks like around it. Because of differences in behavior and execution of the two caching providers, for example, you could see some strange errors. For example, I immediately got an error indicating there was no parameterless constructor for an MVC controller, because the DI resolver failed to create instances for the dependencies it had. In reality, the NuGet packaged DI resolver for StructureMap was eating an exception thrown by the Azure components that said my configuration, outlined in that how-to article, was wrong. That error wouldn’t occur when using the HttpRuntime. That’s something a lot of people debate about using different components like that, and how you configure them. I kinda hate XML config files, and like the idea of the code-based approach above, but you should be darn sure that your unit and integration testing can account for the differences.

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• Our embedded linux system won't recognize a USB Device if it is plugged in before powerup. Suggestions?

  - by Blaine

  We are developing on a small embedded device. This device us a gumstix overo board running OpenEmbedded linux. We have our development almost completely done, and have run into the strangest of bugs that we can't figure out. We have a USB Device (Spectrophotometer) that has a USB2.0 Connection and an external power supply for the light source. Typical behavior is that you plug in the power supply, then the USB connection to a host. When the usb connection is detected by the device, the device boots up and enables the light source and fan. The device is then able to be used by the host system. The problem is that if the device is plugged into the Gumstix before we turn on the Gumstix, the USB Device apparently is not probed by the system (and hence does not turn on). Under a normal situation, when the connection is initialized by plugging in the usb cable, the spectro turns itself on and becomes available to the system (this can be seen via "lsusb" typically). Neither of these things are happening. There is no device detected via "lsusb" and no dmesg errors of any kind that we can see. It is as if the device is not plugged in. The device does show up and work fine if we unplug the USB cable and plug it back in once the system is booted up. It turns on and shows up on the usb bus, and we can access it with our driver. On any other desktop or laptop, it does not matter if the host system is on or off when we plug in the spectrometer. This behavior is what I would consider to be "normal" - that the usb system is probed and initialized at boot time, and the usb devices come online. In other words, our system is fully functional as long as we plug in the usb device after the system is booted up. Unfortunately this isn't possible in our final product - everything comes on at once. Additional Info: 1) We have tried a flash drive attached to the system when the system is turned off. Booting up the system brings the flash drive online, as expected 2) There are no messages regarding the spectro or usb device (using dmesg). "lsusb" only lists the USB hubs / controllers. It is literally as if the device is not present and not plugged in. 3) We have tried a brand new image from gumstix and an older image from last year. Both images have this problem. This problem exists on all 3 gumstix devices we use. Does anyone have any suggestions? From what I can tell it isn't really possible to do a complete "reboot" of the usb system that is a complete emulation of "unplugging" and "replugging" a usb device. I feel like what is happening is that there is no initial probe on the usb bus that would trigger the usb handshaking, but this is somehow specific to the spectro. This seems to be a kernel issue or at least an issue in how the kernel is initializing the usb subsystem. I'm not really sure though. I have tried the gumstix mailing list, but there doesn't seem to be anyone who has seen this issue before. Any advice or suggestions on where to start looking would be fantastic. Thank you! Blaine output etc. $ uname -a Linux overo 2.6.33 #1 Tue Apr 27 08:35:38 PDT 2010 armv7l GNU/Linux When the system is up and running and spectro is plugged in (working as intended), this is lsusb: Bus 001 Device 116: ID 2457:1022 Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 2.00 bDeviceClass 0 (Defined at Interface level) bDeviceSubClass 0 bDeviceProtocol 0 bMaxPacketSize0 64 idVendor 0x2457 idProduct 0x1022 bcdDevice 0.02 iManufacturer 1 USB4000 1.01.11 iProduct 2 Ocean Optics USB4000 iSerial 0 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 46 bNumInterfaces 1 bConfigurationValue 1 iConfiguration 0 bmAttributes 0x80 (Bus Powered) MaxPower 400mA Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 4 bInterfaceClass 255 Vendor Specific Class bInterfaceSubClass 0 bInterfaceProtocol 0 iInterface 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x01 EP 1 OUT bmAttributes 2 Transfer Type Bulk Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0200 1x 512 bytes bInterval 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x82 EP 2 IN bmAttributes 2 Transfer Type Bulk Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0200 1x 512 bytes bInterval 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x86 EP 6 IN bmAttributes 2 Transfer Type Bulk Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0200 1x 512 bytes bInterval 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 2 Transfer Type Bulk Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0200 1x 512 bytes bInterval 0 Device Qualifier (for other device speed): bLength 10 bDescriptorType 6 bcdUSB 2.00 bDeviceClass 0 (Defined at Interface level) bDeviceSubClass 0 bDeviceProtocol 0 bMaxPacketSize0 64 bNumConfigurations 1 Device Status: 0x0000 (Bus Powered) dmesg output: usb usb1: usb auto-resume hub 1-0:1.0: hub_resume usb usb2: usb auto-resume ehci-omap ehci-omap.0: resume root hub hub 1-0:1.0: state 7 ports 1 chg 0000 evt 0000 hub 2-0:1.0: hub_resume hub 2-0:1.0: state 7 ports 3 chg 0000 evt 0000 hub 1-0:1.0: hub_suspend usb usb1: bus auto-suspend hub 2-0:1.0: hub_suspend usb usb2: bus auto-suspend ehci-omap ehci-omap.0: suspend root hub usb usb2: usb resume ehci-omap ehci-omap.0: resume root hub hub 2-0:1.0: hub_resume ehci-omap ehci-omap.0: GetStatus port 2 status 001803 POWER sig=j CSC CONNECT hub 2-0:1.0: port 2: status 0501 change 0001 hub 2-0:1.0: state 7 ports 3 chg 0004 evt 0000 hub 2-0:1.0: port 2, status 0501, change 0000, 480 Mb/s ehci-omap ehci-omap.0: port 2 high speed ehci-omap ehci-omap.0: GetStatus port 2 status 001005 POWER sig=se0 PE CONNECT usb 2-2: new high speed USB device using ehci-omap and address 2 ehci-omap ehci-omap.0: port 2 high speed ehci-omap ehci-omap.0: GetStatus port 2 status 001005 POWER sig=se0 PE CONNECT usb 2-2: default language 0x0409 usb 2-2: udev 2, busnum 2, minor = 129 usb 2-2: New USB device found, idVendor=2457, idProduct=1022 usb 2-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0 usb 2-2: Product: Ocean Optics USB4000 usb 2-2: Manufacturer: USB4000 1.01.11 usb 2-2: uevent usb 2-2: usb_probe_device usb 2-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice usb 2-2: uevent usb 2-2: adding 2-2:1.0 (config #1, interface 0) usb 2-2:1.0: uevent drivers/usb/core/inode.c: creating file '002' dmesg has nothing to say, and lusb simply lists nothing else but the two default usb controllers / hubs if we plug the device in before the system is turned on.

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• Integrating JavaScript Unit Tests with Visual Studio

  - by Stephen Walther

  Modern ASP.NET web applications take full advantage of client-side JavaScript to provide better interactivity and responsiveness. If you are building an ASP.NET application in the right way, you quickly end up with lots and lots of JavaScript code. When writing server code, you should be writing unit tests. One big advantage of unit tests is that they provide you with a safety net that enable you to safely modify your existing code – for example, fix bugs, add new features, and make performance enhancements -- without breaking your existing code. Every time you modify your code, you can execute your unit tests to verify that you have not broken anything. For the same reason that you should write unit tests for your server code, you should write unit tests for your client code. JavaScript is just as susceptible to bugs as C#. There is no shortage of unit testing frameworks for JavaScript. Each of the major JavaScript libraries has its own unit testing framework. For example, jQuery has QUnit, Prototype has UnitTestJS, YUI has YUI Test, and Dojo has Dojo Objective Harness (DOH). The challenge is integrating a JavaScript unit testing framework with Visual Studio. Visual Studio and Visual Studio ALM provide fantastic support for server-side unit tests. You can easily view the results of running your unit tests in the Visual Studio Test Results window. You can set up a check-in policy which requires that all unit tests pass before your source code can be committed to the source code repository. In addition, you can set up Team Build to execute your unit tests automatically. Unfortunately, Visual Studio does not provide “out-of-the-box” support for JavaScript unit tests. MS Test, the unit testing framework included in Visual Studio, does not support JavaScript unit tests. As soon as you leave the server world, you are left on your own. The goal of this blog entry is to describe one approach to integrating JavaScript unit tests with MS Test so that you can execute your JavaScript unit tests side-by-side with your C# unit tests. The goal is to enable you to execute JavaScript unit tests in exactly the same way as server-side unit tests. You can download the source code described by this project by scrolling to the end of this blog entry. Rejected Approach: Browser Launchers One popular approach to executing JavaScript unit tests is to use a browser as a test-driver. When you use a browser as a test-driver, you open up a browser window to execute and view the results of executing your JavaScript unit tests. For example, QUnit – the unit testing framework for jQuery – takes this approach. The following HTML page illustrates how you can use QUnit to create a unit test for a function named addNumbers(). <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <html> <head> <title>Using QUnit</title> <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://github.com/jquery/qunit/raw/master/qunit/qunit.css" type="text/css" /> </head> <body> <h1 id="qunit-header">QUnit example</h1> <h2 id="qunit-banner"></h2> <div id="qunit-testrunner-toolbar"></div> <h2 id="qunit-userAgent"></h2> <ol id="qunit-tests"></ol> <div id="qunit-fixture">test markup, will be hidden</div> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://github.com/jquery/qunit/raw/master/qunit/qunit.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> // The function to test function addNumbers(a, b) { return a+b; } // The unit test test("Test of addNumbers", function () { equals(4, addNumbers(1,3), "1+3 should be 4"); }); </script> </body> </html> This test verifies that calling addNumbers(1,3) returns the expected value 4. When you open this page in a browser, you can see that this test does, in fact, pass. The idea is that you can quickly refresh this QUnit HTML JavaScript test driver page in your browser whenever you modify your JavaScript code. In other words, you can keep a browser window open and keep refreshing it over and over while you are developing your application. That way, you can know very quickly whenever you have broken your JavaScript code. While easy to setup, there are several big disadvantages to this approach to executing JavaScript unit tests: You must view your JavaScript unit test results in a different location than your server unit test results. The JavaScript unit test results appear in the browser and the server unit test results appear in the Visual Studio Test Results window. Because all of your unit test results don’t appear in a single location, you are more likely to introduce bugs into your code without noticing it. Because your unit tests are not integrated with Visual Studio – in particular, MS Test -- you cannot easily include your JavaScript unit tests when setting up check-in policies or when performing automated builds with Team Build. A more sophisticated approach to using a browser as a test-driver is to automate the web browser. Instead of launching the browser and loading the test code yourself, you use a framework to automate this process. There are several different testing frameworks that support this approach: · Selenium – Selenium is a very powerful framework for automating browser tests. You can create your tests by recording a Firefox session or by writing the test driver code in server code such as C#. You can learn more about Selenium at http://seleniumhq.org/. LTAF – The ASP.NET team uses the Lightweight Test Automation Framework to test JavaScript code in the ASP.NET framework. You can learn more about LTAF by visiting the project home at CodePlex: http://aspnet.codeplex.com/releases/view/35501 jsTestDriver – This framework uses Java to automate the browser. jsTestDriver creates a server which can be used to automate multiple browsers simultaneously. This project is located at http://code.google.com/p/js-test-driver/ TestSwam – This framework, created by John Resig, uses PHP to automate the browser. Like jsTestDriver, the framework creates a test server. You can open multiple browsers that are automated by the test server. Learn more about TestSwarm by visiting the following address: https://github.com/jeresig/testswarm/wiki Yeti – This is the framework introduced by Yahoo for automating browser tests. Yeti uses server-side JavaScript and depends on Node.js. Learn more about Yeti at http://www.yuiblog.com/blog/2010/08/25/introducing-yeti-the-yui-easy-testing-interface/ All of these frameworks are great for integration tests – however, they are not the best frameworks to use for unit tests. In one way or another, all of these frameworks depend on executing tests within the context of a “living and breathing” browser. If you create an ASP.NET Unit Test then Visual Studio will launch a web server before executing the unit test. Why is launching a web server so bad? It is not the worst thing in the world. However, it does introduce dependencies that prevent your code from being tested in isolation. One of the defining features of a unit test -- versus an integration test – is that a unit test tests code in isolation. Another problem with launching a web server when performing unit tests is that launching a web server can be slow. If you cannot execute your unit tests quickly, you are less likely to execute your unit tests each and every time you make a code change. You are much more likely to fall into the pit of failure. Launching a browser when performing a JavaScript unit test has all of the same disadvantages as launching a web server when performing an ASP.NET unit test. Instead of testing a unit of JavaScript code in isolation, you are testing JavaScript code within the context of a particular browser. Using the frameworks listed above for integration tests makes perfect sense. However, I want to consider a different approach for creating unit tests for JavaScript code. Using Server-Side JavaScript for JavaScript Unit Tests A completely different approach to executing JavaScript unit tests is to perform the tests outside of any browser. If you really want to test JavaScript then you should test JavaScript and leave the browser out of the testing process. There are several ways that you can execute JavaScript on the server outside the context of any browser: Rhino – Rhino is an implementation of JavaScript written in Java. The Rhino project is maintained by the Mozilla project. Learn more about Rhino at http://www.mozilla.org/rhino/ V8 – V8 is the open-source Google JavaScript engine written in C++. This is the JavaScript engine used by the Chrome web browser. You can download V8 and embed it in your project by visiting http://code.google.com/p/v8/ JScript – JScript is the JavaScript Script Engine used by Internet Explorer (up to but not including Internet Explorer 9), Windows Script Host, and Active Server Pages. Internet Explorer is still the most popular web browser. Therefore, I decided to focus on using the JScript Script Engine to execute JavaScript unit tests. Using the Microsoft Script Control There are two basic ways that you can pass JavaScript to the JScript Script Engine and execute the code: use the Microsoft Windows Script Interfaces or use the Microsoft Script Control. The difficult and proper way to execute JavaScript using the JScript Script Engine is to use the Microsoft Windows Script Interfaces. You can learn more about the Script Interfaces by visiting http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/t9d4xf28(VS.85).aspx The main disadvantage of using the Script Interfaces is that they are difficult to use from .NET. There is a great series of articles on using the Script Interfaces from C# located at http://www.drdobbs.com/184406028. I picked the easier alternative and used the Microsoft Script Control. The Microsoft Script Control is an ActiveX control that provides a higher level abstraction over the Window Script Interfaces. You can download the Microsoft Script Control from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=d7e31492-2595-49e6-8c02-1426fec693ac After you download the Microsoft Script Control, you need to add a reference to it to your project. Select the Visual Studio menu option Project, Add Reference to open the Add Reference dialog. Select the COM tab and add the Microsoft Script Control 1.0. Using the Script Control is easy. You call the Script Control AddCode() method to add JavaScript code to the Script Engine. Next, you call the Script Control Run() method to run a particular JavaScript function. The reference documentation for the Microsoft Script Control is located at the MSDN website: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa227633%28v=vs.60%29.aspx Creating the JavaScript Code to Test To keep things simple, let’s imagine that you want to test the following JavaScript function named addNumbers() which simply adds two numbers together: MvcApplication1\Scripts\Math.js function addNumbers(a, b) { return 5; } Notice that the addNumbers() method always returns the value 5. Right-now, it will not pass a good unit test. Create this file and save it in your project with the name Math.js in your MVC project’s Scripts folder (Save the file in your actual MVC application and not your MVC test application). Creating the JavaScript Test Helper Class To make it easier to use the Microsoft Script Control in unit tests, we can create a helper class. This class contains two methods: LoadFile() – Loads a JavaScript file. Use this method to load the JavaScript file being tested or the JavaScript file containing the unit tests. ExecuteTest() – Executes the JavaScript code. Use this method to execute a JavaScript unit test. Here’s the code for the JavaScriptTestHelper class: JavaScriptTestHelper.cs   using System; using System.IO; using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting; using MSScriptControl; namespace MvcApplication1.Tests { public class JavaScriptTestHelper : IDisposable { private ScriptControl _sc; private TestContext _context; /// <summary> /// You need to use this helper with Unit Tests and not /// Basic Unit Tests because you need a Test Context /// </summary> /// <param name="testContext">Unit Test Test Context</param> public JavaScriptTestHelper(TestContext testContext) { if (testContext == null) { throw new ArgumentNullException("TestContext"); } _context = testContext; _sc = new ScriptControl(); _sc.Language = "JScript"; _sc.AllowUI = false; } /// <summary> /// Load the contents of a JavaScript file into the /// Script Engine. /// </summary> /// <param name="path">Path to JavaScript file</param> public void LoadFile(string path) { var fileContents = File.ReadAllText(path); _sc.AddCode(fileContents); } /// <summary> /// Pass the path of the test that you want to execute. /// </summary> /// <param name="testMethodName">JavaScript function name</param> public void ExecuteTest(string testMethodName) { dynamic result = null; try { result = _sc.Run(testMethodName, new object[] { }); } catch { var error = ((IScriptControl)_sc).Error; if (error != null) { var description = error.Description; var line = error.Line; var column = error.Column; var text = error.Text; var source = error.Source; if (_context != null) { var details = String.Format("{0} \r\nLine: {1} Column: {2}", source, line, column); _context.WriteLine(details); } } throw new AssertFailedException(error.Description); } } public void Dispose() { _sc = null; } } }     Notice that the JavaScriptTestHelper class requires a Test Context to be instantiated. For this reason, you can use the JavaScriptTestHelper only with a Visual Studio Unit Test and not a Basic Unit Test (These are two different types of Visual Studio project items). Add the JavaScriptTestHelper file to your MVC test application (for example, MvcApplication1.Tests). Creating the JavaScript Unit Test Next, we need to create the JavaScript unit test function that we will use to test the addNumbers() function. Create a folder in your MVC test project named JavaScriptTests and add the following JavaScript file to this folder: MvcApplication1.Tests\JavaScriptTests\MathTest.js /// <reference path="JavaScriptUnitTestFramework.js"/> function testAddNumbers() { // Act var result = addNumbers(1, 3); // Assert assert.areEqual(4, result, "addNumbers did not return right value!"); }   The testAddNumbers() function takes advantage of another JavaScript library named JavaScriptUnitTestFramework.js. This library contains all of the code necessary to make assertions. Add the following JavaScriptnitTestFramework.js to the same folder as the MathTest.js file: MvcApplication1.Tests\JavaScriptTests\JavaScriptUnitTestFramework.js var assert = { areEqual: function (expected, actual, message) { if (expected !== actual) { throw new Error("Expected value " + expected + " is not equal to " + actual + ". " + message); } } }; There is only one type of assertion supported by this file: the areEqual() assertion. Most likely, you would want to add additional types of assertions to this file to make it easier to write your JavaScript unit tests. Deploying the JavaScript Test Files This step is non-intuitive. When you use Visual Studio to run unit tests, Visual Studio creates a new folder and executes a copy of the files in your project. After you run your unit tests, your Visual Studio Solution will contain a new folder named TestResults that includes a subfolder for each test run. You need to configure Visual Studio to deploy your JavaScript files to the test run folder or Visual Studio won’t be able to find your JavaScript files when you execute your unit tests. You will get an error that looks something like this when you attempt to execute your unit tests: You can configure Visual Studio to deploy your JavaScript files by adding a Test Settings file to your Visual Studio Solution. It is important to understand that you need to add this file to your Visual Studio Solution and not a particular Visual Studio project. Right-click your Solution in the Solution Explorer window and select the menu option Add, New Item. Select the Test Settings item and click the Add button. After you create a Test Settings file for your solution, you can indicate that you want a particular folder to be deployed whenever you perform a test run. Select the menu option Test, Edit Test Settings to edit your test configuration file. Select the Deployment tab and select your MVC test project’s JavaScriptTest folder to deploy. Click the Apply button and the Close button to save the changes and close the dialog. Creating the Visual Studio Unit Test The very last step is to create the Visual Studio unit test (the MS Test unit test). Add a new unit test to your MVC test project by selecting the menu option Add New Item and selecting the Unit Test project item (Do not select the Basic Unit Test project item): The difference between a Basic Unit Test and a Unit Test is that a Unit Test includes a Test Context. We need this Test Context to use the JavaScriptTestHelper class that we created earlier. Enter the following test method for the new unit test: [TestMethod] public void TestAddNumbers() { var jsHelper = new JavaScriptTestHelper(this.TestContext); // Load JavaScript files jsHelper.LoadFile("JavaScriptUnitTestFramework.js"); jsHelper.LoadFile(@"..\..\..\MvcApplication1\Scripts\Math.js"); jsHelper.LoadFile("MathTest.js"); // Execute JavaScript Test jsHelper.ExecuteTest("testAddNumbers"); } This code uses the JavaScriptTestHelper to load three files: JavaScripUnitTestFramework.js – Contains the assert functions. Math.js – Contains the addNumbers() function from your MVC application which is being tested. MathTest.js – Contains the JavaScript unit test function. Next, the test method calls the JavaScriptTestHelper ExecuteTest() method to execute the testAddNumbers() JavaScript function. Running the Visual Studio JavaScript Unit Test After you complete all of the steps described above, you can execute the JavaScript unit test just like any other unit test. You can use the keyboard combination CTRL-R, CTRL-A to run all of the tests in the current Visual Studio Solution. Alternatively, you can use the buttons in the Visual Studio toolbar to run the tests: (Unfortunately, the Run All Impacted Tests button won’t work correctly because Visual Studio won’t detect that your JavaScript code has changed. Therefore, you should use either the Run Tests in Current Context or Run All Tests in Solution options instead.) The results of running the JavaScript tests appear side-by-side with the results of running the server tests in the Test Results window. For example, if you Run All Tests in Solution then you will get the following results: Notice that the TestAddNumbers() JavaScript test has failed. That is good because our addNumbers() function is hard-coded to always return the value 5. If you double-click the failing JavaScript test, you can view additional details such as the JavaScript error message and the line number of the JavaScript code that failed: Summary The goal of this blog entry was to explain an approach to creating JavaScript unit tests that can be easily integrated with Visual Studio and Visual Studio ALM. I described how you can use the Microsoft Script Control to execute JavaScript on the server. By taking advantage of the Microsoft Script Control, we were able to execute our JavaScript unit tests side-by-side with all of our other unit tests and view the results in the standard Visual Studio Test Results window. You can download the code discussed in this blog entry from here: http://StephenWalther.com/downloads/Blog/JavaScriptUnitTesting/JavaScriptUnitTests.zip Before running this code, you need to first install the Microsoft Script Control which you can download from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=d7e31492-2595-49e6-8c02-1426fec693ac

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• Issue 15: Oracle Exadata Marketing Campaigns

  - by rituchhibber

       PARTNER FOCUS Oracle ExadataMarketing Campaign Steve McNickleVP Europe, cVidya Steve McNickle is VP Europe for cVidya, an innovative provider of revenue intelligence solutions for telecom, media and entertainment service providers including AT&T, BT, Deutsche Telecom and Vodafone. The company's product portfolio helps operators and service providers maximise margins, improve customer experience and optimise ecosystem relationships through revenue assurance, fraud and security management, sales performance management, pricing analytics, and inter-carrier services. cVidya has partnered with Oracle for more than a decade. RESOURCES -- Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Oracle Exastack Program Oracle Exastack Optimized Oracle Exastack Labs and Enablement Resources Oracle Engineered Systems Oracle Communications cVidya SUBSCRIBE FEEDBACK PREVIOUS ISSUES Are you ready for Oracle OpenWorld this October? -- -- Please could you tell us a little about cVidya's partnering history with Oracle, and expand on your Oracle Exastack accreditations? "cVidya was established just over ten years ago and we've had a strong relationship with Oracle almost since the very beginning. Through our Revenue Intelligence work with some of the world's largest service providers we collect tremendous amounts of information, amounting to billions of records per day. We help our clients to collect, store and analyse that data to ensure that their end customers are getting the best levels of service, are billed correctly, and are happy that they are on the correct price plan. We have been an Oracle Gold level partner for seven years, and crucially just two months ago we were also accredited as Oracle Exastack Optimized for MoneyMap, our core Revenue Assurance solution. Very soon we also expect to be Oracle Exastack Optimized DRMap, our Data Retention solution." What unique capabilities and customer benefits does Oracle Exastack add to your applications? "Oracle Exastack enables us to deliver radical benefits to our customers. A typical mobile operator in the UK might handle between 500 million and two billion call data record details daily. Each transaction needs to be validated, billed correctly and fraud checked. Because of the enormous volumes involved, our clients demand scalable infrastructure that allows them to efficiently acquire, store and process all that data within controlled cost, space and environmental constraints. We have proved that the Oracle Exadata system can process data up to seven times faster and load it as much as 20 times faster than other standard best-of-breed server approaches. With the Oracle Exadata Database Machine they can reduce their datacentre equipment from say, the six or seven cabinets that they needed in the past, down to just one. This dramatic simplification delivers incredible value to the customer by cutting down enormously on all of their significant cost, space, energy, cooling and maintenance overheads." "The Oracle Exastack Program has given our clients the ability to switch their focus from reactive to proactive. Traditionally they may have spent 80 percent of their day processing, and just 20 percent enabling end customers to see advanced analytics, and avoiding issues before they occur. With our solutions and Oracle Exadata they can now switch that balance around entirely, resulting not only in reduced revenue leakage, but a far higher focus on proactive leakage prevention. How has the Oracle Exastack Program transformed your customer business? "We can already see the impact. Oracle solutions allow our delivery teams to achieve successful deployments, happy customers and self-satisfaction, and the power of Oracle's Exa solutions is easy to measure in terms of their transformational ability. We gained our first sale into a major European telco by demonstrating the major performance gains that would transform their business. Clients can measure the ease of organisational change, the early prevention of business issues, the reduction in manpower required to provide protection and coverage across all their products and services, plus of course end customer satisfaction. If customers know that that service is provided accurately and that their bills are calculated correctly, then over time this satisfaction can be attributed to revenue intelligence and the underlying systems which provide it. Combine this with the further integration we have with the other layers of the Oracle stack, including the telecommunications offerings such as NCC, OCDM and BRM, and the result is even greater customer value—not to mention the increased speed to market and the reduced project risk." What does the Oracle Exastack community bring to cVidya, both in terms of general benefits, and also tangible new opportunities and partnerships? "A great deal. We have participated in the Oracle Exastack community heavily over the past year, and have had lots of meetings with Oracle and our peers around the globe. It brings us into contact with like-minded, innovative partners, who like us are not happy to just stand still and want to take fresh technology to their customer base in order to gain enhanced value. We identified three new partnerships in each of two recent meetings, and hope these will open up new opportunities, not only in areas that exactly match where we operate today, but also in some new associative areas that will expand our reach into new business sectors. Notably, thanks to the Exastack community we were invited on stage at last year's Oracle OpenWorld conference. Appearing so publically with Oracle senior VP Judson Althoff elevated awareness and visibility of cVidya and has enabled us to participate in a number of other events with Oracle over the past eight months. We've been involved in speaking opportunities, forums and exhibitions, providing us with invaluable opportunities that we wouldn't otherwise have got close to." How has Exastack differentiated cVidya as an ISV, and helped you to evolve your business to the next level? "When we are selling to our core customer base of Tier 1 telecommunications providers, we know that they want more than just software. They want an enduring partnership that will last many years, they want innovation, and a forward thinking partner who knows how to guide them on where they need to be to meet market demand three, five or seven years down the line. Membership of respected global bodies, such as the Telemanagement Forum enables us to lead standard adherence in our area of business, giving us a lot of credibility, but Oracle is also involved in this forum with its own telecommunications portfolio, strengthening our position still further. When we approach CEOs, CTOs and CIOs at the very largest Tier 1 operators, not only can we easily show them that our technology is fantastic, we can also talk about our strong partnership with Oracle, and our joint embracing of today's standards and tomorrow's innovation." Where would you like cVidya to be in one year's time? "We want to get all of our relevant products Oracle Exastack Optimized. Our MoneyMap Revenue Assurance solution is already Exastack Optimised, our DRMAP Data Retention Solution should be Exastack Optimised within the next month, and our FraudView Fraud Management solution within the next two to three months. We'd then like to extend our Oracle accreditation out to include other members of the Oracle Engineered Systems family. We are moving into the 'Big Data' space, and so we're obviously very keen to work closely with Oracle to conduct pilots, map new technologies onto Oracle Big Data platforms, and embrace and measure the benefits of other Oracle systems, namely Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud, the Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine and the Oracle SPARC SuperCluster. We would also like to examine how the Oracle Database Appliance might benefit our Tier 2 service provider customers. Finally, we'd also like to continue working with the Oracle Communications Global Business Unit (CGBU), furthering our integration with Oracle billing products so that we are able to quickly deploy fraud solutions into Oracle's Engineered System stack, give operational benefits to our clients that are pre-integrated, more cost-effective, and can be rapidly deployed rapidly and producing benefits in three months, not nine months." Chris Baker ,Senior Vice President, Oracle Worldwide ISV-OEM-Java Sales Chris Baker is the Global Head of ISV/OEM Sales responsible for working with ISV/OEM partners to maximise Oracle's business through those partners, whilst maximising those partners' business to their end users. Chris works with partners, customers, innovators, investors and employees to develop innovative business solutions using Oracle products, services and skills. Firstly, could you please explain Oracle's current strategy for ISV partners, globally and in EMEA? "Oracle customers use independent software vendor (ISV) applications to run their businesses. They use them to generate revenue and to fulfil obligations to their own customers. Our strategy is very straight-forward. We want all of our ISV partners and OEMs to concentrate on the things that they do the best – building applications to meet the unique industry and functional requirements of their customer. We want to ensure that we deliver a best in class application platform so the ISV is free to concentrate their effort on their application functionality and user experience We invest over four billion dollars in research and development every year, and we want our ISVs to benefit from all of that investment in operating systems, virtualisation, databases, middleware, engineered systems, and other hardware. By doing this, we help them to reduce their costs, gain more consistency and agility for quicker implementations, and also rapidly differentiate themselves from other application vendors. It's all about simplification because we believe that around 25 to 30 percent of the development costs incurred by many ISVs are caused by customising infrastructure and have nothing to do with their applications. Our strategy is to enable our ISV partners to standardise their application platform using engineered architecture, so they can write once to the Oracle stack and deploy seamlessly in the cloud, on-premise, or in hybrid deployments. It's really important that architecture is the same in order to keep cost and time overheads at a minimum, so we provide standardisation and an environment that enables our ISVs to concentrate on the core business that makes them the most money and brings them success." How do you believe this strategy is helping the ISVs to work hand-in-hand with Oracle to ensure that end customers get the industry-leading solutions that they need? "We work with our ISVs not just to help them be successful, but also to help them market themselves. We have something called the 'Oracle Exastack Ready Program', which enables ISVs to publicise themselves as 'Ready' to run the core software platforms that run on Oracle's engineered systems including Exadata and Exalogic. So, for example, they can become 'Database Ready' which means that they use the latest version of Oracle Database and therefore can run their application without modification on Exadata or the Oracle Database Appliance. Alternatively, they can become WebLogic Ready, Oracle Linux Ready and Oracle Solaris Ready which means they run on the latest release and therefore can run their application, with no new porting work, on Oracle Exalogic. Those 'Ready' logos are important in helping ISVs advertise to their customers that they are using the latest technologies which have been fully tested. We now also have Exadata Ready and Exalogic Ready programmes which allow ISVs to promote the certification of their applications on these platforms. This highlights these partners to Oracle customers as having solutions that run fluently on the Oracle Exadata Database Machine, the Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud or one of our other engineered systems. This makes it easy for customers to identify solutions and provides ISVs with an avenue to connect with Oracle customers who are rapidly adopting engineered systems. We have also taken this programme to the next level in the shape of 'Oracle Exastack Optimized' for partners whose applications run best on the Oracle stack and have invested the time to fully optimise application performance. We ensure that Exastack Optimized partner status is promoted and supported by press releases, and we help our ISVs go to market and differentiate themselves through the use our technology and the standardisation it delivers. To date we have had several hundred organisations successfully work through our Exastack Optimized programme." How does Oracle's strategy of offering pre-integrated open platform software and hardware allow ISVs to bring their products to market more quickly? "One of the problems for many ISVs is that they have to think very carefully about the technology on which their solutions will be deployed, particularly in the cloud or hosted environments. They have to think hard about how they secure these environments, whether the concern is, for example, middleware, identity management, or securing personal data. If they don't use the technology that we build-in to our products to help them to fulfil these roles, they then have to build it themselves. This takes time, requires testing, and must be maintained. By taking advantage of our technology, partners will now know that they have a standard platform. They will know that they can confidently talk about implementation being the same every time they do it. Very large ISV applications could once take a year or two to be implemented at an on-premise environment. But it wasn't just the configuration of the application that took the time, it was actually the infrastructure - the different hardware configurations, operating systems and configurations of databases and middleware. Now we strongly believe that it's all about standardisation and repeatability. It's about making sure that our partners can do it once and are then able to roll it out many different times using standard componentry." What actions would you recommend for existing ISV partners that are looking to do more business with Oracle and its customer base, not only to maximise benefits, but also to maximise partner relationships? "My team, around the world and in the EMEA region, is available and ready to talk to any of our ISVs and to explore the possibilities together. We run programmes like 'Excite' and 'Insight' to help us to understand how we can help ISVs with architecture and widen their environments. But we also want to work with, and look at, new opportunities - for example, the Machine-to-Machine (M2M) market or 'The Internet of Things'. Over the next few years, many millions, indeed billions of devices will be collecting massive amounts of data and communicating it back to the central systems where ISVs will be running their applications. The only way that our partners will be able to provide a single vendor 'end-to-end' solution is to use Oracle integrated systems at the back end and Java on the 'smart' devices collecting the data – a complete solution from device to data centre. So there are huge opportunities to work closely with our ISVs, using Oracle's complete M2M platform, to provide the infrastructure that enables them to extract maximum value from the data collected. If any partners don't know where to start or who to contact, then they can contact me directly at [email protected] or indeed any of our teams across the EMEA region. We want to work with ISVs to help them to be as successful as they possibly can through simplification and speed to market, and we also want all of the top ISVs in the world based on Oracle." What opportunities are immediately opened to new ISV partners joining the OPN? "As you know OPN is very, very important. New members will discover a huge amount of content that instantly becomes accessible to them. They can access a wealth of no-cost training and enablement materials to build their expertise in Oracle technology. They can download Oracle software and use it for development projects. They can help themselves become more competent by becoming part of a true community and uncovering new opportunities by working with Oracle and their peers in the Oracle Partner Network. As well as publishing massive amounts of information on OPN, we also hold our global Oracle OpenWorld event, at which partners play a huge role. This takes place at the end of September and the beginning of October in San Francisco. Attending ISV partners have an unrivalled opportunity to contribute to elements such as the OpenWorld / OPN Exchange, at which they can talk to other partners and really begin thinking about how they can move their businesses on and play key roles in a very large ecosystem which revolves around technology and standardisation." Finally, are there any other messages that you would like to share with the Oracle ISV community? "The crucial message that I always like to reinforce is architecture, architecture and architecture! The key opportunities that ISVs have today revolve around standardising their architectures so that they can confidently think: “I will I be able to do exactly the same thing whenever a customer is looking to deploy on-premise, hosted or in the cloud”. The right architecture is critical to being competitive and to really start changing the game. We want to help our ISV partners to do just that; to establish standard architecture and to seize the opportunities it opens up for them. New market opportunities like M2M are enormous - just look at how many devices are all around you right now. We can help our partners to interface with these devices more effectively while thinking about their entire ecosystem, rather than just the piece that they have traditionally focused upon. With standardised architecture, we can help people dramatically improve their speed, reach, agility and delivery of enhanced customer satisfaction and value all the way from the Java side to their centralised systems. All Oracle ISV partners must take advantage of these opportunities, which is why Oracle will continue to invest in and support them." -- Gergely Strbik is Oracle Hardware and Software Product Manager for Avnet in Hungary. Avnet Technology Solutions is an OracleValue Added Distributor focused on the development of the existing Oracle channel. This includes the recruitment and enablement of Oracle partners as well as driving deeper adoption of Oracle's technology and application products within the IT channel. "The main business benefits of ODA for our customers and partners are scalability, flexibility, a great price point for the high performance delivered, and the easily configurable embedded Linux operating system. People welcome a lower point of entry and the ability to grow capacity on demand as their business expands." "Marketing and selling the ODA requires another way of thinking because it is an appliance. We have to transform the ways in which our partners and customers think from buying hardware and software independently to buying complete solutions. Successful early adopters and satisfied customer reactions will certainly help us to sell the ODA. We will have more experience with the product after the first deliveries and installations—end users need to see the power and benefits for themselves." "Our typical ODA customers will be those looking for complete solutions from a single reseller partner who is also able to manage the appliance. They will have enjoyed using Oracle Database but now want a new product that is able to unlock new levels of performance. A higher proportion of potential customers will come from our existing Oracle base, with around 30% from new business, but we intend to evangelise the ODA on the market to see how we can change this balance as all our customers adjust to the concept of 'Hardware and Software, Engineered to Work Together'. -- Back to the welcome page

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• Windows 7 intermittently drops wired internet/lan connection.

  - by CraigTP

  In a nutshell, my Windows 7 Ultimate PC intermittently drops it's internet connection. Why? Background: My PC is wired to my ADSL modem/router which is directly connected to the phone line. I also have wireless connectivity turned on within the router for a laptop to connect wirelessly. Every few hours or so, when using my PC, I find I cannot access the internet and pages will not load. Eventually, Windows7 will update the network icon in the task-tray to show the exclamation mark symbol on the network icon. Opening up the Network And Sharing Centre will show the red cross between the "Multiple Networks" and "The Internet". Here's a picture of the "Network And Sharing Centre" (grabbed when everything was working!) As you can see, I'm running Sun's VirtualBox on this machine and that creates a Network connection for itself. This doesn't seem to affect the intermittent dropping (i.e. the intermittent drops occur whether the VirtualBox connection is in use or not). When the connection does drop, I cannot access any internet pages, nor can I access the router's web admin page at http://192.168.1.1/, so I'm assuming I've lost all local LAN access too. It's definitely not the router (or the internet connection itself) as my laptop, using the wireless connection (and running Vista Home Premium) continues to be able to access the internet (and the router's web admin pages) just fine. Every time this happens, I can immediately restore all internet and LAN access by opening Network Adapter page, disabling the "Local Area Connection" and then re-enabling it. Give it a few seconds and everything is fine again. I assume this is because, beneath the GUI, it's effectively doing an "ipconfig /release" then "ipconfig /renew". Why does this happen in the first place, though? I've googled for this and seen quite a few other people (even on MSDN/Technet forums) experiencing the same or almost the same problem, but with no clear resolution. Suggestions of turning off IPv6 on the LAN adapter, and ensuring there's no power management "sleeping" the network adapter have been tried but do not cure the problem. There does not seem to be any particular sequence of events that cause it to happen either. I've had it go twice in 20 minutes when just randomly browsing the web with no other traffic, and I've also had it go once then not go again for 2-3 hours with the same sort of usage. Can anyone tell me why this is happening and how to make it stop? EDIT: Additional information based upon the answer provided so far: Firstly, I forgot the mention that this is Windows 7 64 bit if that makes any difference at all. I mentioned that I don't think the VirtualBox network adpater is causing this problem in any way, and I also have VirtualBox installed on two other machines, one running Vista Home Premium and the other running XP. Neither of these machine experience the same network connectivity issues as the Windows 7 machine. The IP assignment for the Windows 7 machine is the same both before and after the "drop". I have a DHCP server on the router issuing IP Addresses, however my Windows 7 machine uses a static address. Here's the output from "ipconfig": Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.2(Preferred) Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0 Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1 DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1 NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled Within the system's event logs, the only event that relates to the connection dropping is a "DNS Client Event" and this is generated after the connection has dropped and is an event detailing that DNS information can't be found for whatever website I may be trying to access, just as the connection drops: Log Name: System Source: Microsoft-Windows-DNS-Client Event ID: 1014 Task Category: None Level: Warning Keywords: User: NETWORK SERVICE Description: Name resolution for the name weather.service.msn.com timed out after none of the configured DNS servers responded. The network adapter chipset is Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller and I have confirmed that this is the correct chipset for the motherboard (Asus M4A77TD PRO), and in fact, Windows Update installed an updated driver for this on 12/Jan/2009. The details of the update say that it's a Realtek software update from December 2009. Incidentally, I was still having the same intermittent problems prior to this update. It seems to have made no difference at all. EDIT 2 (1 Feb 2010): In my quest to solve this problem, I have discovered some more interesting information. On another forum, someone suggested that I should try running Windows in "Safe Mode With Networking" and see if the problem continues to occur. This was a fantastic suggestion and I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner myself. So, I proceeded to run in Safe Mode with Networking for a number of hours, and amazingly, the "drops" didn't occur once. It was a positive discovery, however, due to the intermittent nature of the original problem, I wasn't completely convinced that the problem was cured. One thing I did note is that the fan on my GFX card was running alot louder than normal. This is due to the fact that I have an ASUS ENGTS250 graphics card (http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=B6imcoax3MRY42f3) which had a known problem with a noisy fan until a BIOS update fixed the issue. (See the "Manufacturer Response" here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121334 for details). Well, running in safe mode had the fan running (incorrectly) at full speed (as it did before the BIOS update), but with an (apparently) stable network connection. Obviously some driver was not loaded for the GFX card when in Safe Mode so this got me thinking about the GFX card (since the very noisy fan was quite obvious when running in Safe Mode). I rebooted into normal mode, and found that Nvidia had a very up-to-date new driver for my GFX card (only about 1 week old), so I downloaded the appropriate driver and installed it. After installation and a reboot, I was able to use my PC for an entire day with NO NETWORK DROPS!!! This was on Saturday. However, on the Sunday, I also had my PC for pretty much the entire day and experienced 2 network drops. No other changes have been made to my PC in this time. So, the story seems to be that updating my graphics card drivers seems to have improved (if not completely fixed) the issue, however, I'm still searching for a proper fix for this problem. Hopefully, this information may help anyone who may have additional ideas as to why this problem is occuring in the first place. (And why does new GFX card drivers have anything to do with the network?) I appreciate everyone's feedback so far. However, I'll have to ask once more if anyone has any further ideas of how to fix this particular problem? Thanks in advance.

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• CSS drop-down menus pushing page content down

  - by Mason Jones

  This is probably (hopefully) a pretty simple question, but I can't seem to get it to work so I'll turn to the experts here. I'm using a pretty straightforward CSS drop-down menu, with just a little JQuery involved. The issue is that when I hover over the drop-down and it opens, it's pushing everything on the page down below it rather then opening over it. I've tried messing with the z-index but that doesn't seem to be the issue. Any tips would be fantastic, thanks in advance. Here's the HTML; sorry it's not super-pretty, I had to rip out a bunch of stuff to make it simple and generic. <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <HTML style="zoom: 100%; "> <HEAD> <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.0/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> </HEAD> <BODY class="bodyclass" style="background:#BCE2F1; height: 100%;"> <DIV id="maincontainer" style="min-height: 100%;"> <STYLE type="text/css"> #cssdropdown, #cssdropdown ul { font-size: 9pt; background-color: black; list-style: none; } #cssdropdown, #cssdropdown * { padding: 0; margin: 0; } #cssdropdown li.headlink { width: 140px; float: left; margin-left: -1px; border: 1px black solid; background-color: white; text-align: center; } #cssdropdown li.headlink a { display: block; color: #339804; padding: 3px; text-decoration: none; } #cssdropdown li.headlink a:hover { background-color: #F8E0AC; font-weight: bold; } #cssdropdown li.headlink ul { display: none; border-top: 1px black solid; text-align: left; } #cssdropdown li.headlink:hover ul { display: block; text-decoration: none; } #cssdropdown li.headlink ul li a { padding: 5px; height: 15px; } #cssdropdown li.headlink ul li a:hover { background-color: #CCE9F5; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal; } /* #cssdropdown a { color: #CCE9F5; } */ #cssdropdown ul li a:hover { text-decoration: none; } #cssdropdown li.headlink { background-color: white; } #cssdropdown li.headlink ul { background-color: white; background-position: bottom; padding-bottom: 2px; } </STYLE> <SCRIPT language="JavaScript"> $(document).ready(function(){ $('#cssdropdown li.headlink').hover( function() { $('ul', this).css('display', 'block'); }, function() { $('ul', this).css('display', 'none'); }); }); </SCRIPT> <DIV class="navigation_box" style="border: none;"> <DIV class="innercontent"> <DIV style="background: white; float: left; padding: 5px; border: solid 1px black;"> LOGO </DIV> <DIV class="navmenu" style="float: right; bottom: 0; font-size: 9pt; text-align: right;"> <SPAN>Logged in as [email protected]</SPAN><BR> <UL id="cssdropdown"> <LI class="headlink"> <A href="http://localhost:3000/one">One</A> <UL style="display: none; "> <LI><A href="http://localhost:3000/one">Option One</A></LI> <LI><A href="http://localhost:3000/one">Option Two</A></LI> <LI><A href="http://localhost:3000/one">Option Three</A></LI> <LI><A href="http://localhost:3000/one">Option Four</A></LI> </UL> </LI> <LI class="headlink"> <A href="http://localhost:3000/two">Two</A> <UL style="display: none; "> <LI><A href="http://localhost:3000/two">Option Two-One</A></LI> <LI><A href="http://localhost:3000/two">Option Two-Two</A></LI> <LI><A href="http://localhost:3000/two">Option Two-Three</A></LI> </UL> </LI> <LI class="headlink" style="width: 80px;"> <A href="http://localhost:3000/three">Three</A> </LI> <LI class="headlink" style="width: 300px; padding-top: 2px; height: 19px;"> <FORM action="http://localhost:3000/search" method="post"> <P> Search: <INPUT id="searchwords" name="searchwords" size="20" type="text" value=""> <INPUT name="commit" type="submit" value="Find"> </P> </FORM> </LI> <LI class="headlink" style="width: 60px;"> <A href="http://localhost:3000/four">Four</A> </LI> <LI class="headlink" style="width: 60px;"> <A href="http://localhost:3000/logout">Logout</A> </LI> </UL> </DIV> </DIV> </DIV> <DIV id="contentwrapper" style="clear:both"> <DIV class="innercontent" style="margin: 0px 20px 20px 20px;"> <H1>Some test content here to fill things out a little bit.</H1> </DIV> </DIV> </DIV> <DIV id="footer" style="clear: both; float: bottom;"> <DIV class="innercontent" style="font-size: 10px;"> Copyright 2008-2010 </DIV> </DIV> </BODY>

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• How to insert sub root node in xml file

  - by pravakar

  Hi guys hope all are doing good. I want to create one sub root node in my xml file like, <CapitalJobsList xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <JobAds> -- element to create <JobAd> <AdvertiserDetails> <AdvertiserId>718508549</AdvertiserId> <AdvertiserName>ABC</AdvertiserName> </AdvertiserDetails> <ConsultantDetails> <ContactName>Naga Divakar</ContactName> <ContactPhone>6239 7755</ContactPhone> <ContactEmail>[email protected]</ContactEmail> <ContactFax>12345678912</ContactFax> </ConsultantDetails> <JobAdDetails> <DateEntered>2009-10-03T21:09:35.500</DateEntered> <AdvertiserJobRef>83754865</AdvertiserJobRef> <Title>IT Operations Manager</Title> <DescriptionShort>Large scale/exciting projects Mentor and manage o...</DescriptionShort> <Description>Large scale/exciting projects Mentor and manage others Management/technical mix This is a fantastic opportunity to join a high profile client who is active across both the commercial and Government domain. As the IT Operations Manager you will be responsible for leading and mentoring a small team of Infrastructure Engineers to ensure the availability and performance of the IT infrastructure. You w</Description> <SalaryMin>0.00</SalaryMin> <SalaryMax>0.00</SalaryMax> <WorkType xsi:nil="true" /> <Location>) as [JobAd/JobAdDetails/Bullets], isnull(Job</Location> <PostCode>2600</PostCode> <ClosingDate>2009-11-01T00:00:00</ClosingDate> <Keywords xsi:nil="true" /> <ApplyEmail xsi:nil="true" /> <ApplyURL>http://jobview.careerone.com.au/GetJob.aspx?JobID=83754865</ApplyURL> </JobAdDetails> <JobAdOptions> <BlindPost xsi:nil="true" /> <AdFormatType xsi:nil="true" /> <AdTemplateName xsi:nil="true" /> <ShowContactDetails xsi:nil="true" /> <ShowSalary xsi:nil="true" /> <HasVideo xsi:nil="true" /> <ResumeRequired>1</ResumeRequired> <ResidentsOnly>0</ResidentsOnly> </JobAdOptions> <CategoryList> <Category xsi:nil="true" /> </CategoryList> <RegionsList> <Region>ACT</Region> </RegionsList> <LevelsList> <Level xsi:nil="true" /> </LevelsList> </JobAd> <JobAd> <AdvertiserDetails> <AdvertiserId>718508549</AdvertiserId> <AdvertiserName>ABC</AdvertiserName> </AdvertiserDetails> <ConsultantDetails> <ContactName>Naga Divakar</ContactName> <ContactPhone>6239 7755</ContactPhone> <ContactEmail>[email protected]</ContactEmail> <ContactFax>12345678912</ContactFax> </ConsultantDetails> <JobAdDetails> <DateEntered>2009-10-03T21:09:35.530</DateEntered> <AdvertiserJobRef>83731488</AdvertiserJobRef> <Title>SAP Developers Required in Canberra - 12 month contract</Title> <DescriptionShort>My client, a large government department in Canbe...</DescriptionShort> <Description>My client, a large government department in Canberra, seeks two SAP Developers for 12 month ongoing contracts. Two SAP Developers Required Expert level ABAP programming skills Large SAP landscape - SAP R/3, SAP Web, SAP BI, SAP ITS My client, a large government department in Canberra, seeks two SAP Developers for 12 month ongoing contracts. My client is a large government department in Canberra, a</Description> <SalaryMin>0.00</SalaryMin> <SalaryMax>0.00</SalaryMax> <WorkType xsi:nil="true" /> <Location>) as [JobAd/JobAdDetails/Bullets], isnull(Job</Location> <PostCode>2600</PostCode> <ClosingDate>2009-11-01T00:00:00</ClosingDate> <Keywords xsi:nil="true" /> <ApplyEmail xsi:nil="true" /> <ApplyURL>http://jobview.careerone.com.au/GetJob.aspx?JobID=83731488</ApplyURL> </JobAdDetails> <JobAdOptions> <BlindPost xsi:nil="true" /> <AdFormatType xsi:nil="true" /> <AdTemplateName xsi:nil="true" /> <ShowContactDetails xsi:nil="true" /> <ShowSalary xsi:nil="true" /> <HasVideo xsi:nil="true" /> <ResumeRequired>1</ResumeRequired> <ResidentsOnly>0</ResidentsOnly> </JobAdOptions> <CategoryList> <Category xsi:nil="true" /> </CategoryList> <RegionsList> <Region>ACT</Region> </RegionsList> <LevelsList> <Level xsi:nil="true" /> </LevelsList> </JobAd> </JobAds> </CapitalJobsList> I have used the sql query for xml path like: select r.advid as [JobAd/AdvertiserDetails/AdvertiserId], CompanyName as [JobAd/AdvertiserDetails/AdvertiserName], firstname +'' ''+ lastname as [JobAd/ConsultantDetails/ContactName], WorkPhone as [JobAd/ConsultantDetails/ContactPhone], AdvEmail as [JobAd/ConsultantDetails/ContactEmail], FaxNo as [JobAd/ConsultantDetails/ContactFax], Job_CreatedDate as [JobAd/JobAdDetails/DateEntered], Job_Id as [JobAd/JobAdDetails/AdvertiserJobRef], Job_Title as [JobAd/JobAdDetails/Title], substring(Job_Description,0,50)+''...'' as [JobAd/JobAdDetails/DescriptionShort], Job_Description as [JobAd/JobAdDetails/Description], CONVERT(DECIMAL(10,2),MinSalary) as [JobAd/JobAdDetails/SalaryMin], CONVERT(DECIMAL(10,2),MaxSalary) as [JobAd/JobAdDetails/SalaryMax], Job_Type as [JobAd/JobAdDetails/WorkType], isnull(Job_Bullets,'') as [JobAd/JobAdDetails/Bullets], isnull(Job_Location,'') as [JobAd/JobAdDetails/Location], Job_PostCode as [JobAd/JobAdDetails/PostCode], Job_ExpireDate as [JobAd/JobAdDetails/ClosingDate], Job_Keywords as [JobAd/JobAdDetails/Keywords], ApplyEmail as [JobAd/JobAdDetails/ApplyEmail], Job_BrandURL+Job_Id as [JobAd/JobAdDetails/ApplyURL], BlindPost as [JobAd/JobAdOptions/BlindPost], AdFormatType as [JobAd/JobAdOptions/AdFormatType], AdTemplateName as [JobAd/JobAdOptions/AdTemplateName], ShowContactDetails as [JobAd/JobAdOptions/ShowContactDetails], ShowSalary as [JobAd/JobAdOptions/ShowSalary], HasVideo as [JobAd/JobAdOptions/HasVideo], ResumeRequired as [JobAd/JobAdOptions/ResumeRequired], ResidentsOnly as [JobAd/JobAdOptions/ResidentsOnly], Job_Category as [JobAd/CategoryList/Category], Job_Location_State as [JobAd/RegionsList/Region], [Level] as [JobAd/LevelsList/Level] from DR_Adv_Registration r, DR_CareerOne_ACTJobs j where r.Advid = j.Advid and job_location_city like(''%'+''+ @City +''+'%'') and job_location_state in('''+ @State +''') and job_status=1 for xml path(''''), Root(''CapitalJobsList''),ELEMENTS XSINIL So, suggest me how to get the sub root node. Thanks in advance

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• client problems - misaligned expectations & not following SDLC protocols

  - by louism

  hi guys, im having some serious problems with a client on a project - i could use some advice please the short version i have been working with this client now for almost 6 months without any problems (a classified website project in the range of 500 hours) over the last few days things have drastically deteriorated to the point where ive had to place the project on-hold whilst i work-out what to do (this has pissed the client off even more) to be simplistic, the root cause of the issue is this: the client doesnt read the specs i make for him, i code the feature, he than wants to change things, i tell him its not to the agreed spec and that that change will have to be postponed and possibly charged for, he gets upset and rants saying 'hes paid for the feature' and im not keeping to the agreement (<- misalignment of expectations) i think the root cause of the root cause is my clients failure to take my SDLC protocols seriously. i have a bug tracking system in place which he practically refuses to use (he still emails me bugs), he doesnt seem to care to much for the protocols i use for dealing with scope creep and change control the whole situation came to a head recently where he 'cracked it' (an aussie term for being fed-up). the more terms like 'postponed for post-launch implementation', 'costed feature addition', and 'not to agreed spec' i kept using, the worse it got finally, he began to bully me - basically insisting i shut-up and do the work im being paid for. i wrote a long-winded email explaining how wrong he was on all these different points, and explaining what all the SDLC protocols do to protect the success of the project. than i deleted that email and wrote a new one in the new email, i suggested as a solution i write up a list of grievances we both had. we than review the list and compromise on different points: he gets some things he wants, i get some things i want. sometimes youve got to give ground to get ground his response to this suggestion was flat-out refusal, and a restatement that i should just get on with the work ive been paid to do so there you have the very subjective short version. if you have the time and inclination, the long version may be a little less bias as it has the email communiques between me and my client the long version (with background) the long version works by me showing you the email communiques which lead to the situation coming to a head. so here it is, judge for yourself where the trouble started... 1. client asked me why something was missing from a feature i just uploaded, my response was to show him what was in the spec: it basically said the item he was looking for was never going to be included 2. [clients response...] Memo Louis, We are following your own title fields and keeping a consistent layout. Why the big fuss about not adding "Part". It simply replaces "model" and is consistent with your current title fields. 3. [my response...] hi [client], the 'part' field appeared to me as a redundancy / mistake. i requested clarification but never received any in a timely manner (about 2 weeks ago) the specification for this feature also indicated it wasnt going to be included: RE: "Why the big fuss about not adding "Part" " it may not appear so, but it would actually be a lot of work for me to now add a 'Part' field it could take me up to 15-20 minutes to properly explain why its such a big undertaking to do this, but i would prefer to use that time instead to work on completing your v1.1 features as a simplistic explanation - it connects to the change in paradigm from a 'generic classified ad' model to a 'specific attributes for specific categories' model basically, i am saying it is a big fuss, but i understand that it doesnt look that way - after all, it is just one ity-bitty field :) if you require a fuller explanation, please let me know and i will commit the time needed to write that out also, if you recall when we first started on the project, i said that with the effort/time required for features, you would likely not know off the top of your head. you may think something is really complex, but in reality its quite simple, you might think something is easy - but it could actually be a massive trauma to code (which is the case here with the 'Part' field). if you also recalled, i said the best course of action is to just ask, and i would let you know on a case-by-case basis 4. [email from me to client...] hi [client], the online catalogue page is now up live (see my email from a few days ago for information on how it works) note: the window of opportunity for input/revisions on what data the catalogue stores has now closed (as i have put the code up live now) RE: the UI/layout of the online catalogue page you may still do visual/ui tweaks to the page at the moment (this window for input/revisions will close in a couple of days time) 5. [email from client to me...] *(note: i had put up the feature & asked the client to review it, never heard back from them for a few days)* Memo Louis, Here you go again. CLOSED without a word of input from the customer. I don't think so. I will reply tomorrow regarding the content and functionality we require from this feature. 5. [from me to client...] hi [client]: RE: from my understanding, you are saying that the mini-sale yard control would change itself based on the fact someone was viewing for parts & accessories <- is that correct? this change is outside the scope of the v1.1 mini-spec and therefore will need to wait 'til post launch for costing/implementation 6. [email from client to me...] Memo Louis, Following your v1.1 mini-spec and all your time paid in full for the work selected. We need to make the situation clear. There will be no further items held for post-launch. Do not expect us to pay for any further items other than those we have agreed upon. You have undertaken to complete the Parts and accessories feature as follows. Obviously, as part of this process the "mini search" will be effected, and will require "adaption to make sense". 7. [email from me to client...] hi [client], RE: "There will be no further items held for post-launch. Do not expect us to pay for any further items other than those we have agreed upon." a few points to consider: 1) the specification for the 'parts & accessories' feature was as follows: (i.e. [what] "...we have agreed upon.") 2) you have received the 'parts & accessories' feature free of charge (you have paid $0 for it). ive spent two days coding that feature as a gesture of good will i would request that you please consider these two facts carefully and sincerely 8. [email from client to me...] Memo Louis, I don't see how you are giving us anything for free. From your original fee proposal you have deleted more than 30 hours of included features. Your title "shelved features". Further you have charged us twice by adding back into the site, at an addition cost, some of those "shelved features" features. See v1.1 mini-spec. Did include in your original fee proposal a change request budget but then charge without discussion items included in v1.1 mini-spec. Included a further Features test plan for a regression test, a fee of 10 hours that would not have been required if the "shelved features" were not left out of the agreed fee proposal. I have made every attempt to satisfy your your uneven business sense by offering you everything your heart desired, in the v1.1 mini-spec, to be left once again with your attitude of "its too hard, lets leave it for post launch". I am no longer accepting anything less than what we have contracted you to do. That is clearly defined in v1.1 mini-spec, and you are paid in advance for delivering those items as an acceptable function. a few notes about the above email... i had to cull features from the original spec because it didnt fit into the budget. i explained this to the client at the start of the project (he wanted more features than he had budget hours to do them all) nothing has been charged for twice, i didnt charge the client for culled features. im charging him to now do those culled features the draft version of the project schedule included a change request budget of 10 hours, but i had to remove that to meet the budget (the client may not have been aware of this to be fair to them) what the client refers to as my attitude of 'too hard/leave it for post-launch', i called a change request protocol and a method for keeping scope creep under control 9. [email from me to client...] hi [client], RE: "...all your grievances..." i had originally written out a long email response; it was fantastic, it had all these great points of how 'you were wrong' and 'i was right', you would of loved it (and by 'loved it', i mean it would of just infuriated you more) so, i decided to deleted it start over, for two reasons: 1) a long email is being disrespectful of your time (youre a busy businessman with things to do) 2) whos wrong or right gets us no closer to fixing the problems we are experiencing what i propose is this... i prepare a bullet point list of your grievances and my grievances (yes, im unhappy too about how things are going - and it has little to do with money) i submit this list to you for you to add to as necessary we then both take a good hard look at this list, and we decide which areas we are willing to give ground on as an example, the list may look something like this: "louis, you keep taking away features you said you would do" [your grievance 2] [your grievance 3] [your grievance ...] "[client], i feel you dont properly read the specs i prepare for you..." [my grievance 2] [my grievance 3] [my grievance ...] if you are willing to give this a try, let me know will it work? who knows. but if it doesnt, we can always go back to arguing some more :) obviously, this will only work if you are willing to give it a genuine try, and you can accept that you may have to 'give some ground to get some ground' what do you think? 10. [email from client to me ...] Memo Louis, Instead of wasting your time listing grievances, I would prefer you complete the items in v1.1 mini-spec, to a satisfactory conclusion. We almost had the website ready for launch until you brought the v1.1 mini-spec into the frame. Obviously I expected you could complete the v1.1 mini-spec in a two-week time frame as you indicated and give the site a more profession presentation. Most of the problems have been caused by you not following our instructions, but deciding to do what you feel like at the time. And then arguing with us how the missing information is not necessary. For instance "Parts and Accessories". Why on earth would you leave out the parts heading, when it ties-in with the fields you have already developed. It replaces "model" and is just as important in the context of information that appears in the "Details" panel. We are at a stage where the the v1.1 mini-spec needs to be completed without further time wasting and the site is complete (subject to all features working). We are on standby at this end to do just that. Let me know when you are back, working on the site and we will process and complete each v1.1 mini-spec, item by item, until the job is complete. 11. [last email from me to client...] hi [client], based on this reply, and your demonstrated unwillingness to compromise/give any ground on issues at hand, i have decided to place your project on-hold for the moment i will be considering further options on how to over-come our challenges over the next few days i will contact you by monday 17/may to discuss any new options i have come up with, and if i believe it is appropriate to restart work on your project at that point or not told you it was long... what do you think?

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