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• How I do VCS

  - by Wes McClure

  After years of dabbling with different version control systems and techniques, I wanted to share some of what I like and dislike in a few blog posts.  To start this out, I want to talk about how I use VCS in a team environment.  These come in a series of tips or best practices that I try to follow.  Note: This list is subject to change in the future. Always use some form of version control for all aspects of software development. Development is an evolution.  Looking back at where we were is an invaluable asset in that process.  This includes data schemas and documentation. Reverting / reapplying changes is absolutely critical for efficient development. The tools I use: Code: Hg (preferred), SVN Database: TSqlMigrations Documents: Sometimes in code repository, also SharePoint with versioning Always tag a commit (changeset) with comments This is a quick way to describe to someone else (or your future self) what the changeset entails. Be brief but courteous. One or two sentences about the task, not the actual changes. Use precommit hooks or setup the central repository to reject changes without comments. Link changesets to documentation If your project management system integrates with version control, or has a way to externally reference stories, tasks etc then leave a reference in the commit.  This helps locate more information about the commit and/or related changesets. It’s best to have a precommit hook or system that requires this information, otherwise it’s easy to forget. Ability to work offline is required, including commits and history Yes this requires a DVCS locally but doesn’t require the central repository to be a DVCS.  I prefer to use either Git or Hg but if it isn’t possible to migrate the central repository, it’s still possible for a developer to push / pull changes to that repository from a local Hg or Git repository. Never lock resources (files) in a central repository… Rude! We have merge tools for a reason, merging sucked a long time ago, it doesn’t anymore… stop locking files! This is unproductive, rude and annoying to other team members. Always review everything in your commit. Never ever commit a set of files without reviewing the changes in each. Never add a file without asking yourself, deep down inside, does this belong? If you leave to make changes during a review, start the review over when you come back.  Never assume you didn’t touch a file, double check. This is another reason why you want to avoid large, infrequent commits. Requirements for tools Quickly show pending changes for the entire repository. Default action for a resource with pending changes is a diff. Pluggable diff & merge tool Produce a unified diff or a diff of all changes.  This is helpful to bulk review changes instead of opening each file. The central repository is not your own personal dump yard.  Breaking this rule is a sure fire way to get the F bomb dropped in front of your name, multiple times. If you turn on Visual Studio’s commit on closing studio option, I will personally break your fingers. By the way, the person(s) in charge of this feature should be fired and never be allowed near programming, ever again. Commit (integrate) to the central repository / branch frequently I try to do this before leaving each day, especially without a DVCS.  One never knows when they might need to work from remote the following day. Never commit commented out code If it isn’t needed anymore, delete it! If you aren’t sure if it might be useful in the future, delete it! This is why we have history. If you don’t know why it’s commented out, figure it out and then either uncomment it or delete it. Don’t commit build artifacts, user preferences and temporary files. Build artifacts do not belong in VCS, everything in them is present in the code. (ie: bin\*, obj\*, *.dll, *.exe) User preferences are your settings, stop overriding my preferences files! (ie: *.suo and *.user files) Most tools allow you to ignore certain files and Hg/Git allow you to version this as an ignore file.  Set this up as a first step when creating a new repository! Be polite when merging unresolved conflicts. Count to 10, cuss, grab a stress ball and realize it’s not a big deal.  Actually, it’s an opportunity to let you know that someone else is working in the same area and you might want to communicate with them. Following the other rules, especially committing frequently, will reduce the likelihood of this. Suck it up, we all have to deal with this unintended consequence at times.  Just be careful and GET FAMILIAR with your merge tool.  It’s really not as scary as you think.  I personally prefer KDiff3 as its merging capabilities rock. Don’t blindly merge and then blindly commit your changes, this is rude and unprofessional.  Make sure you understand why the conflict occurred and which parts of the code you want to keep.  Apply scrutiny when you commit a manual merge: review the diff! Make sure you test the changes (build and run automated tests) Become intimate with your version control system and the tools you use with it. Avoid trial and error as much as is possible, sit down and test the tool out, read some tutorials etc.  Create test repositories and walk through common scenarios. Find the most efficient way to do your work.  These tools will be used repetitively, so inefficiencies will add up. Sometimes this involves a mix of tools, both GUI and CLI. I like a combination of both Tortoise Hg and hg cli to get the job efficiently. Always tag releases Create a way to find a given release, whether this be in comments or an explicit tag / branch.  This should be readily discoverable. Create release branches to patch bugs and then merge the changes back to other development branch(es). If using feature branches, strive for periodic integrations. Feature branches often cause forked code that becomes irreconcilable.  Strive to re-integrate somewhat frequently with the branch this code will ultimately be merged into.  This will avoid merge conflicts in the future. Feature branches are best when they are mutually exclusive of active development in other branches. Use and abuse local commits , at least one per task in a story. This builds a trail of changes in your local repository that can be pushed to a central repository when the story is complete. Never commit a broken build or failing tests to the central repository. It’s ok for a local commit to break the build and/or tests.  In fact, I encourage this if it helps group the changes more logically.  This is one of the main reasons I got excited about DVCS, when I wanted more than one changeset for a set of pending changes but some files could be grouped into both changesets (like solution file / project file changes). If you have more than a dozen outstanding changed resources, there should probably be more than one commit involved. Exceptions when maintaining code bases that require shotgun surgery, in this case, it’s a design smell :) Don’t version sensitive information Especially usernames / passwords   There is one area I haven’t found a solution I like yet: versioning 3rd party libraries and/or code.  I really dislike keeping any assemblies in the repository, but seems to be a common practice for external libraries.  Please feel free to share your ideas about this below.    -Wes

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• How to configure VPN in Windows XP

  - by SAMIR BHOGAYTA

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

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• Building KPIs to monitor your business Its not really about the Technology

  When I have discussions with people about Business Intelligence, one of the questions the inevitably come up is about building KPIs and how to accomplish that. From a technical level the concept of a KPI is very simple, almost too simple in that it is like the tip of an iceberg floating above the water. The key to that iceberg is not really the tip, but the mass of the iceberg that is hidden beneath the surface upon which the tip sits. The analogy of the iceberg is not meant to indicate that the foundation of the KPI is overly difficult or complex. The disparity in size in meant to indicate that the larger thing that needs to be defined is not the technical tip, but the underlying business definition of what the KPI means. From a technical perspective the KPI consists of primarily the following items: Actual Value This is the actual value data point that is being measured. An example would be something like the amount of sales. Target Value This is the target goal for the KPI. This is a number that can be measured against Actual Value. An example would be $10,000 in monthly sales. Target Indicator Range This is the definition of ranges that define what type of indicator the user will see comparing the Actual Value to the Target Value. Most often this is defined by stoplight, but can be any indicator that is going to show a status in a quick fashion to the user. Typically this would be something like: Red Light = Actual Value more than 5% below target; Yellow Light = Within 5% of target either direction; Green Light = More than 5% higher than Target Value Status\Trend Indicator This is an optional attribute of a KPI that is typically used to show some kind of trend. The vast majority of these indicators are used to show some type of progress against a previous period. As an example, the status indicator might be used to show how the monthly sales compare to last month. With this type of indicator there needs to be not only a definition of what the ranges are for your status indictor, but then also what value the number needs to be compared against. So now we have an idea of what data points a KPI consists of from a technical perspective lets talk a bit about tools. As you can see technically there is not a whole lot to them and the choice of technology is not as important as the definition of the KPIs, which we will get to in a minute. There are many different types of tools in the Microsoft BI stack that you can use to expose your KPI to the business. These include Performance Point, SharePoint, Excel, and SQL Reporting Services. There are pluses and minuses to each technology and the right technology is based a lot on your goals and how you want to deliver the information to the users. Additionally, there are other non-Microsoft tools that can be used to expose KPI indicators to your business users. Regardless of the technology used as your front end, the heavy lifting of KPI is in the business definition of the values and benchmarks for that KPI. The discussion about KPIs is very dependent on the history of an organization and how much they are exposed to the attributes of a KPI. Often times when discussing KPIs with a business contact who has not been exposed to KPIs the discussion tends to also be a session educating the business user about what a KPI is and what goes into the definition of a KPI. The majority of times the business user has an idea of what their actual values are and they have been tracking those numbers for some time, generally in Excel and all manually. So they will know the amount of sales last month along with sales two years ago in the same month. Where the conversation tends to get stuck is when you start discussing what the target value should be. The actual value is answering the What and How much questions. When you are talking about the Target values you are asking the question Is this number good or bad. Typically, the user will know whether or not the value is good or bad, but most of the time they are not able to quantify what is good or bad. Their response is usually something like I just know. Because they have been watching the sales quantity for years now, they can tell you that a 5% decrease in sales this month might actually be a good thing, maybe because the salespeople are all waiting until next month when the new versions come out. It can sometimes be very hard to break the business people of this habit. One of the fears generally is that the status indicator is not subjective. Thus, in the scenario above, the business user is going to be fearful that their boss, just looking at a negative red indicator, is going to haul them out to the woodshed for a bad month. But, on the flip side, if all you are displaying is the amount of sales, only a person with knowledge of last month sales and the target amount for this month would have any idea if $10,000 in sales is good or not. Here is where a key point about KPIs needs to be communicated to both the business user and any user who might be viewing the results of that KPI. The KPI is just one tool that is used to report on business performance. The KPI is meant as a quick indicator of one business statistic. It is not meant to tell the entire story. It does not answer the question Why. Its primary purpose is to objectively and quickly expose an area of the business that might warrant more review. There is always going to be the need to do further analysis on any potential negative or neutral KPI. So, hopefully, once you have convinced your business user to come up with some target numbers and ranges for status indicators, you then need to take the next step and help them answer the Why question. The main question here to ask is, Okay, you see the indicator and you need to discover why the number is what is, where do you go?. The answer is usually a combination of sources. A sales manager might have some of the following items at their disposal (Marketing report showing a decrease in the promotional discounts for the month, Pricing Report showing the reduction of prices of older models, an Inventory Report showing the discontinuation of a particular product line, or a memo showing the ending of a large affiliate partnership. The answers to the question Why are never as simple as a single indicator value. Bring able to quickly get to this information is all about designing how a user accesses the KPIs and then also how easily they can get to the additional information they need. This is where a Dashboard mentality can come in handy. For example, the business user can have a dashboard that shows their KPIs, but also has links to some of the common reports that they run regarding Sales Data. The users boss may have the same KPIs on their dashboard, but instead of links to individual reports they are going to have a link to a status report that was created by the user that pulls together all the data about the KPI in a summary format the users boss can review. So some of the key things to think about when building or evaluating KPIs for your organization: Technology should not be the driving factor KPIs are of little value without some indicator for whether a value is good, bad or neutral. KPIs only give an answer to the Is this number good\bad? question Make sure the ability to drill into the Why of a KPI is close at hand and relevant to the user who is viewing the KPI. The KPI is a key business tool when defined properly to help monitor business performance across the enterprise in an objective and consistent manner. At times it might feel like the process of defining the business aspects of a KPI can sometimes be arduous, the payoff in the end can far outweigh the costs. Some of the benefits of going through this process are a better understanding of the key metrics for an organization and the measure of those metrics and a consistent snapshot of business performance that can be utilized across the organization. And I think that these are benefits to any organization regardless of the technology or the implementation.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: Using &lsquo;default&rsquo; to Get Default Values

  - 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. Today’s little wonder is another of those small items that can help a lot in certain situations, especially when writing generics.  In particular, it is useful in determining what the default value of a given type would be. The Problem: what’s the default value for a generic type? There comes a time when you’re writing generic code where you may want to set an item of a given generic type.  Seems simple enough, right?  We’ll let’s see! Let’s say we want to query a Dictionary<TKey, TValue> for a given key and get back the value, but if the key doesn’t exist, we’d like a default value instead of throwing an exception. So, for example, we might have a the following dictionary defined: 1: var lookup = new Dictionary<int, string> 2: { 3: { 1, "Apple" }, 4: { 2, "Orange" }, 5: { 3, "Banana" }, 6: { 4, "Pear" }, 7: { 9, "Peach" } 8: }; And using those definitions, perhaps we want to do something like this: 1: // assume a default 2: string value = "Unknown"; 3:  4: // if the item exists in dictionary, get its value 5: if (lookup.ContainsKey(5)) 6: { 7: value = lookup[5]; 8: } But that’s inefficient, because then we’re double-hashing (once for ContainsKey() and once for the indexer).  Well, to avoid the double-hashing, we could use TryGetValue() instead: 1: string value; 2:  3: // if key exists, value will be put in value, if not default it 4: if (!lookup.TryGetValue(5, out value)) 5: { 6: value = "Unknown"; 7: } But the “flow” of using of TryGetValue() can get clunky at times when you just want to assign either the value or a default to a variable.  Essentially it’s 3-ish lines (depending on formatting) for 1 assignment.  So perhaps instead we’d like to write an extension method to support a cleaner interface that will return a default if the item isn’t found: 1: public static class DictionaryExtensions 2: { 3: public static TValue GetValueOrDefault<TKey, TValue>(this Dictionary<TKey, TValue> dict, 4: TKey key, TValue defaultIfNotFound) 5: { 6: TValue value; 7:  8: // value will be the result or the default for TValue 9: if (!dict.TryGetValue(key, out value)) 10: { 11: value = defaultIfNotFound; 12: } 13:  14: return value; 15: } 16: } 17:  So this creates an extension method on Dictionary<TKey, TValue> that will attempt to get a value using the given key, and will return the defaultIfNotFound as a stand-in if the key does not exist. This code compiles, fine, but what if we would like to go one step further and allow them to specify a default if not found, or accept the default for the type?  Obviously, we could overload the method to take the default or not, but that would be duplicated code and a bit heavy for just specifying a default.  It seems reasonable that we could set the not found value to be either the default for the type, or the specified value. So what if we defaulted the type to null? 1: public static TValue GetValueOrDefault<TKey, TValue>(this Dictionary<TKey, TValue> dict, 2: TKey key, TValue defaultIfNotFound = null) // ... No, this won’t work, because only reference types (and Nullable<T> wrapped types due to syntactical sugar) can be assigned to null.  So what about a calling parameterless constructor? 1: public static TValue GetValueOrDefault<TKey, TValue>(this Dictionary<TKey, TValue> dict, 2: TKey key, TValue defaultIfNotFound = new TValue()) // ... No, this won’t work either for several reasons.  First, we’d expect a reference type to return null, not an “empty” instance.  Secondly, not all reference types have a parameter-less constructor (string for example does not).  And finally, a constructor cannot be determined at compile-time, while default values can. The Solution: default(T) – returns the default value for type T Many of us know the default keyword for its uses in switch statements as the default case.  But it has another use as well: it can return us the default value for a given type.  And since it generates the same defaults that default field initialization uses, it can be determined at compile-time as well. For example: 1: var x = default(int); // x is 0 2:  3: var y = default(bool); // y is false 4:  5: var z = default(string); // z is null 6:  7: var t = default(TimeSpan); // t is a TimeSpan with Ticks == 0 8:  9: var n = default(int?); // n is a Nullable<int> with HasValue == false Notice that for numeric types the default is 0, and for reference types the default is null.  In addition, for struct types, the value is a default-constructed struct – which simply means a struct where every field has their default value (hence 0 Ticks for TimeSpan, etc.). So using this, we could modify our code to this: 1: public static class DictionaryExtensions 2: { 3: public static TValue GetValueOrDefault<TKey, TValue>(this Dictionary<TKey, TValue> dict, 4: TKey key, TValue defaultIfNotFound = default(TValue)) 5: { 6: TValue value; 7:  8: // value will be the result or the default for TValue 9: if (!dict.TryGetValue(key, out value)) 10: { 11: value = defaultIfNotFound; 12: } 13:  14: return value; 15: } 16: } Now, if defaultIfNotFound is unspecified, it will use default(TValue) which will be the default value for whatever value type the dictionary holds.  So let’s consider how we could use this: 1: lookup.GetValueOrDefault(1); // returns “Apple” 2:  3: lookup.GetValueOrDefault(5); // returns null 4:  5: lookup.GetValueOrDefault(5, “Unknown”); // returns “Unknown” 6:  Again, do not confuse a parameter-less constructor with the default value for a type.  Remember that the default value for any type is the compile-time default for any instance of that type (0 for numeric, false for bool, null for reference types, and struct will all default fields for struct).  Consider the difference: 1: // both zero 2: int i1 = default(int); 3: int i2 = new int(); 4:  5: // both “zeroed” structs 6: var dt1 = default(DateTime); 7: var dt2 = new DateTime(); 8:  9: // sb1 is null, sb2 is an “empty” string builder 10: var sb1 = default(StringBuilder()); 11: var sb2 = new StringBuilder(); So in the above code, notice that the value types all resolve the same whether using default or parameter-less construction.  This is because a value type is never null (even Nullable<T> wrapped types are never “null” in a reference sense), they will just by default contain fields with all default values. However, for reference types, the default is null and not a constructed instance.  Also it should be noted that not all classes have parameter-less constructors (string, for instance, doesn’t have one – and doesn’t need one). Summary Whenever you need to get the default value for a type, especially a generic type, consider using the default keyword.  This handy word will give you the default value for the given type at compile-time, which can then be used for initialization, optional parameters, etc. Technorati Tags: C#,CSharp,.NET,Little Wonders,default

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• Windows Azure Evolution &ndash; Deploy Web Sites (WAWS Part 3)

  - by Shaun

  This is the sixth post of my Windows Azure Evolution series. After talked a bit about the new caching preview feature in the previous one, let’s back to the Windows Azure Web Sites (WAWS).   Git and GitHub Integration In the third post I introduced the overview functionality of WAWS and demonstrated how to create a WordPress blog through the build-in application gallery. And in the fourth post I covered how to use the TFS service preview to deploy an ASP.NET MVC application to the web site through the TFS integration. WAWS also have the Git integration. I’m not going to talk very detailed about the Git and GitHub integration since there are a bunch of information on the internet you can refer to. To enable the Git just go to the web site item in the developer portal and click the “Set up Git publishing”. After specified the username and password the windows azure platform will establish the Git integration and provide some basic guide. As you can see, you can download the Git binaries, commit the files and then push to the remote repository. Regarding the GitHub, since it’s built on top of Git it should work. Maarten Balliauw have a wonderful post about how to integrate GitHub to Windows Azure Web Site you can find here.   WebMatrix 2 RC WebMatrix is a lightweight web application development tool provided by Microsoft. It utilizes WebDeploy or FTP to deploy the web application to the server. And in WebMatrix 2.0 RC it added the feature to work with Windows Azure. First of all we need to download the latest WebMatrix 2 through the Web Platform Installer 4.0. Just open the WebPI and search “WebMatrix”, or go to its home page download its web installer. Once we have WebMatrix 2, we need to download the publish file of our WAWS. Let’s go to the developer portal and open the web site we want to deploy and download the publish file from the link on the right hand side. This file contains the necessary information of publishing the web site through WebDeploy and FTP, which can be used in WebMatrix, Visual Studio, etc.. Once we have the publish file we can open the WebMatrix, click the Open Site, Remote Site. Then it will bring up a dialog where we can input the information of the remote site. Since we have our publish file already, we can click the “Import publish settings” and select the publish file, then we can see the site information will be populated automatically. Click OK, the WebMatrix will connect to the remote site, which is the WAWS we had deployed already, retrieve the folders and files information. We can open files in WebMatrix and modify. But since WebMatrix is a lightweight web application tool, we cannot update the backend C# code. So in this case, we will modify the frontend home page only. After saved our modification, WebMatrix will compare the files between in local and remote and then it will only upload the modified files to Windows Azure through the connection information in the publish file. Since it only update the files which were changed, this minimized the bandwidth and deployment duration. After few seconds we back to the website and the modification had been applied.   Visual Studio and WebDeploy The publish file we had downloaded can be used not only in WebMatrix but also Visual Studio. As we know in Visual Studio we can publish a web application by clicking the “Publish” item from the project context menu in the solution explorer, and we can specify the WebDeploy, FTP or File System for the publish target. Now we can use the WAWS publish file to let Visual Studio publish the web application to WAWS. Let’s create a new ASP.NET MVC Web Application in Visual Studio 2010 and then click the “Publish” in solution explorer. Once we have the Windows Azure SDK 1.7 installed, it will update the web application publish dialog. So now we can import the publish information from the publish file. Select WebDeploy as the publish method. We can select FTP as well, which is supported by Windows Azure and the FTP information was in the same publish file. In the last step the publish wizard can check the files which will be uploaded to the remote site before the actually publishing. This gives us a chance to review and amend the files. Same as the WebMatrix, Visual Studio will compare the files between local and WAWS and determined which had been changed and need to be published. Finally Visual Studio will publish the web application to windows azure through WebDeploy protocol. Once it finished we can browse our website.   FTP Deployment The publish file we downloaded contains the connection information to our web site via both WebDeploy and FTP. When using WebMatrix and Visual Studio we can select WebDeploy or FTP. WebDeploy method can be used very easily from WebMatrix and Visual Studio, with the file compare feature. But the FTP gives more flexibility. We can use any FTP client to upload files to windows azure regardless which client and OS we are using. Open the publish file in any text editor, we can find the connection information very easily. As you can see the publish file is actually a XML file with WebDeploy and FTP information in plain text attributes. And once we have the FTP URL, username and password, when can connect to the site and upload and download files. For example I opened FileZilla and connected to my WAWS through FTP. Then I can download files I am interested in and modify them on my local disk. Then upload back to windows azure through FileZilla. Then I can see the new page.   Summary In this simple and quick post I introduced vary approaches to deploy our web application to Windows Azure Web Site. It supports TFS integration which I mentioned previously. It also supports Git and GitHub, WebDeploy and FTP as well.   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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• How you can extend Tasklists in Fusion Applications

  - by Elie Wazen

  In this post we describe the process of modifying and extending a Tasklist available in the Regional Area of a Fusion Applications UI Shell. This is particularly useful to Customers who would like to expose Setup Tasks (generally available in the Fusion Setup Manager application) in the various functional pillars workareas. Oracle Composer, the tool used to implement such extensions allows changes to be made at runtime. The example provided in this document is for an Oracle Fusion Financials page. Let us examine the case of a customer role who requires access to both, a workarea and its associated functional tasks, and to an FSM (setup) task.  Both of these tasks represent ADF Taskflows but each is accessible from a different page.  We will show how an FSM task is added to a Functional tasklist and made accessible to a user from within a single workarea, eliminating the need to navigate between the FSM application and the Functional workarea where transactions are conducted. In general, tasks in Fusion Applications are grouped in two ways: Setup tasks are grouped in tasklists available to implementers in the Functional Setup Manager (FSM). These Tasks are accessed by implementation users and in general do not represent daily operational tasks that fit into a functional business process and were consequently included in the FSM application. For these tasks, the primary organizing principle is precedence between tasks. If task "Manage Suppliers" has prerequisites, those tasks must precede it in a tasklist. Task Lists are organized to efficiently implement an offering. Tasks frequently performed as part of business process flows are made available as links in the tasklist of their corresponding menu workarea. The primary organizing principle in the menu and task pane entries is to group tasks that are generally accessed together. Customizing a tasklist thus becomes required for business scenarios where a task packaged under FSM as a setup task, is for a particular customer a regular maintenance task that is accessed for record updates or creation as part of normal operational activities and where the frequency of this access merits the inclusion of that task in the related operational tasklist A user with the role of maintaining Journals in General Ledger is also responsible for maintaining Chart of Accounts Mappings.  In the Fusion Financials Product Family, Manage Journals is a task available from within the Journals Menu whereas Chart of Accounts Mapping is available via FSM under the Define Chart of Accounts tasklist Figure 1. The Manage Chart of Accounts Mapping Task in FSM Figure 2. The Manage Journals Task in the Task Pane of the Journals Workarea Our goal is to simplify cross task navigation and allow the user to access both tasks from a single tasklist on a single page without having to navigate to FSM for the Mapping task and to the Journals workarea for the Manage task. To accomplish that, we use Oracle Composer to customize  the Journals tasklist by adding to it the Mapping task. Identify the Taskflow name and path of the FSM Task The first step in our process is to identify the underlying taskflow for the Manage Chart of Accounts Mappings task. We select to Setup and Maintenance from the Navigator to launch the FSM Application, and we query the task from Manage Tasklists and Tasks Figure 3. Task Details including Taskflow path The Manage Chart of Accounts Mapping Task Taskflow is: /WEB-INF/oracle/apps/financials/generalLedger/sharedSetup/coaMappings/ui/flow /CoaMappingsMainAreaFlow.xml#CoaMappingsMainAreaFlow We copy that value and use it later as a parameter to our new task in the customized Journals Tasklist. Customize the Journals Page A user with Administration privileges can start the run time customization directly from the Administration Menu of the Global Area.  This customization is done at the Site level and once implemented becomes available to all users with access to the Journals Workarea. Figure 4.  Customization Menu The Oracle Composer Window is displayed in the same browser and the Hierarchy of the page component is displayed and available for modification. Figure 5.  Oracle Composer In the composer Window select the PanelFormLayout node and click on the Edit Button.  Note that the selected component is simultaneously highlighted in the lower pane in the browser. In the Properties popup window, select the Tasks List and Task Properties Tab, where the user finds the hierarchy of the Tasklist and is able to Edit nodes or create new ones. src="https://blogs.oracle.com/FunctionalArchitecture/resource/TL5.jpg" Figure 6.  The Tasklist in edit mode Add a Child Task to the Tasklist In the Edit Window the user will now create a child node at the desired level in the hierarchy by selecting the immediate parent node and clicking on the insert node button.  This process requires four values to be set as described in Table 1 below. Parameter Value How to Determine the Value Focus View Id /JournalEntryPage This is the Focus View ID of the UI Shell where the Tasklist we want to customize is.  A simple way to determine this value is to copy it from any of the Standard tasks on the Tasklist Label COA Mapping This is the Display name of the Task as it will appear in the Tasklist Task Type dynamicMain If the value is dynamicMain, the page contains a new link in the Regional Area. When you click the link, a new tab with the loaded task opens Taskflowid /WEB-INF/oracle/apps/financials/generalLedger/sharedSetup/ coaMappings/ui/flow/ CoaMappingsMainAreaFlow.xml#CoaMappingsMainAreaFlow This is the Taskflow path we retrieved from the Task Definition in FSM earlier in the process Table 1.  Parameters and Values for the Task to be added to the customized Tasklist Figure 7.   The parameters window of the newly added Task   Access the FSM Task from the Journals Workarea Once the FSM task is added and its parameters defined, the user saves the record, closes the Composer making the new task immediately available to users with access to the Journals workarea (Refer to Figure 8 below). Figure 8.   The COA Mapping Task is now visible and can be invoked from the Journals Workarea   Additional Considerations If a Task Flow is part of a product that is deployed on the same app server as the Tasklist workarea then that task flow can be added to a customized tasklist in that workarea. Otherwise that task flow can be invoked from its parent product’s workarea tasklist by selecting that workarea from the Navigator menu. For Example The following Taskflows  belong respectively to the Subledger Accounting, and to the General Ledger Products.  /WEB-INF/oracle/apps/financials/subledgerAccounting/accountingMethodSetup/mappingSets/ui/flow/MappingSetFlow.xml#MappingSetFlow /WEB-INF/oracle/apps/financials/generalLedger/sharedSetup/coaMappings/ui/flow/CoaMappingsMainAreaFlow.xml#CoaMappingsMainAreaFlow Since both the Subledger Accounting and General Ledger products are part of the LedgerApp J2EE Applicaton and are both deployed on the General Ledger Cluster Server (Figure 8 below), the user can add both of the above taskflows to the  tasklist in the  /JournalEntryPage FocusVIewID Workarea. Note:  both FSM Taskflows and Functional Taskflows can be added to the Tasklists as described in this document Figure 8.   The Topology of the Fusion Financials Product Family. Note that SubLedger Accounting and General Ledger are both deployed on the Ledger App Conclusion In this document we have shown how an administrative user can edit the Tasklist in the Regional Area of a Fusion Apps page using Oracle Composer. This is useful for cases where tasks packaged in different workareas are frequently accessed by the same user. By making these tasks available from the same page, we minimize the number of steps in the navigation the user has to do to perform their transactions and queries in Fusion Apps.  The example explained above showed that tasks classified as Setup tasks, meaning made accessible to implementation users from the FSM module can be added to the workarea of their respective Fusion application. This eliminates the need to navigate to FSM to access tasks that are both setup and regular maintenance tasks. References Oracle Fusion Applications Extensibility Guide 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.5) Part Number E16691-02 (Section 3.2) Oracle Fusion Applications Developer's Guide 11g Release 1 (11.1.4) Part Number E15524-05

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

  - by Sysadmin Geek

  One of the more popular tools of the Sysinternals suite among system administrators is BGInfo which tacks real-time system information to your desktop wallpaper when you first login. For obvious reasons, having information such as system memory, available hard drive space and system up time (among others) right in front of you is very convenient when you are managing several systems. A little known feature about this handy utility is the ability to have system information automatically saved to a SQL database or some other data file. With a few minutes of setup work you can easily configure BGInfo to record system information of all your network computers in a centralized storage location. You can then use this data to monitor or report on these systems however you see fit. BGInfo Setup If you are familiar with BGInfo, you can skip this section. However, if you have never used this tool, it takes just a few minutes to setup in order to capture the data you are looking for. When you first open BGInfo, a timer will be counting down in the upper right corner. Click the countdown button to keep the interface up so we can edit the settings. Now edit the information you want to capture from the available fields on the right. Since all the output will be redirected to a central location, don’t worry about configuring the layout or formatting. Configuring the Storage Database BGInfo supports the ability to store information in several database formats: SQL Server Database, Access Database, Excel and Text File. To configure this option, open File > Database. Using a Text File The simplest, and perhaps most practical, option is to store the BGInfo data in a comma separated text file. This format allows for the file to be opened in Excel or imported into a database. To use a text file or any other file system type (Excel or MS Access), simply provide the UNC to the respective file. The account running the task to write to this file will need read/write access to both the share and NTFS file permissions. When using a text file, the only option is to have BGInfo create a new entry each time the capture process is run which will add a new line to the respective CSV text file. Using a SQL Database If you prefer to have the data dropped straight into a SQL Server database, BGInfo support this as well. This requires a bit of additional configuration, but overall it is very easy. The first step is to create a database where the information will be stored. Additionally, you will want to create a user account to fill data into this table (and this table only). For your convenience, this script creates a new database and user account (run this as Administrator on your SQL Server machine): @SET Server=%ComputerName%.@SET Database=BGInfo@SET UserName=BGInfo@SET Password=passwordSQLCMD -S “%Server%” -E -Q “Create Database [%Database%]“SQLCMD -S “%Server%” -E -Q “Create Login [%UserName%] With Password=N’%Password%’, DEFAULT_DATABASE=[%Database%], CHECK_EXPIRATION=OFF, CHECK_POLICY=OFF”SQLCMD -S “%Server%” -E -d “%Database%” -Q “Create User [%UserName%] For Login [%UserName%]“SQLCMD -S “%Server%” -E -d “%Database%” -Q “EXEC sp_addrolemember N’db_owner’, N’%UserName%’” Note the SQL user account must have ‘db_owner’ permissions on the database in order for BGInfo to work correctly. This is why you should have a SQL user account specifically for this database. Next, configure BGInfo to connect to this database by clicking on the SQL button. Fill out the connection properties according to your database settings. Select the option of whether or not to only have one entry per computer or keep a history of each system. The data will then be dropped directly into a table named “BGInfoTable” in the respective database.   Configure User Desktop Options While the primary function of BGInfo is to alter the user’s desktop by adding system info as part of the wallpaper, for our use here we want to leave the user’s wallpaper alone so this process runs without altering any of the user’s settings. Click the Desktops button. Configure the Wallpaper modifications to not alter anything.   Preparing the Deployment Now we are all set for deploying the configuration to the individual machines so we can start capturing the system data. If you have not done so already, click the Apply button to create the first entry in your data repository. If all is configured correctly, you should be able to open your data file or database and see the entry for the respective machine. Now click the File > Save As menu option and save the configuration as “BGInfoCapture.bgi”.   Deploying to Client Machines Deployment to the respective client machines is pretty straightforward. No installation is required as you just need to copy the BGInfo.exe and the BGInfoCapture.bgi to each machine and place them in the same directory. Once in place, just run the command: BGInfo.exe BGInfoCapture.bgi /Timer:0 /Silent /NoLicPrompt Of course, you probably want to schedule the capture process to run on a schedule. This command creates a Scheduled Task to run the capture process at 8 AM every morning and assumes you copied the required files to the root of your C drive: SCHTASKS /Create /SC DAILY /ST 08:00 /TN “System Info” /TR “C:\BGInfo.exe C:\BGInfoCapture.bgi /Timer:0 /Silent /NoLicPrompt” Adjust as needed, but the end result is the scheduled task command should look something like this:   Download BGInfo from Sysinternals Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Create Your Own Custom ASCII Art from Any Image How To Process Camera Raw Without Paying for Adobe Photoshop How Do You Block Annoying Text Message (SMS) Spam? How to Use and Master the Notoriously Difficult Pen Tool in Photoshop HTG Explains: What Are the Differences Between All Those Audio Formats? 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• Creating an SMF service for mercurial web server

  - by Chris W Beal

  I'm working on a project at the moment, which has a number of contributers. We're managing the project gate (which is stand alone) with mercurial. We want to have an easy way of seeing the changelog, so we can show management what is going on.  Luckily mercurial provides a basic web server which allows you to see the changes, and drill in to change sets. This can be run as a daemon, but as it was running on our build server, every time it was rebooted, someone needed to remember to start the process again. This is of course a classic usage of SMF. Now I'm not an experienced person at writing SMF services, so it took me 1/2 an hour or so to figure it out the first time. But going forward I should know what I'm doing a bit better. I did reference this doc extensively. Taking a step back, the command to start the mercurial web server is $ hg serve -p <port number> -d So we somehow need to get SMF to run that command for us. In the simplest form, SMF services are really made up of two components. The manifest Usually lives in /var/svc/manifest somewhere Can be imported from any location The method Usually live in /lib/svc/method I simply put the script straight in that directory. Not very repeatable, but it worked Can take an argument of start, stop, or refresh Lets start with the manifest. This looks pretty complex, but all it's doing is describing the service name, the dependencies, the start and stop methods, and some properties. The properties can be by instance, that is to say I could have multiple hg serve processes handling different mercurial projects, on different ports simultaneously Here is the manifest I wrote. I stole extensively from the examples in the Documentation. So my manifest looks like this $ cat hg-serve.xml <?xml version="1.0"?> <!DOCTYPE service_bundle SYSTEM "/usr/share/lib/xml/dtd/service_bundle.dtd.1"> <service_bundle type='manifest' name='hg-serve'> <service name='application/network/hg-serve' type='service' version='1'> <dependency name='network' grouping='require_all' restart_on='none' type='service'> <service_fmri value='svc:/milestone/network:default' /> </dependency> <exec_method type='method' name='start' exec='/lib/svc/method/hg-serve %m' timeout_seconds='2' /> <exec_method type='method' name='stop' exec=':kill' timeout_seconds='2'> </exec_method> <instance name='project-gate' enabled='true'> <method_context> <method_credential user='root' group='root' /> </method_context> <property_group name='hg-serve' type='application'> <propval name='path' type='astring' value='/src/project-gate'/> <propval name='port' type='astring' value='9998' /> </property_group> </instance> <stability value='Evolving' /> <template> <common_name> <loctext xml:lang='C'>hg-serve</loctext> </common_name> <documentation> <manpage title='hg' section='1' /> </documentation> </template> </service> </service_bundle> So the only things I had to decide on in this are the service name "application/network/hg-serve" the start and stop methods (more of which later) and the properties. This is the information I need to pass to the start method script. In my case the port I want to start the web server on "9998", and the path to the source gate "/src/project-gate". These can be read in to the start method. So now lets look at the method scripts $ cat /lib/svc/method/hg-serve #!/sbin/sh # # # Copyright (c) 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. # # Standard prolog # . /lib/svc/share/smf_include.sh if [ -z $SMF_FMRI ]; then echo "SMF framework variables are not initialized." exit $SMF_EXIT_ERR fi # # Build the command line flags # # Get the port and directory from the SMF properties port=`svcprop -c -p hg-serve/port $SMF_FMRI` dir=`svcprop -c -p hg-serve/path $SMF_FMRI` echo "$1" case "$1" in 'start') cd $dir /usr/bin/hg serve -d -p $port ;; *) echo "Usage: $0 {start|refresh|stop}" exit 1 ;; esac exit $SMF_EXIT_OK This is all pretty self explanatory, we read the port and directory using svcprop, and use those simply to run a command in the start case. We don't need to implement a stop case, as the manifest says to use "exec=':kill'for the stop method. Now all we need to do is import the manifest and start the service, but first verify the manifest # svccfg verify /path/to/hg-serve.xml If that doesn't give an error try importing it # svccfg import /path/to/hg-serve.xml If like me you originally put the hg-serve.xml file in /var/svc/manifest somewhere you'll get an error and told to restart the import service svccfg: Restarting svc:/system/manifest-import The manifest being imported is from a standard location and should be imported with the command : svcadm restart svc:/system/manifest-import # svcadm restart svc:/system/manifest-import and you're nearly done. You can look at the service using svcs -l # svcs -l hg-serve fmri svc:/application/network/hg-serve:project-gate name hg-serve enabled false state disabled next_state none state_time Thu May 31 16:11:47 2012 logfile /var/svc/log/application-network-hg-serve:project-gate.log restarter svc:/system/svc/restarter:default contract_id 15749 manifest /var/svc/manifest/network/hg/hg-serve.xml dependency require_all/none svc:/milestone/network:default (online) And look at the interesting properties # svcprop hg-serve hg-serve/path astring /src/project-gate hg-serve/port astring 9998 ...stuff deleted.... Then simply enable the service and if every things gone right, you can point your browser at http://server:9998 and get a nice graphical log of project activity. # svcadm enable hg-serve # svcs -l hg-serve fmri svc:/application/network/hg-serve:project-gate name hg-serve enabled true state online next_state none state_time Thu May 31 16:18:11 2012 logfile /var/svc/log/application-network-hg-serve:project-gate.log restarter svc:/system/svc/restarter:default contract_id 15858 manifest /var/svc/manifest/network/hg/hg-serve.xml dependency require_all/none svc:/milestone/network:default (online) None of this is rocket science, but a bit fiddly. Hence I thought I'd blog it. It might just be you see this in google and it clicks with you more than one of the many other blogs or how tos about it. Plus I can always refer back to it myself in 3 weeks, when I want to add another project to the server, and I've forgotten how to do it.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, May 23, 2010

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

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• Metro: Grouping Items in a ListView Control

  - by Stephen.Walther

  The purpose of this blog entry is to explain how you can group list items when displaying the items in a WinJS ListView control. In particular, you learn how to group a list of products by product category. Displaying a grouped list of items in a ListView control requires completing the following steps: Create a Grouped data source from a List data source Create a Grouped Header Template Declare the ListView control so it groups the list items Creating the Grouped Data Source Normally, you bind a ListView control to a WinJS.Binding.List object. If you want to render list items in groups, then you need to bind the ListView to a grouped data source instead. The following code – contained in a file named products.js — illustrates how you can create a standard WinJS.Binding.List object from a JavaScript array and then return a grouped data source from the WinJS.Binding.List object by calling its createGrouped() method: (function () { "use strict"; // Create List data source var products = new WinJS.Binding.List([ { name: "Milk", price: 2.44, category: "Beverages" }, { name: "Oranges", price: 1.99, category: "Fruit" }, { name: "Wine", price: 8.55, category: "Beverages" }, { name: "Apples", price: 2.44, category: "Fruit" }, { name: "Steak", price: 1.99, category: "Other" }, { name: "Eggs", price: 2.44, category: "Other" }, { name: "Mushrooms", price: 1.99, category: "Other" }, { name: "Yogurt", price: 2.44, category: "Other" }, { name: "Soup", price: 1.99, category: "Other" }, { name: "Cereal", price: 2.44, category: "Other" }, { name: "Pepsi", price: 1.99, category: "Beverages" } ]); // Create grouped data source var groupedProducts = products.createGrouped( function (dataItem) { return dataItem.category; }, function (dataItem) { return { title: dataItem.category }; }, function (group1, group2) { return group1.charCodeAt(0) - group2.charCodeAt(0); } ); // Expose the grouped data source WinJS.Namespace.define("ListViewDemos", { products: groupedProducts }); })(); Notice that the createGrouped() method requires three functions as arguments: groupKey – This function associates each list item with a group. The function accepts a data item and returns a key which represents a group. In the code above, we return the value of the category property for each product. groupData – This function returns the data item displayed by the group header template. For example, in the code above, the function returns a title for the group which is displayed in the group header template. groupSorter – This function determines the order in which the groups are displayed. The code above displays the groups in alphabetical order: Beverages, Fruit, Other. Creating the Group Header Template Whenever you create a ListView control, you need to create an item template which you use to control how each list item is rendered. When grouping items in a ListView control, you also need to create a group header template. The group header template is used to render the header for each group of list items. Here’s the markup for both the item template and the group header template: <div id="productTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div class="product"> <span data-win-bind="innerText:name"></span> <span data-win-bind="innerText:price"></span> </div> </div> <div id="productGroupHeaderTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div class="productGroupHeader"> <h1 data-win-bind="innerText: title"></h1> </div> </div> You should declare the two templates in the same file as you declare the ListView control – for example, the default.html file. Declaring the ListView Control The final step is to declare the ListView control. Here’s the required markup: <div data-win-control="WinJS.UI.ListView" data-win-options="{ itemDataSource:ListViewDemos.products.dataSource, itemTemplate:select('#productTemplate'), groupDataSource:ListViewDemos.products.groups.dataSource, groupHeaderTemplate:select('#productGroupHeaderTemplate'), layout: {type: WinJS.UI.GridLayout} }"> </div> In the markup above, six properties of the ListView control are set when the control is declared. First the itemDataSource and itemTemplate are specified. Nothing new here. Next, the group data source and group header template are specified. Notice that the group data source is represented by the ListViewDemos.products.groups.dataSource property of the grouped data source. Finally, notice that the layout of the ListView is changed to Grid Layout. You are required to use Grid Layout (instead of the default List Layout) when displaying grouped items in a ListView. Here’s the entire contents of the default.html page: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>ListViewDemos</title> <!-- WinJS references --> <link href="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/css/ui-dark.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/base.js"></script> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/ui.js"></script> <!-- ListViewDemos references --> <link href="/css/default.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="/js/default.js"></script> <script src="/js/products.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <style type="text/css"> .product { width: 200px; height: 100px; border: white solid 1px; font-size: x-large; } </style> </head> <body> <div id="productTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div class="product"> <span data-win-bind="innerText:name"></span> <span data-win-bind="innerText:price"></span> </div> </div> <div id="productGroupHeaderTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div class="productGroupHeader"> <h1 data-win-bind="innerText: title"></h1> </div> </div> <div data-win-control="WinJS.UI.ListView" data-win-options="{ itemDataSource:ListViewDemos.products.dataSource, itemTemplate:select('#productTemplate'), groupDataSource:ListViewDemos.products.groups.dataSource, groupHeaderTemplate:select('#productGroupHeaderTemplate'), layout: {type: WinJS.UI.GridLayout} }"> </div> </body> </html> Notice that the default.html page includes a reference to the products.js file: <script src=”/js/products.js” type=”text/javascript”></script> The default.html page also contains the declarations of the item template, group header template, and ListView control. Summary The goal of this blog entry was to explain how you can group items in a ListView control. You learned how to create a grouped data source, a group header template, and declare a ListView so that it groups its list items.

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• The Data Scientist

  - by BuckWoody

  A new term - well, perhaps not that new - has come up and I’m actually very excited about it. The term is Data Scientist, and since it’s new, it’s fairly undefined. I’ll explain what I think it means, and why I’m excited about it. In general, I’ve found the term deals at its most basic with analyzing data. Of course, we all do that, and the term itself in that definition is redundant. There is no science that I know of that does not work with analyzing lots of data. But the term seems to refer to more than the common practices of looking at data visually, putting it in a spreadsheet or report, or even using simple coding to examine data sets. The term Data Scientist (as far as I can make out this early in it’s use) is someone who has a strong understanding of data sources, relevance (statistical and otherwise) and processing methods as well as front-end displays of large sets of complicated data. Some - but not all - Business Intelligence professionals have these skills. In other cases, senior developers, database architects or others fill these needs, but in my experience, many lack the strong mathematical skills needed to make these choices properly. I’ve divided the knowledge base for someone that would wear this title into three large segments. It remains to be seen if a given Data Scientist would be responsible for knowing all these areas or would specialize. There are pretty high requirements on the math side, specifically in graduate-degree level statistics, but in my experience a company will only have a few of these folks, so they are expected to know quite a bit in each of these areas. Persistence The first area is finding, cleaning and storing the data. In some cases, no cleaning is done prior to storage - it’s just identified and the cleansing is done in a later step. This area is where the professional would be able to tell if a particular data set should be stored in a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS), across a set of key/value pair storage (NoSQL) or in a file system like HDFS (part of the Hadoop landscape) or other methods. Or do you examine the stream of data without storing it in another system at all? This is an important decision - it’s a foundation choice that deals not only with a lot of expense of purchasing systems or even using Cloud Computing (PaaS, SaaS or IaaS) to source it, but also the skillsets and other resources needed to care and feed the system for a long time. The Data Scientist sets something into motion that will probably outlast his or her career at a company or organization. Often these choices are made by senior developers, database administrators or architects in a company. But sometimes each of these has a certain bias towards making a decision one way or another. The Data Scientist would examine these choices in light of the data itself, starting perhaps even before the business requirements are created. The business may not even be aware of all the strategic and tactical data sources that they have access to. Processing Once the decision is made to store the data, the next set of decisions are based around how to process the data. An RDBMS scales well to a certain level, and provides a high degree of ACID compliance as well as offering a well-known set-based language to work with this data. In other cases, scale should be spread among multiple nodes (as in the case of Hadoop landscapes or NoSQL offerings) or even across a Cloud provider like Windows Azure Table Storage. In fact, in many cases - most of the ones I’m dealing with lately - the data should be split among multiple types of processing environments. This is a newer idea. Many data professionals simply pick a methodology (RDBMS with Star Schemas, NoSQL, etc.) and put all data there, regardless of its shape, processing needs and so on. A Data Scientist is familiar not only with the various processing methods, but how they work, so that they can choose the right one for a given need. This is a huge time commitment, hence the need for a dedicated title like this one. Presentation This is where the need for a Data Scientist is most often already being filled, sometimes with more or less success. The latest Business Intelligence systems are quite good at allowing you to create amazing graphics - but it’s the data behind the graphics that are the most important component of truly effective displays. This is where the mathematics requirement of the Data Scientist title is the most unforgiving. In fact, someone without a good foundation in statistics is not a good candidate for creating reports. Even a basic level of statistics can be dangerous. Anyone who works in analyzing data will tell you that there are multiple errors possible when data just seems right - and basic statistics bears out that you’re on the right track - that are only solvable when you understanding why the statistical formula works the way it does. And there are lots of ways of presenting data. Sometimes all you need is a “yes” or “no” answer that can only come after heavy analysis work. In that case, a simple e-mail might be all the reporting you need. In others, complex relationships and multiple components require a deep understanding of the various graphical methods of presenting data. Knowing which kind of chart, color, graphic or shape conveys a particular datum best is essential knowledge for the Data Scientist. Why I’m excited I love this area of study. I like math, stats, and computing technologies, but it goes beyond that. I love what data can do - how it can help an organization. I’ve been fortunate enough in my professional career these past two decades to work with lots of folks who perform this role at companies from aerospace to medical firms, from manufacturing to retail. Interestingly, the size of the company really isn’t germane here. I worked with one very small bio-tech (cryogenics) company that worked deeply with analysis of complex interrelated data. So  watch this space. No, I’m not leaving Azure or distributed computing or Microsoft. In fact, I think I’m perfectly situated to investigate this role further. We have a huge set of tools, from RDBMS to Hadoop to allow me to explore. And I’m happy to share what I learn along the way.

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• Silverlight MEF – Download On Demand

  - by PeterTweed

  Take the Slalom Challenge at www.slalomchallenge.com! A common challenge with building complex applications in Silverlight is the initial download size of the xap file.  MEF enables us to build composable applications that allows us to build complex composite applications.  Wouldn’t it be great if we had a mechanism to spilt out components into different Silverlight applications in separate xap files and download the separate xap file only if needed?   MEF gives us the ability to do this.  This post will cover the basics needed to build such a composite application split between different silerlight applications and download the referenced silverlight application only when needed. Steps: 1.     Create a Silverlight 4 application 2.     Add references to the following assemblies: System.ComponentModel.Composition.dll System.ComponentModel.Composition.Initialization.dll 3.     Add a new Silverlight 4 application called ExternalSilverlightApplication to the solution that was created in step 1.  Ensure the new application is hosted in the web application for the solution and choose to not create a test page for the new application. 4.     Delete the App.xaml and MainPage.xaml files – they aren’t needed. 5.     Add references to the following assemblies in the ExternalSilverlightApplication project: System.ComponentModel.Composition.dll System.ComponentModel.Composition.Initialization.dll 6.     Ensure the two references above have their Copy Local values set to false.  As we will have these two assmblies in the original Silverlight application, we will have no need to include them in the built ExternalSilverlightApplication build. 7.     Add a new user control called LeftControl to the ExternalSilverlightApplication project. 8.     Replace the LayoutRoot Grid with the following xaml:     <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="Beige" Margin="40" >         <Button Content="Left Content" Margin="30"></Button>     </Grid> 9.     Add the following statement to the top of the LeftControl.xaml.cs file using System.ComponentModel.Composition; 10.   Add the following attribute to the LeftControl class     [Export(typeof(LeftControl))]   This attribute tells MEF that the type LeftControl will be exported – i.e. made available for other applications to import and compose into the application. 11.   Add a new user control called RightControl to the ExternalSilverlightApplication project. 12.   Replace the LayoutRoot Grid with the following xaml:     <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="Green" Margin="40"  >         <TextBlock Margin="40" Foreground="White" Text="Right Control" FontSize="16" VerticalAlignment="Center" HorizontalAlignment="Center" ></TextBlock>     </Grid> 13.   Add the following statement to the top of the RightControl.xaml.cs file using System.ComponentModel.Composition; 14.   Add the following attribute to the RightControl class     [Export(typeof(RightControl))] 15.   In your original Silverlight project add a reference to the ExternalSilverlightApplication project. 16.   Change the reference to the ExternalSilverlightApplication project to have it’s Copy Local value = false.  This will ensure that the referenced ExternalSilverlightApplication Silverlight application is not included in the original Silverlight application package when it it built.  The ExternalSilverlightApplication Silverlight application therefore has to be downloaded on demand by the original Silverlight application for it’s controls to be used. 1.     In your original Silverlight project add the following xaml to the LayoutRoot Grid in MainPage.xaml:         <Grid.RowDefinitions>             <RowDefinition Height="65*" />             <RowDefinition Height="235*" />         </Grid.RowDefinitions>         <Button Name="LoaderButton" Content="Download External Controls" Click="Button_Click"></Button>         <StackPanel Grid.Row="1" Orientation="Horizontal" HorizontalAlignment="Center" >             <Border Name="LeftContent" Background="Red" BorderBrush="Gray" CornerRadius="20"></Border>             <Border Name="RightContent" Background="Red" BorderBrush="Gray" CornerRadius="20"></Border>         </StackPanel>       The borders will hold the controls that will be downlaoded, imported and composed via MEF when the button is clicked. 2.     Add the following statement to the top of the MainPage.xaml.cs file using System.ComponentModel.Composition; 3.     Add the following properties to the MainPage class:         [Import(typeof(LeftControl))]         public LeftControl LeftUserControl { get; set; }         [Import(typeof(RightControl))]         public RightControl RightUserControl { get; set; }   This defines properties accepting LeftControl and RightControl types.  The attrributes are used to tell MEF the discovered type that should be applied to the property when composition occurs. 17.   Add the following event handler for the button click to the MainPage.xaml.cs file:         private void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)         {                   DeploymentCatalog deploymentCatalog =     new DeploymentCatalog("ExternalSilverlightApplication.xap");                   CompositionHost.Initialize(deploymentCatalog);                   deploymentCatalog.DownloadCompleted += (s, i) =>                 {                     if (i.Error == null)                     {                         CompositionInitializer.SatisfyImports(this);                           LeftContent.Child = LeftUserControl;                         RightContent.Child = RightUserControl;                         LoaderButton.IsEnabled = false;                     }                 };                   deploymentCatalog.DownloadAsync();         } This is where the magic happens!  The deploymentCatalog object is pointed to the ExternalSilverlightApplication.xap file.  It is then associated with the CompositionHost initialization.  As the download will be asynchronous, an eventhandler is created for the DownloadCompleted event.  The deploymentCatalog object is then told to start the asynchronous download. The event handler that executes when the download is completed uses the CompositionInitializer.SatisfyImports() function to tell MEF to satisfy the Imports for the current class.  It is at this point that the LeftUserControl and RightUserControl properties are initialized with composed objects from the downloaded ExternalSilverlightApplication.xap package. 18.   Run the application click the Download External Controls button and see the controls defined in the ExternalSilverlightApplication application loaded into the original Silverlight application. Congratulations!  You have implemented download on demand capabilities for composite applications using the MEF DeploymentCatalog class.  You are now able to segment your applications into separate xap file for deployment.

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• Avoid the “Social Silo” - Learn Why and How

  - by Brian Dayton

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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’m not going to spend any more real estate than needed on this—social media is big. Facebook hit the Billion user mark in October, that’s 1 out of every 7 humans on the planet. This past Summer (in the Northern hemisphere) Twitter passed the 400 Million Tweet/day mark. The list of social properties and data points goes on and on. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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;} With social your customer, prospect, or constituent has pervasive access—through mobile—to a global audience, the ability to influence friends, friends of friends, and even people they will never meet. They also have the unique opportunity to forge a deeper relationship with your business—telling you what they like, what they don’t like, how you can help, and what they’d like to see more of. Are you listening? Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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;} What’s the Bottom Line for Business? Businesses need to be where their customers are—on social properties. They need to be available and responsive in those channels—24x7x365. They need to engage and communicate in new ways—sometimes in less than 140 characters and with empathy, not a 1-way megaphone. Finally, businesses need to look at social as an extension of their existing business practices. Not as a silo’d communication channel limited to marketing. Social Can’t Be a Silo – Learn Why @ Oracle CloudWorld When a business is on social networks they represent the whole business. That’s how a customer, constituent, partner or potential candidate sees it. Those organizations that have moved on the opportunity to build closer relationships through social marketing have already made the first step. Social Selling, Service, eCommerce, and Recruiting are external-facing opportunities that leading organizations are moving on right now. This strategy, one of weaving social into and across your business processes—and leveraging social concepts and technologies for internal collaboration—is something you can learn about during an Oracle CloudWorld event in a city near you. You’ll hear and see social relationship management concepts, best-practices, and recommendations woven into topics, discussions, and demonstrations throughout the event—from Marketing and Sales to Service and Human Resources. Stay Tuned and Avoid Potholes By all indications social is here to stay but it’s moving fast and social business strategies are evolving rapidly. At Oracle CloudWorld you’ll also get the opportunity to learn how to avoid some of the potholes on the road to #socialbusiness. Stay tuned to this blog. In future posts I’ll cover some of those potholes including the challenges of Social@Scale and Parallel Processes. Jump-start your social business strategy or learn how to refine and expand what you’re doing already at Oracle CloudWorld. Want to learn more about what Oracle is doing in social? Check out www.oracle.com/social or, if you're looking for a quick read my co-worker, Pat Ma, has a great post on this blog summarizing some popular Social Relationship Management use cases.

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• Packaging Swing apps with integrated JavaFX content

  - by igor

  JavaFX provides a lot of interesting capabilities for developing rich client applications in Java, but what if you are working on an existing Swing application and you want to take advantage of these new features?  Maybe you want to use one or two controls like the LineChart or a MediaView.  Maybe you want to embed a large Scene Graph as an initial step in porting your application to FX.  A hybrid Swing/FX application might just be the answer. Developing a hybrid Swing + JavaFX application is not terribly difficult, but until recently the deployment of hybrid applications has not simple as a "pure" JavaFX application.  The existing tools focused on packaging FX Applications, or Swing applications - they did not account for hybrid applications. But with JavaFX 2.2 the tools include support for this hybrid application use case.  Solution  In JavaFX 2.2 we extended the packaging ant tasks to greatly simplify deploying hybrid applications.  You now use the same deployment approach as you would for pure JavaFX applications.  Just bundle your main application jar with the fx:jar ant task and then generate html/jnlp files using fx:deploy.  The only difference is setting toolkit attribute for the fx:application tag as shown below: <fx:application id="swingFXApp" mainClass="${main.class}" toolkit="swing"/>  The value of ${main.class} in the example above is your application class which has a main method.  It does not need to extend JavaFX Application class. The resulting package provides support for the same set of execution modes as a package for a JavaFX application, although the packages which are created are not identical to the packages created for a pure FX application.  You will see two JNLP files generated in the case of a hybrid application - one for use from Swing applet and another for the webstart launch.  Note that these improvements do not alter the set of features available to Swing applications. The packaging tools just make it easier to use the advanced features of JavaFX in your Swing application. The same limits still apply, for example a Swing application can not use JavaFX Preloaders and code changes are necessary to support HTML splash screens. Why should I use the JavaFX ant tasks for packaging my Swing application?  While using FX packaging tool for a Swing application may seem like a mismatch at face value, there are some really good reasons to use this approach.  The primary justification for our packaging tools is to simplify the creation of your application artifacts, and to reduce manual errors.  Plus, no one should have to write JNLP by hand. Some specific benefits include: Your application jar will include a launcher program.  This improves your standalone launch by: checking for the JavaFX runtime guiding the user through any necessary installations setting the system proxy for Java The ant tasks will generate JNLP and HTML files for your swing app: avoids learning unnecessary details about JNLP, and eliminates the error-prone hand editing of JNLP files simplifies using advanced features like embedding JNLP and signing jars as BLOBs to improve launch performance.you can also embed the signing certificate details to improve the user's experience  allows the use of web page templates to inject the generated code directly into your actual web page instead of being forced to copy/paste the generated code snippets. What about native packing? Absolutely!  The very same ant task can generate a native bundle for a Swing application with JavaFX content.  Try running one of these sample native bundles for the "SwingInterop" FX example: exe and dmg.   I also used another feature on these examples: a click-through license agreement for .exe installers and OS X DMG drag installers. Small Caveat This packaging procedure is optimized around using the JavaFX packaging tools for your entire Swing application.  If you are trying to embed JavaFX content into existing project (with an existing build/packing process) then you may need to experiment in order to find the best way to integrate the JavaFX packaging steps into your existing build procedure. As long as you can use ant in your build process this should be a workable approach. It some cases solution could be less than ideal. For example, you need to use fx:jar to package your main jar file in order to produce a double-clickable jar or a native bundle.  The jar will be created from scratch, but you may already be creating the main jar file with a custom manifest.  This may lead to some redundant steps in your build process.  Hopefully the benefits will outweigh the problems. This is an area of ongoing development for the team, and we will continue to refine and improve both the tools and the process. Please share your experiences and suggestions with us.  You can comment here on the blog or file issues to JIRA. Sample code Here is the full ant code used to package SwingInterop.  You can grab latest JavaFX samples and try it yourself:  <target name="-post-jar"> <taskdef resource="com/sun/javafx/tools/ant/antlib.xml" uri="javafx:com.sun.javafx.tools.ant" classpath="${javafx.tools.ant.jar}"/> <!-- Mark application as Swing-based --> <fx:application id="swingFXApp" mainClass="${main.class}" toolkit="swing"/> <!-- Create doubleclickable jar file with embedded launcher --> <fx:jar destfile="${dist.jar}"> <fileset dir="${build.classes.dir}"/> <fx:application refid="swingFXApp" name="SwingInterop"/> <manifest> <attribute name="Implementation-Vendor" value="${application.vendor}"/> <attribute name="Implementation-Title" value="${application.title}"/> <attribute name="Implementation-Version" value="1.0"/> </manifest> </fx:jar> <!-- sign application jar. Use new self signed certificate --> <delete file="${build.dir}/test.keystore"/> <genkey alias="TestAlias" storepass="xyz123" keystore="${build.dir}/test.keystore" dname="CN=Samples, OU=JavaFX Dev, O=Oracle, C=US"/> <fx:signjar keystore="${build.dir}/test.keystore" alias="TestAlias" storepass="xyz123"> <fileset file="${dist.jar}"/> </fx:signjar> <!-- generate JNLPs, HTML and native bundles --> <fx:deploy width="960" height="720" includeDT="true" nativeBundles="all" outdir="${basedir}/${dist.dir}" embedJNLP="true" outfile="${application.title}"> <fx:application refId="swingFXApp"/> <fx:resources> <fx:fileset dir="${basedir}/${dist.dir}" includes="SwingInterop.jar"/> </fx:resources> <fx:permissions/> <info title="Sample app: ${application.title}" vendor="${application.vendor}"/> </fx:deploy> </target>

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• In Case You Weren’t There: Blogwell NYC

  - by Mike Stiles

  0 0 1 1009 5755 Vitrue 47 13 6751 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* 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-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} Your roving reporter roved out to another one of Socialmedia.org’s fantastic Blogwell events, this time in NYC. As Central Park and incredible weather beckoned, some of the biggest brand names in the world gathered to talk about how they’re incorporating social into marketing and CRM, as well as extending social across their entire organizations internally. Below we present a collection of the live tweets from many of the key sessions GE @generalelectricJon Lombardo, Leader of Social Media COE How GE builds and extends emotional connections with consumers around health and reaps the benefits of increased brand equity in the process. GE has a social platform around Healthyimagination to create better health for people. If you and a friend are trying to get healthy together, you’ll do better. Health is inherently. Get health challenges via Facebook and share with friends to achieve goals together. They’re creating an emotional connection around the health context. You don’t influence people at large. Your sphere of real influence is around 5-10 people. They find relevant conversations about health on Twitter and engage sounding like a friend, not a brand. Why would people share on behalf of a brand? Because you tapped into an activity and emotion they’re already having. To create better habits in health, GE gave away inexpensive, relevant gifts related to their goals. Create the context, give the relevant gift, get social acknowledgment for giving it. What you get when you get acknowledgment for your engagement and gift is user generated microcontent. GE got 12,000 unique users engaged and 1400 organic posts with the healthy gift campaign. The Dow Chemical Company @DowChemicalAbby Klanecky, Director of Digital & Social Media Learn how Dow Chemical is finding, training, and empowering their scientists to be their storytellers in social media. There are 1m jobs coming open in science. Only 200k are qualified for them. Dow Chemical wanted to use social to attract and talk to scientists. Dow Chemical decided to use real scientists as their storytellers. Scientists are incredibly passionate, the key ingredient of a great storyteller. Step 1 was getting scientists to focus on a few platforms, blog, Twitter, LinkedIn. Dow Chemical social flow is Core Digital Team - #CMs – ambassadors – advocates. The scientists were trained in social etiquette via practice scenarios. It’s not just about sales. It’s about growing influence and the business. Dow Chemical trained about 100 scientists, 55 are active and there’s a waiting list for the next sessions. In person social training produced faster results and better participation. Sometimes you have to tell pieces of the story instead of selling your execs on the whole vision. Social Media Ethics Briefing: Staying Out of TroubleAndy Sernovitz, CEO @SocialMediaOrg How do we get people to share our message for us? We have to have their trust. The difference between being honest and being sleazy is disclosure. Disclosure does not hurt the effectiveness of your marketing. No one will get mad if you tell them up front you’re a paid spokesperson for a company. It’s a legal requirement by the FTC, it’s the law, to disclose if you’re being paid for an endorsement. Require disclosure and truthfulness in all your social media outreach. Don’t lie to people. Monitor the conversation and correct misstatements. Create social media policies and training programs. If you want to stay safe, never pay cash for social media. Money changes everything. As soon as you pay, it’s not social media, it’s advertising. Disclosure, to the feds, means clear, conspicuous, and understandable to the average reader. This phrase will keep you in the clear, “I work for ___ and this is my personal opinion.” Who are you? Were you paid? Are you giving an honest opinion based on a real experience? You as a brand are responsible for what an agency or employee or contactor does in your behalf. SocialMedia.org makes available a Disclosure Best Practices Toolkit. Socialmedia.org/disclosure. The point is to not ethically mess up and taint social media as happened to e-mail. Not only is the FTC cracking down, so is Google and Facebook. Visa @VisaNewsLucas Mast, Senior Business Leader, Global Corporate Social Media Visa built a mobile studio for the Olympics for execs and athletes. They wanted to do postcard style real time coverage of Visa’s Olympics sponsorships, and on a shoestring. Challenges included Olympic rules, difficulty getting interviews, time zone trouble, and resourcing. Another problem was they got bogged down with their own internal approval processes. Despite all the restrictions, they created and published a variety of and fair amount of content. They amassed 1000+ views of videos posted to the Visa Communication YouTube channel. Less corporate content yields more interest from media outlets and bloggers. They did real world video demos of how their products work in the field vs. an exec doing a demo in a studio. Don’t make exec interview videos dull and corporate. Keep answers short, shoot it in an interesting place, do takes until they’re comfortable and natural. Not everything will work. Not everything will get a retweet. But like the lottery, you can’t win if you don’t play. Promoting content is as important as creating it. McGraw-Hill Companies @McGrawHillCosPatrick Durando, Senior Director of Global New Media McGraw-Hill has 26,000 employees. McGraw-Hill created a social intranet called Buzz. Intranets create operational efficiency, help product dev, facilitate crowdsourcing, and breaks down geo silos. Intranets help with talent development, acquisition, retention. They replaced the corporate directory with their own version of LinkedIn. The company intranet has really cut down on the use of email. Long email threats become organized, permanent social discussions. The intranet is particularly useful in HR for researching and getting answers surrounding benefits and policies. Using a profile on your company intranet can establish and promote your internal professional brand. If you’re going to make an intranet, it has to look great, work great, and employees are going have to want to go there. You can’t order them to like it. 

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• Is RTD Stateless or Stateful?

  - by [email protected]

  Yes.   A stateless service is one where each request is an independent transaction that can be processed by any of the servers in a cluster.  A stateful service is one where state is kept in a server's memory from transaction to transaction, thus necessitating the proper routing of requests to the right server. The main advantage of stateless systems is simplicity of design. The main advantage of stateful systems is performance. I'm often asked whether RTD is a stateless or stateful service, so I wanted to clarify this issue in depth so that RTD's architecture will be properly understood. The short answer is: "RTD can be configured as a stateless or stateful service." The performance difference between stateless and stateful systems can be very significant, and while in a call center implementation it may be reasonable to use a pure stateless configuration, a web implementation that produces thousands of requests per second is practically impossible with a stateless configuration. RTD's performance is orders of magnitude better than most competing systems. RTD was architected from the ground up to achieve this performance. Features like automatic and dynamic compression of prediction models, automatic translation of metadata to machine code, lack of interpreted languages, and separation of model building from decisioning contribute to achieving this performance level. Because  of this focus on performance we decided to have RTD's default configuration work in a stateful manner. By being stateful RTD requests are typically handled in a few milliseconds when repeated requests come to the same session. Now, those readers that have participated in implementations of RTD know that RTD's architecture is also focused on reducing Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) with features like automatic model building, automatic time windows, automatic maintenance of database tables, automatic evaluation of data mining models, automatic management of models partitioned by channel, geography, etcetera, and hot swapping of configurations. How do you reconcile the need for a low TCO and the need for performance? How do you get the performance of a stateful system with the simplicity of a stateless system? The answer is that you make the system behave like a stateless system to the exterior, but you let it automatically take advantage of situations where being stateful is better. For example, one of the advantages of stateless systems is that you can route a message to any server in a cluster, without worrying about sending it to the same server that was handling the session in previous messages. With an RTD stateful configuration you can still route the message to any server in the cluster, so from the point of view of the configuration of other systems, it is the same as a stateless service. The difference though comes in performance, because if the message arrives to the right server, RTD can serve it without any external access to the session's state, thus tremendously reducing processing time. In typical implementations it is not rare to have high percentages of messages routed directly to the right server, while those that are not, are easily handled by forwarding the messages to the right server. This architecture usually provides the best of both worlds with performance and simplicity of configuration.   Configuring RTD as a pure stateless service A pure stateless configuration requires session data to be persisted at the end of handling each and every message and reloading that data at the beginning of handling any new message. This is of course, the root of the inefficiency of these configurations. This is also the reason why many "stateless" implementations actually do keep state to take advantage of a request coming back to the same server. Nevertheless, if the implementation requires a pure stateless decision service, this is easy to configure in RTD. The way to do it is: Mark every Integration Point to Close the session at the end of processing the message In the Session entity persist the session data on closing the session In the session entity check if a persisted version exists and load it An excellent solution for persisting the session data is Oracle Coherence, which provides a high performance, distributed cache that minimizes the performance impact of persisting and reloading the session. Alternatively, the session can be persisted to a local database. An interesting feature of the RTD stateless configuration is that it can cope with serializing concurrent requests for the same session. For example, if a web page produces two requests to the decision service, these requests could come concurrently to the decision services and be handled by different servers. Most stateless implementation would have the two requests step onto each other when saving the state, or fail one of the messages. When properly configured, RTD will make one message wait for the other before processing.   A Word on Context Using the context of a customer interaction typically significantly increases lift. For example, offer success in a call center could double if the context of the call is taken into account. For this reason, it is important to utilize the contextual information in decision making. To make the contextual information available throughout a session it needs to be persisted. When there is a well defined owner for the information then there is no problem because in case of a session restart, the information can be easily retrieved. If there is no official owner of the information, then RTD can be configured to persist this information.   Once again, RTD provides flexibility to ensure high performance when it is adequate to allow for some loss of state in the rare cases of server failure. For example, in a heavy use web site that serves 1000 pages per second the navigation history may be stored in the in memory session. In such sites it is typical that there is no OLTP that stores all the navigation events, therefore if an RTD server were to fail, it would be possible for the navigation to that point to be lost (note that a new session would be immediately established in one of the other servers). In most cases the loss of this navigation information would be acceptable as it would happen rarely. If it is desired to save this information, RTD would persist it every time the visitor navigates to a new page. Note that this practice is preferred whether RTD is configured in a stateless or stateful manner.  

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• You Say You Want a (Customer Experience) Revolution

  - by Christie Flanagan

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} rev-o-lu-tion [rev-uh-loo-shuhn] noun 1. a sudden, radical or complete change 2. fundamental change in the way of thinking about or visualizing something; a change of paradigm 3. a changeover in use or preference especially in technology <the computer revolution> Lately, I've been hearing an awful lot about the customer experience revolution.  Tonight Oracle will be hosting The Experience Revolution, an evening of exploration and networking with customer experience executives in New York City where Oracle President Mark Hurd will introduce Oracle Customer Experience, a cross-stack suite of customer experience products that includes Oracle WebCenter and a number of other Oracle technologies. Then on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Forrester Customer Experience Forum East also kicks off in New York City where they'll examine how businesses can "reap the full business benefits of the customer experience revolution." So, are we in the midst of a customer experience revolution? As a consumer, I can answer that question with a definitive “yes.” When I bought my very first car, I had a lot of questions. How do I know if I’m paying a fair price? How do I know if this dealer is honest? Why do I have to sit through these good cop, bad cop shenanigans between sales and sales management at the dealership? Why do I feel like I’m doing these people a favor by giving them my business? In the end the whole experience left me feeling deeply unsatisfied. I didn’t feel that I held all that much power over the experience and the only real negotiating trick I had was to walk out, which I did, many times before actually making a purchase. Fast forward to a year ago and I found myself back in the market for a new car. The very first car that I bought had finally kicked the bucket after many years, many repair bills, and much wear and tear. Man, I had loved that car. It was time to move on, but I had a knot in my stomach when I reflected back on my last car purchase experience and dreaded the thought of going through that again. Could that have been the reason why I drove my old car for so long? But as I started the process of researching new cars, I started to feel really confident. I had a wealth of online information that helped me in my search. I went to Edmunds and plugged in some information on my preferences and left with a short list of vehicles. After an afternoon spent test driving the cars my short list, I had determined my favorite – it was a model I didn’t even know about until my research on Edmunds! But I didn’t want to go back to the dealership where I test drove it. They were clearly old school and wanted me to buy the way that they wanted to sell. No thanks! After that I went back online. I figured out exactly what people had paid for this car in my area. I found out what kind of discount others were able to negotiate from an online community forum dedicated to the make and model. I found out how the sales people were being incentivized by the manufacturer that month. I learned which dealers had the best ratings and reviews. This was actually getting exciting. I was feeling really empowered. My next step was to request online quotes from the some of the highest rated dealers but I already knew exactly how much I was going to pay. This was really a test for the dealers. My new mantra was “let he who delivers the best customer experience win.” An inside sales rep from one dealer responded to my quote request within a couple of hours. I told him I had already decided on the make and model and it was just a matter of figuring out who I would buy it from. I also told them that I was really busy and wouldn’t set foot in the dealership unless we had come to terms beforehand. Lastly, I let him know that I’d prefer to work out the details via email. He promised to get back to me shortly with a detailed quote. Over the next few days I received calls from other dealers. One asked me a host of questions that I had already answered in their lengthy online form. Another blamed their website performance issues for their delay in responding to my request. But by then it didn’t really matter because I’d already bought the car days before from the dealer who responded to me first and who was willing to adjust their sales process to accommodate my buying one. So, yes, I really do believe we are in the midst of a customer experience revolution. And every revolution leaves some victorious and other vanquished. Which side do you want to be on when it comes to the customer experience revolution?

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• Running Solaris 11 as a control domain on a T2000

  - by jsavit

  There is increased adoption of Oracle Solaris 11, and many customers are deploying it on systems that previously ran Solaris 10. That includes older T1-processor based systems like T1000 and T2000. Even though they are old (from 2005) and don't have the performance of current SPARC servers, they are still functional, stable servers that customers continue to operate. One reason to install Solaris 11 on them is that older machines are attractive for testing OS upgrades before updating current, production systems. Normally this does not present a challenge, because Solaris 11 runs on any T-series or M-series SPARC server. One scenario adds a complication: running Solaris 11 in a control domain on a T1000 or T2000 hosting logical domains. Solaris 11 pre-installed Oracle VM Server for SPARC incompatible with T1 Unlike Solaris 10, Solaris 11 comes with Oracle VM Server for SPARC preinstalled. The ldomsmanager package contains the logical domains manager for Oracle VM Server for SPARC 2.2, which requires a SPARC T2, T2+, T3, or T4 server. It does not work with T1-processor systems, which are only supported by LDoms Manager 1.2 and earlier. The following screenshot shows what happens (bold font) if you try to use Oracle VM Server for SPARC 2.x commands in a Solaris 11 control domain. The commands were issued in a control domain on a T2000 that previously ran Solaris 10. We also display the version of the logical domains manager installed in Solaris 11: root@t2000 psrinfo -vp The physical processor has 4 virtual processors (0-3) UltraSPARC-T1 (chipid 0, clock 1200 MHz) # prtconf|grep T SUNW,Sun-Fire-T200 # ldm -V Failed to connect to logical domain manager: Connection refused # pkg info ldomsmanager Name: system/ldoms/ldomsmanager Summary: Logical Domains Manager Description: LDoms Manager - Virtualization for SPARC T-Series Category: System/Virtualization State: Installed Publisher: solaris Version: 2.2.0.0 Build Release: 5.11 Branch: 0.175.0.8.0.3.0 Packaging Date: May 25, 2012 10:20:48 PM Size: 2.86 MB FMRI: pkg://solaris/system/ldoms/[email protected],5.11-0.175.0.8.0.3.0:20120525T222048Z The 2.2 version of the logical domains manager will have to be removed, and 1.2 installed, in order to use this as a control domain. Preparing to change - create a new boot environment Before doing anything else, lets create a new boot environment: # beadm list BE Active Mountpoint Space Policy Created -- ------ ---------- ----- ------ ------- solaris NR / 2.14G static 2012-09-25 10:32 # beadm create solaris-1 # beadm activate solaris-1 # beadm list BE Active Mountpoint Space Policy Created -- ------ ---------- ----- ------ ------- solaris N / 4.82M static 2012-09-25 10:32 solaris-1 R - 2.14G static 2012-09-29 11:40 # init 0 Normally an init 6 to reboot would have been sufficient, but in the next step I reset the system anyway in order to put the system in factory default mode for a "clean" domain configuration. Preparing to change - reset to factory default There was a leftover domain configuration on the T2000, so I reset it to the factory install state. Since the ldm command is't working yet, it can't be done from the control domain, so I did it by logging onto to the service processor: $ ssh -X admin@t2000-sc Copyright (c) 2010, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Oracle Advanced Lights Out Manager CMT v1.7.9 Please login: admin Please Enter password: ******** sc> showhost Sun-Fire-T2000 System Firmware 6.7.10 2010/07/14 16:35 Host flash versions: OBP 4.30.4.b 2010/07/09 13:48 Hypervisor 1.7.3.c 2010/07/09 15:14 POST 4.30.4.b 2010/07/09 14:24 sc> bootmode config="factory-default" sc> poweroff Are you sure you want to power off the system [y/n]? y SC Alert: SC Request to Power Off Host. SC Alert: Host system has shut down. sc> poweron SC Alert: Host System has Reset At this point I rebooted into the new Solaris 11 boot environment, and Solaris commands showed it was running on the factory default configuration of a single domain owning all 32 CPUs and 32GB of RAM (that's what it looked like in 2005.) # psrinfo -vp The physical processor has 8 cores and 32 virtual processors (0-31) The core has 4 virtual processors (0-3) The core has 4 virtual processors (4-7) The core has 4 virtual processors (8-11) The core has 4 virtual processors (12-15) The core has 4 virtual processors (16-19) The core has 4 virtual processors (20-23) The core has 4 virtual processors (24-27) The core has 4 virtual processors (28-31) UltraSPARC-T1 (chipid 0, clock 1200 MHz) # prtconf|grep Mem Memory size: 32640 Megabytes Note that the older processor has 4 virtual CPUs per core, while current processors have 8 per core. Remove ldomsmanager 2.2 and install the 1.2 version The Solaris 11 pkg command is now used to remove the 2.2 version that shipped with Solaris 11: # pkg uninstall ldomsmanager Packages to remove: 1 Create boot environment: No Create backup boot environment: No Services to change: 2 PHASE ACTIONS Removal Phase 130/130 PHASE ITEMS Package State Update Phase 1/1 Package Cache Update Phase 1/1 Image State Update Phase 2/2 Finally, LDoms 1.2 installed via its install script, the same way it was done years ago: # unzip LDoms-1_2-Integration-10.zip # cd LDoms-1_2-Integration-10/Install/ # ./install-ldm Welcome to the LDoms installer. You are about to install the Logical Domains Manager package that will enable you to create, destroy and control other domains on your system. Given the capabilities of the LDoms domain manager, you can now change the security configuration of this Solaris instance using the Solaris Security Toolkit. ... ... normal install messages omitted ... The Solaris Security Toolkit applies to Solaris 10, and cannot be used in Solaris 11 (in which several things hardened by the Toolkit are already hardened by default), so answer b in the choice below: You are about to install the Logical Domains Manager package that will enable you to create, destroy and control other domains on your system. Given the capabilities of the LDoms domain manager, you can now change the security configuration of this Solaris instance using the Solaris Security Toolkit. Select a security profile from this list: a) Hardened Solaris configuration for LDoms (recommended) b) Standard Solaris configuration c) Your custom-defined Solaris security configuration profile Enter a, b, or c [a]: b ... other install messages omitted for brevity... After install I ensure that the necessary services are enabled, and verify the version of the installed LDoms Manager: # svcs ldmd STATE STIME FMRI online 22:00:36 svc:/ldoms/ldmd:default # svcs vntsd STATE STIME FMRI disabled Aug_19 svc:/ldoms/vntsd:default # ldm -V Logical Domain Manager (v 1.2-debug) Hypervisor control protocol v 1.3 Using Hypervisor MD v 1.1 System PROM: Hypervisor v. 1.7.3. @(#)Hypervisor 1.7.3.c 2010/07/09 15:14\015 OpenBoot v. 4.30.4. @(#)OBP 4.30.4.b 2010/07/09 13:48 Set up control domain and domain services At this point we have a functioning LDoms 1.2 environment that can be configured in the usual fashion. One difference is that LDoms 1.2 behavior had 'delayed configuration mode (as expected) during initial configuration before rebooting the control domain. Another minor difference with a Solaris 11 control domain is that you define virtual switches using the 'vanity name' of the network interface, rather than the hardware driver name as in Solaris 10. # ldm list ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Notice: the LDom Manager is running in configuration mode. Configuration and resource information is displayed for the configuration under construction; not the current active configuration. The configuration being constructed will only take effect after it is downloaded to the system controller and the host is reset. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-c-- SP 32 32640M 3.2% 4d 2h 50m # ldm add-vdiskserver primary-vds0 primary # ldm add-vconscon port-range=5000-5100 primary-vcc0 primary # ldm add-vswitch net-dev=net0 primary-vsw0 primary # ldm set-mau 2 primary # ldm set-vcpu 8 primary # ldm set-memory 4g primary # ldm add-config initial # ldm list-spconfig factory-default initial [current] That's it, really. After reboot, we are ready to install guest domains. Summary - new wine in old bottles This example shows that (new) Solaris 11 can be installed on (old) T2000 servers and used as a control domain. The main activity is to remove the preinstalled Oracle VM Server for 2.2 and install Logical Domains 1.2 - the last version of LDoms to support T1-processor systems. I tested Solaris 10 and Solaris 11 guest domains running on this server and they worked without any surprises. This is a viable way to get further into Solaris 11 adoption, even on older T-series equipment.

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• Applications: How to create a custom dialog box for Windows Mobile 6 (native)

  - by TechTwaddle

  Ashraf, on the MSDN forum, asks, “Is there a way to make a default choice for the messagebox that happens after a period of time if the user doesn't choose (Clicked ) Yes or No buttons.” To elaborate, the requirement is to show a message box to the user with certain options to select, and if the user does not respond within a predefined time limit (say 8 seconds) then the message box must dismiss itself and select a default option. Now such a functionality is not available with the MessageBox() api, you will have to write your own custom dialog box. Surely, creating a dialog box is quite a simple task using the DialogBox() api, and we have been creating full screen dialog boxes all the while. So how will this custom message box be any different? It’s not much different from a regular dialog box except for a few changes in its properties. First, it has a title bar but no buttons on the title bar (no ‘x’ or ‘ok’ button on the title bar), it doesn’t occupy full screen and it contains the controls that you put into it, thus justifying the title ‘custom’. So in this post we create a custom dialog box with two buttons, ‘Black’ and ‘White’. The user is given 8 seconds to select one of those colours, if the user doesn’t make a selection in 8 seconds, the default option ‘Black’ is selected. Before going into the implementation here is a video of how the dialog box works; Custom dialog box To start off, add a new dialog resource into your application, size it appropriately and add whatever controls you need to the dialog. In my case, I added two static text labels and two buttons, as below; Now we need to write up the window procedure for this dialog, here is the complete function; BOOL CALLBACK CustomDialogProc(HWND hDlg, UINT uMessage, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam) {     int wmID, wmEvent;     PAINTSTRUCT ps;     HDC hdc;     static int timeCount = 0;     switch(uMessage)     {         case WM_INITDIALOG:             {                 SHINITDLGINFO shidi;                 memset(&shidi, 0, sizeof(shidi));                 shidi.dwMask = SHIDIM_FLAGS;                 //shidi.dwFlags = SHIDIF_DONEBUTTON | SHIDIF_SIPDOWN | SHIDIF_SIZEDLGFULLSCREEN | SHIDIF_EMPTYMENU;                 shidi.dwFlags = SHIDIF_SIPDOWN | SHIDIF_EMPTYMENU;                 shidi.hDlg = hDlg;                 SHInitDialog(&shidi);                 SHDoneButton(hDlg, SHDB_HIDE);                 timeCount = 0;                 SetWindowText(GetDlgItem(hDlg, IDC_STATIC_TIME_REMAINING), L"Time remaining: 8 second(s)");                 SetTimer(hDlg, MY_TIMER, 1000, NULL);             }             return TRUE;         case WM_COMMAND:             {                 wmID = LOWORD(wParam);                 wmEvent = HIWORD(wParam);                 switch(wmID)                 {                     case IDC_BUTTON_BLACK:                         KillTimer(hDlg, MY_TIMER);                         EndDialog(hDlg, IDC_BUTTON_BLACK);                         break;                     case IDC_BUTTON_WHITE:                         KillTimer(hDlg, MY_TIMER);                         EndDialog(hDlg, IDC_BUTTON_WHITE);                         break;                 }             }             break;         case WM_TIMER:             {                 if (wParam == MY_TIMER)                 {                     WCHAR wszText[128];                     memset(&wszText, 0, sizeof(wszText));                     timeCount++;                     //8 seconds are over, dismiss the dialog, select def value                     if (timeCount >= 8)                     {                         KillTimer(hDlg, MY_TIMER);                         EndDialog(hDlg, IDC_BUTTON_BLACK_DEF);                     }                     wsprintf(wszText, L"Time remaining: %d second(s)", 8-timeCount);                     SetWindowText(GetDlgItem(hDlg, IDC_STATIC_TIME_REMAINING), wszText);                     UpdateWindow(GetDlgItem(hDlg, IDC_STATIC_TIME_REMAINING));                 }             }             break;         case WM_PAINT:             {                 hdc = BeginPaint(hDlg, &ps);                 EndPaint(hDlg, &ps);             }             break;     }     return FALSE; } The MSDN documentation mentions that you need to specify the flag WS_NONAVDONEBUTTON, but I got an error saying that the value could not be found, so we can ignore this for now. Next up, while calling SHInitDialog() for your custom dialog, make sure that you don’t specify SHDIF_DONEBUTTON in the dwFlags member of the SHINITDIALOG structure, this member makes the ‘ok’ button appear on the dialog title bar. Finally, we need to call SHDoneButton() with SHDB_HIDE flag to, well, hide the Done button. The ‘Done’ button is the same as the ‘ok’ button, so this step might seem redundant, and the dialog works fine without calling SHDoneButton() too, but it’s better to stick with the documentation (; So you can see that we have followed all these steps above, under WM_INITDIALOG. We also setup a few things like a variable to keep track of the time, and setting off a one second timer. Every time the timer fires, we receive a WM_TIMER message. We then update the static label displaying the amount of time left to the user. If 8 seconds go by without the user selecting any option, we kill the timer and end the dialog with IDC_BUTTON_BLACK_DEF. This is just a #define’d integer value, make sure it’s unique. You’ll see why this is important. If the user makes a selection, either Black or White, we kill the timer and end the dialog with corresponding selection the user made, that is, either IDC_BUTTON_BLACK or IDC_BUTTON_WHITE. Ok, so now our custom dialog is ready to be used. I invoke the custom dialog from a menu entry in the main windows as below, case IDM_MENU_CUSTOMDLG:     {         int ret = DialogBox(g_hInst, MAKEINTRESOURCE(IDD_CUSTOM_DIALOG), hWnd, CustomDialogProc);         switch(ret)         {             case IDC_BUTTON_BLACK_DEF:                 SetWindowText(g_hStaticSelection, L"You Selected: Black (default)");                 break;             case IDC_BUTTON_BLACK:                 SetWindowText(g_hStaticSelection, L"You Selected: Black");                 break;             case IDC_BUTTON_WHITE:                 SetWindowText(g_hStaticSelection, L"You Selected: White");                 break;         }         UpdateWindow(g_hStaticSelection);     }     break; So you see why ending the dialog with the corresponding value was important, that’s what the DialogBox() api returns with. And in the main window I update a static text label to show which option was selected. I cranked this out in about an hour, and unfortunately don’t have time for a managed C# version. That will have to be another post, if I manage to get it working that is (;

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• Service Broker, not ETL

  - by jamiet

  I have been very quiet on this blog of late and one reason for that is I have been very busy on a client project that I would like to talk about a little here. The client that I have been working for has a website that runs on a distributed architecture utilising a messaging infrastructure for communication between different endpoints. My brief was to build a system that could consume these messages and produce analytical information in near-real-time. More specifically I basically had to deliver a data warehouse however it was the real-time aspect of the project that really intrigued me. This real-time requirement meant that using an Extract transformation, Load (ETL) tool was out of the question and so I had no choice but to write T-SQL code (i.e. stored-procedures) to process the incoming messages and load the data into the data warehouse. This concerned me though – I had no way to control the rate at which data would arrive into the system yet we were going to have end-users querying the system at the same time that those messages were arriving; the potential for contention in such a scenario was pretty high and and was something I wanted to minimise as much as possible. Moreover I did not want the processing of data inside the data warehouse to have any impact on the customer-facing website. As you have probably guessed from the title of this blog post this is where Service Broker stepped in! For those that have not heard of it Service Broker is a queuing technology that has been built into SQL Server since SQL Server 2005. It provides a number of features however the one that was of interest to me was the fact that it facilitates asynchronous data processing which, in layman’s terms, means the ability to process some data without requiring the system that supplied the data having to wait for the response. That was a crucial feature because on this project the customer-facing website (in effect an OLTP system) would be calling one of our stored procedures with each message – we did not want to cause the OLTP system to wait on us every time we processed one of those messages. This asynchronous nature also helps to alleviate the contention problem because the asynchronous processing activity is handled just like any other task in the database engine and hence can wait on another task (such as an end-user query). Service Broker it was then! The stored procedure called by the OLTP system would simply put the message onto a queue and we would use a feature called activation to pick each message off the queue in turn and process it into the warehouse. At the time of writing the system is not yet up to full capacity but so far everything seems to be working OK (touch wood) and crucially our users are seeing data in near-real-time. By near-real-time I am talking about latencies of a few minutes at most and to someone like me who is used to building systems that have overnight latencies that is a huge step forward! So then, am I advocating that you all go out and dump your ETL tools? Of course not, no! What this project has taught me though is that in certain scenarios there may be better ways to implement a data warehouse system then the traditional “load data in overnight” approach that we are all used to. Moreover I have really enjoyed getting to grips with a new technology and even if you don’t want to use Service Broker you might want to consider asynchronous messaging architectures for your BI/data warehousing solutions in the future. This has been a very high level overview of my use of Service Broker and I have deliberately left out much of the minutiae of what has been a very challenging implementation. Nonetheless I hope I have caused you to reflect upon your own approaches to BI and question whether other approaches may be more tenable. All comments and questions gratefully received! Lastly, if you have never used Service Broker before and want to kick the tyres I have provided below a very simple “Service Broker Hello World” script that will create all of the objects required to facilitate Service Broker communications and then send the message “Hello World” from one place to anther! This doesn’t represent a “proper” implementation per se because it doesn’t close down down conversation objects (which you should always do in a real-world scenario) but its enough to demonstrate the capabilities! @Jamiet ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /*This is a basic Service Broker Hello World app. Have fun! -Jamie */ USE MASTER GO CREATE DATABASE SBTest GO --Turn Service Broker on! ALTER DATABASE SBTest SET ENABLE_BROKER GO USE SBTest GO -- 1) we need to create a message type. Note that our message type is -- very simple and allowed any type of content CREATE MESSAGE TYPE HelloMessage VALIDATION = NONE GO -- 2) Once the message type has been created, we need to create a contract -- that specifies who can send what types of messages CREATE CONTRACT HelloContract (HelloMessage SENT BY INITIATOR) GO --We can query the metadata of the objects we just created SELECT * FROM   sys.service_message_types WHERE name = 'HelloMessage'; SELECT * FROM   sys.service_contracts WHERE name = 'HelloContract'; SELECT * FROM   sys.service_contract_message_usages WHERE  service_contract_id IN (SELECT service_contract_id FROM sys.service_contracts WHERE name = 'HelloContract') AND        message_type_id IN (SELECT message_type_id FROM sys.service_message_types WHERE name = 'HelloMessage'); -- 3) The communication is between two endpoints. Thus, we need two queues to -- hold messages CREATE QUEUE SenderQueue CREATE QUEUE ReceiverQueue GO --more querying metatda SELECT * FROM sys.service_queues WHERE name IN ('SenderQueue','ReceiverQueue'); --we can also select from the queues as if they were tables SELECT * FROM SenderQueue   SELECT * FROM ReceiverQueue   -- 4) Create the required services and bind them to be above created queues CREATE SERVICE Sender   ON QUEUE SenderQueue CREATE SERVICE Receiver   ON QUEUE ReceiverQueue (HelloContract) GO --more querying metadata SELECT * FROM sys.services WHERE name IN ('Receiver','Sender'); -- 5) At this point, we can begin the conversation between the two services by -- sending messages DECLARE @conversationHandle UNIQUEIDENTIFIER DECLARE @message NVARCHAR(100) BEGIN   BEGIN TRANSACTION;   BEGIN DIALOG @conversationHandle         FROM SERVICE Sender         TO SERVICE 'Receiver'         ON CONTRACT HelloContract WITH ENCRYPTION=OFF   -- Send a message on the conversation   SET @message = N'Hello, World';   SEND  ON CONVERSATION @conversationHandle         MESSAGE TYPE HelloMessage (@message)   COMMIT TRANSACTION END GO --check contents of queues SELECT * FROM SenderQueue   SELECT * FROM ReceiverQueue   GO -- Receive a message from the queue RECEIVE CONVERT(NVARCHAR(MAX), message_body) AS MESSAGE FROM ReceiverQueue GO --If no messages were received and/or you can't see anything on the queues you may wish to check the following for clues: SELECT * FROM sys.transmission_queue -- Cleanup DROP SERVICE Sender DROP SERVICE Receiver DROP QUEUE SenderQueue DROP QUEUE ReceiverQueue DROP CONTRACT HelloContract DROP MESSAGE TYPE HelloMessage GO USE MASTER GO DROP DATABASE SBTest GO

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• Metro: Grouping Items in a ListView Control

  - by Stephen.Walther

  The purpose of this blog entry is to explain how you can group list items when displaying the items in a WinJS ListView control. In particular, you learn how to group a list of products by product category. Displaying a grouped list of items in a ListView control requires completing the following steps: Create a Grouped data source from a List data source Create a Grouped Header Template Declare the ListView control so it groups the list items Creating the Grouped Data Source Normally, you bind a ListView control to a WinJS.Binding.List object. If you want to render list items in groups, then you need to bind the ListView to a grouped data source instead. The following code – contained in a file named products.js — illustrates how you can create a standard WinJS.Binding.List object from a JavaScript array and then return a grouped data source from the WinJS.Binding.List object by calling its createGrouped() method: (function () { "use strict"; // Create List data source var products = new WinJS.Binding.List([ { name: "Milk", price: 2.44, category: "Beverages" }, { name: "Oranges", price: 1.99, category: "Fruit" }, { name: "Wine", price: 8.55, category: "Beverages" }, { name: "Apples", price: 2.44, category: "Fruit" }, { name: "Steak", price: 1.99, category: "Other" }, { name: "Eggs", price: 2.44, category: "Other" }, { name: "Mushrooms", price: 1.99, category: "Other" }, { name: "Yogurt", price: 2.44, category: "Other" }, { name: "Soup", price: 1.99, category: "Other" }, { name: "Cereal", price: 2.44, category: "Other" }, { name: "Pepsi", price: 1.99, category: "Beverages" } ]); // Create grouped data source var groupedProducts = products.createGrouped( function (dataItem) { return dataItem.category; }, function (dataItem) { return { title: dataItem.category }; }, function (group1, group2) { return group1.charCodeAt(0) - group2.charCodeAt(0); } ); // Expose the grouped data source WinJS.Namespace.define("ListViewDemos", { products: groupedProducts }); })(); Notice that the createGrouped() method requires three functions as arguments: groupKey – This function associates each list item with a group. The function accepts a data item and returns a key which represents a group. In the code above, we return the value of the category property for each product. groupData – This function returns the data item displayed by the group header template. For example, in the code above, the function returns a title for the group which is displayed in the group header template. groupSorter – This function determines the order in which the groups are displayed. The code above displays the groups in alphabetical order: Beverages, Fruit, Other. Creating the Group Header Template Whenever you create a ListView control, you need to create an item template which you use to control how each list item is rendered. When grouping items in a ListView control, you also need to create a group header template. The group header template is used to render the header for each group of list items. Here’s the markup for both the item template and the group header template: <div id="productTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div class="product"> <span data-win-bind="innerText:name"></span> <span data-win-bind="innerText:price"></span> </div> </div> <div id="productGroupHeaderTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div class="productGroupHeader"> <h1 data-win-bind="innerText: title"></h1> </div> </div> You should declare the two templates in the same file as you declare the ListView control – for example, the default.html file. Declaring the ListView Control The final step is to declare the ListView control. Here’s the required markup: <div data-win-control="WinJS.UI.ListView" data-win-options="{ itemDataSource:ListViewDemos.products.dataSource, itemTemplate:select('#productTemplate'), groupDataSource:ListViewDemos.products.groups.dataSource, groupHeaderTemplate:select('#productGroupHeaderTemplate'), layout: {type: WinJS.UI.GridLayout} }"> </div> In the markup above, six properties of the ListView control are set when the control is declared. First the itemDataSource and itemTemplate are specified. Nothing new here. Next, the group data source and group header template are specified. Notice that the group data source is represented by the ListViewDemos.products.groups.dataSource property of the grouped data source. Finally, notice that the layout of the ListView is changed to Grid Layout. You are required to use Grid Layout (instead of the default List Layout) when displaying grouped items in a ListView. Here’s the entire contents of the default.html page: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>ListViewDemos</title> <!-- WinJS references --> <link href="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/css/ui-dark.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/base.js"></script> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/ui.js"></script> <!-- ListViewDemos references --> <link href="/css/default.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="/js/default.js"></script> <script src="/js/products.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <style type="text/css"> .product { width: 200px; height: 100px; border: white solid 1px; font-size: x-large; } </style> </head> <body> <div id="productTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div class="product"> <span data-win-bind="innerText:name"></span> <span data-win-bind="innerText:price"></span> </div> </div> <div id="productGroupHeaderTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div class="productGroupHeader"> <h1 data-win-bind="innerText: title"></h1> </div> </div> <div data-win-control="WinJS.UI.ListView" data-win-options="{ itemDataSource:ListViewDemos.products.dataSource, itemTemplate:select('#productTemplate'), groupDataSource:ListViewDemos.products.groups.dataSource, groupHeaderTemplate:select('#productGroupHeaderTemplate'), layout: {type: WinJS.UI.GridLayout} }"> </div> </body> </html> Notice that the default.html page includes a reference to the products.js file: <script src=”/js/products.js” type=”text/javascript”></script> The default.html page also contains the declarations of the item template, group header template, and ListView control. Summary The goal of this blog entry was to explain how you can group items in a ListView control. You learned how to create a grouped data source, a group header template, and declare a ListView so that it groups its list items.

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• SSIS: Deploying OLAP cubes using C# script tasks and AMO

  - by DrJohn

  As part of the continuing series on Building dynamic OLAP data marts on-the-fly, this blog entry will focus on how to automate the deployment of OLAP cubes using SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) and Analysis Services Management Objects (AMO). OLAP cube deployment is usually done using the Analysis Services Deployment Wizard. However, this option was dismissed for a variety of reasons. Firstly, invoking external processes from SSIS is fraught with problems as (a) it is not always possible to ensure SSIS waits for the external program to terminate; (b) we cannot log the outcome properly and (c) it is not always possible to control the server's configuration to ensure the executable works correctly. Another reason for rejecting the Deployment Wizard is that it requires the 'answers' to be written into four XML files. These XML files record the three things we need to change: the name of the server, the name of the OLAP database and the connection string to the data mart. Although it would be reasonably straight forward to change the content of the XML files programmatically, this adds another set of complication and level of obscurity to the overall process. When I first investigated the possibility of using C# to deploy a cube, I was surprised to find that there are no other blog entries about the topic. I can only assume everyone else is happy with the Deployment Wizard! SSIS "forgets" assembly references If you build your script task from scratch, you will have to remember how to overcome one of the major annoyances of working with SSIS script tasks: the forgetful nature of SSIS when it comes to assembly references. Basically, you can go through the process of adding an assembly reference using the Add Reference dialog, but when you close the script window, SSIS "forgets" the assembly reference so the script will not compile. After repeating the operation several times, you will find that SSIS only remembers the assembly reference when you specifically press the Save All icon in the script window. This problem is not unique to the AMO assembly and has certainly been a "feature" since SQL Server 2005, so I am not amazed it is still present in SQL Server 2008 R2! Sample Package So let's take a look at the sample SSIS package I have provided which can be downloaded from here: DeployOlapCubeExample.zip  Below is a screenshot after a successful run. Connection Managers The package has three connection managers: AsDatabaseDefinitionFile is a file connection manager pointing to the .asdatabase file you wish to deploy. Note that this can be found in the bin directory of you OLAP database project once you have clicked the "Build" button in Visual Studio TargetOlapServerCS is an Analysis Services connection manager which identifies both the deployment server and the target database name. SourceDataMart is an OLEDB connection manager pointing to the data mart which is to act as the source of data for your cube. This will be used to replace the connection string found in your .asdatabase file Once you have configured the connection managers, the sample should run and deploy your OLAP database in a few seconds. Of course, in a production environment, these connection managers would be associated with package configurations or set at runtime. When you run the sample, you should see that the script logs its activity to the output screen (see screenshot above). If you configure logging for the package, then these messages will also appear in your SSIS logging. Sample Code Walkthrough Next let's walk through the code. The first step is to parse the connection string provided by the TargetOlapServerCS connection manager and obtain the name of both the target OLAP server and also the name of the OLAP database. Note that the target database does not have to exist to be referenced in an AS connection manager, so I am using this as a convenient way to define both properties. We now connect to the server and check for the existence of the OLAP database. If it exists, we drop the database so we can re-deploy. svr.Connect(olapServerName); if (svr.Connected) { // Drop the OLAP database if it already exists Database db = svr.Databases.FindByName(olapDatabaseName); if (db != null) { db.Drop(); } // rest of script } Next we start building the XMLA command that will actually perform the deployment. Basically this is a small chuck of XML which we need to wrap around the large .asdatabase file generated by the Visual Studio build process. // Start generating the main part of the XMLA command XmlDocument xmlaCommand = new XmlDocument(); xmlaCommand.LoadXml(string.Format("<Batch Transaction='false' xmlns='http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2003/engine'><Alter AllowCreate='true' ObjectExpansion='ExpandFull'><Object><DatabaseID>{0}</DatabaseID></Object><ObjectDefinition/></Alter></Batch>", olapDatabaseName));  Next we need to merge two XML files which we can do by simply using setting the InnerXml property of the ObjectDefinition node as follows: // load OLAP Database definition from .asdatabase file identified by connection manager XmlDocument olapCubeDef = new XmlDocument(); olapCubeDef.Load(Dts.Connections["AsDatabaseDefinitionFile"].ConnectionString); // merge the two XML files by obtain a reference to the ObjectDefinition node oaRootNode.InnerXml = olapCubeDef.InnerXml;   One hurdle I had to overcome was removing detritus from the .asdabase file left by the Visual Studio build. Through an iterative process, I found I needed to remove several nodes as they caused the deployment to fail. The XMLA error message read "Cannot set read-only node: CreatedTimestamp" or similar. In comparing the XMLA generated with by the Deployment Wizard with that generated by my code, these read-only nodes were missing, so clearly I just needed to strip them out. This was easily achieved using XPath to find the relevant XML nodes, of which I show one example below: foreach (XmlNode node in rootNode.SelectNodes("//ns1:CreatedTimestamp", nsManager)) { node.ParentNode.RemoveChild(node); } Now we need to change the database name in both the ID and Name nodes using code such as: XmlNode databaseID = xmlaCommand.SelectSingleNode("//ns1:Database/ns1:ID", nsManager); if (databaseID != null) databaseID.InnerText = olapDatabaseName; Finally we need to change the connection string to point at the relevant data mart. Again this is easily achieved using XPath to search for the relevant nodes and then replace the content of the node with the new name or connection string. XmlNode connectionStringNode = xmlaCommand.SelectSingleNode("//ns1:DataSources/ns1:DataSource/ns1:ConnectionString", nsManager); if (connectionStringNode != null) { connectionStringNode.InnerText = Dts.Connections["SourceDataMart"].ConnectionString; } Finally we need to perform the deployment using the Execute XMLA command and check the returned XmlaResultCollection for errors before setting the Dts.TaskResult. XmlaResultCollection oResults = svr.Execute(xmlaCommand.InnerXml);  // check for errors during deployment foreach (Microsoft.AnalysisServices.XmlaResult oResult in oResults) { foreach (Microsoft.AnalysisServices.XmlaMessage oMessage in oResult.Messages) { if ((oMessage.GetType().Name == "XmlaError")) { FireError(oMessage.Description); HadError = true; } } } If you are not familiar with XML programming, all this may all seem a bit daunting, but perceiver as the sample code is pretty short. If you would like the script to process the OLAP database, simply uncomment the lines in the vicinity of Process method. Of course, you can extend the script to perform your own custom processing and to even synchronize the database to a front-end server. Personally, I like to keep the deployment and processing separate as the code can become overly complex for support staff.If you want to know more, come see my session at the forthcoming SQLBits conference.

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• Partner Blog Series: PwC Perspectives - "Is It Time for an Upgrade?"

  - by Tanu Sood

  Is your organization debating their next step with regard to Identity Management? While all the stakeholders are well aware that the one-size-fits-all doesn’t apply to identity management, just as true is the fact that no two identity management implementations are alike. Oracle’s recent release of Identity Governance Suite 11g Release 2 has innovative features such as a customizable user interface, shopping cart style request catalog and more. However, only a close look at the use cases can help you determine if and when an upgrade to the latest R2 release makes sense for your organization. This post will describe a few of the situations that PwC has helped our clients work through. “Should I be considering an upgrade?” If your organization has an existing identity management implementation, the questions below are a good start to assessing your current solution to see if you need to begin planning for an upgrade: Does the current solution scale and meet your projected identity management needs? Does the current solution have a customer-friendly user interface? Are you completely meeting your compliance objectives? Are you still using spreadsheets? Does the current solution have the features you need? Is your total cost of ownership in line with well-performing similar sized companies in your industry? Can your organization support your existing Identity solution? Is your current product based solution well positioned to support your organization's tactical and strategic direction? Existing Oracle IDM Customers: Several existing Oracle clients are looking to move to R2 in 2013. If your organization is on Sun Identity Manager (SIM) or Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) and if your current assessment suggests that you need to upgrade, you should strongly consider OIM 11gR2. Oracle provides upgrade paths to Oracle Identity Manager 11gR2 from SIM 7.x / 8.x as well as Oracle Identity Manager 10g / 11gR1. The following are some of the considerations for migration: Check the end of product support (for Sun or legacy OIM) schedule There are several new features available in R2 (including common Helpdesk scenarios, profiling of disconnected applications, increased scalability, custom connectors, browser-based UI configurations, portability of configurations during future upgrades, etc) Cost of ownership (for SIM customers)\ Customizations that need to be maintained during the upgrade Time/Cost to migrate now vs. waiting for next version If you are already on an older version of Oracle Identity Manager and actively maintaining your support contract with Oracle, you might be eligible for a free upgrade to OIM 11gR2. Check with your Oracle sales rep for more details. Existing IDM infrastructure in place: In the past year and half, we have seen a surge in IDM upgrades from non-Oracle infrastructure to Oracle. If your organization is looking to improve the end-user experience related to identity management functions, the shopping cart style access request model and browser based personalization features may come in handy. Additionally, organizations that have a large number of applications that include ecommerce, LDAP stores, databases, UNIX systems, mainframes as well as a high frequency of user identity changes and access requests will value the high scalability of the OIM reconciliation and provisioning engine. Furthermore, we have seen our clients like OIM's out of the box (OOB) support for multiple authoritative sources. For organizations looking to integrate applications that do not have an exposed API, the Generic Technology Connector framework supported by OIM will be helpful in quickly generating custom connector using OOB wizard. Similarly, organizations in need of not only flexible on-boarding of disconnected applications but also strict access management to these applications using approval flows will find the flexible disconnected application profiling feature an extremely useful tool that provides a high degree of time savings. Organizations looking to develop custom connectors for home grown or industry specific applications will likewise find that the Identity Connector Framework support in OIM allows them to build and test a custom connector independently before integrating it with OIM. Lastly, most of our clients considering an upgrade to OIM 11gR2 have also expressed interest in the browser based configuration feature that allows an administrator to quickly customize the user interface without adding any custom code. Better yet, code customizations, if any, made to the product are portable across the future upgrades which, is viewed as a big time and money saver by most of our clients. Below are some upgrade methodologies we adopt based on client priorities and the scale of implementation. For illustration purposes, we have assumed that the client is currently on Oracle Waveset (formerly Sun Identity Manager).   Integrated Deployment: The integrated deployment is typically where a client wants to split the implementation to where their current IDM is continuing to handle the front end workflows and OIM takes over the back office operations incrementally. Once all the back office operations are moved completely to OIM, the front end workflows are migrated to OIM. Parallel Deployment: This deployment is typically done where there can be a distinct line drawn between which functionality the platforms are supporting. For example the current IDM implementation is handling the password reset functionality while OIM takes over the access provisioning and RBAC functions. Cutover Deployment: A cutover deployment is typically recommended where a client has smaller less complex implementations and it makes sense to leverage the migration tools to move them over immediately. What does this mean for YOU? There are many variables to consider when making upgrade decisions. For most customers, there is no ‘easy’ button. Organizations looking to upgrade or considering a new vendor should start by doing a mapping of their requirements with product features. The recommended approach is to take stock of both the short term and long term objectives, understand product features, future roadmap, maturity and level of commitment from the R&D and build the implementation plan accordingly. As we said, in the beginning, there is no one-size-fits-all with Identity Management. So, arm yourself with the knowledge, engage in industry discussions, bring in business stakeholders and start building your implementation roadmap. In the next post we will discuss the best practices on R2 implementations. We will be covering the Do's and Don't's and share our thoughts on making implementations successful. Meet the Writers: Dharma Padala is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has been implementing medium to large scale Identity Management solutions across multiple industries including utility, health care, entertainment, retail and financial sectors.   Dharma has 14 years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which he has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past 8 years. Scott MacDonald is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has consulted for several clients across multiple industries including financial services, health care, automotive and retail.   Scott has 10 years of experience in delivering Identity Management solutions. John Misczak is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has experience implementing multiple Identity and Access Management solutions, specializing in Oracle Identity Manager and Business Process Engineering Language (BPEL). Praveen Krishna is a Manager in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  Over the last decade Praveen has helped clients plan, architect and implement Oracle identity solutions across diverse industries.  His experience includes delivering security across diverse topics like network, infrastructure, application and data where he brings a holistic point of view to problem solving. Jenny (Xiao) Zhang is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  She has consulted across multiple industries including financial services, entertainment and retail. Jenny has three years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which she has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past one and a half years.

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• Converting projects to use Automatic NuGet restore

  - by terje

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/terje/archive/2014/06/11/converting-projects-to-use-automatic-nuget-restore.aspxDownload tool In version 2.7 of NuGet automatic nuget restore was introduced, meaning you no longer need to distort your msbuild project files with nuget target information.   Visual Studio and TFS 2013 build have this enabled by default.  However, if your project was created before this was introduced, and/or if you have used the “Enable NuGet Package Restore” afterwards, you now have a series of unwanted things in your projects, and a series of project files that have been modified – and – you no longer neither want nor need this !  You might also get into some unwanted issues due to these modifications.  This is a MSBuild modification that was needed only before NuGet 2.7 ! So: DON’T USE THIS FUNCTION !!! There is an issue https://nuget.codeplex.com/workitem/4019 on this on the NuGet project site to get this function removed, renamed or at least moved farther away from the top level (please help vote it up!).  The response seems to be that it WILL BE removed, around version 3.0. This function does nothing you need after the introduction of NuGet 2.7.  What is also unfortunate is the naming of it – it implies that it is needed, it is not, and what is worse, there is no corresponding function to remove what it does ! So to fix this use the tool named IFix, that will fix this issue for you   - all free of course, and the code is open source.  Also report issues there:  https://github.com/OsirisTerje/IFix    IFix information DOWNLOAD HERE This command line tool installs using an MSI, and add itself to the system path.  If you work in a team, you will probably need to use the  tool multiple times.  Anyone in the team may at any time use the “Enable NuGet Package Restore” function and mess up your project again.  The IFix program can be run either in a  check modus, where it does not write anything back – it only checks if you have any issues, or in a Fix mode, where it will also perform the necessary fixes for you. The IFix program is used like this: IFix <command> [-c/--check] [-f/--fix]  [-v/--verbose] The command in this case is “nugetrestore”.  It will do a check from the location where it is being called, and run through all subfolders from that location. So  “IFix nugetrestore  --check” , will do the check ,  and “IFix nugetrestore  --fix”  will perform the changes, for all files and folders below the current working directory. (Note that --check  can be replaced with only –c, and --fix with –f, and so on. ) BEWARE: When you run the fix option, all solutions to be affected must be closed in Visual Studio ! So, if you just want to DO it, then: IFix nugetrestore --check to see if you have issues then IFix nugetrestore  --fix to fix them. How does it work IFix nugetrestore  checks and optionally fixes four issues that the older enabling of nuget restore did.  The issues are related to the MSBuild projess, and are: Deleting the nuget.targets file. Deleting the nuget.exe that is located under the .nuget folder Removing all references to nuget.targets in the solution file Removing all properties and target imports of nuget.targets inside the csproj files. IFix fixes these issues in the same sequence. The first step, removing the nuget.targets file is the most critical one, and all instances of the nuget.targets file within the scope of a solution has to be removed, and in addition it has to be done with the solution closed in Visual Studio.  If Visual Studio finds a nuget.targets file, the csproj files will be automatically messed up again. This means the removal process above might need to be done multiple times, specially when you’re working with a team, and that solution context menu still has the “Enable NuGet Package Restore” function.  Someone on the team might inadvertently do this at any time. It can be a good idea to add this check to a checkin policy – if you run TFS standard version control, but that will have no effect if you use TFS Git version control of course. So, better be prepared to run the IFix check from time to time. Or, even better, install IFix on your build servers, and add a call to IFix nugetrestore --check in the TFS Build script.    How does it look As a first example I have run the IFix program from the top of a set of git repositories, so it spans multiple repositories with multiple solutions. The result from the check option is as follows: We see the four red lines, there is one for each of the four checks we talked about in the previous section. The fact that they are red, means we have that particular issue. The first section (above the first red text line) is the nuget targets section.  Notice  No.1, it says it has found no paths to copy.  What IFix does here is to check if there are any defined paths to other nuget galleries.  If there are, then those are copied over to the nuget.config file, where is where it should be in version 2.7 and above.   No.2 says it has found the particular nuget.targets file,  No.3  states it HAS found some other nuget galleries defines in the targets file, which then it would like to copy to the config.file. No.4 is the section for nuget.exe files, and list those it has found, and which it would like to delete. No 5 states it has found a reference to nuget.targets in the solution file.  This reference comes from the fact that the .nuget folder is a solution folder, and the items within are described in the solution file. It then checks the csproj files, and as can be seen from the last red line, it ha found issues in 96 out of 198 csproj files.  There are two possible issues in a csproj files.  No.6 is the first one, and the most common and most important one, an “Import project” section.  This is the section that calls the nuget.targets files.  No.7 is another issue, which seems to sometimes be there, sometimes not, it is a RestorePackages property, which also should go away. Now, if we run the IFix nugetrestore –fix command, and then the check again after that, the result is: All green !

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• Advanced Continuous Delivery to Azure from TFS, Part 1: Good Enough Is Not Great

  - by jasont

  The folks over on the TFS / Visual Studio team have been working hard at releasing a steady stream of new features for their new hosted Team Foundation Service in the cloud. One of the most significant features released was simple continuous delivery of your solution into your Azure deployments. The original announcement from Brian Harry can be found here. Team Foundation Service is a great platform for .Net developers who are used to working with TFS on-premises. I’ve been using it since it became available at the //BUILD conference in 2011, and when I recently came to work at Stackify, it was one of the first changes I made. Managing work items is much easier than the tool we were using previously, although there are some limitations (more on that in another blog post). However, when continuous deployment was made available, it blew my mind. It was the killer feature I didn’t know I needed. Not to say that I wasn’t previously an advocate for continuous delivery; just that it was always a pain to set up and configure. Having it hosted - and a one-click setup – well, that’s just the best thing since sliced bread. It made perfect sense: my source code is in the cloud, and my deployment is in the cloud. Great! I can queue up a build from my iPad or phone and just let it go! I quickly tore through the quick setup and saw it all work… sort of. This will be the first in a three part series on how to take the building block of Team Foundation Service continuous delivery and build a CD model that will actually work for any team deploying something more advanced than a “Hello World” example. Part 1: Good Enough Is Not Great Part 2: A Model That Works: Branching and Multiple Deployment Environments Part 3: Other Considerations: SQL, Custom Tasks, Etc Good Enough Is Not Great There. I’ve said it. I certainly hope no one on the TFS team is offended, but it’s the truth. Let’s take a look under the hood and understand how it works, and then why it’s not enough to handle real world CD as-is. How it works. (note that I’ve skipped a couple of steps; I already have my accounts set up and something deployed to Azure) The first step is to establish some oAuth magic between your Azure management portal and your TFS Instance. You do this via the management portal. Once it’s done, you have a new build process template in your TFS instance. (Image lifted from the documentation) From here, you’ll get the usual prompts for security, allowing access, etc. But you’ll also get to pick which Solution in your source control to build. Here’s what the bulk of the build definition looks like. All I’ve had to do is add in the solution to build (notice that mine is from a specific branch – Release – more on that later) and I’ve changed the configuration. I trigger the build, and voila! I have an Azure deployment a few minutes later. The beauty of this is that it’s all in the cloud and I’m not waiting for my machine to compile and upload the package. (I also had to enable the build definition first – by default it is created in disabled state, probably a good thing since it will trigger on every.single.checkin by default.) I get to see a history of deployments from the Azure portal, and can link into TFS to see the associated changesets and work items. You’ll notice also that this build definition also automatically put my code in the Staging slot of my Azure deployment – more on this soon. For now, I can VIP swap and be in production. (P.S. I hate VIP swap and “production” and “staging” in Azure. More on that later too.) That’s it. That’s the default out-of-box experience. Easy, right? But it’s full of room for improvement, so let’s get into that….   The Problems Nothing is perfect (except my code – it’s always perfect), and neither is Continuous Deployment without a bit of work to help it fit your dev team’s process. So what are the issues? Issue 1: Staging vs QA vs Prod vs whatever other environments your team may have. This, for me, is the big hairy one. Remember how this automatically deployed to staging rather than prod for us? There are a couple of issues with this model: If I want to deliver to prod, it requires intervention on my part after deployment (via a VIP swap). If I truly want to promote between environments (i.e. Nightly Build –> Stable QA –> Production) I likely have configuration changes between each environment such as database connection strings and this process (and the VIP swap) doesn’t account for this. Yet. Issue 2: Branching and delivering on every check-in. As I mentioned above, I have set this up to target a specific branch – Release – of my code. For the purposes of this example, I have adopted the “basic” branching strategy as defined by the ALM Rangers. This basically establishes a “Main” trunk where you branch off Dev and Release branches. Granted, the Release branch is usually the only thing you will deploy to production, but you certainly don’t want to roll to production automatically when you merge to the Release branch and check-in (unless you like the thrill of it, and in that case, I like your style, cowboy….). Rather, you have nightly build and QA environments, or if you’ve adopted the feature-branch model you have environments for those. Those are the environments you want to continuously deploy to. But that takes us back to Issue 1: we currently have a 1:1 solution to Azure deployment target. Issue 3: SQL and other custom tasks. Let’s be honest and address the elephant in the room: I need to get some sleep because I see an elephant in the room. But seriously, I can’t think of an application I have touched in the last 10 years that doesn’t need to consider SQL changes when deploying code and upgrading an environment. Microsoft seems perfectly content to ignore this elephant for now: yes, they’ve added Data Tier Applications. But let’s be honest with ourselves again: no one really uses it, and it’s not suitable for anything more complex than a Hello World sample project database. Why? Because it doesn’t fit well into a great source control story. Developers make stored procedure and table changes all day long while coding complex applications, and if someone forgets to go update the DACPAC before the automated deployment, you have a broken build until it’s completed. Developers – not just DBAs – also like to work with SQL in SQL tools, not in Visual Studio. I’m really picking on SQL because that’s generally the biggest concern that I hear. But we need to account for any custom tasks as well in the build process.   The Solutions… ? We’ve taken a look at how this all works, and addressed the shortcomings. In my next post (which I promise will be very, very soon), I will detail how I’ve overcome these shortcomings and used this foundation to create a mature, flexible model for deploying my app – any version, any time, to any environment.

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