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• jQuery Globalization Plugin from Microsoft

  - by ScottGu

  Last month I blogged about how Microsoft is starting to make code contributions to jQuery, and about some of the first code contributions we were working on: jQuery Templates and Data Linking support. Today, we released a prototype of a new jQuery Globalization Plugin that enables you to add globalization support to your JavaScript applications. This plugin includes globalization information for over 350 cultures ranging from Scottish Gaelic, Frisian, Hungarian, Japanese, to Canadian English.  We will be releasing this plugin to the community as open-source. You can download our prototype for the jQuery Globalization plugin from our Github repository: http://github.com/nje/jquery-glob You can also download a set of samples that demonstrate some simple use-cases with it here. Understanding Globalization The jQuery Globalization plugin enables you to easily parse and format numbers, currencies, and dates for different cultures in JavaScript. For example, you can use the Globalization plugin to display the proper currency symbol for a culture: You also can use the Globalization plugin to format dates so that the day and month appear in the right order and the day and month names are correctly translated: Notice above how the Arabic year is displayed as 1431. This is because the year has been converted to use the Arabic calendar. Some cultural differences, such as different currency or different month names, are obvious. Other cultural differences are surprising and subtle. For example, in some cultures, the grouping of numbers is done unevenly. In the "te-IN" culture (Telugu in India), groups have 3 digits and then 2 digits. The number 1000000 (one million) is written as "10,00,000". Some cultures do not group numbers at all. All of these subtle cultural differences are handled by the jQuery Globalization plugin automatically. Getting dates right can be especially tricky. Different cultures have different calendars such as the Gregorian and UmAlQura calendars. A single culture can even have multiple calendars. For example, the Japanese culture uses both the Gregorian calendar and a Japanese calendar that has eras named after Japanese emperors. The Globalization Plugin includes methods for converting dates between all of these different calendars. Using Language Tags The jQuery Globalization plugin uses the language tags defined in the RFC 4646 and RFC 5646 standards to identity cultures (see http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5646). A language tag is composed out of one or more subtags separated by hyphens. For example: Language Tag Language Name (in English) en-AU English (Australia) en-BZ English (Belize) en-CA English (Canada) Id Indonesian zh-CHS Chinese (Simplified) Legacy Zu isiZulu Notice that a single language, such as English, can have several language tags. Speakers of English in Canada format numbers, currencies, and dates using different conventions than speakers of English in Australia or the United States. You can find the language tag for a particular culture by using the Language Subtag Lookup tool located here:  http://rishida.net/utils/subtags/ The jQuery Globalization plugin download includes a folder named globinfo that contains the information for each of the 350 cultures. Actually, this folder contains more than 700 files because the folder includes both minified and un-minified versions of each file. For example, the globinfo folder includes JavaScript files named jQuery.glob.en-AU.js for English Australia, jQuery.glob.id.js for Indonesia, and jQuery.glob.zh-CHS for Chinese (Simplified) Legacy. Example: Setting a Particular Culture Imagine that you have been asked to create a German website and want to format all of the dates, currencies, and numbers using German formatting conventions correctly in JavaScript on the client. The HTML for the page might look like this: Notice the span tags above. They mark the areas of the page that we want to format with the Globalization plugin. We want to format the product price, the date the product is available, and the units of the product in stock. To use the jQuery Globalization plugin, we’ll add three JavaScript files to the page: the jQuery library, the jQuery Globalization plugin, and the culture information for a particular language: In this case, I’ve statically added the jQuery.glob.de-DE.js JavaScript file that contains the culture information for German. The language tag “de-DE” is used for German as spoken in Germany. Now that I have all of the necessary scripts, I can use the Globalization plugin to format the product price, date available, and units in stock values using the following client-side JavaScript: The jQuery Globalization plugin extends the jQuery library with new methods - including new methods named preferCulture() and format(). The preferCulture() method enables you to set the default culture used by the jQuery Globalization plugin methods. Notice that the preferCulture() method accepts a language tag. The method will find the closest culture that matches the language tag. The $.format() method is used to actually format the currencies, dates, and numbers. The second parameter passed to the $.format() method is a format specifier. For example, passing “c” causes the value to be formatted as a currency. The ReadMe file at github details the meaning of all of the various format specifiers: http://github.com/nje/jquery-glob When we open the page in a browser, everything is formatted correctly according to German language conventions. A euro symbol is used for the currency symbol. The date is formatted using German day and month names. Finally, a period instead of a comma is used a number separator: You can see a running example of the above approach with the 3_GermanSite.htm file in this samples download. Example: Enabling a User to Dynamically Select a Culture In the previous example we explicitly said that we wanted to globalize in German (by referencing the jQuery.glob.de-DE.js file). Let’s now look at the first of a few examples that demonstrate how to dynamically set the globalization culture to use. Imagine that you want to display a dropdown list of all of the 350 cultures in a page. When someone selects a culture from the dropdown list, you want all of the dates in the page to be formatted using the selected culture. Here’s the HTML for the page: Notice that all of the dates are contained in a <span> tag with a data-date attribute (data-* attributes are a new feature of HTML 5 that conveniently also still work with older browsers). We’ll format the date represented by the data-date attribute when a user selects a culture from the dropdown list. In order to display dates for any possible culture, we’ll include the jQuery.glob.all.js file like this: The jQuery Globalization plugin includes a JavaScript file named jQuery.glob.all.js. This file contains globalization information for all of the more than 350 cultures supported by the Globalization plugin.  At 367KB minified, this file is not small. Because of the size of this file, unless you really need to use all of these cultures at the same time, we recommend that you add the individual JavaScript files for particular cultures that you intend to support instead of the combined jQuery.glob.all.js to a page. In the next sample I’ll show how to dynamically load just the language files you need. Next, we’ll populate the dropdown list with all of the available cultures. We can use the $.cultures property to get all of the loaded cultures: Finally, we’ll write jQuery code that grabs every span element with a data-date attribute and format the date: The jQuery Globalization plugin’s parseDate() method is used to convert a string representation of a date into a JavaScript date. The plugin’s format() method is used to format the date. The “D” format specifier causes the date to be formatted using the long date format. And now the content will be globalized correctly regardless of which of the 350 languages a user visiting the page selects.  You can see a running example of the above approach with the 4_SelectCulture.htm file in this samples download. Example: Loading Globalization Files Dynamically As mentioned in the previous section, you should avoid adding the jQuery.glob.all.js file to a page whenever possible because the file is so large. A better alternative is to load the globalization information that you need dynamically. For example, imagine that you have created a dropdown list that displays a list of languages: The following jQuery code executes whenever a user selects a new language from the dropdown list. The code checks whether the globalization file associated with the selected language has already been loaded. If the globalization file has not been loaded then the globalization file is loaded dynamically by taking advantage of the jQuery $.getScript() method. The globalizePage() method is called after the requested globalization file has been loaded, and contains the client-side code to perform the globalization. The advantage of this approach is that it enables you to avoid loading the entire jQuery.glob.all.js file. Instead you only need to load the files that you need and you don’t need to load the files more than once. The 5_Dynamic.htm file in this samples download demonstrates how to implement this approach. Example: Setting the User Preferred Language Automatically Many websites detect a user’s preferred language from their browser settings and automatically use it when globalizing content. A user can set a preferred language for their browser. Then, whenever the user requests a page, this language preference is included in the request in the Accept-Language header. When using Microsoft Internet Explorer, you can set your preferred language by following these steps: Select the menu option Tools, Internet Options. Select the General tab. Click the Languages button in the Appearance section. Click the Add button to add a new language to the list of languages. Move your preferred language to the top of the list. Notice that you can list multiple languages in the Language Preference dialog. All of these languages are sent in the order that you listed them in the Accept-Language header: Accept-Language: fr-FR,id-ID;q=0.7,en-US;q=0.3 Strangely, you cannot retrieve the value of the Accept-Language header from client JavaScript. Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox support a bevy of language related properties exposed by the window.navigator object, such as windows.navigator.browserLanguage and window.navigator.language, but these properties represent either the language set for the operating system or the language edition of the browser. These properties don’t enable you to retrieve the language that the user set as his or her preferred language. The only reliable way to get a user’s preferred language (the value of the Accept-Language header) is to write server code. For example, the following ASP.NET page takes advantage of the server Request.UserLanguages property to assign the user’s preferred language to a client JavaScript variable named acceptLanguage (which then allows you to access the value using client-side JavaScript): In order for this code to work, the culture information associated with the value of acceptLanguage must be included in the page. For example, if someone’s preferred culture is fr-FR (French in France) then you need to include either the jQuery.glob.fr-FR.js or the jQuery.glob.all.js JavaScript file in the page or the culture information won’t be available.  The “6_AcceptLanguages.aspx” sample in this samples download demonstrates how to implement this approach. If the culture information for the user’s preferred language is not included in the page then the $.preferCulture() method will fall back to using the neutral culture (for example, using jQuery.glob.fr.js instead of jQuery.glob.fr-FR.js). If the neutral culture information is not available then the $.preferCulture() method falls back to the default culture (English). Example: Using the Globalization Plugin with the jQuery UI DatePicker One of the goals of the Globalization plugin is to make it easier to build jQuery widgets that can be used with different cultures. We wanted to make sure that the jQuery Globalization plugin could work with existing jQuery UI plugins such as the DatePicker plugin. To that end, we created a patched version of the DatePicker plugin that can take advantage of the Globalization plugin when rendering a calendar. For example, the following figure illustrates what happens when you add the jQuery Globalization and the patched jQuery UI DatePicker plugin to a page and select Indonesian as the preferred culture: Notice that the headers for the days of the week are displayed using Indonesian day name abbreviations. Furthermore, the month names are displayed in Indonesian. You can download the patched version of the jQuery UI DatePicker from our github website. Or you can use the version included in this samples download and used by the 7_DatePicker.htm sample file. Summary I’m excited about our continuing participation in the jQuery community. This Globalization plugin is the third jQuery plugin that we’ve released. We’ve really appreciated all of the great feedback and design suggestions on the jQuery templating and data-linking prototypes that we released earlier this year.  We also want to thank the jQuery and jQuery UI teams for working with us to create these plugins. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. You can follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• Announcing release of ASP.NET MVC 3, IIS Express, SQL CE 4, Web Farm Framework, Orchard, WebMatrix

  - by ScottGu

  I’m excited to announce the release today of several products: ASP.NET MVC 3 NuGet IIS Express 7.5 SQL Server Compact Edition 4 Web Deploy and Web Farm Framework 2.0 Orchard 1.0 WebMatrix 1.0 The above products are all free. They build upon the .NET 4 and VS 2010 release, and add a ton of additional value to ASP.NET (both Web Forms and MVC) and the Microsoft Web Server stack. ASP.NET MVC 3 Today we are shipping the final release of ASP.NET MVC 3.  You can download and install ASP.NET MVC 3 here.  The ASP.NET MVC 3 source code (released under an OSI-compliant open source license) can also optionally be downloaded here. ASP.NET MVC 3 is a significant update that brings with it a bunch of great features.  Some of the improvements include: Razor ASP.NET MVC 3 ships with a new view-engine option called “Razor” (in addition to continuing to support/enhance the existing .aspx view engine).  Razor minimizes the number of characters and keystrokes required when writing a view template, and enables a fast, fluid coding workflow. Unlike most template syntaxes, with Razor you do not need to interrupt your coding to explicitly denote the start and end of server blocks within your HTML. The Razor parser is smart enough to infer this from your code. This enables a compact and expressive syntax which is clean, fast and fun to type.  You can learn more about Razor from some of the blog posts I’ve done about it over the last 6 months Introducing Razor New @model keyword in Razor Layouts with Razor Server-Side Comments with Razor Razor’s @: and <text> syntax Implicit and Explicit code nuggets with Razor Layouts and Sections with Razor Today’s release supports full code intellisense support for Razor (both VB and C#) with Visual Studio 2010 and the free Visual Web Developer 2010 Express. JavaScript Improvements ASP.NET MVC 3 enables richer JavaScript scenarios and takes advantage of emerging HTML5 capabilities. The AJAX and Validation helpers in ASP.NET MVC 3 now use an Unobtrusive JavaScript based approach.  Unobtrusive JavaScript avoids injecting inline JavaScript into HTML, and enables cleaner separation of behavior using the new HTML 5 “data-“ attribute convention (which conveniently works on older browsers as well – including IE6). This keeps your HTML tight and clean, and makes it easier to optionally swap out or customize JS libraries.  ASP.NET MVC 3 now includes built-in support for posting JSON-based parameters from client-side JavaScript to action methods on the server.  This makes it easier to exchange data across the client and server, and build rich JavaScript front-ends.  We think this capability will be particularly useful going forward with scenarios involving client templates and data binding (including the jQuery plugins the ASP.NET team recently contributed to the jQuery project).  Previous releases of ASP.NET MVC included the core jQuery library.  ASP.NET MVC 3 also now ships the jQuery Validate plugin (which our validation helpers use for client-side validation scenarios).  We are also now shipping and including jQuery UI by default as well (which provides a rich set of client-side JavaScript UI widgets for you to use within projects). Improved Validation ASP.NET MVC 3 includes a bunch of validation enhancements that make it even easier to work with data. Client-side validation is now enabled by default with ASP.NET MVC 3 (using an onbtrusive javascript implementation).  Today’s release also includes built-in support for Remote Validation - which enables you to annotate a model class with a validation attribute that causes ASP.NET MVC to perform a remote validation call to a server method when validating input on the client. The validation features introduced within .NET 4’s System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations namespace are now supported by ASP.NET MVC 3.  This includes support for the new IValidatableObject interface – which enables you to perform model-level validation, and allows you to provide validation error messages specific to the state of the overall model, or between two properties within the model.  ASP.NET MVC 3 also supports the improvements made to the ValidationAttribute class in .NET 4.  ValidationAttribute now supports a new IsValid overload that provides more information about the current validation context, such as what object is being validated.  This enables richer scenarios where you can validate the current value based on another property of the model.  We’ve shipped a built-in [Compare] validation attribute  with ASP.NET MVC 3 that uses this support and makes it easy out of the box to compare and validate two property values. You can use any data access API or technology with ASP.NET MVC.  This past year, though, we’ve worked closely with the .NET data team to ensure that the new EF Code First library works really well for ASP.NET MVC applications.  These two posts of mine cover the latest EF Code First preview and demonstrates how to use it with ASP.NET MVC 3 to enable easy editing of data (with end to end client+server validation support).  The final release of EF Code First will ship in the next few weeks. Today we are also publishing the first preview of a new MvcScaffolding project.  It enables you to easily scaffold ASP.NET MVC 3 Controllers and Views, and works great with EF Code-First (and is pluggable to support other data providers).  You can learn more about it – and install it via NuGet today - from Steve Sanderson’s MvcScaffolding blog post. Output Caching Previous releases of ASP.NET MVC supported output caching content at a URL or action-method level. With ASP.NET MVC V3 we are also enabling support for partial page output caching – which allows you to easily output cache regions or fragments of a response as opposed to the entire thing.  This ends up being super useful in a lot of scenarios, and enables you to dramatically reduce the work your application does on the server.  The new partial page output caching support in ASP.NET MVC 3 enables you to easily re-use cached sub-regions/fragments of a page across multiple URLs on a site.  It supports the ability to cache the content either on the web-server, or optionally cache it within a distributed cache server like Windows Server AppFabric or memcached. I’ll post some tutorials on my blog that show how to take advantage of ASP.NET MVC 3’s new output caching support for partial page scenarios in the future. Better Dependency Injection ASP.NET MVC 3 provides better support for applying Dependency Injection (DI) and integrating with Dependency Injection/IOC containers. With ASP.NET MVC 3 you no longer need to author custom ControllerFactory classes in order to enable DI with Controllers.  You can instead just register a Dependency Injection framework with ASP.NET MVC 3 and it will resolve dependencies not only for Controllers, but also for Views, Action Filters, Model Binders, Value Providers, Validation Providers, and Model Metadata Providers that you use within your application. This makes it much easier to cleanly integrate dependency injection within your projects. Other Goodies ASP.NET MVC 3 includes dozens of other nice improvements that help to both reduce the amount of code you write, and make the code you do write cleaner.  Here are just a few examples: Improved New Project dialog that makes it easy to start new ASP.NET MVC 3 projects from templates. Improved Add->View Scaffolding support that enables the generation of even cleaner view templates. New ViewBag property that uses .NET 4’s dynamic support to make it easy to pass late-bound data from Controllers to Views. Global Filters support that allows specifying cross-cutting filter attributes (like [HandleError]) across all Controllers within an app. New [AllowHtml] attribute that allows for more granular request validation when binding form posted data to models. Sessionless controller support that allows fine grained control over whether SessionState is enabled on a Controller. New ActionResult types like HttpNotFoundResult and RedirectPermanent for common HTTP scenarios. New Html.Raw() helper to indicate that output should not be HTML encoded. New Crypto helpers for salting and hashing passwords. And much, much more… Learn More about ASP.NET MVC 3 We will be posting lots of tutorials and samples on the http://asp.net/mvc site in the weeks ahead.  Below are two good ASP.NET MVC 3 tutorials available on the site today: Build your First ASP.NET MVC 3 Application: VB and C# Building the ASP.NET MVC 3 Music Store We’ll post additional ASP.NET MVC 3 tutorials and videos on the http://asp.net/mvc site in the future. Visit it regularly to find new tutorials as they are published. How to Upgrade Existing Projects ASP.NET MVC 3 is compatible with ASP.NET MVC 2 – which means it should be easy to update existing MVC projects to ASP.NET MVC 3.  The new features in ASP.NET MVC 3 build on top of the foundational work we’ve already done with the MVC 1 and MVC 2 releases – which means that the skills, knowledge, libraries, and books you’ve acquired are all directly applicable with the MVC 3 release.  MVC 3 adds new features and capabilities – it doesn’t obsolete existing ones. You can upgrade existing ASP.NET MVC 2 projects by following the manual upgrade steps in the release notes.  Alternatively, you can use this automated ASP.NET MVC 3 upgrade tool to easily update your  existing projects. Localized Builds Today’s ASP.NET MVC 3 release is available in English.  We will be releasing localized versions of ASP.NET MVC 3 (in 9 languages) in a few days.  I’ll blog pointers to the localized downloads once they are available. NuGet Today we are also shipping NuGet – a free, open source, package manager that makes it easy for you to find, install, and use open source libraries in your projects. It works with all .NET project types (including ASP.NET Web Forms, ASP.NET MVC, WPF, WinForms, Silverlight, and Class Libraries).  You can download and install it here. NuGet enables developers who maintain open source projects (for example, .NET projects like Moq, NHibernate, Ninject, StructureMap, NUnit, Windsor, Raven, Elmah, etc) to package up their libraries and register them with an online gallery/catalog that is searchable.  The client-side NuGet tools – which include full Visual Studio integration – make it trivial for any .NET developer who wants to use one of these libraries to easily find and install it within the project they are working on. NuGet handles dependency management between libraries (for example: library1 depends on library2). It also makes it easy to update (and optionally remove) libraries from your projects later. It supports updating web.config files (if a package needs configuration settings). It also allows packages to add PowerShell scripts to a project (for example: scaffold commands). Importantly, NuGet is transparent and clean – and does not install anything at the system level. Instead it is focused on making it easy to manage libraries you use with your projects. Our goal with NuGet is to make it as simple as possible to integrate open source libraries within .NET projects.  NuGet Gallery This week we also launched a beta version of the http://nuget.org web-site – which allows anyone to easily search and browse an online gallery of open source packages available via NuGet.  The site also now allows developers to optionally submit new packages that they wish to share with others.  You can learn more about how to create and share a package here. There are hundreds of open-source .NET projects already within the NuGet Gallery today.  We hope to have thousands there in the future. IIS Express 7.5 Today we are also shipping IIS Express 7.5.  IIS Express is a free version of IIS 7.5 that is optimized for developer scenarios.  It works for both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC project types. We think IIS Express combines the ease of use of the ASP.NET Web Server (aka Cassini) currently built-into Visual Studio today with the full power of IIS.  Specifically: It’s lightweight and easy to install (less than 5Mb download and a quick install) It does not require an administrator account to run/debug applications from Visual Studio It enables a full web-server feature set – including SSL, URL Rewrite, and other IIS 7.x modules It supports and enables the same extensibility model and web.config file settings that IIS 7.x support It can be installed side-by-side with the full IIS web server as well as the ASP.NET Development Server (they do not conflict at all) It works on Windows XP and higher operating systems – giving you a full IIS 7.x developer feature-set on all Windows OS platforms IIS Express (like the ASP.NET Development Server) can be quickly launched to run a site from a directory on disk.  It does not require any registration/configuration steps. This makes it really easy to launch and run for development scenarios.  You can also optionally redistribute IIS Express with your own applications if you want a lightweight web-server.  The standard IIS Express EULA now includes redistributable rights. Visual Studio 2010 SP1 adds support for IIS Express.  Read my VS 2010 SP1 and IIS Express blog post to learn more about what it enables.  SQL Server Compact Edition 4 Today we are also shipping SQL Server Compact Edition 4 (aka SQL CE 4).  SQL CE is a free, embedded, database engine that enables easy database storage. No Database Installation Required SQL CE does not require you to run a setup or install a database server in order to use it.  You can simply copy the SQL CE binaries into the \bin directory of your ASP.NET application, and then your web application can use it as a database engine.  No setup or extra security permissions are required for it to run. You do not need to have an administrator account on the machine. Just copy your web application onto any server and it will work. This is true even of medium-trust applications running in a web hosting environment. SQL CE runs in-memory within your ASP.NET application and will start-up when you first access a SQL CE database, and will automatically shutdown when your application is unloaded.  SQL CE databases are stored as files that live within the \App_Data folder of your ASP.NET Applications. Works with Existing Data APIs SQL CE 4 works with existing .NET-based data APIs, and supports a SQL Server compatible query syntax.  This means you can use existing data APIs like ADO.NET, as well as use higher-level ORMs like Entity Framework and NHibernate with SQL CE.  This enables you to use the same data programming skills and data APIs you know today. Supports Development, Testing and Production Scenarios SQL CE can be used for development scenarios, testing scenarios, and light production usage scenarios.  With the SQL CE 4 release we’ve done the engineering work to ensure that SQL CE won’t crash or deadlock when used in a multi-threaded server scenario (like ASP.NET).  This is a big change from previous releases of SQL CE – which were designed for client-only scenarios and which explicitly blocked running in web-server environments.  Starting with SQL CE 4 you can use it in a web-server as well. There are no license restrictions with SQL CE.  It is also totally free. Tooling Support with VS 2010 SP1 Visual Studio 2010 SP1 adds support for SQL CE 4 and ASP.NET Projects.  Read my VS 2010 SP1 and SQL CE 4 blog post to learn more about what it enables.  Web Deploy and Web Farm Framework 2.0 Today we are also releasing Microsoft Web Deploy V2 and Microsoft Web Farm Framework V2.  These services provide a flexible and powerful way to deploy ASP.NET applications onto either a single server, or across a web farm of machines. You can learn more about these capabilities from my previous blog posts on them: Introducing the Microsoft Web Farm Framework Automating Deployment with Microsoft Web Deploy Visit the http://iis.net website to learn more and install them. Both are free. Orchard 1.0 Today we are also releasing Orchard v1.0.  Orchard is a free, open source, community based project.  It provides Content Management System (CMS) and Blogging System support out of the box, and makes it possible to easily create and manage web-sites without having to write code (site owners can customize a site through the browser-based editing tools built-into Orchard).  Read these tutorials to learn more about how you can setup and manage your own Orchard site. Orchard itself is built as an ASP.NET MVC 3 application using Razor view templates (and by default uses SQL CE 4 for data storage).  Developers wishing to extend an Orchard site with custom functionality can open and edit it as a Visual Studio project – and add new ASP.NET MVC Controllers/Views to it.  WebMatrix 1.0 WebMatrix is a new, free, web development tool from Microsoft that provides a suite of technologies that make it easier to enable website development.  It enables a developer to start a new site by browsing and downloading an app template from an online gallery of web applications (which includes popular apps like Umbraco, DotNetNuke, Orchard, WordPress, Drupal and Joomla).  Alternatively it also enables developers to create and code web sites from scratch. WebMatrix is task focused and helps guide developers as they work on sites.  WebMatrix includes IIS Express, SQL CE 4, and ASP.NET - providing an integrated web-server, database and programming framework combination.  It also includes built-in web publishing support which makes it easy to find and deploy sites to web hosting providers. You can learn more about WebMatrix from my Introducing WebMatrix blog post this summer.  Visit http://microsoft.com/web to download and install it today. Summary I’m really excited about today’s releases – they provide a bunch of additional value that makes web development with ASP.NET, Visual Studio and the Microsoft Web Server a lot better.  A lot of folks worked hard to share this with you today. On behalf of my whole team – we hope you enjoy them! Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, March 12, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, March 12, 2010New Projects.NET DEPENDENCY INJECTION: Abel Perez Enterprise FrameworkAutodocs - WCF REST Automatic API Documentation Generator: Autodocs is an automatic API documentation generator for .NET applications that use Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) to establish REST API's.BlockBlock: Block Block is a free game. You know Lumines and you will like BlockBlock.C4F XNA ASCII Post-Processing: This is the source code for the Coding4Fun article "XNA Effects – ASCII Art in 3D"ChequePrinter: this is ChequePrinterCompiladores MSIL usando Phoenix (PLP 2008.1 - CIn/UFPE): Este projeto foi feito com o intuito de explorar a plataforma Microsoft Phoenix para a construção de compiladores para MSIL de duas linguagens de E...CRM External View: CRM External View enables more robust control over exposing Microsoft CRM data (in a form of views) for external parties. The solution uses web ser...CS Project2: This is for the projectDotNetNuke IM Module of Facebook Like Messenger: Help you integrate 123 Web Messenger into DotNetNuke, and add a powerful 1-to-1 IM Software named "Facebook Messenger Style Web Chat Bar" at the bo...DotNetNuke® RadPanelBar: DNNRadPanelBar makes it easy to add telerik RadPanelBar functionality to your module or skin. Licensing permits anyone to use the components (incl...DotNetNuke® Skin Blocks: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Modern Business" category by Armand Datema of Schwingsoft. This skin uses a bit of jQu...Drilltrough and filtering on SSAS-cubes in SSRS: We will describe a technique to create Reporting services (SSRS) reports that use Analysis services (SSAS) cubes as data sources, have a very intu...Ecosystem Diagnosis & Treatment: The Ecosystem DIagnosis & Treatment community provides tools, analyses and applications of the medical model to natural resource problems. EDT sof...ExIf 35: A utility for use by film photographers for keeping track of critical facts about images taken on a roll of film, just as digital cameras do automa...FabricadeTI: Desenvolvimento do framework FabricadeTI.Find and Replace word in the sentences: This program used Java Development Kid 6.0 and i were using HighLighter class. It was completed code with source code and then everybody can use in...Flash Nut: Flash Nut is a flash card program. You can build and review decks of flash cards. The project is a vs2008 wpf application.Free DotNetNuke Chat Module (Popup Mode): With this free DotNetNuke Chat Module (Popup Mode), master will assist to integrate DotNetNuke with 123 Flash Chat seamlessly, and add a popup mode...Free DotNetNuke IM of 123 Web Messenger -- Web-based Friend List: With this FREE application, you could integrate DNN website Database with 123 Web Messenger seamlessly and embed a web-based Friends List into anyw...Free DotNetNuke Live Help Module: With DotNetNuke Live Help Module, integrate 123 Live Help into DotNetNuke website and add Live Chat Button anywhere you like. Let visitors to chat ...G52GRP Videowall: NottinghamHappy Turtle Plugins for BVI :: Repository Based Versioning for Visual Studio: The Happy Turtle project creates plugins for the Build Version Increment Add-In for Visual Studio (BVI). The focus is to automatically version asse...Hasher: Hasher es capaz de generar el hash MD5 y SHA de textos de hasta 100.000 caracteres y ficheros. También te permitirá comprobar dos hash para verifi...Infragistics Silverlight Extended Controls: This project is a group of controls that extend or add functionality to the Infragistics Silverlight control suite. This control requires Infragis...Insert Video Jnr: This is a baby version of my Video plugin, it is intended for Hosted Wordpress blogs only and shouldn't be used with other blog providers.jccc .NET smart framework: jccc .NET smart framework allows the creation of fast connections to MSSQL or MYSQL databases, and the data manipulation by using of c# class's tha...LytScript: 函数式脚本语言Microsoft - DDD NLayerApp .NET 4.0 Example (Microsoft Spain): DDD NLayered App .NET 4.0 Example By Microsoft - Spain Domain Driven Design NLayered App .NET 4.0 Example Implementation Example of our local Arc...mimiKit: Lightweight ASP.NET MVC / Javascript Framework for creating mobile applications PHPWord: With PHPWord you can easily create a Word document with PHP. 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If no bugs are found within the next couple of weeks, then this will become the 1.2 Final b...Free DotNetNuke Chat Module (Popup Mode): Download DNN Chat Module (Popup Mode)+Source Code: Feel free to download DotNetNuke Chat Module (Popup Mode), integrating DotNetNuke with 123 Flash Chat Software, and add a free popup mode flash cha...Free DotNetNuke Live Help Module: Download DNN Live Support Module and Source Code: In Readme file, there are detailed Installation and Integration Manual for you. This module is compatible with DotNetNuke v5.x.Happy Turtle Plugins for BVI :: Repository Based Versioning for Visual Studio: Happy Turtle 1.0.44927: This is the first release of the SVN based version incrementor. How To InstallMake sure that Build Version Increment v2.2.10065.1524 or newer is i...Hasher: 1.0: Versión inicial de la aplicación: Obtención de hash MD5 y SHA. Codificación en tiempo real de textos de hasta 100.000 caracteres. Codificación ...Jamolina: PhotosynthDemo: PhotosynthDemoMapWindow GIS: MapWindow 6.0 msi (March 11): This fixes an PixelToProj problem for the Extended Buffer case, as well as adding fixes to the WKBFeatureReader to fix an X,Y reversal and some ext...Math.NET Numerics: 2010.3.11.291 Build: Latest alpha buildMicrosoft - DDD NLayerApp .NET 4.0 Example (Microsoft Spain): V0.5 - N-Layer DDD Sample App: Required Software (Microsoft Base Software needed for Development environment) Unity Application Block 1.2 - October 2008 http://www.microsoft.com/...MiniTwitter: 1.09.2: MiniTwitter 1.09.2 更新内容 修正 タイムラインを削除すると落ちるバグを修正 稀にタイムラインのスクロールが出来ないバグを修正Nestoria.NET: Nestoria.NET 0.8: Provides access to the Nestoria API. Documentation contains a basic getting started guide. Please visit Darren Edge's blog for ongoing developmen...Pod Thrower: Version 1.0: Here is version 1.0. It has all the features I was looking to do in it. Please let me know if you use this and if you would like any changes.SharePoint Ad Rotator: SPAdRotator 2.0 Beta: This new release of the Ad Rotator contains many new features. One major new feature is that jQuery has been added to do image rotation without hav...SharePoint Objects: Democode Ton Stegeman: These download contains sample code for some SharePoint 2007 blog posts: TST.Themes_Build20100311.zip contains a feature receiver that registers Sh...SharePoint Taxonomy Extensions: SharePoint Taxonomy Extensions 1.2: Make Taxonomy Extensions useable in every list type. Not only in document libraries.SharePoint Video Player Web Part & SharePoint Video Library: Version 3.0.0: Absolutely killer feature - installing multiple players on a page without any loss of performance.SilverLight Interface for Mapserver: SLMapViewer v. 1.0: SLMapviewer sample application version 1.0. This new release includes the following enhancements: Silverlight 3.0 native Added a new init parame...Spark View Engine: Spark v1.1: Changes since RC1Built against ASP.NET MVC 2 RTMSPSS .NET interop library: 2.0: This new version supports SPSS 15, and includes spssio32.dll and other native .dll dependencies so that it works out of the box without SPSS being ...stefvanhooijdonk.com: SharePoint2010.ProfilePicturesLoader: So, with the help of Reflector, I wrote a small tool that would import all our profile pictures and update the user profiles. http://wp.me/pMnlQ-6G SuperviseObjects: SuperviseObjects 1.0: First releaseTortoiseSVN Addin for Visual Studio: TortoiseSVN Addin 1.0.5: Feature: Visual Studio/svn action synchronization on Item in Solution explorer like add, move, delete and rename. Note: Move action does not rememb...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30311.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVivoSocial: VivoSocial 7.0.4: Business Management ■This release fixes a Could not load type error on the main view of the module. Groups ■Group requests were failing in some i...WikiPlex – a Regex Wiki Engine: WikiPlex 1.3: Info: Official Version: 1.3.0.215 | Full Release Notes Documentation - This new documentation includes Full Markup Guide with Examples Articles ...Zealand IT MSBuild Tasks: Zealand IT MSBuild Tasks: Initial beta release of Zealand IT MSBuild Tasks. Contains the following tasks: RunAs - Same as Exec task, but provides parameters for impersonat...ZoomBarPlus: V1 (Beta): This is the initial release. It should be considered a beta test version as it has not been tested for very long on my device.Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpWBFS ManagerRawrAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NET Ajax LibraryASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesMost Active ProjectsUmbraco CMSRawrN2 CMSBlogEngine.NETFasterflect - A Fast and Simple Reflection APIjQuery Library for SharePoint Web Servicespatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryFarseer Physics EngineCaliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and SilverlightSharePoint Team-Mailer

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• Differences Between NHibernate and Entity Framework

  - by Ricardo Peres

  Introduction NHibernate and Entity Framework are two of the most popular O/RM frameworks on the .NET world. Although they share some functionality, there are some aspects on which they are quite different. This post will describe this differences and will hopefully help you get started with the one you know less. Mind you, this is a personal selection of features to compare, it is by no way an exhaustive list. History First, a bit of history. NHibernate is an open-source project that was first ported from Java’s venerable Hibernate framework, one of the first O/RM frameworks, but nowadays it is not tied to it, for example, it has .NET specific features, and has evolved in different ways from those of its Java counterpart. Current version is 3.3, with 3.4 on the horizon. It currently targets .NET 3.5, but can be used as well in .NET 4, it only makes no use of any of its specific functionality. You can find its home page at NHForge. Entity Framework 1 came out with .NET 3.5 and is now on its second major version, despite being version 4. Code First sits on top of it and but came separately and will also continue to be released out of line with major .NET distributions. It is currently on version 4.3.1 and version 5 will be released together with .NET Framework 4.5. All versions will target the current version of .NET, at the time of their release. Its home location is located at MSDN. Architecture In NHibernate, there is a separation between the Unit of Work and the configuration and model instances. You start off by creating a Configuration object, where you specify all global NHibernate settings such as the database and dialect to use, the batch sizes, the mappings, etc, then you build an ISessionFactory from it. The ISessionFactory holds model and metadata that is tied to a particular database and to the settings that came from the Configuration object, and, there will typically be only one instance of each in a process. Finally, you create instances of ISession from the ISessionFactory, which is the NHibernate representation of the Unit of Work and Identity Map. This is a lightweight object, it basically opens and closes a database connection as required and keeps track of the entities associated with it. ISession objects are cheap to create and dispose, because all of the model complexity is stored in the ISessionFactory and Configuration objects. As for Entity Framework, the ObjectContext/DbContext holds the configuration, model and acts as the Unit of Work, holding references to all of the known entity instances. This class is therefore not lightweight as its NHibernate counterpart and it is not uncommon to see examples where an instance is cached on a field. Mappings Both NHibernate and Entity Framework (Code First) support the use of POCOs to represent entities, no base classes are required (or even possible, in the case of NHibernate). As for mapping to and from the database, NHibernate supports three types of mappings: XML-based, which have the advantage of not tying the entity classes to a particular O/RM; the XML files can be deployed as files on the file system or as embedded resources in an assembly; Attribute-based, for keeping both the entities and database details on the same place at the expense of polluting the entity classes with NHibernate-specific attributes; Strongly-typed code-based, which allows dynamic creation of the model and strongly typing it, so that if, for example, a property name changes, the mapping will also be updated. Entity Framework can use: Attribute-based (although attributes cannot express all of the available possibilities – for example, cascading); Strongly-typed code mappings. Database Support With NHibernate you can use mostly any database you want, including: SQL Server; SQL Server Compact; SQL Server Azure; Oracle; DB2; PostgreSQL; MySQL; Sybase Adaptive Server/SQL Anywhere; Firebird; SQLLite; Informix; Any through OLE DB; Any through ODBC. Out of the box, Entity Framework only supports SQL Server, but a number of providers exist, both free and commercial, for some of the most used databases, such as Oracle and MySQL. See a list here. Inheritance Strategies Both NHibernate and Entity Framework support the three canonical inheritance strategies: Table Per Type Hierarchy (Single Table Inheritance), Table Per Type (Class Table Inheritance) and Table Per Concrete Type (Concrete Table Inheritance). Associations Regarding associations, both support one to one, one to many and many to many. However, NHibernate offers far more collection types: Bags of entities or values: unordered, possibly with duplicates; Lists of entities or values: ordered, indexed by a number column; Maps of entities or values: indexed by either an entity or any value; Sets of entities or values: unordered, no duplicates; Arrays of entities or values: indexed, immutable. Querying NHibernate exposes several querying APIs: LINQ is probably the most used nowadays, and really does not need to be introduced; Hibernate Query Language (HQL) is a database-agnostic, object-oriented SQL-alike language that exists since NHibernate’s creation and still offers the most advanced querying possibilities; well suited for dynamic queries, even if using string concatenation; Criteria API is an implementation of the Query Object pattern where you create a semi-abstract conceptual representation of the query you wish to execute by means of a class model; also a good choice for dynamic querying; Query Over offers a similar API to Criteria, but using strongly-typed LINQ expressions instead of strings; for this, although more refactor-friendlier that Criteria, it is also less suited for dynamic queries; SQL, including stored procedures, can also be used; Integration with Lucene.NET indexer is available. As for Entity Framework: LINQ to Entities is fully supported, and its implementation is considered very complete; it is the API of choice for most developers; Entity-SQL, HQL’s counterpart, is also an object-oriented, database-independent querying language that can be used for dynamic queries; SQL, of course, is also supported. Caching Both NHibernate and Entity Framework, of course, feature first-level cache. NHibernate also supports a second-level cache, that can be used among multiple ISessionFactorys, even in different processes/machines: Hashtable (in-memory); SysCache (uses ASP.NET as the cache provider); SysCache2 (same as above but with support for SQL Server SQL Dependencies); Prevalence; SharedCache; Memcached; Redis; NCache; Appfabric Caching. Out of the box, Entity Framework does not have any second-level cache mechanism, however, there are some public samples that show how we can add this. ID Generators NHibernate supports different ID generation strategies, coming from the database and otherwise: Identity (for SQL Server, MySQL, and databases who support identity columns); Sequence (for Oracle, PostgreSQL, and others who support sequences); Trigger-based; HiLo; Sequence HiLo (for databases that support sequences); Several GUID flavors, both in GUID as well as in string format; Increment (for single-user uses); Assigned (must know what you’re doing); Sequence-style (either uses an actual sequence or a single-column table); Table of ids; Pooled (similar to HiLo but stores high values in a table); Native (uses whatever mechanism the current database supports, identity or sequence). Entity Framework only supports: Identity generation; GUIDs; Assigned values. Properties NHibernate supports properties of entity types (one to one or many to one), collections (one to many or many to many) as well as scalars and enumerations. It offers a mechanism for having complex property types generated from the database, which even include support for querying. It also supports properties originated from SQL formulas. Entity Framework only supports scalars, entity types and collections. Enumerations support will come in the next version. Events and Interception NHibernate has a very rich event model, that exposes more than 20 events, either for synchronous pre-execution or asynchronous post-execution, including: Pre/Post-Load; Pre/Post-Delete; Pre/Post-Insert; Pre/Post-Update; Pre/Post-Flush. It also features interception of class instancing and SQL generation. As for Entity Framework, only two events exist: ObjectMaterialized (after loading an entity from the database); SavingChanges (before saving changes, which include deleting, inserting and updating). Tracking Changes For NHibernate as well as Entity Framework, all changes are tracked by their respective Unit of Work implementation. Entities can be attached and detached to it, Entity Framework does, however, also support self-tracking entities. Optimistic Concurrency Control NHibernate supports all of the imaginable scenarios: SQL Server’s ROWVERSION; Oracle’s ORA_ROWSCN; A column containing date and time; A column containing a version number; All/dirty columns comparison. Entity Framework is more focused on Entity Framework, so it only supports: SQL Server’s ROWVERSION; Comparing all/some columns. Batching NHibernate has full support for insertion batching, but only if the ID generator in use is not database-based (for example, it cannot be used with Identity), whereas Entity Framework has no batching at all. Cascading Both support cascading for collections and associations: when an entity is deleted, their conceptual children are also deleted. NHibernate also offers the possibility to set the foreign key column on children to NULL instead of removing them. Flushing Changes NHibernate’s ISession has a FlushMode property that can have the following values: Auto: changes are sent to the database when necessary, for example, if there are dirty instances of an entity type, and a query is performed against this entity type, or if the ISession is being disposed; Commit: changes are sent when committing the current transaction; Never: changes are only sent when explicitly calling Flush(). As for Entity Framework, changes have to be explicitly sent through a call to AcceptAllChanges()/SaveChanges(). Lazy Loading NHibernate supports lazy loading for Associated entities (one to one, many to one); Collections (one to many, many to many); Scalar properties (thing of BLOBs or CLOBs). Entity Framework only supports lazy loading for: Associated entities; Collections. Generating and Updating the Database Both NHibernate and Entity Framework Code First (with the Migrations API) allow creating the database model from the mapping and updating it if the mapping changes. Extensibility As you can guess, NHibernate is far more extensible than Entity Framework. Basically, everything can be extended, from ID generation, to LINQ to SQL transformation, HQL native SQL support, custom column types, custom association collections, SQL generation, supported databases, etc. With Entity Framework your options are more limited, at least, because practically no information exists as to what can be extended/changed. It features a provider model that can be extended to support any database. Integration With Other Microsoft APIs and Tools When it comes to integration with Microsoft technologies, it will come as no surprise that Entity Framework offers the best support. For example, the following technologies are fully supported: ASP.NET (through the EntityDataSource); ASP.NET Dynamic Data; WCF Data Services; WCF RIA Services; Visual Studio (through the integrated designer). Documentation This is another point where Entity Framework is superior: NHibernate lacks, for starters, an up to date API reference synchronized with its current version. It does have a community mailing list, blogs and wikis, although not much used. Entity Framework has a number of resources on MSDN and, of course, several forums and discussion groups exist. Conclusion Like I said, this is a personal list. I may come as a surprise to some that Entity Framework is so behind NHibernate in so many aspects, but it is true that NHibernate is much older and, due to its open-source nature, is not tied to product-specific timeframes and can thus evolve much more rapidly. I do like both, and I chose whichever is best for the job I have at hands. I am looking forward to the changes in EF5 which will add significant value to an already interesting product. So, what do you think? Did I forget anything important or is there anything else worth talking about? Looking forward for your comments!

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, March 01, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, March 01, 2012Popular ReleasesMetodología General Ajustada - MGA: 01.09.08: Cambios John: Cambios en el MDI: Habilitación del menú e ícono de Imprimir. Deshabilitación de menú Ayuda y opciones de Importar y Exportar del menú Proyectos temporalmente. Integración con código de Crystal Report. Validaciones con Try-Catch al generar los reportes, personalización de los formularios en estilos y botones y validación de selección de tipo de reporte. Creación de instalador con TODOS los cambios y la creación de las carpetas asociadas a los RPT.WatchersNET CKEditor™ Provider for DotNetNuke®: CKEditor Provider 1.14.01: Whats NewAdded New Plugin "Ventrian News Articles Link Selector" to select an Article Link from the News Article Module (This Plugin is not visible by default in your Toolbar, you need to manually add the 'newsarticleslinks' to your toolbarset) http://www.watchersnet.de/Portals/0/screenshots/dnn/CKEditorNewsArticlesLinks.png File-Browser: Added Paging to the Files List. You can define the Page Size in the Options (Default Value: 20) http://www.watchersnet.de/Portals/0/screenshots/dnn/CKEdito...MyRouter (Virtual WiFi Router): MyRouter 1.0 (Beta): A friendlier User Interface. A logger file to catch exceptions so you may send it to use to improve and fix any bugs that may occur. A feedback form because we always love hearing what you guy's think of MyRouter. Check for update menu item for you to stay up to date will the latest changes. Facebook fan page so you may spread the word and share MyRouter with friends and family And Many other exciting features were sure your going to love!WPF Sound Visualization Library: WPF SVL 0.3 (Source, Binaries, Examples, Help): Version 0.3 of WPFSVL. This includes three new controls: an equalizer, a digital clock, and a time editor.Thai Flood Watch: Thai Flood Watch - Source: non commercial use only ** This project supported by Department of Computer Science KhonKaen University Thailand.ZXing.Net: ZXing.Net 0.4.0.0: sync with rev. 2196 of the java version important fix for RGBLuminanceSource generating barcode bitmaps Windows Phone demo client (only tested with emulator, because I don't have a Windows Phone) Barcode generation support for Windows Forms demo client Webcam support for Windows Forms demo clientOrchard Project: Orchard 1.4: Please read our release notes for Orchard 1.4: http://docs.orchardproject.net/Documentation/Orchard-1-4-Release-Notes.NET Assembly Information: Assembly Information 2.1.0.1: - Fixed the issue in which AnyCPU binaries were shown as 32bit - Added support to show the errors in-case if some dlls failed to load.FluentData -Micro ORM with a fluent API that makes it simple to query a database: FluentData version 1.2: New features: - QueryValues method - Added support for automapping to enumerations (both int and string are supported). Fixed 2 reported issues.NetSqlAzMan - .NET SQL Authorization Manager: 3.6.0.15: 3.6.0.15 28-Feb-2012 • Fix: The communication object, System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel, cannot be used for communication because it is in the Faulted state. Work Item 10435: http://netsqlazman.codeplex.com/workitem/10435 • Fix: Made StorageCache thread safe. Thanks to tangrl. • Fix: Members property of SqlAzManApplicationGroup is not functioning. Thanks to tangrl. Work Item 10267: http://netsqlazman.codeplex.com/workitem/10267 • Fix: Indexer are making database calls. Thanks to t...SCCM Client Actions Tool: Client Actions Tool v1.1: SCCM Client Actions Tool v1.1 is the latest version. It comes with following changes since last version: Added stop button to stop the ongoing process. Added action "Query update status". Added option "saveOnlineComputers" in config.ini to enable saving list of online computers from last session. Default value for "LatestClientVersion" set to SP2 R3 (4.00.6487.2157). Wuauserv service manual startup mode is considered healthy on Windows 7. Errors are now suppressed in checkReleases...Kinect PowerPoint Control: Kinect PowerPoint Control v1.1: Updated for Kinect SDK 1.0.SharpCompress - a fully native C# library for RAR, 7Zip, Zip, Tar, GZip, BZip2: SharpCompress 0.8: API Updates: SOLID Extract Method for Archives (7Zip and RAR). ExtractAllEntries method on Archive classes will extract archives as a streaming file. This can offer better 7Zip extraction performance if any of the entries are solid. The IsSolid method on 7Zip archives will return true if any are solid. Removed IExtractionListener was removed in favor of events. Unit tests show example. Bug fixes: PPMd passes tests plus other fixes (Thanks Pavel) Zip used to always write a Post Descri...Social Network Importer for NodeXL: SocialNetImporter(v.1.3): This new version includes: - Download new networks for Facebook fan pages. - New options for downloading more posts - Bug fixes To use the new graph data provider, do the following: Unzip the Zip file into the "PlugIns" folder that can be found in the NodeXL installation folder (i.e "C:\Program Files\Social Media Research Foundation\NodeXL Excel Template\PlugIns") Open NodeXL template and you can access the new importer from the "Import" menuASP.NET REST Services Framework: Release 1.1 - Standard version: Beginning from v1.1 the REST-services Framework is compatible with ASP.NET Routing model as well with CRUD (Create, Read, Update, and Delete) principle. These two are often important when building REST API functionality within your application. It also includes ability to apply Filters to a class to target all WebRest methods, as well as some performance enhancements. New version includes Metadata Explorer providing ability exploring the existing services that becomes essential as the number ...SQL Live Monitor: SQL Live Monitor 1.31: A quick fix to make it this version work with SQL 2012. Version 2 already has 2012 working, but am still developing the UI in version 2, so this is just an interim fix to allow user to monitor SQL 2012.Content Slider Module for DotNetNuke: 01.02.00: This release has the following updates and new features: Feature: One-Click Enabling of Pager Setting Feature: Cache Sliders for Performance Feature: Configurable Cache Setting Enhancement: Transitions can be Selected Bug: Secure Folder Images not Viewable Bug: Sliders Disappear on Postback Bug: Remote Images Cause Error Bug: Deleted Images Cause Error System Requirements DotNetNuke v06.00.00 or newer .Net Framework v3.5 SP1 or newer SQL Server 2005 or newerImage Resizer for Windows: Image Resizer 3 Preview 3: Here is yet another iteration toward what will eventually become Image Resizer 3. This release is stable. However, I'm calling it a preview since there are still many features I'd still like to add before calling it complete. Updated on February 28 to fix an issue with installing on multi-user machines. As usual, here is my progress report. Done Preview 3 Fix: 3206 3076 3077 5688 Fix: 7420 Fix: 7527 Fix: 7576 7612 Preview 2 6308 6309 Fix: 7339 Fix: 7357 Preview 1 UI...Finestra Virtual Desktops: 2.5.4500: This is a bug fix release for version 2.5. It fixes several things and adds a couple of minor features. See the 2.5 release notes for more information on the major new features in that version. Important - If Finestra crashes on startup for you, you must install the Visual C++ 2010 runtime from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=5555. Fixes a bug with window animations not refreshing the screen on XP and with DWM off Fixes a bug with with crashing on XP due to a bug in t...Media Companion: MC 3.432b Release: General Now remembers window location. Catching a few more exceptions when an image is blank TV A couple of UI tweaks Movies Fixed the actor name displaying HTML Fixed crash when using Save files as "movie.nfo", "movie.tbn", & "fanart.jpg" New CSV template for HTML output function Added <createdate> tag for HTML output A couple of UI tweaks Known Issues Multiepisodes are not handled correctly in MC. The created nfo is valid, but they are not displayed in MC correctly & saving the...New Projectsabac: abac cn websiteAION Launcher: simple aion launcher...just edit the background image of your choosing inside the code and other things such as the links for the buttons and the ip adress and port of the serverAXTFSTool: Dynamics AX tool that connects to your project's TFS and lists the objects your colleagues have changed. Written in C#, still under development and improvements. Useful for team leaders, deployment managers, etc.cookieTopo: Topo map viewerCrmFetchKit.js: Simple Library at allows the execution of fetchxml queries via JavaScript for Dynamics CRM 2011 (using the new WCF endpoints). Like the CrmRestKit this framework uses the promise/A capacities of jQuery. The code and the idea for this framework bases on the CrmServiceToolkit (http://crmtoolkit.codeplex.com/) developed by Daniel Cai. cy univerX engine: ????????DNSAPI.NET: A common API for managing DNS servers on Windows. This project is based on the work I started back in 2002 when I needed to create a web front-end for Windows' DNS server using the .Net framework. The plan is to expand on the project and include support for the BIND server on Windows too. ego.net: ego.netfdTFS: Team Foundation Server Source Control Plugin for FlashDevelopGeoWPS: GeoWPS is an implementation of the OGC WPS. It will be developed in C#. IThink: A new project.King Garden: Boy King's .net practical projects.King Garret: Boy King's .net learning projects.LottoCheck: Follow LottoNot-Terraria: This is a like terraria game but NOT terrariaPassword Protector: Password Protector SharePoint 2010 BlobCache Manager: Manage your web application's blobcache settings directly in the central administration.SharePoint 2010 SilverLight Multiple File Uploader: SharePoint 2010 SilverLight Multiple File Uploader for Documents Libraries with MetaData.Sharepoint Tool Collection: I want to Integrate Various Utilities of Sharepoint at one place. It is for easy working of user or developer. Ex-1. A utility which takes some params & csv file and upload 100s of items on the sharepoint list easily. Ex-2 A utility to upload documents in a library. etc.SQLCLR Cmd Exec Framework Example: For users of MS SQL Server, xp_cmdshell is a utility that we usually want to have disabled. However there are still cases where calling a command line is needed. This project provides an framework/example to make command line calls. It is not meant as an xp_cmdshell replacement but as a workaround.Symmetric Designs Python 3.2: Symmetric Designs for Python 3.2 helps graphical artists to design and develop their own designs freestyle. It uses the pygame module for Python 3.2. It can also be analysed in order to get a grasp of graphics programming in Python.Terminsoft open CLR libraries: Terminsoft open CLR libraries. The first is Terminsoft.Intervals, intended for modeling the sets of intervals with elements, the comparison operation is defined for. The second is Terminsoft.Syntax, intended for text parsing and transformation and built upon regular expressions.Thai Flood Watch: Thai Flood Watch provides useful information, up-to-date and visual access to the major canal in Bangkok, Thailand using data from department of drainage and sewerage. Easily monitor river and canal flow information in Bangkok area, right from your hand.TheNerd: Sample video game source code. Using Sunburn.Unity.WebAPI: A library that allows simple Integration of Microsoft's Unity IoC container with ASP.NET's WebAPI. This project includes a bespoke DependencyResolver that creates a child container per HTTP request and disposes of all registered IDisposable instances at the end of the request.Wholemy.RemoteTouch: The project is a remote touch-sensitive keyboard with a customizable interface which allows to supplement control of another computer, regardless of the wires. For example, if you have not so fast Tablet PC - a client and a fast desktop computer - the server using the network.WindowPlace: WindowPlace makes it possible to save Window positions and sizes to a profile. Switching between profiles will effortlessly move and resize your windows. Help improve productivity - especially for multi-monitor systems. Developed in C# using WPF and a few Windows API calls in the background. WP Error Manager (Devv.Core.WPErrorManager): Library to log, handle and report errors on Windows Phone 7 apps. Fully customizable and extremely easy to implement. Works with any WP7 app. Tested with the emulator, Nokia Lumia 800 and Samsung Focus Flash.WPMatic: Windows Phone7 App to manage Homematic (eQ-3) Devices. The App is like the Homematic Central Configuration Unit (CCU) in German.www.Nabaza.com Freeware and Ebooks: www.Nabaza.com Freeware and Ebooks by William R. NabazaZap: Zap is a light weight .NET communication framework. It is designed for programs running in local area network. Zap provides code generation tool that enables user to call remote methods, add/remote event listener to remote objects, while hides the lower details.

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• OIM 11g notification framework

  - by Rajesh G Kumar

  OIM 11g has introduced an improved and template based Notifications framework. New release has removed the limitation of sending text based emails (out-of-the-box emails) and enhanced to support html features. New release provides in-built out-of-the-box templates for events like 'Reset Password', 'Create User Self Service' , ‘User Deleted' etc. Also provides new APIs to support custom templates to send notifications out of OIM. OIM notification framework supports notification mechanism based on events, notification templates and template resolver. They are defined as follows: Ø Events are defined as XML file and imported as part of MDS database in order to make notification event available for use. Ø Notification templates are created using OIM advance administration console. The template contains the text and the substitution 'variables' which will be replaced with the data provided by the template resolver. Templates support internationalization and can be defined as HTML or in form of simple text. Ø Template resolver is a Java class that is responsible to provide attributes and data to be used at runtime and design time. It must be deployed following the OIM plug-in framework. Resolver data provided at design time is to be used by end user to design notification template with available entity variables and it also provides data at runtime to replace the designed variable with value to be displayed to recipients. Steps to define custom notifications in OIM 11g are: Steps# Steps 1. Define the Notification Event 2. Create the Custom Template Resolver class 3. Create Template with notification contents to be sent to recipients 4. Create Event triggering spots in OIM 1. Notification Event metadata The Notification Event is defined as XML file which need to be imported into MDS database. An event file must be compliant with the schema defined by the notification engine, which is NotificationEvent.xsd. The event file contains basic information about the event.XSD location in MDS database: “/metadata/iam-features-notification/NotificationEvent.xsd”Schema file can be viewed by exporting file from MDS using weblogicExportMetadata.sh script.Sample Notification event metadata definition: 1: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> 2: <Events xmlns:xsi=http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="../../../metadata/NotificationEvent.xsd"> 3: <EventType name="Sample Notification"> 4: <StaticData> 5: <Attribute DataType="X2-Entity" EntityName="User" Name="Granted User"/> 6: </StaticData> 7: <Resolver class="com.iam.oim.demo.notification.DemoNotificationResolver"> 8: <Param DataType="91-Entity" EntityName="Resource" Name="ResourceInfo"/> 9: </Resolver> 10: </EventType> 11: </Events> Line# Description 1. XML file notation tag 2. Events is root tag 3. EventType tag is to declare a unique event name which will be available for template designing 4. The StaticData element lists a set of parameters which allow user to add parameters that are not data dependent. In other words, this element defines the static data to be displayed when notification is to be configured. An example of static data is the User entity, which is not dependent on any other data and has the same set of attributes for all event instances and notification templates. Available attributes are used to be defined as substitution tokens in the template. 5. Attribute tag is child tag for StaticData to declare the entity and its data type with unique reference name. User entity is most commonly used Entity as StaticData. 6. StaticData closing tag 7. Resolver tag defines the resolver class. The Resolver class must be defined for each notification. It defines what parameters are available in the notification creation screen and how those parameters are replaced when the notification is to be sent. Resolver class resolves the data dynamically at run time and displays the attributes in the UI. 8. The Param DataType element lists a set of parameters which allow user to add parameters that are data dependent. An example of the data dependent or a dynamic entity is a resource object which user can select at run time. A notification template is to be configured for the resource object. Corresponding to the resource object field, a lookup is displayed on the UI. When a user selects the event the call goes to the Resolver class provided to fetch the fields that are displayed in the Available Data list, from which user can select the attribute to be used on the template. Param tag is child tag to declare the entity and its data type with unique reference name. 9. Resolver closing tag 10 EventType closing tag 11. Events closing tag Note: - DataType needs to be declared as “X2-Entity” for User entity and “91-Entity” for Resource or Organization entities. The dynamic entities supported for lookup are user, resource, and organization. Once notification event metadata is defined, need to be imported into MDS database. Fully qualified resolver class name need to be define for XML but do not need to load the class in OIM yet (it can be loaded later). 2. Coding the notification resolver All event owners have to provide a resolver class which would resolve the data dynamically at run time. Custom resolver class must implement the interface oracle.iam.notification.impl.NotificationEventResolver and override the implemented methods with actual implementation. It has 2 methods: S# Methods Descriptions 1. public List<NotificationAttribute> getAvailableData(String eventType, Map<String, Object> params); This API will return the list of available data variables. These variables will be available on the UI while creating/modifying the Templates and would let user select the variables so that they can be embedded as a token as part of the Messages on the template. These tokens are replaced by the value passed by the resolver class at run time. Available data is displayed in a list. The parameter "eventType" specifies the event Name for which template is to be read.The parameter "params" is the map which has the entity name and the corresponding value for which available data is to be fetched. Sample code snippet: List<NotificationAttribute> list = new ArrayList<NotificationAttribute>(); long objKey = (Long) params.get("resource"); //Form Field details based on Resource object key HashMap<String, Object> formFieldDetail = getObjectFormName(objKey); for (Iterator<?> itrd = formFieldDetail.entrySet().iterator(); itrd.hasNext(); ) { NotificationAttribute availableData = new NotificationAttribute(); Map.Entry formDetailEntrySet = (Entry<?, ?>)itrd.next(); String fieldLabel = (String)formDetailEntrySet.getValue(); availableData.setName(fieldLabel); list.add(availableData); } return list; 2. Public HashMap<String, Object> getReplacedData(String eventType, Map<String, Object> params); This API would return the resolved value of the variables present on the template at the runtime when notification is being sent. The parameter "eventType" specifies the event Name for which template is to be read.The parameter "params" is the map which has the base values such as usr_key, obj_key etc required by the resolver implementation to resolve the rest of the variables in the template. Sample code snippet: HashMap<String, Object> resolvedData = new HashMap<String, Object>();String firstName = getUserFirstname(params.get("usr_key"));resolvedData.put("fname", firstName); String lastName = getUserLastName(params.get("usr_key"));resolvedData.put("lname", lastname);resolvedData.put("count", "1 million");return resolvedData; This code must be deployed as per OIM 11g plug-in framework. The XML file defining the plug-in is as below: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <oimplugins xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <plugins pluginpoint="oracle.iam.notification.impl.NotificationEventResolver"> <plugin pluginclass= " com.iam.oim.demo.notification.DemoNotificationResolver" version="1.0" name="Sample Notification Resolver"/> </plugins> </oimplugins> 3. Defining the template To create a notification template: Log in to the Oracle Identity Administration Click the System Management tab and then click the Notification tab From the Actions list on the left pane, select Create On the Create page, enter values for the following fields under the Template Information section: Template Name: Demo template Description Text: Demo template Under the Event Details section, perform the following: From the Available Event list, select the event for which the notification template is to be created from a list of available events. Depending on your selection, other fields are displayed in the Event Details section. Note that the template Sample Notification Event created in the previous step being used as the notification event. The contents of the Available Data drop down are based on the event XML StaticData tag, the drop down basically lists all the attributes of the entities defined in that tag. Once you select an element in the drop down, it will show up in the Selected Data text field and then you can just copy it and paste it into either the message subject or the message body fields prefixing $ symbol. Example if list has attribute like First_Name then message body will contains this as $First_Name which resolver will parse and replace it with actual value at runtime. In the Resource field, select a resource from the lookup. This is the dynamic data defined by the Param DataType element in the XML definition. Based on selected resource getAvailableData method of resolver will be called to fetch the resource object attribute detail, if method is overridden with required implementation. For current scenario, Map<String, Object> params will get populated with object key as value and key as “resource” in the map. This is the only input will be provided to resolver at design time. You need to implement the further logic to fetch the object attributes detail to populate the available Data list. List string should not have space in between, if object attributes has space for attribute name then implement logic to replace the space with ‘_’ before populating the list. Example if attribute name is “First Name” then make it “First_Name” and populate the list. Space is not supported while you try to parse and replace the token at run time with real value. Make a note that the Available Data and Selected Data are used in the substitution tokens definition only, they do not define the final data that will be sent in the notification. OIM will invoke the resolver class to get the data and make the substitutions. Under the Locale Information section, enter values in the following fields: To specify a form of encoding, select either UTF-8 or ASCII. In the Message Subject field, enter a subject for the notification. From the Type options, select the data type in which you want to send the message. You can choose between HTML and Text/Plain. In the Short Message field, enter a gist of the message in very few words. In the Long Message field, enter the message that will be sent as the notification with Available data token which need to be replaced by resolver at runtime. After you have entered the required values in all the fields, click Save. A message is displayed confirming the creation of the notification template. Click OK 4. Triggering the event A notification event can be triggered from different places in OIM. The logic behind the triggering must be coded and plugged into OIM. Examples of triggering points for notifications: Event handlers: post process notifications for specific data updates in OIM users Process tasks: to notify the users that a provisioning task was executed by OIM Scheduled tasks: to notify something related to the task The scheduled job has two parameters: Template Name: defines the notification template to be sent User Login: defines the user record that will provide the data to be sent in the notification Sample Code Snippet: public void execute(String templateName , String userId) { try { NotificationService notService = Platform.getService(NotificationService.class); NotificationEvent eventToSend=this.createNotificationEvent(templateName,userId); notService.notify(eventToSend); } catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } private NotificationEvent createNotificationEvent(String poTemplateName, String poUserId) { NotificationEvent event = new NotificationEvent(); String[] receiverUserIds= { poUserId }; event.setUserIds(receiverUserIds); event.setTemplateName(poTemplateName); event.setSender(null); HashMap<String, Object> templateParams = new HashMap<String, Object>(); templateParams.put("USER_LOGIN",poUserId); event.setParams(templateParams); return event; } public HashMap getAttributes() { return null; } public void setAttributes() {} }

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• An easy way to create Side by Side registrationless COM Manifests with Visual Studio

  - by Rick Strahl

  Here's something I didn't find out until today: You can use Visual Studio to easily create registrationless COM manifest files for you with just a couple of small steps. Registrationless COM lets you use COM component without them being registered in the registry. This means it's possible to deploy COM components along with another application using plain xcopy semantics. To be sure it's rarely quite that easy - you need to watch out for dependencies - but if you know you have COM components that are light weight and have no or known dependencies it's easy to get everything into a single folder and off you go. Registrationless COM works via manifest files which carry the same name as the executable plus a .manifest extension (ie. yourapp.exe.manifest) I'm going to use a Visual FoxPro COM object as an example and create a simple Windows Forms app that calls the component - without that component being registered. Let's take a walk down memory lane… Create a COM Component I start by creating a FoxPro COM component because that's what I know and am working with here in my legacy environment. You can use VB classic or C++ ATL object if that's more to your liking. Here's a real simple Fox one: DEFINE CLASS SimpleServer as Session OLEPUBLIC FUNCTION HelloWorld(lcName) RETURN "Hello " + lcName ENDDEFINE Compile it into a DLL COM component with: BUILD MTDLL simpleserver FROM simpleserver RECOMPILE And to make sure it works test it quickly from Visual FoxPro: server = CREATEOBJECT("simpleServer.simpleserver") MESSAGEBOX( server.HelloWorld("Rick") ) Using Visual Studio to create a Manifest File for a COM Component Next open Visual Studio and create a new executable project - a Console App or WinForms or WPF application will all do. Go to the References Node Select Add Reference Use the Browse tab and find your compiled DLL to import  Next you'll see your assembly in the project. Right click on the reference and select Properties Click on the Isolated DropDown and select True Compile and that's all there's to it. Visual Studio will create a App.exe.manifest file right alongside your application's EXE. The manifest file created looks like this: xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"? assembly xsi:schemaLocation="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1 assembly.adaptive.xsd" manifestVersion="1.0" xmlns:asmv1="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" xmlns:asmv2="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v2" xmlns:asmv3="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3" xmlns:dsig="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#" xmlns:co.v1="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:clickonce.v1" xmlns:co.v2="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:clickonce.v2" xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" assemblyIdentity name="App.exe" version="1.0.0.0" processorArchitecture="x86" type="win32" / file name="simpleserver.DLL" asmv2:size="27293" hash xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v2" dsig:Transforms dsig:Transform Algorithm="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:HashTransforms.Identity" / dsig:Transforms dsig:DigestMethod Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#sha1" / dsig:DigestValuepuq+ua20bbidGOWhPOxfquztBCU=dsig:DigestValue hash typelib tlbid="{f10346e2-c9d9-47f7-81d1-74059cc15c3c}" version="1.0" helpdir="" resourceid="0" flags="HASDISKIMAGE" / comClass clsid="{af2c2811-0657-4264-a1f5-06d033a969ff}" threadingModel="Apartment" tlbid="{f10346e2-c9d9-47f7-81d1-74059cc15c3c}" progid="simpleserver.SimpleServer" description="simpleserver.SimpleServer" / file assembly Now let's finish our super complex console app to test with: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Text; namespace ConsoleApplication1 {     class Program     {         static voidMain(string[] args)         { Type type = Type.GetTypeFromProgID("simpleserver.simpleserver",true); dynamic server = Activator.CreateInstance(type); Console.WriteLine(server.HelloWorld("rick")); Console.ReadLine(); } } } Now run the Console Application… As expected that should work. And why not? The COM component is still registered, right? :-) Nothing tricky about that. Let's unregister the COM component and then re-run and see what happens. Go to the Command Prompt Change to the folder where the DLL is installed Unregister with: RegSvr32 -u simpleserver.dll      To be sure that the COM component no longer works, check it out with the same test you used earlier (ie. o = CREATEOBJECT("SimpleServer.SimpleServer") in your development environment or VBScript etc.). Make sure you run the EXE and you don't re-compile the application or else Visual Studio will complain that it can't find the COM component in the registry while compiling. In fact now that we have our .manifest file you can remove the COM object from the project. When you run run the EXE from Windows Explorer or a command prompt to avoid the recompile. Watch out for embedded Manifest Files Now recompile your .NET project and run it… and it will most likely fail! The problem is that .NET applications by default embeds a manifest file into the compiled EXE application which results in the externally created manifest file being completely ignored. Only one manifest can be applied at a time and the compiled manifest takes precedency. Uh, thanks Visual Studio - not very helpful… Note that if you use another development tool like Visual FoxPro to create your EXE this won't be an issue as long as the tool doesn't automatically add a manifest file. Creating a Visual FoxPro EXE for example will work immediately with the generated manifest file as is. If you are using .NET and Visual Studio you have a couple of options of getting around this: Remove the embedded manifest file Copy the contents of the generated manifest file into a project manifest file and compile that in To remove an embedded manifest in a Visual Studio project: Open the Project Properties (Alt-Enter on project node) Go down to Resources | Manifest and select | Create Application without a Manifest   You can now add use the external manifest file and it will actually be respected when the app runs. The other option is to let Visual Studio create the manifest file on disk and then explicitly add the manifest file into the project. Notice on the dialog above I did this for app.exe.manifest and the manifest actually shows up in the list. If I select this file it will be compiled into the EXE and be used in lieu of any external files and that works as well. Remove the simpleserver.dll reference so you can compile your code and run the application. Now it should work without COM registration of the component. Personally I prefer external manifests because they can be modified after the fact - compiled manifests are evil in my mind because they are immutable - once they are there they can't be overriden or changed. So I prefer an external manifest. However, if you are absolutely sure nothing needs to change and you don't want anybody messing with your manifest, you can also embed it. The option to either is there. Watch for Manifest Caching While working trying to get this to work I ran into some problems at first. Specifically when it wasn't working at first (due to the embedded schema) I played with various different manifest layouts in different files etc.. There are a number of different ways to actually represent manifest files including offloading to separate folder (more on that later). A few times I made deliberate errors in the schema file and I found that regardless of what I did once the app failed or worked no amount of changing of the manifest file would make it behave differently. It appears that Windows is caching the manifest data for a given EXE or DLL. It takes a restart or a recompile of either the EXE or the DLL to clear the caching. Recompile your servers in order to see manifest changes unless there's an outright failure of an invalid manifest file. If the app starts the manifest is being read and caches immediately. This can be very confusing especially if you don't know that it's happening. I found myself always recompiling the exe after each run and before making any changes to the manifest file. Don't forget about Runtimes of COM Objects In the example I used above I used a Visual FoxPro COM component. Visual FoxPro is a runtime based environment so if I'm going to distribute an application that uses a FoxPro COM object the runtimes need to be distributed as well. The same is true of classic Visual Basic applications. Assuming that you don't know whether the runtimes are installed on the target machines make sure to install all the additional files in the EXE's directory alongside the COM DLL. In the case of Visual FoxPro the target folder should contain: The EXE  App.exe The Manifest file (unless it's compiled in) App.exe.manifest The COM object DLL (simpleserver.dll) Visual FoxPro Runtimes: VFP9t.dll (or VFP9r.dll for non-multithreaded dlls), vfp9rENU.dll, msvcr71.dll All these files should be in the same folder. Debugging Manifest load Errors If you for some reason get your manifest loading wrong there are a couple of useful tools available - SxSTrace and SxSParse. These two tools can be a huge help in debugging manifest loading errors. Put the following into a batch file (SxS_Trace.bat for example): sxstrace Trace -logfile:sxs.bin sxstrace Parse -logfile:sxs.bin -outfile:sxs.txt Then start the batch file before running your EXE. Make sure there's no caching happening as described in the previous section. For example, if I go into the manifest file and explicitly break the CLSID and/or ProgID I get a detailed report on where the EXE is looking for the manifest and what it's reading. Eventually the trace gives me an error like this: INFO: Parsing Manifest File C:\wwapps\Conf\SideBySide\Code\app.EXE.     INFO: Manifest Definition Identity is App.exe,processorArchitecture="x86",type="win32",version="1.0.0.0".     ERROR: Line 13: The value {AAaf2c2811-0657-4264-a1f5-06d033a969ff} of attribute clsid in element comClass is invalid. ERROR: Activation Context generation failed. End Activation Context Generation. pinpointing nicely where the error lies. Pay special attention to the various attributes - they have to match exactly in the different sections of the manifest file(s). Multiple COM Objects The manifest file that Visual Studio creates is actually quite more complex than is required for basic registrationless COM object invokation. The manifest file can be simplified a lot actually by stripping off various namespaces and removing the type library references altogether. Here's an example of a simplified manifest file that actually includes references to 2 COM servers: xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"? assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0" assemblyIdentity name="App.exe" version="1.0.0.0" processorArchitecture="x86" type="win32" / file name="simpleserver.DLL" comClass clsid="{af2c2811-0657-4264-a1f5-06d033a969ff}" threadingModel="Apartment" progid="simpleserver.SimpleServer" description="simpleserver.SimpleServer" / file file name = "sidebysidedeploy.dll" comClass clsid="{EF82B819-7963-4C36-9443-3978CD94F57C}" progid="sidebysidedeploy.SidebysidedeployServer" description="SidebySideDeploy Server" threadingModel="apartment" / file assembly Simple enough right? Routing to separate Manifest Files and Folders In the examples above all files ended up in the application's root folder - all the DLLs, support files and runtimes. Sometimes that's not so desirable and you can actually create separate manifest files. The easiest way to do this is to create a manifest file that 'routes' to another manifest file in a separate folder. Basically you create a new 'assembly identity' via a named id. You can then create a folder and another manifest with the id plus .manifest that points at the actual file. In this example I create: App.exe.manifest A folder called App.deploy A manifest file in App.deploy All DLLs and runtimes in App.deploy Let's start with that master manifest file. This file only holds a reference to another manifest file: App.exe.manifest xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"? assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0" assemblyIdentity name="App.exe" version="1.0.0.0" processorArchitecture="x86" type="win32" / dependency dependentAssembly assemblyIdentity name="App.deploy" version="1.0.0.0" type="win32" / dependentAssembly dependency assembly   Note this file only contains a dependency to App.deploy which is another manifest id. I can then create App.deploy.manifest in the current folder or in an App.deploy folder. In this case I'll create App.deploy and in it copy the DLLs and support runtimes. I then create App.deploy.manifest. App.deploy.manifest xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"? assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0" assemblyIdentity name="App.deploy" type="win32" version="1.0.0.0" / file name="simpleserver.DLL" comClass clsid="{af2c2811-0657-4264-a1f5-06d033a969ff}" threadingModel="Apartment" progid="simpleserver.SimpleServer" description="simpleserver.SimpleServer" / file file name="sidebysidedeploy.dll" comClass clsid="{EF82B819-7963-4C36-9443-3978CD94F57C}" threadingModel="Apartment" progid="sidebysidedeploy.SidebysidedeployServer" description="SidebySideDeploy Server" / file assembly   In this manifest file I then host my COM DLLs and any support runtimes. This is quite useful if you have lots of DLLs you are referencing or if you need to have separate configuration and application files that are associated with the COM object. This way the operation of your main application and the COM objects it interacts with is somewhat separated. You can see the two folders here:   Routing Manifests to different Folders In theory registrationless COM should be pretty easy in painless - you've seen the configuration manifest files and it certainly doesn't look very complicated, right? But the devil's in the details. The ActivationContext API (SxS - side by side activation) is very intolerant of small errors in the XML or formatting of the keys, so be really careful when setting up components, especially if you are manually editing these files. If you do run into trouble SxsTrace/SxsParse are a huge help to track down the problems. And remember that if you do have problems that you'll need to recompile your EXEs or DLLs for the SxS APIs to refresh themselves properly. All of this gets even more fun if you want to do registrationless COM inside of IIS :-) But I'll leave that for another blog post…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in COM  .NET  FoxPro   Tweet (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Adding Unobtrusive Validation To MVCContrib Fluent Html

  - by srkirkland

  ASP.NET MVC 3 includes a new unobtrusive validation strategy that utilizes HTML5 data-* attributes to decorate form elements.  Using a combination of jQuery validation and an unobtrusive validation adapter script that comes with MVC 3, those attributes are then turned into client side validation rules. A Quick Introduction to Unobtrusive Validation To quickly show how this works in practice, assume you have the following Order.cs class (think Northwind) [If you are familiar with unobtrusive validation in MVC 3 you can skip to the next section]: public class Order : DomainObject { [DataType(DataType.Date)] public virtual DateTime OrderDate { get; set; }   [Required] [StringLength(12)] public virtual string ShipAddress { get; set; }   [Required] public virtual Customer OrderedBy { get; set; } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Note the System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations attributes, which provide the validation and metadata information used by ASP.NET MVC 3 to determine how to render out these properties.  Now let’s assume we have a form which can edit this Order class, specifically let’s look at the ShipAddress property: @Html.LabelFor(x => x.Order.ShipAddress) @Html.EditorFor(x => x.Order.ShipAddress) @Html.ValidationMessageFor(x => x.Order.ShipAddress) .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Now the Html.EditorFor() method is smart enough to look at the ShipAddress attributes and write out the necessary unobtrusive validation html attributes.  Note we could have used Html.TextBoxFor() or even Html.TextBox() and still retained the same results. If we view source on the input box generated by the Html.EditorFor() call, we get the following: <input type="text" value="Rua do Paço, 67" name="Order.ShipAddress" id="Order_ShipAddress" data-val-required="The ShipAddress field is required." data-val-length-max="12" data-val-length="The field ShipAddress must be a string with a maximum length of 12." data-val="true" class="text-box single-line input-validation-error"> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } As you can see, we have data-val-* attributes for both required and length, along with the proper error messages and additional data as necessary (in this case, we have the length-max=”12”). And of course, if we try to submit the form with an invalid value, we get an error on the client: Working with MvcContrib’s Fluent Html The MvcContrib project offers a fluent interface for creating Html elements which I find very expressive and useful, especially when it comes to creating select lists.  Let’s look at a few quick examples: @this.TextBox(x => x.FirstName).Class("required").Label("First Name:") @this.MultiSelect(x => x.UserId).Options(ViewModel.Users) @this.CheckBox("enabled").LabelAfter("Enabled").Title("Click to enable.").Styles(vertical_align => "middle")   @(this.Select("Order.OrderedBy").Options(Model.Customers, x => x.Id, x => x.CompanyName) .Selected(Model.Order.OrderedBy != null ? Model.Order.OrderedBy.Id : "") .FirstOption(null, "--Select A Company--") .HideFirstOptionWhen(Model.Order.OrderedBy != null) .Label("Ordered By:")) .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } These fluent html helpers create the normal html you would expect, and I think they make life a lot easier and more readable when dealing with complex markup or select list data models (look ma: no anonymous objects for creating class names!). Of course, the problem we have now is that MvcContrib’s fluent html helpers don’t know about ASP.NET MVC 3’s unobtrusive validation attributes and thus don’t take part in client validation on your page.  This is not ideal, so I wrote a quick helper method to extend fluent html with the knowledge of what unobtrusive validation attributes to include when they are rendered. Extending MvcContrib’s Fluent Html Before posting the code, there are just a few things you need to know.  The first is that all Fluent Html elements implement the IElement interface (MvcContrib.FluentHtml.Elements.IElement), and the second is that the base System.Web.Mvc.HtmlHelper has been extended with a method called GetUnobtrusiveValidationAttributes which we can use to determine the necessary attributes to include.  With this knowledge we can make quick work of extending fluent html: public static class FluentHtmlExtensions { public static T IncludeUnobtrusiveValidationAttributes<T>(this T element, HtmlHelper htmlHelper) where T : MvcContrib.FluentHtml.Elements.IElement { IDictionary<string, object> validationAttributes = htmlHelper .GetUnobtrusiveValidationAttributes(element.GetAttr("name"));   foreach (var validationAttribute in validationAttributes) { element.SetAttr(validationAttribute.Key, validationAttribute.Value); }   return element; } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } The code is pretty straight forward – basically we use a passed HtmlHelper to get a list of validation attributes for the current element and then add each of the returned attributes to the element to be rendered. The Extension In Action Now let’s get back to the earlier ShipAddress example and see what we’ve accomplished.  First we will use a fluent html helper to render out the ship address text input (this is the ‘before’ case): @this.TextBox("Order.ShipAddress").Label("Ship Address:").Class("class-name") .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } And the resulting HTML: <label id="Order_ShipAddress_Label" for="Order_ShipAddress">Ship Address:</label> <input type="text" value="Rua do Paço, 67" name="Order.ShipAddress" id="Order_ShipAddress" class="class-name"> Now let’s do the same thing except here we’ll use the newly written extension method: @this.TextBox("Order.ShipAddress").Label("Ship Address:") .Class("class-name").IncludeUnobtrusiveValidationAttributes(Html) .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } And the resulting HTML: <label id="Order_ShipAddress_Label" for="Order_ShipAddress">Ship Address:</label> <input type="text" value="Rua do Paço, 67" name="Order.ShipAddress" id="Order_ShipAddress" data-val-required="The ShipAddress field is required." data-val-length-max="12" data-val-length="The field ShipAddress must be a string with a maximum length of 12." data-val="true" class="class-name"> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Excellent!  Now we can continue to use unobtrusive validation and have the flexibility to use ASP.NET MVC’s Html helpers or MvcContrib’s fluent html helpers interchangeably, and every element will participate in client side validation. Wrap Up Overall I’m happy with this solution, although in the best case scenario MvcContrib would know about unobtrusive validation attributes and include them automatically (of course if it is enabled in the web.config file).  I know that MvcContrib allows you to author global behaviors, but that requires changing the base class of your views, which I am not willing to do. Enjoy!

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• OpenVPN not connecting

  - by LandArch

  There have been a number of post similar to this, but none seem to satisfy my need. Plus I am a Ubuntu newbie. I followed this tutorial to completely set up OpenVPN on Ubuntu 12.04 server. Here is my server.conf file ################################################# # Sample OpenVPN 2.0 config file for # # multi-client server. # # # # This file is for the server side # # of a many-clients <-> one-server # # OpenVPN configuration. # # # # OpenVPN also supports # # single-machine <-> single-machine # # configurations (See the Examples page # # on the web site for more info). # # # # This config should work on Windows # # or Linux/BSD systems. Remember on # # Windows to quote pathnames and use # # double backslashes, e.g.: # # "C:\\Program Files\\OpenVPN\\config\\foo.key" # # # # Comments are preceded with '#' or ';' # ################################################# # Which local IP address should OpenVPN # listen on? (optional) local 192.168.13.8 # Which TCP/UDP port should OpenVPN listen on? # If you want to run multiple OpenVPN instances # on the same machine, use a different port # number for each one. You will need to # open up this port on your firewall. port 1194 # TCP or UDP server? proto tcp ;proto udp # "dev tun" will create a routed IP tunnel, # "dev tap" will create an ethernet tunnel. # Use "dev tap0" if you are ethernet bridging # and have precreated a tap0 virtual interface # and bridged it with your ethernet interface. # If you want to control access policies # over the VPN, you must create firewall # rules for the the TUN/TAP interface. # On non-Windows systems, you can give # an explicit unit number, such as tun0. # On Windows, use "dev-node" for this. # On most systems, the VPN will not function # unless you partially or fully disable # the firewall for the TUN/TAP interface. dev tap0 up "/etc/openvpn/up.sh br0" down "/etc/openvpn/down.sh br0" ;dev tun # Windows needs the TAP-Win32 adapter name # from the Network Connections panel if you # have more than one. On XP SP2 or higher, # you may need to selectively disable the # Windows firewall for the TAP adapter. # Non-Windows systems usually don't need this. ;dev-node MyTap # SSL/TLS root certificate (ca), certificate # (cert), and private key (key). Each client # and the server must have their own cert and # key file. The server and all clients will # use the same ca file. # # See the "easy-rsa" directory for a series # of scripts for generating RSA certificates # and private keys. Remember to use # a unique Common Name for the server # and each of the client certificates. # # Any X509 key management system can be used. # OpenVPN can also use a PKCS #12 formatted key file # (see "pkcs12" directive in man page). ca "/etc/openvpn/ca.crt" cert "/etc/openvpn/server.crt" key "/etc/openvpn/server.key" # This file should be kept secret # Diffie hellman parameters. # Generate your own with: # openssl dhparam -out dh1024.pem 1024 # Substitute 2048 for 1024 if you are using # 2048 bit keys. dh dh1024.pem # Configure server mode and supply a VPN subnet # for OpenVPN to draw client addresses from. # The server will take 10.8.0.1 for itself, # the rest will be made available to clients. # Each client will be able to reach the server # on 10.8.0.1. Comment this line out if you are # ethernet bridging. See the man page for more info. ;server 10.8.0.0 255.255.255.0 # Maintain a record of client <-> virtual IP address # associations in this file. If OpenVPN goes down or # is restarted, reconnecting clients can be assigned # the same virtual IP address from the pool that was # previously assigned. ifconfig-pool-persist ipp.txt # Configure server mode for ethernet bridging. # You must first use your OS's bridging capability # to bridge the TAP interface with the ethernet # NIC interface. Then you must manually set the # IP/netmask on the bridge interface, here we # assume 10.8.0.4/255.255.255.0. Finally we # must set aside an IP range in this subnet # (start=10.8.0.50 end=10.8.0.100) to allocate # to connecting clients. Leave this line commented # out unless you are ethernet bridging. server-bridge 192.168.13.101 255.255.255.0 192.168.13.105 192.168.13.200 # Configure server mode for ethernet bridging # using a DHCP-proxy, where clients talk # to the OpenVPN server-side DHCP server # to receive their IP address allocation # and DNS server addresses. You must first use # your OS's bridging capability to bridge the TAP # interface with the ethernet NIC interface. # Note: this mode only works on clients (such as # Windows), where the client-side TAP adapter is # bound to a DHCP client. ;server-bridge # Push routes to the client to allow it # to reach other private subnets behind # the server. Remember that these # private subnets will also need # to know to route the OpenVPN client # address pool (10.8.0.0/255.255.255.0) # back to the OpenVPN server. push "route 192.168.13.1 255.255.255.0" push "dhcp-option DNS 192.168.13.201" push "dhcp-option DOMAIN blahblah.dyndns-wiki.com" ;push "route 192.168.20.0 255.255.255.0" # To assign specific IP addresses to specific # clients or if a connecting client has a private # subnet behind it that should also have VPN access, # use the subdirectory "ccd" for client-specific # configuration files (see man page for more info). # EXAMPLE: Suppose the client # having the certificate common name "Thelonious" # also has a small subnet behind his connecting # machine, such as 192.168.40.128/255.255.255.248. # First, uncomment out these lines: ;client-config-dir ccd ;route 192.168.40.128 255.255.255.248 # Then create a file ccd/Thelonious with this line: # iroute 192.168.40.128 255.255.255.248 # This will allow Thelonious' private subnet to # access the VPN. This example will only work # if you are routing, not bridging, i.e. you are # using "dev tun" and "server" directives. # EXAMPLE: Suppose you want to give # Thelonious a fixed VPN IP address of 10.9.0.1. # First uncomment out these lines: ;client-config-dir ccd ;route 10.9.0.0 255.255.255.252 # Then add this line to ccd/Thelonious: # ifconfig-push 10.9.0.1 10.9.0.2 # Suppose that you want to enable different # firewall access policies for different groups # of clients. There are two methods: # (1) Run multiple OpenVPN daemons, one for each # group, and firewall the TUN/TAP interface # for each group/daemon appropriately. # (2) (Advanced) Create a script to dynamically # modify the firewall in response to access # from different clients. See man # page for more info on learn-address script. ;learn-address ./script # If enabled, this directive will configure # all clients to redirect their default # network gateway through the VPN, causing # all IP traffic such as web browsing and # and DNS lookups to go through the VPN # (The OpenVPN server machine may need to NAT # or bridge the TUN/TAP interface to the internet # in order for this to work properly). ;push "redirect-gateway def1 bypass-dhcp" # Certain Windows-specific network settings # can be pushed to clients, such as DNS # or WINS server addresses. CAVEAT: # http://openvpn.net/faq.html#dhcpcaveats # The addresses below refer to the public # DNS servers provided by opendns.com. ;push "dhcp-option DNS 208.67.222.222" ;push "dhcp-option DNS 208.67.220.220" # Uncomment this directive to allow different # clients to be able to "see" each other. # By default, clients will only see the server. # To force clients to only see the server, you # will also need to appropriately firewall the # server's TUN/TAP interface. ;client-to-client # Uncomment this directive if multiple clients # might connect with the same certificate/key # files or common names. This is recommended # only for testing purposes. For production use, # each client should have its own certificate/key # pair. # # IF YOU HAVE NOT GENERATED INDIVIDUAL # CERTIFICATE/KEY PAIRS FOR EACH CLIENT, # EACH HAVING ITS OWN UNIQUE "COMMON NAME", # UNCOMMENT THIS LINE OUT. ;duplicate-cn # The keepalive directive causes ping-like # messages to be sent back and forth over # the link so that each side knows when # the other side has gone down. # Ping every 10 seconds, assume that remote # peer is down if no ping received during # a 120 second time period. keepalive 10 120 # For extra security beyond that provided # by SSL/TLS, create an "HMAC firewall" # to help block DoS attacks and UDP port flooding. # # Generate with: # openvpn --genkey --secret ta.key # # The server and each client must have # a copy of this key. # The second parameter should be '0' # on the server and '1' on the clients. ;tls-auth ta.key 0 # This file is secret # Select a cryptographic cipher. # This config item must be copied to # the client config file as well. ;cipher BF-CBC # Blowfish (default) ;cipher AES-128-CBC # AES ;cipher DES-EDE3-CBC # Triple-DES # Enable compression on the VPN link. # If you enable it here, you must also # enable it in the client config file. comp-lzo # The maximum number of concurrently connected # clients we want to allow. ;max-clients 100 # It's a good idea to reduce the OpenVPN # daemon's privileges after initialization. # # You can uncomment this out on # non-Windows systems. user nobody group nogroup # The persist options will try to avoid # accessing certain resources on restart # that may no longer be accessible because # of the privilege downgrade. persist-key persist-tun # Output a short status file showing # current connections, truncated # and rewritten every minute. status openvpn-status.log # By default, log messages will go to the syslog (or # on Windows, if running as a service, they will go to # the "\Program Files\OpenVPN\log" directory). # Use log or log-append to override this default. # "log" will truncate the log file on OpenVPN startup, # while "log-append" will append to it. Use one # or the other (but not both). ;log openvpn.log ;log-append openvpn.log # Set the appropriate level of log # file verbosity. # # 0 is silent, except for fatal errors # 4 is reasonable for general usage # 5 and 6 can help to debug connection problems # 9 is extremely verbose verb 3 # Silence repeating messages. At most 20 # sequential messages of the same message # category will be output to the log. ;mute 20 I am using Windows 7 as the Client and set that up accordingly using the OpenVPN GUI. That conf file is as follows: ############################################## # Sample client-side OpenVPN 2.0 config file # # for connecting to multi-client server. # # # # This configuration can be used by multiple # # clients, however each client should have # # its own cert and key files. # # # # On Windows, you might want to rename this # # file so it has a .ovpn extension # ############################################## # Specify that we are a client and that we # will be pulling certain config file directives # from the server. client # Use the same setting as you are using on # the server. # On most systems, the VPN will not function # unless you partially or fully disable # the firewall for the TUN/TAP interface. dev tap0 up "/etc/openvpn/up.sh br0" down "/etc/openvpn/down.sh br0" ;dev tun # Windows needs the TAP-Win32 adapter name # from the Network Connections panel # if you have more than one. On XP SP2, # you may need to disable the firewall # for the TAP adapter. ;dev-node MyTap # Are we connecting to a TCP or # UDP server? Use the same setting as # on the server. proto tcp ;proto udp # The hostname/IP and port of the server. # You can have multiple remote entries # to load balance between the servers. blahblah.dyndns-wiki.com 1194 ;remote my-server-2 1194 # Choose a random host from the remote # list for load-balancing. Otherwise # try hosts in the order specified. ;remote-random # Keep trying indefinitely to resolve the # host name of the OpenVPN server. Very useful # on machines which are not permanently connected # to the internet such as laptops. resolv-retry infinite # Most clients don't need to bind to # a specific local port number. nobind # Downgrade privileges after initialization (non-Windows only) user nobody group nobody # Try to preserve some state across restarts. persist-key persist-tun # If you are connecting through an # HTTP proxy to reach the actual OpenVPN # server, put the proxy server/IP and # port number here. See the man page # if your proxy server requires # authentication. ;http-proxy-retry # retry on connection failures ;http-proxy [proxy server] [proxy port #] # Wireless networks often produce a lot # of duplicate packets. Set this flag # to silence duplicate packet warnings. ;mute-replay-warnings # SSL/TLS parms. # See the server config file for more # description. It's best to use # a separate .crt/.key file pair # for each client. A single ca # file can be used for all clients. ca "C:\\Program Files\OpenVPN\config\\ca.crt" cert "C:\\Program Files\OpenVPN\config\\ChadMWade-THINK.crt" key "C:\\Program Files\OpenVPN\config\\ChadMWade-THINK.key" # Verify server certificate by checking # that the certicate has the nsCertType # field set to "server". This is an # important precaution to protect against # a potential attack discussed here: # http://openvpn.net/howto.html#mitm # # To use this feature, you will need to generate # your server certificates with the nsCertType # field set to "server". The build-key-server # script in the easy-rsa folder will do this. ns-cert-type server # If a tls-auth key is used on the server # then every client must also have the key. ;tls-auth ta.key 1 # Select a cryptographic cipher. # If the cipher option is used on the server # then you must also specify it here. ;cipher x # Enable compression on the VPN link. # Don't enable this unless it is also # enabled in the server config file. comp-lzo # Set log file verbosity. verb 3 # Silence repeating messages ;mute 20 Not sure whats left to do.

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• Creating STA COM compatible ASP.NET Applications

  - by Rick Strahl

  When building ASP.NET applications that interface with old school COM objects like those created with VB6 or Visual FoxPro (MTDLL), it's extremely important that the threads that are serving requests use Single Threaded Apartment Threading. STA is a COM built-in technology that allows essentially single threaded components to operate reliably in a multi-threaded environment. STA's guarantee that COM objects instantiated on a specific thread stay on that specific thread and any access to a COM object from another thread automatically marshals that thread to the STA thread. The end effect is that you can have multiple threads, but a COM object instance lives on a fixed never changing thread. ASP.NET by default uses MTA (multi-threaded apartment) threads which are truly free spinning threads that pay no heed to COM object marshaling. This is vastly more efficient than STA threading which has a bit of overhead in determining whether it's OK to run code on a given thread or whether some sort of thread/COM marshaling needs to occur. MTA COM components can be very efficient, but STA COM components in a multi-threaded environment always tend to have a fair amount of overhead. It's amazing how much COM Interop I still see today so while it seems really old school to be talking about this topic, it's actually quite apropos for me as I have many customers using legacy COM systems that need to interface with other .NET applications. In this post I'm consolidating some of the hacks I've used to integrate with various ASP.NET technologies when using STA COM Components. STA in ASP.NET Support for STA threading in the ASP.NET framework is fairly limited. Specifically only the original ASP.NET WebForms technology supports STA threading directly via its STA Page Handler implementation or what you might know as ASPCOMPAT mode. For WebForms running STA components is as easy as specifying the ASPCOMPAT attribute in the @Page tag:<%@ Page Language="C#" AspCompat="true" %> which runs the page in STA mode. Removing it runs in MTA mode. Simple. Unfortunately all other ASP.NET technologies built on top of the core ASP.NET engine do not support STA natively. So if you want to use STA COM components in MVC or with class ASMX Web Services, there's no automatic way like the ASPCOMPAT keyword available. So what happens when you run an STA COM component in an MTA application? In low volume environments - nothing much will happen. The COM objects will appear to work just fine as there are no simultaneous thread interactions and the COM component will happily run on a single thread or multiple single threads one at a time. So for testing running components in MTA environments may appear to work just fine. However as load increases and threads get re-used by ASP.NET COM objects will end up getting created on multiple different threads. This can result in crashes or hangs, or data corruption in the STA components which store their state in thread local storage on the STA thread. If threads overlap this global store can easily get corrupted which in turn causes problems. STA ensures that any COM object instance loaded always stays on the same thread it was instantiated on. What about COM+? COM+ is supposed to address the problem of STA in MTA applications by providing an abstraction with it's own thread pool manager for COM objects. It steps in to the COM instantiation pipeline and hands out COM instances from its own internally maintained STA Thread pool. This guarantees that the COM instantiation threads are STA threads if using STA components. COM+ works, but in my experience the technology is very, very slow for STA components. It adds a ton of overhead and reduces COM performance noticably in load tests in IIS. COM+ can make sense in some situations but for Web apps with STA components it falls short. In addition there's also the need to ensure that COM+ is set up and configured on the target machine and the fact that components have to be registered in COM+. COM+ also keeps components up at all times, so if a component needs to be replaced the COM+ package needs to be unloaded (same is true for IIS hosted components but it's more common to manage that). COM+ is an option for well established components, but native STA support tends to provide better performance and more consistent usability, IMHO. STA for non supporting ASP.NET Technologies As mentioned above only WebForms supports STA natively. However, by utilizing the WebForms ASP.NET Page handler internally it's actually possible to trick various other ASP.NET technologies and let them work with STA components. This is ugly but I've used each of these in various applications and I've had minimal problems making them work with FoxPro STA COM components which is about as dififcult as it gets for COM Interop in .NET. In this post I summarize several STA workarounds that enable you to use STA threading with these ASP.NET Technologies: ASMX Web Services ASP.NET MVC WCF Web Services ASP.NET Web API ASMX Web Services I start with classic ASP.NET ASMX Web Services because it's the easiest mechanism that allows for STA modification. It also clearly demonstrates how the WebForms STA Page Handler is the key technology to enable the various other solutions to create STA components. Essentially the way this works is to override the WebForms Page class and hijack it's init functionality for processing requests. Here's what this looks like for Web Services:namespace FoxProAspNet { public class WebServiceStaHandler : System.Web.UI.Page, IHttpAsyncHandler { protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e) { IHttpHandler handler = new WebServiceHandlerFactory().GetHandler( this.Context, this.Context.Request.HttpMethod, this.Context.Request.FilePath, this.Context.Request.PhysicalPath); handler.ProcessRequest(this.Context); this.Context.ApplicationInstance.CompleteRequest(); } public IAsyncResult BeginProcessRequest( HttpContext context, AsyncCallback cb, object extraData) { return this.AspCompatBeginProcessRequest(context, cb, extraData); } public void EndProcessRequest(IAsyncResult result) { this.AspCompatEndProcessRequest(result); } } public class AspCompatWebServiceStaHandlerWithSessionState : WebServiceStaHandler, IRequiresSessionState { } } This class overrides the ASP.NET WebForms Page class which has a little known AspCompatBeginProcessRequest() and AspCompatEndProcessRequest() method that is responsible for providing the WebForms ASPCOMPAT functionality. These methods handle routing requests to STA threads. Note there are two classes - one that includes session state and one that does not. If you plan on using ASP.NET Session state use the latter class, otherwise stick to the former. This maps to the EnableSessionState page setting in WebForms. This class simply hooks into this functionality by overriding the BeginProcessRequest and EndProcessRequest methods and always forcing it into the AspCompat methods. The way this works is that BeginProcessRequest() fires first to set up the threads and starts intializing the handler. As part of that process the OnInit() method is fired which is now already running on an STA thread. The code then creates an instance of the actual WebService handler factory and calls its ProcessRequest method to start executing which generates the Web Service result. Immediately after ProcessRequest the request is stopped with Application.CompletRequest() which ensures that the rest of the Page handler logic doesn't fire. This means that even though the fairly heavy Page class is overridden here, it doesn't end up executing any of its internal processing which makes this code fairly efficient. In a nutshell, we're highjacking the Page HttpHandler and forcing it to process the WebService process handler in the context of the AspCompat handler behavior. Hooking up the Handler Because the above is an HttpHandler implementation you need to hook up the custom handler and replace the standard ASMX handler. To do this you need to modify the web.config file (here for IIS 7 and IIS Express): <configuration> <system.webServer> <handlers> <remove name="WebServiceHandlerFactory-Integrated-4.0" /> <add name="Asmx STA Web Service Handler" path="*.asmx" verb="*" type="FoxProAspNet.WebServiceStaHandler" precondition="integrated"/> </handlers> </system.webServer> </configuration> (Note: The name for the WebServiceHandlerFactory-Integrated-4.0 might be slightly different depending on your server version. Check the IIS Handler configuration in the IIS Management Console for the exact name or simply remove the handler from the list there which will propagate to your web.config). For IIS 5 & 6 (Windows XP/2003) or the Visual Studio Web Server use:<configuration> <system.web> <httpHandlers> <remove path="*.asmx" verb="*" /> <add path="*.asmx" verb="*" type="FoxProAspNet.WebServiceStaHandler" /> </httpHandlers> </system.web></configuration> To test, create a new ASMX Web Service and create a method like this: [WebService(Namespace = "http://foxaspnet.org/")] [WebServiceBinding(ConformsTo = WsiProfiles.BasicProfile1_1)] public class FoxWebService : System.Web.Services.WebService { [WebMethod] public string HelloWorld() { return "Hello World. Threading mode is: " + System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.GetApartmentState(); } } Run this before you put in the web.config configuration changes and you should get: Hello World. Threading mode is: MTA Then put the handler mapping into Web.config and you should see: Hello World. Threading mode is: STA And you're on your way to using STA COM components. It's a hack but it works well! I've used this with several high volume Web Service installations with various customers and it's been fast and reliable. ASP.NET MVC ASP.NET MVC has quickly become the most popular ASP.NET technology, replacing WebForms for creating HTML output. MVC is more complex to get started with, but once you understand the basic structure of how requests flow through the MVC pipeline it's easy to use and amazingly flexible in manipulating HTML requests. In addition, MVC has great support for non-HTML output sources like JSON and XML, making it an excellent choice for AJAX requests without any additional tools. Unlike WebForms ASP.NET MVC doesn't support STA threads natively and so some trickery is needed to make it work with STA threads as well. MVC gets its handler implementation through custom route handlers using ASP.NET's built in routing semantics. To work in an STA handler requires working in the Page Handler as part of the Route Handler implementation. As with the Web Service handler the first step is to create a custom HttpHandler that can instantiate an MVC request pipeline properly:public class MvcStaThreadHttpAsyncHandler : Page, IHttpAsyncHandler, IRequiresSessionState { private RequestContext _requestContext; public MvcStaThreadHttpAsyncHandler(RequestContext requestContext) { if (requestContext == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("requestContext"); _requestContext = requestContext; } public IAsyncResult BeginProcessRequest(HttpContext context, AsyncCallback cb, object extraData) { return this.AspCompatBeginProcessRequest(context, cb, extraData); } protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e) { var controllerName = _requestContext.RouteData.GetRequiredString("controller"); var controllerFactory = ControllerBuilder.Current.GetControllerFactory(); var controller = controllerFactory.CreateController(_requestContext, controllerName); if (controller == null) throw new InvalidOperationException("Could not find controller: " + controllerName); try { controller.Execute(_requestContext); } finally { controllerFactory.ReleaseController(controller); } this.Context.ApplicationInstance.CompleteRequest(); } public void EndProcessRequest(IAsyncResult result) { this.AspCompatEndProcessRequest(result); } public override void ProcessRequest(HttpContext httpContext) { throw new NotSupportedException("STAThreadRouteHandler does not support ProcessRequest called (only BeginProcessRequest)"); } } This handler code figures out which controller to load and then executes the controller. MVC internally provides the information needed to route to the appropriate method and pass the right parameters. Like the Web Service handler the logic occurs in the OnInit() and performs all the processing in that part of the request. Next, we need a RouteHandler that can actually pick up this handler. Unlike the Web Service handler where we simply registered the handler, MVC requires a RouteHandler to pick up the handler. RouteHandlers look at the URL's path and based on that decide on what handler to invoke. The route handler is pretty simple - all it does is load our custom handler: public class MvcStaThreadRouteHandler : IRouteHandler { public IHttpHandler GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext) { if (requestContext == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("requestContext"); return new MvcStaThreadHttpAsyncHandler(requestContext); } } At this point you can instantiate this route handler and force STA requests to MVC by specifying a route. The following sets up the ASP.NET Default Route:Route mvcRoute = new Route("{controller}/{action}/{id}", new RouteValueDictionary( new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }), new MvcStaThreadRouteHandler()); RouteTable.Routes.Add(mvcRoute);   To make this code a little easier to work with and mimic the behavior of the routes.MapRoute() functionality extension method that MVC provides, here is an extension method for MapMvcStaRoute(): public static class RouteCollectionExtensions { public static void MapMvcStaRoute(this RouteCollection routeTable, string name, string url, object defaults = null) { Route mvcRoute = new Route(url, new RouteValueDictionary(defaults), new MvcStaThreadRouteHandler()); RouteTable.Routes.Add(mvcRoute); } } With this the syntax to add  route becomes a little easier and matches the MapRoute() method:RouteTable.Routes.MapMvcStaRoute( name: "Default", url: "{controller}/{action}/{id}", defaults: new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } ); The nice thing about this route handler, STA Handler and extension method is that it's fully self contained. You can put all three into a single class file and stick it into your Web app, and then simply call MapMvcStaRoute() and it just works. Easy! To see whether this works create an MVC controller like this: public class ThreadTestController : Controller { public string ThreadingMode() { return Thread.CurrentThread.GetApartmentState().ToString(); } } Try this test both with only the MapRoute() hookup in the RouteConfiguration in which case you should get MTA as the value. Then change the MapRoute() call to MapMvcStaRoute() leaving all the parameters the same and re-run the request. You now should see STA as the result. You're on your way using STA COM components reliably in ASP.NET MVC. WCF Web Services running through IIS WCF Web Services provide a more robust and wider range of services for Web Services. You can use WCF over HTTP, TCP, and Pipes, and WCF services support WS* secure services. There are many features in WCF that go way beyond what ASMX can do. But it's also a bit more complex than ASMX. As a basic rule if you need to serve straight SOAP Services over HTTP I 'd recommend sticking with the simpler ASMX services especially if COM is involved. If you need WS* support or want to serve data over non-HTTP protocols then WCF makes more sense. WCF is not my forte but I found a solution from Scott Seely on his blog that describes the progress and that seems to work well. I'm copying his code below so this STA information is all in one place and quickly explain. Scott's code basically works by creating a custom OperationBehavior which can be specified via an [STAOperation] attribute on every method. Using his attribute you end up with a class (or Interface if you separate the contract and class) that looks like this: [ServiceContract] public class WcfService { [OperationContract] public string HelloWorldMta() { return Thread.CurrentThread.GetApartmentState().ToString(); } // Make sure you use this custom STAOperationBehavior // attribute to force STA operation of service methods [STAOperationBehavior] [OperationContract] public string HelloWorldSta() { return Thread.CurrentThread.GetApartmentState().ToString(); } } Pretty straight forward. The latter method returns STA while the former returns MTA. To make STA work every method needs to be marked up. The implementation consists of the attribute and OperationInvoker implementation. Here are the two classes required to make this work from Scott's post:public class STAOperationBehaviorAttribute : Attribute, IOperationBehavior { public void AddBindingParameters(OperationDescription operationDescription, System.ServiceModel.Channels.BindingParameterCollection bindingParameters) { } public void ApplyClientBehavior(OperationDescription operationDescription, System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ClientOperation clientOperation) { // If this is applied on the client, well, it just doesn’t make sense. // Don’t throw in case this attribute was applied on the contract // instead of the implementation. } public void ApplyDispatchBehavior(OperationDescription operationDescription, System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.DispatchOperation dispatchOperation) { // Change the IOperationInvoker for this operation. dispatchOperation.Invoker = new STAOperationInvoker(dispatchOperation.Invoker); } public void Validate(OperationDescription operationDescription) { if (operationDescription.SyncMethod == null) { throw new InvalidOperationException("The STAOperationBehaviorAttribute " + "only works for synchronous method invocations."); } } } public class STAOperationInvoker : IOperationInvoker { IOperationInvoker _innerInvoker; public STAOperationInvoker(IOperationInvoker invoker) { _innerInvoker = invoker; } public object[] AllocateInputs() { return _innerInvoker.AllocateInputs(); } public object Invoke(object instance, object[] inputs, out object[] outputs) { // Create a new, STA thread object[] staOutputs = null; object retval = null; Thread thread = new Thread( delegate() { retval = _innerInvoker.Invoke(instance, inputs, out staOutputs); }); thread.SetApartmentState(ApartmentState.STA); thread.Start(); thread.Join(); outputs = staOutputs; return retval; } public IAsyncResult InvokeBegin(object instance, object[] inputs, AsyncCallback callback, object state) { // We don’t handle async… throw new NotImplementedException(); } public object InvokeEnd(object instance, out object[] outputs, IAsyncResult result) { // We don’t handle async… throw new NotImplementedException(); } public bool IsSynchronous { get { return true; } } } The key in this setup is the Invoker and the Invoke method which creates a new thread and then fires the request on this new thread. Because this approach creates a new thread for every request it's not super efficient. There's a bunch of overhead involved in creating the thread and throwing it away after each thread, but it'll work for low volume requests and insure each thread runs in STA mode. If better performance is required it would be useful to create a custom thread manager that can pool a number of STA threads and hand off threads as needed rather than creating new threads on every request. If your Web Service needs are simple and you need only to serve standard SOAP 1.x requests, I would recommend sticking with ASMX services. It's easier to set up and work with and for STA component use it'll be significantly better performing since ASP.NET manages the STA thread pool for you rather than firing new threads for each request. One nice thing about Scotts code is though that it works in any WCF environment including self hosting. It has no dependency on ASP.NET or WebForms for that matter. STA - If you must STA components are a  pain in the ass and thankfully there isn't too much stuff out there anymore that requires it. But when you need it and you need to access STA functionality from .NET at least there are a few options available to make it happen. Each of these solutions is a bit hacky, but they work - I've used all of them in production with good results with FoxPro components. I hope compiling all of these in one place here makes it STA consumption a little bit easier. I feel your pain :-) Resources Download STA Handler Code Examples Scott Seely's original STA WCF OperationBehavior Article© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in FoxPro   ASP.NET  .NET  COM   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 16, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 16, 2010New ProjectsAAPL-MySQL (a MySql implementation of the Agile ADO.Net Persistence Layer): Using the code conventions and code of the Agile ADO.Net Persistence Layer to build a MySql implementationAddress Book: Address Book is simple and easy to use application for storing and editing contacts. It has many features like search and grouping. It's developed ...Airplanes: Airplanes GameAJAX Fax document viewer: The AJAX Fax document viewer is an ASP.net 4.0 project which uses a Seadragon control to display Tiff/Tif files inside the browser. Since it's base...AxeFrog Core: This project contains the foundational code used in several other projects.Bolão: O objetivo deste projeto é estimular a troca de informações e experiências sobre arquitetura e desenvolvimento de software na prática, através do d...Caramel Engine: This is designed to be a logic engine for developing a wide variety of games. To include card logic, dice logic, territories, players, and even man...DotNetNuke® Skin BrandWorks: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Modern Business" category by M Perakakis & M Siganou (e-bilab). A very minimal look sk...DotNetNuke® Skin Reasonable: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Personal" category by Ralph Williams of Architech Solutions. A clean, classy, professi...DotNetNuke® Skin Seasons: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Personal" category by Atul Handa and Kevin McCusker of Mercer. This skin is a generic ...File Eraser: File Eraser make it esasier for IT Administrator or Advanced Users to administer files and eliminate long addresses, even UNC. It's developed in VB...GreenEyes: My project for IT personalHulu Launcher: Hulu Launcher is a simple Windows Media Center add-in that attempts to launch Hulu Desktop and manage the windows as seamlessly as possible.Imenik: Imenik makes it easier for users to organise their contacts!KharaPOS: KharaPOS is an Exemplar application for Silverlight 4, WCF RIA Services and .NET Framework 4.Mantas Cryptography: Pequena biblioteca de criptografia com suporte aos algorítmos DES, RC2, Rexor e TripleDES. Gera hashes HMAC-MD5, HMAC-RIPEMD160, HMAC-SHA (SHA1, S...MapWindow3D: A C# DirectX library that extends the MapWindow 6.0 geospatial software library by adding an external map. The map supports rotation and tilting i...Microsoft Silverlight Analytics Framework: Extensible Web Analytics Framework for Microsoft Silverlight Applications.Moq Examples: Unit tests demonstrating Moq features.Ncqrs: Framework that helps you to create Command-Query Responsibility Segregation based applications easily.NoLedge - Notetaking and knowledge database: NoLedge is an easy knowledge gathering and notetaking freeware with a simple interface. You can link a note with different titles and can retrieve ...Numina Application Framework: The framework is a set of tools that help facilitate authentication, authorization, and access control. It is much more than a SSO. It is a central...OData SDK for PHP: OData SDK for PHP is a library to facilitate the connection with OData Services.patterns & practices - Windows Azure Guidance: p&p site for Windows Azure related guidance.projecteuler.net: Exploring projecteuler.net using F#ResumeTracker: Small and easy to use tool that helps to track your job applications. To report bugs or for suggestions please email kirunchik@gmail.com.Selection Maker: Have you ever create a collection of music files? Imagine you just want to pick best of them by your choice. you should go to several folder,play...ShureValidation: Multilingual model validation library. Supports fluent validations, attribute validations and own custom validations.Simple Phonebook: Simple phonebook allows you to store contacts. It also allows you to export the contacts to .txt or .csv. This application is written in C#, but it...SoftUpd: A usefull library which provides an Update feature to any .Net software.sTASKedit: This program can modify and export Perfect World tasks.data files...Tigie: Tigie is a simple CMS system for basic website. It's simple, easy to customize. you'll have a very basic cms to start with and expand for it. All c...toapp: ap hwUltiLogger: UltiLogger is a fast, lightweight logging library programmed in C#. It is meant as a fast, easy, and efficient way for developers to access a relia...Unnme: UnnmeVisual Studio 2008 NUnit snippets: A simple set of useful NUnit snippets, for Visual studio 2008.webdama: italian checkers game c#XBrowser - Headless Browser for .Net: XBrowser is a "headless" web browser written for .Net applications using C#. It is designed to allow automated, remote controlled and test-based br...XML Integrator: XML integration, collaborative toolNew ReleasesAddress Book: Address Book: Address BookAddress Book: Address Book - Source: Address Book source code.AJAX Fax document viewer: AJAXTiff_Source 1.0: Source project for the AJAX Tiff viewer v1.0. Written in Visual Studio 2010 RC using ASP.net 4.0ASP.Net Routing Configuration: mal.Web.Routing v1.0.0.0: mal.Web.Routing v1.0.0.0ASP.NET Wiki Control: Release 1.0: Includes VS2010 Solution and Project files but targets the 3.5 framework so can still be used with VS2008 if new project files are created.BingPaper: Beta: BingPaper Beta Release This Beta release contains quite a few improvements: This Beta release contains a complate overhaul of the replacement tok...Bolão: teste: testeDotNetNuke® Skin Reasonable: Reasonable Package 1.0.0: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Personal" category by Ralph Williams of Architech Solutions. A clean, classy, professi...DotNetNuke® Skin Seasons: Seasons Package 1.0.0: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Personal" category by Atul Handa and Kevin McCusker of Mercer. This skin is a generic ...dylan.NET: dylan.NET v. 9.2: In TFS Serverdylan.NET Apps: dylan.NET Apps v. 1.1: First version of dnu.dll together with v.9.2 of dylan.NETFamily Tree Analyzer: Version 1.1.0.0: Version 1.1.0.0 Census report now shows in bold those individuals you KNOW to be alive at the date of the census. Direct Ancestors on census repor...GLB Virtual Player Builder: 0.4.1: Minor change to reset non-major/minor attr to 8.Hulu Launcher: HuluLauncher Release 1.0.1.1: HuluLauncher Release 1.0.1.1 is the initial, barely-tested release of this Windows Media Center add-in. It should work in Vista Media Center and 7 ...Imenik: Imenik: Imenik is now available!jQuery Library for SharePoint Web Services: SPServices 0.5.3: NOTE: While I work on new releases, I post alpha versions. Usually the alpha versions are here to address a particular need. I DO NOT recommend usi...KeelKit: KeelKit 1.0.3800: 更新内容如下: 优化了DBHelper的一些机制 修正一些BUG 支持Mysql PHP代理，使得能通过Web代理的方式远程访问数据库服务器 添加Model实例化方法，支持所有非自动计算字段的参数实例化、支持所有非空字段实例化 添加Model中的常量，使用这些常量可以获得表名称。 添加了自...Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) Contrib: MefContrib 0.9.0.0: Updated to MEF Preview 9 Moved MefContrib.Extensions.Generics to MefContrib.Hosting.Generics Moved MefContrib.Extensions.Generics.Tests to MefC...MooiNooi MVC2LINQ2SQL Web Databinder: MooiNooi MVC2LINQ2SQL Web Databinder v0.1.1: Repaired a problem with collections... only index number under 10 were allowed... Please send me your comments and rate the project. Sorry.Mouse Gestures for .NET: Mouse Gestures 1.0: Improved version of the component + sample application. Version 1.0 is not backward compatible.MoviesForMyBlog: MoviesForMyBlog V1.0: This is version 1.0Nito.KitchenSink: Version 1: The first release of Nito.KitchenSink, which uses Nito.Linq 0.1. Please report any issues via the Issue Tracker.Nito.LINQ: Beta (v0.1): This is the first official public release of Nito.Linq. This release only supports .NET 3.5 SP1 with the Microsoft Rx libraries. The documentation...Nito.LINQ: Beta (v0.2): Added ListSource.Generate overloads that take a delegate for counting the list elements.OData SDK for PHP: OData SDK for PHP: This is an updated version of the ADO.NET Data Services toolkit for PHP. It includes full support for OData Protocol V2.0 specification, better pro...Orchard Project: Orchard Latest Build (0.1.2010.0312): This is a technical preview release of Orchard. Our intent with this release is to demonstrate representative experiences for our audiences (end-us...patterns & practices – Enterprise Library: Enterprise Library 5.0 - Beta2: This is a preliminary release of the code and documentation that may potentially be incomplete, and may change prior to the final release of Enterp...patterns & practices - Unity: Unity 2.0 - Beta2: This is a preliminary release of the code and documentation that may potentially be incomplete, and may change prior to the final release of Unity ...patterns & practices - Windows Azure Guidance: Code drop - 1: This initial version is the before the cloud baseline application, so you won’t find anything related to Windows Azure here. Next iteration, we'l...Rawr: Rawr 2.3.12: - First, a note about Rawr3. Rawr3 has been in development for quite a while now, and we know that everyone's eager to get it. It's been held back ...ResumeTracker: Resume Tracker v1.0: First release.Selection Maker: Selection Maker 1.0: This is just the first release of this programSevenZipSharp: SevenZipSharp 0.61: Added: Windows Mobile support bool Check() method for Extractor to test archives integrity FileExtractionFinished now returns FileInfoEventArgs...Silverlight 3.0 Advanced ToolTipService: Advanced ToolTipService v2.0.1: This release is compiled against the Silverlight 3.0 runtime. A demonstration on how to set the ToolTip content to a property of the DataContext o...Silverlight Flow Layouts library: SL and WPF Flow Layouts library March 2010: This release indtroduces some bug fixes, performance improvements, Silverlight 4 RC and WPF 4.0 RC support. Flow Layouts Library is a control libra...Simple Phonebook: SimplePhonebook Visual Studio 2010 Solution: Ovo je cijeli projekt u kojem se nalaze svi source fileovi koje sam koristio u izradi ove aplikacije. Za pokretanje je potreban Visual Studio 2010....Simple Phonebook: SimplePhonebook.rar: U ovoj .rar datoteci nalaze se izvršni fileovi. _ In this .rar file you can find .exe file needed for executing the application.SLARToolkit - Silverlight Augmented Reality Toolkit: SLARToolkit 1.0.1.0: Updated to Silverlight 4 Release Candidate. Introduces the new GenericMarkerDetector which uses the IXrgbReader interface. See the Marker Detecto...sPWadmin: pwAdmin v1.0: Fixed: Templates can now be saved server restart persistant (wait at least 60 seconds between saving and restarting)SQL Director for Dependencies & Indexes: SDD CTP 1.0: SQL Director for Dependencies allows you to view dependencies between tables, views, function, stored procedures and jobs. Newest Testing build, f...SqlCeViewer: SeasonStar Database Management 0.7.0.2: Update the user interface to help user understand clearly how to use .UltiLogger: Initial alpha release: Important! This is not a feature-complete release! It contains the logging priorities, and an interface for building logging systems from. THERE IS...Visual Studio 2008 NUnit snippets: Version 1.0: First stable release.Zeta Resource Editor: Source Code Release 2010-03-16: New source code. Binary setup is also available.Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpWBFS ManagerRawrAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitASP.NET Ajax LibraryWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETLiveUpload to FacebookMost Active ProjectsLINQ to TwitterOData SDK for PHPRawrN2 CMSpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryDirectQBlogEngine.NETMapWindow6SharePoint Team-MailerNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Module

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• A Taxonomy of Numerical Methods v1

  - by JoshReuben

  Numerical Analysis – When, What, (but not how) Once you understand the Math & know C++, Numerical Methods are basically blocks of iterative & conditional math code. I found the real trick was seeing the forest for the trees – knowing which method to use for which situation. Its pretty easy to get lost in the details – so I’ve tried to organize these methods in a way that I can quickly look this up. I’ve included links to detailed explanations and to C++ code examples. I’ve tried to classify Numerical methods in the following broad categories: Solving Systems of Linear Equations Solving Non-Linear Equations Iteratively Interpolation Curve Fitting Optimization Numerical Differentiation & Integration Solving ODEs Boundary Problems Solving EigenValue problems Enjoy – I did ! Solving Systems of Linear Equations Overview Solve sets of algebraic equations with x unknowns The set is commonly in matrix form Gauss-Jordan Elimination http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauss%E2%80%93Jordan_elimination C++: http://www.codekeep.net/snippets/623f1923-e03c-4636-8c92-c9dc7aa0d3c0.aspx Produces solution of the equations & the coefficient matrix Efficient, stable 2 steps: · Forward Elimination – matrix decomposition: reduce set to triangular form (0s below the diagonal) or row echelon form. If degenerate, then there is no solution · Backward Elimination –write the original matrix as the product of ints inverse matrix & its reduced row-echelon matrix à reduce set to row canonical form & use back-substitution to find the solution to the set Elementary ops for matrix decomposition: · Row multiplication · Row switching · Add multiples of rows to other rows Use pivoting to ensure rows are ordered for achieving triangular form LU Decomposition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LU_decomposition C++: http://ganeshtiwaridotcomdotnp.blogspot.co.il/2009/12/c-c-code-lu-decomposition-for-solving.html Represent the matrix as a product of lower & upper triangular matrices A modified version of GJ Elimination Advantage – can easily apply forward & backward elimination to solve triangular matrices Techniques: · Doolittle Method – sets the L matrix diagonal to unity · Crout Method - sets the U matrix diagonal to unity Note: both the L & U matrices share the same unity diagonal & can be stored compactly in the same matrix Gauss-Seidel Iteration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauss%E2%80%93Seidel_method C++: http://www.nr.com/forum/showthread.php?t=722 Transform the linear set of equations into a single equation & then use numerical integration (as integration formulas have Sums, it is implemented iteratively). an optimization of Gauss-Jacobi: 1.5 times faster, requires 0.25 iterations to achieve the same tolerance Solving Non-Linear Equations Iteratively find roots of polynomials – there may be 0, 1 or n solutions for an n order polynomial use iterative techniques Iterative methods · used when there are no known analytical techniques · Requires set functions to be continuous & differentiable · Requires an initial seed value – choice is critical to convergence à conduct multiple runs with different starting points & then select best result · Systematic - iterate until diminishing returns, tolerance or max iteration conditions are met · bracketing techniques will always yield convergent solutions, non-bracketing methods may fail to converge Incremental method if a nonlinear function has opposite signs at 2 ends of a small interval x1 & x2, then there is likely to be a solution in their interval – solutions are detected by evaluating a function over interval steps, for a change in sign, adjusting the step size dynamically. Limitations – can miss closely spaced solutions in large intervals, cannot detect degenerate (coinciding) solutions, limited to functions that cross the x-axis, gives false positives for singularities Fixed point method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-point_iteration C++: http://books.google.co.il/books?id=weYj75E_t6MC&pg=PA79&lpg=PA79&dq=fixed+point+method++c%2B%2B&source=bl&ots=LQ-5P_taoC&sig=lENUUIYBK53tZtTwNfHLy5PEWDk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=wezDUPW1J5DptQaMsIHQCw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=fixed%20point%20method%20%20c%2B%2B&f=false Algebraically rearrange a solution to isolate a variable then apply incremental method Bisection method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisection_method C++: http://numericalcomputing.wordpress.com/category/algorithms/ Bracketed - Select an initial interval, keep bisecting it ad midpoint into sub-intervals and then apply incremental method on smaller & smaller intervals – zoom in Adv: unaffected by function gradient à reliable Disadv: slow convergence False Position Method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_position_method C++: http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/topic/126100-bisection-and-false-position-methods/ Bracketed - Select an initial interval , & use the relative value of function at interval end points to select next sub-intervals (estimate how far between the end points the solution might be & subdivide based on this) Newton-Raphson method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton's_method C++: http://www-users.cselabs.umn.edu/classes/Summer-2012/csci1113/index.php?page=./newt3 Also known as Newton's method Convenient, efficient Not bracketed – only a single initial guess is required to start iteration – requires an analytical expression for the first derivative of the function as input. Evaluates the function & its derivative at each step. Can be extended to the Newton MutiRoot method for solving multiple roots Can be easily applied to an of n-coupled set of non-linear equations – conduct a Taylor Series expansion of a function, dropping terms of order n, rewrite as a Jacobian matrix of PDs & convert to simultaneous linear equations !!! Secant Method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secant_method C++: http://forum.vcoderz.com/showthread.php?p=205230 Unlike N-R, can estimate first derivative from an initial interval (does not require root to be bracketed) instead of inputting it Since derivative is approximated, may converge slower. Is fast in practice as it does not have to evaluate the derivative at each step. Similar implementation to False Positive method Birge-Vieta Method http://mat.iitm.ac.in/home/sryedida/public_html/caimna/transcendental/polynomial%20methods/bv%20method.html C++: http://books.google.co.il/books?id=cL1boM2uyQwC&pg=SA3-PA51&lpg=SA3-PA51&dq=Birge-Vieta+Method+c%2B%2B&source=bl&ots=QZmnDTK3rC&sig=BPNcHHbpR_DKVoZXrLi4nVXD-gg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=R-_DUK2iNIjzsgbE5ID4Dg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Birge-Vieta%20Method%20c%2B%2B&f=false combines Horner's method of polynomial evaluation (transforming into lesser degree polynomials that are more computationally efficient to process) with Newton-Raphson to provide a computational speed-up Interpolation Overview Construct new data points for as close as possible fit within range of a discrete set of known points (that were obtained via sampling, experimentation) Use Taylor Series Expansion of a function f(x) around a specific value for x Linear Interpolation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_interpolation C++: http://www.hamaluik.com/?p=289 Straight line between 2 points à concatenate interpolants between each pair of data points Bilinear Interpolation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilinear_interpolation C++: http://supercomputingblog.com/graphics/coding-bilinear-interpolation/2/ Extension of the linear function for interpolating functions of 2 variables – perform linear interpolation first in 1 direction, then in another. Used in image processing – e.g. texture mapping filter. Uses 4 vertices to interpolate a value within a unit cell. Lagrange Interpolation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_polynomial C++: http://www.codecogs.com/code/maths/approximation/interpolation/lagrange.php For polynomials Requires recomputation for all terms for each distinct x value – can only be applied for small number of nodes Numerically unstable Barycentric Interpolation http://epubs.siam.org/doi/pdf/10.1137/S0036144502417715 C++: http://www.gamedev.net/topic/621445-barycentric-coordinates-c-code-check/ Rearrange the terms in the equation of the Legrange interpolation by defining weight functions that are independent of the interpolated value of x Newton Divided Difference Interpolation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_polynomial C++: http://jee-appy.blogspot.co.il/2011/12/newton-divided-difference-interpolation.html Hermite Divided Differences: Interpolation polynomial approximation for a given set of data points in the NR form - divided differences are used to approximately calculate the various differences. For a given set of 3 data points , fit a quadratic interpolant through the data Bracketed functions allow Newton divided differences to be calculated recursively Difference table Cubic Spline Interpolation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spline_interpolation C++: https://www.marcusbannerman.co.uk/index.php/home/latestarticles/42-articles/96-cubic-spline-class.html Spline is a piecewise polynomial Provides smoothness – for interpolations with significantly varying data Use weighted coefficients to bend the function to be smooth & its 1st & 2nd derivatives are continuous through the edge points in the interval Curve Fitting A generalization of interpolating whereby given data points may contain noise à the curve does not necessarily pass through all the points Least Squares Fit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Least_squares C++: http://www.ccas.ru/mmes/educat/lab04k/02/least-squares.c Residual – difference between observed value & expected value Model function is often chosen as a linear combination of the specified functions Determines: A) The model instance in which the sum of squared residuals has the least value B) param values for which model best fits data Straight Line Fit Linear correlation between independent variable and dependent variable Linear Regression http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_regression C++: http://www.oocities.org/david_swaim/cpp/linregc.htm Special case of statistically exact extrapolation Leverage least squares Given a basis function, the sum of the residuals is determined and the corresponding gradient equation is expressed as a set of normal linear equations in matrix form that can be solved (e.g. using LU Decomposition) Can be weighted - Drop the assumption that all errors have the same significance –-> confidence of accuracy is different for each data point. Fit the function closer to points with higher weights Polynomial Fit - use a polynomial basis function Moving Average http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_average C++: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/17860/A-Simple-Moving-Average-Algorithm Used for smoothing (cancel fluctuations to highlight longer-term trends & cycles), time series data analysis, signal processing filters Replace each data point with average of neighbors. Can be simple (SMA), weighted (WMA), exponential (EMA). Lags behind latest data points – extra weight can be given to more recent data points. Weights can decrease arithmetically or exponentially according to distance from point. Parameters: smoothing factor, period, weight basis Optimization Overview Given function with multiple variables, find Min (or max by minimizing –f(x)) Iterative approach Efficient, but not necessarily reliable Conditions: noisy data, constraints, non-linear models Detection via sign of first derivative - Derivative of saddle points will be 0 Local minima Bisection method Similar method for finding a root for a non-linear equation Start with an interval that contains a minimum Golden Search method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_section_search C++: http://www.codecogs.com/code/maths/optimization/golden.php Bisect intervals according to golden ratio 0.618.. Achieves reduction by evaluating a single function instead of 2 Newton-Raphson Method Brent method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent's_method C++: http://people.sc.fsu.edu/~jburkardt/cpp_src/brent/brent.cpp Based on quadratic or parabolic interpolation – if the function is smooth & parabolic near to the minimum, then a parabola fitted through any 3 points should approximate the minima – fails when the 3 points are collinear , in which case the denominator is 0 Simplex Method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplex_algorithm C++: http://www.codeguru.com/cpp/article.php/c17505/Simplex-Optimization-Algorithm-and-Implemetation-in-C-Programming.htm Find the global minima of any multi-variable function Direct search – no derivatives required At each step it maintains a non-degenerative simplex – a convex hull of n+1 vertices. Obtains the minimum for a function with n variables by evaluating the function at n-1 points, iteratively replacing the point of worst result with the point of best result, shrinking the multidimensional simplex around the best point. Point replacement involves expanding & contracting the simplex near the worst value point to determine a better replacement point Oscillation can be avoided by choosing the 2nd worst result Restart if it gets stuck Parameters: contraction & expansion factors Simulated Annealing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_annealing C++: http://code.google.com/p/cppsimulatedannealing/ Analogy to heating & cooling metal to strengthen its structure Stochastic method – apply random permutation search for global minima - Avoid entrapment in local minima via hill climbing Heating schedule - Annealing schedule params: temperature, iterations at each temp, temperature delta Cooling schedule – can be linear, step-wise or exponential Differential Evolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_evolution C++: http://www.amichel.com/de/doc/html/ More advanced stochastic methods analogous to biological processes: Genetic algorithms, evolution strategies Parallel direct search method against multiple discrete or continuous variables Initial population of variable vectors chosen randomly – if weighted difference vector of 2 vectors yields a lower objective function value then it replaces the comparison vector Many params: #parents, #variables, step size, crossover constant etc Convergence is slow – many more function evaluations than simulated annealing Numerical Differentiation Overview 2 approaches to finite difference methods: · A) approximate function via polynomial interpolation then differentiate · B) Taylor series approximation – additionally provides error estimate Finite Difference methods http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_difference_method C++: http://www.wpi.edu/Pubs/ETD/Available/etd-051807-164436/unrestricted/EAMPADU.pdf Find differences between high order derivative values - Approximate differential equations by finite differences at evenly spaced data points Based on forward & backward Taylor series expansion of f(x) about x plus or minus multiples of delta h. Forward / backward difference - the sums of the series contains even derivatives and the difference of the series contains odd derivatives – coupled equations that can be solved. Provide an approximation of the derivative within a O(h^2) accuracy There is also central difference & extended central difference which has a O(h^4) accuracy Richardson Extrapolation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richardson_extrapolation C++: http://mathscoding.blogspot.co.il/2012/02/introduction-richardson-extrapolation.html A sequence acceleration method applied to finite differences Fast convergence, high accuracy O(h^4) Derivatives via Interpolation Cannot apply Finite Difference method to discrete data points at uneven intervals – so need to approximate the derivative of f(x) using the derivative of the interpolant via 3 point Lagrange Interpolation Note: the higher the order of the derivative, the lower the approximation precision Numerical Integration Estimate finite & infinite integrals of functions More accurate procedure than numerical differentiation Use when it is not possible to obtain an integral of a function analytically or when the function is not given, only the data points are Newton Cotes Methods http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%E2%80%93Cotes_formulas C++: http://www.siafoo.net/snippet/324 For equally spaced data points Computationally easy – based on local interpolation of n rectangular strip areas that is piecewise fitted to a polynomial to get the sum total area Evaluate the integrand at n+1 evenly spaced points – approximate definite integral by Sum Weights are derived from Lagrange Basis polynomials Leverage Trapezoidal Rule for default 2nd formulas, Simpson 1/3 Rule for substituting 3 point formulas, Simpson 3/8 Rule for 4 point formulas. For 4 point formulas use Bodes Rule. Higher orders obtain more accurate results Trapezoidal Rule uses simple area, Simpsons Rule replaces the integrand f(x) with a quadratic polynomial p(x) that uses the same values as f(x) for its end points, but adds a midpoint Romberg Integration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romberg's_method C++: http://code.google.com/p/romberg-integration/downloads/detail?name=romberg.cpp&can=2&q= Combines trapezoidal rule with Richardson Extrapolation Evaluates the integrand at equally spaced points The integrand must have continuous derivatives Each R(n,m) extrapolation uses a higher order integrand polynomial replacement rule (zeroth starts with trapezoidal) à a lower triangular matrix set of equation coefficients where the bottom right term has the most accurate approximation. The process continues until the difference between 2 successive diagonal terms becomes sufficiently small. Gaussian Quadrature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_quadrature C++: http://www.alglib.net/integration/gaussianquadratures.php Data points are chosen to yield best possible accuracy – requires fewer evaluations Ability to handle singularities, functions that are difficult to evaluate The integrand can include a weighting function determined by a set of orthogonal polynomials. Points & weights are selected so that the integrand yields the exact integral if f(x) is a polynomial of degree <= 2n+1 Techniques (basically different weighting functions): · Gauss-Legendre Integration w(x)=1 · Gauss-Laguerre Integration w(x)=e^-x · Gauss-Hermite Integration w(x)=e^-x^2 · Gauss-Chebyshev Integration w(x)= 1 / Sqrt(1-x^2) Solving ODEs Use when high order differential equations cannot be solved analytically Evaluated under boundary conditions RK for systems – a high order differential equation can always be transformed into a coupled first order system of equations Euler method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler_method C++: http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Euler_method First order Runge–Kutta method. Simple recursive method – given an initial value, calculate derivative deltas. Unstable & not very accurate (O(h) error) – not used in practice A first-order method - the local error (truncation error per step) is proportional to the square of the step size, and the global error (error at a given time) is proportional to the step size In evolving solution between data points xn & xn+1, only evaluates derivatives at beginning of interval xn à asymmetric at boundaries Higher order Runge Kutta http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runge%E2%80%93Kutta_methods C++: http://www.dreamincode.net/code/snippet1441.htm 2nd & 4th order RK - Introduces parameterized midpoints for more symmetric solutions à accuracy at higher computational cost Adaptive RK – RK-Fehlberg – estimate the truncation at each integration step & automatically adjust the step size to keep error within prescribed limits. At each step 2 approximations are compared – if in disagreement to a specific accuracy, the step size is reduced Boundary Value Problems Where solution of differential equations are located at 2 different values of the independent variable x à more difficult, because cannot just start at point of initial value – there may not be enough starting conditions available at the end points to produce a unique solution An n-order equation will require n boundary conditions – need to determine the missing n-1 conditions which cause the given conditions at the other boundary to be satisfied Shooting Method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_method C++: http://ganeshtiwaridotcomdotnp.blogspot.co.il/2009/12/c-c-code-shooting-method-for-solving.html Iteratively guess the missing values for one end & integrate, then inspect the discrepancy with the boundary values of the other end to adjust the estimate Given the starting boundary values u1 & u2 which contain the root u, solve u given the false position method (solving the differential equation as an initial value problem via 4th order RK), then use u to solve the differential equations. Finite Difference Method For linear & non-linear systems Higher order derivatives require more computational steps – some combinations for boundary conditions may not work though Improve the accuracy by increasing the number of mesh points Solving EigenValue Problems An eigenvalue can substitute a matrix when doing matrix multiplication à convert matrix multiplication into a polynomial EigenValue For a given set of equations in matrix form, determine what are the solution eigenvalue & eigenvectors Similar Matrices - have same eigenvalues. Use orthogonal similarity transforms to reduce a matrix to diagonal form from which eigenvalue(s) & eigenvectors can be computed iteratively Jacobi method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobi_method C++: http://people.sc.fsu.edu/~jburkardt/classes/acs2_2008/openmp/jacobi/jacobi.html Robust but Computationally intense – use for small matrices < 10x10 Power Iteration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_iteration For any given real symmetric matrix, generate the largest single eigenvalue & its eigenvectors Simplest method – does not compute matrix decomposition à suitable for large, sparse matrices Inverse Iteration Variation of power iteration method – generates the smallest eigenvalue from the inverse matrix Rayleigh Method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh's_method_of_dimensional_analysis Variation of power iteration method Rayleigh Quotient Method Variation of inverse iteration method Matrix Tri-diagonalization Method Use householder algorithm to reduce an NxN symmetric matrix to a tridiagonal real symmetric matrix vua N-2 orthogonal transforms     Whats Next Outside of Numerical Methods there are lots of different types of algorithms that I’ve learned over the decades: Data Mining – (I covered this briefly in a previous post: http://geekswithblogs.net/JoshReuben/archive/2007/12/31/ssas-dm-algorithms.aspx ) Search & Sort Routing Problem Solving Logical Theorem Proving Planning Probabilistic Reasoning Machine Learning Solvers (eg MIP) Bioinformatics (Sequence Alignment, Protein Folding) Quant Finance (I read Wilmott’s books – interesting) Sooner or later, I’ll cover the above topics as well.

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• Toorcon14

  - by danx

  Toorcon 2012 Information Security Conference San Diego, CA, http://www.toorcon.org/ Dan Anderson, October 2012 It's almost Halloween, and we all know what that means—yes, of course, it's time for another Toorcon Conference! Toorcon is an annual conference for people interested in computer security. This includes the whole range of hackers, computer hobbyists, professionals, security consultants, press, law enforcement, prosecutors, FBI, etc. We're at Toorcon 14—see earlier blogs for some of the previous Toorcon's I've attended (back to 2003). This year's "con" was held at the Westin on Broadway in downtown San Diego, California. The following are not necessarily my views—I'm just the messenger—although I could have misquoted or misparaphrased the speakers. Also, I only reviewed some of the talks, below, which I attended and interested me. MalAndroid—the Crux of Android Infections, Aditya K. Sood Programming Weird Machines with ELF Metadata, Rebecca "bx" Shapiro Privacy at the Handset: New FCC Rules?, Valkyrie Hacking Measured Boot and UEFI, Dan Griffin You Can't Buy Security: Building the Open Source InfoSec Program, Boris Sverdlik What Journalists Want: The Investigative Reporters' Perspective on Hacking, Dave Maas & Jason Leopold Accessibility and Security, Anna Shubina Stop Patching, for Stronger PCI Compliance, Adam Brand McAfee Secure & Trustmarks — a Hacker's Best Friend, Jay James & Shane MacDougall MalAndroid—the Crux of Android Infections Aditya K. Sood, IOActive, Michigan State PhD candidate Aditya talked about Android smartphone malware. There's a lot of old Android software out there—over 50% Gingerbread (2.3.x)—and most have unpatched vulnerabilities. Of 9 Android vulnerabilities, 8 have known exploits (such as the old Gingerbread Global Object Table exploit). Android protection includes sandboxing, security scanner, app permissions, and screened Android app market. The Android permission checker has fine-grain resource control, policy enforcement. Android static analysis also includes a static analysis app checker (bouncer), and a vulnerablity checker. What security problems does Android have? User-centric security, which depends on the user to grant permission and make smart decisions. But users don't care or think about malware (the're not aware, not paranoid). All they want is functionality, extensibility, mobility Android had no "proper" encryption before Android 3.0 No built-in protection against social engineering and web tricks Alternative Android app markets are unsafe. Simply visiting some markets can infect Android Aditya classified Android Malware types as: Type A—Apps. These interact with the Android app framework. For example, a fake Netflix app. Or Android Gold Dream (game), which uploads user files stealthy manner to a remote location. Type K—Kernel. Exploits underlying Linux libraries or kernel Type H—Hybrid. These use multiple layers (app framework, libraries, kernel). These are most commonly used by Android botnets, which are popular with Chinese botnet authors What are the threats from Android malware? These incude leak info (contacts), banking fraud, corporate network attacks, malware advertising, malware "Hackivism" (the promotion of social causes. For example, promiting specific leaders of the Tunisian or Iranian revolutions. Android malware is frequently "masquerated". That is, repackaged inside a legit app with malware. To avoid detection, the hidden malware is not unwrapped until runtime. The malware payload can be hidden in, for example, PNG files. Less common are Android bootkits—there's not many around. What they do is hijack the Android init framework—alteering system programs and daemons, then deletes itself. For example, the DKF Bootkit (China). Android App Problems: no code signing! all self-signed native code execution permission sandbox — all or none alternate market places no robust Android malware detection at network level delayed patch process Programming Weird Machines with ELF Metadata Rebecca "bx" Shapiro, Dartmouth College, NH https://github.com/bx/elf-bf-tools @bxsays on twitter Definitions. "ELF" is an executable file format used in linking and loading executables (on UNIX/Linux-class machines). "Weird machine" uses undocumented computation sources (I think of them as unintended virtual machines). Some examples of "weird machines" are those that: return to weird location, does SQL injection, corrupts the heap. Bx then talked about using ELF metadata as (an uintended) "weird machine". Some ELF background: A compiler takes source code and generates a ELF object file (hello.o). A static linker makes an ELF executable from the object file. A runtime linker and loader takes ELF executable and loads and relocates it in memory. The ELF file has symbols to relocate functions and variables. ELF has two relocation tables—one at link time and another one at loading time: .rela.dyn (link time) and .dynsym (dynamic table). GOT: Global Offset Table of addresses for dynamically-linked functions. PLT: Procedure Linkage Tables—works with GOT. The memory layout of a process (not the ELF file) is, in order: program (+ heap), dynamic libraries, libc, ld.so, stack (which includes the dynamic table loaded into memory) For ELF, the "weird machine" is found and exploited in the loader. ELF can be crafted for executing viruses, by tricking runtime into executing interpreted "code" in the ELF symbol table. One can inject parasitic "code" without modifying the actual ELF code portions. Think of the ELF symbol table as an "assembly language" interpreter. It has these elements: instructions: Add, move, jump if not 0 (jnz) Think of symbol table entries as "registers" symbol table value is "contents" immediate values are constants direct values are addresses (e.g., 0xdeadbeef) move instruction: is a relocation table entry add instruction: relocation table "addend" entry jnz instruction: takes multiple relocation table entries The ELF weird machine exploits the loader by relocating relocation table entries. The loader will go on forever until told to stop. It stores state on stack at "end" and uses IFUNC table entries (containing function pointer address). The ELF weird machine, called "Brainfu*k" (BF) has: 8 instructions: pointer inc, dec, inc indirect, dec indirect, jump forward, jump backward, print. Three registers - 3 registers Bx showed example BF source code that implemented a Turing machine printing "hello, world". More interesting was the next demo, where bx modified ping. Ping runs suid as root, but quickly drops privilege. BF modified the loader to disable the library function call dropping privilege, so it remained as root. Then BF modified the ping -t argument to execute the -t filename as root. It's best to show what this modified ping does with an example: $ whoami bx $ ping localhost -t backdoor.sh # executes backdoor $ whoami root $ The modified code increased from 285948 bytes to 290209 bytes. A BF tool compiles "executable" by modifying the symbol table in an existing ELF executable. The tool modifies .dynsym and .rela.dyn table, but not code or data. Privacy at the Handset: New FCC Rules? "Valkyrie" (Christie Dudley, Santa Clara Law JD candidate) Valkyrie talked about mobile handset privacy. Some background: Senator Franken (also a comedian) became alarmed about CarrierIQ, where the carriers track their customers. Franken asked the FCC to find out what obligations carriers think they have to protect privacy. The carriers' response was that they are doing just fine with self-regulation—no worries! Carriers need to collect data, such as missed calls, to maintain network quality. But carriers also sell data for marketing. Verizon sells customer data and enables this with a narrow privacy policy (only 1 month to opt out, with difficulties). The data sold is not individually identifiable and is aggregated. But Verizon recommends, as an aggregation workaround to "recollate" data to other databases to identify customers indirectly. The FCC has regulated telephone privacy since 1934 and mobile network privacy since 2007. Also, the carriers say mobile phone privacy is a FTC responsibility (not FCC). FTC is trying to improve mobile app privacy, but FTC has no authority over carrier / customer relationships. As a side note, Apple iPhones are unique as carriers have extra control over iPhones they don't have with other smartphones. As a result iPhones may be more regulated. Who are the consumer advocates? Everyone knows EFF, but EPIC (Electrnic Privacy Info Center), although more obsecure, is more relevant. What to do? Carriers must be accountable. Opt-in and opt-out at any time. Carriers need incentive to grant users control for those who want it, by holding them liable and responsible for breeches on their clock. Location information should be added current CPNI privacy protection, and require "Pen/trap" judicial order to obtain (and would still be a lower standard than 4th Amendment). Politics are on a pro-privacy swing now, with many senators and the Whitehouse. There will probably be new regulation soon, and enforcement will be a problem, but consumers will still have some benefit. Hacking Measured Boot and UEFI Dan Griffin, JWSecure, Inc., Seattle, @JWSdan Dan talked about hacking measured UEFI boot. First some terms: UEFI is a boot technology that is replacing BIOS (has whitelisting and blacklisting). UEFI protects devices against rootkits. TPM - hardware security device to store hashs and hardware-protected keys "secure boot" can control at firmware level what boot images can boot "measured boot" OS feature that tracks hashes (from BIOS, boot loader, krnel, early drivers). "remote attestation" allows remote validation and control based on policy on a remote attestation server. Microsoft pushing TPM (Windows 8 required), but Google is not. Intel TianoCore is the only open source for UEFI. Dan has Measured Boot Tool at http://mbt.codeplex.com/ with a demo where you can also view TPM data. TPM support already on enterprise-class machines. UEFI Weaknesses. UEFI toolkits are evolving rapidly, but UEFI has weaknesses: assume user is an ally trust TPM implicitly, and attached to computer hibernate file is unprotected (disk encryption protects against this) protection migrating from hardware to firmware delays in patching and whitelist updates will UEFI really be adopted by the mainstream (smartphone hardware support, bank support, apathetic consumer support) You Can't Buy Security: Building the Open Source InfoSec Program Boris Sverdlik, ISDPodcast.com co-host Boris talked about problems typical with current security audits. "IT Security" is an oxymoron—IT exists to enable buiness, uptime, utilization, reporting, but don't care about security—IT has conflict of interest. There's no Magic Bullet ("blinky box"), no one-size-fits-all solution (e.g., Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs)). Regulations don't make you secure. The cloud is not secure (because of shared data and admin access). Defense and pen testing is not sexy. Auditors are not solution (security not a checklist)—what's needed is experience and adaptability—need soft skills. Step 1: First thing is to Google and learn the company end-to-end before you start. Get to know the management team (not IT team), meet as many people as you can. Don't use arbitrary values such as CISSP scores. Quantitive risk assessment is a myth (e.g. AV*EF-SLE). Learn different Business Units, legal/regulatory obligations, learn the business and where the money is made, verify company is protected from script kiddies (easy), learn sensitive information (IP, internal use only), and start with low-hanging fruit (customer service reps and social engineering). Step 2: Policies. Keep policies short and relevant. Generic SANS "security" boilerplate policies don't make sense and are not followed. Focus on acceptable use, data usage, communications, physical security. Step 3: Implementation: keep it simple stupid. Open source, although useful, is not free (implementation cost). Access controls with authentication & authorization for local and remote access. MS Windows has it, otherwise use OpenLDAP, OpenIAM, etc. Application security Everyone tries to reinvent the wheel—use existing static analysis tools. Review high-risk apps and major revisions. Don't run different risk level apps on same system. Assume host/client compromised and use app-level security control. Network security VLAN != segregated because there's too many workarounds. Use explicit firwall rules, active and passive network monitoring (snort is free), disallow end user access to production environment, have a proxy instead of direct Internet access. Also, SSL certificates are not good two-factor auth and SSL does not mean "safe." Operational Controls Have change, patch, asset, & vulnerability management (OSSI is free). For change management, always review code before pushing to production For logging, have centralized security logging for business-critical systems, separate security logging from administrative/IT logging, and lock down log (as it has everything). Monitor with OSSIM (open source). Use intrusion detection, but not just to fulfill a checkbox: build rules from a whitelist perspective (snort). OSSEC has 95% of what you need. Vulnerability management is a QA function when done right: OpenVas and Seccubus are free. Security awareness The reality is users will always click everything. Build real awareness, not compliance driven checkbox, and have it integrated into the culture. Pen test by crowd sourcing—test with logging COSSP http://www.cossp.org/ - Comprehensive Open Source Security Project What Journalists Want: The Investigative Reporters' Perspective on Hacking Dave Maas, San Diego CityBeat Jason Leopold, Truthout.org The difference between hackers and investigative journalists: For hackers, the motivation varies, but method is same, technological specialties. For investigative journalists, it's about one thing—The Story, and they need broad info-gathering skills. J-School in 60 Seconds: Generic formula: Person or issue of pubic interest, new info, or angle. Generic criteria: proximity, prominence, timeliness, human interest, oddity, or consequence. Media awareness of hackers and trends: journalists becoming extremely aware of hackers with congressional debates (privacy, data breaches), demand for data-mining Journalists, use of coding and web development for Journalists, and Journalists busted for hacking (Murdock). Info gathering by investigative journalists include Public records laws. Federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is good, but slow. California Public Records Act is a lot stronger. FOIA takes forever because of foot-dragging—it helps to be specific. Often need to sue (especially FBI). CPRA is faster, and requests can be vague. Dumps and leaks (a la Wikileaks) Journalists want: leads, protecting ourselves, our sources, and adapting tools for news gathering (Google hacking). Anonomity is important to whistleblowers. They want no digital footprint left behind (e.g., email, web log). They don't trust encryption, want to feel safe and secure. Whistleblower laws are very weak—there's no upside for whistleblowers—they have to be very passionate to do it. Accessibility and Security or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Halting Problem Anna Shubina, Dartmouth College Anna talked about how accessibility and security are related. Accessibility of digital content (not real world accessibility). mostly refers to blind users and screenreaders, for our purpose. Accessibility is about parsing documents, as are many security issues. "Rich" executable content causes accessibility to fail, and often causes security to fail. For example MS Word has executable format—it's not a document exchange format—more dangerous than PDF or HTML. Accessibility is often the first and maybe only sanity check with parsing. They have no choice because someone may want to read what you write. Google, for example, is very particular about web browser you use and are bad at supporting other browsers. Uses JavaScript instead of links, often requiring mouseover to display content. PDF is a security nightmare. Executible format, embedded flash, JavaScript, etc. 15 million lines of code. Google Chrome doesn't handle PDF correctly, causing several security bugs. PDF has an accessibility checker and PDF tagging, to help with accessibility. But no PDF checker checks for incorrect tags, untagged content, or validates lists or tables. None check executable content at all. The "Halting Problem" is: can one decide whether a program will ever stop? The answer, in general, is no (Rice's theorem). The same holds true for accessibility checkers. Language-theoretic Security says complicated data formats are hard to parse and cannot be solved due to the Halting Problem. W3C Web Accessibility Guidelines: "Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust" Not much help though, except for "Robust", but here's some gems: * all information should be parsable (paraphrasing) * if not parsable, cannot be converted to alternate formats * maximize compatibility in new document formats Executible webpages are bad for security and accessibility. They say it's for a better web experience. But is it necessary to stuff web pages with JavaScript for a better experience? A good example is The Drudge Report—it has hand-written HTML with no JavaScript, yet drives a lot of web traffic due to good content. A bad example is Google News—hidden scrollbars, guessing user input. Solutions: Accessibility and security problems come from same source Expose "better user experience" myth Keep your corner of Internet parsable Remember "Halting Problem"—recognize false solutions (checking and verifying tools) Stop Patching, for Stronger PCI Compliance Adam Brand, protiviti @adamrbrand, http://www.picfun.com/ Adam talked about PCI compliance for retail sales. Take an example: for PCI compliance, 50% of Brian's time (a IT guy), 960 hours/year was spent patching POSs in 850 restaurants. Often applying some patches make no sense (like fixing a browser vulnerability on a server). "Scanner worship" is overuse of vulnerability scanners—it gives a warm and fuzzy and it's simple (red or green results—fix reds). Scanners give a false sense of security. In reality, breeches from missing patches are uncommon—more common problems are: default passwords, cleartext authentication, misconfiguration (firewall ports open). Patching Myths: Myth 1: install within 30 days of patch release (but PCI §6.1 allows a "risk-based approach" instead). Myth 2: vendor decides what's critical (also PCI §6.1). But §6.2 requires user ranking of vulnerabilities instead. Myth 3: scan and rescan until it passes. But PCI §11.2.1b says this applies only to high-risk vulnerabilities. Adam says good recommendations come from NIST 800-40. Instead use sane patching and focus on what's really important. From NIST 800-40: Proactive: Use a proactive vulnerability management process: use change control, configuration management, monitor file integrity. Monitor: start with NVD and other vulnerability alerts, not scanner results. Evaluate: public-facing system? workstation? internal server? (risk rank) Decide:on action and timeline Test: pre-test patches (stability, functionality, rollback) for change control Install: notify, change control, tickets McAfee Secure & Trustmarks — a Hacker's Best Friend Jay James, Shane MacDougall, Tactical Intelligence Inc., Canada "McAfee Secure Trustmark" is a website seal marketed by McAfee. A website gets this badge if they pass their remote scanning. The problem is a removal of trustmarks act as flags that you're vulnerable. Easy to view status change by viewing McAfee list on website or on Google. "Secure TrustGuard" is similar to McAfee. Jay and Shane wrote Perl scripts to gather sites from McAfee and search engines. If their certification image changes to a 1x1 pixel image, then they are longer certified. Their scripts take deltas of scans to see what changed daily. The bottom line is change in TrustGuard status is a flag for hackers to attack your site. Entire idea of seals is silly—you're raising a flag saying if you're vulnerable.

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• Problems configuring nameserver in plesk

  - by Saif Bechan

  Hello, i have some troubles with setting up a nameserver in PLESK for months now. I have tried all possible scenario's but i can not get this to work. I am really in need for some help, and if you can i will really appreciate it. Basically what i want is to just set up a nameserver in PLESK. I have a primary IP, and my host gave me a secondary nameserver i can use. My host is leaseweb in the netherlands. I have made some screenshots of the important parts in my opinion, maybe you guys can see some errors in them. To use the secondary nameserver provided by leaseweb i had to enable ACL on that account, i did so and made a screenshot of that too. The DNS recursion is set to localnets. These settings have not changed for months, so the dns should be fully updated everywhere. The check i run is the following: https://www.sidn.nl/over-nl/aanvraag...-server-check/ Domeinnaam (inclusief .nl): rdshosting.nl Eerste Nameserver: ns1.rdshosting.nl Eerste IP: 62.212.66.33 Tweede Nameserver: ns7.leaseweb.net Tweede ip: 62.212.76.50 If i run the dns check of the netherlands it gives me the following errors: primary name server "ns1.rdshosting.nl." Error: specified name server is not listed as NS record. All public name servers for a domain must also be listed as NS records in the zone of the domain. This domain was specified explicitly as a name server, but not found in the zone description of the primary name server. TE.6a rdshosting.nl. 86400 IN SOA ns1.rdspartners.nl. saif2k.hotmail.com. (2010031102 12H 1H 7D 3H) Error: the MNAME in SOA says "ns1.rdspartners.nl." is the primary name server. The MNAME field in the SOA record (first parameter) lists a different primary name server from the one specified for this check. RFC1035 section 3.3.13 rdshosting.nl. 86400 IN NS ns1.rdspartners.nl. Warning: hidden name server "ns1.rdspartners.nl." never used for first contact. The zone contains an NS record for a host which is not in the list of specified name servers. Hence, this name server will not be used to initiate contact to the domain. It may be used in sequential lookups, so it may still be useful. secondary name server "ns1.rdspartners.nl." [BROKEN] [HIDDEN] Failure: name server at 77.232.85.129 cannot be reached: (unknown error) The name server could not be contacted, which may be due to temporary technical problems or global DNS configuration mistakes. The internal error is shown, but not always clear about the cause. secondary name server "ns7.leaseweb.net." Info: name server looks correctly configured. I have the content of the file etc/named.conf also: // $Id: named.conf,v 1.1.1.1 2001/10/15 07:44:36 kap Exp $ // // Refer to the named(8) man page for details. If you are ever going // to setup a primary server, make sure you've understood the hairy // details of how DNS is working. Even with simple mistakes, you can // break connectivity for affected parties, or cause huge amount of // useless Internet traffic. options { allow-recursion { localnets; }; directory "/var"; auth-nxdomain no; pid-file "/var/run/named/named.pid"; // In addition to the "forwarders" clause, you can force your name // server to never initiate queries of its own, but always ask its // forwarders only, by enabling the following line: // // forward only; // If you've got a DNS server around at your upstream provider, enter // its IP address here, and enable the line below. This will make you // benefit from its cache, thus reduce overall DNS traffic in the Internet. /* forwarders { 127.0.0.1; }; */ /* * If there is a firewall between you and nameservers you want * to talk to, you might need to uncomment the query-source * directive below. Previous versions of BIND always asked * questions using port 53, but BIND 8.1 uses an unprivileged * port by default. */ // query-source address * port 53; /* * If running in a sandbox, you may have to specify a different * location for the dumpfile. */ // dump-file "s/named_dump.db"; }; //Use with the following in named.conf, adjusting the allow list as needed: key "rndc-key" { algorithm hmac-md5; secret "CeMgS23y0oWE20nyv0x40Q=="; }; controls { inet 127.0.0.1 port 953 allow { 127.0.0.1; } keys { "rndc-key"; }; }; // Note: the following will be supported in a future release. /* host { any; } { topology { 127.0.0.0/8; }; }; */ // Setting up secondaries is way easier and the rough picture for this // is explained below. // // If you enable a local name server, don't forget to enter 127.0.0.1 // into your /etc/resolv.conf so this server will be queried first. // Also, make sure to enable it in /etc/rc.conf. zone "." { type hint; file "named.root"; }; zone "0.0.127.IN-ADDR.ARPA" { type master; file "localhost.rev"; }; // NB: Do not use the IP addresses below, they are faked, and only // serve demonstration/documentation purposes! // // Example secondary config entries. It can be convenient to become // a secondary at least for the zone where your own domain is in. Ask // your network administrator for the IP address of the responsible // primary. // // Never forget to include the reverse lookup (IN-ADDR.ARPA) zone! // (This is the first bytes of the respective IP address, in reverse // order, with ".IN-ADDR.ARPA" appended.) // // Before starting to setup a primary zone, better make sure you fully // understand how DNS and BIND works, however. There are sometimes // unobvious pitfalls. Setting up a secondary is comparably simpler. // // NB: Don't blindly enable the examples below. :-) Use actual names // and addresses instead. // // NOTE!!! FreeBSD runs bind in a sandbox (see named_flags in rc.conf). // The directory containing the secondary zones must be write accessible // to bind. The following sequence is suggested: // // mkdir /etc/namedb/s // chown bind.bind /etc/namedb/s // chmod 750 /etc/namedb/s zone "rdshosting.nl" { type master; file "rdshosting.nl"; allow-transfer { 77.232.85.129; 62.212.76.50; common-allow-transfer; }; }; zone "66.212.62.in-addr.arpa" { type master; file "66.212.62.in-addr.arpa"; allow-transfer { common-allow-transfer; }; }; acl common-allow-transfer { 62.212.76.50; }; As i mentioned i made some screenshots of some parts: First the dns settings in plesk: http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/2480faed5e.jpg Second the acl settings in plesk: http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/777f5e69b0.jpg Third my settings at leaseweb: http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/de7122b19c.jpg And last the secondary nameserver settings from leaseweb: http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/fd1da38a8f.jpg If someone has anysuggestion at all on this this will be highly appriciated. Thank you for your time! PS. I am dutch so dutch answers are welcome aswell

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• Announcing Entity Framework Code-First (CTP5 release)

  - by ScottGu

  This week the data team released the CTP5 build of the new Entity Framework Code-First library.  EF Code-First enables a pretty sweet code-centric development workflow for working with data.  It enables you to: Develop without ever having to open a designer or define an XML mapping file Define model objects by simply writing “plain old classes” with no base classes required Use a “convention over configuration” approach that enables database persistence without explicitly configuring anything Optionally override the convention-based persistence and use a fluent code API to fully customize the persistence mapping I’m a big fan of the EF Code-First approach, and wrote several blog posts about it this summer: Code-First Development with Entity Framework 4 (July 16th) EF Code-First: Custom Database Schema Mapping (July 23rd) Using EF Code-First with an Existing Database (August 3rd) Today’s new CTP5 release delivers several nice improvements over the CTP4 build, and will be the last preview build of Code First before the final release of it.  We will ship the final EF Code First release in the first quarter of next year (Q1 of 2011).  It works with all .NET application types (including both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC projects). Installing EF Code First You can install and use EF Code First CTP5 using one of two ways: Approach 1) By downloading and running a setup program.  Once installed you can reference the EntityFramework.dll assembly it provides within your projects.      or: Approach 2) By using the NuGet Package Manager within Visual Studio to download and install EF Code First within a project.  To do this, simply bring up the NuGet Package Manager Console within Visual Studio (View->Other Windows->Package Manager Console) and type “Install-Package EFCodeFirst”: Typing “Install-Package EFCodeFirst” within the Package Manager Console will cause NuGet to download the EF Code First package, and add it to your current project: Doing this will automatically add a reference to the EntityFramework.dll assembly to your project:   NuGet enables you to have EF Code First setup and ready to use within seconds.  When the final release of EF Code First ships you’ll also be able to just type “Update-Package EFCodeFirst” to update your existing projects to use the final release. EF Code First Assembly and Namespace The CTP5 release of EF Code First has an updated assembly name, and new .NET namespace: Assembly Name: EntityFramework.dll Namespace: System.Data.Entity These names match what we plan to use for the final release of the library. Nice New CTP5 Improvements The new CTP5 release of EF Code First contains a bunch of nice improvements and refinements. Some of the highlights include: Better support for Existing Databases Built-in Model-Level Validation and DataAnnotation Support Fluent API Improvements Pluggable Conventions Support New Change Tracking API Improved Concurrency Conflict Resolution Raw SQL Query/Command Support The rest of this blog post contains some more details about a few of the above changes. Better Support for Existing Databases EF Code First makes it really easy to create model layers that work against existing databases.  CTP5 includes some refinements that further streamline the developer workflow for this scenario. Below are the steps to use EF Code First to create a model layer for the Northwind sample database: Step 1: Create Model Classes and a DbContext class Below is all of the code necessary to implement a simple model layer using EF Code First that goes against the Northwind database: EF Code First enables you to use “POCO” – Plain Old CLR Objects – to represent entities within a database.  This means that you do not need to derive model classes from a base class, nor implement any interfaces or data persistence attributes on them.  This enables the model classes to be kept clean, easily testable, and “persistence ignorant”.  The Product and Category classes above are examples of POCO model classes. EF Code First enables you to easily connect your POCO model classes to a database by creating a “DbContext” class that exposes public properties that map to the tables within a database.  The Northwind class above illustrates how this can be done.  It is mapping our Product and Category classes to the “Products” and “Categories” tables within the database.  The properties within the Product and Category classes in turn map to the columns within the Products and Categories tables – and each instance of a Product/Category object maps to a row within the tables. The above code is all of the code required to create our model and data access layer!  Previous CTPs of EF Code First required an additional step to work against existing databases (a call to Database.Initializer<Northwind>(null) to tell EF Code First to not create the database) – this step is no longer required with the CTP5 release.  Step 2: Configure the Database Connection String We’ve written all of the code we need to write to define our model layer.  Our last step before we use it will be to setup a connection-string that connects it with our database.  To do this we’ll add a “Northwind” connection-string to our web.config file (or App.Config for client apps) like so:   <connectionStrings>          <add name="Northwind"          connectionString="data source=.\SQLEXPRESS;Integrated Security=SSPI;AttachDBFilename=|DataDirectory|\northwind.mdf;User Instance=true"          providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />   </connectionStrings> EF “code first” uses a convention where DbContext classes by default look for a connection-string that has the same name as the context class.  Because our DbContext class is called “Northwind” it by default looks for a “Northwind” connection-string to use.  Above our Northwind connection-string is configured to use a local SQL Express database (stored within the \App_Data directory of our project).  You can alternatively point it at a remote SQL Server. Step 3: Using our Northwind Model Layer We can now easily query and update our database using the strongly-typed model layer we just built with EF Code First. The code example below demonstrates how to use LINQ to query for products within a specific product category.  This query returns back a sequence of strongly-typed Product objects that match the search criteria: The code example below demonstrates how we can retrieve a specific Product object, update two of its properties, and then save the changes back to the database: EF Code First handles all of the change-tracking and data persistence work for us, and allows us to focus on our application and business logic as opposed to having to worry about data access plumbing. Built-in Model Validation EF Code First allows you to use any validation approach you want when implementing business rules with your model layer.  This enables a great deal of flexibility and power. Starting with this week’s CTP5 release, EF Code First also now includes built-in support for both the DataAnnotation and IValidatorObject validation support built-into .NET 4.  This enables you to easily implement validation rules on your models, and have these rules automatically be enforced by EF Code First whenever you save your model layer.  It provides a very convenient “out of the box” way to enable validation within your applications. Applying DataAnnotations to our Northwind Model The code example below demonstrates how we could add some declarative validation rules to two of the properties of our “Product” model: We are using the [Required] and [Range] attributes above.  These validation attributes live within the System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations namespace that is built-into .NET 4, and can be used independently of EF.  The error messages specified on them can either be explicitly defined (like above) – or retrieved from resource files (which makes localizing applications easy). Validation Enforcement on SaveChanges() EF Code-First (starting with CTP5) now automatically applies and enforces DataAnnotation rules when a model object is updated or saved.  You do not need to write any code to enforce this – this support is now enabled by default.  This new support means that the below code – which violates our above rules – will automatically throw an exception when we call the “SaveChanges()” method on our Northwind DbContext: The DbEntityValidationException that is raised when the SaveChanges() method is invoked contains a “EntityValidationErrors” property that you can use to retrieve the list of all validation errors that occurred when the model was trying to save.  This enables you to easily guide the user on how to fix them.  Note that EF Code-First will abort the entire transaction of changes if a validation rule is violated – ensuring that our database is always kept in a valid, consistent state. EF Code First’s validation enforcement works both for the built-in .NET DataAnnotation attributes (like Required, Range, RegularExpression, StringLength, etc), as well as for any custom validation rule you create by sub-classing the System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations.ValidationAttribute base class. UI Validation Support A lot of our UI frameworks in .NET also provide support for DataAnnotation-based validation rules. For example, ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Dynamic Data, and Silverlight (via WCF RIA Services) all provide support for displaying client-side validation UI that honor the DataAnnotation rules applied to model objects. The screen-shot below demonstrates how using the default “Add-View” scaffold template within an ASP.NET MVC 3 application will cause appropriate validation error messages to be displayed if appropriate values are not provided: ASP.NET MVC 3 supports both client-side and server-side enforcement of these validation rules.  The error messages displayed are automatically picked up from the declarative validation attributes – eliminating the need for you to write any custom code to display them. Keeping things DRY The “DRY Principle” stands for “Do Not Repeat Yourself”, and is a best practice that recommends that you avoid duplicating logic/configuration/code in multiple places across your application, and instead specify it only once and have it apply everywhere. EF Code First CTP5 now enables you to apply declarative DataAnnotation validations on your model classes (and specify them only once) and then have the validation logic be enforced (and corresponding error messages displayed) across all applications scenarios – including within controllers, views, client-side scripts, and for any custom code that updates and manipulates model classes. This makes it much easier to build good applications with clean code, and to build applications that can rapidly iterate and evolve. Other EF Code First Improvements New to CTP5 EF Code First CTP5 includes a bunch of other improvements as well.  Below are a few short descriptions of some of them: Fluent API Improvements EF Code First allows you to override an “OnModelCreating()” method on the DbContext class to further refine/override the schema mapping rules used to map model classes to underlying database schema.  CTP5 includes some refinements to the ModelBuilder class that is passed to this method which can make defining mapping rules cleaner and more concise.  The ADO.NET Team blogged some samples of how to do this here. Pluggable Conventions Support EF Code First CTP5 provides new support that allows you to override the “default conventions” that EF Code First honors, and optionally replace them with your own set of conventions. New Change Tracking API EF Code First CTP5 exposes a new set of change tracking information that enables you to access Original, Current & Stored values, and State (e.g. Added, Unchanged, Modified, Deleted).  This support is useful in a variety of scenarios. Improved Concurrency Conflict Resolution EF Code First CTP5 provides better exception messages that allow access to the affected object instance and the ability to resolve conflicts using current, original and database values.  Raw SQL Query/Command Support EF Code First CTP5 now allows raw SQL queries and commands (including SPROCs) to be executed via the SqlQuery and SqlCommand methods exposed off of the DbContext.Database property.  The results of these method calls can be materialized into object instances that can be optionally change-tracked by the DbContext.  This is useful for a variety of advanced scenarios. Full Data Annotations Support EF Code First CTP5 now supports all standard DataAnnotations within .NET, and can use them both to perform validation as well as to automatically create the appropriate database schema when EF Code First is used in a database creation scenario.  Summary EF Code First provides an elegant and powerful way to work with data.  I really like it because it is extremely clean and supports best practices, while also enabling solutions to be implemented very, very rapidly.  The code-only approach of the library means that model layers end up being flexible and easy to customize. This week’s CTP5 release further refines EF Code First and helps ensure that it will be really sweet when it ships early next year.  I recommend using NuGet to install and give it a try today.  I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how awesome it is. Hope this helps, Scott

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• Passing multiple POST parameters to Web API Controller Methods

  - by Rick Strahl

  ASP.NET Web API introduces a new API for creating REST APIs and making AJAX callbacks to the server. This new API provides a host of new great functionality that unifies many of the features of many of the various AJAX/REST APIs that Microsoft created before it - ASP.NET AJAX, WCF REST specifically - and combines them into a whole more consistent API. Web API addresses many of the concerns that developers had with these older APIs, namely that it was very difficult to build consistent REST style resource APIs easily. While Web API provides many new features and makes many scenarios much easier, a lot of the focus has been on making it easier to build REST compliant APIs that are focused on resource based solutions and HTTP verbs. But  RPC style calls that are common with AJAX callbacks in Web applications, have gotten a lot less focus and there are a few scenarios that are not that obvious, especially if you're expecting Web API to provide functionality similar to ASP.NET AJAX style AJAX callbacks. RPC vs. 'Proper' REST RPC style HTTP calls mimic calling a method with parameters and returning a result. Rather than mapping explicit server side resources or 'nouns' RPC calls tend simply map a server side operation, passing in parameters and receiving a typed result where parameters and result values are marshaled over HTTP. Typically RPC calls - like SOAP calls - tend to always be POST operations rather than following HTTP conventions and using the GET/POST/PUT/DELETE etc. verbs to implicitly determine what operation needs to be fired. RPC might not be considered 'cool' anymore, but for typical private AJAX backend operations of a Web site I'd wager that a large percentage of use cases of Web API will fall towards RPC style calls rather than 'proper' REST style APIs. Web applications that have needs for things like live validation against data, filling data based on user inputs, handling small UI updates often don't lend themselves very well to limited HTTP verb usage. It might not be what the cool kids do, but I don't see RPC calls getting replaced by proper REST APIs any time soon.  Proper REST has its place - for 'real' API scenarios that manage and publish/share resources, but for more transactional operations RPC seems a better choice and much easier to implement than trying to shoehorn a boatload of endpoint methods into a few HTTP verbs. In any case Web API does a good job of providing both RPC abstraction as well as the HTTP Verb/REST abstraction. RPC works well out of the box, but there are some differences especially if you're coming from ASP.NET AJAX service or WCF Rest when it comes to multiple parameters. Action Routing for RPC Style Calls If you've looked at Web API demos you've probably seen a bunch of examples of how to create HTTP Verb based routing endpoints. Verb based routing essentially maps a controller and then uses HTTP verbs to map the methods that are called in response to HTTP requests. This works great for resource APIs but doesn't work so well when you have many operational methods in a single controller. HTTP Verb routing is limited to the few HTTP verbs available (plus separate method signatures) and - worse than that - you can't easily extend the controller with custom routes or action routing beyond that. Thankfully Web API also supports Action based routing which allows you create RPC style endpoints fairly easily:RouteTable.Routes.MapHttpRoute( name: "AlbumRpcApiAction", routeTemplate: "albums/{action}/{title}", defaults: new { title = RouteParameter.Optional, controller = "AlbumApi", action = "GetAblums" } ); This uses traditional MVC style {action} method routing which is different from the HTTP verb based routing you might have read a bunch about in conjunction with Web API. Action based routing like above lets you specify an end point method in a Web API controller either via the {action} parameter in the route string or via a default value for custom routes. Using routing you can pass multiple parameters either on the route itself or pass parameters on the query string, via ModelBinding or content value binding. For most common scenarios this actually works very well. As long as you are passing either a single complex type via a POST operation, or multiple simple types via query string or POST buffer, there's no issue. But if you need to pass multiple parameters as was easily done with WCF REST or ASP.NET AJAX things are not so obvious. Web API has no issue allowing for single parameter like this:[HttpPost] public string PostAlbum(Album album) { return String.Format("{0} {1:d}", album.AlbumName, album.Entered); } There are actually two ways to call this endpoint: albums/PostAlbum Using the Model Binder with plain POST values In this mechanism you're sending plain urlencoded POST values to the server which the ModelBinder then maps the parameter. Each property value is matched to each matching POST value. This works similar to the way that MVC's  ModelBinder works. Here's how you can POST using the ModelBinder and jQuery:$.ajax( { url: "albums/PostAlbum", type: "POST", data: { AlbumName: "Dirty Deeds", Entered: "5/1/2012" }, success: function (result) { alert(result); }, error: function (xhr, status, p3, p4) { var err = "Error " + " " + status + " " + p3; if (xhr.responseText && xhr.responseText[0] == "{") err = JSON.parse(xhr.responseText).message; alert(err); } }); Here's what the POST data looks like for this request: The model binder and it's straight form based POST mechanism is great for posting data directly from HTML pages to model objects. It avoids having to do manual conversions for many operations and is a great boon for AJAX callback requests. Using Web API JSON Formatter The other option is to post data using a JSON string. The process for this is similar except that you create a JavaScript object and serialize it to JSON first.album = { AlbumName: "PowerAge", Entered: new Date(1977,0,1) } $.ajax( { url: "albums/PostAlbum", type: "POST", contentType: "application/json", data: JSON.stringify(album), success: function (result) { alert(result); } }); Here the data is sent using a JSON object rather than form data and the data is JSON encoded over the wire. The trace reveals that the data is sent using plain JSON (Source above), which is a little more efficient since there's no UrlEncoding that occurs. BTW, notice that WebAPI automatically deals with the date. I provided the date as a plain string, rather than a JavaScript date value and the Formatter and ModelBinder both automatically map the date propertly to the Entered DateTime property of the Album object. Passing multiple Parameters to a Web API Controller Single parameters work fine in either of these RPC scenarios and that's to be expected. ModelBinding always works against a single object because it maps a model. But what happens when you want to pass multiple parameters? Consider an API Controller method that has a signature like the following:[HttpPost] public string PostAlbum(Album album, string userToken) Here I'm asking to pass two objects to an RPC method. Is that possible? This used to be fairly straight forward either with WCF REST and ASP.NET AJAX ASMX services, but as far as I can tell this is not directly possible using a POST operation with WebAPI. There a few workarounds that you can use to make this work: Use both POST *and* QueryString Parameters in Conjunction If you have both complex and simple parameters, you can pass simple parameters on the query string. The above would actually work with: /album/PostAlbum?userToken=sekkritt but that's not always possible. In this example it might not be a good idea to pass a user token on the query string though. It also won't work if you need to pass multiple complex objects, since query string values do not support complex type mapping. They only work with simple types. Use a single Object that wraps the two Parameters If you go by service based architecture guidelines every service method should always pass and return a single value only. The input should wrap potentially multiple input parameters and the output should convey status as well as provide the result value. You typically have a xxxRequest and a xxxResponse class that wraps the inputs and outputs. Here's what this method might look like:public PostAlbumResponse PostAlbum(PostAlbumRequest request) { var album = request.Album; var userToken = request.UserToken; return new PostAlbumResponse() { IsSuccess = true, Result = String.Format("{0} {1:d} {2}", album.AlbumName, album.Entered,userToken) }; } with these support types:public class PostAlbumRequest { public Album Album { get; set; } public User User { get; set; } public string UserToken { get; set; } } public class PostAlbumResponse { public string Result { get; set; } public bool IsSuccess { get; set; } public string ErrorMessage { get; set; } }   To call this method you now have to assemble these objects on the client and send it up as JSON:var album = { AlbumName: "PowerAge", Entered: "1/1/1977" } var user = { Name: "Rick" } var userToken = "sekkritt"; $.ajax( { url: "samples/PostAlbum", type: "POST", contentType: "application/json", data: JSON.stringify({ Album: album, User: user, UserToken: userToken }), success: function (result) { alert(result.Result); } }); I assemble the individual types first and then combine them in the data: property of the $.ajax() call into the actual object passed to the server, that mimics the structure of PostAlbumRequest server class that has Album, User and UserToken properties. This works well enough but it gets tedious if you have to create Request and Response types for each method signature. If you have common parameters that are always passed (like you always pass an album or usertoken) you might be able to abstract this to use a single object that gets reused for all methods, but this gets confusing too: Overload a single 'parameter' too much and it becomes a nightmare to decipher what your method actual can use. Use JObject to parse multiple Property Values out of an Object If you recall, ASP.NET AJAX and WCF REST used a 'wrapper' object to make default AJAX calls. Rather than directly calling a service you always passed an object which contained properties for each parameter: { parm1: Value, parm2: Value2 } WCF REST/ASP.NET AJAX would then parse this top level property values and map them to the parameters of the endpoint method. This automatic type wrapping functionality is no longer available directly in Web API, but since Web API now uses JSON.NET for it's JSON serializer you can actually simulate that behavior with a little extra code. You can use the JObject class to receive a dynamic JSON result and then using the dynamic cast of JObject to walk through the child objects and even parse them into strongly typed objects. Here's how to do this on the API Controller end:[HttpPost] public string PostAlbum(JObject jsonData) { dynamic json = jsonData; JObject jalbum = json.Album; JObject juser = json.User; string token = json.UserToken; var album = jalbum.ToObject<Album>(); var user = juser.ToObject<User>(); return String.Format("{0} {1} {2}", album.AlbumName, user.Name, token); } This is clearly not as nice as having the parameters passed directly, but it works to allow you to pass multiple parameters and access them using Web API. JObject is JSON.NET's generic object container which sports a nice dynamic interface that allows you to walk through the object's properties using standard 'dot' object syntax. All you have to do is cast the object to dynamic to get access to the property interface of the JSON type. Additionally JObject also allows you to parse JObject instances into strongly typed objects, which enables us here to retrieve the two objects passed as parameters from this jquery code:var album = { AlbumName: "PowerAge", Entered: "1/1/1977" } var user = { Name: "Rick" } var userToken = "sekkritt"; $.ajax( { url: "samples/PostAlbum", type: "POST", contentType: "application/json", data: JSON.stringify({ Album: album, User: user, UserToken: userToken }), success: function (result) { alert(result); } }); Summary ASP.NET Web API brings many new features and many advantages over the older Microsoft AJAX and REST APIs, but realize that some things like passing multiple strongly typed object parameters will work a bit differently. It's not insurmountable, but just knowing what options are available to simulate this behavior is good to know. Now let me say here that it's probably not a good practice to pass a bunch of parameters to an API call. Ideally APIs should be closely factored to accept single parameters or a single content parameter at least along with some identifier parameters that can be passed on the querystring. But saying that doesn't mean that occasionally you don't run into a situation where you have the need to pass several objects to the server and all three of the options I mentioned might have merit in different situations. For now I'm sure the question of how to pass multiple parameters will come up quite a bit from people migrating WCF REST or ASP.NET AJAX code to Web API. At least there are options available to make it work.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Web Api   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Setting up a new Silverlight 4 Project with WCF RIA Services

  - by Kevin Grossnicklaus

  Many of my clients are actively using Silverlight 4 and RIA Services to build powerful line of business applications.  Getting things set up correctly is critical to being to being able to take full advantage of the RIA services plumbing and when developers struggle with the setup they tend to shy away from the solution as a whole.  I’m a big proponent of RIA services and wanted to take the opportunity to share some of my experiences in setting up these types of projects.  In late 2010 I presented a RIA Services Master Class here in St. Louis, MO through my firm (ArchitectNow) and the information shared in this post was promised during that presentation. One other thing I want to mention before diving in is the existence of a number of other great posts on this subject.  I’ve learned a lot from many of them and wanted to call out a few of them.  The purpose of my post is to point out some of the gotchas that people get caught up on in the process but I would still encourage you to do as much additional research as you can to find the perfect setup for your needs. Here are a few additional blog posts and articles you should check out on the subject: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee707351(VS.91).aspx http://adam-thompson.com/post/2010/07/03/Getting-Started-with-WCF-RIA-Services-for-Silverlight-4.aspx Technologies I don’t intend for this post to turn into a full WCF RIA Services tutorial but I did want to point out what technologies we will be using: Visual Studio.NET 2010 Silverlight 4.0 WCF RIA Services for Visual Studio 2010 Entity Framework 4.0 I also wanted to point out that the screenshots came from my personal development box which has a number of additional plug-ins and frameworks loaded so a few of the screenshots might not match 100% with what you see on your own machines. If you do not have Visual Studio 2010 you can download the express version from http://www.microsoft.com/express.  The Silverlight 4.0 tools and the WCF RIA Services components are installed via the Web Platform Installer (http://www.microsoft.com/web/download). Also, the examples given in this post are done in C#…sorry to you VB folks but the concepts are 100% identical. Setting up anew RIA Services Project This section will provide a step-by-step walkthrough of setting up a new RIA services project using a shared DLL for server side code and a simple Entity Framework model for data access.  All projects are created with the consistent ArchitectNow.RIAServices filename prefix and default namespace.  This would be modified to match your companies standards. First, open Visual Studio and open the new project window via File->New->Project.  In the New Project window, select the Silverlight folder in the Installed Templates section on the left and select “Silverlight Application” as your project type.  Verify your solution name and location are set appropriately.  Note that the project name we specified in the example below ends with .Client.  This indicates the name which will be given to our Silverlight project. I consider Silverlight a client-side technology and thus use this name to reflect that.  Click Ok to continue. During the creation on a new Silverlight 4 project you will be prompted with the following dialog to create a new web ASP.NET web project to host your Silverlight content.  As we are demonstrating the setup of a WCF RIA Services infrastructure, make sure the “Enable WCF RIA Services” option is checked and click OK.  Obviously, there are some other options here which have an effect on your solution and you are welcome to look around.  For our example we are going to leave the ASP.NET Web Application Project selected.  If you are interested in having your Silverlight project hosted in an MVC 2 application or a Web Site project these options are available as well.  Also, whichever web project type you select, the name can be modified here as well.  Note that it defaults to the same name as your Silverlight project with the addition of a .Web suffix. At this point, your full Silverlight 4 project and host ASP.NET Web Application should be created and will now display in your Visual Studio solution explorer as part of a single Visual Studio solution as follows: Now we want to add our WCF RIA Services projects to this same solution.  To do so, right-click on the Solution node in the solution explorer and select Add->New Project.  In the New Project dialog again select the Silverlight folder under the Visual C# node on the left and, in the main area of the screen, select the WCF RIA Services Class Library project template as shown below.  Make sure your project name is set appropriately as well.  For the sample below, we will name the project “ArchitectNow.RIAServices.Server.Entities”.   The .Server.Entities suffix we use is meant to simply indicate that this particular project will contain our WCF RIA Services entity classes (as you will see below).  Click OK to continue. Once you have created the WCF RIA Services Class Library specified above, Visual Studio will automatically add TWO projects to your solution.  The first will be an project called .Server.Entities (using our naming conventions) and the other will have the same name with a .Web extension.  The full solution (with all 4 projects) is shown in the image below.  The .Entities project will essentially remain empty and is actually a Silverlight 4 class library that will contain generated RIA Services domain objects.  It will be referenced by our front-end Silverlight project and thus allow for simplified sharing of code between the client and the server.   The .Entities.Web project is a .NET 4.0 class library into which we will put our data access code (via Entity Framework).  This is our server side code and business logic and the RIA Services plumbing will maintain a link between this project and the front end.  Specific entities such as our domain objects and other code we set to be shared will be copied automatically into the .Entities project to be used in both the front end and the back end. At this point, we want to do a little cleanup of the projects in our solution and we will do so by deleting the “Class1.cs” class from both the .Entities project and the .Entities.Web project.  (Has anyone ever intentionally named a class “Class1”?) Next, we need to configure a few references to make RIA Services work.  THIS IS A KEY STEP THAT CAUSES MANY HEADACHES FOR DEVELOPERS NEW TO THIS INFRASTRUCTURE! Using the Add References dialog in Visual Studio, add a project reference from the *.Client project (our Silverlight 4 client) to the *.Entities project (our RIA Services class library).  Next, again using the Add References dialog in Visual Studio, add a project reference from the *.Client.Web project (our ASP.NET host project) to the *.Entities.Web project (our back-end data services DLL).  To get to the Add References dialog, simply right-click on the project you with to add a reference to in the Visual Studio solution explorer and select “Add Reference” from the resulting context menu.  You will want to make sure these references are added as “Project” references to simplify your future debugging.  To reiterate the reference direction using the project names we have utilized in this example thus far:  .Client references .Entities and .Client.Web reference .Entities.Web.  If you have opted for a different naming convention, then the Silverlight project must reference the RIA Services Silverlight class library and the ASP.NET host project must reference the server-side class library. Next, we are going to add a new Entity Framework data model to our data services project (.Entities.Web).  We will do this by right clicking on this project (ArchitectNow.Server.Entities.Web in the above diagram) and selecting Add->New Project.  In the New Project dialog we will select ADO.NET Entity Data Model as in the following diagram.  For now we will call this simply SampleDataModel.edmx and click OK. It is worth pointing out that WCF RIA Services is in no way tied to the Entity Framework as a means of accessing data and any data access technology is supported (as long as the server side implementation maps to the RIA Services pattern which is a topic beyond the scope of this post).  We are using EF to quickly demonstrate the RIA Services concepts and setup infrastructure, as such, I am not providing a database schema with this post but am instead connecting to a small sample database on my local machine.  The following diagram shows a simple EF Data Model with two tables that I reverse engineered from a local data store.   If you are putting together your own solution, feel free to reverse engineer a few tables from any local database to which you have access. At this point, once you have an EF data model generated as an EDMX into your .Entites.Web project YOU MUST BUILD YOUR SOLUTION.  I know it seems strange to call that out but it important that the solution be built at this point for the next step to be successful.  Obviously, if you have any build errors, these must be addressed at this point. At this point we will add a RIA Services Domain Service to our .Entities.Web project (our server side code).  We will need to right-click on the .Entities.Web project and select Add->New Item.  In the Add New Item dialog, select Domain Service Class and verify the name of your new Domain Service is correct (ours is called SampleService.cs in the image below).  Next, click "Add”. After clicking “Add” to include the Domain Service Class in the selected project, you will be presented with the following dialog.  In it, you can choose which entities from the selected EDMX to include in your services and if they should be allowed to be edited (i.e. inserted, updated, or deleted) via this service.  If the “Available DataContext/ObjectContext classes” dropdown is empty, this indicates you have not yes successfully built your project after adding your EDMX.  I would also recommend verifying that the “Generate associated classes for metadata” option is selected.  Once you have selected the appropriate options, click “OK”. Once you have added the domain service class to the .Entities.Web project, the resulting solution should look similar to the following: Note that in the solution you now have a SampleDataModel.edmx which represents your EF data mapping to your database and a SampleService.cs which will contain a large amount of generated RIA Services code which RIA Services utilizes to access this data from the Silverlight front-end.  You will put all your server side data access code and logic into the SampleService.cs class.  The SampleService.metadata.cs class is for decorating the generated domain objects with attributes from the System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations namespace for validation purposes. FINAL AND KEY CONFIGURATION STEP!  One key step that causes significant headache to developers configuring RIA Services for the first time is the fact that, when we added the EDMX to the .Entities.Web project for our EF data access, a connection string was generated and placed within a newly generated App.Context file within that project.  While we didn’t point it out at the time you can see it in the image above.  This connection string will be required for the EF data model to successfully locate it’s data.  Also, when we added the Domain Service class to the .Entities.Web project, a number of RIA Services configuration options were added to the same App.Config file.   Unfortunately, when we ultimately begin to utilize the RIA Services infrastructure, our Silverlight UI will be making RIA services calls through the ASP.NET host project (i.e. .Client.Web).  This host project has a reference to the .Entities.Web project which actually contains the code so all will pass through correctly EXCEPT the fact that the host project will utilize it’s own Web.Config for any configuration settings.  For this reason we must now merge all the sections of the App.Config file in the .Entities.Web project into the Web.Config file in the .Client.Web project.  I know this is a bit tedious and I wish there were a simpler solution but it is required for our RIA Services Domain Service to be made available to the front end Silverlight project.  Much of this manual merge can be achieved by simply cutting and pasting from App.Config into Web.Config.  Unfortunately, the <system.webServer> section will exist in both and the contents of this section will need to be manually merged.  Fortunately, this is a step that needs to be taken only once per solution.  As you add additional data structures and Domain Services methods to the server no additional changes will be necessary to the Web.Config. Next Steps At this point, we have walked through the basic setup of a simple RIA services solution.  Unfortunately, there is still a lot to know about RIA services and we have not even begun to take advantage of the plumbing which we just configured (meaning we haven’t even made a single RIA services call).  I plan on posting a few more introductory posts over the next few weeks to take us to this step.  If you have any questions on the content in this post feel free to reach out to me via this Blog and I’ll gladly point you in (hopefully) the right direction. Resources Prior to closing out this post, I wanted to share a number or resources to help you get started with RIA services.  While I plan on posting more on the subject, I didn’t invent any of this stuff and wanted to give credit to the following areas for helping me put a lot of these pieces into place.   The books and online resources below will go a long way to making you extremely productive with RIA services in the shortest time possible.  The only thing required of you is the dedication to take advantage of the resources available. Books Pro Business Applications with Silverlight 4 http://www.amazon.com/Pro-Business-Applications-Silverlight-4/dp/1430272074/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1291048751&sr=8-2 Silverlight 4 in Action http://www.amazon.com/Silverlight-4-Action-Pete-Brown/dp/1935182374/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1291048751&sr=8-1 Pro Silverlight for the Enterprise (Books for Professionals by Professionals) http://www.amazon.com/Pro-Silverlight-Enterprise-Books-Professionals/dp/1430218673/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1291048751&sr=8-3 Web Content RIA Services http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/RobBagby/NET-RIA-Services-in-5-Minutes http://silverlight.net/riaservices/ http://www.silverlight.net/learn/videos/all/net-ria-services-intro/ http://www.silverlight.net/learn/videos/all/ria-services-support-visual-studio-2010/ http://channel9.msdn.com/learn/courses/Silverlight4/SL4BusinessModule2/SL4LOB_02_01_RIAServices http://www.myvbprof.com/MainSite/index.aspx#/zSL4_RIA_01 http://channel9.msdn.com/blogs/egibson/silverlight-firestarter-ria-services http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee707336%28v=VS.91%29.aspx Silverlight www.silverlight.net http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/silverlight4trainingcourse.aspx http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/silverlighttv

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• Elfsign Object Signing on Solaris

  - by danx

  Elfsign Object Signing on Solaris Don't let this happen to you—use elfsign! Solaris elfsign(1) is a command that signs and verifies ELF format executables. That includes not just executable programs (such as ls or cp), but other ELF format files including libraries (such as libnvpair.so) and kernel modules (such as autofs). Elfsign has been available since Solaris 10 and ELF format files distributed with Solaris, since Solaris 10, are signed by either Sun Microsystems or its successor, Oracle Corporation. When an ELF file is signed, elfsign adds a new section the ELF file, .SUNW_signature, that contains a RSA public key signature and other information about the signer. That is, the algorithm used, algorithm OID, signer CN/OU, and time stamp. The signature section can later be verified by elfsign or other software by matching the signature in the file agains the ELF file contents (excluding the signature). ELF executable files may also be signed by a 3rd-party or by the customer. This is useful for verifying the origin and authenticity of executable files installed on a system. The 3rd-party or customer public key certificate should be installed in /etc/certs/ to allow verification by elfsign. For currently-released versions of Solaris, only cryptographic framework plugin libraries are verified by Solaris. However, all ELF files may be verified by the elfsign command at any time. Elfsign Algorithms Elfsign signatures are created by taking a digest of the ELF section contents, then signing the digest with RSA. To verify, one takes a digest of ELF file and compares with the expected digest that's computed from the signature and RSA public key. Originally elfsign took a MD5 digest of a SHA-1 digest of the ELF file sections, then signed the resulting digest with RSA. In Solaris 11.1 then Solaris 11.1 SRU 7 (5/2013), the elfsign crypto algorithms available have been expanded to keep up with evolving cryptography. The following table shows the available elfsign algorithms: Elfsign Algorithm Solaris Release Comments elfsign sign -F rsa_md5_sha1   S10, S11.0, S11.1 Default for S10. Not recommended* elfsign sign -F rsa_sha1 S11.1 Default for S11.1. Not recommended elfsign sign -F rsa_sha256 S11.1 patch SRU7+   Recommended ___ *Most or all CAs do not accept MD5 CSRs and do not issue MD5 certs due to MD5 hash collision problems. RSA Key Length. I recommend using RSA-2048 key length with elfsign is RSA-2048 as the best balance between a long expected "life time", interoperability, and performance. RSA-2048 keys have an expected lifetime through 2030 (and probably beyond). For details, see Recommendation for Key Management: Part 1: General, NIST Publication SP 800-57 part 1 (rev. 3, 7/2012, PDF), tables 2 and 4 (pp. 64, 67). Step 1: create or obtain a key and cert The first step in using elfsign is to obtain a key and cert from a public Certificate Authority (CA), or create your own self-signed key and cert. I'll briefly explain both methods. Obtaining a Certificate from a CA To obtain a cert from a CA, such as Verisign, Thawte, or Go Daddy (to name a few random examples), you create a private key and a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) file and send it to the CA, following the instructions of the CA on their website. They send back a signed public key certificate. The public key cert, along with the private key you created is used by elfsign to sign an ELF file. The public key cert is distributed with the software and is used by elfsign to verify elfsign signatures in ELF files. You need to request a RSA "Class 3 public key certificate", which is used for servers and software signing. Elfsign uses RSA and we recommend RSA-2048 keys. The private key and CSR can be generated with openssl(1) or pktool(1) on Solaris. Here's a simple example that uses pktool to generate a private RSA_2048 key and a CSR for sending to a CA: $ pktool gencsr keystore=file format=pem outcsr=MYCSR.p10 \ subject="CN=canineswworks.com,OU=Canine SW object signing" \ outkey=MYPRIVATEKEY.key $ openssl rsa -noout -text -in MYPRIVATEKEY.key Private-Key: (2048 bit) modulus: 00:d2:ef:42:f2:0b:8c:96:9f:45:32:fc:fe:54:94: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . c9:c7 publicExponent: 65537 (0x10001) privateExponent: 26:14:fc:49:26:bc:a3:14:ee:31:5e:6b:ac:69:83: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . 81 prime1: 00:f6:b7:52:73:bc:26:57:26:c8:11:eb:6c:dc:cb: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . bc:91:d0:40:d6:9d:ac:b5:69 prime2: 00:da:df:3f:56:b2:18:46:e1:89:5b:6c:f1:1a:41: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . f3:b7:48:de:c3:d9:ce:af:af exponent1: 00:b9:a2:00:11:02:ed:9a:3f:9c:e4:16:ce:c7:67: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . 55:50:25:70:d3:ca:b9:ab:99 exponent2: 00:c8:fc:f5:57:11:98:85:8e:9a:ea:1f:f2:8f:df: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . 23:57:0e:4d:b2:a0:12:d2:f5 coefficient: 2f:60:21:cd:dc:52:76:67:1a:d8:75:3e:7f:b0:64: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . 06:94:56:d8:9d:5c:8e:9b $ openssl req -noout -text -in MYCSR.p10 Certificate Request: Data: Version: 2 (0x2) Subject: OU=Canine SW object signing, CN=canineswworks.com Subject Public Key Info: Public Key Algorithm: rsaEncryption Public-Key: (2048 bit) Modulus: 00:d2:ef:42:f2:0b:8c:96:9f:45:32:fc:fe:54:94: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . c9:c7 Exponent: 65537 (0x10001) Attributes: Signature Algorithm: sha1WithRSAEncryption b3:e8:30:5b:88:37:68:1c:26:6b:45:af:5e:de:ea:60:87:ea: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . 06:f9:ed:b4 Secure storage of RSA private key. The private key needs to be protected if the key signing is used for production (as opposed to just testing). That is, protect the key to protect against unauthorized signatures by others. One method is to use a PIN-protected PKCS#11 keystore. The private key you generate should be stored in a secure manner, such as in a PKCS#11 keystore using pktool(1). Otherwise others can sign your signature. Other secure key storage mechanisms include a SCA-6000 crypto card, a USB thumb drive stored in a locked area, a dedicated server with restricted access, Oracle Key Manager (OKM), or some combination of these. I also recommend secure backup of the private key. Here's an example of generating a private key protected in the PKCS#11 keystore, and a CSR. $ pktool setpin # use if PIN not set yet Enter token passphrase: changeme Create new passphrase: Re-enter new passphrase: Passphrase changed. $ pktool gencsr keystore=pkcs11 label=MYPRIVATEKEY \ format=pem outcsr=MYCSR.p10 \ subject="CN=canineswworks.com,OU=Canine SW object signing" $ pktool list keystore=pkcs11 Enter PIN for Sun Software PKCS#11 softtoken: Found 1 asymmetric public keys. Key #1 - RSA public key: MYPRIVATEKEY Here's another example that uses openssl instead of pktool to generate a private key and CSR: $ openssl genrsa -out cert.key 2048 $ openssl req -new -key cert.key -out MYCSR.p10 Self-Signed Cert You can use openssl or pktool to create a private key and a self-signed public key certificate. A self-signed cert is useful for development, testing, and internal use. The private key created should be stored in a secure manner, as mentioned above. The following example creates a private key, MYSELFSIGNED.key, and a public key cert, MYSELFSIGNED.pem, using pktool and displays the contents with the openssl command. $ pktool gencert keystore=file format=pem serial=0xD06F00D lifetime=20-year \ keytype=rsa hash=sha256 outcert=MYSELFSIGNED.pem outkey=MYSELFSIGNED.key \ subject="O=Canine Software Works, OU=Self-signed CA, CN=canineswworks.com" $ pktool list keystore=file objtype=cert infile=MYSELFSIGNED.pem Found 1 certificates. 1. (X.509 certificate) Filename: MYSELFSIGNED.pem ID: c8:24:59:08:2b:ae:6e:5c:bc:26:bd:ef:0a:9c:54:de:dd:0f:60:46 Subject: O=Canine Software Works, OU=Self-signed CA, CN=canineswworks.com Issuer: O=Canine Software Works, OU=Self-signed CA, CN=canineswworks.com Not Before: Oct 17 23:18:00 2013 GMT Not After: Oct 12 23:18:00 2033 GMT Serial: 0xD06F00D0 Signature Algorithm: sha256WithRSAEncryption $ openssl x509 -noout -text -in MYSELFSIGNED.pem Certificate: Data: Version: 3 (0x2) Serial Number: 3496935632 (0xd06f00d0) Signature Algorithm: sha256WithRSAEncryption Issuer: O=Canine Software Works, OU=Self-signed CA, CN=canineswworks.com Validity Not Before: Oct 17 23:18:00 2013 GMT Not After : Oct 12 23:18:00 2033 GMT Subject: O=Canine Software Works, OU=Self-signed CA, CN=canineswworks.com Subject Public Key Info: Public Key Algorithm: rsaEncryption Public-Key: (2048 bit) Modulus: 00:bb:e8:11:21:d9:4b:88:53:8b:6c:5a:7a:38:8b: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . bf:77 Exponent: 65537 (0x10001) Signature Algorithm: sha256WithRSAEncryption 9e:39:fe:c8:44:5c:87:2c:8f:f4:24:f6:0c:9a:2f:64:84:d1: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . 5f:78:8e:e8 $ openssl rsa -noout -text -in MYSELFSIGNED.key Private-Key: (2048 bit) modulus: 00:bb:e8:11:21:d9:4b:88:53:8b:6c:5a:7a:38:8b: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . bf:77 publicExponent: 65537 (0x10001) privateExponent: 0a:06:0f:23:e7:1b:88:62:2c:85:d3:2d:c1:e6:6e: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . 9c:e1:e0:0a:52:77:29:4a:75:aa:02:d8:af:53:24: c1 prime1: 00:ea:12:02:bb:5a:0f:5a:d8:a9:95:b2:ba:30:15: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . 5b:ca:9c:7c:19:48:77:1e:5d prime2: 00:cd:82:da:84:71:1d:18:52:cb:c6:4d:74:14:be: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . 5f:db:d5:5e:47:89:a7:ef:e3 exponent1: 32:37:62:f6:a6:bf:9c:91:d6:f0:12:c3:f7:04:e9: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . 97:3e:33:31:89:66:64:d1 exponent2: 00:88:a2:e8:90:47:f8:75:34:8f:41:50:3b:ce:93: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . ff:74:d4:be:f3:47:45:bd:cb coefficient: 4d:7c:09:4c:34:73:c4:26:f0:58:f5:e1:45:3c:af: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . af:01:5f:af:ad:6a:09:bf Step 2: Sign the ELF File object By now you should have your private key, and obtained, by hook or crook, a cert (either from a CA or use one you created (a self-signed cert). The next step is to sign one or more objects with your private key and cert. Here's a simple example that creates an object file, signs, verifies, and lists the contents of the ELF signature. $ echo '#include <stdio.h>\nint main(){printf("Hello\\n");}'>hello.c $ make hello cc -o hello hello.c $ elfsign verify -v -c MYSELFSIGNED.pem -e hello elfsign: no signature found in hello. $ elfsign sign -F rsa_sha256 -v -k MYSELFSIGNED.key -c MYSELFSIGNED.pem -e hello elfsign: hello signed successfully. format: rsa_sha256. signer: O=Canine Software Works, OU=Self-signed CA, CN=canineswworks.com. signed on: October 17, 2013 04:22:49 PM PDT. $ elfsign list -f format -e hello rsa_sha256 $ elfsign list -f signer -e hello O=Canine Software Works, OU=Self-signed CA, CN=canineswworks.com $ elfsign list -f time -e hello October 17, 2013 04:22:49 PM PDT $ elfsign verify -v -c MYSELFSIGNED.key -e hello elfsign: verification of hello failed. format: rsa_sha256. signer: O=Canine Software Works, OU=Self-signed CA, CN=canineswworks.com. signed on: October 17, 2013 04:22:49 PM PDT. Signing using the pkcs11 keystore To sign the ELF file using a private key in the secure pkcs11 keystore, replace "-K MYSELFSIGNED.key" in the "elfsign sign" command line with "-T MYPRIVATEKEY", where MYPRIVATKEY is the pkcs11 token label. Step 3: Install the cert and test on another system Just signing the object isn't enough. You need to copy or install the cert and the signed ELF file(s) on another system to test that the signature is OK. Your public key cert should be installed in /etc/certs. Use elfsign verify to verify the signature. Elfsign verify checks each cert in /etc/certs until it finds one that matches the elfsign signature in the file. If one isn't found, the verification fails. Here's an example: $ su Password: # rm /etc/certs/MYSELFSIGNED.key # cp MYSELFSIGNED.pem /etc/certs # exit $ elfsign verify -v hello elfsign: verification of hello passed. format: rsa_sha256. signer: O=Canine Software Works, OU=Self-signed CA, CN=canineswworks.com. signed on: October 17, 2013 04:24:20 PM PDT. After testing, package your cert along with your ELF object to allow elfsign verification after your cert and object are installed or copied. Under the Hood: elfsign verification Here's the steps taken to verify a ELF file signed with elfsign. The steps to sign the file are similar except the private key exponent is used instead of the public key exponent and the .SUNW_signature section is written to the ELF file instead of being read from the file. Generate a digest (SHA-256) of the ELF file sections. This digest uses all ELF sections loaded in memory, but excludes the ELF header, the .SUNW_signature section, and the symbol table Extract the RSA signature (RSA-2048) from the .SUNW_signature section Extract the RSA public key modulus and public key exponent (65537) from the public key cert Calculate the expected digest as follows:     signaturepublicKeyExponent % publicKeyModulus Strip the PKCS#1 padding (most significant bytes) from the above. The padding is 0x00, 0x01, 0xff, 0xff, . . ., 0xff, 0x00. If the actual digest == expected digest, the ELF file is verified (OK). Further Information elfsign(1), pktool(1), and openssl(1) man pages. "Signed Solaris 10 Binaries?" blog by Darren Moffat (2005) shows how to use elfsign. "Simple CLI based CA on Solaris" blog by Darren Moffat (2008) shows how to set up a simple CA for use with self-signed certificates. "How to Create a Certificate by Using the pktool gencert Command" System Administration Guide: Security Services (available at docs.oracle.com)

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• More CPU cores may not always lead to better performance – MAXDOP and query memory distribution in spotlight

  - by sqlworkshops

  More hardware normally delivers better performance, but there are exceptions where it can hinder performance. Understanding these exceptions and working around it is a major part of SQL Server performance tuning.   When a memory allocating query executes in parallel, SQL Server distributes memory to each task that is executing part of the query in parallel. In our example the sort operator that executes in parallel divides the memory across all tasks assuming even distribution of rows. Common memory allocating queries are that perform Sort and do Hash Match operations like Hash Join or Hash Aggregation or Hash Union.   In reality, how often are column values evenly distributed, think about an example; are employees working for your company distributed evenly across all the Zip codes or mainly concentrated in the headquarters? What happens when you sort result set based on Zip codes? Do all products in the catalog sell equally or are few products hot selling items?   One of my customers tested the below example on a 24 core server with various MAXDOP settings and here are the results:MAXDOP 1: CPU time = 1185 ms, elapsed time = 1188 msMAXDOP 4: CPU time = 1981 ms, elapsed time = 1568 msMAXDOP 8: CPU time = 1918 ms, elapsed time = 1619 msMAXDOP 12: CPU time = 2367 ms, elapsed time = 2258 msMAXDOP 16: CPU time = 2540 ms, elapsed time = 2579 msMAXDOP 20: CPU time = 2470 ms, elapsed time = 2534 msMAXDOP 0: CPU time = 2809 ms, elapsed time = 2721 ms - all 24 cores.In the above test, when the data was evenly distributed, the elapsed time of parallel query was always lower than serial query.   Why does the query get slower and slower with more CPU cores / higher MAXDOP? Maybe you can answer this question after reading the article; let me know: [email protected].   Well you get the point, let’s see an example.   The best way to learn is to practice. To create the below tables and reproduce the behavior, join the mailing list by using this link: www.sqlworkshops.com/ml and I will send you the table creation script.   Let’s update the Employees table with 49 out of 50 employees located in Zip code 2001. update Employees set Zip = EmployeeID / 400 + 1 where EmployeeID % 50 = 1 update Employees set Zip = 2001 where EmployeeID % 50 != 1 go update statistics Employees with fullscan go   Let’s create the temporary table #FireDrill with all possible Zip codes. drop table #FireDrill go create table #FireDrill (Zip int primary key) insert into #FireDrill select distinct Zip from Employees update statistics #FireDrill with fullscan go  Let’s execute the query serially with MAXDOP 1. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --Execute query with uneven Zip code distribution --First serially with MAXDOP 1 set statistics time on go declare @EmployeeID int, @EmployeeName varchar(48),@zip int select @EmployeeName = e.EmployeeName, @zip = e.Zip from Employees e       inner join #FireDrill fd on (e.Zip = fd.Zip)       order by e.Zip option (maxdop 1) goThe query took 1011 ms to complete.   The execution plan shows the 77816 KB of memory was granted while the estimated rows were 799624.  No Sort Warnings in SQL Server Profiler.  Now let’s execute the query in parallel with MAXDOP 0. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --Execute query with uneven Zip code distribution --In parallel with MAXDOP 0 set statistics time on go declare @EmployeeID int, @EmployeeName varchar(48),@zip int select @EmployeeName = e.EmployeeName, @zip = e.Zip from Employees e       inner join #FireDrill fd on (e.Zip = fd.Zip)       order by e.Zip option (maxdop 0) go The query took 1912 ms to complete.  The execution plan shows the 79360 KB of memory was granted while the estimated rows were 799624.  The estimated number of rows between serial and parallel plan are the same. The parallel plan has slightly more memory granted due to additional overhead. Sort properties shows the rows are unevenly distributed over the 4 threads.   Sort Warnings in SQL Server Profiler.   Intermediate Summary: The reason for the higher duration with parallel plan was sort spill. This is due to uneven distribution of employees over Zip codes, especially concentration of 49 out of 50 employees in Zip code 2001. Now let’s update the Employees table and distribute employees evenly across all Zip codes.   update Employees set Zip = EmployeeID / 400 + 1 go update statistics Employees with fullscan go  Let’s execute the query serially with MAXDOP 1. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --Execute query with uneven Zip code distribution --Serially with MAXDOP 1 set statistics time on go declare @EmployeeID int, @EmployeeName varchar(48),@zip int select @EmployeeName = e.EmployeeName, @zip = e.Zip from Employees e       inner join #FireDrill fd on (e.Zip = fd.Zip)       order by e.Zip option (maxdop 1) go   The query took 751 ms to complete.  The execution plan shows the 77816 KB of memory was granted while the estimated rows were 784707.  No Sort Warnings in SQL Server Profiler.   Now let’s execute the query in parallel with MAXDOP 0. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --Execute query with uneven Zip code distribution --In parallel with MAXDOP 0 set statistics time on go declare @EmployeeID int, @EmployeeName varchar(48),@zip int select @EmployeeName = e.EmployeeName, @zip = e.Zip from Employees e       inner join #FireDrill fd on (e.Zip = fd.Zip)       order by e.Zip option (maxdop 0) go The query took 661 ms to complete.  The execution plan shows the 79360 KB of memory was granted while the estimated rows were 784707.  Sort properties shows the rows are evenly distributed over the 4 threads. No Sort Warnings in SQL Server Profiler.    Intermediate Summary: When employees were distributed unevenly, concentrated on 1 Zip code, parallel sort spilled while serial sort performed well without spilling to tempdb. When the employees were distributed evenly across all Zip codes, parallel sort and serial sort did not spill to tempdb. This shows uneven data distribution may affect the performance of some parallel queries negatively. For detailed discussion of memory allocation, refer to webcasts available at www.sqlworkshops.com/webcasts.     Some of you might conclude from the above execution times that parallel query is not faster even when there is no spill. Below you can see when we are joining limited amount of Zip codes, parallel query will be fasted since it can use Bitmap Filtering.   Let’s update the Employees table with 49 out of 50 employees located in Zip code 2001. update Employees set Zip = EmployeeID / 400 + 1 where EmployeeID % 50 = 1 update Employees set Zip = 2001 where EmployeeID % 50 != 1 go update statistics Employees with fullscan go  Let’s create the temporary table #FireDrill with limited Zip codes. drop table #FireDrill go create table #FireDrill (Zip int primary key) insert into #FireDrill select distinct Zip       from Employees where Zip between 1800 and 2001 update statistics #FireDrill with fullscan go  Let’s execute the query serially with MAXDOP 1. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --Execute query with uneven Zip code distribution --Serially with MAXDOP 1 set statistics time on go declare @EmployeeID int, @EmployeeName varchar(48),@zip int select @EmployeeName = e.EmployeeName, @zip = e.Zip from Employees e       inner join #FireDrill fd on (e.Zip = fd.Zip)       order by e.Zip option (maxdop 1) go The query took 989 ms to complete.  The execution plan shows the 77816 KB of memory was granted while the estimated rows were 785594. No Sort Warnings in SQL Server Profiler.  Now let’s execute the query in parallel with MAXDOP 0. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --Execute query with uneven Zip code distribution --In parallel with MAXDOP 0 set statistics time on go declare @EmployeeID int, @EmployeeName varchar(48),@zip int select @EmployeeName = e.EmployeeName, @zip = e.Zip from Employees e       inner join #FireDrill fd on (e.Zip = fd.Zip)       order by e.Zip option (maxdop 0) go The query took 1799 ms to complete.  The execution plan shows the 79360 KB of memory was granted while the estimated rows were 785594.  Sort Warnings in SQL Server Profiler.    The estimated number of rows between serial and parallel plan are the same. The parallel plan has slightly more memory granted due to additional overhead.  Intermediate Summary: The reason for the higher duration with parallel plan even with limited amount of Zip codes was sort spill. This is due to uneven distribution of employees over Zip codes, especially concentration of 49 out of 50 employees in Zip code 2001.   Now let’s update the Employees table and distribute employees evenly across all Zip codes. update Employees set Zip = EmployeeID / 400 + 1 go update statistics Employees with fullscan go Let’s execute the query serially with MAXDOP 1. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --Execute query with uneven Zip code distribution --Serially with MAXDOP 1 set statistics time on go declare @EmployeeID int, @EmployeeName varchar(48),@zip int select @EmployeeName = e.EmployeeName, @zip = e.Zip from Employees e       inner join #FireDrill fd on (e.Zip = fd.Zip)       order by e.Zip option (maxdop 1) go The query took 250  ms to complete.  The execution plan shows the 9016 KB of memory was granted while the estimated rows were 79973.8.  No Sort Warnings in SQL Server Profiler.  Now let’s execute the query in parallel with MAXDOP 0.  --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --Execute query with uneven Zip code distribution --In parallel with MAXDOP 0 set statistics time on go declare @EmployeeID int, @EmployeeName varchar(48),@zip int select @EmployeeName = e.EmployeeName, @zip = e.Zip from Employees e       inner join #FireDrill fd on (e.Zip = fd.Zip)       order by e.Zip option (maxdop 0) go The query took 85 ms to complete.  The execution plan shows the 13152 KB of memory was granted while the estimated rows were 784707.  No Sort Warnings in SQL Server Profiler.    Here you see, parallel query is much faster than serial query since SQL Server is using Bitmap Filtering to eliminate rows before the hash join.   Parallel queries are very good for performance, but in some cases it can hinder performance. If one identifies the reason for these hindrances, then it is possible to get the best out of parallelism. I covered many aspects of monitoring and tuning parallel queries in webcasts (www.sqlworkshops.com/webcasts) and articles (www.sqlworkshops.com/articles). I suggest you to watch the webcasts and read the articles to better understand how to identify and tune parallel query performance issues.   Summary: One has to avoid sort spill over tempdb and the chances of spills are higher when a query executes in parallel with uneven data distribution. Parallel query brings its own advantage, reduced elapsed time and reduced work with Bitmap Filtering. So it is important to understand how to avoid spills over tempdb and when to execute a query in parallel.   I explain these concepts with detailed examples in my webcasts (www.sqlworkshops.com/webcasts), I recommend you to watch them. The best way to learn is to practice. To create the above tables and reproduce the behavior, join the mailing list at www.sqlworkshops.com/ml and I will send you the relevant SQL Scripts.   Register for the upcoming 3 Day Level 400 Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2005 Performance Monitoring & Tuning Hands-on Workshop in London, United Kingdom during March 15-17, 2011, click here to register / Microsoft UK TechNet.These are hands-on workshops with a maximum of 12 participants and not lectures. For consulting engagements click here.   Disclaimer and copyright information:This article refers to organizations and products that may be the trademarks or registered trademarks of their various owners. Copyright of this article belongs to R Meyyappan / www.sqlworkshops.com. You may freely use the ideas and concepts discussed in this article with acknowledgement (www.sqlworkshops.com), but you may not claim any of it as your own work. This article is for informational purposes only; you use any of the suggestions given here entirely at your own risk.   Register for the upcoming 3 Day Level 400 Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2005 Performance Monitoring & Tuning Hands-on Workshop in London, United Kingdom during March 15-17, 2011, click here to register / Microsoft UK TechNet.These are hands-on workshops with a maximum of 12 participants and not lectures. For consulting engagements click here.   R Meyyappan [email protected] LinkedIn: http://at.linkedin.com/in/rmeyyappan  

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, April 01, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, April 01, 2010New ProjectsASP.NET Bing Maps: Extensible and easy to use, this is ASP.NET Bing Maps Control. Drag & Drop and is ready to go. You can configure map mode, map style, add a PushPin...Bricks' Bane: Bricks' Bane is a brick breaker game developed using XNA and published on XBox Live Indy Games. Source code includes a C# library useful for game d...cURL for dotnet: Another dotnet binding for libcurl see http://curl.haxx.se for more info about cURL/libcurlCustom Functoid que acessa o banco de dados SQL: Functoid para Biztalk Server 2006 utilizando dados do SQL Server 2005FEI STU Pharmacy e-shop: Elektronicky obchod s liekmi Vytvorte jednoduchú klient-server aplikáciu, ktorá bude realizovať elektronický obchod s liekmi. Moduly: 1. e-shop f...Flavours of Wix: Investigating building DSL's to create installers based on WIXFulcrum: Fulcrum is a code generation framework built on top of the T4 technology in Visual Studio. GreviousAngel: New team projectHabanero Inferno: Habanero Inferno coming soon.Kawo Pounga !: A useless game !!!LetsXNA!!: This is a project created by members of Linked In group Lets XNA!! to build a XNA game and have fun in the process. The goal is to build a simple ...Linq To Naver , Custom Linq Provider for Naver searchengine OpenAPI: <project name>Linq to Naver </project name> <programming language>C#, CSharp</programming language>LocoSync: LocoSync is a file Syncronization/Backup/Archiver program, which is easily extendable. It is easy to add new syncronization methods using C# code.Natural Language Processing: Natural Language ProcessingNop Commerce Azure: Ce projet vous permet de mettre en place rapidement et simplement votre site d'e-commerce en ligne en bénéficiant de tous les avantages de la plate...Nwinsock: Nwinsock is a component for network , Object Transfer, Pocket Compression, Support TCP,UDP Protocol, Thread Base OnTime: OnTime is a simple program from that matching game back in the day just to bring light to programming techniques. It's developed in C#.?OpenGL ES 2.0 Compact Framework Wrapper: OpenGL ES 2.0 wrapper for .NET Compact Framework. Developed on HTC HD 2 device but should run on any Windows Mobile device that has the correct lib...ortaknokta: bu proje: birkaç kişinin bir araya gelip, istedikleri konularda tartışma yapmalarına olanak saglamak icin hazırlanmaya çalışıl maktadır. P-Data: P-Data es una herramienta que permite obtener información procedente de archivos de datos (Data Profiling) a través de consultas SQL, automatizando...PowerAuras: Addon for World of Warcraft - Displays effects on screen at different conditionsPowerShell ToodleDo Module: PowerShell Module for interacting with toodledo.com online To-Do list site. RSS Reader for Windows Phone 7: This RSS Reader application for windows 7Streamlet Containers: This is my implement of STL-style containers, including a dynamic array, a double-linked list and an r-b-tree. Just for practice. Please feel free...Troav: Social encyclopedia built using c# and the Orchard frameworkUmbraco App_Code/Usercontrol Editor: Package for Umbraco to add App_Code and usercontrol editing to the Developer section of the Umbraco administration system. Will support GeSHi editi...Vczh Reactive Programming Library: Reactive programming library provide a stream or state machine view to use .NET eventsWhoIs XML API: The project uses the public WhoIs XML API service (http://www.whoisxmlapi.com/) to obtain detailed details. The project is written in C# and serial...WPF FlowDocument Examples for VS2008 and VS2010: WPF Text Samples (especially FlowDocument) on the various possible effects: sub- and super-script, ruby (a.k.a. furigana), and various others...You are here (for Windows Mobile): This sample shows you how to play a *.wav file on your device with Compact Framework 2.0. There is better support for playing music on Compact F...New Releases( λunula ): Lunula 0.4.0: Changelog Implemented a virtual machine. Implemented a compiler for the virtual machine. Added first-class continuations (call/cc) Removed co...Alter gear SQL index Management: Setup 1.0.1: Changes Test connection - successful message Connection string timeout property added Setup Project added to project source code Possible issu...ASP.NET Bing Maps: ASP.NET Bing Maps 0.1b: Project Description Extensible and easy to use, this is ASP.NET Bing Maps Control. Drag & Drop and is ready to go. You can configure map mode, map ...ASP.NET MVC Validation Library: ASP.NET MVC Validation Library 1.3: Changes since 1.2: - Support remote validation - Support custom server-side validation - The design of validation attribute is improved Note: test...BigDays 2010: HelfenHelfen - v1: PLEASE NOTE: This project is published under the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL). http://bigdays10.codeplex.com/license IT IS A DEMO SOLUTION FOR...Caps - Manage your collection!: Caps Console 0.1.4.0 Alpha: This is preview release (Alpha quality). This release contains only limited amount of fixes and new features from user point of view. Major focus f...CSharpQuery: Version 1.0: This version is stable. Please report any possible bugs. The next release will include a sample project and index management tools. Until then pl...Custom Functoid que acessa o banco de dados SQL: Custom Functoid SQL Server: Solução do Visual Studio com código fonte e script SQL do functoid em BiztalkDawf: Dual Audio Workflow: Beta 3: Suppose if two good audio events overlap in time with a videoevent of interest. (This can only happen if PluralEyes isn't used on everything). Befo...Dirac codec user interface: Dirac User Interface (checkin 37132): Same as 36795 version, but done with the last source code.DotNetNuke® Blog: 04.00.00 RC 3: PLEASE NOTE: You may upgrade an RC 2 install. But please do not upgrade previous version of the Beta releases - please start from RC 2 or 03.05.0...DotNetNuke® Skinning Extensions: SimpleTitle Skin Object: This is an example skin object that only renders the "page name" if used in a skin and the "module title" if used in a container. No extra spans, c...Fulcrum: Fulcrum v0.9: Initial release of FulcrumHelloTipi Photos Uploader: Version 2010.03.31: De toute petites corrections : - Correction du bouton envoyer - Impossible d'interagir avec l'application quand on uploadkdar: KDAR 0.0.18: KDAR - Kernel Debugger Anti Rootkit - dispacth table's signature bases updated ( many driver's) - scripts refactored - some bug fixedLegend: Legend Libraries: The latest release.Linq To Naver , Custom Linq Provider for Naver searchengine OpenAPI: Linq to Naver: Linq to NaverLive at Education Meta Web-Service: Live at Education Meta Web Service v. 1.0: We're happy to publish final version of Live at Education Meta Web Serivce (LAEMWS). In this release: Huge list of Windows Live ID enabled servic...Live@edu SSO WebPart for MOSS 2007: WebPart 2.0: This release is based on Live@edu Meta Web Service (laemws - http://laemws.codeplex.com). It is highly recomended to use laemws version of webpart,...LocoSync: LocoSync v0.1r2010.03.31 installer: This is the first public release. Unzip and run setup. Or if you have .net 3.5 runtime available download the exetutable and try...Natural Language Processing: test1: testNop Commerce Azure: Nop Commerce Azure: Nop Commerce Full Sources with additionnals Azure Projects.Nwinsock: NWinsock: Nwinsock version 1.0 is hereOpen NFe: DANFe v1.9.8: Correção CSTOpenGL ES 2.0 Compact Framework Wrapper: v0.1 Sources: First rough release. It has a working sample application which renders a triangle with rotation. Don't expect anything great. Just a very early ...patterns & practices - Windows Azure Guidance: Code Drop 3: Second iteration of a-Expense on Azure. This release builds on the previous one and mainly focuses on replacing SQL Azure by Table Storage. We hav...Posh4DNN: Posh4DNN Scripts 2.0: This release greatly increases the speed of installation and incorporates the use of IIS and SQL Server Snap-ins for managing those services. Inst...Process Enactment Tool Framework: PET 1.1: PET Core new intermediate model with arbitrary "clean" relations among objects and several updates of the object fields (see DependencyInterfacesA...Project Tru Tiên: Elements-test V1-fix (v1): Là Elements-test V1 đã được fix các vấn đề sau: - Fix lỗi hiển thị thú cưỡi Hổ Kỳ Lân - Fix hiển thị tab tiếng trung --> sang tiếng việt - Fix hiể...Sentinel - Log Viewer: Sentinel 0.8.1 (nLog support): Build of the 0.8.1 code (svn revision 36823) which included support for both nLog and log4net that has been in SVN for a while but didn't have a bi...sgMotion Animation Library: SgMotion v1.1 (For Sunburn 1.3.1): SgMotion v1.1 (For Sunburn 1.3.1) This release includes both a Windows & Xbox sample. The sample is set to default at Forward rendering, but can e...sTASKedit: sTASKedit 44538 (Developer Alpha): + nearly all fields are viewed in this release for task verification and identifying of unknownsTest Project (ignore): asdf asdf asdf asdf asdf asdf asdf sadf sdf asdf a: ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ...Test Project (ignore): cdscs: csdcacacTroav: Traov20100331 Source Pre-Alpah: This is some experiements with implementing custom modules with Microsoft's Orchard frame work. This is very preliminary, and subject to change.Weather Report WebControls: WebWeatherReport: 主要文件的源代码WhoIs XML API: Initial Release: Initial ReleaseYou are here (for Windows Mobile): CAB file and Source Code: You can find more Controls and samples for Windows Mobile developers at: http://www.beemobile4.netMost Popular ProjectshmrEngineRawrWBFS ManagerASP.NET Ajax LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitAJAX Control ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETLiveUpload to FacebookMost Active ProjectsRawrGraffiti CMSBase Class LibrariesjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesBlogEngine.NETMicrosoft Biology FoundationN2 CMSLINQ to TwitterManaged Extensibility FrameworkFarseer Physics Engine

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• Announcing the release of the Windows Azure SDK 2.1 for .NET

  - by ScottGu

  Today we released the v2.1 update of the Windows Azure SDK for .NET.  This is a major refresh of the Windows Azure SDK and it includes some great new features and enhancements. These new capabilities include: Visual Studio 2013 Preview Support: The Windows Azure SDK now supports using the new VS 2013 Preview Visual Studio 2013 VM Image: Windows Azure now has a built-in VM image that you can use to host and develop with VS 2013 in the cloud Visual Studio Server Explorer Enhancements: Redesigned with improved filtering and auto-loading of subscription resources Virtual Machines: Start and Stop VM’s w/suspend billing directly from within Visual Studio Cloud Services: New Emulator Express option with reduced footprint and Run as Normal User support Service Bus: New high availability options, Notification Hub support, Improved VS tooling PowerShell Automation: Lots of new PowerShell commands for automating Web Sites, Cloud Services, VMs and more All of these SDK enhancements are now available to start using immediately and you can download the SDK from the Windows Azure .NET Developer Center.  Visual Studio’s Team Foundation Service (http://tfs.visualstudio.com/) has also been updated to support today’s SDK 2.1 release, and the SDK 2.1 features can now be used with it (including with automated builds + tests). Below are more details on the new features and capabilities released today: Visual Studio 2013 Preview Support Today’s Window Azure SDK 2.1 release adds support for the recent Visual Studio 2013 Preview. The 2.1 SDK also works with Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio 2012, and works side by side with the previous Windows Azure SDK 1.8 and 2.0 releases. To install the Windows Azure SDK 2.1 on your local computer, choose the “install the sdk” link from the Windows Azure .NET Developer Center. Then, chose which version of Visual Studio you want to use it with.  Clicking the third link will install the SDK with the latest VS 2013 Preview: If you don’t already have the Visual Studio 2013 Preview installed on your machine, this will also install Visual Studio Express 2013 Preview for Web. Visual Studio 2013 VM Image Hosted in the Cloud One of the requests we’ve heard from several customers has been to have the ability to host Visual Studio within the cloud (avoiding the need to install anything locally on your computer). With today’s SDK update we’ve added a new VM image to the Windows Azure VM Gallery that has Visual Studio Ultimate 2013 Preview, SharePoint 2013, SQL Server 2012 Express and the Windows Azure 2.1 SDK already installed on it.  This provides a really easy way to create a development environment in the cloud with the latest tools. With the recent shutdown and suspend billing feature we shipped on Windows Azure last month, you can spin up the image only when you want to do active development, and then shut down the virtual machine and not have to worry about usage charges while the virtual machine is not in use. You can create your own VS image in the cloud by using the New->Compute->Virtual Machine->From Gallery menu within the Windows Azure Management Portal, and then by selecting the “Visual Studio Ultimate 2013 Preview” template: Visual Studio Server Explorer: Improved Filtering/Management of Subscription Resources With the Windows Azure SDK 2.1 release you’ll notice significant improvements in the Visual Studio Server Explorer. The explorer has been redesigned so that all Windows Azure services are now contained under a single Windows Azure node.  From the top level node you can now manage your Windows Azure credentials, import a subscription file or filter Server Explorer to only show services from particular subscriptions or regions. Note: The Web Sites and Mobile Services nodes will appear outside the Windows Azure Node until the final release of VS 2013. If you have installed the ASP.NET and Web Tools Preview Refresh, though, the Web Sites node will appear inside the Windows Azure node even with the VS 2013 Preview. Once your subscription information is added, Windows Azure services from all your subscriptions are automatically enumerated in the Server Explorer. You no longer need to manually add services to Server Explorer individually. This provides a convenient way of viewing all of your cloud services, storage accounts, service bus namespaces, virtual machines, and web sites from one location: Subscription and Region Filtering Support Using the Windows Azure node in Server Explorer, you can also now filter your Windows Azure services in the Server Explorer by the subscription or region they are in.  If you have multiple subscriptions but need to focus your attention to just a few subscription for some period of time, this a handy way to hide the services from other subscriptions view until they become relevant. You can do the same sort of filtering by region. To enable this, just select “Filter Services” from the context menu on the Windows Azure node: Then choose the subscriptions and/or regions you want to filter by. In the below example, I’ve decided to show services from my pay-as-you-go subscription within the East US region: Visual Studio will then automatically filter the items that show up in the Server Explorer appropriately: With storage accounts and service bus namespaces, you sometimes need to work with services outside your subscription. To accommodate that scenario, those services allow you to attach an external account (from the context menu). You’ll notice that external accounts have a slightly different icon in server explorer to indicate they are from outside your subscription. Other Improvements We’ve also improved the Server Explorer by adding additional properties and actions to the service exposed. You now have access to most of the properties on a cloud service, deployment slot, role or role instance as well as the properties on storage accounts, virtual machines and web sites. Just select the object of interest in Server Explorer and view the properties in the property pane. We also now have full support for creating/deleting/update storage tables, blobs and queues from directly within Server Explorer.  Simply right-click on the appropriate storage account node and you can create them directly within Visual Studio: Virtual Machines: Start/Stop within Visual Studio Virtual Machines now have context menu actions that allow you start, shutdown, restart and delete a Virtual Machine directly within the Visual Studio Server Explorer. The shutdown action enables you to shut down the virtual machine and suspend billing when the VM is not is use, and easily restart it when you need it: This is especially useful in Dev/Test scenarios where you can start a VM – such as a SQL Server – during your development session and then shut it down / suspend billing when you are not developing (and no longer be billed for it). You can also now directly remote desktop into VMs using the “Connect using Remote Desktop” context menu command in VS Server Explorer.  Cloud Services: Emulator Express with Run as Normal User Support You can now launch Visual Studio and run your cloud services locally as a Normal User (without having to elevate to an administrator account) using a new Emulator Express option included as a preview feature with this SDK release.  Emulator Express is a version of the Windows Azure Compute Emulator that runs a restricted mode – one instance per role – and it doesn’t require administrative permissions and uses 40% less resources than the full Windows Azure Emulator. Emulator Express supports both web and worker roles. To run your application locally using the Emulator Express option, simply change the following settings in the Windows Azure project. On the shortcut menu for the Windows Azure project, choose Properties, and then choose the Web tab. Check the setting for IIS (Internet Information Services). Make sure that the option is set to IIS Express, not the full version of IIS. Emulator Express is not compatible with full IIS. On the Web tab, choose the option for Emulator Express. Service Bus: Notification Hubs With the Windows Azure SDK 2.1 release we are adding support for Windows Azure Notification Hubs as part of our official Windows Azure SDK, inside of Microsoft.ServiceBus.dll (previously the Notification Hub functionality was in a preview assembly). You are now able to create, update and delete Notification Hubs programmatically, manage your device registrations, and send push notifications to all your mobile clients across all platforms (Windows Store, Windows Phone 8, iOS, and Android). Learn more about Notification Hubs on MSDN here, or watch the Notification Hubs //BUILD/ presentation here. Service Bus: Paired Namespaces One of the new features included with today’s Windows Azure SDK 2.1 release is support for Service Bus “Paired Namespaces”.  Paired Namespaces enable you to better handle situations where a Service Bus service namespace becomes unavailable (for example: due to connectivity issues or an outage) and you are unable to send or receive messages to the namespace hosting the queue, topic, or subscription. Previously,to handle this scenario you had to manually setup separate namespaces that can act as a backup, then implement manual failover and retry logic which was sometimes tricky to get right. Service Bus now supports Paired Namespaces, which enables you to connect two namespaces together. When you activate the secondary namespace, messages are stored in the secondary queue for delivery to the primary queue at a later time. If the primary container (namespace) becomes unavailable for some reason, automatic failover enables the messages in the secondary queue. For detailed information about paired namespaces and high availability, see the new topic Asynchronous Messaging Patterns and High Availability. Service Bus: Tooling Improvements In this release, the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio contain several enhancements and changes to the management of Service Bus messaging entities using Visual Studio’s Server Explorer. The most noticeable change is that the Service Bus node is now integrated into the Windows Azure node, and supports integrated subscription management. Additionally, there has been a change to the code generated by the Windows Azure Worker Role with Service Bus Queue project template. This code now uses an event-driven “message pump” programming model using the QueueClient.OnMessage method. PowerShell: Tons of New Automation Commands Since my last blog post on the previous Windows Azure SDK 2.0 release, we’ve updated Windows Azure PowerShell (which is a separate download) five times. You can find the full change log here. We’ve added new cmdlets in the following areas: China instance and Windows Azure Pack support Environment Configuration VMs Cloud Services Web Sites Storage SQL Azure Service Bus China Instance and Windows Azure Pack We now support the following cmdlets for the China instance and Windows Azure Pack, respectively: China Instance: Web Sites, Service Bus, Storage, Cloud Service, VMs, Network Windows Azure Pack: Web Sites, Service Bus We will have full cmdlet support for these two Windows Azure environments in PowerShell in the near future. Virtual Machines: Stop/Start Virtual Machines Similar to the Start/Stop VM capability in VS Server Explorer, you can now stop your VM and suspend billing: If you want to keep the original behavior of keeping your stopped VM provisioned, you can pass in the -StayProvisioned switch parameter. Virtual Machines: VM endpoint ACLs We’ve added and updated a bunch of cmdlets for you to configure fine-grained network ACL on your VM endpoints. You can use the following cmdlets to create ACL config and apply them to a VM endpoint: New-AzureAclConfig Get-AzureAclConfig Set-AzureAclConfig Remove-AzureAclConfig Add-AzureEndpoint -ACL Set-AzureEndpoint –ACL The following example shows how to add an ACL rule to an existing endpoint of a VM. Other improvements for Virtual Machine management includes Added -NoWinRMEndpoint parameter to New-AzureQuickVM and Add-AzureProvisioningConfig to disable Windows Remote Management Added -DirectServerReturn parameter to Add-AzureEndpoint and Set-AzureEndpoint to enable/disable direct server return Added Set-AzureLoadBalancedEndpoint cmdlet to modify load balanced endpoints Cloud Services: Remote Desktop and Diagnostics Remote Desktop and Diagnostics are popular debugging options for Cloud Services. We’ve introduced cmdlets to help you configure these two Cloud Service extensions from Windows Azure PowerShell. Windows Azure Cloud Services Remote Desktop extension: New-AzureServiceRemoteDesktopExtensionConfig Get-AzureServiceRemoteDesktopExtension Set-AzureServiceRemoteDesktopExtension Remove-AzureServiceRemoteDesktopExtension Windows Azure Cloud Services Diagnostics extension New-AzureServiceDiagnosticsExtensionConfig Get-AzureServiceDiagnosticsExtension Set-AzureServiceDiagnosticsExtension Remove-AzureServiceDiagnosticsExtension The following example shows how to enable Remote Desktop for a Cloud Service. Web Sites: Diagnostics With our last SDK update, we introduced the Get-AzureWebsiteLog –Tail cmdlet to get the log streaming of your Web Sites. Recently, we’ve also added cmdlets to configure Web Site application diagnostics: Enable-AzureWebsiteApplicationDiagnostic Disable-AzureWebsiteApplicationDiagnostic The following 2 examples show how to enable application diagnostics to the file system and a Windows Azure Storage Table: SQL Database Previously, you had to know the SQL Database server admin username and password if you want to manage the database in that SQL Database server. Recently, we’ve made the experience much easier by not requiring the admin credential if the database server is in your subscription. So you can simply specify the -ServerName parameter to tell Windows Azure PowerShell which server you want to use for the following cmdlets. Get-AzureSqlDatabase New-AzureSqlDatabase Remove-AzureSqlDatabase Set-AzureSqlDatabase We’ve also added a -AllowAllAzureServices parameter to New-AzureSqlDatabaseServerFirewallRule so that you can easily add a firewall rule to whitelist all Windows Azure IP addresses. Besides the above experience improvements, we’ve also added cmdlets get the database server quota and set the database service objective. Check out the following cmdlets for details. Get-AzureSqlDatabaseServerQuota Get-AzureSqlDatabaseServiceObjective Set-AzureSqlDatabase –ServiceObjective Storage and Service Bus Other new cmdlets include Storage: CRUD cmdlets for Azure Tables and Queues Service Bus: Cmdlets for managing authorization rules on your Service Bus Namespace, Queue, Topic, Relay and NotificationHub Summary Today’s release includes a bunch of great features that enable you to build even better cloud solutions.  All the above features/enhancements are shipped and available to use immediately as part of the 2.1 release of the Windows Azure SDK for .NET. If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today.  Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, March 05, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, March 05, 2012Popular ReleasesSimple Injector: Simple Injector v1.4.1: This release adds two small improvements to the SimpleInjector.Extensions.dll. No changes have been made to the core library. New features and improvements in this release for the SimpleInjector.Extensions.dll The RegisterManyForOpenGeneric extension methods now accept non-generic decorator, as long as they implement the given open generic service type. GetTypesToRegister methods added to the OpenGenericBatchRegistrationExtensions class which allows to customize the behavior. Note that the...SQL Scriptz Runner: Application: Scriptz Runner source code and applicationCommonLibrary: Code: CodePowerGUI Visual Studio Extension: PowerGUI VSX 1.5.2: Added support for PowerGUI 3.2.Path Copy Copy: 10.0: New version with the following biggest new features: Regular expression support in custom commands (see this work item) Import/export feature for custom commands (see this work item) This version also addresses the following work items: 11353 11348 This version is a recommended upgrade for all users. Note: new custom commands that user regular expressions won't be compatible with earlier versions (if installed by registry manipulation or via network installation), but everything else is ...VidCoder: 1.3.1: Updated HandBrake core to 0.9.6 release (svn 4472). Removed erroneous "None" container choice. Change some logic and help text to stop assuming you have to pick the VIDEO_TS folder for a DVD scan. This should make previewing DVD titles on the Queue Multiple Titles window possible when you've picked the root DVD directory.ASP.NET MVC Framework - Abstracting Data Annotations, HTML5, Knockout JS techs: Version 1.0: Please download the source code. I am not associating any dll for release.ExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.0: ExtAspNet - ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ?????????? ExtAspNet ????? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ??????????。 ExtAspNet ??????? JavaScript，?? CSS，?? UpdatePanel，?? ViewState，?? WebServices ???????。 ??????: IE 7.0, Firefox 3.6, Chrome 3.0, Opera 10.5, Safari 3.0+ ????：Apache License 2.0 (Apache) ??：http://extasp.net/ ??：http://bbs.extasp.net/ ??：http://extaspnet.codeplex.com/ ??：http://sanshi.cnblogs.com/ ????： +2012-03-04 v3.1.0 -??Hidden???????（〓?〓）。 -?PageManager??...AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.9.1: ?? ●AcDown??????????、??、??????，????1M，????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????????????????????????，???，???????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? ??????????????，??????????： ??"AcDo...Windows Phone Commands for VS2010: Version 1.0: Initial Release Version 1.0 Connect from device or emulator (Monitors the connection) Show Device information (Plataform, build , version, avaliable memory, total memory, architeture Manager installed applications (Launch, uninstall and explorer isolate storage files) Manager core applications (Launch blocked applications from emulator (Office, Calculator, alarm, calendar , etc) Manager blocked settings from emulator (Airplane Mode, Celullar Network, Wifi, etc) Deploy and update ap...DNN Metro7 style Skin package: Metro7 style Skin for DotNetNuke 06.01.00: Changes on Version 06.01.00 Fixed issue on GraySmallTitle container, that breaks the layout Fixed issue on Blue Metro7 Skin where the Search, Login, Register, Date is missing Fixed issue with the Version numbers on the target file Fixed issue where the jQuery and jQuery-UI files not deleted on upgrade from Version 01.00.00 Added a internal page where the Image Slider would be replaces with a BannerPaneMedia Companion: MC 3.433b Release: General More GUI tweaks (mostly imperceptible!) Updates for mc_com.exe TV The 'Watched' button has been re-instigated Added TV Menu sub-option to search ALL for new Episodes (includes locked shows) Movies Added 'Source' field (eg DVD, Bluray, HDTV), customisable in Advanced Preferences (try it out, let us know how it works!) Added HTML <<format>> tag with optional parameters for video container, source, and resolution (updated HTML tags to be added to Documentation shortly) Known Issu...Picturethrill: Version 2.3.2.0: Release includes Self-Update feature for Picturethrill. What that means for users is that they are always guaranteed to have a fresh copy of Picturethrill on their computers with all latest fixes. When Picturethrill adds a new website to get pictures from, you will get it too!Simple MVVM Toolkit for Silverlight, WPF and Windows Phone: Simple MVVM Toolkit v3.0.0.0: Added support for Silverlight 5.0 and Windows Phone 7.1. Upgraded project templates and samples. Upgraded installer. There are some new prerequisites required for this version, namely Silverlight 5 Tools, Expression Blend Preview for Silverlight 5 (until the SDK is released), Windows Phone 7.1 SDK. Because it is in the experimental band, I have also removed the dependency on the Silverlight Testing Framework. You can use it if you wish, but the Ria Services project template no longer uses ...CODE Framework: 4.0.20301: The latest version adds a number of new features to the WPF system (such as stylable and testable messagebox support) as well as various new features throughout the system (especially in the Utilities namespace).MyRouter (Virtual WiFi Router): MyRouter 1.0.2 (Beta): A friendlier User Interface. A logger file to catch exceptions so you may send it to use to improve and fix any bugs that may occur. A feedback form because we always love hearing what you guy's think of MyRouter. Check for update menu item for you to stay up to date will the latest changes. Facebook fan page so you may spread the word and share MyRouter with friends and family And Many other exciting features were sure your going to love!WPF Sound Visualization Library: WPF SVL 0.3 (Source, Binaries, Examples, Help): Version 0.3 of WPFSVL. This includes three new controls: an equalizer, a digital clock, and a time editor.Orchard Project: Orchard 1.4: Please read our release notes for Orchard 1.4: http://docs.orchardproject.net/Documentation/Orchard-1-4-Release-NotesNetSqlAzMan - .NET SQL Authorization Manager: 3.6.0.15: 3.6.0.15 28-Feb-2012 • Fix: The communication object, System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel, cannot be used for communication because it is in the Faulted state. Work Item 10435: http://netsqlazman.codeplex.com/workitem/10435 • Fix: Made StorageCache thread safe. Thanks to tangrl. • Fix: Members property of SqlAzManApplicationGroup is not functioning. Thanks to tangrl. Work Item 10267: http://netsqlazman.codeplex.com/workitem/10267 • Fix: Indexer are making database calls. Thanks to t...SCCM Client Actions Tool: Client Actions Tool v1.1: SCCM Client Actions Tool v1.1 is the latest version. It comes with following changes since last version: Added stop button to stop the ongoing process. Added action "Query update status". Added option "saveOnlineComputers" in config.ini to enable saving list of online computers from last session. Default value for "LatestClientVersion" set to SP2 R3 (4.00.6487.2157). Wuauserv service manual startup mode is considered healthy on Windows 7. Errors are now suppressed in checkReleases...New ProjectsAbsolute Risk Game: Risk Game is a classic "World Domination Risk" game where you try to conquer the world.Architecture Document Catalog: The Architecture Document Catalog is a catalog for various documentation used by software solution architects. The initial architecture framework supported is from Rozanski and Woods, also called Viewpoints and Perspectives. It's in C#, Silverlight, WCF RIA Services.Background Worker Job Execution & Job Scheduler: Background worker is a multi-threaded job execution and scheduling engine. Very similar to Quartz, but with a slightly different focus.BWOS: preparing a new operating system. and name BWOS. CommonLibrary: Common modules and componentesCustomizeTool: CustomizeToolData Foundry: Data Foundry is a Swiss army knife for database administrator. With capabilities to cross reference check data between tables to find orphaned data and table relations.Data Grid Extensions: Modular extensions for the DataGrid control. Attach filtering capabilities to your existing DataGrid.dk.Helper: dk.Helper makes it easier for tribal wars game players (divoke-kmene.sk) to manage common activities in game. It's developed in C#.ExEn: ExEn is a high-performance implementation of a subset of the XNA API that runs on Silverlight, iOS and Android.Extended Methods for .NET: Developed in VB.NET, this DLL includes some functions I came across over the internet. Originally they were functions. I made some changes to suit my work and recreated them as Extended methods. Currently includes two extended methods for the Image class and one extended method for the String class. I will update it with new methods as I go along.GestionarComenzi: Gestioneaza Comenzi - Firma transporturiGIS Library Management: GIS Library Management System.iFinity Cache Master for DotNetNuke: The iFinity DotNetNuke Cache Master is an Administration module for DotNetNuke. This module allows administrators to inspect the current contents of the ASP.NET Cache in their running DotNetNuke installation. A very useful tool for developers working with the DotNetNuke cache.intelliEssay Document Format Checker: This is a product that tries to check a document's format to see if it conforms to certain given standard.Just T[he]IP: "Just The IP" leverages the Bing API v2 and the ip: Bing Advanced Operator to list the other web sites hosted at this IP Address (that are indexed by Bing).KTool: Ktool is a tool for learning japanese kanji. This program is still in developed. Current version can only display and find a kanji word (Press ctrl-F on main screen for search). Developed in WPF, .NET 4.0Lab Checker: Lab Checker makes it easy for teacher to check students' programs. It allows a student to test his program on a set of test cases which eliminates the need to run the program manually.MeoBox Vera Control Plugin: This is my project for creating a plugin to control my MeoBox ( Scientific Atlanta ) using Vera ( www.micasaverde.com ) Should work with other TV2Client boxesNUnitTestHelper: NUnitTestHelper is a helper class for developing unit tests for C# applications with NUnit framework. This helper library provides set of classes and method which can be used for accomplishing faster unit test development for any kind of project. NUnitTestBase – Supports basic functionality for writing a unit test with NUnit framework. This base class provides built in support for mocking framework. This version provides support for Rhino mocking framework.OnlineExam: Common online examination system based on Asp.net MVC3 can used for knowledge test, I/Q test, college test or most other test project.Orchard Code Generation Extensions: Code Generation Extensions module for Orchard.OrchardTranstion_CN: Orchar?? OsAvatar: to next step showOwnTools: About my toolsPhone Finder App: PhoneFinder will be a Windows Phone platform app alternative for finding a lost or stolen phone. Our plan is to have additional functionality the Windows software does not include. It will be developed using ASP.NET MVC, SQL Server, C#, etc.PoshChat: PoshChat is a client/server chat program written in PowerShell. Supports multiple client connections to a single server to chat.Process Attachment And Secure Text: ProcessAttachmentAndSecureText is an Exchange Transport Agent DLL and associated ASPX page. It is used to 1) strip out attachments and send them to an upload portal, and 2) to strip out text from emails and send it to an upload portal. It is currently coded for Exchange 2010Resource Viewer - Visual Studio Extension: Simply put the “resource viewer extension” enables you to visually view your ResourceDictionary. To open it go to: View – Other Windows – Resource Viewer. When working with WPF/Silverlight you put your reusable resources in a common ResourceDictionary, those resources might be of type Style, SolidColorBrush, DrawingBrush, BitmapImage and more. The problems starts when you have that ResourceDictionary you have no way to see how your resources look like, making the work process (of both t...Scumm XNA: Scumm XNA is an engine that runs old school LucasArts graphical adventure games. It is written completely in C# and will run on PC, Xbox 360 and Windows phone. The code is inspired by ScummVM but this project is not a port, it is a complete rewrite in order to optimize the engine for the CLR. Of course, you will need to own the orinigal games in order to use it. Currently, I will focus my work on the great "Day of Tentacle" game specifically the CD version.SDX DataGrid: SDXDataGrid is a comprehensive data grid component for Microsoft .NET 3.5 web application developers. It is designed to ease the exhausting process of implementing the necessary code for sorting, navigation, grouping, searching and data editing in a data representation object.SQL Scriptz Runner: Features are : Drag And Drop script files Run a directory of script files Sql Script out put messages during execution Script passed or failed that are colored green and red (yellow for running) Stop on error option Open script on error option Run report with time taken for each uComponents Demo: A demo for the code of running uComponents in Umbraco siteUnixTable: UnixTable makes it easier to realize application to access database, with no code but only with visual instrument at runtime. You'll no longer have to write query or code to read table from database. It's developed in Visual Basic for .NET 4. VOA Player.NET: VOA Player is a lightweight windows client for listening VOA Special English. Because of GFW blocking it fetch RSS data via rss2proxy.appspot.com indirectly. User can view article page and listen MP3 stream. The project is a C# implementation of voaplayer.sinaapp.com.Windows Metafile Library: The library supports reading and writing WMF files. Source code is written in pure .NET from scratch following the Windows Metafile Format Specification.Windows Phone 7.1 + MicroFramework (a phone device as remote control): Windows Phone 7.1 + .Net MicroFramework (How use a windows phone device as remote control of a Fez Panda II/MicroFramework board). A windows phone device can be connected to a wifi network (for example a wifi router). If you have also a MicroFramework board connected to the wifi network; you can send some http rest commands from the windows phone device to the MicroFramework board. The microframework board, it must support the tcp/ip protocol through a connect shield. In this exaple it will...XBMC Cache Manager: A Windows Service to manage a shared XBMC MySQL database and shared cache folder.

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• SQL Monitor’s data repository: Alerts

  - by Chris Lambrou

  In my previous post, I introduced the SQL Monitor data repository, and described how the monitored objects are stored in a hierarchy in the data schema, in a series of tables with a _Keys suffix. In this post I had planned to describe how the actual data for the monitored objects is stored in corresponding tables with _StableSamples and _UnstableSamples suffixes. However, I’m going to postpone that until my next post, as I’ve had a request from a SQL Monitor user to explain how alerts are stored. In the SQL Monitor data repository, alerts are stored in tables belonging to the alert schema, which contains the following five tables: alert.Alert alert.Alert_Cleared alert.Alert_Comment alert.Alert_Severity alert.Alert_Type In this post, I’m only going to cover the alert.Alert and alert.Alert_Type tables. I may cover the other three tables in a later post. The most important table in this schema is alert.Alert, as each row in this table corresponds to a single alert. So let’s have a look at it. SELECT TOP 100 AlertId, AlertType, TargetObject, [Read], SubType FROM alert.Alert ORDER BY AlertId DESC;  AlertIdAlertTypeTargetObjectReadSubType 165550397:Cluster,1,4:Name,s29:srp-mr03.testnet.red-gate.com,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,10 265549387:Cluster,1,4:Name,s29:srp-mr03.testnet.red-gate.com,7:Machine,1,4:Name,s0:,10 365548187:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s15:FavouriteThings,00 465547157:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s15:FavouriteThings,00 565546147:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s15:FavouriteThings,00 665545187:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s14:SqlMonitorData,00 765544157:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s14:SqlMonitorData,00 865543147:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s14:SqlMonitorData,00 965542187:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s4:msdb,00 1065541147:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s4:msdb,00 11…     So what are we seeing here, then? Well, AlertId is an auto-incrementing identity column, so ORDER BY AlertId DESC ensures that we see the most recent alerts first. AlertType indicates the type of each alert, such as Job failed (6), Backup overdue (14) or Long-running query (12). The TargetObject column indicates which monitored object the alert is associated with. The Read column acts as a flag to indicate whether or not the alert has been read. And finally the SubType column is used in the case of a Custom metric (40) alert, to indicate which custom metric the alert pertains to. Okay, now lets look at some of those columns in more detail. The AlertType column is an easy one to start with, and it brings use nicely to the next table, data.Alert_Type. Let’s have a look at what’s in this table: SELECT AlertType, Event, Monitoring, Name, Description FROM alert.Alert_Type ORDER BY AlertType;  AlertTypeEventMonitoringNameDescription 1100Processor utilizationProcessor utilization (CPU) on a host machine stays above a threshold percentage for longer than a specified duration 2210SQL Server error log entryAn error is written to the SQL Server error log with a severity level above a specified value. 3310Cluster failoverThe active cluster node fails, causing the SQL Server instance to switch nodes. 4410DeadlockSQL deadlock occurs. 5500Processor under-utilizationProcessor utilization (CPU) on a host machine remains below a threshold percentage for longer than a specified duration 6610Job failedA job does not complete successfully (the job returns an error code). 7700Machine unreachableHost machine (Windows server) cannot be contacted on the network. 8800SQL Server instance unreachableThe SQL Server instance is not running or cannot be contacted on the network. 9900Disk spaceDisk space used on a logical disk drive is above a defined threshold for longer than a specified duration. 101000Physical memoryPhysical memory (RAM) used on the host machine stays above a threshold percentage for longer than a specified duration. 111100Blocked processSQL process is blocked for longer than a specified duration. 121200Long-running queryA SQL query runs for longer than a specified duration. 131400Backup overdueNo full backup exists, or the last full backup is older than a specified time. 141500Log backup overdueNo log backup exists, or the last log backup is older than a specified time. 151600Database unavailableDatabase changes from Online to any other state. 161700Page verificationTorn Page Detection or Page Checksum is not enabled for a database. 171800Integrity check overdueNo entry for an integrity check (DBCC DBINFO returns no date for dbi_dbccLastKnownGood field), or the last check is older than a specified time. 181900Fragmented indexesFragmentation level of one or more indexes is above a threshold percentage. 192400Job duration unusualThe duration of a SQL job duration deviates from its baseline duration by more than a threshold percentage. 202501Clock skewSystem clock time on the Base Monitor computer differs from the system clock time on a monitored SQL Server host machine by a specified number of seconds. 212700SQL Server Agent Service statusThe SQL Server Agent Service status matches the status specified. 222800SQL Server Reporting Service statusThe SQL Server Reporting Service status matches the status specified. 232900SQL Server Full Text Search Service statusThe SQL Server Full Text Search Service status matches the status specified. 243000SQL Server Analysis Service statusThe SQL Server Analysis Service status matches the status specified. 253100SQL Server Integration Service statusThe SQL Server Integration Service status matches the status specified. 263300SQL Server Browser Service statusThe SQL Server Browser Service status matches the status specified. 273400SQL Server VSS Writer Service statusThe SQL Server VSS Writer status matches the status specified. 283501Deadlock trace flag disabledThe monitored SQL Server’s trace flag cannot be enabled. 293600Monitoring stopped (host machine credentials)SQL Monitor cannot contact the host machine because authentication failed. 303700Monitoring stopped (SQL Server credentials)SQL Monitor cannot contact the SQL Server instance because authentication failed. 313800Monitoring error (host machine data collection)SQL Monitor cannot collect data from the host machine. 323900Monitoring error (SQL Server data collection)SQL Monitor cannot collect data from the SQL Server instance. 334000Custom metricThe custom metric value has passed an alert threshold. 344100Custom metric collection errorSQL Monitor cannot collect custom metric data from the target object. Basically, alert.Alert_Type is just a big reference table containing information about the 34 different alert types supported by SQL Monitor (note that the largest id is 41, not 34 – some alert types have been retired since SQL Monitor was first developed). The Name and Description columns are self evident, and I’m going to skip over the Event and Monitoring columns as they’re not very interesting. The AlertId column is the primary key, and is referenced by AlertId in the alert.Alert table. As such, we can rewrite our earlier query to join these two tables, in order to provide a more readable view of the alerts: SELECT TOP 100 AlertId, Name, TargetObject, [Read], SubType FROM alert.Alert a JOIN alert.Alert_Type at ON a.AlertType = at.AlertType ORDER BY AlertId DESC;  AlertIdNameTargetObjectReadSubType 165550Monitoring error (SQL Server data collection)7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s29:srp-mr03.testnet.red-gate.com,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,00 265549Monitoring error (host machine data collection)7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s29:srp-mr03.testnet.red-gate.com,7:Machine,1,4:Name,s0:,00 365548Integrity check overdue7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s15:FavouriteThings,00 465547Log backup overdue7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s15:FavouriteThings,00 565546Backup overdue7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s15:FavouriteThings,00 665545Integrity check overdue7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s14:SqlMonitorData,00 765544Log backup overdue7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s14:SqlMonitorData,00 865543Backup overdue7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s14:SqlMonitorData,00 965542Integrity check overdue7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s4:msdb,00 1065541Backup overdue7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s4:msdb,00 Okay, the next column to discuss in the alert.Alert table is TargetObject. Oh boy, this one’s a bit tricky! The TargetObject of an alert is a serialized string representation of the position in the monitored object hierarchy of the object to which the alert pertains. The serialization format is somewhat convenient for parsing in the C# source code of SQL Monitor, and has some helpful characteristics, but it’s probably very awkward to manipulate in T-SQL. I could document the serialization format here, but it would be very dry reading, so perhaps it’s best to consider an example from the table above. Have a look at the alert with an AlertID of 65543. It’s a Backup overdue alert for the SqlMonitorData database running on the default instance of granger, my laptop. Each different alert type is associated with a specific type of monitored object in the object hierarchy (I described the hierarchy in my previous post). The Backup overdue alert is associated with databases, whose position in the object hierarchy is root → Cluster → SqlServer → Database. The TargetObject value identifies the target object by specifying the key properties at each level in the hierarchy, thus: Cluster: Name = "granger" SqlServer: Name = "" (an empty string, denoting the default instance) Database: Name = "SqlMonitorData" Well, look at the actual TargetObject value for this alert: "7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s14:SqlMonitorData,". It is indeed composed of three parts, one for each level in the hierarchy: Cluster: "7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger," SqlServer: "9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:," Database: "8:Database,1,4:Name,s14:SqlMonitorData," Each part is handled in exactly the same way, so let’s concentrate on the first part, "7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,". It comprises the following: "7:Cluster," – This identifies the level in the hierarchy. "1," – This indicates how many different key properties there are to uniquely identify a cluster (we saw in my last post that each cluster is identified by a single property, its Name). "4:Name,s14:SqlMonitorData," – This represents the Name property, and its corresponding value, SqlMonitorData. It’s split up like this: "4:Name," – Indicates the name of the key property. "s" – Indicates the type of the key property, in this case, it’s a string. "14:SqlMonitorData," – Indicates the value of the property. At this point, you might be wondering about the format of some of these strings. Why is the string "Cluster" stored as "7:Cluster,"? Well an encoding scheme is used, which consists of the following: "7" – This is the length of the string "Cluster" ":" – This is a delimiter between the length of the string and the actual string’s contents. "Cluster" – This is the string itself. 7 characters. "," – This is a final terminating character that indicates the end of the encoded string. You can see that "4:Name,", "8:Database," and "14:SqlMonitorData," also conform to the same encoding scheme. In the example above, the "s" character is used to indicate that the value of the Name property is a string. If you explore the TargetObject property of alerts in your own SQL Monitor data repository, you might find other characters used for other non-string key property values. The different value types you might possibly encounter are as follows: "I" – Denotes a bigint value. For example, "I65432,". "g" – Denotes a GUID value. For example, "g32116732-63ae-4ab5-bd34-7dfdfb084c18,". "d" – Denotes a datetime value. For example, "d634815384796832438,". The value is stored as a bigint, rather than a native SQL datetime value. I’ll describe how datetime values are handled in the SQL Monitor data repostory in a future post. I suggest you have a look at the alerts in your own SQL Monitor data repository for further examples, so you can see how the TargetObject values are composed for each of the different types of alert. Let me give one further example, though, that represents a Custom metric alert, as this will help in describing the final column of interest in the alert.Alert table, SubType. Let me show you the alert I’m interested in: SELECT AlertId, a.AlertType, Name, TargetObject, [Read], SubType FROM alert.Alert a JOIN alert.Alert_Type at ON a.AlertType = at.AlertType WHERE AlertId = 65769;  AlertIdAlertTypeNameTargetObjectReadSubType 16576940Custom metric7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s6:master,12:CustomMetric,1,8:MetricId,I2,02 An AlertType value of 40 corresponds to the Custom metric alert type. The Name taken from the alert.Alert_Type table is simply Custom metric, but this doesn’t tell us anything about the specific custom metric that this alert pertains to. That’s where the SubType value comes in. For custom metric alerts, this provides us with the Id of the specific custom alert definition that can be found in the settings.CustomAlertDefinitions table. I don’t really want to delve into custom alert definitions yet (maybe in a later post), but an extra join in the previous query shows us that this alert pertains to the CPU pressure (avg runnable task count) custom metric alert. SELECT AlertId, a.AlertType, at.Name, cad.Name AS CustomAlertName, TargetObject, [Read], SubType FROM alert.Alert a JOIN alert.Alert_Type at ON a.AlertType = at.AlertType JOIN settings.CustomAlertDefinitions cad ON a.SubType = cad.Id WHERE AlertId = 65769;  AlertIdAlertTypeNameCustomAlertNameTargetObjectReadSubType 16576940Custom metricCPU pressure (avg runnable task count)7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s6:master,12:CustomMetric,1,8:MetricId,I2,02 The TargetObject value in this case breaks down like this: "7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger," – Cluster named "granger". "9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:," – SqlServer named "" (the default instance). "8:Database,1,4:Name,s6:master," – Database named "master". "12:CustomMetric,1,8:MetricId,I2," – Custom metric with an Id of 2. Note that the hierarchy for a custom metric is slightly different compared to the earlier Backup overdue alert. It’s root → Cluster → SqlServer → Database → CustomMetric. Also notice that, unlike Cluster, SqlServer and Database, the key property for CustomMetric is called MetricId (not Name), and the value is a bigint (not a string). Finally, delving into the custom metric tables is beyond the scope of this post, but for the sake of avoiding any future confusion, I’d like to point out that whilst the SubType references a custom alert definition, the MetricID value embedded in the TargetObject value references a custom metric definition. Although in this case both the custom metric definition and custom alert definition share the same Id value of 2, this is not generally the case. Okay, that’s enough for now, not least because as I’m typing this, it’s almost 2am, I have to go to work tomorrow, and my alarm is set for 6am – eek! In my next post, I’ll either cover the remaining three tables in the alert schema, or I’ll delve into the way SQL Monitor stores its monitoring data, as I’d originally planned to cover in this post.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, December 01, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, December 01, 2010Popular ReleasesUltimateJB: UltimateJB 2.02 PL3 KAKAROTO + CE-X-3.41 EvilSperm: Voici une version attendu avec impatience pour beaucoup : - La Version CEX341 pour pouvoir jouer avec des jeux demandant le firmware 3.50 ( certain ne fonctionne tous simplement pas ). - Pour l'instant le CEX341 n'est disponible qu'avec les PS3 en firmwares 3.41 !!! - La version PL3 KAKAROTO intégre ses dernières modification et intégre maintenant le firmware 3.30 !!! Conclusion : - UltimateJB CEX341 => Spoof le Firmware 3.41 en 3.50 ( facilite l'utilisation de certain jeux avec openManage...Menu and Context Menu for Silverlight 4.0: Silverlight Menu and Context Menu v2.2 Beta2: - Added keyboard navigation support with access keys - Shortcuts like Ctrl-Alt-A are now supported(where the browser permits it) - The PopupMenuSeparator is now completely based on the PopupMenuItem class - Moved item manipulation code to a partial class in PopupMenuItemsControl.cs - Simplified the layout by removing the RootGrid element(all content is now placed in OverlayCanvas and is accessed by the new ContentRoot property) - Added properties AccessKey, AccessKeyModifier, AccessKeyElemen...EnhSim: EnhSim 2.1.1: 2.1.1This release adds in the changes for 4.03a. To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Switched Searing Flames bac...AI: Initial 0.0.1: It’s simply just one code file; it simulates AI and machine in a simulated world. The AI has a little understanding of its body machine and parts, and able to use its feet to do actions just start and stop walking. The world is all of white with nothing but just the machine on a white planet. Colors, odors and position information make no sense. I’m previous C# programmer and I’m learning F# during this project, although I’m still not a good F# programmer, in this project I learning to prog...Microsoft - Domain Oriented N-Layered .NET 4.0 App Sample (Microsoft Spain): V1.0 - N-Layer DDD Sample App .NET 4.0: Required Software (Microsoft Base Software needed for Development environment) Visual Studio 2010 RTM & .NET 4.0 RTM (Final Versions) Expression Blend 4 SQL Server 2008 R2 Express/Standard/Enterprise Unity Application Block 2.0 - Published May 5th 2010 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=2D24F179-E0A6-49D7-89C4-5B67D939F91B&displaylang=en http://unity.codeplex.com/releases/view/31277 PEX & MOLES 0.94.51023.0, 29/Oct/2010 - Visual Studio 2010 Power Tools http://re...Sense/Net Enterprise Portal & ECMS: SenseNet 6.0.1 Community Edition: Sense/Net 6.0.1 Community Edition This half year we have been working quite fiercely to bring you the long-awaited release of Sense/Net 6.0. Download this Community Edition to see what we have been up to. These months we have worked on getting the WebCMS capabilities of Sense/Net 6.0 up to par. New features include: New, powerful page and portlet editing experience. HTML and CSS cleanup, new, powerful site skinning system. Upgraded, lightning-fast indexing and query via Lucene. Limita...Minecraft GPS: Minecraft GPS 1.1.1: New Features Compass! New style. Set opacity on main window to allow overlay of Minecraft. Open World in any folder. Fixes Fixed style so listbox won't grow the window size. Fixed open file dialog issue on non-vista kernel machines.DotSpatial: DotSpatial 11-28-2001: This release introduces some exciting improvements. Support for big raster, both in display and changing the scheme. Faster raster scheme creation for all rasters. Caching of the "sample" values so once obtained the raster symbolizer dialog loads faster. Reprojection supported for raster and image classes. Affine transform fully supported for images and rasters, so skewed images are now possible. Projection uses better checks when loading unprojected layers. GDAL raster support f...SuperWebSocket: SuperWebSocket(60438): It is the first release of SuperWebSocket. Because it is base on SuperSocket, most features of SuperSocket are supported in SuperWebSocket. The source code include a LiveChat demo.MDownloader: MDownloader-0.15.25.7002: Fixed updater Fixed FileServe Fixed LetItBitCropper: 1.9.4: Mostly fixes for issues with a few feature requests. Fixed Issues 2730 & 3638 & 14467 11044 11447 11448 11449 14665 Implemented Features 6123 11581PFC: PFC for PB 11.5: This is just a migration from the 11.0 code. No changes have been made yet (and they are needed) for it to work properly with 11.5.PDF Rider: PDF Rider 0.5: This release does not add any new feature for pdf manipulation, but enables automatic updates checking, so it is reccomended to install it in order to stay updated with next releases. Prerequisites * Microsoft Windows Operating Systems (XP - Vista - 7) * Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 runtime * A PDF rendering software (i.e. Adobe Reader) that can be opened inside Internet Explorer. Installation instructionsChoose one of the following methods: 1. Download and run the "pdfRider0...BCLExtensions: BCL Extensions v1.0: The files associated with v1.0 of the BCL Extensions library.XamlQuery/WPF - The Write Less, Do More, WPF Library: XamlQuery-WPF v1.2 (Runtime, Source): This is the first release of popular XamlQuery library for WPF. XamlQuery has already gained recognition among Silverlight developers.Math.NET Numerics: Beta 1: First beta of Math.NET Numerics. Only contains the managed linear algebra provider. Beta 2 will include the native linear algebra providers along with better documentation and examples.Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework: Visual Studio 2010 Code Samples 2010-11-25: Code samples for Visual Studio 2010Wii Backup Fusion: Wii Backup Fusion 0.8.5 Beta: - WBFS repair (default) options fixed - Transfer to image fixed - Settings ui widget names fixed - Some little bug fixes You need to reset the settings! Delete WiiBaFu's config file or registry entries on windows: Linux: ~/.config/WiiBaFu/wiibafu.conf Windows: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\WiiBaFu\wiibafu Mac OS X: ~/Library/Preferences/com.wiibafu.wiibafu.plist Caution: This is a BETA version! Errors, crashes and data loss not impossible! Use in test environments only, not on productive syste...Minemapper: Minemapper v0.1.3: Added process count and world size calculation progress to the status bar. Added View->'Status Bar' menu item to show/hide the status bar. Status bar is automatically shown when loading a world. Added a prompt, when loading a world, to use or clear cached images.Sexy Select: sexy select v0.4: Changes in v0.4 Added method : elements. This returns all the option elements that are currently added to the select list Added method : selectOption. This method accepts two values, the element to be modified and the selected state. (true/false)New ProjectsAbstract SQL: ADO.NET Sql classes wrapper; provides a clean fluent interface library that allows you to write very concise code and avoid the repetitiveness of ADO.NET. It can be used in all types of applications, even supports CLR stored procedures. It is written in C# 2.0.AI: The Artificial Intelligence program built on F#.Another .NET wrapper for the MailChimp API: A .NET wrapper for the MailChimp API 1.3 written in F# by DK.App-V Tool Suite: A collection of tools for Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V). These tools were developed at Sinclair Community College in the process of setting up and then supporting its App-V implementation.b2b: Project-01tBham.CmuCam: A library and GUI front-end for the CMUcam series of cameras for use by .NET-based applications, the GUI can also run standalone.BizTalk Deployment Tool: Yet another BizTalk Deployment Tool to make it easier for BizTalk deployment that needs to support orchestration versioning, multiple environments. Features includes but not limited to: GAC Verification, Receive Locations and Send Ports management, Orchestration States managementCertificate Request (PKCS#10) Generator: A .NET application that can create PKCS#10 Certificate Requests, either by generating a new key or reusing a preexisting one. Minimum requirement : Windows Vista and above. .NET 2.0.Cloud Billing: Cloud billing proposal.Currency Converter: Coding4Fun Windows Phone 7 Currency ConverterDiffLib: A diff implementation class library for .NET 3.5 written in C#.expression Blend 4.0 Comment Uncomment Xaml Code Extension: BlendShortCuts Extension makes it easier for blend users to comment and uncomment xaml code. you'll no longer have to insert tag <!-- --> just press ALt+C and ALT+U it's developed in c# (.Net framework 4.0, microsoft expression library)Game Studio: Game Studio is an Integrated Development Environment “IDE” that helps game developers in designing their games. The software generates code for the mesh, models, pictures and sounds. It has a form designer, code editor and a special framework for the “Game Studio”.Gridify for ASP.NET MVC: Easy solution for grids on top of ASP.NET MVC Make grids from your data tables in a really lightweight manner! How lightweight? Well, exactly TWO line changes. You don't have to add new action parameters or anything. Really simple!In-House Inventory System: a normal inventory management system, normal use case and normal function.In-House Money Saver: just for school project, it may not be useful, however, it is my first project using Microsoft technology.ITICup2009: Programs used in ITICup 2009.libobs++: Implementation of a signal/slot system, created exclusively for developers that uses Visual Studio's 2010 IDE/Compiler. The classes are templated, and really easy to learn. The callbacks are fast, and type-safe.Longan ERP: Open Source Business Solutions.Lucienne - WebScripting Assignment: Lucienne - WebScripting AssignmentMercurial.Net: .NET wrapper class library for the Mercurial Distributed Version Control System (DVCS) - (http://mercurial.selenic.com/), written in C# 3.0 for the .NET 3.5 Client Profile runtime.Mini C++ UI Framework: Mini C++ UI Framework for my work.MinuRaamu: MeieRaamuMobile Device Browser File: The Mobile Browser Definition File contains definitions for individual mobile devices and browsers. At run time, ASP.NET uses the information in the request header to determine what type of device/browser has made the request.NKinect: .NET 4.0 (C++/CLI) based open source implementation of Microsoft Kinect. Currently supports CodeLaboratories NUI SDK, but will be brought to OpenKinect/libfreenect when a Windows version is stable.Oblivion Cell - Oblivion mmo project: We are working on creating a mmorpg mod/Addon for Oblivion using C# and hooking to the accual game with obse and a few other mods. We also use Cell Framework for our base server system.Optional: Optional is a library to create options and commands from command-line arguments. It uses Convention over Configuration to get out of your way. Attributes can be used to set properties which differ from the convention.Paypal adaptive payments using .NET (C#): This is a C# project to help you interface with the PayPal adaptive payments API. https://www.x.com/community/ppx/adaptive_payments. POS bd: Dynamic POS. this project is being devoloped on focused to local market only. the initial project is projected for a single company whose main business is selling lighting-bulb instruments.PowerEvents for Windows PowerShell: A Microsoft Windows PowerShell module to assist with managing permanent WMI event consumer registrations. You can use this module to register for, and respond to, system-level events available to WMI.PPL Daily Report Helper: Daily Reporting Helper Tool for Phoenix Propulsion LabsRandom Passwd Generator: This is a simple program developed in C# that generates random passwords of the specified length with the specified characters to be used. It's in beta version.SharePoint MUI Manager: The SharePoint MUI Manager allows you to translate user-specified text, such as the Title and Description of the site, throught the web interface. There is no need to download, edit and upload a RESX file. Sqlite Client for Windows Phone: Sqlite client for Windows Phone 7 . Supports transactionsTouchToolkit: A toolkit to simplify the multi-touch application development and testing complexities. It currently supports WPF and Silverlight.TSI4: Proyecto para facultad de ingenieríaVS2010 Debugger Visualizers Contrib: This project is for hosting user-contributed debugger visualizers for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.Windows Shell Framework: Windows Shell Framework is a managed wrappers for a subset of the windows shell. This Project is for of .NET Shell Namespace Extension FrameworkWork in Progress: Work in progressWPFtest: A simpel test project for experimenting with WPF.YingYangXonix: YingYangXonixZeroUnit.net: The zero dependency, zero friction, sugar free Unit Testing framework for .Net.ZXing barcode for Windows Phone: Barcode support for Windows Phone 7 using ZXing

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• Introducing Data Annotations Extensions

  - by srkirkland

  Validation of user input is integral to building a modern web application, and ASP.NET MVC offers us a way to enforce business rules on both the client and server using Model Validation.  The recent release of ASP.NET MVC 3 has improved these offerings on the client side by introducing an unobtrusive validation library built on top of jquery.validation.  Out of the box MVC comes with support for Data Annotations (that is, System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations) and can be extended to support other frameworks.  Data Annotations Validation is becoming more popular and is being baked in to many other Microsoft offerings, including Entity Framework, though with MVC it only contains four validators: Range, Required, StringLength and Regular Expression.  The Data Annotations Extensions project attempts to augment these validators with additional attributes while maintaining the clean integration Data Annotations provides. A Quick Word About Data Annotations Extensions The Data Annotations Extensions project can be found at http://dataannotationsextensions.org/, and currently provides 11 additional validation attributes (ex: Email, EqualTo, Min/Max) on top of Data Annotations’ original 4.  You can find a current list of the validation attributes on the afore mentioned website. The core library provides server-side validation attributes that can be used in any .NET 4.0 project (no MVC dependency). There is also an easily pluggable client-side validation library which can be used in ASP.NET MVC 3 projects using unobtrusive jquery validation (only MVC3 included javascript files are required). On to the Preview Let’s say you had the following “Customer” domain model (or view model, depending on your project structure) in an MVC 3 project: public class Customer { public string Email { get; set; } public int Age { get; set; } public string ProfilePictureLocation { get; set; } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } When it comes time to create/edit this Customer, you will probably have a CustomerController and a simple form that just uses one of the Html.EditorFor() methods that the ASP.NET MVC tooling generates for you (or you can write yourself).  It should look something like this: With no validation, the customer can enter nonsense for an email address, and then can even report their age as a negative number!  With the built-in Data Annotations validation, I could do a bit better by adding a Range to the age, adding a RegularExpression for email (yuck!), and adding some required attributes.  However, I’d still be able to report my age as 10.75 years old, and my profile picture could still be any string.  Let’s use Data Annotations along with this project, Data Annotations Extensions, and see what we can get: public class Customer { [Email] [Required] public string Email { get; set; }   [Integer] [Min(1, ErrorMessage="Unless you are benjamin button you are lying.")] [Required] public int Age { get; set; }   [FileExtensions("png|jpg|jpeg|gif")] public string ProfilePictureLocation { get; set; } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Now let’s try to put in some invalid values and see what happens: That is very nice validation, all done on the client side (will also be validated on the server).  Also, the Customer class validation attributes are very easy to read and understand. Another bonus: Since Data Annotations Extensions can integrate with MVC 3’s unobtrusive validation, no additional scripts are required! Now that we’ve seen our target, let’s take a look at how to get there within a new MVC 3 project. Adding Data Annotations Extensions To Your Project First we will File->New Project and create an ASP.NET MVC 3 project.  I am going to use Razor for these examples, but any view engine can be used in practice.  Now go into the NuGet Extension Manager (right click on references and select add Library Package Reference) and search for “DataAnnotationsExtensions.”  You should see the following two packages: The first package is for server-side validation scenarios, but since we are using MVC 3 and would like comprehensive sever and client validation support, click on the DataAnnotationsExtensions.MVC3 project and then click Install.  This will install the Data Annotations Extensions server and client validation DLLs along with David Ebbo’s web activator (which enables the validation attributes to be registered with MVC 3). Now that Data Annotations Extensions is installed you have all you need to start doing advanced model validation.  If you are already using Data Annotations in your project, just making use of the additional validation attributes will provide client and server validation automatically.  However, assuming you are starting with a blank project I’ll walk you through setting up a controller and model to test with. Creating Your Model In the Models folder, create a new User.cs file with a User class that you can use as a model.  To start with, I’ll use the following class: public class User { public string Email { get; set; } public string Password { get; set; } public string PasswordConfirm { get; set; } public string HomePage { get; set; } public int Age { get; set; } } Next, create a simple controller with at least a Create method, and then a matching Create view (note, you can do all of this via the MVC built-in tooling).  Your files will look something like this: UserController.cs: public class UserController : Controller { public ActionResult Create() { return View(new User()); }   [HttpPost] public ActionResult Create(User user) { if (!ModelState.IsValid) { return View(user); }   return Content("User valid!"); } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Create.cshtml: @model NuGetValidationTester.Models.User   @{ ViewBag.Title = "Create"; }   <h2>Create</h2>   <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.validate.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.validate.unobtrusive.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script>   @using (Html.BeginForm()) { @Html.ValidationSummary(true) <fieldset> <legend>User</legend> @Html.EditorForModel() <p> <input type="submit" value="Create" /> </p> </fieldset> } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } In the Create.cshtml view, note that we are referencing jquery validation and jquery unobtrusive (jquery is referenced in the layout page).  These MVC 3 included scripts are the only ones you need to enjoy both the basic Data Annotations validation as well as the validation additions available in Data Annotations Extensions.  These references are added by default when you use the MVC 3 “Add View” dialog on a modification template type. Now when we go to /User/Create we should see a form for editing a User Since we haven’t yet added any validation attributes, this form is valid as shown (including no password, email and an age of 0).  With the built-in Data Annotations attributes we can make some of the fields required, and we could use a range validator of maybe 1 to 110 on Age (of course we don’t want to leave out supercentenarians) but let’s go further and validate our input comprehensively using Data Annotations Extensions.  The new and improved User.cs model class. { [Required] [Email] public string Email { get; set; }   [Required] public string Password { get; set; }   [Required] [EqualTo("Password")] public string PasswordConfirm { get; set; }   [Url] public string HomePage { get; set; }   [Integer] [Min(1)] public int Age { get; set; } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Now let’s re-run our form and try to use some invalid values: All of the validation errors you see above occurred on the client, without ever even hitting submit.  The validation is also checked on the server, which is a good practice since client validation is easily bypassed. That’s all you need to do to start a new project and include Data Annotations Extensions, and of course you can integrate it into an existing project just as easily. Nitpickers Corner ASP.NET MVC 3 futures defines four new data annotations attributes which this project has as well: CreditCard, Email, Url and EqualTo.  Unfortunately referencing MVC 3 futures necessitates taking an dependency on MVC 3 in your model layer, which may be unadvisable in a multi-tiered project.  Data Annotations Extensions keeps the server and client side libraries separate so using the project’s validation attributes don’t require you to take any additional dependencies in your model layer which still allowing for the rich client validation experience if you are using MVC 3. Custom Error Message and Globalization: Since the Data Annotations Extensions are build on top of Data Annotations, you have the ability to define your own static error messages and even to use resource files for very customizable error messages. Available Validators: Please see the project site at http://dataannotationsextensions.org/ for an up-to-date list of the new validators included in this project.  As of this post, the following validators are available: CreditCard Date Digits Email EqualTo FileExtensions Integer Max Min Numeric Url Conclusion Hopefully I’ve illustrated how easy it is to add server and client validation to your MVC 3 projects, and how to easily you can extend the available validation options to meet real world needs. The Data Annotations Extensions project is fully open source under the BSD license.  Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.  More information than you require, along with links to the source code, is available at http://dataannotationsextensions.org/. Enjoy!

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