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• linux thread synchronization

  - by johnnycrash

  I am new to linux and linux threads. I have spent some time googling to try to understand the differences between all the functions available for thread synchronization. I still have some questions. I have found all of these different types of synchronizations, each with a number of functions for locking, unlocking, testing the lock, etc. gcc atomic operations futexes mutexes spinlocks seqlocks rculocks conditions semaphores My current (but probably flawed) understanding is this: semaphores are process wide, involve the filesystem (virtually I assume), and are probably the slowest. Futexes might be the base locking mechanism used by mutexes, spinlocks, seqlocks, and rculocks. Futexes might be faster than the locking mechanisms that are based on them. Spinlocks dont block and thus avoid context swtiches. However they avoid the context switch at the expense of consuming all the cycles on a CPU until the lock is released (spinning). They should only should be used on multi processor systems for obvious reasons. Never sleep in a spinlock. The seq lock just tells you when you finished your work if a writer changed the data the work was based on. You have to go back and repeat the work in this case. Atomic operations are the fastest synch call, and probably are used in all the above locking mechanisms. You do not want to use atomic operations on all the fields in your shared data. You want to use a lock (mutex, futex, spin, seq, rcu) or a single atomic opertation on a lock flag when you are accessing multiple data fields. My questions go like this: Am I right so far with my assumptions? Does anyone know the cpu cycle cost of the various options? I am adding parallelism to the app so we can get better wall time response at the expense of running fewer app instances per box. Performances is the utmost consideration. I don't want to consume cpu with context switching, spinning, or lots of extra cpu cycles to read and write shared memory. I am absolutely concerned with number of cpu cycles consumed. Which (if any) of the locks prevent interruption of a thread by the scheduler or interrupt...or am I just an idiot and all synchonization mechanisms do this. What kinds of interruption are prevented? Can I block all threads or threads just on the locking thread's CPU? This question stems from my fear of interrupting a thread holding a lock for a very commonly used function. I expect that the scheduler might schedule any number of other workers who will likely run into this function and then block because it was locked. A lot of context switching would be wasted until the thread with the lock gets rescheduled and finishes. I can re-write this function to minimize lock time, but still it is so commonly called I would like to use a lock that prevents interruption...across all processors. I am writing user code...so I get software interrupts, not hardware ones...right? I should stay away from any functions (spin/seq locks) that have the word "irq" in them. Which locks are for writing kernel or driver code and which are meant for user mode? Does anyone think using an atomic operation to have multiple threads move through a linked list is nuts? I am thinking to atomicly change the current item pointer to the next item in the list. If the attempt works, then the thread can safely use the data the current item pointed to before it was moved. Other threads would now be moved along the list. futexes? Any reason to use them instead of mutexes? Is there a better way than using a condition to sleep a thread when there is no work? When using gcc atomic ops, specifically the test_and_set, can I get a performance increase by doing a non atomic test first and then using test_and_set to confirm? *I know this will be case specific, so here is the case. There is a large collection of work items, say thousands. Each work item has a flag that is initialized to 0. When a thread has exclusive access to the work item, the flag will be one. There will be lots of worker threads. Any time a thread is looking for work, they can non atomicly test for 1. If they read a 1, we know for certain that the work is unavailable. If they read a zero, they need to perform the atomic test_and_set to confirm. So if the atomic test_and_set is 500 cpu cycles because it is disabling pipelining, causes cpu's to communicate and L2 caches to flush/fill .... and a simple test is 1 cycle .... then as long as I had a better ratio of 500 to 1 when it came to stumbling upon already completed work items....this would be a win.* I hope to use mutexes or spinlocks to sparilngly protect sections of code that I want only one thread on the SYSTEM (not jsut the CPU) to access at a time. I hope to sparingly use gcc atomic ops to select work and minimize use of mutexes and spinlocks. For instance: a flag in a work item can be checked to see if a thread has worked it (0=no, 1=yes or in progress). A simple test_and_set tells the thread if it has work or needs to move on. I hope to use conditions to wake up threads when there is work. Thanks!

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• Fix a box 250px from top of content with wrapping content

  - by Matt

  I'm having trouble left aligning a related links div inside a block of text, exactly 250 pixels from the top of a content area, while retaining word wrapping. I attempted to do this with absolute positioning, but the text in the content area doesn't wrap around the content. I would just fix the related links div in the content, however, this will display on an article page, so I would like for it to be done without placing it in a specific location in the content. Is this possible? If so, can someone help me out with the CSS for this? Example image of desired look & feel... UPDATE: For simplicity, I've added example code. You can view this here: http://www.focusontheclouds.com/files/example.html. Example HTML: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Example Page</title> <style> body { width: 400px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; } h1 { font-family: Georgia, serif; font-weight: normal; } .relatedLinks { position: relative; width: 150px; text-align: center; background: #f00; height: 300px; float: left; margin: 0 10px 10px 0; } </style> </head> <body> <div class="relatedLinks"><h1>Related Links</h1></div> <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nunc tempus est luctus ante auctor et ullamcorper metus ullamcorper. Vestibulum molestie, lectus sed luctus egestas, dolor ipsum aliquet orci, ac bibendum quam elit blandit nulla.</p> <p>In sit amet sagittis urna. In fermentum enim et lectus consequat a congue elit porta. Pellentesque nisl quam, elementum vitae elementum et, facilisis quis velit. Nam odio neque, viverra in consectetur at, mollis eu mi. Etiam tempor odio vitae ligula ultrices mollis. </p> <p>Donec eget ligula id augue pulvinar lobortis. Mauris tincidunt suscipit felis, eget eleifend lectus molestie in. Donec et massa arcu. Aenean eleifend nulla at odio adipiscing quis interdum arcu dictum. Fusce tellus dolor, tempor ut blandit a, dapibus ac ante. Nulla eget ligula at turpis consequat accumsan egestas nec purus. Nullam sit amet turpis ac lacus tincidunt hendrerit. Nulla iaculis mauris sed enim ornare molestie. </p> <p>Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Maecenas non purus diam. Suspendisse iaculis tincidunt tempor. Suspendisse ut pretium lectus. Maecenas id est dui.</p> <p>Nunc pretium ipsum id libero rhoncus varius. Duis imperdiet elit ut turpis porta pharetra. Nulla vel dui vitae ipsum sollicitudin varius. Duis sagittis elit felis, quis interdum odio. </p> <p>Morbi imperdiet volutpat sodales. Aenean non euismod est. Cras ultricies felis non tortor congue ultrices. Proin quis enim arcu. Cras mattis sagittis erat, elementum bibendum ipsum imperdiet eu. Morbi fringilla ullamcorper elementum. Vestibulum semper dui non elit luctus quis accumsan ante scelerisque.</p> </body> </html>

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• jQuery returning two elements for each one it finds?

  - by John Rudy

  I'll start by saying I'm fairly new to jQuery. For the most part, I've found it intuitive and powerful, but this one circumstance has me thoroughly stumped. In the following method, the call to .each() returns two elements for every one found. It iterates over a set of table rows given IDs starting with the word, "communication," and followed by an ID number. For each row it returns, it processes twice. Using Firebug, I've validated that the DOM only has a single instance of each table row in question. Also using Firebug, I've validated that the method is not being called twice; the iteration in .each() is truly going over each returned table row twice. By the time all the AJAX call goodness is done, I'll have two entries in the database for each row created in the table. This is the code that's causing the issues: function getCommunications() { var list = $('[id^=communication]'); var communications = new Array(); list.each(function () { var communication = { ID: $(this).find('.commCompanyID').val(), /* * SNIP: more object properties here that are * unnecessary to this discussion */ }; communications.push(communication); }); return communications; } At the point of return communications, the Array returned will contain twice as many elements as there are table rows. I should note that nearly identical code (but going against specific lists of divs) is working on the same page. It's just the table that's suffering the issues. I'm using jQuery 1.4.1, the version which shipped with Visual Studio .NET 2010. The table markup is fully dynamic -- that is, aside from the header row, it's dependent on data either returned at page load or created by the user via a dialog box. I'll drop in just the code for what's created at page load; again using Firebug I've validated that what I create dynamically when an end user creates a row with the dialog box matches. (This should be readable by anyone, but for the record this is an ASP.NET MVC 2.0 project.) <table id="commTable"> <tr> <th></th> <th> Date / Time </th> <th> Contact </th> <th> Type </th> <th> Duration </th> <th> Notes </th> </tr> <% foreach (var item in Model) { %> <tr id="communication<%: item.ID %>"> <td> <a href="#" onclick="showEditCommunicationForm(<%: item.ID %>"> Edit</a> <span class="commDeleteButton"> <a href="#" onclick="deleteCommunication(<%: item.ID %>)"> Delete</a> </span> </td> <td> <span class="commDateTime"><%: item.DateTime %></span> <input type="hidden" class="commID" value="<%: item.ID %>" /> <input type="hidden" class="commIsDeleted" value="<%: item.IsDeleted %>" /> </td> <td> <span class="commSourceText"><%: item.Company.CompanyName %></span> <input type="hidden" class="commCompanyID" value="<%: item.CompanyID %>" /> </td> <td> <%: item.CommunicationType.CommunicationTypeText %> <input type="hidden" class="commTypeID" value="<%: item.CommunicationTypeID %>" /> </td> <td> <span class="commDuration"><%: item.DurationMinutes %></span> Minutes </td> <td> <span class="commNotes"><%: item.Notes %></span> </td> </tr> <% } %> </table>

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• Design advice for avoiding change in several classes

  - by Anders Svensson

  Hi, I'm trying to figure out how to design a small application more elegantly, and make it more resistant to change. Basically it is a sort of project price calculator, and the problem is that there are many parameters that can affect the pricing. I'm trying to avoid cluttering the code with a lot of if-clauses for each parameter, but still I have e.g. if-clauses in two places checking for the value of the size parameter. I have the Head First Design Patterns book, and have tried to find ideas there, but the closest I got was the decorator pattern, which has an example where starbuzz coffee sets prices depending first on condiments added, and then later in an exercise by adding a size parameter (Tall, Grande, Venti). But that didn't seem to help, because adding that parameter still seemed to add if-clause complexity in a lot of places (and this being an exercise they didn't explain that further). What I am trying to avoid is having to change several classes if a parameter were to change or a new parameter added, or at least change in as few places as possible (there's some fancy design principle word for this that I don't rememeber :-)). Here below is the code. Basically it calculates the price for a project that has the tasks "Writing" and "Analysis" with a size parameter and different pricing models. There will be other parameters coming in later too, like "How new is the product?" (New, 1-5 years old, 6-10 years old), etc. Any advice on the best design would be greatly appreciated, whether a "design pattern" or just good object oriented principles that would make it resistant to change (e.g. adding another size, or changing one of the size values, and only have to change in one place rather than in several if-clauses): public class Project { private readonly int _numberOfProducts; protected Size _size; public Task Analysis { get; set; } public Task Writing { get; set; } public Project(int numberOfProducts) { _numberOfProducts = numberOfProducts; _size = GetSize(); Analysis = new AnalysisTask(numberOfProducts, _size); Writing = new WritingTask(numberOfProducts, _size); } private Size GetSize() { if (_numberOfProducts <= 2) return Size.small; if (_numberOfProducts <= 8) return Size.medium; return Size.large; } public double GetPrice() { return Analysis.GetPrice() + Writing.GetPrice(); } } public abstract class Task { protected readonly int _numberOfProducts; protected Size _size; protected double _pricePerHour; protected Dictionary<Size, int> _hours; public abstract int TotalHours { get; } public double Price { get; set; } protected Task(int numberOfProducts, Size size) { _numberOfProducts = numberOfProducts; _size = size; } public double GetPrice() { return _pricePerHour * TotalHours; } } public class AnalysisTask : Task { public AnalysisTask(int numberOfProducts, Size size) : base(numberOfProducts, size) { _pricePerHour = 850; _hours = new Dictionary<Size, int>() { { Size.small, 56 }, { Size.medium, 104 }, { Size.large, 200 } }; } public override int TotalHours { get { return _hours[_size]; } } } public class WritingTask : Task { public WritingTask(int numberOfProducts, Size size) : base(numberOfProducts, size) { _pricePerHour = 650; _hours = new Dictionary<Size, int>() { { Size.small, 125 }, { Size.medium, 100 }, { Size.large, 60 } }; } public override int TotalHours { get { if (_size == Size.small) return _hours[_size] * _numberOfProducts; if (_size == Size.medium) return (_hours[Size.small] * 2) + (_hours[Size.medium] * (_numberOfProducts - 2)); return (_hours[Size.small] * 2) + (_hours[Size.medium] * (8 - 2)) + (_hours[Size.large] * (_numberOfProducts - 8)); } } } public enum Size { small, medium, large } public partial class Form1 : Form { public Form1() { InitializeComponent(); List<int> quantities = new List<int>(); for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++) { quantities.Add(i); } comboBoxNumberOfProducts.DataSource = quantities; } private void comboBoxNumberOfProducts_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, EventArgs e) { Project project = new Project((int)comboBoxNumberOfProducts.SelectedItem); labelPrice.Text = project.GetPrice().ToString(); labelWriterHours.Text = project.Writing.TotalHours.ToString(); labelAnalysisHours.Text = project.Analysis.TotalHours.ToString(); } } At the end is a simple current calling code in the change event for a combobox that set size... (BTW, I don't like the fact that I have to use several dots to get to the TotalHours at the end here either, as far as I can recall, that violates the "principle of least knowledge" or "the law of demeter", so input on that would be appreciated too, but it's not the main point of the question) Regards, Anders

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• $_GET loading content before head tag instead of in specified div.

  - by s32ialx

  NOT EDITING BELOW BUT THANKS TO SOME REALLY NICE PEOPLE I CAN'T POST AN IMAGE ANYMORE BECAUSE I HAD a 15 Rep but NOW ONLY A 5 becuase my question wasn't what they wanted help with they gave me a neg rep. The problem is that the content loads it displays UNDER the div i placed #CONTENT# inside so the styles are being ignored and it's posting #CONTENT# outside the divs at positions 0,0 any suggestions? Found out whats happening by using "View Source" seems that it's putting all of the #CONTENT#, content that's being loaded in front of the <head> tag. Like this <doctype...> <div class="home"> \ blah blah #CONTENT# bot being loaded in correct specified area </div> / <head> <script src=""></script> </head> <body> <div class="header"></div> <div class="contents"> #CONTENT# < where content SHOULD load </div> <div class="footer"></div> </body> so anyone got a fix? OK so a better description I'll add relevant screen-shots Whats happening is /* file.class.php */ <?php $file = new file(); class file{ var $path = "templates/clean"; var $ext = "tpl"; function loadfile($filename){ return file_get_contents($this->path . "/" . $filename . "." . $this->ext); } function setcontent($content,$newcontent,$vartoreplace='#CONTENT#'){ $val = str_replace($vartoreplace,$newcontent,$content); return $val; } function p($content) { $v = $content; $v = str_replace('#CONTENT#','',$v); print $v; } } if(!isset($_GET['page'])){ // if not, lets load our index page(you can change home.php to whatever you want: include("main.txt"); // else $_GET['page'] was set so lets do stuff: } else { // lets first check if the file exists: if(file_exists($_GET['page'].'.txt')){ // and lets include that then: include($_GET['page'].'.txt'); // sorry mate, could not find it: } else { echo 'Sorry, could not find <strong>' . $_GET['page'] .'.txt</strong>'; } } ?> is calling for a file_get_contents at the bottom which I use in /* index.php */ <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> <?php include('classes/file.class.php'); // load the templates $header = $file->loadfile('header'); $body = $file->loadfile('body'); $footer = $file->loadfile('footer'); // fill body.tpl #CONTENT# slot with $content $body = $file->setcontent($body, $content); // cleanup and output the full page $file->p($header . $body . $footer); ?> and loads into /* body.tpl */ <div id="bodys"> <div id="bodt"></div> <div id="bodm"> <div id="contents"> #CONTENT# </div> </div> <div id="bodb"></div> </div> but the issue is as follows the $content loads properly img tags etc <h2> tags etc but CSS styling is TOTALY ignored for position width z-index etc. and as follows here's the screen-shot My Firefox Showing The Problem In Action REPOSTED DUE TO PEOPLE NOT HELPING AND JUST BEING ARROGANT AND GIVING NEGATIVE VOTES and not even saying a word. DO NOT COMMENT UNLESS YOU PLAN TO HELP god I'm a beginner and with you people giving me bad reviews this won't make me help you out when the chance comes.

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• pass an ID with hyperlik but cant get this ID value from a fk in one table when i click in insert

  - by susan

  Something strange happened in my codes, actually I have a hyperlink that pass ID value in a query string to second page.in second page i have 2 sql datasource that both these sql datasources should get this id value and pass it to a filter parameter to show sth in datalist. so in another word I have a first page that has an hyperlink read ID value from a datasource and pass it to second page.its like below: <asp:HyperLink ID="HyperLink1" runat="server" NavigateUrl='<%# "~/forumpage.aspx?ID="+Eval("ID")%>'><%#Eval("title")%> </asp:HyperLink> then in second page i have one sql datasource with a query like this ...where ID=@id and get this id in query string from db.it work great . but i have problem with second sql datasource in second page it has a query sth like below:...forms.question_id=@id then in sql reference both to query string as ID that get by first page in hyperlink. but when i click in insert button show me error with fk. error:Error:The INSERT statement conflicted with the FOREIGN KEY constraint "FK_forumreply_forumquestions". The conflict occurred in database "forum", table "dbo.forumquestions", column 'ID'. The statement has been terminated. my tables (question(ID,user_id(fk),Cat_id(fk),title,bodytext) (reply(ID,userr_id(fk),questionn_id(fk),titlereply,bodytestreply); When by hand in cb i gave a number in questionn_id like 1 it show me successful but when it want read from a filter by datasource this field face with problem. plzzzz help i really need skip from this part.and cause i am new i guess I cant understand the logic way clearly. <asp:SqlDataSource ID="sdsreply" runat="server" ConnectionString="<%$ ConnectionStrings:forumConnectionString %>" SelectCommand="SELECT forumreply.ID, forumreply.userr_id, forumreply.questionn_id, forumreply.bodytextreply, forumreply.datetimereply, forumquestions.ID AS Expr1, forumusers.ID AS Expr2, forumusers.username FROM forumquestions INNER JOIN forumreply ON forumquestions.ID = forumreply.questionn_id INNER JOIN forumusers ON forumquestions.user_id = forumusers.ID AND forumreply.userr_id = forumusers.ID where forumreply.questionn_id=@questionn_id"> <SelectParameters> <asp:QueryStringParameter Name="questionn_id" QueryStringField="ID" /> </SelectParameters> </asp:SqlDataSource> it is cb for second page in insert button: { if (Session["userid"] != null) { lblreply.Text = Session["userid"].ToString(); } else { Session["userid"]=null; } if (HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated) { lblshow.Text = string.Empty; string d = HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.Name; lblshow.Text =d + "???? ??? ?????." ; foreach (DataListItem item in DataList2.Items) { Label questionn_idLabel = (Label)item.FindControl("questionn_idLabel"); Label userr_idLabel = (Label)item.FindControl("userr_idLabel"); lbltest.Text = string.Empty; lbltest.Text = questionn_idLabel.Text; lblreply.Text = string.Empty; lblreply.Text = userr_idLabel.Text; } } else { lblshow.Text = "??? ??? ??? ??? ?? ?? ?????? ???? ???? ???? ????? ??? ??? ? ??? ????? ???????."; } } { if(HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated) { if (Page.IsValid) { SqlConnection con = new SqlConnection(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["forumConnectionString"].ConnectionString); try { con.Open(); SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand("insert into forumreply (userr_id,questionn_id,bodytextreply,datetimereply)values(@userr_id,@questionn_id,@bodytextreply,@datetimereply)", con); cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("userr_id",lblreply.Text); cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("questionn_id",lbltest.Text); cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("bodytextreply",txtbody.Text); cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("datetimereply",DateTime.Now ); cmd.ExecuteNonQuery(); } catch (Exception exp) { Response.Write("<b>Error:</b>"); Response.Write(exp.Message); } finally { con.Close(); } lblmsg.Text = "???? ??? ?? ?????? ??? ?????.thx"; lblshow.Visible = false; //lbltxt.Text = txtbody.Text; txtbody.Text = string.Empty; } } else { lblmsg.Text = string.Empty; Session["rem"] = Request.UrlReferrer.AbsoluteUri; Response.Redirect("~/login.aspx"); } }

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• What's wrong with my destructor?

  - by Ahmed Sharara

  // Sparse Array Assignment.cpp : Defines the entry point for the console application. // #include "stdafx.h" #include<iostream> using namespace std; struct node{ int row; int col; int value; node* next_in_row; node* next_in_col; }; class MultiLinkedListSparseArray { private: char *logfile; node** rowPtr; node** colPtr; // used in constructor node* find_node(node* out); node* ins_node(node* ins,int col); node* in_node(node* ins,node* z); node* get(node* in,int row,int col); bool exist(node* so,int row,int col); node* dummy; int rowd,cold; //add anything you need public: MultiLinkedListSparseArray(int rows, int cols); ~MultiLinkedListSparseArray(); void setCell(int row, int col, int value); int getCell(int row, int col); void display(); void log(char *s); void dump(); }; MultiLinkedListSparseArray::MultiLinkedListSparseArray(int rows,int cols){ rowPtr=new node* [rows+1]; colPtr=new node* [cols+1]; for(int n=0;n<=rows;n++) rowPtr[n]=NULL; for(int i=0;i<=cols;i++) colPtr[i]=NULL; rowd=rows;cold=cols; } MultiLinkedListSparseArray::~MultiLinkedListSparseArray(){ cout<<"array is deleted"<<endl; for(int i=rowd;i>=0;i--){ for(int j=cold;j>=0;j--){ if(exist(rowPtr[i],i,j)) delete get(rowPtr[i],i,j); } } // it stops in the last loop & doesnt show the done word cout<<"done"<<endl; delete [] rowPtr; delete [] colPtr; delete dummy; } void MultiLinkedListSparseArray::log(char *s){ logfile=s; } void MultiLinkedListSparseArray::setCell(int row,int col,int value){ if(exist(rowPtr[row],row,col)){ (*get(rowPtr[row],row,col)).value=value; } else{ if(rowPtr[row]==NULL){ rowPtr[row]=new node; (*rowPtr[row]).value=value; (*rowPtr[row]).row=row; (*rowPtr[row]).col=col; (*rowPtr[row]).next_in_row=NULL; (*rowPtr[row]).next_in_col=NULL; } else if((*find_node(rowPtr[row])).col<col){ node* out; out=find_node(rowPtr[row]); (*out).next_in_row=new node; (*((*out).next_in_row)).col=col; (*((*out).next_in_row)).row=row; (*((*out).next_in_row)).value=value; (*((*out).next_in_row)).next_in_row=NULL; } else if((*find_node(rowPtr[row])).col>col){ node* ins; ins=in_node(rowPtr[row],ins_node(rowPtr[row],col)); node* g=(*ins).next_in_row; (*ins).next_in_row=new node; (*((*ins).next_in_row)).col=col; (*(*ins).next_in_row).row=row; (*(*ins).next_in_row).value=value; (*(*ins).next_in_row).next_in_row=g; } } } int MultiLinkedListSparseArray::getCell(int row,int col){ return (*get(rowPtr[row],row,col)).value; } void MultiLinkedListSparseArray::display(){ for(int i=1;i<=5;i++){ for(int j=1;j<=5;j++){ if(exist(rowPtr[i],i,j)) cout<<(*get(rowPtr[i],i,j)).value<<" "; else cout<<"0"<<" "; } cout<<endl; } } node* MultiLinkedListSparseArray::find_node(node* out) { while((*out).next_in_row!=NULL) out=(*out).next_in_row; return out; } node* MultiLinkedListSparseArray::ins_node(node* ins,int col){ while(!((*ins).col>col)) ins=(*ins).next_in_row; return ins; } node* MultiLinkedListSparseArray::in_node(node* ins,node* z){ while((*ins).next_in_row!=z) ins=(*ins).next_in_col; return ins; } node* MultiLinkedListSparseArray::get(node* in,int row,int col){ dummy=new node; dummy->value=0; while((*in).col!=col){ if((*in).next_in_row==NULL){ return dummy; } in=(*in).next_in_row; } return in; } bool MultiLinkedListSparseArray::exist(node* so,int row,int col){ if(so==NULL) return false; else{ while((*so).col!=col){ if((*so).next_in_row==NULL) return false; else so=(*so).next_in_row; } return true; } }

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• Table not Echoing out if another Table has a Zero value

  - by John

  Hello, The table below with mysql_query($sqlStr3) (the one with the word "Joined" in its row) does not echo if the result associated with mysql_query($sqlStr1) has a value of zero. This happens even if mysql_query($sqlStr3) returns a result. In other words, if a given loginid has an entry in the table "login", but not one in the table "submission", then the table associated with mysql_query($sqlStr3) does not echo. I don't understand why the "submission" table would have any effect on mysql_query($sqlStr3), since the $sqlStr3 only deals with another table, called "login", as seen below. Any ideas why this is happening? Thanks in advance, John W. <?php echo '<div class="profilename">User Profile for </div>'; echo '<div class="profilename2">'.$profile.'</div>'; $tzFrom = new DateTimeZone('America/New_York'); $tzTo = new DateTimeZone('America/Phoenix'); $profile = mysql_real_escape_string($_GET['profile']); $sqlStr = "SELECT l.username, l.loginid, s.loginid, s.submissionid, s.title, s.url, s.datesubmitted, s.displayurl FROM submission AS s INNER JOIN login AS l ON s.loginid = l.loginid WHERE l.username = '$profile' ORDER BY s.datesubmitted DESC"; $result = mysql_query($sqlStr); $arr = array(); echo "<table class=\"samplesrec1\">"; while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) { $dt = new DateTime($row["datesubmitted"], $tzFrom); $dt->setTimezone($tzTo); echo '<tr>'; echo '<td class="sitename3">'.$dt->format('F j, Y &\nb\sp &\nb\sp g:i a').'</a></td>'; echo '<td class="sitename1"><a href="http://www.'.$row["url"].'">'.$row["title"].'</a></td>'; echo '</tr>'; } echo "</table>"; $sqlStr1 = "SELECT l.username, l.loginid, s.loginid, s.submissionid, s.title, s.url, s.datesubmitted, s.displayurl, l.created, count(s.submissionid) countSubmissions FROM submission AS s INNER JOIN login AS l ON s.loginid = l.loginid WHERE l.username = '$profile'"; $result1 = mysql_query($sqlStr1); $arr1 = array(); echo "<table class=\"samplesrec2\">"; while ($row1 = mysql_fetch_array($result1)) { echo '<tr>'; echo '<td class="sitename5">Submissions: &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'.$row1["countSubmissions"].'</td>'; echo '</tr>'; } echo "</table>"; $sqlStr2 = "SELECT l.username, l.loginid, c.loginid, c.commentid, c.submissionid, c.comment, c.datecommented, l.created, count(c.commentid) countComments FROM comment AS c INNER JOIN login AS l ON c.loginid = l.loginid WHERE l.username = '$profile'"; $result2 = mysql_query($sqlStr2); $arr2 = array(); echo "<table class=\"samplesrec3\">"; while ($row2 = mysql_fetch_array($result2)) { echo '<tr>'; echo '<td class="sitename5">Comments: &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'.$row2["countComments"].'</td>'; echo '</tr>'; } echo "</table>"; $tzFrom3 = new DateTimeZone('America/New_York'); $tzTo3 = new DateTimeZone('America/Phoenix'); $sqlStr3 = "SELECT created, username FROM login WHERE username = '$profile'"; $result3 = mysql_query($sqlStr3); $arr3 = array(); echo "<table class=\"samplesrec4\">"; while ($row3 = mysql_fetch_array($result3)) { $dt3 = new DateTime($row3["created"], $tzFrom3); $dt3->setTimezone($tzTo3); echo '<tr>'; echo '<td class="sitename5">Joined: &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'.$dt->format('F j, Y').'</td>'; echo '</tr>'; } echo "</table>"; ?> </body> </html>

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• c windows connect() fails. error 10049

  - by Joshua Moore

  The following two pieces of code compile, but I get a connect() failed error on the client side. (compiled with MinGW). Client Code: // thanks to cs.baylor.edu/~donahoo/practical/CSockets/code/TCPEchoClientWS.c #include <stdio.h> #include <winsock.h> #include <stdlib.h> #define RCVBUFSIZE 32 // size of receive buffer void DieWithError(char *errorMessage); int main(int argc, char* argv[]) { int sock; struct sockaddr_in echoServAddr; unsigned short echoServPort; char *servIP; char *echoString; char echoBuffer[RCVBUFSIZE]; int echoStringLen; int bytesRcvd, totalBytesRcvd; WSAData wsaData; if((argc < 3) || (argc > 4)){ fprintf(stderr, "Usage: %s <Sever IP> <Echo Word> [<Echo Port>]\n", argv[0]); exit(1); } if (argc==4) echoServPort = atoi(argv[3]); // use given port if any else echoServPort = 7; // echo is well-known port for echo service if(WSAStartup(MAKEWORD(2, 0), &wsaData) != 0){ // load winsock 2.0 dll fprintf(stderr, "WSAStartup() failed"); exit(1); } // create reliable, stream socket using tcp if((sock=socket(PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TCP)) < 0) DieWithError("socket() failed"); // construct the server address structure memset(&echoServAddr, 0, sizeof(echoServAddr)); echoServAddr.sin_family = AF_INET; echoServAddr.sin_addr.s_addr = inet_addr(servIP); // server IP address echoServAddr.sin_port = htons(echoServPort); // establish connection to the echo server if(connect(sock, (struct sockaddr*)&echoServAddr, sizeof(echoServAddr)) < 0) DieWithError("connect() failed"); echoStringLen = strlen(echoString); // determine input length // send the string, includeing the null terminator to the server if(send(sock, echoString, echoStringLen, 0)!= echoStringLen) DieWithError("send() sent a different number of bytes than expected"); totalBytesRcvd = 0; printf("Received: "); // setup to print the echoed string while(totalBytesRcvd < echoStringLen){ // receive up to the buffer size (minus 1 to leave space for a null terminator) bytes from the sender if(bytesRcvd = recv(sock, echoBuffer, RCVBUFSIZE-1, 0) <= 0) DieWithError("recv() failed or connection closed prematurely"); totalBytesRcvd += bytesRcvd; // keep tally of total bytes echoBuffer[bytesRcvd] = '\0'; printf("%s", echoBuffer); // print the echo buffer } printf("\n"); closesocket(sock); WSACleanup(); exit(0); } void DieWithError(char *errorMessage) { fprintf(stderr, "%s: %d\n", errorMessage, WSAGetLastError()); exit(1); } Server Code: // thanks cs.baylor.edu/~donahoo/practical/CSockets/code/TCPEchoServerWS.c #include <stdio.h> #include <winsock.h> #include <stdlib.h> #define MAXPENDING 5 // maximum outstanding connection requests #define RCVBUFSIZE 1000 void DieWithError(char *errorMessage); void HandleTCPClient(int clntSocket); // tcp client handling function int main(int argc, char **argv) { int serverSock; int clientSock; struct sockaddr_in echoServerAddr; struct sockaddr_in echoClientAddr; unsigned short echoServerPort; int clientLen; // length of client address data structure WSAData wsaData; if (argc!=2){ fprintf(stderr, "Usage: %s <Server Port>\n", argv[0]); exit(1); } echoServerPort = atoi(argv[1]); if(WSAStartup(MAKEWORD(2, 0), &wsaData)!=0){ fprintf(stderr, "WSAStartup() failed"); exit(1); } // create socket for incoming connections if((serverSock=socket(PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TCP))<0) DieWithError("socket() failed"); // construct local address structure memset(&echoServerAddr, 0, sizeof(echoServerAddr)); echoServerAddr.sin_family = AF_INET; echoServerAddr.sin_addr.s_addr = htonl(INADDR_ANY); // any incoming interface echoServerAddr.sin_port = htons(echoServerPort); // local port // bind to the local address if(bind(serverSock, (struct sockaddr*)&echoServerAddr, sizeof(echoServerAddr) )<0) DieWithError("bind() failed"); // mark the socket so it will listen for incoming connections if(listen(serverSock, MAXPENDING)<0) DieWithError("listen() failed"); for (;;){ // run forever // set the size of the in-out parameter clientLen = sizeof(echoClientAddr); // wait for a client to connect if((clientSock = accept(serverSock, (struct sockaddr*)&echoClientAddr, &clientLen)) < 0) DieWithError("accept() failed"); // clientSock is connected to a client printf("Handling client %s\n", inet_ntoa(echoClientAddr.sin_addr)); HandleTCPClient(clientSock); } // NOT REACHED } void DieWithError(char *errorMessage) { fprintf(stderr, "%s: %d\n", errorMessage, WSAGetLastError()); exit(1); } void HandleTCPClient(int clientSocket) { char echoBuffer[RCVBUFSIZE]; // buffer for echostring int recvMsgSize; // size of received message // receive message from client if((recvMsgSize = recv(clientSocket, echoBuffer, RCVBUFSIZE, 0) <0)) DieWithError("recv() failed"); // send received string and receive again until end of transmission while(recvMsgSize > 0){ // echo message back to client if(send(clientSocket, echoBuffer, recvMsgSize, 0)!=recvMsgSize) DieWithError("send() failed"); // see if there's more data to receive if((recvMsgSize = recv(clientSocket, echoBuffer, RCVBUFSIZE, 0)) <0) DieWithError("recv() failed"); } closesocket(clientSocket); // close client socket } How can I fix this?

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• Center footer fixed at the bottom IE

  - by Mirko

  I am coding a web interface for a University project and I have been dealing with this issue: I want my footer fixed at the bottom so it is in place no matter which screen I am using or if I toggle the full screen mode It works in all the other browsers except IE7 (I do not have to support previous versions) HTML <div id="menu"> <a href="information.html" rel="shadowbox;height=500;width=650" title="INFORMATION" > <img src="images/info.png" alt="information icon" /> </a> <a href="images/bricks_of_destiny.jpg" rel="shadowbox[gallery]" title="IMAGES" > <img src="images/image.png" alt="image icon" /> </a> <a href="music_player.swf" title="MUSIC" rel="shadowbox;height=400;width=600" > <img src="images/music.png" alt="music icon" /> </a> <a href="#" title="MOVIES"><img src="images/television.png" alt="movies icon" /></a> <a href="quotes.html" title="QUOTES" rel="shadowbox;height=300;width=650" > <img src="images/male_user.png" alt="male user icon" /> </a> <a href="#" title="REFERENCES"> <img src="images/search_globe.png" alt="search globe icon" /> </a> </div> <a href="images/destiny_1.jpg" rel="shadowbox[gallery]" title="IMAGES"></a> <a href="images/destiny_carma_jewell.jpg" rel="shadowbox[gallery]" title="IMAGES"></a> <a href="images/destiny-joan-marie.jpg" rel="shadowbox[gallery]" title="IMAGES"></a> <a href="images/pursuing_destiny.jpg" rel="shadowbox[gallery]" title="IMAGES"></a> <div class="clear"></div> <div id="destiny"> Discover more about the word <span class="strong">DESTINY </span>! Click one of the icon above! (F11 Toggle Full / Standard screen) </div> <div id="footer"> <ul id="breadcrumbs"> <li>Disclaimer</li> <li> | Icons by: <a href="http://dryicons.com/" rel="shadowbox">dryicons.com</a></li> <li> | Website by: <a href="http://www.eezzyweb.com/" rel="shadowbox">eezzyweb</a></li> <li> | <a href="http://jquery.com/" rel="shadowbox">jQuery</a></li> </ul> </div> </div> CSS: #wrapper{ text-align:center; margin:0 auto; width:750px; height:430px; border:1px solid #fff; } #menu{ position:relative; margin:0 auto; top:350px; width:450px; height:60px; } #destiny{ position:relative; top:380px; color:#FFF; font-size:1.5em; font-weight:bold; border:1px solid #fff; } #breadcrumbs{ list-style:none; } #breadcrumbs li{ display:inline; color:#FFF; } #footer{ position:absolute; width:750px; height:60px; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; border:1px solid #fff; bottom:0; } .clear{ clear:both; } The white borders are there only for debugging purposes The application is hosted at http://www.eezzyweb.com/destiny/ Any suggestion is appreciated

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• Need help getting DIV inside DIV to stretch to width of contents in Firefox

  - by bj.

  I am using a layout similar to the one from Dynamic Drive here: http://www.dynamicdrive.com/style/layouts/item/css-right-frame-layout/ The main content area (white) has overflow set to auto. I have given the innerTube inside this main content area a border. However if the contents within this innerTube are greater than the width of the main content area, a horizontal scroll bar will appear as expected, but in Firefox these contents will 'overlap' the border and go off screen (can be retrieved by scrolling horizontally). In other words, the right hand border remains in place, and the content just goes over the op of it, and disappears behind the right hand column. In IE it behaves exactly as I want - the content pushes the border off screen to be visible only once you scroll over there. I guess the easiest thing is to paste the source code here. If you copy it into a blank file you'll see what I mean. I've just used one really long word to replicate what happens if a wide image is there instead. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me out. <!--Force IE6 into quirks mode with this comment tag--> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" /> <style type="text/css"> body{ margin: 0; padding: 0; border: 0; overflow: hidden; height: 100%; max-height: 100%; } #framecontent{ position: absolute; top: 0; bottom: 0; right: 0; width: 200px; /*Width of frame div*/ height: 100%; overflow: hidden; /*Disable scrollbars. Set to "scroll" to enable*/ background: #cccccc; color: white; } #maincontent{ position: fixed; top: 0; left: 0; right: 200px; /*Set right value to WidthOfFrameDiv*/ bottom: 0; overflow: auto; background: #fff; } .innertube{ margin: 15px; /*Margins for inner DIV inside each DIV (to provide padding)*/ } .innertubeWithBorder { margin: 15px; border: solid 1px #666666; } * html body{ /*IE6 hack*/ padding: 0 200px 0 0; /*Set value to (0 WidthOfFrameDiv 0 0)*/ } * html #maincontent{ /*IE6 hack*/ height: 100%; width: 100%; } </style> </head> <body> <div id="framecontent"> <div class="innertube"> <h1>CSS Right Frame Layout</h1> <h3>Sample text here</h3> </div> </div> <div id="maincontent"> <div class="innertubeWithBorder"> <h1>Dynamic Drive CSS Library</h1> <p>AReallyLongWordWhichIsSimilarToHavingAnImageWithWidthGreaterThanTheWidthOfThisDivToShowOverFlowProblemWithBorderSoIfYouResizeThisWindowNarrowerYouWillSeeWhatIMeanWorksFineInIEButNotFirefox</p> <p>So I want that border over there ------> to dissappear behind the right hand column like it does in IE, and be visible once you use the scrollbar below and scroll to the right</p> <p style="text-align: center">Credits: <a href="http://www.dynamicdrive.com/style/">Dynamic Drive CSS Library</a></p> </div> </div> </body> </html>

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• Abstracting the adding of click events to elements selected by class using jQuery

  - by baroquedub

  I'm slowly getting up to speed with jQuery and am starting to want to abstract my code. I'm running into problems trying to define click events at page load. In the code below, I'm trying to run through each div with the 'block' class and add events to some of its child elements by selecting them by class: <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function (){ $('HTML').addClass('JS'); // if JS enabled, hide answers $(".block").each(function() { problem = $(this).children('.problem'); button = $(this).children('.showButton'); problem.data('currentState', 'off'); button.click(function() { if ((problem.data('currentState')) == 'off'){ button.children('.btn').html('Hide'); problem.data('currentState', 'on'); problem.fadeIn('slow'); } else if ((problem.data('currentState')) == 'on'){ button.children('.btn').html('Solve'); problem.data('currentState', 'off'); problem.fadeOut('fast'); } return false; }); }); }); </script> <style media="all" type="text/css"> .JS div.problem{display:none;} </style> <div class="block"> <div class="showButton"> <a href="#" title="Show solution" class="btn">Solve</a> </div> <div class="problem"> <p>Answer 1</p> </div> </div> <div class="block"> <div class="showButton"> <a href="#" title="Show solution" class="btn">Solve</a> </div> <div class="problem"> <p>Answer 2</p> </div> </div> Unfortunately using this, only the last of the divs' button actually works. The event is not 'localised' (if that's the right word for it?) i.e. the event is only applied to the last $(".block") in the each method. So I have to laboriously add ids for each element and define my click events one by one. Surely there's a better way! Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? And how I can get rid of the need for those IDs (I want this to work on dynamically generated pages where I might not know how many 'blocks' there are...) <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function (){ $('HTML').addClass('JS'); // if JS enabled, hide answers // Preferred version DOESN'T' WORK // So have to add ids to each element and laboriously set-up each one in turn... $('#problem1').data('currentState', 'off'); $('#showButton1').click(function() { if (($('#problem1').data('currentState')) == 'off'){ $('#showButton1 > a').html('Hide'); $('#problem1').data('currentState', 'on'); $('#problem1').fadeIn('slow'); } else if (($('#problem1').data('currentState')) == 'on'){ $('#showButton1 > a').html('Solve'); $('#problem1').data('currentState', 'off'); $('#problem1').fadeOut('fast'); } return false; }); $('#problem2').data('currentState', 'off'); $('#showButton2').click(function() { if (($('#problem2').data('currentState')) == 'off'){ $('#showButton2 > a').html('Hide'); $('#problem2').data('currentState', 'on'); $('#problem2').fadeIn('slow'); } else if (($('#problem2').data('currentState')) == 'on'){ $('#showButton2 > a').html('Solve'); $('#problem2').data('currentState', 'off'); $('#problem2').fadeOut('fast'); } return false; }); }); </script> <style media="all" type="text/css"> .JS div.problem{display:none;} </style> <div class="block"> <div class="showButton" id="showButton1"> <a href="#" title="Show solution" class="btn">Solve</a> </div> <div class="problem" id="problem1"> <p>Answer 1</p> </div> </div> <div class="block"> <div class="showButton" id="showButton2"> <a href="#" title="Show solution" class="btn">Solve</a> </div> <div class="problem" id="problem2"> <p>Answer 2</p> </div> </div>

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• strange array in php

  - by tunpishuang

  here i wrote a function , it's general purpose is to get an array of the depIds under the parent root $depId. i use recursion method to get the array. public function getEmpsByDep($depId){ $query = "select * from ".SQLPREFIX."department where id_parent=".$depId; $stmt=$this->db->query($query); while(($row=$this->db->fetch_assoc($stmt))==true) { if($this->hasChildNode($row['DEPID'])) { $depId = $row['DEPID']; self::getEmpsByDep($depId); } else { $arr[]=$row['DEPID']; } } return ($arr); } while i think it should return a 1D array of the depid.but it return a strange 2D array like this: array(4) { [0]=> string(2) "11" [1]=> string(2) "12" [2]=> string(2) "13" [3]=> string(2) "14" } array(3) { [0]=> string(2) "19" [1]=> string(2) "20" [2]=> string(2) "21" } array(3) { [0]=> string(2) "15" [1]=> string(2) "16" [2]=> string(2) "17" } array(8) { [0]=> string(1) "2" [1]=> string(1) "4" [2]=> string(1) "5" [3]=> string(1) "6" [4]=> string(1) "7" [5]=> string(1) "8" [6]=> string(1) "9" [7]=> string(2) "10" } here is the table structure and data sample: $query[]="create table ".$sqltblpre."department( depId number(10) not null primary key, depName varchar2(50) not null, id_parent number(10) )"; //department(?????) $index=1; $query[] = "INSERT INTO ".$sqltblpre."department values(".$index++.",'??',0)"; //1 $query[] = "INSERT INTO ".$sqltblpre."department values(".$index++.",'???',0)"; //2 $query[] = "INSERT INTO ".$sqltblpre."department values(".$index++.",'???',0)"; //3 $query[] = "INSERT INTO ".$sqltblpre."department values(".$index++.",'???',0)"; //4 $query[] = "INSERT INTO ".$sqltblpre."department values(".$index++.",'???',0)"; //5 $query[] = "INSERT INTO ".$sqltblpre."department values(".$index++.",'???',0)"; //6 $query[] = "INSERT INTO ".$sqltblpre."department values(".$index++.",'?????',0)"; $query[] = "INSERT INTO ".$sqltblpre."department values(".$index++.",'????',0)"; $query[] = "INSERT INTO ".$sqltblpre."department values(".$index++.",'????',0)"; $query[] = "INSERT INTO ".$sqltblpre."department values(".$index++.",'????',0)"; $query[] = "INSERT INTO ".$sqltblpre."department values(".$index++.",'??',1)"; $query[] = "INSERT INTO ".$sqltblpre."department values(".$index++.",'??',1)"; $query[] = "INSERT INTO ".$sqltblpre."department values(".$index++.",'???',1)"; $query[] = "INSERT INTO ".$sqltblpre."department values(".$index++.",'??',1)"; $query[] = "INSERT INTO ".$sqltblpre."department values(".$index++.",'??',3)"; $query[] = "INSERT INTO ".$sqltblpre."department values(".$index++.",'???',3)"; $query[] = "INSERT INTO ".$sqltblpre."department values(".$index++.",'???',3)"; $query[] = "INSERT INTO ".$sqltblpre."department values(".$index++.",'???',3)"; //18 $query[] = "INSERT INTO ".$sqltblpre."department values(".$index++.",'??',18)"; $query[] = "INSERT INTO ".$sqltblpre."department values(".$index++.",'???',18)"; $query[] = "INSERT INTO ".$sqltblpre."department values(".$index++.",'??',18)"; so in a word, how can i get the 1D array thought the right code of this function?

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• Error when call 'qb.query(db, projection, selection, selectionArgs, null, null, orderBy);'

  - by smalltalk1960s

  Hi all, I make a content provider named 'DictionaryProvider' (Based on NotepadProvider). When my program run to command 'qb.query(db, projection, selection, selectionArgs, null, null, orderBy);', error happen. I don't know how to fix. please help me. Below is my code // file main calling DictionnaryProvider @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.dictionary); final String[] PROJECTION = new String[] { DicColumns._ID, // 0 DicColumns.KEY_WORD, // 1 DicColumns.KEY_DEFINITION // 2 }; Cursor c = managedQuery(DicColumns.CONTENT_URI, PROJECTION, null, null, DicColumns.DEFAULT_SORT_ORDER); String str = ""; if (c.moveToFirst()) { int wordColumn = c.getColumnIndex("KEY_WORD"); int defColumn = c.getColumnIndex("KEY_DEFINITION"); do { // Get the field values str = ""; str += c.getString(wordColumn); str +="\n"; str +=c.getString(defColumn); } while (c.moveToNext()); } Toast.makeText(this, str, Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show(); } // file DictionaryProvider.java package com.example.helloandroid; import java.util.HashMap; import android.content.ContentProvider; import android.content.ContentValues; import android.content.UriMatcher; import android.database.Cursor; import android.database.sqlite.SQLiteDatabase; import android.database.sqlite.SQLiteQueryBuilder; import android.net.Uri; import android.text.TextUtils; import com.example.helloandroid.Dictionary.DicColumns; public class DictionaryProvider extends ContentProvider { //private static final String TAG = "DictionaryProvider"; private DictionaryOpenHelper dbdic; static final int DATABASE_VERSION = 1; static final String DICTIONARY_DATABASE_NAME = "dictionarydb"; static final String DICTIONARY_TABLE_NAME = "dictionary"; private static final UriMatcher sUriMatcher; private static HashMap<String, String> sDicProjectionMap; @Override public int delete(Uri arg0, String arg1, String[] arg2) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub return 0; } @Override public String getType(Uri arg0) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub return null; } @Override public Uri insert(Uri arg0, ContentValues arg1) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub return null; } @Override public boolean onCreate() { // TODO Auto-generated method stub dbdic = new DictionaryOpenHelper(getContext(), DICTIONARY_DATABASE_NAME, null, DATABASE_VERSION); return true; } @Override public Cursor query(Uri uri, String[] projection, String selection, String[] selectionArgs, String sortOrder) { SQLiteQueryBuilder qb = new SQLiteQueryBuilder(); qb.setTables(DICTIONARY_TABLE_NAME); switch (sUriMatcher.match(uri)) { case 1: qb.setProjectionMap(sDicProjectionMap); break; case 2: qb.setProjectionMap(sDicProjectionMap); qb.appendWhere(DicColumns._ID + "=" + uri.getPathSegments().get(1)); break; default: throw new IllegalArgumentException("Unknown URI " + uri); } // If no sort order is specified use the default String orderBy; if (TextUtils.isEmpty(sortOrder)) { orderBy = DicColumns.DEFAULT_SORT_ORDER; } else { orderBy = sortOrder; } // Get the database and run the query SQLiteDatabase db = dbdic.getReadableDatabase(); Cursor c = qb.query(db, projection, selection, selectionArgs, null, null, orderBy); // Tell the cursor what uri to watch, so it knows when its source data changes c.setNotificationUri(getContext().getContentResolver(), uri); return c; } @Override public int update(Uri uri, ContentValues values, String selection, String[] selectionArgs) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub return 0; } static { sUriMatcher = new UriMatcher(UriMatcher.NO_MATCH); sUriMatcher.addURI(Dictionary.AUTHORITY, "dictionary", 1); sUriMatcher.addURI(Dictionary.AUTHORITY, "dictionary/#", 2); sDicProjectionMap = new HashMap<String, String>(); sDicProjectionMap.put(DicColumns._ID, DicColumns._ID); sDicProjectionMap.put(DicColumns.KEY_WORD, DicColumns.KEY_WORD); sDicProjectionMap.put(DicColumns.KEY_DEFINITION, DicColumns.KEY_DEFINITION); // Support for Live Folders. /*sLiveFolderProjectionMap = new HashMap<String, String>(); sLiveFolderProjectionMap.put(LiveFolders._ID, NoteColumns._ID + " AS " + LiveFolders._ID); sLiveFolderProjectionMap.put(LiveFolders.NAME, NoteColumns.TITLE + " AS " + LiveFolders.NAME);*/ // Add more columns here for more robust Live Folders. } } // file Dictionary.java package com.example.helloandroid; import android.net.Uri; import android.provider.BaseColumns; /** * Convenience definitions for DictionaryProvider */ public final class Dictionary { public static final String AUTHORITY = "com.example.helloandroid.provider.Dictionary"; // This class cannot be instantiated private Dictionary() {} /** * Dictionary table */ public static final class DicColumns implements BaseColumns { // This class cannot be instantiated private DicColumns() {} /** * The content:// style URL for this table */ public static final Uri CONTENT_URI = Uri.parse("content://" + AUTHORITY + "/dictionary"); /** * The MIME type of {@link #CONTENT_URI} providing a directory of notes. */ //public static final String CONTENT_TYPE = "vnd.android.cursor.dir/vnd.google.note"; /** * The MIME type of a {@link #CONTENT_URI} sub-directory of a single note. */ //public static final String CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE = "vnd.android.cursor.item/vnd.google.note"; /** * The default sort order for this table */ public static final String DEFAULT_SORT_ORDER = "modified DESC"; /** * The key_word of the dictionary * <P>Type: TEXT</P> */ public static final String KEY_WORD = "KEY_WORD"; /** * The key_definition of word * <P>Type: TEXT</P> */ public static final String KEY_DEFINITION = "KEY_DEFINITION"; } } thanks so much

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• .NET 3.5SP1 64-bit memory model vs. 32-bit memory model

  - by James Dunne

  As I understand it, the .NET memory model on a 32-bit machine guarantees 32-bit word writes and reads to be atomic operations but does not provide this guarantee on 64-bit words. I have written a quick tool to demonstrate this effect on a Windows XP 32-bit OS and am getting results consistent with that memory model description. However, I have taken this same tool's executable and run it on a Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit OS and am getting wildly different results. Both the machines are identical specs just with different OSes installed. I would have expected that the .NET memory model would guarantee writes and reads to BOTH 32-bit and 64-bit words to be atomic on a 64-bit OS. I find results completely contrary to BOTH assumptions. 32-bit reads and writes are not demonstrated to be atomic on this OS. Can someone explain to me why this fails on a 64-bit OS? Tool code: using System; using System.Threading; namespace ConsoleApplication1 { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { var th = new Thread(new ThreadStart(RunThread)); var th2 = new Thread(new ThreadStart(RunThread)); int lastRecordedInt = 0; long lastRecordedLong = 0L; th.Start(); th2.Start(); while (!done) { int newIntValue = intValue; long newLongValue = longValue; if (lastRecordedInt > newIntValue) Console.WriteLine("BING(int)! {0} > {1}, {2}", lastRecordedInt, newIntValue, (lastRecordedInt - newIntValue)); if (lastRecordedLong > newLongValue) Console.WriteLine("BING(long)! {0} > {1}, {2}", lastRecordedLong, newLongValue, (lastRecordedLong - newLongValue)); lastRecordedInt = newIntValue; lastRecordedLong = newLongValue; } th.Join(); th2.Join(); Console.WriteLine("{0} =? {2}, {1} =? {3}", intValue, longValue, Int32.MaxValue / 2, (long)Int32.MaxValue + (Int32.MaxValue / 2)); } private static long longValue = Int32.MaxValue; private static int intValue; private static bool done = false; static void RunThread() { for (int i = 0; i < Int32.MaxValue / 4; ++i) { ++longValue; ++intValue; } done = true; } } } Results on Windows XP 32-bit: Windows XP 32-bit Intel Core2 Duo P8700 @ 2.53GHz BING(long)! 2161093208 > 2161092246, 962 BING(long)! 2162448397 > 2161273312, 1175085 BING(long)! 2270110050 > 2270109040, 1010 BING(long)! 2270115061 > 2270110059, 5002 BING(long)! 2558052223 > 2557528157, 524066 BING(long)! 2571660540 > 2571659563, 977 BING(long)! 2646433569 > 2646432557, 1012 BING(long)! 2660841714 > 2660840732, 982 BING(long)! 2661795522 > 2660841715, 953807 BING(long)! 2712855281 > 2712854239, 1042 BING(long)! 2737627472 > 2735210929, 2416543 1025780885 =? 1073741823, 3168207035 =? 3221225470 Notice how BING(int) is never written and demonstrates that 32-bit reads/writes are atomic on this 32-bit OS. Results on Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit: Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit Intel Core2 Duo P8700 @ 2.53GHz BING(long)! 2208482159 > 2208121217, 360942 BING(int)! 280292777 > 279704627, 588150 BING(int)! 308158865 > 308131694, 27171 BING(long)! 2549116628 > 2548884894, 231734 BING(int)! 534815527 > 534708027, 107500 BING(int)! 545113548 > 544270063, 843485 BING(long)! 2710030799 > 2709941968, 88831 BING(int)! 668662394 > 667539649, 1122745 1006355562 =? 1073741823, 3154727581 =? 3221225470 Notice that BING(long) AND BING(int) are both displayed! Why are the 32-bit operations failing, let alone the 64-bit ones?

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• seeking help with Chrome & Safari not rendering my table stretched to fit its contents...help?

  - by oompa_l

  I have an element on this web page I'm developing where I need my text to conform to the width of an image above it - whose width will always be different - think of captions. I have found numerous references to using a 1px table to force this width sizing behaviour. I am having problems, though with Safari and Chrome "seeing" this instruction - the text ends up as a marginally sized text box sitting behind the image. The problem, as I see it, has to do with the text and images sitting in div's nested within the table. I need the images to sit in a div because of some jquery script I'm using called cycle, which turns a group of images into a slideshow. The problem may have something to do with the script as well. In any case, I have tried a seeming infinite number of combination of floating left and clearing left on all all the divs, changing their positions and widths...nothing works. Anyone have any clues about how to broach this one? EDIT 1: ok, should I be editing my post or responding with answers? here's the url to see the problem I am having - http://friedmanstudios.ca/webdev/test8.html and the code: <div id="content" class="boxes"> <table> <tr> <td > <div id="imageFrame"> <a href="#" class="img" title="_MG_9786_fmt.jpeg"> <img src="images/_MG_9786_fmt.jpeg"/> </a> <a href="#" class="img" title="IMG_5169_fmt.jpeg"> <img src="indesign export/GFA-TEARSHEETS-100526-01-web-images/IMG_5169_fmt.jpeg"/> </a> <a href="#" class="img" title="IMG_5175_fmt.jpeg"> <img src="indesign export/GFA-TEARSHEETS-100526-01-web-images/IMG_5175_fmt.jpeg"/> </a> <a href="#" class="img" title="aerial_fmt.jpeg" width=""> <img src="indesign export/GFA-TEARSHEETS-100526-01-web-images/aerial_fmt.jpeg"/> </a> </div> <div id="cycleCtrl"> <div id="prev" class="pager"><a href="#">< Prev</a> </div> <div id="next" class="pager"><a href="#">Next ></a></div> <div id="pagerNav" class="pager"></div> </div> <div id="descController"> <img src="images/arrow.gif" name="arrow" width="5" height="10" id="arrow" /> <span id="projectName">Toronto Centre for the Arts </span> <br /> <div id="desc"> In the past eight years... </div> </div></td> <td width="90%"><!--push col 1 back--></td> </tr> </table> and the styles: #content { position: absolute; top: 250px; left: 275px; float: left; clear: both; } content table { float: left; width: 1px; } imageFrame { position: relative; float: left; clear: left; width: inherit; } desc { position: relative; clear: left; float: left; } descController { position:relative; padding-top:5px; padding-bottom:10px; clear: left; float: left; } descController div { height:0; overflow:hidden; -webkit-transition:all .5s ease; -moz-transition:all .5s ease; -o-transition:all .5s ease; transition:all .5s ease; padding-top:10px; margin-top: 10px; word-spacing: 0em; line-height: 16px; font-size: 12px; position: relative; float: left; clear: left; }

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• socket connection failed, telnet OK

  - by cf16

  my problem is that I can't connect two comps through socket (windows xp and windows7) although the server created with socket is listening and I can telnet it. It receives then information and does what should be done, but if I run the corresponding socket client I get error 10061. Moreover I am behind firewall - these two comps are running within my LAN, the windows firewalls are turned off, comp1: 192.168.1.2 port 12345 comp1: 192.168.1.6 port 12345 router: 192.168.1.1 Maybe port forwarding could help? But most important for me is to answer why Sockets fail if telnet works fine. client: int main(){ // Initialize Winsock. WSADATA wsaData; int iResult = WSAStartup(MAKEWORD(2,2), &wsaData); if (iResult != NO_ERROR) printf("Client: Error at WSAStartup().\n"); else printf("Client: WSAStartup() is OK.\n"); // Create a socket. SOCKET m_socket; m_socket = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TCP); if (m_socket == INVALID_SOCKET){ printf("Client: socket() - Error at socket(): %ld\n", WSAGetLastError()); WSACleanup(); return 7; }else printf("Client: socket() is OK.\n"); // Connect to a server. sockaddr_in clientService; clientService.sin_family = AF_INET; //clientService.sin_addr.s_addr = inet_addr("77.64.240.156"); clientService.sin_addr.s_addr = inet_addr("192.168.1.5"); //clientService.sin_addr.s_addr = inet_addr("87.207.222.5"); clientService.sin_port = htons(12345); if (connect(m_socket, (SOCKADDR*)&clientService, sizeof(clientService)) == SOCKET_ERROR){ printf("Client: connect() - Failed to connect.\n"); wprintf(L"connect function failed with error: %ld\n", WSAGetLastError()); iResult = closesocket(m_socket); if (iResult == SOCKET_ERROR) wprintf(L"closesocket function failed with error: %ld\n", WSAGetLastError()); WSACleanup(); return 6; } // Send and receive data int bytesSent; int bytesRecv = SOCKET_ERROR; // Be careful with the array bound, provide some checking mechanism char sendbuf[200] = "Client: Sending some test string to server..."; char recvbuf[200] = ""; bytesSent = send(m_socket, sendbuf, strlen(sendbuf), 0); printf("Client: send() - Bytes Sent: %ld\n", bytesSent); while(bytesRecv == SOCKET_ERROR){ bytesRecv = recv(m_socket, recvbuf, 32, 0); if (bytesRecv == 0 || bytesRecv == WSAECONNRESET){ printf("Client: Connection Closed.\n"); break; }else printf("Client: recv() is OK.\n"); if (bytesRecv < 0) return 0; else printf("Client: Bytes received - %ld.\n", bytesRecv); } system("pause"); return 0; } server: int main(){ WORD wVersionRequested; WSADATA wsaData={0}; int wsaerr; // Using MAKEWORD macro, Winsock version request 2.2 wVersionRequested = MAKEWORD(2, 2); wsaerr = WSAStartup(wVersionRequested, &wsaData); if (wsaerr != 0){ /* Tell the user that we could not find a usable WinSock DLL.*/ printf("Server: The Winsock dll not found!\n"); return 0; }else{ printf("Server: The Winsock dll found!\n"); printf("Server: The status: %s.\n", wsaData.szSystemStatus); } /* Confirm that the WinSock DLL supports 2.2.*/ /* Note that if the DLL supports versions greater */ /* than 2.2 in addition to 2.2, it will still return */ /* 2.2 in wVersion since that is the version we */ /* requested. */ if (LOBYTE(wsaData.wVersion) != 2 || HIBYTE(wsaData.wVersion) != 2 ){ /* Tell the user that we could not find a usable WinSock DLL.*/ printf("Server: The dll do not support the Winsock version %u.%u!\n", LOBYTE(wsaData.wVersion), HIBYTE(wsaData.wVersion)); WSACleanup(); return 0; }else{ printf("Server: The dll supports the Winsock version %u.%u!\n", LOBYTE(wsaData.wVersion), HIBYTE(wsaData.wVersion)); printf("Server: The highest version this dll can support: %u.%u\n", LOBYTE(wsaData.wHighVersion), HIBYTE(wsaData.wHighVersion)); } //////////Create a socket//////////////////////// //Create a SOCKET object called m_socket. SOCKET m_socket; // Call the socket function and return its value to the m_socket variable. // For this application, use the Internet address family, streaming sockets, and the TCP/IP protocol. // using AF_INET family, TCP socket type and protocol of the AF_INET - IPv4 m_socket = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TCP); // Check for errors to ensure that the socket is a valid socket. if (m_socket == INVALID_SOCKET){ printf("Server: Error at socket(): %ld\n", WSAGetLastError()); WSACleanup(); //return 0; }else{ printf("Server: socket() is OK!\n"); } ////////////////bind////////////////////////////// // Create a sockaddr_in object and set its values. sockaddr_in service; // AF_INET is the Internet address family. service.sin_family = AF_INET; // "127.0.0.1" is the local IP address to which the socket will be bound. service.sin_addr.s_addr = htons(INADDR_ANY);//inet_addr("127.0.0.1");//htons(INADDR_ANY); //inet_addr("192.168.1.2"); // 55555 is the port number to which the socket will be bound. // using the htons for big-endian service.sin_port = htons(12345); // Call the bind function, passing the created socket and the sockaddr_in structure as parameters. // Check for general errors. if (bind(m_socket, (SOCKADDR*)&service, sizeof(service)) == SOCKET_ERROR){ printf("Server: bind() failed: %ld.\n", WSAGetLastError()); closesocket(m_socket); //return 0; }else{ printf("Server: bind() is OK!\n"); } // Call the listen function, passing the created socket and the maximum number of allowed // connections to accept as parameters. Check for general errors. if (listen(m_socket, 1) == SOCKET_ERROR) printf("Server: listen(): Error listening on socket %ld.\n", WSAGetLastError()); else{ printf("Server: listen() is OK, I'm waiting for connections...\n"); } // Create a temporary SOCKET object called AcceptSocket for accepting connections. SOCKET AcceptSocket; // Create a continuous loop that checks for connections requests. If a connection // request occurs, call the accept function to handle the request. printf("Server: Waiting for a client to connect...\n"); printf("***Hint: Server is ready...run your client program...***\n"); // Do some verification... while (1){ AcceptSocket = SOCKET_ERROR; while (AcceptSocket == SOCKET_ERROR){ AcceptSocket = accept(m_socket, NULL, NULL); } // else, accept the connection... note: now it is wrong implementation !!!!!!!! !! !! (only 1 char) // When the client connection has been accepted, transfer control from the // temporary socket to the original socket and stop checking for new connections. printf("Server: Client Connected! Mammamija. \n"); m_socket = AcceptSocket; char recvBuf[200]=""; char * rc=recvBuf; int bytesRecv=recv(m_socket,recvBuf,64,0); if(bytesRecv==0 || bytesRecv==WSAECONNRESET){ cout<<"server: connection closed.\n"; }else{ cout<<"server: recv() is OK.\n"; if(bytesRecv<0){ return 0; }else{ printf("server: bytes received: %ld.\n",recvBuf); } }

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• Xenserver 5.5 U2 a bit unstable with an unstable W2003 VM

  - by twistedbrain

  In the last week I had to reboot the host system twice and the second one by means of the power button. The system is a Dell PE 6950 (4 Opteron dual core, 2,8 Ghz, 16 GB RAM, 900 GB disk in a RAID 10 array composed by 4 450GB 15000 rpm disks) with XenServer 5.5 U2. We're installing it and at now there are working in production a 2003 32 bit Windows server VM with 2 GB RAM, 3 vcpu and about 200 GB disk in 4 partition (12 GB boot, 20 GB program, 80 GB user data, 80 GB other data). The first time I was compressing many Windows 2003 folders (some tens GB by means of W2003 compressed folder option) from a Windows remote console and some hours before my colleague installed Backup Exec agent that was alredy installed and that required a reboot (that was pending). The console stopped responding, it was no more possible to connect by means of remote console or by means of the console of the XenCentre, it was still possible from the network to use the shared folder of the VM and the programs on it (2 db and a GIS program), but the print server didn't work any more and I couldn't give remote reboot from other domain controller hosts. I couldn't stop the virtual machine neither from the XenCentre, neither from the command line of the host also forcing the reboot. I had to reboot the host server. Yesterday it has been worst. I installed a template of another VM, CentOS 5.3 and then, put the DVD in the drive of the host. Then, before the install and after the boot I checked for defect the DVD and the W2003 VM began to respond slowly (I was connected by means of an administration remote console) the task manager showed only mid or low load, it is, only the first of the 3 vcpu was loaded (about 70%), while the other two were about at 20% and also the disk I/O was not so heavy. Then the users were not so happy because they couldn't any more use the MS word docs on the server. I immediately stopped the check of the DVD (to do that I had to force the stop of such Centos 5.3 VM), then some users could again use their docs, but other had still problems, so I decided to reboot the VM, but it doesn't stopped, neither from XenCenter, neither from command line, neither forcing the reboot. Then I tried to reboot of the host, but it didn't worked, neither from the XenCentre, neither from the host prompt (shutdown -r now as root: it told that it was shutting down, but then it didn't did that). So I had to power off by means of the power button of the server (before I tried some Magic SyS REQ, but I saw that Xen isn't compiled with this option enabled). What could you suggest about my problem, what can I look, search and see? In the W2003 VM logs there are no errors or warning to explain what happened. Some more exciting, amusing and inspiring words of poetry (the facts happened around 11 am): \# egrep -i 'err|warning' xensource.log [20100219 10:32:05.597|debug|culo|6301 unix-RPC|VBD.plug R:c81bcda701f6|xenops] watch: watching xenstore paths: [ /xapi/0/frontend/vbd/51712/hotplug; /local/domain/0/backend/vbd/0/51712/tapdisk-error ] with timeout 1200.000000 seconds [20100219 10:32:05.597|debug|culo|6301 unix-RPC|VBD.plug R:c81bcda701f6|xenops] watch: fired on /local/domain/0/backend/vbd/0/51712/tapdisk-error [20100219 10:32:14.314|debug|culo|6335 unix-RPC|VBD.unplug R:9258f54578d6|xenops] watch: watching xenstore paths: [ /local/domain/0/backend/vbd/0/51712/shutdown-done; /local/domain/0/error/device/vbd/51712/error ] with timeout 1200.000000 seconds [20100219 10:32:14.337|debug|culo|6335 unix-RPC|VBD.unplug R:9258f54578d6|xenops] xenstore-rm /local/domain/0/error/backend/vbd/0 [20100219 10:32:14.337|debug|culo|6335 unix-RPC|VBD.unplug R:9258f54578d6|xenops] xenstore-rm /local/domain/0/error/device/vbd/51712 [20100219 10:32:14.338|debug|culo|6335 unix-RPC|VBD.unplug R:9258f54578d6|xenops] watch: fired on /local/domain/0/error/device/vbd/51712/error [20100219 10:53:48.903|debug|culo|6418|Async.VM.hard_shutdown R:88d2095678f7|helpers] Ignoring exception: INTERNAL_ERROR: [ Xb.Noent ] while Vmops.destroy_domain: Destroying domid 14 guest session [20100219 10:53:52.048|debug|culo|6418|Async.VM.hard_shutdown R:88d2095678f7|xenops] xenstore-rm /local/domain/0/error/backend/tap/14 [20100219 10:53:52.048|debug|culo|6418|Async.VM.hard_shutdown R:88d2095678f7|xenops] xenstore-rm /local/domain/14/error/device/vbd/51744 [20100219 10:53:52.085|debug|culo|6418|Async.VM.hard_shutdown R:88d2095678f7|xenops] xenstore-rm /local/domain/0/error/backend/tap/14 [20100219 10:53:52.086|debug|culo|6418|Async.VM.hard_shutdown R:88d2095678f7|xenops] xenstore-rm /local/domain/14/error/device/vbd/51728 [20100219 10:53:52.122|debug|culo|6418|Async.VM.hard_shutdown R:88d2095678f7|xenops] xenstore-rm /local/domain/0/error/backend/tap/14 [20100219 10:53:52.122|debug|culo|6418|Async.VM.hard_shutdown R:88d2095678f7|xenops] xenstore-rm /local/domain/14/error/device/vbd/51712 [20100219 10:53:52.127|debug|culo|6418|Async.VM.hard_shutdown R:88d2095678f7|xenops] xenstore-rm /local/domain/0/error/backend/vbd/14 [20100219 10:53:52.128|debug|culo|6418|Async.VM.hard_shutdown R:88d2095678f7|xenops] xenstore-rm /local/domain/14/error/device/vbd/51760 [20100219 10:53:52.496|debug|culo|6418|Async.VM.hard_shutdown R:88d2095678f7|xenops] Device.Vif.hard_shutdown about to blow away backend and error paths [20100219 10:53:52.497|debug|culo|6418|Async.VM.hard_shutdown R:88d2095678f7|xenops] xenstore-rm /local/domain/0/error/backend/vif/14 [20100219 10:53:52.497|debug|culo|6418|Async.VM.hard_shutdown R:88d2095678f7|xenops] xenstore-rm /local/domain/14/error/device/vif/0 [20100219 10:53:53.385|debug|culo|6418|Async.VM.hard_shutdown R:88d2095678f7|xenops] Device.Vif.hard_shutdown about to blow away backend and error paths [20100219 10:53:53.386|debug|culo|6418|Async.VM.hard_shutdown R:88d2095678f7|xenops] xenstore-rm /local/domain/0/error/backend/vif/14 [20100219 10:53:53.386|debug|culo|6418|Async.VM.hard_shutdown R:88d2095678f7|xenops] xenstore-rm /local/domain/14/error/device/vif/1 [20100219 10:53:53.389| warn|culo|6418|Async.VM.hard_shutdown R:88d2095678f7|hotplug] Warning, deleting 'vif' entry from /xapi/14/hotplug/vif/0 [20100219 10:53:53.391| warn|culo|6418|Async.VM.hard_shutdown R:88d2095678f7|hotplug] Warning, deleting 'vif' entry from /xapi/14/hotplug/vif/1 [20100219 11:20:49.766|debug|culo|6484|Async.VM.clean_shutdown R:78d3c3e28cb6|helpers] Ignoring exception: INTERNAL_ERROR: [ Xb.Noent ] while Vmops.destroy_domain: Destroying domid 11 guest session [20100219 11:20:50.339|debug|culo|6484|Async.VM.clean_shutdown R:78d3c3e28cb6|xenops] xenstore-rm /local/domain/0/error/backend/tap/11 [20100219 11:20:50.339|debug|culo|6484|Async.VM.clean_shutdown R:78d3c3e28cb6|xenops] xenstore-rm /local/domain/11/error/device/vbd/832 [20100219 11:20:50.360|debug|culo|6484|Async.VM.clean_shutdown R:78d3c3e28cb6|xenops] xenstore-rm /local/domain/0/error/backend/tap/11 [20100219 11:20:50.360|debug|culo|6484|Async.VM.clean_shutdown R:78d3c3e28cb6|xenops] xenstore-rm /local/domain/11/error/device/vbd/768 [20100219 11:20:50.366|debug|culo|6484|Async.VM.clean_shutdown R:78d3c3e28cb6|xenops] xenstore-rm /local/domain/0/error/backend/vbd/11 [20100219 11:20:50.366|debug|culo|6484|Async.VM.clean_shutdown R:78d3c3e28cb6|xenops] xenstore-rm /local/domain/11/error/device/vbd/5696 [20100219 11:20:50.753|debug|culo|6484|Async.VM.clean_shutdown R:78d3c3e28cb6|xenops] Device.Vif.hard_shutdown about to blow away backend and error paths [20100219 11:20:50.754|debug|culo|6484|Async.VM.clean_shutdown R:78d3c3e28cb6|xenops] xenstore-rm /local/domain/0/error/backend/vif/11 [20100219 11:20:50.754|debug|culo|6484|Async.VM.clean_shutdown R:78d3c3e28cb6|xenops] xenstore-rm /local/domain/11/error/device/vif/1 [20100219 11:20:50.757| warn|culo|6484|Async.VM.clean_shutdown R:78d3c3e28cb6|hotplug] Warning, deleting 'vif' entry from /xapi/11/hotplug/vif/1 [20100219 11:28:13.803|debug|culo|6610 inet-RPC|Connection to VM console R:e9f8b76e8975|console] error: INTERNAL_ERROR: [ Unix.Unix_error(63, "connect", "") ]

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• How to get full control of umask/PAM/permissions?

  - by plua

  OUR SITUATION Several people from our company log in to a server and upload files. They all need to be able to upload and overwrite the same files. They have different usernames, but are all part of the same group. However, this is an internet server, so the "other" users should have (in general) just read-only access. So what I want to have is these standard permissions: files: 664 directories: 771 My goal is that all users do not need to worry about permissions. The server should be configured in such a way that these permissions apply to all files and directories, newly created, copied, or over-written. Only when we need some special permissions we'd manually change this. We upload files to the server by SFTP-ing in Nautilus, by mounting the server using sshfs and accessing it in Nautilus as if it were a local folder, and by SCP-ing in the command line. That basically covers our situation and what we aim to do. Now, I have read many things about the beautiful umask functionality. From what I understand umask (together with PAM) should allow me to do exactly what I want: set standard permissions for new files and directories. However, after many many hours of reading and trial-and-error, I still do not get this to work. I get many unexpected results. I really like to get a solid grasp of umask and have many question unanswered. I will post these questions below, together with my findings and an explanation of my trials that led to these questions. Given that many things appear to go wrong, I think that I am doing several things wrong. So therefore, there are many questions. NOTE: I am using Ubuntu 9.10 and therefore can not change the sshd_config to set the umask for the SFTP server. Installed SSH OpenSSH_5.1p1 Debian-6ubuntu2 < required OpenSSH 5.4p1. So here go the questions. 1. DO I NEED TO RESTART FOR PAM CHANGS TO TAKE EFFECT? Let's start with this. There were so many files involved and I was unable to figure out what does and what does not affect things, also because I did not know whether or not I have to restart the whole system for PAM changes to take effect. I did do so after not seeing the expected results, but is this really necessary? Or can I just log out from the server and log back in, and should new PAM policies be effective? Or is there some 'PAM' program to reload? 2. IS THERE ONE SINGLE FILE TO CHANGE THAT AFFECTS ALL USERS FOR ALL SESSIONS? So I ended up changing MANY files, as I read MANY different things. I ended up setting the umask in the following files: ~/.profile -> umask=0002 ~/.bashrc -> umask=0002 /etc/profile -> umask=0002 /etc/pam.d/common-session -> umask=0002 /etc/pam.d/sshd -> umask=0002 /etc/pam.d/login -> umask=0002 I want this change to apply to all users, so some sort of system-wide change would be best. Can it be achieved? 3. AFTER ALL, THIS UMASK THING, DOES IT WORK? So after changing umask to 0002 at every possible place, I run tests. ------------SCP----------- TEST 1: scp testfile (which has 777 permissions for testing purposes) server:/home/ testfile 100% 4 0.0KB/s 00:00 Let's check permissions: user@server:/home$ ls -l total 4 -rwx--x--x 1 user uploaders 4 2011-02-05 17:59 testfile (711) ---------SSH------------ TEST 2: ssh server user@server:/home$ touch anotherfile user@server:/home$ ls -l total 4 -rw-rw-r-- 1 user uploaders 0 2011-02-05 18:03 anotherfile (664) --------SFTP----------- Nautilus: sftp://server/home/ Copy and paste newfile from client to server (777 on client) TEST 3: user@server:/home$ ls -l total 4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 user uploaders 3 2011-02-05 18:05 newfile (777) Create a new file through Nautilus. Check file permissions in terminal: TEST 4: user@server:/home$ ls -l total 4 -rw------- 1 user uploaders 0 2011-02-05 18:06 newfile (600) I mean... WHAT just happened here?! We should get 644 every single time. Instead I get 711, 777, 600, and then once 644. And the 644 is only achieved when creating a new, blank file through SSH, which is the least probable scenario. So I am asking, does umask/pam work after all? 4. SO WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO UMASK SSHFS? Sometimes we mount a server locally, using sshfs. Very useful. But again, we have permissions issues. Here is how we mount: sshfs -o idmap=user -o umask=0113 user@server:/home/ /mnt NOTE: we use umask = 113 because apparently, sshfs starts from 777 instead of 666, so with 113 we get 664 which is the desired file permission. But what now happens is that we see all files and directories as if they are 664. We browse in Nautilus to /mnt and: Right click - New File (newfile) --- TEST 5 Right click - New Folder (newfolder) --- TEST 6 Copy and paste a 777 file from our local client --- TEST 7 So let's check on the command line: user@client:/mnt$ ls -l total 8 -rw-rw-r-- 1 user 1007 3 Feb 5 18:05 copyfile (664) -rw-rw-r-- 1 user 1007 0 Feb 5 18:15 newfile (664) drw-rw-r-- 1 user 1007 4096 Feb 5 18:15 newfolder (664) But hey, let's check this same folder on the server-side: user@server:/home$ ls -l total 8 -rwxrwxrwx 1 user uploaders 3 2011-02-05 18:05 copyfile (777) -rw------- 1 user uploaders 0 2011-02-05 18:15 newfile (600) drwx--x--x 2 user uploaders 4096 2011-02-05 18:15 newfolder (711) What?! The REAL file permissions are very different from what we see in Nautilus. So does this umask on sshfs just create a 'filter' that shows unreal file permissions? And I tried to open a file from another user but the same group that had real 600 permissions but 644 'fake' permissions, and I could still not read this, so what good is this filter?? 5. UMASK IS ALL ABOUT FILES. BUT WHAT ABOUT DIRECTORIES? From my tests I can see that the umask that is being applied also somehow influences the directory permissions. However, I want my files to be 664 (002) and my directories to be 771 (006). So is it possible to have a different umask for directories? 6. PERHAPS UMASK/PAM IS REALLY COOL, BUT UBUNTU IS JUST BUGGY? On the one hand, I have read topics of people that have had success with PAM/UMASK and Ubuntu. On the other hand, I have found many older and newer bugs regarding umask/PAM/fuse on Ubuntu: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gdm/+bug/241198 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/fuse/+bug/239792 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pam/+bug/253096 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sudo/+bug/549172 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=314796 So I do not know what to believe anymore. Should I just give up? Would ACL solve all my problems? Or do I have again problems using Ubuntu? One word of caution with backups using tar. Red Hat /Centos distributions support acls in the tar program but Ubuntu does not support acls when backing up. This means that all acls will be lost when you create a backup. I am very willing to upgrade to Ubuntu 10.04 if that would solve my problems too, but first I want to understand what is happening.

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• Metro: Declarative Data Binding

  - by Stephen.Walther

  The goal of this blog post is to describe how declarative data binding works in the WinJS library. In particular, you learn how to use both the data-win-bind and data-win-bindsource attributes. You also learn how to use calculated properties and converters to format the value of a property automatically when performing data binding. By taking advantage of WinJS data binding, you can use the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern when building Metro style applications with JavaScript. By using the MVVM pattern, you can prevent your JavaScript code from spinning into chaos. The MVVM pattern provides you with a standard pattern for organizing your JavaScript code which results in a more maintainable application. Using Declarative Bindings You can use the data-win-bind attribute with any HTML element in a page. The data-win-bind attribute enables you to bind (associate) an attribute of an HTML element to the value of a property. Imagine, for example, that you want to create a product details page. You want to show a product object in a page. In that case, you can create the following HTML page to display the product details: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>Application1</title> <!-- WinJS references --> <link href="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/css/ui-dark.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/base.js"></script> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/ui.js"></script> <!-- Application1 references --> <link href="/css/default.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="/js/default.js"></script> </head> <body> <h1>Product Details</h1> <div class="field"> Product Name: <span data-win-bind="innerText:name"></span> </div> <div class="field"> Product Price: <span data-win-bind="innerText:price"></span> </div> <div class="field"> Product Picture: <br /> <img data-win-bind="src:photo;alt:name" /> </div> </body> </html> The HTML page above contains three data-win-bind attributes – one attribute for each product property displayed. You use the data-win-bind attribute to set properties of the HTML element associated with the data-win-attribute. The data-win-bind attribute takes a semicolon delimited list of element property names and data source property names: data-win-bind=”elementPropertyName:datasourcePropertyName; elementPropertyName:datasourcePropertyName;…” In the HTML page above, the first two data-win-bind attributes are used to set the values of the innerText property of the SPAN elements. The last data-win-bind attribute is used to set the values of the IMG element’s src and alt attributes. By the way, using data-win-bind attributes is perfectly valid HTML5. The HTML5 standard enables you to add custom attributes to an HTML document just as long as the custom attributes start with the prefix data-. So you can add custom attributes to an HTML5 document with names like data-stephen, data-funky, or data-rover-dog-is-hungry and your document will validate. The product object displayed in the page above with the data-win-bind attributes is created in the default.js file: (function () { "use strict"; var app = WinJS.Application; app.onactivated = function (eventObject) { if (eventObject.detail.kind === Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ActivationKind.launch) { var product = { name: "Tesla", price: 80000, photo: "/images/TeslaPhoto.png" }; WinJS.Binding.processAll(null, product); } }; app.start(); })(); In the code above, a product object is created with a name, price, and photo property. The WinJS.Binding.processAll() method is called to perform the actual binding (Don’t confuse WinJS.Binding.processAll() and WinJS.UI.processAll() – these are different methods). The first parameter passed to the processAll() method represents the root element for the binding. In other words, binding happens on this element and its child elements. If you provide the value null, then binding happens on the entire body of the document (document.body). The second parameter represents the data context. This is the object that has the properties which are displayed with the data-win-bind attributes. In the code above, the product object is passed as the data context parameter. Another word for data context is view model.  Creating Complex View Models In the previous section, we used the data-win-bind attribute to display the properties of a simple object: a single product. However, you can use binding with more complex view models including view models which represent multiple objects. For example, the view model in the following default.js file represents both a customer and a product object. Furthermore, the customer object has a nested address object: (function () { "use strict"; var app = WinJS.Application; app.onactivated = function (eventObject) { if (eventObject.detail.kind === Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ActivationKind.launch) { var viewModel = { customer: { firstName: "Fred", lastName: "Flintstone", address: { street: "1 Rocky Way", city: "Bedrock", country: "USA" } }, product: { name: "Bowling Ball", price: 34.55 } }; WinJS.Binding.processAll(null, viewModel); } }; app.start(); })(); The following page displays the customer (including the customer address) and the product. Notice that you can use dot notation to refer to child objects in a view model such as customer.address.street. <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>Application1</title> <!-- WinJS references --> <link href="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/css/ui-dark.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/base.js"></script> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/ui.js"></script> <!-- Application1 references --> <link href="/css/default.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="/js/default.js"></script> </head> <body> <h1>Customer Details</h1> <div class="field"> First Name: <span data-win-bind="innerText:customer.firstName"></span> </div> <div class="field"> Last Name: <span data-win-bind="innerText:customer.lastName"></span> </div> <div class="field"> Address: <address> <span data-win-bind="innerText:customer.address.street"></span> <br /> <span data-win-bind="innerText:customer.address.city"></span> <br /> <span data-win-bind="innerText:customer.address.country"></span> </address> </div> <h1>Product</h1> <div class="field"> Name: <span data-win-bind="innerText:product.name"></span> </div> <div class="field"> Price: <span data-win-bind="innerText:product.price"></span> </div> </body> </html> A view model can be as complicated as you need and you can bind the view model to a view (an HTML document) by using declarative bindings. Creating Calculated Properties You might want to modify a property before displaying the property. For example, you might want to format the product price property before displaying the property. You don’t want to display the raw product price “80000”. Instead, you want to display the formatted price “$80,000”. You also might need to combine multiple properties. For example, you might need to display the customer full name by combining the values of the customer first and last name properties. In these situations, it is tempting to call a function when performing binding. For example, you could create a function named fullName() which concatenates the customer first and last name. Unfortunately, the WinJS library does not support the following syntax: <span data-win-bind=”innerText:fullName()”></span> Instead, in these situations, you should create a new property in your view model that has a getter. For example, the customer object in the following default.js file includes a property named fullName which combines the values of the firstName and lastName properties: (function () { "use strict"; var app = WinJS.Application; app.onactivated = function (eventObject) { if (eventObject.detail.kind === Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ActivationKind.launch) { var customer = { firstName: "Fred", lastName: "Flintstone", get fullName() { return this.firstName + " " + this.lastName; } }; WinJS.Binding.processAll(null, customer); } }; app.start(); })(); The customer object has a firstName, lastName, and fullName property. Notice that the fullName property is defined with a getter function. When you read the fullName property, the values of the firstName and lastName properties are concatenated and returned. The following HTML page displays the fullName property in an H1 element. You can use the fullName property in a data-win-bind attribute in exactly the same way as any other property. <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>Application1</title> <!-- WinJS references --> <link href="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/css/ui-dark.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/base.js"></script> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/ui.js"></script> <!-- Application1 references --> <link href="/css/default.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="/js/default.js"></script> </head> <body> <h1 data-win-bind="innerText:fullName"></h1> <div class="field"> First Name: <span data-win-bind="innerText:firstName"></span> </div> <div class="field"> Last Name: <span data-win-bind="innerText:lastName"></span> </div> </body> </html> Creating a Converter In the previous section, you learned how to format the value of a property by creating a property with a getter. This approach makes sense when the formatting logic is specific to a particular view model. If, on the other hand, you need to perform the same type of formatting for multiple view models then it makes more sense to create a converter function. A converter function is a function which you can apply whenever you are using the data-win-bind attribute. Imagine, for example, that you want to create a general function for displaying dates. You always want to display dates using a short format such as 12/25/1988. The following JavaScript file – named converters.js – contains a shortDate() converter: (function (WinJS) { var shortDate = WinJS.Binding.converter(function (date) { return date.getMonth() + 1 + "/" + date.getDate() + "/" + date.getFullYear(); }); // Export shortDate WinJS.Namespace.define("MyApp.Converters", { shortDate: shortDate }); })(WinJS); The file above uses the Module Pattern, a pattern which is used through the WinJS library. To learn more about the Module Pattern, see my blog entry on namespaces and modules: http://stephenwalther.com/blog/archive/2012/02/22/windows-web-applications-namespaces-and-modules.aspx The file contains the definition for a converter function named shortDate(). This function converts a JavaScript date object into a short date string such as 12/1/1988. The converter function is created with the help of the WinJS.Binding.converter() method. This method takes a normal function and converts it into a converter function. Finally, the shortDate() converter is added to the MyApp.Converters namespace. You can call the shortDate() function by calling MyApp.Converters.shortDate(). The default.js file contains the customer object that we want to bind. Notice that the customer object has a firstName, lastName, and birthday property. We will use our new shortDate() converter when displaying the customer birthday property: (function () { "use strict"; var app = WinJS.Application; app.onactivated = function (eventObject) { if (eventObject.detail.kind === Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ActivationKind.launch) { var customer = { firstName: "Fred", lastName: "Flintstone", birthday: new Date("12/1/1988") }; WinJS.Binding.processAll(null, customer); } }; app.start(); })(); We actually use our shortDate converter in the HTML document. The following HTML document displays all of the customer properties: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>Application1</title> <!-- WinJS references --> <link href="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/css/ui-dark.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/base.js"></script> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/ui.js"></script> <!-- Application1 references --> <link href="/css/default.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="/js/default.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/converters.js"></script> </head> <body> <h1>Customer Details</h1> <div class="field"> First Name: <span data-win-bind="innerText:firstName"></span> </div> <div class="field"> Last Name: <span data-win-bind="innerText:lastName"></span> </div> <div class="field"> Birthday: <span data-win-bind="innerText:birthday MyApp.Converters.shortDate"></span> </div> </body> </html> Notice the data-win-bind attribute used to display the birthday property. It looks like this: <span data-win-bind="innerText:birthday MyApp.Converters.shortDate"></span> The shortDate converter is applied to the birthday property when the birthday property is bound to the SPAN element’s innerText property. Using data-win-bindsource Normally, you pass the view model (the data context) which you want to use with the data-win-bind attributes in a page by passing the view model to the WinJS.Binding.processAll() method like this: WinJS.Binding.processAll(null, viewModel); As an alternative, you can specify the view model declaratively in your markup by using the data-win-datasource attribute. For example, the following default.js script exposes a view model with the fully-qualified name of MyWinWebApp.viewModel: (function () { "use strict"; var app = WinJS.Application; app.onactivated = function (eventObject) { if (eventObject.detail.kind === Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ActivationKind.launch) { // Create view model var viewModel = { customer: { firstName: "Fred", lastName: "Flintstone" }, product: { name: "Bowling Ball", price: 12.99 } }; // Export view model to be seen by universe WinJS.Namespace.define("MyWinWebApp", { viewModel: viewModel }); // Process data-win-bind attributes WinJS.Binding.processAll(); } }; app.start(); })(); In the code above, a view model which represents a customer and a product is exposed as MyWinWebApp.viewModel. The following HTML page illustrates how you can use the data-win-bindsource attribute to bind to this view model: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>Application1</title> <!-- WinJS references --> <link href="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/css/ui-dark.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/base.js"></script> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/ui.js"></script> <!-- Application1 references --> <link href="/css/default.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="/js/default.js"></script> </head> <body> <h1>Customer Details</h1> <div data-win-bindsource="MyWinWebApp.viewModel.customer"> <div class="field"> First Name: <span data-win-bind="innerText:firstName"></span> </div> <div class="field"> Last Name: <span data-win-bind="innerText:lastName"></span> </div> </div> <h1>Product</h1> <div data-win-bindsource="MyWinWebApp.viewModel.product"> <div class="field"> Name: <span data-win-bind="innerText:name"></span> </div> <div class="field"> Price: <span data-win-bind="innerText:price"></span> </div> </div> </body> </html> The data-win-bindsource attribute is used twice in the page above: it is used with the DIV element which contains the customer details and it is used with the DIV element which contains the product details. If an element has a data-win-bindsource attribute then all of the child elements of that element are affected. The data-win-bind attributes of all of the child elements are bound to the data source represented by the data-win-bindsource attribute. Summary The focus of this blog entry was data binding using the WinJS library. You learned how to use the data-win-bind attribute to bind the properties of an HTML element to a view model. We also discussed several advanced features of data binding. We examined how to create calculated properties by including a property with a getter in your view model. We also discussed how you can create a converter function to format the value of a view model property when binding the property. Finally, you learned how to use the data-win-bindsource attribute to specify a view model declaratively.

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• Is there a Telecommunications Reference Architecture?

  - by raul.goycoolea

  @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Abstract   Reference architecture provides needed architectural information that can be provided in advance to an enterprise to enable consistent architectural best practices. Enterprise Reference Architecture helps business owners to actualize their strategies, vision, objectives, and principles. It evaluates the IT systems, based on Reference Architecture goals, principles, and standards. It helps to reduce IT costs by increasing functionality, availability, scalability, etc. Telecom Reference Architecture provides customers with the flexibility to view bundled service bills online with the provision of multiple services. It provides real-time, flexible billing and charging systems, to handle complex promotions, discounts, and settlements with multiple parties. This paper attempts to describe the Reference Architecture for the Telecom Enterprises. It lays the foundation for a Telecom Reference Architecture by articulating the requirements, drivers, and pitfalls for telecom service providers. It describes generic reference architecture for telecom enterprises and moves on to explain how to achieve Enterprise Reference Architecture by using SOA.   Introduction   A Reference Architecture provides a methodology, set of practices, template, and standards based on a set of successful solutions implemented earlier. These solutions have been generalized and structured for the depiction of both a logical and a physical architecture, based on the harvesting of a set of patterns that describe observations in a number of successful implementations. It helps as a reference for the various architectures that an enterprise can implement to solve various problems. It can be used as the starting point or the point of comparisons for various departments/business entities of a company, or for the various companies for an enterprise. It provides multiple views for multiple stakeholders.   Major artifacts of the Enterprise Reference Architecture are methodologies, standards, metadata, documents, design patterns, etc.   Purpose of Reference Architecture   In most cases, architects spend a lot of time researching, investigating, defining, and re-arguing architectural decisions. It is like reinventing the wheel as their peers in other organizations or even the same organization have already spent a lot of time and effort defining their own architectural practices. This prevents an organization from learning from its own experiences and applying that knowledge for increased effectiveness.   Reference architecture provides missing architectural information that can be provided in advance to project team members to enable consistent architectural best practices.   Enterprise Reference Architecture helps an enterprise to achieve the following at the abstract level:   ·       Reference architecture is more of a communication channel to an enterprise ·       Helps the business owners to accommodate to their strategies, vision, objectives, and principles. ·       Evaluates the IT systems based on Reference Architecture Principles ·       Reduces IT spending through increasing functionality, availability, scalability, etc ·       A Real-time Integration Model helps to reduce the latency of the data updates Is used to define a single source of Information ·       Provides a clear view on how to manage information and security ·       Defines the policy around the data ownership, product boundaries, etc. ·       Helps with cost optimization across project and solution portfolios by eliminating unused or duplicate investments and assets ·       Has a shorter implementation time and cost   Once the reference architecture is in place, the set of architectural principles, standards, reference models, and best practices ensure that the aligned investments have the greatest possible likelihood of success in both the near term and the long term (TCO).     Common pitfalls for Telecom Service Providers   Telecom Reference Architecture serves as the first step towards maturity for a telecom service provider. During the course of our assignments/experiences with telecom players, we have come across the following observations – Some of these indicate a lack of maturity of the telecom service provider:   ·       In markets that are growing and not so mature, it has been observed that telcos have a significant amount of in-house or home-grown applications. In some of these markets, the growth has been so rapid that IT has been unable to cope with business demands. Telcos have shown a tendency to come up with workarounds in their IT applications so as to meet business needs. ·       Even for core functions like provisioning or mediation, some telcos have tried to manage with home-grown applications. ·       Most of the applications do not have the required scalability or maintainability to sustain growth in volumes or functionality. ·       Applications face interoperability issues with other applications in the operator's landscape. Integrating a new application or network element requires considerable effort on the part of the other applications. ·       Application boundaries are not clear, and functionality that is not in the initial scope of that application gets pushed onto it. This results in the development of the multiple, small applications without proper boundaries. ·       Usage of Legacy OSS/BSS systems, poor Integration across Multiple COTS Products and Internal Systems. Most of the Integrations are developed on ad-hoc basis and Point-to-Point Integration. ·       Redundancy of the business functions in different applications • Fragmented data across the different applications and no integrated view of the strategic data • Lot of performance Issues due to the usage of the complex integration across OSS and BSS systems   However, this is where the maturity of the telecom industry as a whole can be of help. The collaborative efforts of telcos to overcome some of these problems have resulted in bodies like the TM Forum. They have come up with frameworks for business processes, data, applications, and technology for telecom service providers. These could be a good starting point for telcos to clean up their enterprise landscape.   Industry Trends in Telecom Reference Architecture   Telecom reference architectures are evolving rapidly because telcos are facing business and IT challenges.   “The reality is that there probably is no killer application, no silver bullet that the telcos can latch onto to carry them into a 21st Century.... Instead, there are probably hundreds – perhaps thousands – of niche applications.... And the only way to find which of these works for you is to try out lots of them, ramp up the ones that work, and discontinue the ones that fail.” – Martin Creaner President & CTO TM Forum.   The following trends have been observed in telecom reference architecture:   ·       Transformation of business structures to align with customer requirements ·       Adoption of more Internet-like technical architectures. The Web 2.0 concept is increasingly being used. ·       Virtualization of the traditional operations support system (OSS) ·       Adoption of SOA to support development of IP-based services ·       Adoption of frameworks like Service Delivery Platforms (SDPs) and IP Multimedia Subsystem ·       (IMS) to enable seamless deployment of various services over fixed and mobile networks ·       Replacement of in-house, customized, and stove-piped OSS/BSS with standards-based COTS products ·       Compliance with industry standards and frameworks like eTOM, SID, and TAM to enable seamless integration with other standards-based products   Drivers of Reference Architecture   The drivers of the Reference Architecture are Reference Architecture Goals, Principles, and Enterprise Vision and Telecom Transformation. The details are depicted below diagram. @font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoCaption, li.MsoCaption, div.MsoCaption { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: rgb(79, 129, 189); font-weight: bold; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } Figure 1. Drivers for Reference Architecture @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Today’s telecom reference architectures should seamlessly integrate traditional legacy-based applications and transition to next-generation network technologies (e.g., IP multimedia subsystems). This has resulted in new requirements for flexible, real-time billing and OSS/BSS systems and implications on the service provider’s organizational requirements and structure.   Telecom reference architectures are today expected to:   ·       Integrate voice, messaging, email and other VAS over fixed and mobile networks, back end systems ·       Be able to provision multiple services and service bundles • Deliver converged voice, video and data services ·       Leverage the existing Network Infrastructure ·       Provide real-time, flexible billing and charging systems to handle complex promotions, discounts, and settlements with multiple parties. ·       Support charging of advanced data services such as VoIP, On-Demand, Services (e.g.  Video), IMS/SIP Services, Mobile Money, Content Services and IPTV. ·       Help in faster deployment of new services • Serve as an effective platform for collaboration between network IT and business organizations ·       Harness the potential of converging technology, networks, devices and content to develop multimedia services and solutions of ever-increasing sophistication on a single Internet Protocol (IP) ·       Ensure better service delivery and zero revenue leakage through real-time balance and credit management ·       Lower operating costs to drive profitability   Enterprise Reference Architecture   The Enterprise Reference Architecture (RA) fills the gap between the concepts and vocabulary defined by the reference model and the implementation. Reference architecture provides detailed architectural information in a common format such that solutions can be repeatedly designed and deployed in a consistent, high-quality, supportable fashion. This paper attempts to describe the Reference Architecture for the Telecom Application Usage and how to achieve the Enterprise Level Reference Architecture using SOA.   • Telecom Reference Architecture • Enterprise SOA based Reference Architecture   Telecom Reference Architecture   Tele Management Forum’s New Generation Operations Systems and Software (NGOSS) is an architectural framework for organizing, integrating, and implementing telecom systems. NGOSS is a component-based framework consisting of the following elements:   ·       The enhanced Telecom Operations Map (eTOM) is a business process framework. ·       The Shared Information Data (SID) model provides a comprehensive information framework that may be specialized for the needs of a particular organization. ·       The Telecom Application Map (TAM) is an application framework to depict the functional footprint of applications, relative to the horizontal processes within eTOM. ·       The Technology Neutral Architecture (TNA) is an integrated framework. TNA is an architecture that is sustainable through technology changes.   NGOSS Architecture Standards are:   ·       Centralized data ·       Loosely coupled distributed systems ·       Application components/re-use  ·       A technology-neutral system framework with technology specific implementations ·       Interoperability to service provider data/processes ·       Allows more re-use of business components across multiple business scenarios ·       Workflow automation   The traditional operator systems architecture consists of four layers,   ·       Business Support System (BSS) layer, with focus toward customers and business partners. Manages order, subscriber, pricing, rating, and billing information. ·       Operations Support System (OSS) layer, built around product, service, and resource inventories. ·       Networks layer – consists of Network elements and 3rd Party Systems. ·       Integration Layer – to maximize application communication and overall solution flexibility.   Reference architecture for telecom enterprises is depicted below. @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoCaption, li.MsoCaption, div.MsoCaption { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: rgb(79, 129, 189); font-weight: bold; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Figure 2. Telecom Reference Architecture   The major building blocks of any Telecom Service Provider architecture are as follows:   1. Customer Relationship Management   CRM encompasses the end-to-end lifecycle of the customer: customer initiation/acquisition, sales, ordering, and service activation, customer care and support, proactive campaigns, cross sell/up sell, and retention/loyalty.   CRM also includes the collection of customer information and its application to personalize, customize, and integrate delivery of service to a customer, as well as to identify opportunities for increasing the value of the customer to the enterprise.   The key functionalities related to Customer Relationship Management are   ·       Manage the end-to-end lifecycle of a customer request for products. ·       Create and manage customer profiles. ·       Manage all interactions with customers – inquiries, requests, and responses. ·       Provide updates to Billing and other south bound systems on customer/account related updates such as customer/ account creation, deletion, modification, request bills, final bill, duplicate bills, credit limits through Middleware. ·       Work with Order Management System, Product, and Service Management components within CRM. ·       Manage customer preferences – Involve all the touch points and channels to the customer, including contact center, retail stores, dealers, self service, and field service, as well as via any media (phone, face to face, web, mobile device, chat, email, SMS, mail, the customer's bill, etc.). ·       Support single interface for customer contact details, preferences, account details, offers, customer premise equipment, bill details, bill cycle details, and customer interactions.   CRM applications interact with customers through customer touch points like portals, point-of-sale terminals, interactive voice response systems, etc. The requests by customers are sent via fulfillment/provisioning to billing system for ordering processing.   2. Billing and Revenue Management   Billing and Revenue Management handles the collection of appropriate usage records and production of timely and accurate bills – for providing pre-bill usage information and billing to customers; for processing their payments; and for performing payment collections. In addition, it handles customer inquiries about bills, provides billing inquiry status, and is responsible for resolving billing problems to the customer's satisfaction in a timely manner. This process grouping also supports prepayment for services.   The key functionalities provided by these applications are   ·       To ensure that enterprise revenue is billed and invoices delivered appropriately to customers. ·       To manage customers’ billing accounts, process their payments, perform payment collections, and monitor the status of the account balance. ·       To ensure the timely and effective fulfillment of all customer bill inquiries and complaints. ·       Collect the usage records from mediation and ensure appropriate rating and discounting of all usage and pricing. ·       Support revenue sharing; split charging where usage is guided to an account different from the service consumer. ·       Support prepaid and post-paid rating. ·       Send notification on approach / exceeding the usage thresholds as enforced by the subscribed offer, and / or as setup by the customer. ·       Support prepaid, post paid, and hybrid (where some services are prepaid and the rest of the services post paid) customers and conversion from post paid to prepaid, and vice versa. ·       Support different billing function requirements like charge prorating, promotion, discount, adjustment, waiver, write-off, account receivable, GL Interface, late payment fee, credit control, dunning, account or service suspension, re-activation, expiry, termination, contract violation penalty, etc. ·       Initiate direct debit to collect payment against an invoice outstanding. ·       Send notification to Middleware on different events; for example, payment receipt, pre-suspension, threshold exceed, etc.   Billing systems typically get usage data from mediation systems for rating and billing. They get provisioning requests from order management systems and inquiries from CRM systems. Convergent and real-time billing systems can directly get usage details from network elements.   3. Mediation   Mediation systems transform/translate the Raw or Native Usage Data Records into a general format that is acceptable to billing for their rating purposes.   The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Mediation system in the end-to-end solution.   ·       Collect Usage Data Records from different data sources – like network elements, routers, servers – via different protocol and interfaces. ·       Process Usage Data Records – Mediation will process Usage Data Records as per the source format. ·       Validate Usage Data Records from each source. ·       Segregates Usage Data Records coming from each source to multiple, based on the segregation requirement of end Application. ·       Aggregates Usage Data Records based on the aggregation rule if any from different sources. ·       Consolidates multiple Usage Data Records from each source. ·       Delivers formatted Usage Data Records to different end application like Billing, Interconnect, Fraud Management, etc. ·       Generates audit trail for incoming Usage Data Records and keeps track of all the Usage Data Records at various stages of mediation process. ·       Checks duplicate Usage Data Records across files for a given time window.   4. Fulfillment   This area is responsible for providing customers with their requested products in a timely and correct manner. It translates the customer's business or personal need into a solution that can be delivered using the specific products in the enterprise's portfolio. This process informs the customers of the status of their purchase order, and ensures completion on time, as well as ensuring a delighted customer. These processes are responsible for accepting and issuing orders. They deal with pre-order feasibility determination, credit authorization, order issuance, order status and tracking, customer update on customer order activities, and customer notification on order completion. Order management and provisioning applications fall into this category.   The key functionalities provided by these applications are   ·       Issuing new customer orders, modifying open customer orders, or canceling open customer orders; ·       Verifying whether specific non-standard offerings sought by customers are feasible and supportable; ·       Checking the credit worthiness of customers as part of the customer order process; ·       Testing the completed offering to ensure it is working correctly; ·       Updating of the Customer Inventory Database to reflect that the specific product offering has been allocated, modified, or cancelled; ·       Assigning and tracking customer provisioning activities; ·       Managing customer provisioning jeopardy conditions; and ·       Reporting progress on customer orders and other processes to customer.   These applications typically get orders from CRM systems. They interact with network elements and billing systems for fulfillment of orders.   5. Enterprise Management   This process area includes those processes that manage enterprise-wide activities and needs, or have application within the enterprise as a whole. They encompass all business management processes that   ·       Are necessary to support the whole of the enterprise, including processes for financial management, legal management, regulatory management, process, cost, and quality management, etc.;   ·       Are responsible for setting corporate policies, strategies, and directions, and for providing guidelines and targets for the whole of the business, including strategy development and planning for areas, such as Enterprise Architecture, that are integral to the direction and development of the business;   ·       Occur throughout the enterprise, including processes for project management, performance assessments, cost assessments, etc.     (i) Enterprise Risk Management:   Enterprise Risk Management focuses on assuring that risks and threats to the enterprise value and/or reputation are identified, and appropriate controls are in place to minimize or eliminate the identified risks. The identified risks may be physical or logical/virtual. Successful risk management ensures that the enterprise can support its mission critical operations, processes, applications, and communications in the face of serious incidents such as security threats/violations and fraud attempts. Two key areas covered in Risk Management by telecom operators are:   ·       Revenue Assurance: Revenue assurance system will be responsible for identifying revenue loss scenarios across components/systems, and will help in rectifying the problems. The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Revenue Assurance system in the end-to-end solution. o   Identify all usage information dropped when networks are being upgraded. o   Interconnect bill verification. o   Identify where services are routinely provisioned but never billed. o   Identify poor sales policies that are intensifying collections problems. o   Find leakage where usage is sent to error bucket and never billed for. o   Find leakage where field service, CRM, and network build-out are not optimized.   ·       Fraud Management: Involves collecting data from different systems to identify abnormalities in traffic patterns, usage patterns, and subscription patterns to report suspicious activity that might suggest fraudulent usage of resources, resulting in revenue losses to the operator.   The key roles and responsibilities of the system component are as follows:   o   Fraud management system will capture and monitor high usage (over a certain threshold) in terms of duration, value, and number of calls for each subscriber. The threshold for each subscriber is decided by the system and fixed automatically. o   Fraud management will be able to detect the unauthorized access to services for certain subscribers. These subscribers may have been provided unauthorized services by employees. The component will raise the alert to the operator the very first time of such illegal calls or calls which are not billed. o   The solution will be to have an alarm management system that will deliver alarms to the operator/provider whenever it detects a fraud, thus minimizing fraud by catching it the first time it occurs. o   The Fraud Management system will be capable of interfacing with switches, mediation systems, and billing systems   (ii) Knowledge Management   This process focuses on knowledge management, technology research within the enterprise, and the evaluation of potential technology acquisitions.   Key responsibilities of knowledge base management are to   ·       Maintain knowledge base – Creation and updating of knowledge base on ongoing basis. ·       Search knowledge base – Search of knowledge base on keywords or category browse ·       Maintain metadata – Management of metadata on knowledge base to ensure effective management and search. ·       Run report generator. ·       Provide content – Add content to the knowledge base, e.g., user guides, operational manual, etc.   (iii) Document Management   It focuses on maintaining a repository of all electronic documents or images of paper documents relevant to the enterprise using a system.   (iv) Data Management   It manages data as a valuable resource for any enterprise. For telecom enterprises, the typical areas covered are Master Data Management, Data Warehousing, and Business Intelligence. It is also responsible for data governance, security, quality, and database management.   Key responsibilities of Data Management are   ·       Using ETL, extract the data from CRM, Billing, web content, ERP, campaign management, financial, network operations, asset management info, customer contact data, customer measures, benchmarks, process data, e.g., process inputs, outputs, and measures, into Enterprise Data Warehouse. ·       Management of data traceability with source, data related business rules/decisions, data quality, data cleansing data reconciliation, competitors data – storage for all the enterprise data (customer profiles, products, offers, revenues, etc.) ·       Get online update through night time replication or physical backup process at regular frequency. ·       Provide the data access to business intelligence and other systems for their analysis, report generation, and use.   (v) Business Intelligence   It uses the Enterprise Data to provide the various analysis and reports that contain prospects and analytics for customer retention, acquisition of new customers due to the offers, and SLAs. It will generate right and optimized plans – bolt-ons for the customers.   The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Business Intelligence system at the Enterprise Level:   ·       It will do Pattern analysis and reports problem. ·       It will do Data Analysis – Statistical analysis, data profiling, affinity analysis of data, customer segment wise usage patterns on offers, products, service and revenue generation against services and customer segments. ·       It will do Performance (business, system, and forecast) analysis, churn propensity, response time, and SLAs analysis. ·       It will support for online and offline analysis, and report drill down capability. ·       It will collect, store, and report various SLA data. ·       It will provide the necessary intelligence for marketing and working on campaigns, etc., with cost benefit analysis and predictions.   It will advise on customer promotions with additional services based on loyalty and credit history of customer   ·       It will Interface with Enterprise Data Management system for data to run reports and analysis tasks. It will interface with the campaign schedules, based on historical success evidence.   (vi) Stakeholder and External Relations Management   It manages the enterprise's relationship with stakeholders and outside entities. Stakeholders include shareholders, employee organizations, etc. Outside entities include regulators, local community, and unions. Some of the processes within this grouping are Shareholder Relations, External Affairs, Labor Relations, and Public Relations.   (vii) Enterprise Resource Planning   It is used to manage internal and external resources, including tangible assets, financial resources, materials, and human resources. Its purpose is to facilitate the flow of information between all business functions inside the boundaries of the enterprise and manage the connections to outside stakeholders. ERP systems consolidate all business operations into a uniform and enterprise wide system environment.   The key roles and responsibilities for Enterprise System are given below:   ·        It will handle responsibilities such as core accounting, financial, and management reporting. ·       It will interface with CRM for capturing customer account and details. ·       It will interface with billing to capture the billing revenue and other financial data. ·       It will be responsible for executing the dunning process. Billing will send the required feed to ERP for execution of dunning. ·       It will interface with the CRM and Billing through batch interfaces. Enterprise management systems are like horizontals in the enterprise and typically interact with all major telecom systems. E.g., an ERP system interacts with CRM, Fulfillment, and Billing systems for different kinds of data exchanges.   6. External Interfaces/Touch Points   The typical external parties are customers, suppliers/partners, employees, shareholders, and other stakeholders. External interactions from/to a Service Provider to other parties can be achieved by a variety of mechanisms, including:   ·       Exchange of emails or faxes ·       Call Centers ·       Web Portals ·       Business-to-Business (B2B) automated transactions   These applications provide an Internet technology driven interface to external parties to undertake a variety of business functions directly for themselves. These can provide fully or partially automated service to external parties through various touch points.   Typical characteristics of these touch points are   ·       Pre-integrated self-service system, including stand-alone web framework or integration front end with a portal engine ·       Self services layer exposing atomic web services/APIs for reuse by multiple systems across the architectural environment ·       Portlets driven connectivity exposing data and services interoperability through a portal engine or web application   These touch points mostly interact with the CRM systems for requests, inquiries, and responses.   7. Middleware   The component will be primarily responsible for integrating the different systems components under a common platform. It should provide a Standards-Based Platform for building Service Oriented Architecture and Composite Applications. The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Middleware component in the end-to-end solution.   ·       As an integration framework, covering to and fro interfaces ·       Provide a web service framework with service registry. ·       Support SOA framework with SOA service registry. ·       Each of the interfaces from / to Middleware to other components would handle data transformation, translation, and mapping of data points. ·       Receive data from the caller / activate and/or forward the data to the recipient system in XML format. ·       Use standard XML for data exchange. ·       Provide the response back to the service/call initiator. ·       Provide a tracking until the response completion. ·       Keep a store transitional data against each call/transaction. ·       Interface through Middleware to get any information that is possible and allowed from the existing systems to enterprise systems; e.g., customer profile and customer history, etc. ·       Provide the data in a common unified format to the SOA calls across systems, and follow the Enterprise Architecture directive. ·       Provide an audit trail for all transactions being handled by the component.   8. Network Elements   The term Network Element means a facility or equipment used in the provision of a telecommunications service. Such terms also includes features, functions, and capabilities that are provided by means of such facility or equipment, including subscriber numbers, databases, signaling systems, and information sufficient for billing and collection or used in the transmission, routing, or other provision of a telecommunications service.   Typical network elements in a GSM network are Home Location Register (HLR), Intelligent Network (IN), Mobile Switching Center (MSC), SMS Center (SMSC), and network elements for other value added services like Push-to-talk (PTT), Ring Back Tone (RBT), etc.   Network elements are invoked when subscribers use their telecom devices for any kind of usage. These elements generate usage data and pass it on to downstream systems like mediation and billing system for rating and billing. They also integrate with provisioning systems for order/service fulfillment.   9. 3rd Party Applications   3rd Party systems are applications like content providers, payment gateways, point of sale terminals, and databases/applications maintained by the Government.   Depending on applicability and the type of functionality provided by 3rd party applications, the integration with different telecom systems like CRM, provisioning, and billing will be done.   10. Service Delivery Platform   A service delivery platform (SDP) provides the architecture for the rapid deployment, provisioning, execution, management, and billing of value added telecom services. SDPs are based on the concept of SOA and layered architecture. They support the delivery of voice, data services, and content in network and device-independent fashion. They allow application developers to aggregate network capabilities, services, and sources of content. SDPs typically contain layers for web services exposure, service application development, and network abstraction.   SOA Reference Architecture   SOA concept is based on the principle of developing reusable business service and building applications by composing those services, instead of building monolithic applications in silos. It’s about bridging the gap between business and IT through a set of business-aligned IT services, using a set of design principles, patterns, and techniques.   In an SOA, resources are made available to participants in a value net, enterprise, line of business (typically spanning multiple applications within an enterprise or across multiple enterprises). It consists of a set of business-aligned IT services that collectively fulfill an organization’s business processes and goals. We can choreograph these services into composite applications and invoke them through standard protocols. SOA, apart from agility and reusability, enables:   ·       The business to specify processes as orchestrations of reusable services ·       Technology agnostic business design, with technology hidden behind service interface ·       A contractual-like interaction between business and IT, based on service SLAs ·       Accountability and governance, better aligned to business services ·       Applications interconnections untangling by allowing access only through service interfaces, reducing the daunting side effects of change ·       Reduced pressure to replace legacy and extended lifetime for legacy applications, through encapsulation in services   ·       A Cloud Computing paradigm, using web services technologies, that makes possible service outsourcing on an on-demand, utility-like, pay-per-usage basis   The following section represents the Reference Architecture of logical view for the Telecom Solution. The new custom built application needs to align with this logical architecture in the long run to achieve EA benefits.   Packaged implementation applications, such as ERP billing applications, need to expose their functions as service providers (as other applications consume) and interact with other applications as service consumers.   COT applications need to expose services through wrappers such as adapters to utilize existing resources and at the same time achieve Enterprise Architecture goal and objectives.   The following are the various layers for Enterprise level deployment of SOA. This diagram captures the abstract view of Enterprise SOA layers and important components of each layer. Layered architecture means decomposition of services such that most interactions occur between adjacent layers. However, there is no strict rule that top layers should not directly communicate with bottom layers.   The diagram below represents the important logical pieces that would result from overall SOA transformation. @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoCaption, li.MsoCaption, div.MsoCaption { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: rgb(79, 129, 189); font-weight: bold; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Figure 3. Enterprise SOA Reference Architecture 1.          Operational System Layer: This layer consists of all packaged applications like CRM, ERP, custom built applications, COTS based applications like Billing, Revenue Management, Fulfilment, and the Enterprise databases that are essential and contribute directly or indirectly to the Enterprise OSS/BSS Transformation.   ERP holds the data of Asset Lifecycle Management, Supply Chain, and Advanced Procurement and Human Capital Management, etc.   CRM holds the data related to Order, Sales, and Marketing, Customer Care, Partner Relationship Management, Loyalty, etc.   Content Management handles Enterprise Search and Query. Billing application consists of the following components:   ·       Collections Management, Customer Billing Management, Invoices, Real-Time Rating, Discounting, and Applying of Charges ·       Enterprise databases will hold both the application and service data, whether structured or unstructured.   MDM - Master data majorly consists of Customer, Order, Product, and Service Data.     2.          Enterprise Component Layer:   This layer consists of the Application Services and Common Services that are responsible for realizing the functionality and maintaining the QoS of the exposed services. This layer uses container-based technologies such as application servers to implement the components, workload management, high availability, and load balancing.   Application Services: This Service Layer enables application, technology, and database abstraction so that the complex accessing logic is hidden from the other service layers. This is a basic service layer, which exposes application functionalities and data as reusable services. The three types of the Application access services are:   ·       Application Access Service: This Service Layer exposes application level functionalities as a reusable service between BSS to BSS and BSS to OSS integration. This layer is enabled using disparate technology such as Web Service, Integration Servers, and Adaptors, etc.   ·       Data Access Service: This Service Layer exposes application data services as a reusable reference data service. This is done via direct interaction with application data. and provides the federated query.   ·       Network Access Service: This Service Layer exposes provisioning layer as a reusable service from OSS to OSS integration. This integration service emphasizes the need for high performance, stateless process flows, and distributed design.   Common Services encompasses management of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data such as information services, portal services, interaction services, infrastructure services, and security services, etc.   3.          Integration Layer:   This consists of service infrastructure components like service bus, service gateway for partner integration, service registry, service repository, and BPEL processor. Service bus will carry the service invocation payloads/messages between consumers and providers. The other important functions expected from it are itinerary based routing, distributed caching of routing information, transformations, and all qualities of service for messaging-like reliability, scalability, and availability, etc. Service registry will hold all contracts (wsdl) of services, and it helps developers to locate or discover service during design time or runtime.   • BPEL processor would be useful in orchestrating the services to compose a complex business scenario or process. • Workflow and business rules management are also required to support manual triggering of certain activities within business process. based on the rules setup and also the state machine information. Application, data, and service mediation layer typically forms the overall composite application development framework or SOA Framework.   4.          Business Process Layer: These are typically the intermediate services layer and represent Shared Business Process Services. At Enterprise Level, these services are from Customer Management, Order Management, Billing, Finance, and Asset Management application domains.   5.          Access Layer: This layer consists of portals for Enterprise and provides a single view of Enterprise information management and dashboard services.   6.          Channel Layer: This consists of various devices; applications that form part of extended enterprise; browsers through which users access the applications.   7.          Client Layer: This designates the different types of users accessing the enterprise applications. The type of user typically would be an important factor in determining the level of access to applications.   8.          Vertical pieces like management, monitoring, security, and development cut across all horizontal layers Management and monitoring involves all aspects of SOA-like services, SLAs, and other QoS lifecycle processes for both applications and services surrounding SOA governance.     9.          EA Governance, Reference Architecture, Roadmap, Principles, and Best Practices:   EA Governance is important in terms of providing the overall direction to SOA implementation within the enterprise. This involves board-level involvement, in addition to business and IT executives. At a high level, this involves managing the SOA projects implementation, managing SOA infrastructure, and controlling the entire effort through all fine-tuned IT processes in accordance with COBIT (Control Objectives for Information Technology).   Devising tools and techniques to promote reuse culture, and the SOA way of doing things needs competency centers to be established in addition to training the workforce to take up new roles that are suited to SOA journey.   Conclusions   Reference Architectures can serve as the basis for disparate architecture efforts throughout the organization, even if they use different tools and technologies. Reference architectures provide best practices and approaches in the independent way a vendor deals with technology and standards. Reference Architectures model the abstract architectural elements for an enterprise independent of the technologies, protocols, and products that are used to implement an SOA. Telecom enterprises today are facing significant business and technology challenges due to growing competition, a multitude of services, and convergence. Adopting architectural best practices could go a long way in meeting these challenges. The use of SOA-based architecture for communication to each of the external systems like Billing, CRM, etc., in OSS/BSS system has made the architecture very loosely coupled, with greater flexibility. Any change in the external systems would be absorbed at the Integration Layer without affecting the rest of the ecosystem. The use of a Business Process Management (BPM) tool makes the management and maintenance of the business processes easy, with better performance in terms of lead time, quality, and cost. Since the Architecture is based on standards, it will lower the cost of deploying and managing OSS/BSS applications over their lifecycles.

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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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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, October 29, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, October 29, 2011Popular Releasespatterns & practices: Enterprise Library Contrib: Enterprise Library Contrib - 5.0 (Oct 2011): This release of Enterprise Library Contrib is based on the Microsoft patterns & practices Enterprise Library 5.0 core and contains the following: Common extensionsTypeConfigurationElement<T> - A Polymorphic Configuration Element without having to be part of a PolymorphicConfigurationElementCollection. AnonymousConfigurationElement - A Configuration element that can be uniquely identified without having to define its name explicitly. Data Access Application Block extensionsMySql Provider - ...Network Monitor Open Source Parsers: Network Monitor Parsers 3.4.2748: The Network Monitor Parsers packages contain parsers for more than 400 network protocols, including RFC based public protocols and protocols for Microsoft products defined in the Microsoft Open Specifications for Windows and SQL Server. NetworkMonitor_Parsers.msi is the base parser package which defines parsers for commonly used public protocols and protocols for Microsoft Windows. In this release, NetowrkMonitor_Parsers.msi continues to improve quality and fix bugs. It has included the fo...Duckworth Lewis Professional Edition Calculator: DLcalc 3.0: DLcalc 3.0 can perform Duckworth/Lewis Professional Edition calculations 100% accurately. It also produces over-by-over and ball-by-ball PAR score tables.Folder Bookmarks: Folder Bookmarks 2.2.0.1: In this version: Custom Icons - now you can change the icons of the bookmarks. By default, whenever an image is added, the icon is automatically changed to a thumbnail of the picture. This can be turned off in the settings (Options... > Settings) Ability to remove items from the 'Recent' category Bugfixes - 'Choose' button in 'Edit Bookmark' now works Another bug fix: another problem in the 'Edit Bookmark' windowMedia Companion: MC 3.420b Weekly: Ensure .NET 4.0 Full Framework is installed. (Available from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17718) Ensure the NFO ID fix is applied when transitioning from versions prior to 3.416b. (Details here) Movies Fixed: Fanart and poster scraping issues TV Shows (Re)Added: Rebuild single show Fixed: Issue when shows are moved from original location Ability to handle " for actor nicknames Crash when episode name contains "<" (does not scrape yet) Clears fanart when switch...patterns & practices - Unity: Unity 3.0 for .NET4.5 Preview: The Unity 3.0.1026.0 Preview enables Unity to work on .NET 4.5 with both the WinRT and desktop profiles. The major changes include: Unity projects updated to target .NET 4.5. Dynamic build plans modified to use compiled lambda expressions instead of Reflection.Emit Converting reflection to use the new TypeInfo for reflection. Projects updated to work with the Microsoft Visual Studio 2011 Preview Notes/Known Issues: The Microsoft.Practices.Unity.UnityServiceLocator class cannot be use...Managed Extensibility Framework: MEF 2 Preview 4: Detailed information on this release is available on the BCL team blog.Image Converter: Image Converter 0.3: New Features: - English and German support Technical Improvements: - Microsoft All Rules using Code Analysis Planned Features for future release: 1. Unit testing 2. Command line interface 3. Automatic UpdatesAcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.6: ?? ● AcDown??????????、??????，??????????????????????，???????Acfun、Bilibili、???、???、???、Tucao.cc、SF???、?????80????，???????????、?????????。 ● AcDown???????????????????????????，???，???????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)?.NET Framework 2.0???(x64)，?????"?????????"??? ??????????????，??????????： ??"AcDown?????"????????? ?? v3.6?? ??“????”...DotNetNuke® Events: 05.02.01: This release fixes any know bugs from any previous version. Events 05.02.01 will work for any DNN version 5.5.0 and up. Full details on the changes can be found at http://dnnevents.codeplex.com/workitem/list/basic Please review and rate this release... (stars are welcome)BUG FIXESAdded validation around category cookie RSS feed was missing an explicit close of the file when writing. Fixed. Added extra security into detail view .ICS Files did not include correct line folding. Fixed Cha...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.33: Add JSParser.ParseExpression method to parse JavaScript expressions rather than source-elements. Add -strict switch (CodeSettings.StrictMode) to force input code to ECMA5 Strict-mode (extra error-checking, "use strict" at top). Fixed bug when MinifyCode setting was set to false but RemoveUnneededCode was left it's default value of true.Path Copy Copy: 8.0: New version that mostly adds lots of requested features: 11340 11339 11338 11337 This version also features a more elaborate Settings UI that has several tabs. I tried to add some notes to better explain the use and purpose of the various options. The Path Copy Copy documentation is also on the way, both to explain how to develop custom plugins and to explain how to pre-configure options if you're a network admin. Stay tuned.MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 1.5.0: Added: The new Client Blocks feaure of Views A new "move" js method for the TreeViews The NewHtmlCreated js event to the DataGrid Improved the ChoiceList structure that now allows also the selection list of a dropdown to be chosen with a lambda expression Improved the AcceptViewHintAttribute controller filter. Now a client can specify not only the name of a View or Partial View it prefers, but also to receive just the rough data in Json format. Fixed: Issue with partial thrust Cl...Free SharePoint Master Pages: Buried Alive (Halloween) Theme: Release Notes *Created for Halloween, you will find theme file, custom css file and images. *Created by Al Roome @AlstarRoome Features: Custom styling for web part Custom background *Screenshot https://s3.amazonaws.com/kkhipple/post/sharepoint-showcase-halloween.pngDevForce Application Framework: DevForce AF 2.0.3 RTW: PrerequisitesWPF 4.0 Silverlight 4.0 DevForce 2010 6.1.3.1 Download ContentsDebug and Release Assemblies API Documentation Source code License.txt Requirements.txt Release HighlightsNew: EventAggregator event forwarding New: EntityManagerInterceptor<T> to intercept EntityManger events New: IHarnessAware to allow for ViewModel setup when executed inside of the Development Harness New: Improved design time stability New: Support for add-in development New: CoroutineFns.To...NicAudio: NicAudio 2.0.5: Minor change to accept special DTS stereo modes (LtRt, AB,...)NDepend TFS 2010 integration: version 0.5.0 beta 1: Only the activity and the VS plugin are avalaible right now. They basically work. Data types that are logged into tfs reports are subject to change. This is no big deal since data is not yet sent into the warehouse.Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone v1.3.1: Upgraded Windows Azure projects to Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 1.5 – September 2011 Upgraded the tools tools to support the Windows Phone Developer Tools RTW Update SQL Azure only scenarios to use ASP.NET Universal Providers (through the System.Web.Providers v1.0.1 NuGet package) Changed Shared Access Signature service interface to support more operations Refactored Blobs API to have a similar interface and usage to that provided by the Windows Azure SDK Stor...DotNetNuke® FAQ: 05.00.00: FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) 05.00.00 will work for any DNN version 5.6.1 and up. It is the first version which is rewritten in C#. The scope of this update is to fix all known issues and improve user interface. Please review and rate this release... (stars are welcome)BUG FIXESManage Categories button text was not localized Edit/Add FAQ Entry: button text was not localized ENHANCEMENTSAdded an option to select the control for category display: Listbox with checkboxes (flat category ...SiteMap Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: SiteMap Editor (1.0.921.340): Added CodePlex and PayPal links New iconNew ProjectsAsynk: Asynk is a framework/application that allows existing applications to easily be extended with an offloaded asynchronous worker layer. Asynk is developed using C#.Blob Tower Defense: 3D tower defense game for Windows Phone 7. School project for Brno University of Technology, computer graphics class.Booz: Booz is... An extended version of the boo shell (booish2 to be precise). Offers additional commands like cd, md, ls etc. I hope this shell can be used to take the position of/surpass the native windows shell in the near future.CIMS: a sanction infomation system for sencience and technology of hustCrystalDot - Icon Collection / Pack (LGPL): .Net / Mono freundliche Varainte der Crystal-Icons von Everaldo Icon collection / pack for .NET and Mono designed by Everaldo - KDE style http://www.everaldo.com/crystal/dotetes: dotetes adalah teka teki silang tool dikembangkan dengan bahasa c#Emoe': This Project is a Windows Phone 7.1 application.Equation Inversion: Visual Studion 2008 Add-in for equation inversions.Exploring VMR Features on WEC7: This is the sample application helps you to do alpha blending the bitmap on camera streaming in Windows Embedded Compact 7 using Directshow video Renderer (VMR). It is a VS2008 based smart device project developed on C++. I have explained the sample application in the following blog link. http://www.e-consystems.com/blog/windowsce/?p=759 EzValidation: Custom validation extensions for ASP.NET MVC 3. Includes server and client side model based validation attributes for: -- Equal To -- Not Equal To -- Greater Than -- Greater Than or Equal To -- Less Than -- Less Than or Equal To Supports validating against: -- Another Model Field -- A Specific Value -- Current Date/Yesterday/Tomorrow (for Dates and Strings) Download & Install via NuGet "package-install ezvalidation"Flu.net: Flu.net is a tool that helps you creating your own fluent syntax for .NET Framework applications in a declarative fashion. It is aimed for infrastructures and other open-source projects use.For Chess Endgames: King vs. King Opposition Calculator: You must input the locations of 2 kings on a chessboard, and whose turn it is to move. The calculator will display which king has the opposition, and how it can be used or maintained.GameTrakXNA: This project aims to create a simple library to use the unique GameTrak controller within XNA and Flash.Google Speech Recognition Example: Google Speech Recognition contains a working example of application that uses google speech recognition API. App contains all necessary dlls to record, decode and send your voice request to google service and recieve a text representation of what you've said. It's developed in C#Interval Mandelbrot Explorer: Explore the Mandelbrot set using interval arithmetic.ISD training tasks: ISD training examples and tasksiTunesControlBar: The iTunesControlBar helps user control their iTunes Application while it is minimized. iTunesControlBar resides at the top of the screen, invisible when not used, and allows playback and volume control, library searches and media information without the need to bring up iTunes.iTurtle: A bunch of Powerscripts to automate server management in AD environment.M26WC - Mono 2.6 Wizard Control: Wizard which runs under Mono2.6 A fork of: http://aerowizard.codeplex.com/Microsoft Help Viewer 2: Help Viewer 2 is the help runtime for both Visual Studio 11 help and Windows 8 help. The code in this project will help you use and understand the HV2 runtime API.MONTRASEC: Monitoring Trafficking in human beings and Sexual Exploitation of Children: benchmarking for member state and EU reporting, turning the SIAMSECT templates into a user-friendly interface and reporting tool. MTF.NET Runtime: Managed Task Framework .NET Runtime The MTF.NET runtime software and resulting assemblies are required to run applications built using the Managed Task Framework.NET Professional (Visual Studio 2010 extension) software design editor. The MTF.NET team are committed to continuously improving the core MTF.NET runtime and ensuring it is always available free and fully transparent. Pandoras Box: A greenfield inversion of control project utilising the power and flexibility of expressions and preferring convention over configuration.Pass the Puzzle: Pass the Puzzle is a frantic word-guessing party game. The game displays a few letters, and the players must come up with words containing those letters. But beware: if the timer goes off, you lose! It is based on the folk party game Pass the Parcel and is written in C#.PerCiGal: Percigal is a project for the development of applications for managing your personal media library. It consists in - a windows application to use at home to catalog movies, TV series, cast and books, with the support of the Internet for information retrieval; - a web interface for viewing and cataloging everywhere your media; - an application for smartphones. Project Flying Carpet: Este jogo é um projeto para a cadeira Projeto de Jogos: Motores Jogos do curso de Jogos Digitais da Unisinos.proxy browser: sed leo Latin's Butterfly....Python Multiple Dispatch: Multiple dispatch (AKA multimethods) for Python 3 via a metaclass and type annotations.reDune: ?????????? ???? ? ????? «????????? ? ???????? ???????». ???????? ?? Dune2000 ?? Westwood ? Electronic Arts.Rereadable: Keep page from internet for read it latter.ServStop: ServStop is a .NET application that makes it easy to stop several system services at once. Now you don't have to change startup types or stop them one at a time. It has a simple list-based interface with the ability to save and load lists of user services to stop. Written in C#.SharePoint 2010 Audience Membership Workflow Activity (Full Trust): A simple SharePoint 2010 workflow activity / workflow condition to check whether the user initiating the workflow is a member of a specified audience. Farm-level .wsp solution, written in C#. Once installed, the workflow activity can be used in SharePoint Designer 2010 declarative workflows.SQL Server® to Firebird DB converter: Converts Microsoft SQL Server® database into Firebird database including entire structure and datastegitest: test projectSystem.Threading.Joins: The Joins project provides asynchronous concurrency semantics based on join calculus and modeled after the Microsoft Research C? (C Omega) project.TestAndroidGame: try dev a TestAndroidGametetribricks: block game Topographic Explorer: A project to import, convert, explore, manipulate, and save topographical maps. Looking to use C# and WPF.Trading: Under construction!!!Trombone: Trombone makes it easier for Windows Mobile Professional users to automate status reply through SMS. It's developed in Visual C# 2008.Tulsa SharePoint Interest Group: Repository for source code for the Tulsa SharePoint Interest Group's web site. The Tulsa SharePoint Interest Group is using the Community Kit for SharePoint. This project will house any modifications that are specific to our user group.World of Tanks RU tiny stats collection utilty.: Tiny utility to load players stats for World of Tanks RU server. Results saved to comma separated file.WS-Discovery Proxy: Attempt at creating general purpose WS-Discovery Proxy.Yamaha Tu?n Tr?c: This application is used to manage information for Yamaha Tu?n Tr?c

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• Nagging As A Strategy For Better Linking: -z guidance

  - by user9154181

  The link-editor (ld) in Solaris 11 has a new feature that we call guidance that is intended to help you build better objects. The basic idea behind guidance is that if (and only if) you request it, the link-editor will issue messages suggesting better options and other changes you might make to your ld command to get better results. You can choose to take the advice, or you can disable specific types of guidance while acting on others. In some ways, this works like an experienced friend leaning over your shoulder and giving you advice — you're free to take it or leave it as you see fit, but you get nudged to do a better job than you might have otherwise. We use guidance to build the core Solaris OS, and it has proven to be useful, both in improving our objects, and in making sure that regressions don't creep back in later. In this article, I'm going to describe the evolution in thinking and design that led to the implementation of the -z guidance option, as well as give a brief description of how it works. The guidance feature issues non-fatal warnings. However, experience shows that once developers get used to ignoring warnings, it is inevitable that real problems will be lost in the noise and ignored or missed. This is why we have a zero tolerance policy against build noise in the core Solaris OS. In order to get maximum benefit from -z guidance while maintaining this policy, I added the -z fatal-warnings option at the same time. Much of the material presented here is adapted from the arc case: PSARC 2010/312 Link-editor guidance The History Of Unfortunate Link-Editor Defaults The Solaris link-editor is one of the oldest Unix commands. It stands to reason that this would be true — in order to write an operating system, you need the ability to compile and link code. The original link-editor (ld) had defaults that made sense at the time. As new features were needed, command line option switches were added to let the user use them, while maintaining backward compatibility for those who didn't. Backward compatibility is always a concern in system design, but is particularly important in the case of the tool chain (compilers, linker, and related tools), since it is a basic building block for the entire system. Over the years, applications have grown in size and complexity. Important concepts like dynamic linking that didn't exist in the original Unix system were invented. Object file formats changed. In the case of System V Release 4 Unix derivatives like Solaris, the ELF (Extensible Linking Format) was adopted. Since then, the ELF system has evolved to provide tools needed to manage today's larger and more complex environments. Features such as lazy loading, and direct bindings have been added. In an ideal world, many of these options would be defaults, with rarely used options that allow the user to turn them off. However, the reality is exactly the reverse: For backward compatibility, these features are all options that must be explicitly turned on by the user. This has led to a situation in which most applications do not take advantage of the many improvements that have been made in linking over the last 20 years. If their code seems to link and run without issue, what motivation does a developer have to read a complex manpage, absorb the information provided, choose the features that matter for their application, and apply them? Experience shows that only the most motivated and diligent programmers will make that effort. We know that most programs would be improved if we could just get you to use the various whizzy features that we provide, but the defaults conspire against us. We have long wanted to do something to make it easier for our users to use the linkers more effectively. There have been many conversations over the years regarding this issue, and how to address it. They always break down along the following lines: Change ld Defaults Since the world would be a better place the newer ld features were the defaults, why not change things to make it so? This idea is simple, elegant, and impossible. Doing so would break a large number of existing applications, including those of ISVs, big customers, and a plethora of existing open source packages. In each case, the owner of that code may choose to follow our lead and fix their code, or they may view it as an invitation to reconsider their commitment to our platform. Backward compatibility, and our installed base of working software, is one of our greatest assets, and not something to be lightly put at risk. Breaking backward compatibility at this level of the system is likely to do more harm than good. But, it sure is tempting. New Link-Editor One might create a new linker command, not called 'ld', leaving the old command as it is. The new one could use the same code as ld, but would offer only modern options, with the proper defaults for features such as direct binding. The resulting link-editor would be a pleasure to use. However, the approach is doomed to niche status. There is a vast pile of exiting code in the world built around the existing ld command, that reaches back to the 1970's. ld use is embedded in large and unknown numbers of makefiles, and is used by name by compilers that execute it. A Unix link-editor that is not named ld will not find a majority audience no matter how good it might be. Finally, a new linker command will eventually cease to be new, and will accumulate its own burden of backward compatibility issues. An Option To Make ld Do The Right Things Automatically This line of reasoning is best summarized by a CR filed in 2005, entitled 6239804 make it easier for ld(1) to do what's best The idea is to have a '-z best' option that unchains ld from its backward compatibility commitment, and allows it to turn on the "best" set of features, as determined by the authors of ld. The specific set of features enabled by -z best would be subject to change over time, as requirements change. This idea is more realistic than the other two, but was never implemented because it has some important issues that we could never answer to our satisfaction: The -z best proposal assumes that the user can turn it on, and trust it to select good options without the user needing to be aware of the options being applied. This is a fallacy. Features such as direct bindings require the user to do some analysis to ensure that the resulting program will still operate properly. A user who is willing to do the work to verify that what -z best does will be OK for their application is capable of turning on those features directly, and therefore gains little added benefit from -z best. The intent is that when a user opts into -z best, that they understand that z best is subject to sometimes incompatible evolution. Experience teaches us that this won't work. People will use this feature, the meaning of -z best will change, code that used to build will fail, and then there will be complaints and demands to retract the change. When (not if) this occurs, we will of course defend our actions, and point at the disclaimer. We'll win some of those debates, and lose others. Ultimately, we'll end up with -z best2 (-z better), or other compromises, and our goal of simplifying the world will have failed. The -z best idea rolls up a set of features that may or may not be related to each other into a unit that must be taken wholesale, or not at all. It could be that only a subset of what it does is compatible with a given application, in which case the user is expected to abandon -z best and instead set the options that apply to their application directly. In doing so, they lose one of the benefits of -z best, that if you use it, future versions of ld may choose a different set of options, and automatically improve the object through the act of rebuilding it. I drew two conclusions from the above history: For a link-editor, backward compatibility is vital. If a given command line linked your application 10 years ago, you have every reason to expect that it will link today, assuming that the libraries you're linking against are still available and compatible with their previous interfaces. For an application of any size or complexity, there is no substitute for the work involved in examining the code and determining which linker options apply and which do not. These options are largely orthogonal to each other, and it can be reasonable not to use any or all of them, depending on the situation, even in modern applications. It is a mistake to tie them together. The idea for -z guidance came from consideration of these points. By decoupling the advice from the act of taking the advice, we can retain the good aspects of -z best while avoiding its pitfalls: -z guidance gives advice, but the decision to take that advice remains with the user who must evaluate its merit and make a decision to take it or not. As such, we are free to change the specific guidance given in future releases of ld, without breaking existing applications. The only fallout from this will be some new warnings in the build output, which can be ignored or dealt with at the user's convenience. It does not couple the various features given into a single "take it or leave it" option, meaning that there will never be a need to offer "-zguidance2", or other such variants as things change over time. Guidance has the potential to be our final word on this subject. The user is given the flexibility to disable specific categories of guidance without losing the benefit of others, including those that might be added to future versions of the system. Although -z fatal-warnings stands on its own as a useful feature, it is of particular interest in combination with -z guidance. Used together, the guidance turns from advice to hard requirement: The user must either make the suggested change, or explicitly reject the advice by specifying a guidance exception token, in order to get a build. This is valuable in environments with high coding standards. ld Command Line Options The guidance effort resulted in new link-editor options for guidance and for turning warnings into fatal errors. Before I reproduce that text here, I'd like to highlight the strategic decisions embedded in the guidance feature: In order to get guidance, you have to opt in. We hope you will opt in, and believe you'll get better objects if you do, but our default mode of operation will continue as it always has, with full backward compatibility, and without judgement. Guidance suggestions always offers specific advice, and not vague generalizations. You can disable some guidance without turning off the entire feature. When you get guidance warnings, you can choose to take the advice, or you can specify a keyword to disable guidance for just that category. This allows you to get guidance for things that are useful to you, without being bothered about things that you've already considered and dismissed. As the world changes, we will add new guidance to steer you in the right direction. All such new guidance will come with a keyword that let's you turn it off. In order to facilitate building your code on different versions of Solaris, we quietly ignore any guidance keywords we don't recognize, assuming that they are intended for newer versions of the link-editor. If you want to see what guidance tokens ld does and does not recognize on your system, you can use the ld debugging feature as follows: % ld -Dargs -z guidance=foo,nodefs debug: debug: Solaris Linkers: 5.11-1.2275 debug: debug: arg[1] option=-D: option-argument: args debug: arg[2] option=-z: option-argument: guidance=foo,nodefs debug: warning: unrecognized -z guidance item: foo The -z fatal-warning option is straightforward, and generally useful in environments with strict coding standards. Note that the GNU ld already had this feature, and we accept their option names as synonyms: -z fatal-warnings | nofatal-warnings --fatal-warnings | --no-fatal-warnings The -z fatal-warnings and the --fatal-warnings option cause the link-editor to treat warnings as fatal errors. The -z nofatal-warnings and the --no-fatal-warnings option cause the link-editor to treat warnings as non-fatal. This is the default behavior. The -z guidance option is defined as follows: -z guidance[=item1,item2,...] Provide guidance messages to suggest ld options that can improve the quality of the resulting object, or which are otherwise considered to be beneficial. The specific guidance offered is subject to change over time as the system evolves. Obsolete guidance offered by older versions of ld may be dropped in new versions. Similarly, new guidance may be added to new versions of ld. Guidance therefore always represents current best practices. It is possible to enable guidance, while preventing specific guidance messages, by providing a list of item tokens, representing the class of guidance to be suppressed. In this way, unwanted advice can be suppressed without losing the benefit of other guidance. Unrecognized item tokens are quietly ignored by ld, allowing a given ld command line to be executed on a variety of older or newer versions of Solaris. The guidance offered by the current version of ld, and the item tokens used to disable these messages, are as follows. Specify Required Dependencies Dynamic executables and shared objects should explicitly define all of the dependencies they require. Guidance recommends the use of the -z defs option, should any symbol references remain unsatisfied when building dynamic objects. This guidance can be disabled with -z guidance=nodefs. Do Not Specify Non-Required Dependencies Dynamic executables and shared objects should not define any dependencies that do not satisfy the symbol references made by the dynamic object. Guidance recommends that unused dependencies be removed. This guidance can be disabled with -z guidance=nounused. Lazy Loading Dependencies should be identified for lazy loading. Guidance recommends the use of the -z lazyload option should any dependency be processed before either a -z lazyload or -z nolazyload option is encountered. This guidance can be disabled with -z guidance=nolazyload. Direct Bindings Dependencies should be referenced with direct bindings. Guidance recommends the use of the -B direct, or -z direct options should any dependency be processed before either of these options, or the -z nodirect option is encountered. This guidance can be disabled with -z guidance=nodirect. Pure Text Segment Dynamic objects should not contain relocations to non-writable, allocable sections. Guidance recommends compiling objects with Position Independent Code (PIC) should any relocations against the text segment remain, and neither the -z textwarn or -z textoff options are encountered. This guidance can be disabled with -z guidance=notext. Mapfile Syntax All mapfiles should use the version 2 mapfile syntax. Guidance recommends the use of the version 2 syntax should any mapfiles be encountered that use the version 1 syntax. This guidance can be disabled with -z guidance=nomapfile. Library Search Path Inappropriate dependencies that are encountered by ld are quietly ignored. For example, a 32-bit dependency that is encountered when generating a 64-bit object is ignored. These dependencies can result from incorrect search path settings, such as supplying an incorrect -L option. Although benign, this dependency processing is wasteful, and might hide a build problem that should be solved. Guidance recommends the removal of any inappropriate dependencies. This guidance can be disabled with -z guidance=nolibpath. In addition, -z guidance=noall can be used to entirely disable the guidance feature. See Chapter 7, Link-Editor Quick Reference, in the Linker and Libraries Guide for more information on guidance and advice for building better objects. Example The following example demonstrates how the guidance feature is intended to work. We will build a shared object that has a variety of shortcomings: Does not specify all it's dependencies Specifies dependencies it does not use Does not use direct bindings Uses a version 1 mapfile Contains relocations to the readonly allocable text (not PIC) This scenario is sadly very common — many shared objects have one or more of these issues. % cat hello.c #include <stdio.h> #include <unistd.h> void hello(void) { printf("hello user %d\n", getpid()); } % cat mapfile.v1 # This version 1 mapfile will trigger a guidance message % cc hello.c -o hello.so -G -M mapfile.v1 -lelf As you can see, the operation completes without error, resulting in a usable object. However, turning on guidance reveals a number of things that could be better: % cc hello.c -o hello.so -G -M mapfile.v1 -lelf -zguidance ld: guidance: version 2 mapfile syntax recommended: mapfile.v1 ld: guidance: -z lazyload option recommended before first dependency ld: guidance: -B direct or -z direct option recommended before first dependency Undefined first referenced symbol in file getpid hello.o (symbol belongs to implicit dependency /lib/libc.so.1) printf hello.o (symbol belongs to implicit dependency /lib/libc.so.1) ld: warning: symbol referencing errors ld: guidance: -z defs option recommended for shared objects ld: guidance: removal of unused dependency recommended: libelf.so.1 warning: Text relocation remains referenced against symbol offset in file .rodata1 (section) 0xa hello.o getpid 0x4 hello.o printf 0xf hello.o ld: guidance: position independent (PIC) code recommended for shared objects ld: guidance: see ld(1) -z guidance for more information Given the explicit advice in the above guidance messages, it is relatively easy to modify the example to do the right things: % cat mapfile.v2 # This version 2 mapfile will not trigger a guidance message $mapfile_version 2 % cc hello.c -o hello.so -Kpic -G -Bdirect -M mapfile.v2 -lc -zguidance There are situations in which the guidance does not fit the object being built. For instance, you want to build an object without direct bindings: % cc -Kpic hello.c -o hello.so -G -M mapfile.v2 -lc -zguidance ld: guidance: -B direct or -z direct option recommended before first dependency ld: guidance: see ld(1) -z guidance for more information It is easy to disable that specific guidance warning without losing the overall benefit from allowing the remainder of the guidance feature to operate: % cc -Kpic hello.c -o hello.so -G -M mapfile.v2 -lc -zguidance=nodirect Conclusions The linking guidelines enforced by the ld guidance feature correspond rather directly to our standards for building the core Solaris OS. I'm sure that comes as no surprise. It only makes sense that we would want to build our own product as well as we know how. Solaris is usually the first significant test for any new linker feature. We now enable guidance by default for all builds, and the effect has been very positive. Guidance helps us find suboptimal objects more quickly. Programmers get concrete advice for what to change instead of vague generalities. Even in the cases where we override the guidance, the makefile rules to do so serve as documentation of the fact. Deciding to use guidance is likely to cause some up front work for most code, as it forces you to consider using new features such as direct bindings. Such investigation is worthwhile, but does not come for free. However, the guidance suggestions offer a structured and straightforward way to tackle modernizing your objects, and once that work is done, for keeping them that way. The investment is often worth it, and will replay you in terms of better performance and fewer problems. I hope that you find guidance to be as useful as we have.

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• iPhone SDK vs. Windows Phone 7 Series SDK Challenge, Part 2: MoveMe

  In this series, I will be taking sample applications from the iPhone SDK and implementing them on Windows Phone 7 Series.  My goal is to do as much of an apples-to-apples comparison as I can.  This series will be written to not only compare and contrast how easy or difficult it is to complete tasks on either platform, how many lines of code, etc., but Id also like it to be a way for iPhone developers to either get started on Windows Phone 7 Series development, or for developers in general to learn the platform. Heres my methodology: Run the iPhone SDK app in the iPhone Simulator to get a feel for what it does and how it works, without looking at the implementation Implement the equivalent functionality on Windows Phone 7 Series using Silverlight. Compare the two implementations based on complexity, functionality, lines of code, number of files, etc. Add some functionality to the Windows Phone 7 Series app that shows off a way to make the scenario more interesting or leverages an aspect of the platform, or uses a better design pattern to implement the functionality. You can download Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone CTP here, and the Expression Blend 4 Beta here. If youre seeing this series for the first time, check out Part 1: Hello World. A note on methodologyin the prior post there was some feedback about lines of code not being a very good metric for this exercise.  I dont really disagree, theres a lot more to this than lines of code but I believe that is a relevant metric, even if its not the ultimate one.  And theres no perfect answer here.  So I am going to continue to report the number of lines of code that I, as a developer would need to write in these apps as a data point, and Ill leave it up to the reader to determine how that fits in with overall complexity, etc.  The first example was so basic that I think it was difficult to talk about in real terms.  I think that as these apps get more complex, the subjective differences in concept count and will be more important.  MoveMe The MoveMe app is the main end-to-end app writing example in the iPhone SDK, called Creating an iPhone Application.  This application demonstrates a few concepts, including handling touch input, how to do animations, and how to do some basic transforms. The behavior of the application is pretty simple.  User touches the button: The button does a throb type animation where it scales up and then back down briefly. User drags the button: After a touch begins, moving the touch point will drag the button around with the touch. User lets go of the button: The button animates back to its original position, but does a few small bounces as it reaches its original point, which makes the app fun and gives it an extra bit of interactivity. Now, how would I write an app that meets this spec for Windows Phone 7 Series, and how hard would it be?  Lets find out!     Implementing the UI Okay, lets build the UI for this application.  In the HelloWorld example, we did all the UI design in Visual Studio and/or by hand in XAML.  In this example, were going to use the Expression Blend 4 Beta. You might be wondering when to use Visual Studio, when to use Blend, and when to do XAML by hand.  Different people will have different takes on this, but heres mine: XAML by hand simple UI that doesnt contain animations, gradients, etc., and or UI that I want to really optimize and craft when I know exactly what I want to do. Visual Studio Basic UI layout, property setting, data binding, etc. Blend Any serious design work needs to be done in Blend, including animations, handling states and transitions, styling and templating, editing resources. As in Part 1, go ahead and fire up Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone (yes, soon it will take longer to say the name of our products than to start them up!), and create a new Windows Phone Application.  As in Part 1, clear out the XAML from the designer.  An easy way to do this is to just: Click on the design surface Hit Control+A Hit Delete Theres a little bit left over (the Grid.RowDefinitions element), just go ahead and delete that element so were starting with a clean state of only one outer Grid element. To use Blend, we need to save this project.  See, when you create a project with Visual Studio Express, it doesnt commit it to the disk (well, in a place where you can find it, at least) until you actually save the project.  This is handy if youre doing some fooling around, because it doesnt clutter your disk with WindowsPhoneApplication23-like directories.  But its also kind of dangerous, since when you close VS, if you dont save the projectits all gone.  Yes, this has bitten me since I was saving files and didnt remember that, so be careful to save the project/solution via Save All, at least once. So, save and note the location on disk.  Start Expression Blend 4 Beta, and chose File > Open Project/Solution, and load your project.  You should see just about the same thing you saw over in VS: a blank, black designer surface. Now, thinking about this application, we dont really need a button, even though it looks like one.  We never click it.  So were just going to create a visual and use that.  This is also true in the iPhone example above, where the visual is actually not a button either but a jpg image with a nice gradient and round edges.  Well do something simple here that looks pretty good. In Blend, look in the tool pane on the left for the icon that looks like the below (the highlighted one on the left), and hold it down to get the popout menu, and choose Border:    Okay, now draw out a box in the middle of the design surface of about 300x100.  The Properties Pane to the left should show the properties for this item. First, lets make it more visible by giving it a border brush.  Set the BorderBrush to white by clicking BorderBrush and dragging the color selector all the way to the upper right in the palette.  Then, down a bit farther, make the BorderThickness 4 all the way around, and the CornerRadius set to 6. In the Layout section, do the following to Width, Height, Horizontal and Vertical Alignment, and Margin (all 4 margin values): Youll see the outline now is in the middle of the design surface.  Now lets give it a background color.  Above BorderBrush select Background, and click the third tab over: Gradient Brush.  Youll see a gradient slider at the bottom, and if you click the markers, you can edit the gradient stops individually (or add more).  In this case, you can select something you like, but wheres what I chose: Left stop: #BFACCFE2 (I just picked a spot on the palette and set opacity to 75%, no magic here, feel free to fiddle these or just enter these numbers into the hex area and be done with it) Right stop: #FF3E738F Okay, looks pretty good.  Finally set the name of the element in the Name field at the top of the Properties pane to welcome. Now lets add some text.  Just hit T and itll select the TextBlock tool automatically: Now draw out some are inside our welcome visual and type Welcome!, then click on the design surface (to exit text entry mode) and hit V to go back into selection mode (or the top item in the tool pane that looks like a mouse pointer).  Click on the text again to select it in the tool pane.  Just like the border, we want to center this.  So set HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment to Center, and clear the Margins: Thats it for the UI.  Heres how it looks, on the design surface: Not bad!  Okay, now the fun part Adding Animations Using Blend to build animations is a lot of fun, and its easy.  In XAML, I can not only declare elements and visuals, but also I can declare animations that will affect those visuals.  These are called Storyboards. To recap, well be doing two animations: The throb animation when the element is touched The center animation when the element is released after being dragged. The throb animation is just a scale transform, so well do that first.  In the Objects and Timeline Pane (left side, bottom half), click the little + icon to add a new Storyboard called touchStoryboard: The timeline view will appear.  In there, click a bit to the right of 0 to create a keyframe at .2 seconds: Now, click on our welcome element (the Border, not the TextBlock in it), and scroll to the bottom of the Properties Pane.  Open up Transform, click the third tab ("Scale), and set X and Y to 1.2: This all of this says that, at .2 seconds, I want the X and Y size of this element to scale to 1.2. In fact you can see this happen.  Push the Play arrow in the timeline view, and youll see the animation run! Lets make two tweaks.  First, we want the animation to automatically reverse so it scales up then back down nicely. Click in the dropdown that says touchStoryboard in Objects and Timeline, then in the Properties pane check Auto Reverse: Now run it again, and youll see it go both ways. Lets even make it nicer by adding an easing function. First, click on the Render Transform item in the Objects tree, then, in the Property Pane, youll see a bunch of easing functions to choose from.  Feel free to play with this, then seeing how each runs.  I chose Circle In, but some other ones are fun.  Try them out!  Elastic In is kind of fun, but well stick with Circle In.  Thats it for that animation. Now, we also want an animation to move the Border back to its original position when the user ends the touch gesture.  This is exactly the same process as above, but just targeting a different transform property. Create a new animation called releaseStoryboard Select a timeline point at 1.2 seconds. Click on the welcome Border element again Scroll to the Transforms panel at the bottom of the Properties Pane Choose the first tab (Translate), which may already be selected Set both X and Y values to 0.0 (we do this just to make the values stick, because the value is already 0 and we need Blend to know we want to save that value) Click on RenderTransform in the Objects tree In the properties pane, choose Bounce Out Set Bounces to 6, and Bounciness to 4 (feel free to play with these as well) Okay, were done. Note, if you want to test this Storyboard, you have to do something a little tricky because the final value is the same as the initial value, so playing it does nothing.  If you want to play with it, do the following: Next to the selection dropdown, hit the little "x (Close Storyboard) Go to the Translate Transform value for welcome Set X,Y to 50, 200, respectively (or whatever) Select releaseStoryboard again from the dropdown Hit play, see it run Go into the object tree and select RenderTransform to change the easing function. When youre done, hit the Close Storyboard x again and set the values in Transform/Translate back to 0 Wiring Up the Animations Okay, now go back to Visual Studio.  Youll get a prompt due to the modification of MainPage.xaml.  Hit Yes. In the designer, click on the welcome Border element.  In the Property Browser, hit the Events button, then double click each of ManipulationStarted, ManipulationDelta, ManipulationCompleted.  Youll need to flip back to the designer from code, after each double click. Its code time.  Here we go. Here, three event handlers have been created for us: welcome_ManipulationStarted: This will execute when a manipulation begins.  Think of it as MouseDown. welcome_ManipulationDelta: This executes each time a manipulation changes.  Think MouseMove. welcome_ManipulationCompleted: This will  execute when the manipulation ends. Think MouseUp. Now, in ManipuliationStarted, we want to kick off the throb animation that we called touchAnimation.  Thats easy: 1: private void welcome_ManipulationStarted(object sender, ManipulationStartedEventArgs e) 2: { 3: touchStoryboard.Begin(); 4: } .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; } Likewise, when the manipulation completes, we want to re-center the welcome visual with our bounce animation: 1: private void welcome_ManipulationCompleted(object sender, ManipulationCompletedEventArgs e) 2: { 3: releaseStoryboard.Begin(); 4: } .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 there is actually a way to kick off these animations from Blend directly via something called Triggers, but I think its clearer to show whats going on like this.  A Trigger basically allows you to say When this event fires, trigger this Storyboard, so its the exact same logical process as above, but without the code. But how do we get the object to move?  Well, for that we really dont want an animation because we want it to respond immediately to user input. We do this by directly modifying the transform to match the offset for the manipulation, and then well let the animation bring it back to zero when the manipulation completes.  The manipulation events do a great job of keeping track of all the stuff that you usually had to do yourself when doing drags: where you started from, how far youve moved, etc. So we can easily modify the position as below: 1: private void welcome_ManipulationDelta(object sender, ManipulationDeltaEventArgs e) 2: { 3: CompositeTransform transform = (CompositeTransform)welcome.RenderTransform; 4:   5: transform.TranslateX = e.CumulativeManipulation.Translation.X; 6: transform.TranslateY = e.CumulativeManipulation.Translation.Y; 7: } .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; } Thats it! Go ahead and run the app in the emulator.  I suggest running without the debugger, its a little faster (CTRL+F5).  If youve got a machine that supports DirectX 10, youll see nice smooth GPU accelerated graphics, which also what it looks like on the phone, running at about 60 frames per second.  If your machine does not support DX10 (like the laptop Im writing this on!), it wont be quite a smooth so youll have to take my word for it! Comparing Against the iPhone This is an example where the flexibility and power of XAML meets the tooling of Visual Studio and Blend, and the whole experience really shines.  So, for several things that are declarative and 100% toolable with the Windows Phone 7 Series, this example does them with code on the iPhone.  In parens is the lines of code that I count to do these operations. PlacardView.m: 19 total LOC Creating the view that hosts the button-like image and the text Drawing the image that is the background of the button Drawing the Welcome text over the image (I think you could technically do this step and/or the prior one using Interface Builder) MoveMeView.m:  63 total LOC Constructing and running the scale (throb) animation (25) Constructing the path describing the animation back to center plus bounce effect (38) Beyond the code count, yy experience with doing this kind of thing in code is that its VERY time intensive.  When I was a developer back on Windows Forms, doing GDI+ drawing, we did this stuff a lot, and it took forever!  You write some code and even once you get it basically working, you see its not quite right, you go back, tweak the interval, or the math a bit, run it again, etc.  You can take a look at the iPhone code here to judge for yourself.  Scroll down to animatePlacardViewToCenter toward the bottom.  I dont think this code is terribly complicated, but its not what Id call simple and its not at all simple to get right. And then theres a few other lines of code running around for setting up the ViewController and the Views, about 15 lines between MoveMeAppDelegate, PlacardView, and MoveMeView, plus the assorted decls in the h files. Adding those up, I conservatively get something like 100 lines of code (19+63+15+decls) on iPhone that I have to write, by hand, to make this project work. The lines of code that I wrote in the examples above is 5 lines of code on Windows Phone 7 Series. In terms of incremental concept counts beyond the HelloWorld app, heres a shot at that: iPhone: Drawing Images Drawing Text Handling touch events Creating animations Scaling animations Building a path and animating along that Windows Phone 7 Series: Laying out UI in Blend Creating & testing basic animations in Blend Handling touch events Invoking animations from code This was actually the first example I tried converting, even before I did the HelloWorld, and I was pretty surprised.  Some of this is luck that this app happens to match up with the Windows Phone 7 Series platform just perfectly.  In terms of time, I wrote the above application, from scratch, in about 10 minutes.  I dont know how long it would take a very skilled iPhone developer to write MoveMe on that iPhone from scratch, but if I was to write it on Silverlight in the same way (e.g. all via code), I think it would likely take me at least an hour or two to get it all working right, maybe more if I ended up picking the wrong strategy or couldnt get the math right, etc. Making Some Tweaks Silverlight contains a feature called Projections to do a variety of 3D-like effects with a 2D surface. So lets play with that a bit. Go back to Blend and select the welcome Border in the object tree.  In its properties, scroll down to the bottom, open Transform, and see Projection at the bottom.  Set X,Y,Z to 90.  Youll see the element kind of disappear, replaced by a thin blue line. Now Create a new animation called startupStoryboard. Set its key time to .5 seconds in the timeline view Set the projection values above to 0 for X, Y, and Z. Save Go back to Visual Studio, and in the constructor, add the following bold code (lines 7-9 to the constructor: 1: public MainPage() 2: { 3: InitializeComponent(); 4:   5: SupportedOrientations = SupportedPageOrientation.Portrait; 6:   7: this.Loaded += (s, e) => 8: { 9: startupStoryboard.Begin(); 10: }; 11: } .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; } If the code above looks funny, its using something called a lambda in C#, which is an inline anonymous method.  Its just a handy shorthand for creating a handler like the manipulation ones above. So with this youll get a nice 3D looking fly in effect when the app starts up.  Here it is, in flight: Pretty cool!Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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