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  • Illegal cross thread operation exception, unable to handle it

    - by yeah1000
    Hello, i am using visual C# express 2008. I SOMETIMES get the illegal cross thread operation in my invoke method when i try to run my project. It use the same invoke method in many places but its only at the beginning of another thread that i get the error. I check the InvokeRequired property, invoke the same method and in the 'else' condition and create a temporary variable and assign it the text of my control. But on that line, in the 'else' statement, inside the Invoking method i sometimes get the exception. What could be the cause? How to get rid of it? It does not occur often, but it is still a bug... Code: // Delegate: private delegate void ChangeTextDelegate(string text); // Method: public static void ChangeText(string text) { if (richtextbox1.InvokeRequired) { richtextbox1.Invoke(new ChangeTextDelegate(ChangeText), new object[] { text }); } else { int startIndex; startIndex = richtextbox1.TextLength; // <- Exception points here. // ... } } Stack trace: System.InvalidOperationException was unhandled Message="Cross-thread operation not valid: Control 'SomeClass' accessed from a thread other than the thread it was created on." Source="System.Windows.Forms" StackTrace: at System.Windows.Forms.Control.get_Handle() at System.Windows.Forms.Control.get_InternalHandle() at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmWindowPosChanged(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.TextBoxBase.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.RichTextBox.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.DebuggableCallback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam) at System.Windows.Forms.UnsafeNativeMethods.CallWindowProc(IntPtr wndProc, IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam) at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.DefWndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.DefWndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmCreate(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.TextBoxBase.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.RichTextBox.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.DebuggableCallback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam) at System.Windows.Forms.UnsafeNativeMethods.IntCreateWindowEx(Int32 dwExStyle, String lpszClassName, String lpszWindowName, Int32 style, Int32 x, Int32 y, Int32 width, Int32 height, HandleRef hWndParent, HandleRef hMenu, HandleRef hInst, Object pvParam) at System.Windows.Forms.UnsafeNativeMethods.CreateWindowEx(Int32 dwExStyle, String lpszClassName, String lpszWindowName, Int32 style, Int32 x, Int32 y, Int32 width, Int32 height, HandleRef hWndParent, HandleRef hMenu, HandleRef hInst, Object pvParam) at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.CreateHandle(CreateParams cp) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.CreateHandle() at System.Windows.Forms.TextBoxBase.CreateHandle() at System.Windows.Forms.Control.get_Handle() at System.Windows.Forms.RichTextBox.get_TextLength() at SomeNamespace.SomeClass.Changetext(String text, Color color) in C:\...\SomeClass.cs:line 827 at SomeNamespace.SomeClass.SomeThreadFun() in C:\...\SomeClass.cs:line 112 at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart_Context(Object state) at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state) at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart() InnerException: TY

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  • At which point is a continuous integration server interesting?

    - by Cedric Martin
    I've been reading a bit about CI servers like Jenkins and I'm wondering: at which point is it useful? Because surely for a tiny project where you'd have only 5 classes and 10 unit tests, there's no real need. Here we've got about 1500 unit tests and they pass (on old Core 2 Duo workstations) in about 90 seconds (because they're really testing "units" and hence are very fast). The rule we have is that we cannot commit code when a test fail. So each developers launches all his tests to prevent regression. Obviously, because all the developers always launch all the test we catch errors due to conflicting changes as soon as one developer pulls the change of another (when any). It's still not very clear to me: should I set up a CI server like Jenkins? What would it bring? Is it just useful for the speed gain? (not an issue in our case) Is it useful because old builds can be recreated? (but we can do this to with Mercurial, by checking out old revs) Basically I understand it can be useful but I fail to see exactly why. Any explanation taking into account the points I raised above would be most welcome.

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  • Continuous Form, how to add/update records with external connection

    - by Mohgeroth
    EDIT After some more research I found that I cannot use a continuous form with an unbound form since it can only reference a single record at a time. Given that I've altered my question... I have a sample form that pulls out data to enter into a table as an intermediary. Initially the form is unbound and I open connections to two main recordsets. I set the listbox's recordset equal to one of them and the forms recordset equal to the other. The problem is that I cannot add records or update existing ones. Attempting to key into the fields does nothing almost as if the field was locked (Which it is not). Settings of the recordsets are OpenKeyset and LockPessimistic. Tables are not linked, they come from an outside access database seperate from this project and must remain that way. I am using an adodb connection to get the data. Could the separation of the data from the project be causing this? Sample Code from the Form Option Compare Database Option Explicit Private conn As CRobbers_Connections Private exception As CError_Trapping Private mClient_Translations As ADODB.Recordset Private mUnmatched_Clients As ADODB.Recordset Private mExcluded_Clients As ADODB.Recordset //Construction Private Sub Form_Open(Cancel As Integer) Set conn = New CRobbers_Connections Set exception = New CError_Trapping Set mClient_Translations = New ADODB.Recordset Set mUnmatched_Clients = New ADODB.Recordset Set mExcluded_Clients = New ADODB.Recordset mClient_Translations.Open "SELECT * FROM Client_Translation" _ , conn.RBRS_Conn, adOpenKeyset, adLockPessimistic mUnmatched_Clients.Open "SELECT DISTINCT(a.Client) as Client" _ & " FROM Master_Projections a " _ & " WHERE Client NOT IN ( " _ & " SELECT DISTINCT ClientID " _ & " FROM Client_Translation);" _ , conn.RBRS_Conn, adOpenKeyset, adLockPessimistic mExcluded_Clients.Open "SELECT * FROM Clients_Excluded" _ , conn.RBRS_Conn, adOpenKeyset, adLockPessimistic End Sub //Add new record to the client translations Private Sub cmdAddNew_Click() If lstUnconfirmed <> "" Then AddRecord End If End Sub Private Function AddRecord() With mClient_Translations .AddNew .Fields("ClientID") = Me.lstUnconfirmed .Fields("ClientAbbr") = Me.txtTmpShort .Fields("ClientName") = Me.txtTmpLong .Update End With UpdateRecords End Function Private Function UpdateRecords() Me.lstUnconfirmed.Requery End Function //Load events (After construction) Private Sub Form_Load() Set lstUnconfirmed.Recordset = mUnmatched_Clients //Link recordset into listbox Set Me.Recordset = mClient_Translations End Sub //Destruction method Private Sub Form_Close() Set conn = Nothing Set exception = Nothing Set lstUnconfirmed.Recordset = Nothing Set Me.Recordset = Nothing Set mUnmatched_Clients = Nothing Set mExcluded_Clients = Nothing Set mClient_Translations = Nothing End Sub

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  • Free Book from Microsoft - Testing for Continuous Delivery with Visual Studio 2012

    - by TATWORTH
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TATWORTH/archive/2013/10/16/free-book-from-microsoft---testing-for-continuous-delivery-with.aspxAt  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj159345.aspx, Microsoft have made available a free e-book - Testing for Continuous Delivery with Visual Studio 2012 "As more software projects adopt a continuous delivery cycle, testing threatens to be the bottleneck in the process. Agile development frequently revisits each part of the source code, but every change requires a re-test of the product. While the skills of the manual tester are vital, purely manual testing can't keep up. Visual Studio 2012 provides many features that remove roadblocks in the testing and debugging process and also help speed up and automate re-testing."

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  • Numerical stability in continuous physics simulation

    - by Panda Pajama
    Pretty much all of the game development I have been involved with runs afoul of simulating a physical world in discrete time steps. This is of course very simple, but hardly elegant (not to mention mathematically inaccurate). It also has severe disadvantages when large values are involved (either very large speeds, or very large time intervals). I'm trying to make a continuous physics simulation, just for learning, which goes like this: time = get_time() while true do new_time = get_time() update_world(new_time - time) render() time = new_time end And update_world() is a continuous physical simulation. Meaning that for example, for an accelerated object, instead of doing object.x = object.x + object.vx * timestep object.vx = object.vx + object.ax * timestep -- timestep is fixed I'm doing something like object.x = object.x + object.vx * deltatime + object.ax * ((deltatime ^ 2) / 2) object.vx = object.vx + object.ax * deltatime However, I'm having a hard time with the numerical stability of my solutions, especially for very large time intervals (think of simulating a physical world for hundreds of thousands of virtual years). Depending on the framerate, I get wildly different solutions. How can I improve the numerical stability of my continuous physical simulations?

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  • Free E-Book - Testing for Continuous Delivery with Visual Studio 2012

    - by TATWORTH
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TATWORTH/archive/2013/11/05/free-e-book---testing-for-continuous-delivery-with-visual-studio.aspx At http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj159345.aspx, Microsoft Press are offering the free e-Book, Testing for Continuous Delivery with Visual Studio 2012. "As more software projects adopt a continuous delivery cycle, testing threatens to be the bottleneck in the process. Agile development frequently revisits each part of the source code, but every change requires a re-test of the product. While the skills of the manual tester are vital, purely manual testing can't keep up. Visual Studio 2012 provides many features that remove roadblocks in the testing and debugging process and also help speed up and automate re-testing. " (Please ignore the click to look inside!)

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  • CruiseControl [.Net] vs TeamCity for continuous integration?

    - by zappan
    i would like to ask you which automated build environment you consider better, based on practical experience. i'm planning to do some .Net and some Java development, so i would like to have a tool that supports both these platforms. i've been reading around and found out about CruiseControl.NET, used on stackoverflow development, and TeamCity with its support for build agents on different OS-platforms and based on different programming languages. so, if you have some practical experience on both of those, which one you prefer and why. currently, i'm mostly interested in the ease of use and management of the tool, much less in the fact that CC is open source, and TC is a subject to licensing at some point when you have much projects to run (because, i need it for a small amount of projects). also, if there is some other tool that meets the above-mentioned and you believe it's worth a recommendation - feel free to include it in the discussion.

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  • Continuous Integration or Publishing System

    - by Chris M
    I've been testing Hudson for a few days now and for PHP projects it seems ok; What I need though is a system that will allow me to publish an SVN tag to an FTP folder without adding a pile of rubbish on the end; hudson gets overexcited and adds a pile of folders to the export. Are their any other decent systems; it needs to be simple to use as this will eventually fall under the control of 'admins' in order to meet sox compliance (aka the man with the gun cant pull the trigger). Basic Requirements: Must be free and downloadable to a server (FTP's internal only here) Needs to be able to interact with SVN Needs to be able to publish to FTP Needs matrix login permissions (or AD if its something that can go on IIS) Needs to be auditable (logging) Tell me if im not being clear enough here; thanks. Chris

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  • Continuous Integration with Oracle Products

    - by Lee Gathercole
    Hi, I'm currently working on a Datawarehouse project using an Oracle Database, Oracle Data Integrator, Oracle Warehouse Builder and some Jython thrown in for good measure. All of which is held within TFS. My background is .net and prior to this project was seeing a lot of promise in CI. I'm not suggesting that the testing element of CI is feasible in this instance, but I would like to implement a stable deployment strategy. What I'm trying to understand is whether or not I can build some NANT scripts that will allow me to deploy ODI\OWB\Oracle DB code to any given environment at any point. Has anyone tried this before? Are there more appropriate tools out there that lends themselves better to this sort of toolset? Am I just a crazy horse to be evening contemplating this? Any view would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Lee

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  • Continuous integration with .net and svn

    - by stiank81
    We're currently not applying the automated building and testing of continous integration in our project. We haven't bothered this far as we're only 2 developers working on it, but even with a team of 2 I still think it would be valuable to use continous integration and get a confirmation that our builds don't break or tests start failing. We're using .Net with C# and WPF. We have created Python-scripts for building the application - using MSbuild - and for running all tests. Our source is in SVN. What would be the best approach to apply continous integration with this setup? What tool should we get? It should be one which doesn't require alot of setup. Simple procedures to get started and little maintanance is a must.

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  • Drawing a continuous rectangle

    - by JAYMIN
    Hi..i m currently working on visual c++ 2008 express edition.. in my project i have a picturebox which contains an image, now i have to draw a rectangle to enaable the user to select a part of the image.. I have used the "MouseDown" event of the picturebox and the below code to draw a rectangle: Void pictureBox1_MouseDown(System::Object^ sender, Windows::Forms::MouseEventArgs^ e) { Graphics^ g = pictureBox1-CreateGraphics(); Pen^ pen = gcnew Pen(Color::Blue); g-DrawRectangle( pen , e-X ,e-Y,width,ht); } now in the "DrawRectangle" the arguments "width" and "ht" are static, so the above code results in the drawing of a rectangle at the point where the user presses the mouse button on the image in picturebox... i want to allow the user to be able to drag the cursor and draw a rectangle of size that he wishes to.. Plz help me on this.. Thanx..

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  • Build Pipelining and Continuous Integration with Maven and Hudson

    - by Brandon
    Currently the my team is considering splitting our single CI build process into a more streamlined multi-stage process to speed up basic build feedback and isolate different ci concerns. The idea we had was to have each stage exist in Hudson as a different build with the correct maven goal or maven plugin execution, then chain them together using the post-build hooks of Hudson. However to my knowledge, Maven as a build tool mandates that any lifecycle phase which is performed automatically builds every preceding lifecycle phase. This presents a number of problems the most significant of which is that maven is recreating the build resources with each distinct call and not using those of the previous stage. This not only breaks the consistency of the build lifecycle but has much more unnecessary processing overhead. Is there a way to accomplish pipelining with CI using Maven? Assuming there is, is there a way to let Hudson know to use those resources built from the previous stage in the next one?

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  • Continuous Integration of Git on Windows

    - by Duncan
    Hey All, assuming I'm running a small shop (3 devs) and using a Windows 7 machine as a centralised Git and IIS server what is the easiest way to get CI up and running? This must be locally hosted CI (no github, no remote servers). I'm doing C# .Net development with Visual Studio 2008. Any help on getting this running with the minimum of effort and the nicest possible UI would be extremely helpful. Thanks!

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  • Continuous integration with multiple branch development

    - by ryanprayogo
    In the project that I'm working on, we are using SVN with 'Stable Trunk' strategy. What that means is that for each bug that is found, QA opens a bug ticket and assigns it to a developer. Then, a developer fixes that bug and checks it in a branch (off trunk, let's call this the bug branch) and that branch will only contain fixes for that particular bug ticket When we decided to do a release, for each bug fixes that we want to release to the customer, a developer will merge all the fixes from several bug branch to trunk and proceed with the normal QA cycle. The problem is that we use trunk as the codebase for our CI job (Hudson, specifically), and therefore, for all commits to the bug branch, it will miss the daily build until it gets merged to trunk when we decided to release the new version of the software. Obviously, that defeats the purpose of having CI. What is the proper way to fix this issue?

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  • Difference between EJB Persist & Merge operation

    - by shantala.sankeshwar
    This article gives the difference between EJB Persist & Merge operations with scenarios.Use Case Description Users working on EJB persist & merge operations often have this question in mind " When merge can create new entity as well as modify existing entity,then why do we have 2 separate operations - persist & merge?" The reason is very simple.If we use merge operation to create new entity & if the entity exists then it does not throw any exception,but persist throws exception if the entity already exists.Merge should be used to modify the existing entity.The sql statement that gets executed on persist operation is insert statement.But in case of merge first select statement gets executed & then update sql statement gets executed.Scenario 1: Persist operation to create new Emp recordLet us suppose that we have a Java EE Web Application created with Entities from Emp table & have created session bean with data control. Drop Emp Object(Expand SessionEJBLocal->Constructors under Data Controls) as ADF Parameter form in jspx pageDrop persistEmp(Emp) as ADF CommandButton & provide #{bindings.EmpIterator.currentRow.dataProvider} as the value for emp parameter.Then run this page & provide values for Emp,click on 'persistEmp' button.New Emp record gets created.So when we execute persist operation only insert sql statement gets executed :INSERT INTO EMP (EMPNO, COMM, HIREDATE, ENAME, JOB, DEPTNO, SAL, MGR) VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?)    bind => [2, null, null, e2, null, 10, null, null]Scenario 2: Merge operation to modify existing Emp recordLet us suppose that we have a Java EE Web Application created with Entities from Emp table & have created session bean with data control.Drop empFindAll() Object as ADF form on jspx page.Drop mergeEmp(Emp) operation as commandButton & provide #{bindings.EmpIterator.currentRow.dataProvider} as the value for emp parameter.Then run this page & modify values for Emp record,click on 'mergeEmp' button.The respective Emp record gets modified.So when we execute merge operation select & update sql statements gets executed :SELECT EMPNO, COMM, HIREDATE, ENAME, JOB, DEPTNO, SAL, MGR FROM EMP WHERE (EMPNO = ?) bind => [7566]UPDATE EMP SET ENAME = ? WHERE (EMPNO = ?) bind => [KINGS, 7839]

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  • The Latest in Enterprise Continuous Controls Monitoring

    AMR identifies continuous controls monitoring as one of the top GRC software investments planned for 2010. Tune into this Appcast to hear why Gartner positions Oracle as a Leader in its Magic Quadrant for Continuous Controls Monitoring. Siddharth Sinha, Senior Director of GRC Product Strategy, unveils how Oracle GRC Controls monitors, enforces and optimizes critical processes within ERP applications, and reduce opportunities for fraud and error.

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  • Implementing Cluster Continuous Replication, Part 2

    Cluster continuous replication (CCR) helps to provide a more resilient email system with faster recovery. It was introduced in Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and uses log shipping and failover. configuring Cluster Continuous Replication on a Windows Server 2008 requires different techniques to Windows Server 2003. Brien Posey explains all.

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  • IBM sort Rational Engineering Lifecycle Manager et SmartCloud Continuous Delivery pour réduire la complexité des applications

    IBM sort Rational Engineering Lifecycle Manager et SmartCloud Continuous Delivery des nouveaux outils pou réduire la complexité des applications Le portefeuille d'outils de développement d'IBM vient de s'enrichir de Rational Engineering Lifecycle Manager et SmartCloud Continuous Delivery, deux nouvelles solutions pour répondre aux besoins des développeurs. Ces outils ont été conçus pour résoudre des problèmes rencontrés dans les projets d'envergure comme ceux qu'on trouve dans des systèmes pour l'industrie automobile, la robotique ou de petits changements dans le système qui peuvent avoir des effets plus importants que prévu initialement. La solution Rational Engineering L...

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  • Continuous Delivery and the Database

    Continuous Delivery is fairly generally understood to be an effective way of tackling the problems of software delivery and deployment by making build, integration and delivery into a routine. The way that databases fit into the Continuous Delivery story has been less-well defined. Phil Factor explains why he's an enthusiast for databases being full participants, and suggests practical ways of doing so.

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  • Database Continuous Integration 101

    We talk a lot about continuous integration here on the Atlassian Dev Tools blog, and many readers are bonafide CI gurus. Now that you are integrating your application code, test code, config files and deploy scripts, are you ready to take it to the next level? An increasing number of engineering shops are starting to bring the continuous integration discipline into their database development. Get smart with SQL Backup ProGet faster, smaller backups with integrated verification.Quickly and easily DBCC CHECKDB your backups. Learn more.

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  • SOA, Empowerment and Continuous Improvement

    - by Tanu Sood
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Rick Beers is Senior Director of Product Management for Oracle Fusion Middleware. Prior to joining Oracle, Rick held a variety of executive operational positions at Corning, Inc. and Bausch & Lomb. With a professional background that includes senior management positions in manufacturing, supply chain and information technology, Rick brings a unique set of experiences to cover the impact that technology can have on business models, processes and organizations. Rick will be hosting the IT Leader Editorial on a regular basis. I met my twin at Open World. We share backgrounds, experiences and even names. I hosted an invitation-only AppAdvantage Leadership Forum with an overcapacity 85 participants: 55 customers, 15 from the Oracle AppAdvantage team and 15 Partners. It was a lively, open and positive discussion of pace layered architectures and Oracle’s AppAdvantage approach to a unified view of Applications and Middleware. Rick Hassman from Pella was one of the customer panelists and during the pre event prep, Rick and I shared backgrounds and found that we had both been plant managers and led ERP deployments prior to leading IT itself. During the panel conversation I explored this with him, discussing the unique perspectives that this provides to CIO’s. He then hit on a point that I wasn’t able to fully appreciate until a week later. First though, some background. The week after the Forum, one of the participants emailed me with the following thoughts: “I am 150% behind this concept……but we are struggling with the concept of web services and the potential use of the Oracle Service Bus technology let alone moving into using the full SOA/BPM/BAM software to extend our JD Edwards application to both integrate and support business processes”. After thinking a bit I responded this way: While I certainly appreciate the degree of change and effort involved, perhaps I could offer the following: One of the underlying principles behind Oracle AppAdvantage is that more often than not, the choice between changing a business process and invasively customizing ERP represents a Hobson's Choice: neither is acceptable. In this case the third option, moving the process out of ERP, is the only acceptable one. Providing this choice typically requires end to end, real time interoperability across applications and/or services. This real time interoperability, to be sustainable over time requires a service oriented architecture. There's just no way around this. SOA adaptation is admittedly tough at the beginning. New skills, new technology and new headaches. But, like any radically new technology, it has a learning curve that drives cost down rather dramatically over time. Tough choices to be sure, but not entirely different than we face with every major technology cycle. Good points of course, but I felt that something was missing. The points were convincing, perhaps even a bit insightful, but they didn’t get at the heart of what Oracle AppAdvantage is focused upon: how the optimization of technology, applications, processes and relationships can change the very way that organizations operate. And then I thought back to the panel discussion with Rick Hassman at Oracle OpenWorld. Rick stressed that Continuous Improvement is a fundamental business strategy at Pella. I remember Continuous Improvement well as I suspect does everyone who was in American manufacturing during the 80’s. Pioneered by W. Edwards Deming in Japan (and still known alternatively as Kaizen), Continuous Improvement sets in place the business culture that we must not become complacent with success and resistant to the ongoing need for change. Many believe that this single handedly drove the renaissance in American manufacturing through the last two decades, which had become complacent during the 70’s and early 80’s. But what exactly does this have to do with SOA? It was Rick’s next point. He drew the connection that moving those business processes that need to continually change over time out of ERP and into edge applications and services enables continuous improvement by empowering people to continually strive for better ways of doing things rather than be being bound by workflows that cannot change. A compelling connection: that SOA, and the overall Oracle AppAdvantage framework of which it is an integral part, can empower people towards continuous improvement in business processes and as a result drive business leadership and business excellence. What better a case for technology innovation?

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

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

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