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• Seeking on a Heap, and Two Useful DMVs

  - by Paul White

  So far in this mini-series on seeks and scans, we have seen that a simple ‘seek’ operation can be much more complex than it first appears.  A seek can contain one or more seek predicates – each of which can either identify at most one row in a unique index (a singleton lookup) or a range of values (a range scan).  When looking at a query plan, we will often need to look at the details of the seek operator in the Properties window to see how many operations it is performing, and what type of operation each one is.  As you saw in the first post in this series, the number of hidden seeking operations can have an appreciable impact on performance. Measuring Seeks and Scans I mentioned in my last post that there is no way to tell from a graphical query plan whether you are seeing a singleton lookup or a range scan.  You can work it out – if you happen to know that the index is defined as unique and the seek predicate is an equality comparison, but there’s no separate property that says ‘singleton lookup’ or ‘range scan’.  This is a shame, and if I had my way, the query plan would show different icons for range scans and singleton lookups – perhaps also indicating whether the operation was one or more of those operations underneath the covers. In light of all that, you might be wondering if there is another way to measure how many seeks of either type are occurring in your system, or for a particular query.  As is often the case, the answer is yes – we can use a couple of dynamic management views (DMVs): sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats and sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats. Index Usage Stats The index usage stats DMV contains counts of index operations from the perspective of the Query Executor (QE) – the SQL Server component that is responsible for executing the query plan.  It has three columns that are of particular interest to us: user_seeks – the number of times an Index Seek operator appears in an executed plan user_scans – the number of times a Table Scan or Index Scan operator appears in an executed plan user_lookups – the number of times an RID or Key Lookup operator appears in an executed plan An operator is counted once per execution (generating an estimated plan does not affect the totals), so an Index Seek that executes 10,000 times in a single plan execution adds 1 to the count of user seeks.  Even less intuitively, an operator is also counted once per execution even if it is not executed at all.  I will show you a demonstration of each of these things later in this post. Index Operational Stats The index operational stats DMV contains counts of index and table operations from the perspective of the Storage Engine (SE).  It contains a wealth of interesting information, but the two columns of interest to us right now are: range_scan_count – the number of range scans (including unrestricted full scans) on a heap or index structure singleton_lookup_count – the number of singleton lookups in a heap or index structure This DMV counts each SE operation, so 10,000 singleton lookups will add 10,000 to the singleton lookup count column, and a table scan that is executed 5 times will add 5 to the range scan count. The Test Rig To explore the behaviour of seeks and scans in detail, we will need to create a test environment.  The scripts presented here are best run on SQL Server 2008 Developer Edition, but the majority of the tests will work just fine on SQL Server 2005.  A couple of tests use partitioning, but these will be skipped if you are not running an Enterprise-equivalent SKU.  Ok, first up we need a database: USE master; GO IF DB_ID('ScansAndSeeks') IS NOT NULL DROP DATABASE ScansAndSeeks; GO CREATE DATABASE ScansAndSeeks; GO USE ScansAndSeeks; GO ALTER DATABASE ScansAndSeeks SET ALLOW_SNAPSHOT_ISOLATION OFF ; ALTER DATABASE ScansAndSeeks SET AUTO_CLOSE OFF, AUTO_SHRINK OFF, AUTO_CREATE_STATISTICS OFF, AUTO_UPDATE_STATISTICS OFF, PARAMETERIZATION SIMPLE, READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT OFF, RESTRICTED_USER ; Notice that several database options are set in particular ways to ensure we get meaningful and reproducible results from the DMVs.  In particular, the options to auto-create and update statistics are disabled.  There are also three stored procedures, the first of which creates a test table (which may or may not be partitioned).  The table is pretty much the same one we used yesterday: The table has 100 rows, and both the key_col and data columns contain the same values – the integers from 1 to 100 inclusive.  The table is a heap, with a non-clustered primary key on key_col, and a non-clustered non-unique index on the data column.  The only reason I have used a heap here, rather than a clustered table, is so I can demonstrate a seek on a heap later on.  The table has an extra column (not shown because I am too lazy to update the diagram from yesterday) called padding – a CHAR(100) column that just contains 100 spaces in every row.  It’s just there to discourage SQL Server from choosing table scan over an index + RID lookup in one of the tests. The first stored procedure is called ResetTest: CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.ResetTest @Partitioned BIT = 'false' AS BEGIN SET NOCOUNT ON ; IF OBJECT_ID(N'dbo.Example', N'U') IS NOT NULL BEGIN DROP TABLE dbo.Example; END ; -- Test table is a heap -- Non-clustered primary key on 'key_col' CREATE TABLE dbo.Example ( key_col INTEGER NOT NULL, data INTEGER NOT NULL, padding CHAR(100) NOT NULL DEFAULT SPACE(100), CONSTRAINT [PK dbo.Example key_col] PRIMARY KEY NONCLUSTERED (key_col) ) ; IF @Partitioned = 'true' BEGIN -- Enterprise, Trial, or Developer -- required for partitioning tests IF SERVERPROPERTY('EngineEdition') = 3 BEGIN EXECUTE (' DROP TABLE dbo.Example ; IF EXISTS ( SELECT 1 FROM sys.partition_schemes WHERE name = N''PS'' ) DROP PARTITION SCHEME PS ; IF EXISTS ( SELECT 1 FROM sys.partition_functions WHERE name = N''PF'' ) DROP PARTITION FUNCTION PF ; CREATE PARTITION FUNCTION PF (INTEGER) AS RANGE RIGHT FOR VALUES (20, 40, 60, 80, 100) ; CREATE PARTITION SCHEME PS AS PARTITION PF ALL TO ([PRIMARY]) ; CREATE TABLE dbo.Example ( key_col INTEGER NOT NULL, data INTEGER NOT NULL, padding CHAR(100) NOT NULL DEFAULT SPACE(100), CONSTRAINT [PK dbo.Example key_col] PRIMARY KEY NONCLUSTERED (key_col) ) ON PS (key_col); '); END ELSE BEGIN RAISERROR('Invalid SKU for partition test', 16, 1); RETURN; END; END ; -- Non-unique non-clustered index on the 'data' column CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX [IX dbo.Example data] ON dbo.Example (data) ; -- Add 100 rows INSERT dbo.Example WITH (TABLOCKX) ( key_col, data ) SELECT key_col = V.number, data = V.number FROM master.dbo.spt_values AS V WHERE V.[type] = N'P' AND V.number BETWEEN 1 AND 100 ; END; GO The second stored procedure, ShowStats, displays information from the Index Usage Stats and Index Operational Stats DMVs: CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.ShowStats @Partitioned BIT = 'false' AS BEGIN -- Index Usage Stats DMV (QE) SELECT index_name = ISNULL(I.name, I.type_desc), scans = IUS.user_scans, seeks = IUS.user_seeks, lookups = IUS.user_lookups FROM sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats AS IUS JOIN sys.indexes AS I ON I.object_id = IUS.object_id AND I.index_id = IUS.index_id WHERE IUS.database_id = DB_ID(N'ScansAndSeeks') AND IUS.object_id = OBJECT_ID(N'dbo.Example', N'U') ORDER BY I.index_id ; -- Index Operational Stats DMV (SE) IF @Partitioned = 'true' SELECT index_name = ISNULL(I.name, I.type_desc), partitions = COUNT(IOS.partition_number), range_scans = SUM(IOS.range_scan_count), single_lookups = SUM(IOS.singleton_lookup_count) FROM sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats ( DB_ID(N'ScansAndSeeks'), OBJECT_ID(N'dbo.Example', N'U'), NULL, NULL ) AS IOS JOIN sys.indexes AS I ON I.object_id = IOS.object_id AND I.index_id = IOS.index_id GROUP BY I.index_id, -- Key I.name, I.type_desc ORDER BY I.index_id; ELSE SELECT index_name = ISNULL(I.name, I.type_desc), range_scans = SUM(IOS.range_scan_count), single_lookups = SUM(IOS.singleton_lookup_count) FROM sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats ( DB_ID(N'ScansAndSeeks'), OBJECT_ID(N'dbo.Example', N'U'), NULL, NULL ) AS IOS JOIN sys.indexes AS I ON I.object_id = IOS.object_id AND I.index_id = IOS.index_id GROUP BY I.index_id, -- Key I.name, I.type_desc ORDER BY I.index_id; END; The final stored procedure, RunTest, executes a query written against the example table: CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.RunTest @SQL VARCHAR(8000), @Partitioned BIT = 'false' AS BEGIN -- No execution plan yet SET STATISTICS XML OFF ; -- Reset the test environment EXECUTE dbo.ResetTest @Partitioned ; -- Previous call will throw an error if a partitioned -- test was requested, but SKU does not support it IF @@ERROR = 0 BEGIN -- IO statistics and plan on SET STATISTICS XML, IO ON ; -- Test statement EXECUTE (@SQL) ; -- Plan and IO statistics off SET STATISTICS XML, IO OFF ; EXECUTE dbo.ShowStats @Partitioned; END; END; The Tests The first test is a simple scan of the heap table: EXECUTE dbo.RunTest @SQL = 'SELECT * FROM Example'; The top result set comes from the Index Usage Stats DMV, so it is the Query Executor’s (QE) view.  The lower result is from Index Operational Stats, which shows statistics derived from the actions taken by the Storage Engine (SE).  We see that QE performed 1 scan operation on the heap, and SE performed a single range scan.  Let’s try a single-value equality seek on a unique index next: EXECUTE dbo.RunTest @SQL = 'SELECT key_col FROM Example WHERE key_col = 32'; This time we see a single seek on the non-clustered primary key from QE, and one singleton lookup on the same index by the SE.  Now for a single-value seek on the non-unique non-clustered index: EXECUTE dbo.RunTest @SQL = 'SELECT data FROM Example WHERE data = 32'; QE shows a single seek on the non-clustered non-unique index, but SE shows a single range scan on that index – not the singleton lookup we saw in the previous test.  That makes sense because we know that only a single-value seek into a unique index is a singleton seek.  A single-value seek into a non-unique index might retrieve any number of rows, if you think about it.  The next query is equivalent to the IN list example seen in the first post in this series, but it is written using OR (just for variety, you understand): EXECUTE dbo.RunTest @SQL = 'SELECT data FROM Example WHERE data = 32 OR data = 33'; The plan looks the same, and there’s no difference in the stats recorded by QE, but the SE shows two range scans.  Again, these are range scans because we are looking for two values in the data column, which is covered by a non-unique index.  I’ve added a snippet from the Properties window to show that the query plan does show two seek predicates, not just one.  Now let’s rewrite the query using BETWEEN: EXECUTE dbo.RunTest @SQL = 'SELECT data FROM Example WHERE data BETWEEN 32 AND 33'; Notice the seek operator only has one predicate now – it’s just a single range scan from 32 to 33 in the index – as the SE output shows.  For the next test, we will look up four values in the key_col column: EXECUTE dbo.RunTest @SQL = 'SELECT key_col FROM Example WHERE key_col IN (2,4,6,8)'; Just a single seek on the PK from the Query Executor, but four singleton lookups reported by the Storage Engine – and four seek predicates in the Properties window.  On to a more complex example: EXECUTE dbo.RunTest @SQL = 'SELECT * FROM Example WITH (INDEX([PK dbo.Example key_col])) WHERE key_col BETWEEN 1 AND 8'; This time we are forcing use of the non-clustered primary key to return eight rows.  The index is not covering for this query, so the query plan includes an RID lookup into the heap to fetch the data and padding columns.  The QE reports a seek on the PK and a lookup on the heap.  The SE reports a single range scan on the PK (to find key_col values between 1 and 8), and eight singleton lookups on the heap.  Remember that a bookmark lookup (RID or Key) is a seek to a single value in a ‘unique index’ – it finds a row in the heap or cluster from a unique RID or clustering key – so that’s why lookups are always singleton lookups, not range scans. Our next example shows what happens when a query plan operator is not executed at all: EXECUTE dbo.RunTest @SQL = 'SELECT key_col FROM Example WHERE key_col = 8 AND @@TRANCOUNT < 0'; The Filter has a start-up predicate which is always false (if your @@TRANCOUNT is less than zero, call CSS immediately).  The index seek is never executed, but QE still records a single seek against the PK because the operator appears once in an executed plan.  The SE output shows no activity at all.  This next example is 2008 and above only, I’m afraid: EXECUTE dbo.RunTest @SQL = 'SELECT * FROM Example WHERE key_col BETWEEN 1 AND 30', @Partitioned = 'true'; This is the first example to use a partitioned table.  QE reports a single seek on the heap (yes – a seek on a heap), and the SE reports two range scans on the heap.  SQL Server knows (from the partitioning definition) that it only needs to look at partitions 1 and 2 to find all the rows where key_col is between 1 and 30 – the engine seeks to find the two partitions, and performs a range scan seek on each partition. The final example for today is another seek on a heap – try to work out the output of the query before running it! EXECUTE dbo.RunTest @SQL = 'SELECT TOP (2) WITH TIES * FROM Example WHERE key_col BETWEEN 1 AND 50 ORDER BY $PARTITION.PF(key_col) DESC', @Partitioned = 'true'; Notice the lack of an explicit Sort operator in the query plan to enforce the ORDER BY clause, and the backward range scan. © 2011 Paul White email: [email protected] twitter: @SQL_Kiwi

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• How to safely reboot via First Boot script

  - by unixman

  With the cost and performance benefits of the SPARC T4 and SPARC T5 systems undeniably validated, the banking sector is actively moving to Solaris 11.  I was recently asked to help a banking customer of ours look at migrating some of their Solaris 10 logic over to Solaris 11.  While we've introduced a number of holistic improvements in Solaris 11, in terms of how we ease long-term software lifecycle management, it is important to appreciate that customers may not be able to move all of their Solaris 10 scripts and procedures at once; there are years of scripts that reflect fine-tuned requirements of proprietary banking software that gets layered on top of the operating system. One of these requirements is to go through a cycle of reboots, after the system is installed, in order to ensure appropriate software dependencies and various configuration files are in-place. While Solaris 10 introduced a facility that aids here, namely SMF, many of our customers simply haven't yet taken the time to take advantage of this - proceeding with logic that, while functional, without further analysis has an appearance of not being optimal in terms of taking advantage of all the niceties bundled in Solaris 11 at no extra cost. When looking at Solaris 11, we recognize that one of the vehicles that bridges the gap between getting the operating system image payload delivered, and the customized banking software installed, is a notion of a First Boot script.  I had a working example of this at one of the Oracle OpenWorld sessions a few years ago - we've since improved our documentation and have introduced sections where this is described in better detail.   If you're looking at this for the first time and you've not worked with IPS and SMF previously, you might get the sense that the tasks are daunting.   There is a set of technologies involved that are jointly engineered in order to make the process reliable, predictable and extensible. As you go down the path of writing your first boot script, you'll be faced with a need to wrap it into a SMF service and then packaged into a IPS package. The IPS package would then need to be placed onto your IPS repository, in order to subsequently be made available to all of your AI (Automated Install) clients (i.e. the systems that you're installing Solaris and your software onto).     With this blog post, I wanted to create a single place that outlines the entire process (simplistically), and provide a hint of how a good old "at" command may make the requirement of forcing an initial reboot handy. The syntax and references to commands here is based on running this on a version of Solaris 11 that has been updated since its initial release in 2011 (i.e. I am writing this on Solaris 11.1) Assuming you've built an AI server (see this How To article for an example), you might be asking yourself: "Ok, I've got some logic that I need executed AFTER Solaris is deployed and I need my own little script that would make that happen. How do I go about hooking that script into the Solaris 11 AI framework?"  You might start here, in Chapter 13 of the "Installing Oracle Solaris 11.1 Systems" guide, which talks about "Running a Custom Script During First Boot".  And as you do, you'll be confronted with command that might be unfamiliar to you if you're new to Solaris 11, like our dear new friend: svcbundle svcbundle is an aide to creating manifests and profiles.  It is awesome, but don't let its awesomeness overwhelm you. (See this How To article by my colleague Glynn Foster for a nice working example).  In order to get your script's logic integrated into the Solaris 11 deployment process, you need to wrap your (shell) script into 2 manifests -  a SMF service manifest and a IPS package manifest.  ....and if you're new to XML, well then -- buckle up We have some examples of small first boot scripts shown here, as templates to build upon. Necessary structure of the script, particularly in leveraging SMF interfaces, is key. I won't go into that here as that is covered nicely in the doc link above.    Let's say your script ends up looking like this (btw: if things appear to be cut-off in your browser, just select them, copy and paste into your editor and it'll be grabbed - the source gets captured eventhough the browser may not render it "correctly" - ah, computers). #!/bin/sh # Load SMF shell support definitions . /lib/svc/share/smf_include.sh # If nothing to do, exit with temporary disable completed=`svcprop -p config/completed site/first-boot-script-svc:default` [ "${completed}" = "true" ] && \ smf_method_exit $SMF_EXIT_TEMP_DISABLE completed "Configuration completed" # Obtain the active BE name from beadm: The active BE on reboot has an R in # the third column of 'beadm list' output. Its name is in column one. bename=`beadm list -Hd|nawk -F ';' '$3 ~ /R/ {print $1}'` beadm create ${bename}.orig echo "Original boot environment saved as ${bename}.orig" # ---- Place your one-time configuration tasks here ---- # For example, if you have to pull some files from your own pre-existing system: /usr/bin/wget -P /var/tmp/ $PULL_DOWN_ADDITIONAL_SCRIPTS_FROM_A_CORPORATE_SYSTEM /usr/bin/chmod 755 /var/tmp/$SCRIPTS_THAT_GOT_PULLED_DOWN_IN_STEP_ABOVE # Clearly the above 2 lines represent some logic that you'd have to customize to fit your needs. # # Perhaps additional things you may want to do here might be of use, like # (gasp!) configuring ssh server for root login and X11 forwarding (for testing), and the like... # # Oh and by the way, after we're done executing all of our proprietary scripts we need to reboot # the system in accordance with our operational software requirements to ensure all layered bits # get initialized properly and pull-in their own modules and components in the right sequence, # subsequently. # We need to set a "time bomb" reboot, that would take place upon completion of this script. # We already know that *this* script depends on multi-user-server SMF milestone, so it should be # safe for us to schedule a reboot for 5 minutes from now. The "at" job get scheduled in the queue # while our little script continues thru the rest of the logic. /usr/bin/at now + 5 minutes <<REBOOT /usr/bin/sync /usr/sbin/reboot REBOOT # ---- End of your customizations ---- # Record that this script's work is done svccfg -s site/first-boot-script-svc:default setprop config/completed = true svcadm refresh site/first-boot-script-svc:default smf_method_exit $SMF_EXIT_TEMP_DISABLE method_completed "Configuration completed"  ...and you're happy with it and are ready to move on. Where do you go and what do you do? The next step is creating the IPS package for your script. Since running the logic of your script constitutes a service, you need to create a service manifest. This is described here, in the middle of Chapter 13 of "Creating an IPS package for the script and service".  Assuming the name of your shell script is first-boot-script.sh, you could end up doing the following: $ cd some_working_directory_for_this_project$ mkdir -p proto/lib/svc/manifest/site$ mkdir -p proto/opt/site $ cp first-boot-script.sh proto/opt/site  Then you would create the service manifest  file like so: $ svcbundle -s service-name=site/first-boot-script-svc \ -s start-method=/opt/site/first-boot-script.sh \ -s instance-property=config:completed:boolean:false -o \ first-boot-script-svc-manifest.xml   ...as described here, and place it into the directory hierarchy above. But before you place it into the directory, make sure to inspect the manifest and adjust the appropriate service dependencies.  That is to say, you want to properly specify what milestone should be reached before your service runs.  There's a <dependency> section that looks like this, before you modify it: <dependency restart_on="none" type="service" name="multi_user_dependency" grouping="require_all"> <service_fmri value="svc:/milestone/multi-user"/>  </dependency>  So if you'd like to have your service run AFTER the multi-user-server milestone has been reached (i.e. later, as multi-user-server has more dependencies then multi-user and our intent to reboot the system may have significant ramifications if done prematurely), you would modify that section to read:  <dependency restart_on="none" type="service" name="multi_user_server_dependency" grouping="require_all"> <service_fmri value="svc:/milestone/multi-user-server"/>  </dependency> Save the file and validate it: $ svccfg validate first-boot-script-svc-manifest.xml Assuming there are no errors returned, copy the file over into the directory hierarchy: $ cp first-boot-script-svc-manifest.xml proto/lib/svc/manifest/site Now that we've created the service manifest (.xml), create the package manifest (.p5m) file named: first-boot-script.p5m.  Populate it as follows: set name=pkg.fmri value=first-boot-script-AT-1-DOT-0,5.11-0 set name=pkg.summary value="AI first-boot script" set name=pkg.description value="Script that runs at first boot after AI installation" set name=info.classification value=\ "org.opensolaris.category.2008:System/Administration and Configuration" file lib/svc/manifest/site/first-boot-script-svc-manifest.xml \ path=lib/svc/manifest/site/first-boot-script-svc-manifest.xml owner=root \ group=sys mode=0444 dir path=opt/site owner=root group=sys mode=0755 file opt/site/first-boot-script.sh path=opt/site/first-boot-script.sh \ owner=root group=sys mode=0555 Now we are going to publish this package into a IPS repository. If you don't have one yet, don't worry. You have 2 choices: You can either  publish this package into your mirror of the Oracle Solaris IPS repo or create your own customized repo.  The best practice is to create your own customized repo, leaving your mirror of the Oracle Solaris IPS repo untouched.  From this point, you have 2 choices as well - you can either create a repo that will be accessible by your clients via HTTP or via NFS.  Since HTTP is how the default Solaris repo is accessed, we'll go with HTTP for your own IPS repo.   This nice and comprehensive How To by Albert White describes how to create multiple internal IPS repos for Solaris 11. We'll zero in on the basic elements for our needs here: We'll create the IPS repo directory structure hanging off a separate ZFS file system, and we'll tie it into an instance of pkg.depotd. We do this because we want our IPS repo to be accessible to our AI clients through HTTP, and the pkg.depotd SMF service bundled in Solaris 11 can help us do this. We proceed as follows: # zfs create rpool/export/MyIPSrepo # pkgrepo create /export/MyIPSrepo # svccfg -s pkg/server add MyIPSrepo # svccfg -s pkg/server:MyIPSrepo addpg pkg application # svccfg -s pkg/server:MyIPSrepo setprop pkg/port=10081 # svccfg -s pkg/server:MyIPSrepo setprop pkg/inst_root=/export/MyIPSrepo # svccfg -s pkg/server:MyIPSrepo addpg general framework # svccfg -s pkg/server:MyIPSrepo addpropvalue general/complete astring: MyIPSrepo # svccfg -s pkg/server:MyIPSrepo addpropvalue general/enabled boolean: true # svccfg -s pkg/server:MyIPSrepo setprop pkg/readonly=true # svccfg -s pkg/server:MyIPSrepo setprop pkg/proxy_base = astring: http://your_internal_websrvr/MyIPSrepo # svccfg -s pkg/server:MyIPSrepo setprop pkg/threads = 200 # svcadm refresh application/pkg/server:MyIPSrepo # svcadm enable application/pkg/server:MyIPSrepo Now that the IPS repo is created, we need to publish our package into it: # pkgsend publish -d ./proto -s /export/MyIPSrepo first-boot-script.p5m If you find yourself making changes to your script, remember to up-rev the version in the .p5m file (which is your IPS package manifest), and re-publish the IPS package. Next, you need to go to your AI install server (which might be the same machine) and modify the AI manifest to include a reference to your newly created package.  We do that by listing an additional publisher, which would look like this (replacing the IP address and port with your own, from the "svccfg" commands up above): <publisher name="firstboot"> <origin name="http://192.168.1.222:10081"/> </publisher>  Further down, in the  <software_data action="install">  section add: <name>pkg:/first-boot-script</name> Make sure to update your Automated Install service with the new AI manifest via installadm update-manifest command.  Don't forget to boot your client from the network to watch the entire process unfold and your script get tested.  Once the system makes the initial reboot, the first boot script will be executed and whatever logic you've specified in it should be executed, too, followed by a nice reboot. When the system comes up, your service should stay in a disabled state, as specified by the tailing lines of your SMF script - this is normal and should be left as is as it helps provide an auditing trail for you.   Because the reboot is quite a significant action for the system, you may want to add additional logic to the script that actually places and then checks for presence of certain lock files in order to avoid doing a reboot unnecessarily. You may also want to, alternatively, remove the SMF service entirely - if you're unsure of the potential for someone to try and accidentally enable that service -- eventhough its role in life is to only run once upon the system's first boot. That is how I spent a good chunk of my pre-Halloween time this week, hope yours was just as SPARCkly^H^H^H^H fun!    

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• Securing an ADF Application using OES11g: Part 2

  - by user12587121

  To validate the integration with OES we need a sample ADF Application that is rich enough to allow us to test securing the various ADF elements.  To achieve this we can add some items including bounded task flows to the application developed in this tutorial. A sample JDeveloper 11.1.1.6 project is available here. It depends on the Fusion Order Demo (FOD) database schema which is easily created using the FOD build scripts.In the deployment we have chosen to enable only ADF Authentication as we will delegate Authorization, mostly, to OES.The welcome page of the application with all the links exposed looks as follows: The Welcome, Browse Products, Browse Stock and System Administration links go to pages while the Supplier Registration and Update Stock are bounded task flows.  The Login link goes to a basic login page and once logged in a link is presented that goes to a logout page.  Only the Browse Products and Browse Stock pages are really connected to the database--the other pages and task flows do not really perform any operations on the database. Required Security Policies We make use of a set of test users and roles as decscribed on the welcome page of the application.  In order to exercise the different authorization possibilities we would like to enforce the following sample policies: Anonymous users can see the Login, Welcome and Supplier Registration links. They can also see the Welcome page, the Login page and follow the Supplier Registration task flow.  They can see the icon adjacent to the Login link indicating whether they have logged in or not. Authenticated users can see the Browse Product page. Only staff granted the right can see the Browse Product page cost price value returned from the database and then only if the value is below a configurable limit. Suppliers and staff can see the Browse Stock links and pages.  Customers cannot. Suppliers can see the Update Stock link but only those with the update permission are allowed to follow the task flow that it launches.  We could hide the link but leave it exposed here so we can easily demonstrate the method call activity protecting the task flow. Only staff granted the right can see the System Administration link and the System Administration page it accesses. Implementing the required policies In order to secure the application we will make use of the following techniques: EL Expressions and Java backing beans: JSF has the notion of EL expressions to reference data from backing Java classes.  We use these to control the presentation of links on the navigation page which respect the security contraints.  So a user will not see links that he is not allowed to click on into. These Java backing beans can call on to OES for an authorization decision.  Important Note: naturally we would configure the WLS domain where our ADF application is running as an OES WLS SM, which would allow us to efficiently query OES over the PEP API.  However versioning conflicts between OES 11.1.1.5 and ADF 11.1.1.6 mean that this is not possible.  Nevertheless, we can make use of the OES RESTful gateway technique from this posting in order to call into OES. You can easily create and manage backing beans in Jdeveloper as follows: Custom ADF Phase Listener: ADF extends the JSF page lifecycle flow and allows one to hook into the flow to intercept page rendering.  We use this to put a check prior to rendering any protected pages, again calling on to OES via the backing bean.  Phase listeners are configured in the adf-settings.xml file.  See the MyPageListener.java class in the project.  Here, for example,  is the code we use in the listener to check for allowed access to the sysadmin page, navigating back to the welcome page if authorization is not granted:                         if (page != null && (page.equals("/system.jspx") || page.equals("/system"))){                             System.out.println("MyPageListener: Checking Authorization for /system");                             if (getValue("#{oesBackingBean.UIAccessSysAdmin}").toString().equals("false") ){                                   System.out.println("MyPageListener: Forcing navigation away from system" +                                       "to welcome");                                 NavigationHandler nh = fc.getApplication().getNavigationHandler();                                   nh.handleNavigation(fc, null, "welcome");                               } else {                                 System.out.println("MyPageListener: access allowed");                              }                         } Method call activity: our app makes use of bounded task flows to implement the sequence of pages that update the stock or allow suppliers to self register.  ADF takes care of ensuring that a bounded task flow can be entered by only one page.  So a way to protect all those pages is to make a call to OES in the first activity and then either exit the task flow or continue depending on the authorization decision.  The method call returns a String which contains the name of the transition to effect. This is where we configure the method call activity in JDeveloper: We implement each of the policies using the above techniques as follows: Policies 1 and 2: as these policies concern the coarse grained notions of controlling access to anonymous and authenticated users we can make use of the container’s security constraints which can be defined in the web.xml file.  The allPages constraint is added automatically when we configure Authentication for the ADF application.  We have added the “anonymousss” constraint to allow access to the the required pages, task flows and icons: <security-constraint>    <web-resource-collection>      <web-resource-name>anonymousss</web-resource-name>      <url-pattern>/faces/welcome</url-pattern>      <url-pattern>/afr/*</url-pattern>      <url-pattern>/adf/*</url-pattern>      <url-pattern>/key.png</url-pattern>      <url-pattern>/faces/supplier-reg-btf/*</url-pattern>      <url-pattern>/faces/supplier_register_complete</url-pattern>    </web-resource-collection>  </security-constraint> Policy 3: we can place an EL expression on the element representing the cost price on the products.jspx page: #{oesBackingBean.dataAccessCostPrice}. This EL Expression references a method in a Java backing bean that will call on to OES for an authorization decision.  In OES we model the authorization requirement by requiring the view permission on the resource /MyADFApp/data/costprice and granting it only to the staff application role.  We recover any obligations to determine the limit.  Policy 4: is implemented by putting an EL expression on the Browse Stock link #{oesBackingBean.UIAccessBrowseStock} which checks for the view permission on the /MyADFApp/ui/stock resource. The stock.jspx page is protected by checking for the same permission in a custom phase listener—if the required permission is not satisfied then we force navigation back to the welcome page. Policy 5: the Update Stock link is protected with the same EL expression as the Browse Link: #{oesBackingBean.UIAccessBrowseStock}.  However the Update Stock link launches a bounded task flow and to protect it the first activity in the flow is a method call activity which will execute an EL expression #{oesBackingBean.isUIAccessSupplierUpdateTransition}  to check for the update permission on the /MyADFApp/ui/stock resource and either transition to the next step in the flow or terminate the flow with an authorization error. Policy 6: the System Administration link is protected with an EL Expression #{oesBackingBean.UIAccessSysAdmin} that checks for view access on the /MyADF/ui/sysadmin resource.  The system page is protected in the same way at the stock page—the custom phase listener checks for the same permission that protects the link and if not satisfied we navigate back to the welcome page. Testing the Application To test the application: deploy the OES11g Admin to a WLS domain deploy the OES gateway in a another domain configured to be a WLS SM. You must ensure that the jps-config.xml file therein is configured to allow access to the identity store, otherwise the gateway will not b eable to resolve the principals for the requested users.  To do this ensure that the following elements appear in the jps-config.xml file: <serviceProvider type="IDENTITY_STORE" name="idstore.ldap.provider" class="oracle.security.jps.internal.idstore.ldap.LdapIdentityStoreProvider">             <description>LDAP-based IdentityStore Provider</description>  </serviceProvider> <serviceInstance name="idstore.ldap" provider="idstore.ldap.provider">             <property name="idstore.config.provider" value="oracle.security.jps.wls.internal.idstore.WlsLdapIdStoreConfigProvider"/>             <property name="CONNECTION_POOL_CLASS" value="oracle.security.idm.providers.stdldap.JNDIPool"/></serviceInstance> <serviceInstanceRef ref="idstore.ldap"/> download the sample application and change the URL to the gateway in the MyADFApp OESBackingBean code to point to the OES Gateway and deploy the application to an 11.1.1.6 WLS domain that has been extended with the ADF JRF files. You will need to configure the FOD database connection to point your database which contains the FOD schema. populate the OES Admin and OES Gateway WLS LDAP stores with the sample set of users and groups.  If  you have configured the WLS domains to point to the same LDAP then it would only have to be done once.  To help with this there is a directory called ldap_scripts in the sample project with ldif files for the test users and groups. start the OES Admin console and configure the required OES authorization policies for the MyADFApp application and push them to the WLS SM containing the OES Gateway. Login to the MyADFApp as each of the users described on the login page to test that the security policy is correct. You will see informative logging from the OES Gateway and the ADF application to their respective WLS consoles. Congratulations, you may now login to the OES Admin console and change policies that will control the behaviour of your ADF application--change the limit value in the obligation for the cost price for example, or define Role Mapping policies to determine staff access to the system administration page based on user profile attributes. ADF Development Notes Some notes on ADF development which are probably typical gotchas: May need this on WLS startup in order to allow us to overwrite credentials for the database, the signal here is that there is an error trying to access the data base: -Djps.app.credential.overwrite.allowed=true Best to call Bounded Task flows via a CommandLink (as opposed to a go link) as you cannot seem to start them again from a go link, even having completed the task flow correctly with a return activity. Once a bounded task flow (BTF) is initated it must complete correctly  via a return activity—attempting to click on any other link whilst in the context of a  BTF has no effect.  See here for example: When using the ADF Authentication only security approach it seems to be awkward to allow anonymous access to the welcome and registration pages.  We can achieve anonymous access using the web.xml security constraint shown above (where no auth-constraint is specified) however it is not clear what needs to be listed in there….for example the /afr/* and /adf/* are in there by trial and error as sometimes the welcome page will not render if we omit those items.  I was not able to use the default allPages constraint with for example the anonymous-role or the everyone WLS group in order to be able to allow anonymous access to pages. The ADF security best practice advises placing all pages under the public_html/WEB-INF folder as then ADF will not allow any direct access to the .jspx pages but will only allow acces via a link of the form /faces/welcome rather than /faces/welcome.jspx.  This seems like a very good practice to follow as having multiple entry points to data is a source of confusion in a web application (particulary from a security point of view). In Authentication+Authorization mode only pages with a Page definition file are protected.  In order to add an emty one right click on the page and choose Go to Page Definition.  This will create an empty page definition and now the page will require explicit permission to be seen. It is advisable to give a unique context root via the weblogic.xml for the application, as otherwise the application will clash with any other application with the same context root and it will not deploy

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• Graphics.MeasureCharacterRanges giving wrong size calculations in C#.Net?

  - by Owen Blacker

  I'm trying to render some text into a specific part of an image in a Web Forms app. The text will be user entered, so I want to vary the font size to make sure it fits within the bounding box. I have code that was doing this fine on my proof-of-concept implementation, but I'm now trying it against the assets from the designer, which are larger, and I'm getting some odd results. I'm running the size calculation as follows: StringFormat fmt = new StringFormat(); fmt.Alignment = StringAlignment.Center; fmt.LineAlignment = StringAlignment.Near; fmt.FormatFlags = StringFormatFlags.NoClip; fmt.Trimming = StringTrimming.None; int size = __startingSize; Font font = __fonts.GetFontBySize(size); while (GetStringBounds(text, font, fmt).IsLargerThan(__textBoundingBox)) { context.Trace.Write("MyHandler.ProcessRequest", "Decrementing font size to " + size + ", as size is " + GetStringBounds(text, font, fmt).Size() + " and limit is " + __textBoundingBox.Size()); size--; if (size < __minimumSize) { break; } font = __fonts.GetFontBySize(size); } context.Trace.Write("MyHandler.ProcessRequest", "Writing " + text + " in " + font.FontFamily.Name + " at " + font.SizeInPoints + "pt, size is " + GetStringBounds(text, font, fmt).Size() + " and limit is " + __textBoundingBox.Size()); I then use the following line to render the text onto an image I'm pulling from the filesystem: g.DrawString(text, font, __brush, __textBoundingBox, fmt); where: __fonts is a PrivateFontCollection, PrivateFontCollection.GetFontBySize is an extension method that returns a FontFamily RectangleF __textBoundingBox = new RectangleF(150, 110, 212, 64); int __minimumSize = 8; int __startingSize = 48; Brush __brush = Brushes.White; int size starts out at 48 and decrements within that loop Graphics g has SmoothingMode.AntiAlias and TextRenderingHint.AntiAlias set context is a System.Web.HttpContext (this is an excerpt from the ProcessRequest method of an IHttpHandler) The other methods are: private static RectangleF GetStringBounds(string text, Font font, StringFormat fmt) { CharacterRange[] range = { new CharacterRange(0, text.Length) }; StringFormat myFormat = fmt.Clone() as StringFormat; myFormat.SetMeasurableCharacterRanges(range); using (Graphics g = Graphics.FromImage(new Bitmap( (int) __textBoundingBox.Width - 1, (int) __textBoundingBox.Height - 1))) { g.SmoothingMode = System.Drawing.Drawing2D.SmoothingMode.AntiAlias; g.TextRenderingHint = System.Drawing.Text.TextRenderingHint.AntiAlias; Region[] regions = g.MeasureCharacterRanges(text, font, __textBoundingBox, myFormat); return regions[0].GetBounds(g); } } public static string Size(this RectangleF rect) { return rect.Width + "×" + rect.Height; } public static bool IsLargerThan(this RectangleF a, RectangleF b) { return (a.Width > b.Width) || (a.Height > b.Height); } Now I have two problems. Firstly, the text sometimes insists on wrapping by inserting a line-break within a word, when it should just fail to fit and cause the while loop to decrement again. I can't see why it is that Graphics.MeasureCharacterRanges thinks that this fits within the box when it shouldn't be word-wrapping within a word. This behaviour is exhibited irrespective of the character set used (I get it in Latin alphabet words, as well as other parts of the Unicode range, like Cyrillic, Greek, Georgian and Armenian). Is there some setting I should be using to force Graphics.MeasureCharacterRanges only to be word-wrapping at whitespace characters (or hyphens)? This first problem is the same as post 2499067. Secondly, in scaling up to the new image and font size, Graphics.MeasureCharacterRanges is giving me heights that are wildly off. The RectangleF I am drawing within corresponds to a visually apparent area of the image, so I can easily see when the text is being decremented more than is necessary. Yet when I pass it some text, the GetBounds call is giving me a height that is almost double what it's actually taking. Using trial and error to set the __minimumSize to force an exit from the while loop, I can see that 24pt text fits within the bounding box, yet Graphics.MeasureCharacterRanges is reporting that the height of that text, once rendered to the image, is 122px (when the bounding box is 64px tall and it fits within that box). Indeed, without forcing the matter, the while loop iterates to 18pt, at which point Graphics.MeasureCharacterRanges returns a value that fits. The trace log excerpt is as follows: Decrementing font size to 24, as size is 193×122 and limit is 212×64 Decrementing font size to 23, as size is 191×117 and limit is 212×64 Decrementing font size to 22, as size is 200×75 and limit is 212×64 Decrementing font size to 21, as size is 192×71 and limit is 212×64 Decrementing font size to 20, as size is 198×68 and limit is 212×64 Decrementing font size to 19, as size is 185×65 and limit is 212×64 Writing VENNEGOOR of HESSELINK in DIN-Black at 18pt, size is 178×61 and limit is 212×64 So why is Graphics.MeasureCharacterRanges giving me a wrong result? I could understand it being, say, the line height of the font if the loop stopped around 21pt (which would visually fit, if I screenshot the results and measure it in Paint.Net), but it's going far further than it should be doing because, frankly, it's returning the wrong damn results. Any and all help gratefully received. Thanks!

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• Office 2010: It&rsquo;s not just DOC(X) and XLS(X)

  - by andrewbrust

  Office 2010 has released to manufacturing.  The bits have left the (product team’s) building.  Will you upgrade? This version of Office is officially numbered 14, a designation that correlates with the various releases, through the years, of Microsoft Word.  There were six major versions of Word for DOS, during whose release cycles came three 16-bit Windows versions.  Then, starting with Word 95 and counting through Word 2007, there have been six more versions – all for the 32-bit Windows platform.  Skip version 13 to ward off folksy bad luck (and, perhaps, the bugs that could come with it) and that brings us to version 14, which includes implementations for both 32- and 64-bit Windows platforms.  We’ve come a long way baby.  Or have we? As it does every three years or so, debate will now start to rage on over whether we need a “14th” version the PC platform’s standard word processor, or a “13th” version of the spreadsheet.  If you accept the premise of that question, then you may be on a slippery slope toward answering it in the negative.  Thing is, that premise is valid for certain customers and not others. The Microsoft Office product has morphed from one that offered core word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and email functionality to a suite of applications that provides unique, new value-added features, and even whole applications, in the context of those core services.  The core apps thus grow in mission: Excel is a BI tool.  Word is a collaborative editorial system for the production of publications.  PowerPoint is a media production platform for for live presentations and, increasingly, for delivering more effective presentations online.  Outlook is a time and task management system.  Access is a rich client front-end for data-driven self-service SharePoint applications.  OneNote helps you capture ideas, corral random thoughts in a semi-structured way, and then tie them back to other, more rigidly structured, Office documents. Google Docs and other cloud productivity platforms like Zoho don’t really do these things.  And there is a growing chorus of voices who say that they shouldn’t, because those ancillary capabilities are over-engineered, over-produced and “under-necessary.”  They might say Microsoft is layering on superfluous capabilities to avoid admitting that Office’s core capabilities, the ones people really need, have become commoditized. It’s hard to take sides in that argument, because different people, and the different companies that employ them, have different needs.  For my own needs, it all comes down to three basic questions: will the new version of Office save me time, will it make the mundane parts of my job easier, and will it augment my services to customers?  I need my time back.  I need to spend more of it with my family, and more of it focusing on my own core capabilities rather than the administrative tasks around them.  And I also need my customers to be able to get more value out of the services I provide. Help me triage my inbox, help me get proposals done more quickly and make them easier to read.  Let me get my presentations done faster, make them more effective and make it easier for me to reuse materials from other presentations.  And, since I’m in the BI and data business, help me and my customers manage data and analytics more easily, both on the desktop and online. Those are my criteria.  And, with those in mind, Office 2010 is looking like a worthwhile upgrade.  Perhaps it’s not earth-shattering, but it offers a combination of incremental improvements and a few new major capabilities that I think are quite compelling.  I provide a brief roundup of them here.  It’s admittedly arbitrary and not comprehensive, but I think it tells the Office 2010 story effectively. Across the Suite More than any other, this release of Office aims to give collaboration a real workout.  In certain apps, for the first time, documents can be opened simultaneously by multiple users, with colleagues’ changes appearing in near real-time.  Web-browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote will be available to extend collaboration to contributors who are off the corporate network. The ribbon user interface is now more pervasive (for example, it appears in OneNote and in Outlook’s main window).  It’s also customizable, allowing users to add, easily, buttons and options of their choosing, into new tabs, or into new groups within existing tabs. Microsoft has also taken the File menu (which was the “Office Button” menu in the 2007 release) and made it into a full-screen “Backstage” view where document-wide operations, like saving, printing and online publishing are performed. And because, more and more, heavily formatted content is cut and pasted between documents and applications, Office 2010 makes it easier to manage the retention or jettisoning of that formatting right as the paste operation is performed.  That’s much nicer than stripping it off, or adding it back, afterwards. And, speaking of pasting, a number of Office apps now make it especially easy to insert screenshots within their documents.  I know that’s useful to me, because I often document or critique applications and need to show them in action.  For the vast majority of users, I expect that this feature will be more useful for capturing snapshots of Web pages, but we’ll have to see whether this feature becomes popular.   Excel At first glance, Excel 2010 looks and acts nearly identically to the 2007 version.  But additional glances are necessary.  It’s important to understand that lots of people in the working world use Excel as more of a database, analytics and mathematical modeling tool than merely as a spreadsheet.  And it’s also important to understand that Excel wasn’t designed to handle such workloads past a certain scale.  That all changes with this release. The first reason things change is that Excel has been tuned for performance.  It’s been optimized for multi-threaded operation; previously lengthy processes have been shortened, especially for large data sets; more rows and columns are allowed and, for the first time, Excel (and the rest of Office) is available in a 64-bit version.  For Excel, this means users can take advantage of more than the 2GB of memory that the 32-bit version is limited to. On the analysis side, Excel 2010 adds Sparklines (tiny charts that fit into a single cell and can therefore be presented down an entire column or across a row) and Slicers (a more user-friendly filter mechanism for PivotTables and charts, which visually indicates what the filtered state of a given data member is).  But most important, Excel 2010 supports the new PowerPIvot add-in which brings true self-service BI to Office.  PowerPivot allows users to import data from almost anywhere, model it, and then analyze it.  Rather than forcing users to build “spreadmarts” or use corporate-built data warehouses, PowerPivot models function as true columnar, in-memory OLAP cubes that can accommodate millions of rows of data and deliver fast drill-down performance. And speaking of OLAP, Excel 2010 now supports an important Analysis Services OLAP feature called write-back.  Write-back is especially useful in financial forecasting scenarios for which Excel is the natural home.  Support for write-back is long overdue, but I’m still glad it’s there, because I had almost given up on it.   PowerPoint This version of PowerPoint marks its progression from a presentation tool to a video and photo editing and production tool.  Whether or not it’s successful in this pursuit, and if offering this is even a sensible goal, is another question. Regardless, the new capabilities are kind of interesting.  A greatly enhanced set of slide transitions with 3D effects; in-product photo and video editing; accommodation of embedded videos from services such as YouTube; and the ability to save a presentation as a video each lay testimony to PowerPoint’s transformation into a media tool and away from a pure presentation tool. These capabilities also recognize the importance of the Web as both a source for materials and a channel for disseminating PowerPoint output. Congruent with that is PowerPoint’s new ability to broadcast a slide presentation, using a quickly-generated public URL, without involving the hassle or expense of a Web meeting service like GoToMeeting or Microsoft’s own LiveMeeting.  Slides presented through this broadcast feature retain full color fidelity and transitions and animations are preserved as well.   Outlook Microsoft’s ubiquitous email/calendar/contact/task management tool gains long overdue speed improvements, especially against POP3 email accounts.  Outlook 2010 also supports multiple Exchange accounts, rather than just one; tighter integration with OneNote; and a new Social Connector providing integration with, and presence information from, online social network services like LinkedIn and Facebook (not to mention Windows Live).  A revamped conversation view now includes messages that are part of a given thread regardless of which folder they may be stored in. I don’t know yet how well the Social Connector will work or whether it will keep Outlook relevant to those who live on Facebook and LinkedIn.  But among the other features, there’s very little not to like.   OneNote To me, OneNote is the part of Office that just keeps getting better.  There is one major caveat to this, which I’ll cover in a moment, but let’s first catalog what new stuff OneNote 2010 brings.  The best part of OneNote, is the way each of its versions have managed hierarchy: Notebooks have sections, sections have pages, pages have sub pages, multiple notes can be contained in either, and each note supports infinite levels of indentation.  None of that is new to 2010, but the new version does make creation of pages and subpages easier and also makes simple work out of promoting and demoting pages from sub page to full page status.  And relationships between pages are quite easy to create now: much like a Wiki, simply typing a page’s name in double-square-brackets (“[[…]]”) creates a link to it. OneNote is also great at integrating content outside of its notebooks.  With a new Dock to Desktop feature, OneNote becomes aware of what window is displayed in the rest of the screen and, if it’s an Office document or a Web page, links the notes you’re typing, at the time, to it.  A single click from your notes later on will bring that same document or Web page back on-screen.  Embedding content from Web pages and elsewhere is also easier.  Using OneNote’s Windows Key+S combination to grab part of the screen now allows you to specify the destination of that bitmap instead of automatically creating a new note in the Unfiled Notes area.  Using the Send to OneNote buttons in Internet Explorer and Outlook result in the same choice. Collaboration gets better too.  Real-time multi-author editing is better accommodated and determining author lineage of particular changes is easily carried out. My one pet peeve with OneNote is the difficulty using it when I’m not one a Windows PC.  OneNote’s main competitor, Evernote, while I believe inferior in terms of features, has client versions for PC, Mac, Windows Mobile, Android, iPhone, iPad and Web browsers.  Since I have an Android phone and an iPad, I am practically forced to use it.  However, the OneNote Web app should help here, as should a forthcoming version of OneNote for Windows Phone 7.  In the mean time, it turns out that using OneNote’s Email Page ribbon button lets you move a OneNote page easily into EverNote (since every EverNote account gets a unique email address for adding notes) and that Evernote’s Email function combined with Outlook’s Send to OneNote button (in the Move group of the ribbon’s Home tab) can achieve the reverse.   Access To me, the big change in Access 2007 was its tight integration with SharePoint lists.  Access 2010 and SharePoint 2010 continue this integration with the introduction of SharePoint’s Access Services.  Much as Excel Services provides a SharePoint-hosted experience for viewing (and now editing) Excel spreadsheet, PivotTable and chart content, Access Services allows for SharePoint browser-hosted editing of Access data within the forms that are built in the Access client itself. To me this makes all kinds of sense.  Although it does beg the question of where to draw the line between Access, InfoPath, SharePoint list maintenance and SharePoint 2010’s new Business Connectivity Services.  Each of these tools provide overlapping data entry and data maintenance functionality. But if you do prefer Access, then you’ll like  things like templates and application parts that make it easier to get off the blank page.  These features help you quickly get tables, forms and reports built out.  To make things look nice, Access even gets its own version of Excel’s Conditional Formatting feature, letting you add data bars and data-driven text formatting.   Word As I said at the beginning of this post, upgrades to Office are about much more than enhancing the suite’s flagship word processing application. So are there any enhancements in Word worth mentioning?  I think so.  The most important one has to be the collaboration features.  Essentially, when a user opens a Word document that is in a SharePoint document library (or Windows Live SkyDrive folder), rather than the whole document being locked, Word has the ability to observe more granular locks on the individual paragraphs being edited.  Word also shows you who’s editing what and its Save function morphs into a sync feature that both saves your changes and loads those made by anyone editing the document concurrently. There’s also a new navigation pane that lets you manage sections in your document in much the same way as you manage slides in a PowerPoint deck.  Using the navigation pane, you can reorder sections, insert new ones, or promote and demote sections in the outline hierarchy.  Not earth shattering, but nice.   Other Apps and Summarized Findings What about InfoPath, Publisher, Visio and Project?  I haven’t looked at them yet.  And for this post, I think that’s fine.  While those apps (and, arguably, Access) cater to specific tasks, I think the apps we’ve looked at in this post service the general purpose needs of most users.  And the theme in those 2010 apps is clear: collaboration is key, the Web and productivity are indivisible, and making data and analytics into a self-service amenity is the way to go.  But perhaps most of all, features are still important, as long as they get you through your day faster, rather than adding complexity for its own sake.  I would argue that this is true for just about every product Microsoft makes: users want utility, not complexity.

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• Tips for XNA WP7 Developers

  - by Michael B. McLaughlin

  There are several things any XNA developer should know/consider when coming to the Windows Phone 7 platform. This post assumes you are familiar with the XNA Framework and with the changes between XNA 3.1 and XNA 4.0. It’s not exhaustive; it’s simply a list of things I’ve gathered over time. I may come back and add to it over time, and I’m happy to add anything anyone else has experienced or learned as well. Display · The screen is either 800x480 or 480x800. · But you aren’t required to use only those resolutions. · The hardware scaler on the phone will scale up from 240x240. · One dimension will be capped at 800 and the other at 480; which depends on your code, but you cannot have, e.g., an 800x600 back buffer – that will be created as 800x480. · The hardware scaler will not normally change aspect ratio, though, so no unintended stretching. · Any dimension (width, height, or both) below 240 will be adjusted to 240 (without any aspect ratio adjustment such that, e.g. 200x240 will be treated as 240x240). · Dimensions below 240 will be honored in terms of calculating whether to use portrait or landscape. · If dimensions are exactly equal or if height is greater than width then game will be in portrait. · If width is greater than height, the game will be in landscape. · Landscape games will automatically flip if the user turns the phone 180°; no code required. · Default landscape is top = left. In other words a user holding a phone who starts a landscape game will see the first image presented so that the “top” of the screen is along the right edge of his/her phone, such that the natural behavior would be to turn the phone 90° so that the top of the phone will be held in the user’s left hand and the bottom would be held in the user’s right hand. · The status bar (where the clock, battery power, etc., are found) is hidden when the Game-derived class sets GraphicsDeviceManager.IsFullScreen = true. It is shown when IsFullScreen = false. The default value is false (i.e. the status bar is shown). · You should have a good reason for hiding the status bar. Users find it helpful to know what time it is, how much charge their battery has left, and whether or not their phone is in service range. This is especially true for casual games that you expect someone to play for a few minutes at a time, e.g. while waiting for some event to start, for a phone call to come in, or for a train, bus, or subway to arrive. · In portrait mode, the status bar occupies 32 pixels of space. This means that a game with a back buffer of 480x800 will be scaled down to occupy approximately 461x768 screen pixels. Setting the back buffer to 480x768 (or some resolution with the same 0.625 aspect ratio) will avoid this scaling. · In landscape mode, the status bar occupies 72 pixels of space. This means that a game with a back buffer of 800x480 will be scaled down to occupy approximately 728x437 screen pixels. Setting the back buffer to 728x480 (or some resolution with the same 1.51666667 aspect ratio) will avoid this scaling. Input · Touch input is scaled with screen size. · So if your back buffer is 600x360, a tap in the bottom right corner will come in as (599,359). You don’t need to do anything special to get this automatic scaling of touch behavior. · If you do not use full area of the screen, any touch input outside the area you use will still register as a touch input. For example, if you set a portrait resolution of 240x240, it would be scaled up to occupy a 480x480 area, centered in the screen. If you touch anywhere above this area, you will get a touch input of (X,0) where X is a number from 0 to 239 (in accordance with your 240 pixel wide back buffer). Any touch below this area will give a touch input of (X,239). · If you keep the status bar visible, touches within its area will not be passed to your game. · In general, a screen measurement is the diagonal. So a 3.5” screen is 3.5” long from the bottom right corner to the top left corner. With an aspect ratio of 0.6 (480/800 = 0.6), this means that a phone with a 3.5” screen is only approximately 1.8” wide by 3” tall. So there are approximately 267 pixels in an inch on a 3.5” screen. · Again, this time in metric! 3.5 inches is approximately 8.89 cm. So an 8.89 cm screen is 8.89 cm long from the bottom right corner to the top left corner. With an aspect ratio of 0.6, this means that a phone with an 8.89 cm screen is only approximately 4.57 cm wide by 7.62 cm tall. So there are approximately 105 pixels in a centimeter on an 8.89 cm screen. · Think about the size of your finger tip. If you do not have large hands, think about the size of the fingertip of someone with large hands. Consider that when you are sizing your touch input. Especially consider that when you are spacing two touch targets near one another. You need to judge it for yourself, but items that are next to each other and are each 100x100 should be fine when it comes to selecting items individually. Smaller targets than that are ok provided that you leave space between them. · You want your users to have a pleasant experience. Making touch controls too small or too close to one another will make them nervous about whether they will touch the right target. Take this into account when you plan out your game initially. If possible, do some quick size mockups on an actual phone using colored rectangles that you position and size where you plan to have your game controls. Adjust as necessary. · People do not have transparent hands! Nor are their hands the size of a mouse pointer icon. Consider leaving a dedicated space for input rather than forcing the user to cover up to one-third of the screen with a finger just to play the game. · Another benefit of designing your controls to use a dedicated area is that you’re less likely to have players moving their finger(s) so frantically that they accidentally hit the back button, start button, or search button (many phones have one or more of these on the screen itself – it’s easy to hit one by accident and really annoying if you hit, e.g., the search button and then quickly tap back only to find out that the game didn’t save your progress such that you just wasted all the time you spent playing). · People do not like doing somersaults in order to move something forward with accelerometer-based controls. Test your accelerometer-based controls extensively and get a lot of feedback. Very well-known games from noted publishers have created really bad accelerometer controls and been virtually unplayable as a result. Also be wary of exceptions and other possible failures that the documentation warns about. · When done properly, the accelerometer can add a nice touch to your game (see, e.g. ilomilo where the accelerometer was used to move the background; it added a nice touch without frustrating the user; I also think CarniVale does direct accelerometer controls very well). However, if done poorly, it will make your game an abomination unto the Marketplace. Days, weeks, perhaps even months of development time that you will never get back. I won’t name names; you can search the marketplace for games with terrible reviews and you’ll find them. Graphics · The maximum frame rate is 30 frames per second. This was set as a compromise between battery life and quality. · At least one model of phone is known to have a screen refresh rate that is between 59 and 60 hertz. Because of this, using a fixed time step with a target frame rate of 30 will cause a slight internal delay to build up as the framework is forced to wait slightly for the next refresh. Eventually the delay will get to the point where a draw is skipped in order to recover from the delay. (See Nick's comment below for clarification.) · To deal with that delay, you can either stay with a fixed time step and set the frame rate slightly lower or else you can go to a variable time step and make sure to adjust all of your update data (e.g. player movement distance) to take into account the elapsed time from the last update. A variable time step makes your update logic slightly more complicated but will avoid frame skips entirely. · Currently there are no custom shaders. This might change in the future (there is no hardware limitation preventing it; it simply wasn’t a feature that could be implemented in the time available before launch). · There are five built-in shaders. You can create a lot of nice effects with the built-in shaders. · There is more power on the CPU than there is on the GPU so things you might typically off-load to the GPU will instead make sense to do on the CPU side. · This is a phone. It is not a PC. It is not an Xbox 360. The emulator runs on a PC and uses the full power of your PC. It is very good for testing your code for bugs and doing early prototyping and layout. You should not use it to measure performance. Use actual phone hardware instead. · There are many phone models, each of which has slightly different performance levels for I/O, screen blitting, CPU performance, etc. Do not take your game right to the performance limit on your phone since for some other phones you might be crossing their limits and leaving players with a bad experience. Leave a cushion to account for hardware differences. · Smaller screened phones will have slightly more dots per inch (dpi). Larger screened phones will have slightly less. Either way, the dpi will be much higher than the typical 96 found on most computer screens. Make sure that whoever is doing art for your game takes this into account. · Screens are only required to have 16 bit color (65,536 colors). This is common among smart phones. Using gradients on a 16 bit display can produce an ugly artifact known as banding. Banding is when, rather than a smooth transition from one color to another, you instead see distinct lines. Be careful to avoid this when possible. Banding can be avoided through careful art creation. Its effects can be minimized and even unnoticeable when the texture in question is always moving. You should be careful not to rely on “looks good on my phone” since some phones do have 32-bit displays and thus you’ll find yourself wondering why you’re getting bad reviews that complain about the graphics. Avoid gradients; if you can’t, make sure they are 16-bit safe. Audio · Never rely on sounds as your sole signal to the player that something is happening in the game. They might have the sound off. They might be playing somewhere loud. Etc. · You have to provide controls to disable sound & music. These should be separate. · On at least one model of phone, the volume control API currently has no effect. Players can adjust sound with their hardware volume buttons, but in game selectors simply won’t work. As such, it may not be worth the effort of providing anything beyond on/off switches for sound and music. · MediaPlayer.GameHasControl will return true when a game is hooked up to a PC running Zune. When Zune is running, any attempts to do anything (beyond check GameHasControl) with MediaPlayer will cause an exception to be thrown. If this exception is thrown, catch it and disable music. Exceptions take time to propagate; you don’t want one popping up in every single run of your game’s Update method. · Remember that players can already be listening to music or using the FM radio. In this case GameHasControl will be false and you should handle this appropriately. You can, alternately, ask the player for permission to stop their current music and play your music instead, but the (current) requirement that you restore their music when done is very hard (if not impossible) to deal with. · You can still play sound effects even when the game doesn’t have control of the music, but don’t think this is a backdoor to playing music. Your game will fail certification if your “sound effect” seems to be more like music in scope and length.

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

  - by Jeff

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

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• Android Out of memory regarding png image

  - by turtleboy

  I have a jpg image in my app that shows correctly. In my listview i'd like to make the image more transparent so it is easier to see the text. I changed the image to a png format and altered it's opacity in GIMP. Now that the new image is in the app drawable folder. Im getting the following error. why? 09-28 09:24:07.560: I/global(20140): call socket shutdown, tmpsocket=Socket[address=/178.250.50.40,port=80,localPort=35172] 09-28 09:24:07.570: I/global(20140): call socket shutdown, tmpsocket=Socket[address=/212.169.27.217,port=84,localPort=55656] 09-28 09:24:07.690: D/dalvikvm(20140): GC_FOR_ALLOC freed 113K, 4% free 38592K/39907K, paused 32ms 09-28 09:24:07.690: I/dalvikvm-heap(20140): Forcing collection of SoftReferences for 28072816-byte allocation 09-28 09:24:07.740: D/dalvikvm(20140): GC_BEFORE_OOM freed 9K, 4% free 38582K/39907K, paused 43ms 09-28 09:24:07.740: E/dalvikvm-heap(20140): Out of memory on a 28072816-byte allocation. 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): "main" prio=5 tid=1 RUNNABLE 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): | group="main" sCount=0 dsCount=0 obj=0x40a57490 self=0x1b6e9a8 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): | sysTid=20140 nice=0 sched=0/0 cgrp=default handle=1074361640 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): | schedstat=( 2289118000 760844000 2121 ) utm=195 stm=33 core=1 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at android.graphics.BitmapFactory.nativeDecodeAsset(Native Method) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at android.graphics.BitmapFactory.decodeResourceStream(BitmapFactory.java:486) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at android.graphics.drawable.Drawable.createFromResourceStream(Drawable.java:773) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at android.content.res.Resources.loadDrawable(Resources.java:2042) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at android.content.res.TypedArray.getDrawable(TypedArray.java:601) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at android.view.View.<init>(View.java:2812) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at android.view.ViewGroup.<init>(ViewGroup.java:410) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at android.widget.LinearLayout.<init>(LinearLayout.java:174) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at android.widget.LinearLayout.<init>(LinearLayout.java:170) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.constructNative(Native Method) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:417) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at android.view.LayoutInflater.createView(LayoutInflater.java:586) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at com.android.internal.policy.impl.PhoneLayoutInflater.onCreateView(PhoneLayoutInflater.java:56) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at android.view.LayoutInflater.onCreateView(LayoutInflater.java:653) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at android.view.LayoutInflater.createViewFromTag(LayoutInflater.java:678) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at android.view.LayoutInflater.inflate(LayoutInflater.java:466) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at android.view.LayoutInflater.inflate(LayoutInflater.java:396) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at android.view.LayoutInflater.inflate(LayoutInflater.java:352) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at com.android.internal.policy.impl.PhoneWindow.setContentView(PhoneWindow.java:278) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at android.app.Activity.setContentView(Activity.java:1897) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at com.carefreegroup.ShowMoreDetails.onCreate(ShowMoreDetails.java:26) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at android.app.Activity.performCreate(Activity.java:4543) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at android.app.Instrumentation.callActivityOnCreate(Instrumentation.java:1071) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2181) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at android.app.ActivityThread.handleLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2260) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at android.app.ActivityThread.access$600(ActivityThread.java:139) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:1277) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:156) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:5045) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:511) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:784) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:551) 09-28 09:24:07.740: I/dalvikvm(20140): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method) 09-28 09:24:07.740: E/dalvikvm(20140): Out of memory: Heap Size=46115KB, Allocated=38582KB, Limit=65536KB 09-28 09:24:07.740: E/dalvikvm(20140): Extra info: Footprint=39907KB, Allowed Footprint=46115KB, Trimmed=892KB 09-28 09:24:07.740: E/Bitmap_JNI(20140): Create Bitmap Failed. 09-28 09:24:07.740: A/libc(20140): Fatal signal 11 (SIGSEGV) at 0x00000004 (code=1) 09-28 09:24:09.750: I/dalvikvm(20367): Turning on JNI app bug workarounds for target SDK version 10... 09-28 09:24:09.940: D/dalvikvm(20367): GC_CONCURRENT freed 864K, 21% free 3797K/4771K, paused 2ms+2ms thanks. [update] @Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.showmoredetailslayout); actualCallTime = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.actualcalltime); doubleUp = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.doubleupcallid); needName = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.needname); needNameLabel = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.neednamelabel); getRotaDetails = (Button)findViewById(R.id.buttongetrotadetails); intent = this.getIntent(); String actualTimeIn = intent.getStringExtra("actTimeIn"); String actualTimeOut = intent.getStringExtra("actTimeOut"); String doubleUpValue = intent.getStringExtra("doubleUpValue"); String needNameWithCommas = intent.getStringExtra("needNameWithCommas"); callID = intent.getStringExtra("callID"); String[] needs = needNameWithCommas.split(","); actualCallTime.setText("This call was completed at " + actualTimeIn + " -" + actualTimeOut); if( ! doubleUpValue.equalsIgnoreCase("") || doubleUpValue.equalsIgnoreCase("]")){ doubleUp.setText("This call was not a double up "); }else{ doubleUp.setText("This call was a double up " + doubleUpValue); } needNameLabel.setText("Purpose of Call: "); for (int i = 0; i < needs.length; i++){ needName.append( needs[i] + "\n"); } getRotaDetails.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener() { @Override public void onClick(View v) { Intent intent = new Intent(ShowMoreDetails.this, GetRotaDetails.class); intent.putExtra("callIDExtra", callID); startActivity(intent); } }); } }

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• ActiveMQ - "Cannot send, channel has already failed" every 2 seconds?

  - by quanta

  ActiveMQ 5.7.0 In the activemq.log, I'm seeing this exception every 2 seconds: 2013-11-05 13:00:52,374 | DEBUG | Transport Connection to: tcp://127.0.0.1:37501 failed: org.apache.activemq.transport.InactivityIOException: Cannot send, channel has already failed: tcp://127.0.0.1:37501 | org.apache.activemq.broker.TransportConnection.Transport | Async Exception Handler org.apache.activemq.transport.InactivityIOException: Cannot send, channel has already failed: tcp://127.0.0.1:37501 at org.apache.activemq.transport.AbstractInactivityMonitor.doOnewaySend(AbstractInactivityMonitor.java:282) at org.apache.activemq.transport.AbstractInactivityMonitor.oneway(AbstractInactivityMonitor.java:271) at org.apache.activemq.transport.TransportFilter.oneway(TransportFilter.java:85) at org.apache.activemq.transport.WireFormatNegotiator.oneway(WireFormatNegotiator.java:104) at org.apache.activemq.transport.MutexTransport.oneway(MutexTransport.java:68) at org.apache.activemq.broker.TransportConnection.dispatch(TransportConnection.java:1312) at org.apache.activemq.broker.TransportConnection.processDispatch(TransportConnection.java:838) at org.apache.activemq.broker.TransportConnection.iterate(TransportConnection.java:873) at org.apache.activemq.thread.PooledTaskRunner.runTask(PooledTaskRunner.java:129) at org.apache.activemq.thread.PooledTaskRunner$1.run(PooledTaskRunner.java:47) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:886) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:908) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:662) Due to this keyword InactivityIOException, the first thing comes to my mind is InactivityMonitor, but the strange thing is MaxInactivityDuration=30000: 2013-11-05 13:11:02,672 | DEBUG | Sending: WireFormatInfo { version=9, properties={MaxFrameSize=9223372036854775807, CacheSize=1024, CacheEnabled=true, SizePrefixDisabled=false, MaxInactivityDurationInitalDelay=10000, TcpNoDelayEnabled=true, MaxInactivityDuration=30000, TightEncodingEnabled=true, StackTraceEnabled=true}, magic=[A,c,t,i,v,e,M,Q]} | org.apache.activemq.transport.WireFormatNegotiator | ActiveMQ BrokerService[localhost] Task-2 Moreover, I also didn't see something like this: No message received since last read check for ... or: Channel was inactive for too (30000) long Do a netstat, I see these connections in TIME_WAIT state: tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:38545 127.0.0.1:61616 TIME_WAIT - tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:38544 127.0.0.1:61616 TIME_WAIT - tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:38522 127.0.0.1:61616 TIME_WAIT - Here're the output when running tcpdump: Internet Protocol Version 4, Src: 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1), Dst: 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1) Version: 4 Header length: 20 bytes Differentiated Services Field: 0x00 (DSCP 0x00: Default; ECN: 0x00: Not-ECT (Not ECN-Capable Transport)) 0000 00.. = Differentiated Services Codepoint: Default (0x00) .... ..00 = Explicit Congestion Notification: Not-ECT (Not ECN-Capable Transport) (0x00) Total Length: 296 Identification: 0x7b6a (31594) Flags: 0x02 (Don't Fragment) 0... .... = Reserved bit: Not set .1.. .... = Don't fragment: Set ..0. .... = More fragments: Not set Fragment offset: 0 Time to live: 64 Protocol: TCP (6) Header checksum: 0xc063 [correct] [Good: True] [Bad: False] Source: 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1) Destination: 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1) Transmission Control Protocol, Src Port: 61616 (61616), Dst Port: 54669 (54669), Seq: 1, Ack: 2, Len: 244 Source port: 61616 (61616) Destination port: 54669 (54669) [Stream index: 11] Sequence number: 1 (relative sequence number) [Next sequence number: 245 (relative sequence number)] Acknowledgement number: 2 (relative ack number) Header length: 32 bytes Flags: 0x018 (PSH, ACK) 000. .... .... = Reserved: Not set ...0 .... .... = Nonce: Not set .... 0... .... = Congestion Window Reduced (CWR): Not set .... .0.. .... = ECN-Echo: Not set .... ..0. .... = Urgent: Not set .... ...1 .... = Acknowledgement: Set .... .... 1... = Push: Set .... .... .0.. = Reset: Not set .... .... ..0. = Syn: Not set .... .... ...0 = Fin: Not set Window size value: 256 [Calculated window size: 32768] [Window size scaling factor: 128] Checksum: 0xff1c [validation disabled] [Good Checksum: False] [Bad Checksum: False] Options: (12 bytes) No-Operation (NOP) No-Operation (NOP) Timestamps: TSval 2304161892, TSecr 2304161891 Kind: Timestamp (8) Length: 10 Timestamp value: 2304161892 Timestamp echo reply: 2304161891 [SEQ/ACK analysis] [Bytes in flight: 244] Constrained Application Protocol, TID: 240, Length: 244 00.. .... = Version: 0 ..00 .... = Type: Confirmable (0) .... 0000 = Option Count: 0 Code: Unknown (0) Transaction ID: 240 Payload Content-Type: text/plain (default), Length: 240, offset: 4 Line-based text data: text/plain [truncated] \001ActiveMQ\000\000\000\t\001\000\000\000<DE>\000\000\000\t\000\fMaxFrameSize\006\177<FF><FF><FF><FF> <FF><FF><FF>\000\tCacheSize\005\000\000\004\000\000\fCacheEnabled\001\001\000\022SizePrefixDisabled\001\000\000 MaxInactivityDurationInitalDelay\006\ It is very likely a tcp port check. This is what I see when trying telnet from another host: 2013-11-05 16:12:41,071 | DEBUG | Transport Connection to: tcp://10.8.20.9:46775 failed: java.io.EOFException | org.apache.activemq.broker.TransportConnection.Transport | ActiveMQ Transport: tcp:///10.8.20.9:46775@61616 java.io.EOFException at java.io.DataInputStream.readInt(DataInputStream.java:375) at org.apache.activemq.openwire.OpenWireFormat.unmarshal(OpenWireFormat.java:275) at org.apache.activemq.transport.tcp.TcpTransport.readCommand(TcpTransport.java:229) at org.apache.activemq.transport.tcp.TcpTransport.doRun(TcpTransport.java:221) at org.apache.activemq.transport.tcp.TcpTransport.run(TcpTransport.java:204) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:662) 2013-11-05 16:12:41,071 | DEBUG | Transport Connection to: tcp://10.8.20.9:46775 failed: org.apache.activemq.transport.InactivityIOException: Cannot send, channel has already failed: tcp://10.8.20.9:46775 | org.apache.activemq.broker.TransportConnection.Transport | Async Exception Handler org.apache.activemq.transport.InactivityIOException: Cannot send, channel has already failed: tcp://10.8.20.9:46775 at org.apache.activemq.transport.AbstractInactivityMonitor.doOnewaySend(AbstractInactivityMonitor.java:282) at org.apache.activemq.transport.AbstractInactivityMonitor.oneway(AbstractInactivityMonitor.java:271) at org.apache.activemq.transport.TransportFilter.oneway(TransportFilter.java:85) at org.apache.activemq.transport.WireFormatNegotiator.oneway(WireFormatNegotiator.java:104) at org.apache.activemq.transport.MutexTransport.oneway(MutexTransport.java:68) at org.apache.activemq.broker.TransportConnection.dispatch(TransportConnection.java:1312) at org.apache.activemq.broker.TransportConnection.processDispatch(TransportConnection.java:838) at org.apache.activemq.broker.TransportConnection.iterate(TransportConnection.java:873) at org.apache.activemq.thread.PooledTaskRunner.runTask(PooledTaskRunner.java:129) at org.apache.activemq.thread.PooledTaskRunner$1.run(PooledTaskRunner.java:47) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:886) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:908) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:662) 2013-11-05 16:12:41,071 | DEBUG | Unregistering MBean org.apache.activemq:BrokerName=localhost,Type=Connection,ConnectorName=ope nwire,ViewType=address,Name=tcp_//10.8.20.9_46775 | org.apache.activemq.broker.jmx.ManagementContext | ActiveMQ Transport: tcp:/ //10.8.20.9:46775@61616 2013-11-05 16:12:41,073 | DEBUG | Stopping connection: tcp://10.8.20.9:46775 | org.apache.activemq.broker.TransportConnection | ActiveMQ BrokerService[localhost] Task-5 2013-11-05 16:12:41,073 | DEBUG | Stopping transport tcp:///10.8.20.9:46775@61616 | org.apache.activemq.transport.tcp.TcpTranspo rt | ActiveMQ BrokerService[localhost] Task-5 2013-11-05 16:12:41,073 | DEBUG | Initialized TaskRunnerFactory[ActiveMQ Task] using ExecutorService: java.util.concurrent.Threa dPoolExecutor@23cc2a28 | org.apache.activemq.thread.TaskRunnerFactory | ActiveMQ BrokerService[localhost] Task-5 2013-11-05 16:12:41,074 | DEBUG | Closed socket Socket[addr=/10.8.20.9,port=46775,localport=61616] | org.apache.activemq.transpo rt.tcp.TcpTransport | ActiveMQ Task-1 2013-11-05 16:12:41,074 | DEBUG | Forcing shutdown of ExecutorService: java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor@23cc2a28 | org.apache.activemq.util.ThreadPoolUtils | ActiveMQ BrokerService[localhost] Task-5 2013-11-05 16:12:41,074 | DEBUG | Stopped transport: tcp://10.8.20.9:46775 | org.apache.activemq.broker.TransportConnection | ActiveMQ BrokerService[localhost] Task-5 2013-11-05 16:12:41,074 | DEBUG | Connection Stopped: tcp://10.8.20.9:46775 | org.apache.activemq.broker.TransportConnection | ActiveMQ BrokerService[localhost] Task-5 2013-11-05 16:12:41,902 | DEBUG | Sending: WireFormatInfo { version=9, properties={MaxFrameSize=9223372036854775807, CacheSize=1024, CacheEnabled=true, SizePrefixDisabled=false, MaxInactivityDurationInitalDelay=10000, TcpNoDelayEnabled=true, MaxInactivityDuration=30000, TightEncodingEnabled=true, StackTraceEnabled=true}, magic=[A,c,t,i,v,e,M,Q]} | org.apache.activemq.transport.WireFormatNegotiator | ActiveMQ BrokerService[localhost] Task-5 So the question is: how can I find out the process that is trying to connect to my ActiveMQ (from localhost) every 2 seconds?

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• Network Logon Issues with Group Policy and Network

  - by bobloki

  I am gravely in need of your help and assistance. We have a problem with our logon and startup to our Windows 7 Enterprise system. We have more than 3000 Windows Desktops situated in roughly 20+ buildings around campus. Almost every computer on campus has the problem that I will be describing. I have spent over one month peering over etl files from Windows Performance Analyzer (A great product) and hundreds of thousands of event logs. I come to you today humbled that I could not figure this out. The problem as simply put our logon times are extremely long. An average first time logon is roughly 2-10 minutes depending on the software installed. All computers are Windows 7, the oldest computers being 5 years old. Startup times on various computers range from good (1-2 minutes) to very bad (5-60). Our second time logons range from 30 seconds to 4 minutes. We have a gigabit connection between each computer on the network. We have 5 domain controllers which also double as our DNS servers. Initial testing led us to believe that this was a software problem. So I spent a few days testing machines only to find inconsistent results from the etl files from xperfview. Each subset of computers on campus had a different subset of software issues, none seeming to interfere with logon just startup. So I started looking at our group policy and located some very interesting event ID’s. Group Policy 1129: The processing of Group Policy failed because of lack of network connectivity to a domain controller. Group Policy 1055: The processing of Group Policy failed. Windows could not resolve the computer name. This could be caused by one of more of the following: a) Name Resolution failure on the current domain controller. b) Active Directory Replication Latency (an account created on another domain controller has not replicated to the current domain controller). NETLOGON 5719 : This computer was not able to set up a secure session with a domain controller in domain OURDOMAIN due to the following: There are currently no logon servers available to service the logon request. This may lead to authentication problems. Make sure that this computer is connected to the network. If the problem persists, please contact your domain administrator. E1kexpress 27: Intel®82567LM-3 Gigabit Network Connection – Network link is disconnected. NetBT 4300 – The driver could not be created. WMI 10 - Event filter with query "SELECT * FROM __InstanceModificationEvent WITHIN 60 WHERE TargetInstance ISA "Win32_Processor" AND TargetInstance.LoadPercentage 99" could not be reactivated in namespace "//./root/CIMV2" because of error 0x80041003. Events cannot be delivered through this filter until the problem is corrected. More or less with timestamps it becomes apparent that the network maybe the issue. 1:25:57 - Group Policy is trying to discover the domain controller information 1:25:57 - The network link has been disconnected 1:25:58 - The processing of Group Policy failed because of lack of network connectivity to a domain controller. This may be a transient condition. A success message would be generated once the machine gets connected to the domain controller and Group Policy has successfully processed. If you do not see a success message for several hours, then contact your administrator. 1:25:58 - Making LDAP calls to connect and bind to active directory. DC1.ourdomain.edu 1:25:58 - Call failed after 0 milliseconds. 1:25:58 - Forcing rediscovery of domain controller details. 1:25:58 - Group policy failed to discover the domain controller in 1030 milliseconds 1:25:58 - Periodic policy processing failed for computer OURDOMAIN\%name%$ in 1 seconds. 1:25:59 - A network link has been established at 1Gbps at full duplex 1:26:00 - The network link has been disconnected 1:26:02 - NtpClient was unable to set a domain peer to use as a time source because of discovery error. NtpClient will try again in 3473457 minutes and DOUBLE THE REATTEMPT INTERVAL thereafter. 1:26:05 - A network link has been established at 1Gbps at full duplex 1:26:08 - Name resolution for the name %Name% timed out after none of the configured DNS servers responded. 1:26:10 – The TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper service entered the running state. 1:26:11 - The time provider NtpClient is currently receiving valid time data at dc4.ourdomain.edu 1:26:14 – User Logon Notification for Customer Experience Improvement Program 1:26:15 - Group Policy received the notification Logon from Winlogon for session 1. 1:26:15 - Making LDAP calls to connect and bind to Active Directory. dc4.ourdomain.edu 1:26:18 - The LDAP call to connect and bind to Active Directory completed. dc4. ourdomain.edu. The call completed in 2309 milliseconds. 1:26:18 - Group Policy successfully discovered the Domain Controller in 2918 milliseconds. 1:26:18 - Computer details: Computer role : 2 Network name : (Blank) 1:26:18 - The LDAP call to connect and bind to Active Directory completed. dc4.ourdomain.edu. The call completed in 2309 milliseconds. 1:26:18 - Group Policy successfully discovered the Domain Controller in 2918 milliseconds. 1:26:19 - The WinHTTP Web Proxy Auto-Discovery Service service entered the running state. 1:26:46 - The Network Connections service entered the running state. 1:27:10 – Retrieved account information 1:27:10 – The system call to get account information completed. 1:27:10 - Starting policy processing due to network state change for computer OURDOMAIN\%name%$ 1:27:10 – Network state change detected 1:27:10 - Making system call to get account information. 1:27:11 - Making LDAP calls to connect and bind to Active Directory. dc4.ourdomain.edu 1:27:13 - Computer details: Computer role : 2 Network name : ourdomain.edu (Now not blank) 1:27:13 - Group Policy successfully discovered the Domain Controller in 2886 milliseconds. 1:27:13 - The LDAP call to connect and bind to Active Directory completed. dc4.ourdomain.edu The call completed in 2371 milliseconds. 1:27:15 - Estimated network bandwidth on one of the connections: 0 kbps. 1:27:15 - Estimated network bandwidth on one of the connections: 8545 kbps. 1:27:15 - A fast link was detected. The Estimated bandwidth is 8545 kbps. The slow link threshold is 500 kbps. 1:27:17 – Powershell - Engine state is changed from Available to Stopped. 1:27:20 - Completed Group Policy Local Users and Groups Extension Processing in 4539 milliseconds. 1:27:25 - Completed Group Policy Scheduled Tasks Extension Processing in 5210 milliseconds. 1:27:27 - Completed Group Policy Registry Extension Processing in 1529 milliseconds. 1:27:27 - Completed policy processing due to network state change for computer OURDOMAIN\%name%$ in 16 seconds. 1:27:27 – The Group Policy settings for the computer were processed successfully. There were no changes detected since the last successful processing of Group Policy. Any help would be appreciated. Please ask for any relevant information and it will be provided as soon as possible.

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• sudo apt-get install mysql-server fails

  - by danwoods

  Hi all, I'm coming from a fresh install of Ubuntu server 9.10 and trying to install mysql-server by using 'sudo apt-get mysql-server' I get the following errors: dan@dev:~$ sudo apt-get install mysql-server [sudo] password for dan: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following extra packages will be installed: libdbd-mysql-perl libdbi-perl libhtml-template-perl libnet-daemon-perl libplrpc-perl mysql-client-5.1 mysql-server-5.1 Suggested packages: dbishell libipc-sharedcache-perl tinyca The following NEW packages will be installed: libdbd-mysql-perl libdbi-perl libhtml-template-perl libnet-daemon-perl libplrpc-perl mysql-client-5.1 mysql-server mysql-server-5.1 0 upgraded, 8 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 16.5MB of archives. After this operation, 39.0MB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y Get:1 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com karmic/main libnet-daemon-perl 0.43-1 [46.9kB] Get:2 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com karmic/main libplrpc-perl 0.2020-2 [36.0kB] Get:3 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com karmic/main libdbi-perl 1.609-1 [800kB] Get:4 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com karmic/main libdbd-mysql-perl 4.011-1ubuntu1 [136kB] Get:5 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com karmic-updates/main mysql-client-5.1 5.1.37- 1ubuntu5.1 [8,202kB] Get:6 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com karmic-updates/main mysql-server-5.1 5.1.37-1ubuntu5.1 [7,186kB] Get:7 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com karmic/main libhtml-template-perl 2.9-1 [65.8kB] Get:8 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com karmic-updates/main mysql-server 5.1.37-1ubuntu5.1 [64.3kB] Fetched 16.5MB in 1min 34s (175kB/s) Preconfiguring packages ... Selecting previously deselected package libnet-daemon-perl. (Reading database ... 123083 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking libnet-daemon-perl (from .../libnet-daemon-perl_0.43-1_all.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package libplrpc-perl. Unpacking libplrpc-perl (from .../libplrpc-perl_0.2020-2_all.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package libdbi-perl. Unpacking libdbi-perl (from .../libdbi-perl_1.609-1_i386.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package libdbd-mysql-perl. Unpacking libdbd-mysql-perl (from .../libdbd-mysql-perl_4.011-1ubuntu1_i386.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package mysql-client-5.1. Unpacking mysql-client-5.1 (from .../mysql-client-5.1_5.1.37-1ubuntu5.1_i386.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package mysql-server-5.1. Unpacking mysql-server-5.1 (from .../mysql-server-5.1_5.1.37-1ubuntu5.1_i386.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package libhtml-template-perl. Unpacking libhtml-template-perl (from .../libhtml-template-perl_2.9-1_all.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package mysql-server. Unpacking mysql-server (from .../mysql-server_5.1.37-1ubuntu5.1_all.deb) ... Processing triggers for man-db ... Processing triggers for ureadahead ... ureadahead will be reprofiled on next reboot Setting up libnet-daemon-perl (0.43-1) ... Setting up libplrpc-perl (0.2020-2) ... Setting up libdbi-perl (1.609-1) ... Setting up libdbd-mysql-perl (4.011-1ubuntu1) ... Setting up mysql-client-5.1 (5.1.37-1ubuntu5.1) ... Setting up mysql-server-5.1 (5.1.37-1ubuntu5.1) ... * Stopping MySQL database server mysqld [ OK ] * Starting MySQL database server mysqld [fail] invoke-rc.d: initscript mysql, action "start" failed. dpkg: error processing mysql-server-5.1 (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1 Setting up libhtml-template-perl (2.9-1) ... dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of mysql-server: mysql-server depends on mysql-server-5.1; however: Package mysql-server-5.1 is not configured yet. dpkg: error processing mysql-server (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured No apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure. Errors were encountered while processing: mysql-server-5.1 mysql-server E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) What am I missing? [update] mysqld returns: dan@dev:~$ sudo mysqld [sudo] password for dan: 100220 12:18:17 [Note] Plugin 'FEDERATED' is disabled. InnoDB: Unable to lock ./ibdata1, error: 11 InnoDB: Check that you do not already have another mysqld process InnoDB: using the same InnoDB data or log files. 100220 12:18:17 InnoDB: Retrying to lock the first data file InnoDB: Unable to lock ./ibdata1, error: 11 InnoDB: Check that you do not already have another mysqld process This goes on for a while... InnoDB: Unable to lock ./ibdata1, error: 11 InnoDB: Check that you do not already have another mysqld process InnoDB: using the same InnoDB data or log files. ^[[BInnoDB: Unable to lock ./ibdata1, error: 11 InnoDB: Check that you do not already have another mysqld process InnoDB: using the same InnoDB data or log files. 100220 12:19:57 InnoDB: Unable to open the first data file InnoDB: Error in opening ./ibdata1 100220 12:19:57 InnoDB: Operating system error number 11 in a file operation. InnoDB: Error number 11 means 'Resource temporarily unavailable'. InnoDB: Some operating system error numbers are described at InnoDB: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/operating-system-error-codes.html InnoDB: Could not open or create data files. InnoDB: If you tried to add new data files, and it failed here, InnoDB: you should now edit innodb_data_file_path in my.cnf back InnoDB: to what it was, and remove the new ibdata files InnoDB created InnoDB: in this failed attempt. InnoDB only wrote those files full of InnoDB: zeros, but did not yet use them in any way. But be careful: do not InnoDB: remove old data files which contain your precious data! 100220 12:19:57 [ERROR] Plugin 'InnoDB' init function returned error. 100220 12:19:57 [ERROR] Plugin 'InnoDB' registration as a STORAGE ENGINE failed. 100220 12:19:57 [ERROR] Can't start server: Bind on TCP/IP port: Address already in use 100220 12:19:57 [ERROR] Do you already have another mysqld server running on port: 3306 ? 100220 12:19:57 [ERROR] Aborting 100220 12:19:57 [Warning] Forcing shutdown of 1 plugins 100220 12:19:57 [Note] mysqld: Shutdown complete How can I check what process is using port: 3306? [Update]: sudo netstat -anp | grep LISTEN returns dan@dev:~$ sudo netstat -anp | grep LISTEN [sudo] password for dan: tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:25 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 1372/master tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:3306 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 4391/mysqld tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:631 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 1409/cupsd tcp6 0 0 ::1:631 :::* LISTEN 1409/cupsd [More Updates]: I can log into mysql if that makes a difference

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• Network Logon Issues with Group Policy and Network

  - by bobloki

  I am gravely in need of your help and assistance. We have a problem with our logon and startup to our Windows 7 Enterprise system. We have more than 3000 Windows Desktops situated in roughly 20+ buildings around campus. Almost every computer on campus has the problem that I will be describing. I have spent over one month peering over etl files from Windows Performance Analyzer (A great product) and hundreds of thousands of event logs. I come to you today humbled that I could not figure this out. The problem as simply put our logon times are extremely long. An average first time logon is roughly 2-10 minutes depending on the software installed. All computers are Windows 7, the oldest computers being 5 years old. Startup times on various computers range from good (1-2 minutes) to very bad (5-60). Our second time logons range from 30 seconds to 4 minutes. We have a gigabit connection between each computer on the network. We have 5 domain controllers which also double as our DNS servers. Initial testing led us to believe that this was a software problem. So I spent a few days testing machines only to find inconsistent results from the etl files from xperfview. Each subset of computers on campus had a different subset of software issues, none seeming to interfere with logon just startup. So I started looking at our group policy and located some very interesting event ID’s. Group Policy 1129: The processing of Group Policy failed because of lack of network connectivity to a domain controller. Group Policy 1055: The processing of Group Policy failed. Windows could not resolve the computer name. This could be caused by one of more of the following: a) Name Resolution failure on the current domain controller. b) Active Directory Replication Latency (an account created on another domain controller has not replicated to the current domain controller). NETLOGON 5719 : This computer was not able to set up a secure session with a domain controller in domain OURDOMAIN due to the following: There are currently no logon servers available to service the logon request. This may lead to authentication problems. Make sure that this computer is connected to the network. If the problem persists, please contact your domain administrator. E1kexpress 27: Intel®82567LM-3 Gigabit Network Connection – Network link is disconnected. NetBT 4300 – The driver could not be created. WMI 10 - Event filter with query "SELECT * FROM __InstanceModificationEvent WITHIN 60 WHERE TargetInstance ISA "Win32_Processor" AND TargetInstance.LoadPercentage 99" could not be reactivated in namespace "//./root/CIMV2" because of error 0x80041003. Events cannot be delivered through this filter until the problem is corrected. More or less with timestamps it becomes apparent that the network maybe the issue. 1:25:57 - Group Policy is trying to discover the domain controller information 1:25:57 - The network link has been disconnected 1:25:58 - The processing of Group Policy failed because of lack of network connectivity to a domain controller. This may be a transient condition. A success message would be generated once the machine gets connected to the domain controller and Group Policy has successfully processed. If you do not see a success message for several hours, then contact your administrator. 1:25:58 - Making LDAP calls to connect and bind to active directory. DC1.ourdomain.edu 1:25:58 - Call failed after 0 milliseconds. 1:25:58 - Forcing rediscovery of domain controller details. 1:25:58 - Group policy failed to discover the domain controller in 1030 milliseconds 1:25:58 - Periodic policy processing failed for computer OURDOMAIN\%name%$ in 1 seconds. 1:25:59 - A network link has been established at 1Gbps at full duplex 1:26:00 - The network link has been disconnected 1:26:02 - NtpClient was unable to set a domain peer to use as a time source because of discovery error. NtpClient will try again in 3473457 minutes and DOUBLE THE REATTEMPT INTERVAL thereafter. 1:26:05 - A network link has been established at 1Gbps at full duplex 1:26:08 - Name resolution for the name %Name% timed out after none of the configured DNS servers responded. 1:26:10 – The TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper service entered the running state. 1:26:11 - The time provider NtpClient is currently receiving valid time data at dc4.ourdomain.edu 1:26:14 – User Logon Notification for Customer Experience Improvement Program 1:26:15 - Group Policy received the notification Logon from Winlogon for session 1. 1:26:15 - Making LDAP calls to connect and bind to Active Directory. dc4.ourdomain.edu 1:26:18 - The LDAP call to connect and bind to Active Directory completed. dc4. ourdomain.edu. The call completed in 2309 milliseconds. 1:26:18 - Group Policy successfully discovered the Domain Controller in 2918 milliseconds. 1:26:18 - Computer details: Computer role : 2 Network name : (Blank) 1:26:18 - The LDAP call to connect and bind to Active Directory completed. dc4.ourdomain.edu. The call completed in 2309 milliseconds. 1:26:18 - Group Policy successfully discovered the Domain Controller in 2918 milliseconds. 1:26:19 - The WinHTTP Web Proxy Auto-Discovery Service service entered the running state. 1:26:46 - The Network Connections service entered the running state. 1:27:10 – Retrieved account information 1:27:10 – The system call to get account information completed. 1:27:10 - Starting policy processing due to network state change for computer OURDOMAIN\%name%$ 1:27:10 – Network state change detected 1:27:10 - Making system call to get account information. 1:27:11 - Making LDAP calls to connect and bind to Active Directory. dc4.ourdomain.edu 1:27:13 - Computer details: Computer role : 2 Network name : ourdomain.edu (Now not blank) 1:27:13 - Group Policy successfully discovered the Domain Controller in 2886 milliseconds. 1:27:13 - The LDAP call to connect and bind to Active Directory completed. dc4.ourdomain.edu The call completed in 2371 milliseconds. 1:27:15 - Estimated network bandwidth on one of the connections: 0 kbps. 1:27:15 - Estimated network bandwidth on one of the connections: 8545 kbps. 1:27:15 - A fast link was detected. The Estimated bandwidth is 8545 kbps. The slow link threshold is 500 kbps. 1:27:17 – Powershell - Engine state is changed from Available to Stopped. 1:27:20 - Completed Group Policy Local Users and Groups Extension Processing in 4539 milliseconds. 1:27:25 - Completed Group Policy Scheduled Tasks Extension Processing in 5210 milliseconds. 1:27:27 - Completed Group Policy Registry Extension Processing in 1529 milliseconds. 1:27:27 - Completed policy processing due to network state change for computer OURDOMAIN\%name%$ in 16 seconds. 1:27:27 – The Group Policy settings for the computer were processed successfully. There were no changes detected since the last successful processing of Group Policy. Any help would be appreciated. Please ask for any relevant information and it will be provided as soon as possible.

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• Fibre channel long distance woes

  - by Marki

  I need a fresh pair of eyes. We're using a 15km fibre optic line across which fibrechannel and 10GbE is multiplexed (passive optical CWDM). For FC we have long distance lasers suitable up to 40km (Skylane SFCxx0404F0D). The multiplexer is limited by the SFPs which can do max. 4Gb fibrechannel. The FC switch is a Brocade 5000 series. The respective wavelengths are 1550,1570,1590 and 1610nm for FC and 1530nm for 10GbE. The problem is the 4GbFC fabrics are almost never clean. Sometimes they are for a while even with a lot of traffic on them. Then they may suddenly start producing errors (RX CRC, RX encoding, RX disparity, ...) even with only marginal traffic on them. I am attaching some error and traffic graphs. Errors are currently in the order of 50-100 errors per 5 minutes when with 1Gb/s traffic. Optics Here is the power output of one port summarized (collected using sfpshow on different switches) SITE-A units=uW (microwatt) SITE-B ********************************************** FAB1 SW1 TX 1234.3 RX 49.1 SW3 1550nm (ko) RX 95.2 TX 1175.6 FAB2 SW2 TX 1422.0 RX 104.6 SW4 1610nm (ok) RX 54.3 TX 1468.4 What I find curious at this point is the asymmetry in the power levels. While SW2 transmits with 1422uW which SW4 receives with 104uW, SW2 only receives the SW4 signal with similar original power only with 54uW. Vice versa for SW1-3. Anyway the SFPs have RX sensitivity down to -18dBm (ca. 20uW) so in any case it should be fine... But nothing is. Some SFPs have been diagnosed as malfunctioning by the manufacturer (the 1550nm ones shown above with "ko"). The 1610nm ones apparently are ok, they have been tested using a traffic generator. The leased line has also been tested more than once. All is within tolerances. I'm awaiting the replacements but for some reason I don't believe it will make things better as the apparently good ones don't produce ZERO errors either. Earlier there was active equipment involved (some kind of 4GFC retimer) before putting the signal on the line. No idea why. That equipment was eliminated because of the problems so we now only have: the long distance laser in the switch, (new) 10m LC-SC monomode cable to the mux (for each fabric), the leased line, the same thing but reversed on the other side of the link. FC switches Here is a port config from the Brocade portcfgshow (it's like that on both sides, obviously) Area Number: 0 Speed Level: 4G Fill Word(On Active) 0(Idle-Idle) Fill Word(Current) 0(Idle-Idle) AL_PA Offset 13: OFF Trunk Port ON Long Distance LS VC Link Init OFF Desired Distance 32 Km Reserved Buffers 70 Locked L_Port OFF Locked G_Port OFF Disabled E_Port OFF Locked E_Port OFF ISL R_RDY Mode OFF RSCN Suppressed OFF Persistent Disable OFF LOS TOV enable OFF NPIV capability ON QOS E_Port OFF Port Auto Disable: OFF Rate Limit OFF EX Port OFF Mirror Port OFF Credit Recovery ON F_Port Buffers OFF Fault Delay: 0(R_A_TOV) NPIV PP Limit: 126 CSCTL mode: OFF Forcing the links to 2GbFC produces no errors, but we bought 4GbFC and we want 4GbFC. I don't know where to look anymore. Any ideas what to try next or how to proceed? If we can't make 4GbFC work reliably I wonder what the people working with 8 or 16 do... I don't assume that "a few errors here and there" are acceptable. Oh and BTW we are in contact with everyone of the manufacturers (FC switch, MUX, SFPs, ...) Except for the SFPs to be changed (some have been changed before) nobody has a clue. Brocade SAN Health says the fabric is ok. MUX, well, it's passive, it's only a prism, nature at it's best. Any shots in the dark? APPENDIX: Answers to your questions @Chopper3: This is the second generation of Brocades exhibiting the problem. Before we had 5000s, now we have 5100s. In the beginning when we still had the active MUX we rented a longdistance laser once to put it into the switch directly in order to make tests for a day, during that day of course it was clean. But as I said, sometimes it's clean just like that. And sometimes it's not. Alternative switches would mean to rebuild the entire SAN with those only to test. Alternative SFPs, well they're hard to come by just like that. @longneck: The line is rented. It's a dark fibre (9um monomode) so there's noone else on it. Sure there are splices. I can't go and look but I have to trust they have been done correctly. As I said the line has been checked and rechecked (using an optical time-domain reflectometer). Obviously you don't have all this equipment yourself because it's way too expensive. @mdpc: What would be the "wrong" type of cable according to you? Up to the switch everything is monomode, yes. The connectors are the correct ones too. Yeah I know there are the green ones where the fibre is cut off at a certain angle etc. But we have the correct ones for all that I know. Progress Report #1 We have had two fabrics (=2x2 switches) with Brocade 5100s with FabricOS 6.4.1 and two fabrics (another 2x4 switches) on FabricOS 7.0.2. On the longdistance ISLs (one in each fabric) it turned out that with FOS 6.4.1 setting it to long distance issues warnings about the VC Init setting and consequently the fill word. But those are only warnings. FOS 7.0.2 requires you to do modifications to VCI and the fillword for long distance links. Setting FOS 6.4.1 to the LS (long-distance static distance) setting with wrong VCI and fillword setting made the whole fabric inoperational (stuck in an SCN loop, use fabriclog -s to see, you don't see it anywhere else, no port error counters or anything increasing). Currently I'm giving the one fabric with the IMHO more correct settings a beating and it seems to do fine, whereas the other one without much traffic still has errors here and there. In short: We have eliminated the active part of the MUX (the FC retimer). We are putting the long distance SFPs into the end equipment themselves. Just to be sure we bought new monomode cables to connect the end equipment to the remaining passive part of the MUX. We are now trying out several long distance configs. It's almost black magic. Everything that happens is mostly empirical, noone seems to have a clue what are the exact reasons to do something. ("We have tried this, and it didn't work, then we tried that and it worked, so we stuck with that." But noone really seems to know why.) I'll keep you updated. Progress Report #2 We got the new lasers for one of the fabrics on warranty. It's ultra clean even on 4GbFC. They're transmitting with roughly 2mW (3dBm) whereas the others are only at 1.5mW (1.5dBm) although that should really be enough. The other fabric (where the lasers are apparently ok) still produces one or two CRCs infrequently. Using sfpshow the SFP producing the actual RX errors shows Status/Ctrl: 0x82 Alarm flags[0,1] = 0x5, 0x40 Warn Flags[0,1] = 0x5, 0x40 Now I'll have to find out what that means. Not sure if it was there before. Well I'll first clear my head with a week of vacation. 8-)

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• Microsoft and jQuery

  - by Rick Strahl

  The jQuery JavaScript library has been steadily getting more popular and with recent developments from Microsoft, jQuery is also getting ever more exposure on the ASP.NET platform including now directly from Microsoft. jQuery is a light weight, open source DOM manipulation library for JavaScript that has changed how many developers think about JavaScript. You can download it and find more information on jQuery on www.jquery.com. For me jQuery has had a huge impact on how I develop Web applications and was probably the main reason I went from dreading to do JavaScript development to actually looking forward to implementing client side JavaScript functionality. It has also had a profound impact on my JavaScript skill level for me by seeing how the library accomplishes things (and often reviewing the terse but excellent source code). jQuery made an uncomfortable development platform (JavaScript + DOM) a joy to work on. Although jQuery is by no means the only JavaScript library out there, its ease of use, small size, huge community of plug-ins and pure usefulness has made it easily the most popular JavaScript library available today. As a long time jQuery user, I’ve been excited to see the developments from Microsoft that are bringing jQuery to more ASP.NET developers and providing more integration with jQuery for ASP.NET’s core features rather than relying on the ASP.NET AJAX library. Microsoft and jQuery – making Friends jQuery is an open source project but in the last couple of years Microsoft has really thrown its weight behind supporting this open source library as a supported component on the Microsoft platform. When I say supported I literally mean supported: Microsoft now offers actual tech support for jQuery as part of their Product Support Services (PSS) as jQuery integration has become part of several of the ASP.NET toolkits and ships in several of the default Web project templates in Visual Studio 2010. The ASP.NET MVC 3 framework (still in Beta) also uses jQuery for a variety of client side support features including client side validation and we can look forward toward more integration of client side functionality via jQuery in both MVC and WebForms in the future. In other words jQuery is becoming an optional but included component of the ASP.NET platform. PSS support means that support staff will answer jQuery related support questions as part of any support incidents related to ASP.NET which provides some piece of mind to some corporate development shops that require end to end support from Microsoft. In addition to including jQuery and supporting it, Microsoft has also been getting involved in providing development resources for extending jQuery’s functionality via plug-ins. Microsoft’s last version of the Microsoft Ajax Library – which is the successor to the native ASP.NET AJAX Library – included some really cool functionality for client templates, databinding and localization. As it turns out Microsoft has rebuilt most of that functionality using jQuery as the base API and provided jQuery plug-ins of these components. Very recently these three plug-ins were submitted and have been approved for inclusion in the official jQuery plug-in repository and been taken over by the jQuery team for further improvements and maintenance. Even more surprising: The jQuery-templates component has actually been approved for inclusion in the next major update of the jQuery core in jQuery V1.5, which means it will become a native feature that doesn’t require additional script files to be loaded. Imagine this – an open source contribution from Microsoft that has been accepted into a major open source project for a core feature improvement. Microsoft has come a long way indeed! What the Microsoft Involvement with jQuery means to you For Microsoft jQuery support is a strategic decision that affects their direction in client side development, but nothing stopped you from using jQuery in your applications prior to Microsoft’s official backing and in fact a large chunk of developers did so readily prior to Microsoft’s announcement. Official support from Microsoft brings a few benefits to developers however. jQuery support in Visual Studio 2010 means built-in support for jQuery IntelliSense, automatically added jQuery scripts in many projects types and a common base for client side functionality that actually uses what most developers are already using. If you have already been using jQuery and were worried about straying from the Microsoft line and their internal Microsoft Ajax Library – worry no more. With official support and the change in direction towards jQuery Microsoft is now following along what most in the ASP.NET community had already been doing by using jQuery, which is likely the reason for Microsoft’s shift in direction in the first place. ASP.NET AJAX and the Microsoft AJAX Library weren’t bad technology – there was tons of useful functionality buried in these libraries. However, these libraries never got off the ground, mainly because early incarnations were squarely aimed at control/component developers rather than application developers. For all the functionality that these controls provided for control developers they lacked in useful and easily usable application developer functionality that was easily accessible in day to day client side development. The result was that even though Microsoft shipped support for these tools in the box (in .NET 3.5 and 4.0), other than for the internal support in ASP.NET for things like the UpdatePanel and the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit as well as some third party vendors, the Microsoft client libraries were largely ignored by the developer community opening the door for other client side solutions. Microsoft seems to be acknowledging developer choice in this case: Many more developers were going down the jQuery path rather than using the Microsoft built libraries and there seems to be little sense in continuing development of a technology that largely goes unused by the majority of developers. Kudos for Microsoft for recognizing this and gracefully changing directions. Note that even though there will be no further development in the Microsoft client libraries they will continue to be supported so if you’re using them in your applications there’s no reason to start running for the exit in a panic and start re-writing everything with jQuery. Although that might be a reasonable choice in some cases, jQuery and the Microsoft libraries work well side by side so that you can leave existing solutions untouched even as you enhance them with jQuery. The Microsoft jQuery Plug-ins – Solid Core Features One of the most interesting developments in Microsoft’s embracing of jQuery is that Microsoft has started contributing to jQuery via standard mechanism set for jQuery developers: By submitting plug-ins. Microsoft took some of the nicest new features of the unpublished Microsoft Ajax Client Library and re-wrote these components for jQuery and then submitted them as plug-ins to the jQuery plug-in repository. Accepted plug-ins get taken over by the jQuery team and that’s exactly what happened with the three plug-ins submitted by Microsoft with the templating plug-in even getting slated to be published as part of the jQuery core in the next major release (1.5). The following plug-ins are provided by Microsoft: jQuery Templates – a client side template rendering engine jQuery Data Link – a client side databinder that can synchronize changes without code jQuery Globalization – provides formatting and conversion features for dates and numbers The first two are ports of functionality that was slated for the Microsoft Ajax Library while functionality for the globalization library provides functionality that was already found in the original ASP.NET AJAX library. To me all three plug-ins address a pressing need in client side applications and provide functionality I’ve previously used in other incarnations, but with more complete implementations. Let’s take a close look at these plug-ins. jQuery Templates http://api.jquery.com/category/plugins/templates/ Client side templating is a key component for building rich JavaScript applications in the browser. Templating on the client lets you avoid from manually creating markup by creating DOM nodes and injecting them individually into the document via code. Rather you can create markup templates – similar to the way you create classic ASP server markup – and merge data into these templates to render HTML which you can then inject into the document or replace existing content with. Output from templates are rendered as a jQuery matched set and can then be easily inserted into the document as needed. Templating is key to minimize client side code and reduce repeated code for rendering logic. Instead a single template can be used in many places for updating and adding content to existing pages. Further if you build pure AJAX interfaces that rely entirely on client rendering of the initial page content, templates allow you to a use a single markup template to handle all rendering of each specific HTML section/element. I’ve used a number of different client rendering template engines with jQuery in the past including jTemplates (a PHP style templating engine) and a modified version of John Resig’s MicroTemplating engine which I built into my own set of libraries because it’s such a commonly used feature in my client side applications. jQuery templates adds a much richer templating model that allows for sub-templates and access to the data items. Like John Resig’s original Micro Template engine, the core basics of the templating engine create JavaScript code which means that templates can include JavaScript code. To give you a basic idea of how templates work imagine I have an application that downloads a set of stock quotes based on a symbol list then displays them in the document. To do this you can create an ‘item’ template that describes how each of the quotes is renderd as a template inside of the document: <script id="stockTemplate" type="text/x-jquery-tmpl"> <div id="divStockQuote" class="errordisplay" style="width: 500px;"> <div class="label">Company:</div><div><b>${Company}(${Symbol})</b></div> <div class="label">Last Price:</div><div>${LastPrice}</div> <div class="label">Net Change:</div><div> {{if NetChange > 0}} <b style="color:green" >${NetChange}</b> {{else}} <b style="color:red" >${NetChange}</b> {{/if}} </div> <div class="label">Last Update:</div><div>${LastQuoteTimeString}</div> </div> </script> The ‘template’ is little more than HTML with some markup expressions inside of it that define the template language. Notice the embedded ${} expressions which reference data from the quote objects returned from an AJAX call on the server. You can embed any JavaScript or value expression in these template expressions. There are also a number of structural commands like {{if}} and {{each}} that provide for rudimentary logic inside of your templates as well as commands ({{tmpl}} and {{wrap}}) for nesting templates. You can find more about the full set of markup expressions available in the documentation. To load up this data you can use code like the following: <script type="text/javascript"> //var Proxy = new ServiceProxy("../PageMethods/PageMethodsService.asmx/"); $(document).ready(function () { $("#btnGetQuotes").click(GetQuotes); }); function GetQuotes() { var symbols = $("#txtSymbols").val().split(","); $.ajax({ url: "../PageMethods/PageMethodsService.asmx/GetStockQuotes", data: JSON.stringify({ symbols: symbols }), // parameter map type: "POST", // data has to be POSTed contentType: "application/json", timeout: 10000, dataType: "json", success: function (result) { var quotes = result.d; var jEl = $("#stockTemplate").tmpl(quotes); $("#quoteDisplay").empty().append(jEl); }, error: function (xhr, status) { alert(status + "\r\n" + xhr.responseText); } }); }; </script> In this case an ASMX AJAX service is called to retrieve the stock quotes. The service returns an array of quote objects. The result is returned as an object with the .d property (in Microsoft service style) that returns the actual array of quotes. The template is applied with: var jEl = $("#stockTemplate").tmpl(quotes); which selects the template script tag and uses the .tmpl() function to apply the data to it. The result is a jQuery matched set of elements that can then be appended to the quote display element in the page. The template is merged against an array in this example. When the result is an array the template is automatically applied to each each array item. If you pass a single data item – like say a stock quote – the template works exactly the same way but is applied only once. Templates also have access to a $data item which provides the current data item and information about the tempalte that is currently executing. This makes it possible to keep context within the context of the template itself and also to pass context from a parent template to a child template which is very powerful. Templates can be evaluated by using the template selector and calling the .tmpl() function on the jQuery matched set as shown above or you can use the static $.tmpl() function to provide a template as a string. This allows you to dynamically create templates in code or – more likely – to load templates from the server via AJAX calls. In short there are options The above shows off some of the basics, but there’s much for functionality available in the template engine. Check the documentation link for more information and links to additional examples. The plug-in download also comes with a number of examples that demonstrate functionality. jQuery templates will become a native component in jQuery Core 1.5, so it’s definitely worthwhile checking out the engine today and get familiar with this interface. As much as I’m stoked about templating becoming part of the jQuery core because it’s such an integral part of many applications, there are also a couple shortcomings in the current incarnation: Lack of Error Handling Currently if you embed an expression that is invalid it’s simply not rendered. There’s no error rendered into the template nor do the various  template functions throw errors which leaves finding of bugs as a runtime exercise. I would like some mechanism – optional if possible – to be able to get error info of what is failing in a template when it’s rendered. No String Output Templates are always rendered into a jQuery matched set and there’s no way that I can see to directly render to a string. String output can be useful for debugging as well as opening up templating for creating non-HTML string output. Limited JavaScript Access Unlike John Resig’s original MicroTemplating Engine which was entirely based on JavaScript code generation these templates are limited to a few structured commands that can ‘execute’. There’s no code execution inside of script code which means you’re limited to calling expressions available in global objects or the data item passed in. This may or may not be a big deal depending on the complexity of your template logic. Error handling has been discussed quite a bit and it’s likely there will be some solution to that particualar issue by the time jQuery templates ship. The others are relatively minor issues but something to think about anyway. jQuery Data Link http://api.jquery.com/category/plugins/data-link/ jQuery Data Link provides the ability to do two-way data binding between input controls and an underlying object’s properties. The typical scenario is linking a textbox to a property of an object and have the object updated when the text in the textbox is changed and have the textbox change when the value in the object or the entire object changes. The plug-in also supports converter functions that can be applied to provide the conversion logic from string to some other value typically necessary for mapping things like textbox string input to say a number property and potentially applying additional formatting and calculations. In theory this sounds great, however in reality this plug-in has some serious usability issues. Using the plug-in you can do things like the following to bind data: person = { firstName: "rick", lastName: "strahl"}; $(document).ready( function() { // provide for two-way linking of inputs $("form").link(person); // bind to non-input elements explicitly $("#objFirst").link(person, { firstName: { name: "objFirst", convertBack: function (value, source, target) { $(target).text(value); } } }); $("#objLast").link(person, { lastName: { name: "objLast", convertBack: function (value, source, target) { $(target).text(value); } } }); }); This code hooks up two-way linking between a couple of textboxes on the page and the person object. The first line in the .ready() handler provides mapping of object to form field with the same field names as properties on the object. Note that .link() does NOT bind items into the textboxes when you call .link() – changes are mapped only when values change and you move out of the field. Strike one. The two following commands allow manual binding of values to specific DOM elements which is effectively a one-way bind. You specify the object and a then an explicit mapping where name is an ID in the document. The converter is required to explicitly assign the value to the element. Strike two. You can also detect changes to the underlying object and cause updates to the input elements bound. Unfortunately the syntax to do this is not very natural as you have to rely on the jQuery data object. To update an object’s properties and get change notification looks like this: function updateFirstName() { $(person).data("firstName", person.firstName + " (code updated)"); } This works fine in causing any linked fields to be updated. In the bindings above both the firstName input field and objFirst DOM element gets updated. But the syntax requires you to use a jQuery .data() call for each property change to ensure that the changes are tracked properly. Really? Sure you’re binding through multiple layers of abstraction now but how is that better than just manually assigning values? The code savings (if any) are going to be minimal. As much as I would like to have a WPF/Silverlight/Observable-like binding mechanism in client script, this plug-in doesn’t help much towards that goal in its current incarnation. While you can bind values, the ‘binder’ is too limited to be really useful. If initial values can’t be assigned from the mappings you’re going to end up duplicating work loading the data using some other mechanism. There’s no easy way to re-bind data with a different object altogether since updates trigger only through the .data members. Finally, any non-input elements have to be bound via code that’s fairly verbose and frankly may be more voluminous than what you might write by hand for manual binding and unbinding. Two way binding can be very useful but it has to be easy and most importantly natural. If it’s more work to hook up a binding than writing a couple of lines to do binding/unbinding this sort of thing helps very little in most scenarios. In talking to some of the developers the feature set for Data Link is not complete and they are still soliciting input for features and functionality. If you have ideas on how you want this feature to be more useful get involved and post your recommendations. As it stands, it looks to me like this component needs a lot of love to become useful. For this component to really provide value, bindings need to be able to be refreshed easily and work at the object level, not just the property level. It seems to me we would be much better served by a model binder object that can perform these binding/unbinding tasks in bulk rather than a tool where each link has to be mapped first. I also find the choice of creating a jQuery plug-in questionable – it seems a standalone object – albeit one that relies on the jQuery library – would provide a more intuitive interface than the current forcing of options onto a plug-in style interface. Out of the three Microsoft created components this is by far the least useful and least polished implementation at this point. jQuery Globalization http://github.com/jquery/jquery-global Globalization in JavaScript applications often gets short shrift and part of the reason for this is that natively in JavaScript there’s little support for formatting and parsing of numbers and dates. There are a number of JavaScript libraries out there that provide some support for globalization, but most are limited to a particular portion of globalization. As .NET developers we’re fairly spoiled by the richness of APIs provided in the framework and when dealing with client development one really notices the lack of these features. While you may not necessarily need to localize your application the globalization plug-in also helps with some basic tasks for non-localized applications: Dealing with formatting and parsing of dates and time values. Dates in particular are problematic in JavaScript as there are no formatters whatsoever except the .toString() method which outputs a verbose and next to useless long string. With the globalization plug-in you get a good chunk of the formatting and parsing functionality that the .NET framework provides on the server. You can write code like the following for example to format numbers and dates: var date = new Date(); var output = $.format(date, "MMM. dd, yy") + "\r\n" + $.format(date, "d") + "\r\n" + // 10/25/2010 $.format(1222.32213, "N2") + "\r\n" + $.format(1222.33, "c") + "\r\n"; alert(output); This becomes even more useful if you combine it with templates which can also include any JavaScript expressions. Assuming the globalization plug-in is loaded you can create template expressions that use the $.format function. Here’s the template I used earlier for the stock quote again with a couple of formats applied: <script id="stockTemplate" type="text/x-jquery-tmpl"> <div id="divStockQuote" class="errordisplay" style="width: 500px;"> <div class="label">Company:</div><div><b>${Company}(${Symbol})</b></div> <div class="label">Last Price:</div> <div>${$.format(LastPrice,"N2")}</div> <div class="label">Net Change:</div><div> {{if NetChange > 0}} <b style="color:green" >${NetChange}</b> {{else}} <b style="color:red" >${NetChange}</b> {{/if}} </div> <div class="label">Last Update:</div> <div>${$.format(LastQuoteTime,"MMM dd, yyyy")}</div> </div> </script> There are also parsing methods that can parse dates and numbers from strings into numbers easily: alert($.parseDate("25.10.2010")); alert($.parseInt("12.222")); // de-DE uses . for thousands separators As you can see culture specific options are taken into account when parsing. The globalization plugin provides rich support for a variety of locales: Get a list of all available cultures Query cultures for culture items (like currency symbol, separators etc.) Localized string names for all calendar related items (days of week, months) Generated off of .NET’s supported locales In short you get much of the same functionality that you already might be using in .NET on the server side. The plugin includes a huge number of locales and an Globalization.all.min.js file that contains the text defaults for each of these locales as well as small locale specific script files that define each of the locale specific settings. It’s highly recommended that you NOT use the huge globalization file that includes all locales, but rather add script references to only those languages you explicitly care about. Overall this plug-in is a welcome helper. Even if you use it with a single locale (like en-US) and do no other localization, you’ll gain solid support for number and date formatting which is a vital feature of many applications. Changes for Microsoft It’s good to see Microsoft coming out of its shell and away from the ‘not-built-here’ mentality that has been so pervasive in the past. It’s especially good to see it applied to jQuery – a technology that has stood in drastic contrast to Microsoft’s own internal efforts in terms of design, usage model and… popularity. It’s great to see that Microsoft is paying attention to what customers prefer to use and supporting the customer sentiment – even if it meant drastically changing course of policy and moving into a more open and sharing environment in the process. The additional jQuery support that has been introduced in the last two years certainly has made lives easier for many developers on the ASP.NET platform. It’s also nice to see Microsoft submitting proposals through the standard jQuery process of plug-ins and getting accepted for various very useful projects. Certainly the jQuery Templates plug-in is going to be very useful to many especially since it will be baked into the jQuery core in jQuery 1.5. I hope we see more of this type of involvement from Microsoft in the future. Kudos!© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in jQuery  ASP.NET  

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• Improving Partitioned Table Join Performance

  - by Paul White

  The query optimizer does not always choose an optimal strategy when joining partitioned tables. This post looks at an example, showing how a manual rewrite of the query can almost double performance, while reducing the memory grant to almost nothing. Test Data The two tables in this example use a common partitioning partition scheme. The partition function uses 41 equal-size partitions: CREATE PARTITION FUNCTION PFT (integer) AS RANGE RIGHT FOR VALUES ( 125000, 250000, 375000, 500000, 625000, 750000, 875000, 1000000, 1125000, 1250000, 1375000, 1500000, 1625000, 1750000, 1875000, 2000000, 2125000, 2250000, 2375000, 2500000, 2625000, 2750000, 2875000, 3000000, 3125000, 3250000, 3375000, 3500000, 3625000, 3750000, 3875000, 4000000, 4125000, 4250000, 4375000, 4500000, 4625000, 4750000, 4875000, 5000000 ); GO CREATE PARTITION SCHEME PST AS PARTITION PFT ALL TO ([PRIMARY]); There two tables are: CREATE TABLE dbo.T1 ( TID integer NOT NULL IDENTITY(0,1), Column1 integer NOT NULL, Padding binary(100) NOT NULL DEFAULT 0x,   CONSTRAINT PK_T1 PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (TID) ON PST (TID) );   CREATE TABLE dbo.T2 ( TID integer NOT NULL, Column1 integer NOT NULL, Padding binary(100) NOT NULL DEFAULT 0x,   CONSTRAINT PK_T2 PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (TID, Column1) ON PST (TID) ); The next script loads 5 million rows into T1 with a pseudo-random value between 1 and 5 for Column1. The table is partitioned on the IDENTITY column TID: INSERT dbo.T1 WITH (TABLOCKX) (Column1) SELECT (ABS(CHECKSUM(NEWID())) % 5) + 1 FROM dbo.Numbers AS N WHERE n BETWEEN 1 AND 5000000; In case you don’t already have an auxiliary table of numbers lying around, here’s a script to create one with 10 million rows: CREATE TABLE dbo.Numbers (n bigint PRIMARY KEY);   WITH L0 AS(SELECT 1 AS c UNION ALL SELECT 1), L1 AS(SELECT 1 AS c FROM L0 AS A CROSS JOIN L0 AS B), L2 AS(SELECT 1 AS c FROM L1 AS A CROSS JOIN L1 AS B), L3 AS(SELECT 1 AS c FROM L2 AS A CROSS JOIN L2 AS B), L4 AS(SELECT 1 AS c FROM L3 AS A CROSS JOIN L3 AS B), L5 AS(SELECT 1 AS c FROM L4 AS A CROSS JOIN L4 AS B), Nums AS(SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT NULL)) AS n FROM L5) INSERT dbo.Numbers WITH (TABLOCKX) SELECT TOP (10000000) n FROM Nums ORDER BY n OPTION (MAXDOP 1); Table T1 contains data like this: Next we load data into table T2. The relationship between the two tables is that table 2 contains ‘n’ rows for each row in table 1, where ‘n’ is determined by the value in Column1 of table T1. There is nothing particularly special about the data or distribution, by the way. INSERT dbo.T2 WITH (TABLOCKX) (TID, Column1) SELECT T.TID, N.n FROM dbo.T1 AS T JOIN dbo.Numbers AS N ON N.n >= 1 AND N.n <= T.Column1; Table T2 ends up containing about 15 million rows: The primary key for table T2 is a combination of TID and Column1. The data is partitioned according to the value in column TID alone. Partition Distribution The following query shows the number of rows in each partition of table T1: SELECT PartitionID = CA1.P, NumRows = COUNT_BIG(*) FROM dbo.T1 AS T CROSS APPLY (VALUES ($PARTITION.PFT(TID))) AS CA1 (P) GROUP BY CA1.P ORDER BY CA1.P; There are 40 partitions containing 125,000 rows (40 * 125k = 5m rows). The rightmost partition remains empty. The next query shows the distribution for table 2: SELECT PartitionID = CA1.P, NumRows = COUNT_BIG(*) FROM dbo.T2 AS T CROSS APPLY (VALUES ($PARTITION.PFT(TID))) AS CA1 (P) GROUP BY CA1.P ORDER BY CA1.P; There are roughly 375,000 rows in each partition (the rightmost partition is also empty): Ok, that’s the test data done. Test Query and Execution Plan The task is to count the rows resulting from joining tables 1 and 2 on the TID column: SET STATISTICS IO ON; DECLARE @s datetime2 = SYSUTCDATETIME();   SELECT COUNT_BIG(*) FROM dbo.T1 AS T1 JOIN dbo.T2 AS T2 ON T2.TID = T1.TID;   SELECT DATEDIFF(Millisecond, @s, SYSUTCDATETIME()); SET STATISTICS IO OFF; The optimizer chooses a plan using parallel hash join, and partial aggregation: The Plan Explorer plan tree view shows accurate cardinality estimates and an even distribution of rows across threads (click to enlarge the image): With a warm data cache, the STATISTICS IO output shows that no physical I/O was needed, and all 41 partitions were touched: Running the query without actual execution plan or STATISTICS IO information for maximum performance, the query returns in around 2600ms. Execution Plan Analysis The first step toward improving on the execution plan produced by the query optimizer is to understand how it works, at least in outline. The two parallel Clustered Index Scans use multiple threads to read rows from tables T1 and T2. Parallel scan uses a demand-based scheme where threads are given page(s) to scan from the table as needed. This arrangement has certain important advantages, but does result in an unpredictable distribution of rows amongst threads. The point is that multiple threads cooperate to scan the whole table, but it is impossible to predict which rows end up on which threads. For correct results from the parallel hash join, the execution plan has to ensure that rows from T1 and T2 that might join are processed on the same thread. For example, if a row from T1 with join key value ‘1234’ is placed in thread 5’s hash table, the execution plan must guarantee that any rows from T2 that also have join key value ‘1234’ probe thread 5’s hash table for matches. The way this guarantee is enforced in this parallel hash join plan is by repartitioning rows to threads after each parallel scan. The two repartitioning exchanges route rows to threads using a hash function over the hash join keys. The two repartitioning exchanges use the same hash function so rows from T1 and T2 with the same join key must end up on the same hash join thread. Expensive Exchanges This business of repartitioning rows between threads can be very expensive, especially if a large number of rows is involved. The execution plan selected by the optimizer moves 5 million rows through one repartitioning exchange and around 15 million across the other. As a first step toward removing these exchanges, consider the execution plan selected by the optimizer if we join just one partition from each table, disallowing parallelism: SELECT COUNT_BIG(*) FROM dbo.T1 AS T1 JOIN dbo.T2 AS T2 ON T2.TID = T1.TID WHERE $PARTITION.PFT(T1.TID) = 1 AND $PARTITION.PFT(T2.TID) = 1 OPTION (MAXDOP 1); The optimizer has chosen a (one-to-many) merge join instead of a hash join. The single-partition query completes in around 100ms. If everything scaled linearly, we would expect that extending this strategy to all 40 populated partitions would result in an execution time around 4000ms. Using parallelism could reduce that further, perhaps to be competitive with the parallel hash join chosen by the optimizer. This raises a question. If the most efficient way to join one partition from each of the tables is to use a merge join, why does the optimizer not choose a merge join for the full query? Forcing a Merge Join Let’s force the optimizer to use a merge join on the test query using a hint: SELECT COUNT_BIG(*) FROM dbo.T1 AS T1 JOIN dbo.T2 AS T2 ON T2.TID = T1.TID OPTION (MERGE JOIN); This is the execution plan selected by the optimizer: This plan results in the same number of logical reads reported previously, but instead of 2600ms the query takes 5000ms. The natural explanation for this drop in performance is that the merge join plan is only using a single thread, whereas the parallel hash join plan could use multiple threads. Parallel Merge Join We can get a parallel merge join plan using the same query hint as before, and adding trace flag 8649: SELECT COUNT_BIG(*) FROM dbo.T1 AS T1 JOIN dbo.T2 AS T2 ON T2.TID = T1.TID OPTION (MERGE JOIN, QUERYTRACEON 8649); The execution plan is: This looks promising. It uses a similar strategy to distribute work across threads as seen for the parallel hash join. In practice though, performance is disappointing. On a typical run, the parallel merge plan runs for around 8400ms; slower than the single-threaded merge join plan (5000ms) and much worse than the 2600ms for the parallel hash join. We seem to be going backwards! The logical reads for the parallel merge are still exactly the same as before, with no physical IOs. The cardinality estimates and thread distribution are also still very good (click to enlarge): A big clue to the reason for the poor performance is shown in the wait statistics (captured by Plan Explorer Pro): CXPACKET waits require careful interpretation, and are most often benign, but in this case excessive waiting occurs at the repartitioning exchanges. Unlike the parallel hash join, the repartitioning exchanges in this plan are order-preserving ‘merging’ exchanges (because merge join requires ordered inputs): Parallelism works best when threads can just grab any available unit of work and get on with processing it. Preserving order introduces inter-thread dependencies that can easily lead to significant waits occurring. In extreme cases, these dependencies can result in an intra-query deadlock, though the details of that will have to wait for another time to explore in detail. The potential for waits and deadlocks leads the query optimizer to cost parallel merge join relatively highly, especially as the degree of parallelism (DOP) increases. This high costing resulted in the optimizer choosing a serial merge join rather than parallel in this case. The test results certainly confirm its reasoning. Collocated Joins In SQL Server 2008 and later, the optimizer has another available strategy when joining tables that share a common partition scheme. This strategy is a collocated join, also known as as a per-partition join. It can be applied in both serial and parallel execution plans, though it is limited to 2-way joins in the current optimizer. Whether the optimizer chooses a collocated join or not depends on cost estimation. The primary benefits of a collocated join are that it eliminates an exchange and requires less memory, as we will see next. Costing and Plan Selection The query optimizer did consider a collocated join for our original query, but it was rejected on cost grounds. The parallel hash join with repartitioning exchanges appeared to be a cheaper option. There is no query hint to force a collocated join, so we have to mess with the costing framework to produce one for our test query. Pretending that IOs cost 50 times more than usual is enough to convince the optimizer to use collocated join with our test query: -- Pretend IOs are 50x cost temporarily DBCC SETIOWEIGHT(50);   -- Co-located hash join SELECT COUNT_BIG(*) FROM dbo.T1 AS T1 JOIN dbo.T2 AS T2 ON T2.TID = T1.TID OPTION (RECOMPILE);   -- Reset IO costing DBCC SETIOWEIGHT(1); Collocated Join Plan The estimated execution plan for the collocated join is: The Constant Scan contains one row for each partition of the shared partitioning scheme, from 1 to 41. The hash repartitioning exchanges seen previously are replaced by a single Distribute Streams exchange using Demand partitioning. Demand partitioning means that the next partition id is given to the next parallel thread that asks for one. My test machine has eight logical processors, and all are available for SQL Server to use. As a result, there are eight threads in the single parallel branch in this plan, each processing one partition from each table at a time. Once a thread finishes processing a partition, it grabs a new partition number from the Distribute Streams exchange…and so on until all partitions have been processed. It is important to understand that the parallel scans in this plan are different from the parallel hash join plan. Although the scans have the same parallelism icon, tables T1 and T2 are not being co-operatively scanned by multiple threads in the same way. Each thread reads a single partition of T1 and performs a hash match join with the same partition from table T2. The properties of the two Clustered Index Scans show a Seek Predicate (unusual for a scan!) limiting the rows to a single partition: The crucial point is that the join between T1 and T2 is on TID, and TID is the partitioning column for both tables. A thread that processes partition ‘n’ is guaranteed to see all rows that can possibly join on TID for that partition. In addition, no other thread will see rows from that partition, so this removes the need for repartitioning exchanges. CPU and Memory Efficiency Improvements The collocated join has removed two expensive repartitioning exchanges and added a single exchange processing 41 rows (one for each partition id). Remember, the parallel hash join plan exchanges had to process 5 million and 15 million rows. The amount of processor time spent on exchanges will be much lower in the collocated join plan. In addition, the collocated join plan has a maximum of 8 threads processing single partitions at any one time. The 41 partitions will all be processed eventually, but a new partition is not started until a thread asks for it. Threads can reuse hash table memory for the new partition. The parallel hash join plan also had 8 hash tables, but with all 5,000,000 build rows loaded at the same time. The collocated plan needs memory for only 8 * 125,000 = 1,000,000 rows at any one time. Collocated Hash Join Performance The collated join plan has disappointing performance in this case. The query runs for around 25,300ms despite the same IO statistics as usual. This is much the worst result so far, so what went wrong? It turns out that cardinality estimation for the single partition scans of table T1 is slightly low. The properties of the Clustered Index Scan of T1 (graphic immediately above) show the estimation was for 121,951 rows. This is a small shortfall compared with the 125,000 rows actually encountered, but it was enough to cause the hash join to spill to physical tempdb: A level 1 spill doesn’t sound too bad, until you realize that the spill to tempdb probably occurs for each of the 41 partitions. As a side note, the cardinality estimation error is a little surprising because the system tables accurately show there are 125,000 rows in every partition of T1. Unfortunately, the optimizer uses regular column and index statistics to derive cardinality estimates here rather than system table information (e.g. sys.partitions). Collocated Merge Join We will never know how well the collocated parallel hash join plan might have worked without the cardinality estimation error (and the resulting 41 spills to tempdb) but we do know: Merge join does not require a memory grant; and Merge join was the optimizer’s preferred join option for a single partition join Putting this all together, what we would really like to see is the same collocated join strategy, but using merge join instead of hash join. Unfortunately, the current query optimizer cannot produce a collocated merge join; it only knows how to do collocated hash join. So where does this leave us? CROSS APPLY sys.partitions We can try to write our own collocated join query. We can use sys.partitions to find the partition numbers, and CROSS APPLY to get a count per partition, with a final step to sum the partial counts. The following query implements this idea: SELECT row_count = SUM(Subtotals.cnt) FROM ( -- Partition numbers SELECT p.partition_number FROM sys.partitions AS p WHERE p.[object_id] = OBJECT_ID(N'T1', N'U') AND p.index_id = 1 ) AS P CROSS APPLY ( -- Count per collocated join SELECT cnt = COUNT_BIG(*) FROM dbo.T1 AS T1 JOIN dbo.T2 AS T2 ON T2.TID = T1.TID WHERE $PARTITION.PFT(T1.TID) = p.partition_number AND $PARTITION.PFT(T2.TID) = p.partition_number ) AS SubTotals; The estimated plan is: The cardinality estimates aren’t all that good here, especially the estimate for the scan of the system table underlying the sys.partitions view. Nevertheless, the plan shape is heading toward where we would like to be. Each partition number from the system table results in a per-partition scan of T1 and T2, a one-to-many Merge Join, and a Stream Aggregate to compute the partial counts. The final Stream Aggregate just sums the partial counts. Execution time for this query is around 3,500ms, with the same IO statistics as always. This compares favourably with 5,000ms for the serial plan produced by the optimizer with the OPTION (MERGE JOIN) hint. This is another case of the sum of the parts being less than the whole – summing 41 partial counts from 41 single-partition merge joins is faster than a single merge join and count over all partitions. Even so, this single-threaded collocated merge join is not as quick as the original parallel hash join plan, which executed in 2,600ms. On the positive side, our collocated merge join uses only one logical processor and requires no memory grant. The parallel hash join plan used 16 threads and reserved 569 MB of memory:   Using a Temporary Table Our collocated merge join plan should benefit from parallelism. The reason parallelism is not being used is that the query references a system table. We can work around that by writing the partition numbers to a temporary table (or table variable): SET STATISTICS IO ON; DECLARE @s datetime2 = SYSUTCDATETIME();   CREATE TABLE #P ( partition_number integer PRIMARY KEY);   INSERT #P (partition_number) SELECT p.partition_number FROM sys.partitions AS p WHERE p.[object_id] = OBJECT_ID(N'T1', N'U') AND p.index_id = 1;   SELECT row_count = SUM(Subtotals.cnt) FROM #P AS p CROSS APPLY ( SELECT cnt = COUNT_BIG(*) FROM dbo.T1 AS T1 JOIN dbo.T2 AS T2 ON T2.TID = T1.TID WHERE $PARTITION.PFT(T1.TID) = p.partition_number AND $PARTITION.PFT(T2.TID) = p.partition_number ) AS SubTotals;   DROP TABLE #P;   SELECT DATEDIFF(Millisecond, @s, SYSUTCDATETIME()); SET STATISTICS IO OFF; Using the temporary table adds a few logical reads, but the overall execution time is still around 3500ms, indistinguishable from the same query without the temporary table. The problem is that the query optimizer still doesn’t choose a parallel plan for this query, though the removal of the system table reference means that it could if it chose to: In fact the optimizer did enter the parallel plan phase of query optimization (running search 1 for a second time): Unfortunately, the parallel plan found seemed to be more expensive than the serial plan. This is a crazy result, caused by the optimizer’s cost model not reducing operator CPU costs on the inner side of a nested loops join. Don’t get me started on that, we’ll be here all night. In this plan, everything expensive happens on the inner side of a nested loops join. Without a CPU cost reduction to compensate for the added cost of exchange operators, candidate parallel plans always look more expensive to the optimizer than the equivalent serial plan. Parallel Collocated Merge Join We can produce the desired parallel plan using trace flag 8649 again: SELECT row_count = SUM(Subtotals.cnt) FROM #P AS p CROSS APPLY ( SELECT cnt = COUNT_BIG(*) FROM dbo.T1 AS T1 JOIN dbo.T2 AS T2 ON T2.TID = T1.TID WHERE $PARTITION.PFT(T1.TID) = p.partition_number AND $PARTITION.PFT(T2.TID) = p.partition_number ) AS SubTotals OPTION (QUERYTRACEON 8649); The actual execution plan is: One difference between this plan and the collocated hash join plan is that a Repartition Streams exchange operator is used instead of Distribute Streams. The effect is similar, though not quite identical. The Repartition uses round-robin partitioning, meaning the next partition id is pushed to the next thread in sequence. The Distribute Streams exchange seen earlier used Demand partitioning, meaning the next partition id is pulled across the exchange by the next thread that is ready for more work. There are subtle performance implications for each partitioning option, but going into that would again take us too far off the main point of this post. Performance The important thing is the performance of this parallel collocated merge join – just 1350ms on a typical run. The list below shows all the alternatives from this post (all timings include creation, population, and deletion of the temporary table where appropriate) from quickest to slowest: Collocated parallel merge join: 1350ms Parallel hash join: 2600ms Collocated serial merge join: 3500ms Serial merge join: 5000ms Parallel merge join: 8400ms Collated parallel hash join: 25,300ms (hash spill per partition) The parallel collocated merge join requires no memory grant (aside from a paltry 1.2MB used for exchange buffers). This plan uses 16 threads at DOP 8; but 8 of those are (rather pointlessly) allocated to the parallel scan of the temporary table. These are minor concerns, but it turns out there is a way to address them if it bothers you. Parallel Collocated Merge Join with Demand Partitioning This final tweak replaces the temporary table with a hard-coded list of partition ids (dynamic SQL could be used to generate this query from sys.partitions): SELECT row_count = SUM(Subtotals.cnt) FROM ( VALUES (1),(2),(3),(4),(5),(6),(7),(8),(9),(10), (11),(12),(13),(14),(15),(16),(17),(18),(19),(20), (21),(22),(23),(24),(25),(26),(27),(28),(29),(30), (31),(32),(33),(34),(35),(36),(37),(38),(39),(40),(41) ) AS P (partition_number) CROSS APPLY ( SELECT cnt = COUNT_BIG(*) FROM dbo.T1 AS T1 JOIN dbo.T2 AS T2 ON T2.TID = T1.TID WHERE $PARTITION.PFT(T1.TID) = p.partition_number AND $PARTITION.PFT(T2.TID) = p.partition_number ) AS SubTotals OPTION (QUERYTRACEON 8649); The actual execution plan is: The parallel collocated hash join plan is reproduced below for comparison: The manual rewrite has another advantage that has not been mentioned so far: the partial counts (per partition) can be computed earlier than the partial counts (per thread) in the optimizer’s collocated join plan. The earlier aggregation is performed by the extra Stream Aggregate under the nested loops join. The performance of the parallel collocated merge join is unchanged at around 1350ms. Final Words It is a shame that the current query optimizer does not consider a collocated merge join (Connect item closed as Won’t Fix). The example used in this post showed an improvement in execution time from 2600ms to 1350ms using a modestly-sized data set and limited parallelism. In addition, the memory requirement for the query was almost completely eliminated  – down from 569MB to 1.2MB. The problem with the parallel hash join selected by the optimizer is that it attempts to process the full data set all at once (albeit using eight threads). It requires a large memory grant to hold all 5 million rows from table T1 across the eight hash tables, and does not take advantage of the divide-and-conquer opportunity offered by the common partitioning. The great thing about the collocated join strategies is that each parallel thread works on a single partition from both tables, reading rows, performing the join, and computing a per-partition subtotal, before moving on to a new partition. From a thread’s point of view… If you have trouble visualizing what is happening from just looking at the parallel collocated merge join execution plan, let’s look at it again, but from the point of view of just one thread operating between the two Parallelism (exchange) operators. Our thread picks up a single partition id from the Distribute Streams exchange, and starts a merge join using ordered rows from partition 1 of table T1 and partition 1 of table T2. By definition, this is all happening on a single thread. As rows join, they are added to a (per-partition) count in the Stream Aggregate immediately above the Merge Join. Eventually, either T1 (partition 1) or T2 (partition 1) runs out of rows and the merge join stops. The per-partition count from the aggregate passes on through the Nested Loops join to another Stream Aggregate, which is maintaining a per-thread subtotal. Our same thread now picks up a new partition id from the exchange (say it gets id 9 this time). The count in the per-partition aggregate is reset to zero, and the processing of partition 9 of both tables proceeds just as it did for partition 1, and on the same thread. Each thread picks up a single partition id and processes all the data for that partition, completely independently from other threads working on other partitions. One thread might eventually process partitions (1, 9, 17, 25, 33, 41) while another is concurrently processing partitions (2, 10, 18, 26, 34) and so on for the other six threads at DOP 8. The point is that all 8 threads can execute independently and concurrently, continuing to process new partitions until the wider job (of which the thread has no knowledge!) is done. This divide-and-conquer technique can be much more efficient than simply splitting the entire workload across eight threads all at once. Related Reading Understanding and Using Parallelism in SQL Server Parallel Execution Plans Suck © 2013 Paul White – All Rights Reserved Twitter: @SQL_Kiwi

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• The broken Promise of the Mobile Web

  - by Rick Strahl

  High end mobile devices have been with us now for almost 7 years and they have utterly transformed the way we access information. Mobile phones and smartphones that have access to the Internet and host smart applications are in the hands of a large percentage of the population of the world. In many places even very remote, cell phones and even smart phones are a common sight. I’ll never forget when I was in India in 2011 I was up in the Southern Indian mountains riding an elephant out of a tiny local village, with an elephant herder in front riding atop of the elephant in front of us. He was dressed in traditional garb with the loin wrap and head cloth/turban as did quite a few of the locals in this small out of the way and not so touristy village. So we’re slowly trundling along in the forest and he’s lazily using his stick to guide the elephant and… 10 minutes in he pulls out his cell phone from his sash and starts texting. In the middle of texting a huge pig jumps out from the side of the trail and he takes a picture running across our path in the jungle! So yeah, mobile technology is very pervasive and it’s reached into even very buried and unexpected parts of this world. Apps are still King Apps currently rule the roost when it comes to mobile devices and the applications that run on them. If there’s something that you need on your mobile device your first step usually is to look for an app, not use your browser. But native app development remains a pain in the butt, with the requirement to have to support 2 or 3 completely separate platforms. There are solutions that try to bridge that gap. Xamarin is on a tear at the moment, providing their cross-device toolkit to build applications using C#. While Xamarin tools are impressive – and also *very* expensive – they only address part of the development madness that is app development. There are still specific device integration isssues, dealing with the different developer programs, security and certificate setups and all that other noise that surrounds app development. There’s also PhoneGap/Cordova which provides a hybrid solution that involves creating local HTML/CSS/JavaScript based applications, and then packaging them to run in a specialized App container that can run on most mobile device platforms using a WebView interface. This allows for using of HTML technology, but it also still requires all the set up, configuration of APIs, security keys and certification and submission and deployment process just like native applications – you actually lose many of the benefits that  Web based apps bring. The big selling point of Cordova is that you get to use HTML have the ability to build your UI once for all platforms and run across all of them – but the rest of the app process remains in place. Apps can be a big pain to create and manage especially when we are talking about specialized or vertical business applications that aren’t geared at the mainstream market and that don’t fit the ‘store’ model. If you’re building a small intra department application you don’t want to deal with multiple device platforms and certification etc. for various public or corporate app stores. That model is simply not a good fit both from the development and deployment perspective. Even for commercial, big ticket apps, HTML as a UI platform offers many advantages over native, from write-once run-anywhere, to remote maintenance, single point of management and failure to having full control over the application as opposed to have the app store overloads censor you. In a lot of ways Web based HTML/CSS/JavaScript applications have so much potential for building better solutions based on existing Web technologies for the very same reasons a lot of content years ago moved off the desktop to the Web. To me the Web as a mobile platform makes perfect sense, but the reality of today’s Mobile Web unfortunately looks a little different… Where’s the Love for the Mobile Web? Yet here we are in the middle of 2014, nearly 7 years after the first iPhone was released and brought the promise of rich interactive information at your fingertips, and yet we still don’t really have a solid mobile Web platform. I know what you’re thinking: “But we have lots of HTML/JavaScript/CSS features that allows us to build nice mobile interfaces”. I agree to a point – it’s actually quite possible to build nice looking, rich and capable Web UI today. We have media queries to deal with varied display sizes, CSS transforms for smooth animations and transitions, tons of CSS improvements in CSS 3 that facilitate rich layout, a host of APIs geared towards mobile device features and lately even a number of JavaScript framework choices that facilitate development of multi-screen apps in a consistent manner. Personally I’ve been working a lot with AngularJs and heavily modified Bootstrap themes to build mobile first UIs and that’s been working very well to provide highly usable and attractive UI for typical mobile business applications. From the pure UI perspective things actually look very good. Not just about the UI But it’s not just about the UI - it’s also about integration with the mobile device. When it comes to putting all those pieces together into what amounts to a consolidated platform to build mobile Web applications, I think we still have a ways to go… there are a lot of missing pieces to make it all work together and integrate with the device more smoothly, and more importantly to make it work uniformly across the majority of devices. I think there are a number of reasons for this. Slow Standards Adoption HTML standards implementations and ratification has been dreadfully slow, and browser vendors all seem to pick and choose different pieces of the technology they implement. The end result is that we have a capable UI platform that’s missing some of the infrastructure pieces to make it whole on mobile devices. There’s lots of potential but what is lacking that final 10% to build truly compelling mobile applications that can compete favorably with native applications. Some of it is the fragmentation of browsers and the slow evolution of the mobile specific HTML APIs. A host of mobile standards exist but many of the standards are in the early review stage and they have been there stuck for long periods of time and seem to move at a glacial pace. Browser vendors seem even slower to implement them, and for good reason – non-ratified standards mean that implementations may change and vendor implementations tend to be experimental and  likely have to be changed later. Neither Vendors or developers are not keen on changing standards. This is the typical chicken and egg scenario, but without some forward momentum from some party we end up stuck in the mud. It seems that either the standards bodies or the vendors need to carry the torch forward and that doesn’t seem to be happening quickly enough. Mobile Device Integration just isn’t good enough Current standards are not far reaching enough to address a number of the use case scenarios necessary for many mobile applications. While not every application needs to have access to all mobile device features, almost every mobile application could benefit from some integration with other parts of the mobile device platform. Integration with GPS, phone, media, messaging, notifications, linking and contacts system are benefits that are unique to mobile applications and could be widely used, but are mostly (with the exception of GPS) inaccessible for Web based applications today. Unfortunately trying to do most of this today only with a mobile Web browser is a losing battle. Aside from PhoneGap/Cordova’s app centric model with its own custom API accessing mobile device features and the token exception of the GeoLocation API, most device integration features are not widely supported by the current crop of mobile browsers. For example there’s no usable messaging API that allows access to SMS or contacts from HTML. Even obvious components like the Media Capture API are only implemented partially by mobile devices. There are alternatives and workarounds for some of these interfaces by using browser specific code, but that’s might ugly and something that I thought we were trying to leave behind with newer browser standards. But it’s not quite working out that way. It’s utterly perplexing to me that mobile standards like Media Capture and Streams, Media Gallery Access, Responsive Images, Messaging API, Contacts Manager API have only minimal or no traction at all today. Keep in mind we’ve had mobile browsers for nearly 7 years now, and yet we still have to think about how to get access to an image from the image gallery or the camera on some devices? Heck Windows Phone IE Mobile just gained the ability to upload images recently in the Windows 8.1 Update – that’s feature that HTML has had for 20 years! These are simple concepts and common problems that should have been solved a long time ago. It’s extremely frustrating to see build 90% of a mobile Web app with relative ease and then hit a brick wall for the remaining 10%, which often can be show stoppers. The remaining 10% have to do with platform integration, browser differences and working around the limitations that browsers and ‘pinned’ applications impose on HTML applications. The maddening part is that these limitations seem arbitrary as they could easily work on all mobile platforms. For example, SMS has a URL Moniker interface that sort of works on Android, works badly with iOS (only works if the address is already in the contact list) and not at all on Windows Phone. There’s no reason this shouldn’t work universally using the same interface – after all all phones have supported SMS since before the year 2000! But, it doesn’t have to be this way Change can happen very quickly. Take the GeoLocation API for example. Geolocation has taken off at the very beginning of the mobile device era and today it works well, provides the necessary security (a big concern for many mobile APIs), and is supported by just about all major mobile and even desktop browsers today. It handles security concerns via prompts to avoid unwanted access which is a model that would work for most other device APIs in a similar fashion. One time approval and occasional re-approval if code changes or caches expire. Simple and only slightly intrusive. It all works well, even though GeoLocation actually has some physical limitations, such as representing the current location when no GPS device is present. Yet this is a solved problem, where other APIs that are conceptually much simpler to implement have failed to gain any traction at all. Technically none of these APIs should be a problem to implement, but it appears that the momentum is just not there. Inadequate Web Application Linking and Activation Another important piece of the puzzle missing is the integration of HTML based Web applications. Today HTML based applications are not first class citizens on mobile operating systems. When talking about HTML based content there’s a big difference between content and applications. Content is great for search engine discovery and plain browser usage. Content is usually accessed intermittently and permanent linking is not so critical for this type of content.  But applications have different needs. Applications need to be started up quickly and must be easily switchable to support a multi-tasking user workflow. Therefore, it’s pretty crucial that mobile Web apps are integrated into the underlying mobile OS and work with the standard task management features. Unfortunately this integration is not as smooth as it should be. It starts with actually trying to find mobile Web applications, to ‘installing’ them onto a phone in an easily accessible manner in a prominent position. The experience of discovering a Mobile Web ‘App’ and making it sticky is by no means as easy or satisfying. Today the way you’d go about this is: Open the browser Search for a Web Site in the browser with your search engine of choice Hope that you find the right site Hope that you actually find a site that works for your mobile device Click on the link and run the app in a fully chrome’d browser instance (read tiny surface area) Pin the app to the home screen (with all the limitations outline above) Hope you pointed at the right URL when you pinned Even for you and me as developers, there are a few steps in there that are painful and annoying, but think about the average user. First figuring out how to search for a specific site or URL? And then pinning the app and hopefully from the right location? You’ve probably lost more than half of your audience at that point. This experience sucks. For developers too this process is painful since app developers can’t control the shortcut creation directly. This problem often gets solved by crazy coding schemes, with annoying pop-ups that try to get people to create shortcuts via fancy animations that are both annoying and add overhead to each and every application that implements this sort of thing differently. And that’s not the end of it - getting the link onto the home screen with an application icon varies quite a bit between browsers. Apple’s non-standard meta tags are prominent and they work with iOS and Android (only more recent versions), but not on Windows Phone. Windows Phone instead requires you to create an actual screen or rather a partial screen be captured for a shortcut in the tile manager. Who had that brilliant idea I wonder? Surprisingly Chrome on recent Android versions seems to actually get it right – icons use pngs, pinning is easy and pinned applications properly behave like standalone apps and retain the browser’s active page state and content. Each of the platforms has a different way to specify icons (WP doesn’t allow you to use an icon image at all), and the most widely used interface in use today is a bunch of Apple specific meta tags that other browsers choose to support. The question is: Why is there no standard implementation for installing shortcuts across mobile platforms using an official format rather than a proprietary one? Then there’s iOS and the crazy way it treats home screen linked URLs using a crazy hybrid format that is neither as capable as a Web app running in Safari nor a WebView hosted application. Moving off the Web ‘app’ link when switching to another app actually causes the browser and preview it to ‘blank out’ the Web application in the Task View (see screenshot on the right). Then, when the ‘app’ is reactivated it ends up completely restarting the browser with the original link. This is crazy behavior that you can’t easily work around. In some situations you might be able to store the application state and restore it using LocalStorage, but for many scenarios that involve complex data sources (like say Google Maps) that’s not a possibility. The only reason for this screwed up behavior I can think of is that it is deliberate to make Web apps a pain in the butt to use and forcing users trough the App Store/PhoneGap/Cordova route. App linking and management is a very basic problem – something that we essentially have solved in every desktop browser – yet on mobile devices where it arguably matters a lot more to have easy access to web content we have to jump through hoops to have even a remotely decent linking/activation experience across browsers. Where’s the Money? It’s not surprising that device home screen integration and Mobile Web support in general is in such dismal shape – the mobile OS vendors benefit financially from App store sales and have little to gain from Web based applications that bypass the App store and the cash cow that it presents. On top of that, platform specific vendor lock-in of both end users and developers who have invested in hardware, apps and consumables is something that mobile platform vendors actually aspire to. Web based interfaces that are cross-platform are the anti-thesis of that and so again it’s no surprise that the mobile Web is on a struggling path. But – that may be changing. More and more we’re seeing operations shifting to services that are subscription based or otherwise collect money for usage, and that may drive more progress into the Web direction in the end . Nothing like the almighty dollar to drive innovation forward. Do we need a Mobile Web App Store? As much as I dislike moderated experiences in today’s massive App Stores, they do at least provide one single place to look for apps for your device. I think we could really use some sort of registry, that could provide something akin to an app store for mobile Web apps, to make it easier to actually find mobile applications. This could take the form of a specialized search engine, or maybe a more formal store/registry like structure. Something like apt-get/chocolatey for Web apps. It could be curated and provide at least some feedback and reviews that might help with the integrity of applications. Coupled to that could be a native application on each platform that would allow searching and browsing of the registry and then also handle installation in the form of providing the home screen linking, plus maybe an initial security configuration that determines what features are allowed access to for the app. I’m not holding my breath. In order for this sort of thing to take off and gain widespread appeal, a lot of coordination would be required. And in order to get enough traction it would have to come from a well known entity – a mobile Web app store from a no name source is unlikely to gain high enough usage numbers to make a difference. In a way this would eliminate some of the freedom of the Web, but of course this would also be an optional search path in addition to the standard open Web search mechanisms to find and access content today. Security Security is a big deal, and one of the perceived reasons why so many IT professionals appear to be willing to go back to the walled garden of deployed apps is that Apps are perceived as safe due to the official review and curation of the App stores. Curated stores are supposed to protect you from malware, illegal and misleading content. It doesn’t always work out that way and all the major vendors have had issues with security and the review process at some time or another. Security is critical, but I also think that Web applications in general pose less of a security threat than native applications, by nature of the sandboxed browser and JavaScript environments. Web applications run externally completely and in the HTML and JavaScript sandboxes, with only a very few controlled APIs allowing access to device specific features. And as discussed earlier – security for any device interaction can be granted the same for mobile applications through a Web browser, as they can for native applications either via explicit policies loaded from the Web, or via prompting as GeoLocation does today. Security is important, but it’s certainly solvable problem for Web applications even those that need to access device hardware. Security shouldn’t be a reason for Web apps to be an equal player in mobile applications. Apps are winning, but haven’t we been here before? So now we’re finding ourselves back in an era of installed app, rather than Web based and managed apps. Only it’s even worse today than with Desktop applications, in that the apps are going through a gatekeeper that charges a toll and censors what you can and can’t do in your apps. Frankly it’s a mystery to me why anybody would buy into this model and why it’s lasted this long when we’ve already been through this process. It’s crazy… It’s really a shame that this regression is happening. We have the technology to make mobile Web apps much more prominent, but yet we’re basically held back by what seems little more than bureaucracy, partisan bickering and self interest of the major parties involved. Back in the day of the desktop it was Internet Explorer’s 98+%  market shareholding back the Web from improvements for many years – now it’s the combined mobile OS market in control of the mobile browsers. If mobile Web apps were allowed to be treated the same as native apps with simple ways to install and run them consistently and persistently, that would go a long way to making mobile applications much more usable and seriously viable alternatives to native apps. But as it is mobile apps have a severe disadvantage in placement and operation. There are a few bright spots in all of this. Mozilla’s FireFoxOs is embracing the Web for it’s mobile OS by essentially building every app out of HTML and JavaScript based content. It supports both packaged and certified package modes (that can be put into the app store), and Open Web apps that are loaded and run completely off the Web and can also cache locally for offline operation using a manifest. Open Web apps are treated as full class citizens in FireFoxOS and run using the same mechanism as installed apps. Unfortunately FireFoxOs is getting a slow start with minimal device support and specifically targeting the low end market. We can hope that this approach will change and catch on with other vendors, but that’s also an uphill battle given the conflict of interest with platform lock in that it represents. Recent versions of Android also seem to be working reasonably well with mobile application integration onto the desktop and activation out of the box. Although it still uses the Apple meta tags to find icons and behavior settings, everything at least works as you would expect – icons to the desktop on pinning, WebView based full screen activation, and reliable application persistence as the browser/app is treated like a real application. Hopefully iOS will at some point provide this same level of rudimentary Web app support. What’s also interesting to me is that Microsoft hasn’t picked up on the obvious need for a solid Web App platform. Being a distant third in the mobile OS war, Microsoft certainly has nothing to lose and everything to gain by using fresh ideas and expanding into areas that the other major vendors are neglecting. But instead Microsoft is trying to beat the market leaders at their own game, fighting on their adversary’s terms instead of taking a new tack. Providing a kick ass mobile Web platform that takes the lead on some of the proposed mobile APIs would be something positive that Microsoft could do to improve its miserable position in the mobile device market. Where are we at with Mobile Web? It sure sounds like I’m really down on the Mobile Web, right? I’ve built a number of mobile apps in the last year and while overall result and response has been very positive to what we were able to accomplish in terms of UI, getting that final 10% that required device integration dialed was an absolute nightmare on every single one of them. Big compromises had to be made and some features were left out or had to be modified for some devices. In two cases we opted to go the Cordova route in order to get the integration we needed, along with the extra pain involved in that process. Unless you’re not integrating with device features and you don’t care deeply about a smooth integration with the mobile desktop, mobile Web development is fraught with frustration. So, yes I’m frustrated! But it’s not for lack of wanting the mobile Web to succeed. I am still a firm believer that we will eventually arrive a much more functional mobile Web platform that allows access to the most common device features in a sensible way. It wouldn't be difficult for device platform vendors to make Web based applications first class citizens on mobile devices. But unfortunately it looks like it will still be some time before this happens. So, what’s your experience building mobile Web apps? Are you finding similar issues? Just giving up on raw Web applications and building PhoneGap apps instead? Completely skipping the Web and going native? Leave a comment for discussion. Resources Rick Strahl on DotNet Rocks talking about Mobile Web© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2014Posted in HTML5  Mobile   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Syncing Data with a Server using Silverlight and HTTP Polling Duplex

  - by dwahlin

  Many applications have the need to stay in-sync with data provided by a service. Although web applications typically rely on standard polling techniques to check if data has changed, Silverlight provides several interesting options for keeping an application in-sync that rely on server “push” technologies. A few years back I wrote several blog posts covering different “push” technologies available in Silverlight that rely on sockets or HTTP Polling Duplex. We recently had a project that looked like it could benefit from pushing data from a server to one or more clients so I thought I’d revisit the subject and provide some updates to the original code posted. If you’ve worked with AJAX before in Web applications then you know that until browsers fully support web sockets or other duplex (bi-directional communication) technologies that it’s difficult to keep applications in-sync with a server without relying on polling. The problem with polling is that you have to check for changes on the server on a timed-basis which can often be wasteful and take up unnecessary resources. With server “push” technologies, data can be pushed from the server to the client as it changes. Once the data is received, the client can update the user interface as appropriate. Using “push” technologies allows the client to listen for changes from the data but stay 100% focused on client activities as opposed to worrying about polling and asking the server if anything has changed. Silverlight provides several options for pushing data from a server to a client including sockets, TCP bindings and HTTP Polling Duplex.  Each has its own strengths and weaknesses as far as performance and setup work with HTTP Polling Duplex arguably being the easiest to setup and get going.  In this article I’ll demonstrate how HTTP Polling Duplex can be used in Silverlight 4 applications to push data and show how you can create a WCF server that provides an HTTP Polling Duplex binding that a Silverlight client can consume.   What is HTTP Polling Duplex? Technologies that allow data to be pushed from a server to a client rely on duplex functionality. Duplex (or bi-directional) communication allows data to be passed in both directions.  A client can call a service and the server can call the client. HTTP Polling Duplex (as its name implies) allows a server to communicate with a client without forcing the client to constantly poll the server. It has the benefit of being able to run on port 80 making setup a breeze compared to the other options which require specific ports to be used and cross-domain policy files to be exposed on port 943 (as with sockets and TCP bindings). Having said that, if you’re looking for the best speed possible then sockets and TCP bindings are the way to go. But, they’re not the only game in town when it comes to duplex communication. The first time I heard about HTTP Polling Duplex (initially available in Silverlight 2) I wasn’t exactly sure how it was any better than standard polling used in AJAX applications. I read the Silverlight SDK, looked at various resources and generally found the following definition unhelpful as far as understanding the actual benefits that HTTP Polling Duplex provided: "The Silverlight client periodically polls the service on the network layer, and checks for any new messages that the service wants to send on the callback channel. The service queues all messages sent on the client callback channel and delivers them to the client when the client polls the service." Although the previous definition explained the overall process, it sounded as if standard polling was used. Fortunately, Microsoft’s Scott Guthrie provided me with a more clear definition several years back that explains the benefits provided by HTTP Polling Duplex quite well (used with his permission): "The [HTTP Polling Duplex] duplex support does use polling in the background to implement notifications – although the way it does it is different than manual polling. It initiates a network request, and then the request is effectively “put to sleep” waiting for the server to respond (it doesn’t come back immediately). The server then keeps the connection open but not active until it has something to send back (or the connection times out after 90 seconds – at which point the duplex client will connect again and wait). This way you are avoiding hitting the server repeatedly – but still get an immediate response when there is data to send." After hearing Scott’s definition the light bulb went on and it all made sense. A client makes a request to a server to check for changes, but instead of the request returning immediately, it parks itself on the server and waits for data. It’s kind of like waiting to pick up a pizza at the store. Instead of calling the store over and over to check the status, you sit in the store and wait until the pizza (the request data) is ready. Once it’s ready you take it back home (to the client). This technique provides a lot of efficiency gains over standard polling techniques even though it does use some polling of its own as a request is initially made from a client to a server. So how do you implement HTTP Polling Duplex in your Silverlight applications? Let’s take a look at the process by starting with the server. Creating an HTTP Polling Duplex WCF Service Creating a WCF service that exposes an HTTP Polling Duplex binding is straightforward as far as coding goes. Add some one way operations into an interface, create a client callback interface and you’re ready to go. The most challenging part comes into play when configuring the service to properly support the necessary binding and that’s more of a cut and paste operation once you know the configuration code to use. To create an HTTP Polling Duplex service you’ll need to expose server-side and client-side interfaces and reference the System.ServiceModel.PollingDuplex assembly (located at C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v4.0\Libraries\Server on my machine) in the server project. For the demo application I upgraded a basketball simulation service to support the latest polling duplex assemblies. The service simulates a simple basketball game using a Game class and pushes information about the game such as score, fouls, shots and more to the client as the game changes over time. Before jumping too far into the game push service, it’s important to discuss two interfaces used by the service to communicate in a bi-directional manner. The first is called IGameStreamService and defines the methods/operations that the client can call on the server (see Listing 1). The second is IGameStreamClient which defines the callback methods that a server can use to communicate with a client (see Listing 2).   [ServiceContract(Namespace = "Silverlight", CallbackContract = typeof(IGameStreamClient))] public interface IGameStreamService { [OperationContract(IsOneWay = true)] void GetTeamData(); } Listing 1. The IGameStreamService interface defines server operations that can be called on the server.   [ServiceContract] public interface IGameStreamClient { [OperationContract(IsOneWay = true)] void ReceiveTeamData(List<Team> teamData); [OperationContract(IsOneWay = true, AsyncPattern=true)] IAsyncResult BeginReceiveGameData(GameData gameData, AsyncCallback callback, object state); void EndReceiveGameData(IAsyncResult result); } Listing 2. The IGameStreamClient interfaces defines client operations that a server can call.   The IGameStreamService interface is decorated with the standard ServiceContract attribute but also contains a value for the CallbackContract property.  This property is used to define the interface that the client will expose (IGameStreamClient in this example) and use to receive data pushed from the service. Notice that each OperationContract attribute in both interfaces sets the IsOneWay property to true. This means that the operation can be called and passed data as appropriate, however, no data will be passed back. Instead, data will be pushed back to the client as it’s available.  Looking through the IGameStreamService interface you can see that the client can request team data whereas the IGameStreamClient interface allows team and game data to be received by the client. One interesting point about the IGameStreamClient interface is the inclusion of the AsyncPattern property on the BeginReceiveGameData operation. I initially created this operation as a standard one way operation and it worked most of the time. However, as I disconnected clients and reconnected new ones game data wasn’t being passed properly. After researching the problem more I realized that because the service could take up to 7 seconds to return game data, things were getting hung up. By setting the AsyncPattern property to true on the BeginReceivedGameData operation and providing a corresponding EndReceiveGameData operation I was able to get around this problem and get everything running properly. I’ll provide more details on the implementation of these two methods later in this post. Once the interfaces were created I moved on to the game service class. The first order of business was to create a class that implemented the IGameStreamService interface. Since the service can be used by multiple clients wanting game data I added the ServiceBehavior attribute to the class definition so that I could set its InstanceContextMode to InstanceContextMode.Single (in effect creating a Singleton service object). Listing 3 shows the game service class as well as its fields and constructor.   [ServiceBehavior(ConcurrencyMode = ConcurrencyMode.Multiple, InstanceContextMode = InstanceContextMode.Single)] public class GameStreamService : IGameStreamService { object _Key = new object(); Game _Game = null; Timer _Timer = null; Random _Random = null; Dictionary<string, IGameStreamClient> _ClientCallbacks = new Dictionary<string, IGameStreamClient>(); static AsyncCallback _ReceiveGameDataCompleted = new AsyncCallback(ReceiveGameDataCompleted); public GameStreamService() { _Game = new Game(); _Timer = new Timer { Enabled = false, Interval = 2000, AutoReset = true }; _Timer.Elapsed += new ElapsedEventHandler(_Timer_Elapsed); _Timer.Start(); _Random = new Random(); }} Listing 3. The GameStreamService implements the IGameStreamService interface which defines a callback contract that allows the service class to push data back to the client. By implementing the IGameStreamService interface, GameStreamService must supply a GetTeamData() method which is responsible for supplying information about the teams that are playing as well as individual players.  GetTeamData() also acts as a client subscription method that tracks clients wanting to receive game data.  Listing 4 shows the GetTeamData() method. public void GetTeamData() { //Get client callback channel var context = OperationContext.Current; var sessionID = context.SessionId; var currClient = context.GetCallbackChannel<IGameStreamClient>(); context.Channel.Faulted += Disconnect; context.Channel.Closed += Disconnect; IGameStreamClient client; if (!_ClientCallbacks.TryGetValue(sessionID, out client)) { lock (_Key) { _ClientCallbacks[sessionID] = currClient; } } currClient.ReceiveTeamData(_Game.GetTeamData()); //Start timer which when fired sends updated score information to client if (!_Timer.Enabled) { _Timer.Enabled = true; } } Listing 4. The GetTeamData() method subscribes a given client to the game service and returns. The key the line of code in the GetTeamData() method is the call to GetCallbackChannel<IGameStreamClient>().  This method is responsible for accessing the calling client’s callback channel. The callback channel is defined by the IGameStreamClient interface shown earlier in Listing 2 and used by the server to communicate with the client. Before passing team data back to the client, GetTeamData() grabs the client’s session ID and checks if it already exists in the _ClientCallbacks dictionary object used to track clients wanting callbacks from the server. If the client doesn’t exist it adds it into the collection. It then pushes team data from the Game class back to the client by calling ReceiveTeamData().  Since the service simulates a basketball game, a timer is then started if it’s not already enabled which is then used to randomly send data to the client. When the timer fires, game data is pushed down to the client. Listing 5 shows the _Timer_Elapsed() method that is called when the timer fires as well as the SendGameData() method used to send data to the client. void _Timer_Elapsed(object sender, ElapsedEventArgs e) { int interval = _Random.Next(3000, 7000); lock (_Key) { _Timer.Interval = interval; _Timer.Enabled = false; } SendGameData(_Game.GetGameData()); } private void SendGameData(GameData gameData) { var cbs = _ClientCallbacks.Where(cb => ((IContextChannel)cb.Value).State == CommunicationState.Opened); for (int i = 0; i < cbs.Count(); i++) { var cb = cbs.ElementAt(i).Value; try { cb.BeginReceiveGameData(gameData, _ReceiveGameDataCompleted, cb); } catch (TimeoutException texp) { //Log timeout error } catch (CommunicationException cexp) { //Log communication error } } lock (_Key) _Timer.Enabled = true; } private static void ReceiveGameDataCompleted(IAsyncResult result) { try { ((IGameStreamClient)(result.AsyncState)).EndReceiveGameData(result); } catch (CommunicationException) { // empty } catch (TimeoutException) { // empty } } LIsting 5. _Timer_Elapsed is used to simulate time in a basketball game. When _Timer_Elapsed() fires the SendGameData() method is called which iterates through the clients wanting to be notified of changes. As each client is identified, their respective BeginReceiveGameData() method is called which ultimately pushes game data down to the client. Recall that this method was defined in the client callback interface named IGameStreamClient shown earlier in Listing 2. Notice that BeginReceiveGameData() accepts _ReceiveGameDataCompleted as its second parameter (an AsyncCallback delegate defined in the service class) and passes the client callback as the third parameter. The initial version of the sample application had a standard ReceiveGameData() method in the client callback interface. However, sometimes the client callbacks would work properly and sometimes they wouldn’t which was a little baffling at first glance. After some investigation I realized that I needed to implement an asynchronous pattern for client callbacks to work properly since 3 – 7 second delays are occurring as a result of the timer. Once I added the BeginReceiveGameData() and ReceiveGameDataCompleted() methods everything worked properly since each call was handled in an asynchronous manner. The final task that had to be completed to get the server working properly with HTTP Polling Duplex was adding configuration code into web.config. In the interest of brevity I won’t post all of the code here since the sample application includes everything you need. However, Listing 6 shows the key configuration code to handle creating a custom binding named pollingDuplexBinding and associate it with the service’s endpoint.   <bindings> <customBinding> <binding name="pollingDuplexBinding"> <binaryMessageEncoding /> <pollingDuplex maxPendingSessions="2147483647" maxPendingMessagesPerSession="2147483647" inactivityTimeout="02:00:00" serverPollTimeout="00:05:00"/> <httpTransport /> </binding> </customBinding> </bindings> <services> <service name="GameService.GameStreamService" behaviorConfiguration="GameStreamServiceBehavior"> <endpoint address="" binding="customBinding" bindingConfiguration="pollingDuplexBinding" contract="GameService.IGameStreamService"/> <endpoint address="mex" binding="mexHttpBinding" contract="IMetadataExchange" /> </service> </services>   Listing 6. Configuring an HTTP Polling Duplex binding in web.config and associating an endpoint with it. Calling the Service and Receiving “Pushed” Data Calling the service and handling data that is pushed from the server is a simple and straightforward process in Silverlight. Since the service is configured with a MEX endpoint and exposes a WSDL file, you can right-click on the Silverlight project and select the standard Add Service Reference item. After the web service proxy is created you may notice that the ServiceReferences.ClientConfig file only contains an empty configuration element instead of the normal configuration elements created when creating a standard WCF proxy. You can certainly update the file if you want to read from it at runtime but for the sample application I fed the service URI directly to the service proxy as shown next: var address = new EndpointAddress("http://localhost.:5661/GameStreamService.svc"); var binding = new PollingDuplexHttpBinding(); _Proxy = new GameStreamServiceClient(binding, address); _Proxy.ReceiveTeamDataReceived += _Proxy_ReceiveTeamDataReceived; _Proxy.ReceiveGameDataReceived += _Proxy_ReceiveGameDataReceived; _Proxy.GetTeamDataAsync(); This code creates the proxy and passes the endpoint address and binding to use to its constructor. It then wires the different receive events to callback methods and calls GetTeamDataAsync().  Calling GetTeamDataAsync() causes the server to store the client in the server-side dictionary collection mentioned earlier so that it can receive data that is pushed.  As the server-side timer fires and game data is pushed to the client, the user interface is updated as shown in Listing 7. Listing 8 shows the _Proxy_ReceiveGameDataReceived() method responsible for handling the data and calling UpdateGameData() to process it.   Listing 7. The Silverlight interface. Game data is pushed from the server to the client using HTTP Polling Duplex. void _Proxy_ReceiveGameDataReceived(object sender, ReceiveGameDataReceivedEventArgs e) { UpdateGameData(e.gameData); } private void UpdateGameData(GameData gameData) { //Update Score this.tbTeam1Score.Text = gameData.Team1Score.ToString(); this.tbTeam2Score.Text = gameData.Team2Score.ToString(); //Update ball visibility if (gameData.Action != ActionsEnum.Foul) { if (tbTeam1.Text == gameData.TeamOnOffense) { AnimateBall(this.BB1, this.BB2); } else //Team 2 { AnimateBall(this.BB2, this.BB1); } } if (this.lbActions.Items.Count > 9) this.lbActions.Items.Clear(); this.lbActions.Items.Add(gameData.LastAction); if (this.lbActions.Visibility == Visibility.Collapsed) this.lbActions.Visibility = Visibility.Visible; } private void AnimateBall(Image onBall, Image offBall) { this.FadeIn.Stop(); Storyboard.SetTarget(this.FadeInAnimation, onBall); Storyboard.SetTarget(this.FadeOutAnimation, offBall); this.FadeIn.Begin(); } Listing 8. As the server pushes game data, the client’s _Proxy_ReceiveGameDataReceived() method is called to process the data. In a real-life application I’d go with a ViewModel class to handle retrieving team data, setup data bindings and handle data that is pushed from the server. However, for the sample application I wanted to focus on HTTP Polling Duplex and keep things as simple as possible.   Summary Silverlight supports three options when duplex communication is required in an application including TCP bindins, sockets and HTTP Polling Duplex. In this post you’ve seen how HTTP Polling Duplex interfaces can be created and implemented on the server as well as how they can be consumed by a Silverlight client. HTTP Polling Duplex provides a nice way to “push” data from a server while still allowing the data to flow over port 80 or another port of your choice.   Sample Application Download

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• Why is iTunes starting and stopping play randomly, and how do I stop it?

  - by Chris R

  Since yesterday morning my copy of iTunes has been starting and stopping randomly. If iTunes is not running, then it opens and sometimes begins playing, other times sits idle. Eventually, after a random interval it will begin playing a song, and then stop, and so on... Needless to say, it's driving me mad. (Mac OSX, 10.6.3, on a new-ish (< 1 year old) 24" iMac) I've made five changes to my system that may or may not be connected to this: My office phone was replaced with a Linksys IP Phone, which necessitated a change to my networking; where previously my Mac was connected directly to the office network port, now it is connected through the phone. My network connection now uses auto link detection in lieu of forcing 100Mbit I unpaired my bluetooth headset. I removed the USB audio device associated with another headset. I upgraded to Safari 5. I don't use it as a primary browser, but it's often open to run web apps that I'm developing. All of these things happened in pretty close proximity to each other, so one or more of them may be the culprit. One other thing that may or may not be related; for some reason my built-in microphone is no longer picking up audio. It seems like this might be connected to the iTunes issue, because it happened around the same time. In terms of things that I've tried in order to solve this, I'm at a bit of a loss. I followed the instructions at http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/technotes/tn2004/tn2124.html#SECLAUNCHDLOGGING to enable detailed launchd logging to see if I could track down which process was asking iTunes to open (when it's not already open) but I wasn't able to make heads or tails of the output. I'm not even sure if I'm looking in the right place, to be honest; it actually acts like something is activating the application with AppleScript, but I have no processes running that are doing that, as far as I know. I'm running a few apps that have iTunes integration: Adium, iChat with Chax, Quicksilver. None of these have been changed lately, so I consider them low risks of causing this, but it's not impossible. Moreover, I'm not using any of those features intentionally. This is a snippet of launchd debug logging from around the time it just launched: 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] Dispatching kevent... 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] KEVENT[0]: udata = 0x10002b230 data = 0x30 ident = 5 filter = EVFILT_READ flags = EV_ADD|EV_RECEIPT fflags = 0x0 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] Dispatching kevent... 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] KEVENT[0]: udata = 0x100802000 data = 0x0 ident = 26 filter = EVFILT_PROC flags = EV_ADD|EV_RECEIPT|EV_CLEAR fflags = NOTE_FORK 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.coreservicesd[26]) Dispatching kevent callback. 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.coreservicesd[26]) EVFILT_PROC event for job: 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] KEVENT[0]: udata = 0x1004076f0 data = 0x0 ident = 26 filter = EVFILT_PROC flags = EV_ADD|EV_RECEIPT|EV_CLEAR fflags = NOTE_FORK 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.coreservicesd[26]) fork()ed 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave) Conceived 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22197]) Created PID 22197 anonymously by PPID 26 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22197]) Looking up per user launchd for UID: 0 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22197]) Per user launchd job found for UID: 505 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.system.notification_center 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.system.notification_center 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22197]) Looking up per user launchd for UID: 0 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22197]) Per user launchd job found for UID: 505 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.system.DirectoryService.libinfo_v1 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.system.DirectoryService.libinfo_v1 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22197]) Looking up per user launchd for UID: 0 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22197]) Per user launchd job found for UID: 505 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.system.DirectoryService.membership_v1 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.system.DirectoryService.membership_v1 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22197]) Looking up per user launchd for UID: 0 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22197]) Per user launchd job found for UID: 505 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.CoreServices.coreservicesd 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.CoreServices.coreservicesd 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] Dispatching kevent... 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] KEVENT[0]: udata = 0x100802000 data = 0x0 ident = 22197 filter = EVFILT_PROC flags = EV_ADD|EV_RECEIPT|EV_CLEAR fflags = NOTE_EXIT 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22197]) Dispatching kevent callback. 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22197]) EVFILT_PROC event for job: 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] KEVENT[0]: udata = 0x100401720 data = 0x0 ident = 22197 filter = EVFILT_PROC flags = EV_ADD|EV_RECEIPT|EV_CLEAR fflags = NOTE_EXIT 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22197]) Reaping 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave) Total rusage: utime 0.000000 stime 0.000000 maxrss 0 ixrss 0 idrss 0 isrss 0 minflt 0 majflt 0 nswap 0 inblock 0 oublock 0 msgsnd 0 msgrcv 0 nsignals 0 nvcsw 0 nivcsw 0 10-06-09 9:14:29 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave) Removed 10-06-09 9:14:30 AM com.apple.launchd[1] Dispatching kevent... 10-06-09 9:14:30 AM com.apple.launchd[1] KEVENT[0]: udata = 0x100802000 data = 0x0 ident = 22197 filter = EVFILT_PROC flags = EV_ADD|EV_RECEIPT|EV_CLEAR|EV_EOF|EV_ONESHOT fflags = NOTE_REAP 10-06-09 9:14:32 AM com.apple.launchd[1] Dispatching kevent... 10-06-09 9:14:32 AM com.apple.launchd[1] KEVENT[0]: udata = 0x10002b230 data = 0x30 ident = 5 filter = EVFILT_READ flags = EV_ADD|EV_RECEIPT fflags = 0x0 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] Dispatching kevent... 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] KEVENT[0]: udata = 0x100802000 data = 0x0 ident = 143 filter = EVFILT_PROC flags = EV_ADD|EV_RECEIPT|EV_CLEAR fflags = NOTE_FORK 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Dispatching kevent callback. 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) EVFILT_PROC event for job: 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] KEVENT[0]: udata = 0x10041e9a0 data = 0x0 ident = 143 filter = EVFILT_PROC flags = EV_ADD|EV_RECEIPT|EV_CLEAR fflags = NOTE_FORK 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) fork()ed 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.distributed_notifications.2 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.distributed_notifications.2 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.system.notification_center 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.system.notification_center 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.system.DirectoryService.libinfo_v1 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.system.DirectoryService.libinfo_v1 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.system.DirectoryService.membership_v1 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.system.DirectoryService.membership_v1 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.CoreServices.coreservicesd 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.CoreServices.coreservicesd 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.SystemConfiguration.configd 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.SystemConfiguration.configd 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.audio.coreaudiod 10-06-09 9:14:33 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.audio.coreaudiod 10-06-09 9:14:34 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.system.logger 10-06-09 9:14:34 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.system.logger 10-06-09 9:14:35 AM com.apple.launchd[1] Dispatching kevent... 10-06-09 9:14:35 AM com.apple.launchd[1] KEVENT[0]: udata = 0x10002b230 data = 0x30 ident = 5 filter = EVFILT_READ flags = EV_ADD|EV_RECEIPT fflags = 0x0 10-06-09 9:14:35 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.DiskArbitration.diskarbitrationd 10-06-09 9:14:35 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.DiskArbitration.diskarbitrationd 10-06-09 9:14:35 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.system.logger 10-06-09 9:14:35 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.system.logger 10-06-09 9:14:36 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.FSEvents 10-06-09 9:14:36 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.FSEvents 10-06-09 9:14:36 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.SystemConfiguration.configd 10-06-09 9:14:36 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.SystemConfiguration.configd 10-06-09 9:14:38 AM com.apple.launchd[1] Dispatching kevent... 10-06-09 9:14:38 AM com.apple.launchd[1] KEVENT[0]: udata = 0x10002b230 data = 0x30 ident = 5 filter = EVFILT_READ flags = EV_ADD|EV_RECEIPT fflags = 0x0 10-06-09 9:14:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] Dispatching kevent... 10-06-09 9:14:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] KEVENT[0]: udata = 0x100802000 data = 0x0 ident = 26 filter = EVFILT_PROC flags = EV_ADD|EV_RECEIPT|EV_CLEAR fflags = NOTE_FORK 10-06-09 9:14:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.coreservicesd[26]) Dispatching kevent callback. 10-06-09 9:14:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.coreservicesd[26]) EVFILT_PROC event for job: 10-06-09 9:14:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] KEVENT[0]: udata = 0x1004076f0 data = 0x0 ident = 26 filter = EVFILT_PROC flags = EV_ADD|EV_RECEIPT|EV_CLEAR fflags = NOTE_FORK 10-06-09 9:14:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.coreservicesd[26]) fork()ed 10-06-09 9:14:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave) Conceived 10-06-09 9:14:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22211]) Created PID 22211 anonymously by PPID 26 10-06-09 9:14:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22211]) Looking up per user launchd for UID: 0 10-06-09 9:14:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22211]) Per user launchd job found for UID: 505 10-06-09 9:14:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.system.notification_center 10-06-09 9:14:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.505[143]) Mach service lookup: com.apple.system.notification_center 10-06-09 9:14:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22211]) Looking up per user launchd for UID: 0 10-06-09 9:14:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x100401720.anonymous.lssave[22211]) Per user launchd job found for UID: 505 10-06-09 9:14:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] System: Looking up service com.apple.system.DirectoryService.libinfo_v1

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• (PHP) Validation, Security and Speed - Does my app have these?

  - by Devner

  Hi all, I am currently working on a building community website in PHP. This contains forms that a user can fill right from registration to lot of other functionality. I am not an Object-oriented guy, so I am using functions most of the time to handle my application. I know I have to learn OOPS, but currently need to develop this website and get it running soon. Anyway, here's a sample of what I let my app. do: Consider a page (register.php) that has a form where a user has 3 fields to fill up, say: First Name, Last Name and Email. Upon submission of this form, I want to validate the form and show the corresponding errors to the users: <form id="form1" name="form1" method="post" action="<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>"> <label for="name">Name:</label> <input type="text" name="name" id="name" /><br /> <label for="lname">Last Name:</label> <input type="text" name="lname" id="lname" /><br /> <label for="email">Email:</label> <input type="text" name="email" id="email" /><br /> <input type="submit" name="submit" id="submit" value="Submit" /> </form> This form will POST the info to the same page. So here's the code that will process the POST'ed info: <?php require("functions.php"); if( isset($_POST['submit']) ) { $errors = fn_register(); if( count($errors) ) { //Show error messages } else { //Send welcome mail to the user or do database stuff... } } ?> <?php //functions.php page: function sql_quote( $value ) { if( get_magic_quotes_gpc() ) { $value = stripslashes( $value ); } else { $value = addslashes( $value ); } if( function_exists( "mysql_real_escape_string" ) ) { $value = mysql_real_escape_string( $value ); } return $value; } function clean($str) { $str = strip_tags($str, '<br>,<br />'); $str = trim($str); $str = sql_quote($str); return $str; } foreach ($_POST as &$value) { if (!is_array($value)) { $value = clean($value); } else { clean($value); } } foreach ($_GET as &$value) { if (!is_array($value)) { $value = clean($value); } else { clean($value); } } function validate_name( $fld, $min, $max, $rule, $label ) { if( $rule == 'required' ) { if ( trim($fld) == '' ) { $str = "$label: Cannot be left blank."; return $str; } } if ( isset($fld) && trim($fld) != '' ) { if ( isset($fld) && $fld != '' && !preg_match("/^[a-zA-Z\ ]+$/", $fld)) { $str = "$label: Invalid characters used! Only Lowercase, Uppercase alphabets and Spaces are allowed"; } else if ( strlen($fld) < $min or strlen($fld) > $max ) { $curr_char = strlen($fld); $str = "$label: Must be atleast $min character &amp; less than $max char. Entered characters: $curr_char"; } else { $str = 0; } } else { $str = 0; } return $str; } function validate_email( $fld, $min, $max, $rule, $label ) { if( $rule == 'required' ) { if ( trim($fld) == '' ) { $str = "$label: Cannot be left blank."; return $str; } } if ( isset($fld) && trim($fld) != '' ) { if ( !eregi('^[a-zA-Z0-9._-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9._-]+\.([a-zA-Z]{2,4})$', $fld) ) { $str = "$label: Invalid format. Please check."; } else if ( strlen($fld) < $min or strlen($fld) > $max ) { $curr_char = strlen($fld); $str = "$label: Must be atleast $min character &amp; less than $max char. Entered characters: $curr_char"; } else { $str = 0; } } else { $str = 0; } return $str; } function val_rules( $str, $val_type, $rule='required' ){ switch ($val_type) { case 'name': $val = validate_name( $str, 3, 20, $rule, 'First Name'); break; case 'lname': $val = validate_name( $str, 10, 20, $rule, 'Last Name'); break; case 'email': $val = validate_email( $str, 10, 60, $rule, 'Email'); break; } return $val; } function fn_register() { $errors = array(); $val_name = val_rules( $_POST['name'], 'name' ); $val_lname = val_rules( $_POST['lname'], 'lname', 'optional' ); $val_email = val_rules( $_POST['email'], 'email' ); if ( $val_name != '0' ) { $errors['name'] = $val_name; } if ( $val_lname != '0' ) { $errors['lname'] = $val_lname; } if ( $val_email != '0' ) { $errors['email'] = $val_email; } return $errors; } //END of functions.php page ?> OK, now it might look like there's a lot, but lemme break it down target wise: 1. I wanted the foreach ($_POST as &$value) and foreach ($_GET as &$value) loops to loop through the received info from the user submission and strip/remove all malicious input. I am calling a function called clean on the input first to achieve the objective as stated above. This function will process each of the input, whether individual field values or even arrays and allow only tags and remove everything else. The rest of it is obvious. Once this happens, the new/cleaned values will be processed by the fn_register() function and based on the values returned after the validation, we get the corresponding errors or NULL values (as applicable). So here's my questions: 1. This pretty much makes me feel secure as I am forcing the user to correct malicious data and won't process the final data unless the errors are corrected. Am I correct? Does the method that I follow guarantee the speed (as I am using lots of functions and their corresponding calls)? The fields of a form differ and the minimum number of fields I may have at any given point of time in any form may be 3 and can go upto as high as 100 (or even more, I am not sure as the website is still being developed). Will having 100's of fields and their validation in the above way, reduce the speed of application (say upto half a million users are accessing the website at the same time?). What can I do to improve the speed and reduce function calls (if possible)? 3, Can I do something to improve the current ways of validation? I am holding off object oriented approach and using FILTERS in PHP for the later. So please, I request you all to suggest me way to improve/tweak the current ways and suggest me if the script is vulnerable or safe enough to be used in a Live production environment. If not, what I can do to be able to use it live? Thank you all in advance.

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• Cisco Unifed Communication integration for Microsoft Lync crashes on Remote Desktop services 2008 R2!

  - by user66267

  Hi everybody i have deployed office communication server 2007 R2 and communicator 2007 R2 and i made integration with Cisco Unified Communication Manager 7.1 in my network, i also uses Remote Desktop Servers 2008 R2 for Thin Client Computers, now that i installed Cisco UC integration client for communicator 2007 R2 (Ver. 8.0.3) or Cisco UC integration client for Microsoft Lync that works fine on PCs but Not on Remote Desktop Servers. i have Three Remote Desktop Servers in a Farm with loadbalancing enabled. all other applications on these RDP servers works fine for 120 active users. some times when i start Cisco UC client on Remote Desktop servers i get the following error "The Port Reguired for callbacks from Cisco unified client framework could not be read, please retry" i also found the folowing log so i think that may be the cause: 2011-01-05 08:24:21,489 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.SingleInstanceManager] [SingleInstanceManager.acquireMutex(0)] - Acquiring Mutex... 2011-01-05 08:24:21,512 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.IPC.PipeServer] [PipeServer.start(0)] - Starting Pipe Server 2011-01-05 08:24:21,516 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.SingleInstanceManager] [SingleInstanceManager.acquireMutex(0)] - Mutex Acquired... 2011-01-05 08:24:25,437 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.process.ProcessUtil] [ProcessUtil.isOtherPRTProcessRunning(0)] - No other instance(s) of ProblemReportingTool.exe found 2011-01-05 08:24:25,438 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.Controller] [Controller.Main(0)] - ******************************* 2011-01-05 08:24:25,439 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.Controller] [Controller.Main(0)] - **Launching CUCSF Problem Reporting Tool v0.8.3.2** 2011-01-05 08:24:25,440 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.Controller] [Controller.Main(0)] - ******************************* 2011-01-05 08:24:25,441 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.Controller] [Controller.Main(0)] - Raw input: -reason=Launched by the user from CUCIMOC ver 8.5.105.17095 -file=C:\Users\MA899~1.SAD\AppData\Local\Temp\36\CUCIMOCInstaller.txt 2011-01-05 08:24:25,445 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.Controller] [Controller.Main(0)] - Current culture: English (United States) 2011-01-05 08:24:25,448 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.init(0)] - Loading string resources from file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,455 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.context.CLIUtil] [CLIUtil.parse(0)] - Argument -reason Launched by the user from CUCIMOC ver 8.5.105.17095 received 2011-01-05 08:24:25,456 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.context.CLIUtil] [CLIUtil.parse(0)] - Argument -file C:\Users\MA899~1.SAD\AppData\Local\Temp\36\CUCIMOCInstaller.txt received 2011-01-05 08:24:25,457 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.Controller] [Controller.startup(0)] - Launching GUI... 2011-01-05 08:24:25,536 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PROG.PleaseWaitText from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,545 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.OKButtonText from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,548 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.CancelButtonText from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,549 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.ErrorMsgText1 from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,549 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.Title from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,552 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.WindowTitle from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,553 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.AgreeText from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,553 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.PrivacyText from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,554 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.PrivacyTitle from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,555 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.PrivacyLinkText from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,555 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.DescriptionTitle from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,629 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.SysInfoManager] [SysInfoManager..ctor(0)] - Starting SysInfoManager... 2011-01-05 08:24:25,634 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.WindowsUtilsInfo] [WindowsUtilsInfo.startWindowsUtilsThreads(0)] - Launching worker thread: systeminfo.exe 2011-01-05 08:24:25,669 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.WindowsUtilsInfo] [WindowsUtilsInfo.startWindowsUtilsThreads(0)] - Launching worker thread: tasklist.exe 2011-01-05 08:24:25,672 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.WindowsUtilsInfo] [WindowsUtilsInfo.startWindowsUtilsThreads(0)] - Launching worker thread: ipconfig.exe 2011-01-05 08:24:25,676 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.WindowsUtilsInfo] [WindowsUtilsInfo.startWindowsUtilsThreads(0)] - Launching worker thread: netstat.exe 2011-01-05 08:24:25,684 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.WindowsUtilsInfo] [WindowsUtilsInfo.startWindowsUtilsThreads(0)] - Launching worker thread: net.exe 2011-01-05 08:24:25,926 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.SysInfoManager] [SysInfoManager.launchHardwareInfoThread(0)] - Launching worker thread: HardwareInfo 2011-01-05 08:24:25,928 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.CSFDirectoryInfo] [HardwareInfo.getHardWareInfo(0)] - Gathering CPU data 2011-01-05 08:24:26,149 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.SysInfoManager] [SysInfoManager.launchCSFDirectoryInfoThread(0)] - Gathering CSF Directory Listing 2011-01-05 08:24:26,153 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.CSFDirectoryInfo] [CSFDirectoryInfo.getCSFInstallPath(0)] - Retrieving CSF Install Directory 2011-01-05 08:24:26,159 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.CSFDirectoryInfo] [CSFDirectoryInfo.getCSFInstallPath(0)] - CSF Install Path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Cisco Systems\Client Services Framework 2011-01-05 08:24:26,162 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.SysInfoManager] [SysInfoManager.launchWMIInfoThread(0)] - Launching worker thread: WMIInfo 2011-01-05 08:24:26,164 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.CSFDirectoryInfo] [HardwareInfo.getWMIInfo(0)] - Gathering Audio info... 2011-01-05 08:24:26,168 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.SysInfoManager] [SysInfoManager.launchRegistryAndEnvironmentalVarInfoThread(0)] - Launching worker thread: Registry & Environment Variables 2011-01-05 08:24:26,173 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.generateRegString(0)] - Gathering Registry data under: Software\Cisco Systems, Inc.\Client Services Framework\AdminData\ 2011-01-05 08:24:26,180 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.generateRegString(0)] - Gathering Registry data under: Software\Policies\Cisco Systems, Inc.\Client Services Framework\AdminData\ 2011-01-05 08:24:26,182 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.generateRegString(0)] - Gathering Registry data under: Software\Cisco Systems, Inc.\Unified Communications\CUCSF 2011-01-05 08:24:26,183 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.generateRegString(0)] - Gathering Registry data under: Software\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment 2011-01-05 08:24:26,184 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.generateRegString(0)] - Gathering Registry data under: Software\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment\1.6 2011-01-05 08:24:26,186 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.generateRegString(0)] - Gathering Registry data under: Software\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment\1.6.0_17 2011-01-05 08:24:26,188 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.generateRegString(0)] - Gathering Registry data under: Software\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment\1.6.0_17\MSI 2011-01-05 08:24:26,190 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.gatherRegistryAndEnvInfo(0)] - Gathering Environment Variables data 2011-01-05 08:24:26,283 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.CSFDirectoryInfo] [HardwareInfo.getWMIInfo(0)] - Gathering Video driver info... 2011-01-05 08:24:26,750 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.SysInfoManager] [SysInfoManager.writeFile(0)] - Creating file: DirectoryInfo.txt 2011-01-05 08:24:26,759 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.CSFDirectoryInfo] [HardwareInfo.getWMIInfo(0)] - Gathering Monitor info... 2011-01-05 08:24:34,483 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.gatherFiles(0)] - Config Dir C:\Users\m.sadeghi\AppData\Roaming\Cisco\Unified Communications\ 2011-01-05 08:24:34,530 [WARN ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.addFile(0)] - C:\Users\MA899~1.SAD\AppData\Local\Temp\36\CUCIMOCInstaller.txt not found 2011-01-05 08:24:34,561 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.addSystemInfo(0)] - Waiting for worker threads... 2011-01-05 08:24:38,180 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.CSFDirectoryInfo] [HardwareInfo.getHardWareInfo(0)] - Gathering Resolution data 2011-01-05 08:24:55,565 [ERROR] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.addSystemInfo(0)] - One or more worker threads have not returned in a timely manner. Forcing quit. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,568 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.SysInfoManager] [SysInfoManager.writeFile(0)] - Creating file: SystemInfo.txt 2011-01-05 08:24:55,577 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Checking for files to be excluded 2011-01-05 08:24:55,578 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Excluding: d11bfd8f-9745-41db-a35b-200389e65583.dat 2011-01-05 08:24:55,579 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Excluding: cacerts 2011-01-05 08:24:55,580 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Excluding: Voicemail.2639.20110103081119+0330.wav 2011-01-05 08:24:55,581 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Excluding: Voicemail.farhad.20101224165510+0330.wav 2011-01-05 08:24:55,581 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Excluding: Voicemail.postmaster.20101224165906+0330.wav 2011-01-05 08:24:55,582 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Excluding: VoicemailBeep.wav 2011-01-05 08:24:55,583 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Excluding: secModeNone 2011-01-05 08:24:55,586 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Preparing to create zip file... 2011-01-05 08:24:55,588 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - 60 files found 2011-01-05 08:24:55,589 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying .CSFExit.loc to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,595 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CSF.loc to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,597 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CsfAddress.dat to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,600 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CSFLogSetting.dat to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,634 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CSFSecurityKey.dat to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,637 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CommunicationHistory.xml to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,641 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying MehdiSadeghi.cnf.xml to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,751 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying jtapi.jar to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,812 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi.index to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,820 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi01.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,887 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi02.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,968 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi03.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,972 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi04.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,008 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi05.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,038 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi06.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,079 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi07.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,100 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi08.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,140 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi09.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,215 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi10.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,296 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying Core.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,319 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying Core.log.1 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,498 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying Core.log.2 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,708 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying Core.log.3 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,912 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying Core.log.4 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,105 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying Core.log.5 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,292 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying Core.log.6 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,505 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying tracker.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,523 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying VideoEngineEncryptedTrace.txt to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,542 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying VoiceEngineDebugTrace.txt to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,545 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying VoiceEngineTrace.txt to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,548 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying operationreport.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,551 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying voicemailbox.dat to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,554 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying voicemailfolder.dat to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,558 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying UIPrefs.xml to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,562 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,569 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log.1 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,752 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log.10 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:58,099 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log.2 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:58,302 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log.3 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:58,517 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log.4 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:58,697 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log.5 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:58,899 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log.6 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,100 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log.7 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,303 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log.8 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,500 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log.9 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,895 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying Cisco.ClickToCall.Common.Core.dll.config to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,915 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying ClickToCall.pref to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,918 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoClickToCall.dll.config to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,928 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoClickToCallContacts.dll.config to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,948 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoPersonName.dll.config to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,980 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying userData.properties to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,988 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying userData.properties.backup to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,990 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying cisco-uc-client.log4net.config to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,994 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying cisco-uc-tab.log4net.config to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:25:00,011 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying LocalSettings.xml to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:25:00,025 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying Description.txt to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:25:00,028 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying LaunchInfo.txt to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:25:00,031 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying DirectoryInfo.txt to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:25:00,034 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying SystemInfo.txt to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:25:00,036 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying csf-prt.log to temp folder.

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• Cisco Unified Communication integration for Microsoft Lync crashes on Remote Desktop services 2008 R2!

  - by user66267

  Hi everybody i have deployed office communication server 2007 R2 and communicator 2007 R2 and i made integration with Cisco Unified Communication Manager 7.1 in my network, i also use Remote Desktop Servers 2008 R2 for Thin Client Computers, now that i installed Cisco UC integration client for communicator 2007 R2 (Ver. 8.0.3) or Cisco UC integration client for Microsoft Lync that works fine on PCs but Not on Remote Desktop Servers. i have Three Remote Desktop Servers in a Farm with loadbalancing enabled. all other applications on these RDP servers works fine for 120 active users. some times when i start Cisco UC client on Remote Desktop servers i get the following error: "The Port Reguired for callbacks from Cisco unified client framework could not be read, please retry" i also found the folowing log so i think that may be the cause: 2011-01-05 08:24:21,489 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.SingleInstanceManager] [SingleInstanceManager.acquireMutex(0)] - Acquiring Mutex... 2011-01-05 08:24:21,512 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.IPC.PipeServer] [PipeServer.start(0)] - Starting Pipe Server 2011-01-05 08:24:21,516 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.SingleInstanceManager] [SingleInstanceManager.acquireMutex(0)] - Mutex Acquired... 2011-01-05 08:24:25,437 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.process.ProcessUtil] [ProcessUtil.isOtherPRTProcessRunning(0)] - No other instance(s) of ProblemReportingTool.exe found 2011-01-05 08:24:25,438 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.Controller] [Controller.Main(0)] - ******************************* 2011-01-05 08:24:25,439 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.Controller] [Controller.Main(0)] - **Launching CUCSF Problem Reporting Tool v0.8.3.2** 2011-01-05 08:24:25,440 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.Controller] [Controller.Main(0)] - ******************************* 2011-01-05 08:24:25,441 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.Controller] [Controller.Main(0)] - Raw input: -reason=Launched by the user from CUCIMOC ver 8.5.105.17095 -file=C:\Users\MA899~1.SAD\AppData\Local\Temp\36\CUCIMOCInstaller.txt 2011-01-05 08:24:25,445 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.Controller] [Controller.Main(0)] - Current culture: English (United States) 2011-01-05 08:24:25,448 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.init(0)] - Loading string resources from file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,455 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.context.CLIUtil] [CLIUtil.parse(0)] - Argument -reason Launched by the user from CUCIMOC ver 8.5.105.17095 received 2011-01-05 08:24:25,456 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.context.CLIUtil] [CLIUtil.parse(0)] - Argument -file C:\Users\MA899~1.SAD\AppData\Local\Temp\36\CUCIMOCInstaller.txt received 2011-01-05 08:24:25,457 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.Controller] [Controller.startup(0)] - Launching GUI... 2011-01-05 08:24:25,536 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PROG.PleaseWaitText from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,545 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.OKButtonText from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,548 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.CancelButtonText from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,549 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.ErrorMsgText1 from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,549 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.Title from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,552 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.WindowTitle from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,553 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.AgreeText from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,553 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.PrivacyText from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,554 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.PrivacyTitle from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,555 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.PrivacyLinkText from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,555 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.DescriptionTitle from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,629 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.SysInfoManager] [SysInfoManager..ctor(0)] - Starting SysInfoManager... 2011-01-05 08:24:25,634 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.WindowsUtilsInfo] [WindowsUtilsInfo.startWindowsUtilsThreads(0)] - Launching worker thread: systeminfo.exe 2011-01-05 08:24:25,669 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.WindowsUtilsInfo] [WindowsUtilsInfo.startWindowsUtilsThreads(0)] - Launching worker thread: tasklist.exe 2011-01-05 08:24:25,672 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.WindowsUtilsInfo] [WindowsUtilsInfo.startWindowsUtilsThreads(0)] - Launching worker thread: ipconfig.exe 2011-01-05 08:24:25,676 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.WindowsUtilsInfo] [WindowsUtilsInfo.startWindowsUtilsThreads(0)] - Launching worker thread: netstat.exe 2011-01-05 08:24:25,684 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.WindowsUtilsInfo] [WindowsUtilsInfo.startWindowsUtilsThreads(0)] - Launching worker thread: net.exe 2011-01-05 08:24:25,926 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.SysInfoManager] [SysInfoManager.launchHardwareInfoThread(0)] - Launching worker thread: HardwareInfo 2011-01-05 08:24:25,928 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.CSFDirectoryInfo] [HardwareInfo.getHardWareInfo(0)] - Gathering CPU data 2011-01-05 08:24:26,149 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.SysInfoManager] [SysInfoManager.launchCSFDirectoryInfoThread(0)] - Gathering CSF Directory Listing 2011-01-05 08:24:26,153 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.CSFDirectoryInfo] [CSFDirectoryInfo.getCSFInstallPath(0)] - Retrieving CSF Install Directory 2011-01-05 08:24:26,159 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.CSFDirectoryInfo] [CSFDirectoryInfo.getCSFInstallPath(0)] - CSF Install Path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Cisco Systems\Client Services Framework 2011-01-05 08:24:26,162 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.SysInfoManager] [SysInfoManager.launchWMIInfoThread(0)] - Launching worker thread: WMIInfo 2011-01-05 08:24:26,164 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.CSFDirectoryInfo] [HardwareInfo.getWMIInfo(0)] - Gathering Audio info... 2011-01-05 08:24:26,168 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.SysInfoManager] [SysInfoManager.launchRegistryAndEnvironmentalVarInfoThread(0)] - Launching worker thread: Registry & Environment Variables 2011-01-05 08:24:26,173 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.generateRegString(0)] - Gathering Registry data under: Software\Cisco Systems, Inc.\Client Services Framework\AdminData\ 2011-01-05 08:24:26,180 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.generateRegString(0)] - Gathering Registry data under: Software\Policies\Cisco Systems, Inc.\Client Services Framework\AdminData\ 2011-01-05 08:24:26,182 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.generateRegString(0)] - Gathering Registry data under: Software\Cisco Systems, Inc.\Unified Communications\CUCSF 2011-01-05 08:24:26,183 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.generateRegString(0)] - Gathering Registry data under: Software\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment 2011-01-05 08:24:26,184 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.generateRegString(0)] - Gathering Registry data under: Software\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment\1.6 2011-01-05 08:24:26,186 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.generateRegString(0)] - Gathering Registry data under: Software\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment\1.6.0_17 2011-01-05 08:24:26,188 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.generateRegString(0)] - Gathering Registry data under: Software\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment\1.6.0_17\MSI 2011-01-05 08:24:26,190 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.gatherRegistryAndEnvInfo(0)] - Gathering Environment Variables data 2011-01-05 08:24:26,283 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.CSFDirectoryInfo] [HardwareInfo.getWMIInfo(0)] - Gathering Video driver info... 2011-01-05 08:24:26,750 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.SysInfoManager] [SysInfoManager.writeFile(0)] - Creating file: DirectoryInfo.txt 2011-01-05 08:24:26,759 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.CSFDirectoryInfo] [HardwareInfo.getWMIInfo(0)] - Gathering Monitor info... 2011-01-05 08:24:34,483 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.gatherFiles(0)] - Config Dir C:\Users\m.sadeghi\AppData\Roaming\Cisco\Unified Communications\ 2011-01-05 08:24:34,530 [WARN ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.addFile(0)] - C:\Users\MA899~1.SAD\AppData\Local\Temp\36\CUCIMOCInstaller.txt not found 2011-01-05 08:24:34,561 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.addSystemInfo(0)] - Waiting for worker threads... 2011-01-05 08:24:38,180 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.CSFDirectoryInfo] [HardwareInfo.getHardWareInfo(0)] - Gathering Resolution data 2011-01-05 08:24:55,565 [ERROR] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.addSystemInfo(0)] - One or more worker threads have not returned in a timely manner. Forcing quit. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,568 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.SysInfoManager] [SysInfoManager.writeFile(0)] - Creating file: SystemInfo.txt 2011-01-05 08:24:55,577 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Checking for files to be excluded 2011-01-05 08:24:55,578 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Excluding: d11bfd8f-9745-41db-a35b-200389e65583.dat 2011-01-05 08:24:55,579 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Excluding: cacerts 2011-01-05 08:24:55,580 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Excluding: Voicemail.2639.20110103081119+0330.wav 2011-01-05 08:24:55,581 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Excluding: Voicemail.farhad.20101224165510+0330.wav 2011-01-05 08:24:55,581 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Excluding: Voicemail.postmaster.20101224165906+0330.wav 2011-01-05 08:24:55,582 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Excluding: VoicemailBeep.wav 2011-01-05 08:24:55,583 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Excluding: secModeNone 2011-01-05 08:24:55,586 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Preparing to create zip file... 2011-01-05 08:24:55,588 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - 60 files found 2011-01-05 08:24:55,589 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying .CSFExit.loc to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,595 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CSF.loc to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,597 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CsfAddress.dat to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,600 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CSFLogSetting.dat to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,634 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CSFSecurityKey.dat to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,637 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CommunicationHistory.xml to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,641 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying MehdiSadeghi.cnf.xml to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,751 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying jtapi.jar to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,812 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi.index to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,820 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi01.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,887 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi02.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,968 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi03.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,972 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi04.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,008 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi05.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,038 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi06.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,079 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi07.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,100 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi08.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,140 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi09.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,215 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi10.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,296 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying Core.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,319 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying Core.log.1 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,498 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying Core.log.2 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,708 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying Core.log.3 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,912 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying Core.log.4 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,105 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying Core.log.5 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,292 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying Core.log.6 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,505 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying tracker.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,523 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying VideoEngineEncryptedTrace.txt to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,542 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying VoiceEngineDebugTrace.txt to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,545 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying VoiceEngineTrace.txt to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,548 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying operationreport.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,551 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying voicemailbox.dat to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,554 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying voicemailfolder.dat to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,558 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying UIPrefs.xml to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,562 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,569 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log.1 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,752 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log.10 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:58,099 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log.2 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:58,302 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log.3 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:58,517 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log.4 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:58,697 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log.5 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:58,899 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log.6 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,100 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log.7 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,303 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log.8 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,500 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log.9 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,895 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying Cisco.ClickToCall.Common.Core.dll.config to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,915 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying ClickToCall.pref to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,918 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoClickToCall.dll.config to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,928 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoClickToCallContacts.dll.config to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,948 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoPersonName.dll.config to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,980 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying userData.properties to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,988 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying userData.properties.backup to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,990 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying cisco-uc-client.log4net.config to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,994 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying cisco-uc-tab.log4net.config to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:25:00,011 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying LocalSettings.xml to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:25:00,025 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying Description.txt to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:25:00,028 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying LaunchInfo.txt to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:25:00,031 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying DirectoryInfo.txt to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:25:00,034 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying SystemInfo.txt to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:25:00,036 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying csf-prt.log to temp folder.

  Read the article

• App using MonoTouch Core Graphics mysteriously crashes

  - by Stephen Ashley

  My app launches with a view controller and a simple view consisting of a button and a subview. When the user touches the button, the subview is populated with scrollviews that display the column headers, row headers, and cells of a spreadsheet. To draw the cells, I use CGBitmapContext to draw the cells, generate an image, and then put the image into the imageview contained in the scrollview that displays the cells. When I run the app on the iPad, it displays the cells just fine, and the scrollview lets the user scroll around in the spreadsheet without any problems. If the user touches the button a second time, the spreadsheet redraws and continues to work perfectly, If, however, the user touches the button a third time, the app crashes. There is no exception information display in the Application Output window. My first thought was that the successive button pushes were using up all the available memory, so I overrode the DidReceiveMemoryWarning method in the view controller and used a breakpoint to confirm that this method was not getting called. My next thought was that the CGBitmapContext was not getting released and looked for a Monotouch equivalent of Objective C's CGContextRelease() function. The closest I could find was the CGBitmapContext instance method Dispose(), which I called, without solving the problem. In order to free up as much memory as possible (in case I was somehow running out of memory without tripping a warning), I tried forcing garbage collection each time I finished using a CGBitmapContext. This made the problem worse. Now the program would crash moments after displaying the spreadsheet the first time. This caused me to wonder whether the Garbage Collector was somehow collecting something necessary to the continued display of graphics on the screen. I would be grateful for any suggestions on further avenues to investigate for the cause of these crashes. I have included the source code for the SpreadsheetView class. The relevant method is DrawSpreadsheet(), which is called when the button is touched. Thank you for your assistance on this matter. Stephen Ashley public class SpreadsheetView : UIView { public ISpreadsheetMessenger spreadsheetMessenger = null; public UIScrollView cellsScrollView = null; public UIImageView cellsImageView = null; public SpreadsheetView(RectangleF frame) : base() { Frame = frame; BackgroundColor = Constants.backgroundBlack; AutosizesSubviews = true; } public void DrawSpreadsheet() { UInt16 RowHeaderWidth = spreadsheetMessenger.RowHeaderWidth; UInt16 RowHeaderHeight = spreadsheetMessenger.RowHeaderHeight; UInt16 RowCount = spreadsheetMessenger.RowCount; UInt16 ColumnHeaderWidth = spreadsheetMessenger.ColumnHeaderWidth; UInt16 ColumnHeaderHeight = spreadsheetMessenger.ColumnHeaderHeight; UInt16 ColumnCount = spreadsheetMessenger.ColumnCount; // Add the corner UIImageView cornerView = new UIImageView(new RectangleF(0f, 0f, RowHeaderWidth, ColumnHeaderHeight)); cornerView.BackgroundColor = Constants.headingColor; CGColorSpace cornerColorSpace = null; CGBitmapContext cornerContext = null; IntPtr buffer = Marshal.AllocHGlobal(RowHeaderWidth * ColumnHeaderHeight * 4); if (buffer == IntPtr.Zero) throw new OutOfMemoryException("Out of memory."); try { cornerColorSpace = CGColorSpace.CreateDeviceRGB(); cornerContext = new CGBitmapContext (buffer, RowHeaderWidth, ColumnHeaderHeight, 8, 4 * RowHeaderWidth, cornerColorSpace, CGImageAlphaInfo.PremultipliedFirst); cornerContext.SetFillColorWithColor(Constants.headingColor.CGColor); cornerContext.FillRect(new RectangleF(0f, 0f, RowHeaderWidth, ColumnHeaderHeight)); cornerView.Image = UIImage.FromImage(cornerContext.ToImage()); } finally { Marshal.FreeHGlobal(buffer); if (cornerContext != null) { cornerContext.Dispose(); cornerContext = null; } if (cornerColorSpace != null) { cornerColorSpace.Dispose(); cornerColorSpace = null; } } cornerView.Image = DrawBottomRightCorner(cornerView.Image); AddSubview(cornerView); // Add the cellsScrollView cellsScrollView = new UIScrollView (new RectangleF(RowHeaderWidth, ColumnHeaderHeight, Frame.Width - RowHeaderWidth, Frame.Height - ColumnHeaderHeight)); cellsScrollView.ContentSize = new SizeF (ColumnCount * ColumnHeaderWidth, RowCount * RowHeaderHeight); Size iContentSize = new Size((int)cellsScrollView.ContentSize.Width, (int)cellsScrollView.ContentSize.Height); cellsScrollView.BackgroundColor = UIColor.Black; AddSubview(cellsScrollView); CGColorSpace colorSpace = null; CGBitmapContext context = null; CGGradient gradient = null; UIImage image = null; int bytesPerRow = 4 * iContentSize.Width; int byteCount = bytesPerRow * iContentSize.Height; buffer = Marshal.AllocHGlobal(byteCount); if (buffer == IntPtr.Zero) throw new OutOfMemoryException("Out of memory."); try { colorSpace = CGColorSpace.CreateDeviceRGB(); context = new CGBitmapContext (buffer, iContentSize.Width, iContentSize.Height, 8, 4 * iContentSize.Width, colorSpace, CGImageAlphaInfo.PremultipliedFirst); float[] components = new float[] {.75f, .75f, .75f, 1f, .25f, .25f, .25f, 1f}; float[] locations = new float[]{0f, 1f}; gradient = new CGGradient(colorSpace, components, locations); PointF startPoint = new PointF(0f, (float)iContentSize.Height); PointF endPoint = new PointF((float)iContentSize.Width, 0f); context.DrawLinearGradient(gradient, startPoint, endPoint, 0); context.SetLineWidth(Constants.lineWidth); context.BeginPath(); for (UInt16 i = 1; i <= RowCount; i++) { context.MoveTo (0f, iContentSize.Height - i * RowHeaderHeight + (Constants.lineWidth/2)); context.AddLineToPoint((float)iContentSize.Width, iContentSize.Height - i * RowHeaderHeight + (Constants.lineWidth/2)); } for (UInt16 j = 1; j <= ColumnCount; j++) { context.MoveTo((float)j * ColumnHeaderWidth - Constants.lineWidth/2, (float)iContentSize.Height); context.AddLineToPoint((float)j * ColumnHeaderWidth - Constants.lineWidth/2, 0f); } context.StrokePath(); image = UIImage.FromImage(context.ToImage()); } finally { Marshal.FreeHGlobal(buffer); if (gradient != null) { gradient.Dispose(); gradient = null; } if (context != null) { context.Dispose(); context = null; } if (colorSpace != null) { colorSpace.Dispose(); colorSpace = null; } // GC.Collect(); //GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers(); } UIImage finalImage = ActivateCell(1, 1, image); finalImage = ActivateCell(0, 0, finalImage); cellsImageView = new UIImageView(finalImage); cellsImageView.Frame = new RectangleF(0f, 0f, iContentSize.Width, iContentSize.Height); cellsScrollView.AddSubview(cellsImageView); } private UIImage ActivateCell(UInt16 column, UInt16 row, UIImage backgroundImage) { UInt16 ColumnHeaderWidth = (UInt16)spreadsheetMessenger.ColumnHeaderWidth; UInt16 RowHeaderHeight = (UInt16)spreadsheetMessenger.RowHeaderHeight; CGColorSpace cellColorSpace = null; CGBitmapContext cellContext = null; UIImage cellImage = null; IntPtr buffer = Marshal.AllocHGlobal(4 * ColumnHeaderWidth * RowHeaderHeight); if (buffer == IntPtr.Zero) throw new OutOfMemoryException("Out of memory: ActivateCell()"); try { cellColorSpace = CGColorSpace.CreateDeviceRGB(); // Create a bitmap the size of a cell cellContext = new CGBitmapContext (buffer, ColumnHeaderWidth, RowHeaderHeight, 8, 4 * ColumnHeaderWidth, cellColorSpace, CGImageAlphaInfo.PremultipliedFirst); // Paint it white cellContext.SetFillColorWithColor(UIColor.White.CGColor); cellContext.FillRect(new RectangleF(0f, 0f, ColumnHeaderWidth, RowHeaderHeight)); // Convert it to an image cellImage = UIImage.FromImage(cellContext.ToImage()); } finally { Marshal.FreeHGlobal(buffer); if (cellContext != null) { cellContext.Dispose(); cellContext = null; } if (cellColorSpace != null) { cellColorSpace.Dispose(); cellColorSpace = null; } // GC.Collect(); //GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers(); } // Draw the border on the cell image cellImage = DrawBottomRightCorner(cellImage); CGColorSpace colorSpace = null; CGBitmapContext context = null; Size iContentSize = new Size((int)backgroundImage.Size.Width, (int)backgroundImage.Size.Height); buffer = Marshal.AllocHGlobal(4 * iContentSize.Width * iContentSize.Height); if (buffer == IntPtr.Zero) throw new OutOfMemoryException("Out of memory: ActivateCell()."); try { colorSpace = CGColorSpace.CreateDeviceRGB(); // Set up a bitmap context the size of the whole grid context = new CGBitmapContext (buffer, iContentSize.Width, iContentSize.Height, 8, 4 * iContentSize.Width, colorSpace, CGImageAlphaInfo.PremultipliedFirst); // Draw the original grid into the bitmap context.DrawImage(new RectangleF(0f, 0f, iContentSize.Width, iContentSize.Height), backgroundImage.CGImage); // Draw the cell image into the bitmap context.DrawImage(new RectangleF(column * ColumnHeaderWidth, iContentSize.Height - (row + 1) * RowHeaderHeight, ColumnHeaderWidth, RowHeaderHeight), cellImage.CGImage); // Convert the bitmap back to an image backgroundImage = UIImage.FromImage(context.ToImage()); } finally { Marshal.FreeHGlobal(buffer); if (context != null) { context.Dispose(); context = null; } if (colorSpace != null) { colorSpace.Dispose(); colorSpace = null; } // GC.Collect(); //GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers(); } return backgroundImage; } private UIImage DrawBottomRightCorner(UIImage image) { int width = (int)image.Size.Width; int height = (int)image.Size.Height; float lineWidth = Constants.lineWidth; CGColorSpace colorSpace = null; CGBitmapContext context = null; UIImage returnImage = null; IntPtr buffer = Marshal.AllocHGlobal(4 * width * height); if (buffer == IntPtr.Zero) throw new OutOfMemoryException("Out of memory: DrawBottomRightCorner()."); try { colorSpace = CGColorSpace.CreateDeviceRGB(); context = new CGBitmapContext (buffer, width, height, 8, 4 * width, colorSpace, CGImageAlphaInfo.PremultipliedFirst); context.DrawImage(new RectangleF(0f, 0f, width, height), image.CGImage); context.BeginPath(); context.MoveTo(0f, (int)(lineWidth/2f)); context.AddLineToPoint(width - (int)(lineWidth/2f), (int)(lineWidth/2f)); context.AddLineToPoint(width - (int)(lineWidth/2f), height); context.SetLineWidth(Constants.lineWidth); context.SetStrokeColorWithColor(UIColor.Black.CGColor); context.StrokePath(); returnImage = UIImage.FromImage(context.ToImage()); } finally { Marshal.FreeHGlobal(buffer); if (context != null){ context.Dispose(); context = null;} if (colorSpace != null){ colorSpace.Dispose(); colorSpace = null;} // GC.Collect(); //GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers(); } return returnImage; } }

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• Windows CE Chat Transcript (March 30, 2010)

  - by Bruce Eitman

  For those of you who missed the chat today, here is the raw transcript.   By raw, I mean that I copied and pasted the discussion without any edits. This is divided into two parts, the top part is the answers from the Microsoft Experts and the bottom part is the questions from the audience. Answers from Microsoft:   Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:2]: Hi everyone, my name is Karel Danihelka and I am developer in partner response team. Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:2]: Hi, I'm Sing Wee, part of the CoreOS/BSP Test Team. GLanger_MS (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:2]: Hi, I'm Glen Langer, program manager on the Core Team. Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:3]: Q: I need to implement hardware timers on my windows CE 6.0 device to trigger events at microsecond intervals. Where should i start? A: Until you are using CPU with GHz frequency your only chance is use interrupt handler and implement all funcionality there. But it will be really tricky and may reduce system performance. If period will be near to millisecond timeframe you can use normal thread wait for event pattern. Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:5]: Q: I want to partition my NAND Flash device. One partition to use for hive ragistry and the other for the apps and data. The only way to do it is programmatically or setting some registry values ? A: It need to be set in registry - generally you need mark this partition as boot partition. Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:7]: Q: My CPU is Intel celeron M processor 1Ghz. A: In this case you can try use normal approach - in interrupt handler return SYSINTR and start thread in device driver which will spin thread waiting on event attached to this SYSINTR. Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:7]: Q: If i need to implement it using interrupt handlers, What are all the files that I should look at? A: Good quesiton - I would recommend documentation and there was BSP development book to download for free. mikehall_ms (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:8]: Q: Hi guys, what's the formal way to report bugs back to the core team / product team? The mechanism of calling the support phone number every time is really onerous and time-consuming. Is there another mechanism? A: Using product support is the formal way to report bugs/issues - Product support can then create an issue that can be tracked. Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:9]: Q: But the operation for creating the partitions ? A: This is tricky - if you will make it autopartition & autoformat it will be created by filesystem. But generally it depends on your boot loader. mikehall_ms (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:10]: Q: Is Windows Phone 7 related to Windows CE? If so, can you tell me what version of Windows CE is the basis? Is it in fact the new version of Windows Mobile? A: At MIX 2010 Charlie Kindel presented a session that described some of the core technologies that make up Windows Phone 7 Series, including the underlying operating system (Windows CE) and the new ISV programming model based on Silverlight and .NET - check out the Mix Online Videos to get more information. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:10]: Q: Is Windows Phone 7 related to Windows CE? If so, can you tell me what version of Windows CE is the basis? Is it in fact the new version of Windows Mobile? A: This forum is to discussed released products in the industry. Windows Mobile & Windows CE are based on the same Windows CE Kernel/system. Windows CE is focused on deliverying the OS for embedded customers in the market where Windows Mobile is focused on deliverying compelling Windows Phone platform. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:11]: Q: Is Windows Phone 7 related to Windows CE? If so, can you tell me what version of Windows CE is the basis? Is it in fact the new version of Windows Mobile? A: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_CE Wikipedia gives a good breakdown of the version history. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:13]: Q: I created a OS design with KITL and kernel debugger enabled. But I am unable to connect to the target for debugging. I am getting the following error when i try to connect with the device. PB Debugger Cannot initialize the Kernel Debugger. PB Debugger Debugger could not initialize connection. PB Debugger The Kernel Debugger is waiting to connect with target. PB Debugger The Kernel Debugger has been disconnected successfully. A: One possibility is that a rogue cesvchost.exe has co-opted the debugger. I am assuming this is CE 6.0? Can you try exiting visual studio and manually killing the cesvchost.exe process from the Task Manager? davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:14]: Q: Hi guys, what's the formal way to report bugs back to the core team / product team? The mechanism of calling the support phone number every time is really onerous and time-consuming. Is there another mechanism? A: For info on contacting Microsoft support refer to the support page on the Embedded website: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsembedded/dd897633.aspx Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:16]: Q: Do u mean ISR/IST implementation? How can i register an interrupt? What kind of interrupt should i register? A: A good introduction to interrupts in WinCE 6.0 can be found here (aside from the documentation on MSDN): http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/c/f/9cffaa58-4000-48d6-a4b2-5fed9e4e6410/Chapter%206%20-%20Developing%20Device%20Drivers.pdf mikehall_ms (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:16]: Q: What will be different in Windows Compact 7 from CE 6.0? A: Unfortunately we cannot discuss unreleased products on this chat - keep an eye on the Windows Embedded web site and blogs to keep up to date with product announcements. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:16]: Q: I am using CE 6.0. There is no cesvchost process running in my system. A: What operating system are you using? Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:16]: Q: So...I have to modify file system code to create 2 partition at system startup ?!! I haven't understood.... A: You don't need to modify code, there are registry settings to achive this (look to documentation). But you may need to create partition table in boot loader. Unfortunatelly there isn't simple way how to do it. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:18]: Q: I would like to get a handle to a Silverlight screen section, is that possiable? A: Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 includes Sliverlight for Windows Embedded. Refer to New Features overview on the embedded web site. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/en-us/products/windowsce/default.mspx. Silverlight - The power of Silverlight brought to Windows Embedded CE to create rich applications and user interfaces is new part of Windows CE Embedded. mikehall_ms (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:20]: Q: The link for developing device drivers is not working. can u please check that? A: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms923714.aspx davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:20]: Q: I would like to get a handle to a Silverlight screen section, is that possiable? A: Sorry misunderstood the question I thought you were asking if embedded CE could handle Silverlight. Please repost so that the question goes back into the active queue because once answered no way to put the status back to open. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:21]: Q: sorry! Windows XP SP3 A: Can you try exiting VS2005 and confirming cesvchost.exe is not running, then renaming C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\CoreCon\1.0 to 1.0_backup, then restarting VS2005? Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:24]: Q: Can I have the book's name please? A: I believe the downloadable version is related to the last link I sent. If you go to the following website, I believe you can download the whole thing: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsembedded/ce/cc294468.aspx davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:24]: Q: If one has an image on a Silverlight page, it seems to be cached. How would one refresh that cache after changing the underlying image? A: change the URI of the image or use a writeable bitmap if they want to manually toggle the pixels Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:25]: A: Whoops, hit [ENTER] too early. On the right side, you'll see there an "Exam Preparation Kit" link that can be downloaded in several different languages. Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:25]: Q: Can I have the book's name please? A: Whoops, hit [ENTER] too early. On the right side, you'll see there an "Exam Preparation Kit" link that can be downloaded in several different languages. Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:26]: Q: I have a NAND Flash on my target device. On this flash I have the hive registry and an application.I have observed that when the NAND flash is fully, the system startup time is longer....is there a degradation of NAND use that influences the startup time ? Why ? A: Yes - on boot flash abstraction library (old one) read metadata from all sectors to rebuild physical - logical mapping table. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:27]: Q: I would like to get a handle to a Silverlight screen section, is that possiable? A: Need addition info on this question. Can you provide more details on what you are trying to do in Silverlight? davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:27]: Q: If one has an image on a Silverlight page, it seems to be cached. How would one refresh that cache after changing the underlying image? A: Additonal Info: if you want to manually touch the pixels use WriteableBitmap if you want to use the underlying HWND then use IXRVisualHost::GetHWND() davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:28]: Q: Writable bitmap, is there an example of the syntax? A: if you want to manually touch the pixels use WriteableBitmap if you want to use the underlying HWND then use IXRVisualHost::GetHWND() davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:29]: Q: I would like to get a handle to a Silverlight screen section, is that possiable? A: Can I get more information about this question about what you are trying to accomplish in Silverlight? davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:31]: Q: IXRVisualHost::GetHWND() exactly what I needed Thanks, A: Your welcome Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:31]: Q: ok. thanks for the book's link A: No problem. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:32]: Q: Typically for SoC devices you name your hardware specific libraries in the form "SOCDIRNAME_LIBNAME". In our platform "OMAP35XX_TPS659XX_TI_V1" if you do this we cause the catalog parser to die... For example if we have a library "Musbfn_OMAP35XX_TPS659XX_TI_V1.dll" entering this in the catalogs pbcxml file in a <module> section causes the XML parser to fail with : Error 3 The 'urn:Microsoft.PlatformBuilder/Catalog:Module' element is        invalid - The value '012345678901234567890123456789.dll' is invalid         according to its datatype         'urn:Microsoft.PlatformBuilder/Catalog:CatalogFileName' - The actual         length is greater than the MaxLength value. A: There are a couple workarounds I can think of. I believe the Module element is only used when doing SYSGEN parsing to make sure dependent SYSGENs are present when the item is selected, so I believe it is optional to the catalog. The other obvious workaround is to shorten the soc name. I realize neither of these solutions is ideal. This is not something we anticipated when we tested CE6.0, sorry. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:33]: Q: I am getting this error only when I select the KdStub as the debugger in Target device connectivity. A: Right, but KdStub is the debugger that you should use. Have you tried the steps I suggested? Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:36]: Q: If I select Active KTIL, My OS doesn't boots. It says "loading NK.EXE at 0x<xxxxx> location" after that nothing comes in the debug log. A: Can you look at the serial debug output and see what is happening there? Often it can give you a clue to the KITL driver malfunctioning. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:38]: Q: I have tried that and I am getting the same error. A: I am assuming you have a device created in Target -> Connectivity Options in Platform Builder. What are the Kernel download / Kernel transport for your device? Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:40]: Q: KITL: *** Device Name CEPC56059 *** WARN: KITL will run in polling mode VBridge:: built on [Jul 10 2009] time [10:20:14] VBridgeInit()...TX = [16384] bytes -- Rx = [16384] bytes Tx buffer [0xA1B84860] to [0xA1B88860]. Rx buffer [0xA1B88880] to [0xA1B8C880]. VBridge:: NK add MAC: [0-60-65-2-DA-FB] Connecting to Desktop KITL: Connected host IP: 1 Port: 1086 .. this is the output of the serial debug A: This looks reasonable and does not give clues as to why boot would halt at that point. If you capture a network trace or turn on KITL debug zones via dpCurSettings in kitl.dll, do you see KITL active after this? Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:41]: Q: Both is happening via Ethernet. A: Only thing I have left to suggest is a Platform Builder installation Repair, then. Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:42]: Q: Hi, I saw that the ATADISK is quite generic and des not have any optimizations. Do you have any advice to consider while tryin to improve the performance of it? A: If I remember correctly sample code has support for some specific hardware controllers (little obsolete now). This should be good start point (if you will not decide take existing driver as sample and write you own). Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:44]: Q: I didn't do that. I have to try. A: I think that's the next valid step. You need to figure out whether KITL is hanging or the device - use instrumented serial debug messages and network trace to determine this. Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:46]: Q: KITL: *** Device Name CEPC56059 *** WARN: KITL will run in polling mode VBridge:: built on [Jul 10 2009] time [10:20:14] VBridgeInit()...TX = [16384] bytes -- Rx = [16384] bytes Tx buffer [0xA1B84860] to [0xA1B88860]. Rx buffer [0xA1B88880] to [0xA1B8C880]. VBridge:: NK add MAC: [0-60-65-2-DA-FB] Connecting to Desktop KITL: Connected host IP: 1 Port: 1086 .. this is the output of the serial debug A: Neo, have you by any chance tried looking into your firewall to see if it might be blocking traffic on any particular ports? Wireshark/netmon might be able to help you here if that's the issue. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:48]: Q: I lost spell check, how can i get it back A: Hello - can you give additional details about your question? Is this related to a Windows CE Embedded application? masatos_MSFT (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:51]: Q: When attempting to run the CETK cellcore tests the documentation states the pre-requisites include "stinger.ini", "ltk.ini" but windows CE doesn't provide these or document what they fully need to contain. Implicitly you also need "datatrans.xml" which isn't supplied. If you get around this error and steal these from Windows Mobile instead, when you try and run the CETK tests you get a data abort in radiometricsdll.dll. How should we invoke the cellcore parts of CETK? A: Hi Pev, what version of Windows CE and CETK are you using? I do not have the expertise to answer this question, but can find somebody who can. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:52]: Q: I don't see a kitlcore.dll in my OS. is my debug image fails to load because of that? A: kitl.dll should be all that's needed, kitlcore.lib is linked into that. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:55]: Q: I've got a platform (not developed by myself) where I2C bus support has to be provided through the OAL as the kernel needs to talk to devices such as the power management IC and gas gauge so a 'proper' I2C driver hanging off device manager isn't possible. This happens to be a polled driver, so obviously it hits the system hard when either under lots of traffic or an error condition occurs and the driver constantly polls. I originally thought that there was no straightforward way to make such code interrupt driven in the kernel (as it's a cludge) but I realised that that's exactly what ETHDBG drivers do. Is there any reason why I shouldn't have a go at implementing a similar mechanism for our kernel resident I2C driver? If not, are there any obvious pitfalls - I've not seen any other BSP's do this in the past... A: You can make a 'proper' driver that calls down into the OAL to do the actual I2C transactions. Alternatively you can build an interrupt-based version in the OAL where you handle everything in the ISR. There is nothing wrong with that so long as the rest of your drivers and app threads can handle longer times with interrupts off while you are servicing I2C interrupts. Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:55]: Q: I am having trouble with my mouse, I have the microsoft wireless mobile mouse 3000, when I push the scroll button I am suppose to have autoscroll instead it shows other web pages,Can you help me out tell me what to do!!! A: Sorry, this current chat is about Windows Embedded Compact. Hope you're able to find an answer to your question elsewhere. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:56]: Q: Is the Silverlight Animation "Spline" a BezierSpline? A: Spline - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee501495.aspx<BR< a>>   masatos_MSFT (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:57]: Thanks for the info Pev. I will follow up with the CETK experts here and get back to you. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:59]: Q: Spline- bad link A: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee501495.aspx davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 13:0]: Q: Sorry, got to tirm the ">" A: No Worries http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee501495.aspx davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 13:0]: Hello everyone, we are just about out of time. Thank you for joining us for our Windows Embedded CE 6.0 chat today! <http://www.Microsoft.com/Embedded>; A special thank you to the product group members for coming out. The transcript of today’s chat will be posted online as soon as possible, to <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats>;. We’ll see you again for another chat next month. Please check <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats>; for the list of upcoming chats. If you still have unanswered questions, let me suggest that you post them on one of our newsgroups on <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsembedded/ce/default.aspx> -Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 Now Available! <http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/ce/dd630616.aspx>; davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 13:1]: Q: hi everybody. I would like to know if there is something know about a bug in RTC API (VOIP), especially when using SIP. According the to the analysis with application verifyier there is a heap link in rtcdllmedia.dll. All of the unreleased chunks seem to have a size of 6560 bytes. A: I will follow up with the Networking Team for a response. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 13:1]: Q: Hi, we've problems with debugging of applications (= breakpoints in Platform Builder will be ignored) over KITL on Windows CE 5.0, if the PDB files are large (over 60MB). Are there any limitations to size of the PDB files? A: I will follow up with the tools team for a response and post with the transcript. Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 13:1]: Q: I am unable to use the target control in my development environment. any ideas? A: Make sure you have SYSGEN_SHELL=1 set in your build environment. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 13:3]: Q: what are the main differences between Object Store and RAM disk ? They are both in RAM...are there performance differences ? access differences ? A: I will follow up with the Core Team and get a response posted with the transcript to MSDN  The Questions   [2010-3-30 12:57]: Thanks for the info Pev. I will follow up with the CETK experts here and get back to you. [2010-3-30 12:59]:   [2010-3-30 13:0]:   [2010-3-30 13:0]: Hello everyone, we are just about out of time. Thank you for joining us for our Windows Embedded CE 6.0 chat today! <http://www.Microsoft.com/Embedded>; A special thank you to the product group members for coming out. The transcript of today’s chat will be posted online as soon as possible, to <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats>;. We’ll see you again for another chat next month. Please check <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats>; for the list of upcoming chats. If you still have unanswered questions, let me suggest that you post them on one of our newsgroups on <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsembedded/ce/default.aspx> -Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 Now Available! <http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/ce/dd630616.aspx>; [2010-3-30 13:1]: [2010-3-30 13:1]: [2010-3-30 13:1]: [2010-3-30 13:3]: neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:37]: Hi all KellyG (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:37]: Hi KellyG (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:37]: I have a question unrelated to windows Ce embedded, can you please help me?? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:38]: I need to implement hardware timers on my windows CE 6.0 device to trigger events at microsecond intervals! c neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:38]: yes. post it. May be i cud give a try KellyG (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:38]: My Product key listed on my tower is not the product key I need for microsoft office, but that is the only product key listed. neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:39]: I hope this is a chat for windows embedded. please post ur queries in office forums KellyG (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:39]: it is but i could not find a forum for office neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:40]: I think moderators will help u out. @ davbo-msft: can u help this guy? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:41]: Q: I need to implement hardware timers on my windows CE 6.0 device to trigger events at microsecond intervals. Where should i start? davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 11:50]: Our chat today covers the topic of Windows Embedded CE! 1. This chat will last for one hour. During this hour, our Experts will respond to as many questions as they can. Please understand that there may be some questions we cannot respond to due to lack of information or because the information is not yet public. 2. We encourage you to submit questions for our Experts. To do so, type your questions in the send box, select the “ask the Experts” box and click SEND. Questions sent directly to the Guest Chat room will not be answered by the Experts, but we encourage other community members to assist. 3. We ask that you stay on topic for the duration of the chat. This helps the Guests and Experts follow the conversation more easily. We invite you to ask off topic questions after this chat is over, but not during. 4. Please abide by the Chat Code of Conduct. Chat code of conduct: <http://msdn.microsoft.com/chats/chatroom.aspx?ctl=hlp#Conduct>; Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:54]: Evening! davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 11:54]: Hello everyone this is Dave Boyce - I worked in the Multimedia area for Windows CE. neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:55]: hello dave neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:55]: The chat code of conduct link is not working! Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:56]: Best be polite just in case then ;-) neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:56]: davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 11:57]: I'll check out the issue w/ the link paolopat (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:0]: Hello davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:0]: We are pleased to welcome our Experts for today’s chat. I will have them introduce themselves now. Chat will begin in a couple of minutes. <http://www.Microsoft.com/Embedded>; paolopat (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:3]: Hello Experts ! neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:3]: Welcome all! paolopat (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:3]: Q: I want to partition my NAND Flash device. One partition to use for hive ragistry and the other for the apps and data. The only way to do it is programmatically or setting some registry values ? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:3]: Q: I need to implement hardware timers on my windows CE 6.0 device to trigger events at microsecond intervals. Where should i start? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:5]: Q: My CPU is Intel celeron M processor 1Ghz. Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:5]: neo: if your silicon has multiple general purpose timers, pick one that's not in use for the system timer / profiler and set it up to trigger irqs for your purpose. You can't guarantee hard realtime type responses though... GarySwalling (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:5]: Q: Is Windows Phone 7 related to Windows CE? If so, can you tell me what version of Windows CE is the basis? Is it in fact the new version of Windows Mobile? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:6]: Q: Hi guys, what's the formal way to report bugs back to the core team / product team? The mechanism of calling the support phone number every time is really onerous and time-consuming. Is there another mechanism? paolopat (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:6]: Q: But the operation for creating the partitions ? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:6]: Q: If i need to implement it using interrupt handlers, What are all the files that I should look at? GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:6]: Q: I would like to get a handle to a Silverlight screen section, is that possiable? Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:7]: Q: I created a OS design with KITL and kernel debugger enabled. But I am unable to connect to the target for debugging. I am getting the following error when i try to connect with the device. PB Debugger Cannot initialize the Kernel Debugger. PB Debugger Debugger could not initialize connection. PB Debugger The Kernel Debugger is waiting to connect with target. PB Debugger The Kernel Debugger has been disconnected successfully. Charles (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:7]: What will be different in Windows Compact 7 from CE 6.0? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:8]: Can I have the book's name please? kiefs_dev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:8]: Q: hi everybody. I would like to know if there is something know about a bug in RTC API (VOIP), especially when using SIP. According the to the analysis with application verifyier there is a heap link in rtcdllmedia.dll. All of the unreleased chunks seem to have a size of 6560 bytes. paolopat (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:10]: Q: So...I have to modify file system code to create 2 partition at system startup ?!! I haven't understood.... neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:10]: Q: Do u mean ISR/IST implementation? How can i register an interrupt? What kind of interrupt should i register? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:11]: Q: Can I have the book's name please? Charles (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:11]: Q: What will be different in Windows Compact 7 from CE 6.0? PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:11]: neo: I'd say that you really need the docs for YOUR BSP, not generic documents for BSPs in general. Each BSP may be architected differently. If you're using the CEPC BSP, then the documentation that comes with Platform Builder is a reasonable place to look. GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:11]: Q: If one has an image on a Silverlight page, it seems to be cached. How would one refresh that cache after changing the underlying image? Elektrobit (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:12]: Q: Hi, we've problems with debugging of applications (= breakpoints in Platform Builder will be ignored) over KITL on Windows CE 5.0, if the PDB files are large (over 60MB). Are there any limitations to size of the PDB files? Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:15]: Q: I am using CE 6.0. There is no cesvchost process running in my system. alexquisi (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:15]: Q: Hi, I saw that the ATADISK is quite generic and des not have any optimizations. Do you have any advice to consider while tryin to improve the performance of it? Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:17]: Windows XP service pack 1 Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:17]: Q: sorry! Windows XP SP3 neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:19]: Q: The link for developing device drivers is not working. can u please check that? paolopat (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:20]: Q: I have a NAND Flash on my target device. On this flash I have the hive registry and an application.I have observed that when the NAND flash is fully, the system startup time is longer....is there a degradation of NAND use that influences the startup time ? Why ? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:20]: Q: When attempting to run the CETK cellcore tests the documentation states the pre-requisites include "stinger.ini", "ltk.ini" but windows CE doesn't provide these or document what they fully need to contain. Implicitly you also need "datatrans.xml" which isn't supplied. If you get around this error and steal these from Windows Mobile instead, when you try and run the CETK tests you get a data abort in radiometricsdll.dll. How should we invoke the cellcore parts of CETK? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:21]: Hi all, Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:21]: oops Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:21]: :-D Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:24]: Typically for SoC devices you name your hardware specific libraries in the form "SOCDIRNAME_LIBNAME". In our platform "OMAP35XX_TPS659XX_TI_V1" if you do this we cause the catalog parser to die... For example if we have a library "Musbfn_OMAP35XX_TPS659XX_TI_V1.dll" entering this in the catalogs pbcxml file in a <module> section causes the XML parser to fail with : Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:25]: Q: Error 3 The 'urn:Microsoft.PlatformBuilder/Catalog:Module' element is        invalid - The value '012345678901234567890123456789.dll' is invalid         according to its datatype         'urn:Microsoft.PlatformBuilder/Catalog:CatalogFileName' - The actual         length is greater than the MaxLength value. GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:25]: Q: Writable bitmap, is there an example of the syntax? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:25]: Q: Typically for SoC devices you name your hardware specific libraries in the form "SOCDIRNAME_LIBNAME". In our platform "OMAP35XX_TPS659XX_TI_V1" if you do this we cause the catalog parser to die... For example if we have a library "Musbfn_OMAP35XX_TPS659XX_TI_V1.dll" entering this in the catalogs pbcxml file in a <module> section causes the XML parser to fail with : Error 3 The 'urn:Microsoft.PlatformBuilder/Catalog:Module' element is        invalid - The value '012345678901234567890123456789.dll' is invalid         according to its datatype         'urn:Microsoft.PlatformBuilder/Catalog:CatalogFileName' - The actual         length is greater than the MaxLength value. Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:25]: sorry, messed up submission there! GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:26]: Q: I would like to get a handle to a Silverlight screen section, is that possiable? GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:28]: Q: IXRVisualHost::GetHWND() exactly what I needed Thanks, PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:29]: GPM: You don't have to keep submitting the questions. The chat experts have an application that they're using to follow the chat and all Ask the Experts questions are logged. Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:29]: Q: I am getting this error only when I select the KdStub as the debugger in Target device connectivity. neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:30]: Q: ok. thanks for the book's link Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:31]: Hm, did those two I submitted get picked up by anyone? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:33]: Q: If I select Active KTIL, My OS doesn't boots. It says "loading NK.EXE at 0x<xxxxx> location" after that nothing comes in the debug log. PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:34]: Pev: PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:35]: Pev: I'm sure they did. The guys who are actually on the chat may not be experts in that part of things. That's usually the explanation when you don't get an answer in 10 minutes or so. Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:36]: Ah, fair enough Susie (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:36]: My Outlook Express incoming mail is corrput. No ONE has been able to fix the problem, Dell or Norton. I have dial up I'm in a rural area Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:37]: Q: I have tried that and I am getting the same error. Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:37]: Susie : Use Thunderbird instead :-D PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:37]: Susie: Sorry, but this chat is not about Windows, but Embedded (like what runs on a phone). Your best chance is to find a local expert or talk to your ISP. paolopat (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:37]: Q: what are the main differences between Object Store and RAM disk ? They are both in RAM...are there performance differences ? access differences ? Susie (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:38]: My computer knowlege is very limited, what is Thunderbird? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:38]: A different email client :-D neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:39]: Q: KITL: *** Device Name CEPC56059 *** WARN: KITL will run in polling mode VBridge:: built on [Jul 10 2009] time [10:20:14] VBridgeInit()...TX = [16384] bytes -- Rx = [16384] bytes Tx buffer [0xA1B84860] to [0xA1B88860]. Rx buffer [0xA1B88880] to [0xA1B8C880]. VBridge:: NK add MAC: [0-60-65-2-DA-FB] Connecting to Desktop KITL: Connected host IP: 1 Port: 1086 .. this is the output of the serial debug Susie (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:39]: Do I need to uninstall Outlook Express youngboyzie (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:39]: I need to start battery calibration for my new battery for my dell inspiron 1525 laptop and should be able to reach the BIOS screen by hitting f2 but this isnt working... help? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:39]: Nah, you can run it instead - you'll still need help from your ISP to configure it I expect Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:39]: Q: Both is happening via Ethernet. PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:40]: youngboyzie: You're off-topic. This is not a general chat for Windows and certainly not for Dell. You'll have to ask Dell how to get to setup; it's their machine. bill (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:41]: I lost spell check, how can i get et back neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:42]: Q: I didn't do that. I have to try. Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:43]: Q: Ok. I will do it then. bill (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:43]: Q: I lost spell check, how can i get it back PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:44]: bill: This isn't a general Windows chat. There are some Web forums that you might try. GarySwalling (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:45]: Q: Thanks, I found the Phone 7 presentation at http://live.visitmix.com/MIX10/Sessions/CL13 GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:45]: Q: Is the Silverlight Animation "Spline" a BezierSpline? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:46]: Q: ok. I'll do it. thanks Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:46]: Whowever was asking about KITL connection : I've had this loads in the past. I think I started debugging last time by using wireshark to see what was happening on the network then setting up the OAL_ETHER and OAL_FUNC and OAL_VERBOSE as well as OAL_KITL flags to see what was actually happening in the driver.... Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:47]: I'd generally make sure that you're testing though a 10baseT hub (instead of anything faster) and forcing Active KITL in polled mode too... neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:48]: Q: I disabled the firewall in my PC. Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:50]: Q: I've got a platform (not developed by myself) where I2C bus support has to be provided through the OAL as the kernel needs to talk to devices such as the power management IC and gas gauge so a 'proper' I2C driver hanging off device manager isn't possible. This happens to be a polled driver, so obviously it hits the system hard when either under lots of traffic or an error condition occurs and the driver constantly polls. I originally thought that there was no straightforward way to make such code interrupt driven in the kernel (as it's a cludge) but I realised that that's exactly what ETHDBG drivers do. Is there any reason why I shouldn't have a go at implementing a similar mechanism for our kernel resident I2C driver? If not, are there any obvious pitfalls - I've not seen any other BSP's do this in the past... neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:51]: Q: I don't see a kitlcore.dll in my OS. is my debug image fails to load because of that? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:52]: Q: Hi masatos, I'm using Windows Embedded CE 6.0 with R3 and patched to feb 2010's QFE's (with it's associated CETK version) this is a machine with only CE 6.0 on (no conflicts with earlier CE or WM...) neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:54]: ok. Got it neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:54]: Q: ok. Got it Roundman (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:55]: Q: I am having trouble with my mouse, I have the microsoft wireless mobile mouse 3000, when I push the scroll button I am suppose to have autoscroll instead it shows other web pages,Can you help me out tell me what to do!!! Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:55]: Hey neo, debugging kitl issues is really frustrating but dont lose heart :-) neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:55]: @ pev : u fixed the problem of KITL after that? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:56]: I am getting the same error again and again. I even cleaned my environment and tried in a fresh PC. But didn't succeed yet Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:56]: Well, eventually - my experiences probably won't help you as different platforms have different reasons for doing that neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:56]: I think so PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:58]: neo: Have you searched the old messages in microsoft.public.windowsce.platbuilder? It seems to me that there was a packet size situation where it was possible to have problems with KITL connections based on a setting on the PC. Google Groups, groups.google.com, Advanced Groups Search will allow you to search a single newsgroup or a set of newsgroups easily. GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:58]: Q: Spline- bad link PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:58]: GPM: without the > at the end does it work? It seems to for me... neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:58]: But some times if i try to connect to the device again. The Image information is seen in the serial debug. what does that mean?Download BIN file information: ----------------------------------------------------- [0]: Base Address=0x220000 Length=0x18DAADC Received a broadcast message !CheckUDP: Not UDP (proto = 0x00000001) after this i am getting the old errors. PB debugger cannot initialize ... GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:59]: Q: Sorry, got to tirm the ">" neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:59]: ok paul. I ll look into that. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 13:0]: Hello everyone, we are just about out of time. Thank you for joining us for our Windows Embedded CE 6.0 chat today! <http://www.Microsoft.com/Embedded>; A special thank you to the product group members for coming out. The transcript of today’s chat will be posted online as soon as possible, to <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats>;. We’ll see you again for another chat next month. Please check <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats>; for the list of upcoming chats. If you still have unanswered questions, let me suggest that you post them on one of our newsgroups on <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsembedded/ce/default.aspx> -Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 Now Available! <http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/ce/dd630616.aspx>; neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 13:1]: Q: I am unable to use the target control in my development environment. any ideas? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 13:1]: Sure, if KITL isn't connected target control won't work as it runs over kitl... neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 13:1]: ok .thanks pev neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 13:2]: yes. sysgen_shell is set to 1 neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 13:2]: Q: yes. sysgen_shell is set to 1 Marcelovk (Guest)[2010-3-30 13:2]: Q: Is there any way to extract the default command lines of the tests in CETK? I want to have it running unconnected from the desktop.   Copyright © 2010 – Bruce Eitman All Rights Reserved

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• Hosting the Razor Engine for Templating in Non-Web Applications

  - by Rick Strahl

  Microsoft’s new Razor HTML Rendering Engine that is currently shipping with ASP.NET MVC previews can be used outside of ASP.NET. Razor is an alternative view engine that can be used instead of the ASP.NET Page engine that currently works with ASP.NET WebForms and MVC. It provides a simpler and more readable markup syntax and is much more light weight in terms of functionality than the full blown WebForms Page engine, focusing only on features that are more along the lines of a pure view engine (or classic ASP!) with focus on expression and code rendering rather than a complex control/object model. Like the Page engine though, the parser understands .NET code syntax which can be embedded into templates, and behind the scenes the engine compiles markup and script code into an executing piece of .NET code in an assembly. Although it ships as part of the ASP.NET MVC and WebMatrix the Razor Engine itself is not directly dependent on ASP.NET or IIS or HTTP in any way. And although there are some markup and rendering features that are optimized for HTML based output generation, Razor is essentially a free standing template engine. And what’s really nice is that unlike the ASP.NET Runtime, Razor is fairly easy to host inside of your own non-Web applications to provide templating functionality. Templating in non-Web Applications? Yes please! So why might you host a template engine in your non-Web application? Template rendering is useful in many places and I have a number of applications that make heavy use of it. One of my applications – West Wind Html Help Builder - exclusively uses template based rendering to merge user supplied help text content into customizable and executable HTML markup templates that provide HTML output for CHM style HTML Help. This is an older product and it’s not actually using .NET at the moment – and this is one reason I’m looking at Razor for script hosting at the moment. For a few .NET applications though I’ve actually used the ASP.NET Runtime hosting to provide templating and mail merge style functionality and while that works reasonably well it’s a very heavy handed approach. It’s very resource intensive and has potential issues with versioning in various different versions of .NET. The generic implementation I created in the article above requires a lot of fix up to mimic an HTTP request in a non-HTTP environment and there are a lot of little things that have to happen to ensure that the ASP.NET runtime works properly most of it having nothing to do with the templating aspect but just satisfying ASP.NET’s requirements. The Razor Engine on the other hand is fairly light weight and completely decoupled from the ASP.NET runtime and the HTTP processing. Rather it’s a pure template engine whose sole purpose is to render text templates. Hosting this engine in your own applications can be accomplished with a reasonable amount of code (actually just a few lines with the tools I’m about to describe) and without having to fake HTTP requests. It’s also much lighter on resource usage and you can easily attach custom properties to your base template implementation to easily pass context from the parent application into templates all of which was rather complicated with ASP.NET runtime hosting. Installing the Razor Template Engine You can get Razor as part of the MVC 3 (RC and later) or Web Matrix. Both are available as downloadable components from the Web Platform Installer Version 3.0 (!important – V2 doesn’t show these components). If you already have that version of the WPI installed just fire it up. You can get the latest version of the Web Platform Installer from here: http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/install.aspx Once the platform Installer 3.0 is installed install either MVC 3 or ASP.NET Web Pages. Once installed you’ll find a System.Web.Razor assembly in C:\Program Files\Microsoft ASP.NET\ASP.NET Web Pages\v1.0\Assemblies\System.Web.Razor.dll which you can add as a reference to your project. Creating a Wrapper The basic Razor Hosting API is pretty simple and you can host Razor with a (large-ish) handful of lines of code. I’ll show the basics of it later in this article. However, if you want to customize the rendering and handle assembly and namespace includes for the markup as well as deal with text and file inputs as well as forcing Razor to run in a separate AppDomain so you can unload the code-generated assemblies and deal with assembly caching for re-used templates little more work is required to create something that is more easily reusable. For this reason I created a Razor Hosting wrapper project that combines a bunch of this functionality into an easy to use hosting class, a hosting factory that can load the engine in a separate AppDomain and a couple of hosting containers that provided folder based and string based caching for templates for an easily embeddable and reusable engine with easy to use syntax. If you just want the code and play with the samples and source go grab the latest code from the Subversion Repository at: http://www.west-wind.com:8080/svn/articles/trunk/RazorHosting/ or a snapshot from: http://www.west-wind.com/files/tools/RazorHosting.zip Getting Started Before I get into how hosting with Razor works, let’s take a look at how you can get up and running quickly with the wrapper classes provided. It only takes a few lines of code. The easiest way to use these Razor Hosting Wrappers is to use one of the two HostContainers provided. One is for hosting Razor scripts in a directory and rendering them as relative paths from these script files on disk. The other HostContainer serves razor scripts from string templates… Let’s start with a very simple template that displays some simple expressions, some code blocks and demonstrates rendering some data from contextual data that you pass to the template in the form of a ‘context’. Here’s a simple Razor template: @using System.Reflection Hello @Context.FirstName! Your entry was entered on: @Context.Entered @{ // Code block: Update the host Windows Form passed in through the context Context.WinForm.Text = "Hello World from Razor at " + DateTime.Now.ToString(); } AppDomain Id: @AppDomain.CurrentDomain.FriendlyName Assembly: @Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().FullName Code based output: @{ // Write output with Response object from code string output = string.Empty; for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { output += i.ToString() + " "; } Response.Write(output); } Pretty easy to see what’s going on here. The only unusual thing in this code is the Context object which is an arbitrary object I’m passing from the host to the template by way of the template base class. I’m also displaying the current AppDomain and the executing Assembly name so you can see how compiling and running a template actually loads up new assemblies. Also note that as part of my context I’m passing a reference to the current Windows Form down to the template and changing the title from within the script. It’s a silly example, but it demonstrates two-way communication between host and template and back which can be very powerful. The easiest way to quickly render this template is to use the RazorEngine<TTemplateBase> class. The generic parameter specifies a template base class type that is used by Razor internally to generate the class it generates from a template. The default implementation provided in my RazorHosting wrapper is RazorTemplateBase. Here’s a simple one that renders from a string and outputs a string: var engine = new RazorEngine<RazorTemplateBase>(); // we can pass any object as context - here create a custom context var context = new CustomContext() { WinForm = this, FirstName = "Rick", Entered = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-10) }; string output = engine.RenderTemplate(this.txtSource.Text new string[] { "System.Windows.Forms.dll" }, context); if (output == null) this.txtResult.Text = "*** ERROR:\r\n" + engine.ErrorMessage; else this.txtResult.Text = output; Simple enough. This code renders a template from a string input and returns a result back as a string. It  creates a custom context and passes that to the template which can then access the Context’s properties. Note that anything passed as ‘context’ must be serializable (or MarshalByRefObject) – otherwise you get an exception when passing the reference over AppDomain boundaries (discussed later). Passing a context is optional, but is a key feature in being able to share data between the host application and the template. Note that we use the Context object to access FirstName, Entered and even the host Windows Form object which is used in the template to change the Window caption from within the script! In the code above all the work happens in the RenderTemplate method which provide a variety of overloads to read and write to and from strings, files and TextReaders/Writers. Here’s another example that renders from a file input using a TextReader: using (reader = new StreamReader("templates\\simple.csHtml", true)) { result = host.RenderTemplate(reader, new string[] { "System.Windows.Forms.dll" }, this.CustomContext); } RenderTemplate() is fairly high level and it handles loading of the runtime, compiling into an assembly and rendering of the template. If you want more control you can use the lower level methods to control each step of the way which is important for the HostContainers I’ll discuss later. Basically for those scenarios you want to separate out loading of the engine, compiling into an assembly and then rendering the template from the assembly. Why? So we can keep assemblies cached. In the code above a new assembly is created for each template rendered which is inefficient and uses up resources. Depending on the size of your templates and how often you fire them you can chew through memory very quickly. This slighter lower level approach is only a couple of extra steps: // we can pass any object as context - here create a custom context var context = new CustomContext() { WinForm = this, FirstName = "Rick", Entered = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-10) }; var engine = new RazorEngine<RazorTemplateBase>(); string assId = null; using (StringReader reader = new StringReader(this.txtSource.Text)) { assId = engine.ParseAndCompileTemplate(new string[] { "System.Windows.Forms.dll" }, reader); } string output = engine.RenderTemplateFromAssembly(assId, context); if (output == null) this.txtResult.Text = "*** ERROR:\r\n" + engine.ErrorMessage; else this.txtResult.Text = output; The difference here is that you can capture the assembly – or rather an Id to it – and potentially hold on to it to render again later assuming the template hasn’t changed. The HostContainers take advantage of this feature to cache the assemblies based on certain criteria like a filename and file time step or a string hash that if not change indicate that an assembly can be reused. Note that ParseAndCompileTemplate returns an assembly Id rather than the assembly itself. This is done so that that the assembly always stays in the host’s AppDomain and is not passed across AppDomain boundaries which would cause load failures. We’ll talk more about this in a minute but for now just realize that assemblies references are stored in a list and are accessible by this ID to allow locating and re-executing of the assembly based on that id. Reuse of the assembly avoids recompilation overhead and creation of yet another assembly that loads into the current AppDomain. You can play around with several different versions of the above code in the main sample form:   Using Hosting Containers for more Control and Caching The above examples simply render templates into assemblies each and every time they are executed. While this works and is even reasonably fast, it’s not terribly efficient. If you render templates more than once it would be nice if you could cache the generated assemblies for example to avoid re-compiling and creating of a new assembly each time. Additionally it would be nice to load template assemblies into a separate AppDomain optionally to be able to be able to unload assembli es and also to protect your host application from scripting attacks with malicious template code. Hosting containers provide also provide a wrapper around the RazorEngine<T> instance, a factory (which allows creation in separate AppDomains) and an easy way to start and stop the container ‘runtime’. The Razor Hosting samples provide two hosting containers: RazorFolderHostContainer and StringHostContainer. The folder host provides a simple runtime environment for a folder structure similar in the way that the ASP.NET runtime handles a virtual directory as it’s ‘application' root. Templates are loaded from disk in relative paths and the resulting assemblies are cached unless the template on disk is changed. The string host also caches templates based on string hashes – if the same string is passed a second time a cached version of the assembly is used. Here’s how HostContainers work. I’ll use the FolderHostContainer because it’s likely the most common way you’d use templates – from disk based templates that can be easily edited and maintained on disk. The first step is to create an instance of it and keep it around somewhere (in the example it’s attached as a property to the Form): RazorFolderHostContainer Host = new RazorFolderHostContainer(); public RazorFolderHostForm() { InitializeComponent(); // The base path for templates - templates are rendered with relative paths // based on this path. Host.TemplatePath = Path.Combine(Environment.CurrentDirectory, TemplateBaseFolder); // Add any assemblies you want reference in your templates Host.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.Windows.Forms.dll"); // Start up the host container Host.Start(); } Next anytime you want to render a template you can use simple code like this: private void RenderTemplate(string fileName) { // Pass the template path via the Context var relativePath = Utilities.GetRelativePath(fileName, Host.TemplatePath); if (!Host.RenderTemplate(relativePath, this.Context, Host.RenderingOutputFile)) { MessageBox.Show("Error: " + Host.ErrorMessage); return; } this.webBrowser1.Navigate("file://" + Host.RenderingOutputFile); } You can also render the output to a string instead of to a file: string result = Host.RenderTemplateToString(relativePath,context); Finally if you want to release the engine and shut down the hosting AppDomain you can simply do: Host.Stop(); Stopping the AppDomain and restarting it (ie. calling Stop(); followed by Start()) is also a nice way to release all resources in the AppDomain. The FolderBased domain also supports partial Rendering based on root path based relative paths with the same caching characteristics as the main templates. From within a template you can call out to a partial like this: @RenderPartial(@"partials\PartialRendering.cshtml", Context) where partials\PartialRendering.cshtml is a relative to the template root folder. The folder host example lets you load up templates from disk and display the result in a Web Browser control which demonstrates using Razor HTML output from templates that contain HTML syntax which happens to me my target scenario for Html Help Builder.   The Razor Engine Wrapper Project The project I created to wrap Razor hosting has a fair bit of code and a number of classes associated with it. Most of the components are internally used and as you can see using the final RazorEngine<T> and HostContainer classes is pretty easy. The classes are extensible and I suspect developers will want to build more customized host containers for their applications. Host containers are the key to wrapping up all functionality – Engine, BaseTemplate, AppDomain Hosting, Caching etc in a logical piece that is ready to be plugged into an application. When looking at the code there are a couple of core features provided: Core Razor Engine Hosting This is the core Razor hosting which provides the basics of loading a template, compiling it into an assembly and executing it. This is fairly straightforward, but without a host container that can cache assemblies based on some criteria templates are recompiled and re-created each time which is inefficient (although pretty fast). The base engine wrapper implementation also supports hosting the Razor runtime in a separate AppDomain for security and the ability to unload it on demand. Host Containers The engine hosting itself doesn’t provide any sort of ‘runtime’ service like picking up files from disk, caching assemblies and so forth. So my implementation provides two HostContainers: RazorFolderHostContainer and RazorStringHostContainer. The FolderHost works off a base directory and loads templates based on relative paths (sort of like the ASP.NET runtime does off a virtual). The HostContainers also deal with caching of template assemblies – for the folder host the file date is tracked and checked for updates and unless the template is changed a cached assembly is reused. The StringHostContainer similiarily checks string hashes to figure out whether a particular string template was previously compiled and executed. The HostContainers also act as a simple startup environment and a single reference to easily store and reuse in an application. TemplateBase Classes The template base classes are the base classes that from which the Razor engine generates .NET code. A template is parsed into a class with an Execute() method and the class is based on this template type you can specify. RazorEngine<TBaseTemplate> can receive this type and the HostContainers default to specific templates in their base implementations. Template classes are customizable to allow you to create templates that provide application specific features and interaction from the template to your host application. How does the RazorEngine wrapper work? You can browse the source code in the links above or in the repository or download the source, but I’ll highlight some key features here. Here’s part of the RazorEngine implementation that can be used to host the runtime and that demonstrates the key code required to host the Razor runtime. The RazorEngine class is implemented as a generic class to reflect the Template base class type: public class RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> : MarshalByRefObject where TBaseTemplateType : RazorTemplateBase The generic type is used to internally provide easier access to the template type and assignments on it as part of the template processing. The class also inherits MarshalByRefObject to allow execution over AppDomain boundaries – something that all the classes discussed here need to do since there is much interaction between the host and the template. The first two key methods deal with creating a template assembly: /// <summary> /// Creates an instance of the RazorHost with various options applied. /// Applies basic namespace imports and the name of the class to generate /// </summary> /// <param name="generatedNamespace"></param> /// <param name="generatedClass"></param> /// <returns></returns> protected RazorTemplateEngine CreateHost(string generatedNamespace, string generatedClass) { Type baseClassType = typeof(TBaseTemplateType); RazorEngineHost host = new RazorEngineHost(new CSharpRazorCodeLanguage()); host.DefaultBaseClass = baseClassType.FullName; host.DefaultClassName = generatedClass; host.DefaultNamespace = generatedNamespace; host.NamespaceImports.Add("System"); host.NamespaceImports.Add("System.Text"); host.NamespaceImports.Add("System.Collections.Generic"); host.NamespaceImports.Add("System.Linq"); host.NamespaceImports.Add("System.IO"); return new RazorTemplateEngine(host); } /// <summary> /// Parses and compiles a markup template into an assembly and returns /// an assembly name. The name is an ID that can be passed to /// ExecuteTemplateByAssembly which picks up a cached instance of the /// loaded assembly. /// /// </summary> /// <param name="namespaceOfGeneratedClass">The namespace of the class to generate from the template</param> /// <param name="generatedClassName">The name of the class to generate from the template</param> /// <param name="ReferencedAssemblies">Any referenced assemblies by dll name only. Assemblies must be in execution path of host or in GAC.</param> /// <param name="templateSourceReader">Textreader that loads the template</param> /// <remarks> /// The actual assembly isn't returned here to allow for cross-AppDomain /// operation. If the assembly was returned it would fail for cross-AppDomain /// calls. /// </remarks> /// <returns>An assembly Id. The Assembly is cached in memory and can be used with RenderFromAssembly.</returns> public string ParseAndCompileTemplate( string namespaceOfGeneratedClass, string generatedClassName, string[] ReferencedAssemblies, TextReader templateSourceReader) { RazorTemplateEngine engine = CreateHost(namespaceOfGeneratedClass, generatedClassName); // Generate the template class as CodeDom GeneratorResults razorResults = engine.GenerateCode(templateSourceReader); // Create code from the codeDom and compile CSharpCodeProvider codeProvider = new CSharpCodeProvider(); CodeGeneratorOptions options = new CodeGeneratorOptions(); // Capture Code Generated as a string for error info // and debugging LastGeneratedCode = null; using (StringWriter writer = new StringWriter()) { codeProvider.GenerateCodeFromCompileUnit(razorResults.GeneratedCode, writer, options); LastGeneratedCode = writer.ToString(); } CompilerParameters compilerParameters = new CompilerParameters(ReferencedAssemblies); // Standard Assembly References compilerParameters.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.dll"); compilerParameters.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.Core.dll"); compilerParameters.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("Microsoft.CSharp.dll"); // dynamic support! // Also add the current assembly so RazorTemplateBase is available compilerParameters.ReferencedAssemblies.Add(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().CodeBase.Substring(8)); compilerParameters.GenerateInMemory = Configuration.CompileToMemory; if (!Configuration.CompileToMemory) compilerParameters.OutputAssembly = Path.Combine(Configuration.TempAssemblyPath, "_" + Guid.NewGuid().ToString("n") + ".dll"); CompilerResults compilerResults = codeProvider.CompileAssemblyFromDom(compilerParameters, razorResults.GeneratedCode); if (compilerResults.Errors.Count > 0) { var compileErrors = new StringBuilder(); foreach (System.CodeDom.Compiler.CompilerError compileError in compilerResults.Errors) compileErrors.Append(String.Format(Resources.LineX0TColX1TErrorX2RN, compileError.Line, compileError.Column, compileError.ErrorText)); this.SetError(compileErrors.ToString() + "\r\n" + LastGeneratedCode); return null; } AssemblyCache.Add(compilerResults.CompiledAssembly.FullName, compilerResults.CompiledAssembly); return compilerResults.CompiledAssembly.FullName; } Think of the internal CreateHost() method as setting up the assembly generated from each template. Each template compiles into a separate assembly. It sets up namespaces, and assembly references, the base class used and the name and namespace for the generated class. ParseAndCompileTemplate() then calls the CreateHost() method to receive the template engine generator which effectively generates a CodeDom from the template – the template is turned into .NET code. The code generated from our earlier example looks something like this: //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ // <auto-generated> // This code was generated by a tool. // Runtime Version:4.0.30319.1 // // Changes to this file may cause incorrect behavior and will be lost if // the code is regenerated. // </auto-generated> //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ namespace RazorTest { using System; using System.Text; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.IO; using System.Reflection; public class RazorTemplate : RazorHosting.RazorTemplateBase { #line hidden public RazorTemplate() { } public override void Execute() { WriteLiteral("Hello "); Write(Context.FirstName); WriteLiteral("! Your entry was entered on: "); Write(Context.Entered); WriteLiteral("\r\n\r\n"); // Code block: Update the host Windows Form passed in through the context Context.WinForm.Text = "Hello World from Razor at " + DateTime.Now.ToString(); WriteLiteral("\r\nAppDomain Id:\r\n "); Write(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.FriendlyName); WriteLiteral("\r\n \r\nAssembly:\r\n "); Write(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().FullName); WriteLiteral("\r\n\r\nCode based output: \r\n"); // Write output with Response object from code string output = string.Empty; for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { output += i.ToString() + " "; } } } } Basically the template’s body is turned into code in an Execute method that is called. Internally the template’s Write method is fired to actually generate the output. Note that the class inherits from RazorTemplateBase which is the generic parameter I used to specify the base class when creating an instance in my RazorEngine host: var engine = new RazorEngine<RazorTemplateBase>(); This template class must be provided and it must implement an Execute() and Write() method. Beyond that you can create any class you chose and attach your own properties. My RazorTemplateBase class implementation is very simple: public class RazorTemplateBase : MarshalByRefObject, IDisposable { /// <summary> /// You can pass in a generic context object /// to use in your template code /// </summary> public dynamic Context { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Class that generates output. Currently ultra simple /// with only Response.Write() implementation. /// </summary> public RazorResponse Response { get; set; } public object HostContainer {get; set; } public object Engine { get; set; } public RazorTemplateBase() { Response = new RazorResponse(); } public virtual void Write(object value) { Response.Write(value); } public virtual void WriteLiteral(object value) { Response.Write(value); } /// <summary> /// Razor Parser implements this method /// </summary> public virtual void Execute() {} public virtual void Dispose() { if (Response != null) { Response.Dispose(); Response = null; } } } Razor fills in the Execute method when it generates its subclass and uses the Write() method to output content. As you can see I use a RazorResponse() class here to generate output. This isn’t necessary really, as you could use a StringBuilder or StringWriter() directly, but I prefer using Response object so I can extend the Response behavior as needed. The RazorResponse class is also very simple and merely acts as a wrapper around a TextWriter: public class RazorResponse : IDisposable { /// <summary> /// Internal text writer - default to StringWriter() /// </summary> public TextWriter Writer = new StringWriter(); public virtual void Write(object value) { Writer.Write(value); } public virtual void WriteLine(object value) { Write(value); Write("\r\n"); } public virtual void WriteFormat(string format, params object[] args) { Write(string.Format(format, args)); } public override string ToString() { return Writer.ToString(); } public virtual void Dispose() { Writer.Close(); } public virtual void SetTextWriter(TextWriter writer) { // Close original writer if (Writer != null) Writer.Close(); Writer = writer; } } The Rendering Methods of RazorEngine At this point I’ve talked about the assembly generation logic and the template implementation itself. What’s left is that once you’ve generated the assembly is to execute it. The code to do this is handled in the various RenderXXX methods of the RazorEngine class. Let’s look at the lowest level one of these which is RenderTemplateFromAssembly() and a couple of internal support methods that handle instantiating and invoking of the generated template method: public string RenderTemplateFromAssembly( string assemblyId, string generatedNamespace, string generatedClass, object context, TextWriter outputWriter) { this.SetError(); Assembly generatedAssembly = AssemblyCache[assemblyId]; if (generatedAssembly == null) { this.SetError(Resources.PreviouslyCompiledAssemblyNotFound); return null; } string className = generatedNamespace + "." + generatedClass; Type type; try { type = generatedAssembly.GetType(className); } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(Resources.UnableToCreateType + className + ": " + ex.Message); return null; } // Start with empty non-error response (if we use a writer) string result = string.Empty; using(TBaseTemplateType instance = InstantiateTemplateClass(type)) { if (instance == null) return null; if (outputWriter != null) instance.Response.SetTextWriter(outputWriter); if (!InvokeTemplateInstance(instance, context)) return null; // Capture string output if implemented and return // otherwise null is returned if (outputWriter == null) result = instance.Response.ToString(); } return result; } protected virtual TBaseTemplateType InstantiateTemplateClass(Type type) { TBaseTemplateType instance = Activator.CreateInstance(type) as TBaseTemplateType; if (instance == null) { SetError(Resources.CouldnTActivateTypeInstance + type.FullName); return null; } instance.Engine = this; // If a HostContainer was set pass that to the template too instance.HostContainer = this.HostContainer; return instance; } /// <summary> /// Internally executes an instance of the template, /// captures errors on execution and returns true or false /// </summary> /// <param name="instance">An instance of the generated template</param> /// <returns>true or false - check ErrorMessage for errors</returns> protected virtual bool InvokeTemplateInstance(TBaseTemplateType instance, object context) { try { instance.Context = context; instance.Execute(); } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(Resources.TemplateExecutionError + ex.Message); return false; } finally { // Must make sure Response is closed instance.Response.Dispose(); } return true; } The RenderTemplateFromAssembly method basically requires the namespace and class to instantate and creates an instance of the class using InstantiateTemplateClass(). It then invokes the method with InvokeTemplateInstance(). These two methods are broken out because they are re-used by various other rendering methods and also to allow subclassing and providing additional configuration tasks to set properties and pass values to templates at execution time. In the default mode instantiation sets the Engine and HostContainer (discussed later) so the template can call back into the template engine, and the context is set when the template method is invoked. The various RenderXXX methods use similar code although they create the assemblies first. If you’re after potentially cashing assemblies the method is the one to call and that’s exactly what the two HostContainer classes do. More on that in a minute, but before we get into HostContainers let’s talk about AppDomain hosting and the like. Running Templates in their own AppDomain With the RazorEngine class above, when a template is parsed into an assembly and executed the assembly is created (in memory or on disk – you can configure that) and cached in the current AppDomain. In .NET once an assembly has been loaded it can never be unloaded so if you’re loading lots of templates and at some time you want to release them there’s no way to do so. If however you load the assemblies in a separate AppDomain that new AppDomain can be unloaded and the assemblies loaded in it with it. In order to host the templates in a separate AppDomain the easiest thing to do is to run the entire RazorEngine in a separate AppDomain. Then all interaction occurs in the other AppDomain and no further changes have to be made. To facilitate this there is a RazorEngineFactory which has methods that can instantiate the RazorHost in a separate AppDomain as well as in the local AppDomain. The host creates the remote instance and then hangs on to it to keep it alive as well as providing methods to shut down the AppDomain and reload the engine. Sounds complicated but cross-AppDomain invocation is actually fairly easy to implement. Here’s some of the relevant code from the RazorEngineFactory class. Like the RazorEngine this class is generic and requires a template base type in the generic class name: public class RazorEngineFactory<TBaseTemplateType> where TBaseTemplateType : RazorTemplateBase Here are the key methods of interest: /// <summary> /// Creates an instance of the RazorHost in a new AppDomain. This /// version creates a static singleton that that is cached and you /// can call UnloadRazorHostInAppDomain to unload it. /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public static RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> CreateRazorHostInAppDomain() { if (Current == null) Current = new RazorEngineFactory<TBaseTemplateType>(); return Current.GetRazorHostInAppDomain(); } public static void UnloadRazorHostInAppDomain() { if (Current != null) Current.UnloadHost(); Current = null; } /// <summary> /// Instance method that creates a RazorHost in a new AppDomain. /// This method requires that you keep the Factory around in /// order to keep the AppDomain alive and be able to unload it. /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> GetRazorHostInAppDomain() { LocalAppDomain = CreateAppDomain(null); if (LocalAppDomain == null) return null; /// Create the instance inside of the new AppDomain /// Note: remote domain uses local EXE's AppBasePath!!! RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> host = null; try { Assembly ass = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly(); string AssemblyPath = ass.Location; host = (RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType>) LocalAppDomain.CreateInstanceFrom(AssemblyPath, typeof(RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType>).FullName).Unwrap(); } catch (Exception ex) { ErrorMessage = ex.Message; return null; } return host; } /// <summary> /// Internally creates a new AppDomain in which Razor templates can /// be run. /// </summary> /// <param name="appDomainName"></param> /// <returns></returns> private AppDomain CreateAppDomain(string appDomainName) { if (appDomainName == null) appDomainName = "RazorHost_" + Guid.NewGuid().ToString("n"); AppDomainSetup setup = new AppDomainSetup(); // *** Point at current directory setup.ApplicationBase = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory; AppDomain localDomain = AppDomain.CreateDomain(appDomainName, null, setup); return localDomain; } /// <summary> /// Allow unloading of the created AppDomain to release resources /// All internal resources in the AppDomain are released including /// in memory compiled Razor assemblies. /// </summary> public void UnloadHost() { if (this.LocalAppDomain != null) { AppDomain.Unload(this.LocalAppDomain); this.LocalAppDomain = null; } } The static CreateRazorHostInAppDomain() is the key method that startup code usually calls. It uses a Current singleton instance to an instance of itself that is created cross AppDomain and is kept alive because it’s static. GetRazorHostInAppDomain actually creates a cross-AppDomain instance which first creates a new AppDomain and then loads the RazorEngine into it. The remote Proxy instance is returned as a result to the method and can be used the same as a local instance. The code to run with a remote AppDomain is simple: private RazorEngine<RazorTemplateBase> CreateHost() { if (this.Host != null) return this.Host; // Use Static Methods - no error message if host doesn't load this.Host = RazorEngineFactory<RazorTemplateBase>.CreateRazorHostInAppDomain(); if (this.Host == null) { MessageBox.Show("Unable to load Razor Template Host", "Razor Hosting", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Exclamation); } return this.Host; } This code relies on a local reference of the Host which is kept around for the duration of the app (in this case a form reference). To use this you’d simply do: this.Host = CreateHost(); if (host == null) return; string result = host.RenderTemplate( this.txtSource.Text, new string[] { "System.Windows.Forms.dll", "Westwind.Utilities.dll" }, this.CustomContext); if (result == null) { MessageBox.Show(host.ErrorMessage, "Template Execution Error", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Exclamation); return; } this.txtResult.Text = result; Now all templates run in a remote AppDomain and can be unloaded with simple code like this: RazorEngineFactory<RazorTemplateBase>.UnloadRazorHostInAppDomain(); this.Host = null; One Step further – Providing a caching ‘Runtime’ Once we can load templates in a remote AppDomain we can add some additional functionality like assembly caching based on application specific features. One of my typical scenarios is to render templates out of a scripts folder. So all templates live in a folder and they change infrequently. So a Folder based host that can compile these templates once and then only recompile them if something changes would be ideal. Enter host containers which are basically wrappers around the RazorEngine<t> and RazorEngineFactory<t>. They provide additional logic for things like file caching based on changes on disk or string hashes for string based template inputs. The folder host also provides for partial rendering logic through a custom template base implementation. There’s a base implementation in RazorBaseHostContainer, which provides the basics for hosting a RazorEngine, which includes the ability to start and stop the engine, cache assemblies and add references: public abstract class RazorBaseHostContainer<TBaseTemplateType> : MarshalByRefObject where TBaseTemplateType : RazorTemplateBase, new() { public RazorBaseHostContainer() { UseAppDomain = true; GeneratedNamespace = "__RazorHost"; } /// <summary> /// Determines whether the Container hosts Razor /// in a separate AppDomain. Seperate AppDomain /// hosting allows unloading and releasing of /// resources. /// </summary> public bool UseAppDomain { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Base folder location where the AppDomain /// is hosted. By default uses the same folder /// as the host application. /// /// Determines where binary dependencies are /// found for assembly references. /// </summary> public string BaseBinaryFolder { get; set; } /// <summary> /// List of referenced assemblies as string values. /// Must be in GAC or in the current folder of the host app/ /// base BinaryFolder /// </summary> public List<string> ReferencedAssemblies = new List<string>(); /// <summary> /// Name of the generated namespace for template classes /// </summary> public string GeneratedNamespace {get; set; } /// <summary> /// Any error messages /// </summary> public string ErrorMessage { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Cached instance of the Host. Required to keep the /// reference to the host alive for multiple uses. /// </summary> public RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> Engine; /// <summary> /// Cached instance of the Host Factory - so we can unload /// the host and its associated AppDomain. /// </summary> protected RazorEngineFactory<TBaseTemplateType> EngineFactory; /// <summary> /// Keep track of each compiled assembly /// and when it was compiled. /// /// Use a hash of the string to identify string /// changes. /// </summary> protected Dictionary<int, CompiledAssemblyItem> LoadedAssemblies = new Dictionary<int, CompiledAssemblyItem>(); /// <summary> /// Call to start the Host running. Follow by a calls to RenderTemplate to /// render individual templates. Call Stop when done. /// </summary> /// <returns>true or false - check ErrorMessage on false </returns> public virtual bool Start() { if (Engine == null) { if (UseAppDomain) Engine = RazorEngineFactory<TBaseTemplateType>.CreateRazorHostInAppDomain(); else Engine = RazorEngineFactory<TBaseTemplateType>.CreateRazorHost(); Engine.Configuration.CompileToMemory = true; Engine.HostContainer = this; if (Engine == null) { this.ErrorMessage = EngineFactory.ErrorMessage; return false; } } return true; } /// <summary> /// Stops the Host and releases the host AppDomain and cached /// assemblies. /// </summary> /// <returns>true or false</returns> public bool Stop() { this.LoadedAssemblies.Clear(); RazorEngineFactory<RazorTemplateBase>.UnloadRazorHostInAppDomain(); this.Engine = null; return true; } … } This base class provides most of the mechanics to host the runtime, but no application specific implementation for rendering. There are rendering functions but they just call the engine directly and provide no caching – there’s no context to decide how to cache and reuse templates. The key methods are Start and Stop and their main purpose is to start a new AppDomain (optionally) and shut it down when requested. The RazorFolderHostContainer – Folder Based Runtime Hosting Let’s look at the more application specific RazorFolderHostContainer implementation which is defined like this: public class RazorFolderHostContainer : RazorBaseHostContainer<RazorTemplateFolderHost> Note that a customized RazorTemplateFolderHost class template is used for this implementation that supports partial rendering in form of a RenderPartial() method that’s available to templates. The folder host’s features are: Render templates based on a Template Base Path (a ‘virtual’ if you will) Cache compiled assemblies based on the relative path and file time stamp File changes on templates cause templates to be recompiled into new assemblies Support for partial rendering using base folder relative pathing As shown in the startup examples earlier host containers require some startup code with a HostContainer tied to a persistent property (like a Form property): // The base path for templates - templates are rendered with relative paths // based on this path. HostContainer.TemplatePath = Path.Combine(Environment.CurrentDirectory, TemplateBaseFolder); // Default output rendering disk location HostContainer.RenderingOutputFile = Path.Combine(HostContainer.TemplatePath, "__Preview.htm"); // Add any assemblies you want reference in your templates HostContainer.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.Windows.Forms.dll"); // Start up the host container HostContainer.Start(); Once that’s done, you can render templates with the host container: // Pass the template path for full filename seleted with OpenFile Dialog // relativepath is: subdir\file.cshtml or file.cshtml or ..\file.cshtml var relativePath = Utilities.GetRelativePath(fileName, HostContainer.TemplatePath); if (!HostContainer.RenderTemplate(relativePath, Context, HostContainer.RenderingOutputFile)) { MessageBox.Show("Error: " + HostContainer.ErrorMessage); return; } webBrowser1.Navigate("file://" + HostContainer.RenderingOutputFile); The most critical task of the RazorFolderHostContainer implementation is to retrieve a template from disk, compile and cache it and then deal with deciding whether subsequent requests need to re-compile the template or simply use a cached version. Internally the GetAssemblyFromFileAndCache() handles this task: /// <summary> /// Internally checks if a cached assembly exists and if it does uses it /// else creates and compiles one. Returns an assembly Id to be /// used with the LoadedAssembly list. /// </summary> /// <param name="relativePath"></param> /// <param name="context"></param> /// <returns></returns> protected virtual CompiledAssemblyItem GetAssemblyFromFileAndCache(string relativePath) { string fileName = Path.Combine(TemplatePath, relativePath).ToLower(); int fileNameHash = fileName.GetHashCode(); if (!File.Exists(fileName)) { this.SetError(Resources.TemplateFileDoesnTExist + fileName); return null; } CompiledAssemblyItem item = null; this.LoadedAssemblies.TryGetValue(fileNameHash, out item); string assemblyId = null; // Check for cached instance if (item != null) { var fileTime = File.GetLastWriteTimeUtc(fileName); if (fileTime <= item.CompileTimeUtc) assemblyId = item.AssemblyId; } else item = new CompiledAssemblyItem(); // No cached instance - create assembly and cache if (assemblyId == null) { string safeClassName = GetSafeClassName(fileName); StreamReader reader = null; try { reader = new StreamReader(fileName, true); } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(Resources.ErrorReadingTemplateFile + fileName); return null; } assemblyId = Engine.ParseAndCompileTemplate(this.ReferencedAssemblies.ToArray(), reader); // need to ensure reader is closed if (reader != null) reader.Close(); if (assemblyId == null) { this.SetError(Engine.ErrorMessage); return null; } item.AssemblyId = assemblyId; item.CompileTimeUtc = DateTime.UtcNow; item.FileName = fileName; item.SafeClassName = safeClassName; this.LoadedAssemblies[fileNameHash] = item; } return item; } This code uses a LoadedAssembly dictionary which is comprised of a structure that holds a reference to a compiled assembly, a full filename and file timestamp and an assembly id. LoadedAssemblies (defined on the base class shown earlier) is essentially a cache for compiled assemblies and they are identified by a hash id. In the case of files the hash is a GetHashCode() from the full filename of the template. The template is checked for in the cache and if not found the file stamp is checked. If that’s newer than the cache’s compilation date the template is recompiled otherwise the version in the cache is used. All the core work defers to a RazorEngine<T> instance to ParseAndCompileTemplate(). The three rendering specific methods then are rather simple implementations with just a few lines of code dealing with parameter and return value parsing: /// <summary> /// Renders a template to a TextWriter. Useful to write output into a stream or /// the Response object. Used for partial rendering. /// </summary> /// <param name="relativePath">Relative path to the file in the folder structure</param> /// <param name="context">Optional context object or null</param> /// <param name="writer">The textwriter to write output into</param> /// <returns></returns> public bool RenderTemplate(string relativePath, object context, TextWriter writer) { // Set configuration data that is to be passed to the template (any object) Engine.TemplatePerRequestConfigurationData = new RazorFolderHostTemplateConfiguration() { TemplatePath = Path.Combine(this.TemplatePath, relativePath), TemplateRelativePath = relativePath, }; CompiledAssemblyItem item = GetAssemblyFromFileAndCache(relativePath); if (item == null) { writer.Close(); return false; } try { // String result will be empty as output will be rendered into the // Response object's stream output. However a null result denotes // an error string result = Engine.RenderTemplateFromAssembly(item.AssemblyId, context, writer); if (result == null) { this.SetError(Engine.ErrorMessage); return false; } } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(ex.Message); return false; } finally { writer.Close(); } return true; } /// <summary> /// Render a template from a source file on disk to a specified outputfile. /// </summary> /// <param name="relativePath">Relative path off the template root folder. Format: path/filename.cshtml</param> /// <param name="context">Any object that will be available in the template as a dynamic of this.Context</param> /// <param name="outputFile">Optional - output file where output is written to. If not specified the /// RenderingOutputFile property is used instead /// </param> /// <returns>true if rendering succeeds, false on failure - check ErrorMessage</returns> public bool RenderTemplate(string relativePath, object context, string outputFile) { if (outputFile == null) outputFile = RenderingOutputFile; try { using (StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(outputFile, false, Engine.Configuration.OutputEncoding, Engine.Configuration.StreamBufferSize)) { return RenderTemplate(relativePath, context, writer); } } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(ex.Message); return false; } return true; } /// <summary> /// Renders a template to string. Useful for RenderTemplate /// </summary> /// <param name="relativePath"></param> /// <param name="context"></param> /// <returns></returns> public string RenderTemplateToString(string relativePath, object context) { string result = string.Empty; try { using (StringWriter writer = new StringWriter()) { // String result will be empty as output will be rendered into the // Response object's stream output. However a null result denotes // an error if (!RenderTemplate(relativePath, context, writer)) { this.SetError(Engine.ErrorMessage); return null; } result = writer.ToString(); } } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(ex.Message); return null; } return result; } The idea is that you can create custom host container implementations that do exactly what you want fairly easily. Take a look at both the RazorFolderHostContainer and RazorStringHostContainer classes for the basic concepts you can use to create custom implementations. Notice also that you can set the engine’s PerRequestConfigurationData() from the host container: // Set configuration data that is to be passed to the template (any object) Engine.TemplatePerRequestConfigurationData = new RazorFolderHostTemplateConfiguration() { TemplatePath = Path.Combine(this.TemplatePath, relativePath), TemplateRelativePath = relativePath, }; which when set to a non-null value is passed to the Template’s InitializeTemplate() method. This method receives an object parameter which you can cast as needed: public override void InitializeTemplate(object configurationData) { // Pick up configuration data and stuff into Request object RazorFolderHostTemplateConfiguration config = configurationData as RazorFolderHostTemplateConfiguration; this.Request.TemplatePath = config.TemplatePath; this.Request.TemplateRelativePath = config.TemplateRelativePath; } With this data you can then configure any custom properties or objects on your main template class. It’s an easy way to pass data from the HostContainer all the way down into the template. The type you use is of type object so you have to cast it yourself, and it must be serializable since it will likely run in a separate AppDomain. This might seem like an ugly way to pass data around – normally I’d use an event delegate to call back from the engine to the host, but since this is running over AppDomain boundaries events get really tricky and passing a template instance back up into the host over AppDomain boundaries doesn’t work due to serialization issues. So it’s easier to pass the data from the host down into the template using this rather clumsy approach of set and forward. It’s ugly, but it’s something that can be hidden in the host container implementation as I’ve done here. It’s also not something you have to do in every implementation so this is kind of an edge case, but I know I’ll need to pass a bunch of data in some of my applications and this will be the easiest way to do so. Summing Up Hosting the Razor runtime is something I got jazzed up about quite a bit because I have an immediate need for this type of templating/merging/scripting capability in an application I’m working on. I’ve also been using templating in many apps and it’s always been a pain to deal with. The Razor engine makes this whole experience a lot cleaner and more light weight and with these wrappers I can now plug .NET based templating into my code literally with a few lines of code. That’s something to cheer about… I hope some of you will find this useful as well… Resources The examples and code require that you download the Razor runtimes. Projects are for Visual Studio 2010 running on .NET 4.0 Platform Installer 3.0 (install WebMatrix or MVC 3 for Razor Runtimes) Latest Code in Subversion Repository Download Snapshot of the Code Documentation (CHM Help File) © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  .NET  

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• Agile Development

  - by James Oloo Onyango

  Alot of literature has and is being written about agile developement and its surrounding philosophies. In my quest to find the best way to express the importance of agile methodologies, i have found Robert C. Martin's "A Satire Of Two Companies" to be both the most concise and thorough! Enjoy the read! Rufus Inc Project Kick Off Your name is Bob. The date is January 3, 2001, and your head still aches from the recent millennial revelry. You are sitting in a conference room with several managers and a group of your peers. You are a project team leader. Your boss is there, and he has brought along all of his team leaders. His boss called the meeting. "We have a new project to develop," says your boss's boss. Call him BB. The points in his hair are so long that they scrape the ceiling. Your boss's points are just starting to grow, but he eagerly awaits the day when he can leave Brylcream stains on the acoustic tiles. BB describes the essence of the new market they have identified and the product they want to develop to exploit this market. "We must have this new project up and working by fourth quarter October 1," BB demands. "Nothing is of higher priority, so we are cancelling your current project." The reaction in the room is stunned silence. Months of work are simply going to be thrown away. Slowly, a murmur of objection begins to circulate around the conference table.   His points give off an evil green glow as BB meets the eyes of everyone in the room. One by one, that insidious stare reduces each attendee to quivering lumps of protoplasm. It is clear that he will brook no discussion on this matter. Once silence has been restored, BB says, "We need to begin immediately. How long will it take you to do the analysis?" You raise your hand. Your boss tries to stop you, but his spitwad misses you and you are unaware of his efforts.   "Sir, we can't tell you how long the analysis will take until we have some requirements." "The requirements document won't be ready for 3 or 4 weeks," BB says, his points vibrating with frustration. "So, pretend that you have the requirements in front of you now. How long will you require for analysis?" No one breathes. Everyone looks around to see whether anyone has some idea. "If analysis goes beyond April 1, we have a problem. Can you finish the analysis by then?" Your boss visibly gathers his courage: "We'll find a way, sir!" His points grow 3 mm, and your headache increases by two Tylenol. "Good." BB smiles. "Now, how long will it take to do the design?" "Sir," you say. Your boss visibly pales. He is clearly worried that his 3 mms are at risk. "Without an analysis, it will not be possible to tell you how long design will take." BB's expression shifts beyond austere.   "PRETEND you have the analysis already!" he says, while fixing you with his vacant, beady little eyes. "How long will it take you to do the design?" Two Tylenol are not going to cut it. Your boss, in a desperate attempt to save his new growth, babbles: "Well, sir, with only six months left to complete the project, design had better take no longer than 3 months."   "I'm glad you agree, Smithers!" BB says, beaming. Your boss relaxes. He knows his points are secure. After a while, he starts lightly humming the Brylcream jingle. BB continues, "So, analysis will be complete by April 1, design will be complete by July 1, and that gives you 3 months to implement the project. This meeting is an example of how well our new consensus and empowerment policies are working. Now, get out there and start working. I'll expect to see TQM plans and QIT assignments on my desk by next week. Oh, and don't forget that your crossfunctional team meetings and reports will be needed for next month's quality audit." "Forget the Tylenol," you think to yourself as you return to your cubicle. "I need bourbon."   Visibly excited, your boss comes over to you and says, "Gosh, what a great meeting. I think we're really going to do some world shaking with this project." You nod in agreement, too disgusted to do anything else. "Oh," your boss continues, "I almost forgot." He hands you a 30-page document. "Remember that the SEI is coming to do an evaluation next week. This is the evaluation guide. You need to read through it, memorize it, and then shred it. It tells you how to answer any questions that the SEI auditors ask you. It also tells you what parts of the building you are allowed to take them to and what parts to avoid. We are determined to be a CMM level 3 organization by June!"   You and your peers start working on the analysis of the new project. This is difficult because you have no requirements. But from the 10-minute introduction given by BB on that fateful morning, you have some idea of what the product is supposed to do.   Corporate process demands that you begin by creating a use case document. You and your team begin enumerating use cases and drawing oval and stick diagrams. Philosophical debates break out among the team members. There is disagreement as to whether certain use cases should be connected with <<extends>> or <<includes>> relationships. Competing models are created, but nobody knows how to evaluate them. The debate continues, effectively paralyzing progress.   After a week, somebody finds the iceberg.com Web site, which recommends disposing entirely of <<extends>> and <<includes>> and replacing them with <<precedes>> and <<uses>>. The documents on this Web site, authored by Don Sengroiux, describes a method known as stalwart-analysis, which claims to be a step-by-step method for translating use cases into design diagrams. More competing use case models are created using this new scheme, but again, people can't agree on how to evaluate them. The thrashing continues. More and more, the use case meetings are driven by emotion rather than by reason. If it weren't for the fact that you don't have requirements, you'd be pretty upset by the lack of progress you are making. The requirements document arrives on February 15. And then again on February 20, 25, and every week thereafter. Each new version contradicts the previous one. Clearly, the marketing folks who are writing the requirements, empowered though they might be, are not finding consensus.   At the same time, several new competing use case templates have been proposed by the various team members. Each template presents its own particularly creative way of delaying progress. The debates rage on. On March 1, Prudence Putrigence, the process proctor, succeeds in integrating all the competing use case forms and templates into a single, all-encompassing form. Just the blank form is 15 pages long. She has managed to include every field that appeared on all the competing templates. She also presents a 159- page document describing how to fill out the use case form. All current use cases must be rewritten according to the new standard.   You marvel to yourself that it now requires 15 pages of fill-in-the-blank and essay questions to answer the question: What should the system do when the user presses Return? The corporate process (authored by L. E. Ott, famed author of "Holistic Analysis: A Progressive Dialectic for Software Engineers") insists that you discover all primary use cases, 87 percent of all secondary use cases, and 36.274 percent of all tertiary use cases before you can complete analysis and enter the design phase. You have no idea what a tertiary use case is. So in an attempt to meet this requirement, you try to get your use case document reviewed by the marketing department, which you hope will know what a tertiary use case is.   Unfortunately, the marketing folks are too busy with sales support to talk to you. Indeed, since the project started, you have not been able to get a single meeting with marketing, which has provided a never-ending stream of changing and contradictory requirements documents.   While one team has been spinning endlessly on the use case document, another team has been working out the domain model. Endless variations of UML documents are pouring out of this team. Every week, the model is reworked.   The team members can't decide whether to use <<interfaces>> or <<types>> in the model. A huge disagreement has been raging on the proper syntax and application of OCL. Others on the team just got back from a 5-day class on catabolism, and have been producing incredibly detailed and arcane diagrams that nobody else can fathom.   On March 27, with one week to go before analysis is to be complete, you have produced a sea of documents and diagrams but are no closer to a cogent analysis of the problem than you were on January 3. **** And then, a miracle happens.   **** On Saturday, April 1, you check your e-mail from home. You see a memo from your boss to BB. It states unequivocally that you are done with the analysis! You phone your boss and complain. "How could you have told BB that we were done with the analysis?" "Have you looked at a calendar lately?" he responds. "It's April 1!" The irony of that date does not escape you. "But we have so much more to think about. So much more to analyze! We haven't even decided whether to use <<extends>> or <<precedes>>!" "Where is your evidence that you are not done?" inquires your boss, impatiently. "Whaaa . . . ." But he cuts you off. "Analysis can go on forever; it has to be stopped at some point. And since this is the date it was scheduled to stop, it has been stopped. Now, on Monday, I want you to gather up all existing analysis materials and put them into a public folder. Release that folder to Prudence so that she can log it in the CM system by Monday afternoon. Then get busy and start designing."   As you hang up the phone, you begin to consider the benefits of keeping a bottle of bourbon in your bottom desk drawer. They threw a party to celebrate the on-time completion of the analysis phase. BB gave a colon-stirring speech on empowerment. And your boss, another 3 mm taller, congratulated his team on the incredible show of unity and teamwork. Finally, the CIO takes the stage to tell everyone that the SEI audit went very well and to thank everyone for studying and shredding the evaluation guides that were passed out. Level 3 now seems assured and will be awarded by June. (Scuttlebutt has it that managers at the level of BB and above are to receive significant bonuses once the SEI awards level 3.)   As the weeks flow by, you and your team work on the design of the system. Of course, you find that the analysis that the design is supposedly based on is flawedno, useless; no, worse than useless. But when you tell your boss that you need to go back and work some more on the analysis to shore up its weaker sections, he simply states, "The analysis phase is over. The only allowable activity is design. Now get back to it."   So, you and your team hack the design as best you can, unsure of whether the requirements have been properly analyzed. Of course, it really doesn't matter much, since the requirements document is still thrashing with weekly revisions, and the marketing department still refuses to meet with you.     The design is a nightmare. Your boss recently misread a book named The Finish Line in which the author, Mark DeThomaso, blithely suggested that design documents should be taken down to code-level detail. "If we are going to be working at that level of detail," you ask, "why don't we simply write the code instead?" "Because then you wouldn't be designing, of course. And the only allowable activity in the design phase is design!" "Besides," he continues, "we have just purchased a companywide license for Dandelion! This tool enables 'Round the Horn Engineering!' You are to transfer all design diagrams into this tool. It will automatically generate our code for us! It will also keep the design diagrams in sync with the code!" Your boss hands you a brightly colored shrinkwrapped box containing the Dandelion distribution. You accept it numbly and shuffle off to your cubicle. Twelve hours, eight crashes, one disk reformatting, and eight shots of 151 later, you finally have the tool installed on your server. You consider the week your team will lose while attending Dandelion training. Then you smile and think, "Any week I'm not here is a good week." Design diagram after design diagram is created by your team. Dandelion makes it very difficult to draw these diagrams. There are dozens and dozens of deeply nested dialog boxes with funny text fields and check boxes that must all be filled in correctly. And then there's the problem of moving classes between packages. At first, these diagram are driven from the use cases. But the requirements are changing so often that the use cases rapidly become meaningless. Debates rage about whether VISITOR or DECORATOR design patterns should be used. One developer refuses to use VISITOR in any form, claiming that it's not a properly object-oriented construct. Someone refuses to use multiple inheritance, since it is the spawn of the devil. Review meetings rapidly degenerate into debates about the meaning of object orientation, the definition of analysis versus design, or when to use aggregation versus association. Midway through the design cycle, the marketing folks announce that they have rethought the focus of the system. Their new requirements document is completely restructured. They have eliminated several major feature areas and replaced them with feature areas that they anticipate customer surveys will show to be more appropriate. You tell your boss that these changes mean that you need to reanalyze and redesign much of the system. But he says, "The analysis phase is system. But he says, "The analysis phase is over. The only allowable activity is design. Now get back to it."   You suggest that it might be better to create a simple prototype to show to the marketing folks and even some potential customers. But your boss says, "The analysis phase is over. The only allowable activity is design. Now get back to it." Hack, hack, hack, hack. You try to create some kind of a design document that might reflect the new requirements documents. However, the revolution of the requirements has not caused them to stop thrashing. Indeed, if anything, the wild oscillations of the requirements document have only increased in frequency and amplitude.   You slog your way through them.   On June 15, the Dandelion database gets corrupted. Apparently, the corruption has been progressive. Small errors in the DB accumulated over the months into bigger and bigger errors. Eventually, the CASE tool just stopped working. Of course, the slowly encroaching corruption is present on all the backups. Calls to the Dandelion technical support line go unanswered for several days. Finally, you receive a brief e-mail from Dandelion, informing you that this is a known problem and that the solution is to purchase the new version, which they promise will be ready some time next quarter, and then reenter all the diagrams by hand.   ****   Then, on July 1 another miracle happens! You are done with the design!   Rather than go to your boss and complain, you stock your middle desk drawer with some vodka.   **** They threw a party to celebrate the on-time completion of the design phase and their graduation to CMM level 3. This time, you find BB's speech so stirring that you have to use the restroom before it begins. New banners and plaques are all over your workplace. They show pictures of eagles and mountain climbers, and they talk about teamwork and empowerment. They read better after a few scotches. That reminds you that you need to clear out your file cabinet to make room for the brandy. You and your team begin to code. But you rapidly discover that the design is lacking in some significant areas. Actually, it's lacking any significance at all. You convene a design session in one of the conference rooms to try to work through some of the nastier problems. But your boss catches you at it and disbands the meeting, saying, "The design phase is over. The only allowable activity is coding. Now get back to it."   ****   The code generated by Dandelion is really hideous. It turns out that you and your team were using association and aggregation the wrong way, after all. All the generated code has to be edited to correct these flaws. Editing this code is extremely difficult because it has been instrumented with ugly comment blocks that have special syntax that Dandelion needs in order to keep the diagrams in sync with the code. If you accidentally alter one of these comments, the diagrams will be regenerated incorrectly. It turns out that "Round the Horn Engineering" requires an awful lot of effort. The more you try to keep the code compatible with Dandelion, the more errors Dandelion generates. In the end, you give up and decide to keep the diagrams up to date manually. A second later, you decide that there's no point in keeping the diagrams up to date at all. Besides, who has time?   Your boss hires a consultant to build tools to count the number of lines of code that are being produced. He puts a big thermometer graph on the wall with the number 1,000,000 on the top. Every day, he extends the red line to show how many lines have been added. Three days after the thermometer appears on the wall, your boss stops you in the hall. "That graph isn't growing quickly enough. We need to have a million lines done by October 1." "We aren't even sh-sh-sure that the proshect will require a m-million linezh," you blather. "We have to have a million lines done by October 1," your boss reiterates. His points have grown again, and the Grecian formula he uses on them creates an aura of authority and competence. "Are you sure your comment blocks are big enough?" Then, in a flash of managerial insight, he says, "I have it! I want you to institute a new policy among the engineers. No line of code is to be longer than 20 characters. Any such line must be split into two or more preferably more. All existing code needs to be reworked to this standard. That'll get our line count up!"   You decide not to tell him that this will require two unscheduled work months. You decide not to tell him anything at all. You decide that intravenous injections of pure ethanol are the only solution. You make the appropriate arrangements. Hack, hack, hack, and hack. You and your team madly code away. By August 1, your boss, frowning at the thermometer on the wall, institutes a mandatory 50-hour workweek.   Hack, hack, hack, and hack. By September 1st, the thermometer is at 1.2 million lines and your boss asks you to write a report describing why you exceeded the coding budget by 20 percent. He institutes mandatory Saturdays and demands that the project be brought back down to a million lines. You start a campaign of remerging lines. Hack, hack, hack, and hack. Tempers are flaring; people are quitting; QA is raining trouble reports down on you. Customers are demanding installation and user manuals; salespeople are demanding advance demonstrations for special customers; the requirements document is still thrashing, the marketing folks are complaining that the product isn't anything like they specified, and the liquor store won't accept your credit card anymore. Something has to give.    On September 15, BB calls a meeting. As he enters the room, his points are emitting clouds of steam. When he speaks, the bass overtones of his carefully manicured voice cause the pit of your stomach to roll over. "The QA manager has told me that this project has less than 50 percent of the required features implemented. He has also informed me that the system crashes all the time, yields wrong results, and is hideously slow. He has also complained that he cannot keep up with the continuous train of daily releases, each more buggy than the last!" He stops for a few seconds, visibly trying to compose himself. "The QA manager estimates that, at this rate of development, we won't be able to ship the product until December!" Actually, you think it's more like March, but you don't say anything. "December!" BB roars with such derision that people duck their heads as though he were pointing an assault rifle at them. "December is absolutely out of the question. Team leaders, I want new estimates on my desk in the morning. I am hereby mandating 65-hour work weeks until this project is complete. And it better be complete by November 1."   As he leaves the conference room, he is heard to mutter: "Empowermentbah!" * * * Your boss is bald; his points are mounted on BB's wall. The fluorescent lights reflecting off his pate momentarily dazzle you. "Do you have anything to drink?" he asks. Having just finished your last bottle of Boone's Farm, you pull a bottle of Thunderbird from your bookshelf and pour it into his coffee mug. "What's it going to take to get this project done? " he asks. "We need to freeze the requirements, analyze them, design them, and then implement them," you say callously. "By November 1?" your boss exclaims incredulously. "No way! Just get back to coding the damned thing." He storms out, scratching his vacant head.   A few days later, you find that your boss has been transferred to the corporate research division. Turnover has skyrocketed. Customers, informed at the last minute that their orders cannot be fulfilled on time, have begun to cancel their orders. Marketing is re-evaluating whether this product aligns with the overall goals of the company. Memos fly, heads roll, policies change, and things are, overall, pretty grim. Finally, by March, after far too many sixty-five hour weeks, a very shaky version of the software is ready. In the field, bug-discovery rates are high, and the technical support staff are at their wits' end, trying to cope with the complaints and demands of the irate customers. Nobody is happy.   In April, BB decides to buy his way out of the problem by licensing a product produced by Rupert Industries and redistributing it. The customers are mollified, the marketing folks are smug, and you are laid off.     Rupert Industries: Project Alpha   Your name is Robert. The date is January 3, 2001. The quiet hours spent with your family this holiday have left you refreshed and ready for work. You are sitting in a conference room with your team of professionals. The manager of the division called the meeting. "We have some ideas for a new project," says the division manager. Call him Russ. He is a high-strung British chap with more energy than a fusion reactor. He is ambitious and driven but understands the value of a team. Russ describes the essence of the new market opportunity the company has identified and introduces you to Jane, the marketing manager, who is responsible for defining the products that will address it. Addressing you, Jane says, "We'd like to start defining our first product offering as soon as possible. When can you and your team meet with me?" You reply, "We'll be done with the current iteration of our project this Friday. We can spare a few hours for you between now and then. After that, we'll take a few people from the team and dedicate them to you. We'll begin hiring their replacements and the new people for your team immediately." "Great," says Russ, "but I want you to understand that it is critical that we have something to exhibit at the trade show coming up this July. If we can't be there with something significant, we'll lose the opportunity."   "I understand," you reply. "I don't yet know what it is that you have in mind, but I'm sure we can have something by July. I just can't tell you what that something will be right now. In any case, you and Jane are going to have complete control over what we developers do, so you can rest assured that by July, you'll have the most important things that can be accomplished in that time ready to exhibit."   Russ nods in satisfaction. He knows how this works. Your team has always kept him advised and allowed him to steer their development. He has the utmost confidence that your team will work on the most important things first and will produce a high-quality product.   * * *   "So, Robert," says Jane at their first meeting, "How does your team feel about being split up?" "We'll miss working with each other," you answer, "but some of us were getting pretty tired of that last project and are looking forward to a change. So, what are you people cooking up?" Jane beams. "You know how much trouble our customers currently have . . ." And she spends a half hour or so describing the problem and possible solution. "OK, wait a second" you respond. "I need to be clear about this." And so you and Jane talk about how this system might work. Some of her ideas aren't fully formed. You suggest possible solutions. She likes some of them. You continue discussing.   During the discussion, as each new topic is addressed, Jane writes user story cards. Each card represents something that the new system has to do. The cards accumulate on the table and are spread out in front of you. Both you and Jane point at them, pick them up, and make notes on them as you discuss the stories. The cards are powerful mnemonic devices that you can use to represent complex ideas that are barely formed.   At the end of the meeting, you say, "OK, I've got a general idea of what you want. I'm going to talk to the team about it. I imagine they'll want to run some experiments with various database structures and presentation formats. Next time we meet, it'll be as a group, and we'll start identifying the most important features of the system."   A week later, your nascent team meets with Jane. They spread the existing user story cards out on the table and begin to get into some of the details of the system. The meeting is very dynamic. Jane presents the stories in the order of their importance. There is much discussion about each one. The developers are concerned about keeping the stories small enough to estimate and test. So they continually ask Jane to split one story into several smaller stories. Jane is concerned that each story have a clear business value and priority, so as she splits them, she makes sure that this stays true.   The stories accumulate on the table. Jane writes them, but the developers make notes on them as needed. Nobody tries to capture everything that is said; the cards are not meant to capture everything but are simply reminders of the conversation.   As the developers become more comfortable with the stories, they begin writing estimates on them. These estimates are crude and budgetary, but they give Jane an idea of what the story will cost.   At the end of the meeting, it is clear that many more stories could be discussed. It is also clear that the most important stories have been addressed and that they represent several months worth of work. Jane closes the meeting by taking the cards with her and promising to have a proposal for the first release in the morning.   * * *   The next morning, you reconvene the meeting. Jane chooses five cards and places them on the table. "According to your estimates, these cards represent about one perfect team-week's worth of work. The last iteration of the previous project managed to get one perfect team-week done in 3 real weeks. If we can get these five stories done in 3 weeks, we'll be able to demonstrate them to Russ. That will make him feel very comfortable about our progress." Jane is pushing it. The sheepish look on her face lets you know that she knows it too. You reply, "Jane, this is a new team, working on a new project. It's a bit presumptuous to expect that our velocity will be the same as the previous team's. However, I met with the team yesterday afternoon, and we all agreed that our initial velocity should, in fact, be set to one perfectweek for every 3 real-weeks. So you've lucked out on this one." "Just remember," you continue, "that the story estimates and the story velocity are very tentative at this point. We'll learn more when we plan the iteration and even more when we implement it."   Jane looks over her glasses at you as if to say "Who's the boss around here, anyway?" and then smiles and says, "Yeah, don't worry. I know the drill by now."Jane then puts 15 more cards on the table. She says, "If we can get all these cards done by the end of March, we can turn the system over to our beta test customers. And we'll get good feedback from them."   You reply, "OK, so we've got our first iteration defined, and we have the stories for the next three iterations after that. These four iterations will make our first release."   "So," says Jane, can you really do these five stories in the next 3 weeks?" "I don't know for sure, Jane," you reply. "Let's break them down into tasks and see what we get."   So Jane, you, and your team spend the next several hours taking each of the five stories that Jane chose for the first iteration and breaking them down into small tasks. The developers quickly realize that some of the tasks can be shared between stories and that other tasks have commonalities that can probably be taken advantage of. It is clear that potential designs are popping into the developers' heads. From time to time, they form little discussion knots and scribble UML diagrams on some cards.   Soon, the whiteboard is filled with the tasks that, once completed, will implement the five stories for this iteration. You start the sign-up process by saying, "OK, let's sign up for these tasks." "I'll take the initial database generation." Says Pete. "That's what I did on the last project, and this doesn't look very different. I estimate it at two of my perfect workdays." "OK, well, then, I'll take the login screen," says Joe. "Aw, darn," says Elaine, the junior member of the team, "I've never done a GUI, and kinda wanted to try that one."   "Ah, the impatience of youth," Joe says sagely, with a wink in your direction. "You can assist me with it, young Jedi." To Jane: "I think it'll take me about three of my perfect workdays."   One by one, the developers sign up for tasks and estimate them in terms of their own perfect workdays. Both you and Jane know that it is best to let the developers volunteer for tasks than to assign the tasks to them. You also know full well that you daren't challenge any of the developers' estimates. You know these people, and you trust them. You know that they are going to do the very best they can.   The developers know that they can't sign up for more perfect workdays than they finished in the last iteration they worked on. Once each developer has filled his or her schedule for the iteration, they stop signing up for tasks.   Eventually, all the developers have stopped signing up for tasks. But, of course, tasks are still left on the board.   "I was worried that that might happen," you say, "OK, there's only one thing to do, Jane. We've got too much to do in this iteration. What stories or tasks can we remove?" Jane sighs. She knows that this is the only option. Working overtime at the beginning of a project is insane, and projects where she's tried it have not fared well.   So Jane starts to remove the least-important functionality. "Well, we really don't need the login screen just yet. We can simply start the system in the logged-in state." "Rats!" cries Elaine. "I really wanted to do that." "Patience, grasshopper." says Joe. "Those who wait for the bees to leave the hive will not have lips too swollen to relish the honey." Elaine looks confused. Everyone looks confused. "So . . .," Jane continues, "I think we can also do away with . . ." And so, bit by bit, the list of tasks shrinks. Developers who lose a task sign up for one of the remaining ones.   The negotiation is not painless. Several times, Jane exhibits obvious frustration and impatience. Once, when tensions are especially high, Elaine volunteers, "I'll work extra hard to make up some of the missing time." You are about to correct her when, fortunately, Joe looks her in the eye and says, "When once you proceed down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny."   In the end, an iteration acceptable to Jane is reached. It's not what Jane wanted. Indeed, it is significantly less. But it's something the team feels that can be achieved in the next 3 weeks.   And, after all, it still addresses the most important things that Jane wanted in the iteration. "So, Jane," you say when things had quieted down a bit, "when can we expect acceptance tests from you?" Jane sighs. This is the other side of the coin. For every story the development team implements,   Jane must supply a suite of acceptance tests that prove that it works. And the team needs these long before the end of the iteration, since they will certainly point out differences in the way Jane and the developers imagine the system's behaviour.   "I'll get you some example test scripts today," Jane promises. "I'll add to them every day after that. You'll have the entire suite by the middle of the iteration."   * * *   The iteration begins on Monday morning with a flurry of Class, Responsibilities, Collaborators sessions. By midmorning, all the developers have assembled into pairs and are rapidly coding away. "And now, my young apprentice," Joe says to Elaine, "you shall learn the mysteries of test-first design!"   "Wow, that sounds pretty rad," Elaine replies. "How do you do it?" Joe beams. It's clear that he has been anticipating this moment. "OK, what does the code do right now?" "Huh?" replied Elaine, "It doesn't do anything at all; there is no code."   "So, consider our task; can you think of something the code should do?" "Sure," Elaine said with youthful assurance, "First, it should connect to the database." "And thereupon, what must needs be required to connecteth the database?" "You sure talk weird," laughed Elaine. "I think we'd have to get the database object from some registry and call the Connect() method. "Ah, astute young wizard. Thou perceives correctly that we requireth an object within which we can cacheth the database object." "Is 'cacheth' really a word?" "It is when I say it! So, what test can we write that we know the database registry should pass?" Elaine sighs. She knows she'll just have to play along. "We should be able to create a database object and pass it to the registry in a Store() method. And then we should be able to pull it out of the registry with a Get() method and make sure it's the same object." "Oh, well said, my prepubescent sprite!" "Hay!" "So, now, let's write a test function that proves your case." "But shouldn't we write the database object and registry object first?" "Ah, you've much to learn, my young impatient one. Just write the test first." "But it won't even compile!" "Are you sure? What if it did?" "Uh . . ." "Just write the test, Elaine. Trust me." And so Joe, Elaine, and all the other developers began to code their tasks, one test case at a time. The room in which they worked was abuzz with the conversations between the pairs. The murmur was punctuated by an occasional high five when a pair managed to finish a task or a difficult test case.   As development proceeded, the developers changed partners once or twice a day. Each developer got to see what all the others were doing, and so knowledge of the code spread generally throughout the team.   Whenever a pair finished something significant whether a whole task or simply an important part of a task they integrated what they had with the rest of the system. Thus, the code base grew daily, and integration difficulties were minimized.   The developers communicated with Jane on a daily basis. They'd go to her whenever they had a question about the functionality of the system or the interpretation of an acceptance test case.   Jane, good as her word, supplied the team with a steady stream of acceptance test scripts. The team read these carefully and thereby gained a much better understanding of what Jane expected the system to do. By the beginning of the second week, there was enough functionality to demonstrate to Jane. She watched eagerly as the demonstration passed test case after test case. "This is really cool," Jane said as the demonstration finally ended. "But this doesn't seem like one-third of the tasks. Is your velocity slower than anticipated?"   You grimace. You'd been waiting for a good time to mention this to Jane but now she was forcing the issue. "Yes, unfortunately, we are going more slowly than we had expected. The new application server we are using is turning out to be a pain to configure. Also, it takes forever to reboot, and we have to reboot it whenever we make even the slightest change to its configuration."   Jane eyes you with suspicion. The stress of last Monday's negotiations had still not entirely dissipated. She says, "And what does this mean to our schedule? We can't slip it again, we just can't. Russ will have a fit! He'll haul us all into the woodshed and ream us some new ones."   You look Jane right in the eyes. There's no pleasant way to give someone news like this. So you just blurt out, "Look, if things keep going like they're going, we're not going to be done with everything by next Friday. Now it's possible that we'll figure out a way to go faster. But, frankly, I wouldn't depend on that. You should start thinking about one or two tasks that could be removed from the iteration without ruining the demonstration for Russ. Come hell or high water, we are going to give that demonstration on Friday, and I don't think you want us to choose which tasks to omit."   "Aw forchrisakes!" Jane barely manages to stifle yelling that last word as she stalks away, shaking her head. Not for the first time, you say to yourself, "Nobody ever promised me project management would be easy." You are pretty sure it won't be the last time, either.   Actually, things went a bit better than you had hoped. The team did, in fact, have to drop one task from the iteration, but Jane had chosen wisely, and the demonstration for Russ went without a hitch. Russ was not impressed with the progress, but neither was he dismayed. He simply said, "This is pretty good. But remember, we have to be able to demonstrate this system at the trade show in July, and at this rate, it doesn't look like you'll have all that much to show." Jane, whose attitude had improved dramatically with the completion of the iteration, responded to Russ by saying, "Russ, this team is working hard, and well. When July comes around, I am confident that we'll have something significant to demonstrate. It won't be everything, and some of it may be smoke and mirrors, but we'll have something."   Painful though the last iteration was, it had calibrated your velocity numbers. The next iteration went much better. Not because your team got more done than in the last iteration but simply because the team didn't have to remove any tasks or stories in the middle of the iteration.   By the start of the fourth iteration, a natural rhythm has been established. Jane, you, and the team know exactly what to expect from one another. The team is running hard, but the pace is sustainable. You are confident that the team can keep up this pace for a year or more.   The number of surprises in the schedule diminishes to near zero; however, the number of surprises in the requirements does not. Jane and Russ frequently look over the growing system and make recommendations or changes to the existing functionality. But all parties realize that these changes take time and must be scheduled. So the changes do not cause anyone's expectations to be violated. In March, there is a major demonstration of the system to the board of directors. The system is very limited and is not yet in a form good enough to take to the trade show, but progress is steady, and the board is reasonably impressed.   The second release goes even more smoothly than the first. By now, the team has figured out a way to automate Jane's acceptance test scripts. The team has also refactored the design of the system to the point that it is really easy to add new features and change old ones. The second release was done by the end of June and was taken to the trade show. It had less in it than Jane and Russ would have liked, but it did demonstrate the most important features of the system. Although customers at the trade show noticed that certain features were missing, they were very impressed overall. You, Russ, and Jane all returned from the trade show with smiles on your faces. You all felt as though this project was a winner.   Indeed, many months later, you are contacted by Rufus Inc. That company had been working on a system like this for its internal operations. Rufus has canceled the development of that system after a death-march project and is negotiating to license your technology for its environment.   Indeed, things are looking up!

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