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• SQL SERVER – History of SQL Server Database Encryption

  - by pinaldave

  I recently met Michael Coles and Rodeney Landrum the author of one of the kind book Expert SQL Server 2008 Encryption at SQLPASS in Seattle. During the conversation we ended up how Microsoft is evolving encryption technology. The same discussion lead to talking about history of encryption tools in SQL Server. Michale pointed me to page 18 of his book of encryption. He explicitly give me permission to re-produce relevant part of history from his book. Encryption in SQL Server 2000 Built-in cryptographic encryption functionality was nonexistent in SQL Server 2000 and prior versions. In order to get server-side encryption in SQL Server you had to resort to purchasing or creating your own SQL Server XPs. Creating your own cryptographic XPs could be a daunting task owing to the fact that XPs had to be compiled as native DLLs (using a language like C or C++) and the XP application programming interface (API) was poorly documented. In addition there were always concerns around creating wellbehaved XPs that “played nicely” with the SQL Server process. Encryption in SQL Server 2005 Prior to the release of SQL Server 2005 there was a flurry of regulatory activity in response to accounting scandals and attacks on repositories of confidential consumer data. Much of this regulation centered onthe need for protecting and controlling access to sensitive financial and consumer information. With the release of SQL Server 2005 Microsoft responded to the increasing demand for built-in encryption byproviding the necessary tools to encrypt data at the column level. This functionality prominently featured the following: Support for column-level encryption of data using symmetric keys or passphrases. Built-in access to a variety of symmetric and asymmetric encryption algorithms, including AES, DES, Triple DES, RC2, RC4, and RSA. Capability to create and manage symmetric keys. Key creation and management. Ability to generate asymmetric keys and self-signed certificates, or to install external asymmetric keys and certificates. Implementation of hierarchical model for encryption key management, similar to the ANSI X9.17 standard model. SQL functions to generate one-way hash codes and digital signatures, including SHA-1 and MD5 hashes. Additional SQL functions to encrypt and decrypt data. Extensions to the SQL language to support creation, use, and administration of encryption keys and certificates. SQL CLR extensions that provide access to .NET-based encryption functionality. Encryption in SQL Server 2008 Encryption demands have increased over the past few years. For instance, there has been a demand for the ability to store encryption keys “off-the-box,” physically separate from the database and the data it contains. Also there is a recognized requirement for legacy databases and applications to take advantage of encryption without changing the existing code base. To address these needs SQL Server 2008 adds the following features to its encryption arsenal: Transparent Data Encryption (TDE): Allows you to encrypt an entire database, including log files and the tempdb database, in such a way that it is transparent to client applications. Extensible Key Management (EKM): Allows you to store and manage your encryption keys on an external device known as a hardware security module (HSM). Cryptographic random number generation functionality. Additional cryptography-related catalog views and dynamic management views. SQL language extensions to support the new encryption functionality. The encryption book covers all the tools in its various chapter in one simple story. If you are interested how encryption evolved and reached to the stage where it is today, this book is must for everyone. You can read my earlier review of the book over here. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Book Review, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Encryption, SQL Server Encryption, SQLPASS

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• BizTalk and IBM WebSphere MQ Errors

  - by Christopher House

  The project I'm currently working on is going to make heavy use of IBM WebShere MQ to send messages from BizTalk to the client's iSeries box.  I'd never previously worked with WebSphere MQ, so I didn't really have any idea what it would take to get this to work.  I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't too difficult to configure a send port and pass messages through it to a queue.  Or so I thought... A couple of weeks ago, the client gave me the name of a host, queue manager and queue that I'd been using for my development.  Everything was going great, I was able to put messages onto the queue, I was happy, the client was happy.  Life was good.  Then the client tells me that the host I've been connecting to is actually a Solaris box and that in prod, we'll actually be sending to an iSeries.  We both agree that it would behoove us to start pointing my dev environment to their dev iSeries box in order to flush out any weirdness there might be.  As it turns out, it was a good thing we made the change.  As soon as I reconfigured my BRE policy that sets endpoint information to point to the iSeries queue, we started seeing failures in the event log.  An example from the event log: Event Type: Error Event Source: BizTalk Server 2009 Event Category: BizTalk Server 2009 Event ID: 5754 Date:  6/9/2010 Time:  10:16:41 AM User:  N/A Computer: WINDOWS2003 Description: A message sent to adapter "MQSC" on send port "<my dynamic sendport name>" with URI "mqsc://client/tcp/<hostname>(1414)/<queue manager name>/<queue name>" is suspended.  Error details: Failure encountered while attempting to open queue. queue = <queue name> queueManager = <queue manager name>, reasonCode = 6124  MessageId:  {76825C7C-611A-4A56-8A6F-35E1124BDB5C}  InstanceID: {BA389103-DF9B-493F-8C61-44574822AAD6} The key piece of information in the event entry is the reasonCode, 6124.  A quick Google search shows that reasonCode 6124 is the code for MQRC_NOT_CONNECTED.  According to IBM's docs, this means that you've tried to send a message without first opening a connection to the queue manager.  Obviously, in the context of BizTalk, this is an unexpected error, since this sort of thing should be managed entirely by the send adapter. Perusing IBM's documentation a bit more, I came across some info on how to turn on tracing for MQ.  With tracing enabled, I tried sending a message again, then went and reviewed the trace files.  The bulk of the information in the trace files didn't mean a thing to me, but at the end of one of the files, I did notice this: 00006257 15:40:20.327795   3500.4      RSESS:000009 ------{  reqReleaseConn 00006258 15:40:20.328714   3500.4      RSESS:000009 ------}  reqReleaseConn (rc=OK) 00006259 15:40:20.328727   3500.4      RSESS:000009 ------{  xcsClearTraceIdent 0000625A 15:40:20.328739   3500.4           :       ------}  xcsClearTraceIdent (rc=OK) 0000625B 15:40:20.328752   3500.4           :       -----}! trmzstMQCONNX (rc=MQRC_NOT_AUTHORIZED) 0000625C 15:40:20.328765   3500.4           :       ----}! MQCONNX (rc=MQRC_NOT_AUTHORIZED) 0000625D 15:40:20.328766   3500.4           :       ---}! ImqQueueManager::connect (rc=MQRC_NOT_AUTHORIZED) 0000625E 15:40:20.328767   3500.4           :       --}! ImqObject::open (rc=MQRC_NOT_CONNECTED) 0000625F 15:40:20.328768   3500.4           :       --{  ImqQueue::lock 00006260 15:40:20.328769   3500.4           :       --}! ImqQueue::lock (rc=Unknown(1)) 00006261 15:40:20.328769   3500.4           :       --{  ImqQueue::unlock 00006262 15:40:20.328769   3500.4           :       --}! ImqQueue::unlock (rc=Unknown(1)) It seemed like the MQRC_NOT_CONNECTED error was being caused by a security related issue (MQRC_NOT_AUTHORIZED).  I did notice something earlier in the log where it appeared that MQ was passing a field named UID with a value equal to the account name that my BizTalk service was running under.  I ended up creating a new local account on the BizTalk server that had the same name as a user which had access to the queue manager on the iSeries.  I then created a new host instance that ran under this new account, created a send handler for the MQSC adapter on this new host instance and reconfigured my orchestration to run on the new host instance.  After bouncing all my host instances, I was now able to send messages to the iSeries. It's still not clear to me why we were able to connect to the Solaris server.  I ended up contacting IBM's support and they did confirm that the process sending to MQ does in fact pass the identity to the queue manager it's connecting to.

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• Dec 5th Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, jQuery, Silverlight, Visual Studio

  - by ScottGu

  Here is the latest in my link-listing series.  Also check out my VS 2010 and .NET 4 series for another on-going blog series I’m working on. [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] ASP.NET ASP.NET Code Samples Collection: J.D. Meier has a great post that provides a detailed round-up of ASP.NET code samples and tutorials from a wide variety of sources.  Lots of useful pointers. Slash your ASP.NET compile/load time without any hard work: Nice article that details a bunch of optimizations you can make to speed up ASP.NET project load and compile times. You might also want to read my previous blog post on this topic here. 10 Essential Tools for Building ASP.NET Websites: Great article by Stephen Walther on 10 great (and free) tools that enable you to more easily build great ASP.NET Websites.  Highly recommended reading. Optimize Images using the ASP.NET Sprite and Image Optimization Framework: A nice article by 4GuysFromRolla that discusses how to use the open-source ASP.NET Sprite and Image Optimization Framework (one of the tools recommended by Stephen in the previous article).  You can use this to significantly improve the load-time of your pages on the client. Formatting Dates, Times and Numbers in ASP.NET: Scott Mitchell has a great article that discusses formatting dates, times and numbers in ASP.NET.  A very useful link to bookmark.  Also check out James Michael’s DateTime is Packed with Goodies blog post for other DateTime tips. Examining ASP.NET’s Membership, Roles and Profile APIs (Part 18): Everything you could possibly want to known about ASP.NET’s built-in Membership, Roles and Profile APIs must surely be in this tutorial series. Part 18 covers how to store additional user info with Membership. ASP.NET with jQuery An Introduction to jQuery Templates: Stephen Walther has written an outstanding introduction and tutorial on the new jQuery Template plugin that the ASP.NET team has contributed to the jQuery project. Composition with jQuery Templates and jQuery Templates, Composite Rendering, and Remote Loading: Dave Ward has written two nice posts that talk about composition scenarios with jQuery Templates and some cool scenarios you can enable with them. Using jQuery and ASP.NET to Build a News Ticker: Scott Mitchell has a nice tutorial that demonstrates how to build a dynamically updated “news ticker” style UI with ASP.NET and jQuery. Checking All Checkboxes in a GridView using jQuery: Scott Mitchell has a nice post that covers how to use jQuery to enable a checkbox within a GridView’s header to automatically check/uncheck all checkboxes contained within rows of it. Using jQuery to POST Form Data to an ASP.NET AJAX Web Service: Rick Strahl has a nice post that discusses how to capture form variables and post them to an ASP.NET AJAX Web Service (.asmx). ASP.NET MVC ASP.NET MVC Diagnostics Using NuGet: Phil Haack has a nice post that demonstrates how to easily install a diagnostics page (using NuGet) that can help identify and diagnose common configuration issues within your apps. ASP.NET MVC 3 JsonValueProviderFactory: James Hughes has a nice post that discusses how to take advantage of the new JsonValueProviderFactory support built into ASP.NET MVC 3.  This makes it easy to post JSON payloads to MVC action methods. Practical jQuery Mobile with ASP.NET MVC: James Hughes has another nice post that discusses how to use the new jQuery Mobile library with ASP.NET MVC to build great mobile web applications. Credit Card Validator for ASP.NET MVC 3: Benjii Me has a nice post that demonstrates how to build a [CreditCard] validator attribute that can be used to easily validate credit card numbers are in the correct format with ASP.NET MVC. Silverlight Silverlight FireStarter Keynote and Sessions: A great blog post from John Papa that contains pointers and descriptions of all the great Silverlight content we published last week at the Silverlight FireStarter.  You can watch all of the talks online.  More details on my keynote and Silverlight 5 announcements can be found here. 31 Days of Windows Phone 7: 31 great tutorials on how to build Windows Phone 7 applications (using Silverlight).  Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit Update: David Anson has a nice post that discusses some of the additional controls provided with the Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit. Visual Studio JavaScript Editor Extensions: A nice (and free) Visual Studio plugin built by the web tools team that significantly improves the JavaScript intellisense support within Visual Studio. HTML5 Intellisense for Visual Studio: Gil has a blog post that discusses a new extension my team has posted to the Visual Studio Extension Gallery that adds HTML5 schema support to Visual Studio 2008 and 2010. Team Build + Web Deployment + Web Deploy + VS 2010 = Goodness: Visual blogs about how to enable a continuous deployment system with VS 2010, TFS 2010 and the Microsoft Web Deploy framework.  Visual Studio 2010 Emacs Emulation Extension and VIM Emulation Extension: Check out these two extensions if you are fond of Emacs and VIM key bindings and want to enable them within Visual Studio 2010. Hope this helps, Scott

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• SQL SERVER – Enumerations in Relational Database – Best Practice

  - by pinaldave

  Marko Parkkola This article has been submitted by Marko Parkkola, Data systems designer at Saarionen Oy, Finland. Marko is excellent developer and always thinking at next level. You can read his earlier comment which created very interesting discussion here: SQL SERVER- IF EXISTS(Select null from table) vs IF EXISTS(Select 1 from table). I must express my special thanks to Marko for sending this best practice for Enumerations in Relational Database. He has really wrote excellent piece here and welcome comments here. Enumerations in Relational Database This is a subject which is very basic thing in relational databases but often not very well understood and sometimes badly implemented. There are of course many ways to do this but I concentrate only two cases, one which is “the right way” and one which is definitely wrong way. The concept Let’s say we have table Person in our database. Person has properties/fields like Firstname, Lastname, Birthday and so on. Then there’s a field that tells person’s marital status and let’s name it the same way; MaritalStatus. Now MaritalStatus is an enumeration. In C# I would definitely make it an enumeration with values likes Single, InRelationship, Married, Divorced. Now here comes the problem, SQL doesn’t have enumerations. The wrong way This is, in my opinion, absolutely the wrong way to do this. It has one upside though; you’ll see the enumeration’s description instantly when you do simple SELECT query and you don’t have to deal with mysterious values. There’s plenty of downsides too and one would be database fragmentation. Consider this (I’ve left all indexes and constraints out of the query on purpose). CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Person] ( [Firstname] NVARCHAR(100), [Lastname] NVARCHAR(100), [Birthday] datetime, [MaritalStatus] NVARCHAR(10) ) You have nvarchar(20) field in the table that tells the marital status. Obvious problem with this is that what if you create a new value which doesn’t fit into 20 characters? You’ll have to come and alter the table. There are other problems also but I’ll leave those for the reader to think about. The correct way Here’s how I’ve done this in many projects. This model still has one problem but it can be alleviated in the application layer or with CHECK constraints if you like. First I will create a namespace table which tells the name of the enumeration. I will add one row to it too. I’ll write all the indexes and constraints here too. CREATE TABLE [CodeNamespace] ( [Id] INT IDENTITY(1, 1), [Name] NVARCHAR(100) NOT NULL, CONSTRAINT [PK_CodeNamespace] PRIMARY KEY ([Id]), CONSTRAINT [IXQ_CodeNamespace_Name] UNIQUE NONCLUSTERED ([Name]) ) GO INSERT INTO [CodeNamespace] SELECT 'MaritalStatus' GO Then I create a table that holds the actual values and which reference to namespace table in order to group the values under different namespaces. I’ll add couple of rows here too. CREATE TABLE [CodeValue] ( [CodeNamespaceId] INT NOT NULL, [Value] INT NOT NULL, [Description] NVARCHAR(100) NOT NULL, [OrderBy] INT, CONSTRAINT [PK_CodeValue] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ([CodeNamespaceId], [Value]), CONSTRAINT [FK_CodeValue_CodeNamespace] FOREIGN KEY ([CodeNamespaceId]) REFERENCES [CodeNamespace] ([Id]) ) GO -- 1 is the 'MaritalStatus' namespace INSERT INTO [CodeValue] SELECT 1, 1, 'Single', 1 INSERT INTO [CodeValue] SELECT 1, 2, 'In relationship', 2 INSERT INTO [CodeValue] SELECT 1, 3, 'Married', 3 INSERT INTO [CodeValue] SELECT 1, 4, 'Divorced', 4 GO Now there’s four columns in CodeValue table. CodeNamespaceId tells under which namespace values belongs to. Value tells the enumeration value which is used in Person table (I’ll show how this is done below). Description tells what the value means. You can use this, for example, column in UI’s combo box. OrderBy tells if the values needs to be ordered in some way when displayed in the UI. And here’s the Person table again now with correct columns. I’ll add one row here to show how enumerations are to be used. CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Person] ( [Firstname] NVARCHAR(100), [Lastname] NVARCHAR(100), [Birthday] datetime, [MaritalStatus] INT ) GO INSERT INTO [Person] SELECT 'Marko', 'Parkkola', '1977-03-04', 3 GO Now I said earlier that there is one problem with this. MaritalStatus column doesn’t have any database enforced relationship to the CodeValue table so you can enter any value you like into this field. I’ve solved this problem in the application layer by selecting all the values from the CodeValue table and put them into a combobox / dropdownlist (with Value field as value and Description as text) so the end user can’t enter any illegal values; and of course I’ll check the entered value in data access layer also. I said in the “The wrong way” section that there is one benefit to it. In fact, you can have the same benefit here by using a simple view, which I schema bound so you can even index it if you like. CREATE VIEW [dbo].[Person_v] WITH SCHEMABINDING AS SELECT p.[Firstname], p.[Lastname], p.[BirthDay], c.[Description] MaritalStatus FROM [dbo].[Person] p JOIN [dbo].[CodeValue] c ON p.[MaritalStatus] = c.[Value] JOIN [dbo].[CodeNamespace] n ON n.[Id] = c.[CodeNamespaceId] AND n.[Name] = 'MaritalStatus' GO -- Select from View SELECT * FROM [dbo].[Person_v] GO This is excellent write up byMarko Parkkola. Do you have this kind of design setup at your organization? Let us know your opinion. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Best Practices, Database, DBA, Readers Contribution, Software Development, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Documentation, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• New MySQL Cluster 7.3 Previews: Foreign Keys, NoSQL Node.js API and Auto-Tuned Clusters

  - by Mat Keep

  At this weeks MySQL Connect conference, Oracle previewed an exciting new wave of developments for MySQL Cluster, further extending its simplicity and flexibility by expanding the range of use-cases, adding new NoSQL options, and automating configuration. What’s new: Development Release 1: MySQL Cluster 7.3 with Foreign Keys Early Access “Labs” Preview: MySQL Cluster NoSQL API for Node.js Early Access “Labs” Preview: MySQL Cluster GUI-Based Auto-Installer In this blog, I'll introduce you to the features being previewed. Review the blogs listed below for more detail on each of the specific features discussed. Save the date!: A live webinar is scheduled for Thursday 25th October at 0900 Pacific Time / 1600UTC where we will discuss each of these enhancements in more detail. Registration will be open soon and published to the MySQL webinars page MySQL Cluster 7.3: Development Release 1 The first MySQL Cluster 7.3 Development Milestone Release (DMR) previews Foreign Keys, bringing powerful new functionality to MySQL Cluster while eliminating development complexity. Foreign Key support has been one of the most requested enhancements to MySQL Cluster – enabling users to simplify their data models and application logic – while extending the range of use-cases for both custom projects requiring referential integrity and packaged applications, such as eCommerce, CRM, CMS, etc. Implementation The Foreign Key functionality is implemented directly within the MySQL Cluster data nodes, allowing any client API accessing the cluster to benefit from them – whether they are SQL or one of the NoSQL interfaces (Memcached, C++, Java, JPA, HTTP/REST or the new Node.js API - discussed later.) The core referential actions defined in the SQL:2003 standard are implemented: CASCADE RESTRICT NO ACTION SET NULL In addition, the MySQL Cluster implementation supports the online adding and dropping of Foreign Keys, ensuring the Cluster continues to serve both read and write requests during the operation.  This represents a further enhancement to MySQL Cluster's support for on0line schema changes, ie adding and dropping indexes, adding columns, etc.  Read this blog for a demonstration of using Foreign Keys with MySQL Cluster.  Getting Started with MySQL Cluster 7.3 DMR1: Users can download either the source or binary and evaluate the MySQL Cluster 7.3 DMR with Foreign Keys now! (Select the Development Release tab). MySQL Cluster NoSQL API for Node.js Node.js is hot! In a little over 3 years, it has become one of the most popular environments for developing next generation web, cloud, mobile and social applications. Bringing JavaScript from the browser to the server, the design goal of Node.js is to build new real-time applications supporting millions of client connections, serviced by a single CPU core. Making it simple to further extend the flexibility and power of Node.js to the database layer, we are previewing the Node.js Javascript API for MySQL Cluster as an Early Access release, available for download now from http://labs.mysql.com/. Select the following build: MySQL-Cluster-NoSQL-Connector-for-Node-js Alternatively, you can clone the project at the MySQL GitHub page.  Implemented as a module for the V8 engine, the new API provides Node.js with a native, asynchronous JavaScript interface that can be used to both query and receive results sets directly from MySQL Cluster, without transformations to SQL. Figure 1: MySQL Cluster NoSQL API for Node.js enables end-to-end JavaScript development Rather than just presenting a simple interface to the database, the Node.js module integrates the MySQL Cluster native API library directly within the web application itself, enabling developers to seamlessly couple their high performance, distributed applications with a high performance, distributed, persistence layer delivering 99.999% availability. The new Node.js API joins a rich array of NoSQL interfaces available for MySQL Cluster. Whichever API is chosen for an application, SQL and NoSQL can be used concurrently across the same data set, providing the ultimate in developer flexibility.  Get started with MySQL Cluster NoSQL API for Node.js tutorial MySQL Cluster GUI-Based Auto-Installer Compatible with both MySQL Cluster 7.2 and 7.3, the Auto-Installer makes it simple for DevOps teams to quickly configure and provision highly optimized MySQL Cluster deployments – whether on-premise or in the cloud. Implemented with a standard HTML GUI and Python-based web server back-end, the Auto-Installer intelligently configures MySQL Cluster based on application requirements and auto-discovered hardware resources Figure 2: Automated Tuning and Configuration of MySQL Cluster Developed by the same engineering team responsible for the MySQL Cluster database, the installer provides standardized configurations that make it simple, quick and easy to build stable and high performance clustered environments. The auto-installer is previewed as an Early Access release, available for download now from http://labs.mysql.com/, by selecting the MySQL-Cluster-Auto-Installer build. You can read more about getting started with the MySQL Cluster auto-installer here. Watch the YouTube video for a demonstration of using the MySQL Cluster auto-installer Getting Started with MySQL Cluster If you are new to MySQL Cluster, the Getting Started guide will walk you through installing an evaluation cluster on a singe host (these guides reflect MySQL Cluster 7.2, but apply equally well to 7.3 and the Early Access previews). Or use the new MySQL Cluster Auto-Installer! Download the Guide to Scaling Web Databases with MySQL Cluster (to learn more about its architecture, design and ideal use-cases). Post any questions to the MySQL Cluster forum where our Engineering team and the MySQL Cluster community will attempt to assist you. Post any bugs you find to the MySQL bug tracking system (select MySQL Cluster from the Category drop-down menu) And if you have any feedback, please post them to the Comments section here or in the blogs referenced in this article. Summary MySQL Cluster 7.2 is the GA, production-ready release of MySQL Cluster. The first Development Release of MySQL Cluster 7.3 and the Early Access previews give you the opportunity to preview and evaluate future developments in the MySQL Cluster database, and we are very excited to be able to share that with you. Let us know how you get along with MySQL Cluster 7.3, and other features that you want to see in future releases, by using the comments of this blog.

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• Enable Automatic Code First Migrations On SQL Database in Azure Web Sites

  - by Steve Michelotti

  Now that Azure supports .NET Framework 4.5, you can use all the latest and greatest available features. A common scenario is to be able to use Entity Framework Code First Migrations with a SQL Database in Azure. Prior to Code First Migrations, Entity Framework provided database initializers. While convenient for demos and prototypes, database initializers weren’t useful for much beyond that because, if you delete and re-create your entire database when the schema changes, you lose all of your operational data. This is the void that Migrations are meant to fill. For example, if you add a column to your model, Migrations will alter the database to add the column rather than blowing away the entire database and re-creating it from scratch. Azure is becoming increasingly easier to use – especially with features like Azure Web Sites. Being able to use Entity Framework Migrations in Azure makes deployment easier than ever. In this blog post, I’ll walk through enabling Automatic Code First Migrations on Azure. I’ll use the Simple Membership provider for my example. First, we’ll create a new Azure Web site called “migrationstest” including creating a new SQL Database along with it:   Next we’ll go to the web site and download the publish profile:   In the meantime, we’ve created a new MVC 4 website in Visual Studio 2012 using the “Internet Application” template. This template is automatically configured to use the Simple Membership provider. We’ll do our initial Publish to Azure by right-clicking our project and selecting “Publish…”. From the “Publish Web” dialog, we’ll import the publish profile that we downloaded in the previous step:   Once the site is published, we’ll just click the “Register” link from the default site. Since the AccountController is decorated with the [InitializeSimpleMembership] attribute, the initializer will be called and the initial database is created.   We can verify this by connecting to our SQL Database on Azure with SQL Management Studio (after making sure that our local IP address is added to the list of Allowed IP Addresses in Azure): One interesting note is that these tables got created with the default Entity Framework initializer – which is to create the database if it doesn’t already exist. However, our database did already exist! This is because there is a new feature of Entity Framework 5 where Code First will add tables to an existing database as long as the target database doesn’t contain any of the tables from the model. At this point, it’s time to enable Migrations. We’ll open the Package Manger Console and execute the command: PM> Enable-Migrations -EnableAutomaticMigrations This will enable automatic migrations for our project. Because we used the "-EnableAutomaticMigrations” switch, it will create our Configuration class with a constructor that sets the AutomaticMigrationsEnabled property set to true: 1: public Configuration() 2: { 3: AutomaticMigrationsEnabled = true; 4: } We’ll now add our initial migration: PM> Add-Migration Initial This will create a migration class call “Initial” that contains the entire model. But we need to remove all of this code because our database already exists so we are just left with empty Up() and Down() methods. 1: public partial class Initial : DbMigration 2: { 3: public override void Up() 4: { 5: } 6: 7: public override void Down() 8: { 9: } 10: } If we don’t remove this code, we’ll get an exception the first time we attempt to run migrations that tells us: “There is already an object named 'UserProfile' in the database”. This blog post by Julie Lerman fully describes this scenario (i.e., enabling migrations on an existing database). Our next step is to add the Entity Framework initializer that will automatically use Migrations to update the database to the latest version. We will add these 2 lines of code to the Application_Start of the Global.asax: 1: Database.SetInitializer(new MigrateDatabaseToLatestVersion<UsersContext, Configuration>()); 2: new UsersContext().Database.Initialize(false); Note the Initialize() call will force the initializer to run if it has not been run before. At this point, we can publish again to make sure everything is still working as we are expecting. This time we’re going to specify in our publish profile that Code First Migrations should be executed:   Once we have re-published we can once again navigate to the Register page. At this point the database has not been changed but Migrations is now enabled on our SQL Database in Azure. We can now customize our model. Let’s add 2 new properties to the UserProfile class – Email and DateOfBirth: 1: [Table("UserProfile")] 2: public class UserProfile 3: { 4: [Key] 5: [DatabaseGeneratedAttribute(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)] 6: public int UserId { get; set; } 7: public string UserName { get; set; } 8: public string Email { get; set; } 9: public DateTime DateOfBirth { get; set; } 10: } At this point all we need to do is simply re-publish. We’ll once again navigate to the Registration page and, because we had Automatic Migrations enabled, the database has been altered (*not* recreated) to add our 2 new columns. We can verify this by once again looking at SQL Management Studio:   Automatic Migrations provide a quick and easy way to keep your database in sync with your model without the worry of having to re-create your entire database and lose data. With Azure Web Sites you can set up automatic deployment with Git or TFS and automate the entire process to make it dead simple.

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• How to create a link to Nintex Start Workflow Page in the document set home page

  - by ybbest

  In this blog post, I’d like to show you how to create a link to start Nintex Workflow Page in the document set home page. 1. Firstly, you need to upload the latest version of jQuery to the style library of your team site. 2. Then, upload a text file to the style library for writing your own html and JavaScript 3. In the document set home page, insert a new content editor web part and link the text file you just upload. 4. Update the text file with the following content, you can download this file here. <script type="text/javascript" src="/Style%20Library/jquery-1.9.0.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/_layouts/sp.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function() { listItemId=getParameterByName("ID"); setTheWorkflowLink("YBBESTDocumentLibrary"); }); function buildWorkflowLink(webRelativeUrl,listId,itemId) { var workflowLink =webRelativeUrl+"_layouts/NintexWorkflow/StartWorkflow.aspx?list="+listId+"&ID="+itemId+"&WorkflowName=Start Approval"; return workflowLink; } function getParameterByName(name) { name = name.replace(/[\[]/, "\\\[").replace(/[\]]/, "\\\]"); var regexS = "[\\?&]" + name + "=([^&#]*)"; var regex = new RegExp(regexS); var results = regex.exec(window.location.search); if(results == null){ return ""; } else{ return decodeURIComponent(results[1].replace(/\+/g, " ")); } } function setTheWorkflowLink(listName) { var SPContext = new SP.ClientContext.get_current(); web = SPContext.get_web(); list = web.get_lists().getByTitle(listName); SPContext.load(web,"ServerRelativeUrl"); SPContext.load(list, 'Title', 'Id'); SPContext.executeQueryAsync(setTheWorkflowLink_Success, setTheWorkflowLink_Fail); } function setTheWorkflowLink_Success(sender, args) { var listId = list.get_id(); var listTitle = list.get_title(); var webRelativeUrl = web.get_serverRelativeUrl(); var startWorkflowLink=buildWorkflowLink(webRelativeUrl,listId,listItemId) $("a#submitLink").attr('href',startWorkflowLink); } function setTheWorkflowLink_Fail(sender, args) { alert("There is a problem setting up the submit exam approval link"); } </script> <a href="" target="_blank" id="submitLink"><span style="font-size:14pt">Start the approval process.</span></a> 5. Save your changes and go to the document set Item, you will see the link is on the home page now. Notes: 1. You can create a link to start the workflow using the following build dynamic string configuration: {Common:WebUrl}/_layouts/NintexWorkflow/StartWorkflow.aspx?list={Common:ListID}&ID={ItemProperty:ID}&WorkflowName=workflowname. With this link you will still need to click the start button, this is standard SharePoint behaviour and cannot be altered. References: http://connect.nintex.com/forums/27143/ShowThread.aspx How to use html and JavaScript in Content Editor web part in SharePoint2010

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• Interview with Tomas Ulin at the MySQL Innovation Day

  - by Monica Kumar

  MySQL Innovation Day held on June 5, 2012 was a great event for the MySQL engineers, users and customers to gather, share and network. I was able to get a few minutes with Tomas Ulin, Vice President of MySQL Engineering at Oracle, to ask him some questions. Here are the highlights of my interview with Tomas. Monica: This was the first MySQL Innovation Day, correct?  Why now, what was the strategy behind hosting this kind of event? Tomas: In the last year, we have rolled out an incredible number of MySQL events worldwide – some targeted at developers that are new to MySQL and others for the MySQL savvy. At the MySQL Innovation Day, our first event of this kind,, we had a number of our key engineers presenting lightning talks delivering previews of key new features as well as discussing roadmap. Our goal is to keep an open dialogue with the MySQL community. In fact, we are hosting a two-day conference, another first, for the MySQL community called MySQL Connect on Sept. 29-30 in San Francisco. If you attended the MySQL Innovation Day and liked what we did, you are going to love MySQL Connect. We’ll have a lot more of our engineers and many users and community members presenting hour long sessions and hands on labs. Our engineers will be presenting new MySQL features as well offer previews of upcoming enhancements. Monica: What's the big take-away from today's MySQL Innovation Day? Tomas: I hope the most important takeaway for attendees was to see that Oracle has been driving, and continues to drive MySQL innovation with a steady stream of new great GA and Development Milestone releases. Monica: What were attendees most interested in? What feedback did they have? Tomas: Feedback from attendees was incredibly positive and encouraging. In particular, they liked the interaction with the MySQL engineers and were also excited about the new early access features in MySQL 5.6 and MySQL Cluster 7.3. In addition, sessions delivered by MySQL users like Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter were very well received. For example, Pinterest talked about using MySQL to scale from 0 to billions of page views/month, Twitter talked about “Scaling twitter with MySQL” and Facebook discussed the many options to implement MySQL master failover solutions. The presentations are already available for download while some of the session videos will be made available on the MySQL Innovation Day web page shortly. Monica: How would you distinguish the use of MySQL vs. Oracle Database? What key factors should customers consider? Tomas: MySQL and Oracle Database complement each other. They are very different products, best suited to different use cases. Customers can choose world-class solutions from Oracle to fulfill a variety of needs. MySQL is a great choice for enterprise web-based, custom and embedded apps. Oracle Database is the leading choice for enterprise packaged applications such as ERP, CRM as well as high-end data warehousing and business intelligence applications. Monica: What are the highlights of the current MySQL 5.6 Development Milestone Release and early access features for MySQL Cluster 7.3? Tomas: MySQL 5.6 development milestone release builds on MySQL 5.5 by improving: Optimizer for better Performance, Scalability Performance Schema for better instrumentation InnoDB for better transactional throughput Replication for higher availability, data integrity NoSQL options for more flexibility We announced some new early access features in MySQL 5.6, including binary log group commit. We also announced early access features in MySQL Cluster 7.3 including support for foreign key constraints. Monica: How do people get these releases? Tomas: You can access development milestone releases by going to: http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysqlThen select the “Development Release” tab. The MySQL Cluster 7.3 and other early access features can be downloaded at: http://labs.mysql.com Monica: What's coming up next for MySQL? Tomas: Our development team is working in overdrive, cranking out new features with community feedback. Don’t miss the MySQL Connect conference being held in San Francisco on Sept. 29 and 30th. My team and I will be there. I hope you can join us! Monica: Thank you for your time, Tomas. I look forward to seeing you at the MySQL Connect conference. To our followers, I hope you found this interview informative. I welcome your comments. Please stay tuned here for more updates on MySQL. Note: Monica Kumar is Senior Director of product marketing for Linux, Virtualization and MySQL at Oracle.

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• List of blogs - year 2010

  - by hajan

  This is the last day of year 2010 and I would like to add links to all blogs I have posted in this year. First, I would like to mention that I started blogging in ASP.NET Community in May / June 2010 and have really enjoyed writing for my favorite technologies, such as: ASP.NET, jQuery/JavaScript, C#, LINQ, Web Services etc. I also had great feedback either through comments on my blogs or in Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn where I met many new experts just as a result of my blog posts. Thanks to the interesting topics I have in my blog, I became DZone MVB. Here is the list of blogs I made in 2010 in my ASP.NET Community Weblog: (newest to oldest) Great library of ASP.NET videos – Pluralsight! NDepend – Code Query Language (CQL) NDepend tool – Why every developer working with Visual Studio.NET must try it! jQuery Templates in ASP.NET - Blogs Series jQuery Templates - XHTML Validation jQuery Templates with ASP.NET MVC jQuery Templates - {Supported Tags} jQuery Templates – tmpl(), template() and tmplItem() Introduction to jQuery Templates ViewBag dynamic in ASP.NET MVC 3 - RC 2 Today I had a presentation on "Deep Dive into jQuery Templates in ASP.NET" jQuery Data Linking in ASP.NET How do you prefer getting bundles of technologies?? Case-insensitive XPath query search on XML Document in ASP.NET jQuery UI Accordion in ASP.NET MVC - feed with data from database (Part 3) jQuery UI Accordion in ASP.NET WebForms - feed with data from database (Part 2) jQuery UI Accordion in ASP.NET – Client side implementation (Part 1) Using Images embedded in Project’s Assembly Macedonian Code Camp 2010 event has finished successfully Tips and Tricks: Deferred execution using LINQ Using System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch class to measure the elapsed time Speaking at Macedonian Code Camp 2010 URL Routing in ASP.NET 4.0 Web Forms Conflicts between ASP.NET AJAX UpdatePanels & jQuery functions Integration of jQuery DatePicker in ASP.NET Website – Localization (part 3) Why not to use HttpResponse.Close and HttpResponse.End Calculate Business Days using LINQ Get Distinct values of an Array using LINQ Using CodeRun browser-based IDE to create ASP.NET Web Applications Using params keyword – Methods with variable number of parameters Working with Code Snippets in VS.NET  Working with System.IO.Path static class Calculating GridView total using JavaScript/JQuery The new SortedSet<T> Collection in .NET 4.0 JavaScriptSerializer – Dictionary to JSON Serialization and Deserialization Integration of jQuery DatePicker in ASP.NET Website – JS Validation Script (part 2) Integration of jQuery DatePicker in ASP.NET Website (part 1) Transferring large data when using Web Services Forums dedicated to WebMatrix Microsoft WebMatrix – Short overview & installation Working with embedded resources in Project's assembly Debugging ASP.NET Web Services Save and Display YouTube Videos on ASP.NET Website Hello ASP.NET World... In addition, I would like to mention that I have big list of blog posts in CodeASP.NET Community (total 60 blogs) and the local MKDOT.NET Community (total 61 blogs). You may find most of my weblogs.asp.net/hajan blogs posted there too, but there you can find many others. In my blog on MKDOT.NET Community you can find most of my ASP.NET Weblog posts translated in Macedonian language, some of them posted in English and some other blogs that were posted only there. By reading my blogs, I hope you have learnt something new or at least have confirmed your knowledge. And also, if you haven't, I encourage you to start blogging and share your Microsoft Tech. thoughts with all of us... Sharing and spreading knowledge is definitely one of the noblest things which we can do in our life. "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime" HAPPY NEW 2011 YEAR!!! Best Regards, Hajan

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• Logging connection strings

  If you some of the dynamic features of SSIS such as package configurations or property expressions then sometimes trying to work out were your connections are pointing can be a bit confusing. You will work out in the end but it can be useful to explicitly log this information so that when things go wrong you can just review the logs. You may wish to develop this idea further and encapsulate such logging into a custom task, but for now lets keep it simple and use the Script Task. The Script Task code below will raise an Information event showing the name and connection string for a connection. Imports System Imports Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime Public Class ScriptMain Public Sub Main() Dim fireAgain As Boolean ' Get the connection string, we need to know the name of the connection Dim connectionName As String = "My OLE-DB Connection" Dim connectionString As String = Dts.Connections(connectionName).ConnectionString ' Format the message and log it via an information event Dim message As String = String.Format("Connection ""{0}"" has a connection string of ""{1}"".", _ connectionName, connectionString) Dts.Events.FireInformation(0, "Information", message, Nothing, 0, fireAgain) Dts.TaskResult = Dts.Results.Success End Sub End Class Building on that example it is probably more flexible to log all connections in a package as shown in the next example. Imports System Imports Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime Public Class ScriptMain Public Sub Main() Dim fireAgain As Boolean ' Loop through all connections in the package For Each connection As ConnectionManager In Dts.Connections ' Get the connection string and log it via an information event Dim message As String = String.Format("Connection ""{0}"" has a connection string of ""{1}"".", _ connection.Name, connection.ConnectionString) Dts.Events.FireInformation(0, "Information", message, Nothing, 0, fireAgain) Next Dts.TaskResult = Dts.Results.Success End Sub End Class By using the Information event it makes it readily available in the designer, for example the Visual Studio Output window (Ctrl+Alt+O) or the package designer Execution Results tab, and also allows you to readily control the logging by choosing which events to log in the normal way. Now before somebody starts commenting that this is a security risk, I would like to highlight good practice for building connection managers. Firstly the Password property, or any other similar sensitive property is always defined as write-only, and secondly the connection string property only uses the public properties to assemble the connection string value when requested. In other words the connection string will never contain the password. I have seen a couple of cases where this is not true, but that was just bad development by third-parties, you won’t find anything like that in the box from Microsoft.   Whilst writing this code it made me wish that there was a custom log entry that you could just turn on that did this for you, but alas connection managers do not even seem to support custom events. It did however remind me of a very useful event that is often overlooked and fits rather well alongside connection string logging, the Execute SQL Task’s custom ExecuteSQLExecutingQuery event. To quote the help reference Custom Messages for Logging - Provides information about the execution phases of the SQL statement. Log entries are written when the task acquires connection to the database, when the task starts to prepare the SQL statement, and after the execution of the SQL statement is completed. The log entry for the prepare phase includes the SQL statement that the task uses. It is the last part that is so useful, how often have you used an expression to derive a SQL statement and you want to log that to make sure the correct SQL is being returned? You need to turn it one, by default no custom log events are captured, but I’ll refer you to a walkthrough on setting up the logging for ExecuteSQLExecutingQuery by Jamie.

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• Trace File Source Adapter

  The Trace File Source adapter is a useful addition to your SSIS toolbox.  It allows you to read 2005 and 2008 profiler traces stored as .trc files and read them into the Data Flow.  From there you can perform filtering and analysis using the power of SSIS. There is no need for a SQL Server connection this just uses the trace file. Example Usages Cache warming for SQL Server Analysis Services Reading the flight recorder Find out the longest running queries on a server Analyze statements for CPU, memory by user or some other criteria you choose Properties The Trace File Source adapter has two properties, both of which combine to control the source trace file that is read at runtime. SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 trace files are supported for both the Database Engine (SQL Server) and Analysis Services. The properties are managed by the Editor form or can be set directly from the Properties Grid in Visual Studio. Property Type Description AccessMode Enumeration This property determines how the Filename property is interpreted. The values available are: DirectInput Variable Filename String This property holds the path for trace file to load (*.trc). The value is either a full path, or the name of a variable which contains the full path to the trace file, depending on the AccessMode property. Trace Column Definition Hopefully the majority of you can skip this section entirely, but if you encounter some problems processing a trace file this may explain it and allow you to fix the problem. The component is built upon the trace management API provided by Microsoft. Unfortunately API methods that expose the schema of a trace file have known issues and are unreliable, put simply the data often differs from what was specified. To overcome these limitations the component uses  some simple XML files. These files enable the trace column data types and sizing attributes to be overridden. For example SQL Server Profiler or TMO generated structures define EventClass as an integer, but the real value is a string. TraceDataColumnsSQL.xml  - SQL Server Database Engine Trace Columns TraceDataColumnsAS.xml    - SQL Server Analysis Services Trace Columns The files can be found in the %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS\PipelineComponents folder, e.g. "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS\PipelineComponents\TraceDataColumnsSQL.xml" "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS\PipelineComponents\TraceDataColumnsAS.xml" If at runtime the component encounters a type conversion or sizing error it is most likely due to a discrepancy between the column definition as reported by the API and the actual value encountered. Whilst most common issues have already been fixed through these files we have implemented specific exception traps to direct you to the files to enable you to fix any further issues due to different usage or data scenarios that we have not tested. An example error that you can fix through these files is shown below. Buffer exception writing value to column 'Column Name'. The string value is 999 characters in length, the column is only 111. Columns can be overridden by the TraceDataColumns XML files in "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS\PipelineComponents\TraceDataColumnsAS.xml". Installation The component is provided as an MSI file which you can download and run to install it. This simply places the files on disk in the correct locations and also installs the assemblies in the Global Assembly Cache as per Microsoft’s recommendations. You may need to restart the SQL Server Integration Services service, as this caches information about what components are installed, as well as restarting any open instances of Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) / Visual Studio that you may be using to build your SSIS packages. Finally you will have to add the transformation to the Visual Studio toolbox manually. Right-click the toolbox, and select Choose Items.... Select the SSIS Data Flow Items tab, and then check the Trace File Source transformation in the Choose Toolbox Items window. This process has been described in detail in the related FAQ entry for How do I install a task or transform component? We recommend you follow best practice and apply the current Microsoft SQL Server Service pack to your SQL Server servers and workstations. Please note that the Microsoft Trace classes used in the component are not supported on 64-bit platforms. To use the Trace File Source on a 64-bit host you need to ensure you have the 32-bit (x86) tools available, and the way you execute your package is setup to use them, please see the help topic 64-bit Considerations for Integration Services for more details. Downloads Trace Sources for SQL Server 2005 -- Trace Sources for SQL Server 2008 Version History SQL Server 2008 Version 2.0.0.382 - SQL Sever 2008 public release. (9 Apr 2009) SQL Server 2005 Version 1.0.0.321 - SQL Server 2005 public release. (18 Nov 2008) -- Screenshots

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• JavaScript: this

  - by bdukes

  JavaScript is a language steeped in juxtaposition.  It was made to “look like Java,” yet is dynamic and classless.  From this origin, we get the new operator and the this keyword.  You are probably used to this referring to the current instance of a class, so what could it mean in a language without classes? In JavaScript, this refers to the object off of which a function is referenced when it is invoked (unless it is invoked via call or apply). What this means is that this is not bound to your function, and can change depending on how your function is invoked. It also means that this changes when declaring a function inside another function (i.e. each function has its own this), such as when writing a callback. Let's see some of this in action: var obj = { count: 0, increment: function () { this.count += 1; }, logAfterTimeout = function () { setTimeout(function () { console.log(this.count); }, 1); } }; obj.increment(); console.log(obj.count); // 1 var increment = obj.increment; window.count = 'global count value: '; increment(); console.log(obj.count); // 1 console.log(window.count); // global count value: 1 var newObj = {count:50}; increment.call(newObj); console.log(newObj.count); // 51 obj.logAfterTimeout();// global count value: 1 obj.logAfterTimeout = function () { var proxiedFunction = $.proxy(function () { console.log(this.count); }, this); setTimeout(proxiedFunction, 1); }; obj.logAfterTimeout(); // 1 obj.logAfterTimeout = function () { var that = this; setTimeout(function () { console.log(that.count); }, 1); }; obj.logAfterTimeout(); // 1 The last couple of examples here demonstrate some methods for making sure you get the values you expect.  The first time logAfterTimeout is redefined, we use jQuery.proxy to create a new function which has its this permanently set to the passed in value (in this case, the current this).  The second time logAfterTimeout is redefined, we save the value of this in a variable (named that in this case, also often named self) and use the new variable in place of this. Now, all of this is to clarify what’s going on when you use this.  However, it’s pretty easy to avoid using this altogether in your code (especially in the way I’ve demonstrated above).  Instead of using this.count all over the place, it would have been much easier if I’d made count a variable instead of a property, and then I wouldn’t have to use this to refer to it.  var obj = (function () { var count = 0; return { increment: function () { count += 1; }, logAfterTimeout = function () { setTimeout(function () { console.log(count); }, 1); }, getCount: function () { return count; } }; }()); If you’re writing your code in this way, the main place you’ll run into issues with this is when handling DOM events (where this is the element on which the event occurred).  In that case, just be careful when using a callback within that event handler, that you’re not expecting this to still refer to the element (and use proxy or that/self if you need to refer to it). Finally, as demonstrated in the example, you can use call or apply on a function to set its this value.  This isn’t often needed, but you may also want to know that you can use apply to pass in an array of arguments to a function (e.g. console.log.apply(console, [1, 2, 3, 4])).

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• Make Your PC Look Like Windows Phone 7

  - by Matthew Guay

  Windows Phone 7 offers a unique and exciting UI that displays lots of information efficiently on the screen.  And with a simple Rainmeter theme, you can have the same UI and content directly on your Windows 7 desktop. Turn your Desktop into a Windows Phone 7 lookalike To give your Windows 7 desktop a Windows Phone 7 makeover, first you need to have the free Rainmeter application installed.  If you do not have it installed, download it from the link below and run the setup.  Accept the license agreement, and install it with the default settings. By default Rainmeter will automatically run when you start your computer.  If you do not want this, you can uncheck the box during the setup. Now, download the Omnimo UI theme for Rainmeter (link below).  You will need to unzip the folder first. This theme uses the Segoe UI and the Segoe UI Light font, so Windows Vista users need to install the segoeuil.ttf font first, and XP users need to install both the segoeui.ttf and the segoeuil.ttf font first.  Copy the appropriate fonts to C:\Windows\Fonts, or in Vista double-click on the font and select Install. Now, run the Rainmeter theme setup.  Double-click on the Rainstaller.exe in the Omnimo folder. Click Express install to add the theme and skin to Rainmeter. Click Finish, and by default Rainmeter will open with your new theme. When the new theme opens the first time, you will be asked to read the readme, or simply go to the gallery. When you open the gallery, you can choose from a wide variety of tiles and gadgets to place on your desktop.  You can also choose a different color scheme for your tiles. Once you’re done, click the X in the top right hand corner to close the Gallery.  Welcome to your Windows Phone 7 desktop!  Many of the gadgets are dynamic, and you can change the settings for most of them.  The only thing missing is the transition animations that Windows Phone 7 shows when you launch an application. To make it look even more like Windows Phone 7, you can change your background to black.  This makes the desktop theme really dramatic. And, if you want to add gadgets or change the color scheme, simply click on the + logo on the top. Windows Phone 7 Desktop Wallpapers If you’d prefer to simply change your background, My Microsoft Life has several very nice Windows Phone 7 wallpapers available for free.  Click the link below to download these and other Microsoft-centric wallpapers. If you can’t wait to get the new Windows phone 7, this is a great way to start experiencing the beauty of the phone UI on your desktop. Links Download Rainmeter Download the Omnimo UI Rainmeter theme Download Windows Phone 7 inspired wallpapers Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Try out Windows Phone 7 on your PC todayTest All Features of Windows Phone 7 On Your PCHow-To Geek on Lifehacker: How to Make Windows Vista Less AnnoyingCreate a Shortcut or Hotkey to Mute the System Volume in WindowsMake Ubuntu Automatically Save Changes to Your Session TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Norwegian Life If Web Browsers Were Modes of Transportation Google Translate (for animals) Roadkill’s Scan Port scans for open ports Out of 100 Tweeters Out of band Security Update for Internet Explorer

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• 5 Steps to getting started with IronRuby

  - by Eric Nelson

  IronRuby is a Open Source implementation of the Ruby programming language for .NET, heavily relying on Microsoft's Dynamic Language Runtime. The project's #1 goal is to be a true Ruby implementation, meaning it runs existing Ruby code. Check out this summary of using the Ruby standard library and 3rd party libraries in IronRuby. IronRuby has tight integration with .NET, so any .NET types can be used from IronRuby and the IronRuby runtime can be embedded into any .NET application. These 5 steps should get you nicely up and running on IronRuby – OR … you could just watch a video session from the lead developer which took place earlier this month (March 2010 - 60mins). But the 5 steps will be quicker :-) Step 1 – Install IronRuby :-) You can install IronRuby automatically using an MSI or manually. For simplicity I would recommend the MSI install. TIP: As of the 25th of March IronRuby has not quite shipped. The download above is a Release Candidate (RC) which means it is still undergoing final testing by the team. You will need to uninstall this version (RC3) once the final release is available. The good news is that uninstalling IronRuby RC3 will work without a hitch as the MSI does relatively little. Step 2 – Install an IronRuby friendly editor You will need to Install an editor to work with IronRuby as there is no designer support for IronRuby inside Visual Studio. There are many editors to choose from but I would recommend you either went with: SciTE (Download the MSI): This is a lightweight text editor which is simple to get up and running. SciTE understands Ruby syntax and allows you to easily run IronRuby code within the editor with a small change to the config file. SharpDevelop 3.2 (Download the MSI): This is an open source development environment for C#, VB, Boo and now IronRuby. IronRuby support is new but it does include integrated debugging. You might also want to check out the main site for SharpDevelop. TIP: There are commercial tools for Ruby development which offer richer support such as intellisense.. They can be coerced into working with IronRuby. A good one to start with is RubyMine which needs some small changes to make it work with IronRuby. Step 3 – Run the IronRuby Tutorial Run through the IronRuby tutorial which is included in the IronRuby download. It covers off the basics of the Ruby languages and how IronRuby integrates with .NET. In a typical install it will end up at C:\Program Files\IronRuby 0.9.4.0\Samples\Tutorial. Which will give you the tutorial implemented in .NET and Ruby. TIP: You might also want to check out these two introductory posts Using IronRuby and .NET to produce the ‘Hello World of WPF’ and What's IronRuby, and how do I put it on Rails? Step 4 – Get some good books to read Get a great book on Ruby and IronRuby. There are several free ebooks on Ruby which will help you learn the language. The little book of Ruby is a good place to start. I would also recommend you purchase IronRuby Unleashed (Buy on Amazon UK | Buy on Amazon USA). You might also want to check out this mini-review. Other books are due out soon including IronRuby in Action. TIP: Also check out the official documentation for using .NET from IronRuby. Step 5 – Keep an eye on the team blogs Keep an eye on the IronRuby team blogs including Jimmy Schementi, Jim Deville and Tomas Matousek (full list) TIP: And keep a watch out for the final release of IronRuby – due anytime soon!

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• SQL SERVER – Advanced Data Quality Services with Melissa Data – Azure Data Market

  - by pinaldave

  There has been much fanfare over the new SQL Server 2012, and especially around its new companion product Data Quality Services (DQS). Among the many new features is the addition of this integrated knowledge-driven product that enables data stewards everywhere to profile, match, and cleanse data. In addition to the homegrown rules that data stewards can design and implement, there are also connectors to third party providers that are hosted in the Azure Datamarket marketplace.  In this review, I leverage SQL Server 2012 Data Quality Services, and proceed to subscribe to a third party data cleansing product through the Datamarket to showcase this unique capability. Crucial Questions For the purposes of the review, I used a database I had in an Excel spreadsheet with name and address information. Upon a cursory inspection, there are miscellaneous problems with these records; some addresses are missing ZIP codes, others missing a city, and some records are slightly misspelled or have unparsed suites. With DQS, I can easily add a knowledge base to help standardize my values, such as for state abbreviations. But how do I know that my address is correct? And if my address is not correct, what should it be corrected to? The answer lies in a third party knowledge base by the acknowledged USPS certified address accuracy experts at Melissa Data. Reference Data Services Within DQS there is a handy feature to actually add reference data from many different third-party Reference Data Services (RDS) vendors. DQS simplifies the processes of cleansing, standardizing, and enriching data through custom rules and through service providers from the Azure Datamarket. A quick jump over to the Datamarket site shows me that there are a handful of providers that offer data directly through Data Quality Services. Upon subscribing to these services, one can attach a DQS domain or composite domain (fields in a record) to a reference data service provider, and begin using it to cleanse, standardize, and enrich that data. Besides what I am looking for (address correction and enrichment), it is possible to subscribe to a host of other services including geocoding, IP address reference, phone checking and enrichment, as well as name parsing, standardization, and genderization.  These capabilities extend the data quality that DQS has natively by quite a bit. For my current address correction review, I needed to first sign up to a reference data provider on the Azure Data Market site. For this example, I used Melissa Data’s Address Check Service. They offer free one-month trials, so if you wish to follow along, or need to add address quality to your own data, I encourage you to sign up with them. Once I subscribed to the desired Reference Data Provider, I navigated my browser to the Account Keys within My Account to view the generated account key, which I then inserted into the DQS Client – Configuration under the Administration area. Step by Step to Guide That was all it took to hook in the subscribed provider -Melissa Data- directly to my DQS Client. The next step was for me to attach and map in my Reference Data from the newly acquired reference data provider, to a domain in my knowledge base. On the DQS Client home screen, I selected “New Knowledge Base” under Knowledge Base Management on the left-hand side of the home screen. Under New Knowledge Base, I typed a Name and description of my new knowledge base, then proceeded to the Domain Management screen. Here I established a series of domains (fields) and then linked them all together as a composite domain (record set). Using the Create Domain button, I created the following domains according to the fields in my incoming data: Name Address Suite City State Zip I added a Suite column in my domain because Melissa Data has the ability to return missing Suites based on last name or company. And that’s a great benefit of using these third party providers, as they have data that the data steward would not normally have access to. The bottom line is, with these third party data providers, I can actually improve my data. Next, I created a composite domain (fulladdress) and added the (field) domains into the composite domain. This essentially groups our address fields together in a record to facilitate the full address cleansing they perform. I then selected my newly created composite domain and under the Reference Data tab, added my third party reference data provider –Melissa Data’s Address Check- and mapped in each domain that I had to the provider’s Schema. Now that my composite domain has been married to the Reference Data service, I can take the newly published knowledge base and create a project to cleanse and enrich my data. My next task was to create a new Data Quality project, mapping in my data source and matching it to the appropriate domain column, and then kick off the verification process. It took just a few minutes with some progress indicators indicating that it was working. When the process concluded, there was a helpful set of tabs that place the response records into categories: suggested; new; invalid; corrected (automatically); and correct. Accepting the suggestions provided by  Melissa Data allowed me to clean up all the records and flag the invalid ones. It is very apparent that DQS makes address data quality simplistic for any IT professional. Final Note As I have shown, DQS makes data quality very easy. Within minutes I was able to set up a data cleansing and enrichment routine within my data quality project, and ensure that my address data was clean, verified, and standardized against real reference data. As reviewed here, it’s easy to see how both SQL Server 2012 and DQS work to take what used to require a highly skilled developer, and empower an average business or database person to consume external services and clean data. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, T SQL, Technology Tagged: DQS

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• SOA Suite 11g Asynchronous Testing with soapUI

  - by Greg Mally

  Overview The Enterprise Manager test harness that comes bundled with SOA Suite 11g is a great tool for doing smoke tests and some minor load testing. When a more robust testing tool is needed, often times soapUI is leveraged for many reasons ranging from ease of use to cost effective. However, when you want to start doing some more complex testing other than synchronous web services with static content, then the free version of soapUI becomes a bit more challenging. In this blog I will show you how to test asynchronous web services with soapUI free edition. The following assumes that you have a working knowledge of soapUI and will not go into concepts like setting up a project etc. For the basics, please review the documentation for soapUI: http://www.soapui.org/Getting-Started/ Asynchronous Web Service Testing in soapUI When invoking an asynchronous web service, the caller must provide a callback for the response. Since our testing will originate from soapUI, then it is only natural that soapUI would provide the callback mechanism. This mechanism in soapUI is called a MockService. In a nutshell, a soapUI MockService is a simulation of a Web Service (aka, a process listening on a port). We will go through the steps in setting up the MockService for a simple asynchronous BPEL process. After creating your soapUI project based on an asynchronous BPEL process, you will see something like the following: Notice that soapUI created an interface for both the request and the response (i.e., callback). The interface that was created for the callback will be used to create the MockService. Right-click on the callback interface and select the Generate MockService menu item: You will be presented with the Generate MockService dialogue where we will tweak the Path and possibly the port (depends upon what ports are available on the machine where soapUI will be running). We will adjust the Path to include the operation name (append /processResponse in this example) and the port of 8088 is fine: Once the MockService is created, you should have something like the following in soapUI: This window acts as a console/view into the callback process. When the play button is pressed (green triangle in the upper left-hand corner), soapUI will start a process running on the configured Port that will accept web service invocations on the configured Path: At this point we are “almost” ready to try out the asynchronous test. But first we must provide the web service addressing (WS-A) configuration on the request message. We will edit the message for the request interface that was generated when the project was created (SimpleAsyncBPELProcessBinding > process > Request 1 in this example). At the bottom of the request message editor you will find the WS-A configuration by left-clicking on the WS-A label: Here we will setup WS-A by changing the default values to: Must understand: TRUE Add default wsa:Action: Add default wsa:Action (checked) Reply to: ${host where soapUI is running}:${MockService Port}${MockService Path} … in this example: http://192.168.1.181:8088/mockSimpleAsyncBPELProcessCallbackBinding/processResponse We now are ready to run the asynchronous test from soapUI free edition. Make sure that the MockService you created is running and then push the play button for the request (green triangle in the upper left-hand corner of the request editor). If everything is configured correctly, you should see the response show up in the MockService window: To view the response message/payload, just double-click on a response message in the Message Log window of the MockService: At this point you can now expand the project to include a Test Suite for some load balance tests etc. This same topic has been covered in various detail on other sites/blogs, but I wanted to simplify and detail how this is done in the context of SOA Suite 11g. It also serves as a nice introduction to another blog of mine: SOA Suite 11g Dynamic Payload Testing with soapUI Free Edition.

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• Create Music Playlists in Windows 7 Media Center

  - by DigitalGeekery

  One of the new features in Windows 7 Media Center is the ability to easily create music playlists without using Media Player. Today we’ll take a closer look at how to create them directly in Media Center. Create Manual Playlists Open Windows Media Center and select the Music Library. From within the Music Library, choose playlists from the top menu.   Then select Create Playlist. Give your new playlist a name, and select Next. Choose Music Library and select Next.    Select “songs” from the top menu, choose the songs for your playlist from your library, and select Next when finished. You can also click Select All to add all songs to your playlist, or clear all to remove them. Note: you can also sort by artist, album, genre, etc. from the top menu.   Now you can review and edit your playlist. Click the up and down pointers to move songs up and down in the playlist, or “X” to remove them. You can also go back and add additional songs by selecting Add More. Click Create when you are finished.   Auto Playlists Windows Media Center also allows you to create six different auto playlists. These are dynamic playlists based on pre-defined criteria. Auto Playlists include All Music, Music added in the last month, Music auto rated at 5 stars, Music played in the last month, Music played the most, and Music rated 4 or 5 stars. These Auto Playlists will change dynamically as your library and listening habits change. Your new music playlists can be found under playlists in the music library. Select play playlist to start the music. Now kick back and enjoy the music from your playlist. Conclusion While earlier versions of WMC allowed you to create playlists, you had to do it through Windows Media Player. This is a nice new feature for music lovers who use WMC and prefer to do everything with a remote. Do you already have playlists that you’ve created in Windows Media Player? Windows Media Center can play those too. If your playlists are in the default Music folder, Media Center will detect them automatically and add them to your Music Library. Plus, any playlists you create in Media Center are also available for Media Player. For more on creating Playlists in Media Player, check out our previous articles on how to create a custom playlist in Windows Media Player 12, and how to create auto playlists in WMP 12. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How To Rip a Music CD in Windows 7 Media CenterCreate Custom Playlists in Windows Media Player 12Using Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)How to Create Auto Playlists in Windows Media Player 12Fixing When Windows Media Player Library Won’t Let You Add Files TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 How to Forecast Weather, without Gadgets Outlook Tools, one stop tweaking for any Outlook version Zoofs, find the most popular tweeted YouTube videos Video preview of new Windows Live Essentials 21 Cursor Packs for XP, Vista & 7 Map the Stars with Stellarium

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• Logical Domain Modeling Made Simple

  - by Knut Vatsendvik

  How can logical domain modeling be made simple and collaborative? Many non-technical end-users, managers and business domain experts find it difficult to understand the visual models offered by many UML tools. This creates trouble in capturing and verifying the information that goes into a logical domain model. The tools are also too advanced and complex for a non-technical user to learn and use. We have therefore, in our current project, ended up with using Confluence as tool for designing the logical domain model with the help of a few very useful plugins. Big thanks to Ole Nymoen and Per Spilling for their expertise in this field that made this posting possible. Confluence Plugins Here is a list of Confluence plugins used in this solution. Install these before trying out the macros used below. Plugin Description Copy Space Allows a space administrator to copy a space, including the pages within the space Metadata Supports adding metadata to Wiki pages Label Manages labeling of pages Linking Contains macros for linking to templates, the dashboard and other Table Enhances the table capability in Confluence Creating a Confluence Space First we need to create a new confluence space for the domain model. Click the link Create a Space located below the list of spaces on the Dashboard. Please contact your Confluence administrator is you do not have permissions to do this.   For illustrative purpose all attributes and entities in this posting are based on my imaginary project manager domain model. When a logical domain model is good enough for being implemented, do a copy of the Confluence Space (see Copy Space plugin). In this way you create a stable version of the logical domain model while further design can continue with the new copied space. Typical will the implementation phase result in a database design and/or a XSD schema design. Add Space Templates Go to the Home page of your Confluence Space. Navigate to the Browse drop-down menu and click on Advanced. Then click the Templates option in the left navigation panel. Click Add New Space Template to add the following three templates. Name: attribute {metadata-list} || Name | | || Type | | || Format | | || Description | | {metadata-list} {add-label:attribute} Name: primary-type {metadata-list} || Name | || || Type | || || Format | || || Description | || {metadata-list} {add-label:primary-type} Name: complex-type {metadata-list} || Name | || || Description |  || {metadata-list} h3. Attributes || Name || Type || Format || Description || | [name] | {metadata-from:name|Type} | {metadata-from:name|Format} | {metadata-from:name|Description} | {add-label:complex-type,entity} The metadata-list macro (see Metadata plugin) will save a list of metadata values to the page. The add-label macro (see Label plugin) will automatically label the page. Primary Types Page Our first page to add will act as container for our primary types. Switch to Wiki markup when adding the following content to the page. | (+) {add-page:template=primary-type|parent=@self}Add new primary type{add-page} | {metadata-report:Name,Type,Format,Description|sort=Name|root=@self|pages=@descendents} Once the page is created, click the Add new primary type (create-page macro) to start creating a new pages. Here is an example of input to the LocalDate page. Embrace the LocalDate with square brackets [] to make the page linkable. Again switch to Wiki markup before editing. {metadata-list} || Name | [LocalDate] || || Type | Date || || Format | YYYY-MM-DD || || Description | Date in local time zone. YYYY = year, MM = month and DD = day || {metadata-list} {add-label:primary-type} The metadata-report macro will show a tabular report of all child pages.   Attributes Page The next page will act as container for all of our attributes. | (+) {add-page:template=attribute|parent=@self|title=attribute}Add new attribute{add-page} | {metadata-report:Name,Type,Format,Description|sort=Name|pages=@descendants} Here is an example of input to the startDate page. {metadata-list} || Name | [startDate] || || Type | [LocalDate] || || Format | {metadata-from:LocalDate|Format} || || Description | The projects start date || {metadata-list} {add-label:attribute} Using the metadata-from macro we fetch the text from the previously created LocalDate page. Complex Types Page The last page in this example shows how attributes can be combined together to form more complex types.   h3. Intro Overview of complex types in the domain model. | (+) {add-page:template=complex-type|parent=@self}Add a new complex type{add-page}\\ | {metadata-report:Name,Description|sort=Name|root=@self|pages=@descendents} Here is an example of input to the ProjectType page. {metadata-list} || Name | [ProjectType] || || Description | Represents a project || {metadata-list} h3. Attributes || Name || Type || Format || Description || | [projectId] | {metadata-from:projectId|Type} | {metadata-from:projectId|Format} | {metadata-from:projectId|Description} | | [name] | {metadata-from:name|Type} | {metadata-from:name|Format} | {metadata-from:name|Description} | | [description] | {metadata-from:description|Type} | {metadata-from:description|Format} | {metadata-from:description|Description} | | [startDate] | {metadata-from:startDate|Type} | {metadata-from:startDate|Format} | {metadata-from:startDate|Description} | {add-label:complex-type,entity} Gives us this Conclusion Using a web-based corporate Wiki like Confluence to create a logical domain model increases the collaboration between people with different roles in the enterprise. It’s my believe that this helps the domain model to be more accurate, and better documented. In our real project we have more pages than illustrated here to complete the documentation. We do also still use UML tools to create different types of diagrams that Confluence do not support. As a last tip, an ImageMap plugin can make those diagrams clickable when used in pages. Enjoy!

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• To ORM or Not to ORM. That is the question&hellip;

  - by Patrick Liekhus

  UPDATE:  Thanks for the feedback and comments.  I have adjusted my table below with your recommendations.  I had missed a point or two. I wanted to do a series on creating an entire project using the EDMX XAF code generation and the SpecFlow BDD Easy Test tools discussed in my earlier posts, but I thought it would be appropriate to start with a simple comparison and reasoning on why I choose to use these tools. Let’s start by defining the term ORM, or Object-Relational Mapping.  According to Wikipedia it is defined as the following: Object-relational mapping (ORM, O/RM, and O/R mapping) in computer software is a programming technique for converting data between incompatible type systems in object-oriented programming languages. This creates, in effect, a "virtual object database" that can be used from within the programming language. Why should you care?  Basically it allows you to map your business objects in code to their persistence layer behind them. And better yet, why would you want to do this?  Let me outline it in the following points: Development speed.  No more need to map repetitive tasks query results to object members.  Once the map is created the code is rendered for you. Persistence portability.  The ORM knows how to map SQL specific syntax for the persistence engine you choose.  It does not matter if it is SQL Server, Oracle and another database of your choosing. Standard/Boilerplate code is simplified.  The basic CRUD operations are consistent and case use database metadata for basic operations. So how does this help?  Well, let’s compare some of the ORM tools that I have used and/or researched.  I have been interested in ORM for some time now.  My ORM of choice for a long time was NHibernate and I still believe it has a strong case in some business situations.  However, you have to take business considerations into account and the law of diminishing returns.  Because of these two factors, my recent activity and experience has been around DevExpress eXpress Persistence Objects (XPO).  The primary reason for this is because they have the DevExpress eXpress Application Framework (XAF) that sits on top of XPO.  With this added value, the data model can be created (either database first of code first) and the Web and Windows client can be created from these maps.  While out of the box they provide some simple list and detail screens, you can verify easily extend and modify these to your liking.  DevExpress has done a tremendous job of providing enough framework while also staying out of the way when you need to extend it.  This sounds worse than it really is.  What I mean by this is that if you choose to follow DevExpress coding style and recommendations, the hooks and extension points provided allow you to do some pretty heavy lifting while also not worrying about the basics. I have put together a list of the top features that I have used to compare the limited list of ORM’s that I have exposure with.  Again, the biggest selling point in my opinion is that XPO is just a solid as any of the other ORM’s but with the added layer of XAF they become unstoppable.  And then couple that with the EDMX modeling tools and code generation, it becomes a no brainer. Designer Features Entity Framework NHibernate Fluent w/ Nhibernate Telerik OpenAccess DevExpress XPO DevExpress XPO/XAF plus Liekhus Tools Uses XML to map relationships - Yes - - -   Visual class designer interface Yes - - - - Yes Management integrated w/ Visual Studio Yes - - Yes - Yes Supports schema first approach Yes - - Yes - Yes Supports model first approach Yes - - Yes Yes Yes Supports code first approach Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Attribute driven coding style Yes - Yes - Yes Yes                 I have a very small team and limited resources with a lot of responsibilities.  In order to keep up with our customers, we must rely on tools like these.  We use the EDMX tool so that we can create a visual representation of the applications with our customers.  Second, we rely on the code generation so that we can focus on the business problems at hand and not whether a field is mapped correctly.  This keeps us from requiring as many junior level developers on our team.  I have also worked on multiple teams where they believed in writing their own “framework”.  In my experiences and opinion this is not the route to take unless you have a team dedicated to supporting just the framework.  Each time that I have worked on custom frameworks, the framework eventually becomes old, out dated and full of “performance” enhancements specific to one or two requirements.  With an ORM, there are a lot smarter people than me working on the bigger issue of persistence and performance.  Again, my recommendation would be to use an available framework and get to working on your business domain problems.  If your coding is not making money for you, why are you working on it?  Do you really need to be writing query to object member code again and again? Thanks

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• Installing SOA Suite 11.1.1.3

  - by James Taylor

  With the release of Oracle SOA Suite 11.1.1.3 last week (28 April 2010) I thought I would attempt to implement a complete SOA Environment with SOA Suite, BPM and OSB on the WLS infrastructure. One major point of difference with the 11.1.1.3 is that is is released as a point release so you must have 11.1.1.2 installed first, then upgrade to 11.1.1.3. This post is performing the upgrade on Linux, if upgrading on windows you will need to substitute the directories and files accordingly. This post assumes that you have SOA Suite 11.1.1.2 installed already. 1. Download 11.1.1.3 software from the following site: http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/middleware/htdocs/fmw_11_download.html WLS 11.1.1.3   RCU 11.1.1.3 SOA Suite 11.1.1.3 OSB 11.1.1.3 Copy files to a staging area. For the purpose of this document the staging area is: /u01/stage  2. Shutdown your existing SOA Suite 11.1.1.2 environment 3. Execute the WLS 11.1.1.3 install from the stage directory. wls1033_linux32.bin 4. Choose the existing 11.1.1.2 Middleware Home 5. Ignore the security update notification 6. Accept the default products to be upgraded. 7. Upgrade of WebLogic has been completed   8. Upgrade the SOA Suite database schemas using the RCU utility. Unzip the RCU utility into the staging area and run the install ./u01/stage/rcuHome/bin/rcu 9. Drop the existing Repository and provide connection details 9. Install SOA Suite patch set 11.1.1.3. Unzip the SOA Suite patchset and execute the runInstaller with the following command. ./u01/stage/Disk1/runInstaller –jreLoc $MW_HOME/jdk160_18/jre 10. Choose the existing 11.1.1.2 middleware home 11. Start Install 12. Your SOA Suite Install should now be completed. Now we need to update the database repository. Login to SQLPlus as sysdba and execute the following command. SELECT version, status FROM schema_version_registry where owner = 'DEV_SOAINFRA'; the result should be similar to this: VERSION                        STATUS      OWNER ------------------------------ ----------- ------------------------------ 11.1.1.2.0                     VALID       DEV_SOAINFRA As you can see the version if these repositories are still at 11.1.1.2. 13. To upgrade these versions you have 2 options. 1 install via RCU, but this will remove any existing services. The second option is to use the Patch Set Assistant. From the $MW_HOME directory run the following command ./Oracle_SOA1/bin/psa -dbType Oracle -dbConnectString 'localhost:1521:xe' -dbaUserName sys -schemaUserName DEV_SOAINFRA 14. Install OSB. For the OSB install I did not install the IDE, or the Examples. run the runInstaller from the command line, unzip the OSB download to the stage area. ./u01/stage/osb/Disk1/runInstaller –jreLoc $MW_HOME/jdk160_18/jre 15. Choose Custom Install NOT to install the IDE (Eclipse) or Examples. 16. Unselect the, Examples and IDE checkboxes. 17. Accept the defaults and start installing. 18. Once the install has been completed configure the domain by running the Configuration Wizard. $MW_HOME/oracle_common/common/bin/config.sh You can create a new domain. In this document I will extend the soa_domain. 19. Select the following from the check list. I have selected the BPM Suite, this is unrelated to OSB but wanted it for my development purposes. To use this functionality additional license are required. 20. Configure the database connectivity. 21. Configure the database connectivity for the OSB schema. 22. Accept the defaults if installing on standard machine, if you require a cluster or advanced configuration then choose the option for you. 23. Upgrade is complete and OSB has been installed. Now you can start your environment.

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• Big Data – Buzz Words: Importance of Relational Database in Big Data World – Day 9 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we learned what is HDFS. In this article we will take a quick look at the importance of the Relational Database in Big Data world. A Big Question? Here are a few questions I often received since the beginning of the Big Data Series - Does the relational database have no space in the story of the Big Data? Does relational database is no longer relevant as Big Data is evolving? Is relational database not capable to handle Big Data? Is it true that one no longer has to learn about relational data if Big Data is the final destination? Well, every single time when I hear that one person wants to learn about Big Data and is no longer interested in learning about relational database, I find it as a bit far stretched. I am not here to give ambiguous answers of It Depends. I am personally very clear that one who is aspiring to become Big Data Scientist or Big Data Expert they should learn about relational database. NoSQL Movement The reason for the NoSQL Movement in recent time was because of the two important advantages of the NoSQL databases. Performance Flexible Schema In personal experience I have found that when I use NoSQL I have found both of the above listed advantages when I use NoSQL database. There are instances when I found relational database too much restrictive when my data is unstructured as well as they have in the datatype which my Relational Database does not support. It is the same case when I have found that NoSQL solution performing much better than relational databases. I must say that I am a big fan of NoSQL solutions in the recent times but I have also seen occasions and situations where relational database is still perfect fit even though the database is growing increasingly as well have all the symptoms of the big data. Situations in Relational Database Outperforms Adhoc reporting is the one of the most common scenarios where NoSQL is does not have optimal solution. For example reporting queries often needs to aggregate based on the columns which are not indexed as well are built while the report is running, in this kind of scenario NoSQL databases (document database stores, distributed key value stores) database often does not perform well. In the case of the ad-hoc reporting I have often found it is much easier to work with relational databases. SQL is the most popular computer language of all the time. I have been using it for almost over 10 years and I feel that I will be using it for a long time in future. There are plenty of the tools, connectors and awareness of the SQL language in the industry. Pretty much every programming language has a written drivers for the SQL language and most of the developers have learned this language during their school/college time. In many cases, writing query based on SQL is much easier than writing queries in NoSQL supported languages. I believe this is the current situation but in the future this situation can reverse when No SQL query languages are equally popular. ACID (Atomicity Consistency Isolation Durability) – Not all the NoSQL solutions offers ACID compliant language. There are always situations (for example banking transactions, eCommerce shopping carts etc.) where if there is no ACID the operations can be invalid as well database integrity can be at risk. Even though the data volume indeed qualify as a Big Data there are always operations in the application which absolutely needs ACID compliance matured language. The Mixed Bag I have often heard argument that all the big social media sites now a days have moved away from Relational Database. Actually this is not entirely true. While researching about Big Data and Relational Database, I have found that many of the popular social media sites uses Big Data solutions along with Relational Database. Many are using relational databases to deliver the results to end user on the run time and many still uses a relational database as their major backbone. Here are a few examples: Facebook uses MySQL to display the timeline. (Reference Link) Twitter uses MySQL. (Reference Link) Tumblr uses Sharded MySQL (Reference Link) Wikipedia uses MySQL for data storage. (Reference Link) There are many for prominent organizations which are running large scale applications uses relational database along with various Big Data frameworks to satisfy their various business needs. Summary I believe that RDBMS is like a vanilla ice cream. Everybody loves it and everybody has it. NoSQL and other solutions are like chocolate ice cream or custom ice cream – there is a huge base which loves them and wants them but not every ice cream maker can make it just right  for everyone’s taste. No matter how fancy an ice cream store is there is always plain vanilla ice cream available there. Just like the same, there are always cases and situations in the Big Data’s story where traditional relational database is the part of the whole story. In the real world scenarios there will be always the case when there will be need of the relational database concepts and its ideology. It is extremely important to accept relational database as one of the key components of the Big Data instead of treating it as a substandard technology. Ray of Hope – NewSQL In this module we discussed that there are places where we need ACID compliance from our Big Data application and NoSQL will not support that out of box. There is a new termed coined for the application/tool which supports most of the properties of the traditional RDBMS and supports Big Data infrastructure – NewSQL. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss about NewSQL. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• Software development stack 2012

  A couple of months ago, I posted on Google+ about my evaluation period for a new software development stack in general. "Analysing existing 'jungle' of multiple applications and tools in various languages for clarification and future design decisions. Great fun and lots of headaches... #DevelopersLife" Surprisingly, there was response... ;-) - And this series of articles is initiated by this post. Thanks Olaf. The past few years... Well, after all my first choice of software development in the past was Microsoft Visual FoxPro 6.0 - 9.0 in combination with Microsoft SQL Server 2000 - 2008 and Crystal Reports 9.x - XI. Honestly, it is my main working environment due to exisiting maintenance and support plans with my customers, but also for new project requests. And... hands on, it is still my first choice for data manipulation and migration options. But the earth is spinning, and as a software craftsman one has to be flexible with the choice of tools. In parallel to my knowledge and expertise in the above mentioned tools, I already started very early to get my hands dirty with the Microsoft .NET Framework. If I remember correctly, I started back in 2002/2003 with the first version ever. But this was more out of curiousity. During the years this kind of development got more serious and demanding, and I focused myself on interop and integrational libraries and applications. Mainly, to expose exisitng features of the .NET Framework to Visual FoxPro - I even had a session about that at the German Developer's Conference in Frankfurt. Observation of recent developments With the recent hype on Javascript and HTML5, especially for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 development, I had several 'Deja vu' events... Back in early 2006 (roughly) I had a conversation on the future of Web and Desktop development with my former colleagues Golo Roden and Thomas Wilting about the underestimation of Javascript and its root as a prototype-based, dynamic, full-featured programming language. During this talk with them I took the Mozilla applications, namely Firefox and Thunderbird, as a reference which are mainly based on XML, CSS, Javascript and images - besides the core rendering engine. And that it is very simple to write your own extensions for the Gecko rendering engine. Looking at the Windows Vista Sidebar widgets, just underlines this kind of usage. So, yes the 'Modern UI' of Windows 8 based on HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript didn't come as any surprise to me. Just allow me to ask why did it take so long for Microsoft to come up with this step? A new set of tools Ok, coming from web development in HTML 4, CSS and Javascript prior to Visual FoxPro, I am partly going back to that combination of technologies. What is the other part of the software development stack here at IOS Indian Ocean Software Ltd? Frankly, it is easy and straight forward to describe: Microsoft Visual FoxPro 9.0 SP 2 - still going strong! Visual Studio 2012 (C# on latest .NET Framework) MonoDevelop Telerik DevCraft Suite WPF ASP.NET MVC Windows 8 Kendo UI OpenAccess ORM Reporting JustCode CODE Framework by EPS Software MonoTouch and Mono for Android Subversion and additional tools for the daily routine: Notepad++, JustCode, SQL Compare, DiffMerge, VMware, etc. Following the principles of Clean Code Developer and the Agile Manifesto Actually, nothing special about this combination but rather a solid fundament to work with and create line of business applications for customers.Honestly, I am really interested in your choice of 'weapons' for software development, and hopefully there might be some nice conversations in the comment section. Over the next coming days/weeks I'm going to describe a little bit more in detail about the reasons for my decision. Articles will be added bit by bit here as reference, too. Please bear with me... Regards, JoKi

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• Introducing .NET 4.0 with Visual Studio 2010 by Alex Mackey - Book review

  - by Malisa L. Ncube

  Alex (http://simpleisbest.co.uk/) does a very good job in covering the new features of .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010. His focus is on the developers that have experience in development using previous versions of Visual Studio, more specifically Visual Studio 2008.     The following are my views towards his book. 1. Scope / Coverage Even as the book is labeled as introduction, it is covers a broad spectrum of technologies, features and references that are focused into helping a developer quickly decide what to use in the new .NET framework. a. Content The content included covers as much as possible the new additions that are included in the new .NET version 4.0. He shows the Visual Studio 2010 new features and quickly shows how to extend it using Managed Extensibility Framework. Some of my favorites are parallel debugging enhancements. The author delves into JQuery, which Microsoft has decided to support. Some of the very interesting content is on the out-of-band releases including ASP.NET MVC, Windows Azure Silverlight 3 and WCF Data Services. b. What is not included? Windows Phone 7 Series. This was only talked about in the MIX10. The data may not have been available at the time of writing. Microsoft Pinpoint (Microsoft code name "Dallas") Windows Embedded development. c. Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Visual Studio IDE and MEF Chapter 3: Language and Dynamic Changes Chapter 4: CLR and BCL Changes Chapter 5: Parallelization and Threading Enhancements Chapter 6: Windows Workflow Foundation 4 Chapter 7: Windows Communication Foundation Chapter 8: Entity Framework Chapter 9: WCF Data Services Chapter 10: ASPNET Chapter 11: Microsoft AJAX Library Chapter 12: jQuery Chapter 13: ASPNET MVC Chapter 14: Silverlight Introduction Chapter 15: WPF 4.0 and Silverlight 3.0 Chapter 16: Windows Azure 2. Depth Avoids getting into depth on the topics presented, to present the new concepts in assumption of the developer’s existing knowledge. Code samples are on book and exist mostly as snippets and very easy to follow. There are no downloadable examples. 3. Complexity The book is written in a very simple way and easy to follow. There are no irrelevant intimidating details. So it’s a book that you can grab and never put down until you’ve finished reading the entire book. 4. References The author includes reference links to blogs, Wikis and a lot of online resources including the MSDN documentation, which is a very convenient strategy to avoid flooding the reader with details which may not be of interest to them. Most sites do not use url routing and that is really not nice. There are notes from interviews between the author and people behind the new technologies, in which they explain what some specific areas that need clarifications and what their future views are in relation to the features they are working on. 5. Target The author targets experts that want to make a transition from .NET 3.5 to 4.0. Some obvious 3.5 features have been purposely excluded from the text 6. Overrall It is evident that the author has made extensive research into the breadth of what MS is working on, in relation to .NET and Visual Studio and has also been watching the online community. What I would like to see in the next edition are some details on OData protocol, Expression Blend 4 and Embedded development and Windows Phone development. I should say I’m one of the beneficiaries of this book. Excellent work Alex.   Technorati Tags: .NET,Book-Review,Visual Studio

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• OBIEE 11.1.1 - User Interface (UI) Performance Is Slow With Internet Explorer 8

  - by Ahmed A

  The OBIEE 11g UI is performance is slow in IE 8 and faster in Firefox.  For VPN or WAN users, it takes long time to display links on Dashboards via IE 8. Cause is IE 8 generates many HTTP 304 return calls and this caused the 11g UI slower when compared to the Mozilla FireFox browser. To resolve this issue, you can implement HTTP compression and caching. This is a best practice.Why use Web Server Compression / Caching for OBIEE? Bandwidth Savings: Enabling HTTP compression can have a dramatic improvement on the latency of responses. By compressing static files and dynamic application responses, it will significantly reduce the remote (high latency) user response time. Improves request/response latency: Caching makes it possible to suppress the payload of the HTTP reply using the 304 status code.  Minimizing round trips over the Web to re-validate cached items can make a huge difference in browser page load times. This screen shot depicts the flow and where the compression and decompression occurs: Solution: a. How to Enable HTTP Caching / Compression in Oracle HTTP Server (OHS) 11.1.1.x 1. To implement HTTP compression / caching, install and configure Oracle HTTP Server (OHS) 11.1.1.x for the bi_serverN Managed Servers (refer to "OBIEE Enterprise Deployment Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence" document for details). 2. On the OHS machine, open the file HTTP Server configuration file (httpd.conf) for editing. This file is located in the OHS installation directory.For example: ORACLE_HOME/Oracle_WT1/instances/instance1/config/OHS/ohs13. In httpd.conf file, verify that the following directives are included and not commented out: LoadModule expires_module "${ORACLE_HOME}/ohs/modules/mod_expires.soLoadModule deflate_module "${ORACLE_HOME}/ohs/modules/mod_deflate.so 4. Add the following lines in httpd.conf file below the directive LoadModule section and restart the OHS: Note: For the Windows platform, you will need to enclose any paths in double quotes ("), for example:Alias "/analytics ORACLE_HOME/bifoundation/web/app"<Directory "ORACLE_HOME/bifoundation/web/app"> Alias /analytics ORACLE_HOME/bifoundation/web/app#Pls replace the ORACLE_HOME with your actual BI ORACLE_HOME path<Directory ORACLE_HOME/bifoundation/web/app>#We don't generate proper cross server ETags so disable themFileETag noneSetOutputFilter DEFLATE# Don't compress imagesSetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png)$ no-gzip dont-vary<FilesMatch "\.(gif|jpeg|png|js|x-javascript|javascript|css)$">#Enable future expiry of static filesExpiresActive onExpiresDefault "access plus 1 week"     #1 week, this will stops the HTTP304 calls i.e. generated by IE 8Header set Cache-Control "max-age=604800"</FilesMatch>DirectoryIndex default.jsp</Directory>#Restrict access to WEB-INF<Location /analytics/WEB-INF>Order Allow,DenyDeny from all</Location> Note: Make sure you replace above placeholder "ORACLE_HOME" to your correct path for BI ORACLE_HOME.For example: my BI Oracle Home path is /Oracle/BIEE11g/Oracle_BI1/bifoundation/web/app Important Notes: Above caching rules restricted to static files found inside the /analytics directory(/web/app). This approach is safer instead of setting static file caching globally. In some customer environments you may not get 100% performance gains in IE 8.0 browser. So in that case you need to extend caching rules to other directories with static files content. If OHS is installed on separate dedicated machine, make sure static files in your BI ORACLE_HOME (../Oracle_BI1/bifoundation/web/app) is accessible to the OHS instance. The following screen shot summarizes the before and after results and improvements after enabling compression and caching:

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• Drupal Modules for SEO & Content

  - by Aditi

  When we talk about Drupal SEO, there are two things to consider one is about the relevant SEO practices and about appropriate Drupal Modules available. Optimizing your website for search engines is one of the most important aspect of launching & promoting your website especially if ranking matters to you. Understanding SEO For starters, you have begin with Keyword research and then optimize your content according to your findings by tagging, meta tags etc, Drupal modules once installed help you manage a lot of such parameters. Identifying the target keywords Using the Page Title and Token modules PathAuto configuration <H1> heading tags Optimizing Drupal’s default robots.txt file Etc. While Drupal gives you a lot of ability to make your website content worthy & search engine friendly it is important for you to make sure you are not crossing the line or you could get penalized. Modules Overview Drupal Power is at its best when you have these modules & great brain working together. The basic SEO improvements can be achieved easily with the modules enlisted below, but you can win magical rankings if you use them logically & wisely. Understanding your keyword competition & enhancing your content is the basic key to success and ofcourse the modules: Pathauto Automatically create search enging friendly readable URLS from tokens. A token is a piece of data from content, say the author’s username, or the content’s title. For example mysite.com/an-article, rather than mysite.com/node/114 for every node you make. NodeWords Amazingly useful drupal module that allows you to create custom meta tags and descriptions for your nodes, which gives you the ability to target specific keywords and phrases. Page Title Enables you to set an alternative title for the <title></title> tags and for the <h1></h1> tags on a node. Global Redirect Manage content duplication, 301 redirects, and URL validation with this small, but powerful module. Taxonomy manager Make large additions, or changes to taxonomy very easy. This module provides a powerful interface for managing taxonomies. A vocabulary gets displayed in a dynamic tree view, where parent terms can be expanded to list their nested child terms or can be collapsed. robotstxt A robots.txt file is vital for ensuring that search engine spiders don’t index the unwanted areas of your site. This Drupal module gives you the ability to manage your robots.txt file through the CMS admin. xmlsitemap An XML Sitemap lets the search engines index your website content. This module helps in generating and maintaining a complete sitemap for your website and gives you control over exactly which parts of the site you want to be included in the index. It even gives you the ability to automatically submit your sitemap to Google, Yahoo!, Ask.com and Windows Live every time you update a node or at specific interval. Node Import This module allows you to import a set of nodes from a Comma Seperated Values (CSV) or Tab Seperated Values (TSV) text file. Makes it easy to import hundreds-thousands of csv rows and you get to tie up these rows to CCK fields (or locations), and it can file it under the right taxonomy hierarchy. This is Super life saver module.

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