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• How to safely reboot via First Boot script

  - by unixman

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

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• Project Management Helps AmeriCares Deliver International Aid

  - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP

  Excerpt from PROFIT - ORACLE - by Alison Weiss Handle with Care Sound project management helps AmeriCares bring international aid to those in need. The stakes are always high for AmeriCares. On a mission to restore health and save lives during times of disaster, the nonprofit international relief and humanitarian aid organization delivers donated medicines, medical supplies, and humanitarian aid to people in the U.S. and around the globe. Founded in 1982 with the express mission of responding as quickly and efficiently as possible to help people in need, the Stamford, Connecticut-based AmeriCares has delivered more than US$10.5 billion in aid to 147 countries over the past three decades. Launch the Slideshow “It’s critically important to us that we steward all the donations and that the medical supplies and medicines get to people as quickly as possible with no loss,” says Kate Sears, senior vice president for finance and technology at AmeriCares. “Whether we’re shipping IV solutions to victims of cholera in Haiti or antibiotics to Somali famine victims, we need to get the medicines there sooner because it means more people will be helped and lives improved or even saved.” Ten years ago, the tracking systems used by AmeriCares associates were paper-based. In recent years, staff started using spreadsheets, but the tracking processes were not standardized between teams. “Every team was tracking completely different information,” says Megan McDermott, senior associate, Sub-Saharan Africa partnerships, at AmeriCares. “It was just a few key things. For example, we tracked the date a shipment was supposed to arrive and the date we got reports from our partner that a hospital received aid on their end.” While the data was accurate, much detail was being lost in the process. AmeriCares management knew it could do a better job of tracking this enterprise data and in 2011 took a significant step by implementing Oracle’s Primavera P6 Professional Project Management. “It’s a comprehensive solution that has helped us improve the monitoring and controlling processes. It has allowed us to do our distribution better,” says Sears. In addition, the implementation effort has been a change agent, helping AmeriCares leadership rethink project management across the entire organization. Initially, much of the focus was on standardizing processes, but staff members also learned the importance of thinking proactively to prevent possible problems and evaluating results to determine if goals and objectives are truly being met. Such data about process efficiency and overall results is critical not only to AmeriCares staff but also to the donors supporting the organization’s life-saving missions. Efficiency Saves Lives One of AmeriCares’ core operations is to gather product donations from the private sector, establish where the most-urgent needs are, and solicit monetary support to send the aid via ocean cargo or airlift to welfare- and health-oriented nongovernmental organizations, hospitals, health networks, and government ministries based in areas in need. In 2011 alone, AmeriCares sent more than 3,500 shipments to 95 countries in response to both ongoing humanitarian needs and more than two dozen emergencies, including deadly tornadoes and storms in the U.S. and the devastating tsunami in Japan. When it comes to nonprofits in general, donors want to know that the charitable organizations they support are using funds wisely. Typically, nonprofits are evaluated by donors in terms of efficiency, an area where AmeriCares has an excellent reputation: 98 percent of expenses go directly to supporting programs and less than 2 percent represent administrative and fundraising costs. Donors, however, should look at more than simple efficiency, says Peter York, senior partner and chief research and learning officer at TCC Group, a nonprofit consultancy headquartered in New York, New York. They should also look at whether organizations have the systems in place to sustain their missions and continue to thrive. An expert on nonprofit organizational management, York has spent years studying sustainable charitable organizations. He defines them as nonprofits that are able to achieve the ongoing financial support to stay relevant and continue doing core mission work. In his analysis of well over 2,500 larger nonprofits, York has found that many are not sustaining, and are actually scaling back in size. “One of the biggest challenges of nonprofit sustainability is the general public’s perception that every dollar donated has to go only to the delivery of service,” says York. “What our data shows is that there are some fundamental capacities that have to be there in order for organizations to sustain and grow.” York’s research highlights the importance of data-driven leadership at successful nonprofits. “You’ve got to have the tools, the systems, and the technologies to get objective information on what you do, the people you serve, and the results you’re achieving,” says York. “If leaders don’t have the knowledge and the data, they can’t make the strategic decisions about programs to take organizations to the next level.” Historically, AmeriCares associates have used time-tested and cost-effective strategies to ship and then track supplies from donation to delivery to their destinations in designated time frames. When disaster strikes, AmeriCares ships by air and generally pulls out all the stops to deliver the most urgently needed aid within the first few days and weeks. Then, as situations stabilize, AmeriCares turns to delivering sea containers for the postemergency and ongoing aid so often needed over the long term. According to McDermott, getting a shipment out the door is fairly complicated, requiring as many as five different AmeriCares teams collaborating together. The entire process can take months—from when products are received in the warehouse and deciding which recipients to allocate supplies to, to getting customs and governmental approvals in place, actually shipping products, and finally ensuring that the products are received in-country. Delivering that aid is no small affair. “Our volume exceeds half a billion dollars a year worth of donated medicines and medical supplies, so it’s a sizable logistical operation to bring these products in and get them out to the right place quickly to have the most impact,” says Sears. “We really pride ourselves on our controls and efficiencies.” Adding to that complexity is the fact that the longer it takes to deliver aid, the more dire the human need can be. Any time AmeriCares associates can shave off the complicated aid delivery process can translate into lives saved. “It’s really being able to track information consistently that will help us to see where are the bottlenecks and where can we work on improving our processes,” says McDermott. Setting a Standard Productivity and information management improvements were key objectives for AmeriCares when staff began the process of implementing Oracle’s Primavera solution. But before configuring the software, the staff needed to take the time to analyze the systems already in place. According to Greg Loop, manager of database systems at AmeriCares, the organization received guidance from several consultants, including Rich D’Addario, consulting project manager in the Primavera Global Business Unit at Oracle, who was instrumental in shepherding the critical requirements-gathering phase. D’Addario encouraged staff to begin documenting shipping processes by considering the order in which activities occur and which ones are dependent on others to get accomplished. This exercise helped everyone realize that to be more efficient, they needed to keep track of shipments in a more standard way. “The staff didn’t recognize formal project management methodology,” says D’Addario. “But they did understand what the most important things are and that if they go wrong, an entire project can go off course.” Before, if a boatload of supplies was being sent to Haiti and there was a problem somewhere, a lot of time was taken up finding out where the problem was—because staff was not tracking things in a standard way. As a result, even more time was needed to find possible solutions to the problem and alert recipients that the aid might be delayed. “For everyone to put on the project manager hat and standardize the way every single thing is done means that now the whole organization is on the same page as to what needs to occur from the time a hurricane hits Haiti and when a boat pulls in to unload supplies,” says D’Addario. With so much care taken to put a process foundation firmly in place, configuring the Primavera solution was actually quite simple. Specific templates were set up for different types of shipments, and dashboards were implemented to provide executives with clear overviews of every project in the system. AmeriCares’ Loop reports that system planning, refining, and testing, followed by writing up documentation and training, took approximately four months. The system went live in spring 2011 at AmeriCares’ Connecticut headquarters. While the nonprofit has an international presence, with warehouses in Europe and offices in Haiti, India, Japan, and Sri Lanka, most donated medicines come from U.S. entities and are shipped from the U.S. out to the rest of the world. In addition, all shipments are tracked from the U.S. office. AmeriCares doesn’t expect the Primavera system to take months off the shipping time, especially for sea containers. However, any time saved is still important because it will allow aid to be delivered to people more quickly at a lower overall cost. “If we can trim a day or two here or there, that can translate into lives that we’re saving, especially in emergency situations,” says Sears. A Cultural Change Beyond the measurable benefits that come with IT-driven process improvement, AmeriCares management is seeing a change in culture as a result of the Primavera project. One change has been treating every shipment of aid as a project, and everyone involved with facilitating shipments as a project manager. “This is a revolutionary concept for us,” says McDermott. “Before, we were used to thinking we were doing logistics—getting a container from point A to point B without looking at it as one project and really understanding what it meant to manage it.” AmeriCares staff is also happy to report that collaboration within the organization is much more efficient. When someone creates a shipment in the Primavera system, the same shared template is used, which means anyone can log in to the system to see the status of a shipment. Knowledgeable staff can access a shipment project to help troubleshoot a problem. Management can easily check the status of projects across the organization. “Dashboards are really useful,” says McDermott. “Instead of going into the details of each project, you can just see the high-level real-time information at a glance.” The new system is helping team members focus on proactively managing shipments rather than simply reacting when problems occur. For example, when a container is shipped, documents must be included for customs clearance. Now, the shipping template has built-in reminders to prompt team members to ask for copies of these documents from freight forwarders and to follow up with partners to discover if a shipment is on time. In the past, staff may not have worked on securing these documents until they’d been notified a shipment had arrived in-country. Another benefit of capturing and adopting best practices within the Primavera system is that staff training is easier. “Capturing the processes in documented steps and milestones allows us to teach new staff members how to do their jobs faster,” says Sears. “It provides them with the knowledge of their predecessors so they don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel.” With the Primavera system already generating positive results, management is eager to take advantage of advanced capabilities. Loop is working on integrating the company’s proprietary inventory management system with the Primavera system so that when logistics or warehousing operators input data, the information will automatically go into the Primavera system. In the past, this information had to be manually keyed into spreadsheets, often leading to errors. Mining Historical Data Another feature on the horizon for AmeriCares is utilizing Primavera P6 Professional Project Management reporting capabilities. As the system begins to include more historical data, management soon will be able to draw on this information to conduct analysis that has not been possible before and create customized reports. For example, at the beginning of the shipment process, staff will be able to use historical data to more accurately estimate how long the approval process should take for a particular country. This could help ensure that food and medicine with limited shelf lives do not get stuck in customs or used beyond their expiration dates. The historical data in the Primavera system will also help AmeriCares with better planning year to year. The nonprofit’s staff has always put together a plan at the beginning of the year, but this has been very challenging simply because it is impossible to predict disasters. Now, management will be able to look at historical data and see trends and statistics as they set current objectives and prepare for future need. In addition, this historical data will provide AmeriCares management with the ability to review year-end data and compare actual project results with goals set at the beginning of the year—to see if desired outcomes were achieved and if there are areas that need improvement. It’s this type of information that is so valuable to donors. And, according to York, project management software can play a critical role in generating the data to help nonprofits sustain and grow. “It is important to invest in systems to help replicate, expand, and deliver services,” says York. “Project management software can help because it encourages nonprofits to examine program or service changes and how to manage moving forward.” Sears believes that AmeriCares donors will support the return on investment the organization will achieve with the Primavera solution. “It won’t be financial returns, but rather how many more people we can help for a given dollar or how much more quickly we can respond to a need,” says Sears. “I think donors are receptive to such arguments.” And for AmeriCares, it is all about the future and increasing results. The project management environment currently may be quite simple, but IT staff plans to expand the complexity and functionality as the organization grows in its knowledge of project management and the goals it wants to achieve. “As we use the system over time, we’ll continue to refine our best practices and accumulate more data,” says Sears. “It will advance our ability to make better data-driven decisions.”

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• Down Tools Week Cometh: Kissing Goodbye to CVs/Resumes and Cover Letters

  - by Bart Read

  I haven't blogged about what I'm doing in my (not so new) temporary role as Red Gate's technical recruiter, mostly because it's been routine, business as usual stuff, and because I've been trying to understand the role by doing it. I think now though the time has come to get a little more radical, so I'm going to tell you why I want to largely eliminate CVs/resumes and cover letters from the application process for some of our technical roles, and why I think that might be a good thing for candidates (and for us). I have a terrible confession to make, or at least it's a terrible confession for a recruiter: I don't really like CV sifting, or reading cover letters, and, unless I've misread the mood around here, neither does anybody else. It's dull, it's time-consuming, and it's somewhat soul destroying because, when all is said and done, you're being paid to be incredibly judgemental about people based on relatively little information. I feel like I've dirtied myself by saying that - I mean, after all, it's a core part of my job - but it sucks, it really does. (And, of course, the truth is I'm still a software engineer at heart, and I'm always looking for ways to do things better.) On the flip side, I've never met anyone who likes writing their CV. It takes hours and hours of faffing around and massaging it into shape, and the whole process is beset by a gnawing anxiety, frustration, and insecurity. All you really want is a chance to demonstrate your skills - not just talk about them - and how do you do that in a CV or cover letter? Often the best candidates will include samples of their work (a portfolio, screenshots, links to websites, product downloads, etc.), but sometimes this isn't possible, or may not be appropriate, or you just don't think you're allowed because of what your school/university careers service has told you (more commonly an issue with grads, obviously). And what are we actually trying to find out about people with all of this? I think the common criteria are actually pretty basic: Smart Gets things done (thanks for these two Joel) Not an a55hole* (sorry, have to get around Simple Talk's swear filter - and thanks to Professor Robert I. Sutton for this one) *Of course, everyone has off days, and I don't honestly think we're too worried about somebody being a bit grumpy every now and again. We can do a bit better than this in the context of the roles I'm talking about: we can be more specific about what "gets things done" means, at least in part. For software engineers and interns, the non-exhaustive meaning of "gets things done" is: Excellent coder For test engineers, the non-exhaustive meaning of "gets things done" is: Good at finding problems in software Competent coder Team player, etc., to me, are covered by "not an a55hole". I don't expect people to be the life and soul of the party, or a wild extrovert - that's not what team player means, and it's not what "not an a55hole" means. Some of our best technical staff are quiet, introverted types, but they're still pleasant to work with. My problem is that I don't think the initial sift really helps us find out whether people are smart and get things done with any great efficacy. It's better than nothing, for sure, but it's not as good as it could be. It's also contentious, and potentially unfair/inequitable - if you want to get an idea of what I mean by this, check out the background information section at the bottom. Before I go any further, let's look at the Red Gate recruitment process for technical staff* as it stands now: (LOTS of) People apply for jobs. All these applications go through a brutal process of manual sifting, which eliminates between 75 and 90% of them, depending upon the role, and the time of year**. Depending upon the role, those who pass the sift will be sent an assessment or telescreened. For the purposes of this blog post I'm only interested in those that are sent some sort of programming assessment, or bug hunt. This means software engineers, test engineers, and software interns, which are the roles for which I receive the most applications. The telescreen tends to be reserved for project or product managers. Those that pass the assessment are invited in for first interview. This interview is mostly about assessing their technical skills***, although we're obviously on the look out for cultural fit red flags as well. If the first interview goes well we'll invite candidates back for a second interview. This is where team/cultural fit is really scoped out. We also use this interview to dive more deeply into certain areas of their skillset, and explore any concerns that may have come out of the first interview (these obviously won't have been serious or obvious enough to cause a rejection at that point, but are things we do need to look into before we'd consider making an offer). We might subsequently invite them in for lunch before we make them an offer. This tends to happen when we're recruiting somebody for a specific team and we'd like them to meet all the people they'll be working with directly. It's not an interview per se, but can prove pivotal if they don't gel with the team. Anyone who's made it this far will receive an offer from us. *We have a slightly quirky definition of "technical staff" as it relates to the technical recruiter role here. It includes software engineers, test engineers, software interns, user experience specialists, technical authors, project managers, product managers, and development managers, but does not include product support or information systems roles. **For example, the quality of graduate applicants overall noticeably drops as the academic year wears on, which is not to say that by now there aren't still stars in there, just that they're fewer and further between. ***Some organisations prefer to assess for team fit first, but I think assessing technical skills is a more effective initial filter - if they're the nicest person in the world, but can't cut a line of code they're not going to work out. Now, as I suggested in the title, Red Gate's Down Tools Week is upon us once again - next week in fact - and I had proposed as a project that we refactor and automate the first stage of marking our programming assessments. Marking assessments, and in fact organising the marking of them, is a somewhat time-consuming process, and we receive many assessment solutions that just don't make the cut, for whatever reason. Whilst I don't think it's possible to fully automate marking, I do think it ought to be possible to run a suite of automated tests over each candidate's solution to see whether or not it behaves correctly and, if it does, move on to a manual stage where we examine the code for structure, decomposition, style, readability, maintainability, etc. Obviously it's possible to use tools to generate potentially helpful metrics for some of these indices as well. This would obviously reduce the marking workload, and would provide candidates with quicker feedback about whether they've been successful - though I do wonder if waiting a tactful interval before sending a (nicely written) rejection might be wise. I duly scrawled out a picture of my ideal process, which looked like this: The problem is, as soon as I'd roughed it out, I realised that fundamentally it wasn't an ideal process at all, which explained the gnawing feeling of cognitive dissonance I'd been wrestling with all week, whilst I'd been trying to find time to do this. Here's what I mean. Automated assessment marking, and the associated infrastructure around that, makes it much easier for us to deal with large numbers of assessments. This means we can be much more permissive about who we send assessments out to or, in other words, we can give more candidates the opportunity to really demonstrate their skills to us. And this leads to a question: why not give everyone the opportunity to demonstrate their skills, to show that they're smart and can get things done? (Two or three of us even discussed this in the down tools week hustings earlier this week.) And isn't this a lot simpler than the alternative we'd been considering? (FYI, this was automated CV/cover letter sifting by some form of textual analysis to ideally eliminate the worst 50% or so of applications based on an analysis of the 20,000 or so historical applications we've received since 2007 - definitely not the basic keyword analysis beloved of recruitment agencies, since this would eliminate hardly anyone who was awful, but definitely would eliminate stellar Oxbridge candidates - #fail - or some nightmarishly complex Google-like system where we profile all our currently employees, only to realise that we're never going to get representative results because we don't have a statistically significant sample size in any given role - also #fail.) No, I think the new way is better. We let people self-select. We make them the masters (or mistresses) of their own destiny. We give applicants the power - we put their fate in their hands - by giving them the chance to demonstrate their skills, which is what they really want anyway, instead of requiring that they spend hours and hours creating a CV and cover letter that I'm going to evaluate for suitability, and make a value judgement about, in approximately 1 minute (give or take). It doesn't matter what university you attended, it doesn't matter if you had a bad year when you took your A-levels - here's your chance to shine, so take it and run with it. (As a side benefit, we cut the number of applications we have to sift by something like two thirds.) WIN! OK, yeah, sounds good, but will it actually work? That's an excellent question. My gut feeling is yes, and I'll justify why below (and hopefully have gone some way towards doing that above as well), but what I'm proposing here is really that we run an experiment for a period of time - probably a couple of months or so - and measure the outcomes we see: How many people apply? (Wouldn't be surprised or alarmed to see this cut by a factor of ten.) How many of them submit a good assessment? (More/less than at present?) How much overhead is there for us in dealing with these assessments compared to now? What are the success and failure rates at each interview stage compared to now? How many people are we hiring at the end of it compared to now? I think it'll work because I hypothesize that, amongst other things: It self-selects for people who really want to work at Red Gate which, at the moment, is something I have to try and assess based on their CV and cover letter - but if you're not that bothered about working here, why would you complete the assessment? Candidates who would submit a shoddy application probably won't feel motivated to do the assessment. Candidates who would demonstrate good attention to detail in their CV/cover letter will demonstrate good attention to detail in the assessment. In general, only the better candidates will complete and submit the assessment. Marking assessments is much less work so we'll be able to deal with any increase that we see (hopefully we will see). There are obviously other questions as well: Is plagiarism going to be a problem? Is there any way we can detect/discourage potential plagiarism? How do we assess candidates' education and experience? What about their ability to communicate in writing? Do we still want them to submit a CV afterwards if they pass assessment? Do we want to offer them the opportunity to tell us a bit about why they'd like the job when they submit their assessment? How does this affect our relationship with recruitment agencies we might use to hire for these roles? So, what's the objective for next week's Down Tools Week? Pretty simple really - we want to implement this process for the Graduate Software Engineer and Software Engineer positions that you can find on our website. I will be joined by a crack team of our best developers (Kevin Boyle, and new Red-Gater, Sam Blackburn), and recruiting hostess with the mostest Laura McQuillen, and hopefully a couple of others as well - if I can successfully twist more arms before Monday.* Hopefully by next Friday our experiment will be up and running, and we may have changed the way Red Gate recruits software engineers for good! Stay tuned and we'll let you know how it goes! *I'm going to play dirty by offering them beer and chocolate during meetings. Some background information: how agonising over the initial CV/cover letter sift helped lead us to bin it off entirely The other day I was agonising about the new university/good degree grade versus poor A-level results issue, and decided to canvas for other opinions to see if there was something I could do that was fairer than my current approach, which is almost always to reject. This generated quite an involved discussion on our Yammer site: I'm sure you can glean a pretty good impression of my own educational prejudices from that discussion as well, although I'm very open to changing my opinion - hopefully you've already figured that out from reading the rest of this post. Hopefully you can also trace a logical path from agonising about sifting to, "Uh, hang on, why on earth are we doing this anyway?!?" Technorati Tags: recruitment,hr,developers,testers,red gate,cv,resume,cover letter,assessment,sea change

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• Simple GET operation with JSON data in ADF Mobile

  - by PadmajaBhat

  Usecase: This sample uses a RESTful service which contains a GET method that fetches employee details for an employee with given employee ID along with other methods. The data is fetched in JSON format. This RESTful service is then invoked via ADF Mobile and the JSON data thus obtained is parsed and rendered in mobile in a table. Prerequisite: Download JDev build JDEVADF_11.1.2.4.0_GENERIC_130421.1600.6436.1 or higher with mobile support.  Steps: Run EmployeeService.java in JSONService.zip. This is a simple service with a method, getEmpById(id) that takes employee ID as parameter and produces employee details in JSON format. Copy the target URL generated on running this service. The target URL will be as shown below: http://127.0.0.1:7101/JSONService-Project1-context-root/jersey/project1 Now, let us invoke this service in our mobile application. For this, create an ADF Mobile application.  Name the application JSON_SearchByEmpID and finish the wizard. Now, let us create a connection to our service. To do this, we create a URL Connection. Invoke new gallery wizard on ApplicationController project.  Select URL Connection option. In the Create URL Connection window, enter connection name as ‘conn’. For URL endpoint, supply the URL you copied earlier on running the service. Remember to use your system IP instead of localhost. Test the connection and click OK. At this point, a connection to the REST service has been created. Since JSON data is not supported directly in WSDC wizard, we need to invoke the operation through Java code using RestServiceAdapter. For this, in the ApplicationController project, create a Java class called ‘EmployeeDC’. We will be creating DC from this class. Add the following code to the newly created class to invoke the getEmpById method. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 public Employee fetchEmpDetails(){ RestServiceAdapter restServiceAdapter = Model.createRestServiceAdapter(); restServiceAdapter.clearRequestProperties(); restServiceAdapter.setConnectionName("conn"); //URL connection created with this name restServiceAdapter.setRequestType(RestServiceAdapter.REQUEST_TYPE_GET); restServiceAdapter.addRequestProperty("Content-Type", "application/json"); restServiceAdapter.addRequestProperty("Accept", "application/json; charset=UTF-8"); restServiceAdapter.setRetryLimit(0); restServiceAdapter.setRequestURI("/getById/"+inputEmpID); String response = ""; JSONBeanSerializationHelper jsonHelper = new JSONBeanSerializationHelper(); try { response = restServiceAdapter.send(""); //Invoke the GET operation System.out.println("Response received!"); Employee responseObject = (Employee) jsonHelper.fromJSON(Employee.class, response); return responseObject; } catch (Exception e) { } return null; } Here, in lines 2 to 9, we create the RestServiceAdapter and set various properties required to invoke the web service. At line 4, we are pointing to the connection ‘conn’ created previously. Since we want to invoke getEmpById method of the service, which is defined by the URL http://IP:7101/REST_Sanity_JSON-Project1-context-root/resources/project1/getById/{id} we are updating the request URI to point to this URI at line 9. inputEmpID is a variable that will hold the value input by the user for employee ID. This we will be creating in a while. As the method we are invoking is a GET operation and consumes json data, these properties are being set in lines 5 through 7. Finally, we are sending the request in line 13. In line 15, we use jsonHelper.fromJSON to convert received JSON data to a Java object. The required Java objects' structure is defined in class Employee.java whose structure is provided later. Since the response from our service is a simple response consisting of attributes like employee Id, name, design etc, we will just return this parsed response (line 16) and use it to create DC. As mentioned previously, we would like the user to input the employee ID for which he/she wants to perform search. So, in the same class, define a variable inputEmpID which will hold the value input by the user. Generate accessors for this variable. Lastly, we need to create Employee class. Employee class will define how we want to structure the JSON object received from the service. To design the Employee class, run the services’ method in the browser or via analyzer using path parameter as 1. This will give you the output JSON structure. Ours is a simple service that returns a JSONObject with a set of data. Hence, Employee class will just contain this set of data defined with the proper data types. Create Employee.java in the same project as EmployeeDC.java and write the below code: package application; import oracle.adfmf.java.beans.PropertyChangeListener; import oracle.adfmf.java.beans.PropertyChangeSupport; public class Employee { private String dept; private String desig; private int id; private String name; private int salary; private PropertyChangeSupport propertyChangeSupport = new PropertyChangeSupport(this); public void setDept(String dept) {         String oldDept = this.dept; this.dept = dept; propertyChangeSupport.firePropertyChange("dept", oldDept, dept); } public String getDept() { return dept; } public void setDesig(String desig) { String oldDesig = this.desig; this.desig = desig; propertyChangeSupport.firePropertyChange("desig", oldDesig, desig); } public String getDesig() { return desig; } public void setId(int id) { int oldId = this.id; this.id = id; propertyChangeSupport.firePropertyChange("id", oldId, id); } public int getId() { return id; } public void setName(String name) { String oldName = this.name; this.name = name; propertyChangeSupport.firePropertyChange("name", oldName, name); } public String getName() { return name; } public void setSalary(int salary) { int oldSalary = this.salary; this.salary = salary; propertyChangeSupport.firePropertyChange("salary", oldSalary, salary); } public int getSalary() { return salary; } public void addPropertyChangeListener(PropertyChangeListener l) { propertyChangeSupport.addPropertyChangeListener(l); } public void removePropertyChangeListener(PropertyChangeListener l) { propertyChangeSupport.removePropertyChangeListener(l);     } } Now, let us create a DC out of EmployeeDC.java.  DC as shown below is created. Now, you can design the mobile page as usual and invoke the operation of the service. To design the page, go to ViewController project and locate adfmf-feature.xml. Create a new feature called ‘SearchFeature’ by clicking the plus icon. Go the content tab and add an amx page. Call it SearchPage.amx. Call it SearchPage.amx. Remove primary and secondary buttons as we don’t need them and rename the header. Drag and drop inputEmpID from the DC palette onto Panel Page in the structure pane as input text with label. Next, drop fetchEmpDetails method as an ADF button. For a change, let us display the output in a table component instead of the usual form. However, you will notice that if you drag and drop Employee onto the structure pane, there is no option for ADF Mobile Table. Hence, we will need to create the table on our own. To do this, let us first drop Employee as an ADF Read -Only form. This step is needed to get the required bindings. We will be deleting this form in a while. Now, from the Component palette, search for ‘Table Layout’. Drag and drop this below the command button.  Within the tablelayout, insert ‘Row Layout’ and ‘Cell Format’ components. Final table structure should be as shown below. Here, we have also defined some inline styling to render the UI in a nice manner. <amx:tableLayout id="tl1" borderWidth="2" halign="center" inlineStyle="vertical-align:middle;" width="100%" cellPadding="10"> <amx:rowLayout id="rl1" > <amx:cellFormat id="cf1" width="30%"> <amx:outputText value="#{bindings.dept.hints.label}" id="ot7" inlineStyle="color:rgb(0,148,231);"/> </amx:cellFormat> <amx:cellFormat id="cf2"> <amx:outputText value="#{bindings.dept.inputValue}" id="ot8" /> </amx:cellFormat> </amx:rowLayout> <amx:rowLayout id="rl2"> <amx:cellFormat id="cf3" width="30%"> <amx:outputText value="#{bindings.desig.hints.label}" id="ot9" inlineStyle="color:rgb(0,148,231);"/> </amx:cellFormat> <amx:cellFormat id="cf4" > <amx:outputText value="#{bindings.desig.inputValue}" id="ot10"/> </amx:cellFormat> </amx:rowLayout> <amx:rowLayout id="rl3"> <amx:cellFormat id="cf5" width="30%"> <amx:outputText value="#{bindings.id.hints.label}" id="ot11" inlineStyle="color:rgb(0,148,231);"/> </amx:cellFormat> <amx:cellFormat id="cf6" > <amx:outputText value="#{bindings.id.inputValue}" id="ot12"/> </amx:cellFormat> </amx:rowLayout> <amx:rowLayout id="rl4"> <amx:cellFormat id="cf7" width="30%"> <amx:outputText value="#{bindings.name.hints.label}" id="ot13" inlineStyle="color:rgb(0,148,231);"/> </amx:cellFormat> <amx:cellFormat id="cf8"> <amx:outputText value="#{bindings.name.inputValue}" id="ot14"/> </amx:cellFormat> </amx:rowLayout> <amx:rowLayout id="rl5"> <amx:cellFormat id="cf9" width="30%"> <amx:outputText value="#{bindings.salary.hints.label}" id="ot15" inlineStyle="color:rgb(0,148,231);"/> </amx:cellFormat> <amx:cellFormat id="cf10"> <amx:outputText value="#{bindings.salary.inputValue}" id="ot16"/> </amx:cellFormat> </amx:rowLayout>     </amx:tableLayout> The values used in the output text of the table come from the bindings obtained from the ADF Form created earlier. As we have used the bindings and don’t need the form anymore, let us delete the form.  One last thing before we deploy. When user changes employee ID, we want to clear the table contents. For this we associate a value change listener with the input text box. Click New in the resulting dialog to create a managed bean. Next, we create a method within the managed bean. For this, click on the New button associated with method. Call the method ‘empIDChange’. Open myClass.java and write the below code in empIDChange(). public void empIDChange(ValueChangeEvent valueChangeEvent) { // Add event code here... //Resetting the values to blank values when employee id changes AdfELContext adfELContext = AdfmfJavaUtilities.getAdfELContext(); ValueExpression ve = AdfmfJavaUtilities.getValueExpression("#{bindings.dept.inputValue}", String.class); ve.setValue(adfELContext, ""); ve = AdfmfJavaUtilities.getValueExpression("#{bindings.desig.inputValue}", String.class); ve.setValue(adfELContext, ""); ve = AdfmfJavaUtilities.getValueExpression("#{bindings.id.inputValue}", int.class); ve.setValue(adfELContext, ""); ve = AdfmfJavaUtilities.getValueExpression("#{bindings.name.inputValue}", String.class); ve.setValue(adfELContext, ""); ve = AdfmfJavaUtilities.getValueExpression("#{bindings.salary.inputValue}", int.class); ve.setValue(adfELContext, ""); } That’s it. Deploy the application to android emulator or device. Some snippets from the app.

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• PASS: Bylaw Change 2013

  - by Bill Graziano

  PASS launched a Global Growth Initiative in the Summer of 2011 with the appointment of three international Board advisors.  Since then we’ve thought and talked extensively about how we make PASS more relevant to our members outside the US and Canada.  We’ve collected much of that discussion in our Global Growth site.  You can find vision documents, plans, governance proposals, feedback sites, and transcripts of Twitter chats and town hall meetings.  We also address these plans at the Board Q&A during the 2012 Summit. One of the biggest changes coming out of this process is around how we elect Board members.  And that requires a change to the bylaws.  We published the proposed bylaw changes as a red-lined document so you can clearly see the changes.  Our goal in these bylaw changes was to address the changes required by the global growth initiatives, conduct a legal review of the document and address other minor issues in the document.  There are numerous small wording changes throughout the document.  For example, we replaced every reference of “The Corporation” with the word “PASS” so it now reads “PASS is organized…”. Board Composition The biggest change in these bylaw changes is how the Board is composed and elected.  This discussion starts in section VI.2.  This section now says that some elected directors will come from geographic regions.  I think this is the best way to make sure we give all of our members a voice in the leadership of the organization.  The key parts of this section are: The remaining Directors (i.e. the non-Officer Directors and non-Vendor Appointed Directors) shall be elected by the voting membership (“Elected Directors”). Elected Directors shall include representatives of defined PASS regions (“Regions”) as set forth below (“Regional Directors”) and at minimum one (1) additional Director-at-Large whose selection is not limited by region. Regional Directors shall include, but are not limited to, two (2) seats for the Region covering Canada and the United States of America. Additional Regions for the purpose of electing additional Regional Directors and additional Director-at-Large seats for the purpose of expanding the Board shall be defined by a majority vote of the current Board of Directors and must be established prior to the public call for nominations in the general election. Previously defined Regions and seats approved by the Board of Directors shall remain in effect and can only be modified by a 2/3 majority vote by the then current Board of Directors. Currently PASS has six At-Large Directors elected by the members.  These changes allow for a Regional Director position that is elected by the members but must come from a particular region.  It also stipulates that there must always be at least one Director-at-Large who can come from any region. We also understand that PASS is currently a very US-centric organization.  Our Summit is held in America, roughly half our chapters are in the US and Canada and most of the Board members over the last ten years have come from America.  We wanted to reflect that by making sure that our US and Canadian volunteers would continue to play a significant role by ensuring that two Regional seats are reserved specifically for Canada and the US. Other than that, the bylaws don’t create any specific regional seats.  These rules allow us to create Regional Director seats but don’t require it.  We haven’t fully discussed what the criteria will be in order for a region to have a seat designated for it or how many regions there will be.  In our discussions we’ve broadly discussed regions for United States and Canada Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) Australia, New Zealand and Asia (also known as Asia Pacific or APAC) Mexico, South America, and Central America (LATAM) As you can see, our thinking is that there will be a few large regions.  I’ve also considered a non-North America region that we can gradually split into the regions above as our membership grows in those areas.  The regions will be defined by a policy document that will be published prior to the elections. I’m hoping that over the next year we can begin to publish more of what we do as Board-approved policy documents. While the bylaws only require a single non-region specific At-large Director, I would expect we would always have two.  That way we can have one in each election.  I think it’s important that we always have one seat open that anyone who is eligible to run for the Board can contest.  The Board is required to have any regions defined prior to the start of the election process. Board Elections – Regional Seats We spent a lot of time discussing how the elections would work for these Regional Director seats.  Ultimately we decided that the simplest solution is that every PASS member should vote for every open seat.  Section VIII.3 reads: Candidates who are eligible (i.e. eligible to serve in such capacity subject to the criteria set forth herein or adopted by the Board of Directors) shall be designated to fill open Board seats in the following order of priority on the basis of total votes received: (i) full term Regional Director seats, (ii) full term Director-at-Large seats, (iii) not full term (vacated) Regional Director seats, (iv) not full term (vacated) Director-at-Large seats. For the purposes of clarity, because of eligibility requirements, it is contemplated that the candidates designated to the open Board seats may not receive more votes than certain other candidates who are not selected to the Board. We debated whether to have multiple ballots or one single ballot.  Multiple ballot elections get complicated quickly.  Let’s say we have a ballot for US/Canada and one for Region 2.  After that we’d need a mechanism to merge those two together and come up with the winner of the at-large seat or have another election for the at-large position.  We think the best way to do this is a single ballot and putting the highest vote getters into the most restrictive seats.  Let’s look at an example: There are seats open for Region 1, Region 2 and at-large.  The election results are as follows: Candidate A (eligible for Region 1) – 550 votes Candidate B (eligible for Region 1) – 525 votes Candidate C (eligible for Region 1) – 475 votes Candidate D (eligible for Region 2) – 125 votes Candidate E (eligible for Region 2) – 75 votes In this case, Candidate A is the winner for Region 1 and is assigned that seat.  Candidate D is the winner for Region 2 and is assigned that seat.  The at-large seat is filled by the high remaining vote getter which is Candidate B. The key point to understand is that we may have a situation where a person with a lower vote total is elected to a regional seat and a person with a higher vote total is excluded.  This will be true whether we had multiple ballots or a single ballot.  Board Elections – Vacant Seats The other change to the election process is for vacant Board seats.  The actual changes are sprinkled throughout the document. Previously we didn’t have a mechanism that allowed for an election of a Board seat that we knew would be vacant in the future.  The most common case is when a Board members moves to an Officer role in the middle of their term.  One of the key changes is to allow the number of votes members have to match the number of open seats.  This allows each voter to express their preference on all open seats.  This only applies when we know about the opening prior to the call for nominations.  This all means that if there’s a seat will be open at the start of the next Board term, and we know about it prior to the call for nominations, we can include that seat in the elections.  Ultimately, the aim is to have PASS members decide who sits on the Board in as many situations as possible. We discussed the option of changing the bylaws to just take next highest vote-getter in all other cases.  I think that’s wrong for the following reasons: All voters aren’t able to express an opinion on all candidates.  If there are five people running for three seats, you can only vote for three.  You have no way to express your preference between #4 and #5. Different candidates may have different information about the number of seats available.  A person may learn that a Board member plans to resign at the end of the year prior to that information being made public. They may understand that the top four vote getters will end up on the Board while the rest of the members believe there are only three openings.  This may affect someone’s decision to run.  I don’t think this creates a transparent, fair election. Board members may use their knowledge of the election results to decide whether to remain on the Board or not.  Admittedly this one is unlikely but I don’t want to create a situation where this accusation can be leveled. I think the majority of vacancies in the future will be handled through elections.  The bylaw section quoted above also indicates that partial term vacancies will be filled after the full term seats are filled. Removing Directors Section VI.7 on removing directors has always had a clause that allowed members to remove an elected director.  We also had a clause that allowed appointed directors to be removed.  We added a clause that allows the Board to remove for cause any director with a 2/3 majority vote.  The updated text reads: Any Director may be removed for cause by a 2/3 majority vote of the Board of Directors whenever in its judgment the best interests of PASS would be served thereby. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the authority of any Director to act as in an official capacity as a Director or Officer of PASS may be suspended by the Board of Directors for cause. Cause for suspension or removal of a Director shall include but not be limited to failure to meet any Board-approved performance expectations or the presence of a reason for suspension or dismissal as listed in Addendum B of these Bylaws. The first paragraph is updated and the second and third are unchanged (except cleaning up language).  If you scroll down and look at Addendum B of these bylaws you find the following: Cause for suspension or dismissal of a member of the Board of Directors may include: Inability to attend Board meetings on a regular basis. Inability or unwillingness to act in a capacity designated by the Board of Directors. Failure to fulfill the responsibilities of the office. Inability to represent the Region elected to represent Failure to act in a manner consistent with PASS's Bylaws and/or policies. Misrepresentation of responsibility and/or authority. Misrepresentation of PASS. Unresolved conflict of interests with Board responsibilities. Breach of confidentiality. The bold line about your inability to represent your region is what we added to the bylaws in this revision.  We also added a clause to section VII.3 allowing the Board to remove an officer.  That clause is much less restrictive.  It doesn’t require cause and only requires a simple majority. The Board of Directors may remove any Officer whenever in their judgment the best interests of PASS shall be served by such removal. Other There are numerous other small changes throughout the document. Proxy voting.  The laws around how members and Board members proxy votes are specific in Illinois law.  PASS is an Illinois corporation and is subject to Illinois laws.  We changed section IV.5 to come into compliance with those laws.  Specifically this says you can only vote through a proxy if you have a written proxy through your authorized attorney.  English language proficiency.  As we increase our global footprint we come across more members that aren’t native English speakers.  The business of PASS is conducted in English and it’s important that our Board members speak English.  If we get big enough to afford translators, we may be able to relax this but right now we need English language skills for effective Board members. Committees.  The language around committees in section IX is old and dated.  Our lawyers advised us to clean it up.  This section specifically applies to any committees that the Board may form outside of portfolios.  We removed the term limits, quorum and vacancies clause.  We don’t currently have any committees that this would apply to.  The Nominating Committee is covered elsewhere in the bylaws. Electronic Votes.  The change allows the Board to vote via email but the results must be unanimous.  This is to conform with Illinois state law. Immediate Past President.  There was no mechanism to fill the IPP role if an outgoing President chose not to participate.  We changed section VII.8 to allow the Board to invite any previous President to fill the role by majority vote. Nominations Committee.  We’ve opened the language to allow for the transparent election of the Nominations Committee as outlined by the 2011 Election Review Committee. Revocation of Charters. The language surrounding the revocation of charters for local groups was flagged by the lawyers. We have allowed for the local user group to make all necessary payment before considering returning of items to PASS if required. Bylaw notification. We’ve spent countless meetings working on these bylaws with the intent to not open them again any time in the near future. Should the bylaws be opened again, we have included a clause ensuring that the PASS membership is involved. I’m proud that the Board has remained committed to transparency and accountability to members. This clause will require that same level of commitment in the future even when all the current Board members have rolled off. I think that covers everything.  I’d encourage you to look through the red-line document and see the changes.  It’s helpful to look at the language that’s being removed and the language that’s being added.  I’m happy to answer any questions here or you can email them to [email protected].

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• ASP.NET MVC 3 Hosting :: How to Deploy Web Apps Using ASP.NET MVC 3, Razor and EF Code First - Part II

  - by mbridge

  In previous post, I have discussed on how to work with ASP.NET MVC 3 and EF Code First for developing web apps. In this post, I will demonstrate on working with domain entity with deep object graph, Service Layer and View Models and will also complete the rest of the demo application. In the previous post, we have done CRUD operations against Category entity and this post will be focus on Expense entity those have an association with Category entity. Domain Model Category Entity public class Category   {       public int CategoryId { get; set; }       [Required(ErrorMessage = "Name Required")]       [StringLength(25, ErrorMessage = "Must be less than 25 characters")]       public string Name { get; set;}       public string Description { get; set; }       public virtual ICollection<Expense> Expenses { get; set; }   } Expense Entity public class Expense     {                public int ExpenseId { get; set; }                public string  Transaction { get; set; }         public DateTime Date { get; set; }         public double Amount { get; set; }         public int CategoryId { get; set; }         public virtual Category Category { get; set; }     } We have two domain entities - Category and Expense. A single category contains a list of expense transactions and every expense transaction should have a Category. Repository class for Expense Transaction Let’s create repository class for handling CRUD operations for Expense entity public class ExpenseRepository : RepositoryBase<Expense>, IExpenseRepository     {     public ExpenseRepository(IDatabaseFactory databaseFactory)         : base(databaseFactory)         {         }                } public interface IExpenseRepository : IRepository<Expense> { } Service Layer If you are new to Service Layer, checkout Martin Fowler's article Service Layer . According to Martin Fowler, Service Layer defines an application's boundary and its set of available operations from the perspective of interfacing client layers. It encapsulates the application's business logic, controlling transactions and coordinating responses in the implementation of its operations. Controller classes should be lightweight and do not put much of business logic onto it. We can use the service layer as the business logic layer and can encapsulate the rules of the application. Let’s create a Service class for coordinates the transaction for Expense public interface IExpenseService {     IEnumerable<Expense> GetExpenses(DateTime startDate, DateTime ednDate);     Expense GetExpense(int id);             void CreateExpense(Expense expense);     void DeleteExpense(int id);     void SaveExpense(); } public class ExpenseService : IExpenseService {     private readonly IExpenseRepository expenseRepository;            private readonly IUnitOfWork unitOfWork;     public ExpenseService(IExpenseRepository expenseRepository, IUnitOfWork unitOfWork)     {                  this.expenseRepository = expenseRepository;         this.unitOfWork = unitOfWork;     }     public IEnumerable<Expense> GetExpenses(DateTime startDate, DateTime endDate)     {         var expenses = expenseRepository.GetMany(exp => exp.Date >= startDate && exp.Date <= endDate);         return expenses;     }     public void CreateExpense(Expense expense)     {         expenseRepository.Add(expense);         unitOfWork.Commit();     }     public Expense GetExpense(int id)     {         var expense = expenseRepository.GetById(id);         return expense;     }     public void DeleteExpense(int id)     {         var expense = expenseRepository.GetById(id);         expenseRepository.Delete(expense);         unitOfWork.Commit();     }     public void SaveExpense()     {         unitOfWork.Commit();     } } View Model for Expense Transactions In real world ASP.NET MVC applications, we need to design model objects especially for our views. Our domain objects are mainly designed for the needs for domain model and it is representing the domain of our applications. On the other hand, View Model objects are designed for our needs for views. We have an Expense domain entity that has an association with Category. While we are creating a new Expense, we have to specify that in which Category belongs with the new Expense transaction. The user interface for Expense transaction will have form fields for representing the Expense entity and a CategoryId for representing the Category. So let's create view model for representing the need for Expense transactions. public class ExpenseViewModel {     public int ExpenseId { get; set; }       [Required(ErrorMessage = "Category Required")]     public int CategoryId { get; set; }       [Required(ErrorMessage = "Transaction Required")]     public string Transaction { get; set; }       [Required(ErrorMessage = "Date Required")]     public DateTime Date { get; set; }       [Required(ErrorMessage = "Amount Required")]     public double Amount { get; set; }       public IEnumerable<SelectListItem> Category { get; set; } } The ExpenseViewModel is designed for the purpose of View template and contains the all validation rules. It has properties for mapping values to Expense entity and a property Category for binding values to a drop-down for list values of Category. Create Expense transaction Let’s create action methods in the ExpenseController for creating expense transactions public ActionResult Create() {     var expenseModel = new ExpenseViewModel();     var categories = categoryService.GetCategories();     expenseModel.Category = categories.ToSelectListItems(-1);     expenseModel.Date = DateTime.Today;     return View(expenseModel); } [HttpPost] public ActionResult Create(ExpenseViewModel expenseViewModel) {                      if (!ModelState.IsValid)         {             var categories = categoryService.GetCategories();             expenseViewModel.Category = categories.ToSelectListItems(expenseViewModel.CategoryId);             return View("Save", expenseViewModel);         }         Expense expense=new Expense();         ModelCopier.CopyModel(expenseViewModel,expense);         expenseService.CreateExpense(expense);         return RedirectToAction("Index");              } In the Create action method for HttpGet request, we have created an instance of our View Model ExpenseViewModel with Category information for the drop-down list and passing the Model object to View template. The extension method ToSelectListItems is shown below public static IEnumerable<SelectListItem> ToSelectListItems(         this IEnumerable<Category> categories, int  selectedId) {     return           categories.OrderBy(category => category.Name)                 .Select(category =>                     new SelectListItem                     {                         Selected = (category.CategoryId == selectedId),                         Text = category.Name,                         Value = category.CategoryId.ToString()                     }); } In the Create action method for HttpPost, our view model object ExpenseViewModel will map with posted form input values. We need to create an instance of Expense for the persistence purpose. So we need to copy values from ExpenseViewModel object to Expense object. ASP.NET MVC futures assembly provides a static class ModelCopier that can use for copying values between Model objects. ModelCopier class has two static methods - CopyCollection and CopyModel.CopyCollection method will copy values between two collection objects and CopyModel will copy values between two model objects. We have used CopyModel method of ModelCopier class for copying values from expenseViewModel object to expense object. Finally we did a call to CreateExpense method of ExpenseService class for persisting new expense transaction. List Expense Transactions We want to list expense transactions based on a date range. So let’s create action method for filtering expense transactions with a specified date range. public ActionResult Index(DateTime? startDate, DateTime? endDate) {     //If date is not passed, take current month's first and last dte     DateTime dtNow;     dtNow = DateTime.Today;     if (!startDate.HasValue)     {         startDate = new DateTime(dtNow.Year, dtNow.Month, 1);         endDate = startDate.Value.AddMonths(1).AddDays(-1);     }     //take last date of start date's month, if end date is not passed     if (startDate.HasValue && !endDate.HasValue)     {         endDate = (new DateTime(startDate.Value.Year, startDate.Value.Month, 1)).AddMonths(1).AddDays(-1);     }     var expenses = expenseService.GetExpenses(startDate.Value ,endDate.Value);     //if request is Ajax will return partial view     if (Request.IsAjaxRequest())     {         return PartialView("ExpenseList", expenses);     }     //set start date and end date to ViewBag dictionary     ViewBag.StartDate = startDate.Value.ToShortDateString();     ViewBag.EndDate = endDate.Value.ToShortDateString();     //if request is not ajax     return View(expenses); } We are using the above Index Action method for both Ajax requests and normal requests. If there is a request for Ajax, we will call the PartialView ExpenseList. Razor Views for listing Expense information Let’s create view templates in Razor for showing list of Expense information ExpenseList.cshtml @model IEnumerable<MyFinance.Domain.Expense>   <table>         <tr>             <th>Actions</th>             <th>Category</th>             <th>                 Transaction             </th>             <th>                 Date             </th>             <th>                 Amount             </th>         </tr>       @foreach (var item in Model) {              <tr>             <td>                 @Html.ActionLink("Edit", "Edit",new { id = item.ExpenseId })                 @Ajax.ActionLink("Delete", "Delete", new { id = item.ExpenseId }, new AjaxOptions { Confirm = "Delete Expense?", HttpMethod = "Post", UpdateTargetId = "divExpenseList" })             </td>              <td>                 @item.Category.Name             </td>             <td>                 @item.Transaction             </td>             <td>                 @String.Format("{0:d}", item.Date)             </td>             <td>                 @String.Format("{0:F}", item.Amount)             </td>         </tr>          }       </table>     <p>         @Html.ActionLink("Create New Expense", "Create") |         @Html.ActionLink("Create New Category", "Create","Category")     </p> Index.cshtml @using MyFinance.Helpers; @model IEnumerable<MyFinance.Domain.Expense> @{     ViewBag.Title = "Index"; }    <h2>Expense List</h2>    <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.unobtrusive-ajax.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery-ui.js")" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.ui.datepicker.js")" type="text/javascript"></script> <link href="@Url.Content("~/Content/jquery-ui-1.8.6.custom.css")" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />      @using (Ajax.BeginForm(new AjaxOptions{ UpdateTargetId="divExpenseList", HttpMethod="Get"})) {     <table>         <tr>         <td>         <div>           Start Date: @Html.TextBox("StartDate", Html.Encode(String.Format("{0:mm/dd/yyyy}", ViewData["StartDate"].ToString())), new { @class = "ui-datepicker" })         </div>         </td>         <td><div>            End Date: @Html.TextBox("EndDate", Html.Encode(String.Format("{0:mm/dd/yyyy}", ViewData["EndDate"].ToString())), new { @class = "ui-datepicker" })          </div></td>          <td> <input type="submit" value="Search By TransactionDate" /></td>         </tr>     </table>         }   <div id="divExpenseList">             @Html.Partial("ExpenseList", Model)     </div> <script type="text/javascript">     $().ready(function () {         $('.ui-datepicker').datepicker({             dateFormat: 'mm/dd/yy',             buttonImage: '@Url.Content("~/Content/calendar.gif")',             buttonImageOnly: true,             showOn: "button"         });     }); </script> Ajax search functionality using Ajax.BeginForm The search functionality of Index view is providing Ajax functionality using Ajax.BeginForm. The Ajax.BeginForm() method writes an opening <form> tag to the response. You can use this method in a using block. In that case, the method renders the closing </form> tag at the end of the using block and the form is submitted asynchronously by using JavaScript. The search functionality will call the Index Action method and this will return partial view ExpenseList for updating the search result. We want to update the response UI for the Ajax request onto divExpenseList element. So we have specified the UpdateTargetId as "divExpenseList" in the Ajax.BeginForm method. Add jQuery DatePicker Our search functionality is using a date range so we are providing two date pickers using jQuery datepicker. You need to add reference to the following JavaScript files to working with jQuery datepicker. - jquery-ui.js - jquery.ui.datepicker.js For theme support for datepicker, we can use a customized CSS class. In our example we have used a CSS file “jquery-ui-1.8.6.custom.css”. For more details about the datepicker component, visit jquery UI website at http://jqueryui.com/demos/datepicker . In the jQuery ready event, we have used following JavaScript function to initialize the UI element to show date picker. <script type="text/javascript">     $().ready(function () {         $('.ui-datepicker').datepicker({             dateFormat: 'mm/dd/yy',             buttonImage: '@Url.Content("~/Content/calendar.gif")',             buttonImageOnly: true,             showOn: "button"         });     }); </script> Summary In this two-part series, we have created a simple web application using ASP.NET MVC 3 RTM, Razor and EF Code First CTP 5. I have demonstrated patterns and practices  such as Dependency Injection, Repository pattern, Unit of Work, ViewModel and Service Layer. My primary objective was to demonstrate different practices and options for developing web apps using ASP.NET MVC 3 and EF Code First. You can implement these approaches in your own way for building web apps using ASP.NET MVC 3. I will refactor this demo app on later time.

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• .NET Code Evolution

  - by Alois Kraus

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/akraus1/archive/2013/07/24/153504.aspxAt my day job I do look at a lot of code written by other people. Most of the code is quite good and some is even a masterpiece. And there is also code which makes you think WTF… oh it was written by me. Hm not so bad after all. There are many excuses reasons for bad code. Most often it is time pressure followed by not enough ambition (who cares) or insufficient training. Normally I do care about code quality quite a lot which makes me a (perceived) slow worker who does write many tests and refines the code quite a lot because of the design deficiencies. Most of the deficiencies I do find by putting my design under stress while checking for invariants. It does also help a lot to step into the code with a debugger (sometimes also Windbg). I do this much more often when my tests are red. That way I do get a much better understanding what my code really does and not what I think it should be doing. This time I do want to show you how code can evolve over the years with different .NET Framework versions. Once there was  time where .NET 1.1 was new and many C++ programmers did switch over to get rid of not initialized pointers and memory leaks. There were also nice new data structures available such as the Hashtable which is fast lookup table with O(1) time complexity. All was good and much code was written since then. At 2005 a new version of the .NET Framework did arrive which did bring many new things like generics and new data structures. The “old” fashioned way of Hashtable were coming to an end and everyone used the new Dictionary<xx,xx> type instead which was type safe and faster because the object to type conversion (aka boxing) was no longer necessary. I think 95% of all Hashtables and dictionaries use string as key. Often it is convenient to ignore casing to make it easy to look up values which the user did enter. An often followed route is to convert the string to upper case before putting it into the Hashtable. Hashtable Table = new Hashtable(); void Add(string key, string value) { Table.Add(key.ToUpper(), value); } This is valid and working code but it has problems. First we can pass to the Hashtable a custom IEqualityComparer to do the string matching case insensitive. Second we can switch over to the now also old Dictionary type to become a little faster and we can keep the the original keys (not upper cased) in the dictionary. Dictionary<string, string> DictTable = new Dictionary<string, string>(StringComparer.OrdinalIgnoreCase); void AddDict(string key, string value) { DictTable.Add(key, value); } Many people do not user the other ctors of Dictionary because they do shy away from the overhead of writing their own comparer. They do not know that .NET has for strings already predefined comparers at hand which you can directly use. Today in the many core area we do use threads all over the place. Sometimes things break in subtle ways but most of the time it is sufficient to place a lock around the offender. Threading has become so mainstream that it may sound weird that in the year 2000 some guy got a huge incentive for the idea to reduce the time to process calibration data from 12 hours to 6 hours by using two threads on a dual core machine. Threading does make it easy to become faster at the expense of correctness. Correct and scalable multithreading can be arbitrarily hard to achieve depending on the problem you are trying to solve. Lets suppose we want to process millions of items with two threads and count the processed items processed by all threads. A typical beginners code might look like this: int Counter; void IJustLearnedToUseThreads() { var t1 = new Thread(ThreadWorkMethod); t1.Start(); var t2 = new Thread(ThreadWorkMethod); t2.Start(); t1.Join(); t2.Join(); if (Counter != 2 * Increments) throw new Exception("Hmm " + Counter + " != " + 2 * Increments); } const int Increments = 10 * 1000 * 1000; void ThreadWorkMethod() { for (int i = 0; i < Increments; i++) { Counter++; } } It does throw an exception with the message e.g. “Hmm 10.222.287 != 20.000.000” and does never finish. The code does fail because the assumption that Counter++ is an atomic operation is wrong. The ++ operator is just a shortcut for Counter = Counter + 1 This does involve reading the counter from a memory location into the CPU, incrementing value on the CPU and writing the new value back to the memory location. When we do look at the generated assembly code we will see only inc dword ptr [ecx+10h] which is only one instruction. Yes it is one instruction but it is not atomic. All modern CPUs have several layers of caches (L1,L2,L3) which try to hide the fact how slow actual main memory accesses are. Since cache is just another word for redundant copy it can happen that one CPU does read a value from main memory into the cache, modifies it and write it back to the main memory. The problem is that at least the L1 cache is not shared between CPUs so it can happen that one CPU does make changes to values which did change in meantime in the main memory. From the exception you can see we did increment the value 20 million times but half of the changes were lost because we did overwrite the already changed value from the other thread. This is a very common case and people do learn to protect their  data with proper locking.   void Intermediate() { var time = Stopwatch.StartNew(); Action acc = ThreadWorkMethod_Intermediate; var ar1 = acc.BeginInvoke(null, null); var ar2 = acc.BeginInvoke(null, null); ar1.AsyncWaitHandle.WaitOne(); ar2.AsyncWaitHandle.WaitOne(); if (Counter != 2 * Increments) throw new Exception(String.Format("Hmm {0:N0} != {1:N0}", Counter, 2 * Increments)); Console.WriteLine("Intermediate did take: {0:F1}s", time.Elapsed.TotalSeconds); } void ThreadWorkMethod_Intermediate() { for (int i = 0; i < Increments; i++) { lock (this) { Counter++; } } } This is better and does use the .NET Threadpool to get rid of manual thread management. It does give the expected result but it can result in deadlocks because you do lock on this. This is in general a bad idea since it can lead to deadlocks when other threads use your class instance as lock object. It is therefore recommended to create a private object as lock object to ensure that nobody else can lock your lock object. When you read more about threading you will read about lock free algorithms. They are nice and can improve performance quite a lot but you need to pay close attention to the CLR memory model. It does make quite weak guarantees in general but it can still work because your CPU architecture does give you more invariants than the CLR memory model. For a simple counter there is an easy lock free alternative present with the Interlocked class in .NET. As a general rule you should not try to write lock free algos since most likely you will fail to get it right on all CPU architectures. void Experienced() { var time = Stopwatch.StartNew(); Task t1 = Task.Factory.StartNew(ThreadWorkMethod_Experienced); Task t2 = Task.Factory.StartNew(ThreadWorkMethod_Experienced); t1.Wait(); t2.Wait(); if (Counter != 2 * Increments) throw new Exception(String.Format("Hmm {0:N0} != {1:N0}", Counter, 2 * Increments)); Console.WriteLine("Experienced did take: {0:F1}s", time.Elapsed.TotalSeconds); } void ThreadWorkMethod_Experienced() { for (int i = 0; i < Increments; i++) { Interlocked.Increment(ref Counter); } } Since time does move forward we do not use threads explicitly anymore but the much nicer Task abstraction which was introduced with .NET 4 at 2010. It is educational to look at the generated assembly code. The Interlocked.Increment method must be called which does wondrous things right? Lets see: lock inc dword ptr [eax] The first thing to note that there is no method call at all. Why? Because the JIT compiler does know very well about CPU intrinsic functions. Atomic operations which do lock the memory bus to prevent other processors to read stale values are such things. Second: This is the same increment call prefixed with a lock instruction. The only reason for the existence of the Interlocked class is that the JIT compiler can compile it to the matching CPU intrinsic functions which can not only increment by one but can also do an add, exchange and a combined compare and exchange operation. But be warned that the correct usage of its methods can be tricky. If you try to be clever and look a the generated IL code and try to reason about its efficiency you will fail. Only the generated machine code counts. Is this the best code we can write? Perhaps. It is nice and clean. But can we make it any faster? Lets see how good we are doing currently. Level Time in s IJustLearnedToUseThreads Flawed Code Intermediate 1,5 (lock) Experienced 0,3 (Interlocked.Increment) Master 0,1 (1,0 for int[2]) That lock free thing is really a nice thing. But if you read more about CPU cache, cache coherency, false sharing you can do even better. int[] Counters = new int[12]; // Cache line size is 64 bytes on my machine with an 8 way associative cache try for yourself e.g. 64 on more modern CPUs void Master() { var time = Stopwatch.StartNew(); Task t1 = Task.Factory.StartNew(ThreadWorkMethod_Master, 0); Task t2 = Task.Factory.StartNew(ThreadWorkMethod_Master, Counters.Length - 1); t1.Wait(); t2.Wait(); Counter = Counters[0] + Counters[Counters.Length - 1]; if (Counter != 2 * Increments) throw new Exception(String.Format("Hmm {0:N0} != {1:N0}", Counter, 2 * Increments)); Console.WriteLine("Master did take: {0:F1}s", time.Elapsed.TotalSeconds); } void ThreadWorkMethod_Master(object number) { int index = (int) number; for (int i = 0; i < Increments; i++) { Counters[index]++; } } The key insight here is to use for each core its own value. But if you simply use simply an integer array of two items, one for each core and add the items at the end you will be much slower than the lock free version (factor 3). Each CPU core has its own cache line size which is something in the range of 16-256 bytes. When you do access a value from one location the CPU does not only fetch one value from main memory but a complete cache line (e.g. 16 bytes). This means that you do not pay for the next 15 bytes when you access them. This can lead to dramatic performance improvements and non obvious code which is faster although it does have many more memory reads than another algorithm. So what have we done here? We have started with correct code but it was lacking knowledge how to use the .NET Base Class Libraries optimally. Then we did try to get fancy and used threads for the first time and failed. Our next try was better but it still had non obvious issues (lock object exposed to the outside). Knowledge has increased further and we have found a lock free version of our counter which is a nice and clean way which is a perfectly valid solution. The last example is only here to show you how you can get most out of threading by paying close attention to your used data structures and CPU cache coherency. Although we are working in a virtual execution environment in a high level language with automatic memory management it does pay off to know the details down to the assembly level. Only if you continue to learn and to dig deeper you can come up with solutions no one else was even considering. I have studied particle physics which does help at the digging deeper part. Have you ever tried to solve Quantum Chromodynamics equations? Compared to that the rest must be easy ;-). Although I am no longer working in the Science field I take pride in discovering non obvious things. This can be a very hard to find bug or a new way to restructure data to make something 10 times faster. Now I need to get some sleep ….

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• How to reduce iOS AVPlayer start delay

  - by Bernt Habermeier

  Note, for the below question: All assets are local on the device -- no network streaming is taking place. The videos contain audio tracks. I'm working on an iOS application that requires playing video files with minimum delay to start the video clip in question. Unfortunately we do not know what specific video clip is next until we actually need to start it up. Specifically: When one video clip is playing, we will know what the next set of (roughly) 10 video clips are, but we don't know which one exactly, until it comes time to 'immediately' play the next clip. What I've done to look at actual start delays is to call addBoundaryTimeObserverForTimes on the video player, with a time period of one millisecond to see when the video actually started to play, and I take the difference of that time stamp with the first place in the code that indicates which asset to start playing. From what I've seen thus-far, I have found that using the combination of AVAsset loading, and then creating an AVPlayerItem from that once it's ready, and then waiting for AVPlayerStatusReadyToPlay before I call play, tends to take between 1 and 3 seconds to start the clip. I've since switched to what I think is roughly equivalent: calling [AVPlayerItem playerItemWithURL:] and waiting for AVPlayerItemStatusReadyToPlay to play. Roughly same performance. One thing I'm observing is that the first AVPlayer item load is slower than the rest. Seems one idea is to pre-flight the AVPlayer with a short / empty asset before trying to play the first video might be of good general practice. [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/900461/slow-start-for-avaudioplayer-the-first-time-a-sound-is-played] I'd love to get the video start times down as much as possible, and have some ideas of things to experiment with, but would like some guidance from anyone that might be able to help. Update: idea 7, below, as-implemented yields switching times of around 500 ms. This is an improvement, but it it'd be nice to get this even faster. Idea 1: Use N AVPlayers (won't work) Using ~ 10 AVPPlayer objects and start-and-pause all ~ 10 clips, and once we know which one we really need, switch to, and un-pause the correct AVPlayer, and start all over again for the next cycle. I don't think this works, because I've read there is roughly a limit of 4 active AVPlayer's in iOS. There was someone asking about this on StackOverflow here, and found out about the 4 AVPlayer limit: fast-switching-between-videos-using-avfoundation Idea 2: Use AVQueuePlayer (won't work) I don't believe that shoving 10 AVPlayerItems into an AVQueuePlayer would pre-load them all for seamless start. AVQueuePlayer is a queue, and I think it really only makes the next video in the queue ready for immediate playback. I don't know which one out of ~10 videos we do want to play back, until it's time to start that one. ios-avplayer-video-preloading Idea 3: Load, Play, and retain AVPlayerItems in background (not 100% sure yet -- but not looking good) I'm looking at if there is any benefit to load and play the first second of each video clip in the background (suppress video and audio output), and keep a reference to each AVPlayerItem, and when we know which item needs to be played for real, swap that one in, and swap the background AVPlayer with the active one. Rinse and Repeat. The theory would be that recently played AVPlayer/AVPlayerItem's may still hold some prepared resources which would make subsequent playback faster. So far, I have not seen benefits from this, but I might not have the AVPlayerLayer setup correctly for the background. I doubt this will really improve things from what I've seen. Idea 4: Use a different file format -- maybe one that is faster to load? I'm currently using .m4v's (video-MPEG4) H.264 format. I have not played around with other formats, but it may well be that some formats are faster to decode / get ready than others. Possible still using video-MPEG4 but with a different codec, or maybe quicktime? Maybe a lossless video format where decoding / setup is faster? Idea 5: Combination of lossless video format + AVQueuePlayer If there is a video format that is fast to load, but maybe where the file size is insane, one idea might be to pre-prepare the first 10 seconds of each video clip with a version that is boated but faster to load, but back that up with an asset that is encoded in H.264. Use an AVQueuePlayer, and add the first 10 seconds in the uncompressed file format, and follow that up with one that is in H.264 which gets up to 10 seconds of prepare/preload time. So I'd get 'the best' of both worlds: fast start times, but also benefits from a more compact format. Idea 6: Use a non-standard AVPlayer / write my own / use someone else's Given my needs, maybe I can't use AVPlayer, but have to resort to AVAssetReader, and decode the first few seconds (possibly write raw file to disk), and when it comes to playback, make use of the raw format to play it back fast. Seems like a huge project to me, and if I go about it in a naive way, it's unclear / unlikely to even work better. Each decoded and uncompressed video frame is 2.25 MB. Naively speaking -- if we go with ~ 30 fps for the video, I'd end up with ~60 MB/s read-from-disk requirement, which is probably impossible / pushing it. Obviously we'd have to do some level of image compression (perhaps native openGL/es compression formats via PVRTC)... but that's kind crazy. Maybe there is a library out there that I can use? Idea 7: Combine everything into a single movie asset, and seekToTime One idea that might be easier than some of the above, is to combine everything into a single movie, and use seekToTime. The thing is that we'd be jumping all around the place. Essentially random access into the movie. I think this may actually work out okay: avplayer-movie-playing-lag-in-ios5 Which approach do you think would be best? So far, I've not made that much progress in terms of reducing the lag.

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• XSL testing empty strings with <xsl:if> and sorting

  - by AdRock

  I am having trouble with a template that has to check 3 different nodes and if they are not empty, print the data I am using for each node then doing the output but it is not printing anything. It is like the test returns zero. I have selected the parent node of each node i want to check the length on as the template match but it still doesn't work. Another thing, how do i sort the list using . I tried using this but i get an error about loading the stylesheet. If i take out the sort it works <xsl:template match="folktask/member"> <xsl:if test="user/account/userlevel='3'"> <xsl:sort select="festival/event/datefrom"/> <div class="userdiv"> <xsl:apply-templates select="user"/> <xsl:apply-templates select="festival"/> </div> </xsl:if> </xsl:template> <xsl:template match="festival"> <xsl:apply-templates select="contact"/> </xsl:template> This should hopefully finish all my stylesheets. This is the template I am calling <xsl:template match="contact"> <xsl:if test="string-length(contelephone)!=0"> <div class="small bold">TELEPHONE:</div> <div class="large"> <xsl:value-of select="contelephone/." /> </div> </xsl:if> <xsl:if test="string-length(conmobile)!=0"> <div class="small bold">MOBILE:</div> <div class="large"> <xsl:value-of select="conmobile/." /> </div> </xsl:if> <xsl:if test="string-length(fax)!=0"> <div class="small bold">FAX:</div> <div class="large"> <xsl:value-of select="fax/." /> </div> </xsl:if> </xsl:template> and a section of my xml. If you need me to edit my post so you can see the full code i will but the rest works fine. <folktask> <member> <user id="4"> <personal> <name>Connor Lawson</name> <sex>Male</sex> <address1>12 Ash Way</address1> <address2></address2> <city>Swindon</city> <county>Wiltshire</county> <postcode>SN3 6GS</postcode> <telephone>01791928119</telephone> <mobile>07338695664</mobile> <email>[email protected]</email> </personal> <account> <username>iTuneStinker</username> <password>3a1f5fda21a07bfff20c41272bae7192</password> <userlevel>3</userlevel> <signupdate>2010-03-26T09:23:50</signupdate> </account> </user> <festival id="1"> <event> <eventname>Oxford Folk Festival</eventname> <url>http://www.oxfordfolkfestival.com/</url> <datefrom>2010-04-07</datefrom> <dateto>2010-04-09</dateto> <location>Oxford</location> <eventpostcode>OX1 9BE</eventpostcode> <coords> <lat>51.735640</lat> <lng>-1.276136</lng> </coords> </event> <contact> <conname>Stuart Vincent</conname> <conaddress1>P.O. Box 642</conaddress1> <conaddress2></conaddress2> <concity>Oxford</concity> <concounty>Bedfordshire</concounty> <conpostcode>OX1 3BY</conpostcode> <contelephone>01865 79073</contelephone> <conmobile></conmobile> <fax></fax> <conemail>[email protected]</conemail> </contact> </festival> </member> </folktask>

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• org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.Dispatcher: Could not find action or result Error

  - by peterwkc

  i tried to code the following simple struts but encounter this error during run time. [org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.Dispatcher] Could not find action or result: No result defined for action com.peter.action.LoginAction and result success index.jsp <%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" pageEncoding="ISO-8859-1"%> <%@ taglib prefix="s" uri="/struts-tags" %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"> <title>Struts Tutorial</title> </head> <body> <h2>Hello Struts</h2> <s:form action="login" > <s:textfield name="username" label="Username:" /> <s:password name="password" label="Password:"/> <s:submit /> </s:form> </body> </html> LoginAction.java /** * */ package com.peter.action; //import org.apache.struts2.convention.annotation.Namespace; import org.apache.struts2.convention.annotation.ResultPath; import org.apache.struts2.convention.annotation.Result; import org.apache.struts2.convention.annotation.Action; import com.opensymphony.xwork2.ActionSupport; /** * @author nicholas_tse * */ //@Namespace("/") To define URL namespace @ResultPath("/") // To instruct Struts where to search result page(jsp) public class LoginAction extends ActionSupport { private String username, password; /** * */ private static final long serialVersionUID = -8992836566328180883L; /** * */ public LoginAction() { // TODO Auto-generated constructor stub } public String getUsername() { return username; } public void setUsername(String username) { this.username = username; } public String getPassword() { return password; } public void setPassword(String password) { this.password = password; } @Override @Action(value = "login", results = {@Result(name="success", location="welcome.jsp")}) public String execute() { return SUCCESS; } } /* Remove * struts2-gxp-plugin * struts2-portlet-plugin * struts2-jsf-plugin * struts2-osgi-plugin and its related osgi-plugin * struts-rest-plugin * * Add * velocity-tools-view * * */ web.xml <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <web-app id="WebApp_ID" version="3.0" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd"> <display-name>Struts</display-name> <!-- org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.ng.filter.StrutsPrepareAndExecuteFilter org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.FilterDispatcher --> <filter> <filter-name>Struts_Filter</filter-name> <filter-class>org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.FilterDispatcher</filter-class> <init-param> <param-name>actionPackages</param-name> <param-value>com.peter.action</param-value> </init-param> </filter> <filter-mapping> <filter-name>Struts_Filter</filter-name> <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern> </filter-mapping> <listener> <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class> </listener> <welcome-file-list> <welcome-file>index.jsp</welcome-file> </welcome-file-list> </web-app> Besides the runtime error, there is deployment error which is ERROR [com.opensymphony.xwork2.util.finder.ClassFinder] (MSC service thread 1-2) Unable to read class [WEB-INF.classes.com.peter.action.LoginAction]: Could not load WEB-INF/classes/com/peter/action/LoginAction.class - [unknown location] at com.opensymphony.xwork2.util.finder.ClassFinder.readClassDef(ClassFinder.java:785) [xwork-core-2.3.1.2.jar:2.3.1.2] AFAIK, the scanning methodology of struts will scan the default packages named struts2 for any annotated class but i have instructed struts2 to scan in com.peter.action using init-param but still unable to find the class. It is pretty weird. Please help. Thanks.

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• Jquery .ajax async postback on C# UserControl

  - by tnriverfish

  I'm working on adding a todo list to a project system and would like to have the todo creation trigger a async postback to update the database. I'd really like to host this in a usercontrol so I can drop the todo list onto a project page, task page or stand alone todo list page. Here's what I have. User Control "TodoList.ascx" which lives in the Controls directory. The script that sits at the top of the UserControl. You can see where I started building jsonText to postback but when that didn't work I just tried posting back an empty data variable and removed the 'string[] items' variable from the AddTodo2 method. <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function() { // Add the page method call as an onclick handler for the div. $("#divAddButton").click(function() { var jsonText = JSON.stringify({ tdlId: 1, description: "test test test" }); //data: jsonText, $.ajax({ type: "POST", url: "TodoList.aspx/AddTodo2", data: "{}", contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8", dataType: "json", success: function(msg) { alert('retrieved'); $("#divAddButton").text(msg.d); }, error: function() { alert("error"); } }); }); });</script> The rest of the code on the ascx. <div class="divTodoList"> <asp:PlaceHolder ID="phTodoListCreate" runat="server"> <div class="divTLDetail"> <div>Description</div> <div><asp:TextBox ID="txtDescription" runat="server"></asp:TextBox></div> <div>Active</div> <div><asp:CheckBox ID="cbActive" runat="server" /></div> <div>Access Level</div> <div><asp:DropDownList ID="ddlAccessLevel" runat="server"></asp:DropDownList></div> </div> </asp:PlaceHolder> <asp:PlaceHolder ID="phTodoListDisplayHeader" runat="server"> <div id="divTLHeader"> <asp:HyperLink ID="hlHeader" runat="server"></asp:HyperLink> </div> </asp:PlaceHolder> <asp:PlaceHolder ID="phTodoListItems" runat="server"> <div class="divTLItems> <asp:Literal ID="litItems" runat="server"></asp:Literal> </div> </asp:PlaceHolder> <asp:PlaceHolder ID="phAddTodo" runat="server"> <div class="divTLAddItem"> <div id="divAddButton">Add Todo</div> <div id="divAddText"><asp:TextBox ID="txtNewTodo" runat="server"></asp:TextBox></div> </div> </asp:PlaceHolder> <asp:Label ID="lbTodoListId" runat="server" style="display:none;"></asp:Label></div> To test the idea I created a /TodoList.aspx page that lives in the root directory. <uc1:TodoList runat="server" ID="tdl1" TodoListId="1" ></uc1:TodoList> The cs for the todolist.aspx protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { SecurityManager sm = new SecurityManager(); sm.MemberLevelAccessCheck(MemberLevelKey.AreaAdmin); } public static string AddTodo2() { return "yea!"; } My hope is that I can have a control that can be used to display multiple todo lists and create a brand new todo list as well. When I click on the #divAddButton I can watch it build the postback in firebug but once it completes it runs the error portion by alerting 'error'. I can't see why. I'd really rather have the response method live inside the user control as well. Since I'll be dropping it on several pages to keep from having to go put a method on each individual page. Any help would be appreciated.

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• Getting template metaprogramming compile-time constants at runtime

  - by GMan - Save the Unicorns

  Background Consider the following: template <unsigned N> struct Fibonacci { enum { value = Fibonacci<N-1>::value + Fibonacci<N-2>::value }; }; template <> struct Fibonacci<1> { enum { value = 1 }; }; template <> struct Fibonacci<0> { enum { value = 0 }; }; This is a common example and we can get the value of a Fibonacci number as a compile-time constant: int main(void) { std::cout << "Fibonacci(15) = "; std::cout << Fibonacci<15>::value; std::cout << std::endl; } But you obviously cannot get the value at runtime: int main(void) { std::srand(static_cast<unsigned>(std::time(0))); // ensure the table exists up to a certain size // (even though the rest of the code won't work) static const unsigned fibbMax = 20; Fibonacci<fibbMax>::value; // get index into sequence unsigned fibb = std::rand() % fibbMax; std::cout << "Fibonacci(" << fibb << ") = "; std::cout << Fibonacci<fibb>::value; std::cout << std::endl; } Because fibb is not a compile-time constant. Question So my question is: What is the best way to peek into this table at run-time? The most obvious solution (and "solution" should be taken lightly), is to have a large switch statement: unsigned fibonacci(unsigned index) { switch (index) { case 0: return Fibonacci<0>::value; case 1: return Fibonacci<1>::value; case 2: return Fibonacci<2>::value; . . . case 20: return Fibonacci<20>::value; default: return fibonacci(index - 1) + fibonacci(index - 2); } } int main(void) { std::srand(static_cast<unsigned>(std::time(0))); static const unsigned fibbMax = 20; // get index into sequence unsigned fibb = std::rand() % fibbMax; std::cout << "Fibonacci(" << fibb << ") = "; std::cout << fibonacci(fibb); std::cout << std::endl; } But now the size of the table is very hard coded and it wouldn't be easy to expand it to say, 40. The only one I came up with that has a similiar method of query is this: template <int TableSize = 40> class FibonacciTable { public: enum { max = TableSize }; static unsigned get(unsigned index) { if (index == TableSize) { return Fibonacci<TableSize>::value; } else { // too far, pass downwards return FibonacciTable<TableSize - 1>::get(index); } } }; template <> class FibonacciTable<0> { public: enum { max = 0 }; static unsigned get(unsigned) { // doesn't matter, no where else to go. // must be 0, or the original value was // not in table return 0; } }; int main(void) { std::srand(static_cast<unsigned>(std::time(0))); // get index into sequence unsigned fibb = std::rand() % FibonacciTable<>::max; std::cout << "Fibonacci(" << fibb << ") = "; std::cout << FibonacciTable<>::get(fibb); std::cout << std::endl; } Which seems to work great. The only two problems I see are: Potentially large call stack, since calculating Fibonacci<2 requires we go through TableMax all the way to 2, and: If the value is outside of the table, it returns zero as opposed to calculating it. So is there something I am missing? It seems there should be a better way to pick out these values at runtime. A template metaprogramming version of a switch statement perhaps, that generates a switch statement up to a certain number? Thanks in advance.

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• Why is C# winforms application not working without VS.NET installed?

  - by Shane

  Hi folks, I have a winforms c# app that has an embedded webbrowser control inside it generated through VS.NET 2008. We sink events by inheriting our events class from HTMLDocumentEvents2. public class IEHTMLDocumentEvents : mshtml.HTMLDocumentEvents2 { public bool onclick(mshtml.IHTMLEventObj pEvtObj) { // Clicking on an input (checkbox, radio, button, image) if (pEvtObj.srcElement.tagName == "INPUT") { // The following will result in a null pointer without VS.NET installed HTMLInputElementClass input = pEvtObj.srcElement as HTMLInputElementClass; } } } The code above works fine when clicking on elements in the webbrowser control on our dev machines with VS.NET installed. However it fails to cast the pEvtObj.srcElement when VS.NET is not installed. This immediately starts working when we install the most basic VS.NET with C# that you can. To note: The rest of the c# app works fine, and you can browser the web through the control fine as well, just that the events like the above 'onclick' can't be handled properly. I thought it would be a DLL version loaded issue but doing a diff of the files loaded indicates only minor differences. 1c1 < Process: C# App without VS.NET installed --- > Process: C# App with VS.NET 2008 installed 18d17 < C:\WINDOWS\assembly\NativeImages_v2.0.50727_32\CustomMarshalers\e148983beeb0f30918b0564849a16456\CustomMarshalers.ni.dll CustomMarshalers.ni.dll Microsoft .NET Framework Custom Marshalers Microsoft Corporation 2.0.50727.3053 36d34 < C:\Documents and Settings\XpHome\Local Settings\History\History.IE5\index.dat index.dat 37a36 > C:\Documents and Settings\XpHome\Local Settings\History\History.IE5\index.dat index.dat 44,45c43,44 < C:\Program Files\<hidden>\<hidden>\Microsoft.mshtml.dll Microsoft.mshtml.dll 7.0.3300.1 < C:\WINDOWS\assembly\NativeImages_v2.0.50727_32\Microsoft.VisualBas#\5b3d048d8c003d743ea5e72caf07773a\Microsoft.VisualBasic.ni.dll Microsoft.VisualBasic.ni.dll Visual Basic Runtime Library Microsoft Corporation 8.0.50727.3053 --- > C:\WINDOWS\assembly\GAC\Microsoft.mshtml\7.0.3300.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a\Microsoft.mshtml.dll Microsoft.mshtml.dll 7.0.3300.1 > C:\WINDOWS\assembly\GAC_MSIL\Microsoft.VisualBasic\8.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a\Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll Visual Basic Runtime Library Microsoft Corporation 8.0.50727.3053 50,52c49,51 < c:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\mscorjit.dll mscorjit.dll Microsoft .NET Runtime Just-In-Time Compiler Microsoft Corporation 2.0.50727.3053 < C:\WINDOWS\assembly\NativeImages_v2.0.50727_32\mscorlib\9adb89fa22fd5b4ce433b5aca7fb1b07\mscorlib.ni.dll mscorlib.ni.dll Microsoft Common Language Runtime Class Library Microsoft Corporation 2.0.50727.3053 < c:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\mscorwks.dll mscorwks.dll Microsoft .NET Runtime Common Language Runtime - WorkStation Microsoft Corporation 2.0.50727.3053 --- > c:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\mscorjit.dll mscorjit.dll Microsoft .NET Runtime Just-In-Time Compiler Microsoft Corporation 2.0.50727.3082 > C:\WINDOWS\assembly\NativeImages_v2.0.50727_32\mscorlib\7124a40b9998f7b63c86bd1a2125ce26\mscorlib.ni.dll mscorlib.ni.dll Microsoft Common Language Runtime Class Library Microsoft Corporation 2.0.50727.3603 > c:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\mscorwks.dll mscorwks.dll Microsoft .NET Runtime Common Language Runtime - WorkStation Microsoft Corporation 2.0.50727.3603 94,98c93,97 < C:\WINDOWS\assembly\NativeImages_v2.0.50727_32\System.Configuration\cb4cb21d14767292e079366a5d3d76cd\System.Configuration.ni.dll System.Configuration.ni.dll System.Configuration.dll Microsoft Corporation 2.0.50727.3053 < C:\WINDOWS\assembly\NativeImages_v2.0.50727_32\System.Drawing\6978f2e90f13bc720d57fa6895c911e2\System.Drawing.ni.dll System.Drawing.ni.dll .NET Framework Microsoft Corporation 2.0.50727.3053 < C:\WINDOWS\assembly\NativeImages_v2.0.50727_32\System\aa7926460a336408c8041330ad90929d\System.ni.dll System.ni.dll .NET Framework Microsoft Corporation 2.0.50727.3053 < C:\WINDOWS\assembly\NativeImages_v2.0.50727_32\System.Windows.Forms\9a254c455892c02355ab0ab0f0727c5b\System.Windows.Forms.ni.dll System.Windows.Forms.ni.dll .NET Framework Microsoft Corporation 2.0.50727.3053 < C:\WINDOWS\assembly\NativeImages_v2.0.50727_32\System.Xml\36f3953f24d4f0b767bf172331ad6f3e\System.Xml.ni.dll System.Xml.ni.dll .NET Framework Microsoft Corporation 2.0.50727.3053 --- > C:\WINDOWS\assembly\GAC_MSIL\System.Configuration\2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a\System.Configuration.dll System.Configuration.dll System.Configuration.dll Microsoft Corporation 2.0.50727.3053 > C:\WINDOWS\assembly\NativeImages_v2.0.50727_32\System.Drawing\abb2ac7e08bee026f857d8fa36f9fe6f\System.Drawing.ni.dll System.Drawing.ni.dll .NET Framework Microsoft Corporation 2.0.50727.3053 > C:\WINDOWS\assembly\NativeImages_v2.0.50727_32\System\3de5bd01124463d7862bd173af90bc83\System.ni.dll System.ni.dll .NET Framework Microsoft Corporation 2.0.50727.3053 > C:\WINDOWS\assembly\NativeImages_v2.0.50727_32\System.Windows.Forms\d2ea8d76f015817db1607075812b555f\System.Windows.Forms.ni.dll System.Windows.Forms.ni.dll .NET Framework Microsoft Corporation 2.0.50727.3053 > C:\WINDOWS\assembly\NativeImages_v2.0.50727_32\System.Xml\5913d3f81e77194ec833991b1047a532\System.Xml.ni.dll System.Xml.ni.dll .NET Framework Microsoft Corporation 2.0.50727.3082

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• Exception while exposing a bean in webservice using spring mvc

  - by Ajay

  Hi, I am using Spring 3.0.5.Release MVC for exposing a webservice and below is my servlet.xml <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context" xsi:schemaLocation=" http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.0.xsd"> <!-- To enable @RequestMapping process on type level and method level --> <context:component-scan base-package="com.pyramid.qls.progressReporter.service" /> <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.DefaultAnnotationHandlerMapping" /> <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter"> <property name="messageConverters"> <list> <ref bean="marshallingConverter" /> <ref bean="atomConverter" /> <ref bean="jsonConverter" /> </list> </property> </bean> <bean id="marshallingConverter" class="org.springframework.http.converter.xml.MarshallingHttpMessageConverter"> <constructor-arg ref="jaxbMarshaller" /> <property name="supportedMediaTypes" value="application/xml"/> </bean> <bean id="atomConverter" class="org.springframework.http.converter.feed.AtomFeedHttpMessageConverter"> <property name="supportedMediaTypes" value="application/atom+xml" /> </bean> <bean id="jsonConverter" class="org.springframework.http.converter.json.MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter"> <property name="supportedMediaTypes" value="application/json" /> </bean> <!-- Client --> <bean id="restTemplate" class="org.springframework.web.client.RestTemplate"> <property name="messageConverters"> <list> <ref bean="marshallingConverter" /> <ref bean="atomConverter" /> <ref bean="jsonConverter" /> </list> </property> </bean> <bean id="jaxbMarshaller" class="org.springframework.oxm.jaxb.Jaxb2Marshaller"> <property name="classesToBeBound"> <list> <value>com.pyramid.qls.progressReporter.impl.BatchProgressMetricsImpl</value> <value>com.pyramid.qls.progressReporter.datatype.InstrumentStats</value> <value>com.pyramid.qls.progressReporter.datatype.InstrumentInfo</value> <value>com.pyramid.qls.progressReporter.datatype.LoadOnConsumer</value> <value>com.pyramid.qls.progressReporter.datatype.HighLevelTaskStats</value> <value>com.pyramid.qls.progressReporter.datatype.SessionStats</value> <value>com.pyramid.qls.progressReporter.datatype.TaskStats</value> <value>com.pyramid.qls.progressReporter.datatype.ComputeStats</value> <value>com.pyramid.qls.progressReporter.datatype.DetailedInstrumentStats</value> <value>com.pyramid.qls.progressReporter.datatype.ImntHistoricalStats</value> </list> </property> </bean> <bean id="QPRXmlView" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.xml.MarshallingView"> <constructor-arg ref="jaxbMarshaller" /> </bean> <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.ContentNegotiatingViewResolver"> <property name="mediaTypes"> <map> <entry key="xml" value="application/xml"/> <entry key="html" value="text/html"/> </map> </property> <property name="viewResolvers"> <list> <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.BeanNameViewResolver"/> <bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.UrlBasedViewResolver"> <property name="viewClass" value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.JstlView"/> <property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/jsp/"/> <property name="suffix" value=".jsp"/> </bean> </list> </property> </bean> <bean id="QPRController" class="com.pyramid.qls.progressReporter.service.QPRController"> <property name="jaxb2Mashaller" ref="jaxbMarshaller" /> </bean> </beans> Following is what i am doing in controller (QPRController) @RequestMapping(value = "/clientMetrics/{clientId}", method = RequestMethod.GET) public ModelAndView getBatchProgressMetrics(@PathVariable String clientId) { List<BatchProgressMetrics> batchProgressMetricsList = null; batchProgressMetricsList = batchProgressReporter.getBatchProgressMetricsForClient(clientId); ModelAndView mav = new ModelAndView("QPRXmlView", BindingResult.MODEL_KEY_PREFIX + "batchProgressMetrics", batchProgressMetricsList); return mav; } And i get the following: SEVERE: Servlet.service() for servlet rest threw exception javax.servlet.ServletException: Unable to locate object to be marshalled in model: {org.springframework.validation.BindingResult.batchProgressMetrics= Note that BatchProgressMetrics is an interface so my MAV is returning list of BatchProgressMetrics objects and i have entry for its impl in classes to be bound in servlet.xml. Can you please help me as to what i am doing wrong. And yes if i send just batchProgressMetricsList.get(0) in MAV it just works fine.

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• Rails User-Profile model challenges

  - by Craig

  I am attempting to create an enrollment process similar to SO's: route to an OpenID provider provider returns the user's information to the UsersController (a guess) UsersController creates user, then routes to the ProfilesController's new or edit action. For now, I'm simply trying to create the user, then route to the ProfilesController's new or edit action (not sure which I should be using). Here's what I have thus far: Models: class User < ActiveRecord::Base has_one :profile end class Profile < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :user end Routes: map.resources :users do |user| user.resource :profile end new_user_profile GET /users/:user_id/profile/new(.:format) {:controller=>"profiles", :action=>"new"} edit_user_profile GET /users/:user_id/profile/edit(.:format) {:controller=>"profiles", :action=>"edit"} user_profile GET /users/:user_id/profile(.:format) {:controller=>"profiles", :action=>"show"} PUT /users/:user_id/profile(.:format) {:controller=>"profiles", :action=>"update"} DELETE /users/:user_id/profile(.:format) {:controller=>"profiles", :action=>"destroy"} POST /users/:user_id/profile(.:format) {:controller=>"profiles", :action=>"create"} users GET /users(.:format) {:controller=>"users", :action=>"index"} POST /users(.:format) {:controller=>"users", :action=>"create"} new_user GET /users/new(.:format) {:controller=>"users", :action=>"new"} edit_user GET /users/:id/edit(.:format) {:controller=>"users", :action=>"edit"} user GET /users/:id(.:format) {:controller=>"users", :action=>"show"} PUT /users/:id(.:format) {:controller=>"users", :action=>"update"} DELETE /users/:id(.:format) {:controller=>"users", :action=>"destroy"} Controllers: class UsersController < ApplicationController # generate new-user form def new @user = User.new end # process new-user-form post def create @user = User.new(params[:user]) if @user.save redirect_to new_user_profile_path(@user) ... end end # generate edit-user form def edit @user = User.find(params[:id]) end # process edit-user-form post def update @user = User.find(params[:id]) respond_to do |format| if @user.update_attributes(params[:user]) flash[:notice] = 'User was successfully updated.' format.html { redirect_to(users_path) } format.xml { head :ok } ... end end end class ProfilesController < ApplicationController before_filter :get_user def get_user @user = User.find(params[:user_id]) end # generate new-profile form def new @user.profile = Profile.new @profile = @user.profile end # process new-profile-form post def create @user.profile = Profile.new(params[:profile]) @profile = @user.profile respond_to do |format| if @profile.save flash[:notice] = 'Profile was successfully created.' format.html { redirect_to(@profile) } format.xml { render :xml => @profile, :status => :created, :location => @profile } ... end end end # generate edit-profile form def edit @profile = @user.profile end # generate edit-profile-form post def update @profile = @user.profile respond_to do |format| if @profile.update_attributes(params[:profile]) flash[:notice] = 'Profile was successfully updated.' # format.html { redirect_to(@profile) } format.html { redirect_to(user_profile(@user)) } format.xml { head :ok } else format.html { render :action => "edit" } format.xml { render :xml => @profile.errors, :status => :unprocessable_entity } end end end Edit-User View: ... <% form_for(@user) do |f| %> ... New-Profile View: ... <% form_for([@user,@profile]) do |f| %> .. I'm having two problems: When saving an edit to the User model, the UsersController attempts to route to http://localhost:3000/users/1/profile.%23%3Cprofile:0x10438e3e8%3E, instead of http://localhost:3000/users/1/profile When the new-profile form is being rendered, it throws an error that reads: undefined method `user_profiles_path' for # Is it better to create a blank profile when the user is created (in the UsersController), then edit it OR follow the rest-ful convention of creating the profile in the ProfilesController (as I have done)? What am I missing? I did review Associating Two Models in Rails (user and profile), but it didn't address my needs. Thanks for your time.

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• Reference a GNU C (POSIX) DLL built in GCC against Cygwin, from C#/NET

  - by Dale Halliwell

  Here is what I want: I have a huge legacy C/C++ codebase written for POSIX, including some very POSIX specific stuff like pthreads. This can be compiled on Cygwin/GCC and run as an executable under Windows with the Cygwin DLL. What I would like to do is build the codebase itself into a Windows DLL that I can then reference from C# and write a wrapper around it to access some parts of it programatically. I have tried this approach with the very simple "hello world" example at http://www.cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/dll.html and it doesn't seem to work. #include <stdio.h> extern "C" __declspec(dllexport) int hello(); int hello() { printf ("Hello World!\n"); return 42; } I believe I should be able to reference a DLL built with the above code in C# using something like: [DllImport("kernel32.dll")] public static extern IntPtr LoadLibrary(string dllToLoad); [DllImport("kernel32.dll")] public static extern IntPtr GetProcAddress(IntPtr hModule, string procedureName); [DllImport("kernel32.dll")] public static extern bool FreeLibrary(IntPtr hModule); [UnmanagedFunctionPointer(CallingConvention.Cdecl)] private delegate int hello(); static void Main(string[] args) { var path = Path.Combine(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory, "helloworld.dll"); IntPtr pDll = LoadLibrary(path); IntPtr pAddressOfFunctionToCall = GetProcAddress(pDll, "hello"); hello hello = (hello)Marshal.GetDelegateForFunctionPointer( pAddressOfFunctionToCall, typeof(hello)); int theResult = hello(); Console.WriteLine(theResult.ToString()); bool result = FreeLibrary(pDll); Console.ReadKey(); } But this approach doesn't seem to work. LoadLibrary returns null. It can find the DLL (helloworld.dll), it is just like it can't load it or find the exported function. I am sure that if I get this basic case working I can reference the rest of my codebase in this way. Any suggestions or pointers, or does anyone know if what I want is even possible? Thanks. Edit: Examined my DLL with Dependency Walker (great tool, thanks) and it seems to export the function correctly. Question: should I be referencing it as the function name Dependency Walker seems to find (_Z5hellov)? Edit2: Just to show you I have tried it, linking directly to the dll at relative or absolute path (i.e. not using LoadLibrary): [DllImport(@"C:\.....\helloworld.dll")] public static extern int hello(); static void Main(string[] args) { int theResult = hello(); Console.WriteLine(theResult.ToString()); Console.ReadKey(); } This fails with: "Unable to load DLL 'C:.....\helloworld.dll': Invalid access to memory location. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x800703E6) *Edit 3: * Oleg has suggested running dumpbin.exe on my dll, this is the output: Dump of file helloworld.dll File Type: DLL Section contains the following exports for helloworld.dll 00000000 characteristics 4BD5037F time date stamp Mon Apr 26 15:07:43 2010 0.00 version 1 ordinal base 1 number of functions 1 number of names ordinal hint RVA name 1 0 000010F0 hello Summary 1000 .bss 1000 .data 1000 .debug_abbrev 1000 .debug_info 1000 .debug_line 1000 .debug_pubnames 1000 .edata 1000 .eh_frame 1000 .idata 1000 .reloc 1000 .text Edit 4 Thanks everyone for the help, I managed to get it working. Oleg's answer gave me the information I needed to find out what I was doing wrong. There are 2 ways to do this. One is to build with the gcc -mno-cygwin compiler flag, which builds the dll without the cygwin dll, basically as if you had built it in MingW. Building it this way got my hello world example working! However, MingW doesn't have all the libraries that cygwin has in the installer, so if your POSIX code has dependencies on these libraries (mine had heaps) you can't do this way. And if your POSIX code didn't have those dependencies, why not just build for Win32 from the beginning. So that's not much help unless you want to spend time setting up MingW properly. The other option is to build with the Cygwin DLL. The Cygwin DLL needs an initialization function init() to be called before it can be used. This is why my code wasn't working before. The code below loads and runs my hello world example. //[DllImport(@"hello.dll", EntryPoint = "#1",SetLastError = true)] //static extern int helloworld(); //don't do this! cygwin needs to be init first [DllImport("kernel32", CharSet = CharSet.Ansi, ExactSpelling = true, SetLastError = true)] static extern IntPtr GetProcAddress(IntPtr hModule, string procName); [DllImport("kernel32", SetLastError = true)] static extern IntPtr LoadLibrary(string lpFileName); public delegate int MyFunction(); static void Main(string[] args) { //load cygwin dll IntPtr pcygwin = LoadLibrary("cygwin1.dll"); IntPtr pcyginit = GetProcAddress(pcygwin, "cygwin_dll_init"); Action init = (Action)Marshal.GetDelegateForFunctionPointer(pcyginit, typeof(Action)); init(); IntPtr phello = LoadLibrary("hello.dll"); IntPtr pfn = GetProcAddress(phello, "helloworld"); MyFunction helloworld = (MyFunction)Marshal.GetDelegateForFunctionPointer(pfn, typeof(MyFunction)); Console.WriteLine(helloworld()); Console.ReadKey(); } Thanks to everyone that answered~~

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• NerdDinner form validation DataAnnotations ERROR in MVC2 when a form field is left blank.

  - by Edward Burns

  Platform: Windows 7 Ultimate IDE: Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Web Environment: ASP.NET MVC 2 Database: SQL Server 2008 R2 Express Data Access: Entity Framework 4 Form Validation: DataAnnotations Sample App: NerdDinner from Wrox Pro ASP.NET MVC 2 Book: Wrox Professional MVC 2 Problem with Chapter 1 - Section: "Integrating Validation and Business Rule Logic with Model Classes" (pages 33 to 35) ERROR Synopsis: NerdDinner form validation ERROR with DataAnnotations and db nulls. DataAnnotations in sample code does not work when the database fields are set to not allow nulls. ERROR occurs with the code from the book and with the sample code downloaded from codeplex. Help! I'm really frustrated by this!! I can't believe something so simple just doesn't work??? Steps to reproduce ERROR: Set Database fields to not allow NULLs (See Picture) Set NerdDinnerEntityModel Dinner class fields' Nullable property to false (See Picture) Add DataAnnotations for Dinner_Validation class (CODE A) Create Dinner repository class (CODE B) Add CREATE action to DinnerController (CODE C) This is blank form before posting (See Picture) This null ERROR occurs when posting a blank form which should be intercepted by the Dinner_Validation class DataAnnotations. Note ERROR message says that "This property cannot be set to a null value. WTH??? (See Picture) The next ERROR occurs during the edit process. Here is the Edit controller action (CODE D) This is the "Edit" form with intentionally wrong input to test Dinner Validation DataAnnotations (See Picture) The ERROR occurs again when posting the edit form with blank form fields. The post request should be intercepted by the Dinner_Validation class DataAnnotations. Same null entry error. WTH??? (See Picture) See screen shots at: http://www.intermedia4web.com/temp/nerdDinner/StackOverflowNerdDinnerQuestionshort.png CODE A: [MetadataType(typeof(Dinner_Validation))] public partial class Dinner { } [Bind(Include = "Title, EventDate, Description, Address, Country, ContactPhone, Latitude, Longitude")] public class Dinner_Validation { [Required(ErrorMessage = "Title is required")] [StringLength(50, ErrorMessage = "Title may not be longer than 50 characters")] public string Title { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage = "Description is required")] [StringLength(265, ErrorMessage = "Description must be 256 characters or less")] public string Description { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage="Event date is required")] public DateTime EventDate { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage = "Address is required")] public string Address { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage = "Country is required")] public string Country { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage = "Contact phone is required")] public string ContactPhone { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage = "Latitude is required")] public double Latitude { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage = "Longitude is required")] public double Longitude { get; set; } } CODE B: public class DinnerRepository { private NerdDinnerEntities _NerdDinnerEntity = new NerdDinnerEntities(); // Query Method public IQueryable<Dinner> FindAllDinners() { return _NerdDinnerEntity.Dinners; } // Query Method public IQueryable<Dinner> FindUpcomingDinners() { return from dinner in _NerdDinnerEntity.Dinners where dinner.EventDate > DateTime.Now orderby dinner.EventDate select dinner; } // Query Method public Dinner GetDinner(int id) { return _NerdDinnerEntity.Dinners.FirstOrDefault(d => d.DinnerID == id); } // Insert Method public void Add(Dinner dinner) { _NerdDinnerEntity.Dinners.AddObject(dinner); } // Delete Method public void Delete(Dinner dinner) { foreach (var rsvp in dinner.RSVPs) { _NerdDinnerEntity.RSVPs.DeleteObject(rsvp); } _NerdDinnerEntity.Dinners.DeleteObject(dinner); } // Persistence Method public void Save() { _NerdDinnerEntity.SaveChanges(); } } CODE C: // ************************************** // GET: /Dinners/Create/ // ************************************** public ActionResult Create() { Dinner dinner = new Dinner() { EventDate = DateTime.Now.AddDays(7) }; return View(dinner); } // ************************************** // POST: /Dinners/Create/ // ************************************** [HttpPost] public ActionResult Create(Dinner dinner) { if (ModelState.IsValid) { dinner.HostedBy = "The Code Dude"; _dinnerRepository.Add(dinner); _dinnerRepository.Save(); return RedirectToAction("Details", new { id = dinner.DinnerID }); } else { return View(dinner); } } CODE D: // ************************************** // GET: /Dinners/Edit/{id} // ************************************** public ActionResult Edit(int id) { Dinner dinner = _dinnerRepository.GetDinner(id); return View(dinner); } // ************************************** // POST: /Dinners/Edit/{id} // ************************************** [HttpPost] public ActionResult Edit(int id, FormCollection formValues) { Dinner dinner = _dinnerRepository.GetDinner(id); if (TryUpdateModel(dinner)){ _dinnerRepository.Save(); return RedirectToAction("Details", new { id=dinner.DinnerID }); } return View(dinner); } I have sent Wrox and one of the authors a request for help but have not heard back from anyone. Readers of the book cannot even continue to finish the rest of chapter 1 because of these errors. Even if I download the latest build from Codeplex, it still has the same errors. Can someone please help me and tell me what needs to be fixed? Thanks - Ed.

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• What's the best Communication Pattern for EJB3-based applications?

  - by Hank

  I'm starting a JEE project that needs to be strongly scalable. So far, the concept was: several Message Driven Beans, responsible for different parts of the architecture each MDB has a Session Bean injected, handling the business logic a couple of Entity Beans, providing access to the persistence layer communication between the different parts of the architecture via Request/Reply concept via JMS messages: MDB receives msg containing activity request uses its session bean to execute necessary business logic returns response object in msg to original requester The idea was that by de-coupling parts of the architecture from each other via the message bus, there is no limit to the scalability. Simply start more components - as long as they are connected to the same bus, we can grow and grow. Unfortunately, we're having massive problems with the request-reply concept. Transaction Mgmt seems to be in our way plenty. It seams that session beans are not supposed to consume messages?! Reading http://blogs.sun.com/fkieviet/entry/request_reply_from_an_ejb and http://forums.sun.com/message.jspa?messageID=10338789, I get the feeling that people actually recommend against the request/reply concept for EJBs. If that is the case, how do you communicate between your EJBs? (Remember, scalability is what I'm after) Details of my current setup: MDB 1 'TestController', uses (local) SLSB 1 'TestService' for business logic TestController.onMessage() makes TestService send a message to queue XYZ and requests a reply TestService uses Bean Managed Transactions TestService establishes a connection & session to the JMS broker via a joint connection factory upon initialization (@PostConstruct) TestService commits the transaction after sending, then begins another transaction and waits 10 sec for the response Message gets to MDB 2 'LocationController', which uses (local) SLSB 2 'LocationService' for business logic LocationController.onMessage() makes LocationService send a message back to the requested JMSReplyTo queue Same BMT concept, same @PostConstruct concept all use the same connection factory to access the broker Problem: The first message gets send (by SLSB 1) and received (by MDB 2) ok. The sending of the returning message (by SLSB 2) is fine as well. However, SLSB 1 never receives anything - it just times out. I tried without the messageSelector, no change, still no receiving message. Is it not ok to consume message by a session bean? SLSB 1 - TestService.java @Resource(name = "jms/mvs.MVSControllerFactory") private javax.jms.ConnectionFactory connectionFactory; @PostConstruct public void initialize() { try { jmsConnection = connectionFactory.createConnection(); session = jmsConnection.createSession(false, Session.AUTO_ACKNOWLEDGE); System.out.println("Connection to JMS Provider established"); } catch (Exception e) { } } public Serializable sendMessageWithResponse(Destination reqDest, Destination respDest, Serializable request) { Serializable response = null; try { utx.begin(); Random rand = new Random(); String correlationId = rand.nextLong() + "-" + (new Date()).getTime(); // prepare the sending message object ObjectMessage reqMsg = session.createObjectMessage(); reqMsg.setObject(request); reqMsg.setJMSReplyTo(respDest); reqMsg.setJMSCorrelationID(correlationId); // prepare the publishers and subscribers MessageProducer producer = session.createProducer(reqDest); // send the message producer.send(reqMsg); System.out.println("Request Message has been sent!"); utx.commit(); // need to start second transaction, otherwise the first msg never gets sent utx.begin(); MessageConsumer consumer = session.createConsumer(respDest, "JMSCorrelationID = '" + correlationId + "'"); jmsConnection.start(); ObjectMessage respMsg = (ObjectMessage) consumer.receive(10000L); utx.commit(); if (respMsg != null) { response = respMsg.getObject(); System.out.println("Response Message has been received!"); } else { // timeout waiting for response System.out.println("Timeout waiting for response!"); } } catch (Exception e) { } return response; } SLSB 2 - LocationService.Java (only the reply method, rest is same as above) public boolean reply(Message origMsg, Serializable o) { boolean rc = false; try { // check if we have necessary correlationID and replyTo destination if (!origMsg.getJMSCorrelationID().equals("") && (origMsg.getJMSReplyTo() != null)) { // prepare the payload utx.begin(); ObjectMessage msg = session.createObjectMessage(); msg.setObject(o); // make it a response msg.setJMSCorrelationID(origMsg.getJMSCorrelationID()); Destination dest = origMsg.getJMSReplyTo(); // send it MessageProducer producer = session.createProducer(dest); producer.send(msg); producer.close(); System.out.println("Reply Message has been sent"); utx.commit(); rc = true; } } catch (Exception e) {} return rc; } sun-resources.xml <admin-object-resource enabled="true" jndi-name="jms/mvs.LocationControllerRequest" res-type="javax.jms.Queue" res-adapter="jmsra"> <property name="Name" value="mvs.LocationControllerRequestQueue"/> </admin-object-resource> <admin-object-resource enabled="true" jndi-name="jms/mvs.LocationControllerResponse" res-type="javax.jms.Queue" res-adapter="jmsra"> <property name="Name" value="mvs.LocationControllerResponseQueue"/> </admin-object-resource> <connector-connection-pool name="jms/mvs.MVSControllerFactoryPool" connection-definition-name="javax.jms.QueueConnectionFactory" resource-adapter-name="jmsra"/> <connector-resource enabled="true" jndi-name="jms/mvs.MVSControllerFactory" pool-name="jms/mvs.MVSControllerFactoryPool" />

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• HttpPost works in Java project, not in Android

  - by dave.c

  I've written some code for my Android device to login to a web site over https and parse some data out of the resulting pages. An HttpGet happens first to get some info needed for login, then an HttpPost to do the actual login process. The code below works great in a Java project within Eclipse which has the following Jar files on the build path: httpcore-4.1-beta2.jar, httpclient-4.1-alpha2.jar, httpmime-4.1-alpha2.jar, commons-logging-1.1.1.jar. public static MyBean gatherData(String username, String password) { MyBean myBean = new MyBean(); try { HttpResponse response = doHttpGet(URL_PAGE_LOGIN, null, null); System.out.println("Got login page"); String content = EntityUtils.toString(response.getEntity()); String token = ContentParser.getToken(content); String cookie = getCookie(response); System.out.println("Performing login"); System.out.println("token = "+token +" || cookie = "+cookie); response = doLoginPost(username,password,cookie, token); int respCode = response.getStatusLine().getStatusCode(); if (respCode != 302) { System.out.println("ERROR: not a 302 redirect!: code is \""+ respCode+"\""); if (respCode == 200) { System.out.println(getHeaders(response)); System.out.println(EntityUtils.toString(response.getEntity()).substring(0, 500)); } } else { System.out.println("Logged in OK, loading account home"); // redirect handler and rest of parse removed } }catch (Exception e) { System.out.println("ERROR in gatherdata: "+e.toString()); e.printStackTrace(); } return myBean; } private static HttpResponse doHttpGet(String url, String cookie, String referrer) { try { HttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient(); client.getParams().setParameter(CoreProtocolPNames.PROTOCOL_VERSION, HttpVersion.HTTP_1_1); client.getParams().setParameter(CoreProtocolPNames.HTTP_CONTENT_CHARSET, "UTF-8"); HttpGet httpGet = new HttpGet(url); httpGet.getParams().setParameter(CoreProtocolPNames.PROTOCOL_VERSION, HttpVersion.HTTP_1_1); httpGet.setHeader(HEADER_USER_AGENT,HEADER_USER_AGENT_VALUE); if (referrer != null && !referrer.equals("")) httpGet.setHeader(HEADER_REFERER,referrer); if (cookie != null && !cookie.equals("")) httpGet.setHeader(HEADER_COOKIE,cookie); return client.execute(httpGet); } catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); throw new ConnectException("Failed to read content from response"); } } private static HttpResponse doLoginPost(String username, String password, String cookie, String token) throws ClientProtocolException, IOException { try { HttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient(); client.getParams().setParameter(CoreProtocolPNames.PROTOCOL_VERSION, HttpVersion.HTTP_1_1); client.getParams().setParameter(CoreProtocolPNames.HTTP_CONTENT_CHARSET, "UTF-8"); HttpPost post = new HttpPost(URL_LOGIN_SUBMIT); post.getParams().setParameter(CoreProtocolPNames.PROTOCOL_VERSION, HttpVersion.HTTP_1_1); post.setHeader(HEADER_USER_AGENT,HEADER_USER_AGENT_VALUE); post.setHeader(HEADER_REFERER, URL_PAGE_LOGIN); post.setHeader(HEADER_COOKIE, cookie); post.setHeader("Content-Type","application/x-www-form-urlencoded"); List<NameValuePair> formParams = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>(); formParams.add(new BasicNameValuePair("org.apache.struts.taglib.html.TOKEN", token)); formParams.add(new BasicNameValuePair("showLogin", "true")); formParams.add(new BasicNameValuePair("upgrade", "")); formParams.add(new BasicNameValuePair("username", username)); formParams.add(new BasicNameValuePair("password", password)); formParams.add(new BasicNameValuePair("submit", "Secure+Log+in")); UrlEncodedFormEntity entity = new UrlEncodedFormEntity(formParams,HTTP.UTF_8); post.setEntity(entity); return client.execute(post); } catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); throw new ConnectException("ERROR in doLoginPost(): "+e.getMessage()); } } The server (which is not under my control) returns a 302 redirect when the login was successful, and 200 if it fails and re-loads the login page. When run with the above Jar files I get the 302 redirect, however if I run the exact same code from an Android project with the 1.6 Android Jar file on the build path I get the 200 response from the server. I get the same 200 response when running the code on my 2.2 device. My android application has internet permissions, and the HttpGet works fine. I'm assuming that the problem lies in the fact that HttpPost (or some other class) is different in some significant way between the Android Jar version and the newer Apache versions. I've tried adding the Apache libraries to the build path of the Android project, but due to the duplicate classes I get messages like: INFO/dalvikvm(390): DexOpt: not resolving ambiguous class 'Lorg/apache/http/impl/client/DefaultHttpClient;' in the log. I've also tried using a MultipartEntity instead of the UrlEncodedFormEntity but I get the same 200 result. So, I have a few questions: - Can I force the code running under android to use the newer Apache libraries in preference to the Android versions? - If not, does anyone have any ideas how can I alter my code so that it works with the Android Jar? - Are there any other, totally different approaches to doing an HttpPost in Android? - Any other ideas? I've read a lot of posts and code but I'm not getting anywhere. I've been stuck on this for a couple of days and I'm at a loss how to get the thing to work, so I'll try anything at this point. Thanks in advance.

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• Javascript Dropdownbox

  - by edgar

  I have a dropdownbox (percent), a input box(price) and a input box (total) When you select a percent from the dropdown, it multiplies the value of the selected dropdown times the price value and input the result in the total input box. This works well with one input box, but what I am trying to do is to use asp and when you select a percent from the drop down box, it will calcualate the rest of the total fields. Here is the code that I have so far <%@LANGUAGE="VBSCRIPT" CODEPAGE="1252"% <% Dim Recordset1 Dim Recordset1_numRows Set Recordset1 = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Recordset") Recordset1.ActiveConnection = MM_pricdsn_STRING Recordset1.Source = "SELECT * FROM AMFLIB.MBCWCPP where cwfvnb = 1090101 and cwaitx between '0025' and '0025AT'" Recordset1.CursorType = 0 Recordset1.CursorLocation = 2 Recordset1.LockType = 1 Recordset1.Open() Recordset1_numRows = 0 %> <% Dim Repeat1__numRows Dim Repeat1__index Repeat1__numRows = -1 Repeat1__index = 0 Recordset1_numRows = Recordset1_numRows + Repeat1__numRows %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> Javascript Untitled Document <script type="text/javascript"> function startCalc4(){ interval = setInterval("calc4()",1); } function calc4(){ one = document.form1.prcbook.value; two = document.form1.percent.value; document.form1.total.value = (one * 1) * (two * 1); } function stopCalc4(){ clearInterval(interval); } </script> <style type="text/css"> <!-- #Layer1 { position:absolute; left:26px; top:49px; width:150px; height:24px; z-index:1; } #Layer2 { position:absolute; left:36px; top:22px; width:166px; height:22px; z-index:2; } #Layer3 { position:absolute; left:19px; top:24px; width:174px; height:21px; z-index:3; } --> </style> <script type="text/javascript"> function showhideText(box,id) { var elm = document.getElementById(id) elm.style.display = box.checked? "inline":"none" } </script> </head> <body> <form id="form1" name="form1" method="post" action=""> <p> </p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p> <input type="text" name="itm" value="<%=(Recordset1.Fields.Item("CWAITX").Value)%>"/> <select name="percent" onFocus="startCalc4();"onBlur="stopCalc4();"> <option value="0">select</option> <option value="1.10">10%</option> <option value="1.25">25%</option> </select> </p> <p> <% If Not REcordset1.EOF Then Do while not REcordset1.EOF %> <input type="text" name="qty" value="<%=(Recordset1.Fields.Item("CWAJQT").Value)%>"onfocus="startCalc4();" onblur="stopCalc4();"/> <input name="prcbook" type="text" value="<%=(Recordset1.Fields.Item("CWKDVA").Value)%>"onfocus="startCalc4();" onblur="stopCalc4();"/> <input type="text" name="total" value=""/> </p> </form> </body> </html> <% REcordset1.MoveNext Loop End If %>

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• [wordpress] Loop through a specific category on single.php

  - by petrescu

  I've created a custom page and it is set as my homepage, within this custom page I am pulling out the latest post from a specific category, I've also created a form of pagination which when clicked upon will take the user to single.php. My intention for the single.php is to have two custom loops. Custom loop one I want single.php to distinguish that it has came from the homepage and loop through all of the posts tagged with the same category as the one on the homepage. Some of these posts will have to be tagged with more than one category, so the loop will have to know to ignore the other categories and just pay attention to the category in question. Does that make sense? Custom loop two If the user hasn't arrived from the homepage, single.php will just act as it normally does i.e, if the user comes from index.php (the blog) they will be taken to this second loop (blog post) However I don't seem to be able to make the distinction between the two loops, I might be over complicating matters, as I've got a loop which wraps everything together and then I have a loop for my custom pagination. Here is the code below to show you what I'm talking about custompage.php (set to home) - This works just fine but I'll post it just incase anyone is able to tidy it up <?php query_posts('cat=1'); ?> <?php $myPosts = new WP_Query(); $myPosts->query('showposts=1'); if (have_posts()) : while ($myPosts->have_posts()) : $myPosts->the_post(); ?> <script type="text/javascript">$.backstretch("<?php $key="image"; echo get_post_meta($post->ID, $key, true);?>");</script> <div id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>" class="info"> <h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2> <ul class="nav"> <?php query_posts('posts_per_page=1&offset=1'); the_post(); ?> <li class="prev"><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>">Previous</a></li> <?php wp_reset_query(); ?> <li class="next"></li> </ul> </div> <!-- end .info --> <?php endwhile; endif; ?> <?php wp_reset_query(); ?> single.php - Currently broken <?php if( in_category('1') ) { ?> <!-- start --> <?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?> <div id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>" class="info"> <script type="text/javascript">$.backstretch("<?php $key="image"; echo get_post_meta($post->ID, $key, true);?>");</script> <h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2> <ul class="nav"> <li class="prev"><?php previous_post_link('%link', '&nbsp;', 'true', '1') ?></li> <li class="next"><?php next_post_link('%link', '&nbsp;', 'true', '1'); ?></li> <!--li class="prev"><?php //previous_post_link('%link', '%title;', 'true', '1') ?></li> <li class="next"><?php //next_post_link('%link', '%title;', 'true', '1'); ?></li--> </ul> </div> <!-- end .info --> <?php endwhile; else: ?> <?php endif; ?> <!-- end --> <?php }else{ ?> <div id="content" class="widecolumn" role="main"> <?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?> <div <?php post_class() ?> id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>"> <h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2> <div class="entry"> <?php the_content('<p class="serif">Read the rest of this entry &raquo;</p>'); ?> </div> </div> <?php comments_template(); ?> <?php endwhile; else: ?> <p>Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.</p> <?php endif; ?> </div> <?php } ?> The problem I seem to be running into is when a post has been tagged with two categories, wordpress doesn't seem to be able to make the distinction between the two categories and instead of carrying on to the next category it breaks and defaults to the second loop.

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• Maddening Linked List problem

  - by Mike

  This has been plaguing me for weeks. It's something really simple, I know it. Every time I print a singly linked list, it prints an address at the end of the list. #include <iostream> using namespace std; struct node { int info; node *link; }; node *before(node *head); node *after(node *head); void middle(node *head, node *ptr); void reversep(node *head, node *ptr); node *head, *ptr, *newnode; int main() { head = NULL; ptr = NULL; newnode = new node; head = newnode; for(int c1=1;c1<11;c1++) { newnode->info = c1; ptr = newnode; newnode = new node; ptr->link = newnode; ptr = ptr->link; } ptr->link=NULL; head = before(head); head = after(head); middle(head, ptr); //reversep(head, ptr); ptr = head; cout<<ptr->info<<endl; while(ptr->link!=NULL) { ptr=ptr->link; cout<<ptr->info<<endl; } system("Pause"); return 0; } node *before(node *head) { node *befnode; befnode = new node; cout<<"What should go before the list?"<<endl; cin>>befnode->info; befnode->link = head; head = befnode; return head; } node *after(node *head) { node *afnode, *ptr2; afnode = new node; ptr2 = head; cout<<"What should go after the list?"<<endl; cin>>afnode->info; ptr2 = afnode; afnode->link=NULL; ptr2 = head; return ptr2; } void middle(node *head, node *ptr) { int c1 = 0, c2 = 0; node *temp, *midnode; ptr = head; while(ptr->link->link!=NULL) { ptr=ptr->link; c1++; } c1/=2; c1-=1; ptr = head; while(c2<c1) { ptr=ptr->link; c2++; } midnode = new node; cout<<"What should go in the middle of the list?"<<endl; cin>>midnode->info; cout<<endl; temp=ptr->link; ptr->link=midnode; midnode->link=temp; } void reversep(node *head, node *ptr) { node *last, *ptr2; ptr=head; ptr2=head; while(ptr->link!=NULL) ptr = ptr->link; last = ptr; cout<<last->info; while(ptr!=head) { while(ptr2->link!=ptr) ptr2=ptr2->link; ptr = ptr2; cout<<ptr->info; } } I'll admit that this is class work, but even the professor can't figure it out, and says that its probably something insignificant that we're overlooking, but I can't put my mind to rest until I find out what it is.

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• Unaccounted for database size

  - by Nazadus

  I currently have a database that is 20GB in size. I've run a few scripts which show on each tables size (and other incredibly useful information such as index stuff) and the biggest table is 1.1 million records which takes up 150MB of data. We have less than 50 tables most of which take up less than 1MB of data. After looking at the size of each table I don't understand why the database shouldn't be 1GB in size after a shrink. The amount of available free space that SqlServer (2005) reports is 0%. The log mode is set to simple. At this point my main concern is I feel like I have 19GB of unaccounted for used space. Is there something else I should look at? Normally I wouldn't care and would make this a passive research project except this particular situation calls for us to do a backup and restore on a weekly basis to put a copy on a satellite (which has no internet, so it must be done manually). I'd much rather copy 1GB (or even if it were down to 5GB!) than 20GB of data each week. sp_spaceused reports the following: Navigator-Production 19184.56 MB 3.02 MB And the second part of it: 19640872 KB 19512112 KB 108184 KB 20576 KB while I've found a few other scripts (such as the one from two of the server database size questions here, they all report the same information either found above or below). The script I am using is from SqlTeam. Here is the header info: * BigTables.sql * Bill Graziano (SQLTeam.com) * graz@<email removed> * v1.11 The top few tables show this (table, rows, reserved space, data, index, unused, etc): Activity 1143639 131 MB 89 MB 41768 KB 1648 KB 46% 1% EventAttendance 883261 90 MB 58 MB 32264 KB 328 KB 54% 0% Person 113437 31 MB 15 MB 15752 KB 912 KB 103% 3% HouseholdMember 113443 12 MB 6 MB 5224 KB 432 KB 82% 4% PostalAddress 48870 8 MB 6 MB 2200 KB 280 KB 36% 3% The rest of the tables are either the same in size or smaller. No more than 50 tables. Update 1: - All tables use unique identifiers. Usually an int incremented by 1 per row. I've also re-indexed everything. I ran the dbcc shrink command as well as updating the usage before and after. And over and over. An interesting thing I found is that when I restarted the server and confirmed no one was using it (and no maintenance procs are running, this is a very new application -- under a week old) and when I went to run the shrink, every now and then it would say something about data changed. Googling yielded too few useful answers with the obvious not applying (it was 1am and I disconnected everyone, so it seems impossible that was really the case). The data was migrated via C# code which basically looked at another server and brought things over. The quantity of deletes, at this point in time, are probably under 50k in rows. Even if those rows were the biggest rows, that wouldn't be more than 100M I would imagine. When I go to shrink via the GUI it reports 0% available to shrink, indicating that I've already gotten it as small as it thinks it can go. Update 2: sp_spaceused 'Activity' yields this (which seems right on the money): Activity 1143639 134488 KB 91072 KB 41768 KB 1648 KB Fill factor was 90. All primary keys are ints. Here is the command I used to 'updateusage': DBCC UPDATEUSAGE(0); Update 3: Per Edosoft's request: Image 111975 2407773 19262184 It appears as though the image table believes it's the 19GB portion. I don't understand what this means though. Is it really 19GB or is it misrepresented? Update 4: Talking to a co-worker and I found out that it's because of the pages, as someone else here has also state the potential for that. The only index on the image table is a clustered PK. Is this something I can fix or do I just have to deal with it? The regular script shows the Image table to be 6MB in size. Update 5: I think I'm just going to have to deal with it after further research. The images have been resized to be roughly 2-5KB each and on a normal file system doesn't consume much space but on SqlServer it seems to consume considerably more. The real answer, in the long run, will likely be separating that table in to another partition or something similar.

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• Using RJS to replace innerHTML with a real live instance variable.

  - by Steve Cotner

  I can't for the life of me get RJS to replace an element's innerHTML with an instance variable's attribute, i.e. something like @thing.name I'll show all the code (simplified from the actual project, but still complete), and I hope the solution will be forehead-slap obvious to someone... In RoR, I've made a simple page displaying a random Chinese character. This is a Word object with attributes chinese and english. Clicking on a link titled "What is this?" reveals the english attribute using RJS. Currently, it also hides the "What is this?" link and reveals a "Try Another?" link that just reloads the page, effectively starting over with a new random character. This is fine, but there are other elements on the page that make their own database queries, so I would like to load a new random character by an AJAX call, leaving the rest of the page alone. This has turned out to be harder than I expected: I have no trouble replacing the html using link_remote_to and page.replace_html, but I can't get it to display anything that includes an instance variable. I have a Word resource and a Page resource, which has a home page, where all this fun takes place. In the PagesController, I've made a couple ways to get random words. Either one works fine... Here's the code: class PagesController < ApplicationController def home all_words = Word.find(:all) @random_word = all_words.rand @random_words = Word.find(:all, :limit => 100, :order => 'rand()') @random_first = @random_words[1] end end As an aside, the SQL call with :limit => 100 is just in case I think of some way to cycle through those random words. Right now it's not useful. Also, the 'rand()' is MySQL specific, as far as I know. In the home page view (it's HAML), I have this: #character_box = render(:partial => "character", :object => @random_word) if @random_word #whatisthis = link_to_remote "? what is this?", :url => { :controller => 'words', :action => 'reveal_character' }, :html => { :title => "Click for the translation." } #tryanother.{:style => "display:none"} = link_to "try another?", root_path Note that the #'s in this case represent divs (with the given ids), not comments, because this is HAML. The "character" partial looks like this (it's erb, for no real reason): <div id="character"> <%= "#{@random_word.chinese}" } %> </div> <div id="revealed" style="display:none"> <ul> <li><span id="english"><%= "#{@random_word.english_name}" %></span></li> </ul> </div> The reveal_character.rjs file looks like this: page[:revealed].visual_effect :slide_down, :duration => '.2' page[:english].visual_effect :highlight, :startcolor => "#ffff00", :endcolor => "#ffffff", :duration => '2.5' page.delay(0.8) do page[:whatisthis].visual_effect :fade, :duration => '.3' page[:tryanother].visual_effect :appear end That all works perfectly fine. But if I try to turn link_to "try another?" into link_to_remote, and point it to an RJS template that replaces the "character" element with something new, it only works when I replace the innerHTML with static text. If I try to pass an instance variable in there, it never works. For instance, let's say I've defined a second random word under Pages#home... I'll add @random_second = @random_words[2] there. Then, in the home page view, I'll replace the "try another?" link (previously pointing to the root_path), with this: = link_to_remote "try another?", :url => { :controller => 'words', :action => 'second_character' }, :html => { :title => "Click for a new character." } I'll make that new RJS template, at app/views/words/second_character.rjs, and a simple test like this shows that it's working: page.replace_html("character", "hi") But if I change it to this: page.replace_html("character", "#{@random_second.english}") I get an error saying I fed it a nil object: ActionView::TemplateError (undefined method `english_name' for nil:NilClass) on line #1 of app/views/words/second_character.rjs: 1: page.replace_html("character", "#{@random_second.english}") Of course, actually instantiating @random_second, @random_third and so on ad infinitum would be ridiculous in a real app (I would eventually figure out some better way to keep grabbing a new random record without reloading the page), but the point is that I don't know how to get any instance variable to work here. This is not even approaching my ideal solution of rendering a partial that includes the object I specify, like this: page.replace_html 'character', :partial => 'new_character', :object => @random_second As I can't get an instance variable to work directly, I obviously cannot get it to work via a partial. I have tried various things like: :object => @random_second or :locals => { :random_second => @random_second } I've tried adding these all over the place -- in the link_to_remote options most obviously -- and studying what gets passed in the parameters, but to no avail. It's at this point that I realize I don't know what I'm doing. This is my first question here. I erred on the side of providing all necessary code, rather than being brief. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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• How to occupy all the space in a div when working with min-height header / footer

  - by javacoder

  I believe this is a beginner's CSS question. I am utilizing the method described in http://www.xs4all.nl/~peterned/examples/csslayout1.html to fix a header to the top and a footer to the bottom. What I'd like to achieve now is two columns inside the content div. A left one of 200px and a right one that takes up the rest of the width. Unfortunately, I can't get the left and right divs to display correctly: they just don't grow vertically, and if I make the right div "width: 100%" it positions itself underneath the left one. What is the trick to make the left and right div take up all the space within the content div? The layout1.css is the original one. I just added two entries: #left and #right layout1.css: /** * 100% height layout with header and footer * ---------------------------------------------- * Feel free to copy/use/change/improve */ html,body { margin: 0; padding: 0; height: 100%; /* needed for container min-height */ background: gray; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; color: #666; } h1 { font: 1.5em georgia, serif; margin: 0.5em 0; } h2 { font: 1.25em georgia, serif; margin: 0 0 0.5em; } h1,h2,a { color: orange; } p { line-height: 1.5; margin: 0 0 1em; } div#container { position: relative; /* needed for footer positioning*/ margin: 0 auto; /* center, not in IE5 */ width: 750px; background: #f0f0f0; height: auto !important; /* real browsers */ height: 100%; /* IE6: treaded as min-height*/ min-height: 100%; /* real browsers */ } div#header { padding: 1em; background: #ddd url("../csslayout.gif") 98% 10px no-repeat; border-bottom: 6px double gray; } div#header p { font-style: italic; font-size: 1.1em; margin: 0; } div#content { padding: 1em 1em 5em; /* bottom padding for footer */ } div#content p { text-align: justify; padding: 0 1em; } div#footer { position: absolute; width: 100%; bottom: 0; /* stick to bottom */ background: #ddd; border-top: 6px double gray; } div#footer p { padding: 1em; margin: 0; } // added the following: div#left { border: 1px solid red; width: 200px; float: left; min-height: 100%; height: 100%; padding-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px; } div#right { border: 1px solid blue; float: left; min-height: 100%; height: 100%; padding-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px; } layout.html: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" /> <title>CSS Layout - 100% height</title> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="layout1.css" /> </head> <body> <div id="container"> <div id="header"> <h1>header</h1> </div> <div id="content"> <div id="left"> left column </div> <div id="right"> right column </div> </div> <div id="footer"> <p> footer </p> </div> </div> </body>

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