Search Results

Search found 10710 results on 429 pages for 'release candidate'.

Page 357/429 | < Previous Page | 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364  | Next Page >

  • How do I install MySQLdb on a Python 2.6 source build, on Debian Lenny?

    - by nbolton
    I've installed Python 2.6 from source on my Debian Lenny server, as Lenny does not have the python2.6 package. So, my Python 2.5 has MySQLdb installed and working just fine because I installed the python-mysqldb package. I figured I could just install MySQLdb from source, but because I have the Lenny python-dev package, it builds against 2.5: # python setup.py build running build running build_py copying MySQLdb/release.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-2.5/MySQLdb running build_ext building '_mysql' extension gcc -pthread -fno-strict-aliasing -DNDEBUG -g -fwrapv -O2 -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -fPIC -Dversion_info=(1,2,3,'final',0) -D__version__=1.2.3 -I/usr/include/mysql -I/usr/include/python2.5 -c _mysql.c -o build/temp.linux-x86_64-2.5/_mysql.o -DBIG_JOINS=1 -fPIC gcc -pthread -shared -Wl,-O1 -Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions build/temp.linux-x86_64-2.5/_mysql.o -L/usr/lib/mysql -lmysqlclient_r -o build/lib.linux-x86_64-2.5/_mysql.so I don't want to run python setup.py install, because I'm afraid it's going to screw up MySQLdb on 2.5 -- should I? I imagine it'd just overwrite 2.5 and do nothing to 2.6 -- maybe there's an argument I can use to install to 2.6? I imagine that I would need also to build against 2.6, so how do I do this?

    Read the article

  • Sending 10,000 emails?

    - by Philipp Lenssen
    (I don't know whether to submit this to SuperUser or StackOverflow.) My friend and I have a subscriber list -- strictly opt-in, for people interested when we release new projects -- and we may want to send out a first email this year. How would one best send an email to over 10,000 people? Perhaps there is a good, I suppose paid service, which would do this for one? The key being that the emails ought arrive, with good chances of not being immediately labeled as spam due to the sender or something (as it's definitely not spam). When I simply send emails from my 1&1 server, they often immediately make it into the spam folder, even though when sending the same email through say Google Appspot, it arrives fine. FWIW, the email addresses are not yet verified (people simply signed up for the list by providing an email, and optionally a name). Analyzing what bounced may be a pro. BTW, we will provide an opt-out link with every mail. Thanks for any pointers, and sorry if this doesn't fit to ServerFault 100%!

    Read the article

  • Ant get task throws "get doesn't support nested resources element" error

    - by David Corley
    The following ant xml should work according to documentation, but does not. Can anyone tell me if I'm doing something wrong. The get task should support the nested "resources" element in Ant 1.7.1 which is the version I'm using: -- <target name="setup"> <tstamp/> <!-- set up work areas --> <!--<taskdef name="ccmutil" classname="com.allfinanz.framework.tools.CCMUtil" classpath="\\Abate\Data\Build_Lib\Ivy\com.allfinanz\ccmutil\1.0\ccmutil-1.0.jar"/>--> <!-- 1st one is special, also sets ${project_wa} --> <!--<ccmutil file="${ant.file}" projects="framework, xpbuw, xpb, bil"/>--> <property name="framework_wa" value="../../../framework"/> <property name="xpbuw_wa" value="../../../xpbuw"/> <property name="xpb_wa" value="../../../xpb"/> <property name="bil_wa" value="../.."/> <!-- Create properties to hold the build values --> <property name="out" value="${user.dir}"/> <!-- This may be overridden from the command line --> <property name="locale" value="us"/> <!-- set contextRoot up as a property - this mean that it can be overwritten from the command line e.g.: ant -DcontextRoot=xpertBridge. --> <property name="contextRoot" value="xpertBridge"/> <property name="build_dir" value="${out}/${release}/build"/> <property name="distrib_dir" value="${out}/${release}/distrib"/> <property name="build.number" value="-1"/> <!-- Download dependencies from repo.fms.allfinanz.com--> <get dest="${lib}"> <resources> <url url="http://repo.fms.allfinanz.com/service/local/artifact/maven/redirect?r=central&amp;g=soap&amp;a=soap&amp;v=2.3.1&amp;e=jar"/> <url url="http://repo.fms.allfinanz.com/service/local/artifact/maven/redirect?r=JBOSS&amp;g=apache-fileupload&amp;a=commons-fileupload&amp;v=1.0&amp;e=jar"/> <url url="http://repo.fms.allfinanz.com/service/local/artifact/maven/redirect?r=thirdparty&amp;g=regexp&amp;a=regexp&amp;v=1.1&amp;e=jar"/> <url url="http://repo.fms.allfinanz.com/service/local/artifact/maven/redirect?r=thirdparty&amp;g=javax.mail&amp;a=mail&amp;v=1.2&amp;e=jar"/> <url url="http://repo.fms.allfinanz.com/service/local/artifact/maven/redirect?r=thirdparty&amp;g=com.ibm.ws.webservices&amp;a=webservices.thinclient&amp;v=6.1.0&amp;e=jar"/> <url url="http://repo.fms.allfinanz.com/service/local/artifact/maven/redirect?r=thirdparty&amp;g=avalon-framework&amp;a=avalon-framework&amp;v=4.2.0&amp;e=jar"/> <url url="http://repo.fms.allfinanz.com/service/local/artifact/maven/redirect?r=thirdparty&amp;g=jimi&amp;a=jimi&amp;v=1.0&amp;e=jar"/> <url url="http://repo.fms.allfinanz.com/service/local/artifact/maven/redirect?r=thirdparty&amp;g=batik&amp;a=batik-all&amp;v=1.6&amp;e=jar"/> <url url="http://repo.fms.allfinanz.com/service/local/artifact/maven/redirect?r=thirdparty&amp;g=bsf&amp;a=bsf&amp;v=2.3.0&amp;e=jar"/> <url url="http://repo.fms.allfinanz.com/service/local/artifact/maven/redirect?r=thirdparty&amp;g=rhino&amp;a=js&amp;v=1.5R3&amp;e=jar"/> <url url="http://repo.fms.allfinanz.com/service/local/artifact/maven/redirect?r=central&amp;g=commons-io&amp;a=commons-io&amp;v=1.1&amp;e=jar"/> <url url="http://repo.fms.allfinanz.com/service/local/artifact/maven/redirect?r=central&amp;g=commons-logging&amp;a=commons-logging&amp;v=1.0.4&amp;e=jar"/> <url url="http://repo.fms.allfinanz.com/service/local/artifact/maven/redirect?r=thirdparty&amp;g=xmlgraphics&amp;a=commons&amp;v=1.0&amp;e=jar"/> <url url="http://repo.fms.allfinanz.com/service/local/artifact/maven/redirect?r=thirdparty&amp;g=barcode4j&amp;a=barcode4j&amp;v=trunkBIL&amp;e=jar"/> <url url="http://repo.fms.allfinanz.com/service/local/artifact/maven/redirect?r=thirdparty&amp;g=com.ibm&amp;a=fmcojagt&amp;v=6.1&amp;e=jar"/> <url url="http://repo.fms.allfinanz.com/service/local/artifact/maven/redirect?r=thirdparty&amp;g=com.allfinanz&amp;a=ejbserversupport&amp;v=1.0&amp;e=jar"/> <url url="http://repo.fms.allfinanz.com/service/local/artifact/maven/redirect?r=thirdparty&amp;g=com.sun&amp;a=jce&amp;v=1.0&amp;e=zip"/> <url url="http://repo.fms.allfinanz.com/service/local/artifact/maven/redirect?r=thirdparty&amp;g=ssce&amp;a=ssce&amp;v=5.8&amp;e=jar"/> <url url="http://repo.fms.allfinanz.com/service/local/artifact/maven/redirect?r=thirdparty&amp;g=com.ibm&amp;a=mq&amp;v=5.1&amp;e=jar"/> <url url="http://repo.fms.allfinanz.com/service/local/artifact/maven/redirect?r=thirdparty&amp;g=com.ibm&amp;a=mqjms&amp;v=5.1&amp;e=jar"/> <url url="http://repo.fms.allfinanz.com/service/local/artifact/maven/redirect?r=thirdparty&amp;g=NetServerRemote&amp;a=NetServerRemote&amp;v=1.0&amp;e=jar"/> <url url="http://repo.fms.allfinanz.com/service/local/artifact/maven/redirect?r=thirdparty&amp;g=NetServerRMI&amp;a=NetServerRMI&amp;v=1.0&amp;e=jar"/> <url url="http://repo.fms.allfinanz.com/service/local/artifact/maven/redirect?r=thirdparty&amp;g=jwsdp&amp;a=saaj-api&amp;v=1.5&amp;e=jar&amp;c=api"/> <url url="http://repo.fms.allfinanz.com/service/local/artifact/maven/redirect?r=thirdparty&amp;g=jwsdp&amp;a=saaj-impl&amp;v=1.5&amp;e=jar&amp;c=impl"/> <url url="http://repo.fms.allfinanz.com/service/local/artifact/maven/redirect?r=thirdparty&amp;g=org.apache.xmlgraphics&amp;a=fop&amp;v=0.92b&amp;e=jar"/> <url url="http://repo.fms.allfinanz.com/service/local/artifact/maven/redirect?r=thirdparty&amp;g=xerces&amp;a=dom3-xml-apis&amp;v=1.0&amp;e=jar"/> <url url="http://repo.fms.allfinanz.com/service/local/artifact/maven/redirect?r=thirdparty&amp;g=org.apache&amp;a=derbynet&amp;v=10.0.2&amp;e=jar"/> <url url="http://repo.fms.allfinanz.com/service/local/artifact/maven/redirect?r=thirdparty&amp;g=com.sun&amp;a=jsse&amp;v=1.0&amp;e=jar"/> </resources> </get> </target>

    Read the article

  • Records not being saved to core data sqlite file

    - by esd100
    I'm a complete newbie when it comes to iOS programming and much less Core Data. It's rather non-intuitive for me, as I really came into my own with programming with MATLAB, which I guess is more of a 'scripting' language. At any rate, my problem is that I had no idea what I had to do to create a database for my application. So I read a little bit and thought I had to create a SQL database of my stuff and then import it. Long story short, I created a SQLite db and I want to use the work I have already done to import stuff into my CoreData database. I tried exporting to comma-delimited files and xml files and reading those in, but I didn't like it and it seemed like an extra step that I shouldn't need to do. So, I imported the SQLite database into my resources and added the sqlite framework. I have my core data model setup and it is setting up the SQLite database for the model correctly in the background. When I run through my program to add objects to my entities, it seems to work and I can even fetch results afterward. However, when I inspect the Core Data Database SQLite file, no records have been saved. How is it possible for it to fetch results but not save them to the database? - (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions{ //load in the path for resources NSString *paths = [[NSBundle mainBundle] resourcePath]; NSString *databaseName = @"histology.sqlite"; NSString *databasePath = [paths stringByAppendingPathComponent:databaseName]; [self createDatabase:databasePath ]; NSError *error; if ([[self managedObjectContext] save:&error]) { NSLog(@"Whoops, couldn't save: %@", [error localizedDescription]); } // Test listing all CELLS from the store NSFetchRequest *fetchRequest = [[NSFetchRequest alloc] init]; NSEntityDescription *entityMO = [NSEntityDescription entityForName:@"CELL" inManagedObjectContext:[self managedObjectContext]]; [fetchRequest setEntity:entityMO]; NSArray *fetchedObjects = [[self managedObjectContext] executeFetchRequest:fetchRequest error:&error]; for (CELL *cellName in fetchedObjects) { //NSLog(@"cellName: %@", cellName); } -(void) createDatabase:databasePath { NSLog(@"The createDatabase function was entered."); NSLog(@"The databasePath is %@ ",[databasePath description]); // Setup the database object sqlite3 *histoDatabase; // Open the database from filessytem if(sqlite3_open([databasePath UTF8String], &histoDatabase) == SQLITE_OK) { NSLog(@"The database was opened"); // Setup the SQL Statement and compile it for faster access const char *sqlStatement = "SELECT * FROM CELL"; sqlite3_stmt *compiledStatement; if(sqlite3_prepare_v2(histoDatabase, sqlStatement, -1, &compiledStatement, NULL) != SQLITE_OK) { NSAssert1(0, @"Error while creating add statement. '%s'", sqlite3_errmsg(histoDatabase)); } if(sqlite3_prepare_v2(histoDatabase, sqlStatement, -1, &compiledStatement, NULL) == SQLITE_OK) { // Loop through the results and add them to cell MO array while(sqlite3_step(compiledStatement) == SQLITE_ROW) { CELL *cellMO = [NSEntityDescription insertNewObjectForEntityForName:@"CELL" inManagedObjectContext:[self managedObjectContext]]; if (sqlite3_column_type(compiledStatement, 0) != SQLITE_NULL) { cellMO.cellName = [NSString stringWithUTF8String:(char *)sqlite3_column_text(compiledStatement, 0)]; } else { cellMO.cellName = @"undefined"; } if (sqlite3_column_type(compiledStatement, 1) != SQLITE_NULL) { cellMO.cellDescription = [NSString stringWithUTF8String:(char *)sqlite3_column_text(compiledStatement, 1)]; } else { cellMO.cellDescription = @"undefined"; } NSLog(@"The contents of NSString *cellName = %@",[cellMO.cellName description]); } } // Release the compiled statement from memory sqlite3_finalize(compiledStatement); } sqlite3_close(histoDatabase); } I have a feeling that it has something to do with the timing of opening/closing both of the databases? Attached I have some SQL debugging output to the terminal 2012-05-28 16:03:39.556 MedPix[34751:fb03] The createDatabase function was entered. 2012-05-28 16:03:39.557 MedPix[34751:fb03] The databasePath is /Users/jack/Library/Application Support/iPhone Simulator/5.1/Applications/A6B2A79D-BA93-4E24-9291-5B7948A3CDF4/MedPix.app/histology.sqlite 2012-05-28 16:03:39.559 MedPix[34751:fb03] The database was opened 2012-05-28 16:03:39.560 MedPix[34751:fb03] The database was prepared 2012-05-28 16:03:39.575 MedPix[34751:fb03] CoreData: annotation: Connecting to sqlite database file at "/Users/jack/Library/Application Support/iPhone Simulator/5.1/Applications/A6B2A79D-BA93-4E24-9291-5B7948A3CDF4/Documents/MedPix.sqlite" 2012-05-28 16:03:39.576 MedPix[34751:fb03] CoreData: annotation: creating schema. 2012-05-28 16:03:39.577 MedPix[34751:fb03] CoreData: sql: pragma page_size=4096 2012-05-28 16:03:39.578 MedPix[34751:fb03] CoreData: sql: pragma auto_vacuum=2 2012-05-28 16:03:39.630 MedPix[34751:fb03] CoreData: sql: BEGIN EXCLUSIVE 2012-05-28 16:03:39.631 MedPix[34751:fb03] CoreData: sql: SELECT TBL_NAME FROM SQLITE_MASTER WHERE TBL_NAME = 'Z_METADATA' 2012-05-28 16:03:39.632 MedPix[34751:fb03] CoreData: sql: CREATE TABLE ZCELL ( Z_PK INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, Z_ENT INTEGER, Z_OPT INTEGER, ZCELLDESCRIPTION VARCHAR, ZCELLNAME VARCHAR ) ... 2012-05-28 16:03:39.669 MedPix[34751:fb03] CoreData: annotation: Creating primary key table. 2012-05-28 16:03:39.671 MedPix[34751:fb03] CoreData: sql: CREATE TABLE Z_PRIMARYKEY (Z_ENT INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, Z_NAME VARCHAR, Z_SUPER INTEGER, Z_MAX INTEGER) 2012-05-28 16:03:39.672 MedPix[34751:fb03] CoreData: sql: INSERT INTO Z_PRIMARYKEY(Z_ENT, Z_NAME, Z_SUPER, Z_MAX) VALUES(1, 'CELL', 0, 0) ... 2012-05-28 16:03:39.701 MedPix[34751:fb03] CoreData: sql: CREATE TABLE Z_METADATA (Z_VERSION INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, Z_UUID VARCHAR(255), Z_PLIST BLOB) 2012-05-28 16:03:39.702 MedPix[34751:fb03] CoreData: sql: SELECT TBL_NAME FROM SQLITE_MASTER WHERE TBL_NAME = 'Z_METADATA' 2012-05-28 16:03:39.703 MedPix[34751:fb03] CoreData: sql: DELETE FROM Z_METADATA WHERE Z_VERSION = ? 2012-05-28 16:03:39.704 MedPix[34751:fb03] CoreData: sql: INSERT INTO Z_METADATA (Z_VERSION, Z_UUID, Z_PLIST) VALUES (?, ?, ?) 2012-05-28 16:03:39.705 MedPix[34751:fb03] CoreData: sql: COMMIT 2012-05-28 16:03:39.710 MedPix[34751:fb03] CoreData: sql: pragma cache_size=200 2012-05-28 16:03:39.711 MedPix[34751:fb03] CoreData: sql: SELECT Z_VERSION, Z_UUID, Z_PLIST FROM Z_METADATA 2012-05-28 16:03:39.712 MedPix[34751:fb03] The contents of NSString *cellName = Beta Cell 2012-05-28 16:03:39.712 MedPix[34751:fb03] The contents of NSString *cellName = Gastric Chief Cell ... 2012-05-28 16:03:39.714 MedPix[34751:fb03] The database was prepared 2012-05-28 16:03:39.764 MedPix[34751:fb03] The createDatabase function has finished. Now fetching. 2012-05-28 16:03:39.765 MedPix[34751:fb03] CoreData: sql: SELECT 0, t0.Z_PK, t0.Z_OPT, t0.ZCELLDESCRIPTION, t0.ZCELLNAME FROM ZCELL t0 2012-05-28 16:03:39.766 MedPix[34751:fb03] CoreData: annotation: sql connection fetch time: 0.0008s 2012-05-28 16:03:39.767 MedPix[34751:fb03] CoreData: annotation: total fetch execution time: 0.0016s for 0 rows. 2012-05-28 16:03:39.768 MedPix[34751:fb03] cellName: <CELL: 0x6bbc120> (entity: CELL; id: 0x6bbc160 <x-coredata:///CELL/t57D10DDD-74E2-474F-97EE-E3BD0FF684DA34> ; data: { cellDescription = "S cells are cells which release secretin, found in the jejunum and duodenum. They are stimulated by a drop in pH to 4 or below in the small intestine's lumen. The released secretin will increase the s"; cellName = "S Cell"; organs = ( ); specimens = ( ); systems = ( ); tissues = ( ); }) ... Sections were cut short to abbreviate. But note that the fetch results contain information, but it says that total fetch execution was for "0" rows? How can that be? Any help will be greatly appreciated, especially detailed explanations. :) Thanks.

    Read the article

  • "Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation" Running Tests - VS2008 SP1

    - by omatrot
    I'm using Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite and I'm unable to run tests and display the Test/Windows/Test Result Window. The result is a dialog box with the following content : "Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation". Team Explorer has been installed after Visual Studio 2008 SP1. So I have re-apllied the service pack. Searching the web I found that this error is pretty common but unfortunately, the proposed solutions does not work for me. The problem was never analysed so I decided to give it a try : I reproduced the problem on a computer, attached the process with windbg and start with the basic investigations. Following are the first results : 0:000>!dumpstack OS Thread Id: 0xdb0 (0) Current frame: USER32!NtUserWaitMessage+0x15 ChildEBP RetAddr Caller,Callee 003fec94 75a32674 USER32!DialogBox2+0x222, calling USER32!NtUserWaitMessage 003fecd0 75a3288a USER32!InternalDialogBox+0xe5, calling USER32!DialogBox2 003fecfc 75a6f8d0 USER32!SoftModalMessageBox+0x757, calling USER32!InternalDialogBox 003fed3c 6eb61996 mscorwks!Thread::ReverseLeaveRuntime+0x95, calling mscorwks!_EH_epilog3 003fedb0 75a6fbac USER32!MessageBoxWorker+0x269, calling USER32!SoftModalMessageBox 003fede0 6ea559c3 mscorwks!SetupThreadNoThrow+0x19a, calling mscorwks!_EH_epilog3_catch_GS 003fee24 6eb61d8a mscorwks!HasIllegalReentrancy+0xac, calling mscorwks!_EH_epilog3 003fee30 6ea89796 mscorwks!SimpleComCallWrapper::Release+0x2e, calling mscorwks!CompareExchangeMP 003fee38 6ea0da05 mscorwks!CLRException::HandlerState::CleanupTry+0x16, calling mscorwks!GetCurrentSEHRecord 003fee44 6ea0c9c0 mscorwks!Thread::EnablePreemptiveGC+0xf, calling mscorwks!Thread::CatchAtSafePoint 003fee4c 6ea8a241 mscorwks!Unknown_Release_Internal+0x24d, calling mscorwks!GCHolder<1,0,0>::Pop 003fee50 6ea0c86c mscorwks!_EH_epilog3_catch_GS+0xa, calling mscorwks!__security_check_cookie 003fee54 6ea8a24c mscorwks!Unknown_Release_Internal+0x258, calling mscorwks!_EH_epilog3_catch_GS 003fee7c 75a16941 USER32!UserCallWinProcCheckWow+0x13d, calling ntdll!RtlDeactivateActivationContextUnsafeFast 003feed8 7082119e msenv!ATL::CComCritSecLock<ATL::CComCriticalSection>::Lock+0xd, calling ntdll!RtlEnterCriticalSection 003fef08 75a6fe5b USER32!MessageBoxIndirectW+0x2e, calling USER32!MessageBoxWorker 003fef7c 70a1e367 msenv!MessageBoxPVoidW+0xda 003fefd4 70a1db60 msenv!VBDialogCover2+0x11b 003ff01c 70a1e4c0 msenv!VBMessageBox2W+0xf0, calling msenv!VBDialogCover2 003ff044 7087246b msenv!main_GetAppNameW+0xa, calling msenv!GetAppNameInternal 003ff04c 70a1e4f2 msenv!VBMessageBox3W+0x1c, calling msenv!VBMessageBox2W 003ff064 70a1d6d7 msenv!_IdMsgShow+0x362, calling msenv!VBMessageBox3W 003ff0cc 70951841 msenv!TaskDialogCallback+0x7e0, calling msenv!_IdMsgShow 003ff118 6eb20da4 mscorwks!Unknown_QueryInterface+0x230, calling mscorwks!_EH_epilog3_catch_GS 003ff14c 6eb20c43 mscorwks!Unknown_QueryInterface_Internal+0x3d8, calling mscorwks!_EH_epilog3_catch_GS 003ff168 02006ec4 02006ec4, calling 0247a1e8 003ff16c 6ea0c86c mscorwks!_EH_epilog3_catch_GS+0xa, calling mscorwks!__security_check_cookie 003ff198 6eb20562 mscorwks!COMToCLRWorker+0xb34, calling mscorwks!_EH_epilog3_catch_GS 003ff19c 0247a235 0247a235, calling mscorwks!COMToCLRWorker 003ff1c4 7083249f msenv!CVSCommandTarget::ExecCmd+0x937 003ff1e4 7086d5c8 msenv!VsReportErrorInfo+0x11, calling msenv!TaskDialogCallback+0xd8 003ff1f8 7093e65b msenv!CVSCommandTarget::ExecCmd+0x945, calling msenv!VsReportErrorInfo 003ff25c 7081f53a msenv!ATL::CComPtr<IVsLanguageInfo>::~CComPtr<IVsLanguageInfo>+0x24, calling msenv!_EH_epilog3 003ff260 70b18d72 msenv!LogCommand+0x4c, calling msenv!ATL::CComPtr<IVsCodePageSelection>::~CComPtr<IVsCodePageSelection> 003ff264 70b18d77 msenv!LogCommand+0x51, calling msenv!_EH_epilog3 003ff280 70a4fd0e msenv!CMsoButtonUser::FClick+0x1d1, calling msenv!CVSCommandTarget::ExecCmd 003ff2f4 70823a87 msenv!CTLSITE::QueryInterface+0x16 003ff31c 70cb7d4d msenv!TBCB::FNotifyFocus+0x204 003ff35c 70ce5fda msenv!TB::NotifyControl+0x101 003ff3bc 709910f6 msenv!TB::FRequestFocus+0x4ed, calling msenv!TB::NotifyControl 003ff414 708254ba msenv!CMsoButtonUser::FEnabled+0x3d, calling msenv!GetQueryStatusFlags 003ff428 7086222a msenv!TBC::FAutoEnabled+0x24 003ff43c 7098e1eb msenv!TB::LProcessInputMsg+0xdb4 003ff458 6bec1c49 (MethodDesc 0x6bcd7f54 +0x89 System.Windows.Forms.Form.DefWndProc(System.Windows.Forms.Message ByRef)), calling 6be3b738 003ff50c 70823ab0 msenv!FPtbFromSite+0x16 003ff520 70991c43 msenv!TB::PtbParent+0x25, calling msenv!FPtbFromSite 003ff52c 708dda49 msenv!TBWndProc+0x2da 003ff588 0203d770 0203d770, calling 0247a1e8 003ff598 70822a70 msenv!CPaneFrame::Release+0x118, calling msenv!_EH_epilog3 003ff5b0 75a16238 USER32!InternalCallWinProc+0x23 003ff5dc 75a168ea USER32!UserCallWinProcCheckWow+0x109, calling USER32!InternalCallWinProc 003ff620 75a16899 USER32!UserCallWinProcCheckWow+0x6a, calling ntdll!RtlActivateActivationContextUnsafeFast 003ff654 75a17d31 USER32!DispatchMessageWorker+0x3bc, calling USER32!UserCallWinProcCheckWow 003ff688 70847f2b msenv!CMsoComponent::FPreTranslateMessage+0x72, calling msenv!MainFTranslateMessage 003ff6b4 75a17dfa USER32!DispatchMessageW+0xf, calling USER32!DispatchMessageWorker 003ff6c4 70831553 msenv!EnvironmentMsgLoop+0x1ea, calling USER32!DispatchMessageW 003ff6f8 708eb9bd msenv!CMsoCMHandler::FPushMessageLoop+0x86, calling msenv!EnvironmentMsgLoop 003ff724 708eb94d msenv!SCM::FPushMessageLoop+0xb7 003ff74c 708eb8e9 msenv!SCM_MsoCompMgr::FPushMessageLoop+0x28, calling msenv!SCM::FPushMessageLoop 003ff768 708eb8b8 msenv!CMsoComponent::PushMsgLoop+0x28 003ff788 708ebe4e msenv!VStudioMainLogged+0x482, calling msenv!CMsoComponent::PushMsgLoop 003ff7ac 70882afe msenv!CVsActivityLogSingleton::Instance+0xdf, calling msenv!_EH_epilog3 003ff7d8 70882afe msenv!CVsActivityLogSingleton::Instance+0xdf, calling msenv!_EH_epilog3 003ff7dc 707e4e31 msenv!VActivityLogStartupEntries+0x42 003ff7f4 7081f63b msenv!ATL::CComPtr<IClassFactory>::~CComPtr<IClassFactory>+0x24, calling msenv!_EH_epilog3 003ff7f8 708b250f msenv!ATL::CComQIPtr<IUnknown,&IID_IUnknown>::~CComQIPtr<IUnknown,&IID_IUnknown>+0x1d, calling msenv!_EH_epilog3 003ff820 708e7561 msenv!VStudioMain+0xc1, calling msenv!VStudioMainLogged 003ff84c 2f32aabc devenv!util_CallVsMain+0xff 003ff878 2f3278f2 devenv!CDevEnvAppId::Run+0x11fd, calling devenv!util_CallVsMain 003ff97c 77533b23 ntdll!RtlpAllocateHeap+0xe73, calling ntdll!_SEH_epilog4 003ff9f0 77536cd7 ntdll!RtlpLowFragHeapAllocFromContext+0x882, calling ntdll!RtlpSubSegmentInitialize 003ffa10 7753609f ntdll!RtlNtStatusToDosError+0x3b, calling ntdll!RtlNtStatusToDosErrorNoTeb 003ffa14 775360a4 ntdll!RtlNtStatusToDosError+0x40, calling ntdll!_SEH_epilog4 003ffa40 775360a4 ntdll!RtlNtStatusToDosError+0x40, calling ntdll!_SEH_epilog4 003ffa44 75bd2736 kernel32!LocalBaseRegOpenKey+0x159, calling ntdll!RtlNtStatusToDosError 003ffa48 75bd2762 kernel32!LocalBaseRegOpenKey+0x22a, calling kernel32!_SEH_epilog4 003ffac4 75bd2762 kernel32!LocalBaseRegOpenKey+0x22a, calling kernel32!_SEH_epilog4 003ffac8 75bd28c9 kernel32!RegOpenKeyExInternalW+0x130, calling kernel32!LocalBaseRegOpenKey 003ffad8 75bd28de kernel32!RegOpenKeyExInternalW+0x211 003ffae0 75bd28e5 kernel32!RegOpenKeyExInternalW+0x21d, calling kernel32!_SEH_epilog4 003ffb04 6f282e2b MSVCR90!_unlock+0x15, calling ntdll!RtlLeaveCriticalSection 003ffb14 75bd2642 kernel32!BaseRegCloseKeyInternal+0x41, calling ntdll!NtClose 003ffb28 75bd25d0 kernel32!RegCloseKey+0xd4, calling kernel32!_SEH_epilog4 003ffb5c 75bd25d0 kernel32!RegCloseKey+0xd4, calling kernel32!_SEH_epilog4 003ffb60 2f321ea4 devenv!DwInitSyncObjects+0x340 003ffb90 2f327bf4 devenv!WinMain+0x74, calling devenv!CDevEnvAppId::Run 003ffbac 2f327c68 devenv!License::GetPID+0x258, calling devenv!WinMain 003ffc3c 75bd3677 kernel32!BaseThreadInitThunk+0xe 003ffc48 77539d72 ntdll!__RtlUserThreadStart+0x70 003ffc88 77539d45 ntdll!_RtlUserThreadStart+0x1b, calling ntdll!__RtlUserThreadStart 0:000> !pe -nested Exception object: 050aae9c Exception type: System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException Message: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. InnerException: System.NullReferenceException, use !PrintException 050aac64 to see more StackTrace (generated): SP IP Function 003FEC2C 6D2700F7 mscorlib_ni!System.RuntimeType.CreateInstanceSlow(Boolean, Boolean)+0x57 003FEC5C 6D270067 mscorlib_ni!System.RuntimeType.CreateInstanceImpl(Boolean, Boolean, Boolean)+0xe7 003FEC94 6D270264 mscorlib_ni!System.Activator.CreateInstance(System.Type, Boolean)+0x44 003FECA4 6AD02DAF Microsoft_VisualStudio_Shell_9_0_ni!Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Package.CreateToolWindow(System.Type, Int32, Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.ProvideToolWindowAttribute)+0x67 003FED30 6AD0311B Microsoft_VisualStudio_Shell_9_0_ni!Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Package.CreateToolWindow(System.Type, Int32)+0xb7 003FED58 6AD02D12 Microsoft_VisualStudio_Shell_9_0_ni!Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Package.FindToolWindow(System.Type, Int32, Boolean, Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.ProvideToolWindowAttribute)+0x7a 003FED88 6AD02D39 Microsoft_VisualStudio_Shell_9_0_ni!Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Package.FindToolWindow(System.Type, Int32, Boolean)+0x11 003FED94 02585E30 Microsoft_VisualStudio_QualityTools_TestCaseManagement!Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.TestCaseManagement.QualityToolsPackage.InitToolWindowVariable[[System.__Canon, mscorlib]](System.__Canon ByRef, System.String, Boolean)+0x58 003FEDD0 02585DBE Microsoft_VisualStudio_QualityTools_TestCaseManagement!Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.TestCaseManagement.QualityToolsPackage.InitToolWindowVariable[[System.__Canon, mscorlib]](System.__Canon ByRef, System.String)+0x36 003FEDE4 02585D32 Microsoft_VisualStudio_QualityTools_TestCaseManagement!Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.TestCaseManagement.QualityToolsPackage.ShowToolWindow[[System.__Canon, mscorlib]](System.__Canon ByRef, System.String, Boolean)+0x3a 003FEE00 02585AB4 Microsoft_VisualStudio_QualityTools_TestCaseManagement!Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.TestCaseManagement.QualityToolsPackage.OpenTestResultsToolWindow()+0x2c 003FEE10 02585A6E Microsoft_VisualStudio_QualityTools_TestCaseManagement!Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.TestCaseManagement.QualityToolsPackage.OnMenuViewTestResults(System.Object, System.EventArgs)+0x6 003FEE18 6CD4F993 System_ni!System.ComponentModel.Design.MenuCommand.Invoke()+0x43 003FEE40 6CD4F9D4 System_ni!System.ComponentModel.Design.MenuCommand.Invoke(System.Object)+0x8 003FEE48 6AD000FA Microsoft_VisualStudio_Shell_9_0_ni!Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.OleMenuCommandService.Microsoft.VisualStudio.OLE.Interop.IOleCommandTarget.Exec(System.Guid ByRef, UInt32, UInt32, IntPtr, IntPtr)+0x11a 003FEEA0 6AD03FB8 Microsoft_VisualStudio_Shell_9_0_ni!Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Package.Microsoft.VisualStudio.OLE.Interop.IOleCommandTarget.Exec(System.Guid ByRef, UInt32, UInt32, IntPtr, IntPtr)+0x44 StackTraceString: <none> HResult: 80131604 0:000> !PrintException 050aac64 Exception object: 050aac64 Exception type: System.NullReferenceException Message: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. InnerException: <none> StackTrace (generated): SP IP Function 003FE660 078E60BE Microsoft_VisualStudio_TeamSystem_Integration!Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamSystem.Integration.TcmResultsPublishManager..ctor(Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamSystem.Integration.ResultsPublishManager)+0xc6 003FE674 078E5C91 Microsoft_VisualStudio_TeamSystem_Integration!Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamSystem.Integration.ResultsPublishManager..ctor(Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamSystem.Integration.TeamFoundationHostHelper)+0x59 003FE684 078E2FA0 Microsoft_VisualStudio_TeamSystem_Integration!Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamSystem.Integration.VsetServerHelper..ctor(System.IServiceProvider)+0x50 003FE6A4 078E2E90 Microsoft_VisualStudio_TeamSystem_Common!Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamSystem.Integration.Client.VsetHelper.InitializeThrow(System.IServiceProvider)+0x20 003FE6B8 078E2E2A Microsoft_VisualStudio_TeamSystem_Common!Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamSystem.Integration.Client.VsetHelper.InitializeHelper(System.IServiceProvider)+0x22 003FE6E0 078E2DEC Microsoft_VisualStudio_TeamSystem_Common!Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamSystem.Integration.Client.VsetHelper.CreateVsetHelper(System.IServiceProvider)+0x1c 003FE6F0 078E2DAC Microsoft_VisualStudio_QualityTools_TestCaseManagement!Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.TestCaseManagement.QualityToolsPackage.get_VsetHelper()+0x14 003FE6F8 02586BBE Microsoft_VisualStudio_QualityTools_TestCaseManagement!Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.TestCaseManagement.ResultsToolWindow..ctor()+0x9f6 003FE798 02585F8A Microsoft_VisualStudio_QualityTools_TestCaseManagement!Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.TestCaseManagement.ResultToolWindowHost..ctor()+0x1a StackTraceString: <none> HResult: 80004003 In order to be able to continue the analysis, we need to get the parameters to see what is going on. I also tried to run devenv.exe with the /log switch. No error in the log after reproducing the problem. Finally, If Team Explorer is removed from the system, the problem goes away. Any help appreciated. TIA. Olivier.

    Read the article

  • Why is UITableView not reloading (even on the main thread)?

    - by radesix
    I have two programs that basically do the same thing. They read an XML feed and parse the elements. The design of both programs is to use an asynchronous NSURLConnection to get the data then to spawn a new thread to handle the parsing. As batches of 5 items are parsed it calls back to the main thread to reload the UITableView. My issue is it works fine in one program, but not the other. I know that the parsing is actually occuring on the background thread and I know that [tableView reloadData] is executing on the main thread; however, it doesn't reload the table until all parsing is complete. I'm stumped. As far as I can tell... both programs are structured exactly the same way. Here is some code from the app that isn't working correctly. - (void)startConnectionWithURL:(NSString *)feedURL feedList:(NSMutableArray *)list { self.feedList = list; // Use NSURLConnection to asynchronously download the data. This means the main thread will not be blocked - the // application will remain responsive to the user. // // IMPORTANT! The main thread of the application should never be blocked! Also, avoid synchronous network access on any thread. // NSURLRequest *feedURLRequest = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:feedURL]]; self.bloggerFeedConnection = [[[NSURLConnection alloc] initWithRequest:feedURLRequest delegate:self] autorelease]; // Test the validity of the connection object. The most likely reason for the connection object to be nil is a malformed // URL, which is a programmatic error easily detected during development. If the URL is more dynamic, then you should // implement a more flexible validation technique, and be able to both recover from errors and communicate problems // to the user in an unobtrusive manner. NSAssert(self.bloggerFeedConnection != nil, @"Failure to create URL connection."); // Start the status bar network activity indicator. We'll turn it off when the connection finishes or experiences an error. [UIApplication sharedApplication].networkActivityIndicatorVisible = YES; } - (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveResponse:(NSURLResponse *)response { self.bloggerData = [NSMutableData data]; } - (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveData:(NSData *)data { [bloggerData appendData:data]; } - (void)connectionDidFinishLoading:(NSURLConnection *)connection { self.bloggerFeedConnection = nil; [UIApplication sharedApplication].networkActivityIndicatorVisible = NO; // Spawn a thread to fetch the link data so that the UI is not blocked while the application parses the XML data. // // IMPORTANT! - Don't access UIKit objects on secondary threads. // [NSThread detachNewThreadSelector:@selector(parseFeedData:) toTarget:self withObject:bloggerData]; // farkData will be retained by the thread until parseFarkData: has finished executing, so we no longer need // a reference to it in the main thread. self.bloggerData = nil; } If you read this from the top down you can see when the NSURLConnection is finished I detach a new thread and call parseFeedData. - (void)parseFeedData:(NSData *)data { // You must create a autorelease pool for all secondary threads. NSAutoreleasePool *pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init]; self.currentParseBatch = [NSMutableArray array]; self.currentParsedCharacterData = [NSMutableString string]; self.feedList = [NSMutableArray array]; // // It's also possible to have NSXMLParser download the data, by passing it a URL, but this is not desirable // because it gives less control over the network, particularly in responding to connection errors. // NSXMLParser *parser = [[NSXMLParser alloc] initWithData:data]; [parser setDelegate:self]; [parser parse]; // depending on the total number of links parsed, the last batch might not have been a "full" batch, and thus // not been part of the regular batch transfer. So, we check the count of the array and, if necessary, send it to the main thread. if ([self.currentParseBatch count] > 0) { [self performSelectorOnMainThread:@selector(addLinksToList:) withObject:self.currentParseBatch waitUntilDone:NO]; } self.currentParseBatch = nil; self.currentParsedCharacterData = nil; [parser release]; [pool release]; } In the did end element delegate I check to see that 5 items have been parsed before calling the main thread to perform the update. - (void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser didEndElement:(NSString *)elementName namespaceURI:(NSString *)namespaceURI qualifiedName:(NSString *)qName { if ([elementName isEqualToString:kItemElementName]) { [self.currentParseBatch addObject:self.currentItem]; parsedItemsCounter++; if (parsedItemsCounter % kSizeOfItemBatch == 0) { [self performSelectorOnMainThread:@selector(addLinksToList:) withObject:self.currentParseBatch waitUntilDone:NO]; self.currentParseBatch = [NSMutableArray array]; } } // Stop accumulating parsed character data. We won't start again until specific elements begin. accumulatingParsedCharacterData = NO; } - (void)addLinksToList:(NSMutableArray *)links { [self.feedList addObjectsFromArray:links]; // The table needs to be reloaded to reflect the new content of the list. if (self.viewDelegate != nil && [self.viewDelegate respondsToSelector:@selector(parser:didParseBatch:)]) { [self.viewDelegate parser:self didParseBatch:links]; } } Finally, the UIViewController delegate: - (void)parser:(XMLFeedParser *)parser didParseBatch:(NSMutableArray *)parsedBatch { NSLog(@"parser:didParseBatch:"); [self.selectedBlogger.feedList addObjectsFromArray:parsedBatch]; [self.tableView reloadData]; } If I write to the log when my view controller delegate fires to reload the table and when cellForRowAtIndexPath fires as it's rebuilding the table then the log looks something like this: parser:didParseBatch: parser:didParseBatch: tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath parser:didParseBatch: parser:didParseBatch: parser:didParseBatch: tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath parser:didParseBatch: tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath parser:didParseBatch: parser:didParseBatch: parser:didParseBatch: parser:didParseBatch: tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath Clearly, the tableView is not reloading when I tell it to every time. The log from the app that works correctly looks like this: parser:didParseBatch: tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath parser:didParseBatch: tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath parser:didParseBatch: tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath parser:didParseBatch: tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath parser:didParseBatch: tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath

    Read the article

  • Delphi hook to redirect to different ip

    - by Chris
    What is the best way to redirect ANY browser to a different ip for specific sites? For example if the user will type www.facebook.com in any browser he will be redirected to 127.0.0.1. Also the same should happen if he will type 66.220.146.11. What I have until now is this: using the winpkfilter I am able to intercept all the traffic on port 80, with type(in or out), source ip, destination ip and packet. My problem is to modify somehow the packet so the browser will be redirected. This is the code that i have right now: program Pass; {$APPTYPE CONSOLE} uses SysUtils, Windows, Winsock, winpkf, iphlp; var iIndex, counter : DWORD; hFilt : THANDLE; Adapts : TCP_AdapterList; AdapterMode : ADAPTER_MODE; Buffer, ParsedBuffer : INTERMEDIATE_BUFFER; ReadRequest : ETH_REQUEST; hEvent : THANDLE; hAdapter : THANDLE; pEtherHeader : TEtherHeaderPtr; pIPHeader : TIPHeaderPtr; pTcpHeader : TTCPHeaderPtr; pUdpHeader : TUDPHeaderPtr; SourceIP, DestIP : TInAddr; thePacket : PChar; f : TextFile; SourceIpString, DestinationIpString : string; SourceName, DestinationName : string; function IPAddrToName(IPAddr : string) : string; var SockAddrIn : TSockAddrIn; HostEnt : PHostEnt; WSAData : TWSAData; begin WSAStartup($101, WSAData); SockAddrIn.sin_addr.s_addr := inet_addr(PChar(IPAddr)); HostEnt := gethostbyaddr(@SockAddrIn.sin_addr.S_addr, 4, AF_INET); if HostEnt < nil then begin result := StrPas(Hostent^.h_name) end else begin result := ''; end; end; procedure ReleaseInterface(); begin // Restore default mode AdapterMode.dwFlags := 0; AdapterMode.hAdapterHandle := hAdapter; SetAdapterMode(hFilt, @AdapterMode); // Set NULL event to release previously set event object SetPacketEvent(hFilt, hAdapter, 0); // Close Event if hEvent < 0 then CloseHandle(hEvent); // Close driver object CloseFilterDriver(hFilt); // Release NDISAPI FreeNDISAPI(); end; begin // Check the number of parameters if ParamCount() < 2 then begin Writeln('Command line syntax:'); Writeln(' PassThru.exe index num'); Writeln(' index - network interface index.'); Writeln(' num - number or packets to filter'); Writeln('You can use ListAdapters to determine correct index.'); Exit; end; // Initialize NDISAPI InitNDISAPI(); // Create driver object hFilt := OpenFilterDriver('NDISRD'); if IsDriverLoaded(hFilt) then begin // Get parameters from command line iIndex := StrToInt(ParamStr(1)); counter := StrToInt(ParamStr(2)); // Set exit procedure ExitProcessProc := ReleaseInterface; // Get TCP/IP bound interfaces GetTcpipBoundAdaptersInfo(hFilt, @Adapts); // Check paramer values if iIndex > Adapts.m_nAdapterCount then begin Writeln('There is no network interface with such index on this system.'); Exit; end; hAdapter := Adapts.m_nAdapterHandle[iIndex]; AdapterMode.dwFlags := MSTCP_FLAG_SENT_TUNNEL or MSTCP_FLAG_RECV_TUNNEL; AdapterMode.hAdapterHandle := hAdapter; // Create notification event hEvent := CreateEvent(nil, TRUE, FALSE, nil); if hEvent <> 0 then if SetPacketEvent(hFilt, hAdapter, hEvent) <> 0 then begin // Initialize request ReadRequest.EthPacket.Buffer := @Buffer; ReadRequest.hAdapterHandle := hAdapter; SetAdapterMode(hFilt, @AdapterMode); counter := 0; //while counter <> 0 do while true do begin WaitForSingleObject(hEvent, INFINITE); while ReadPacket(hFilt, @ReadRequest) <> 0 do begin //dec(counter); pEtherHeader := TEtherHeaderPtr(@Buffer.m_IBuffer); if ntohs(pEtherHeader.h_proto) = ETH_P_IP then begin pIPHeader := TIPHeaderPtr(Integer(pEtherHeader) + SizeOf(TEtherHeader)); SourceIP.S_addr := pIPHeader.SourceIp; DestIP.S_addr := pIPHeader.DestIp; if pIPHeader.Protocol = IPPROTO_TCP then begin pTcpHeader := TTCPHeaderPtr(Integer(pIPHeader) + (pIPHeader.VerLen and $F) * 4); if (pTcpHeader.SourcePort = htons(80)) or (pTcpHeader.DestPort = htons(80)) then begin inc(counter); if Buffer.m_dwDeviceFlags = PACKET_FLAG_ON_SEND then Writeln(counter, ') - MSTCP --> Interface') else Writeln(counter, ') - Interface --> MSTCP'); Writeln(' Packet size = ', Buffer.m_Length); Writeln(Format(' IP %.3u.%.3u.%.3u.%.3u --> %.3u.%.3u.%.3u.%.3u PROTOCOL: %u', [byte(SourceIP.S_un_b.s_b1), byte(SourceIP.S_un_b.s_b2), byte(SourceIP.S_un_b.s_b3), byte(SourceIP.S_un_b.s_b4), byte(DestIP.S_un_b.s_b1), byte(DestIP.S_un_b.s_b2), byte(DestIP.S_un_b.s_b3), byte(DestIP.S_un_b.s_b4), byte(pIPHeader.Protocol)] )); Writeln(Format(' TCP SRC PORT: %d DST PORT: %d', [ntohs(pTcpHeader.SourcePort), ntohs(pTcpHeader.DestPort)])); //get the data thePacket := pchar(pEtherHeader) + (sizeof(TEtherHeaderPtr) + pIpHeader.VerLen * 4 + pTcpHeader.Offset * 4); { SourceIpString := IntToStr(byte(SourceIP.S_un_b.s_b1)) + '.' + IntToStr(byte(SourceIP.S_un_b.s_b2)) + '.' + IntToStr(byte(SourceIP.S_un_b.s_b3)) + '.' + IntToStr(byte(SourceIP.S_un_b.s_b4)); DestinationIpString := IntToStr(byte(DestIP.S_un_b.s_b1)) + '.' + IntToStr(byte(DestIP.S_un_b.s_b2)) + '.' + IntToStr(byte(DestIP.S_un_b.s_b3)) + '.' + IntToStr(byte(DestIP.S_un_b.s_b4)); } end; end; end; // if ntohs(pEtherHeader.h_proto) = ETH_P_RARP then // Writeln(' Reverse Addr Res packet'); // if ntohs(pEtherHeader.h_proto) = ETH_P_ARP then // Writeln(' Address Resolution packet'); //Writeln('__'); if Buffer.m_dwDeviceFlags = PACKET_FLAG_ON_SEND then // Place packet on the network interface SendPacketToAdapter(hFilt, @ReadRequest) else // Indicate packet to MSTCP SendPacketToMstcp(hFilt, @ReadRequest); { if counter = 0 then begin Writeln('Filtering complete'); readln; break; end; } end; ResetEvent(hEvent); end; end; end; end.

    Read the article

  • Getting ClassCastException with JSF 1.2 Custom Component and BEA 10.3

    - by Tobi
    Im getting a ClassCastException if i use Attributes in my Custom Headline Tag. Without Attributes rendering works fine. Calling <t:headline value="test" /> gives a ClassCastException even before a Method in my HeadlineComponent or HeadlineTag-Class is called. <t:headline /> works fine. I'm using MyFaces-1.2, on BEA 10.3 default.jsp <%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" pageEncoding="ISO-8859-1"%> <%@ taglib prefix="f" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core"%> <%@ taglib prefix="h" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html"%> <%@ taglib prefix="t" uri="http://www.tobi.de/taglibrary" %> <!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>Tobi Test</title> </head> <body> <f:view> <t:headline value="test" /> </f:view> </body> </html> HeadlineComponent.java package tobi.web.component.headline; import java.io.IOException; import javax.el.ValueExpression; import javax.faces.component.UIOutput; import javax.faces.context.FacesContext; import javax.faces.context.ResponseWriter; public class HeadlineComponent extends UIOutput { private String value; private Integer size; @Override public Object saveState(FacesContext context) { Object values[] = new Object[3]; values[0] = super.saveState(context); values[1] = value; values[2] = size; return ((Object)(values)); } @Override public void restoreState(FacesContext context, Object state) { Object values[] = (Object[])state; super.restoreState(context, values[0]); value = (String)values[1]; size = (Integer)values[2]; } @Override public void encodeBegin(FacesContext context) throws IOException { // Wenn keine Groesse angegeben wurde default 3 String htmlTag = (size == null) ? "h3" : "h"+getSize().toString(); ResponseWriter writer = context.getResponseWriter(); writer.startElement(htmlTag, this); if(value == null) { writer.write(""); } else { writer.write(value); } writer.endElement(htmlTag); writer.flush(); } public String getValue() { if(value != null) { return value; } ValueExpression ve = getValueExpression("value"); if(ve != null) { return (String)ve.getValue(getFacesContext().getELContext()); } return null; } public void setValue(String value) { this.value = value; } public Integer getSize() { if(size != null) { return size; } ValueExpression ve = getValueExpression("size"); if(ve != null) { return (Integer)ve.getValue(getFacesContext().getELContext()); } return null; } public void setSize(Integer size) { if(size>6) size = 6; if(size<1) size = 1; this.size = size; } } HeadlineTag.java package tobi.web.component.headline; import javax.el.ValueExpression; import javax.faces.component.UIComponent; import javax.faces.webapp.UIComponentELTag; public class HeadlineTag extends UIComponentELTag { private ValueExpression value; private ValueExpression size; @Override public String getComponentType() { return "tobi.headline"; } @Override public String getRendererType() { // null, da wir hier keinen eigenen Render benutzen return null; } protected void setProperties(UIComponent component) { super.setProperties(component); HeadlineComponent headline = (HeadlineComponent)component; if(value != null) { if(value.isLiteralText()) { headline.getAttributes().put("value", value.getExpressionString()); } else { headline.setValueExpression("value", value); } } if(size != null) { if(size.isLiteralText()) { headline.getAttributes().put("size", size.getExpressionString()); } else { headline.setValueExpression("size", size); } } } @Override public void release() { super.release(); this.value = null; this.size = null; } public ValueExpression getValue() { return value; } public void setValue(ValueExpression value) { this.value = value; } public ValueExpression getSize() { return size; } public void setSize(ValueExpression size) { this.size = size; } } taglibrary.tld <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> <taglib 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-jsptaglibrary_2_1.xsd" version="2.1"> <description>Tobi Webclient Taglibrary</description> <tlib-version>1.0</tlib-version> <short-name>tobi-taglibrary</short-name> <uri>http://www.tobi.de/taglibrary</uri> <tag> <description>Eine Überschrift im HTML-Stil</description> <name>headline</name> <tag-class>tobi.web.component.headline.HeadlineTag</tag-class> <body-content>empty</body-content> <attribute> <description>Der Text der Überschrift</description> <name>value</name> <required>false</required> <rtexprvalue>true</rtexprvalue> </attribute> <attribute> <description>Die Größe der Überschrift nach HTML (h1 - h6)</description> <name>size</name> <required>false</required> <rtexprvalue>true</rtexprvalue> </attribute> </tag> </taglib> faces-config.xml <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <faces-config 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-facesconfig_1_2.xsd" version="1.2"> <component> <description>Erzeugt eine Überschrift nach HTML-Stil</description> <display-name>headline</display-name> <component-type>tobi.headline</component-type> <component-class>tobi.web.component.headline.HeadlineComponent</component-class> <attribute> <attribute-name>value</attribute-name> <attribute-class>java.lang.String</attribute-class> </attribute> <attribute> <attribute-name>size</attribute-name> <attribute-class>java.lang.Integer</attribute-class> <default-value>3</default-value> </attribute> </component> </faces-config>

    Read the article

  • GDI+ crashes when loading PNG from IStream

    - by konforce
    I wrote something to load PNG files from a custom C++ IStream via GDI+. It worked great until I ran it on Vista machines. Crashes every time. When compiled on VS 2008, I found that inserting code into the IStream::AddRef method, such as a cout, made the problem go away. When compiling with VS 2010, it still crashes regardless of that. I stripped the program down to its basics. I copied a FileStream straight from Microsoft's documentation. It can load PNGs when using Bitmap::FromFile. It can load JPEGs, GIFs, and BMPs via FromFile or FromStream. So in short: on Vista, PNG files loaded via Bitmap::FromStream crash. #pragma comment(lib, "gdiplus.lib") #include <iostream> #include <objidl.h> #include <gdiplus.h> class FileStream : public IStream { public: FileStream(HANDLE hFile) { _refcount = 1; _hFile = hFile; } ~FileStream() { if (_hFile != INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE) { ::CloseHandle(_hFile); } } public: HRESULT static OpenFile(LPCWSTR pName, IStream ** ppStream, bool fWrite) { HANDLE hFile = ::CreateFileW(pName, fWrite ? GENERIC_WRITE : GENERIC_READ, FILE_SHARE_READ, NULL, fWrite ? CREATE_ALWAYS : OPEN_EXISTING, FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL, NULL); if (hFile == INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE) return HRESULT_FROM_WIN32(GetLastError()); *ppStream = new FileStream(hFile); if(*ppStream == NULL) CloseHandle(hFile); return S_OK; } virtual HRESULT STDMETHODCALLTYPE QueryInterface(REFIID iid, void ** ppvObject) { if (iid == __uuidof(IUnknown) || iid == __uuidof(IStream) || iid == __uuidof(ISequentialStream)) { *ppvObject = static_cast<IStream*>(this); AddRef(); return S_OK; } else return E_NOINTERFACE; } virtual ULONG STDMETHODCALLTYPE AddRef(void) { return (ULONG)InterlockedIncrement(&_refcount); } virtual ULONG STDMETHODCALLTYPE Release(void) { ULONG res = (ULONG) InterlockedDecrement(&_refcount); if (res == 0) delete this; return res; } // ISequentialStream Interface public: virtual HRESULT STDMETHODCALLTYPE Read(void* pv, ULONG cb, ULONG* pcbRead) { ULONG local_pcbRead; BOOL rc = ReadFile(_hFile, pv, cb, &local_pcbRead, NULL); if (pcbRead) *pcbRead = local_pcbRead; return (rc) ? S_OK : HRESULT_FROM_WIN32(GetLastError()); } virtual HRESULT STDMETHODCALLTYPE Write(void const* pv, ULONG cb, ULONG* pcbWritten) { BOOL rc = WriteFile(_hFile, pv, cb, pcbWritten, NULL); return rc ? S_OK : HRESULT_FROM_WIN32(GetLastError()); } // IStream Interface public: virtual HRESULT STDMETHODCALLTYPE SetSize(ULARGE_INTEGER) { return E_NOTIMPL; } virtual HRESULT STDMETHODCALLTYPE CopyTo(IStream*, ULARGE_INTEGER, ULARGE_INTEGER*, ULARGE_INTEGER*) { return E_NOTIMPL; } virtual HRESULT STDMETHODCALLTYPE Commit(DWORD) { return E_NOTIMPL; } virtual HRESULT STDMETHODCALLTYPE Revert(void) { return E_NOTIMPL; } virtual HRESULT STDMETHODCALLTYPE LockRegion(ULARGE_INTEGER, ULARGE_INTEGER, DWORD) { return E_NOTIMPL; } virtual HRESULT STDMETHODCALLTYPE UnlockRegion(ULARGE_INTEGER, ULARGE_INTEGER, DWORD) { return E_NOTIMPL; } virtual HRESULT STDMETHODCALLTYPE Clone(IStream **) { return E_NOTIMPL; } virtual HRESULT STDMETHODCALLTYPE Seek(LARGE_INTEGER liDistanceToMove, DWORD dwOrigin, ULARGE_INTEGER* lpNewFilePointer) { DWORD dwMoveMethod; switch(dwOrigin) { case STREAM_SEEK_SET: dwMoveMethod = FILE_BEGIN; break; case STREAM_SEEK_CUR: dwMoveMethod = FILE_CURRENT; break; case STREAM_SEEK_END: dwMoveMethod = FILE_END; break; default: return STG_E_INVALIDFUNCTION; break; } if (SetFilePointerEx(_hFile, liDistanceToMove, (PLARGE_INTEGER) lpNewFilePointer, dwMoveMethod) == 0) return HRESULT_FROM_WIN32(GetLastError()); return S_OK; } virtual HRESULT STDMETHODCALLTYPE Stat(STATSTG* pStatstg, DWORD grfStatFlag) { if (GetFileSizeEx(_hFile, (PLARGE_INTEGER) &pStatstg->cbSize) == 0) return HRESULT_FROM_WIN32(GetLastError()); return S_OK; } private: volatile HANDLE _hFile; volatile LONG _refcount; }; #define USE_STREAM int main() { Gdiplus::GdiplusStartupInput gdiplusStartupInput; ULONG_PTR gdiplusToken; Gdiplus::GdiplusStartup(&gdiplusToken, &gdiplusStartupInput, NULL); Gdiplus::Bitmap *bmp; #ifndef USE_STREAM bmp = Gdiplus::Bitmap::FromFile(L"test.png", false); if (!bmp) { std::cerr << " Unable to open image file." << std::endl; return 1; } #else IStream *s; if (FileStream::OpenFile(L"test.png", &s, false) != S_OK) { std::cerr << "Unable to open image file." << std::endl; return 1; } bmp = Gdiplus::Bitmap::FromStream(s, false); #endif std::cout << "Image is " << bmp->GetWidth() << " by " << bmp->GetHeight() << std::endl; Gdiplus::GdiplusShutdown(gdiplusToken); #ifdef USE_STREAM s->Release(); #endif return 0; } Tracing and debugging, shows that it does make some calls to the IStream class. It crashes inside of lastResult = DllExports::GdipCreateBitmapFromStream(stream, &bitmap); from GdiPlusBitmap.h, which is a static inline wrapper over the flat API. Other than the reference counting, the only IStream methods it calls is stat (for file size), read, and seek. Call stack looks like: ntdll.dll!_DbgBreakPoint@0() + 0x1 bytes ntdll.dll!_RtlpBreakPointHeap@4() + 0x28 bytes ntdll.dll!_RtlpValidateHeapEntry@12() + 0x70a3c bytes ntdll.dll!_RtlDebugFreeHeap@12() + 0x9a bytes ntdll.dll!@RtlpFreeHeap@16() + 0x13cdd bytes ntdll.dll!_RtlFreeHeap@12() + 0x2e49 bytes kernel32.dll!_HeapFree@12() + 0x14 bytes ole32.dll!CRetailMalloc_Free() + 0x1c bytes ole32.dll!_CoTaskMemFree@4() + 0x13 bytes GdiPlus.dll!GpPngDecoder::GetImageInfo() + 0x68 bytes GdiPlus.dll!GpDecodedImage::InternalGetImageInfo() + 0x3c bytes GdiPlus.dll!GpDecodedImage::GetImageInfo() + 0x18 bytes GdiPlus.dll!CopyOnWriteBitmap::CopyOnWriteBitmap() + 0x49 bytes GdiPlus.dll!CopyOnWriteBitmap::Create() + 0x1d bytes GdiPlus.dll!GpBitmap::GpBitmap() + 0x2c bytes I was unable to find anybody else with the same problem, so I assume there's something wrong with my implementation...

    Read the article

  • Reading in a 5000 line text file on the Iphone

    - by howsyourface
    Gday, I am trying to create a tiled map for my game, i have had this previously working using other xml methods but i had memory leaks and all sorts of errors. However i had a map load time of about 2.5 - 3 seconds. So i rewrote all of the code using NSMutableStrings and NSStrings. After my best attempt at optomizing it i had a map load time of 10 - 11 seconds, which is far too slow. So i have now rewritten the code using char* arrays, only to now have a load time of 18 seconds -_-. Here is the latest code, i don't know much c so i could have easily botched the whole thing up. FILE* file = fopen(a, "r"); fseek(file, 0L, SEEK_END); length = ftell(file); fseek(file,0L, SEEK_SET); char fileText[length +1]; char buffer[1024];// = malloc(1024); while(fgets(buffer, 1024, file) != NULL) { strncat(fileText, buffer, strlen(buffer)); } fclose(file); [self parseMapFile:fileText]; - (void)parseMapFile:(char*)tiledXML { currentLayerID = 0; currentTileSetID = 0; tileX = 0; tileY = 0; int tmpGid; NSString* tmpName; int tmpTileWidth; int tmpTileHeight; int tilesetCounter = 0; NSString* tmpLayerName; int tmpLayerHeight; int tmpLayerWidth; int layerCounter = 0; tileX = 0; tileY = 0; int tmpFirstGid = 0; int x; int index; char* r; int counter = 0; while ((x = [self findSubstring:tiledXML substring:"\n"]) != 0) { counter ++; char result[x + 1]; r = &result[0]; [self substringIndex:tiledXML index:x newArray:result]; tiledXML += x+2; index = 0; if (counter == 1) { continue; } else if (counter == 2) { char result1[5]; index = [self getStringBetweenStrings:r substring1:"th=\"" substring2:"\"" newArray:result1]; if (r != 0); mapWidth = atoi(result1); r += index +1; index = 0; index = [self getStringBetweenStrings:r substring1:"ht=\"" substring2:"\"" newArray:result1]; if (r != 0); mapHeight = atoi(result1); r += index +1; index = 0; index = [self getStringBetweenStrings:r substring1:"th=\"" substring2:"\"" newArray:result1]; if (r != 0); tileWidth = atoi(result1); r += index +1; index = 0; index = [self getStringBetweenStrings:r substring1:"ht=\"" substring2:"\"" newArray:result1]; if (r != 0); tileHeight = atoi(result1); continue; } char result2[50]; char result3[3]; if ((index = [self getStringBetweenStrings:r substring1:" gid=\"" substring2:"\"" newArray:result3]) != 0) { tmpGid = atoi(result3); free(result2); if(tmpGid == 0) { [currentLayer addTileAtX:tileX y:tileY tileSetID:-1 tileID:0 globalID:0]; } else { [currentLayer addTileAtX:tileX y:tileY tileSetID:[currentTileSet tileSetID] tileID:tmpGid - [currentTileSet firstGID] globalID:tmpGid]; } tileX ++; if (tileX > [currentLayer layerWidth]-1) { tileY ++; tileX = 0; } } else if ((index = [self getStringBetweenStrings:r substring1:"tgid=\"" substring2:"\"" newArray:result2]) != 0) { tmpFirstGid = atoi(result2); r += index +1; index = 0; index = [self getStringBetweenStrings:r substring1:"me=\"" substring2:"\"" newArray:result2]; if (r != 0); tmpName = [NSString stringWithUTF8String:result2]; r += index +1; index = 0; index = [self getStringBetweenStrings:r substring1:"th=\"" substring2:"\"" newArray:result2]; if (r != 0); tmpTileWidth = atoi(result2); r += index +1; index = 0; index = [self getStringBetweenStrings:r substring1:"ht=\"" substring2:"\"" newArray:result2]; if (r != 0); tmpTileHeight = atoi(result2); } else if ((index = [self getStringBetweenStrings:r substring1:"rce=\"" substring2:"\"" newArray:result2]) != 0) { currentTileSet = [[TileSet alloc] initWithImageNamed:[NSString stringWithUTF8String:result2] name:tmpName tileSetID:tilesetCounter firstGID:tmpFirstGid tileWidth:tmpTileWidth tileHeight:tmpTileHeight spacing:0]; [tileSets addObject:currentTileSet]; [currentTileSet release]; tilesetCounter ++; } else if ((index = [self getStringBetweenStrings:r substring1:"r name=\"" substring2:"\"" newArray:result2]) != 0) { tileX = 0; tileY = 0; tmpLayerName = [NSString stringWithUTF8String:result2]; r += index +1; index = 0; index = [self getStringBetweenStrings:r substring1:"th=\"" substring2:"\"" newArray:result2]; if (r != 0); tmpLayerWidth = atoi(result2); r += index +1; index = 0; index = [self getStringBetweenStrings:r substring1:"ht=\"" substring2:"\"" newArray:result2]; if (r != 0); tmpLayerHeight = atoi(result2); currentLayer = [[Layer alloc] initWithName:tmpLayerName layerID:layerCounter layerWidth:tmpLayerWidth layerHeight:tmpLayerHeight]; [layers addObject:currentLayer]; [currentLayer release]; layerCounter ++; } } } -(void)substringIndex:(char*)c index:(int)x newArray:(char*)result { result[0] = 0; for (int i = 0; i < strlen(c); i++) { result[i] = c[i]; if (i == x) { result[i+1] = '\0'; break; } } } -(int)findSubstring:(char*)c substring:(char*)s { int sCounter = 0; int index = 0; int d; for (int i = 0; i < strlen(c); i ++) { if (i > 500)//max line size break; if (c[i] == s[sCounter]) { d = strlen(s); sCounter ++; if (d > sCounter) { } else { index = i - (d); break; } } else sCounter = 0; } return index; } -(int)getStringBetweenStrings:(char*)c substring1:(char*)s substring2:(char*)s2 newArray:(char*)result { int sCounter = 0; int sCounter2 = 0; int index = 0; int index2 = 0; int d; for (int i = 0; i < strlen(c); i ++) { if (index != 0) { if (c[i] == s2[sCounter2]) { d = strlen(s2); sCounter2 ++; if (d > sCounter2) { } else { index2 = i - (d); break; } } else sCounter2 = 0; } else { if (c[i] == s[sCounter]) { d = strlen(s); sCounter ++; if (d > sCounter) { } else { index = i; } } else sCounter = 0; } } if (index != 0 && index2 != 0) [self substringIndex:(c + index+1) index:index2-index-1 newArray:result]; return index; } (I know it's a lot of code to be putting in here) I thought the by using basic char arrays i could drastically increase the performance, at least over the initial node based code that i was replacing. Thanks for all your efforts.

    Read the article

  • 26 Days: Countdown to Oracle OpenWorld 2012

    - by Michael Snow
    Welcome to our countdown to Oracle OpenWorld! Oracle OpenWorld 2012 is just around the corner. In less than 26 days, San Francisco will be invaded by an expected 50,000 people from all over the world. Here on the Oracle WebCenter team, we’ve all been working to help make the experience a great one for all our WebCenter customers. For a sneak peak  – we’ll be spending this week giving you a teaser of what to look forward to if you are joining us in San Francisco from September 30th through October 4th. We have Oracle WebCenter sessions covering all topics imaginable. Take a look and use the tools we provide to build out your schedule in advance and reserve your seats in your favorite sessions.  That gives you plenty of time to plan for your week with us in San Francisco. If unfortunately, your boss denied your request to attend - there are still some ways that you can join in the experience virtually On-Demand. This year - we are expanding even more up North of Market Street and will be taking over Union Square as well. Check out this map of San Francisco to get a sense of how much of a footprint Oracle OpenWorld has grown to this year. With so much to see and so many sessions to learn from - its no wonder that people get excited. Add to that a good mix of fun and all of the possible WebCenter sessions you could attend - you won't want to sleep at all to take full advantage of such an opportunity. We'll also have our annual WebCenter Customer Appreciation reception - stay tuned this week for some more info on registration to make sure you'll be able to join us. If you've been following the America's Cup at all and believe in EXTREME PERFORMANCE you'll definitely want to take a look at this video from last year's OpenWorld Keynote. 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Important OpenWorld Links:  Attendee / Presenters Toolkit Oracle Schedule Builder WebCenter Sessions (listed in the catalog under Fusion Middleware as "Portals, Sites, Content, and Collaboration" ) Oracle Music Festival - AMAZING Line up!!  Oracle Customer Appreciation Night -LOOK HERE!! Oracle OpenWorld LIVE On-Demand Here are all the WebCenter sessions broken down by day for your viewing pleasure. Monday, October 1st CON8885 - Simplify CRM Engagement with Contextual Collaboration Are your sales teams disconnected and disengaged? Do you want a tool for easily connecting expertise across your organization and providing visibility into the complete sales process? Do you want a way to enhance and retain organization knowledge? Oracle Social Network is the answer. Attend this session to learn how to make CRM easy, effective, and efficient for use across virtual sales teams. Also learn how Oracle Social Network can drive sales force collaboration with natural conversations throughout the sales cycle, promote sales team productivity through purposeful social networking without the noise, and build cross-team knowledge by integrating conversations with CRM and other business applications. CON8268 - Oracle WebCenter Strategy: Engaging Your Customers. Empowering Your Business Oracle WebCenter is a user engagement platform for social business, connecting people and information. Attend this session to learn about the Oracle WebCenter strategy, and understand where Oracle is taking the platform to help companies engage customers, empower employees, and enable partners. Business success starts with ensuring that everyone is engaged with the right people and the right information and can access what they need through the channel of their choice—Web, mobile, or social. Are you giving customers, employees, and partners the best-possible experience? Come learn how you can! ¶ HOL10208 - Add Social Capabilities to Your Enterprise Applications Oracle Social Network enables you to add real-time collaboration capabilities into your enterprise applications, so that conversations can happen directly within your business systems. In this hands-on lab, you will try out the Oracle Social Network product to collaborate with other attendees, using real-time conversations with document sharing capabilities. Next you will embed social capabilities into a sample Web-based enterprise application, using embedded UI components. Experts will also write simple REST-based integrations, using the Oracle Social Network API to programmatically create social interactions. ¶ CON8893 - Improve Employee Productivity with Intuitive and Social Work Environments Social technologies have already transformed the ways customers, employees, partners, and suppliers communicate and stay informed. Forward-thinking organizations today need technologies and infrastructures to help them advance to the next level and integrate social activities with business applications to deliver a user experience that simplifies business processes and enterprise application engagement. Attend this session to hear from an innovative Oracle Social Network customer and learn how you can improve productivity with intuitive and social work environments and empower your employees with innovative social tools to enable contextual access to content and dynamic personalization of solutions. ¶ CON8270 - Oracle WebCenter Content Strategy and Vision Oracle WebCenter provides a strategic content infrastructure for managing documents, images, e-mails, and rich media files. With a single repository, organizations can address any content use case, such as accounts payable, HR onboarding, document management, compliance, records management, digital asset management, or Website management. In this session, learn about future plans for how Oracle WebCenter will address new use cases as well as new integrations with Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Applications, leveraging your investments by making your users more productive and error-free. ¶ CON8269 - Oracle WebCenter Sites Strategy and Vision Oracle’s Web experience management solution, Oracle WebCenter Sites, enables organizations to use the online channel to drive customer acquisition and brand loyalty. It helps marketers and business users easily create and manage contextually relevant, social, interactive online experiences across multiple channels on a global scale. In this session, learn about future plans for how Oracle WebCenter Sites will provide you with the tools, capabilities, and integrations you need in order to continue to address your customers’ evolving requirements for engaging online experiences and keep moving your business forward. ¶ CON8896 - Living with SharePoint SharePoint is a popular platform, but it’s not always the best fit for Oracle customers. In this session, you’ll discover the technical and nontechnical limitations and pitfalls of SharePoint and learn about Oracle alternatives for collaboration, portals, enterprise and Web content management, social computing, and application integration. The presentation shows you how to integrate with SharePoint when business or IT requirements dictate and covers cloud-based (Office 365) and on-premises versions of SharePoint. Presented by a former Microsoft director of SharePoint product management and backed by independent customer research, this session will prepare you to answer the question “Why don’t we just use SharePoint for that?’ the next time it comes up in your organization. ¶ CON7843 - Content-Enabling Enterprise Processes with Oracle WebCenter Organizations today continually strive to automate business processes, reduce costs, and improve efficiency. Many business processes are content-intensive and unstructured, requiring ad hoc collaboration, and distributed in nature, requiring many approvals and generating huge volumes of paper. In this session, learn how Oracle and SYSTIME have partnered to help a customer content-enable its enterprise with Oracle WebCenter Content and Oracle WebCenter Imaging 11g and integrate them with Oracle Applications. ¶ CON6114 - Tape Robotics’ Newest Superhero: Now Fueled by Oracle Software For small, midsize, and rapidly growing businesses that want the most energy-efficient, scalable storage infrastructure to meet their rapidly growing data demands, Oracle’s most recent addition to its award-winning tape portfolio leverages several pieces of Oracle software. With Oracle Linux, Oracle WebLogic, and Oracle Fusion Middleware tools, the library achieves a higher level of usability than previous products while offering customers a familiar interface for management, plus ease of use. This session examines the competitive advantages of the tape library and how Oracle software raises customer satisfaction. Learn how the combination of Oracle engineered systems, Oracle Secure Backup, and Oracle’s StorageTek tape libraries provide end-to-end coverage of your data. ¶ CON9437 - Mobile Access Management With more than five billion mobile devices on the planet and an increasing number of users using their own devices to access corporate data and applications, securely extending identity management to mobile devices has become a hot topic. This session focuses on how to extend your existing identity management infrastructure and policies to securely and seamlessly enable mobile user access. CON7815 - Customer Experience Online in Cloud: Oracle WebCenter Sites, Oracle ATG Apps, Oracle Exalogic Oracle WebCenter Sites and Oracle’s ATG product line together can provide a compelling marketing and e-commerce experience. When you couple them with the extreme performance of Oracle Exalogic, you’ll see unmatched scalability that provides you with a true cloud-based solution. In this session, you’ll learn how running Oracle WebCenter Sites and ATG applications on Oracle Exalogic delivers both a private and a public cloud experience. Find out what it takes to get these systems working together and delivering engaging Web experiences. Even if you aren’t considering Oracle Exalogic today, the rich Web experience of Oracle WebCenter, paired with the depth of the ATG product line, can provide your business full support, from merchandising through sale completion. ¶ CON8271 - Oracle WebCenter Portal Strategy and Vision To innovate and keep a competitive edge, organizations need to leverage the power of agile and responsive Web applications. Oracle WebCenter Portal enables you to do just that, by delivering intuitive user experiences for enterprise applications to drive innovation with composite applications and mashups. Attend this session to learn firsthand from customers how Oracle WebCenter Portal extends the value of existing enterprise applications, business processes, and content; delivers a superior business user experience; and maximizes limited IT resources. ¶ CON8880 - The Connected Customer Experience Begins with the Online Channel There’s a lot of talk these days about how to connect the customer journey across various touchpoints—from Websites and e-commerce to call centers and in-store—to provide experiences that are more relevant and engaging and ultimately gain competitive edge. Doing it all at once isn’t a realistic objective, so where do you start? Come to this session, and hear about three steps you can take that can help you begin your journey toward delivering the connected customer experience. You’ll hear how Oracle now has an integrated digital marketing platform for your corporate Website, your e-commerce site, your self-service portal, and your marketing and loyalty campaigns, and you’ll learn what you can do today to begin executing on your customer experience initiatives. ¶ GEN11451 - General Session: Building Mobile Applications with Oracle Cloud With the prevalence of smart mobile devices, companies are facing an increased demand to provide access to data and applications from new channels. However, developing applications for mobile devices poses some unique challenges. Come to this session to learn how Oracle addresses these challenges, offering a simpler way to develop and deploy cross-device mobile applications. See how Oracle Cloud enables you to access applications, data, and services from mobile channels in an easier way.  CON8272 - Oracle Social Network Strategy and Vision One key way of increasing employee productivity is by bringing people, processes, and information together—providing new social capabilities to enable business users to quickly correspond and collaborate on business activities. Oracle WebCenter provides a user engagement platform with social and collaborative technologies to empower business users to focus on their key business processes, applications, and content in the context of their role and process. Attend this session to hear how the latest social capabilities in Oracle Social Network are enabling organizations to transform themselves into social businesses.  --- Tuesday, October 2nd HOL10194 - Enterprise Content Management Simplified: Oracle WebCenter Content’s Next-Generation UI Regardless of the nature of your business, unstructured content underpins many of its daily functions. Whether you are working with traditional presentations, spreadsheets, or text documents—or even with digital assets such as images and multimedia files—your content needs to be accessible and manageable in convenient and intuitive ways to make working with the content easier. Additionally, you need the ability to easily share documents with coworkers to facilitate a collaborative working environment. Come to this session to see how Oracle WebCenter Content’s next-generation user interface helps modern knowledge workers easily manage personal and enterprise documents in a collaborative environment.¶ CON8877 - Develop a Mobile Strategy with Oracle WebCenter: Engage Customers, Employees, and Partners Mobile technology has gone from nice-to-have to a cornerstone of user engagement. Mobile access enables users to have information available at their fingertips, enabling them to take action the moment they make a decision, interact in the moment of convenience, and take advantage of new service offerings in their preferred channels. All your employees have your mobile applications in their pocket; now what are you going to do? It is a critical step for companies to think through what their employees, customers, and partners really need on their devices. Attend this session to see how Oracle WebCenter enables you to better engage your customers, employees, and partners by providing a unified experience across multiple channels. ¶ CON9447 - Enabling Access for Hundreds of Millions of Users How do you grow your business by identifying, authenticating, authorizing, and federating users on the Web, leveraging social identity and the open source OAuth protocol? How do you scale your access management solution to support hundreds of millions of users? With social identity support out of the box, Oracle’s access management solution is also benchmarked for 250-million-user deployment according to real-world customer scenarios. In this session, you will learn about the social identity capability and the 250-million-user benchmark testing of Oracle Access Manager and Oracle Adaptive Access Manager running on Oracle Exalogic and Oracle Exadata. ¶ HOL10207 - Build an Intranet Portal with Oracle WebCenter In this hands-on lab, you’ll work with Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle WebCenter Content to build out an enterprise portal that maximizes the productivity of teams and individual contributors. Using browser-based tools, you’ll manage site resources such as page styles, templates, and navigation. You’ll edit content stored in Oracle WebCenter Content directly from your portal. You’ll also experience the latest features that promote collaboration, social networking, and personal productivity. ¶ CON2906 - Get Proactive: Best Practices for Maintaining Oracle Fusion Middleware You chose Oracle Fusion Middleware products to help your organization deliver superior business results. Now learn how to take full advantage of your software with all the great tools, resources, and product updates you’re entitled to through Oracle Support. In this session, Oracle product experts provide proven best practices to help you work more efficiently, plan and prepare for upgrades and patching more effectively, and manage risk. Topics include configuration management tools, remote diagnostics, My Oracle Support Community, and My Oracle Support Lifecycle Advisors. New users and Oracle Fusion Middleware experts alike are guaranteed to leave with fresh ideas and practical, easy-to-implement next steps. ¶ CON8878 - Oracle WebCenter’s Cloud Strategy: From Social and Platform Services to Mashups Cloud computing represents a paradigm shift in how we build applications, automate processes, collaborate, and share and in how we secure our enterprise. Additionally, as you adopt cloud-based services in your organization, it’s likely that you will still have many critical on-premises applications running. With these mixed environments, multiple user interfaces, different security, and multiple datasources and content sources, how do you start evolving your strategy to account for these challenges? Oracle WebCenter offers a complete array of technologies enabling you to solve these challenges and prepare you for the cloud. Attend this session to learn how you can use Oracle WebCenter in the cloud as well as create on-premises and cloud application mash-ups. ¶ CON8901 - Optimize Enterprise Business Processes with Oracle WebCenter and Oracle BPM Do you have business processes that span multiple applications? Are you grappling with how to have visibility across these business processes; how to manage content that is associated with these processes; and, most importantly, how to model and optimize these business processes? Attend this session to hear how Oracle WebCenter and Oracle Business Process Management provide a unique set of integrated solutions to provide a composite application dashboard across these business processes and offer a solution for content-centric business processes. ¶ CON8883 - Deliver Engaging Interfaces to Oracle Applications with Oracle WebCenter Critical business processes live within enterprise applications, and application users need to manage and execute these processes as effectively as possible. Oracle provides a comprehensive user engagement platform to increase user productivity and optimize overall processes within Oracle Applications—Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle’s Siebel, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards product families—and third-party applications. Attend this session to learn how you can integrate these applications with Oracle WebCenter to deliver composite application dashboards to your end users—whether they are your customers, partners, or employees—for enhanced usability and Web 2.0–enabled enterprise portals.¶ Wednesday, October 3rd CON8895 - Future-Ready Intranets: How Aramark Re-engineered the Application Landscape There are essential techniques and technologies you can use to deliver employee portals that garner higher productivity, improve business efficiency, and increase user engagement. Attend this session to learn how you can leverage Oracle WebCenter Portal as a user engagement platform for bringing together business process management, enterprise content management, and business intelligence into a highly relevant and integrated experience. Hear how Aramark has leveraged Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle WebCenter Content to deliver a unified workspace providing simpler navigation and processing, consolidation of tools, easy access to information, integrated search, and single sign-on. ¶ CON8886 - Content Consolidation: Save Money, Increase Efficiency, and Eliminate Silos Organizations are looking for ways to save money and be more efficient. With content in many different places, it’s difficult to know where to look for a document and whether the document is the most current version. With Oracle WebCenter, content can be consolidated into one best-of-breed repository that is secure, scalable, and integrated with your business processes and applications. Users can find the content they need, where they need it, and ensure that it is the right content. This session covers content challenges that affect your business; content consolidation that can lead to savings in storage and administration costs and can lower risks; and how companies are realizing savings. ¶ CON8911 - Improve Online Experiences for Customers and Partners with Self-Service Portals Are you able to provide your customers and partners an easy-to-use online self-service experience? Are you processing high-volume transactions and struggling with call center bottlenecks or back-end systems that won’t integrate, causing order delays and customer frustration? Are you looking to target content such as product and service offerings to your end users? This session shares approaches to providing targeted delivery as well as strategies and best practices for transforming your business by providing an intuitive user experience for your customers and partners. ¶ CON6156 - Top 10 Ways to Integrate Oracle WebCenter Content This session covers 10 common ways to integrate Oracle WebCenter Content with other enterprise applications and middleware. It discusses out-of-the-box modules that provide expanded features in Oracle WebCenter Content—such as enterprise search, SOA, and BPEL—as well as developer tools you can use to create custom integrations. The presentation also gives guidance on which integration option may work best in your environment. ¶ HOL10207 - Build an Intranet Portal with Oracle WebCenter In this hands-on lab, you’ll work with Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle WebCenter Content to build out an enterprise portal that maximizes the productivity of teams and individual contributors. Using browser-based tools, you’ll manage site resources such as page styles, templates, and navigation. You’ll edit content stored in Oracle WebCenter Content directly from your portal. You’ll also experience the latest features that promote collaboration, social networking, and personal productivity. ¶ CON7817 - Migration to Oracle WebCenter Imaging 11g Customers today continually strive to automate business processes, reduce costs, and improve efficiency. The accounts payable process—which is often distributed in nature, requires many approvals, and generates huge volumes of paper invoices—is automated by many customers. In this session, learn how Oracle and SYSTIME have partnered to help a customer migrate its existing Oracle Imaging and Process Management Release 7.6 to the latest Oracle WebCenter Imaging 11g and integrate it with Oracle’s JD Edwards family of products. ¶ CON8910 - How to Engage Customers Across Web, Mobile, and Social Channels Whether on desktops at the office, on tablets at home, or on mobile phones when on the go, today’s customers are always connected. To engage today’s customers, you need to make the online customer experience connected and consistent across a host of devices and multiple channels, including Web, mobile, and social networks. Managing this multichannel environment can result in lots of headaches without the right tools. Attend this session to learn how Oracle WebCenter Sites solves the challenge of multichannel customer engagement. ¶ HOL10206 - Oracle WebCenter Sites 11g: Transforming the Content Contributor Experience Oracle WebCenter Sites 11g makes it easy for marketers and business users to contribute to and manage Websites with the new visual, contextual, and intuitive Web authoring interface. In this hands-on lab, you will create and manage content for a sports-themed Website, using many of the new and enhanced features of the 11g release. ¶ CON8900 - Building Next-Generation Portals: An Interactive Customer Panel Discussion Social and collaborative technologies have changed how people interact, learn, and collaborate, and providing a modern, social Web presence is imperative to remain competitive in today’s market. Can your business benefit from a more collaborative and interactive portal environment for employees, customers, and partners? Attend this session to hear from Oracle WebCenter Portal customers as they share their strategies and best practices for providing users with a modern experience that adapts to their needs and includes personalized access to content in context. The panel also addresses how customers have benefited from creating next-generation portals by migrating from older portal technologies to Oracle WebCenter Portal. ¶ CON9625 - Taking Control of Oracle WebCenter Security Organizations are increasingly looking to extend their Oracle WebCenter portal for social business, to serve external users and provide seamless access to the right information. In particular, many organizations are extending Oracle WebCenter in a business-to-business scenario requiring secure identification and authorization of business partners and their users. This session focuses on how customers are leveraging, securing, and providing access control to Oracle WebCenter portal and mobile solutions. You will learn best practices and hear real-world examples of how to provide flexible and granular access control for Oracle WebCenter deployments, using Oracle Platform Security Services and Oracle Access Management Suite product offerings. ¶ CON8891 - Extending Social into Enterprise Applications and Business Processes Oracle Social Network is an extensible social platform that enables contextual collaboration within enterprise applications and business processes, providing relevant data from across various enterprise systems in one place. Attend this session to see how an Oracle Social Network customer is integrating multiple applications—such as CRM, HCM, and business processes—into Oracle Social Network and Oracle WebCenter to enable individuals and teams to solve complex cross-organizational business problems more effectively by utilizing the social enterprise. ¶ Thursday, October 4th CON8899 - Becoming a Social Business: Stories from the Front Lines of Change What does it really mean to be a social business? How can you change our organization to embrace social approaches? What pitfalls do you need to avoid? In this lively panel discussion, customer and industry thought leaders in social business explore these topics and more as they share their stories of the good, the bad, and the ugly that can happen when embracing social methods and technologies to improve business success. Using moderated questions and open Q&A from the audience, the panel discusses vital topics such as the critical factors for success, the major issues to avoid, how to gain senior executive support for social efforts, how to handle undesired behavior, and how to measure business impact. It takes a thought-provoking look at becoming a social business from the inside. ¶ CON6851 - Oracle WebCenter and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition to Create Vendor Portals Large manufacturers of grocery items routinely find themselves depending on the inventory management expertise of their wholesalers and distributors. Inventory costs can be managed more efficiently by the manufacturers if they have better insight into the inventory levels of items carried by their distributors. This creates a unique opportunity for distributors and wholesalers to leverage this knowledge into a revenue-generating subscription service. Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition and Oracle WebCenter Portal play a key part in enabling creation of business-managed business intelligence portals for vendors. This session discusses one customer that implemented this by leveraging Oracle WebCenter and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. ¶ CON8879 - Provide a Personalized and Consistent Customer Experience in Your Websites and Portals Your customers engage with your company online in different ways throughout their journey—from prospecting by acquiring information on your corporate Website to transacting through self-service applications on your customer portal—and then the cycle begins again when they look for new products and services. Ensuring that the customer experience is consistent and personalized across online properties—from branding and content to interactions and transactions—can be a daunting task. Oracle WebCenter enables you to speak and interact with your customers with one voice across your Websites and portals by providing an integrated platform for delivery of self-service and engagement that unifies and personalizes the online experience. Learn more in this session. ¶ CON8898 - Land Mines, Potholes, and Dirt Roads: Navigating the Way to ECM Nirvana Ten years ago, people were predicting that by this time in history, we’d be some kind of utopian paperless society. As we all know, we’re not there yet, but are we getting closer? What is keeping companies from driving down the road to enterprise content management bliss? Most people understand that using ECM as a central platform enables organizations to expedite document-centric processes, but most business processes in organizations are still heavily paper-based. Many of these processes could be automated and improved with an ECM platform infrastructure. In this panel discussion, you’ll hear from Oracle WebCenter customers that have already solved some of these challenges as they share their strategies for success and roads to avoid along your journey. ¶ CON8908 - Oracle WebCenter Portal: Creating and Using Content Presenter Templates Oracle WebCenter Portal applications use task flows to display and integrate content stored in the Oracle WebCenter Content server. Among the most flexible task flows is Content Presenter, which renders various types of content on an Oracle WebCenter Portal page. Although Oracle WebCenter Portal comes with a set of predefined Content Presenter templates, developers can create their own templates for specific rendering needs. This session shows the lifecycle of developing Content Presenter task flows, including how to create, package, import, modify at runtime, and use such templates. In addition to simple examples with Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) UI elements to render the content, it shows how to use other UI technologies, CSS files, and JavaScript libraries. ¶ CON8897 - Using Web Experience Management to Drive Online Marketing Success Every year, the online channel becomes more imperative for driving organizational top-line revenue, but for many companies, mastering how to best market their products and services in a fast-evolving online world with high customer expectations for personalized experiences can be a complex proposition. Come to this panel discussion, and hear directly from online marketers how they are succeeding today by using Web experience management to drive marketing success, using capabilities such as targeting and optimization, user-generated content, mobile site publishing, and site visitor personalization to deliver engaging online experiences. ¶ CON8892 - Oracle’s Journey to Social Business Social business is a revolution, one that is causing rapidly accelerating change in how companies and customers engage with one another and how employees work together. Oracle’s goal in becoming a social business is to create a socially connected organization in which working collaboratively across geographical locations, lines of business, and management chains is second nature, enabling innovative solutions to business challenges. We can achieve this by connecting the right people, finding the right content, communicating with the right people, collaborating at the right time, and building the right communities in the right context—all ready in the CLOUD. Attend this session to see how Oracle is transforming itself into a social business. ¶  ------------ If you've read all the way to the end here - we are REALLY looking forward to seeing you in San Francisco.

    Read the article

  • Parallelism in .NET – Part 3, Imperative Data Parallelism: Early Termination

    - by Reed
    Although simple data parallelism allows us to easily parallelize many of our iteration statements, there are cases that it does not handle well.  In my previous discussion, I focused on data parallelism with no shared state, and where every element is being processed exactly the same. Unfortunately, there are many common cases where this does not happen.  If we are dealing with a loop that requires early termination, extra care is required when parallelizing. Often, while processing in a loop, once a certain condition is met, it is no longer necessary to continue processing.  This may be a matter of finding a specific element within the collection, or reaching some error case.  The important distinction here is that, it is often impossible to know until runtime, what set of elements needs to be processed. In my initial discussion of data parallelism, I mentioned that this technique is a candidate when you can decompose the problem based on the data involved, and you wish to apply a single operation concurrently on all of the elements of a collection.  This covers many of the potential cases, but sometimes, after processing some of the elements, we need to stop processing. As an example, lets go back to our previous Parallel.ForEach example with contacting a customer.  However, this time, we’ll change the requirements slightly.  In this case, we’ll add an extra condition – if the store is unable to email the customer, we will exit gracefully.  The thinking here, of course, is that if the store is currently unable to email, the next time this operation runs, it will handle the same situation, so we can just skip our processing entirely.  The original, serial case, with this extra condition, might look something like the following: foreach(var customer in customers) { // Run some process that takes some time... DateTime lastContact = theStore.GetLastContact(customer); TimeSpan timeSinceContact = DateTime.Now - lastContact; // If it's been more than two weeks, send an email, and update... if (timeSinceContact.Days > 14) { // Exit gracefully if we fail to email, since this // entire process can be repeated later without issue. if (theStore.EmailCustomer(customer) == false) break; customer.LastEmailContact = DateTime.Now; } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Here, we’re processing our loop, but at any point, if we fail to send our email successfully, we just abandon this process, and assume that it will get handled correctly the next time our routine is run.  If we try to parallelize this using Parallel.ForEach, as we did previously, we’ll run into an error almost immediately: the break statement we’re using is only valid when enclosed within an iteration statement, such as foreach.  When we switch to Parallel.ForEach, we’re no longer within an iteration statement – we’re a delegate running in a method. This needs to be handled slightly differently when parallelized.  Instead of using the break statement, we need to utilize a new class in the Task Parallel Library: ParallelLoopState.  The ParallelLoopState class is intended to allow concurrently running loop bodies a way to interact with each other, and provides us with a way to break out of a loop.  In order to use this, we will use a different overload of Parallel.ForEach which takes an IEnumerable<T> and an Action<T, ParallelLoopState> instead of an Action<T>.  Using this, we can parallelize the above operation by doing: Parallel.ForEach(customers, (customer, parallelLoopState) => { // Run some process that takes some time... DateTime lastContact = theStore.GetLastContact(customer); TimeSpan timeSinceContact = DateTime.Now - lastContact; // If it's been more than two weeks, send an email, and update... if (timeSinceContact.Days > 14) { // Exit gracefully if we fail to email, since this // entire process can be repeated later without issue. if (theStore.EmailCustomer(customer) == false) parallelLoopState.Break(); else customer.LastEmailContact = DateTime.Now; } }); There are a couple of important points here.  First, we didn’t actually instantiate the ParallelLoopState instance.  It was provided directly to us via the Parallel class.  All we needed to do was change our lambda expression to reflect that we want to use the loop state, and the Parallel class creates an instance for our use.  We also needed to change our logic slightly when we call Break().  Since Break() doesn’t stop the program flow within our block, we needed to add an else case to only set the property in customer when we succeeded.  This same technique can be used to break out of a Parallel.For loop. That being said, there is a huge difference between using ParallelLoopState to cause early termination and to use break in a standard iteration statement.  When dealing with a loop serially, break will immediately terminate the processing within the closest enclosing loop statement.  Calling ParallelLoopState.Break(), however, has a very different behavior. The issue is that, now, we’re no longer processing one element at a time.  If we break in one of our threads, there are other threads that will likely still be executing.  This leads to an important observation about termination of parallel code: Early termination in parallel routines is not immediate.  Code will continue to run after you request a termination. This may seem problematic at first, but it is something you just need to keep in mind while designing your routine.  ParallelLoopState.Break() should be thought of as a request.  We are telling the runtime that no elements that were in the collection past the element we’re currently processing need to be processed, and leaving it up to the runtime to decide how to handle this as gracefully as possible.  Although this may seem problematic at first, it is a good thing.  If the runtime tried to immediately stop processing, many of our elements would be partially processed.  It would be like putting a return statement in a random location throughout our loop body – which could have horrific consequences to our code’s maintainability. In order to understand and effectively write parallel routines, we, as developers, need a subtle, but profound shift in our thinking.  We can no longer think in terms of sequential processes, but rather need to think in terms of requests to the system that may be handled differently than we’d first expect.  This is more natural to developers who have dealt with asynchronous models previously, but is an important distinction when moving to concurrent programming models. As an example, I’ll discuss the Break() method.  ParallelLoopState.Break() functions in a way that may be unexpected at first.  When you call Break() from a loop body, the runtime will continue to process all elements of the collection that were found prior to the element that was being processed when the Break() method was called.  This is done to keep the behavior of the Break() method as close to the behavior of the break statement as possible. We can see the behavior in this simple code: var collection = Enumerable.Range(0, 20); var pResult = Parallel.ForEach(collection, (element, state) => { if (element > 10) { Console.WriteLine("Breaking on {0}", element); state.Break(); } Console.WriteLine(element); }); If we run this, we get a result that may seem unexpected at first: 0 2 1 5 6 3 4 10 Breaking on 11 11 Breaking on 12 12 9 Breaking on 13 13 7 8 Breaking on 15 15 What is occurring here is that we loop until we find the first element where the element is greater than 10.  In this case, this was found, the first time, when one of our threads reached element 11.  It requested that the loop stop by calling Break() at this point.  However, the loop continued processing until all of the elements less than 11 were completed, then terminated.  This means that it will guarantee that elements 9, 7, and 8 are completed before it stops processing.  You can see our other threads that were running each tried to break as well, but since Break() was called on the element with a value of 11, it decides which elements (0-10) must be processed. If this behavior is not desirable, there is another option.  Instead of calling ParallelLoopState.Break(), you can call ParallelLoopState.Stop().  The Stop() method requests that the runtime terminate as soon as possible , without guaranteeing that any other elements are processed.  Stop() will not stop the processing within an element, so elements already being processed will continue to be processed.  It will prevent new elements, even ones found earlier in the collection, from being processed.  Also, when Stop() is called, the ParallelLoopState’s IsStopped property will return true.  This lets longer running processes poll for this value, and return after performing any necessary cleanup. The basic rule of thumb for choosing between Break() and Stop() is the following. Use ParallelLoopState.Stop() when possible, since it terminates more quickly.  This is particularly useful in situations where you are searching for an element or a condition in the collection.  Once you’ve found it, you do not need to do any other processing, so Stop() is more appropriate. Use ParallelLoopState.Break() if you need to more closely match the behavior of the C# break statement. Both methods behave differently than our C# break statement.  Unfortunately, when parallelizing a routine, more thought and care needs to be put into every aspect of your routine than you may otherwise expect.  This is due to my second observation: Parallelizing a routine will almost always change its behavior. This sounds crazy at first, but it’s a concept that’s so simple its easy to forget.  We’re purposely telling the system to process more than one thing at the same time, which means that the sequence in which things get processed is no longer deterministic.  It is easy to change the behavior of your routine in very subtle ways by introducing parallelism.  Often, the changes are not avoidable, even if they don’t have any adverse side effects.  This leads to my final observation for this post: Parallelization is something that should be handled with care and forethought, added by design, and not just introduced casually.

    Read the article

  • Parallelism in .NET – Part 2, Simple Imperative Data Parallelism

    - by Reed
    In my discussion of Decomposition of the problem space, I mentioned that Data Decomposition is often the simplest abstraction to use when trying to parallelize a routine.  If a problem can be decomposed based off the data, we will often want to use what MSDN refers to as Data Parallelism as our strategy for implementing our routine.  The Task Parallel Library in .NET 4 makes implementing Data Parallelism, for most cases, very simple. Data Parallelism is the main technique we use to parallelize a routine which can be decomposed based off data.  Data Parallelism refers to taking a single collection of data, and having a single operation be performed concurrently on elements in the collection.  One side note here: Data Parallelism is also sometimes referred to as the Loop Parallelism Pattern or Loop-level Parallelism.  In general, for this series, I will try to use the terminology used in the MSDN Documentation for the Task Parallel Library.  This should make it easier to investigate these topics in more detail. Once we’ve determined we have a problem that, potentially, can be decomposed based on data, implementation using Data Parallelism in the TPL is quite simple.  Let’s take our example from the Data Decomposition discussion – a simple contrast stretching filter.  Here, we have a collection of data (pixels), and we need to run a simple operation on each element of the pixel.  Once we know the minimum and maximum values, we most likely would have some simple code like the following: for (int row=0; row < pixelData.GetUpperBound(0); ++row) { for (int col=0; col < pixelData.GetUpperBound(1); ++col) { pixelData[row, col] = AdjustContrast(pixelData[row, col], minPixel, maxPixel); } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } This simple routine loops through a two dimensional array of pixelData, and calls the AdjustContrast routine on each pixel. As I mentioned, when you’re decomposing a problem space, most iteration statements are potentially candidates for data decomposition.  Here, we’re using two for loops – one looping through rows in the image, and a second nested loop iterating through the columns.  We then perform one, independent operation on each element based on those loop positions. This is a prime candidate – we have no shared data, no dependencies on anything but the pixel which we want to change.  Since we’re using a for loop, we can easily parallelize this using the Parallel.For method in the TPL: Parallel.For(0, pixelData.GetUpperBound(0), row => { for (int col=0; col < pixelData.GetUpperBound(1); ++col) { pixelData[row, col] = AdjustContrast(pixelData[row, col], minPixel, maxPixel); } }); Here, by simply changing our first for loop to a call to Parallel.For, we can parallelize this portion of our routine.  Parallel.For works, as do many methods in the TPL, by creating a delegate and using it as an argument to a method.  In this case, our for loop iteration block becomes a delegate creating via a lambda expression.  This lets you write code that, superficially, looks similar to the familiar for loop, but functions quite differently at runtime. We could easily do this to our second for loop as well, but that may not be a good idea.  There is a balance to be struck when writing parallel code.  We want to have enough work items to keep all of our processors busy, but the more we partition our data, the more overhead we introduce.  In this case, we have an image of data – most likely hundreds of pixels in both dimensions.  By just parallelizing our first loop, each row of pixels can be run as a single task.  With hundreds of rows of data, we are providing fine enough granularity to keep all of our processors busy. If we parallelize both loops, we’re potentially creating millions of independent tasks.  This introduces extra overhead with no extra gain, and will actually reduce our overall performance.  This leads to my first guideline when writing parallel code: Partition your problem into enough tasks to keep each processor busy throughout the operation, but not more than necessary to keep each processor busy. Also note that I parallelized the outer loop.  I could have just as easily partitioned the inner loop.  However, partitioning the inner loop would have led to many more discrete work items, each with a smaller amount of work (operate on one pixel instead of one row of pixels).  My second guideline when writing parallel code reflects this: Partition your problem in a way to place the most work possible into each task. This typically means, in practice, that you will want to parallelize the routine at the “highest” point possible in the routine, typically the outermost loop.  If you’re looking at parallelizing methods which call other methods, you’ll want to try to partition your work high up in the stack – as you get into lower level methods, the performance impact of parallelizing your routines may not overcome the overhead introduced. Parallel.For works great for situations where we know the number of elements we’re going to process in advance.  If we’re iterating through an IList<T> or an array, this is a typical approach.  However, there are other iteration statements common in C#.  In many situations, we’ll use foreach instead of a for loop.  This can be more understandable and easier to read, but also has the advantage of working with collections which only implement IEnumerable<T>, where we do not know the number of elements involved in advance. As an example, lets take the following situation.  Say we have a collection of Customers, and we want to iterate through each customer, check some information about the customer, and if a certain case is met, send an email to the customer and update our instance to reflect this change.  Normally, this might look something like: foreach(var customer in customers) { // Run some process that takes some time... DateTime lastContact = theStore.GetLastContact(customer); TimeSpan timeSinceContact = DateTime.Now - lastContact; // If it's been more than two weeks, send an email, and update... if (timeSinceContact.Days > 14) { theStore.EmailCustomer(customer); customer.LastEmailContact = DateTime.Now; } } Here, we’re doing a fair amount of work for each customer in our collection, but we don’t know how many customers exist.  If we assume that theStore.GetLastContact(customer) and theStore.EmailCustomer(customer) are both side-effect free, thread safe operations, we could parallelize this using Parallel.ForEach: Parallel.ForEach(customers, customer => { // Run some process that takes some time... DateTime lastContact = theStore.GetLastContact(customer); TimeSpan timeSinceContact = DateTime.Now - lastContact; // If it's been more than two weeks, send an email, and update... if (timeSinceContact.Days > 14) { theStore.EmailCustomer(customer); customer.LastEmailContact = DateTime.Now; } }); Just like Parallel.For, we rework our loop into a method call accepting a delegate created via a lambda expression.  This keeps our new code very similar to our original iteration statement, however, this will now execute in parallel.  The same guidelines apply with Parallel.ForEach as with Parallel.For. The other iteration statements, do and while, do not have direct equivalents in the Task Parallel Library.  These, however, are very easy to implement using Parallel.ForEach and the yield keyword. Most applications can benefit from implementing some form of Data Parallelism.  Iterating through collections and performing “work” is a very common pattern in nearly every application.  When the problem can be decomposed by data, we often can parallelize the workload by merely changing foreach statements to Parallel.ForEach method calls, and for loops to Parallel.For method calls.  Any time your program operates on a collection, and does a set of work on each item in the collection where that work is not dependent on other information, you very likely have an opportunity to parallelize your routine.

    Read the article

  • Parallelism in .NET – Part 4, Imperative Data Parallelism: Aggregation

    - by Reed
    In the article on simple data parallelism, I described how to perform an operation on an entire collection of elements in parallel.  Often, this is not adequate, as the parallel operation is going to be performing some form of aggregation. Simple examples of this might include taking the sum of the results of processing a function on each element in the collection, or finding the minimum of the collection given some criteria.  This can be done using the techniques described in simple data parallelism, however, special care needs to be taken into account to synchronize the shared data appropriately.  The Task Parallel Library has tools to assist in this synchronization. The main issue with aggregation when parallelizing a routine is that you need to handle synchronization of data.  Since multiple threads will need to write to a shared portion of data.  Suppose, for example, that we wanted to parallelize a simple loop that looked for the minimum value within a dataset: double min = double.MaxValue; foreach(var item in collection) { double value = item.PerformComputation(); min = System.Math.Min(min, value); } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } This seems like a good candidate for parallelization, but there is a problem here.  If we just wrap this into a call to Parallel.ForEach, we’ll introduce a critical race condition, and get the wrong answer.  Let’s look at what happens here: // Buggy code! Do not use! double min = double.MaxValue; Parallel.ForEach(collection, item => { double value = item.PerformComputation(); min = System.Math.Min(min, value); }); This code has a fatal flaw: min will be checked, then set, by multiple threads simultaneously.  Two threads may perform the check at the same time, and set the wrong value for min.  Say we get a value of 1 in thread 1, and a value of 2 in thread 2, and these two elements are the first two to run.  If both hit the min check line at the same time, both will determine that min should change, to 1 and 2 respectively.  If element 1 happens to set the variable first, then element 2 sets the min variable, we’ll detect a min value of 2 instead of 1.  This can lead to wrong answers. Unfortunately, fixing this, with the Parallel.ForEach call we’re using, would require adding locking.  We would need to rewrite this like: // Safe, but slow double min = double.MaxValue; // Make a "lock" object object syncObject = new object(); Parallel.ForEach(collection, item => { double value = item.PerformComputation(); lock(syncObject) min = System.Math.Min(min, value); }); This will potentially add a huge amount of overhead to our calculation.  Since we can potentially block while waiting on the lock for every single iteration, we will most likely slow this down to where it is actually quite a bit slower than our serial implementation.  The problem is the lock statement – any time you use lock(object), you’re almost assuring reduced performance in a parallel situation.  This leads to two observations I’ll make: When parallelizing a routine, try to avoid locks. That being said: Always add any and all required synchronization to avoid race conditions. These two observations tend to be opposing forces – we often need to synchronize our algorithms, but we also want to avoid the synchronization when possible.  Looking at our routine, there is no way to directly avoid this lock, since each element is potentially being run on a separate thread, and this lock is necessary in order for our routine to function correctly every time. However, this isn’t the only way to design this routine to implement this algorithm.  Realize that, although our collection may have thousands or even millions of elements, we have a limited number of Processing Elements (PE).  Processing Element is the standard term for a hardware element which can process and execute instructions.  This typically is a core in your processor, but many modern systems have multiple hardware execution threads per core.  The Task Parallel Library will not execute the work for each item in the collection as a separate work item. Instead, when Parallel.ForEach executes, it will partition the collection into larger “chunks” which get processed on different threads via the ThreadPool.  This helps reduce the threading overhead, and help the overall speed.  In general, the Parallel class will only use one thread per PE in the system. Given the fact that there are typically fewer threads than work items, we can rethink our algorithm design.  We can parallelize our algorithm more effectively by approaching it differently.  Because the basic aggregation we are doing here (Min) is communitive, we do not need to perform this in a given order.  We knew this to be true already – otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to parallelize this routine in the first place.  With this in mind, we can treat each thread’s work independently, allowing each thread to serially process many elements with no locking, then, after all the threads are complete, “merge” together the results. This can be accomplished via a different set of overloads in the Parallel class: Parallel.ForEach<TSource,TLocal>.  The idea behind these overloads is to allow each thread to begin by initializing some local state (TLocal).  The thread will then process an entire set of items in the source collection, providing that state to the delegate which processes an individual item.  Finally, at the end, a separate delegate is run which allows you to handle merging that local state into your final results. To rewriting our routine using Parallel.ForEach<TSource,TLocal>, we need to provide three delegates instead of one.  The most basic version of this function is declared as: public static ParallelLoopResult ForEach<TSource, TLocal>( IEnumerable<TSource> source, Func<TLocal> localInit, Func<TSource, ParallelLoopState, TLocal, TLocal> body, Action<TLocal> localFinally ) The first delegate (the localInit argument) is defined as Func<TLocal>.  This delegate initializes our local state.  It should return some object we can use to track the results of a single thread’s operations. The second delegate (the body argument) is where our main processing occurs, although now, instead of being an Action<T>, we actually provide a Func<TSource, ParallelLoopState, TLocal, TLocal> delegate.  This delegate will receive three arguments: our original element from the collection (TSource), a ParallelLoopState which we can use for early termination, and the instance of our local state we created (TLocal).  It should do whatever processing you wish to occur per element, then return the value of the local state after processing is completed. The third delegate (the localFinally argument) is defined as Action<TLocal>.  This delegate is passed our local state after it’s been processed by all of the elements this thread will handle.  This is where you can merge your final results together.  This may require synchronization, but now, instead of synchronizing once per element (potentially millions of times), you’ll only have to synchronize once per thread, which is an ideal situation. Now that I’ve explained how this works, lets look at the code: // Safe, and fast! double min = double.MaxValue; // Make a "lock" object object syncObject = new object(); Parallel.ForEach( collection, // First, we provide a local state initialization delegate. () => double.MaxValue, // Next, we supply the body, which takes the original item, loop state, // and local state, and returns a new local state (item, loopState, localState) => { double value = item.PerformComputation(); return System.Math.Min(localState, value); }, // Finally, we provide an Action<TLocal>, to "merge" results together localState => { // This requires locking, but it's only once per used thread lock(syncObj) min = System.Math.Min(min, localState); } ); Although this is a bit more complicated than the previous version, it is now both thread-safe, and has minimal locking.  This same approach can be used by Parallel.For, although now, it’s Parallel.For<TLocal>.  When working with Parallel.For<TLocal>, you use the same triplet of delegates, with the same purpose and results. Also, many times, you can completely avoid locking by using a method of the Interlocked class to perform the final aggregation in an atomic operation.  The MSDN example demonstrating this same technique using Parallel.For uses the Interlocked class instead of a lock, since they are doing a sum operation on a long variable, which is possible via Interlocked.Add. By taking advantage of local state, we can use the Parallel class methods to parallelize algorithms such as aggregation, which, at first, may seem like poor candidates for parallelization.  Doing so requires careful consideration, and often requires a slight redesign of the algorithm, but the performance gains can be significant if handled in a way to avoid excessive synchronization.

    Read the article

  • Parallelism in .NET – Part 11, Divide and Conquer via Parallel.Invoke

    - by Reed
    Many algorithms are easily written to work via recursion.  For example, most data-oriented tasks where a tree of data must be processed are much more easily handled by starting at the root, and recursively “walking” the tree.  Some algorithms work this way on flat data structures, such as arrays, as well.  This is a form of divide and conquer: an algorithm design which is based around breaking up a set of work recursively, “dividing” the total work in each recursive step, and “conquering” the work when the remaining work is small enough to be solved easily. Recursive algorithms, especially ones based on a form of divide and conquer, are often a very good candidate for parallelization. This is apparent from a common sense standpoint.  Since we’re dividing up the total work in the algorithm, we have an obvious, built-in partitioning scheme.  Once partitioned, the data can be worked upon independently, so there is good, clean isolation of data. Implementing this type of algorithm is fairly simple.  The Parallel class in .NET 4 includes a method suited for this type of operation: Parallel.Invoke.  This method works by taking any number of delegates defined as an Action, and operating them all in parallel.  The method returns when every delegate has completed: Parallel.Invoke( () => { Console.WriteLine("Action 1 executing in thread {0}", Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId); }, () => { Console.WriteLine("Action 2 executing in thread {0}", Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId); }, () => { Console.WriteLine("Action 3 executing in thread {0}", Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId); } ); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Running this simple example demonstrates the ease of using this method.  For example, on my system, I get three separate thread IDs when running the above code.  By allowing any number of delegates to be executed directly, concurrently, the Parallel.Invoke method provides us an easy way to parallelize any algorithm based on divide and conquer.  We can divide our work in each step, and execute each task in parallel, recursively. For example, suppose we wanted to implement our own quicksort routine.  The quicksort algorithm can be designed based on divide and conquer.  In each iteration, we pick a pivot point, and use that to partition the total array.  We swap the elements around the pivot, then recursively sort the lists on each side of the pivot.  For example, let’s look at this simple, sequential implementation of quicksort: public static void QuickSort<T>(T[] array) where T : IComparable<T> { QuickSortInternal(array, 0, array.Length - 1); } private static void QuickSortInternal<T>(T[] array, int left, int right) where T : IComparable<T> { if (left >= right) { return; } SwapElements(array, left, (left + right) / 2); int last = left; for (int current = left + 1; current <= right; ++current) { if (array[current].CompareTo(array[left]) < 0) { ++last; SwapElements(array, last, current); } } SwapElements(array, left, last); QuickSortInternal(array, left, last - 1); QuickSortInternal(array, last + 1, right); } static void SwapElements<T>(T[] array, int i, int j) { T temp = array[i]; array[i] = array[j]; array[j] = temp; } Here, we implement the quicksort algorithm in a very common, divide and conquer approach.  Running this against the built-in Array.Sort routine shows that we get the exact same answers (although the framework’s sort routine is slightly faster).  On my system, for example, I can use framework’s sort to sort ten million random doubles in about 7.3s, and this implementation takes about 9.3s on average. Looking at this routine, though, there is a clear opportunity to parallelize.  At the end of QuickSortInternal, we recursively call into QuickSortInternal with each partition of the array after the pivot is chosen.  This can be rewritten to use Parallel.Invoke by simply changing it to: // Code above is unchanged... SwapElements(array, left, last); Parallel.Invoke( () => QuickSortInternal(array, left, last - 1), () => QuickSortInternal(array, last + 1, right) ); } This routine will now run in parallel.  When executing, we now see the CPU usage across all cores spike while it executes.  However, there is a significant problem here – by parallelizing this routine, we took it from an execution time of 9.3s to an execution time of approximately 14 seconds!  We’re using more resources as seen in the CPU usage, but the overall result is a dramatic slowdown in overall processing time. This occurs because parallelization adds overhead.  Each time we split this array, we spawn two new tasks to parallelize this algorithm!  This is far, far too many tasks for our cores to operate upon at a single time.  In effect, we’re “over-parallelizing” this routine.  This is a common problem when working with divide and conquer algorithms, and leads to an important observation: When parallelizing a recursive routine, take special care not to add more tasks than necessary to fully utilize your system. This can be done with a few different approaches, in this case.  Typically, the way to handle this is to stop parallelizing the routine at a certain point, and revert back to the serial approach.  Since the first few recursions will all still be parallelized, our “deeper” recursive tasks will be running in parallel, and can take full advantage of the machine.  This also dramatically reduces the overhead added by parallelizing, since we’re only adding overhead for the first few recursive calls.  There are two basic approaches we can take here.  The first approach would be to look at the total work size, and if it’s smaller than a specific threshold, revert to our serial implementation.  In this case, we could just check right-left, and if it’s under a threshold, call the methods directly instead of using Parallel.Invoke. The second approach is to track how “deep” in the “tree” we are currently at, and if we are below some number of levels, stop parallelizing.  This approach is a more general-purpose approach, since it works on routines which parse trees as well as routines working off of a single array, but may not work as well if a poor partitioning strategy is chosen or the tree is not balanced evenly. This can be written very easily.  If we pass a maxDepth parameter into our internal routine, we can restrict the amount of times we parallelize by changing the recursive call to: // Code above is unchanged... SwapElements(array, left, last); if (maxDepth < 1) { QuickSortInternal(array, left, last - 1, maxDepth); QuickSortInternal(array, last + 1, right, maxDepth); } else { --maxDepth; Parallel.Invoke( () => QuickSortInternal(array, left, last - 1, maxDepth), () => QuickSortInternal(array, last + 1, right, maxDepth)); } We no longer allow this to parallelize indefinitely – only to a specific depth, at which time we revert to a serial implementation.  By starting the routine with a maxDepth equal to Environment.ProcessorCount, we can restrict the total amount of parallel operations significantly, but still provide adequate work for each processing core. With this final change, my timings are much better.  On average, I get the following timings: Framework via Array.Sort: 7.3 seconds Serial Quicksort Implementation: 9.3 seconds Naive Parallel Implementation: 14 seconds Parallel Implementation Restricting Depth: 4.7 seconds Finally, we are now faster than the framework’s Array.Sort implementation.

    Read the article

  • Introduction to the ASP.NET Web API

    - by Stephen.Walther
    I am a huge fan of Ajax. If you want to create a great experience for the users of your website – regardless of whether you are building an ASP.NET MVC or an ASP.NET Web Forms site — then you need to use Ajax. Otherwise, you are just being cruel to your customers. We use Ajax extensively in several of the ASP.NET applications that my company, Superexpert.com, builds. We expose data from the server as JSON and use jQuery to retrieve and update that data from the browser. One challenge, when building an ASP.NET website, is deciding on which technology to use to expose JSON data from the server. For example, how do you expose a list of products from the server as JSON so you can retrieve the list of products with jQuery? You have a number of options (too many options) including ASMX Web services, WCF Web Services, ASHX Generic Handlers, WCF Data Services, and MVC controller actions. Fortunately, the world has just been simplified. With the release of ASP.NET 4 Beta, Microsoft has introduced a new technology for exposing JSON from the server named the ASP.NET Web API. You can use the ASP.NET Web API with both ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Web Forms applications. The goal of this blog post is to provide you with a brief overview of the features of the new ASP.NET Web API. You learn how to use the ASP.NET Web API to retrieve, insert, update, and delete database records with jQuery. We also discuss how you can perform form validation when using the Web API and use OData when using the Web API. Creating an ASP.NET Web API Controller The ASP.NET Web API exposes JSON data through a new type of controller called an API controller. You can add an API controller to an existing ASP.NET MVC 4 project through the standard Add Controller dialog box. Right-click your Controllers folder and select Add, Controller. In the dialog box, name your controller MovieController and select the Empty API controller template: A brand new API controller looks like this: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Net.Http; using System.Web.Http; namespace MyWebAPIApp.Controllers { public class MovieController : ApiController { } } An API controller, unlike a standard MVC controller, derives from the base ApiController class instead of the base Controller class. Using jQuery to Retrieve, Insert, Update, and Delete Data Let’s create an Ajaxified Movie Database application. We’ll retrieve, insert, update, and delete movies using jQuery with the MovieController which we just created. Our Movie model class looks like this: namespace MyWebAPIApp.Models { public class Movie { public int Id { get; set; } public string Title { get; set; } public string Director { get; set; } } } Our application will consist of a single HTML page named Movies.html. We’ll place all of our jQuery code in the Movies.html page. Getting a Single Record with the ASP.NET Web API To support retrieving a single movie from the server, we need to add a Get method to our API controller: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Net; using System.Net.Http; using System.Web.Http; using MyWebAPIApp.Models; namespace MyWebAPIApp.Controllers { public class MovieController : ApiController { public Movie GetMovie(int id) { // Return movie by id if (id == 1) { return new Movie { Id = 1, Title = "Star Wars", Director = "Lucas" }; } // Otherwise, movie was not found throw new HttpResponseException(HttpStatusCode.NotFound); } } } In the code above, the GetMovie() method accepts the Id of a movie. If the Id has the value 1 then the method returns the movie Star Wars. Otherwise, the method throws an exception and returns 404 Not Found HTTP status code. After building your project, you can invoke the MovieController.GetMovie() method by entering the following URL in your web browser address bar: http://localhost:[port]/api/movie/1 (You’ll need to enter the correct randomly generated port). In the URL api/movie/1, the first “api” segment indicates that this is a Web API route. The “movie” segment indicates that the MovieController should be invoked. You do not specify the name of the action. Instead, the HTTP method used to make the request – GET, POST, PUT, DELETE — is used to identify the action to invoke. The ASP.NET Web API uses different routing conventions than normal ASP.NET MVC controllers. When you make an HTTP GET request then any API controller method with a name that starts with “GET” is invoked. So, we could have called our API controller action GetPopcorn() instead of GetMovie() and it would still be invoked by the URL api/movie/1. The default route for the Web API is defined in the Global.asax file and it looks like this: routes.MapHttpRoute( name: "DefaultApi", routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{id}", defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional } ); We can invoke our GetMovie() controller action with the jQuery code in the following HTML page: <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Get Movie</title> </head> <body> <div> Title: <span id="title"></span> </div> <div> Director: <span id="director"></span> </div> <script type="text/javascript" src="Scripts/jquery-1.6.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> getMovie(1, function (movie) { $("#title").html(movie.Title); $("#director").html(movie.Director); }); function getMovie(id, callback) { $.ajax({ url: "/api/Movie", data: { id: id }, type: "GET", contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8", statusCode: { 200: function (movie) { callback(movie); }, 404: function () { alert("Not Found!"); } } }); } </script> </body> </html> In the code above, the jQuery $.ajax() method is used to invoke the GetMovie() method. Notice that the Ajax call handles two HTTP response codes. When the GetMove() method successfully returns a movie, the method returns a 200 status code. In that case, the details of the movie are displayed in the HTML page. Otherwise, if the movie is not found, the GetMovie() method returns a 404 status code. In that case, the page simply displays an alert box indicating that the movie was not found (hopefully, you would implement something more graceful in an actual application). You can use your browser’s Developer Tools to see what is going on in the background when you open the HTML page (hit F12 in the most recent version of most browsers). For example, you can use the Network tab in Google Chrome to see the Ajax request which invokes the GetMovie() method: Getting a Set of Records with the ASP.NET Web API Let’s modify our Movie API controller so that it returns a collection of movies. The following Movie controller has a new ListMovies() method which returns a (hard-coded) collection of movies: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Net; using System.Net.Http; using System.Web.Http; using MyWebAPIApp.Models; namespace MyWebAPIApp.Controllers { public class MovieController : ApiController { public IEnumerable<Movie> ListMovies() { return new List<Movie> { new Movie {Id=1, Title="Star Wars", Director="Lucas"}, new Movie {Id=1, Title="King Kong", Director="Jackson"}, new Movie {Id=1, Title="Memento", Director="Nolan"} }; } } } Because we named our action ListMovies(), the default Web API route will never match it. Therefore, we need to add the following custom route to our Global.asax file (at the top of the RegisterRoutes() method): routes.MapHttpRoute( name: "ActionApi", routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{action}/{id}", defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional } ); This route enables us to invoke the ListMovies() method with the URL /api/movie/listmovies. Now that we have exposed our collection of movies from the server, we can retrieve and display the list of movies using jQuery in our HTML page: <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>List Movies</title> </head> <body> <div id="movies"></div> <script type="text/javascript" src="Scripts/jquery-1.6.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> listMovies(function (movies) { var strMovies=""; $.each(movies, function (index, movie) { strMovies += "<div>" + movie.Title + "</div>"; }); $("#movies").html(strMovies); }); function listMovies(callback) { $.ajax({ url: "/api/Movie/ListMovies", data: {}, type: "GET", contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8", }).then(function(movies){ callback(movies); }); } </script> </body> </html>     Inserting a Record with the ASP.NET Web API Now let’s modify our Movie API controller so it supports creating new records: public HttpResponseMessage<Movie> PostMovie(Movie movieToCreate) { // Add movieToCreate to the database and update primary key movieToCreate.Id = 23; // Build a response that contains the location of the new movie var response = new HttpResponseMessage<Movie>(movieToCreate, HttpStatusCode.Created); var relativePath = "/api/movie/" + movieToCreate.Id; response.Headers.Location = new Uri(Request.RequestUri, relativePath); return response; } The PostMovie() method in the code above accepts a movieToCreate parameter. We don’t actually store the new movie anywhere. In real life, you will want to call a service method to store the new movie in a database. When you create a new resource, such as a new movie, you should return the location of the new resource. In the code above, the URL where the new movie can be retrieved is assigned to the Location header returned in the PostMovie() response. Because the name of our method starts with “Post”, we don’t need to create a custom route. The PostMovie() method can be invoked with the URL /Movie/PostMovie – just as long as the method is invoked within the context of a HTTP POST request. The following HTML page invokes the PostMovie() method. <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Create Movie</title> </head> <body> <script type="text/javascript" src="Scripts/jquery-1.6.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> var movieToCreate = { title: "The Hobbit", director: "Jackson" }; createMovie(movieToCreate, function (newMovie) { alert("New movie created with an Id of " + newMovie.Id); }); function createMovie(movieToCreate, callback) { $.ajax({ url: "/api/Movie", data: JSON.stringify( movieToCreate ), type: "POST", contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8", statusCode: { 201: function (newMovie) { callback(newMovie); } } }); } </script> </body> </html> This page creates a new movie (the Hobbit) by calling the createMovie() method. The page simply displays the Id of the new movie: The HTTP Post operation is performed with the following call to the jQuery $.ajax() method: $.ajax({ url: "/api/Movie", data: JSON.stringify( movieToCreate ), type: "POST", contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8", statusCode: { 201: function (newMovie) { callback(newMovie); } } }); Notice that the type of Ajax request is a POST request. This is required to match the PostMovie() method. Notice, furthermore, that the new movie is converted into JSON using JSON.stringify(). The JSON.stringify() method takes a JavaScript object and converts it into a JSON string. Finally, notice that success is represented with a 201 status code. The HttpStatusCode.Created value returned from the PostMovie() method returns a 201 status code. Updating a Record with the ASP.NET Web API Here’s how we can modify the Movie API controller to support updating an existing record. In this case, we need to create a PUT method to handle an HTTP PUT request: public void PutMovie(Movie movieToUpdate) { if (movieToUpdate.Id == 1) { // Update the movie in the database return; } // If you can't find the movie to update throw new HttpResponseException(HttpStatusCode.NotFound); } Unlike our PostMovie() method, the PutMovie() method does not return a result. The action either updates the database or, if the movie cannot be found, returns an HTTP Status code of 404. The following HTML page illustrates how you can invoke the PutMovie() method: <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Put Movie</title> </head> <body> <script type="text/javascript" src="Scripts/jquery-1.6.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> var movieToUpdate = { id: 1, title: "The Hobbit", director: "Jackson" }; updateMovie(movieToUpdate, function () { alert("Movie updated!"); }); function updateMovie(movieToUpdate, callback) { $.ajax({ url: "/api/Movie", data: JSON.stringify(movieToUpdate), type: "PUT", contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8", statusCode: { 200: function () { callback(); }, 404: function () { alert("Movie not found!"); } } }); } </script> </body> </html> Deleting a Record with the ASP.NET Web API Here’s the code for deleting a movie: public HttpResponseMessage DeleteMovie(int id) { // Delete the movie from the database // Return status code return new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.NoContent); } This method simply deletes the movie (well, not really, but pretend that it does) and returns a No Content status code (204). The following page illustrates how you can invoke the DeleteMovie() action: <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Delete Movie</title> </head> <body> <script type="text/javascript" src="Scripts/jquery-1.6.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> deleteMovie(1, function () { alert("Movie deleted!"); }); function deleteMovie(id, callback) { $.ajax({ url: "/api/Movie", data: JSON.stringify({id:id}), type: "DELETE", contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8", statusCode: { 204: function () { callback(); } } }); } </script> </body> </html> Performing Validation How do you perform form validation when using the ASP.NET Web API? Because validation in ASP.NET MVC is driven by the Default Model Binder, and because the Web API uses the Default Model Binder, you get validation for free. Let’s modify our Movie class so it includes some of the standard validation attributes: using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations; namespace MyWebAPIApp.Models { public class Movie { public int Id { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage="Title is required!")] [StringLength(5, ErrorMessage="Title cannot be more than 5 characters!")] public string Title { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage="Director is required!")] public string Director { get; set; } } } In the code above, the Required validation attribute is used to make both the Title and Director properties required. The StringLength attribute is used to require the length of the movie title to be no more than 5 characters. Now let’s modify our PostMovie() action to validate a movie before adding the movie to the database: public HttpResponseMessage PostMovie(Movie movieToCreate) { // Validate movie if (!ModelState.IsValid) { var errors = new JsonArray(); foreach (var prop in ModelState.Values) { if (prop.Errors.Any()) { errors.Add(prop.Errors.First().ErrorMessage); } } return new HttpResponseMessage<JsonValue>(errors, HttpStatusCode.BadRequest); } // Add movieToCreate to the database and update primary key movieToCreate.Id = 23; // Build a response that contains the location of the new movie var response = new HttpResponseMessage<Movie>(movieToCreate, HttpStatusCode.Created); var relativePath = "/api/movie/" + movieToCreate.Id; response.Headers.Location = new Uri(Request.RequestUri, relativePath); return response; } If ModelState.IsValid has the value false then the errors in model state are copied to a new JSON array. Each property – such as the Title and Director property — can have multiple errors. In the code above, only the first error message is copied over. The JSON array is returned with a Bad Request status code (400 status code). The following HTML page illustrates how you can invoke our modified PostMovie() action and display any error messages: <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Create Movie</title> </head> <body> <script type="text/javascript" src="Scripts/jquery-1.6.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> var movieToCreate = { title: "The Hobbit", director: "" }; createMovie(movieToCreate, function (newMovie) { alert("New movie created with an Id of " + newMovie.Id); }, function (errors) { var strErrors = ""; $.each(errors, function(index, err) { strErrors += "*" + err + "\n"; }); alert(strErrors); } ); function createMovie(movieToCreate, success, fail) { $.ajax({ url: "/api/Movie", data: JSON.stringify(movieToCreate), type: "POST", contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8", statusCode: { 201: function (newMovie) { success(newMovie); }, 400: function (xhr) { var errors = JSON.parse(xhr.responseText); fail(errors); } } }); } </script> </body> </html> The createMovie() function performs an Ajax request and handles either a 201 or a 400 status code from the response. If a 201 status code is returned then there were no validation errors and the new movie was created. If, on the other hand, a 400 status code is returned then there was a validation error. The validation errors are retrieved from the XmlHttpRequest responseText property. The error messages are displayed in an alert: (Please don’t use JavaScript alert dialogs to display validation errors, I just did it this way out of pure laziness) This validation code in our PostMovie() method is pretty generic. There is nothing specific about this code to the PostMovie() method. In the following video, Jon Galloway demonstrates how to create a global Validation filter which can be used with any API controller action: http://www.asp.net/web-api/overview/web-api-routing-and-actions/video-custom-validation His validation filter looks like this: using System.Json; using System.Linq; using System.Net; using System.Net.Http; using System.Web.Http.Controllers; using System.Web.Http.Filters; namespace MyWebAPIApp.Filters { public class ValidationActionFilter:ActionFilterAttribute { public override void OnActionExecuting(HttpActionContext actionContext) { var modelState = actionContext.ModelState; if (!modelState.IsValid) { dynamic errors = new JsonObject(); foreach (var key in modelState.Keys) { var state = modelState[key]; if (state.Errors.Any()) { errors[key] = state.Errors.First().ErrorMessage; } } actionContext.Response = new HttpResponseMessage<JsonValue>(errors, HttpStatusCode.BadRequest); } } } } And you can register the validation filter in the Application_Start() method in the Global.asax file like this: GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Filters.Add(new ValidationActionFilter()); After you register the Validation filter, validation error messages are returned from any API controller action method automatically when validation fails. You don’t need to add any special logic to any of your API controller actions to take advantage of the filter. Querying using OData The OData protocol is an open protocol created by Microsoft which enables you to perform queries over the web. The official website for OData is located here: http://odata.org For example, here are some of the query options which you can use with OData: · $orderby – Enables you to retrieve results in a certain order. · $top – Enables you to retrieve a certain number of results. · $skip – Enables you to skip over a certain number of results (use with $top for paging). · $filter – Enables you to filter the results returned. The ASP.NET Web API supports a subset of the OData protocol. You can use all of the query options listed above when interacting with an API controller. The only requirement is that the API controller action returns its data as IQueryable. For example, the following Movie controller has an action named GetMovies() which returns an IQueryable of movies: public IQueryable<Movie> GetMovies() { return new List<Movie> { new Movie {Id=1, Title="Star Wars", Director="Lucas"}, new Movie {Id=2, Title="King Kong", Director="Jackson"}, new Movie {Id=3, Title="Willow", Director="Lucas"}, new Movie {Id=4, Title="Shrek", Director="Smith"}, new Movie {Id=5, Title="Memento", Director="Nolan"} }.AsQueryable(); } If you enter the following URL in your browser: /api/movie?$top=2&$orderby=Title Then you will limit the movies returned to the top 2 in order of the movie Title. You will get the following results: By using the $top option in combination with the $skip option, you can enable client-side paging. For example, you can use $top and $skip to page through thousands of products, 10 products at a time. The $filter query option is very powerful. You can use this option to filter the results from a query. Here are some examples: Return every movie directed by Lucas: /api/movie?$filter=Director eq ‘Lucas’ Return every movie which has a title which starts with ‘S’: /api/movie?$filter=startswith(Title,’S') Return every movie which has an Id greater than 2: /api/movie?$filter=Id gt 2 The complete documentation for the $filter option is located here: http://www.odata.org/developers/protocols/uri-conventions#FilterSystemQueryOption Summary The goal of this blog entry was to provide you with an overview of the new ASP.NET Web API introduced with the Beta release of ASP.NET 4. In this post, I discussed how you can retrieve, insert, update, and delete data by using jQuery with the Web API. I also discussed how you can use the standard validation attributes with the Web API. You learned how to return validation error messages to the client and display the error messages using jQuery. Finally, we briefly discussed how the ASP.NET Web API supports the OData protocol. For example, you learned how to filter records returned from an API controller action by using the $filter query option. I’m excited about the new Web API. This is a feature which I expect to use with almost every ASP.NET application which I build in the future.

    Read the article

  • Introduction to the ASP.NET Web API

    - by Stephen.Walther
    I am a huge fan of Ajax. If you want to create a great experience for the users of your website – regardless of whether you are building an ASP.NET MVC or an ASP.NET Web Forms site — then you need to use Ajax. Otherwise, you are just being cruel to your customers. We use Ajax extensively in several of the ASP.NET applications that my company, Superexpert.com, builds. We expose data from the server as JSON and use jQuery to retrieve and update that data from the browser. One challenge, when building an ASP.NET website, is deciding on which technology to use to expose JSON data from the server. For example, how do you expose a list of products from the server as JSON so you can retrieve the list of products with jQuery? You have a number of options (too many options) including ASMX Web services, WCF Web Services, ASHX Generic Handlers, WCF Data Services, and MVC controller actions. Fortunately, the world has just been simplified. With the release of ASP.NET 4 Beta, Microsoft has introduced a new technology for exposing JSON from the server named the ASP.NET Web API. You can use the ASP.NET Web API with both ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Web Forms applications. The goal of this blog post is to provide you with a brief overview of the features of the new ASP.NET Web API. You learn how to use the ASP.NET Web API to retrieve, insert, update, and delete database records with jQuery. We also discuss how you can perform form validation when using the Web API and use OData when using the Web API. Creating an ASP.NET Web API Controller The ASP.NET Web API exposes JSON data through a new type of controller called an API controller. You can add an API controller to an existing ASP.NET MVC 4 project through the standard Add Controller dialog box. Right-click your Controllers folder and select Add, Controller. In the dialog box, name your controller MovieController and select the Empty API controller template: A brand new API controller looks like this: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Net.Http; using System.Web.Http; namespace MyWebAPIApp.Controllers { public class MovieController : ApiController { } } An API controller, unlike a standard MVC controller, derives from the base ApiController class instead of the base Controller class. Using jQuery to Retrieve, Insert, Update, and Delete Data Let’s create an Ajaxified Movie Database application. We’ll retrieve, insert, update, and delete movies using jQuery with the MovieController which we just created. Our Movie model class looks like this: namespace MyWebAPIApp.Models { public class Movie { public int Id { get; set; } public string Title { get; set; } public string Director { get; set; } } } Our application will consist of a single HTML page named Movies.html. We’ll place all of our jQuery code in the Movies.html page. Getting a Single Record with the ASP.NET Web API To support retrieving a single movie from the server, we need to add a Get method to our API controller: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Net; using System.Net.Http; using System.Web.Http; using MyWebAPIApp.Models; namespace MyWebAPIApp.Controllers { public class MovieController : ApiController { public Movie GetMovie(int id) { // Return movie by id if (id == 1) { return new Movie { Id = 1, Title = "Star Wars", Director = "Lucas" }; } // Otherwise, movie was not found throw new HttpResponseException(HttpStatusCode.NotFound); } } } In the code above, the GetMovie() method accepts the Id of a movie. If the Id has the value 1 then the method returns the movie Star Wars. Otherwise, the method throws an exception and returns 404 Not Found HTTP status code. After building your project, you can invoke the MovieController.GetMovie() method by entering the following URL in your web browser address bar: http://localhost:[port]/api/movie/1 (You’ll need to enter the correct randomly generated port). In the URL api/movie/1, the first “api” segment indicates that this is a Web API route. The “movie” segment indicates that the MovieController should be invoked. You do not specify the name of the action. Instead, the HTTP method used to make the request – GET, POST, PUT, DELETE — is used to identify the action to invoke. The ASP.NET Web API uses different routing conventions than normal ASP.NET MVC controllers. When you make an HTTP GET request then any API controller method with a name that starts with “GET” is invoked. So, we could have called our API controller action GetPopcorn() instead of GetMovie() and it would still be invoked by the URL api/movie/1. The default route for the Web API is defined in the Global.asax file and it looks like this: routes.MapHttpRoute( name: "DefaultApi", routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{id}", defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional } ); We can invoke our GetMovie() controller action with the jQuery code in the following HTML page: <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Get Movie</title> </head> <body> <div> Title: <span id="title"></span> </div> <div> Director: <span id="director"></span> </div> <script type="text/javascript" src="Scripts/jquery-1.6.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> getMovie(1, function (movie) { $("#title").html(movie.Title); $("#director").html(movie.Director); }); function getMovie(id, callback) { $.ajax({ url: "/api/Movie", data: { id: id }, type: "GET", contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8", statusCode: { 200: function (movie) { callback(movie); }, 404: function () { alert("Not Found!"); } } }); } </script> </body> </html> In the code above, the jQuery $.ajax() method is used to invoke the GetMovie() method. Notice that the Ajax call handles two HTTP response codes. When the GetMove() method successfully returns a movie, the method returns a 200 status code. In that case, the details of the movie are displayed in the HTML page. Otherwise, if the movie is not found, the GetMovie() method returns a 404 status code. In that case, the page simply displays an alert box indicating that the movie was not found (hopefully, you would implement something more graceful in an actual application). You can use your browser’s Developer Tools to see what is going on in the background when you open the HTML page (hit F12 in the most recent version of most browsers). For example, you can use the Network tab in Google Chrome to see the Ajax request which invokes the GetMovie() method: Getting a Set of Records with the ASP.NET Web API Let’s modify our Movie API controller so that it returns a collection of movies. The following Movie controller has a new ListMovies() method which returns a (hard-coded) collection of movies: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Net; using System.Net.Http; using System.Web.Http; using MyWebAPIApp.Models; namespace MyWebAPIApp.Controllers { public class MovieController : ApiController { public IEnumerable<Movie> ListMovies() { return new List<Movie> { new Movie {Id=1, Title="Star Wars", Director="Lucas"}, new Movie {Id=1, Title="King Kong", Director="Jackson"}, new Movie {Id=1, Title="Memento", Director="Nolan"} }; } } } Because we named our action ListMovies(), the default Web API route will never match it. Therefore, we need to add the following custom route to our Global.asax file (at the top of the RegisterRoutes() method): routes.MapHttpRoute( name: "ActionApi", routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{action}/{id}", defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional } ); This route enables us to invoke the ListMovies() method with the URL /api/movie/listmovies. Now that we have exposed our collection of movies from the server, we can retrieve and display the list of movies using jQuery in our HTML page: <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>List Movies</title> </head> <body> <div id="movies"></div> <script type="text/javascript" src="Scripts/jquery-1.6.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> listMovies(function (movies) { var strMovies=""; $.each(movies, function (index, movie) { strMovies += "<div>" + movie.Title + "</div>"; }); $("#movies").html(strMovies); }); function listMovies(callback) { $.ajax({ url: "/api/Movie/ListMovies", data: {}, type: "GET", contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8", }).then(function(movies){ callback(movies); }); } </script> </body> </html>     Inserting a Record with the ASP.NET Web API Now let’s modify our Movie API controller so it supports creating new records: public HttpResponseMessage<Movie> PostMovie(Movie movieToCreate) { // Add movieToCreate to the database and update primary key movieToCreate.Id = 23; // Build a response that contains the location of the new movie var response = new HttpResponseMessage<Movie>(movieToCreate, HttpStatusCode.Created); var relativePath = "/api/movie/" + movieToCreate.Id; response.Headers.Location = new Uri(Request.RequestUri, relativePath); return response; } The PostMovie() method in the code above accepts a movieToCreate parameter. We don’t actually store the new movie anywhere. In real life, you will want to call a service method to store the new movie in a database. When you create a new resource, such as a new movie, you should return the location of the new resource. In the code above, the URL where the new movie can be retrieved is assigned to the Location header returned in the PostMovie() response. Because the name of our method starts with “Post”, we don’t need to create a custom route. The PostMovie() method can be invoked with the URL /Movie/PostMovie – just as long as the method is invoked within the context of a HTTP POST request. The following HTML page invokes the PostMovie() method. <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Create Movie</title> </head> <body> <script type="text/javascript" src="Scripts/jquery-1.6.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> var movieToCreate = { title: "The Hobbit", director: "Jackson" }; createMovie(movieToCreate, function (newMovie) { alert("New movie created with an Id of " + newMovie.Id); }); function createMovie(movieToCreate, callback) { $.ajax({ url: "/api/Movie", data: JSON.stringify( movieToCreate ), type: "POST", contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8", statusCode: { 201: function (newMovie) { callback(newMovie); } } }); } </script> </body> </html> This page creates a new movie (the Hobbit) by calling the createMovie() method. The page simply displays the Id of the new movie: The HTTP Post operation is performed with the following call to the jQuery $.ajax() method: $.ajax({ url: "/api/Movie", data: JSON.stringify( movieToCreate ), type: "POST", contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8", statusCode: { 201: function (newMovie) { callback(newMovie); } } }); Notice that the type of Ajax request is a POST request. This is required to match the PostMovie() method. Notice, furthermore, that the new movie is converted into JSON using JSON.stringify(). The JSON.stringify() method takes a JavaScript object and converts it into a JSON string. Finally, notice that success is represented with a 201 status code. The HttpStatusCode.Created value returned from the PostMovie() method returns a 201 status code. Updating a Record with the ASP.NET Web API Here’s how we can modify the Movie API controller to support updating an existing record. In this case, we need to create a PUT method to handle an HTTP PUT request: public void PutMovie(Movie movieToUpdate) { if (movieToUpdate.Id == 1) { // Update the movie in the database return; } // If you can't find the movie to update throw new HttpResponseException(HttpStatusCode.NotFound); } Unlike our PostMovie() method, the PutMovie() method does not return a result. The action either updates the database or, if the movie cannot be found, returns an HTTP Status code of 404. The following HTML page illustrates how you can invoke the PutMovie() method: <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Put Movie</title> </head> <body> <script type="text/javascript" src="Scripts/jquery-1.6.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> var movieToUpdate = { id: 1, title: "The Hobbit", director: "Jackson" }; updateMovie(movieToUpdate, function () { alert("Movie updated!"); }); function updateMovie(movieToUpdate, callback) { $.ajax({ url: "/api/Movie", data: JSON.stringify(movieToUpdate), type: "PUT", contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8", statusCode: { 200: function () { callback(); }, 404: function () { alert("Movie not found!"); } } }); } </script> </body> </html> Deleting a Record with the ASP.NET Web API Here’s the code for deleting a movie: public HttpResponseMessage DeleteMovie(int id) { // Delete the movie from the database // Return status code return new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.NoContent); } This method simply deletes the movie (well, not really, but pretend that it does) and returns a No Content status code (204). The following page illustrates how you can invoke the DeleteMovie() action: <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Delete Movie</title> </head> <body> <script type="text/javascript" src="Scripts/jquery-1.6.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> deleteMovie(1, function () { alert("Movie deleted!"); }); function deleteMovie(id, callback) { $.ajax({ url: "/api/Movie", data: JSON.stringify({id:id}), type: "DELETE", contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8", statusCode: { 204: function () { callback(); } } }); } </script> </body> </html> Performing Validation How do you perform form validation when using the ASP.NET Web API? Because validation in ASP.NET MVC is driven by the Default Model Binder, and because the Web API uses the Default Model Binder, you get validation for free. Let’s modify our Movie class so it includes some of the standard validation attributes: using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations; namespace MyWebAPIApp.Models { public class Movie { public int Id { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage="Title is required!")] [StringLength(5, ErrorMessage="Title cannot be more than 5 characters!")] public string Title { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage="Director is required!")] public string Director { get; set; } } } In the code above, the Required validation attribute is used to make both the Title and Director properties required. The StringLength attribute is used to require the length of the movie title to be no more than 5 characters. Now let’s modify our PostMovie() action to validate a movie before adding the movie to the database: public HttpResponseMessage PostMovie(Movie movieToCreate) { // Validate movie if (!ModelState.IsValid) { var errors = new JsonArray(); foreach (var prop in ModelState.Values) { if (prop.Errors.Any()) { errors.Add(prop.Errors.First().ErrorMessage); } } return new HttpResponseMessage<JsonValue>(errors, HttpStatusCode.BadRequest); } // Add movieToCreate to the database and update primary key movieToCreate.Id = 23; // Build a response that contains the location of the new movie var response = new HttpResponseMessage<Movie>(movieToCreate, HttpStatusCode.Created); var relativePath = "/api/movie/" + movieToCreate.Id; response.Headers.Location = new Uri(Request.RequestUri, relativePath); return response; } If ModelState.IsValid has the value false then the errors in model state are copied to a new JSON array. Each property – such as the Title and Director property — can have multiple errors. In the code above, only the first error message is copied over. The JSON array is returned with a Bad Request status code (400 status code). The following HTML page illustrates how you can invoke our modified PostMovie() action and display any error messages: <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Create Movie</title> </head> <body> <script type="text/javascript" src="Scripts/jquery-1.6.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> var movieToCreate = { title: "The Hobbit", director: "" }; createMovie(movieToCreate, function (newMovie) { alert("New movie created with an Id of " + newMovie.Id); }, function (errors) { var strErrors = ""; $.each(errors, function(index, err) { strErrors += "*" + err + "n"; }); alert(strErrors); } ); function createMovie(movieToCreate, success, fail) { $.ajax({ url: "/api/Movie", data: JSON.stringify(movieToCreate), type: "POST", contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8", statusCode: { 201: function (newMovie) { success(newMovie); }, 400: function (xhr) { var errors = JSON.parse(xhr.responseText); fail(errors); } } }); } </script> </body> </html> The createMovie() function performs an Ajax request and handles either a 201 or a 400 status code from the response. If a 201 status code is returned then there were no validation errors and the new movie was created. If, on the other hand, a 400 status code is returned then there was a validation error. The validation errors are retrieved from the XmlHttpRequest responseText property. The error messages are displayed in an alert: (Please don’t use JavaScript alert dialogs to display validation errors, I just did it this way out of pure laziness) This validation code in our PostMovie() method is pretty generic. There is nothing specific about this code to the PostMovie() method. In the following video, Jon Galloway demonstrates how to create a global Validation filter which can be used with any API controller action: http://www.asp.net/web-api/overview/web-api-routing-and-actions/video-custom-validation His validation filter looks like this: using System.Json; using System.Linq; using System.Net; using System.Net.Http; using System.Web.Http.Controllers; using System.Web.Http.Filters; namespace MyWebAPIApp.Filters { public class ValidationActionFilter:ActionFilterAttribute { public override void OnActionExecuting(HttpActionContext actionContext) { var modelState = actionContext.ModelState; if (!modelState.IsValid) { dynamic errors = new JsonObject(); foreach (var key in modelState.Keys) { var state = modelState[key]; if (state.Errors.Any()) { errors[key] = state.Errors.First().ErrorMessage; } } actionContext.Response = new HttpResponseMessage<JsonValue>(errors, HttpStatusCode.BadRequest); } } } } And you can register the validation filter in the Application_Start() method in the Global.asax file like this: GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Filters.Add(new ValidationActionFilter()); After you register the Validation filter, validation error messages are returned from any API controller action method automatically when validation fails. You don’t need to add any special logic to any of your API controller actions to take advantage of the filter. Querying using OData The OData protocol is an open protocol created by Microsoft which enables you to perform queries over the web. The official website for OData is located here: http://odata.org For example, here are some of the query options which you can use with OData: · $orderby – Enables you to retrieve results in a certain order. · $top – Enables you to retrieve a certain number of results. · $skip – Enables you to skip over a certain number of results (use with $top for paging). · $filter – Enables you to filter the results returned. The ASP.NET Web API supports a subset of the OData protocol. You can use all of the query options listed above when interacting with an API controller. The only requirement is that the API controller action returns its data as IQueryable. For example, the following Movie controller has an action named GetMovies() which returns an IQueryable of movies: public IQueryable<Movie> GetMovies() { return new List<Movie> { new Movie {Id=1, Title="Star Wars", Director="Lucas"}, new Movie {Id=2, Title="King Kong", Director="Jackson"}, new Movie {Id=3, Title="Willow", Director="Lucas"}, new Movie {Id=4, Title="Shrek", Director="Smith"}, new Movie {Id=5, Title="Memento", Director="Nolan"} }.AsQueryable(); } If you enter the following URL in your browser: /api/movie?$top=2&$orderby=Title Then you will limit the movies returned to the top 2 in order of the movie Title. You will get the following results: By using the $top option in combination with the $skip option, you can enable client-side paging. For example, you can use $top and $skip to page through thousands of products, 10 products at a time. The $filter query option is very powerful. You can use this option to filter the results from a query. Here are some examples: Return every movie directed by Lucas: /api/movie?$filter=Director eq ‘Lucas’ Return every movie which has a title which starts with ‘S’: /api/movie?$filter=startswith(Title,’S') Return every movie which has an Id greater than 2: /api/movie?$filter=Id gt 2 The complete documentation for the $filter option is located here: http://www.odata.org/developers/protocols/uri-conventions#FilterSystemQueryOption Summary The goal of this blog entry was to provide you with an overview of the new ASP.NET Web API introduced with the Beta release of ASP.NET 4. In this post, I discussed how you can retrieve, insert, update, and delete data by using jQuery with the Web API. I also discussed how you can use the standard validation attributes with the Web API. You learned how to return validation error messages to the client and display the error messages using jQuery. Finally, we briefly discussed how the ASP.NET Web API supports the OData protocol. For example, you learned how to filter records returned from an API controller action by using the $filter query option. I’m excited about the new Web API. This is a feature which I expect to use with almost every ASP.NET application which I build in the future.

    Read the article

  • How do I use C# and ADO.NET to query an Oracle table with a spatial column of type SDO_GEOMETRY?

    - by John Donahue
    My development machine is running Windows 7 Enterprise, 64-bit version. I am using Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate. I am connecting to an Oracle 11g Enterprise server version 11.1.0.7.0. I had a difficult time locating Oracle client software that is made for 64-bit Windows systems and eventually landed here to download what I assume is the proper client connectivity software. I added a reference to "Oracle.DataAccess" which is version 2.111.6.0 (Runtime Version is v2.0.50727). I am targeting .NET CLR version 4.0 since all properties of my VS Solution are defaults and this is 2010 RC. I was then able to write a console application in C# that established connectivity, executed a SELECT statement, and properly returned data when the table in question does NOT contain a spatial column. My problem is that this no longer works when the table I query has a column of type SDO_GEOMETRY in it. Below is the simple console application I am trying to run that reproduces the problem. When the code gets to the line with the "ExecuteReader" command, an exception is raised and the message is "Unsupported column datatype". using System; using System.Data; using Oracle.DataAccess.Client; namespace ConsoleTestOracle { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { string oradb = string.Format("Data Source={0};User Id={1};Password={2};", "hostname/servicename", "login", "password"); try { using (OracleConnection conn = new OracleConnection(oradb)) { conn.Open(); OracleCommand cmd = new OracleCommand(); cmd.Connection = conn; cmd.CommandText = "select * from SDO_8307_2D_POINTS"; cmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text; OracleDataReader dr = cmd.ExecuteReader(); } } catch (Exception e) { string error = e.Message; } } } } The fact that this code works when used against a table that does not contain a spatial column of type SDO_GEOMETRY makes me think I have my windows 7 machine properly configured so I am surprised that I get this exception when the table contains different kinds of columns. I don't know if there is some configuration on my machine or the Oracle machine that needs to be done, or if the Oracle client software I have installed is wrong, or old and needs to be updated. Here is the SQL I used to create the table, populate it with some rows containing points in the spatial column, etc. if you want to try to reproduce this exactly. SQL Create Commands: create table SDO_8307_2D_Points (ObjectID number(38) not null unique, TestID number, shape SDO_GEOMETRY); Insert into SDO_8307_2D_Points values (1, 1, SDO_GEOMETRY(2001, 8307, null, SDO_ELEM_INFO_ARRAY(1, 1, 1), SDO_ORDINATE_ARRAY(10.0, 10.0))); Insert into SDO_8307_2D_Points values (2, 2, SDO_GEOMETRY(2001, 8307, null, SDO_ELEM_INFO_ARRAY(1, 1, 1), SDO_ORDINATE_ARRAY(10.0, 20.0))); insert into user_sdo_geom_metadata values ('SDO_8307_2D_Points', 'SHAPE', SDO_DIM_ARRAY(SDO_DIM_ELEMENT('Lat', -180, 180, 0.05), SDO_DIM_ELEMENT('Long', -90, 90, 0.05)), 8307); create index SDO_8307_2D_Point_indx on SDO_8307_2D_Points(shape) indextype is mdsys.spatial_index PARAMETERS ('sdo_indx_dims=2' ); Any advice or insights would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

    Read the article

  • SQL Server 2012 - AlwaysOn

    - by Claus Jandausch
    Ich war nicht nur irritiert, ich war sogar regelrecht schockiert - und für einen kurzen Moment sprachlos (was nur selten der Fall ist). Gerade eben hatte mich jemand gefragt "Wann Oracle denn etwas Vergleichbares wie AlwaysOn bieten würde - und ob überhaupt?" War ich hier im falschen Film gelandet? Ich konnte nicht anders, als meinen Unmut kundzutun und zu erklären, dass die Fragestellung normalerweise anders herum läuft. Zugegeben - es mag vielleicht strittige Punkte geben im Vergleich zwischen Oracle und SQL Server - bei denen nicht unbedingt immer Oracle die Nase vorn haben muss - aber das Thema Clustering für Hochverfügbarkeit (HA), Disaster Recovery (DR) und Skalierbarkeit gehört mit Sicherheit nicht dazu. Dieses Erlebnis hakte ich am Nachgang als Einzelfall ab, der so nie wieder vorkommen würde. Bis ich kurz darauf eines Besseren belehrt wurde und genau die selbe Frage erneut zu hören bekam. Diesmal sogar im Exadata-Umfeld und einem Oracle Stretch Cluster. Einmal ist keinmal, doch zweimal ist einmal zu viel... Getreu diesem alten Motto war mir klar, dass man das so nicht länger stehen lassen konnte. Ich habe keine Ahnung, wie die Microsoft Marketing Abteilung es geschafft hat, unter dem AlwaysOn Brading eine innovative Technologie vermuten zu lassen - aber sie hat ihren Job scheinbar gut gemacht. Doch abgesehen von einem guten Marketing, stellt sich natürlich die Frage, was wirklich dahinter steckt und wie sich das Ganze mit Oracle vergleichen lässt - und ob überhaupt? Damit wären wir wieder bei der ursprünglichen Frage angelangt.  So viel zum Hintergrund dieses Blogbeitrags - von meiner Antwort handelt der restliche Blog. "Windows was the God ..." Um den wahren Unterschied zwischen Oracle und Microsoft verstehen zu können, muss man zunächst das bedeutendste Microsoft Dogma kennen. Es lässt sich schlicht und einfach auf den Punkt bringen: "Alles muss auf Windows basieren." Die Überschrift dieses Absatzes ist kein von mir erfundener Ausspruch, sondern ein Zitat. Konkret stammt es aus einem längeren Artikel von Kurt Eichenwald in der Vanity Fair aus dem August 2012. Er lautet Microsoft's Lost Decade und sei jedem ans Herz gelegt, der die "Microsoft-Maschinerie" unter Steve Ballmer und einige ihrer Kuriositäten besser verstehen möchte. "YOU TALKING TO ME?" Microsoft C.E.O. Steve Ballmer bei seiner Keynote auf der 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas am 9. Januar   Manche Dinge in diesem Artikel mögen überspitzt dargestellt erscheinen - sind sie aber nicht. Vieles davon kannte ich bereits aus eigener Erfahrung und kann es nur bestätigen. Anderes hat sich mir erst so richtig erschlossen. Insbesondere die folgenden Passagen führten zum Aha-Erlebnis: “Windows was the god—everything had to work with Windows,” said Stone... “Every little thing you want to write has to build off of Windows (or other existing roducts),” one software engineer said. “It can be very confusing, …” Ich habe immer schon darauf hingewiesen, dass in einem SQL Server Failover Cluster die Microsoft Datenbank eigentlich nichts Nenneswertes zum Geschehen beiträgt, sondern sich voll und ganz auf das Windows Betriebssystem verlässt. Deshalb muss man auch die Windows Server Enterprise Edition installieren, soll ein Failover Cluster für den SQL Server eingerichtet werden. Denn hier werden die Cluster Services geliefert - nicht mit dem SQL Server. Er ist nur lediglich ein weiteres Server Produkt, für das Windows in Ausfallszenarien genutzt werden kann - so wie Microsoft Exchange beispielsweise, oder Microsoft SharePoint, oder irgendein anderes Server Produkt das auf Windows gehostet wird. Auch Oracle kann damit genutzt werden. Das Stichwort lautet hier: Oracle Failsafe. Nur - warum sollte man das tun, wenn gleichzeitig eine überlegene Technologie wie die Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) zur Verfügung steht, die dann auch keine Windows Enterprise Edition voraussetzen, da Oracle die eigene Clusterware liefert. Welche darüber hinaus für kürzere Failover-Zeiten sorgt, da diese Cluster-Technologie Datenbank-integriert ist und sich nicht auf "Dritte" verlässt. Wenn man sich also schon keine technischen Vorteile mit einem SQL Server Failover Cluster erkauft, sondern zusätzlich noch versteckte Lizenzkosten durch die Lizenzierung der Windows Server Enterprise Edition einhandelt, warum hat Microsoft dann in den vergangenen Jahren seit SQL Server 2000 nicht ebenfalls an einer neuen und innovativen Lösung gearbeitet, die mit Oracle RAC mithalten kann? Entwickler hat Microsoft genügend? Am Geld kann es auch nicht liegen? Lesen Sie einfach noch einmal die beiden obenstehenden Zitate und sie werden den Grund verstehen. Anders lässt es sich ja auch gar nicht mehr erklären, dass AlwaysOn aus zwei unterschiedlichen Technologien besteht, die beide jedoch wiederum auf dem Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) basieren. Denn daraus ergeben sich klare Nachteile - aber dazu später mehr. Um AlwaysOn zu verstehen, sollte man sich zunächst kurz in Erinnerung rufen, was Microsoft bisher an HA/DR (High Availability/Desaster Recovery) Lösungen für SQL Server zur Verfügung gestellt hat. Replikation Basiert auf logischer Replikation und Pubisher/Subscriber Architektur Transactional Replication Merge Replication Snapshot Replication Microsoft's Replikation ist vergleichbar mit Oracle GoldenGate. Oracle GoldenGate stellt jedoch die umfassendere Technologie dar und bietet High Performance. Log Shipping Microsoft's Log Shipping stellt eine einfache Technologie dar, die vergleichbar ist mit Oracle Managed Recovery in Oracle Version 7. Das Log Shipping besitzt folgende Merkmale: Transaction Log Backups werden von Primary nach Secondary/ies geschickt Einarbeitung (z.B. Restore) auf jedem Secondary individuell Optionale dritte Server Instanz (Monitor Server) für Überwachung und Alarm Log Restore Unterbrechung möglich für Read-Only Modus (Secondary) Keine Unterstützung von Automatic Failover Database Mirroring Microsoft's Database Mirroring wurde verfügbar mit SQL Server 2005, sah aus wie Oracle Data Guard in Oracle 9i, war funktional jedoch nicht so umfassend. Für ein HA/DR Paar besteht eine 1:1 Beziehung, um die produktive Datenbank (Principle DB) abzusichern. Auf der Standby Datenbank (Mirrored DB) werden alle Insert-, Update- und Delete-Operationen nachgezogen. Modi Synchron (High-Safety Modus) Asynchron (High-Performance Modus) Automatic Failover Unterstützt im High-Safety Modus (synchron) Witness Server vorausgesetzt     Zur Frage der Kontinuität Es stellt sich die Frage, wie es um diesen Technologien nun im Zusammenhang mit SQL Server 2012 bestellt ist. Unter Fanfaren seinerzeit eingeführt, war Database Mirroring das erklärte Mittel der Wahl. Ich bin kein Produkt Manager bei Microsoft und kann hierzu nur meine Meinung äußern, aber zieht man den SQL AlwaysOn Team Blog heran, so sieht es nicht gut aus für das Database Mirroring - zumindest nicht langfristig. "Does AlwaysOn Availability Group replace Database Mirroring going forward?” “The short answer is we recommend that you migrate from the mirroring configuration or even mirroring and log shipping configuration to using Availability Group. Database Mirroring will still be available in the Denali release but will be phased out over subsequent releases. Log Shipping will continue to be available in future releases.” Damit wären wir endlich beim eigentlichen Thema angelangt. Was ist eine sogenannte Availability Group und was genau hat es mit der vielversprechend klingenden Bezeichnung AlwaysOn auf sich?   SQL Server 2012 - AlwaysOn Zwei HA-Features verstekcne sich hinter dem “AlwaysOn”-Branding. Einmal das AlwaysOn Failover Clustering aka SQL Server Failover Cluster Instances (FCI) - zum Anderen die AlwaysOn Availability Groups. Failover Cluster Instances (FCI) Entspricht ungefähr dem Stretch Cluster Konzept von Oracle Setzt auf Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) auf Bietet HA auf Instanz-Ebene AlwaysOn Availability Groups (Verfügbarkeitsgruppen) Ähnlich der Idee von Consistency Groups, wie in Storage-Level Replikations-Software von z.B. EMC SRDF Abhängigkeiten zu Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) Bietet HA auf Datenbank-Ebene   Hinweis: Verwechseln Sie nicht eine SQL Server Datenbank mit einer Oracle Datenbank. Und auch nicht eine Oracle Instanz mit einer SQL Server Instanz. Die gleichen Begriffe haben hier eine andere Bedeutung - nicht selten ein Grund, weshalb Oracle- und Microsoft DBAs schnell aneinander vorbei reden. Denken Sie bei einer SQL Server Datenbank eher an ein Oracle Schema, das kommt der Sache näher. So etwas wie die SQL Server Northwind Datenbank ist vergleichbar mit dem Oracle Scott Schema. Wenn Sie die genauen Unterschiede kennen möchten, finden Sie eine detaillierte Beschreibung in meinem Buch "Oracle10g Release 2 für Windows und .NET", erhältich bei Lehmanns, Amazon, etc.   Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) Wie man sieht, basieren beide AlwaysOn Technologien wiederum auf dem Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC), um einerseits Hochverfügbarkeit auf Ebene der Instanz zu gewährleisten und andererseits auf der Datenbank-Ebene. Deshalb nun eine kurze Beschreibung der WSFC. Die WSFC sind ein mit dem Windows Betriebssystem geliefertes Infrastruktur-Feature, um HA für Server Anwendungen, wie Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, SQL Server, etc. zu bieten. So wie jeder andere Cluster, besteht ein WSFC Cluster aus einer Gruppe unabhängiger Server, die zusammenarbeiten, um die Verfügbarkeit einer Applikation oder eines Service zu erhöhen. Falls ein Cluster-Knoten oder -Service ausfällt, kann der auf diesem Knoten bisher gehostete Service automatisch oder manuell auf einen anderen im Cluster verfügbaren Knoten transferriert werden - was allgemein als Failover bekannt ist. Unter SQL Server 2012 verwenden sowohl die AlwaysOn Avalability Groups, als auch die AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instances die WSFC als Plattformtechnologie, um Komponenten als WSFC Cluster-Ressourcen zu registrieren. Verwandte Ressourcen werden in eine Ressource Group zusammengefasst, die in Abhängigkeit zu anderen WSFC Cluster-Ressourcen gebracht werden kann. Der WSFC Cluster Service kann jetzt die Notwendigkeit zum Neustart der SQL Server Instanz erfassen oder einen automatischen Failover zu einem anderen Server-Knoten im WSFC Cluster auslösen.   Failover Cluster Instances (FCI) Eine SQL Server Failover Cluster Instanz (FCI) ist eine einzelne SQL Server Instanz, die in einem Failover Cluster betrieben wird, der aus mehreren Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) Knoten besteht und so HA (High Availability) auf Ebene der Instanz bietet. Unter Verwendung von Multi-Subnet FCI kann auch Remote DR (Disaster Recovery) unterstützt werden. Eine weitere Option für Remote DR besteht darin, eine unter FCI gehostete Datenbank in einer Availability Group zu betreiben. Hierzu später mehr. FCI und WSFC Basis FCI, das für lokale Hochverfügbarkeit der Instanzen genutzt wird, ähnelt der veralteten Architektur eines kalten Cluster (Aktiv-Passiv). Unter SQL Server 2008 wurde diese Technologie SQL Server 2008 Failover Clustering genannt. Sie nutzte den Windows Server Failover Cluster. In SQL Server 2012 hat Microsoft diese Basistechnologie unter der Bezeichnung AlwaysOn zusammengefasst. Es handelt sich aber nach wie vor um die klassische Aktiv-Passiv-Konfiguration. Der Ablauf im Failover-Fall ist wie folgt: Solange kein Hardware-oder System-Fehler auftritt, werden alle Dirty Pages im Buffer Cache auf Platte geschrieben Alle entsprechenden SQL Server Services (Dienste) in der Ressource Gruppe werden auf dem aktiven Knoten gestoppt Die Ownership der Ressource Gruppe wird auf einen anderen Knoten der FCI transferriert Der neue Owner (Besitzer) der Ressource Gruppe startet seine SQL Server Services (Dienste) Die Connection-Anforderungen einer Client-Applikation werden automatisch auf den neuen aktiven Knoten mit dem selben Virtuellen Network Namen (VNN) umgeleitet Abhängig vom Zeitpunkt des letzten Checkpoints, kann die Anzahl der Dirty Pages im Buffer Cache, die noch auf Platte geschrieben werden müssen, zu unvorhersehbar langen Failover-Zeiten führen. Um diese Anzahl zu drosseln, besitzt der SQL Server 2012 eine neue Fähigkeit, die Indirect Checkpoints genannt wird. Indirect Checkpoints ähnelt dem Fast-Start MTTR Target Feature der Oracle Datenbank, das bereits mit Oracle9i verfügbar war.   SQL Server Multi-Subnet Clustering Ein SQL Server Multi-Subnet Failover Cluster entspricht vom Konzept her einem Oracle RAC Stretch Cluster. Doch dies ist nur auf den ersten Blick der Fall. Im Gegensatz zu RAC ist in einem lokalen SQL Server Failover Cluster jeweils nur ein Knoten aktiv für eine Datenbank. Für die Datenreplikation zwischen geografisch entfernten Sites verlässt sich Microsoft auf 3rd Party Lösungen für das Storage Mirroring.     Die Verbesserung dieses Szenario mit einer SQL Server 2012 Implementierung besteht schlicht darin, dass eine VLAN-Konfiguration (Virtual Local Area Network) nun nicht mehr benötigt wird, so wie dies bisher der Fall war. Das folgende Diagramm stellt dar, wie der Ablauf mit SQL Server 2012 gehandhabt wird. In Site A und Site B wird HA jeweils durch einen lokalen Aktiv-Passiv-Cluster sichergestellt.     Besondere Aufmerksamkeit muss hier der Konfiguration und dem Tuning geschenkt werden, da ansonsten völlig inakzeptable Failover-Zeiten resultieren. Dies liegt darin begründet, weil die Downtime auf Client-Seite nun nicht mehr nur von der reinen Failover-Zeit abhängt, sondern zusätzlich von der Dauer der DNS Replikation zwischen den DNS Servern. (Rufen Sie sich in Erinnerung, dass wir gerade von Multi-Subnet Clustering sprechen). Außerdem ist zu berücksichtigen, wie schnell die Clients die aktualisierten DNS Informationen abfragen. Spezielle Konfigurationen für Node Heartbeat, HostRecordTTL (Host Record Time-to-Live) und Intersite Replication Frequeny für Active Directory Sites und Services werden notwendig. Default TTL für Windows Server 2008 R2: 20 Minuten Empfohlene Einstellung: 1 Minute DNS Update Replication Frequency in Windows Umgebung: 180 Minuten Empfohlene Einstellung: 15 Minuten (minimaler Wert)   Betrachtet man diese Werte, muss man feststellen, dass selbst eine optimale Konfiguration die rigiden SLAs (Service Level Agreements) heutiger geschäftskritischer Anwendungen für HA und DR nicht erfüllen kann. Denn dies impliziert eine auf der Client-Seite erlebte Failover-Zeit von insgesamt 16 Minuten. Hierzu ein Auszug aus der SQL Server 2012 Online Dokumentation: Cons: If a cross-subnet failover occurs, the client recovery time could be 15 minutes or longer, depending on your HostRecordTTL setting and the setting of your cross-site DNS/AD replication schedule.    Wir sind hier an einem Punkt unserer Überlegungen angelangt, an dem sich erklärt, weshalb ich zuvor das "Windows was the God ..." Zitat verwendet habe. Die unbedingte Abhängigkeit zu Windows wird zunehmend zum Problem, da sie die Komplexität einer Microsoft-basierenden Lösung erhöht, anstelle sie zu reduzieren. Und Komplexität ist das Letzte, was sich CIOs heutzutage wünschen.  Zur Ehrenrettung des SQL Server 2012 und AlwaysOn muss man sagen, dass derart lange Failover-Zeiten kein unbedingtes "Muss" darstellen, sondern ein "Kann". Doch auch ein "Kann" kann im unpassenden Moment unvorhersehbare und kostspielige Folgen haben. Die Unabsehbarkeit ist wiederum Ursache vieler an der Implementierung beteiligten Komponenten und deren Abhängigkeiten, wie beispielsweise drei Cluster-Lösungen (zwei von Microsoft, eine 3rd Party Lösung). Wie man die Sache auch dreht und wendet, kommt man an diesem Fakt also nicht vorbei - ganz unabhängig von der Dauer einer Downtime oder Failover-Zeiten. Im Gegensatz zu AlwaysOn und der hier vorgestellten Version eines Stretch-Clusters, vermeidet eine entsprechende Oracle Implementierung eine derartige Komplexität, hervorgerufen duch multiple Abhängigkeiten. Den Unterschied machen Datenbank-integrierte Mechanismen, wie Fast Application Notification (FAN) und Fast Connection Failover (FCF). Für Oracle MAA Konfigurationen (Maximum Availability Architecture) sind Inter-Site Failover-Zeiten im Bereich von Sekunden keine Seltenheit. Wenn Sie dem Link zur Oracle MAA folgen, finden Sie außerdem eine Reihe an Customer Case Studies. Auch dies ist ein wichtiges Unterscheidungsmerkmal zu AlwaysOn, denn die Oracle Technologie hat sich bereits zigfach in höchst kritischen Umgebungen bewährt.   Availability Groups (Verfügbarkeitsgruppen) Die sogenannten Availability Groups (Verfügbarkeitsgruppen) sind - neben FCI - der weitere Baustein von AlwaysOn.   Hinweis: Bevor wir uns näher damit beschäftigen, sollten Sie sich noch einmal ins Gedächtnis rufen, dass eine SQL Server Datenbank nicht die gleiche Bedeutung besitzt, wie eine Oracle Datenbank, sondern eher einem Oracle Schema entspricht. So etwas wie die SQL Server Northwind Datenbank ist vergleichbar mit dem Oracle Scott Schema.   Eine Verfügbarkeitsgruppe setzt sich zusammen aus einem Set mehrerer Benutzer-Datenbanken, die im Falle eines Failover gemeinsam als Gruppe behandelt werden. Eine Verfügbarkeitsgruppe unterstützt ein Set an primären Datenbanken (primäres Replikat) und einem bis vier Sets von entsprechenden sekundären Datenbanken (sekundäre Replikate).       Es können jedoch nicht alle SQL Server Datenbanken einer AlwaysOn Verfügbarkeitsgruppe zugeordnet werden. Der SQL Server Spezialist Michael Otey zählt in seinem SQL Server Pro Artikel folgende Anforderungen auf: Verfügbarkeitsgruppen müssen mit Benutzer-Datenbanken erstellt werden. System-Datenbanken können nicht verwendet werden Die Datenbanken müssen sich im Read-Write Modus befinden. Read-Only Datenbanken werden nicht unterstützt Die Datenbanken in einer Verfügbarkeitsgruppe müssen Multiuser Datenbanken sein Sie dürfen nicht das AUTO_CLOSE Feature verwenden Sie müssen das Full Recovery Modell nutzen und es muss ein vollständiges Backup vorhanden sein Eine gegebene Datenbank kann sich nur in einer einzigen Verfügbarkeitsgruppe befinden und diese Datenbank düerfen nicht für Database Mirroring konfiguriert sein Microsoft empfiehl außerdem, dass der Verzeichnispfad einer Datenbank auf dem primären und sekundären Server identisch sein sollte Wie man sieht, eignen sich Verfügbarkeitsgruppen nicht, um HA und DR vollständig abzubilden. Die Unterscheidung zwischen der Instanzen-Ebene (FCI) und Datenbank-Ebene (Availability Groups) ist von hoher Bedeutung. Vor kurzem wurde mir gesagt, dass man mit den Verfügbarkeitsgruppen auf Shared Storage verzichten könne und dadurch Kosten spart. So weit so gut ... Man kann natürlich eine Installation rein mit Verfügbarkeitsgruppen und ohne FCI durchführen - aber man sollte sich dann darüber bewusst sein, was man dadurch alles nicht abgesichert hat - und dies wiederum für Desaster Recovery (DR) und SLAs (Service Level Agreements) bedeutet. Kurzum, um die Kombination aus beiden AlwaysOn Produkten und der damit verbundene Komplexität kommt man wohl in der Praxis nicht herum.    Availability Groups und WSFC AlwaysOn hängt von Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) ab, um die aktuellen Rollen der Verfügbarkeitsreplikate einer Verfügbarkeitsgruppe zu überwachen und zu verwalten, und darüber zu entscheiden, wie ein Failover-Ereignis die Verfügbarkeitsreplikate betrifft. Das folgende Diagramm zeigt de Beziehung zwischen Verfügbarkeitsgruppen und WSFC:   Der Verfügbarkeitsmodus ist eine Eigenschaft jedes Verfügbarkeitsreplikats. Synychron und Asynchron können also gemischt werden: Availability Modus (Verfügbarkeitsmodus) Asynchroner Commit-Modus Primäres replikat schließt Transaktionen ohne Warten auf Sekundäres Synchroner Commit-Modus Primäres Replikat wartet auf Commit von sekundärem Replikat Failover Typen Automatic Manual Forced (mit möglichem Datenverlust) Synchroner Commit-Modus Geplanter, manueller Failover ohne Datenverlust Automatischer Failover ohne Datenverlust Asynchroner Commit-Modus Nur Forced, manueller Failover mit möglichem Datenverlust   Der SQL Server kennt keinen separaten Switchover Begriff wie in Oracle Data Guard. Für SQL Server werden alle Role Transitions als Failover bezeichnet. Tatsächlich unterstützt der SQL Server keinen Switchover für asynchrone Verbindungen. Es gibt nur die Form des Forced Failover mit möglichem Datenverlust. Eine ähnliche Fähigkeit wie der Switchover unter Oracle Data Guard ist so nicht gegeben.   SQL Sever FCI mit Availability Groups (Verfügbarkeitsgruppen) Neben den Verfügbarkeitsgruppen kann eine zweite Failover-Ebene eingerichtet werden, indem SQL Server FCI (auf Shared Storage) mit WSFC implementiert wird. Ein Verfügbarkeitesreplikat kann dann auf einer Standalone Instanz gehostet werden, oder einer FCI Instanz. Zum Verständnis: Die Verfügbarkeitsgruppen selbst benötigen kein Shared Storage. Diese Kombination kann verwendet werden für lokale HA auf Ebene der Instanz und DR auf Datenbank-Ebene durch Verfügbarkeitsgruppen. Das folgende Diagramm zeigt dieses Szenario:   Achtung! Hier handelt es sich nicht um ein Pendant zu Oracle RAC plus Data Guard, auch wenn das Bild diesen Eindruck vielleicht vermitteln mag - denn alle sekundären Knoten im FCI sind rein passiv. Es existiert außerdem eine weitere und ernsthafte Einschränkung: SQL Server Failover Cluster Instanzen (FCI) unterstützen nicht das automatische AlwaysOn Failover für Verfügbarkeitsgruppen. Jedes unter FCI gehostete Verfügbarkeitsreplikat kann nur für manuelles Failover konfiguriert werden.   Lesbare Sekundäre Replikate Ein oder mehrere Verfügbarkeitsreplikate in einer Verfügbarkeitsgruppe können für den lesenden Zugriff konfiguriert werden, wenn sie als sekundäres Replikat laufen. Dies ähnelt Oracle Active Data Guard, jedoch gibt es Einschränkungen. Alle Abfragen gegen die sekundäre Datenbank werden automatisch auf das Snapshot Isolation Level abgebildet. Es handelt sich dabei um eine Versionierung der Rows. Microsoft versuchte hiermit die Oracle MVRC (Multi Version Read Consistency) nachzustellen. Tatsächlich muss man die SQL Server Snapshot Isolation eher mit Oracle Flashback vergleichen. Bei der Implementierung des Snapshot Isolation Levels handelt sich um ein nachträglich aufgesetztes Feature und nicht um einen inhärenten Teil des Datenbank-Kernels, wie im Falle Oracle. (Ich werde hierzu in Kürze einen weiteren Blogbeitrag verfassen, wenn ich mich mit der neuen SQL Server 2012 Core Lizenzierung beschäftige.) Für die Praxis entstehen aus der Abbildung auf das Snapshot Isolation Level ernsthafte Restriktionen, derer man sich für den Betrieb in der Praxis bereits vorab bewusst sein sollte: Sollte auf der primären Datenbank eine aktive Transaktion zu dem Zeitpunkt existieren, wenn ein lesbares sekundäres Replikat in die Verfügbarkeitsgruppe aufgenommen wird, werden die Row-Versionen auf der korrespondierenden sekundären Datenbank nicht sofort vollständig verfügbar sein. Eine aktive Transaktion auf dem primären Replikat muss zuerst abgeschlossen (Commit oder Rollback) und dieser Transaktions-Record auf dem sekundären Replikat verarbeitet werden. Bis dahin ist das Isolation Level Mapping auf der sekundären Datenbank unvollständig und Abfragen sind temporär geblockt. Microsoft sagt dazu: "This is needed to guarantee that row versions are available on the secondary replica before executing the query under snapshot isolation as all isolation levels are implicitly mapped to snapshot isolation." (SQL Storage Engine Blog: AlwaysOn: I just enabled Readable Secondary but my query is blocked?)  Grundlegend bedeutet dies, dass ein aktives lesbares Replikat nicht in die Verfügbarkeitsgruppe aufgenommen werden kann, ohne das primäre Replikat vorübergehend stillzulegen. Da Leseoperationen auf das Snapshot Isolation Transaction Level abgebildet werden, kann die Bereinigung von Ghost Records auf dem primären Replikat durch Transaktionen auf einem oder mehreren sekundären Replikaten geblockt werden - z.B. durch eine lang laufende Abfrage auf dem sekundären Replikat. Diese Bereinigung wird auch blockiert, wenn die Verbindung zum sekundären Replikat abbricht oder der Datenaustausch unterbrochen wird. Auch die Log Truncation wird in diesem Zustant verhindert. Wenn dieser Zustand längere Zeit anhält, empfiehlt Microsoft das sekundäre Replikat aus der Verfügbarkeitsgruppe herauszunehmen - was ein ernsthaftes Downtime-Problem darstellt. Die Read-Only Workload auf den sekundären Replikaten kann eingehende DDL Änderungen blockieren. Obwohl die Leseoperationen aufgrund der Row-Versionierung keine Shared Locks halten, führen diese Operatioen zu Sch-S Locks (Schemastabilitätssperren). DDL-Änderungen durch Redo-Operationen können dadurch blockiert werden. Falls DDL aufgrund konkurrierender Lese-Workload blockiert wird und der Schwellenwert für 'Recovery Interval' (eine SQL Server Konfigurationsoption) überschritten wird, generiert der SQL Server das Ereignis sqlserver.lock_redo_blocked, welches Microsoft zum Kill der blockierenden Leser empfiehlt. Auf die Verfügbarkeit der Anwendung wird hierbei keinerlei Rücksicht genommen.   Keine dieser Einschränkungen existiert mit Oracle Active Data Guard.   Backups auf sekundären Replikaten  Über die sekundären Replikate können Backups (BACKUP DATABASE via Transact-SQL) nur als copy-only Backups einer vollständigen Datenbank, Dateien und Dateigruppen erstellt werden. Das Erstellen inkrementeller Backups ist nicht unterstützt, was ein ernsthafter Rückstand ist gegenüber der Backup-Unterstützung physikalischer Standbys unter Oracle Data Guard. Hinweis: Ein möglicher Workaround via Snapshots, bleibt ein Workaround. Eine weitere Einschränkung dieses Features gegenüber Oracle Data Guard besteht darin, dass das Backup eines sekundären Replikats nicht ausgeführt werden kann, wenn es nicht mit dem primären Replikat kommunizieren kann. Darüber hinaus muss das sekundäre Replikat synchronisiert sein oder sich in der Synchronisation befinden, um das Beackup auf dem sekundären Replikat erstellen zu können.   Vergleich von Microsoft AlwaysOn mit der Oracle MAA Ich komme wieder zurück auf die Eingangs erwähnte, mehrfach an mich gestellte Frage "Wann denn - und ob überhaupt - Oracle etwas Vergleichbares wie AlwaysOn bieten würde?" und meine damit verbundene (kurze) Irritation. Wenn Sie diesen Blogbeitrag bis hierher gelesen haben, dann kennen Sie jetzt meine darauf gegebene Antwort. Der eine oder andere Punkt traf dabei nicht immer auf Jeden zu, was auch nicht der tiefere Sinn und Zweck meiner Antwort war. Wenn beispielsweise kein Multi-Subnet mit im Spiel ist, sind alle diesbezüglichen Kritikpunkte zunächst obsolet. Was aber nicht bedeutet, dass sie nicht bereits morgen schon wieder zum Thema werden könnten (Sag niemals "Nie"). In manch anderes Fettnäpfchen tritt man wiederum nicht unbedingt in einer Testumgebung, sondern erst im laufenden Betrieb. Erst recht nicht dann, wenn man sich potenzieller Probleme nicht bewusst ist und keine dedizierten Tests startet. Und wer AlwaysOn erfolgreich positionieren möchte, wird auch gar kein Interesse daran haben, auf mögliche Schwachstellen und den besagten Teufel im Detail aufmerksam zu machen. Das ist keine Unterstellung - es ist nur menschlich. Außerdem ist es verständlich, dass man sich in erster Linie darauf konzentriert "was geht" und "was gut läuft", anstelle auf das "was zu Problemen führen kann" oder "nicht funktioniert". Wer will schon der Miesepeter sein? Für mich selbst gesprochen, kann ich nur sagen, dass ich lieber vorab von allen möglichen Einschränkungen wissen möchte, anstelle sie dann nach einer kurzen Zeit der heilen Welt schmerzhaft am eigenen Leib erfahren zu müssen. Ich bin davon überzeugt, dass es Ihnen nicht anders geht. Nachfolgend deshalb eine Zusammenfassung all jener Punkte, die ich im Vergleich zur Oracle MAA (Maximum Availability Architecture) als unbedingt Erwähnenswert betrachte, falls man eine Evaluierung von Microsoft AlwaysOn in Betracht zieht. 1. AlwaysOn ist eine komplexe Technologie Der SQL Server AlwaysOn Stack ist zusammengesetzt aus drei verschiedenen Technlogien: Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) SQL Server Failover Cluster Instances (FCI) SQL Server Availability Groups (Verfügbarkeitsgruppen) Man kann eine derartige Lösung nicht als nahtlos bezeichnen, wofür auch die vielen von Microsoft dargestellten Einschränkungen sprechen. Während sich frühere SQL Server Versionen in Richtung eigener HA/DR Technologien entwickelten (wie Database Mirroring), empfiehlt Microsoft nun die Migration. Doch weshalb dieser Schwenk? Er führt nicht zu einem konsisten und robusten Angebot an HA/DR Technologie für geschäftskritische Umgebungen.  Liegt die Antwort in meiner These begründet, nach der "Windows was the God ..." noch immer gilt und man die Nachteile der allzu engen Kopplung mit Windows nicht sehen möchte? Entscheiden Sie selbst ... 2. Failover Cluster Instanzen - Kein RAC-Pendant Die SQL Server und Windows Server Clustering Technologie basiert noch immer auf dem veralteten Aktiv-Passiv Modell und führt zu einer Verschwendung von Systemressourcen. In einer Betrachtung von lediglich zwei Knoten erschließt sich auf Anhieb noch nicht der volle Mehrwert eines Aktiv-Aktiv Clusters (wie den Real Application Clusters), wie er von Oracle bereits vor zehn Jahren entwickelt wurde. Doch kennt man die Vorzüge der Skalierbarkeit durch einfaches Hinzufügen weiterer Cluster-Knoten, die dann alle gemeinsam als ein einziges logisches System zusammenarbeiten, versteht man was hinter dem Motto "Pay-as-you-Grow" steckt. In einem Aktiv-Aktiv Cluster geht es zwar auch um Hochverfügbarkeit - und ein Failover erfolgt zudem schneller, als in einem Aktiv-Passiv Modell - aber es geht eben nicht nur darum. An dieser Stelle sei darauf hingewiesen, dass die Oracle 11g Standard Edition bereits die Nutzung von Oracle RAC bis zu vier Sockets kostenfrei beinhaltet. Möchten Sie dazu Windows nutzen, benötigen Sie keine Windows Server Enterprise Edition, da Oracle 11g die eigene Clusterware liefert. Sie kommen in den Genuss von Hochverfügbarkeit und Skalierbarkeit und können dazu die günstigere Windows Server Standard Edition nutzen. 3. SQL Server Multi-Subnet Clustering - Abhängigkeit zu 3rd Party Storage Mirroring  Die SQL Server Multi-Subnet Clustering Architektur unterstützt den Aufbau eines Stretch Clusters, basiert dabei aber auf dem Aktiv-Passiv Modell. Das eigentlich Problematische ist jedoch, dass man sich zur Absicherung der Datenbank auf 3rd Party Storage Mirroring Technologie verlässt, ohne Integration zwischen dem Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) und der darunterliegenden Mirroring Technologie. Wenn nun im Cluster ein Failover auf Instanzen-Ebene erfolgt, existiert keine Koordination mit einem möglichen Failover auf Ebene des Storage-Array. 4. Availability Groups (Verfügbarkeitsgruppen) - Vier, oder doch nur Zwei? Ein primäres Replikat erlaubt bis zu vier sekundäre Replikate innerhalb einer Verfügbarkeitsgruppe, jedoch nur zwei im Synchronen Commit Modus. Während dies zwar einen Vorteil gegenüber dem stringenten 1:1 Modell unter Database Mirroring darstellt, fällt der SQL Server 2012 damit immer noch weiter zurück hinter Oracle Data Guard mit bis zu 30 direkten Stanbdy Zielen - und vielen weiteren durch kaskadierende Ziele möglichen. Damit eignet sich Oracle Active Data Guard auch für die Bereitstellung einer Reader-Farm Skalierbarkeit für Internet-basierende Unternehmen. Mit AwaysOn Verfügbarkeitsgruppen ist dies nicht möglich. 5. Availability Groups (Verfügbarkeitsgruppen) - kein asynchrones Switchover  Die Technologie der Verfügbarkeitsgruppen wird auch als geeignetes Mittel für administrative Aufgaben positioniert - wie Upgrades oder Wartungsarbeiten. Man muss sich jedoch einem gravierendem Defizit bewusst sein: Im asynchronen Verfügbarkeitsmodus besteht die einzige Möglichkeit für Role Transition im Forced Failover mit Datenverlust! Um den Verlust von Daten durch geplante Wartungsarbeiten zu vermeiden, muss man den synchronen Verfügbarkeitsmodus konfigurieren, was jedoch ernstzunehmende Auswirkungen auf WAN Deployments nach sich zieht. Spinnt man diesen Gedanken zu Ende, kommt man zu dem Schluss, dass die Technologie der Verfügbarkeitsgruppen für geplante Wartungsarbeiten in einem derartigen Umfeld nicht effektiv genutzt werden kann. 6. Automatisches Failover - Nicht immer möglich Sowohl die SQL Server FCI, als auch Verfügbarkeitsgruppen unterstützen automatisches Failover. Möchte man diese jedoch kombinieren, wird das Ergebnis kein automatisches Failover sein. Denn ihr Zusammentreffen im Failover-Fall führt zu Race Conditions (Wettlaufsituationen), weshalb diese Konfiguration nicht länger das automatische Failover zu einem Replikat in einer Verfügbarkeitsgruppe erlaubt. Auch hier bestätigt sich wieder die tiefere Problematik von AlwaysOn, mit einer Zusammensetzung aus unterschiedlichen Technologien und der Abhängigkeit zu Windows. 7. Problematische RTO (Recovery Time Objective) Microsoft postioniert die SQL Server Multi-Subnet Clustering Architektur als brauchbare HA/DR Architektur. Bedenkt man jedoch die Problematik im Zusammenhang mit DNS Replikation und den möglichen langen Wartezeiten auf Client-Seite von bis zu 16 Minuten, sind strenge RTO Anforderungen (Recovery Time Objectives) nicht erfüllbar. Im Gegensatz zu Oracle besitzt der SQL Server keine Datenbank-integrierten Technologien, wie Oracle Fast Application Notification (FAN) oder Oracle Fast Connection Failover (FCF). 8. Problematische RPO (Recovery Point Objective) SQL Server ermöglicht Forced Failover (erzwungenes Failover), bietet jedoch keine Möglichkeit zur automatischen Übertragung der letzten Datenbits von einem alten zu einem neuen primären Replikat, wenn der Verfügbarkeitsmodus asynchron war. Oracle Data Guard hingegen bietet diese Unterstützung durch das Flush Redo Feature. Dies sichert "Zero Data Loss" und beste RPO auch in erzwungenen Failover-Situationen. 9. Lesbare Sekundäre Replikate mit Einschränkungen Aufgrund des Snapshot Isolation Transaction Level für lesbare sekundäre Replikate, besitzen diese Einschränkungen mit Auswirkung auf die primäre Datenbank. Die Bereinigung von Ghost Records auf der primären Datenbank, wird beeinflusst von lang laufenden Abfragen auf der lesabaren sekundären Datenbank. Die lesbare sekundäre Datenbank kann nicht in die Verfügbarkeitsgruppe aufgenommen werden, wenn es aktive Transaktionen auf der primären Datenbank gibt. Zusätzlich können DLL Änderungen auf der primären Datenbank durch Abfragen auf der sekundären blockiert werden. Und imkrementelle Backups werden hier nicht unterstützt.   Keine dieser Restriktionen existiert unter Oracle Data Guard.

    Read the article

  • What&rsquo;s New in ASP.NET 4.0 Part Two: WebForms and Visual Studio Enhancements

    - by Rick Strahl
    In the last installment I talked about the core changes in the ASP.NET runtime that I’ve been taking advantage of. In this column, I’ll cover the changes to the Web Forms engine and some of the cool improvements in Visual Studio that make Web and general development easier. WebForms The WebForms engine is the area that has received most significant changes in ASP.NET 4.0. Probably the most widely anticipated features are related to managing page client ids and of ViewState on WebForm pages. Take Control of Your ClientIDs Unique ClientID generation in ASP.NET has been one of the most complained about “features” in ASP.NET. Although there’s a very good technical reason for these unique generated ids - they guarantee unique ids for each and every server control on a page - these unique and generated ids often get in the way of client-side JavaScript development and CSS styling as it’s often inconvenient and fragile to work with the long, generated ClientIDs. In ASP.NET 4.0 you can now specify an explicit client id mode on each control or each naming container parent control to control how client ids are generated. By default, ASP.NET generates mangled client ids for any control contained in a naming container (like a Master Page, or a User Control for example). The key to ClientID management in ASP.NET 4.0 are the new ClientIDMode and ClientIDRowSuffix properties. ClientIDMode supports four different ClientID generation settings shown below. For the following examples, imagine that you have a Textbox control named txtName inside of a master page control container on a WebForms page. <%@Page Language="C#"      MasterPageFile="~/Site.Master"     CodeBehind="WebForm2.aspx.cs"     Inherits="WebApplication1.WebForm2"  %> <asp:Content ID="content"  ContentPlaceHolderID="content"               runat="server"               ClientIDMode="Static" >       <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtName" /> </asp:Content> The four available ClientIDMode values are: AutoID This is the existing behavior in ASP.NET 1.x-3.x where full naming container munging takes place. <input name="ctl00$content$txtName" type="text"        id="ctl00_content_txtName" /> This should be familiar to any ASP.NET developer and results in fairly unpredictable client ids that can easily change if the containership hierarchy changes. For example, removing the master page changes the name in this case, so if you were to move a block of script code that works against the control to a non-Master page, the script code immediately breaks. Static This option is the most deterministic setting that forces the control’s ClientID to use its ID value directly. No naming container naming at all is applied and you end up with clean client ids: <input name="ctl00$content$txtName"         type="text" id="txtName" /> Note that the name property which is used for postback variables to the server still is munged, but the ClientID property is displayed simply as the ID value that you have assigned to the control. This option is what most of us want to use, but you have to be clear on that because it can potentially cause conflicts with other controls on the page. If there are several instances of the same naming container (several instances of the same user control for example) there can easily be a client id naming conflict. Note that if you assign Static to a data-bound control, like a list child control in templates, you do not get unique ids either, so for list controls where you rely on unique id for child controls, you’ll probably want to use Predictable rather than Static. I’ll write more on this a little later when I discuss ClientIDRowSuffix. Predictable The previous two values are pretty self-explanatory. Predictable however, requires some explanation. To me at least it’s not in the least bit predictable. MSDN defines this value as follows: This algorithm is used for controls that are in data-bound controls. The ClientID value is generated by concatenating the ClientID value of the parent naming container with the ID value of the control. If the control is a data-bound control that generates multiple rows, the value of the data field specified in the ClientIDRowSuffix property is added at the end. For the GridView control, multiple data fields can be specified. If the ClientIDRowSuffix property is blank, a sequential number is added at the end instead of a data-field value. Each segment is separated by an underscore character (_). The key that makes this value a bit confusing is that it relies on the parent NamingContainer’s ClientID to build its own ClientID value. This effectively means that the value is not predictable at all but rather very tightly coupled to the parent naming container’s ClientIDMode setting. For my simple textbox example, if the ClientIDMode property of the parent naming container (Page in this case) is set to “Predictable” you’ll get this: <input name="ctl00$content$txtName" type="text"         id="content_txtName" /> which gives an id that based on walking up to the currently active naming container (the MasterPage content container) and starting the id formatting from there downward. Think of this as a semi unique name that’s guaranteed unique only for the naming container. If, on the other hand, the Page is set to “AutoID” you get the following with Predictable on txtName: <input name="ctl00$content$txtName" type="text"         id="ctl00_content_txtName" /> The latter is effectively the same as if you specified AutoID because it inherits the AutoID naming from the Page and Content Master Page control of the page. But again - predictable behavior always depends on the parent naming container and how it generates its id, so the id may not always be exactly the same as the AutoID generated value because somewhere in the NamingContainer chain the ClientIDMode setting may be set to a different value. For example, if you had another naming container in the middle that was set to Static you’d end up effectively with an id that starts with the NamingContainers id rather than the whole ctl000_content munging. The most common use for Predictable is likely to be for data-bound controls, which results in each data bound item getting a unique ClientID. Unfortunately, even here the behavior can be very unpredictable depending on which data-bound control you use - I found significant differences in how template controls in a GridView behave from those that are used in a ListView control. For example, GridView creates clean child ClientIDs, while ListView still has a naming container in the ClientID, presumably because of the template container on which you can’t set ClientIDMode. Predictable is useful, but only if all naming containers down the chain use this setting. Otherwise you’re right back to the munged ids that are pretty unpredictable. Another property, ClientIDRowSuffix, can be used in combination with ClientIDMode of Predictable to force a suffix onto list client controls. For example: <asp:GridView runat="server" ID="gvItems"              AutoGenerateColumns="false"             ClientIDMode="Static"              ClientIDRowSuffix="Id">     <Columns>     <asp:TemplateField>         <ItemTemplate>             <asp:Label runat="server" id="txtName"                        Text='<%# Eval("Name") %>'                   ClientIDMode="Predictable"/>         </ItemTemplate>     </asp:TemplateField>     <asp:TemplateField>         <ItemTemplate>         <asp:Label runat="server" id="txtId"                     Text='<%# Eval("Id") %>'                     ClientIDMode="Predictable" />         </ItemTemplate>     </asp:TemplateField>     </Columns>  </asp:GridView> generates client Ids inside of a column in the master page described earlier: <td>     <span id="txtName_0">Rick</span> </td> where the value after the underscore is the ClientIDRowSuffix field - in this case “Id” of the item data bound to the control. Note that all of the child controls require ClientIDMode=”Predictable” in order for the ClientIDRowSuffix to be applied, and the parent GridView controls need to be set to Static either explicitly or via Naming Container inheritance to give these simple names. It’s a bummer that ClientIDRowSuffix doesn’t work with Static to produce this automatically. Another real problem is that other controls process the ClientIDMode differently. For example, a ListView control processes the Predictable ClientIDMode differently and produces the following with the Static ListView and Predictable child controls: <span id="ctrl0_txtName_0">Rick</span> I couldn’t even figure out a way using ClientIDMode to get a simple ID that also uses a suffix short of falling back to manually generated ids using <%= %> expressions instead. Given the inconsistencies inside of list controls using <%= %>, ids for the ListView might not be a bad idea anyway. Inherit The final setting is Inherit, which is the default for all controls except Page. This means that controls by default inherit the parent naming container’s ClientIDMode setting. For more detailed information on ClientID behavior and different scenarios you can check out a blog post of mine on this subject: http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/posts/54760.aspx. ClientID Enhancements Summary The ClientIDMode property is a welcome addition to ASP.NET 4.0. To me this is probably the most useful WebForms feature as it allows me to generate clean IDs simply by setting ClientIDMode="Static" on either the page or inside of Web.config (in the Pages section) which applies the setting down to the entire page which is my 95% scenario. For the few cases when it matters - for list controls and inside of multi-use user controls or custom server controls) - I can use Predictable or even AutoID to force controls to unique names. For application-level page development, this is easy to accomplish and provides maximum usability for working with client script code against page controls. ViewStateMode Another area of large criticism for WebForms is ViewState. ViewState is used internally by ASP.NET to persist page-level changes to non-postback properties on controls as pages post back to the server. It’s a useful mechanism that works great for the overall mechanics of WebForms, but it can also cause all sorts of overhead for page operation as ViewState can very quickly get out of control and consume huge amounts of bandwidth in your page content. ViewState can also wreak havoc with client-side scripting applications that modify control properties that are tracked by ViewState, which can produce very unpredictable results on a Postback after client-side updates. Over the years in my own development, I’ve often turned off ViewState on pages to reduce overhead. Yes, you lose some functionality, but you can easily implement most of the common functionality in non-ViewState workarounds. Relying less on heavy ViewState controls and sticking with simpler controls or raw HTML constructs avoids getting around ViewState problems. In ASP.NET 3.x and prior, it wasn’t easy to control ViewState - you could turn it on or off and if you turned it off at the page or web.config level, you couldn’t turn it back on for specific controls. In short, it was an all or nothing approach. With ASP.NET 4.0, the new ViewStateMode property gives you more control. It allows you to disable ViewState globally either on the page or web.config level and then turn it back on for specific controls that might need it. ViewStateMode only works when EnableViewState="true" on the page or web.config level (which is the default). You can then use ViewStateMode of Disabled, Enabled or Inherit to control the ViewState settings on the page. If you’re shooting for minimal ViewState usage, the ideal situation is to set ViewStateMode to disabled on the Page or web.config level and only turn it back on particular controls: <%@Page Language="C#"      CodeBehind="WebForm2.aspx.cs"     Inherits="Westwind.WebStore.WebForm2"        ClientIDMode="Static"                ViewStateMode="Disabled"     EnableViewState="true"  %> <!-- this control has viewstate  --> <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtName"  ViewStateMode="Enabled" />       <!-- this control has no viewstate - it inherits  from parent container --> <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtAddress" /> Note that the EnableViewState="true" at the Page level isn’t required since it’s the default, but it’s important that the value is true. ViewStateMode has no effect if EnableViewState="false" at the page level. The main benefit of ViewStateMode is that it allows you to more easily turn off ViewState for most of the page and enable only a few key controls that might need it. For me personally, this is a perfect combination as most of my WebForm apps can get away without any ViewState at all. But some controls - especially third party controls - often don’t work well without ViewState enabled, and now it’s much easier to selectively enable controls rather than the old way, which required you to pretty much turn off ViewState for all controls that you didn’t want ViewState on. Inline HTML Encoding HTML encoding is an important feature to prevent cross-site scripting attacks in data entered by users on your site. In order to make it easier to create HTML encoded content, ASP.NET 4.0 introduces a new Expression syntax using <%: %> to encode string values. The encoding expression syntax looks like this: <%: "<script type='text/javascript'>" +     "alert('Really?');</script>" %> which produces properly encoded HTML: &lt;script type=&#39;text/javascript&#39; &gt;alert(&#39;Really?&#39;);&lt;/script&gt; Effectively this is a shortcut to: <%= HttpUtility.HtmlEncode( "<script type='text/javascript'>" + "alert('Really?');</script>") %> Of course the <%: %> syntax can also evaluate expressions just like <%= %> so the more common scenario applies this expression syntax against data your application is displaying. Here’s an example displaying some data model values: <%: Model.Address.Street %> This snippet shows displaying data from your application’s data store or more importantly, from data entered by users. Anything that makes it easier and less verbose to HtmlEncode text is a welcome addition to avoid potential cross-site scripting attacks. Although I listed Inline HTML Encoding here under WebForms, anything that uses the WebForms rendering engine including ASP.NET MVC, benefits from this feature. ScriptManager Enhancements The ASP.NET ScriptManager control in the past has introduced some nice ways to take programmatic and markup control over script loading, but there were a number of shortcomings in this control. The ASP.NET 4.0 ScriptManager has a number of improvements that make it easier to control script loading and addresses a few of the shortcomings that have often kept me from using the control in favor of manual script loading. The first is the AjaxFrameworkMode property which finally lets you suppress loading the ASP.NET AJAX runtime. Disabled doesn’t load any ASP.NET AJAX libraries, but there’s also an Explicit mode that lets you pick and choose the library pieces individually and reduce the footprint of ASP.NET AJAX script included if you are using the library. There’s also a new EnableCdn property that forces any script that has a new WebResource attribute CdnPath property set to a CDN supplied URL. If the script has this Attribute property set to a non-null/empty value and EnableCdn is enabled on the ScriptManager, that script will be served from the specified CdnPath. [assembly: WebResource(    "Westwind.Web.Resources.ww.jquery.js",    "application/x-javascript",    CdnPath =  "http://mysite.com/scripts/ww.jquery.min.js")] Cool, but a little too static for my taste since this value can’t be changed at runtime to point at a debug script as needed, for example. Assembly names for loading scripts from resources can now be simple names rather than fully qualified assembly names, which make it less verbose to reference scripts from assemblies loaded from your bin folder or the assembly reference area in web.config: <asp:ScriptManager runat="server" id="Id"          EnableCdn="true"         AjaxFrameworkMode="disabled">     <Scripts>         <asp:ScriptReference          Name="Westwind.Web.Resources.ww.jquery.js"         Assembly="Westwind.Web" />     </Scripts>        </asp:ScriptManager> The ScriptManager in 4.0 also supports script combining via the CompositeScript tag, which allows you to very easily combine scripts into a single script resource served via ASP.NET. Even nicer: You can specify the URL that the combined script is served with. Check out the following script manager markup that combines several static file scripts and a script resource into a single ASP.NET served resource from a static URL (allscripts.js): <asp:ScriptManager runat="server" id="Id"          EnableCdn="true"         AjaxFrameworkMode="disabled">     <CompositeScript          Path="~/scripts/allscripts.js">         <Scripts>             <asp:ScriptReference                    Path="~/scripts/jquery.js" />             <asp:ScriptReference                    Path="~/scripts/ww.jquery.js" />             <asp:ScriptReference            Name="Westwind.Web.Resources.editors.js"                 Assembly="Westwind.Web" />         </Scripts>     </CompositeScript> </asp:ScriptManager> When you render this into HTML, you’ll see a single script reference in the page: <script src="scripts/allscripts.debug.js"          type="text/javascript"></script> All you need to do to make this work is ensure that allscripts.js and allscripts.debug.js exist in the scripts folder of your application - they can be empty but the file has to be there. This is pretty cool, but you want to be real careful that you use unique URLs for each combination of scripts you combine or else browser and server caching will easily screw you up royally. The script manager also allows you to override native ASP.NET AJAX scripts now as any script references defined in the Scripts section of the ScriptManager trump internal references. So if you want custom behavior or you want to fix a possible bug in the core libraries that normally are loaded from resources, you can now do this simply by referencing the script resource name in the Name property and pointing at System.Web for the assembly. Not a common scenario, but when you need it, it can come in real handy. Still, there are a number of shortcomings in this control. For one, the ScriptManager and ClientScript APIs still have no common entry point so control developers are still faced with having to check and support both APIs to load scripts so that controls can work on pages that do or don’t have a ScriptManager on the page. The CdnUrl is static and compiled in, which is very restrictive. And finally, there’s still no control over where scripts get loaded on the page - ScriptManager still injects scripts into the middle of the HTML markup rather than in the header or optionally the footer. This, in turn, means there is little control over script loading order, which can be problematic for control developers. MetaDescription, MetaKeywords Page Properties There are also a number of additional Page properties that correspond to some of the other features discussed in this column: ClientIDMode, ClientTarget and ViewStateMode. Another minor but useful feature is that you can now directly access the MetaDescription and MetaKeywords properties on the Page object to set the corresponding meta tags programmatically. Updating these values programmatically previously required either <%= %> expressions in the page markup or dynamic insertion of literal controls into the page. You can now just set these properties programmatically on the Page object in any Control derived class on the page or the Page itself: Page.MetaKeywords = "ASP.NET,4.0,New Features"; Page.MetaDescription = "This article discusses the new features in ASP.NET 4.0"; Note, that there’s no corresponding ASP.NET tag for the HTML Meta element, so the only way to specify these values in markup and access them is via the @Page tag: <%@Page Language="C#"      CodeBehind="WebForm2.aspx.cs"     Inherits="Westwind.WebStore.WebForm2"      ClientIDMode="Static"                MetaDescription="Article that discusses what's                      new in ASP.NET 4.0"     MetaKeywords="ASP.NET,4.0,New Features" %> Nothing earth shattering but quite convenient. Visual Studio 2010 Enhancements for Web Development For Web development there are also a host of editor enhancements in Visual Studio 2010. Some of these are not Web specific but they are useful for Web developers in general. Text Editors Throughout Visual Studio 2010, the text editors have all been updated to a new core engine based on WPF which provides some interesting new features for various code editors including the nice ability to zoom in and out with Ctrl-MouseWheel to quickly change the size of text. There are many more API options to control the editor and although Visual Studio 2010 doesn’t yet use many of these features, we can look forward to enhancements in add-ins and future editor updates from the various language teams that take advantage of the visual richness that WPF provides to editing. On the negative side, I’ve noticed that occasionally the code editor and especially the HTML and JavaScript editors will lose the ability to use various navigation keys like arrows, back and delete keys, which requires closing and reopening the documents at times. This issue seems to be well documented so I suspect this will be addressed soon with a hotfix or within the first service pack. Overall though, the code editors work very well, especially given that they were re-written completely using WPF, which was one of my big worries when I first heard about the complete redesign of the editors. Multi-Targeting Visual Studio now targets all versions of the .NET framework from 2.0 forward. You can use Visual Studio 2010 to work on your ASP.NET 2, 3.0 and 3.5 applications which is a nice way to get your feet wet with the new development environment without having to make changes to existing applications. It’s nice to have one tool to work in for all the different versions. Multi-Monitor Support One cool feature of Visual Studio 2010 is the ability to drag windows out of the Visual Studio environment and out onto the desktop including onto another monitor easily. Since Web development often involves working with a host of designers at the same time - visual designer, HTML markup window, code behind and JavaScript editor - it’s really nice to be able to have a little more screen real estate to work on each of these editors. Microsoft made a welcome change in the environment. IntelliSense Snippets for HTML and JavaScript Editors The HTML and JavaScript editors now finally support IntelliSense scripts to create macro-based template expansions that have been in the core C# and Visual Basic code editors since Visual Studio 2005. Snippets allow you to create short XML-based template definitions that can act as static macros or real templates that can have replaceable values that can be embedded into the expanded text. The XML syntax for these snippets is straight forward and it’s pretty easy to create custom snippets manually. You can easily create snippets using XML and store them in your custom snippets folder (C:\Users\rstrahl\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Code Snippets\Visual Web Developer\My HTML Snippets and My JScript Snippets), but it helps to use one of the third-party tools that exist to simplify the process for you. I use SnippetEditor, by Bill McCarthy, which makes short work of creating snippets interactively (http://snippeteditor.codeplex.com/). Note: You may have to manually add the Visual Studio 2010 User specific Snippet folders to this tool to see existing ones you’ve created. Code snippets are some of the biggest time savers and HTML editing more than anything deals with lots of repetitive tasks that lend themselves to text expansion. Visual Studio 2010 includes a slew of built-in snippets (that you can also customize!) and you can create your own very easily. If you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to spend a little time examining your coding patterns and find the repetitive code that you write and convert it into snippets. I’ve been using CodeRush for this for years, but now you can do much of the basic expansion natively for HTML and JavaScript snippets. jQuery Integration Is Now Native jQuery is a popular JavaScript library and recently Microsoft has recently stated that it will become the primary client-side scripting technology to drive higher level script functionality in various ASP.NET Web projects that Microsoft provides. In Visual Studio 2010, the default full project template includes jQuery as part of a new project including the support files that provide IntelliSense (-vsdoc files). IntelliSense support for jQuery is now also baked into Visual Studio 2010, so unlike Visual Studio 2008 which required a separate download, no further installs are required for a rich IntelliSense experience with jQuery. Summary ASP.NET 4.0 brings many useful improvements to the platform, but thankfully most of the changes are incremental changes that don’t compromise backwards compatibility and they allow developers to ease into the new features one feature at a time. None of the changes in ASP.NET 4.0 or Visual Studio 2010 are monumental or game changers. The bigger features are language and .NET Framework changes that are also optional. This ASP.NET and tools release feels more like fine tuning and getting some long-standing kinks worked out of the platform. It shows that the ASP.NET team is dedicated to paying attention to community feedback and responding with changes to the platform and development environment based on this feedback. If you haven’t gotten your feet wet with ASP.NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010, there’s no reason not to give it a shot now - the ASP.NET 4.0 platform is solid and Visual Studio 2010 works very well for a brand new release. Check it out. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  

    Read the article

  • Udev webcam rule read, but not respected?

    - by user89305
    I have two usb-webcams on them machine, but at bot they some switch /dev/video number. The solution to this problem seems to be new udev rule. I have added this rule in/etc/udev/rules.d/jj-video.rules: Fix webcam 1 KERNEL=="video1", SUBSYSTEM=="video4linux", SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="1d6b", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0001", SYMLINK+="webcam1" Fix webcam 2 KERNEL=="video2", SUBSYSTEM=="video4linux", ATTR{name}=="Logitech QuickCam Pro 3000", KERNELS=="0000:00:1d.0", SUBSYSTEMS=="pci", DRIVERS=="uhci_hcd", ATTRS{vendor}=="0x8086", ATTRS##{device}=="0x2658", SYMLINK+="webcam2" but the symlinks are not created. I have tried many different combinations in this file. The present ones are just my lates attempts. I found the parameters in: jjk@eee-old:~$ udevadm info -a -p $(udevadm info -q path -p /class/video4linux/video1) Udevadm info starts with the device specified by the devpath and then walks up the chain of parent devices. It prints for every device found, all possible attributes in the udev rules key format. A rule to match, can be composed by the attributes of the device and the attributes from one single parent device. looking at device '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-2/2-2:1.0/video4linux/video1': KERNEL=="video1" SUBSYSTEM=="video4linux" DRIVER=="" ATTR{name}=="Logitech QuickCam Pro 3000" ATTR{index}=="0" ATTR{button}=="0" looking at parent device '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-2/2-2:1.0': KERNELS=="2-2:1.0" SUBSYSTEMS=="usb" DRIVERS=="Philips webcam" ATTRS{bInterfaceNumber}=="00" ATTRS{bAlternateSetting}==" 9" ATTRS{bNumEndpoints}=="02" ATTRS{bInterfaceClass}=="0a" ATTRS{bInterfaceSubClass}=="ff" ATTRS{bInterfaceProtocol}=="00" ATTRS{supports_autosuspend}=="0" looking at parent device '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-2': KERNELS=="2-2" SUBSYSTEMS=="usb" DRIVERS=="usb" ATTRS{configuration}=="" ATTRS{bNumInterfaces}==" 3" ATTRS{bConfigurationValue}=="1" ATTRS{bmAttributes}=="a0" ATTRS{bMaxPower}=="500mA" ATTRS{urbnum}=="371076" ATTRS{idVendor}=="046d" ATTRS{idProduct}=="08b0" ATTRS{bcdDevice}=="0002" ATTRS{bDeviceClass}=="00" ATTRS{bDeviceSubClass}=="00" ATTRS{bDeviceProtocol}=="00" ATTRS{bNumConfigurations}=="1" ATTRS{bMaxPacketSize0}=="8" ATTRS{speed}=="12" ATTRS{busnum}=="2" ATTRS{devnum}=="2" ATTRS{devpath}=="2" ATTRS{version}==" 1.10" ATTRS{maxchild}=="0" ATTRS{quirks}=="0x0" ATTRS{avoid_reset_quirk}=="0" ATTRS{authorized}=="1" ATTRS{serial}=="01402100A5000000" looking at parent device '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2': KERNELS=="usb2" SUBSYSTEMS=="usb" DRIVERS=="usb" ATTRS{configuration}=="" ATTRS{bNumInterfaces}==" 1" ATTRS{bConfigurationValue}=="1" ATTRS{bmAttributes}=="e0" ATTRS{bMaxPower}==" 0mA" ATTRS{urbnum}=="34" ATTRS{idVendor}=="1d6b" ATTRS{idProduct}=="0001" ATTRS{bcdDevice}=="0302" ATTRS{bDeviceClass}=="09" ATTRS{bDeviceSubClass}=="00" ATTRS{bDeviceProtocol}=="00" ATTRS{bNumConfigurations}=="1" ATTRS{bMaxPacketSize0}=="64" ATTRS{speed}=="12" ATTRS{busnum}=="2" ATTRS{devnum}=="1" ATTRS{devpath}=="0" ATTRS{version}==" 1.10" ATTRS{maxchild}=="2" ATTRS{quirks}=="0x0" ATTRS{avoid_reset_quirk}=="0" ATTRS{authorized}=="1" ATTRS{manufacturer}=="Linux 3.2.0-29-generic uhci_hcd" ATTRS{product}=="UHCI Host Controller" ATTRS{serial}=="0000:00:1d.0" ATTRS{authorized_default}=="1" looking at parent device '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0': KERNELS=="0000:00:1d.0" SUBSYSTEMS=="pci" DRIVERS=="uhci_hcd" ATTRS{vendor}=="0x8086" ATTRS{device}=="0x2658" ATTRS{subsystem_vendor}=="0x1043" ATTRS{subsystem_device}=="0x82d8" ATTRS{class}=="0x0c0300" ATTRS{irq}=="23" ATTRS{local_cpus}=="ff" ATTRS{local_cpulist}=="0-7" ATTRS{dma_mask_bits}=="32" ATTRS{consistent_dma_mask_bits}=="32" ATTRS{broken_parity_status}=="0" ATTRS{msi_bus}=="" looking at parent device '/devices/pci0000:00': KERNELS=="pci0000:00" SUBSYSTEMS=="" DRIVERS=="" jjk@eee-old:~$ And tested the setup: sudo udevadm --debug test /sys/class/video4linux/video1 main: runtime dir '/run/udev' run_command: calling: test adm_test: version 175 This program is for debugging only, it does not run any program, specified by a RUN key. It may show incorrect results, because some values may be different, or not available at a simulation run. parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/40-crda.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/40-fuse.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/40-gnupg.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/40-hplip.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/40-ia64.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/40-inputattach.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/40-libgphoto2-2.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/40-libsane.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/40-ppc.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/40-usb_modeswitch.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/40-xserver-xorg-video-intel.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/42-qemu-usb.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/50-firmware.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/50-udev-default.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/55-dm.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/56-hpmud_support.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/60-cdrom_id.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/60-pcmcia.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/60-persistent-alsa.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/60-persistent-input.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/60-persistent-serial.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/60-persistent-storage-dm.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/60-persistent-storage-tape.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/60-persistent-storage.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/60-persistent-v4l.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/61-accelerometer.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/64-xorg-xkb.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/66-xorg-synaptics-quirks.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/69-cd-sensors.rules' as rules file add_rule: IMPORT found builtin 'usb_id', replacing /lib/udev/rules.d/69-cd-sensors.rules:76 parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/69-libmtp.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/69-xorg-vmmouse.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/69-xserver-xorg-input-wacom.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-cd.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/70-printers.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/75-cd-aliases-generator.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/75-net-description.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/75-persistent-net-generator.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/75-probe_mtd.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/75-tty-description.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/77-mm-ericsson-mbm.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/77-mm-longcheer-port-types.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/77-mm-nokia-port-types.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/77-mm-pcmcia-device-blacklist.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/77-mm-platform-serial-whitelist.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/77-mm-qdl-device-blacklist.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/77-mm-simtech-port-types.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/77-mm-usb-device-blacklist.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/77-mm-x22x-port-types.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/77-mm-zte-port-types.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/77-nm-olpc-mesh.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/78-graphics-card.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/78-sound-card.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/80-drivers.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/80-mm-candidate.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/80-udisks.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/85-brltty.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/85-hdparm.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/85-hplj10xx.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/85-keyboard-configuration.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/85-regulatory.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/85-usbmuxd.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/90-alsa-restore.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/90-alsa-ucm.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/90-libgpod.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/90-pulseaudio.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/95-cd-devices.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/95-keyboard-force-release.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/95-keymap.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/95-udev-late.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/95-upower-battery-recall-dell.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/95-upower-battery-recall-fujitsu.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/95-upower-battery-recall-gateway.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/95-upower-battery-recall-ibm.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/95-upower-battery-recall-lenovo.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/95-upower-battery-recall-toshiba.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/95-upower-csr.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/95-upower-hid.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/95-upower-wup.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/97-bluetooth-hid2hci.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/etc/udev/rules.d/jj-video.rules' as rules file udev_rules_new: rules use 259284 bytes tokens (21607 * 12 bytes), 37913 bytes buffer udev_rules_new: temporary index used 67520 bytes (3376 * 20 bytes) udev_device_new_from_syspath: device 0x215103e0 has devpath '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-2/2-2:1.0/video4linux/video1' udev_device_new_from_syspath: device 0x21510758 has devpath '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-2/2-2:1.0/video4linux/video1' udev_device_read_db: device 0x21510758 filled with db file data udev_device_new_from_syspath: device 0x21510e10 has devpath '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-2/2-2:1.0' udev_device_new_from_syspath: device 0x21511b10 has devpath '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-2' udev_device_new_from_syspath: device 0x215132f8 has devpath '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2' udev_device_new_from_syspath: device 0x21513650 has devpath '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0' udev_device_new_from_syspath: device 0x21513980 has devpath '/devices/pci0000:00' udev_rules_apply_to_event: GROUP 44 /lib/udev/rules.d/50-udev-default.rules:29 udev_rules_apply_to_event: IMPORT 'v4l_id /dev/video1' /lib/udev/rules.d/60-persistent-v4l.rules:7 udev_event_spawn: starting 'v4l_id /dev/video1' spawn_read: 'v4l_id /dev/video1'(out) 'ID_V4L_VERSION=2' spawn_read: 'v4l_id /dev/video1'(out) 'ID_V4L_PRODUCT=Logitech QuickCam Pro 3000' spawn_read: 'v4l_id /dev/video1'(out) 'ID_V4L_CAPABILITIES=:capture:' spawn_wait: 'v4l_id /dev/video1' [2609] exit with return code 0 udev_rules_apply_to_event: IMPORT builtin 'usb_id' /lib/udev/rules.d/60-persistent-v4l.rules:9 builtin_usb_id: /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-2/2-2:1.0: if_class 10 protocol 0 udev_builtin_add_property: ID_VENDOR=046d udev_builtin_add_property: ID_VENDOR_ENC=046d udev_builtin_add_property: ID_VENDOR_ID=046d udev_builtin_add_property: ID_MODEL=08b0 udev_builtin_add_property: ID_MODEL_ENC=08b0 udev_builtin_add_property: ID_MODEL_ID=08b0 udev_builtin_add_property: ID_REVISION=0002 udev_builtin_add_property: ID_SERIAL=046d_08b0_01402100A5000000 udev_builtin_add_property: ID_SERIAL_SHORT=01402100A5000000 udev_builtin_add_property: ID_TYPE=generic udev_builtin_add_property: ID_BUS=usb udev_builtin_add_property: ID_USB_INTERFACES=:0aff00:010100:010200: udev_builtin_add_property: ID_USB_INTERFACE_NUM=00 udev_builtin_add_property: ID_USB_DRIVER=Philips webcam udev_rules_apply_to_event: LINK 'v4l/by-id/usb-046d_08b0_01402100A5000000-video-index0' /lib/udev/rules.d/60-persistent-v4l.rules:10 udev_rules_apply_to_event: IMPORT builtin 'path_id' /lib/udev/rules.d/60-persistent-v4l.rules:16 udev_builtin_add_property: ID_PATH=pci-0000:00:1d.0-usb-0:2:1.0 udev_builtin_add_property: ID_PATH_TAG=pci-0000_00_1d_0-usb-0_2_1_0 udev_rules_apply_to_event: LINK 'v4l/by-path/pci-0000:00:1d.0-usb-0:2:1.0-video-index0' /lib/udev/rules.d/60-persistent-v4l.rules:17 udev_rules_apply_to_event: RUN 'udev-acl --action=$env{ACTION} --device=$env{DEVNAME}' /lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules:74 udev_rules_apply_to_event: LINK 'webcam1' /etc/udev/rules.d/jj-video.rules:2 udev_event_execute_rules: no node name set, will use kernel supplied name 'video1' udev_node_add: creating device node '/dev/video1', devnum=81:1, mode=0660, uid=0, gid=44 udev_node_mknod: preserve file '/dev/video1', because it has correct dev_t udev_node_mknod: preserve permissions /dev/video1, 020660, uid=0, gid=44 node_symlink: preserve already existing symlink '/dev/char/81:1' to '../video1' link_find_prioritized: found 'c81:2' claiming '/run/udev/links/v4l\x2fby-id\x2fusb-046d_08b0_01402100A5000000-video-index0' udev_device_new_from_syspath: device 0x21516748 has devpath '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.1/usb3/3-2/3-2:1.0/video4linux/video2' udev_device_read_db: device 0x21516748 filled with db file data link_find_prioritized: found 'c81:1' claiming '/run/udev/links/v4l\x2fby-id\x2fusb-046d_08b0_01402100A5000000-video-index0' link_update: creating link '/dev/v4l/by-id/usb-046d_08b0_01402100A5000000-video-index0' to '/dev/video1' node_symlink: atomically replace '/dev/v4l/by-id/usb-046d_08b0_01402100A5000000-video-index0' link_find_prioritized: found 'c81:1' claiming '/run/udev/links/v4l\x2fby-path\x2fpci-0000:00:1d.0-usb-0:2:1.0-video-index0' link_update: creating link '/dev/v4l/by-path/pci-0000:00:1d.0-usb-0:2:1.0-video-index0' to '/dev/video1' node_symlink: preserve already existing symlink '/dev/v4l/by-path/pci-0000:00:1d.0-usb-0:2:1.0-video-index0' to '../../video1' link_find_prioritized: found 'c81:1' claiming '/run/udev/links/webcam1' link_update: creating link '/dev/webcam1' to '/dev/video1' node_symlink: preserve already existing symlink '/dev/webcam1' to 'video1' udev_device_update_db: created db file '/run/udev/data/c81:1' for '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-2/2-2:1.0/video4linux/video1' ACTION=add COLORD_DEVICE=1 COLORD_KIND=camera DEVLINKS=/dev/v4l/by-id/usb-046d_08b0_01402100A5000000-video-index0 /dev/v4l/by-path/pci-0000:00:1d.0-usb-0:2:1.0-video-index0 /dev/webcam1 DEVNAME=/dev/video1 DEVPATH=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-2/2-2:1.0/video4linux/video1 ID_BUS=usb ID_MODEL=08b0 ID_MODEL_ENC=08b0 ID_MODEL_ID=08b0 ID_PATH=pci-0000:00:1d.0-usb-0:2:1.0 ID_PATH_TAG=pci-0000_00_1d_0-usb-0_2_1_0 ID_REVISION=0002 ID_SERIAL=046d_08b0_01402100A5000000 ID_SERIAL_SHORT=01402100A5000000 ID_TYPE=generic ID_USB_DRIVER=Philips webcam ID_USB_INTERFACES=:0aff00:010100:010200: ID_USB_INTERFACE_NUM=00 ID_V4L_CAPABILITIES=:capture: ID_V4L_PRODUCT=Logitech QuickCam Pro 3000 ID_V4L_VERSION=2 ID_VENDOR=046d ID_VENDOR_ENC=046d ID_VENDOR_ID=046d MAJOR=81 MINOR=1 SUBSYSTEM=video4linux TAGS=:udev-acl: UDEV_LOG=6 USEC_INITIALIZED=18213768 run: 'udev-acl --action=add --device=/dev/video1' jjk@eee-old:~$ (and correspondingly for video2) It looks to me like my rules are read, but not respected. What am I doing wrong?

    Read the article

  • Is this question too hard for a seasoned C++ architect?

    - by Monomer
    Background Information We're looking to hire a seasoned C++ architect (10+years dev, of which at least 6years must be C++ ) for a high frequency trading platform. Job advert says STL, Boost proficiency is a must with preferences to modern uses of C++. The company I work for is a Fortune 500 IB (aka finance industry), it requires passes in all the standard SHL tests (numeric, vocab, spatial etc) before interviews can commence. Everyone on the team was given the task of coming up with one question to ask the candidates during a written/typed test, please note this is the second test provided to the candidates, the first being Advanced IKM C++ test, done in the offices supervised and without internet access. People passing that do the second test. After roughly 70 candidates, my question has been determined to be statistically the worst performing - aka least number of people attempted it, furthermore even less people were able to give meaningful answers. Please note, the second test is not timed, the candidate can literally take as long as they like (we've had one person take roughly 10.5hrs) My question to SO is this, after SHL and IKM adv c++ tests, backed up with at least 6+ years C++ development experience, is it still ok not to be able to even comment about let alone come up with some loose strategy for solving the following question. The Question There is a class C with methods foo, boo, boo_and_foo and foo_and_boo. Each method takes i,j,k and l clock cycles respectively, where i < j, k < i+j and l < i+j. class C { public: int foo() {...} int boo() {...} int boo_and_foo() {...} int foo_and_boo() {...} }; In code one might write: C c; . . int i = c.foo() + c.boo(); But it would be better to have: int i = c.foo_and_boo(); What changes or techniques could one make to the definition of C, that would allow similar syntax of the original usage, but instead have the compiler generate the latter. Note that foo and boo are not commutative. Possible Solution We were basically looking for an expression templates based approach, and were willing to give marks to anyone who had even hinted or used the phrase or related terminology. We got only two people that used the wording, but weren't able to properly describe how they accomplish the task in detail. We use such techniques all over the place, due to the use of various mathematical operators for matrix and vector based calculations, for example to decide when to use IPP or hand woven implementations at compile time for a particular architecture and many other things. The particular area of software development requires microsecond response times. I believe could/should be able to teach a junior such techniques, but given the assumed caliber of candidates I expected a little more. Is this really a difficult question? Should it be removed? Or are we just not seeing the right candidates?

    Read the article

  • Finding the Right Solution to Source and Manage Your Contractors

    - by mark.rosenberg(at)oracle.com
    Many of our PeopleSoft Enterprise applications customers operate in service-based industries, and all of our customers have at least some internal service units, such as IT, marketing, and facilities. Employing the services of contractors, often referred to as "contingent labor," to deliver either or both internal and external services is common practice. As we've transitioned from an industrial age to a knowledge age, talent has become a primary competitive advantage for most organizations. Contingent labor offers talent on flexible terms; it offers the ability to scale up operations, close skill gaps, and manage risk in the process of delivering services. Talent comes from many sources and the rise in the contingent worker (contractor, consultant, temporary, part time) has increased significantly in the past decade and is expected to reach 40 percent in the next decade. Managing the total pool of talent in a seamless integrated fashion not only saves organizations money and increases efficiency, but creates a better place for workers of all kinds to work. Although the term "contingent labor" is frequently used to describe both contractors and employees who have flexible schedules and relationships with an organization, the remainder of this discussion focuses on contractors. The term "contingent labor" is used interchangeably with "contractor." Recognizing the importance of contingent labor, our PeopleSoft customers often ask our team, "What Oracle vendor management system (VMS) applications should I evaluate for managing contractors?" In response, I thought it would be useful to describe and compare the three most common Oracle-based options available to our customers. They are:   The enterprise licensed software model in which you implement and utilize the PeopleSoft Services Procurement (sPro) application and potentially other PeopleSoft applications;  The software-as-a-service model in which you gain access to a derivative of PeopleSoft sPro from an Oracle Business Process Outsourcing Partner; and  The managed service provider (MSP) model in which staffing industry professionals utilize either your enterprise licensed software or the software-as-a-service application to administer your contingent labor program. At this point, you may be asking yourself, "Why three options?" The answer is that since there is no "one size fits all" in terms of talent, there is also no "one size fits all" for effectively sourcing and managing contingent workers. Various factors influence how an organization thinks about and relates to its contractors, and each of the three Oracle-based options addresses an organization's needs and preferences differently. For the purposes of this discussion, I will describe the options with respect to (A) pricing and software provisioning models; (B) control and flexibility; (C) level of engagement with contractors; and (D) approach to sourcing, employment law, and financial settlement. Option 1:  Enterprise Licensed Software In this model, you purchase from Oracle the license and support for the applications you need. Typically, you license PeopleSoft sPro as your VMS tool for sourcing, monitoring, and paying your contract labor. In conjunction with sPro, you can also utilize PeopleSoft Human Capital Management (HCM) applications (if you do not already) to configure more advanced business processes for recruiting, training, and tracking your contractors. Many customers choose this enterprise license software model because of the functionality and natural integration of the PeopleSoft applications and because the cost for the PeopleSoft software is explicit. There is no fee per transaction to source each contractor under this model. Our customers that employ contractors to augment their permanent staff on billable client engagements often find this model appealing because there are no fees to affect their profit margins. With this model, you decide whether to have your own IT organization run the software or have the software hosted and managed by either Oracle or another application services provider. Your organization, perhaps with the assistance of consultants, configures, deploys, and operates the software for managing your contingent workforce. This model offers you the highest level of control and flexibility since your organization can configure the contractor process flow exactly to your business and security requirements and can extend the functionality with PeopleTools. This option has proven very valuable and applicable to our customers engaged in government contracting because their contingent labor management practices are subject to complex standards and regulations. Customers find a great deal of value in the application functionality and configurability the enterprise licensed software offers for managing contingent labor. Some examples of that functionality are... The ability to create a tiered network of preferred suppliers including competencies, pricing agreements, and elaborate candidate management capabilities. Configurable alerts and online collaboration for bid, resource requisition, timesheet, and deliverable entry, routing, and approval for both resource and deliverable-based services. The ability to manage contractors with the same PeopleSoft HCM and Projects applications that are used to manage the permanent workforce. Because it allows you to utilize much of the same PeopleSoft HCM and Projects application functionality for contractors that you use for permanent employees, the enterprise licensed software model supports the deepest level of engagement with the contingent workforce. For example, you can: fill job openings with contingent labor; guide contingent workers through essential safety and compliance training with PeopleSoft Enterprise Learning Management; and source contingent workers directly to project-based assignments in PeopleSoft Resource Management and PeopleSoft Program Management. This option enables contingent workers to collaborate closely with your permanent staff on complex, knowledge-based efforts - R&D projects, billable client contracts, architecture and engineering projects spanning multiple years, and so on. With the enterprise licensed software model, your organization maintains responsibility for the sourcing, onboarding (including adherence to employment laws), and financial settlement processes. This means your organization maintains on staff or hires the expertise in these domains to utilize the software and interact with suppliers and contractors. Option 2:  Software as a Service (SaaS) The effort involved in setting up and operating VMS software to handle a contingent workforce leads many organizations to seek a system that can be activated and configured within a few days and for which they can pay based on usage. Oracle's Business Process Outsourcing partner, Provade, Inc., provides exactly this option to our customers. Provade offers its vendor management software as a service over the Internet and usually charges your organization a fee that is a percentage of your total contingent labor spending processed through the Provade software. (Percentage of spend is the predominant fee model, although not the only one.) In addition to lower implementation costs, the effort of configuring and maintaining the software is largely upon Provade, not your organization. This can be very appealing to IT organizations that are thinly stretched supporting other important information technology initiatives. Built upon PeopleSoft sPro, the Provade solution is tailored for simple and quick deployment and administration. Provade has added capabilities to clone users rapidly and has simplified business documents, like work orders and change orders, to facilitate enterprise-wide, self-service adoption with little to no training. Provade also leverages Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) to provide integrated spend analytics and dashboards. Although pure customization is more limited than with the enterprise licensed software model, Provade offers a very effective option for organizations that are regularly on-boarding and off-boarding high volumes of contingent staff hired to perform discrete support tasks (for example, order fulfillment during the holiday season, hourly clerical work, desktop technology repairs, and so on) or project tasks. The software is very configurable and at the same time very intuitive to even the most computer-phobic users. The level of contingent worker engagement your organization can achieve with the Provade option is generally the same as with the enterprise licensed software model since Provade can automatically establish contingent labor resources in your PeopleSoft applications. Provade has pre-built integrations to Oracle's PeopleSoft and the Oracle E-Business Suite procurement, projects, payables, and HCM applications, so that you can evaluate, train, assign, and track contingent workers like your permanent employees. Similar to the enterprise licensed software model, your organization is responsible for the contingent worker sourcing, administration, and financial settlement processes. This means your organization needs to maintain the staff expertise in these domains. Option 3:  Managed Services Provider (MSP) Whether you are using the enterprise licensed model or the SaaS model, you may want to engage the services of sourcing, employment, payroll, and financial settlement professionals to administer your contingent workforce program. Firms that offer this expertise are often referred to as "MSPs," and they are typically staffing companies that also offer permanent and temporary hiring services. (In fact, many of the major MSPs are Oracle applications customers themselves, and they utilize the PeopleSoft Solution for the Staffing Industry to run their own business operations.) Usually, MSPs place their staff on-site at your facilities, and they can utilize either your enterprise licensed PeopleSoft sPro application or the Provade VMS SaaS software to administer the network of suppliers providing contingent workers. When you utilize an MSP, there is a separate fee for the MSP's service that is typically funded by the participating suppliers of the contingent labor. Also in this model, the suppliers of the contingent labor (not the MSP) usually pay the contingent labor force. With an MSP, you are intentionally turning over business process control for the advantages associated with having someone else manage the processes. The software option you choose will to a certain extent affect your process flexibility; however, the MSPs are often able to adapt their processes to the unique demands of your business. When you engage an MSP, you will want to give some thought to the level of engagement and "partnering" you need with your contingent workforce. Because the MSP acts as an intermediary, it can be very valuable in handling high volume, routine contracting for which there is a relatively low need for "partnering" with the contingent workforce. However, if your organization (or part of your organization) engages contingent workers for high-profile client projects that require diplomacy, intensive amounts of interaction, and personal trust, introducing an MSP into the process may prove less effective than handling the process with your own staff. In fact, in many organizations, it is common to enlist an MSP to handle contractors working on internal projects and to have permanent employees handle the contractor relationships that affect the portion of the services portfolio focused on customer-facing, billable projects. One of the key advantages of enlisting an MSP is that you do not have to maintain the expertise required for orchestrating the sourcing, hiring, and paying of contingent workers.  These are the domain of the MSPs. If your own staff members are not prepared to manage the essential "overhead" processes associated with contingent labor, working with an MSP can make solid business sense. Proper administration of a contingent workforce can make the difference between project success and failure, operating profit and loss, and legal compliance and fines. Concluding Thoughts There is little doubt that thoughtfully and purposefully constructing a service delivery strategy that leverages the strengths of contingent workers can lead to better projects, deliverables, and business results. What requires a bit more thinking is determining the platform (or platforms) that will enable each part of your organization to best deliver on its mission.

    Read the article

  • Need some help with my XML Schema.

    - by Airjoe
    I'm using Qt C++ and am reading in an XML file for data. I want to ensure the XML file contains valid elements, so I began to write an XML Schema to validate against (Qt doesn't support validating against a DTD). The problem is, I'm not sure if my Schema itself is valid, and I can't seem to find an actual XSD validator. I tried using the official w3c validator at http://www.w3.org/2001/03/webdata/xsv, but it's giving me blank output. Would anyone know of a decent XSD validator, or perhaps be willing to look over the following manually? <?xml version="1.0"?> <xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" elementFormDefault="qualified"> <xs:element name="ballot"> <xs:complexType> <xs:sequence> <xs:element name="races"> <xs:complexType> <xs:element name="race" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="unbounded"> <xs:complexType> <xs:sequence> <xs:element name="rtitle" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="1" type="xs:string"/> <xs:element name="candidates" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="1"> <xs:complexType> <xs:element name="candidate" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="10"> <xs:complexType> <xs:element name="candname" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="1" type="xs:string"/> <xs:element name="candparty" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="1" type="xs:string"/> </xs:complexType> </xs:element> </xs:complexType> </xs:element> </xs:sequence> </xs:complexType> </xs:element> </xs:complexType> </xs:element> <xs:element name="propositions"> <xs:complexType> <xs:element name="proposition" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="unbounded"> <xs:complexType> <xs:element name="ptitle" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="1" type="xs:string"/> <xs:element name="pdesc" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="1" type="xs:string"/> </xs:complexType> </xs:element> </xs:complexType> </xs:element> </xs:sequence> </xs:complexType> </xs:element> </xs:schema> Please let me know what you think, I appreciate it!

    Read the article

  • Big GRC: Turning Data into Actionable GRC Intelligence

    - by Jenna Danko
    While it’s no longer headline news that Governments have carried out large scale data-mining programmes aimed at terrorism detection and identifying other patterns of interest across a wide range of digital data sources, the debate over the ethics and justification over this action, will clearly continue for some time to come. What is becoming clear is that these programmes are a framework for the collation and aggregation of massive amounts of unstructured data and from this, the creation of actionable intelligence from analyses that allowed the analysts to explore and extract a variety of patterns and then direct resources. This data included audio and video chats, phone calls, photographs, e-mails, documents, internet searches, social media posts and mobile phone logs and connections. Although Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) professionals are not looking at the implementation of such programmes, there are many similar GRC “Big data” challenges to be faced and potential lessons to be learned from these high profile government programmes that can be applied a lot closer to home. For example, how can GRC professionals collect, manage and analyze an enormous and disparate volume of data to create and manage their own actionable intelligence covering hidden signs and patterns of criminal activity, the early or retrospective, violation of regulations/laws/corporate policies and procedures, emerging risks and weakening controls etc. Not exactly the stuff of James Bond to be sure, but it is certainly more applicable to most GRC professional’s day to day challenges. So what is Big Data and how can it benefit the GRC process? Although it often varies, the definition of Big Data largely refers to the following types of data: Traditional Enterprise Data – includes customer information from CRM systems, transactional ERP data, web store transactions, and general ledger data. Machine-Generated /Sensor Data – includes Call Detail Records (“CDR”), weblogs and trading systems data. Social Data – includes customer feedback streams, micro-blogging sites like Twitter, and social media platforms like Facebook. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that data volume is growing 40% per year, and will grow 44x between 2009 and 2020. But while it’s often the most visible parameter, volume of data is not the only characteristic that matters. In fact, according to sources such as Forrester there are four key characteristics that define big data: Volume. Machine-generated data is produced in much larger quantities than non-traditional data. This is all the data generated by IT systems that power the enterprise. This includes live data from packaged and custom applications – for example, app servers, Web servers, databases, networks, virtual machines, telecom equipment, and much more. Velocity. Social media data streams – while not as massive as machine-generated data – produce a large influx of opinions and relationships valuable to customer relationship management as well as offering early insight into potential reputational risk issues. Even at 140 characters per tweet, the high velocity (or frequency) of Twitter data ensures large volumes (over 8 TB per day) need to be managed. Variety. Traditional data formats tend to be relatively well defined by a data schema and change slowly. In contrast, non-traditional data formats exhibit a dizzying rate of change. Without question, all GRC professionals work in a dynamic environment and as new services, new products, new business lines are added or new marketing campaigns executed for example, new data types are needed to capture the resultant information.  Value. The economic value of data varies significantly. Typically, there is good information hidden amongst a larger body of non-traditional data that GRC professionals can use to add real value to the organisation; the greater challenge is identifying what is valuable and then transforming and extracting that data for analysis and action. For example, customer service calls and emails have millions of useful data points and have long been a source of information to GRC professionals. Those calls and emails are critical in helping GRC professionals better identify hidden patterns and implement new policies that can reduce the amount of customer complaints.   Now on a scale and depth far beyond those in place today, all that unstructured call and email data can be captured, stored and analyzed to reveal the reasons for the contact, perhaps with the aggregated customer results cross referenced against what is being said about the organization or a similar peer organization on social media. The organization can then take positive actions, communicating to the market in advance of issues reaching the press, strengthening controls, adjusting risk profiles, changing policy and procedures and completely minimizing, if not eliminating, complaints and compensation for that specific reason in the future. In this one example of many similar ones, the GRC team(s) has demonstrated real and tangible business value. Big Challenges - Big Opportunities As pointed out by recent Forrester research, high performing companies (those that are growing 15% or more year-on-year compared to their peers) are taking a selective approach to investing in Big Data.  "Tomorrow's winners understand this, and they are making selective investments aimed at specific opportunities with tangible benefits where big data offers a more economical solution to meet a need." (Forrsights Strategy Spotlight: Business Intelligence and Big Data, Q4 2012) As pointed out earlier, with the ever increasing volume of regulatory demands and fines for getting it wrong, limited resource availability and out of date or inadequate GRC systems all contributing to a higher cost of compliance and/or higher risk profile than desired – a big data investment in GRC clearly falls into this category. However, to make the most of big data organizations must evolve both their business and IT procedures, processes, people and infrastructures to handle these new high-volume, high-velocity, high-variety sources of data and be able integrate them with the pre-existing company data to be analyzed. GRC big data clearly allows the organization access to and management over a huge amount of often very sensitive information that although can help create a more risk intelligent organization, also presents numerous data governance challenges, including regulatory compliance and information security. In addition to client and regulatory demands over better information security and data protection the sheer amount of information organizations deal with the need to quickly access, classify, protect and manage that information can quickly become a key issue  from a legal, as well as technical or operational standpoint. However, by making information governance processes a bigger part of everyday operations, organizations can make sure data remains readily available and protected. The Right GRC & Big Data Partnership Becomes Key  The "getting it right first time" mantra used in so many companies remains essential for any GRC team that is sponsoring, helping kick start, or even overseeing a big data project. To make a big data GRC initiative work and get the desired value, partnerships with companies, who have a long history of success in delivering successful GRC solutions as well as being at the very forefront of technology innovation, becomes key. Clearly solutions can be built in-house more cheaply than through vendor, but as has been proven time and time again, when it comes to self built solutions covering AML and Fraud for example, few have able to scale or adapt appropriately to meet the changing regulations or challenges that the GRC teams face on a daily basis. This has led to the creation of GRC silo’s that are causing so many headaches today. The solutions that stand out and should be explored are the ones that can seamlessly merge the traditional world of well-known data, analytics and visualization with the new world of seemingly innumerable data sources, utilizing Big Data technologies to generate new GRC insights right across the enterprise.Ultimately, Big Data is here to stay, and organizations that embrace its potential and outline a viable strategy, as well as understand and build a solid analytical foundation, will be the ones that are well positioned to make the most of it. A Blueprint and Roadmap Service for Big Data Big data adoption is first and foremost a business decision. As such it is essential that your partner can align your strategies, goals, and objectives with an architecture vision and roadmap to accelerate adoption of big data for your environment, as well as establish practical, effective governance that will maintain a well managed environment going forward. Key Activities: While your initiatives will clearly vary, there are some generic starting points the team and organization will need to complete: Clearly define your drivers, strategies, goals, objectives and requirements as it relates to big data Conduct a big data readiness and Information Architecture maturity assessment Develop future state big data architecture, including views across all relevant architecture domains; business, applications, information, and technology Provide initial guidance on big data candidate selection for migrations or implementation Develop a strategic roadmap and implementation plan that reflects a prioritization of initiatives based on business impact and technology dependency, and an incremental integration approach for evolving your current state to the target future state in a manner that represents the least amount of risk and impact of change on the business Provide recommendations for practical, effective Data Governance, Data Quality Management, and Information Lifecycle Management to maintain a well-managed environment Conduct an executive workshop with recommendations and next steps There is little debate that managing risk and data are the two biggest obstacles encountered by financial institutions.  Big data is here to stay and risk management certainly is not going anywhere, and ultimately financial services industry organizations that embrace its potential and outline a viable strategy, as well as understand and build a solid analytical foundation, will be best positioned to make the most of it. Matthew Long is a Financial Crime Specialist for Oracle Financial Services. He can be reached at matthew.long AT oracle.com.

    Read the article

< Previous Page | 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364  | Next Page >