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  • Pixel plot method errors out without error message.

    - by sonny5
    // The following method blows up (big red x on screen) without generating error info. Any // ideas why? // MyPlot.PlotPixel(x, y, Color.BlueViolet, Grf); // runs if commented out // My goal is to draw a pixel on a form. Is there a way to increase the pixel size also? using System; using System.Drawing; using System.Drawing.Drawing2D; using System.Collections; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Windows.Forms; using System.Data; public class Plot : System.Windows.Forms.Form { private Size _ClientArea; //keeps the pixels info private double _Xspan; private double _Yspan; public Plot() { InitializeComponent(); } public Size ClientArea { set { _ClientArea = value; } } private void InitializeComponent() { this.AutoScaleBaseSize = new System.Drawing.Size(5, 13); this.ClientSize = new System.Drawing.Size(400, 300); this.Text="World Plot (world_plot.cs)"; this.Resize += new System.EventHandler(this.Form1_Resize); this.Paint += new System.Windows.Forms.PaintEventHandler(this.doLine); this.Paint += new System.Windows.Forms.PaintEventHandler(this.TransformPoints); // new this.Paint += new System.Windows.Forms.PaintEventHandler(this.DrawRectangleFloat); this.Paint += new System.Windows.Forms.PaintEventHandler(this.DrawWindow_Paint); } private void DrawWindow_Paint(object sender, PaintEventArgs e) { Graphics Grf = e.Graphics; pixPlot(Grf); } static void Main() { Application.Run(new Plot()); } private void doLine(object sender, System.Windows.Forms.PaintEventArgs e) { // no transforms done yet!!! Graphics g = e.Graphics; g.FillRectangle(Brushes.White, this.ClientRectangle); Pen p = new Pen(Color.Black); g.DrawLine(p, 0, 0, 100, 100); // draw DOWN in y, which is positive since no matrix called p.Dispose(); } public void PlotPixel(double X, double Y, Color C, Graphics G) { Bitmap bm = new Bitmap(1, 1); bm.SetPixel(0, 0, C); G.DrawImageUnscaled(bm, TX(X), TY(Y)); } private int TX(double X) //transform real coordinates to pixels for the X-axis { double w; w = _ClientArea.Width / _Xspan * X + _ClientArea.Width / 2; return Convert.ToInt32(w); } private int TY(double Y) //transform real coordinates to pixels for the Y-axis { double w; w = _ClientArea.Height / _Yspan * Y + _ClientArea.Height / 2; return Convert.ToInt32(w); } private void pixPlot(Graphics Grf) { Plot MyPlot = new Plot(); double x = 12.0; double y = 10.0; MyPlot.ClientArea = this.ClientSize; Console.WriteLine("x = {0}", x); Console.WriteLine("y = {0}", y); //MyPlot.PlotPixel(x, y, Color.BlueViolet, Grf); // blows up } private void DrawRectangleFloat(object sender, PaintEventArgs e) { // Create pen. Pen penBlu = new Pen(Color.Blue, 2); // Create location and size of rectangle. float x = 0.0F; float y = 0.0F; float width = 200.0F; float height = 200.0F; // translate DOWN by 200 pixels // Draw rectangle to screen. e.Graphics.DrawRectangle(penBlu, x, y, width, height); } private void TransformPoints(object sender, System.Windows.Forms.PaintEventArgs e) { // after transforms Graphics g = this.CreateGraphics(); Pen penGrn = new Pen(Color.Green, 3); Matrix myMatrix2 = new Matrix(1, 0, 0, -1, 0, 0); // flip Y axis with -1 g.Transform = myMatrix2; g.TranslateTransform(0, 200, MatrixOrder.Append); // translate DOWN the same distance as the rectangle... // ...so this will put it at lower left corner g.DrawLine(penGrn, 0, 0, 100, 90); // notice that y 90 is going UP } private void Form1_Resize(object sender, System.EventArgs e) { Invalidate(); } }

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  • Why are my Opteron cores running at only 75% capacity each? (25% CPU idle)

    - by Tim Cooper
    We've just taken delivery of a powerful 32-core AMD Opteron server with 128Gb. We have 2 x 6272 CPU's with 16 cores each. We are running a big long-running java task on 30 threads. We have the NUMA optimisations for Linux and java turned on. Our Java threads are mainly using objects that are private to that thread, sometimes reading memory that other threads will be reading, and very very occasionally writing or locking shared objects. We can't explain why the CPU cores are 25% idle. Below is a dump of "top": top - 23:06:38 up 1 day, 23 min, 3 users, load average: 10.84, 10.27, 9.62 Tasks: 676 total, 1 running, 675 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 64.5%us, 1.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 32.9%id, 1.3%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Mem: 132138168k total, 131652664k used, 485504k free, 92340k buffers Swap: 5701624k total, 230252k used, 5471372k free, 13444344k cached ... top - 22:37:39 up 23:54, 3 users, load average: 7.83, 8.70, 9.27 Tasks: 678 total, 1 running, 677 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu0 : 75.8%us, 2.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 22.2%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu1 : 77.2%us, 1.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 21.5%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu2 : 77.3%us, 1.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 21.7%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu3 : 77.8%us, 1.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 21.2%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu4 : 76.9%us, 2.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 21.1%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu5 : 76.3%us, 2.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 21.7%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu6 : 12.6%us, 3.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 84.4%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu7 : 8.6%us, 2.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 89.4%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu8 : 77.0%us, 2.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 21.1%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu9 : 77.0%us, 2.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 21.1%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu10 : 77.6%us, 1.7%sy, 0.0%ni, 20.8%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu11 : 75.7%us, 2.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 21.4%id, 1.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu12 : 76.6%us, 2.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 21.1%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu13 : 76.6%us, 2.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 21.1%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu14 : 76.2%us, 2.6%sy, 0.0%ni, 15.9%id, 5.3%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu15 : 76.6%us, 2.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 21.5%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu16 : 73.6%us, 2.6%sy, 0.0%ni, 23.8%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu17 : 74.5%us, 2.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 23.2%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu18 : 73.9%us, 2.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 23.8%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu19 : 72.9%us, 2.6%sy, 0.0%ni, 24.4%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu20 : 72.8%us, 2.6%sy, 0.0%ni, 24.5%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu21 : 72.7%us, 2.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 25.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu22 : 72.5%us, 2.6%sy, 0.0%ni, 24.8%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu23 : 73.0%us, 2.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 24.7%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu24 : 74.7%us, 2.7%sy, 0.0%ni, 22.7%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu25 : 74.5%us, 2.6%sy, 0.0%ni, 22.8%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu26 : 73.7%us, 2.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 24.3%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu27 : 74.1%us, 2.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 23.6%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu28 : 74.1%us, 2.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 23.6%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu29 : 74.0%us, 2.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 24.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu30 : 73.2%us, 2.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 24.5%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu31 : 73.1%us, 2.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 24.9%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Mem: 132138168k total, 131711704k used, 426464k free, 88336k buffers Swap: 5701624k total, 229572k used, 5472052k free, 13745596k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 13865 root 20 0 122g 112g 3.1g S 2334.3 89.6 20726:49 java 27139 jayen 20 0 15428 1728 952 S 2.6 0.0 0:04.21 top 27161 sysadmin 20 0 15428 1712 940 R 1.0 0.0 0:00.28 top 33 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.3 0.0 0:06.24 ksoftirqd/7 131 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.3 0.0 0:09.52 events/0 1858 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.3 0.0 1:35.14 kondemand/0 A dump of the java stack confirms that none of the threads are anywhere near the few places where locks are used, nor are they anywhere near any disk or network i/o. I had trouble finding a clear explanation of what 'top' means by "idle" versus "wait", but I get the impression that "idle" means "no more threads that need to be run" but this doesn't make sense in our case. We're using a "Executors.newFixedThreadPool(30)". There are a large number of tasks pending and each task lasts for 10 seconds or so. I suspect that the explanation requires a good understanding of NUMA. Is the "idle" state what you see when a CPU is waiting for a non-local access? If not, then what is the explanation?

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  • App crashes when adding array data to table cells

    - by bassmandan
    I am trying to create a table view that loads a number of tweets into the table (one per cell etc). I am using NSXMLParser to get the information and have got as far as creating an array with the selection of tweets that I want. However, when I try to add them to the table cells, the app crashes on the line: cell.textLabel.text = cellValue; An NSLog before this shows in the console that the app is getting the correct data, so I am a bit stumped as to why this isn't working. This is the block of code that appears to be having the problem: - (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath { static NSString *CellIdentifier = @"Cell"; UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:CellIdentifier]; if (cell == nil) { cell = [[UITableViewCell alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleDefault reuseIdentifier:CellIdentifier]; } // Set up the cell... NSString *cellValue = [statuses objectAtIndex:indexPath.row]; NSLog(@"%@", cellValue); cell.textLabel.text = cellValue; return cell;} If it makes a difference, I am using ARC and the latest version of XCode. I'm still quite new to all this, so if I need to give some extra information, let me know. Thanks in advance. Edit: Backtrace gives the following: * thread #1: tid = 0x2003, 0x918a19c6 libsystem_kernel.dylib`__pthread_kill + 10, stop reason = signal SIGABRT frame #0: 0x918a19c6 libsystem_kernel.dylib`__pthread_kill + 10 frame #1: 0x9968ff78 libsystem_c.dylib`pthread_kill + 106 frame #2: 0x99680bdd libsystem_c.dylib`abort + 167 frame #3: 0x03c93e78 libc++abi.dylib`_Unwind_DeleteException frame #4: 0x03c9189e libc++abi.dylib`_ZL17default_terminatev + 34 frame #5: 0x0154df4b libobjc.A.dylib`_objc_terminate + 94 frame #6: 0x03c918de libc++abi.dylib`_ZL19safe_handler_callerPFvvE + 13 frame #7: 0x03c91946 libc++abi.dylib`std::terminate() + 23 frame #8: 0x03c92ab2 libc++abi.dylib`__cxa_throw + 110 frame #9: 0x0154de15 libobjc.A.dylib`objc_exception_throw + 311 frame #10: 0x013bdced CoreFoundation`-[NSObject doesNotRecognizeSelector:] + 253 frame #11: 0x01322f00 CoreFoundation`___forwarding___ + 432 frame #12: 0x01322ce2 CoreFoundation`_CF_forwarding_prep_0 + 50 frame #13: 0x0015168f UIKit`-[UILabel setText:] + 56 frame #14: 0x00003088 Twitter`-[TwitterViewController tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath:] + 376 at TwitterViewController.m:131 frame #15: 0x000ace0f UIKit`-[UITableView(UITableViewInternal) _createPreparedCellForGlobalRow:withIndexPath:] + 494 frame #16: 0x000ad589 UIKit`-[UITableView(UITableViewInternal) _createPreparedCellForGlobalRow:] + 69 frame #17: 0x00098dfd UIKit`-[UITableView(_UITableViewPrivate) _updateVisibleCellsNow:] + 1350 frame #18: 0x000a7851 UIKit`-[UITableView layoutSubviews] + 242 frame #19: 0x00052301 UIKit`-[UIView(CALayerDelegate) layoutSublayersOfLayer:] + 145 frame #20: 0x013bde72 CoreFoundation`-[NSObject performSelector:withObject:] + 66 frame #21: 0x01d6692d QuartzCore`-[CALayer layoutSublayers] + 266 frame #22: 0x01d70827 QuartzCore`CA::Layer::layout_if_needed(CA::Transaction*) + 231 frame #23: 0x01cf6fa7 QuartzCore`CA::Context::commit_transaction(CA::Transaction*) + 377 frame #24: 0x01cf8ea6 QuartzCore`CA::Transaction::commit() + 374 frame #25: 0x01d8430c QuartzCore`+[CATransaction flush] + 52 frame #26: 0x000124c6 UIKit`-[UIApplication _reportAppLaunchFinished] + 39 frame #27: 0x00012bd6 UIKit`-[UIApplication _runWithURL:payload:launchOrientation:statusBarStyle:statusBarHidden:] + 1324 frame #28: 0x00021743 UIKit`-[UIApplication handleEvent:withNewEvent:] + 1027 frame #29: 0x000221f8 UIKit`-[UIApplication sendEvent:] + 68 frame #30: 0x00015aa9 UIKit`_UIApplicationHandleEvent + 8196 frame #31: 0x012a6fa9 GraphicsServices`PurpleEventCallback + 1274 frame #32: 0x013901c5 CoreFoundation`__CFRUNLOOP_IS_CALLING_OUT_TO_A_SOURCE1_PERFORM_FUNCTION__ + 53 frame #33: 0x012f5022 CoreFoundation`__CFRunLoopDoSource1 + 146 frame #34: 0x012f390a CoreFoundation`__CFRunLoopRun + 2218 frame #35: 0x012f2db4 CoreFoundation`CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 212 frame #36: 0x012f2ccb CoreFoundation`CFRunLoopRunInMode + 123 frame #37: 0x000122a7 UIKit`-[UIApplication _run] + 576 frame #38: 0x00013a9b UIKit`UIApplicationMain + 1175 frame #39: 0x0000239d Twitter`main + 141 at main.m:16 frame #40: 0x00002305 Twitter`start + 53 Debugging console shows this: 2012-04-08 10:10:05.084 Twitter[25309:f803] ( { text = "Have you shared the Shakedown yet? http://t.co/WHrIC9w7"; }, { text = "For all you closet rocknrollas pencil in Sat 12th May The Rebirth of Rock n Roll Party. Haywire Saint @ The Good... http://t.co/OXHKlLIV"; }, { text = "4 weeks today: Vocal tracks will be getting recorded at The Premises Studios"; }, { text = "Rehearsal tonight in preparation to some big recording next month!"; }, { text = "haywire saint 'great taste.' Tune. \n\nhttp://t.co/GKmu5Lna http://t.co/0fii55Hw"; }, { text = "Meeting up with an old roadie for The Cure today. oh the stories...... http://t.co/UeUYccme"; }, { text = "Satisfying day of programming today.. Haywire Saint app coming along nicely with the custom music player ready to rock 'n' roll!"; }, { text = "Happy Friday Everyone!"; }, { text = "We had a great time at The Premises Studios yesterday. We'll be back there before long :D x"; }, { text = "I posted a new photo to Facebook http://t.co/73qAnCvk"; } ) 2012-04-08 10:10:05.093 Twitter[25309:f803] { text = "Have you shared the Shakedown yet? http://t.co/WHrIC9w7"; } 2012-04-08 10:10:05.094 Twitter[25309:f803] -[__NSCFDictionary isEqualToString:]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x6877a50 2012-04-08 10:10:05.096 Twitter[25309:f803] *** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '-[__NSCFDictionary isEqualToString:]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x6877a50' *** First throw call stack: (0x13bc052 0x154dd0a 0x13bdced 0x1322f00 0x1322ce2 0x15168f 0x3088 0xace0f 0xad589 0x98dfd 0xa7851 0x52301 0x13bde72 0x1d6692d 0x1d70827 0x1cf6fa7 0x1cf8ea6 0x1d8430c 0x124c6 0x12bd6 0x21743 0x221f8 0x15aa9 0x12a6fa9 0x13901c5 0x12f5022 0x12f390a 0x12f2db4 0x12f2ccb 0x122a7 0x13a9b 0x239d 0x2305) terminate called throwing an exception2012-04-08 10:10:05.924 Twitter[25309:f803] -[__NSCFConstantString count]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x5b30

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  • Losing NSManaged Objects in my Application

    - by Wayfarer
    I've been doing quite a bit of work on a fun little iPhone app. At one point, I get a bunch of player objects from my Persistant store, and then display them on the screen. I also have the options of adding new player objects (their just custom UIButtons) and removing selected players. However, I believe I'm running into some memory management issues, in that somehow the app is not saving which "players" are being displayed. Example: I have 4 players shown, I select them all and then delete them all. They all disappear. But if I exit and then reopen the application, they all are there again. As though they had never left. So somewhere in my code, they are not "really" getting removed. MagicApp201AppDelegate *appDelegate = [[UIApplication sharedApplication] delegate]; context = [appDelegate managedObjectContext]; NSFetchRequest *request = [[NSFetchRequest alloc] init]; NSEntityDescription *desc = [NSEntityDescription entityForName:@"Player" inManagedObjectContext:context]; [request setEntity:desc]; NSError *error; NSMutableArray *objects = [[[context executeFetchRequest:request error:&error] mutableCopy] autorelease]; if (objects == nil) { NSLog(@"Shit man, there was an error taking out the single player object when the view did load. ", error); } int j = 0; while (j < [objects count]) { if ([[[objects objectAtIndex:j] valueForKey:@"currentMultiPlayer"] boolValue] == NO) { [objects removeObjectAtIndex:j]; j--; } else { j++; } } [self setPlayers:objects]; //This is a must, it NEEDS to work Objects are all the players playing So in this snippit (in the viewdidLoad method), I grab the players out of the persistant store, and then remove the objects I don't want (those whose boolValue is NO), and the rest are kept. This works, I'm pretty sure. I think the issue is where I remove the players. Here is that code: NSLog(@"Remove players"); /** For each selected player: Unselect them (remove them from SelectedPlayers) Remove the button from the view Remove the button object from the array Remove the player from Players */ NSLog(@"Debugging Removal: %d", [selectedPlayers count]); for (int i=0; i < [selectedPlayers count]; i++) { NSManagedObject *rPlayer = [selectedPlayers objectAtIndex:i]; [rPlayer setValue:[NSNumber numberWithBool:NO] forKey:@"currentMultiPlayer"]; int index = [players indexOfObjectIdenticalTo:rPlayer]; //this is the index we need for (int j = (index + 1); j < [players count]; j++) { UIButton *tempButton = [playerButtons objectAtIndex:j]; tempButton.tag--; } NSError *error; if ([context hasChanges] && ![context save:&error]) { NSLog(@"Unresolved error %@, %@", error, [error userInfo]); abort(); } UIButton *aButton = [playerButtons objectAtIndex:index]; [players removeObjectAtIndex:index]; [aButton removeFromSuperview]; [playerButtons removeObjectAtIndex:index]; } [selectedPlayers removeAllObjects]; NSError *error; if ([context hasChanges] && ![context save:&error]) { NSLog(@"Unresolved error %@, %@", error, [error userInfo]); abort(); } NSLog(@"About to refresh YES"); [self refreshAllPlayers:YES]; The big part in the second code snippet is I set them to NO for currentMultiPlayer. NO NO NO NO NO, they should NOT come back when the view does load, NEVER ever ever. Not until I say so. No other relevant part of the code sets that to YES. Which makes me think... perhaps they aren't being saved. Perhaps that doesn't save, perhaps those objects aren't being managed anymore, and so they don't get saved in. Is there a lifetime (metaphorically) of NSManaged object? The Players array is the same I set in the "viewDidLoad" method, and SelectedPlayers holds players that are selected, references to NSManagedObjects. Does it have something to do with Removing them from the array? I'm so confused, some insight would be greatly appreciated!!

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  • STORED PROCEDURE working in my local test machine cannot be created in production environment.

    - by Marcos Buarque
    Hi, I have an SQL CREATE PROCEDURE statement that runs perfectly in my local SQL Server, but cannot be recreated in production environment. The error message I get in production is Msg 102, Level 15, State 1, Incorrect syntax near '='. It is a pretty big query and I don't want to annoy StackOverflow users, but I simply can't find a solution. If only you could point me out what settings I could check in the production server in order to enable running the code... I must be using some kind of syntax or something that is conflicting with some setting in production. This PROCEDURE was already registered in production before, but when I ran a DROP - CREATE PROCEDURE today, the server was able to drop the procedure, but not to recreate it. I will paste the code below. Thank you! =============== USE [Enorway] GO /****** Object: StoredProcedure [dbo].[Spel_CM_ChartsUsersTotals] Script Date: 03/17/2010 11:59:57 ******/ SET ANSI_NULLS ON GO SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON GO CREATE PROC [dbo].[Spel_CM_ChartsUsersTotals] @IdGroup int, @IdAssessment int, @UserId int AS SET NOCOUNT ON DECLARE @RequiredColor varchar(6) SET @RequiredColor = '3333cc' DECLARE @ManagersColor varchar(6) SET @ManagersColor = '993300' DECLARE @GroupColor varchar(6) SET @GroupColor = 'ff0000' DECLARE @SelfColor varchar(6) SET @SelfColor = '336600' DECLARE @TeamColor varchar(6) SET @TeamColor = '993399' DECLARE @intMyCounter tinyint DECLARE @intManagersPosition tinyint DECLARE @intGroupPosition tinyint DECLARE @intSelfPosition tinyint DECLARE @intTeamPosition tinyint SET @intMyCounter = 1 -- Table that will hold the subtotals... DECLARE @tblTotalsSource table ( IdCompetency int, CompetencyName nvarchar(200), FunctionRequiredLevel float, ManagersAverageAssessment float, SelfAssessment float, GroupAverageAssessment float, TeamAverageAssessment float ) INSERT INTO @tblTotalsSource ( IdCompetency, CompetencyName, FunctionRequiredLevel, ManagersAverageAssessment, SelfAssessment, GroupAverageAssessment, TeamAverageAssessment ) SELECT e.[IdCompetency], dbo.replaceAccentChar(e.[Name]) AS CompetencyName, (i.[LevelNumber]) AS FunctionRequiredLevel, ( SELECT ROUND(avg(CAST(ac.[LevelNumber] AS float)),0) FROM Spel_CM_AssessmentsData aa INNER JOIN Spel_CM_CompetenciesLevels ab ON aa.[IdCompetencyLevel] = ab.[IdCompetencyLevel] INNER JOIN Spel_CM_Levels ac ON ab.[IdLevel] = ac.[IdLevel] INNER JOIN Spel_CM_AssessmentsEvents ad ON aa.[IdAssessmentEvent] = ad.[IdAssessmentEvent] WHERE aa.[EvaluatedUserId] = @UserId AND aa.[AssessmentType] = 't' AND aa.[IdGroup] = @IdGroup AND ab.[IdCompetency] = e.[IdCompetency] AND ad.[IdAssessment] = @IdAssessment ) AS ManagersAverageAssessment, ( SELECT bc.[LevelNumber] FROM Spel_CM_AssessmentsData ba INNER JOIN Spel_CM_CompetenciesLevels bb ON ba.[IdCompetencyLevel] = bb.[IdCompetencyLevel] INNER JOIN Spel_CM_Levels bc ON bb.[IdLevel] = bc.[IdLevel] INNER JOIN Spel_CM_AssessmentsEvents bd ON ba.[IdAssessmentEvent] = bd.[IdAssessmentEvent] WHERE ba.[EvaluatedUserId] = @UserId AND ba.[AssessmentType] = 's' AND ba.[IdGroup] = @IdGroup AND bb.[IdCompetency] = e.[IdCompetency] AND bd.[IdAssessment] = @IdAssessment ) AS SelfAssessment, ( SELECT ROUND(avg(CAST(cc.[LevelNumber] AS float)),0) FROM Spel_CM_AssessmentsData ca INNER JOIN Spel_CM_CompetenciesLevels cb ON ca.[IdCompetencyLevel] = cb.[IdCompetencyLevel] INNER JOIN Spel_CM_Levels cc ON cb.[IdLevel] = cc.[IdLevel] INNER JOIN Spel_CM_AssessmentsEvents cd ON ca.[IdAssessmentEvent] = cd.[IdAssessmentEvent] WHERE ca.[EvaluatedUserId] = @UserId AND ca.[AssessmentType] = 'g' AND ca.[IdGroup] = @IdGroup AND cb.[IdCompetency] = e.[IdCompetency] AND cd.[IdAssessment] = @IdAssessment ) AS GroupAverageAssessment, ( SELECT ROUND(avg(CAST(dc.[LevelNumber] AS float)),0) FROM Spel_CM_AssessmentsData da INNER JOIN Spel_CM_CompetenciesLevels db ON da.[IdCompetencyLevel] = db.[IdCompetencyLevel] INNER JOIN Spel_CM_Levels dc ON db.[IdLevel] = dc.[IdLevel] INNER JOIN Spel_CM_AssessmentsEvents dd ON da.[IdAssessmentEvent] = dd.[IdAssessmentEvent] WHERE da.[EvaluatedUserId] = @UserId AND da.[AssessmentType] = 'm' AND da.[IdGroup] = @IdGroup AND db.[IdCompetency] = e.[IdCompetency] AND dd.[IdAssessment] = @IdAssessment ) AS TeamAverageAssessment FROM Spel_CM_AssessmentsData a INNER JOIN Spel_CM_AssessmentsEvents c ON a.[IdAssessmentEvent] = c.[IdAssessmentEvent] INNER JOIN Spel_CM_CompetenciesLevels d ON a.[IdCompetencyLevel] = d.[IdCompetencyLevel] INNER JOIN Spel_CM_Competencies e ON d.[IdCompetency] = e.[IdCompetency] INNER JOIN Spel_CM_Levels f ON d.[IdLevel] = f.[IdLevel] -- This will link with user's assigned functions INNER JOIN Spel_CM_FunctionsCompetenciesLevels g ON a.[IdFunction] = g.[IdFunction] INNER JOIN Spel_CM_CompetenciesLevels h ON g.[IdCompetencyLevel] = h.[IdCompetencyLevel] AND e.[IdCompetency] = h.[IdCompetency] INNER JOIN Spel_CM_Levels i ON h.[IdLevel] = i.[IdLevel] WHERE (NOT c.[EndDate] IS NULL) AND a.[EvaluatedUserId] = @UserId AND c.[IdAssessment] = @IdAssessment AND a.[IdGroup] = @IdGroup GROUP BY e.[IdCompetency], e.[Name], i.[LevelNumber] ORDER BY e.[Name] ASC -- This will define the position of each element (managers, group, self and team) SELECT @intManagersPosition = @intMyCounter FROM @tblTotalsSource WHERE NOT ManagersAverageAssessment IS NULL IF IsNumeric(@intManagersPosition) = 1 BEGIN SELECT @intMyCounter += 1 END SELECT @intGroupPosition = @intMyCounter FROM @tblTotalsSource WHERE NOT GroupAverageAssessment IS NULL IF IsNumeric(@intGroupPosition) = 1 BEGIN SELECT @intMyCounter += 1 END SELECT @intSelfPosition = @intMyCounter FROM @tblTotalsSource WHERE NOT SelfAssessment IS NULL IF IsNumeric(@intSelfPosition) = 1 BEGIN SELECT @intMyCounter += 1 END SELECT @intTeamPosition = @intMyCounter FROM @tblTotalsSource WHERE NOT TeamAverageAssessment IS NULL -- This will render the final table for the end user. The tabe will flatten some of the numbers to allow them to be prepared for Google Graphics. SELECT SUBSTRING( ( SELECT ( '|' + REPLACE(ma.[CompetencyName],' ','+')) FROM @tblTotalsSource ma ORDER BY ma.[CompetencyName] DESC FOR XML PATH('') ), 2, 1000) AS 'CompetenciesNames', SUBSTRING( ( SELECT ( ',' + REPLACE(ra.[FunctionRequiredLevel]*10,' ','+')) FROM @tblTotalsSource ra FOR XML PATH('') ), 2, 1000) AS 'FunctionRequiredLevel', SUBSTRING( ( SELECT ( ',' + CAST(na.[ManagersAverageAssessment]*10 AS nvarchar(10))) FROM @tblTotalsSource na FOR XML PATH('') ), 2, 1000) AS 'ManagersAverageAssessment', SUBSTRING( ( SELECT ( ',' + CAST(oa.[GroupAverageAssessment]*10 AS nvarchar(10))) FROM @tblTotalsSource oa FOR XML PATH('') ), 2, 1000) AS 'GroupAverageAssessment', SUBSTRING( ( SELECT ( ',' + CAST(pa.[SelfAssessment]*10 AS nvarchar(10))) FROM @tblTotalsSource pa FOR XML PATH('') ), 2, 1000) AS 'SelfAssessment', SUBSTRING( ( SELECT ( ',' + CAST(qa.[TeamAverageAssessment]*10 AS nvarchar(10))) FROM @tblTotalsSource qa FOR XML PATH('') ), 2, 1000) AS 'TeamAverageAssessment', SUBSTRING( ( SELECT ( '|t++' + CAST([FunctionRequiredLevel] AS varchar(10)) + ',' + @RequiredColor + ',0,' + CAST(ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY CompetencyName) - 1 AS varchar(2)) + ',9') FROM @tblTotalsSource FOR XML PATH('') ), 2, 1000) AS 'FunctionRequiredAverageLabel', SUBSTRING( ( SELECT ( '|t++' + CAST([ManagersAverageAssessment] AS varchar(10)) + ',' + @ManagersColor + ',' + CAST(@intManagersPosition AS varchar(2)) + ',' + CAST(ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY CompetencyName) - 1 AS varchar(2)) + ',9') FROM @tblTotalsSource FOR XML PATH('') ), 2, 1000) AS 'ManagersLabel', SUBSTRING( ( SELECT ( '|t++' + CAST([GroupAverageAssessment] AS varchar(10)) + ',' + @GroupColor + ',' + CAST(@intGroupPosition AS varchar(2)) + ',' + CAST(ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY CompetencyName) - 1 AS varchar(2)) + ',9') FROM @tblTotalsSource FOR XML PATH('') ), 2, 1000) AS 'GroupLabel', SUBSTRING( ( SELECT ( '|t++' + CAST([SelfAssessment] AS varchar(10)) + ',' + @SelfColor + ',' + CAST(@intSelfPosition AS varchar(2)) + ',' + CAST(ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY CompetencyName) - 1 AS varchar(2)) + ',9') FROM @tblTotalsSource FOR XML PATH('') ), 2, 1000) AS 'SelfLabel', SUBSTRING( ( SELECT ( '|t++' + CAST([TeamAverageAssessment] AS varchar(10)) + ',' + @TeamColor + ',' + CAST(@intTeamPosition AS varchar(2)) + ',' + CAST(ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY CompetencyName) - 1 AS varchar(2)) + ',10') FROM @tblTotalsSource FOR XML PATH('') ), 2, 1000) AS 'TeamLabel', (Count(src.[IdCompetency]) * 30) + 100 AS 'ControlHeight' FROM @tblTotalsSource src SET NOCOUNT OFF GO

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  • SUDS rendering a duplicate node and wrapping everything in it

    - by PylonsN00b
    Here is my code: #Make the SOAP connection url = "https://api.channeladvisor.com/ChannelAdvisorAPI/v1/InventoryService.asmx?WSDL" headers = {'Content-Type': 'text/xml; charset=utf-8'} ca_client_inventory = Client(url, location="https://api.channeladvisor.com/ChannelAdvisorAPI/v1/InventoryService.asmx", headers=headers) #Make the SOAP headers login = ca_client_inventory.factory.create('APICredentials') login.DeveloperKey = 'REMOVED' login.Password = 'REMOVED' #Attach the headers ca_client_inventory.set_options(soapheaders=login) synch_inventory_item_list = ca_client_inventory.factory.create('SynchInventoryItemList') synch_inventory_item_list.accountID = "REMOVED" array_of_inventory_item_submit = ca_client_inventory.factory.create('ArrayOfInventoryItemSubmit') for product in products: inventory_item_submit = ca_client_inventory.factory.create('InventoryItemSubmit') inventory_item_list = get_item_list(product) inventory_item_submit = [inventory_item_list] array_of_inventory_item_submit.InventoryItemSubmit.append(inventory_item_submit) synch_inventory_item_list.itemList = array_of_inventory_item_submit #Call that service baby! ca_client_inventory.service.SynchInventoryItemList(synch_inventory_item_list) Here is what it outputs: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:ns0="http://api.channeladvisor.com/webservices/" xmlns:ns1="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:tns="http://api.channeladvisor.com/webservices/" xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"> <SOAP-ENV:Header> <tns:APICredentials> <tns:DeveloperKey>REMOVED</tns:DeveloperKey> <tns:Password>REMOVED</tns:Password> </tns:APICredentials> </SOAP-ENV:Header> <ns1:Body> <ns0:SynchInventoryItemList> <ns0:accountID> <ns0:accountID>REMOVED</ns0:accountID> <ns0:itemList> <ns0:InventoryItemSubmit> <ns0:Sku>1872</ns0:Sku> <ns0:Title>The Big Book Of Crazy Quilt Stitches</ns0:Title> <ns0:Subtitle></ns0:Subtitle> <ns0:Description>Embellish the seams and patches of crazy quilt projects with over 75 embroidery stitches and floral motifs. You&apos;ll use this handy reference book again and again to dress up wall hangings, pillows, sachets, clothing, and other nostalgic creations.</ns0:Description> <ns0:Weight>4</ns0:Weight> <ns0:FlagStyle/> <ns0:IsBlocked xsi:nil="true"/> <ns0:ISBN></ns0:ISBN> <ns0:UPC>028906018721</ns0:UPC> <ns0:EAN></ns0:EAN> <ns0:QuantityInfo> <ns0:UpdateType>UnShipped</ns0:UpdateType> <ns0:Total>0</ns0:Total> </ns0:QuantityInfo> <ns0:PriceInfo> <ns0:Cost>0.575</ns0:Cost> <ns0:RetailPrice xsi:nil="true"/> <ns0:StartingPrice xsi:nil="true"/> <ns0:ReservePrice xsi:nil="true"/> <ns0:TakeItPrice>6.95</ns0:TakeItPrice> <ns0:SecondChanceOfferPrice xsi:nil="true"/> <ns0:StorePrice>6.95</ns0:StorePrice> </ns0:PriceInfo> <ns0:ClassificationInfo> <ns0:Name>Books</ns0:Name> <ns0:AttributeList> <ns0:ClassificationAttributeInfo> <ns0:Name>Designer/Author</ns0:Name> <ns0:Value>Patricia Eaton</ns0:Value> </ns0:ClassificationAttributeInfo> <ns0:ClassificationAttributeInfo> <ns0:Name>Trim Size</ns0:Name> <ns0:Value></ns0:Value> </ns0:ClassificationAttributeInfo> <ns0:ClassificationAttributeInfo> <ns0:Name>Binding</ns0:Name> <ns0:Value>Leaflet</ns0:Value> </ns0:ClassificationAttributeInfo> <ns0:ClassificationAttributeInfo> <ns0:Name>Release Date</ns0:Name> <ns0:Value>11/1/1999 0:00:00</ns0:Value> </ns0:ClassificationAttributeInfo> <ns0:ClassificationAttributeInfo> <ns0:Name>Skill Level</ns0:Name> <ns0:Value></ns0:Value> </ns0:ClassificationAttributeInfo> <ns0:ClassificationAttributeInfo> <ns0:Name>Pages</ns0:Name> <ns0:Value>20</ns0:Value> </ns0:ClassificationAttributeInfo> <ns0:ClassificationAttributeInfo> <ns0:Name>Projects</ns0:Name> <ns0:Value></ns0:Value> </ns0:ClassificationAttributeInfo> </ns0:AttributeList> </ns0:ClassificationInfo> <ns0:ImageList> <ns0:ImageInfoSubmit> <ns0:PlacementName>ITEMIMAGEURL1</ns0:PlacementName> <ns0:FilenameOrUrl>1872.jpg</ns0:FilenameOrUrl> </ns0:ImageInfoSubmit> </ns0:ImageList> </ns0:InventoryItemSubmit> </ns0:itemList> </ns0:accountID> </ns0:SynchInventoryItemList> </ns1:Body> </SOAP-ENV:Envelope> See how it creates the accountID node twice and wraps the whole thing in it? WHY? How do I make it stop that?!

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  • c++ and c# speed compared

    - by Mack
    I was worried about C#'s speed when it deals with heavy calculations, when you need to use raw CPU power. I always thought that C++ is much faster than C# when it comes to calculations. So I did some quick tests. The first test computes prime numbers < an integer n, the second test computes some pandigital numbers. The idea for second test comes from here: Pandigital Numbers C# prime computation: using System; using System.Diagnostics; class Program { static int primes(int n) { uint i, j; int countprimes = 0; for (i = 1; i <= n; i++) { bool isprime = true; for (j = 2; j <= Math.Sqrt(i); j++) if ((i % j) == 0) { isprime = false; break; } if (isprime) countprimes++; } return countprimes; } static void Main(string[] args) { int n = int.Parse(Console.ReadLine()); Stopwatch sw = new Stopwatch(); sw.Start(); int res = primes(n); sw.Stop(); Console.WriteLine("I found {0} prime numbers between 0 and {1} in {2} msecs.", res, n, sw.ElapsedMilliseconds); Console.ReadKey(); } } C++ variant: #include <iostream> #include <ctime> int primes(unsigned long n) { unsigned long i, j; int countprimes = 0; for(i = 1; i <= n; i++) { int isprime = 1; for(j = 2; j < (i^(1/2)); j++) if(!(i%j)) { isprime = 0; break; } countprimes+= isprime; } return countprimes; } int main() { int n, res; cin>>n; unsigned int start = clock(); res = primes(n); int tprime = clock() - start; cout<<"\nI found "<<res<<" prime numbers between 1 and "<<n<<" in "<<tprime<<" msecs."; return 0; } When I ran the test trying to find primes < than 100,000, C# variant finished in 0.409 seconds and C++ variant in 5.553 seconds. When I ran them for 1,000,000 C# finished in 6.039 seconds and C++ in about 337 seconds. Pandigital test in C#: using System; using System.Diagnostics; class Program { static bool IsPandigital(int n) { int digits = 0; int count = 0; int tmp; for (; n > 0; n /= 10, ++count) { if ((tmp = digits) == (digits |= 1 << (n - ((n / 10) * 10) - 1))) return false; } return digits == (1 << count) - 1; } static void Main() { int pans = 0; Stopwatch sw = new Stopwatch(); sw.Start(); for (int i = 1; i <= 123456789; i++) { if (IsPandigital(i)) { pans++; } } sw.Stop(); Console.WriteLine("{0}pcs, {1}ms", pans, sw.ElapsedMilliseconds); Console.ReadKey(); } } Pandigital test in C++: #include <iostream> #include <ctime> using namespace std; int IsPandigital(int n) { int digits = 0; int count = 0; int tmp; for (; n > 0; n /= 10, ++count) { if ((tmp = digits) == (digits |= 1 << (n - ((n / 10) * 10) - 1))) return 0; } return digits == (1 << count) - 1; } int main() { int pans = 0; unsigned int start = clock(); for (int i = 1; i <= 123456789; i++) { if (IsPandigital(i)) { pans++; } } int ptime = clock() - start; cout<<"\nPans:"<<pans<<" time:"<<ptime; return 0; } C# variant runs in 29.906 seconds and C++ in about 36.298 seconds. I didn't touch any compiler switches and bot C# and C++ programs were compiled with debug options. Before I attempted to run the test I was worried that C# will lag well behind C++, but now it seems that there is a pretty big speed difference in C# favor. Can anybody explain this? C# is jitted and C++ is compiled native so it's normal that a C++ will be faster than a C# variant. Thanks for the answers!

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  • Need some suggestions on my softwares architecture. [Code review]

    - by Sergio Tapia
    I'm making an open source C# library for other developers to use. My key concern is ease of use. This means using intuitive names, intuitive method usage and such. This is the first time I've done something with other people in mind, so I'm really concerned about the quality of the architecture. Plus, I wouldn't mind learning a thing or two. :) I have three classes: Downloader, Parser and Movie I was thinking that it would be best to only expose the Movie class of my library and have Downloader and Parser remain hidden from invocation. Ultimately, I see my library being used like this. using FreeIMDB; public void Test() { var MyMovie = Movie.FindMovie("The Matrix"); //Now MyMovie would have all it's fields set and ready for the big show. } Can you review how I'm planning this, and point out any wrong judgement calls I've made and where I could improve. Remember, my main concern is ease of use. Movie.cs using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Drawing; namespace FreeIMDB { public class Movie { public Image Poster { get; set; } public string Title { get; set; } public DateTime ReleaseDate { get; set; } public string Rating { get; set; } public string Director { get; set; } public List<string> Writers { get; set; } public List<string> Genres { get; set; } public string Tagline { get; set; } public string Plot { get; set; } public List<string> Cast { get; set; } public string Runtime { get; set; } public string Country { get; set; } public string Language { get; set; } public Movie FindMovie(string Title) { Movie film = new Movie(); Parser parser = Parser.FromMovieTitle(Title); film.Poster = parser.Poster(); film.Title = parser.Title(); film.ReleaseDate = parser.ReleaseDate(); //And so an so forth. } public Movie FindKnownMovie(string ID) { Movie film = new Movie(); Parser parser = Parser.FromMovieID(ID); film.Poster = parser.Poster(); film.Title = parser.Title(); film.ReleaseDate = parser.ReleaseDate(); //And so an so forth. } } } Parser.cs using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using HtmlAgilityPack; namespace FreeIMDB { /// <summary> /// Provides a simple, and intuitive way for searching for movies and actors on IMDB. /// </summary> class Parser { private Downloader downloader = new Downloader(); private HtmlDocument Page; #region "Page Loader Events" private Parser() { } public static Parser FromMovieTitle(string MovieTitle) { var newParser = new Parser(); newParser.Page = newParser.downloader.FindMovie(MovieTitle); return newParser; } public static Parser FromActorName(string ActorName) { var newParser = new Parser(); newParser.Page = newParser.downloader.FindActor(ActorName); return newParser; } public static Parser FromMovieID(string MovieID) { var newParser = new Parser(); newParser.Page = newParser.downloader.FindKnownMovie(MovieID); return newParser; } public static Parser FromActorID(string ActorID) { var newParser = new Parser(); newParser.Page = newParser.downloader.FindKnownActor(ActorID); return newParser; } #endregion #region "Page Parsing Methods" public string Poster() { //Logic to scrape the Poster URL from the Page element of this. return null; } public string Title() { return null; } public DateTime ReleaseDate() { return null; } #endregion } } ----------------------------------------------- Do you guys think I'm heading towards a good path, or am I setting myself up for a world of hurt later on? My original thought was to separate the downloading, the parsing and the actual populating to easily have an extensible library. Imagine if one day the website changed its HTML, I would then only have to modifiy the parsing class without touching the Downloader.cs or Movie.cs class. Thanks for reading and for helping!

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  • directX texture appears incorrectly

    - by numerical25
    I finally managed to get a texture onto a cube sadly, but it is appearing incorrectly. as the below picture identifies. Anyways, I am not sure what it could be. My first guess is it could be my uv mapping or my vertex positioning is off. If someone could check and make sure thats good. The first element is the vertex position, second is the color, and third is the uv texture. //Create vectors and put in vertices // Create vertex buffer VertexPos vertices[] = { // BACK SIDES { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, -5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(1.0,1.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,1.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,1.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, -5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(1.0,1.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, -5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(1.0,1.0)}, // 2 FRONT SIDE { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, 5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, 5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(1.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, -5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,1.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, -5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,1.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, 5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.0f,0.0f) , D3DXVECTOR2(1.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, -5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(1.0,1.0)}, // 3 { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(1.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, 5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,1.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, 5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,2.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(1.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, 5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,1.0)}, // 4 { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, -5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.5f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, -5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.5f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(1.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, -5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.5f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,1.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, -5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.5f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,1.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, -5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.5f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(1.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, -5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.5f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,1.0)}, // 5 { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, 5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.5f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.5f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(1.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, -5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.5f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,1.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, -5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.5f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,1.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.5f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(1.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, -5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.5f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,2.0)}, // 6 {D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, 5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.5f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, {D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, -5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.5f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(1.0,0.0)}, {D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.5f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,1.0)}, {D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.5f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,1.0)}, {D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, -5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.5f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(1.0,0.0)}, {D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, -5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.5f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,1.0)}, }; My second guess could be an error that I am receiving as I run the program. But I don't know where to begin with that. The following is the description of the error . D3D10: WARNING: ID3D10Device::Draw: Vertex Buffer at the input vertex slot 0 is not big enough for what the Draw*() call expects to traverse. This is OK, as reading off the end of the Buffer is defined to return 0. However the developer probably did not intend to make use of this behavior. [ EXECUTION WARNING #356: DEVICE_DRAW_VERTEX_BUFFER_TOO_SMALL ] Not sure what it could be. but where is my vertex layout description //Create Layout D3D10_INPUT_ELEMENT_DESC layout[] = { {"POSITION",0,DXGI_FORMAT_R32G32B32_FLOAT, 0 , 0, D3D10_INPUT_PER_VERTEX_DATA, 0}, {"COLOR",0,DXGI_FORMAT_R32G32B32A32_FLOAT, 0 , 12, D3D10_INPUT_PER_VERTEX_DATA, 0}, {"NORMAL",0,DXGI_FORMAT_R32G32B32A32_FLOAT, 0 , 28, D3D10_INPUT_PER_VERTEX_DATA, 0}, {"TEXCOORD",0, DXGI_FORMAT_R32G32_FLOAT, 0 , 44, D3D10_INPUT_PER_VERTEX_DATA, 0} }; UINT numElements = (sizeof(layout)/sizeof(layout[0])); modelObject.numVertices = sizeof(vertices)/sizeof(VertexPos); for(int i = 0; i < modelObject.numVertices; i += 3) { D3DXVECTOR3 out; D3DXVECTOR3 v1 = vertices[0 + i].pos; D3DXVECTOR3 v2 = vertices[1 + i].pos; D3DXVECTOR3 v3 = vertices[2 + i].pos; D3DXVECTOR3 u = v2 - v1; D3DXVECTOR3 v = v3 - v1; D3DXVec3Cross(&out, &u, &v); D3DXVec3Normalize(&out, &out); vertices[0 + i].normal = out; vertices[1 + i].normal = out; vertices[2 + i].normal = out; } //Create buffer desc D3D10_BUFFER_DESC bufferDesc; bufferDesc.Usage = D3D10_USAGE_DEFAULT; bufferDesc.ByteWidth = sizeof(VertexPos) * modelObject.numVertices; bufferDesc.BindFlags = D3D10_BIND_VERTEX_BUFFER; bufferDesc.CPUAccessFlags = 0; bufferDesc.MiscFlags = 0; D3D10_SUBRESOURCE_DATA initData; initData.pSysMem = vertices; //Create the buffer HRESULT hr = mpD3DDevice->CreateBuffer(&bufferDesc, &initData, &modelObject.pVertexBuffer); if(FAILED(hr)) return false;

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  • SQL: Using a CASE Statement to update 1000 rows at once

    - by SoLoGHoST
    Ok, I would like to use a CASE STATEMENT for this, but I am lost with this. Basically, I need to update a ton of rows, but just on the "position" column. I need to update all "position" values from 0 - count(position) for each id_layout_position column per id_layout column. OK, here is a pic of what the table looks like: Now let's say I delete the circled row, this will remove position = 2 and give me: 0, 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, and 4. But I want to add something at the end now and make sure that it has the last possible position, but the positions are already messed up, so I need to reorder them like so before I insert the new row: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. But it must be ordered by lowest first. So 0 stays at 0, 1 stays at 1, 3 gets changed to 2, the 4 at the end gets changed to a 3, 5 gets changed to 4, 6 gets changed to 5, and 7 gets changed to 6. Hopefully you guys get the picture now. I'm completely lost here. Also, note, this table is tiny compared to how fast it can grow in size, so it needs to be able to do this FAST, thus I was thinking on the CASE STATEMENT for an UPDATE QUERY. Here's what I got for a regular update, but I don't wanna throw this into a foreach loop, as it would take forever to do it. I'm using SMF (Simple Machines Forums), so it might look a little different, but the idea is the same, and CASE statements are supported... $smcFunc['db_query']('', ' UPDATE {db_prefix}dp_positions SET position = {int:position} WHERE id_layout_position = {int:id_layout_position} AND id_layout = {int:id_layout}', array( 'position' => $position++, 'id_layout_position' => (int) $id_layout_position, 'id_layout' => (int) $id_layout, ) ); Anyways, I need to apply some sort of CASE on this so that I can auto-increment by 1 all values that it finds and update to the next possible value. I know I'm doing this wrong, even in this QUERY. But I'm totally lost when it comes to CASES. Here's an example of a CASE being used within SMF, so you can see this and hopefully relate: $conditions = ''; foreach ($postgroups as $id => $min_posts) { $conditions .= ' WHEN posts >= ' . $min_posts . (!empty($lastMin) ? ' AND posts <= ' . $lastMin : '') . ' THEN ' . $id; $lastMin = $min_posts; } // A big fat CASE WHEN... END is faster than a zillion UPDATE's ;). $smcFunc['db_query']('', ' UPDATE {db_prefix}members SET id_post_group = CASE ' . $conditions . ' ELSE 0 END' . ($parameter1 != null ? ' WHERE ' . (is_array($parameter1) ? 'id_member IN ({array_int:members})' : 'id_member = {int:members}') : ''), array( 'members' => $parameter1, ) ); Before I do the update, I actually have a SELECT which throws everything I need into arrays like so: $disabled_sections = array(); $positions = array(); while ($row = $smcFunc['db_fetch_assoc']($request)) { if (!isset($disabled_sections[$row['id_group']][$row['id_layout']])) $disabled_sections[$row['id_group']][$row['id_layout']] = array( 'info' => $module_info[$name], 'id_layout_position' => $row['id_layout_position'] ); // Increment the positions... if (!is_null($row['position'])) { if (!isset($positions[$row['id_layout']][$row['id_layout_position']])) $positions[$row['id_layout']][$row['id_layout_position']] = 1; else $positions[$row['id_layout']][$row['id_layout_position']]++; } else $positions[$row['id_layout']][$row['id_layout_position']] = 0; } Thanks, I know if anyone can help me here it's definitely you guys and gals... Anyways, here is my question: How do I use a CASE statement in the first code example, so that I can update all of the rows in the position column from 0 - total # of rows found, that have that id_layout value and that id_layout_position value, and continue this for all different id_layout values in that table? Can I use the arrays above somehow? I'm sure I'll have to use the id_layout and id_layout_position values for this right? But how can I do this? Ok, guy, I get an error, saying "Hacking Attempt" with the following code: // Updating all positions in here. $smcFunc['db_query']('', ' SET @pos = 0; UPDATE {db_prefix}dp_positions SET position=@pos:=@pos+1 ORDER BY id_layout_position, position', array( ) ); Am I doing something wrong? Perhaps SMF has safeguards against this approach?? Perhaps I need to use a CASE STATEMENT instead?

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  • Allowing pop-up's and downloads with flex

    - by ShadowVariable
    I'm building an flex app that is basically a wrapper for a few websites. One of them is a google docs website, and I'm trying to get flex to allow downloads or popups or something that will allow me to do it. I've tried a whole bunch of solutions online and none of them have worked out. Here's the code so far: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <s:WindowedApplication xmlns:fx="http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009" xmlns:s="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark" xmlns:mx="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/mx" width="100%" height="100%" creationComplete="onCreationComplete()"> <s:layout> <s:HorizontalLayout/> </s:layout> <fx:Style source="style.css"/> <fx:Script> <![CDATA[ include "CustomHTMLLoader.as"; private function onCreationComplete():void { // ... other stuff ... var custom:object; custom.htmlHost = new MyHTMLHost(); } ]]> </fx:Script> <fx:Declarations> <!-- Place non-visual elements (e.g., services, value objects) here --> </fx:Declarations> <s:BorderContainer width="100%" height="100%" backgroundColor="#87BED0" styleName="container"> <s:Panel x="188" y="17" width="826" height="112" borderAlpha="0.15" chromeColor="#0C5A74" color="#FFFFFF" cornerRadius="20" dropShadowVisible="false" enabled="true" title="Customer Service Control Panel"> <s:controlBarContent/> <s:Button id="home" x="13" y="10" height="44" label="Phones" click="myViewStack.selectedChild=Home;" enabled="true" icon="@Embed('assets/iconmonstr-mobile-phone-6-icon-32.png')"/> <s:Button id="liveagent" x="131" y="10" height="44" label="Live Agent" click="myViewStack.selectedChild=live_agent;" icon="@Embed('assets/iconmonstr-speech-bubble-11-icon-32.png')"/> <s:Button id="bigcommerce" x="260" y="10" width="158" height="44" label="Big Commerce" click="myViewStack.selectedChild=bigcommerce_home;" icon="@Embed('assets/iconmonstr-coin-6-icon-48.png')"/> <s:Button id="faq" x="436" y="10" width="88" height="44" label="FAQ" click="myViewStack.selectedChild=freqaskquestions;" fontFamily="Arial" icon="@Embed('assets/iconmonstr-help-4-icon-32.png')"/> <s:Button id="call" x="540" y="10" width="131" height="44" label="Google Docs" click="myViewStack.selectedChild=call_notes;" icon="@Embed('assets/iconmonstr-text-file-4-icon-32.png')"/> <s:Button id="hoot" x="684" y="10" width="122" height="44" label="HootSuite" click="myViewStack.selectedChild=hoot_suite;" icon="@Embed('assets/iconmonstr-facebook-icon-32.png')"/> </s:Panel> <mx:ViewStack id="myViewStack" x="0" y="140" width="100%" height="100%" borderStyle="solid"> <s:NavigatorContent id="Home"> <s:BorderContainer width="100%" height="100%"> <mx:HTML x="0" y="0" width="100%" height="100%" borderVisible="false" horizontalScrollPolicy="off" location="http://mbvphone.mtbakervapor.org/vbx/messages/inbox" /> </s:BorderContainer> </s:NavigatorContent> <s:NavigatorContent id="bigcommerce_home"> <s:BorderContainer width="100%" height="100%"> <mx:HTML x="0" y="0" width="100%" height="100%" borderVisible="false" horizontalScrollPolicy="off" location="http://www.mtbakervapor.com/admin" /> </s:BorderContainer> </s:NavigatorContent> <s:NavigatorContent id="live_agent"> <s:BorderContainer width="100%" height="100%"> <mx:HTML x="0" y="0" width="100%" height="100%" borderVisible="false" horizontalScrollPolicy="off" location="http://mbvphone.mtbakervapor.org/liveagent/agent/#login" /> </s:BorderContainer> </s:NavigatorContent> <s:NavigatorContent id="freqaskquestions"> <s:BorderContainer width="100%" height="100%"> <mx:HTML x="0" y="0" width="100%" height="100%" borderVisible="false" horizontalScrollPolicy="off" location="http://mbvphone.mtbakervapor.org/liveagent/" /> </s:BorderContainer> </s:NavigatorContent> <s:NavigatorContent id="call_notes"> <s:BorderContainer width="100%" height="100%"> <mx:HTML id="html" x="0" y="0" width="100%" height="100%" borderVisible="false" horizontalScrollPolicy="off" location="https://drive.google.com/a/mtbakervapor.com/" htmlHost="{new CustomHost()}" /> </s:BorderContainer> </s:NavigatorContent> <s:NavigatorContent id="hoot_suite"> <s:BorderContainer width="100%" height="100%"> <mx:HTML x="0" y="0" width="100%" height="100%" borderVisible="false" horizontalScrollPolicy="off" location="https://hootsuite.com/login" /> </s:BorderContainer> </s:NavigatorContent> </mx:ViewStack> <s:Image x="0" y="0" width="180" height="140" scaleMode="letterbox" smooth="false" source="assets/mbvlogo_black.png"/> </s:BorderContainer> </s:WindowedApplication> and the custom class code: package { import flash.html.HTMLHost; import flash.html.HTMLWindowCreateOptions; import flash.html.HTMLLoader; public class MyHTMLHost extends HTMLHost { public function MyHTMLHost(defaultBehaviors:Boolean=true) { super(defaultBehaviors); } override public function createWindow(windowCreateOptions:HTMLWindowCreateOptions):HTMLLoader { // all JS calls and HREFs to open a new window should use the existing window return HTMLLoader.createRootWindow(); } } } any help would be appreciated.

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  • MEF + Plug-In not updating

    - by mybrokengnome
    I asked this on the MEF Codeplex forum already, but I haven't gotten a response yet, so I figured I'd try StackOverflow. Here's the original post if anyone's interested (this is just a copy from it): MEF Codeplex "Let me first say that I'm completely new to MEF (just discovered it today) and am very happy with it so far. However, I've ran in to a problem that is very frustrating. I'm creating an app that will have a plugin architecture and the plugins will only be stored in a single DLL file (or coded into the main app). The DLL file needs to be able to be recompiled during run-time and the app should recognize this and re-load the plugins (I know this is difficult, but it's a requirement). To accomplish this I took the approach covered http://blog.maartenballiauw.be/category/MEF.aspx there (look for WebServerDirectoryCatalog). Basically the idea is to "monitor the plugins folder, copy the new/modified assemblies to the web application’s /bin folder and instruct MEF to load its exports from there." This is my code, which is probably not the correct way to do it but it's what I found in some samples around the net: main()... string myExecName = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location; string myPath = System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(myExecName); catalog = new AggregateCatalog(); pluginCatalog = new MyDirectoryCatalog(myPath + @"/Plugins"); catalog.Catalogs.Add(pluginCatalog); exportContainer = new CompositionContainer(catalog); CompositionBatch compBatch = new CompositionBatch(); compBatch.AddPart(this); compBatch.AddPart(catalog); exportContainer.Compose(compBatch); and private FileSystemWatcher fileSystemWatcher; public DirectoryCatalog directoryCatalog; private string path; private string extension; public MyDirectoryCatalog(string path) { Initialize(path, "*.dll", "*.dll"); } private void Initialize(string path, string extension, string modulePattern) { this.path = path; this.extension = extension; fileSystemWatcher = new FileSystemWatcher(path, modulePattern); fileSystemWatcher.Changed += new FileSystemEventHandler(fileSystemWatcher_Changed); fileSystemWatcher.Created += new FileSystemEventHandler(fileSystemWatcher_Created); fileSystemWatcher.Deleted += new FileSystemEventHandler(fileSystemWatcher_Deleted); fileSystemWatcher.Renamed += new RenamedEventHandler(fileSystemWatcher_Renamed); fileSystemWatcher.IncludeSubdirectories = false; fileSystemWatcher.EnableRaisingEvents = true; Refresh(); } void fileSystemWatcher_Renamed(object sender, RenamedEventArgs e) { RemoveFromBin(e.OldName); Refresh(); } void fileSystemWatcher_Deleted(object sender, FileSystemEventArgs e) { RemoveFromBin(e.Name); Refresh(); } void fileSystemWatcher_Created(object sender, FileSystemEventArgs e) { Refresh(); } void fileSystemWatcher_Changed(object sender, FileSystemEventArgs e) { Refresh(); } private void Refresh() { // Determine /bin path string binPath = Path.Combine(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory, "Plugins"); string newPath = ""; // Copy files to /bin foreach (string file in Directory.GetFiles(path, extension, SearchOption.TopDirectoryOnly)) { try { DirectoryInfo dInfo = new DirectoryInfo(binPath); DirectoryInfo[] dirs = dInfo.GetDirectories(); int count = dirs.Count() + 1; newPath = binPath + "/" + count; DirectoryInfo dInfo2 = new DirectoryInfo(newPath); if (!dInfo2.Exists) dInfo2.Create(); File.Copy(file, System.IO.Path.Combine(newPath, System.IO.Path.GetFileName(file)), true); } catch { // Not that big deal... Blog readers will probably kill me for this bit of code :-) } } // Create new directory catalog directoryCatalog = new DirectoryCatalog(newPath, extension); directoryCatalog.Refresh(); } public override IQueryable<ComposablePartDefinition> Parts { get { return directoryCatalog.Parts; } } private void RemoveFromBin(string name) { string binPath = Path.Combine(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory, ""); File.Delete(Path.Combine(binPath, name)); } So all this actually works, and after the end of the code in main my IEnumerable variable is actually filled with all the plugins in the DLL (which if you follow the code is located in Plugins/1 so that I can modify the dll in the plugins folder). So now at this point I should be able to re-compile the plugins DLL, drop it in to the Plugins folder, my FileWatcher detect that it's changed, and then copy it into folder "2" and directoryCatalog should point to the new folder. All this actually works! The problem is, even though it seems like every thing is pointed to the right place, my IEnumerable variable is never updated with the new plugins. So close, but yet so far! Any suggestions? I know the downsides of doing it this way, that no dll is actually getting unloaded and causing a memory leak, but it's a Windows App and will probably be started at least once a day, and the plugins are un-likely to change that often, but it's still a requirement from the client that it does this without re-loading the app. Thanks! Thanks for any help you all can provide, it's driving me crazy not being able to figure this out."

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  • Min-Ordered Bionomial Heap Insertion java

    - by Charodd Richardson
    Im writing a java code to make a min-ordered Binomial Heap and I have to Insert and Remove-min. I'm having a very big problem inserting into the Heap. I have been stuck on this for a couple of days now and it is due tomorrow. Whenever I go to insert, It only prints out the item I insert instead of the whole tree (which is in preorder). Such as if I insert 1 it prints (1) and then I go to insert 2 it prints out (2) instead of (1(2)) It keeps printing out only the number I insert last instead of the whole preordered tree. I would be very grateful if someone could help me with this problem. Thank you so much in advance, Here is my code. public class BHeap { int key; int degree;//The degree(Number of children) BHeap parent, leftmostChild, rightmostChild, rightSibling,root,previous,next; public BHeap(){ key =0; degree=0; parent =null; leftmostChild=null; rightmostChild=null; rightSibling=null; root=null; previous=null; next=null; } public BHeap merge(BHeap x, BHeap y){ BHeap newHeap = new BHeap(); y.rightSibling=x.root; BHeap currentHeap = y; BHeap nextHeap = y.rightSibling; while(currentHeap.rightSibling !=null){ if(currentHeap.degree==nextHeap.degree){ if(currentHeap.key<nextHeap.key){ if(currentHeap.degree ==0){ currentHeap.leftmostChild=nextHeap; currentHeap.rightmostChild=nextHeap; currentHeap.rightSibling=nextHeap.rightSibling; nextHeap.rightSibling=null; nextHeap.parent=currentHeap; currentHeap.degree++; } else{ newHeap = currentHeap; newHeap.rightmostChild.rightSibling=nextHeap; newHeap.rightmostChild=nextHeap; nextHeap.parent=newHeap; newHeap.degree++; nextHeap.rightSibling=null; nextHeap=newHeap.rightSibling; } } else{ if(currentHeap.degree==0){ nextHeap.rightmostChild=currentHeap; nextHeap.rightmostChild.root = nextHeap.rightmostChild;//add nextHeap.leftmostChild=currentHeap; nextHeap.leftmostChild.root = nextHeap.leftmostChild;//add currentHeap.parent=nextHeap; currentHeap.rightSibling=null; currentHeap.root=currentHeap;//add nextHeap.degree++; } else{ newHeap=nextHeap; newHeap.rightmostChild.rightSibling=currentHeap; newHeap.rightmostChild=currentHeap; currentHeap.parent= newHeap; newHeap.degree++; currentHeap=newHeap.rightSibling; currentHeap.rightSibling=null; } } } else{ currentHeap=currentHeap.rightSibling; nextHeap=nextHeap.rightSibling; } } return y; } public void Insert(int x){ /*BHeap newHeap = new BHeap(); newHeap.key=x; if(this.root==null){ this.root=newHeap; return; } else{ this.root=merge(newHeap,this.root); }*/ BHeap newHeap= new BHeap(); newHeap.key=x; if(this.root==null){ this.root=newHeap; } else{ this.root = merge(this,newHeap); }} public void RemoveMin(){ BHeap newHeap = new BHeap(); BHeap child = new BHeap(); newHeap=this; BHeap pos = newHeap.next; while(pos !=null){ if(pos.key<newHeap.key){ newHeap=pos; } pos=pos.rightSibling; } pos=this; BHeap B1 = new BHeap(); if(newHeap.previous!=null){ newHeap.previous.rightSibling=newHeap.rightSibling; B1 =pos.leftmostChild; B1.rightSibling=pos; pos.leftmostChild=pos.rightmostChild.leftmostChild; } else{ newHeap=newHeap.rightSibling; newHeap.previous.rightSibling=newHeap.rightSibling; B1 =pos.leftmostChild; B1.rightSibling=pos; pos.leftmostChild=pos.rightmostChild.leftmostChild; } merge(newHeap,B1); } public void Display(){ System.out.print("("); System.out.print(this.root.key); if(this.leftmostChild != null){ this.leftmostChild.Display(); } System.out.print(")"); if(this.rightSibling!=null){ this.rightSibling.Display(); } } }

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  • Microsoft and jQuery

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

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  • Why is Java EE 6 better than Spring ?

    - by arungupta
    Java EE 6 was released over 2 years ago and now there are 14 compliant application servers. In all my talks around the world, a question that is frequently asked is Why should I use Java EE 6 instead of Spring ? There are already several blogs covering that topic: Java EE wins over Spring by Bill Burke Why will I use Java EE instead of Spring in new Enterprise Java projects in 2012 ? by Kai Waehner (more discussion on TSS) Spring to Java EE migration (Part 1 and 2, 3 and 4 coming as well) by David Heffelfinger Spring to Java EE - A Migration Experience by Lincoln Baxter Migrating Spring to Java EE 6 by Bert Ertman and Paul Bakker at NLJUG Moving from Spring to Java EE 6 - The Age of Frameworks is Over at TSS Java EE vs Spring Shootout by Rohit Kelapure and Reza Rehman at JavaOne 2011 Java EE 6 and the Ewoks by Murat Yener Definite excuse to avoid Spring forever - Bert Ertman and Arun Gupta I will try to share my perspective in this blog. First of all, I'd like to start with a note: Thank you Spring framework for filling the interim gap and providing functionality that is now included in the mainstream Java EE 6 application servers. The Java EE platform has evolved over the years learning from frameworks like Spring and provides all the functionality to build an enterprise application. Thank you very much Spring framework! While Spring was revolutionary in its time and is still very popular and quite main stream in the same way Struts was circa 2003, it really is last generation's framework - some people are even calling it legacy. However my theory is "code is king". So my approach is to build/take a simple Hello World CRUD application in Java EE 6 and Spring and compare the deployable artifacts. I started looking at the official tutorial Developing a Spring Framework MVC Application Step-by-Step but it is using the older version 2.5. I wasn't able to find any updated version in the current 3.1 release. Next, I downloaded Spring Tool Suite and thought that would provide some template samples to get started. A least a quick search did not show any handy tutorials - either video or text-based. So I searched and found a link to their SVN repository at src.springframework.org/svn/spring-samples/. I tried the "mvc-basic" sample and the generated WAR file was 4.43 MB. While it was named a "basic" sample it seemed to come with 19 different libraries bundled but it was what I could find: ./WEB-INF/lib/aopalliance-1.0.jar./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-validator-4.1.0.Final.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jcl-over-slf4j-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/joda-time-1.6.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/joda-time-jsptags-1.0.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jstl-1.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/log4j-1.2.16.jar./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-api-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-aop-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-asm-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-beans-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-support-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-core-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-expression-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-web-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-webmvc-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/validation-api-1.0.0.GA.jar And it is not even using any database! The app deployed fine on GlassFish 3.1.2 but the "@Controller Example" link did not work as it was missing the context root. With a bit of tweaking I could deploy the application and assume that the account got created because no error was displayed in the browser or server log. Next I generated the WAR for "mvc-ajax" and the 5.1 MB WAR had 20 JARs (1 removed, 2 added): ./WEB-INF/lib/aopalliance-1.0.jar./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-validator-4.1.0.Final.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jackson-core-asl-1.6.4.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jackson-mapper-asl-1.6.4.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jcl-over-slf4j-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/joda-time-1.6.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jstl-1.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/log4j-1.2.16.jar./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-api-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-aop-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-asm-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-beans-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-support-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-core-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-expression-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-web-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-webmvc-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/validation-api-1.0.0.GA.jar 2 more JARs for just doing Ajax. Anyway, deploying this application gave the following error: Caused by: java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: org.codehaus.jackson.map.SerializationConfig.<init>(Lorg/codehaus/jackson/map/ClassIntrospector;Lorg/codehaus/jackson/map/AnnotationIntrospector;Lorg/codehaus/jackson/map/introspect/VisibilityChecker;Lorg/codehaus/jackson/map/jsontype/SubtypeResolver;)V    at org.springframework.samples.mvc.ajax.json.ConversionServiceAwareObjectMapper.<init>(ConversionServiceAwareObjectMapper.java:20)    at org.springframework.samples.mvc.ajax.json.JacksonConversionServiceConfigurer.postProcessAfterInitialization(JacksonConversionServiceConfigurer.java:40)    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.applyBeanPostProcessorsAfterInitialization(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:407) Seems like some incorrect repos in the "pom.xml". Next one is "mvc-showcase" and the 6.49 MB WAR now has 28 JARs as shown below: ./WEB-INF/lib/aopalliance-1.0.jar./WEB-INF/lib/aspectjrt-1.6.10.jar./WEB-INF/lib/commons-fileupload-1.2.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/commons-io-2.0.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/el-api-2.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-validator-4.1.0.Final.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jackson-core-asl-1.8.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jackson-mapper-asl-1.8.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/javax.inject-1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jcl-over-slf4j-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jdom-1.0.jar./WEB-INF/lib/joda-time-1.6.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jstl-api-1.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jstl-impl-1.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/log4j-1.2.16.jar./WEB-INF/lib/rome-1.0.0.jar./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-api-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-aop-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-asm-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-beans-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-support-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-core-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-expression-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-web-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-webmvc-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/validation-api-1.0.0.GA.jar The app at least deployed and showed results this time. But still no database! Next I tried building "jpetstore" and got the error: [ERROR] Failed to execute goal on project org.springframework.samples.jpetstore:Could not resolve dependencies for project org.springframework.samples:org.springframework.samples.jpetstore:war:1.0.0-SNAPSHOT: Failed to collect dependencies for [commons-fileupload:commons-fileupload:jar:1.2.1 (compile), org.apache.struts:com.springsource.org.apache.struts:jar:1.2.9 (compile), javax.xml.rpc:com.springsource.javax.xml.rpc:jar:1.1.0 (compile), org.apache.commons:com.springsource.org.apache.commons.dbcp:jar:1.2.2.osgi (compile), commons-io:commons-io:jar:1.3.2 (compile), hsqldb:hsqldb:jar:1.8.0.7 (compile), org.apache.tiles:tiles-core:jar:2.2.0 (compile), org.apache.tiles:tiles-jsp:jar:2.2.0 (compile), org.tuckey:urlrewritefilter:jar:3.1.0 (compile), org.springframework:spring-webmvc:jar:3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT (compile), org.springframework:spring-orm:jar:3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT (compile), org.springframework:spring-context-support:jar:3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT (compile), org.springframework.webflow:spring-js:jar:2.0.7.RELEASE (compile), org.apache.ibatis:com.springsource.com.ibatis:jar:2.3.4.726 (runtime), com.caucho:com.springsource.com.caucho:jar:3.2.1 (compile), org.apache.axis:com.springsource.org.apache.axis:jar:1.4.0 (compile), javax.wsdl:com.springsource.javax.wsdl:jar:1.6.1 (compile), javax.servlet:jstl:jar:1.2 (runtime), org.aspectj:aspectjweaver:jar:1.6.5 (compile), javax.servlet:servlet-api:jar:2.5 (provided), javax.servlet.jsp:jsp-api:jar:2.1 (provided), junit:junit:jar:4.6 (test)]: Failed to read artifact descriptor for org.springframework:spring-webmvc:jar:3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT: Could not transfer artifact org.springframework:spring-webmvc:pom:3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT from/to JBoss repository (http://repository.jboss.com/maven2): Access denied to: http://repository.jboss.com/maven2/org/springframework/spring-webmvc/3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT/spring-webmvc-3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT.pom It appears the sample is broken - maybe I was pulling from the wrong repository - would be great if someone were to point me at a good target to use here. With a 50% hit on samples in this repository, I started searching through numerous blogs, most of which have either outdated information (using XML-heavy Spring 2.5), some piece of configuration (which is a typical "feature" of Spring) is missing, or too much complexity in the sample. I finally found this blog that worked like a charm. This blog creates a trivial Spring MVC 3 application using Hibernate and MySQL. This application performs CRUD operations on a single table in a database using typical Spring technologies.  I downloaded the sample code from the blog, deployed it on GlassFish 3.1.2 and could CRUD the "person" entity. The source code for this application can be downloaded here. More details on the application statistics below. And then I built a similar CRUD application in Java EE 6 using NetBeans wizards in a couple of minutes. The source code for the application can be downloaded here and the WAR here. The Spring Source Tool Suite may also offer similar wizard-driven capabilities but this blog focus primarily on comparing the runtimes. The lack of STS tutorials was slightly disappointing as well. NetBeans however has tons of text-based and video tutorials and tons of material even by the community. One more bit on the download size of tools bundle ... NetBeans 7.1.1 "All" is 211 MB (which includes GlassFish and Tomcat) Spring Tool Suite  2.9.0 is 347 MB (~ 65% bigger) This blog is not about the tooling comparison so back to the Java EE 6 version of the application .... In order to run the Java EE version on GlassFish, copy the MySQL Connector/J to glassfish3/glassfish/domains/domain1/lib/ext directory and create a JDBC connection pool and JDBC resource as: ./bin/asadmin create-jdbc-connection-pool --datasourceclassname \\ com.mysql.jdbc.jdbc2.optional.MysqlDataSource --restype \\ javax.sql.DataSource --property \\ portNumber=3306:user=mysql:password=mysql:databaseName=mydatabase \\ myConnectionPool ./bin/asadmin create-jdbc-resource --connectionpoolid myConnectionPool jdbc/myDataSource I generated WARs for the two projects and the table below highlights some differences between them: Java EE 6 Spring WAR File Size 0.021030 MB 10.87 MB (~516x) Number of files 20 53 (> 2.5x) Bundled libraries 0 36 Total size of libraries 0 12.1 MB XML files 3 5 LoC in XML files 50 (11 + 15 + 24) 129 (27 + 46 + 16 + 11 + 19) (~ 2.5x) Total .properties files 1 Bundle.properties 2 spring.properties, log4j.properties Cold Deploy 5,339 ms 11,724 ms Second Deploy 481 ms 6,261 ms Third Deploy 528 ms 5,484 ms Fourth Deploy 484 ms 5,576 ms Runtime memory ~73 MB ~101 MB Some points worth highlighting from the table ... 516x WAR file, 10x deployment time - With 12.1 MB of libraries (for a very basic application) bundled in your application, the WAR file size and the deployment time will naturally go higher. The WAR file for Spring-based application is 516x bigger and the deployment time is double during the first deployment and ~ 10x during subsequent deployments. The Java EE 6 application is fully portable and will run on any Java EE 6 compliant application server. 36 libraries in the WAR - There are 14 Java EE 6 compliant application servers today. Each of those servers provide all the functionality like transactions, dependency injection, security, persistence, etc typically required of an enterprise or web application. There is no need to bundle 36 libraries worth 12.1 MB for a trivial CRUD application. These 14 compliant application servers provide all the functionality baked in. Now you can also deploy these libraries in the container but then you don't get the "portability" offered by Spring in that case. Does your typical Spring deployment actually do that ? 3x LoC in XML - The number of XML files is about 1.6x and the LoC is ~ 2.5x. So much XML seems circa 2003 when the Java language had no annotations. The XML files can be further reduced, e.g. faces-config.xml can be replaced without providing i18n, but I just want to compare stock applications. Memory usage - Both the applications were deployed on default GlassFish 3.1.2 installation and any additional memory consumed as part of deployment/access was attributed to the application. This is by no means scientific but at least provides an initial ballpark. This area definitely needs more investigation. Another table that compares typical Java EE 6 compliant application servers and the custom-stack created for a Spring application ... Java EE 6 Spring Web Container ? 53 MB (tcServer 2.6.3 Developer Edition) Security ? 12 MB (Spring Security 3.1.0) Persistence ? 6.3 MB (Hibernate 4.1.0, required) Dependency Injection ? 5.3 MB (Framework) Web Services ? 796 KB (Spring WS 2.0.4) Messaging ? 3.4 MB (RabbitMQ Server 2.7.1) 936 KB (Java client 936) OSGi ? 1.3 MB (Spring OSGi 1.2.1) GlassFish and WebLogic (starting at 33 MB) 83.3 MB There are differentiating factors on both the stacks. But most of the functionality like security, persistence, and dependency injection is baked in a Java EE 6 compliant application server but needs to be individually managed and patched for a Spring application. This very quickly leads to a "stack explosion". The Java EE 6 servers are tested extensively on a variety of platforms in different combinations whereas a Spring application developer is responsible for testing with different JDKs, Operating Systems, Versions, Patches, etc. Oracle has both the leading OSS lightweight server with GlassFish and the leading enterprise Java server with WebLogic Server, both Java EE 6 and both with lightweight deployment options. The Web Container offered as part of a Java EE 6 application server not only deploys your enterprise Java applications but also provide operational management, diagnostics, and mission-critical capabilities required by your applications. The Java EE 6 platform also introduced the Web Profile which is a subset of the specifications from the entire platform. It is targeted at developers of modern web applications offering a reasonably complete stack, composed of standard APIs, and is capable out-of-the-box of addressing the needs of a large class of Web applications. As your applications grow, the stack can grow to the full Java EE 6 platform. The GlassFish Server Web Profile starting at 33MB (smaller than just the non-standard tcServer) provides most of the functionality typically required by a web application. WebLogic provides battle-tested functionality for a high throughput, low latency, and enterprise grade web application. No individual managing or patching, all tested and commercially supported for you! Note that VMWare does have a server, tcServer, but it is non-standard and not even certified to the level of the standard Web Profile most customers expect these days. Customers who choose this risk proprietary lock-in since VMWare does not seem to want to formally certify with either Java EE 6 Enterprise Platform or with Java EE 6 Web Profile but of course it would be great if they were to join the community and help their customers reduce the risk of deploying on VMWare software. Some more points to help you decide choose between Java EE 6 and Spring ... Freedom to choose container - There are 14 Java EE 6 compliant application servers today, with a variety of open source and commercial offerings. A Java EE 6 application can be deployed on any of those containers. So if you deployed your application on GlassFish today and would like to scale up with your demands then you can deploy the same application to WebLogic. And because of the portability of a Java EE 6 application, you can even take it a different vendor altogether. Spring requires a runtime which could be any of these app servers as well. But why use Spring when all the required functionality is already baked into the application server itself ? Spring also has a different definition of portability where they claim to bundle all the libraries in the WAR file and move to any application server. But we saw earlier how bloated that archive could be. The equivalent features in Spring runtime offerings (mainly tcServer) are not all open source, not as mature, and often require manual assembly.  Vendor choice - The Java EE 6 platform is created using the Java Community Process where all the big players like Oracle, IBM, RedHat, and Apache are conritbuting to make the platform successful. Each application server provides the basic Java EE 6 platform compliance and has its own competitive offerings. This allows you to choose an application server for deploying your Java EE 6 applications. If you are not happy with the support or feature of one vendor then you can move your application to a different vendor because of the portability promise offered by the platform. Spring is a set of products from a single company, one price book, one support organization, one sustaining organization, one sales organization, etc. If any of those cause a customer headache, where do you go ? Java EE, backed by multiple vendors, is a safer bet for those that are risk averse. Production support - With Spring, typically you need to get support from two vendors - VMWare and the container provider. With Java EE 6, all of this is typically provided by one vendor. For example, Oracle offers commercial support from systems, operating systems, JDK, application server, and applications on top of them. VMWare certainly offers complete production support but do you really want to put all your eggs in one basket ? Do you really use tcServer ? ;-) Maintainability - With Spring, you are likely building your own distribution with multiple JAR files, integrating, patching, versioning, etc of all those components. Spring's claim is that multiple JAR files allow you to go à la carte and pick the latest versions of different components. But who is responsible for testing whether all these versions work together ? Yep, you got it, its YOU! If something does not work, who patches and maintains the JARs ? Of course, you! Commercial support for such a configuration ? On your own! The Java EE application servers manage all of this for you and provide a well-tested and commercially supported bundle. While it is always good to realize that there is something new and improved that updates and replaces older frameworks like Spring, the good news is not only does a Java EE 6 container offer what is described here, most also will let you deploy and run your Spring applications on them while you go through an upgrade to a more modern architecture. End result, you get the best of both worlds - keeping your legacy investment but moving to a more agile, lightweight world of Java EE 6. A message to the Spring lovers ... The complexity in J2EE 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4 led to the genesis of Spring but that was in 2004. This is 2012 and the name has changed to "Java EE 6" :-) There are tons of improvements in the Java EE platform to make it easy-to-use and powerful. Some examples: Adding @Stateless on a POJO makes it an EJB EJBs can be packaged in a WAR with no special packaging or deployment descriptors "web.xml" and "faces-config.xml" are optional in most of the common cases Typesafe dependency injection is now part of the Java EE platform Add @Path on a POJO allows you to publish it as a RESTful resource EJBs can be used as backing beans for Facelets-driven JSF pages providing full MVC Java EE 6 WARs are known to be kilobytes in size and deployed in milliseconds Tons of other simplifications in the platform and application servers So if you moved away from J2EE to Spring many years ago and have not looked at Java EE 6 (which has been out since Dec 2009) then you should definitely try it out. Just be at least aware of what other alternatives are available instead of restricting yourself to one stack. Here are some workshops and screencasts worth trying: screencast #37 shows how to build an end-to-end application using NetBeans screencast #36 builds the same application using Eclipse javaee-lab-feb2012.pdf is a 3-4 hours self-paced hands-on workshop that guides you to build a comprehensive Java EE 6 application using NetBeans Each city generally has a "spring cleanup" program every year. It allows you to clean up the mess from your house. For your software projects, you don't need to wait for an annual event, just get started and reduce the technical debt now! Move away from your legacy Spring-based applications to a lighter and more modern approach of building enterprise Java applications using Java EE 6. Watch this beautiful presentation that explains how to migrate from Spring -> Java EE 6: List of files in the Java EE 6 project: ./index.xhtml./META-INF./person./person/Create.xhtml./person/Edit.xhtml./person/List.xhtml./person/View.xhtml./resources./resources/css./resources/css/jsfcrud.css./template.xhtml./WEB-INF./WEB-INF/classes./WEB-INF/classes/Bundle.properties./WEB-INF/classes/META-INF./WEB-INF/classes/META-INF/persistence.xml./WEB-INF/classes/org./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/AbstractFacade.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/Person.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/Person_.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/PersonController$1.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/PersonController$PersonControllerConverter.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/PersonController.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/PersonFacade.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/util./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/util/JsfUtil.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/util/PaginationHelper.class./WEB-INF/faces-config.xml./WEB-INF/web.xml List of files in the Spring 3.x project: ./META-INF ./META-INF/MANIFEST.MF./WEB-INF./WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml./WEB-INF/classes./WEB-INF/classes/log4j.properties./WEB-INF/classes/org./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/controller ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/controller/MainController.class ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/domain ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/domain/Person.class ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/service ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/service/PersonService.class ./WEB-INF/hibernate-context.xml ./WEB-INF/hibernate.cfg.xml ./WEB-INF/jsp ./WEB-INF/jsp/addedpage.jsp ./WEB-INF/jsp/addpage.jsp ./WEB-INF/jsp/deletedpage.jsp ./WEB-INF/jsp/editedpage.jsp ./WEB-INF/jsp/editpage.jsp ./WEB-INF/jsp/personspage.jsp ./WEB-INF/lib ./WEB-INF/lib/antlr-2.7.6.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/aopalliance-1.0.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/c3p0-0.9.1.2.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/cglib-nodep-2.2.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/commons-beanutils-1.8.3.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/commons-collections-3.2.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/commons-digester-2.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/commons-logging-1.1.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/dom4j-1.6.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/ejb3-persistence-1.0.2.GA.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-annotations-3.4.0.GA.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-commons-annotations-3.1.0.GA.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-core-3.3.2.GA.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/javassist-3.7.ga.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/jstl-1.1.2.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/jta-1.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/junit-4.8.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/log4j-1.2.14.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/mysql-connector-java-5.1.14.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/persistence-api-1.0.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-api-1.6.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.6.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-aop-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-asm-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-beans-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-support-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-core-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-expression-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-jdbc-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-orm-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-tx-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-web-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-webmvc-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/standard-1.1.2.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/xml-apis-1.0.b2.jar ./WEB-INF/spring-servlet.xml ./WEB-INF/spring.properties ./WEB-INF/web.xml So, are you excited about Java EE 6 ? Want to get started now ? Here are some resources: Java EE 6 SDK (including runtime, samples, tutorials etc) GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 3.1.2 (Community) Oracle GlassFish Server 3.1.2 (Commercial) Java EE 6 using WebLogic 12c and NetBeans (Video) Java EE 6 with NetBeans and GlassFish (Video) Java EE with Eclipse and GlassFish (Video)

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  • Using JSON.NET for dynamic JSON parsing

    - by Rick Strahl
    With the release of ASP.NET Web API as part of .NET 4.5 and MVC 4.0, JSON.NET has effectively pushed out the .NET native serializers to become the default serializer for Web API. JSON.NET is vastly more flexible than the built in DataContractJsonSerializer or the older JavaScript serializer. The DataContractSerializer in particular has been very problematic in the past because it can't deal with untyped objects for serialization - like values of type object, or anonymous types which are quite common these days. The JavaScript Serializer that came before it actually does support non-typed objects for serialization but it can't do anything with untyped data coming in from JavaScript and it's overall model of extensibility was pretty limited (JavaScript Serializer is what MVC uses for JSON responses). JSON.NET provides a robust JSON serializer that has both high level and low level components, supports binary JSON, JSON contracts, Xml to JSON conversion, LINQ to JSON and many, many more features than either of the built in serializers. ASP.NET Web API now uses JSON.NET as its default serializer and is now pulled in as a NuGet dependency into Web API projects, which is great. Dynamic JSON Parsing One of the features that I think is getting ever more important is the ability to serialize and deserialize arbitrary JSON content dynamically - that is without mapping the JSON captured directly into a .NET type as DataContractSerializer or the JavaScript Serializers do. Sometimes it isn't possible to map types due to the differences in languages (think collections, dictionaries etc), and other times you simply don't have the structures in place or don't want to create them to actually import the data. If this topic sounds familiar - you're right! I wrote about dynamic JSON parsing a few months back before JSON.NET was added to Web API and when Web API and the System.Net HttpClient libraries included the System.Json classes like JsonObject and JsonArray. With the inclusion of JSON.NET in Web API these classes are now obsolete and didn't ship with Web API or the client libraries. I re-linked my original post to this one. In this post I'll discus JToken, JObject and JArray which are the dynamic JSON objects that make it very easy to create and retrieve JSON content on the fly without underlying types. Why Dynamic JSON? So, why Dynamic JSON parsing rather than strongly typed parsing? Since applications are interacting more and more with third party services it becomes ever more important to have easy access to those services with easy JSON parsing. Sometimes it just makes lot of sense to pull just a small amount of data out of large JSON document received from a service, because the third party service isn't directly related to your application's logic most of the time - and it makes little sense to map the entire service structure in your application. For example, recently I worked with the Google Maps Places API to return information about businesses close to me (or rather the app's) location. The Google API returns a ton of information that my application had no interest in - all I needed was few values out of the data. Dynamic JSON parsing makes it possible to map this data, without having to map the entire API to a C# data structure. Instead I could pull out the three or four values I needed from the API and directly store it on my business entities that needed to receive the data - no need to map the entire Maps API structure. Getting JSON.NET The easiest way to use JSON.NET is to grab it via NuGet and add it as a reference to your project. You can add it to your project with: PM> Install-Package Newtonsoft.Json From the Package Manager Console or by using Manage NuGet Packages in your project References. As mentioned if you're using ASP.NET Web API or MVC 4 JSON.NET will be automatically added to your project. Alternately you can also go to the CodePlex site and download the latest version including source code: http://json.codeplex.com/ Creating JSON on the fly with JObject and JArray Let's start with creating some JSON on the fly. It's super easy to create a dynamic object structure with any of the JToken derived JSON.NET objects. The most common JToken derived classes you are likely to use are JObject and JArray. JToken implements IDynamicMetaProvider and so uses the dynamic  keyword extensively to make it intuitive to create object structures and turn them into JSON via dynamic object syntax. Here's an example of creating a music album structure with child songs using JObject for the base object and songs and JArray for the actual collection of songs:[TestMethod] public void JObjectOutputTest() { // strong typed instance var jsonObject = new JObject(); // you can explicitly add values here using class interface jsonObject.Add("Entered", DateTime.Now); // or cast to dynamic to dynamically add/read properties dynamic album = jsonObject; album.AlbumName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"; album.Artist = "AC/DC"; album.YearReleased = 1976; album.Songs = new JArray() as dynamic; dynamic song = new JObject(); song.SongName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"; song.SongLength = "4:11"; album.Songs.Add(song); song = new JObject(); song.SongName = "Love at First Feel"; song.SongLength = "3:10"; album.Songs.Add(song); Console.WriteLine(album.ToString()); } This produces a complete JSON structure: { "Entered": "2012-08-18T13:26:37.7137482-10:00", "AlbumName": "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap", "Artist": "AC/DC", "YearReleased": 1976, "Songs": [ { "SongName": "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap", "SongLength": "4:11" }, { "SongName": "Love at First Feel", "SongLength": "3:10" } ] } Notice that JSON.NET does a nice job formatting the JSON, so it's easy to read and paste into blog posts :-). JSON.NET includes a bunch of configuration options that control how JSON is generated. Typically the defaults are just fine, but you can override with the JsonSettings object for most operations. The important thing about this code is that there's no explicit type used for holding the values to serialize to JSON. Rather the JSON.NET objects are the containers that receive the data as I build up my JSON structure dynamically, simply by adding properties. This means this code can be entirely driven at runtime without compile time restraints of structure for the JSON output. Here I use JObject to create a album 'object' and immediately cast it to dynamic. JObject() is kind of similar in behavior to ExpandoObject in that it allows you to add properties by simply assigning to them. Internally, JObject values are stored in pseudo collections of key value pairs that are exposed as properties through the IDynamicMetaObject interface exposed in JSON.NET's JToken base class. For objects the syntax is very clean - you add simple typed values as properties. For objects and arrays you have to explicitly create new JObject or JArray, cast them to dynamic and then add properties and items to them. Always remember though these values are dynamic - which means no Intellisense and no compiler type checking. It's up to you to ensure that the names and values you create are accessed consistently and without typos in your code. Note that you can also access the JObject instance directly (not as dynamic) and get access to the underlying JObject type. This means you can assign properties by string, which can be useful for fully data driven JSON generation from other structures. Below you can see both styles of access next to each other:// strong type instance var jsonObject = new JObject(); // you can explicitly add values here jsonObject.Add("Entered", DateTime.Now); // expando style instance you can just 'use' properties dynamic album = jsonObject; album.AlbumName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"; JContainer (the base class for JObject and JArray) is a collection so you can also iterate over the properties at runtime easily:foreach (var item in jsonObject) { Console.WriteLine(item.Key + " " + item.Value.ToString()); } The functionality of the JSON objects are very similar to .NET's ExpandObject and if you used it before, you're already familiar with how the dynamic interfaces to the JSON objects works. Importing JSON with JObject.Parse() and JArray.Parse() The JValue structure supports importing JSON via the Parse() and Load() methods which can read JSON data from a string or various streams respectively. Essentially JValue includes the core JSON parsing to turn a JSON string into a collection of JsonValue objects that can be then referenced using familiar dynamic object syntax. Here's a simple example:public void JValueParsingTest() { var jsonString = @"{""Name"":""Rick"",""Company"":""West Wind"", ""Entered"":""2012-03-16T00:03:33.245-10:00""}"; dynamic json = JValue.Parse(jsonString); // values require casting string name = json.Name; string company = json.Company; DateTime entered = json.Entered; Assert.AreEqual(name, "Rick"); Assert.AreEqual(company, "West Wind"); } The JSON string represents an object with three properties which is parsed into a JObject class and cast to dynamic. Once cast to dynamic I can then go ahead and access the object using familiar object syntax. Note that the actual values - json.Name, json.Company, json.Entered - are actually of type JToken and I have to cast them to their appropriate types first before I can do type comparisons as in the Asserts at the end of the test method. This is required because of the way that dynamic types work which can't determine the type based on the method signature of the Assert.AreEqual(object,object) method. I have to either assign the dynamic value to a variable as I did above, or explicitly cast ( (string) json.Name) in the actual method call. The JSON structure can be much more complex than this simple example. Here's another example of an array of albums serialized to JSON and then parsed through with JsonValue():[TestMethod] public void JsonArrayParsingTest() { var jsonString = @"[ { ""Id"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""AlbumName"": ""Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"", ""Artist"": ""AC/DC"", ""YearReleased"": 1976, ""Entered"": ""2012-03-16T00:13:12.2810521-10:00"", ""AlbumImageUrl"": ""http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61kTaH-uZBL._AA115_.jpg"", ""AmazonUrl"": ""http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/…ASIN=B00008BXJ4"", ""Songs"": [ { ""AlbumId"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""SongName"": ""Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"", ""SongLength"": ""4:11"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""SongName"": ""Love at First Feel"", ""SongLength"": ""3:10"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""SongName"": ""Big Balls"", ""SongLength"": ""2:38"" } ] }, { ""Id"": ""7b919432"", ""AlbumName"": ""End of the Silence"", ""Artist"": ""Henry Rollins Band"", ""YearReleased"": 1992, ""Entered"": ""2012-03-16T00:13:12.2800521-10:00"", ""AlbumImageUrl"": ""http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51FO3rb1tuL._SL160_AA160_.jpg"", ""AmazonUrl"": ""http://www.amazon.com/End-Silence-Rollins-Band/dp/B0000040OX/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1302232195&sr=8-5"", ""Songs"": [ { ""AlbumId"": ""7b919432"", ""SongName"": ""Low Self Opinion"", ""SongLength"": ""5:24"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""7b919432"", ""SongName"": ""Grip"", ""SongLength"": ""4:51"" } ] } ]"; JArray jsonVal = JArray.Parse(jsonString) as JArray; dynamic albums = jsonVal; foreach (dynamic album in albums) { Console.WriteLine(album.AlbumName + " (" + album.YearReleased.ToString() + ")"); foreach (dynamic song in album.Songs) { Console.WriteLine("\t" + song.SongName); } } Console.WriteLine(albums[0].AlbumName); Console.WriteLine(albums[0].Songs[1].SongName); } JObject and JArray in ASP.NET Web API Of course these types also work in ASP.NET Web API controller methods. If you want you can accept parameters using these object or return them back to the server. The following contrived example receives dynamic JSON input, and then creates a new dynamic JSON object and returns it based on data from the first:[HttpPost] public JObject PostAlbumJObject(JObject jAlbum) { // dynamic input from inbound JSON dynamic album = jAlbum; // create a new JSON object to write out dynamic newAlbum = new JObject(); // Create properties on the new instance // with values from the first newAlbum.AlbumName = album.AlbumName + " New"; newAlbum.NewProperty = "something new"; newAlbum.Songs = new JArray(); foreach (dynamic song in album.Songs) { song.SongName = song.SongName + " New"; newAlbum.Songs.Add(song); } return newAlbum; } The raw POST request to the server looks something like this: POST http://localhost/aspnetwebapi/samples/PostAlbumJObject HTTP/1.1User-Agent: FiddlerContent-type: application/jsonHost: localhostContent-Length: 88 {AlbumName: "Dirty Deeds",Songs:[ { SongName: "Problem Child"},{ SongName: "Squealer"}]} and the output that comes back looks like this: {  "AlbumName": "Dirty Deeds New",  "NewProperty": "something new",  "Songs": [    {      "SongName": "Problem Child New"    },    {      "SongName": "Squealer New"    }  ]} The original values are echoed back with something extra appended to demonstrate that we're working with a new object. When you receive or return a JObject, JValue, JToken or JArray instance in a Web API method, Web API ignores normal content negotiation and assumes your content is going to be received and returned as JSON, so effectively the parameter and result type explicitly determines the input and output format which is nice. Dynamic to Strong Type Mapping You can also map JObject and JArray instances to a strongly typed object, so you can mix dynamic and static typing in the same piece of code. Using the 2 Album jsonString shown earlier, the code below takes an array of albums and picks out only a single album and casts that album to a static Album instance.[TestMethod] public void JsonParseToStrongTypeTest() { JArray albums = JArray.Parse(jsonString) as JArray; // pick out one album JObject jalbum = albums[0] as JObject; // Copy to a static Album instance Album album = jalbum.ToObject<Album>(); Assert.IsNotNull(album); Assert.AreEqual(album.AlbumName,jalbum.Value<string>("AlbumName")); Assert.IsTrue(album.Songs.Count > 0); } This is pretty damn useful for the scenario I mentioned earlier - you can read a large chunk of JSON and dynamically walk the property hierarchy down to the item you want to access, and then either access the specific item dynamically (as shown earlier) or map a part of the JSON to a strongly typed object. That's very powerful if you think about it - it leaves you in total control to decide what's dynamic and what's static. Strongly typed JSON Parsing With all this talk of dynamic let's not forget that JSON.NET of course also does strongly typed serialization which is drop dead easy. Here's a simple example on how to serialize and deserialize an object with JSON.NET:[TestMethod] public void StronglyTypedSerializationTest() { // Demonstrate deserialization from a raw string var album = new Album() { AlbumName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap", Artist = "AC/DC", Entered = DateTime.Now, YearReleased = 1976, Songs = new List<Song>() { new Song() { SongName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap", SongLength = "4:11" }, new Song() { SongName = "Love at First Feel", SongLength = "3:10" } } }; // serialize to string string json2 = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(album,Formatting.Indented); Console.WriteLine(json2); // make sure we can serialize back var album2 = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Album>(json2); Assert.IsNotNull(album2); Assert.IsTrue(album2.AlbumName == "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"); Assert.IsTrue(album2.Songs.Count == 2); } JsonConvert is a high level static class that wraps lower level functionality, but you can also use the JsonSerializer class, which allows you to serialize/parse to and from streams. It's a little more work, but gives you a bit more control. The functionality available is easy to discover with Intellisense, and that's good because there's not a lot in the way of documentation that's actually useful. Summary JSON.NET is a pretty complete JSON implementation with lots of different choices for JSON parsing from dynamic parsing to static serialization, to complex querying of JSON objects using LINQ. It's good to see this open source library getting integrated into .NET, and pushing out the old and tired stock .NET parsers so that we finally have a bit more flexibility - and extensibility - in our JSON parsing. Good to go! Resources Sample Test Project http://json.codeplex.com/© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in .NET  Web Api  AJAX   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • SimpleMembership, Membership Providers, Universal Providers and the new ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC 4 templates

    - by Jon Galloway
    The ASP.NET MVC 4 Internet template adds some new, very useful features which are built on top of SimpleMembership. These changes add some great features, like a much simpler and extensible membership API and support for OAuth. However, the new account management features require SimpleMembership and won't work against existing ASP.NET Membership Providers. I'll start with a summary of top things you need to know, then dig into a lot more detail. Summary: SimpleMembership has been designed as a replacement for traditional the previous ASP.NET Role and Membership provider system SimpleMembership solves common problems people ran into with the Membership provider system and was designed for modern user / membership / storage needs SimpleMembership integrates with the previous membership system, but you can't use a MembershipProvider with SimpleMembership The new ASP.NET MVC 4 Internet application template AccountController requires SimpleMembership and is not compatible with previous MembershipProviders You can continue to use existing ASP.NET Role and Membership providers in ASP.NET 4.5 and ASP.NET MVC 4 - just not with the ASP.NET MVC 4 AccountController The existing ASP.NET Role and Membership provider system remains supported as is part of the ASP.NET core ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms does not use SimpleMembership; it implements OAuth on top of ASP.NET Membership The ASP.NET Web Site Administration Tool (WSAT) is not compatible with SimpleMembership The following is the result of a few conversations with Erik Porter (PM for ASP.NET MVC) to make sure I had some the overall details straight, combined with a lot of time digging around in ILSpy and Visual Studio's assembly browsing tools. SimpleMembership: The future of membership for ASP.NET The ASP.NET Membership system was introduces with ASP.NET 2.0 back in 2005. It was designed to solve common site membership requirements at the time, which generally involved username / password based registration and profile storage in SQL Server. It was designed with a few extensibility mechanisms - notably a provider system (which allowed you override some specifics like backing storage) and the ability to store additional profile information (although the additional  profile information was packed into a single column which usually required access through the API). While it's sometimes frustrating to work with, it's held up for seven years - probably since it handles the main use case (username / password based membership in a SQL Server database) smoothly and can be adapted to most other needs (again, often frustrating, but it can work). The ASP.NET Web Pages and WebMatrix efforts allowed the team an opportunity to take a new look at a lot of things - e.g. the Razor syntax started with ASP.NET Web Pages, not ASP.NET MVC. The ASP.NET Web Pages team designed SimpleMembership to (wait for it) simplify the task of dealing with membership. As Matthew Osborn said in his post Using SimpleMembership With ASP.NET WebPages: With the introduction of ASP.NET WebPages and the WebMatrix stack our team has really be focusing on making things simpler for the developer. Based on a lot of customer feedback one of the areas that we wanted to improve was the built in security in ASP.NET. So with this release we took that time to create a new built in (and default for ASP.NET WebPages) security provider. I say provider because the new stuff is still built on the existing ASP.NET framework. So what do we call this new hotness that we have created? Well, none other than SimpleMembership. SimpleMembership is an umbrella term for both SimpleMembership and SimpleRoles. Part of simplifying membership involved fixing some common problems with ASP.NET Membership. Problems with ASP.NET Membership ASP.NET Membership was very obviously designed around a set of assumptions: Users and user information would most likely be stored in a full SQL Server database or in Active Directory User and profile information would be optimized around a set of common attributes (UserName, Password, IsApproved, CreationDate, Comment, Role membership...) and other user profile information would be accessed through a profile provider Some problems fall out of these assumptions. Requires Full SQL Server for default cases The default, and most fully featured providers ASP.NET Membership providers (SQL Membership Provider, SQL Role Provider, SQL Profile Provider) require full SQL Server. They depend on stored procedure support, and they rely on SQL Server cache dependencies, they depend on agents for clean up and maintenance. So the main SQL Server based providers don't work well on SQL Server CE, won't work out of the box on SQL Azure, etc. Note: Cory Fowler recently let me know about these Updated ASP.net scripts for use with Microsoft SQL Azure which do support membership, personalization, profile, and roles. But the fact that we need a support page with a set of separate SQL scripts underscores the underlying problem. Aha, you say! Jon's forgetting the Universal Providers, a.k.a. System.Web.Providers! Hold on a bit, we'll get to those... Custom Membership Providers have to work with a SQL-Server-centric API If you want to work with another database or other membership storage system, you need to to inherit from the provider base classes and override a bunch of methods which are tightly focused on storing a MembershipUser in a relational database. It can be done (and you can often find pretty good ones that have already been written), but it's a good amount of work and often leaves you with ugly code that has a bunch of System.NotImplementedException fun since there are a lot of methods that just don't apply. Designed around a specific view of users, roles and profiles The existing providers are focused on traditional membership - a user has a username and a password, some specific roles on the site (e.g. administrator, premium user), and may have some additional "nice to have" optional information that can be accessed via an API in your application. This doesn't fit well with some modern usage patterns: In OAuth and OpenID, the user doesn't have a password Often these kinds of scenarios map better to user claims or rights instead of monolithic user roles For many sites, profile or other non-traditional information is very important and needs to come from somewhere other than an API call that maps to a database blob What would work a lot better here is a system in which you were able to define your users, rights, and other attributes however you wanted and the membership system worked with your model - not the other way around. Requires specific schema, overflow in blob columns I've already mentioned this a few times, but it bears calling out separately - ASP.NET Membership focuses on SQL Server storage, and that storage is based on a very specific database schema. SimpleMembership as a better membership system As you might have guessed, SimpleMembership was designed to address the above problems. Works with your Schema As Matthew Osborn explains in his Using SimpleMembership With ASP.NET WebPages post, SimpleMembership is designed to integrate with your database schema: All SimpleMembership requires is that there are two columns on your users table so that we can hook up to it – an “ID” column and a “username” column. The important part here is that they can be named whatever you want. For instance username doesn't have to be an alias it could be an email column you just have to tell SimpleMembership to treat that as the “username” used to log in. Matthew's example shows using a very simple user table named Users (it could be named anything) with a UserID and Username column, then a bunch of other columns he wanted in his app. Then we point SimpleMemberhip at that table with a one-liner: WebSecurity.InitializeDatabaseFile("SecurityDemo.sdf", "Users", "UserID", "Username", true); No other tables are needed, the table can be named anything we want, and can have pretty much any schema we want as long as we've got an ID and something that we can map to a username. Broaden database support to the whole SQL Server family While SimpleMembership is not database agnostic, it works across the SQL Server family. It continues to support full SQL Server, but it also works with SQL Azure, SQL Server CE, SQL Server Express, and LocalDB. Everything's implemented as SQL calls rather than requiring stored procedures, views, agents, and change notifications. Note that SimpleMembership still requires some flavor of SQL Server - it won't work with MySQL, NoSQL databases, etc. You can take a look at the code in WebMatrix.WebData.dll using a tool like ILSpy if you'd like to see why - there places where SQL Server specific SQL statements are being executed, especially when creating and initializing tables. It seems like you might be able to work with another database if you created the tables separately, but I haven't tried it and it's not supported at this point. Note: I'm thinking it would be possible for SimpleMembership (or something compatible) to run Entity Framework so it would work with any database EF supports. That seems useful to me - thoughts? Note: SimpleMembership has the same database support - anything in the SQL Server family - that Universal Providers brings to the ASP.NET Membership system. Easy to with Entity Framework Code First The problem with with ASP.NET Membership's system for storing additional account information is that it's the gate keeper. That means you're stuck with its schema and accessing profile information through its API. SimpleMembership flips that around by allowing you to use any table as a user store. That means you're in control of the user profile information, and you can access it however you'd like - it's just data. Let's look at a practical based on the AccountModel.cs class in an ASP.NET MVC 4 Internet project. Here I'm adding a Birthday property to the UserProfile class. [Table("UserProfile")] public class UserProfile { [Key] [DatabaseGeneratedAttribute(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)] public int UserId { get; set; } public string UserName { get; set; } public DateTime Birthday { get; set; } } Now if I want to access that information, I can just grab the account by username and read the value. var context = new UsersContext(); var username = User.Identity.Name; var user = context.UserProfiles.SingleOrDefault(u => u.UserName == username); var birthday = user.Birthday; So instead of thinking of SimpleMembership as a big membership API, think of it as something that handles membership based on your user database. In SimpleMembership, everything's keyed off a user row in a table you define rather than a bunch of entries in membership tables that were out of your control. How SimpleMembership integrates with ASP.NET Membership Okay, enough sales pitch (and hopefully background) on why things have changed. How does this affect you? Let's start with a diagram to show the relationship (note: I've simplified by removing a few classes to show the important relationships): So SimpleMembershipProvider is an implementaiton of an ExtendedMembershipProvider, which inherits from MembershipProvider and adds some other account / OAuth related things. Here's what ExtendedMembershipProvider adds to MembershipProvider: The important thing to take away here is that a SimpleMembershipProvider is a MembershipProvider, but a MembershipProvider is not a SimpleMembershipProvider. This distinction is important in practice: you cannot use an existing MembershipProvider (including the Universal Providers found in System.Web.Providers) with an API that requires a SimpleMembershipProvider, including any of the calls in WebMatrix.WebData.WebSecurity or Microsoft.Web.WebPages.OAuth.OAuthWebSecurity. However, that's as far as it goes. Membership Providers still work if you're accessing them through the standard Membership API, and all of the core stuff  - including the AuthorizeAttribute, role enforcement, etc. - will work just fine and without any change. Let's look at how that affects you in terms of the new templates. Membership in the ASP.NET MVC 4 project templates ASP.NET MVC 4 offers six Project Templates: Empty - Really empty, just the assemblies, folder structure and a tiny bit of basic configuration. Basic - Like Empty, but with a bit of UI preconfigured (css / images / bundling). Internet - This has both a Home and Account controller and associated views. The Account Controller supports registration and login via either local accounts and via OAuth / OpenID providers. Intranet - Like the Internet template, but it's preconfigured for Windows Authentication. Mobile - This is preconfigured using jQuery Mobile and is intended for mobile-only sites. Web API - This is preconfigured for a service backend built on ASP.NET Web API. Out of these templates, only one (the Internet template) uses SimpleMembership. ASP.NET MVC 4 Basic template The Basic template has configuration in place to use ASP.NET Membership with the Universal Providers. You can see that configuration in the ASP.NET MVC 4 Basic template's web.config: <profile defaultProvider="DefaultProfileProvider"> <providers> <add name="DefaultProfileProvider" type="System.Web.Providers.DefaultProfileProvider, System.Web.Providers, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" connectionStringName="DefaultConnection" applicationName="/" /> </providers> </profile> <membership defaultProvider="DefaultMembershipProvider"> <providers> <add name="DefaultMembershipProvider" type="System.Web.Providers.DefaultMembershipProvider, System.Web.Providers, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" connectionStringName="DefaultConnection" enablePasswordRetrieval="false" enablePasswordReset="true" requiresQuestionAndAnswer="false" requiresUniqueEmail="false" maxInvalidPasswordAttempts="5" minRequiredPasswordLength="6" minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters="0" passwordAttemptWindow="10" applicationName="/" /> </providers> </membership> <roleManager defaultProvider="DefaultRoleProvider"> <providers> <add name="DefaultRoleProvider" type="System.Web.Providers.DefaultRoleProvider, System.Web.Providers, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" connectionStringName="DefaultConnection" applicationName="/" /> </providers> </roleManager> <sessionState mode="InProc" customProvider="DefaultSessionProvider"> <providers> <add name="DefaultSessionProvider" type="System.Web.Providers.DefaultSessionStateProvider, System.Web.Providers, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" connectionStringName="DefaultConnection" /> </providers> </sessionState> This means that it's business as usual for the Basic template as far as ASP.NET Membership works. ASP.NET MVC 4 Internet template The Internet template has a few things set up to bootstrap SimpleMembership: \Models\AccountModels.cs defines a basic user account and includes data annotations to define keys and such \Filters\InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute.cs creates the membership database using the above model, then calls WebSecurity.InitializeDatabaseConnection which verifies that the underlying tables are in place and marks initialization as complete (for the application's lifetime) \Controllers\AccountController.cs makes heavy use of OAuthWebSecurity (for OAuth account registration / login / management) and WebSecurity. WebSecurity provides account management services for ASP.NET MVC (and Web Pages) WebSecurity can work with any ExtendedMembershipProvider. There's one in the box (SimpleMembershipProvider) but you can write your own. Since a standard MembershipProvider is not an ExtendedMembershipProvider, WebSecurity will throw exceptions if the default membership provider is a MembershipProvider rather than an ExtendedMembershipProvider. Practical example: Create a new ASP.NET MVC 4 application using the Internet application template Install the Microsoft ASP.NET Universal Providers for LocalDB NuGet package Run the application, click on Register, add a username and password, and click submit You'll get the following execption in AccountController.cs::Register: To call this method, the "Membership.Provider" property must be an instance of "ExtendedMembershipProvider". This occurs because the ASP.NET Universal Providers packages include a web.config transform that will update your web.config to add the Universal Provider configuration I showed in the Basic template example above. When WebSecurity tries to use the configured ASP.NET Membership Provider, it checks if it can be cast to an ExtendedMembershipProvider before doing anything else. So, what do you do? Options: If you want to use the new AccountController, you'll either need to use the SimpleMembershipProvider or another valid ExtendedMembershipProvider. This is pretty straightforward. If you want to use an existing ASP.NET Membership Provider in ASP.NET MVC 4, you can't use the new AccountController. You can do a few things: Replace  the AccountController.cs and AccountModels.cs in an ASP.NET MVC 4 Internet project with one from an ASP.NET MVC 3 application (you of course won't have OAuth support). Then, if you want, you can go through and remove other things that were built around SimpleMembership - the OAuth partial view, the NuGet packages (e.g. the DotNetOpenAuthAuth package, etc.) Use an ASP.NET MVC 4 Internet application template and add in a Universal Providers NuGet package. Then copy in the AccountController and AccountModel classes. Create an ASP.NET MVC 3 project and upgrade it to ASP.NET MVC 4 using the steps shown in the ASP.NET MVC 4 release notes. None of these are particularly elegant or simple. Maybe we (or just me?) can do something to make this simpler - perhaps a NuGet package. However, this should be an edge case - hopefully the cases where you'd need to create a new ASP.NET but use legacy ASP.NET Membership Providers should be pretty rare. Please let me (or, preferably the team) know if that's an incorrect assumption. Membership in the ASP.NET 4.5 project template ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms took a different approach which builds off ASP.NET Membership. Instead of using the WebMatrix security assemblies, Web Forms uses Microsoft.AspNet.Membership.OpenAuth assembly. I'm no expert on this, but from a bit of time in ILSpy and Visual Studio's (very pretty) dependency graphs, this uses a Membership Adapter to save OAuth data into an EF managed database while still running on top of ASP.NET Membership. Note: There may be a way to use this in ASP.NET MVC 4, although it would probably take some plumbing work to hook it up. How does this fit in with Universal Providers (System.Web.Providers)? Just to summarize: Universal Providers are intended for cases where you have an existing ASP.NET Membership Provider and you want to use it with another SQL Server database backend (other than SQL Server). It doesn't require agents to handle expired session cleanup and other background tasks, it piggybacks these tasks on other calls. Universal Providers are not really, strictly speaking, universal - at least to my way of thinking. They only work with databases in the SQL Server family. Universal Providers do not work with Simple Membership. The Universal Providers packages include some web config transforms which you would normally want when you're using them. What about the Web Site Administration Tool? Visual Studio includes tooling to launch the Web Site Administration Tool (WSAT) to configure users and roles in your application. WSAT is built to work with ASP.NET Membership, and is not compatible with Simple Membership. There are two main options there: Use the WebSecurity and OAuthWebSecurity API to manage the users and roles Create a web admin using the above APIs Since SimpleMembership runs on top of your database, you can update your users as you would any other data - via EF or even in direct database edits (in development, of course)

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  • NoSQL with RavenDB and ASP.NET MVC - Part 1

    - by shiju
     A while back, I have blogged NoSQL with MongoDB, NoRM and ASP.NET MVC Part 1 and Part 2 on how to use MongoDB with an ASP.NET MVC application. The NoSQL movement is getting big attention and RavenDB is the latest addition to the NoSQL and document database world. RavenDB is an Open Source (with a commercial option) document database for the .NET/Windows platform developed  by Ayende Rahien.  Raven stores schema-less JSON documents, allow you to define indexes using Linq queries and focus on low latency and high performance. RavenDB is .NET focused document database which comes with a fully functional .NET client API  and supports LINQ. RavenDB comes with two components, a server and a client API. RavenDB is a REST based system, so you can write your own HTTP cleint API. As a .NET developer, RavenDB is becoming my favorite document database. Unlike other document databases, RavenDB is supports transactions using System.Transactions. Also it's supports both embedded and server mode of database. You can access RavenDB site at http://ravendb.netA demo App with ASP.NET MVCLet's create a simple demo app with RavenDB and ASP.NET MVC. To work with RavenDB, do the following steps. Go to http://ravendb.net/download and download the latest build.Unzip the downloaded file.Go to the /Server directory and run the RavenDB.exe. This will start the RavenDB server listening on localhost:8080You can change the port of RavenDB  by modifying the "Raven/Port" appSetting value in the RavenDB.exe.config file.When running the RavenDB, it will automatically create a database in the /Data directory. You can change the directory name data by modifying "Raven/DataDirt" appSetting value in the RavenDB.exe.config file.RavenDB provides a browser based admin tool. When the Raven server is running, You can be access the browser based admin tool and view and edit documents and index using your browser admin tool. The web admin tool available at http://localhost:8080The below is the some screen shots of web admin tool     Working with ASP.NET MVC  To working with RavenDB in our demo ASP.NET MVC application, do the following steps Step 1 - Add reference to Raven Cleint API In our ASP.NET MVC application, Add a reference to the Raven.Client.Lightweight.dll from the Client directory. Step 2 - Create DocumentStoreThe document store would be created once per application. Let's create a DocumentStore on application start-up in the Global.asax.cs. documentStore = new DocumentStore { Url = "http://localhost:8080/" }; documentStore.Initialise(); The above code will create a Raven DB document store and will be listening the server locahost at port 8080    Step 3 - Create DocumentSession on BeginRequest   Let's create a DocumentSession on BeginRequest event in the Global.asax.cs. We are using the document session for every unit of work. In our demo app, every HTTP request would be a single Unit of Work (UoW). BeginRequest += (sender, args) =>   HttpContext.Current.Items[RavenSessionKey] = documentStore.OpenSession(); Step 4 - Destroy the DocumentSession on EndRequest  EndRequest += (o, eventArgs) => {     var disposable = HttpContext.Current.Items[RavenSessionKey] as IDisposable;     if (disposable != null)         disposable.Dispose(); };  At the end of HTTP request, we are destroying the DocumentSession  object.The below  code block shown all the code in the Global.asax.cs  private const string RavenSessionKey = "RavenMVC.Session"; private static DocumentStore documentStore;   protected void Application_Start() { //Create a DocumentStore in Application_Start //DocumentStore should be created once per application and stored as a singleton. documentStore = new DocumentStore { Url = "http://localhost:8080/" }; documentStore.Initialise(); AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas(); RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes); //DI using Unity 2.0 ConfigureUnity(); }   public MvcApplication() { //Create a DocumentSession on BeginRequest   //create a document session for every unit of work BeginRequest += (sender, args) =>     HttpContext.Current.Items[RavenSessionKey] = documentStore.OpenSession(); //Destroy the DocumentSession on EndRequest EndRequest += (o, eventArgs) => { var disposable = HttpContext.Current.Items[RavenSessionKey] as IDisposable; if (disposable != null) disposable.Dispose(); }; }   //Getting the current DocumentSession public static IDocumentSession CurrentSession {   get { return (IDocumentSession)HttpContext.Current.Items[RavenSessionKey]; } }  We have setup all necessary code in the Global.asax.cs for working with RavenDB. For our demo app, Let’s write a domain class  public class Category {       public string Id { get; set; }       [Required(ErrorMessage = "Name Required")]     [StringLength(25, ErrorMessage = "Must be less than 25 characters")]     public string Name { get; set;}     public string Description { get; set; }   } We have created simple domain entity Category. Let's create repository class for performing CRUD operations against our domain entity Category.  public interface ICategoryRepository {     Category Load(string id);     IEnumerable<Category> GetCategories();     void Save(Category category);     void Delete(string id);       }    public class CategoryRepository : ICategoryRepository {     private IDocumentSession session;     public CategoryRepository()     {             session = MvcApplication.CurrentSession;     }     //Load category based on Id     public Category Load(string id)     {         return session.Load<Category>(id);     }     //Get all categories     public IEnumerable<Category> GetCategories()     {         var categories= session.LuceneQuery<Category>()                 .WaitForNonStaleResults()             .ToArray();         return categories;       }     //Insert/Update category     public void Save(Category category)     {         if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(category.Id))         {             //insert new record             session.Store(category);         }         else         {             //edit record             var categoryToEdit = Load(category.Id);             categoryToEdit.Name = category.Name;             categoryToEdit.Description = category.Description;         }         //save the document session         session.SaveChanges();     }     //delete a category     public void Delete(string id)     {         var category = Load(id);         session.Delete<Category>(category);         session.SaveChanges();     }        } For every CRUD operations, we are taking the current document session object from HttpContext object. session = MvcApplication.CurrentSession; We are calling the static method CurrentSession from the Global.asax.cs public static IDocumentSession CurrentSession {     get { return (IDocumentSession)HttpContext.Current.Items[RavenSessionKey]; } }  Retrieve Entities  The Load method get the single Category object based on the Id. RavenDB is working based on the REST principles and the Id would be like categories/1. The Id would be created by automatically when a new object is inserted to the document store. The REST uri categories/1 represents a single category object with Id representation of 1.   public Category Load(string id) {    return session.Load<Category>(id); } The GetCategories method returns all the categories calling the session.LuceneQuery method. RavenDB is using a lucen query syntax for querying. I will explain more details about querying and indexing in my future posts.   public IEnumerable<Category> GetCategories() {     var categories= session.LuceneQuery<Category>()             .WaitForNonStaleResults()         .ToArray();     return categories;   } Insert/Update entityFor insert/Update a Category entity, we have created Save method in repository class. If  the Id property of Category is null, we call Store method of Documentsession for insert a new record. For editing a existing record, we load the Category object and assign the values to the loaded Category object. The session.SaveChanges() will save the changes to document store.  //Insert/Update category public void Save(Category category) {     if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(category.Id))     {         //insert new record         session.Store(category);     }     else     {         //edit record         var categoryToEdit = Load(category.Id);         categoryToEdit.Name = category.Name;         categoryToEdit.Description = category.Description;     }     //save the document session     session.SaveChanges(); }  Delete Entity  In the Delete method, we call the document session's delete method and call the SaveChanges method to reflect changes in the document store.  public void Delete(string id) {     var category = Load(id);     session.Delete<Category>(category);     session.SaveChanges(); }  Let’s create ASP.NET MVC controller and controller actions for handling CRUD operations for the domain class Category  public class CategoryController : Controller { private ICategoryRepository categoyRepository; //DI enabled constructor public CategoryController(ICategoryRepository categoyRepository) {     this.categoyRepository = categoyRepository; } public ActionResult Index() {         var categories = categoyRepository.GetCategories();     if (categories == null)         return RedirectToAction("Create");     return View(categories); }   [HttpGet] public ActionResult Edit(string id) {     var category = categoyRepository.Load(id);         return View("Save",category); } // GET: /Category/Create [HttpGet] public ActionResult Create() {     var category = new Category();     return View("Save", category); } [HttpPost] public ActionResult Save(Category category) {     if (!ModelState.IsValid)     {         return View("Save", category);     }           categoyRepository.Save(category);         return RedirectToAction("Index");     }        [HttpPost] public ActionResult Delete(string id) {     categoyRepository.Delete(id);     var categories = categoyRepository.GetCategories();     return PartialView("CategoryList", categories);      }        }  RavenDB is an awesome document database and I hope that it will be the winner in .NET space of document database world.  The source code of demo application available at http://ravenmvc.codeplex.com/

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  • Announcing release of ASP.NET MVC 3, IIS Express, SQL CE 4, Web Farm Framework, Orchard, WebMatrix

    - by ScottGu
    I’m excited to announce the release today of several products: ASP.NET MVC 3 NuGet IIS Express 7.5 SQL Server Compact Edition 4 Web Deploy and Web Farm Framework 2.0 Orchard 1.0 WebMatrix 1.0 The above products are all free. They build upon the .NET 4 and VS 2010 release, and add a ton of additional value to ASP.NET (both Web Forms and MVC) and the Microsoft Web Server stack. ASP.NET MVC 3 Today we are shipping the final release of ASP.NET MVC 3.  You can download and install ASP.NET MVC 3 here.  The ASP.NET MVC 3 source code (released under an OSI-compliant open source license) can also optionally be downloaded here. ASP.NET MVC 3 is a significant update that brings with it a bunch of great features.  Some of the improvements include: Razor ASP.NET MVC 3 ships with a new view-engine option called “Razor” (in addition to continuing to support/enhance the existing .aspx view engine).  Razor minimizes the number of characters and keystrokes required when writing a view template, and enables a fast, fluid coding workflow. Unlike most template syntaxes, with Razor you do not need to interrupt your coding to explicitly denote the start and end of server blocks within your HTML. The Razor parser is smart enough to infer this from your code. This enables a compact and expressive syntax which is clean, fast and fun to type.  You can learn more about Razor from some of the blog posts I’ve done about it over the last 6 months Introducing Razor New @model keyword in Razor Layouts with Razor Server-Side Comments with Razor Razor’s @: and <text> syntax Implicit and Explicit code nuggets with Razor Layouts and Sections with Razor Today’s release supports full code intellisense support for Razor (both VB and C#) with Visual Studio 2010 and the free Visual Web Developer 2010 Express. JavaScript Improvements ASP.NET MVC 3 enables richer JavaScript scenarios and takes advantage of emerging HTML5 capabilities. The AJAX and Validation helpers in ASP.NET MVC 3 now use an Unobtrusive JavaScript based approach.  Unobtrusive JavaScript avoids injecting inline JavaScript into HTML, and enables cleaner separation of behavior using the new HTML 5 “data-“ attribute convention (which conveniently works on older browsers as well – including IE6). This keeps your HTML tight and clean, and makes it easier to optionally swap out or customize JS libraries.  ASP.NET MVC 3 now includes built-in support for posting JSON-based parameters from client-side JavaScript to action methods on the server.  This makes it easier to exchange data across the client and server, and build rich JavaScript front-ends.  We think this capability will be particularly useful going forward with scenarios involving client templates and data binding (including the jQuery plugins the ASP.NET team recently contributed to the jQuery project).  Previous releases of ASP.NET MVC included the core jQuery library.  ASP.NET MVC 3 also now ships the jQuery Validate plugin (which our validation helpers use for client-side validation scenarios).  We are also now shipping and including jQuery UI by default as well (which provides a rich set of client-side JavaScript UI widgets for you to use within projects). Improved Validation ASP.NET MVC 3 includes a bunch of validation enhancements that make it even easier to work with data. Client-side validation is now enabled by default with ASP.NET MVC 3 (using an onbtrusive javascript implementation).  Today’s release also includes built-in support for Remote Validation - which enables you to annotate a model class with a validation attribute that causes ASP.NET MVC to perform a remote validation call to a server method when validating input on the client. The validation features introduced within .NET 4’s System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations namespace are now supported by ASP.NET MVC 3.  This includes support for the new IValidatableObject interface – which enables you to perform model-level validation, and allows you to provide validation error messages specific to the state of the overall model, or between two properties within the model.  ASP.NET MVC 3 also supports the improvements made to the ValidationAttribute class in .NET 4.  ValidationAttribute now supports a new IsValid overload that provides more information about the current validation context, such as what object is being validated.  This enables richer scenarios where you can validate the current value based on another property of the model.  We’ve shipped a built-in [Compare] validation attribute  with ASP.NET MVC 3 that uses this support and makes it easy out of the box to compare and validate two property values. You can use any data access API or technology with ASP.NET MVC.  This past year, though, we’ve worked closely with the .NET data team to ensure that the new EF Code First library works really well for ASP.NET MVC applications.  These two posts of mine cover the latest EF Code First preview and demonstrates how to use it with ASP.NET MVC 3 to enable easy editing of data (with end to end client+server validation support).  The final release of EF Code First will ship in the next few weeks. Today we are also publishing the first preview of a new MvcScaffolding project.  It enables you to easily scaffold ASP.NET MVC 3 Controllers and Views, and works great with EF Code-First (and is pluggable to support other data providers).  You can learn more about it – and install it via NuGet today - from Steve Sanderson’s MvcScaffolding blog post. Output Caching Previous releases of ASP.NET MVC supported output caching content at a URL or action-method level. With ASP.NET MVC V3 we are also enabling support for partial page output caching – which allows you to easily output cache regions or fragments of a response as opposed to the entire thing.  This ends up being super useful in a lot of scenarios, and enables you to dramatically reduce the work your application does on the server.  The new partial page output caching support in ASP.NET MVC 3 enables you to easily re-use cached sub-regions/fragments of a page across multiple URLs on a site.  It supports the ability to cache the content either on the web-server, or optionally cache it within a distributed cache server like Windows Server AppFabric or memcached. I’ll post some tutorials on my blog that show how to take advantage of ASP.NET MVC 3’s new output caching support for partial page scenarios in the future. Better Dependency Injection ASP.NET MVC 3 provides better support for applying Dependency Injection (DI) and integrating with Dependency Injection/IOC containers. With ASP.NET MVC 3 you no longer need to author custom ControllerFactory classes in order to enable DI with Controllers.  You can instead just register a Dependency Injection framework with ASP.NET MVC 3 and it will resolve dependencies not only for Controllers, but also for Views, Action Filters, Model Binders, Value Providers, Validation Providers, and Model Metadata Providers that you use within your application. This makes it much easier to cleanly integrate dependency injection within your projects. Other Goodies ASP.NET MVC 3 includes dozens of other nice improvements that help to both reduce the amount of code you write, and make the code you do write cleaner.  Here are just a few examples: Improved New Project dialog that makes it easy to start new ASP.NET MVC 3 projects from templates. Improved Add->View Scaffolding support that enables the generation of even cleaner view templates. New ViewBag property that uses .NET 4’s dynamic support to make it easy to pass late-bound data from Controllers to Views. Global Filters support that allows specifying cross-cutting filter attributes (like [HandleError]) across all Controllers within an app. New [AllowHtml] attribute that allows for more granular request validation when binding form posted data to models. Sessionless controller support that allows fine grained control over whether SessionState is enabled on a Controller. New ActionResult types like HttpNotFoundResult and RedirectPermanent for common HTTP scenarios. New Html.Raw() helper to indicate that output should not be HTML encoded. New Crypto helpers for salting and hashing passwords. And much, much more… Learn More about ASP.NET MVC 3 We will be posting lots of tutorials and samples on the http://asp.net/mvc site in the weeks ahead.  Below are two good ASP.NET MVC 3 tutorials available on the site today: Build your First ASP.NET MVC 3 Application: VB and C# Building the ASP.NET MVC 3 Music Store We’ll post additional ASP.NET MVC 3 tutorials and videos on the http://asp.net/mvc site in the future. Visit it regularly to find new tutorials as they are published. How to Upgrade Existing Projects ASP.NET MVC 3 is compatible with ASP.NET MVC 2 – which means it should be easy to update existing MVC projects to ASP.NET MVC 3.  The new features in ASP.NET MVC 3 build on top of the foundational work we’ve already done with the MVC 1 and MVC 2 releases – which means that the skills, knowledge, libraries, and books you’ve acquired are all directly applicable with the MVC 3 release.  MVC 3 adds new features and capabilities – it doesn’t obsolete existing ones. You can upgrade existing ASP.NET MVC 2 projects by following the manual upgrade steps in the release notes.  Alternatively, you can use this automated ASP.NET MVC 3 upgrade tool to easily update your  existing projects. Localized Builds Today’s ASP.NET MVC 3 release is available in English.  We will be releasing localized versions of ASP.NET MVC 3 (in 9 languages) in a few days.  I’ll blog pointers to the localized downloads once they are available. NuGet Today we are also shipping NuGet – a free, open source, package manager that makes it easy for you to find, install, and use open source libraries in your projects. It works with all .NET project types (including ASP.NET Web Forms, ASP.NET MVC, WPF, WinForms, Silverlight, and Class Libraries).  You can download and install it here. NuGet enables developers who maintain open source projects (for example, .NET projects like Moq, NHibernate, Ninject, StructureMap, NUnit, Windsor, Raven, Elmah, etc) to package up their libraries and register them with an online gallery/catalog that is searchable.  The client-side NuGet tools – which include full Visual Studio integration – make it trivial for any .NET developer who wants to use one of these libraries to easily find and install it within the project they are working on. NuGet handles dependency management between libraries (for example: library1 depends on library2). It also makes it easy to update (and optionally remove) libraries from your projects later. It supports updating web.config files (if a package needs configuration settings). It also allows packages to add PowerShell scripts to a project (for example: scaffold commands). Importantly, NuGet is transparent and clean – and does not install anything at the system level. Instead it is focused on making it easy to manage libraries you use with your projects. Our goal with NuGet is to make it as simple as possible to integrate open source libraries within .NET projects.  NuGet Gallery This week we also launched a beta version of the http://nuget.org web-site – which allows anyone to easily search and browse an online gallery of open source packages available via NuGet.  The site also now allows developers to optionally submit new packages that they wish to share with others.  You can learn more about how to create and share a package here. There are hundreds of open-source .NET projects already within the NuGet Gallery today.  We hope to have thousands there in the future. IIS Express 7.5 Today we are also shipping IIS Express 7.5.  IIS Express is a free version of IIS 7.5 that is optimized for developer scenarios.  It works for both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC project types. We think IIS Express combines the ease of use of the ASP.NET Web Server (aka Cassini) currently built-into Visual Studio today with the full power of IIS.  Specifically: It’s lightweight and easy to install (less than 5Mb download and a quick install) It does not require an administrator account to run/debug applications from Visual Studio It enables a full web-server feature set – including SSL, URL Rewrite, and other IIS 7.x modules It supports and enables the same extensibility model and web.config file settings that IIS 7.x support It can be installed side-by-side with the full IIS web server as well as the ASP.NET Development Server (they do not conflict at all) It works on Windows XP and higher operating systems – giving you a full IIS 7.x developer feature-set on all Windows OS platforms IIS Express (like the ASP.NET Development Server) can be quickly launched to run a site from a directory on disk.  It does not require any registration/configuration steps. This makes it really easy to launch and run for development scenarios.  You can also optionally redistribute IIS Express with your own applications if you want a lightweight web-server.  The standard IIS Express EULA now includes redistributable rights. Visual Studio 2010 SP1 adds support for IIS Express.  Read my VS 2010 SP1 and IIS Express blog post to learn more about what it enables.  SQL Server Compact Edition 4 Today we are also shipping SQL Server Compact Edition 4 (aka SQL CE 4).  SQL CE is a free, embedded, database engine that enables easy database storage. No Database Installation Required SQL CE does not require you to run a setup or install a database server in order to use it.  You can simply copy the SQL CE binaries into the \bin directory of your ASP.NET application, and then your web application can use it as a database engine.  No setup or extra security permissions are required for it to run. You do not need to have an administrator account on the machine. Just copy your web application onto any server and it will work. This is true even of medium-trust applications running in a web hosting environment. SQL CE runs in-memory within your ASP.NET application and will start-up when you first access a SQL CE database, and will automatically shutdown when your application is unloaded.  SQL CE databases are stored as files that live within the \App_Data folder of your ASP.NET Applications. Works with Existing Data APIs SQL CE 4 works with existing .NET-based data APIs, and supports a SQL Server compatible query syntax.  This means you can use existing data APIs like ADO.NET, as well as use higher-level ORMs like Entity Framework and NHibernate with SQL CE.  This enables you to use the same data programming skills and data APIs you know today. Supports Development, Testing and Production Scenarios SQL CE can be used for development scenarios, testing scenarios, and light production usage scenarios.  With the SQL CE 4 release we’ve done the engineering work to ensure that SQL CE won’t crash or deadlock when used in a multi-threaded server scenario (like ASP.NET).  This is a big change from previous releases of SQL CE – which were designed for client-only scenarios and which explicitly blocked running in web-server environments.  Starting with SQL CE 4 you can use it in a web-server as well. There are no license restrictions with SQL CE.  It is also totally free. Tooling Support with VS 2010 SP1 Visual Studio 2010 SP1 adds support for SQL CE 4 and ASP.NET Projects.  Read my VS 2010 SP1 and SQL CE 4 blog post to learn more about what it enables.  Web Deploy and Web Farm Framework 2.0 Today we are also releasing Microsoft Web Deploy V2 and Microsoft Web Farm Framework V2.  These services provide a flexible and powerful way to deploy ASP.NET applications onto either a single server, or across a web farm of machines. You can learn more about these capabilities from my previous blog posts on them: Introducing the Microsoft Web Farm Framework Automating Deployment with Microsoft Web Deploy Visit the http://iis.net website to learn more and install them. Both are free. Orchard 1.0 Today we are also releasing Orchard v1.0.  Orchard is a free, open source, community based project.  It provides Content Management System (CMS) and Blogging System support out of the box, and makes it possible to easily create and manage web-sites without having to write code (site owners can customize a site through the browser-based editing tools built-into Orchard).  Read these tutorials to learn more about how you can setup and manage your own Orchard site. Orchard itself is built as an ASP.NET MVC 3 application using Razor view templates (and by default uses SQL CE 4 for data storage).  Developers wishing to extend an Orchard site with custom functionality can open and edit it as a Visual Studio project – and add new ASP.NET MVC Controllers/Views to it.  WebMatrix 1.0 WebMatrix is a new, free, web development tool from Microsoft that provides a suite of technologies that make it easier to enable website development.  It enables a developer to start a new site by browsing and downloading an app template from an online gallery of web applications (which includes popular apps like Umbraco, DotNetNuke, Orchard, WordPress, Drupal and Joomla).  Alternatively it also enables developers to create and code web sites from scratch. WebMatrix is task focused and helps guide developers as they work on sites.  WebMatrix includes IIS Express, SQL CE 4, and ASP.NET - providing an integrated web-server, database and programming framework combination.  It also includes built-in web publishing support which makes it easy to find and deploy sites to web hosting providers. You can learn more about WebMatrix from my Introducing WebMatrix blog post this summer.  Visit http://microsoft.com/web to download and install it today. Summary I’m really excited about today’s releases – they provide a bunch of additional value that makes web development with ASP.NET, Visual Studio and the Microsoft Web Server a lot better.  A lot of folks worked hard to share this with you today. On behalf of my whole team – we hope you enjoy them! Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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  • UPDATE FOR BI PUBLISHER ENTERPRISE 10.1.3.4.1 MARCH 2010

    - by Tim Dexter
    Latest roll up patch for 10.1.3.4.1 is now out in the wild. Yep, there are bug fixes but the guys have implemented some great enhancements. I'll be covering some of them over the coming weeks, from collapsing bookmarks in your PDFs to better MS AD support to 'true' Excel templates, yes you read that correctly! Patch is available from Oracle's support site. Just search for patch 9546699. Here's the contents and readme, apologies for the big list but at least you can search against it for a particular fix. This patch contains backports of following bugs for BI Publisher Enterprise 10.1.3.4.0 and 10.1.3.4.1. 6193342 - REG:SAMPLE DATA FILE FOR PDF FORM MAPPING IS NOT VALIDATED 6261875 - ERRONEOUS PRECISION VALIDATION ON ONLINE ANALYZER 6439437 - NULL POINTER EXCEPTION WHEN PROCESSING TABLE OF CONTENT 6460974 - BACS EFT PAYMENT INSTRUCTION OUTPUT FILE IS EMPTY 6939721 - BIP: REPORT BUSTING DELIVERY KEY VALUES CANNOT CONTAIN SEVERAL SPECIAL CHARACTER 6996069 - USING XML DB FOR BI REPOSITORY FAILS WITH RESOURCENOTFOUNDEXCEPTION 7207434 - TIMEZONE:SHOULD NOT DO TIMEZONE CONVERSION AGAINST CANONICAL DATE YYYY-MM-DD 7371531 - SUPPORT FOR CSV OUTPUT FOR STRUCTURED XML AND NON SQL DATA SOURCES 7596148 - ER: LDAP FOR MS AD TO SEARCH FROM AD ROOT 7646139 - WEBSERVICES ERROR 7829516 - BIP STANDALONE FAILS TO BURST USING XSL-FO TEMPLATES 8219848 - PDF TEMPLATE REPORT NOT PERFORMING PAGE BREAK 8232116 - PARAMETER VALUE IS PASSED AS NULL,IF IT CONTAINS 'AND' WITHIN THE STRING 8250690 - NOT ABLE TO UPLOAD TEMPLATE VIA BIP API 8288459 - ER: QUERY BUILDER OPTION TO NOT INCLUDE TABLENAME. PREFIX IN SQL 8289600 - REPORT TITLE AND DESCRIPTION CAN'T SUPPORT MULTIPLE LANGUAGES 8327080 - CAN NOT CONFIGURE ORACLE EBUSINESS SUITE SECURITY MODEL WITH ORACLE RAC 8332164 - AN XDO PROPERTY TO ENABLE DEBUG LOGGING 8333289 - WEB SERVICE JOBS FAIL AFTER BIP STARTED UP 8340239 - HTTP NOTIFY IS MISSING IN SCHEDULEREPORTREQUEST 8360933 - UNABLE TO USE LOGGED IN BI USER AS THE WSSECURITY USERNAME IN A VARIABLE FORMAT 8400744 - ADMINISTRATOR USER DOES NOT HAVE FULL ADMINISTRATOR RIGHTS 8402436 - CRASH CAUSED BY UNDETERMINED ATTRKEY ERROR IN MULTI-THREADED 8403779 - IMPOSSIBLE TO CONFIGURE PARAMETER FOR A REPORT 8412259 - PDF, RTF OUTPUT NOT HANDLING THE TABLE BORDER AND CONTENT OVERFLOWS TO NEXT PAGE 8483919 - DYNAMIC DATASOURCE WEBSERVICE SHOULD WORK WITH SERVERSIDE CONNECTIONS 8444382 - ID ATTRIBUTE IN TITLE-PAGE DOES NOT WORK WITH SELECTACTION PROPERTY 8446681 - UI LANGUAGE IS NOT REFLECTED AT THE FIRST LOG IN 8449884 - PUBLICREPORTSERVICE FAILS ON EMAIL DELIVERY USING BIP 10.1.3.4.0D+ - NPE 8454858 - DB: XMLP_ADMIN CAN SEE ALL THE FOLDERS BUT ONLY HAS VIEW PERMISSIONS 8458818 - PDFBOOKBINDER FAILS WITH OUTOFMEMORY ERROR WHEN TRYING TO BIND > 1500 PDFS 8463992 - INCORRECT IMPLEMENTATION OF XLIFF SPECIFICATION 8468777 - BI PUBLISHER QUERY BUILDER NOT LOADING SCHEMA OBJECTS 8477310 - QUERY BUILDER NOT WORK WITH SSL ON STANDALONE OC4J 8506701 - POSITIVE PAY FILE WITH OPTIONS NOT CREATING FILE CHECKS OVER 2500 8506761 - PERFORMANCE: PDFBOOKBINDER CLASS TAKES 4 HOURS TO BIND 4000 PAGES 8535604 - NPE WHEN CLICKING "ANALYZER FOR EXCEL" BUTTON IN ALL_* REPORTS 8536246 - REMOVE-PDF-FIELDS DOES NOT WORK WITH CHECKBOXES WITH OPT ARRAY 8541792 - NULLPOINTER EXCEPTION WHILE USING SFTP PROTOCOL 8554443 - LOGGING TIME STAMP IN 10G: THE HOUR PART IS WRONG 8558007 - UNABLE TO LOGIN BIP WITH UNPRIVILEGED USER WHEN XDB IS USED FOR REPORSITORY STOR 8565758 - NEED TO CONNECT IMPERSONATION TO DATA SOURCE WITH PL/SQL FUNCTION 8567235 - EFTPROCESSOR AND XDO DEBUG ENABLED CAUSES ORG.XML.SAX.SAXPARSEEXCEPTION 8572216 - EFTPROCESSOR NOT THREAD SAFE - CAUSING CORRUPTED REPORTS TO BE GENERATED 8575776 - LANDSCAPE REPORT ORIENTAION NOT SELECTED WHEN REPORT IS PRINTED WITH PS 8588330 - XLIFF GENERATING WITH WRONG MAXWIDTH ATTRIBUTE IN SOME TRANS-UNITS 8584446 - EFTGENERATOR DOES NOT USE XSLT SCALABILITY - JAVA.LANG.OUTOFMEMORY EXCEPTION 8594954 - ENG: BIP NOTIFY MESSAGE BECOMES ENGLISH 8599646 - ER:EXTRA SPACE ADDED BELOW IMAGE IN A TABLE CELL OF TEMPLATE IN FIREFOX 8605110 - PDFSIGNATURE API ENCOUNTERS JAVA.LANG.NULLPOINTEREXCEPTION ON PDF WITH WATERMARK 8660915 - BURSTING WITH DATA TEMPLATE NOT WORKING WITH OPTION: VALUE=FALSE 8660920 - ER: EXTRACT XHTML DATA USING XDODTEXE IN XHTML FORMAT 8667150 - PROBLEM WITH 3RD APPLICATION ABOUT PDF GENERATED WITH BI PUBLISHER 8683547 - "CLICK VIEW REPORT BUTTON TO GENERATE THE REPORT" MESSAGE IS DISPLAYED 8713080 - SEARCH" PARAMETER IS NOT SHOWING NON ENGLISH DATA IN INTERNET EXPLORER 8724778 - EXCEL ANALYZER PARAMETERS DO NOT WORK WITH EXCEL 2007 8725450 - UIX 2.3.6.6 UPTAKE FOR 10.1.3.4.1 8728807 - DYNAMIC JDBC DATA SOURCE WITH PRE-PROCESS FUNCTION BASED ON EXISTING DATA SOURCE 8759558 - XDO TEMPLATE SHOWS CURRENCY IN WRONG FORMAT FOR DUNNING 8792894 - EFTPROCESSOR DOES NOT SUPPORT XSL TEMPLATE AS INPUTSTREAM 8793550 - BIP GENERATES CSV REPORTS OUTPUT FORMAT WITH EXTENTION .OUT NOT .CSV IN EMAIL 8819869 - PERIOD CLOSE VALUE SUMMARY REPORT (XML) RUNNING INTO WARNING 8825732 - MY FOLDERS LINK BROKEN WITH USER NAME THAT INCLUDES A SLASH (/) OBIEE SECURITY 8831948 - TRYING TO GENERATE A SCATTER PLOT USING THE CHART WIZARD 8842299 - SEEDED QUERY ALWAYS RETURNS RESULTS BASED ON FIRST COLUMN 8858027 - NODE.GETTEXTCONTEXT() NOT AVAILABLE IN 10G UNDER OC4J 8859957 - REPORT TITLE ALIGNMENT GOES BAD FOR REPORTS WITH XLIFF FILE ATTACHED 8860957 - ER: IMPROVE PERFORMANCE OF ANSWERS PARAMETERS 8891537 - GETREPORTPARAMETERS WEB SERVICE API ISSUES WITH OAAM REPORTS 8891558 - GETTING SQLEXCEPTION IN GENERATEREPORT WEB SERVICE API ON OAAM REPORTS 8927796 - ER: DYANAMIC DATA SOURCE SUPPORT BY DATA SOURCE NAME 8969898 - BI PUBLISHER WEB SERVICE GETREPORTPARAMETERS DOES NOT TRANSLATE PARAMETER LABEL 8998967 - MULTIPLE XSL PREDICATES ELEMENT[A='A'] [B='B'] CAUSES XML-22019 ERROR 9012511 - SCALABLE MODE IS NOT WORKING IN XMLPUBLISHER 10.1.3.4 9016976 - ER: PRINT XSL-T AND FOPROCESSING TIMING INFORMATION 9018580 - WEB SERVICE CALL FAILS WHEN REPORT INCLUDES SEARCH TYPE 9018657 - JOB FAILS WHEN LOV QUERY CONTAINS BIND VARIABLES :XDO_USER_UI_LOCALE 9021224 - PERFORMANCE ISSUE TO VIEW DASHBOARD PAGE WITH BIP REPORT LINKS 9022440 - ER: SUPPORT "COMB OF N CHARACTERS" FEATURE PDF FORM TEXT FIELDS 9026236 - XPATH DOES NOT WORK CORRECTLY IN 10.1.3.4.1 9051652 - FILE EXTENSION OF CSV OUTPUT IS TXT WHEN IT IS EXPORTED FROM REPORT VIEWER 9053770 - WHEN SENDING CSV REPORT OUTPUT BY EMAIL SOMETIMES IT IS SENT WITHOUT EXTENSION 9066483 - PDFBOOKBINDER LEAVE SOME TEMPORARY FILES AFTER MERGING TITLE PAGE OR TOC 9102420 - USE RELATIVE PATHS IN HYPERLINKS 9127185 - CHECKBOX NOT WORK ON SUB TEMPLATE 9149679 - BASE URL IS NOT PASSED CORRECTLY 9149691 - PROVIDE A WAY TO DISABLE THE ABILITY TO CREATE SCHEDULED REPORT JOB "PUBLIC" 9167822 - NOTIFICATION URL BREAKS ON FOLDER NAMES WITH SPACES 9167913 - CHARTS ARE MISSING IN PDF OUTPUTS WHEN THE DEFAULT OUTPUT FORMAT IS NOT A PDF 9217965 - REPORT HISTORY TAKES LONG TIME TO RENDER THE PAGE 9236674 - BI PUBLISHER PARAMETERS DO NOT CASCADE REFRESH AFTER SECOND PARAMETER 9283933 - OPTION TO COLLAPSE PDF OUTPUT BOOKMARKS BY DEFAULT 9287245 - SAVE COMPLETED SCHEDULED REPORTS IN ITS REPORT NAME AND NOT IN A GENERIC NAME 9348862 - ADD FEATURE TO DISABLE THE XSLT1.0-COMPATIBILITY IN RTF TEMPLATE 9355897 - ER: NEED A SAFE DIVIDE FUNCTION 9364169 - UIX 2.3.6.6 PATCH UPTAKE FOR 10.1.3.4.1 9365153 - LEADING WHITESPACE CHARACTERS IN A FIELD TRIMMED WHEN RUN VIEW OR EXPORT TO .CSV 9389039 - LONG TEXT IS NOT WRAPPED PROPERLY IN THE AUTOSHAPE ON RTF TEMPLATE 9475697 - ENH: SUB-TEMPLATE:DYNAMIC VARIABLE WITH PARAMETER VALUE IN CALL-TEMPLATE CLAUSE 9484549 - CHANGE DEFAULT FOR "XSLT1.0-COMPATIBILITY" TO FALSE FOR 10G 9508499 - UNABLE TO READ EXCEL FILE IF MORE THAN 1800 ROWS GENERATED 9546078 - EMAIL DELIVERY INFORMATION SHOULD NOT BE SAVED AND AUTO-FED IN JOB SUBMISSION 9546101 - EXCEPTION OCCURS WHEN SFTP/FTP REMOTE FILENAME DOSE NOT CONTAIN A SLASH '/' 9546117 - SFTP REPORT DELIVERY FAILS WITH NO CLASS DEF FOUND EXCEPTION ON WEBLOGIC 9.2 Following bugs are included in 10.1.3.4.1 and they are only applied to 10.1.3.4.0. 4612604 - FROM EDGE ATTRIBUTE OF HEADER AND FOOTER IS NOT PRESERVED 6621006 - PARAMNAMEVALUE ELEMENT DEFINITION SHOULD HAVE PARAMETER TYPE 6811967 - DATE PARAMETER NOT HANDLING DATE OFFSET WHEN PASSED UPPERCASE Z FOR OFFSET 6864451 - WHEN BIP REPORTS TIMEOUT, THE PROCESS TO LOG BACK IN IS NOT USER FRIENDLY 6869887 - FUSION CURRENCY BRD:4.1.4/4.1.6 OVERRIDINDG MASK /W XSLT._XDOCURMASKS /W SYMBOL 6959078 - "TEXT FIELD CONTAINS COMMA-SEPARATED VALUES" DOESN'T WORK IN CASE OF STRING 6994647 - GETTING ERROR MESSAGE SAYING JOB FAILED EVEN THOUGH WORKS OK IN BI PUBLISHER 7133143 - ENABLE USER TO ENTER 'TODAY' AS VALUE TO DATE PARAMETER IN SCHEDULE REPORT UI 7165117 - QA_BIP_FUNC:-CLOSED LIFE TIME REPORT ERROR MESSAGE IN CMD 7167068 - LEADER-LENGTH OR RULE-THICKNESS PROPRTY IS TOO LARGE 7219517 - NEED EXTENSION FUNCTIONS TO URL ENCODE TEXT STRING. 7269228 - TEMPLATEHELPER PRODUCES A GARBLED OUTPUT WHEN INVOKED BY MULTIPLE THREADS 7276813 - GETREPORTPARAMETERSRETURN ELEMENT SHOULD HAVE DEFAULT VALUE 7279046 - SCHDEULER:UNABLE TO DELETE A JOB USING API 7280336 - ER: BI PUBLISHER - SITEMINDER SUPPORT - GENERIC NON-ORACLE SSO SUPPORT 7281468 - MODIFY SQL SERVER PROPERTIES TO USE HYP DATA DIRECT IN JDBCDEFAULTS.XML 7281495 - PLEASE ADD SUPPORTED DBS TO JDBCDEFAULT.XML AND LIST EACH DB VERSION SEPARATELY 7282456 - FUSION CURRENCY BRD 4.1.9.2: CURRENCY AMOUTS SHOULD NOT BE WRAPPED. MINUS SIGN 7282507 - FUSION CURRENCY BRD4.1.2.5:DISPLAY CURRENCY AND LOCALE DERIVED CURRENCY SYMBOL 7284780 - FUSION CURRENCY BRD 4.1.12.4 CORRECTLY ALIGN NEGATIVE CURRENCY AMOUNTS 7306874 - OPP ERROR - JAVA.LANG.OUTOFMEMORYERROR: ZIP002:OUTOFMEMORYERROR, MEM_ERROR 7309596 - SIEBELCRM: BIP ENHANCEMENT REQUEST FOR SIEBEL PARAMETERIZATION 7337173 - UI LOCALE IS ALWAYS REWRITTEN TO EN WHEN MOVE FROM DASHBOARD 7338349 - REG:ANALYZER REPORT WITH AVERAGE FUNCTION FAIL TO RUN FOR NON INTERACTIVE FORMAT 7343757 - OUTPUT FORMAT OF TEMPLATES IS NOT SAVING 7345989 - SET XDK REPLACEILLEGALCHARS AND ENHANCE XSLTWRAPPER WARNING 7354775 - UNEXPECTED BEHAVIOR OF LAYOUT TEMPLATE PARAMETER OF RUNREPORT WEBSERVICES API 7354798 - SEQUENCE ORDER OF PARAMETERS FOR THE RUNREPORT WEBSERVICES API 7358973 - PARALLEL SFTP DELIVERY FAILS DUE TO SSHEXCEPTION: CORRUPT MAC ON INPUT 7370110 - REGN:FAIL WHEN USE JNDI TO XMLDB REPORT REPOSITORY 7375859 - NEW WEBSERVICE REQUIRED FOR RUNREPORT 7375892 - REQUIRE NEW WEBSERVICE TO CHECK IF REPORTFOLDER EXISTS 7377686 - TEXT-ALIGN NOT APPLIED IN PDF IN HEBREW LOCALE 7413722 - RUNREPORT API DOES NOT PASS BACK ANY GENERATED EXCEPTIONS TO SCHEDULEREPORT 7435420 - FUSION CURRENCY: SUPPORT MICROSOFT(JAVA) FORMAT MASK WITH CURRENCY 7441486 - ER: ADD PARAMETER FOR SFTP TO BURSTING QUERY 7458169 - SSO WITH OID LDAP COULD NOT FETCH OID ROLES 7461161 - EMAIL DELIVERY FAILS - DELIVERYEXCEPTION: 0 BYTE AVAILABLE IN THE GIVEN INPU 7580715 - INCORRECT FORMATTING OF DATES IN TIMEZONE GMT+13 7582694 - INVALID MAXWIDTH VALUE CAUSES NLS FAILURES 7583693 - JAVA.LANG.NULLPOINTEREXCEPTION RAISED WHEN GENERATING HRMS BENEFITS PDF REPORT 7587998 - NEWLY CREATED USERS IN OID CANT ACCESS REPORTS UNTILL BI PUBLISHER IS RESTARTED 7588317 - TABLE OF CONTENT ALWAYS IN THE SAME FONT 7590084 - REMOVING THE BIP ENTERPRISE BANNER BUT KEEPING THE REPORTS & SCHEDULES TAB 7590112 - SOMEONE NOT PRIVILEGED ACCESS BIP DIRECTLY SHOULD GET A CUSTOM PAGE 7590125 - AUTOMATING CREATION OF USERS AND ROLES 7597902 - TIMEZONE SUPPORT IN RUNREPORT WEBSERVICE API 7599031 - XML PUBLISHER SUM(CURRENT-GROUP()) FAILS 7609178 - ISSUE WITH TAGS EXTRACTED FROM RTF TEMPLATE 7613024 - HEADER/FOOTER SETTINGS OF RTF TEMPLATE ARE NOT RETAINING IN THE RTF OUTPUT 7623988 - ADD XSLT FUNCTION TO PRINT XDO PROPERTIES 7625975 - RETRIEVING PARAMETER LOV FROM RTF TEMPLATE 7629445 - SPELL OUT A NUMBER INTO WORDS 7641827 - ANALYTICS FROZED AFTER PAGE TAB WHICH INCLUDES [BI PUBLISHER REPORT] WERE CLICKE 7645504 - BIP REPORT FROZED AFTER THE SAME DASHBOARD BIP REPORTS WERE CLICKED SIMULTANEOUS 7649561 - RECEIVE 'TO MANY OPEN FILE HANDLES' ERROR CAUSING BI TO CRASH 7654155 - BIP REMOVES THE FIRST FILE SEPARATOR WHEN RE-ENTER REPOSITORY LOCATION IN ADMIN 7656834 - NEED AN OPTION TO NOT APPEND SCHEMA NAME IN GENERATED QUERY 7660292 - ER: XDOPARSER UPGRADE TO XDK 11G 7687862 - BIP DATA EXTRACTING ENHANCEMENT FOR SIEBEL BIP INTEGRATION 7694875 - ADMINISTRATOR IS SUPER USER WHETHER CONFIGURED MANDATORY_USER_ROLE OR NOT 7697592 - BI PUBLISHER STRINGINDEXOUTOFBOUNDSEXCEPTION WHEN PRINTING LABEL FROM SIM 7702372 - ARABIC/ENGLISH NUMBER/DATE PROBLEM, TOTAL PAGE NUMBER NOT RENDERED IN ENGLISH 7707987 - OUTOFMEMORY BURSTING A BI PUBLISHER REPORT BI SERVER DATA SOURCE 7712026 - ER: CHANGE CHART OUTPUT FORMAT TO PNG IN HTML OUTPUT 7833732 - THE 'SEARCH' PARAMETER TYPE CANNOT BE USED IN IE6 UNDER WINDOWS 8214839 - ER: INCREASE COLUMN SIZE IN SCHEDULER TABLE XMLP_SCHED_JOB 8218271 - ISSUES WHILE CONVERTING EXCEL TO XML 8218452 - BI PUBLISHER STANDALONE : GRAPHICS WITHOUT COLORS IF MORE THAN 33 PAGES 8250980 - USER WITH XMLP_ADMIN RESPONSIBILITY IS NOT ABLE TO EDIT REPORT IN BIP 8262410 - IMPOSSIBLE TO PRINT PDF CREATED BY BI PUBLISHER VIA 3RD PARTY PDF APPLICATION 8274369 - QA: CANNOT DELETE EMAIL SERVER UNDER DELIVERY CONFIGURATION 8284173 - FO:VISIBILITY="HIDDEN" DOESN'T WORK WITH FO:PAGE-NUMBER-CITATION 8288421 - THE VALUE OF VIEW BY GO BACK TO MY HISTORY IN SCHEDULES TAB 8299212 - REG: THE SPECIFICAL BI USER DIDN'T GET THE CORRECT REPORT HISTORY 8301767 - ORA-01795 ERROR OCCURED AFTER ACCESSING DASHBOARD PAGE WHICH INCLUDES BIP 8304944 - ADD SIEBEL SECURITY MODEL IN BI PUBLISHER 10.1.3.4.1 8312814 - QA:HOT:OBI SERVER JDBC DRIVER BIJDBC14.JAR IN XMLPSERVER.WAR IS INCORRECT 8323679 - BI PUBLISHER SENDS HTML REPORT TO OUTLOOK CLIENT AS ATTACHMENT NOT INLINE 8370794 - HISTORY OF COMPLETED SCHEDULER JOBS STILL SHOW ONE AS RUNNING ON CLUSTER ENV 8390970 - OUT OF MEMORY EXCEPTION RAISED, WHILE SAVING THE DATA 8393681 - CHECKBOX IS SHOWING UP AS CHECKED WHEN DATA IS NOT CHECKED VALUE 8725450 - UIX 2.3.6.6 UPTAKE FOR 10.1.3.4.1 UIX fixes: 6866363 - SUPPORT FOR JAVA DATE FORMAT AS PER JDK 1.4 AND ABOVE 6829124 - DATE PARAMETER NOT HANDLING DATE OFFSET AS PER JAVA STANDARDS ---------------------------- INSTALLATION FOR ENTERPRISE ---------------------------- Upgrade from 10.1.3.4.0d (patch 8284524, 8398280) and 10.1.3.4.1 does not require step 8 and step 9. 1 - Make a backup copy of the xmlp-server-config.xml file located in <application installation>/WEB-INF/ directory, where your application server unpacked the BI Publisher war or ear file. Example: In an Oracle AS/OC4J 10.1.3 deployment, the location is <ORACLE_HOME>/j2ee/home/applications/xmlpserver/xmlpserver/WEB-INF/xmlp-server-config.xml 2 - Back up all the directories under the BI Publisher repository (for example: {Oracle_Home}/xmlp/XMLP). 3 - If you are using Scheduling, back up your existing BI Publisher Scheduler schema. 4 - Shut down BI Publisher. 5 - Undeploy the BI Publisher application ("xmlpserver") from your J2EE application server. See your application server documentation for instructions how to undeploy an application. 6 - Deploy the 10.1.3.4 xmlpserver.ear or xmlpserver.war to your application server. See "Manually Installing BI Publisher to Your J2EE Application Server" secition of BI Publisher Installation Guide for guidelines for your application server type. 7 - Copy the saved backup copy of the xmlp-server-config.xml file from step 1 to the newly created BI Publisher <application installation>/WEB-INF/ directory, where your application server unpacked the BI Publisher war or ear file. Example: In an Oracle AS/OC4J 10.1.3 deployment, the location is <ORACLE_HOME>/j2ee/home/applications/xmlpserver/xmlpserver/WEB-INF/xmlp-server-config.xml 8 - Copy ssodefaults.xml to the following directory. And replace [host]:[port] with your server's information. Default values for other properties can be updated depending on your configuration. <Existing Repository>\XMLP\Admin\Security 9 - Copy database-config.xml to the following directory. <Existing Repository>\XMLP\Admin\Scheduler 10 - Restart xmlpserver application or Application Server ---------------------------------- IBM WEBSPHERE 6.1 DEPLOYMENT NOTE ---------------------------------- When users fail to log on to BI Publisher with "HTTP 500 Internal Server Error" on WebSphere 6.1, you must change Class Loader configuration to avoid the error. (bug7506253 - XMLPSERVER WON'T START AFTER DEPLOYMENT TO WEBSPHERE 6.1) SystemErr.log: java.lang.VerifyError: class loading constraint violated (class: oracle/xml/parser/v2/XMLNode method: xdkSetQxName(Loracle/xml/util/QxName;)V) at pc: 0 .... Class Loader Configuration Steps: 1 - Login to WebSphere Admin console. Click Enterprise Applications under Applications menu 2 - Click xmlpserver application name from the list 3 - Select "Class loading and update detection" 4 - Update class loader configuration as follows in Class Loader -> General Properties * Polling interval for updated files: [0] Seconds * Class loader order: [x] Classes loaded with application class loader first * WAR class loader policy: [x] Single class loader for application 5 - Apply this change and save the new configuration. 6 - Restart xmlpserver application Please refer to WebSphere 6.1 documentation for more details. "http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wasinfo/v6r1/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.websphere.base.doc/info/aes/ae/trun_classload_entapp.html"> http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wasinfo/v6r1/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.websphere.base.doc/info/aes/ae/trun_classload_entapp.html ------------------------------------------------------- Oracle WebLogic Server 11g R1 (10.3.1) Deployment NOTE ------------------------------------------------------- If you are deploying BI Publisher to WebLogic Server 10.3.1, you must add the following setting at startup for the domain that contains the BI Publisher server in the /weblogic_home/user_projects/domains/base_domain/bin/startWebLogic.sh script : -Dtoplink.xml.platform=oracle.toplink.platform.xml.jaxp.JAXPPlatform This setting is required to enable BI Publisher to find the TopLink JAR files to create the Scheduler tables.

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  • Quick guide to Oracle IRM 11g: Server configuration

    - by Simon Thorpe
    Quick guide to Oracle IRM 11g index Welcome to the second article in this quick quide to Oracle IRM 11g. Hopefully you've just finished the first article which takes you through deploying the software onto a Linux server. This article walks you through the configuration of this new service and contains a subset of information from the official documentation and is focused on installing the server on Oracle Enterprise Linux. If you are planning to deploy on a non-Linux platform, you will need to reference the documentation for platform specific information. Contents Introduction Create IRM WebLogic Domain Starting the Admin Server and initial configuration Introduction In the previous article the database was prepared, the WebLogic Application Server installed and the files required for an IRM server installed. But we don't actually have a configured system yet. We need to now create a WebLogic Domain in which the IRM server will run, then configure some of the settings and crypography so that we can create a context and be ready to seal some content and test it all works. This article doesn't cover the configuration of SSL communication from client to server. This is quite a big topic and a separate article has been dedicated for this area. In these articles I also use the hostname, irm.company.internal to reference the IRM server and later on use the hostname irm.company.com in reference to the public facing service. Create IRM WebLogic Domain First step is creating the WebLogic domain, in a console switch to the newly created IRM installation folder as shown below and we will run the domain configuration wizard. [oracle@irm /]$ cd /oracle/middleware/Oracle_IRM/common/bin [oracle@irm bin]$ ./config.sh First thing the wizard will ask is if you wish to create a new or extend an existing domain. This guide is creating a standalone system so you should select to create a new domain. Next step is to choose what technologies from the Oracle ECM Suite you wish this domain to host. You are only interested in selecting the option "Oracle Information Rights Management". When you select this check box you will notice that it also selects "Oracle Enterprise Manager" and "Oracle JRF" as these are dependencies of the IRM server. You then need to specify where you wish to place the domain files. I usually just change the domain name from base_domain or irm_domain and leave the others with their defaults. Now the domain will have a single user initially and by default this user is called "weblogic". I usually change this account name to "sysadmin" or "administrator", but in this guide lets just accept the default. With respects to the next dialog, again for eval or dev reasons, leave the server startup mode as development. The JDK should also be automatically detected. We now need to provide details of the database. This guide is using the Oracle 11gR2 database and the settings I used can be seen in the image to the right. There is a lot of configuration that can now be done for the admin server, any managed servers and where the deployments reside. In this guide I am leaving all of these to their defaults so do not check any of the boxes. However I will on this blog be detailing later how you can go back and setup things such as automated startup of an IRM server which require changes to these default settings. But for now, lets leave it all alone and just click next. Now we are ready to install. Note that from this dialog you can scroll the left window and see there are going to be two servers created from the defaults. The AdminServer which is where you modify settings for the WebLogic Server and also hosts the Oracle Enterprise Manager for IRM which allows to monitor the IRM service performance and also make service related settings (which we shortly do below) and the IRM_server1 which hosts the actual IRM services themselves. So go right ahead and hit create, the process is pretty quick and usually under 10 minutes. When the domain creation ends, it will give you the URL to the admin server. It's worth noting this down and the URL is usually; http://irm.company.internal:7001 Starting the Admin Server and initial configuration First thing to do is to start the WebLogic Admin server and review the initial IRM server settings. In this guide we are going to run the Admin server and IRM server in console windows, in another article I will discuss running these as background services. So for now, start a console and run the Admin server by doing the following. cd /oracle/middleware/user_projects/domains/irm_domain/ ./startWebLogic.sh Wait for the server to start, you are looking for the following line to be reported in the console window. <BEA-00360><Server started in RUNNING mode> First step is configuring the IRM service via Enterprise Manager. Now that the Admin server is running you can point a browser at http://irm.company.internal:7001/em. Login with the username and password you supplied when you created the domain. In Enterprise Manager the IRM service administrator is able to make server wide configuration. However finding where to access the pages with these settings can be a bit of a challenge. After logging in on the left you'll see a tree containing elements of the Enterprise Manager farm Farm_irm_domain. Open up Content Management, then Information Rights Management and finally select the IRM node. On the right then select the IRM menu item, navigate to the Administration section and now we have four options, for now, we are just going to look at General Settings. The image on the right proves that a picture is worth a thousand words (or 113 in this case). The General Settings page allows you to set the cryptographic algorithms used for protecting sealed content. Unless you have a burning need to increase the key lengths or you need to comply to a regulation or government mandate, AES192 is a good start. You can change this later on without worry. The most important setting here we need to make is the Server URL. In this blog article I go over why this URL is so important, basically every single piece of content you protect with Oracle IRM is going to have this URL embedded in it, so if it's wrong or unresolvable, then nobody can open the secured documents. Note that in our environment we have yet to do any SSL configuration of the service. If you intend to build a server without SSL, then use http as the protocol instead of https. But I would recommend using SSL and setting this up is described in the next article. I would also probably up the device count from 1 to 3. This means that any user can retrieve rights to access content onto 3 computers at any one time. The default of 1 doesn't really make sense in development, evaluation nor even production environments and my experience is that 3 is a better number. Next step is to create the keystore for the IRM server. When a classification (called a context) is created, Oracle IRM generates a unique set of symmetric keys which are used to secure the content itself. These keys are then encrypted with a set of "wrapper" asymmetric cryptography keys which are stored externally to the server either in a Java Key Store or a HSM. These keys need to be generated and the following shows my commands and the resulting output. I have greyed out the responses from the commands so you can see the input a little easier. [oracle@irmsrv ~]$ cd /oracle/middleware/wlserver_10.3/server/bin/ [oracle@irmsrv bin]$ ./setWLSEnv.sh CLASSPATH=/oracle/middleware/patch_wls1033/profiles/default/sys_manifest_classpath/weblogic_patch.jar:/oracle/middleware/patch_ocp353/profiles/default/sys_manifest_classpath/weblogic_patch.jar:/usr/java/jdk1.6.0_18/lib/tools.jar:/oracle/middleware/wlserver_10.3/server/lib/weblogic_sp.jar:/oracle/middleware/wlserver_10.3/server/lib/weblogic.jar:/oracle/middleware/modules/features/weblogic.server.modules_10.3.3.0.jar:/oracle/middleware/wlserver_10.3/server/lib/webservices.jar:/oracle/middleware/modules/org.apache.ant_1.7.1/lib/ant-all.jar:/oracle/middleware/modules/net.sf.antcontrib_1.1.0.0_1-0b2/lib/ant-contrib.jar: PATH=/oracle/middleware/wlserver_10.3/server/bin:/oracle/middleware/modules/org.apache.ant_1.7.1/bin:/usr/java/jdk1.6.0_18/jre/bin:/usr/java/jdk1.6.0_18/bin:/usr/kerberos/bin:/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/home/oracle/bin Your environment has been set. [oracle@irmsrv bin]$ cd /oracle/middleware/user_projects/domains/irm_domain/config/fmwconfig/ [oracle@irmsrv fmwconfig]$ keytool -genkeypair -alias oracle.irm.wrap -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -keystore irm.jks Enter keystore password: Re-enter new password: What is your first and last name? [Unknown]: Simon Thorpe What is the name of your organizational unit? [Unknown]: Oracle What is the name of your organization? [Unknown]: Oracle What is the name of your City or Locality? [Unknown]: San Francisco What is the name of your State or Province? [Unknown]: CA What is the two-letter country code for this unit? [Unknown]: US Is CN=Simon Thorpe, OU=Oracle, O=Oracle, L=San Francisco, ST=CA, C=US correct? [no]: yes Enter key password for (RETURN if same as keystore password): At this point we now have an irm.jks in the directory /oracle/middleware/user_projects/domains/irm_domain/config/fmwconfig. The reason we store it here is this folder would be backed up as part of a domain backup. As with any cryptographic technology, DO NOT LOSE THESE KEYS OR THIS KEY STORE. Once you've sealed content against a context, the keys will be wrapped with these keys, lose these keys, and you can't get access to any secured content, pretty important. Now we've got the keys created, we need to go back to the IRM Enterprise Manager and set the location of the key store. Going back to the General Settings page in Enterprise Manager scroll down to Keystore Settings. Leave the type as JKS but change the location to; /oracle/Middleware/user_projects/domains/irm_domain/config/fmwconfig/irm.jks and hit Apply. The final step with regards to the key store is we need to tell the server what the password is for the Java Key Store so that it can be opened and the keys accessed. Once more fire up a console window and run these commands (again i've greyed out the clutter to see the commands easier). You will see dummy passed into the commands, this is because the command asks for a username, but in this instance we don't use one, hence the value dummy is passed and it isn't used. [oracle@irmsrv fmwconfig]$ cd /oracle/middleware/Oracle_IRM/common/bin/ [oracle@irmsrv bin]$ ./wlst.sh ... lots of settings fly by... Welcome to WebLogic Server Administration Scripting Shell Type help() for help on available commands wls:/offline>connect('weblogic','password','t3://irmsrv.us.oracle.com:7001') Connecting to t3://irmsrv.us.oracle.com:7001 with userid weblogic ... Successfully connected to Admin Server 'AdminServer' that belongs to domain 'irm_domain'. Warning: An insecure protocol was used to connect to the server. To ensure on-the-wire security, the SSL port or Admin port should be used instead. wls:/irm_domain/serverConfig>createCred("IRM","keystore:irm.jks","dummy","password") Location changed to domainRuntime tree. This is a read-only tree with DomainMBean as the root. For more help, use help(domainRuntime)wls:/irm_domain/serverConfig>createCred("IRM","key:irm.jks:oracle.irm.wrap","dummy","password") Already in Domain Runtime Tree wls:/irm_domain/serverConfig> At last we are now ready to fire up the IRM server itself. The domain creation created a managed server called IRM_server1 and we need to start this, use the following commands in a new console window. cd /oracle/middleware/user_projects/domains/irm_domain/bin/ ./startManagedWebLogic.sh IRM_server1 This will start up the server in the console, unlike the Admin server, you need to provide the username and password for the service to start. Enter in your weblogic username and password when prompted. You can change this behavior by putting the password into a boot.properties file, read more about this in the WebLogic Server documentation. Once running, wait until you see the line; <Notice><WebLogicServer><BEA-000360><Server started in RUNNING mode> At this point we can now login to the Oracle IRM Management Website at the URL. http://irm.company.internal:1600/irm_rights/ The server is just configured for HTTP at the moment, no SSL involved. Just want to ensure we can get a working system up and running. You should now see a login like the image on the right and you can now login using your weblogic username and password. The next article in this guide goes over adding SSL and now testing your server by actually adding a few users, sealing some content and opening this content as a user.

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  • West Wind WebSurge - an easy way to Load Test Web Applications

    - by Rick Strahl
    A few months ago on a project the subject of load testing came up. We were having some serious issues with a Web application that would start spewing SQL lock errors under somewhat heavy load. These sort of errors can be tough to catch, precisely because they only occur under load and not during typical development testing. To replicate this error more reliably we needed to put a load on the application and run it for a while before these SQL errors would flare up. It’s been a while since I’d looked at load testing tools, so I spent a bit of time looking at different tools and frankly didn’t really find anything that was a good fit. A lot of tools were either a pain to use, didn’t have the basic features I needed, or are extravagantly expensive. In  the end I got frustrated enough to build an initially small custom load test solution that then morphed into a more generic library, then gained a console front end and eventually turned into a full blown Web load testing tool that is now called West Wind WebSurge. I got seriously frustrated looking for tools every time I needed some quick and dirty load testing for an application. If my aim is to just put an application under heavy enough load to find a scalability problem in code, or to simply try and push an application to its limits on the hardware it’s running I shouldn’t have to have to struggle to set up tests. It should be easy enough to get going in a few minutes, so that the testing can be set up quickly so that it can be done on a regular basis without a lot of hassle. And that was the goal when I started to build out my initial custom load tester into a more widely usable tool. If you’re in a hurry and you want to check it out, you can find more information and download links here: West Wind WebSurge Product Page Walk through Video Download link (zip) Install from Chocolatey Source on GitHub For a more detailed discussion of the why’s and how’s and some background continue reading. How did I get here? When I started out on this path, I wasn’t planning on building a tool like this myself – but I got frustrated enough looking at what’s out there to think that I can do better than what’s available for the most common simple load testing scenarios. When we ran into the SQL lock problems I mentioned, I started looking around what’s available for Web load testing solutions that would work for our whole team which consisted of a few developers and a couple of IT guys both of which needed to be able to run the tests. It had been a while since I looked at tools and I figured that by now there should be some good solutions out there, but as it turns out I didn’t really find anything that fit our relatively simple needs without costing an arm and a leg… I spent the better part of a day installing and trying various load testing tools and to be frank most of them were either terrible at what they do, incredibly unfriendly to use, used some terminology I couldn’t even parse, or were extremely expensive (and I mean in the ‘sell your liver’ range of expensive). Pick your poison. There are also a number of online solutions for load testing and they actually looked more promising, but those wouldn’t work well for our scenario as the application is running inside of a private VPN with no outside access into the VPN. Most of those online solutions also ended up being very pricey as well – presumably because of the bandwidth required to test over the open Web can be enormous. When I asked around on Twitter what people were using– I got mostly… crickets. Several people mentioned Visual Studio Load Test, and most other suggestions pointed to online solutions. I did get a bunch of responses though with people asking to let them know what I found – apparently I’m not alone when it comes to finding load testing tools that are effective and easy to use. As to Visual Studio, the higher end skus of Visual Studio and the test edition include a Web load testing tool, which is quite powerful, but there are a number of issues with that: First it’s tied to Visual Studio so it’s not very portable – you need a VS install. I also find the test setup and terminology used by the VS test runner extremely confusing. Heck, it’s complicated enough that there’s even a Pluralsight course on using the Visual Studio Web test from Steve Smith. And of course you need to have one of the high end Visual Studio Skus, and those are mucho Dinero ($$$) – just for the load testing that’s rarely an option. Some of the tools are ultra extensive and let you run analysis tools on the target serves which is useful, but in most cases – just plain overkill and only distracts from what I tend to be ultimately interested in: Reproducing problems that occur at high load, and finding the upper limits and ‘what if’ scenarios as load is ramped up increasingly against a site. Yes it’s useful to have Web app instrumentation, but often that’s not what you’re interested in. I still fondly remember early days of Web testing when Microsoft had the WAST (Web Application Stress Tool) tool, which was rather simple – and also somewhat limited – but easily allowed you to create stress tests very quickly. It had some serious limitations (mainly that it didn’t work with SSL),  but the idea behind it was excellent: Create tests quickly and easily and provide a decent engine to run it locally with minimal setup. You could get set up and run tests within a few minutes. Unfortunately, that tool died a quiet death as so many of Microsoft’s tools that probably were built by an intern and then abandoned, even though there was a lot of potential and it was actually fairly widely used. Eventually the tools was no longer downloadable and now it simply doesn’t work anymore on higher end hardware. West Wind Web Surge – Making Load Testing Quick and Easy So I ended up creating West Wind WebSurge out of rebellious frustration… The goal of WebSurge is to make it drop dead simple to create load tests. It’s super easy to capture sessions either using the built in capture tool (big props to Eric Lawrence, Telerik and FiddlerCore which made that piece a snap), using the full version of Fiddler and exporting sessions, or by manually or programmatically creating text files based on plain HTTP headers to create requests. I’ve been using this tool for 4 months now on a regular basis on various projects as a reality check for performance and scalability and it’s worked extremely well for finding small performance issues. I also use it regularly as a simple URL tester, as it allows me to quickly enter a URL plus headers and content and test that URL and its results along with the ability to easily save one or more of those URLs. A few weeks back I made a walk through video that goes over most of the features of WebSurge in some detail: Note that the UI has slightly changed since then, so there are some UI improvements. Most notably the test results screen has been updated recently to a different layout and to provide more information about each URL in a session at a glance. The video and the main WebSurge site has a lot of info of basic operations. For the rest of this post I’ll talk about a few deeper aspects that may be of interest while also giving a glance at how WebSurge works. Session Capturing As you would expect, WebSurge works with Sessions of Urls that are played back under load. Here’s what the main Session View looks like: You can create session entries manually by individually adding URLs to test (on the Request tab on the right) and saving them, or you can capture output from Web Browsers, Windows Desktop applications that call services, your own applications using the built in Capture tool. With this tool you can capture anything HTTP -SSL requests and content from Web pages, AJAX calls, SOAP or REST services – again anything that uses Windows or .NET HTTP APIs. Behind the scenes the capture tool uses FiddlerCore so basically anything you can capture with Fiddler you can also capture with Web Surge Session capture tool. Alternately you can actually use Fiddler as well, and then export the captured Fiddler trace to a file, which can then be imported into WebSurge. This is a nice way to let somebody capture session without having to actually install WebSurge or for your customers to provide an exact playback scenario for a given set of URLs that cause a problem perhaps. Note that not all applications work with Fiddler’s proxy unless you configure a proxy. For example, .NET Web applications that make HTTP calls usually don’t show up in Fiddler by default. For those .NET applications you can explicitly override proxy settings to capture those requests to service calls. The capture tool also has handy optional filters that allow you to filter by domain, to help block out noise that you typically don’t want to include in your requests. For example, if your pages include links to CDNs, or Google Analytics or social links you typically don’t want to include those in your load test, so by capturing just from a specific domain you are guaranteed content from only that one domain. Additionally you can provide url filters in the configuration file – filters allow to provide filter strings that if contained in a url will cause requests to be ignored. Again this is useful if you don’t filter by domain but you want to filter out things like static image, css and script files etc. Often you’re not interested in the load characteristics of these static and usually cached resources as they just add noise to tests and often skew the overall url performance results. In my testing I tend to care only about my dynamic requests. SSL Captures require Fiddler Note, that in order to capture SSL requests you’ll have to install the Fiddler’s SSL certificate. The easiest way to do this is to install Fiddler and use its SSL configuration options to get the certificate into the local certificate store. There’s a document on the Telerik site that provides the exact steps to get SSL captures to work with Fiddler and therefore with WebSurge. Session Storage A group of URLs entered or captured make up a Session. Sessions can be saved and restored easily as they use a very simple text format that simply stored on disk. The format is slightly customized HTTP header traces separated by a separator line. The headers are standard HTTP headers except that the full URL instead of just the domain relative path is stored as part of the 1st HTTP header line for easier parsing. Because it’s just text and uses the same format that Fiddler uses for exports, it’s super easy to create Sessions by hand manually or under program control writing out to a simple text file. You can see what this format looks like in the Capture window figure above – the raw captured format is also what’s stored to disk and what WebSurge parses from. The only ‘custom’ part of these headers is that 1st line contains the full URL instead of the domain relative path and Host: header. The rest of each header are just plain standard HTTP headers with each individual URL isolated by a separator line. The format used here also uses what Fiddler produces for exports, so it’s easy to exchange or view data either in Fiddler or WebSurge. Urls can also be edited interactively so you can modify the headers easily as well: Again – it’s just plain HTTP headers so anything you can do with HTTP can be added here. Use it for single URL Testing Incidentally I’ve also found this form as an excellent way to test and replay individual URLs for simple non-load testing purposes. Because you can capture a single or many URLs and store them on disk, this also provides a nice HTTP playground where you can record URLs with their headers, and fire them one at a time or as a session and see results immediately. It’s actually an easy way for REST presentations and I find the simple UI flow actually easier than using Fiddler natively. Finally you can save one or more URLs as a session for later retrieval. I’m using this more and more for simple URL checks. Overriding Cookies and Domains Speaking of HTTP headers – you can also overwrite cookies used as part of the options. One thing that happens with modern Web applications is that you have session cookies in use for authorization. These cookies tend to expire at some point which would invalidate a test. Using the Options dialog you can actually override the cookie: which replaces the cookie for all requests with the cookie value specified here. You can capture a valid cookie from a manual HTTP request in your browser and then paste into the cookie field, to replace the existing Cookie with the new one that is now valid. Likewise you can easily replace the domain so if you captured urls on west-wind.com and now you want to test on localhost you can do that easily easily as well. You could even do something like capture on store.west-wind.com and then test on localhost/store which would also work. Running Load Tests Once you’ve created a Session you can specify the length of the test in seconds, and specify the number of simultaneous threads to run each session on. Sessions run through each of the URLs in the session sequentially by default. One option in the options list above is that you can also randomize the URLs so each thread runs requests in a different order. This avoids bunching up URLs initially when tests start as all threads run the same requests simultaneously which can sometimes skew the results of the first few minutes of a test. While sessions run some progress information is displayed: By default there’s a live view of requests displayed in a Console-like window. On the bottom of the window there’s a running total summary that displays where you’re at in the test, how many requests have been processed and what the requests per second count is currently for all requests. Note that for tests that run over a thousand requests a second it’s a good idea to turn off the console display. While the console display is nice to see that something is happening and also gives you slight idea what’s happening with actual requests, once a lot of requests are processed, this UI updating actually adds a lot of CPU overhead to the application which may cause the actual load generated to be reduced. If you are running a 1000 requests a second there’s not much to see anyway as requests roll by way too fast to see individual lines anyway. If you look on the options panel, there is a NoProgressEvents option that disables the console display. Note that the summary display is still updated approximately once a second so you can always tell that the test is still running. Test Results When the test is done you get a simple Results display: On the right you get an overall summary as well as breakdown by each URL in the session. Both success and failures are highlighted so it’s easy to see what’s breaking in your load test. The report can be printed or you can also open the HTML document in your default Web Browser for printing to PDF or saving the HTML document to disk. The list on the right shows you a partial list of the URLs that were fired so you can look in detail at the request and response data. The list can be filtered by success and failure requests. Each list is partial only (at the moment) and limited to a max of 1000 items in order to render reasonably quickly. Each item in the list can be clicked to see the full request and response data: This particularly useful for errors so you can quickly see and copy what request data was used and in the case of a GET request you can also just click the link to quickly jump to the page. For non-GET requests you can find the URL in the Session list, and use the context menu to Test the URL as configured including any HTTP content data to send. You get to see the full HTTP request and response as well as a link in the Request header to go visit the actual page. Not so useful for a POST as above, but definitely useful for GET requests. Finally you can also get a few charts. The most useful one is probably the Request per Second chart which can be accessed from the Charts menu or shortcut. Here’s what it looks like:   Results can also be exported to JSON, XML and HTML. Keep in mind that these files can get very large rather quickly though, so exports can end up taking a while to complete. Command Line Interface WebSurge runs with a small core load engine and this engine is plugged into the front end application I’ve shown so far. There’s also a command line interface available to run WebSurge from the Windows command prompt. Using the command line you can run tests for either an individual URL (similar to AB.exe for example) or a full Session file. By default when it runs WebSurgeCli shows progress every second showing total request count, failures and the requests per second for the entire test. A silent option can turn off this progress display and display only the results. The command line interface can be useful for build integration which allows checking for failures perhaps or hitting a specific requests per second count etc. It’s also nice to use this as quick and dirty URL test facility similar to the way you’d use Apache Bench (ab.exe). Unlike ab.exe though, WebSurgeCli supports SSL and makes it much easier to create multi-URL tests using either manual editing or the WebSurge UI. Current Status Currently West Wind WebSurge is still in Beta status. I’m still adding small new features and tweaking the UI in an attempt to make it as easy and self-explanatory as possible to run. Documentation for the UI and specialty features is also still a work in progress. I plan on open-sourcing this product, but it won’t be free. There’s a free version available that provides a limited number of threads and request URLs to run. A relatively low cost license  removes the thread and request limitations. Pricing info can be found on the Web site – there’s an introductory price which is $99 at the moment which I think is reasonable compared to most other for pay solutions out there that are exorbitant by comparison… The reason code is not available yet is – well, the UI portion of the app is a bit embarrassing in its current monolithic state. The UI started as a very simple interface originally that later got a lot more complex – yeah, that never happens, right? Unless there’s a lot of interest I don’t foresee re-writing the UI entirely (which would be ideal), but in the meantime at least some cleanup is required before I dare to publish it :-). The code will likely be released with version 1.0. I’m very interested in feedback. Do you think this could be useful to you and provide value over other tools you may or may not have used before? I hope so – it already has provided a ton of value for me and the work I do that made the development worthwhile at this point. You can leave a comment below, or for more extensive discussions you can post a message on the West Wind Message Board in the WebSurge section Microsoft MVPs and Insiders get a free License If you’re a Microsoft MVP or a Microsoft Insider you can get a full license for free. Send me a link to your current, official Microsoft profile and I’ll send you a not-for resale license. Send any messages to [email protected]. Resources For more info on WebSurge and to download it to try it out, use the following links. West Wind WebSurge Home Download West Wind WebSurge Getting Started with West Wind WebSurge Video© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2014Posted in ASP.NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • Use IIS Application Initialization for keeping ASP.NET Apps alive

    - by Rick Strahl
    I've been working quite a bit with Windows Services in the recent months, and well, it turns out that Windows Services are quite a bear to debug, deploy, update and maintain. The process of getting services set up,  debugged and updated is a major chore that has to be extensively documented and or automated specifically. On most projects when a service is built, people end up scrambling for the right 'process' to use for administration. Web app deployment and maintenance on the other hand are common and well understood today, as we are constantly dealing with Web apps. There's plenty of infrastructure and tooling built into Web Tools like Visual Studio to facilitate the process. By comparison Windows Services or anything self-hosted for that matter seems convoluted.In fact, in a recent blog post I mentioned that on a recent project I'd been using self-hosting for SignalR inside of a Windows service, because the application is in fact a 'service' that also needs to send out lots of messages via SignalR. But the reality is that it could just as well be an IIS application with a service component that runs in the background. Either way you look at it, it's either a Windows Service with a built in Web Server, or an IIS application running a Service application, neither of which follows the standard Service or Web App template.Personally I much prefer Web applications. Running inside of IIS I get all the benefits of the IIS platform including service lifetime management (crash and restart), controlled shutdowns, the whole security infrastructure including easy certificate support, hot-swapping of code and the the ability to publish directly to IIS from within Visual Studio with ease.Because of these benefits we set out to move from the self hosted service into an ASP.NET Web app instead.The Missing Link for ASP.NET as a Service: Auto-LoadingI've had moments in the past where I wanted to run a 'service like' application in ASP.NET because when you think about it, it's so much easier to control a Web application remotely. Services are locked into start/stop operations, but if you host inside of a Web app you can write your own ticket and control it from anywhere. In fact nearly 10 years ago I built a background scheduling application that ran inside of ASP.NET and it worked great and it's still running doing its job today.The tricky part for running an app as a service inside of IIS then and now, is how to get IIS and ASP.NET launched so your 'service' stays alive even after an Application Pool reset. 7 years ago I faked it by using a web monitor (my own West Wind Web Monitor app) I was running anyway to monitor my various web sites for uptime, and having the monitor ping my 'service' every 20 seconds to effectively keep ASP.NET alive or fire it back up after a reload. I used a simple scheduler class that also includes some logic for 'self-reloading'. Hacky for sure, but it worked reliably.Luckily today it's much easier and more integrated to get IIS to launch ASP.NET as soon as an Application Pool is started by using the Application Initialization Module. The Application Initialization Module basically allows you to turn on Preloading on the Application Pool and the Site/IIS App, which essentially fires a request through the IIS pipeline as soon as the Application Pool has been launched. This means that effectively your ASP.NET app becomes active immediately, Application_Start is fired making sure your app stays up and running at all times. All the other features like Application Pool recycling and auto-shutdown after idle time still work, but IIS will then always immediately re-launch the application.Getting started with Application InitializationAs of IIS 8 Application Initialization is part of the IIS feature set. For IIS 7 and 7.5 there's a separate download available via Web Platform Installer. Using IIS 8 Application Initialization is an optional install component in Windows or the Windows Server Role Manager: This is an optional component so make sure you explicitly select it.IIS Configuration for Application InitializationInitialization needs to be applied on the Application Pool as well as the IIS Application level. As of IIS 8 these settings can be made through the IIS Administration console.Start with the Application Pool:Here you need to set both the Start Automatically which is always set, and the StartMode which should be set to AlwaysRunning. Both have to be set - the Start Automatically flag is set true by default and controls the starting of the application pool itself while Always Running flag is required in order to launch the application. Without the latter flag set the site settings have no effect.Now on the Site/Application level you can specify whether the site should pre load: Set the Preload Enabled flag to true.At this point ASP.NET apps should auto-load. This is all that's needed to pre-load the site if all you want is to get your site launched automatically.If you want a little more control over the load process you can add a few more settings to your web.config file that allow you to show a static page while the App is starting up. This can be useful if startup is really slow, so rather than displaying blank screen while the user is fiddling their thumbs you can display a static HTML page instead: <system.webServer> <applicationInitialization remapManagedRequestsTo="Startup.htm" skipManagedModules="true"> <add initializationPage="ping.ashx" /> </applicationInitialization> </system.webServer>This allows you to specify a page to execute in a dry run. IIS basically fakes request and pushes it directly into the IIS pipeline without hitting the network. You specify a page and IIS will fake a request to that page in this case ping.ashx which just returns a simple OK string - ie. a fast pipeline request. This request is run immediately after Application Pool restart, and while this request is running and your app is warming up, IIS can display an alternate static page - Startup.htm above. So instead of showing users an empty loading page when clicking a link on your site you can optionally show some sort of static status page that says, "we'll be right back".  I'm not sure if that's such a brilliant idea since this can be pretty disruptive in some cases. Personally I think I prefer letting people wait, but at least get the response they were supposed to get back rather than a random page. But it's there if you need it.Note that the web.config stuff is optional. If you don't provide it IIS hits the default site link (/) and even if there's no matching request at the end of that request it'll still fire the request through the IIS pipeline. Ideally though you want to make sure that an ASP.NET endpoint is hit either with your default page, or by specify the initializationPage to ensure ASP.NET actually gets hit since it's possible for IIS fire unmanaged requests only for static pages (depending how your pipeline is configured).What about AppDomain Restarts?In addition to full Worker Process recycles at the IIS level, ASP.NET also has to deal with AppDomain shutdowns which can occur for a variety of reasons:Files are updated in the BIN folderWeb Deploy to your siteweb.config is changedHard application crashThese operations don't cause the worker process to restart, but they do cause ASP.NET to unload the current AppDomain and start up a new one. Because the features above only apply to Application Pool restarts, AppDomain restarts could also cause your 'ASP.NET service' to stop processing in the background.In order to keep the app running on AppDomain recycles, you can resort to a simple ping in the Application_End event:protected void Application_End() { var client = new WebClient(); var url = App.AdminConfiguration.MonitorHostUrl + "ping.aspx"; client.DownloadString(url); Trace.WriteLine("Application Shut Down Ping: " + url); }which fires any ASP.NET url to the current site at the very end of the pipeline shutdown which in turn ensures that the site immediately starts back up.Manual Configuration in ApplicationHost.configThe above UI corresponds to the following ApplicationHost.config settings. If you're using IIS 7, there's no UI for these flags so you'll have to manually edit them.When you install the Application Initialization component into IIS it should auto-configure the module into ApplicationHost.config. Unfortunately for me, with Mr. Murphy in his best form for me, the module registration did not occur and I had to manually add it.<globalModules> <add name="ApplicationInitializationModule" image="%windir%\System32\inetsrv\warmup.dll" /> </globalModules>Most likely you won't need ever need to add this, but if things are not working it's worth to check if the module is actually registered.Next you need to configure the ApplicationPool and the Web site. The following are the two relevant entries in ApplicationHost.config.<system.applicationHost> <applicationPools> <add name="West Wind West Wind Web Connection" autoStart="true" startMode="AlwaysRunning" managedRuntimeVersion="v4.0" managedPipelineMode="Integrated"> <processModel identityType="LocalSystem" setProfileEnvironment="true" /> </add> </applicationPools> <sites> <site name="Default Web Site" id="1"> <application path="/MPress.Workflow.WebQueueMessageManager" applicationPool="West Wind West Wind Web Connection" preloadEnabled="true"> <virtualDirectory path="/" physicalPath="C:\Clients\…" /> </application> </site> </sites> </system.applicationHost>On the Application Pool make sure to set the autoStart and startMode flags to true and AlwaysRunning respectively. On the site make sure to set the preloadEnabled flag to true.And that's all you should need. You can still set the web.config settings described above as well.ASP.NET as a Service?In the particular application I'm working on currently, we have a queue manager that runs as standalone service that polls a database queue and picks out jobs and processes them on several threads. The service can spin up any number of threads and keep these threads alive in the background while IIS is running doing its own thing. These threads are newly created threads, so they sit completely outside of the IIS thread pool. In order for this service to work all it needs is a long running reference that keeps it alive for the life time of the application.In this particular app there are two components that run in the background on their own threads: A scheduler that runs various scheduled tasks and handles things like picking up emails to send out outside of IIS's scope and the QueueManager. Here's what this looks like in global.asax:public class Global : System.Web.HttpApplication { private static ApplicationScheduler scheduler; private static ServiceLauncher launcher; protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { // Pings the service and ensures it stays alive scheduler = new ApplicationScheduler() { CheckFrequency = 600000 }; scheduler.Start(); launcher = new ServiceLauncher(); launcher.Start(); // register so shutdown is controlled HostingEnvironment.RegisterObject(launcher); }}By keeping these objects around as static instances that are set only once on startup, they survive the lifetime of the application. The code in these classes is essentially unchanged from the Windows Service code except that I could remove the various overrides required for the Windows Service interface (OnStart,OnStop,OnResume etc.). Otherwise the behavior and operation is very similar.In this application ASP.NET serves two purposes: It acts as the host for SignalR and provides the administration interface which allows remote management of the 'service'. I can start and stop the service remotely by shutting down the ApplicationScheduler very easily. I can also very easily feed stats from the queue out directly via a couple of Web requests or (as we do now) through the SignalR service.Registering a Background Object with ASP.NETNotice also the use of the HostingEnvironment.RegisterObject(). This function registers an object with ASP.NET to let it know that it's a background task that should be notified if the AppDomain shuts down. RegisterObject() requires an interface with a Stop() method that's fired and allows your code to respond to a shutdown request. Here's what the IRegisteredObject::Stop() method looks like on the launcher:public void Stop(bool immediate = false) { LogManager.Current.LogInfo("QueueManager Controller Stopped."); Controller.StopProcessing(); Controller.Dispose(); Thread.Sleep(1500); // give background threads some time HostingEnvironment.UnregisterObject(this); }Implementing IRegisterObject should help with reliability on AppDomain shutdowns. Thanks to Justin Van Patten for pointing this out to me on Twitter.RegisterObject() is not required but I would highly recommend implementing it on whatever object controls your background processing to all clean shutdowns when the AppDomain shuts down.Testing it outI'm still in the testing phase with this particular service to see if there are any side effects. But so far it doesn't look like it. With about 50 lines of code I was able to replace the Windows service startup to Web start up - everything else just worked as is. An honorable mention goes to SignalR 2.0's oWin hosting, because with the new oWin based hosting no code changes at all were required, merely a couple of configuration file settings and an assembly directive needed, to point at the SignalR startup class. Sweet!It also seems like SignalR is noticeably faster running inside of IIS compared to self-host. Startup feels faster because of the preload.Starting and Stopping the 'Service'Because the application is running as a Web Server, it's easy to have a Web interface for starting and stopping the services running inside of the service. For our queue manager the SignalR service and front monitoring app has a play and stop button for toggling the queue.If you want more administrative control and have it work more like a Windows Service you can also stop the application pool explicitly from the command line which would be equivalent to stopping and restarting a service.To start and stop from the command line you can use the IIS appCmd tool. To stop:> %windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd stop apppool /apppool.name:"Weblog"and to start> %windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd start apppool /apppool.name:"Weblog"Note that when you explicitly force the AppPool to stop running either in the UI (on the ApplicationPools page use Start/Stop) or via command line tools, the application pool will not auto-restart immediately. You have to manually start it back up.What's not to like?There are certainly a lot of benefits to running a background service in IIS, but… ASP.NET applications do have more overhead in terms of memory footprint and startup time is a little slower, but generally for server applications this is not a big deal. If the application is stable the service should fire up and stay running indefinitely. A lot of times this kind of service interface can simply be attached to an existing Web application, or if scalability requires be offloaded to its own Web server.Easier to work withBut the ultimate benefit here is that it's much easier to work with a Web app as opposed to a service. While developing I can simply turn off the auto-launch features and launch the service on demand through IIS simply by hitting a page on the site. If I want to shut down an IISRESET -stop will shut down the service easily enough. I can then attach a debugger anywhere I want and this works like any other ASP.NET application. Yes you end up on a background thread for debugging but Visual Studio handles that just fine and if you stay on a single thread this is no different than debugging any other code.SummaryUsing ASP.NET to run background service operations is probably not a super common scenario, but it probably should be something that is considered carefully when building services. Many applications have service like features and with the auto-start functionality of the Application Initialization module, it's easy to build this functionality into ASP.NET. Especially when combined with the notification features of SignalR it becomes very, very easy to create rich services that can also communicate their status easily to the outside world.Whether it's existing applications that need some background processing for scheduling related tasks, or whether you just create a separate site altogether just to host your service it's easy to do and you can leverage the same tool chain you're already using for other Web projects. If you have lots of service projects it's worth considering… give it some thought…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2013Posted in ASP.NET  SignalR  IIS   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • Inheritance Mapping Strategies with Entity Framework Code First CTP5 Part 1: Table per Hierarchy (TPH)

    - by mortezam
    A simple strategy for mapping classes to database tables might be “one table for every entity persistent class.” This approach sounds simple enough and, indeed, works well until we encounter inheritance. Inheritance is such a visible structural mismatch between the object-oriented and relational worlds because object-oriented systems model both “is a” and “has a” relationships. SQL-based models provide only "has a" relationships between entities; SQL database management systems don’t support type inheritance—and even when it’s available, it’s usually proprietary or incomplete. There are three different approaches to representing an inheritance hierarchy: Table per Hierarchy (TPH): Enable polymorphism by denormalizing the SQL schema, and utilize a type discriminator column that holds type information. Table per Type (TPT): Represent "is a" (inheritance) relationships as "has a" (foreign key) relationships. Table per Concrete class (TPC): Discard polymorphism and inheritance relationships completely from the SQL schema.I will explain each of these strategies in a series of posts and this one is dedicated to TPH. In this series we'll deeply dig into each of these strategies and will learn about "why" to choose them as well as "how" to implement them. Hopefully it will give you a better idea about which strategy to choose in a particular scenario. Inheritance Mapping with Entity Framework Code FirstAll of the inheritance mapping strategies that we discuss in this series will be implemented by EF Code First CTP5. The CTP5 build of the new EF Code First library has been released by ADO.NET team earlier this month. EF Code-First enables a pretty powerful code-centric development workflow for working with data. I’m a big fan of the EF Code First approach, and I’m pretty excited about a lot of productivity and power that it brings. When it comes to inheritance mapping, not only Code First fully supports all the strategies but also gives you ultimate flexibility to work with domain models that involves inheritance. The fluent API for inheritance mapping in CTP5 has been improved a lot and now it's more intuitive and concise in compare to CTP4. A Note For Those Who Follow Other Entity Framework ApproachesIf you are following EF's "Database First" or "Model First" approaches, I still recommend to read this series since although the implementation is Code First specific but the explanations around each of the strategies is perfectly applied to all approaches be it Code First or others. A Note For Those Who are New to Entity Framework and Code-FirstIf you choose to learn EF you've chosen well. If you choose to learn EF with Code First you've done even better. To get started, you can find a great walkthrough by Scott Guthrie here and another one by ADO.NET team here. In this post, I assume you already setup your machine to do Code First development and also that you are familiar with Code First fundamentals and basic concepts. You might also want to check out my other posts on EF Code First like Complex Types and Shared Primary Key Associations. A Top Down Development ScenarioThese posts take a top-down approach; it assumes that you’re starting with a domain model and trying to derive a new SQL schema. Therefore, we start with an existing domain model, implement it in C# and then let Code First create the database schema for us. However, the mapping strategies described are just as relevant if you’re working bottom up, starting with existing database tables. I’ll show some tricks along the way that help you dealing with nonperfect table layouts. Let’s start with the mapping of entity inheritance. -- The Domain ModelIn our domain model, we have a BillingDetail base class which is abstract (note the italic font on the UML class diagram below). We do allow various billing types and represent them as subclasses of BillingDetail class. As for now, we support CreditCard and BankAccount: Implement the Object Model with Code First As always, we start with the POCO classes. Note that in our DbContext, I only define one DbSet for the base class which is BillingDetail. Code First will find the other classes in the hierarchy based on Reachability Convention. public abstract class BillingDetail  {     public int BillingDetailId { get; set; }     public string Owner { get; set; }             public string Number { get; set; } } public class BankAccount : BillingDetail {     public string BankName { get; set; }     public string Swift { get; set; } } public class CreditCard : BillingDetail {     public int CardType { get; set; }                     public string ExpiryMonth { get; set; }     public string ExpiryYear { get; set; } } public class InheritanceMappingContext : DbContext {     public DbSet<BillingDetail> BillingDetails { get; set; } } This object model is all that is needed to enable inheritance with Code First. If you put this in your application you would be able to immediately start working with the database and do CRUD operations. Before going into details about how EF Code First maps this object model to the database, we need to learn about one of the core concepts of inheritance mapping: polymorphic and non-polymorphic queries. Polymorphic Queries LINQ to Entities and EntitySQL, as object-oriented query languages, both support polymorphic queries—that is, queries for instances of a class and all instances of its subclasses, respectively. For example, consider the following query: IQueryable<BillingDetail> linqQuery = from b in context.BillingDetails select b; List<BillingDetail> billingDetails = linqQuery.ToList(); Or the same query in EntitySQL: string eSqlQuery = @"SELECT VAlUE b FROM BillingDetails AS b"; ObjectQuery<BillingDetail> objectQuery = ((IObjectContextAdapter)context).ObjectContext                                                                          .CreateQuery<BillingDetail>(eSqlQuery); List<BillingDetail> billingDetails = objectQuery.ToList(); linqQuery and eSqlQuery are both polymorphic and return a list of objects of the type BillingDetail, which is an abstract class but the actual concrete objects in the list are of the subtypes of BillingDetail: CreditCard and BankAccount. Non-polymorphic QueriesAll LINQ to Entities and EntitySQL queries are polymorphic which return not only instances of the specific entity class to which it refers, but all subclasses of that class as well. On the other hand, Non-polymorphic queries are queries whose polymorphism is restricted and only returns instances of a particular subclass. In LINQ to Entities, this can be specified by using OfType<T>() Method. For example, the following query returns only instances of BankAccount: IQueryable<BankAccount> query = from b in context.BillingDetails.OfType<BankAccount>() select b; EntitySQL has OFTYPE operator that does the same thing: string eSqlQuery = @"SELECT VAlUE b FROM OFTYPE(BillingDetails, Model.BankAccount) AS b"; In fact, the above query with OFTYPE operator is a short form of the following query expression that uses TREAT and IS OF operators: string eSqlQuery = @"SELECT VAlUE TREAT(b as Model.BankAccount)                       FROM BillingDetails AS b                       WHERE b IS OF(Model.BankAccount)"; (Note that in the above query, Model.BankAccount is the fully qualified name for BankAccount class. You need to change "Model" with your own namespace name.) Table per Class Hierarchy (TPH)An entire class hierarchy can be mapped to a single table. This table includes columns for all properties of all classes in the hierarchy. The concrete subclass represented by a particular row is identified by the value of a type discriminator column. You don’t have to do anything special in Code First to enable TPH. It's the default inheritance mapping strategy: This mapping strategy is a winner in terms of both performance and simplicity. It’s the best-performing way to represent polymorphism—both polymorphic and nonpolymorphic queries perform well—and it’s even easy to implement by hand. Ad-hoc reporting is possible without complex joins or unions. Schema evolution is straightforward. Discriminator Column As you can see in the DB schema above, Code First has to add a special column to distinguish between persistent classes: the discriminator. This isn’t a property of the persistent class in our object model; it’s used internally by EF Code First. By default, the column name is "Discriminator", and its type is string. The values defaults to the persistent class names —in this case, “BankAccount” or “CreditCard”. EF Code First automatically sets and retrieves the discriminator values. TPH Requires Properties in SubClasses to be Nullable in the Database TPH has one major problem: Columns for properties declared by subclasses will be nullable in the database. For example, Code First created an (INT, NULL) column to map CardType property in CreditCard class. However, in a typical mapping scenario, Code First always creates an (INT, NOT NULL) column in the database for an int property in persistent class. But in this case, since BankAccount instance won’t have a CardType property, the CardType field must be NULL for that row so Code First creates an (INT, NULL) instead. If your subclasses each define several non-nullable properties, the loss of NOT NULL constraints may be a serious problem from the point of view of data integrity. TPH Violates the Third Normal FormAnother important issue is normalization. We’ve created functional dependencies between nonkey columns, violating the third normal form. Basically, the value of Discriminator column determines the corresponding values of the columns that belong to the subclasses (e.g. BankName) but Discriminator is not part of the primary key for the table. As always, denormalization for performance can be misleading, because it sacrifices long-term stability, maintainability, and the integrity of data for immediate gains that may be also achieved by proper optimization of the SQL execution plans (in other words, ask your DBA). Generated SQL QueryLet's take a look at the SQL statements that EF Code First sends to the database when we write queries in LINQ to Entities or EntitySQL. For example, the polymorphic query for BillingDetails that you saw, generates the following SQL statement: SELECT  [Extent1].[Discriminator] AS [Discriminator],  [Extent1].[BillingDetailId] AS [BillingDetailId],  [Extent1].[Owner] AS [Owner],  [Extent1].[Number] AS [Number],  [Extent1].[BankName] AS [BankName],  [Extent1].[Swift] AS [Swift],  [Extent1].[CardType] AS [CardType],  [Extent1].[ExpiryMonth] AS [ExpiryMonth],  [Extent1].[ExpiryYear] AS [ExpiryYear] FROM [dbo].[BillingDetails] AS [Extent1] WHERE [Extent1].[Discriminator] IN ('BankAccount','CreditCard') Or the non-polymorphic query for the BankAccount subclass generates this SQL statement: SELECT  [Extent1].[BillingDetailId] AS [BillingDetailId],  [Extent1].[Owner] AS [Owner],  [Extent1].[Number] AS [Number],  [Extent1].[BankName] AS [BankName],  [Extent1].[Swift] AS [Swift] FROM [dbo].[BillingDetails] AS [Extent1] WHERE [Extent1].[Discriminator] = 'BankAccount' Note how Code First adds a restriction on the discriminator column and also how it only selects those columns that belong to BankAccount entity. Change Discriminator Column Data Type and Values With Fluent API Sometimes, especially in legacy schemas, you need to override the conventions for the discriminator column so that Code First can work with the schema. The following fluent API code will change the discriminator column name to "BillingDetailType" and the values to "BA" and "CC" for BankAccount and CreditCard respectively: protected override void OnModelCreating(System.Data.Entity.ModelConfiguration.ModelBuilder modelBuilder) {     modelBuilder.Entity<BillingDetail>()                 .Map<BankAccount>(m => m.Requires("BillingDetailType").HasValue("BA"))                 .Map<CreditCard>(m => m.Requires("BillingDetailType").HasValue("CC")); } Also, changing the data type of discriminator column is interesting. In the above code, we passed strings to HasValue method but this method has been defined to accepts a type of object: public void HasValue(object value); Therefore, if for example we pass a value of type int to it then Code First not only use our desired values (i.e. 1 & 2) in the discriminator column but also changes the column type to be (INT, NOT NULL): modelBuilder.Entity<BillingDetail>()             .Map<BankAccount>(m => m.Requires("BillingDetailType").HasValue(1))             .Map<CreditCard>(m => m.Requires("BillingDetailType").HasValue(2)); SummaryIn this post we learned about Table per Hierarchy as the default mapping strategy in Code First. The disadvantages of the TPH strategy may be too serious for your design—after all, denormalized schemas can become a major burden in the long run. Your DBA may not like it at all. In the next post, we will learn about Table per Type (TPT) strategy that doesn’t expose you to this problem. References ADO.NET team blog Java Persistence with Hibernate book a { text-decoration: none; } a:visited { color: Blue; } .title { padding-bottom: 5px; font-family: Segoe UI; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: bold; padding-top: 15px; } .code, .typeName { font-family: consolas; } .typeName { color: #2b91af; } .padTop5 { padding-top: 5px; } .padTop10 { padding-top: 10px; } p.MsoNormal { margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 0in; line-height: 115%; font-size: 11.0pt; font-family: "Calibri" , "sans-serif"; }

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  • VS 2010 SP1 and SQL CE

    - by ScottGu
    Last month we released the Beta of VS 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1).  You can learn more about the VS 2010 SP1 Beta from Jason Zander’s two blog posts about it, and from Scott Hanselman’s blog post that covers some of the new capabilities enabled with it.   You can download and install the VS 2010 SP1 Beta here. Last week I blogged about the new Visual Studio support for IIS Express that we are adding with VS 2010 SP1. In today’s post I’m going to talk about the new VS 2010 SP1 tooling support for SQL CE, and walkthrough some of the cool scenarios it enables.  SQL CE – What is it and why should you care? SQL CE is a free, embedded, database engine that enables easy database storage. No Database Installation Required SQL CE does not require you to run a setup or install a database server in order to use it.  You can simply copy the SQL CE binaries into the \bin directory of your ASP.NET application, and then your web application can use it as a database engine.  No setup or extra security permissions are required for it to run. You do not need to have an administrator account on the machine. Just copy your web application onto any server and it will work. This is true even of medium-trust applications running in a web hosting environment. SQL CE runs in-memory within your ASP.NET application and will start-up when you first access a SQL CE database, and will automatically shutdown when your application is unloaded.  SQL CE databases are stored as files that live within the \App_Data folder of your ASP.NET Applications. Works with Existing Data APIs SQL CE 4 works with existing .NET-based data APIs, and supports a SQL Server compatible query syntax.  This means you can use existing data APIs like ADO.NET, as well as use higher-level ORMs like Entity Framework and NHibernate with SQL CE.  This enables you to use the same data programming skills and data APIs you know today. Supports Development, Testing and Production Scenarios SQL CE can be used for development scenarios, testing scenarios, and light production usage scenarios.  With the SQL CE 4 release we’ve done the engineering work to ensure that SQL CE won’t crash or deadlock when used in a multi-threaded server scenario (like ASP.NET).  This is a big change from previous releases of SQL CE – which were designed for client-only scenarios and which explicitly blocked running in web-server environments.  Starting with SQL CE 4 you can use it in a web-server as well. There are no license restrictions with SQL CE.  It is also totally free. Easy Migration to SQL Server SQL CE is an embedded database – which makes it ideal for development, testing, and light-usage scenarios.  For high-volume sites and applications you’ll probably want to migrate your database to use SQL Server Express (which is free), SQL Server or SQL Azure.  These servers enable much better scalability, more development features (including features like Stored Procedures – which aren’t supported with SQL CE), as well as more advanced data management capabilities. We’ll ship migration tools that enable you to optionally take SQL CE databases and easily upgrade them to use SQL Server Express, SQL Server, or SQL Azure.  You will not need to change your code when upgrading a SQL CE database to SQL Server or SQL Azure.  Our goal is to enable you to be able to simply change the database connection string in your web.config file and have your application just work. New Tooling Support for SQL CE in VS 2010 SP1 VS 2010 SP1 includes much improved tooling support for SQL CE, and adds support for using SQL CE within ASP.NET projects for the first time.  With VS 2010 SP1 you can now: Create new SQL CE Databases Edit and Modify SQL CE Database Schema and Indexes Populate SQL CE Databases within Data Use the Entity Framework (EF) designer to create model layers against SQL CE databases Use EF Code First to define model layers in code, then create a SQL CE database from them, and optionally edit the DB with VS Deploy SQL CE databases to remote servers using Web Deploy and optionally convert them to full SQL Server databases You can take advantage of all of the above features from within both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC based projects. Download You can enable SQL CE tooling support within VS 2010 by first installing VS 2010 SP1 (beta). Once SP1 is installed, you’ll also then need to install the SQL CE Tools for Visual Studio download.  This is a separate download that enables the SQL CE tooling support for VS 2010 SP1. Walkthrough of Two Scenarios In this blog post I’m going to walkthrough how you can take advantage of SQL CE and VS 2010 SP1 using both an ASP.NET Web Forms and an ASP.NET MVC based application. Specifically, we’ll walkthrough: How to create a SQL CE database using VS 2010 SP1, then use the EF4 visual designers in Visual Studio to construct a model layer from it, and then display and edit the data using an ASP.NET GridView control. How to use an EF Code First approach to define a model layer using POCO classes and then have EF Code-First “auto-create” a SQL CE database for us based on our model classes.  We’ll then look at how we can use the new VS 2010 SP1 support for SQL CE to inspect the database that was created, populate it with data, and later make schema changes to it.  We’ll do all this within the context of an ASP.NET MVC based application. You can follow the two walkthroughs below on your own machine by installing VS 2010 SP1 (beta) and then installing the SQL CE Tools for Visual Studio download (which is a separate download that enables SQL CE tooling support for VS 2010 SP1). Walkthrough 1: Create a SQL CE Database, Create EF Model Classes, Edit the Data with a GridView This first walkthrough will demonstrate how to create and define a SQL CE database within an ASP.NET Web Form application.  We’ll then build an EF model layer for it and use that model layer to enable data editing scenarios with an <asp:GridView> control. Step 1: Create a new ASP.NET Web Forms Project We’ll begin by using the File->New Project menu command within Visual Studio to create a new ASP.NET Web Forms project.  We’ll use the “ASP.NET Web Application” project template option so that it has a default UI skin implemented: Step 2: Create a SQL CE Database Right click on the “App_Data” folder within the created project and choose the “Add->New Item” menu command: This will bring up the “Add Item” dialog box.  Select the “SQL Server Compact 4.0 Local Database” item (new in VS 2010 SP1) and name the database file to create “Store.sdf”: Note that SQL CE database files have a .sdf filename extension. Place them within the /App_Data folder of your ASP.NET application to enable easy deployment. When we clicked the “Add” button above a Store.sdf file was added to our project: Step 3: Adding a “Products” Table Double-clicking the “Store.sdf” database file will open it up within the Server Explorer tab.  Since it is a new database there are no tables within it: Right click on the “Tables” icon and choose the “Create Table” menu command to create a new database table.  We’ll name the new table “Products” and add 4 columns to it.  We’ll mark the first column as a primary key (and make it an identify column so that its value will automatically increment with each new row): When we click “ok” our new Products table will be created in the SQL CE database. Step 4: Populate with Data Once our Products table is created it will show up within the Server Explorer.  We can right-click it and choose the “Show Table Data” menu command to edit its data: Let’s add a few sample rows of data to it: Step 5: Create an EF Model Layer We have a SQL CE database with some data in it – let’s now create an EF Model Layer that will provide a way for us to easily query and update data within it. Let’s right-click on our project and choose the “Add->New Item” menu command.  This will bring up the “Add New Item” dialog – select the “ADO.NET Entity Data Model” item within it and name it “Store.edmx” This will add a new Store.edmx item to our solution explorer and launch a wizard that allows us to quickly create an EF model: Select the “Generate From Database” option above and click next.  Choose to use the Store.sdf SQL CE database we just created and then click next again.  The wizard will then ask you what database objects you want to import into your model.  Let’s choose to import the “Products” table we created earlier: When we click the “Finish” button Visual Studio will open up the EF designer.  It will have a Product entity already on it that maps to the “Products” table within our SQL CE database: The VS 2010 SP1 EF designer works exactly the same with SQL CE as it does already with SQL Server and SQL Express.  The Product entity above will be persisted as a class (called “Product”) that we can programmatically work against within our ASP.NET application. Step 6: Compile the Project Before using your model layer you’ll need to build your project.  Do a Ctrl+Shift+B to compile the project, or use the Build->Build Solution menu command. Step 7: Create a Page that Uses our EF Model Layer Let’s now create a simple ASP.NET Web Form that contains a GridView control that we can use to display and edit the our Products data (via the EF Model Layer we just created). Right-click on the project and choose the Add->New Item command.  Select the “Web Form from Master Page” item template, and name the page you create “Products.aspx”.  Base the master page on the “Site.Master” template that is in the root of the project. Add an <h2>Products</h2> heading the new Page, and add an <asp:gridview> control within it: Then click the “Design” tab to switch into design-view. Select the GridView control, and then click the top-right corner to display the GridView’s “Smart Tasks” UI: Choose the “New data source…” drop down option above.  This will bring up the below dialog which allows you to pick your Data Source type: Select the “Entity” data source option – which will allow us to easily connect our GridView to the EF model layer we created earlier.  This will bring up another dialog that allows us to pick our model layer: Select the “StoreEntities” option in the dropdown – which is the EF model layer we created earlier.  Then click next – which will allow us to pick which entity within it we want to bind to: Select the “Products” entity in the above dialog – which indicates that we want to bind against the “Product” entity class we defined earlier.  Then click the “Enable automatic updates” checkbox to ensure that we can both query and update Products.  When you click “Finish” VS will wire-up an <asp:EntityDataSource> to your <asp:GridView> control: The last two steps we’ll do will be to click the “Enable Editing” checkbox on the Grid (which will cause the Grid to display an “Edit” link on each row) and (optionally) use the Auto Format dialog to pick a UI template for the Grid. Step 8: Run the Application Let’s now run our application and browse to the /Products.aspx page that contains our GridView.  When we do so we’ll see a Grid UI of the Products within our SQL CE database. Clicking the “Edit” link for any of the rows will allow us to edit their values: When we click “Update” the GridView will post back the values, persist them through our EF Model Layer, and ultimately save them within our SQL CE database. Learn More about using EF with ASP.NET Web Forms Read this tutorial series on the http://asp.net site to learn more about how to use EF with ASP.NET Web Forms.  The tutorial series uses SQL Express as the database – but the nice thing is that all of the same steps/concepts can also now also be done with SQL CE.   Walkthrough 2: Using EF Code-First with SQL CE and ASP.NET MVC 3 We used a database-first approach with the sample above – where we first created the database, and then used the EF designer to create model classes from the database.  In addition to supporting a designer-based development workflow, EF also enables a more code-centric option which we call “code first development”.  Code-First Development enables a pretty sweet development workflow.  It enables you to: Define your model objects by simply writing “plain old classes” with no base classes or visual designer required Use a “convention over configuration” approach that enables database persistence without explicitly configuring anything Optionally override the convention-based persistence and use a fluent code API to fully customize the persistence mapping Optionally auto-create a database based on the model classes you define – allowing you to start from code first I’ve done several blog posts about EF Code First in the past – I really think it is great.  The good news is that it also works very well with SQL CE. The combination of SQL CE, EF Code First, and the new VS tooling support for SQL CE, enables a pretty nice workflow.  Below is a simple example of how you can use them to build a simple ASP.NET MVC 3 application. Step 1: Create a new ASP.NET MVC 3 Project We’ll begin by using the File->New Project menu command within Visual Studio to create a new ASP.NET MVC 3 project.  We’ll use the “Internet Project” template so that it has a default UI skin implemented: Step 2: Use NuGet to Install EFCodeFirst Next we’ll use the NuGet package manager (automatically installed by ASP.NET MVC 3) to add the EFCodeFirst library to our project.  We’ll use the Package Manager command shell to do this.  Bring up the package manager console within Visual Studio by selecting the View->Other Windows->Package Manager Console menu command.  Then type: install-package EFCodeFirst within the package manager console to download the EFCodeFirst library and have it be added to our project: When we enter the above command, the EFCodeFirst library will be downloaded and added to our application: Step 3: Build Some Model Classes Using a “code first” based development workflow, we will create our model classes first (even before we have a database).  We create these model classes by writing code. For this sample, we will right click on the “Models” folder of our project and add the below three classes to our project: The “Dinner” and “RSVP” model classes above are “plain old CLR objects” (aka POCO).  They do not need to derive from any base classes or implement any interfaces, and the properties they expose are standard .NET data-types.  No data persistence attributes or data code has been added to them.   The “NerdDinners” class derives from the DbContext class (which is supplied by EFCodeFirst) and handles the retrieval/persistence of our Dinner and RSVP instances from a database. Step 4: Listing Dinners We’ve written all of the code necessary to implement our model layer for this simple project.  Let’s now expose and implement the URL: /Dinners/Upcoming within our project.  We’ll use it to list upcoming dinners that happen in the future. We’ll do this by right-clicking on our “Controllers” folder and select the “Add->Controller” menu command.  We’ll name the Controller we want to create “DinnersController”.  We’ll then implement an “Upcoming” action method within it that lists upcoming dinners using our model layer above.  We will use a LINQ query to retrieve the data and pass it to a View to render with the code below: We’ll then right-click within our Upcoming method and choose the “Add-View” menu command to create an “Upcoming” view template that displays our dinners.  We’ll use the “empty” template option within the “Add View” dialog and write the below view template using Razor: Step 4: Configure our Project to use a SQL CE Database We have finished writing all of our code – our last step will be to configure a database connection-string to use. We will point our NerdDinners model class to a SQL CE database by adding the below <connectionString> to the web.config file at the top of our project: EF Code First uses a default convention where context classes will look for a connection-string that matches the DbContext class name.  Because we created a “NerdDinners” class earlier, we’ve also named our connectionstring “NerdDinners”.  Above we are configuring our connection-string to use SQL CE as the database, and telling it that our SQL CE database file will live within the \App_Data directory of our ASP.NET project. Step 5: Running our Application Now that we’ve built our application, let’s run it! We’ll browse to the /Dinners/Upcoming URL – doing so will display an empty list of upcoming dinners: You might ask – but where did it query to get the dinners from? We didn’t explicitly create a database?!? One of the cool features that EF Code-First supports is the ability to automatically create a database (based on the schema of our model classes) when the database we point it at doesn’t exist.  Above we configured  EF Code-First to point at a SQL CE database in the \App_Data\ directory of our project.  When we ran our application, EF Code-First saw that the SQL CE database didn’t exist and automatically created it for us. Step 6: Using VS 2010 SP1 to Explore our newly created SQL CE Database Click the “Show all Files” icon within the Solution Explorer and you’ll see the “NerdDinners.sdf” SQL CE database file that was automatically created for us by EF code-first within the \App_Data\ folder: We can optionally right-click on the file and “Include in Project" to add it to our solution: We can also double-click the file (regardless of whether it is added to the project) and VS 2010 SP1 will open it as a database we can edit within the “Server Explorer” tab of the IDE. Below is the view we get when we double-click our NerdDinners.sdf SQL CE file.  We can drill in to see the schema of the Dinners and RSVPs tables in the tree explorer.  Notice how two tables - Dinners and RSVPs – were automatically created for us within our SQL CE database.  This was done by EF Code First when we accessed the NerdDinners class by running our application above: We can right-click on a Table and use the “Show Table Data” command to enter some upcoming dinners in our database: We’ll use the built-in editor that VS 2010 SP1 supports to populate our table data below: And now when we hit “refresh” on the /Dinners/Upcoming URL within our browser we’ll see some upcoming dinners show up: Step 7: Changing our Model and Database Schema Let’s now modify the schema of our model layer and database, and walkthrough one way that the new VS 2010 SP1 Tooling support for SQL CE can make this easier.  With EF Code-First you typically start making database changes by modifying the model classes.  For example, let’s add an additional string property called “UrlLink” to our “Dinner” class.  We’ll use this to point to a link for more information about the event: Now when we re-run our project, and visit the /Dinners/Upcoming URL we’ll see an error thrown: We are seeing this error because EF Code-First automatically created our database, and by default when it does this it adds a table that helps tracks whether the schema of our database is in sync with our model classes.  EF Code-First helpfully throws an error when they become out of sync – making it easier to track down issues at development time that you might otherwise only find (via obscure errors) at runtime.  Note that if you do not want this feature you can turn it off by changing the default conventions of your DbContext class (in this case our NerdDinners class) to not track the schema version. Our model classes and database schema are out of sync in the above example – so how do we fix this?  There are two approaches you can use today: Delete the database and have EF Code First automatically re-create the database based on the new model class schema (losing the data within the existing DB) Modify the schema of the existing database to make it in sync with the model classes (keeping/migrating the data within the existing DB) There are a couple of ways you can do the second approach above.  Below I’m going to show how you can take advantage of the new VS 2010 SP1 Tooling support for SQL CE to use a database schema tool to modify our database structure.  We are also going to be supporting a “migrations” feature with EF in the future that will allow you to automate/script database schema migrations programmatically. Step 8: Modify our SQL CE Database Schema using VS 2010 SP1 The new SQL CE Tooling support within VS 2010 SP1 makes it easy to modify the schema of our existing SQL CE database.  To do this we’ll right-click on our “Dinners” table and choose the “Edit Table Schema” command: This will bring up the below “Edit Table” dialog.  We can rename, change or delete any of the existing columns in our table, or click at the bottom of the column listing and type to add a new column.  Below I’ve added a new “UrlLink” column of type “nvarchar” (since our property is a string): When we click ok our database will be updated to have the new column and our schema will now match our model classes. Because we are manually modifying our database schema, there is one additional step we need to take to let EF Code-First know that the database schema is in sync with our model classes.  As i mentioned earlier, when a database is automatically created by EF Code-First it adds a “EdmMetadata” table to the database to track schema versions (and hash our model classes against them to detect mismatches between our model classes and the database schema): Since we are manually updating and maintaining our database schema, we don’t need this table – and can just delete it: This will leave us with just the two tables that correspond to our model classes: And now when we re-run our /Dinners/Upcoming URL it will display the dinners correctly: One last touch we could do would be to update our view to check for the new UrlLink property and render a <a> link to it if an event has one: And now when we refresh our /Dinners/Upcoming we will see hyperlinks for the events that have a UrlLink stored in the database: Summary SQL CE provides a free, embedded, database engine that you can use to easily enable database storage.  With SQL CE 4 you can now take advantage of it within ASP.NET projects and applications (both Web Forms and MVC). VS 2010 SP1 provides tooling support that enables you to easily create, edit and modify SQL CE databases – as well as use the standard EF designer against them.  This allows you to re-use your existing skills and data knowledge while taking advantage of an embedded database option.  This is useful both for small applications (where you don’t need the scalability of a full SQL Server), as well as for development and testing scenarios – where you want to be able to rapidly develop/test your application without having a full database instance.  SQL CE makes it easy to later migrate your data to a full SQL Server or SQL Azure instance if you want to – without having to change any code in your application.  All we would need to change in the above two scenarios is the <connectionString> value within the web.config file in order to have our code run against a full SQL Server.  This provides the flexibility to scale up your application starting from a small embedded database solution as needed. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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