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• Passing Strings by Ref

  - by SGWellens

  Humbled yet again…DOH! No matter how much experience you acquire, no matter how smart you may be, no matter how hard you study, it is impossible to keep fully up to date on all the nuances of the technology we are exposed to. There will always be gaps in our knowledge: Little 'dead zones' of uncertainty. For me, this time, it was about passing string parameters to functions. I thought I knew this stuff cold. First, a little review... Value Types and Ref Integers and structs are value types (as opposed to reference types). When declared locally, their memory storage is on the stack; not on the heap. When passed to a function, the function gets a copy of the data and works on the copy. If a function needs to change a value type, you need to use the ref keyword.  Here's an example:     // ---- declaration -----------------     public struct MyStruct    {        public string StrTag;    }     // ---- functions -----------------------     void SetMyStruct(MyStruct myStruct)     // pass by value    {        myStruct.StrTag = "BBB";    }     void SetMyStruct(ref MyStruct myStruct)  // pass by ref    {        myStruct.StrTag = "CCC";    }     // ---- Usage -----------------------     protected void Button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)    {        MyStruct Data;        Data.StrTag = "AAA";         SetMyStruct(Data);        // Data.StrTag is still "AAA"         SetMyStruct(ref Data);        // Data.StrTag is now "CCC"    } No surprises here. All value types like ints, floats, datetimes, enums, structs, etc. work the same way. And now on to... Class Types and Ref     // ---- Declaration -----------------------------     public class MyClass    {        public string StrTag;    }     // ---- Functions ----------------------------     void SetMyClass(MyClass myClass)  // pass by 'value'    {        myClass.StrTag = "BBB";    }     void SetMyClass(ref MyClass myClass)   // pass by ref    {        myClass.StrTag = "CCC";    }     // ---- Usage ---------------------------------------     protected void Button2_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)    {        MyClass Data = new MyClass();        Data.StrTag = "AAA";         SetMyClass(Data);          // Data.StrTag is now "BBB"         SetMyClass(ref Data);        // Data.StrTag is now "CCC"    }  No surprises here either. Since Classes are reference types, you do not need the ref keyword to modify an object. What may seem a little strange is that with or without the ref keyword, the results are the same: The compiler knows what to do. So, why would you need to use the ref keyword when passing an object to a function? Because then you can change the reference itself…ie you can make it refer to a completely different object. Inside the function you can do: myClass = new MyClass() and the old object will be garbage collected and the new object will be returned to the caller. That ends the review. Now let's look at passing strings as parameters. The String Type and Ref Strings are reference types. So when you pass a String to a function, you do not need the ref keyword to change the string. Right? Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. When I saw this, I was so surprised that I fell out of my chair. Getting up, I bumped my head on my desk (which really hurt). My bumping the desk caused a large speaker to fall off of a bookshelf and land squarely on my big toe. I was screaming in pain and hopping on one foot when I lost my balance and fell. I struck my head on the side of the desk (once again) and knocked myself out cold. When I woke up, I was in the hospital where due to a database error (thanks Oracle) the doctors had put casts on both my hands. I'm typing this ever so slowly with just my ton..tong ..tongu…tongue. But I digress. Okay, the only true part of that story is that I was a bit surprised. Here is what happens passing a String to a function.     // ---- Functions ----------------------------     void SetMyString(String myString)   // pass by 'value'    {        myString = "BBB";    }     void SetMyString(ref String myString)  // pass by ref    {        myString = "CCC";    }     // ---- Usage ---------------------------------     protected void Button3_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)    {        String MyString = "AAA";         SetMyString(MyString);        // MyString is still "AAA"  What!!!!         SetMyString(ref MyString);        // MyString is now "CCC"    } What the heck. We should not have to use the ref keyword when passing a String because Strings are reference types. Why didn't the string change? What is going on?   I spent hours unssuccessfully researching this anomaly until finally, I had a Eureka moment: This code: String MyString = "AAA"; Is semantically equivalent to this code (note this code doesn't actually compile): String MyString = new String(); MyString = "AAA"; Key Point: In the function, the copy of the reference is pointed to a new object and THAT object is modified. The original reference and what it points to is unchanged. You can simulate this behavior by modifying the class example code to look like this:      void SetMyClass(MyClass myClass)  // call by 'value'    {        //myClass.StrTag = "BBB";        myClass = new MyClass();        myClass.StrTag = "BBB";    } Now when you call the SetMyClass function without using ref, the parameter is unchanged...just like the string example.  I hope someone finds this useful. Steve Wellens

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• Why might a System.String object not cache its hash code?

  - by Dan Tao

  A glance at the source code for string.GetHashCode using Reflector reveals the following (for mscorlib.dll version 4.0): public override unsafe int GetHashCode() { fixed (char* str = ((char*) this)) { char* chPtr = str; int num = 0x15051505; int num2 = num; int* numPtr = (int*) chPtr; for (int i = this.Length; i > 0; i -= 4) { num = (((num << 5) + num) + (num >> 0x1b)) ^ numPtr[0]; if (i <= 2) { break; } num2 = (((num2 << 5) + num2) + (num2 >> 0x1b)) ^ numPtr[1]; numPtr += 2; } return (num + (num2 * 0x5d588b65)); } } Now, I realize that the implementation of GetHashCode is not specified and is implementation-dependent, so the question "is GetHashCode implemented in the form of X or Y?" is not really answerable. I'm just curious about a few things: If Reflector has disassembled the DLL correctly and this is the implementation of GetHashCode (in my environment), am I correct in interpreting this code to indicate that a string object, based on this particular implementation, would not cache its hash code? Assuming the answer is yes, why would this be? It seems to me that the memory cost would be minimal (one more 32-bit integer, a drop in the pond compared to the size of the string itself) whereas the savings would be significant, especially in cases where, e.g., strings are used as keys in a hashtable-based collection like a Dictionary<string, [...]>. And since the string class is immutable, it isn't like the value returned by GetHashCode will ever even change. What could I be missing? UPDATE: In response to Andras Zoltan's closing remark: There's also the point made in Tim's answer(+1 there). If he's right, and I think he is, then there's no guarantee that a string is actually immutable after construction, therefore to cache the result would be wrong. Whoa, whoa there! This is an interesting point to make (and yes it's very true), but I really doubt that this was taken into consideration in the implementation of GetHashCode. The statement "therefore to cache the result would be wrong" implies to me that the framework's attitude regarding strings is "Well, they're supposed to be immutable, but really if developers want to get sneaky they're mutable so we'll treat them as such." This is definitely not how the framework views strings. It fully relies on their immutability in so many ways (interning of string literals, assignment of all zero-length strings to string.Empty, etc.) that, basically, if you mutate a string, you're writing code whose behavior is entirely undefined and unpredictable. I guess my point is that for the author(s) of this implementation to worry, "What if this string instance is modified between calls, even though the class as it is publicly exposed is immutable?" would be like for someone planning a casual outdoor BBQ to think to him-/herself, "What if someone brings an atomic bomb to the party?" Look, if someone brings an atom bomb, party's over.

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• globals and locals in python exec()

  - by hawkettc

  Hi, I'm trying to run a piece of python code using exec. my_code = """ class A(object): pass print 'locals: %s' % locals() print 'A: %s' % A class B(object): a_ref = A """ global_env = {} local_env = {} my_code_AST = compile(my_code, "My Code", "exec") exec(my_code_AST, global_env, local_env) print local_env which results in the following output locals: {'A': <class 'A'>} A: <class 'A'> Traceback (most recent call last): File "python_test.py", line 16, in <module> exec(my_code_AST, global_env, local_env) File "My Code", line 8, in <module> File "My Code", line 9, in B NameError: name 'A' is not defined However, if I change the code to this - my_code = """ class A(object): pass print 'locals: %s' % locals() print 'A: %s' % A class B(A): pass """ global_env = {} local_env = {} my_code_AST = compile(my_code, "My Code", "exec") exec(my_code_AST, global_env, local_env) print local_env then it works fine - giving the following output - locals: {'A': <class 'A'>} A: <class 'A'> {'A': <class 'A'>, 'B': <class 'B'>} Clearly A is present and accessible - what's going wrong in the first piece of code? I'm using 2.6.5, cheers, Colin * UPDATE 1 * If I check the locals() inside the class - my_code = """ class A(object): pass print 'locals: %s' % locals() print 'A: %s' % A class B(object): print locals() a_ref = A """ global_env = {} local_env = {} my_code_AST = compile(my_code, "My Code", "exec") exec(my_code_AST, global_env, local_env) print local_env Then it becomes clear that locals() is not the same in both places - locals: {'A': <class 'A'>} A: <class 'A'> {'__module__': '__builtin__'} Traceback (most recent call last): File "python_test.py", line 16, in <module> exec(my_code_AST, global_env, local_env) File "My Code", line 8, in <module> File "My Code", line 10, in B NameError: name 'A' is not defined However, if I do this, there is no problem - def f(): class A(object): pass class B(object): a_ref = A f() print 'Finished OK' * UPDATE 2 * ok, so the docs here - http://docs.python.org/reference/executionmodel.html 'A class definition is an executable statement that may use and define names. These references follow the normal rules for name resolution. The namespace of the class definition becomes the attribute dictionary of the class. Names defined at the class scope are not visible in methods.' It seems to me that 'A' should be made available as a free variable within the executable statement that is the definition of B, and this happens when we call f(), but not when we use exec(). This can be more easily shown with the following - my_code = """ class A(object): pass print 'locals in body: %s' % locals() print 'A: %s' % A def f(): print 'A in f: %s' % A f() class B(object): a_ref = A """ which outputs locals in body: {'A': <class 'A'>} A: <class 'A'> Traceback (most recent call last): File "python_test.py", line 20, in <module> exec(my_code_AST, global_env, local_env) File "My Code", line 11, in <module> File "My Code", line 9, in f NameError: global name 'A' is not defined So I guess the new question is - why aren't those locals being exposed as free variables in functions and class definitions - it seems like a pretty standard closure scenario.

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• Building Enterprise Smartphone App &ndash; Part 4: Application Development Considerations

  - by Tim Murphy

  This is the final part in a series of posts based on a talk I gave recently at the Chicago Information Technology Architects Group.  Feel free to leave feedback. Application Development Considerations Now we get to the actual building of your solutions.  What are the skills and resources that will be needed in order to develop a smartphone application in the enterprise? Language Knowledge One of the first things you need to consider when you are deciding which platform language do you either have the most in house skill base or can you easily acquire.  If you already have developers who know Java or C# you may want to use either Android or Windows Phone.  You should also take into consideration the market availability of developers.  If your key developer leaves how easy is it to find a knowledgeable replacement? A second consideration when it comes to programming languages is the qualities exposed by the languages of a particular platform.  How well does that development language and its associated frameworks support things like security and access to the features of the smartphone hardware?  This will play into your overall cost of ownership if you have to create this infrastructure on your own. Manage Limited Resources Everything is limited on a smartphone: battery, memory, processing power, network bandwidth.  When developing your applications you will have to keep your footprint as small as possible in every way.  This means not running unnecessary processes in the background that will drain the battery or pulling more data over the airwaves than you have to.  You also want to keep your on device in as compact a format as possible. Mobile Design Patterns There are a number of design patterns that have either come to life because of smartphone development or have been adapted for this use.  The main pattern in the Windows Phone environment is the MVVM (Model-View-View-Model).  This is great for overall application structure and separation of concerns.  The fun part is trying to keep that separation as pure as possible.  Many of the other patterns may or may not have strict definitions, but some that you need to be concerned with are push notification, asynchronous communication and offline data storage. Real estate is limited on smartphones and even tablets. You are also limited in the type of controls that can be represented in the UI. This means rethinking how you modularize your application. Typing is also much harder to do so you want to reduce this as much as possible.  This leads to UI patterns.  While not what we would traditionally think of as design patterns the guidance each platform has for UI design is critical to the success of your application.  If user find the application difficult navigate they will not use it. Development Process Because of the differences in development tools required, test devices and certification and deployment processes your teams will need to learn new way of working together.  This will include the need to integrate service contracts of back-end systems with mobile applications.  You will also want to make sure that you present consistency across different access points to corporate data.  Your web site may have more functionality than your smartphone application, but it should have a consistent core set of functionality.  This all requires greater communication between sub-teams of your developers. Testing Process Testing of smartphone apps has a lot more to do with what happens when you lose connectivity or if the user navigates away from your application. There are a lot more opportunities for the user or the device to perform disruptive acts.  This should be your main testing concentration aside from the main business requirements.  You will need to do things like setting the phone to airplane mode and seeing what the application does in order to weed out any gaps in your handling communication interruptions. Need For Outside Experts Since this is a development area that is new to most companies the need for experts is a lot greater. Whether these are consultants, vendor representatives or just development community forums you will need to establish expert contacts. Nothing is more dangerous for your project timelines than a lack of knowledge.  Make sure you know who to call to avoid lengthy delays in your project because of knowledge gaps. Security Security has to be a major concern for enterprise applications. You aren't dealing with just someone's game standings. You are dealing with a companies intellectual property and competitive advantage. As such you need to start by limiting access to the application itself.  Once the user is in the app you need to ensure that the data is secure at all times.  This includes both local storage and across the wire.  This means if a platform doesn’t natively support encryption for these functions you will need to find alternatives to secure your data.  You also need to keep secret (encryption) keys obfuscated or locked away outside of the application. People can disassemble the code otherwise and break your encryption. Offline Capabilities As we discussed earlier one your biggest concerns is not having connectivity.  Because of this a good portion of your code may be dedicated to handling loss of connection and reconnection situations.  What do you do if you lose the network?  Back up all your transactions and store of any supporting data so that operations can continue off line. In order to support this you will need to determine the available flat file or local data base capabilities of the platform.  Any failed transactions will need to support a retry mechanism whether it is automatic or user initiated.  This also includes your services since they will need to be able to roll back partially completed transactions.  What ever you do, don’t ignore this area when you are designing your system. Deployment Each platform has different deployment capabilities. Some are more suited to enterprise situations than others. Apple's approach is probably the most mature at the moment. Prior to the current generation of smartphone platforms it would have been Windows CE. Windows Phone 7 has the limitation that the app has to be distributed through the same network as public facing applications. You mark them as private which means that they are only accessible by a direct URL. Unfortunately this does not make them undiscoverable (although it is very difficult). This will change with Windows Phone 8 where companies will be able to certify their own applications and distribute them.  Given this Windows Phone applications need to be more diligent with application access in order to keep them restricted to the company's employees. My understanding of the Android deployment schemes is that it is much less standardized then either iOS or Windows Phone. Someone would have to confirm or deny that for me though since I have not yet put the time into researching this platform further. Given my limited exposure to the iOS and Android platforms I have not been able to confirm this, but there are varying degrees of user involvement to install and keep applications updated. At one extreme the user just goes to a website to do the install and in other case they may need to download files and perform steps to install them. Future Bluetooth Today we use Bluetooth for keyboards, mice and headsets.  In the future it could be used to interrogate car computers or manufacturing systems or possibly retail machines by service techs.  This would open smartphones to greater use as a almost a Star Trek Tricorder.  You would get you all your data as well as being able to use it as a universal remote for just about any device or machine. Better corporation controlled deployment At least in the Windows Phone world the upcoming release of Windows Phone 8 will include a private certification and deployment option that is currently not available with Windows Phone 7 (Mango). We currently have to run the apps through the Marketplace certification process and use a targeted distribution method. Platform independent approaches HTML5 and JavaScript with Web Service has become a popular topic lately for not only creating flexible web site, but also creating cross platform mobile applications.  I’m not yet convinced that this lowest common denominator approach is viable in most cases, but it does have it’s place and seems to be growing.  Be sure to keep an eye on it. Summary From my perspective enterprise smartphone applications can offer a great competitive advantage to many companies.  They are not cheap to build and should be approached cautiously.  Understand the factors I have outlined in this series, do you due diligence and see if there is a portion of your business that can benefit from the mobile experience. del.icio.us Tags: Architecture,Smartphones,Windows Phone,iOS,Android

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• Towards Ultra-Reusability for ADF - Adaptive Bindings

  - by Duncan Mills

  The task flow mechanism embodies one of the key value propositions of the ADF Framework, it's primary contribution being the componentization of your applications and implicitly the introduction of a re-use culture, particularly in large applications. However, what if we could do more? How could we make task flows even more re-usable than they are today? Well one great technique is to take advantage of a feature that is already present in the framework, a feature which I will call, for want of a better name, "adaptive bindings". What's an adaptive binding? well consider a simple use case.  I have several screens within my application which display tabular data which are all essentially identical, the only difference is that they happen to be based on different data collections (View Objects, Bean collections, whatever) , and have a different set of columns. Apart from that, however, they happen to be identical; same toolbar, same key functions and so on. So wouldn't it be nice if I could have a single parametrized task flow to represent that type of UI and reuse it? Hold on you say, great idea, however, to do that we'd run into problems. Each different collection that I want to display needs different entries in the pageDef file and: I want to continue to use the ADF Bindings mechanism rather than dropping back to passing the whole collection into the taskflow   If I do use bindings, there is no way I want to have to declare iterators and tree bindings for every possible collection that I might want the flow to handle  Ah, joy! I reply, no need to panic, you can just use adaptive bindings. Defining an Adaptive Binding  It's easiest to explain with a simple before and after use case.  Here's a basic pageDef definition for our familiar Departments table.  <executables> <iterator Binds="DepartmentsView1" DataControl="HRAppModuleDataControl" RangeSize="25"             id="DepartmentsView1Iterator"/> </executables> <bindings> <tree IterBinding="DepartmentsView1Iterator" id="DepartmentsView1">   <nodeDefinition DefName="oracle.demo.model.vo.DepartmentsView" Name="DepartmentsView10">     <AttrNames>       <Item Value="DepartmentId"/>         <Item Value="DepartmentName"/>         <Item Value="ManagerId"/>         <Item Value="LocationId"/>       </AttrNames>     </nodeDefinition> </tree> </bindings>  Here's the adaptive version: <executables> <iterator Binds="${pageFlowScope.voName}" DataControl="HRAppModuleDataControl" RangeSize="25"             id="TableSourceIterator"/> </executables> <bindings> <tree IterBinding="TableSourceIterator" id="GenericView"> <nodeDefinition Name="GenericViewNode"/> </tree> </bindings>  You'll notice three changes here.   Most importantly, you'll see that the hard-coded View Object name  that formally populated the iterator Binds attribute is gone and has been replaced by an expression (${pageFlowScope.voName}). This of course, is key, you can see that we can pass a parameter to the task flow, telling it exactly what VO to instantiate to populate this table! I've changed the IDs of the iterator and the tree binding, simply to reflect that they are now re-usable The tree binding itself has simplified and the node definition is now empty.  Now what this effectively means is that the #{node} map exposed through the tree binding will expose every attribute of the underlying iterator's collection - neat! (kudos to Eugene Fedorenko at this point who reminded me that this was even possible in his excellent "deep dive" session at OpenWorld  this year) Using the adaptive binding in the UI Now we have a parametrized  binding we have to make changes in the UI as well, first of all to reflect the new ID that we've assigned to the binding (of course) but also to change the column list from being a fixed known list to being a generic metadata driven set: <af:table value="#{bindings.GenericView.collectionModel}" rows="#{bindings.GenericView.rangeSize}"         fetchSize="#{bindings.GenericView.rangeSize}"           emptyText="#{bindings.GenericView.viewable ? 'No data to display.' : 'Access Denied.'}"           var="row" rowBandingInterval="0"           selectedRowKeys="#{bindings.GenericView.collectionModel.selectedRow}"           selectionListener="#{bindings.GenericView.collectionModel.makeCurrent}"           rowSelection="single" id="t1"> <af:forEach items="#{bindings.GenericView.attributeDefs}" var="def">   <af:column headerText="#{bindings.GenericView.labels[def.name]}" sortable="true"            sortProperty="#{def.name}" id="c1">     <af:outputText value="#{row[def.name]}" id="ot1"/>     </af:column>   </af:forEach> </af:table> Of course you are not constrained to a simple read only table here.  It's a normal tree binding and iterator that you are using behind the scenes so you can do all the usual things, but you can see the value of using ADFBC as the back end model as you have the rich pantheon of UI hints to use to derive things like labels (and validators and converters...)  One Final Twist  To finish on a high note I wanted to point out that you can take this even further and achieve the ultra-reusability I promised. Here's the new version of the pageDef iterator, see if you can notice the subtle change? <iterator Binds="{pageFlowScope.voName}"  DataControl="${pageFlowScope.dataControlName}" RangeSize="25"           id="TableSourceIterator"/>  Yes, as well as parametrizing the collection (VO) name, we can also parametrize the name of the data control. So your task flow can graduate from being re-usable within an application to being truly generic. So if you have some really common patterns within your app you can wrap them up and reuse then across multiple developments without having to dictate data control names, or connection names. This also demonstrates the importance of interacting with data only via the binding layer APIs. If you keep any code in the task flow generic in that way you can deal with data from multiple types of data controls, not just one flavour. Enjoy!

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• Jquery Close/Open Multiple Toggles

  - by Pedro

  Hi, I have the toggle in my menu Working successfully for the two links that I have within it. Because the top link once toggled covers the other link, there is no problem. But since the link beneath it leaves the top link exposed, a user could click that and now have two toggled items open and pretty much stacked on top of each other. Is there a way for me to check if the other toggled item is open and if so, close it? Thanks! <div class="parents-toggle"> <a href="#" id="customize-toggle">Customize</a><br/> <div class="menu-toggle hidden" id="customize-menu"> <div class="menu-toggle-one"> <h3>Background</h3> <ul> <li><a href="#">Dark Wood</a></li> <li><a href="#">Wallpaper</a></li> <li><a href="#">Bricks</a></li> <li><a href="#">Planks</a></li> <li><a href="#">Default</a></li> </ul> </div> <div class="menu-toggle-two"> <h3>Layout</h3> <ul> <li><a href="#">Grid</a></li> <li><a href="#">List</a></li> <li><a href="#">Full</a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div> <a href="/submit/">Submit video</a><br/> <div class="parents-toggle"> <a href="#" id="channels-toggle">Channels</a> <div class="menu-toggle hidden" id="channels-menu"> <div class="menu-toggle-one"> <ul> <li><a href="#">Automotive</a></li> <li><a href="#">Comedy</a></li> <li><a href="#">Movies</a></li> <li><a href="#">Weather</a></li> </ul> </div> <div class="menu-toggle-two"> <ul> <li><a href="#">Business</a></li> <li><a href="#">Commercials</a></li> <li><a href="#">Music</a></li> <li><a href="#">Technology</a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div> </div> <script> $("#customize-toggle").click(function () { $("#customize-menu").toggle(); }); $("#channels-toggle").click(function () { $("#channels-menu").toggle(); }); </script>

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• Give Markup support for Custom server control with public PlaceHolders properties

  - by ravinsp

  I have a custom server control with two public PlaceHolder properties exposed to outside. I can use this control in a page like this: <cc1:MyControl ID="MyControl1" runat="server"> <TitleTemplate> Title text and anything else </TitleTemplate> <ContentTemplate> <asp:TextBox ID="TextBox1" runat="server"></asp:TextBox> <asp:Button ID="Button1" runat="server" Text="Button" /> </ContentTemplate> </cc1:MyControl> TitleTemplate and ContentTemplate are properties of type asp.net PlaceHolder class. Everything works fine. The control gets any content given to these custom properties and produces a custom HTML output around them. If I want a Button1_Click event handler, I can attach the event handler in Page_Load like the following code. And it works. protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { Button1.Click += new EventHandler(Button1_Click); } void Button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { TextBox1.Text = "Button1 clicked"; } But if try to attach the click event handler in aspx markup I get an error when running the application "Compiler Error Message: CS0117: 'ASP.default_aspx' does not contain a definition for 'Button1_Click' <asp:Button ID="Button1" runat="server" Text="Button" OnClick="Button1_Click" /> AutoEventWireup is set to "true" in the page markup. This happens only for child controls inside my custom control. I can programatically access child control correctly. Only problem is with event handler assignment from Markup. When I select the child Button in markup, the properties window only detects it as a < BUTTON. Not System.Web.UI.Controls.Button. It also doesn't display the "Events" tab. How can I give markup support for this scenario? Here's code for MyControl class if needed. And remember, I'm not using any ITemplate types for this. The custom properties I provide are of type "PlaceHolder". [ToolboxData("<{0}:MyControl runat=server>" + "<TitleTemplate></TitleTemplate>" + "<ContentTemplate></ContentTemplate>" + "</{0}:MyControl>")] public class MyControl : WebControl { PlaceHolder contentTemplate, titleTemplate; public MyControl() { contentTemplate = new PlaceHolder(); titleTemplate = new PlaceHolder(); Controls.Add(contentTemplate); Controls.Add(titleTemplate); } [Browsable(true)] [TemplateContainer(typeof(PlaceHolder))] [PersistenceMode(PersistenceMode.InnerProperty)] public PlaceHolder TitleTemplate { get { return titleTemplate; } } [Browsable(true)] [TemplateContainer(typeof(PlaceHolder))] [PersistenceMode(PersistenceMode.InnerProperty)] public PlaceHolder ContentTemplate { get { return contentTemplate; } } protected override void RenderContents(HtmlTextWriter output) { output.Write("<div>"); output.Write("<div class=\"title\">"); titleTemplate.RenderControl(output); output.Write("</div>"); output.Write("<div class=\"content\">"); contentTemplate.RenderControl(output); output.Write("</div>"); output.Write("</div>"); } }

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• How to bind to the sum of two data bound values in WPF?

  - by Sheridan

  I have designed an analog clock control. It uses the stroke from two ellipses to represent an outer border and an inner border to the clock face. I have exposed properties in the UserControl that allow a user to alter the thickness of these two borders. The Ellipse.StrokeThickness properties are then bound to these UserControl properties. At the moment, I am binding the UserControl property for the outer border thickness to the margins of the inner elements so that they are not hidden when the border size is increased. <Ellipse Name="OuterBorder" Panel.ZIndex="1" StrokeThickness="{Binding OuterBorderThickness, ElementName=This}" Stroke="{StaticResource OuterBorderBrush}" /> <Ellipse Name="InnerBorder" Panel.ZIndex="5" StrokeThickness="{Binding InnerBorderThickness, ElementName=This}" Margin="{Binding OuterBorderThickness, ElementName=This}" Stroke="{StaticResource InnerBorderBrush}"> ... <Ellipse Name="Face" Panel.ZIndex="1" Margin="{Binding OuterBorderThickness, ElementName=This}" Fill="{StaticResource FaceBackgroundBrush}" /> ... The problem is that if the inner border thickness is increased, this does not affect the margins and so the hour ticks and numbers can become partially obscured or hidden. So what I really need is to be able to bind the margin properties of the inner controls to the sum of the inner and outer border thickness values (they are of type double). I have done this successfully using 'DataContext = this;', but am trying to rewrite the control without this as I hear it is not recommended. I also thought about using a converter and passing the second value as the ConverterParameter, but didn't know how to bind to the ConverterParameter. Any tips would be greatly appreciated. EDIT Thanks to Kent's suggestion, I've created a simple MultiConverter to add the input values and return the result. I've hooked the SAME multibinding with converter XAML to both a TextBlock.Text property and the TextBlock.Margin property to test it. <TextBlock> <TextBlock.Text> <MultiBinding Converter="{StaticResource SumConverter}" ConverterParameter="Add"> <Binding Path="OuterBorderThickness" ElementName="This" /> <Binding Path="InnerBorderThickness" ElementName="This" /> </MultiBinding> </TextBlock.Text> <TextBlock.Margin> <MultiBinding Converter="{StaticResource SumConverter}" ConverterParameter="Add"> <Binding Path="OuterBorderThickness" ElementName="This" /> <Binding Path="InnerBorderThickness" ElementName="This" /> </MultiBinding> </TextBlock.Margin> </TextBlock> I can see the correct value displayed in the TexBlock, but the Margin is not set. Any ideas? EDIT Interestingly, the Margin property can be bound to a data property of type double, but this does not seem to apply within a MultiBinding. As advised by Kent, I changed the Converter to return the value as a Thickness object and now it works. Thanks Kent.

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• What does a WinForm application need to be designed for usability, and be robust, clean, and profess

  - by msorens

  One of the principal problems impeding productivity in software implementation is the classic conundrum of “reinventing the wheel”. Of late I am a .NET developer and even the wonderful wizardry of .NET and Visual Studio covers only a portion of this challenging issue. Below I present my initial thoughts both on what is available and what should be available from .NET on a WinForm, focusing on good usability. That is, aspects of an application exposed to the user and making the user experience easier and/or better. (I do include a couple items not visible to the user because I feel strongly about them, such as diagnostics.) I invite you to contribute to these lists. LIST A: Components provided by .NET These are substantially complete components provided by .NET, i.e. those requiring at most trivial coding to use. “About” dialog -- add it with a couple clicks then customize. Persist settings across invocations -- .NET has the support; just use a few lines of code to glue them together. Migrate settings with a new version -- a powerful one, available with one line of code. Tooltips (and infotips) -- .NET includes just plain text tooltips; third-party libraries provide richer ones. Diagnostic support -- TraceSources, TraceListeners, and more are built-in. Internationalization -- support for tailoring your app to languages other than your own. LIST B: Components not provided by .NET These are not supplied at all by .NET or supplied only as rudimentary elements requiring substantial work to be realized. Splash screen -- a small window present during program startup with your logo, loading messages, etc. Tip of the day -- a mini-tutorial presented one bit at a time each time the user starts your app. Check for available updates -- facility to query a server to see if the user is running the latest version of your app, then provide a simple way to upgrade if a new version is found. Maximize to multiple monitors -- the canonical window allows you to maximize to a single monitor only; in my apps I allow maximizing across multiple monitors with a click. Taskbar notifier -- flash the taskbar when your backgrounded app has new info for the user. Options dialogs -- multi-page dialogs letting the user customize the app settings to his/her own preferences. Progress indicator -- for long running operations give the user feedback on how far there is left to go. Memory gauge -- an indicator (either absolute or percentage) of how much memory is used by your app. LIST C: Stylistic and/or tiny bits of functionality This list includes bits of functionality that are too tiny to merit being called a component, along with stylistic concerns (that admittedly do overlap with the Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines). Design a form for resizing -- unless you are restricting your form to be a fixed size, use anchors and docking so that it does what is reasonable when enlarged or shrunk by the user. Set tab order on a form -- repeated tab presses by the user should advance from field to field in a logical order rather than the default order in which you added fields. Adjust controls to be aware of operating modes -- When starting a background operation with, for example, a “Go” button, disable that “Go” button until the operation completes. Provide access keys for all menu items (per UXGuide). Provide shortcut keys for commonly used menu items (per UXGuide). Set up some (global or important or common) shortcut keys without associating to menu items. Allow some menu items to be invoked with or without modifier keys (shift, control, alt) where the modifier key is useful to vary the operation slightly. Hook up Escape and Enter on child forms to do what is reasonable. Decorate any library classes with documentation-comments and attributes -- this allows Visual Studio to leverage them for Intellisense and property descriptions. Spell check your code! What else would you include?

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• How to reserve public API to internal usage in .NET?

  - by mark

  Dear ladies and sirs. Let me first present the case, which will explain my question. This is going to be a bit long, so I apologize in advance :-). I have objects and collections, which should support the Merge API (it is my custom API, the signature of which is immaterial for this question). This API must be internal, meaning only my framework should be allowed to invoke it. However, derived types should be able to override the basic implementation. The natural way to implement this pattern as I see it, is this: The Merge API is declared as part of some internal interface, let us say IMergeable. Because the interface is internal, derived types would not be able to implement it directly. Rather they must inherit it from a common base type. So, a common base type is introduced, which would implement the IMergeable interface explicitly, where the interface methods delegate to respective protected virtual methods, providing the default implementation. This way the API is only callable by my framework, but derived types may override the default implementation. The following code snippet demonstrates the concept: internal interface IMergeable { void Merge(object obj); } public class BaseFrameworkObject : IMergeable { protected virtual void Merge(object obj) { // The default implementation. } void IMergeable.Merge(object obj) { Merge(obj); } } public class SomeThirdPartyObject : BaseFrameworkObject { protected override void Merge(object obj) { // A derived type implementation. } } All is fine, provided a single common base type suffices, which is usually true for non collection types. The thing is that collections must be mergeable as well. Collections do not play nicely with the presented concept, because developers do not develop collections from the scratch. There are predefined implementations - observable, filtered, compound, read-only, remove-only, ordered, god-knows-what, ... They may be developed from scratch in-house, but once finished, they serve wide range of products and should never be tailored to some specific product. Which means, that either: they do not implement the IMergeable interface at all, because it is internal to some product the scope of the IMergeable interface is raised to public and the API becomes open and callable by all. Let us refer to these collections as standard collections. Anyway, the first option screws my framework, because now each possible standard collection type has to be paired with the respective framework version, augmenting the standard with the IMergeable interface implementation - this is so bad, I am not even considering it. The second option breaks the framework as well, because the IMergeable interface should be internal for a reason (whatever it is) and now this interface has to open to all. So what to do? My solution is this. make IMergeable public API, but add an extra parameter to the Merge method, I call it a security token. The interface implementation may check that the token references some internal object, which is never exposed to the outside. If this is the case, then the method was called from within the framework, otherwise - some outside API consumer attempted to invoke it and so the implementation can blow up with a SecurityException. Here is the modified code snippet demonstrating this concept: internal static class InternalApi { internal static readonly object Token = new object(); } public interface IMergeable { void Merge(object obj, object token); } public class BaseFrameworkObject : IMergeable { protected virtual void Merge(object obj) { // The default implementation. } public void Merge(object obj, object token) { if (!object.ReferenceEquals(token, InternalApi.Token)) { throw new SecurityException("bla bla bla"); } Merge(obj); } } public class SomeThirdPartyObject : BaseFrameworkObject { protected override void Merge(object obj) { // A derived type implementation. } } Of course, this is less explicit than having an internally scoped interface and the check is moved from the compile time to run time, yet this is the best I could come up with. Now, I have a gut feeling that there is a better way to solve the problem I have presented. I do not know, may be using some standard Code Access Security features? I have only vague understanding of it, but can LinkDemand attribute be somehow related to it? Anyway, I would like to hear other opinions. Thanks.

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• Referencing variables in a structure / C++

  - by user1628622

  Below, I provided a minimal example of code I created. I managed to get this code working, but I'm not sure if the practice being employed is sound. In essence, what I am trying to do is have the 'Parameter' class reference select elements in the 'States' class, so variables in States can be changed via Parameters. Questions I have: is the approach taken OK? If not, is there a better way to achieve what I am aiming for? Example code: struct VAR_TYPE{ public: bool is_fixed; // If is_fixed = true, then variable is a parameter double value; // Numerical value std::string name; // Description of variable (to identify it by name) }; struct NODE{ public: VAR_TYPE X, Y, Z; /* VAR_TYPE is a structure of primitive types */ }; class States{ private: std::vector <NODE_ptr> node; // shared ptr to struct NODE std::vector <PROP_DICTIONARY_ptr> property; // CAN NOT be part of Parameter std::vector <ELEMENT_ptr> element; // CAN NOT be part of Parameter public: /* ect */ void set_X_reference ( Parameter &T , int i ) { T.push_var( &node[i]->X ); } void set_Y_reference ( Parameter &T , int i ) { T.push_var( &node[i]->Y ); } void set_Z_reference ( Parameter &T , int i ) { T.push_var( &node[i]->Z ); } bool get_node_bool_X( int i ) { return node[i]->X.is_fixed; } // repeat for Y and Z }; class Parameter{ private: std::vector <VAR_TYPE*> var; public: /* ect */ }; int main(){ States S; Parameter P; /* Here I initialize and set S, and do other stuff */ // Now I assign components in States to Parameters for(int n=0 ; n<S.size_of_nodes() ; n++ ){ if ( S.get_node_bool_X(n)==true ){ S.set_X_reference ( P , n ); }; // repeat if statement for Y and Z }; /* Now P points selected to data in S, and I can * modify the contents of S through P */ return 0; }; Update The reason this issue cropped up is I am working with Fortran legacy code. To sum up this Fotran code - it's a numerical simulation of a flight vehicle. This code has a fairly rigid procedural framework one must work within, which comes with a pre-defined list of allowable Fortran types. The Fortran glue code can create an instance of a C++ object (in actuality, a reference from the perspective of Fortran), but is not aware what is contained in it (other means are used to extract C++ data into Fortran). The problem that I encountered is when a C++ module is dynamically linked to the Fortran glue code, C++ objects have to be initialized each instance the C++ code is called. This happens by virtue of how the Fortran template is defined. To avoid this cycle of re-initializing objects, I plan to use 'State' as a container class. The Fortran code allows a 'State' object, which has an arbitrary definition; but I plan to use it to harness all relevant information about the model. The idea is to use the Parameters class (which is exposed and updated by the Fortran code) to update variables in States.

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• SOA Suite 11g Native Format Builder Complex Format Example

  - by bob.webster

  This rather long posting details the steps required to process a grouping of fixed length records using Format Builder.   If it’s 10 pm and you’re feeling beat you might want to leave this until tomorrow.  But if it’s 10 pm and you need to get a Format Builder Complex template done, read on… The goal is to process individual orders from a file using the 11g File Adapter and Format Builder Sample Data =========== 001Square Widget            0245.98 102Triagular Widget         1120.00 403Circular Widget           0099.45 ORD8898302/01/2011 301Hexagon Widget         1150.98 ORD6735502/01/2011 The records are fixed length records representing a number of logical Order records. Each order record consists of a number of item records starting with a 3 digit number, followed by a single Summary Record which starts with the constant ORD. How can this file be processed so that the first poll returns the first order? 001Square Widget            0245.98 102Triagular Widget         1120.00 403Circular Widget           0099.45 ORD8898302/01/2011 And the second poll returns the second order? 301Hexagon Widget           1150.98 ORD6735502/01/2011 Note: if you need more than one order per poll, that’s also possible, see the “Multiple Messages” field in the “File Adapter Step 6 of 9” snapshot further down.   To follow along with this example you will need - Studio Edition Version 11.1.1.4.0    with the   - SOA Extension for JDeveloper 11.1.1.4.0 installed Both can be downloaded from here:  http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/soasuite/downloads/index.html You will not need a running WebLogic Server domain to complete the steps and Format Builder tests in this article.     Start with a SOA Composite containing a File Adapter The Format Builder is part of the File Adapter so start by creating a new SOA Project and Composite. Here is a quick summary for those not familiar with these steps - Start JDeveloper - From the Main Menu choose File->New - In the New Gallery window that opens Expand the “General” category and Select the Applications node.   Then choose SOA Application from the Items section on the right.  Finally press the OK button. - In Step 1 of the “Create SOA Application wizard” that appears enter an Application Name and an Directory of your     choice,   then press the Next button. - In Step 2 of the “Create SOA Application wizard”, press the Next button leaving all entries as defaulted. - In Step 3 of the “Create SOA Application wizard”, Enter a composite name of your choice and Press the Finish   Button These steps result in a new Application and SOA Project. The SOA Project contains a composite.xml file which is opened and shown below. For our example we have not defined a Mediator or a BPEL process to minimize the steps, but one or the other would eventually be needed to use the File Adapter we are about to create. Drag and drop the File Adapter icon from the Component Pallette onto either the LEFT side of the diagram under “Exposed Services” or the right side under “External References”.  (See the Green Circle in the image below).  Placing the adapter on the left side would indicate the file being processed is inbound to the composite, if the adapter is placed on the right side then the data is outbound to a file.     Note that the same Format Builder definition can be used in both directions.  For example we could use the format with a File Adapter on the left side of the composite to parse fixed data into XML, modify the data in our Composite or BPEL process and then use the same Format Builder definition with a File adapter on the right side of the composite to write the data back out in the same fixed data format When the File Adapter is dropped on the Composite the File Adapter Wizard Appears. Skip Past the first page, Step 1 of 9 by pressing the Next button. In Step 2 enter a service name of your choice as shown below, then press Next   When the Native Format Builder appears, skip the welcome page by pressing next. Also press the Next button to accept the settings on Step 3 of 9 On Step 4, select Read File and press the Next button as shown below.   On Step 5 enter a directory that will contain a file with the input data, then  Press the Next button as shown below. In step 6, enter *.txt or another file format to select input files from the input directory mentioned in step 5. ALSO check the “Files contain Multiple Messages” checkbox and set the “Publish Messages in Batches of” field to 1.  The value can be set higher to increase the number of logical order group records returned on each poll of the file adapter.  In other words, it determines the number of Orders that will be sent to each instance of a Mediator or Composite processing using the File Adapter.   Skip Step 7 by pressing the Next button In Step 8 press the Gear Icon on the right side to load the Native Format Builder.       Native Format Builder  appears Before diving into the format, here is an overview of the process. Approach - Bottom up Assuming an Order is a grouping of item records and a summary record…. - Define a separate  Complex Type for each Record Type found in the group.    (One for itemRecord and one for summaryRecord) - Define a Complex Type to contain the Group of Record types defined above   (LogicalOrderRecord) - Define a top level element to represent an order.  (order)   The order element will be of type LogicalOrderRecord   Defining the Format In Step 1 select   “Create new”  and  “Complex Type” and “Next”   In Step two browse to and select a file containing the test data shown at the start of this article. A link is provided at the end of this article to download a file containing the test data. Press the Next button     In Step 3 Complex types must be define for each type of input record. Select the Root-Element and Click on the Add Complex Type icon This creates a new empty complex type definition shown below. The fastest way to create the definition is to highlight the first line of the Sample File data and drag the line onto the  <new_complex_type> Format Builder introspects the data and provides a grid to define additional fields. Change the “Complex Type Name” to  “itemRecord” Then click on the ruler to indicate the position of fixed columns.  Drag the red triangle icons to the exact columns if necessary. Double click on an existing red triangle to remove an unwanted entry. In the case below fields are define in columns 0-3, 4-28, 29-eol When the field definitions are correct, press the “Generate Fields” button. Field entries named C1, C2 and C3 will be created as shown below. Click on the field names and rename them from C1->itemNum, C2->itemDesc and C3->itemCost  When all the fields are correctly defined press OK to save the complex type.        Next, the process is repeated to define a Complex Type for the SummaryRecord. Select the Root-Element in the schema tree and press the new complex type icon Then highlight and drag the Summary Record from the sample data onto the <new_complex_type>   Change the complex type name to “summaryRecord” Mark the fixed fields for Order Number and Order Date. Press the Generate Fields button and rename C1 and C2 to itemNum and orderDate respectively.   The last complex type to be defined is a type to hold the group of items and the summary record. Select the Root-Element in the schema tree and click the new complex type icon Select the “<new_complex_type>” entry and click the pencil icon   On the Complex Type Details page change the name and type of each input field. Change line 1 to be named item and set the Type  to “itemRecord” Change line 2 to be named summary and set the Type to “summaryRecord” We also need to indicate that itemRecords repeat in the input file. Click the pencil icon at the right side of the item line. On the Edit Details page change the “Max Occurs” entry from 1 to UNBOUNDED. We also need to indicate how to identify an itemRecord.  Since each item record has “.” in column 32 we can use this fact to differentiate an item record from a summary record. Change the “Look Ahead” field to value 32 and enter a period in the “Look For” field Press the OK button to save entry.     Finally, its time to create a top level element to represent an order. Select the “Root-Element” in the schema tree and press the New element icon Click on the <new_element> and press the pencil icon.   Set the Element Name to “order” and change the Data Type to “logicalOrderRecord” Press the OK button to save the element definition.   The final definition should match the screenshot below. Press the Next Button to view the definition source.     Press the Test Button to test the definition   Press the Green Triangle Icon to run the test.   And we are presented with an unwelcome error. The error states that the processor ran out of data while working through the definition. The processor was unable to differentiate between itemRecords and summaryRecords and therefore treated the entire file as a list of itemRecords.  At end of file, the “summary” portion of the logicalOrderRecord remained unprocessed but mandatory.   This root cause of this error is the loss of our “lookAhead” definition used to identify itemRecords. This appears to be a bug in the  Native Format Builder 11.1.1.4.0 Luckily, a simple workaround exists. Press the Cancel button and return to the “Step 4 of 4” Window. Manually add    nxsd:lookAhead="32" nxsd:lookFor="."   attributes after the maxOccurs attribute of the item element. as shown in the highlighted text below.   When the lookAhead and lookFor attributes have been added Press the Test button and on the Test page press the Green Triangle. The test is now successful, the first order in the file is returned by the File Adapter.     Below is a complete listing of the Result XML from the right column of the screen above   Try running it The downloaded input test file and completed schema file can be used for testing without following all the Native Format Builder steps in this example. Use the following link to download a file containing the sample data. Download Sample Input Data This is the best approach rather than cutting and pasting the input data at the top of the article.  Since the data is fixed length it’s very important to watch out for trailing spaces in the data and to ensure an eol character at the end of every line. The download file is correctly formatted. The final schema definition can be downloaded at the following link Download Completed Schema Definition   - Save the inputData.txt file to a known location like the xsd folder in your project. - Save the inputData_6.xsd file to the xsd folder in your project. - At step 1 in the Native Format Builder wizard  (as shown above) check the “Edit existing” radio button,    then browse and select the inputData_6.xsd file - At step 2 of the Format Builder configuration Wizard (as shown above) supply the path and filename for    the inputData.txt file. - You can then proceed to the test page and run a test. - Remember the wizard bug will drop the lookAhead and lookFor attributes,  you will need to manually add   nxsd:lookAhead="32" nxsd:lookFor="."    after the maxOccurs attribute of the item element in the   LogicalOrderRecord Complex Type.  (as shown above)   Good Luck with your Format Project

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• jQuery Globalization Plugin from Microsoft

  - by ScottGu

  Last month I blogged about how Microsoft is starting to make code contributions to jQuery, and about some of the first code contributions we were working on: jQuery Templates and Data Linking support. Today, we released a prototype of a new jQuery Globalization Plugin that enables you to add globalization support to your JavaScript applications. This plugin includes globalization information for over 350 cultures ranging from Scottish Gaelic, Frisian, Hungarian, Japanese, to Canadian English.  We will be releasing this plugin to the community as open-source. You can download our prototype for the jQuery Globalization plugin from our Github repository: http://github.com/nje/jquery-glob You can also download a set of samples that demonstrate some simple use-cases with it here. Understanding Globalization The jQuery Globalization plugin enables you to easily parse and format numbers, currencies, and dates for different cultures in JavaScript. For example, you can use the Globalization plugin to display the proper currency symbol for a culture: You also can use the Globalization plugin to format dates so that the day and month appear in the right order and the day and month names are correctly translated: Notice above how the Arabic year is displayed as 1431. This is because the year has been converted to use the Arabic calendar. Some cultural differences, such as different currency or different month names, are obvious. Other cultural differences are surprising and subtle. For example, in some cultures, the grouping of numbers is done unevenly. In the "te-IN" culture (Telugu in India), groups have 3 digits and then 2 digits. The number 1000000 (one million) is written as "10,00,000". Some cultures do not group numbers at all. All of these subtle cultural differences are handled by the jQuery Globalization plugin automatically. Getting dates right can be especially tricky. Different cultures have different calendars such as the Gregorian and UmAlQura calendars. A single culture can even have multiple calendars. For example, the Japanese culture uses both the Gregorian calendar and a Japanese calendar that has eras named after Japanese emperors. The Globalization Plugin includes methods for converting dates between all of these different calendars. Using Language Tags The jQuery Globalization plugin uses the language tags defined in the RFC 4646 and RFC 5646 standards to identity cultures (see http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5646). A language tag is composed out of one or more subtags separated by hyphens. For example: Language Tag Language Name (in English) en-AU English (Australia) en-BZ English (Belize) en-CA English (Canada) Id Indonesian zh-CHS Chinese (Simplified) Legacy Zu isiZulu Notice that a single language, such as English, can have several language tags. Speakers of English in Canada format numbers, currencies, and dates using different conventions than speakers of English in Australia or the United States. You can find the language tag for a particular culture by using the Language Subtag Lookup tool located here:  http://rishida.net/utils/subtags/ The jQuery Globalization plugin download includes a folder named globinfo that contains the information for each of the 350 cultures. Actually, this folder contains more than 700 files because the folder includes both minified and un-minified versions of each file. For example, the globinfo folder includes JavaScript files named jQuery.glob.en-AU.js for English Australia, jQuery.glob.id.js for Indonesia, and jQuery.glob.zh-CHS for Chinese (Simplified) Legacy. Example: Setting a Particular Culture Imagine that you have been asked to create a German website and want to format all of the dates, currencies, and numbers using German formatting conventions correctly in JavaScript on the client. The HTML for the page might look like this: Notice the span tags above. They mark the areas of the page that we want to format with the Globalization plugin. We want to format the product price, the date the product is available, and the units of the product in stock. To use the jQuery Globalization plugin, we’ll add three JavaScript files to the page: the jQuery library, the jQuery Globalization plugin, and the culture information for a particular language: In this case, I’ve statically added the jQuery.glob.de-DE.js JavaScript file that contains the culture information for German. The language tag “de-DE” is used for German as spoken in Germany. Now that I have all of the necessary scripts, I can use the Globalization plugin to format the product price, date available, and units in stock values using the following client-side JavaScript: The jQuery Globalization plugin extends the jQuery library with new methods - including new methods named preferCulture() and format(). The preferCulture() method enables you to set the default culture used by the jQuery Globalization plugin methods. Notice that the preferCulture() method accepts a language tag. The method will find the closest culture that matches the language tag. The $.format() method is used to actually format the currencies, dates, and numbers. The second parameter passed to the $.format() method is a format specifier. For example, passing “c” causes the value to be formatted as a currency. The ReadMe file at github details the meaning of all of the various format specifiers: http://github.com/nje/jquery-glob When we open the page in a browser, everything is formatted correctly according to German language conventions. A euro symbol is used for the currency symbol. The date is formatted using German day and month names. Finally, a period instead of a comma is used a number separator: You can see a running example of the above approach with the 3_GermanSite.htm file in this samples download. Example: Enabling a User to Dynamically Select a Culture In the previous example we explicitly said that we wanted to globalize in German (by referencing the jQuery.glob.de-DE.js file). Let’s now look at the first of a few examples that demonstrate how to dynamically set the globalization culture to use. Imagine that you want to display a dropdown list of all of the 350 cultures in a page. When someone selects a culture from the dropdown list, you want all of the dates in the page to be formatted using the selected culture. Here’s the HTML for the page: Notice that all of the dates are contained in a <span> tag with a data-date attribute (data-* attributes are a new feature of HTML 5 that conveniently also still work with older browsers). We’ll format the date represented by the data-date attribute when a user selects a culture from the dropdown list. In order to display dates for any possible culture, we’ll include the jQuery.glob.all.js file like this: The jQuery Globalization plugin includes a JavaScript file named jQuery.glob.all.js. This file contains globalization information for all of the more than 350 cultures supported by the Globalization plugin.  At 367KB minified, this file is not small. Because of the size of this file, unless you really need to use all of these cultures at the same time, we recommend that you add the individual JavaScript files for particular cultures that you intend to support instead of the combined jQuery.glob.all.js to a page. In the next sample I’ll show how to dynamically load just the language files you need. Next, we’ll populate the dropdown list with all of the available cultures. We can use the $.cultures property to get all of the loaded cultures: Finally, we’ll write jQuery code that grabs every span element with a data-date attribute and format the date: The jQuery Globalization plugin’s parseDate() method is used to convert a string representation of a date into a JavaScript date. The plugin’s format() method is used to format the date. The “D” format specifier causes the date to be formatted using the long date format. And now the content will be globalized correctly regardless of which of the 350 languages a user visiting the page selects.  You can see a running example of the above approach with the 4_SelectCulture.htm file in this samples download. Example: Loading Globalization Files Dynamically As mentioned in the previous section, you should avoid adding the jQuery.glob.all.js file to a page whenever possible because the file is so large. A better alternative is to load the globalization information that you need dynamically. For example, imagine that you have created a dropdown list that displays a list of languages: The following jQuery code executes whenever a user selects a new language from the dropdown list. The code checks whether the globalization file associated with the selected language has already been loaded. If the globalization file has not been loaded then the globalization file is loaded dynamically by taking advantage of the jQuery $.getScript() method. The globalizePage() method is called after the requested globalization file has been loaded, and contains the client-side code to perform the globalization. The advantage of this approach is that it enables you to avoid loading the entire jQuery.glob.all.js file. Instead you only need to load the files that you need and you don’t need to load the files more than once. The 5_Dynamic.htm file in this samples download demonstrates how to implement this approach. Example: Setting the User Preferred Language Automatically Many websites detect a user’s preferred language from their browser settings and automatically use it when globalizing content. A user can set a preferred language for their browser. Then, whenever the user requests a page, this language preference is included in the request in the Accept-Language header. When using Microsoft Internet Explorer, you can set your preferred language by following these steps: Select the menu option Tools, Internet Options. Select the General tab. Click the Languages button in the Appearance section. Click the Add button to add a new language to the list of languages. Move your preferred language to the top of the list. Notice that you can list multiple languages in the Language Preference dialog. All of these languages are sent in the order that you listed them in the Accept-Language header: Accept-Language: fr-FR,id-ID;q=0.7,en-US;q=0.3 Strangely, you cannot retrieve the value of the Accept-Language header from client JavaScript. Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox support a bevy of language related properties exposed by the window.navigator object, such as windows.navigator.browserLanguage and window.navigator.language, but these properties represent either the language set for the operating system or the language edition of the browser. These properties don’t enable you to retrieve the language that the user set as his or her preferred language. The only reliable way to get a user’s preferred language (the value of the Accept-Language header) is to write server code. For example, the following ASP.NET page takes advantage of the server Request.UserLanguages property to assign the user’s preferred language to a client JavaScript variable named acceptLanguage (which then allows you to access the value using client-side JavaScript): In order for this code to work, the culture information associated with the value of acceptLanguage must be included in the page. For example, if someone’s preferred culture is fr-FR (French in France) then you need to include either the jQuery.glob.fr-FR.js or the jQuery.glob.all.js JavaScript file in the page or the culture information won’t be available.  The “6_AcceptLanguages.aspx” sample in this samples download demonstrates how to implement this approach. If the culture information for the user’s preferred language is not included in the page then the $.preferCulture() method will fall back to using the neutral culture (for example, using jQuery.glob.fr.js instead of jQuery.glob.fr-FR.js). If the neutral culture information is not available then the $.preferCulture() method falls back to the default culture (English). Example: Using the Globalization Plugin with the jQuery UI DatePicker One of the goals of the Globalization plugin is to make it easier to build jQuery widgets that can be used with different cultures. We wanted to make sure that the jQuery Globalization plugin could work with existing jQuery UI plugins such as the DatePicker plugin. To that end, we created a patched version of the DatePicker plugin that can take advantage of the Globalization plugin when rendering a calendar. For example, the following figure illustrates what happens when you add the jQuery Globalization and the patched jQuery UI DatePicker plugin to a page and select Indonesian as the preferred culture: Notice that the headers for the days of the week are displayed using Indonesian day name abbreviations. Furthermore, the month names are displayed in Indonesian. You can download the patched version of the jQuery UI DatePicker from our github website. Or you can use the version included in this samples download and used by the 7_DatePicker.htm sample file. Summary I’m excited about our continuing participation in the jQuery community. This Globalization plugin is the third jQuery plugin that we’ve released. We’ve really appreciated all of the great feedback and design suggestions on the jQuery templating and data-linking prototypes that we released earlier this year.  We also want to thank the jQuery and jQuery UI teams for working with us to create these plugins. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. You can follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• Making WCF Output a single WSDL file for interop purposes.

  - by Glav

  By default, when WCF emits a WSDL definition for your services, it can often contain many links to others related schemas that need to be imported. For the most part, this is fine. WCF clients understand this type of schema without issue, and it conforms to the requisite standards as far as WSDL definitions go. However, some non Microsoft stacks will only work with a single WSDL file and require that all definitions for the service(s) (port types, messages, operation etc…) are contained within that single file. In other words, no external imports are supported. Some Java clients (to my working knowledge) have this limitation. This obviously presents a problem when trying to create services exposed for consumption and interop by these clients. Note: You can download the full source code for this sample from here To illustrate this point, lets say we have a simple service that looks like: Service Contract public interface IService1 { [OperationContract] [FaultContract(typeof(DataFault))] string GetData(DataModel1 model); [OperationContract] [FaultContract(typeof(DataFault))] string GetMoreData(DataModel2 model); } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Service Implementation/Behaviour public class Service1 : IService1 { public string GetData(DataModel1 model) { return string.Format("Some Field was: {0} and another field was {1}", model.SomeField,model.AnotherField); } public string GetMoreData(DataModel2 model) { return string.Format("Name: {0}, age: {1}", model.Name, model.Age); } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Configuration File <system.serviceModel> <services> <service name="SingleWSDL_WcfService.Service1" behaviorConfiguration="SingleWSDL_WcfService.Service1Behavior"> <!-- ...std/default data omitted for brevity..... --> <endpoint address ="" binding="wsHttpBinding" contract="SingleWSDL_WcfService.IService1" > ....... </services> <behaviors> <serviceBehaviors> <behavior name="SingleWSDL_WcfService.Service1Behavior"> ........ </behavior> </serviceBehaviors> </behaviors> </system.serviceModel> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } When WCF is asked to produce a WSDL for this service, it will produce a file that looks something like this (note: some sections omitted for brevity): <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> - <wsdl:definitions name="Service1" targetNamespace="http://tempuri.org/" xmlns:wsdl="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/" xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/soap/" ...... namespace definitions omitted for brevity + &lt;wsp:Policy wsu:Id="WSHttpBinding_IService1_policy"> ... multiple policy items omitted for brevity </wsp:Policy> - <wsdl:types> - <xsd:schema targetNamespace="http://tempuri.org/Imports"> <xsd:import schemaLocation="http://localhost:2370/HostingSite/Service-default.svc?xsd=xsd0" namespace="http://tempuri.org/" /> <xsd:import schemaLocation="http://localhost:2370/HostingSite/Service-default.svc?xsd=xsd3" namespace="Http://SingleWSDL/Fault" /> <xsd:import schemaLocation="http://localhost:2370/HostingSite/Service-default.svc?xsd=xsd1" namespace="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/" /> <xsd:import schemaLocation="http://localhost:2370/HostingSite/Service-default.svc?xsd=xsd2" namespace="http://SingleWSDL/Model1" /> <xsd:import schemaLocation="http://localhost:2370/HostingSite/Service-default.svc?xsd=xsd4" namespace="http://SingleWSDL/Model2" /> </xsd:schema> </wsdl:types> + <wsdl:message name="IService1_GetData_InputMessage"> .... </wsdl:message> - <wsdl:operation name="GetData"> ..... </wsdl:operation> - <wsdl:service name="Service1"> ....... </wsdl:service> </wsdl:definitions> The above snippet from the WSDL shows the external links and references that are generated by WCF for a relatively simple service. Note the xsd:import statements that reference external XSD definitions which are also generated by WCF. In order to get WCF to produce a single WSDL file, we first need to follow some good practices when it comes to WCF service definitions. Step 1: Define a namespace for your service contract. [ServiceContract(Namespace="http://SingleWSDL/Service1")] public interface IService1 { ...... } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Normally you would not use a literal string and may instead define a constant to use in your own application for the namespace. When this is applied and we generate the WSDL, we get the following statement inserted into the document: <wsdl:import namespace="http://SingleWSDL/Service1" location="http://localhost:2370/HostingSite/Service-default.svc?wsdl=wsdl0" /> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } All the previous imports have gone. If we follow this link, we will see that the XSD imports are now in this external WSDL file. Not really any benefit for our purposes. Step 2: Define a namespace for your service behaviour [ServiceBehavior(Namespace = "http://SingleWSDL/Service1")] public class Service1 : IService1 { ...... } As you can see, the namespace of the service behaviour should be the same as the service contract interface to which it implements. Failure to do these tasks will cause WCF to emit its default http://tempuri.org namespace all over the place and cause WCF to still generate import statements. This is also true if the namespace of the contract and behaviour differ. If you define one and not the other, defaults kick in, and you’ll find extra imports generated. While each of the previous 2 steps wont cause any less import statements to be generated, you will notice that namespace definitions within the WSDL have identical, well defined names. Step 3: Define a binding namespace In the configuration file, modify the endpoint configuration line item to iunclude a bindingNamespace attribute which is the same as that defined on the service behaviour and service contract <endpoint address="" binding="wsHttpBinding" contract="SingleWSDL_WcfService.IService1" bindingNamespace="http://SingleWSDL/Service1"> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } However, this does not completely solve the issue. What this will do is remove the WSDL import statements like this one: <wsdl:import namespace="http://SingleWSDL/Service1" location="http://localhost:2370/HostingSite/Service-default.svc?wsdl" /> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } from the generated WSDL. Finally…. the magic…. Step 4: Use a custom endpoint behaviour to read in external imports and include in the main WSDL output. In order to force WCF to output a single WSDL with all the required definitions, we need to define a custom WSDL Export extension that can be applied to any endpoints. This requires implementing the IWsdlExportExtension and IEndpointBehavior interfaces and then reading in any imported schemas, and adding that output to the main, flattened WSDL to be output. Sounds like fun right…..? Hmmm well maybe not. This step sounds a little hairy, but its actually quite easy thanks to some kind individuals who have already done this for us. As far as I know, there are 2 available implementations that we can easily use to perform the import and “WSDL flattening”.  WCFExtras which is on codeplex and FlatWsdl by Thinktecture. Both implementations actually do exactly the same thing with the imports and provide an endpoint behaviour, however FlatWsdl does a little more work for us by providing a ServiceHostFactory that we can use which automatically attaches the requisite behaviour to our endpoints for us. To use this in an IIS hosted service, we can modify the .SVC file to specify this ne factory to use like so: <%@ ServiceHost Language="C#" Debug="true" Service="SingleWSDL_WcfService.Service1" Factory="Thinktecture.ServiceModel.Extensions.Description.FlatWsdlServiceHostFactory" %> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Within a service application or another form of executable such as a console app, we can simply create an instance of the custom service host and open it as we normally would as shown here: FlatWsdlServiceHost host = new FlatWsdlServiceHost(typeof(Service1)); host.Open(); And we are done. WCF will now generate one single WSDL file that contains all he WSDL imports and data/XSD imports. You can download the full source code for this sample from here Hope this has helped you. Note: Please note that I have not extensively tested this in a number of different scenarios so no guarantees there.

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• Making WCF Output a single WSDL file for interop purposes.

  By default, when WCF emits a WSDL definition for your services, it can often contain many links to others related schemas that need to be imported. For the most part, this is fine. WCF clients understand this type of schema without issue, and it conforms to the requisite standards as far as WSDL definitions go. However, some non Microsoft stacks will only work with a single WSDL file and require that all definitions for the service(s) (port types, messages, operation etc) are contained within that single file. In other words, no external imports are supported. Some Java clients (to my working knowledge) have this limitation. This obviously presents a problem when trying to create services exposed for consumption and interop by these clients. Note: You can download the full source code for this sample from here To illustrate this point, lets say we have a simple service that looks like: Service Contract public interface IService1 { [OperationContract] [FaultContract(typeof(DataFault))] string GetData(DataModel1 model); [OperationContract] [FaultContract(typeof(DataFault))] string GetMoreData(DataModel2 model); } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Service Implementation/Behaviour public class Service1 : IService1 { public string GetData(DataModel1 model) { return string.Format("Some Field was: {0} and another field was {1}", model.SomeField,model.AnotherField); } public string GetMoreData(DataModel2 model) { return string.Format("Name: {0}, age: {1}", model.Name, model.Age); } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Configuration File <system.serviceModel> <services> <service name="SingleWSDL_WcfService.Service1" behaviorConfiguration="SingleWSDL_WcfService.Service1Behavior"> <!-- ...std/default data omitted for brevity..... --> <endpoint address ="" binding="wsHttpBinding" contract="SingleWSDL_WcfService.IService1" > ....... </services> <behaviors> <serviceBehaviors> <behavior name="SingleWSDL_WcfService.Service1Behavior"> ........ </behavior> </serviceBehaviors> </behaviors> </system.serviceModel> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } When WCF is asked to produce a WSDL for this service, it will produce a file that looks something like this (note: some sections omitted for brevity): <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> - <wsdl:definitions name="Service1" targetNamespace="http://tempuri.org/" xmlns:wsdl="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/" xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/soap/" ...... namespace definitions omitted for brevity + <wsp:Policy wsu:Id="WSHttpBinding_IService1_policy"> ... multiple policy items omitted for brevity </wsp:Policy> - <wsdl:types> - <xsd:schema targetNamespace="http://tempuri.org/Imports"> <xsd:import schemaLocation="http://localhost:2370/HostingSite/Service-default.svc?xsd=xsd0" namespace="http://tempuri.org/" /> <xsd:import schemaLocation="http://localhost:2370/HostingSite/Service-default.svc?xsd=xsd3" namespace="Http://SingleWSDL/Fault" /> <xsd:import schemaLocation="http://localhost:2370/HostingSite/Service-default.svc?xsd=xsd1" namespace="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/" /> <xsd:import schemaLocation="http://localhost:2370/HostingSite/Service-default.svc?xsd=xsd2" namespace="http://SingleWSDL/Model1" /> <xsd:import schemaLocation="http://localhost:2370/HostingSite/Service-default.svc?xsd=xsd4" namespace="http://SingleWSDL/Model2" /> </xsd:schema> </wsdl:types> + <wsdl:message name="IService1_GetData_InputMessage"> .... </wsdl:message> - <wsdl:operation name="GetData"> ..... </wsdl:operation> - <wsdl:service name="Service1"> ....... </wsdl:service> </wsdl:definitions> The above snippet from the WSDL shows the external links and references that are generated by WCF for a relatively simple service. Note the xsd:import statements that reference external XSD definitions which are also generated by WCF. In order to get WCF to produce a single WSDL file, we first need to follow some good practices when it comes to WCF service definitions. Step 1: Define a namespace for your service contract. [ServiceContract(Namespace="http://SingleWSDL/Service1")] public interface IService1 { ...... } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Normally you would not use a literal string and may instead define a constant to use in your own application for the namespace. When this is applied and we generate the WSDL, we get the following statement inserted into the document: <wsdl:import namespace="http://SingleWSDL/Service1" location="http://localhost:2370/HostingSite/Service-default.svc?wsdl=wsdl0" /> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } All the previous imports have gone. If we follow this link, we will see that the XSD imports are now in this external WSDL file. Not really any benefit for our purposes. Step 2: Define a namespace for your service behaviour [ServiceBehavior(Namespace = "http://SingleWSDL/Service1")] public class Service1 : IService1 { ...... } As you can see, the namespace of the service behaviour should be the same as the service contract interface to which it implements. Failure to do these tasks will cause WCF to emit its default http://tempuri.org namespace all over the place and cause WCF to still generate import statements. This is also true if the namespace of the contract and behaviour differ. If you define one and not the other, defaults kick in, and youll find extra imports generated. While each of the previous 2 steps wont cause any less import statements to be generated, you will notice that namespace definitions within the WSDL have identical, well defined names. Step 3: Define a binding namespace In the configuration file, modify the endpoint configuration line item to iunclude a bindingNamespace attribute which is the same as that defined on the service behaviour and service contract <endpoint address="" binding="wsHttpBinding" contract="SingleWSDL_WcfService.IService1" bindingNamespace="http://SingleWSDL/Service1"> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } However, this does not completely solve the issue. What this will do is remove the WSDL import statements like this one: <wsdl:import namespace="http://SingleWSDL/Service1" location="http://localhost:2370/HostingSite/Service-default.svc?wsdl" /> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } from the generated WSDL. Finally. the magic. Step 4: Use a custom endpoint behaviour to read in external imports and include in the main WSDL output. In order to force WCF to output a single WSDL with all the required definitions, we need to define a custom WSDL Export extension that can be applied to any endpoints. This requires implementing the IWsdlExportExtension and IEndpointBehavior interfaces and then reading in any imported schemas, and adding that output to the main, flattened WSDL to be output. Sounds like fun right..? Hmmm well maybe not. This step sounds a little hairy, but its actually quite easy thanks to some kind individuals who have already done this for us. As far as I know, there are 2 available implementations that we can easily use to perform the import and WSDL flattening.  WCFExtras which is on codeplex and FlatWsdl by Thinktecture. Both implementations actually do exactly the same thing with the imports and provide an endpoint behaviour, however FlatWsdl does a little more work for us by providing a ServiceHostFactory that we can use which automatically attaches the requisite behaviour to our endpoints for us. To use this in an IIS hosted service, we can modify the .SVC file to specify this ne factory to use like so: <%@ ServiceHost Language="C#" Debug="true" Service="SingleWSDL_WcfService.Service1" Factory="Thinktecture.ServiceModel.Extensions.Description.FlatWsdlServiceHostFactory" %> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Within a service application or another form of executable such as a console app, we can simply create an instance of the custom service host and open it as we normally would as shown here: FlatWsdlServiceHost host = new FlatWsdlServiceHost(typeof(Service1)); host.Open(); And we are done. WCF will now generate one single WSDL file that contains all he WSDL imports and data/XSD imports. You can download the full source code for this sample from here Hope this has helped you. Note: Please note that I have not extensively tested this in a number of different scenarios so no guarantees there.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• JMS Step 7 - How to Write to an AQ JMS (Advanced Queueing JMS) Queue from a BPEL Process

  - by John-Brown.Evans

  JMS Step 7 - How to Write to an AQ JMS (Advanced Queueing JMS) Queue from a BPEL Process ol{margin:0;padding:0} .jblist{list-style-type:disc;margin:0;padding:0;padding-left:0pt;margin-left:36pt} .c4_7{vertical-align:top;width:468pt;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt} .c3_7{vertical-align:top;width:234pt;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:0pt 5pt 0pt 5pt} .c6_7{vertical-align:top;width:156pt;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt} .c16_7{background-color:#ffffff;padding:0pt 0pt 0pt 0pt} .c0_7{height:11pt;direction:ltr} .c9_7{color:#1155cc;text-decoration:underline} .c17_7{color:inherit;text-decoration:inherit} .c5_7{direction:ltr} .c18_7{background-color:#ffff00} .c2_7{background-color:#f3f3f3} .c14_7{height:0pt} .c8_7{text-indent:36pt} .c11_7{text-align:center} .c7_7{font-style:italic} .c1_7{font-family:"Courier New"} .c13_7{line-height:1.0} .c15_7{border-collapse:collapse} .c12_7{font-weight:bold} .c10_7{font-size:8pt} .title{padding-top:24pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#000000;font-size:36pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:bold;padding-bottom:6pt} .subtitle{padding-top:18pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#666666;font-style:italic;font-size:24pt;font-family:"Georgia";padding-bottom:4pt} li{color:#000000;font-size:10pt;font-family:"Arial"} p{color:#000000;font-size:10pt;margin:0;font-family:"Arial"} h1{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:24pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal} h2{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:18pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal} h3{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:14pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal} h4{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal} h5{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal} h6{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:10pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal} This post continues the series of JMS articles which demonstrate how to use JMS queues in a SOA context. The previous posts were: JMS Step 1 - How to Create a Simple JMS Queue in Weblogic Server 11g JMS Step 2 - Using the QueueSend.java Sample Program to Send a Message to a JMS Queue JMS Step 3 - Using the QueueReceive.java Sample Program to Read a Message from a JMS Queue JMS Step 4 - How to Create an 11g BPEL Process Which Writes a Message Based on an XML Schema to a JMS Queue JMS Step 5 - How to Create an 11g BPEL Process Which Reads a Message Based on an XML Schema from a JMS Queue JMS Step 6 - How to Set Up an AQ JMS (Advanced Queueing JMS) for SOA Purposes This example demonstrates how to write a simple message to an Oracle AQ via the the WebLogic AQ JMS functionality from a BPEL process and a JMS adapter. If you have not yet reviewed the previous posts, please do so first, especially the JMS Step 6 post, as this one references objects created there. 1. Recap and Prerequisites In the previous example, we created an Oracle Advanced Queue (AQ) and some related JMS objects in WebLogic Server to be able to access it via JMS. Here are the objects which were created and their names and JNDI names: Database Objects Name Type AQJMSUSER Database User MyQueueTable Advanced Queue (AQ) Table UserQueue Advanced Queue WebLogic Server Objects Object Name Type JNDI Name aqjmsuserDataSource Data Source jdbc/aqjmsuserDataSource AqJmsModule JMS System Module AqJmsForeignServer JMS Foreign Server AqJmsForeignServerConnectionFactory JMS Foreign Server Connection Factory AqJmsForeignServerConnectionFactory AqJmsForeignDestination AQ JMS Foreign Destination queue/USERQUEUE eis/aqjms/UserQueue Connection Pool eis/aqjms/UserQueue 2 . Create a BPEL Composite with a JMS Adapter Partner Link This step requires that you have a valid Application Server Connection defined in JDeveloper, pointing to the application server on which you created the JMS Queue and Connection Factory. You can create this connection in JDeveloper under the Application Server Navigator. Give it any name and be sure to test the connection before completing it. This sample will write a simple XML message to the AQ JMS queue via the JMS adapter, based on the following XSD file, which consists of a single string element: stringPayload.xsd <?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1252" ?> <xsd:schema xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"                xmlns="http://www.example.org"                targetNamespace="http://www.example.org"                elementFormDefault="qualified">  <xsd:element name="exampleElement" type="xsd:string">  </xsd:element> </xsd:schema> The following steps are all executed in JDeveloper. The SOA project will be created inside a JDeveloper Application. If you do not already have an application to contain the project, you can create a new one via File > New > General > Generic Application. Give the application any name, for example JMSTests and, when prompted for a project name and type, call the project   JmsAdapterWriteAqJms  and select SOA as the project technology type. If you already have an application, continue below. Create a SOA Project Create a new project and select SOA Tier > SOA Project as its type. Name it JmsAdapterWriteAqJms . When prompted for the composite type, choose Composite With BPEL Process. When prompted for the BPEL Process, name it JmsAdapterWriteAqJms too and choose Synchronous BPEL Process as the template. This will create a composite with a BPEL process and an exposed SOAP service. Double-click the BPEL process to open and begin editing it. You should see a simple BPEL process with a Receive and Reply activity. As we created a default process without an XML schema, the input and output variables are simple strings. Create an XSD File An XSD file is required later to define the message format to be passed to the JMS adapter. In this step, we create a simple XSD file, containing a string variable and add it to the project. First select the xsd item in the left-hand navigation tree to ensure that the XSD file is created under that item. Select File > New > General > XML and choose XML Schema. Call it stringPayload.xsd  and when the editor opens, select the Source view. then replace the contents with the contents of the stringPayload.xsd example above and save the file. You should see it under the XSD item in the navigation tree. Create a JMS Adapter Partner Link We will create the JMS adapter as a service at the composite level. If it is not already open, double-click the composite.xml file in the navigator to open it. From the Component Palette, drag a JMS adapter over onto the right-hand swim lane, under External References. This will start the JMS Adapter Configuration Wizard. Use the following entries: Service Name: JmsAdapterWrite Oracle Enterprise Messaging Service (OEMS): Oracle Advanced Queueing AppServer Connection: Use an existing application server connection pointing to the WebLogic server on which the connection factory created earlier is located. You can use the “+” button to create a connection directly from the wizard, if you do not already have one. Adapter Interface > Interface: Define from operation and schema (specified later) Operation Type: Produce Message Operation Name: Produce_message Produce Operation Parameters Destination Name: Wait for the list to populate. (Only foreign servers are listed here, because Oracle Advanced Queuing was selected earlier, in step 3) .         Select the foreign server destination created earlier, AqJmsForeignDestination (queue) . This will automatically populate the Destination Name field with the name of the foreign destination, queue/USERQUEUE . JNDI Name: The JNDI name to use for the JMS connection. This is the JNDI name of the connection pool created in the WebLogic Server.JDeveloper does not verify the value entered here. If you enter a wrong value, the JMS adapter won’t find the queue and you will get an error message at runtime. In our example, this is the value eis/aqjms/UserQueue Messages URL: We will use the XSD file we created earlier, stringPayload.xsd to define the message format for the JMS adapter. Press the magnifying glass icon to search for schema files. Expand Project Schema Files > stringPayload.xsd and select exampleElement : string . Press Next and Finish, which will complete the JMS Adapter configuration. Wire the BPEL Component to the JMS Adapter In this step, we link the BPEL process/component to the JMS adapter. From the composite.xml editor, drag the right-arrow icon from the BPEL process to the JMS adapter’s in-arrow.   This completes the steps at the composite level. 3. Complete the BPEL Process Design Invoke the JMS Adapter Open the BPEL component by double-clicking it in the design view of the composite.xml. This will display the BPEL process in the design view. You should see the JmsAdapterWrite partner link under one of the two swim lanes. We want it in the right-hand swim lane. If JDeveloper displays it in the left-hand lane, right-click it and choose Display > Move To Opposite Swim Lane. An Invoke activity is required in order to invoke the JMS adapter. Drag an Invoke activity between the Receive and Reply activities. Drag the right-hand arrow from the Invoke activity to the JMS adapter partner link. This will open the Invoke editor. The correct default values are entered automatically and are fine for our purposes. We only need to define the input variable to use for the JMS adapter. By pressing the green “+” symbol, a variable of the correct type can be auto-generated, for example with the name Invoke1_Produce_Message_InputVariable. Press OK after creating the variable. Assign Variables Drag an Assign activity between the Receive and Invoke activities. We will simply copy the input variable to the JMS adapter and, for completion, so the process has an output to print, again to the process’s output variable. Double-click the Assign activity and create two Copy rules: for the first, drag Variables > inputVariable > payload > client:process > client:input_string to Invoke1_Produce_Message_InputVariable > body > ns2:exampleElement for the second, drag the same input variable to outputVariable > payload > client:processResponse > client:result This will create two copy rules, similar to the following: Press OK. This completes the BPEL and Composite design. 4. Compile and Deploy the Composite Compile the process by pressing the Make or Rebuild icons or by right-clicking the project name in the navigator and selecting Make... or Rebuild... If the compilation is successful, deploy it to the SOA server connection defined earlier. (Right-click the project name in the navigator, select Deploy to Application Server, choose the application server connection, choose the partition on the server (usually default) and press Finish. You should see the message ----  Deployment finished.  ---- in the Deployment frame, if the deployment was successful. 5. Test the Composite Execute a Test Instance In a browser, log in to the Enterprise Manager 11g Fusion Middleware Control (EM) for your SOA installation. Navigate to SOA > soa-infra (soa_server1) > default (or wherever you deployed your composite) and click on  JmsAdapterWriteAqJms [1.0] , then press the Test button. Enter any string into the text input field, for example “Test message from JmsAdapterWriteAqJms” then press Test Web Service. If the instance is successful, you should see the same text you entered in the Response payload frame. Monitor the Advanced Queue The test message will be written to the advanced queue created at the top of this sample. To confirm it, log in to the database as AQJMSUSER and query the MYQUEUETABLE database table. For example, from a shell window with SQL*Plus sqlplus aqjmsuser/aqjmsuser SQL> SELECT user_data FROM myqueuetable; which will display the message contents, for example Similarly, you can use the JDeveloper Database Navigator to view the contents. Use a database connection to the AQJMSUSER and in the navigator, expand Queues Tables and select MYQUEUETABLE. Select the Data tab and scroll to the USER_DATA column to view its contents. This concludes this example. The following post will be the last one in this series. In it, we will learn how to read the message we just wrote using a BPEL process and AQ JMS. Best regards John-Brown Evans Oracle Technology Proactive Support Delivery

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• Announcing Entity Framework Code-First (CTP5 release)

  - by ScottGu

  This week the data team released the CTP5 build of the new Entity Framework Code-First library.  EF Code-First enables a pretty sweet code-centric development workflow for working with data.  It enables you to: Develop without ever having to open a designer or define an XML mapping file Define model objects by simply writing “plain old classes” with no base classes 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 I’m a big fan of the EF Code-First approach, and wrote several blog posts about it this summer: Code-First Development with Entity Framework 4 (July 16th) EF Code-First: Custom Database Schema Mapping (July 23rd) Using EF Code-First with an Existing Database (August 3rd) Today’s new CTP5 release delivers several nice improvements over the CTP4 build, and will be the last preview build of Code First before the final release of it.  We will ship the final EF Code First release in the first quarter of next year (Q1 of 2011).  It works with all .NET application types (including both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC projects). Installing EF Code First You can install and use EF Code First CTP5 using one of two ways: Approach 1) By downloading and running a setup program.  Once installed you can reference the EntityFramework.dll assembly it provides within your projects.      or: Approach 2) By using the NuGet Package Manager within Visual Studio to download and install EF Code First within a project.  To do this, simply bring up the NuGet Package Manager Console within Visual Studio (View->Other Windows->Package Manager Console) and type “Install-Package EFCodeFirst”: Typing “Install-Package EFCodeFirst” within the Package Manager Console will cause NuGet to download the EF Code First package, and add it to your current project: Doing this will automatically add a reference to the EntityFramework.dll assembly to your project:   NuGet enables you to have EF Code First setup and ready to use within seconds.  When the final release of EF Code First ships you’ll also be able to just type “Update-Package EFCodeFirst” to update your existing projects to use the final release. EF Code First Assembly and Namespace The CTP5 release of EF Code First has an updated assembly name, and new .NET namespace: Assembly Name: EntityFramework.dll Namespace: System.Data.Entity These names match what we plan to use for the final release of the library. Nice New CTP5 Improvements The new CTP5 release of EF Code First contains a bunch of nice improvements and refinements. Some of the highlights include: Better support for Existing Databases Built-in Model-Level Validation and DataAnnotation Support Fluent API Improvements Pluggable Conventions Support New Change Tracking API Improved Concurrency Conflict Resolution Raw SQL Query/Command Support The rest of this blog post contains some more details about a few of the above changes. Better Support for Existing Databases EF Code First makes it really easy to create model layers that work against existing databases.  CTP5 includes some refinements that further streamline the developer workflow for this scenario. Below are the steps to use EF Code First to create a model layer for the Northwind sample database: Step 1: Create Model Classes and a DbContext class Below is all of the code necessary to implement a simple model layer using EF Code First that goes against the Northwind database: EF Code First enables you to use “POCO” – Plain Old CLR Objects – to represent entities within a database.  This means that you do not need to derive model classes from a base class, nor implement any interfaces or data persistence attributes on them.  This enables the model classes to be kept clean, easily testable, and “persistence ignorant”.  The Product and Category classes above are examples of POCO model classes. EF Code First enables you to easily connect your POCO model classes to a database by creating a “DbContext” class that exposes public properties that map to the tables within a database.  The Northwind class above illustrates how this can be done.  It is mapping our Product and Category classes to the “Products” and “Categories” tables within the database.  The properties within the Product and Category classes in turn map to the columns within the Products and Categories tables – and each instance of a Product/Category object maps to a row within the tables. The above code is all of the code required to create our model and data access layer!  Previous CTPs of EF Code First required an additional step to work against existing databases (a call to Database.Initializer<Northwind>(null) to tell EF Code First to not create the database) – this step is no longer required with the CTP5 release.  Step 2: Configure the Database Connection String We’ve written all of the code we need to write to define our model layer.  Our last step before we use it will be to setup a connection-string that connects it with our database.  To do this we’ll add a “Northwind” connection-string to our web.config file (or App.Config for client apps) like so:   <connectionStrings>          <add name="Northwind"          connectionString="data source=.\SQLEXPRESS;Integrated Security=SSPI;AttachDBFilename=|DataDirectory|\northwind.mdf;User Instance=true"          providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />   </connectionStrings> EF “code first” uses a convention where DbContext classes by default look for a connection-string that has the same name as the context class.  Because our DbContext class is called “Northwind” it by default looks for a “Northwind” connection-string to use.  Above our Northwind connection-string is configured to use a local SQL Express database (stored within the \App_Data directory of our project).  You can alternatively point it at a remote SQL Server. Step 3: Using our Northwind Model Layer We can now easily query and update our database using the strongly-typed model layer we just built with EF Code First. The code example below demonstrates how to use LINQ to query for products within a specific product category.  This query returns back a sequence of strongly-typed Product objects that match the search criteria: The code example below demonstrates how we can retrieve a specific Product object, update two of its properties, and then save the changes back to the database: EF Code First handles all of the change-tracking and data persistence work for us, and allows us to focus on our application and business logic as opposed to having to worry about data access plumbing. Built-in Model Validation EF Code First allows you to use any validation approach you want when implementing business rules with your model layer.  This enables a great deal of flexibility and power. Starting with this week’s CTP5 release, EF Code First also now includes built-in support for both the DataAnnotation and IValidatorObject validation support built-into .NET 4.  This enables you to easily implement validation rules on your models, and have these rules automatically be enforced by EF Code First whenever you save your model layer.  It provides a very convenient “out of the box” way to enable validation within your applications. Applying DataAnnotations to our Northwind Model The code example below demonstrates how we could add some declarative validation rules to two of the properties of our “Product” model: We are using the [Required] and [Range] attributes above.  These validation attributes live within the System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations namespace that is built-into .NET 4, and can be used independently of EF.  The error messages specified on them can either be explicitly defined (like above) – or retrieved from resource files (which makes localizing applications easy). Validation Enforcement on SaveChanges() EF Code-First (starting with CTP5) now automatically applies and enforces DataAnnotation rules when a model object is updated or saved.  You do not need to write any code to enforce this – this support is now enabled by default.  This new support means that the below code – which violates our above rules – will automatically throw an exception when we call the “SaveChanges()” method on our Northwind DbContext: The DbEntityValidationException that is raised when the SaveChanges() method is invoked contains a “EntityValidationErrors” property that you can use to retrieve the list of all validation errors that occurred when the model was trying to save.  This enables you to easily guide the user on how to fix them.  Note that EF Code-First will abort the entire transaction of changes if a validation rule is violated – ensuring that our database is always kept in a valid, consistent state. EF Code First’s validation enforcement works both for the built-in .NET DataAnnotation attributes (like Required, Range, RegularExpression, StringLength, etc), as well as for any custom validation rule you create by sub-classing the System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations.ValidationAttribute base class. UI Validation Support A lot of our UI frameworks in .NET also provide support for DataAnnotation-based validation rules. For example, ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Dynamic Data, and Silverlight (via WCF RIA Services) all provide support for displaying client-side validation UI that honor the DataAnnotation rules applied to model objects. The screen-shot below demonstrates how using the default “Add-View” scaffold template within an ASP.NET MVC 3 application will cause appropriate validation error messages to be displayed if appropriate values are not provided: ASP.NET MVC 3 supports both client-side and server-side enforcement of these validation rules.  The error messages displayed are automatically picked up from the declarative validation attributes – eliminating the need for you to write any custom code to display them. Keeping things DRY The “DRY Principle” stands for “Do Not Repeat Yourself”, and is a best practice that recommends that you avoid duplicating logic/configuration/code in multiple places across your application, and instead specify it only once and have it apply everywhere. EF Code First CTP5 now enables you to apply declarative DataAnnotation validations on your model classes (and specify them only once) and then have the validation logic be enforced (and corresponding error messages displayed) across all applications scenarios – including within controllers, views, client-side scripts, and for any custom code that updates and manipulates model classes. This makes it much easier to build good applications with clean code, and to build applications that can rapidly iterate and evolve. Other EF Code First Improvements New to CTP5 EF Code First CTP5 includes a bunch of other improvements as well.  Below are a few short descriptions of some of them: Fluent API Improvements EF Code First allows you to override an “OnModelCreating()” method on the DbContext class to further refine/override the schema mapping rules used to map model classes to underlying database schema.  CTP5 includes some refinements to the ModelBuilder class that is passed to this method which can make defining mapping rules cleaner and more concise.  The ADO.NET Team blogged some samples of how to do this here. Pluggable Conventions Support EF Code First CTP5 provides new support that allows you to override the “default conventions” that EF Code First honors, and optionally replace them with your own set of conventions. New Change Tracking API EF Code First CTP5 exposes a new set of change tracking information that enables you to access Original, Current & Stored values, and State (e.g. Added, Unchanged, Modified, Deleted).  This support is useful in a variety of scenarios. Improved Concurrency Conflict Resolution EF Code First CTP5 provides better exception messages that allow access to the affected object instance and the ability to resolve conflicts using current, original and database values.  Raw SQL Query/Command Support EF Code First CTP5 now allows raw SQL queries and commands (including SPROCs) to be executed via the SqlQuery and SqlCommand methods exposed off of the DbContext.Database property.  The results of these method calls can be materialized into object instances that can be optionally change-tracked by the DbContext.  This is useful for a variety of advanced scenarios. Full Data Annotations Support EF Code First CTP5 now supports all standard DataAnnotations within .NET, and can use them both to perform validation as well as to automatically create the appropriate database schema when EF Code First is used in a database creation scenario.  Summary EF Code First provides an elegant and powerful way to work with data.  I really like it because it is extremely clean and supports best practices, while also enabling solutions to be implemented very, very rapidly.  The code-only approach of the library means that model layers end up being flexible and easy to customize. This week’s CTP5 release further refines EF Code First and helps ensure that it will be really sweet when it ships early next year.  I recommend using NuGet to install and give it a try today.  I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how awesome it is. Hope this helps, Scott

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, February 08, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, February 08, 2011Popular ReleasesyoutubeFisher: youtubeFisher 3.0 [beta]: What's new: Supports YouTube's new layout Complete internal refactoringNearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v5.0: Version 5.0 of the ASP.NET MVC Forum Engine, containing the following improvements: .NET 4.0 as target framework using ASP.NET MVC 3. All views migrated to Razor for cleaner markup. Alternate template (Layout file) for mobile devices 4 Bug Fixes since Version 4.1 Visit the project Roadmap for more details.fuv: 1.0 release, codename Chopper Joe: features: search/replace :o to open file :s to save file :q to quitASP.NET MVC Project Awesome, jQuery Ajax helpers (controls): 1.7: A rich set of helpers (controls) that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled Web applications. These helpers include Autocomplete, AjaxDropdown, Lookup, Confirm Dialog, Popup Form, Popup and Pager html generation optimized new features for the lookup (add additional search data ) live demo went aeroEnhSim: EnhSim 2.3.6 BETA: 2.3.6 BETAThis release supports WoW patch 4.06 at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 Changes since 2.3.0 ...TestApi - a library of Test APIs: TestApi v0.6: TestApi v0.6 comes with the following changes: TestApi code development has been moved to Codeplex: Moved TestApi soluton to VS 2010; Moved all source code to Codeplex. All development work is done there now. Fault Injection API: Integrated the unmanaged FaultInjectionEngine.dll COM component in the build; Cleaned up FaultInjectionEngine.dll to build at warning level 4; Implemented “FaultScope” which allows for in-process fault injection; Added automation scripts & sample program; ...AutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.5.5: AutoChat now allows up to 6 items. Items with nr. 7-0 will be removed! News page url's are now opened in the default browser Added a context menu to the system tray icon (thanks to Alex Banagos) AutoChat now allows configuring the Chat Keys and the Modifier Key The recent files list now supports compact and full mode Fix: Swapped mouse buttons are now properly detected Fix: Sometimes the Play button was pressed while still greyed out Champion: Karma Note: You can also run the u...mojoPortal: 2.3.6.2: see release notes on mojoportal.com http://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2362-released.aspx Note that we have separate deployment packages for .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0 The deployment package downloads on this page are pre-compiled and ready for production deployment, they contain no C# source code. To download the source code see the Source Code Tab I recommend getting the latest source code using TortoiseHG, you can get the source code corresponding to this release here.Rawr: Rawr 4.0.19 Beta: Rawr is now web-based. The link to use Rawr4 is: http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.phpThis is the Cataclysm Beta Release. More details can be found at the following link http://rawr.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=237262 As of the 4.0.16 release, you can now also begin using the new Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!This is a pre-alpha release of the WPF version, there are likely to be a lot of issues. If you have a problem, please follow the Posting Guidelines and put it into the Issue Trac...IronRuby: 1.1.2: IronRuby 1.1.2 is a servicing release that keeps on improving compatibility with Ruby 1.9.2 and includes IronRuby integration to Visual Studio 2010. We decided to drop 1.8.6 compatibility mode in all post-1.0 releases. We recommend using IronRuby 1.0 if you need 1.8.6 compatibility. In this release we fixed several major issues: - problems that blocked Gem installation in certain cases - regex syntax: the parser was replaced with a new one that is much more compatible with Ruby 1.9.2 - cras...Pyxis 2: Production Release: Pyxis 2.0.0.13 - Full Production Release This release of Pyxis 2 offers you a wide range of features: Launch Applications in their own threads & domains Render alpha-blended icons on the desktop Support for SD & USB drives Online App Store Dynamic & Static IP support Menus & Modals Over a dozen GUI controls File selection dialogs Folder selection dialog Application, Bootloader, and Firmware Updating Update Release Notes Much More!Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework: Sample Browser v2 (CTP Release): Sample Browser v2 (CTP Release) http://i3.codeplex.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=1code&DownloadId=205917MVVM Light Toolkit: MVVM Light Toolkit V3 SP1 (4): There was a small issue with the previous release that caused errors when installing the templates in VS10 Express. This release corrects the error. Only use this if you encountered issues when installing the previous release. No changes in the binaries.Finestra Virtual Desktops: 1.0: Finally the version 1.0 release! Sorry for the long delay since the last release, but I think that you'll find this release to be really smooth, really stable, and a really great enhancement to Windows. New features include: Windows 7 taskbar integration Major performance and usability improvements Redesigned look and feel New name: Finestra Better automatic updating Much faster full-screen switcher Fixes Windows 7 hotkey collisions by default Updated installerFacebook C# SDK: 5.0.2 (BETA): PLEASE TAKE A FEW MINUTES TO GIVE US SOME FEEDBACK: Facebook C# SDK Survey This is third BETA release of the version 5 branch of the Facebook C# SDK. Remember this is a BETA build. Some things may change or not work exactly as planned. We are absolutely looking for feedback on this release to help us improve the final 5.X.X release. This release contains some breaking changes. Particularly with authentication. After spending time reviewing the trouble areas that people are having using th...ASP.NET MVC SiteMap provider: MvcSiteMapProvider 3.0.0 for MVC3: Using NuGet?MvcSiteMapProvider is also listed in the NuGet feed. Learn more... Like the project? Consider a donation!Donate via PayPal via PayPal. ChangelogTargeting ASP.NET MVC 3 and .NET 4.0 Additional UpdatePriority options for generating XML sitemaps Allow to specify target on SiteMapTitleAttribute One action with multiple routes and breadcrumbs Medium Trust optimizations Create SiteMapTitleAttribute for setting parent title IntelliSense for your sitemap with MvcSiteMapSchem...patterns & practices SharePoint Guidance: SharePoint Guidance 2010 Hands On Lab: SharePoint Guidance 2010 Hands On Lab consists of six labs: one for logging, one for service location, and four for application setting manager. Each lab takes about 20 minutes to walk through. Each lab consists of a PDF document. You can go through the steps in the doc to create solution and then build/deploy the solution and run the lab. For those of you who wants to save the time, we included the final solution so you can just build/deploy the solution and run the lab.Value Injecter - object(s) to -> object mapper: 2.3: it lets you define your own convention-based matching algorithms (ValueInjections) in order to match up (inject) source values to destination values. inject from multiple sources in one InjectFrom added ConventionInjectionMobile Device Detection and Redirection: 0.1.11.11: Improvements to Beta Release The following changes have been made in version 0.1.11.11: BlackBerry Version 6 devices (such as the 9800 Torch) are now correctly identified with a dedicated handler. Android powered devices are now correctly identified. Minor change to Provider.cs to improve performance and optimise data sent to 51Degrees.mobi if the option is enabled. GC.collect is no longer called at any point. All garbage collection now happens automatically IMPORTANT CHANGES This rele...TweetSharp: TweetSharp v2.0.0.0 - Preview 10: Documentation for this release may be found at http://tweetsharp.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=UserGuide&referringTitle=Documentation. Note: This code is currently preview quality. Preview 9 ChangesAdded support for trends Added support for Silverlight 4 Elevated WP7 fixes Third Party Library VersionsHammock v1.1.7: http://hammock.codeplex.com Json.NET 4.0 Release 1: http://json.codeplex.comNew Projectsbisolu_sendus: bisolu smsBlack & Scholes: Black & Scholes OptionsCosLabs: CosLabs makes it easy to see the full capabilities of the Cosmos operating system toolkit. CosLabs has a number of experiments to find new and unique uses for Cosmos. It's developed in C#.DeployToAzure: DeployToAzure allows automating deployment of Windows Azure project and making it a part of TFS 2010 build process without using PowerShell and Azure Management CmdLets. Digital: Educational purposesDiscogsNet: DiscogsNet is a .NET library to query the Discogs.com API and parse the Discogs XML data dump files. It's developed in C# and usable from any .NET language. The API of the library is focused on ease of use and intuitiveness.DJME - The jQuery extensions for ASP.NET MVC: DJME - The jQuery extensions for ASP.NET MVC is a lightweight framework which helps you build rich user interfaces for ASP.NET MVC while enjoying great developer productivity. DokuDB: Visio AddIn to document different versions of a databaseDtsConfig Explorer: This project is a windows froms application that helps explore a SSIS dtsconfig file with an easy wayEveryDNS Service: Windows service to automatically send your current IP address to everydns.net for dynamic domains. Automatically monitors and sends IP address changes without having to be logged in. The project is built in C# targeting the .NET 4.0 framework.EvoSim - Evolution Simulation: EvoSim is a pet project to learn aspects of MVVM, WPF/Silverlight, and Parallel Processing features of .NET 4. The goal is to simulate a world filled with creatures that move, eat, reproduce, and die according to Darwinian evolutionary principles. It is tile and turn based.EZStorage: A storage library for XNA based on EasyStorage but abstracting in an XML based file list for each folder, allowing file listings on all folders and details like file creation dates which are no longer possible in XNA 4.0ForeverBell's Snake: A snake game written in VB.NET.Glauca Browser: This is a browser with a webkit core inside.Grauers SharePoint 2010 Custom MasterPage Feature: This is a SharePoint 2010 Custom MastePage feature. Custom Master and custom CSS Blog post about the project: http://www.grauers.net/archive/2011/02/07/build-a-sharepoint-2010-custom-mastepage-with-visual-studio-2010.aspxHamming Code Sample: HamCode demonstrate how the hamming code work, result of coded and decoded data. Shows the benefits of hamming method/codeHydroDesktop Mercurial Test: This is a trial version of the HydroDesktop project (hydrodesktop.codeplex.com) running on Mercurial source code repository. We first want to test whether the data update/download is happening fine before switching the official HydroDesktop website to the new system.LateBindingApi: Creates .Net Proxy Components from COM Type Libraries.Middlesex County College Library Wireless Auto Login: The Middlesex County College Library Wireless Auto Login automatically logs a computer in to the Middlesex County College (Edison, NJ) Library's WifiMobility: Mobility is a small program that reads from a text file. The text file includes everything about the program, right down to that cute little bunny on your desktop! Try Mobility today!OpenMFC: OpenMFC is opensource version of MFC for using with C/C++ compiler without MFC.Orchard Content Sharing: This Orchard module adds content sharing functionality via integration with AddThis.com sharing service.Orchard Wunder Weather Widget: This project is used to maintain the source code for the Wunder Weather widget in the Orchard gallery.Professional Audio Recorder: Professional Audio Recorder is a Audio Recorder for Windows Phone 7Python Node Info for Umbraco: Designed to assist Umbraco macro authors who are writing their macros in Python. Provides a helper macro that, when inserted into a page, will enable the display of an info panel showing the page node properties as represented in Python.Softina.Graphs: Softina.Graphs is a graph managment and algorithm utility. It includes a set of libraries to work with graph processing. It is written using .net framework with c# language and MS Visual Studio 2008. Client applications is created using devexpress components.spangesharp: Application to help people learn c#Visual Studio Private Extension Gallery: Add a new tab in the Visual Studio extension manager to manage private extensions.WCF Home Framework: Home Framework is a service-oriented framework able to facilitate deploy and management of wcf services in a mid-size scenario project.Windows Phone 7 Video Player: This project contains all the source of an application for Windows Phone 7 to consume an RSS Media exposed by our Smooth Streaming Video Player plugin for WordPress (http://smooth.codeplex.com).WOL Shopping List: This is a shoppingList version of WOL's NearMeWP7RSSReader: Updated RSSReader project for Windows Phone 7 using the RTM tools with the October 2010 update.Xen (XNA Extended) Framework: The Xen Framework is a set of libraries that provides and extends XNA 4.0 functionality to make game development easier and faster while producing clean, maintainable code. Xen frees you up to spend more time building your game.

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• Announcing the release of the Windows Azure SDK 2.1 for .NET

  - by ScottGu

  Today we released the v2.1 update of the Windows Azure SDK for .NET.  This is a major refresh of the Windows Azure SDK and it includes some great new features and enhancements. These new capabilities include: Visual Studio 2013 Preview Support: The Windows Azure SDK now supports using the new VS 2013 Preview Visual Studio 2013 VM Image: Windows Azure now has a built-in VM image that you can use to host and develop with VS 2013 in the cloud Visual Studio Server Explorer Enhancements: Redesigned with improved filtering and auto-loading of subscription resources Virtual Machines: Start and Stop VM’s w/suspend billing directly from within Visual Studio Cloud Services: New Emulator Express option with reduced footprint and Run as Normal User support Service Bus: New high availability options, Notification Hub support, Improved VS tooling PowerShell Automation: Lots of new PowerShell commands for automating Web Sites, Cloud Services, VMs and more All of these SDK enhancements are now available to start using immediately and you can download the SDK from the Windows Azure .NET Developer Center.  Visual Studio’s Team Foundation Service (http://tfs.visualstudio.com/) has also been updated to support today’s SDK 2.1 release, and the SDK 2.1 features can now be used with it (including with automated builds + tests). Below are more details on the new features and capabilities released today: Visual Studio 2013 Preview Support Today’s Window Azure SDK 2.1 release adds support for the recent Visual Studio 2013 Preview. The 2.1 SDK also works with Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio 2012, and works side by side with the previous Windows Azure SDK 1.8 and 2.0 releases. To install the Windows Azure SDK 2.1 on your local computer, choose the “install the sdk” link from the Windows Azure .NET Developer Center. Then, chose which version of Visual Studio you want to use it with.  Clicking the third link will install the SDK with the latest VS 2013 Preview: If you don’t already have the Visual Studio 2013 Preview installed on your machine, this will also install Visual Studio Express 2013 Preview for Web. Visual Studio 2013 VM Image Hosted in the Cloud One of the requests we’ve heard from several customers has been to have the ability to host Visual Studio within the cloud (avoiding the need to install anything locally on your computer). With today’s SDK update we’ve added a new VM image to the Windows Azure VM Gallery that has Visual Studio Ultimate 2013 Preview, SharePoint 2013, SQL Server 2012 Express and the Windows Azure 2.1 SDK already installed on it.  This provides a really easy way to create a development environment in the cloud with the latest tools. With the recent shutdown and suspend billing feature we shipped on Windows Azure last month, you can spin up the image only when you want to do active development, and then shut down the virtual machine and not have to worry about usage charges while the virtual machine is not in use. You can create your own VS image in the cloud by using the New->Compute->Virtual Machine->From Gallery menu within the Windows Azure Management Portal, and then by selecting the “Visual Studio Ultimate 2013 Preview” template: Visual Studio Server Explorer: Improved Filtering/Management of Subscription Resources With the Windows Azure SDK 2.1 release you’ll notice significant improvements in the Visual Studio Server Explorer. The explorer has been redesigned so that all Windows Azure services are now contained under a single Windows Azure node.  From the top level node you can now manage your Windows Azure credentials, import a subscription file or filter Server Explorer to only show services from particular subscriptions or regions. Note: The Web Sites and Mobile Services nodes will appear outside the Windows Azure Node until the final release of VS 2013. If you have installed the ASP.NET and Web Tools Preview Refresh, though, the Web Sites node will appear inside the Windows Azure node even with the VS 2013 Preview. Once your subscription information is added, Windows Azure services from all your subscriptions are automatically enumerated in the Server Explorer. You no longer need to manually add services to Server Explorer individually. This provides a convenient way of viewing all of your cloud services, storage accounts, service bus namespaces, virtual machines, and web sites from one location: Subscription and Region Filtering Support Using the Windows Azure node in Server Explorer, you can also now filter your Windows Azure services in the Server Explorer by the subscription or region they are in.  If you have multiple subscriptions but need to focus your attention to just a few subscription for some period of time, this a handy way to hide the services from other subscriptions view until they become relevant. You can do the same sort of filtering by region. To enable this, just select “Filter Services” from the context menu on the Windows Azure node: Then choose the subscriptions and/or regions you want to filter by. In the below example, I’ve decided to show services from my pay-as-you-go subscription within the East US region: Visual Studio will then automatically filter the items that show up in the Server Explorer appropriately: With storage accounts and service bus namespaces, you sometimes need to work with services outside your subscription. To accommodate that scenario, those services allow you to attach an external account (from the context menu). You’ll notice that external accounts have a slightly different icon in server explorer to indicate they are from outside your subscription. Other Improvements We’ve also improved the Server Explorer by adding additional properties and actions to the service exposed. You now have access to most of the properties on a cloud service, deployment slot, role or role instance as well as the properties on storage accounts, virtual machines and web sites. Just select the object of interest in Server Explorer and view the properties in the property pane. We also now have full support for creating/deleting/update storage tables, blobs and queues from directly within Server Explorer.  Simply right-click on the appropriate storage account node and you can create them directly within Visual Studio: Virtual Machines: Start/Stop within Visual Studio Virtual Machines now have context menu actions that allow you start, shutdown, restart and delete a Virtual Machine directly within the Visual Studio Server Explorer. The shutdown action enables you to shut down the virtual machine and suspend billing when the VM is not is use, and easily restart it when you need it: This is especially useful in Dev/Test scenarios where you can start a VM – such as a SQL Server – during your development session and then shut it down / suspend billing when you are not developing (and no longer be billed for it). You can also now directly remote desktop into VMs using the “Connect using Remote Desktop” context menu command in VS Server Explorer.  Cloud Services: Emulator Express with Run as Normal User Support You can now launch Visual Studio and run your cloud services locally as a Normal User (without having to elevate to an administrator account) using a new Emulator Express option included as a preview feature with this SDK release.  Emulator Express is a version of the Windows Azure Compute Emulator that runs a restricted mode – one instance per role – and it doesn’t require administrative permissions and uses 40% less resources than the full Windows Azure Emulator. Emulator Express supports both web and worker roles. To run your application locally using the Emulator Express option, simply change the following settings in the Windows Azure project. On the shortcut menu for the Windows Azure project, choose Properties, and then choose the Web tab. Check the setting for IIS (Internet Information Services). Make sure that the option is set to IIS Express, not the full version of IIS. Emulator Express is not compatible with full IIS. On the Web tab, choose the option for Emulator Express. Service Bus: Notification Hubs With the Windows Azure SDK 2.1 release we are adding support for Windows Azure Notification Hubs as part of our official Windows Azure SDK, inside of Microsoft.ServiceBus.dll (previously the Notification Hub functionality was in a preview assembly). You are now able to create, update and delete Notification Hubs programmatically, manage your device registrations, and send push notifications to all your mobile clients across all platforms (Windows Store, Windows Phone 8, iOS, and Android). Learn more about Notification Hubs on MSDN here, or watch the Notification Hubs //BUILD/ presentation here. Service Bus: Paired Namespaces One of the new features included with today’s Windows Azure SDK 2.1 release is support for Service Bus “Paired Namespaces”.  Paired Namespaces enable you to better handle situations where a Service Bus service namespace becomes unavailable (for example: due to connectivity issues or an outage) and you are unable to send or receive messages to the namespace hosting the queue, topic, or subscription. Previously,to handle this scenario you had to manually setup separate namespaces that can act as a backup, then implement manual failover and retry logic which was sometimes tricky to get right. Service Bus now supports Paired Namespaces, which enables you to connect two namespaces together. When you activate the secondary namespace, messages are stored in the secondary queue for delivery to the primary queue at a later time. If the primary container (namespace) becomes unavailable for some reason, automatic failover enables the messages in the secondary queue. For detailed information about paired namespaces and high availability, see the new topic Asynchronous Messaging Patterns and High Availability. Service Bus: Tooling Improvements In this release, the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio contain several enhancements and changes to the management of Service Bus messaging entities using Visual Studio’s Server Explorer. The most noticeable change is that the Service Bus node is now integrated into the Windows Azure node, and supports integrated subscription management. Additionally, there has been a change to the code generated by the Windows Azure Worker Role with Service Bus Queue project template. This code now uses an event-driven “message pump” programming model using the QueueClient.OnMessage method. PowerShell: Tons of New Automation Commands Since my last blog post on the previous Windows Azure SDK 2.0 release, we’ve updated Windows Azure PowerShell (which is a separate download) five times. You can find the full change log here. We’ve added new cmdlets in the following areas: China instance and Windows Azure Pack support Environment Configuration VMs Cloud Services Web Sites Storage SQL Azure Service Bus China Instance and Windows Azure Pack We now support the following cmdlets for the China instance and Windows Azure Pack, respectively: China Instance: Web Sites, Service Bus, Storage, Cloud Service, VMs, Network Windows Azure Pack: Web Sites, Service Bus We will have full cmdlet support for these two Windows Azure environments in PowerShell in the near future. Virtual Machines: Stop/Start Virtual Machines Similar to the Start/Stop VM capability in VS Server Explorer, you can now stop your VM and suspend billing: If you want to keep the original behavior of keeping your stopped VM provisioned, you can pass in the -StayProvisioned switch parameter. Virtual Machines: VM endpoint ACLs We’ve added and updated a bunch of cmdlets for you to configure fine-grained network ACL on your VM endpoints. You can use the following cmdlets to create ACL config and apply them to a VM endpoint: New-AzureAclConfig Get-AzureAclConfig Set-AzureAclConfig Remove-AzureAclConfig Add-AzureEndpoint -ACL Set-AzureEndpoint –ACL The following example shows how to add an ACL rule to an existing endpoint of a VM. Other improvements for Virtual Machine management includes Added -NoWinRMEndpoint parameter to New-AzureQuickVM and Add-AzureProvisioningConfig to disable Windows Remote Management Added -DirectServerReturn parameter to Add-AzureEndpoint and Set-AzureEndpoint to enable/disable direct server return Added Set-AzureLoadBalancedEndpoint cmdlet to modify load balanced endpoints Cloud Services: Remote Desktop and Diagnostics Remote Desktop and Diagnostics are popular debugging options for Cloud Services. We’ve introduced cmdlets to help you configure these two Cloud Service extensions from Windows Azure PowerShell. Windows Azure Cloud Services Remote Desktop extension: New-AzureServiceRemoteDesktopExtensionConfig Get-AzureServiceRemoteDesktopExtension Set-AzureServiceRemoteDesktopExtension Remove-AzureServiceRemoteDesktopExtension Windows Azure Cloud Services Diagnostics extension New-AzureServiceDiagnosticsExtensionConfig Get-AzureServiceDiagnosticsExtension Set-AzureServiceDiagnosticsExtension Remove-AzureServiceDiagnosticsExtension The following example shows how to enable Remote Desktop for a Cloud Service. Web Sites: Diagnostics With our last SDK update, we introduced the Get-AzureWebsiteLog –Tail cmdlet to get the log streaming of your Web Sites. Recently, we’ve also added cmdlets to configure Web Site application diagnostics: Enable-AzureWebsiteApplicationDiagnostic Disable-AzureWebsiteApplicationDiagnostic The following 2 examples show how to enable application diagnostics to the file system and a Windows Azure Storage Table: SQL Database Previously, you had to know the SQL Database server admin username and password if you want to manage the database in that SQL Database server. Recently, we’ve made the experience much easier by not requiring the admin credential if the database server is in your subscription. So you can simply specify the -ServerName parameter to tell Windows Azure PowerShell which server you want to use for the following cmdlets. Get-AzureSqlDatabase New-AzureSqlDatabase Remove-AzureSqlDatabase Set-AzureSqlDatabase We’ve also added a -AllowAllAzureServices parameter to New-AzureSqlDatabaseServerFirewallRule so that you can easily add a firewall rule to whitelist all Windows Azure IP addresses. Besides the above experience improvements, we’ve also added cmdlets get the database server quota and set the database service objective. Check out the following cmdlets for details. Get-AzureSqlDatabaseServerQuota Get-AzureSqlDatabaseServiceObjective Set-AzureSqlDatabase –ServiceObjective Storage and Service Bus Other new cmdlets include Storage: CRUD cmdlets for Azure Tables and Queues Service Bus: Cmdlets for managing authorization rules on your Service Bus Namespace, Queue, Topic, Relay and NotificationHub Summary Today’s release includes a bunch of great features that enable you to build even better cloud solutions.  All the above features/enhancements are shipped and available to use immediately as part of the 2.1 release of the Windows Azure SDK for .NET. If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today.  Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. 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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• CLSF & CLK 2013 Trip Report by Jeff Liu

  - by jamesmorris

  This is a contributed post from Jeff Liu, lead XFS developer for the Oracle mainline Linux kernel team. Recently, I attended both the China Linux Storage and Filesystem workshop (CLSF), and the China Linux Kernel conference (CLK), which were held in Shanghai. Here are the highlights for both events. CLSF - 17th October XFS update (led by Jeff Liu) XFS keeps rapid progress with a lot of changes, especially focused on the infrastructure/performance improvements as well as  new feature development.  This can be reflected with a sample statistics among XFS/Ext4+JBD2/Btrfs via: # git diff --stat --minimal -C -M v3.7..v3.12-rc4 -- fs/xfs|fs/ext4+fs/jbd2|fs/btrfs XFS: 141 files changed, 27598 insertions(+), 19113 deletions(-) Ext4+JBD2: 39 files changed, 10487 insertions(+), 5454 deletions(-) Btrfs: 70 files changed, 19875 insertions(+), 8130 deletions(-) What made up those changes in XFS? Self-describing metadata(CRC32c). This is a new feature and it contributed about 70% code changes, it can be enabled via `mkfs.xfs -m crc=1 /dev/xxx` for v5 superblock. Transaction log space reservation improvements. With this change, we can calculate the log space reservation at mount time rather than runtime to reduce the the CPU overhead. User namespace support. So both XFS and USERNS can be enabled on kernel configuration begin from Linux 3.10. Thanks Dwight Engen's efforts for this thing. Split project/group quota inodes. Originally, project quota can not be enabled with group quota at the same time because they were share the same quota file inode, now it works but only for v5 super block. i.e, CRC enabled. CONFIG_XFS_WARN, an new lightweight runtime debugger which can be deployed in production environment. Readahead log object recovery, this change can speed up the log replay progress significantly. Speculative preallocation inode tracking, clearing and throttling. The main purpose is to deal with inodes with post-EOF space due to speculative preallocation, support improved quota management to free up a significant amount of unwritten space when at or near EDQUOT. It support backgroup scanning which occurs on a longish interval(5 mins by default, tunable), and on-demand scanning/trimming via ioctl(2). Bitter arguments ensued from this session, especially for the comparison between Ext4 and Btrfs in different areas, I have to spent a whole morning of the 1st day answering those questions. We basically agreed on XFS is the best choice in Linux nowadays because: Stable, XFS has a good record in stability in the past 10 years. Fengguang Wu who lead the 0-day kernel test project also said that he has observed less error than other filesystems in the past 1+ years, I own it to the XFS upstream code reviewer, they always performing serious code review as well as testing. Good performance for large/small files, XFS does not works very well for small files has already been an old story for years. Best choice (maybe) for distributed PB filesystems. e.g, Ceph recommends delopy OSD daemon on XFS because Ext4 has limited xattr size. Best choice for large storage (>16TB). Ext4 does not support a single file more than around 15.95TB. Scalability, any objection to XFS is best in this point? :) XFS is better to deal with transaction concurrency than Ext4, why? The maximum size of the log in XFS is 2038MB compare to 128MB in Ext4. Misc. Ext4 is widely used and it has been proved fast/stable in various loads and scenarios, XFS just need more customers, and Btrfs is still on the road to be a manhood. Ceph Introduction (Led by Li Wang) This a hot topic.  Li gave us a nice introduction about the design as well as their current works. Actually, Ceph client has been included in Linux kernel since 2.6.34 and supported by Openstack since Folsom but it seems that it has not yet been widely deployment in production environment. Their major work is focus on the inline data support to separate the metadata and data storage, reduce the file access time, i.e, a file access need communication twice, fetch the metadata from MDS and then get data from OSD, and also, the small file access is limited by the network latency. The solution is, for the small files they would like to store the data at metadata so that when accessing a small file, the metadata server can push both metadata and data to the client at the same time. In this way, they can reduce the overhead of calculating the data offset and save the communication to OSD. For this feature, they have only run some small scale testing but really saw noticeable improvements. Test environment: Intel 2 CPU 12 Core, 64GB RAM, Ubuntu 12.04, Ceph 0.56.6 with 200GB SATA disk, 15 OSD, 1 MDS, 1 MON. The sequence read performance for 1K size files improved about 50%. I have asked Li and Zheng Yan (the core developer of Ceph, who also worked on Btrfs) whether Ceph is really stable and can be deployed at production environment for large scale PB level storage, but they can not give a positive answer, looks Ceph even does not spread over Dreamhost (subject to confirmation). From Li, they only deployed Ceph for a small scale storage(32 nodes) although they'd like to try 6000 nodes in the future. Improve Linux swap for Flash storage (led by Shaohua Li) Because of high density, low power and low price, flash storage (SSD) is a good candidate to partially replace DRAM. A quick answer for this is using SSD as swap. But Linux swap is designed for slow hard disk storage, so there are a lot of challenges to efficiently use SSD for swap. SWAPOUT swap_map scan swap_map is the in-memory data structure to track swap disk usage, but it is a slow linear scan. It will become a bottleneck while finding many adjacent pages in the use of SSD. Shaohua Li have changed it to a cluster(128K) list, resulting in O(1) algorithm. However, this apporoach needs restrictive cluster alignment and only enabled for SSD. IO pattern In most cases, the swap io is in interleaved pattern because of mutiple reclaimers or a free cluster is shared by all reclaimers. Even though block layer can merge interleaved IO to some extent, but we cannot count on it completely. Hence the per-cpu cluster is added base on the previous change, it can help reclaimer do sequential IO and the block layer will be easier to merge IO. TLB flush: If we're reclaiming one active page, we should first move the page from active lru list to inactive lru list, and then reclaim the page from inactive lru to swap it out. During the process, we need to clear PTE twice: first is 'A'(ACCESS) bit, second is 'P'(PRESENT) bit. Processors need to send lots of ipi which make the TLB flush really expensive. Some works have been done to improve this, including rework smp_call_functiom_many() or remove the first TLB flush in x86, but there still have some arguments here and only parts of works have been pushed to mainline. SWAPIN: Page fault does iodepth=1 sync io, but it's a little waste if only issue a page size's IO. The obvious solution is doing swap readahead. But the current in-kernel swap readahead is arbitary(always 8 pages), and it always doesn't perform well for both random and sequential access workload. Shaohua introduced a new flag for madvise(MADV_WILLNEED) to do swap prefetch, so the changes happen in userspace API and leave the in-kernel readahead unchanged(but I think some improvement can also be done here). SWAP discard As we know, discard is important for SSD write throughout, but the current swap discard implementation is synchronous. He changed it to async discard which allow discard and write run in the same time. Meanwhile, the unit of discard is also optimized to cluster. Misc: lock contention For many concurrent swapout and swapin , the lock contention such as anon_vma or swap_lock is high, so he changed the swap_lock to a per-swap lock. But there still have some lock contention in very high speed SSD because of swapcache address_space lock. Zproject (led by Bob Liu) Bob gave us a very nice introduction about the current memory compression status. Now there are 3 projects(zswap/zram/zcache) which all aim at smooth swap IO storm and promote performance, but they all have their own pros and cons. ZSWAP It is implemented based on frontswap API and it uses a dynamic allocater named Zbud to allocate free pages. Zbud means pairs of zpages are "buddied" and it can only store at most two compressed pages in one page frame, so the max compress ratio is 50%. Each page frame is lru-linked and can do shink in memory pressure. If the compressed memory pool reach its limitation, shink or reclaim happens. It decompress the page frame into two new allocated pages and then write them to real swap device, but it can fail when allocating the two pages. ZRAM Acts as a compressed ramdisk and used as swap device, and it use zsmalloc as its allocator which has high density but may have fragmentation issues. Besides, page reclaim is hard since it will need more pages to uncompress and free just one page. ZRAM is preferred by embedded system which may not have any real swap device. Now both ZRAM and ZSWAP are in driver/staging tree, and in the mm community there are some disscussions of merging ZRAM into ZSWAP or viceversa, but no agreement yet. ZCACHE Handles file page compression but it is removed out of staging recently. From industry (led by Tang Jie, LSI) An LSI engineer introduced several new produces to us. The first is raid5/6 cards that it use full stripe writes to improve performance. The 2nd one he introduced is SandForce flash controller, who can understand data file types (data entropy) to reduce write amplification (WA) for nearly all writes. It's called DuraWrite and typical WA is 0.5. What's more, if enable its Dynamic Logical Capacity function module, the controller can do data compression which is transparent to upper layer. LSI testing shows that with this virtual capacity enables 1x TB drive can support up to 2x TB capacity, but the application must monitor free flash space to maintain optimal performance and to guard against free flash space exhaustion. He said the most useful application is for datebase. Another thing I think it's worth to mention is that a NV-DRAM memory in NMR/Raptor which is directly exposed to host system. Applications can directly access the NV-DRAM via a memory address - using standard system call mmap(). He said that it is very useful for database logging now. This kind of NVM produces are beginning to appear in recent years, and it is said that Samsung is building a research center in China for related produces. IMHO, NVM will bring an effect to current os layer especially on file system, e.g. its journaling may need to redesign to fully utilize these nonvolatile memory. OCFS2 (led by Canquan Shen) Without a doubt, HuaWei is the biggest contributor to OCFS2 in the past two years. They have posted 46 upstream patches and 39 patches have been merged. Their current project is based on 32/64 nodes cluster, but they also tried 128 nodes at the experimental stage. The major work they are working is to support ATS (atomic test and set), it can be works with DLM at the same time. Looks this idea is inspired by the vmware VMFS locking, i.e, http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/05/vmfs-locking-uncovered.html CLK - 18th October 2013 Improving Linux Development with Better Tools (Andi Kleen) This talk focused on how to find/solve bugs along with the Linux complexity growing. Generally, we can do this with the following kind of tools: Static code checkers tools. e.g, sparse, smatch, coccinelle, clang checker, checkpatch, gcc -W/LTO, stanse. This can help check a lot of things, simple mistakes, complex problems, but the challenges are: some are very slow, false positives, may need a concentrated effort to get false positives down. Especially, no static checker I found can follow indirect calls (“OO in C”, common in kernel): struct foo_ops { int (*do_foo)(struct foo *obj); } foo->do_foo(foo); Dynamic runtime checkers, e.g, thread checkers, kmemcheck, lockdep. Ideally all kernel code would come with a test suite, then someone could run all the dynamic checkers. Fuzzers/test suites. e.g, Trinity is a great tool, it finds many bugs, but needs manual model for each syscall. Modern fuzzers around using automatic feedback, but notfor kernel yet: http://taviso.decsystem.org/making_software_dumber.pdf Debuggers/Tracers to understand code, e.g, ftrace, can dump on events/oops/custom triggers, but still too much overhead in many cases to run always during debug. Tools to read/understand source, e.g, grep/cscope work great for many cases, but do not understand indirect pointers (OO in C model used in kernel), give us all “do_foo” instances: struct foo_ops { int (*do_foo)(struct foo *obj); } = { .do_foo = my_foo }; foo>do_foo(foo); That would be great to have a cscope like tool that understands this based on types/initializers XFS: The High Performance Enterprise File System (Jeff Liu) [slides] I gave a talk for introducing the disk layout, unique features, as well as the recent changes.   The slides include some charts to reflect the performances between XFS/Btrfs/Ext4 for small files. About a dozen users raised their hands when I asking who has experienced with XFS. I remembered that when I asked the same question in LinuxCon/Japan, only 3 people raised their hands, but they are Chris Mason, Ric Wheeler, and another attendee. The attendee questions were mainly focused on stability, and comparison with other file systems. Linux Containers (Feng Gao) The speaker introduced us that the purpose for those kind of namespaces, include mount/UTS/IPC/Network/Pid/User, as well as the system API/ABI. For the userspace tools, He mainly focus on the Libvirt LXC rather than us(LXC). Libvirt LXC is another userspace container management tool, implemented as one type of libvirt driver, it can manage containers, create namespace, create private filesystem layout for container, Create devices for container and setup resources controller via cgroup. In this talk, Feng also mentioned another two possible new namespaces in the future, the 1st is the audit, but not sure if it should be assigned to user namespace or not. Another is about syslog, but the question is do we really need it? In-memory Compression (Bob Liu) Same as CLSF, a nice introduction that I have already mentioned above. Misc There were some other talks related to ACPI based memory hotplug, smart wake-affinity in scheduler etc., but my head is not big enough to record all those things. -- Jeff Liu

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• Transformation of Product Management in Telecommunications for Rapid Launch of Next Generation Products

  - by raul.goycoolea

  @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }a:link, span.MsoHyperlink { color: blue; text-decoration: underline; }a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed { color: purple; text-decoration: underline; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } The Telecom industry continues to evolve through disruptive products, uncertain markets, shorter product lifecycles and convergence of technologies. Today’s market has moved from network centric to consumer centric and focuses primarily on the customer experience. It has resulted in several product management challenges such as an increased complexity and volume of offerings, creating product variants, accelerating time-to-market, ability to provide multiple product views for varied stakeholders, leveraging OSS intelligence to BSS layer, product co-creation and increasing audit and security concerns for service providers. The document discusses how enterprise product management enabled by PLM-based product catalogue solutions helps to launch next generation products rapidly in the context of the Telecommunication Industry.   1.0.       Introduction   Figure 1: Business Scenario   Modern business demands the launch of complex products in a very short timeframe and effecting changes in the price plan faster without IT intervention. One of the key transformation initiatives companies are focusing on is in the area of product management transformation and operational efficiency improvement. As part of these initiatives, companies are investing in best- in-class COTs-based Product Management solutions developed on industry-wide standards.   The new COTs packages are planned to integrate with existing or new B/OSS systems to provide a strategic end-to-end agile solution for reduced time-to-market and order journey time. In addition, system rationalization is being undertaken to phase out legacy systems and migrate to strategic systems.   2.0.       An Overview of Product Management in Telecom   Product data in telecom is multi- dimensional and difficult to manage. It increased significantly due to the complexity of the product, product offerings on the converged network, increased volume of offerings, bundled offering structures and ever increasing regulatory requirements.   In addition, the shrinking product lifecycle in telecom makes it difficult to manage the dynamic product data. Mergers and acquisitions coupled with organic growth pose major challenges in product portfolio management. It is a roadblock in the journey towards becoming an agile organization.       Figure 2: Complexity in Product Management   Network Technology’ is the new dimension in telecom product management where the same products are realized through different networks i.e., Soiled network to Converged network. Consequently, the product solution is different.     Figure 3: Current Scenario - Pain Points in Product Management   The major business implications arising out of the current scenario are slow time-to-market and an inefficient process that affects innovation.   3.0. Transformation of Next Generation Product Management   Companies must focus on their Product Management Transformation Journey in the areas of:   ·       Management of single truth of product information across the organization/geographies which is currently managed in heterogeneous systems   ·       Management of the Intellectual Property (IP) on the product concept and partnership in the design of discrete components to integrate into the system   ·       Leveraging structured and unstructured product data within the extended enterprise to extract consumer insights and drive innovation   ·       Management of effective operational separation to comply with regulatory bodies   ·       Reuse of existing designs and add relevant features such as value-added services to enable effective product bundling     Figure 4: Next generation needs   PLM-based Enterprise Product Catalogue solutions efficiently address the above requirements and act as an enabler towards product management transformation and rapid product launch.   4.0. PLM-based Enterprise Product Management     Figure 5: PLM-based Enterprise Product Mastering   Enterprise Product Management (EPM) enables the business to manage complex product attributes of data in complex environments. Product Mastering helps create a 'single view' of the product by creating a business-driven, IT-supported environment where a global 'single truth record' is created, managed and reused.   4.1 The Business Case for Telco PLM-based solutions for Enterprise Product Management   ·       Telco PLM-based Product Mastering solutions provide a centralized authoring environment for product definition and control of all product data and rules   ·       PLM packages are designed to support multiple perspectives of product data (ordering perspective, billing perspective, provisioning perspective)   ·       Maintains relationships/links between different elements of the entire product definition   ·       Telco PLM packages are specialized in next generation lifecycle management requirements of products such as revision and state management, test and release management, role management and impact analysis)   ·       Takes into consideration all aspects of OSS product requirements compared to CRM product catalogue solutions where the product data managed is mostly order oriented and transactional     ·       New breed of Telco PLM packages are designed with 'open' standards such as SID and eTOM. They are interoperable, support integration frameworks such as subscription and notification.   ·       Telco PLM packages have developed good collaboration frameworks to integrate suppliers and partners into the product development value chain   4.2 Various Architectures/Approaches for Product Mastering using Telco PLM systems   4. 2.a Single Central Product Management (Mastering) Approach   Figure 6: Single Central Product Management (Master) Approach       This approach is implemented across verticals such as aerospace and automotive. It focuses on a physically centralized product master to which other sources are dependent on. The product definition data (Product bundles, service bundles, price plans, offers and discounts, product configuration rules and market campaigns) is created and maintained physically in a centralized environment. In addition, the product definition/authoring environment is centralized. The existing legacy product definition data available in CRM product catalogue, billing catalogue and the legacy product catalogue is migrated to the centralized PLM-based Enterprise Product Management solution.   Architectural changes must be made in the existing business landscape of applications to create and revise data because the applications have to refer to the central repository for approvals and validation of product configurations. It is achieved by modifying how the applications write data or how the applications can be adapted to use the rules to be managed and published.   Complete product configuration validation will be done in enterprise / central product catalogue and final configuration will be sent to the B/OSS system through the SOA compliant product distribution architecture. The approach/architecture enables greater control in terms of product data management and product data governance.   4.2.b Federated Product Management (Mastering) Architecture     Figure 7: Federated Product Management (Mastering) Architecture   In the federated product mastering approach, the basic unique product definition data (product id, description product hierarchy, basic price plans and simple product design rules) will be centrally created and will be maintained. And, the advanced product definition (Product bundling, promotions, offers & discount plans) will be created in respective down stream OSS systems. The advanced product definition (Product bundling, promotions, offers and discount plans) will be created in respective downstream OSS systems.   For example, basic product definitions such as attributes, product hierarchy and basic price plans will be created and maintained in Enterprise/Central product reference catalogue and distributed to downstream OSS systems. Respective downstream OSS systems build product bundles, promotions, advanced price plans over the basic product definition and master the advanced product definition. Central reference database accesses the respective other source product master data and assembles a point-in-time consolidated view of the product. The approach is typically adapted in some merger and acquisition scenarios where there is a low probability of a central physical authority managing the data. In addition, the migration effort in this case is minimal and there are no big architectural changes to the organization application landscape. However, this approach will not result in better product data management and data governance.   5.0 Customer Scenario – Before EPC deployment   A leading global telecommunications service provider wanted to launch a quad play and triple play service offering in the shortest possible lead time. The service provider was offering Broadband and VoIP services to customers. The company wanted to reuse a majority of the Broadband services and price plans and bundle them with new wireless and IPTV services for quad play and triple play. The challenges in launching the new service offerings were:       Figure 8: Triple Play Plan   ·       Broadband product data was stored in multiple product catalogues (CRM catalogue, Billing catalogue, spread sheets)   ·       Product managers spent a lot of time performing tasks involving duplication or re-keying of data. Manual effort caused errors, cost and time over-runs.   ·       No effective product and price data governance mechanism. Price change issues arising from the lack of data consistency across systems resulted in leakage of customer value and revenue.   ·       Product data had re-usability issues and was not in a structured format. It resulted in uncontrolled product portfolio creation and product management issues.   ·       Lack of enterprise product model resulted into product distribution challenges and thus delays in product launch.   ·       Designers are constrained by existing legacy product management solutions to model product/service requirements and product configuration rules such as upgrading, downgrading and cross selling.    5.1 Customer Scenario - After EPC deployment     Figure 9: SOA-based end-to-end EPC Solution   The company deployed PLM-based Enterprise Product Catalogue solutions to launch quad play service after evaluating various product catalogues. The broadband product offering, service and price data were migrated to the new system, and the product and price plan hierarchy for new offerings were created using the entities defined in the Enterprise Product Model. Supplier product catalogue data such as routers and set up boxes were loaded onto the new solution through SOA-based web service. Price plans and configuration rules were built in the new system. The validated final product configurations were extracted from the product catalogue in a SID format and were distributed to the downstream B/OSS systems through exposed SOA-based web services. The transformations required for the B/OSS system were handled using the transformation layer as part of the solution.   6.0 How PLM enabled Product Management Transformation         Figure 10: Product Management Transformation     PLM-based Product Catalogue Solution helped the customer reduce the product launch cycle time by 30% and enable transformation of Product Management for next generation services.   7.0 Conclusion   On the one hand, the telecom industry is undergoing changes due to disruptions, uncertain product markets and increased complexity of products. On the other hand, the ARPU is decreasing year-on-year. Communications Service Providers are embarking on convergence, bundled service offerings, flexibility to cross-sell and up-sell, introduce new value-added services, leverage Web 2.0 concepts and network capabilities. Consequently, large scale IT transformation initiatives to improve their ARPU supporting network and business transformations are a business imperative. Product Management has become a focus area. Companies are investing in best-in- class COTS solutions to reduce time-to-market, ensure rapid service delivery and improve operational efficiency. An efficient PLM-based enterprise product mastering solution plays a key role in achieving zero touch automation and rapid product launch.   References:   1.     Preston G.Smith, Donald G.Reineristsem, Van Nostrand Reinhold “Developing Products in Half the time”.   2.     John G. Innes, "Achieving Successful Product Change", Pitman Publishing.   3.     D T Pham and R M Setchi (16th Jan, 2001) "Authoring environment for documentation development" University of Wales Cardiff, U.K., Proceedings on Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Vol. 215, Part B.   4.     Oracle Product Hub for Communications:   http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/master-data-management/product-hub-082059.html  

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 27, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 27, 2012Popular ReleasesHarness: Harness 2.0.2: change to .NET Framework Client Profile bug fix the download dialog auto answer. bug fix setFocus command. add "SendKeys" command. remove "closeAll" command. minor bugs fixed.BugNET Issue Tracker: BugNET 0.9.161: Below is a list of fixes in this release. Bug BGN-2092 - Link in Email "visit your profile" not functional BGN-2083 - Manager of bugnet can not edit project when it is not public BGN-2080 - clicking on a link in the project summary causes error (0.9.152.0) BGN-2070 - Missing Functionality On Feed.aspx BGN-2069 - Calendar View does not work BGN-2068 - Time tracking totals not ok BGN-2067 - Issues List Page Size Bug: Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less than the si...YAF.NET (aka Yet Another Forum.NET): v1.9.6.1 RTW: v1.9.6.1 FINAL is .NET v4.0 ONLY v1.9.6.1 has: Performance Improvements .NET v4.0 improvements Improved FaceBook Integration More complete change list and discussion here: http://forum.yetanotherforum.net/yaf_postst14201_v1-9-6-1-RTW-Dated--3-26-2012.aspxQuick Performance Monitor: Version 1.8.1: Added option to set main window to be 'Always On Top'. Use context (right-click) menu on graph to toggle.Asp.NET Url Router: v1.0: build for .net 2.0 and .net 4.0SQLinq - use LINQ to generate Ad-Hoc Sql Queries: SQLinq v1.1: Nuget Package:http://nuget.org/packages/sqlinq Install SQLinq via Nuget Change Log:Fixed "SELECT *" bug when no selector is specified Added ".Take(int)" and ".Skip(int)" methods to support paging Added ability to specify "ORDER BY"DbViewSharp: Sql Compact Edition plugins: The SQL CE plugins are new assemblies written to allow DbViewSharp to work with SQL Compact Edition databases. Some features available for Sql Server databases are unavailable because of restrictions in the Compact Edition engine. However there are plans to add different new features as compensation for this. See the Sql CE Plugin page for more details.TileSet Map Editor: Map Creator: can add maps/ layers can use only 1 tileset for now Have Save/Load Logics... added Fill Copy and Paste working towards better code and more optionsBagammon pc player: Baggamon pc player v.1.3: This a source code of a project "tool-game" Bagammon pc player. It has bug. Please do not fix them. Thank you. For your information : "If you want to use it buy it. Send an email."openSourceC.Daylife: Release v1.0a: This is a minor bug fix release with some minor internal refactoring as well. The Documentation page has some code samples that show how to use the library. If you discover any issues with this release, please check the existing Discussions and Issues to see if the issue has already been reported, and if not, create a new discussion with the details of the issue.menu4web: menu4web 0.0.3: menu4web 0.0.3Windawesome: Windawesome v1.4.0 x86: Added a SeparatorWidget. Implemented some xmonad-like functionality for multiple-monitors - see SwapCurrentWorkspaceWith, SwitchToNextMonitor and SwitchToPreviousMonitor. Thanks to mkocubinski for the idea and some of the implementation. Implemented AddBarToWorkspace and RemoveBarFromWorkspace. Small performance improvements. Any issues/recommendations/requests for future versions? This is the 32-bit version of the release. If you use a 32-bit Windows, this is the release you should u...Navigation for ASP.NET Web Forms: Navigation 1.4: Navigation for ASP.NET Web Forms manages movement and data passing between ASPX pages in a unit-testable manner. There is no client-side logic, so it works in all browsers, and no server-side cache, so it works with the browser back button. Comprehensive documentation and sample code can be found under the Documentation tab (Make sure to unblock all zip files prior to extraction) New - Added default State NavigationData. Supports strongly typed values and routing defaults New - Added mobi...Afrihost Usage Monitoring Gadget: Afrihost Gadget 1.2.0: This is the stable current download: Changes: Added support for Uncapped accounts. Added support for IS Uncapped Accounts.ArcGIS Editor for OpenStreetMap: ArcGIS Editor for OSM 2.0 Final: This release installs both the ArcGIS Editor for OSM Server Component and/or ArcGIS Editor for OSM Desktop components. The Desktop tools allow you to download data from the OpenStreetMap servers and store it locally in a geodatabase. You can then use the familiar editing environment of ArcGIS Desktop to create, modify, or delete data. Once you are done editing, you can post back the edit changes to OSM to make them available to all OSM users. The Server Component allows you to quickly create...Craig's Utility Library: Craig's Utility Library 3.1: This update adds about 60 new extension methods, a couple of new classes, and a number of fixes including: Additions Added DateSpan class Added GenericDelimited class Random additions Added static thread friendly version of Random.Next called ThreadSafeNext. AOP Manager additions Added Destroy function to AOPManager (clears out all data so system can be recreated. Really only useful for testing...) ORM additions Added PagedCommand and PageCount functions to ObjectBaseClass (same as M...DotSpatial: DotSpatial 1.1: This is a Minor Release. See the changes in the issue tracker. Minimal -- includes DotSpatial core and essential extensions Extended -- includes debugging symbols and additional extensions Just want to run the software? End user (non-programmer) version available branded as MapWindow Want to add your own feature? Develop a plugin, using the template and contribute to the extension feed (you can also write extensions that you distribute in other ways). Components are available as NuGet pa...Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework - a centralized code sample library: C++, .NET Coding Guideline: Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework Coding Guideline This document describes the coding style guideline for native C++ and .NET (C# and VB.NET) programming used by the Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework project team.WebDAV for WHS: Version 1.0.67: - Added: Check whether the Remote Web Access is turned on or not; - Added: Check for Add-In updates;Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 3.0 (March 2012) for .NET 4.0: March release of Phalanger 3.0 significantly enhances performance, adds new features and fixes many issues. See following for the list of main improvements: New features: Phalanger Tools installable for Visual Studio 2011 Beta "filter" extension with several most used filters implemented DomDocument HTML parser, loadHTML() method mail() PHP compatible function PHP 5.4 T_CALLABLE token PHP 5.4 "callable" type hint PCRE: UTF32 characters in range support configuration supports <c...New Projects(MVC4) Character Creation: A simple web site to manage your Avalon CharactersAmfSample: Sample projectBismillah Quran Reader for Wp7: Bismillah Quran Reader is an application for reading Quran translations in WP7. Translations can be read in various languages. Also recitations can be listened to.BlogEngine Mvc: This is an MVC version of BlogEngine.net. Project Description Our plan is to convert the whole BlogEngine.NET into an MVC application by the end of June 2012. It's developed in C# ASP.NET MVC3.Db7: Db7EF4.3 Code First and Migration Sample: EF4.3 Code First and Migration Sampleemoji for windows phone: This project is a windows phone 7 enmoji libary.Excel Document Merger: Excel Document Merger is a utility for combining multiple Excel workbooks and worksheets into a single workbook.exceladdin: exceladdinfastBinaryJSON: Binary JSON serializer based on fastJSONFontographer: A metro style WPF app to demonstrate the capabilites of the fonts on the users systemGonte Web Desktop: Another web desktop using ExtJs javascript frameworkIndoor Cricket Stats: Indoor Cricket StatsKernel32 C# wrapper: Kernel32.dll C# wrapper. Mostly done for threading, pipes, mutexes and other stuff. Not all methods implemented.Live for Desktop: A simple app that lets you browse you Live accout from a webbrowser integrated in the software. Future version will also include a custom interface and a Metro style look.LogoScriptIDE: IDE for LogoScript, A logo and C like scripting languageMcCloud Service Framework: Monte Carlo Cloud Service Framework (McCloud) provides a generic service implementation of Monte Carlo method, based on Microsoft Windows Azure, to solve a wide range of scientific and engineering problems.NetView Control for Microsoft Access: A native control for Microsoft Access forms to display and interact with non-hierarchical data.Polygon: Polygon is a UI composition framework for ASP.NET Web Forms. It can be used for third-party plugin extensibility of ASP.NET Web Forms applications. Though it's developed in C#, plugins can also done in VB as well.Programmeerproject-LambdaOffice: Architectural project. Takes input from the user and prints it to various fileformats such as .docx and .pdfQuick Job Seeker: Final project of computer scienceSchool Education Management: Project Description School Management System helps schools in managing student's data. It is targeted for colleges in the Philippines. It is developed in ASp.Net MVC3 and uses SQL Server as the database. The system is divided into several modules: 1. Registrar Module - used by the Registrar. 2. Scheduling Module - used by Deans for creating course offerings schedule 3. Cashiering Module - used by the Accounting Department 4. Grading Entry Module - used by teachers for encoding grade...Sharepoint Carousel: Sharepoint Carousel\Slider is a webpart that allows you to have a carousel that contains an image with a link below it. it is fully customisable from styles to the actual javascript that generates the slider data it has currently only been tested with sharepoint 2010 This is carousel\slider for sharepoint is built of the JCarousel http://sorgalla.com/jcarousel/.Sieena Dashboard: Metro UI DashboardSimple Redirect Module for DotNetNuke: This module allows content editors in DotNetNuke to have a simple and easy way to properly redirect incoming URLs that are incorrectly indexed by search engines.software de entrenador 2.0: software de entrenador es un Programa diseñado para entrenadores de musculacion y personas cuyo proposito es mejorar en sus entrenamientos y desean llevar un control del mismo a modo de diario.Sqlite Loader: Tool to Import/Export data to an Sqlite database using CSV, XML with a GUI written in C#TestProject_Mercurial: Test Project with MercuriaTestProject_TFS: the test project with tfsThinkPHP-??、???PHP????: ??WEB??????，?????WEB?????? Twesh Ajax: TweshAjax is clientside javascript library for making asynchronous calls to server.UserProfilePropertiesSync: This utility allows to synchronize User Profile properties between different SharePoint 2010 environments.VRacer: Vektor Car racing on windows phone.Workflow Foundation State Machine Service: This is a sample project for workflow foundation 4 state machine exposed as a WCF serviceWPZilla: Bugzilla client for Windows Phone 7.1 and up.XNA GPU Particles Tool: This is a tool to help create particle effects based on the sample shaders provided in the XNA education catalogue. View the changes to the parameters in real time.Y.Music: Y.Music - ??? ?????? ??? ??????? ??????.?????? ???????? ??????. ?? ????????? ?? ??????? ???-??????? ????????? ??????????. ? ???? ?? ?? ?????????? ??????? ?????? ?????????? ?????? ? ????????????? ??????? ? ????????? ? ?????????. ????????? ?????????? ?? WPF/?#/.NET. ????? ? ??? ???????????? ?????????? NAudio ? Fluent Ribbon.

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• OData to the rescue. Exposing the eventlog as a data feed

  - by cibrax

  In one of the project where I was working one, we used the Microsoft Enterprise Library Exception Application Block integration with WCF for logging all the technical issues on the services/backend in Windows Event Log. This application block worked like a charm, all the errors were correctly logged on the Event Log without even needing to modify the service code. However, we also needed to provide a quick way to expose all those events to the different system users so they could get access to all the them remotely. In just a couple of minutes I came up with a simple solution based on ADO.NET Data Services. ADO.NET data services is very powerful in this sense, you only need to provide a IQueryable implementation, and that’s all. You get a RESTful service with rich query support for free. In this sample, I used Linq to Objects to get the latest entries from the Event Log, and I also filter the entries by the category used by the Application Block to avoid loading unnecessary entries in memory. public class LogDataSource     {         string source;         public LogDataSource(string source)         {             this.source = source;         }         public LogDataSource()         {         }         public IQueryable<LogEntry> LogEntries         {             get { return GetEntries().AsQueryable().OrderBy(e => e.TimeGenerated); }         }         private IEnumerable<LogEntry> GetEntries()         {             var applicationLog = System.Diagnostics.EventLog.GetEventLogs().Where(e => e.Log == "Application")                 .FirstOrDefault();             var entries = new List<LogEntry>();             if (applicationLog != null)             {                 foreach (EventLogEntry entry in applicationLog.Entries)                 {                     if (source == null || entry.Source.Equals(source, StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase))                     {                         entries.Add(new LogEntry                         {                             Category = entry.Category,                             EventID = entry.InstanceId,                             Message = entry.Message,                             TimeGenerated = entry.TimeGenerated,                             Source = entry.Source,                         });                     }                 }             }             return entries.OrderByDescending(e => e.TimeGenerated)                         .Take(200);         }     } LogEntry is class I created for this service to expose an Event Log Entry.     [EntityPropertyMappingAttribute("Source",         SyndicationItemProperty.Title,         SyndicationTextContentKind.Plaintext, true)]     [EntityPropertyMapping("Message",         SyndicationItemProperty.Summary,         SyndicationTextContentKind.Plaintext, true)]     [EntityPropertyMapping("TimeGenerated",         SyndicationItemProperty.Updated,         SyndicationTextContentKind.Plaintext, true)]     [DataServiceKey("EventID")]     public class LogEntry     {         public long EventID         {             get;             set;         }         public string Category         {             get;             set;         }         public string Message         {             get;             set;         }         public DateTime TimeGenerated         {             get;             set;         }         public string Source         {             get;             set;         }     } As you can see, I used the new feature “Friendly feeds” to map several properties in the entries with standard ATOM elements. The “DataServiceKey” is only necessary because I am using the Reflection Provider (the exposed IQueryable implementation is just Linq to Objects) rather than the default Entity Framework Provider. The data service implementation is also quite simple, just a couple of lines were needed to expose the data source created previously. public class LogDataService : DataService<LogDataSource>     {         public static void InitializeService(IDataServiceConfiguration config)         {             config.SetEntitySetAccessRule("*", EntitySetRights.AllRead);         }         protected override LogDataSource CreateDataSource()         {             string source = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["EventLogSource"];             if (source == null)             {                 throw new ApplicationException("The EventLogSource appsetting is missing in the configuration file");             }             return new LogDataSource(source);         }     } With this implementation in place, the final users not only get a feed with all the latest errors in the event log, but also support for performing queries against that data. This is one of the great things about ADO.NET Data services.

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• How to create a new WCF/MVC/jQuery application from scratch

  - by pjohnson

  As a corporate developer by trade, I don't get much opportunity to create from-the-ground-up web sites; usually it's tweaks, fixes, and new functionality to existing sites. And with hobby sites, I often don't find the challenges I run into with enterprise systems; usually it's starting from Visual Studio's boilerplate project and adding whatever functionality I want to play around with, rarely deploying outside my own machine. So my experience creating a new enterprise-level site was a bit dated, and the technologies to do so have come a long way, and are much more ready to go out of the box. My intention with this post isn't so much to provide any groundbreaking insights, but to just tie together a lot of information in one place to make it easy to create a new site from scratch. Architecture One site I created earlier this year had an MVC 3 front end and a WCF 4-driven service layer. Using Visual Studio 2010, these project types are easy enough to add to a new solution. I created a third Class Library project to store common functionality the front end and services layers both needed to access, for example, the DataContract classes that the front end uses to call services in the service layer. By keeping DataContract classes in a separate project, I avoided the need for the front end to have an assembly/project reference directly to the services code, a bit cleaner and more flexible of an SOA implementation. Consuming the service Even by this point, VS has given you a lot. You have a working web site and a working service, neither of which do much but are great starting points. To wire up the front end and the services, I needed to create proxy classes and WCF client configuration information. I decided to use the SvcUtil.exe utility provided as part of the Windows SDK, which you should have installed if you installed VS. VS also provides an Add Service Reference command since the .NET 1.x ASMX days, which I've never really liked; it creates several .cs/.disco/etc. files, some of which contained hardcoded URL's, adding duplicate files (*1.cs, *2.cs, etc.) without doing a good job of cleaning up after itself. I've found SvcUtil much cleaner, as it outputs one C# file (containing several proxy classes) and a config file with settings, and it's easier to use to regenerate the proxy classes when the service changes, and to then maintain all your configuration in one place (your Web.config, instead of the Service Reference files). I provided it a reference to a copy of my common assembly so it doesn't try to recreate the data contract classes, had it use the type List<T> for collections, and modified the output files' names and .NET namespace, ending up with a command like: svcutil.exe /l:cs /o:MyService.cs /config:MyService.config /r:MySite.Common.dll /ct:System.Collections.Generic.List`1 /n:*,MySite.Web.ServiceProxies http://localhost:59999/MyService.svc I took the generated MyService.cs file and drop it in the web project, under a ServiceProxies folder, matching the namespace and keeping it separate from classes I coded manually. Integrating the config file took a little more work, but only needed to be done once as these settings didn't often change. A great thing Microsoft improved with WCF 4 is configuration; namely, you can use all the default settings and not have to specify them explicitly in your config file. Unfortunately, SvcUtil doesn't generate its config file this way. If you just copy & paste MyService.config's contents into your front end's Web.config, you'll copy a lot of settings you don't need, plus this will get unwieldy if you add more services in the future, each with its own custom binding. Really, as the only mandatory settings are the endpoint's ABC's (address, binding, and contract) you can get away with just this: <system.serviceModel>  <client>    <endpoint address="http://localhost:59999/MyService.svc" binding="wsHttpBinding" contract="MySite.Web.ServiceProxies.IMyService" />  </client></system.serviceModel> By default, the services project uses basicHttpBinding. As you can see, I switched it to wsHttpBinding, a more modern standard. Using something like netTcpBinding would probably be faster and more efficient since the client & service are both written in .NET, but it requires additional server setup and open ports, whereas switching to wsHttpBinding is much simpler. From an MVC controller action method, I instantiated the client, and invoked the method for my operation. As with any object that implements IDisposable, I wrapped it in C#'s using() statement, a tidy construct that ensures Dispose gets called no matter what, even if an exception occurs. Unfortunately there are problems with that, as WCF's ClientBase<TChannel> class doesn't implement Dispose according to Microsoft's own usage guidelines. I took an approach similar to Technology Toolbox's fix, except using partial classes instead of a wrapper class to extend the SvcUtil-generated proxy, making the fix more seamless from the controller's perspective, and theoretically, less code I have to change if and when Microsoft fixes this behavior. User interface The MVC 3 project template includes jQuery and some other common JavaScript libraries by default. I updated the ones I used to the latest versions using NuGet, available in VS via the Tools > Library Package Manager > Manage NuGet Packages for Solution... > Updates. I also used this dialog to remove packages I wasn't using. Given that it's smart enough to know the difference between the .js and .min.js files, I was hoping it would be smart enough to know which to include during build and publish operations, but this doesn't seem to be the case. I ended up using Cassette to perform the minification and bundling of my JavaScript and CSS files; ASP.NET 4.5 includes this functionality out of the box. The web client to web server link via jQuery was easy enough. In my JavaScript function, unobtrusively wired up to a button's click event, I called $.ajax, corresponding to an action method that returns a JsonResult, accomplished by passing my model class to the Controller.Json() method, which jQuery helpfully translates from JSON to a JavaScript object.$.ajax calls weren't perfectly straightforward. I tried using the simpler $.post method instead, but ran into trouble without specifying the contentType parameter, which $.post doesn't have. The url parameter is simple enough, though for flexibility in how the site is deployed, I used MVC's Url.Action method to get the URL, then sent this to JavaScript in a JavaScript string variable. If the request needed input data, I used the JSON.stringify function to convert a JavaScript object with the parameters into a JSON string, which MVC then parses into strongly-typed C# parameters. I also specified "json" for dataType, and "application/json; charset=utf-8" for contentType. For success and error, I provided my success and error handling functions, though success is a bit hairier. "Success" in this context indicates whether the HTTP request succeeds, not whether what you wanted the AJAX call to do on the web server was successful. For example, if you make an AJAX call to retrieve a piece of data, the success handler will be invoked for any 200 OK response, and the error handler will be invoked for failed requests, e.g. a 404 Not Found (if the server rejected the URL you provided in the url parameter) or 500 Internal Server Error (e.g. if your C# code threw an exception that wasn't caught). If an exception was caught and handled, or if the data requested wasn't found, this would likely go through the success handler, which would need to do further examination to verify it did in fact get back the data for which it asked. I discuss this more in the next section. Logging and exception handling At this point, I had a working application. If I ran into any errors or unexpected behavior, debugging was easy enough, but of course that's not an option on public web servers. Microsoft Enterprise Library 5.0 filled this gap nicely, with its Logging and Exception Handling functionality. First I installed Enterprise Library; NuGet as outlined above is probably the best way to do so. I needed a total of three assembly references--Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.ExceptionHandling, Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.ExceptionHandling.Logging, and Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Logging. VS links with the handy Enterprise Library 5.0 Configuration Console, accessible by right-clicking your Web.config and choosing Edit Enterprise Library V5 Configuration. In this console, under Logging Settings, I set up a Rolling Flat File Trace Listener to write to log files but not let them get too large, using a Text Formatter with a simpler template than that provided by default. Logging to a different (or additional) destination is easy enough, but a flat file suited my needs. At this point, I verified it wrote as expected by calling the Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Logging.Logger.Write method from my C# code. With those settings verified, I went on to wire up Exception Handling with Logging. Back in the EntLib Configuration Console, under Exception Handling, I used a LoggingExceptionHandler, setting its Logging Category to the category I already had configured in the Logging Settings. Then, from code (e.g. a controller's OnException method, or any action method's catch block), I called the Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.ExceptionHandling.ExceptionPolicy.HandleException method, providing the exception and the exception policy name I had configured in the Exception Handling Settings. Before I got this configured correctly, when I tried it out, nothing was logged. In working with .NET, I'm used to seeing an exception if something doesn't work or isn't set up correctly, but instead working with these EntLib modules reminds me more of JavaScript (before the "use strict" v5 days)--it just does nothing and leaves you to figure out why, I presume due in part to the listener pattern Microsoft followed with the Enterprise Library. First, I verified logging worked on its own. Then, verifying/correcting where each piece wires up to the next resolved my problem. Your C# code calls into the Exception Handling module, referencing the policy you pass the HandleException method; that policy's configuration contains a LoggingExceptionHandler that references a logCategory; that logCategory should be added in the loggingConfiguration's categorySources section; that category references a listener; that listener should be added in the loggingConfiguration's listeners section, which specifies the name of the log file. One final note on error handling, as the proper way to handle WCF and MVC errors is a whole other very lengthy discussion. For AJAX calls to MVC action methods, depending on your configuration, an exception thrown here will result in ASP.NET'S Yellow Screen Of Death being sent back as a response, which is at best unnecessarily and uselessly verbose, and at worst a security risk as the internals of your application are exposed to potential hackers. I mitigated this by overriding my controller's OnException method, passing the exception off to the Exception Handling module as above. I created an ErrorModel class with as few properties as possible (e.g. an Error string), sending as little information to the client as possible, to both maximize bandwidth and mitigate risk. I then return an ErrorModel in JSON format for AJAX requests: if (filterContext.HttpContext.Request.IsAjaxRequest()){    filterContext.Result = Json(new ErrorModel(...));    filterContext.ExceptionHandled = true;} My $.ajax calls from the browser get a valid 200 OK response and go into the success handler. Before assuming everything is OK, I check if it's an ErrorModel or a model containing what I requested. If it's an ErrorModel, or null, I pass it to my error handler. If the client needs to handle different errors differently, ErrorModel can contain a flag, error code, string, etc. to differentiate, but again, sending as little information back as possible is ideal. Summary As any experienced ASP.NET developer knows, this is a far cry from where ASP.NET started when I began working with it 11 years ago. WCF services are far more powerful than ASMX ones, MVC is in many ways cleaner and certainly more unit test-friendly than Web Forms (if you don't consider the code/markup commingling you're doing again), the Enterprise Library makes error handling and logging almost entirely configuration-driven, AJAX makes a responsive UI more feasible, and jQuery makes JavaScript coding much less painful. It doesn't take much work to get a functional, maintainable, flexible application, though having it actually do something useful is a whole other matter.

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• Running SSIS packages from C#

  - by Piotr Rodak

  Most of the developers and DBAs know about two ways of deploying packages: You can deploy them to database server and run them using SQL Server Agent job or you can deploy the packages to file system and run them using dtexec.exe utility. Both approaches have their pros and cons. However I would like to show you that there is a third way (sort of) that is often overlooked, and it can give you capabilities the ‘traditional’ approaches can’t. I have been working for a few years with applications that run packages from host applications that are implemented in .NET. As you know, SSIS provides programming model that you can use to implement more flexible solutions. SSIS applications are usually thought to be batch oriented, with fairly rigid architecture and processing model, with fixed timeframes when the packages are executed to process data. It doesn’t to be the case, you don’t have to limit yourself to batch oriented architecture. I have very good experiences with service oriented architectures processing large amounts of data. These applications are more complex than what I would like to show here, but the principle stays the same: you can execute packages as a service, on ad-hoc basis. You can also implement and schedule various signals, HTTP calls, file drops, time schedules, Tibco messages and other to run the packages. You can implement event handler that will trigger execution of SSIS when a certain event occurs in StreamInsight stream. This post is just a small example of how you can use the API and other features to create a service that can run SSIS packages on demand. I thought it might be a good idea to implement a restful service that would listen to requests and execute appropriate actions. As it turns out, it is trivial in C#. The application is implemented as console application for the ease of debugging and running. In reality, you might want to implement the application as Windows service. To begin, you have to reference namespace System.ServiceModel.Web and then add a few lines of code: Uri baseAddress = new Uri("http://localhost:8011/");               WebServiceHost svcHost = new WebServiceHost(typeof(PackRunner), baseAddress);                           try             {                 svcHost.Open();                   Console.WriteLine("Service is running");                 Console.WriteLine("Press enter to stop the service.");                 Console.ReadLine();                   svcHost.Close();             }             catch (CommunicationException cex)             {                 Console.WriteLine("An exception occurred: {0}", cex.Message);                 svcHost.Abort();             } The interesting lines are 3, 7 and 13. In line 3 you create a WebServiceHost object. In line 7 you start listening on the defined URL and then in line 13 you shut down the service. As you have noticed, the WebServiceHost constructor is accepting type of an object (here: PackRunner) that will be instantiated as singleton and subsequently used to process the requests. This is the class where you put your logic, but to tell WebServiceHost how to use it, the class must implement an interface which declares methods to be used by the host. The interface itself must be ornamented with attribute ServiceContract. [ServiceContract]     public interface IPackRunner     {         [OperationContract]         [WebGet(UriTemplate = "runpack?package={name}")]         string RunPackage1(string name);           [OperationContract]         [WebGet(UriTemplate = "runpackwithparams?package={name}&rows={rows}")]         string RunPackage2(string name, int rows);     } Each method that is going to be used by WebServiceHost has to have attribute OperationContract, as well as WebGet or WebInvoke attribute. The detailed discussion of the available options is outside of scope of this post. I also recommend using more descriptive names to methods . Then, you have to provide the implementation of the interface: public class PackRunner : IPackRunner     {         ... There are two methods defined in this class. I think that since the full code is attached to the post, I will show only the more interesting method, the RunPackage2.   /// <summary> /// Runs package and sets some of its variables. /// </summary> /// <param name="name">Name of the package</param> /// <param name="rows">Number of rows to export</param> /// <returns></returns> public string RunPackage2(string name, int rows) {     try     {         string pkgLocation = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["PackagePath"];           pkgLocation = Path.Combine(pkgLocation, name.Replace("\"", ""));           Console.WriteLine();         Console.WriteLine("Calling package {0} with parameter {1}.", name, rows);                  Application app = new Application();         Package pkg = app.LoadPackage(pkgLocation, null);           pkg.Variables["User::ExportRows"].Value = rows;         DTSExecResult pkgResults = pkg.Execute();         Console.WriteLine();         Console.WriteLine(pkgResults.ToString());         if (pkgResults == DTSExecResult.Failure)         {             Console.WriteLine();             Console.WriteLine("Errors occured during execution of the package:");             foreach (DtsError er in pkg.Errors)                 Console.WriteLine("{0}: {1}", er.ErrorCode, er.Description);             Console.WriteLine();             return "Errors occured during execution. Contact your support.";         }                  Console.WriteLine();         Console.WriteLine();         return "OK";     }     catch (Exception ex)     {         Console.WriteLine(ex);         return ex.ToString();     } }   The method accepts package name and number of rows to export. The packages are deployed to the file system. The path to the packages is configured in the application configuration file. This way, you can implement multiple services on the same machine, provided you also configure the URL for each instance appropriately. To run a package, you have to reference Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime namespace. This namespace is implemented in Microsoft.SQLServer.ManagedDTS.dll which in my case was installed in the folder “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\100\SDK\Assemblies”. Once you have done it, you can create an instance of Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime.Application as in line 18 in the above snippet. It may be a good idea to create the Application object in the constructor of the PackRunner class, to avoid necessity of recreating it each time the service is invoked. Then, in line 19 you see that an instance of Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime.Package is created. The method LoadPackage in its simplest form just takes package file name as the first parameter. Before you run the package, you can set its variables to certain values. This is a great way of configuring your packages without all the hassle with dtsConfig files. In the above code sample, variable “User:ExportRows” is set to value of the parameter “rows” of the method. Eventually, you execute the package. The method doesn’t throw exceptions, you have to test the result of execution yourself. If the execution wasn’t successful, you can examine collection of errors exposed by the package. These are the familiar errors you often see during development and debugging of the package. I you run the package from the code, you have opportunity to persist them or log them using your favourite logging framework. The package itself is very simple; it connects to my AdventureWorks database and saves number of rows specified in variable “User::ExportRows” to a file. You should know that before you run the package, you can change its connection strings, logging, events and many more. I attach solution with the test service, as well as a project with two test packages. To test the service, you have to run it and wait for the message saying that the host is started. Then, just type (or copy and paste) the below command to your browser. http://localhost:8011/runpackwithparams?package=%22ExportEmployees.dtsx%22&rows=12 When everything works fine, and you modified the package to point to your AdventureWorks database, you should see "OK” wrapped in xml: I stopped the database service to simulate invalid connection string situation. The output of the request is different now: And the service console window shows more information: As you see, implementing service oriented ETL framework is not a very difficult task. You have ability to configure the packages before you run them, you can implement logging that is consistent with the rest of your system. In application I have worked with we also have resource monitoring and execution control. We don’t allow to run more than certain number of packages to run simultaneously. This ensures we don’t strain the server and we use memory and CPUs efficiently. The attached zip file contains two projects. One is the package runner. It has to be executed with administrative privileges as it registers HTTP namespace. The other project contains two simple packages. This is really a cool thing, you should check it out!

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