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Answers to Your Common Oracle Database Lifecycle Management Questions

- by Scott McNeil

We recently ran a live webcast on Strategies for Managing Oracle Database's Lifecycle. There were tons of questions from our audience that we simply could not get to during the hour long presentation. Below are some of those questions along with their answers. Enjoy! Question: In the webcast the presenter talked about “gold” configuration standards, for those who want to use this technique, could you recommend a best practice to consider or follow? How do I get started? Answer:Gold configuration standardization is a quick and easy way to improve availability through consistency. Start by choosing a reference database and saving the configuration to the Oracle Enterprise Manager repository using the Save Configuration feature. Next create a comparison template using the Oracle provided template as a starting point and modify the ignored properties to eliminate expected differences in your environment. Finally create a comparison specification using the comparison template you created plus your saved gold configuration and schedule it to run on a regular basis. Don’t forget to fill in the email addresses of those you want to notify upon drift detection. Watch the database configuration management demo to learn more. Question: Can Oracle Lifecycle Management Pack for Database help with patching an Oracle Real Application Cluster (RAC) environment? Answer: Yes, Oracle Enterprise Manager supports both parallel and rolling patch application of Oracle Real Application Clusters. The use of rolling patching is recommended as there is no downtime involved. For more details watch this demo. Question: What are some of the things administrators can do to control configuration drift? Why is it important? Answer:Configuration drift is one of the main causes of instability and downtime of applications. Oracle Enterprise Manager makes it easy to manage and control drift using scheduled configuration comparisons combined with comparison templates. Question: Does Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Release 2 offer an incremental update feature for "gold" images? For instance, if the source binary has a higher PSU level, what is the best approach to update the existing "gold" image in the software library? Do you have to create a new image or can you just update the original one? Answer:Provisioning Profiles (Gold images) can contain the installation files and database configuration templates. Although it is possible to make some changes to the profile after creation (mainly to configuration), it is normally recommended to simply create a new profile after applying a patch to your reference database. Question: The webcast talked about enforcing in-house standards, does Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c offer verification of your databases and systems to those standards? For example, the initial "gold" image has been massively deployed over time, and there may be some changes to it. How can you do regular checks from Enterprise Manager to ensure the in-house standards are being enforced? Answer:There are really two methods to validate conformity to standards. The first method is to use gold standards which you compare other databases to report unwanted differences. This method uses a new comparison template technology which allows users to ignore known differences (i.e. SID, Start time, etc) which results in a report only showing important or non-conformant differences. This method is quick to setup and configure and recommended for those who want to get started validating compliance quickly. The second method leverages the new compliance framework which allows the creation of specific and robust validations. These compliance rules are grouped into standards which can be assigned to databases quickly and easily. Compliance rules allow for targeted and more sophisticated validation beyond the basic equals operation available in the comparison method. The compliance framework can be used to implement just about any internal or industry standard. The compliance results will track current and historic compliance scores at the overall and individual database targets. When the issue is resolved, the score is automatically affected. Compliance framework is the recommended long term solution for validating compliance using Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. Check out this demo on database compliance to learn more. Question: If you are using the integration between Oracle Enterprise Manager and My Oracle Support in an "offline" mode, how do you know if you have the latest My Oracle Support metadata? Answer:In Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Release 2, you now only need to download one zip file containing all of the metadata xmls files. There is no indication that the metadata has changed but you could run a checksum on the file and compare it to the previously downloaded version to see if it has changed. Question: What happens if a patch fails while administrators are applying it to a database or system? Answer:A large portion of Oracle Enterprise Manager's patch automation is the pre-requisite checks that happen to ensure the highest level of confidence the patch will successfully apply. It is recommended you test the patch in a non-production environment and save the patch plan as a template once successful so you can create new plans using the saved template. If you are using the recommended ‘out of place’ patching methodology, there is no urgency because the database is still running as the cloned Oracle home is being patched. Users can address the issue and restart the patch procedure at the point it left off. If you are using 'in place' method, you can address the issue and continue where the procedure left off. Question: Can Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c R2 compare configurations between more than one target at the same time? Answer:Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c can compare any number of target configurations at one time. This is the basis of many important use cases including Configuration Drift Management. These comparisons can also be scheduled on a regular basis and emails notification sent should any differences appear. To learn more about configuration search and compare watch this demo. Question: How is data comparison done since changes are taking place in a live production system? Answer:There are many things to keep in mind when using the data comparison feature (as part of the Change Management ability to compare table data). It was primarily intended to be used for maintaining consistency of important but relatively static data. For example, application seed data and application setup configuration. This data does not change often but is critical when testing an application to ensure results are consistent with production. It is not recommended to use data comparison on highly dynamic data like transactional tables or very large tables. Question: Which versions of Oracle Database can be monitored through Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c? Answer:Oracle Database versions: 9.2.0.8, 10.1.0.5, 10.2.0.4, 10.2.0.5, 11.1.0.7, 11.2.0.1, 11.2.0.2, 11.2.0.3. Watch the On-Demand Webcast Stay Connected: Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | Linkedin | NewsletterDownload the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control12c Mobile app

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Pixel Shader Giving Black output

- by Yashwinder

I am coding in C# using Windows Forms and the SlimDX API to show the effect of a pixel shader. When I am setting the pixel shader, I am getting a black output screen but if I am not using the pixel shader then I am getting my image rendered on the screen. I have the following C# code using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Windows.Forms; using System.Runtime.InteropServices; using SlimDX.Direct3D9; using SlimDX; using SlimDX.Windows; using System.Drawing; using System.Threading; namespace WindowsFormsApplication1 { // Vertex structure. [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)] struct Vertex { public Vector3 Position; public float Tu; public float Tv; public static int SizeBytes { get { return Marshal.SizeOf(typeof(Vertex)); } } public static VertexFormat Format { get { return VertexFormat.Position | VertexFormat.Texture1; } } } static class Program { public static Device D3DDevice; // Direct3D device. public static VertexBuffer Vertices; // Vertex buffer object used to hold vertices. public static Texture Image; // Texture object to hold the image loaded from a file. public static int time; // Used for rotation caculations. public static float angle; // Angle of rottaion. public static Form1 Window =new Form1(); public static string filepath; static VertexShader vertexShader = null; static ConstantTable constantTable = null; static ImageInformation info; [STAThread] static void Main() { filepath = "C:\\Users\\Public\\Pictures\\Sample Pictures\\Garden.jpg"; info = new ImageInformation(); info = ImageInformation.FromFile(filepath); PresentParameters presentParams = new PresentParameters(); // Below are the required bare mininum, needed to initialize the D3D device. presentParams.BackBufferHeight = info.Height; // BackBufferHeight, set to the Window's height. presentParams.BackBufferWidth = info.Width+200; // BackBufferWidth, set to the Window's width. presentParams.Windowed =true; presentParams.DeviceWindowHandle = Window.panel2 .Handle; // DeviceWindowHandle, set to the Window's handle. // Create the device. D3DDevice = new Device(new Direct3D (), 0, DeviceType.Hardware, Window.Handle, CreateFlags.HardwareVertexProcessing, presentParams); // Create the vertex buffer and fill with the triangle vertices. (Non-indexed) // Remember 3 vetices for a triangle, 2 tris per quad = 6. Vertices = new VertexBuffer(D3DDevice, 6 * Vertex.SizeBytes, Usage.WriteOnly, VertexFormat.None, Pool.Managed); DataStream stream = Vertices.Lock(0, 0, LockFlags.None); stream.WriteRange(BuildVertexData()); Vertices.Unlock(); // Create the texture. Image = Texture.FromFile(D3DDevice,filepath ); // Turn off culling, so we see the front and back of the triangle D3DDevice.SetRenderState(RenderState.CullMode, Cull.None); // Turn off lighting D3DDevice.SetRenderState(RenderState.Lighting, false); ShaderBytecode sbcv = ShaderBytecode.CompileFromFile("C:\\Users\\yashwinder singh\\Desktop\\vertexShader.vs", "vs_main", "vs_1_1", ShaderFlags.None); constantTable = sbcv.ConstantTable; vertexShader = new VertexShader(D3DDevice, sbcv); ShaderBytecode sbc = ShaderBytecode.CompileFromFile("C:\\Users\\yashwinder singh\\Desktop\\pixelShader.txt", "ps_main", "ps_3_0", ShaderFlags.None); PixelShader ps = new PixelShader(D3DDevice, sbc); VertexDeclaration vertexDecl = new VertexDeclaration(D3DDevice, new[] { new VertexElement(0, 0, DeclarationType.Float3, DeclarationMethod.Default, DeclarationUsage.PositionTransformed, 0), new VertexElement(0, 12, DeclarationType.Float2 , DeclarationMethod.Default, DeclarationUsage.TextureCoordinate , 0), VertexElement.VertexDeclarationEnd }); Application.EnableVisualStyles(); MessagePump.Run(Window, () => { // Clear the backbuffer to a black color. D3DDevice.Clear(ClearFlags.Target | ClearFlags.ZBuffer, Color.Black, 1.0f, 0); // Begin the scene. D3DDevice.BeginScene(); // Setup the world, view and projection matrices. //D3DDevice.VertexShader = vertexShader; //D3DDevice.PixelShader = ps; // Render the vertex buffer. D3DDevice.SetStreamSource(0, Vertices, 0, Vertex.SizeBytes); D3DDevice.VertexFormat = Vertex.Format; // Setup our texture. Using Textures introduces the texture stage states, // which govern how Textures get blended together (in the case of multiple // Textures) and lighting information. D3DDevice.SetTexture(0, Image); // Now drawing 2 triangles, for a quad. D3DDevice.DrawPrimitives(PrimitiveType.TriangleList , 0, 2); // End the scene. D3DDevice.EndScene(); // Present the backbuffer contents to the screen. D3DDevice.Present(); }); if (Image != null) Image.Dispose(); if (Vertices != null) Vertices.Dispose(); if (D3DDevice != null) D3DDevice.Dispose(); } private static Vertex[] BuildVertexData() { Vertex[] vertexData = new Vertex[6]; vertexData[0].Position = new Vector3(-1.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f); vertexData[0].Tu = 0.0f; vertexData[0].Tv = 0.0f; vertexData[1].Position = new Vector3(-1.0f, -1.0f, 0.0f); vertexData[1].Tu = 0.0f; vertexData[1].Tv = 1.0f; vertexData[2].Position = new Vector3(1.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f); vertexData[2].Tu = 1.0f; vertexData[2].Tv = 0.0f; vertexData[3].Position = new Vector3(-1.0f, -1.0f, 0.0f); vertexData[3].Tu = 0.0f; vertexData[3].Tv = 1.0f; vertexData[4].Position = new Vector3(1.0f, -1.0f, 0.0f); vertexData[4].Tu = 1.0f; vertexData[4].Tv = 1.0f; vertexData[5].Position = new Vector3(1.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f); vertexData[5].Tu = 1.0f; vertexData[5].Tv = 0.0f; return vertexData; } } } And my pixel shader and vertex shader code are as following // Pixel shader input structure struct PS_INPUT { float4 Position : POSITION; float2 Texture : TEXCOORD0; }; // Pixel shader output structure struct PS_OUTPUT { float4 Color : COLOR0; }; // Global variables sampler2D Tex0; // Name: Simple Pixel Shader // Type: Pixel shader // Desc: Fetch texture and blend with constant color // PS_OUTPUT ps_main( in PS_INPUT In ) { PS_OUTPUT Out; //create an output pixel Out.Color = tex2D(Tex0, In.Texture); //do a texture lookup Out.Color *= float4(0.9f, 0.8f, 0.0f, 1); //do a simple effect return Out; //return output pixel } // Vertex shader input structure struct VS_INPUT { float4 Position : POSITION; float2 Texture : TEXCOORD0; }; // Vertex shader output structure struct VS_OUTPUT { float4 Position : POSITION; float2 Texture : TEXCOORD0; }; // Global variables float4x4 WorldViewProj; // Name: Simple Vertex Shader // Type: Vertex shader // Desc: Vertex transformation and texture coord pass-through // VS_OUTPUT vs_main( in VS_INPUT In ) { VS_OUTPUT Out; //create an output vertex Out.Position = mul(In.Position, WorldViewProj); //apply vertex transformation Out.Texture = In.Texture; //copy original texcoords return Out; //return output vertex }

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Creating New Scripts Dynamically in Lua

- by bazola

Right now this is just a crazy idea that I had, but I was able to implement the code and get it working properly. I am not entirely sure of what the use cases would be just yet. What this code does is create a new Lua script file in the project directory. The ScriptWriter takes as arguments the file name, a table containing any arguments that the script should take when created, and a table containing any instance variables to create by default. My plan is to extend this code to create new functions based on inputs sent in during its creation as well. What makes this cool is that the new file is both generated and loaded dynamically on the fly. Theoretically you could get this code to generate and load any script imaginable. One use case I can think of is an AI that creates scripts to map out it's functions, and creates new scripts for new situations or environments. At this point, this is all theoretical, though. Here is the test code that is creating the new script and then immediately loading it and calling functions from it: function Card:doScriptWriterThing() local scriptName = "ScriptIAmMaking" local scripter = scriptWriter:new(scriptName, {"argumentName"}, {name = "'test'", one = 1}) scripter:makeFileForLoadedSettings() local loadedScript = require (scriptName) local scriptInstance = loadedScript:new("sayThis") print(scriptInstance:get_name()) --will print test print(scriptInstance:get_one()) -- will print 1 scriptInstance:set_one(10000) print(scriptInstance:get_one()) -- will print 10000 print(scriptInstance:get_argumentName()) -- will print sayThis scriptInstance:set_argumentName("saySomethingElse") print(scriptInstance:get_argumentName()) --will print saySomethingElse end Here is ScriptWriter.lua local ScriptWriter = {} local twoSpaceIndent = " " local equalsWithSpaces = " = " local newLine = "\n" --scriptNameToCreate must be a string --argumentsForNew and instanceVariablesToCreate must be tables and not nil function ScriptWriter:new(scriptNameToCreate, argumentsForNew, instanceVariablesToCreate) local instance = setmetatable({}, { __index = self }) instance.name = scriptNameToCreate instance.newArguments = argumentsForNew instance.instanceVariables = instanceVariablesToCreate instance.stringList = {} return instance end function ScriptWriter:makeFileForLoadedSettings() self:buildInstanceMetatable() self:buildInstanceCreationMethod() self:buildSettersAndGetters() self:buildReturn() self:writeStringsToFile() end --very first line of any script that will have instances function ScriptWriter:buildInstanceMetatable() table.insert(self.stringList, "local " .. self.name .. " = {}" .. newLine) table.insert(self.stringList, newLine) end --every script made this way needs a new method to create its instances function ScriptWriter:buildInstanceCreationMethod() --new() function declaration table.insert(self.stringList, ("function " .. self.name .. ":new(")) self:buildNewArguments() table.insert(self.stringList, ")" .. newLine) --first line inside :new() function table.insert(self.stringList, twoSpaceIndent .. "local instance = setmetatable({}, { __index = self })" .. newLine) --add designated arguments inside :new() self:buildNewArgumentVariables() --create the instance variables with the loaded values for key,value in pairs(self.instanceVariables) do table.insert(self.stringList, twoSpaceIndent .. "instance." .. key .. equalsWithSpaces .. value .. newLine) end --close the :new() function table.insert(self.stringList, twoSpaceIndent .. "return instance" .. newLine) table.insert(self.stringList, "end" .. newLine) table.insert(self.stringList, newLine) end function ScriptWriter:buildNewArguments() --if there are arguments for :new(), add them for key,value in ipairs(self.newArguments) do table.insert(self.stringList, value) table.insert(self.stringList, ", ") end if next(self.newArguments) ~= nil then --makes sure the table is not empty first table.remove(self.stringList) --remove the very last element, which will be the extra ", " end end function ScriptWriter:buildNewArgumentVariables() --add the designated arguments to :new() for key, value in ipairs(self.newArguments) do table.insert(self.stringList, twoSpaceIndent .. "instance." .. value .. equalsWithSpaces .. value .. newLine) end end --the instance variables need separate code because their names have to be the key and not the argument name function ScriptWriter:buildSettersAndGetters() for key,value in ipairs(self.newArguments) do self:buildArgumentSetter(value) self:buildArgumentGetter(value) table.insert(self.stringList, newLine) end for key,value in pairs(self.instanceVariables) do self:buildInstanceVariableSetter(key, value) self:buildInstanceVariableGetter(key, value) table.insert(self.stringList, newLine) end end --code for arguments passed in function ScriptWriter:buildArgumentSetter(variable) table.insert(self.stringList, "function " .. self.name .. ":set_" .. variable .. "(newValue)" .. newLine) table.insert(self.stringList, twoSpaceIndent .. "self." .. variable .. equalsWithSpaces .. "newValue" .. newLine) table.insert(self.stringList, "end" .. newLine) end function ScriptWriter:buildArgumentGetter(variable) table.insert(self.stringList, "function " .. self.name .. ":get_" .. variable .. "()" .. newLine) table.insert(self.stringList, twoSpaceIndent .. "return " .. "self." .. variable .. newLine) table.insert(self.stringList, "end" .. newLine) end --code for instance variable values passed in function ScriptWriter:buildInstanceVariableSetter(key, variable) table.insert(self.stringList, "function " .. self.name .. ":set_" .. key .. "(newValue)" .. newLine) table.insert(self.stringList, twoSpaceIndent .. "self." .. key .. equalsWithSpaces .. "newValue" .. newLine) table.insert(self.stringList, "end" .. newLine) end function ScriptWriter:buildInstanceVariableGetter(key, variable) table.insert(self.stringList, "function " .. self.name .. ":get_" .. key .. "()" .. newLine) table.insert(self.stringList, twoSpaceIndent .. "return " .. "self." .. key .. newLine) table.insert(self.stringList, "end" .. newLine) end --last line of any script that will have instances function ScriptWriter:buildReturn() table.insert(self.stringList, "return " .. self.name) end function ScriptWriter:writeStringsToFile() local fileName = (self.name .. ".lua") file = io.open(fileName, 'w') for key,value in ipairs(self.stringList) do file:write(value) end file:close() end return ScriptWriter And here is what the code provided will generate: local ScriptIAmMaking = {} function ScriptIAmMaking:new(argumentName) local instance = setmetatable({}, { __index = self }) instance.argumentName = argumentName instance.name = 'test' instance.one = 1 return instance end function ScriptIAmMaking:set_argumentName(newValue) self.argumentName = newValue end function ScriptIAmMaking:get_argumentName() return self.argumentName end function ScriptIAmMaking:set_name(newValue) self.name = newValue end function ScriptIAmMaking:get_name() return self.name end function ScriptIAmMaking:set_one(newValue) self.one = newValue end function ScriptIAmMaking:get_one() return self.one end return ScriptIAmMaking All of this is generated with these calls: local scripter = scriptWriter:new(scriptName, {"argumentName"}, {name = "'test'", one = 1}) scripter:makeFileForLoadedSettings() I am not sure if I am correct that this could be useful in certain situations. What I am looking for is feedback on the readability of the code, and following Lua best practices. I would also love to hear whether this approach is a valid one, and whether the way that I have done things will be extensible.

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Use a Fake Http Channel to Unit Test with HttpClient

- by Steve Michelotti

Applications get data from lots of different sources. The most common is to get data from a database or a web service. Typically, we encapsulate calls to a database in a Repository object and we create some sort of IRepository interface as an abstraction to decouple between layers and enable easier unit testing by leveraging faking and mocking. This works great for database interaction. However, when consuming a RESTful web service, this is is not always the best approach. The WCF Web APIs that are available on CodePlex (current drop is Preview 3) provide a variety of features to make building HTTP REST services more robust. When you download the latest bits, you’ll also find a new HttpClient which has been updated for .NET 4.0 as compared to the one that shipped for 3.5 in the original REST Starter Kit. The HttpClient currently provides the best API for consuming REST services on the .NET platform and the WCF Web APIs provide a number of extension methods which extend HttpClient and make it even easier to use. Let’s say you have a client application that is consuming an HTTP service – this could be Silverlight, WPF, or any UI technology but for my example I’ll use an MVC application: 1: using System; 2: using System.Net.Http; 3: using System.Web.Mvc; 4: using FakeChannelExample.Models; 5: using Microsoft.Runtime.Serialization; 6: 7: namespace FakeChannelExample.Controllers 8: { 9: public class HomeController : Controller 10: { 11: private readonly HttpClient httpClient; 12: 13: public HomeController(HttpClient httpClient) 14: { 15: this.httpClient = httpClient; 16: } 17: 18: public ActionResult Index() 19: { 20: var response = httpClient.Get("Person(1)"); 21: var person = response.Content.ReadAsDataContract<Person>(); 22: 23: this.ViewBag.Message = person.FirstName + " " + person.LastName; 24: 25: return View(); 26: } 27: } 28: } On line #20 of the code above you can see I’m performing an HTTP GET request to a Person resource exposed by an HTTP service. On line #21, I use the ReadAsDataContract() extension method provided by the WCF Web APIs to serialize to a Person object. In this example, the HttpClient is being passed into the constructor by MVC’s dependency resolver – in this case, I’m using StructureMap as an IoC and my StructureMap initialization code looks like this: 1: using StructureMap; 2: using System.Net.Http; 3: 4: namespace FakeChannelExample 5: { 6: public static class IoC 7: { 8: public static IContainer Initialize() 9: { 10: ObjectFactory.Initialize(x => 11: { 12: x.For<HttpClient>().Use(() => new HttpClient("http://localhost:31614/")); 13: }); 14: return ObjectFactory.Container; 15: } 16: } 17: } My controller code currently depends on a concrete instance of the HttpClient. Now I *could* create some sort of interface and wrap the HttpClient in this interface and use that object inside my controller instead – however, there are a few why reasons that is not desirable: For one thing, the API provided by the HttpClient provides nice features for dealing with HTTP services. I don’t really *want* these to look like C# RPC method calls – when HTTP services have REST features, I may want to inspect HTTP response headers and hypermedia contained within the message so that I can make intelligent decisions as to what to do next in my workflow (although I don’t happen to be doing these things in my example above) – this type of workflow is common in hypermedia REST scenarios. If I just encapsulate HttpClient behind some IRepository interface and make it look like a C# RPC method call, it will become difficult to take advantage of these types of things. Second, it could get pretty mind-numbing to have to create interfaces all over the place just to wrap the HttpClient. Then you’re probably going to have to hard-code HTTP knowledge into your code to formulate requests rather than just “following the links” that the hypermedia in a message might provide. Third, at first glance it might appear that we need to create an interface to facilitate unit testing, but actually it’s unnecessary. Even though the code above is dependent on a concrete type, it’s actually very easy to fake the data in a unit test. The HttpClient provides a Channel property (of type HttpMessageChannel) which allows you to create a fake message channel which can be leveraged in unit testing. In this case, what I want is to be able to write a unit test that just returns fake data. I also want this to be as re-usable as possible for my unit testing. I want to be able to write a unit test that looks like this: 1: [TestClass] 2: public class HomeControllerTest 3: { 4: [TestMethod] 5: public void Index() 6: { 7: // Arrange 8: var httpClient = new HttpClient("http://foo.com"); 9: httpClient.Channel = new FakeHttpChannel<Person>(new Person { FirstName = "Joe", LastName = "Blow" }); 10: 11: HomeController controller = new HomeController(httpClient); 12: 13: // Act 14: ViewResult result = controller.Index() as ViewResult; 15: 16: // Assert 17: Assert.AreEqual("Joe Blow", result.ViewBag.Message); 18: } 19: } Notice on line #9, I’m setting the Channel property of the HttpClient to be a fake channel. I’m also specifying the fake object that I want to be in the response on my “fake” Http request. I don’t need to rely on any mocking frameworks to do this. All I need is my FakeHttpChannel. The code to do this is not complex: 1: using System; 2: using System.IO; 3: using System.Net.Http; 4: using System.Runtime.Serialization; 5: using System.Threading; 6: using FakeChannelExample.Models; 7: 8: namespace FakeChannelExample.Tests 9: { 10: public class FakeHttpChannel<T> : HttpClientChannel 11: { 12: private T responseObject; 13: 14: public FakeHttpChannel(T responseObject) 15: { 16: this.responseObject = responseObject; 17: } 18: 19: protected override HttpResponseMessage Send(HttpRequestMessage request, CancellationToken cancellationToken) 20: { 21: return new HttpResponseMessage() 22: { 23: RequestMessage = request, 24: Content = new StreamContent(this.GetContentStream()) 25: }; 26: } 27: 28: private Stream GetContentStream() 29: { 30: var serializer = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(T)); 31: Stream stream = new MemoryStream(); 32: serializer.WriteObject(stream, this.responseObject); 33: stream.Position = 0; 34: return stream; 35: } 36: } 37: } The HttpClientChannel provides a Send() method which you can override to return any HttpResponseMessage that you want. You can see I’m using the DataContractSerializer to serialize the object and write it to a stream. That’s all you need to do. In the example above, the only thing I’ve chosen to do is to provide a way to return different response objects. But there are many more features you could add to your own re-usable FakeHttpChannel. For example, you might want to provide the ability to add HTTP headers to the message. You might want to use a different serializer other than the DataContractSerializer. You might want to provide custom hypermedia in the response as well as just an object or set HTTP response codes. This list goes on. This is the just one example of the really cool features being added to the next version of WCF to enable various HTTP scenarios. The code sample for this post can be downloaded here.

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Superclass Sensitive Actions

- by Geertjan

I've created a small piece of functionality that enables you to create actions for Java classes in the IDE. When the user right-clicks on a Java class, they will see one or more actions depending on the superclass of the selected class. To explain this visually, here I have "BlaTopComponent.java". I right-click on its node in the Projects window and I see "This is a TopComponent": Indeed, when you look at the source code of "BlaTopComponent.java", you'll see that it implements the TopComponent class. Next, in the screenshot below, you see that I have right-click a different class. In this case, there's an action available because the selected class implements the ActionListener class. Then, take a look at this one. Here both TopComponent and ActionListener are superclasses of the current class, hence both the actions are available to be invoked: Finally, here's a class that subclasses neither TopComponent nor ActionListener, hence neither of the actions that I created for doing something that relates to TopComponents or ActionListeners is available, since those actions are irrelevant in this context: How does this work? Well, it's a combination of my blog entries "Generic Node Popup Registration Solution" and "Showing an Action on a TopComponent Node". The cool part is that the definition of the two actions that you see above is remarkably trivial: import java.awt.event.ActionEvent; import java.awt.event.ActionListener; import javax.swing.JOptionPane; import org.openide.loaders.DataObject; import org.openide.util.Utilities; public class TopComponentSensitiveAction implements ActionListener { private final DataObject context; public TopComponentSensitiveAction() { context = Utilities.actionsGlobalContext().lookup(DataObject.class); } @Override public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent ev) { //Do something with the context: JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "TopComponent: " + context.getNodeDelegate().getDisplayName()); } } The above is the action that will be available if you right-click a Java class that extends TopComponent. This, in turn, is the action that will be available if you right-click a Java class that implements ActionListener: import java.awt.event.ActionEvent; import java.awt.event.ActionListener; import javax.swing.JOptionPane; import org.openide.loaders.DataObject; import org.openide.util.Utilities; public class ActionListenerSensitiveAction implements ActionListener { private final DataObject context; public ActionListenerSensitiveAction() { context = Utilities.actionsGlobalContext().lookup(DataObject.class); } @Override public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent ev) { //Do something with the context: JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "ActionListener: " + context.getNodeDelegate().getDisplayName()); } } Indeed, the classes, at this stage are the same. But, depending on what I want to do with TopComponents or ActionListeners, I now have a starting point, which includes access to the DataObject, from where I can get down into the source code, as shown here. This is how the two ActionListeners that you see defined above are registered in the layer, which could ultimately be done via annotations on the ActionListeners, of course: <folder name="Actions"> <folder name="Tools"> <file name="org-netbeans-sbas-impl-TopComponentSensitiveAction.instance"> <attr stringvalue="This is a TopComponent" name="displayName"/> <attr name="instanceCreate" methodvalue="org.netbeans.sbas.SuperclassSensitiveAction.create"/> <attr name="type" stringvalue="org.openide.windows.TopComponent"/> <attr name="delegate" newvalue="org.netbeans.sbas.impl.TopComponentSensitiveAction"/> </file> <file name="org-netbeans-sbas-impl-ActionListenerSensitiveAction.instance"> <attr stringvalue="This is an ActionListener" name="displayName"/> <attr name="instanceCreate" methodvalue="org.netbeans.sbas.SuperclassSensitiveAction.create"/> <attr name="type" stringvalue="java.awt.event.ActionListener"/> <attr name="delegate" newvalue="org.netbeans.sbas.impl.ActionListenerSensitiveAction"/> </file> </folder> </folder> <folder name="Loaders"> <folder name="text"> <folder name="x-java"> <folder name="Actions"> <file name="org-netbeans-sbas-impl-TopComponentSensitiveAction.shadow"> <attr name="originalFile" stringvalue="Actions/Tools/org-netbeans-sbas-impl-TopComponentSensitiveAction.instance"/> <attr intvalue="150" name="position"/> </file> <file name="org-netbeans-sbas-impl-ActionListenerSensitiveAction.shadow"> <attr name="originalFile" stringvalue="Actions/Tools/org-netbeans-sbas-impl-ActionListenerSensitiveAction.instance"/> <attr intvalue="160" name="position"/> </file> </folder> </folder> </folder> </folder> The most important parts of the layer registration are the lines that are highlighted above. Those lines connect the layer to the generic action that delegates back to the action listeners defined above, as follows: public final class SuperclassSensitiveAction extends AbstractAction implements ContextAwareAction { private final Map map; //This method is called from the layer, via "instanceCreate", //magically receiving a map, which contains all the attributes //that are defined in the layer for the file: static SuperclassSensitiveAction create(Map map) { return new SuperclassSensitiveAction(Utilities.actionsGlobalContext(), map); } public SuperclassSensitiveAction(Lookup context, Map m) { super(m.get("displayName").toString()); this.map = m; String superclass = m.get("type").toString(); //Enable the menu item only if //we're dealing with a class of type superclass: JavaSource javaSource = JavaSource.forFileObject( context.lookup(DataObject.class).getPrimaryFile()); try { javaSource.runUserActionTask(new ScanTask(this, superclass), true); } catch (IOException ex) { Exceptions.printStackTrace(ex); } //Hide the menu item if it isn't enabled: putValue(DynamicMenuContent.HIDE_WHEN_DISABLED, true); } @Override public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent ev) { ActionListener delegatedAction = (ActionListener)map.get("delegate"); delegatedAction.actionPerformed(ev); } @Override public Action createContextAwareInstance(Lookup actionContext) { return new SuperclassSensitiveAction(actionContext, map); } private class ScanTask implements Task<CompilationController> { private SuperclassSensitiveAction action = null; private String superclass; private ScanTask(SuperclassSensitiveAction action, String superclass) { this.action = action; this.superclass = superclass; } @Override public void run(final CompilationController info) throws Exception { info.toPhase(Phase.ELEMENTS_RESOLVED); new EnableIfGivenSuperclassMatches(info, action, superclass).scan( info.getCompilationUnit(), null); } } private static class EnableIfGivenSuperclassMatches extends TreePathScanner<Void, Void> { private CompilationInfo info; private final AbstractAction action; private final String superclassName; public EnableIfGivenSuperclassMatches(CompilationInfo info, AbstractAction action, String superclassName) { this.info = info; this.action = action; this.superclassName = superclassName; } @Override public Void visitClass(ClassTree t, Void v) { Element el = info.getTrees().getElement(getCurrentPath()); if (el != null) { TypeElement te = (TypeElement) el; List<? extends TypeMirror> interfaces = te.getInterfaces(); if (te.getSuperclass().toString().equals(superclassName)) { action.setEnabled(true); } else { action.setEnabled(false); } for (TypeMirror typeMirror : interfaces) { if (typeMirror.toString().equals(superclassName)){ action.setEnabled(true); } } } return null; } } } This is a pretty cool solution and, as you can see, very generic. Create a new ActionListener, register it in the layer so that it maps to the generic class above, and make sure to set the type attribute, which defines the superclass to which the action should be sensitive.

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How To: Using SimpleMembserhipProvider with MySql Connector/Net.

- by Francisco Tirado

Now on Connector/Net 6.9 the users will have the ability to use SimpleMembership Provider on MVC4 templates. The configuration is very simple and also have compatibility with OAuth, in this post we'll explain step by step how to configure it in a MVC 4 Web Application. Requirements The requirements to use SimpleMembership with Connector/Net are: Install Connector/Net 6.9, or download the No Install version. Net Framework 4.0 or greater. MVC 4 Visual Studio 2012 or newer version Creating and configuring a new project In this example we'll use VS2012 to create the project basis on the Internet Aplication template and using Entity Framework to manage the User model. Open VS 2012 and create a new project, we'll create a new MVC 4 Web Application and configure the project to use Net Framework 4.5. Type a name for the project and then click “Ok”. In the next dialog we'll choose the “Internet Application” template and use Razor as engine without creating a test project. Click “Ok” to continue. Now we have a new project with the templates necessaries to run a Web Application with the default values. We'll use the current files to continue working. If you have installed Connector/Net you can skip this step, if you don't have installed but you're planning to do it, please install it and continue with the next step. If you're using the No Install version of Connector/Net we'll need to add the references to our project, the assemblies needed are: MySql.Data, MySql.Data.Entities and MySql.Web. Be sure that the assemblies chosen match the Net Framework version used in our project and the MySql.Data.Entities is compatible with EF5 (EF5 is the default added by the project). Now open the “web.config” file, and under the <connectionStrings> node add a connection string that points to a MySql instance. We'll use the following connection configuration: <add name="MyConnection" connectionString="server=localhost;UserId=root;password=pass;database=MySqlSimpleMembership;" providerName="MySql.Data.MySqlClient"/> Under the node <system.web> we'll add the following configuration: <membership defaultProvider="MySqlSimpleMembershipProvider"><providers><clear/><add name="MySqlSimpleMembershipProvider" type="MySql.Web.Security.MySqlSimpleMembershipProvider,MySql.Web,Version=6.9.3.0,Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=c5687fc88969c44d" applicationName="MySqlSimpleMembershipTest" description="MySQLdefaultapplication" connectionStringName="MyConnection" userTableName="UserProfile" userIdColumn="UserId" userNameColumn="UserName" autoGenerateTables="True"/></providers></membership> In the previous configuration the mandatory properties are: connectionStringName, userTableName, userIdColumn, userNameColumn and autoGenerateTables. If the other properties are not provided a default value is set to it but if the mandatory properties are not set a ProviderException will be thrown. The valid properties for the MySqlSimpleMembership are the same used for MySqlMembership plus the mandatory fields. UserTableName: Name of the table where will be stored the user, this table is independent from the schema generated by the provider and can be edited later by the user. UserId: name of the column that will store the id for the records in the userTableName. UserName : name of the column that will store the name/user for the records in the userTableName. The connectionStringName property must match a connection string defined in web.config file. Once the configuration is done in web.config, we need to be sure that our database context for the Users Table point to the right connection string. In our case we just need to update the class UsersContext in the file AcountModel.cs in the Models folder. The file also contains the UserProfile class which match the configuration for our UserTable. Other class that needs to be updated is the SimpleMembershipInitializer in the file InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute.cs in the Filters folder. In that class we'll see a call to the method “WebSecurity.InitializeDatabaseConnection”, in that call is where we need to update the parameters to match our configuration. If the database that you configure in your connection string doesn't exists, you need to create it empty. Now we're ready to run our web application, press F5 or the Run button in the tool bar. You'll see the following screen: If you go to your database used by the application you'll see some tables created, now we are using SimpleMembership. Now create a user, click on “Register” at the top-right in the web page. Type your user name and password, then click on “Register”. You'll be redirected to the home page and you'll see the name of your user at the top-right page. If you take a look on the tables just created in your database you will find the data about the user you just register. In our case the tables that contains the information are UserProfile and Webpages_Membership. Configuring OAuth Other option to access your website will be using OAuth, so you can validate an user using an external account like Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. In this post we'll enable the authentication for Google account in our application. Go to the class AuthConfig.cs in the folder App_Start. In the method “RegisterAuth” uncomment the last line where is the call to the method “OauthWebSecurity.RegisterGoogleClient”. Run the application. Once the application is running click on “Login”. You will see at the right side the option to login using a Google account, click on “Google”. You will be asked for Google credentials. If your login is successful you'll see a message asking for your approval to give permission to your site to access your information. Click on “Accept”. Now a page to register your user will be shown, click on “Register”. Now your new user is logged in in your application. You can take a look of the user information created in the tables UserProfile and Webpages_OauthMembership. If you want to use another external option to authenticate users you must enable the client in the same class where we enable the Google authentication, but for others providers is mandatory to register your Application in their site. Once you have register your application they will give you a token/key and the id for your application, that information you're going to use it to register the client. Thanks for reading.

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How to Control Screen Layouts in LightSwitch

- by ChrisD

Visual Studio LightSwitch has a bunch of screen templates that you can use to quickly generate screens. They give you good starting points that you can customize further. When you add a new screen to your project you see a set of screen templates that you can choose from. These templates lay out all the related data you choose to put on a screen automatically for you. And don’t under estimate them; they do a great job of laying out controls in a smart way. For instance, a tab control will be used when you select more than one related set of data to display on a screen. However, you’re not limited to taking the layout as is. In fact, the screen designer is pretty flexible and allows you to create stacks of controls in a variety of configurations. You just need to visualize your screen as a series of containers that you can lay out in rows and columns. You then place controls or stacks of controls into these areas to align the screen exactly how you want. If you’re new in Visual Studio LightSwitch, you can see this tutorial. OK, Let’s start with a simple example. I have already designed my data entities for a simple order tracking system similar to the Northwind database. I also have added a Search Data Screen to search my Products already. Now I will add a new Details Screen for my Products and make it the default screen via the “Add New Screen” dialog: The screen designer picks a simple layout for me based on the single entity I chose, in this case Product. Hit F5 to run the application, select a Product on the search screen to open the Product Details Screen. Notice that it’s pretty simple because my entity is simple. Click the “Customize” button in the top right of the screen so we can start tweaking it. The left side of the screen shows the containership of controls and data bindings (called the content tree) and the right side shows the live preview with data. Notice that we have a simple layout of two rows but only one row is populated (with a vertical stack of controls in this case). The bottom row is empty. You can envision the screen like this: Each container will display a group of data that you select. For instance in the above screen, the top row is set to a vertical stack control and the group of data to display is coming from Product. So when laying out screens you need to think in terms of containers of controls bound to groups of data. To change the data to which a container is bound, select the data item next to the container: You can select the “New Group” item in order to create more containers (or controls) within the current container. For instance to totally control the layout, select the Product in the top row and hit the delete key. This will delete the vertical stack and therefore all the controls on the screen. The content tree will still have two rows, but the rows are now both empty. If you want a layout of four containers (two rows and two columns) then select “New Group” for the data item and then change the vertical stack control to “Two Columns” for both of the rows as shown here: You can keep going on and on by selecting new groups and choosing between rows or columns. Here’s a layout with 8 containers, 4 rows and 2 columns: And here is a layout with 7 content areas; one row across the top of the screen and three rows with two columns below that: When you select Choose Content and select a data item like Product it will populate all the controls within the container (row or column in a vertical stack) however you have complete control on what to display within each group. You can delete fields you don’t want to display and/or change their controls. You can also change the size of controls and how they display by changing the settings in the properties window. If you are in the Screen Designer (and not the customization mode like we are here) you can also drag-drop data items from the left-hand side of the screen to the content tree. Note, however, that not all areas of the tree will allow you to drop a data item if there is a binding already set to a different set of data. For instance you can’t drop a Customer ID into the same group as a Product if they originate from different entities. To get around this, all you need to do is create a new group and content area as shown above. Let’s take a more complex example that deals with more than just product. I want to design a complex screen that displays Products and their Category, as well as all the OrderDetails for which that product is selected. This time I will create a new screen and select List and Details, select the Products screen data, and include the related OrderDetails. However I’m going to totally change the layout so that a Product grid is at the top left and below that is the selected Product detail. Below that will be the Category text fields and image in two columns below. On the right side I want the OrderDetails grid to take up the whole right side of the screen. All this can be done in customization mode while you’re debugging the application. To do this, I first deleted all the content items in the tree and then re-created the content tree as shown in the image below. I also set the image to be larger and the description textbox to be 5 rows using the property window below the live preview. I added the green lines to indicate the containers and show how it maps to the content tree (click to enlarge): I hope this demystifies the screen designer a little bit. Remember that screen templates are excellent starting points – you can take them as-is or customize them further. It takes a little fooling around with customizing screens to get them to do exactly what you want but there are a ton of possibilities once you get the hang of it. Stay tuned for more information on how to create your own screen templates that show up in the “Add New Screen” dialog. Enjoy! The tutorial that might be interested: Adding Custom Control In LightSwitch

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Combining MVVM Light Toolkit and Unity 2.0

- by Alan Cordner

This is more of a commentary than a question, though feedback would be nice. I have been tasked to create the user interface for a new project we are doing. We want to use WPF and I wanted to learn all of the modern UI design techniques available. Since I am fairly new to WPF I have been researching what is available. I think I have pretty much settled on using MVVM Light Toolkit (mainly because of its "Blendability" and the EventToCommand behavior!), but I wanted to incorporate IoC also. So, here is what I have come up with. I have modified the default ViewModelLocator class in a MVVM Light project to use a UnityContainer to handle dependency injections. Considering I didn't know what 90% of these terms meant 3 months ago, I think I'm on the right track. // Example of MVVM Light Toolkit ViewModelLocator class that implements Microsoft // Unity 2.0 Inversion of Control container to resolve ViewModel dependencies. using Microsoft.Practices.Unity; namespace MVVMLightUnityExample { public class ViewModelLocator { public static UnityContainer Container { get; set; } #region Constructors static ViewModelLocator() { if (Container == null) { Container = new UnityContainer(); // register all dependencies required by view models Container .RegisterType<IDialogService, ModalDialogService>(new ContainerControlledLifetimeManager()) .RegisterType<ILoggerService, LogFileService>(new ContainerControlledLifetimeManager()) ; } } /// <summary> /// Initializes a new instance of the ViewModelLocator class. /// </summary> public ViewModelLocator() { ////if (ViewModelBase.IsInDesignModeStatic) ////{ //// // Create design time view models ////} ////else ////{ //// // Create run time view models ////} CreateMain(); } #endregion #region MainViewModel private static MainViewModel _main; /// <summary> /// Gets the Main property. /// </summary> public static MainViewModel MainStatic { get { if (_main == null) { CreateMain(); } return _main; } } /// <summary> /// Gets the Main property. /// </summary> [System.Diagnostics.CodeAnalysis.SuppressMessage("Microsoft.Performance", "CA1822:MarkMembersAsStatic", Justification = "This non-static member is needed for data binding purposes.")] public MainViewModel Main { get { return MainStatic; } } /// <summary> /// Provides a deterministic way to delete the Main property. /// </summary> public static void ClearMain() { _main.Cleanup(); _main = null; } /// <summary> /// Provides a deterministic way to create the Main property. /// </summary> public static void CreateMain() { if (_main == null) { // allow Unity to resolve the view model and hold onto reference _main = Container.Resolve<MainViewModel>(); } } #endregion #region OrderViewModel // property to hold the order number (injected into OrderViewModel() constructor when resolved) public static string OrderToView { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets the OrderViewModel property. /// </summary> public static OrderViewModel OrderViewModelStatic { get { // allow Unity to resolve the view model // do not keep local reference to the instance resolved because we need a new instance // each time - the corresponding View is a UserControl that can be used multiple times // within a single window/view // pass current value of OrderToView parameter to constructor! return Container.Resolve<OrderViewModel>(new ParameterOverride("orderNumber", OrderToView)); } } /// <summary> /// Gets the OrderViewModel property. /// </summary> [System.Diagnostics.CodeAnalysis.SuppressMessage("Microsoft.Performance", "CA1822:MarkMembersAsStatic", Justification = "This non-static member is needed for data binding purposes.")] public OrderViewModel Order { get { return OrderViewModelStatic; } } #endregion /// <summary> /// Cleans up all the resources. /// </summary> public static void Cleanup() { ClearMain(); Container = null; } } } And the MainViewModel class showing dependency injection usage: using GalaSoft.MvvmLight; using Microsoft.Practices.Unity; namespace MVVMLightUnityExample { public class MainViewModel : ViewModelBase { private IDialogService _dialogs; private ILoggerService _logger; /// <summary> /// Initializes a new instance of the MainViewModel class. This default constructor calls the /// non-default constructor resolving the interfaces used by this view model. /// </summary> public MainViewModel() : this(ViewModelLocator.Container.Resolve<IDialogService>(), ViewModelLocator.Container.Resolve<ILoggerService>()) { if (IsInDesignMode) { // Code runs in Blend --> create design time data. } else { // Code runs "for real" } } /// <summary> /// Initializes a new instance of the MainViewModel class. /// Interfaces are automatically resolved by the IoC container. /// </summary> /// <param name="dialogs">Interface to dialog service</param> /// <param name="logger">Interface to logger service</param> public MainViewModel(IDialogService dialogs, ILoggerService logger) { _dialogs = dialogs; _logger = logger; if (IsInDesignMode) { // Code runs in Blend --> create design time data. _dialogs.ShowMessage("Running in design-time mode!", "Injection Constructor", DialogButton.OK, DialogImage.Information); _logger.WriteLine("Running in design-time mode!"); } else { // Code runs "for real" _dialogs.ShowMessage("Running in run-time mode!", "Injection Constructor", DialogButton.OK, DialogImage.Information); _logger.WriteLine("Running in run-time mode!"); } } public override void Cleanup() { // Clean up if needed _dialogs = null; _logger = null; base.Cleanup(); } } } And the OrderViewModel class: using GalaSoft.MvvmLight; using Microsoft.Practices.Unity; namespace MVVMLightUnityExample { /// <summary> /// This class contains properties that a View can data bind to. /// <para> /// Use the <strong>mvvminpc</strong> snippet to add bindable properties to this ViewModel. /// </para> /// <para> /// You can also use Blend to data bind with the tool's support. /// </para> /// <para> /// See http://www.galasoft.ch/mvvm/getstarted /// </para> /// </summary> public class OrderViewModel : ViewModelBase { private const string testOrderNumber = "123456"; private Order _order; /// <summary> /// Initializes a new instance of the OrderViewModel class. /// </summary> public OrderViewModel() : this(testOrderNumber) { } /// <summary> /// Initializes a new instance of the OrderViewModel class. /// </summary> public OrderViewModel(string orderNumber) { if (IsInDesignMode) { // Code runs in Blend --> create design time data. _order = new Order(orderNumber, "My Company", "Our Address"); } else { _order = GetOrder(orderNumber); } } public override void Cleanup() { // Clean own resources if needed _order = null; base.Cleanup(); } } } And the code that could be used to display an order view for a specific order: public void ShowOrder(string orderNumber) { // pass the order number to show to ViewModelLocator to be injected //into the constructor of the OrderViewModel instance ViewModelLocator.OrderToShow = orderNumber; View.OrderView orderView = new View.OrderView(); } These examples have been stripped down to show only the IoC ideas. It took a lot of trial and error, searching the internet for examples, and finding out that the Unity 2.0 documentation is lacking (at best) to come up with this solution. Let me know if you think it could be improved.

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What is the fastest cyclic synchronization in Java (ExecutorService vs. CyclicBarrier vs. X)?

- by Alex Dunlop

Which Java synchronization construct is likely to provide the best performance for a concurrent, iterative processing scenario with a fixed number of threads like the one outlined below? After experimenting on my own for a while (using ExecutorService and CyclicBarrier) and being somewhat surprised by the results, I would be grateful for some expert advice and maybe some new ideas. Existing questions here do not seem to focus primarily on performance, hence this new one. Thanks in advance! The core of the app is a simple iterative data processing algorithm, parallelized to the spread the computational load across 8 cores on a Mac Pro, running OS X 10.6 and Java 1.6.0_07. The data to be processed is split into 8 blocks and each block is fed to a Runnable to be executed by one of a fixed number of threads. Parallelizing the algorithm was fairly straightforward, and it functionally works as desired, but its performance is not yet what I think it could be. The app seems to spend a lot of time in system calls synchronizing, so after some profiling I wonder whether I selected the most appropriate synchronization mechanism(s). A key requirement of the algorithm is that it needs to proceed in stages, so the threads need to sync up at the end of each stage. The main thread prepares the work (very low overhead), passes it to the threads, lets them work on it, then proceeds when all threads are done, rearranges the work (again very low overhead) and repeats the cycle. The machine is dedicated to this task, Garbage Collection is minimized by using per-thread pools of pre-allocated items, and the number of threads can be fixed (no incoming requests or the like, just one thread per CPU core). V1 - ExecutorService My first implementation used an ExecutorService with 8 worker threads. The program creates 8 tasks holding the work and then lets them work on it, roughly like this: // create one thread per CPU executorService = Executors.newFixedThreadPool( 8 ); ... // now process data in cycles while( ...) { // package data into 8 work items ... // create one Callable task per work item ... // submit the Callables to the worker threads executorService.invokeAll( taskList ); } This works well functionally (it does what it should), and for very large work items indeed all 8 CPUs become highly loaded, as much as the processing algorithm would be expected to allow (some work items will finish faster than others, then idle). However, as the work items become smaller (and this is not really under the program's control), the user CPU load shrinks dramatically: blocksize | system | user | cycles/sec 256k 1.8% 85% 1.30 64k 2.5% 77% 5.6 16k 4% 64% 22.5 4096 8% 56% 86 1024 13% 38% 227 256 17% 19% 420 64 19% 17% 948 16 19% 13% 1626 Legend: - block size = size of the work item (= computational steps) - system = system load, as shown in OS X Activity Monitor (red bar) - user = user load, as shown in OS X Activity Monitor (green bar) - cycles/sec = iterations through the main while loop, more is better The primary area of concern here is the high percentage of time spent in the system, which appears to be driven by thread synchronization calls. As expected, for smaller work items, ExecutorService.invokeAll() will require relatively more effort to sync up the threads versus the amount of work being performed in each thread. But since ExecutorService is more generic than it would need to be for this use case (it can queue tasks for threads if there are more tasks than cores), I though maybe there would be a leaner synchronization construct. V2 - CyclicBarrier The next implementation used a CyclicBarrier to sync up the threads before receiving work and after completing it, roughly as follows: main() { // create the barrier barrier = new CyclicBarrier( 8 + 1 ); // create Runable for thread, tell it about the barrier Runnable task = new WorkerThreadRunnable( barrier ); // start the threads for( int i = 0; i < 8; i++ ) { // create one thread per core new Thread( task ).start(); } while( ... ) { // tell threads about the work ... // N threads + this will call await(), then system proceeds barrier.await(); // ... now worker threads work on the work... // wait for worker threads to finish barrier.await(); } } class WorkerThreadRunnable implements Runnable { CyclicBarrier barrier; WorkerThreadRunnable( CyclicBarrier barrier ) { this.barrier = barrier; } public void run() { while( true ) { // wait for work barrier.await(); // do the work ... // wait for everyone else to finish barrier.await(); } } } Again, this works well functionally (it does what it should), and for very large work items indeed all 8 CPUs become highly loaded, as before. However, as the work items become smaller, the load still shrinks dramatically: blocksize | system | user | cycles/sec 256k 1.9% 85% 1.30 64k 2.7% 78% 6.1 16k 5.5% 52% 25 4096 9% 29% 64 1024 11% 15% 117 256 12% 8% 169 64 12% 6.5% 285 16 12% 6% 377 For large work items, synchronization is negligible and the performance is identical to V1. But unexpectedly, the results of the (highly specialized) CyclicBarrier seem MUCH WORSE than those for the (generic) ExecutorService: throughput (cycles/sec) is only about 1/4th of V1. A preliminary conclusion would be that even though this seems to be the advertised ideal use case for CyclicBarrier, it performs much worse than the generic ExecutorService. V3 - Wait/Notify + CyclicBarrier It seemed worth a try to replace the first cyclic barrier await() with a simple wait/notify mechanism: main() { // create the barrier // create Runable for thread, tell it about the barrier // start the threads while( ... ) { // tell threads about the work // for each: workerThreadRunnable.setWorkItem( ... ); // ... now worker threads work on the work... // wait for worker threads to finish barrier.await(); } } class WorkerThreadRunnable implements Runnable { CyclicBarrier barrier; @NotNull volatile private Callable<Integer> workItem; WorkerThreadRunnable( CyclicBarrier barrier ) { this.barrier = barrier; this.workItem = NO_WORK; } final protected void setWorkItem( @NotNull final Callable<Integer> callable ) { synchronized( this ) { workItem = callable; notify(); } } public void run() { while( true ) { // wait for work while( true ) { synchronized( this ) { if( workItem != NO_WORK ) break; try { wait(); } catch( InterruptedException e ) { e.printStackTrace(); } } } // do the work ... // wait for everyone else to finish barrier.await(); } } } Again, this works well functionally (it does what it should). blocksize | system | user | cycles/sec 256k 1.9% 85% 1.30 64k 2.4% 80% 6.3 16k 4.6% 60% 30.1 4096 8.6% 41% 98.5 1024 12% 23% 202 256 14% 11.6% 299 64 14% 10.0% 518 16 14.8% 8.7% 679 The throughput for small work items is still much worse than that of the ExecutorService, but about 2x that of the CyclicBarrier. Eliminating one CyclicBarrier eliminates half of the gap. V4 - Busy wait instead of wait/notify Since this app is the primary one running on the system and the cores idle anyway if they're not busy with a work item, why not try a busy wait for work items in each thread, even if that spins the CPU needlessly. The worker thread code changes as follows: class WorkerThreadRunnable implements Runnable { // as before final protected void setWorkItem( @NotNull final Callable<Integer> callable ) { workItem = callable; } public void run() { while( true ) { // busy-wait for work while( true ) { if( workItem != NO_WORK ) break; } // do the work ... // wait for everyone else to finish barrier.await(); } } } Also works well functionally (it does what it should). blocksize | system | user | cycles/sec 256k 1.9% 85% 1.30 64k 2.2% 81% 6.3 16k 4.2% 62% 33 4096 7.5% 40% 107 1024 10.4% 23% 210 256 12.0% 12.0% 310 64 11.9% 10.2% 550 16 12.2% 8.6% 741 For small work items, this increases throughput by a further 10% over the CyclicBarrier + wait/notify variant, which is not insignificant. But it is still much lower-throughput than V1 with the ExecutorService. V5 - ? So what is the best synchronization mechanism for such a (presumably not uncommon) problem? I am weary of writing my own sync mechanism to completely replace ExecutorService (assuming that it is too generic and there has to be something that can still be taken out to make it more efficient). It is not my area of expertise and I'm concerned that I'd spend a lot of time debugging it (since I'm not even sure my wait/notify and busy wait variants are correct) for uncertain gain. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

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Delphi Editbox causing unexplainable errors...

- by NeoNMD

On a form I have 8 edit boxes that I do the exact same thing with. They are arranged in 2 sets of 4, one is Upper and the other is Lower. I kept getting errors clearing all the edit boxes so I went through clearing them 1 by 1 and found that 1 of the edit boxes just didnt work and when I tried to run the program and change that exit box it caused the debugger to jump to a point in the code with the database (even though the edit boxes had nothing to do with the database and they arent in a procedure or stack with a database in it) and say the program has access violation there. So I then removed all mention of that edit box and the code worked perfectly again, so I deleted that edit box, copied and pasted another edit box and left all values the same, then went through my code and copied the code from the other sections and simply renamed it for the new Edit box and it STILL causes an error even though it is entirely new. I cannot figure it out so I ask you all, what the hell? The editbox in question is "Edit1" unit DefinitionCoreV2; interface uses Windows, Messages, SysUtils, Variants, Classes, Graphics, Controls, Forms, Dialogs, SQLiteTable3, StdCtrls; type TDefinitionFrm = class(TForm) GrpCompetition: TGroupBox; CmbCompSele: TComboBox; BtnCompetitionAdd: TButton; BtnCompetitionUpdate: TButton; BtnCompetitionRevert: TButton; GrpCompetitionDetails: TGroupBox; LblCompetitionIDTitle: TLabel; EdtCompID: TEdit; LblCompetitionDescriptionTitle: TLabel; EdtCompDesc: TEdit; LblCompetitionNotesTitle: TLabel; EdtCompNote: TEdit; LblCompetitionLocationTitle: TLabel; EdtCompLoca: TEdit; BtnCompetitionDelete: TButton; GrpSection: TGroupBox; LblSectionID: TLabel; LblGender: TLabel; LblAge: TLabel; LblLevel: TLabel; LblWeight: TLabel; LblType: TLabel; LblHeight: TLabel; LblCompetitionID: TLabel; BtnSectionAdd: TButton; EdtSectionID: TEdit; CmbGender: TComboBox; BtnSectionUpdate: TButton; BtnSectionRevert: TButton; CmbAgeRange: TComboBox; CmbLevelRange: TComboBox; CmbType: TComboBox; CmbWeightRange: TComboBox; CmbHeightRange: TComboBox; EdtSectCompetitionID: TEdit; BtnSectionDelete: TButton; GrpSectionDetails: TGroupBox; EdtLowerAge: TEdit; EdtLowerWeight: TEdit; EdtLowerHeight: TEdit; EdtUpperAge: TEdit; EdtUpperLevel: TEdit; EdtUpperWeight: TEdit; EdtUpperHeight: TEdit; LblAgeRule: TLabel; LblLevelRule: TLabel; LblWeightRule: TLabel; LblHeightRule: TLabel; LblCompetitionSelect: TLabel; LblSectionSelect: TLabel; CmbSectSele: TComboBox; Edit1: TEdit; procedure FormCreate(Sender: TObject); procedure BtnCompetitionAddClick(Sender: TObject); procedure CmbCompSeleChange(Sender: TObject); procedure BtnCompetitionUpdateClick(Sender: TObject); procedure BtnCompetitionRevertClick(Sender: TObject); procedure BtnCompetitionDeleteClick(Sender: TObject); procedure CmbSectSeleChange(Sender: TObject); procedure BtnSectionAddClick(Sender: TObject); procedure BtnSectionUpdateClick(Sender: TObject); procedure BtnSectionRevertClick(Sender: TObject); procedure BtnSectionDeleteClick(Sender: TObject); procedure CmbAgeRangeChange(Sender: TObject); procedure CmbLevelRangeChange(Sender: TObject); procedure CmbWeightRangeChange(Sender: TObject); procedure CmbHeightRangeChange(Sender: TObject); private procedure UpdateCmbCompSele; procedure AddComp; procedure RevertComp; procedure AddSect; procedure RevertSect; procedure UpdateCmbSectSele; procedure ClearSect; { Private declarations } public { Public declarations } end; var DefinitionFrm: TDefinitionFrm; implementation {$R *.dfm} procedure TDefinitionFrm.UpdateCmbCompSele; var slDBpath: string; sldb : TSQLiteDatabase; sltb : TSQLiteTable; sCompTitle : string; bNext : boolean; begin slDBPath := ExtractFilepath(application.exename)+ 'Competitions.db'; if not FileExists(slDBPath) then begin MessageDlg('Competitions.db does not exist.',mtInformation,[mbOK],0); exit; end; sldb := TSQLiteDatabase.Create(slDBPath); try sltb := slDb.GetTable('SELECT * FROM CompetitionTable'); try CmbCompSele.Items.Clear; Repeat begin sCompTitle:=sltb.FieldAsString(sltb.FieldIndex['CompetitionID'])+':'+sltb.FieldAsString(sltb.FieldIndex['Description']); CmbCompSele.Items.Add(sCompTitle); bNext := sltb.Next; end; Until sltb.EOF; finally sltb.Free; end; finally sldb.Free; end; end; procedure TDefinitionFrm.UpdateCmbSectSele; var slDBpath: string; sldb : TSQLiteDatabase; sltb : TSQLiteTable; sSQL : string; sSectTitle : string; bNext : boolean; bLast : boolean; begin slDBPath := ExtractFilepath(application.exename)+ 'Competitions.db'; if not FileExists(slDBPath) then begin MessageDlg('Competitions.db does not exist.',mtInformation,[mbOK],0); exit; end; sldb := TSQLiteDatabase.Create(slDBPath); try sltb := slDb.GetTable('SELECT * FROM SectionTable WHERE CompetitionID = '+EdtCompID.text); If sltb.RowCount =0 then begin sltb := slDb.GetTable('SELECT * FROM SectionTable'); bLast:= sltb.MoveLast; sSQL := 'INSERT INTO SectionTable(SectionID,CompetitionID,Gender,Type) VALUES ('+IntToStr(sltb.FieldAsInteger(sltb.FieldIndex['SectionID'])+1)+','+EdtCompID.text+',1,1)'; sldb.ExecSQL(sSQL); sltb := slDb.GetTable('SELECT * FROM SectionTable WHERE CompetitionID = '+EdtCompID.text); end; try CmbSectSele.Items.Clear; Repeat begin sSectTitle:=sltb.FieldAsString(sltb.FieldIndex['SectionID'])+':'+sltb.FieldAsString(sltb.FieldIndex['Type'])+':'+sltb.FieldAsString(sltb.FieldIndex['Gender'])+':'+sltb.FieldAsString(sltb.FieldIndex['Age'])+':'+sltb.FieldAsString(sltb.FieldIndex['Level'])+':'+sltb.FieldAsString(sltb.FieldIndex['Weight'])+':'+sltb.FieldAsString(sltb.FieldIndex['Height']); CmbSectSele.Items.Add(sSectTitle); //CmbType.Items.Strings[sltb.FieldAsInteger(sltb.FieldIndex['Type'])] Works but has logic errors bNext := sltb.Next; end; Until sltb.EOF; finally sltb.Free; end; finally sldb.Free; end; end; procedure TDefinitionFrm.AddComp; var slDBpath: string; sSQL : string; sldb : TSQLiteDatabase; sltb : TSQLiteTable; bLast : boolean; begin slDBPath := ExtractFilepath(application.exename)+ 'Competitions.db'; if not FileExists(slDBPath) then begin MessageDlg('Competitions.db does not exist.',mtInformation,[mbOK],0); exit; end; sldb := TSQLiteDatabase.Create(slDBPath); try sltb := slDb.GetTable('SELECT * FROM CompetitionTable'); try bLast:= sltb.MoveLast; sSQL := 'INSERT INTO CompetitionTable(CompetitionID,Description) VALUES ('+IntToStr(sltb.FieldAsInteger(sltb.FieldIndex['CompetitionID'])+1)+',"New Competition")'; sldb.ExecSQL(sSQL); finally sltb.Free; end; finally sldb.Free; end; UpdateCmbCompSele; end; procedure TDefinitionFrm.AddSect; var slDBpath: string; sSQL : string; sldb : TSQLiteDatabase; sltb : TSQLiteTable; bLast : boolean; begin slDBPath := ExtractFilepath(application.exename)+ 'Competitions.db'; if not FileExists(slDBPath) then begin MessageDlg('Competitions.db does not exist.',mtInformation,[mbOK],0); exit; end; sldb := TSQLiteDatabase.Create(slDBPath); try sltb := slDb.GetTable('SELECT * FROM SectionTable'); try bLast:= sltb.MoveLast; sSQL := 'INSERT INTO SectionTable(SectionID,CompetitionID,Gender,Type) VALUES ('+IntToStr(sltb.FieldAsInteger(sltb.FieldIndex['SectionID'])+1)+','+EdtCompID.text+',1,1)'; sldb.ExecSQL(sSQL); finally sltb.Free; end; finally sldb.Free; end; UpdateCmbSectSele; end; procedure TDefinitionFrm.RevertComp; var slDBpath: string; sldb : TSQLiteDatabase; sltb : TSQLiteTable; iID : integer; begin slDBPath := ExtractFilepath(application.exename)+ 'Competitions.db'; if not FileExists(slDBPath) then begin MessageDlg('Competitions.db does not exist.',mtInformation,[mbOK],0); exit; end; sldb := TSQLiteDatabase.Create(slDBPath); try If CmbCompSele.Text <> '' then begin iID := StrToInt(Copy(CmbCompSele.Text,0,Pos(':',CmbCompSele.Text)-1)); sltb := slDb.GetTable('SELECT * FROM CompetitionTable WHERE CompetitionID='+IntToStr(iID))//ItemIndex starts at 0, CompID at 1 end else sltb := slDb.GetTable('SELECT * FROM CompetitionTable WHERE CompetitionID=1'); try EdtCompID.Text:=sltb.FieldAsString(sltb.FieldIndex['CompetitionID']); EdtCompLoca.Text:=sltb.FieldAsString(sltb.FieldIndex['Location']); EdtCompDesc.Text:=sltb.FieldAsString(sltb.FieldIndex['Description']); EdtCompNote.Text:=sltb.FieldAsString(sltb.FieldIndex['Notes']); finally sltb.Free; end; finally sldb.Free; end; end; procedure TDefinitionFrm.RevertSect; var slDBpath: string; sldb : TSQLiteDatabase; sltb : TSQLiteTable; iID : integer; sTemp : string; begin slDBPath := ExtractFilepath(application.exename)+ 'Competitions.db'; if not FileExists(slDBPath) then begin MessageDlg('Competitions.db does not exist.',mtInformation,[mbOK],0); exit; end; sldb := TSQLiteDatabase.Create(slDBPath); try If CmbCompSele.Text <> '' then begin iID := StrToInt(Copy(CmbSectSele.Text,0,Pos(':',CmbSectSele.Text)-1)); sltb := slDb.GetTable('SELECT * FROM SectionTable WHERE SectionID='+IntToStr(iID));//ItemIndex starts at 0, CompID at 1 end else sltb := slDb.GetTable('SELECT * FROM SectionTable WHERE CompetitionID='+EdtCompID.Text); try EdtSectionID.Text:=sltb.FieldAsString(sltb.FieldIndex['SectionID']); EdtSectCompetitionID.Text:=sltb.FieldAsString(sltb.FieldIndex['CompetitionID']); Case sltb.FieldAsInteger(sltb.FieldIndex['Type']) of 1 : CmbType.ItemIndex:=0; 2 : CmbType.ItemIndex:=0; 3 : CmbType.ItemIndex:=1; 4 : CmbType.ItemIndex:=1; end; Case sltb.FieldAsInteger(sltb.FieldIndex['Gender']) of 1 : CmbGender.ItemIndex:=0; 2 : CmbGender.ItemIndex:=1; 3 : CmbGender.ItemIndex:=2; end; sTemp := sltb.FieldAsString(sltb.FieldIndex['Age']); if sTemp <> '' then begin //Decode end else begin LblAgeRule.Hide; EdtLowerAge.Text :=''; EdtLowerAge.Hide; EdtUpperAge.Text :=''; EdtUpperAge.Hide; end; sTemp := sltb.FieldAsString(sltb.FieldIndex['Level']); if sTemp <> '' then begin //Decode end else begin LblLevelRule.Hide; Edit1.Text :=''; Edit1.Hide; EdtUpperLevel.Text :=''; EdtUpperLevel.Hide; end; sTemp := sltb.FieldAsString(sltb.FieldIndex['Weight']); if sTemp <> '' then begin //Decode end else begin LblWeightRule.Hide; EdtLowerWeight.Text :=''; EdtLowerWeight.Hide; EdtUpperWeight.Text :=''; EdtUpperWeight.Hide; end; sTemp := sltb.FieldAsString(sltb.FieldIndex['Height']); if sTemp <> '' then begin //Decode end else begin LblHeightRule.Hide; EdtLowerHeight.Text :=''; EdtLowerHeight.Hide; EdtUpperHeight.Text :=''; EdtUpperHeight.Hide; end; finally sltb.Free; end; finally sldb.Free; end; end; procedure TDefinitionFrm.BtnCompetitionAddClick(Sender: TObject); begin AddComp end; procedure TDefinitionFrm.ClearSect; begin CmbSectSele.Clear; EdtSectionID.Text:=''; EdtSectCompetitionID.Text:=''; CmbType.Clear; CmbGender.Clear; CmbAgeRange.Clear; EdtLowerAge.Text:=''; EdtUpperAge.Text:=''; CmbLevelRange.Clear; Edit1.Text:=''; EdtUpperLevel.Text:=''; CmbWeightRange.Clear; EdtLowerWeight.Text:=''; EdtUpperWeight.Text:=''; CmbHeightRange.Clear; EdtLowerHeight.Text:=''; EdtUpperHeight.Text:=''; end; procedure TDefinitionFrm.CmbCompSeleChange(Sender: TObject); begin If CmbCompSele.ItemIndex <> -1 then begin RevertComp; GrpSection.Enabled:=True; CmbSectSele.Clear; ClearSect; UpdateCmbSectSele; end; end; procedure TDefinitionFrm.BtnCompetitionUpdateClick(Sender: TObject); var slDBpath: string; sSQL : string; sldb : TSQLiteDatabase; begin slDBPath := ExtractFilepath(application.exename)+ 'Competitions.db'; if not FileExists(slDBPath) then begin MessageDlg('Competitions.db does not exist.',mtInformation,[mbOK],0); exit; end; sldb := TSQLiteDatabase.Create(slDBPath); try sSQL:= 'UPDATE CompetitionTable SET Description="'+EdtCompDesc.Text+'",Location="'+EdtCompLoca.Text+'",Notes="'+EdtCompNote.Text+'" WHERE CompetitionID ="'+EdtCompID.Text+'";'; sldb.ExecSQL(sSQL); finally sldb.Free; end; end; procedure TDefinitionFrm.BtnCompetitionRevertClick(Sender: TObject); begin RevertComp; end; procedure TDefinitionFrm.BtnCompetitionDeleteClick(Sender: TObject); var slDBpath: string; sSQL : string; sldb : TSQLiteDatabase; iID : integer; begin If CmbCompSele.Text <> '' then begin If (CmbCompSele.Text[1] ='1') and (CmbCompSele.Text[2] =':') then begin MessageDlg('Deleting the last record is a very bad idea :/',mtInformation,[mbOK],0); end else begin slDBPath := ExtractFilepath(application.exename)+ 'Competitions.db'; if not FileExists(slDBPath) then begin MessageDlg('Competitions.db does not exist.',mtInformation,[mbOK],0); exit; end; sldb := TSQLiteDatabase.Create(slDBPath); try iID := StrToInt(Copy(CmbCompSele.Text,0,Pos(':',CmbCompSele.Text)-1)); sSQL:= 'DELETE FROM SectionTable WHERE CompetitionID='+IntToStr(iID)+';'; sldb.ExecSQL(sSQL); sSQL:= 'DELETE FROM CompetitionTable WHERE CompetitionID='+IntToStr(iID)+';'; sldb.ExecSQL(sSQL); finally sldb.Free; end; CmbCompSele.ItemIndex:=0; UpdateCmbCompSele; RevertComp; CmbCompSele.Text:='Select Competition'; end; end; end; procedure TDefinitionFrm.FormCreate(Sender: TObject); begin UpdateCmbCompSele; end; procedure TDefinitionFrm.CmbSectSeleChange(Sender: TObject); begin RevertSect; end; procedure TDefinitionFrm.BtnSectionAddClick(Sender: TObject); begin AddSect; end; procedure TDefinitionFrm.BtnSectionUpdateClick(Sender: TObject); //change fields values var slDBpath: string; sSQL : string; sldb : TSQLiteDatabase; iTypeCode : integer; iGenderCode : integer; sAgeStr, sLevelStr, sWeightStr, sHeightStr : string; begin slDBPath := ExtractFilepath(application.exename)+ 'Competitions.db'; if not FileExists(slDBPath) then begin MessageDlg('Competitions.db does not exist.',mtInformation,[mbOK],0); exit; end; sldb := TSQLiteDatabase.Create(slDBPath); try If CmbType.Text='Fighting' then iTypeCode := 1 else iTypeCode := 3; If CmbGender.Text='Male' then iGenderCode := 1 else if CmbGender.Text='Female' then iGenderCode := 2 else iGenderCode := 3; Case CmbAgeRange.ItemIndex of 0:sAgeStr := 'o-'+EdtLowerAge.Text; 1:sAgeStr := 'u-'+EdtLowerAge.Text; 2:sAgeStr := EdtLowerAge.Text+'-'+EdtUpperAge.Text; end; Case CmbLevelRange.ItemIndex of 0:sLevelStr := 'o-'+Edit1.Text; 1:sLevelStr := 'u-'+Edit1.Text; 2:sLevelStr := Edit1.Text+'-'+EdtUpperLevel.Text; end; Case CmbWeightRange.ItemIndex of 0:sWeightStr := 'o-'+EdtLowerWeight.Text; 1:sWeightStr := 'u-'+EdtLowerWeight.Text; 2:sWeightStr := EdtLowerWeight.Text+'-'+EdtUpperWeight.Text; end; Case CmbHeightRange.ItemIndex of 0:sHeightStr := 'o-'+EdtLowerHeight.Text; 1:sHeightStr := 'u-'+EdtLowerHeight.Text; 2:sHeightStr := EdtLowerHeight.Text+'-'+EdtUpperHeight.Text; end; sSQL:= 'UPDATE SectionTable SET Type="'+IntToStr(iTypeCode)+'",Gender="'+IntToStr(iGenderCode)+'" WHERE SectionID ="'+EdtSectionID.Text+'";'; sldb.ExecSQL(sSQL); finally sldb.Free; end; end; procedure TDefinitionFrm.BtnSectionRevertClick(Sender: TObject); begin RevertSect; end; procedure TDefinitionFrm.BtnSectionDeleteClick(Sender: TObject); var slDBpath: string; sSQL : string; sldb : TSQLiteDatabase; begin If CmbSectSele.Text[1] ='1' then begin MessageDlg('Deleting the last record is a very bad idea :/',mtInformation,[mbOK],0); end else begin slDBPath := ExtractFilepath(application.exename)+ 'Competitions.db'; if not FileExists(slDBPath) then begin MessageDlg('Competitions.db does not exist.',mtInformation,[mbOK],0); exit; end; sldb := TSQLiteDatabase.Create(slDBPath); try sSQL:= 'DELETE FROM SectionTable WHERE SectionID='+CmbSectSele.Text[1]+';'; sldb.ExecSQL(sSQL); finally sldb.Free; end; CmbSectSele.ItemIndex:=0; UpdateCmbSectSele; RevertSect; CmbSectSele.Text:='Select Competition'; end; end; procedure TDefinitionFrm.CmbAgeRangeChange(Sender: TObject); begin Case CmbAgeRange.ItemIndex of 0: begin EdtLowerAge.Show; LblAgeRule.Caption:='Over and including'; LblAgeRule.Show; EdtUpperAge.Hide; end; 1: begin EdtLowerAge.Show; LblAgeRule.Caption:='Under and including'; LblAgeRule.Show; EdtUpperAge.Hide; end; 2: begin EdtLowerAge.Show; LblAgeRule.Caption:='LblAgeRule'; LblAgeRule.Hide; EdtUpperAge.Show; end; end; end; procedure TDefinitionFrm.CmbLevelRangeChange(Sender: TObject); begin Case CmbLevelRange.ItemIndex of 0: begin Edit1.Show; LblLevelRule.Caption:='Over and including'; LblLevelRule.Show; EdtUpperLevel.Hide; end; 1: begin Edit1.Show; LblLevelRule.Caption:='Under and including'; LblLevelRule.Show; EdtUpperLevel.Hide; end; 2: begin Edit1.Show; LblLevelRule.Caption:='LblLevelRule'; LblLevelRule.Hide; EdtUpperLevel.Show; end; end; end; procedure TDefinitionFrm.CmbWeightRangeChange(Sender: TObject); begin Case CmbWeightRange.ItemIndex of 0: begin EdtLowerWeight.Show; LblWeightRule.Caption:='Over and including'; LblWeightRule.Show; EdtUpperWeight.Hide; end; 1: begin EdtLowerWeight.Show; LblWeightRule.Caption:='Under and including'; LblWeightRule.Show; EdtUpperWeight.Hide; end; 2: begin EdtLowerWeight.Show; LblWeightRule.Caption:='LblWeightRule'; LblWeightRule.Hide; EdtUpperWeight.Show; end; end; end; procedure TDefinitionFrm.CmbHeightRangeChange(Sender: TObject); begin Case CmbHeightRange.ItemIndex of 0: begin EdtLowerHeight.Show; LblHeightRule.Caption:='Over and including'; LblHeightRule.Show; EdtUpperHeight.Hide; end; 1: begin EdtLowerHeight.Show; LblHeightRule.Caption:='Under and including'; LblHeightRule.Show; EdtUpperHeight.Hide; end; 2: begin EdtLowerHeight.Show; LblHeightRule.Caption:='LblHeightRule'; LblHeightRule.Hide; EdtUpperHeight.Show; end; end; end; end.

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Weblogic 10.0: SAMLSignedObject.verify() failed to validate signature value

- by joshea

I've been having this problem for a while and it's driving me nuts. I'm trying to create a client (in C# .NET 2.0) that will use SAML 1.1 to sign on to a WebLogic 10.0 server (i.e., a Single Sign-On scenario, using browser/post profile). The client is on a WinXP machine and the WebLogic server is on a RHEL 5 box. I based my client largely on code in the example here: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/DotNetSamlPost.aspx (the source has a section for SAML 1.1). I set up WebLogic based on instructions for SAML Destination Site from here:http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/dev2arch/2006/12/sso-with-saml4.html I created a certificate using makecert that came with VS 2005. makecert -r -pe -n "CN=whatever" -b 01/01/2010 -e 01/01/2011 -sky exchange whatever.cer -sv whatever.pvk pvk2pfx.exe -pvk whatever.pvk -spc whatever.cer -pfx whatever.pfx Then I installed the .pfx to my personal certificate directory, and installed the .cer into the WebLogic SAML Identity Asserter V2. I read on another site that formatting the response to be readable (ie, adding whitespace) to the response after signing would cause this problem, so I tried various combinations of turning on/off .Indent XMLWriterSettings and turning on/off .PreserveWhiteSpace when loading the XML document, and none of it made any difference. I've printed the SignatureValue both before the message is is encoded/sent and after it arrives/gets decoded, and they are the same. So, to be clear: the Response appears to be formed, encoded, sent, and decoded fine (I see the full Response in the WebLogic logs). WebLogic finds the certificate I want it to use, verifies that a key was supplied, gets the signed info, and then fails to validate the signature. Code: public string createResponse(Dictionary<string, string> attributes){ ResponseType response = new ResponseType(); // Create Response response.ResponseID = "_" + Guid.NewGuid().ToString(); response.MajorVersion = "1"; response.MinorVersion = "1"; response.IssueInstant = System.DateTime.UtcNow; response.Recipient = "http://theWLServer/samlacs/acs"; StatusType status = new StatusType(); status.StatusCode = new StatusCodeType(); status.StatusCode.Value = new XmlQualifiedName("Success", "urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.0:protocol"); response.Status = status; // Create Assertion AssertionType assertionType = CreateSaml11Assertion(attributes); response.Assertion = new AssertionType[] {assertionType}; //Serialize XmlSerializerNamespaces ns = new XmlSerializerNamespaces(); ns.Add("samlp", "urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.0:protocol"); ns.Add("saml", "urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.0:assertion"); XmlSerializer responseSerializer = new XmlSerializer(response.GetType()); StringWriter stringWriter = new StringWriter(); XmlWriterSettings settings = new XmlWriterSettings(); settings.OmitXmlDeclaration = true; settings.Indent = false;//I've tried both ways, for the fun of it settings.Encoding = Encoding.UTF8; XmlWriter responseWriter = XmlTextWriter.Create(stringWriter, settings); responseSerializer.Serialize(responseWriter, response, ns); responseWriter.Close(); string samlString = stringWriter.ToString(); stringWriter.Close(); // Sign the document XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument(); doc.PreserveWhiteSpace = true; //also tried this both ways to no avail doc.LoadXml(samlString); X509Certificate2 cert = null; X509Store store = new X509Store(StoreName.My, StoreLocation.CurrentUser); store.Open(OpenFlags.ReadOnly); X509Certificate2Collection coll = store.Certificates.Find(X509FindType.FindBySubjectDistinguishedName, "distName", true); if (coll.Count < 1) { throw new ArgumentException("Unable to locate certificate"); } cert = coll[0]; store.Close(); //this special SignDoc just overrides a function in SignedXml so //it knows to look for ResponseID rather than ID XmlElement signature = SamlHelper.SignDoc( doc, cert, "ResponseID", response.ResponseID); doc.DocumentElement.InsertBefore(signature, doc.DocumentElement.ChildNodes[0]); // Base64Encode and URL Encode byte[] base64EncodedBytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(doc.OuterXml); string returnValue = System.Convert.ToBase64String( base64EncodedBytes); return returnValue; } private AssertionType CreateSaml11Assertion(Dictionary<string, string> attributes){ AssertionType assertion = new AssertionType(); assertion.AssertionID = "_" + Guid.NewGuid().ToString(); assertion.Issuer = "madeUpValue"; assertion.MajorVersion = "1"; assertion.MinorVersion = "1"; assertion.IssueInstant = System.DateTime.UtcNow; //Not before, not after conditions ConditionsType conditions = new ConditionsType(); conditions.NotBefore = DateTime.UtcNow; conditions.NotBeforeSpecified = true; conditions.NotOnOrAfter = DateTime.UtcNow.AddMinutes(10); conditions.NotOnOrAfterSpecified = true; //Name Identifier to be used in Saml Subject NameIdentifierType nameIdentifier = new NameIdentifierType(); nameIdentifier.NameQualifier = domain.Trim(); nameIdentifier.Value = subject.Trim(); SubjectConfirmationType subjectConfirmation = new SubjectConfirmationType(); subjectConfirmation.ConfirmationMethod = new string[] { "urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.0:cm:bearer" }; // // Create some SAML subject. SubjectType samlSubject = new SubjectType(); AttributeStatementType attrStatement = new AttributeStatementType(); AuthenticationStatementType authStatement = new AuthenticationStatementType(); authStatement.AuthenticationMethod = "urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.0:am:password"; authStatement.AuthenticationInstant = System.DateTime.UtcNow; samlSubject.Items = new object[] { nameIdentifier, subjectConfirmation}; attrStatement.Subject = samlSubject; authStatement.Subject = samlSubject; IPHostEntry ipEntry = Dns.GetHostEntry(System.Environment.MachineName); SubjectLocalityType subjectLocality = new SubjectLocalityType(); subjectLocality.IPAddress = ipEntry.AddressList[0].ToString(); authStatement.SubjectLocality = subjectLocality; attrStatement.Attribute = new AttributeType[attributes.Count]; int i=0; // Create SAML attributes. foreach (KeyValuePair<string, string> attribute in attributes) { AttributeType attr = new AttributeType(); attr.AttributeName = attribute.Key; attr.AttributeNamespace= domain; attr.AttributeValue = new object[] {attribute.Value}; attrStatement.Attribute[i] = attr; i++; } assertion.Conditions = conditions; assertion.Items = new StatementAbstractType[] {authStatement, attrStatement}; return assertion; } private static XmlElement SignDoc(XmlDocument doc, X509Certificate2 cert2, string referenceId, string referenceValue) { // Use our own implementation of SignedXml SamlSignedXml sig = new SamlSignedXml(doc, referenceId); // Add the key to the SignedXml xmlDocument. sig.SigningKey = cert2.PrivateKey; // Create a reference to be signed. Reference reference = new Reference(); reference.Uri= String.Empty; reference.Uri = "#" + referenceValue; // Add an enveloped transformation to the reference. XmlDsigEnvelopedSignatureTransform env = new XmlDsigEnvelopedSignatureTransform(); reference.AddTransform(env); // Add the reference to the SignedXml object. sig.AddReference(reference); // Add an RSAKeyValue KeyInfo (optional; helps recipient find key to validate). KeyInfo keyInfo = new KeyInfo(); keyInfo.AddClause(new KeyInfoX509Data(cert2)); sig.KeyInfo = keyInfo; // Compute the signature. sig.ComputeSignature(); // Get the XML representation of the signature and save // it to an XmlElement object. XmlElement xmlDigitalSignature = sig.GetXml(); return xmlDigitalSignature; } To open the page in my client app, string postData = String.Format("SAMLResponse={0}&APID=ap_00001&TARGET={1}", System.Web.HttpUtility.UrlEncode(builder.buildResponse("http://theWLServer/samlacs/acs",attributes)), "http://desiredURL"); webBrowser.Navigate("http://theWLServer/samlacs/acs", "_self", Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(postData), "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded");

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Form File Upload with other TextBox Inputs + Creating Custom Form Action attribute

- by Jonathan Stowell

Hi All, I am attempting to create a form where a user is able to enter your typical form values textboxes etc, but also upload a file as part of the form submission. This is my View code it can be seen that the File upload is identified by the MCF id: <% using (Html.BeginForm("Create", "Problem", FormMethod.Post, new { id = "ProblemForm", enctype = "multipart/form-data" })) {%> <p> <label for="StudentEmail">Student Email (*)</label> <br /> <%= Html.TextBox("StudentEmail", Model.Problem.StudentEmail, new { size = "30", maxlength=26 })%> <%= Html.ValidationMessage("StudentEmail", "*") %> </p> <p> <label for="Type">Communication Type (*)</label> <br /> <%= Html.DropDownList("Type") %> <%= Html.ValidationMessage("Type", "*") %> </p> <p> <label for="ProblemDateTime">Problem Date (*)</label> <br /> <%= Html.TextBox("ProblemDateTime", String.Format("{0:d}", Model.Problem.ProblemDateTime), new { maxlength = 10 })%> <%= Html.ValidationMessage("ProblemDateTime", "*") %> </p> <p> <label for="ProblemCategory">Problem Category (* OR Problem Outline)</label> <br /> <%= Html.DropDownList("ProblemCategory", null, "Please Select...")%> <%= Html.ValidationMessage("ProblemCategory", "*")%> </p> <p> <label for="ProblemOutline">Problem Outline (* OR Problem Category)</label> <br /> <%= Html.TextArea("ProblemOutline", Model.Problem.ProblemOutline, 6, 75, new { maxlength = 255 })%> <%= Html.ValidationMessage("ProblemOutline", "*") %> </p> <p> <label for="MCF">Mitigating Circumstance Form</label> <br /> <input id="MCF" type="file" /> <%= Html.ValidationMessage("MCF", "*") %> </p> <p> <label for="MCL">Mitigating Circumstance Level</label> <br /> <%= Html.DropDownList("MCL") %> <%= Html.ValidationMessage("MCL", "*") %> </p> <p> <label for="AbsentFrom">Date Absent From</label> <br /> <%= Html.TextBox("AbsentFrom", String.Format("{0:d}", Model.Problem.AbsentFrom), new { maxlength = 10 })%> <%= Html.ValidationMessage("AbsentFrom", "*") %> </p> <p> <label for="AbsentUntil">Date Absent Until</label> <br /> <%= Html.TextBox("AbsentUntil", String.Format("{0:d}", Model.Problem.AbsentUntil), new { maxlength = 10 })%> <%= Html.ValidationMessage("AbsentUntil", "*") %> </p> <p> <label for="AssessmentID">Assessment Extension</label> <br /> <%= Html.DropDownList("AssessmentID") %> <%= Html.ValidationMessage("AssessmentID", "*") %> <%= Html.TextBox("DateUntil", String.Format("{0:d}", Model.AssessmentExtension.DateUntil), new { maxlength = 16 })%> <%= Html.ValidationMessage("DateUntil", "*") %> </p> <p> <label for="Details">Assessment Extension Details</label> <br /> <%= Html.TextArea("Details", Model.AssessmentExtension.Details, 6, 75, new { maxlength = 255 })%> <%= Html.ValidationMessage("Details", "*") %> </p> <p> <label for="RequestedFollowUp">Requested Follow Up</label> <br /> <%= Html.TextBox("RequestedFollowUp", String.Format("{0:d}", Model.Problem.RequestedFollowUp), new { maxlength = 16 })%> <%= Html.ValidationMessage("RequestedFollowUp", "*") %> </p> <p> <label for="StaffEmail">Staff</label> <br /> <%= Html.ListBox("StaffEmail", Model.StaffEmail, new { @class = "multiselect" })%> <%= Html.ValidationMessage("StaffEmail", "*")%> </p> <p> <input class="button" type="submit" value="Create Problem" /> </p> This is my controller code: [AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Post)] public ActionResult Create(Problem problem, AssessmentExtension assessmentExtension, Staff staffMember, HttpPostedFileBase file, string[] StaffEmail) { if (ModelState.IsValid) { try { Student student = studentRepository.GetStudent(problem.StudentEmail); Staff currentUserStaffMember = staffRepository.GetStaffWindowsLogon(User.Identity.Name); var fileName = Path.Combine(Request.MapPath("~/App_Data"), Path.GetFileName(file.FileName)); file.SaveAs(@"C:\Temp\" + fileName); if (problem.RequestedFollowUp.HasValue) { String meetingName = student.FirstName + " " + student.LastName + " " + "Mitigating Circumstance Meeting"; OutlookAppointment outlookAppointment = new OutlookAppointment(currentUserStaffMember.Email, meetingName, (DateTime)problem.RequestedFollowUp, (DateTime)problem.RequestedFollowUp.Value.AddMinutes(30)); } problemRepository.Add(problem); problemRepository.Save(); if (assessmentExtension.DateUntil != null) { assessmentExtension.ProblemID = problem.ProblemID; assessmentExtensionRepository.Add(assessmentExtension); assessmentExtensionRepository.Save(); } ProblemPrivacy problemPrivacy = new ProblemPrivacy(); problemPrivacy.ProblemID = problem.ProblemID; problemPrivacy.StaffEmail = currentUserStaffMember.Email; problemPrivacyRepository.Add(problemPrivacy); if (StaffEmail != null) { for (int i = 0; i < StaffEmail.Length; i++) { ProblemPrivacy probPrivacy = new ProblemPrivacy(); probPrivacy.ProblemID = problem.ProblemID; probPrivacy.StaffEmail = StaffEmail[i]; problemPrivacyRepository.Add(probPrivacy); } } problemPrivacyRepository.Save(); return RedirectToAction("Details", "Student", new { id = student.Email }); } catch { ModelState.AddRuleViolations(problem.GetRuleViolations()); } } return View(new ProblemFormViewModel(problem, assessmentExtension, staffMember)); } This form was working correctly before I had to switch to using a non-AJAX file upload, this was due to an issue with Flash when enabling Windows Authentication which I need to use. It appears that when I submit the form the file is not sent and I am unsure as to why? I have also been unsuccessful in finding an example online where a file upload is used in conjunction with other input types. Another query I have is that for Create, and Edit operations I have used a PartialView for my forms to make my application have higher code reuse. The form action is normally generated by just using: Html.BeginForm() And this populates the action depending on which Url is being used Edit or Create. However when populating HTML attributes you have to provide a action and controller value to pass HTML attributes. using (Html.BeginForm("Create", "Problem", FormMethod.Post, new { id = "ProblemForm", enctype = "multipart/form-data" })) Is it possible to somehow populate the action and controller value depending on the URL to maintain code reuse? Thinking about it whilst typing this I could set two values in the original controller action request view data and then just populate the value using the viewdata values? Any help on these two issues would be appreciated, I'm new to asp.net mvc :-) Thanks, Jon

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Using an alternate JSON Serializer in ASP.NET Web API

- by Rick Strahl

The new ASP.NET Web API that Microsoft released alongside MVC 4.0 Beta last week is a great framework for building REST and AJAX APIs. I've been working with it for quite a while now and I really like the way it works and the complete set of features it provides 'in the box'. It's about time that Microsoft gets a decent API for building generic HTTP endpoints into the framework. DataContractJsonSerializer sucks As nice as Web API's overall design is one thing still sucks: The built-in JSON Serialization uses the DataContractJsonSerializer which is just too limiting for many scenarios. The biggest issues I have with it are: No support for untyped values (object, dynamic, Anonymous Types) MS AJAX style Date Formatting Ugly serialization formats for types like Dictionaries To me the most serious issue is dealing with serialization of untyped objects. I have number of applications with AJAX front ends that dynamically reformat data from business objects to fit a specific message format that certain UI components require. The most common scenario I have there are IEnumerable query results from a database with fields from the result set rearranged to fit the sometimes unconventional formats required for the UI components (like jqGrid for example). Creating custom types to fit these messages seems like overkill and projections using Linq makes this much easier to code up. Alas DataContractJsonSerializer doesn't support it. Neither does DataContractSerializer for XML output for that matter. What this means is that you can't do stuff like this in Web API out of the box:public object GetAnonymousType() { return new { name = "Rick", company = "West Wind", entered= DateTime.Now }; } Basically anything that doesn't have an explicit type DataContractJsonSerializer will not let you return. FWIW, the same is true for XmlSerializer which also doesn't work with non-typed values for serialization. The example above is obviously contrived with a hardcoded object graph, but it's not uncommon to get dynamic values returned from queries that have anonymous types for their result projections. Apparently there's a good possibility that Microsoft will ship Json.NET as part of Web API RTM release. Scott Hanselman confirmed this as a footnote in his JSON Dates post a few days ago. I've heard several other people from Microsoft confirm that Json.NET will be included and be the default JSON serializer, but no details yet in what capacity it will show up. Let's hope it ends up as the default in the box. Meanwhile this post will show you how you can use it today with the beta and get JSON that matches what you should see in the RTM version. What about JsonValue? To be fair Web API DOES include a new JsonValue/JsonObject/JsonArray type that allow you to address some of these scenarios. JsonValue is a new type in the System.Json assembly that can be used to build up an object graph based on a dictionary. It's actually a really cool implementation of a dynamic type that allows you to create an object graph and spit it out to JSON without having to create .NET type first. JsonValue can also receive a JSON string and parse it without having to actually load it into a .NET type (which is something that's been missing in the core framework). This is really useful if you get a JSON result from an arbitrary service and you don't want to explicitly create a mapping type for the data returned. For serialization you can create an object structure on the fly and pass it back as part of an Web API action method like this:public JsonValue GetJsonValue() { dynamic json = new JsonObject(); json.name = "Rick"; json.company = "West Wind"; json.entered = DateTime.Now; dynamic address = new JsonObject(); address.street = "32 Kaiea"; address.zip = "96779"; json.address = address; dynamic phones = new JsonArray(); json.phoneNumbers = phones; dynamic phone = new JsonObject(); phone.type = "Home"; phone.number = "808 123-1233"; phones.Add(phone); phone = new JsonObject(); phone.type = "Home"; phone.number = "808 123-1233"; phones.Add(phone); //var jsonString = json.ToString(); return json; } which produces the following output (formatted here for easier reading):{ name: "rick", company: "West Wind", entered: "2012-03-08T15:33:19.673-10:00", address: { street: "32 Kaiea", zip: "96779" }, phoneNumbers: [ { type: "Home", number: "808 123-1233" }, { type: "Mobile", number: "808 123-1234" }] } If you need to build a simple JSON type on the fly these types work great. But if you have an existing type - or worse a query result/list that's already formatted JsonValue et al. become a pain to work with. As far as I can see there's no way to just throw an object instance at JsonValue and have it convert into JsonValue dictionary. It's a manual process. Using alternate Serializers in Web API So, currently the default serializer in WebAPI is DataContractJsonSeriaizer and I don't like it. You may not either, but luckily you can swap the serializer fairly easily. If you'd rather use the JavaScriptSerializer built into System.Web.Extensions or Json.NET today, it's not too difficult to create a custom MediaTypeFormatter that uses these serializers and can replace or partially replace the native serializer. Here's a MediaTypeFormatter implementation using the ASP.NET JavaScriptSerializer:using System; using System.Net.Http.Formatting; using System.Threading.Tasks; using System.Web.Script.Serialization; using System.Json; using System.IO; namespace Westwind.Web.WebApi { public class JavaScriptSerializerFormatter : MediaTypeFormatter { public JavaScriptSerializerFormatter() { SupportedMediaTypes.Add(new System.Net.Http.Headers.MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/json")); } protected override bool CanWriteType(Type type) { // don't serialize JsonValue structure use default for that if (type == typeof(JsonValue) || type == typeof(JsonObject) || type== typeof(JsonArray) ) return false; return true; } protected override bool CanReadType(Type type) { if (type == typeof(IKeyValueModel)) return false; return true; } protected override System.Threading.Tasks.Taskobject OnReadFromStreamAsync(Type type, System.IO.Stream stream, System.Net.Http.Headers.HttpContentHeaders contentHeaders, FormatterContext formatterContext) { var task = Taskobject.Factory.StartNew(() = { var ser = new JavaScriptSerializer(); string json; using (var sr = new StreamReader(stream)) { json = sr.ReadToEnd(); sr.Close(); } object val = ser.Deserialize(json,type); return val; }); return task; } protected override System.Threading.Tasks.Task OnWriteToStreamAsync(Type type, object value, System.IO.Stream stream, System.Net.Http.Headers.HttpContentHeaders contentHeaders, FormatterContext formatterContext, System.Net.TransportContext transportContext) { var task = Task.Factory.StartNew( () = { var ser = new JavaScriptSerializer(); var json = ser.Serialize(value); byte[] buf = System.Text.Encoding.Default.GetBytes(json); stream.Write(buf,0,buf.Length); stream.Flush(); }); return task; } } } Formatter implementation is pretty simple: You override 4 methods to tell which types you can handle and then handle the input or output streams to create/parse the JSON data. Note that when creating output you want to take care to still allow JsonValue/JsonObject/JsonArray types to be handled by the default serializer so those objects serialize properly - if you let either JavaScriptSerializer or JSON.NET handle them they'd try to render the dictionaries which is very undesirable. If you'd rather use Json.NET here's the JSON.NET version of the formatter:// this code requires a reference to JSON.NET in your project #if true using System; using System.Net.Http.Formatting; using System.Threading.Tasks; using System.Web.Script.Serialization; using System.Json; using Newtonsoft.Json; using System.IO; using Newtonsoft.Json.Converters; namespace Westwind.Web.WebApi { public class JsonNetFormatter : MediaTypeFormatter { public JsonNetFormatter() { SupportedMediaTypes.Add(new System.Net.Http.Headers.MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/json")); } protected override bool CanWriteType(Type type) { // don't serialize JsonValue structure use default for that if (type == typeof(JsonValue) || type == typeof(JsonObject) || type == typeof(JsonArray)) return false; return true; } protected override bool CanReadType(Type type) { if (type == typeof(IKeyValueModel)) return false; return true; } protected override System.Threading.Tasks.Taskobject OnReadFromStreamAsync(Type type, System.IO.Stream stream, System.Net.Http.Headers.HttpContentHeaders contentHeaders, FormatterContext formatterContext) { var task = Taskobject.Factory.StartNew(() = { var settings = new JsonSerializerSettings() { NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore, }; var sr = new StreamReader(stream); var jreader = new JsonTextReader(sr); var ser = new JsonSerializer(); ser.Converters.Add(new IsoDateTimeConverter()); object val = ser.Deserialize(jreader, type); return val; }); return task; } protected override System.Threading.Tasks.Task OnWriteToStreamAsync(Type type, object value, System.IO.Stream stream, System.Net.Http.Headers.HttpContentHeaders contentHeaders, FormatterContext formatterContext, System.Net.TransportContext transportContext) { var task = Task.Factory.StartNew( () = { var settings = new JsonSerializerSettings() { NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore, }; string json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(value, Formatting.Indented, new JsonConverter[1] { new IsoDateTimeConverter() } ); byte[] buf = System.Text.Encoding.Default.GetBytes(json); stream.Write(buf,0,buf.Length); stream.Flush(); }); return task; } } } #endif One advantage of the Json.NET serializer is that you can specify a few options on how things are formatted and handled. You get null value handling and you can plug in the IsoDateTimeConverter which is nice to product proper ISO dates that I would expect any Json serializer to output these days. Hooking up the Formatters Once you've created the custom formatters you need to enable them for your Web API application. To do this use the GlobalConfiguration.Configuration object and add the formatter to the Formatters collection. Here's what this looks like hooked up from Application_Start in a Web project:protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { // Action based routing (used for RPC calls) RouteTable.Routes.MapHttpRoute( name: "StockApi", routeTemplate: "stocks/{action}/{symbol}", defaults: new { symbol = RouteParameter.Optional, controller = "StockApi" } ); // WebApi Configuration to hook up formatters and message handlers // optional RegisterApis(GlobalConfiguration.Configuration); } public static void RegisterApis(HttpConfiguration config) { // Add JavaScriptSerializer formatter instead - add at top to make default //config.Formatters.Insert(0, new JavaScriptSerializerFormatter()); // Add Json.net formatter - add at the top so it fires first! // This leaves the old one in place so JsonValue/JsonObject/JsonArray still are handled config.Formatters.Insert(0, new JsonNetFormatter()); } One thing to remember here is the GlobalConfiguration object which is Web API's static configuration instance. I think this thing is seriously misnamed given that GlobalConfiguration could stand for anything and so is hard to discover if you don't know what you're looking for. How about WebApiConfiguration or something more descriptive? Anyway, once you know what it is you can use the Formatters collection to insert your custom formatter. Note that I insert my formatter at the top of the list so it takes precedence over the default formatter. I also am not removing the old formatter because I still want JsonValue/JsonObject/JsonArray to be handled by the default serialization mechanism. Since they process in sequence and I exclude processing for these types JsonValue et al. still get properly serialized/deserialized. Summary Currently DataContractJsonSerializer in Web API is a pain, but at least we have the ability with relatively limited effort to replace the MediaTypeFormatter and plug in our own JSON serializer. This is useful for many scenarios - if you have existing client applications that used MVC JsonResult or ASP.NET AJAX results from ASMX AJAX services you can plug in the JavaScript serializer and get exactly the same serializer you used in the past so your results will be the same and don't potentially break clients. JSON serializers do vary a bit in how they serialize some of the more complex types (like Dictionaries and dates for example) and so if you're migrating it might be helpful to ensure your client code doesn't break when you switch to ASP.NET Web API. Going forward it looks like Microsoft is planning on plugging in Json.Net into Web API and make that the default. I think that's an awesome choice since Json.net has been around forever, is fast and easy to use and provides a ton of functionality as part of this great library. I just wish Microsoft would have figured this out sooner instead of now at the last minute integrating with it especially given that Json.Net has a similar set of lower level JSON objects JsonValue/JsonObject etc. which now will end up being duplicated by the native System.Json stuff. It's not like we don't already have enough confusion regarding which JSON serializer to use (JavaScriptSerializer, DataContractJsonSerializer, JsonValue/JsonObject/JsonArray and now Json.net). For years I've been using my own JSON serializer because the built in choices are both limited. However, with an official encorsement of Json.Net I'm happily moving on to use that in my applications. Let's see and hope Microsoft gets this right before ASP.NET Web API goes gold.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Web Api AJAX ASP.NET Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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Adding Client Validation To DataAnnotations DataType Attribute

- by srkirkland

The System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations namespace contains a validation attribute called DataTypeAttribute, which takes an enum specifying what data type the given property conforms to. Here are a few quick examples: public class DataTypeEntity { [DataType(DataType.Date)] public DateTime DateTime { get; set; } [DataType(DataType.EmailAddress)] public string EmailAddress { get; set; } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } This attribute comes in handy when using ASP.NET MVC, because the type you specify will determine what “template” MVC uses. Thus, for the DateTime property if you create a partial in Views/[loc]/EditorTemplates/Date.ascx (or cshtml for razor), that view will be used to render the property when using any of the Html.EditorFor() methods. One thing that the DataType() validation attribute does not do is any actual validation. To see this, let’s take a look at the EmailAddress property above. It turns out that regardless of the value you provide, the entity will be considered valid: //valid new DataTypeEntity {EmailAddress = "Foo"}; .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; } Hmmm. Since DataType() doesn’t validate, that leaves us with two options: (1) Create our own attributes for each datatype to validate, like [Date], or (2) add validation into the DataType attribute directly. In this post, I will show you how to hookup client-side validation to the existing DataType() attribute for a desired type. From there adding server-side validation would be a breeze and even writing a custom validation attribute would be simple (more on that in future posts). Validation All The Way Down Our goal will be to leave our DataTypeEntity class (from above) untouched, requiring no reference to System.Web.Mvc. Then we will make an ASP.NET MVC project that allows us to create a new DataTypeEntity and hookup automatic client-side date validation using the suggested “out-of-the-box” jquery.validate bits that are included with ASP.NET MVC 3. For simplicity I’m going to focus on the only DateTime field, but the concept is generally the same for any other DataType. Building a DataTypeAttribute Adapter To start we will need to build a new validation adapter that we can register using ASP.NET MVC’s DataAnnotationsModelValidatorProvider.RegisterAdapter() method. This method takes two Type parameters; The first is the attribute we are looking to validate with and the second is an adapter that should subclass System.Web.Mvc.ModelValidator. Since we are extending DataAnnotations we can use the subclass of ModelValidator called DataAnnotationsModelValidator<>. This takes a generic argument of type DataAnnotations.ValidationAttribute, which lucky for us means the DataTypeAttribute will fit in nicely. So starting from there and implementing the required constructor, we get: public class DataTypeAttributeAdapter : DataAnnotationsModelValidator<DataTypeAttribute> { public DataTypeAttributeAdapter(ModelMetadata metadata, ControllerContext context, DataTypeAttribute attribute) : base(metadata, context, attribute) { } } .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; } Now you have a full-fledged validation adapter, although it doesn’t do anything yet. There are two methods you can override to add functionality, IEnumerable<ModelValidationResult> Validate(object container) and IEnumerable<ModelClientValidationRule> GetClientValidationRules(). Adding logic to the server-side Validate() method is pretty straightforward, and for this post I’m going to focus on GetClientValidationRules(). Adding a Client Validation Rule Adding client validation is now incredibly easy because jquery.validate is very powerful and already comes with a ton of validators (including date and regular expressions for our email example). Teamed with the new unobtrusive validation javascript support we can make short work of our ModelClientValidationDateRule: public class ModelClientValidationDateRule : ModelClientValidationRule { public ModelClientValidationDateRule(string errorMessage) { ErrorMessage = errorMessage; ValidationType = "date"; } } .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; } If your validation has additional parameters you can the ValidationParameters IDictionary<string,object> to include them. There is a little bit of conventions magic going on here, but the distilled version is that we are defining a “date” validation type, which will be included as html5 data-* attributes (specifically data-val-date). Then jquery.validate.unobtrusive takes this attribute and basically passes it along to jquery.validate, which knows how to handle date validation. Finishing our DataTypeAttribute Adapter Now that we have a model client validation rule, we can return it in the GetClientValidationRules() method of our DataTypeAttributeAdapter created above. Basically I want to say if DataType.Date was provided, then return the date rule with a given error message (using ValidationAttribute.FormatErrorMessage()). The entire adapter is below: public class DataTypeAttributeAdapter : DataAnnotationsModelValidator<DataTypeAttribute> { public DataTypeAttributeAdapter(ModelMetadata metadata, ControllerContext context, DataTypeAttribute attribute) : base(metadata, context, attribute) { } public override System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable<ModelClientValidationRule> GetClientValidationRules() { if (Attribute.DataType == DataType.Date) { return new[] { new ModelClientValidationDateRule(Attribute.FormatErrorMessage(Metadata.GetDisplayName())) }; } return base.GetClientValidationRules(); } } .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; } Putting it all together Now that we have an adapter for the DataTypeAttribute, we just need to tell ASP.NET MVC to use it. The easiest way to do this is to use the built in DataAnnotationsModelValidatorProvider by calling RegisterAdapter() in your global.asax startup method. DataAnnotationsModelValidatorProvider.RegisterAdapter(typeof(DataTypeAttribute), typeof(DataTypeAttributeAdapter)); .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; } Show and Tell Let’s see this in action using a clean ASP.NET MVC 3 project. First make sure to reference the jquery, jquery.vaidate and jquery.validate.unobtrusive scripts that you will need for client validation. Next, let’s make a model class (note we are using the same built-in DataType() attribute that comes with System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations). public class DataTypeEntity { [DataType(DataType.Date, ErrorMessage = "Please enter a valid date (ex: 2/14/2011)")] public DateTime DateTime { get; set; } } .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; } Then we make a create page with a strongly-typed DataTypeEntity model, the form section is shown below (notice we are just using EditorForModel): @using (Html.BeginForm()) { @Html.ValidationSummary(true) <fieldset> <legend>Fields</legend> @Html.EditorForModel() <p> <input type="submit" value="Create" /> </p> </fieldset> } .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; } The final step is to register the adapter in our global.asax file: DataAnnotationsModelValidatorProvider.RegisterAdapter(typeof(DataTypeAttribute), typeof(DataTypeAttributeAdapter)); Now we are ready to run the page: Looking at the datetime field’s html, we see that our adapter added some data-* validation attributes: <input type="text" value="1/1/0001" name="DateTime" id="DateTime" data-val-required="The DateTime field is required." data-val-date="Please enter a valid date (ex: 2/14/2011)" data-val="true" class="text-box single-line valid"> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Here data-val-required was added automatically because DateTime is non-nullable, and data-val-date was added by our validation adapter. Now if we try to add an invalid date: Our custom error message is displayed via client-side validation as soon as we tab out of the box. If we didn’t include a custom validation message, the default DataTypeAttribute “The field {0} is invalid” would have been shown (of course we can change the default as well). Note we did not specify server-side validation, but in this case we don’t have to because an invalid date will cause a server-side error during model binding. Conclusion I really like how easy it is to register new data annotations model validators, whether they are your own or, as in this post, supplements to existing validation attributes. I’m still debating about whether adding the validation directly in the DataType attribute is the correct place to put it versus creating a dedicated “Date” validation attribute, but it’s nice to know either option is available and, as we’ve seen, simple to implement. I’m also working through the nascent stages of an open source project that will create validation attribute extensions to the existing data annotations providers using similar techniques as seen above (examples: Email, Url, EqualTo, Min, Max, CreditCard, etc). Keep an eye on this blog and subscribe to my twitter feed (@srkirkland) if you are interested for announcements.

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Metro: Introduction to CSS 3 Grid Layout

- by Stephen.Walther

The purpose of this blog post is to provide you with a quick introduction to the new W3C CSS 3 Grid Layout standard. You can use CSS Grid Layout in Metro style applications written with JavaScript to lay out the content of an HTML page. CSS Grid Layout provides you with all of the benefits of using HTML tables for layout without requiring you to actually use any HTML table elements. Doing Page Layouts without Tables Back in the 1990’s, if you wanted to create a fancy website, then you would use HTML tables for layout. For example, if you wanted to create a standard three-column page layout then you would create an HTML table with three columns like this: <table height="100%"> <tr> <td valign="top" width="300px" bgcolor="red"> Left Column, Left Column, Left Column, Left Column, Left Column, Left Column, Left Column, Left Column, Left Column </td> <td valign="top" bgcolor="green"> Middle Column, Middle Column, Middle Column, Middle Column, Middle Column, Middle Column, Middle Column, Middle Column, Middle Column </td> <td valign="top" width="300px" bgcolor="blue"> Right Column, Right Column, Right Column, Right Column, Right Column, Right Column, Right Column, Right Column, Right Column </td> </tr> </table> When the table above gets rendered out to a browser, you end up with the following three-column layout: The width of the left and right columns is fixed – the width of the middle column expands or contracts depending on the width of the browser. Sometime around the year 2005, everyone decided that using tables for layout was a bad idea. Instead of using tables for layout — it was collectively decided by the spirit of the Web — you should use Cascading Style Sheets instead. Why is using HTML tables for layout bad? Using tables for layout breaks the semantics of the TABLE element. A TABLE element should be used only for displaying tabular information such as train schedules or moon phases. Using tables for layout is bad for accessibility (The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 is explicit about this) and using tables for layout is bad for separating content from layout (see http://CSSZenGarden.com). Post 2005, anyone who used HTML tables for layout were encouraged to hold their heads down in shame. That’s all well and good, but the problem with using CSS for layout is that it can be more difficult to work with CSS than HTML tables. For example, to achieve a standard three-column layout, you either need to use absolute positioning or floats. Here’s a three-column layout with floats: <style type="text/css"> #container { min-width: 800px; } #leftColumn { float: left; width: 300px; height: 100%; background-color:red; } #middleColumn { background-color:green; height: 100%; } #rightColumn { float: right; width: 300px; height: 100%; background-color:blue; } </style> <div id="container"> <div id="rightColumn"> Right Column, Right Column, Right Column, Right Column, Right Column, Right Column, Right Column, Right Column, Right Column </div> <div id="leftColumn"> Left Column, Left Column, Left Column, Left Column, Left Column, Left Column, Left Column, Left Column, Left Column </div> <div id="middleColumn"> Middle Column, Middle Column, Middle Column, Middle Column, Middle Column, Middle Column, Middle Column, Middle Column, Middle Column </div> </div> The page above contains four DIV elements: a container DIV which contains a leftColumn, middleColumn, and rightColumn DIV. The leftColumn DIV element is floated to the left and the rightColumn DIV element is floated to the right. Notice that the rightColumn DIV appears in the page before the middleColumn DIV – this unintuitive ordering is necessary to get the floats to work correctly (see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/533607/css-three-column-layout-problem). The page above (almost) works with the most recent versions of most browsers. For example, you get the correct three-column layout in both Firefox and Chrome: And the layout mostly works with Internet Explorer 9 except for the fact that for some strange reason the min-width doesn’t work so when you shrink the width of your browser, you can get the following unwanted layout: Notice how the middle column (the green column) bleeds to the left and right. People have solved these issues with more complicated CSS. For example, see: http://matthewjamestaylor.com/blog/holy-grail-no-quirks-mode.htm But, at this point, no one could argue that using CSS is easier or more intuitive than tables. It takes work to get a layout with CSS and we know that we could achieve the same layout more easily using HTML tables. Using CSS Grid Layout CSS Grid Layout is a new W3C standard which provides you with all of the benefits of using HTML tables for layout without the disadvantage of using an HTML TABLE element. In other words, CSS Grid Layout enables you to perform table layouts using pure Cascading Style Sheets. The CSS Grid Layout standard is still in a “Working Draft” state (it is not finalized) and it is located here: http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-grid-layout/ The CSS Grid Layout standard is only supported by Internet Explorer 10 and there are no signs that any browser other than Internet Explorer will support this standard in the near future. This means that it is only practical to take advantage of CSS Grid Layout when building Metro style applications with JavaScript. Here’s how you can create a standard three-column layout using a CSS Grid Layout: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <style type="text/css"> html, body, #container { height: 100%; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; } #container { display: -ms-grid; -ms-grid-columns: 300px auto 300px; -ms-grid-rows: 100%; } #leftColumn { -ms-grid-column: 1; background-color:red; } #middleColumn { -ms-grid-column: 2; background-color:green; } #rightColumn { -ms-grid-column: 3; background-color:blue; } </style> </head> <body> <div id="container"> <div id="leftColumn"> Left Column, Left Column, Left Column, Left Column, Left Column, Left Column, Left Column, Left Column, Left Column </div> <div id="middleColumn"> Middle Column, Middle Column, Middle Column, Middle Column, Middle Column, Middle Column, Middle Column, Middle Column, Middle Column </div> <div id="rightColumn"> Right Column, Right Column, Right Column, Right Column, Right Column, Right Column, Right Column, Right Column, Right Column </div> </div> </body> </html> When the page above is rendered in Internet Explorer 10, you get a standard three-column layout: The page above contains four DIV elements: a container DIV which contains a leftColumn DIV, middleColumn DIV, and rightColumn DIV. The container DIV is set to Grid display mode with the following CSS rule: #container { display: -ms-grid; -ms-grid-columns: 300px auto 300px; -ms-grid-rows: 100%; } The display property is set to the value “-ms-grid”. This property causes the container DIV to lay out its child elements in a grid. (Notice that you use “-ms-grid” instead of “grid”. The “-ms-“ prefix is used because the CSS Grid Layout standard is still preliminary. This implementation only works with IE10 and it might change before the final release.) The grid columns and rows are defined with the “-ms-grid-columns” and “-ms-grid-rows” properties. The style rule above creates a grid with three columns and one row. The left and right columns are fixed sized at 300 pixels. The middle column sizes automatically depending on the remaining space available. The leftColumn, middleColumn, and rightColumn DIVs are positioned within the container grid element with the following CSS rules: #leftColumn { -ms-grid-column: 1; background-color:red; } #middleColumn { -ms-grid-column: 2; background-color:green; } #rightColumn { -ms-grid-column: 3; background-color:blue; } The “-ms-grid-column” property is used to specify the column associated with the element selected by the style sheet selector. The leftColumn DIV is positioned in the first grid column, the middleColumn DIV is positioned in the second grid column, and the rightColumn DIV is positioned in the third grid column. I find using CSS Grid Layout to be just as intuitive as using an HTML table for layout. You define your columns and rows and then you position different elements within these columns and rows. Very straightforward. Creating Multiple Columns and Rows In the previous section, we created a super simple three-column layout. This layout contained only a single row. In this section, let’s create a slightly more complicated layout which contains more than one row: The following page contains a header row, a content row, and a footer row. The content row contains three columns: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <style type="text/css"> html, body, #container { height: 100%; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; } #container { display: -ms-grid; -ms-grid-columns: 300px auto 300px; -ms-grid-rows: 100px 1fr 100px; } #header { -ms-grid-column: 1; -ms-grid-column-span: 3; -ms-grid-row: 1; background-color: yellow; } #leftColumn { -ms-grid-column: 1; -ms-grid-row: 2; background-color:red; } #middleColumn { -ms-grid-column: 2; -ms-grid-row: 2; background-color:green; } #rightColumn { -ms-grid-column: 3; -ms-grid-row: 2; background-color:blue; } #footer { -ms-grid-column: 1; -ms-grid-column-span: 3; -ms-grid-row: 3; background-color: orange; } </style> </head> <body> <div id="container"> <div id="header"> Header, Header, Header </div> <div id="leftColumn"> Left Column, Left Column, Left Column, Left Column, Left Column, Left Column, Left Column, Left Column, Left Column </div> <div id="middleColumn"> Middle Column, Middle Column, Middle Column, Middle Column, Middle Column, Middle Column, Middle Column, Middle Column, Middle Column </div> <div id="rightColumn"> Right Column, Right Column, Right Column, Right Column, Right Column, Right Column, Right Column, Right Column, Right Column </div> <div id="footer"> Footer, Footer, Footer </div> </div> </body> </html> In the page above, the grid layout is created with the following rule which creates a grid with three rows and three columns: #container { display: -ms-grid; -ms-grid-columns: 300px auto 300px; -ms-grid-rows: 100px 1fr 100px; } The header is created with the following rule: #header { -ms-grid-column: 1; -ms-grid-column-span: 3; -ms-grid-row: 1; background-color: yellow; } The header is positioned in column 1 and row 1. Furthermore, notice that the “-ms-grid-column-span” property is used to span the header across three columns. CSS Grid Layout and Fractional Units When you use CSS Grid Layout, you can take advantage of fractional units. Fractional units provide you with an easy way of dividing up remaining space in a page. Imagine, for example, that you want to create a three-column page layout. You want the size of the first column to be fixed at 200 pixels and you want to divide the remaining space among the remaining three columns. The width of the second column is equal to the combined width of the third and fourth columns. The following CSS rule creates four columns with the desired widths: #container { display: -ms-grid; -ms-grid-columns: 200px 2fr 1fr 1fr; -ms-grid-rows: 1fr; } The fr unit represents a fraction. The grid above contains four columns. The second column is two times the size (2fr) of the third (1fr) and fourth (1fr) columns. When you use the fractional unit, the remaining space is divided up using fractional amounts. Notice that the single row is set to a height of 1fr. The single grid row gobbles up the entire vertical space. Here’s the entire HTML page: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <style type="text/css"> html, body, #container { height: 100%; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; } #container { display: -ms-grid; -ms-grid-columns: 200px 2fr 1fr 1fr; -ms-grid-rows: 1fr; } #firstColumn { -ms-grid-column: 1; background-color:red; } #secondColumn { -ms-grid-column: 2; background-color:green; } #thirdColumn { -ms-grid-column: 3; background-color:blue; } #fourthColumn { -ms-grid-column: 4; background-color:orange; } </style> </head> <body> <div id="container"> <div id="firstColumn"> First Column, First Column, First Column </div> <div id="secondColumn"> Second Column, Second Column, Second Column </div> <div id="thirdColumn"> Third Column, Third Column, Third Column </div> <div id="fourthColumn"> Fourth Column, Fourth Column, Fourth Column </div> </div> </body> </html> Summary There is more in the CSS 3 Grid Layout standard than discussed in this blog post. My goal was to describe the basics. If you want to learn more than you can read through the entire standard at http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-grid-layout/ In this blog post, I described some of the difficulties that you might encounter when attempting to replace HTML tables with Cascading Style Sheets when laying out a web page. I explained how you can take advantage of the CSS 3 Grid Layout standard to avoid these problems when building Metro style applications using JavaScript. CSS 3 Grid Layout provides you with all of the benefits of using HTML tables for laying out a page without requiring you to use HTML table elements.

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OpenVPN not connecting

- by LandArch

There have been a number of post similar to this, but none seem to satisfy my need. Plus I am a Ubuntu newbie. I followed this tutorial to completely set up OpenVPN on Ubuntu 12.04 server. Here is my server.conf file ################################################# # Sample OpenVPN 2.0 config file for # # multi-client server. # # # # This file is for the server side # # of a many-clients <-> one-server # # OpenVPN configuration. # # # # OpenVPN also supports # # single-machine <-> single-machine # # configurations (See the Examples page # # on the web site for more info). # # # # This config should work on Windows # # or Linux/BSD systems. Remember on # # Windows to quote pathnames and use # # double backslashes, e.g.: # # "C:\\Program Files\\OpenVPN\\config\\foo.key" # # # # Comments are preceded with '#' or ';' # ################################################# # Which local IP address should OpenVPN # listen on? (optional) local 192.168.13.8 # Which TCP/UDP port should OpenVPN listen on? # If you want to run multiple OpenVPN instances # on the same machine, use a different port # number for each one. You will need to # open up this port on your firewall. port 1194 # TCP or UDP server? proto tcp ;proto udp # "dev tun" will create a routed IP tunnel, # "dev tap" will create an ethernet tunnel. # Use "dev tap0" if you are ethernet bridging # and have precreated a tap0 virtual interface # and bridged it with your ethernet interface. # If you want to control access policies # over the VPN, you must create firewall # rules for the the TUN/TAP interface. # On non-Windows systems, you can give # an explicit unit number, such as tun0. # On Windows, use "dev-node" for this. # On most systems, the VPN will not function # unless you partially or fully disable # the firewall for the TUN/TAP interface. dev tap0 up "/etc/openvpn/up.sh br0" down "/etc/openvpn/down.sh br0" ;dev tun # Windows needs the TAP-Win32 adapter name # from the Network Connections panel if you # have more than one. On XP SP2 or higher, # you may need to selectively disable the # Windows firewall for the TAP adapter. # Non-Windows systems usually don't need this. ;dev-node MyTap # SSL/TLS root certificate (ca), certificate # (cert), and private key (key). Each client # and the server must have their own cert and # key file. The server and all clients will # use the same ca file. # # See the "easy-rsa" directory for a series # of scripts for generating RSA certificates # and private keys. Remember to use # a unique Common Name for the server # and each of the client certificates. # # Any X509 key management system can be used. # OpenVPN can also use a PKCS #12 formatted key file # (see "pkcs12" directive in man page). ca "/etc/openvpn/ca.crt" cert "/etc/openvpn/server.crt" key "/etc/openvpn/server.key" # This file should be kept secret # Diffie hellman parameters. # Generate your own with: # openssl dhparam -out dh1024.pem 1024 # Substitute 2048 for 1024 if you are using # 2048 bit keys. dh dh1024.pem # Configure server mode and supply a VPN subnet # for OpenVPN to draw client addresses from. # The server will take 10.8.0.1 for itself, # the rest will be made available to clients. # Each client will be able to reach the server # on 10.8.0.1. Comment this line out if you are # ethernet bridging. See the man page for more info. ;server 10.8.0.0 255.255.255.0 # Maintain a record of client <-> virtual IP address # associations in this file. If OpenVPN goes down or # is restarted, reconnecting clients can be assigned # the same virtual IP address from the pool that was # previously assigned. ifconfig-pool-persist ipp.txt # Configure server mode for ethernet bridging. # You must first use your OS's bridging capability # to bridge the TAP interface with the ethernet # NIC interface. Then you must manually set the # IP/netmask on the bridge interface, here we # assume 10.8.0.4/255.255.255.0. Finally we # must set aside an IP range in this subnet # (start=10.8.0.50 end=10.8.0.100) to allocate # to connecting clients. Leave this line commented # out unless you are ethernet bridging. server-bridge 192.168.13.101 255.255.255.0 192.168.13.105 192.168.13.200 # Configure server mode for ethernet bridging # using a DHCP-proxy, where clients talk # to the OpenVPN server-side DHCP server # to receive their IP address allocation # and DNS server addresses. You must first use # your OS's bridging capability to bridge the TAP # interface with the ethernet NIC interface. # Note: this mode only works on clients (such as # Windows), where the client-side TAP adapter is # bound to a DHCP client. ;server-bridge # Push routes to the client to allow it # to reach other private subnets behind # the server. Remember that these # private subnets will also need # to know to route the OpenVPN client # address pool (10.8.0.0/255.255.255.0) # back to the OpenVPN server. push "route 192.168.13.1 255.255.255.0" push "dhcp-option DNS 192.168.13.201" push "dhcp-option DOMAIN blahblah.dyndns-wiki.com" ;push "route 192.168.20.0 255.255.255.0" # To assign specific IP addresses to specific # clients or if a connecting client has a private # subnet behind it that should also have VPN access, # use the subdirectory "ccd" for client-specific # configuration files (see man page for more info). # EXAMPLE: Suppose the client # having the certificate common name "Thelonious" # also has a small subnet behind his connecting # machine, such as 192.168.40.128/255.255.255.248. # First, uncomment out these lines: ;client-config-dir ccd ;route 192.168.40.128 255.255.255.248 # Then create a file ccd/Thelonious with this line: # iroute 192.168.40.128 255.255.255.248 # This will allow Thelonious' private subnet to # access the VPN. This example will only work # if you are routing, not bridging, i.e. you are # using "dev tun" and "server" directives. # EXAMPLE: Suppose you want to give # Thelonious a fixed VPN IP address of 10.9.0.1. # First uncomment out these lines: ;client-config-dir ccd ;route 10.9.0.0 255.255.255.252 # Then add this line to ccd/Thelonious: # ifconfig-push 10.9.0.1 10.9.0.2 # Suppose that you want to enable different # firewall access policies for different groups # of clients. There are two methods: # (1) Run multiple OpenVPN daemons, one for each # group, and firewall the TUN/TAP interface # for each group/daemon appropriately. # (2) (Advanced) Create a script to dynamically # modify the firewall in response to access # from different clients. See man # page for more info on learn-address script. ;learn-address ./script # If enabled, this directive will configure # all clients to redirect their default # network gateway through the VPN, causing # all IP traffic such as web browsing and # and DNS lookups to go through the VPN # (The OpenVPN server machine may need to NAT # or bridge the TUN/TAP interface to the internet # in order for this to work properly). ;push "redirect-gateway def1 bypass-dhcp" # Certain Windows-specific network settings # can be pushed to clients, such as DNS # or WINS server addresses. CAVEAT: # http://openvpn.net/faq.html#dhcpcaveats # The addresses below refer to the public # DNS servers provided by opendns.com. ;push "dhcp-option DNS 208.67.222.222" ;push "dhcp-option DNS 208.67.220.220" # Uncomment this directive to allow different # clients to be able to "see" each other. # By default, clients will only see the server. # To force clients to only see the server, you # will also need to appropriately firewall the # server's TUN/TAP interface. ;client-to-client # Uncomment this directive if multiple clients # might connect with the same certificate/key # files or common names. This is recommended # only for testing purposes. For production use, # each client should have its own certificate/key # pair. # # IF YOU HAVE NOT GENERATED INDIVIDUAL # CERTIFICATE/KEY PAIRS FOR EACH CLIENT, # EACH HAVING ITS OWN UNIQUE "COMMON NAME", # UNCOMMENT THIS LINE OUT. ;duplicate-cn # The keepalive directive causes ping-like # messages to be sent back and forth over # the link so that each side knows when # the other side has gone down. # Ping every 10 seconds, assume that remote # peer is down if no ping received during # a 120 second time period. keepalive 10 120 # For extra security beyond that provided # by SSL/TLS, create an "HMAC firewall" # to help block DoS attacks and UDP port flooding. # # Generate with: # openvpn --genkey --secret ta.key # # The server and each client must have # a copy of this key. # The second parameter should be '0' # on the server and '1' on the clients. ;tls-auth ta.key 0 # This file is secret # Select a cryptographic cipher. # This config item must be copied to # the client config file as well. ;cipher BF-CBC # Blowfish (default) ;cipher AES-128-CBC # AES ;cipher DES-EDE3-CBC # Triple-DES # Enable compression on the VPN link. # If you enable it here, you must also # enable it in the client config file. comp-lzo # The maximum number of concurrently connected # clients we want to allow. ;max-clients 100 # It's a good idea to reduce the OpenVPN # daemon's privileges after initialization. # # You can uncomment this out on # non-Windows systems. user nobody group nogroup # The persist options will try to avoid # accessing certain resources on restart # that may no longer be accessible because # of the privilege downgrade. persist-key persist-tun # Output a short status file showing # current connections, truncated # and rewritten every minute. status openvpn-status.log # By default, log messages will go to the syslog (or # on Windows, if running as a service, they will go to # the "\Program Files\OpenVPN\log" directory). # Use log or log-append to override this default. # "log" will truncate the log file on OpenVPN startup, # while "log-append" will append to it. Use one # or the other (but not both). ;log openvpn.log ;log-append openvpn.log # Set the appropriate level of log # file verbosity. # # 0 is silent, except for fatal errors # 4 is reasonable for general usage # 5 and 6 can help to debug connection problems # 9 is extremely verbose verb 3 # Silence repeating messages. At most 20 # sequential messages of the same message # category will be output to the log. ;mute 20 I am using Windows 7 as the Client and set that up accordingly using the OpenVPN GUI. That conf file is as follows: ############################################## # Sample client-side OpenVPN 2.0 config file # # for connecting to multi-client server. # # # # This configuration can be used by multiple # # clients, however each client should have # # its own cert and key files. # # # # On Windows, you might want to rename this # # file so it has a .ovpn extension # ############################################## # Specify that we are a client and that we # will be pulling certain config file directives # from the server. client # Use the same setting as you are using on # the server. # On most systems, the VPN will not function # unless you partially or fully disable # the firewall for the TUN/TAP interface. dev tap0 up "/etc/openvpn/up.sh br0" down "/etc/openvpn/down.sh br0" ;dev tun # Windows needs the TAP-Win32 adapter name # from the Network Connections panel # if you have more than one. On XP SP2, # you may need to disable the firewall # for the TAP adapter. ;dev-node MyTap # Are we connecting to a TCP or # UDP server? Use the same setting as # on the server. proto tcp ;proto udp # The hostname/IP and port of the server. # You can have multiple remote entries # to load balance between the servers. blahblah.dyndns-wiki.com 1194 ;remote my-server-2 1194 # Choose a random host from the remote # list for load-balancing. Otherwise # try hosts in the order specified. ;remote-random # Keep trying indefinitely to resolve the # host name of the OpenVPN server. Very useful # on machines which are not permanently connected # to the internet such as laptops. resolv-retry infinite # Most clients don't need to bind to # a specific local port number. nobind # Downgrade privileges after initialization (non-Windows only) user nobody group nobody # Try to preserve some state across restarts. persist-key persist-tun # If you are connecting through an # HTTP proxy to reach the actual OpenVPN # server, put the proxy server/IP and # port number here. See the man page # if your proxy server requires # authentication. ;http-proxy-retry # retry on connection failures ;http-proxy [proxy server] [proxy port #] # Wireless networks often produce a lot # of duplicate packets. Set this flag # to silence duplicate packet warnings. ;mute-replay-warnings # SSL/TLS parms. # See the server config file for more # description. It's best to use # a separate .crt/.key file pair # for each client. A single ca # file can be used for all clients. ca "C:\\Program Files\OpenVPN\config\\ca.crt" cert "C:\\Program Files\OpenVPN\config\\ChadMWade-THINK.crt" key "C:\\Program Files\OpenVPN\config\\ChadMWade-THINK.key" # Verify server certificate by checking # that the certicate has the nsCertType # field set to "server". This is an # important precaution to protect against # a potential attack discussed here: # http://openvpn.net/howto.html#mitm # # To use this feature, you will need to generate # your server certificates with the nsCertType # field set to "server". The build-key-server # script in the easy-rsa folder will do this. ns-cert-type server # If a tls-auth key is used on the server # then every client must also have the key. ;tls-auth ta.key 1 # Select a cryptographic cipher. # If the cipher option is used on the server # then you must also specify it here. ;cipher x # Enable compression on the VPN link. # Don't enable this unless it is also # enabled in the server config file. comp-lzo # Set log file verbosity. verb 3 # Silence repeating messages ;mute 20 Not sure whats left to do.

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, November 18, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, November 18, 2010Popular ReleasesSitefinity Migration Tool: Sitefinity Migration Tool 0.2 Alpha: - Improvements for the Sitefinity RC releaseMiniTwitter: 1.57: MiniTwitter 1.57 ???? ?? ?????????????????? ?? User Streams ????????????????????? ???????????????·??????·???????VFPX: VFP2C32 2.0.0.7: fixed a bug in AAverage - NULL values in the array corrupted the result removed limitation in ASum, AMin, AMax, AAverage - the functions were limited to 65000 elements, now they're limited to 65000 rows ASplitStr now returns a 1 element array with an empty string when an empty string is passed (behaves more like ALINES) internal code cleanup and optimization: optimized FoxArray class - results in a speedup of 10-20% in many functions which return the result in an array - like AProcesses...Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks 2008R2 SR1: Sample Databases for Microsoft SQL Server 2008R2 (SR1)This release is dedicated to the sample databases that ship for Microsoft SQL Server 2008R2. See Database Prerequisites for SQL Server 2008R2 for feature configurations required for installing the sample databases. See Installing SQL Server 2008R2 Databases for step by step installation instructions. The SR1 release contains minor bug fixes to the installer used to create the sample databases. There are no changes to the databases them...VidCoder: 0.7.2: Fixed duplicated subtitles when running multiple encodes off of the same title.Razor Templating Engine: Razor Template Engine v1.1: Release 1.1 Changes: ADDED: Signed assemblies with strong name to allow assemblies to be referenced by other strongly-named assemblies. FIX: Filter out dynamic assemblies which causes failures in template compilation. FIX: Changed ASCII to UTF8 encoding to support UTF-8 encoded string templates. FIX: Corrected implementation of TemplateBase adding ITemplate interface.Prism Training Kit: Prism Training Kit - 1.1: This is an updated version of the Prism training Kit that targets Prism 4.0 and fixes the bugs reported in the version 1.0. This release consists of a Training Kit with Labs on the following topics Modularity Dependency Injection Bootstrapper UI Composition Communication Note: Take into account that this is a Beta version. If you find any bugs please report them in the Issue Tracker PrerequisitesVisual Studio 2010 Microsoft Word 2007/2010 Microsoft Silverlight 4 Microsoft S...Craig's Utility Library: Craig's Utility Library Code 2.0: This update contains a number of changes, added functionality, and bug fixes: Added transaction support to SQLHelper. Added linked/embedded resource ability to EmailSender. Updated List to take into account new functions. Added better support for MAC address in WMI classes. Fixed Parsing in Reflection class when dealing with sub classes. Fixed bug in SQLHelper when replacing the Command that is a select after doing a select. Fixed issue in SQL Server helper with regard to generati...MFCMAPI: November 2010 Release: Build: 6.0.0.1023 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the tool, get the executable. If you want to debug it, get the symbol file and the source. The 64 bit build will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit build, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeDotNetNuke® Community Edition: 05.06.00: Major HighlightsAdded automatic portal alias creation for single portal installs Updated the file manager upload page to allow user to upload multiple files without returning to the file manager page. Fixed issue with Event Log Email Notifications. Fixed issue where Telerik HTML Editor was unable to upload files to secure or database folder. Fixed issue where registration page is not set correctly during an upgrade. Fixed issue where Sendmail stripped HTML and Links from emails...mVu Mobile Viewer: mVu Mobile Viewer 0.7.10.0: Tube8 fix.EPPlus-Create advanced Excel 2007 spreadsheets on the server: EPPlus 2.8.0.1: EPPlus-Create advanced Excel 2007 spreadsheets on the serverNew Features Improved chart support Different chart-types series on the same chart Support for secondary axis and a lot of new properties Better styling Encryption and Workbook protection Table support Import csv files Array formulas ...and a lot of bugfixesAutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.4.2: Added support for more clients (French and Russian) Settings are now stored sepperatly for each user on a computer Auto Login is much faster now Auto Login detects and handles caps lock state properly nowTailspinSpyworks - WebForms Sample Application: TailspinSpyworks-v0.9: Contains a number of bug fixes and additional tutorial steps as well as complete database implementation details.ASP.NET MVC Project Awesome (rich jQuery AJAX helpers): 1.3 and demos: a library with mvc helpers and a demo project that demonstrates an awesome way of doing asp.net mvc. tested on mozilla, safari, chrome, opera, ie 9b/8/7/6 new stuff in 1.3 Autocomplete helper Autocomplete and AjaxDropdown can have parentId and be filled with data depending on the value of the parent PopupForm besides Content("ok") on success can also return Json(data) and use 'data' in a client side function Awesome demo improved (cruder, builder, added service layer)Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v4.1: Version 4.1 of the ASP.NET MVC forum engine, with great improvements: TinyMCE added as visual editor for messages (removed CKEditor). Integrated AntiSamy for cleaner html user post and add more prevention to potential injections. Admin status page: a page for the site admin to check the current status of the configuration / db / etc. View Roadmap for more details.UltimateJB: UltimateJB 2.01 PL3 KakaRoto + PSNYes by EvilSperm: Voici une version attendu avec impatience pour beaucoup : - La Version PSNYes pour pouvoir jouer sur le PSN avec une PS3 Jailbreaker. - Pour l'instant le PSNYes n'est disponible qu'avec les PS3 en firmwares 3.41 !!! - La version PL3 KAKAROTO intégre ses dernières modification et prépare a l'intégration du Firmware 3.30 !!! Conclusion : - UltimateJB PSNYes => Valide l'utilisation du PSN : Uniquement compatible avec les 3.41 - ultimateJB DEFAULT => Pas de PSN mais disponible pour les PS3 sui...Fluent Ribbon Control Suite: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 2.0: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 2.0(supports .NET 4.0 RTM and .NET 3.5) Includes: Fluent.dll (with .pdb and .xml) Showcase Application Samples (only for .NET 4.0) Foundation (Tabs, Groups, Contextual Tabs, Quick Access Toolbar, Backstage) Resizing (ribbon reducing & enlarging principles) Galleries (Gallery in ContextMenu, InRibbonGallery) MVVM (shows how to use this library with Model-View-ViewModel pattern) KeyTips ScreenTips Toolbars ColorGallery NEW! *Walkthrough (documenta...patterns & practices: Prism: Prism 4 Documentation: This release contains the Prism 4 documentation in Help 1.0 (CHM) format and PDF format. The documentation is also included with the full download of the guidance. Note: If you cannot view the content of the CHM, using Windows Explorer, select the properties for the file and then click Unblock on the General tab. Note: The PDF version of the guidance is provided for printing and reading in book format. The online version of the Prism 4 documentation can be read here.Farseer Physics Engine: Farseer Physics Engine 3.1: DonationsIf you like this release and would like to keep Farseer Physics Engine running, please consider a small donation. What's new?We bring a lot of new features in Farseer Physics Engine 3.1. Just to name a few: New Box2D core Rope joint added More stable CCD algorithm YuPeng clipper Explosives logic New Constrained Delaunay Triangulation algorithm from the Poly2Tri project. New Flipcode triangulation algorithm. Silverlight 4 samples Silverlight 4 debug view XNA 4.0 relea...New Projectsbizicosoft crm: crmBlog Migrator: The Blog Migrator tool is an all purpose utility designed to help transition a blog from one platform to another. It leverages XML-RPC, BlogML, and WordPress WXR formats. It also provides the ability to "rewrite" your posts on your old blog to point to the new location.bzr-tfs integration tests: Used to test bzr-tfs integrationC++ Open Source Advanced Operating System: C++ Open Source Advanced Operating System is a project which allows starter developers create their own OS. For now it is at a really initial stage.Chavah - internet radio for Yeshua's disciples: Chavah (pronounced "ha-vah") is internet radio for Yeshua's disciples. Inspired by Pandora, Chavah is a Silverlight application that brings community-driven Messianic Jewish tunes for the Lord over the web to your eager ears.CodePoster: An add-in for Visual Studio which allows you to post code directly from Visual Studio to your blog. CRM 2011 Plugin Testing Tools: This solution is meant to make unit testing of plugins in CRM 2011 a simpler and more efficient process. This solution serializes the objects that the CRM server passes to a plugin on execution and then offers a library that allows you to deserialize them in a unit test.Edinamarry Free Tarot Software for Windows: A freeware yet an advanced Tarot reading divinity Software for Psychics and for all those who practice Divinity and Spirituality. This software includes Tarot Spread Designer, Tarot Deck Designer, Tarot Cards Gallery, Client & Customer Profile, Word Editor, Tarot Reader, etc.EPiSocial: Social addons for EPiServer.first team foundation project: this is my first project for the student to teach them about the ms visual studio 201o and team foundation serverFKTdev: Proyecto donde subiremos las pruebas, códigos de ejemplo y demás recursos en nuestro aprendizaje en XNA, hasta que comencemos un desarrollo estable.Gardens Point Component Pascal: Gardens Point Component Pascal is an implementation for .NET of the Component Pascal Language (CP). CP is an object oriented version of Pascal, and shares many design features with Oberon-2. Geoinformatics: geoinformaticsGREENHOUSEMANAGER: GREENHOUSE es un proyecto universitario para manejar los distintos aspectos de un invernadero. El sistema esta desarrollado en c# con interfaz grafica en WPFHousing: This project is only for the asp.net learning. HR-XML.NET: A .NET HR-XML Serialization Library. Also supports the Dutch SETU standard and some proprietary extensions used in the Netherlands. The project is currently targeting HR-XML version 2.5 and Setu standard 2008-01.InternetShop2: ShopLesson4: Lesson4 for M.Logical Synchronous Circuit Simulator: As part of a student project, we are trying to make a logic synchronous circuit simulator, with the ultimate goal of simulating a processor and a digital clock running on it.MediaOwl: MediaOwl is a music (albums, artists, tracks, tags) and movie (movies, series, actors, directors, genres) search engine, but above all, it is a Microsoft Silverlight 4 application (C#), that shows how to use Caliburn Micro.N2F Yverdon Solar Flare Reflector: The solar flare reflector provides minimal base-range protection for your N2F Yverdon installation against solar flare interference.Netduino Plus Home Automation Toolkit: The Netduino Plus Home Automation project is designed to proivde a communication platform from various consumer based home automation products that offer a common web service endpoint. This will hopefully create a low cost DIY alternative to the expensive ethernet interfaces.NRapid: NRapidOfficeHelper: Wrapper around the open xml office package. You can easily create xlsx documents based on a template xlsx document and reuse parts from that document, if you mark them as named ranges (i.e. "names").OffProjects: This is a private project which for my dev investigationParis Velib Stations for Windows Mobile: Allow to find the closest Velib bike station in Paris on a Windows Mobile Phone (6.5)/ Permet de trouver la station de Vélib la plus proche dans Paris ainsi que ses informations sur un smartphone Windows MobilePolarConverter: Adjust the measured distance of HRM files created by Polar Heart Rate monitorsSexy Select: a jQuery plugin that allows for easy manipulation of select options. Allows for adding, removing, sorting, validation and custom skinningSilverlight Progress Feedback: Demonstrates how to get progress feedback from slow running WPF processes in Silverlight.Silverlight Tabbed Panel: Tabbed Panel based on Silverlight targeted for both developers and designers audience. Tabbed Control is used in this project. This is a basic application. More features will be added in further releases. XAML has been used to design this panel. slabhid: SLABHIDDevice.dll is used for the SLAB MCU example code on PC, the original source code is written by C++. This wrapper class brings SLABHIDDevice.dll to the .Net world, so it will be possible to make some quick solution for firmware testing purpose.SuperWebSocket: A .NET server side implementation of WebSocket protocol.test1-jjoiner: just a test projectTotem Alpha Developer Framework For .Net: ????tadf??VS.NET???????????，????jtadf???????????????。 ?????????tadf??????????????J2EE???????VS.NET?????????，??tadf?????.NET??，???????????，????????????，??????C#??????????Java???????，??????。 tadf?????????????，????HTML???????????，???????，?????????，?????。tadf???????????，????????RICH UI?????WEB??。??????，??。 tadf?????????????????????，????WEB??????????。???????，???????????，?Ajax???????，????????????????，????????，????????????????。???????????，???????????????????????????????，?xml??????，?????????????xml...Ukázkové projekty: Obsahuje ukázkové projekty uživatele TenCoKaciStromy.WPFDemo: This Peoject is only for the WPF learning.Xinx TimeIt!: TinyAlarm is a small utility that allows you to configure an Alarm so that you can opt for 1. Shutdown computer 2. Play a sound 3. Show a note with sound 4. Disconnect a dial-up connection 5. Connect via dial-up connection

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Working with PivotTables in Excel

- by Mark Virtue

PivotTables are one of the most powerful features of Microsoft Excel. They allow large amounts of data to be analyzed and summarized in just a few mouse clicks. In this article, we explore PivotTables, understand what they are, and learn how to create and customize them. Note: This article is written using Excel 2010 (Beta). The concept of a PivotTable has changed little over the years, but the method of creating one has changed in nearly every iteration of Excel. If you are using a version of Excel that is not 2010, expect different screens from the ones you see in this article. A Little History In the early days of spreadsheet programs, Lotus 1-2-3 ruled the roost. Its dominance was so complete that people thought it was a waste of time for Microsoft to bother developing their own spreadsheet software (Excel) to compete with Lotus. Flash-forward to 2010, and Excel’s dominance of the spreadsheet market is greater than Lotus’s ever was, while the number of users still running Lotus 1-2-3 is approaching zero. How did this happen? What caused such a dramatic reversal of fortunes? Industry analysts put it down to two factors: Firstly, Lotus decided that this fancy new GUI platform called “Windows” was a passing fad that would never take off. They declined to create a Windows version of Lotus 1-2-3 (for a few years, anyway), predicting that their DOS version of the software was all anyone would ever need. Microsoft, naturally, developed Excel exclusively for Windows. Secondly, Microsoft developed a feature for Excel that Lotus didn’t provide in 1-2-3, namely PivotTables. The PivotTables feature, exclusive to Excel, was deemed so staggeringly useful that people were willing to learn an entire new software package (Excel) rather than stick with a program (1-2-3) that didn’t have it. This one feature, along with the misjudgment of the success of Windows, was the death-knell for Lotus 1-2-3, and the beginning of the success of Microsoft Excel. Understanding PivotTables So what is a PivotTable, exactly? Put simply, a PivotTable is a summary of some data, created to allow easy analysis of said data. But unlike a manually created summary, Excel PivotTables are interactive. Once you have created one, you can easily change it if it doesn’t offer the exact insights into your data that you were hoping for. In a couple of clicks the summary can be “pivoted” – rotated in such a way that the column headings become row headings, and vice versa. There’s a lot more that can be done, too. Rather than try to describe all the features of PivotTables, we’ll simply demonstrate them… The data that you analyze using a PivotTable can’t be just any data – it has to be raw data, previously unprocessed (unsummarized) – typically a list of some sort. An example of this might be the list of sales transactions in a company for the past six months. Examine the data shown below: Notice that this is not raw data. In fact, it is already a summary of some sort. In cell B3 we can see $30,000, which apparently is the total of James Cook’s sales for the month of January. So where is the raw data? How did we arrive at the figure of $30,000? Where is the original list of sales transactions that this figure was generated from? It’s clear that somewhere, someone must have gone to the trouble of collating all of the sales transactions for the past six months into the summary we see above. How long do you suppose this took? An hour? Ten? Probably. If we were to track down the original list of sales transactions, it might look something like this: You may be surprised to learn that, using the PivotTable feature of Excel, we can create a monthly sales summary similar to the one above in a few seconds, with only a few mouse clicks. We can do this – and a lot more too! How to Create a PivotTable First, ensure that you have some raw data in a worksheet in Excel. A list of financial transactions is typical, but it can be a list of just about anything: Employee contact details, your CD collection, or fuel consumption figures for your company’s fleet of cars. So we start Excel… …and we load such a list… Once we have the list open in Excel, we’re ready to start creating the PivotTable. Click on any one single cell within the list: Then, from the Insert tab, click the PivotTable icon: The Create PivotTable box appears, asking you two questions: What data should your new PivotTable be based on, and where should it be created? Because we already clicked on a cell within the list (in the step above), the entire list surrounding that cell is already selected for us ($A$1:$G$88 on the Payments sheet, in this example). Note that we could select a list in any other region of any other worksheet, or even some external data source, such as an Access database table, or even a MS-SQL Server database table. We also need to select whether we want our new PivotTable to be created on a new worksheet, or on an existing one. In this example we will select a new one: The new worksheet is created for us, and a blank PivotTable is created on that worksheet: Another box also appears: The PivotTable Field List. This field list will be shown whenever we click on any cell within the PivotTable (above): The list of fields in the top part of the box is actually the collection of column headings from the original raw data worksheet. The four blank boxes in the lower part of the screen allow us to choose the way we would like our PivotTable to summarize the raw data. So far, there is nothing in those boxes, so the PivotTable is blank. All we need to do is drag fields down from the list above and drop them in the lower boxes. A PivotTable is then automatically created to match our instructions. If we get it wrong, we only need to drag the fields back to where they came from and/or drag new fields down to replace them. The Values box is arguably the most important of the four. The field that is dragged into this box represents the data that needs to be summarized in some way (by summing, averaging, finding the maximum, minimum, etc). It is almost always numerical data. A perfect candidate for this box in our sample data is the “Amount” field/column. Let’s drag that field into the Values box: Notice that (a) the “Amount” field in the list of fields is now ticked, and “Sum of Amount” has been added to the Values box, indicating that the amount column has been summed. If we examine the PivotTable itself, we indeed find the sum of all the “Amount” values from the raw data worksheet: We’ve created our first PivotTable! Handy, but not particularly impressive. It’s likely that we need a little more insight into our data than that. Referring to our sample data, we need to identify one or more column headings that we could conceivably use to split this total. For example, we may decide that we would like to see a summary of our data where we have a row heading for each of the different salespersons in our company, and a total for each. To achieve this, all we need to do is to drag the “Salesperson” field into the Row Labels box: Now, finally, things start to get interesting! Our PivotTable starts to take shape…. With a couple of clicks we have created a table that would have taken a long time to do manually. So what else can we do? Well, in one sense our PivotTable is complete. We’ve created a useful summary of our source data. The important stuff is already learned! For the rest of the article, we will examine some ways that more complex PivotTables can be created, and ways that those PivotTables can be customized. First, we can create a two-dimensional table. Let’s do that by using “Payment Method” as a column heading. Simply drag the “Payment Method” heading to the Column Labels box: Which looks like this: Starting to get very cool! Let’s make it a three-dimensional table. What could such a table possibly look like? Well, let’s see… Drag the “Package” column/heading to the Report Filter box: Notice where it ends up…. This allows us to filter our report based on which “holiday package” was being purchased. For example, we can see the breakdown of salesperson vs payment method for all packages, or, with a couple of clicks, change it to show the same breakdown for the “Sunseekers” package: And so, if you think about it the right way, our PivotTable is now three-dimensional. Let’s keep customizing… If it turns out, say, that we only want to see cheque and credit card transactions (i.e. no cash transactions), then we can deselect the “Cash” item from the column headings. Click the drop-down arrow next to Column Labels, and untick “Cash”: Let’s see what that looks like…As you can see, “Cash” is gone. Formatting This is obviously a very powerful system, but so far the results look very plain and boring. For a start, the numbers that we’re summing do not look like dollar amounts – just plain old numbers. Let’s rectify that. A temptation might be to do what we’re used to doing in such circumstances and simply select the whole table (or the whole worksheet) and use the standard number formatting buttons on the toolbar to complete the formatting. The problem with that approach is that if you ever change the structure of the PivotTable in the future (which is 99% likely), then those number formats will be lost. We need a way that will make them (semi-)permanent. First, we locate the “Sum of Amount” entry in the Values box, and click on it. A menu appears. We select Value Field Settings… from the menu: The Value Field Settings box appears. Click the Number Format button, and the standard Format Cells box appears: From the Category list, select (say) Accounting, and drop the number of decimal places to 0. Click OK a few times to get back to the PivotTable… As you can see, the numbers have been correctly formatted as dollar amounts. While we’re on the subject of formatting, let’s format the entire PivotTable. There are a few ways to do this. Let’s use a simple one… Click the PivotTable Tools/Design tab: Then drop down the arrow in the bottom-right of the PivotTable Styles list to see a vast collection of built-in styles: Choose any one that appeals, and look at the result in your PivotTable: Other Options We can work with dates as well. Now usually, there are many, many dates in a transaction list such as the one we started with. But Excel provides the option to group data items together by day, week, month, year, etc. Let’s see how this is done. First, let’s remove the “Payment Method” column from the Column Labels box (simply drag it back up to the field list), and replace it with the “Date Booked” column: As you can see, this makes our PivotTable instantly useless, giving us one column for each date that a transaction occurred on – a very wide table! To fix this, right-click on any date and select Group… from the context-menu: The grouping box appears. We select Months and click OK: Voila! A much more useful table: (Incidentally, this table is virtually identical to the one shown at the beginning of this article – the original sales summary that was created manually.) Another cool thing to be aware of is that you can have more than one set of row headings (or column headings): …which looks like this…. You can do a similar thing with column headings (or even report filters). Keeping things simple again, let’s see how to plot averaged values, rather than summed values. First, click on “Sum of Amount”, and select Value Field Settings… from the context-menu that appears: In the Summarize value field by list in the Value Field Settings box, select Average: While we’re here, let’s change the Custom Name, from “Average of Amount” to something a little more concise. Type in something like “Avg”: Click OK, and see what it looks like. Notice that all the values change from summed totals to averages, and the table title (top-left cell) has changed to “Avg”: If we like, we can even have sums, averages and counts (counts = how many sales there were) all on the same PivotTable! Here are the steps to get something like that in place (starting from a blank PivotTable): Drag “Salesperson” into the Column Labels Drag “Amount” field down into the Values box three times For the first “Amount” field, change its custom name to “Total” and it’s number format to Accounting (0 decimal places) For the second “Amount” field, change its custom name to “Average”, its function to Average and it’s number format to Accounting (0 decimal places) For the third “Amount” field, change its name to “Count” and its function to Count Drag the automatically created field from Column Labels to Row Labels Here’s what we end up with: Total, average and count on the same PivotTable! Conclusion There are many, many more features and options for PivotTables created by Microsoft Excel – far too many to list in an article like this. To fully cover the potential of PivotTables, a small book (or a large website) would be required. Brave and/or geeky readers can explore PivotTables further quite easily: Simply right-click on just about everything, and see what options become available to you. There are also the two ribbon-tabs: PivotTable Tools/Options and Design. It doesn’t matter if you make a mistake – it’s easy to delete the PivotTable and start again – a possibility old DOS users of Lotus 1-2-3 never had. We’ve included an Excel that should work with most versions of Excel, so you can download to practice your PivotTable skills. Download Our Practice Excel File Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Magnify Selected Cells In Excel 2007Share Access Data with Excel in Office 2010Make Excel 2007 Print Gridlines In Workbook FileMake Excel 2007 Always Save in Excel 2003 FormatConvert Older Excel Documents to Excel 2007 Format TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Ben & Jerry’s Free Cone Day, 3/23/10 New Stinger from McAfee Helps Remove ‘FakeAlert’ Threats Google Apps Marketplace: Tools & Services For Google Apps Users Get News Quick and Precise With Newser Scan for Viruses in Ubuntu using ClamAV Replace Your Windows Task Manager With System Explorer

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Elfsign Object Signing on Solaris

- by danx

Elfsign Object Signing on Solaris Don't let this happen to you—use elfsign! Solaris elfsign(1) is a command that signs and verifies ELF format executables. That includes not just executable programs (such as ls or cp), but other ELF format files including libraries (such as libnvpair.so) and kernel modules (such as autofs). Elfsign has been available since Solaris 10 and ELF format files distributed with Solaris, since Solaris 10, are signed by either Sun Microsystems or its successor, Oracle Corporation. When an ELF file is signed, elfsign adds a new section the ELF file, .SUNW_signature, that contains a RSA public key signature and other information about the signer. That is, the algorithm used, algorithm OID, signer CN/OU, and time stamp. The signature section can later be verified by elfsign or other software by matching the signature in the file agains the ELF file contents (excluding the signature). ELF executable files may also be signed by a 3rd-party or by the customer. This is useful for verifying the origin and authenticity of executable files installed on a system. The 3rd-party or customer public key certificate should be installed in /etc/certs/ to allow verification by elfsign. For currently-released versions of Solaris, only cryptographic framework plugin libraries are verified by Solaris. However, all ELF files may be verified by the elfsign command at any time. Elfsign Algorithms Elfsign signatures are created by taking a digest of the ELF section contents, then signing the digest with RSA. To verify, one takes a digest of ELF file and compares with the expected digest that's computed from the signature and RSA public key. Originally elfsign took a MD5 digest of a SHA-1 digest of the ELF file sections, then signed the resulting digest with RSA. In Solaris 11.1 then Solaris 11.1 SRU 7 (5/2013), the elfsign crypto algorithms available have been expanded to keep up with evolving cryptography. The following table shows the available elfsign algorithms: Elfsign Algorithm Solaris Release Comments elfsign sign -F rsa_md5_sha1 S10, S11.0, S11.1 Default for S10. Not recommended* elfsign sign -F rsa_sha1 S11.1 Default for S11.1. Not recommended elfsign sign -F rsa_sha256 S11.1 patch SRU7+ Recommended ___ *Most or all CAs do not accept MD5 CSRs and do not issue MD5 certs due to MD5 hash collision problems. RSA Key Length. I recommend using RSA-2048 key length with elfsign is RSA-2048 as the best balance between a long expected "life time", interoperability, and performance. RSA-2048 keys have an expected lifetime through 2030 (and probably beyond). For details, see Recommendation for Key Management: Part 1: General, NIST Publication SP 800-57 part 1 (rev. 3, 7/2012, PDF), tables 2 and 4 (pp. 64, 67). Step 1: create or obtain a key and cert The first step in using elfsign is to obtain a key and cert from a public Certificate Authority (CA), or create your own self-signed key and cert. I'll briefly explain both methods. Obtaining a Certificate from a CA To obtain a cert from a CA, such as Verisign, Thawte, or Go Daddy (to name a few random examples), you create a private key and a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) file and send it to the CA, following the instructions of the CA on their website. They send back a signed public key certificate. The public key cert, along with the private key you created is used by elfsign to sign an ELF file. The public key cert is distributed with the software and is used by elfsign to verify elfsign signatures in ELF files. You need to request a RSA "Class 3 public key certificate", which is used for servers and software signing. Elfsign uses RSA and we recommend RSA-2048 keys. The private key and CSR can be generated with openssl(1) or pktool(1) on Solaris. Here's a simple example that uses pktool to generate a private RSA_2048 key and a CSR for sending to a CA: $ pktool gencsr keystore=file format=pem outcsr=MYCSR.p10 \ subject="CN=canineswworks.com,OU=Canine SW object signing" \ outkey=MYPRIVATEKEY.key $ openssl rsa -noout -text -in MYPRIVATEKEY.key Private-Key: (2048 bit) modulus: 00:d2:ef:42:f2:0b:8c:96:9f:45:32:fc:fe:54:94: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . c9:c7 publicExponent: 65537 (0x10001) privateExponent: 26:14:fc:49:26:bc:a3:14:ee:31:5e:6b:ac:69:83: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . 81 prime1: 00:f6:b7:52:73:bc:26:57:26:c8:11:eb:6c:dc:cb: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . bc:91:d0:40:d6:9d:ac:b5:69 prime2: 00:da:df:3f:56:b2:18:46:e1:89:5b:6c:f1:1a:41: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . f3:b7:48:de:c3:d9:ce:af:af exponent1: 00:b9:a2:00:11:02:ed:9a:3f:9c:e4:16:ce:c7:67: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . 55:50:25:70:d3:ca:b9:ab:99 exponent2: 00:c8:fc:f5:57:11:98:85:8e:9a:ea:1f:f2:8f:df: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . 23:57:0e:4d:b2:a0:12:d2:f5 coefficient: 2f:60:21:cd:dc:52:76:67:1a:d8:75:3e:7f:b0:64: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . 06:94:56:d8:9d:5c:8e:9b $ openssl req -noout -text -in MYCSR.p10 Certificate Request: Data: Version: 2 (0x2) Subject: OU=Canine SW object signing, CN=canineswworks.com Subject Public Key Info: Public Key Algorithm: rsaEncryption Public-Key: (2048 bit) Modulus: 00:d2:ef:42:f2:0b:8c:96:9f:45:32:fc:fe:54:94: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . c9:c7 Exponent: 65537 (0x10001) Attributes: Signature Algorithm: sha1WithRSAEncryption b3:e8:30:5b:88:37:68:1c:26:6b:45:af:5e:de:ea:60:87:ea: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . 06:f9:ed:b4 Secure storage of RSA private key. The private key needs to be protected if the key signing is used for production (as opposed to just testing). That is, protect the key to protect against unauthorized signatures by others. One method is to use a PIN-protected PKCS#11 keystore. The private key you generate should be stored in a secure manner, such as in a PKCS#11 keystore using pktool(1). Otherwise others can sign your signature. Other secure key storage mechanisms include a SCA-6000 crypto card, a USB thumb drive stored in a locked area, a dedicated server with restricted access, Oracle Key Manager (OKM), or some combination of these. I also recommend secure backup of the private key. Here's an example of generating a private key protected in the PKCS#11 keystore, and a CSR. $ pktool setpin # use if PIN not set yet Enter token passphrase: changeme Create new passphrase: Re-enter new passphrase: Passphrase changed. $ pktool gencsr keystore=pkcs11 label=MYPRIVATEKEY \ format=pem outcsr=MYCSR.p10 \ subject="CN=canineswworks.com,OU=Canine SW object signing" $ pktool list keystore=pkcs11 Enter PIN for Sun Software PKCS#11 softtoken: Found 1 asymmetric public keys. Key #1 - RSA public key: MYPRIVATEKEY Here's another example that uses openssl instead of pktool to generate a private key and CSR: $ openssl genrsa -out cert.key 2048 $ openssl req -new -key cert.key -out MYCSR.p10 Self-Signed Cert You can use openssl or pktool to create a private key and a self-signed public key certificate. A self-signed cert is useful for development, testing, and internal use. The private key created should be stored in a secure manner, as mentioned above. The following example creates a private key, MYSELFSIGNED.key, and a public key cert, MYSELFSIGNED.pem, using pktool and displays the contents with the openssl command. $ pktool gencert keystore=file format=pem serial=0xD06F00D lifetime=20-year \ keytype=rsa hash=sha256 outcert=MYSELFSIGNED.pem outkey=MYSELFSIGNED.key \ subject="O=Canine Software Works, OU=Self-signed CA, CN=canineswworks.com" $ pktool list keystore=file objtype=cert infile=MYSELFSIGNED.pem Found 1 certificates. 1. (X.509 certificate) Filename: MYSELFSIGNED.pem ID: c8:24:59:08:2b:ae:6e:5c:bc:26:bd:ef:0a:9c:54:de:dd:0f:60:46 Subject: O=Canine Software Works, OU=Self-signed CA, CN=canineswworks.com Issuer: O=Canine Software Works, OU=Self-signed CA, CN=canineswworks.com Not Before: Oct 17 23:18:00 2013 GMT Not After: Oct 12 23:18:00 2033 GMT Serial: 0xD06F00D0 Signature Algorithm: sha256WithRSAEncryption $ openssl x509 -noout -text -in MYSELFSIGNED.pem Certificate: Data: Version: 3 (0x2) Serial Number: 3496935632 (0xd06f00d0) Signature Algorithm: sha256WithRSAEncryption Issuer: O=Canine Software Works, OU=Self-signed CA, CN=canineswworks.com Validity Not Before: Oct 17 23:18:00 2013 GMT Not After : Oct 12 23:18:00 2033 GMT Subject: O=Canine Software Works, OU=Self-signed CA, CN=canineswworks.com Subject Public Key Info: Public Key Algorithm: rsaEncryption Public-Key: (2048 bit) Modulus: 00:bb:e8:11:21:d9:4b:88:53:8b:6c:5a:7a:38:8b: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . bf:77 Exponent: 65537 (0x10001) Signature Algorithm: sha256WithRSAEncryption 9e:39:fe:c8:44:5c:87:2c:8f:f4:24:f6:0c:9a:2f:64:84:d1: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . 5f:78:8e:e8 $ openssl rsa -noout -text -in MYSELFSIGNED.key Private-Key: (2048 bit) modulus: 00:bb:e8:11:21:d9:4b:88:53:8b:6c:5a:7a:38:8b: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . bf:77 publicExponent: 65537 (0x10001) privateExponent: 0a:06:0f:23:e7:1b:88:62:2c:85:d3:2d:c1:e6:6e: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . 9c:e1:e0:0a:52:77:29:4a:75:aa:02:d8:af:53:24: c1 prime1: 00:ea:12:02:bb:5a:0f:5a:d8:a9:95:b2:ba:30:15: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . 5b:ca:9c:7c:19:48:77:1e:5d prime2: 00:cd:82:da:84:71:1d:18:52:cb:c6:4d:74:14:be: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . 5f:db:d5:5e:47:89:a7:ef:e3 exponent1: 32:37:62:f6:a6:bf:9c:91:d6:f0:12:c3:f7:04:e9: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . 97:3e:33:31:89:66:64:d1 exponent2: 00:88:a2:e8:90:47:f8:75:34:8f:41:50:3b:ce:93: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . ff:74:d4:be:f3:47:45:bd:cb coefficient: 4d:7c:09:4c:34:73:c4:26:f0:58:f5:e1:45:3c:af: . . . [omitted for brevity] . . . af:01:5f:af:ad:6a:09:bf Step 2: Sign the ELF File object By now you should have your private key, and obtained, by hook or crook, a cert (either from a CA or use one you created (a self-signed cert). The next step is to sign one or more objects with your private key and cert. Here's a simple example that creates an object file, signs, verifies, and lists the contents of the ELF signature. $ echo '#include <stdio.h>\nint main(){printf("Hello\\n");}'>hello.c $ make hello cc -o hello hello.c $ elfsign verify -v -c MYSELFSIGNED.pem -e hello elfsign: no signature found in hello. $ elfsign sign -F rsa_sha256 -v -k MYSELFSIGNED.key -c MYSELFSIGNED.pem -e hello elfsign: hello signed successfully. format: rsa_sha256. signer: O=Canine Software Works, OU=Self-signed CA, CN=canineswworks.com. signed on: October 17, 2013 04:22:49 PM PDT. $ elfsign list -f format -e hello rsa_sha256 $ elfsign list -f signer -e hello O=Canine Software Works, OU=Self-signed CA, CN=canineswworks.com $ elfsign list -f time -e hello October 17, 2013 04:22:49 PM PDT $ elfsign verify -v -c MYSELFSIGNED.key -e hello elfsign: verification of hello failed. format: rsa_sha256. signer: O=Canine Software Works, OU=Self-signed CA, CN=canineswworks.com. signed on: October 17, 2013 04:22:49 PM PDT. Signing using the pkcs11 keystore To sign the ELF file using a private key in the secure pkcs11 keystore, replace "-K MYSELFSIGNED.key" in the "elfsign sign" command line with "-T MYPRIVATEKEY", where MYPRIVATKEY is the pkcs11 token label. Step 3: Install the cert and test on another system Just signing the object isn't enough. You need to copy or install the cert and the signed ELF file(s) on another system to test that the signature is OK. Your public key cert should be installed in /etc/certs. Use elfsign verify to verify the signature. Elfsign verify checks each cert in /etc/certs until it finds one that matches the elfsign signature in the file. If one isn't found, the verification fails. Here's an example: $ su Password: # rm /etc/certs/MYSELFSIGNED.key # cp MYSELFSIGNED.pem /etc/certs # exit $ elfsign verify -v hello elfsign: verification of hello passed. format: rsa_sha256. signer: O=Canine Software Works, OU=Self-signed CA, CN=canineswworks.com. signed on: October 17, 2013 04:24:20 PM PDT. After testing, package your cert along with your ELF object to allow elfsign verification after your cert and object are installed or copied. Under the Hood: elfsign verification Here's the steps taken to verify a ELF file signed with elfsign. The steps to sign the file are similar except the private key exponent is used instead of the public key exponent and the .SUNW_signature section is written to the ELF file instead of being read from the file. Generate a digest (SHA-256) of the ELF file sections. This digest uses all ELF sections loaded in memory, but excludes the ELF header, the .SUNW_signature section, and the symbol table Extract the RSA signature (RSA-2048) from the .SUNW_signature section Extract the RSA public key modulus and public key exponent (65537) from the public key cert Calculate the expected digest as follows: signaturepublicKeyExponent % publicKeyModulus Strip the PKCS#1 padding (most significant bytes) from the above. The padding is 0x00, 0x01, 0xff, 0xff, . . ., 0xff, 0x00. If the actual digest == expected digest, the ELF file is verified (OK). Further Information elfsign(1), pktool(1), and openssl(1) man pages. "Signed Solaris 10 Binaries?" blog by Darren Moffat (2005) shows how to use elfsign. "Simple CLI based CA on Solaris" blog by Darren Moffat (2008) shows how to set up a simple CA for use with self-signed certificates. "How to Create a Certificate by Using the pktool gencert Command" System Administration Guide: Security Services (available at docs.oracle.com)

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, February 19, 2011

CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, February 19, 2011Popular ReleasesAdvanced Explorer for Wp7: Advanced Explorer for Wp7 Version 1.4 Test8: Added option to run under Lockscreen. Fixed a bug when you open a pdf/mobi file without starting adobe reader/amazon kindle first boost loading time for folders added \Windows directory (all devices) you can now interact with the filesystem while it is loading!Game Files Open - Map Editor: Game Files Open - Map Editor Beta 2 v1.0.0.0: The 2° beta release of the Map Editor, we have fixed a big bug of the files regen.Document.Editor: 2011.6: Whats new for Document.Editor 2011.6: New Left to Right and Left to Right support New Indent more/less support Improved Home tab Improved Tooltips/shortcut keys Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsCatel - WPF and Silverlight MVVM library: 1.2: Catel history ============= (+) Added (*) Changed (-) Removed (x) Error / bug (fix) For more information about issues or new feature requests, please visit: http://catel.codeplex.com =========== Version 1.2 =========== Release date: ============= 2011/02/17 Added/fixed: ============ (+) DataObjectBase now supports Isolated Storage out of the box: Person.Save(myStream) stores a whole object graph in Silverlight (+) DataObjectBase can now be converted to Json via Person.ToJson(); (+)...??????????: All-In-One Code Framework ??? 2011-02-18: ?????All-In-One Code Framework?2011??????????！！http://i3.codeplex.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=1code&DownloadId=128165 ?????，?????AzureBingMaps??????，??Azure，WCF, Silverlight, Window Phone????????，????????????????????????。 ???： Windows Azure SQL Azure Windows Azure AppFabric Windows Live Messenger Connect Bing Maps ?????： ??????HTML??? ??Windows PC?Mac?Silverlight??? ??Windows Phone?Silverlight??? ?????：http://blog.csdn.net/sjb5201/archive/2011...Image.Viewer: 2011: First version of 2011Silverlight Toolkit: Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit - Feb 2011: Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit OverviewSilverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit offers developers additional controls for Windows Phone application development, designed to match the rich user experience of the Windows Phone 7. Suggestions? Features? Questions? Ask questions in the Create.msdn.com forum. Add bugs or feature requests to the Issue Tracker. Help us shape the Silverlight Toolkit with your feedback! Please clearly indicate that the work items and issues are for the phone t...VsTortoise - a TortoiseSVN add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio: VsTortoise Build 29 Beta: Note: This release does not work with custom VsTortoise toolbars. These get removed every time when you shutdown Visual Studio. (#7940) Build 29 (beta)New: Added VsTortoise Solution Explorer integration for Web Project Folder, Web Folder and Web Item. Fix: TortoiseProc was called with invalid parameters, when using TSVN 1.4.x or older #7338 (thanks psifive) Fix: Add-in does not work, when "TortoiseSVN/bin" is not added to PATH environment variable #7357 Fix: Missing error message when ...Sense/Net CMS - Enterprise Content Management: SenseNet 6.0.3 Community Edition: Sense/Net 6.0.3 Community Edition We are happy to introduce you the latest version of Sense/Net with integrated ECM Workflow capabilities! In the past weeks we have been working hard to migrate the product to .Net 4 and include a workflow framework in Sense/Net built upon Windows Workflow Foundation 4. This brand new feature enables developers to define and develop workflows, and supports users when building and setting up complicated business processes involving content creation and response...thinktecture WSCF.blue: WSCF.blue V1 Update (1.0.11): Features Added a new option that allows properties on data contract types to be marked as virtual. Bug Fixes Fixed a bug caused by certain project properties not being available on Web Service Software Factory projects. Fixed a bug that could result in the WrapperName value of the MessageContractAttribute being incorrect when the Adjust Casing option is used. The menu item code now caters for CommandBar instances that are not available. For example the Web Item CommandBar does not exist ...Terminals: Version 2 - RC1: The "Clean Install" will overwrite your log4net configuration (if you have one). If you run in a Portable Environment, you can use the "Clean Install" and target your portable folder. Tested and it works fine. Changes for this release: Re-worked on the Toolstip settings are done, just to avoid the vs.net clash with auto-generating files for .settings files. renamed it to .settings.config Packged both log4net and ToolStripSettings files into the installer Upgraded the version inform...AllNewsManager.NET: AllNewsManager.NET 1.3: AllNewsManager.NET 1.3. This new version provide several new features, improvements and bug fixes. Some new features: Online Users. Avatars. Copy function (to create a new article from another one). SEO improvements (friendly urls). New admin buttons. And more...Facebook Graph Toolkit: Facebook Graph Toolkit 0.8: Version 0.8 (15 Feb 2011)moved to Beta stage publish photo feature "email" field of User object added new Graph Api object: Group, Event new Graph Api connection: likes, groups, eventsDJME - The jQuery extensions for ASP.NET MVC: DJME2 -The jQuery extensions for ASP.NET MVC beta2: The source code and runtime library for DJME2. For more product info you can goto http://www.dotnetage.com/djme.html What is new ?The Grid extension added The ModelBinder added which helping you create Bindable data Action. The DnaFor() control factory added that enabled Model bindable extensions. Enhance the ListBox , ComboBox data binding.Jint - Javascript Interpreter for .NET: Jint - 0.9.0: New CLR interoperability features Many bugfixesBuild Version Increment Add-In Visual Studio: Build Version Increment v2.4.11046.2045: v2.4.11046.2045 Fixes and/or Improvements:Major: Added complete support for VC projects including .vcxproj & .vcproj. All padding issues fixed. A project's assembly versions are only changed if the project has been modified. Minor Order of versioning style values is now according to their respective positions in the attributes i.e. Major, Minor, Build, Revision. Fixed issue with global variable storage with some projects. Fixed issue where if a project item's file does not exist, a ...Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.1: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.1 release. Bug fixes and minor feature requests addedTV4Home - The all-in-one TV solution!: 0.1.0.0 Preview: This is the beta preview release of the TV4Home software.Finestra Virtual Desktops: 1.2: Fixes a few minor issues with 1.1 including the broken per-desktop backgrounds Further improves the speed of switching desktops A few UI performance improvements Added donations linksNuGet: NuGet 1.1: NuGet is a free, open source developer focused package management system for the .NET platform intent on simplifying the process of incorporating third party libraries into a .NET application during development. This release is a Visual Studio 2010 extension and contains the the Package Manager Console and the Add Package Dialog. The URL to the package OData feed is: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=206669 To see the list of issues fixed in this release, visit this our issues list A...New ProjectsComplexityEvolution: Research projectCRM 2011 Metadata Browser: The CRM 2011 Metadata Browser is a Silverlight 4 application that is packaged as a Managed CRM Solution. This tool allows you to view metadata including Entities, Attributes and Relationships. The 2011 SOAP endpoint is used to connect to CRM using the Organization.svc/web serviceEFCFvsNH3: A sample project that shows the main differences between Entity Framework Code First and Nhibernate 3: -Mapping -Configuration -DB Initialization -Query API -Session & Transaction -ValidationE-Teacher for IELTS preparation: E-teacher helps IELTS students prepare for the IELTS Academic and General Training test. Qualified English Teachers can register to the e-community and helps candidates to understand what they really need to improve for the IELTS exam and how to reach for the maximum band score.FIM CM Extensions: Extensions for Forefront Identity Manager 2010 to enable integration between the FIM Service workflow and the FIM Certificate Management workflow. Game Files Open - Map Editor: This is a map editor for the metin2 clients, it's very simple edit or create a map with this tool.Garbage Collection Sample Code: Garbage collection sample code demonstrates the differences between the large and small object heaps. This code supports the blog post at http://www.deepcode.co.ukGardenersWorld: The aim of gardenersWorld community website is to provide a platform for budding gardenening enthusiasts, hobbyists and professionals to share information. Harvester - Debug Monitor for Log4Net and NLog: Harvester enables you to monitor all Win32 debug output from all applications running on your machine. Watch real time Log4Net and NLog output across multiple applications at the same time. Trace a call from client to server and back without having to look at multiple log files.Hjelp! Jeg skal ha farmakokinetikk-eksamen!: Sliter du med å pugge formler til farmakokinetikk-eksamenen? Da er redningen din her! :DMercury Business Framework: Mercury Business Framework is a project set up to define basic objects used by the vast majority of business and non business software. The idea is to define the low level objects required by most applications on the web and desktop.MyDistrictBuilder: MyDistrictBuilder allows anybody to build legislative districts and submit to the Florida House of Rep. It is built on Bing Maps, Silverlight and AZURE. Written in C#. It is written to allow anyone to adapt for any states census geography. www.floridaredistricting.cloudapp.netMySchoolApp: MySchoolApp is a customizable application written in Visual Basic and C# for the Windows Mobile Phone 7 platform using Visual Studio Professional 2010. The application combines links to RSS and Web sites about a school, and displays a map and local weather. Osm Parser Community Edition: Osm Parser parse highways in open street maps to generate routable roads network in spatialite.PRBox Cloud Website: This is the website base for PRBox.com SEO Reporter : open source search engine optimization software: SEO Reporter is an open source search engine optimization application for detecting HTML related SEO violations, gathering data about a Web page and analyzing its keywords strategy. It's a Windows navigation application developed in F#. Setting timeout for SharePoint 2010 Silverlight web part: This web part overwrites 5sec hard-coded timeout for SharePoint 2010 Silverlight web part.SharePoint 2010 Central Administration Automatic Resources Link Generator: This feature will automatically generate the resources links list (Quick Links) in your SharePoint 2010 Central Administration site making it easier for SharePoint Admins to navigate through the common Central Administration activities without populating it themselves - VS2010/c#SharePoint Holiday Loader: SharePoint Holiday Loader allows you to quickly import public holidays into a SharePoint calendar from the standard .HOL format.Sohu?????: ?????????WPF?????????????，????????????（??、??、???），??、??、???????，????????????，??????????????。 ??V1????????，V2?????????????????。SP2010 Form Manipulator: This project will hopefully make it easier to manipulate the list form in SharePoint 2010.SPRotator: A jQuery powered web part for SharePoint that cycles through any type of list.SQL Script to Create a Website Directory: Here you can download sql script to create a website directory using SQL Server. * This is only the easy directory sql script to develop your website. Directory software may publish in future.Sri Hits Zone: This is an online repository which used to share Sri Lankan music. This is to provide Sri Lankans who living abroad to being touches with Sri Lankan artist and their music. testz: testzTime domain dissipative acoustic problem: tddapWindows Azure Hosted Services VM Manager: Windows Azure Hosted Services VM Manager is a Windows Service that can manage the number of hosted services running in Azure by either a time based schedule or by CPU load. This allows your service to scale for either dynamic load or a known schedule. Z80TR: Z80TR

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Metro, Authentication, and the ASP.NET Web API

- by Stephen.Walther

Imagine that you want to create a Metro style app written with JavaScript and you want to communicate with a remote web service. For example, you are creating a movie app which retrieves a list of movies from a movies service. In this situation, how do you authenticate your Metro app and the Metro user so not just anyone can call the movies service? How can you identify the user making the request so you can return user specific data from the service? The Windows Live SDK supports a feature named Single Sign-On. When a user logs into a Windows 8 machine using their Live ID, you can authenticate the user’s identity automatically. Even better, when the Metro app performs a call to a remote web service, you can pass an authentication token to the remote service and prevent unauthorized access to the service. The documentation for Single Sign-On is located here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/live/hh826544.aspx In this blog entry, I describe the steps that you need to follow to use Single Sign-On with a (very) simple movie app. We build a Metro app which communicates with a web service created using the ASP.NET Web API. Creating the Visual Studio Solution Let’s start by creating a Visual Studio solution which contains two projects: a Windows Metro style Blank App project and an ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Application project. Name the Metro app MovieApp and the ASP.NET MVC application MovieApp.Services. When you create the ASP.NET MVC application, select the Web API template: After you create the two projects, your Visual Studio Solution Explorer window should look like this: Configuring the Live SDK You need to get your hands on the Live SDK and register your Metro app. You can download the latest version of the SDK (version 5.2) from the following address: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29938 After you download the Live SDK, you need to visit the following website to register your Metro app: https://manage.dev.live.com/build Don’t let the title of the website — Windows Push Notifications & Live Connect – confuse you, this is the right place. Follow the instructions at the website to register your Metro app. Don’t forget to follow the instructions in Step 3 for updating the information in your Metro app’s manifest. After you register, your client secret is displayed. Record this client secret because you will need it later (we use it with the web service): You need to configure one more thing. You must enter your Redirect Domain by visiting the following website: https://manage.dev.live.com/Applications/Index Click on your application name, click Edit Settings, click the API Settings tab, and enter a value for the Redirect Domain field. You can enter any domain that you please just as long as the domain has not already been taken: For the Redirect Domain, I entered http://superexpertmovieapp.com. Create the Metro MovieApp Next, we need to create the MovieApp. The MovieApp will: 1. Use Single Sign-On to log the current user into Live 2. Call the MoviesService web service 3. Display the results in a ListView control Because we use the Live SDK in the MovieApp, we need to add a reference to it. Right-click your References folder in the Solution Explorer window and add the reference: Here’s the HTML page for the Metro App: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8" /> <title>MovieApp</title>  <link href="//Microsoft.WinJS.1.0.RC/css/ui-dark.css" rel="stylesheet" /> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.1.0.RC/js/base.js"></script> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.1.0.RC/js/ui.js"></script>  <script type="text/javascript" src="/LiveSDKHTML/js/wl.js"></script>  <link href="/css/default.css" rel="stylesheet" /> <script src="/js/default.js"></script> </head> <body> <div id="tmplMovie" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div class="movieItem"> <span data-win-bind="innerText:title"></span> <br /><span data-win-bind="innerText:director"></span> </div> </div> <div id="lvMovies" data-win-control="WinJS.UI.ListView" data-win-options="{ itemTemplate: select('#tmplMovie') }"> </div> </body> </html> The HTML page above contains a Template and ListView control. These controls are used to display the movies when the movies are returned from the movies service. Notice that the page includes a reference to the Live script that we registered earlier:  <script type="text/javascript" src="/LiveSDKHTML/js/wl.js"></script> The JavaScript code looks like this: (function () { "use strict"; var REDIRECT_DOMAIN = "http://superexpertmovieapp.com"; var WEBSERVICE_URL = "http://localhost:49743/api/movies"; function init() { WinJS.UI.processAll().done(function () { // Get element and control references var lvMovies = document.getElementById("lvMovies").winControl; // Login to Windows Live var scopes = ["wl.signin"]; WL.init({ scope: scopes, redirect_uri: REDIRECT_DOMAIN }); WL.login().then( function(response) { // Get the authentication token var authenticationToken = response.session.authentication_token; // Call the web service var options = { url: WEBSERVICE_URL, headers: { authenticationToken: authenticationToken } }; WinJS.xhr(options).done( function (xhr) { var movies = JSON.parse(xhr.response); var listMovies = new WinJS.Binding.List(movies); lvMovies.itemDataSource = listMovies.dataSource; }, function (xhr) { console.log(xhr.statusText); } ); }, function(response) { throw WinJS.ErrorFromName("Failed to login!"); } ); }); } document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", init); })(); There are two constants which you need to set to get the code above to work: REDIRECT_DOMAIN and WEBSERVICE_URL. The REDIRECT_DOMAIN is the domain that you entered when registering your app with Live. The WEBSERVICE_URL is the path to your web service. You can get the correct value for WEBSERVICE_URL by opening the Project Properties for the MovieApp.Services project, clicking the Web tab, and getting the correct URL. The port number is randomly generated. In my code, I used the URL “http://localhost:49743/api/movies”. Assuming that the user is logged into Windows 8 with a Live account, when the user runs the MovieApp, the user is logged into Live automatically. The user is logged in with the following code: // Login to Windows Live var scopes = ["wl.signin"]; WL.init({ scope: scopes, redirect_uri: REDIRECT_DOMAIN }); WL.login().then(function(response) { // Do something }); The scopes setting determines what the user has permission to do. For example, access the user’s SkyDrive or access the user’s calendar or contacts. The available scopes are listed here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/live/hh243646.aspx In our case, we only need the wl.signin scope which enables Single Sign-On. After the user signs in, you can retrieve the user’s Live authentication token. The authentication token is passed to the movies service to authenticate the user. Creating the Movies Service The Movies Service is implemented as an API controller in an ASP.NET MVC 4 Web API project. Here’s what the MoviesController looks like: using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Net; using System.Net.Http; using System.Web.Http; using JWTSample; using MovieApp.Services.Models; namespace MovieApp.Services.Controllers { public class MoviesController : ApiController { const string CLIENT_SECRET = "NtxjF2wu7JeY1unvVN-lb0hoeWOMUFoR"; // GET api/values public HttpResponseMessage Get() { // Authenticate // Get authenticationToken var authenticationToken = Request.Headers.GetValues("authenticationToken").FirstOrDefault(); if (authenticationToken == null) { return new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.Unauthorized); } // Validate token var d = new Dictionary<int, string>(); d.Add(0, CLIENT_SECRET); try { var myJWT = new JsonWebToken(authenticationToken, d); } catch { return new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.Unauthorized); } // Return results return Request.CreateResponse( HttpStatusCode.OK, new List<Movie> { new Movie {Title="Star Wars", Director="Lucas"}, new Movie {Title="King Kong", Director="Jackson"}, new Movie {Title="Memento", Director="Nolan"} } ); } } } Because the Metro app performs an HTTP GET request, the MovieController Get() action is invoked. This action returns a set of three movies when, and only when, the authentication token is validated. The Movie class looks like this: using Newtonsoft.Json; namespace MovieApp.Services.Models { public class Movie { [JsonProperty(PropertyName="title")] public string Title { get; set; } [JsonProperty(PropertyName="director")] public string Director { get; set; } } } Notice that the Movie class uses the JsonProperty attribute to change Title to title and Director to director to make JavaScript developers happy. The Get() method validates the authentication token before returning the movies to the Metro app. To get authentication to work, you need to provide the client secret which you created at the Live management site. If you forgot to write down the secret, you can get it again here: https://manage.dev.live.com/Applications/Index The client secret is assigned to a constant at the top of the MoviesController class. The MoviesController class uses a helper class named JsonWebToken to validate the authentication token. This class was created by the Windows Live team. You can get the source code for the JsonWebToken class from the following GitHub repository: https://github.com/liveservices/LiveSDK/blob/master/Samples/Asp.net/AuthenticationTokenSample/JsonWebToken.cs You need to add an additional reference to your MVC project to use the JsonWebToken class: System.Runtime.Serialization. You can use the JsonWebToken class to get a unique and validated user ID like this: var user = myJWT.Claims.UserId; If you need to store user specific information then you can use the UserId property to uniquely identify the user making the web service call. Running the MovieApp When you first run the Metro MovieApp, you get a screen which asks whether the app should have permission to use Single Sign-On. This screen never appears again after you give permission once. Actually, when I first ran the app, I get the following error: According to the error, the app is blocked because “We detected some suspicious activity with your Online Id account. To help protect you, we’ve temporarily blocked your account.” This appears to be a bug in the current preview release of the Live SDK and there is more information about this bug here: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/messengerconnect/thread/866c495f-2127-429d-ab07-842ef84f16ae/ If you click continue, and continue running the app, the error message does not appear again. Summary The goal of this blog entry was to describe how you can validate Metro apps and Metro users when performing a call to a remote web service. First, I explained how you can create a Metro app which takes advantage of Single Sign-On to authenticate the current user against Live automatically. You learned how to register your Metro app with Live and how to include an authentication token in an Ajax call. Next, I explained how you can validate the authentication token – retrieved from the request header – in a web service. I discussed how you can use the JsonWebToken class to validate the authentication token and retrieve the unique user ID.

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More CPU cores may not always lead to better performance – MAXDOP and query memory distribution in spotlight

- by sqlworkshops

More hardware normally delivers better performance, but there are exceptions where it can hinder performance. Understanding these exceptions and working around it is a major part of SQL Server performance tuning. When a memory allocating query executes in parallel, SQL Server distributes memory to each task that is executing part of the query in parallel. In our example the sort operator that executes in parallel divides the memory across all tasks assuming even distribution of rows. Common memory allocating queries are that perform Sort and do Hash Match operations like Hash Join or Hash Aggregation or Hash Union. In reality, how often are column values evenly distributed, think about an example; are employees working for your company distributed evenly across all the Zip codes or mainly concentrated in the headquarters? What happens when you sort result set based on Zip codes? Do all products in the catalog sell equally or are few products hot selling items? One of my customers tested the below example on a 24 core server with various MAXDOP settings and here are the results:MAXDOP 1: CPU time = 1185 ms, elapsed time = 1188 msMAXDOP 4: CPU time = 1981 ms, elapsed time = 1568 msMAXDOP 8: CPU time = 1918 ms, elapsed time = 1619 msMAXDOP 12: CPU time = 2367 ms, elapsed time = 2258 msMAXDOP 16: CPU time = 2540 ms, elapsed time = 2579 msMAXDOP 20: CPU time = 2470 ms, elapsed time = 2534 msMAXDOP 0: CPU time = 2809 ms, elapsed time = 2721 ms - all 24 cores.In the above test, when the data was evenly distributed, the elapsed time of parallel query was always lower than serial query. Why does the query get slower and slower with more CPU cores / higher MAXDOP? Maybe you can answer this question after reading the article; let me know: [email protected]. Well you get the point, let’s see an example. The best way to learn is to practice. To create the below tables and reproduce the behavior, join the mailing list by using this link: www.sqlworkshops.com/ml and I will send you the table creation script. Let’s update the Employees table with 49 out of 50 employees located in Zip code 2001. update Employees set Zip = EmployeeID / 400 + 1 where EmployeeID % 50 = 1 update Employees set Zip = 2001 where EmployeeID % 50 != 1 go update statistics Employees with fullscan go Let’s create the temporary table #FireDrill with all possible Zip codes. drop table #FireDrill go create table #FireDrill (Zip int primary key) insert into #FireDrill select distinct Zip from Employees update statistics #FireDrill with fullscan go Let’s execute the query serially with MAXDOP 1. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --Execute query with uneven Zip code distribution --First serially with MAXDOP 1 set statistics time on go declare @EmployeeID int, @EmployeeName varchar(48),@zip int select @EmployeeName = e.EmployeeName, @zip = e.Zip from Employees e inner join #FireDrill fd on (e.Zip = fd.Zip) order by e.Zip option (maxdop 1) goThe query took 1011 ms to complete. The execution plan shows the 77816 KB of memory was granted while the estimated rows were 799624. No Sort Warnings in SQL Server Profiler. Now let’s execute the query in parallel with MAXDOP 0. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --Execute query with uneven Zip code distribution --In parallel with MAXDOP 0 set statistics time on go declare @EmployeeID int, @EmployeeName varchar(48),@zip int select @EmployeeName = e.EmployeeName, @zip = e.Zip from Employees e inner join #FireDrill fd on (e.Zip = fd.Zip) order by e.Zip option (maxdop 0) go The query took 1912 ms to complete. The execution plan shows the 79360 KB of memory was granted while the estimated rows were 799624. The estimated number of rows between serial and parallel plan are the same. The parallel plan has slightly more memory granted due to additional overhead. Sort properties shows the rows are unevenly distributed over the 4 threads. Sort Warnings in SQL Server Profiler. Intermediate Summary: The reason for the higher duration with parallel plan was sort spill. This is due to uneven distribution of employees over Zip codes, especially concentration of 49 out of 50 employees in Zip code 2001. Now let’s update the Employees table and distribute employees evenly across all Zip codes. update Employees set Zip = EmployeeID / 400 + 1 go update statistics Employees with fullscan go Let’s execute the query serially with MAXDOP 1. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --Execute query with uneven Zip code distribution --Serially with MAXDOP 1 set statistics time on go declare @EmployeeID int, @EmployeeName varchar(48),@zip int select @EmployeeName = e.EmployeeName, @zip = e.Zip from Employees e inner join #FireDrill fd on (e.Zip = fd.Zip) order by e.Zip option (maxdop 1) go The query took 751 ms to complete. The execution plan shows the 77816 KB of memory was granted while the estimated rows were 784707. No Sort Warnings in SQL Server Profiler. Now let’s execute the query in parallel with MAXDOP 0. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --Execute query with uneven Zip code distribution --In parallel with MAXDOP 0 set statistics time on go declare @EmployeeID int, @EmployeeName varchar(48),@zip int select @EmployeeName = e.EmployeeName, @zip = e.Zip from Employees e inner join #FireDrill fd on (e.Zip = fd.Zip) order by e.Zip option (maxdop 0) go The query took 661 ms to complete. The execution plan shows the 79360 KB of memory was granted while the estimated rows were 784707. Sort properties shows the rows are evenly distributed over the 4 threads. No Sort Warnings in SQL Server Profiler. Intermediate Summary: When employees were distributed unevenly, concentrated on 1 Zip code, parallel sort spilled while serial sort performed well without spilling to tempdb. When the employees were distributed evenly across all Zip codes, parallel sort and serial sort did not spill to tempdb. This shows uneven data distribution may affect the performance of some parallel queries negatively. For detailed discussion of memory allocation, refer to webcasts available at www.sqlworkshops.com/webcasts. Some of you might conclude from the above execution times that parallel query is not faster even when there is no spill. Below you can see when we are joining limited amount of Zip codes, parallel query will be fasted since it can use Bitmap Filtering. Let’s update the Employees table with 49 out of 50 employees located in Zip code 2001. update Employees set Zip = EmployeeID / 400 + 1 where EmployeeID % 50 = 1 update Employees set Zip = 2001 where EmployeeID % 50 != 1 go update statistics Employees with fullscan go Let’s create the temporary table #FireDrill with limited Zip codes. drop table #FireDrill go create table #FireDrill (Zip int primary key) insert into #FireDrill select distinct Zip from Employees where Zip between 1800 and 2001 update statistics #FireDrill with fullscan go Let’s execute the query serially with MAXDOP 1. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --Execute query with uneven Zip code distribution --Serially with MAXDOP 1 set statistics time on go declare @EmployeeID int, @EmployeeName varchar(48),@zip int select @EmployeeName = e.EmployeeName, @zip = e.Zip from Employees e inner join #FireDrill fd on (e.Zip = fd.Zip) order by e.Zip option (maxdop 1) go The query took 989 ms to complete. The execution plan shows the 77816 KB of memory was granted while the estimated rows were 785594. No Sort Warnings in SQL Server Profiler. Now let’s execute the query in parallel with MAXDOP 0. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --Execute query with uneven Zip code distribution --In parallel with MAXDOP 0 set statistics time on go declare @EmployeeID int, @EmployeeName varchar(48),@zip int select @EmployeeName = e.EmployeeName, @zip = e.Zip from Employees e inner join #FireDrill fd on (e.Zip = fd.Zip) order by e.Zip option (maxdop 0) go The query took 1799 ms to complete. The execution plan shows the 79360 KB of memory was granted while the estimated rows were 785594. Sort Warnings in SQL Server Profiler. The estimated number of rows between serial and parallel plan are the same. The parallel plan has slightly more memory granted due to additional overhead. Intermediate Summary: The reason for the higher duration with parallel plan even with limited amount of Zip codes was sort spill. This is due to uneven distribution of employees over Zip codes, especially concentration of 49 out of 50 employees in Zip code 2001. Now let’s update the Employees table and distribute employees evenly across all Zip codes. update Employees set Zip = EmployeeID / 400 + 1 go update statistics Employees with fullscan go Let’s execute the query serially with MAXDOP 1. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --Execute query with uneven Zip code distribution --Serially with MAXDOP 1 set statistics time on go declare @EmployeeID int, @EmployeeName varchar(48),@zip int select @EmployeeName = e.EmployeeName, @zip = e.Zip from Employees e inner join #FireDrill fd on (e.Zip = fd.Zip) order by e.Zip option (maxdop 1) go The query took 250 ms to complete. The execution plan shows the 9016 KB of memory was granted while the estimated rows were 79973.8. No Sort Warnings in SQL Server Profiler. Now let’s execute the query in parallel with MAXDOP 0. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --Execute query with uneven Zip code distribution --In parallel with MAXDOP 0 set statistics time on go declare @EmployeeID int, @EmployeeName varchar(48),@zip int select @EmployeeName = e.EmployeeName, @zip = e.Zip from Employees e inner join #FireDrill fd on (e.Zip = fd.Zip) order by e.Zip option (maxdop 0) go The query took 85 ms to complete. The execution plan shows the 13152 KB of memory was granted while the estimated rows were 784707. No Sort Warnings in SQL Server Profiler. Here you see, parallel query is much faster than serial query since SQL Server is using Bitmap Filtering to eliminate rows before the hash join. Parallel queries are very good for performance, but in some cases it can hinder performance. If one identifies the reason for these hindrances, then it is possible to get the best out of parallelism. I covered many aspects of monitoring and tuning parallel queries in webcasts (www.sqlworkshops.com/webcasts) and articles (www.sqlworkshops.com/articles). I suggest you to watch the webcasts and read the articles to better understand how to identify and tune parallel query performance issues. Summary: One has to avoid sort spill over tempdb and the chances of spills are higher when a query executes in parallel with uneven data distribution. Parallel query brings its own advantage, reduced elapsed time and reduced work with Bitmap Filtering. So it is important to understand how to avoid spills over tempdb and when to execute a query in parallel. I explain these concepts with detailed examples in my webcasts (www.sqlworkshops.com/webcasts), I recommend you to watch them. The best way to learn is to practice. To create the above tables and reproduce the behavior, join the mailing list at www.sqlworkshops.com/ml and I will send you the relevant SQL Scripts. Register for the upcoming 3 Day Level 400 Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2005 Performance Monitoring & Tuning Hands-on Workshop in London, United Kingdom during March 15-17, 2011, click here to register / Microsoft UK TechNet.These are hands-on workshops with a maximum of 12 participants and not lectures. For consulting engagements click here. Disclaimer and copyright information:This article refers to organizations and products that may be the trademarks or registered trademarks of their various owners. Copyright of this article belongs to R Meyyappan / www.sqlworkshops.com. You may freely use the ideas and concepts discussed in this article with acknowledgement (www.sqlworkshops.com), but you may not claim any of it as your own work. This article is for informational purposes only; you use any of the suggestions given here entirely at your own risk. Register for the upcoming 3 Day Level 400 Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2005 Performance Monitoring & Tuning Hands-on Workshop in London, United Kingdom during March 15-17, 2011, click here to register / Microsoft UK TechNet.These are hands-on workshops with a maximum of 12 participants and not lectures. For consulting engagements click here. R Meyyappan [email protected] LinkedIn: http://at.linkedin.com/in/rmeyyappan

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Table sorting & pagination with jQuery and Razor in ASP.NET MVC

- by hajan

Introduction jQuery enjoys living inside pages which are built on top of ASP.NET MVC Framework. The ASP.NET MVC is a place where things are organized very well and it is quite hard to make them dirty, especially because the pattern enforces you on purity (you can still make it dirty if you want so ;) ). We all know how easy is to build a HTML table with a header row, footer row and table rows showing some data. With ASP.NET MVC we can do this pretty easy, but, the result will be pure HTML table which only shows data, but does not includes sorting, pagination or some other advanced features that we were used to have in the ASP.NET WebForms GridView. Ok, there is the WebGrid MVC Helper, but what if we want to make something from pure table in our own clean style? In one of my recent projects, I’ve been using the jQuery tablesorter and tablesorter.pager plugins that go along. You don’t need to know jQuery to make this work… You need to know little CSS to create nice design for your table, but of course you can use mine from the demo… So, what you will see in this blog is how to attach this plugin to your pure html table and a div for pagination and make your table with advanced sorting and pagination features. Demo Project Resources The resources I’m using for this demo project are shown in the following solution explorer window print screen: Content/images – folder that contains all the up/down arrow images, pagination buttons etc. You can freely replace them with your own, but keep the names the same if you don’t want to change anything in the CSS we will built later. Content/Site.css – The main css theme, where we will add the theme for our table too Controllers/HomeController.cs – The controller I’m using for this project Models/Person.cs – For this demo, I’m using Person.cs class Scripts – jquery-1.4.4.min.js, jquery.tablesorter.js, jquery.tablesorter.pager.js – required script to make the magic happens Views/Home/Index.cshtml – Index view (razor view engine) the other items are not important for the demo. ASP.NET MVC 1. Model In this demo I use only one Person class which defines Person entity with several properties. You can use your own model, maybe one which will access data from database or any other resource. Person.cs public class Person { public string Name { get; set; } public string Surname { get; set; } public string Email { get; set; } public int? Phone { get; set; } public DateTime? DateAdded { get; set; } public int? Age { get; set; } public Person(string name, string surname, string email, int? phone, DateTime? dateadded, int? age) { Name = name; Surname = surname; Email = email; Phone = phone; DateAdded = dateadded; Age = age; } } 2. View In our example, we have only one Index.chtml page where Razor View engine is used. Razor view engine is my favorite for ASP.NET MVC because it’s very intuitive, fluid and keeps your code clean. 3. Controller Since this is simple example with one page, we use one HomeController.cs where we have two methods, one of ActionResult type (Index) and another GetPeople() used to create and return list of people. HomeController.cs public class HomeController : Controller { // // GET: /Home/ public ActionResult Index() { ViewBag.People = GetPeople(); return View(); } public List<Person> GetPeople() { List<Person> listPeople = new List<Person>(); listPeople.Add(new Person("Hajan", "Selmani", "[email protected]", 070070070,DateTime.Now, 25)); listPeople.Add(new Person("Straight", "Dean", "[email protected]", 123456789, DateTime.Now.AddDays(-5), 35)); listPeople.Add(new Person("Karsen", "Livia", "[email protected]", 46874651, DateTime.Now.AddDays(-2), 31)); listPeople.Add(new Person("Ringer", "Anne", "[email protected]", null, DateTime.Now, null)); listPeople.Add(new Person("O'Leary", "Michael", "[email protected]", 32424344, DateTime.Now, 44)); listPeople.Add(new Person("Gringlesby", "Anne", "[email protected]", null, DateTime.Now.AddDays(-9), 18)); listPeople.Add(new Person("Locksley", "Stearns", "[email protected]", 2135345, DateTime.Now, null)); listPeople.Add(new Person("DeFrance", "Michel", "[email protected]", 235325352, DateTime.Now.AddDays(-18), null)); listPeople.Add(new Person("White", "Johnson", null, null, DateTime.Now.AddDays(-22), 55)); listPeople.Add(new Person("Panteley", "Sylvia", null, 23233223, DateTime.Now.AddDays(-1), 32)); listPeople.Add(new Person("Blotchet-Halls", "Reginald", null, 323243423, DateTime.Now, 26)); listPeople.Add(new Person("Merr", "South", "[email protected]", 3232442, DateTime.Now.AddDays(-5), 85)); listPeople.Add(new Person("MacFeather", "Stearns", "[email protected]", null, DateTime.Now, null)); return listPeople; } } TABLE CSS/HTML DESIGN Now, lets start with the implementation. First of all, lets create the table structure and the main CSS. 1. HTML Structure @{ Layout = null; } <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>ASP.NET & jQuery</title>  </head> <body> <div> <table class="tablesorter"> <thead> <tr> <th> value </th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>value</td> </tr> </tbody> <tfoot> <tr> <th> value </th> </tr> </tfoot> </table> <div id="pager"> </div> </div> </body> </html> So, this is the main structure you need to create for each of your tables where you want to apply the functionality we will create. Of course the scripts are referenced once ;). As you see, our table has class tablesorter and also we have a div with id pager. In the next steps we will use both these to create the needed functionalities. The complete Index.cshtml coded to get the data from controller and display in the page is: <body> <div> <table class="tablesorter"> <thead> <tr> <th>Name</th> <th>Surname</th> <th>Email</th> <th>Phone</th> <th>Date Added</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> @{ foreach (var p in ViewBag.People) { <tr> <td>@p.Name</td> <td>@p.Surname</td> <td>@p.Email</td> <td>@p.Phone</td> <td>@p.DateAdded</td> </tr> } } </tbody> <tfoot> <tr> <th>Name</th> <th>Surname</th> <th>Email</th> <th>Phone</th> <th>Date Added</th> </tr> </tfoot> </table> <div id="pager" style="position: none;"> <form> <img src="@Url.Content("~/Content/images/first.png")" class="first" /> <img src="@Url.Content("~/Content/images/prev.png")" class="prev" /> <input type="text" class="pagedisplay" /> <img src="@Url.Content("~/Content/images/next.png")" class="next" /> <img src="@Url.Content("~/Content/images/last.png")" class="last" /> <select class="pagesize"> <option selected="selected" value="5">5</option> <option value="10">10</option> <option value="20">20</option> <option value="30">30</option> <option value="40">40</option> </select> </form> </div> </div> </body> So, mainly the structure is the same. I have added @Razor code to create table with data retrieved from the ViewBag.People which has been filled with data in the home controller. 2. CSS Design The CSS code I’ve created is: /* DEMO TABLE */ body { font-size: 75%; font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Sans-Serif; color: #232323; background-color: #fff; } table { border-spacing:0; border:1px solid gray;} table.tablesorter thead tr .header { background-image: url(images/bg.png); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: center right; cursor: pointer; } table.tablesorter tbody td { color: #3D3D3D; padding: 4px; background-color: #FFF; vertical-align: top; } table.tablesorter tbody tr.odd td { background-color:#F0F0F6; } table.tablesorter thead tr .headerSortUp { background-image: url(images/asc.png); } table.tablesorter thead tr .headerSortDown { background-image: url(images/desc.png); } table th { width:150px; border:1px outset gray; background-color:#3C78B5; color:White; cursor:pointer; } table thead th:hover { background-color:Yellow; color:Black;} table td { width:150px; border:1px solid gray;} PAGINATION AND SORTING Now, when everything is ready and we have the data, lets make pagination and sorting functionalities 1. jQuery Scripts referencing <link href="@Url.Content("~/Content/Site.css")" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery-1.4.4.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.tablesorter.js")" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.tablesorter.pager.js")" type="text/javascript"></script> 2. jQuery Sorting and Pagination script <script type="text/javascript"> $(function () { $("table.tablesorter").tablesorter({ widthFixed: true, sortList: [[0, 0]] }) .tablesorterPager({ container: $("#pager"), size: $(".pagesize option:selected").val() }); }); </script> So, with only two lines of code, I’m using both tablesorter and tablesorterPager plugins, giving some options to both these. Options added: tablesorter - widthFixed: true – gives fixed width of the columns tablesorter - sortList[[0,0]] – An array of instructions for per-column sorting and direction in the format: [[columnIndex, sortDirection], ... ] where columnIndex is a zero-based index for your columns left-to-right and sortDirection is 0 for Ascending and 1 for Descending. A valid argument that sorts ascending first by column 1 and then column 2 looks like: [[0,0],[1,0]] (source: http://tablesorter.com/docs/) tablesorterPager – container: $(“#pager”) – tells the pager container, the div with id pager in our case. tablesorterPager – size: the default size of each page, where I get the default value selected, so if you put selected to any other of the options in your select list, you will have this number of rows as default per page for the table too. END RESULTS 1. Table once the page is loaded (default results per page is 5 and is automatically sorted by 1st column as sortList is specified) 2. Sorted by Phone Descending 3. Changed pagination to 10 items per page 4. Sorted by Phone and Name (use SHIFT to sort on multiple columns) 5. Sorted by Date Added 6. Page 3, 5 items per page ADDITIONAL ENHANCEMENTS We can do additional enhancements to the table. We can make search for each column. I will cover this in one of my next blogs. Stay tuned. DEMO PROJECT You can download demo project source code from HERE.CONCLUSION Once you finish with the demo, run your page and open the source code. You will be amazed of the purity of your code.Working with pagination in client side can be very useful. One of the benefits is performance, but if you have thousands of rows in your tables, you will get opposite result when talking about performance. Hence, sometimes it is nice idea to make pagination on back-end. So, the compromise between both approaches would be best to combine both of them. I use at most up to 500 rows on client-side and once the user reach the last page, we can trigger ajax postback which can get the next 500 rows using server-side pagination of the same data. I would like to recommend the following blog post http://weblogs.asp.net/gunnarpeipman/archive/2010/09/14/returning-paged-results-from-repositories-using-pagedresult-lt-t-gt.aspx, which will help you understand how to return page results from repository. I hope this was helpful post for you. Wait for my next posts ;). Please do let me know your feedback. Best Regards, Hajan

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Using VLOOKUP in Excel

- by Mark Virtue

VLOOKUP is one of Excel’s most useful functions, and it’s also one of the least understood. In this article, we demystify VLOOKUP by way of a real-life example. We’ll create a usable Invoice Template for a fictitious company. So what is VLOOKUP? Well, of course it’s an Excel function. This article will assume that the reader already has a passing understanding of Excel functions, and can use basic functions such as SUM, AVERAGE, and TODAY. In its most common usage, VLOOKUP is a database function, meaning that it works with database tables – or more simply, lists of things in an Excel worksheet. What sort of things? Well, any sort of thing. You may have a worksheet that contains a list of employees, or products, or customers, or CDs in your CD collection, or stars in the night sky. It doesn’t really matter. Here’s an example of a list, or database. In this case it’s a list of products that our fictitious company sells: Usually lists like this have some sort of unique identifier for each item in the list. In this case, the unique identifier is in the “Item Code” column. Note: For the VLOOKUP function to work with a database/list, that list must have a column containing the unique identifier (or “key”, or “ID”), and that column must be the first column in the table. Our sample database above satisfies this criterion. The hardest part of using VLOOKUP is understanding exactly what it’s for. So let’s see if we can get that clear first: VLOOKUP retrieves information from a database/list based on a supplied instance of the unique identifier. Put another way, if you put the VLOOKUP function into a cell and pass it one of the unique identifiers from your database, it will return you one of the pieces of information associated with that unique identifier. In the example above, you would pass VLOOKUP an item code, and it would return to you either the corresponding item’s description, its price, or its availability (its “In stock” quantity). Which of these pieces of information will it pass you back? Well, you get to decide this when you’re creating the formula. If all you need is one piece of information from the database, it would be a lot of trouble to go to to construct a formula with a VLOOKUP function in it. Typically you would use this sort of functionality in a reusable spreadsheet, such as a template. Each time someone enters a valid item code, the system would retrieve all the necessary information about the corresponding item. Let’s create an example of this: An Invoice Template that we can reuse over and over in our fictitious company. First we start Excel… …and we create ourselves a blank invoice: This is how it’s going to work: The person using the invoice template will fill in a series of item codes in column “A”, and the system will retrieve each item’s description and price, which will be used to calculate the line total for each item (assuming we enter a valid quantity). For the purposes of keeping this example simple, we will locate the product database on a separate sheet in the same workbook: In reality, it’s more likely that the product database would be located in a separate workbook. It makes little difference to the VLOOKUP function, which doesn’t really care if the database is located on the same sheet, a different sheet, or a completely different workbook. In order to test the VLOOKUP formula we’re about to write, we first enter a valid item code into cell A11: Next, we move the active cell to the cell in which we want information retrieved from the database by VLOOKUP to be stored. Interestingly, this is the step that most people get wrong. To explain further: We are about to create a VLOOKUP formula that will retrieve the description that corresponds to the item code in cell A11. Where do we want this description put when we get it? In cell B11, of course. So that’s where we write the VLOOKUP formula – in cell B11. Select cell B11: We need to locate the list of all available functions that Excel has to offer, so that we can choose VLOOKUP and get some assistance in completing the formula. This is found by first clicking the Formulas tab, and then clicking Insert Function: A box appears that allows us to select any of the functions available in Excel. To find the one we’re looking for, we could type a search term like “lookup” (because the function we’re interested in is a lookup function). The system would return us a list of all lookup-related functions in Excel. VLOOKUP is the second one in the list. Select it an click OK… The Function Arguments box appears, prompting us for all the arguments (or parameters) needed in order to complete the VLOOKUP function. You can think of this box as the function is asking us the following questions: What unique identifier are you looking up in the database? Where is the database? Which piece of information from the database, associated with the unique identifier, do you wish to have retrieved for you? The first three arguments are shown in bold, indicating that they are mandatory arguments (the VLOOKUP function is incomplete without them and will not return a valid value). The fourth argument is not bold, meaning that it’s optional: We will complete the arguments in order, top to bottom. The first argument we need to complete is the Lookup_value argument. The function needs us to tell it where to find the unique identifier (the item code in this case) that it should be retuning the description of. We must select the item code we entered earlier (in A11). Click on the selector icon to the right of the first argument: Then click once on the cell containing the item code (A11), and press Enter: The value of “A11” is inserted into the first argument. Now we need to enter a value for the Table_array argument. In other words, we need to tell VLOOKUP where to find the database/list. Click on the selector icon next to the second argument: Now locate the database/list and select the entire list – not including the header line. The database is located on a separate worksheet, so we first click on that worksheet tab: Next we select the entire database, not including the header line: …and press Enter. The range of cells that represents the database (in this case “’Product Database’!A2:D7”) is entered automatically for us into the second argument. Now we need to enter the third argument, Col_index_num. We use this argument to specify to VLOOKUP which piece of information from the database, associate with our item code in A11, we wish to have returned to us. In this particular example, we wish to have the item’s description returned to us. If you look on the database worksheet, you’ll notice that the “Description” column is the second column in the database. This means that we must enter a value of “2” into the Col_index_num box: It is important to note that that we are not entering a “2” here because the “Description” column is in the B column on that worksheet. If the database happened to start in column K of the worksheet, we would still enter a “2” in this field. Finally, we need to decide whether to enter a value into the final VLOOKUP argument, Range_lookup. This argument requires either a true or false value, or it should be left blank. When using VLOOKUP with databases (as is true 90% of the time), then the way to decide what to put in this argument can be thought of as follows: If the first column of the database (the column that contains the unique identifiers) is sorted alphabetically/numerically in ascending order, then it’s possible to enter a value of true into this argument, or leave it blank. If the first column of the database is not sorted, or it’s sorted in descending order, then you must enter a value of false into this argument As the first column of our database is not sorted, we enter false into this argument: That’s it! We’ve entered all the information required for VLOOKUP to return the value we need. Click the OK button and notice that the description corresponding to item code “R99245” has been correctly entered into cell B11: The formula that was created for us looks like this: If we enter a different item code into cell A11, we will begin to see the power of the VLOOKUP function: The description cell changes to match the new item code: We can perform a similar set of steps to get the item’s price returned into cell E11. Note that the new formula must be created in cell E11. The result will look like this: …and the formula will look like this: Note that the only difference between the two formulae is the third argument (Col_index_num) has changed from a “2” to a “3” (because we want data retrieved from the 3rd column in the database). If we decided to buy 2 of these items, we would enter a “2” into cell D11. We would then enter a simple formula into cell F11 to get the line total: =D11*E11 …which looks like this… Completing the Invoice Template We’ve learned a lot about VLOOKUP so far. In fact, we’ve learned all we’re going to learn in this article. It’s important to note that VLOOKUP can be used in other circumstances besides databases. This is less common, and may be covered in future How-To Geek articles. Our invoice template is not yet complete. In order to complete it, we would do the following: We would remove the sample item code from cell A11 and the “2” from cell D11. This will cause our newly created VLOOKUP formulae to display error messages: We can remedy this by judicious use of Excel’s IF() and ISBLANK() functions. We change our formula from this… =VLOOKUP(A11,’Product Database’!A2:D7,2,FALSE) …to this… =IF(ISBLANK(A11),”",VLOOKUP(A11,’Product Database’!A2:D7,2,FALSE)) We would copy the formulas in cells B11, E11 and F11 down to the remainder of the item rows of the invoice. Note that if we do this, the resulting formulas will no longer correctly refer to the database table. We could fix this by changing the cell references for the database to absolute cell references. Alternatively – and even better – we could create a range name for the entire product database (such as “Products”), and use this range name instead of the cell references. The formula would change from this… =IF(ISBLANK(A11),”",VLOOKUP(A11,’Product Database’!A2:D7,2,FALSE)) …to this… =IF(ISBLANK(A11),”",VLOOKUP(A11,Products,2,FALSE)) …and then copy the formulas down to the rest of the invoice item rows. We would probably “lock” the cells that contain our formulae (or rather unlock the other cells), and then protect the worksheet, in order to ensure that our carefully constructed formulae are not accidentally overwritten when someone comes to fill in the invoice. We would save the file as a template, so that it could be reused by everyone in our company If we were feeling really clever, we would create a database of all our customers in another worksheet, and then use the customer ID entered in cell F5 to automatically fill in the customer’s name and address in cells B6, B7 and B8. If you would like to practice with VLOOKUP, or simply see our resulting Invoice Template, it can be downloaded from here. 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Coherence - How to develop a custom push replication publisher

- by cosmin.tudor(at)oracle.com

CoherencePushReplicationDB.zipIn the example bellow I'm describing a way of developing a custom push replication publisher that publishes data to a database via JDBC. This example can be easily changed to publish data to other receivers (JMS,...) by performing changes to step 2 and small changes to step 3, steps that are presented bellow. I've used Eclipse as the development tool. To develop a custom push replication publishers we will need to go through 6 steps: Step 1: Create a custom publisher scheme class Step 2: Create a custom publisher class that should define what the publisher is doing. Step 3: Create a class data is performing the actions (publish to JMS, DB, etc ) for the custom publisher. Step 4: Register the new publisher against a ContentHandler. Step 5: Add the new custom publisher in the cache configuration file. Step 6: Add the custom publisher scheme class to the POF configuration file. All these steps are detailed bellow. The coherence project is attached and conclusions are presented at the end. Step 1: In the Coherence Eclipse project create a class called CustomPublisherScheme that should implement com.oracle.coherence.patterns.pushreplication.publishers.AbstractPublisherScheme. In this class define the elements of the custom-publisher-scheme element. For instance for a CustomPublisherScheme that looks like that: <sync:publisher> <sync:publisher-name>Active2-JDBC-Publisher</sync:publisher-name> <sync:publisher-scheme> <sync:custom-publisher-scheme> <sync:jdbc-string>jdbc:oracle:thin:@machine-name:1521:XE</sync:jdbc-string> <sync:username>hr</sync:username> <sync:password>hr</sync:password> </sync:custom-publisher-scheme> </sync:publisher-scheme> </sync:publisher> the code is: package com.oracle.coherence; import java.io.DataInput; import java.io.DataOutput; import java.io.IOException; import com.oracle.coherence.patterns.pushreplication.Publisher; import com.oracle.coherence.configuration.Configurable; import com.oracle.coherence.configuration.Mandatory; import com.oracle.coherence.configuration.Property; import com.oracle.coherence.configuration.parameters.ParameterScope; import com.oracle.coherence.environment.Environment; import com.tangosol.io.pof.PofReader; import com.tangosol.io.pof.PofWriter; import com.tangosol.util.ExternalizableHelper; @Configurable public class CustomPublisherScheme extends com.oracle.coherence.patterns.pushreplication.publishers.AbstractPublisherScheme { /** * */ private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L; private String jdbcString; private String username; private String password; public String getJdbcString() { return this.jdbcString; } @Property("jdbc-string") @Mandatory public void setJdbcString(String jdbcString) { this.jdbcString = jdbcString; } public String getUsername() { return username; } @Property("username") @Mandatory public void setUsername(String username) { this.username = username; } public String getPassword() { return password; } @Property("password") @Mandatory public void setPassword(String password) { this.password = password; } public Publisher realize(Environment environment, ClassLoader classLoader, ParameterScope parameterScope) { return new CustomPublisher(getJdbcString(), getUsername(), getPassword()); } public void readExternal(DataInput in) throws IOException { super.readExternal(in); this.jdbcString = ExternalizableHelper.readSafeUTF(in); this.username = ExternalizableHelper.readSafeUTF(in); this.password = ExternalizableHelper.readSafeUTF(in); } public void writeExternal(DataOutput out) throws IOException { super.writeExternal(out); ExternalizableHelper.writeSafeUTF(out, this.jdbcString); ExternalizableHelper.writeSafeUTF(out, this.username); ExternalizableHelper.writeSafeUTF(out, this.password); } public void readExternal(PofReader reader) throws IOException { super.readExternal(reader); this.jdbcString = reader.readString(100); this.username = reader.readString(101); this.password = reader.readString(102); } public void writeExternal(PofWriter writer) throws IOException { super.writeExternal(writer); writer.writeString(100, this.jdbcString); writer.writeString(101, this.username); writer.writeString(102, this.password); } } Step 2: Define what the CustomPublisher should basically do by creating a new java class called CustomPublisher that implements com.oracle.coherence.patterns.pushreplication.Publisher package com.oracle.coherence; import com.oracle.coherence.patterns.pushreplication.EntryOperation; import com.oracle.coherence.patterns.pushreplication.Publisher; import com.oracle.coherence.patterns.pushreplication.exceptions.PublisherNotReadyException; import java.io.BufferedWriter; import java.util.Iterator; public class CustomPublisher implements Publisher { private String jdbcString; private String username; private String password; private transient BufferedWriter bufferedWriter; public CustomPublisher() { } public CustomPublisher(String jdbcString, String username, String password) { this.jdbcString = jdbcString; this.username = username; this.password = password; this.bufferedWriter = null; } public String getJdbcString() { return this.jdbcString; } public String getUsername() { return username; } public String getPassword() { return password; } public void publishBatch(String cacheName, String publisherName, Iterator<EntryOperation> entryOperations) { DatabasePersistence databasePersistence = new DatabasePersistence( jdbcString, username, password); while (entryOperations.hasNext()) { EntryOperation entryOperation = (EntryOperation) entryOperations .next(); databasePersistence.databasePersist(entryOperation); } } public void start(String cacheName, String publisherName) throws PublisherNotReadyException { System.err .printf("Started: Custom JDBC Publisher for Cache %s with Publisher %s\n", new Object[] { cacheName, publisherName }); } public void stop(String cacheName, String publisherName) { System.err .printf("Stopped: Custom JDBC Publisher for Cache %s with Publisher %s\n", new Object[] { cacheName, publisherName }); } } In the publishBatch method from above we inform the publisher that he is supposed to persist data to a database: DatabasePersistence databasePersistence = new DatabasePersistence( jdbcString, username, password); while (entryOperations.hasNext()) { EntryOperation entryOperation = (EntryOperation) entryOperations .next(); databasePersistence.databasePersist(entryOperation); } Step 3: The class that deals with the persistence is a very basic one that uses JDBC to perform inserts/updates against a database. package com.oracle.coherence; import com.oracle.coherence.patterns.pushreplication.EntryOperation; import java.sql.*; import java.text.SimpleDateFormat; import com.oracle.coherence.Order; public class DatabasePersistence { public static String INSERT_OPERATION = "INSERT"; public static String UPDATE_OPERATION = "UPDATE"; public Connection dbConnection; public DatabasePersistence(String jdbcString, String username, String password) { this.dbConnection = createConnection(jdbcString, username, password); } public Connection createConnection(String jdbcString, String username, String password) { Connection connection = null; System.err.println("Connecting to: " + jdbcString + " Username: " + username + " Password: " + password); try { // Load the JDBC driver String driverName = "oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver"; Class.forName(driverName); // Create a connection to the database connection = DriverManager.getConnection(jdbcString, username, password); System.err.println("Connected to:" + jdbcString + " Username: " + username + " Password: " + password); } catch (ClassNotFoundException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } // driver catch (SQLException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } return connection; } public void databasePersist(EntryOperation entryOperation) { if (entryOperation.getOperation().toString() .equalsIgnoreCase(INSERT_OPERATION)) { insert(((Order) entryOperation.getPublishableEntry().getValue())); } else if (entryOperation.getOperation().toString() .equalsIgnoreCase(UPDATE_OPERATION)) { update(((Order) entryOperation.getPublishableEntry().getValue())); } } public void update(Order order) { String update = "UPDATE Orders set QUANTITY= '" + order.getQuantity() + "', AMOUNT='" + order.getAmount() + "', ORD_DATE= '" + (new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MMM-yyyy")).format(order .getOrdDate()) + "' WHERE SYMBOL='" + order.getSymbol() + "'"; System.err.println("UPDATE = " + update); try { Statement stmt = getDbConnection().createStatement(); stmt.execute(update); stmt.close(); } catch (SQLException ex) { System.err.println("SQLException: " + ex.getMessage()); } } public void insert(Order order) { String insert = "insert into Orders values('" + order.getSymbol() + "'," + order.getQuantity() + "," + order.getAmount() + ",'" + (new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MMM-yyyy")).format(order .getOrdDate()) + "')"; System.err.println("INSERT = " + insert); try { Statement stmt = getDbConnection().createStatement(); stmt.execute(insert); stmt.close(); } catch (SQLException ex) { System.err.println("SQLException: " + ex.getMessage()); } } public Connection getDbConnection() { return dbConnection; } public void setDbConnection(Connection dbConnection) { this.dbConnection = dbConnection; } } Step 4: Now we need to register our publisher against a ContentHandler. In order to achieve that we need to create in our eclipse project a new class called CustomPushReplicationNamespaceContentHandler that should extend the com.oracle.coherence.patterns.pushreplication.configuration.PushReplicationNamespaceContentHandler. In the constructor of the new class we define a new handler for our custom publisher. package com.oracle.coherence; import com.oracle.coherence.configuration.Configurator; import com.oracle.coherence.environment.extensible.ConfigurationContext; import com.oracle.coherence.environment.extensible.ConfigurationException; import com.oracle.coherence.environment.extensible.ElementContentHandler; import com.oracle.coherence.patterns.pushreplication.PublisherScheme; import com.oracle.coherence.environment.extensible.QualifiedName; import com.oracle.coherence.patterns.pushreplication.configuration.PushReplicationNamespaceContentHandler; import com.tangosol.run.xml.XmlElement; public class CustomPushReplicationNamespaceContentHandler extends PushReplicationNamespaceContentHandler { public CustomPushReplicationNamespaceContentHandler() { super(); registerContentHandler("custom-publisher-scheme", new ElementContentHandler() { public Object onElement(ConfigurationContext context, QualifiedName qualifiedName, XmlElement xmlElement) throws ConfigurationException { PublisherScheme publisherScheme = new CustomPublisherScheme(); Configurator.configure(publisherScheme, context, qualifiedName, xmlElement); return publisherScheme; } }); } } Step 5: Now we should define our CustomPublisher in the cache configuration file according to the following documentation. <cache-config xmlns:sync="class:com.oracle.coherence.CustomPushReplicationNamespaceContentHandler" xmlns:cr="class:com.oracle.coherence.environment.extensible.namespaces.InstanceNamespaceContentHandler"> <caching-schemes> <sync:provider pof-enabled="false"> <sync:coherence-provider /> </sync:provider> <caching-scheme-mapping> <cache-mapping> <cache-name>publishing-cache</cache-name> <scheme-name>distributed-scheme-with-publishing-cachestore</scheme-name> <autostart>true</autostart> <sync:publisher> <sync:publisher-name>Active2 Publisher</sync:publisher-name> <sync:publisher-scheme> <sync:remote-cluster-publisher-scheme> <sync:remote-invocation-service-name>remote-site1</sync:remote-invocation-service-name> <sync:remote-publisher-scheme> <sync:local-cache-publisher-scheme> <sync:target-cache-name>publishing-cache</sync:target-cache-name> </sync:local-cache-publisher-scheme> </sync:remote-publisher-scheme> <sync:autostart>true</sync:autostart> </sync:remote-cluster-publisher-scheme> </sync:publisher-scheme> </sync:publisher> <sync:publisher> <sync:publisher-name>Active2-Output-Publisher</sync:publisher-name> <sync:publisher-scheme> <sync:stderr-publisher-scheme> <sync:autostart>true</sync:autostart> <sync:publish-original-value>true</sync:publish-original-value> </sync:stderr-publisher-scheme> </sync:publisher-scheme> </sync:publisher> <sync:publisher> <sync:publisher-name>Active2-JDBC-Publisher</sync:publisher-name> <sync:publisher-scheme> <sync:custom-publisher-scheme> <sync:jdbc-string>jdbc:oracle:thin:@machine_name:1521:XE</sync:jdbc-string> <sync:username>hr</sync:username> <sync:password>hr</sync:password> </sync:custom-publisher-scheme> </sync:publisher-scheme> </sync:publisher> </cache-mapping> </caching-scheme-mapping>  <remote-invocation-scheme> <service-name>remote-site1</service-name> <initiator-config> <tcp-initiator> <remote-addresses> <socket-address> <address>localhost</address> <port>20001</port> </socket-address> </remote-addresses> <connect-timeout>2s</connect-timeout> </tcp-initiator> <outgoing-message-handler> <request-timeout>5s</request-timeout> </outgoing-message-handler> </initiator-config> </remote-invocation-scheme>  <proxy-scheme> <service-name>ExtendTcpProxyService</service-name> <acceptor-config> <tcp-acceptor> <local-address> <address>localhost</address> <port>20002</port> </local-address> </tcp-acceptor> </acceptor-config> <autostart>true</autostart> </proxy-scheme> </caching-schemes> </cache-config> As you can see in the red-marked text from above I've: - set new Namespace Content Handler - define the new custom publisher that should work together with other publishers like: stderr and remote publishers in our case. Step 6: Add the com.oracle.coherence.CustomPublisherScheme to your custom-pof-config file: <pof-config> <user-type-list>  <include>coherence-pof-config.xml</include> <include>coherence-common-pof-config.xml</include> <include>coherence-messagingpattern-pof-config.xml</include> <include>coherence-pushreplicationpattern-pof-config.xml</include>  <user-type> <type-id>1901</type-id> <class-name>com.oracle.coherence.Order</class-name> <serializer> <class-name>com.oracle.coherence.OrderSerializer</class-name> </serializer> </user-type> <user-type> <type-id>1902</type-id> <class-name>com.oracle.coherence.CustomPublisherScheme</class-name> </user-type> </user-type-list> </pof-config> CONCLUSIONSThis approach allows for publishers to publish data to almost any other receiver (database, JMS, MQ, ...). The only thing that needs to be changed is the DatabasePersistence.java class that should be adapted to the chosen receiver. Only minor changes are needed for the rest of the code (to publishBatch method from CustomPublisher class).

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