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iTunes 9.0.2 hangs on launch on Mac OS X 10.6.2

- by dlamblin

My iTunes 9.0.2 hangs on launch in OS X 10.6.2. This doesn't happen all the time, only if I've been running for a while. Then it will recur until I restart. Similarly Safari 4.0.4 will hang in the flash player plugin when about to play a video. If I restart both these problems go away until later. Based on this crash dump I am suspecting Audio Hijack Pro. I will try to install a newer version of the driver involved, but so far I haven't had much luck. I have uninstalled the Flash Plugin (10.0.r42 and r32) but clearly I want it in the long run. This is iTunes' crash report. Date/Time: 2009-12-14 19:56:02 -0500 OS Version: 10.6.2 (Build 10C540) Architecture: x86_64 Report Version: 6 Command: iTunes Path: /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunes Version: 9.0.2 (9.0.2) Build Version: 2 Project Name: iTunes Source Version: 9022501 Parent: launchd [120] PID: 16878 Event: hang Duration: 3.55s (sampling started after 2 seconds) Steps: 16 (100ms sampling interval) Pageins: 5 Pageouts: 0 Process: iTunes [16878] Path: /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunes UID: 501 Thread 8f96000 User stack: 16 ??? (in iTunes + 6633) [0x29e9] 16 ??? (in iTunes + 6843) [0x2abb] 16 ??? (in iTunes + 11734) [0x3dd6] 16 ??? (in iTunes + 44960) [0xbfa0] 16 ??? (in iTunes + 45327) [0xc10f] 16 ??? (in iTunes + 2295196) [0x23159c] 16 ??? (in iTunes + 103620) [0x1a4c4] 16 ??? (in iTunes + 105607) [0x1ac87] 16 ??? (in iTunes + 106442) [0x1afca] 16 OpenAComponent + 433 (in CarbonCore) [0x972e9dd0] 16 CallComponentOpen + 43 (in CarbonCore) [0x972ebae7] 16 CallComponentDispatch + 29 (in CarbonCore) [0x972ebb06] 16 DefaultOutputAUEntry + 319 (in CoreAudio) [0x70031117] 16 AUGenericOutputEntry + 15273 (in CoreAudio) [0x7000e960] 16 AUGenericOutputEntry + 13096 (in CoreAudio) [0x7000e0df] 16 AUGenericOutputEntry + 9628 (in CoreAudio) [0x7000d353] 16 ??? [0xe0c16d] 16 ??? [0xe0fdf8] 16 ??? [0xe0e1e7] 16 ahs_hermes_CoreAudio_init + 32 (in Instant Hijack Server) [0x13fc7e9] 16 semaphore_wait_signal_trap + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x9798e922] Kernel stack: 16 semaphore_wait_continue + 0 [0x22a0a5] Thread 9b9eb7c User stack: 16 thread_start + 34 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x979bbe42] 16 _pthread_start + 345 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x979bbfbd] 16 ??? (in iTunes + 4011870) [0x3d475e] 16 CFRunLoopRun + 84 (in CoreFoundation) [0x993497a4] 16 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 452 (in CoreFoundation) [0x99343864] 16 __CFRunLoopRun + 2079 (in CoreFoundation) [0x9934477f] 16 mach_msg_trap + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x9798e8da] Kernel stack: 16 ipc_mqueue_receive_continue + 0 [0x210aa3] Thread 9bc8b7c User stack: 16 start_wqthread + 30 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x979b4336] 16 _pthread_wqthread + 390 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x979b44f1] 16 _dispatch_worker_thread2 + 234 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x979b4a68] 16 _dispatch_queue_invoke + 163 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x979b4cc3] 16 kevent + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x979b50ea] Kernel stack: 16 kevent + 97 [0x471745] Binary Images: 0x1000 - 0xbecfea com.apple.iTunes 9.0.2 (9.0.2) <1F665956-0131-39AF-F334-E29E510D42DA> /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunes 0x13f6000 - 0x1402ff7 com.rogueamoeba.audio_hijack_server.hermes 2.2.2 (2.2.2) <9B29AE7F-6951-E63F-616A-482B62179A5C> /usr/local/hermes/modules/Instant Hijack Server.hermesmodule/Contents/MacOS/Instant Hijack Server 0x70000000 - 0x700cbffb com.apple.audio.units.Components 1.6.1 (1.6.1) <600769A2-479A-CA6E-A214-C8766F7CBD0F> /System/Library/Components/CoreAudio.component/Contents/MacOS/CoreAudio 0x97284000 - 0x975a3fe7 com.apple.CoreServices.CarbonCore 861.2 (861.2) <A9077470-3786-09F2-E0C7-F082B7F97838> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/CarbonCore.framework/Versions/A/CarbonCore 0x9798e000 - 0x97b32feb libSystem.B.dylib ??? (???) <D45B91B2-2B4C-AAC0-8096-1FC48B7E9672> /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib 0x99308000 - 0x9947ffef com.apple.CoreFoundation 6.6.1 (550.13) <AE9FC6F7-F0B2-DE58-759E-7DB89C021A46> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreFoundation.framework/Versions/A/CoreFoundation Process: AirPort Base Station Agent [142] Path: /System/Library/CoreServices/AirPort Base Station Agent.app/Contents/MacOS/AirPort Base Station Agent UID: 501 Thread 8b1d3d4 DispatchQueue 1 User stack: 16 ??? (in AirPort Base Station Agent + 5344) [0x1000014e0] 16 ??? (in AirPort Base Station Agent + 70666) [0x10001140a] 16 CFRunLoopRun + 70 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff86e859b6] 16 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 575 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff86e85c2f] 16 __CFRunLoopRun + 1698 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff86e867a2] 16 mach_msg_trap + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff8786ce3a] Kernel stack: 16 ipc_mqueue_receive_continue + 0 [0x210aa3] Thread 8b80000 DispatchQueue 2 User stack: 16 start_wqthread + 13 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87886a55] 16 _pthread_wqthread + 353 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87886bb8] 16 _dispatch_worker_thread2 + 244 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87887286] 16 _dispatch_queue_invoke + 185 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff8788775c] 16 kevent + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87885bba] Kernel stack: 16 kevent + 97 [0x471745] Thread 6e3c7a8 User stack: 16 start_wqthread + 13 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87886a55] 16 __workq_kernreturn + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878869da] Kernel stack: 16 workqueue_thread_yielded + 562 [0x4cb6ae] Thread 8b0f3d4 User stack: 16 thread_start + 13 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878a5e41] 16 _pthread_start + 331 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878a5f8e] 16 select$DARWIN_EXTSN + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878b09e2] Kernel stack: 16 sleep + 52 [0x487f93] Thread 8bcb000 User stack: 16 thread_start + 13 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878a5e41] 16 _pthread_start + 331 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878a5f8e] 16 ??? (in AirPort Base Station Agent + 71314) [0x100011692] 16 ??? (in AirPort Base Station Agent + 13712) [0x100003590] 16 ??? (in AirPort Base Station Agent + 71484) [0x10001173c] 16 __semwait_signal + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878a79ee] Kernel stack: 16 semaphore_wait_continue + 0 [0x22a0a5] Binary Images: 0x100000000 - 0x100016fff com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent 1.5.4 (154.2) <73DF13C1-AF86-EC2C-9056-8D1946E607CF> /System/Library/CoreServices/AirPort Base Station Agent.app/Contents/MacOS/AirPort Base Station Agent 0x7fff86e3b000 - 0x7fff86faeff7 com.apple.CoreFoundation 6.6.1 (550.13) <1E952BD9-37C6-16BE-B2F0-CD92A6283D37> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreFoundation.framework/Versions/A/CoreFoundation 0x7fff8786c000 - 0x7fff87a2aff7 libSystem.B.dylib ??? (???) <526DD3E5-2A8B-4512-ED97-01B832369959> /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib Process: AppleSpell [3041] Path: /System/Library/Services/AppleSpell.service/Contents/MacOS/AppleSpell UID: 501 Thread 999a000 DispatchQueue 1 User stack: 16 ??? (in AppleSpell + 5852) [0x1000016dc] 16 ??? (in AppleSpell + 6508) [0x10000196c] 16 -[NSSpellServer run] + 72 (in Foundation) [0x7fff81d3b796] 16 CFRunLoopRun + 70 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff86e859b6] 16 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 575 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff86e85c2f] 16 __CFRunLoopRun + 1698 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff86e867a2] 16 mach_msg_trap + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff8786ce3a] Kernel stack: 16 ipc_mqueue_receive_continue + 0 [0x210aa3] Thread 8a9e7a8 DispatchQueue 2 User stack: 16 start_wqthread + 13 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87886a55] 16 _pthread_wqthread + 353 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87886bb8] 16 _dispatch_worker_thread2 + 244 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87887286] 16 _dispatch_queue_invoke + 185 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff8788775c] 16 kevent + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87885bba] Kernel stack: 16 kevent + 97 [0x471745] Binary Images: 0x100000000 - 0x1000a9fef com.apple.AppleSpell 1.6.1 (61.1) <6DE57CC1-77A0-BC06-45E7-E1EACEBE1A88> /System/Library/Services/AppleSpell.service/Contents/MacOS/AppleSpell 0x7fff81cbc000 - 0x7fff81f3dfe7 com.apple.Foundation 6.6.1 (751.14) <767349DB-C486-70E8-7970-F13DB4CDAF37> /System/Library/Frameworks/Foundation.framework/Versions/C/Foundation 0x7fff86e3b000 - 0x7fff86faeff7 com.apple.CoreFoundation 6.6.1 (550.13) <1E952BD9-37C6-16BE-B2F0-CD92A6283D37> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreFoundation.framework/Versions/A/CoreFoundation 0x7fff8786c000 - 0x7fff87a2aff7 libSystem.B.dylib ??? (???) <526DD3E5-2A8B-4512-ED97-01B832369959> /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib Process: autofsd [52] Path: /usr/libexec/autofsd UID: 0 Thread 79933d4 DispatchQueue 1 User stack: 16 ??? (in autofsd + 5340) [0x1000014dc] 16 ??? (in autofsd + 6461) [0x10000193d] 16 CFRunLoopRun + 70 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff86e859b6] 16 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 575 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff86e85c2f] 16 __CFRunLoopRun + 1698 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff86e867a2] 16 mach_msg_trap + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff8786ce3a] Kernel stack: 16 ipc_mqueue_receive_continue + 0 [0x210aa3] Thread 75997a8 DispatchQueue 2 User stack: 16 start_wqthread + 13 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87886a55] 16 _pthread_wqthread + 353 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87886bb8] 16 _dispatch_worker_thread2 + 244 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87887286] 16 _dispatch_queue_invoke + 185 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff8788775c] 16 kevent + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87885bba] Kernel stack: 16 kevent + 97 [0x471745] Binary Images: 0x100000000 - 0x100001ff7 autofsd ??? (???) <29276FAC-AEA8-1520-5329-C75F9D453D6C> /usr/libexec/autofsd 0x7fff86e3b000 - 0x7fff86faeff7 com.apple.CoreFoundation 6.6.1 (550.13) <1E952BD9-37C6-16BE-B2F0-CD92A6283D37> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreFoundation.framework/Versions/A/CoreFoundation 0x7fff8786c000 - 0x7fff87a2aff7 libSystem.B.dylib ??? (???) <526DD3E5-2A8B-4512-ED97-01B832369959> /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib Process: blued [51] Path: /usr/sbin/blued UID: 0 Thread 7993000 DispatchQueue 1 User stack: 16 ??? (in blued + 5016) [0x100001398] 16 ??? (in blued + 152265) [0x1000252c9] 16 -[NSRunLoop(NSRunLoop) run] + 77 (in Foundation) [0x7fff81d07903] 16 -[NSRunLoop(NSRunLoop) runMode:beforeDate:] + 270 (in Foundation) [0x7fff81d07a24] 16 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 575 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff86e85c2f] 16 __CFRunLoopRun + 1698 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff86e867a2] 16 mach_msg_trap + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff8786ce3a] Kernel stack: 16 ipc_mqueue_receive_continue + 0 [0x210aa3] Thread 70db000 DispatchQueue 2 User stack: 16 start_wqthread + 13 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87886a55] 16 _pthread_wqthread + 353 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87886bb8] 16 _dispatch_worker_thread2 + 244 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87887286] 16 _dispatch_queue_invoke + 185 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff8788775c] 16 kevent + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87885bba] Kernel stack: 16 kevent + 97 [0x471745] Thread 84d2000 User stack: 16 thread_start + 13 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878a5e41] 16 _pthread_start + 331 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878a5f8e] 16 select$DARWIN_EXTSN + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878b09e2] Kernel stack: 16 sleep + 52 [0x487f93] Binary Images: 0x100000000 - 0x100044fff blued ??? (???) <ECD752C9-F98E-3052-26BF-DC748281C992> /usr/sbin/blued 0x7fff81cbc000 - 0x7fff81f3dfe7 com.apple.Foundation 6.6.1 (751.14) <767349DB-C486-70E8-7970-F13DB4CDAF37> /System/Library/Frameworks/Foundation.framework/Versions/C/Foundation 0x7fff86e3b000 - 0x7fff86faeff7 com.apple.CoreFoundation 6.6.1 (550.13) <1E952BD9-37C6-16BE-B2F0-CD92A6283D37> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreFoundation.framework/Versions/A/CoreFoundation 0x7fff8786c000 - 0x7fff87a2aff7 libSystem.B.dylib ??? (???) <526DD3E5-2A8B-4512-ED97-01B832369959> /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib Process: check_afp [84504] Path: /System/Library/Filesystems/AppleShare/check_afp.app/Contents/MacOS/check_afp UID: 0 Thread 1140f000 DispatchQueue 1 User stack: 16 ??? (in check_afp + 5596) [0x1000015dc] 16 ??? (in check_afp + 12976) [0x1000032b0] 16 ??? (in check_afp + 6664) [0x100001a08] 16 ??? (in check_afp + 6520) [0x100001978] 16 CFRunLoopRun + 70 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff86e859b6] 16 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 575 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff86e85c2f] 16 __CFRunLoopRun + 1698 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff86e867a2] 16 mach_msg_trap + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff8786ce3a] Kernel stack: 16 ipc_mqueue_receive_continue + 0 [0x210aa3] Thread 13ad8b7c DispatchQueue 2 User stack: 16 start_wqthread + 13 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87886a55] 16 _pthread_wqthread + 353 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87886bb8] 16 _dispatch_worker_thread2 + 244 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87887286] 16 _dispatch_queue_invoke + 185 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff8788775c] 16 kevent + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87885bba] Kernel stack: 16 kevent + 97 [0x471745] Thread 13ad6b7c User stack: 16 thread_start + 13 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878a5e41] 16 _pthread_start + 331 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878a5f8e] 16 ??? (in check_afp + 13071) [0x10000330f] 16 mach_msg_server_once + 285 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878b2417] 16 mach_msg_trap + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff8786ce3a] Kernel stack: 16 ipc_mqueue_receive_continue + 0 [0x210aa3] Thread 13ad87a8 User stack: 16 thread_start + 13 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878a5e41] 16 _pthread_start + 331 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878a5f8e] 16 select$DARWIN_EXTSN + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878b09e2] Kernel stack: 16 sleep + 52 [0x487f93] Binary Images: 0x100000000 - 0x100004ff7 com.apple.check_afp 2.0 (2.0) <EE865A7B-8CDC-7649-58E1-6FE2B43F7A73> /System/Library/Filesystems/AppleShare/check_afp.app/Contents/MacOS/check_afp 0x7fff86e3b000 - 0x7fff86faeff7 com.apple.CoreFoundation 6.6.1 (550.13) <1E952BD9-37C6-16BE-B2F0-CD92A6283D37> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreFoundation.framework/Versions/A/CoreFoundation 0x7fff8786c000 - 0x7fff87a2aff7 libSystem.B.dylib ??? (???) <526DD3E5-2A8B-4512-ED97-01B832369959> /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib Process: configd [14] Path: /usr/libexec/configd UID: 0 Thread 704a3d4 DispatchQueue 1 User stack: 16 start + 52 (in configd) [0x100001488] 16 main + 2051 (in configd) [0x100001c9e] 16 server_loop + 72 (in configd) [0x1000024f4] 16 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 575 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff86e85c2f] 16 __CFRunLoopRun + 1698 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff86e867a2] 16 mach_msg_trap + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff8786ce3a] Kernel stack: 16 ipc_mqueue_receive_continue + 0 [0x210aa3] Thread 6e70000 DispatchQueue 2 User stack: 16 start_wqthread + 13 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87886a55] 16 _pthread_wqthread + 353 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87886bb8] 16 _dispatch_worker_thread2 + 244 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87887286] 16 _dispatch_queue_invoke + 185 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff8788775c] 16 kevent + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87885bba] Kernel stack: 16 kevent + 97 [0x471745] Thread 74a7b7c User stack: 16 thread_start + 13 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878a5e41] 16 _pthread_start + 331 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878a5f8e] 16 plugin_exec + 1440 (in configd) [0x100003c5b] 16 CFRunLoopRun + 70 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff86e859b6] 16 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 575 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff86e85c2f] 16 __CFRunLoopRun + 1698 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff86e867a2] 16 mach_msg_trap + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff8786ce3a] Kernel stack: 16 ipc_mqueue_receive_continue + 0 [0x210aa3] Thread 7560000 User stack: 16 thread_start + 13 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878a5e41] 16 _pthread_start + 331 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878a5f8e] 16 _io_pm_force_active_settings + 2266 (in PowerManagement) [0x10050f968] 16 CFRunLoopRun + 70 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff86e859b6] 16 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 575 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff86e85c2f] 16 __CFRunLoopRun + 1698 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff86e867a2] 16 mach_msg_trap + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff8786ce3a] Kernel stack: 16 ipc_mqueue_receive_continue + 0 [0x210aa3] Thread 75817a8 User stack: 16 thread_start + 13 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878a5e41] 16 _pthread_start + 331 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878a5f8e] 16 select$DARWIN_EXTSN + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878b09e2] Kernel stack: 16 sleep + 52 [0x487f93] Thread 8b1db7c User stack: 16 start_wqthread + 13 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87886a55] 16 __workq_kernreturn + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878869da] Kernel stack: 16 workqueue_thread_yielded + 562 [0x4cb6ae] Binary Images: 0x100000000 - 0x100026ff7 configd ??? (???) <58C02CBA-5556-4CDC-2763-814C4C7175DE> /usr/libexec/configd 0x10050c000 - 0x10051dfff com.apple.SystemConfiguration.PowerManagement 160.0.0 (160.0.0) <0AC3D2ED-919E-29C7-9EEF-629FBDDA6159> /System/Library/SystemConfiguration/PowerManagement.bundle/Contents/MacOS/PowerManagement 0x7fff86e3b000 - 0x7fff86faeff7 com.apple.CoreFoundation 6.6.1 (550.13) <1E952BD9-37C6-16BE-B2F0-CD92A6283D37> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreFoundation.framework/Versions/A/CoreFoundation 0x7fff8786c000 - 0x7fff87a2aff7 libSystem.B.dylib ??? (???) <526DD3E5-2A8B-4512-ED97-01B832369959> /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib Process: coreaudiod [114] Path: /usr/sbin/coreaudiod UID: 202 Thread 83b93d4 DispatchQueue 1 User stack: 16 ??? (in coreaudiod + 3252) [0x100000cb4] 16 ??? (in coreaudiod + 26505) [0x100006789] 16 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 575 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff86e85c2f] 16 __CFRunLoopRun + 1698 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff86e867a2] 16 mach_msg_trap + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff8786ce3a] Kernel stack: 16 ipc_mqueue_receive_continue + 0 [0x210aa3] Thread 847e3d4 DispatchQueue 2 User stack: 16 start_wqthread + 13 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87886a55] 16 _pthread_wqthread + 353 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87886bb8] 16 _dispatch_worker_thread2 + 244 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87887286] 16 _dispatch_queue_invoke + 185 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff8788775c] 16 kevent + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87885bba] Kernel stack: 16 kevent + 97 [0x471745] Thread 854c000 User stack: 3 start_wqthread + 13 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87886a55] 3 __workq_kernreturn + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878869da] Kernel stack: 3 workqueue_thread_yielded + 562 [0x4cb6ae] Binary Images: 0x100000000 - 0x10001ffef coreaudiod ??? (???) <A060D20F-A6A7-A3AE-84EC-11D7D7DDEBC6> /usr/sbin/coreaudiod 0x7fff86e3b000 - 0x7fff86faeff7 com.apple.CoreFoundation 6.6.1 (550.13) <1E952BD9-37C6-16BE-B2F0-CD92A6283D37> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreFoundation.framework/Versions/A/CoreFoundation 0x7fff8786c000 - 0x7fff87a2aff7 libSystem.B.dylib ??? (???) <526DD3E5-2A8B-4512-ED97-01B832369959> /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib Process: coreservicesd [66] Path: /System/Library/CoreServices/coreservicesd UID: 0 Thread 7994000 DispatchQueue 1 User stack: 16 ??? (in coreservicesd + 3756) [0x100000eac] 16 _CoreServicesServerMain + 522 (in CarbonCore) [0x7fff8327a972] 16 CFRunLoopRun + 70 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff86e859b6] 16 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 575 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff86e85c2f] 16 __CFRunLoopRun + 1698 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff86e867a2] 16 mach_msg_trap + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff8786ce3a] Kernel stack: 16 ipc_mqueue_receive_continue + 0 [0x210aa3] Thread 76227a8 User stack: 16 thread_start + 13 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878a5e41] 16 _pthread_start + 331 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878a5f8e] 16 read + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87877426] Kernel stack: 16 lo64_unix_scall + 77 [0x29e3fd] 16 unix_syscall64 + 617 [0x4ee947] 16 read_nocancel + 158 [0x496add] 16 write + 312 [0x49634d] 16 get_pathbuff + 3054 [0x3023db] 16 tsleep + 105 [0x4881ce] 16 wakeup + 786 [0x487da7] 16 thread_block + 33 [0x226fb5] 16 thread_block_reason + 331 [0x226f27] 16 thread_dispatch + 1950 [0x226c88] 16 machine_switch_context + 753 [0x2a5a37] Thread 7622b7c User stack: 16 thread_start + 13 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878a5e41] 16 _pthread_start + 331 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878a5f8e] 16 fmodWatchConsumer + 347 (in CarbonCore) [0x7fff8322f23f] 16 __semwait_signal + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878a79ee] Kernel stack: 16 semaphore_wait_continue + 0 [0x22a0a5] Thread 79913d4 User stack: 16 start_wqthread + 13 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87886a55] 16 _pthread_wqthread + 353 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87886bb8] 16 _dispatch_worker_thread2 + 244 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87887286] 16 _dispatch_queue_invoke + 185 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff8788775c] 16 kevent + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87885bba] Kernel stack: 16 kevent + 97 [0x471745] Thread 84d2b7c User stack: 16 start_wqthread + 13 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87886a55] 16 __workq_kernreturn + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878869da] Kernel stack: 16 workqueue_thread_yielded + 562 [0x4cb6ae] Thread 9b643d4 User stack: 15 start_wqthread + 13 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87886a55] 15 __workq_kernreturn + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878869da] Kernel stack: 16 workqueue_thread_yielded + 562 [0x4cb6ae] Binary Images: 0x100000000 - 0x100000fff coreservicesd ??? (???) <D804E55B-4376-998C-AA25-2ADBFDD24414> /System/Library/CoreServices/coreservicesd 0x7fff831cb000 - 0x7fff834fdfef com.apple.CoreServices.CarbonCore 861.2 (861.2) <39F3B259-AC2A-792B-ECFE-4F3E72F2D1A5> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/CarbonCore.framework/Versions/A/CarbonCore 0x7fff86e3b000 - 0x7fff86faeff7 com.apple.CoreFoundation 6.6.1 (550.13) <1E952BD9-37C6-16BE-B2F0-CD92A6283D37> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreFoundation.framework/Versions/A/CoreFoundation 0x7fff8786c000 - 0x7fff87a2aff7 libSystem.B.dylib ??? (???) <526DD3E5-2A8B-4512-ED97-01B832369959> /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib Process: cron [31] Path: /usr/sbin/cron UID: 0 Thread 75acb7c DispatchQueue 1 User stack: 16 ??? (in cron + 2872) [0x100000b38] 16 ??? (in cron + 3991) [0x100000f97] 16 sleep + 61 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878f5090] 16 __semwait_signal + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878a79ee] Kernel stack: 16 semaphore_wait_continue + 0 [0x22a0a5] Binary Images: 0x100000000 - 0x100006fff cron ??? (???) <3C5DCC7E-B6E8-1318-8E00-AB721270BFD4> /usr/sbin/cron 0x7fff8786c000 - 0x7fff87a2aff7 libSystem.B.dylib ??? (???) <526DD3E5-2A8B-4512-ED97-01B832369959> /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib Process: cvmsServ [104] Path: /System/Library/Frameworks/OpenGL.framework/Versions/A/Libraries/cvmsServ UID: 0 Thread 761f3d4 DispatchQueue 1 User stack: 16 ??? (in cvmsServ + 4100) [0x100001004] 16 ??? (in cvmsServ + 23081) [0x100005a29] 16 mach_msg_server + 597 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878ea1c8] 16 mach_msg_trap + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff8786ce3a] Kernel stack: 16 ipc_mqueue_receive_continue + 0 [0x210aa3] Binary Images: 0x100000000 - 0x100008fff cvmsServ ??? (???) <6200AD80-4159-5656-8736-B72B7388C461> /System/Library/Frameworks/OpenGL.framework/Versions/A/Libraries/cvmsServ 0x7fff8786c000 - 0x7fff87a2aff7 libSystem.B.dylib ??? (???) <526DD3E5-2A8B-4512-ED97-01B832369959> /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib Process: DirectoryService [11] Path: /usr/sbin/DirectoryService UID: 0 Thread 70db7a8 DispatchQueue 1 User stack: 16 start + 52 (in DirectoryService) [0x10000da74] 16 main + 3086 (in DirectoryService) [0x10000e68a] 16 CFRunLoopRun + 70 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff86e859b6] 16 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 575 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff86e85c2f] 16 __CFRunLoopRun + 1698 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff86e867a2] 16 mach_msg_trap + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff8786ce3a] Kernel stack: 16 ipc_mqueue_receive_continue + 0 [0x210aa3] Thread <multiple> DispatchQueue 6 User stack: 17 start_wqthread + 13 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87886a55] 17 _pthread_wqthread + 353 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87886bb8] 16 _dispatch_worker_thread2 + 231 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff87887279] 16 _dispatch_call_block_and_release + 15 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878a8ce8] 16 syscall + 10 (in libSystem.B.dylib) [0x7fff878a92da] 1 _disp

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Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Batman

- by Pinal Dave

Batman is one of the darkest superheroes in the fantasy canon. He does not come to his powers through any sort of magical coincidence or radioactive insect, but through a lot of psychological scarring caused by witnessing the death of his parents. Despite his dark back story, he possesses a lot of admirable abilities that I feel bear comparison to developers. Batman has the distinct advantage that his alter ego, Bruce Wayne is a millionaire (or billionaire in today’s reboots). This means that he can spend his time working on his athletic abilities, building a secret lair, and investing his money in cool tools. This might not be true for developers (well, most developers), but I still think there are many parallels. So how are developers like Batman? Well, read on my list of reasons. Develop Skills Batman works on his skills. He didn’t get the strength to scale Gotham’s skyscrapers by inheriting his powers or suffering an industrial accident. Developers also hone their skills daily. They might not be doing pull-ups and scaling buldings, but I think their skills are just as impressive. Clear Goals Batman is driven to build a better Gotham. He knows that the criminal who killed his parents was a small-time thief, not a super villain – so he has larger goals in mind than simply chasing one villain. He wants his city as a whole to be better. Developers are also driven to make things better. It can be easy to get hung up on one problem, but in the end it is best to focus on the well-being of the system as a whole. Ultimate Teamplayers Batman is the hero Gotham needs – even when that means appearing to be the bad guys. Developers probably know that feeling well. Batman takes the fall for a crime he didn’t commit, and developers often have to deliver bad news about the limitations of their networks and servers. It’s not always a job filled with glory and thanks, but someone has to do it. Always Ready Batman and the Boy Scouts have this in common – they are always prepared. Let’s add developers to this list. Batman has an amazing tool belt with gadgets and gizmos, and let’s not even get into all the functions of the Batmobile! Developers’ skills might be the knowledge and skills they have developed, not tools they can carry in a utility belt, but that doesn’t make them any less impressive. 100% Dedication Bruce Wayne cultivates the personality of a playboy, never keeping the same girlfriend for long and spending his time partying. Even though he hides it, his driving force is his deep concern and love for his friends and the city as a whole. Developers also care a lot about their company and employees – even when it is driving them crazy. You do your best work when you care about your job on a personal level. Quality Output Batman believes the city deserves to be saved. The citizens might have a love-hate relationship with both Batman and Bruce Wayne, and employees might not always appreciate developers. Batman and developers, though, keep working for the best of everyone. I hope you are all enjoying reading about developers-as-superheroes as much as I am enjoying writing about them. Please tell me how else developers are like Superheroes in the comments – especially if you know any developers who are faster than a speeding bullet and can leap tall buildings in a single bound. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Developer, Superhero

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What are developer's problems with helpful error messages?

- by Moo-Juice

It continue to astounds me that, in this day and age, products that have years of use under their belt, built by teams of professionals, still to this day - fail to provide helpful error messages to the user. In some cases, the addition of just a little piece of extra information could save a user hours of trouble. A program that generates an error, generated it for a reason. It has everything at its disposal to inform the user as much as it can, why something failed. And yet it seems that providing information to aid the user is a low-priority. I think this is a huge failing. One example is from SQL Server. When you try and restore a database that is in use, it quite rightly won't let you. SQL Server knows what processes and applications are accessing it. Why can't it include information about the process(es) that are using the database? I know not everyone passes an Applicatio_Name attribute on their connection string, but even a hint about the machine in question could be helpful. Another candidate, also SQL Server (and mySQL) is the lovely string or binary data would be truncated error message and equivalents. A lot of the time, a simple perusal of the SQL statement that was generated and the table shows which column is the culprit. This isn't always the case, and if the database engine picked up on the error, why can't it save us that time and just tells us which damned column it was? On this example, you could argue that there may be a performance hit to checking it and that this would impede the writer. Fine, I'll buy that. How about, once the database engine knows there is an error, it does a quick comparison after-the-fact, between values that were going to be stored, versus the column lengths. Then display that to the user. ASP.NET's horrid Table Adapters are also guilty. Queries can be executed and one can be given an error message saying that a constraint somewhere is being violated. Thanks for that. Time to compare my data model against the database, because the developers are too lazy to provide even a row number, or example data. (For the record, I'd never use this data-access method by choice, it's just a project I have inherited!). Whenever I throw an exception from my C# or C++ code, I provide everything I have at hand to the user. The decision has been made to throw it, so the more information I can give, the better. Why did my function throw an exception? What was passed in, and what was expected? It takes me just a little longer to put something meaningful in the body of an exception message. Hell, it does nothing but help me whilst I develop, because I know my code throws things that are meaningful. One could argue that complicated exception messages should not be displayed to the user. Whilst I disagree with that, it is an argument that can easily be appeased by having a different level of verbosity depending on your build. Even then, the users of ASP.NET and SQL Server are not your typical users, and would prefer something full of verbosity and yummy information because they can track down their problems faster. Why to developers think it is okay, in this day and age, to provide the bare minimum amount of information when an error occurs? It's 2011 guys, come on.

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XNA Notes 008

- by George Clingerman

This week has been a rough one. I’ve been sick and then in some kind of slump for my afternoon coding sessions. It could be from the cold, could be I’m still tired from writing that Windows Phone 7 game development book (which is out now!) or it could just be I’m tired of winter and want some sunshine. All I know is that even while I’m stick, the XNA world keeps going along at it’s whirlwind pace. Below are the things I caught in between my coughing fits.. Time Critical XNA News: The 2011 MVP summit is almost here so pass along your feelings and thoughts so the MVPs can take them and share them with the team in person http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/76317/464136.aspx#464136 Dream Build Play - there’s no new announcement yet, but you can’t get much more to the end of February than this! http://www.dreambuildplay.com/Main/Home.aspx XNA Team: Dean Johnson from the XNA team shares an excellent way of handling Guide.IsTrialMode on WP7 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dejohn/archive/2011/02/21/calling-guide-istrialmode-on-windows-phone-7.aspx Nick Gravelyn tries a new tactic in deciding if there’s enough interest to develop a sequel or not. Don’t YOU want Pixel Man 2 to come out? http://nickgravelyn.com/pixelman2/ XNA MVPs: Andy “The ZMan” Dunn finally shares what he’s been secretly working on these past 4 months http://twitter.com/#!/The_Zman/status/40590269392887808 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg8Z0ZdYbvg&feature=youtu.be Joel Martinez lets developers around NYC know they should by signing up for Game Hack Day http://twitter.com/joelmartinez/statuses/41118590862102528 http://gamehackday.org/71fdk XNA Developers: Michael McLaughlin shares an XNA RenderTarget2D Sample http://geekswithblogs.net/mikebmcl/archive/2011/02/18/xna-rendertarget2d-sample.aspx Martin Caine starts a new series on Deferred Rendering in XNA 4.0 http://twitter.com/#!/MartinCaine/status/39735221339291648 http://martincaine.com/xna/deferred_rendering_in_xna_4_introduction ElemenyCy posts about his fun time with the IntermediateSerializer http://www.ubergamermonkey.com/xna/holy-bloated-xml-batman/ Ben Kane releases a narrated dev diary video for Project Splice. Let him know if you’d like to see more! (I know I do!) http://twitter.com/#!/benkane/status/39846959498002432 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EmziXZUo08&feature=youtu.be Jason Swearingen (of Novaleaf) posts his part 1 of Spatial Partitioning solutions http://altdevblogaday.org/2011/02/21/spatial-partitioning-part-1-survey-of-spatial-partitioning-solutions/ Brian Lawson of Dark Flow Studios shares what his been up to lately with lots of pretty screenshots and hints of announcements from Microsoft... http://www.darkflowstudios.com/entry/short-and-sweet-part-1 Luke Avery starts a new blog where he plans on making XNA tutorials for beginners (and he’s got a few started already!) http://programmingwithovery.wordpress.com/ Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): GameMarx Episode 10 http://www.gamemarx.com/video/the-show/24/ep-10-february-18-2010.aspx Minecraft clone FortressCraft coming to XBLIG http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-02-23-minecraft-clone-fortresscraft-hits-xblig ezMuze+ starts an IndieGoGo fundraiser campaign to help fund their second game and get it onto even more devices! http://www.indiegogo.com/ezmuze Gamergeddon XBLIG round up http://www.gamergeddon.com/2011/02/20/xbox-indie-game-round-up-february-20th/?utm_campaign=twitter&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitter JForce Games loses their Ego http://jforcegames.com/blog/index.php?itemid=121&catid=4 XNA Game Development: @BallerIndustry reminds all XNA developers that the Maths are important ;) http://twitter.com/#!/BallerIndustry/status/39317618280243200 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjV3XDFsjP4&feature=player_embedded#at=106 @suhinini stumbles on an older but extremely useful post on XNA Content Pipeline debugging http://twitter.com/#!/suhinini/status/39270189476352000 http://badcorporatelogo.wordpress.com/2010/10/31/xna-content-pipeline-debugging-4-0/ XNA Game Development Workshops at Singapore Universities http://innovativesingapore.com/2011/02/xna-game-development-workshops-at-singapore-universities/ Indiefreaks announces that IGF v0.3 is out with Xbox 360 support, SunBurn 2.0.12 and it’s now Open Source! http://twitter.com/#!/indiefreaks/status/39391953971982336 @liotral announces a new series on properly designing a game http://twitter.com/#!/liortal53/status/39466905081217024 http://liortalblog.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/hello-cosmos/ Indies and XNA at CodeStock 2011 http://www.gamemarx.com/news/2011/02/20/indies-and-xna-at-codestock-2011.aspx Train Frontier Express posts about XNA Content Hotloading http://trainfrontierexpress.blogspot.com/2011/02/xna-content-hotloading-overview.html Slyprid announces a new character editor in Transmute http://twitter.com/#!/slyprid/status/40146992818696192 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKhFAc78LDs&feature=youtu.be The XNA 2D from the ground up tutorial series http://xna-uk.net/blogs/darkgenesis/archive/2011/02/23/recap-the-xna-2d-from-the-ground-up-tutorial-series.aspx Sgt.Conker posts a “Clingerman” (hey that’s me!) to stay relevant http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/02/posting-a-clingerman-to-stay-relevant/

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Logging connection strings

If you some of the dynamic features of SSIS such as package configurations or property expressions then sometimes trying to work out were your connections are pointing can be a bit confusing. You will work out in the end but it can be useful to explicitly log this information so that when things go wrong you can just review the logs. You may wish to develop this idea further and encapsulate such logging into a custom task, but for now lets keep it simple and use the Script Task. The Script Task code below will raise an Information event showing the name and connection string for a connection. Imports System Imports Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime Public Class ScriptMain Public Sub Main() Dim fireAgain As Boolean ' Get the connection string, we need to know the name of the connection Dim connectionName As String = "My OLE-DB Connection" Dim connectionString As String = Dts.Connections(connectionName).ConnectionString ' Format the message and log it via an information event Dim message As String = String.Format("Connection ""{0}"" has a connection string of ""{1}"".", _ connectionName, connectionString) Dts.Events.FireInformation(0, "Information", message, Nothing, 0, fireAgain) Dts.TaskResult = Dts.Results.Success End Sub End Class Building on that example it is probably more flexible to log all connections in a package as shown in the next example. Imports System Imports Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime Public Class ScriptMain Public Sub Main() Dim fireAgain As Boolean ' Loop through all connections in the package For Each connection As ConnectionManager In Dts.Connections ' Get the connection string and log it via an information event Dim message As String = String.Format("Connection ""{0}"" has a connection string of ""{1}"".", _ connection.Name, connection.ConnectionString) Dts.Events.FireInformation(0, "Information", message, Nothing, 0, fireAgain) Next Dts.TaskResult = Dts.Results.Success End Sub End Class By using the Information event it makes it readily available in the designer, for example the Visual Studio Output window (Ctrl+Alt+O) or the package designer Execution Results tab, and also allows you to readily control the logging by choosing which events to log in the normal way. Now before somebody starts commenting that this is a security risk, I would like to highlight good practice for building connection managers. Firstly the Password property, or any other similar sensitive property is always defined as write-only, and secondly the connection string property only uses the public properties to assemble the connection string value when requested. In other words the connection string will never contain the password. I have seen a couple of cases where this is not true, but that was just bad development by third-parties, you won’t find anything like that in the box from Microsoft. Whilst writing this code it made me wish that there was a custom log entry that you could just turn on that did this for you, but alas connection managers do not even seem to support custom events. It did however remind me of a very useful event that is often overlooked and fits rather well alongside connection string logging, the Execute SQL Task’s custom ExecuteSQLExecutingQuery event. To quote the help reference Custom Messages for Logging - Provides information about the execution phases of the SQL statement. Log entries are written when the task acquires connection to the database, when the task starts to prepare the SQL statement, and after the execution of the SQL statement is completed. The log entry for the prepare phase includes the SQL statement that the task uses. It is the last part that is so useful, how often have you used an expression to derive a SQL statement and you want to log that to make sure the correct SQL is being returned? You need to turn it one, by default no custom log events are captured, but I’ll refer you to a walkthrough on setting up the logging for ExecuteSQLExecutingQuery by Jamie.

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SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles–building WCM sites

- by svdoever

One of the use cases where we use the SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles tooling is in building SharePoint Publishing (WCM) solutions for SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010 and Office365. Publishing solutions are often solutions that have one instance, the publishing site (possibly with subsites), that in most cases need to go through DTAP. If you dissect a publishing site, in most case you have the following findings: The publishing site spans a site collection The branding of the site is specified in the root site, because: Master pages live in the root site (/_catalogs/masterpage) Page layouts live in the root site (/_catalogs/masterpage) The style library lives in the root site ( /Style Library) and contains images, css, javascript, xslt transformations for your CQWP’s, … Preconfigured web parts live in the root site (/_catalogs/wp) The root site and subsites contains a document library called Pages (or your language-specific version of it) containing publishing pages using the page layouts and master pages The site collection contains content types, fields and lists When using the SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles tooling it is very easy to create, test, package and deploy the artifacts that can be uploaded to the SharePoint content database. This can be done in a fast and simple way without the need to create and deploy WSP packages. If we look at the above list of artifacts we can use SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles for master pages, page layouts, the style library, web part configurations, and initial publishing pages (these are normally made through the SharePoint web UI). Some artifacts like content types, fields and lists in the above list can NOT be handled by SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles, because they can’t be uploaded to the SharePoint content database. The good thing is that these artifacts are the artifacts that don’t change that much in the development of a SharePoint Publishing solution. There are however multiple ways to create these artifacts: Use paper script: create them manually in each of the environments based on documentation Automate the creation of the artifacts using (PowerShell) script Develop a WSP package to create these artifacts I’m not a big fan of the third option (see my blog post Thoughts on building deployable and updatable SharePoint solutions). It is a lot of work to create content types, fields and list definitions using all kind of XML files, and it is not allowed to modify these artifacts when in use. I know… SharePoint 2010 has some content type upgrade possibilities, but I think it is just too cumbersome. The first option has the problem that content types and fields get ID’s, and that these ID’s must be used by the metadata on for example page layouts. No problem for SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles, because it supports deploy-time resolving of these ID’s using PowerShell. For example consider the following metadata definition for the page layout contactpage-wcm.aspx.properties.ps1: Metadata page layout # This script must return a hashtable @{ name=value; ... } of field name-value pairs # for the content file that this script applies to. # On deployment to SharePoint, these values are written as fields in the corresponding list item (if any) # Note that fields must exist; they can be updated but not created or deleted. # This script is called right after the file is deployed to SharePoint. # You can use the script parameters and arbitrary PowerShell code to interact with SharePoint. # e.g. to calculate properties and values at deployment time. param([string]$SourcePath, [string]$RelativeUrl, $Context) @{ "ContentTypeId" = $Context.GetContentTypeID('GeneralPage'); "MasterPageDescription" = "Cloud Aviator Contact pagelayout (wcm - don't use)"; "PublishingHidden" = "1"; "PublishingAssociatedContentType" = $Context.GetAssociatedContentTypeInfo('GeneralPage') } The PowerShell functions GetContentTypeID and GetAssociatedContentTypeInfo can at deploy-time resolve the required information from the server we are deploying to. I personally prefer the second option: automate creation through PowerShell, because there are PowerShell scripts available to export content types and fields. An example project structure for a typical SharePoint WCM site looks like: Note that this project uses DualLayout. So if you build Publishing sites using SharePoint, checkout out the completely free SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles tooling and start flying!

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What is Agile Modeling and why do I need it?

What is Agile Modeling and why do I need it? Agile Modeling is an add-on to existing agile methodologies like Extreme programming (XP) and Rational Unified Process (RUP). Agile Modeling enables developers to develop a customized software development process that actually meets their current development needs and is flexible enough to adjust in the future. According to Scott Ambler, Agile Modeling consists of five core values that enable this methodology to be effective and light weight Agile Modeling Core Values: Communication Simplicity Feedback Courage Humility Communication is a key component to any successful project. Open communication between stakeholder and the development team is essential when developing new applications or maintaining legacy systems. Agile models promote communication amongst software development teams and stakeholders. Furthermore, Agile Models provide a common understanding of an application for members of a software development team allowing them to have a universal common point of reference. The use of simplicity in Agile Models enables the exploration of new ideas and concepts through the use of basic diagrams instead of investing the time in writing tens or hundreds of lines of code. Feedback in regards to application development is essential. Feedback allows a development team to confirm that the development path is on track. Agile Models allow for quick feedback from shareholders because minimal to no technical expertise is required to understand basic models. Courage is important because you need to make important decisions and be able to change direction by either discarding or refactoring your work when some of your decisions prove inadequate, according to Scott Ambler. As a member of a development team, we must admit that we do not know everything even though some of us think we do. This is where humility comes in to play. Everyone is a knowledge expert in their own specific domain. If you need help with your finances then you would consult an accountant. If you have a problem or are in need of help with a topic why would someone not consult with a subject expert? An effective approach is to assume that everyone involved with your project has equal value and therefore should be treated with respect. Agile Model Characteristics: Purposeful Understandable Sufficiently Accurate Sufficiently Consistent Sufficiently Detailed Provide Positive Value Simple as Possible Just Fulfill Basic Requirements According to Scott Ambler, Agile models are the most effective possible because the time that is invested in the model is just enough effort to complete the job. Furthermore, if a model isn’t good enough yet then additional effort can be invested to get more value out of the model. However if a model is good enough, for the current needs, or surpass the current needs, then any additional work done on the model would be a waste. It is important to remember that good enough is in the eye of the beholder, so this can be tough. In order for Agile Models to work effectively Active Stakeholder need to participation in the modeling process. Finally it is also very important to model with others, this allows for additionally input ensuring that all the shareholders needs are reflected in the models. How can Agile Models be incorporated in to our projects? Agile Models can be incorporated in to our project during the requirement gathering and design phases. As requirements are gathered the models should be updated to incorporate the new project details as they are defined and updated. Additionally, the Agile Models created during the requirement phase can be the bases for the models created during the design phase. It is important to only add to the model when the changes fit within the agile model characteristics and they do not over complicate the design.

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Silverlight Cream for March 26, 2010 -- #821

- by Dave Campbell

In this Issue: Max Paulousky, Christian Schormann, John Papa, Phani Raj, David Anson(-2-, -3-), Brad Abrams(-2-), and Jeff Wilcox(-2-, -3-). Shoutouts: Jeff Wilcox posted his material from mix and some preview TestFramework bits: Unit Testing Silverlight & Windows Phone Applications – talk now online At MIX10, Jeff Wilcox demo'd an app called "Peppermint"... here's the bleeding edge demo: “Peppermint” MIX demo sources Erik Mork and Co. have put out their weekly This Week In Silverlight 3.25.2010 Brad Abrams has all his materials posted for his MIX10 session Mix2010: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Microsoft Silverlight... including play-by-play of the demo and all source. Do you use Rooler? Well you should! Watch a video Pete Brown did with Pete Blois on Expression Blend, Windows Phone, Rooler Interested in Silverlight and XNA for WP7? Me too! Michael Klucher has a post outlining the two: Silverlight and XNA Framework Game Development and Compatibility From SilverlightCream.com: Modularity in Silverlight Applications - An Issue With ModuleInitializeException Max Paulousky has a truly ugly error trace listed by way of not having a reference listed, and the obvious simple solution. Next time he'll talk about the difficult situations. Using SketchFlow to Prototype for Windows Phone Christian Schormann has a tutorial up on using Expression Blend to develop for WP7 ... who better than Christian for that task?? Silverlight TV 18: WCF RIA Services Validation John Papa held forth with Nikhil Kothari on WCF RIA Services and validation just prior to MIX10, and was posted yesterday. Building SL3 applications using OData client Library with Vs 2010 RC Phani Raj walks through building an OData consumer in SL3, the first problem you're going to hit, and the easy solution to it. Tip: When creating a DependencyProperty, follow the handy convention of "wrapper+register+static+virtual" David Anson has a couple more of his 'Tips' up... this first is about Dependency Properties again... having a good foundation for all your Dependency Properties is a great way to avoid problems. Tip: Do not assign DependencyProperty values in a constructor; it prevents users from overriding them In the next post, David Anson talks about not assigning Dependency Property values in a constructor and gives one of the two ways to get around doing so. Tip: Set DependencyProperty default values in a class's default style if it's more convenient In his latest post, David Anson gives the second way to avoid setting a Dependency Property value in the constructor. Silverlight 4 + RIA Services - Ready for Business: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Brad Abrams Abrams adds SEO to the tutorial series he's doing. He begins with his PDC09 session material on the subject and then takes off on a great detailed tutorial all with source. Silverlight 4 + RIA Services - Ready for Business: Localizing Business Application Brad Abrams then discusses localization and Silverlight in another detailed tutorial with all code included. Silverlight Toolkit and the Windows Phone: WrapPanel, and a few others Jeff Wilcox has a few WP7 posts I'm going to push today. This first is from earlier this week and is about using the Toolkit in WP7 and better than that, he includes the bits you need if all you want is the WrapPanel Data binding user settings in Windows Phone applications In the next one from yesterday, Jeff Wilcox demonstrates saving some user info in Isolated Storage to improve the user experience, and shares all the necessary plumbing files, and other external links as well. Displaying 2D QR barcodes in Windows Phone applications In a post from today, Jeff Wilcox ported his Silverlight 2D QR Barcode app from last year into WP7 ... just very cool... get the source and display your Microsoft Tag. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight Silverlight 3 Silverlight 4 Windows Phone MIX10

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Creating typed WSDL’s for generic WCF services of the ESB Toolkit

- by charlie.mott

source: http://geekswithblogs.net/charliemott Question How do you make it easy for client systems to consume the generic WCF services exposed by the ESB Toolkit using messages that conform to agreed schemas\contracts? Usually the developer of a system consuming a web service adds a service reference using a WSDL. However, the WSDL’s for the generic services exposed by the ESB Toolkit do not make it easy to develop clients that conform to agreed schemas\contracts. Recommendation Take a copy of the generic WSDL’s and modify it to use the proper contracts. This is very easy. It will work with the generic on ramps so long as the <part>?</part> wrapping is removed from the WCF adapter configuration in the BizTalk receive locations. Attempting to create a WSDL where the input and output messages are sent/returned with a <part> wrapper is a nightmare. I have not managed it. Consequences I can only see the following consequences of removing the <part> wrapper: ESB Test Client – I needed to modify the out-of-the-box ESB Test Client source code to make it send non-wrapped messages. Flat file formatted messages – the endpoint will no longer support flat file message formats. However, even if you needed to support this integration pattern through WCF, you would most-likely want to create a separate receive location anyway with its’ own independently configured XML disassembler pipeline component. Instructions These steps show how to implement a request-response implementation of this. WCF Receive Locations In BizTalk, for the WCF receive location for the ESB on-ramp, set the adapter Message settings\bindings to “UseBodyPath”: Inbound BizTalk message body = Body Outbound WCF message body = Body Create a WSDL’s for each supported integration use-case Save a copy of the WSDL for the WCF generic receive location above that you intend the client system to use. Give it a name that mirrors the interface agreement (e.g. Esb_SuppliersSearchCommand_wsHttpBinding.wsdl). Add any xsd schemas files imported below to this same folder. Edit the WSDL to import schemas For example, this: <xsd:schema targetNamespace=http://microsoft.practices.esb/Imports /> … would become something like: <xsd:schema targetNamespace="http://microsoft.practices.esb/Imports"> <xsd:import schemaLocation="SupplierSearchCommand_V1.xsd" namespace="http://schemas.acme.co.uk/suppliersearchcommand/1.0"/> <xsd:import schemaLocation="SuppliersDocument_V1.xsd" namespace="http://schemas.acme.co.uk/suppliersdocument/1.0"/> <xsd:import schemaLocation="Types\Supplier_V1.xsd" namespace="http://schemas.acme.co.uk/types/supplier/1.0"/> <xsd:import schemaLocation="GovTalk\bs7666-v2-0.xsd" namespace="http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/people/bs7666"/> <xsd:import schemaLocation="GovTalk\CommonSimpleTypes-v1-3.xsd" namespace="http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/core"/> <xsd:import schemaLocation="GovTalk\AddressTypes-v2-0.xsd" namespace="http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/people/AddressAndPersonalDetails"/> </xsd:schema> Modify the Input and Output message For example, this: <wsdl:message name="ProcessRequestResponse_SubmitRequestResponse_InputMessage"> <wsdl:part name="part" type="xsd:anyType"/> </wsdl:message> <wsdl:message name="ProcessRequestResponse_SubmitRequestResponse_OutputMessage"> <wsdl:part name="part" type="xsd:anyType"/> </wsdl:message> … would become something like: <wsdl:message name="ProcessRequestResponse_SubmitRequestResponse_InputMessage"> <wsdl:part name="part" element="ssc:SupplierSearchEvent" xmlns:ssc="http://schemas.acme.co.uk/suppliersearchcommand/1.0" /> </wsdl:message> <wsdl:message name="ProcessRequestResponse_SubmitRequestResponse_OutputMessage"> <wsdl:part name="part" element="sd:SuppliersDocument" xmlns:sd="http://schemas.acme.co.uk/suppliersdocument/1.0"/> </wsdl:message> This WSDL can now be added as a service reference in client solutions.

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Customize Team Build 2010 – Part 12: How to debug my custom activities

In the series the following parts have been published Part 1: Introduction Part 2: Add arguments and variables Part 3: Use more complex arguments Part 4: Create your own activity Part 5: Increase AssemblyVersion Part 6: Use custom type for an argument Part 7: How is the custom assembly found Part 8: Send information to the build log Part 9: Impersonate activities (run under other credentials) Part 10: Include Version Number in the Build Number Part 11: Speed up opening my build process template Part 12: How to debug my custom activities Part 13: Get control over the Build Output Part 14: Execute a PowerShell script Part 15: Fail a build based on the exit code of a console application Developers are “spoilt” persons who expect to be able to have easy debugging experiences for every technique they work with. So they also expect it when developing custom activities for the build process template. This post describes how you can debug your custom activities without having to develop on the build server itself. Remote debugging prerequisites The prerequisite for these steps are to install the Microsoft Visual Studio Remote Debugging Monitor. You can find information how to install this at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bt727f1t.aspx. I chose for the option to run the remote debugger on the build server from a file share. Debugging symbols prerequisites To be able to start the debugging, you need to have the pdb files on the buildserver together with the assembly. The pdb must have been build with Full Debug Info. Steps In my setup I have a development machine and a build server. To setup the remote debugging, I performed the following steps Locate on your development machine the folder C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\Remote Debugger Create a share for the Remote Debugger folder. Make sure that the share (and the folder) has the correct permissions so the user on the build server has access to the share. On the build server go to the shared “Remote Debugger” folder Start msvsmon.exe which is located in the folder that represents the platform of the build server. This will open a winform application like Go back to your development machine and open the BuildProcess solution. Start the Attach to process command (Ctrl+Alt+P) Type in the Qualifier the name of the build server. In my case the user account that has started the msvsmon is another user then the user on my development machine. In that case you have to type the qualifier in the format that is shown in the Remote Debugging Monitor (in my case LOCAL\Administrator@TFSLAB) and confirm it by pressing <Enter> Since the build service is running with other credentials, check the option “Show processes from all users”. Now the Attach to process dialog shows the TFSBuildServiceHost process Set the breakpoint in the activity you want to debug and kick of a build. Be aware that when you attach to the TFSBuildServiceHost that you debug every single build that is run by this windows service, so make sure you don’t debug the build server that is in production! You can download the full solution at BuildProcess.zip. It will include the sources of every part and will continue to evolve.

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Having Fun with Coding4Fun’s Windows Phone 7 Controls

- by mbcrump

I’m a big believer in having a hobby project as you can probably tell from the first sentence in my “personal webpage using Silverlight” article. One of my current hobby projects is to re-do my current WP7 application in the marketplace. I knew up front that I needed a “Loading” animation and a better “About” box. After starting to develop my own, I noticed a great set of WP7 controls by Coding4Fun and decided to use them in my new application. Before I go any further they are FREE and Open-Source. It is really simple to get started, just go to the CodePlex site and click the download button. After you have downloaded it then extract it to a Folder and you will have 4 DLL files. They are listed below: Now create a Windows Phone 7 Project and add references to the DLL’s by right clicking on the References folder and clicking “Add references”. After adding the references, we can get started. I needed a ProgressOverlay animation or “Loading Screen” while my RSS feed is downloading. Basically, you just need to add the following namespace to whatever page you want the control on: xmlns:Controls="clr-namespace:Coding4Fun.Phone.Controls;assembly=Coding4Fun.Phone.Controls" And then the code inside your Grid or wherever you want the Loading screen placed. <Controls:ProgressOverlay Name="progressOverlay" > <Controls:ProgressOverlay.Content> <TextBlock>Loading</TextBlock> </Controls:ProgressOverlay.Content> </Controls:ProgressOverlay> Bam, you now have a great looking loading screen. Of course inside the ProgressOverlay, you may want to add a Visibility property to turn it off after your data loads if you are using MVVM or similar pattern. Next up, I needed a nice clean “About Box” that looks good but is also functional. Meaning, if they click on my twitter name, web or email to launch the appropriate task. Again, this is only a few lines of code: var p = new AboutPrompt(); p.VersionNumber = "2.0"; p.Show("Michael Crump", "@mbcrump", "[email protected]", @"http://michaelcrump.net"); A nice clean “About” box with just a few lines of code! I’m all for code that I don’t have to write. It also comes with a pretty sweet InputPrompt for grabbing info from a user: The code for this is also very simple: InputPrompt input = new InputPrompt(); input.Completed += (s, e) => { MessageBox.Show(e.Result.ToString()); }; input.Title = "Input Box"; input.Message = "What does a \"Developer Large\" T-Shirt Mean? "; input.Show(); I also enjoyed the PhoneHelper that allows you to get data out of the WMAppManifest File very easy. So for example if I wanted the Version info from the WMAppManifest file. I could write one line and get it. PhoneHelper.GetAppAttribute("Version") Of course you would want to make sure you add the following using statement: using Coding4Fun.Phone.Controls.Data; You can’t have all these cool controls without a great set of Converters. The included BooleanToVisibility converter will convert a Boolean to and from a Visibility value. This is excellent when using something like a CheckBox to display a TextBox when its checked. See the example below: The code is below: <phone:PhoneApplicationPage.Resources> <Converters:BooleanToVisibilityConverter x:Key="BooleanToVisibilityConverter"/> </phone:PhoneApplicationPage.Resources> <CheckBox x:Name="checkBox"/> <TextBlock Text="Display Text" Visibility="{Binding ElementName=checkBox, Path=IsChecked, Converter={StaticResource BooleanToVisibilityConverter} }"/> That’s not all the goodies included. They also provide a RoundedButton, TimePicker and several other converters. The documentation is great and I would recommend you give them a shot if you need any of this functionality. Btw, thank Brian Peek for his awesome work on Coding4Fun! Subscribe to my feed

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Collaborate10 – THEconference

- by jean-pierre.dijcks

After spending a few days in Mandalay Bay's THEHotel, I guess I now call everything THE... Seriously, they even tag their toilet paper with THEtp... I guess the brand builders in Vegas thought that once you are on to something you keep on doing it, and granted it is a nice hotel with nice rooms. THEanalytics Most of my collab10 experience was in a room called Reef C, where the BIWA bootcamp was held. Two solid days of BI, Warehousing and Analytics organized by the BIWA SIG at IOUG. Didn't get to see all sessions, but what struck me was the high interest in Analytics. Marty Gubar's OLAP session was full and he did some very nice things with the OLAP option. The cool bit was that he actually gets all the advanced calculations in OLAP to show up in OBI EE without any effort. It was nice to see that the idea from OWB where you generate an RPD is now also in AWM. I think it makes life so much simpler to generate these RPD's from your data model. Even if the end RPD needs some tweaking, it is all a lot less effort to get something going. You can see this stuff for yourself in this demo (click here). OBI EE uses just SQL to get to the calculations, and so, if you prefer APEX, you can build you application there and get the same nice calculations in an APEX application. Marty also showed the Simba MDX driver used with Excel. I guess we should call that THEcoolone... and it is very slick and wonderfully useful for all of you who actually know Excel. The nice thing is that you leverage pure Excel for all operations (no plug-ins). That means no new tools to learn, no new controls, all just pure Excel. THEdatabasemachine Got some very good questions in my "what makes Exadata fast" session and overall, the interest in Exadata is overwhelming. One of the things that I did try to do in my session is to get people to think in new patterns rather than in patterns based on Oracle 9i running on some random hardware configuration. We talked a little bit about the often over-indexing and how everyone has to unlearn all of that on Exadata. The main thing however is that everyone needs to get used to the shear size of some of the components in a Database machine V2. 5TB of flash cache is a lot of very fast data storage, half a TB of memory gets quite interesting as well. So what I did there was really focus on some of the content in these earlier posts on Upward ILM and In-Memory processing. In short, I do believe the these newer media point out a trend. In-memory and other fast media will get cheaper and will see more use. Some of that we do automatically by adding new functionality, but in some cases I think the end user of the system needs to start thinking about how to leverage all this new hardware. I think most people got very excited about these new capabilities and opportunities. THEcoolkids One of the cool things about the BIWA track was the hand-on track. Very cool to see big crowds for both OLAP and OWB hands-on. Also quite nice to see that the folks at RittmanMead spent so much time on preparing for that session. While all of them put down cool stuff, none was more cool that seeing Data Mining on an Apple iPAD... it all just looks great on an iPAD! Very disappointing to see that Mark Rittman still wasn't showing OWB on his iPAD ;-) THEend All in all this was a great set of sessions in the BIWA track. Lots of value to our guests (we hope) and we hope they all come again next year!

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SQL SERVER – What is SSRS and Why SSRS is asked for in many Job Opening?

- by Pinal Dave

This example is from the Beginning SSRS by Kathi Kellenberger. Supporting files are available with a free download from the www.Joes2Pros.com web site. This will be a 5 day blog post in getting started with SSRS. Today will show the importance of SSRS in the business. Why is SSRS asked for in so many job openings? If you talk to an SSRS expert it’s very clear to them exactly why companies really need this invention and how it saves time and adds business value. You don’t have to be an SSRS expert to know its value or to start using it. For example you don’t have to be an airline pilot to know the usefulness of modern transportation. Even the people who don’t know how to run SSRS but need the reports can tell you why that is needed. This blog post will go into why SSRS is an important invention by showing how it improves the usage of information in your company. Before SSRS there has always been a need for a company to benefit from the use of its own information. Excel spreadsheets have been a popular way to do this for a long time. With SSRS you can still use this solution and gain many other options too. A friend of mine told me a story about doing database work in the 90s for a major company and how he wished SSRS was available back then. The Vice President of the marketing channel would often come to him just before an important meeting with the board of directors. He often needed to show how certain product sales were performing over time. All this information was in the database so it was my friend’s job to get the information out and organized into a medium the VP could use. This medium was usually Excel. The VP often had meetings all over the world where he showcased this Excel report. The solution to get the VP to him anywhere he was in the world was an Excel file attached to an e-mail. This worked pretty well but with some drawbacks. One time my friend sent the wrong file in the e-mail. A few minutes later my friend realized his mistake and sent another frantic e-mail to VP. This one was saying to ignore the last e-mail and use this newer one. Would the VP see the correct e-mail in time? If SSRS had been available, my friend could have created a solution that let the VP run the report any time he wished. The report could have been published to the company intranet where the VP could run it from any of the offices he happened to be traveling to that month. There is a fair amount of work up front to develop and publish the report, but once that work is completed, the report can be reused as many times as needed. My friend could even be on vacation for the first day of the monthly and the VP can get his real-time report. Not only could the report show the most recent data, the VP could choose to view reports of previous months with just a few clicks. The deployed SSRS is user friendly, and can also be configured to protect reports from being run by the wrong people. Tomorrow’s Post Tomorrow’s blog post will show how to know if you already have SSRS installed. If you want to learn SSRS in easy to simple words – I strongly recommend you to get Beginning SSRS book from Joes 2 Pros. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Reporting Services, SSRS

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Windows Azure PowerShell for Node.js

- by shiju

The Windows Azure PowerShell for Node.js is a command-line tool that allows the Node developers to build and deploy Node.js apps in Windows Azure using Windows PowerShell cmdlets. Using Windows Azure PowerShell for Node.js, you can develop, test, deploy and manage Node based hosted service in Windows Azure. For getting the PowerShell for Node.js, click All Programs, Windows Azure SDK Node.js and run Windows Azure PowerShell for Node.js, as Administrator. The followings are the few PowerShell cmdlets that lets you to work with Node.js apps in Windows Azure Create New Hosted Service New-AzureService <HostedServiceName> The below cmdlet will created a Windows Aazure hosted service named NodeOnAzure in the folder C:\nodejs and this will also create ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg, ServiceConfiguration.Local.cscfg and ServiceDefinition.csdef and deploymentSettings.json files for the hosted service. PS C:\nodejs> New-AzureService NodeOnAzure The below picture shows the files after creating the hosted service Create Web Role Add-AzureNodeWebRole <RoleName> The following cmdlet will create a hosted service named MyNodeApp along with web.config file. PS C:\nodejs\NodeOnAzure> Add-AzureNodeWebRole MyNodeApp The below picture shows the files after creating the web role app. Install Node Module npm install <NodeModule> The following command will install Node Module Express onto your web role app. PS C:\nodejs\NodeOnAzure\MyNodeApp> npm install Express Run Windows Azure Apps Locally in the Emulator Start-AzureEmulator -launch The following cmdlet will create a local package and run Windows Azure app locally in the emulator PS C:\nodejs\NodeOnAzure\MyNodeApp> Start-AzureEmulator -launch Stop Windows Azure Emulator Stop-AzureEmulator The following cmdlet will stop your Windows Azure in the emulator. PS C:\nodejs\NodeOnAzure\MyNodeApp> Stop-AzureEmulator Download Windows Azure Publishing Settings Get-AzurePublishSettings The following cmdlet will redirect to Windows Azure portal where we can download Windows Azure publish settings PS C:\nodejs\NodeOnAzure\MyNodeApp> Get-AzurePublishSettings Import Windows Azure Publishing Settings Import-AzurePublishSettings <Location of .publishSettings file> The following cmdlet will import the publish settings file from the location c:\nodejs PS C:\nodejs\NodeOnAzure\MyNodeApp> Import-AzurePublishSettings c:\nodejs\shijuvar.publishSettings Publish Apps to Windows Azure Publish-AzureService –name <Name> –location <Location of Data centre> The following cmdlet will publish the app to Windows Azure with name “NodeOnAzure” in the location Southeast Asia. Please keep in mind that the service name should be unique. PS C:\nodejs\NodeOnAzure\MyNodeApp> Publish-AzureService –name NodeonAzure –location "Southeast Asia” –launch Stop Windows Azure Service Stop-AzureService The following cmdlet will stop your service which you have deployed previously. PS C:\nodejs\NodeOnAzure\MyNodeApp> Stop-AzureService Remove Windows Azure Service Remove-AzureService The following cmdlet will remove your service from Windows Azure. PS C:\nodejs\NodeOnAzure\MyNodeApp> Remove-AzureService Quick Summary for PowerShell cmdlets Create a new Hosted Service New-AzureService <HostedServiceName> Create a Web Role Add-AzureNodeWebRole <RoleName> Install Node Module npm install <NodeModule> Running Windows Azure Apps Locally in Emulator Start-AzureEmulator -launch Stop Windows Azure Emulator Stop-AzureEmulator Download Windows Azure Publishing Settings Get-AzurePublishSettings Import Windows Azure Publishing Settings Import-AzurePublishSettings <Location of .publishSettings file> Publish Apps to Windows Azure Publish-AzureService –name <Name> –location <Location of Data centre> Stop Windows Azure Service Stop-AzureService Remove Windows Azure Service Remove-AzureService

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Redirect all access requests to a domain and subdomain(s) except from specific IP address? [closed]

- by Christopher

This is a self-answered question... After much wrangling I found the magic combination of mod_rewrite rules so I'm posting here. My scenario is that I have two domains - domain1.com and domain2.com - both of which are currently serving identical content (by way of a global 301 redirect from domain1 to domain2). Domain1 was then chosen to be repurposed to be a 'portal' domain - with a corporate CMS-based site leading off from the front page, and the existing 'retail' domain (domain2) left to serve the main web site. In addition, a staging subdomain was created on domain1 in order to prepare the new corporate site without impinging on the root domain's existing operation. I contemplated just rewriting all requests to domain2 and setting up the new corporate site 'behind the scenes' without using a staging domain, but I usually use subdomains when setting up new sites. Finally, I required access to the 'actual' contents of the domains and subdomains - i.e., to not be redirected like all other visitors - in order that I can develop the new site and test it in the staging environment on the live server, as I'm not using a separate development webserver in this case. I also have another test subdomain on domain1 which needed to be preserved. The way I eventually set it up was as follows: (10.2.2.1 would be my home WAN IP) .htaccess in root of domain1 RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^10\.2\.2\.1 RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^staging.domain1.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^staging2.domain1.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain2.com/$1 [R=301] .htaccess in staging subdomain on domain1: RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^10\.2\.2\.1 RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^staging.revolver.coop$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain2.com/$1 [R=301,L] The multiple .htaccess files and multiple rulesets require more processing overhead and longer iteration as the visitor is potentially redirected twice, however I find it to be a more granular method of control as I can selectively allow more than one IP address access to individual staging subdomain(s) without automatically granting them access to everything else. It also keeps the rulesets fairly simple and easy to read. (or re-interpret, because I'm always forgetting how I put rules together!) If anybody can suggest a more efficient way of merging all these rules and conditions into just one main ruleset in the root of domain1, please post! I'm always keen to learn, this post is more my attempt to preserve this information for those who are looking to redirect entire domains for all visitors except themselves (for design/testing purposes) and not just denying specific file access for maintenance mode (there are many good examples of simple mod_rewrite rules for 'maintenance mode' style operation easily findable via Google). You can also extend the IP address detection - firstly by using wildcards ^10\.2\.2\..*: the last octet's \..* denotes the usual "." and then "zero or more arbitrary characters", signified by the .* - so you can specify specific ranges of IPs in a subnet or entire subnets if you wish. You can also use square brackets: ^10\.2\.[1-255]\.[120-140]; ^10\.2\.[1-9]?[0-9]\.; ^10\.2\.1[0-1][0-9]\. etc. The third way, if you wish to specify multiple discrete IP addresses, is to bracket them in the style of ^(1.1.1.1|2.2.2.2|3.3.3.3)$, and you can of course use square brackets to substitute octets or single digits again. NB: if you're using individual RewriteCond lines to specify multiple IPs / ranges, make sure to put [OR] at the end of each one otherwise mod_rewrite will interpret as "if IP address matches 1.1.1.1 AND if IP address matches 2.2.2.2... which is of course impossible! However as far as I'm aware this isn't necessary if you're using the ! negator to specify "and is not...". Kudos also to SE: this older question also came in useful when I was verifying my own knowledge prior to my futzing around with code. This page was helpful, as were the various other links posted below (can't hyperlink them all due to spam protection... other regex checkers are available). The AddedBytes cheat sheet's useful to pin up on your wall. Other referenced URLs: internetofficer.com/seo-tool/regex-tester/ fantomaster.com/faarticles/rewritingurls.txt internetofficer.com/seo-tool/regex-tester/ addedbytes.com/cheat-sheets/mod_rewrite-cheat-sheet/

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Beyond Chatting: What ‘Social’ Means for CRM

- by Divya Malik

A guest post by Steve Diamond, Senior Director, Outbound Product Management, Oracle In a recent post on the Oracle Applications blog, my colleague Steve Boese asked three questions related to the widespread popularity and incredibly rapid growth of Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. Steve then addressed the many applications for collaborative solutions in the area of Human Capital Management. So, in turning to a conversation about Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Sales Force Automation (SFA), let me ask you one simple question. How many sales people, particularly at business-to-business companies, consistently meet or beat their quotas in their roles by working alone, with no collaboration among fellow sales people, sales executives, employees in product groups, in service, in Legal, third-party partners, etc.? Hello? Is anybody out there? What’s that cricket noise I hear? That’s correct. Nobody! When it comes to Sales, introverts arguably have a distinct disadvantage. While it’s certainly a truism that “success” in most professional endeavors requires working with people, it’s a mandatory success factor in Sales. This fact became abundantly clear to me one early morning in the late 1990s when I joined the former Hyperion Solutions (now part of Oracle) and attended a Sales Award Ceremony. The Head of Sales at that time gave out dozens of awards – none of them to individuals and all of them to TEAMS of individuals. That’s how it works in Sales. Your colleagues help provide you with product intelligence and competitive intelligence. They help you build the best presentations, pitches, and proposals. They help you develop the most killer RFPs. They align you with the best product people to ensure you’re matching the best products for the opportunity and join you in critical meetings. They help knock the socks of your prospects in “bake off” demo’s. They bring in the best partners to either add complementary products to your opportunity or help you implement a solution. They work with you as a collective team. And so how is all this collaboration STILL typically done today? Through email. And yet we all silently or not so silently grimace about email. It’s relatively siloed. It’s painful to search. It’s difficult to align by topic. And it’s nearly impossible to re-trace meaningful and helpful conversations that occurred among a group or a team at some point in history. This is where social networking for Sales comes into play. It’s about PURPOSEFUL social networking versus chattering. What is purposeful social networking? It’s collaboration that’s built around opportunities, accounts, and contacts. It’s collaboration that delivers valuable context – on the target company, and on key competitors – just to name two examples. It’s collaboration that can scale to provide coaching for larger numbers of sales representatives, both for general purposes, and as we’ve largely discussed here, for specific ‘deals.’ And it’s collaboration that allows a team of people to collectively edit and iterate on a document like an RFP or a soon-to-be killer presentation that is maintained in a central repository, with no time wasted searching for it or worrying about version control. But lest we get carried away, let’s remember that collaboration “happens” among sales people whether there is specialized software to support it or not. The human practice of sales has not changed much in the last 80 to 90 years. Collaboration has been a mainstay during this entire time. But what social networking in general, and Oracle Social Networking in particular delivers, is the opportunity for sales teams to dramatically increase their effectiveness and efficiency – to identify and close more high quality and lucrative opportunities more quickly. For most sales organizations, this is how the game is won. To learn more please visit Oracle Social Network and Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management on oracle.com

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SQL SERVER – Top 10 “Ease of Use” Features of expressor Studio

- by pinaldave

expressor Studio is new data integration platform that is being marketed as the most easy to use tool of its kind. But “easy to use” can be a relative term – an expert can find a very complex system easy, but a beginner might be stumped. A recent article online discussed exactly what makes expressor Studio so easy use, and here is my view on this subject. Simple Installation There is one pop-up for one .exe file, and nothing more. You can’t get much simpler than this. It is also in the familiar Windows design, so there should be no surprises. No 3rd party software dependency Have you ever tried to download software, only to be slowed down by the need to download a compatible system to run the program, and another to read the user manual, and so on? expressor Studio was designed specifically to avoid this problem. Microsoft Office Like Ribbon Bar and Menus As mentioned before, everything is in the familiar Windows design, from the pop up windows to the tool bars and menus. There should be no learning curve for using this program, or even simply trying to navigate around a new system. General Development Design Interface This software has been designed to be simple and straightforward. Projects can be arranged in a simple “tree” design, that is totally collapsible and can easy be added to or “trimmed” with a click of a button. It was meant to be logical and easy to follow. Integrated Contextual Help This is a fancy way of saying that you can practically yell “help!” if you do get stuck on something. Solving a problem is as simple as highlighting and hitting F1 for contextual help. Visual Indicators and Messages Wouldn’t it be nice to know exactly where something has gone wrong before trying to complete a project. expressor Studio has a built in system to catch mistakes and highlight them in a bright color, flash a warning message, and even disable functions before you can continue – and possibly lose hours of work. Property Inputs and Selectors Every operator will have a list of requirements that need to be filled in. But don’t worry; you won’t have to make stuff up to fill in the boxes. Each one will have a drop-down menu with options to choose from – but not too many as to be confusing. Connection Wizards Configuring connections can be the hardest part of a project. But not with the expressor Studioconnection wizard. A familiar, Windows-style menu will walk you through connections so quickly you’ll forget what trouble it used to be. Templates With large, complex projects, a majority of your time is often spent simply setting up the files and inputting data. But expressor Studio allows you to create one file and then save it as a template, saving you hours of boring data input. Extension Manager Let’s say that you need a little more functionality or some new features on your program. A lot of software requires you to download complex plug-ins that need to be decompressed and installed. However, expressor Studio has extended its system to an Extension Manager, which allows for quick and easy installation of the functionality you need, without the need to download and decompress. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, T SQL, Technology

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Big Data: Size isn’t everything

- by Simon Elliston Ball

Big Data has a big problem; it’s the word “Big”. These days, a quick Google search will uncover terabytes of negative opinion about the futility of relying on huge volumes of data to produce magical, meaningful insight. There are also many clichéd but correct assertions about the difficulties of correlation versus causation, in massive data sets. In reading some of these pieces, I begin to understand how climatologists must feel when people complain ironically about “global warming” during snowfall. Big Data has a name problem. There is a lot more to it than size. Shape, Speed, and…err…Veracity are also key elements (now I understand why Gartner and the gang went with V’s instead of S’s). The need to handle data of different shapes (Variety) is not new. Data developers have always had to mold strange-shaped data into our reporting systems, integrating with semi-structured sources, and even straying into full-text searching. However, what we lacked was an easy way to add semi-structured and unstructured data to our arsenal. New “Big Data” tools such as MongoDB, and other NoSQL (Not Only SQL) databases, or a graph database like Neo4J, fill this gap. Still, to many, they simply introduce noise to the clean signal that is their sensibly normalized data structures. What about speed (Velocity)? It’s not just high frequency trading that generates data faster than a single system can handle. Many other applications need to make trade-offs that traditional databases won’t, in order to cope with high data insert speeds, or to extract quickly the required information from data streams. Unfortunately, many people equate Big Data with the Hadoop platform, whose batch driven queries and job processing queues have little to do with “velocity”. StreamInsight, Esper and Tibco BusinessEvents are examples of Big Data tools designed to handle high-velocity data streams. Again, the name doesn’t do the discipline of Big Data any favors. Ultimately, though, does analyzing fast moving data produce insights as useful as the ones we get through a more considered approach, enabled by traditional BI? Finally, we have Veracity and Value. In many ways, these additions to the classic Volume, Velocity and Variety trio acknowledge the criticism that without high-quality data and genuinely valuable outputs then data, big or otherwise, is worthless. As a discipline, Big Data has recognized this, and data quality and cleaning tools are starting to appear to support it. Rather than simply decrying the irrelevance of Volume, we need as a profession to focus how to improve Veracity and Value. Perhaps we should just declare the ‘Big’ silent, embrace these new data tools and help develop better practices for their use, just as we did the good old RDBMS? What does Big Data mean to you? Which V gives your business the most pain, or the most value? Do you see these new tools as a useful addition to the BI toolbox, or are they just enabling a dangerous trend to find ghosts in the noise?

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Do We Indeed Have a Future? George Takei on Star Wars.

- by Bil Simser

George Takei (rhymes with Okay), probably best known for playing Hikaru Sulu on the original Star Trek, has always had deep concerns for the present and the future. Whether on Earth or among the stars, he has the welfare of humanity very much at heart. I was digging through my old copies of Famous Monsters of Filmland, a great publication on monster and films that I grew up with, and came across this. This was his reaction to STAR WARS from issue 139 of Famous Monsters of Filmland and was written June 6, 1977. It is reprinted here without permission but I hope since the message is still valid to this day and has never been reprinted anywhere, nobody will mind me sharing it. STAR WARS is the most pre-posterously diverting galactic escape and at the same time the most hideously credible portent of the future yet.While I thrilled to the exploits that reminded me of the heroics of Errol Flynn as Robin Hood, Burt Lancaster as the Crimson Pirate and Buster Crabbe as Flash Gordon, I was at the same time aghast at the phantasmagoric violence technology can place at our disposal. STAR WARS raised in my mind the question - do we indeed have a future?It seems to me what George Lucas has done is to masterfully guide us on a journey through space and time and bring us back face to face with today's reality. STAR WARS is more than science fiction, I think it is science fictitious reality.Just yesterday, June 7, 1977, I read that the United States will embark on the production of a neutron bomb - a bomb that will kill people on a gigantic scale but will not destroy buildings. A few days before that, I read that the Pentagon is fearful that the Soviets may have developed a warhead that could neutralize ours that have a capacity for that irrational concept overkill to the nth power. Already, it seems we have the technology to realize the awesome special effects simulations that we saw in the film.The political scene of STAR WARS is that of government by force and power, of revolutions based on some unfathomable grievance, survival through a combination of cunning and luck and success by the harnessing of technology - a picture not very much at variance from the political headlines that we read today.And most of all, look at the people; both the heroes in the film and the reaction of the audience. First, the heroes; Luke Skywalker is a pretty but easily led youth. Without any real philosophy to guide him, he easily falls under the influence of a mystical old man believed previously to be an eccentric hermit. Recognize a 1960's hippie or a 1970's moonie? Han Solo has a philosophy coupled with courage and skill. His philosophy is money. His proficiency comes for a price - the highest. Solo is a thoroughly avaricious mercenary. And the Princess, a decisive, strong, self-confident and chilly woman. The audience cheered when she wielded a gun. In all three, I missed qualities that could be called humane - love, kindness, yes, I missed sensuality. I also missed a sense of ideals and faith. In this regard the machines seemed more human. They demonstrated real affection for each other and an occasional poutiness. They exhibited a sense of fidelity and constancy. The machines were humanized and the humans conversely seemed mechanical.As a member of the audience, I was swept up by the sheer romantic escapsim of it all. The deering-dos, the rope swing escape across the pit, the ray gun battles and especially the swash buckle with the ray swords. Great fun!But I just hope that we weren't too intoxicated by the escapism to be able to focus on the recognizable. I hope the beauty of the effects didn't narcotize our sensitivity to violence. I hope the people see through the fantastically well done futuristic mirrors to the disquieting reflection of our own society. I hope they enjoy STAR WARS without being "purely entertained".

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How to make software development decisions based on facts

- by Laila

We love to hear stories about the many and varied ways our customers use the tools that we develop, but in our earnest search for stories and feedback, we'd rather forgotten that some of our keenest users are fellow RedGaters, in the same building. It was almost by chance that we discovered how the SQL Source Control team were using SmartAssembly. As it happens, there is a separate account (here on Simple-Talk) of how SmartAssembly was used to support the Early Access program; by providing answers to specific questions about how the SQL Source Control product was used. But what really got us all grinning was how valuable the SQL Source Control team found the reports that SmartAssembly was quickly and painlessly providing. So gather round, my friends, and I'll tell you the Tale Of The Framework Upgrade . <strange mirage effect to denote a flashback. A subtle background string of music starts playing in minor key> Kevin and his team were undecided. They weren't sure whether they could move their software product from .NET 2 to .NET 3.5 , let alone to .NET 4. You see, they were faced with having to guess what version of .NET was already installed on the average user's machine, which I'm sure you'll agree is no easy task. Upgrading their code to .NET 3.5 might put a barrier to people trying the tool, which was the last thing Kevin wanted: "what if our users have to download X, Y, and Z before being able to open the application?" he asked. That fear of users having to do half an hour of downloads (.followed by at least ten minutes of installation. followed by a five minute restart) meant that Kevin's team couldn't take advantage of WCF (Windows Communication Foundation). This made them sad, because WCF would have allowed them to write their code in a much simpler way, and in hours instead of days (as was the case with .NET 2). Oh sure, they had a gut feeling that this probably wasn't the case, 3.5 had been out for so many years, but they weren't sure. <background music switches to major key> SmartAssembly Feature Usage Reporting gave Kevin and his team exactly what they needed: hard data on their users' systems, both hardware and software. I was there, I saw it happen, and that's not the sort of thing a woman quickly forgets. I'll always remember his last words (before he went to lunch): "You get lots of free information by just checking a box in SmartAssembly" is what he said. For example, they could see how many CPU cores their customers were using, and found out that they should be making use of parallelism to take advantage of available cores. But crucially, (and this is the moral of my tale, dear reader), Kevin saw that 99% of SQL Source Control's users were on .NET 3.5 or above. So he knew that they could make the switch and that is was safe to do so. With this reassurance, they could use WCF to not only make development easier, but to also give them a really nice way to do inter-process communication between the Source Control and the SQL Compare products. To have done that on .NET 2.0 was certainly possible <knowing chuckle>, but Microsoft have made it a lot easier with WCF. <strange mirage effect to denote end of flashback> So you see, with Feature Usage Reporting, they finally got the hard evidence they needed to safely make the switch to .NET 3.5, knowing it would not inconvenience their users. And that, my friends, is just the sort of thing we like to hear.

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Sun Fire X4800 M2 Posts World Record x86 SPECjEnterprise2010 Result

- by Brian

Oracle's Sun Fire X4800 M2 using the Intel Xeon E7-8870 processor and Sun Fire X4470 M2 using the Intel Xeon E7-4870 processor, produced a world record single application server SPECjEnterprise2010 benchmark result of 27,150.05 SPECjEnterprise2010 EjOPS. The Sun Fire X4800 M2 server ran the application tier and the Sun Fire X4470 M2 server was used for the database tier. The Sun Fire X4800 M2 server demonstrated 63% better performance compared to IBM P780 server result of 16,646.34 SPECjEnterprise2010 EjOPS. The Sun Fire X4800 M2 server demonstrated 4% better performance than the Cisco UCS B440 M2 result, both results used the same number of processors. This result used Oracle WebLogic Server 12c, Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server 1.7.0_02, and Oracle Database 11g. This result was produced using Oracle Linux. Performance Landscape Complete benchmark results are at the SPEC website, SPECjEnterprise2010 Results. The table below compares against the best results from IBM and Cisco. SPECjEnterprise2010 Performance Chart as of 3/12/2012 Submitter EjOPS* Application Server Database Server Oracle 27,150.05 1x Sun Fire X4800 M2 8x 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon E7-8870 Oracle WebLogic 12c 1x Sun Fire X4470 M2 4x 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon E7-4870 Oracle Database 11g (11.2.0.2) Cisco 26,118.67 2x UCS B440 M2 Blade Server 4x 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon E7-4870 Oracle WebLogic 11g (10.3.5) 1x UCS C460 M2 Blade Server 4x 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon E7-4870 Oracle Database 11g (11.2.0.2) IBM 16,646.34 1x IBM Power 780 8x 3.86 GHz POWER 7 WebSphere Application Server V7 1x IBM Power 750 Express 4x 3.55 GHz POWER 7 IBM DB2 9.7 Workgroup Server Edition FP3a * SPECjEnterprise2010 EjOPS, bigger is better. Configuration Summary Application Server: 1 x Sun Fire X4800 M2 8 x 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon processor E7-8870 256 GB memory 4 x 10 GbE NIC 2 x FC HBA Oracle Linux 5 Update 6 Oracle WebLogic Server 11g Release 1 (10.3.5) Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM on Linux, version 1.7.0_02 (Java SE 7 Update 2) Database Server: 1 x Sun Fire X4470 M2 4 x 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon E7-4870 512 GB memory 4 x 10 GbE NIC 2 x FC HBA 2 x Sun StorageTek 2540 M2 4 x Sun Fire X4270 M2 4 x Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array Oracle Linux 5 Update 6 Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.2 Benchmark Description SPECjEnterprise2010 is the third generation of the SPEC organization's J2EE end-to-end industry standard benchmark application. The SPECjEnterprise2010 benchmark has been designed and developed to cover the Java EE 5 specification's significantly expanded and simplified programming model, highlighting the major features used by developers in the industry today. This provides a real world workload driving the Application Server's implementation of the Java EE specification to its maximum potential and allowing maximum stressing of the underlying hardware and software systems. The workload consists of an end to end web based order processing domain, an RMI and Web Services driven manufacturing domain and a supply chain model utilizing document based Web Services. The application is a collection of Java classes, Java Servlets, Java Server Pages, Enterprise Java Beans, Java Persistence Entities (pojo's) and Message Driven Beans. The SPECjEnterprise2010 benchmark heavily exercises all parts of the underlying infrastructure that make up the application environment, including hardware, JVM software, database software, JDBC drivers, and the system network. The primary metric of the SPECjEnterprise2010 benchmark is jEnterprise Operations Per Second ("SPECjEnterprise2010 EjOPS"). This metric is calculated by adding the metrics of the Dealership Management Application in the Dealer Domain and the Manufacturing Application in the Manufacturing Domain. There is no price/performance metric in this benchmark. Key Points and Best Practices Sixteen Oracle WebLogic server instances were started using numactl, binding 2 instances per chip. Eight Oracle database listener processes were started, binding 2 instances per chip using taskset. Additional tuning information is in the report at http://spec.org. See Also Oracle Press Release -- SPECjEnterprise2010 Results Page Sun Fire X4800 M2 Server oracle.com OTN Sun Fire X4270 M2 Server oracle.com OTN Sun Storage 2540-M2 Array oracle.com OTN Oracle Linux oracle.com OTN Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition oracle.com OTN WebLogic Suite oracle.com OTN Disclosure Statement SPEC and the benchmark name SPECjEnterprise are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Sun Fire X4800 M2, 27,150.05 SPECjEnterprise2010 EjOPS; IBM Power 780, 16,646.34 SPECjEnterprise2010 EjOPS; Cisco UCS B440 M2, 26,118.67 SPECjEnterprise2010 EjOPS. Results from www.spec.org as of 3/27/2012.

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Beyond Chatting: What ‘Social’ Means for CRM

- by Divya Malik

A guest post by Steve Diamond, Senior Director, Outbound Product Management, Oracle In a recent post on the Oracle Applications blog, my colleague Steve Boese asked three questions related to the widespread popularity and incredibly rapid growth of Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. Steve then addressed the many applications for collaborative solutions in the area of Human Capital Management. So, in turning to a conversation about Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Sales Force Automation (SFA), let me ask you one simple question. How many sales people, particularly at business-to-business companies, consistently meet or beat their quotas in their roles by working alone, with no collaboration among fellow sales people, sales executives, employees in product groups, in service, in Legal, third-party partners, etc.? Hello? Is anybody out there? What’s that cricket noise I hear? That’s correct. Nobody! When it comes to Sales, introverts arguably have a distinct disadvantage. While it’s certainly a truism that “success” in most professional endeavors requires working with people, it’s a mandatory success factor in Sales. This fact became abundantly clear to me one early morning in the late 1990s when I joined the former Hyperion Solutions (now part of Oracle) and attended a Sales Award Ceremony. The Head of Sales at that time gave out dozens of awards – none of them to individuals and all of them to TEAMS of individuals. That’s how it works in Sales. Your colleagues help provide you with product intelligence and competitive intelligence. They help you build the best presentations, pitches, and proposals. They help you develop the most killer RFPs. They align you with the best product people to ensure you’re matching the best products for the opportunity and join you in critical meetings. They help knock the socks of your prospects in “bake off” demo’s. They bring in the best partners to either add complementary products to your opportunity or help you implement a solution. They work with you as a collective team. And so how is all this collaboration STILL typically done today? Through email. And yet we all silently or not so silently grimace about email. It’s relatively siloed. It’s painful to search. It’s difficult to align by topic. And it’s nearly impossible to re-trace meaningful and helpful conversations that occurred among a group or a team at some point in history. This is where social networking for Sales comes into play. It’s about PURPOSEFUL social networking versus chattering. What is purposeful social networking? It’s collaboration that’s built around opportunities, accounts, and contacts. It’s collaboration that delivers valuable context – on the target company, and on key competitors – just to name two examples. It’s collaboration that can scale to provide coaching for larger numbers of sales representatives, both for general purposes, and as we’ve largely discussed here, for specific ‘deals.’ And it’s collaboration that allows a team of people to collectively edit and iterate on a document like an RFP or a soon-to-be killer presentation that is maintained in a central repository, with no time wasted searching for it or worrying about version control. But lest we get carried away, let’s remember that collaboration “happens” among sales people whether there is specialized software to support it or not. The human practice of sales has not changed much in the last 80 to 90 years. Collaboration has been a mainstay during this entire time. But what social networking in general, and Oracle Social Networking in particular delivers, is the opportunity for sales teams to dramatically increase their effectiveness and efficiency – to identify and close more high quality and lucrative opportunities more quickly. For most sales organizations, this is how the game is won. To learn more please visit Oracle Social Network and Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management on oracle.com

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Your Job Search Should be More Than Just a New Year's Resolution

- by david.talamelli

I love the beginning of a new year, it is a great chance to refocus and either re-evaluate goals you are working to or even set new ones. I don't have any statistics to measure this but I am sure that one of the more popular new year's resolutions in the general workforce is to either get a new job or work to further develop one's career. I think this is a good idea, in today's competitive work force people should have a plan of what they want to do, what role they are after and how to get there. One common mistake I think many people make though is that a career plan shouldn't be a once a year thought. When people finish with the holiday season with their new year's resolution to find a new job fresh in their mind, you can see the enthusiasm and motivation a person has to make something happen. Emails are sent, calls are made, applications are made, networking is happening, etc..... Finding the right role that you are after however can be difficult, while it would be great if that dream role was available just at the time you happened to be looking for it - in reality this is not always the case. Job Seekers need to keep reminding themselves that while sometimes that dream job they are after is available at the same time they are looking, that also a Job search can be a difficult and long process. Many people who set out with the best of intentions in January to find a new job can soon lose interest in a job search if they do not immediately find a role. Just like the Christmas decorations are put away and the photos from New Year's are stored away - a Job Seeker's motivation may slowly decrease until that person finds themselves 12 months later in the same situation in same role and looking for that new opportunity again. Rather than just "going for it" and looking for a role in the month of January, a person's job search or career plan should be an ongoing activity and thought process that is constantly updated and evaluated over the course of the year. It can be hard to stay motivated over an extended period of time, especially when you are newly motivated and ready for that new role and the results are not immediate. Rather than letting your job search fall down the priority list and into the "too hard basket" a few ideas that may keep your enthusiasm fresh Update your resume every 6 months, even if you are not looking for a job - it is easy to forget what you have accomplished if you don't keep your details updated. Also it is good to be prepared and have a resume ready to go in case you do get an unexpected phone call for that 'dream job' you have been hoping for. Work out what you want out of your next role before you begin your job search - rather than aimlessly searching job ads or talking to people - think of the organisations or type of role you would like before you search. If you know what you are looking for it will be much easier to work out how to get there than if you do not know what you want. Don't expect immediate results once you decide to look for another job, things don't always fall into place. Timing and delivery can be important pieces of being selected for a role, companies don't hire every role in January. Have an open mind - people you meet or talk to may not result in immediate results for your job search but every connection may help you get a bit closer to what you are after . These actions will not guarantee a positive result, but in today's competitive work force every little of extra preparation and planning helps. All the best for 2011 and I hope your career plan whatever it may be is a success.

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Building a Mafia…TechFest Style

- by David Hoerster

It’s been a few months since I last blogged (not that I blog much to begin with), but things have been busy. We all have a lot going on in our lives, but I’ve had one item that has taken up a surprising amount of time – Pittsburgh TechFest 2012. After the event, I went through some minutes of the first meetings for TechFest, and I started to think about how it all came together. I think what inspired me the most about TechFest was how people from various technical communities were able to come together and build and promote a common event. As a result, I wanted to blog about this to show that people from different communities can work together to build something that benefits all communities. (Hopefully I've got all my facts straight.) TechFest started as an idea Eric Kepes and myself had when we were planning our next Pittsburgh Code Camp, probably in the summer of 2011. Our Spring 2011 Code Camp was a little different because we had a great infusion of some folks from the Pittsburgh Agile group (especially with a few speakers from LeanDog). The line-up was great, but we felt our audience wasn’t as broad as it should have been. We thought it would be great to somehow attract other user groups around town and have a big, polyglot conference. We started contacting leaders from Pittsburgh’s various user groups. Eric and I split up the ones that we knew about, and we just started making contacts. Most of the people we started contacting never heard of us, nor we them. But we all had one thing in common – we ran user groups who’s primary goal is educating our members to make them better at what they do. Amazingly, and I say this because I wasn’t sure what to expect, we started getting some interest from the various leaders. One leader, Greg Akins, is, in my opinion, Pittsburgh’s poster boy for the polyglot programmer. He’s helped us in the past with .NET Code Camps, is a Java developer (and leader in Pittsburgh’s Java User Group), works with Ruby and I’m sure a handful of other languages. He helped make some e-introductions to other user group leaders, and the whole thing just started to snowball. Once we realized we had enough interest with the user group leaders, we decided to not have a Fall Code Camp and instead focus on this new entity. Flash-forward to October of 2011. I set up a meeting, with the help of Jeremy Jarrell (Pittsburgh Agile leader) to hold a meeting with the leaders of many of Pittsburgh technical user groups. We had representatives from 12 technical user groups (Python, JavaScript, Clojure, Ruby, PittAgile, jQuery, PHP, Perl, SQL, .NET, Java and PowerShell) – 14 people. We likened it to a scene from a Godfather movie where the heads of all the families come together to make some deal. As a result, the name “TechFest Mafia” was born and kind of stuck. Over the next 7 months or so, we had our starts and stops. There were moments where I thought this event would not happen either because we wouldn’t have the right mix of topics (was I off there!), or enough people register (OK, I was wrong there, too!) or find an appropriate venue (hmm…wrong there, too) or find enough sponsors to help support the event (wow…not doing so well). Overall, everything fell into place with a lot of hard work from Eric, Jen, Greg, Jeremy, Sean, Nicholas, Gina and probably a few others that I’m forgetting. We also had a bit of luck, too. But in the end, the passion that we had to put together an event that was really about making ourselves better at what we do really paid off. I’ve never been more excited about a project coming together than I have been with Pittsburgh TechFest 2012. From the moment the first person arrived at the event to the final minutes of my closing remarks (where I almost lost my voice – I ended up being diagnosed with bronchitis the next day!), it was an awesome event. I’m glad to have been part of bringing something like this to Pittsburgh…and I’m looking forward to Pittsburgh TechFest 2013. See you there!

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Add the Vista Style Sidebar Back to Windows 7

- by Mysticgeek

If you are moving from Vista to Windows 7, you might miss the Sidebar which was introduced in Vista. Today we take a look at a couple options for getting a Sidebar back in Windows 7. Copy Files from Vista Note: In this example we are using 32-bit versions of Vista and Windows 7. Make sure you are logged in with Administrator credentials. If you have a Vista machine running, we can copy the Windows Sidebar files over to the Windows 7 machine. On the Vista machine navigate to C:\Program Files and copy the Windows Sidebar folder and all of its contents over to a flash drive or network location. On the Windows 7 machine go to C:\Program Files and rename the Windows Sidebar folder to something like Windows Sidebar_old. Now copy the Vista Windows Sidebar folder into C:\Program Files… Now you will have both folders…Windows Sidebar and Windows Sidebar_old in your C:\Program Files folder. Right-click on the desktop and select Gadgets. There you are…the Original Vista Sidebar is back and will act as it did in Vista. Move Sidebar Gadgets Another work around if you don’t have a copy of Vista, you can simply move the Desktop Gadgets you want over to the right side of the screen and they will stay there…no dock needed. Type gadgets into the Search box in the Windows Start Menu and click on Desktop Gadgets. Then drag the included Gadgets you want over to the right side of the screen. Or click on the link to Get more gadgets online to find more. Once you have them where you want, each time you reboot they will still be in the same location. This holds true no matter where you place them on your desktop as well. Install Desktop Sidebar If you want an enhanced sidebar that includes a lot of different features, and don’t have a copy of Vista, you might want to check out Desktop Sidebar Beta (link below). This is a freeware application that works with Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7. After installation you can access it from the Start Menu… Here is how it will look after you launch it… It includes several pre-installed panels including a clock, Media Player, Search Bar, Slideshow, Messenger, Outlook inbox, Tasks, Quick Launch, Performance…and a lot more. It is highly customizable and allows you to change skins, add various levels of transparency, and a lot more. One caveat with going with Desktop Sidebar is we didn’t find a way to add Windows Gadgets to it (though there might be a plugin for it that we’re not aware of). But there are so many options, you may not mind. However, you can still use the desktop gadgets as you normally would in Windows 7. Believe it or not, some people actually prefer the Vista style Sidebar and would like it back in Windows 7. With these options you can get the Vista Sidebar back if you have a copy of Vista, place the Gadgets on the desktop, or go the freeware route. Download Desktop Sidebar (freeware) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Disable Windows Sidebar in VistaHow To Repair Your Crashed or Hanging Vista SidebarApplying Themes To Your Windows Vista SidebarDisable Sidebar / Desktop Gadgets on Windows 7Put AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) In your Windows Sidebar 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 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup Ultimate Boot CD can help when disaster strikes Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor Gmail Button Addon (Firefox) Hyperwords addon (Firefox)

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