self referential - Page 390

CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, April 28, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, April 28, 2010New ProjectsArgument Handler: This project aims to help the handling of arguments in command line programs.Bing for BlackBerry: Bing for BlackBerry is a SDK that allows intergration and searching Bing in there applications.C4F - GeoWallpaper: This is an extension for my MEF Utility Runner to change desktop wallpaper based on Flickr images geotagged with your current location. Uses Windo...CRM 4.0 Contract Utilities: List of Contract Utilities (i.e. custom workflow actions) 1. Change contract status from Active to Draft 2. Copy Contract (with custom start/end da...ELIS: Multimedia player based on WPFEnterprise Administration with Powershell: The EnterpriseShell aims to produce a powershell code library that will enable Enterprise Administrators to quickly reconfigure their IT infrastruc...ExposedObject: ExposedObject uses dynamic typing in C# to provide convenient access to private fields and methods from code outside of the class – for testing, ex...F# Project Extender: Installing F# Project Extender provides tools to better organize files in F# projects by allowing project subdirectories and separating file manage...Hack Framework: Code bundle with the internets brains connected into one piece of .Net frameworkKrypton XNA: Krypton allows users of the XNA framework to easily add 2D lighting to their games. Krypton is fast, as it utilizes the GPU and uses a vertex shade...Net Darts: Provides an easy way to calculate the score left to throw. Users can easily click on the score.PlayerSharp: PlayerSharp is a library written entirely in C# that allows you to communicate your C# programs with the Player Server by Brian Gerkey et al (http:...Ratpoid: RatpoidRedeemer Tower Defense: 2d tower defense game. It is developed with XNA technology, using .Net Visual Studio 2008 or .Net Visual Studio 2010SelfService: Simple self service projectSharePoint Exchange Calendar: a jQuery based calendar web part for displaying Exchange calendars within SharePoint.SharpORM, easy use Object & Relation Database mapping Library: AIM on: Object easy storeage, Create,Retrieve,Update,Delete User .NET Attribute marking or Xml Standalone Mapping eg. public class Somethin...Silverlight Calculator: Silverlight Calculator makes it easier for people to do simple math calculations. It's developed in C# Silverlight 2. Silverlight Calendar: Silverlight Calendar makes it easier for people to view a calendar in silverlight way. It's developed in C# Silverlight 2.SPSocialUtil for SharePoint 2010: SPSocialUtil makes it easier for delevoper to use Social Tag, Tag Cloud, BookMark, Colleague in SharePoint 2010. It's developed in C# with Visual S...Sublight: Sublight open source project is a simple metadata utility for view models in ASP.NET MVC 2Veda Auto Dealer Report: Create work item tasks for the Veda Auto Dealer ReportWPF Meta-Effects: WPF Meta-Effects makes it easier for shader effect developpers to develop and maintain shader code. You'll no longer have to write any HLSL, instea...New ReleasesBing for BlackBerry: Bing SDK for BlackBerry: There are four downloadable components: The library, in source code format, in its latest stable release. A "getting started" doc that will gui...DotNetNuke® Store: 02.01.34: What's New in this release? Bugs corrected: - Fixed a bug related to encryption cookie when DNN is used in Medium Trust environment. New Features:...Encrypted Notes: Encrypted Notes 1.6.4: This is the latest version of Encrypted Notes, with general improvements and bug fixes for 'Batch Encryption'. It has an installer that will create...EPiServer CMS Page Type Builder: Page Type Builder 1.2 Beta 2: For more information about this release check out this blog post.ExposedObject: ExposedObject 0.1: This is an initial release of the ExposedObject library that lets you conveniently call private methods and access private fields of a class.Extended SSIS Package Execute: Ver 0.01: Version 0.01 - 2008 Compatible OnlyF# Project Extender: V0.9.0.0 (VS2008): F# project extender for Visual Studio 2008. Initial ReleaseFileExplorer.NET: FileExplorer.NET 1.0: This is the first release of this project. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Please report any bugs that you may en...Fluent ViewModel Configuration for WPF (MVVM): FluentViewModel Alpha3: Overhaul of the configuration system Separation of the configuratior and service locator Added support for general services - using Castle Wind...Home Access Plus+: v4.1: v4.1 Change Log: booking system fixes/additions Uploader fixes Added excluded extensions in my computer Updated Config Tool Fixed an issue ...ILMerge-GUI, merge .NET assemblies: 1.9.0 BETA: Compatible with .NET 4.0 This is the first version of ILMerge-GUI working with .NET 4.0. The final version will be 2.0.0, to be released by mid May...iTuner - The iTunes Companion: iTuner 1.2.3769 Beta 3c: Given the high download rate and awesome feedback for Beta 3b, I decided to release this interim build with the following enhancements: Added new h...Jet Login Tool (JetLoginTool): In then Out - 1.5.3770.18310: Fixed: Will only attempt to logout if currently logged in Fixed: UI no longer blocks while waiting for log outKooboo CMS: Kooboo CMS 2.1.1.0: New features Add new API RssUrl to generate RSS link, this is an extension to UrlHelper. Add possibility to index and search attachment content ...Krypton XNA: Krypton v1.0: First release of Krypton. I've tried to throw together a small testbed, but just getting tortoisehq to work the first time around was a huge pain. ...LinkedIn® for Windows Mobile: LinkedIn for Windows Mobile v0.5: Added missing files to installer packageNito.KitchenSink: Version 7: New features (since Version 5) Fixed null reference bug in ExceptionExtensions. Added DynamicStaticTypeMembers and RefOutArg for dynamically (lat...Numina Application/Security Framework: Numina.Framework Core 51341: Added multiple methods to API and classic ASP libraryOpenIdPortableArea: 0.1.0.3 OpenIdPortableArea: OpenIdPortableArea.Release: DotNetOpenAuth.dll DotNetOpenAuth.xml MvcContrib.dll MvcContrib.xml OpenIdPortableArea.dll OpenIdPortableAre...Play-kanaler (Windows Media Center Plug-in): Playkanaler 1.0.5 Alpha: Playkanaler version 1.0.5 Alpha Skärmsläckar-fix. helt otestad!PokeIn Comet Ajax Library: PokeIn v0.81 Library with ServerWatch Sample: Release Notes Functionality improved. Possible bugs fixed. Realtime server time sample addedSharpORM, easy use Object & Relation Database mapping Library: Vbyte.SharpOrm 1.0.2010.427: Vbyte.SharpOrm for Access & SQLServer.7z 1.0 alpha release for Access oledb provider and Sql Server 2000+.Silverlight 4.0 Popup Menu: Context Menu for Silverlight 4.0: - Markup items can now be added seperately using the AddItem method. Alternatingly all items can be placed inside a listbox which can then be added...Silverlight Calculator: SilverCalculator: SilverCalculator version 1.0 Live demoSilverlight Calendar: Silverlight Calendar: Silverlight Calendar version 1.0 Live demoSpeakup Desktop Frontend: Speakup Desktop Frontend v0.2a: This is new version of Speakup Desktop Frontend. It requires .net 4.0 to be installed before using it. In this release next changes were done: - ...TwitterVB - A .NET Twitter Library: Twitter-2.5: Adds xAuth support and increases TwitterLocation information (html help file is not up to date, will correct in a later version.)VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30427.5: Automatic drop of latest buildXP-More: 1.1: Added a parent VHD edit feature. Moved VM settings from double-click to a button, and rearranged the buttons' layout.Yasbg: It's Static 1.0: Many changes have been made from the previous release. Read the README! This release adds settings tab and fixes bugs. To run, first unzip, then...Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS Managerpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryAJAX Control ToolkitSilverlight ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesPHPExcelMost Active ProjectsRawrpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryGMap.NET - Great Maps for Windows Forms & PresentationNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterParticle Plot PivotFarseer Physics EngineBlogEngine.NETDotNetZip LibrarySqlDiffFramework-A Visual Differencing Engine for Dissimilar Data Sources

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Looking Back at MIX10

- by WeigeltRo

It’s the sad truth of my life that even though I’m fascinated by airplanes and flight in general since my childhood days, my body doesn’t like flying. Even the ridiculously short flights inside Germany are taking their toll on me each time. Now combine this with sitting in the cramped space of economy class for many hours on a transatlantic flight from Germany to Las Vegas and back, and factor in some heavy dose of jet lag (especially on my way eastwards), and you get an idea why after coming back home I had this question on my mind: Was it really worth it to attend MIX10? This of course is a question that will also be asked by my boss at Comma Soft (for other reasons, obviously), who decided to send me and my colleague Jens Schaller, to the MIX10 conference. (A note to my German readers: An dieser Stelle der Hinweis, dass Comma Soft noch Silverlight-Entwickler und/oder UI-Designer für den Standort Bonn sucht – aussagekräftige Bewerbungen bitte an [email protected]) Too keep things short: My answer is yes. Before I’ll go into detail, let me ask the heretical questions whether tech conferences in general still make sense. There was a time, where actually being at a tech conference gave you a head-start in regard to learning about new technologies. Nowadays this is no longer true, where every bit of information and every detail is immediately twittered, blogged and whatevered to death. In the case of MIX10 you even can download the video-taped sessions shortly after. So: Does visiting a conference still make sense? It depends on what you expect from a conference. It should be clear to everybody that you’ll neither get exclusive information, nor receive training in a small group. What a conference does offer that sitting in front of your computer does not can be summarized as follows: Focus Being away from work and home will help you to focus on the presented information. Of course there are always the poor guys who are haunted by their work (with mails and short text messages reporting the latest showstopper problem), but in general being out of your office makes a huge difference. Inspiration With the focus comes the emotional involvement. I find it much easier to absorb information if I feel that certain vibe when sitting in a session. This still means that I have put work into reviewing the information later, but it’s a better starting point. And all the impressions collected at a (good) conference combined lead to a higher motivation – be it by the buzz (“this is gonna be sooo cool!”) or by the fear to fall behind (“man, we’ll have work on this, or else…”). People At a conference it’s pretty easy to get into contact with other people during breakfast, lunch and other breaks. This is a good opportunity to get a feel for what other development teams are doing (on a very general level of course, nobody will tell you about their secret formula) and what they are thinking about specific technologies. So MIX10 did offer focus, inspiration and people, but that would have meant nothing without valuable content. When I (being a frontend developer with a strong interest in UI/UX) planned my visit to MIX10, I made the decision to focus on the "soft" topics of design, interaction and user experience. I figured that I would be bombarded with all the technical details about Silverlight 4 anyway in the weeks and months to come. Actually, I would have liked to catch a few technical sessions, but the agenda wasn’t exactly in favor of people interested in any kind of Silverlight and UI/UX/Design topics. That’s one of my few complaints about the conference – I would have liked one more day and/or more sessions per day. Overall, the quality of the workshops and sessions was pretty high. In fact, looking back at my collection of conferences I’ve visited in the past I’d say that MIX10 ranks somewhere near the top spot. Here’s an overview of the workshops/sessions I attended (I’ll leave out the keynotes): Day 0 (Workshops on Sunday) Design Fundamentals for Developers Robby Ingebretsen is the man! Great workshop in three parts with the perfect mix of examples, well-structured definition of terminology and the right dose of humor. Robby was part of the WPF team before founding his own company so he not only has a strong interest in design (and the skillz!) but also the technical background. Design Tools and Techniques Originally announced to be held by Arturo Toledo, the Rosso brothers from ArcheType filled in for the first two parts, and Corrina Black had a pretty general part about the Windows Phone UI. The first two thirds were a mixed bag; the two guys definitely knew what they were talking about, and the demos were great, but the talk lacked the preparation and polish of a truly great presentation. Corrina was not allowed to go into too much detail before the keynote on Monday, but the session was still very interesting as it showed how much thought went into the Windows Phone UI (and there’s always a lot to learn when people talk about their thought process). Day 1 (Monday) Designing Rich Experiences for Data-Centric Applications I wonder whether there was ever a test-run for this session, but what Ken Azuma and Yoshihiro Saito delivered in the first 15 minutes of a 30-minutes-session made me walk out. A commercial for a product (just great: a video showing a SharePoint plug-in in an all-Japanese UI) combined with the most generic blah blah one could imagine. EPIC FAIL. Great User Experiences: Seamlessly Blending Technology & Design I switched to this session from the one above but I guess I missed the interesting part – what I did catch was what looked like a “look at the cool stuff we did” without being helpful. Or maybe I was just in a bad mood after the other session. The Art, Technology and Science of Reading This talk by Kevin Larson was very interesting, but was more a presentation of what Microsoft is doing in research (pretty impressive) and in the end lacked a bit the helpful advice one could have hoped for. 10 Ways to Attack a Design Problem and Come Out Winning Robby Ingebretsen again, and again a great mix of theory and practice. The clean and simple, yet effective, UI of the reader app resulted in a simultaneous “wow” of Jens and me. If you’d watch only one session video, this should be it. Microsoft has to bring Robby back next year! Day 2 (Tuesday) Touch in Public: Multi-touch Interaction Design for Kiosks & Architectural Experiences Very interesting session by Jason Brush, a great inspiration with many details to look out for in the examples. Exactly what I was hoping for – and then some! Designing Bing: Heart and Science How hard can it be to design the UI for a search engine? An input field and a list of results, that should be it, right? Well, not so fast! The talk by Paul Ray showed the many iterations to finally get it right (up to the choice of a specific blue for the links). And yes, I want an eye-tracking device to play around with! The Elephant in the Room When Nishant Kothary presented a long list of what his session was not about, I told to myself (not having the description text present) “Am I in the wrong talk? Should I leave?”. Boy, was I wrong. A great talk about human factors in the process of designing stuff. An Hour with Bill Buxton Having seen Bill Buxton’s presentation in the keynote, I just had to see this man again – even though I didn’t know what to expect. Being more or less unplanned and intended to be more of a conversation, the session didn’t provide a wealth of immediately useful information. Nevertheless Bill Buxton was impressive with his huge knowledge of seemingly everything. But this could/should have been a session some when in the evening and not in parallel to at least two other interesting talks. Day 3 (Wednesday) Design the Ordinary, Like the Fixie This session by DL Byron and Kevin Tamura started really well and brought across the message to keep things simple. But towards the end the talk lost some of its steam. And, as a member of the audience pointed out, they kind of ignored their own advice when they used a fancy presentation software other then PowerPoint that sometimes got in the way of showing things. Developing Natural User Interfaces Speaking of alternative presentation software, Joshua Blake definitely had the most remarkable alternative to PowerPoint, a self-written program called NaturalShow that was controlled using multi-touch on a touch screen. Not a PowerPoint-killer, but impressive nevertheless. The (excellent) talk itself was kind of eye-opening in regard to what “multi-touch support” on various platforms (WPF, Silverlight, Windows Phone) actually means. Treat your Content Right The talk by Tiffani Jones Brown wasn’t even on my planned schedule, but somehow I ended up in that session – and it was great. And even for people who don’t necessarily have to write content for websites, some points made by Tiffani are valid in many places, notably wherever you put texts with more than a single word into your UI. Creating Effective Info Viz in Microsoft Silverlight The last session of MIX10 I attended was kind of disappointing. At first things were very promising, with Matthias Shapiro giving a brief but well-structured introduction to info graphics and interactive visualizations. Then the live-coding began and while the result was interesting, too much time was spend on wrestling to get the code working. Ending earlier than planned, the talk was a bit light on actual content, but at least it included a nice list of resources. Conclusion It could be felt all across MIX10, UIs will take a huge leap forward; in fact, there are enough examples that have already. People who both have the technical know-how and at least a basic understanding of design (“literacy” as Bill Buxton called it) are in high demand. The concept of the MIX conference and initiatives like design.toolbox shows that Microsoft understands very well that frontend developers have to acquire new knowledge besides knowing how to hack code and putting buttons on a form. There are extremely exciting times before us, with lots of opportunity for those who are eager to develop their skills, that is for sure.

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In Which We Demystify A Few Docupresentment Settings And Learn the Ethos of the Author

- by Andy Little

It's no secret that Docupresentment (part of the Oracle Documaker suite) is powerful tool for integrating on-demand and interactive applications for publishing with the Oracle Documaker framework. It's also no secret there are are many details with respect to the configuration of Docupresentment that can elude even the most erudite of of techies. To be sure, Docupresentment will work for you right out of the box, and in most cases will suit your needs without toying with a configuration file. But, where's the adventure in that? With this inaugural post to That's The Way, I'm going to introduce myself, and what my aim is with this blog. If you didn't figure it out already by checking out my profile, my name is Andy and I've been with Oracle (nee Skywire Software nee Docucorp nee Formmaker) since the formative years of 1998. Strangely, it doesn't seem that long ago, but it's certainly a lifetime in the age of technology. I recall running a BBS from my parent's basement on a 1200 baud modem, and the trepidation and sweaty-palmed excitement of upgrading to the power and speed of 2400 baud! Fine, I'll admit that perhaps I'm inflating the experience a bit, but I was kid! This is the stuff of War Games and King's Quest I and the demise of TI-99 4/A. Exciting times. So fast-forward a bit and I'm 12 years into a career in the world of document automation and publishing working for the best (IMHO) software company on the planet. With That's The Way I hope to shed a little light and peek under the covers of some of the more interesting aspects of implementations involving the tech space within the Oracle Insurance Global Business Unit (IGBU), which includes Oracle Documaker, Rating & Underwriting, and Policy Administration to name a few. I may delve off course a bit, and you'll likely get a dose of humor (at least in my mind) but I hope you'll glean at least a tidbit of usefulness with each post. Feel free to comment as I'm a fairly conversant guy and happy to talk -- it's stopping the talking that's the hard part... So, back to our regularly-scheduled post, already in progress. By this time you've visited Oracle's E-Delivery site and acquired your properly-licensed version of Oracle Documaker. Wait -- you didn't find it? Understandable -- navigating the voluminous download library within Oracle can be a daunting task. It's pretty simple once you’ve done it a few times. Login to the e-delivery site, and accept the license terms and restrictions. Then, you’ll be able to select the Oracle Insurance Applications product pack and your appropriate platform. Click Go and you’ll see a list of applicable products, and you’ll click on Oracle Documaker Media Pack (as I went to press with this article the version is 11.4): Finally, click the Download button next to Docupresentment (again, version at press time is 2.2 p5). This should give you a ZIP file that contains the installation packages for the Docupresentment Server and Client, cryptically named IDSServer22P05W32.exe and IDSClient22P05W32.exe. At this time, I’d like to take a little detour and explain that the world of Oracle, like most technical companies, is rife with acronyms. One of the reasons Skywire Software was a appealing to Oracle was our use of many acronyms, including the occasional use of multiple acronyms with the same meaning. I apologize in advance and will try to point these out along the way. Here’s your first sticky note to go along with that: IDS = Internet Document Server = Docupresentment Once you’ve completed the installation, you’ll have a shiny new Docupresentment server and client, and if you installed the default location it will be living in c:\docserv. Unix users, I’m one of you! You’ll find it by default in ~/docupresentment/docserv. Forging onward with the meat of this post is learning about some special configuration options. By now you’ve read the documentation included with the download (specifically ids_book.pdf) which goes into some detail of the rubric of the configuration file and in fact there’s even a handy utility that provides an interface to the configuration file (see Running IDSConfig in the documentation). But who wants to deal with a configuration utility when we have the tools and technology to edit the file <gasp> by hand! I shall now proceed with the standard Information Technology Under the Hood Disclaimer: Please remember to back up any files before you make changes. I am not responsible for any havoc you may wreak! Go to your installation directory, and locate your docserv.xml file. Open it in your favorite XML editor. I happen to be fond of Notepad++ with the XML Tools plugin. Almost immediately you will behold the splendor of the configuration file. Just take a moment and let that sink in. Ok – moving on. If you reviewed the documentation you know that inside the root <configuration> node there are multiple <section> nodes, each containing a specific group of settings. Let’s take a look at <section name=”DocumentServer”>: There are a few entries I’d like to discuss. First, <entry name=”StartCommand”>. This should be pretty self-explanatory; it’s the name of the executable that’s run when you fire up Docupresentment. Immediately following that is <entry name=”StartArguments”> and as you might imagine these are the arguments passed to the executable. A few things to point out: The –Dids.configuration=docserv.xml parameter specifies the name of your configuration file. The –Dlogging.configuration=logconf.xml parameter specifies the name of your logging configuration file (this uses log4j so bone up on that before you delve here). The -Djava.endorsed.dirs=lib/endorsed parameter specifies the path where 3rd party Java libraries can be located for use with Docupresentment. More on that in another post. The <entry name=”Instances”> allows you to specify the number of instances of Docupresentment that will be started. By default this is two, and generally two instances per CPU is adequate, however you will always need to perform load testing to determine the sweet spot based on your hardware and types of transactions. You may have many, many more instances than 2. Time for a sidebar on instances. An instance is nothing more than a separate process of Docupresentment. The Docupresentment service that you fire up with docserver.bat or docserver.sh actually starts a watchdog process, which is then responsible for starting up the actual Docupresentment processes. Each of these act independently from one another, so if one crashes, it does not affect any others. In the case of a crashed process, the watchdog will start up another instance so the number of configured instances are always running. Bottom line: instance = Docupresentment process. And now, finally, to the settings which gave me pause on an not-too-long-ago implementation! Docupresentment includes a feature that watches configuration files (such as docserv.xml and logconf.xml) and will automatically restart its instances to load the changes. You can configure the time that Docupresentment waits to check these files using the setting <entry name=”FileWatchTimeMillis”>. By default the number is 12000ms, or 12 seconds. You can save yourself a few CPU cycles by extending this time, or by disabling the check altogether by setting the value to 0. This may or may not be appropriate for your environment; if you have 100% uptime requirements then you probably don’t want to bring down an entire set of processes just to accept a new configuration value, so it’s best to leave this somewhere between 12 seconds to a few minutes. Another point to keep in mind: if you are using Documaker real-time processing under Docupresentment the Master Resource Library (MRL) files and INI options are cached, and if you need to affect a change, you’ll have to “restart” Docupresentment. Touching the docserv.xml file is an easy way to do this (other methods including using the RSS request, but that’s another post). The next item up: <entry name=”FilePurgeTimeSeconds”>. You may already know that the Docupresentment system can generate many temporary files based on certain request types that are processed through the system. What you may not know is how those files are cleaned up. There are many rules in Docupresentment that cause the creation of temporary files. When these files are created, Docupresentment writes an entry into a properties file called the file cache. This file contains the name, creation date, and expiration time of each temporary file created by each instance of Docupresentment. Periodically Docupresentment will check the file cache to determine if there are files that are past the expiration time, not unlike that block of cheese festering away in the back of my refrigerator. However, unlike my ‘fridge cleaning tendencies, Docupresentment is quick to remove files that are past their expiration time. You, my friend, have the power to control how often Docupresentment inspects the file cache. Simply set the value for <entry name=”FilePurgeTimeSeconds”> to the number of seconds appropriate for your requirements and you’re set. Note that file purging happens on a separate thread from normal request processing, so this shouldn’t interfere with response times unless the CPU happens to be really taxed at the point of cache processing. Finally, after all of this, we get to the final setting I’m going to address in this post: <entry name=”FilePurgeList”>. The default is “filecache.properties”. This establishes the root name for the Docupresentment file cache that I mentioned previously. Docupresentment creates a separate cache file for each instance based on this setting. If you have two instances, you’ll see two files created: filecache.properties.1 and filecache.properties.2. Feel free to open these up and check them out. I hope you’ve enjoyed this first foray into the configuration file of Docupresentment. If you did enjoy it, feel free to drop a comment, I welcome feedback. If you have ideas for other posts you’d like to see, please do let me know. You can reach me at [email protected]. ‘Til next time! ###

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Native packaging for JavaFX

- by igor

JavaFX 2.2 adds new packaging option for JavaFX applications, allowing you to package your application as a "native bundle". This gives your users a way to install and run your application without any external dependencies on a system JRE or FX SDK. I'd like to give you an overview of what is it, motivation behind it, and finally explain how to get started with it. Screenshots may give you some idea of user experience but first hand experience is always the best. Before we go into all of the boring details, here are few different flavors of Ensemble for you to try: exe, msi, dmg, rpm installers and zip of linux bundle for non-rpm aware systems. Alternatively, check out native packages for JFXtras 2. Whats wrong with existing deployment options? JavaFX 2 applications are easy to distribute as a standalone application or as an application deployed on the web (embedded in the web page or as link to launch application from the webpage). JavaFX packaging tools, such as ant tasks and javafxpackager utility, simplify the creation of deployment packages even further. Why add new deployment options? JavaFX applications have implicit dependency on the availability of Java and JavaFX runtimes, and while existing deployment methods provide a means to validate the system requirements are met -- and even guide user to perform required installation/upgrades -- they do not fully address all of the important scenarios. In particular, here are few examples: the user may not have admin permissions to install new system software if the application was certified to run in the specific environment (fixed version of Java and JavaFX) then it may be hard to ensure user has this environment due to an autoupdate of the system version of Java/JavaFX (to ensure they are secure). Potentially, other apps may have a requirement for a different JRE or FX version that your app is incompatible with. your distribution channel may disallow dependencies on external frameworks (e.g. Mac AppStore) What is a "native package" for JavaFX application? In short it is A Wrapper for your JavaFX application that makes is into a platform-specific application bundle Each Bundle is self-contained and includes your application code and resources (same set as need to launch standalone application from jar) Java and JavaFX runtimes (private copies to be used by this application only) native application launcher metadata (icons, etc.) No separate installation is needed for Java and JavaFX runtimes Can be distributed as .zip or packaged as platform-specific installer No application changes, the same jar app binaries can be deployed as a native bundle, double-clickable jar, applet, or web start app What is good about it: Easy deployment of your application on fresh systems, without admin permissions when using .zip or a user-level installer No-hassle compatibility. Your application is using a private copy of Java and JavaFX. The developer (you!) controls when these are updated. Easily package your application for Mac AppStore (or Windows, or...) Process name of running application is named after your application (and not just java.exe) Easily deploy your application using enterprise deployment tools (e.g. deploy as MSI) Support is built in into JDK 7u6 (that includes JavaFX 2.2) Is it a silver bullet for the deployment that other deployment options will be deprecated? No. There are no plans to deprecate other deployment options supported by JavaFX, each approach addresses different needs. Deciding whether native packaging is a best way to deploy your application depends on your requirements. A few caveats to consider: "Download and run" user experienceUnlike web deployment, the user experience is not about "launch app from web". It is more of "download, install and run" process, and the user may need to go through additional steps to get application launched - e.g. accepting a browser security dialog or finding and launching the application installer from "downloads" folder. Larger download sizeIn general size of bundled application will be noticeably higher than size of unbundled app as a private copy of the JRE and JavaFX are included. We're working to reduce the size through compression and customizable "trimming", but it will always be substantially larger than than an app that depends on a "system JRE". Bundle per target platformBundle formats are platform specific. Currently a native bundle can only be produced for the same system you are building on. That is, if you want to deliver native app bundles on Windows, Linux and Mac you will have to build your project on all three platforms. Application updates are the responsibility of developerWeb deployed Java applications automatically download application updates from the web as soon as they are available. The Java Autoupdate mechanism takes care of updating the Java and JavaFX runtimes to latest secure version several times every year. There is no built in support for this in for bundled applications. It is possible to use 3rd party libraries (like Sparkle on Mac) to add autoupdate support at application level. In a future version of JavaFX we may include built-in support for autoupdate (add yourself as watcher for RT-22211 if you are interested in this) Getting started with native bundles First, you need to get the latest JDK 7u6 beta build (build 14 or later is recommended). On Windows/Mac/Linux it comes with JavaFX 2.2 SDK as part of JDK installation and contains JavaFX packaging tools, including: bin/javafxpackagerCommand line utility to produce JavaFX packages. lib/ant-javafx.jar Set of ant tasks to produce JavaFX packages (most recommended way to deploy apps) For general information on how to use them refer to the Deploying JavaFX Application guide. Once you know how use these tools to package your JavaFX application for other deployment methods there are only a few minor tweaks necessary to produce native bundles: make sure java is used from JDK7u6 bundle you have installed adjust your PATH settings if needed if you are using ant tasks add "nativeBundles=all" attribute to fx:deploy task if you are using javafxpackager pass "-native" option to deploy command or if you are using makeall command then it will try build native packages by default result bundles will be in the "bundles" folder next to other deployment artifacts Note that building some types of native packages (e.g. .exe or .msi) may require additional free 3rd party software to be installed and available on PATH. As of JDK 7u6 build 14 you could build following types of packages: Windows bundle image EXE Inno Setup 5 or later is required Result exe will perform user level installation (no admin permissions are required) At least one shortcut will be created (menu or desktop) Application will be launched at the end of install MSI WiX 3.0 or later is required Result MSI will perform user level installation (no admin permissions are required) At least one shortcut will be created (menu or desktop) MacOS bundle image dmg (drag and drop) installer Linux bundle image rpm rpmbuild is required shortcut will be added to the programs menu If you are using Netbeans for producing the deployment packages then you will need to add custom build step to the build.xml to execute the fx:deploy task with native bundles enabled. Here is what we do for BrickBreaker sample: <target name="-post-jfx-deploy"> <fx:deploy width="${javafx.run.width}" height="${javafx.run.height}" nativeBundles="all" outdir="${basedir}/${dist.dir}" outfile="${application.title}"> <fx:application name="${application.title}" mainClass="${javafx.main.class}"> <fx:resources> <fx:fileset dir="${basedir}/${dist.dir}" includes="BrickBreaker.jar"/> </fx:resources> <info title="${application.title}" vendor="${application.vendor}"/> </fx:application> </fx:deploy> </target> This is pretty much regular use of fx:deploy task, the only special thing here is nativeBundles="all". Perhaps the easiest way to try building native bundles is to download the latest JavaFX samples bundle and build Ensemble, BrickBreaker or SwingInterop. Please give it a try and share your experience. We need your feedback! BTW, do not hesitate to file bugs and feature requests to JavaFX bug database! Wait! How can i ... This entry is not a comprehensive guide into native bundles, and we plan to post on this topic more. However, I am sure that once you play with native bundles you will have a lot of questions. We may not have all the answers, but please do not hesitate to ask! Knowing all of the questions is the first step to finding all of the answers.

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Is there a Generic USB TouchScreen Driver 12.04?

- by lbjoum

Is there a Generic USB TouchScreen Driver 12.04? Device 03eb:201c I've been looking for 4 days solid (not very skilled) and can't find a solution. I have a generic tablet: C97- Atom N2600 9.7" 2GB 32GB Bluetooth WiFi WebCam Ext.3G Windows 7 Tablet PC Using 12.04 and cannot find a driver. I installed android and the touchscreen works but still lots of other bugs. Oh well, stuck with Windows 7 and not happy about it. Will keep trying, but too much time wasted already. If you have a solution I would love to try it. ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ lsusb Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0cf2:6238 ENE Technology, Inc. Bus 001 Device 003: ID 1a40:0101 Terminus Technology Inc. 4-Port HUB Bus 001 Device 005: ID 05e1:0100 Syntek Semiconductor Co., Ltd 802.11g + Bluetooth Wireless Adapter Bus 001 Device 006: ID 090c:3731 Silicon Motion, Inc. - Taiwan (formerly Feiya Technology Corp.) Bus 003 Device 002: ID 03eb:201c Atmel Corp. at90usbkey sample firmware (HID mouse) (from Windows: HID\VID_03EB&PID_201C\6&5F38127&0&0000 USB\VID_03EB&PID_201C\5&193ADADC&1&2 ) Bus 001 Device 007: ID 0518:0001 EzKEY Corp. USB to PS2 Adaptor v1.09 Bus 001 Device 008: ID 192f:0916 Avago Technologies, Pte. ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo lsusb -v Bus 003 Device 002: ID 03eb:201c Atmel Corp. at90usbkey sample firmware (HID mouse) Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 2.00 bDeviceClass 0 (Defined at Interface level) bDeviceSubClass 0 bDeviceProtocol 0 bMaxPacketSize0 32 idVendor 0x03eb Atmel Corp. idProduct 0x201c at90usbkey sample firmware (HID mouse) bcdDevice 45.a2 iManufacturer 1 CDT iProduct 2 9.75 iSerial 0 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 34 bNumInterfaces 1 bConfigurationValue 1 iConfiguration 0 bmAttributes 0x00 (Missing must-be-set bit!) (Bus Powered) MaxPower 100mA Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 3 Human Interface Device bInterfaceSubClass 0 No Subclass bInterfaceProtocol 0 None iInterface 0 HID Device Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 33 bcdHID 1.11 bCountryCode 0 Not supported bNumDescriptors 1 bDescriptorType 34 Report wDescriptorLength 177 Report Descriptors: ** UNAVAILABLE ** Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 3 Transfer Type Interrupt Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0020 1x 32 bytes bInterval 5 Device Status: 0x00fb Self Powered Remote Wakeup Enabled Debug Mode ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo lshw ubuntu description: Notebook product: To be filled by O.E.M. (To be filled by O.E.M.) vendor: To be filled by O.E.M. version: To be filled by O.E.M. serial: To be filled by O.E.M. width: 32 bits capabilities: smbios-2.7 dmi-2.7 smp-1.4 smp configuration: boot=normal chassis=notebook cpus=2 family=To be filled by O.E.M. sku=To be filled by O.E.M. uuid=00020003-0004-0005-0006-000700080009 *-core description: Motherboard product: Tiger Hill vendor: INTEL Corporation physical id: 0 version: To be filled by O.E.M. serial: To be filled by O.E.M. slot: To be filled by O.E.M. *-firmware description: BIOS vendor: American Megatrends Inc. physical id: 0 version: 4.6.5 date: 08/24/2012 size: 64KiB capacity: 960KiB capabilities: pci upgrade shadowing cdboot bootselect socketedrom edd int13floppy1200 int13floppy720 int13floppy2880 int5printscreen int9keyboard int14serial int17printer acpi usb biosbootspecification *-cpu:0 description: CPU product: Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU N2600 @ 1.60GHz vendor: Intel Corp. physical id: 4 bus info: cpu@0 version: 6.6.1 serial: 0003-0661-0000-0000-0000-0000 slot: CPU 1 size: 1600MHz capacity: 1600MHz width: 64 bits clock: 400MHz capabilities: x86-64 boot fpu fpu_exception wp vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts nonstop_tsc aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm movbe lahf_lm arat configuration: cores=2 enabledcores=1 id=2 threads=2 *-cache:0 description: L1 cache physical id: 5 slot: L1-Cache size: 24KiB capacity: 24KiB capabilities: internal write-back unified *-cache:1 description: L2 cache physical id: 6 slot: L2-Cache size: 512KiB capacity: 512KiB capabilities: internal varies unified *-logicalcpu:0 description: Logical CPU physical id: 2.1 width: 64 bits capabilities: logical *-logicalcpu:1 description: Logical CPU physical id: 2.2 width: 64 bits capabilities: logical *-logicalcpu:2 description: Logical CPU physical id: 2.3 width: 64 bits capabilities: logical *-logicalcpu:3 description: Logical CPU physical id: 2.4 width: 64 bits capabilities: logical *-memory description: System Memory physical id: 28 slot: System board or motherboard size: 2GiB *-bank:0 description: SODIMM [empty] product: [Empty] vendor: [Empty] physical id: 0 serial: [Empty] slot: DIMM0 *-bank:1 description: SODIMM DDR3 Synchronous 800 MHz (1.2 ns) vendor: 69 physical id: 1 serial: 00000210 slot: DIMM1 size: 2GiB width: 64 bits clock: 800MHz (1.2ns) *-cpu:1 physical id: 1 bus info: cpu@1 version: 6.6.1 serial: 0003-0661-0000-0000-0000-0000 size: 1600MHz capabilities: ht configuration: id=2 *-logicalcpu:0 description: Logical CPU physical id: 2.1 capabilities: logical *-logicalcpu:1 description: Logical CPU physical id: 2.2 capabilities: logical *-logicalcpu:2 description: Logical CPU physical id: 2.3 capabilities: logical *-logicalcpu:3 description: Logical CPU physical id: 2.4 capabilities: logical *-pci description: Host bridge product: Atom Processor D2xxx/N2xxx DRAM Controller vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 100 bus info: pci@0000:00:00.0 version: 03 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz *-display UNCLAIMED description: VGA compatible controller product: Atom Processor D2xxx/N2xxx Integrated Graphics Controller vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 2 bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0 version: 09 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list configuration: latency=0 resources: memory:dfe00000-dfefffff ioport:f100(size=8) *-multimedia description: Audio device product: N10/ICH 7 Family High Definition Audio Controller vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1b bus info: pci@0000:00:1b.0 version: 02 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=snd_hda_intel latency=0 resources: irq:42 memory:dff00000-dff03fff *-pci:0 description: PCI bridge product: N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 1 vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1c bus info: pci@0000:00:1c.0 version: 02 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pci pciexpress msi pm normal_decode bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=pcieport resources: irq:40 ioport:2000(size=4096) memory:80000000-801fffff ioport:80200000(size=2097152) *-usb:0 description: USB controller product: N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #1 vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1d bus info: pci@0000:00:1d.0 version: 02 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: uhci bus_master configuration: driver=uhci_hcd latency=0 resources: irq:23 ioport:f0a0(size=32) *-usb:1 description: USB controller product: N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #2 vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1d.1 bus info: pci@0000:00:1d.1 version: 02 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: uhci bus_master configuration: driver=uhci_hcd latency=0 resources: irq:19 ioport:f080(size=32) *-usb:2 description: USB controller product: N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #3 vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1d.2 bus info: pci@0000:00:1d.2 version: 02 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: uhci bus_master configuration: driver=uhci_hcd latency=0 resources: irq:18 ioport:f060(size=32) *-usb:3 description: USB controller product: N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #4 vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1d.3 bus info: pci@0000:00:1d.3 version: 02 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: uhci bus_master configuration: driver=uhci_hcd latency=0 resources: irq:16 ioport:f040(size=32) *-usb:4 description: USB controller product: N10/ICH 7 Family USB2 EHCI Controller vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1d.7 bus info: pci@0000:00:1d.7 version: 02 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm debug ehci bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=ehci_hcd latency=0 resources: irq:23 memory:dff05000-dff053ff *-pci:1 description: PCI bridge product: 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1e bus info: pci@0000:00:1e.0 version: e2 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pci subtractive_decode bus_master cap_list *-isa description: ISA bridge product: NM10 Family LPC Controller vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1f bus info: pci@0000:00:1f.0 version: 02 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: isa bus_master cap_list configuration: latency=0 *-storage description: SATA controller product: N10/ICH7 Family SATA Controller [AHCI mode] vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1f.2 bus info: pci@0000:00:1f.2 logical name: scsi0 version: 02 width: 32 bits clock: 66MHz capabilities: storage msi pm ahci_1.0 bus_master cap_list emulated configuration: driver=ahci latency=0 resources: irq:41 ioport:f0f0(size=8) ioport:f0e0(size=4) ioport:f0d0(size=8) ioport:f0c0(size=4) ioport:f020(size=16) memory:dff04000-dff043ff *-disk description: ATA Disk product: BIWIN SSD physical id: 0.0.0 bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0 logical name: /dev/sda version: 1206 serial: 123403501060 size: 29GiB (32GB) capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos configuration: ansiversion=5 signature=8fbe402b *-volume:0 description: Windows NTFS volume physical id: 1 bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0,1 logical name: /dev/sda1 version: 3.1 serial: 249bde5d-8246-9a40-88c7-2d5e3bcaf692 size: 19GiB capacity: 19GiB capabilities: primary bootable ntfs initialized configuration: clustersize=4096 created=2011-04-04 02:27:51 filesystem=ntfs state=clean *-volume:1 description: Windows NTFS volume physical id: 2 bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0,2 logical name: /dev/sda2 version: 3.1 serial: de12d40f-d5ca-8642-b306-acd9349fda1a size: 10231MiB capacity: 10GiB capabilities: primary ntfs initialized configuration: clustersize=4096 created=2011-04-04 01:52:26 filesystem=ntfs state=clean *-serial UNCLAIMED description: SMBus product: N10/ICH 7 Family SMBus Controller vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1f.3 bus info: pci@0000:00:1f.3 version: 02 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz configuration: latency=0 resources: ioport:f000(size=32) *-scsi:0 physical id: 2 bus info: usb@1:1 logical name: scsi4 capabilities: emulated scsi-host configuration: driver=usb-storage *-disk description: SCSI Disk physical id: 0.0.0 bus info: scsi@4:0.0.0 logical name: /dev/sdb size: 29GiB (31GB) capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos configuration: signature=00017463 *-volume description: Windows FAT volume vendor: mkdosfs physical id: 1 bus info: scsi@4:0.0.0,1 logical name: /dev/sdb1 logical name: /cdrom version: FAT32 serial: 129b-4f87 size: 29GiB capacity: 29GiB capabilities: primary bootable fat initialized configuration: FATs=2 filesystem=fat mount.fstype=vfat mount.options=rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=cp437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro state=mounted *-scsi:1 physical id: 3 bus info: usb@1:3.1 logical name: scsi6 capabilities: emulated scsi-host configuration: driver=usb-storage *-disk description: SCSI Disk physical id: 0.0.0 bus info: scsi@6:0.0.0 logical name: /dev/sdc size: 7400MiB (7759MB) capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos configuration: signature=c3072e18 *-volume description: Windows FAT volume vendor: mkdosfs physical id: 1 bus info: scsi@6:0.0.0,1 logical name: /dev/sdc1 logical name: /media/JOUM8G version: FAT32 serial: e676-9311 size: 7394MiB capacity: 7394MiB capabilities: primary bootable fat initialized configuration: FATs=2 filesystem=fat label=Android mount.fstype=vfat mount.options=rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,uid=999,gid=999,fmask=0022,dmask=0077,codepage=cp437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,showexec,utf8,flush,errors=remount-ro state=mounted ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ xinput list ? Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)] ? ? Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)] ? ? Plus More Enterprise LTD. USB-compliant keyboard id=10 [slave pointer (2)] ? ? USB Optical Mouse id=11 [slave pointer (2)] ? Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)] ? Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)] ? Power Button id=6 [slave keyboard (3)] ? Power Button id=7 [slave keyboard (3)] ? Sleep Button id=8 [slave keyboard (3)] ? Plus More Enterprise LTD. USB-compliant keyboard id=9 [slave keyboard (3)] ? USB 2.0 Webcam - Front id=12 [slave keyboard (3)] ? AT Translated Set 2 keyboard id=13 [slave keyboard (3)] ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

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Routing to a Controller with no View in Angular

- by Rick Strahl

I've finally had some time to put Angular to use this week in a small project I'm working on for fun. Angular's routing is great and makes it real easy to map URL routes to controllers and model data into views. But what if you don't actually need a view, if you effectively need a headless controller that just runs code, but doesn't render a view?Preserve the ViewWhen Angular navigates a route and and presents a new view, it loads the controller and then renders the view from scratch. Views are not cached or stored, but displayed and then removed. So if you have routes configured like this:'use strict'; // Declare app level module which depends on filters, and services window.myApp = angular.module('myApp', ['myApp.filters', 'myApp.services', 'myApp.directives', 'myApp.controllers']). config(['$routeProvider', function($routeProvider) { $routeProvider.when('/map', { template: "partials/map.html ", controller: 'mapController', reloadOnSearch: false, animation: 'slide' }); … $routeProvider.otherwise({redirectTo: '/map'}); }]); Angular routes to the mapController and then re-renders the map.html template with the new data from the $scope filled in.But, but… I don't want a new View!Now in most cases this works just fine. If I'm rendering plain DOM content, or textboxes in a form interface that is all fine and dandy - it's perfectly fine to completely re-render the UI.But in some cases, the UI that's being managed has state and shouldn't be redrawn. In this case the main page in question has a Google Map on it. The map is going to be manipulated throughout the lifetime of the application and the rest of the pages. In my application I have a toolbar on the bottom and the rest of the content is replaced/switched out by the Angular Views:The problem is that the map shouldn't be redrawn each time the Location view is activated. It should maintain its state, such as the current position selected (which can move), and shouldn't redraw due to the overhead of re-rendering the initial map.Originally I set up the map, exactly like all my other views - as a partial, that is rendered with a separate file, but that didn't work.The Workaround - Controller Only RoutesThe workaround for this goes decidedly against Angular's way of doing things:Setting up a Template-less RouteIn-lining the map view directly into the main pageHiding and showing the map view manuallyLet's see how this works.Controller Only RouteThe template-less route is basically a route that doesn't have any template to render. This is not directly supported by Angular, but thankfully easy to fake. The end goal here is that I want to simply have the Controller fire and then have the controller manage the display of the already active view by hiding and showing the map and any other view content, in effect bypassing Angular's view display management.In short - I want a controller action, but no view rendering.The controller-only or template-less route looks like this: $routeProvider.when('/map', { template: " ", // just fire controller controller: 'mapController', animation: 'slide' });Notice I'm using the template property rather than templateUrl (used in the first example above), which allows specifying a string template, and leaving it blank. The template property basically allows you to provide a templated string using Angular's HandleBar like binding syntax which can be useful at times. You can use plain strings or strings with template code in the template, or as I'm doing here a blank string to essentially fake 'just clear the view'. In-lined ViewSo if there's no view where does the HTML go? Because I don't want Angular to manage the view the map markup is in-lined directly into the page. So instead of rendering the map into the Angular view container, the content is simply set up as inline HTML to display as a sibling to the view container.<div id="MapContent" data-icon="LocationIcon" ng-controller="mapController" style="display:none"> <div class="headerbar"> <div class="right-header" style="float:right"> <a id="btnShowSaveLocationDialog" class="iconbutton btn btn-sm" href="#/saveLocation" style="margin-right: 2px;"> <i class="icon-ok icon-2x" style="color: lightgreen; "></i> Save Location </a> </div> <div class="left-header">GeoCrumbs</div> </div> <div class="clearfix"></div> <div id="Message"> <i id="MessageIcon"></i> <span id="MessageText"></span> </div> <div id="Map" class="content-area"> </div> </div> <div id="ViewPlaceholder" ng-view></div>Note that there's the #MapContent element and the #ViewPlaceHolder. The #MapContent is my static map view that is always 'live' and is initially hidden. It is initially hidden and doesn't get made visible until the MapController controller activates it which does the initial rendering of the map. After that the element is persisted with the map data already loaded and any future access only updates the map with new locations/pins etc.Note that default route is assigned to the mapController, which means that the mapController is fired right as the page loads, which is actually a good thing in this case, as the map is the cornerstone of this app that is manipulated by some of the other controllers/views.The Controller handles some UISince there's effectively no view activation with the template-less route, the controller unfortunately has to take over some UI interaction directly. Specifically it has to swap the hidden state between the map and any of the other views.Here's what the controller looks like:myApp.controller('mapController', ["$scope", "$routeParams", "locationData", function($scope, $routeParams, locationData) { $scope.locationData = locationData.location; $scope.locationHistory = locationData.locationHistory; if ($routeParams.mode == "currentLocation") { bc.getCurrentLocation(false); } bc.showMap(false,"#LocationIcon"); }]);bc.showMap is responsible for a couple of display tasks that hide/show the views/map and for activating/deactivating icons. The code looks like this:this.showMap = function (hide,selActiveIcon) { if (!hide) $("#MapContent").show(); else { $("#MapContent").hide(); } self.fitContent(); if (selActiveIcon) { $(".iconbutton").removeClass("active"); $(selActiveIcon).addClass("active"); } };Each of the other controllers in the app also call this function when they are activated to basically hide the map and make the View Content area visible. The map controller makes the map.This is UI code and calling this sort of thing from controllers is generally not recommended, but I couldn't figure out a way using directives to make this work any more easily than this. It'd be easy to hide and show the map and view container using a flag an ng-show, but it gets tricky because of scoping of the $scope. I would have to resort to storing this setting on the $rootscope which I try to avoid. The same issues exists with the icons.It sure would be nice if Angular had a way to explicitly specify that a View shouldn't be destroyed when another view is activated, so currently this workaround is required. Searching around, I saw a number of whacky hacks to get around this, but this solution I'm using here seems much easier than any of that I could dig up even if it doesn't quite fit the 'Angular way'.Angular nice, until it's notOverall I really like Angular and the way it works although it took me a bit of time to get my head around how all the pieces fit together. Once I got the idea how the app/routes, the controllers and views snap together, putting together Angular pages becomes fairly straightforward. You can get quite a bit done never going beyond those basics. For most common things Angular's default routing and view presentation works very well.But, when you do something a bit more complex, where there are multiple dependencies or as in this case where Angular doesn't appear to support a feature that's absolutely necessary, you're on your own. Finding information on more advanced topics is not trivial especially since versions are changing so rapidly and the low level behaviors are changing frequently so finding something that works is often an exercise in trial and error. Not that this is surprising. Angular is a complex piece of kit as are all the frameworks that try to hack JavaScript into submission to do something that it was really never designed to. After all everything about a framework like Angular is an elaborate hack. A lot of shit has to happen to make this all work together and at that Angular (and Ember, Durandel etc.) are pretty amazing pieces of JavaScript code. So no harm, no foul, but I just can't help feeling like working in toy sandbox at times :-)© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2013Posted in Angular JavaScript Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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OFM 11g: Implementing OAM SSO with Forms

- by olaf.heimburger

There is some confusion about the integration of OFM 11g Forms with Oracle Access Manager 11g (OAM). Some say this does not work, some say it works, but.... Actually, having implemented it many times I belong to the later group. Here is how. Caveat Before you start installing anything, take a step back and consider your current implementation and what you really need and want to achieve. The current integration of Forms 11g with OAM 11g does not support self-service account creation and password resets from the Forms application. If you really need this, you must use the existing Oracle AS 10.1.4.3 infrastructure. On the other hand, if your user population is pretty stable, you can enjoy the latest Forms 11g with OAM 11g. Assumptions The whole process should be done in one day. I assume that all domains and instances are started during setup, if you need to restart them on demand or purpose, be sure to have proper start/stop scripts, I don't mention them. Preparation It goes without saying, that you always should do a proper backup before you change anything on your production environment. With proper backup, I also mean a tested and verified restore process. If you dared to test it before, do it now. It pays off. Requirements For OAM 11g to work properly you need a LDAP repository. For the integration of Forms 11g you need an Oracle Internet Directory (OID) configured with the Oracle AS SSO LDAP extensions. For better support I usually give the latest version a try, in this case OID 11g is a good choice.During the Installation and Integration steps we use an upgrade wizard that needs the old OID configuration on the same host but in a different ORACLE_HOME. Installation vs Configuration With OFM 11g Oracle introduced a clear separation between Installation of the binaries (the software) and the Configuration of the instances (the runtime). This is really great as you can install all the software and create new instances when needed. In the following we adhere to this scheme and install the software first and then configure the instances later. Installation Steps The Oracle documentation contains all the necessary steps for the installation of all pieces of software. But some hints help to avoid traps and pitfalls. Step 1 The Database Start the installation with the database. It is quite obvious but we need an Oracle database for all the other steps. If you have one at hand, fine. If not, just install at least a Oracle 10.2.0.4 version. This database can be on a different host. Step 2 The Repository Creation Utility The next step should be to run the Repository Creation Utility (RCU). This is a client application that just needs to connect to your database. It can be run on any host that can reach the database and is a Windows or Linux 32-bit machine. When you run it, be sure to install the OID schema and the OAM schema. If you miss one of these, you can run the RCU again to install the missing schema. Step 3 The Foundation With OFM 11g Oracle started to use WebLogic Server 11g (WLS) as its foundation for all OFM 11g installation. We therefore install it first. Depending on your operating system, it might be possible, that no native installer is available. My approach to this dilemma is to use the WLS Generic Installer for all my installations. It does not include a JDK either but if you have both for your platform you are ready to go. Step 3a The JDK To make things interesting, Oracle currently has two JDKs in its portfolio. The Sun JDK and the JRockit JDK. Both are available for a number of platforms. If you are lucky and both are available for your platform, install both in a separate directory (and not one of your ORACLE_HOMEs) each, You can use the later as you like. Step 3b Install WLS for OID and OAM With the JDK installed, we start the generic installer with java -jar wls_generic.jar.STOP! Before you do this, check the version first. It should be 1.6.0_18 or later and not the GCC one (Some Linux distros have it installed by default). To verify the version, issue a java -version command and make sure that the output does not contain the text gcj and the version matches. If this does not work, use an absolute path like /opt/java/jdk1.6.0_23/bin/java to start the installer. The installer allows you to specify a path to install the software into, say /opt/oracle/iam/11.1.1.3 for the OID and OAM installation. We will call this IAM_HOME. Step 4 Install OID Now we are ready to install OID. Start the OID installer (in the Disk1 directory) and just select the installation only step. This will install the software only and does not configure the instance. Use the IAM_HOME as the target directory. Step 5 Install SOA Suite The IAM 11g Suite uses the BPEL component of the SOA Suite 11g for its workflows. This is a pretty closed environment and not to be used for SCA Composites. We install the SOA Suite in $IAM_HOME/soa. The installer only installs the binaries. Configuration will be done later. Step 6 Install OAM Once the installation of OID and SOA is done, we are ready to install the OAM software in the same IAM_HOME. Make sure to install the OAM binaries in a directory different from the one you used during the OID and SOA installation. As before, we only install the software, the instance will be created later. Step 7 Backup the Installation At this point, I normally do a backup (or snapshot in a virtual image) of the installation. Good when you need to go back to this point. Step 8 Configure OID The software is installed and now we need instances to run it. This process is called configuration. For OID use the config.sh found in $IAM_HOME/oid/bin to start the configuration wizard. Normally this runs smoothly. If you encounter some issues check the Oracle Support site for help. This configuration will also start the OID instance. Step 9 Install the Oracle AS SSO Schema Before we install the Forms software we need to install the Oracle AS SSO Schema into the database and OID. This is a rather dangerous procedure, but fully documented in the IAM Installation Guide, Chapter 10. You should finish this in one go, do not reboot your host during the whole procedure. As a precaution, you should make a backup of the OID instance before you start the procedure. Once the backup is ready, read the chapter, including every note, carefully. You can avoid a number of issues by following all the steps and will succeed with a working solution. Step 10 Configure OAM Reached this step? Great. You are ready to create an OAM instance. Use the $IAM_HOME/iam/common/binconfig.sh for this. This will open the WLS Domain Creation Wizard and asks for the libraries to be installed. You should at least select the OAM with Database repository item. The configuration will also start the OAM instance. Step 11 Install WLS for Forms 11g It is quite tempting to install everything in one ORACLE_HOME. Unfortunately this does not work for all OFM packages. Therefore we do another WLS installation in another ORACLE_HOME. The same considerations as in step 3b apply. We call this one FORMS_HOME. Step 12 Install Forms In the FORMS_HOME we now install the binaries for the Forms 11g software. Again, this is a install only step. Configuration starts with the next step. Step 13 Configure Forms To configure Forms 11g we start the Configuration Wizard (config.sh) in FORMS_HOME/bin. This wizard should create a new WebLogic Domain and an OHS instance! Do not extend existing domains or instances! Forms should run in its own instances! When all information is supplied, the wizard will create the domain and instance and starts them automatically.Step 14 Setup your Forms SSO EnvironmentOnce you have implemented and tested your Forms 11g instance, you can configured it for SSO. Yes, this requires the old Oracle AS SSO solution, OIDDAS for creating and assigning users and SSO to setup your partner applications. In this step you should consider to create every user necessary for use within the environment. When done, do not forget to test it. Step 15 Migrate the SSO Repository Since the final goal is to get rid of the old SSO implementation we need to migrate the old SSO repository into the new OID structure. Additionally, this step will also migrate all partner application configurations into OAM 11g. Quite convenient. To do this step, you have to start the upgrade agent (ua or ua.bat or ua.cmd) on the operating system level in $IAM_HOME/bin. Once finished, this wizard will create new osso.conf files for each partner application in $IAM_HOME/upgrade/temp/oam/.Note: At the time of this writing, this step only works if everything is on the same host (ie. OID, OAM, etc.). This restriction might be lifted in later releases. Step 16 Change your OHS sso.conf and shut down OC4J_SECURITY In Step 14 we verified that SSO for our Forms environment works fine. Now, we are shutting the old system done and reconfigure the OHS that acts as the Forms entry point. First we go to the OHS configuration directory and rename the old osso.conf to osso.conf.10g. Now we change the moduleconf/mod_osso.conf to point to the new osso.conf file. Copy the new osso.conf file from $IAM_HOME/upgrade/temp/oam/ to the OHS configuration directory. Restart OHS, test forms by using the same forms links. OAM should now kick in and show the login dialog to ask for your user credentials.Done. Now your Forms environment is successfully integrated with OAM 11g.Enjoy. What's Next? This rather lengthy setup is just the foundation for your growing environment of OAM 11g protections. In the next entry we will show that Forms 11g and ADF Faces 11g can use the same OAM installation and provide real single sign-on. References Nearly everything is documented. Use the documentation! Oracle® Fusion Middleware Installation Guide for Oracle Identity Management 11gR1 Oracle® Fusion Middleware Installation Guide for Oracle Identity Management 11gR1, Chapter 11-14 Oracle® Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide for Oracle Access Manager 11gR1, Appendix B Oracle® Fusion Middleware Upgrade Guide for Oracle Identity Management 11gR1, Chapter 10

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How to Avoid Your Next 12-Month Science Project

- by constant

While most customers immediately understand how the magic of Oracle's Hybrid Columnar Compression, intelligent storage servers and flash memory make Exadata uniquely powerful against home-grown database systems, some people think that Exalogic is nothing more than a bunch of x86 servers, a storage appliance and an InfiniBand (IB) network, built into a single rack. After all, isn't this exactly what the High Performance Computing (HPC) world has been doing for decades? On the surface, this may be true. And some people tried exactly that: They tried to put together their own version of Exalogic, but then they discover there's a lot more to building a system than buying hardware and assembling it together. IT is not Ikea. Why is that so? Could it be there's more going on behind the scenes than merely putting together a bunch of servers, a storage array and an InfiniBand network into a rack? Let's explore some of the special sauce that makes Exalogic unique and un-copyable, so you can save yourself from your next 6- to 12-month science project that distracts you from doing real work that adds value to your company. Engineering Systems is Hard Work! The backbone of Exalogic is its InfiniBand network: 4 times better bandwidth than even 10 Gigabit Ethernet, and only about a tenth of its latency. What a potential for increased scalability and throughput across the middleware and database layers! But InfiniBand is a beast that needs to be tamed: It is true that Exalogic uses a standard, open-source Open Fabrics Enterprise Distribution (OFED) InfiniBand driver stack. Unfortunately, this software has been developed by the HPC community with fastest speed in mind (which is good) but, despite the name, not many other enterprise-class requirements are included (which is less good). Here are some of the improvements that Oracle's InfiniBand development team had to add to the OFED stack to make it enterprise-ready, simply because typical HPC users didn't have the need to implement them: More than 100 bug fixes in the pieces that were not related to the Message Passing Interface Protocol (MPI), which is the protocol that HPC users use most of the time, but which is less useful in the enterprise. Performance optimizations and tuning across the whole IB stack: From Switches, Host Channel Adapters (HCAs) and drivers to low-level protocols, middleware and applications. Yes, even the standard HPC IB stack could be improved in terms of performance. Ethernet over IB (EoIB): Exalogic uses InfiniBand internally to reach high performance, but it needs to play nicely with datacenters around it. That's why Oracle added Ethernet over InfiniBand technology to it that allows for creating many virtual 10GBE adapters inside Exalogic's nodes that are aggregated and connected to Exalogic's IB gateway switches. While this is an open standard, it's up to the vendor to implement it. In this case, Oracle integrated the EoIB stack with Oracle's own IB to 10GBE gateway switches, and made it fully virtualized from the beginning. This means that Exalogic customers can completely rewire their server infrastructure inside the rack without having to physically pull or plug a single cable - a must-have for every cloud deployment. Anybody who wants to match this level of integration would need to add an InfiniBand switch development team to their project. Or just buy Oracle's gateway switches, which are conveniently shipped with a whole server infrastructure attached! IPv6 support for InfiniBand's Sockets Direct Protocol (SDP), Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS), TCP/IP over IB (IPoIB) and EoIB protocols. Because no IPv6 = not very enterprise-class. HA capability for SDP. High Availability is not a big requirement for HPC, but for enterprise-class application servers it is. Every node in Exalogic's InfiniBand network is connected twice for redundancy. If any cable or port or HCA fails, there's always a replacement link ready to take over. This requires extra magic at the protocol level to work. So in addition to Weblogic's failover capabilities, Oracle implemented IB automatic path migration at the SDP level to avoid unnecessary failover operations at the middleware level. Security, for example spoof-protection. Another feature that is less important for traditional users of InfiniBand, but very important for enterprise customers. InfiniBand Partitioning and Quality-of-Service (QoS): One of the first questions we get from customers about Exalogic is: “How can we implement multi-tenancy?” The answer is to partition your IB network, which effectively creates many networks that work independently and that are protected at the lowest networking layer possible. In addition to that, QoS allows administrators to prioritize traffic flow in multi-tenancy environments so they can keep their service levels where it matters most. Resilient IB Fabric Management: InfiniBand is a self-managing network, so a lot of the magic lies in coming up with the right topology and in teaching the subnet manager how to properly discover and manage the network. Oracle's Infiniband switches come with pre-integrated, highly available fabric management with seamless integration into Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center. In short: Oracle elevated the OFED InfiniBand stack into an enterprise-class networking infrastructure. Many years and multiple teams of manpower went into the above improvements - this is something you can only get from Oracle, because no other InfiniBand vendor can give you these features across the whole stack! Exabus: Because it's not About the Size of Your Network, it's How You Use it! So let's assume that you somehow were able to get your hands on an enterprise-class IB driver stack. Or maybe you don't care and are just happy with the standard OFED one? Anyway, the next step is to actually leverage that InfiniBand performance. Here are the choices: Use traditional TCP/IP on top of the InfiniBand stack, Develop your own integration between your middleware and the lower-level (but faster) InfiniBand protocols. While more bandwidth is always a good thing, it's actually the low latency that enables superior performance for your applications when running on any networking infrastructure: The lower the latency, the faster the response travels through the network and the more transactions you can close per second. The reason why InfiniBand is such a low latency technology is that it gets rid of most if not all of your traditional networking protocol stack: Data is literally beamed from one region of RAM in one server into another region of RAM in another server with no kernel/drivers/UDP/TCP or other networking stack overhead involved! Which makes option 1 a no-go: Adding TCP/IP on top of InfiniBand is like adding training wheels to your racing bike. It may be ok in the beginning and for development, but it's not quite the performance IB was meant to deliver. Which only leaves option 2: Integrating your middleware with fast, low-level InfiniBand protocols. And this is what Exalogic's "Exabus" technology is all about. Here are a few Exabus features that help applications leverage the performance of InfiniBand in Exalogic: RDMA and SDP integration at the JDBC driver level (SDP), for Oracle Weblogic (SDP), Oracle Coherence (RDMA), Oracle Tuxedo (RDMA) and the new Oracle Traffic Director (RDMA) on Exalogic. Using these protocols, middleware can communicate a lot faster with each other and the Oracle database than by using standard networking protocols, Seamless Integration of Ethernet over InfiniBand from Exalogic's Gateway switches into the OS, Oracle Weblogic optimizations for handling massive amounts of parallel transactions. Because if you have an 8-lane Autobahn, you also need to improve your ramps so you can feed it with many cars in parallel. Integration of Weblogic with Oracle Exadata for faster performance, optimized session management and failover. As you see, “Exabus” is Oracle's word for describing all the InfiniBand enhancements Oracle put into Exalogic: OFED stack enhancements, protocols for faster IB access, and InfiniBand support and optimizations at the virtualization and middleware level. All working together to deliver the full potential of InfiniBand performance. Who else has 100% control over their middleware so they can develop their own low-level protocol integration with InfiniBand? Even if you take an open source approach, you're looking at years of development work to create, test and support a whole new networking technology in your middleware! The Extras: Less Hassle, More Productivity, Faster Time to Market And then there are the other advantages of Engineered Systems that are true for Exalogic the same as they are for every other Engineered System: One simple purchasing process: No headaches due to endless RFPs and no “Will X work with Y?” uncertainties. Everything has been engineered together: All kinds of bugs and problems have been already fixed at the design level that would have only manifested themselves after you have built the system from scratch. Everything is built, tested and integrated at the factory level . Less integration pain for you, faster time to market. Every Exalogic machine world-wide is identical to Oracle's own machines in the lab: Instant replication of any problems you may encounter, faster time to resolution. Simplified patching, management and operations. One throat to choke: Imagine finger-pointing hell for systems that have been put together using several different vendors. Oracle's Engineered Systems have a single phone number that customers can call to get their problems solved. For more business-centric values, read The Business Value of Engineered Systems. Conclusion: Buy Exalogic, or get ready for a 6-12 Month Science Project And here's the reason why it's not easy to "build your own Exalogic": There's a lot of work required to make such a system fly. In fact, anybody who is starting to "just put together a bunch of servers and an InfiniBand network" is really looking at a 6-12 month science project. And the outcome is likely to not be very enterprise-class. And it won't have Exalogic's performance either. Because building an Engineered System is literally rocket science: It takes a lot of time, effort, resources and many iterations of design/test/analyze/fix to build such a system. That's why InfiniBand has been reserved for HPC scientists for such a long time. And only Oracle can bring the power of InfiniBand in an enterprise-class, ready-to use, pre-integrated version to customers, without the develop/integrate/support pain. For more details, check the new Exalogic overview white paper which was updated only recently. P.S.: Thanks to my colleagues Ola, Paul, Don and Andy for helping me put together this article! var flattr_uid = '26528'; var flattr_tle = 'How to Avoid Your Next 12-Month Science Project'; var flattr_dsc = 'While most customers immediately understand how the magic of Oracle's Hybrid Columnar Compression, intelligent storage servers and flash memory make Exadata uniquely powerful against home-grown database systems, some people think that Exalogic is nothing more than a bunch of x86 servers, a storage appliance and an InfiniBand (IB) network, built into a single rack.After all, isn't this exactly what the High Performance Computing (HPC) world has been doing for decades?On the surface, this may be true. And some people tried exactly that: They tried to put together their own version of Exalogic, but then they discover there's a lot more to building a system than buying hardware and assembling it together. IT is not Ikea.Why is that so? Could it be there's more going on behind the scenes than merely putting together a bunch of servers, a storage array and an InfiniBand network into a rack? Let's explore some of the special sauce that makes Exalogic unique and un-copyable, so you can save yourself from your next 6- to 12-month science project that distracts you from doing real work that adds value to your company.'; var flattr_tag = 'Engineered Systems,Engineered Systems,Infiniband,Integration,latency,Oracle,performance'; var flattr_cat = 'text'; var flattr_url = 'http://constantin.glez.de/blog/2012/04/how-avoid-your-next-12-month-science-project'; var flattr_lng = 'en_GB'

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Caching NHibernate Named Queries

- by TStewartDev

I recently started a new job and one of my first tasks was to implement a "popular products" design. The parameters were that it be done with NHibernate and be cached for 24 hours at a time because the query will be pretty taxing and the results do not need to be constantly up to date. This ended up being tougher than it sounds. The database schema meant a minimum of four joins with filtering and ordering criteria. I decided to use a stored procedure rather than letting NHibernate create the SQL for me. Here is a summary of what I learned (even if I didn't ultimately use all of it): You can't, at the time of this writing, use Fluent NHibernate to configure SQL named queries or imports You can return persistent entities from a stored procedure and there are a couple ways to do that You can populate POCOs using the results of a stored procedure, but it isn't quite as obvious You can reuse your named query result mapping other places (avoid duplication) Caching your query results is not at all obvious Testing to see if your cache is working is a pain NHibernate does a lot of things right. Having unified, up-to-date, comprehensive, and easy-to-find documentation is not one of them. By the way, if you're new to this, I'll use the terms "named query" and "stored procedure" (from NHibernate's perspective) fairly interchangeably. Technically, a named query can execute any SQL, not just a stored procedure, and a stored procedure doesn't have to be executed from a named query, but for reusability, it seems to me like the best practice. If you're here, chances are good you're looking for answers to a similar problem. You don't want to read about the path, you just want the result. So, here's how to get this thing going. The Stored Procedure NHibernate has some guidelines when using stored procedures. For Microsoft SQL Server, you have to return a result set. The scalar value that the stored procedure returns is ignored as are any result sets after the first. Other than that, it's nothing special. CREATE PROCEDURE GetPopularProducts @StartDate DATETIME, @MaxResults INT AS BEGIN SELECT [ProductId], [ProductName], [ImageUrl] FROM SomeTableWithJoinsEtc END The Result Class - PopularProduct You have two options to transport your query results to your view (or wherever is the final destination): you can populate an existing mapped entity class in your model, or you can create a new entity class. If you go with the existing model, the advantage is that the query will act as a loader and you'll get full proxied access to the domain model. However, this can be a disadvantage if you require access to the related entities that aren't loaded by your results. For example, my PopularProduct has image references. Unless I tie them into the query (thus making it even more complicated and expensive to run), they'll have to be loaded on access, requiring more trips to the database. Since we're trying to avoid trips to the database by using a second-level cache, we should use the second option, which is to create a separate entity for results. This approach is (I believe) in the spirit of the Command-Query Separation principle, and it allows us to flatten our data and optimize our report-generation process from data source to view. public class PopularProduct { public virtual int ProductId { get; set; } public virtual string ProductName { get; set; } public virtual string ImageUrl { get; set; } } The NHibernate Mappings (hbm) Next up, we need to let NHibernate know about the query and where the results will go. Below is the markup for the PopularProduct class. Notice that I'm using the <resultset> element and that it has a name attribute. The name allows us to drop this into our query map and any others, giving us reusability. Also notice the <import> element which lets NHibernate know about our entity class. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <hibernate-mapping xmlns="urn:nhibernate-mapping-2.2"> <import class="PopularProduct, Infrastructure.NHibernate, Version=1.0.0.0"/> <resultset name="PopularProductResultSet"> <return-scalar column="ProductId" type="System.Int32"/> <return-scalar column="ProductName" type="System.String"/> <return-scalar column="ImageUrl" type="System.String"/> </resultset> </hibernate-mapping> And now the PopularProductsMap: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <hibernate-mapping xmlns="urn:nhibernate-mapping-2.2"> <sql-query name="GetPopularProducts" resultset-ref="PopularProductResultSet" cacheable="true" cache-mode="normal"> <query-param name="StartDate" type="System.DateTime" /> <query-param name="MaxResults" type="System.Int32" /> exec GetPopularProducts @StartDate = :StartDate, @MaxResults = :MaxResults </sql-query> </hibernate-mapping> The two most important things to notice here are the resultset-ref attribute, which links in our resultset mapping, and the cacheable attribute. The Query Class – PopularProductsQuery So far, this has been fairly obvious if you're familiar with NHibernate. This next part, maybe not so much. You can implement your query however you want to; for me, I wanted a self-encapsulated Query class, so here's what it looks like: public class PopularProductsQuery : IPopularProductsQuery { private static readonly IResultTransformer ResultTransformer; private readonly ISessionBuilder _sessionBuilder; static PopularProductsQuery() { ResultTransformer = Transformers.AliasToBean<PopularProduct>(); } public PopularProductsQuery(ISessionBuilder sessionBuilder) { _sessionBuilder = sessionBuilder; } public IList<PopularProduct> GetPopularProducts(DateTime startDate, int maxResults) { var session = _sessionBuilder.GetSession(); var popularProducts = session .GetNamedQuery("GetPopularProducts") .SetCacheable(true) .SetCacheRegion("PopularProductsCacheRegion") .SetCacheMode(CacheMode.Normal) .SetReadOnly(true) .SetResultTransformer(ResultTransformer) .SetParameter("StartDate", startDate.Date) .SetParameter("MaxResults", maxResults) .List<PopularProduct>(); return popularProducts; } } Okay, so let's look at each line of the query execution. The first, GetNamedQuery, matches up with our NHibernate mapping for the sql-query. Next, we set it as cacheable (this is probably redundant since our mapping also specified it, but it can't hurt, right?). Then we set the cache region which we'll get to in the next section. Set the cache mode (optional, I believe), and my cache is read-only, so I set that as well. The result transformer is very important. This tells NHibernate how to transform your query results into a non-persistent entity. You can see I've defined ResultTransformer in the static constructor using the AliasToBean transformer. The name is obviously leftover from Java/Hibernate. Finally, set your parameters and then call a result method which will execute the query. Because this is set to cached, you execute this statement every time you run the query and NHibernate will know based on your parameters whether to use its cached version or a fresh version. The Configuration – hibernate.cfg.xml and Web.config You need to explicitly enable second-level caching in your hibernate configuration: <hibernate-configuration xmlns="urn:nhibernate-configuration-2.2"> <session-factory> [...] <property name="dialect">NHibernate.Dialect.MsSql2005Dialect</property> <property name="cache.provider_class">NHibernate.Caches.SysCache.SysCacheProvider,NHibernate.Caches.SysCache</property> <property name="cache.use_query_cache">true</property> <property name="cache.use_second_level_cache">true</property> [...] </session-factory> </hibernate-configuration> Both properties "use_query_cache" and "use_second_level_cache" are necessary. As this is for a web deployement, we're using SysCache which relies on ASP.NET's caching. Be aware of this if you're not deploying to the web! You'll have to use a different cache provider. We also need to tell our cache provider (in this cache, SysCache) about our caching region: <syscache> <cache region="PopularProductsCacheRegion" expiration="86400" priority="5" /> </syscache> Here I've set the cache to be valid for 24 hours. This XML snippet goes in your Web.config (or in a separate file referenced by Web.config, which helps keep things tidy). The Payoff That should be it! At this point, your queries should run once against the database for a given set of parameters and then use the cache thereafter until it expires. You can, of course, adjust settings to work in your particular environment. Testing Testing your application to ensure it is using the cache is a pain, but if you're like me, you want to know that it's actually working. It's a bit involved, though, so I'll create a separate post for it if comments indicate there is interest.

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Refactor This (Ugly Code)!

- by Alois Kraus

Ayende has put on his blog some ugly code to refactor. First and foremost it is nearly impossible to reason about other peoples code without knowing the driving forces behind the current code. It is certainly possible to make it much cleaner when potential sources of errors cannot happen in the first place due to good design. I can see what the intention of the code is but I do not know about every brittle detail if I am allowed to reorder things here and there to simplify things. So I decided to make it much simpler by identifying the different responsibilities of the methods and encapsulate it in different classes. The code we need to refactor seems to deal with a handler after a message has been sent to a message queue. The handler does complete the current transaction if there is any and does handle any errors happening there. If during the the completion of the transaction errors occur the transaction is at least disposed. We can enter the handler already in a faulty state where we try to deliver the complete event in any case and signal a failure event and try to resend the message again to the queue if it was not inside a transaction. All is decorated with many try/catch blocks, duplicated code and some state variables to route the program flow. It is hard to understand and difficult to reason about. In other words: This code is a mess and could be written by me if I was under pressure. Here comes to code we want to refactor: private void HandleMessageCompletion( Message message, TransactionScope tx, OpenedQueue messageQueue, Exception exception, Action<CurrentMessageInformation, Exception> messageCompleted, Action<CurrentMessageInformation> beforeTransactionCommit) { var txDisposed = false; if (exception == null) { try { if (tx != null) { if (beforeTransactionCommit != null) beforeTransactionCommit(currentMessageInformation); tx.Complete(); tx.Dispose(); txDisposed = true; } try { if (messageCompleted != null) messageCompleted(currentMessageInformation, exception); } catch (Exception e) { Trace.TraceError("An error occured when raising the MessageCompleted event, the error will NOT affect the message processing"+ e); } return; } catch (Exception e) { Trace.TraceWarning("Failed to complete transaction, moving to error mode"+ e); exception = e; } } try { if (txDisposed == false && tx != null) { Trace.TraceWarning("Disposing transaction in error mode"); tx.Dispose(); } } catch (Exception e) { Trace.TraceWarning("Failed to dispose of transaction in error mode."+ e); } if (message == null) return; try { if (messageCompleted != null) messageCompleted(currentMessageInformation, exception); } catch (Exception e) { Trace.TraceError("An error occured when raising the MessageCompleted event, the error will NOT affect the message processing"+ e); } try { var copy = MessageProcessingFailure; if (copy != null) copy(currentMessageInformation, exception); } catch (Exception moduleException) { Trace.TraceError("Module failed to process message failure: " + exception.Message+ moduleException); } if (messageQueue.IsTransactional == false)// put the item back in the queue { messageQueue.Send(message); } } You can see quite some processing and handling going on there. Yes this looks like real world code one did put together to make things work and he does not trust his callbacks. I guess these are event handlers which are optional and the delegates were extracted from an event to call them back later when necessary. Lets see what the author of this code did intend: private void HandleMessageCompletion( TransactionHandler transactionHandler, MessageCompletionHandler handler, CurrentMessageInformation messageInfo, ErrorCollector errors ) { // commit current pending transaction transactionHandler.CallHandlerAndCommit(messageInfo, errors); // We have an error for a null message do not send completion event if (messageInfo.CurrentMessage == null) return; // Send completion event in any case regardless of errors handler.OnMessageCompleted(messageInfo, errors); // put message back if queue is not transactional transactionHandler.ResendMessageOnError(messageInfo.CurrentMessage, errors); } I did not bother to write the intention here again since the code should be pretty self explaining by now. I have used comments to explain the still nontrivial procedure step by step revealing the real intention about all this complex program flow. The original complexity of the problem domain does not go away but by applying the techniques of SRP (Single Responsibility Principle) and some functional style but we can abstract the necessary complexity away in useful abstractions which make it much easier to reason about it. Since most of the method seems to deal with errors I thought it was a good idea to encapsulate the error state of our current message in an ErrorCollector object which stores all exceptions in a list along with a description what the error all was about in the exception itself. We can log it later or not depending on the log level or whatever. It is really just a simple list that encapsulates the current error state. class ErrorCollector { List<Exception> _Errors = new List<Exception>(); public void Add(Exception ex, string description) { ex.Data["Description"] = description; _Errors.Add(ex); } public Exception Last { get { return _Errors.LastOrDefault(); } } public bool HasError { get { return _Errors.Count > 0; } } } Since the error state is global we have two choices to store a reference in the other helper objects (TransactionHandler and MessageCompletionHandler)or pass it to the method calls when necessary. I did chose the latter one because a second argument does not hurt and makes it easier to reason about the overall state while the helper objects remain stateless and immutable which makes the helper objects much easier to understand and as a bonus thread safe as well. This does not mean that the stored member variables are stateless or thread safe as well but at least our helper classes are it. Most of the complexity is located the transaction handling I consider as a separate responsibility that I delegate to the TransactionHandler which does nothing if there is no transaction or Call the Before Commit Handler Commit Transaction Dispose Transaction if commit did throw In fact it has a second responsibility to resend the message if the transaction did fail. I did see a good fit there since it deals with transaction failures. class TransactionHandler { TransactionScope _Tx; Action<CurrentMessageInformation> _BeforeCommit; OpenedQueue _MessageQueue; public TransactionHandler(TransactionScope tx, Action<CurrentMessageInformation> beforeCommit, OpenedQueue messageQueue) { _Tx = tx; _BeforeCommit = beforeCommit; _MessageQueue = messageQueue; } public void CallHandlerAndCommit(CurrentMessageInformation currentMessageInfo, ErrorCollector errors) { if (_Tx != null && !errors.HasError) { try { if (_BeforeCommit != null) { _BeforeCommit(currentMessageInfo); } _Tx.Complete(); _Tx.Dispose(); } catch (Exception ex) { errors.Add(ex, "Failed to complete transaction, moving to error mode"); Trace.TraceWarning("Disposing transaction in error mode"); try { _Tx.Dispose(); } catch (Exception ex2) { errors.Add(ex2, "Failed to dispose of transaction in error mode."); } } } } public void ResendMessageOnError(Message message, ErrorCollector errors) { if (errors.HasError && !_MessageQueue.IsTransactional) { _MessageQueue.Send(message); } } } If we need to change the handling in the future we have a much easier time to reason about our application flow than before. After we did complete our transaction and called our callback we can call the completion handler which is the main purpose of the HandleMessageCompletion method after all. The responsiblity o the MessageCompletionHandler is to call the completion callback and the failure callback when some error has occurred. class MessageCompletionHandler { Action<CurrentMessageInformation, Exception> _MessageCompletedHandler; Action<CurrentMessageInformation, Exception> _MessageProcessingFailure; public MessageCompletionHandler(Action<CurrentMessageInformation, Exception> messageCompletedHandler, Action<CurrentMessageInformation, Exception> messageProcessingFailure) { _MessageCompletedHandler = messageCompletedHandler; _MessageProcessingFailure = messageProcessingFailure; } public void OnMessageCompleted(CurrentMessageInformation currentMessageInfo, ErrorCollector errors) { try { if (_MessageCompletedHandler != null) { _MessageCompletedHandler(currentMessageInfo, errors.Last); } } catch (Exception ex) { errors.Add(ex, "An error occured when raising the MessageCompleted event, the error will NOT affect the message processing"); } if (errors.HasError) { SignalFailedMessage(currentMessageInfo, errors); } } void SignalFailedMessage(CurrentMessageInformation currentMessageInfo, ErrorCollector errors) { try { if (_MessageProcessingFailure != null) _MessageProcessingFailure(currentMessageInfo, errors.Last); } catch (Exception moduleException) { errors.Add(moduleException, "Module failed to process message failure"); } } } If for some reason I did screw up the logic and we need to call the completion handler from our Transaction handler we can simple add to the CallHandlerAndCommit method a third argument to the MessageCompletionHandler and we are fine again. If the logic becomes even more complex and we need to ensure that the completed event is triggered only once we have now one place the completion handler to capture the state. During this refactoring I simple put things together that belong together and came up with useful abstractions. If you look at the original argument list of the HandleMessageCompletion method I have put many things together: Original Arguments New Arguments Encapsulate Message message CurrentMessageInformation messageInfo Message message TransactionScope tx Action<CurrentMessageInformation> beforeTransactionCommit OpenedQueue messageQueue TransactionHandler transactionHandler TransactionScope tx OpenedQueue messageQueue Action<CurrentMessageInformation> beforeTransactionCommit Exception exception, ErrorCollector errors Action<CurrentMessageInformation, Exception> messageCompleted MessageCompletionHandler handler Action<CurrentMessageInformation, Exception> messageCompleted Action<CurrentMessageInformation, Exception> messageProcessingFailure The reason is simple: Put the things that have relationships together and you will find nearly automatically useful abstractions. I hope this makes sense to you. If you see a way to make it even more simple you can show Ayende your improved version as well.

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How did I get here? My route to Android, iPhone, Windows Phone 7, and interest in Mobile Devices

- by Wallym

I get asked all the time how/why I got interested in mobile and jumped on this fairly early. I tend to give half answers because it wasn't just one thing that took me to mobile, but a whole host of separate ivents culminating in a specific event where I wasdoing market research in May/June 2008. Let me throw out the events and the facts about me: I tend to like new, different, cool stuff. I jumped on .NET early on. I jumped on Ajax early on. I don't jump on every new technology that comes down the road, I'm probably the only person on the planet that doesn't "get" MVC, though I acknowledge that a lot of people do and it solves a number of problems in the default settings of ASP.NET WebForms. I remember buying an early Windows CE device. It was interesting, but dang, this stylus thing sucks. After I lost my third stylus, i just gave up. I got my first mobile phone in early 1999. Reception was crappy, but I could see the value in being mobile. In 1999, I worked on a manufacturing systems project. One piece of the projects was a set of handheld devices on the shop floor. While the UI was a crappy DOS based, yes I said DOS as in Disk Operating System Version 6.22, I could see that the wireless world was a direction I wanted to be in. In 2000, Microsoft released the first public alpha of .NET. Very cool stuff indeed. One piece of the puzzle was a set of mobile controls for ASP.NET. I build numerous test apps as well as mobile version using these mobile controls. Now, the mobile UIs of the time were based on WML, which was crap. I could real all the analysis of mobile and read all about growth rates. Now, you have to realize that growth rates can be impressive when dealing with small numbers, but I knew it was a comer. In our first book, I got talked out of mobile because of the line from the publisher "Wally, mobile doesn't sell." Blackberry was the dominant device of the mid 2000s. Its users were referred to as "Crackberry addicts." Unfortunately, the mobile development experience for native apps was crap and the web experience was fairly rough as well, but if they could get the ecosystem started, other phones and better blackberryies would come out. I finally jumped into using a blackberry. Sometime around 2006, I heard "Wally, mobile doesn't sell" again. Now, anyone that knows me knows that someone saying something like this to me means I'll keep trying it. The phones of the mid 2000s were moving to be more graphical, but there were too many that had this idea that they had to use a stylus. Stylus suck. They get lost too easily. I worked on a project in 2007 and 2008 for a startup trying to answer the question of "What is there to do where I am at?" For some reason, they wanted to be tied to PCs. As it became obvious that they were having problems, their investor asked us to do some market research and to figure out what the marketplace did want. One of the important things that I figured out was the we lived in a mobile world and if you had a mobile app, it need to be on a mobile device, not tied to a desktop/laptop/netbook device. If there was any single event, this was it - I was doing some market research and sat and talked to people in a bar/restaurant in Atlanta called "The Grove" on Lavista. The consensus of the people that I talked to was that they wanted their data where ever they were at, laptop, pc, mobile, whereever. In 2007, Apple released the iPhone. Wow, what an impressive device, even with all the problems of a 1st generation device. I bought an iPod Touch 1st generation to understand touch better, one of the best decisions I ever made. I decided in late 2008, to make a move into cloud, for a number of reasons. I was working on an example app. In April, 2009, one of my friends at Microsoft said "don't mention my name with this, but you need an iPhone front end for this app." How do you get on the iPhone. Well, there are a number of ways including: ObjectiveC. Its hard to teach an old dog new tricks, and this dog knows .NET, not ObjectiveC. HTML, web, javascript optimized interface. yeah, this is possible. PhoneGap. Now, this is interesting, take an html interface and get it to run on the iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and other platforms. I thought that this way made the most sense for me until......... MonoTouch. In May/June 2009, Novell announced a way for .NET/c# developers to write apps for the iPhone. This is the way that made the most sense to me. Titanium by Appcelerator. This is similar in concept to PhoneGap. I haven't played with this much but do want to learn more about it. In July, 2009, I emailed one of my contacts at Wrox to see if they would be interested in a short MonoTouch ebook in their Wrox Blox format. I fully expected another response along the lines of "Wally, mobile doesn't sell." The response I got was "Wally, iPhone is H O T, get started immediately, can you have this to me before Labor Day." Not quite the response I expected. Thankfully, we didn't make the Labor Day, first draft date. I kept pushing back because I had a feeling that things were not going to be quite as polished and feature rich as necessary. After all, Novell doesn't have the resouces of Microsoft's developer division. The ebook shipped on November 30, 2009. On about December, 15, 2009, my editor emailed and said "Your ebook is selling really well, lets do a full book and it by March 1 so get started." Thankfully, guys like Craig Dunn and Chris Hardy were interested along with Martin and Ror joinged us later on. I bought my wife an iPhone 3Gs in early 2010 to go along with all my iPod Touch devices. I tried to pretend in 2010 that I wasn't that interested in mobile and still had interest in the desktop technologies. I love the technologies and continue to use them today, but that isn't where my interest is right now. I'm just about all mobile all the time with my energies. Our book shipped in the beginning of July, 2010 right in the middle of the Apple FUD.I've been looking at Mobile Web as a way around the AppStores and Apple FUD problems of 2010. With all the Apple self FUD, we became interested in Android.I went up to Dino Esposito at DevConnections in Las Vegas at introduced myself. I've always tried to keep up with what Dino has been doing. I was shocked, he wanted to meet me. We must have talked for 1.5 hours. It was way more time than I deserved. If you get a chance, go and introduce yourself to Dino. He's a great guy. Microsoft released Windows Phone 7 in the Fall of 2010. I'm not doing development on that platform at this time. I think they have a very interesting user interface. The devices are being positively reviewed. For my purposes, the devices are limited at this point in time. We'll see what 2011 brings as far as updates to the operating system. I need multitasking/background processing and html5 in the browser. Add that as well as acceptance in the marketplace and I'll be more interested in the device. Obviosuly, I'm now working on a MonoDroid book . I own Android and iPhone/iOS devices. I am currently working on some startup ideas and am exploring as much in that area as I can. For 2011, I'm planning on speaking at Android Developer's Conference (AnDevCon) and Mobile Connections. I'm really excited about this. I have a couple of magazine articles coming out in 2011 on Android and iPhone development with the Mono technologies.is Mono "The Answer"? What's "The Question?" I think it will work for me. It might work for you, it might not. it depends on your situation. Its the current horse that I am riding. I might find a better horse tomorrow. So, that's how I got here. I'm in love with mobile. Mobile native apps on the device as well as mobile web. I'm into all this cool stuff. Where are you at?

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Metro: Understanding the default.js File

- by Stephen.Walther

The goal of this blog entry is to describe — in painful detail — the contents of the default.js file in a Metro style application written with JavaScript. When you use Visual Studio to create a new Metro application then you get a default.js file automatically. The file is located in a folder named \js\default.js. The default.js file kicks off all of your custom JavaScript code. It is the main entry point to a Metro application. The default contents of the default.js file are included below: // For an introduction to the Blank template, see the following documentation: // http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=232509 (function () { "use strict"; var app = WinJS.Application; app.onactivated = function (eventObject) { if (eventObject.detail.kind === Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ActivationKind.launch) { if (eventObject.detail.previousExecutionState !== Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ApplicationExecutionState.terminated) { // TODO: This application has been newly launched. Initialize // your application here. } else { // TODO: This application has been reactivated from suspension. // Restore application state here. } WinJS.UI.processAll(); } }; app.oncheckpoint = function (eventObject) { // TODO: This application is about to be suspended. Save any state // that needs to persist across suspensions here. You might use the // WinJS.Application.sessionState object, which is automatically // saved and restored across suspension. If you need to complete an // asynchronous operation before your application is suspended, call // eventObject.setPromise(). }; app.start(); })(); There are several mysterious things happening in this file. The purpose of this blog entry is to dispel this mystery. Understanding the Module Pattern The first thing that you should notice about the default.js file is that the entire contents of this file are enclosed within a self-executing JavaScript function: (function () { ... })(); Metro applications written with JavaScript use something called the module pattern. The module pattern is a common pattern used in JavaScript applications to create private variables, objects, and methods. Anything that you create within the module is encapsulated within the module. Enclosing all of your custom code within a module prevents you from stomping on code from other libraries accidently. Your application might reference several JavaScript libraries and the JavaScript libraries might have variables, objects, or methods with the same names. By encapsulating your code in a module, you avoid overwriting variables, objects, or methods in the other libraries accidently. Enabling Strict Mode with “use strict” The first statement within the default.js module enables JavaScript strict mode: 'use strict'; Strict mode is a new feature of ECMAScript 5 (the latest standard for JavaScript) which enables you to make JavaScript more strict. For example, when strict mode is enabled, you cannot declare variables without using the var keyword. The following statement would result in an exception: hello = "world!"; When strict mode is enabled, this statement throws a ReferenceError. When strict mode is not enabled, a global variable is created which, most likely, is not what you want to happen. I’d rather get the exception instead of the unwanted global variable. The full specification for strict mode is contained in the ECMAScript 5 specification (look at Annex C): http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST/ECMA-262.pdf Aliasing the WinJS.Application Object The next line of code in the default.js file is used to alias the WinJS.Application object: var app = WinJS.Application; This line of code enables you to use a short-hand syntax when referring to the WinJS.Application object: for example, app.onactivated instead of WinJS.Application.onactivated. The WinJS.Application object represents your running Metro application. Handling Application Events The default.js file contains an event handler for the WinJS.Application activated event: app.onactivated = function (eventObject) { if (eventObject.detail.kind === Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ActivationKind.launch) { if (eventObject.detail.previousExecutionState !== Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ApplicationExecutionState.terminated) { // TODO: This application has been newly launched. Initialize // your application here. } else { // TODO: This application has been reactivated from suspension. // Restore application state here. } WinJS.UI.processAll(); } }; This WinJS.Application class supports the following events: · loaded – Happens after browser DOMContentLoaded event. After this event, the DOM is ready and you can access elements in a page. This event is raised before external images have been loaded. · activated – Triggered by the Windows.UI.WebUI.WebUIApplication activated event. After this event, the WinRT is ready. · ready – Happens after both loaded and activated events. · unloaded – Happens before application is unloaded. The following default.js file has been modified to capture each of these events and write a message to the Visual Studio JavaScript Console window: (function () { "use strict"; var app = WinJS.Application; WinJS.Application.onloaded = function (e) { console.log("Loaded"); }; WinJS.Application.onactivated = function (e) { console.log("Activated"); }; WinJS.Application.onready = function (e) { console.log("Ready"); } WinJS.Application.onunload = function (e) { console.log("Unload"); } app.start(); })(); When you execute the code above, a message is written to the Visual Studio JavaScript Console window when each event occurs with the exception of the Unload event (presumably because the console is not attached when that event is raised). Handling Different Activation Contexts The code for the activated handler in the default.js file looks like this: app.onactivated = function (eventObject) { if (eventObject.detail.kind === Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ActivationKind.launch) { if (eventObject.detail.previousExecutionState !== Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ApplicationExecutionState.terminated) { // TODO: This application has been newly launched. Initialize // your application here. } else { // TODO: This application has been reactivated from suspension. // Restore application state here. } WinJS.UI.processAll(); } }; Notice that the code contains a conditional which checks the Kind of the event (the value of e.detail.kind). The startup code is executed only when the activated event is triggered by a Launch event, The ActivationKind enumeration has the following values: · launch · search · shareTarget · file · protocol · fileOpenPicker · fileSavePicker · cacheFileUpdater · contactPicker · device · printTaskSettings · cameraSettings Metro style applications can be activated in different contexts. For example, a camera application can be activated when modifying camera settings. In that case, the ActivationKind would be CameraSettings. Because we want to execute our JavaScript code when our application first launches, we verify that the kind of the activation event is an ActivationKind.Launch event. There is a second conditional within the activated event handler which checks whether an application is being newly launched or whether the application is being resumed from a suspended state. When running a Metro application with Visual Studio, you can use Visual Studio to simulate different application execution states by taking advantage of the Debug toolbar and the new Debug Location toolbar. Handling the checkpoint Event The default.js file also includes an event handler for the WinJS.Application checkpoint event: app.oncheckpoint = function (eventObject) { // TODO: This application is about to be suspended. Save any state // that needs to persist across suspensions here. You might use the // WinJS.Application.sessionState object, which is automatically // saved and restored across suspension. If you need to complete an // asynchronous operation before your application is suspended, call // eventObject.setPromise(). }; The checkpoint event is raised when your Metro application goes into a suspended state. The idea is that you can save your application data when your application is suspended and reload your application data when your application resumes. Starting the Application The final statement in the default.js file is the statement that gets everything going: app.start(); Events are queued up in a JavaScript array named eventQueue . Until you call the start() method, the events in the queue are not processed. If you don’t call the start() method then the Loaded, Activated, Ready, and Unloaded events are never raised. Summary The goal of this blog entry was to describe the contents of the default.js file which is the JavaScript file which you use to kick off your custom code in a Windows Metro style application written with JavaScript. In this blog entry, I discussed the module pattern, JavaScript strict mode, handling first chance exceptions, WinJS Application events, and activation contexts.

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SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #003

- by pinaldave

Here is the list of curetted articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2006 This was the first year of my blogging and lots of new things I was learning as I go. I was indeed an infant in blogging a few years ago. However, as time passed by I have learned a lot. This year was year of experiments and new learning. 2007 Working as a full time DBA I often encoutered various errors and I started to learn how to avoid those error and document the same. ERROR Msg 5174 Each file size must be greater than or equal to 512 KB Whenever I see this error I wonder why someone is trying to attempt a database which is extremely small. Anyway, it does not matter what I think I keep on seeing this error often in industries. Anyway the solution of the error is equally interesting – just created larger database. Dilbert Humor This was very first encounter with database humor and I started to love it. It does not matter how many time we read this cartoon it does not get old. Generate Script with Data from Database – Database Publishing Wizard Generating schema script with data is one of the most frequently performed tasks among SQL Server Data Professionals. There are many ways to do the same. In the above article I demonstrated that how we can use the Database Publishing Wizard to accomplish the same. It was new to me at that time but I have not seen much of the adoption of the same still in the industry. Here is one of my videos where I demonstrate how we can generate data with schema. 2008 Delete Backup History – Cleanup Backup History Deleting backup history is important too but should be done carefully. If this is not carried out at regular interval there is good chance that MSDB will be filled up with all the old history. Every organization is different. Some would like to keep the history for 30 days and some for a year but there should be some limit. One should regularly archive the database backup history. South Asia MVP Open Days 2008 This was my very first year Microsoft MVP. I had Indeed big blast at the event and the fun was incredible. After this event I have attended many different MVP events but the fun and learning this particular event presented was amazing and just like me many others are not able to forget the same. Here are other links related to the event: South Asia MVP Open Day 2008 – Goa South Asia MVP Open Day 2008 – Goa – Day 1 South Asia MVP Open Day 2008 – Goa – Day 2 South Asia MVP Open Day 2008 – Goa – Day 3 2009 Enable or Disable Constraint This is very simple script but I personally keep on forgetting it so I had blogged it. Till today, I keep on referencing this again and again as sometime a very little thing is hard to remember. Policy Based Management – Create, Evaluate and Fix Policies This article will cover the most spectacular feature of SQL 2008 – Policy-based management and how the configuration of SQL Server with policy-based management architecture can make a powerful difference. Policy based management is loaded with several advantages. It can help you implement various policies for reliable configuration of the system. It also provides additional administrative assistance to DBAs and helps them effortlessly manage various tasks of SQL Server across the enterprise. SQLPASS 2009 – My Very First SQPASS Experience Just Brilliant! I never had an experience such a thing in my life. SQL SQL and SQL – all around SQL! I am listing my own reasons here in order of importance to me. Networking with SQL fellows and experts Putting face to the name or avatar Learning and improving my SQL skills Understanding the structure of the largest SQL Server Professional Association Attending my favorite training sessions Since last time I have never missed a single time this event. This event is my favorite event and something keeps me going. Here are additional post related SQLPASS 2009. SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 1 SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 2 SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 3 SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 4 2010 Get All the Information of Database using sys.databases Even though we believe that we know everything about our database, we do not know a lot of things about our database. This little script enables us to know so many details about databases which we may not be familiar with. Run this on your server today and see how much you know your database. Reducing CXPACKET Wait Stats for High Transactional Database While engaging in a performance tuning consultation for a client, a situation occurred where they were facing a lot of CXPACKET Waits Stats. The client asked me if I could help them reduce this huge number of wait stats. I usually receive this kind of request from other client as well, but the important thing to understand is whether this question has any merits or benefits, or not. I discusses the same in this article – a bit long but insightful for sure. Error related to Database in Use There are so many database management operations in SQL Server which requires exclusive access to the database and it is not always possible to get it. When any database is online in SQL Server it either applications or system thread often accesses them. This means database can’t have exclusive access and the operations which required this access throws an error. There is very easy method to overcome this minor issue – a single line script can give you exclusive access to the database. Difference between DATETIME and DATETIME2 Developers have found the root reason of the problem when dealing with Date Functions – when data time values are converted (implicit or explicit) between different data types, which would lose some precision, so the result cannot match each other as expected. In this blog post I go over very interesting details and difference between DATETIME and DATETIME2 History of SQL Server Database Encryption I recently met Michael Coles and Rodeney Landrum the author of one of the kind book Expert SQL Server 2008 Encryption at SQLPASS in Seattle. During the conversation we ended up how Microsoft is evolving encryption technology. The same discussion lead to talking about history of encryption tools in SQL Server. Michale pointed me to page 18 of his book of encryption. He explicitly gave me permission to re-produce relevant part of history from his book. 2011 Functions FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE with OVER clause and ORDER BY Some time an interesting feature and smart audience make a total difference in places. From last two days, I have been writing on SQL Server 2012 feature FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE. I created a puzzle which was very interesting and got many people attempt to resolve it. It was based on following two articles: Introduction to FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE Introduction to FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE with OVER clause I even provided the hint about how one can solve this problem. The best part was many people solved the problem without using hints! Try your luck! A Real Story of Book Getting ‘Out of Stock’ to A 25% Discount Story Available This is a great problem and everybody would love to have it. We had it and we loved it. Our book got out of stock in 48 hours of releasing and stocks were empty. We faced many issues and learned many valuable lessons. Some we were able to avoid in the future and some we are still facing it as those problems have no solutions. However, since that day – our books never gone out of stock. This inspiring learning story for us and I am confident that you will love to read it as well. Introduction to LEAD and LAG – Analytic Functions Introduced in SQL Server 2012 SQL Server 2012 introduces new analytical function LEAD() and LAG(). This function accesses data from a subsequent row (for lead) and previous row (for lag) in the same result set without the use of a self-join . It will be very difficult to explain this in words so I will attempt small example to explain you this function. I had a fantastic time writing this blog post and I am very confident when you read it, you will like the same. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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A Simple Approach For Presenting With Code Samples

- by Jesse Taber

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/GruffCode/archive/2013/07/31/a-simple-approach-for-presenting-with-code-samples.aspxI’ve been getting ready for a presentation and have been struggling a bit with the best way to show and execute code samples. I don’t present often (hardly ever), but when I do I like the presentation to have a lot of succinct and executable code snippets to help illustrate the points that I’m making. Depending on what the presentation is about, I might just want to build an entire sample application that I would run during the presentation. In other cases, however, building a full-blown application might not really be the best way to present the code. The presentation I’m working on now is for an open source utility library for dealing with dates and times. I could have probably cooked up a sample app for accepting date and time input and then contrived ways in which it could put the library through its paces, but I had trouble coming up with one app that would illustrate all of the various features of the library that I wanted to highlight. I finally decided that what I really needed was an approach that met the following criteria: Simple: I didn’t want the user interface or overall architecture of a sample application to serve as a distraction from the demonstration of the syntax of the library that the presentation is about. I want to be able to present small bits of code that are focused on accomplishing a single task. Several of these examples will look similar, and that’s OK. I want each sample to “stand on its own” and not rely much on external classes or methods (other than the library that is being presented, of course). “Debuggable” (not really a word, I know): I want to be able to easily run the sample with the debugger attached in Visual Studio should I want to step through any bits of code and show what certain values might be at run time. As far as I know this rules out something like LinqPad, though using LinqPad to present code samples like this is actually a very interesting idea that I might explore another time. Flexible and Selectable: I’m going to have lots of code samples to show, and I want to be able to just package them all up into a single project or module and have an easy way to just run the sample that I want on-demand. Since I’m presenting on a .NET framework library, one of the simplest ways in which I could execute some code samples would be to just create a Console application and use Console.WriteLine to output the pertinent info at run time. This gives me a “no frills” harness from which to run my code samples, and I just hit ‘F5’ to run it with the debugger. This satisfies numbers 1 and 2 from my list of criteria above, but item 3 is a little harder. By default, just running a console application is going to execute the ‘main’ method, and then terminate the program after all code is executed. If I want to have several different code samples and run them one at a time, it would be cumbersome to keep swapping the code I want in and out of the ‘main’ method of the console application. What I really want is an easy way to keep the console app running throughout the whole presentation and just have it run the samples I want when I want. I could setup a simple Windows Forms or WPF desktop application with buttons for the different samples, but then I’m getting away from my first criteria of keeping things as simple as possible. Infinite Loops To The Rescue I found a way to have a simple console application satisfy all three of my requirements above, and it involves using an infinite loop and some Console.ReadLine calls that will give the user an opportunity to break out and exit the program. (All programs that need to run until they are closed explicitly (or crash!) likely use similar constructs behind the scenes. Create a new Windows Forms project, look in the ‘Program.cs’ that gets generated, and then check out the docs for the Application.Run method that it calls.). Here’s how the main method might look: 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: do 4: { 5: Console.Write("Enter command or 'exit' to quit: > "); 6: var command = Console.ReadLine(); 7: if ((command ?? string.Empty).Equals("exit", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase)) 8: { 9: Console.WriteLine("Quitting."); 10: break; 11: } 12: 13: } while (true); 14: } The idea here is the app prompts me for the command I want to run, or I can type in ‘exit’ to break out of the loop and let the application close. The only trick now is to create a set of commands that map to each of the code samples that I’m going to want to run. Each sample is already encapsulated in a single public method in a separate class, so I could just write a big switch statement or create a hashtable/dictionary that maps command text to an Action that will invoke the proper method, but why re-invent the wheel? CLAP For Your Own Presentation I’ve blogged about the CLAP library before, and it turns out that it’s a great fit for satisfying criteria #3 from my list above. CLAP lets you decorate methods in a class with an attribute and then easily invoke those methods from within a console application. CLAP was designed to take the arguments passed into the console app from the command line and parse them to determine which method to run and what arguments to pass to that method, but there’s no reason you can’t re-purpose it to accept command input from within the infinite loop defined above and invoke the corresponding method. Here’s how you might define a couple of different methods to contain two different code samples that you want to run during your presentation: 1: public static class CodeSamples 2: { 3: [Verb(Aliases="one")] 4: public static void SampleOne() 5: { 6: Console.WriteLine("This is sample 1"); 7: } 8: 9: [Verb(Aliases="two")] 10: public static void SampleTwo() 11: { 12: Console.WriteLine("This is sample 2"); 13: } 14: } A couple of things to note about the sample above: I’m using static methods. You don’t actually need to use static methods with CLAP, but the syntax ends up being a bit simpler and static methods happen to lend themselves well to the “one self-contained method per code sample” approach that I want to use. The methods are decorated with a ‘Verb’ attribute. This tells CLAP that they are eligible targets for commands. The “Aliases” argument lets me give them short and easy-to-remember aliases that can be used to invoke them. By default, CLAP just uses the full method name as the command name, but with aliases you can simply the usage a bit. I’m not using any parameters. CLAP’s main feature is its ability to parse out arguments from a command line invocation of a console application and automatically pass them in as parameters to the target methods. My code samples don’t need parameters ,and honestly having them would complicate giving the presentation, so this is a good thing. You could use this same approach to invoke methods with parameters, but you’d have a couple of things to figure out. When you invoke a .NET application from the command line, Windows will parse the arguments and pass them in as a string array (called ‘args’ in the boilerplate console project Program.cs). The parsing that gets done here is smart enough to deal with things like treating strings in double quotes as one argument, and you’d have to re-create that within your infinite loop if you wanted to use parameters. I plan on either submitting a pull request to CLAP to add this capability or maybe just making a small utility class/extension method to do it and posting that here in the future. So I now have a simple class with static methods to contain my code samples, and an infinite loop in my ‘main’ method that can accept text commands. Wiring this all up together is pretty easy: 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: do 4: { 5: try 6: { 7: Console.Write("Enter command or 'exit' to quit: > "); 8: var command = Console.ReadLine(); 9: if ((command ?? string.Empty).Equals("exit", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase)) 10: { 11: Console.WriteLine("Quitting."); 12: break; 13: } 14: 15: Parser.Run<CodeSamples>(new[] { command }); 16: Console.WriteLine("---------------------------------------------------------"); 17: } 18: catch (Exception ex) 19: { 20: Console.Error.WriteLine("Error: " + ex.Message); 21: } 22: 23: } while (true); 24: } Note that I’m now passing the ‘CodeSamples’ class into the CLAP ‘Parser.Run’ as a type argument. This tells CLAP to inspect that class for methods that might be able to handle the commands passed in. I’m also throwing in a little “----“ style line separator and some basic error handling (because I happen to know that some of the samples are going to throw exceptions for demonstration purposes) and I’m good to go. Now during my presentation I can just have the console application running the whole time with the debugger attached and just type in the alias of the code sample method that I want to run when I want to run it.

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SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #049

- by Pinal Dave

Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 Two Connections Related Global Variables Explained – @@CONNECTIONS and @@MAX_CONNECTIONS @@CONNECTIONS Returns the number of attempted connections, either successful or unsuccessful since SQL Server was last started. @@MAX_CONNECTIONS Returns the maximum number of simultaneous user connections allowed on an instance of SQL Server. The number returned is not necessarily the number currently configured. Query Editor – Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio This post may be very simple for most of the users of SQL Server 2005. Earlier this year, I have received one question many times – Where is Query Analyzer in SQL Server 2005? I wrote small post about it and pointed many users to that post – SQL SERVER – 2005 Query Analyzer – Microsoft SQL SERVER Management Studio. Recently I have been receiving similar question. OUTPUT Clause Example and Explanation with INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE SQL Server 2005 has a new OUTPUT clause, which is quite useful. OUTPUT clause has access to insert and deleted tables (virtual tables) just like triggers. OUTPUT clause can be used to return values to client clause. OUTPUT clause can be used with INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE to identify the actual rows affected by these statements. OUTPUT clause can generate a table variable, a permanent table, or temporary table. Even though, @@Identity will still work with SQL Server 2005, however I find the OUTPUT clause very easy and powerful to use. Let us understand the OUTPUT clause using an example. Find Name of The SQL Server Instance Based on database server stored procedures has to run different logic. We came up with two different solutions. 1) When database schema is very much changed, we wrote completely new stored procedure and deprecated older version once it was not needed. 2) When logic depended on Server Name we used global variable @@SERVERNAME. It was very convenient while writing migrating script which depended on the server name for the same database. Explanation of TRY…CATCH and ERROR Handling With RAISEERROR Function One of the developers at my company thought that we can not use the RAISEERROR function in new feature of SQL Server 2005 TRY… CATCH. When asked for an explanation he suggested SQL SERVER – 2005 Explanation of TRY… CATCH and ERROR Handling article as excuse suggesting that I did not give example of RAISEERROR with TRY…CATCH. We all thought it was funny. Just to keep records straight, TRY… CATCH can sure use RAISEERROR function. Different Types of Cache Objects Serveral kinds of objects can be stored in the procedure cache: Compiled Plans: When the query optimizer finishes compiling a query plan, the principal output is compiled plan. Execution contexts: While executing a compiled plan, SQL Server has to keep track of information about the state of execution. Cursors: Cursors track the execution state of server-side cursors, including the cursor’s current location within a resultset. Algebrizer trees: The Algebrizer’s job is to produce an algebrizer tree, which represents the logic structure of a query. Open SSMS From Command Prompt – sqlwb.exe Example This article is written by request and suggestion of Sr. Web Developer at my organization. Due to the nature of this article most of the content is referred from Book On-Line. sqlwbcommand prompt utility which opens SQL Server Management Studio. Squib command does not run queries from the command prompt. sqlcmd utility runs queries from command prompt, read for more information. 2008 Puzzle – Solution – Computed Columns Datatype Explanation Just a day before I wrote article SQL SERVER – Puzzle – Computed Columns Datatype Explanation which was inspired by SQL Server MVP Jacob Sebastian. I suggest that before continuing this article read the original puzzle question SQL SERVER – Puzzle – Computed Columns Datatype Explanation.The question was if the computed column was of datatype TINYINT how to create a Computed Column of datatype INT? 2008 – Find If Index is Being Used in Database It is very often I get a query that how to find if any index is being used in the database or not. If any database has many indexes and not all indexes are used it can adversely affect performance. If the number of indices are higher it reduces the INSERT / UPDATE / DELETE operation but increase the SELECT operation. It is recommended to drop any unused indexes from table to improve the performance. 2009 Interesting Observation – Execution Plan and Results of Aggregate Concatenation Queries If you want to see what’s going on here, I think you need to shift your point of view from an implementation-centric view to an ANSI point of view. ANSI does not guarantee processing the order. Figure 2 is interesting, but it will be potentially misleading if you don’t understand the ANSI rule-set SQL Server operates under in most cases. Implementation thinking can certainly be useful at times when you really need that multi-million row query to finish before the backup fire off, but in this case, it’s counterproductive to understanding what is going on. SQL Server Management Studio and Client Statistics Client Statistics are very important. Many a times, people relate queries execution plan to query cost. This is not a good comparison. Both parameters are different, and they are not always related. It is possible that the query cost of any statement is less, but the amount of the data returned is considerably larger, which is causing any query to run slow. How do we know if any query is retrieving a large amount data or very little data? 2010 I encourage all of you to go through complete series and write your own on the subject. If you write an article and send it to me, I will publish it on this blog with due credit to you. If you write on your own blog, I will update this blog post pointing to your blog post. SQL SERVER – ORDER BY Does Not Work – Limitation of the View 1 SQL SERVER – Adding Column is Expensive by Joining Table Outside View – Limitation of the View 2 SQL SERVER – Index Created on View not Used Often – Limitation of the View 3 SQL SERVER – SELECT * and Adding Column Issue in View – Limitation of the View 4 SQL SERVER – COUNT(*) Not Allowed but COUNT_BIG(*) Allowed – Limitation of the View 5 SQL SERVER – UNION Not Allowed but OR Allowed in Index View – Limitation of the View 6 SQL SERVER – Cross Database Queries Not Allowed in Indexed View – Limitation of the View 7 SQL SERVER – Outer Join Not Allowed in Indexed Views – Limitation of the View 8 SQL SERVER – SELF JOIN Not Allowed in Indexed View – Limitation of the View 9 SQL SERVER – Keywords View Definition Must Not Contain for Indexed View – Limitation of the View 10 SQL SERVER – View Over the View Not Possible with Index View – Limitations of the View 11 SQL SERVER – Get Query Running in Session I was recently looking for syntax where I needed a query running in any particular session. I always remembered the syntax and ha d actually written it down before, but somehow it was not coming to mind quickly this time. I searched online and I ended up on my own article written last year SQL SERVER – Get Last Running Query Based on SPID. I felt that I am getting old because I forgot this really simple syntax. Find Total Number of Transaction on Interval In one of my recent Performance Tuning assignments I was asked how do someone know how many transactions are happening on a server during certain interval. I had a handy script for the same. Following script displays transactions happened on the server at the interval of one minute. You can change the WAITFOR DELAY to any other interval and it should work. 2011 Here are two DMV’s which are newly introduced in SQL Server 2012 and provides vital information about SQL Server. DMV – sys.dm_os_volume_stats – Information about operating system volume DMV – sys.dm_os_windows_info – Information about Operating System SQL Backup and FTP – A Quick and Handy Tool I have used this tool extensively since 2009 at numerous occasion and found it to be very impressive. What separates it from the crowd the most – it is it’s apparent simplicity and speed. When I install SQLBackupAndFTP and configure backups – all in 1 or 2 minutes, my clients are always impressed. Quick Note about JOIN – Common Questions and Simple Answers In this blog post we are going to talk about join and lots of things related to the JOIN. I recently started office hours to answer questions and issues of the community. I receive so many questions that are related to JOIN. I will share a few of the same over here. Most of them are basic, but note that the basics are of great importance. 2012 Importance of User Without Login Question: “In recent version of SQL Server we can create user without login. What is the use of it?” Great question indeed. Let me first attempt to answer this question but after reading my answer I need your help. I want you to help him as well with adding more value to it. Preserve Leading Zero While Coping to Excel from SSMS Earlier I wrote two articles about how to efficiently copy data from SSMS to Excel. Since I wrote that post there are plenty of interest generated on this subject. There are a few questions I keep on getting over this subject. One of the question is how to get the leading zero preserved while copying the data from SSMS to Excel. Well it is almost the same way as my earlier post SQL SERVER – Excel Losing Decimal Values When Value Pasted from SSMS ResultSet. The key here is in EXCEL and not in SQL Server. Solution – 2 T-SQL Puzzles – Display Star and Shortest Code to Display 1 Earlier on this blog we had asked two puzzles. The response from all of you is nothing but Amazing. I have received 350+ responses. Many are valid and many were indeed something I had not thought about it. I strongly suggest you read all the puzzles and their answers here - trust me if you start reading the comments you will not stop till you read every single comment. Seriously trust me on it. Personally I have learned a lot from it. Identify Most Resource Intensive Queries – SQL in Sixty Seconds #028 – Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvlYy-TGaaA Importance of User Without Login – T-SQL Demo Script Earlier I wrote a blog post about SQL SERVER – Importance of User Without Login and my friend and SQL Expert Vinod Kumar has written excellent follow up blog post about Contained Databases inside SQL Server 2012. Now lots of people asked me if I can also explain the same concept again so here is the small demonstration for it. Let me show you how login without user can help. Before we continue on this subject I strongly recommend that you read my earlier blog post here. In following demo I am going to demonstrate following situation. Login using the System Admin account Create a user without login Checking Access Impersonate the user without login Checking Access Revert Impersonation Give Permission to user without login Impersonate the user without login Checking Access Revert Impersonation Clean up Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, October 12, 2013

CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, October 12, 2013Popular ReleasesTerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v7 [Terraria Inventory Editor]: This is a complete overhaul but has the same core style. I hope you enjoy it. This version is compatible with 1.2.0.3 Please send issues to my Twitter or https://github.com/TJChap2840WDTVHubGen - Adds Metadata, thumbnails and subtitles to WDTV Live Hubs: WDTVHubGen.v2.1.6.maint: I think this covers all of the issues. new additions: fixed the thumbnail problem for backgrounds. general clean up and error checking. need to get this put through the wringer and all feedback is welcome.Free language translator and file converter: Free Language Translator 3.4: fixe for new version look up.MoreTerra (Terraria World Viewer): MoreTerra 1.11.3: =========== =New Features= =========== New Markers added for Plantera's Bulb, Heart Fruits and Gold Cache. Markers now correctly display for the gems found in rock debris on the floor. =========== =Compatibility= =========== Fixed header changes found in Terraria 1.0.3.1C# Intellisense for Notepad++: Release v1.0.8.0: - fixed document formatting artifacts To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.CS-Script for Notepad++ (C# intellisense and code execution): Release v1.0.8.0: - fixed document formatting artifacts To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.Generic Unit of Work and Repositories Framework: v2.0: Async methods for Repostiories - Ivan (@ifarkas) OData Async - Ivan (@ifarkas) Glimpse MVC4 workig with MVC5 Glimpse EF6 Northwind.Repostiory Project (layer) best practices for extending the Repositories Northwind.Services Project (layer), best practices for implementing business facade Live Demo: http://longle.azurewebsites.net/Spa/Product#/list Documentation: http://blog.longle.net/2013/10/09/upgrading-to-async-with-entity-framework-mvc-odata-asyncentitysetcontroller-kendo-ui-gli...Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.581b: Fix in place for TVDB xml issue. New* Movie - General Preferences, allow saving of ignored 'The' or 'A' to end of movie title, stored in sorttitle field. * Movie - New Way for Cropping Posters. Fixed* Movie - Rename of folders/filename. caught error message. * Movie - Fixed Bug in Save Cropped image, only saving in Pre-Frodo format if Both model selected. * Movie - Fixed Cropped image didn't take zoomed ratio into effect. * Movie - Separated Folder Renaming and File Renaming fuctions durin...Ghostscript.NET: Ghostscript.NET v.1.1.1.: v.1.1.1. fixed problem in GhostscriptRasterizer and GhostscriptViewer when MediaBox contains negative llx or lly values. (problem reported by "Prasenjit Das"). added GhostscriptPngDevice, a friendly output device class with all png devices related switches. (GhostscriptPngDevice supports: png16m, pngalpha, pnggray, png256, png16, pngmono, pngmonod). added GhostscriptJpegDevice, a friendly output device class with all jpeg devices related switches. (GhostscriptJpegDevice supports: jpeg, jp...(Party) DJ Player: DJP.124.12: 124.12 (Feature implementation completed): Changed datatype of HistoryDateInfo from string to DateTime New: HistoryDateInfoConverter for the listbox Improved: HistoryDateInfoDeleter, HistoryDateInfoLoader, HistoryDateInfoAsynchronizer, HistoryItemLoader, HistoryItemsToHistoryDateInfoConverterSmartStore.NET - Free ASP.NET MVC Ecommerce Shopping Cart Solution: SmartStore.NET 1.2.0: HighlightsMulti-store support "Trusted Shops" plugins Highly improved SmartStore.biz Importer plugin Add custom HTML content to pages Performance optimization New FeaturesMulti-store-support: now multiple stores can be managed within a single application instance (e.g. for building different catalogs, brands, landing pages etc.) Added 3 new Trusted Shops plugins: Seal, Buyer Protection, Store Reviews Added Display as HTML Widget to CMS Topics (store owner now can add arbitrary HT...Fast YouTube Downloader: Youtube Downloader 2.1: Youtube Downloader 2.1NuGet: NuGet 2.7.1: Released October 07, 2013. Release notes: http://docs.nuget.org/docs/release-notes/nuget-2.7.1 Important note: After downloading the signed build of NuGet.exe, if you perform an update using the "nuget.exe update -self" command, it will revert back to the unsigned build.Mugen MVVM Toolkit: Mugen MVVM Toolkit 2.0: IntroductionMugen MVVM Toolkit makes it easier to develop Silverlight, WPF, WinRT and WP applications using the Model-View-ViewModel design pattern. The purpose of the toolkit is to provide a simple framework and set of tools for getting up to speed quickly with applications based on the MVVM design pattern. The core of Toolkit contains a navigation system, windows management system, models, validation, etc. Mugen MVVM Toolkit contains all the MVVM classes such as ViewModelBase, RelayCommand,...Office Ribbon Project (under active development): Ribbon (07. Oct. 2013): Fixed Scrollbar Bug if DropDown Button is bigger than screen Added Office 2013 Theme Fixed closing the Ribbon caused a null reference exception in the RibbonButton.Dispose if the DropDown was not created yet Fixed Memory leak fix (unhooked events after Dispose) Fixed ToolStrip Selected Text 2013 and 2007 for Blue and Standard themesGhostscript Studio: Ghostscript.Studio v.1.0.2: Ghostscript Studio is easy to use Ghostscript IDE, a tool that facilitates the use of the Ghostscript interpreter by providing you with a graphical interface for postscript editing and file conversions. Ghostscript Studio allows you to preview postscript files, edit the code and execute them in order to convert PDF documents and other formats. The program allows you to convert between PDF, Postscript, EPS, TIFF, JPG and PNG by using the Ghostscript.NET Processor. v.1.0.2. added custom -c s...Squiggle - A free open source LAN Messenger: Squiggle 3.3 Alpha: Allow using environment variables in configuration file (history db connection string, download folder location, display name, group and message) Fix for history viewer to show the correct history entries History saved with UTC timestamp This is alpha release and not recommended for use in productionVidCoder: 1.5.7 Beta: Updated HandBrake core to SVN 5819. About dialog now pulls down HandBrake version from the DLL. Added a confirmation dialog to Stop if the encode has been going on for more than 5 minutes. Fixed handling of unicode characters for input and output filenames. We now encode to UTF-8 before passing to HandBrake. Fixed a crash in the queue multiple titles dialog. Added code to rescue tool windows which get placed outside of the visible screen area.Vodigi Open Source Interactive Digital Signage: Vodigi Release 6.0: Please note that we have removed the Kinect support in the Vodigi Player for Version 6.0. We are in the process of building a separate Kinect-enabled Player that will support the next generation Kinect sensor. If you are currently using Kinect with the Vodigi Player, you should not upgrade to Version 6.0. The following enhancements and fixes are included in Vodigi 6.0. Vodigi Administrator - New Interface - Timelines that allow you play video and images on the Main Screen Vodigi Player -...Wsus Package Publisher: Release v1.3.1310.05: Enhance the "Reboot Remote Computers", by adding a timer before the reboot occure. So that remote users can save their documents and close applications. You can also add a message to be display. In 'Tools'->'Settings'-> Misc Tab, you can set a default message. Enhance the "Compare Computers against AD", by choosing OUs to include in the comparison.New Projects555984402e86: 555984402e86DropBoxClient: DropBoxClient is a .NET library for interacting with the DropBox Core API. EDB to PST Converter-Fastest Method for Exchange Data conversion: Enstella EDB to PST converter software-smart and valuable solution for instant and safe recovery and conversion of EDB file into PST file.How to build an autodialer with PHP using your MySQL database: As the title says we create an autodialer application, which can call multiple phones simultaneously, in the time we set up.HungNm Test: HungNm TestIBANTools: Strumento da riga di comando per il calcolo massivo dell'IBAN a partire da ABI, CAB, nazione e conto.KGitSvn: This is only a project I set up to test git-svn functionality. It will be deleted when my testing is complete.MailboxLogParser: MailboxLogParser works with Exchange ActiveSync mailbox logs to help support engineers debug issue.MiniScrum: MiniScrum is a small MVC based website to collect notes of what the team members have been up to since our last meeting. pescar2013-shop-purecss: Pescar shop, library PureCssSharePoint User Permission Check: A SP2010 webpart for any site of any site collection. Gives info on permissions of a user for: all folders in all docs, every item in all folders of the librarySocksOverHttp: Welcome free internet, kick away HTTP proxy filter.TypeScript component based framework for enterprise web application.: TypeScript component based framework for enterprise web application.ugsf migration (2007/2010/2013): UGSF ( UserGroup SharePoint France) Documentation and Ressources for SharePoint Migration ( 2007/2010/2013)weiqk's project: only test Windows Imaging Component(WIC) Demo App on WEC2013: A sample application to Demo the Windows Imaging Component(WIC) on WEC2013.WPTrakt: wptrakt

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Visual Studio 2010 Productivity Tips and Tricks-Part 2: Key Shortcuts

- by ToStringTheory

Ask anyone that knows me, and they will confirm that I hate the mouse. This isn’t because I deny affection to objects that don’t look like their mammalian-named self, but rather for a much more simple and not-insane reason: I have terrible eyesight. Introduction Thanks to a degenerative eye disease known as Choroideremia, I have learned to rely more on the keyboard which I can feel digital/static positions of keys relative to my fingers, than the much more analog/random position of the mouse. Now, I would like to share some of the keyboard shortcuts with you now, as I believe that they not only increase my productivity, but yours as well once you know them (if you don’t already of course)... I share one of my biggest tips for productivity in the conclusion at the end. Visual Studio Key Shortcuts Global Editor Shortcuts These are shortcuts that are available from almost any application running in Windows, however are many times forgotten. Shortcut Action Visual Studio 2010 Functionality Ctrl + X Cut This shortcut works without a selection. If nothing is selected, the entire line that the caret is on is cut from the editor. Ctrl + C Copy This shortcut works without a selection. If nothing is selected, the entire line that the caret is on is copied from the editor. Ctrl + V Paste If you copied an entire line by the method above, the data is pasted in the line above the current caret line. Ctrl + Shift + V Next Clipboard Element Cut/Copy multiple things, and then hit this combo repeatedly to switch to the next clipboard item when pasting. Ctrl + Backspace Delete Previous Will delete the previous word from the editor directly before the caret. If anything is selected, will just delete that. Ctrl + Del Delete Next Word Will delete the next word/space from the editor directly after the caret. If anything is selected, will just delete that. Shift + Del Delete Focused Line Will delete the line from the editor that the caret is on. If something is selected, will just delete that. Ctrl + ? or Ctrl + ? Left/Right by Word This will move the caret left or right by word or special character boundary. Holding Shift will also select the word. Ctrl + F Quick Find Either the Quick Find panel, or the search bar if you have the Productivity Power Tools installed. Ctrl + Shift + F Find in Solution Opens up the 'Find in Files' window, allowing you to search your solution, as well as using regex for pattern matching. F2 Rename File... While not debugging, selecting a file in the solution explorer\navigator and pressing F2 allows you to rename the selected file. Global Application Shortcuts These are shortcuts that are available from almost any application running in Windows, however are many times forgotten... Again... Shortcut Action Visual Studio 2010 Functionality Ctrl + N New File dialog Opens up the 'New File' dialog to add a new file to the current directory in the Solution\Project. Ctrl + O Open File dialog Opens up the 'Open File' dialog to open a file in the editor, not necessarily in the solution. Ctrl + S Save File dialog Saves the currently focused editor tab back to your HDD/SSD. Ctrl + Shift + S Save All... Quickly save all open/edited documents back to your disk. Ctrl + Tab Switch Panel\Tab Tapping this combo switches between tabs quickly. Holding down Ctrl when hitting tab will bring up a chooser window. Building Shortcuts These are shortcuts that are focused on building and running a solution. These are not usable when the IDE is in Debug mode, as the shortcut changes by context. Shortcut Action Visual Studio 2010 Functionality Ctrl + Shift + B Build Solution Starts a build process on the solution according to the current build configuration manager settings. Ctrl + Break Cancel a Building Solution Will cancel a build operation currently in progress. Good for long running builds when you think of one last change. F5 Start Debugging Will build the solution if needed and launch debugging according to the current configuration manager settings. Ctrl + F5 Start Without Debugger Will build the solution if needed and launch the startup project without attaching a debugger. Debugging Shortcuts These are shortcuts that are used when debugging a solution. Shortcut Action Visual Studio 2010 Functionality F5 Continue Execution Continues execution of code until the next breakpoint. Ctrl + Alt + Break Pause Execution Pauses the program execution. Shift + F5 Stop Debugging Stops the current debugging session. NOTE: Web apps will still continue processing after stopping the debugger. Keep this in mind if working on code such as credit card processing. Ctrl + Shift + F5 Restart Debugging Stops the current debugging session and restarts the debugging session from the beginning. F9 Place Breakpoint Toggles/Places a breakpoint in the editor on the current line. Set a breakpoint in condensed code by highlighting the statement first. F10 Step Over Statement When debugging, executes all code in methods/properties on the current line until the next line. F11 Step Into Statement When debugging, steps into a method call so you can walk through the code executed there (if available). Ctrl + Alt + I Immediate Window Open the Immediate Window to execute commands when execution is paused. Navigation Shortcuts These are shortcuts that are used for navigating in the IDE or editor panel. Shortcut Action Visual Studio 2010 Functionality F4 Properties Panel Opens the properties panel for the selected item in the editor/designer/solution navigator (context driven). F12 Go to Definition Press F12 with the caret on a member to navigate to its declaration. With the Productivity tools, Ctrl + Click works too. Ctrl + K Ctrl + T View Call Hierarchy View the call hierarchy of the member the caret is on. Great for going through n-tier solutions and interface implementations! Ctrl + Alt + B Breakpoint Window View the breakpoint window to manage breakpoints and their advanced options. Allows easy toggling of breakpoints. Ctrl + Alt + L Solution Navigator Open the solution explorer panel. Ctrl + Alt + O Output Window View the output window to see build\general output from Visual Studio. Ctrl + Alt + Enter Live Web Preview Only available with the Web Essential plugin. Launches the auto-updating Preview panel. Testing Shortcuts These are shortcuts that are used for running tests in the IDE. Please note, Visual Studio 2010 is all about context. If your caret is within a test method when you use one of these combinations, the combination will apply to that test. If your caret is within a test class, it will apply to that class. If the caret is outside of a test class, it will apply to all tests. Shortcut Action Visual Studio 2010 Functionality Ctrl + R T Run Test(s) Run all tests in the current context without a debugger attached. Breakpoints will not be stopped on. Ctrl + R Ctrl + T Run Test(s) (Debug) Run all tests in the current context with a debugger attached. This allows you to use breakpoints. Substitute A for T from the preceding combos to run/debug ALL tests in the current context. Substitute Y for T from the preceding combos to run/debug ALL impacted/covering tests for a method in the current context. Advanced Editor Shortcuts These are shortcuts that are used for more advanced editing in the editor window. Shortcut Action Visual Studio 2010 Functionality Shift + Alt + ? Shift + Alt + ? Multiline caret up/down Use this combo to edit multiple lines at once. Not too many uses for it, but once in a blue moon one comes along. Ctrl + Alt + Enter Insert Line Above Inserts a blank line above the line the caret is currently on. No need to be at end or start of line, so no cutting off words/code. Ctrl + K Ctrl + C Comment Selection Comments the current selection out of compilation. Ctrl + K Ctrl + U Uncomment Selection Uncomments the current selection into compilation. Ctrl + K Ctrl + D Format Document Automatically formats the document into a structured layout. Lines up nodes or code into columns intelligently. Alt + ? Alt + ? Code line up/down *Use this combo to move a line of code up or down quickly. Great for small rearrangements of code. *Requires the Productivity Power pack from Microsoft. Conclusion This list is by no means meant to be exhaustive, but these are the shortcuts I use regularly every hour/minute of the day. There are still 100s more in Visual Studio that you can discover through the configuration window, or by tooltips. Something that I started doing months ago seems to have interest in my office.. In my last post, I talked about how I hated a cluttered UI. One of the ways that I aimed to resolve that was by systematically cleaning up the toolbars week by week. First day, I removed ALL icons that I already knew shortcuts to, or would never use them (Undo in a toolbar?!). Then, every week from that point on, I make it a point to remove an icon/two from the toolbar and make an effort to remember its key combination. I gain extra space in the toolbar area, AND become more productive at the same time! I hope that you found this article interesting or at least somewhat informative.. Maybe a shortcut or two you didn't know. I know some of them seem trivial, but I often see people going to the edit menu for Copy/Paste... Thought a refresher might be helpful!

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Set-Cookie Headers getting stripped in ASP.NET HttpHandlers

- by Rick Strahl

Yikes, I ran into a real bummer of an edge case yesterday in one of my older low level handler implementations (for West Wind Web Connection in this case). Basically this handler is a connector for a backend Web framework that creates self contained HTTP output. An ASP.NET Handler captures the full output, and then shoves the result down the ASP.NET Response object pipeline writing out the content into the Response.OutputStream and seperately sending the HttpHeaders in the Response.Headers collection. The headers turned out to be the problem and specifically Http Cookies, which for some reason ended up getting stripped out in some scenarios. My handler works like this: Basically the HTTP response from the backend app would return a full set of HTTP headers plus the content. The ASP.NET handler would read the headers one at a time and then dump them out via Response.AppendHeader(). But I found that in some situations Set-Cookie headers sent along were simply stripped inside of the Http Handler. After a bunch of back and forth with some folks from Microsoft (thanks Damien and Levi!) I managed to pin this down to a very narrow edge scenario. It's easiest to demonstrate the problem with a simple example HttpHandler implementation. The following simulates the very much simplified output generation process that fails in my handler. Specifically I have a couple of headers including a Set-Cookie header and some output that gets written into the Response object.using System.Web; namespace wwThreads { public class Handler : IHttpHandler { /* NOTE: * * Run as a web.config set handler (see entry below) * * Best way is to look at the HTTP Headers in Fiddler * or Chrome/FireBug/IE tools and look for the * WWHTREADSID cookie in the outgoing Response headers * ( If the cookie is not there you see the problem! ) */ public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) { HttpRequest request = context.Request; HttpResponse response = context.Response; // If ClearHeaders is used Set-Cookie header gets removed! // if commented header is sent... response.ClearHeaders(); response.ClearContent(); // Demonstrate that other headers make it response.AppendHeader("RequestId", "asdasdasd"); // This cookie gets removed when ClearHeaders above is called // When ClearHEaders is omitted above the cookie renders response.AppendHeader("Set-Cookie", "WWTHREADSID=ThisIsThEValue; path=/"); // *** This always works, even when explicit // Set-Cookie above fails and ClearHeaders is called //response.Cookies.Add(new HttpCookie("WWTHREADSID", "ThisIsTheValue")); response.Write(@"Output was created.<hr/> Check output with Fiddler or HTTP Proxy to see whether cookie was sent."); } public bool IsReusable { get { return false; } } } } In order to see the problem behavior this code has to be inside of an HttpHandler, and specifically in a handler defined in web.config with: <add name=".ck_handler" path="handler.ck" verb="*" type="wwThreads.Handler" preCondition="integratedMode" /> Note: Oddly enough this problem manifests only when configured through web.config, not in an ASHX handler, nor if you paste that same code into an ASPX page or MVC controller. What's the problem exactly? The code above simulates the more complex code in my live handler that picks up the HTTP response from the backend application and then peels out the headers and sends them one at a time via Response.AppendHeader. One of the headers in my app can be one or more Set-Cookie. I found that the Set-Cookie headers were not making it into the Response headers output. Here's the Chrome Http Inspector trace: Notice, no Set-Cookie header in the Response headers! Now, running the very same request after removing the call to Response.ClearHeaders() command, the cookie header shows up just fine: As you might expect it took a while to track this down. At first I thought my backend was not sending the headers but after closer checks I found that indeed the headers were set in the backend HTTP response, and they were indeed getting set via Response.AppendHeader() in the handler code. Yet, no cookie in the output. In the simulated example the problem is this line:response.AppendHeader("Set-Cookie", "WWTHREADSID=ThisIsThEValue; path=/"); which in my live code is more dynamic ( ie. AppendHeader(token[0],token[1[]) )as it parses through the headers. Bizzaro Land: Response.ClearHeaders() causes Cookie to get stripped Now, here is where it really gets bizarre: The problem occurs only if: Response.ClearHeaders() was called before headers are added It only occurs in Http Handlers declared in web.config Clearly this is an edge of an edge case but of course - knowing my relationship with Mr. Murphy - I ended up running smack into this problem. So in the code above if you remove the call to ClearHeaders(), the cookie gets set! Add it back in and the cookie is not there. If I run the above code in an ASHX handler it works. If I paste the same code (with a Response.End()) into an ASPX page, or MVC controller it all works. Only in the HttpHandler configured through Web.config does it fail! Cue the Twilight Zone Music. Workarounds As is often the case the fix for this once you know the problem is not too difficult. The difficulty lies in tracking inconsistencies like this down. Luckily there are a few simple workarounds for the Cookie issue. Don't use AppendHeader for Cookies The easiest and obvious solution to this problem is simply not use Response.AppendHeader() to set Cookies. Duh! Under normal circumstances in application level code there's rarely a reason to write out a cookie like this:response.AppendHeader("Set-Cookie", "WWTHREADSID=ThisIsThEValue; path=/"); but rather create the cookie using the Response.Cookies collection:response.Cookies.Add(new HttpCookie("WWTHREADSID", "ThisIsTheValue")); Unfortunately, in my case where I dynamically read headers from the original output and then dynamically write header key value pairs back programmatically into the Response.Headers collection, I actually don't look at each header specifically so in my case the cookie is just another header. My first thought was to simply trap for the Set-Cookie header and then parse out the cookie and create a Cookie object instead. But given that cookies can have a lot of different options this is not exactly trivial, plus I don't really want to fuck around with cookie values which can be notoriously brittle. Don't use Response.ClearHeaders() The real mystery in all this is why calling Response.ClearHeaders() prevents a cookie value later written with Response.AppendHeader() to fail. I fired up Reflector and took a quick look at System.Web and HttpResponse.ClearHeaders. There's all sorts of resetting going on but nothing that seems to indicate that headers should be removed later on in the request. The code in ClearHeaders() does access the HttpWorkerRequest, which is the low level interface directly into IIS, and so I suspect it's actually IIS that's stripping the headers and not ASP.NET, but it's hard to know. Somebody from Microsoft and the IIS team would have to comment on that. In my application it's probably safe to simply skip ClearHeaders() in my handler. The ClearHeaders/ClearContent was mainly for safety but after reviewing my code there really should never be a reason that headers would be set prior to this method firing. However, if for whatever reason headers do need to be cleared, it's easy enough to manually clear the headers out:private void RemoveHeaders(HttpResponse response) { List<string> headers = new List<string>(); foreach (string header in response.Headers) { headers.Add(header); } foreach (string header in headers) { response.Headers.Remove(header); } response.Cookies.Clear(); } Now I can replace the call the Response.ClearHeaders() and I don't get the funky side-effects from Response.ClearHeaders(). Summary I realize this is a total edge case as this occurs only in HttpHandlers that are manually configured. It looks like you'll never run into this in any of the higher level ASP.NET frameworks or even in ASHX handlers - only web.config defined handlers - which is really, really odd. After all those frameworks use the same underlying ASP.NET architecture. Hopefully somebody from Microsoft has an idea what crazy dependency was triggered here to make this fail. IAC, there are workarounds to this should you run into it, although I bet when you do run into it, it'll likely take a bit of time to find the problem or even this post in a search because it's not easily to correlate the problem to the solution. It's quite possible that more than cookies are affected by this behavior. Searching for a solution I read a few other accounts where headers like Referer were mysteriously disappearing, and it's possible that something similar is happening in those cases. Again, extreme edge case, but I'm writing this up here as documentation for myself and possibly some others that might have run into this. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in ASP.NET IIS7 Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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How to tell if SPARC T4 crypto is being used?

- by danx

A question that often comes up when running applications on SPARC T4 systems is "How can I tell if hardware crypto accleration is being used?" To review, the SPARC T4 processor includes a crypto unit that supports several crypto instructions. For hardware crypto these include 11 AES instructions, 4 xmul* instructions (for AES GCM carryless multiply), mont for Montgomery multiply (optimizes RSA and DSA), and 5 des_* instructions (for DES3). For hardware hash algorithm optimization, the T4 has the md5, sha1, sha256, and sha512 instructions (the last two are used for SHA-224 an SHA-384). First off, it's easy to tell if the processor T4 crypto instructions—use the isainfo -v command and look for "sparcv9" and "aes" (and other hash and crypto algorithms) in the output: $ isainfo -v 64-bit sparcv9 applications crc32c cbcond pause mont mpmul sha512 sha256 sha1 md5 camellia kasumi des aes ima hpc vis3 fmaf asi_blk_init vis2 vis popc These instructions are not-privileged, so are available for direct use in user-level applications and libraries (such as OpenSSL). Here is the "openssl speed -evp" command shown with the built-in t4 engine and with the pkcs11 engine. Both run the T4 AES instructions, but the t4 engine is faster than the pkcs11 engine because it has less overhead (especially for smaller packet sizes): t-4 $ /usr/bin/openssl version OpenSSL 1.0.0j 10 May 2012 t-4 $ /usr/bin/openssl engine (t4) SPARC T4 engine support (dynamic) Dynamic engine loading support (pkcs11) PKCS #11 engine support t-4 $ /usr/bin/openssl speed -evp aes-128-cbc # t4 engine used by default . . . The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed. type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes aes-128-cbc 487777.10k 816822.21k 986012.59k 1017029.97k 1053543.08k t-4 $ /usr/bin/openssl speed -engine pkcs11 -evp aes-128-cbc engine "pkcs11" set. . . . The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed. type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes aes-128-cbc 31703.58k 116636.39k 350672.81k 696170.50k 993599.49k Note: The "-evp" flag indicates use the OpenSSL "EnVeloPe" API, which gives more accurate results. That's because it tells OpenSSL to use the same API that external programs use when calling OpenSSL libcrypto functions, evp(3openssl). DTrace Shows if T4 Crypto Functions Are Used OK, good enough, the isainfo(1) command shows the instructions are present, but how does one know if they are being used? Chi-Chang Lin, who works on Oracle Solaris performance, wrote a Dtrace script to show if T4 instructions are being executed. To show the T4 instructions are being used, run the following Dtrace script. Look for functions named "t4" and "yf" in the output. The OpenSSL T4 engine uses functions named "t4" and the PKCS#11 engine uses functions named "yf". To demonstrate, I'll first run "openssl speed" with the built-in t4 engine then with the pkcs11 engine. The performance numbers are not valid due to dtrace probes slowing things down. t-4 # dtrace -Z -n ' pid$target::*yf*:entry,pid$target::*t4_*:entry{ @[probemod, probefunc] = count();}' \ -c "/usr/bin/openssl speed -evp aes-128-cbc" dtrace: description 'pid$target::*yf*:entry' matched 101 probes . . . dtrace: pid 2029 has exited libcrypto.so.1.0.0 ENGINE_load_t4 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_DH 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_DSA 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_RSA 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_destroy 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_free_aes_ctr_NIDs 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_init 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_add_NID 3 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_aes_expand128 5 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_cipher_init_aes 5 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_get_all_ciphers 6 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_get_all_digests 59 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_digest_final_sha1 65 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_digest_init_sha1 65 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_sha1_multiblock 126 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_digest_update_sha1 261 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_aes128_cbc_encrypt 1432979 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_aes128_load_keys_for_encrypt 1432979 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_cipher_do_aes_128_cbc 1432979 t-4 # dtrace -Z -n 'pid$target::*yf*:entry{ @[probemod, probefunc] = count();} pid$target::*yf*:entry,pid$target::*t4_*:entry{ @[probemod, probefunc] = count();}' \ -c "/usr/bin/openssl speed -engine pkcs11 -evp aes-128-cbc" dtrace: description 'pid$target::*yf*:entry' matched 101 probes engine "pkcs11" set. . . . dtrace: pid 2033 has exited libcrypto.so.1.0.0 ENGINE_load_t4 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_DH 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_DSA 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_RSA 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_destroy 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_free_aes_ctr_NIDs 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_get_all_ciphers 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_get_all_digests 1 libsoftcrypto.so.1 rijndael_key_setup_enc_yf 1 libsoftcrypto.so.1 yf_aes_expand128 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_add_NID 3 libsoftcrypto.so.1 yf_aes128_cbc_encrypt 1542330 libsoftcrypto.so.1 yf_aes128_load_keys_for_encrypt 1542330 So, as shown above the OpenSSL built-in t4 engine executes t4_* functions (which are hand-coded assembly executing the T4 AES instructions) and the OpenSSL pkcs11 engine executes *yf* functions. Programmatic Use of OpenSSL T4 engine The OpenSSL t4 engine is used automatically with the /usr/bin/openssl command line. Chi-Chang Lin also points out that if you're calling the OpenSSL API (libcrypto.so) from a program, you must call ENGINE_load_built_engines(), otherwise the built-in t4 engine will not be loaded. You do not call ENGINE_set_default(). That's because "openssl speed -evp" test calls ENGINE_load_built_engines() even though the "-engine" option wasn't specified. OpenSSL T4 engine Availability The OpenSSL t4 engine is available with Solaris 11 and 11.1. For Solaris 10 08/11 (U10), you need to use the OpenSSL pkcs311 engine. The OpenSSL t4 engine is distributed only with the version of OpenSSL distributed with Solaris (and not third-party or self-compiled versions of OpenSSL). The OpenSSL engine implements the AES cipher for Solaris 11, released 11/2011. For Solaris 11.1, released 11/2012, the OpenSSL engine adds optimization for the MD5, SHA-1, and SHA-2 hash algorithms, and DES-3. Although the T4 processor has Camillia and Kasumi block cipher instructions, these are not implemented in the OpenSSL T4 engine. The following charts may help view availability of optimizations. The first chart shows what's available with Solaris CLIs and APIs, the second chart shows what's available in Solaris OpenSSL. Native Solaris Optimization for SPARC T4 This table is shows Solaris native CLI and API support. As such, they are all available with the OpenSSL pkcs11 engine. CLIs: "openssl -engine pkcs11", encrypt(1), decrypt(1), mac(1), digest(1), MD5sum(1), SHA1sum(1), SHA224sum(1), SHA256sum(1), SHA384sum(1), SHA512sum(1) APIs: PKCS#11 library libpkcs11(3LIB) (incluDES Openssl pkcs11 engine), libMD(3LIB), and Solaris kernel modules AlgorithmSolaris 1008/11 (U10)Solaris 11Solaris 11.1 AES-ECB, AES-CBC, AES-CTR, AES-CBC AES-CFB128 XXX DES3-ECB, DES3-CBC, DES2-ECB, DES2-CBC, DES-ECB, DES-CBC XXX bignum Montgomery multiply (RSA, DSA) XXX MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512 XXX SHA-224 X ARCFOUR (RC4) X Solaris OpenSSL T4 Engine Optimization This table is for the Solaris OpenSSL built-in t4 engine. Algorithms listed above are also available through the OpenSSL pkcs11 engine. CLI: openssl(1openssl) APIs: openssl(5), engine(3openssl), evp(3openssl), libcrypto crypto(3openssl) AlgorithmSolaris 11Solaris 11SRU2Solaris 11.1 AES-ECB, AES-CBC, AES-CTR, AES-CBC AES-CFB128 XXX DES3-ECB, DES3-CBC, DES-ECB, DES-CBC X bignum Montgomery multiply (RSA, DSA) X MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512 XX SHA-224 X Source Code Availability Solaris Most of the T4 assembly code that called the new T4 crypto instructions was written by Ferenc Rákóczi of the Solaris Security group, with assistance from others. You can download the Solaris source for this and other parts of Solaris as a few zip files at the Oracle Download website. The relevant source files are generally under directories usr/src/common/crypto/{aes,arcfour,des,md5,modes,sha1,sha2}}/sun4v/. and usr/src/common/bignum/sun4v/. Solaris 11 binary is available from the Oracle Solaris 11 download website. OpenSSL t4 engine The source for the OpenSSL t4 engine, which is based on the Solaris source above, is viewable through the OpenGrok source code browser in directory src/components/openssl/openssl-1.0.0/engines/t4 . You can download the source from the same website or through Mercurial source code management, hg(1). Conclusion Oracle Solaris with SPARC T4 provides a rich set of accelerated cryptographic and hash algorithms. Using the latest update, Solaris 11.1, provides the best set of optimized algorithms, but alternatives are often available, sometimes slightly slower, for releases back to Solaris 10 08/11 (U10). Reference See also these earlier blogs. SPARC T4 OpenSSL Engine by myself, Dan Anderson (2011), discusses the Openssl T4 engine and reviews the SPARC T4 processor for the Solaris 11 release. Exciting Crypto Advances with the T4 processor and Oracle Solaris 11 by Valerie Fenwick (2011) discusses crypto algorithms that were optimized for the T4 processor with the Solaris 11 FCS (11/11) and Solaris 10 08/11 (U10) release. T4 Crypto Cheat Sheet by Stefan Hinker (2012) discusses how to make T4 crypto optimization available to various consumers (such as SSH, Java, OpenSSL, Apache, etc.) High Performance Security For Oracle Database and Fusion Middleware Applications using SPARC T4 (PDF, 2012) discusses SPARC T4 and its usage to optimize application security. Configuring Oracle iPlanet WebServer / Oracle Traffic Director to use crypto accelerators on T4-1 servers by Meena Vyas (2012)

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 13, 2011

CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 13, 2011Popular ReleasesCommunity TFS Build Extensions: Alpha 1.0.0.4: Please see the Source Control change sets for updates in this release This is a minor release to wrap up the BuildReport activity This release contains signed assemblies and a CHM file. Effort is now going into improving the documentation. Note the help on the Guid activity. We plan to provide Actions and a self contained Sequence sample whenever possible. This should address most peoples needs. You can expect frequent updates over the next month as we add more activities and improve the ...Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 1.0.4.1: Stable Release 51 Degrees.mobi Foundation is the best way to detect and redirect mobile devices and their capabilities on ASP.NET and is being used on thousands of websites worldwide. We’re highly confident in our software and we recommend all users update to this version. 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Fixes Movies Readded movie preference to rename invalid or scene nfo's to info ext...Windows Azure VM Assistant: AzureVMAssist V1.0.0.5: AzureVMAssist V1.0.0.5 (Debug) - Test Release VersionNetOffice - The easiest way to use Office in .NET: NetOffice Release 0.9: Changes: - fix examples (include issue 16026) - add new examples - 32Bit/64Bit Walkthrough is now available in technical Documentation. Includes: - Runtime Binaries and Source Code for .NET Framework:......v2.0, v3.0, v3.5, v4.0 - Tutorials in C# and VB.Net:..............................................................COM Proxy Management, Events, etc. - Examples in C# and VB.Net:............................................................Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access - COMAddi...Reusable Library: V1.1.3: A collection of reusable abstractions for enterprise application developerClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.54.0: New on this release: 1) Mayor performance improvements. 2) AdjustToContents now take into account the text rotation. 3) Fixed issues 6782, 6784, 6788HTML-IDEx: HTML-IDEx .15 ALPHA: This release fixes line counting a little bit and adds the masshighlight() sub, which highlights pasted and inserted code.AutoLoL: AutoLoL v2.0.3: - Improved summoner spells are now displayed - Fixed some of the startup errors people got - Double clicking an item selects it - Some usability changes that make using AutoLoL just a little easier - Bug fixes AutoLoL v2 is not an update, but an entirely new version! 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It provides easy usage of MSMQ server, and can be used in any type of NET framework projects. It is developed in C#, Framework 4.0MVC Photos: ASP.NET MVC???????????。 mvcConf @:Japan???????????????。MvcPractice: learn the asp.net mvc3 source.Of Shared Points - Blog Demos and Samples: Blog samples and demonstration source code for "Of Shared Points" SharePoint blogPresentation Abstraction Control for Silverlight - PAC4SL: PAC4SL is a delivery framework used for developing Silverlight applications that uses the Presentation Abstraction Control delivery pattern. This delivery pattern is centered on team development with Silverlight. The focus of the pattern is spreading out of application logic into focused delivery tiers. 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How to properly deny Railo directory access through Apache

- by Sn3akyP3t3

I've been battle tested on this and failed to achieve my goal which is to deny all access to all directories except the Public directory and only allow access to all all other directories with specific IP addresses. To get Railo+Apache+Tomcat installed I pretty much followed this script: https://github.com/talltroym/Railo-Ubuntu-Installer-Script then verified settings with this tutorial: http://blog.nictunney.com/2012/03/railo-tomcat-and-apache-on-amazon-ec2.html From the installation script these mods are enabled: sudo a2enmod ssl sudo a2enmod proxy sudo a2enmod proxy_http sudo a2enmod rewrite sudo a2ensite default-ssl Outside of the script I copied the sites-available to sites-enabled then reloaded Apache. I have a directory created for Railo cmfl located at /var/www/Railo/ Navigating the browser to http ://Server_IP_Address/Railo forces ssl and relocates to https ://Server_IP_Address/Railo which shows off index.cfm. Not providing index.cfm and omitting https indicates that the DirectoryIndex directive and RewriteCond of Apache appears to be working for the sites-enabled VirtualHost. The problem I'm encountering is that I cannot seem to deny access to all directories except Public. My directory structure is rather simple and looks like this: Railo error Public NotPublic Sandbox These are my sites-enabled configurations: <VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost DocumentRoot /var/www #Default Deny All to prevent walking backwards in file system Alias /Railo/ "/var/www/Railo/" <Directory ~ ".*/Railo/(?!Public).*"> Order Deny,Allow Deny from All </Directory> ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/ <Directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin"> AllowOverride None Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit, # alert, emerg. LogLevel warn CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined Alias /doc/ "/usr/share/doc/" <Directory "/usr/share/doc/"> Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks AllowOverride None Order deny,allow Deny from all Allow from 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 ::1/128 </Directory> DirectoryIndex index.cfm index.cfml default.cfm default.cfml index.htm index.html index.cfc RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} !^443$ RewriteRule ^.*$ https://%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R] </VirtualHost> and <IfModule mod_ssl.c> <VirtualHost _default_:443> ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost DocumentRoot /var/www Alias /Railo/ "/var/www/Railo/" <Directory ~ "/var/www/Railo/(?!Public).*"> Order Deny,Allow Deny from All </Directory> ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/ <Directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin"> AllowOverride None Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit, # alert, emerg. LogLevel warn CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/ssl_access.log combined Alias /doc/ "/usr/share/doc/" <Directory "/usr/share/doc/"> Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks AllowOverride None Order deny,allow Deny from all Allow from 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 ::1/128 </Directory> # SSL Engine Switch: # Enable/Disable SSL for this virtual host. SSLEngine on # A self-signed (snakeoil) certificate can be created by installing # the ssl-cert package. See # /usr/share/doc/apache2.2-common/README.Debian.gz for more info. # If both key and certificate are stored in the same file, only the # SSLCertificateFile directive is needed. SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key # Server Certificate Chain: # Point SSLCertificateChainFile at a file containing the # concatenation of PEM encoded CA certificates which form the # certificate chain for the server certificate. Alternatively # the referenced file can be the same as SSLCertificateFile # when the CA certificates are directly appended to the server # certificate for convinience. #SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/apache2/ssl.crt/server-ca.crt # Certificate Authority (CA): # Set the CA certificate verification path where to find CA # certificates for client authentication or alternatively one # huge file containing all of them (file must be PEM encoded) # Note: Inside SSLCACertificatePath you need hash symlinks # to point to the certificate files. Use the provided # Makefile to update the hash symlinks after changes. #SSLCACertificatePath /etc/ssl/certs/ #SSLCACertificateFile /etc/apache2/ssl.crt/ca-bundle.crt # Certificate Revocation Lists (CRL): # Set the CA revocation path where to find CA CRLs for client # authentication or alternatively one huge file containing all # of them (file must be PEM encoded) # Note: Inside SSLCARevocationPath you need hash symlinks # to point to the certificate files. Use the provided # Makefile to update the hash symlinks after changes. #SSLCARevocationPath /etc/apache2/ssl.crl/ #SSLCARevocationFile /etc/apache2/ssl.crl/ca-bundle.crl # Client Authentication (Type): # Client certificate verification type and depth. Types are # none, optional, require and optional_no_ca. Depth is a # number which specifies how deeply to verify the certificate # issuer chain before deciding the certificate is not valid. #SSLVerifyClient require #SSLVerifyDepth 10 # Access Control: # With SSLRequire you can do per-directory access control based # on arbitrary complex boolean expressions containing server # variable checks and other lookup directives. The syntax is a # mixture between C and Perl. See the mod_ssl documentation # for more details. #<Location /> #SSLRequire ( %{SSL_CIPHER} !~ m/^(EXP|NULL)/ \ # and %{SSL_CLIENT_S_DN_O} eq "Snake Oil, Ltd." \ # and %{SSL_CLIENT_S_DN_OU} in {"Staff", "CA", "Dev"} \ # and %{TIME_WDAY} >= 1 and %{TIME_WDAY} <= 5 \ # and %{TIME_HOUR} >= 8 and %{TIME_HOUR} <= 20 ) \ # or %{REMOTE_ADDR} =~ m/^192\.76\.162\.[0-9]+$/ #</Location> # SSL Engine Options: # Set various options for the SSL engine. # o FakeBasicAuth: # Translate the client X.509 into a Basic Authorisation. This means that # the standard Auth/DBMAuth methods can be used for access control. The # user name is the `one line' version of the client's X.509 certificate. # Note that no password is obtained from the user. Every entry in the user # file needs this password: `xxj31ZMTZzkVA'. # o ExportCertData: # This exports two additional environment variables: SSL_CLIENT_CERT and # SSL_SERVER_CERT. These contain the PEM-encoded certificates of the # server (always existing) and the client (only existing when client # authentication is used). This can be used to import the certificates # into CGI scripts. # o StdEnvVars: # This exports the standard SSL/TLS related `SSL_*' environment variables. # Per default this exportation is switched off for performance reasons, # because the extraction step is an expensive operation and is usually # useless for serving static content. So one usually enables the # exportation for CGI and SSI requests only. # o StrictRequire: # This denies access when "SSLRequireSSL" or "SSLRequire" applied even # under a "Satisfy any" situation, i.e. when it applies access is denied # and no other module can change it. # o OptRenegotiate: # This enables optimized SSL connection renegotiation handling when SSL # directives are used in per-directory context. #SSLOptions +FakeBasicAuth +ExportCertData +StrictRequire <FilesMatch "\.(cgi|shtml|phtml|php)$"> SSLOptions +StdEnvVars </FilesMatch> <Directory /usr/lib/cgi-bin> SSLOptions +StdEnvVars </Directory> # SSL Protocol Adjustments: # The safe and default but still SSL/TLS standard compliant shutdown # approach is that mod_ssl sends the close notify alert but doesn't wait for # the close notify alert from client. When you need a different shutdown # approach you can use one of the following variables: # o ssl-unclean-shutdown: # This forces an unclean shutdown when the connection is closed, i.e. no # SSL close notify alert is send or allowed to received. This violates # the SSL/TLS standard but is needed for some brain-dead browsers. Use # this when you receive I/O errors because of the standard approach where # mod_ssl sends the close notify alert. # o ssl-accurate-shutdown: # This forces an accurate shutdown when the connection is closed, i.e. a # SSL close notify alert is send and mod_ssl waits for the close notify # alert of the client. This is 100% SSL/TLS standard compliant, but in # practice often causes hanging connections with brain-dead browsers. Use # this only for browsers where you know that their SSL implementation # works correctly. # Notice: Most problems of broken clients are also related to the HTTP # keep-alive facility, so you usually additionally want to disable # keep-alive for those clients, too. Use variable "nokeepalive" for this. # Similarly, one has to force some clients to use HTTP/1.0 to workaround # their broken HTTP/1.1 implementation. Use variables "downgrade-1.0" and # "force-response-1.0" for this. BrowserMatch "MSIE [2-6]" \ nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown \ downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0 # MSIE 7 and newer should be able to use keepalive BrowserMatch "MSIE [17-9]" ssl-unclean-shutdown DirectoryIndex index.cfm index.cfml default.cfm default.cfml index.htm index.html #Proxy .cfm and cfc requests to Railo ProxyPassMatch ^/(.+.cf[cm])(/.*)?$ http://127.0.0.1:8888/$1 ProxyPassReverse / http://127.0.0.1:8888/ #Deny access to admin except for local clients <Location /railo-context/admin/> Order deny,allow Deny from all # Allow from <Omitted> # Allow from <Omitted> Allow from 127.0.0.1 </Location> </VirtualHost> </IfModule> The apache2.conf includes the following: # Include the virtual host configurations: Include sites-enabled/ <IfModule !mod_jk.c> LoadModule jk_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_jk.so </IfModule> <IfModule mod_jk.c> JkMount /*.cfm ajp13 JkMount /*.cfc ajp13 JkMount /*.do ajp13 JkMount /*.jsp ajp13 JkMount /*.cfchart ajp13 JkMount /*.cfm/* ajp13 JkMount /*.cfml/* ajp13 # Flex Gateway Mappings # JkMount /flex2gateway/* ajp13 # JkMount /flashservices/gateway/* ajp13 # JkMount /messagebroker/* ajp13 JkMountCopy all JkLogFile /var/log/apache2/mod_jk.log </IfModule> I believe I understand most of this except the jk_module inclusion which I've noticed has an error that shows up in the logs that I can't sort out: [warn] No JkShmFile defined in httpd.conf. Using default /etc/apache2/logs/jk-runtime-status I've checked my Regular expression against the paths of the directories with RegexBuddy just to be sure that I wasn't correct. The problem doesn't appear to be Regex related although I may have something incorrect in the Directory directive. The Location directive seems to be working correctly for blocking out Railo admin site access.

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Web API, JavaScript, Chrome & Cross-Origin Resource Sharing

- by Brian Lanham

The team spent much of the week working through this issues related to Chrome running on Windows 8 consuming cross-origin resources using Web API. We thought it was resolved on day 2 but it resurfaced the next day. We definitely resolved it today though. I believe I do not fully understand the situation but I am going to explain what I know in an effort to help you avoid and/or resolve a similar issue. References We referenced many sources during our trial-and-error troubleshooting. These are the links we reference in order of applicability to the solution: Zoiner Tejada JavaScript and other material from -> http://www.devproconnections.com/content1/topic/microsoft-azure-cors-141869/catpath/windows-azure-platform2/page/3 WebDAV Where I learned about “Accept” –> http://www-jo.se/f.pfleger/cors-and-iis? IT Hit Tells about NOT using ‘*’ –> http://www.webdavsystem.com/ajax/programming/cross_origin_requests Carlos Figueira Sample back-end code (newer) –> http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsdesktop/Implementing-CORS-support-a677ab5d (older version) –> http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/CORS-support-in-ASPNET-Web-01e9980a Background As a measure of protection, Web designers (W3C) and implementers (Google, Microsoft, Mozilla) made it so that a request, especially a JSON request (but really any URL), sent from one domain to another will only work if the requestee “knows” about the requester and allows requests from it. So, for example, if you write a ASP.NET MVC Web API service and try to consume it from multiple apps, the browsers used may (will?) indicate that you are not allowed by showing an “Access-Control-Allow-Origin” error indicating the requester is not allowed to make requests. Internet Explorer (big surprise) is the odd-hair-colored step-child in this mix. It seems that running locally at least IE allows this for development purposes. Chrome and Firefox do not. In fact, Chrome is quite restrictive. Notice the images below. IE shows data (a tabular view with one row for each day of a week) while Chrome does not (trust me, neither does Firefox). Further, the Chrome developer console shows an XmlHttpRequest (XHR) error. Screen captures from IE (left) and Chrome (right). Note that Chrome does not display data and the console shows an XHR error. Why does this happen? The Web browser submits these requests and processes the responses and each browser is different. Okay, so, IE is probably the only one that’s truly different. However, Chrome has a specific process of performing a “pre-flight” check to make sure the service can respond to an “Access-Control-Allow-Origin” or Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) request. So basically, the sequence is, if I understand correctly: 1)Page Loads –> 2)JavaScript Request Processed by Browser –> 3)Browsers Prepares to Submit Request –> 4)[Chrome] Browser Submits Pre-Flight Request –> 5)Server Responds with HTTP 200 –> 6)Browser Submits Request –> 7)Server Responds with Data –> 8)Page Shows Data This situation occurs for both GET and POST methods. Typically, GET methods are called with query string parameters so there is no data posted. Instead, the requesting domain needs to be permitted to request data but generally nothing more is required. POSTs on the other hand send form data. Therefore, more configuration is required (you’ll see the configuration below). AJAX requests are not friendly with this (POSTs) either because they don’t post in a form. How to fix it. The team went through many iterations of self-hair removal and we think we finally have a working solution. The trial-and-error approach eventually worked and we referenced many sources for the information. I indicate those references above. There are basically three (3) tasks needed to make this work. Assumptions: You are using Visual Studio, Web API, JavaScript, and have Cross-Origin Resource Sharing, and several browsers. 1. Configure the client Joel Cochran centralized our “cors-oriented” JavaScript (from here). There are two calls including one for GET and one for POST function(url, data, callback) { console.log(data); $.support.cors = true; var jqxhr = $.post(url, data, callback, "json") .error(function(jqXhHR, status, errorThrown) { if ($.browser.msie && window.XDomainRequest) { var xdr = new XDomainRequest(); xdr.open("post", url); xdr.onload = function () { if (callback) { callback(JSON.parse(this.responseText), 'success'); } }; xdr.send(data); } else { console.log(">" + jqXhHR.status); alert("corsAjax.post error: " + status + ", " + errorThrown); } }); }; The GET CORS JavaScript function (credit to Zoiner Tejada) function(url, callback) { $.support.cors = true; var jqxhr = $.get(url, null, callback, "json") .error(function(jqXhHR, status, errorThrown) { if ($.browser.msie && window.XDomainRequest) { var xdr = new XDomainRequest(); xdr.open("get", url); xdr.onload = function () { if (callback) { callback(JSON.parse(this.responseText), 'success'); } }; xdr.send(); } else { alert("CORS is not supported in this browser or from this origin."); } }); }; The POST CORS JavaScript function (credit to Zoiner Tejada) Now you need to call these functions to get and post your data (instead of, say, using $.Ajax). Here is a GET example: corsAjax.get(url, function(data) { if (data !== null && data.length !== undefined) { // do something with data } }); And here is a POST example: corsAjax.post(url, item); Simple…except…you’re not done yet. 2. Change Web API Controllers to Allow CORS There are actually two steps here. Do you remember above when we mentioned the “pre-flight” check? Chrome actually asks the server if it is allowed to ask it for cross-origin resource sharing access. So you need to let the server know it’s okay. This is a two-part activity. a) Add the appropriate response header Access-Control-Allow-Origin, and b) permit the API functions to respond to various methods including GET, POST, and OPTIONS. OPTIONS is the method that Chrome and other browsers use to ask the server if it can ask about permissions. Here is an example of a Web API controller thus decorated: NOTE: You’ll see a lot of references to using “*” in the header value. For security reasons, Chrome does NOT recognize this is valid. [HttpHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Origin", "http://localhost:51234")] [HttpHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Credentials", "true")] [HttpHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Methods", "ACCEPT, PROPFIND, PROPPATCH, COPY, MOVE, DELETE, MKCOL, LOCK, UNLOCK, PUT, GETLIB, VERSION-CONTROL, CHECKIN, CHECKOUT, UNCHECKOUT, REPORT, UPDATE, CANCELUPLOAD, HEAD, OPTIONS, GET, POST")] [HttpHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Headers", "Accept, Overwrite, Destination, Content-Type, Depth, User-Agent, X-File-Size, X-Requested-With, If-Modified-Since, X-File-Name, Cache-Control")] [HttpHeader("Access-Control-Max-Age", "3600")] public abstract class BaseApiController : ApiController { [HttpGet] [HttpOptions] public IEnumerable<foo> GetFooItems(int id) { return foo.AsEnumerable(); } [HttpPost] [HttpOptions] public void UpdateFooItem(FooItem fooItem) { // NOTE: The fooItem object may or may not // (probably NOT) be set with actual data. // If not, you need to extract the data from // the posted form manually. if (fooItem.Id == 0) // However you check for default... { // We use NewtonSoft.Json. string jsonString = context.Request.Form.GetValues(0)[0].ToString(); Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializer js = new Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializer(); fooItem = js.Deserialize<FooItem>(new Newtonsoft.Json.JsonTextReader(new System.IO.StringReader(jsonString))); } // Update the set fooItem object. } } Please note a few specific additions here: * The header attributes at the class level are required. Note all of those methods and headers need to be specified but we find it works this way so we aren’t touching it. * Web API will actually deserialize the posted data into the object parameter of the called method on occasion but so far we don’t know why it does and doesn’t. * [HttpOptions] is, again, required for the pre-flight check. * The “Access-Control-Allow-Origin” response header should NOT NOT NOT contain an ‘*’. 3. Headers and Methods and Such We had most of this code in place but found that Chrome and Firefox still did not render the data. Interestingly enough, Fiddler showed that the GET calls succeeded and the JSON data is returned properly. We learned that among the headers set at the class level, we needed to add “ACCEPT”. Note that I accidentally added it to methods and to headers. Adding it to methods worked but I don’t know why. We added it to headers also for good measure. [HttpHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Methods", "ACCEPT, PROPFIND, PROPPA... [HttpHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Headers", "Accept, Overwrite, Destin... Next Steps That should do it. If it doesn’t let us know. What to do next? * Don’t hardcode the allowed domains. Note that port numbers and other domain name specifics will cause problems and must be specified. If this changes do you really want to deploy updated software? Consider Miguel Figueira’s approach in the following link to writing a custom HttpHeaderAttribute class that allows you to specify the domain names and then you can do it dynamically. There are, of course, other ways to do it dynamically but this is a clean approach. http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsdesktop/Implementing-CORS-support-a677ab5d

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C#/.NET Little Wonders: Tuples and Tuple Factory Methods

- by James Michael Hare

Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can really help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. This week, we look at the System.Tuple class and the handy factory methods for creating a Tuple by inferring the types. What is a Tuple? The System.Tuple is a class that tends to inspire a reaction in one of two ways: love or hate. Simply put, a Tuple is a data structure that holds a specific number of items of a specific type in a specific order. That is, a Tuple<int, string, int> is a tuple that contains exactly three items: an int, followed by a string, followed by an int. The sequence is important not only to distinguish between two members of the tuple with the same type, but also for comparisons between tuples. Some people tend to love tuples because they give you a quick way to combine multiple values into one result. This can be handy for returning more than one value from a method (without using out or ref parameters), or for creating a compound key to a Dictionary, or any other purpose you can think of. They can be especially handy when passing a series of items into a call that only takes one object parameter, such as passing an argument to a thread's startup routine. In these cases, you do not need to define a class, simply create a tuple containing the types you wish to return, and you are ready to go? On the other hand, there are some people who see tuples as a crutch in object-oriented design. They may view the tuple as a very watered down class with very little inherent semantic meaning. As an example, what if you saw this in a piece of code: 1: var x = new Tuple<int, int>(2, 5); What are the contents of this tuple? If the tuple isn't named appropriately, and if the contents of each member are not self evident from the type this can be a confusing question. The people who tend to be against tuples would rather you explicitly code a class to contain the values, such as: 1: public sealed class RetrySettings 2: { 3: public int TimeoutSeconds { get; set; } 4: public int MaxRetries { get; set; } 5: } Here, the meaning of each int in the class is much more clear, but it's a bit more work to create the class and can clutter a solution with extra classes. So, what's the correct way to go? That's a tough call. You will have people who will argue quite well for one or the other. For me, I consider the Tuple to be a tool to make it easy to collect values together easily. There are times when I just need to combine items for a key or a result, in which case the tuple is short lived and so the meaning isn't easily lost and I feel this is a good compromise. If the scope of the collection of items, though, is more application-wide I tend to favor creating a full class. Finally, it should be noted that tuples are immutable. That means they are assigned a value at construction, and that value cannot be changed. Now, of course if the tuple contains an item of a reference type, this means that the reference is immutable and not the item referred to. Tuples from 1 to N Tuples come in all sizes, you can have as few as one element in your tuple, or as many as you like. However, since C# generics can't have an infinite generic type parameter list, any items after 7 have to be collapsed into another tuple, as we'll show shortly. So when you declare your tuple from sizes 1 (a 1-tuple or singleton) to 7 (a 7-tuple or septuple), simply include the appropriate number of type arguments: 1: // a singleton tuple of integer 2: Tuple<int> x; 3: 4: // or more 5: Tuple<int, double> y; 6: 7: // up to seven 8: Tuple<int, double, char, double, int, string, uint> z; Anything eight and above, and we have to nest tuples inside of tuples. The last element of the 8-tuple is the generic type parameter Rest, this is special in that the Tuple checks to make sure at runtime that the type is a Tuple. This means that a simple 8-tuple must nest a singleton tuple (one of the good uses for a singleton tuple, by the way) for the Rest property. 1: // an 8-tuple 2: Tuple<int, int, int, int, int, double, char, Tuple<string>> t8; 3: 4: // an 9-tuple 5: Tuple<int, int, int, int, double, int, char, Tuple<string, DateTime>> t9; 6: 7: // a 16-tuple 8: Tuple<int, int, int, int, int, int, int, Tuple<int, int, int, int, int, int, int, Tuple<int,int>>> t14; Notice that on the 14-tuple we had to have a nested tuple in the nested tuple. Since the tuple can only support up to seven items, and then a rest element, that means that if the nested tuple needs more than seven items you must nest in it as well. Constructing tuples Constructing tuples is just as straightforward as declaring them. That said, you have two distinct ways to do it. The first is to construct the tuple explicitly yourself: 1: var t3 = new Tuple<int, string, double>(1, "Hello", 3.1415927); This creates a triple that has an int, string, and double and assigns the values 1, "Hello", and 3.1415927 respectively. Make sure the order of the arguments supplied matches the order of the types! Also notice that we can't half-assign a tuple or create a default tuple. Tuples are immutable (you can't change the values once constructed), so thus you must provide all values at construction time. Another way to easily create tuples is to do it implicitly using the System.Tuple static class's Create() factory methods. These methods (much like C++'s std::make_pair method) will infer the types from the method call so you don't have to type them in. This can dramatically reduce the amount of typing required especially for complex tuples! 1: // this 4-tuple is typed Tuple<int, double, string, char> 2: var t4 = Tuple.Create(42, 3.1415927, "Love", 'X'); Notice how much easier it is to use the factory methods and infer the types? This can cut down on typing quite a bit when constructing tuples. The Create() factory method can construct from a 1-tuple (singleton) to an 8-tuple (octuple), which of course will be a octuple where the last item is a singleton as we described before in nested tuples. Accessing tuple members Accessing a tuple's members is simplicity itself… mostly. The properties for accessing up to the first seven items are Item1, Item2, …, Item7. If you have an octuple or beyond, the final property is Rest which will give you the nested tuple which you can then access in a similar matter. Once again, keep in mind that these are read-only properties and cannot be changed. 1: // for septuples and below, use the Item properties 2: var t1 = Tuple.Create(42, 3.14); 3: 4: Console.WriteLine("First item is {0} and second is {1}", 5: t1.Item1, t1.Item2); 6: 7: // for octuples and above, use Rest to retrieve nested tuple 8: var t9 = new Tuple<int, int, int, int, int, int, int, 9: Tuple<int, int>>(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,Tuple.Create(8,9)); 10: 11: Console.WriteLine("The 8th item is {0}", t9.Rest.Item1); Tuples are IStructuralComparable and IStructuralEquatable Most of you know about IComparable and IEquatable, what you may not know is that there are two sister interfaces to these that were added in .NET 4.0 to help support tuples. These IStructuralComparable and IStructuralEquatable make it easy to compare two tuples for equality and ordering. This is invaluable for sorting, and makes it easy to use tuples as a compound-key to a dictionary (one of my favorite uses)! Why is this so important? Remember when we said that some folks think tuples are too generic and you should define a custom class? This is all well and good, but if you want to design a custom class that can automatically order itself based on its members and build a hash code for itself based on its members, it is no longer a trivial task! Thankfully the tuple does this all for you through the explicit implementations of these interfaces. For equality, two tuples are equal if all elements are equal between the two tuples, that is if t1.Item1 == t2.Item1 and t1.Item2 == t2.Item2, and so on. For ordering, it's a little more complex in that it compares the two tuples one at a time starting at Item1, and sees which one has a smaller Item1. If one has a smaller Item1, it is the smaller tuple. However if both Item1 are the same, it compares Item2 and so on. For example: 1: var t1 = Tuple.Create(1, 3.14, "Hi"); 2: var t2 = Tuple.Create(1, 3.14, "Hi"); 3: var t3 = Tuple.Create(2, 2.72, "Bye"); 4: 5: // true, t1 == t2 because all items are == 6: Console.WriteLine("t1 == t2 : " + t1.Equals(t2)); 7: 8: // false, t1 != t2 because at least one item different 9: Console.WriteLine("t2 == t2 : " + t2.Equals(t3)); The actual implementation of IComparable, IEquatable, IStructuralComparable, and IStructuralEquatable is explicit, so if you want to invoke the methods defined there you'll have to manually cast to the appropriate interface: 1: // true because t1.Item1 < t3.Item1, if had been same would check Item2 and so on 2: Console.WriteLine("t1 < t3 : " + (((IComparable)t1).CompareTo(t3) < 0)); So, as I mentioned, the fact that tuples are automatically equatable and comparable (provided the types you use define equality and comparability as needed) means that we can use tuples for compound keys in hashing and ordering containers like Dictionary and SortedList: 1: var tupleDict = new Dictionary<Tuple<int, double, string>, string>(); 2: 3: tupleDict.Add(t1, "First tuple"); 4: tupleDict.Add(t2, "Second tuple"); 5: tupleDict.Add(t3, "Third tuple"); Because IEquatable defines GetHashCode(), and Tuple's IStructuralEquatable implementation creates this hash code by combining the hash codes of the members, this makes using the tuple as a complex key quite easy! For example, let's say you are creating account charts for a financial application, and you want to cache those charts in a Dictionary based on the account number and the number of days of chart data (for example, a 1 day chart, 1 week chart, etc): 1: // the account number (string) and number of days (int) are key to get cached chart 2: var chartCache = new Dictionary<Tuple<string, int>, IChart>(); Summary The System.Tuple, like any tool, is best used where it will achieve a greater benefit. I wouldn't advise overusing them, on objects with a large scope or it can become difficult to maintain. However, when used properly in a well defined scope they can make your code cleaner and easier to maintain by removing the need for extraneous POCOs and custom property hashing and ordering. They are especially useful in defining compound keys to IDictionary implementations and for returning multiple values from methods, or passing multiple values to a single object parameter. 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I thought everyone did it like this – Training Session Code Management

- by Fatherjack

One of an occasional series of blogs about things that I do that perhaps others don’t. From very early on in my dealings with SQL Server Management Studio I started using Solutions and Projects. This means that I started using them when writing sessions and it wasn’t until speaking with someone at PASS Summit 2013 that I found out that this was a process that was unheard of by some people. So, here we go, a run through how I create and manage code and other documents that I use in presentations. For people unsure what solutions and projects are; • Solution – a container for one or more projects. • Project – a container for files, .sql files are grouped as Queries, all other files are stored as Misc. How do I start? Open Management Studio as normal, and then click File | New and select Project This will bring up the New Project dialog box and you can select/add details as necessary in the places indicated. If this is the first project you are creating then be sure to select the Create directory for solution check box (4). If know in advance that you are going to have more than one project in the solution then you may want to edit the Solution name (3) as by default it will take the name of the project that you enter at (2). This will lead you to the following folder structure (depending on the location that you chose in 3) above. In SSMS you need to turn on the Solution Explorer, either via the View menu or pressing Ctrl + Alt + L This will bring up a dockable window that will let you quickly access the files that you choose to include in the Solution. Can we get to work and write some code yet please? Yes, we can. As with many Microsoft products there are several ways to go about this, let’s look at the easiest way when creating new code. When writing a presentation I usually start from the position we are currently in – a brand new solution and project with no code. Later on we will look at incorporating existing code files into the Project where we need it. Right-click on the Project name and choose Add New Query As soon as you click this you will be prompted to select the sql server that you want to connect to and once you have done that you will have your new query open in the text editor and the Solution Explorer will now look like this, showing your server connection and your new query. And the Project folder will look like this Now once you have written your code don’t press save, choose Save As and give the code a better name than QueryX.sql. SSMS will interpret this as a request to rename Query1 and your Project and the Project folder will show that SQLQuery1.sql no longer exists but there is now a file named as you requested. If you happen to click save in error then right-click the query in the project and choose rename. You can then alter the name as you like, even when open in the SSMS text editor, and the file will be renamed. When creating a set of scripts for a presentation I name files with a numeric prefix so that when they are sorted by name they are in the order that I need to use them during the session. I love this idea but I’ve got loads of existing scripts I want to put in Projects Excellent, adding existing files to a project is easy, let’s consider that you have query files in your My Documents folder and you want to bring them into the Project we have just created. Right-click on the Project and choose Add | Existing Item Navigate to the location of your chosen file and select it. The file will open in SSMS text editor and the Project will be updated to show that the selected query is now part of your project. If you look in Windows Explorer you will see that the query file has been copied into the Project folder, the original file still remains in your My Documents (or wherever it existed). I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to explore creating further Projects within a solution but will happily answer questions if you get into difficulties. What other advantages do I get from this? Well, as all your code is neatly in one Solution folder and the folder contains only files that are pertinent to the session you are presenting then it makes it very easy to share this code, simply copy the whole folder onto a USB stick, Blog, FTP location, wherever you choose and it’s all there in one self-contained parcel. You don’t have to limit yourself to .sql query files, you can add any sort of document via the Add Existing Item method, just try it out. Right-click on the protect and choose Add | Existing Item Change the file type filter. You can multi select items here using Ctrl as you click each item you want. When you are done, click the Add button and the items will be brought into your project. Again, using this process means the files are copied into the project folder, leaving you original files untouched in their original location. Once they are here you can double click them in the SSMS Solution Explorer to open them, for files with a specific file type then the appropriate application will be launched – ie Word, Excel etc. However, if the files are something that the SSMS Text editor can display then they will open in a tab in SSMS. Try it out with a text file or even a PS1 file … This sounds excellent but what do I need to watch out for? One big thing to consider when working like this is the version of SSMS that you are using. There is something fundamentally different between the different versions in the way that the project (.ssmssqlproj) and solution (.sqlsuo and .ssmssln) files are formatted. If you create a solution in an older version of SSMS and then open it in a newer version you will be given the option to upgrade it. Once you do this upgrade then the older version of SSMS will not be able to open the solution any more. Now this ranks as more of an annoyance than disaster as the files within the projects are not affected in any way, you would just have to delete the files mentioned and recreate the solution in the older version again. Summary So, here we have seen how using SSMS Projects and Solutions can help keep related code files (and other document types) together in a neat structure so that they can be quickly navigated during a presentation and it also makes it incredibly simple to distribute your code and share it with others. I hope this is of use to you and helps you bring more order into your sql files, whether you are a person that does technical presentations or not, having your code grouped and managed can make for a lot of advantages as your code library expands.

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Top 5 Developer Enabling Nuggets in MySQL 5.6

- by Rob Young

MySQL 5.6 is truly a better MySQL and reflects Oracle's commitment to the evolution of the most popular and widelyused open source database on the planet. The feature-complete 5.6 release candidate was announced at MySQL Connect in late September and the production-ready, generally available ("GA") product should be available in early 2013. While the message around 5.6 has been focused mainly on mass appeal, advanced topics like performance/scale, high availability, and self-healing replication clusters, MySQL 5.6 also provides many developer-friendly nuggets that are designed to enable those who are building the next generation of web-based and embedded applications and services. Boiling down the 5.6 feature set into a smaller set, of simple, easy to use goodies designed with developer agility in mind, these things deserve a quick look:Subquery Optimizations Using semi-JOINs and late materialization, the MySQL 5.6 Optimizer delivers greatly improved subquery performance. Specifically, the optimizer is now more efficient in handling subqueries in the FROM clause; materialization of subqueries in the FROM clause is now postponed until their contents are needed during execution. Additionally, the optimizer may add an index to derived tables during execution to speed up row retrieval. Internal tests run using the DBT-3 benchmark Query #13, shown below, demonstrate an order of magnitude improvement in execution times (from days to seconds) over previous versions. select c_name, c_custkey, o_orderkey, o_orderdate, o_totalprice, sum(l_quantity)from customer, orders, lineitemwhere o_orderkey in ( select l_orderkey from lineitem group by l_orderkey having sum(l_quantity) > 313 ) and c_custkey = o_custkey and o_orderkey = l_orderkeygroup by c_name, c_custkey, o_orderkey, o_orderdate, o_totalpriceorder by o_totalprice desc, o_orderdateLIMIT 100;What does this mean for developers? For starters, simplified subqueries can now be coded instead of complex joins for cross table lookups: SELECT title FROM film WHERE film_id IN (SELECT film_id FROM film_actor GROUP BY film_id HAVING count(*) > 12); And even more importantly subqueries embedded in packaged applications no longer need to be re-written into joins. This is good news for both ISVs and their customers who have access to the underlying queries and who have spent development cycles writing, testing and maintaining their own versions of re-written queries across updated versions of a packaged app.The details are in the MySQL 5.6 docs. Online DDL OperationsToday's web-based applications are designed to rapidly evolve and adapt to meet business and revenue-generationrequirements. As a result, development SLAs are now most often measured in minutes vs days or weeks. For example, when an application must quickly support new product lines or new products within existing product lines, the backend database schema must adapt in kind, and most commonly while the application remains available for normal business operations. MySQL 5.6 supports this level of online schema flexibility and agility by providing the following new ALTER TABLE online DDL syntax additions: CREATE INDEX DROP INDEX Change AUTO_INCREMENT value for a column ADD/DROP FOREIGN KEY Rename COLUMN Change ROW FORMAT, KEY_BLOCK_SIZE for a table Change COLUMN NULL, NOT_NULL Add, drop, reorder COLUMN Again, the details are in the MySQL 5.6 docs. Key-value access to InnoDB via Memcached APIMany of the next generation of web, cloud, social and mobile applications require fast operations against simple Key/Value pairs. At the same time, they must retain the ability to run complex queries against the same data, as well as ensure the data is protected with ACID guarantees. With the new NoSQL API for InnoDB, developers have allthe benefits of a transactional RDBMS, coupled with the performance capabilities of Key/Value store.MySQL 5.6 provides simple, key-value interaction with InnoDB data via the familiar Memcached API. Implemented via a new Memcached daemon plug-in to mysqld, the new Memcached protocol is mapped directly to the native InnoDB API and enables developers to use existing Memcached clients to bypass the expense of query parsing and go directly to InnoDB data for lookups and transactional compliant updates. The API makes it possible to re-use standard Memcached libraries and clients, while extending Memcached functionality by integrating a persistent, crash-safe, transactional database back-end. The implementation is shown here:So does this option provide a performance benefit over SQL? Internal performance benchmarks using a customized Java application and test harness show some very promising results with a 9X improvement in overall throughput for SET/INSERT operations:You can follow the InnoDB team blog for the methodology, implementation and internal test cases that generated these results here. How to get started with Memcached API to InnoDB is here. New Instrumentation in Performance SchemaThe MySQL Performance Schema was introduced in MySQL 5.5 and is designed to provide point in time metrics for key performance indicators. MySQL 5.6 improves the Performance Schema in answer to the most common DBA and Developer problems. New instrumentations include: Statements/Stages What are my most resource intensive queries? Where do they spend time? Table/Index I/O, Table Locks Which application tables/indexes cause the most load or contention? Users/Hosts/Accounts Which application users, hosts, accounts are consuming the most resources? Network I/O What is the network load like? How long do sessions idle? Summaries Aggregated statistics grouped by statement, thread, user, host, account or object. The MySQL 5.6 Performance Schema is now enabled by default in the my.cnf file with optimized and auto-tune settings that minimize overhead (< 5%, but mileage will vary), so using the Performance Schema ona production server to monitor the most common application use cases is less of an issue. In addition, new atomic levels of instrumentation enable the capture of granular levels of resource consumption by users, hosts, accounts, applications, etc. for billing and chargeback purposes in cloud computing environments.The MySQL docs are an excellent resource for all that is available and that can be done with the 5.6 Performance Schema. Better Condition Handling - GET DIAGNOSTICSMySQL 5.6 enables developers to easily check for error conditions and code for exceptions by introducing the new MySQL Diagnostics Area and corresponding GET DIAGNOSTICS interface command. The Diagnostic Area can be populated via multiple options and provides 2 kinds of information:Statement - which provides affected row count and number of conditions that occurredCondition - which provides error codes and messages for all conditions that were returned by a previous operation The addressable items for each are: The new GET DIAGNOSTICS command provides a standard interface into the Diagnostics Area and can be used via the CLI or from within application code to easily retrieve and handle the results of the most recent statement execution. An example of how it is used might be:mysql> DROP TABLE test.no_such_table; ERROR 1051 (42S02): Unknown table 'test.no_such_table' mysql> GET DIAGNOSTICS CONDITION 1 -> @p1 = RETURNED_SQLSTATE, @p2 = MESSAGE_TEXT; mysql> SELECT @p1, @p2; +-------+------------------------------------+| @p1 | @p2 | +-------+------------------------------------+| 42S02 | Unknown table 'test.no_such_table' | +-------+------------------------------------+ Options for leveraging the MySQL Diagnotics Area and GET DIAGNOSTICS are detailed in the MySQL Docs.While the above is a summary of some of the key developer enabling 5.6 features, it is by no means exhaustive. You can dig deeper into what MySQL 5.6 has to offer by reading this developer zone article or checking out "What's New in MySQL 5.6" in the MySQL docs.BONUS ALERT! If you are developing on Windows or are considering MySQL as an alternative to SQL Server for your next project, application or shipping product, you should check out the MySQL Installer for Windows. The installer includes the MySQL 5.6 RC database, all drivers, Visual Studio and Excel plugins, tray monitor and development tools all a single download and GUI installer. So what are your next steps? Register for Dec. 13 "MySQL 5.6: Building the Next Generation of Web-Based Applications and Services" live web event. Hurry! Seats are limited. Download the MySQL 5.6 Release Candidate (look under the Development Releases tab) Provide Feedback <link to http://bugs.mysql.com/> Join the Developer discussion on the MySQL Forums Explore all MySQL Products and Developer Tools As always, thanks for your continued support of MySQL!

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