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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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. Changes to Version 1.0.4.1Changed the BlackberryHandler and BlackberryVersion6Handler to have equal CONFIDENCE values to ensure they both get a chance at detecting BlackBerry version 4&5 and version 6 devices. Prior to thi...Rawr: Rawr 4.1.06: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr AddonWe now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including bag and bank items) like Char...AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.0 Beta6: ??AcDown?????????????，?????????????，????、????。?????Acfun????? ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)?.NET Framework 2.0???(x64)，?????"?????????"??? ??v3.0 Beta6 ?????(imanhua.com)????? ???? ?? ??"????","?????","?????","????"?????? "????"?????"????????"?? ??????????? ?????????????? ?????????????/???? ?? ????Windows 7???????????? ????????? ?? ????????????? ???????/??????????? ???????????? ?? ?? ?????(imanh...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.22: Added lots of optimizations related to expression optimization. Combining adjacent expression statements into a single statement means more if-, for-, and while-statements can get rid of the curly-braces. Then more if-statements can be converted to expressions, and more expressions can be combined with return- and for-statements. Moving functions to the top of their scopes, followed by var-statements, provides more opportunities for expression-combination. Added command-line option to remove ...Pulse: Pulse Beta 2: - Added new wallpapers provider http://wallbase.cc. Supports english search, multiple keywords* - Improved font rendering in Options window - Added "Set wallpaper as logon background" option* - Fixed crashes if there is no internet connection - Fixed: Rewalls downloads empty images sometimes - Added filters* Note 1: wallbase provider supports only english search. Rewalls provider supports only russian search but Pulse automatically translates your english keyword into russian using Google Tr...SizeOnDisk: 1.0.8.4: Fix: Contextual menu failures. Switch to ShellExecuteEx of Win32Api.Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 2.1 (June 2011) for .NET 4.0: Release of Phalanger 2.1 - the opensource PHP compiler for .NET framework 4.0. Installation package also includes basic version of Phalanger Tools for Visual Studio 2010. This allows you to easily create, build and debug Phalanger web or application inside this ultimate integrated development environment. You can even install the tools into the free Visual Studio 2010 Shell (Integrated). To improve the performance of your application using MySQL, please use Managed MySQL Extension for Phala...WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.7: Version: 2.0.0.7 (Milestone 7): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Remark The sample applications are using Microsoft’s IoC container MEF. However, the WPF Application Framework (WAF) doesn’t force you to use the same IoC container in your application. You can use ...SimplePlanner: v2.0b: For 2011-2012 Sem 1 ???2011-2012 ????Visual Studio 2010 Help Downloader: 1.0.0.3: Domain name support for proxy Cleanup old packages bug Writing to EventLog with UAC enabled bug Small fixes & RefactoringMedia Companion: MC 3.406b weekly: With this version change a movie rebuild is required when first run -else MC will lock up on exit. Extract the entire archive to a folder which has user access rights, eg desktop, documents etc. Refer to the documentation on this site for the Installation & Setup Guide Important! If you find MC not displaying movie data properly, please try a 'movie rebuild' to reload the data from the nfo's into MC's cache. 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! Please install to a different directory than AutoLoL v1Host Profiles: Host Profiles 1.0: Host Profiles 1.0 Release Quickly modify host file Automatically flush dnsVidCoder: 0.9.2: Updated to HandBrake 4024svn. This fixes problems with mpeg2 sources: corrupted previews, incorrect progress indicators and encodes that incorrectly report as failed. Fixed a problem that prevented target sizes above 2048 MB.New ProjectsAFS - Application Foundation System: application foundation system,including organization structure,rights management,user management,event subscription etc.AuctionWorks: AuctionWorks 1.0Commander: CMD VB6 GUI a CMD application written in Visual Studio 2010 ultimate (VB6). Simple GUI interface, more functions to be addedCotizador de Serigrafia: Cotizador para Industrias SerigráficasESPGame: ESPGame renders a wonderful picture label game environment. It's developed in Python with web framework django.ETRoboCon Race Tracking System: The race tracking system of Embedded Technology Robot Contest in Japan.HNI2: get me at x.InkML JavaScript Library: The InkML JavaScript library allows InkML digital ink to be refernced within web pages and rendered directly into HTML5 <canvas> tags. Ink Markup Language (InkML) is a W3C standard for encoding digital ink (www.w3.org/tr/inkml). Ionut's C++ Programs: Ionut's C++ Programs Are you wondering were you can find software that suports any windows platform and the source code mai be compiled also for a NON-WINDOWS platforms. The Programs are Developed in C++ Mano Machine Emulator: Mano Machine Emulator makes it easier for Computer Science students to learn how the machine works in low level layers. You'll no longer have to imagine how the computer works, instead you will see how it works. It's developed in C#. MSMQ Client Library: MSMQ client library is a client for MSMQ server. 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. The framework was developed in C# on the 4.0 framework and Silverlight 4.0 The framework is designed to be used with C# and Silverlight 4.0 or higher. queryexecutor: A generic database browserSilVM: MVVM, Silverlight, Arquitetura, ArchitectureSimple Dot Net Grapher: Demo project for drawing graphs based on a equation E.g F(x) = 5x^2 + 10x - 1 Just a math grapher I made to test the DynamicDataDisplay library and dynamic string evaluationSPEvolution: Migration for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 data - Content Types, List, Columns, ListItems and many other - in Rails-style. Write small evolution's steps which help to deploy and synchronize data schema beetween production and development environment. SQLDeploy.Net: SQLDeploy.Net is a utility to deploy [run] a set of SQL Scripts on SQL Server. The utility can be integrated with any deployment manager like Marimba , Hudson etc to automate database deployment. The project is developed on .Net Framework 4.0 but it is equally backward compatible. For a list of known issues and enhancements which are being worked upon, refer to Issue Tracker.webget: webgetwhoami: ip address resolverWPFGenie: about WPF, .Net, framework

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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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• 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. Tweet Technorati Tags: C#,.NET,Tuple,Little Wonders

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• Web API, JavaScript, Chrome &amp; 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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• 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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• Do you play Sudoku ?

  - by Gilles Haro

  Did you know that 11gR2 database could solve a Sudoku puzzle with a single query and, most of the time, and this in less than a second ? The following query shows you how ! Simply pass a flattened Sudoku grid to it a get the result instantaneously ! col "Solution" format a9 col "Problem" format a9 with Iteration( initialSudoku, Step, EmptyPosition ) as ( select initialSudoku, InitialSudoku, instr( InitialSudoku, '-' )        from ( select '--64----2--7-35--1--58-----27---3--4---------4--2---96-----27--7--58-6--3----18--' InitialSudoku from dual )    union all    select initialSudoku        , substr( Step, 1, EmptyPosition - 1 ) || OneDigit || substr( Step, EmptyPosition + 1 )         , instr( Step, '-', EmptyPosition + 1 )      from Iteration         , ( select to_char( rownum ) OneDigit from dual connect by rownum <= 9 ) OneDigit     where EmptyPosition > 0       and not exists          ( select null              from ( select rownum IsPossible from dual connect by rownum <= 9 )             where OneDigit = substr( Step, trunc( ( EmptyPosition - 1 ) / 9 ) * 9 + IsPossible, 1 )   -- One line must contain the 1-9 digits                or OneDigit = substr( Step, mod( EmptyPosition - 1, 9 ) - 8 + IsPossible * 9, 1 )      -- One row must contain the 1-9 digits                or OneDigit = substr( Step, mod( trunc( ( EmptyPosition - 1 ) / 3 ), 3 ) * 3           -- One square must contain the 1-9 digits                            + trunc( ( EmptyPosition - 1 ) / 27 ) * 27 + IsPossible                            + trunc( ( IsPossible - 1 ) / 3 ) * 6 , 1 )          ) ) select initialSudoku "Problem", Step "Solution"    from Iteration  where EmptyPosition = 0 ;   The Magic thing behind this is called Recursive Subquery Factoring. The Oracle documentation gives the following definition: If a subquery_factoring_clause refers to its own query_name in the subquery that defines it, then the subquery_factoring_clause is said to be recursive. A recursive subquery_factoring_clause must contain two query blocks: the first is the anchor member and the second is the recursive member. The anchor member must appear before the recursive member, and it cannot reference query_name. The anchor member can be composed of one or more query blocks combined by the set operators: UNION ALL, UNION, INTERSECT or MINUS. The recursive member must follow the anchor member and must reference query_name exactly once. You must combine the recursive member with the anchor member using the UNION ALL set operator. This new feature is a replacement of this old Hierarchical Query feature that exists in Oracle since the days of Aladdin (well, at least, release 2 of the database in 1977). Everyone remembers the old syntax : select empno, ename, job, mgr, level      from   emp      start with mgr is null      connect by prior empno = mgr; that could/should be rewritten (but not as often as it should) as withT_Emp (empno, name, level) as        ( select empno, ename, job, mgr, level             from   emp             start with mgr is null             connect by prior empno = mgr        ) select * from   T_Emp; which uses the "with" syntax, whose main advantage is to clarify the readability of the query. Although very efficient, this syntax had the disadvantage of being a Non-Ansi Sql Syntax. Ansi-Sql version of Hierarchical Query is called Recursive Subquery Factoring. As of 11gR2, Oracle got compliant with Ansi Sql and introduced Recursive Subquery Factoring. It is basically an extension of the "With" clause that enables recursion. Now, the new syntax for the query would be with T_Emp (empno, name, job, mgr, hierlevel) as       ( select E.empno, E.ename, E.job, E.mgr, 1 from emp E where E.mgr is null         union all         select E.empno, E.ename, E.job, E.mgr, T.hierlevel + 1from emp E                                                                                                            join T_Emp T on ( E.mgr = T.empno ) ) select * from   T_Emp; The anchor member is a replacement for the "start with" The recursive member is processed through iterations. It joins the Source table (EMP) with the result from the Recursive Query itself (T_Emp) Each iteration works with the results of all its preceding iterations.     Iteration 1 works on the results of the first query     Iteration 2 works on the results of Iteration 1 and first query     Iteration 3 works on the results of Iteration 1, Iteration 2 and first query. So, knowing that, the Sudoku query it self-explaining; The anchor member contains the "Problem" : The Initial Sudoku and the Position of the first "hole" in the grid. The recursive member tries to replace the considered hole with any of the 9 digit that would satisfy the 3 rules of sudoku Recursion progress through the grid until it is complete.   Another example :  Fibonaccy Numbers :  un = (un-1) + (un-2) with Fib (u1, u2, depth) as   (select 1, 1, 1 from dual    union all    select u1+u2, u1, depth+1 from Fib where depth<10) select u1 from Fib; Conclusion Oracle brings here a new feature (which, to be honest, already existed on other concurrent systems) and extends the power of the database to new boundaries. It’s now up to developers to try and test it and find more useful application than solving puzzles… But still, solving a Sudoku in less time it takes to say it remains impressive… Interesting links: You might be interested by the following links which cover different aspects of this feature Oracle Documentation Lucas Jellema 's Blog Fibonaci Numbers

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• Windows Azure Mobile Services: New support for iOS apps, Facebook/Twitter/Google identity, Emails, SMS, Blobs, Service Bus and more

  - by ScottGu

  A few weeks ago I blogged about Windows Azure Mobile Services - a new capability in Windows Azure that makes it incredibly easy to connect your client and mobile applications to a scalable cloud backend. Earlier today we delivered a number of great improvements to Windows Azure Mobile Services.  New features include: iOS support – enabling you to connect iPhone and iPad apps to Mobile Services Facebook, Twitter, and Google authentication support with Mobile Services Blob, Table, Queue, and Service Bus support from within your Mobile Service Sending emails from your Mobile Service (in partnership with SendGrid) Sending SMS messages from your Mobile Service (in partnership with Twilio) Ability to deploy mobile services in the West US region All of these improvements are now live in production and available to start using immediately. Below are more details on them: iOS Support This week we delivered initial support for connecting iOS based devices (including iPhones and iPads) to Windows Azure Mobile Services.  Like the rest of our Windows Azure SDK, we are delivering the native iOS libraries to enable this under an open source (Apache 2.0) license on GitHub.  We’re excited to get your feedback on this new library through our forum and GitHub issues list, and we welcome contributions to the SDK. To create a new iOS app or connect an existing iOS app to your Mobile Service, simply select the “iOS” tab within the Quick Start view of a Mobile Service within the Windows Azure Portal – and then follow either the “Create a new iOS app” or “Connect to an existing iOS app” link below it: Clicking either of these links will expand and display step-by-step instructions for how to build an iOS application that connects with your Mobile Service: Read this getting started tutorial to walkthrough how you can build (in less than 5 minutes) a simple iOS “Todo List” app that stores data in Windows Azure.  Then follow the below tutorials to explore how to use the iOS client libraries to store data and authenticate users. Get Started with data in Mobile Services for iOS Get Started with authentication in Mobile Services for iOS Facebook, Twitter, and Google Authentication Support Our initial preview of Mobile Services supported the ability to authenticate users of mobile apps using Microsoft Accounts (formerly called Windows Live ID accounts).  This week we are adding the ability to also authenticate users using Facebook, Twitter, and Google credentials.  These are now supported with both Windows 8 apps as well as iOS apps (and a single app can support multiple forms of identity simultaneously – so you can offer your users a choice of how to login). The below tutorials walkthrough how to register your Mobile Service with an identity provider: How to register your app with Microsoft Account How to register your app with Facebook How to register your app with Twitter How to register your app with Google The tutorials above walkthrough how to obtain a client ID and a secret key from the identity provider. You can then click on the “Identity” tab of your Mobile Service (within the Windows Azure Portal) and save these values to enable server-side authentication with your Mobile Service: You can then write code within your client or mobile app to authenticate your users to the Mobile Service.  For example, below is the code you would write to have them login to the Mobile Service using their Facebook credentials: Windows Store App (using C#): var user = await App.MobileService                     .LoginAsync(MobileServiceAuthenticationProvider.Facebook); iOS app (using Objective C): UINavigationController *controller = [self.todoService.client     loginViewControllerWithProvider:@"facebook"     completion:^(MSUser *user, NSError *error) {        //... }]; Learn more about authenticating Mobile Services using Microsoft Account, Facebook, Twitter, and Google from these tutorials: Get started with authentication in Mobile Services for Windows Store (C#) Get started with authentication in Mobile Services for Windows Store (JavaScript) Get started with authentication in Mobile Services for iOS Using Windows Azure Blob, Tables and ServiceBus with your Mobile Services Mobile Services provide a simple but powerful way to add server logic using server scripts. These scripts are associated with the individual CRUD operations on your mobile service’s tables. Server scripts are great for data validation, custom authorization logic (e.g. does this user participate in this game session), augmenting CRUD operations, sending push notifications, and other similar scenarios.   Server scripts are written in JavaScript and are executed in a secure server-side scripting environment built using Node.js.  You can edit these scripts and save them on the server directly within the Windows Azure Portal: In this week’s release we have added the ability to work with other Windows Azure services from your Mobile Service server scripts.  This is supported using the existing “azure” module within the Windows Azure SDK for Node.js.  For example, the below code could be used in a Mobile Service script to obtain a reference to a Windows Azure Table (after which you could query it or insert data into it):     var azure = require('azure');     var tableService = azure.createTableService("<< account name >>",                                                 "<< access key >>"); Follow the tutorials on the Windows Azure Node.js dev center to learn more about working with Blob, Tables, Queues and Service Bus using the azure module. Sending emails from your Mobile Service In this week’s release we have also added the ability to easily send emails from your Mobile Service, building on our partnership with SendGrid. Whether you want to add a welcome email upon successful user registration, or make your app alert you of certain usage activities, you can do this now by sending email from Mobile Services server scripts. To get started, sign up for SendGrid account at http://sendgrid.com . Windows Azure customers receive a special offer of 25,000 free emails per month from SendGrid. To sign-up for this offer, or get more information, please visit http://www.sendgrid.com/azure.html . One you signed up, you can add the following script to your Mobile Service server scripts to send email via SendGrid service:     var sendgrid = new SendGrid('<< account name >>', '<< password >>');       sendgrid.send({         to: '<< enter email address here >>',         from: '<< enter from address here >>',         subject: 'New to-do item',         text: 'A new to-do was added: ' + item.text     }, function (success, message) {         if (!success) {             console.error(message);         }     }); Follow the Send email from Mobile Services with SendGrid tutorial to learn more. Sending SMS messages from your Mobile Service SMS is a key communication medium for mobile apps - it comes in handy if you want your app to send users a confirmation code during registration, allow your users to invite their friends to install your app or reach out to mobile users without a smartphone. Using Mobile Service server scripts and Twilio’s REST API, you can now easily send SMS messages to your app.  To get started, sign up for Twilio account. Windows Azure customers receive 1000 free text messages when using Twilio and Windows Azure together. Once signed up, you can add the following to your Mobile Service server scripts to send SMS messages:     var httpRequest = require('request');     var account_sid = "<< account SID >>";     var auth_token = "<< auth token >>";       // Create the request body     var body = "From=" + from + "&To=" + to + "&Body=" + message;       // Make the HTTP request to Twilio     httpRequest.post({         url: "https://" + account_sid + ":" + auth_token +              "@api.twilio.com/2010-04-01/Accounts/" + account_sid + "/SMS/Messages.json",         headers: { 'content-type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded' },         body: body     }, function (err, resp, body) {         console.log(body);     }); I’m excited to be speaking at the TwilioCon conference this week, and will be showcasing some of the cool scenarios you can now enable with Twilio and Windows Azure Mobile Services. Mobile Services availability in West US region Our initial preview of Windows Azure Mobile Services was only supported in the US East region of Windows Azure.  As with every Windows Azure service, overtime we will extend Mobile Services to all Windows Azure regions. With this week’s preview update we’ve added support so that you can now create your Mobile Service in the West US region as well: Summary The above features are all now live in production and are available to use immediately.  If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using Mobile Services today. Visit the Windows Azure Mobile Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with Mobile Services. We’ll have even more new features and enhancements coming later this week – including .NET 4.5 support for Windows Azure Web Sites.  Keep an eye out on my blog for details as new features become available. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• Finding the Right Solution to Source and Manage Your Contractors

  - by mark.rosenberg(at)oracle.com

  Many of our PeopleSoft Enterprise applications customers operate in service-based industries, and all of our customers have at least some internal service units, such as IT, marketing, and facilities. Employing the services of contractors, often referred to as "contingent labor," to deliver either or both internal and external services is common practice. As we've transitioned from an industrial age to a knowledge age, talent has become a primary competitive advantage for most organizations. Contingent labor offers talent on flexible terms; it offers the ability to scale up operations, close skill gaps, and manage risk in the process of delivering services. Talent comes from many sources and the rise in the contingent worker (contractor, consultant, temporary, part time) has increased significantly in the past decade and is expected to reach 40 percent in the next decade. Managing the total pool of talent in a seamless integrated fashion not only saves organizations money and increases efficiency, but creates a better place for workers of all kinds to work. Although the term "contingent labor" is frequently used to describe both contractors and employees who have flexible schedules and relationships with an organization, the remainder of this discussion focuses on contractors. The term "contingent labor" is used interchangeably with "contractor." Recognizing the importance of contingent labor, our PeopleSoft customers often ask our team, "What Oracle vendor management system (VMS) applications should I evaluate for managing contractors?" In response, I thought it would be useful to describe and compare the three most common Oracle-based options available to our customers. They are:   The enterprise licensed software model in which you implement and utilize the PeopleSoft Services Procurement (sPro) application and potentially other PeopleSoft applications;  The software-as-a-service model in which you gain access to a derivative of PeopleSoft sPro from an Oracle Business Process Outsourcing Partner; and  The managed service provider (MSP) model in which staffing industry professionals utilize either your enterprise licensed software or the software-as-a-service application to administer your contingent labor program. At this point, you may be asking yourself, "Why three options?" The answer is that since there is no "one size fits all" in terms of talent, there is also no "one size fits all" for effectively sourcing and managing contingent workers. Various factors influence how an organization thinks about and relates to its contractors, and each of the three Oracle-based options addresses an organization's needs and preferences differently. For the purposes of this discussion, I will describe the options with respect to (A) pricing and software provisioning models; (B) control and flexibility; (C) level of engagement with contractors; and (D) approach to sourcing, employment law, and financial settlement. Option 1:  Enterprise Licensed Software In this model, you purchase from Oracle the license and support for the applications you need. Typically, you license PeopleSoft sPro as your VMS tool for sourcing, monitoring, and paying your contract labor. In conjunction with sPro, you can also utilize PeopleSoft Human Capital Management (HCM) applications (if you do not already) to configure more advanced business processes for recruiting, training, and tracking your contractors. Many customers choose this enterprise license software model because of the functionality and natural integration of the PeopleSoft applications and because the cost for the PeopleSoft software is explicit. There is no fee per transaction to source each contractor under this model. Our customers that employ contractors to augment their permanent staff on billable client engagements often find this model appealing because there are no fees to affect their profit margins. With this model, you decide whether to have your own IT organization run the software or have the software hosted and managed by either Oracle or another application services provider. Your organization, perhaps with the assistance of consultants, configures, deploys, and operates the software for managing your contingent workforce. This model offers you the highest level of control and flexibility since your organization can configure the contractor process flow exactly to your business and security requirements and can extend the functionality with PeopleTools. This option has proven very valuable and applicable to our customers engaged in government contracting because their contingent labor management practices are subject to complex standards and regulations. Customers find a great deal of value in the application functionality and configurability the enterprise licensed software offers for managing contingent labor. Some examples of that functionality are... The ability to create a tiered network of preferred suppliers including competencies, pricing agreements, and elaborate candidate management capabilities. Configurable alerts and online collaboration for bid, resource requisition, timesheet, and deliverable entry, routing, and approval for both resource and deliverable-based services. The ability to manage contractors with the same PeopleSoft HCM and Projects applications that are used to manage the permanent workforce. Because it allows you to utilize much of the same PeopleSoft HCM and Projects application functionality for contractors that you use for permanent employees, the enterprise licensed software model supports the deepest level of engagement with the contingent workforce. For example, you can: fill job openings with contingent labor; guide contingent workers through essential safety and compliance training with PeopleSoft Enterprise Learning Management; and source contingent workers directly to project-based assignments in PeopleSoft Resource Management and PeopleSoft Program Management. This option enables contingent workers to collaborate closely with your permanent staff on complex, knowledge-based efforts - R&D projects, billable client contracts, architecture and engineering projects spanning multiple years, and so on. With the enterprise licensed software model, your organization maintains responsibility for the sourcing, onboarding (including adherence to employment laws), and financial settlement processes. This means your organization maintains on staff or hires the expertise in these domains to utilize the software and interact with suppliers and contractors. Option 2:  Software as a Service (SaaS) The effort involved in setting up and operating VMS software to handle a contingent workforce leads many organizations to seek a system that can be activated and configured within a few days and for which they can pay based on usage. Oracle's Business Process Outsourcing partner, Provade, Inc., provides exactly this option to our customers. Provade offers its vendor management software as a service over the Internet and usually charges your organization a fee that is a percentage of your total contingent labor spending processed through the Provade software. (Percentage of spend is the predominant fee model, although not the only one.) In addition to lower implementation costs, the effort of configuring and maintaining the software is largely upon Provade, not your organization. This can be very appealing to IT organizations that are thinly stretched supporting other important information technology initiatives. Built upon PeopleSoft sPro, the Provade solution is tailored for simple and quick deployment and administration. Provade has added capabilities to clone users rapidly and has simplified business documents, like work orders and change orders, to facilitate enterprise-wide, self-service adoption with little to no training. Provade also leverages Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) to provide integrated spend analytics and dashboards. Although pure customization is more limited than with the enterprise licensed software model, Provade offers a very effective option for organizations that are regularly on-boarding and off-boarding high volumes of contingent staff hired to perform discrete support tasks (for example, order fulfillment during the holiday season, hourly clerical work, desktop technology repairs, and so on) or project tasks. The software is very configurable and at the same time very intuitive to even the most computer-phobic users. The level of contingent worker engagement your organization can achieve with the Provade option is generally the same as with the enterprise licensed software model since Provade can automatically establish contingent labor resources in your PeopleSoft applications. Provade has pre-built integrations to Oracle's PeopleSoft and the Oracle E-Business Suite procurement, projects, payables, and HCM applications, so that you can evaluate, train, assign, and track contingent workers like your permanent employees. Similar to the enterprise licensed software model, your organization is responsible for the contingent worker sourcing, administration, and financial settlement processes. This means your organization needs to maintain the staff expertise in these domains. Option 3:  Managed Services Provider (MSP) Whether you are using the enterprise licensed model or the SaaS model, you may want to engage the services of sourcing, employment, payroll, and financial settlement professionals to administer your contingent workforce program. Firms that offer this expertise are often referred to as "MSPs," and they are typically staffing companies that also offer permanent and temporary hiring services. (In fact, many of the major MSPs are Oracle applications customers themselves, and they utilize the PeopleSoft Solution for the Staffing Industry to run their own business operations.) Usually, MSPs place their staff on-site at your facilities, and they can utilize either your enterprise licensed PeopleSoft sPro application or the Provade VMS SaaS software to administer the network of suppliers providing contingent workers. When you utilize an MSP, there is a separate fee for the MSP's service that is typically funded by the participating suppliers of the contingent labor. Also in this model, the suppliers of the contingent labor (not the MSP) usually pay the contingent labor force. With an MSP, you are intentionally turning over business process control for the advantages associated with having someone else manage the processes. The software option you choose will to a certain extent affect your process flexibility; however, the MSPs are often able to adapt their processes to the unique demands of your business. When you engage an MSP, you will want to give some thought to the level of engagement and "partnering" you need with your contingent workforce. Because the MSP acts as an intermediary, it can be very valuable in handling high volume, routine contracting for which there is a relatively low need for "partnering" with the contingent workforce. However, if your organization (or part of your organization) engages contingent workers for high-profile client projects that require diplomacy, intensive amounts of interaction, and personal trust, introducing an MSP into the process may prove less effective than handling the process with your own staff. In fact, in many organizations, it is common to enlist an MSP to handle contractors working on internal projects and to have permanent employees handle the contractor relationships that affect the portion of the services portfolio focused on customer-facing, billable projects. One of the key advantages of enlisting an MSP is that you do not have to maintain the expertise required for orchestrating the sourcing, hiring, and paying of contingent workers.  These are the domain of the MSPs. If your own staff members are not prepared to manage the essential "overhead" processes associated with contingent labor, working with an MSP can make solid business sense. Proper administration of a contingent workforce can make the difference between project success and failure, operating profit and loss, and legal compliance and fines. Concluding Thoughts There is little doubt that thoughtfully and purposefully constructing a service delivery strategy that leverages the strengths of contingent workers can lead to better projects, deliverables, and business results. What requires a bit more thinking is determining the platform (or platforms) that will enable each part of your organization to best deliver on its mission.

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• quick look at: dm_db_index_physical_stats

  - by fatherjack

  A quick look at the key data from this dmv that can help a DBA keep databases performing well and systems online as the users need them. When the dynamic management views relating to index statistics became available in SQL Server 2005 there was much hype about how they can help a DBA keep their servers running in better health than ever before. This particular view gives an insight into the physical health of the indexes present in a database. Whether they are use or unused, complete or missing some columns is irrelevant, this is simply the physical stats of all indexes; disabled indexes are ignored however. In it’s simplest form this dmv can be executed as:   The results from executing this contain a record for every index in every database but some of the columns will be NULL. The first parameter is there so that you can specify which database you want to gather index details on, rather than scan every database. Simply specifying DB_ID() in place of the first NULL achieves this. In order to avoid the NULLS, or more accurately, in order to choose when to have the NULLS you need to specify a value for the last parameter. It takes one of 4 values – DEFAULT, ‘SAMPLED’, ‘LIMITED’ or ‘DETAILED’. If you execute the dmv with each of these values you can see some interesting details in the times taken to complete each step. DECLARE @Start DATETIME DECLARE @First DATETIME DECLARE @Second DATETIME DECLARE @Third DATETIME DECLARE @Finish DATETIME SET @Start = GETDATE() SELECT * FROM [sys].[dm_db_index_physical_stats](DB_ID(), NULL, NULL, NULL, DEFAULT) AS ddips SET @First = GETDATE() SELECT * FROM [sys].[dm_db_index_physical_stats](DB_ID(), NULL, NULL, NULL, 'SAMPLED') AS ddips SET @Second = GETDATE() SELECT * FROM [sys].[dm_db_index_physical_stats](DB_ID(), NULL, NULL, NULL, 'LIMITED') AS ddips SET @Third = GETDATE() SELECT * FROM [sys].[dm_db_index_physical_stats](DB_ID(), NULL, NULL, NULL, 'DETAILED') AS ddips SET @Finish = GETDATE() SELECT DATEDIFF(ms, @Start, @First) AS [DEFAULT] , DATEDIFF(ms, @First, @Second) AS [SAMPLED] , DATEDIFF(ms, @Second, @Third) AS [LIMITED] , DATEDIFF(ms, @Third, @Finish) AS [DETAILED] Running this code will give you 4 result sets; DEFAULT will have 12 columns full of data and then NULLS in the remainder. SAMPLED will have 21 columns full of data. LIMITED will have 12 columns of data and the NULLS in the remainder. DETAILED will have 21 columns full of data. So, from this we can deduce that the DEFAULT value (the same one that is also applied when you query the view using a NULL parameter) is the same as using LIMITED. Viewing the final result set has some details that are worth noting: Running queries against this view takes significantly longer when using the SAMPLED and DETAILED values in the last parameter. The duration of the query is directly related to the size of the database you are working in so be careful running this on big databases unless you have tried it on a test server first. Let’s look at the data we get back with the DEFAULT value first of all and then progress to the extra information later. We know that the first parameter that we supply has to be a database id and for the purposes of this blog we will be providing that value with the DB_ID function. We could just as easily put a fixed value in there or a function such as DB_ID (‘AnyDatabaseName’). The first columns we get back are database_id and object_id. These are pretty explanatory and we can wrap those in some code to make things a little easier to read: SELECT DB_NAME([ddips].[database_id]) AS [DatabaseName] , OBJECT_NAME([ddips].[object_id]) AS [TableName] … FROM [sys].[dm_db_index_physical_stats](DB_ID(), NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL) AS ddips  gives us   SELECT DB_NAME([ddips].[database_id]) AS [DatabaseName] , OBJECT_NAME([ddips].[object_id]) AS [TableName], [i].[name] AS [IndexName] , ….. FROM [sys].[dm_db_index_physical_stats](DB_ID(), NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL) AS ddips INNER JOIN [sys].[indexes] AS i ON [ddips].[index_id] = [i].[index_id] AND [ddips].[object_id] = [i].[object_id]     These handily tie in with the next parameters in the query on the dmv. If you specify an object_id and an index_id in these then you get results limited to either the table or the specific index. Once again we can place a  function in here to make it easier to work with a specific table. eg. SELECT * FROM [sys].[dm_db_index_physical_stats] (DB_ID(), OBJECT_ID(‘AdventureWorks2008.Person.Address’) , 1, NULL, NULL) AS ddips   Note: Despite me showing that functions can be placed directly in the parameters for this dmv, best practice recommends that functions are not used directly in the function as it is possible that they will fail to return a valid object ID. To be certain of not passing invalid values to this function, and therefore setting an automated process off on the wrong path, declare variables for the OBJECT_IDs and once they have been validated, use them in the function: DECLARE @db_id SMALLINT; DECLARE @object_id INT; SET @db_id = DB_ID(N’AdventureWorks_2008′); SET @object_id = OBJECT_ID(N’AdventureWorks_2008.Person.Address’); IF @db_id IS NULL BEGINPRINT N’Invalid database’; ENDELSE IF @object_id IS NULL BEGINPRINT N’Invalid object’; ENDELSE BEGINSELECT * FROM sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats (@db_id, @object_id, NULL, NULL , ‘LIMITED’); END; GO In cases where the results of querying this dmv don’t have any effect on other processes (i.e. simply viewing the results in the SSMS results area)  then it will be noticed when the results are not consistent with the expected results and in the case of this blog this is the method I have used. So, now we can relate the values in these columns to something that we recognise in the database lets see what those other values in the dmv are all about. The next columns are: We’ll skip partition_number, index_type_desc, alloc_unit_type_desc, index_depth and index_level  as this is a quick look at the dmv and they are pretty self explanatory. The final columns revealed by querying this view in the DEFAULT mode are avg_fragmentation_in_percent. This is the amount that the index is logically fragmented. It will show NULL when the dmv is queried in SAMPLED mode. fragment_count. The number of pieces that the index is broken into. It will show NULL when the dmv is queried in SAMPLED mode. avg_fragment_size_in_pages. The average size, in pages, of a single fragment in the leaf level of the IN_ROW_DATA allocation unit. It will show NULL when the dmv is queried in SAMPLED mode. page_count. Total number of index or data pages in use. OK, so what does this give us? Well, there is an obvious correlation between fragment_count, page_count and avg_fragment_size-in_pages. We see that an index that takes up 27 pages and is in 3 fragments has an average fragment size of 9 pages (27/3=9). This means that for this index there are 3 separate places on the hard disk that SQL Server needs to locate and access to gather the data when it is requested by a DML query. If this index was bigger than 72KB then having it’s data in 3 pieces might not be too big an issue as each piece would have a significant piece of data to read and the speed of access would not be too poor. If the number of fragments increases then obviously the amount of data in each piece decreases and that means the amount of work for the disks to do in order to retrieve the data to satisfy the query increases and this would start to decrease performance. This information can be useful to keep in mind when considering the value in the avg_fragmentation_in_percent column. This is arrived at by an internal algorithm that gives a value to the logical fragmentation of the index taking into account the multiple files, type of allocation unit and the previously mentioned characteristics if index size (page_count) and fragment_count. Seeing an index with a high avg_fragmentation_in_percent value will be a call to action for a DBA that is investigating performance issues. It is possible that tables will have indexes that suffer from rapid increases in fragmentation as part of normal daily business and that regular defragmentation work will be needed to keep it in good order. In other cases indexes will rarely become fragmented and therefore not need rebuilding from one end of the year to another. Keeping this in mind DBAs need to use an ‘intelligent’ process that assesses key characteristics of an index and decides on the best, if any, defragmentation method to apply should be used. There is a simple example of this in the sample code found in the Books OnLine content for this dmv, in example D. There are also a couple of very popular solutions created by SQL Server MVPs Michelle Ufford and Ola Hallengren which I would wholly recommend that you review for much further detail on how to care for your SQL Server indexes. Right, let’s get back on track then. Querying the dmv with the fifth parameter value as ‘DETAILED’ takes longer because it goes through the index and refreshes all data from every level of the index. As this blog is only a quick look a we are going to skate right past ghost_record_count and version_ghost_record_count and discuss avg_page_space_used_in_percent, record_count, min_record_size_in_bytes, max_record_size_in_bytes and avg_record_size_in_bytes. We can see from the details below that there is a correlation between the columns marked. Column 1 (Page_Count) is the number of 8KB pages used by the index, column 2 is how full each page is (how much of the 8KB has actual data written on it), column 3 is how many records are recorded in the index and column 4 is the average size of each record. This approximates to: ((Col1*8) * 1024*(Col2/100))/Col3 = Col4*. avg_page_space_used_in_percent is an important column to review as this indicates how much of the disk that has been given over to the storage of the index actually has data on it. This value is affected by the value given for the FILL_FACTOR parameter when creating an index. avg_record_size_in_bytes is important as you can use it to get an idea of how many records are in each page and therefore in each fragment, thus reinforcing how important it is to keep fragmentation under control. min_record_size_in_bytes and max_record_size_in_bytes are exactly as their names set them out to be. A detail of the smallest and largest records in the index. Purely offered as a guide to the DBA to better understand the storage practices taking place. So, keeping an eye on avg_fragmentation_in_percent will ensure that your indexes are helping data access processes take place as efficiently as possible. Where fragmentation recurs frequently then potentially the DBA should consider; the fill_factor of the index in order to leave space at the leaf level so that new records can be inserted without causing fragmentation so rapidly. the columns used in the index should be analysed to avoid new records needing to be inserted in the middle of the index but rather always be added to the end. * – it’s approximate as there are many factors associated with things like the type of data and other database settings that affect this slightly.  Another great resource for working with SQL Server DMVs is Performance Tuning with SQL Server Dynamic Management Views by Louis Davidson and Tim Ford – a free ebook or paperback from Simple Talk. Disclaimer – Jonathan is a Friend of Red Gate and as such, whenever they are discussed, will have a generally positive disposition towards Red Gate tools. Other tools are often available and you should always try others before you come back and buy the Red Gate ones. All code in this blog is provided “as is” and no guarantee, warranty or accuracy is applicable or inferred, run the code on a test server and be sure to understand it before you run it on a server that means a lot to you or your manager.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, September 25, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, September 25, 2012Popular ReleasesRawr: Rawr 5.0.0: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...Coevery - Free CRM: Coevery 1.0.0.26: The zh-CN issue has been solved. We also add a project management module.VidCoder: 1.4.1 Beta: Updated to HandBrake 4971. This should fix some issues with stuck PGS subtitles. Fixed build break which prevented pre-compiled XML serializers from showing up. Fixed problem where a preset would get errantly marked as modified when re-opening the encode settings window or importing a new preset.D3 Loot Tracker: 1.3: Added the ability to reload a previous session to be able to resume it. Removed goblin detection, let's keep this an item tracking utility only. Fixed a bug with crafting sound setting not working properly. Completely re-styled the UI.JSLint for Visual Studio 2010: 1.4.0: VS2012 support is alphaBlackJumboDog: Ver5.7.2: 2012.09.23 Ver5.7.2 (1)InetTest?? (2)HTTP?????????????????100???????????Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 (Preview 6): IMPORTANT: List of breaking changes from preview 5 Added separate samples download with .vsix dependencies instead of source dependencies Support for FreeWheel SmartXML ad responses Support for Smooth Streaming SDK DownloaderPlugins Support for VMAP and TTML polling for live scenarios Support for custom smooth streaming byte stream and scheme handlers Support for new play time and position tracking plugin Added IsLiveChanged event Added AdaptivePlugin.MaxBitrate property Add...WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.5.0.8: Version: 2.5.0.8 (Milestone 8): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Changelog Legend: [B] Breaking change; [O] Marked member as obsolete WAF: Mark the class DataModel as serializable. InfoMan: Minor improvements. InfoMan: Add unit tests for all modules. Othe...LogicCircuit: LogicCircuit 2.12.9.20: Logic Circuit - is educational software for designing and simulating logic circuits. Intuitive graphical user interface, allows you to create unrestricted circuit hierarchy with multi bit buses, debug circuits behavior with oscilloscope, and navigate running circuits hierarchy. Changes of this versionToolbars on text note dialog are more flexible now. You can select font face, size, color, and background of text you are typing. RAM now can be initialized to one of the following: random va...SiteMap Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: SiteMap Editor (1.1.2020.421): New features: Disable a specific part of SiteMap to keep the data without displaying them in the CRM application. It simply comments XML part of the sitemap (thanks to rboyers for this feature request) Right click an item and click on "Disable" to disable it Items disabled are greyed and a suffix "- disabled" is added Right click an item and click on "Enable" to enable it Refresh list of web resources in the web resources pickerHigLabo: HigLabo_20120919: Add XXXAsync method to all Client class for async await pattern. (HttpClient,BoxNetClient,DropboxClient,FacebookClient,FtpClient,RssClient,SugarSyncClient,TwitterClient,WindowsLiveClient) Add all api to HigLabo.Net.Ftp project. Add strong name to all assembly. Add HttpBodyMultipartFormData to provide upload multipart form data with http protocol. Add HttpBodyFormUrlEncodedData to provide form url encoded post data with http protocol. FacebookClient,RssClient,WindowsLiveClient,BoxNetClient cl...AJAX Control Toolkit: September 2012 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - September 2012 Release Version 60919September 2012 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4.5 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Notes: - The current version of the AJAX Control Toolkit is not compatible with ...Sense/Net CMS - Enterprise Content Management: SenseNet 6.1.2 Community Edition: Sense/Net 6.1.2 Community EditionMain new featuresOur current release brings a lot of bugfixes, including the resolution of js/css editing cache issues, xlsx file handling from Office, expense claim demo workspace fixes and much more. Besides fixes 6.1.2 introduces workflow start options and other minor features like a reusable Reject client button for approval scenarios and resource editor enhancements. 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• Clusterware 11gR2 &ndash; Setting up an Active/Passive failover configuration

  - by Gilles Haro

  Oracle is providing a large range of interesting solutions to ensure High Availability of the database. Dataguard, RAC or even both configurations (as recommended by Oracle for a Maximum Available Architecture - MAA) are the most frequently found and used solutions. But, when it comes to protecting a system with an Active/Passive architecture with failover capabilities, people often thinks to other expensive third party cluster systems. Oracle Clusterware technology, which comes along at no extra-cost with Oracle Database or Oracle Unbreakable Linux, is - in the knowing of most people - often linked to Oracle RAC and therefore, is seldom used to implement failover solutions. Oracle Clusterware 11gR2  (a part of Oracle 11gR2 Grid Infrastructure)  provides a comprehensive framework to setup automatic failover configurations. It is actually possible to make "failover-able'", and then to protect, almost any kind of application (from the simple xclock to the most complex Application Server). Quoting Oracle: “Oracle Clusterware is a portable cluster software that allows clustering of single servers so that they cooperate as a single system. Oracle Clusterware also provides the required infrastructure for Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC). In addition Oracle Clusterware enables the protection of any Oracle application or any other kind of application within a cluster.” In the next couple of lines, I will try to present the different steps to achieve this goal : Have a fully operational 11gR2 database protected by automatic failover capabilities. I assume you are fluent in installing Oracle Database 11gR2, Oracle Grid Infrastructure 11gR2 on a Linux system and that ASM is not a problem for you (as I am using it as a shared storage). If not, please have a look at Oracle Documentation. As often, I made my tests using an Oracle VirtualBox environment. The scripts are tested and functional on my system. Unfortunately, there can always be a typo or a mistake. This blog entry does not replace a course around the Clusterware Framework. I just hope it will let you see how powerful it is and that it will give you the whilst to go further with it...  Note : This entry has been revised (rev.2) following comments from Philip Newlan. Prerequisite 2 Linux boxes (OELCluster01 and OELCluster02) at the same OS level. I used OEL 5 Update 5 with an Enterprise Kernel. Shared Storage (SAN). On my VirtualBox system, I used Openfiler to simulate the SAN Oracle 11gR2 Database (11.2.0.1) Oracle 11gR2 Grid Infrastructure (11.2.0.1)   Step 1 - Install the software Using asmlib, create 3 ASM disks (ASM_CRS, ASM_DTA and ASM_FRA) Install Grid Infrastructure for a cluster (OELCluster01 and OELCluster02 are the 2 nodes of the cluster) Use ASM_CRS to store Voting Disk and OCR. Use SCAN. Install Oracle Database Standalone binaries on both nodes. Use asmca to check/mount the disk groups on 2 nodes Use dbca to create and configure a database on the primary node Let's name it DB11G. Copy the pfile, password file to the second node. Create adump directoty on the second node.   Step 2 - Setup the resource to be protected After its creation with dbca, the database is automatically protected by the Oracle Restart technology available with Grid Infrastructure. Consequently, it restarts automatically (if possible) after a crash (ex: kill -9 smon). A database resource has been created for that in the Cluster Registry. We can observe this with the command : crsctl status resource that shows and ora.dba11g.db entry. Let's save the definition of this resource, for future use : mkdir -p /crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts chown oracle:oinstall /crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts crsctl status resource ora.db11g.db -p > /crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts/myResource.txt Although very interesting, Oracle Restart is not cluster aware and cannot restart the database on any other node of the cluster. So, let's remove it from the OCR definitions, we don't need it ! srvctl stop database -d DB11G srvctl remove database -d DB11G Instead of it, we need to create a new resource of a more general type : cluster_resource. Here are the steps to achieve this : Create an action script :  /crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts/my_ActivePassive_Cluster.sh #!/bin/bash export ORACLE_HOME=/oracle/product/11.2.0/dbhome_1 export ORACLE_SID=DB11G case $1 in 'start')   $ORACLE_HOME/bin/sqlplus /nolog <<EOF   connect / as sysdba   startup EOF   RET=0   ;; 'stop')   $ORACLE_HOME/bin/sqlplus /nolog <<EOF   connect / as sysdba   shutdown immediate EOF   RET=0   ;; 'clean')   $ORACLE_HOME/bin/sqlplus /nolog <<EOF   connect / as sysdba   shutdown abort    ##for i in `ps -ef | grep -i $ORACLE_SID | awk '{print $2}' ` ;do kill -9 $i; done EOF   RET=0   ;; 'check')    ok=`ps -ef | grep smon | grep $ORACLE_SID | wc -l`    if [ $ok = 0 ]; then      RET=1    else      RET=0    fi    ;; '*')      RET=0   ;; esac if [ $RET -eq 0 ]; then    exit 0 else    exit 1 fi   This script must provide, at least, methods to start, stop, clean and check the database. It is self-explaining and contains nothing special. Just be aware that it must be runnable (+x), it runs as Oracle user (because of the ACL property - see later) and needs to know about the environment. Also make sure it exists on every node of the cluster. Moreover, as of 11.2, the clean method is mandatory. It must provide the “last gasp clean up”, for example, a shutdown abort or a kill –9 of all the remaining processes. chmod +x /crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts/my_ActivePassive_Cluster.sh scp  /crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts/my_ActivePassive_Cluster.sh   oracle@OELCluster02:/crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts Create a new resource file, based on the information we got from previous  myResource.txt . Name it myNewResource.txt. myResource.txt  is shown below. As we can see, it defines an ora.database.type resource, named ora.db11g.db. A lot of properties are related to this type of resource and do not need to be used for a cluster_resource. NAME=ora.db11g.db TYPE=ora.database.type ACL=owner:oracle:rwx,pgrp:oinstall:rwx,other::r-- ACTION_FAILURE_TEMPLATE= ACTION_SCRIPT= ACTIVE_PLACEMENT=1 AGENT_FILENAME=%CRS_HOME%/bin/oraagent%CRS_EXE_SUFFIX% AUTO_START=restore CARDINALITY=1 CHECK_INTERVAL=1 CHECK_TIMEOUT=600 CLUSTER_DATABASE=false DB_UNIQUE_NAME=DB11G DEFAULT_TEMPLATE=PROPERTY(RESOURCE_CLASS=database) PROPERTY(DB_UNIQUE_NAME= CONCAT(PARSE(%NAME%, ., 2), %USR_ORA_DOMAIN%, .)) ELEMENT(INSTANCE_NAME= %GEN_USR_ORA_INST_NAME%) DEGREE=1 DESCRIPTION=Oracle Database resource ENABLED=1 FAILOVER_DELAY=0 FAILURE_INTERVAL=60 FAILURE_THRESHOLD=1 GEN_AUDIT_FILE_DEST=/oracle/admin/DB11G/adump GEN_USR_ORA_INST_NAME= GEN_USR_ORA_INST_NAME@SERVERNAME(oelcluster01)=DB11G HOSTING_MEMBERS= INSTANCE_FAILOVER=0 LOAD=1 LOGGING_LEVEL=1 MANAGEMENT_POLICY=AUTOMATIC NLS_LANG= NOT_RESTARTING_TEMPLATE= OFFLINE_CHECK_INTERVAL=0 ORACLE_HOME=/oracle/product/11.2.0/dbhome_1 PLACEMENT=restricted PROFILE_CHANGE_TEMPLATE= RESTART_ATTEMPTS=2 ROLE=PRIMARY SCRIPT_TIMEOUT=60 SERVER_POOLS=ora.DB11G SPFILE=+DTA/DB11G/spfileDB11G.ora START_DEPENDENCIES=hard(ora.DTA.dg,ora.FRA.dg) weak(type:ora.listener.type,uniform:ora.ons,uniform:ora.eons) pullup(ora.DTA.dg,ora.FRA.dg) START_TIMEOUT=600 STATE_CHANGE_TEMPLATE= STOP_DEPENDENCIES=hard(intermediate:ora.asm,shutdown:ora.DTA.dg,shutdown:ora.FRA.dg) STOP_TIMEOUT=600 UPTIME_THRESHOLD=1h USR_ORA_DB_NAME=DB11G USR_ORA_DOMAIN=haroland USR_ORA_ENV= USR_ORA_FLAGS= USR_ORA_INST_NAME=DB11G USR_ORA_OPEN_MODE=open USR_ORA_OPI=false USR_ORA_STOP_MODE=immediate VERSION=11.2.0.1.0 I removed database type related entries from myResource.txt and modified some other to produce the following myNewResource.txt. Notice the NAME property that should not have the ora. prefix Notice the TYPE property that is not ora.database.type but cluster_resource. Notice the definition of ACTION_SCRIPT. Notice the HOSTING_MEMBERS that enumerates the members of the cluster (as returned by the olsnodes command). NAME=DB11G.db TYPE=cluster_resource DESCRIPTION=Oracle Database resource ACL=owner:oracle:rwx,pgrp:oinstall:rwx,other::r-- ACTION_SCRIPT=/crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts/my_ActivePassive_Cluster.sh PLACEMENT=restricted ACTIVE_PLACEMENT=0 AUTO_START=restore CARDINALITY=1 CHECK_INTERVAL=10 DEGREE=1 ENABLED=1 HOSTING_MEMBERS=oelcluster01 oelcluster02 LOGGING_LEVEL=1 RESTART_ATTEMPTS=1 START_DEPENDENCIES=hard(ora.DTA.dg,ora.FRA.dg) weak(type:ora.listener.type,uniform:ora.ons,uniform:ora.eons) pullup(ora.DTA.dg,ora.FRA.dg) START_TIMEOUT=600 STOP_DEPENDENCIES=hard(intermediate:ora.asm,shutdown:ora.DTA.dg,shutdown:ora.FRA.dg) STOP_TIMEOUT=600 UPTIME_THRESHOLD=1h Register the resource. Take care of the resource type. It needs to be a cluster_resource and not a ora.database.type resource (Oracle recommendation) .   crsctl add resource DB11G.db  -type cluster_resource -file /crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts/myNewResource.txt Step 3 - Start the resource crsctl start resource DB11G.db This command launches the ACTION_SCRIPT with a start and a check parameter on the primary node of the cluster. Step 4 - Test this We will test the setup using 2 methods. crsctl relocate resource DB11G.db This command calls the ACTION_SCRIPT  (on the two nodes)  to stop the database on the active node and start it on the other node. Once done, we can revert back to the original node, but, this time we can use a more "MS$ like" method :Turn off the server on which the database is running. After short delay, you should observe that the database is relocated on node 1. Conclusion Once the software installed and the standalone database created (which is a rather common and usual task), the steps to reach the objective are quite easy : Create an executable action script on every node of the cluster. Create a resource file. Create/Register the resource with OCR using the resource file. Start the resource. This solution is a very interesting alternative to licensable third party solutions. References Clusterware 11gR2 documentation Oracle Clusterware Resource Reference Clusterware for Unbreakable Linux Using Oracle Clusterware to Protect A Single Instance Oracle Database 11gR1 (to have an idea of complexity) Oracle Clusterware on OTN   Gilles Haro Technical Expert - Core Technology, Oracle Consulting   

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