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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 25, 2011

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 25, 2011Popular ReleasesMosaic Project: Mosaic Alpha build 252: First public release There are 8 widgets: - Desktop - Gmail - Weather - Control panel - Me - Video - Clock - PicturesUsage Agent: Usage Agent 9.0.8: Latest release. Changes include: - Fixes for Optus - Usage Delta statistic for BigPond - Eliminated the need for UAC prompt at every startupjQuery List DragSort: jQuery List DragSort 0.4.3: Fix item not dropping correctly on Chrome and jQuery 1.6KinectNUI: Jun 25 Alpha Release: Initial public version. No installer needed, just run the EXE.TerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v3.3 [v1.0.5 Compatible]: I have added support for all the new items in Terraria v1.0.5. I have also added the ability to put your character in hardcore mode or take them out via a simple checkbox on the stats tab. If you come across any bugs, please let me know immediately.Terraria World Viewer: Version 1.5: Update June 24th Made compatible with the new tiles found in Terraria 1.0.5Kinect Earth Move: KinectEarthMove sample code: Sample code releasedThis is a sample code for Kinect for Windows SDK beta, which was demonstrated on Channel 9 Kinect for Windows SKD beta launch event on June 17 2011. Using color image and skeleton data from Kinect and user in front of Kinect can manipulate the earth between his/her hands.NetOffice - The easiest way to use Office in .NET: NetOffice Release 0.9b: Changes: - fix critical issue 262334 (AccessViolationException while using events in a COMAddin) - remove x64 Assemblies (not necessary) 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...MiniTwitter: 1.70: MiniTwitter 1.70 ???? ?? ????? xAuth ?? OAuth ??????? 1.70 ??????????????????????????。 ???????????????? Twitter ? Web ??????????、PIN ????????????????????。??????????????????、???????????????????????????。Total Commander SkyDrive File System Plugin (.wfx): Total Commander SkyDrive File System Plugin 0.8.7b: Total Commander SkyDrive File System Plugin version 0.8.7b. Bug fixes: - BROKEN PLUGIN by upgrading SkyDriveServiceClient version 2.0.1b. Please do not forget to express your opinion of the plugin by rating it! Donate (EUR)SkyDrive .Net API Client: SkyDrive .Net API Client 2.0.1b (RELOADED): SkyDrive .Net API Client assembly has been RELOADED in version 2.0.1b as a REAL API. It supports the followings: - Creating root and sub folders - Uploading and downloading files - Renaming and deleting folders and files Bug fixes: - BROKEN API (issue 6834) Please do not forget to express your opinion of the assembly by rating it! Donate (EUR)Mini SQL Query: Mini SQL Query v1.0.0.59794: This release includes the following enhancements: Added a Most Recently Used file list Added Row counts to the query (per tab) and table view windows Added the Command Timeout option, only valid for MSSQL for now - see options If you have no idea what this thing is make sure you check out http://pksoftware.net/MiniSqlQuery/Help/MiniSqlQueryQuickStart.docx for an introduction. PK :-]HydroDesktop - CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System Desktop Application: 1.2.591 Beta Release: 1.2.591 Beta Releasepatterns & practices: Project Silk: Project Silk Community Drop 12 - June 22, 2011: Changes from previous drop: Minor code changes. New "Introduction" chapter. New "Modularity" chapter. Updated "Architecture" chapter. Updated "Server-Side Implementation" chapter. Updated "Client Data Management and Caching" chapter. Guidance Chapters Ready for Review The Word documents for the chapters are included with the source code in addition to the CHM to help you provide feedback. The PDF is provided as a separate download for your convenience. Installation Overview To ins...SQL Server HowTo: Version 1.0: Initial ReleaseDropBox Linker: DropBox Linker 1.3: Added "Get links..." dialog, that provides selective public files links copying Get links link added to tray menu as the default option Fixed URL encoding .NET Framework 4.0 Client Profile requiredDotNetNuke® Community Edition: 06.00.00 Beta: Beta 1 (Build 2300) includes many important enhancements to the user experience. The control panel has been updated for easier access to the most important features and additional forms have been adapted to the new pattern. This release also includes many bug fixes that make it more stable than previous CTP releases. Beta ForumsBlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.5 RC: BlogEngine.NET Hosting - Click Here! 3 Months FREE – BlogEngine.NET Hosting – Click Here! This is a Release Candidate version for BlogEngine.NET 2.5. The most current, stable version of BlogEngine.NET is version 2.0. Find out more about the BlogEngine.NET 2.5 RC here. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. To get started, be sure to check out our installation documentation. If you are upgrading from a previous version, please take a look at ...Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework - a centralized code sample library: All-In-One Code Framework 2011-06-19: Alternatively, you can install Sample Browser or Sample Browser VS extension, and download the code samples from Sample Browser. Improved and Newly Added Examples:For an up-to-date code sample index, please refer to All-In-One Code Framework Sample Catalog. NEW Samples for Windows Azure Sample Description Owner CSAzureStartupTask The sample demonstrates using the startup tasks to install the prerequisites or to modify configuration settings for your environment in Windows Azure Rafe Wu ...IronPython: 2.7.1 Beta 1: This is the first beta release of IronPython 2.7. Like IronPython 54498, this release requires .NET 4 or Silverlight 4. This release will replace any existing IronPython installation. The highlights of this release are: Updated the standard library to match CPython 2.7.2. Add the ast, csv, and unicodedata modules. Fixed several bugs. IronPython Tools for Visual Studio are disabled by default. See http://pytools.codeplex.com for the next generation of Python Visual Studio support. See...New Projects.Net Image Processor: An image processing wrapper around GDI+, allowing you to apply one or more filters against an image source. Out-of-the-box support: * Conversion from one image type to another * Image resizing and various strategies for resolving aspect ratio * Edge detection * GIF support * Chaining filters together to perform complex operations on a single image Filters can be stacked and queued so that they run one after the other in a process queue. The processor can accept filenames, streams o...AsyncGetListSample: Reactive Extensions?????、Twitter??????????????????????????????。Awful for Windows Phone 7: Awful for Windows Phone 7 is a work-in-progress forum reader software for the Something Awful Forums.binzlog2.com: BlogEngine sourceCaffeine Model: A view model framework that specifically targets problems such as change recognition, validation and graph traversal. Provides robust support in these areas and base classes from which to build off of.CxBuild: cxbuildDotNetNuke Scheduler DashboardControl: The DNNSchedulerDashboard control adds a new control to the DotNetNuke Dashboard module that monitors the execution of the tasks in the DNN Scheduler. This control will keep host administrators informed on the tasks that are not executing on time.fkanban: A free Agile tool insist of Product backlog,sprint,Kanban etcKillstone Spycam: A "WebCam Timershot" style application that can take photos from a DirectShow device at a specified interval and save to disk and/or upload via FTP.Live Services for Moodle 1.9: This is a modification to the original Microsoft Live Services for Moodle allowing users to chat through Live Messenger using the web client.MoreEPG: Import of Extern EPG in Windows Media Center (Windows 7)NAntExt: The NAntExt is an extensions library for NAnt. This library includes Tasks and Functions which are much needed in using NAnt, but are not included in NAnt or NAntContrib. The ideal would be to eventually cycle them back into one of these projects. NetSquare - FourSquare C#.NET Open Source Class Library: NetSquare makes it easy to access Foursquare via the new v2 OAuth interface. This will be published as a VS 2010 C# project with associated examples.Power Presenter 2011: Do you want to make a great photo slideshow? Then get Power Presenter the best for showing phothos. Music with a click from the menu of the window. Better for you!!! If you want to join us it is a single rule NO-SEELING & NO-MONEY. It is developed in VB.NET. PowerPackPS: PowerPackPS is a DSV for creating PowerGUI PowerPacks using Powershell instead of the GUI or XML.Resuming Action Results for ASP.NET MVC: Resuming Action Results for MVC provides a similar implementation as the standard FileResult ActionResult objects but with the intelligence to detect range requests and respond appropriately with no need to write a single extra line of code.SoundSwitch: SoundSwitch makes it easier to switch playback devices (sound cards). Normally, to switch a Playback device you need to right click the sound icon in the bottom right corner of your screen (system tray), choose "Playback devices" and then change the default playback device. Every time you want to switch. With SoundSwitch you just configure once between which Playback devices you want to toggle and then you can press Ctrl+Alt+F11 to toggle automatically!StopWatch Plus: This is a simple stopwatch with which you can set a countdown, save and control the various steps imposed by the pause button. The projects will is still under development and not yet possess all the qualities mentioned above, currently is a simple countdown. _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ Questo è un semplice cronometro col quale si potrà impostare un conto alla rovescia, salvare e tenere sotto controllo i vari step ...TFS Reports: The TFS Reports project is about sharing knowledge around the reporting capabilities in TFS and contains both guidance as well as ready to use reports. TRK ATR: Website for TV/Radio channel UpdateTool: A tool used to update client This project is for personal use. Please do not download in now.Windows Service Helper: Helps by creating a Play/Stop/Pause UI when running with a debugger attached, but also allows the windows service to be installed and run by the Windows Services environment as well. All this with one line of code!XNB filetype plugin for Paint.NET: This plugin allows viewing and editing of XNA compiled textures from inside Paint.NET.

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, September 18, 2012

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, September 18, 2012Popular ReleasesfastJSON: v2.0.5: 2.0.5 - fixed number parsing for invariant format - added a test for German locale number testing (,. problems)????????API for .Net SDK: SDK for .Net ??? Release 4: 2012?9?17??? ?????,???????????????。 ?????Release 3??????,???????,???,??? ??????????????????SDK,????????。 ??,??????? That's all.VidCoder: 1.4.0 Beta: First Beta release! Catches up to HandBrake nightlies with SVN 4937. Added PGS (Blu-ray) subtitle support. Additional framerates available: 30, 50, 59.94, 60 Additional sample rates available: 8, 11.025, 12 and 16 kHz Additional higher bitrates available for audio. Same as Source Constant Framerate available. Added Apple TV 3 preset. Added new Bob deinterlacing option. Introduced process isolation for encodes. Now if HandBrake crashes, VidCoder will keep running and continue pro...DNN Metro7 style Skin package: Metro7 style Skin for DotNetNuke 06.02.01: Stabilization release fixed this issues: Links not worked on FF, Chrome and Safari Modified packaging with own manifest file for install and source package. Moved the user Image on the Login to the left side. Moved h2 font-size to 24px. Note : This release Comes w/o source package about we still work an a solution. Who Needs the Visual Studio source files please go to source and download it from there. Known 16 CSS issues that related to the skin.css. All others are DNN default o...Visual Studio Icon Patcher: Version 1.5.1: This fixes a bug in the 1.5 release where it would crash when no language packs were installed for VS2010.sheetengine - Isometric HTML5 JavaScript Display Engine: sheetengine v1.1.0: This release of sheetengine introduces major drawing optimizations. A background canvas is created with the full drawn scenery onto which only the changed parts are redrawn. For example a moving object will cause only its bounding box to be redrawn instead of the full scene. This background canvas is copied to the main canvas in each iteration. For this reason the size of the bounding box of every object needs to be defined and also the width and height of the background canvas. The example...VFPX: Desktop Alerts 1.0.2: This update for the Desktop Alerts contains changes to behavior for setting custom sounds for alerts. I have removed ALERTWAV.TXT from the project, and also removed DA_DEFAULTSOUND from the VFPALERT.H file. The AlertManager class and Alert class both have a "default" cSound of ADDBS(JUSTPATH(_VFP.ServerName))+"alert.wav" --- so, as long as you distribute a sound file with the file name "alert.wav" along with the EXE, that file will be used. You can set your own sound file globally by setti...MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.2.15: Changelog for 2.2.15 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Added support for %originalfilepath% to get the source file full path. Used for custom commands only. 2. Added support for better parsing of Media Portal XML files to extract ShowName and Episode Name and download additional details from TVDB (like Season No, Episode No etc). 3. Added support for TVDB seriesID in metadata 4. Added support for eMail non blocking UI testCrashReporter.NET : Exception reporting library for C# and VB.NET: CrashReporter.NET 1.2: *Added html mail format which shows hierarchical exception report for better understanding.PDF Viewer Web part: PDF Viewer Web Part: PDF Viewer Web PartMicrosoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.67: Fix issue #18629 - incorrectly handling null characters in string literals and not throwing an error when outside string literals. update for Issue #18600 - forgot to make the ///#DEBUG= directive also set a known-global for the given debug namespace. removed the kill-switch for disregarding preprocessor define-comments (///#IF and the like) and created a separate CodeSettings.IgnorePreprocessorDefines property for those who really need to turn that off. Some people had been setting -kil...MPC-BE: Media Player Classic BE 1.0.1.0 build 1122: MPC-BE is a free and open source audio and video player for Windows. MPC-BE is based on the original "Media Player Classic" project (Gabest) and "Media Player Classic Home Cinema" project (Casimir666), contains additional features and bug fixes. Supported Operating Systems: Windows XP SP2, Vista, 7 32bit/64bit System Requirements: An SSE capable CPU The latest DirectX 9.0c runtime (June 2010). Install it regardless of the operating system, they all need it. Web installer: http://www.micro...Preactor Object Model: Visual Studio Template .NET 3.5: Visual Studio Template with all the necessary files to get started with POM. You will still need to Get the Preactor.ObjectModel and Preactor.ObjectModleExtensions libraries from Nuget though. You will also need to sign with assembly with a strong name key.Lakana - WPF Framework: Lakana V2: Lakana V2 contains : - Lakana WPF Forms (with sample project) - Lakana WPF Navigation (with sample project)myCollections: Version 2.3.0.0: New in this version : Added TheGamesDB.net API for games and nds Added Fast search options Added order by Artist/Album for music Fixed several provider Performance improvement New Splash Screen BugFixingMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: OData QueryFeed workflow activity: The OData QueryFeed sample activity shows how to create a workflow activity that consumes an OData resource, and renders entity properties in a Microsoft Excel 2010 worksheet or Microsoft Word 2010 document. Using the sample QueryFeed activity, you can consume any OData resource. The sample activity uses LINQ to project OData metadata into activity designer expression items. By setting activity expressions, a fully qualified OData query string is constructed consisting of Resource, Filter, Or...F# 3.0 Sample Pack: FSharp 3.0 Sample Pack for Visual Studio 2012 RTM: F# 3.0 Sample Pack for Visual Studio 2012 RTMANPR MX: ANPR_MX Release 1: ANPR MX Release 1 Features: Correctly detects plate area for the average North American plate. (It won't work for the "European" plate size.) Provides potential values for the recognized plate. Allows images 800x600 and below (.jpg / .png). The example requires the VC 10 runtime & .NET 4 Framework to be already installed. The Source code project was made on Visual Studio 2010.Cocktail: Cocktail v1.0.1: PrerequisitesVisual Studio 2010 with SP1 (any edition but Express) Optional: Silverlight 4 or 5 Note: Install Silverlight 4 Tools and then the Silverlight 4 Toolkit. Likewise for Silverlight 5 Tools and the Silverlight 5 Toolkit DevForce Express 6.1.8.1 Included in the Cocktail download, DevForce Express requires registration) Important: Install DevForce after all other components. Download contentsDebug and release assemblies API documentation Source code License.txt Re...weber: weber v0.1: first release, creates a basic browser shell and allows user to navigate to web sites.New Projects.NET Code Editor & Compiler Component: .Net compiler component with integrated advanced text box, VisualStudio like highlightning, ability to intercept and show StandardOutput strings.NET Plugin Manager: Provides agnostic functionality for tiered plugin loading, unloading, and plugin collection management.Amazon Control Panel v2: Amazon Control Panel is a application that lets you control you Amazon Seller Central account using the Amazon MWS (Merchant Web Service) API.AutoSPSourceBuilder: AutoSPSourceBuilder: a utility for automatically building a SharePoint 2010 or 2013 install source including service packs, language packs & cumulative updates.CAOS: RBAC acess controllChat Forum: An Internet  forum,  or message  board,  is  an online discussion  site conversations  in  the  form  of  posted  messages.CRM 2011 - Many-To-Many Relationship Entity View: This Silverlight Web Resource for CRM 2011 will allow user to see N:N relationship entity data from single place.dardasim: dardasim gil and lior Tel Cabir DolphinsDBAManage: ???????ERP??,????!DimDate Generator: A SSIS project for generation a data dimansion table and data.DNL: eine grße .net bibliothek für entwicklerDouban FM for Metro: A music radio client for http://douban.fm running on Windows 8 / WinRTExtended WPF Control: Extended WPF Control for research and learning.FizzBuzzDaveC: Implements the classic FizzBuzz programmine exercise.HamStart: Nothing for now...Infopath XSN Modifier: A tool for editing the dataconnections of Infopath.KH Picture Resizer: Picture Resizer ermöglicht es Bilder per Drag and Dop zu verkleinern. Das Program wurde in C# geschrieben und nutzt Windows Forms.Korean String Extension for .NET: ?? ??? ??? ????? ???? string??? ??? ????? Extension library for "string" class that enhances "Hangul Jamo system" features Lucky Loot - Tattoo Shop Management Application: Lucky Loot - Tattoo Shop Management Application Por: Eric Gabriel Rodrigues Castoldi Objetivo: Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso de Sistemas de InformaçãoMagnOS - C# Cosmos Operating System: MagnOS is an Open Source operating system, made to learn how to make operating systems with Cosmos.Móa mày: Project m?iOData Samples: A collection of samples demonstrating solutions and functionality in WCF Data Services, ODataLib and EdmLib.Online Image Editor: Online Photo CanvasOptimuss Administración: La mejor aplicación de Gestión y Control EscolarOptimuss Obelix: La mejor aplicación de Gestión y Control EscolarPersonal Website: My personal websitePlanisoft: Proyecto de Planilla para clinica los fresnosPROYECTODT: ..................................................................................................................PtLibrary: PtLibrary stands for Peter Thönell's Delphi library. PtSettings and PtSettingsGUI make the management and use of settings extremely easy and powerful.RTS WebServer: A small lightweight, modern and fast webserver (template). with in the feature the newest technologies like SPDY and websocketsStandards: Standards is an Intranet application (using Windows authentication) designed to document and manage company standards. It is written in C#/MVC 4.Truttle OS: This is an OS I made with CosmosWfp System: zdgdsfgdsfgzpo: projekt na zaliczenie zpo???: ???

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  • Load and Web Performance Testing using Visual Studio Ultimate 2010-Part 2

    - by Tarun Arora
    Welcome back, in part 1 of Load and Web Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 I talked about why Performance Testing the application is important, the test tools available in Visual Studio Ultimate 2010 and various test rig topologies. In this blog post I’ll get into the details of web performance & load tests as well as why it’s important to follow a goal based pattern while performance testing your application. Tools => Options => Test Tools Have you visited the treasures of Visual Studio Menu bar tools => Options => Test Tools lately? The options to enable disable prompts on creating, editing, deleting or running manual/automated tests can be controller from here. The default test project language and default test types created on a new test project creation could be selected/unselected from here. Ever wondered how you can change the default limit of 25 test results, this can again be changed from here. If you record a lot of Web Tests and wish for the web test recorder to start with “that” URL populated, well this again can be specified from here. If you haven’t so far, I would urge you to spend 2 minutes in the test tools options.   Test Menu => Ready Steady Test Action! The Test tools are under the Test Menu in Visual Studio, apart from being able to create a new Test and Test List you can also load an existing vsmdi file. You can also manage your test controllers from here. A solution can have one or more test setting files, but there can only be one active test settings file at any time. Again, this selection can be done from here.  You can open the various test windows from under the windows option from the test menu. If you open the Test view window you will see that you have the option to group the tests by work items, project, test type, etc. You can set these properties by right clicking a test in the test list and choosing properties from the context menu.    So, what is a vsmdi file? vsmdi stands for Visual Studio Test Metadata File. Placed under the Solution Items this file keeps track of the list of unit tests in your solution. If you open the vsmdi file as an xml file you will see a series of Test Links nested with in the list Test List tags along with the Run Configuration tag. When in visual studio you run tests, the IDE looks at the vsmdi file to see what tests need to be run. You also have the option of using the vsmdi file in your team builds to specify which tests need to run as part of the build. Refer here for a walkthrough from a fellow blogger on how to use the vsmdi file in the team builds. Web Performance Test – The Truth! In Visual Studio 2010 “Web Tests” have been renamed to “Web Performance Tests”. Apart from renaming this test type there have been several improvements to this test type in visual studio 2010. I am very active on the MSDN Visual Studio And Load Testing forum and a frequent question from many users is “Do Web Tests support Pages that run JavaScript?” I will start with a little bit of background before answering this question. Web Performance Tests operate at the HTTP Layer, but why? To enable you to generate high loads with a relatively low amount of hardware, Web performance tests are driven at the protocol layer rather than instantiating a browser.The most common source of confusion is that users do not realize Web Performance Tests work at the HTTP layer. The tool adds to that misconception. After all, you record in IE, and when running a Web test you can select which browser to use, and then the result viewer shows the results in a browser window. So that means the tests run through the browser, right? NO! The Web test engine works at the HTTP layer, and does not instantiate a browser. What does that mean? In the diagram below, you can see there are no browsers running when the engine is sending and receiving requests. Does that mean I can’t test pages that use Java script? The best example for java script generating HTTP traffic is AJAX calls. The most common example of browser plugins are Silverlight or Flash. The Web test recorder will record HTTP traffic from AJAX calls and from most (but not all) browser plugins. This means you will still be able to web performance test pages that use java script or plugin and play back the results but the playback engine will not show the java script or plug in results in the ‘browser control’. If you want to test the page behaviour as a result of the java script or plug in consider using Coded UI Tests. This page looks like it failed, when in fact it succeeded! Looking closely at the response, and subsequent requests, it is clear the operation succeeded. As stated above, the reason why the browser control is pasting this message is because java script has been disabled in this control. So, to reiterate, the web performance test recorder: - Sends and receives data at the HTTP layer. - Does NOT run a browser. - Does NOT run java script. - Does NOT host ActiveX controls or plugins. There is a great series of blog posts from Ed Glas, i would highly recommend his blog to any one performing Load/Performance testing through Visual Studio. Demo – Web Performance Test [Demo] - Visual Studio Ultimate 2010: Test Settings and Configuration   [Demo]–Visual Studio Ultimate 2010: Web Performance Test   In this short video I try and answer the following questions, Why is performance Testing important? How does Visual Studio Help you performance Test your applications? How do i record a web performance test? How do make a web performance test data driven, transaction driven, loop driven, convert to code, add validations? Best practices for recording Web Performance Tests. I have a web performance test, what next? Creating the Web Performance Test was the first step towards load testing your application. Now that we have the base test we can test the page behaviour when N-users access the page. Have you ever had the head of business call you and mention that the marketing team has done a fantastic job and are expecting increased traffic on the web site, can the website survive the weekend with that additional load? This is the perfect opportunity to capacity test your application to see how your website holds up under various levels of load, you can work the results backwards to see how much hardware you may need to scale up your application to survive the weekend. Apart from that it is always a good idea to have some benchmarks around how the application performs under light loads for short duration, under heavy load for long duration and soak test the application run a constant load for a very week or two to record the effects of constant load for really long durations, this is a great way of identifying how your application handles the default IIS application pool reset which by default is configured to once every 25 hours. These bench marks will act as the perfect yard stick to measure performance gains when you start making improvements. BUT there are some best practices! => Goal Based Load Testing Approach Since the subject is vast and there are a lot of things to measure and analyse, … it is very easy to get distracted from the real goal!  You can optimize your application once you know where the pain points are. There is no point performing a load test of 5000 users if your intranet application will only have a 100 simultaneous users, it is important to keep focussed on the real goals of the project. So the idea is to have a user story around your load testing scenarios and test realistically. So it is recommended that you follow the below outline, It is an Iterative process, refine your objectives, identify the key scenarios, what is the expected workload, key metrics you want to report, record the web performance tests, simulate load and analyse results. Is your application already deployed in Production? This is great! You can analyse the IIS Logs to understand the user behaviour… But what are IIS LOGS? The IIS logs allow you to record events for each application and Web site on the Web server. You can create separate logs for each of your applications and Web sites. Logging information in IIS goes beyond the scope of the event logging or performance monitoring features provided by Windows. The IIS logs can include information, such as who has visited your site, what the visitor viewed, and when the information was last viewed. You can use the IIS logs to identify any attempts to gain unauthorized access to your Web server. How to configure IIS LOGS? For those Ninjas who already have IIS Logs configured (by the way its on by default) and need a way to analyse the IIS Logs, can use the Windows IIS Utility – Log Parser. Log Parser is a very powerful tool that provides a generic SQL-like language on top of many types of data like IIS Logs, Event Viewer entries, XML files, CSV files, File System and others; and it allows you to export the result of the queries to many output formats such as CSV, XML, SQL Server, Charts and others; and it works well with IIS 5, 6, 7 and 7.5. Frequently used Log Parser queries. Demo – Load Test [Demo]–Visual Studio Ultimate 2010: Load Testing   In this short video I try and answer the following questions, - Types of Performance Testing? - Perform Goal driven Load Testing, analyse Test Run Result and Generate a report? Recap A quick recap of what we have covered so far,     Thank you for taking the time out and reading this blog post, in part III of this blog series I’ll be getting into the details of Test Result Analysis, Test Result Drill through, Test Report Generation, Test Run Comparison, and the Asp.net Profiler. If you enjoyed the post, remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora. Questions/Feedback/Suggestions, etc please leave a comment. See you on in Part III   Share this post : CodeProject

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  • Not so long ago in a city not so far away by Carlos Martin

    - by Maria Sandu
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 This is the story of how the EMEA Presales Center turned an Oracle intern into a trusted technology advisor for both Oracle’s Sales and customers. It was the summer of 2011 when I was finishing my Computer Engineering studies as well as my internship at Oracle when I was offered what could possibly be THE dream job for any young European Computer Engineer. Apart from that, it also seemed like the role was particularly tailored to me as I could leverage almost everything I learned at University and during the internship. And all of it in one of the best cities to live in, not only from my home country but arguably from Europe: Malaga! A day at EPC As part of the EPC Technology pillar, and later on completely focused on WebCenter, there was no way to describe a normal day on the job as each day had something unique. Some days I was researching documentation in order to elaborate accurate answers for a customer’s question within a Request for Information or Proposal (RFI/RFP), other days I was doing heavy programming in order to bring a Proof of Concept (PoC) for a customer to life and last not but least, some days I presented to the customer via webconference the demo I built for them the past weeks. So as you can see, the role has research, development and presentation, could you ask for more? Well, don’t worry because there IS more! Internationality As the organization’s name suggests, EMEA Presales Center, it is the Center of Presales within Europe, Middle East and Africa so I got the chance to work with great professionals from all this regions, expanding my network and learning things from one country to apply them to others. In addition to that, the teams based in the Malaga office are comprised of many young professionals hailing mainly from Western and Central European countries (although there are a couple of exceptions!) with very different backgrounds and personalities which guaranteed many laughs and stories during lunch or coffee breaks (or even while working on projects!). Furthermore, having EPC offices in Bucharest and Bangalore and thanks to today’s tele-presence technologies, I was working every day with people from India or Romania as if they were sitting right next to me and the bonding with them got stronger day by day. Career development Apart from the research and self-study I’ve earlier mentioned, one of the EPC’s Key Performance Indicators (KPI) is that 15% of your time is spent on training so you get lots and lots of trainings in order to develop both your technical product knowledge and your presentation, negotiation and other soft skills. Sometimes the training is via webcast, sometimes the trainer comes to the office and sometimes, the best times, you get to travel abroad in order to attend a training, which also helps you to further develop your network by meeting face to face with many people you only know from some email or instant messaging interaction. And as the months go by, your skills improving at a very fast pace, your relevance increasing with each new project you successfully deliver, it’s only a matter of time (and a bit of self-promoting!) that you get the attention of the manager of a more senior team and are offered the opportunity to take a new step in your professional career. For me it took 2 years to move to my current position, Technology Sales Consultant at the Oracle Direct organization. During those 2 years I had built a good relationship with the Oracle Direct Spanish sales and sales managers, who are also based in the Malaga office. I supported their former Sales Consultant in a couple of presentations and demos and were very happy with my overall performance and attitude so even before the position got eventually vacant, I got a heads-up from then in advance that their current Sales Consultant was going to move to a different position. To me it felt like a natural step, same as when I joined EPC, I had at least a 50% of the “homework” already done but wanted to experience that extra 50% to add new product and soft skills to my arsenal. The rest is history, I’ve been in the role for more than half a year as I’m writing this, achieved already some important wins, gained a lot of trust and confidence in front of customers and broadened my view of Oracle’s Fusion Middleware portfolio. I look back at the 2 years I spent in EPC and think: “boy, I’d recommend that experience to absolutely anyone with the slightest interest in IT, there are so many different things you can do as there are different kind of roles you can end up taking thanks to the experience gained at EPC” /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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  • NHibernate Conventions

    - by Ricardo Peres
    Introduction It seems that nowadays everyone loves conventions! Not the ones that you go to, but the ones that you use, that is! It just happens that NHibernate also supports conventions, and we’ll see exactly how. Conventions in NHibernate are supported in two ways: Naming of tables and columns when not explicitly indicated in the mappings; Full domain mapping. Naming of Tables and Columns Since always NHibernate has supported the concept of a naming strategy. A naming strategy in NHibernate converts class and property names to table and column names and vice-versa, when a name is not explicitly supplied. In concrete, it must be a realization of the NHibernate.Cfg.INamingStrategy interface, of which NHibernate includes two implementations: DefaultNamingStrategy: the default implementation, where each column and table are mapped to identically named properties and classes, for example, “MyEntity” will translate to “MyEntity”; ImprovedNamingStrategy: underscores (_) are used to separate Pascal-cased fragments, for example, entity “MyEntity” will be mapped to a “my_entity” table. The naming strategy can be defined at configuration level (the Configuration instance) by calling the SetNamingStrategy method: 1: cfg.SetNamingStrategy(ImprovedNamingStrategy.Instance); Both the DefaultNamingStrategy and the ImprovedNamingStrategy classes offer singleton instances in the form of Instance static fields. DefaultNamingStrategy is the one NHibernate uses, if you don’t specify one. Domain Mapping In mapping by code, we have the choice of relying on conventions to do the mapping automatically. This means a class will inspect our classes and decide how they will relate to the database objects. The class that handles conventions is NHibernate.Mapping.ByCode.ConventionModelMapper, a specialization of the base by code mapper, NHibernate.Mapping.ByCode.ModelMapper. The ModelMapper relies on an internal SimpleModelInspector to help it decide what and how to map, but the mapper lets you override its decisions.  You apply code conventions like this: 1: //pick the types that you want to map 2: IEnumerable<Type> types = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetExportedTypes(); 3:  4: //conventions based mapper 5: ConventionModelMapper mapper = new ConventionModelMapper(); 6:  7: HbmMapping mapping = mapper.CompileMappingFor(types); 8:  9: //the one and only configuration instance 10: Configuration cfg = ...; 11: cfg.AddMapping(mapping); This is a very simple example, it lacks, at least, the id generation strategy, which you can add by adding an event handler like this: 1: mapper.BeforeMapClass += (IModelInspector modelInspector, Type type, IClassAttributesMapper classCustomizer) => 2: { 3: classCustomizer.Id(x => 4: { 5: //set the hilo generator 6: x.Generator(Generators.HighLow); 7: }); 8: }; The mapper will fire events like this whenever it needs to get information about what to do. And basically this is all it takes to automatically map your domain! It will correctly configure many-to-one and one-to-many relations, choosing bags or sets depending on your collections, will get the table and column names from the naming strategy we saw earlier and will apply the usual defaults to all properties, such as laziness and fetch mode. However, there is at least one thing missing: many-to-many relations. The conventional mapper doesn’t know how to find and configure them, which is a pity, but, alas, not difficult to overcome. To start, for my projects, I have this rule: each entity exposes a public property of type ISet<T> where T is, of course, the type of the other endpoint entity. Extensible as it is, NHibernate lets me implement this very easily: 1: mapper.IsOneToMany((MemberInfo member, Boolean isLikely) => 2: { 3: Type sourceType = member.DeclaringType; 4: Type destinationType = member.GetMemberFromDeclaringType().GetPropertyOrFieldType(); 5:  6: //check if the property is of a generic collection type 7: if ((destinationType.IsGenericCollection() == true) && (destinationType.GetGenericArguments().Length == 1)) 8: { 9: Type destinationEntityType = destinationType.GetGenericArguments().Single(); 10:  11: //check if the type of the generic collection property is an entity 12: if (mapper.ModelInspector.IsEntity(destinationEntityType) == true) 13: { 14: //check if there is an equivalent property on the target type that is also a generic collection and points to this entity 15: PropertyInfo collectionInDestinationType = destinationEntityType.GetProperties().Where(x => (x.PropertyType.IsGenericCollection() == true) && (x.PropertyType.GetGenericArguments().Length == 1) && (x.PropertyType.GetGenericArguments().Single() == sourceType)).SingleOrDefault(); 16:  17: if (collectionInDestinationType != null) 18: { 19: return (false); 20: } 21: } 22: } 23:  24: return (true); 25: }); 26:  27: mapper.IsManyToMany((MemberInfo member, Boolean isLikely) => 28: { 29: //a relation is many to many if it isn't one to many 30: Boolean isOneToMany = mapper.ModelInspector.IsOneToMany(member); 31: return (!isOneToMany); 32: }); 33:  34: mapper.BeforeMapManyToMany += (IModelInspector modelInspector, PropertyPath member, IManyToManyMapper collectionRelationManyToManyCustomizer) => 35: { 36: Type destinationEntityType = member.LocalMember.GetPropertyOrFieldType().GetGenericArguments().First(); 37: //set the mapping table column names from each source entity name plus the _Id sufix 38: collectionRelationManyToManyCustomizer.Column(destinationEntityType.Name + "_Id"); 39: }; 40:  41: mapper.BeforeMapSet += (IModelInspector modelInspector, PropertyPath member, ISetPropertiesMapper propertyCustomizer) => 42: { 43: if (modelInspector.IsManyToMany(member.LocalMember) == true) 44: { 45: propertyCustomizer.Key(x => x.Column(member.LocalMember.DeclaringType.Name + "_Id")); 46:  47: Type sourceType = member.LocalMember.DeclaringType; 48: Type destinationType = member.LocalMember.GetPropertyOrFieldType().GetGenericArguments().First(); 49: IEnumerable<String> names = new Type[] { sourceType, destinationType }.Select(x => x.Name).OrderBy(x => x); 50:  51: //set inverse on the relation of the alphabetically first entity name 52: propertyCustomizer.Inverse(sourceType.Name == names.First()); 53: //set mapping table name from the entity names in alphabetical order 54: propertyCustomizer.Table(String.Join("_", names)); 55: } 56: }; We have to understand how the conventions mapper thinks: For each collection of entities found, it will ask the mapper if it is a one-to-many; in our case, if the collection is a generic one that has an entity as its generic parameter, and the generic parameter type has a similar collection, then it is not a one-to-many; Next, the mapper will ask if the collection that it now knows is not a one-to-many is a many-to-many; Before a set is mapped, if it corresponds to a many-to-many, we set its mapping table. Now, this is tricky: because we have no way to maintain state, we sort the names of the two endpoint entities and we combine them with a “_”; for the first alphabetical entity, we set its relation to inverse – remember, on a many-to-many relation, only one endpoint must be marked as inverse; finally, we set the column name as the name of the entity with an “_Id” suffix; Before the many-to-many relation is processed, we set the column name as the name of the other endpoint entity with the “_Id” suffix, as we did for the set. And that’s it. With these rules, NHibernate will now happily find and configure many-to-many relations, as well as all the others. You can wrap this in a new conventions mapper class, so that it is more easily reusable: 1: public class ManyToManyConventionModelMapper : ConventionModelMapper 2: { 3: public ManyToManyConventionModelMapper() 4: { 5: base.IsOneToMany((MemberInfo member, Boolean isLikely) => 6: { 7: return (this.IsOneToMany(member, isLikely)); 8: }); 9:  10: base.IsManyToMany((MemberInfo member, Boolean isLikely) => 11: { 12: return (this.IsManyToMany(member, isLikely)); 13: }); 14:  15: base.BeforeMapManyToMany += this.BeforeMapManyToMany; 16: base.BeforeMapSet += this.BeforeMapSet; 17: } 18:  19: protected virtual Boolean IsManyToMany(MemberInfo member, Boolean isLikely) 20: { 21: //a relation is many to many if it isn't one to many 22: Boolean isOneToMany = this.ModelInspector.IsOneToMany(member); 23: return (!isOneToMany); 24: } 25:  26: protected virtual Boolean IsOneToMany(MemberInfo member, Boolean isLikely) 27: { 28: Type sourceType = member.DeclaringType; 29: Type destinationType = member.GetMemberFromDeclaringType().GetPropertyOrFieldType(); 30:  31: //check if the property is of a generic collection type 32: if ((destinationType.IsGenericCollection() == true) && (destinationType.GetGenericArguments().Length == 1)) 33: { 34: Type destinationEntityType = destinationType.GetGenericArguments().Single(); 35:  36: //check if the type of the generic collection property is an entity 37: if (this.ModelInspector.IsEntity(destinationEntityType) == true) 38: { 39: //check if there is an equivalent property on the target type that is also a generic collection and points to this entity 40: PropertyInfo collectionInDestinationType = destinationEntityType.GetProperties().Where(x => (x.PropertyType.IsGenericCollection() == true) && (x.PropertyType.GetGenericArguments().Length == 1) && (x.PropertyType.GetGenericArguments().Single() == sourceType)).SingleOrDefault(); 41:  42: if (collectionInDestinationType != null) 43: { 44: return (false); 45: } 46: } 47: } 48:  49: return (true); 50: } 51:  52: protected virtual new void BeforeMapManyToMany(IModelInspector modelInspector, PropertyPath member, IManyToManyMapper collectionRelationManyToManyCustomizer) 53: { 54: Type destinationEntityType = member.LocalMember.GetPropertyOrFieldType().GetGenericArguments().First(); 55: //set the mapping table column names from each source entity name plus the _Id sufix 56: collectionRelationManyToManyCustomizer.Column(destinationEntityType.Name + "_Id"); 57: } 58:  59: protected virtual new void BeforeMapSet(IModelInspector modelInspector, PropertyPath member, ISetPropertiesMapper propertyCustomizer) 60: { 61: if (modelInspector.IsManyToMany(member.LocalMember) == true) 62: { 63: propertyCustomizer.Key(x => x.Column(member.LocalMember.DeclaringType.Name + "_Id")); 64:  65: Type sourceType = member.LocalMember.DeclaringType; 66: Type destinationType = member.LocalMember.GetPropertyOrFieldType().GetGenericArguments().First(); 67: IEnumerable<String> names = new Type[] { sourceType, destinationType }.Select(x => x.Name).OrderBy(x => x); 68:  69: //set inverse on the relation of the alphabetically first entity name 70: propertyCustomizer.Inverse(sourceType.Name == names.First()); 71: //set mapping table name from the entity names in alphabetical order 72: propertyCustomizer.Table(String.Join("_", names)); 73: } 74: } 75: } Conclusion Of course, there is much more to mapping than this, I suggest you look at all the events and functions offered by the ModelMapper to see where you can hook for making it behave the way you want. If you need any help, just let me know!

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  • top tweets WebLogic Partner Community – March 2012

    - by JuergenKress
    Send us your tweets @wlscommunity #WebLogicCommunity and follow us on twitter http://twitter.com/wlscommunity PeterPaul ? RT @JDeveloper: EJB 3 Deployment guide for WebLogic Server Version: 10.3.4.0 dlvr.it/1J5VcV Andrejus Baranovskis ?Open ADF PopUp on Page Load fb.me/1Rx9LP3oW Sten Vesterli ? RT @OracleBlogs: Using the Oracle E-Business Suite SDK for Java on ADF Applications ow.ly/1hVKbB <- Neat! No more WS calls Java Buddy ?JavaFX 2.0: Example of MediaPlay java-buddy.blogspot.com/2012/03/javafx… Georges Saab Build improvements coming to #openJDK for #jdk8 mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/buil… NetBeans Team Share your #Java experience! JavaOne 2012 India call for papers: ow.ly/9xYg0 GlassFish ? GlassFish 3.1.2 Screencasts & Videos – bit.ly/zmQjn2 chriscmuir ?G+: New blog post: ADF Runtimes vs WLS versions as of JDeveloper 11.1.1.6.0 – bit.ly/y8tkgJ Michael Heinrichs New article: Creating a Sprite Animation with JavaFX blog.netopyr.com/2012/03/09/cre… Oracle WebLogic ? #WebLogic Devcast Webinar Series for March: Enterprise Java Scale Out, JPA, Distributed Grid Data Cache bit.ly/zeUXEV #Coherence Andrejus Baranovskis ?Extending Application Module for ADF BC Proxy User DB Connection fb.me/Bj1hLUqm OTNArchBeat ? Oracle Fusion Middleware on JDK 7 | Mark Nelson bit.ly/w7IroZ OTNArchBeat ? Java Champion Jonas Bonér Explains the Akka Platform bit.ly/x2GbXm Adam Bien ? (Java) FX Experience Tools–Feels Like Native Mac App: FX Experience Tools application comes with a native Mac O… bit.ly/waHF3H GlassFish ? GlassFish new recruit and Eclipse integration progress – bit.ly/y5eEkk JDeveloper & ADF Prototyping ADF Libraries dlvr.it/1Hhnw0 Eric Elzinga ?Oracle Fusion Middleware on JDK 7, bit.ly/xkphFQ ADF EMG ? Working with ADF in Arabic, Hebrew or other right-to-left-written language? Oracle UX asks for your help. groups.google.com/forum/?fromgro… Java ? A simple #JavaFX Login Form with a TRON like effect ow.ly/9n9AG JDeveloper & ADF ? Logging in Oracle ADF Applications dlvr.it/1HZhcX OTNArchBeat ? Oracle Cloud Conference: dates and locations worldwide bit.ly/ywXydR UK Oracle User Group ? Simon Haslam, ACE Director present on #WebLogic for DBAs at #oug_ire2012 j.mp/zG6vz3 @oraclewebcenter @oracleace #dublin Steven Davelaar ? Working with ADF and not a member of ADF EMG? You miss lots of valuable info, join now! sites.google.com/site/oracleemg… Simon Haslam @MaciejGruszka: Oracle plans to provide Forms & Reports plug-in for OVAB next year to help deployment. #ukoug MW SIG GlassFish ? Introducing JSR 357: Social Media API – bit.ly/yC8vez JAX London ? Are you coming to Java EE workshops by @AdamBien at JAX Days? Save £100 by registering today. #jaxdays #javaee jaxdays.com WebLogic Community ?Welcome to our Munich WebLogic 12c Bootcamp in Munich! If you also want to attend a training register for the Community oracle.com/partners/goto/… chriscmuir ? My first webcast for Oracle! (be kind) Basing ADF Business Component View Objects on More that one Entity Object bit.ly/ArKija OTNArchBeat ? Oracle Weblogic Server 12c is available on Oracle Solaris 11 (SPARC and x86) bit.ly/xE3TLg JDeveloper & ADF ? Basing ADF Business Component View Objects on More that one Entity Object – YouTube dlvr.it/1H93Qr OTNArchBeat ? Application-Driven Virtualization with Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder | Ronen Kofman bit.ly/wF1C1N Oracle WebLogic ? Steve Button’s blog: WebLogic Server Singleton Services ow.ly/1hOu4U Barbara Ann May ?@oracledevtools: New update: #NetBeans IDE 7.1.1, with support for #GlassFish 3.1.2 bit.ly/mOLcQd #java #developer OTNArchBeat ? Using Coherence with JDeveloper: bit.ly/AkoEQb WebLogic Community ? WebLogic Partner Community Newsletter February 2012 wp.me/p1LMIb-f3 GlassFish ? GlassFish 3.1.2 – new Podcast episode : bit.ly/wc6oBE Frank Nimphius ?Cool! Open JDeveloper 11.1.1.5, go help–>check for updates. First thing shown is that 11.1.1.6 is available. Never miss a new release Adam Bien ?5 Minutes (Video) With Java EE …Or With NetBeans + GlassFish: This screencast covers a 5-minute development of a… bit.ly/xkOJMf WebLogic Community ? Free Oracle WebLogic Certification Application Grid Implementation Specialist wp.me/p1LMIb-eT OTNArchBeat ?Oracle Coherence: First Steps Using Clusters and Basic API Usage | Ricardo Ferreira bit.ly/yYQ3Wz GlassFish ? JMS 2.0 Early Draft is here – bit.ly/ygT1VN OTNArchBeat ? Exalogic Networking Part 2 | The Old Toxophilist bit.ly/xuYMIi OTNArchBeat ?New Release: GlassFish Server 3.1.2. Read All About It! | Paul Davies bit.ly/AtlGxo Oracle WebLogic ?OTN Virtual Developer Day: #WebLogic 12c & #Coherence ost-conference on-demand page live with bonus #Virtualbox lab – bit.ly/xUy6BJ Oracle WebLogic ? Steve Button’s blog: WebLogic Server 11g (10.3.6) Documentation ow.ly/1hJgUB Lucas Jellema ? Just published an article on the AMIS blog: technology.amis.nl/2012/03/adf-11… ADF 11g – programmatically sorting rich table columns. Java Certification ? New Course! Learn how to create mobile applications using Java ME: bit.ly/xZj1Jh Simon Haslam ? @MaciejGruszka WebLogic 12c can run against 11g domain config without changes …and can rollback to 11. #ukoug MW SIG Justin Kestelyn ? Learn Advanced ADF, free and online bit.ly/wEKSRc WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: twitter,WebLogic,WebLogic Community,OPN,Oracle,Jürgen Kress,WebLogic 12c

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  • Windows 8 Will be Here Tomorrow; but Should Silverlight be Gone Today?

    - by andrewbrust
    The software industry lives within an interesting paradox. IT in the enterprise moves slowly and cautiously, upgrading only when safe and necessary.  IT interests intentionally live in the past.  On the other hand, developers, and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) not only want to use the latest and greatest technologies, but this constituency prides itself on gauging tech’s future, and basing its present-day strategy upon it.  Normally, we as an industry manage this paradox with a shrug of the shoulder and musings along the lines of “it takes all kinds.”  Different subcultures have different tendencies.  So be it. Microsoft, with its Windows operating system (OS), can’t take such a laissez-faire view of the world though.  Redmond relies on IT to deploy Windows and (at the very least) influence its procurement, but it also relies on developers to build software for Windows, especially software that has a dependency on features in new versions of the OS.  It must indulge and nourish developers’ fetish for an early birthing of the next generation of software, even as it acknowledges the IT reality that the next wave will arrive on-schedule in Redmond and will travel very slowly to end users. With the move to Windows 8, and the corresponding shift in application development models, this paradox is certainly in place. On the one hand, the next version of Windows is widely expected sometime in 2012, and its full-scale deployment will likely push into 2014 or even later.  Meanwhile, there’s a technology that runs on today’s Windows 7, will continue to run in the desktop mode of Windows 8 (the next version’s codename), and provides absolutely the best architectural bridge to the Windows 8 Metro-style application development stack.  That technology is Silverlight.  And given what we now know about Windows 8, one might think, as I do, that Microsoft ecosystem developers should be flocking to it. But because developers are trying to get a jump on the future, and since many of them believe the impending v5.0 release of Silverlight will be the technology’s last, not everyone is flocking to it; in fact some are fleeing from it.  Is this sensible?  Is it not unprecedented?  What options does it lead to?  What’s the right way to think about the situation? Is v5.0 really the last major version of the technology called Silverlight?  We don’t know.  But Scott Guthrie, the “father” and champion of the technology, left the Developer Division of Microsoft months ago to work on the Windows Azure team, and he took his people with him.  John Papa, who was a very influential Redmond-based evangelist for Silverlight (and is a Visual Studio Magazine author), left Microsoft completely.  About a year ago, when initial suspicion of Silverlight’s demise reached significant magnitude, Papa interviewed Guthrie on video and their discussion served to dispel developers’ fears; but now they’ve moved on. So read into that what you will and let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, speculation that Silverlight’s days of major revision and iteration are over now is correct.  Let’s assume the shine and glimmer has dimmed.  Let’s assume that any Silverlight application written today, and that therefore any investment of financial and human resources made in Silverlight development today, is destined for rework and extra investment in a few years, if the application’s platform needs to stay current. Is this really so different from any technology investment we make?  Every framework, language, runtime and operating system is subject to change, to improvement, to flux and, yes, to obsolescence.  What differs from project to project, is how near-term that obsolescence is and how disruptive the change will be.  The shift from .NET 1.1. to 2.0 was incremental.  Some of the further changes were too.  But the switch from Windows Forms to WPF was major, and the change from ASP.NET Web Services (asmx) to Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) was downright fundamental. Meanwhile, the transition to the .NET development model for Windows 8 Metro-style applications is actually quite gentle.  The finer points of this subject are covered nicely in Magenic’s excellent white paper “Assessing the Windows 8 Development Platform.” As the authors of that paper (including Rocky Lhotka)  point out, Silverlight code won’t just “port” to Windows 8.  And, no, Silverlight user interfaces won’t either; Metro always supports XAML, but that relationship is not commutative.  But the concepts, the syntax, the architecture and developers’ skills map from Silverlight to Windows 8 Metro and the Windows Runtime (WinRT) very nicely.  That’s not a coincidence.  It’s not an accident.  This is a protected transition.  It’s not a slap in the face. There are few things that are unnerving about this transition, which make it seem markedly different from others: The assumed end of the road for Silverlight is something many think they can see.  Instead of being ignorant of the technology’s expiration date, we believe we know it.  If ignorance is bliss, it would seem our situation lacks it. The new technology involving WinRT and Metro involves a name change from Silverlight. .NET, which underlies both Silverlight and the XAML approach to WinRT development, has just about reached 10 years of age.  That’s equivalent to 80 in human years, or so many fear. My take is that the combination of these three factors has contributed to what for many is a psychologically compelling case that Silverlight should be abandoned today and HTML 5 (the agnostic kind, not the Windows RT variety) should be embraced in its stead.  I understand the logic behind that.  I appreciate the preemptive, proactive, vigilant conscientiousness involved in its calculus.  But for a great many scenarios, I don’t agree with it.  HTML 5 clients, no matter how impressive their interactivity and the emulation of native application interfaces they present may be, are still second-class clients.  They are getting better, especially when hardware acceleration and fast processors are involved.  But they still lag.  They still feel like they’re emulating something, like they’re prototypes, like they’re not comfortable in their own skins.  They are based on compromise, and they feel compromised too. HTML 5/JavaScript development tools are getting better, and will get better still, but they are not as productive as tools for other environments, like Flash, like Silverlight or even more primitive tooling for iOS or Android.  HTML’s roots as a document markup language, rather than an application interface, create a disconnect that impedes productivity.  I do not necessarily think that problem is insurmountable, but it’s here today. If you’re building line-of-business applications, you need a first-class client and you need productivity.  Lack of productivity increases your costs and worsens your backlog.  A second class client will erode user satisfaction, which is never good.  Worse yet, this erosion will be inconspicuous, rather than easily identified and diagnosed, because the inferiority of an HTML 5 client over a native one is hard to identify and, notably, doing so at this juncture in the industry is unpopular.  Why would you fault a technology that everyone believes is revolutionary?  Instead, user disenchantment will remain latent and yet will add to the malaise caused by slower development. If you’re an ISV and you’re coveting the reach of running multi-platform, it’s a different story.  You’ve likely wanted to move to HTML 5 already, and the uncertainty around Silverlight may be the only remaining momentum or pretext you need to make the shift.  You’re deploying many more copies of your application than a line-of-business developer is anyway; this makes the economic hit from lower productivity less impactful, and the wider potential installed base might even make it profitable. But no matter who you are, it’s important to take stock of the situation and do it accurately.  Continued, but merely incremental changes in a development model lead to conservatism and general lack of innovation in the underlying platform.  Periods of stability and equilibrium are necessary, but permanence in that equilibrium leads to loss of platform relevance, market share and utility.  Arguably, that’s already happened to Windows.  The change Windows 8 brings is necessary and overdue.  The marked changes in using .NET if we’re to build applications for the new OS are inevitable.  We will ultimately benefit from the change, and what we can reasonably hope for in the interim is a migration path for our code and skills that is navigable, logical and conceptually comfortable. That path takes us to a place called WinRT, rather than a place called Silverlight.  But considering everything that is changing for the good, the number of disruptive changes is impressively minimal.  The name may be changing, and there may even be some significance to that in terms of Microsoft’s internal management of products and technologies.  But as the consumer, you should care about the ingredients, not the name.  Turkish coffee and Greek coffee are much the same. Although you’ll find plenty of interested parties who will find the names significant, drinkers of the beverage should enjoy either one.  It’s all coffee, it’s all sweet, and you can tell your fortune from the grounds that are left at the end.  Back on the software side, it’s all XAML, and C# or VB .NET, and you can make your fortune from the product that comes out at the end.  Coffee drinkers wouldn’t switch to tea.  Why should XAML developers switch to HTML?

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  • Create Orchard Module in a Separate Project

    - by Steve Michelotti
    The Orchard Project is a new OOS Microsoft project that is being developed up on CodePlex. From the Orchard home page on CodePlex, it states “Orchard project is focused on delivering a .NET-based CMS application that will allow users to rapidly create content-driven Websites, and an extensibility framework that will allow developers and customizers to provide additional functionality through modules and themes.” The Orchard Project site contains additional information including documentation and walkthroughs. The ability to create a composite solution based on a collection of modules is a compelling feature. In Orchard, these modules can just be created as simple MVC Areas or they can also be created inside of stand-alone web application projects.  The walkthrough for writing an Orchard module that is available on the Orchard site uses a simple Area that is created inside of the host application. It is based on the Orchard MIX presentation. This walkthrough does an effective job introducing various Orchard concepts such as hooking into the navigation system, theme/layout system, content types, and more.  However, creating an Orchard module in a separate project does not seem to be concisely documented anywhere. Orchard ships with several module OOTB that are in separate assemblies – but again, it’s not well documented how to get started building one from scratch. The following are the steps I took to successfully get an Orchard module in a separate project up and running. Step 1 – Download the OrchardIIS.zip file from the Orchard Release page. Unzip and open up the solution. Step 2 – Add your project to the solution. I named my project “Orchard.Widget” and used and “MVC 2 Empty Web Application” project type. Make sure you put the physical path inside the “Modules” sub-folder to the main project like this: At this point the solution should look like: Step 3 – Add assembly references to Orchard.dll and Orchard.Core.dll. Step 4 – Add a controller and view.  I’ll just create a Hello World controller and view. Notice I created the view as a partial view (*.ascx). Also add the [Themed] attribute to the top of the HomeController class just like the normal Orchard walk through shows it. Step 5 – Add Module.txt to the project root. The is a very important step. Orchard will not recognize your module without this text file present.  It can contain just the name of your module: name: Widget Step 6 – Add Routes.cs. Notice I’ve given an area name of “Orchard.Widget” on lines 26 and 33. 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3: using System.Web.Mvc; 4: using System.Web.Routing; 5: using Orchard.Mvc.Routes; 6:   7: namespace Orchard.Widget 8: { 9: public class Routes : IRouteProvider 10: { 11: public void GetRoutes(ICollection<RouteDescriptor> routes) 12: { 13: foreach (var routeDescriptor in GetRoutes()) 14: { 15: routes.Add(routeDescriptor); 16: } 17: } 18:   19: public IEnumerable<RouteDescriptor> GetRoutes() 20: { 21: return new[] { 22: new RouteDescriptor { 23: Route = new Route( 24: "Widget/{controller}/{action}/{id}", 25: new RouteValueDictionary { 26: {"area", "Orchard.Widget"}, 27: {"controller", "Home"}, 28: {"action", "Index"}, 29: {"id", ""} 30: }, 31: new RouteValueDictionary(), 32: new RouteValueDictionary { 33: {"area", "Orchard.Widget"} 34: }, 35: new MvcRouteHandler()) 36: } 37: }; 38: } 39: } 40: } Step 7 – Add MainMenu.cs. This will make sure that an item appears in the main menu called “Widget” which points to the module. 1: using System; 2: using Orchard.UI.Navigation; 3:   4: namespace Orchard.Widget 5: { 6: public class MainMenu : INavigationProvider 7: { 8: public void GetNavigation(NavigationBuilder builder) 9: { 10: builder.Add(menu => menu.Add("Widget", item => item.Action("Index", "Home", new 11: { 12: area = "Orchard.Widget" 13: }))); 14: } 15:   16: public string MenuName 17: { 18: get { return "main"; } 19: } 20: } 21: } Step 8 – Clean up web.config. By default Visual Studio adds numerous sections to the web.config. The sections that can be removed are: appSettings, connectionStrings, authentication, membership, profile, and roleManager. Step 9 – Delete Global.asax. This project will ultimately be running from inside the Orchard host so this “sub-site” should not have its own Global.asax.   Now you’re ready the run the app.  When you first run it, the “Widget” menu item will appear in the main menu because of the MainMenu.cs file we added: We can then click the “Widget” link in the main menu to send us over to our view:   Packaging From start to finish, it’s a relatively painless experience but it could be better. For example, a Visual Studio project template that encapsulates aspects from this blog post would definitely make it a lot easier to get up and running with creating an Orchard module.  Another aspect I found interesting is that if you read the first paragraph of the walkthrough, it says, “You can also develop modules as separate projects, to be packaged and shared with other users of Orchard CMS (the packaging story is still to be defined, along with marketplaces for sharing modules).” In particular, I will be extremely curious to see how the “packaging story” evolves. The first thing that comes to mind for me is: what if we explored MvcContrib Portable Areas as a potential mechanism for this packaging? This would certainly make things easy since all artifacts (aspx, aspx, images, css, javascript) are all wrapped up into a single assembly. Granted, Orchard does have its own infrastructure for layouts and themes but it seems like integrating portable areas into this pipeline would not be a difficult undertaking. Maybe that’ll be the next research task. :)

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  • Surface RT: To Be Or Not To Be (Part 1)

    - by smehaffie
    So the Surface RT has been out for 9 months and Microsoft just declared a $900 million dollar write-down. So how did this happen and what does it mean for Microsoft’s efforts to break into the tablet market? I have been thinking a lot about most of the information below since the Surface product line was released. If you are looking for a “Microsoft Is Dead” story, then don’t read any further. But if you want an honest look at what I think led Microsoft to this point and what I think can be done to make Surface RT devices better, then please continue reading. What Led Microsoft To The $900 Million Write-Down Surface Unveiling:Microsoft totally missed the boat when they unveiled the Surface product line on June 18th, 2012. Microsoft should’ve been ready to post the specifications of both devices that night. Microsoft should’ve had a site up and running right after the event so people could pre-order the devices. This would have given them a good idea what the interest was in each device.  They could also have used this data to make a better estimate for the number of units to to have available for the launch and beyond.  They also lost out on taking advantage of the excitement generated by the Surface RT and Surface Pro announcement. They could have thrown in a free touch keyboard to anyone who pre-ordered. The advertising should have started right after the announcement and gotten bigger as launch day approached. Push for as many pre-order as possible and build excitement for the launch. Actual Launch (Surface RT): By this time all excitement was gone from the initial announcement, except for the Micorsoft faithful. Microsoft should have been ready to sell the Surface in as many markets as possible at launch. The limited market release was a real letdown for a lot of people.  A limited release right after the initial announce is understandable, but not at the official launch of the product. Microsoft overpriced the device and now they are lowering it to what it should have been to start with. The $349 price is within the range I suggested it should be at before pricing was announced. (Surface Tablets: The Price Must Be Right). Limited ordering options online was also a killer. User should have been able to buy the base unit of each device and then add on whatever keyboard they wanted to (this applies more to the Surface Pro).  There should have also been a place where users could order any additional add-ins that they wanted to buy (covers, extra power supplies, etc.) Marketing was better and the dancing “Click In” commercial was cool, but the ads comparing the iPad with Siri should have been on the air from day one of the announcement (or at least the launch).  Consumers want to know why you tablet is better, not just that is has a clickable keyboard and built-in kickstand. They could have also compared it to some of the other mid-range tablets if they had not overprices it to begin with. Stock Applications (Mail, People, Calendar, Music, Video, Reader and IE): This is where Microsoft really blew it. They had all the time in the world to make these applications the best of breed and instead we got applications that seemed thrown together.  Some updates have made these application better, but they are all still lacking in features that should have been there from day one. This did not help to enhance a new users experience any. ** I will admit that the applications that were data driven were first class citizen’s and that makes it even more perplexing why MS could knock it out of the park with the Weather, Travel, Finance, Bing, etc.) and fail so miserably on the core applications users would use the most on a tablet. Desktop on Tablet: The desktop just is so out of place on the tablet  I understand it was needed for Office but think it would have been better to not have the desktop in Windows RT, but instead open up the Office applications in full screen mode, in a desktop shell (same goes for  IE11).That way the user wouldn’t realize they are leaving Metro and going to the desktop. The other option would have been to just not include Office on Windows RT devices. Instead they could have made awesome Widows Store Apps for Word, Excel, OneNote and PowerPoint. In addition, they could have made the stock Mail, People, and Calendar applications contain all the functions that Outlook gives desktop users. Having some of the settings in desktop mode and others under “Change PC Settings” made Windows RT seemed unfinished and rushed to market. What Can Be Done To Make Windows RT Based Tablets Better (At least in my opinion) Either eliminate the desktop all together from Windows RT or at least make the user experience better by hiding the fact the user is running Office/IE in the desktop. Personally I ‘d like them to totally get rid of it and just make awesome Windows Store Application version of Word, Excel PowerPoint & OneNote.  This might also make the OS smaller and give the user more available disk space. I doubt there will ever be a Windows Store App versions of Office, but I still think it is a good idea. Make is so users can easily direct their documents, picture, videos and music to their extra storage and can access these files from the standard libraries.  A user should not have to create a VM on their microSD card or create symbolic links to get this to work properly. Most consumers would not be able to do this. Then users get frustrated when they run out or room on their main storage because nothing is automatically save to their microSD card when saved to libraries.  This is a major bug that needs to be fixed, otherwise Microsoft’s selling point of having a microSD slot is worthless. Allows users to uninstall and re-install any of the Office product that come with the Surface. That way people can free up storage space by uninstalling the Office applications they do not need. Everyone’s needs are different, so make the options flexible. Don’t take up storage space for applications the user will not use. Make the Core applications the “Cream of the Crop” Windows App Store applications. The should set the bar for all other Store applications. Improve performance as much as possible, if it seems to be sluggish on a tablet consumer will not buy it. They need to price the next line of Surface product very aggressive to undercut not only iPad but also Android low end tablets (Nook, Kindle Fire, and Nexus, etc.) Give developers incentives to write quality applications for the devices. Don’t reward developers for cranking out cookie cutter, low quality applications. I’d even suggest Microsoft consider implementing some new store certification guideline to stop these type of applications being published. Allow users to easily move the recover disk “partition between their microSD card and main storage. My Predictions for the Surface RT and Windows RT I honestly think even with all the missteps MS has made since the announcement  about the Surface product line, that they are on the right path. I was excited the Surface tablets when they were announced, and I still am. The truth be told, Windows 8 on a tablet (aka: Windows RT) is better than both iOS and Android. My nephew who is an Apple fan boy told me after he saw and used Windows 8 (he got the beta running on his iPad), that Windows 8 kicked Apples butt as a tablet OS. So there is hope for all Windows RT based tablets. I agree with my nephew and that is why whenever anyone asks me about my Surface, I love showing it off and recommend it. The 6 keys to gaining market share in the tablet market are; Aggressive pricing by both Microsoft and their OEM’s Good quality devices put out by Microsoft and their OEM’s (there are some out there, but not enough) Marketing, Marketing, Marketing from both Microsoft and their OEM’s (Need more ads showing why windows based tablets are better than iPads and Android tablets) Getting Widows tablets in retails stores all over, and giving sales people incentive to sell them. Consumers like to try electronics out before they buy them, and most will listen to what the sales person suggest. Microsoft needs sales people in retail stores directing people to buy windows based tablets over iPads and Android tablets. I think the Microsoft Stores within Best Buy is a good start, but they also need to get prominent displays in Walmart, Target, etc.. Release a smaller form factor Surface, Hopefully the 8”-10” next generation Surface is not a rumor. Make “Surface” the brand name for all Microsoft tablets and hybrid devices that they come out with. They cannot change the name with each new release.  Make Surface synonymous with quality, the same way that iPad  is for Apple. Well, that is my 2 cents on the subject. Let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment below. Soon to follow will be my thought on the Surface Pro, so keep an eye out for it. var addthis_pub="smehaffie"; var addthis_options="email, print, digg, slashdot, delicious, twitter, live, myspace, facebook, google, stumbleupon, newsvine";

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  • SQL SERVER – The Story of a Lesser Known Startup Parameter in SQL Server – Guest Post by Balmukund Lakhani

    - by Pinal Dave
    This is a fantastic blog post from my dear friend Balmukund ( blog | twitter | facebook ). He had presented a fantastic session in our last UG and there were lots of requests from attendees that he blogs about it. Well, here is the blog post about the same very popular UG session. Let us read the entire blog post in the voice of the Balmukund himself. During my last session in SQL Bangalore User Group (Facebook) meeting, I was lucky enough to deliver a session on SQL Server Startup issue. The name of the session was “SQL Engine Starting Trouble – How to start?” From the feedback, I realized that one of the “not well known” startup parameter is “-m”. Okay, you might say “I know that this is used to start the SQL in single user mode”. But what you might not know is that you can pass a string with -m which has special meaning and use. I have used this parameter in my blog here but looks like not many of you have seen that. It happens most of the time when we want to start SQL Server in single user mode, someone else makes connection before you can. The only choice you have is to repeat same process again till you succeed. Some smart DBAs may disable the remote network protocols (TCP/IP and Named Pipes) of SQL Instance and allow only local connections to SQL. Once the activity is complete, our dear smart DBA has to remember to re-enable network protocols. Sometimes, it may be a local service or application getting connection to SQL before we can. There is a better way to deal with it. Yes, you have guessed it correctly: -m parameter which a string. Since I work with SQL Product Support team, I may know little more undocumented commands and parameters, but this is not an undocumented stuff. It’s already documented in books online. So in this blog, I am going to show a demo of its usage. As documentation shows, “Do not use this option as a security feature.” So please read this blog as knowledge enhancer and troubleshooting issues not security feature. In my laptop, I have a default instance of SQL Server 2012 and here is what we would in the configuration manager. Now, I would go ahead and stop SQL Service by selecting SQL Server (MSSQLServer) > Right Click > Stop. There are multiple ways to start SQL with startup parameter. 1) Use Net Start Command from command prompt Net Start MSSQLServer /mSQLCMD The above command is the simplest way to add startup parameter to SQL. This parameter would be cleared once we stop and start SQL. 2) Add Startup Parameter via configuration manager. Step is already listed here. We need to add -mSQLCMD If we compare 1 and 2, it’s clear that unless we modify startup parameter and remove -m, it would be in effect. 3) Start SQL Service via command line SQLServr.exe –mSQLCMD –s<InstanceName> Wait, what does SQLCMD mean with /m? It’s the instruction to SQL that start SQL Server in Single User Mode and allow only the application which is SQLCMD. Any other application would fail with Login Failed for User Error message. It would be important to note that string is case sensitive. This value should be picked up from application_name column from sys.dm_exec_sessions. I have made a connection using SQLCMD and as we can see it comes as upper case “SQLCMD”. If we want only management studio query windows to connect then we need to give -m” Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio – Query” as startup parameter. In below example, I have given it as SQLCMd (lower case d at the end) and we would notice that we would not be able to connect to SQL Instance. Above proves that parameter works as expected and it’s case sensitive. Error Log would show below information. How to get error log location? I have already blogged about it. Hope you have learned something new. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • Dual Boot Oracle Solaris 11/11 and Linux (Ubuntu 11.10/grub2)

    - by HartmutStreppel
    After having worked with Open Solaris on my laptop first, then with an upgrade to Oracle Solaris 11 Express, I finally did a fresh install of Oracle Solaris 11/11, when it became available. I am not a big fan of upgrades as I know that I am not the perfect administrator and my system gets spoiled with unclean configurations, outdated packages and wrong settings that cannot be reversed. So I prefer to start from scratch. Especially with Oracle Solaris 11 I wanted to have a system just like a customer would have it in production. The installation was smooth - more or less, if I had only read the documentation a bit better in advance. For a number of reasons I prefer a dual boot system. The most important one is, that especially with mobile devices you often run into network problems. And you have a hard time figuring out where the problem is: in your laptop hardware, in the OS you are running, or really within the network. If you have an alternate OS to boot, you can exclude the OS and your hardware. This makes you feel better. The second OS should be a Linux variant - and for some not so obvious reason I decided to go with the latest Ubuntu release (11.10). It replaced a very old Open Suse installation that had not been booted for a while. I knew that it was probably best to install Ubuntu first and then Oracle Solaris 11, as this would put the right boot information for Oracle Solaris  into the MBR and onto the root partition. But then, how to enable dual boot with the 2 OSes. Searching the web one mainly finds information about dual boot of: Linux and Linux Linux and Windows I do not want to explain which wrong configurations I worked through, but I prefer to explain the final setup, which is extremely simple, and I am wondering why this is not covered as the easiest solution for most dual boot setups. I use chainloader from and to both OS'es, with the only disadvantage that I have to confirm two grub menus each time I want to boot the "other" OS. Still there were some hurdles to jump over: Ubuntu did not like getting its boot blocks being placed on the partition instead of the disk; I must admit that I do not fully understand why. But using the --force option you could get that done Ubuntu needs an active partition; that was easy to achieve grub2 uses a different numbering scheme for the partitions. That is in the docs, if you read them. BTW: The usual disclaimer is valid. There is  no guarantee that what I describe works or works well. Please back up your data carefully before trying any of this. So, Oracle Solaris 11 is installed on the first partition and Ubuntu on the third. With Ubtuntu things initially were a bit more complicated, as I did not know how to boot it. And the live CD did not offer the capability to boot the on-disk image (at least I did not find it). So I booted the live CD, mounted the Ubuntu installation at /mnt and wrote the boot blocks into the partition. This is something that does not seem to be recommended, at least grub-install refrained from doing what I intended. After a bit more research I was bold enough to use the --force option and wrote the boot blocks to /dev/sda3 using grub-install --boot-directory=/mnt/boot --force --no-floppy /dev/sda3 So, I now had a system with the Solaris boot loader in the MBR, Solaris specific boot blocks on the Solaris root partition and Ubuntu specific boot blocks in the Ubuntu partition. I just had to chain them together and I was done. Oracle Solaris 11: I have added the following lines to /rpool/boot/grub/menu.lst (be aware of the /rpool!!!!) title Ubuntu 11.10root (hd0,2)makeactivechainloader +1boot The Ubuntu root file system sits on the third partition (/dev/sda3). Ubuntu: I have added the following lines to /etc/grub.d/40_custom: menuentry "Solaris 11/11" {      set root=(hd0,1)      chainloader +1} Two things need to be mentioned: a) grub2 starts numbering partitions with 1; so my /dev/sda1 is partition 1. b) Oracle Solaris boots without the partition being made active (btw: the command to make a partition active with grub2 is "parttool (hd0,1) boot+", which currently does not work for me). As debugging grub is a bit complicated, I used the grub CLI to perform some tests and also used a tool, that I found on sourceforge.net that was able to prepare a list of all boot loaders on all partitions. This told me that the basic setup was correct. Unfortunately I lost it in the live CD environment. I hope this is helpful for some of the readers.Hartmut

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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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  • FairScheduling Conventions in Hadoop

    - by dan.mcclary
    While scheduling and resource allocation control has been present in Hadoop since 0.20, a lot of people haven't discovered or utilized it in their initial investigations of the Hadoop ecosystem. We could chalk this up to many things: Organizations are still determining what their dataflow and analysis workloads will comprise Small deployments under tests aren't likely to show the signs of strains that would send someone looking for resource allocation options The default scheduling options -- the FairScheduler and the CapacityScheduler -- are not placed in the most prominent position within the Hadoop documentation. However, for production deployments, it's wise to start with at least the foundations of scheduling in place so that you can tune the cluster as workloads emerge. To do that, we have to ask ourselves something about what the off-the-rack scheduling options are. We have some choices: The FairScheduler, which will work to ensure resource allocations are enforced on a per-job basis. The CapacityScheduler, which will ensure resource allocations are enforced on a per-queue basis. Writing your own implementation of the abstract class org.apache.hadoop.mapred.job.TaskScheduler is an option, but usually overkill. If you're going to have several concurrent users and leverage the more interactive aspects of the Hadoop environment (e.g. Pig and Hive scripting), the FairScheduler is definitely the way to go. In particular, we can do user-specific pools so that default users get their fair share, and specific users are given the resources their workloads require. To enable fair scheduling, we're going to need to do a couple of things. First, we need to tell the JobTracker that we want to use scheduling and where we're going to be defining our allocations. We do this by adding the following to the mapred-site.xml file in HADOOP_HOME/conf: <property> <name>mapred.jobtracker.taskScheduler</name> <value>org.apache.hadoop.mapred.FairScheduler</value> </property> <property> <name>mapred.fairscheduler.allocation.file</name> <value>/path/to/allocations.xml</value> </property> <property> <name>mapred.fairscheduler.poolnameproperty</name> <value>pool.name</value> </property> <property> <name>pool.name</name> <value>${user.name}</name> </property> What we've done here is simply tell the JobTracker that we'd like to task scheduling to use the FairScheduler class rather than a single FIFO queue. Moreover, we're going to be defining our resource pools and allocations in a file called allocations.xml For reference, the allocation file is read every 15s or so, which allows for tuning allocations without having to take down the JobTracker. Our allocation file is now going to look a little like this <?xml version="1.0"?> <allocations> <pool name="dan"> <minMaps>5</minMaps> <minReduces>5</minReduces> <maxMaps>25</maxMaps> <maxReduces>25</maxReduces> <minSharePreemptionTimeout>300</minSharePreemptionTimeout> </pool> <mapreduce.job.user.name="dan"> <maxRunningJobs>6</maxRunningJobs> </user> <userMaxJobsDefault>3</userMaxJobsDefault> <fairSharePreemptionTimeout>600</fairSharePreemptionTimeout> </allocations> In this case, I've explicitly set my username to have upper and lower bounds on the maps and reduces, and allotted myself double the number of running jobs. Now, if I run hive or pig jobs from either the console or via the Hue web interface, I'll be treated "fairly" by the JobTracker. There's a lot more tweaking that can be done to the allocations file, so it's best to dig down into the description and start trying out allocations that might fit your workload.

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, September 26, 2012

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, September 26, 2012Popular ReleasesThe Eggbert Chronicles: Eggbert Chronicles v1: Version 1 of Eggbert Chronicles. Includes: Basic Menu System Fully-Functional Options Menu (need to auto-adjust adv. settings when preset is changed) Basic First Level (It's pre-alpha, level design isn't a must, gameplay mechanics first) 2D Movement System in a 3D World (2.5D Basically) Planned: An actual playermodel Actual custom texturing Platformer Objects: Spikes Sawblades Basic Enemies (Most likely x-axis movement) Tar pits Acid pits More puzzles Custom sound effect...D3 Loot Tracker: 1.3.1 (patch): - Magic find value will now display properly and includes follower value. - ILevel of legendary items will now display properly.WinRtBehaviors: V1.0.2: Includes simple Blend SupportMVC Bootstrap: MVC Boostrap 0.5.1: A small demo site, based on the default ASP.NET MVC 3 project template, showing off some of the features of MVC Bootstrap. This release uses Entity Framework 5 for data access and Ninject 3 for dependency injection. If you download and use this project, please give some feedback, good or bad!Windows Powershell/Quest AD account audit and reporting: Powershell AD Reporting Framework: Alpha 0.0.1 ReleasePicturethrill: Version 2.9.25.0: Allowing to run Picturethrill Update task while computer is not connected to internet on computer wake up.VCC: Latest build, v2.3.00925.0: Automatic drop of latest buildSimple PM - Project Management Simplified !: Simple Pm v1 - Aplha (Re-released): INSTALLATION GUIDE 1. Run the web setup, which will install the web app to IIS. 2. Make sure you select your application pool to "ASP.NET v4.0" during the installation. 3. Create a database named "SimplePm" 4. Run the attached database script on this database. 5. Change the database username and password in connection strings defined as SimplePmEntities and ApplicationServices from the Web.config file 6. Thats its ! Simple Pm are ready to go ! For any installation assistance feel free to c...menu4web: menu4web 1.0 - free javascript menu for web sites: menu4web 1.0 has been tested with all major browsers: Firefox, Chrome, IE, Opera and Safari. Minified m4w.js library is less than 9K. Includes 21 menu examples of different styles. Can be freely distributed under The MIT License (MIT).Rawr: 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.EntitiesToDTOs - Entity Framework DTO Generator: EntitiesToDTOs.v3.0.Beta.2: Support for new Entity Framework EDMX (format used by VS2012) ! Support for Enum Types! DTOs and Assemblers can be generated inside project folders! Optional automatic check for updates! Support for Visual Studio 2012 !!! Choose types you want to generate! Warning system in types to generate! Added ToEntityList() and ToDTOList() to Assemblers! Indicate class identifier for DTOs and Assemblers! Cleaner Assemblers code. Ad module to support the AddIn! Lots of fixes and imp...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.SharePoint WarmUp: Nauplius.SP.Initalization: Initial release.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 pickerNew Projectsaftermath: Provides sse/avx implementation for matrix storage, access and basic operations, probability distributions and fast ziggurat random number generators.Agility: Agility is a management tool for the agile enterprise. It supports encourages ussage of agile methodology from portfolio and management to development.ASP.NET WebForm MVVM: MVVM for ASP.NET WebFormsAzugBeDemo: some text hereBookmark Browser: Web application that allows access to your Firefox Sync bookmarks on platforms that are not supported by Firefox (e.g. iOS).Cachalote-Todo-WPF-Skins: These are skin projects for Cachalote Todo WPF project.CodePlexDeployment01: Project set up to demonstrate codeplex deploymentColorChooser X2: comming soon...De Todo Un Poco: de todo un pcoDeals Patrol: Deals patrolEasy IP Changer: Wechseln von IP Adressen pro AdapterEasyStock: EasyStock is a small and easy to use Windows 8 app that gives you an overview of your favorite stocks with historical data for the last days, months and years. Find++: Find++ finds specific string in multiple files in a folderGoShunn: A DotNetNuke ModuleJquery DataTables Plugin c#, .NET, MS SQL Server and Webservices Example: A working example of JQuery DataTables in C#, ASP.NET, SQL Server side processing with ajax and webservices.Keywords Translator (MUI helper): MUI helper for translate words in others languages.Mupen: A Nentendo 64 Emulator. This emulator is based on the Mupen64plus code, and made to be used for learning purposes.NFC Card Demo: ??nfc?,???demo,???roboguice ioc??NJection.LambdaConverter: NJection.LambdaConverter is an assembly for converting delegates resolved from methods/constructors to expression trees. Copyright 2009-2012 Sagi FogelQuickPasteIt: QuickPasteIt is a pastebin tool for Windows and Visual Studio (2010 & 2012) which makes sharing code files and snippets as easy as one click.SharePoint Move Discussion Threads: SharePoint Move Discussion Threads solution is a tool that allows to move a thread across discussion boards within a site-collection.SQL LocalDB Wrapper: SQL LocalDB Wrapper is a .NET 3.5 assembly providing interop with the SQL LocalDB native API from managed code using .NET APIs.Study Time: Windows 8 metro style app. Create Quizzes and study card. Use the study cards either in the Windows 8 app or WP7 Companion App. Use Skydrive for storage.TenterTaobaoke: toatoaoke projaecttestddgit09252012: stestddhg0925201201: sTrigger: A DotNetNuke C# ModuleUML Creator: This is a programmering project made by 4 students from the Technical University of Denmark, and is a part of the course Windows Programming C# and .NET.W8 Ateneo Libri: No summaryWDSS-II MergedDataViewer: Quickly view merged variables map produced from w2merger Webshop for Orchard: This is Ecommerce Module to Orchard based on SkyWalker's excellent serial blogsWindows Powershell/Quest AD account audit and reporting: Powershell framework utilizing Quest Active Directory commandlet for the generation of user account, group membership and access audit reports.WinRT.Toolkit: I'm trying to Build a Charting Control Set for Windows 8 Modern UI I already Built a Pie Chart which is available now on http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mertoappsXades Library: Xades Library, currently with Xades-T capabilities and compatible with eHealth and MyCareNet.

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  • top tweets WebLogic Partner Community – September 2012

    - by JuergenKress
    Send your tweets @wlscommunity #WebLogicCommunity and follow us at http://twitter.com/wlscommunity Oracle Exalogic? VIDEO: Oracle Public Cloud Built on Exalogic!, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGzjDloUw_s&feature=plcp … oracleopenworld #NetBeans Community Day at #JavaOne http://ow.ly/dunFL Oracle Cloud Zone Building an enterprise Cloud? Have Oracle show you the RIGHT way to plan, deploy and monitor enterprise clouds.... http://fb.me/286978S4S OTNArchBeat? Oracle Exalogic X2-2 walk-through with Brad Cameron | @jvzoggel http://pub.vitrue.com/yE7d Oracle Technet? Stash your cash. September OTN Member Offers - discounts on books, more | OTN Blog http://pub.vitrue.com/yTr9 C2B2 Consulting? C2B2 is Speaking at @UKOUG App Server Middleware SIG Meeting 'Real Life #WebLogic Performance Tuning' http://www.c2b2.co.uk/ukoug_application_server_middleware_sig_meeting … @wlscommunity JAXenter.com? From yesterday, @smeyen offers his views on the next generation #Java - do you agree? http://jaxenter.com/next-gen-java-we-don-t-need-another-revolutionary-44334.html … Markus Eisele? Awesome: professor from ITU uploads her programming lectures to #YouTube. Programming classes without having to pay! http://bit.ly/UtkJIW Adam Bien? Real World Java EE 6 Patterns--Rethinking Best Practices Reloaded: A completely rewritten, second, iteration of ... http://bit.ly/Qc3xTH Markus Eisele [blog] #PrimeFaces Push with #Atmosphere on #GlassFish 3.1.2.2 http://goo.gl/fb/jPDzA Lucas Jellema? Forms community event at Oracle Open World - Tuesday, 2nd Oct with the BIG names in Forms - see: http://oracleformsinfo.wordpress.com/2012/08/28/ask-the-product-manager-join-us-at-the-oracle-forms-community-event-at-openworld-2012/ … WebLogic Community WebLogic & Coherence & Cloud presentations for customer meetings http://wp.me/p1LMIb-kw Adam Bien? New Book: Rethinking Best Practices with Java EE 6 is out: http://realworldpatterns.com (fully rewritten, re-edited and reformatted) WebLogic Community? Want to become and WebLogic 12c expert? free WebLogic 12c partner bootcamps &ndash;new locations: Madrid Spain http://wp.me/p1LMIb-kK WebLogic Community? Promote Your WebLogic events at http://oracle.com http://wp.me/p1LMIb-ku OracleBlogs Gartner review Oracle ADF http://ow.ly/1mgkCV Simon Haslam Next #ukoug App Server & MW SIG on 10 Oct: http://www.ukoug.org/events/ukoug-application-server-and-middleware-sig-meeting8/ … Hopefully plenty of good admin stuff! Michel Schildmeijer My book "WebLogic 12c; First look" has been reviewed again..see http://www.amazon.com/review/R28L6E3CC9RPMK/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1849687188&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag= … … Markus Eisele? #Weblogic 11g Interactive Quick Reference Map: http://bit.ly/Ugsq52 #wls #oracle #reference /via @TonyvanEsch Marc? Playing with #syslog server and #weblogic. Is there a simple how-to to configure all the logging from #WLS to #syslog-ng WebLogic Community Java update http://wp.me/p1LMIb-kI WebLogic Community top tweets WebLogic Partner Community &ndash; August 2012 http://wp.me/p1LMIb-kA Andrejus Baranovskis? Oracle University Training: ADF/WebCenter 11g Development in Depth | Andrejus Baranovskis http://fb.me/253ZTS2zp OracleSupport_WLS? How neat is a free tool that allows you to inspect and debug traffic from virtually any application? http://pub.vitrue.com/vXdP WebLogic Community WebLogic Partner Community Newsletter August 2012 http://wp.me/p1LMIb-kn OTNArchBeat Integrating Coherence & Java EE 6 Applications using ActiveCache | Ricardo Ferreira http://pub.vitrue.com/rwGg Adam Bien? Thanks for attending the #javaee #techtalk "Enterprise Java 2.0" I pushed the project and slides to: http://kenai.com/projects/javaee-patterns/sources/hg/show/hacks/techtalk2012?rev=429 … JDeveloper & ADF? How to service-enable Oracle ADF Business Components http://ht.ly/1mcfsZ OracleSupport_WLS? Do you know that #WebLogic 12.1.1.0 is certified for production with JDK 7? @ http://pub.vitrue.com/35Kn Andreas Koop? My latest upload : WebLogic Administration und Deployment mit WLST on @slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/multikoop/weblogic-administration-und-deployment-mit-wlst … OTNArchBeat? Demo for OPN: Oracle Coherence Management with EM Cloud Control 12c http://pub.vitrue.com/reoo Markus Eisele? [blog] Java Champions at #JavaOne 2012 http://goo.gl/fb/Ibb6N #javachampion OracleBlogs Buy This Book!: Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud Handbook http://ow.ly/1malM1 WebLogic Community? Coherence Management with EM Cloud Control 12c &ndash;demo for partners http://wp.me/p1LMIb-iE Arun Gupta? Learn how Java can help Internet of Things at Java Embedded at JavaOne: http://bit.ly/POBizh WebLogic Community? Follow WebLogicCommunity on facebook http://www.facebook.com/WebLogicCommunity … #WebLogicCommunity WebLogic Community? Building Java EE in the Cloud–Webcast August 30th 2012 https://weblogiccommunity.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/building-java-ee-in-the-cloudwebcast-august-30th-2012/ … #WebLogicCommunity #Java #oracle #opn WebLogic Community? Call for WebLogic Community newsletter content. Please send @wlscommunity #WebLogicCommunity OracleSupport_WLS? The #weblogic wasp: lots of tips, Q&A and examples http://pub.vitrue.com/v0bw Frank Nimphius? Free ADF Best Practices Webinar by Andrejus Baranovskis for ODTUG (18, 2012 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM EDT) http://bit.ly/OiSWbi ADF Code Corner Webcast- Friday September 14, 8:30 AM - 9.00 AM (CET) - ADF as a basis of Fusion Apps (in English) - with Chris Muir: http://bit.ly/OiQVMb Oracle WebLogic? New blog post: Developing Custom User Principal Object http://pub.vitrue.com/ltam JAX London? Just 4days left to get in on the early bird special, don't miss out!! http://jaxlondon.com/ #JAXLondon #Java WebLogic Community Building Java EE in the Cloud&ndash;Webcast August 30th 2012 http://wp.me/p1LMIb-kE Andrejus Baranovskis? New Record Master-Detail Validation and ADF BC Groovy Use Case http://fb.me/1D2NEIl8g JAX London? Don't miss out!!! Only 6 days left to make use of our early bird offer #JAXLondon #JAVA http://jaxlondon.com/ Michel Schildmeijer Qualogy launches Proof of Concept Center for Oracle Fusion Applications http://www.qualogy.com/qualogy-launches-proof-of-concept-center-for-oracle-fusion-applications/ … via @Qualogy_news OracleSupport_WLS ?Need to troubleshoot redeployment failure in #Weblogic? Check this http://pub.vitrue.com/auhz OracleEnterpriseMgr? Blog : Managing Oracle #Exalogic Elastic #Cloud with Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center http://ow.ly/dd40e #em12c ODTUG? Want free advanced technical ADF training?Join @andrejusb for an @odtug webinar! check out his blog for more info http://bit.ly/SvKJDq chriscmuir Oracle Open World 2012 and ADF EMG http://zite.to/QyusZE OTNArchBeat? Boost your infrastructure with Coherence into the Cloud | Nino Guarnacci http://pub.vitrue.com/v3aJ WebLogic Community? Presentations & Training material OFM Summer Camps & Impressions & Feedback http://wp.me/p1LMIb-ks Arun Gupta? Java EE 6 pocket guide by O'Reilly available for pre-order from Amazon: http://amzn.to/O6YyoP and B&N: http://bit.ly/NjWLk1 OTNArchBeat Joining the Existing Cluster in Coherence | A. Fuat Sungur http://pub.vitrue.com/6uLh Andrejus Baranovskis Sample Application for Switching Application Module Data Sources http://fb.me/1PSURUzch OTNArchBeat Oracle WebLogic DevCast: Building Java EE in the Cloud - August 30 - 10am PT/ 1pm ET http://pub.vitrue.com/xXg0 OTNArchBeat? GlassFish Community Event at #javaone - Sept 30 -11am – 1pm -Moscone South. Register Now! http://pub.vitrue.com/p2f5 OracleSupport_WLS? Connecting To HTTPS Site Using Simple Java Program When Using Proxy http://pub.vitrue.com/stVv Michel Schildmeijer? Before you go to #OOW take the sneak preview of WebLogic 12c with you: http://www.qualogy.com/ga-nog-niet-naar-oow-en-neem-mee-weblogic-12c/ … via @Qualogy_news Simon Haslam? Even more great ADF content at #oow2012 this year including a packed ADF EMG day on Sunday: https://blogs.oracle.com/onesizedoesntfitall/entry/the_year_after_the_year … OracleBlogs ExaLogic trainings for partners http://ow.ly/1m6a5D Robin? First presentation on DOAG conference (thanks to @Steffen2042) "Weblogic Server for Dummies". Now I´m pretty excited :) http://www.doag.org/de/events/konferenzen/doag-2012.html … Markus Eisele There is a #facebook page for the upcoming #Java Mission Control (JRockit Mission Control for #Hotspot)! ttp://on.fb.me/Q31oyA Adam Bien? The almost free #javaee workshop in Rapperswil has only 60 registrations so far: http://www.adam-bien.com/roller/abien/entry/enterprise_java_2_0_swiss … What's the problem? :-) WebLogic Community ExaLogic trainings for partners http://wp.me/p1LMIb-iC OracleBlogs How to install Oracle Weblogic Server using Generic Package installer? http://ow.ly/1m5ms7 OracleSupport_WLS #Weblogic Server new blog post - Developing Custom User Principal Object http://pub.vitrue.com/ltam OracleBlogs? Architects and Architecture at JavaOne 2012 http://ow.ly/1m4oS5 WebLogic Community Are you WebLogic or Application Grid Specialized? Do you get Recognized? Get your plaque https://weblogiccommunity.wordpress.com/2012/08/21/plaques-weblogic-application-grid-specialization/ … #WebLogicCommunity #opn WebLogic Community? Plaques WebLogic & Application Grid Specialization http://wp.me/p1LMIb-iA JDeveloper & ADF? First Steps With Oracle Application Testing Suite: Recording a Test With OpenScript http://dlvr.it/222npy WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: twitter,WebLogic,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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  • The Red Gate and .NET Reflector Debacle

    - by Rick Strahl
    About a month ago Red Gate – the company who owns the NET Reflector tool most .NET devs use at one point or another – decided to change their business model for Reflector and take the product from free to a fully paid for license model. As a bit of history: .NET Reflector was originally created by Lutz Roeder as a free community tool to inspect .NET assemblies. Using Reflector you can examine the types in an assembly, drill into type signatures and quickly disassemble code to see how a particular method works.  In case you’ve been living under a rock and you’ve never looked at Reflector, here’s what it looks like drilled into an assembly from disk with some disassembled source code showing: Note that you get tons of information about each element in the tree, and almost all related types and members are clickable both in the list and source view so it’s extremely easy to navigate and follow the code flow even in this static assembly only view. For many year’s Lutz kept the the tool up to date and added more features gradually improving an already amazing tool and making it better. Then about two and a half years ago Red Gate bought the tool from Lutz. A lot of ruckus and noise ensued in the community back then about what would happen with the tool and… for the most part very little did. Other than the incessant update notices with prominent Red Gate promo on them life with Reflector went on. The product didn’t die and and it didn’t go commercial or to a charge model. When .NET 4.0 came out it still continued to work mostly because the .NET feature set doesn’t drastically change how types behave.  Then a month back Red Gate started making noise about a new Version Version 7 which would be commercial. No more free version - and a shit storm broke out in the community. Now normally I’m not one to be critical of companies trying to make money from a product, much less for a product that’s as incredibly useful as Reflector. There isn’t day in .NET development that goes by for me where I don’t fire up Reflector. Whether it’s for examining the innards of the .NET Framework, checking out third party code, or verifying some of my own code and resources. Even more so recently I’ve been doing a lot of Interop work with a non-.NET application that needs to access .NET components and Reflector has been immensely valuable to me (and my clients) if figuring out exact type signatures required to calling .NET components in assemblies. In short Reflector is an invaluable tool to me. Ok, so what’s the problem? Why all the fuss? Certainly the $39 Red Gate is trying to charge isn’t going to kill any developer. If there’s any tool in .NET that’s worth $39 it’s Reflector, right? Right, but that’s not the problem here. The problem is how Red Gate went about moving the product to commercial which borders on the downright bizarre. It’s almost as if somebody in management wrote a slogan: “How can we piss off the .NET community in the most painful way we can?” And that it seems Red Gate has a utterly succeeded. People are rabid, and for once I think that this outrage isn’t exactly misplaced. Take a look at the message thread that Red Gate dedicated from a link off the download page. Not only is Version 7 going to be a paid commercial tool, but the older versions of Reflector won’t be available any longer. Not only that but older versions that are already in use also will continually try to update themselves to the new paid version – which when installed will then expire unless registered properly. There have also been reports of Version 6 installs shutting themselves down and failing to work if the update is refused (I haven’t seen that myself so not sure if that’s true). In other words Red Gate is trying to make damn sure they’re getting your money if you attempt to use Reflector. There’s a lot of temptation there. Think about the millions of .NET developers out there and all of them possibly upgrading – that’s a nice chunk of change that Red Gate’s sitting on. Even with all the community backlash these guys are probably making some bank right now just because people need to get life to move on. Red Gate also put up a Feedback link on the download page – which not surprisingly is chock full with hate mail condemning the move. Oddly there’s not a single response to any of those messages by the Red Gate folks except when it concerns license questions for the full version. It puzzles me what that link serves for other yet than another complete example of failure to understand how to handle customer relations. There’s no doubt that that all of this has caused some serious outrage in the community. The sad part though is that this could have been handled so much less arrogantly and without pissing off the entire community and causing so much ill-will. People are pissed off and I have no doubt that this negative publicity will show up in the sales numbers for their other products. I certainly hope so. Stupidity ought to be painful! Why do Companies do boneheaded stuff like this? Red Gate’s original decision to buy Reflector was hotly debated but at that the time most of what would happen was mostly speculation. But I thought it was a smart move for any company that is in need of spreading its marketing message and corporate image as a vendor in the .NET space. Where else do you get to flash your corporate logo to hordes of .NET developers on a regular basis?  Exploiting that marketing with some goodwill of providing a free tool breeds positive feedback that hopefully has a good effect on the company’s visibility and the products it sells. Instead Red Gate seems to have taken exactly the opposite tack of corporate bullying to try to make a quick buck – and in the process ruined any community goodwill that might have come from providing a service community for free while still getting valuable marketing. What’s so puzzling about this boneheaded escapade is that the company doesn’t need to resort to underhanded tactics like what they are trying with Reflector 7. The tools the company makes are very good. I personally use SQL Compare, Sql Data Compare and ANTS Profiler on a regular basis and all of these tools are essential in my toolbox. They certainly work much better than the tools that are in the box with Visual Studio. Chances are that if Reflector 7 added useful features I would have been more than happy to shell out my $39 to upgrade when the time is right. It’s Expensive to give away stuff for Free At the same time, this episode shows some of the big problems that come with ‘free’ tools. A lot of organizations are realizing that giving stuff away for free is actually quite expensive and the pay back is often very intangible if any at all. Those that rely on donations or other voluntary compensation find that they amount contributed is absolutely miniscule as to not matter at all. Yet at the same time I bet most of those clamouring the loudest on that Red Gate Reflector feedback page that Reflector won’t be free anymore probably have NEVER made a donation to any open source project or free tool ever. The expectation of Free these days is just too great – which is a shame I think. There’s a lot to be said for paid software and having somebody to hold to responsible to because you gave them some money. There’s an incentive –> payback –> responsibility model that seems to be missing from free software (not all of it, but a lot of it). While there certainly are plenty of bad apples in paid software as well, money tends to be a good motivator for people to continue working and improving products. Reasons for giving away stuff are many but often it’s a naïve desire to share things when things are simple. At first it might be no problem to volunteer time and effort but as products mature the fun goes out of it, and as the reality of product maintenance kicks in developers want to get something back for the time and effort they’re putting in doing non-glamorous work. It’s then when products die or languish and this is painful for all to watch. For Red Gate however, I think there was always a pretty good payback from the Reflector acquisition in terms of marketing: Visibility and possible positioning of their products although they seemed to have mostly ignored that option. On the other hand they started this off pretty badly even 2 and a half years back when they aquired Reflector from Lutz with the same arrogant attitude that is evident in the latest episode. You really gotta wonder what folks are thinking in management – the sad part is from advance emails that were circulating, they were fully aware of the shit storm they were inciting with this and I suspect they are banking on the sheer numbers of .NET developers to still make them a tidy chunk of change from upgrades… Alternatives are coming For me personally the single license isn’t a problem, but I actually have a tool that I sell (an interop Web Service proxy generation tool) to customers and one of the things I recommend to use with has been Reflector to view assembly information and to find which Interop classes to instantiate from the non-.NET environment. It’s been nice to use Reflector for this with its small footprint and zero-configuration installation. But now with V7 becoming a paid tool that option is not going to be available anymore. Luckily it looks like the .NET community is jumping to it and trying to fill the void. Amidst the Red Gate outrage a new library called ILSpy has sprung up and providing at least some of the core functionality of Reflector with an open source library. It looks promising going forward and I suspect there will be a lot more support and interest to support this project now that Reflector has gone over to the ‘dark side’…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011

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  • Big Data – Various Learning Resources – How to Start with Big Data? – Day 20 of 21

    - by Pinal Dave
    In yesterday’s blog post we learned how to become a Data Scientist for Big Data. In this article we will go over various learning resources related to Big Data. In this series we have covered many of the most essential details about Big Data. At the beginning of this series, I have encouraged readers to send me questions. One of the most popular questions is - “I want to learn more about Big Data. Where can I learn it?” This is indeed a great question as there are plenty of resources out to learn about Big Data and it is indeed difficult to select on one resource to learn Big Data. Hence I decided to write here a few of the very important resources which are related to Big Data. Learn from Pluralsight Pluralsight is a global leader in high-quality online training for hardcore developers.  It has fantastic Big Data Courses and I started to learn about Big Data with the help of Pluralsight. Here are few of the courses which are directly related to Big Data. Big Data: The Big Picture Big Data Analytics with Tableau NoSQL: The Big Picture Understanding NoSQL Data Analysis Fundamentals with Tableau I encourage all of you start with this video course as they are fantastic fundamentals to learn Big Data. Learn from Apache Resources at Apache are single point the most authentic learning resources. If you want to learn fundamentals and go deep about every aspect of the Big Data, I believe you must understand various concepts in Apache’s library. I am pretty impressed with the documentation and I am personally referencing it every single day when I work with Big Data. I strongly encourage all of you to bookmark following all the links for authentic big data learning. Haddop - The Apache Hadoop® project develops open-source software for reliable, scalable, distributed computing. Ambari: A web-based tool for provisioning, managing, and monitoring Apache Hadoop clusters which include support for Hadoop HDFS, Hadoop MapReduce, Hive, HCatalog, HBase, ZooKeeper, Oozie, Pig and Sqoop. Ambari also provides a dashboard for viewing cluster health such as heat maps and ability to view MapReduce, Pig and Hive applications visually along with features to diagnose their performance characteristics in a user-friendly manner. Avro: A data serialization system. Cassandra: A scalable multi-master database with no single points of failure. Chukwa: A data collection system for managing large distributed systems. HBase: A scalable, distributed database that supports structured data storage for large tables. Hive: A data warehouse infrastructure that provides data summarization and ad hoc querying. Mahout: A Scalable machine learning and data mining library. Pig: A high-level data-flow language and execution framework for parallel computation. ZooKeeper: A high-performance coordination service for distributed applications. Learn from Vendors One of the biggest issues with about learning Big Data is setting up the environment. Every Big Data vendor has different environment request and there are lots of things require to set up Big Data framework. Many of the users do not start with Big Data as they are afraid about the resources required to set up framework as well as a time commitment. Here Hortonworks have created fantastic learning environment. They have created Sandbox with everything one person needs to learn Big Data and also have provided excellent tutoring along with it. Sandbox comes with a dozen hands-on tutorial that will guide you through the basics of Hadoop as well it contains the Hortonworks Data Platform. I think Hortonworks did a fantastic job building this Sandbox and Tutorial. Though there are plenty of different Big Data Vendors I have decided to list only Hortonworks due to their unique setup. Please leave a comment if there are any other such platform to learn Big Data. I will include them over here as well. Learn from Books There are indeed few good books out there which one can refer to learn Big Data. Here are few good books which I have read. I will update the list as I will learn more. Ethics of Big Data Balancing Risk and Innovation Big Data for Dummies Head First Data Analysis: A Learner’s Guide to Big Numbers, Statistics, and Good Decisions If you search on Amazon there are millions of the books but I think above three books are a great set of books and it will give you great ideas about Big Data. Once you go through above books, you will have a clear idea about what is the next step you should follow in this series. You will be capable enough to make the right decision for yourself. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will wrap up this series of Big Data. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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  • .NET Security Part 2

    - by Simon Cooper
    So, how do you create partial-trust appdomains? Where do you come across them? There are two main situations in which your assembly runs as partially-trusted using the Microsoft .NET stack: Creating a CLR assembly in SQL Server with anything other than the UNSAFE permission set. The permissions available in each permission set are given here. Loading an assembly in ASP.NET in any trust level other than Full. Information on ASP.NET trust levels can be found here. You can configure the specific permissions available to assemblies using ASP.NET policy files. Alternatively, you can create your own partially-trusted appdomain in code and directly control the permissions and the full-trust API available to the assemblies you load into the appdomain. This is the scenario I’ll be concentrating on in this post. Creating a partially-trusted appdomain There is a single overload of AppDomain.CreateDomain that allows you to specify the permissions granted to assemblies in that appdomain – this one. This is the only call that allows you to specify a PermissionSet for the domain. All the other calls simply use the permissions of the calling code. If the permissions are restricted, then the resulting appdomain is referred to as a sandboxed domain. There are three things you need to create a sandboxed domain: The specific permissions granted to all assemblies in the domain. The application base (aka working directory) of the domain. The list of assemblies that have full-trust if they are loaded into the sandboxed domain. The third item is what allows us to have a fully-trusted API that is callable by partially-trusted code. I’ll be looking at the details of this in a later post. Granting permissions to the appdomain Firstly, the permissions granted to the appdomain. This is encapsulated in a PermissionSet object, initialized either with no permissions or full-trust permissions. For sandboxed appdomains, the PermissionSet is initialized with no permissions, then you add permissions you want assemblies loaded into that appdomain to have by default: PermissionSet restrictedPerms = new PermissionSet(PermissionState.None); // all assemblies need Execution permission to run at all restrictedPerms.AddPermission( new SecurityPermission(SecurityPermissionFlag.Execution)); // grant general read access to C:\config.xml restrictedPerms.AddPermission( new FileIOPermission(FileIOPermissionAccess.Read, @"C:\config.xml")); // grant permission to perform DNS lookups restrictedPerms.AddPermission( new DnsPermission(PermissionState.Unrestricted)); It’s important to point out that the permissions granted to an appdomain, and so to all assemblies loaded into that appdomain, are usable without needing to go through any SafeCritical code (see my last post if you’re unsure what SafeCritical code is). That is, partially-trusted code loaded into an appdomain with the above permissions (and so running under the Transparent security level) is able to create and manipulate a FileStream object to read from C:\config.xml directly. It is only for operations requiring permissions that are not granted to the appdomain that partially-trusted code is required to call a SafeCritical method that then asserts the missing permissions and performs the operation safely on behalf of the partially-trusted code. The application base of the domain This is simply set as a property on an AppDomainSetup object, and is used as the default directory assemblies are loaded from: AppDomainSetup appDomainSetup = new AppDomainSetup { ApplicationBase = @"C:\temp\sandbox", }; If you’ve read the documentation around sandboxed appdomains, you’ll notice that it mentions a security hole if this parameter is set correctly. I’ll be looking at this, and other pitfalls, that will break the sandbox when using sandboxed appdomains, in a later post. Full-trust assemblies in the appdomain Finally, we need the strong names of the assemblies that, when loaded into the appdomain, will be run as full-trust, irregardless of the permissions specified on the appdomain. These assemblies will contain methods and classes decorated with SafeCritical and Critical attributes. I’ll be covering the details of creating full-trust APIs for partial-trust appdomains in a later post. This is how you get the strongnames of an assembly to be executed as full-trust in the sandbox: // get the Assembly object for the assembly Assembly assemblyWithApi = ... // get the StrongName from the assembly's collection of evidence StrongName apiStrongName = assemblyWithApi.Evidence.GetHostEvidence<StrongName>(); Creating the sandboxed appdomain So, putting these three together, you create the appdomain like so: AppDomain sandbox = AppDomain.CreateDomain( "Sandbox", null, appDomainSetup, restrictedPerms, apiStrongName); You can then load and execute assemblies in this appdomain like any other. For example, to load an assembly into the appdomain and get an instance of the Sandboxed.Entrypoint class, implementing IEntrypoint, you do this: IEntrypoint o = (IEntrypoint)sandbox.CreateInstanceFromAndUnwrap( "C:\temp\sandbox\SandboxedAssembly.dll", "Sandboxed.Entrypoint"); // call method the Execute method on this object within the sandbox o.Execute(); The second parameter to CreateDomain is for security evidence used in the appdomain. This was a feature of the .NET 2 security model, and has been (mostly) obsoleted in the .NET 4 model. Unless the evidence is needed elsewhere (eg. isolated storage), you can pass in null for this parameter. Conclusion That’s the basics of sandboxed appdomains. The most important object is the PermissionSet that defines the permissions available to assemblies running in the appdomain; it is this object that defines the appdomain as full or partial-trust. The appdomain also needs a default directory used for assembly lookups as the ApplicationBase parameter, and you can specify an optional list of the strongnames of assemblies that will be given full-trust permissions if they are loaded into the sandboxed appdomain. Next time, I’ll be looking closer at full-trust assemblies running in a sandboxed appdomain, and what you need to do to make an API available to partial-trust code.

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  • Monitoring almost anything with BizTalk 360

    - by Michael Stephenson
    When you work in an integration environment it is common that you will find yourself in a situation where you integrate with some unusual applications or have some unusual dependencies. That is the nature of integration. When you work with BizTalk one of the common problems is that BizTalk often is the place where problems with applications you integrate with are highlighted and these external applications may have poor monitoring solutions. Fortunately if you are a working with a customer who uses BizTalk 360 then it contains a feature called the "Web Endpoint Manager". Typically the web endpoint manager is used to monitor web services that you integrate with and will ping them at appropriate times to make sure they return the expected HTTP status code. When you have an usual situation where you want to monitor something which is key to the success to your solution but you find yourself having to consider a significant custom solution to monitor the external dependency then the Web Endpoint Manager could be your friend. The endpoint manager monitors a url and checks for a certain status code. This means that you can create your own aspx web page and then make BizTalk 360 monitor this web page. Behind the web page you could write any code you wished. An example of this is architecture is shown in the below diagram.     In the custom web page you would implement some custom code to do whatever it is that you want to monitor. In the below code snippet you can see how the Page_Load default method is doing some kind of check then depending on the result of the check it returns a certain HTTP code. protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { var result = CheckSomething();   if (result == "Success") Response.StatusCode = 202; else if (result == "DatabaseError") Response.StatusCode = 510; else if (result == "SystemError") Response.StatusCode = 512; else Response.StatusCode = 513;   }   In BizTalk 360 you would go into the Monitor and Notify tab and then to BizTalk Environment which gives you access to the Web Endpoint Manager. You need an alarm setup which configures how the endpoint will be checked. I'm not going to go through the details of creating the alarm as this is already documented in the BizTalk 360 documentation. One point to note is that in the example I am using I setup a threshold alarm which means that the url is checked about every minute and if there is an error that persists for a period of time then the alarm will raise the alert notification. In my example I configured the alarm to fire if the error persisted for 3 minutes. The below picture shows accessing the endpoint manager.   In the web endpoint manager you would then configure your endpoint to monitor and the HTTP response code which indicates all is working fine. The below picture shows this. I now have my endpoint monitoring setup and BizTalk 360 should be checking my custom endpoint to see that it is available. If I wanted to manually sanity check that the endpoints I have registered are working fine then clicking the Refresh button will show if they are all good or not. If my custom ASP.net page which is checking my dependency gets a problem you will see in the endpoint manager that the status code does not match the expected return code and your endpoints will display in red and you can see the problem. The below picture shows this. If I use specific HTTP response codes for the errors the custom ASP.net page might encounter I can easily interpret these to know what the problem is. Using the alarms and notifications with BizTalk 360 it means when your endpoint goes into an error state you can easily configure email or SMS notifications from BizTalk 360 to tell you that your endpoint is having problems and you can use BizTalk 360 to help correlate what the problem is to allow you to investigate further. Below you can see the email which tells me my endpoint is not working.   When everything returns to normal you will see the status is now fixed and you will see a situation like below where you can see the WebEndpoints are now green and the return code matches what is expected.   Conclusion As you can see it is really easy to plug your own custom ASP.net page into the BizTalk 360 web endpoint monitoring feature. This extension then gives you the power to really extend the monitoring to almost anything you want as long as you can write some .net code to check that the dependency is available and working. It would be interesting to hear of any ideas people have around things they would monitor with this extension. More details on the end point monitor can be found on the following link: http://www.biztalk360.com/tour/monitoring_notifications

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  • JQuery and the multiple date selector

    - by David Carter
    Overview I recently needed to build a web page that would allow a user to capture some information and most importantly select multiple dates. This functionality was core to the application and hence had to be easy and quick to do. This is a public facing website so it had to be intuitive and very responsive. On the face of it it didn't seem too hard, I know enough juery to know what it is capable of and I was pretty sure that there would be some plugins that would help speed things along the way. I'm using ASP.Net MVC for this project as I really like the control that it gives you over the generated html and javascript. After years of Web Forms development it makes me feel like a web developer again and puts a smile on my face, that can only be a good thing!   The Calendar The first item that I needed on this page was a calender and I wanted the ability to: have the calendar be always visible select/deselect multiple dates at the same time bind to the select/deselect event so that I could update a seperate listing of the selected dates allow the user to move to another month and still have the calender remember any dates in the previous month I was hoping that there was a jQuery plugin that would meet my requirements and luckily there was! The jQuery datepicker does everything I want and there is quite a bit of documentation on how to use it. It makes use of a javascript date library date.js which I had not come across before but has a number of very useful date utilities that I have used elsewhere in the project. As you can see from the image there still needs to be some styling done! But there will be plenty of time for that later. The calendar clearly shows which dates the user has selected in red and i also make use of an unordered list to show the the selected dates so the user can always clearly see what has been selected even if they move to another month on the calendar. The javascript code that is responsible for listening to events on the calendar and synchronising the list look as follows: <script type="text/javascript">     $(function () {         $('.datepicker').datePicker({ inline: true, selectMultiple: true })         .bind(             'dateSelected',             function (e, selectedDate, $td, state) {                                 var dateInMillisecs = selectedDate.valueOf();                 if (state) { //adding a date                     var newDate = new Date(selectedDate);                     //insert the new item into the correct place in the list                     var listitems = $('#dateList').children('li').get();                     var liToAdd = "<li id='" + dateInMillisecs + "' >" + newDate.toString('ddd dd MMM yyyy') + "</li>";                     var targetIndex = -1;                     for (var i = 0; i < listitems.length; i++) {                         if (dateInMillisecs <= listitems[i].id) {                             targetIndex = i;                             break;                         }                     }                     if (targetIndex < 0) {                         $('#dateList').append(liToAdd);                     }                     else {                         $($('#dateList').children("li")[targetIndex]).before(liToAdd);                     }                 }                 else {//removing a date                     $('ul #' + dateInMillisecs).remove();                 }             }         )     }); When a date is selected on the calendar a function is called with a number of parameters passed to it. The ones I am particularly interested in are selectedDate and state. State tells me whether the user has selected or deselected the date passed in the selectedDate parameter. The <ul> that I am using to show the date has an id of dateList and this is what I will be adding and removing <li> items from. To make things a little more logical for the user I decided that the date should be sorted in chronological order, this means that each time a new date is selected it need to be placed in the correct position in the list. One way to do this would be just to append a new <li> to the list and then sort the whole list. However the approach I took was to get an array of all the items in the list var listitems = ('#dateList').children('li').get(); and then check the value of each item in the array against my new date and as soon as I found the case where the new date was less than the current item remember that position in the list as this is where I would insert it later. To make this work easily I decided to store a numeric representation of each date in the list in the id attribute of each <li> element. Fortunately javascript natively stores dates as the number of milliseconds since 1 Jan 1970. var dateInMillisecs = selectedDate.valueOf(); Please note that this is the value of the date in UTC! I always like to store dates in UTC as I learnt a long time ago that it saves a lot of refactoring at a later date... When I convert the dates back to their original back on the server I will need the UTC offset that was used when calculating the dates, this and how to actually serialise the dates and get them posted back will be the subject of another post.

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  • ACORD LOMA Session Highlights Policy Administration Trends

    - by [email protected]
    Helen Pitts, senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance, attended and is blogging from the ACORD LOMA Insurance Forum this week. Above: Paul Vancheri, Chief Information Officer, Fidelity Investments Life Insurance Company. Vancheri gave a presentation during the ACORD LOMA Insurance Systems Forum about the key elements of modern policy administration systems and how insurers can mitigate risk during legacy system migrations to safely introduce new technologies. When I had a few particularly challenging honors courses in college my father, a long-time technology industry veteran, used to say, "If you don't know how to do something go ask the experts. Find someone who has been there and done that, don't be afraid to ask the tough questions, and apply and build upon what you learn." (Actually he still offers this same advice today.) That's probably why my favorite sessions at industry events, like the ACORD LOMA Insurance Forum this week, are those that include insight on industry trends and case studies from carriers who share their experiences and offer best practices based upon their own lessons learned. I had the opportunity to attend a particularly insightful session Wednesday as Craig Weber, senior vice president of Celent's Insurance practice, and Paul Vancheri, CIO of Fidelity Life Investments, presented, "Managing the Dynamic Insurance Landscape: Enabling Growth and Profitability with a Modern Policy Administration System." Policy Administration Trends Growing the business is the top issue when it comes to IT among both life and annuity and property and casualty carriers according to Weber. To drive growth and capture market share from competitors, carriers are looking to modernize their core insurance systems, with 65 percent of those CIOs participating in recent Celent research citing plans to replace their policy administration systems. Weber noted that there has been continued focus and investment, particularly in the last three years, by software and technology vendors to offer modern, rules-based, configurable policy administration solutions. He added that these solutions are continuing to evolve with the ongoing aim of helping carriers rapidly meet shifting business needs--whether it is to launch new products to market faster than the competition, adapt existing products to meet shifting consumer and /or regulatory demands, or to exit unprofitable markets. He closed by noting the top four trends for policy administration either in the process of being adopted today or on the not-so-distant horizon for the future: Underwriting and service desktops New business automation Convergence of ultra-configurable and domain content-rich systems Better usability and screen design Mitigating the Risk When Making the Decision to Modernize Third-party analyst research from advisory firms like Celent was a key part of the due diligence process for Fidelity as it sought a replacement for its legacy policy administration system back in 2005, according to Vancheri. The company's business opportunities were outrunning system capability. Its legacy system had not been upgraded in several years and was deficient from a functionality and currency standpoint. This was constraining the carrier's ability to rapidly configure and bring new and complex products to market. The company sought a new, modern policy administration system, one that would enable it to keep pace with rapid and often unexpected industry changes and ahead of the competition. A cross-functional team that included representatives from finance, actuarial, operations, client services and IT conducted an extensive selection process. This process included deep documentation review, pilot evaluations, demonstrations of required functionality and complex problem-solving, infrastructure integration capability, and the ability to meet the company's desired cost model. The company ultimately selected an adaptive policy administration system that met its requirements to: Deliver ease of use - eliminating paper and rework, while easing the burden on representatives to sell and service annuities Provide customer parity - offering Web-based capabilities in alignment with the company's focus on delivering a consistent customer experience across its business Deliver scalability, efficiency - enabling automation, while simplifying and standardizing systems across its technology stack Offer desired functionality - supporting Fidelity's product configuration / rules management philosophy, focus on customer service and technology upgrade requirements Meet cost requirements - including implementation, professional services and licenses fees and ongoing maintenance Deliver upon business requirements - enabling the ability to drive time to market for new products and flexibility to make changes Best Practices for Addressing Implementation Challenges Based upon lessons learned during the company's implementation, Vancheri advised carriers to evaluate staffing capabilities and cultural impacts, review business requirements to avoid rebuilding legacy processes, factor in dependent systems, and review policies and practices to secure customer data. His formula for success: upfront planning + clear requirements = precision execution. Achieving a Return on Investment Vancheri said the decision to replace their legacy policy administration system and deploy a modern, rules-based system--before the economic downturn occurred--has been integral in helping the company adapt to shifting market conditions, while enabling growth in its direct channel sales of variable annuities. Since deploying its new policy admin system, the company has reduced its average time to market for new products from 12-15 months to 4.5 months. The company has since migrated its other products to the new system and retired its legacy system, significantly decreasing its overall product development cycle. From a processing standpoint Vancheri noted the company has achieved gains in automation, information, and ease of use, resulting in improved real-time data edits, controls for better quality, and tax handling capability. Plus, with by having only one platform to manage, the company has simplified its IT environment and is well positioned to deliver system enhancements for greater efficiencies. Commitment to Continuing the Investment In the short and longer term future Vancheri said the company plans to enhance business functionality to support money movement, wire automation, divorce processing on payout contracts and cost-based tracking improvements. It also plans to continue system upgrades to remain current as well as focus on further reducing cycle time, driving down maintenance costs, and integrating with other products. Helen Pitts is senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance focused on life/annuities and enterprise document automation.

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  • How does one find out which application is associated with an indicator icon?

    - by Amos Annoy
    It is trivial to do this in Ubuntu 10.04. The question is specific to Ubuntu 12.04. some pertinent references (src: answer to What is the difference between indicators and a system tray?: Here is the documentation for indicators: Application indicators | Ubuntu App Developer libindicate Reference Manual libappindicator Reference Manual also DesktopExperienceTeam/ApplicationIndicators - Ubuntu Wiki ref: How can the application that makes an indicator icon be identified? bookmark: How does one find out which application is associated with an indicator icon in Ubuntu 12.04? is a serious question for reasons & problems outlined below and for which a significant investment has been made and is necessary for remedial purposes. reviewing refs. to find an orchestrated resolution ... (an indicator ap. indicator maybe needed) This has nothing to do (does it?) with right click. How can an indicator's icon in Ubuntu 12.04 be matched with the program responsible for it's manifestation on the top panel? A list of running applications can include all processes using System Monitor. How is the correct matching process found for an indicator? How are the sub-indicator applications identified? These are the aps associated with the components of an indicators drop-down menu. (This was to be a separate question and quite naturally follows up the progression. It is included here as it is obvious there is no provisioning to track down offending either sub or indicator aps. easily.) (The examination of SM points out a rather poignant factor in the faster battery depletion and shortened run time - the ambient quiescent CPU rate in 12.04 is now well over 20% when previously, in 10.04, it was well under 10%, between 5% and 7%! - the huge inordinate cpu overhead originates from Xorg and compiz - after booting the system, only SM is run and All Processes are selected, sorting on %CPU - switching between Resources and Processes profiles the execution overhead problem - running another ap like gedit "Text Editor" briefly gives it CPU priority - going back to S&M several aps. are at the top of the list in order: gnome-system-monitor as expected, then: Xorg, compiz, unity-panel-service, hud-service, with dbus-daemon and kworker/x:y's mixed in with some expected daemons and background tasks like nm-applet - not only do Xorg and compiz require excessive CPU time but their entourage has to come along too! further exacerbating the problem - our compute bound tasks no longer work effectively in the field - reduced battery life, reduced CPU time for custom ap.s etc. - and all this precipitated from an examination of what is going on with the battery ap. indicator - this was and is not a flippant, rhetorical or idle musing but has consequences for the credible deployment of 12.04 to reduce the negative impact of its overhead in a production environment) (I have a problem with the battery indicator - it sometimes has % and other times hh:mm - it is necessary to know the ap. & v. to get more info on controlling same. ditto: There are issues with other indicator aps.: NM vs. iwlist/iwconfig conflict, BT ap. vs RF switch, Battery ap. w/ no suspend/sleep for poor battery runtime, ... the list goes on) Details from: How can I find Application Indicator ID's? suggests looking at: file:///usr/share/indicator-application/ordering-override.keyfile [Ordering Index Overrides] nm-applet=1 gnome-power-manager=2 ibus=3 gst-keyboard-xkb=4 gsd-keyboard-xkb=5 which solves the battery ap. identification, and presumably nm is NetworkManager for the rf icon, but the envelope, blue tooth and speaker indicator aps. are still a mystery. (Also, the ordering is not correlated.) Mind you, it was simple in the past to simply right click to get the About option to find the ap. & v. info. browsing around and about: file:///usr/share/indicator-application/ordering-override.keyfile examined: file:///usr/share/indicators file:///usr/share/indicators/messages/applications/ ... perhaps?/presumably? the information sought may be buried in file:///usr/share/indicators A reference in the comments was given to: What is the difference between indicators and a system tray? quoting from that source ... Unfortunately desktop indicators are not well documented yet: I couldn't find any specification doc ... Well ... the actual document https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopExperienceTeam/ApplicationIndicators#Summary does not help much but it's existential information provides considerable insight ...

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  • Dynamic Bursting ... no really!

    - by Tim Dexter
    If any of you have seen me or my colleagues present BI Publisher to you then we have hopefully mentioned 'bursting.' You may have even seen a demo where we talk about being able to take a batch of data, say invoices. Then split them by some criteria, say customer id; format them with a template; generate the output and then deliver the documents to the recipients with a click. We and especially I, always say this can be completely dynamic! By this I mean, that you could store customer preferences in a database. What layout would each customer like; what output format they would like and how they would like the document delivered. We (I) talk a good talk, but typically don't do the walk in a demo. We hard code everything in the bursting query or bursting control file to get the concept across. But no more peeps! I have finally put together a dynamic bursting demo! Its been minutes in the making but its been tough to find those minutes! Read on ... It's nothing amazing in terms of making the burst dynamic. I created a CUSTOMER_PREFS table with some simple UI in an APEX application so that I can maintain their requirements. In EBS you have descriptive flexfields that could do the same thing or probably even 'contact' fields to store most of the info. Here's my table structure: Name                           Type ------------------------------ -------- CUSTOMER_ID                    NUMBER(6) TEMPLATE_TYPE                  VARCHAR2(20) TEMPLATE_NAME                  VARCHAR2(120) OUTPUT_FORMAT                  VARCHAR2(20) DELIVERY_CHANNEL               VARCHAR2(50) EMAIL                          VARCHAR2(255) FAX                            VARCHAR2(20) ATTACH                         VARCHAR2(20) FILE_LOC                       VARCHAR2(255) Simple enough right? Just need CUSTOMER_ID as the key for the bursting engine to join it to the customer data at burst time. I have not covered the full delivery options, just email, fax and file location. Remember, its a demo people :0) However the principal is exactly the same for each delivery type. They each have a set of attributes that need to be provided and you will need to handle that in your bursting query. On a side note, in EBS, you use a bursting control file, you can apply the same principals that I'm laying out here you just need to get the customer bursting info into the XML data stream so that you can refer to it in the control file using XPATH expressions. Next, we need to look up what attributes or parameters are required for each delivery method. that can be found in the documentation here.  Now we know the combinations of parameters and delivery methods we can construct the query using a series a decode statements: select distinct cp.customer_id "KEY", cp.template_name TEMPLATE, cp.template_type TEMPLATE_FORMAT, 'en-US' LOCALE, cp.output_format OUTPUT_FORMAT, 'false' SAVE_FORMAT, cp.delivery_channel DEL_CHANNEL, decode(cp.delivery_channel,'FILE', cp.file_loc , 'EMAIL', cp.email , 'FAX', cp.fax) PARAMETER1, decode(cp.delivery_channel,'FILE', c.cust_last_name||'_orders.pdf' ,'EMAIL','[email protected]' ,'FAX', 'faxserver.com') PARAMETER2, decode(cp.delivery_channel,'FILE',NULL ,'EMAIL','[email protected]' ,'FAX', null) PARAMETER3, decode(cp.delivery_channel,'FILE',NULL ,'EMAIL','Your current orders' ,'FAX',NULL) PARAMETER4, decode(cp.delivery_channel,'FILE',NULL ,'EMAIL','Please find attached a copy of your current orders with BI Publisher, Inc' ,'FAX',NULL) PARAMETER5, decode(cp.delivery_channel,'FILE',NULL ,'EMAIL','false' ,'FAX',NULL) PARAMETER6, decode(cp.delivery_channel,'FILE',NULL ,'EMAIL','[email protected]' ,'FAX',NULL) PARAMETER7 from cust_prefs cp, customers c, orders_view ov where cp.customer_id = c.customer_id and cp.customer_id = ov.customer_id order by cp.customer_id Pretty straightforward, just need to test, test, test, the query and ensure it's bringing back the correct data based on each customers preferences. Notice the NULL values for parameters that are not relevant for a given delivery channel. You should end up with bursting control data that the bursting engine can use:  Now, your users can run the burst and documents will be formatted, generated and delivered based on the customer prefs. If you're interested in the example, I have used the sample OE schema data for the base report. The report files and CUST_PREFS table are zipped up here. The zip contains the data model (.xdmz), the report and templates (.xdoz) and the sql scripts to create and load data to the CUST_PREFS table.  Once you load the report into the catalog, you'll need to create the OE data connection and point the data model at it. You'll probably need to re-point the report to the data model too. Happy Bursting!

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  • Microsoft&rsquo;s new technical computing initiative

    - by Randy Walker
    I made a mental note from earlier in the year.  Microsoft literally buys computers by the truckload.  From what I understand, it’s a typical practice amongst large software vendors.  You plug a few wires in, you test it, and you instantly have mega tera tera flops (don’t hold me to that number).  Microsoft has been trying to plug away at their cloud services (named Azure).  Which, for the layman, means Microsoft runs your software on their computers, and as demand increases you can allocate more computing power on the fly. With this in mind, it doesn’t surprise me that I was recently sent an executive email concerning Microsoft’s new technical computing initiative.  I find it to be a great marketing idea with actual substance behind their real work.  From the programmer academic perspective, in college we dreamed about this type of processing power.  This has decades of computer science theory behind it. A copy of the email received.  (note that I almost deleted this email, thinking it was spam due to it’s length) We don't often think about how complex life really is. Take the relatively simple task of commuting to and from work: it is, in fact, a complicated interplay of variables such as weather, train delays, accidents, traffic patterns, road construction, etc. You can however, take steps to shorten your commute - using a good, predictive understanding of a few of these variables. In fact, you probably are already taking these inputs and instinctively building a predictive model that you act on daily to get to your destination more quickly. Now, when we apply the same method to very complex tasks, this modeling approach becomes much more challenging. Recent world events clearly demonstrated our inability to process vast amounts of information and variables that would have helped to more accurately predict the behavior of global financial markets or the occurrence and impact of a volcano eruption in Iceland. To make sense of issues like these, researchers, engineers and analysts create computer models of the almost infinite number of possible interactions in complex systems. But, they need increasingly more sophisticated computer models to better understand how the world behaves and to make fact-based predictions about the future. And, to do this, it requires a tremendous amount of computing power to process and examine the massive data deluge from cameras, digital sensors and precision instruments of all kinds. This is the key to creating more accurate and realistic models that expose the hidden meaning of data, which gives us the kind of insight we need to solve a myriad of challenges. We have made great strides in our ability to build these kinds of computer models, and yet they are still too difficult, expensive and time consuming to manage. Today, even the most complicated data-rich simulations cannot fully capture all of the intricacies and dependencies of the systems they are trying to model. That is why, across the scientific and engineering world, it is so hard to say with any certainty when or where the next volcano will erupt and what flight patterns it might affect, or to more accurately predict something like a global flu pandemic. So far, we just cannot collect, correlate and compute enough data to create an accurate forecast of the real world. But this is about to change. Innovations in technology are transforming our ability to measure, monitor and model how the world behaves. The implication for scientific research is profound, and it will transform the way we tackle global challenges like health care and climate change. It will also have a huge impact on engineering and business, delivering breakthroughs that could lead to the creation of new products, new businesses and even new industries. Because you are a subscriber to executive e-mails from Microsoft, I want you to be the first to know about a new effort focused specifically on empowering millions of the world's smartest problem solvers. Today, I am happy to introduce Microsoft's Technical Computing initiative. Our goal is to unleash the power of pervasive, accurate, real-time modeling to help people and organizations achieve their objectives and realize their potential. We are bringing together some of the brightest minds in the technical computing community across industry, academia and science at www.modelingtheworld.com to discuss trends, challenges and shared opportunities. New advances provide the foundation for tools and applications that will make technical computing more affordable and accessible where mathematical and computational principles are applied to solve practical problems. One day soon, complicated tasks like building a sophisticated computer model that would typically take a team of advanced software programmers months to build and days to run, will be accomplished in a single afternoon by a scientist, engineer or analyst working at the PC on their desktop. And as technology continues to advance, these models will become more complete and accurate in the way they represent the world. This will speed our ability to test new ideas, improve processes and advance our understanding of systems. Our technical computing initiative reflects the best of Microsoft's heritage. Ever since Bill Gates articulated the then far-fetched vision of "a computer on every desktop" in the early 1980's, Microsoft has been at the forefront of expanding the power and reach of computing to benefit the world. As someone who worked closely with Bill for many years at Microsoft, I am happy to share with you that the passion behind that vision is fully alive at Microsoft and is carried out in the creation of our new Technical Computing group. Enabling more people to make better predictions We have seen the impact of making greater computing power more available firsthand through our investments in high performance computing (HPC) over the past five years. Scientists, engineers and analysts in organizations of all sizes and sectors are finding that using distributed computational power creates societal impact, fuels scientific breakthroughs and delivers competitive advantages. For example, we have seen remarkable results from some of our current customers: Malaria strikes 300,000 to 500,000 people around the world each year. To help in the effort to eradicate malaria worldwide, scientists at Intellectual Ventures use software that simulates how the disease spreads and would respond to prevention and control methods, such as vaccines and the use of bed nets. Technical computing allows researchers to model more detailed parameters for more accurate results and receive those results in less than an hour, rather than waiting a full day. Aerospace engineering firm, a.i. solutions, Inc., needed a more powerful computing platform to keep up with the increasingly complex computational needs of its customers: NASA, the Department of Defense and other government agencies planning space flights. To meet that need, it adopted technical computing. Now, a.i. solutions can produce detailed predictions and analysis of the flight dynamics of a given spacecraft, from optimal launch times and orbit determination to attitude control and navigation, up to eight times faster. This enables them to avoid mistakes in any areas that can cause a space mission to fail and potentially result in the loss of life and millions of dollars. Western & Southern Financial Group faced the challenge of running ever larger and more complex actuarial models as its number of policyholders and products grew and regulatory requirements changed. The company chose an actuarial solution that runs on technical computing technology. The solution is easy for the company's IT staff to manage and adjust to meet business needs. The new solution helps the company reduce modeling time by up to 99 percent - letting the team fine-tune its models for more accurate product pricing and financial projections. Our Technical Computing direction Collaborating closely with partners across industry and academia, we must now extend the reach of technical computing even further to help predictive modelers and data explorers make faster, more accurate predictions. As we build the Technical Computing initiative, we will invest in three core areas: Technical computing to the cloud: Microsoft will play a leading role in bringing technical computing power to scientists, engineers and analysts through the cloud. Existing high- performance computing users will benefit from the ability to augment their on-premises systems with cloud resources that enable 'just-in-time' processing. This platform will help ensure processing resources are available whenever they are needed-reliably, consistently and quickly. Simplify parallel development: Today, computers are shipping with more processing power than ever, including multiple cores, but most modern software only uses a small amount of the available processing power. Parallel programs are extremely difficult to write, test and trouble shoot. However, a consistent model for parallel programming can help more developers unlock the tremendous power in today's modern computers and enable a new generation of technical computing. We are delivering new tools to automate and simplify writing software through parallel processing from the desktop... to the cluster... to the cloud. Develop powerful new technical computing tools and applications: We know scientists, engineers and analysts are pushing common tools (i.e., spreadsheets and databases) to the limits with complex, data-intensive models. They need easy access to more computing power and simplified tools to increase the speed of their work. We are building a platform to do this. Our development efforts will yield new, easy-to-use tools and applications that automate data acquisition, modeling, simulation, visualization, workflow and collaboration. This will allow them to spend more time on their work and less time wrestling with complicated technology. Thinking bigger There is so much left to be discovered and so many questions yet to be answered in the fascinating world around us. We believe the technical computing community will show us that we have not seen anything yet. Imagine just some of the breakthroughs this community could make possible: Better predictions to help improve the understanding of pandemics, contagion and global health trends. Climate change models that predict environmental, economic and human impact, accessible in real-time during key discussions and debates. More accurate prediction of natural disasters and their impact to develop more effective emergency response plans. With an ambitious charter in hand, this new team is ready to build on our progress to-date and execute Microsoft's technical computing vision over the months and years ahead. We will steadily invest in the right technologies, tools and talent, and work to bring together the technical computing community. I invite you to visit www.modelingtheworld.com today. We welcome your ideas and feedback. I look forward to making this journey with you and others who want to answer the world's biggest questions, discover solutions to problems that seem impossible and uncover a host of new opportunities to change the world we live in for the better. Bob

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  • Puppet: Making Windows Awesome Since 2011

    - by Robz / Fervent Coder
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/robz/archive/2014/08/07/puppet-making-windows-awesome-since-2011.aspxPuppet was one of the first configuration management (CM) tools to support Windows, way back in 2011. It has the heaviest investment on Windows infrastructure with 1/3 of the platform client development staff being Windows folks.  It appears that Microsoft believed an end state configuration tool like Puppet was the way forward, so much so that they cloned Puppet’s DSL (domain-specific language) in many ways and are calling it PowerShell DSC. Puppet Labs is pushing the envelope on Windows. Here are several things to note: Puppet x64 Ruby support for Windows coming in v3.7.0. An awesome ACL module (with order, SIDs and very granular control of permissions it is best of any CM). A wealth of modules that work with Windows on the Forge (and more on GitHub). Documentation solely for Windows folks - https://docs.puppetlabs.com/windows. Some of the common learning points with Puppet on Windows user are noted in this recent blog post. Microsoft OpenTech supports Puppet. Azure has the ability to deploy a Puppet Master (http://puppetlabs.com/solutions/microsoft). At Microsoft //Build 2014 in the Day 2 Keynote Puppet Labs CEO Luke Kanies co-presented with Mark Russonivich (http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2014/KEY02  fast forward to 19:30)! Puppet has a Visual Studio Plugin! It can be overwhelming learning a new tool like Puppet at first, but Puppet Labs has some resources to help you on that path. Take a look at the Learning VM, which has a quest-based learning tool. For real-time questions, feel free to drop onto #puppet on freenode.net (yes, some folks still use IRC) with questions, and #puppet-dev with thoughts/feedback on the language itself. You can subscribe to puppet-users / puppet-dev mailing lists. There is also ask.puppetlabs.com for questions and Server Fault if you want to go to a Stack Exchange site. There are books written on learning Puppet. There are even Puppet User Groups (PUGs) and other community resources! Puppet does take some time to learn, but with anything you need to learn, you need to weigh the benefits versus the ramp up time. I learned NHibernate once, it had a very high ramp time back then but was the only game on the street. Puppet’s ramp up time is considerably less than that. The advantage is that you are learning a DSL, and it can apply to multiple platforms (Linux, Windows, OS X, etc.) with the same Puppet resource constructs. As you learn Puppet you may wonder why it has a DSL instead of just leveraging the language of Ruby (or maybe this is one of those things that keeps you up wondering at night). I like the DSL over a small layer on top of Ruby. It allows the Puppet language to be portable and go more places. It makes you think about the end state of what you want to achieve in a declarative sense instead of in an imperative sense. You may also find that right now Puppet doesn’t run manifests (scripts) in order of the way resources are specified. This is the number one learning point for most folks. As a long time consternation of some folks about Puppet, manifest ordering was not possible in the past. In fact it might be why some other CMs exist! As of 3.3.0, Puppet can do manifest ordering, and it will be the default in Puppet 4. http://puppetlabs.com/blog/introducing-manifest-ordered-resources You may have caught earlier that I mentioned PowerShell DSC. But what about DSC? Shouldn’t that be what Windows users want to choose? Other CMs are integrating with DSC, will Puppet follow suit and integrate with DSC? The biggest concern that I have with DSC is it’s lack of visibility in fine-grained reporting of changes (which Puppet has). The other is that it is a very young Microsoft product (pre version 3, you know what they say :) ). I tried getting it working in December and ran into some issues. I’m hoping that newer releases are there that actually work, it does have some promising capabilities, it just doesn’t quite come up to the standard of something that should be used in production. In contrast Puppet is almost a ten year old language with an active community! It’s very stable, and when trusting your business to configuration management, you want something that has been around awhile and has been proven. Give DSC another couple of releases and you might see more folks integrating with it. That said there may be a future with DSC integration. Portability and fine-grained reporting of configuration changes are reasons to take a closer look at Puppet on Windows. Yes, Puppet on Windows is here to stay and it’s continually getting better folks.

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