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• Week in Geek: FBI Back Door in OpenBSD Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  This week we learned how to migrate bookmarks from Delicious to Diigo, fix annoying arrows, play old-school DOS games, schedule smart computer shutdowns, use breaks in Microsoft Word to better format documents, check the condition of hard-disks using Linux disk utilities, & what the Linux fstab is and how it works. Photo by Jameson42. Random Geek Links Another week with extra news link goodness to help keep you up to date. Photo by justmakeit. Report of FBI back door roils OpenBSD community Allegations that the FBI surreptitiously placed a back door into the OpenBSD operating system have alarmed the computer security community, prompting calls for an audit of the source code and claims that the charges must be a hoax. Fortinet: Job outlook improving for cybercrooks In an ironic twist in the job market, more positions will open up for developers who can write customized malware packers, people who can break CAPTCHA codes, and distributors who can spread malicious code, according to Fortinet. Enisa: Malware for smartphones is a ’serious risk’ Businesses and consumers are at risk of data breaches through smartphone use, according to the European Network and Information Security Agency. The trick with the f: Google and Microsoft web sites distribute malware Last week, Google’s DoubleClick advertising platform and Microsoft’s rad.msn.com online ad network briefly distributed malware to other web sites in the form of advertising banners. New scam tactic: Fake disk defraggers It would appear that scammers are trying out new programs to see which might best confuse potential victims and evade detection by legitimate antivirus software. Microsoft closes IE and Stuxnet holes As previously announced, Microsoft has released 17 security updates to close 40 security holes. All four Windows holes so far disclosed in connection with Stuxnet have now been closed. Microsoft Offers H.264 Support to Firefox on Windows via Add-On The new HTML5 Extension for Windows Media Player Firefox Plug-in add-on from Microsoft offers users that are running Firefox on Windows 7 H.264 support for HTML5 video playback. Google proclaims Chrome business-ready Google has announced that Chrome is ready for corporate use. Microsoft Tells Exchange Customers to Think Twice Before Opting for Google Message Continuity This week, Microsoft is telling companies still running Exchange 2010’s precursors that they should carefully consider the implications of embracing Google Message Continuity. Who Google has in mind for its Chrome OS users Steven Vaughan-Nichols explains why he feels that Chrome OS will be ideal for either office-workers or people who need a computer, but do not know the first thing about how to use one safely. Oracle takes office suite to the cloud Oracle has introduced Cloud Office 1.0, a cloud-based version of its office suite, which is aimed at web and mobile users. Mozilla pays premiums for reports of vulnerabilities The Mozilla Foundation has followed Google’s example by expanding its rewards program for reports of vulnerabilities in its Web applications. Who bought those 882 Novell patents? Not just Microsoft The mysterious CPTN Holdings — the organization that bought the 882 Novell patents as part of the terms of the Attachmate acquisition of Novell – has been unmasked (Microsoft, Apple, EMC and Oracle). Appeals court: Feds need warrants for e-mail Police must obtain search warrants before perusing Internet users’ e-mail records, a federal appeals court ruled today in a landmark decision that struck down part of a 1986 law allowing warrantless access. Geek Video of the Week What happens when someone plays a wicked prank by shoveling crazy snow paths that lead to dead ends or turn back on themselves? Watch to find out! Photo by CollegeHumor. Janitor Snow Shoveling Prank Random TinyHacker Links The Oatmeal on Cat vs Internet What lengths will our poor neglected kitty hero have to go to in order to get some attention? Guide On Using JoliCloud With Windows JoliCloud is a nifty operating system that’s made for people who need a light-weight OS that’s mostly cloud based. Check this guide on using it with Windows. Use Cameyo to Easily Create Portable Programs Here’s a nifty tool to make portable apps out of programs in Windows. Check out the guide to do it. Better Family Tech Support A nice new site by Google to help members of family understand how computers work. Track Your Stolen Mobile Phone With F-Secure A useful anti-theft tool for your mobile phone. Super User Questions Another week with great answers to popular questions from Super User. What Chrome password manager fits my requirements? What’s the best way to be able to reimage windows computers? Could you suggest feature-rich disk-based personal backup program for linux (and I’ve seen a few)? What is IPv6 and why should I care? Is there any way to find out what programs are trying to connect to Internet on windows? How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Here are our hottest articles full of geeky goodness from this past week at HTG. 20 OS X Keyboard Shortcuts You Might Not Know Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0 Kills Viruses Dead. Download It Now. Is Your Desktop Printer More Expensive Than Printing Services? Ask the Readers: Would You Be Willing to Give Windows Up and Use a Different O.S.? The Twelve Days of Geekmas One Year Ago on How-To Geek Enjoy reading through our latest batch of retro-geek goodness from one year ago. Macrium Reflect is a Free and Easy To Use Backup Utility How To Turn a Physical Computer Into A Virtual Machine with Disk2vhd How To Restore Windows 7 from a System Image How To Manage Hard Drive Space Used by Windows 7 Backup and Restore How To Manage Hibernate Mode in Windows 7 The Geek Note That is all we have for you this week, so see you back here again after the holidays! Got a great tip? Send it in to us at [email protected]. Photo by mitjamavsar. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials The 50 Best Registry Hacks that Make Windows Better The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor Deathwing the Destroyer – WoW Cataclysm Dragon Wallpaper Drag2Up Lets You Drag and Drop Files to the Web With Ease The Spam Police Parts 1 and 2 – Goodbye Spammers [Videos] Snow Angels Theme for Windows 7 Exploring the Jungle Ruins Wallpaper Protect Your Privacy When Browsing with Chrome and Iron Browser

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• Creating a dynamic proxy generator with c# – Part 2 – Interceptor Design

  - by SeanMcAlinden

  Creating a dynamic proxy generator – Part 1 – Creating the Assembly builder, Module builder and caching mechanism For the latest code go to http://rapidioc.codeplex.com/ Before getting too involved in generating the proxy, I thought it would be worth while going through the intended design, this is important as the next step is to start creating the constructors for the proxy. Each proxy derives from a specified type The proxy has a corresponding constructor for each of the base type constructors The proxy has overrides for all methods and properties marked as Virtual on the base type For each overridden method, there is also a private method whose sole job is to call the base method. For each overridden method, a delegate is created whose sole job is to call the private method that calls the base method. The following class diagram shows the main classes and interfaces involved in the interception process. I’ll go through each of them to explain their place in the overall proxy.   IProxy Interface The proxy implements the IProxy interface for the sole purpose of adding custom interceptors. This allows the created proxy interface to be cast as an IProxy and then simply add Interceptors by calling it’s AddInterceptor method. This is done internally within the proxy building process so the consumer of the API doesn’t need knowledge of this. IInterceptor Interface The IInterceptor interface has one method: Handle. The handle method accepts a IMethodInvocation parameter which contains methods and data for handling method interception. Multiple classes that implement this interface can be added to the proxy. Each method override in the proxy calls the handle method rather than simply calling the base method. How the proxy fully works will be explained in the next section MethodInvocation. IMethodInvocation Interface & MethodInvocation class The MethodInvocation will contain one main method and multiple helper properties. Continue Method The method Continue() has two functions hidden away from the consumer. When Continue is called, if there are multiple Interceptors, the next Interceptors Handle method is called. If all Interceptors Handle methods have been called, the Continue method then calls the base class method. Properties The MethodInvocation will contain multiple helper properties including at least the following: Method Name (Read Only) Method Arguments (Read and Write) Method Argument Types (Read Only) Method Result (Read and Write) – this property remains null if the method return type is void Target Object (Read Only) Return Type (Read Only) DefaultInterceptor class The DefaultInterceptor class is a simple class that implements the IInterceptor interface. Here is the code: DefaultInterceptor namespace Rapid.DynamicProxy.Interception {     /// <summary>     /// Default interceptor for the proxy.     /// </summary>     /// <typeparam name="TBase">The base type.</typeparam>     public class DefaultInterceptor<TBase> : IInterceptor<TBase> where TBase : class     {         /// <summary>         /// Handles the specified method invocation.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="methodInvocation">The method invocation.</param>         public void Handle(IMethodInvocation<TBase> methodInvocation)         {             methodInvocation.Continue();         }     } } This is automatically created in the proxy and is the first interceptor that each method override calls. It’s sole function is to ensure that if no interceptors have been added, the base method is still called. Custom Interceptor Example A consumer of the Rapid.DynamicProxy API could create an interceptor for logging when the FirstName property of the User class is set. Just for illustration, I have also wrapped a transaction around the methodInvocation.Coninue() method. This means that any overriden methods within the user class will run within a transaction scope. MyInterceptor public class MyInterceptor : IInterceptor<User<int, IRepository>> {     public void Handle(IMethodInvocation<User<int, IRepository>> methodInvocation)     {         if (methodInvocation.Name == "set_FirstName")         {             Logger.Log("First name seting to: " + methodInvocation.Arguments[0]);         }         using (TransactionScope scope = new TransactionScope())         {             methodInvocation.Continue();         }         if (methodInvocation.Name == "set_FirstName")         {             Logger.Log("First name has been set to: " + methodInvocation.Arguments[0]);         }     } } Overridden Method Example To show a taster of what the overridden methods on the proxy would look like, the setter method for the property FirstName used in the above example would look something similar to the following (this is not real code but will look similar): set_FirstName public override void set_FirstName(string value) {     set_FirstNameBaseMethodDelegate callBase =         new set_FirstNameBaseMethodDelegate(this.set_FirstNameProxyGetBaseMethod);     object[] arguments = new object[] { value };     IMethodInvocation<User<IRepository>> methodInvocation =         new MethodInvocation<User<IRepository>>(this, callBase, "set_FirstName", arguments, interceptors);          this.Interceptors[0].Handle(methodInvocation); } As you can see, a delegate instance is created which calls to a private method on the class, the private method calls the base method and would look like the following: calls base setter private void set_FirstNameProxyGetBaseMethod(string value) {     base.set_FirstName(value); } The delegate is invoked when methodInvocation.Continue() is called within an interceptor. The set_FirstName parameters are loaded into an object array. The current instance, delegate, method name and method arguments are passed into the methodInvocation constructor (there will be more data not illustrated here passed in when created including method info, return types, argument types etc.) The DefaultInterceptor’s Handle method is called with the methodInvocation instance as it’s parameter. Obviously methods can have return values, ref and out parameters etc. in these cases the generated method override body will be slightly different from above. I’ll go into more detail on these aspects as we build them. Conclusion I hope this has been useful, I can’t guarantee that the proxy will look exactly like the above, but at the moment, this is pretty much what I intend to do. Always worth downloading the code at http://rapidioc.codeplex.com/ to see the latest. There will also be some tests that you can debug through to help see what’s going on. Cheers, Sean.

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• Week in Geek: US Govt E-card Scam Siphons Confidential Data Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  This week we learned how to “back up photos to Flickr, automate repetitive tasks, & normalize MP3 volume”, enable “stereo mix” in Windows 7 to record audio, create custom papercraft toys, read up on three alternatives to Apple’s flaky iOS alarm clock, decorated our desktops & app docks with Google icon packs, and more. Photo by alexschlegel. Random Geek Links It has been a busy week on the security & malware fronts and we have a roundup of the latest news to help keep you updated. Photo by TopTechWriter.US. US govt e-card scam hits confidential data A fake U.S. government Christmas e-card has managed to siphon off gigabytes of sensitive data from a number of law enforcement and military staff who work on cybersecurity matters, many of whom are involved in computer crime investigations. Security tool uncovers multiple bugs in every browser Michal Zalewski reports that he discovered the vulnerability in Internet Explorer a while ago using his cross_fuzz fuzzing tool and reported it to Microsoft in July 2010. Zalewski also used cross_fuzz to discover bugs in other browsers, which he also reported to the relevant organisations. Microsoft to fix Windows holes, but not ones in IE Microsoft said that it will release two security bulletins next week fixing three holes in Windows, but it is still investigating or working on fixing holes in Internet Explorer that have been reportedly exploited in attacks. Microsoft warns of Windows flaw affecting image rendering Microsoft has warned of a Windows vulnerability that could allow an attacker to take control of a computer if the user is logged on with administrative rights. Windows 7 Not Affected by Critical 0-Day in the Windows Graphics Rendering Engine While confirming that details on a Critical zero-day vulnerability have made their way into the wild, Microsoft noted that customers running the latest iteration of Windows client and server platforms are not exposed to any risks. Microsoft warns of Office-related malware Microsoft’s Malware Protection Center issued a warning this week that it has spotted malicious code on the Internet that can take advantage of a flaw in Word and infect computers after a user does nothing more than read an e-mail. *Refers to a flaw that was addressed in the November security patch releases. Make sure you have all of the latest security updates installed. Unpatched hole in ImgBurn disk burning application According to security specialist Secunia, a highly critical vulnerability in ImgBurn, a lightweight disk burning application, can be used to remotely compromise a user’s system. Hole in VLC Media Player Virtual Security Research (VSR) has identified a vulnerability in VLC Media Player. In versions up to and including 1.1.5 of the VLC Media Player. Flash Player sandbox can be bypassed Flash applications run locally can read local files and send them to an online server – something which the sandbox is supposed to prevent. Chinese auction site touts hacked iTunes accounts Tens of thousands of reportedly hacked iTunes accounts have been found on Chinese auction site Taobao, but the company claims it is unable to take action unless there are direct complaints. What happened in the recent Hotmail outage Mike Schackwitz explains the cause of the recent Hotmail outage. DOJ sends order to Twitter for Wikileaks-related account info The U.S. Justice Department has obtained a court order directing Twitter to turn over information about the accounts of activists with ties to Wikileaks, including an Icelandic politician, a legendary Dutch hacker, and a U.S. computer programmer. Google gets court to block Microsoft Interior Department e-mail win The U.S. Federal Claims Court has temporarily blocked Microsoft from proceeding with the $49.3 million, five-year DOI contract that it won this past November. Google Apps customers get email lockdown Companies and organisations using Google Apps are now able to restrict the email access of selected users. LibreOffice Is the Default Office Suite for Ubuntu 11.04 Matthias Klose has announced some details regarding the replacement of the old OpenOffice.org 3.2.1 packages with the new LibreOffice 3.3 ones, starting with the upcoming Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) Alpha 2 release. Sysadmin Geek Tips Photo by Filomena Scalise. How to Setup Software RAID for a Simple File Server on Ubuntu Do you need a file server that is cheap and easy to setup, “rock solid” reliable, and has Email Alerting? This tutorial shows you how to use Ubuntu, software RAID, and SaMBa to accomplish just that. How to Control the Order of Startup Programs in Windows While you can specify the applications you want to launch when Windows starts, the ability to control the order in which they start is not available. However, there are a couple of ways you can easily overcome this limitation and control the startup order of applications. Random TinyHacker Links Using Opera Unite to Send Large Files A tutorial on using Opera Unite to easily send huge files from your computer. WorkFlowy is a Useful To-do List Tool A cool to-do list tool that lets you integrate multiple tasks in one single list easily. Playing Flash Videos on iOS Devices Yes, you can play flash videos on jailbroken iPhones. Here’s a tutorial. Clear Safari History and Cookies On iPhone A tutorial on clearing your browser history on iPhone and other iOS devices. Monitor Your Internet Usage Here’s a cool, cross-platform tool to monitor your internet bandwidth. Super User Questions See what the community had to say on these popular questions from Super User this week. Why is my upload speed much less than my download speed? Where should I find drivers for my laptop if it didn’t come with a driver disk? OEM Office 2010 without media – how to reinstall? Is there a point to using theft tracking software like Prey on my laptop, if you have login security? Moving an “all-in-one” PC when turned on/off How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Get caught up on your HTG reading with our hottest articles from this past week. How to Combine Rescue Disks to Create the Ultimate Windows Repair Disk How To Boot 10 Different Live CDs From 1 USB Flash Drive What is Camera Raw, and Why Would a Professional Prefer it to JPG? Did You Know Facebook Has Built-In Shortcut Keys? The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: The Basics One Year Ago on How-To Geek Enjoy looking through our latest gathering of retro article goodness. Learning Windows 7: Create a Homegroup & Join a New Computer To It How To Disconnect a Machine from a Homegroup Use Remote Desktop To Access Other Computers On a Small Office or Home Network How To Share Files and Printers Between Windows 7 and Vista Allow Users To Run Only Specified Programs in Windows 7 The Geek Note That is all we have for you this week and we hope your first week back at work or school has gone very well now that the holidays are over. Know a great tip? Send it in to us at [email protected]. Photo by Pamela Machado. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC HTG Projects: How to Create Your Own Custom Papercraft Toy How to Combine Rescue Disks to Create the Ultimate Windows Repair Disk What is Camera Raw, and Why Would a Professional Prefer it to JPG? The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: The Basics How To Boot 10 Different Live CDs From 1 USB Flash Drive The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 Arctic Theme for Windows 7 Gives Your Desktop an Icy Touch Install LibreOffice via PPA and Receive Auto-Updates in Ubuntu Creative Portraits Peek Inside the Guts of Modern Electronics Scenic Winter Lane Wallpaper to Create a Relaxing Mood Access Your Web Apps Directly Using the Context Menu in Chrome The Deep – Awesome Use of Metal Objects as Deep Sea Creatures [Video]

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• Why can't I reinstall MySQL?

  - by Johannes Nielsen

  I've been looking all around the Internet for an answer but didn't find anything. I hope you can help me now. I have a server with MySQL. From one day to another, MySQL didn't let me enter with my root password anymore (accsess denied for user 'root'@'localhost' using password: 'YES'). So I tried two ways to reset the password: No.1: I typed: shell> /etc/init.d/mysqld stop To stop MySQL. Then I restarted it skipping the grant-tables: shell> mysqld_safe --skip-grant-tables So I was able to log in as root and change the password using: mysql> UPDATE mysql.user SET Password = PASSWORD('MyNewPassword') WHERE User = 'root'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES; I restarted MySQL and tried to log in as root with my new password - didn't work. So I tried the solution that's described here: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/resetting-permissions.html (I don't want to post it here because this post is already pretty long). Didn't work either. Actually it made it worse, because since that day, every time I try to start MySQL, it doesn't even ask me for my password, but I get: shell> ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (111) Well, I've looked up what it means and found that my mysqld.sock is missing. I tried to create it using touch but MySQL can't start with that socket. Now I'm trying to reinstall MySQL but everytime I type in shell> apt-get --purge remove mysql-server mysql-common mysql-client In that or any other order or every one of those three alone, I get: shell> Reading package lists... Done shell> Building dependency tree shell> Reading state information... Done shell> Package mysql-client is not installed, so not removed shell> Package mysql-server is not installed, so not removed shell> You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these: shell> The following packages have unmet dependencies: shell> libmysqlclient18 : Depends: mysql-common (>= 5.5.28-0ubuntu0.12.04.2) but it is not going to be installed shell> libmysqlclient18:i386 : Depends: mysql-common:i386 (>= 5.5.28-0ubuntu0.12.04.2) shell> mysql-client-5.5 : Depends: mysql-common (>= 5.5.28-0ubuntu0.12.04.2) but it is not going to be installed shell> mysql-server-5.5 : PreDepends: mysql-common (>= 5.5.28-0ubuntu0.12.04.2) but it is not going to be installed shell> psa-firewall : Depends: plesk-core (>= 11.0.9) but it is not installable shell> Depends: mysql-server but it is not going to be installed shell> psa-spamassassin : Depends: plesk-core (>= 11.0.9) but it is not installable shell> psa-vpn : Depends: plesk-core (>= 11.0.9) but it is not installable shell> Depends: plesk-base (>= 11.0.9) but it is not installable shell> Depends: mysql-server but it is not going to be installed shell> E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution). So I said to my self "let's just remove those files with depenencies, too" (that psa-stuff since plesk is virtual and can't be uninstalled)... Guess what happened: shell> Reading package lists... Done shell> Building dependency tree shell> Reading state information... Done shell> Package mysql-client is not installed, so not removed shell> Package mysql-server is not installed, so not removed shell> You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these: shell> The following packages have unmet dependencies: shell> libmysqlclient18 : Depends: mysql-common (>= 5.5.28-0ubuntu0.12.04.2) but it is not going to be installed shell> libmysqlclient18:i386 : Depends: mysql-common:i386 (>= 5.5.28-0ubuntu0.12.04.2) shell> mysql-client-5.5 : Depends: mysql-common (>= 5.5.28-0ubuntu0.12.04.2) but it is not going to be installed shell> mysql-server-5.5 : PreDepends: mysql-common (>= 5.5.28-0ubuntu0.12.04.2) but it is not going to be installed shell> E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution). Of course I tried apt-get -f install, too many times even. What am I doing wrong? No matter, which other packages I include into apt-get --purge remove, I always get new dependencies. Do I have to delete every MySQL-related directory and file manually? Hope there's someone out there who can help me! Cheers! EDIT: After trying apt-get purge mysql-server mysql-common mysql-client libmysqlclient18 libmysqlclient18:i386 mysql-client-5.5 mysql-server-5.5 psa-firewall psa-spamassassin psa-vpn Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Package mysql-client is not installed, so not removed Package mysql-server is not installed, so not removed You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these: The following packages have unmet dependencies: libdbd-mysql-perl : Depends: libmysqlclient18 (>= 5.5.13-1) but it is not going to be installed libmyodbc : Depends: libmysqlclient18 (>= 5.5.13-1) but it is not going to be installed libqt4-sql-mysql:i386 : Depends: libmysqlclient18:i386 (>= 5.5.13-1) but it is not going to be installed php5-mysql : Depends: libmysqlclient18 (>= 5.5.13-1) but it is not going to be installed ruby-mysql : Depends: libmysqlclient18 (>= 5.5.13-1) but it is not going to be installed E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution). So I tried to remove all these and got: Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Package mysql-client is not installed, so not removed Package mysql-server is not installed, so not removed You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these:qlclient18:i386 mysql The following packages have unmet dependencies: libmysql-ruby1.8 : Depends: ruby-mysql but it is not going to be installed E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution). And actually I think removing that file, too solved my problem :-S Next time I'll try everything before asking :D Thank you Eric for keeping me couraged to just go on removing :D

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• Conversation as User Assistance

  - by ultan o'broin

  Applications User Experience members (Erika Web, Laurie Pattison, and I) attended the User Assistance Europe Conference in Stockholm, Sweden. We were impressed with the thought leadership and practical application of ideas in Anne Gentle's keynote address "Social Web Strategies for Documentation". After the conference, we spoke with Anne to explore the ideas further. Anne Gentle (left) with Applications User Experience Senior Director Laurie Pattison In Anne's book called Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation, she explains how user assistance is undergoing a seismic shift. The direction is away from the old print manuals and online help concept towards a web-based, user community-driven solution using social media tools. User experience professionals now have a vast range of such tools to start and nurture this "conversation": blogs, wikis, forums, social networking sites, microblogging systems, image and video sharing sites, virtual worlds, podcasts, instant messaging, mashups, and so on. That user communities are a rich source of user assistance is not a surprise, but the extent of available assistance is. For example, we know from the Consortium for Service Innovation that there has been an 'explosion' of user-generated content on the web. User-initiated community conversations provide as much as 30 times the number of official help desk solutions for consortium members! The growing reliance on user community solutions is clearly a user experience issue. Anne says that user assistance as conversation "means getting closer to users and helping them perform well. User-centered design has been touted as one of the most important ideas developed in the last 20 years of workplace writing. Now writers can take the idea of user-centered design a step further by starting conversations with users and enabling user assistance in interactions." Some of Anne's favorite examples of this paradigm shift from the world of traditional documentation to community conversation include: Writer Bob Bringhurst's blog about Adobe InDesign and InCopy products and Adobe's community help The Microsoft Development Network Community Center ·The former Sun (now Oracle) OpenDS wiki, NetBeans Ruby and other community approaches to engage diverse audiences using screencasts, wikis, and blogs. Cisco's customer support wiki, EMC's community, as well as Symantec and Intuit's approaches The efforts of Ubuntu, Mozilla, and the FLOSS community generally Adobe Writer Bob Bringhurst's Blog Oracle is not without a user community conversation too. Besides the community discussions and blogs around documentation offerings, we have the My Oracle Support Community forums, Oracle Technology Network (OTN) communities, wiki, blogs, and so on. We have the great work done by our user groups and customer councils. Employees like David Haimes reach out, and enthusiastic non-employee gurus like Chet Justice (OracleNerd), Floyd Teter and Eddie Awad provide great "how-to" information too. But what does this paradigm shift mean for existing technical writers as users turn away from the traditional printable PDF manual deliverables? We asked Anne after the conference. The writer role becomes one of conversation initiator or enabler. The role evolves, along with the process, as the users define their concept of user assistance and terms of engagement with the product instead of having it pre-determined. It is largely a case now of "inventing the job while you're doing it, instead of being hired for it" Anne said. There is less emphasis on formal titles. Anne mentions that her own title "Content Stacker" at OpenStack; others use titles such as "Content Curator" or "Community Lead". However, the role remains one essentially about communications, "but of a new type--interacting with users, moderating, curating content, instead of sitting down to write a manual from start to finish." Clearly then, this role is open to more than professional technical writers. Product managers who write blogs, developers who moderate forums, support professionals who update wikis, rock star programmers with a penchant for YouTube are ideal. Anyone with the product knowledge, empathy for the user, and flair for relationships on the social web can join in. Some even perform these roles already but do not realize it. Anne feels the technical communicator space will move from hiring new community conversation professionals (who are already active in the space through blogging, tweets, wikis, and so on) to retraining some existing writers over time. Our own research reveals that the established proponents of community user assistance even set employee performance objectives for internal content curators about the amount of community content delivered by people outside the organization! To take advantage of the conversations on the web as user assistance, enterprises must first establish where on the spectrum their community lies. "What is the line between community willingness to contribute and the enterprise objectives?" Anne asked. "The relationship with users must be managed and also measured." Anne believes that the process can start with a "just do it" approach. Begin by reaching out to existing user groups, individual bloggers and tweeters, forum posters, early adopter program participants, conference attendees, customer advisory board members, and so on. Use analytical tools to measure the level of conversation about your products and services to show a return on investment (ROI), winning management support. Anne emphasized that success with the community model is dependent on lowering the technical and motivational barriers so that users can readily contribute to the conversation. Simple tools must be provided, and guidelines, if any, must be straightforward but not mandatory. The conversational approach is one where traditional style and branding guides do not necessarily apply. Tools and infrastructure help users to create content easily, to search and find the information online, read it, rate it, translate it, and participate further in the content's evolution. Recognizing contributors by using ratings on forums, giving out Twitter kudos, conference invitations, visits to headquarters, free products, preview releases, and so on, also encourages the adoption of the conversation model. The move to conversation as user assistance is not free, but there is a business ROI. The conversational model means that customer service is enhanced, as user experience moves from a functional to a valued, emotional level. Studies show a positive correlation between loyalty and financial performance (Consortium for Service Innovation, 2010), and as customer experience and loyalty become key differentiators, user experience professionals cannot explore the model's possibilities. The digital universe (measured at 1.2 million petabytes in 2010) is doubling every 12 to 18 months, and 70 percent of that universe consists of user-generated content (IDC, 2010). Conversation as user assistance cannot be ignored but must be embraced. It is a time to manage for abundance, not scarcity. Besides, the conversation approach certainly sounds more interesting, rewarding, and fun than the traditional model! I would like to thank Anne for her time and thoughts, and recommend that all user assistance professionals read her book. You can follow Anne on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/annegentle. Oracle's Acrolinx IQ deployment was used to author this article.

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• Anunciando Windows Azure Mobile Services (Serviços Móveis da Windows Azure)

  - by Leniel Macaferi

  Estou animado para anunciar uma nova capacidade que estamos adicionando à Windows Azure hoje: Windows Azure Mobile Services (Serviços Móveis da Windows Azure) Os Serviços Móveis da Windows Azure tornam incrivelmente fácil conectar um backend da nuvem escalável em suas aplicações clientes e móveis. Estes serviços permitem que você facilmente armazene dados estruturados na nuvem que podem abranger dispositivos e usuários, integrando tais dados com autenticação do usuário. Você também pode enviar atualizações para os clientes através de notificações push. O lançamento de hoje permite que você adicione essas capacidades em qualquer aplicação Windows 8 em literalmente minutos, e fornece uma maneira super produtiva para que você transforme rapidamente suas ideias em aplicações. Também vamos adicionar suporte para permitir esses mesmos cenários para o Windows Phone, iOS e dispositivos Android em breve. Leia este tutorial inicial (em Inglês) que mostra como você pode construir (em menos de 5 minutos) uma simples aplicação Windows 8 "Todo List" (Lista de Tarefas) que é habilitada para a nuvem usando os Serviços Móveis da Windows Azure. Ou assista este vídeo (em Inglês) onde mostro como construí-la passo a passo. Começando Se você ainda não possui uma conta na Windows Azure, você pode se inscrever usando uma assinatura gratuita sem compromisso. Uma vez inscrito, clique na seção "preview features" logo abaixo da tab "account" (conta) no website www.windowsazure.com e ative sua conta para ter acesso ao preview dos "Mobile Services" (Serviços Móveis). Instruções sobre como ativar estes novos recursos podem ser encontradas aqui (em Inglês). Depois de habilitar os Serviços Móveis, entre no Portal da Windows Azure, clique no botão "New" (Novo) e escolha o novo ícone "Mobile Services" (Serviços Móveis) para criar o seu primeiro backend móvel. Uma vez criado, você verá uma página de início rápido como a mostrada a seguir com instruções sobre como conectar o seu serviço móvel a uma aplicação Windows 8 cliente já existente, a qual você já tenha começado a implementar, ou como criar e conectar uma nova aplicação Windows 8 cliente ao backend móvel: Leia este tutorial inicial (em Inglês) com explicações passo a passo sobre como construir (em menos de 5 minutos) uma simples aplicação Windows 8 "Todo List" (Lista de Tarefas) que armazena os dados na Windows Azure. Armazenamento Dados na Nuvem Armazenar dados na nuvem com os Serviços Móveis da Windows Azure é incrivelmente fácil. Quando você cria um Serviço Móvel da Windows Azure, nós automaticamente o associamos com um banco de dados SQL dentro da Windows Azure. O backend do Serviço Móvel da Windows Azure então fornece suporte nativo para permitir que aplicações remotas armazenem e recuperem dados com segurança através dele (usando end-points REST seguros, através de um formato OData baseado em JSON) - sem que você tenha que escrever ou implantar qualquer código personalizado no servidor. Suporte integrado para o gerenciamento do backend é fornecido dentro do Portal da Windows Azure para a criação de novas tabelas, navegação pelos dados, criação de índices, e controle de permissões de acesso. Isto torna incrivelmente fácil conectar aplicações clientes na nuvem, e permite que os desenvolvedores de aplicações desktop que não têm muito conhecimento sobre código que roda no servidor sejam produtivos desde o início. Eles podem se concentrar na construção da experiência da aplicação cliente, tirando vantagem dos Serviços Móveis da Windows Azure para fornecer os serviços de backend da nuvem que se façam necessários.  A seguir está um exemplo de código Windows 8 C#/XAML do lado do cliente que poderia ser usado para consultar os dados de um Serviço Móvel da Windows Azure. Desenvolvedores de aplicações que rodam no cliente e que usam C# podem escrever consultas como esta usando LINQ e objetos fortemente tipados POCO, os quais serão mais tarde traduzidos em consultas HTTP REST que são executadas em um Serviço Móvel da Windows Azure. Os desenvolvedores não precisam escrever ou implantar qualquer código personalizado no lado do servidor para permitir que o código do lado do cliente mostrado a seguir seja executado de forma assíncrona preenchendo a interface (UI) do cliente: Como os Serviços Móveis fazem parte da Windows Azure, os desenvolvedores podem escolher mais tarde se querem aumentar ou estender sua solução adicionando funcionalidades no lado do servidor bem como lógica de negócio mais avançada, se quiserem. Isso proporciona o máximo de flexibilidade, e permite que os desenvolvedores ampliem suas soluções para atender qualquer necessidade. Autenticação do Usuário e Notificações Push Os Serviços Móveis da Windows Azure também tornam incrivelmente fácil integrar autenticação/autorização de usuários e notificações push em suas aplicações. Você pode usar esses recursos para habilitar autenticação e controlar as permissões de acesso aos dados que você armazena na nuvem de uma maneira granular. Você também pode enviar notificações push para os usuários/dispositivos quando os dados são alterados. Os Serviços Móveis da Windows Azure suportam o conceito de "scripts do servidor" (pequenos pedaços de script que são executados no servidor em resposta a ações), os quais tornam a habilitação desses cenários muito fácil. A seguir estão links para alguns tutoriais (em Inglês) no formato passo a passo para cenários comuns de autenticação/autorização/push que você pode utilizar com os Serviços Móveis da Windows Azure e aplicações Windows 8: Habilitando Autenticação do Usuário Autorizando Usuários  Começando com Push Notifications Push Notifications para múltiplos Usuários Gerencie e Monitore seu Serviço Móvel Assim como todos os outros serviços na Windows Azure, você pode monitorar o uso e as métricas do backend de seu Serviço Móvel usando a tab "Dashboard" dentro do Portal da Windows Azure. A tab Dashboard fornece uma visão de monitoramento que mostra as chamadas de API, largura de banda e ciclos de CPU do servidor consumidos pelo seu Serviço Móvel da Windows Azure. Você também usar a tab "Logs" dentro do portal para ver mensagens de erro.  Isto torna fácil monitorar e controlar como sua aplicação está funcionando. Aumente a Capacidade de acordo com o Crescimento do Seu Negócio Os Serviços Móveis da Windows Azure agora permitem que cada cliente da Windows Azure crie e execute até 10 Serviços Móveis de forma gratuita, em um ambiente de hospedagem compartilhado com múltiplos banco de dados (onde o backend do seu Serviço Móvel será um dos vários aplicativos sendo executados em um conjunto compartilhado de recursos do servidor). Isso fornece uma maneira fácil de começar a implementar seus projetos sem nenhum custo algum (nota: cada conta gratuita da Windows Azure também inclui um banco de dados SQL de 1GB que você pode usar com qualquer número de aplicações ou Serviços Móveis da Windows Azure). Se sua aplicação cliente se tornar popular, você pode clicar na tab "Scale" (Aumentar Capacidade) do seu Serviço Móvel e mudar de "Shared" (Compartilhado) para o modo "Reserved" (Reservado). Isso permite que você possa isolar suas aplicações de maneira que você seja o único cliente dentro de uma máquina virtual. Isso permite que você dimensione elasticamente a quantidade de recursos que suas aplicações consomem - permitindo que você aumente (ou diminua) sua capacidade de acordo com o tráfego de dados: Com a Windows Azure você paga por capacidade de processamento por hora - o que te permite dimensionar para cima e para baixo seus recursos para atender apenas o que você precisa. Isso permite um modelo super flexível que é ideal para novos cenários de aplicações móveis, bem como para novas empresas que estão apenas começando. Resumo Eu só toquei na superfície do que você pode fazer com os Serviços Móveis da Windows Azure - há muito mais recursos para explorar. Com os Serviços Móveis da Windows Azure, você será capaz de construir cenários de aplicações móveis mais rápido do que nunca, permitindo experiências de usuário ainda melhores - conectando suas aplicações clientes na nuvem. Visite o centro de desenvolvimento dos Serviços Móveis da Windows Azure (em Inglês) para aprender mais, e construa sua primeira aplicação Windows 8 conectada à Windows Azure hoje. E leia este tutorial inicial (em Inglês) com explicações passo a passo que mostram como você pode construir (em menos de 5 minutos) uma simples aplicação Windows 8 "Todo List" (Lista de Tarefas) habilitada para a nuvem usando os Serviços Móveis da Windows Azure. Espero que ajude, - Scott P.S. Além do blog, eu também estou utilizando o Twitter para atualizações rápidas e para compartilhar links. Siga-me em: twitter.com/ScottGu Texto traduzido do post original por Leniel Macaferi.

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• 17 new features in Visual Studio 2010

  - by vik20000in

  Visual studio 2010 has been released to RTM a few days back. This release of Visual studio 2010 comes with a big number of improvements on many fronts. In this post I will try and point out some of the major improvements in Visual Studio 2010. 1)      Visual studio IDE Improvement. Visual studio IDE has been rewritten in WPF. The look and feel of the studio has been improved for improved readability. Start page has been redesigned and template so that anyone can change the start page as they wish. 2)      Multiple Monitor - Support for Multiple Monitor was already there in Visual studio. But in this edition it has been improved as much that we can now place the document, design and code window outside the IDE in another monitor. 3)      ZOOM in Code Editor – Making the editors in WPF has made significant improvement for them. The best one that I like is the ZOOM feature. We can now zoom in the code editor with the help of the ctrl + Mouse scroll. The zoom feature does not work on the Design surface or windows with icon like solution view and toolbox. 4)      Box Selection - Another Important improvement in the Visual studio 2010 is the box selection. We can select a rectangular by holding down the Alt Key and selecting with mouse.  Now in the rectangular selection we can insert text, Paste same code in different line etc. This is helpful if you want to convert a number of variables from public to private etc… 5)      New Improved Search – One of the best productivity improvements in Visual studio 2010 is its new search as you type support. This has been done in the Navigate To window which can be brought up by pressing (Ctrl + ,). The navigate To windows also take help of the Camel casing and will be able to search with the help of camel casing when character is entered in upper case. For example we can search AOH for AddOrederHeader. 6)      Call Hierarchy – This feature is only available to the Visual C# and Visual C++ editor. The call hierarchy windows displays the calls made to and from (yes both to and from) a selected method property or a constructor. The call hierarchy also shows the implementation of interface and the overrides of virtual or abstract methods. This window is very helpful in understanding the code flow, and evaluating the effect of making changes. The best part is it is available at design time and not at runtime only like a debugger. 7)      Highlighting references – One of the very cool stuff in Visual Studio 2010 is the fact if you select a variable then all the use of that variable will be highlighted alongside. This should work for all the result of symbols returned by Find all reference. This also works for Name of class, objects variable, properties and methods. We can also use the Ctrl + Shift + Down Arrow or Up Arror to move through them. 8)      Generate from usage - The Generate from usage feature lets you use classes and members before you define them. You can generate a stub for any undefined class, constructor, method, property, field, or enum that you want to use but have not yet defined. You can generate new types and members without leaving your current location in code, This minimizes interruption to your workflow.9)      IntelliSense Suggestion Mode - IntelliSense now provides two alternatives for IntelliSense statement completion, completion mode and suggestion mode. Use suggestion mode for situations where classes and members are used before they are defined. In suggestion mode, when you type in the editor and then commit the entry, the text you typed is inserted into the code. When you commit an entry in completion mode, the editor shows the entry that is highlighted on the members list. When an IntelliSense window is open, you can press CTRL+ALT+SPACEBAR to toggle between completion mode and suggestion mode. 10)   Application Lifecycle Management – A client application for management of application lifecycle like version control, work item tracking, build automation, team portal etc is available for free (this is not available for express edition.). 11)   Start Page – The start page has been redesigned with WPF for new functionality and look. Tabbed areas are provided for content from different source including MSDN. Once you open some project the start page closes automatically. The list of recent project also lets you remove project from the list. And above all the start page is customizable enough to be changed as per individual requirement. 12)   Extension Manager – Visual Studio 2010 has provided good ways to be extended. We can also use MEF to extend most of the features of Visual Studio. The new extension manager now can go the visual studio gallery and install the extension without even opening any explorer. 13)   Code snippets – Visual studio 2010 for HTML, Jscript and Asp.net also. 14)   Improved Intelligence for JavaScript has been improved vastly (around 2-5 times). Intelligence now also shows the XML documentation comment on the go. 15)   Web Deployment – Web Deployment has been vastly improved. We can package and publish the web application in one click. Three major supported deployment scenarios are Web packages, one click deployment and Web configuration Transformation. 16)   SharePoint - Visual Studio 2010 also brings vastly improved development experience for SharePoint. We can create, edit, debug, package, deploy and activate SharePoint project from within Visual Studio. Deployment of Site is as easy as hitting F5. 17)   Azure – Visual Studio 2010 also comes with handy improvement for developing on windows Azure environment. Vikram

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• Interesting articles and blogs on SPARC T4

  - by mv

  Interesting articles and blogs on SPARC T4 processor   I have consolidated all the interesting information I could get on SPARC T4 processor and its hardware cryptographic capabilities.  Hope its useful. 1. Advantages of SPARC T4 processor  Most important points in this T4 announcement are : "The SPARC T4 processor was designed from the ground up for high speed security and has a cryptographic stream processing unit (SPU) integrated directly into each processor core. These accelerators support 16 industry standard security ciphers and enable high speed encryption at rates 3 to 5 times that of competing processors. By integrating encryption capabilities directly inside the instruction pipeline, the SPARC T4 processor eliminates the performance and cost barriers typically associated with secure computing and makes it possible to deliver high security levels without impacting the user experience." Data Sheet has more details on these  : "New on-chip Encryption Instruction Accelerators with direct non-privileged support for 16 industry-standard cryptographic algorithms plus random number generation in each of the eight cores: AES, Camellia, CRC32c, DES, 3DES, DH, DSA, ECC, Kasumi, MD5, RSA, SHA-1, SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512" I ran "isainfo -v" command on Solaris 11 Sparc T4-1 system. It shows the new instructions as expected  : $ isainfo -v 64-bit sparcv9 applications crc32c cbcond pause mont mpmul sha512 sha256 sha1 md5 camellia kasumi des aes ima hpc vis3 fmaf asi_blk_init vis2 vis popc 32-bit sparc applications crc32c cbcond pause mont mpmul sha512 sha256 sha1 md5 camellia kasumi des aes ima hpc vis3 fmaf asi_blk_init vis2 vis popc v8plus div32 mul32  2.  Dan Anderson's Blog have some interesting points about how these can be used : "New T4 crypto instructions include: aes_kexpand0, aes_kexpand1, aes_kexpand2,         aes_eround01, aes_eround23, aes_eround01_l, aes_eround_23_l, aes_dround01, aes_dround23, aes_dround01_l, aes_dround_23_l.       Having SPARC T4 hardware crypto instructions is all well and good, but how do we access it ?      The software is available with Solaris 11 and is used automatically if you are running Solaris a SPARC T4.  It is used internally in the kernel through kernel crypto modules.  It is available in user space through the PKCS#11 library." 3.   Dans' Blog on Where's the Crypto Libraries? Although this was written in 2009 but still is very useful  "Here's a brief tour of the major crypto libraries shown in the digraph:   The libpkcs11 library contains the PKCS#11 API (C_\*() functions, such as C_Initialize()). That in turn calls library pkcs11_softtoken or pkcs11_kernel, for userland or kernel crypto providers. The latter is used mostly for hardware-assisted cryptography (such as n2cp for Niagara2 SPARC processors), as that is performed more efficiently in kernel space with the "kCF" module (Kernel Crypto Framework). Additionally, for Solaris 10, strong crypto algorithms were split off in separate libraries, pkcs11_softtoken_extra libcryptoutil contains low-level utility functions to help implement cryptography. libsoftcrypto (OpenSolaris and Solaris Nevada only) implements several symmetric-key crypto algorithms in software, such as AES, RC4, and DES3, and the bignum library (used for RSA). libmd implements MD5, SHA, and SHA2 message digest algorithms" 4. Difference in T3 and T4 Diagram in this blog is good and self explanatory. Jeff's blog also highlights the differences  "The T4 servers have improved crypto acceleration, described at https://blogs.oracle.com/DanX/entry/sparc_t4_openssl_engine. It is "just built in" so administrators no longer have to assign crypto accelerator units to domains - it "just happens". Every physical or virtual CPU on a SPARC-T4 has full access to hardware based crypto acceleration at all times. .... For completeness sake, it's worth noting that the T4 adds more crypto algorithms, and accelerates Camelia, CRC32c, and more SHA-x." 5. About performance counters In this blog, performance counters are explained : "Note that unlike T3 and before, T4 crypto doesn't require kernel modules like ncp or n2cp, there is no visibility of crypto hardware with kstats or cryptoadm. T4 does provide hardware counters for crypto operations.  You can see these using cpustat: cpustat -c pic0=Instr_FGU_crypto 5 You can check the general crypto support of the hardware and OS with the command "isainfo -v". Since T4 crypto's implementation now allows direct userland access, there are no "crypto units" visible to cryptoadm.  " For more details refer Martin's blog as well. 6. How to turn off  SPARC T4 or Intel AES-NI crypto acceleration  I found this interesting blog from Darren about how to turn off  SPARC T4 or Intel AES-NI crypto acceleration. "One of the new Solaris 11 features of the linker/loader is the ability to have a single ELF object that has multiple different implementations of the same functions that are selected at runtime based on the capabilities of the machine.   The alternate to this is having the application coded to call getisax(2) system call and make the choice itself.  We use this functionality of the linker/loader when we build the userland libraries for the Solaris Cryptographic Framework (specifically libmd.so and libsoftcrypto.so) The Solaris linker/loader allows control of a lot of its functionality via environment variables, we can use that to control the version of the cryptographic functions we run.  To do this we simply export the LD_HWCAP environment variable with values that tell ld.so.1 to not select the HWCAP section matching certain features even if isainfo says they are present.  This will work for consumers of the Solaris Cryptographic Framework that use the Solaris PKCS#11 libraries or use libmd.so interfaces directly.  For SPARC T4 : export LD_HWCAP="-aes -des -md5 -sha256 -sha512 -mont -mpul" .. For Intel systems with AES-NI support: export LD_HWCAP="-aes"" Note that LD_HWCAP is explained in  http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23823_01/html/816-5165/ld.so.1-1.html "LD_HWCAP, LD_HWCAP_32, and LD_HWCAP_64 -  Identifies an alternative hardware capabilities value... A “-” prefix results in the capabilities that follow being removed from the alternative capabilities." 7. Whitepaper on SPARC T4 Servers—Optimized for End-to-End Data Center Computing This Whitepaper on SPARC T4 Servers—Optimized for End-to-End Data Center Computing explains more details.  It has DTrace scripts which may come in handy : "To ensure the hardware-assisted cryptographic acceleration is configured to use and working with the security scenarios, it is recommended to use the following Solaris DTrace script. #!/usr/sbin/dtrace -s pid$1:libsoftcrypto:yf*:entry, pid$target:libsoftcrypto:rsa*:entry, pid$1:libmd:yf*:entry { @[probefunc] = count(); } tick-1sec { printa(@ops); trunc(@ops); }" Note that I have slightly modified the D Script to have RSA "libsoftcrypto:rsa*:entry" as well as per recommendations from Chi-Chang Lin. 8. References http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/sparc-t4-announcement-494846.html http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/sparc-enterprise/t-series/sparc-t4-1-ds-487858.pdf https://blogs.oracle.com/DanX/entry/sparc_t4_openssl_engine https://blogs.oracle.com/DanX/entry/where_s_the_crypto_libraries https://blogs.oracle.com/darren/entry/howto_turn_off_sparc_t4 http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23823_01/html/816-5165/ld.so.1-1.html   https://blogs.oracle.com/hardware/entry/unleash_the_power_of_cryptography https://blogs.oracle.com/cmt/entry/t4_crypto_cheat_sheet https://blogs.oracle.com/martinm/entry/t4_performance_counters_explained  https://blogs.oracle.com/jsavit/entry/no_mau_required_on_a http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/sparc-enterprise/t-series/sparc-t4-business-wp-524472.pdf

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• ASP.NET Controls – CommunityServer Captcha ControlAdapter, a practical case

  - by nmgomes

  The ControlAdapter is available since .NET framework version 2.0 and his main goal is to adapt and customize a control render in order to achieve a specific behavior or layout. This customization is done without changing the base control. A ControlAdapter is commonly used to custom render for specific platforms like Mobile. In this particular case the ControlAdapter was used to add a specific behavior to a Control. In this  post I will use one adapter to add a Captcha to all WeblogPostCommentForm controls within pontonetpt.com CommunityServer instance. The Challenge The ControlAdapter complexity is usually associated with the complexity/structure of is base control. This case is precisely one of those since base control dynamically load his content (controls) thru several ITemplate. Those of you who already played with ITemplate knows that while it is an excellent option for control composition it also brings to the table a big issue: “Controls defined within a template are not available for manipulation until they are instantiated inside another control.” While analyzing the WeblogPostCommentForm control I found that he uses the ITemplate technique to compose it’s layout and unfortunately I also found that the template content vary from theme to theme. This could have been a problem but luckily WeblogPostCommentForm control template content always contains a submit button with a well known ID (at least I can assume that there are a well known set of IDs). Using this submit button as anchor it’s possible to add the Captcha controls in the correct place. Another important finding was that WeblogPostCommentForm control inherits from the WrappedFormBase control which is the base control for all CommunityServer input forms. Knowing this inheritance link the main goal has changed to became the creation of a base ControlAdapter that  could be extended and customized to allow adding Captcha to: post comments form contact form user creation form. And, with this mind set, I decided to used the following ControlAdapter base class signature :public abstract class WrappedFormBaseCaptchaAdapter<T> : ControlAdapter where T : WrappedFormBase { }Great, but there are still many to do … Captcha The Captcha will be assembled with: A dynamically generated image with a set of random numbers A TextBox control where the image number will be inserted A Validator control to validate whether TextBox numbers match the image numbers This is a common Captcha implementation, is not rocket science and don’t bring any additional problem. The main problem, as told before, is to find the correct anchor control to ensure a correct Captcha control injection. The anchor control can vary by: target control  theme Implementation To support this dynamic scenario I choose to use the following implementation:private List<string> _validAnchorIds = null; protected virtual List<string> ValidAnchorIds { get { if (this._validAnchorIds == null) { this._validAnchorIds = new List<string>(); this._validAnchorIds.Add("btnSubmit"); } return this._validAnchorIds; } } private Control GetAnchorControl(T wrapper) { if (this.ValidAnchorIds == null || this.ValidAnchorIds.Count == 0) { throw new ArgumentException("Cannot be null or empty", "validAnchorNames"); } var q = from anchorId in this.ValidAnchorIds let anchorControl = CSControlUtility.Instance().FindControl(wrapper, anchorId) where anchorControl != null select anchorControl; return q.FirstOrDefault(); } I can now, using the ValidAnchorIds property, configure a set of valid anchor control  Ids. The GetAnchorControl method searches for a valid anchor control within the set of valid control Ids. Here, some of you may question why to use a LINQ To Objects expression, but the important here is to notice the usage of CSControlUtility.Instance().FindControl CommunityServer method. I want to build on top of CommunityServer not to reinvent the wheel. Assuming that an anchor control was found, it’s now possible to inject the Captcha at the correct place. This not something new, we do this all the time when creating server controls or adding dynamic controls:protected sealed override void CreateChildControls() { base.CreateChildControls(); if (this.IsCaptchaRequired) { T wrapper = base.Control as T; if (wrapper != null) { Control anchorControl = GetAnchorControl(wrapper); if (anchorControl != null) { Panel phCaptcha = new Panel {CssClass = "CommonFormField", ID = "Captcha"}; int index = anchorControl.Parent.Controls.IndexOf(anchorControl); anchorControl.Parent.Controls.AddAt(index, phCaptcha); CaptchaConfiguration.DefaultProvider.AddCaptchaControls( phCaptcha, GetValidationGroup(wrapper, anchorControl)); } } } } Here you can see a new entity in action: a provider. This is a CaptchaProvider class instance and is only goal is to create the Captcha itself and do everything else is needed to ensure is correct operation.public abstract class CaptchaProvider : ProviderBase { public abstract void AddCaptchaControls(Panel captchaPanel, string validationGroup); } You can create your own specific CaptchaProvider class to use different Captcha strategies including the use of existing Captcha services  like ReCaptcha. Once the generic ControlAdapter was created became extremely easy to created a specific one. Here is the specific ControlAdapter for the WeblogPostCommentForm control:public class WeblogPostCommentFormCaptchaAdapter : WrappedFormBaseCaptchaAdapter<WrappedFormBase> { #region Overriden Methods protected override List<string> ValidAnchorIds { get { List<string> validAnchorNames = base.ValidAnchorIds; validAnchorNames.Add("CommentSubmit"); return validAnchorNames; } } protected override string DefaultValidationGroup { get { return "CreateCommentForm"; } } #endregion Overriden Methods } Configuration This is the magic step. Without changing the original pages and keeping the application original assemblies untouched we are going to add a new behavior to the CommunityServer application. To glue everything together you must follow this steps: Add the following configuration to default.browser file:<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?> <browsers> <browser refID="Default"> <controlAdapters> <!-- Adapter for the WeblogPostCommentForm control in order to add the Captcha and prevent SPAM comments --> <adapter controlType="CommunityServer.Blogs.Controls.WeblogPostCommentForm" adapterType="NunoGomes.CommunityServer.Components.WeblogPostCommentFormCaptchaAdapter, NunoGomes.CommunityServer" /> </controlAdapters> </browser> </browsers> Add the following configuration to web.config file:<configuration> <configSections> <!-- New section for Captcha providers configuration --> <section name="communityServer.Captcha" type="NunoGomes.CommunityServer.Captcha.Configuration.CaptchaSection" /> </configSections> <!-- Configuring a simple Captcha provider --> <communityServer.Captcha defaultProvider="simpleCaptcha"> <providers> <add name="simpleCaptcha" type="NunoGomes.CommunityServer.Captcha.Providers.SimpleCaptchaProvider, NunoGomes.CommunityServer" imageUrl="~/captcha.ashx" enabled="true" passPhrase="_YourPassPhrase_" saltValue="_YourSaltValue_" hashAlgorithm="SHA1" passwordIterations="3" keySize="256" initVector="_YourInitVectorWithExactly_16_Bytes_" /> </providers> </communityServer.Captcha> <system.web> <httpHandlers> <!-- The Captcha Image handler used by the simple Captcha provider --> <add verb="GET" path="captcha.ashx" type="NunoGomes.CommunityServer.Captcha.Providers.SimpleCaptchaProviderImageHandler, NunoGomes.CommunityServer" /> </httpHandlers> </system.web> <system.webServer> <handlers accessPolicy="Read, Write, Script, Execute"> <!-- The Captcha Image handler used by the simple Captcha provider --> <add verb="GET" name="captcha" path="captcha.ashx" type="NunoGomes.CommunityServer.Captcha.Providers.SimpleCaptchaProviderImageHandler, NunoGomes.CommunityServer" /> </handlers> </system.webServer> </configuration> Conclusion Building a ControlAdapter can be complex but the reward is his ability to allows us, thru configuration changes, to modify an application render and/or behavior. You can see this ControlAdapter in action here and here (anonymous required). A complete solution is available in “CommunityServer Extensions” Codeplex project.

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• The new workflow management of Oracle´s Hyperion Planning: Define more details with Planning Unit Hierarchies and Promotional Paths

  - by Alexandra Georgescu

  After having been almost unchanged for several years, starting with the 11.1.2 release of Oracle´s Hyperion Planning the Process Management has not only got a new name: “Approvals” now is offering the possibility to further split Planning Units (comprised of a unique Scenario-Version-Entity combination) into more detailed combinations along additional secondary dimensions, a so called Planning Unit Hierarchy, and also to pre-define a path of planners, reviewers and approvers, called Promotional Path. I´d like to introduce you to changes and enhancements in this new process management and arouse your curiosity for checking out more details on it. One reason of using the former process management in Planning was to limit data entry rights to one person at a time based on the assignment of a planning unit. So the lowest level of granularity for this assignment was, for a given Scenario-Version combination, the individual entity. Even if in many cases one person wasn´t responsible for all data being entered into that entity, but for only part of it, it was not possible to split the ownership along another additional dimension, for example by assigning ownership to different accounts at the same time. By defining a so called Planning Unit Hierarchy (PUH) in Approvals this gap is now closed. Complementing new Shared Services roles for Planning have been created in order to manage set up and use of Approvals: The Approvals Administrator consisting of the following roles: Approvals Ownership Assigner, who assigns owners and reviewers to planning units for which Write access is assigned (including Planner responsibilities). Approvals Supervisor, who stops and starts planning units and takes any action on planning units for which Write access is assigned. Approvals Process Designer, who can modify planning unit hierarchy secondary dimensions and entity members for which Write access is assigned, can also modify scenarios and versions that are assigned to planning unit hierarchies and can edit validation rules on data forms for which access is assigned. (this includes as well Planner and Ownership Assigner responsibilities) Set up of a Planning Unit Hierarchy is done under the Administration menu, by selecting Approvals, then Planning Unit Hierarchy. Here you create new PUH´s or edit existing ones. The following window displays: After providing a name and an optional description, a pre-selection of entities can be made for which the PUH will be defined. Available options are: All, which pre-selects all entities to be included for the definitions on the subsequent tabs None, manual entity selections will be made subsequently Custom, which offers the selection for an ancestor and the relative generations, that should be included for further definitions. Finally a pattern needs to be selected, which will determine the general flow of ownership: Free-form, uses the flow/assignment of ownerships according to Planning releases prior to 11.1.2 In Bottom-up, data input is done at the leaf member level. Ownership follows the hierarchy of approval along the entity dimension, including refinements using a secondary dimension in the PUH, amended by defined additional reviewers in the promotional path. Distributed, uses data input at the leaf level, while ownership starts at the top level and then is distributed down the organizational hierarchy (entities). After ownership reaches the lower levels, budgets are submitted back to the top through the approval process. Proceeding to the next step, now a secondary dimension and the respective members from that dimension might be selected, in order to create more detailed combinations underneath each entity. After selecting the Dimension and a Parent Member, the definition of a Relative Generation below this member assists in populating the field for Selected Members, while the Count column shows the number of selected members. For refining this list, you might click on the icon right beside the selected member field and use the check-boxes in the appearing list for deselecting members. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TIP: In order to reduce maintenance of the PUH due to changes in the dimensions included (members added, moved or removed) you should consider to dynamically link those dimensions in the PUH with the dimension hierarchies in the planning application. For secondary dimensions this is done using the check-boxes in the Auto Include column. For the primary dimension, the respective selection criteria is applied by right-clicking the name of an entity activated as planning unit, then selecting an item of the shown list of include or exclude options (children, descendants, etc.). Anyway in order to apply dimension changes impacting the PUH a synchronization must be run. If this is really necessary or not is shown on the first screen after selecting from the menu Administration, then Approvals, then Planning Unit Hierarchy: under Synchronized you find the statuses Yes, No or Locked, where the last one indicates, that another user is just changing or synchronizing the PUH. Select one of the not synchronized PUH´s (status No) and click the Synchronize option in order to execute. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In the next step owners and reviewers are assigned to the PUH. Using the icons with the magnifying glass right besides the columns for Owner and Reviewer the respective assignments can be made in the ordermthat you want them to review the planning unit. While it is possible to assign only one owner per entity or combination of entity+ member of the secondary dimension, the selection for reviewers might consist of more than one person. The complete Promotional Path, including the defined owners and reviewers for the entity parents, can be shown by clicking the icon. In addition optional users might be defined for being notified about promotions for a planning unit. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TIP: Reviewers cannot change data, but can only review data according to their data access permissions and reject or promote planning units. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In order to complete your PUH definitions click Finish - this saves the PUH and closes the window. As a final step, before starting the approvals process, you need to assign the PUH to the Scenario-Version combination for which it should be used. From the Administration menu select Approvals, then Scenario and Version Assignment. Expand the PUH in order to see already existing assignments. Under Actions click the add icon and select scenarios and versions to be assigned. If needed, click the remove icon in order to delete entries. After these steps, set up is completed for starting the approvals process. Start, stop and control of the approvals process is now done under the Tools menu, and then Manage Approvals. The new PUH feature is complemented by various additional settings and features; some of them at least should be mentioned here: Export/Import of PUHs: Out of Office agent: Validation Rules changing promotional/approval path if violated (including the use of User-defined Attributes (UDAs)): And various new and helpful reviewer actions with corresponding approval states. About the Author: Bernhard Kinkel started working for Hyperion Solutions as a Presales Consultant and Consultant in 1998 and moved to Hyperion Education Services in 1999. He joined Oracle University in 2007 where he is a Principal Education Consultant. Based on these many years of working with Hyperion products he has detailed product knowledge across several versions. He delivers both classroom and live virtual courses. His areas of expertise are Oracle/Hyperion Essbase, Oracle Hyperion Planning and Hyperion Web Analysis.

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• Oracle at Gartner IAM Summit Next Week

  - by Tanu Sood

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Heading to Gartner Identity and Access Management Summit next week? As you know, one of the premier conferences for identity management specialists and security experts, the Gartner IAM Conference this year is in Las Vegas, Nevada from December 3 – 5. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} As you pack your bags and plan your itinerary, do note that Oracle executives including Amit Jasuja, Senior Vice President, Security and Identity Management and Dave Profozich, Group Vice President along with product management and implementation experts would be in attendance. You are invited to meet with the Oracle team and mingle with our customers. We recommend you bookmark the following times and activities: Breakfast Keynote: Trends in Identity Management Tuesday, December 4, 2012 7:30 a.m. – 8:00 a.m., Octavius 16 Amit Jasuja, SVP, Security and Identity Management, Oracle Ranjan Jain, Enterprise Architect, Cisco Don’t miss the opportunity to hear from Amit Jasuja, SVP, Security and Identity Management as he discusses how mobile and social behavior are changing how organizations function, manage their workforce, and interact with their customers. Learn how these new trends are shaping the innovations in Oracle Identity Management solutions. And get a customer’s take on the new trends and their impact on the organization. Visit the Oracle Booth Mingle with peers, customers, product and implementation experts at the Oracle booth. While there, catch live demonstrations of the very latest best-in-class technologies and learn how Oracle Identity Management solutions are enabling the Social, Mobile and Cloud (SoMoClo) environments. And arm yourself with industry resources from our Virtual Collateral Rack. And don’t forget to enter for a chance to win a JAWBONE JAMBOX Wireless Speaker System while at our booth. So, see you there? Gartner Identity and Access Management Summit December 3 -5, 2012 Caesars Palace 3570 Las Vegas Blvd South Las Vegas, NV 89109

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• What does it mean when a User-Agent has another User-Agent inside it?

  - by Erx_VB.NExT.Coder

  Basically, sometimes the user-agent will have its normal user-agent displayed, then at the end it will have teh "User-Agent: " tag displayed, and right after it another user-agent is shown. Sometimes, the second user-agent is just appended to the first one without the "User-Agent: " tag. Here are some samples I've seen: The first few contain the "User-Agent: " tag in the middle somewhere, and I've changed its font to make it easier to to see. Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0; Trident/4.0; GTB6; User-agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1); SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506) Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; GTB6; MRA 5.10 (build 5339); User-agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1); .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727) Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; User-agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1); .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729) Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; User-agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1); .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152) Here are some without the "User-Agent: " tag in the middle, but just two user agents that seem stiched together. Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.0; Trident/4.0; Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1); .NET CLR 3.5.30729) Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; GTB6; IPMS/6568080A-04A5AD839A9; TCO_20090713170733; Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1); InfoPath.2) Now, just to add a few notes to this. I understand that the "User-Agent: " tag is normally a header, and what follows a typical "User-Agent: " string sequence is the actual user agent that is sent to servers etc, but normally the "User-Agent: " string should not be part of the actual user agent, that is more like the pre-fix or a tag indicating that what follows will be the actual user agent. Additionally, I may have thought, hey, these are just two user agents pasted together, but on closer inspection, you realize that they are not. On all of these dual user agent listings, if you look at the opening bracket "(" just before the "compatible" keyword, you realize the pair to that bracket ")" is actually at the very end, the end of the second user agent. So, the first user agents closing bracket ")" never occurs before the second user agent begins, it's always right at the end, and therefore, the second user agent is more like one of the features of the first user agent, like: "Trident/4.0" or "GTB6" etc etc... The other thing to note that the second user agent is always MSIE 6.0 (Internet Explorer 6.0), interesting. What I had initially thought was it's some sort of Virtual Machine displaying the browser in use & the browser that is installed, but then I thought, what'd be the point in that? Finally, right now, I am thinking, it's probably soem sort of "Compatibility View" type thing, where even if MSIE 7.0 or 8.0 is installed, when my hypothetical the "Display In Internet Explorer 6.0" mode is turned on, the user agent changes to something like this. That being, IE 8.0 is installed, but is rendering everything as IE 6.0 would. Is there or was there such a feature in Internet Explorer? Am I on to something here? What are your thoughts on this? If you have any other ideas, please feel free to let us know. At the moment, I'm just trying to understand if these are valid User Agents, or if they are invalid. In a list of about 44,000 User Agents, I've seen this type of Dual User Agent about 400 times. I've closely inspected 40 of them, and every single one had MSIE 6.0 as the "second" user agent (and the first user agent a higher version of MSIE, such as 7 or 8). This was true for all except one, where both user agents were MSIE 8.0, here it is: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Win32; GMX); GTB0.0) This occured once in my 40 "close" inspections. I've estimated the 400 in 44,000 by taking a sample of the first 4,400 user agents, and finding 40 of these in the MSIE/Windows user agents, and extrapolated that to estimate 40. There were also similar things occuring for non MSIE user agents where there were two Mozilla's in one user agent, the non MSIE ones would probably add another 30% on top of the ones I've noted. I can show you samples of them if anyone would like. There we have it, this is where I'm at, what do you guys think?

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, March 11, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, March 11, 2010New ProjectsASP.NET Wiki Control: This ASP.NET user control allows you to embed a very useful wiki directly into your already existing ASP.NET website taking advantage of the popula...BabyLog: Log baby daily activity.buddyHome: buddyHome is a project that can make your home smarter. as good as your buddy. Cloud Community: Cloud Community makes it easier for organizations to have a simple to use community platform. Our mission is to create an easy to use community pl...Community Connectors for Microsoft CRM 4.0: Community Connectors for Microsoft CRM 4.0 allows Microsoft CRM 4.0 customers and partners to monitor and analyze customers’ interaction from their...Console Highlighter: Hightlights Microsoft Windows Command prompt (cmd.exe) by outputting ANSI VT100 Control sequences to color the output. These sequences are not hand...Cornell Store: This is IN NO WAY officially affiliated or related to the Cornell University store. Instead, this is a project that I am doing for a class. Ther...DevUtilities: This project is for creating some utility tools, and they will be useful during the development.DotNetNuke® Skin Maple: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Personal" category by DyNNamite.co.uk. The package includes 4 color variations and sev...HRNet: HRNetIIS Web Site Monitoring: A software for monitor a particular web site on IIS, even if its IP is sharing between different web site.Iowa Code Camp: The source code for the Iowa Code Camp website.Leonidas: Leonidas is a virtual tutorLunch 'n Learn: The Lunch 'n Learn web application is an open source ASP.NET MVC application that allows you to setup lunch 'n learn presentations for your team, c...MNT Cryptography: A very simple cryptography classMooiNooi MVC2LINQ2SQL Web Databinder: mvc2linq2sql is a databinder for ASP.NET MVC that make able developer to clean bind object from HTML FORMS to Linq entities. Even 1 to N relations ...MoqBot: MoqBot is an auto mocking library for Moq and Ninject.mtExperience1: hoiMvcPager: MvcPager is a free paging component for ASP.NET MVC web application, it exposes a series of extension methods for using in ASP.NET MVC applications...OCal: OCal is based on object calisthenics to identify code smellsPex Custom Arithmetic Solver: Pex Custom Arithmetic Solver contains a collection of meta-heuristic search algorithms. The goal is to improve Pex's code coverage for code involvi...SetControls: Расширеные контролы для ASP.NET приложений. Полная информация ближе к релизу...shadowrage1597: CTC 195 Game Design classSharePoint Team-Mailer: A SharePoint 2007 solution that defines a generic CustomList for sending e-mails to SharePoint Groups.Sql Share: SQL Share is a collaboration tool used within the science to allow database engineers to work tightly with domain scientists.TechCalendar: Tech Events Calendar ASP.NET project.ZLYScript: A very simple script language compiler.New ReleasesALGLIB: ALGLIB 2.4.0: New ALGLIB release contains: improved versions of several linear algebra algorithms: QR decomposition, matrix inversion, condition number estimatio...AmiBroker Plug-Ins with C#: AmiBroker Plug-Ins v0.0.2: Source codes and a binaryAppFabric Caching UI Admin Tool: AppFabric Caching Beta 2 UI Admin Tool: System Requirements:.NET 4.0 RC AppFabric Caching Beta2 Test On:Win 7 (64x)Autodocs - WCF REST Automatic API Documentation Generator: Autodocs.ServiceModel.Web: This archive contains the reference DLL, instructions and license.Compact Plugs & Compact Injection: Compact Injection and Compact Plugs 1.1 Beta: First release of Compact Plugs (CP). The solution includes a simple example project of CP, called "TestCompactPlugs1". Also some fixes where made ...Console Highlighter: Console Highlighter 0.9 (preview release): Preliminary release.Encrypted Notes: Encrypted Notes 1.3: This is the latest version of Encrypted Notes (1.3). It has an installer - it will create a directory 'CPascoe' in My Documents. The last one was ...Family Tree Analyzer: Version 1.0.2: Family Tree Analyzer Version 1.0.2 This early beta version implements loading a gedcom file and displaying some basic reports. These reports inclu...FRC1103 - FRC Dashboard viewer: 2010 Documentation v0.1: This is my current version of the control system documentation for 2010. It isn't complete, but it has the information required for a custom dashbo...jQuery.cssLess: jQuery.cssLess 0.5 (Even less release): NEW - support for nested special CSS classes (like :hover) MAIN RELEASE This release, code "Even less", is the one that will interpret cssLess wit...MooiNooi MVC2LINQ2SQL Web Databinder: MooiNooi MVC2LINQ2SQL DataBinder: I didn't try this... I just took it off from my project. Please, tell me any problem implementing in your own development and I'll be pleased to h...MvcPager: MvcPager 1.2 for ASP.NET MVC 1.0: MvcPager 1.2 for ASP.NET MVC 1.0Mytrip.Mvc: Mytrip 1.0 preview 1: Article Manager Blog Manager L2S Membership(.NET Framework 3.5) EF Membership(.NET Framework 4) User Manager File Manager Localization Captcha ...NodeXL: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel: NodeXL Excel 2007 Template, version 1.0.1.117: The NodeXL Excel 2007 template displays a network graph using edge and vertex lists stored in an Excel 2007 workbook. What's NewThis version adds ...Pex Custom Arithmetic Solver: PexCustomArithmeticSolver: This is the alpha release containing the Alternating Variable Method and Evolution Strategies to try and solve constraints over floating point vari...Scrum Sprint Monitor: v1.0.0.44877: What is new in this release? Major performance increase in animations (up to 50 fps from 2 fps) by replacing DropShadow effect with png bitmaps; ...sELedit: sELedit v1.0b: + Added support for empty strings / wstrings + Fixed: critical bug in configuration files (list 53)sPWadmin: pwAdmin v0.9_nightly: + Fixed: XML editor can now open and save character templates + Added: PWI item name database + Added: Plugin SupportTechCalendar: Events Calendar v.1.0: Initial release.The Silverlight Hyper Video Player [http://slhvp.com]: Beta 2: Beta 2.0 Some fixes from Beta 1, and a couple small enhancements. Intensive testing continues, and I will continue to update the code at least ever...ThreadSafe.Caching: 2010.03.10.1: Updates to the scavanging behaviour since last release. Scavenging will now occur every 30 seconds by default and all objects in the cache will be ...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30310.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVisual Studio DSite: Email Sender (C++): The same Email Sender program that I but made in visual c plus plus 2008 instead of visual basic 2008.Web Forms MVP: Web Forms MVP CTP7: The release can be considered stable, and is in use behind several high traffic, public websites. It has been marked as a CTP release as it is not ...White Tiger: 0.0.3.1: Now you can load or create files with whatever root element you want *check f or sets file permisionsMost Popular ProjectsMetaSharpWBFS ManagerRawrAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesASP.NET Ajax LibraryMost Active ProjectsUmbraco CMSRawrSDS: Scientific DataSet library and toolsN2 CMSFasterflect - A Fast and Simple Reflection APIjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesBlogEngine.NETFarseer Physics Enginepatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryCaliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and Silverlight

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• Web Self Service installation on Windows

  - by Rajesh Sharma

  Web Self Service (WSS) installation on windows is pretty straight forward but you might face some issues if deployed under tomcat. Here's a step-by-step guide to install Oracle Utilities Web Self Service on windows.   Below installation steps are done on: Oracle Utilities Framework version 2.2.0 Oracle Utilities Application - Customer Care & Billing version 2.2.0 Application server - Apache Tomcat 6.0.13 on default port 6500 Other settings include: SPLBASE = C:\spl\CCBDEMO22 SPLENVIRON = CCBV22 SPLWAS = TCAT   Follow these steps for a Web Self Service installation on windows: Download Web Self Service application from edelivery.   Copy the delivery file Release-SelfService-V2.2.0.zip from the Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing version 2.2.0 Web Self Service folder on the installation media to a directory on your Windows box where you would like to install the application, in our case it's a temporary folder C:\wss_temp.   Setup application environment, execute splenviron.cmd -e <ENVIRON_NAME>   Create base folder for Self Service application named SelfService under %SPLEBASE%\splapp\applications   Install Oracle Utilities Web Self Service   C:\wss_temp\Release-SelfService-V2.2.0>install.cmd -d %SPLEBASE%\splapp\applications\SelfService   Web Self Service installation menu. Populate environment values for each item.   ******************************************************** Pick your installation options: ******************************************************** 1. Destination directory name for installation.             | C:\spl\CCBDEMO22\splapp\applications\SelfService 2. Web Server Host.                                         | CCBV22 3. Web Server Port Number.                                  | 6500 4. Mail SMTP Host.                                          | CCBV22 5. Top Product Installation directory.                      | C:\spl\CCBDEMO22 6.     Web Application Server Type.                         | TCAT 7.     When OAS: SPLWeb OC4J instance name is required.     | OC4J1 8.     When WAS: SPLWeb server instance name is required.   | server1   P. Process the installation. Each item in the above list should be configured for a successful installation. Choose option to configure or (P) to process the installation:  P   Option 7 and Option 8 can be ignored for TCAT.   Above step installs SelfService.war file in the destination directory. We need to explode this war file. Change directory to the installation destination folder, and   C:\spl\CCBDEMO22\splapp\applications\SelfService>jar -xf SelfService.war   Review SelfServiceConfig.properties and CMSelfServiceConfig.properties. Change any properties value within the file specific to your installation/site. Generally default settings apply, for this exercise assumes that WEB user already exists in your application database.   For more information on property file customization, refer to Oracle Utilities Web Self Service Configuration section in Customer Care & Billing Installation Guide.   Add context entry in server.xml located under tomcat-base folder C:\spl\CCBDEMO22\product\tomcatBase\conf   ... <!-- SPL Context -->           <Context path="" docBase="C:/spl/CCBDEMO22/splapp/applications/root" debug="0" privileged="true"/>           <Context path="/appViewer" docBase="C:/spl/CCBDEMO22/splapp/applications/appViewer" debug="0" privileged="true"/>           <Context path="/help" docBase="C:/spl/CCBDEMO22/splapp/applications/help" debug="0" privileged="true"/>           <Context path="/XAIApp" docBase="C:/spl/CCBDEMO22/splapp/applications/XAIApp" debug="0" privileged="true"/>           <Context path="/SelfService" docBase="C:/spl/CCBDEMO22/splapp/applications/SelfService" debug="0" privileged="true"/> ...   Add User in tomcat-users.xml file located under tomcat-base folder C:\spl\CCBDEMO22\product\tomcatBase\conf   <user username="WEB" password="selfservice" roles="cisusers"/>   Note the password is "selfservice", this is the default password set within the SelfServiceConfig.properties file with base64 encoding.   Restart the application (spl.cmd stop | start)   12.  Although Apache Tomcat version 6.0.13 does not come with the admin pack, you can verify whether SelfService application is loaded and running, go to following URL http://server:port/manager/list, in our case it'll be http://ccbv22:6500/manager/list Following output will be displayed   OK - Listed applications for virtual host localhost /admin:running:0:C:/tomcat/apache-tomcat-6.0.13/webapps/ROOT/admin /XAIApp:running:0:C:/spl/CCBDEMO22/splapp/applications/XAIApp /host-manager:running:0:C:/tomcat/apache-tomcat-6.0.13/webapps/host-manager /SelfService:running:0:C:/spl/CCBDEMO22/splapp/applications/SelfService /appViewer:running:0:C:/spl/CCBDEMO22/splapp/applications/appViewer /manager:running:1:C:/tomcat/apache-tomcat-6.0.13/webapps/manager /help:running:0:C:/spl/CCBDEMO22/splapp/applications/help /:running:0:C:/spl/CCBDEMO22/splapp/applications/root   Also ensure that the XAIApp is running.   Run Oracle Utilities Web Self Service application http://server:port/SelfService in our case it'll be  http://ccbv22:6500/SelfService   Still doesn't work? And you get '503 HTTP response' at the time of customer registration?     This is because XAI service is still unavailable. There is initialize.waittime set for a default value of 90 seconds for the XAI Application to come up.   Remember WSS uses XAI to perform actions/validations on the CC&B database.  

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• Community Conversation

  - by ultan o'broin

  Applications User Experience members (Erika Webb, Laurie Pattison, and I) attended the User Assistance Europe Conference in Stockholm, Sweden. We were impressed with the thought leadership and practical application of ideas in Anne Gentle's keynote address "Social Web Strategies for Documentation". After the conference, we spoke with Anne to explore the ideas further. Applications User Experience Senior Director Laurie Pattison (left) with Anne Gentle at the User Assistance Europe Conference In Anne's book called Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation, she explains how user assistance is undergoing a seismic shift. The direction is away from the old print manuals and online help concept towards a web-based, user community-driven solution using social media tools. User experience professionals now have a vast range of such tools to start and nurture this "conversation": blogs, wikis, forums, social networking sites, microblogging systems, image and video sharing sites, virtual worlds, podcasts, instant messaging, mashups, and so on. That user communities are a rich source of user assistance is not a surprise, but the extent of available assistance is. For example, we know from the Consortium for Service Innovation that there has been an 'explosion' of user-generated content on the web. User-initiated community conversations provide as much as 30 times the number of official help desk solutions for consortium members! The growing reliance on user community solutions is clearly a user experience issue. Anne says that user assistance as conversation "means getting closer to users and helping them perform well. User-centered design has been touted as one of the most important ideas developed in the last 20 years of workplace writing. Now writers can take the idea of user-centered design a step further by starting conversations with users and enabling user assistance in interactions." Some of Anne's favorite examples of this paradigm shift from the world of traditional documentation to community conversation include: * Writer Bob Bringhurst's blog about Adobe InDesign and InCopy products and Adobe's community help * The Microsoft Development Network Community Center * ·The former Sun (now Oracle) OpenDS wiki, NetBeans Ruby and other community approaches to engage diverse audiences using screencasts, wikis, and blogs. * Cisco's customer support wiki, EMC's community, as well as Symantec and Intuit's approaches * The efforts of Ubuntu, Mozilla, and the FLOSS community generally Adobe Writer Bob Bringhurst's Blog Oracle is not without a user community conversation too. Besides the community discussions and blogs around documentation offerings, we have the My Oracle Support Community forums, Oracle Technology Network (OTN) communities, wiki, blogs, and so on. We have the great work done by our user groups and customer councils. Employees like David Haimes are reaching out, and enthusiastic non-employee gurus like Chet Justice (OracleNerd), Floyd Teter and Eddie Awad provide great "how-to" information too. But what does this paradigm shift mean for existing technical writers as users turn away from the traditional printable PDF manual deliverables? We asked Anne after the conference. The writer role becomes one of conversation initiator or enabler. The role evolves, along with the process, as the users define their concept of user assistance and terms of engagement with the product instead of having it pre-determined. It is largely a case now of "inventing the job while you're doing it, instead of being hired for it" Anne said. There is less emphasis on formal titles. Anne mentions that her own title "Content Stacker" at OpenStack; others use titles such as "Content Curator" or "Community Lead". However, the role remains one essentially about communications, "but of a new type--interacting with users, moderating, curating content, instead of sitting down to write a manual from start to finish." Clearly then, this role is open to more than professional technical writers. Product managers who write blogs, developers who moderate forums, support professionals who update wikis, rock star programmers with a penchant for YouTube are ideal. Anyone with the product knowledge, empathy for the user, and flair for relationships on the social web can join in. Some even perform these roles already but do not realize it. Anne feels the technical communicator space will move from hiring new community conversation professionals (who are already active in the space through blogging, tweets, wikis, and so on) to retraining some existing writers over time. Our own research reveals that the established proponents of community user assistance even set employee performance objectives for internal content curators about the amount of community content delivered by people outside the organization! To take advantage of the conversations on the web as user assistance, enterprises must first establish where on the spectrum their community lies. "What is the line between community willingness to contribute and the enterprise objectives?" Anne asked. "The relationship with users must be managed and also measured." Anne believes that the process can start with a "just do it" approach. Begin by reaching out to existing user groups, individual bloggers and tweeters, forum posters, early adopter program participants, conference attendees, customer advisory board members, and so on. Use analytical tools to measure the level of conversation about your products and services to show a return on investment (ROI), winning management support. Anne emphasized that success with the community model is dependent on lowering the technical and motivational barriers so that users can readily contribute to the conversation. Simple tools must be provided, and guidelines, if any, must be straightforward but not mandatory. The conversational approach is one where traditional style and branding guides do not necessarily apply. Tools and infrastructure help users to create content easily, to search and find the information online, read it, rate it, translate it, and participate further in the content's evolution. Recognizing contributors by using ratings on forums, giving out Twitter kudos, conference invitations, visits to headquarters, free products, preview releases, and so on, also encourages the adoption of the conversation model. The move to conversation as user assistance is not free, but there is a business ROI. The conversational model means that customer service is enhanced, as user experience moves from a functional to a valued, emotional level. Studies show a positive correlation between loyalty and financial performance (Consortium for Service Innovation, 2010), and as customer experience and loyalty become key differentiators, user experience professionals cannot explore the model's possibilities. The digital universe (measured at 1.2 million petabytes in 2010) is doubling every 12 to 18 months, and 70 percent of that universe consists of user-generated content (IDC, 2010). Conversation as user assistance cannot be ignored but must be embraced. It is a time to manage for abundance, not scarcity. Besides, the conversation approach certainly sounds more interesting, rewarding, and fun than the traditional model! I would like to thank Anne for her time and thoughts, and recommend that all user assistance professionals read her book. You can follow Anne on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/annegentle. Oracle's Acrolinx IQ deployment was used to author this article.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, May 03, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, May 03, 2010New Projects.radiko: エアログラス採用のシンプルなradiko(http://radiko.jp/)クライアントです。タスクトレイのアイコンからラジオ局の切り替えができます。7Scale: EmptyB2C MVC Plattform: The B2C MVC Plattform aims to be pluggable site framework to help small busisness accomplish basic tasks between business and customers.ElValWeb: The goal of the project to create full featured implementation of ModelValidatorProvider for Enterprise Library Application Validation Block, wich ...esatis yazilimi: asp.net yazılımı ile satış magazasi websitesi kur.IEnumerable.It sample code: IEnumerable.It sample codejQuery MicroAjax for ASP.NET: MicroAjax is a set of jQuery plugins and .NET components designed to provide simple, powerful and efficient Ajax centric web application design pat...Karbon VOS: Karbon VOS is an advanced Virtual Operating System Template for Visual Basic Express. It's developed in Visual Basic. Karbon VOS hopes to one day b...LINQ Mapper: LINQ Mapper translates simple LINQ queries between different sources. It allows you to write queries against your domain model, but have them run ...Meccano Silverlight Framework: Meccano is a new generation of frameworks for creation of LOB Silverlight applications based on MEF, RX, WCF, ADO.NET Data Services etc. It is inte...Multiuse Model View (MMV) Library: This project is an open source library for the Multiuse Model View (MMV) pattern for building robust WPF and ASP.Net applications. Visit my blog ht...Process Affinity Control: Process Affinity Control allows to set the affinity masks of processes based on rules.SilverSpatial: This project helps bridge the gap between Silverlight and Geo-Spatial data type (such as SQL Spatial). It implements the Well-Known-Binary (WKB) fo...StageAssets: Application for storing data about "things" and people in theatre. For example equipment, actors and so on.Stratosphere: Mono compatible library with set of primitives to work with scalable table, queue and block containers with corresponding implementations for Amazo...TRX Web-Viewer: A simple web-based application to upload and view VSTS 2008 and VSTS 2010 test result files with some basic lookup and feature-wise management of r...WDT2: WDT 2 is the school project to begin learning .NET enviroment, The main focus is on learning the use of almost all the componenets.WPF Behavior Library: WPF Behavior Library is a set of additional actions for WPF that allow you to add extra behaviors to a control quickly and easily. Currently the on...YouTubeEmbeddedVideo WebControl for ASP.NET: A Control to embed YouTube videos in ASP.NET pages. Works in C# and VB.NETNew Releases.radiko: beta: 東京局のみ対応 あとは手抜きActiveWorlds Managed .NET SDK: AwManaged Technology Preview - WIN32 (Alpha): This WIN32 release contains the Server Console Application. The Setup executable should be run as administrator on O.S. using UAC (Vista/Win7)AJAX Control Framework: v1.0.1.0: v1.0.1.0 - Contains a Bing Maps sample project, a number of bug fixes and a few performance improvements. - AJAX enable ANY custom control that der...App_Code (and Usercontrol) Editor (ACE): v1.0.0 alpha: The first alpha release of the AppCode Editor for Umbraco 4.0.3 is now available to download! Tested to work with usercontrols - pre-compilation wi...ElValWeb: ElValWeb 0.0.1.0: Version 0.0.1.0 contains client validation support forAndCompositeValidator ContainsCharactersValidator DomainValidator NotNullValidator Or...esatis yazilimi: magaza: magazanın yazılımları ve veri tabanının yazılımlarıGrunty OS: Grunty OS USB: Download Grunty OS for USBGrunty OS: Grunty OS.ISO: Grunty OS ISOKarbon VOS: Milestone 1 (Kaptua): Milestone 1...Live Meeting API Wrapper: LiveMeetingAPIWrapperV1.2: Added get meeting and update meeting.Multiuse Model View (MMV) Library: v0.3: first alpha release. Medium amount of functionality and some use cases tested.MVC Foolproof Validation: Beta 0.9.3774: Adds resource provided error messages, regular expression operators and a new RegularExpressionIf attribute.Process Affinity Control: Version 1.0.0: This is the first release. Planned features for the next release: No administrative privileges needed to run the manager Select the active scena...SharePoint 2010 Service Manager: SharePoint 2010 Service Manager 1.1: Added support to run under UAC with automatic security elevationSharePoint Event Handler Manager: Event Handler Manager 2.0: Please download the application here: http://www.ackermantech.com/registerevents.aspxSkyDrive Synchronizer: SkyDrive Sync Beta 0.1: Beta release includes: Upload and download Synchronize updated files Delete files on web/locally if not in source Split larger files into sma...Stratosphere: Stratosphere 1.0.0.0: Initial beta releaseSuggested Resources for .NET Developers: 0.8.0.0 VS2010 - focus on displaying content: This is the first release of Suggested Resources that can be downloaded from the internet. While there is still a lot of work to be done this rele...TRX Web-Viewer: TRX Web-Viewer V1.0: First working versionVCC: Latest build, v2.1.30502.0: Automatic drop of latest buildWatchersNET.TagCloud: WatchersNET.TagCloud 01.04.00: !Whats New New Tag Mode: Search Referrers (Shows Search Tags From Google, Ask, Bing, Yahoo and the Dnn Site Search) Taxonomy Tags now contains L...Web/Cloud Applications Development Framework | Visual WebGui: 6.4 Beta 2e: Fully featured beta version of Visual WebGui Web/Cloud Applicaiton Development FrameworkWPF Behavior Library: WPF Behavior Library 0.1 Release: First alpha release of the WPF Behavior Library. It should be stable but doesn't have all of the features it will have in the future and the API ma...xvanneste: Sharepoint Social Network Client: Client permettant d'avoir accés au social network de sharepoint a l'exterieur du navigateur.Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control Toolkitpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)iTuner - The iTunes CompanionASP.NETDotNetNuke® Community EditionMost Active ProjectsIonics Isapi Rewrite Filterpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryRawrHydroServer - CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System ServerAJAX Control Frameworkpatterns & practices: Azure Security GuidanceTinyProjectBlogEngine.NETNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleDambach Linear Algebra Framework

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• SQL SERVER – Guest Post – Architecting Data Warehouse – Niraj Bhatt

  - by pinaldave

  Niraj Bhatt works as an Enterprise Architect for a Fortune 500 company and has an innate passion for building / studying software systems. He is a top rated speaker at various technical forums including Tech·Ed, MCT Summit, Developer Summit, and Virtual Tech Days, among others. Having run a successful startup for four years Niraj enjoys working on – IT innovations that can impact an enterprise bottom line, streamlining IT budgets through IT consolidation, architecture and integration of systems, performance tuning, and review of enterprise applications. He has received Microsoft MVP award for ASP.NET, Connected Systems and most recently on Windows Azure. When he is away from his laptop, you will find him taking deep dives in automobiles, pottery, rafting, photography, cooking and financial statements though not necessarily in that order. He is also a manager/speaker at BDOTNET, Asia’s largest .NET user group. Here is the guest post by Niraj Bhatt. As data in your applications grows it’s the database that usually becomes a bottleneck. It’s hard to scale a relational DB and the preferred approach for large scale applications is to create separate databases for writes and reads. These databases are referred as transactional database and reporting database. Though there are tools / techniques which can allow you to create snapshot of your transactional database for reporting purpose, sometimes they don’t quite fit the reporting requirements of an enterprise. These requirements typically are data analytics, effective schema (for an Information worker to self-service herself), historical data, better performance (flat data, no joins) etc. This is where a need for data warehouse or an OLAP system arises. A Key point to remember is a data warehouse is mostly a relational database. It’s built on top of same concepts like Tables, Rows, Columns, Primary keys, Foreign Keys, etc. Before we talk about how data warehouses are typically structured let’s understand key components that can create a data flow between OLTP systems and OLAP systems. There are 3 major areas to it: a) OLTP system should be capable of tracking its changes as all these changes should go back to data warehouse for historical recording. For e.g. if an OLTP transaction moves a customer from silver to gold category, OLTP system needs to ensure that this change is tracked and send to data warehouse for reporting purpose. A report in context could be how many customers divided by geographies moved from sliver to gold category. In data warehouse terminology this process is called Change Data Capture. There are quite a few systems that leverage database triggers to move these changes to corresponding tracking tables. There are also out of box features provided by some databases e.g. SQL Server 2008 offers Change Data Capture and Change Tracking for addressing such requirements. b) After we make the OLTP system capable of tracking its changes we need to provision a batch process that can run periodically and takes these changes from OLTP system and dump them into data warehouse. There are many tools out there that can help you fill this gap – SQL Server Integration Services happens to be one of them. c) So we have an OLTP system that knows how to track its changes, we have jobs that run periodically to move these changes to warehouse. The question though remains is how warehouse will record these changes? This structural change in data warehouse arena is often covered under something called Slowly Changing Dimension (SCD). While we will talk about dimensions in a while, SCD can be applied to pure relational tables too. SCD enables a database structure to capture historical data. This would create multiple records for a given entity in relational database and data warehouses prefer having their own primary key, often known as surrogate key. As I mentioned a data warehouse is just a relational database but industry often attributes a specific schema style to data warehouses. These styles are Star Schema or Snowflake Schema. The motivation behind these styles is to create a flat database structure (as opposed to normalized one), which is easy to understand / use, easy to query and easy to slice / dice. Star schema is a database structure made up of dimensions and facts. Facts are generally the numbers (sales, quantity, etc.) that you want to slice and dice. Fact tables have these numbers and have references (foreign keys) to set of tables that provide context around those facts. E.g. if you have recorded 10,000 USD as sales that number would go in a sales fact table and could have foreign keys attached to it that refers to the sales agent responsible for sale and to time table which contains the dates between which that sale was made. These agent and time tables are called dimensions which provide context to the numbers stored in fact tables. This schema structure of fact being at center surrounded by dimensions is called Star schema. A similar structure with difference of dimension tables being normalized is called a Snowflake schema. This relational structure of facts and dimensions serves as an input for another analysis structure called Cube. Though physically Cube is a special structure supported by commercial databases like SQL Server Analysis Services, logically it’s a multidimensional structure where dimensions define the sides of cube and facts define the content. Facts are often called as Measures inside a cube. Dimensions often tend to form a hierarchy. E.g. Product may be broken into categories and categories in turn to individual items. Category and Items are often referred as Levels and their constituents as Members with their overall structure called as Hierarchy. Measures are rolled up as per dimensional hierarchy. These rolled up measures are called Aggregates. Now this may seem like an overwhelming vocabulary to deal with but don’t worry it will sink in as you start working with Cubes and others. Let’s see few other terms that we would run into while talking about data warehouses. ODS or an Operational Data Store is a frequently misused term. There would be few users in your organization that want to report on most current data and can’t afford to miss a single transaction for their report. Then there is another set of users that typically don’t care how current the data is. Mostly senior level executives who are interesting in trending, mining, forecasting, strategizing, etc. don’t care for that one specific transaction. This is where an ODS can come in handy. ODS can use the same star schema and the OLAP cubes we saw earlier. The only difference is that the data inside an ODS would be short lived, i.e. for few months and ODS would sync with OLTP system every few minutes. Data warehouse can periodically sync with ODS either daily or weekly depending on business drivers. Data marts are another frequently talked about topic in data warehousing. They are subject-specific data warehouse. Data warehouses that try to span over an enterprise are normally too big to scope, build, manage, track, etc. Hence they are often scaled down to something called Data mart that supports a specific segment of business like sales, marketing, or support. Data marts too, are often designed using star schema model discussed earlier. Industry is divided when it comes to use of data marts. Some experts prefer having data marts along with a central data warehouse. Data warehouse here acts as information staging and distribution hub with spokes being data marts connected via data feeds serving summarized data. Others eliminate the need for a centralized data warehouse citing that most users want to report on detailed data. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Best Practices, Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, Database, Pinal Dave, PostADay, Readers Contribution, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Code excavations, wishful invocations, perimeters and domain specific unit test frameworks

  - by RoyOsherove

  One of the talks I did at QCON London was about a subject that I’ve come across fairly recently , when I was building SilverUnit – a “pure” unit test framework for silverlight objects that depend on the silverlight runtime to run. It is the concept of “cogs in the machine” – when your piece of code needs to run inside a host framework or runtime that you have little or no control over for testability related matters. Examples of such cogs and machines can be: your custom control running inside silverlight runtime in the browser your plug-in running inside an IDE your activity running inside a windows workflow your code running inside a java EE bean your code inheriting from a COM+ (enterprise services) component etc.. Not all of these are necessarily testability problems. The main testability problem usually comes when your code actually inherits form something inside the system. For example. one of the biggest problems with testing objects like silverlight controls is the way they depend on the silverlight runtime – they don’t implement some silverlight interface, they don’t just call external static methods against the framework runtime that surrounds them – they actually inherit parts of the framework: they all inherit (in this case) from the silverlight DependencyObject Wrapping it up? An inheritance dependency is uniquely challenging to bring under test, because “classic” methods such as wrapping the object under test with a framework wrapper will not work, and the only way to do manually is to create parallel testable objects that get delegated with all the possible actions from the dependencies.    In silverlight’s case, that would mean creating your own custom logic class that would be called directly from controls that inherit from silverlight, and would be tested independently of these controls. The pro side is that you get the benefit of understanding the “contract” and the “roles” your system plays against your logic, but unfortunately, more often than not, it can be very tedious to create, and may sometimes feel unnecessary or like code duplication. About perimeters A perimeter is that invisible line that your draw around your pieces of logic during a test, that separate the code under test from any dependencies that it uses. Most of the time, a test perimeter around an object will be the list of seams (dependencies that can be replaced such as interfaces, virtual methods etc.) that are actually replaced for that test or for all the tests. Role based perimeters In the case of creating a wrapper around an object – one really creates a “role based” perimeter around the logic that is being tested – that wrapper takes on roles that are required by the code under test, and also communicates with the host system to implement those roles and provide any inputs to the logic under test. in the image below – we have the code we want to test represented as a star. No perimeter is drawn yet (we haven’t wrapped it up in anything yet). in the image below is what happens when you wrap your logic with a role based wrapper – you get a role based perimeter anywhere your code interacts with the system: There’s another way to bring that code under test – using isolation frameworks like typemock, rhino mocks and MOQ (but if your code inherits from the system, Typemock might be the only way to isolate the code from the system interaction.   Ad-Hoc Isolation perimeters the image below shows what I call ad-hoc perimeter that might be vastly different between different tests: This perimeter’s surface is much smaller, because for that specific test, that is all the “change” that is required to the host system behavior.   The third way of isolating the code from the host system is the main “meat” of this post: Subterranean perimeters Subterranean perimeters are Deep rooted perimeters  - “always on” seams that that can lie very deep in the heart of the host system where they are fully invisible even to the test itself, not just to the code under test. Because they lie deep inside a system you can’t control, the only way I’ve found to control them is with runtime (not compile time) interception of method calls on the system. One way to get such abilities is by using Aspect oriented frameworks – for example, in SilverUnit, I’ve used the CThru AOP framework based on Typemock hooks and CLR profilers to intercept such system level method calls and effectively turn them into seams that lie deep down at the heart of the silverlight runtime. the image below depicts an example of what such a perimeter could look like: As you can see, the actual seams can be very far away form the actual code under test, and as you’ll discover, that’s actually a very good thing. Here is only a partial list of examples of such deep rooted seams : disabling the constructor of a base class five levels below the code under test (this.base.base.base.base) faking static methods of a type that’s being called several levels down the stack: method x() calls y() calls z() calls SomeType.StaticMethod()  Replacing an async mechanism with a synchronous one (replacing all timers with your own timer behavior that always Ticks immediately upon calls to “start()” on the same caller thread for example) Replacing event mechanisms with your own event mechanism (to allow “firing” system events) Changing the way the system saves information with your own saving behavior (in silverunit, I replaced all Dependency Property set and get with calls to an in memory value store instead of using the one built into silverlight which threw exceptions without a browser) several questions could jump in: How do you know what to fake? (how do you discover the perimeter?) How do you fake it? Wouldn’t this be problematic  - to fake something you don’t own? it might change in the future How do you discover the perimeter to fake? To discover a perimeter all you have to do is start with a wishful invocation. a wishful invocation is the act of trying to invoke a method (or even just create an instance ) of an object using “regular” test code. You invoke the thing that you’d like to do in a real unit test, to see what happens: Can I even create an instance of this object without getting an exception? Can I invoke this method on that instance without getting an exception? Can I verify that some call into the system happened? You make the invocation, get an exception (because there is a dependency) and look at the stack trace. choose a location in the stack trace and disable it. Then try the invocation again. if you don’t get an exception the perimeter is good for that invocation, so you can move to trying out other methods on that object. in a future post I will show the process using CThru, and how you end up with something close to a domain specific test framework after you’re done creating the perimeter you need.

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• Chock-full of Identity Customers at Oracle OpenWorld

  - by Tanu Sood

    Oracle Openworld (OOW) 2012 kicks off this coming Sunday. Oracle OpenWorld is known to bring in Oracle customers, organizations big and small, from all over the world. And, Identity Management is no exception. If you are looking to catch up with Oracle Identity Management customers, hear first-hand about their implementation experiences and discuss industry trends, business drivers, solutions and more at OOW, here are some sessions we recommend you attend: Monday, October 1, 2012 CON9405: Trends in Identity Management 10:45 a.m. – 11:45 a.m., Moscone West 3003 Subject matter experts from Kaiser Permanente and SuperValu share the stage with Amit Jasuja, Snior Vice President, Oracle Identity Management and Security to discuss how the latest advances in Identity Management are helping customers address emerging requirements for securely enabling cloud, social and mobile environments. CON9492: Simplifying your Identity Management Implementation 3:15 p.m. – 4:15 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Implementation experts from British Telecom, Kaiser Permanente and UPMC participate in a panel to discuss best practices, key strategies and lessons learned based on their own experiences. Attendees will hear first-hand what they can do to streamline and simplify their identity management implementation framework for a quick return-on-investment and maximum efficiency. CON9444: Modernized and Complete Access Management 4:45 p.m. – 5:45 p.m., Moscone West 3008 We have come a long way from the days of web single sign-on addressing the core business requirements. Today, as technology and business evolves, organizations are seeking new capabilities like federation, token services, fine grained authorizations, web fraud prevention and strong authentication. This session will explore the emerging requirements for access management, what a complete solution is like, complemented with real-world customer case studies from ETS, Kaiser Permanente and TURKCELL and product demonstrations. Tuesday, October 2, 2012 CON9437: Mobile Access Management 10:15 a.m. – 11:15 a.m., Moscone West 3022 With more than 5 billion mobile devices on the planet and an increasing number of users using their own devices to access corporate data and applications, securely extending identity management to mobile devices has become a hot topic. This session will feature Identity Management evangelists from companies like Intuit, NetApp and Toyota to discuss how to extend your existing identity management infrastructure and policies to securely and seamlessly enable mobile user access. CON9491: Enhancing the End-User Experience with Oracle Identity Governance applications 11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m., Moscone West 3008 As organizations seek to encourage more and more user self service, business users are now primary end users for identity management installations.  Join experts from Visa and Oracle as they explore how Oracle Identity Governance solutions deliver complete identity administration and governance solutions with support for emerging requirements like cloud identities and mobile devices. CON9447: Enabling Access for Hundreds of Millions of Users 1:15 p.m. – 2:15 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Dealing with scale problems? Looking to address identity management requirements with million or so users in mind? Then take note of Cisco’s implementation. Join this session to hear first-hand how Cisco tackled identity management and scaled their implementation to bolster security and enforce compliance. CON9465: Next Generation Directory – Oracle Unified Directory 5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Get the 360 degrees perspective from a solution provider, implementation services partner and the customer in this session to learn how the latest Oracle Unified Directory solutions can help you build a directory infrastructure that is optimized to support cloud, mobile and social networking and yet deliver on scale and performance. Wednesday, October 3, 2012 CON9494: Sun2Oracle: Identity Management Platform Transformation 11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Sun customers are actively defining strategies for how they will modernize their identity deployments. Learn how customers like Avea and SuperValu are leveraging their Sun investment, evaluating areas of expansion/improvement and building momentum. CON9631: Entitlement-centric Access to SOA and Cloud Services 11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m., Marriott Marquis, Salon 7 How do you enforce that a junior trader can submit 10 trades/day, with a total value of $5M, if market volatility is low? How can hide sensitive patient information from clerical workers but make it visible to specialists as long as consent has been given or there is an emergency? How do you externalize such entitlements to allow dynamic changes without having to touch the application code? In this session, Uberether and HerbaLife take the stage with Oracle to demonstrate how you can enforce such entitlements on a service not just within your intranet but also right at the perimeter. CON3957 - Delivering Secure Wi-Fi on the Tube as an Olympics Legacy from London 2012 11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m., Moscone West 3003 In this session, Virgin Media, the U.K.’s first combined provider of broadband, TV, mobile, and home phone services, shares how it is providing free secure Wi-Fi services to the London Underground, using Oracle Virtual Directory and Oracle Entitlements Server, leveraging back-end legacy systems that were never designed to be externalized. As an Olympics 2012 legacy, the Oracle architecture will form a platform to be consumed by other Virgin Media services such as video on demand. CON9493: Identity Management and the Cloud 1:15 p.m. – 2:15 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Security is the number one barrier to cloud service adoption.  Not so for industry leading companies like SaskTel, ConAgra foods and UPMC. This session will explore how these organizations are using Oracle Identity with cloud services and how some are offering identity management as a cloud service. CON9624: Real-Time External Authorization for Middleware, Applications, and Databases 3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m., Moscone West 3008 As organizations seek to grant access to broader and more diverse user populations, the importance of centrally defined and applied authorization policies become critical; both to identify who has access to what and to improve the end user experience.  This session will explore how customers are using attribute and role-based access to achieve these goals. CON9625: Taking control of WebCenter Security 5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Many organizations are extending WebCenter in a business to business scenario requiring secure identification and authorization of business partners and their users. Leveraging LADWP’s use case, this session will focus on how customers are leveraging, securing and providing access control to Oracle WebCenter portal and mobile solutions. Thursday, October 4, 2012 CON9662: Securing Oracle Applications with the Oracle Enterprise Identity Management Platform 2:15 p.m. – 3:15 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Oracle Enterprise identity Management solutions are designed to secure access and simplify compliance to Oracle Applications.  Whether you are an EBS customer looking to upgrade from Oracle Single Sign-on or a Fusion Application customer seeking to leverage the Identity instance as an enterprise security platform, this session with Qualcomm and Oracle will help you understand how to get the most out of your investment. And here’s the complete listing of all the Identity Management sessions at Oracle OpenWorld.

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• MySQL – Scalability on Amazon RDS: Scale out to multiple RDS instances

  - by Pinal Dave

  Today, I’d like to discuss getting better MySQL scalability on Amazon RDS. The question of the day: “What can you do when a MySQL database needs to scale write-intensive workloads beyond the capabilities of the largest available machine on Amazon RDS?” Let’s take a look. In a typical EC2/RDS set-up, users connect to app servers from their mobile devices and tablets, computers, browsers, etc.  Then app servers connect to an RDS instance (web/cloud services) and in some cases they might leverage some read-only replicas.   Figure 1. A typical RDS instance is a single-instance database, with read replicas.  This is not very good at handling high write-based throughput. As your application becomes more popular you can expect an increasing number of users, more transactions, and more accumulated data.  User interactions can become more challenging as the application adds more sophisticated capabilities. The result of all this positive activity: your MySQL database will inevitably begin to experience scalability pressures. What can you do? Broadly speaking, there are four options available to improve MySQL scalability on RDS. 1. Larger RDS Instances – If you’re not already using the maximum available RDS instance, you can always scale up – to larger hardware.  Bigger CPUs, more compute power, more memory et cetera. But the largest available RDS instance is still limited.  And they get expensive. “High-Memory Quadruple Extra Large DB Instance”: 68 GB of memory 26 ECUs (8 virtual cores with 3.25 ECUs each) 64-bit platform High I/O Capacity Provisioned IOPS Optimized: 1000Mbps 2. Provisioned IOPs – You can get provisioned IOPs and higher throughput on the I/O level. However, there is a hard limit with a maximum instance size and maximum number of provisioned IOPs you can buy from Amazon and you simply cannot scale beyond these hardware specifications. 3. Leverage Read Replicas – If your application permits, you can leverage read replicas to offload some reads from the master databases. But there are a limited number of replicas you can utilize and Amazon generally requires some modifications to your existing application. And read-replicas don’t help with write-intensive applications. 4. Multiple Database Instances – Amazon offers a fourth option: “You can implement partitioning,thereby spreading your data across multiple database Instances” (Link) However, Amazon does not offer any guidance or facilities to help you with this. “Multiple database instances” is not an RDS feature.  And Amazon doesn’t explain how to implement this idea. In fact, when asked, this is the response on an Amazon forum: Q: Is there any documents that describe the partition DB across multiple RDS? I need to use DB with more 1TB but exist a limitation during the create process, but I read in the any FAQ that you need to partition database, but I don’t find any documents that describe it. A: “DB partitioning/sharding is not an official feature of Amazon RDS or MySQL, but a technique to scale out database by using multiple database instances. The appropriate way to split data depends on the characteristics of the application or data set. Therefore, there is no concrete and specific guidance.” So now what? The answer is to scale out with ScaleBase. Amazon RDS with ScaleBase: What you get – MySQL Scalability! ScaleBase is specifically designed to scale out a single MySQL RDS instance into multiple MySQL instances. Critically, this is accomplished with no changes to your application code.  Your application continues to “see” one database.   ScaleBase does all the work of managing and enforcing an optimized data distribution policy to create multiple MySQL instances. With ScaleBase, data distribution, transactions, concurrency control, and two-phase commit are all 100% transparent and 100% ACID-compliant, so applications, services and tooling continue to interact with your distributed RDS as if it were a single MySQL instance. The result: now you can cost-effectively leverage multiple MySQL RDS instance to scale out write-intensive workloads to an unlimited number of users, transactions, and data. Amazon RDS with ScaleBase: What you keep – Everything! And how does this change your Amazon environment? 1. Keep your application, unchanged – There is no change your application development life-cycle at all.  You still use your existing development tools, frameworks and libraries.  Application quality assurance and testing cycles stay the same. And, critically, you stay with an ACID-compliant MySQL environment. 2. Keep your RDS value-added services – The value-added services that you rely on are all still available. Amazon will continue to handle database maintenance and updates for you. You can still leverage High Availability via Multi A-Z.  And, if it benefits youra application throughput, you can still use read replicas. 3. Keep your RDS administration – Finally the RDS monitoring and provisioning tools you rely on still work as they did before. With your one large MySQL instance, now split into multiple instances, you can actually use less expensive, smallersmaller available RDS hardware and continue to see better database performance. Conclusion Amazon RDS is a tremendous service, but it doesn’t offer solutions to scale beyond a single MySQL instance. Larger RDS instances get more expensive.  And when you max-out on the available hardware, you’re stuck.  Amazon recommends scaling out your single instance into multiple instances for transaction-intensive apps, but offers no services or guidance to help you. This is where ScaleBase comes in to save the day. It gives you a simple and effective way to create multiple MySQL RDS instances, while removing all the complexities typically caused by “DIY” sharding andwith no changes to your applications . With ScaleBase you continue to leverage the AWS/RDS ecosystem: commodity hardware and value added services like read replicas, multi A-Z, maintenance/updates and administration with monitoring tools and provisioning. SCALEBASE ON AMAZON If you’re curious to try ScaleBase on Amazon, it can be found here – Download NOW. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: MySQL, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Optimization, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Integration With Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 11g

  - by Scott Elvington

  In a blog entry earlier this year, we announced the availability of the Ops Center 11g plug-in for Enterprise Manager 12c. In this article I will walk you through the process of deploying the plug-in on your existing Enterprise Manager agents and show you some of the capabilities the plug-in provides. We'll also look at the integration from the Ops Center perspective. I will show you how to set up the connection to Enterprise Manager and give an overview of the information that is available. Installing and Configuring the Ops Center Plug-in The plug-in is available for download from the Self Update page (Setup ? Extensibility ? Self Update). The plug-in name is “Ops Center Infrastructure stack”. Once you have downloaded the plug-in you can navigate to the Plug-In management page (Setup ? Extensibility ? Plug-ins) to begin deployment. The plug-in must first be deployed on the Management Server. You will need to provide the repository password of the SYS user in order to deploy the plug-in to the Management Server. There are a few pre-requisites that need to be completed on the Ops Center side before the plug-in can be deployed and configured on the desired Enterprise Manager agents. Any servers, whether physical or virtual, for which you wish to see metrics and alerts need to be managed by Ops Center. This means that the Operating System needs to have an Ops Center management agent installed as a minimum. The plug-in can provide even more value when Ops Center is also managing the other “layers of the stack”, for example the service processor, the blade chassis or the XSCF of an M-Series server. The more information that Ops Center has about the stack, the more information that will be visible within Enterprise Manager via the plug-in. In order to access the information within Ops Center, the plug-in requires a user to connect as. This user does not require any particular Ops Center permissions or roles, it simply needs to exist. You can create a specific “EMPlugin” user within Ops Center or use an existing user. Oracle recommends creating a specific, non-privileged user account within Ops Center for this purpose. From the Ops Center Administration section, select Enterprise Controller, click the Users tab and finally click the Add User icon to create the desired user account. For the purpose of this article I have discovered and managed the OS and service processor of the server where my Enterprise Manager 12c installation is hosted. With the plug-in deployed to the Management Server and the setup done within Ops Center, we're now ready to deploy the plug-in to the agents and configure the targets to communicate with the Ops Center Enterprise Controller. From the Setup menu select Add Targets then Add Targets Manually. Select the bottom radio button “Add Targets Manually by Specifying Target Monitoring Properties”, select Infrastructure Stack from the Target Type dropdown and finally, select the Monitoring Agent where you wish to deploy the plug-in. Click the Add Manually.... button and fill in the details for the new target using the appropriate hostname for your Enterprise Controller and the user and password details for the plug-in access user. After the target has been added to the agent you will need to allow a few minutes for the initial data collection to complete. Once completed you can see the new target in the All Targets list. All metric collections are enabled by default except one. To enable Infrastructure Stack Alarms collection, navigate to the newly added target and then to Target ? Monitoring ? Metric and Collection Settings. There you can click the “Disabled” link under Collection Schedule to enable collection and set your desired collection frequency. By default, a Warning level alert in Ops Center will equate to a Warning level event in Enterprise Manager and a Critical alert will equate to a Critical event. This mapping can be altered in the Metric and Collection Settings also. The default incident rules in Enterprise Manager only create incidents from Critical events so keep this in mind in case you want to see incidents generated for Warning or Info level alerts from Ops Center. Also, because Enterprise Manager already monitors the OS through it's Host target type, the plug-in does not pull OS alerts from Ops Center so as to prevent duplication. In addition to alert propagation, the plug-in also provides data for several reports detailing the topology and configuration of the stack as well as any hardware sensor data that is available. These are available from the Information Publisher Reports. Navigate there from the Enterprise ? Reports menu or directly from the Infrastructure Stack target of interest. As an example, here is a sample of the Hardware Sensors report showing some of the available sensor data. The report can also be exported to a CSV file format if desired. Connecting Ops Center to Enterprise Manager Repository For an Enterprise Manager user, the plug-in provides a deeper visibility to the state of the infrastructure underlying the databases and middleware. On the Ops Center side, there is also a greater visibility to the targets running on the infrastructure. To set up the Ops Center data collection, just navigate to the Administration section and select the Grid Control link. Select the Configure/Connect action from the right-hand menu and complete the wizard forms to enable the connection to the Enterprise Manager repository and UI. Be sure to use the sysman account when configuring the database connection. Once the job completes and the initial data synchronization is done you will see new Target tabs on your OS assets. The new tab lists all the Enterprise Manager targets and any alerts, availability and performance data specific to the selected target. It is also possible to use the GoTo icon to launch the Enterprise Manager BUI in context of the specific target or alert to drill into more detail. Hopefully this brief overview of the integration between Enterprise Manager and Ops Center has provided a jumpstart to getting a more complete view of the full stack of your enterprise systems.

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• 15 Kasim 2012 Oracle Day

  - by TUFEKCIOGLU,FATIH

     15.Kasim'da Harbiye Istanbul Kongre Merkezi'nde düzenlenecek Oracle Day'e ait etkinlik bilgileri : Oracle Day etkinlik bilgileri için tiklayiniz    En Son Teknolojiden Faydalanin: Inovasyona ve Rekabete Zaman Birakin 15 Kasim 2012 Bulut Bilisim, Mobilite, Sosyal Medya ve Büyük Veri, bildigimiz dünyayi yeniden tanimliyor. Bu teknolojileri kurumuna ilk getirenlerden biri olun; daha hizli yeni ürün ve hizmet gelistirme, müsteri deneyimini iyilestirme ve yeni inovatif is modellerini hayata geçirme firsati yakalayarak rekabetteki konumunuzu güçlendirin. Oracle ve is ortaklari bu noktada size, teknolojik yenilikleri kurumunuza uyarlamanizda yardim ederken, sizin de piyasadaki degisimlerden rakiplerinizden önce avantaj elde etmenizi saglar. Oracle'in, birlikte çalismak için tasarlanmis olan yazilim ve donanimlarda en yeni teknolojileri kullanarak, bilgi teknolojilerini nasil sadelestirdigini ögrenmek için Oracle Day'de bize katilin. Oracle Day'de: Oracle'in Bulut Bilisim, Büyük Veri, Sosyal Medya, is uygulamalari çözümleri hakkinda bilgi edinme, Basarili is dönüsümleri hakkinda örnek basari hikayelerini dinleme, Sizinle ayni zorluklari tecrübe eden sektör çalisanlariyla biraraya gelme, Oracle uzmanlari ve is ortaklari ile tanisma ve yeni ürün tanitimlarini izleme, Oracle OpenWorld'den en yeni ürün bilgilerini edinme firsatini kaçirmayin... Saygilarimizla, Oracle Türkiye Hemen Kaydolun! Platin Sponsor Istanbul Kongre Merkezi Taskisla Caddesi Harbiye 34367 Istanbul / Türkiye 15 Kasim 2012, Persembe 08:30 - 18:30 LCV: [email protected] oracle.com/oracleday Bizi takip edin: #oracleday   Oracle Is Ortagi Müsteri Basari Hikayesi TROUG Sunum Ingilizce'dir  Günün Ajandasi 08:45-09:30 Kayit 09:30-10:00 Hos Geldiniz Filiz Dogan, Genel Müdür, Oracle Türkiye 10:00-10:30 Navigating Complexity by Simplifying I.T. Andrew Mendelsohn, Kidemli Baskan Yardimcisi, Oracle Veritabani Sunucu Teknolojileri, Oracle           10:30-11:00 Dönüsümsel Bulut Yolculugu Ilker Kuruöz, CIO, Turkcell 11:00-11:20 Yeni Dönemde Veri Merkezlerinin Olmazsa Olmazlari Yalim Eristiren, Genel Müdür Yardimcisi, Intel 11:20-11:30 Slimfit Feyza Narli, Is Çözümleri Direktörü, Innova 11:30-12:00 Java ile Inovasyon Cuma Yigit, Teknik Mimar, Etiya Yusuf Tok, Java Grup Yöneticisi, OBSS Ersun Engel, Satis Müdürü, Oracle 12:00-12:10  Kahve Molasi       1. SALON 2. SALON 3. SALON 4. SALON 5. SALON 6. SALON 7. SALON 8. SALON 9. SALON 10. SALON   Müsteri Deneyimi: Çalisaninizi Yetkinlestirin. Markanizi Güçlendirin. Is Süreçlerinde Degisim Daha Fazla Veri, Daha Hizli Sonuç: Isinizi Analitik Çözümlerle Güçlendirin Peki Ama Nasil? Bulut Uygulayicilari için Çözüm Haritasi Is Uygulamalarinizda Inovasyonun Gücünü Kullanin Yeni Nesil Veri Merkezi ile BT'nin Gücünü Ortaya Çikartin Oracle & Is Ortaklari Çözümleri - Basari Hikayeleri I Oracle & Is Ortaklari Çözümleri - Basari Hikayeleri II Oracle Finansal Hizmetler - Core Banking and Analytical Solutions Oracle User Group (TROUG) 12:10-12:40 Müsteri Deneyimi: Çalisaninizi Yetkinlestirin. Markanizi Güçlendirin. Tekfen Ceyhan Çelik Fabrikasi Maliyet Yönetimi ve Üretim Takibi Daha Fazla Veriyle, Daha Hizli Hareket: Yaraticiligi Aksiyonla Güçlendirme Architect Your Cloud: A Blueprint for Cloud Builders Technology Strategies that Drive Business Excellence: Get Social. Be Mobile. Run Cloud. Yeni Nesil Veri Merkezi ile BT'nin Gücünü Ortaya Çikartin Innovate with Oracle - Virtual Banking and Self Service Channels What's Next for Oracle Database?   Oracle Innova Oracle Oracle Oracle Oracle Oracle Oracle 12:40-13:40 Ögle Yemegi 13:40-14:10 Uygulamalariniz Artik Bulutta 21. Yüzyilda Finans: Potansiyeli Kullanin - Sonuçlara Ulasin! "Düsünce Hizinda" Intel Islemcili Oracle Büyük Veri ve Is Analitigi Çözümleri Deniz Seviyesinden Bulutlara I CRM'inizi Sosyallestirin: Telaura Sosyal CRM Yeni Nesil Veri Merkezinde Trend: Sadelik Abone Bilgi Yönetim Sistemi (ABYS) Yüksek Oracle Veri Tabani Performansi - Oracle Veri Tabani Oracle Veri Depolama Sistemi ile Entegre Oldugunda Sigortacilikta Finansal Transformasyon ve Entegre Veri Ambari Çözümleri SQL/PLSQL Yeni Özellikler   Oracle Oracle Intel Oracle Etiya Oracle Inspirit Oracle Oraturk TROUG 14:10-14:20  Kahve Molasi 14:20-14:50 Satis ve Pazarlamada Sosyal Mecralar Müsteri Basari Hikayeleri Paneli: Degisim Yolculugu ve Sonuçlari Tukas'in Analitik Yolculugu Deniz Seviyesinden Bulutlara II Loupe: IP Tabanli Servisler için Proaktif Izleme Veri Merkezinizdeki Riskleri Ortadan Kaldirin Oracle iAS to WebLogic Migrasyonu Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance - Turkcell Deneyimleri Analytical Transformation - Risk and Finance Together to Address the Regulatory Changes Today and Tomorrow Veri Madenciligi Veritabaninda Yapilir: Uygulamalariyla Oracle R Enterprise ve Oracle Data Mining Opsiyonu   Oracle Akbank, Teknosa, Dogus Holding, Ceynak Gtech Oracle Netas Oracle OBSS Turkcell&Gantek Oracle TROUG 14:50-15:00  Kahve Molasi 15:00-15:30 Yetenek Yönetiminde Entegre Çözümler: Taleo ile Ise Alim Artik Daha Kolay Müsteri Basari Hikayeleri Paneli: Degisim Yolculugu ve Sonuçlari Büyük Veri & Exalytics - Exadata'nin Gelecek Rotasi - Bütünlesik (Engineered) Sistemler'de Ücretsiz Platin Hizmetleri Aksigorta Oracle ATS (Application Testing Suite) ile Uygulamalarini Nasil Test Ediyor? Üstün Performans ve Esneklik ile Servis Seviyenizi Arttirin Akilli Belediyecilik Uygulamalarinda Oracle BPM ile Süreç Yönetimi Teyp ile Uçtan Uca Yedekleme Çözümleri Connecting with Customers to Enhance Revenue Generation: Unleashing the Power of an Enterprise Revenue Management and Billing Solution Günümüzün Uygulama Mimarisi Sorunlari ve Çözüm Önerileri   Oracle Akbank, Teknosa, Dogus Holding, Ceynak Oracle Oracle Aksigorta Oracle Sampas Remivac Oracle TROUG 15:30-15:40  Kahve Molasi 15:40-16:10 JD Edwards Yeni Sürüm ile Satis Agi Yönetimi Oracle Policy Automation ile Türkçe Merkezi Is Kurallari Yönetimi Oracle BI ile Kurumsal Karne Çözümleri Turkcell Süperbulut ile Yazilim Artik Hizmetinizde Bütünlesik (Engineered) Sistemler Artik SAP Müsterilerinde de Fark Yaratiyor Yeni Nesil Veri Merkezi Olusturma: Denenmis ve Ispatlanmis Yöntemler Türk Telekom SOA Projesi Basari Hikayesi Yapi Kredi Sigorta Uygulamalarinda Son Kullanici Deneyimini Nasil Izliyor? 2013 NFC Trendleri Karagöz ile Hacivat Veri Tabaninda   TupperWare & Akademi Danismanlik Oracle Oracle Turkcell Oracle Oracle Türk Telekom Yapi Kredi Sigorta Smartsoft TROUG 16:10-16:20  Kahve Molasi 16:20-16:50 Tutarli, Tekil Veriye Yolculuk: Oracle Ana Veri Yönetimi Turkcell/Superonline'da Varlik Yönetimi Her Tür Verinin Endeca ile Rahat Analizi Bulut Bilisim'de Güvenlik Nasil Saglanir? Rekabette Kazanmak: GoldenGate ile Dogru Kararlari Rakiplerinizden Önce Verin. Veri Merkeziniz için Bulut Altyapi Stratejileri Oracle Orkestrasi: Çok Sesli Yönetime Kulak Verin Lojistik Zekasi / Horoz Lojistik Basari Hikayesi Bütünlesik Sistemler (Engineered Systems) ile Yüksek Performansli Java Uygulamalari International Growth - Helping the Banks Standardize Overseas Operations Oracle Big Data   Oracle Turkcell Oracle Oracle Oracle Oracle Kora & Horoz Lojistik Oracle Oracle TROUG 16:50-18:30  Kokteyl     Eger bir kamu kurumunun/kurulusunun çalisani veya görevlisi iseniz, bu etkinlige iliskin önemli etik kurallara iliskin bilgi için lütfen buraya tiklayiniz Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Bize Ulasin | Yasal Uyarilar | Gizlilik Beyani

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• Java FAQ: Tudo o que você precisa saber

  - by Bruno.Borges

  Com frequência recebo e-mails de clientes com dúvidas sobre "quando sairá a próxima versão do Java?", ou então "quando vai expirar o Java?" ou ainda "quais as mudanças da próxima versão?". Por isso resolvi escrever aqui um FAQ, respondendo estas dúvidas e muitas outras. Este post estará sempre atualizado, então se você possui alguma dúvida, envie para mim no Twitter @brunoborges. Qual a diferença entre o Oracle JDK e o OpenJDK?O projeto OpenJDK funciona como a implementação de referência Open Source do Java Standard Edition. Empresas como a Oracle, IBM, e Azul Systems suportam e investem no projeto OpenJDK para continuar evoluindo a plataforma Java. O Oracle JDK é baseado no OpenJDK, mas traz outras ferramentas como o Mission Control, e a máquina virtual traz algumas features avançadas como por exemplo o Flight Recorder. Até a versão 6, a Oracle oferecia duas máquinas virtuais: JRockit (BEA) e HotSpot (Sun). A partir da versão 7 a Oracle unificou as máquinas virtuais, e levou as features avançadas do JRockit para dentro da VM HotSpot. Leia também o OpenJDK FAQ. Onde posso obter binários beta Early Access do JDK 7, JDK 8, JDK 9 para testar?A partir do projeto OpenJDK, existe um projeto específico para cada versão do Java. Nestes projetos você pode encontrar binários beta Early Access, além do código-fonte. JDK 6 - http://jdk6.java.net/ JDK 7 - http://jdk7.java.net/ JDK 8 - http://jdk8.java.net/ JDK 9 - http://jdk9.java.net/ Quando acaba o suporte do Oracle Java SE 6, 7, 8? Somente produtos e versões com release oficial são suportados pela Oracle (exemplo: não há suporte para binários beta do JDK 7, JDK 8, ou JDK 9). Existem duas categorias de datas que o usuriário do Java deve estar ciente:  EOPU - End of Public UpdatesMomento em que a Oracle não mais disponibiliza publicamente atualizações Oracle SupportPolítica de suporte da Oracle para produtos, incluindo o Oracle Java SE O Oracle Java SE é um produto e portando os períodos de suporte são regidos pelo Oracle Lifetime Support Policy. Consulte este documento para datas atualizadas e específicas para cada versão do Java. O Oracle Java SE 6 já atingiu EOPU (End of Public Updates) e agora é mantido e atualizado somente para clientes através de contrato comercial de suporte. Para maiores informações, consulte a página sobre Oracle Java SE Support.  O mais importante aqui é você estar ciente sobre as datas de EOPU para as versões do Java SE da Oracle.Consulte a página do Oracle Java SE Support Roadmap e busque nesta página pela tabela com nome Java SE Public Updates. Nela você encontrará a data em que determinada versão do Java irá atingir EOPU. Como funciona o versionamento do Java?Em 2013, a Oracle divulgou um novo esquema de versionamento do Java para facilmente identificar quando é um release CPU e quando é um release LFR, e também para facilitar o planejamento e desenvolvimento de correções e features para futuras versões. CPU - Critical Patch UpdateAtualizações com correções de segurança. Versão será múltipla de 5, ou com soma de 1 para manter o número ímpar. Exemplos: 7u45, 7u51, 7u55. LFR - Limited Feature ReleaseAtualizações com correções de funcionalidade, melhorias de performance, e novos recursos. Versões de números pares múltiplos de 20, com final 0. Exemplos: 7u40, 7u60, 8u20. Qual a data da próxima atualização de segurança (CPU) do Java SE?Lançamentos do tipo CPU são controlados e pré-agendados pela Oracle e se aplicam a todos os produtos, inclusive o Oracle Java SE. Estes releases acontecem a cada 3 meses, sempre na Terça-feira mais próxima do dia 17 dos meses de Janeiro, Abril, Julho, e Outubro. Consulte a página Critical Patch Updates, Security Alerts and Third Party Bulleting para saber das próximas datas. Caso tenha interesse, você pode acompanhar através de recebimentos destes boletins diretamente no seu email. Veja como assinar o Boletim de Segurança da Oracle. Qual a data da próxima atualização de features (LFR) do Java SE?A Oracle reserva o direito de não divulgar estas datas, assim como o faz para todos os seus produtos. Entretanto é possível acompanhar o desenvolvimento da próxima versão pelos sites do projeto OpenJDK. A próxima versão do JDK 7 será o update 60 e binários beta Early Access já estão disponíveis para testes. A próxima versão doJDK 8 será o update 20 e binários beta Early Access já estão disponíveis para testes. Onde posso ver as mudanças e o que foi corrigido para a próxima versão do Java?A Oracle disponibiliza um changelog para cada binário beta Early Access divulgado no portal Java.net. JDK 7 update 60 changelogs JDK 8 update 20 changelogs Quando o Java da minha máquina (ou do meu usuário) vai expirar?Conheçendo o sistema de versionamento do Java e a periodicidade dos releases de CPU, o usuário pode determinar quando que um update do Java irá expirar. De todo modo, a cada novo update, a Oracle já informa quando que este update deverá expirar diretamente no release notes da versão. Por exemplo, no release notes da versão Oracle Java SE 7 update 55, está escrito na seção JRE Expiration Date o seguinte: The JRE expires whenever a new release with security vulnerability fixes becomes available. Critical patch updates, which contain security vulnerability fixes, are announced one year in advance on Critical Patch Updates, Security Alerts and Third Party Bulletin. This JRE (version 7u55) will expire with the release of the next critical patch update scheduled for July 15, 2014. For systems unable to reach the Oracle Servers, a secondary mechanism expires this JRE (version 7u55) on August 15, 2014. After either condition is met (new release becoming available or expiration date reached), the JRE will provide additional warnings and reminders to users to update to the newer version. For more information, see JRE Expiration Date.Ou seja, a versão 7u55 irá expirar com o lançamento do próximo release CPU, pré-agendado para o dia 15 de Julho de 2014. E caso o computador do usuário não possa se comunicar com o servidor da Oracle, esta versão irá expirar forçadamente no dia 15 de Agosto de 2014 (através de um mecanismo embutido na versão 7u55). O usuário não é obrigado a atualizar para versões LFR e portanto, mesmo com o release da versão 7u60, a versão atual 7u55 não irá expirar.Veja o release notes do Oracle Java SE 8 update 5. Encontrei um bug. Como posso reportar bugs ou problemas no Java SE, para a Oracle?Sempre que possível, faça testes com os binários beta antes da versão final ser lançada. Qualquer problema que você encontrar com estes binários beta, por favor descreva o problema através do fórum de Project Feebdack do JDK.Caso você encontre algum problema em uma versão final do Java, utilize o formulário de Bug Report. Importante: bugs reportados por estes sistemas não são considerados Suporte e portanto não há SLA de atendimento. A Oracle reserva o direito de manter o bug público ou privado, e também de informar ou não o usuário sobre o progresso da resolução do problema. Tenho uma dúvida que não foi respondida aqui. Como faço?Se você possui uma pergunta que não foi respondida aqui, envie para bruno.borges_at_oracle.com e caso ela seja pertinente, tentarei responder neste artigo. Para outras dúvidas, entre em contato pelo meu Twitter @brunoborges.

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• Dynamic Code for type casting Generic Types 'generically' in C#

  - by Rick Strahl

  C# is a strongly typed language and while that's a fundamental feature of the language there are more and more situations where dynamic types make a lot of sense. I've written quite a bit about how I use dynamic for creating new type extensions: Dynamic Types and DynamicObject References in C# Creating a dynamic, extensible C# Expando Object Creating a dynamic DataReader for dynamic Property Access Today I want to point out an example of a much simpler usage for dynamic that I use occasionally to get around potential static typing issues in C# code especially those concerning generic types. TypeCasting Generics Generic types have been around since .NET 2.0 I've run into a number of situations in the past - especially with generic types that don't implement specific interfaces that can be cast to - where I've been unable to properly cast an object when it's passed to a method or assigned to a property. Granted often this can be a sign of bad design, but in at least some situations the code that needs to be integrated is not under my control so I have to make due with what's available or the parent object is too complex or intermingled to be easily refactored to a new usage scenario. Here's an example that I ran into in my own RazorHosting library - so I have really no excuse, but I also don't see another clean way around it in this case. A Generic Example Imagine I've implemented a generic type like this: public class RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> where TBaseTemplateType : RazorTemplateBase, new() You can now happily instantiate new generic versions of this type with custom template bases or even a non-generic version which is implemented like this: public class RazorEngine : RazorEngine<RazorTemplateBase> { public RazorEngine() : base() { } } To instantiate one: var engine = new RazorEngine<MyCustomRazorTemplate>(); Now imagine that the template class receives a reference to the engine when it's instantiated. This code is fired as part of the Engine pipeline when it gets ready to execute the template. It instantiates the template and assigns itself to the template: var template = new TBaseTemplateType() { Engine = this } The problem here is that possibly many variations of RazorEngine<T> can be passed. I can have RazorTemplateBase, RazorFolderHostTemplateBase, CustomRazorTemplateBase etc. as generic parameters and the Engine property has to reflect that somehow. So, how would I cast that? My first inclination was to use an interface on the engine class and then cast to the interface.  Generally that works, but unfortunately here the engine class is generic and has a few members that require the template type in the member signatures. So while I certainly can implement an interface: public interface IRazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> it doesn't really help for passing this generically templated object to the template class - I still can't cast it if multiple differently typed versions of the generic type could be passed. I have the exact same issue in that I can't specify a 'generic' generic parameter, since there's no underlying base type that's common. In light of this I decided on using object and the following syntax for the property (and the same would be true for a method parameter): public class RazorTemplateBase :MarshalByRefObject,IDisposable { public object Engine {get;set; } } Now because the Engine property is a non-typed object, when I need to do something with this value, I still have no way to cast it explicitly. What I really would need is: public RazorEngine<> Engine { get; set; } but that's not possible. Dynamic to the Rescue Luckily with the dynamic type this sort of thing can be mitigated fairly easily. For example here's a method that uses the Engine property and uses the well known class interface by simply casting the plain object reference to dynamic and then firing away on the properties and methods of the base template class that are common to all templates:/// <summary> /// Allows rendering a dynamic template from a string template /// passing in a model. This is like rendering a partial /// but providing the input as a /// </summary> public virtual string RenderTemplate(string template,object model) { if (template == null) return string.Empty; // if there's no template markup if(!template.Contains("@")) return template; // use dynamic to get around generic type casting dynamic engine = Engine; string result = engine.RenderTemplate(template, model); if (result == null) throw new ApplicationException("RenderTemplate failed: " + engine.ErrorMessage); return result; } Prior to .NET 4.0  I would have had to use Reflection for this sort of thing which would have a been a heck of a lot more verbose, but dynamic makes this so much easier and cleaner and in this case at least the overhead is negliable since it's a single dynamic operation on an otherwise very complex operation call. Dynamic as  a Bailout Sometimes this sort of thing often reeks of a design flaw, and I agree that in hindsight this could have been designed differently. But as is often the case this particular scenario wasn't planned for originally and removing the generic signatures from the base type would break a ton of other code in the framework. Given the existing fairly complex engine design, refactoring an interface to remove generic types just to make this particular code work would have been overkill. Instead dynamic provides a nice and simple and relatively clean solution. Now if there were many other places where this occurs I would probably consider reworking the code to make this cleaner but given this isolated instance and relatively low profile operation use of dynamic seems a valid choice for me. This solution really works anywhere where you might end up with an inheritance structure that doesn't have a common base or interface that is sufficient. In the example above I know what I'm getting but there's no common base type that I can cast to. All that said, it's a good idea to think about use of dynamic before you rush in. In many situations there are alternatives that can still work with static typing. Dynamic definitely has some overhead compared to direct static access of objects, so if possible we should definitely stick to static typing. In the example above the application already uses dynamics extensively for dynamic page page templating and passing models around so introducing dynamics here has very little additional overhead. The operation itself also fires of a fairly resource heavy operation where the overhead of a couple of dynamic member accesses are not a performance issue. So, what's your experience with dynamic as a bailout mechanism? © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in CSharp   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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• Announcing Windows Azure Mobile Services

  - by ScottGu

  I’m excited to announce a new capability we are adding to Windows Azure today: Windows Azure Mobile Services Windows Azure Mobile Services makes it incredibly easy to connect a scalable cloud backend to your client and mobile applications.  It allows you to easily store structured data in the cloud that can span both devices and users, integrate it with user authentication, as well as send out updates to clients via push notifications. Today’s release enables you to add these capabilities to any Windows 8 app in literally minutes, and provides a super productive way for you to quickly build out your app ideas.  We’ll also be adding support to enable these same scenarios for Windows Phone, iOS, and Android devices soon. Read this getting started tutorial to walkthrough how you can build (in less than 5 minutes) a simple Windows 8 “Todo List” app that is cloud enabled using Windows Azure Mobile Services.  Or watch this video of me showing how to do it step by step. Getting Started If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign up for a no-obligation Free Trial.  Once you are signed-up, click the “preview features” section under the “account” tab of the www.windowsazure.com website and enable your account to support the “Mobile Services” preview.   Instructions on how to enable this can be found here. Once you have the mobile services preview enabled, log into the Windows Azure Portal, click the “New” button and choose the new “Mobile Services” icon to create your first mobile backend.  Once created, you’ll see a quick-start page like below with instructions on how to connect your mobile service to an existing Windows 8 client app you have already started working on, or how to create and connect a brand-new Windows 8 client app with it: Read this getting started tutorial to walkthrough how you can build (in less than 5 minutes) a simple Windows 8 “Todo List” app  that stores data in Windows Azure. Storing Data in the Cloud Storing data in the cloud with Windows Azure Mobile Services is incredibly easy.  When you create a Windows Azure Mobile Service, we automatically associate it with a SQL Database inside Windows Azure.  The Windows Azure Mobile Service backend then provides built-in support for enabling remote apps to securely store and retrieve data from it (using secure REST end-points utilizing a JSON-based ODATA format) – without you having to write or deploy any custom server code.  Built-in management support is provided within the Windows Azure portal for creating new tables, browsing data, setting indexes, and controlling access permissions. This makes it incredibly easy to connect client applications to the cloud, and enables client developers who don’t have a server-code background to be productive from the very beginning.  They can instead focus on building the client app experience, and leverage Windows Azure Mobile Services to provide the cloud backend services they require.  Below is an example of client-side Windows 8 C#/XAML code that could be used to query data from a Windows Azure Mobile Service.  Client-side C# developers can write queries like this using LINQ and strongly typed POCO objects, which are then translated into HTTP REST queries that run against a Windows Azure Mobile Service.   Developers don’t have to write or deploy any custom server-side code in order to enable client-side code below to execute and asynchronously populate their client UI: Because Mobile Services is part of Windows Azure, developers can later choose to augment or extend their initial solution and add custom server functionality and more advanced logic if they want.  This provides maximum flexibility, and enables developers to grow and extend their solutions to meet any needs. User Authentication and Push Notifications Windows Azure Mobile Services also make it incredibly easy to integrate user authentication/authorization and push notifications within your applications.  You can use these capabilities to enable authentication and fine grain access control permissions to the data you store in the cloud, as well as to trigger push notifications to users/devices when the data changes.  Windows Azure Mobile Services supports the concept of “server scripts” (small chunks of server-side script that executes in response to actions) that make it really easy to enable these scenarios. Below are some tutorials that walkthrough common authentication/authorization/push scenarios you can do with Windows Azure Mobile Services and Windows 8 apps: Enabling User Authentication Authorizing Users  Get Started with Push Notifications Push Notifications to multiple Users Manage and Monitor your Mobile Service Just like with every other service in Windows Azure, you can monitor usage and metrics of your mobile service backend using the “Dashboard” tab within the Windows Azure Portal. The dashboard tab provides a built-in monitoring view of the API calls, Bandwidth, and server CPU cycles of your Windows Azure Mobile Service.   You can also use the “Logs” tab within the portal to review error messages.  This makes it easy to monitor and track how your application is doing. Scale Up as Your Business Grows Windows Azure Mobile Services now allows every Windows Azure customer to create and run up to 10 Mobile Services in a free, shared/multi-tenant hosting environment (where your mobile backend will be one of multiple apps running on a shared set of server resources).  This provides an easy way to get started on projects at no cost beyond the database you connect your Windows Azure Mobile Service to (note: each Windows Azure free trial account also includes a 1GB SQL Database that you can use with any number of apps or Windows Azure Mobile Services). If your client application becomes popular, you can click the “Scale” tab of your Mobile Service and switch from “Shared” to “Reserved” mode.  Doing so allows you to isolate your apps so that you are the only customer within a virtual machine.  This allows you to elastically scale the amount of resources your apps use – allowing you to scale-up (or scale-down) your capacity as your traffic grows: With Windows Azure you pay for compute capacity on a per-hour basis – which allows you to scale up and down your resources to match only what you need.  This enables a super flexible model that is ideal for new mobile app scenarios, as well as startups who are just getting going.  Summary I’ve only scratched the surface of what you can do with Windows Azure Mobile Services – there are a lot more features to explore.  With Windows Azure Mobile Services you’ll be able to build mobile app experiences faster than ever, and enable even better user experiences – by connecting your client apps to the cloud. Visit the Windows Azure Mobile Services development center to learn more, and build your first Windows 8 app connected with Windows Azure today.  And read this getting started tutorial to walkthrough how you can build (in less than 5 minutes) a simple Windows 8 “Todo List” app that is cloud enabled using Windows Azure Mobile Services. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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