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• Is multithreading the right way to go for my case?

  - by Julien Lebosquain

  Hello, I'm currently designing a multi-client / server application. I'm using plain good old sockets because WCF or similar technology is not what I need. Let me explain: it isn't the classical case of a client simply calling a service; all clients can 'interact' with each other by sending a packet to the server, which will then do some action, and possible re-dispatch an answer message to one or more clients. Although doable with WCF, the application will get pretty complex with hundreds of different messages. For each connected client, I'm of course using asynchronous methods to send and receive bytes. I've got the messages fully working, everything's fine. Except that for each line of code I'm writing, my head just burns because of multithreading issues. Since there could be around 200 clients connected at the same time, I chose to go the fully multithreaded way: each received message on a socket is immediately processed on the thread pool thread it was received, not on a single consumer thread. Since each client can interact with other clients, and indirectly with shared objects on the server, I must protect almost every object that is mutable. I first went with a ReaderWriterLockSlim for each resource that must be protected, but quickly noticed that there are more writes overall than reads in the server application, and switched to the well-known Monitor to simplify the code. So far, so good. Each resource is protected, I have helper classes that I must use to get a lock and its protected resource, so I can't use an object without getting a lock. Moreover, each client has its own lock that is entered as soon as a packet is received from its socket. It's done to prevent other clients from making changes to the state of this client while it has some messages being processed, which is something that will happen frequently. Now, I don't just need to protect resources from concurrent accesses. I must keep every client in sync with the server for some collections I have. One tricky part that I'm currently struggling with is the following: I have a collection of clients. Each client has its own unique ID. When a client connects, it must receive the IDs of every connected client, and each one of them must be notified of the newcomer's ID. When a client disconnects, every other client must know it so that its ID is no longer valid for them. Every client must always have, at a given time, the same clients collection as the server so that I can assume that everybody knows everybody. This way if I'm sending a message to client #1 telling "Client #2 has done something", I know that it will always be correctly interpreted: Client 1 will never wonder "but who is Client 2 anyway?". My first attempt for handling the connection of a new client (let's call it X) was this pseudo-code (remember that newClient is already locked here): lock (clients) { foreach (var client in clients) { lock (client) { client.Send("newClient with id X has connected"); } } clients.Add(newClient); newClient.Send("the list of other clients"); } Now imagine that in the same time, another client has sent a packet that translates into a message that must be broadcasted to every connected client, the pseudo-code will be something like this (remember that the current client - let's call it Y - is already locked here): lock (clients) { foreach (var client in clients) { lock (client) { client.Send("something"); } } } An obvious deadlock occurs here: on one thread X is locked, the clients lock has been entered, started looping through the clients, and at one moment must get Y's lock... which is already acquired on the second thread, itself waiting for the clients collection lock to be released! This is not the only case like this in the server application. There are other collections which must be kept in sync with the clients, some properties on a client can be changed by another one, etc. I tried other types of locks, lock-free mechanisms and a bunch of other things. Either there were obvious deadlocks when I'm using too much locks for safety, or obvious race conditions otherwise. When I finally find a good middle point between the two, it usually comes with very subtle race conditions / dead locks and other multi-threading issues... my head hurts very quickly since for any single line of code I'm writing I have to review almost the whole application to ensure everything will behave correctly with any number of threads. So here's my final question: how would you resolve this specific case, the general case, and more importantly: aren't I going the wrong way here? I have little problems with the .NET framework, C#, simple concurrency or algorithms in general. Still, I'm lost here. I know I could use only one thread processing the incoming requests and everything will be fine. However, that won't scale well at all with more clients... But I'm thinking more and more to go this simple way. What do you think? Thanks in advance to you, StackOverflow people which have taken the time to read this huge question. I really had to explain the whole context if I want to get some help.

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• A column ID occurred more than once in the specification

  - by Puzzle84

  Recently i've picked up my EF 4.1 / MVC 3 project again and started building in actual frontend capabilities. Now i'm developing a "simple" message system but upon going to that page i get the error as stated in the title EDIT It creates the database just not the models. Stack trace: [NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.] ASP._Page_Views_Inbox_Index_cshtml.Execute() in c:\Development\MVC\DOCCL\Views\Inbox\Index.cshtml:18 System.Web.WebPages.WebPageBase.ExecutePageHierarchy() +197 System.Web.Mvc.WebViewPage.ExecutePageHierarchy() +81 System.Web.WebPages.StartPage.RunPage() +17 System.Web.WebPages.StartPage.ExecutePageHierarchy() +62 System.Web.WebPages.WebPageBase.ExecutePageHierarchy(WebPageContext pageContext, TextWriter writer, WebPageRenderingBase startPage) +76 System.Web.Mvc.RazorView.RenderView(ViewContext viewContext, TextWriter writer, Object instance) +222 System.Web.Mvc.BuildManagerCompiledView.Render(ViewContext viewContext, TextWriter writer) +115 System.Web.Mvc.ViewResultBase.ExecuteResult(ControllerContext context) +295 System.Web.Mvc.ControllerActionInvoker.InvokeActionResult(ControllerContext controllerContext, ActionResult actionResult) +13 System.Web.Mvc.<c_DisplayClass1c.b_19() +23 System.Web.Mvc.ControllerActionInvoker.InvokeActionResultFilter(IResultFilter filter, ResultExecutingContext preContext, Func1 continuation) +242 System.Web.Mvc.<>c__DisplayClass1e.<InvokeActionResultWithFilters>b__1b() +21 System.Web.Mvc.ControllerActionInvoker.InvokeActionResultWithFilters(ControllerContext controllerContext, IList1 filters, ActionResult actionResult) +177 System.Web.Mvc.ControllerActionInvoker.InvokeAction(ControllerContext controllerContext, String actionName) +324 System.Web.Mvc.Controller.ExecuteCore() +106 System.Web.Mvc.ControllerBase.Execute(RequestContext requestContext) +91 System.Web.Mvc.ControllerBase.System.Web.Mvc.IController.Execute(RequestContext requestContext) +10 System.Web.Mvc.<c_DisplayClassb.b_5() +34 System.Web.Mvc.Async.<c_DisplayClass1.b_0() +19 System.Web.Mvc.Async.<c_DisplayClass81.<BeginSynchronous>b__7(IAsyncResult _) +10 System.Web.Mvc.Async.WrappedAsyncResult1.End() +62 System.Web.Mvc.<c_DisplayClasse.b_d() +48 System.Web.Mvc.SecurityUtil.b_0(Action f) +7 System.Web.Mvc.SecurityUtil.ProcessInApplicationTrust(Action action) +22 System.Web.Mvc.MvcHandler.EndProcessRequest(IAsyncResult asyncResult) +60 System.Web.Mvc.MvcHandler.System.Web.IHttpAsyncHandler.EndProcessRequest(IAsyncResult result) +9 System.Web.CallHandlerExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute() +9478661 System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously) +178 InnerException : {"A column ID occurred more than once in the specification."} The recently added code is. Controller: // // GET: /Inbox/Index/5/1 public ActionResult Index(int? Id, int Page = 1) { try { const int pageSize = 10; var messages = from m in horseTracker.Messages where m.ReceiverId.Equals(Id) select m; var paginatedMessages = new PaginatedList<Message>(messages, Page, pageSize); return View(paginatedMessages); } catch (Exception ex) { } return View(); } Models public class Message { [Key] public int Id { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage = "Subject is required")] [Display(Name = "Subject")] public string Subject { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage = "Message is required")] [Display(Name = "Message")] public string Content { get; set; } [Required] [Display(Name = "Date")] public DateTime Created { get; set; } public Boolean Read { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage = "Can't create a message without a user")] public int SenderId { get; set; } public virtual User Sender { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage = "Please pick a recipient")] public int ReceiverId { get; set; } public virtual User Receiver { get; set; } } public class User { [Key] public int Id { get; set; } [Required] [Display(Name = "Username")] public string UserName { get; set; } [Required] [Display(Name = "First Name")] public string FirstName { get; set; } [Required] [Display(Name = "Last Name")] public string LastName { get; set; } [Required] [Display(Name = "E-Mail")] public string Email { get; set; } [Required] [Display(Name = "Password")] public string Password { get; set; } [Required] [Display(Name = "Country")] public string Country { get; set; } public string EMail { get; set; } //Races public virtual ICollection<Message> Messages { get; set; } } modelBuilder.Entity<User>() .HasMany(u => u.Messages) .WithRequired(m => m.Receiver) .HasForeignKey(m => m.ReceiverId) .WillCascadeOnDelete(false); Anyone have a clue on why i might be getting that error? Before i added these classes it was working fine.

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• Partially Modifying an XML serialized document.

  - by Stacey

  I have an XML document, several actually, that will be editable via a front-end UI. I've discovered a problem with this approach (other than the fact that it is using xml files instead of a database... but I cannot change that right now). If one user makes a change while another user is in the process of making a change, then the second one's changes will overwrite the first. I need to be able to request objects from the xml files, change them, and then submit the changes back to the xml file without re-writing the entire file. I've got my entire xml access class posted here (which was formed thanks to wonderful help from stackoverflow!) using System; using System.Linq; using System.Collections; using System.Collections.Generic; namespace Repositories { /// <summary> /// A file base repository represents a data backing that is stored in an .xml file. /// </summary> public partial class Repository<T> : IRepository { /// <summary> /// Default constructor for a file repository /// </summary> public Repository() { } /// <summary> /// Initialize a basic repository with a filename. This will have to be passed from a context to be mapped. /// </summary> /// <param name="filename"></param> public Repository(string filename) { FileName = filename; } /// <summary> /// Discovers a single item from this repository. /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TItem">The type of item to recover.</typeparam> /// <typeparam name="TCollection">The collection the item belongs to.</typeparam> /// <param name="expression"></param> /// <returns></returns> public TItem Single<TItem, TCollection>(Predicate<TItem> expression) where TCollection : IDisposable, IEnumerable<TItem> { using (var list = List<TCollection>()) { return list.Single(i => expression(i)); } } /// <summary> /// Discovers a collection from the repository, /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TCollection"></typeparam> /// <returns></returns> public TCollection List<TCollection>() where TCollection : IDisposable { using (var list = System.Xml.Serializer.Deserialize<TCollection>(FileName)) { return (TCollection)list; } } /// <summary> /// Discovers a single item from this repository. /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TItem">The type of item to recover.</typeparam> /// <typeparam name="TCollection">The collection the item belongs to.</typeparam> /// <param name="expression"></param> /// <returns></returns> public List<TItem> Select<TItem, TCollection>(Predicate<TItem> expression) where TCollection : IDisposable, IEnumerable<TItem> { using (var list = List<TCollection>()) { return list.Where( i => expression(i) ).ToList<TItem>(); } } /// <summary> /// Attempts to save an entire collection. /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TCollection"></typeparam> /// <param name="collection"></param> /// <returns></returns> public Boolean Save<TCollection>(TCollection collection) { try { // load the collection into an xml reader and try to serialize it. System.Xml.XmlDocument xDoc = new System.Xml.XmlDocument(); xDoc.LoadXml(System.Xml.Serializer.Serialize<TCollection>(collection)); // attempt to flush the file xDoc.Save(FileName); // assume success return true; } catch { return false; } } internal string FileName { get; private set; } } public interface IRepository { TItem Single<TItem, TCollection>(Predicate<TItem> expression) where TCollection : IDisposable, IEnumerable<TItem>; TCollection List<TCollection>() where TCollection : IDisposable; List<TItem> Select<TItem, TCollection>(Predicate<TItem> expression) where TCollection : IDisposable, IEnumerable<TItem>; Boolean Save<TCollection>(TCollection collection); } }

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• Does this language feature already exist?

  - by Pindatjuh

  I'm currently developing a new language for programming in a continuous environment (compare it to electrical engineering), and I've got some ideas on a certain language construction. Let me explain the feature by explanation and then by definition: x = a U b; Where x is a variable and a and b are other variables (or static values). This works like a union between a and b; no duplicates and no specific order. with(x) { // regular 'with' usage; using the global interpretation of "x" x = 5; // will replace the original definition of "x = a U b;" } with(x = a) { // this code block is executed when the "x" variable // has the "a" variable assigned. All references in // this code-block to "x" are references to "a". So saying: x = 5; // would only change the variable "a". If the variable "a" // later on changes, x still equals to 5, in this fashion: // 'x = a U b U 5;' // '[currentscope] = 5;' // thus, 'a = 5;' } with(x = b) { // same but with "b" } with(x != a) { // here the "x" variable refers to any variable // but "a"; thus saying x = 5; // is equal to the rewriting of // 'x = a U b U 5;' // 'b = 5;' (since it was the scope of this block) } with(x = (a U b)) { // guaranteed that "x" is 'a U b'; interacting with "x" // will interact with both "a" and "b". x = 5; // makes both "a" and "b" equal to 5; also the "x" variable // is updated to contain: // 'x = a U b U 5;' // '[currentscope] = 5;' // 'a U b = 5;' // and thus: 'a = 5; b = 5;'. } // etc. In the above, all code-blocks are executed, but the "scope" changes in each block how x is interpreted. In the first block, x is guaranteed to be a: thus interacting with x inside that block will interact on a. The second and the third code-block are only equal in this situation (because not a: then there only remains b). The last block guarantees that x is at least a or b. Further more; U is not the "bitwise or operator", but I've called it the "and/or"-operator. Its definition is: "U" = "and" U "or" (On my blog, http://cplang.wordpress.com/2009/12/19/binop-and-or/, there is more (mathematical) background information on this operator. It's loosely based on sets. Using different syntax, changed it in this question.) Update: more examples. print = "Hello world!" U "How are you?"; // this will print // both values, but the // order doesn't matter. // 'userkey' is a variable containing a key. with(userkey = "a") { print = userkey; // will only print "a". } with(userkey = ("shift" U "a")) { // pressed both "shift" and the "a" key. print = userkey; // will "print" shift and "a", even // if the user also pressed "ctrl": // the interpretation of "userkey" is changed, // such that it only contains the matched cases. } with((userkey = "shift") U (userkey = "a")) { // same as if-statement above this one, showing the distributivity. } x = 5 U 6 U 7; y = x + x; // will be: // y = (5 U 6 U 7) + (5 U 6 U 7) // = 10 U 11 U 12 U 13 U 14 somewantedkey = "ctrl" U "alt" U "space" with(userkey = somewantedkey) { // must match all elements of "somewantedkey" // (distributed the Boolean equals operated) // thus only executed when all the defined keys are pressed } with(somewantedkey = userkey) { // matches only one of the provided "somewantedkey" // thus when only "space" is pressed, this block is executed. } Update2: more examples and some more context. with(x = (a U b)) { // this } // can be written as with((x = a) U (x = b)) { // this: changing the variable like x = 5; // will be rewritten as: // a = 5 and b = 5 } Some background information: I'm building a language which is "time-independent", like Java is "platform-independant". Everything stated in the language is "as is", and is continuously actively executed. This means; the programmer does not know in which order (unless explicitly stated using constructions) elements are, nor when statements are executed. The language is completely separated from the "time"-concept, i.e. it's continuously executed: with(a < 5) { a++; } // this is a loop-structure; // how and when it's executed isn't known however. with(a) { // everytime the "a" variable changes, this code-block is executed. b = 4; with(b < 3) { // runs only three times. } with(b > 0) { b = b - 1; // runs four times } } Update 3: After pondering on the type of this language feature; it closely resemblances Netbeans Platform's Lookup, where each "with"-statement a synchronized agent is, working on it's specific "filter" of objects. Instead of type-based, this is variable-based (fundamentally quite the same; just a different way of identifiying objects). I greatly thank all of you for providing me with very insightful information and links/hints to great topics I can research. Thanks. I do not know if this construction already exists, so that's my question: does this language feature already exist?

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• How should I implement simple caches with concurrency on Redis?

  - by solublefish

  Background I have a 2-tier web service - just my app server and an RDBMS. I want to move to a pool of identical app servers behind a load balancer. I currently cache a bunch of objects in-process. I hope to move them to a shared Redis. I have a dozen or so caches of simple, small-sized business objects. For example, I have a set of Foos. Each Foo has a unique FooId and an OwnerId. One "owner" may own multiple Foos. In a traditional RDBMS this is just a table with an index on the PK FooId and one on OwnerId. I'm caching this in one process simply: Dictionary<int,Foo> _cacheFooById; Dictionary<int,HashSet<int>> _indexFooIdsByOwnerId; Reads come straight from here, and writes go here and to the RDBMS. I usually have this invariant: "For a given group [say by OwnerId], the whole group is in cache or none of it is." So when I cache miss on a Foo, I pull that Foo and all the owner's other Foos from the RDBMS. Updates make sure to keep the index up to date and respect the invariant. When an owner calls GetMyFoos I never have to worry that some are cached and some aren't. What I did already The first/simplest answer seems to be to use plain ol' SET and GET with a composite key and json value: SET( "ServiceCache:Foo:" + theFoo.Id, JsonSerialize(theFoo)); I later decided I liked: HSET( "ServiceCache:Foo", theFoo.FooId, JsonSerialize(theFoo)); That lets me get all the values in one cache as HVALS. It also felt right - I'm literally moving hashtables to Redis, so perhaps my top-level items should be hashes. This works to first order. If my high-level code is like: UpdateCache(myFoo); AddToIndex(myFoo); That translates into: HSET ("ServiceCache:Foo", theFoo.FooId, JsonSerialize(theFoo)); var myFoos = JsonDeserialize( HGET ("ServiceCache:FooIndex", theFoo.OwnerId) ); myFoos.Add(theFoo.OwnerId); HSET ("ServiceCache:FooIndex", theFoo.OwnerId, JsonSerialize(myFoos)); However, this is broken in two ways. Two concurrent operations can read/modify/write at the same time. The latter "wins" the final HSET and the former's index update is lost. Another operation could read the index in between the first and second lines. It would miss a Foo that it should find. So how do I index properly? I think I could use a Redis set instead of a json-encoded value for the index. That would solve part of the problem since the "add-to-index-if-not-already-present" would be atomic. I also read about using MULTI as a "transaction" but it doesn't seem like it does what I want. Am I right that I can't really MULTI; HGET; {update}; HSET; EXEC since it doesn't even do the HGET before I issue the EXEC? I also read about using WATCH and MULTI for optimistic concurrency, then retrying on failure. But WATCH only works on top-level keys. So it's back to SET/GET instead of HSET/HGET. And now I need a new index-like-thing to support getting all the values in a given cache. If I understand it right, I can combine all these things to do the job. Something like: while(!succeeded) { WATCH( "ServiceCache:Foo:" + theFoo.FooId ); WATCH( "ServiceCache:FooIndexByOwner:" + theFoo.OwnerId ); WATCH( "ServiceCache:FooIndexAll" ); MULTI(); SET ("ServiceCache:Foo:" + theFoo.FooId, JsonSerialize(theFoo)); SADD ("ServiceCache:FooIndexByOwner:" + theFoo.OwnerId, theFoo.FooId); SADD ("ServiceCache:FooIndexAll", theFoo.FooId); EXEC(); //TODO somehow set succeeded properly } Finally I'd have to translate this pseudocode into real code depending how my client library uses WATCH/MULTI/EXEC; it looks like they need some sort of context to hook them together. All in all this seems like a lot of complexity for what has to be a very common case; I can't help but think there's a better, smarter, Redis-ish way to do things that I'm just not seeing. How do I lock properly? Even if I had no indexes, there's still a (probably rare) race condition. A: HGET - cache miss B: HGET - cache miss A: SELECT B: SELECT A: HSET C: HGET - cache hit C: UPDATE C: HSET B: HSET ** this is stale data that's clobbering C's update. Note that C could just be a really-fast A. Again I think WATCH, MULTI, retry would work, but... ick. I know in some places people use special Redis keys as locks for other objects. Is that a reasonable approach here? Should those be top-level keys like ServiceCache:FooLocks:{Id} or ServiceCache:Locks:Foo:{Id}? Or make a separate hash for them - ServiceCache:Locks with subkeys Foo:{Id}, or ServiceCache:Locks:Foo with subkeys {Id} ? How would I work around abandoned locks, say if a transaction (or a whole server) crashes while "holding" the lock?

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• Android application displays black screen after running

  - by frgnvola

  When I click "Run as an Android Application" on Eclipse, the following is displayed in the console [2014-06-05 20:07:18 - StudentConnect] Android Launch! [2014-06-05 20:07:18 - StudentConnect] adb is running normally. [2014-06-05 20:07:18 - StudentConnect] Performing sandhu.student.connect.SplashActivity activity launch [2014-06-05 20:07:18 - StudentConnect] Using default Build Tools revision 19.0.0 [2014-06-05 20:07:18 - StudentConnect] Refreshing resource folders. [2014-06-05 20:07:18 - StudentConnect] Using default Build Tools revision 19.0.0 [2014-06-05 20:07:18 - StudentConnect] Starting incremental Pre Compiler: Checking resource changes. [2014-06-05 20:07:18 - StudentConnect] Nothing to pre compile! [2014-06-05 20:07:18 - StudentConnect] Starting incremental Package build: Checking resource changes. [2014-06-05 20:07:18 - StudentConnect] Using default Build Tools revision 19.0.0 [2014-06-05 20:07:18 - StudentConnect] Skipping over Post Compiler. [2014-06-05 20:07:20 - StudentConnect] Application already deployed. No need to reinstall. [2014-06-05 20:07:20 - StudentConnect] Starting activity sandhu.student.connect.SplashActivity on device 0f0898b2 [2014-06-05 20:07:21 - StudentConnect] ActivityManager: Starting: Intent { act=android.intent.action.MAIN cat=[android.intent.category.LAUNCHER] cmp=sandhu.student.connect/.SplashActivity } [2014-06-05 20:07:21 - StudentConnect] ActivityManager: Warning: Activity not started, its current task has been brought to the front After deployed to my phone, it only displays a black screen. I recently implemented a splash screen, but it was working fine before; however I think it might have something to do with the problem. Here are my java and xml files: MainActivity.java package sandhu.student.connect; import android.app.Activity; import android.os.Bundle; import android.view.KeyEvent; import android.view.View; import android.webkit.WebSettings; import android.webkit.WebView; import android.webkit.WebViewClient; public class MainActivity extends Activity { public WebView student_zangle; @Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.activity_main); WebView student_zangle = (WebView) findViewById(R.id.student_zangle); student_zangle.loadUrl("https://zangleweb01.clovisusd.k12.ca.us/studentconnect/"); student_zangle.setWebViewClient(new WebViewClient()); student_zangle.setScrollBarStyle(View.SCROLLBARS_INSIDE_OVERLAY); WebSettings settings = student_zangle.getSettings(); settings.setJavaScriptEnabled(true); settings.setBuiltInZoomControls(true); settings.setLoadWithOverviewMode(true); settings.setUseWideViewPort(true); } @Override public boolean onKeyDown(int keyCode, KeyEvent event) { WebView student_zangle = (WebView) findViewById(R.id.student_zangle); if ((keyCode == KeyEvent.KEYCODE_BACK) && student_zangle.canGoBack()) { student_zangle.goBack(); return true; } else { finish(); } return super.onKeyDown(keyCode, event); } } activity_main.xml <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="match_parent" android:background="@drawable/blue" tools:context=".MainActivity" > <WebView android:id="@+id/student_zangle" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="match_parent" /> </RelativeLayout> SplashActivity.java package sandhu.student.connect; import android.os.Bundle; import android.preference.PreferenceActivity; public class SplashActivity extends PreferenceActivity { @SuppressWarnings("deprecation") @Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); addPreferencesFromResource(R.xml.prefs); } } splash_activity.xml <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="match_parent" android:background="@drawable/blue" android:orientation="vertical" > <ImageView android:id="@+id/imageView1" android:layout_width="250dp" android:layout_height="100dp" android:layout_alignParentTop="true" android:layout_centerHorizontal="true" android:layout_marginTop="145dp" android:contentDescription="@string/zangle_logo" android:src="@drawable/logo" /> </RelativeLayout> Also, here is a full copy of the logcat error output: 06-05 20:19:46.698: E/Watchdog(817): !@Sync 1952 06-05 20:20:09.971: E/memtrack(16438): Couldn't load memtrack module (No such file or directory) 06-05 20:20:09.971: E/android.os.Debug(16438): failed to load memtrack module: -2 06-05 20:20:11.012: E/memtrack(16451): Couldn't load memtrack module (No such file or directory) 06-05 20:20:11.012: E/android.os.Debug(16451): failed to load memtrack module: -2 06-05 20:20:11.202: E/EnterpriseContainerManager(817): ContainerPolicy Service is not yet ready!!! Please help me figure out what is wrong, or at least point me in the right direction. Thanks in advance.

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• how to redirect on youtube in androi

  - by rajshree

  public class MovieDescription extends Activity { Vibrator vibrator; TextView tv_title,tv_year,tv_banner,tv_desc; RatingBar ratingBar; ImageView iv_watch,iv_poster; private static final String TAG_CONTACTS = "Demo"; private static final String TAG_ID = "id"; private static final String TAG_TITLE = "title"; private static final String TAG_YEAR = "year"; private static final String TAG_RATING = "rating"; private static final String TAG_BANNER= "category"; private static final String TAG_DESC = "description"; private static final String TAG_URL = "url"; private static final String TAG_POSTER = "poster"; String id,title,year,rating,banner,description,poster, movieUrl; static JSONArray contacts = null; @Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.movie_description); initialize(); String movieDescUrl = "http://vaibhavtech.com/work/android/movie_description.php?id="+MainActivity.movie_Id; MovieDescriptionParser jParser = new MovieDescriptionParser(); JSONObject json = jParser.getJSONFromUrl(movieDescUrl); try { contacts = json.getJSONArray(TAG_CONTACTS); for (int i = 0; i < contacts.length(); i++) { /**********************************Value Parse FromUrl**********************************/ JSONObject c = contacts.getJSONObject(i); id = c.getString(TAG_ID); title = c.getString(TAG_TITLE); year = c.getString(TAG_YEAR); rating = c.getString(TAG_RATING); banner=c.getString(TAG_BANNER); description = c.getString(TAG_DESC); movieUrl = c.getString(TAG_URL); poster = c.getString(TAG_POSTER); /**********************************Valeu Assing to UI Component**********************************/ Log.i(id, title); } } catch (JSONException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } tv_title.setText(title); tv_year.setText(year); tv_banner.setText(banner); tv_desc.setText(description); Float rat=Float.parseFloat(rating); ratingBar.setRating(rat); Bitmap bimage= getBitmapFromURL("http://vaibhavtech.com/work/android/admin/upload/"+poster); iv_poster.setImageBitmap(bimage); iv_watch.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener() { @Override public void onClick(View v) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub vibrator.vibrate(40); LayoutInflater inflater=getLayoutInflater(); View view=inflater.inflate(R.layout.customtoast,(ViewGroup)findViewById(R.id.custom_toast_layout)); Toast toast=new Toast(getApplicationContext()); toast.setDuration(Toast.LENGTH_LONG); toast.setGravity(Gravity.CENTER_HORIZONTAL, 0, 0); toast.setView(view); toast.show(); Intent intent=new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW); intent.setData(Uri.parse(movieUrl)); startActivity(intent); } }); } @Override public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub int currentapiVersion = android.os.Build.VERSION.SDK_INT; Log.i("Device Versoin is", ""+currentapiVersion); if (currentapiVersion >= android.os.Build.VERSION_CODES.JELLY_BEAN){ ActionBar actionBar = getActionBar(); actionBar.setHomeButtonEnabled(true); actionBar.setDisplayHomeAsUpEnabled(true); getMenuInflater().inflate(R.menu.main, menu); } return super.onCreateOptionsMenu(menu); } @Override public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub switch (item.getItemId()) { case android.R.id.home: onBackPressed(); return true; case R.id.home: Intent intent = new Intent(this, MainActivity.class); intent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP); startActivity(intent); Log.i("Home", "Press"); return true; } return super.onOptionsItemSelected(item); } public void initialize() { tv_banner=(TextView) findViewById(R.id.tv_movie_description_banner); tv_desc=(TextView) findViewById(R.id.tv_movie_description_decription); tv_title=(TextView) findViewById(R.id.tv_movie_description_name); tv_year=(TextView) findViewById(R.id.tv_movie_description_year); ratingBar=(RatingBar) findViewById(R.id.ratingBar1); iv_watch=(ImageView) findViewById(R.id.iv_movie_description_watch); iv_poster=(ImageView) findViewById(R.id.iv_movie_description_poster); vibrator=(Vibrator)getSystemService(Context.VIBRATOR_SERVICE);; } public static Bitmap getBitmapFromURL(String src) { try { Log.i("src",src); URL url = new URL(src); HttpURLConnection connection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection(); connection.setDoInput(true); connection.connect(); InputStream input = connection.getInputStream(); Bitmap myBitmap = BitmapFactory.decodeStream(input); Log.i("Bitmap","returned"); return myBitmap; } catch (IOException e) { e.printStackTrace(); Log.e("Exception",e.getMessage()); return null; } } } when i am clciking on watch now button its giving me 4 options -by mozilz,by chrome,by youtube, i want that when i click on watch now button it get redirect on youtube url link,..how can i do this please give me any suggetion.:(

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• Tomcat 6: Access Control Exception?

  - by iftrue

  I'm trying to setup a tomcat6 server, and I'm trying to match another setup someone else established. However, my deployment (default Ubuntu install) uses a policy.d/ directory structure, and the established server just uses a catalina.policy file. I've tried setting every entry in policy.d to match the given catalina.policy, but I still get the following stacktrace on boot (from localhost log). I have two questions, then. First, how do I get tomcat to use a single poilcy file, rather than the directory structure presented by policy.d/? Secondly, why, when I specify all files to use the same policy, do I still get the stack trace below? Stack trace: SEVERE: Servlet /myapp threw load() exception java.security.AccessControlException: access denied (java.lang.RuntimePermission accessClassInPackage.org.apache.jasper) at java.security.AccessControlContext.checkPermission(AccessControlContext.java:342) at java.security.AccessController.checkPermission(AccessController.java:553) at java.lang.SecurityManager.checkPermission(SecurityManager.java:549) at java.lang.SecurityManager.checkPackageAccess(SecurityManager.java:1529) at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:291) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:264) at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.loadClass(WebappClassLoader.java:1314) at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.loadClass(WebappClassLoader.java:1245) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClassInternal(ClassLoader.java:332) at org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.init(JspServlet.java:100) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:616) at org.apache.catalina.security.SecurityUtil$1.run(SecurityUtil.java:244) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at javax.security.auth.Subject.doAsPrivileged(Subject.java:537) at org.apache.catalina.security.SecurityUtil.execute(SecurityUtil.java:276) at org.apache.catalina.security.SecurityUtil.doAsPrivilege(SecurityUtil.java:162) at org.apache.catalina.security.SecurityUtil.doAsPrivilege(SecurityUtil.java:115) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapper.loadServlet(StandardWrapper.java:1166) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapper.load(StandardWrapper.java:992) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.loadOnStartup(StandardContext.java:4058) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.start(StandardContext.java:4367) at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChildInternal(ContainerBase.java:791) at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.access$000(ContainerBase.java:123) at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$PrivilegedAddChild.run(ContainerBase.java:145) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChild(ContainerBase.java:769) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.addChild(StandardHost.java:525) at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployDirectory(HostConfig.java:978) at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployDirectories(HostConfig.java:941) at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployApps(HostConfig.java:499) at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.start(HostConfig.java:1201) at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.lifecycleEvent(HostConfig.java:318) at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleSupport.fireLifecycleEvent(LifecycleSupport.java:117) at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.start(ContainerBase.java:1053) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.start(StandardHost.java:719) at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.start(ContainerBase.java:1045) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine.start(StandardEngine.java:443) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardService.start(StandardService.java:516) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardServer.start(StandardServer.java:710) at org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina.start(Catalina.java:578) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:616) at org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.start(Bootstrap.java:288) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:616) at org.apache.commons.daemon.support.DaemonLoader.start(DaemonLoader.java:177) Policy.d grant codeBase "file:${java.home}/lib/-" { permission java.security.AllPermission; }; // These permissions apply to all shared system extensions grant codeBase "file:${java.home}/jre/lib/ext/-" { permission java.security.AllPermission; }; // These permissions apply to javac when ${java.home] points at $JAVA_HOME/jre grant codeBase "file:${java.home}/../lib/-" { permission java.security.AllPermission; }; // These permissions apply to all shared system extensions when // ${java.home} points at $JAVA_HOME/jre grant codeBase "file:${java.home}/lib/ext/-" { permission java.security.AllPermission; }; // ========== CATALINA CODE PERMISSIONS ======================================= // These permissions apply to the daemon code grant codeBase "file:${catalina.home}/bin/commons-daemon.jar" { permission java.security.AllPermission; }; // These permissions apply to the logging API grant codeBase "file:${catalina.home}/bin/tomcat-juli.jar" { permission java.util.PropertyPermission "java.util.logging.config.class", "read"; permission java.util.PropertyPermission "java.util.logging.config.file", "read"; permission java.io.FilePermission "${java.home}${file.separator}lib${file.separator}logging.properties", "read"; permission java.lang.RuntimePermission "shutdownHooks"; permission java.io.FilePermission "${catalina.base}${file.separator}conf${file.separator}logging.properties", "read"; permission java.util.PropertyPermission "catalina.base", "read"; permission java.util.logging.LoggingPermission "control"; permission java.io.FilePermission "${catalina.base}${file.separator}logs", "read, write"; permission java.io.FilePermission "${catalina.base}${file.separator}logs${file.separator}*", "read, write"; permission java.lang.RuntimePermission "getClassLoader"; // To enable per context logging configuration, permit read access to the appropriate file. // Be sure that the logging configuration is secure before enabling such access // eg for the examples web application: // permission java.io.FilePermission "${catalina.base}${file.separator}webapps${file.separator}examples${file.separator}WEB-INF${file.separator}classes${file.separator}logging.properties", "read"; }; // These permissions apply to the server startup code grant codeBase "file:${catalina.home}/bin/bootstrap.jar" { permission java.security.AllPermission; }; // These permissions apply to the servlet API classes // and those that are shared across all class loaders // located in the "lib" directory grant codeBase "file:${catalina.home}/lib/-" { permission java.security.AllPermission; }; // ========== WEB APPLICATION PERMISSIONS ===================================== // These permissions are granted by default to all web applications // In addition, a web application will be given a read FilePermission // and JndiPermission for all files and directories in its document root. grant { // Required for JNDI lookup of named JDBC DataSource's and // javamail named MimePart DataSource used to send mail permission java.util.PropertyPermission "java.home", "read"; permission java.util.PropertyPermission "java.naming.*", "read"; permission java.util.PropertyPermission "javax.sql.*", "read"; // OS Specific properties to allow read access permission java.util.PropertyPermission "os.name", "read"; permission java.util.PropertyPermission "os.version", "read"; permission java.util.PropertyPermission "os.arch", "read"; permission java.util.PropertyPermission "file.separator", "read"; permission java.util.PropertyPermission "path.separator", "read"; permission java.util.PropertyPermission "line.separator", "read"; // JVM properties to allow read access permission java.util.PropertyPermission "java.version", "read"; permission java.util.PropertyPermission "java.vendor", "read"; permission java.util.PropertyPermission "java.vendor.url", "read"; permission java.util.PropertyPermission "java.class.version", "read"; permission java.util.PropertyPermission "java.specification.version", "read"; permission java.util.PropertyPermission "java.specification.vendor", "read"; permission java.util.PropertyPermission "java.specification.name", "read"; permission java.util.PropertyPermission "java.vm.specification.version", "read"; permission java.util.PropertyPermission "java.vm.specification.vendor", "read"; permission java.util.PropertyPermission "java.vm.specification.name", "read"; permission java.util.PropertyPermission "java.vm.version", "read"; permission java.util.PropertyPermission "java.vm.vendor", "read"; permission java.util.PropertyPermission "java.vm.name", "read"; // Required for OpenJMX permission java.lang.RuntimePermission "getAttribute"; // Allow read of JAXP compliant XML parser debug permission java.util.PropertyPermission "jaxp.debug", "read"; // Precompiled JSPs need access to this package. permission java.lang.RuntimePermission "accessClassInPackage.org.apache.jasper.runtime"; permission java.lang.RuntimePermission "accessClassInPackage.org.apache.jasper.runtime.*"; // Precompiled JSPs need access to this system property. permission java.util.PropertyPermission "org.apache.jasper.runtime.BodyContentImpl.LIMIT_BUFFER", "read"; };

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• Tools and Utilities for the .NET Developer

  - by mbcrump

  Tweet this list! Add a link to my site to your bookmarks to quickly find this page again! Add me to twitter! This is a list of the tools/utilities that I use to do my job/hobby. I wanted this page to load fast and contain information that only you care about. If I have missed a tool that you like, feel free to contact me and I will add it to the list. Also, this list took a lot of time to complete. Please do not steal my work, if you like the page then please link back to my site. I will keep the links/information updated as new tools/utilities are created.  Windows/.NET Development – This is a list of tools that any Windows/.NET developer should have in his bag. I have used at some point in my career everything listed on this page and below is the tools worth keeping. Name Description License AnkhSVN Subversion support for Visual Studio. It also works with VS2010. Free Aurora XAML Designer One of the best XAML creation tools available. Has a ton of built in templates that you can copy/paste into VS2010. COST/Trial BeyondCompare Beyond Compare 3 is the ideal tool for comparing files and folders on your Windows or Linux system. Visualize changes in your code and carefully reconcile them. COST/Trial BuildIT Automated Task Tool Its main purpose is to automate tasks, whether it is the final packaging of a product, an automated daily build, maybe sending out a mailing list, even backing-up files. Free C Sharper for VB Convert VB to C#. COST CLRProfiler Analyze and improve the behavior of your .NET app. Free CodeRush Direct competitor to ReSharper, contains similar feature. This is one of those decide for yourself. COST/Trial Disk2VHD Disk2vhd is a utility that creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk - Microsoft's Virtual Machine disk format) versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs). Free Eazfuscator.NET Is a free obfuscator for .NET. The main purpose is to protect intellectual property of software. Free EQATEC Profiler Make your .NET app run faster. No source code changes are needed. Just point the profiler to your app, run the modified code, and get a visual report. COST Expression Studio 3/4 Comes with Web, Blend, Sketch Flow and more. You can create websites, produce beautiful XAML and more. COST/Trial Expresso The award-winning Expresso editor is equally suitable as a teaching tool for the beginning user of regular expressions or as a full-featured development environment for the experienced programmer or web designer with an extensive knowledge of regular expressions. Free Fiddler Fiddler is a web debugging proxy which logs all HTTP(s) traffic between your computer and the internet. Free Firebug Powerful Web development tool. If you build websites, you will need this. Free FxCop FxCop is an application that analyzes managed code assemblies (code that targets the .NET Framework common language runtime) and reports information about the assemblies, such as possible design, localization, performance, and security improvements. Free GAC Browser and Remover Easy way to remove multiple assemblies from the GAC. Assemblies registered by programs like Install Shield can also be removed. Free GAC Util The Global Assembly Cache tool allows you to view and manipulate the contents of the global assembly cache and download cache. Free HelpScribble Help Scribble is a full-featured, easy-to-use help authoring tool for creating help files from start to finish. You can create Win Help (.hlp) files, HTML Help (.chm) files, a printed manual and online documentation (on a web site) all from the same Help Scribble project. COST/Trial IETester IETester is a free Web Browser that allows you to have the rendering and JavaScript engines of IE9 preview, IE8, IE7 IE 6 and IE5.5 on Windows 7, Vista and XP, as well as the installed IE in the same process. Free iTextSharp iText# (iTextSharp) is a port of the iText open source java library for PDF generation written entirely in C# for the .NET platform. Use the iText mailing list to get support. Free Kaxaml Kaxaml is a lightweight XAML editor that gives you a "split view" so you can see both your XAML and your rendered content. Free LINQPad LinqPad lets you interactively query databases in a LINQ. Free Linquer Many programmers are familiar with SQL and will need a help in the transition to LINQ. Sometimes there are complicated queries to be written and Linqer can help by converting SQL scripts to LINQ. COST/Trial LiquidXML Liquid XML Studio 2010 is an advanced XML developers toolkit and IDE, containing all the tools needed for designing and developing XML schema and applications. COST/Trial Log4Net log4net is a tool to help the programmer output log statements to a variety of output targets. log4net is a port of the excellent log4j framework to the .NET runtime. We have kept the framework similar in spirit to the original log4j while taking advantage of new features in the .NET runtime. For more information on log4net see the features document. Free Microsoft Web Platform Installer The Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 (Web PI) is a free tool that makes getting the latest components of the Microsoft Web Platform, including Internet Information Services (IIS), SQL Server Express, .NET Framework and Visual Web Developer easy. Free Mono Development Don't have Visual Studio - no problem! This is an open Source C# and .NET development environment for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X Free Net Mass Downloader While it’s great that Microsoft has released the .NET Reference Source Code, you can only get it one file at a time while you’re debugging. If you’d like to batch download it for reading or to populate the cache, you’d have to write a program that instantiated and called each method in the Framework Class Library. Fortunately, .NET Mass Downloader comes to the rescue! Free nMap Nmap ("Network Mapper") is a free and open source (license) utility for network exploration or security auditing. Many systems and network administrators also find it useful for tasks such as network inventory, managing service upgrade schedules, and monitoring host or service uptime. Free NoScript (Firefox add-in) The NoScript Firefox extension provides extra protection for Firefox, Flock, Seamonkey and other Mozilla-based browsers: this free, open source add-on allows JavaScript, Java and Flash and other plug-ins to be executed only by trusted web sites of your choice (e.g. your online bank), and provides the most powerful Anti-XSS protection available in a browser. Free NotePad 2 Notepad2, a fast and light-weight Notepad-like text editor with syntax highlighting. This program can be run out of the box without installation, and does not touch your system's registry. Free PageSpy PageSpy is a small add-on for Internet Explorer that allows you to select any element within a webpage, select an option in the context menu, and view detailed information about both the coding behind the page and the element you selected. Free Phrase Express PhraseExpress manages your frequently used text snippets in customizable categories for quick access. Free PowerGui PowerGui is a free community for PowerGUI, a graphical user interface and script editor for Microsoft Windows PowerShell! Free Powershell Comes with Win7, but you can automate tasks by using the .NET Framework. Great for network admins. Free Process Explorer Ever wondered which program has a particular file or directory open? Now you can find out. Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded. Also, included in the SysInterals Suite. Free Process Monitor Process Monitor is an advanced monitoring tool for Windows that shows real-time file system, Registry and process/thread activity. Free Reflector Explore and analyze compiled .NET assemblies, viewing them in C#, Visual Basic, and IL. This is an Essential for any .NET developer. Free Regular Expression Library Stuck on a Regular Expression but you think someone has already figured it out? Chances are they have. Free Regulator Regulator makes Regular Expressions easy. This is a must have for a .NET Developer. Free RenameMaestro RenameMaestro is probably the easiest batch file renamer you'll find to instantly rename multiple files COST ReSharper The one program that I cannot live without. Supports VS2010 and offers simple refactoring, code analysis/assistance/cleanup/templates. One of the few applications that is worth the $$$. COST/Trial ScrewTurn Wiki ScrewTurn Wiki allows you to create, manage and share wikis. A wiki is a collaboratively-edited, information-centered website: the most famous is Wikipedia. Free SharpDevelop What is #develop? SharpDevelop is a free IDE for C# and VB.NET projects on Microsoft's .NET platform. Free Show Me The Template Show Me The Template is a tool for exploring the templates, be their data, control or items panel, that comes with the controls built into WPF for all 6 themes. Free SnippetCompiler Compiles code snippets without opening Visual Studio. It does not support .NET 4. Free SQL Prompt SQL Prompt is a plug-in that increases how fast you can work with SQL. It provides code-completion for SQL server, reformatting, db schema information and snippets. Awesome! COST/Trial SQLinForm SQLinForm is an automatic SQL code formatter for all major databases  including ORACLE, SQL Server, DB2, UDB, Sybase, Informix, PostgreSQL, Teradata, MySQL, MS Access etc. with over 70 formatting options. COST/OnlineFree SSMS Tools SSMS Tools Pack is an add-in for Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) including SSMS Express. Free Storm STORM is a free and open source tool for testing web services. Free Telerik Code Convertor Convert code from VB to C Sharp and Vice Versa. Free TurtoiseSVN TortoiseSVN is a really easy to use Revision control / version control / source control software for Windows.Since it's not an integration for a specific IDE you can use it with whatever development tools you like. Free UltraEdit UltraEdit is the ideal text, HTML and hex editor, and an advanced PHP, Perl, Java and JavaScript editor for programmers. UltraEdit is also an XML editor including a tree-style XML parser. An industry-award winner, UltraEdit supports disk-based 64-bit file handling (standard) on 32-bit Windows platforms (Windows 2000 and later). COST/Trial Virtual Windows XP Comes with some W7 version and allows you to run WinXP along side W7. Free VirtualBox Virtualization by Sun Microsystems. You can virtualize Windows, Linux and more. Free Visual Log Parser SQL queries against a variety of log files and other system data sources. Free WinMerge WinMerge is an Open Source differencing and merging tool for Windows. WinMerge can compare both folders and files, presenting differences in a visual text format that is easy to understand and handle. Free Wireshark Wireshark is one of the best network protocol analyzer's for Unix and windows. This has been used several times to get me out of a bind. Free XML Notepad 07 Old, but still one of my favorite XML viewers. Free Productivity Tools – This is the list of tools that I use to save time or quickly navigate around Windows. Name Description License AutoHotKey Automate almost anything by sending keystrokes and mouse clicks. You can write a mouse or keyboard macro by hand or use the macro recorder. Free CLCL CLCL is clipboard caching utility. Free Ditto Ditto is an extension to the standard windows clipboard. It saves each item placed on the clipboard allowing you access to any of those items at a later time. Ditto allows you to save any type of information that can be put on the clipboard, text, images, html, custom formats, ..... Free Evernote Remember everything from notes to photos. It will synch between computers/devices. Free InfoRapid Inforapid is a search tool that will display all you search results in a html like browser. If you click on a word in that browser, it will start another search to the word you clicked on. Handy if you want to trackback something to it's true origin. The word you looked for will be highlighted in red. Clicking on the red word will open the containing file in a text based viewer. Clicking on any word in the opened document will start another search on that word. Free KatMouse The prime purpose of the KatMouse utility is to enhance the functionality of mice with a scroll wheel, offering 'universal' scrolling: moving the mouse wheel will scroll the window directly beneath the mouse cursor (not the one with the keyboard focus, which is default on Windows OSes). This is a major increase in the usefulness of the mouse wheel. Free ScreenR Instant Screencast with nothing to download. Works with Mac or PC and free. Free Start++ Start++ is an enhancement for the Start Menu in Windows Vista. It also extends the Run box and the command-line with customizable commands.  For example, typing "w Windows Vista" will take you to the Windows Vista page on Wikipedia! Free Synergy Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It's intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitor(s). Free Texter Texter lets you define text substitution hot strings that, when triggered, will replace hotstring with a larger piece of text. By entering your most commonly-typed snippets of text into Texter, you can save countless keystrokes in the course of the day. Free Total Commander File handling, FTP, Archive handling and much more. Even works with Win3.11. COST/Trial Available Wizmouse WizMouse is a mouse enhancement utility that makes your mouse wheel work on the window currently under the mouse pointer, instead of the currently focused window. This means you no longer have to click on a window before being able to scroll it with the mouse wheel. This is a far more comfortable and practical way to make use of the mouse wheel. Free Xmarks Bookmark sync and search between computers. Free General Utilities – This is a list for power user users or anyone that wants more out of Windows. I usually install a majority of these whenever I get a new system. Name Description License µTorrent µTorrent is a lightweight and efficient BitTorrent client for Windows or Mac with many features. I use this for downloading LEGAL media. Free Audacity Audacity® is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. Learn more about Audacity... Also check our Wiki and Forum for more information. Free AVast Free FREE Antivirus. Free CD Burner XP Pro CDBurnerXP is a free application to burn CDs and DVDs, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs. It also includes the feature to burn and create ISOs, as well as a multilanguage interface. Free CDEX You can extract digital audio CDs into mp3/wav. Free Combofix Combofix is a freeware (a legitimate spyware remover created by sUBs), Combofix was designed to scan a computer for known malware, spyware (SurfSideKick, QooLogic, and Look2Me as well as any other combination of the mentioned spyware applications) and remove them. Free Cpu-Z Provides information about some of the main devices of your system. Free Cropper Cropper is a screen capture utility written in C#. It makes it fast and easy to grab parts of your screen. Use it to easily crop out sections of vector graphic files such as Fireworks without having to flatten the files or open in a new editor. Use it to easily capture parts of a web site, including text and images. It's also great for writing documentation that needs images of your application or web site. Free DropBox Drag and Drop files to sync between computers. Free DVD-Fab Converts/Copies DVDs/Blu-Ray to different formats. (like mp4, mkv, avi) COST/Trial Available FastStone Capture FastStone Capture is a powerful, lightweight, yet full-featured screen capture tool that allows you to easily capture and annotate anything on the screen including windows, objects, menus, full screen, rectangular/freehand regions and even scrolling windows/web pages. Free ffdshow FFDShow is a DirectShow decoding filter for decompressing DivX, XviD, H.264, FLV1, WMV, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, MPEG-4 movies. Free Filezilla FileZilla Client is a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive graphical user interface. You can also download a server version. Free FireFox Web Browser, do you really need an explanation? Free FireGestures A customizable mouse gestures extension which enables you to execute various commands and user scripts with five types of gestures. Free FoxIt Reader Light weight PDF viewer. You should install this with the advanced setting or it will install a toolbar and setup some shortcuts. Free gSynchIt Synch Gmail and Outlook. Even supports Outlook 2010 32/64 bit COST/Trial Available Hulu Desktop At home or in a hotel, this has replaced my cable/satellite subscription. Free ImgBurn ImgBurn is a lightweight CD / DVD / HD DVD / Blu-ray burning application that everyone should have in their toolkit! Free Infrarecorder InfraRecorder is a free CD/DVD burning solution for Microsoft Windows. It offers a wide range of powerful features; all through an easy to use application interface and Windows Explorer integration. Free KeePass KeePass is a free open source password manager, which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. Free LastPass Another password management, synchronize between browsers, automatic form filling and more. Free Live Essentials One download and lots of programs including Mail, Live Writer, Movie Maker and more! Free Monitores MonitorES is a small windows utility that helps you to turnoff monitor display when you lock down your machine.Also when you lock your machine, it will pause all your running media programs & set your IM status message to "Away" / Custom message(via options) and restore it back to normal when you back. Free mRemote mRemote is a full-featured, multi-tab remote connections manager. Free Open Office OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose. Free Paint.NET Simple, intuitive, and innovative user interface for editing photos. Free Picasa Picasa is free photo editing software from Google that makes your pictures look great. Free Pidgin Pidgin is an easy to use and free chat client used by millions. Connect to AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and more chat networks all at once. Free PING PING is a live Linux ISO, based on the excellent Linux From Scratch (LFS) documentation. It can be burnt on a CD and booted, or integrated into a PXE / RIS environment. Free Putty PuTTY is an SSH and telnet client, developed originally by Simon Tatham for the Windows platform. Free Revo Uninstaller Revo Uninstaller Pro helps you to uninstall software and remove unwanted programs installed on your computer easily! Even if you have problems uninstalling and cannot uninstall them from "Windows Add or Remove Programs" control panel applet.Revo Uninstaller is a much faster and more powerful alternative to "Windows Add or Remove Programs" applet! It has very powerful features to uninstall and remove programs. Free Security Essentials Microsoft Security Essentials is a new, free consumer anti-malware solution for your computer. Free SetupVirtualCloneDrive Virtual CloneDrive works and behaves just like a physical CD/DVD drive, however it exists only virtually. Point to the .ISO file and it appears in Windows Explorer as a Drive. Free Shark 007 Codec Pack Play just about any file format with this download. Also includes my W7 Media Playlist Generator. Free Snagit 9 Screen Capture on steroids. Add arrows, captions, etc to any screenshot. COST/Trial Available SysinternalsSuite Go ahead and download the entire sys internals suite. I have mentioned multiple programs in this suite already. Free TeraCopy TeraCopy is a compact program designed to copy and move files at the maximum possible speed, providing the user with a lot of features. Free for Home TrueCrypt Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows 7/Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux Free TweetDeck Fully featured Twitter client. Free UltraVNC UltraVNC is a powerful, easy to use and free software that can display the screen of another computer (via internet or network) on your own screen. The program allows you to use your mouse and keyboard to control the other PC remotely. It means that you can work on a remote computer, as if you were sitting in front of it, right from your current location. Free Unlocker Unlocks locked files. Pretty simple right? Free VLC Media Player VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player and multimedia framework capable of reading most audio and video formats Free Windows 7 Media Playlist This program is special to my heart because I wrote it. It has been mentioned on podcast and various websites. It allows you to quickly create wvx video playlist for Windows Media Center. Free WinRAR WinRAR is a powerful archive manager. It can backup your data and reduce the size of email attachments, decompress RAR, ZIP and other files downloaded from Internet and create new archives in RAR and ZIP file format. COST/Trial Available Blogging – I use the following for my blog. Name Description License Insert Code for Windows Live Writer Insert Code for Windows Live Writer will format a snippet of text in a number of programming languages such as C#, HTML, MSH, JavaScript, Visual Basic and TSQL. Free LiveWriter Included in Live Essentials, but the ultimate in Windows Blogging Free PasteAsVSCode Plug-in for Windows Live Writer that pastes clipboard content as Visual Studio code. Preserves syntax highlighting, indentation and background color. Converts RTF, outputted by Visual Studio, into HTML. Free Desktop Management – The list below represent the best in Windows Desktop Management. Name Description License 7 Stacks Allows users to have "stacks" of icons in their taskbar. Free Executor Executor is a multi purpose launcher and a more advanced and customizable version of windows run. Free Fences Fences is a program that helps you organize your desktop and can hide your icons when they are not in use. Free RocketDock Rocket Dock is a smoothly animated, alpha blended application launcher. It provides a nice clean interface to drop shortcuts on for easy access and organization. With each item completely customizable there is no end to what you can add and launch from the dock. Free WindowsTab Tabbing is an essential feature of modern web browsers. Window Tabs brings the productivity of tabbed window management to all of your desktop applications. Free

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• Content Management for WebCenter Installation Guide

  - by Gary Niu

  Overvew As we known, there are two way to install Content Management for WebCenter. One way is install it by WebCenter installer wizard, another way is to install it use their own installer. This guide is for the later one. For SSO purpose, I also mentioned how to config OID identity store for Content Management for WebCenter. Content Management for WebCenter( 10.1.3.5.1) Oracle Enterprise Linux R5U4 Basic Installation -bash-3.2$ ./setup.sh Please select your locale from the list.           1. Chinese-Simplified           2. Chinese-Traditional           3. Deutsch          *4. English-US           5. English-UK           6. Español           7. Français           8. Italiano           9. Japanese          10. Korean          11. Nederlands          12. Português-Brazil Choice? Throughout the install, when entering a text value, you can press Enter to accept the default that appears between square brackets ([]). When selecting from a list, you can select the choice followed by an asterisk by pressing Enter. Select installation type from the list.         *1. Install new server          2. Update a server Choice? Content Server Installation Directory Please enter the full pathname to the installation directory. Content Server Core Folder [/oracle/ucm/server]:/opt/oracle/ucm/server Create Directory         *1. yes          2. no Choice? Java virtual machine         *1. Sun Java 1.5.0_11 JDK          2. Specify a custom Java virtual machine Choice? Installing with Java version 1.5.0_11. Enter the location of the native file repository. This directory contains the native files checked in by contributors. Content Server Native Vault Folder [/opt/oracle/ucm/server/vault/]: Create Directory         *1. yes          2. no Choice? Enter the location of the web-viewable file repository. This directory contains files that can be accessed through the web server. Content Server Weblayout Folder [/opt/oracle/ucm/server/weblayout/]: Create Directory         *1. yes          2. no Choice? This server can be configured to manage its own authentication or to allow another master to act as an authentication proxy. Configure this server as a master or proxied server.         *1. Configure as a master server.          2. Configure as server proxied by a local master server. Choice? During installation, an admin server can be installed and configured to manage this server. If there is already an admin server on this system, you can have the installer configure it to administrate this server instead. Select admin server configuration.         *1. Install an admin server to manage this server.          2. Configure an existing admin server to manage this server.          3. Don't configure an admin server. Choice? Enter the location of an executable to start your web browser. This browser will be used to display the online help. Web Browser Path [/usr/bin/firefox]: Content Server System locale           1. Chinese-Simplified           2. Chinese-Traditional           3. Deutsch          *4. English-US           5. English-UK           6. Español           7. Français           8. Italiano           9. Japanese          10. Korean          11. Nederlands          12. Português-Brazil Choice? Please select the region for your timezone from the list.         *1. Use the timezone setting for your operating system          2. Pacific          3. America          4. Atlantic          5. Europe          6. Africa          7. Asia          8. Indian          9. Australia Choice? Please enter the port number that will be used to connect to the Content Server. This port must be otherwise unused. Content Server Port [4444]: Please enter the port number that will be used to connect to the Admin Server. This port must be otherwise unused. Admin Server Port [4440]: Enter a security filter for the server port. Hosts which are allowed to communicate directly with the server port may access any resources managed by the server. Insure that hosts which need access are included in the filter. See the installation guide for more details. Incoming connection address filter [127.0.0.1]:*.*.*.* *** Content Server URL Prefix The URL prefix specified here is used when generating HTML pages that refer to the contents of the weblayout directory within the installation. This prefix must be mapped in the web server Additional Document Directories section of the Content Management administration menu to the physical location of the weblayout directory. For example, "/idc/" would be used in your installation to refer to the URL http://ucm.company.com/idc which would be mapped in the web server to the physical location /oracle/ucm/server/weblayout. Web Server Relative Root [/idc/]: Enter the name of the local mail server. The server will contact this system to deliver email. Company Mail Server [mail]: Enter the e-mail address for the system administrator. Administrator E-Mail Address [sysadmin@mail]: *** Web Server Address Many generated HTML pages refer to the web server you are using. The address specified here will be used when generating those pages. The address should include the host and domain name in most cases. If your webserver is running on a port other than 80, append a colon and the port number. Examples: www.company.com, ucm.company.com:90 Web Server HTTP Address [yekki]:yekki.cn.oracle.com:7777 Enter the name for this instance. This name should be unique across your entire enterprise. It may not contain characters other than letters, numbers, and underscores. Server Instance Name [idc]: Enter a short label for this instance. This label is used on web pages to identify this instance. It should be less than 12 characters long. Server Instance Label [idc]: Enter a long description for this instance. Server Description [Content Server idc]: Web Server         *1. Apache          2. Sun ONE          3. Configure manually Choice? Please select a database from the list below to use with the Content Server. Content Server Database         *1. Oracle          2. Microsoft SQL Server 2005          3. Microsoft SQL Server 2000          4. Sybase          5. DB2          6. Custom JDBC settings          7. Skip database configuration Choice? Manually configure JDBC settings for this database          1. yes         *2. no Choice? Oracle Server Hostname [localhost]: Oracle Listener Port Number [1521]: *** Database User ID The user name is used to log into the database used by the content server. Oracle User [user]:YEKKI_OCSERVER *** Database Password The password is used to log into the database used by the content server. Oracle Password []:oracle Oracle Instance Name [ORACLE]:orcl Configure the JVM to find the JDBC driver in a specific jar file          1. yes         *2. no Choice? The installer can attempt to create the database tables or you can manually create them. If you choose to manually create the tables, you should create them now. Attempt to create database tables          1. yes         *2. no Choice? Select components to install.          1. ContentFolios: Collect related items in folios          2. Folders_g: Organize content into hierarchical folders          3. LinkManager8: Hypertext link management support          4. OracleTextSearch: External Oracle 11g database as search indexer support          5. ThreadedDiscussions: Threaded discussion management Enter numbers separated by commas to toggle, 0 to unselect all, F to finish: 1,2,3,4,5         *1. ContentFolios: Collect related items in folios         *2. Folders_g: Organize content into hierarchical folders         *3. LinkManager8: Hypertext link management support         *4. OracleTextSearch: External Oracle 11g database as search indexer support         *5. ThreadedDiscussions: Threaded discussion management Enter numbers separated by commas to toggle, 0 to unselect all, F to finish: F Checking configuration. . . Configuration OK. Review install settings. . . Content Server Core Folder: /opt/oracle/ucm/server Java virtual machine: Sun Java 1.5.0_11 JDK Content Server Native Vault Folder: /opt/oracle/ucm/server/vault/ Content Server Weblayout Folder: /opt/oracle/ucm/server/weblayout/ Proxy authentication through another server: no Install admin server: yes Web Browser Path: /usr/bin/firefox Content Server System locale: English-US Content Server Port: 4444 Admin Server Port: 4440 Incoming connection address filter: *.*.*.* Web Server Relative Root: /idc/ Company Mail Server: mail Administrator E-Mail Address: sysadmin@mail Web Server HTTP Address: yekki.cn.oracle.com:7777 Server Instance Name: idc Server Instance Label: idc Server Description: Content Server idc Web Server: Apache Content Server Database: Oracle Manually configure JDBC settings for this database: false Oracle Server Hostname: localhost Oracle Listener Port Number: 1521 Oracle User: YEKKI_OCSERVER Oracle Password: 6GP1gBgzSyKa4JW10U8UqqPznr/lzkNn/Ojf6M8GJ8I= Oracle Instance Name: orcl Configure the JVM to find the JDBC driver in a specific jar file: false Attempt to create database tables: no Components: ContentFolios,Folders_g,LinkManager8,OracleTextSearch,ThreadedDiscussions Proceed with install         *1. Proceed          2. Change configuration          3. Recheck the configuration          4. Abort installation Choice? Finished install type Install with warnings at 4/2/10 12:32 AM. Run Scripts -bash-3.2$ ./wc_contentserverconfig.sh /opt/oracle/ucm/server /mnt/hgfs/SOFTWARE/ofm_ucm_generic_10.1.3.5.1_disk1_1of1/ContentServer/webcenter-conf Installing '/mnt/hgfs/SOFTWARE/ofm_ucm_generic_10.1.3.5.1_disk1_1of1/ContentServer/webcenter-conf/CS10gR35UpdateBundle.zip' Service 'DELETE_DOC' Extended Service 'DELETE_BYREV_REVISION' Extended Installing '/mnt/hgfs/SOFTWARE/ofm_ucm_generic_10.1.3.5.1_disk1_1of1/ContentServer/webcenter-conf/ContentAccess/ContentAccess-linux.zip' (internal)      04.02 00:40:38.019      main    updateDocMetaDefinitionV11: adding decimal column Installing '/opt/oracle/ucm/server/custom/CS10gR35UpdateBundle/extras/Folders_g.zip' Installing '/opt/oracle/ucm/server/custom/CS10gR35UpdateBundle/extras/FusionLibraries.zip' Installing '/opt/oracle/ucm/server/custom/CS10gR35UpdateBundle/extras/JpsUserProvider.zip' Installing '/mnt/hgfs/SOFTWARE/ofm_ucm_generic_10.1.3.5.1_disk1_1of1/ContentServer/webcenter-conf/WcConfigure.zip' Apr 2, 2010 12:41:24 AM oracle.security.jps.internal.core.util.JpsConfigUtil getPasswordCredential WARNING: A password credential is expected; instead found . Apr 2, 2010 12:41:24 AM oracle.security.jps.internal.idstore.util.IdentityStoreUtil getUnamePwdFromCredStore WARNING: The credential with map JPS and key ldap.credential does not exist. Apr 2, 2010 12:41:27 AM oracle.security.jps.internal.core.util.JpsConfigUtil getPasswordCredential WARNING: A password credential is expected; instead found . Apr 2, 2010 12:41:27 AM oracle.security.jps.internal.idstore.util.IdentityStoreUtil getUnamePwdFromCredStore WARNING: The credential with map JPS and key ldap.credential does not exist. Apr 2, 2010 12:41:28 AM oracle.security.jps.internal.core.util.JpsConfigUtil getPasswordCredential WARNING: A password credential is expected; instead found . Apr 2, 2010 12:41:28 AM oracle.security.jps.internal.idstore.util.IdentityStoreUtil getUnamePwdFromCredStore WARNING: The credential with map JPS and key ldap.credential does not exist. Restart Content Server to apply updates. Configuring Apache Web Server append the following lines at httpd.conf: include "/opt/oracle/ucm/server/data/users/apache22/apache.conf" Configuring the Identity Store( Optional ) 1.  Stop Oracle Content Server and the Admin Server 2.  Update the Oracle Content Server's JPS configuration file, jps-config.xml: a. add a service instance <serviceInstance provider="idstore.ldap.provider" name="idstore.oid"> <property name="subscriber.name" value="dc=cn,dc=oracle,dc=com"></property> <property name="idstore.type" value="OID"></property> <property name="security.principal.key" value="ldap.credential"></property> <property name="security.principal.alias" value="JPS"></property> <property name="ldap.url" value="ldap://yekki.cn.oracle.com:3060"></property> <extendedProperty> <name>user.search.bases</name> <values> <value>cn=users,dc=cn,dc=oracle,dc=com</value> </values> </extendedProperty> <extendedProperty> <name>group.search.bases</name> <values> <value>cn=groups,dc=cn,dc=oracle,dc=com</value> </values> </extendedProperty> <property name="username.attr" value="uid"></property> <property name="user.login.attr" value="uid"></property> <property name="groupname.attr" value="cn"></property> </serviceInstance> b. Ensure that the <jpsContext> entry in the jps-config.xml file refers to the new serviceInstance, that is, idstore.oid and not idstore.ldap: <jpsContext name="default"> <serviceInstanceRef ref="idstore.oid"/> 3. Run the new script to setup the credentials for idstore.oid in the credential store: cd CONTENT_SERVER_HOME/custom/FusionLibraries/tools -bash-3.2$ ./run_credtool.sh Buildfile: ./../tools/credtool.xml     [input] skipping input as property action has already been set.     [input] Alias: [JPS]     [input] Key: [ldap.credential]     [input] User Name: cn=orcladmin     [input] Password: welcome1     [input] JPS Config: [/opt/oracle/ucm/server/custom/FusionLibraries/tools/../../../config/jps-config.xml] manage-creds:      [echo] @@@ Help: run 'ant manage-creds' command to see the detailed usage      [java] Using default context in /opt/oracle/ucm/server/custom/FusionLibraries/tools/../../../config/jps-config.xml file for credential store.      [java] Credential store location : /opt/oracle/ucm/server/config      [java] Credential with map JPS key ldap.credential stored successfully!      [java]      [java]      [java]     Credential for map JPS and key ldap.credential is:      [java]             PasswordCredential name : cn=orcladmin      [java]             PasswordCredential password : welcome1 BUILD SUCCESSFUL Total time: 1 minute 27 seconds Testing 1. acces http://yekki.cn.oracle.com:7777/idc 2. login in with OID user, for example: orcladmin/welcome1 3. make sure your JpsUserProvider status is "good"

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• Announcing release of ASP.NET MVC 3, IIS Express, SQL CE 4, Web Farm Framework, Orchard, WebMatrix

  - by ScottGu

  I’m excited to announce the release today of several products: ASP.NET MVC 3 NuGet IIS Express 7.5 SQL Server Compact Edition 4 Web Deploy and Web Farm Framework 2.0 Orchard 1.0 WebMatrix 1.0 The above products are all free. They build upon the .NET 4 and VS 2010 release, and add a ton of additional value to ASP.NET (both Web Forms and MVC) and the Microsoft Web Server stack. ASP.NET MVC 3 Today we are shipping the final release of ASP.NET MVC 3.  You can download and install ASP.NET MVC 3 here.  The ASP.NET MVC 3 source code (released under an OSI-compliant open source license) can also optionally be downloaded here. ASP.NET MVC 3 is a significant update that brings with it a bunch of great features.  Some of the improvements include: Razor ASP.NET MVC 3 ships with a new view-engine option called “Razor” (in addition to continuing to support/enhance the existing .aspx view engine).  Razor minimizes the number of characters and keystrokes required when writing a view template, and enables a fast, fluid coding workflow. Unlike most template syntaxes, with Razor you do not need to interrupt your coding to explicitly denote the start and end of server blocks within your HTML. The Razor parser is smart enough to infer this from your code. This enables a compact and expressive syntax which is clean, fast and fun to type.  You can learn more about Razor from some of the blog posts I’ve done about it over the last 6 months Introducing Razor New @model keyword in Razor Layouts with Razor Server-Side Comments with Razor Razor’s @: and <text> syntax Implicit and Explicit code nuggets with Razor Layouts and Sections with Razor Today’s release supports full code intellisense support for Razor (both VB and C#) with Visual Studio 2010 and the free Visual Web Developer 2010 Express. JavaScript Improvements ASP.NET MVC 3 enables richer JavaScript scenarios and takes advantage of emerging HTML5 capabilities. The AJAX and Validation helpers in ASP.NET MVC 3 now use an Unobtrusive JavaScript based approach.  Unobtrusive JavaScript avoids injecting inline JavaScript into HTML, and enables cleaner separation of behavior using the new HTML 5 “data-“ attribute convention (which conveniently works on older browsers as well – including IE6). This keeps your HTML tight and clean, and makes it easier to optionally swap out or customize JS libraries.  ASP.NET MVC 3 now includes built-in support for posting JSON-based parameters from client-side JavaScript to action methods on the server.  This makes it easier to exchange data across the client and server, and build rich JavaScript front-ends.  We think this capability will be particularly useful going forward with scenarios involving client templates and data binding (including the jQuery plugins the ASP.NET team recently contributed to the jQuery project).  Previous releases of ASP.NET MVC included the core jQuery library.  ASP.NET MVC 3 also now ships the jQuery Validate plugin (which our validation helpers use for client-side validation scenarios).  We are also now shipping and including jQuery UI by default as well (which provides a rich set of client-side JavaScript UI widgets for you to use within projects). Improved Validation ASP.NET MVC 3 includes a bunch of validation enhancements that make it even easier to work with data. Client-side validation is now enabled by default with ASP.NET MVC 3 (using an onbtrusive javascript implementation).  Today’s release also includes built-in support for Remote Validation - which enables you to annotate a model class with a validation attribute that causes ASP.NET MVC to perform a remote validation call to a server method when validating input on the client. The validation features introduced within .NET 4’s System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations namespace are now supported by ASP.NET MVC 3.  This includes support for the new IValidatableObject interface – which enables you to perform model-level validation, and allows you to provide validation error messages specific to the state of the overall model, or between two properties within the model.  ASP.NET MVC 3 also supports the improvements made to the ValidationAttribute class in .NET 4.  ValidationAttribute now supports a new IsValid overload that provides more information about the current validation context, such as what object is being validated.  This enables richer scenarios where you can validate the current value based on another property of the model.  We’ve shipped a built-in [Compare] validation attribute  with ASP.NET MVC 3 that uses this support and makes it easy out of the box to compare and validate two property values. You can use any data access API or technology with ASP.NET MVC.  This past year, though, we’ve worked closely with the .NET data team to ensure that the new EF Code First library works really well for ASP.NET MVC applications.  These two posts of mine cover the latest EF Code First preview and demonstrates how to use it with ASP.NET MVC 3 to enable easy editing of data (with end to end client+server validation support).  The final release of EF Code First will ship in the next few weeks. Today we are also publishing the first preview of a new MvcScaffolding project.  It enables you to easily scaffold ASP.NET MVC 3 Controllers and Views, and works great with EF Code-First (and is pluggable to support other data providers).  You can learn more about it – and install it via NuGet today - from Steve Sanderson’s MvcScaffolding blog post. Output Caching Previous releases of ASP.NET MVC supported output caching content at a URL or action-method level. With ASP.NET MVC V3 we are also enabling support for partial page output caching – which allows you to easily output cache regions or fragments of a response as opposed to the entire thing.  This ends up being super useful in a lot of scenarios, and enables you to dramatically reduce the work your application does on the server.  The new partial page output caching support in ASP.NET MVC 3 enables you to easily re-use cached sub-regions/fragments of a page across multiple URLs on a site.  It supports the ability to cache the content either on the web-server, or optionally cache it within a distributed cache server like Windows Server AppFabric or memcached. I’ll post some tutorials on my blog that show how to take advantage of ASP.NET MVC 3’s new output caching support for partial page scenarios in the future. Better Dependency Injection ASP.NET MVC 3 provides better support for applying Dependency Injection (DI) and integrating with Dependency Injection/IOC containers. With ASP.NET MVC 3 you no longer need to author custom ControllerFactory classes in order to enable DI with Controllers.  You can instead just register a Dependency Injection framework with ASP.NET MVC 3 and it will resolve dependencies not only for Controllers, but also for Views, Action Filters, Model Binders, Value Providers, Validation Providers, and Model Metadata Providers that you use within your application. This makes it much easier to cleanly integrate dependency injection within your projects. Other Goodies ASP.NET MVC 3 includes dozens of other nice improvements that help to both reduce the amount of code you write, and make the code you do write cleaner.  Here are just a few examples: Improved New Project dialog that makes it easy to start new ASP.NET MVC 3 projects from templates. Improved Add->View Scaffolding support that enables the generation of even cleaner view templates. New ViewBag property that uses .NET 4’s dynamic support to make it easy to pass late-bound data from Controllers to Views. Global Filters support that allows specifying cross-cutting filter attributes (like [HandleError]) across all Controllers within an app. New [AllowHtml] attribute that allows for more granular request validation when binding form posted data to models. Sessionless controller support that allows fine grained control over whether SessionState is enabled on a Controller. New ActionResult types like HttpNotFoundResult and RedirectPermanent for common HTTP scenarios. New Html.Raw() helper to indicate that output should not be HTML encoded. New Crypto helpers for salting and hashing passwords. And much, much more… Learn More about ASP.NET MVC 3 We will be posting lots of tutorials and samples on the http://asp.net/mvc site in the weeks ahead.  Below are two good ASP.NET MVC 3 tutorials available on the site today: Build your First ASP.NET MVC 3 Application: VB and C# Building the ASP.NET MVC 3 Music Store We’ll post additional ASP.NET MVC 3 tutorials and videos on the http://asp.net/mvc site in the future. Visit it regularly to find new tutorials as they are published. How to Upgrade Existing Projects ASP.NET MVC 3 is compatible with ASP.NET MVC 2 – which means it should be easy to update existing MVC projects to ASP.NET MVC 3.  The new features in ASP.NET MVC 3 build on top of the foundational work we’ve already done with the MVC 1 and MVC 2 releases – which means that the skills, knowledge, libraries, and books you’ve acquired are all directly applicable with the MVC 3 release.  MVC 3 adds new features and capabilities – it doesn’t obsolete existing ones. You can upgrade existing ASP.NET MVC 2 projects by following the manual upgrade steps in the release notes.  Alternatively, you can use this automated ASP.NET MVC 3 upgrade tool to easily update your  existing projects. Localized Builds Today’s ASP.NET MVC 3 release is available in English.  We will be releasing localized versions of ASP.NET MVC 3 (in 9 languages) in a few days.  I’ll blog pointers to the localized downloads once they are available. NuGet Today we are also shipping NuGet – a free, open source, package manager that makes it easy for you to find, install, and use open source libraries in your projects. It works with all .NET project types (including ASP.NET Web Forms, ASP.NET MVC, WPF, WinForms, Silverlight, and Class Libraries).  You can download and install it here. NuGet enables developers who maintain open source projects (for example, .NET projects like Moq, NHibernate, Ninject, StructureMap, NUnit, Windsor, Raven, Elmah, etc) to package up their libraries and register them with an online gallery/catalog that is searchable.  The client-side NuGet tools – which include full Visual Studio integration – make it trivial for any .NET developer who wants to use one of these libraries to easily find and install it within the project they are working on. NuGet handles dependency management between libraries (for example: library1 depends on library2). It also makes it easy to update (and optionally remove) libraries from your projects later. It supports updating web.config files (if a package needs configuration settings). It also allows packages to add PowerShell scripts to a project (for example: scaffold commands). Importantly, NuGet is transparent and clean – and does not install anything at the system level. Instead it is focused on making it easy to manage libraries you use with your projects. Our goal with NuGet is to make it as simple as possible to integrate open source libraries within .NET projects.  NuGet Gallery This week we also launched a beta version of the http://nuget.org web-site – which allows anyone to easily search and browse an online gallery of open source packages available via NuGet.  The site also now allows developers to optionally submit new packages that they wish to share with others.  You can learn more about how to create and share a package here. There are hundreds of open-source .NET projects already within the NuGet Gallery today.  We hope to have thousands there in the future. IIS Express 7.5 Today we are also shipping IIS Express 7.5.  IIS Express is a free version of IIS 7.5 that is optimized for developer scenarios.  It works for both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC project types. We think IIS Express combines the ease of use of the ASP.NET Web Server (aka Cassini) currently built-into Visual Studio today with the full power of IIS.  Specifically: It’s lightweight and easy to install (less than 5Mb download and a quick install) It does not require an administrator account to run/debug applications from Visual Studio It enables a full web-server feature set – including SSL, URL Rewrite, and other IIS 7.x modules It supports and enables the same extensibility model and web.config file settings that IIS 7.x support It can be installed side-by-side with the full IIS web server as well as the ASP.NET Development Server (they do not conflict at all) It works on Windows XP and higher operating systems – giving you a full IIS 7.x developer feature-set on all Windows OS platforms IIS Express (like the ASP.NET Development Server) can be quickly launched to run a site from a directory on disk.  It does not require any registration/configuration steps. This makes it really easy to launch and run for development scenarios.  You can also optionally redistribute IIS Express with your own applications if you want a lightweight web-server.  The standard IIS Express EULA now includes redistributable rights. Visual Studio 2010 SP1 adds support for IIS Express.  Read my VS 2010 SP1 and IIS Express blog post to learn more about what it enables.  SQL Server Compact Edition 4 Today we are also shipping SQL Server Compact Edition 4 (aka SQL CE 4).  SQL CE is a free, embedded, database engine that enables easy database storage. No Database Installation Required SQL CE does not require you to run a setup or install a database server in order to use it.  You can simply copy the SQL CE binaries into the \bin directory of your ASP.NET application, and then your web application can use it as a database engine.  No setup or extra security permissions are required for it to run. You do not need to have an administrator account on the machine. Just copy your web application onto any server and it will work. This is true even of medium-trust applications running in a web hosting environment. SQL CE runs in-memory within your ASP.NET application and will start-up when you first access a SQL CE database, and will automatically shutdown when your application is unloaded.  SQL CE databases are stored as files that live within the \App_Data folder of your ASP.NET Applications. Works with Existing Data APIs SQL CE 4 works with existing .NET-based data APIs, and supports a SQL Server compatible query syntax.  This means you can use existing data APIs like ADO.NET, as well as use higher-level ORMs like Entity Framework and NHibernate with SQL CE.  This enables you to use the same data programming skills and data APIs you know today. Supports Development, Testing and Production Scenarios SQL CE can be used for development scenarios, testing scenarios, and light production usage scenarios.  With the SQL CE 4 release we’ve done the engineering work to ensure that SQL CE won’t crash or deadlock when used in a multi-threaded server scenario (like ASP.NET).  This is a big change from previous releases of SQL CE – which were designed for client-only scenarios and which explicitly blocked running in web-server environments.  Starting with SQL CE 4 you can use it in a web-server as well. There are no license restrictions with SQL CE.  It is also totally free. Tooling Support with VS 2010 SP1 Visual Studio 2010 SP1 adds support for SQL CE 4 and ASP.NET Projects.  Read my VS 2010 SP1 and SQL CE 4 blog post to learn more about what it enables.  Web Deploy and Web Farm Framework 2.0 Today we are also releasing Microsoft Web Deploy V2 and Microsoft Web Farm Framework V2.  These services provide a flexible and powerful way to deploy ASP.NET applications onto either a single server, or across a web farm of machines. You can learn more about these capabilities from my previous blog posts on them: Introducing the Microsoft Web Farm Framework Automating Deployment with Microsoft Web Deploy Visit the http://iis.net website to learn more and install them. Both are free. Orchard 1.0 Today we are also releasing Orchard v1.0.  Orchard is a free, open source, community based project.  It provides Content Management System (CMS) and Blogging System support out of the box, and makes it possible to easily create and manage web-sites without having to write code (site owners can customize a site through the browser-based editing tools built-into Orchard).  Read these tutorials to learn more about how you can setup and manage your own Orchard site. Orchard itself is built as an ASP.NET MVC 3 application using Razor view templates (and by default uses SQL CE 4 for data storage).  Developers wishing to extend an Orchard site with custom functionality can open and edit it as a Visual Studio project – and add new ASP.NET MVC Controllers/Views to it.  WebMatrix 1.0 WebMatrix is a new, free, web development tool from Microsoft that provides a suite of technologies that make it easier to enable website development.  It enables a developer to start a new site by browsing and downloading an app template from an online gallery of web applications (which includes popular apps like Umbraco, DotNetNuke, Orchard, WordPress, Drupal and Joomla).  Alternatively it also enables developers to create and code web sites from scratch. WebMatrix is task focused and helps guide developers as they work on sites.  WebMatrix includes IIS Express, SQL CE 4, and ASP.NET - providing an integrated web-server, database and programming framework combination.  It also includes built-in web publishing support which makes it easy to find and deploy sites to web hosting providers. You can learn more about WebMatrix from my Introducing WebMatrix blog post this summer.  Visit http://microsoft.com/web to download and install it today. Summary I’m really excited about today’s releases – they provide a bunch of additional value that makes web development with ASP.NET, Visual Studio and the Microsoft Web Server a lot better.  A lot of folks worked hard to share this with you today. On behalf of my whole team – we hope you enjoy them! 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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• Configuring UCM cache to check for external Content Server changes

  - by Martin Deh

  Recently, I was involved in a customer scenario where they were modifying the Content Server's contributor data files directly through Content Server.  This operation of course is completely supported.  However, since the contributor data file was modified through the "backdoor", a running WebCenter Spaces page, which also used the same data file, would not get the updates immediately.  This was due to two reasons.  The first reason is that the Spaces page was using Content Presenter to display the contents of the data file. The second reason is that the Spaces application was using the "cached" version of the data file.  Fortunately, there is a way to configure cache so backdoor changes can be picked up more quickly and automatically. First a brief overview of Content Presenter.  The Content Presenter task flow enables WebCenter Spaces users with Page-Edit permissions to precisely customize the selection and presentation of content in a WebCenter Spaces application.  With Content Presenter, you can select a single item of content, contents under a folder, a list of items, or query for content, and then select a Content Presenter based template to render the content on a page in a Spaces application.  In addition to displaying the folders and the files in a Content Server, Content Presenter integrates with Oracle Site Studio to allow you to create, access, edit, and display Site Studio contributor data files (Content Server Document) in either a Site Studio region template or in a custom Content Presenter display template.  More information about creating Content Presenter Display Template can be found in the OFM Developers Guide for WebCenter Portal. The easiest way to configure the cache is to modify the WebCenter Spaces Content Server service connection setting through Enterprise Manager.  From here, under the Cache Details, there is a section to set the Cache Invalidation Interval.  Basically, this enables the cache to be monitored by the cache "sweeper" utility.  The cache sweeper queries for changes in the Content Server, and then "marks" the object in cache as "dirty".  This causes the application in turn to get a new copy of the document from the Content Server that replaces the cached version.  By default the initial value for the Cache Invalidation Interval is set to 0 (minutes).  This basically means that the sweeper is OFF.  To turn the sweeper ON, just set a value (in minutes).  The mininal value that can be set is 2 (minutes): Just a note.  In some instances, once the value of the Cache Invalidation Interval has been set (and saved) in the Enterprise Manager UI, it becomes "sticky" and the interval value cannot be set back to 0.  The good news is that this value can also be updated throught a WLST command.   The WLST command to run is as follows: setJCRContentServerConnection(appName, name, [socketType, url, serverHost, serverPort, keystoreLocation, keystorePassword, privateKeyAlias, privateKeyPassword, webContextRoot, clientSecurityPolicy, cacheInvalidationInterval, binaryCacheMaxEntrySize, adminUsername, adminPassword, extAppId, timeout, isPrimary, server, applicationVersion]) One way to get the required information for executing the command is to use the listJCRContentServerConnections('webcenter',verbose=true) command.  For example, this is the sample output from the execution: ------------------ UCM ------------------ Connection Name: UCM Connection Type: JCR External Appliction ID: Timeout: (not set) CIS Socket Type: socket CIS Server Hostname: webcenter.oracle.local CIS Server Port: 4444 CIS Keystore Location: CIS Private Key Alias: CIS Web URL: Web Server Context Root: /cs Client Security Policy: Admin User Name: sysadmin Cache Invalidation Interval: 2 Binary Cache Maximum Entry Size: 1024 The Documents primary connection is "UCM" From this information, the completed  setJCRContentServerConnection would be: setJCRContentServerConnection(appName='webcenter',name='UCM', socketType='socket', serverHost='webcenter.oracle.local', serverPort='4444', webContextRoot='/cs', cacheInvalidationInterval='0', binaryCacheMaxEntrySize='1024',adminUsername='sysadmin',isPrimary=1) Note: The Spaces managed server must be restarted for the change to take effect. More information about using WLST for WebCenter can be found here. Once the sweeper is turned ON, only cache objects that have been changed will be invalidated.  To test this out, I will go through a simple scenario.  The first thing to do is configure the Content Server so it can monitor and report on events.  Log into the Content Server console application, and under the Administration menu item, select System Audit Information.  Note: If your console is using the left menu display option, the Administration link will be located there. Under the Tracing Sections Information, add in only "system" and "requestaudit" in the Active Sections.  Check Full Verbose Tracing, check Save, then click the Update button.  Once this is done, select the View Server Output menu option.  This will change the browser view to display the log.  This is all that is needed to configure the Content Server. For example, the following is the View Server Output with the cache invalidation interval set to 2(minutes) Note the time stamp: requestaudit/6 08.30 09:52:26.001  IdcServer-68    GET_FOLDER_HISTORY_REPORT [dUser=sysadmin][IsJava=1] 0.016933999955654144(secs) requestaudit/6 08.30 09:52:26.010  IdcServer-69    GET_FOLDER_HISTORY_REPORT [dUser=sysadmin][IsJava=1] 0.006134999915957451(secs) requestaudit/6 08.30 09:52:26.014  IdcServer-70    GET_DOCUMENT_HISTORY_REPORT [dUser=sysadmin][IsJava=1] 0.004271999932825565(secs) ... other trace info ... requestaudit/6 08.30 09:54:26.002  IdcServer-71    GET_FOLDER_HISTORY_REPORT [dUser=sysadmin][IsJava=1] 0.020323999226093292(secs) requestaudit/6 08.30 09:54:26.011  IdcServer-72    GET_FOLDER_HISTORY_REPORT [dUser=sysadmin][IsJava=1] 0.017928000539541245(secs) requestaudit/6 08.30 09:54:26.017  IdcServer-73    GET_DOCUMENT_HISTORY_REPORT [dUser=sysadmin][IsJava=1] 0.010185999795794487(secs) Now that the tracing logs are reporting correctly, the next step is set up the Spaces app to test the sweeper. I will use 2 different pages that will use Content Presenter task flows.  Each task flow will use a different custom Content Presenter display template, and will be assign 2 different contributor data files (document that will be in the cache).  The pages at run time appear as follows: Initially, when the Space pages containing the content is loaded in the browser for the first time, you can see the tracing information in the Content Server output viewer. requestaudit/6 08.30 11:51:12.030 IdcServer-129 CLEAR_SERVER_OUTPUT [dUser=weblogic] 0.029171999543905258(secs) requestaudit/6 08.30 11:51:12.101 IdcServer-130 GET_SERVER_OUTPUT [dUser=weblogic] 0.025721000507473946(secs) requestaudit/6 08.30 11:51:26.592 IdcServer-131 VCR_GET_DOCUMENT_BY_NAME [dID=919][dDocName=DF_UCMCACHETESTER][dDocTitle=DF_UCMCacheTester][dUser=weblogic][RevisionSelectionMethod=LatestReleased][IsJava=1] 0.21525299549102783(secs) requestaudit/6 08.30 11:51:27.117 IdcServer-132 VCR_GET_CONTENT_TYPES [dUser=sysadmin][IsJava=1] 0.5059549808502197(secs) requestaudit/6 08.30 11:51:27.146 IdcServer-133 VCR_GET_CONTENT_TYPE [dUser=sysadmin][IsJava=1] 0.03360399976372719(secs) requestaudit/6 08.30 11:51:27.169 IdcServer-134 VCR_GET_CONTENT_TYPE [dUser=sysadmin][IsJava=1] 0.008806000463664532(secs) requestaudit/6 08.30 11:51:27.204 IdcServer-135 VCR_GET_CONTENT_TYPE [dUser=sysadmin][IsJava=1] 0.013265999965369701(secs) requestaudit/6 08.30 11:51:27.384 IdcServer-136 VCR_GET_CONTENT_TYPE [dUser=sysadmin][IsJava=1] 0.18119299411773682(secs) requestaudit/6 08.30 11:51:27.533 IdcServer-137 VCR_GET_CONTENT_TYPE [dUser=sysadmin][IsJava=1] 0.1519480049610138(secs) requestaudit/6 08.30 11:51:27.634 IdcServer-138 VCR_GET_CONTENT_TYPE [dUser=sysadmin][IsJava=1] 0.10827399790287018(secs) requestaudit/6 08.30 11:51:27.687 IdcServer-139 VCR_GET_CONTENT_TYPE [dUser=sysadmin][IsJava=1] 0.059702999889850616(secs) requestaudit/6 08.30 11:51:28.271 IdcServer-140 GET_USER_PERMISSIONS [dUser=weblogic][IsJava=1] 0.006703000050038099(secs) requestaudit/6 08.30 11:51:28.285 IdcServer-141 GET_ENVIRONMENT [dUser=sysadmin][IsJava=1] 0.010893999598920345(secs) requestaudit/6 08.30 11:51:30.433 IdcServer-142 GET_SERVER_OUTPUT [dUser=weblogic] 0.017318999394774437(secs) requestaudit/6 08.30 11:51:41.837 IdcServer-143 VCR_GET_DOCUMENT_BY_NAME [dID=508][dDocName=113_ES][dDocTitle=Landing Home][dUser=weblogic][RevisionSelectionMethod=LatestReleased][IsJava=1] 0.15937699377536774(secs) requestaudit/6 08.30 11:51:42.781 IdcServer-144 GET_FILE [dID=326][dDocName=WEBCENTERORACL000315][dDocTitle=Duke][dUser=anonymous][RevisionSelectionMethod=LatestReleased][dSecurityGroup=Public][xCollectionID=0] 0.16288499534130096(secs) The highlighted sections show where the 2 data files DF_UCMCACHETESTER (P1 page) and 113_ES (P2 page) were called by the (Spaces) VCR connection to the Content Server. The most important line to notice is the VCR_GET_DOCUMENT_BY_NAME invocation.  On subsequent refreshes of these 2 pages, you will notice (after you refresh the Content Server's View Server Output) that there are no further traces of the same VCR_GET_DOCUMENT_BY_NAME invocations.  This is because the pages are getting the documents from the cache. The next step is to go through the "backdoor" and change one of the documents through the Content Server console.  This operation can be done by first locating the data file document, and from the Content Information page, select Edit Data File menu option.   This invokes the Site Studio Contributor, where the modifications can be made. Refreshing the Content Server View Server Output, the tracing displays the operations perform on the document.  requestaudit/6 08.30 11:56:59.972 IdcServer-255 SS_CHECKOUT_BY_NAME [dID=922][dDocName=DF_UCMCACHETESTER][dUser=weblogic][dSecurityGroup=Public] 0.05558200180530548(secs) requestaudit/6 08.30 11:57:00.065 IdcServer-256 SS_GET_CONTRIBUTOR_CONFIG [dID=922][dDocName=DF_UCMCACHETESTER][dDocTitle=DF_UCMCacheTester][dUser=weblogic][dSecurityGroup=Public][xCollectionID=0] 0.08632399886846542(secs) requestaudit/6 08.30 11:57:00.470 IdcServer-259 DOC_INFO_BY_NAME [dID=922][dDocName=DF_UCMCACHETESTER][dDocTitle=DF_UCMCacheTester][dUser=weblogic][dSecurityGroup=Public][xCollectionID=0] 0.02268899977207184(secs) requestaudit/6 08.30 11:57:10.177 IdcServer-264 GET_FOLDER_HISTORY_REPORT [dUser=sysadmin][IsJava=1] 0.007652000058442354(secs) requestaudit/6 08.30 11:57:10.181 IdcServer-263 GET_FOLDER_HISTORY_REPORT [dUser=sysadmin][IsJava=1] 0.01868399977684021(secs) requestaudit/6 08.30 11:57:10.187 IdcServer-265 GET_DOCUMENT_HISTORY_REPORT [dUser=sysadmin][IsJava=1] 0.009367000311613083(secs) (internal)/6 08.30 11:57:26.118 IdcServer-266 File to be removed: /oracle/app/admin/domains/webcenter/ucm/cs/vault/~temp/703253295.xml (internal)/6 08.30 11:57:26.121 IdcServer-266 File to be removed: /oracle/app/admin/domains/webcenter/ucm/cs/vault/~temp/703253295.xml requestaudit/6 08.30 11:57:26.122 IdcServer-266 SS_SET_ELEMENT_DATA [dID=923][dDocName=DF_UCMCACHETESTER][dDocTitle=DF_UCMCacheTester][dUser=weblogic][dSecurityGroup=Public][xCollectionID=0][StatusCode=0][StatusMessage=Successfully checked in content item 'DF_UCMCACHETESTER'.] 0.3765290081501007(secs) requestaudit/6 08.30 11:57:30.710 IdcServer-267 DOC_INFO_BY_NAME [dID=923][dDocName=DF_UCMCACHETESTER][dDocTitle=DF_UCMCacheTester][dUser=weblogic][dSecurityGroup=Public][xCollectionID=0] 0.07942699640989304(secs) requestaudit/6 08.30 11:57:30.733 IdcServer-268 SS_GET_CONTRIBUTOR_STRINGS [dUser=weblogic] 0.0044570001773536205(secs) After a few moments and refreshing the P1 page, the updates has been applied. Note: The refresh time may very, since the Cache Invalidation Interval (set to 2 minutes) is not determined by when changes happened.  The sweeper just runs every 2 minutes. Refreshing the Content Server View Server Output, the tracing displays the important information. requestaudit/6 08.30 11:59:10.171 IdcServer-270 GET_FOLDER_HISTORY_REPORT [dUser=sysadmin][IsJava=1] 0.00952600035816431(secs) requestaudit/6 08.30 11:59:10.179 IdcServer-271 GET_FOLDER_HISTORY_REPORT [dUser=sysadmin][IsJava=1] 0.011118999682366848(secs) requestaudit/6 08.30 11:59:10.182 IdcServer-272 GET_DOCUMENT_HISTORY_REPORT [dUser=sysadmin][IsJava=1] 0.007447000127285719(secs) requestaudit/6 08.30 11:59:16.885 IdcServer-273 VCR_GET_DOCUMENT_BY_NAME [dID=923][dDocName=DF_UCMCACHETESTER][dDocTitle=DF_UCMCacheTester][dUser=weblogic][RevisionSelectionMethod=LatestReleased][IsJava=1] 0.0786449983716011(secs) After the specifed interval time the sweeper is invoked, which is noted by the GET_ ... calls.  Since the history has noted the change, the next call is to the VCR_GET_DOCUMENT_BY_NAME to retrieve the new version of the (modifed) data file.  Navigating back to the P2 page, and viewing the server output, there are no further VCR_GET_DOCUMENT_BY_NAME to retrieve the data file.  This simply means that this data file was just retrieved from the cache.   Upon further review of the server output, we can see that there was only 1 request for the VCR_GET_DOCUMENT_BY_NAME: requestaudit/6 08.30 12:08:00.021 Audit Request Monitor Request Audit Report over the last 120 Seconds for server webcenteroraclelocal16200****  requestaudit/6 08.30 12:08:00.021 Audit Request Monitor -Num Requests 8 Errors 0 Reqs/sec. 0.06666944175958633 Avg. Latency (secs) 0.02762500010430813 Max Thread Count 2  requestaudit/6 08.30 12:08:00.021 Audit Request Monitor 1 Service VCR_GET_DOCUMENT_BY_NAME Total Elapsed Time (secs) 0.09200000017881393 Num requests 1 Num errors 0 Avg. Latency (secs) 0.09200000017881393  requestaudit/6 08.30 12:08:00.021 Audit Request Monitor 2 Service GET_PERSONALIZED_JAVASCRIPT Total Elapsed Time (secs) 0.054999999701976776 Num requests 1 Num errors 0 Avg. Latency (secs) 0.054999999701976776  requestaudit/6 08.30 12:08:00.021 Audit Request Monitor 3 Service GET_FOLDER_HISTORY_REPORT Total Elapsed Time (secs) 0.028999999165534973 Num requests 2 Num errors 0 Avg. Latency (secs) 0.014499999582767487  requestaudit/6 08.30 12:08:00.021 Audit Request Monitor 4 Service GET_SERVER_OUTPUT Total Elapsed Time (secs) 0.017999999225139618 Num requests 1 Num errors 0 Avg. Latency (secs) 0.017999999225139618  requestaudit/6 08.30 12:08:00.021 Audit Request Monitor 5 Service GET_FILE Total Elapsed Time (secs) 0.013000000268220901 Num requests 1 Num errors 0 Avg. Latency (secs) 0.013000000268220901  requestaudit/6 08.30 12:08:00.021 Audit Request Monitor ****End Audit Report*****  

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• Where does ASP.NET Web API Fit?

  - by Rick Strahl

  With the pending release of ASP.NET MVC 4 and the new ASP.NET Web API, there has been a lot of discussion of where the new Web API technology fits in the ASP.NET Web stack. There are a lot of choices to build HTTP based applications available now on the stack - we've come a long way from when WebForms and Http Handlers/Modules where the only real options. Today we have WebForms, MVC, ASP.NET Web Pages, ASP.NET AJAX, WCF REST and now Web API as well as the core ASP.NET runtime to choose to build HTTP content with. Web API definitely squarely addresses the 'API' aspect - building consumable services - rather than HTML content, but even to that end there are a lot of choices you have today. So where does Web API fit, and when doesn't it? But before we get into that discussion, let's talk about what a Web API is and why we should care. What's a Web API? HTTP 'APIs' (Microsoft's new terminology for a service I guess)  are becoming increasingly more important with the rise of the many devices in use today. Most mobile devices like phones and tablets run Apps that are using data retrieved from the Web over HTTP. Desktop applications are also moving in this direction with more and more online content and synching moving into even traditional desktop applications. The pending Windows 8 release promises an app like platform for both the desktop and other devices, that also emphasizes consuming data from the Cloud. Likewise many Web browser hosted applications these days are relying on rich client functionality to create and manipulate the browser user interface, using AJAX rather than server generated HTML data to load up the user interface with data. These mobile or rich Web applications use their HTTP connection to return data rather than HTML markup in the form of JSON or XML typically. But an API can also serve other kinds of data, like images or other binary files, or even text data and HTML (although that's less common). A Web API is what feeds rich applications with data. ASP.NET Web API aims to service this particular segment of Web development by providing easy semantics to route and handle incoming requests and an easy to use platform to serve HTTP data in just about any content format you choose to create and serve from the server. But .NET already has various HTTP Platforms The .NET stack already includes a number of technologies that provide the ability to create HTTP service back ends, and it has done so since the very beginnings of the .NET platform. From raw HTTP Handlers and Modules in the core ASP.NET runtime, to high level platforms like ASP.NET MVC, Web Forms, ASP.NET AJAX and the WCF REST engine (which technically is not ASP.NET, but can integrate with it), you've always been able to handle just about any kind of HTTP request and response with ASP.NET. The beauty of the raw ASP.NET platform is that it provides you everything you need to build just about any type of HTTP application you can dream up from low level APIs/custom engines to high level HTML generation engine. ASP.NET as a core platform clearly has stood the test of time 10+ years later and all other frameworks like Web API are built on top of this ASP.NET core. However, although it's possible to create Web APIs / Services using any of the existing out of box .NET technologies, none of them have been a really nice fit for building arbitrary HTTP based APIs. Sure, you can use an HttpHandler to create just about anything, but you have to build a lot of plumbing to build something more complex like a comprehensive API that serves a variety of requests, handles multiple output formats and can easily pass data up to the server in a variety of ways. Likewise you can use ASP.NET MVC to handle routing and creating content in various formats fairly easily, but it doesn't provide a great way to automatically negotiate content types and serve various content formats directly (it's possible to do with some plumbing code of your own but not built in). Prior to Web API, Microsoft's main push for HTTP services has been WCF REST, which was always an awkward technology that had a severe personality conflict, not being clear on whether it wanted to be part of WCF or purely a separate technology. In the end it didn't do either WCF compatibility or WCF agnostic pure HTTP operation very well, which made for a very developer-unfriendly environment. Personally I didn't like any of the implementations at the time, so much so that I ended up building my own HTTP service engine (as part of the West Wind Web Toolkit), as have a few other third party tools that provided much better integration and ease of use. With the release of Web API for the first time I feel that I can finally use the tools in the box and not have to worry about creating and maintaining my own toolkit as Web API addresses just about all the features I implemented on my own and much more. ASP.NET Web API provides a better HTTP Experience ASP.NET Web API differentiates itself from the previous Microsoft in-box HTTP service solutions in that it was built from the ground up around the HTTP protocol and its messaging semantics. Unlike WCF REST or ASP.NET AJAX with ASMX, it’s a brand new platform rather than bolted on technology that is supposed to work in the context of an existing framework. The strength of the new ASP.NET Web API is that it combines the best features of the platforms that came before it, to provide a comprehensive and very usable HTTP platform. Because it's based on ASP.NET and borrows a lot of concepts from ASP.NET MVC, Web API should be immediately familiar and comfortable to most ASP.NET developers. Here are some of the features that Web API provides that I like: Strong Support for URL Routing to produce clean URLs using familiar MVC style routing semantics Content Negotiation based on Accept headers for request and response serialization Support for a host of supported output formats including JSON, XML, ATOM Strong default support for REST semantics but they are optional Easily extensible Formatter support to add new input/output types Deep support for more advanced HTTP features via HttpResponseMessage and HttpRequestMessage classes and strongly typed Enums to describe many HTTP operations Convention based design that drives you into doing the right thing for HTTP Services Very extensible, based on MVC like extensibility model of Formatters and Filters Self-hostable in non-Web applications  Testable using testing concepts similar to MVC Web API is meant to handle any kind of HTTP input and produce output and status codes using the full spectrum of HTTP functionality available in a straight forward and flexible manner. Looking at the list above you can see that a lot of functionality is very similar to ASP.NET MVC, so many ASP.NET developers should feel quite comfortable with the concepts of Web API. The Routing and core infrastructure of Web API are very similar to how MVC works providing many of the benefits of MVC, but with focus on HTTP access and manipulation in Controller methods rather than HTML generation in MVC. There’s much improved support for content negotiation based on HTTP Accept headers with the framework capable of detecting automatically what content the client is sending and requesting and serving the appropriate data format in return. This seems like such a little and obvious thing, but it's really important. Today's service backends often are used by multiple clients/applications and being able to choose the right data format for what fits best for the client is very important. While previous solutions were able to accomplish this using a variety of mixed features of WCF and ASP.NET, Web API combines all this functionality into a single robust server side HTTP framework that intrinsically understands the HTTP semantics and subtly drives you in the right direction for most operations. And when you need to customize or do something that is not built in, there are lots of hooks and overrides for most behaviors, and even many low level hook points that allow you to plug in custom functionality with relatively little effort. No Brainers for Web API There are a few scenarios that are a slam dunk for Web API. If your primary focus of an application or even a part of an application is some sort of API then Web API makes great sense. HTTP ServicesIf you're building a comprehensive HTTP API that is to be consumed over the Web, Web API is a perfect fit. You can isolate the logic in Web API and build your application as a service breaking out the logic into controllers as needed. Because the primary interface is the service there's no confusion of what should go where (MVC or API). Perfect fit. Primary AJAX BackendsIf you're building rich client Web applications that are relying heavily on AJAX callbacks to serve its data, Web API is also a slam dunk. Again because much if not most of the business logic will probably end up in your Web API service logic, there's no confusion over where logic should go and there's no duplication. In Single Page Applications (SPA), typically there's very little HTML based logic served other than bringing up a shell UI and then filling the data from the server with AJAX which means the business logic required for data retrieval and data acceptance and validation too lives in the Web API. Perfect fit. Generic HTTP EndpointsAnother good fit are generic HTTP endpoints that to serve data or handle 'utility' type functionality in typical Web applications. If you need to implement an image server, or an upload handler in the past I'd implement that as an HTTP handler. With Web API you now have a well defined place where you can implement these types of generic 'services' in a location that can easily add endpoints (via Controller methods) or separated out as more full featured APIs. Granted this could be done with MVC as well, but Web API seems a clearer and more well defined place to store generic application services. This is one thing I used to do a lot of in my own libraries and Web API addresses this nicely. Great fit. Mixed HTML and AJAX Applications: Not a clear Choice  For all the commonality that Web API and MVC share they are fundamentally different platforms that are independent of each other. A lot of people have asked when does it make sense to use MVC vs. Web API when you're dealing with typical Web application that creates HTML and also uses AJAX functionality for rich functionality. While it's easy to say that all 'service'/AJAX logic should go into a Web API and all HTML related generation into MVC, that can often result in a lot of code duplication. Also MVC supports JSON and XML result data fairly easily as well so there's some confusion where that 'trigger point' is of when you should switch to Web API vs. just implementing functionality as part of MVC controllers. Ultimately there's a tradeoff between isolation of functionality and duplication. A good rule of thumb I think works is that if a large chunk of the application's functionality serves data Web API is a good choice, but if you have a couple of small AJAX requests to serve data to a grid or autocomplete box it'd be overkill to separate out that logic into a separate Web API controller. Web API does add overhead to your application (it's yet another framework that sits on top of core ASP.NET) so it should be worth it .Keep in mind that MVC can generate HTML and JSON/XML and just about any other content easily and that functionality is not going away, so just because you Web API is there it doesn't mean you have to use it. Web API is not a full replacement for MVC obviously either since there's not the same level of support to feed HTML from Web API controllers (although you can host a RazorEngine easily enough if you really want to go that route) so if you're HTML is part of your API or application in general MVC is still a better choice either alone or in combination with Web API. I suspect (and hope) that in the future Web API's functionality will merge even closer with MVC so that you might even be able to mix functionality of both into single Controllers so that you don't have to make any trade offs, but at the moment that's not the case. Some Issues To think about Web API is similar to MVC but not the Same Although Web API looks a lot like MVC it's not the same and some common functionality of MVC behaves differently in Web API. For example, the way single POST variables are handled is different than MVC and doesn't lend itself particularly well to some AJAX scenarios with POST data. Code Duplication I already touched on this in the Mixed HTML and Web API section, but if you build an MVC application that also exposes a Web API it's quite likely that you end up duplicating a bunch of code and - potentially - infrastructure. You may have to create authentication logic both for an HTML application and for the Web API which might need something different altogether. More often than not though the same logic is used, and there's no easy way to share. If you implement an MVC ActionFilter and you want that same functionality in your Web API you'll end up creating the filter twice. AJAX Data or AJAX HTML On a recent post's comments, David made some really good points regarding the commonality of MVC and Web API's and its place. One comment that caught my eye was a little more generic, regarding data services vs. HTML services. David says: I see a lot of merit in the combination of Knockout.js, client side templates and view models, calling Web API for a responsive UI, but sometimes late at night that still leaves me wondering why I would no longer be using some of the nice tooling and features that have evolved in MVC ;-) You know what - I can totally relate to that. On the last Web based mobile app I worked on, we decided to serve HTML partials to the client via AJAX for many (but not all!) things, rather than sending down raw data to inject into the DOM on the client via templating or direct manipulation. While there are definitely more bytes on the wire, with this, the overhead ended up being actually fairly small if you keep the 'data' requests small and atomic. Performance was often made up by the lack of client side rendering of HTML. Server rendered HTML for AJAX templating gives so much better infrastructure support without having to screw around with 20 mismatched client libraries. Especially with MVC and partials it's pretty easy to break out your HTML logic into very small, atomic chunks, so it's actually easy to create small rendering islands that can be used via composition on the server, or via AJAX calls to small, tight partials that return HTML to the client. Although this is often frowned upon as to 'heavy', it worked really well in terms of developer effort as well as providing surprisingly good performance on devices. There's still plenty of jQuery and AJAX logic happening on the client but it's more manageable in small doses rather than trying to do the entire UI composition with JavaScript and/or 'not-quite-there-yet' template engines that are very difficult to debug. This is not an issue directly related to Web API of course, but something to think about especially for AJAX or SPA style applications. Summary Web API is a great new addition to the ASP.NET platform and it addresses a serious need for consolidation of a lot of half-baked HTTP service API technologies that came before it. Web API feels 'right', and hits the right combination of usability and flexibility at least for me and it's a good fit for true API scenarios. However, just because a new platform is available it doesn't meant that other tools or tech that came before it should be discarded or even upgraded to the new platform. There's nothing wrong with continuing to use MVC controller methods to handle API tasks if that's what your app is running now - there's very little to be gained by upgrading to Web API just because. But going forward Web API clearly is the way to go, when building HTTP data interfaces and it's good to see that Microsoft got this one right - it was sorely needed! Resources ASP.NET Web API AspConf Ask the Experts Session (first 5 minutes) © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Web Api   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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• West Wind WebSurge - an easy way to Load Test Web Applications

  - by Rick Strahl

  A few months ago on a project the subject of load testing came up. We were having some serious issues with a Web application that would start spewing SQL lock errors under somewhat heavy load. These sort of errors can be tough to catch, precisely because they only occur under load and not during typical development testing. To replicate this error more reliably we needed to put a load on the application and run it for a while before these SQL errors would flare up. It’s been a while since I’d looked at load testing tools, so I spent a bit of time looking at different tools and frankly didn’t really find anything that was a good fit. A lot of tools were either a pain to use, didn’t have the basic features I needed, or are extravagantly expensive. In  the end I got frustrated enough to build an initially small custom load test solution that then morphed into a more generic library, then gained a console front end and eventually turned into a full blown Web load testing tool that is now called West Wind WebSurge. I got seriously frustrated looking for tools every time I needed some quick and dirty load testing for an application. If my aim is to just put an application under heavy enough load to find a scalability problem in code, or to simply try and push an application to its limits on the hardware it’s running I shouldn’t have to have to struggle to set up tests. It should be easy enough to get going in a few minutes, so that the testing can be set up quickly so that it can be done on a regular basis without a lot of hassle. And that was the goal when I started to build out my initial custom load tester into a more widely usable tool. If you’re in a hurry and you want to check it out, you can find more information and download links here: West Wind WebSurge Product Page Walk through Video Download link (zip) Install from Chocolatey Source on GitHub For a more detailed discussion of the why’s and how’s and some background continue reading. How did I get here? When I started out on this path, I wasn’t planning on building a tool like this myself – but I got frustrated enough looking at what’s out there to think that I can do better than what’s available for the most common simple load testing scenarios. When we ran into the SQL lock problems I mentioned, I started looking around what’s available for Web load testing solutions that would work for our whole team which consisted of a few developers and a couple of IT guys both of which needed to be able to run the tests. It had been a while since I looked at tools and I figured that by now there should be some good solutions out there, but as it turns out I didn’t really find anything that fit our relatively simple needs without costing an arm and a leg… I spent the better part of a day installing and trying various load testing tools and to be frank most of them were either terrible at what they do, incredibly unfriendly to use, used some terminology I couldn’t even parse, or were extremely expensive (and I mean in the ‘sell your liver’ range of expensive). Pick your poison. There are also a number of online solutions for load testing and they actually looked more promising, but those wouldn’t work well for our scenario as the application is running inside of a private VPN with no outside access into the VPN. Most of those online solutions also ended up being very pricey as well – presumably because of the bandwidth required to test over the open Web can be enormous. When I asked around on Twitter what people were using– I got mostly… crickets. Several people mentioned Visual Studio Load Test, and most other suggestions pointed to online solutions. I did get a bunch of responses though with people asking to let them know what I found – apparently I’m not alone when it comes to finding load testing tools that are effective and easy to use. As to Visual Studio, the higher end skus of Visual Studio and the test edition include a Web load testing tool, which is quite powerful, but there are a number of issues with that: First it’s tied to Visual Studio so it’s not very portable – you need a VS install. I also find the test setup and terminology used by the VS test runner extremely confusing. Heck, it’s complicated enough that there’s even a Pluralsight course on using the Visual Studio Web test from Steve Smith. And of course you need to have one of the high end Visual Studio Skus, and those are mucho Dinero ($$$) – just for the load testing that’s rarely an option. Some of the tools are ultra extensive and let you run analysis tools on the target serves which is useful, but in most cases – just plain overkill and only distracts from what I tend to be ultimately interested in: Reproducing problems that occur at high load, and finding the upper limits and ‘what if’ scenarios as load is ramped up increasingly against a site. Yes it’s useful to have Web app instrumentation, but often that’s not what you’re interested in. I still fondly remember early days of Web testing when Microsoft had the WAST (Web Application Stress Tool) tool, which was rather simple – and also somewhat limited – but easily allowed you to create stress tests very quickly. It had some serious limitations (mainly that it didn’t work with SSL),  but the idea behind it was excellent: Create tests quickly and easily and provide a decent engine to run it locally with minimal setup. You could get set up and run tests within a few minutes. Unfortunately, that tool died a quiet death as so many of Microsoft’s tools that probably were built by an intern and then abandoned, even though there was a lot of potential and it was actually fairly widely used. Eventually the tools was no longer downloadable and now it simply doesn’t work anymore on higher end hardware. West Wind Web Surge – Making Load Testing Quick and Easy So I ended up creating West Wind WebSurge out of rebellious frustration… The goal of WebSurge is to make it drop dead simple to create load tests. It’s super easy to capture sessions either using the built in capture tool (big props to Eric Lawrence, Telerik and FiddlerCore which made that piece a snap), using the full version of Fiddler and exporting sessions, or by manually or programmatically creating text files based on plain HTTP headers to create requests. I’ve been using this tool for 4 months now on a regular basis on various projects as a reality check for performance and scalability and it’s worked extremely well for finding small performance issues. I also use it regularly as a simple URL tester, as it allows me to quickly enter a URL plus headers and content and test that URL and its results along with the ability to easily save one or more of those URLs. A few weeks back I made a walk through video that goes over most of the features of WebSurge in some detail: Note that the UI has slightly changed since then, so there are some UI improvements. Most notably the test results screen has been updated recently to a different layout and to provide more information about each URL in a session at a glance. The video and the main WebSurge site has a lot of info of basic operations. For the rest of this post I’ll talk about a few deeper aspects that may be of interest while also giving a glance at how WebSurge works. Session Capturing As you would expect, WebSurge works with Sessions of Urls that are played back under load. Here’s what the main Session View looks like: You can create session entries manually by individually adding URLs to test (on the Request tab on the right) and saving them, or you can capture output from Web Browsers, Windows Desktop applications that call services, your own applications using the built in Capture tool. With this tool you can capture anything HTTP -SSL requests and content from Web pages, AJAX calls, SOAP or REST services – again anything that uses Windows or .NET HTTP APIs. Behind the scenes the capture tool uses FiddlerCore so basically anything you can capture with Fiddler you can also capture with Web Surge Session capture tool. Alternately you can actually use Fiddler as well, and then export the captured Fiddler trace to a file, which can then be imported into WebSurge. This is a nice way to let somebody capture session without having to actually install WebSurge or for your customers to provide an exact playback scenario for a given set of URLs that cause a problem perhaps. Note that not all applications work with Fiddler’s proxy unless you configure a proxy. For example, .NET Web applications that make HTTP calls usually don’t show up in Fiddler by default. For those .NET applications you can explicitly override proxy settings to capture those requests to service calls. The capture tool also has handy optional filters that allow you to filter by domain, to help block out noise that you typically don’t want to include in your requests. For example, if your pages include links to CDNs, or Google Analytics or social links you typically don’t want to include those in your load test, so by capturing just from a specific domain you are guaranteed content from only that one domain. Additionally you can provide url filters in the configuration file – filters allow to provide filter strings that if contained in a url will cause requests to be ignored. Again this is useful if you don’t filter by domain but you want to filter out things like static image, css and script files etc. Often you’re not interested in the load characteristics of these static and usually cached resources as they just add noise to tests and often skew the overall url performance results. In my testing I tend to care only about my dynamic requests. SSL Captures require Fiddler Note, that in order to capture SSL requests you’ll have to install the Fiddler’s SSL certificate. The easiest way to do this is to install Fiddler and use its SSL configuration options to get the certificate into the local certificate store. There’s a document on the Telerik site that provides the exact steps to get SSL captures to work with Fiddler and therefore with WebSurge. Session Storage A group of URLs entered or captured make up a Session. Sessions can be saved and restored easily as they use a very simple text format that simply stored on disk. The format is slightly customized HTTP header traces separated by a separator line. The headers are standard HTTP headers except that the full URL instead of just the domain relative path is stored as part of the 1st HTTP header line for easier parsing. Because it’s just text and uses the same format that Fiddler uses for exports, it’s super easy to create Sessions by hand manually or under program control writing out to a simple text file. You can see what this format looks like in the Capture window figure above – the raw captured format is also what’s stored to disk and what WebSurge parses from. The only ‘custom’ part of these headers is that 1st line contains the full URL instead of the domain relative path and Host: header. The rest of each header are just plain standard HTTP headers with each individual URL isolated by a separator line. The format used here also uses what Fiddler produces for exports, so it’s easy to exchange or view data either in Fiddler or WebSurge. Urls can also be edited interactively so you can modify the headers easily as well: Again – it’s just plain HTTP headers so anything you can do with HTTP can be added here. Use it for single URL Testing Incidentally I’ve also found this form as an excellent way to test and replay individual URLs for simple non-load testing purposes. Because you can capture a single or many URLs and store them on disk, this also provides a nice HTTP playground where you can record URLs with their headers, and fire them one at a time or as a session and see results immediately. It’s actually an easy way for REST presentations and I find the simple UI flow actually easier than using Fiddler natively. Finally you can save one or more URLs as a session for later retrieval. I’m using this more and more for simple URL checks. Overriding Cookies and Domains Speaking of HTTP headers – you can also overwrite cookies used as part of the options. One thing that happens with modern Web applications is that you have session cookies in use for authorization. These cookies tend to expire at some point which would invalidate a test. Using the Options dialog you can actually override the cookie: which replaces the cookie for all requests with the cookie value specified here. You can capture a valid cookie from a manual HTTP request in your browser and then paste into the cookie field, to replace the existing Cookie with the new one that is now valid. Likewise you can easily replace the domain so if you captured urls on west-wind.com and now you want to test on localhost you can do that easily easily as well. You could even do something like capture on store.west-wind.com and then test on localhost/store which would also work. Running Load Tests Once you’ve created a Session you can specify the length of the test in seconds, and specify the number of simultaneous threads to run each session on. Sessions run through each of the URLs in the session sequentially by default. One option in the options list above is that you can also randomize the URLs so each thread runs requests in a different order. This avoids bunching up URLs initially when tests start as all threads run the same requests simultaneously which can sometimes skew the results of the first few minutes of a test. While sessions run some progress information is displayed: By default there’s a live view of requests displayed in a Console-like window. On the bottom of the window there’s a running total summary that displays where you’re at in the test, how many requests have been processed and what the requests per second count is currently for all requests. Note that for tests that run over a thousand requests a second it’s a good idea to turn off the console display. While the console display is nice to see that something is happening and also gives you slight idea what’s happening with actual requests, once a lot of requests are processed, this UI updating actually adds a lot of CPU overhead to the application which may cause the actual load generated to be reduced. If you are running a 1000 requests a second there’s not much to see anyway as requests roll by way too fast to see individual lines anyway. If you look on the options panel, there is a NoProgressEvents option that disables the console display. Note that the summary display is still updated approximately once a second so you can always tell that the test is still running. Test Results When the test is done you get a simple Results display: On the right you get an overall summary as well as breakdown by each URL in the session. Both success and failures are highlighted so it’s easy to see what’s breaking in your load test. The report can be printed or you can also open the HTML document in your default Web Browser for printing to PDF or saving the HTML document to disk. The list on the right shows you a partial list of the URLs that were fired so you can look in detail at the request and response data. The list can be filtered by success and failure requests. Each list is partial only (at the moment) and limited to a max of 1000 items in order to render reasonably quickly. Each item in the list can be clicked to see the full request and response data: This particularly useful for errors so you can quickly see and copy what request data was used and in the case of a GET request you can also just click the link to quickly jump to the page. For non-GET requests you can find the URL in the Session list, and use the context menu to Test the URL as configured including any HTTP content data to send. You get to see the full HTTP request and response as well as a link in the Request header to go visit the actual page. Not so useful for a POST as above, but definitely useful for GET requests. Finally you can also get a few charts. The most useful one is probably the Request per Second chart which can be accessed from the Charts menu or shortcut. Here’s what it looks like:   Results can also be exported to JSON, XML and HTML. Keep in mind that these files can get very large rather quickly though, so exports can end up taking a while to complete. Command Line Interface WebSurge runs with a small core load engine and this engine is plugged into the front end application I’ve shown so far. There’s also a command line interface available to run WebSurge from the Windows command prompt. Using the command line you can run tests for either an individual URL (similar to AB.exe for example) or a full Session file. By default when it runs WebSurgeCli shows progress every second showing total request count, failures and the requests per second for the entire test. A silent option can turn off this progress display and display only the results. The command line interface can be useful for build integration which allows checking for failures perhaps or hitting a specific requests per second count etc. It’s also nice to use this as quick and dirty URL test facility similar to the way you’d use Apache Bench (ab.exe). Unlike ab.exe though, WebSurgeCli supports SSL and makes it much easier to create multi-URL tests using either manual editing or the WebSurge UI. Current Status Currently West Wind WebSurge is still in Beta status. I’m still adding small new features and tweaking the UI in an attempt to make it as easy and self-explanatory as possible to run. Documentation for the UI and specialty features is also still a work in progress. I plan on open-sourcing this product, but it won’t be free. There’s a free version available that provides a limited number of threads and request URLs to run. A relatively low cost license  removes the thread and request limitations. Pricing info can be found on the Web site – there’s an introductory price which is $99 at the moment which I think is reasonable compared to most other for pay solutions out there that are exorbitant by comparison… The reason code is not available yet is – well, the UI portion of the app is a bit embarrassing in its current monolithic state. The UI started as a very simple interface originally that later got a lot more complex – yeah, that never happens, right? Unless there’s a lot of interest I don’t foresee re-writing the UI entirely (which would be ideal), but in the meantime at least some cleanup is required before I dare to publish it :-). The code will likely be released with version 1.0. I’m very interested in feedback. Do you think this could be useful to you and provide value over other tools you may or may not have used before? I hope so – it already has provided a ton of value for me and the work I do that made the development worthwhile at this point. You can leave a comment below, or for more extensive discussions you can post a message on the West Wind Message Board in the WebSurge section Microsoft MVPs and Insiders get a free License If you’re a Microsoft MVP or a Microsoft Insider you can get a full license for free. Send me a link to your current, official Microsoft profile and I’ll send you a not-for resale license. Send any messages to [email protected]. Resources For more info on WebSurge and to download it to try it out, use the following links. West Wind WebSurge Home Download West Wind WebSurge Getting Started with West Wind WebSurge Video© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2014Posted in ASP.NET   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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• Server 2012 DFS New Member Issue

  - by David

  I am trying to add a new member to our DFS topology. We have 3 DCs (VMs - VMware) running Windows server 2012, two servers are located in or Primary site and the third at our DR site. Currently the two servers at our primary site are currently replicating DFS (full mesh) and are working fine. I have tried several times to add the third DC to our DFS topology, every time i configure the replication path e.g E:\MSI and click ok the MMC snap in crashes. Below is the crash info, any idea what is causing this? What i am doing is fairly straight forward and don't see why this would be happening. Windows Crash Error: gnature: Problem Event Name: CLR20r3 Problem Signature 01: mmc.exe Problem Signature 02: 6.2.9200.16496 Problem Signature 03: 50ece2e8 Problem Signature 04: System.Windows.Forms Problem Signature 05: 4.0.30319.18046 Problem Signature 06: 51552cda Problem Signature 07: 6291 Problem Signature 08: 25 Problem Signature 09: RML5K4UDBMA5NI04CIYRWVDHKEWFDHCV OS Version: 6.2.9200.2.0.0.272.7 Locale ID: 3081 Additional Information 1: b979 Additional Information 2: b97911c958b3d076b53a1d80c1c56088 Additional Information 3: 4fee Additional Information 4: 4fee5b9baabd694859b15dfc5e1863b7      Crash Report Version=1 EventType=CLR20r3 EventTime=130165974300817209 ReportType=2 Consent=1 ReportIdentifier=d15d0d38-dd36-11e2-93fb-005056af764c IntegratorReportIdentifier=d15d0d37-dd36-11e2-93fb-005056af764c NsAppName=mmc.exe Response.type=4 Sig[0].Name=Problem Signature 01 Sig[0].Value=mmc.exe Sig[1].Name=Problem Signature 02 Sig[1].Value=6.2.9200.16496 Sig[2].Name=Problem Signature 03 Sig[2].Value=50ece2e8 Sig[3].Name=Problem Signature 04 Sig[3].Value=System.Windows.Forms Sig[4].Name=Problem Signature 05 Sig[4].Value=4.0.30319.18046 Sig[5].Name=Problem Signature 06 Sig[5].Value=51552cda Sig[6].Name=Problem Signature 07 Sig[6].Value=6291 Sig[7].Name=Problem Signature 08 Sig[7].Value=25 Sig[8].Name=Problem Signature 09 Sig[8].Value=RML5K4UDBMA5NI04CIYRWVDHKEWFDHCV DynamicSig[1].Name=OS Version DynamicSig[1].Value=6.2.9200.2.0.0.272.7 DynamicSig[2].Name=Locale ID DynamicSig[2].Value=3081 DynamicSig[22].Name=Additional Information 1 DynamicSig[22].Value=b979 DynamicSig[23].Name=Additional Information 2 DynamicSig[23].Value=b97911c958b3d076b53a1d80c1c56088 DynamicSig[24].Name=Additional Information 3 DynamicSig[24].Value=4fee DynamicSig[25].Name=Additional Information 4 DynamicSig[25].Value=4fee5b9baabd694859b15dfc5e1863b7 UI[2]=C:\Windows\system32\mmc.exe UI[3]=Microsoft Management Console has stopped working UI[4]=Windows can check online for a solution to the problem. UI[5]=Check online for a solution and close the program UI[6]=Check online for a solution later and close the program UI[7]=Close the program LoadedModule[0]=C:\Windows\system32\mmc.exe LoadedModule[1]=C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll LoadedModule[2]=C:\Windows\system32\KERNEL32.DLL LoadedModule[3]=C:\Windows\system32\KERNELBASE.dll LoadedModule[4]=C:\Windows\system32\GDI32.dll LoadedModule[5]=C:\Windows\system32\USER32.dll LoadedModule[6]=C:\Windows\system32\MFC42u.dll LoadedModule[7]=C:\Windows\system32\msvcrt.dll LoadedModule[8]=C:\Windows\system32\mmcbase.DLL LoadedModule[9]=C:\Windows\system32\ole32.dll LoadedModule[10]=C:\Windows\system32\SHLWAPI.dll LoadedModule[11]=C:\Windows\system32\UxTheme.dll LoadedModule[12]=C:\Windows\system32\DUser.dll LoadedModule[13]=C:\Windows\system32\OLEAUT32.dll LoadedModule[14]=C:\Windows\system32\ODBC32.dll LoadedModule[15]=C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\combase.dll LoadedModule[16]=C:\Windows\system32\RPCRT4.dll LoadedModule[17]=C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\sechost.dll LoadedModule[18]=C:\Windows\system32\ADVAPI32.dll LoadedModule[19]=C:\Windows\system32\SHCORE.DLL LoadedModule[20]=C:\Windows\system32\IMM32.DLL LoadedModule[21]=C:\Windows\system32\MSCTF.dll LoadedModule[22]=C:\Windows\system32\DUI70.dll LoadedModule[23]=C:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_microsoft.windows.common-controls_6595b64144ccf1df_6.0.9200.16579_none_418ab7ef718b27ef\Comctl32.dll LoadedModule[24]=C:\Windows\system32\SHELL32.dll LoadedModule[25]=C:\Windows\system32\CRYPTBASE.dll LoadedModule[26]=C:\Windows\system32\bcryptPrimitives.dll LoadedModule[27]=C:\Windows\system32\urlmon.dll LoadedModule[28]=C:\Windows\system32\iertutil.dll LoadedModule[29]=C:\Windows\system32\WININET.dll LoadedModule[30]=C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\clbcatq.dll LoadedModule[31]=C:\Windows\system32\mmcndmgr.dll LoadedModule[32]=C:\Windows\System32\msxml6.dll LoadedModule[33]=C:\Windows\system32\profapi.dll LoadedModule[34]=C:\Windows\system32\apphelp.dll 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Event ID: 1026 Application: mmc.exe Framework Version: v4.0.30319 Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception. Exception Info: System.Runtime.InteropServices.SEHException Stack: at System.Windows.Forms.UnsafeNativeMethods.ThemingScope.DeactivateActCtx(Int32 dwFlags, IntPtr lpCookie) at System.Windows.Forms.Application.ThreadContext.RunMessageLoop(Int32 reason, ApplicationContext context) at Microsoft.ManagementConsole.Internal.SnapInMessagePumpProxy.Microsoft.ManagementConsole.Internal.ISnapInMessagePumpProxy.Run() at Microsoft.ManagementConsole.Executive.SnapInThread.OnThreadStart() at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.RunInternal(System.Threading.ExecutionContext, System.Threading.ContextCallback, System.Object, Boolean) at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(System.Threading.ExecutionContext, System.Threading.ContextCallback, System.Object, Boolean) at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(System.Threading.ExecutionContext, System.Threading.ContextCallback, System.Object) at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart()

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• Is there a Telecommunications Reference Architecture?

  - by raul.goycoolea

  @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Abstract   Reference architecture provides needed architectural information that can be provided in advance to an enterprise to enable consistent architectural best practices. Enterprise Reference Architecture helps business owners to actualize their strategies, vision, objectives, and principles. It evaluates the IT systems, based on Reference Architecture goals, principles, and standards. It helps to reduce IT costs by increasing functionality, availability, scalability, etc. Telecom Reference Architecture provides customers with the flexibility to view bundled service bills online with the provision of multiple services. It provides real-time, flexible billing and charging systems, to handle complex promotions, discounts, and settlements with multiple parties. This paper attempts to describe the Reference Architecture for the Telecom Enterprises. It lays the foundation for a Telecom Reference Architecture by articulating the requirements, drivers, and pitfalls for telecom service providers. It describes generic reference architecture for telecom enterprises and moves on to explain how to achieve Enterprise Reference Architecture by using SOA.   Introduction   A Reference Architecture provides a methodology, set of practices, template, and standards based on a set of successful solutions implemented earlier. These solutions have been generalized and structured for the depiction of both a logical and a physical architecture, based on the harvesting of a set of patterns that describe observations in a number of successful implementations. It helps as a reference for the various architectures that an enterprise can implement to solve various problems. It can be used as the starting point or the point of comparisons for various departments/business entities of a company, or for the various companies for an enterprise. It provides multiple views for multiple stakeholders.   Major artifacts of the Enterprise Reference Architecture are methodologies, standards, metadata, documents, design patterns, etc.   Purpose of Reference Architecture   In most cases, architects spend a lot of time researching, investigating, defining, and re-arguing architectural decisions. It is like reinventing the wheel as their peers in other organizations or even the same organization have already spent a lot of time and effort defining their own architectural practices. This prevents an organization from learning from its own experiences and applying that knowledge for increased effectiveness.   Reference architecture provides missing architectural information that can be provided in advance to project team members to enable consistent architectural best practices.   Enterprise Reference Architecture helps an enterprise to achieve the following at the abstract level:   ·       Reference architecture is more of a communication channel to an enterprise ·       Helps the business owners to accommodate to their strategies, vision, objectives, and principles. ·       Evaluates the IT systems based on Reference Architecture Principles ·       Reduces IT spending through increasing functionality, availability, scalability, etc ·       A Real-time Integration Model helps to reduce the latency of the data updates Is used to define a single source of Information ·       Provides a clear view on how to manage information and security ·       Defines the policy around the data ownership, product boundaries, etc. ·       Helps with cost optimization across project and solution portfolios by eliminating unused or duplicate investments and assets ·       Has a shorter implementation time and cost   Once the reference architecture is in place, the set of architectural principles, standards, reference models, and best practices ensure that the aligned investments have the greatest possible likelihood of success in both the near term and the long term (TCO).     Common pitfalls for Telecom Service Providers   Telecom Reference Architecture serves as the first step towards maturity for a telecom service provider. During the course of our assignments/experiences with telecom players, we have come across the following observations – Some of these indicate a lack of maturity of the telecom service provider:   ·       In markets that are growing and not so mature, it has been observed that telcos have a significant amount of in-house or home-grown applications. In some of these markets, the growth has been so rapid that IT has been unable to cope with business demands. Telcos have shown a tendency to come up with workarounds in their IT applications so as to meet business needs. ·       Even for core functions like provisioning or mediation, some telcos have tried to manage with home-grown applications. ·       Most of the applications do not have the required scalability or maintainability to sustain growth in volumes or functionality. ·       Applications face interoperability issues with other applications in the operator's landscape. Integrating a new application or network element requires considerable effort on the part of the other applications. ·       Application boundaries are not clear, and functionality that is not in the initial scope of that application gets pushed onto it. This results in the development of the multiple, small applications without proper boundaries. ·       Usage of Legacy OSS/BSS systems, poor Integration across Multiple COTS Products and Internal Systems. Most of the Integrations are developed on ad-hoc basis and Point-to-Point Integration. ·       Redundancy of the business functions in different applications • Fragmented data across the different applications and no integrated view of the strategic data • Lot of performance Issues due to the usage of the complex integration across OSS and BSS systems   However, this is where the maturity of the telecom industry as a whole can be of help. The collaborative efforts of telcos to overcome some of these problems have resulted in bodies like the TM Forum. They have come up with frameworks for business processes, data, applications, and technology for telecom service providers. These could be a good starting point for telcos to clean up their enterprise landscape.   Industry Trends in Telecom Reference Architecture   Telecom reference architectures are evolving rapidly because telcos are facing business and IT challenges.   “The reality is that there probably is no killer application, no silver bullet that the telcos can latch onto to carry them into a 21st Century.... Instead, there are probably hundreds – perhaps thousands – of niche applications.... And the only way to find which of these works for you is to try out lots of them, ramp up the ones that work, and discontinue the ones that fail.” – Martin Creaner President & CTO TM Forum.   The following trends have been observed in telecom reference architecture:   ·       Transformation of business structures to align with customer requirements ·       Adoption of more Internet-like technical architectures. The Web 2.0 concept is increasingly being used. ·       Virtualization of the traditional operations support system (OSS) ·       Adoption of SOA to support development of IP-based services ·       Adoption of frameworks like Service Delivery Platforms (SDPs) and IP Multimedia Subsystem ·       (IMS) to enable seamless deployment of various services over fixed and mobile networks ·       Replacement of in-house, customized, and stove-piped OSS/BSS with standards-based COTS products ·       Compliance with industry standards and frameworks like eTOM, SID, and TAM to enable seamless integration with other standards-based products   Drivers of Reference Architecture   The drivers of the Reference Architecture are Reference Architecture Goals, Principles, and Enterprise Vision and Telecom Transformation. The details are depicted below diagram. @font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoCaption, li.MsoCaption, div.MsoCaption { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: rgb(79, 129, 189); font-weight: bold; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } Figure 1. Drivers for Reference Architecture @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Today’s telecom reference architectures should seamlessly integrate traditional legacy-based applications and transition to next-generation network technologies (e.g., IP multimedia subsystems). This has resulted in new requirements for flexible, real-time billing and OSS/BSS systems and implications on the service provider’s organizational requirements and structure.   Telecom reference architectures are today expected to:   ·       Integrate voice, messaging, email and other VAS over fixed and mobile networks, back end systems ·       Be able to provision multiple services and service bundles • Deliver converged voice, video and data services ·       Leverage the existing Network Infrastructure ·       Provide real-time, flexible billing and charging systems to handle complex promotions, discounts, and settlements with multiple parties. ·       Support charging of advanced data services such as VoIP, On-Demand, Services (e.g.  Video), IMS/SIP Services, Mobile Money, Content Services and IPTV. ·       Help in faster deployment of new services • Serve as an effective platform for collaboration between network IT and business organizations ·       Harness the potential of converging technology, networks, devices and content to develop multimedia services and solutions of ever-increasing sophistication on a single Internet Protocol (IP) ·       Ensure better service delivery and zero revenue leakage through real-time balance and credit management ·       Lower operating costs to drive profitability   Enterprise Reference Architecture   The Enterprise Reference Architecture (RA) fills the gap between the concepts and vocabulary defined by the reference model and the implementation. Reference architecture provides detailed architectural information in a common format such that solutions can be repeatedly designed and deployed in a consistent, high-quality, supportable fashion. This paper attempts to describe the Reference Architecture for the Telecom Application Usage and how to achieve the Enterprise Level Reference Architecture using SOA.   • Telecom Reference Architecture • Enterprise SOA based Reference Architecture   Telecom Reference Architecture   Tele Management Forum’s New Generation Operations Systems and Software (NGOSS) is an architectural framework for organizing, integrating, and implementing telecom systems. NGOSS is a component-based framework consisting of the following elements:   ·       The enhanced Telecom Operations Map (eTOM) is a business process framework. ·       The Shared Information Data (SID) model provides a comprehensive information framework that may be specialized for the needs of a particular organization. ·       The Telecom Application Map (TAM) is an application framework to depict the functional footprint of applications, relative to the horizontal processes within eTOM. ·       The Technology Neutral Architecture (TNA) is an integrated framework. TNA is an architecture that is sustainable through technology changes.   NGOSS Architecture Standards are:   ·       Centralized data ·       Loosely coupled distributed systems ·       Application components/re-use  ·       A technology-neutral system framework with technology specific implementations ·       Interoperability to service provider data/processes ·       Allows more re-use of business components across multiple business scenarios ·       Workflow automation   The traditional operator systems architecture consists of four layers,   ·       Business Support System (BSS) layer, with focus toward customers and business partners. Manages order, subscriber, pricing, rating, and billing information. ·       Operations Support System (OSS) layer, built around product, service, and resource inventories. ·       Networks layer – consists of Network elements and 3rd Party Systems. ·       Integration Layer – to maximize application communication and overall solution flexibility.   Reference architecture for telecom enterprises is depicted below. @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoCaption, li.MsoCaption, div.MsoCaption { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: rgb(79, 129, 189); font-weight: bold; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Figure 2. Telecom Reference Architecture   The major building blocks of any Telecom Service Provider architecture are as follows:   1. Customer Relationship Management   CRM encompasses the end-to-end lifecycle of the customer: customer initiation/acquisition, sales, ordering, and service activation, customer care and support, proactive campaigns, cross sell/up sell, and retention/loyalty.   CRM also includes the collection of customer information and its application to personalize, customize, and integrate delivery of service to a customer, as well as to identify opportunities for increasing the value of the customer to the enterprise.   The key functionalities related to Customer Relationship Management are   ·       Manage the end-to-end lifecycle of a customer request for products. ·       Create and manage customer profiles. ·       Manage all interactions with customers – inquiries, requests, and responses. ·       Provide updates to Billing and other south bound systems on customer/account related updates such as customer/ account creation, deletion, modification, request bills, final bill, duplicate bills, credit limits through Middleware. ·       Work with Order Management System, Product, and Service Management components within CRM. ·       Manage customer preferences – Involve all the touch points and channels to the customer, including contact center, retail stores, dealers, self service, and field service, as well as via any media (phone, face to face, web, mobile device, chat, email, SMS, mail, the customer's bill, etc.). ·       Support single interface for customer contact details, preferences, account details, offers, customer premise equipment, bill details, bill cycle details, and customer interactions.   CRM applications interact with customers through customer touch points like portals, point-of-sale terminals, interactive voice response systems, etc. The requests by customers are sent via fulfillment/provisioning to billing system for ordering processing.   2. Billing and Revenue Management   Billing and Revenue Management handles the collection of appropriate usage records and production of timely and accurate bills – for providing pre-bill usage information and billing to customers; for processing their payments; and for performing payment collections. In addition, it handles customer inquiries about bills, provides billing inquiry status, and is responsible for resolving billing problems to the customer's satisfaction in a timely manner. This process grouping also supports prepayment for services.   The key functionalities provided by these applications are   ·       To ensure that enterprise revenue is billed and invoices delivered appropriately to customers. ·       To manage customers’ billing accounts, process their payments, perform payment collections, and monitor the status of the account balance. ·       To ensure the timely and effective fulfillment of all customer bill inquiries and complaints. ·       Collect the usage records from mediation and ensure appropriate rating and discounting of all usage and pricing. ·       Support revenue sharing; split charging where usage is guided to an account different from the service consumer. ·       Support prepaid and post-paid rating. ·       Send notification on approach / exceeding the usage thresholds as enforced by the subscribed offer, and / or as setup by the customer. ·       Support prepaid, post paid, and hybrid (where some services are prepaid and the rest of the services post paid) customers and conversion from post paid to prepaid, and vice versa. ·       Support different billing function requirements like charge prorating, promotion, discount, adjustment, waiver, write-off, account receivable, GL Interface, late payment fee, credit control, dunning, account or service suspension, re-activation, expiry, termination, contract violation penalty, etc. ·       Initiate direct debit to collect payment against an invoice outstanding. ·       Send notification to Middleware on different events; for example, payment receipt, pre-suspension, threshold exceed, etc.   Billing systems typically get usage data from mediation systems for rating and billing. They get provisioning requests from order management systems and inquiries from CRM systems. Convergent and real-time billing systems can directly get usage details from network elements.   3. Mediation   Mediation systems transform/translate the Raw or Native Usage Data Records into a general format that is acceptable to billing for their rating purposes.   The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Mediation system in the end-to-end solution.   ·       Collect Usage Data Records from different data sources – like network elements, routers, servers – via different protocol and interfaces. ·       Process Usage Data Records – Mediation will process Usage Data Records as per the source format. ·       Validate Usage Data Records from each source. ·       Segregates Usage Data Records coming from each source to multiple, based on the segregation requirement of end Application. ·       Aggregates Usage Data Records based on the aggregation rule if any from different sources. ·       Consolidates multiple Usage Data Records from each source. ·       Delivers formatted Usage Data Records to different end application like Billing, Interconnect, Fraud Management, etc. ·       Generates audit trail for incoming Usage Data Records and keeps track of all the Usage Data Records at various stages of mediation process. ·       Checks duplicate Usage Data Records across files for a given time window.   4. Fulfillment   This area is responsible for providing customers with their requested products in a timely and correct manner. It translates the customer's business or personal need into a solution that can be delivered using the specific products in the enterprise's portfolio. This process informs the customers of the status of their purchase order, and ensures completion on time, as well as ensuring a delighted customer. These processes are responsible for accepting and issuing orders. They deal with pre-order feasibility determination, credit authorization, order issuance, order status and tracking, customer update on customer order activities, and customer notification on order completion. Order management and provisioning applications fall into this category.   The key functionalities provided by these applications are   ·       Issuing new customer orders, modifying open customer orders, or canceling open customer orders; ·       Verifying whether specific non-standard offerings sought by customers are feasible and supportable; ·       Checking the credit worthiness of customers as part of the customer order process; ·       Testing the completed offering to ensure it is working correctly; ·       Updating of the Customer Inventory Database to reflect that the specific product offering has been allocated, modified, or cancelled; ·       Assigning and tracking customer provisioning activities; ·       Managing customer provisioning jeopardy conditions; and ·       Reporting progress on customer orders and other processes to customer.   These applications typically get orders from CRM systems. They interact with network elements and billing systems for fulfillment of orders.   5. Enterprise Management   This process area includes those processes that manage enterprise-wide activities and needs, or have application within the enterprise as a whole. They encompass all business management processes that   ·       Are necessary to support the whole of the enterprise, including processes for financial management, legal management, regulatory management, process, cost, and quality management, etc.;   ·       Are responsible for setting corporate policies, strategies, and directions, and for providing guidelines and targets for the whole of the business, including strategy development and planning for areas, such as Enterprise Architecture, that are integral to the direction and development of the business;   ·       Occur throughout the enterprise, including processes for project management, performance assessments, cost assessments, etc.     (i) Enterprise Risk Management:   Enterprise Risk Management focuses on assuring that risks and threats to the enterprise value and/or reputation are identified, and appropriate controls are in place to minimize or eliminate the identified risks. The identified risks may be physical or logical/virtual. Successful risk management ensures that the enterprise can support its mission critical operations, processes, applications, and communications in the face of serious incidents such as security threats/violations and fraud attempts. Two key areas covered in Risk Management by telecom operators are:   ·       Revenue Assurance: Revenue assurance system will be responsible for identifying revenue loss scenarios across components/systems, and will help in rectifying the problems. The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Revenue Assurance system in the end-to-end solution. o   Identify all usage information dropped when networks are being upgraded. o   Interconnect bill verification. o   Identify where services are routinely provisioned but never billed. o   Identify poor sales policies that are intensifying collections problems. o   Find leakage where usage is sent to error bucket and never billed for. o   Find leakage where field service, CRM, and network build-out are not optimized.   ·       Fraud Management: Involves collecting data from different systems to identify abnormalities in traffic patterns, usage patterns, and subscription patterns to report suspicious activity that might suggest fraudulent usage of resources, resulting in revenue losses to the operator.   The key roles and responsibilities of the system component are as follows:   o   Fraud management system will capture and monitor high usage (over a certain threshold) in terms of duration, value, and number of calls for each subscriber. The threshold for each subscriber is decided by the system and fixed automatically. o   Fraud management will be able to detect the unauthorized access to services for certain subscribers. These subscribers may have been provided unauthorized services by employees. The component will raise the alert to the operator the very first time of such illegal calls or calls which are not billed. o   The solution will be to have an alarm management system that will deliver alarms to the operator/provider whenever it detects a fraud, thus minimizing fraud by catching it the first time it occurs. o   The Fraud Management system will be capable of interfacing with switches, mediation systems, and billing systems   (ii) Knowledge Management   This process focuses on knowledge management, technology research within the enterprise, and the evaluation of potential technology acquisitions.   Key responsibilities of knowledge base management are to   ·       Maintain knowledge base – Creation and updating of knowledge base on ongoing basis. ·       Search knowledge base – Search of knowledge base on keywords or category browse ·       Maintain metadata – Management of metadata on knowledge base to ensure effective management and search. ·       Run report generator. ·       Provide content – Add content to the knowledge base, e.g., user guides, operational manual, etc.   (iii) Document Management   It focuses on maintaining a repository of all electronic documents or images of paper documents relevant to the enterprise using a system.   (iv) Data Management   It manages data as a valuable resource for any enterprise. For telecom enterprises, the typical areas covered are Master Data Management, Data Warehousing, and Business Intelligence. It is also responsible for data governance, security, quality, and database management.   Key responsibilities of Data Management are   ·       Using ETL, extract the data from CRM, Billing, web content, ERP, campaign management, financial, network operations, asset management info, customer contact data, customer measures, benchmarks, process data, e.g., process inputs, outputs, and measures, into Enterprise Data Warehouse. ·       Management of data traceability with source, data related business rules/decisions, data quality, data cleansing data reconciliation, competitors data – storage for all the enterprise data (customer profiles, products, offers, revenues, etc.) ·       Get online update through night time replication or physical backup process at regular frequency. ·       Provide the data access to business intelligence and other systems for their analysis, report generation, and use.   (v) Business Intelligence   It uses the Enterprise Data to provide the various analysis and reports that contain prospects and analytics for customer retention, acquisition of new customers due to the offers, and SLAs. It will generate right and optimized plans – bolt-ons for the customers.   The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Business Intelligence system at the Enterprise Level:   ·       It will do Pattern analysis and reports problem. ·       It will do Data Analysis – Statistical analysis, data profiling, affinity analysis of data, customer segment wise usage patterns on offers, products, service and revenue generation against services and customer segments. ·       It will do Performance (business, system, and forecast) analysis, churn propensity, response time, and SLAs analysis. ·       It will support for online and offline analysis, and report drill down capability. ·       It will collect, store, and report various SLA data. ·       It will provide the necessary intelligence for marketing and working on campaigns, etc., with cost benefit analysis and predictions.   It will advise on customer promotions with additional services based on loyalty and credit history of customer   ·       It will Interface with Enterprise Data Management system for data to run reports and analysis tasks. It will interface with the campaign schedules, based on historical success evidence.   (vi) Stakeholder and External Relations Management   It manages the enterprise's relationship with stakeholders and outside entities. Stakeholders include shareholders, employee organizations, etc. Outside entities include regulators, local community, and unions. Some of the processes within this grouping are Shareholder Relations, External Affairs, Labor Relations, and Public Relations.   (vii) Enterprise Resource Planning   It is used to manage internal and external resources, including tangible assets, financial resources, materials, and human resources. Its purpose is to facilitate the flow of information between all business functions inside the boundaries of the enterprise and manage the connections to outside stakeholders. ERP systems consolidate all business operations into a uniform and enterprise wide system environment.   The key roles and responsibilities for Enterprise System are given below:   ·        It will handle responsibilities such as core accounting, financial, and management reporting. ·       It will interface with CRM for capturing customer account and details. ·       It will interface with billing to capture the billing revenue and other financial data. ·       It will be responsible for executing the dunning process. Billing will send the required feed to ERP for execution of dunning. ·       It will interface with the CRM and Billing through batch interfaces. Enterprise management systems are like horizontals in the enterprise and typically interact with all major telecom systems. E.g., an ERP system interacts with CRM, Fulfillment, and Billing systems for different kinds of data exchanges.   6. External Interfaces/Touch Points   The typical external parties are customers, suppliers/partners, employees, shareholders, and other stakeholders. External interactions from/to a Service Provider to other parties can be achieved by a variety of mechanisms, including:   ·       Exchange of emails or faxes ·       Call Centers ·       Web Portals ·       Business-to-Business (B2B) automated transactions   These applications provide an Internet technology driven interface to external parties to undertake a variety of business functions directly for themselves. These can provide fully or partially automated service to external parties through various touch points.   Typical characteristics of these touch points are   ·       Pre-integrated self-service system, including stand-alone web framework or integration front end with a portal engine ·       Self services layer exposing atomic web services/APIs for reuse by multiple systems across the architectural environment ·       Portlets driven connectivity exposing data and services interoperability through a portal engine or web application   These touch points mostly interact with the CRM systems for requests, inquiries, and responses.   7. Middleware   The component will be primarily responsible for integrating the different systems components under a common platform. It should provide a Standards-Based Platform for building Service Oriented Architecture and Composite Applications. The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Middleware component in the end-to-end solution.   ·       As an integration framework, covering to and fro interfaces ·       Provide a web service framework with service registry. ·       Support SOA framework with SOA service registry. ·       Each of the interfaces from / to Middleware to other components would handle data transformation, translation, and mapping of data points. ·       Receive data from the caller / activate and/or forward the data to the recipient system in XML format. ·       Use standard XML for data exchange. ·       Provide the response back to the service/call initiator. ·       Provide a tracking until the response completion. ·       Keep a store transitional data against each call/transaction. ·       Interface through Middleware to get any information that is possible and allowed from the existing systems to enterprise systems; e.g., customer profile and customer history, etc. ·       Provide the data in a common unified format to the SOA calls across systems, and follow the Enterprise Architecture directive. ·       Provide an audit trail for all transactions being handled by the component.   8. Network Elements   The term Network Element means a facility or equipment used in the provision of a telecommunications service. Such terms also includes features, functions, and capabilities that are provided by means of such facility or equipment, including subscriber numbers, databases, signaling systems, and information sufficient for billing and collection or used in the transmission, routing, or other provision of a telecommunications service.   Typical network elements in a GSM network are Home Location Register (HLR), Intelligent Network (IN), Mobile Switching Center (MSC), SMS Center (SMSC), and network elements for other value added services like Push-to-talk (PTT), Ring Back Tone (RBT), etc.   Network elements are invoked when subscribers use their telecom devices for any kind of usage. These elements generate usage data and pass it on to downstream systems like mediation and billing system for rating and billing. They also integrate with provisioning systems for order/service fulfillment.   9. 3rd Party Applications   3rd Party systems are applications like content providers, payment gateways, point of sale terminals, and databases/applications maintained by the Government.   Depending on applicability and the type of functionality provided by 3rd party applications, the integration with different telecom systems like CRM, provisioning, and billing will be done.   10. Service Delivery Platform   A service delivery platform (SDP) provides the architecture for the rapid deployment, provisioning, execution, management, and billing of value added telecom services. SDPs are based on the concept of SOA and layered architecture. They support the delivery of voice, data services, and content in network and device-independent fashion. They allow application developers to aggregate network capabilities, services, and sources of content. SDPs typically contain layers for web services exposure, service application development, and network abstraction.   SOA Reference Architecture   SOA concept is based on the principle of developing reusable business service and building applications by composing those services, instead of building monolithic applications in silos. It’s about bridging the gap between business and IT through a set of business-aligned IT services, using a set of design principles, patterns, and techniques.   In an SOA, resources are made available to participants in a value net, enterprise, line of business (typically spanning multiple applications within an enterprise or across multiple enterprises). It consists of a set of business-aligned IT services that collectively fulfill an organization’s business processes and goals. We can choreograph these services into composite applications and invoke them through standard protocols. SOA, apart from agility and reusability, enables:   ·       The business to specify processes as orchestrations of reusable services ·       Technology agnostic business design, with technology hidden behind service interface ·       A contractual-like interaction between business and IT, based on service SLAs ·       Accountability and governance, better aligned to business services ·       Applications interconnections untangling by allowing access only through service interfaces, reducing the daunting side effects of change ·       Reduced pressure to replace legacy and extended lifetime for legacy applications, through encapsulation in services   ·       A Cloud Computing paradigm, using web services technologies, that makes possible service outsourcing on an on-demand, utility-like, pay-per-usage basis   The following section represents the Reference Architecture of logical view for the Telecom Solution. The new custom built application needs to align with this logical architecture in the long run to achieve EA benefits.   Packaged implementation applications, such as ERP billing applications, need to expose their functions as service providers (as other applications consume) and interact with other applications as service consumers.   COT applications need to expose services through wrappers such as adapters to utilize existing resources and at the same time achieve Enterprise Architecture goal and objectives.   The following are the various layers for Enterprise level deployment of SOA. This diagram captures the abstract view of Enterprise SOA layers and important components of each layer. Layered architecture means decomposition of services such that most interactions occur between adjacent layers. However, there is no strict rule that top layers should not directly communicate with bottom layers.   The diagram below represents the important logical pieces that would result from overall SOA transformation. @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoCaption, li.MsoCaption, div.MsoCaption { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: rgb(79, 129, 189); font-weight: bold; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Figure 3. Enterprise SOA Reference Architecture 1.          Operational System Layer: This layer consists of all packaged applications like CRM, ERP, custom built applications, COTS based applications like Billing, Revenue Management, Fulfilment, and the Enterprise databases that are essential and contribute directly or indirectly to the Enterprise OSS/BSS Transformation.   ERP holds the data of Asset Lifecycle Management, Supply Chain, and Advanced Procurement and Human Capital Management, etc.   CRM holds the data related to Order, Sales, and Marketing, Customer Care, Partner Relationship Management, Loyalty, etc.   Content Management handles Enterprise Search and Query. Billing application consists of the following components:   ·       Collections Management, Customer Billing Management, Invoices, Real-Time Rating, Discounting, and Applying of Charges ·       Enterprise databases will hold both the application and service data, whether structured or unstructured.   MDM - Master data majorly consists of Customer, Order, Product, and Service Data.     2.          Enterprise Component Layer:   This layer consists of the Application Services and Common Services that are responsible for realizing the functionality and maintaining the QoS of the exposed services. This layer uses container-based technologies such as application servers to implement the components, workload management, high availability, and load balancing.   Application Services: This Service Layer enables application, technology, and database abstraction so that the complex accessing logic is hidden from the other service layers. This is a basic service layer, which exposes application functionalities and data as reusable services. The three types of the Application access services are:   ·       Application Access Service: This Service Layer exposes application level functionalities as a reusable service between BSS to BSS and BSS to OSS integration. This layer is enabled using disparate technology such as Web Service, Integration Servers, and Adaptors, etc.   ·       Data Access Service: This Service Layer exposes application data services as a reusable reference data service. This is done via direct interaction with application data. and provides the federated query.   ·       Network Access Service: This Service Layer exposes provisioning layer as a reusable service from OSS to OSS integration. This integration service emphasizes the need for high performance, stateless process flows, and distributed design.   Common Services encompasses management of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data such as information services, portal services, interaction services, infrastructure services, and security services, etc.   3.          Integration Layer:   This consists of service infrastructure components like service bus, service gateway for partner integration, service registry, service repository, and BPEL processor. Service bus will carry the service invocation payloads/messages between consumers and providers. The other important functions expected from it are itinerary based routing, distributed caching of routing information, transformations, and all qualities of service for messaging-like reliability, scalability, and availability, etc. Service registry will hold all contracts (wsdl) of services, and it helps developers to locate or discover service during design time or runtime.   • BPEL processor would be useful in orchestrating the services to compose a complex business scenario or process. • Workflow and business rules management are also required to support manual triggering of certain activities within business process. based on the rules setup and also the state machine information. Application, data, and service mediation layer typically forms the overall composite application development framework or SOA Framework.   4.          Business Process Layer: These are typically the intermediate services layer and represent Shared Business Process Services. At Enterprise Level, these services are from Customer Management, Order Management, Billing, Finance, and Asset Management application domains.   5.          Access Layer: This layer consists of portals for Enterprise and provides a single view of Enterprise information management and dashboard services.   6.          Channel Layer: This consists of various devices; applications that form part of extended enterprise; browsers through which users access the applications.   7.          Client Layer: This designates the different types of users accessing the enterprise applications. The type of user typically would be an important factor in determining the level of access to applications.   8.          Vertical pieces like management, monitoring, security, and development cut across all horizontal layers Management and monitoring involves all aspects of SOA-like services, SLAs, and other QoS lifecycle processes for both applications and services surrounding SOA governance.     9.          EA Governance, Reference Architecture, Roadmap, Principles, and Best Practices:   EA Governance is important in terms of providing the overall direction to SOA implementation within the enterprise. This involves board-level involvement, in addition to business and IT executives. At a high level, this involves managing the SOA projects implementation, managing SOA infrastructure, and controlling the entire effort through all fine-tuned IT processes in accordance with COBIT (Control Objectives for Information Technology).   Devising tools and techniques to promote reuse culture, and the SOA way of doing things needs competency centers to be established in addition to training the workforce to take up new roles that are suited to SOA journey.   Conclusions   Reference Architectures can serve as the basis for disparate architecture efforts throughout the organization, even if they use different tools and technologies. Reference architectures provide best practices and approaches in the independent way a vendor deals with technology and standards. Reference Architectures model the abstract architectural elements for an enterprise independent of the technologies, protocols, and products that are used to implement an SOA. Telecom enterprises today are facing significant business and technology challenges due to growing competition, a multitude of services, and convergence. Adopting architectural best practices could go a long way in meeting these challenges. The use of SOA-based architecture for communication to each of the external systems like Billing, CRM, etc., in OSS/BSS system has made the architecture very loosely coupled, with greater flexibility. Any change in the external systems would be absorbed at the Integration Layer without affecting the rest of the ecosystem. The use of a Business Process Management (BPM) tool makes the management and maintenance of the business processes easy, with better performance in terms of lead time, quality, and cost. Since the Architecture is based on standards, it will lower the cost of deploying and managing OSS/BSS applications over their lifecycles.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 13, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 13, 2010New Projects[Experiment] vczh DBUI: EXPERIMENT. Auto UI adaptor for a specified data base[SAMPLE PROJECT] Branch and Patch with GIT: I'll paste more here later...BlogPress: This web application provides a content management system. Coot: Facebook Photos Screensaver.DotNetNuke® JDMenu: dnnJDMenu makes it easy to use the open source JDMenu component in your DotNetNuke skin.DotNetNuke® RadRotator: dnnRadRotator makes it easy to add telerik RadRotator functionality to your site or custom module. Licensing permits anyone to use the components ...DotNetNuke® RadTabStrip: DNNRadTabStrip makes it easy to add telerik RadTabStrip functionality to your module or skin. Licensing permits anyone to use the components (incl...DotNetNuke® RadTreeView: DNNRadTreeView makes it easy to add telerik RadTreeView functionality to your module or skin. Licensing permits anyone to use the components (incl...DotNetNuke® Skin Garden: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Out of the box" category by Mark Allan of DnnGarden. Concise and semantic HTML 5 stru...ElmasFC: Elmas Facebook CheckerFront Callback Protocol: Front Callback Protocol make it easier for developers to create a network application in the .Net Language. It provide the flexibility of using TCP...Glass UI: A Windows Forms Control Library built specifically for Aero Glass. This will consist of existing controls, modified to render on glass, as well as ...Guitarist Tools: Some tools for guitarists.HomeUX: HomeUX is home control software featuring a Silverlight-based touch screen user interface.Homework Helper: Homework Helper help students to train simpler homework like "What's the name of the capital of France?" - Question - Answear based. It's made i...IGNOU Mini Project Allocation: A mini project allocation system.Images Compiler: Images Compiler is pretty small wpf application for users who want to resize, rename, disable colors... for too much images in very short time. It...InstitutionManagementSystem: Institution Management System prototypeManagedCv: ManagedCv is the library for C#/VB/ to use the OpenCV librarymanagement joint ownership: Application pour la gestion des actions réalisées au sein d’une copropriété. Application for management actions within a joint ownershipMapWindow6: MapWindow 6.0 is an open source geographic information system (GIS) and library of geospatial software development tools for .NET, written in C#. T...Morris Auto: Morris Auto is a social application build templateMouse control with finger detection: The aim of this project is to design an application for recognition of the movement of a finger through a webcam and then control the mouse. The pr...ORAYLIS BI.Quality: ORAYLIS BI.Quality makes it easier to develop BI Solutions in an agile environment. It adapts Unit Tests to BI Development. Propositional Framework: Different sales propositions are presented to the user using data collected from marketing intelligence, browser history or user behaviour as they ...ServStop: ServStop is a .NET application that makes it easy to stop several system services at once. Now you don't have to change startup types or stop them ...shatkotha web portal: source code of web portal shatkothaSurvey and Registration tools: Two Silverlight tools for add Survey and Registration in your websiteTable Storage Backup & Restore for Windows Azure: Allows various backup & restore options for Windows Azure Table Storage accounts: - Backup from one storage account to another - Backup a storag...Topsy Lib: This project provides wrapper methods to call Topsy's web services from C#.twNowplaying: twNowplaying is a small and handy utility that allows you to tweet your currently playing track from Spotify to Twitter. Followed by the #twNowplay...XOM: XOM: Xml Object Mapper Automatically populate your objects with data from XML via an XML map. Never do this again: if(e.GetElementsByTagName("us...YS Utils: The library contains set of useful classes which may solve common tasks for different applications.ZabViewer: CS ProjectNew ReleasesAppFabric Caching Admin Tool: AppFabric Caching Admin Tool (0.8): System Requirements:.NET 4.0 RC AppFabric Caching Beta2 Test On:Win 7 (64x)ASP.Net Routing Configuration: mal.Web.Routing v0.9.2.0: mal.Web.Routing v0.9.2.0DotNetNuke IM Module of Facebook Like Messenger: DNN IM Module of Facebook Like Messenger: Empower DNN Website with a 1-to-1 Chat Solution named Free Facebook Messenger Style Web Chat Bar of 123 Web Messenger. 1. If you need to use the c...DotNetNuke® Form and List (formerly User Defined Table): 05.01.02: Form and List 05.01.02 (Release Candidate 2)5.1.2 will be the next stabilzation release. Major Highlights fixed Cancel action in a form, it don't ...DotNetNuke® JDMenu: DNN jdMenu 1.0.0: dnnJDMenu makes it easy to use the open source JDMenu component in your DotNetNuke skin. Many thanks to Jonathan Sharp of Outwest Media for creati...DotNetNuke® RadTabStrip: DNNRadTabstrip 1.0.0: DNNRadTabStrip makes it easy to add telerik RadTabStrip functionality to your module or skin. Licensing permits anyone to use the components (inclu...DotNetNuke® RadTreeView: DNNRadTreeView 1.0.0: DNNRadTreeView makes it easy to create skins which use the Telerik RadTreeview functionality. Licensing permits anyone (including designers) to use...DotNetNuke® Skin Garden: Garden Package 1.0.0: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Out of the box" category by Mark Allan of DnnGarden. Concise and semantic HTML 5 struc...ElmasFC: Elmas FC: This porgram is checking your facebook account automaticly.Free DotNetNuke IM of 123 Web Messenger -- Web-based Friend List: Free Download DNN IM Module and Source Code: 123 Web Messenger offers free DotNetNuke Instant Messaging to help you embed a IM Software into DNN Website by integrating 123 Web Messenger with D...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts 3.0.4 Released: Hi, Today we have released the final version of Visifire v3.0.4 which contains the following major features: * Zooming * Step Line chart ...Home Access Plus+: v3.1.0.0: Version 3.1.0.0 Release Problem with this release, get Version 3.1.1.1 Change Log: Fixed ampersand issue Added Unzip Features Added Help Desk ...Home Access Plus+: v3.1.1.1: Version 3.1.1.1 Release Change Log: Fixed the Help Desk File Changes: ~/App_Data/Tickets.xml ~/bin/CHS Extranet.dll ~/bin/CHS Extranet.pdbHomework Helper: Homework Helper 1.0: The first release of Homework Helper. It got basic functionality. Check the Documentation or press F1 while using the program.Homework Helper: Homework Helper v1.0: This is the latest version of Homework Helper. Just a few updates since the latest one (a couple of minutes ago). Now it saves your settings! Instr...IBCSharp: IBCSharp 1.02: What IBCSharp 1.02.zip unzips to: http://i39.tinypic.com/28hz8m1.png Note: The above solution has MSTest, Typemock Isolator, and Microsoft CHESS c...InfoService: InfoService v1.5 RC 1: InfoService Release Canidate Please note this is a RC. It should be stable, but i can't guarantee that! So use it on your own risk. Please read Pl...IntX: IntX 0.9.3.3: Fixed issue #7100IronRuby: 1.0 RC3: The IronRuby team is pleased to announce version 1.0 RC3! As IronRuby approaches the final 1.0, these RCs will contain crucial bug fixes and enhanc...MAISGestão: LayerDiagram (pdf): This is the final version of the layer diagramMapWindow6: MapWindow 6.0 msi (March 12): After some significant trouble with svn, this site represents a test of using Mercurial for our version control. Hopefully the choice of this new ...MSBuild Mercurial Tasks: 0.2.0 Beta: This release realises the Scenario 2 and provides two MSBuild tasks: HgCommit and HgPush. This task allows to create a new changeset in the current...NLog - Advanced .NET Logging: NLog 2.0 preview 1: This is very experimental first build of NLog from 2.0 branch is available for download. It’s not alpha, beta or even gamma, just a preview of upco...Open NFe: Fonte DANFE v1.9.5: Código-fonte para a versão 1.9.5 do DANFEOpiConsole (XNA): OpiConsole 0.3: OpiConsole 0.3 OpiConsole includes: * PC & Xbox support. * Default commands (cvar, quit etc.) * Ability to add custom commands. *...ORAYLIS BI.Quality: Release 1.0.0: Release 1.0.0Pcap.Net: Pcap.Net 0.5.0 (38141): Pcap.Net - March 2010 Release Pcap.Net is a .NET wrapper for WinPcap written in C++/CLI and C#. It Features almost all WinPcap features and include...PhysX.Net: PhysX.Net 0.12.0.0 Beta 1: This is beta release of 0.12.0.0 for people to test and provide feedback on. It targets 2.8.3.21 of PhysXPólya: Pólya 2010 03 13 alpha: Pólya is a collection of generic data structures; as generic as C#/.Net allows them to be. 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• Top things web developers should know about the Visual Studio 2013 release

  - by Jon Galloway

  ASP.NET and Web Tools for Visual Studio 2013 Release NotesASP.NET and Web Tools for Visual Studio 2013 Release NotesSummary for lazy readers: Visual Studio 2013 is now available for download on the Visual Studio site and on MSDN subscriber downloads) Visual Studio 2013 installs side by side with Visual Studio 2012 and supports round-tripping between Visual Studio versions, so you can try it out without committing to a switch Visual Studio 2013 ships with the new version of ASP.NET, which includes ASP.NET MVC 5, ASP.NET Web API 2, Razor 3, Entity Framework 6 and SignalR 2.0 The new releases ASP.NET focuses on One ASP.NET, so core features and web tools work the same across the platform (e.g. adding ASP.NET MVC controllers to a Web Forms application) New core features include new templates based on Bootstrap, a new scaffolding system, and a new identity system Visual Studio 2013 is an incredible editor for web files, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Markdown, LESS, Coffeescript, Handlebars, Angular, Ember, Knockdown, etc. Top links: Visual Studio 2013 content on the ASP.NET site are in the standard new releases area: http://www.asp.net/vnext ASP.NET and Web Tools for Visual Studio 2013 Release Notes Short intro videos on the new Visual Studio web editor features from Scott Hanselman and Mads Kristensen Announcing release of ASP.NET and Web Tools for Visual Studio 2013 post on the official .NET Web Development and Tools Blog Scott Guthrie's post: Announcing the Release of Visual Studio 2013 and Great Improvements to ASP.NET and Entity Framework Okay, for those of you who are still with me, let's dig in a bit. Quick web dev notes on downloading and installing Visual Studio 2013 I found Visual Studio 2013 to be a pretty fast install. According to Brian Harry's release post, installing over pre-release versions of Visual Studio is supported.  I've installed the release version over pre-release versions, and it worked fine. If you're only going to be doing web development, you can speed up the install if you just select Web Developer tools. Of course, as a good Microsoft employee, I'll mention that you might also want to install some of those other features, like the Store apps for Windows 8 and the Windows Phone 8.0 SDK, but they do download and install a lot of other stuff (e.g. the Windows Phone SDK sets up Hyper-V and downloads several GB's of VM's). So if you're planning just to do web development for now, you can pick just the Web Developer Tools and install the other stuff later. If you've got a fast internet connection, I recommend using the web installer instead of downloading the ISO. The ISO includes all the features, whereas the web installer just downloads what you're installing. Visual Studio 2013 development settings and color theme When you start up Visual Studio, it'll prompt you to pick some defaults. These are totally up to you -whatever suits your development style - and you can change them later. As I said, these are completely up to you. I recommend either the Web Development or Web Development (Code Only) settings. The only real difference is that Code Only hides the toolbars, and you can switch between them using Tools / Import and Export Settings / Reset. Web Development settings Web Development (code only) settings Usually I've just gone with Web Development (code only) in the past because I just want to focus on the code, although the Standard toolbar does make it easier to switch default web browsers. More on that later. Color theme Sigh. Okay, everyone's got their favorite colors. I alternate between Light and Dark depending on my mood, and I personally like how the low contrast on the window chrome in those themes puts the emphasis on my code rather than the tabs and toolbars. I know some people got pretty worked up over that, though, and wanted the blue theme back. I personally don't like it - it reminds me of ancient versions of Visual Studio that I don't want to think about anymore. So here's the thing: if you install Visual Studio Ultimate, it defaults to Blue. The other versions default to Light. If you use Blue, I won't criticize you - out loud, that is. You can change themes really easily - either Tools / Options / Environment / General, or the smart way: ctrl+q for quick launch, then type Theme and hit enter. Signing in During the first run, you'll be prompted to sign in. You don't have to - you can click the "Not now, maybe later" link at the bottom of that dialog. I recommend signing in, though. It's not hooked in with licensing or tracking the kind of code you write to sell you components. It is doing good things, like  syncing your Visual Studio settings between computers. More about that here. So, you don't have to, but I sure do. Overview of shiny new things in ASP.NET land There are a lot of good new things in ASP.NET. I'll list some of my favorite here, but you can read more on the ASP.NET site. One ASP.NET You've heard us talk about this for a while. The idea is that options are good, but choice can be a burden. When you start a new ASP.NET project, why should you have to make a tough decision - with long-term consequences - about how your application will work? If you want to use ASP.NET Web Forms, but have the option of adding in ASP.NET MVC later, why should that be hard? It's all ASP.NET, right? Ideally, you'd just decide that you want to use ASP.NET to build sites and services, and you could use the appropriate tools (the green blocks below) as you needed them. So, here it is. When you create a new ASP.NET application, you just create an ASP.NET application. Next, you can pick from some templates to get you started... but these are different. They're not "painful decision" templates, they're just some starting pieces. And, most importantly, you can mix and match. I can pick a "mostly" Web Forms template, but include MVC and Web API folders and core references. If you've tried to mix and match in the past, you're probably aware that it was possible, but not pleasant. ASP.NET MVC project files contained special project type GUIDs, so you'd only get controller scaffolding support in a Web Forms project if you manually edited the csproj file. Features in one stack didn't work in others. Project templates were painful choices. That's no longer the case. Hooray! I just did a demo in a presentation last week where I created a new Web Forms + MVC + Web API site, built a model, scaffolded MVC and Web API controllers with EF Code First, add data in the MVC view, viewed it in Web API, then added a GridView to the Web Forms Default.aspx page and bound it to the Model. In about 5 minutes. Sure, it's a simple example, but it's great to be able to share code and features across the whole ASP.NET family. Authentication In the past, authentication was built into the templates. So, for instance, there was an ASP.NET MVC 4 Intranet Project template which created a new ASP.NET MVC 4 application that was preconfigured for Windows Authentication. All of that authentication stuff was built into each template, so they varied between the stacks, and you couldn't reuse them. You didn't see a lot of changes to the authentication options, since they required big changes to a bunch of project templates. Now, the new project dialog includes a common authentication experience. When you hit the Change Authentication button, you get some common options that work the same way regardless of the template or reference settings you've made. These options work on all ASP.NET frameworks, and all hosting environments (IIS, IIS Express, or OWIN for self-host) The default is Individual User Accounts: This is the standard "create a local account, using username / password or OAuth" thing; however, it's all built on the new Identity system. More on that in a second. The one setting that has some configuration to it is Organizational Accounts, which lets you configure authentication using Active Directory, Windows Azure Active Directory, or Office 365. Identity There's a new identity system. We've taken the best parts of the previous ASP.NET Membership and Simple Identity systems, rolled in a lot of feedback and made big enhancements to support important developer concerns like unit testing and extensiblity. I've written long posts about ASP.NET identity, and I'll do it again. Soon. This is not that post. The short version is that I think we've finally got just the right Identity system. Some of my favorite features: There are simple, sensible defaults that work well - you can File / New / Run / Register / Login, and everything works. It supports standard username / password as well as external authentication (OAuth, etc.). It's easy to customize without having to re-implement an entire provider. It's built using pluggable pieces, rather than one large monolithic system. It's built using interfaces like IUser and IRole that allow for unit testing, dependency injection, etc. You can easily add user profile data (e.g. URL, twitter handle, birthday). You just add properties to your ApplicationUser model and they'll automatically be persisted. Complete control over how the identity data is persisted. By default, everything works with Entity Framework Code First, but it's built to support changes from small (modify the schema) to big (use another ORM, store your data in a document database or in the cloud or in XML or in the EXIF data of your desktop background or whatever). It's configured via OWIN. More on OWIN and Katana later, but the fact that it's built using OWIN means it's portable. You can find out more in the Authentication and Identity section of the ASP.NET site (and lots more content will be going up there soon). New Bootstrap based project templates The new project templates are built using Bootstrap 3. Bootstrap (formerly Twitter Bootstrap) is a front-end framework that brings a lot of nice benefits: It's responsive, so your projects will automatically scale to device width using CSS media queries. For example, menus are full size on a desktop browser, but on narrower screens you automatically get a mobile-friendly menu. The built-in Bootstrap styles make your standard page elements (headers, footers, buttons, form inputs, tables etc.) look nice and modern. Bootstrap is themeable, so you can reskin your whole site by dropping in a new Bootstrap theme. Since Bootstrap is pretty popular across the web development community, this gives you a large and rapidly growing variety of templates (free and paid) to choose from. Bootstrap also includes a lot of very useful things: components (like progress bars and badges), useful glyphicons, and some jQuery plugins for tooltips, dropdowns, carousels, etc.). Here's a look at how the responsive part works. When the page is full screen, the menu and header are optimized for a wide screen display: When I shrink the page down (this is all based on page width, not useragent sniffing) the menu turns into a nice mobile-friendly dropdown: For a quick example, I grabbed a new free theme off bootswatch.com. For simple themes, you just need to download the boostrap.css file and replace the /content/bootstrap.css file in your project. Now when I refresh the page, I've got a new theme: Scaffolding The big change in scaffolding is that it's one system that works across ASP.NET. You can create a new Empty Web project or Web Forms project and you'll get the Scaffold context menus. For release, we've got MVC 5 and Web API 2 controllers. We had a preview of Web Forms scaffolding in the preview releases, but they weren't fully baked for RTM. Look for them in a future update, expected pretty soon. This scaffolding system wasn't just changed to work across the ASP.NET frameworks, it's also built to enable future extensibility. That's not in this release, but should also hopefully be out soon. Project Readme page This is a small thing, but I really like it. When you create a new project, you get a Project_Readme.html page that's added to the root of your project and opens in the Visual Studio built-in browser. I love it. A long time ago, when you created a new project we just dumped it on you and left you scratching your head about what to do next. Not ideal. Then we started adding a bunch of Getting Started information to the new project templates. That told you what to do next, but you had to delete all of that stuff out of your website. It doesn't belong there. Not ideal. This is a simple HTML file that's not integrated into your project code at all. You can delete it if you want. But, it shows a lot of helpful links that are current for the project you just created. In the future, if we add new wacky project types, they can create readme docs with specific information on how to do appropriately wacky things. Side note: I really like that they used the internal browser in Visual Studio to show this content rather than popping open an HTML page in the default browser. I hate that. It's annoying. If you're doing that, I hope you'll stop. What if some unnamed person has 40 or 90 tabs saved in their browser session? When you pop open your "Thanks for installing my Visual Studio extension!" page, all eleventy billion tabs start up and I wish I'd never installed your thing. Be like these guys and pop stuff Visual Studio specific HTML docs in the Visual Studio browser. ASP.NET MVC 5 The biggest change with ASP.NET MVC 5 is that it's no longer a separate project type. It integrates well with the rest of ASP.NET. In addition to that and the other common features we've already looked at (Bootstrap templates, Identity, authentication), here's what's new for ASP.NET MVC. Attribute routing ASP.NET MVC now supports attribute routing, thanks to a contribution by Tim McCall, the author of http://attributerouting.net. With attribute routing you can specify your routes by annotating your actions and controllers. This supports some pretty complex, customized routing scenarios, and it allows you to keep your route information right with your controller actions if you'd like. Here's a controller that includes an action whose method name is Hiding, but I've used AttributeRouting to configure it to /spaghetti/with-nesting/where-is-waldo public class SampleController : Controller { [Route("spaghetti/with-nesting/where-is-waldo")] public string Hiding() { return "You found me!"; } } I enable that in my RouteConfig.cs, and I can use that in conjunction with my other MVC routes like this: public class RouteConfig { public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes) { routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}"); routes.MapMvcAttributeRoutes(); routes.MapRoute( name: "Default", url: "{controller}/{action}/{id}", defaults: new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } ); } } You can read more about Attribute Routing in ASP.NET MVC 5 here. Filter enhancements There are two new additions to filters: Authentication Filters and Filter Overrides. Authentication filters are a new kind of filter in ASP.NET MVC that run prior to authorization filters in the ASP.NET MVC pipeline and allow you to specify authentication logic per-action, per-controller, or globally for all controllers. Authentication filters process credentials in the request and provide a corresponding principal. Authentication filters can also add authentication challenges in response to unauthorized requests. Override filters let you change which filters apply to a given action method or controller. Override filters specify a set of filter types that should not be run for a given scope (action or controller). This allows you to configure filters that apply globally but then exclude certain global filters from applying to specific actions or controllers. ASP.NET Web API 2 ASP.NET Web API 2 includes a lot of new features. Attribute Routing ASP.NET Web API supports the same attribute routing system that's in ASP.NET MVC 5. You can read more about the Attribute Routing features in Web API in this article. OAuth 2.0 ASP.NET Web API picks up OAuth 2.0 support, using security middleware running on OWIN (discussed below). This is great for features like authenticated Single Page Applications. OData Improvements ASP.NET Web API now has full OData support. That required adding in some of the most powerful operators: $select, $expand, $batch and $value. You can read more about OData operator support in this article by Mike Wasson. Lots more There's a huge list of other features, including CORS (cross-origin request sharing), IHttpActionResult, IHttpRequestContext, and more. I think the best overview is in the release notes. OWIN and Katana I've written about OWIN and Katana recently. I'm a big fan. OWIN is the Open Web Interfaces for .NET. It's a spec, like HTML or HTTP, so you can't install OWIN. The benefit of OWIN is that it's a community specification, so anyone who implements it can plug into the ASP.NET stack, either as middleware or as a host. Katana is the Microsoft implementation of OWIN. It leverages OWIN to wire up things like authentication, handlers, modules, IIS hosting, etc., so ASP.NET can host OWIN components and Katana components can run in someone else's OWIN implementation. Howard Dierking just wrote a cool article in MSDN magazine describing Katana in depth: Getting Started with the Katana Project. He had an interesting example showing an OWIN based pipeline which leveraged SignalR, ASP.NET Web API and NancyFx components in the same stack. If this kind of thing makes sense to you, that's great. If it doesn't, don't worry, but keep an eye on it. You're going to see some cool things happen as a result of ASP.NET becoming more and more pluggable. Visual Studio Web Tools Okay, this stuff's just crazy. Visual Studio has been adding some nice web dev features over the past few years, but they've really cranked it up for this release. Visual Studio is by far my favorite code editor for all web files: CSS, HTML, JavaScript, and lots of popular libraries. Stop thinking of Visual Studio as a big editor that you only use to write back-end code. Stop editing HTML and CSS in Notepad (or Sublime, Notepad++, etc.). Visual Studio starts up in under 2 seconds on a modern computer with an SSD. Misspelling HTML attributes or your CSS classes or jQuery or Angular syntax is stupid. It doesn't make you a better developer, it makes you a silly person who wastes time. Browser Link Browser Link is a real-time, two-way connection between Visual Studio and all connected browsers. It's only attached when you're running locally, in debug, but it applies to any and all connected browser, including emulators. You may have seen demos that showed the browsers refreshing based on changes in the editor, and I'll agree that's pretty cool. But it's really just the start. It's a two-way connection, and it's built for extensiblity. That means you can write extensions that push information from your running application (in IE, Chrome, a mobile emulator, etc.) back to Visual Studio. Mads and team have showed off some demonstrations where they enabled edit mode in the browser which updated the source HTML back on the browser. It's also possible to look at how the rendered HTML performs, check for compatibility issues, watch for unused CSS classes, the sky's the limit. New HTML editor The previous HTML editor had a lot of old code that didn't allow for improvements. The team rewrote the HTML editor to take advantage of the new(ish) extensibility features in Visual Studio, which then allowed them to add in all kinds of features - things like CSS Class and ID IntelliSense (so you type style="" and get a list of classes and ID's for your project), smart indent based on how your document is formatted, JavaScript reference auto-sync, etc. Here's a 3 minute tour from Mads Kristensen. The previous HTML editor had a lot of old code that didn't allow for improvements. The team rewrote the HTML editor to take advantage of the new(ish) extensibility features in Visual Studio, which then allowed them to add in all kinds of features - things like CSS Class and ID IntelliSense (so you type style="" and get a list of classes and ID's for your project), smart indent based on how your document is formatted, JavaScript reference auto-sync, etc. Lots more Visual Studio web dev features That's just a sampling - there's a ton of great features for JavaScript editing, CSS editing, publishing, and Page Inspector (which shows real-time rendering of your page inside Visual Studio). Here are some more short videos showing those features. Lots, lots more Okay, that's just a summary, and it's still quite a bit. Head on over to http://asp.net/vnext for more information, and download Visual Studio 2013 now to get started!

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• Announcing the Release of Visual Studio 2013 and Great Improvements to ASP.NET and Entity Framework

  - by ScottGu

  Today we released VS 2013 and .NET 4.5.1. These releases include a ton of great improvements, and include some fantastic enhancements to ASP.NET and the Entity Framework.  You can download and start using them now. Below are details on a few of the great ASP.NET, Web Development, and Entity Framework improvements you can take advantage of with this release.  Please visit http://www.asp.net/vnext for additional release notes, documentation, and tutorials. One ASP.NET With the release of Visual Studio 2013, we have taken a step towards unifying the experience of using the different ASP.NET sub-frameworks (Web Forms, MVC, Web API, SignalR, etc), and you can now easily mix and match the different ASP.NET technologies you want to use within a single application. When you do a File-New Project with VS 2013 you’ll now see a single ASP.NET Project option: Selecting this project will bring up an additional dialog that allows you to start with a base project template, and then optionally add/remove the technologies you want to use in it.  For example, you could start with a Web Forms template and add Web API or Web Forms support for it, or create a MVC project and also enable Web Forms pages within it: This makes it easy for you to use any ASP.NET technology you want within your apps, and take advantage of any feature across the entire ASP.NET technology span. Richer Authentication Support The new “One ASP.NET” project dialog also includes a new Change Authentication button that, when pushed, enables you to easily change the authentication approach used by your applications – and makes it much easier to build secure applications that enable SSO from a variety of identity providers.  For example, when you start with the ASP.NET Web Forms or MVC templates you can easily add any of the following authentication options to the application: No Authentication Individual User Accounts (Single Sign-On support with FaceBook, Twitter, Google, and Microsoft ID – or Forms Auth with ASP.NET Membership) Organizational Accounts (Single Sign-On support with Windows Azure Active Directory ) Windows Authentication (Active Directory in an intranet application) The Windows Azure Active Directory support is particularly cool.  Last month we updated Windows Azure Active Directory so that developers can now easily create any number of Directories using it (for free and deployed within seconds).  It now takes only a few moments to enable single-sign-on support within your ASP.NET applications against these Windows Azure Active Directories.  Simply choose the “Organizational Accounts” radio button within the Change Authentication dialog and enter the name of your Windows Azure Active Directory to do this: This will automatically configure your ASP.NET application to use Windows Azure Active Directory and register the application with it.  Now when you run the app your users can easily and securely sign-in using their Active Directory credentials within it – regardless of where the application is hosted on the Internet. For more information about the new process for creating web projects, see Creating ASP.NET Web Projects in Visual Studio 2013. Responsive Project Templates with Bootstrap The new default project templates for ASP.NET Web Forms, MVC, Web API and SPA are built using Bootstrap. Bootstrap is an open source CSS framework that helps you build responsive websites which look great on different form factors such as mobile phones, tables and desktops. For example in a browser window the home page created by the MVC template looks like the following: When you resize the browser to a narrow window to see how it would like on a phone, you can notice how the contents gracefully wrap around and the horizontal top menu turns into an icon: When you click the menu-icon above it expands into a vertical menu – which enables a good navigation experience for small screen real-estate devices: We think Bootstrap will enable developers to build web applications that work even better on phones, tablets and other mobile devices – and enable you to easily build applications that can leverage the rich ecosystem of Bootstrap CSS templates already out there.  You can learn more about Bootstrap here. Visual Studio Web Tooling Improvements Visual Studio 2013 includes a new, much richer, HTML editor for Razor files and HTML files in web applications. The new HTML editor provides a single unified schema based on HTML5. It has automatic brace completion, jQuery UI and AngularJS attribute IntelliSense, attribute IntelliSense Grouping, and other great improvements. For example, typing “ng-“ on an HTML element will show the intellisense for AngularJS: This support for AngularJS, Knockout.js, Handlebars and other SPA technologies in this release of ASP.NET and VS 2013 makes it even easier to build rich client web applications: The screen shot below demonstrates how the HTML editor can also now inspect your page at design-time to determine all of the CSS classes that are available. In this case, the auto-completion list contains classes from Bootstrap’s CSS file. No more guessing at which Bootstrap element names you need to use: Visual Studio 2013 also comes with built-in support for both CoffeeScript and LESS editing support. The LESS editor comes with all the cool features from the CSS editor and has specific Intellisense for variables and mixins across all the LESS documents in the @import chain. Browser Link – SignalR channel between browser and Visual Studio The new Browser Link feature in VS 2013 lets you run your app within multiple browsers on your dev machine, connect them to Visual Studio, and simultaneously refresh all of them just by clicking a button in the toolbar. You can connect multiple browsers (including IE, FireFox, Chrome) to your development site, including mobile emulators, and click refresh to refresh all the browsers all at the same time.  This makes it much easier to easily develop/test against multiple browsers in parallel. Browser Link also exposes an API to enable developers to write Browser Link extensions.  By enabling developers to take advantage of the Browser Link API, it becomes possible to create very advanced scenarios that crosses boundaries between Visual Studio and any browser that’s connected to it. Web Essentials takes advantage of the API to create an integrated experience between Visual Studio and the browser’s developer tools, remote controlling mobile emulators and a lot more. You will see us take advantage of this support even more to enable really cool scenarios going forward. ASP.NET Scaffolding ASP.NET Scaffolding is a new code generation framework for ASP.NET Web applications. It makes it easy to add boilerplate code to your project that interacts with a data model. In previous versions of Visual Studio, scaffolding was limited to ASP.NET MVC projects. With Visual Studio 2013, you can now use scaffolding for any ASP.NET project, including Web Forms. When using scaffolding, we ensure that all required dependencies are automatically installed for you in the project. For example, if you start with an ASP.NET Web Forms project and then use scaffolding to add a Web API Controller, the required NuGet packages and references to enable Web API are added to your project automatically.  To do this, just choose the Add->New Scaffold Item context menu: Support for scaffolding async controllers uses the new async features from Entity Framework 6. ASP.NET Identity ASP.NET Identity is a new membership system for ASP.NET applications that we are introducing with this release. ASP.NET Identity makes it easy to integrate user-specific profile data with application data. ASP.NET Identity also allows you to choose the persistence model for user profiles in your application. You can store the data in a SQL Server database or another data store, including NoSQL data stores such as Windows Azure Storage Tables. ASP.NET Identity also supports Claims-based authentication, where the user’s identity is represented as a set of claims from a trusted issuer. Users can login by creating an account on the website using username and password, or they can login using social identity providers (such as Microsoft Account, Twitter, Facebook, Google) or using organizational accounts through Windows Azure Active Directory or Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS). To learn more about how to use ASP.NET Identity visit http://www.asp.net/identity.  ASP.NET Web API 2 ASP.NET Web API 2 has a bunch of great improvements including: Attribute routing ASP.NET Web API now supports attribute routing, thanks to a contribution by Tim McCall, the author of http://attributerouting.net. With attribute routing you can specify your Web API routes by annotating your actions and controllers like this: OAuth 2.0 support The Web API and Single Page Application project templates now support authorization using OAuth 2.0. OAuth 2.0 is a framework for authorizing client access to protected resources. It works for a variety of clients including browsers and mobile devices. OData Improvements ASP.NET Web API also now provides support for OData endpoints and enables support for both ATOM and JSON-light formats. With OData you get support for rich query semantics, paging, $metadata, CRUD operations, and custom actions over any data source. Below are some of the specific enhancements in ASP.NET Web API 2 OData. Support for $select, $expand, $batch, and $value Improved extensibility Type-less support Reuse an existing model OWIN Integration ASP.NET Web API now fully supports OWIN and can be run on any OWIN capable host. With OWIN integration, you can self-host Web API in your own process alongside other OWIN middleware, such as SignalR. For more information, see Use OWIN to Self-Host ASP.NET Web API. More Web API Improvements In addition to the features above there have been a host of other features in ASP.NET Web API, including CORS support Authentication Filters Filter Overrides Improved Unit Testability Portable ASP.NET Web API Client To learn more go to http://www.asp.net/web-api/ ASP.NET SignalR 2 ASP.NET SignalR is library for ASP.NET developers that dramatically simplifies the process of adding real-time web functionality to your applications. Real-time web functionality is the ability to have server-side code push content to connected clients instantly as it becomes available. SignalR 2.0 introduces a ton of great improvements. We’ve added support for Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) to SignalR 2.0. iOS and Android support for SignalR have also been added using the MonoTouch and MonoDroid components from the Xamarin library (for more information on how to use these additions, see the article Using Xamarin Components from the SignalR wiki). We’ve also added support for the Portable .NET Client in SignalR 2.0 and created a new self-hosting package. This change makes the setup process for SignalR much more consistent between web-hosted and self-hosted SignalR applications. To learn more go to http://www.asp.net/signalr. ASP.NET MVC 5 The ASP.NET MVC project templates integrate seamlessly with the new One ASP.NET experience and enable you to integrate all of the above ASP.NET Web API, SignalR and Identity improvements. You can also customize your MVC project and configure authentication using the One ASP.NET project creation wizard. The MVC templates have also been updated to use ASP.NET Identity and Bootstrap as well. An introductory tutorial to ASP.NET MVC 5 can be found at Getting Started with ASP.NET MVC 5. This release of ASP.NET MVC also supports several nice new MVC-specific features including: Authentication filters: These filters allow you to specify authentication logic per-action, per-controller or globally for all controllers. Attribute Routing: Attribute Routing allows you to define your routes on actions or controllers. To learn more go to http://www.asp.net/mvc Entity Framework 6 Improvements Visual Studio 2013 ships with Entity Framework 6, which bring a lot of great new features to the data access space: Async and Task<T> Support EF6’s new Async Query and Save support enables you to perform asynchronous data access and take advantage of the Task<T> support introduced in .NET 4.5 within data access scenarios.  This allows you to free up threads that might otherwise by blocked on data access requests, and enable them to be used to process other requests whilst you wait for the database engine to process operations. When the database server responds the thread will be re-queued within your ASP.NET application and execution will continue.  This enables you to easily write significantly more scalable server code. Here is an example ASP.NET WebAPI action that makes use of the new EF6 async query methods: Interception and Logging Interception and SQL logging allows you to view – or even change – every command that is sent to the database by Entity Framework. This includes a simple, human readable log – which is great for debugging – as well as some lower level building blocks that give you access to the command and results. Here is an example of wiring up the simple log to Debug in the constructor of an MVC controller: Custom Code-First Conventions The new Custom Code-First Conventions enable bulk configuration of a Code First model – reducing the amount of code you need to write and maintain. Conventions are great when your domain classes don’t match the Code First conventions. For example, the following convention configures all properties that are called ‘Key’ to be the primary key of the entity they belong to. This is different than the default Code First convention that expects Id or <type name>Id. Connection Resiliency The new Connection Resiliency feature in EF6 enables you to register an execution strategy to handle – and potentially retry – failed database operations. This is especially useful when deploying to cloud environments where dropped connections become more common as you traverse load balancers and distributed networks. EF6 includes a built-in execution strategy for SQL Azure that knows about retryable exception types and has some sensible – but overridable – defaults for the number of retries and time between retries when errors occur. Registering it is simple using the new Code-Based Configuration support: These are just some of the new features in EF6. You can visit the release notes section of the Entity Framework site for a complete list of new features. Microsoft OWIN Components Open Web Interface for .NET (OWIN) defines an open abstraction between .NET web servers and web applications, and the ASP.NET “Katana” project brings this abstraction to ASP.NET. OWIN decouples the web application from the server, making web applications host-agnostic. For example, you can host an OWIN-based web application in IIS or self-host it in a custom process. For more information about OWIN and Katana, see What's new in OWIN and Katana. Summary Today’s Visual Studio 2013, ASP.NET and Entity Framework release delivers some fantastic new features that streamline your web development lifecycle. These feature span from server framework to data access to tooling to client-side HTML development.  They also integrate some great open-source technology and contributions from our developer community. Download and start using them today! 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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• Creating Custom Ajax Control Toolkit Controls

  - by Stephen Walther

  The goal of this blog entry is to explain how you can extend the Ajax Control Toolkit with custom Ajax Control Toolkit controls. I describe how you can create the two halves of an Ajax Control Toolkit control: the server-side control extender and the client-side control behavior. Finally, I explain how you can use the new Ajax Control Toolkit control in a Web Forms page. At the end of this blog entry, there is a link to download a Visual Studio 2010 solution which contains the code for two Ajax Control Toolkit controls: SampleExtender and PopupHelpExtender. The SampleExtender contains the minimum skeleton for creating a new Ajax Control Toolkit control. You can use the SampleExtender as a starting point for your custom Ajax Control Toolkit controls. The PopupHelpExtender control is a super simple custom Ajax Control Toolkit control. This control extender displays a help message when you start typing into a TextBox control. The animated GIF below demonstrates what happens when you click into a TextBox which has been extended with the PopupHelp extender. Here’s a sample of a Web Forms page which uses the control: <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="ShowPopupHelp.aspx.cs" Inherits="MyACTControls.Web.Default" %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html > <head runat="server"> <title>Show Popup Help</title> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <div> <act:ToolkitScriptManager ID="tsm" runat="server" /> <%-- Social Security Number --%> <asp:Label ID="lblSSN" Text="SSN:" AssociatedControlID="txtSSN" runat="server" /> <asp:TextBox ID="txtSSN" runat="server" /> <act:PopupHelpExtender id="ph1" TargetControlID="txtSSN" HelpText="Please enter your social security number." runat="server" /> <%-- Social Security Number --%> <asp:Label ID="lblPhone" Text="Phone Number:" AssociatedControlID="txtPhone" runat="server" /> <asp:TextBox ID="txtPhone" runat="server" /> <act:PopupHelpExtender id="ph2" TargetControlID="txtPhone" HelpText="Please enter your phone number." runat="server" /> </div> </form> </body> </html> In the page above, the PopupHelp extender is used to extend the functionality of the two TextBox controls. When focus is given to a TextBox control, the popup help message is displayed. An Ajax Control Toolkit control extender consists of two parts: a server-side control extender and a client-side behavior. For example, the PopupHelp extender consists of a server-side PopupHelpExtender control (PopupHelpExtender.cs) and a client-side PopupHelp behavior JavaScript script (PopupHelpBehavior.js). Over the course of this blog entry, I describe how you can create both the server-side extender and the client-side behavior. Writing the Server-Side Code Creating a Control Extender You create a control extender by creating a class that inherits from the abstract ExtenderControlBase class. For example, the PopupHelpExtender control is declared like this: public class PopupHelpExtender: ExtenderControlBase { } The ExtenderControlBase class is part of the Ajax Control Toolkit. This base class contains all of the common server properties and methods of every Ajax Control Toolkit extender control. The ExtenderControlBase class inherits from the ExtenderControl class. The ExtenderControl class is a standard class in the ASP.NET framework located in the System.Web.UI namespace. This class is responsible for generating a client-side behavior. The class generates a call to the Microsoft Ajax Library $create() method which looks like this: <script type="text/javascript"> $create(MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior, {"HelpText":"Please enter your social security number.","id":"ph1"}, null, null, $get("txtSSN")); }); </script> The JavaScript $create() method is part of the Microsoft Ajax Library. The reference for this method can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb397487.aspx This method accepts the following parameters: type – The type of client behavior to create. The $create() method above creates a client PopupHelpBehavior. Properties – Enables you to pass initial values for the properties of the client behavior. For example, the initial value of the HelpText property. This is how server property values are passed to the client. Events – Enables you to pass client-side event handlers to the client behavior. References – Enables you to pass references to other client components. Element – The DOM element associated with the client behavior. This will be the DOM element associated with the control being extended such as the txtSSN TextBox. The $create() method is generated for you automatically. You just need to focus on writing the server-side control extender class. Specifying the Target Control All Ajax Control Toolkit extenders inherit a TargetControlID property from the ExtenderControlBase class. This property, the TargetControlID property, points at the control that the extender control extends. For example, the Ajax Control Toolkit TextBoxWatermark control extends a TextBox, the ConfirmButton control extends a Button, and the Calendar control extends a TextBox. You must indicate the type of control which your extender is extending. You indicate the type of control by adding a [TargetControlType] attribute to your control. For example, the PopupHelp extender is declared like this: [TargetControlType(typeof(TextBox))] public class PopupHelpExtender: ExtenderControlBase { } The PopupHelp extender can be used to extend a TextBox control. If you try to use the PopupHelp extender with another type of control then an exception is thrown. If you want to create an extender control which can be used with any type of ASP.NET control (Button, DataView, TextBox or whatever) then use the following attribute: [TargetControlType(typeof(Control))] Decorating Properties with Attributes If you decorate a server-side property with the [ExtenderControlProperty] attribute then the value of the property gets passed to the control’s client-side behavior. The value of the property gets passed to the client through the $create() method discussed above. The PopupHelp control contains the following HelpText property: [ExtenderControlProperty] [RequiredProperty] public string HelpText { get { return GetPropertyValue("HelpText", "Help Text"); } set { SetPropertyValue("HelpText", value); } } The HelpText property determines the help text which pops up when you start typing into a TextBox control. Because the HelpText property is decorated with the [ExtenderControlProperty] attribute, any value assigned to this property on the server is passed to the client automatically. For example, if you declare the PopupHelp extender in a Web Form page like this: <asp:TextBox ID="txtSSN" runat="server" /> <act:PopupHelpExtender id="ph1" TargetControlID="txtSSN" HelpText="Please enter your social security number." runat="server" />   Then the PopupHelpExtender renders the call to the the following Microsoft Ajax Library $create() method: $create(MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior, {"HelpText":"Please enter your social security number.","id":"ph1"}, null, null, $get("txtSSN")); You can see this call to the JavaScript $create() method by selecting View Source in your browser. This call to the $create() method calls a method named set_HelpText() automatically and passes the value “Please enter your social security number”. There are several attributes which you can use to decorate server-side properties including: ExtenderControlProperty – When a property is marked with this attribute, the value of the property is passed to the client automatically. ExtenderControlEvent – When a property is marked with this attribute, the property represents a client event handler. Required – When a value is not assigned to this property on the server, an error is displayed. DefaultValue – The default value of the property passed to the client. ClientPropertyName – The name of the corresponding property in the JavaScript behavior. For example, the server-side property is named ID (uppercase) and the client-side property is named id (lower-case). IDReferenceProperty – Applied to properties which refer to the IDs of other controls. URLProperty – Calls ResolveClientURL() to convert from a server-side URL to a URL which can be used on the client. ElementReference – Returns a reference to a DOM element by performing a client $get(). The WebResource, ClientResource, and the RequiredScript Attributes The PopupHelp extender uses three embedded resources named PopupHelpBehavior.js, PopupHelpBehavior.debug.js, and PopupHelpBehavior.css. The first two files are JavaScript files and the final file is a Cascading Style sheet file. These files are compiled as embedded resources. You don’t need to mark them as embedded resources in your Visual Studio solution because they get added to the assembly when the assembly is compiled by a build task. You can see that these files get embedded into the MyACTControls assembly by using Red Gate’s .NET Reflector tool: In order to use these files with the PopupHelp extender, you need to work with both the WebResource and the ClientScriptResource attributes. The PopupHelp extender includes the following three WebResource attributes. [assembly: WebResource("PopupHelp.PopupHelpBehavior.js", "text/javascript")] [assembly: WebResource("PopupHelp.PopupHelpBehavior.debug.js", "text/javascript")] [assembly: WebResource("PopupHelp.PopupHelpBehavior.css", "text/css", PerformSubstitution = true)] These WebResource attributes expose the embedded resource from the assembly so that they can be accessed by using the ScriptResource.axd or WebResource.axd handlers. The first parameter passed to the WebResource attribute is the name of the embedded resource and the second parameter is the content type of the embedded resource. The PopupHelp extender also includes the following ClientScriptResource and ClientCssResource attributes: [ClientScriptResource("MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior", "PopupHelp.PopupHelpBehavior.js")] [ClientCssResource("PopupHelp.PopupHelpBehavior.css")] Including these attributes causes the PopupHelp extender to request these resources when you add the PopupHelp extender to a page. If you open View Source in a browser which uses the PopupHelp extender then you will see the following link for the Cascading Style Sheet file: <link href="/WebResource.axd?d=0uONMsWXUuEDG-pbJHAC1kuKiIMteQFkYLmZdkgv7X54TObqYoqVzU4mxvaa4zpn5H9ch0RDwRYKwtO8zM5mKgO6C4WbrbkWWidKR07LD1d4n4i_uNB1mHEvXdZu2Ae5mDdVNDV53znnBojzCzwvSw2&amp;t=634417392021676003" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" /> You also will see the following script include for the JavaScript file: <script src="/ScriptResource.axd?d=pIS7xcGaqvNLFBvExMBQSp_0xR3mpDfS0QVmmyu1aqDUjF06TrW1jVDyXNDMtBHxpRggLYDvgFTWOsrszflZEDqAcQCg-hDXjun7ON0Ol7EXPQIdOe1GLMceIDv3OeX658-tTq2LGdwXhC1-dE7_6g2&amp;t=ffffffff88a33b59" type="text/javascript"></script> The JavaScrpt file returned by this request to ScriptResource.axd contains the combined scripts for any and all Ajax Control Toolkit controls in a page. By default, the Ajax Control Toolkit combines all of the JavaScript files required by a page into a single JavaScript file. Combining files in this way really speeds up how quickly all of the JavaScript files get delivered from the web server to the browser. So, by default, there will be only one ScriptResource.axd include for all of the JavaScript files required by a page. If you want to disable Script Combining, and create separate links, then disable Script Combining like this: <act:ToolkitScriptManager ID="tsm" runat="server" CombineScripts="false" /> There is one more important attribute used by Ajax Control Toolkit extenders. The PopupHelp behavior uses the following two RequirdScript attributes to load the JavaScript files which are required by the PopupHelp behavior: [RequiredScript(typeof(CommonToolkitScripts), 0)] [RequiredScript(typeof(PopupExtender), 1)] The first parameter of the RequiredScript attribute represents either the string name of a JavaScript file or the type of an Ajax Control Toolkit control. The second parameter represents the order in which the JavaScript files are loaded (This second parameter is needed because .NET attributes are intrinsically unordered). In this case, the RequiredScript attribute will load the JavaScript files associated with the CommonToolkitScripts type and the JavaScript files associated with the PopupExtender in that order. The PopupHelp behavior depends on these JavaScript files. Writing the Client-Side Code The PopupHelp extender uses a client-side behavior written with the Microsoft Ajax Library. Here is the complete code for the client-side behavior: (function () { // The unique name of the script registered with the // client script loader var scriptName = "PopupHelpBehavior"; function execute() { Type.registerNamespace('MyACTControls'); MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior = function (element) { /// <summary> /// A behavior which displays popup help for a textbox /// </summmary> /// <param name="element" type="Sys.UI.DomElement">The element to attach to</param> MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.initializeBase(this, [element]); this._textbox = Sys.Extended.UI.TextBoxWrapper.get_Wrapper(element); this._cssClass = "ajax__popupHelp"; this._popupBehavior = null; this._popupPosition = Sys.Extended.UI.PositioningMode.BottomLeft; this._popupDiv = null; this._helpText = "Help Text"; this._element$delegates = { focus: Function.createDelegate(this, this._element_onfocus), blur: Function.createDelegate(this, this._element_onblur) }; } MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.prototype = { initialize: function () { MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.callBaseMethod(this, 'initialize'); // Add event handlers for focus and blur var element = this.get_element(); $addHandlers(element, this._element$delegates); }, _ensurePopup: function () { if (!this._popupDiv) { var element = this.get_element(); var id = this.get_id(); this._popupDiv = $common.createElementFromTemplate({ nodeName: "div", properties: { id: id + "_popupDiv" }, cssClasses: ["ajax__popupHelp"] }, element.parentNode); this._popupBehavior = new $create(Sys.Extended.UI.PopupBehavior, { parentElement: element }, {}, {}, this._popupDiv); this._popupBehavior.set_positioningMode(this._popupPosition); } }, get_HelpText: function () { return this._helpText; }, set_HelpText: function (value) { if (this._HelpText != value) { this._helpText = value; this._ensurePopup(); this._popupDiv.innerHTML = value; this.raisePropertyChanged("Text") } }, _element_onfocus: function (e) { this.show(); }, _element_onblur: function (e) { this.hide(); }, show: function () { this._popupBehavior.show(); }, hide: function () { if (this._popupBehavior) { this._popupBehavior.hide(); } }, dispose: function() { var element = this.get_element(); $clearHandlers(element); if (this._popupBehavior) { this._popupBehavior.dispose(); this._popupBehavior = null; } } }; MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.registerClass('MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior', Sys.Extended.UI.BehaviorBase); Sys.registerComponent(MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior, { name: "popupHelp" }); } // execute if (window.Sys && Sys.loader) { Sys.loader.registerScript(scriptName, ["ExtendedBase", "ExtendedCommon"], execute); } else { execute(); } })();   In the following sections, we’ll discuss how this client-side behavior works. Wrapping the Behavior for the Script Loader The behavior is wrapped with the following script: (function () { // The unique name of the script registered with the // client script loader var scriptName = "PopupHelpBehavior"; function execute() { // Behavior Content } // execute if (window.Sys && Sys.loader) { Sys.loader.registerScript(scriptName, ["ExtendedBase", "ExtendedCommon"], execute); } else { execute(); } })(); This code is required by the Microsoft Ajax Library Script Loader. You need this code if you plan to use a behavior directly from client-side code and you want to use the Script Loader. If you plan to only use your code in the context of the Ajax Control Toolkit then you can leave out this code. Registering a JavaScript Namespace The PopupHelp behavior is declared within a namespace named MyACTControls. In the code above, this namespace is created with the following registerNamespace() method: Type.registerNamespace('MyACTControls'); JavaScript does not have any built-in way of creating namespaces to prevent naming conflicts. The Microsoft Ajax Library extends JavaScript with support for namespaces. You can learn more about the registerNamespace() method here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb397723.aspx Creating the Behavior The actual Popup behavior is created with the following code. MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior = function (element) { /// <summary> /// A behavior which displays popup help for a textbox /// </summmary> /// <param name="element" type="Sys.UI.DomElement">The element to attach to</param> MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.initializeBase(this, [element]); this._textbox = Sys.Extended.UI.TextBoxWrapper.get_Wrapper(element); this._cssClass = "ajax__popupHelp"; this._popupBehavior = null; this._popupPosition = Sys.Extended.UI.PositioningMode.BottomLeft; this._popupDiv = null; this._helpText = "Help Text"; this._element$delegates = { focus: Function.createDelegate(this, this._element_onfocus), blur: Function.createDelegate(this, this._element_onblur) }; } MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.prototype = { initialize: function () { MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.callBaseMethod(this, 'initialize'); // Add event handlers for focus and blur var element = this.get_element(); $addHandlers(element, this._element$delegates); }, _ensurePopup: function () { if (!this._popupDiv) { var element = this.get_element(); var id = this.get_id(); this._popupDiv = $common.createElementFromTemplate({ nodeName: "div", properties: { id: id + "_popupDiv" }, cssClasses: ["ajax__popupHelp"] }, element.parentNode); this._popupBehavior = new $create(Sys.Extended.UI.PopupBehavior, { parentElement: element }, {}, {}, this._popupDiv); this._popupBehavior.set_positioningMode(this._popupPosition); } }, get_HelpText: function () { return this._helpText; }, set_HelpText: function (value) { if (this._HelpText != value) { this._helpText = value; this._ensurePopup(); this._popupDiv.innerHTML = value; this.raisePropertyChanged("Text") } }, _element_onfocus: function (e) { this.show(); }, _element_onblur: function (e) { this.hide(); }, show: function () { this._popupBehavior.show(); }, hide: function () { if (this._popupBehavior) { this._popupBehavior.hide(); } }, dispose: function() { var element = this.get_element(); $clearHandlers(element); if (this._popupBehavior) { this._popupBehavior.dispose(); this._popupBehavior = null; } } }; The code above has two parts. The first part of the code is used to define the constructor function for the PopupHelp behavior. This is a factory method which returns an instance of a PopupHelp behavior: MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior = function (element) { } The second part of the code modified the prototype for the PopupHelp behavior: MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.prototype = { } Any code which is particular to a single instance of the PopupHelp behavior should be placed in the constructor function. For example, the default value of the _helpText field is assigned in the constructor function: this._helpText = "Help Text"; Any code which is shared among all instances of the PopupHelp behavior should be added to the PopupHelp behavior’s prototype. For example, the public HelpText property is added to the prototype: get_HelpText: function () { return this._helpText; }, set_HelpText: function (value) { if (this._HelpText != value) { this._helpText = value; this._ensurePopup(); this._popupDiv.innerHTML = value; this.raisePropertyChanged("Text") } }, Registering a JavaScript Class After you create the PopupHelp behavior, you must register the behavior as a class by using the Microsoft Ajax registerClass() method like this: MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.registerClass('MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior', Sys.Extended.UI.BehaviorBase); This call to registerClass() registers PopupHelp behavior as a class which derives from the base Sys.Extended.UI.BehaviorBase class. Like the ExtenderControlBase class on the server side, the BehaviorBase class on the client side contains method used by every behavior. The documentation for the BehaviorBase class can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb311020.aspx The most important methods and properties of the BehaviorBase class are the following: dispose() – Use this method to clean up all resources used by your behavior. In the case of the PopupHelp behavior, the dispose() method is used to remote the event handlers created by the behavior and disposed the Popup behavior. get_element() -- Use this property to get the DOM element associated with the behavior. In other words, the DOM element which the behavior extends. get_id() – Use this property to the ID of the current behavior. initialize() – Use this method to initialize the behavior. This method is called after all of the properties are set by the $create() method. Creating Debug and Release Scripts You might have noticed that the PopupHelp behavior uses two scripts named PopupHelpBehavior.js and PopupHelpBehavior.debug.js. However, you never create these two scripts. Instead, you only create a single script named PopupHelpBehavior.pre.js. The pre in PopupHelpBehavior.pre.js stands for preprocessor. When you build the Ajax Control Toolkit (or the sample Visual Studio Solution at the end of this blog entry), a build task named JSBuild generates the PopupHelpBehavior.js release script and PopupHelpBehavior.debug.js debug script automatically. The JSBuild preprocessor supports the following directives: #IF #ELSE #ENDIF #INCLUDE #LOCALIZE #DEFINE #UNDEFINE The preprocessor directives are used to mark code which should only appear in the debug version of the script. The directives are used extensively in the Microsoft Ajax Library. For example, the Microsoft Ajax Library Array.contains() method is created like this: $type.contains = function Array$contains(array, item) { //#if DEBUG var e = Function._validateParams(arguments, [ {name: "array", type: Array, elementMayBeNull: true}, {name: "item", mayBeNull: true} ]); if (e) throw e; //#endif return (indexOf(array, item) >= 0); } Notice that you add each of the preprocessor directives inside a JavaScript comment. The comment prevents Visual Studio from getting confused with its Intellisense. The release version, but not the debug version, of the PopupHelpBehavior script is also minified automatically by the Microsoft Ajax Minifier. The minifier is invoked by a build step in the project file. Conclusion The goal of this blog entry was to explain how you can create custom AJAX Control Toolkit controls. In the first part of this blog entry, you learned how to create the server-side portion of an Ajax Control Toolkit control. You learned how to derive a new control from the ExtenderControlBase class and decorate its properties with the necessary attributes. Next, in the second part of this blog entry, you learned how to create the client-side portion of an Ajax Control Toolkit control by creating a client-side behavior with JavaScript. You learned how to use the methods of the Microsoft Ajax Library to extend your client behavior from the BehaviorBase class. Download the Custom ACT Starter Solution

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• Creating a dynamic proxy generator – Part 1 – Creating the Assembly builder, Module builder and cach

  - by SeanMcAlinden

  I’ve recently started a project with a few mates to learn the ins and outs of Dependency Injection, AOP and a number of other pretty crucial patterns of development as we’ve all been using these patterns for a while but have relied totally on third part solutions to do the magic. We thought it would be interesting to really get into the details by rolling our own IoC container and hopefully learn a lot on the way, and you never know, we might even create an excellent framework. The open source project is called Rapid IoC and is hosted at http://rapidioc.codeplex.com/ One of the most interesting tasks for me is creating the dynamic proxy generator for enabling Aspect Orientated Programming (AOP). In this series of articles, I’m going to track each step I take for creating the dynamic proxy generator and I’ll try my best to explain what everything means - mainly as I’ll be using Reflection.Emit to emit a fair amount of intermediate language code (IL) to create the proxy types at runtime which can be a little taxing to read. It’s worth noting that building the proxy is without a doubt going to be slightly painful so I imagine there will be plenty of areas I’ll need to change along the way. Anyway lets get started…   Part 1 - Creating the Assembly builder, Module builder and caching mechanism Part 1 is going to be a really nice simple start, I’m just going to start by creating the assembly, module and type caches. The reason we need to create caches for the assembly, module and types is simply to save the overhead of recreating proxy types that have already been generated, this will be one of the important steps to ensure that the framework is fast… kind of important as we’re calling the IoC container ‘Rapid’ – will be a little bit embarrassing if we manage to create the slowest framework. The Assembly builder The assembly builder is what is used to create an assembly at runtime, we’re going to have two overloads, one will be for the actual use of the proxy generator, the other will be mainly for testing purposes as it will also save the assembly so we can use Reflector to examine the code that has been created. Here’s the code: DynamicAssemblyBuilder using System; using System.Reflection; using System.Reflection.Emit; namespace Rapid.DynamicProxy.Assembly {     /// <summary>     /// Class for creating an assembly builder.     /// </summary>     internal static class DynamicAssemblyBuilder     {         #region Create           /// <summary>         /// Creates an assembly builder.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="assemblyName">Name of the assembly.</param>         public static AssemblyBuilder Create(string assemblyName)         {             AssemblyName name = new AssemblyName(assemblyName);               AssemblyBuilder assembly = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.DefineDynamicAssembly(                     name, AssemblyBuilderAccess.Run);               DynamicAssemblyCache.Add(assembly);               return assembly;         }           /// <summary>         /// Creates an assembly builder and saves the assembly to the passed in location.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="assemblyName">Name of the assembly.</param>         /// <param name="filePath">The file path.</param>         public static AssemblyBuilder Create(string assemblyName, string filePath)         {             AssemblyName name = new AssemblyName(assemblyName);               AssemblyBuilder assembly = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.DefineDynamicAssembly(                     name, AssemblyBuilderAccess.RunAndSave, filePath);               DynamicAssemblyCache.Add(assembly);               return assembly;         }           #endregion     } }   So hopefully the above class is fairly explanatory, an AssemblyName is created using the passed in string for the actual name of the assembly. An AssemblyBuilder is then constructed with the current AppDomain and depending on the overload used, it is either just run in the current context or it is set up ready for saving. It is then added to the cache.   DynamicAssemblyCache using System.Reflection.Emit; using Rapid.DynamicProxy.Exceptions; using Rapid.DynamicProxy.Resources.Exceptions;   namespace Rapid.DynamicProxy.Assembly {     /// <summary>     /// Cache for storing the dynamic assembly builder.     /// </summary>     internal static class DynamicAssemblyCache     {         #region Declarations           private static object syncRoot = new object();         internal static AssemblyBuilder Cache = null;           #endregion           #region Adds a dynamic assembly to the cache.           /// <summary>         /// Adds a dynamic assembly builder to the cache.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="assemblyBuilder">The assembly builder.</param>         public static void Add(AssemblyBuilder assemblyBuilder)         {             lock (syncRoot)             {                 Cache = assemblyBuilder;             }         }           #endregion           #region Gets the cached assembly                  /// <summary>         /// Gets the cached assembly builder.         /// </summary>         /// <returns></returns>         public static AssemblyBuilder Get         {             get             {                 lock (syncRoot)                 {                     if (Cache != null)                     {                         return Cache;                     }                 }                   throw new RapidDynamicProxyAssertionException(AssertionResources.NoAssemblyInCache);             }         }           #endregion     } } The cache is simply a static property that will store the AssemblyBuilder (I know it’s a little weird that I’ve made it public, this is for testing purposes, I know that’s a bad excuse but hey…) There are two methods for using the cache – Add and Get, these just provide thread safe access to the cache.   The Module Builder The module builder is required as the create proxy classes will need to live inside a module within the assembly. Here’s the code: DynamicModuleBuilder using System.Reflection.Emit; using Rapid.DynamicProxy.Assembly; namespace Rapid.DynamicProxy.Module {     /// <summary>     /// Class for creating a module builder.     /// </summary>     internal static class DynamicModuleBuilder     {         /// <summary>         /// Creates a module builder using the cached assembly.         /// </summary>         public static ModuleBuilder Create()         {             string assemblyName = DynamicAssemblyCache.Get.GetName().Name;               ModuleBuilder moduleBuilder = DynamicAssemblyCache.Get.DefineDynamicModule                 (assemblyName, string.Format("{0}.dll", assemblyName));               DynamicModuleCache.Add(moduleBuilder);               return moduleBuilder;         }     } } As you can see, the module builder is created on the assembly that lives in the DynamicAssemblyCache, the module is given the assembly name and also a string representing the filename if the assembly is to be saved. It is then added to the DynamicModuleCache. DynamicModuleCache using System.Reflection.Emit; using Rapid.DynamicProxy.Exceptions; using Rapid.DynamicProxy.Resources.Exceptions; namespace Rapid.DynamicProxy.Module {     /// <summary>     /// Class for storing the module builder.     /// </summary>     internal static class DynamicModuleCache     {         #region Declarations           private static object syncRoot = new object();         internal static ModuleBuilder Cache = null;           #endregion           #region Add           /// <summary>         /// Adds a dynamic module builder to the cache.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="moduleBuilder">The module builder.</param>         public static void Add(ModuleBuilder moduleBuilder)         {             lock (syncRoot)             {                 Cache = moduleBuilder;             }         }           #endregion           #region Get           /// <summary>         /// Gets the cached module builder.         /// </summary>         /// <returns></returns>         public static ModuleBuilder Get         {             get             {                 lock (syncRoot)                 {                     if (Cache != null)                     {                         return Cache;                     }                 }                   throw new RapidDynamicProxyAssertionException(AssertionResources.NoModuleInCache);             }         }           #endregion     } }   The DynamicModuleCache is very similar to the assembly cache, it is simply a statically stored module with thread safe Add and Get methods.   The DynamicTypeCache To end off this post, I’m going to create the cache for storing the generated proxy classes. I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about the type of collection I should use to store the types and have finally decided that for the time being I’m going to use a generic dictionary. This may change when I can actually performance test the proxy generator but the time being I think it makes good sense in theory, mainly as it pretty much maintains it’s performance with varying numbers of items – almost constant (0)1. Plus I won’t ever need to loop through the items which is not the dictionaries strong point. Here’s the code as it currently stands: DynamicTypeCache using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Security.Cryptography; using System.Text; namespace Rapid.DynamicProxy.Types {     /// <summary>     /// Cache for storing proxy types.     /// </summary>     internal static class DynamicTypeCache     {         #region Declarations           static object syncRoot = new object();         public static Dictionary<string, Type> Cache = new Dictionary<string, Type>();           #endregion           /// <summary>         /// Adds a proxy to the type cache.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="type">The type.</param>         /// <param name="proxy">The proxy.</param>         public static void AddProxyForType(Type type, Type proxy)         {             lock (syncRoot)             {                 Cache.Add(GetHashCode(type.AssemblyQualifiedName), proxy);             }         }           /// <summary>         /// Tries the type of the get proxy for.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="type">The type.</param>         /// <returns></returns>         public static Type TryGetProxyForType(Type type)         {             lock (syncRoot)             {                 Type proxyType;                 Cache.TryGetValue(GetHashCode(type.AssemblyQualifiedName), out proxyType);                 return proxyType;             }         }           #region Private Methods           private static string GetHashCode(string fullName)         {             SHA1CryptoServiceProvider provider = new SHA1CryptoServiceProvider();             Byte[] buffer = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(fullName);             Byte[] hash = provider.ComputeHash(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);             return Convert.ToBase64String(hash);         }           #endregion     } } As you can see, there are two public methods, one for adding to the cache and one for getting from the cache. Hopefully they should be clear enough, the Get is a TryGet as I do not want the dictionary to throw an exception if a proxy doesn’t exist within the cache. Other than that I’ve decided to create a key using the SHA1CryptoServiceProvider, this may change but my initial though is the SHA1 algorithm is pretty fast to put together using the provider and it is also very unlikely to have any hashing collisions. (there are some maths behind how unlikely this is – here’s the wiki if you’re interested http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA_hash_functions)   Anyway, that’s the end of part 1 – although I haven’t started any of the fun stuff (by fun I mean hairpulling, teeth grating Relfection.Emit style fun), I’ve got the basis of the DynamicProxy in place so all we have to worry about now is creating the types, interceptor classes, method invocation information classes and finally a really nice fluent interface that will abstract all of the hard-core craziness away and leave us with a lightning fast, easy to use AOP framework. Hope you find the series interesting. All of the source code can be viewed and/or downloaded at our codeplex site - http://rapidioc.codeplex.com/ Kind Regards, Sean.

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• IIS SSL Certificate Renewal Pain

  - by Rick Strahl

  I’m in the middle of my annual certificate renewal for the West Wind site and I can honestly say that I hate IIS’s certificate system.  When it works it’s fine, but when it doesn’t man can it be a pain. Because I deal with public certificates on my site merely once a year, and you have to perform the certificate dance just the right way, I seem to run into some sort of trouble every year, thinking that Microsoft surely must have addressed the issues I ran into previously – HA! Not so. Don’t ever use the Renew Certificate Feature in IIS! The first rule that I should have never forgotten is that certificate renewals in IIS (7 is what I’m using but I think it’s no different in 7.5 and 8), simply don’t work if you’re submitting to get a public certificate from a certificate authority. I use DNSimple for my DNS domain management and SSL certificates because they provide ridiculously easy domain management and good prices for SSL certs – especially wildcard certificates, which is what I use on west-wind.com. Certificates in IIS can be found pegged to the machine root. If you go into the IIS Manager, go to the machine root the tree and then click on certificates and you then get various certificate options: Both of these options create a new Certificate request (CSR), which is just a text file. But if you’re silly enough like me to click on the Renew button on your old certificate, you’ll find that you end up generating a very long Certificate Request that looks nothing like the original certificate request and the format that’s used for this is not accepted by most certificate authorities. While I’m not sure exactly what the problem is, it simply looks like IIS is respecting none of your original certificate bit size choices and is generating a huge certificate request that is 3 times the size of a ‘normal’ certificate request. The end result is (and I’ve done this at least twice now) is that the certificate processor is likely to fail processing those renewals. Always create a new Certificate While it’s a little more work and you have to remember how to fill out the certificate request properly, this is the safe way to make sure your certificate generates properly. First comes the Distinguished Name Properties dialog: Ah yes you have to love the nomenclature of this stuff. Distinguished name, Common name – WTF is a common name? It doesn’t look common to me! Make sure this form gets filled out correctly. Common NameThis is the domain name of the Web site. In my case I’m creating a wildcard certificate so I’m using the * prefix. If you’re purchasing a certificate for a specific domain use www.west-wind.com or store.west-wind.com for example. Make sure this matches the EXACT domain you’re trying to use secure access on because that’s all the certificate is going to work on unless you get a wildcard certificate. Organization Is the name of your company or organization. Depending on the kind of certificate you purchase this name will show up on your certificate. Most low end SSL certificates (ie. those that cost under $100 for single domains) don’t list the organization, the higher signature certificates that also require extensive validation by the cert authority do. Regardless you should make sure this matches the right company/organization. Organizational Unit This can be anything. Not really sure what this is for, but traditionally I’ve always set this to Web because – well this is a Web thing after all right? I’ve never seen this used anywhere that I can tell other than to internally reference the cert. State and CountryPretty obvious. Should reflect the location of the business/organization/person or site.   Next you have to configure the bit size used for the certificate: The default on this dialog is 1024, but I’ve found that most providers these days request a minimum bit length of 2048, as did my DNSimple provider. Again check with the provider when you submit to make sure. Bit length mismatches can cause problems if you use a size that isn’t supported by the provider. I had that happen last year when I submitted my CSR and it got rejected quite a bit later, when the certs usually are issued within an hour or less. When you’re done here, the certificate is saved to disk as a .txt file and it should look something like this (this is a 2048 bit length CSR):-----BEGIN NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- MIIEVGCCAz0CAQAwdjELMAkGA1UEBhMCVVMxDzANBgNVBAgMBkhhd2FpaTENMAsG A1UEBwwEUGFpYTEfMB0GA1UECgwWV2VzdCBXaW5kIFRlY2hub2xvZ2llczEMMAoG B1UECwwDV2ViMRgwFgYDVQQDDA8qLndlc3Qtd2luZC5jb20wggEiMA0GCSqGSIb3 DQEBAQUAA4IBDwAwggEKAoIBAQDIPWOFMkMVRp2Ftj9w/cCVV4OYYhoZYtl+8lTk oqDwKca0xWHLgioX/9v0rZLS6a82MHqKEBxVXu+cuCmSE4AQtB/1YH9lS4tpc/be OZDvnTotP6l4MCEzzAfROcw4CiIg6X0RMSnl8IATAvv2V5LQM9TDdt9oDdMpX2IY +vVC9RZ7PMHBmR9kwI2i/lrKitzhQKaHgpmKcRlM6iqpALUiX28w5HJaDKK1MDHN 607tyFJLHijuJKx7PdTqZYf50KkC3NupfZ2avVycf18Q13jHWj59tvwEOczoVzRL l4LQivAqbhyiqMpWnrZunIOUZta5aGm+jo7O1knGWJjxuraTAgMBAAGgggGYMBoG CisGAQQBgjcNAgMxDBYKNi4yLjkyMDAuMjA0BgkrBgEEAYI3FRQxJzAlAgEFDAZS QVNYUFMMC1JBU1hQU1xSaWNrDAtJbmV0TWdyLmV4ZTByBgorBgEEAYI3DQICMWQw YgIBAR5aAE0AaQBjAHIAbwBzAG8AZgB0ACAAUgBTAEEAIABTAEMAaABhAG4AbgBl AGwAIABDAHIAeQBwAHQAbwBnAHIAYQBwAGgAaQBjACAAUAByAG8AdgBpAGQAZQBy AwEAMIHPBgkqhkiG9w0BCQ4xgcEwgb4wDgYDVR0PAQH/BAQDAgTwMBMGA1UdJQQM MAoGCCsGAQUFBwMBMHgGCSqGSIb3DQEJDwRrMGkwDgYIKoZIhvcNAwICAgCAMA4G CCqGSIb3DQMEAgIAgDALBglghkgBZQMEASowCwYJYIZIAWUDBAEtMAsGCWCGSAFl AwQBAjALBglghkgBZQMEAQUwBwYFKw4DAgcwCgYIKoZIhvcNAwcwHQYDVR0OBBYE FD/yOsTbXE+GVFCFMmldzQvyloz9MA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBQUAA4IBAQCK6LlsCuIM 1AU0niB6QZ9v0FTsGFxP1dYvVUnJyY6VEKNiGFiQjZac7UCs0p58yScdXWEFOE8V OsjAYD3xYNc05+ckyD67UHRGEUAVB9RBvbKW23KeR/8kBmEzc8PemD52YOgExxAJ 57xWmAwEHAvbgYzQvhO8AOzH3TGvvHbg5UKM1pYgNmuwZq5DkL/IDoeIJwfk/wrI wghNTuxxIFgbH4YrgLgv4PRvrS/LaTCRBdboaCgzATMczaOb1nd/DVNR+3fCtMhM W0psTAjzRbmXF3nJyAQa7jF/52gkY0RfFX2lG5tJnG+XDsVNvKNvh9Qa5Tlmkm06 ILKCm9ciWCKk -----END NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- You can take that certificate request and submit that to your certificate provider. Since this is base64 encoded you can typically just paste it into a text box on the submission page, or some providers will ask you to upload the CSR as a file. What does a Renewal look like? Note the length of the CSR will vary somewhat with key strength, but compare this to a renewal request that IIS generated from my existing site:-----BEGIN NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- MIIPpwYFKoZIhvcNAQcCoIIPmDCCD5QCAQExCzAJBgUrDgMCGgUAMIIIqAYJKoZI hvcNAQcBoIIImQSCCJUwggiRMIIH+gIBADBdMSEwHwYDVQQLDBhEb21haW4gQ29u dHJvbCBWYWxpFGF0ZWQxHjAcBgNVBAsMFUVzc2VudGlhbFNTTCBXaWxkY2FyZDEY MBYGA1UEAwwPKi53ZXN0LXdpbmQuY29tMIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCB iQKBgQCK4OuIOR18Wb8tNMGRZiD1c9X57b332Lj7DhbckFqLs0ys8kVDHrTXSj+T Ye9nmAvfPpZmBtE5p9qRNN79rUYugAdl+qEtE4IJe1bRfxXzcKa1SXa8+TEs3zQa zYSmcR2dDuC8om1eAdeCtt0NnkvANgm1VLwGOor/UHMASaEhCQIDAQABoIIG8jAa BgorBgEEAYI3DQIDMQwWCjYuMi45MjAwLjIwNAYJKwYBBAGCNxUUMScwJQIBBQwG UkFTWFBTDAtSQVNYUFNcUmljawwLSW5ldE1nci5leGUwZgYKKwYBBAGCNw0CAjFY MFYCAQIeTgBNAGkAYwByAG8AcwBvAGYAdAAgAFMAdAByAG8AbgBnACAAQwByAHkA cAB0AG8AZwByAGEAcABoAGkAYwAgAFAAcgBvAHYAaQBkAGUAcgMBADCCAQAGCSqG SIb3DQEJDjGB8jCB7zAOBgNVHQ8BAf8EBAMCBaAwDAYDVR0TAQH/BAIwADA0BgNV 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And it didn’t work. IIS creates a custom CSR that is encoded in a format that no certificate authority I’ve ever used uses. If you want the gory details of what’s in there look at this ServerFault question (thanks to Mika in the comments). In the end it doesn’t matter  though – no certificate authority knows what to do with this CSR. So create a new CSR and skip the renewal. Always! Use the same Server Keep in mind that on IIS at least you should always create your certificate on a single server and then when you receive the final certificate from your provider import it on that server. IIS tracks the CSR it created and requires it in order to import the final certificate properly. So if for some reason you try to install the certificate on another server, it won’t work. I’ve also run into trouble trying to install the same certificate twice – this time around I didn’t give my certificate the proper friendly name and IIS failed to allow me to assign the certificate to any of my Web sites. So I removed the certificate and tried to import again, only to find it failed the second time around. There are other ways to fix this, but in my case I had to have the certificate re-issued to work – not what you want to do. Regardless of what you do though, when you import make sure you do it right the first time by crossing all your t’s and dotting your i's– it’ll save you a lot of grief! You don’t actually have to use the server that the certificate gets installed on to generate the CSR and first install it, but it is generally a good idea to do so just so you can get the certificate installed into the right place right away. If you have access to the server where you need to install the certificate you might as well use it. But you can use another machine to generated the and install the certificate, then export the certificate and move it to another machine as needed. So you can use your Dev machine to create a certificate then export it and install it on a live server. More on installation and back up/export later. Installing the Certificate Once you’ve submitted a CSR request your provider will process the request and eventually issue you a new final certificate that contains another text file with the final key to import into your certificate store. IIS does this by combining the content in your certificate request with the original CSR. If all goes well your new certificate shows up in the certificate list and you’re ready to assign the certificate to your sites. Make sure you use a friendly name that matches domain name of your site. So use *.mysite.com or www.mysite.com or store.mysite.com to ensure IIS recognizes the certificate. I made the mistake of not naming my friendly name this way and found that IIS was unable to link my sites to my wildcard certificate. It needed to have the *. as part of the certificate otherwise the Hostname input field was blanked out. Changing the Friendly Name If you by accidentally used an invalid friendly name you can change it later in the Windows certificate store. Bring up a Run Box Type MMC File | Add/Remove Snap In Add Certificates | Computer Account | Local Computer Drill into Certificates | Personal | Certificates Find your Certificate | Right Click | Properties Edit the Friendly Name | Click OK Backing up your Certificate The first thing you should do once your certificate is successfully installed is to back it up! In case your server crashes or you otherwise lose your configuration this will ensure you have an easy way to recover and reinstall your certificate either on the same server or a different one. If you’re running a server farm or using a wildcard certificate you also need to get the certificate onto other machines and a PFX file import is the easiest way to do this. To back up your certificate select your certificate and choose Export from the context or sidebar menu: The Export Certificate option allows you to export a password protected binary file that you can import in a single step. You can copy the resulting binary PFX file to back up or copy to other machines to install on. Importing the certificate on another machine is as easy as pointing at the PFX file and specifying the password. IIS handles the rest. Assigning a new certificate to your Site Once you have the new certificate installed, all that’s left to do is assign it to your site. In IIS select your Web site and bring up the Site Bindings from the right sidebar. Add a new binding for https, bind it to port 443, specify your hostname and pick the certificate from the pick list. If you’re using a root site make sure to set up your certificate for www.yoursite.com and also for yoursite.com so that both work properly with SSL. Note that you need to explicitly configure each hostname for a certificate if you plan to use SSL. Luckily if you update your SSL certificate in the following year, IIS prompts you and asks whether you like to update all other sites that are using the existing cert to the newer cert. And you’re done. So what’s the Pain? So, all of this is old hat and it doesn’t look all that bad right? So what’s the pain here? Well if you follow the instructions and do everything right, then the process is about as straight forward as you would expect it to be. You create a cert request, you import it and assign it to your sites. That’s the basic steps and to be perfectly fair it works well – if nothing goes wrong. However, renewing tends to be the problem. The first unintuitive issue is that you simply shouldn’t renew but create a new CSR and generate your new certificate from that. Over the years I’ve fallen prey to the belief that Microsoft eventually will fix this so that the renewal creates the same type of CSR as the old cert, but apparently that will just never happen. Booo! The other problem I ran into is that I accidentally misnamed my imported certificate which in turn set off a chain of events that caused my originally issued certificate to become uninstallable. When I received my completed certificate I installed it and it installed just fine, but the friendly name was wrong. As a result IIS refused to assign the certificate to any of my host headered sites. That’s strike number one. Why the heck should the friendly name have any effect on the ability to attach the certificate??? Next I uninstalled the certificate because I figured that would be the easiest way to make sure I get it right. But I found that I could not reinstall my certificate. I kept getting these stop errors: "ASN1 bad tag value met" that would prevent the installation from completion. After searching around for this error and reading countless long messages on forums, I found that this error supposedly does not actually mean the install failed, but the list wouldn’t refresh. Commodo has this to say: Note: There is a known issue in IIS 7 giving the following error: "Cannot find the certificate request associated with this certificate file. A certificate request must be completed on the computer where it was created." You may also receive a message stating "ASN1 bad tag value met". If this is the same server that you generated the CSR on then, in most cases, the certificate is actually installed. Simply cancel the dialog and press "F5" to refresh the list of server certificates. If the new certificate is now in the list, you can continue with the next step. If it is not in the list, you will need to reissue your certificate using a new CSR (see our CSR creation instructions for IIS 7). After creating a new CSR, login to your Comodo account and click the 'replace' button for your certificate. Not sure if this issue is fixed in IIS 8 but that’s an insane bug to have crop up. As it turns out, in my case the refresh didn’t work and the certificate didn’t show up in the IIS list after the reinstall. In fact when looking at the certificate store I could see my certificate was installed in the right place, but the private key is missing which is most likely why IIS is not picking it up. It looks like IIS could not match the final cert to the original CSR generated. But again some sort of message to that affect might be helpful instead of ASN1 bad tag value met. Recovering the Private Key So it turns out my original problem was that I received the published key, but when I imported the private key was missing. There’s a relatively easy way to recover from this. If your certificate doesn’t show up in IIS check in the certificate store for the local machine (see steps above on how to bring this up). If you look at the certificate in Certificates/Personal/Certificates make sure you see the key as shown in the image below: if the key is missing it means that the certificate is missing the private key most likely. To fix a certificate you can do the following: Double click the certificate Go to the Details Tab Copy down the Serial number You can copy the serial number from the area blurred out above. The serial number will be in a format like ?00 a7 9b a1 a4 9d 91 63 57 d6 9f 26 b8 ee 79 b5 cb and you’ll need to strip out the spaces in order to use it in the next step. Next open up an Administrative command prompt and issue the following command: certutil -repairstore my 00a79ba1a49d916357d69f26b8ee79b5cb You should get a confirmation message that the repair worked. If you now go back to the certificate store you should now see the key icon show up on the certificate. Your certificate is fixed. Now go back into IIS Manager and refresh the list of certificates and if all goes well you should see all the certificates that showed in the cert store now: Remember – back up the key first then map to your site… Summary I deal with a lot of customers who run their own IIS servers, and I can’t tell you how often I hear about botched SSL installations. When I posted some of my issues on Twitter yesterday I got a hell storm of “me too” responses. I’m clearly not the only one, who’s run into this especially with renewals. I feel pretty comfortable with IIS configuration and I do a lot of it for support purposes, but the SSL configuration is one that never seems to go seamlessly. This blog post is meant as reminder to myself to read next time I do a renewal. So I can dot my i's and dash my t’s before I get caught in the mess I’m dealing with today. Hopefully some of you find this useful as well.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2014Posted in IIS7  Security   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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• jQuery Time Entry with Time Navigation Keys

  - by Rick Strahl

  So, how do you display time values in your Web applications? Displaying date AND time values in applications is lot less standardized than date display only. While date input has become fairly universal with various date picker controls available, time entry continues to be a bit of a non-standardized. In my own applications I tend to use the jQuery UI DatePicker control for date entries and it works well for that. Here's an example: The date entry portion is well defined and it makes perfect sense to have a calendar pop up so you can pick a date from a rich UI when necessary. However, time values are much less obvious when it comes to displaying a UI or even just making time entries more useful. There are a slew of time picker controls available but other than adding some visual glitz, they are not really making time entry any easier. Part of the reason for this is that time entry is usually pretty simple. Clicking on a dropdown of any sort and selecting a value from a long scrolling list tends to take more user interaction than just typing 5 characters (7 if am/pm is used). Keystrokes can make Time Entry easier Time entry maybe pretty simple, but I find that adding a few hotkeys to handle date navigation can make it much easier. Specifically it'd be nice to have keys to: Jump to the current time (Now) Increase/decrease minutes Increase/decrease hours The timeKeys jQuery PlugIn Some time ago I created a small plugin to handle this scenario. It's non-visual other than tooltip that pops up when you press ? to display the hotkeys that are available: Try it Online The keys loosely follow the ancient Quicken convention of using the first and last letters of what you're increasing decreasing (ie. H to decrease, R to increase hours and + and - for the base unit or minutes here). All navigation happens via the keystrokes shown above, so it's all non-visual, which I think is the most efficient way to deal with dates. To hook up the plug-in, start with the textbox:<input type="text" id="txtTime" name="txtTime" value="12:05 pm" title="press ? for time options" /> Note the title which might be useful to alert people using the field that additional functionality is available. To hook up the plugin code is as simple as:$("#txtTime").timeKeys(); You essentially tie the plugin to any text box control. OptionsThe syntax for timeKeys allows for an options map parameter:$(selector).timeKeys(options); Options are passed as a parameter map object which can have the following properties: timeFormatYou can pass in a format string that allows you to format the date. The default is "hh:mm t" which is US time format that shows a 12 hour clock with am/pm. Alternately you can pass in "HH:mm" which uses 24 hour time. HH, hh, mm and t are translated in the format string - you can arrange the format as you see fit. callbackYou can also specify a callback function that is called when the date value has been set. This allows you to either re-format the date or perform post processing (such as displaying highlight if it's after a certain hour for example). Here's another example that uses both options:$("#txtTime").timeKeys({ timeFormat: "HH:mm", callback: function (time) { showStatus("new time is: " + time.toString() + " " + $(this).val() ); } }); The plugin code itself is fairly simple. It hooks the keydown event and checks for the various keys that affect time navigation which is straight forward. The bulk of the code however deals with parsing the time value and formatting the output using a Time class that implements parsing, formatting and time navigation methods. Here's the code for the timeKeys jQuery plug-in:/// <reference path="jquery.js" /> /// <reference path="ww.jquery.js" /> (function ($) { $.fn.timeKeys = function (options) { /// <summary> /// Attaches a set of hotkeys to time fields /// + Add minute - subtract minute /// H Subtract Hour R Add houR /// ? Show keys /// </summary> /// <param name="options" type="object"> /// Options: /// timeFormat: "hh:mm t" by default HH:mm alternate /// callback: callback handler after time assignment /// </param> /// <example> /// var proxy = new ServiceProxy("JsonStockService.svc/"); /// proxy.invoke("GetStockQuote",{symbol:"msft"},function(quote) { alert(result.LastPrice); },onPageError); ///</example> if (this.length < 1) return this; var opt = { timeFormat: "hh:mm t", callback: null } $.extend(opt, options); return this.keydown(function (e) { var $el = $(this); var time = new Time($el.val()); //alert($(this).val() + " " + time.toString() + " " + time.date.toString()); switch (e.keyCode) { case 78: // [N]ow time = new Time(new Date()); break; case 109: case 189: // - time.addMinutes(-1); break; case 107: case 187: // + time.addMinutes(1); break; case 72: //H time.addHours(-1); break; case 82: //R time.addHours(1); break; case 191: // ? if (e.shiftKey) $(this).tooltip("<b>N</b> Now<br/><b>+</b> add minute<br /><b>-</b> subtract minute<br /><b>H</b> Subtract Hour<br /><b>R</b> add hour", 4000, { isHtml: true }); return false; default: return true; } $el.val(time.toString(opt.timeFormat)); if (opt.callback) { // call async and set context in this element setTimeout(function () { opt.callback.call($el.get(0), time) }, 1); } return false; }); } Time = function (time, format) { /// <summary> /// Time object that can parse and format /// a time values. /// </summary> /// <param name="time" type="object"> /// A time value as a string (12:15pm or 23:01), a Date object /// or time value. /// /// </param> /// <param name="format" type="string"> /// Time format string: /// HH:mm (23:01) /// hh:mm t (11:01 pm) /// </param> /// <example> /// var time = new Time( new Date()); /// time.addHours(5); /// time.addMinutes(10); /// var s = time.toString(); /// /// var time2 = new Time(s); // parse with constructor /// var t = time2.parse("10:15 pm"); // parse with .parse() method /// alert( t.hours + " " + t.mins + " " + t.ampm + " " + t.hours25) ///</example> var _I = this; this.date = new Date(); this.timeFormat = "hh:mm t"; if (format) this.timeFormat = format; this.parse = function (time) { /// <summary> /// Parses time value from a Date object, or string in format of: /// 12:12pm or 23:01 /// </summary> /// <param name="time" type="any"> /// A time value as a string (12:15pm or 23:01), a Date object /// or time value. /// /// </param> if (!time) return null; // Date if (time.getDate) { var t = {}; var d = time; t.hours24 = d.getHours(); t.mins = d.getMinutes(); t.ampm = "am"; if (t.hours24 > 11) { t.ampm = "pm"; if (t.hours24 > 12) t.hours = t.hours24 - 12; } time = t; } if (typeof (time) == "string") { var parts = time.split(":"); if (parts < 2) return null; var time = {}; time.hours = parts[0] * 1; time.hours24 = time.hours; time.mins = parts[1].toLowerCase(); if (time.mins.indexOf("am") > -1) { time.ampm = "am"; time.mins = time.mins.replace("am", ""); if (time.hours == 12) time.hours24 = 0; } else if (time.mins.indexOf("pm") > -1) { time.ampm = "pm"; time.mins = time.mins.replace("pm", ""); if (time.hours < 12) time.hours24 = time.hours + 12; } time.mins = time.mins * 1; } _I.date.setMinutes(time.mins); _I.date.setHours(time.hours24); return time; }; this.addMinutes = function (mins) { /// <summary> /// adds minutes to the internally stored time value. /// </summary> /// <param name="mins" type="number"> /// number of minutes to add to the date /// </param> _I.date.setMinutes(_I.date.getMinutes() + mins); } this.addHours = function (hours) { /// <summary> /// adds hours the internally stored time value. /// </summary> /// <param name="hours" type="number"> /// number of hours to add to the date /// </param> _I.date.setHours(_I.date.getHours() + hours); } this.getTime = function () { /// <summary> /// returns a time structure from the currently /// stored time value. /// Properties: hours, hours24, mins, ampm /// </summary> return new Time(new Date()); h } this.toString = function (format) { /// <summary> /// returns a short time string for the internal date /// formats: 12:12 pm or 23:12 /// </summary> /// <param name="format" type="string"> /// optional format string for date /// HH:mm, hh:mm t /// </param> if (!format) format = _I.timeFormat; var hours = _I.date.getHours(); if (format.indexOf("t") > -1) { if (hours > 11) format = format.replace("t", "pm") else format = format.replace("t", "am") } if (format.indexOf("HH") > -1) format = format.replace("HH", hours.toString().padL(2, "0")); if (format.indexOf("hh") > -1) { if (hours > 12) hours -= 12; if (hours == 0) hours = 12; format = format.replace("hh", hours.toString().padL(2, "0")); } if (format.indexOf("mm") > -1) format = format.replace("mm", _I.date.getMinutes().toString().padL(2, "0")); return format; } // construction if (time) this.time = this.parse(time); } String.prototype.padL = function (width, pad) { if (!width || width < 1) return this; if (!pad) pad = " "; var length = width - this.length if (length < 1) return this.substr(0, width); return (String.repeat(pad, length) + this).substr(0, width); } String.repeat = function (chr, count) { var str = ""; for (var x = 0; x < count; x++) { str += chr }; return str; } })(jQuery); The plugin consists of the actual plugin and the Time class which handles parsing and formatting of the time value via the .parse() and .toString() methods. Code like this always ends up taking up more effort than the actual logic unfortunately. There are libraries out there that can handle this like datejs or even ww.jquery.js (which is what I use) but to keep the code self contained for this post the plugin doesn't rely on external code. There's one optional exception: The code as is has one dependency on ww.jquery.js  for the tooltip plugin that provides the small popup for all the hotkeys available. You can replace that code with some other mechanism to display hotkeys or simply remove it since that behavior is optional. While we're at it: A jQuery dateKeys plugIn Although date entry tends to be much better served with drop down calendars to pick dates from, often it's also easier to pick dates using a few simple hotkeys. Navigation that uses + - for days and M and H for MontH navigation, Y and R for YeaR navigation are a quick way to enter dates without having to resort to using a mouse and clicking around to what you want to find. Note that this plugin does have a dependency on ww.jquery.js for the date formatting functionality.$.fn.dateKeys = function (options) { /// <summary> /// Attaches a set of hotkeys to date 'fields' /// + Add day - subtract day /// M Subtract Month H Add montH /// Y Subtract Year R Add yeaR /// ? Show keys /// </summary> /// <param name="options" type="object"> /// Options: /// dateFormat: "MM/dd/yyyy" by default "MMM dd, yyyy /// callback: callback handler after date assignment /// </param> /// <example> /// var proxy = new ServiceProxy("JsonStockService.svc/"); /// proxy.invoke("GetStockQuote",{symbol:"msft"},function(quote) { alert(result.LastPrice); },onPageError); ///</example> if (this.length < 1) return this; var opt = { dateFormat: "MM/dd/yyyy", callback: null }; $.extend(opt, options); return this.keydown(function (e) { var $el = $(this); var d = new Date($el.val()); if (!d) d = new Date(1900, 0, 1, 1, 1); var month = d.getMonth(); var year = d.getFullYear(); var day = d.getDate(); switch (e.keyCode) { case 84: // [T]oday d = new Date(); break; case 109: case 189: d = new Date(year, month, day - 1); break; case 107: case 187: d = new Date(year, month, day + 1); break; case 77: //M d = new Date(year, month - 1, day); break; case 72: //H d = new Date(year, month + 1, day); break; case 191: // ? if (e.shiftKey) $el.tooltip("<b>T</b> Today<br/><b>+</b> add day<br /><b>-</b> subtract day<br /><b>M</b> subtract Month<br /><b>H</b> add montH<br/><b>Y</b> subtract Year<br/><b>R</b> add yeaR", 5000, { isHtml: true }); return false; default: return true; } $el.val(d.formatDate(opt.dateFormat)); if (opt.callback) // call async setTimeout(function () { opt.callback.call($el.get(0),d); }, 10); return false; }); } The logic for this plugin is similar to the timeKeys plugin, but it's a little simpler as it tries to directly parse the date value from a string via new Date(inputString). As mentioned it also uses a helper function from ww.jquery.js to format dates which removes the logic to perform date formatting manually which again reduces the size of the code. And the Key is… I've been using both of these plugins in combination with the jQuery UI datepicker for datetime values and I've found that I rarely actually pop up the date picker any more. It's just so much more efficient to use the hotkeys to navigate dates. It's still nice to have the picker around though - it provides the expected behavior for date entry. For time values however I can't justify the UI overhead of a picker that doesn't make it any easier to pick a time. Most people know how to type in a time value and if they want shortcuts keystrokes easily beat out any pop up UI. Hopefully you'll find this as useful as I have found it for my code. Resources Online Sample Download Sample Project © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in jQuery  HTML   Tweet (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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• Guidance: A Branching strategy for Scrum Teams

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Having a good branching strategy will save your bacon, or at least your code. Be careful when deviating from your branching strategy because if you do, you may be worse off than when you started! This is one possible branching strategy for Scrum teams and I will not be going in depth with Scrum but you can find out more about Scrum by reading the Scrum Guide and you can even assess your Scrum knowledge by having a go at the Scrum Open Assessment. You can also read SSW’s Rules to Better Scrum using TFS which have been developed during our own Scrum implementations. Acknowledgements Bill Heys – Bill offered some good feedback on this post and helped soften the language. Note: Bill is a VS ALM Ranger and co-wrote the Branching Guidance for TFS 2010 Willy-Peter Schaub – Willy-Peter is an ex Visual Studio ALM MVP turned blue badge and has been involved in most of the guidance including the Branching Guidance for TFS 2010 Chris Birmele – Chris wrote some of the early TFS Branching and Merging Guidance. Dr Paul Neumeyer, Ph.D Parallel Processes, ScrumMaster and SSW Solution Architect – Paul wanted to have feature branches coming from the release branch as well. We agreed that this is really a spin-off that needs own project, backlog, budget and Team. Scenario: A product is developed RTM 1.0 is released and gets great sales.  Extra features are demanded but the new version will have double to price to pay to recover costs, work is approved by the guys with budget and a few sprints later RTM 2.0 is released.  Sales a very low due to the pricing strategy. There are lots of clients on RTM 1.0 calling out for patches. As I keep getting Reverse Integration and Forward Integration mixed up and Bill keeps slapping my wrists I thought I should have a reminder: You still seemed to use reverse and/or forward integration in the wrong context. I would recommend reviewing your document at the end to ensure that it agrees with the common understanding of these terms merge (forward integration) from parent to child (same direction as the branch), and merge  (reverse integration) from child to parent (the reverse direction of the branch). - one of my many slaps on the wrist from Bill Heys.   As I mentioned previously we are using a single feature branching strategy in our current project. The single biggest mistake developers make is developing against the “Main” or “Trunk” line. This ultimately leads to messy code as things are added and never finished. Your only alternative is to NEVER check in unless your code is 100%, but this does not work in practice, even with a single developer. Your ADD will kick in and your half-finished code will be finished enough to pass the build and the tests. You do use builds don’t you? Sadly, this is a very common scenario and I have had people argue that branching merely adds complexity. Then again I have seen the other side of the universe ... branching  structures from he... We should somehow convince everyone that there is a happy between no-branching and too-much-branching. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft   A key benefit of branching for development is to isolate changes from the stable Main branch. Branching adds sanity more than it adds complexity. We do try to stress in our guidance that it is important to justify a branch, by doing a cost benefit analysis. The primary cost is the effort to do merges and resolve conflicts. A key benefit is that you have a stable code base in Main and accept changes into Main only after they pass quality gates, etc. - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft The second biggest mistake developers make is branching anything other than the WHOLE “Main” line. If you branch parts of your code and not others it gets out of sync and can make integration a nightmare. You should have your Source, Assets, Build scripts deployment scripts and dependencies inside the “Main” folder and branch the whole thing. Some departments within MSFT even go as far as to add the environments used to develop the product in there as well; although I would not recommend that unless you have a massive SQL cluster to house your source code. We tried the “add environment” back in South-Africa and while it was “phenomenal”, especially when having to switch between environments, the disk storage and processing requirements killed us. We opted for virtualization to skin this cat of keeping a ready-to-go environment handy. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft   I think people often think that you should have separate branches for separate environments (e.g. Dev, Test, Integration Test, QA, etc.). I prefer to think of deploying to environments (such as from Main to QA) rather than branching for QA). - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft   You can read about SSW’s Rules to better Source Control for some additional information on what Source Control to use and how to use it. There are also a number of branching Anti-Patterns that should be avoided at all costs: You know you are on the wrong track if you experience one or more of the following symptoms in your development environment: Merge Paranoia—avoiding merging at all cost, usually because of a fear of the consequences. Merge Mania—spending too much time merging software assets instead of developing them. Big Bang Merge—deferring branch merging to the end of the development effort and attempting to merge all branches simultaneously. Never-Ending Merge—continuous merging activity because there is always more to merge. Wrong-Way Merge—merging a software asset version with an earlier version. Branch Mania—creating many branches for no apparent reason. Cascading Branches—branching but never merging back to the main line. Mysterious Branches—branching for no apparent reason. Temporary Branches—branching for changing reasons, so the branch becomes a permanent temporary workspace. Volatile Branches—branching with unstable software assets shared by other branches or merged into another branch. Note   Branches are volatile most of the time while they exist as independent branches. That is the point of having them. The difference is that you should not share or merge branches while they are in an unstable state. Development Freeze—stopping all development activities while branching, merging, and building new base lines. Berlin Wall—using branches to divide the development team members, instead of dividing the work they are performing. -Branching and Merging Primer by Chris Birmele - Developer Tools Technical Specialist at Microsoft Pty Ltd in Australia   In fact, this can result in a merge exercise no-one wants to be involved in, merging hundreds of thousands of change sets and trying to get a consolidated build. Again, we need to find a happy medium. - Willy-Peter Schaub on Merge Paranoia Merge conflicts are generally the result of making changes to the same file in both the target and source branch. If you create merge conflicts, you will eventually need to resolve them. Often the resolution is manual. Merging more frequently allows you to resolve these conflicts close to when they happen, making the resolution clearer. Waiting weeks or months to resolve them, the Big Bang approach, means you are more likely to resolve conflicts incorrectly. - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft   Figure: Main line, this is where your stable code lives and where any build has known entities, always passes and has a happy test that passes as well? Many development projects consist of, a single “Main” line of source and artifacts. This is good; at least there is source control . There are however a couple of issues that need to be considered. What happens if: you and your team are working on a new set of features and the customer wants a change to his current version? you are working on two features and the customer decides to abandon one of them? you have two teams working on different feature sets and their changes start interfering with each other? I just use labels instead of branches? That's a lot of “what if’s”, but there is a simple way of preventing this. Branching… In TFS, labels are not immutable. This does not mean they are not useful. But labels do not provide a very good development isolation mechanism. Branching allows separate code sets to evolve separately (e.g. Current with hotfixes, and vNext with new development). I don’t see how labels work here. - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft   Figure: Creating a single feature branch means you can isolate the development work on that branch.   Its standard practice for large projects with lots of developers to use Feature branching and you can check the Branching Guidance for the latest recommendations from the Visual Studio ALM Rangers for other methods. In the diagram above you can see my recommendation for branching when using Scrum development with TFS 2010. It consists of a single Sprint branch to contain all the changes for the current sprint. The main branch has the permissions changes so contributors to the project can only Branch and Merge with “Main”. This will prevent accidental check-ins or checkouts of the “Main” line that would contaminate the code. The developers continue to develop on sprint one until the completion of the sprint. Note: In the real world, starting a new Greenfield project, this process starts at Sprint 2 as at the start of Sprint 1 you would have artifacts in version control and no need for isolation.   Figure: Once the sprint is complete the Sprint 1 code can then be merged back into the Main line. There are always good practices to follow, and one is to always do a Forward Integration from Main into Sprint 1 before you do a Reverse Integration from Sprint 1 back into Main. In this case it may seem superfluous, but this builds good muscle memory into your developer’s work ethic and means that no bad habits are learned that would interfere with additional Scrum Teams being added to the Product. The process of completing your sprint development: The Team completes their work according to their definition of done. Merge from “Main” into “Sprint1” (Forward Integration) Stabilize your code with any changes coming from other Scrum Teams working on the same product. If you have one Scrum Team this should be quick, but there may have been bug fixes in the Release branches. (we will talk about release branches later) Merge from “Sprint1” into “Main” to commit your changes. (Reverse Integration) Check-in Delete the Sprint1 branch Note: The Sprint 1 branch is no longer required as its useful life has been concluded. Check-in Done But you are not yet done with the Sprint. The goal in Scrum is to have a “potentially shippable product” at the end of every Sprint, and we do not have that yet, we only have finished code.   Figure: With Sprint 1 merged you can create a Release branch and run your final packaging and testing In 99% of all projects I have been involved in or watched, a “shippable product” only happens towards the end of the overall lifecycle, especially when sprints are short. The in-between releases are great demonstration releases, but not shippable. Perhaps it comes from my 80’s brain washing that we only ship when we reach the agreed quality and business feature bar. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft Although you should have been testing and packaging your code all the way through your Sprint 1 development, preferably using an automated process, you still need to test and package with stable unchanging code. This is where you do what at SSW we call a “Test Please”. This is first an internal test of the product to make sure it meets the needs of the customer and you generally use a resource external to your Team. Then a “Test Please” is conducted with the Product Owner to make sure he is happy with the output. You can read about how to conduct a Test Please on our Rules to Successful Projects: Do you conduct an internal "test please" prior to releasing a version to a client?   Figure: If you find a deviation from the expected result you fix it on the Release branch. If during your final testing or your “Test Please” you find there are issues or bugs then you should fix them on the release branch. If you can’t fix them within the time box of your Sprint, then you will need to create a Bug and put it onto the backlog for prioritization by the Product owner. Make sure you leave plenty of time between your merge from the development branch to find and fix any problems that are uncovered. This process is commonly called Stabilization and should always be conducted once you have completed all of your User Stories and integrated all of your branches. Even once you have stabilized and released, you should not delete the release branch as you would with the Sprint branch. It has a usefulness for servicing that may extend well beyond the limited life you expect of it. Note: Don't get forced by the business into adding features into a Release branch instead that indicates the unspoken requirement is that they are asking for a product spin-off. In this case you can create a new Team Project and branch from the required Release branch to create a new Main branch for that product. And you create a whole new backlog to work from.   Figure: When the Team decides it is happy with the product you can create a RTM branch. Once you have fixed all the bugs you can, and added any you can’t to the Product Backlog, and you Team is happy with the result you can create a Release. This would consist of doing the final Build and Packaging it up ready for your Sprint Review meeting. You would then create a read-only branch that represents the code you “shipped”. This is really an Audit trail branch that is optional, but is good practice. You could use a Label, but Labels are not Auditable and if a dispute was raised by the customer you can produce a verifiable version of the source code for an independent party to check. Rare I know, but you do not want to be at the wrong end of a legal battle. Like the Release branch the RTM branch should never be deleted, or only deleted according to your companies legal policy, which in the UK is usually 7 years.   Figure: If you have made any changes in the Release you will need to merge back up to Main in order to finalise the changes. Nothing is really ever done until it is in Main. The same rules apply when merging any fixes in the Release branch back into Main and you should do a reverse merge before a forward merge, again for the muscle memory more than necessity at this stage. Your Sprint is now nearly complete, and you can have a Sprint Review meeting knowing that you have made every effort and taken every precaution to protect your customer’s investment. Note: In order to really achieve protection for both you and your client you would add Automated Builds, Automated Tests, Automated Acceptance tests, Acceptance test tracking, Unit Tests, Load tests, Web test and all the other good engineering practices that help produce reliable software.     Figure: After the Sprint Planning meeting the process begins again. Where the Sprint Review and Retrospective meetings mark the end of the Sprint, the Sprint Planning meeting marks the beginning. After you have completed your Sprint Planning and you know what you are trying to achieve in Sprint 2 you can create your new Branch to develop in. How do we handle a bug(s) in production that can’t wait? Although in Scrum the only work done should be on the backlog there should be a little buffer added to the Sprint Planning for contingencies. One of these contingencies is a bug in the current release that can’t wait for the Sprint to finish. But how do you handle that? Willy-Peter Schaub asked an excellent question on the release activities: In reality Sprint 2 starts when sprint 1 ends + weekend. Should we not cater for a possible parallelism between Sprint 2 and the release activities of sprint 1? It would introduce FI’s from main to sprint 2, I guess. Your “Figure: Merging print 2 back into Main.” covers, what I tend to believe to be reality in most cases. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft I agree, and if you have a single Scrum team then your resources are limited. The Scrum Team is responsible for packaging and release, so at least one run at stabilization, package and release should be included in the Sprint time box. If more are needed on the current production release during the Sprint 2 time box then resource needs to be pulled from Sprint 2. The Product Owner and the Team have four choices (in order of disruption/cost): Backlog: Add the bug to the backlog and fix it in the next Sprint Buffer Time: Use any buffer time included in the current Sprint to fix the bug quickly Make time: Remove a Story from the current Sprint that is of equal value to the time lost fixing the bug(s) and releasing. Note: The Team must agree that it can still meet the Sprint Goal. Cancel Sprint: Cancel the sprint and concentrate all resource on fixing the bug(s) Note: This can be a very costly if the current sprint has already had a lot of work completed as it will be lost. The choice will depend on the complexity and severity of the bug(s) and both the Product Owner and the Team need to agree. In this case we will go with option #2 or #3 as they are uncomplicated but severe bugs. Figure: Real world issue where a bug needs fixed in the current release. If the bug(s) is urgent enough then then your only option is to fix it in place. You can edit the release branch to find and fix the bug, hopefully creating a test so it can’t happen again. Follow the prior process and conduct an internal and customer “Test Please” before releasing. You can read about how to conduct a Test Please on our Rules to Successful Projects: Do you conduct an internal "test please" prior to releasing a version to a client?   Figure: After you have fixed the bug you need to ship again. You then need to again create an RTM branch to hold the version of the code you released in escrow.   Figure: Main is now out of sync with your Release. We now need to get these new changes back up into the Main branch. Do a reverse and then forward merge again to get the new code into Main. But what about the branch, are developers not working on Sprint 2? Does Sprint 2 now have changes that are not in Main and Main now have changes that are not in Sprint 2? Well, yes… and this is part of the hit you take doing branching. But would this scenario even have been possible without branching?   Figure: Getting the changes in Main into Sprint 2 is very important. The Team now needs to do a Forward Integration merge into their Sprint and resolve any conflicts that occur. Maybe the bug has already been fixed in Sprint 2, maybe the bug no longer exists! This needs to be identified and resolved by the developers before they continue to get further out of Sync with Main. Note: Avoid the “Big bang merge” at all costs.   Figure: Merging Sprint 2 back into Main, the Forward Integration, and R0 terminates. Sprint 2 now merges (Reverse Integration) back into Main following the procedures we have already established.   Figure: The logical conclusion. This then allows the creation of the next release. By now you should be getting the big picture and hopefully you learned something useful from this post. I know I have enjoyed writing it as I find these exploratory posts coupled with real world experience really help harden my understanding.  Branching is a tool; it is not a silver bullet. Don’t over use it, and avoid “Anti-Patterns” where possible. Although the diagram above looks complicated I hope showing you how it is formed simplifies it as much as possible.   Technorati Tags: Branching,Scrum,VS ALM,TFS 2010,VS2010

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• Why does my laptop resume immediately after suspend?

  - by Igor Zinov'yev

  I seem to be having some problem with suspend mode. Every time I try to suspend my laptop, it just locks the screen. Or maybe it successfully suspends just to resume only an instant after. What could cause such a behaviour? I'm running 32-bit Ubuntu 12.04 with the 3.2.0-25 kernel on a HP dv5-1178er Pavilion laptop (Intel Core 2 Duo). Here are the relevant log sections: kern.log: Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.131171] PM: Syncing filesystems ... done. Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.141222] PM: Preparing system for mem sleep Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.141239] Freezing user space processes ... (elapsed 0.01 seconds) done. Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.156171] Freezing remaining freezable tasks ... (elapsed 0.01 seconds) done. Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.172139] PM: Entering mem sleep Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.172169] Suspending console(s) (use no_console_suspend to debug) Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.172895] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Synchronizing SCSI cache Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.181767] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Stopping disk Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.251089] ene_ir 00:0a: wake-up capability enabled by ACPI Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.251115] i8042 aux 00:09: wake-up capability disabled by ACPI Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.251133] i8042 kbd 00:08: wake-up capability enabled by ACPI Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.251286] jmb38x_ms 0000:06:00.3: PCI INT A disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.252491] sdhci-pci 0000:06:00.1: PCI INT A disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.264130] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: PCI INT D disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.264142] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: PCI INT B disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.264325] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.1: PCI INT B disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.288059] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: PCI INT A disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.288097] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.3: PCI INT C disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.288135] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: PCI INT A disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.316051] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: PCI INT A disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.316068] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1a.7: PCI INT D disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.522872] PM: suspend of drv:sd dev:0:0:0:0 complete after 349.979 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.522901] PM: suspend of drv:scsi dev:target0:0:0 complete after 349.955 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.522927] PM: suspend of drv:scsi dev:host0 complete after 272.260 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.522969] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: BIOS update required for suspend/resume Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.522976] pci_legacy_suspend(): ahci_pci_device_suspend+0x0/0x80 returns -5 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.522981] pm_op(): pci_pm_suspend+0x0/0x110 returns -5 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.522984] PM: suspend of drv:ahci dev:0000:00:1f.2 complete after 258.932 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.522987] PM: Device 0000:00:1f.2 failed to suspend async: error -5 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.576228] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: PCI INT A disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.576270] ACPI handle has no context! Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592136] PM: suspend of drv:snd_hda_intel dev:0000:00:1b.0 complete after 327.889 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592206] PM: Some devices failed to suspend Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592291] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592298] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592325] usb usb3: root hub lost power or was reset Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592339] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.1: PCI INT B -> GSI 21 (level, low) -> IRQ 21 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592345] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.1: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592371] usb usb4: root hub lost power or was reset Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592387] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1a.7: PCI INT D -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592395] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1a.7: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592843] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 20 (level, low) -> IRQ 20 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592851] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592854] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: PCI INT B -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592863] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592878] usb usb5: root hub lost power or was reset Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592892] usb usb6: root hub lost power or was reset Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592895] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: PCI INT D -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592903] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592906] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.3: PCI INT C -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592915] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.3: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592930] usb usb7: root hub lost power or was reset Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592946] usb usb8: root hub lost power or was reset Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592949] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: PCI INT A -> GSI 20 (level, low) -> IRQ 20 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592957] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592963] pci 0000:00:1e.0: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.597106] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Starting disk Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.608138] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: BAR 0: set to [mem 0xdf300000-0xdf303fff 64bit] (PCI address [0xdf300000-0xdf303fff]) Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.608180] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: restoring config space at offset 0xf (was 0x100, writing 0x10b) Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.608233] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: restoring config space at offset 0x3 (was 0x0, writing 0x10) Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.608248] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: restoring config space at offset 0x1 (was 0x100000, writing 0x100002) Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.608299] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 22 (level, low) -> IRQ 22 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.608313] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.608420] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: irq 50 for MSI/MSI-X Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.612095] firewire_ohci 0000:06:00.0: restoring config space at offset 0x1 (was 0x100000, writing 0x100006) Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.612181] sdhci-pci 0000:06:00.1: restoring config space at offset 0x1 (was 0x100003, writing 0x100007) Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.612211] sdhci-pci 0000:06:00.1: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.612225] sdhci-pci 0000:06:00.1: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.612296] jmb38x_ms 0000:06:00.3: restoring config space at offset 0x1 (was 0x100003, writing 0x100007) Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.612326] jmb38x_ms 0000:06:00.3: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.612332] jmb38x_ms 0000:06:00.3: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.699170] PM: resume of drv:uvcvideo dev:2-4:1.0 complete after 101.965 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.699179] PM: resume of drv:uvcvideo dev:2-4:1.1 complete after 101.932 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.699186] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_00 complete after 101.917 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.699197] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_83 complete after 101.972 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.716148] PM: resume of drv:hub dev:3-0:1.0 complete after 119.543 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.716155] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_00 complete after 119.544 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.716161] PM: resume of drv:hub dev:5-0:1.0 complete after 119.420 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.716168] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_00 complete after 119.381 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.716174] PM: resume of drv:hub dev:8-0:1.0 complete after 119.141 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.716181] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_00 complete after 119.104 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.716186] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_81 complete after 119.579 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.716191] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_81 complete after 119.427 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.716197] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_81 complete after 119.143 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.747148] firewire_core: skipped bus generations, destroying all nodes Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.776093] PM: resume of drv:hp_accel dev:HPQ0004:00 complete after 167.225 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.777243] i8042 kbd 00:08: wake-up capability disabled by ACPI Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.777278] ene_ir 00:0a: wake-up capability disabled by ACPI Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.820100] PM: resume of drv:hub dev:4-0:1.0 complete after 223.436 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.820115] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_00 complete after 223.444 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.820123] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_81 complete after 223.456 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.820206] PM: resume of drv:hub dev:7-0:1.0 complete after 223.266 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.820221] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_81 complete after 223.260 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.820238] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_00 complete after 223.255 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.820295] PM: resume of drv:hub dev:6-0:1.0 complete after 223.453 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.820302] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_00 complete after 223.415 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.820321] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_81 complete after 223.457 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.932108] usb 4-2: reset full-speed USB device number 2 using uhci_hcd Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.086714] PM: resume of drv:usbhid dev:4-2:1.0 complete after 489.393 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.086728] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_81 complete after 489.384 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.086745] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_00 complete after 489.329 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.086753] PM: resume of drv:usbhid dev:4-2:1.1 complete after 489.384 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.086764] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_82 complete after 489.373 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.180555] usb 7-2: reset full-speed USB device number 2 using uhci_hcd Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.244858] firewire_core: rediscovered device fw0 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.335066] btusb 7-2:1.0: no reset_resume for driver btusb? Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.335068] btusb 7-2:1.1: no reset_resume for driver btusb? Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.432082] usb 6-1: reset full-speed USB device number 2 using uhci_hcd Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.578280] PM: resume of drv:nvidia dev:0000:01:00.0 complete after 985.301 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584296] PM: resume of drv:usb dev:7-2:1.0 complete after 986.693 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584308] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_00 complete after 986.452 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584311] PM: resume of drv:usb dev:7-2:1.1 complete after 986.616 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584315] PM: resume of drv:usb dev:7-2:1.3 complete after 986.483 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584320] PM: resume of drv:usb dev:7-2:1.2 complete after 986.556 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584328] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_03 complete after 986.588 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584331] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_81 complete after 986.704 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584334] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_83 complete after 986.617 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584337] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_82 complete after 986.688 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584340] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_02 complete after 986.667 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584344] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_84 complete after 986.558 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584352] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_04 complete after 986.542 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.590883] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_00 complete after 993.327 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.590887] PM: resume of drv:usb dev:6-1:1.0 complete after 993.424 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.590927] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_82 complete after 993.395 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.590934] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_81 complete after 993.426 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.590940] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_01 complete after 993.456 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.592450] PM: resume of drv:sd dev:0:0:0:0 complete after 995.343 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.592461] PM: resume of drv:scsi_disk dev:0:0:0:0 complete after 802.688 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.592472] PM: resume of drv:scsi_device dev:0:0:0:0 complete after 995.324 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.600339] PM: resume of devices complete after 1008.129 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.601293] PM: resume devices took 1.008 seconds Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.601330] PM: Finishing wakeup. Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.601332] Restarting tasks ... done. Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.625660] video LNXVIDEO:01: Restoring backlight state Jun 1 10:42:22 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2227.478921] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: L1 Disabled; Enabling L0S Jun 1 10:42:22 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2227.481981] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: Radio type=0x1-0x2-0x0 Jun 1 10:42:22 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2227.527727] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready Jun 1 10:42:22 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2227.532468] r8169 0000:03:00.0: eth0: link down Jun 1 10:42:22 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2227.533967] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready pm_suspend.log: Fri Jun 1 10:42:14 MSK 2012: Running hooks for suspend. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/000kernel-change suspend suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/000kernel-change suspend suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/00logging suspend suspend: Linux igor-laptop 3.2.0-25-generic #40-Ubuntu SMP Wed May 23 20:33:05 UTC 2012 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux Module Size Used by pci_stub 12550 1 vboxpci 22882 0 vboxnetadp 13328 0 vboxnetflt 27211 0 vboxdrv 252189 3 vboxpci,vboxnetadp,vboxnetflt dm_crypt 22528 0 snd_hda_codec_hdmi 31775 1 snd_hda_codec_idt 60251 1 arc4 12473 2 hp_wmi 13652 0 sparse_keymap 13658 1 hp_wmi rfcomm 38139 12 snd_hda_intel 32765 5 snd_hda_codec 109562 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_idt,snd_hda_intel snd_hwdep 13276 1 snd_hda_codec bnep 17830 2 btusb 17912 2 bluetooth 158438 23 rfcomm,bnep,btusb joydev 17393 0 parport_pc 32114 0 snd_pcm 80845 4 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec ppdev 12849 0 uvcvideo 67203 0 binfmt_misc 17292 1 videodev 86588 1 uvcvideo snd_seq_midi 13132 0 snd_rawmidi 25424 1 snd_seq_midi nvidia 10958194 43 snd_seq_midi_event 14475 1 snd_seq_midi snd_seq 51567 2 snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event ir_lirc_codec 12739 0 lirc_dev 18700 1 ir_lirc_codec snd_timer 28931 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq snd_seq_device 14172 3 snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq ir_mce_kbd_decoder 12681 0 ir_sony_decoder 12462 0 ir_jvc_decoder 12459 0 ir_rc6_decoder 12459 0 psmouse 87213 0 ir_rc5_decoder 12459 0 serio_raw 13027 0 iwlwifi 287934 0 rc_rc6_mce 12454 0 ir_nec_decoder 12459 0 ene_ir 18019 0 rc_core 21263 10 ir_lirc_codec,ir_mce_kbd_decoder,ir_sony_decoder,ir_jvc_decoder,ir_rc6_decoder,ir_rc5_decoder,rc_rc6_mce,ir_nec_decoder,ene_ir mac80211 436455 1 iwlwifi snd 62064 19 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_idt,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device cfg80211 178679 2 iwlwifi,mac80211 hp_accel 25728 0 lis3lv02d 19268 1 hp_accel input_polldev 13648 1 lis3lv02d mac_hid 13077 0 wmi 18744 1 hp_wmi jmb38x_ms 17406 0 soundcore 14635 1 snd snd_page_alloc 14115 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm memstick 15857 1 jmb38x_ms firewire_sbp2 18346 0 lp 17455 0 parport 40930 3 parport_pc,ppdev,lp vesafb 13516 1 usbhid 41906 0 hid 77367 1 usbhid firewire_ohci 40180 0 firewire_core 56906 2 firewire_sbp2,firewire_ohci crc_itu_t 12627 1 firewire_core sdhci_pci 18324 0 sdhci 28241 1 sdhci_pci r8169 56321 0 video 19068 0 total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 3095544 2364260 731284 0 159020 1280240 -/+ buffers/cache: 925000 2170544 Swap: 1718916 0 1718916 /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/00logging suspend suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/00powersave suspend suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/00powersave suspend suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/01PulseAudio suspend suspend: Welcome to PulseAudio! Use "help" for usage information. >>> >>> Welcome to PulseAudio! Use "help" for usage information. >>> >>> Welcome to PulseAudio! Use "help" for usage information. >>> >>> /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/01PulseAudio suspend suspend: success. Running hook /etc/pm/sleep.d/10_grub-common suspend suspend: /etc/pm/sleep.d/10_grub-common suspend suspend: success. Running hook /etc/pm/sleep.d/10_unattended-upgrades-hibernate suspend suspend: /etc/pm/sleep.d/10_unattended-upgrades-hibernate suspend suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/55NetworkManager suspend suspend: Having NetworkManager put all interaces to sleep...Failed. /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/55NetworkManager suspend suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/60_wpa_supplicant suspend suspend: Failed to connect to wpa_supplicant - wpa_ctrl_open: No such file or directory /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/60_wpa_supplicant suspend suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/75modules suspend suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/75modules suspend suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/90clock suspend suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/90clock suspend suspend: not applicable. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/94cpufreq suspend suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/94cpufreq suspend suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95anacron suspend suspend: stop: Unknown instance: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95anacron suspend suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95hdparm-apm suspend suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95hdparm-apm suspend suspend: not applicable. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95led suspend suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95led suspend suspend: not applicable. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/98video-quirk-db-handler suspend suspend: nVidia binary video drive detected, not using quirks. /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/98video-quirk-db-handler suspend suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/99video suspend suspend: kernel.acpi_video_flags = 0 /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/99video suspend suspend: success. Running hook /etc/pm/sleep.d/novatel_3g_suspend suspend suspend: /etc/pm/sleep.d/novatel_3g_suspend suspend suspend: success. Fri Jun 1 10:42:19 MSK 2012: performing suspend Fri Jun 1 10:42:21 MSK 2012: Awake. Fri Jun 1 10:42:21 MSK 2012: Running hooks for resume Running hook /etc/pm/sleep.d/novatel_3g_suspend resume suspend: /etc/pm/sleep.d/novatel_3g_suspend resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/99video resume suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/99video resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/98video-quirk-db-handler resume suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/98video-quirk-db-handler resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95led resume suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95led resume suspend: not applicable. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95hdparm-apm resume suspend: /dev/sda: setting Advanced Power Management level to 0xfe (254) APM_level = 254 /dev/sda: setting Advanced Power Management level to 0xfe (254) APM_level = 254 /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95hdparm-apm resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95anacron resume suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95anacron resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/94cpufreq resume suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/94cpufreq resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/90clock resume suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/90clock resume suspend: not applicable. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/75modules resume suspend: Reloaded unloaded modules. /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/75modules resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/60_wpa_supplicant resume suspend: Failed to connect to wpa_supplicant - wpa_ctrl_open: No such file or directory /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/60_wpa_supplicant resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/55NetworkManager resume suspend: Having NetworkManager wake interfaces back up...Failed. /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/55NetworkManager resume suspend: success. Running hook /etc/pm/sleep.d/10_unattended-upgrades-hibernate resume suspend: /etc/pm/sleep.d/10_unattended-upgrades-hibernate resume suspend: success. Running hook /etc/pm/sleep.d/10_grub-common resume suspend: /etc/pm/sleep.d/10_grub-common resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/01PulseAudio resume suspend: Welcome to PulseAudio! Use "help" for usage information. >>> >>> Welcome to PulseAudio! Use "help" for usage information. >>> >>> Welcome to PulseAudio! Use "help" for usage information. >>> >>> /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/01PulseAudio resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/00powersave resume suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/00powersave resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/00logging resume suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/00logging resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/000kernel-change resume suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/000kernel-change resume suspend: success. Fri Jun 1 10:42:22 MSK 2012: Finished.

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