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• monitoring iphone 3g/wifi bandswitch

  - by user262325

  Hello everyone I hope add the function to monitor iphone used 3g/wifi band switch. I know I can do these in my app, but I wonder if there is way to monitor all band switch usage of iPhone? I noticed that there is an app http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/download-meter-for-wi-fi-gprs/id327227530?mt=8 It claims: Works with any carrier (iPods are supported too!). Requires no login/password to your carrier's site. Does not require Internet connection to get traffic usage statistics (works even in Airplane mode) because it gets information on traffic from the device, not a carrier; this means it won't cost you anything to view current traffic consumed, even while roaming in a location where traffic is very expensive. Allows the user to adjust consumed traffic for today or the current month to match traffic amounts reported by your carrier. Stats on the screen are updated every second. Measures traffic in real time with up to byte precision. Separates traffic into incoming and outgoing, Wi-Fi traffic and mobile Internet traffic. It looks like it gets the band switch info from carrier site, but they also said it gets info from device. I am really confused. Welcome any comment. Thanks interdev

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• How does one convert 16-bit RGB565 to 24-bit RGB888?

  - by jleedev

  I’ve got my hands on a 16-bit rgb565 image (specifically, an Android framebuffer dump), and I would like to convert it to 24-bit rgb888 for viewing on a normal monitor. The question is, how does one convert a 5- or 6-bit channel to 8 bits? The obvious answer is to shift it. I started out by writing this: uint16_t buf; while (read(0, &buf, sizeof buf)) { unsigned char red = (buf & 0xf800) >> 11; unsigned char green = (buf & 0x07c0) >> 5; unsigned char blue = buf & 0x003f; putchar(red << 3); putchar(green << 2); putchar(blue << 3); } However, this doesn’t have one property I would like, which is for 0xffff to map to 0xffffff, instead of 0xf8fcf8. I need to expand the value in some way, but I’m not sure how that should work. The Android SDK comes with a tool called ddms (Dalvik Debug Monitor) that takes screen captures. As far as I can tell from reading the code, it implements the same logic; yet its screenshots are coming out different, and white is mapping to white. Here’s the raw framebuffer, the smart conversion by ddms, and the dumb conversion by the above algorithm. (By the way, this conversion is implemented in ffmpeg, but it’s just performing the dumb conversion listed above, leaving the LSBs at all zero.) I guess I have two questions: What’s the most sensible way to convert rgb565 to rgb888? How is DDMS converting its screenshots?

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• Help with SQL server stack dump

  - by edosoft

  Hi guru's We're running SQL 2005 standard SP2 on a 4cpu box. Suddenly it crashdumps, after which all pooled connections are invalid and it goes into admin-only mode (only sa can connect) The short stackdump is below. After the dump a number of errors show up like '2008-09-16 10:49:34.48 Server Resource Monitor (0xec4) Worker 0x03D1C0E8 appears to be non-yielding on Node 0. Memory freed: 232408 KB. Approx CPU Used: kernel 203 ms, user 140 ms, Interval: 250250.' Have Googled around but couldn't find a definate answer. Anyone? 2008-09-16 10:46:24.98 Server Using 'dbghelp.dll' version '4.0.5' 2008-09-16 10:46:25.40 Server **Dump thread - spid = 0, PSS = 0x00000000, EC = 0x00000000 2008-09-16 10:46:25.40 Server ***Stack Dump being sent to C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\LOG\SQLDump0009.txt 2008-09-16 10:46:25.40 Server * ******************************************************************************* 2008-09-16 10:46:25.40 Server * 2008-09-16 10:46:25.40 Server * BEGIN STACK DUMP: 2008-09-16 10:46:25.40 Server * 09/16/08 10:46:25 spid 0 2008-09-16 10:46:25.42 Server * 2008-09-16 10:46:25.42 Server * Non-yielding Resource Monitor 2008-09-16 10:46:25.42 Server * 2008-09-16 10:46:25.42 Server * ******************************************************************************* 2008-09-16 10:46:25.42 Server * ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2008-09-16 10:46:25.42 Server * Short Stack Dump 2008-09-16 10:46:25.76 Server Stack Signature for the dump is 0x00000352 2008-09-16 10:46:32.70 Server External dump process return code 0x20000001.

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• iPad + OpenGL ES2. Why the Puzzling Virtual Memory Spike During Device Reorientation?

  - by dugla

  I've been spending the afternoon starring at Xcode Instruments memory monitor trying to decipher the following memory issue. I have a fullscreen OpenGL ES2 app running on iPad. I am fanatical about memory issues so my retains/releases are all nicely balanced. I closely monitor memory leaks. My app is basically squeeky clean. Except occassionally when I reorient the device. Portrait to Landscape. Back and forth I rock the device stress testing my discarding and rebuilding of the OpenGL framebuffer. The ambient memory footprint of my app is about 70MB Real Mems and 180MB Virtual Mems. Real memory hardly varies at all during device rotations. However the virtual mems reading sometimes briefly spikes up to 250MB and then recedes back to 180MB. No real pattern. But clearly related discarding/rebuilding the framebuffer. I see random memory warnings in my NSlogs but the app just hums along, no worries. 1) Since iPhone OS devices don't have VM could someone explain to me what the VM reading actually means? 2) My app totally leak free and generally bulletproof dispite the VM spikes. Never crashes. Rock solid. Should I be concerned about this? 3) There is clearly something happening in OpenGL framebuffer land that is causing this but I am using the API in the proper way: paraphrasing: Discarding the framebuffer: glDeleteRenderbuffers(1, &m_colorbuffer); glDeleteFramebuffers(1, &m_framebuffer); Rebuilding the framebuffer: glGenFramebuffers(1, &m_framebuffer); glGenRenderbuffers(1, &m_colorbuffer); Is there some other memory flushing trick I have missed? Thanks for any insight. Cheers, Doug

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• How do I enumerate all monitors in Windows 7?

  - by Jon Tackabury

  I am trying to enumerate all the monitors in Windows 7, and according to MSDN, using the QueryDisplayConfig method is the correct way to do this. All of this code works fine, and returns a couple of arrays, one with paths and one with modes. However, it doesn't have the same monitor ID's as Windows. I am trying to build an array of all the monitors that appear in the Windows 7 "Screen Resolution" dialog. The paths collection return far too many items, and I'm not sure how to tell if it's a valid non-active monitor. Any help would be much appreciated. UINT32 PathArraySize = 0; UINT32 ModeArraySize = 0; DISPLAYCONFIG_PATH_INFO* PathArray; DISPLAYCONFIG_MODE_INFO* ModeArray; GetDisplayConfigBufferSizes( QDC_ALL_PATHS, &PathArraySize, &ModeArraySize); PathArray = (DISPLAYCONFIG_PATH_INFO*)malloc( PathArraySize * sizeof(DISPLAYCONFIG_PATH_INFO)); memset(PathArray, 0, PathArraySize * sizeof(DISPLAYCONFIG_PATH_INFO)); ModeArray = (DISPLAYCONFIG_MODE_INFO*)malloc( ModeArraySize * sizeof(DISPLAYCONFIG_MODE_INFO)); memset(ModeArray, 0, ModeArraySize * sizeof(DISPLAYCONFIG_MODE_INFO)); LONG rtn = QueryDisplayConfig( QDC_ALL_PATHS, &PathArraySize, PathArray, &ModeArraySize, ModeArray, NULL);

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• What does "cpuid level" means ? Asking just for curiosity

  - by ogzylz

  For example, I put just 2 core info of a 16 core machine. What does "cpuid level : 6" line means? If u can provide info about lines "bogomips : 5992.10" and "clflush size : 64" I will be appreciated processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 15 model : 6 model name : Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 3.00GHz stepping : 8 cpu MHz : 2992.689 cache size : 4096 KB physical id : 0 siblings : 4 core id : 0 cpu cores : 2 fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 6 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm syscall nx lm constant_tsc pni monitor ds_cpl vmx cid cx16 xtpr lahf_lm bogomips : 5992.10 clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 128 address sizes : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management: processor : 1 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 15 model : 6 model name : Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 3.00GHz stepping : 8 cpu MHz : 2992.689 cache size : 4096 KB physical id : 1 siblings : 4 core id : 0 cpu cores : 2 fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 6 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm syscall nx lm constant_tsc pni monitor ds_cpl vmx cid cx16 xtpr lahf_lm bogomips : 5985.23 clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 128 address sizes : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management:

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• What key on a keyboard can be detected in the browser but won't show up in a text input?

  - by Brady

  I know this one is going to sound weird but hear me out. I have a heart rate monitor that is hooked up like a keyboard to the computer. Each time the heart rate monitor detects a pulse it sends a key stroke. This keystroke is then detected by a web based game running in the browser. Currently I'm sending the following keystroke: (`) In the browser base game I'm detecting the following key fine and if when the user is on any data input screens the (`) character is ignored using a bit of JavaScript. The problem comes when I leave the browser and go back to using the Operating system in other ways the (`) starts appearing everywhere. So my question is: Is there a key that can be sent via the keyboard that is detectable in the browser but wont have any notable output on the screen if I switch to other applications. I'm kind of looking for a null key. A key that is detectable in the browser but has no effect to the browser or any other system application if pressed.

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• How to TDD Asynchronous Events?

  - by Padu Merloti

  The fundamental question is how do I create a unit test that needs to call a method, wait for an event to happen on the tested class and then call another method (the one that we actually want to test)? Here's the scenario if you have time to read further: I'm developing an application that has to control a piece of hardware. In order to avoid dependency from hardware availability, when I create my object I specify that we are running in test mode. When that happens, the class that is being tested creates the appropriate driver hierarchy (in this case a thin mock layer of hardware drivers). Imagine that the class in question is an Elevator and I want to test the method that gives me the floor number that the elevator is. Here is how my fictitious test looks like right now: [TestMethod] public void TestGetCurrentFloor() { var elevator = new Elevator(Elevator.Environment.Offline); elevator.ElevatorArrivedOnFloor += TestElevatorArrived; elevator.GoToFloor(5); //Here's where I'm getting lost... I could block //until TestElevatorArrived gives me a signal, but //I'm not sure it's the best way int floor = elevator.GetCurrentFloor(); Assert.AreEqual(floor, 5); } Edit: Thanks for all the answers. This is how I ended up implementing it: [TestMethod] public void TestGetCurrentFloor() { var elevator = new Elevator(Elevator.Environment.Offline); elevator.ElevatorArrivedOnFloor += (s, e) => { Monitor.Pulse(this); }; lock (this) { elevator.GoToFloor(5); if (!Monitor.Wait(this, Timeout)) Assert.Fail("Elevator did not reach destination in time"); int floor = elevator.GetCurrentFloor(); Assert.AreEqual(floor, 5); } }

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• MsSql Server high Resource Waits and Head Blocker

  - by MartinHN

  Hi I have a MS SQL Server 2008 Standard installation running a database for a webshop. The current size of the database is 2.5 GB. Running on Windows 2008 Standard. Dual Intel Xeon X5355 @ 2.00 GHz. 4 GB RAM. When I open the Activity Monitor, I see that I have a Wait Time (ms/sec) of 5000 in the "Other" category. In the Processes list, all connections from the webshop, the Head Blocker value is 1. I see every day that when I try to access the website, it can take 20-30 secs before it even starts to "work". I know that it is not network latency. (I have a 301 redirect from the same server that is executed instantly). When the first request has been served, it seems as if it's not a sleep anymore and every subsequent request is served instantly with the speed of light. The problem was worse two weeks ago, until I changed every query to include WITH (NOLOCK). But I still experience the problem, and the Wait times in the Activity Monitor is about the same. The largest table (Images) has 32764 rows (448576 KB). Some tables exceed 300000 rows, thought they're much smaller in size than the Images table. I have the default clustered index for every primary key column, only. Any ideas?

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• Use of Syntactic Sugar / Built in Functionality

  - by Kyle Rozendo

  I was busy looking deeper into things like multi-threading and deadlocking etc. The book is aimed at both pseudo-code and C code and I was busy looking at implementations for things such as Mutex locks and Monitors. This brought to mind the following; in C# and in fact .NET we have a lot of syntactic sugar for doing things. For instance (.NET 3.5): lock(obj) { body } Is identical to: var temp = obj; Monitor.Enter(temp); try { body } finally { Monitor.Exit(temp); } There are other examples of course, such as the using() {} construct etc. My question is when is it more applicable to "go it alone" and literally code things oneself than to use the "syntactic sugar" in the language? Should one ever use their own ways rather than those of people who are more experienced in the language you're coding in? I recall having to not use a Process object in a using block to help with some multi-threaded issues and infinite looping before. I still feel dirty for not having the using construct in there. Thanks, Kyle

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• How to create platform independent 3D video on 3D TV via HDMI 1.4?

  - by artif

  I am writing a real-time, interactive 3D visualization program and at each point in the program, I can compute 2 images (bitmaps) that are meant to look 3D together by means of stereoscopy. How do I get my program to display the image pairs such that they look 3D on a 3D TV? Is there a platform independent way of accomplishing it? (By platform I mean independent of GPU brand, operating system, 3D TV vendor, etc.) If not, which is preferable-- to lock in by GPU, OS, or 3D TV? I suppose I need to be using an HDMI 1.4 cable with the 3D TV? HDMI 1.4 can encode stereoscopy via side-by-side method. But how do I send such an encoded signal to the monitor? What kind of libraries do I use for this sort of thing? Windows DirectShow? If DirectShow is correct, is there a cross platform equivalent available? If anyone asks, yes I have seen this question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2811350/generating-3d-tv-stereoscopic-output-programmatically. However, correct me if I am wrong, it does not appear to be what I'm looking for. I do not have an OpenGL or Direct3D program that generates polygons, for which a Nvidia card can do ad-hoc impromptu stereoscopy simply by rendering the scene from 2 slightly offset points of view and then displaying those 2 images on the monitor-- my program already has those image pairs and needs to display them (and they are not the result of rendering polygons). Btw, I have never done any major multimedia programming before and know very little about HDMI, Direct Show, 3D TVs, etc so pardon me if any parts of this question did not make any sense at all.

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• Checking if a console application is still running using the Process class

  - by Ced

  I'm making an application that will monitor the state of another process and restart it when it stops responding, exits, or throws an error. However, I'm having trouble to make it reliably check if the process (Being a C++ Console window) has stopped responding. My code looks like this: public void monitorserver() { while (true) { server.StartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo(textbox_srcdsexe.Text, startstring); server.Start(); log("server started"); log("Monitor started."); while (server.Responding) { if (server.HasExited) { log("server exitted, Restarting."); break; } log("server is running: " + server.Responding.ToString()); Thread.Sleep(1000); } log("Server stopped responding, terminating.."); try { server.Kill(); } catch (Exception) { } } } The application I'm monitoring is Valve's Source Dedicated Server, running Garry's Mod, and I'm over stressing the physics engine to simulate it stopping responding. However, this never triggers the process class recognizing it as 'stopped responding'. I know there are ways to directly query the source server using their own protocol, but i'd like to keep it simple and universal (So that i can maybe use it for different applications in the future). Any help appreciated

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• Static Vs Non-Static Method Performance C#

  - by dotnetguts

  Hello All, I have few global methods declared in public class in my asp.net web application. I have habbit of declaring all global methods in public class in following format public static string MethodName(parameters) { } I want to know how it would impact on performance point of view? 1) Which one is Better? Static Method or Non-Static Method? 2) Reason why it is better? Following link shows Non-Static methods are good because, static methods are using locks to be Thread-safe. The always do internally a Monitor.Enter() and Monitor.exit() to ensure Thread-safety. http://bytes.com/topic/c-sharp/answers/231701-static-vs-non-static-function-performance And Following link shows Static Methods are good static methods are normally faster to invoke on the call stack than instance methods. There are several reasons for this in the C# programming language. Instance methods actually use the 'this' instance pointer as the first parameter, so an instance method will always have that overhead. Instance methods are also implemented with the callvirt instruction in the intermediate language, which imposes a slight overhead. Please note that changing your methods to static methods is unlikely to help much on ambitious performance goals, but it can help a tiny bit and possibly lead to further reductions. http://dotnetperls.com/static-method I am little confuse which one to use? Thanks

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• How to set up a load/stress test for a web site?

  - by Ryan

  I've been tasked with stress/load testing our company web site out of the blue and know nothing about doing so. Every search I make on google for "how to load test a web site" just comes back with various companies and software to physically do the load testing. For now I'm more interested in how to actually go about setting up a load test like what I should take into account prior to load testing, what pages within my site I should be testing load against and what things I'm going to want to monitor when doing the test. Our web site is on a multi-tier system complete with a separate database server (IIS 7 Web Server, SQL Server 2000 db). I imagine I'd want to monitor both the web server and the database server for testing load however when setting up scenarios to load test the web server I'd have to use pages that query the database to see any load on the database server at the same time. Are web servers and database servers generally tested simultaneously or are they done as separate tests? As you can see I'm pretty clueless as to the whole operation so any incite as to how to go about this would be very helpful. FYI I have been tinkering with Pylot and was able to create and run a scenario against our site but I'm not sure what I should be looking for in the results or if the scenario I created is even a scenario worth measuring for our site. Thanks in advance.

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• Unit Testing an Event Firing From a Thread

  - by Dougc

  I'm having a problem unit testing a class which fires events when a thread starts and finishes. A cut down version of the offending source is as follows: public class ThreadRunner { private bool keepRunning; public event EventHandler Started; public event EventHandler Finished; public void StartThreadTest() { this.keepRunning = true; var thread = new Thread(new ThreadStart(this.LongRunningMethod)); thread.Start(); } public void FinishThreadTest() { this.keepRunning = false; } protected void OnStarted() { if (this.Started != null) this.Started(this, new EventArgs()); } protected void OnFinished() { if (this.Finished != null) this.Finished(this, new EventArgs()); } private void LongRunningMethod() { this.OnStarted(); while (this.keepRunning) Thread.Sleep(100); this.OnFinished(); } } I then have a test to check that the Finished event fires after the LongRunningMethod has finished as follows: [TestClass] public class ThreadRunnerTests { [TestMethod] public void CheckFinishedEventFiresTest() { var threadTest = new ThreadRunner(); bool finished = false; object locker = new object(); threadTest.Finished += delegate(object sender, EventArgs e) { lock (locker) { finished = true; Monitor.Pulse(locker); } }; threadTest.StartThreadTest(); threadTest.FinishThreadTest(); lock (locker) { Monitor.Wait(locker, 1000); Assert.IsTrue(finished); } } } So the idea here being that the test will block for a maximum of one second - or until the Finish event is fired - before checking whether the finished flag is set. Clearly I've done something wrong as sometimes the test will pass, sometimes it won't. Debugging seems very difficult as well as the breakpoints I'd expect to be hit (the OnFinished method, for example) don't always seem to be. I'm assuming this is just my misunderstanding of the way threading works, so hopefully someone can enlighten me.

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• Any techniques to interrupt, kill, or otherwise unwind (releasing synchronization locks) a single de

  - by gojomo

  I have a long-running process where, due to a bug, a trivial/expendable thread is deadlocked with a thread which I would like to continue, so that it can perform some final reporting that would be hard to reproduce in another way. Of course, fixing the bug for future runs is the proper ultimate resolution. Of course, any such forced interrupt/kill/stop of any thread is inherently unsafe and likely to cause other unpredictable inconsistencies. (I'm familiar with all the standard warnings and the reasons for them.) But still, since the only alternative is to kill the JVM process and go through a more lengthy procedure which would result in a less-complete final report, messy/deprecated/dangerous/risky/one-time techniques are exactly what I'd like to try. The JVM is Sun's 1.6.0_16 64-bit on Ubuntu, and the expendable thread is waiting-to-lock an object monitor. Can an OS signal directed to an exact thread create an InterruptedException in the expendable thread? Could attaching with gdb, and directly tampering with JVM data or calling JVM procedures allow a forced-release of the object monitor held by the expendable thread? Would a Thread.interrupt() from another thread generate a InterruptedException from the waiting-to-lock frame? (With some effort, I can inject an arbitrary beanshell script into the running system.) Can the deprecated Thread.stop() be sent via JMX or any other remote-injection method? Any ideas appreciated, the more 'dangerous', the better! And, if your suggestion has worked in personal experience in a similar situation, the best!

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• JavaCard monitoring folder

  - by GxG

  I want to write a two way application: applet for javacard and an application in C#. I've got the C# covered but i want to know if with JavaCard i can monitor a folder on the memory and how would i go about doing that. I have a shared folder let's call it temp in which i want to store buffer information between the simulated smartcard and the C# application. The C# application will only read from that folder and display the information, but also it will write requests towards the smartcard. For example i simulate entering the PIN for the card. The applet will write a file containing available options and the C# application will read that file and display those options; from the C# app i will chose and option and write a request file in the same folder. This is when the smartcard which is monitoring that folder will read the request and issue a response. Can i make the smartcard monitor that folder? I was thinking of using encrypted XML files for the request/response operations. But simple .txt files are good to. I am limited to using JavaCard v2.2.1, and every operation has to be encrypted/decrypted. (with the ciphering i have no problem)

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• Labview + National Instruments hardware or ???

  - by NSL

  I'm in the processes of buying a new data acquisition system for my company to use for various projects. At first, it's primary purpose will be to monitor up to 20 thermocouples and control the temperature of a composites oven. However, I also plan on using it to monitor accelerometers, strain gauges, and to act as a signal generator. I probably won't be the only one to use it, but I have a good bit of programming experience with Atmel microcontrollers (C). I've used Labview before, but ~5 years ago. Labview would be good because it is easy to pick up on for both me and my coworkers. On the flip side, it's expensive. Right now I have a NI CompactDAQ system with 2 voltage and one thermocouple cards + Labview speced out and it's going to cost $5779! I'm going to try to get the same I/O capabilities with different NI hardware for less $ + labview to see if I can get it for less $. I'd like to see if anyone has any suggestions other than Labview for me. Thanks in advance!

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• Problem monitoring directory for file activity in VB.net 2010...

  - by Mike Cialowicz

  I'm trying to write a simple program to monitor a folder for new files in VB.NET 2010, and am having some trouble. Here's a simplified version of what my program looks like: Imports System.IO Public Class Main Public fileWatcher As FileSystemWatcher Sub btnGo_Click(sender As System.Object, e As System.EventArgs) Handles btnGo.Click '//# initialize my FileSystemWatcher to monitor a particular directory for new files fileWatcher = New FileSystemWatcher() fileWatcher.Path = thisIsAValidPath.ToString() fileWatcher.NotifyFilter = NotifyFilters.FileName AddHandler fileWatcher.Created, AddressOf fileCreated fileWatcher.EnableRaisingEvents = True End Sub Private Sub fileCreated(sender As Object, e As FileSystemEventArgs) '//# program does not exit when I comment the line below out txtLatestAddedFilePath.Text = e.FullPath '//# e.FullPath is valid when I set a breakpoint here, but when I step into the next line, the program abruptly halts with no error code that I can see End Sub End Class As you can see, I have a button which will initialize a FileSystemWatcher when clicked. The initialization works, and when I place a new file in the monitored directory, the program reaches the fileCreated sub. I can even see that e.FullPath is set correctly. However, it exits abruptly right after that with no error code (none that I can see, anyways). If I comment everything in the fileCreated sub out, the program continues running as expected. Any ideas as to why it's dying on me? Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm fairly new to VS/VB.NET, so maybe I'm just making a silly mistake. Thanks!

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• ERROR: Linux route add command failed: external program exited with error status: 4

  - by JohnMerlino

  A remote machine running fedora uses openvpn, and multiple developers were successfully able to connect to it via their client openvpn. However, I am running Ubuntu 12.04 and I am having trouble connecting to the server via vpn. I copied ca.crt, home.key, and home.crt from the server to my local machine to /etc/openvpn folder. My client.conf file looks like this: ############################################## # Sample client-side OpenVPN 2.0 config file # # for connecting to multi-client server. # # # # This configuration can be used by multiple # # clients, however each client should have # # its own cert and key files. # # # # On Windows, you might want to rename this # # file so it has a .ovpn extension # ############################################## # Specify that we are a client and that we # will be pulling certain config file directives # from the server. client # Use the same setting as you are using on # the server. # On most systems, the VPN will not function # unless you partially or fully disable # the firewall for the TUN/TAP interface. ;dev tap dev tun # Windows needs the TAP-Win32 adapter name # from the Network Connections panel # if you have more than one. On XP SP2, # you may need to disable the firewall # for the TAP adapter. ;dev-node MyTap # Are we connecting to a TCP or # UDP server? Use the same setting as # on the server. ;proto tcp proto udp # The hostname/IP and port of the server. # You can have multiple remote entries # to load balance between the servers. remote xx.xxx.xx.130 1194 ;remote my-server-2 1194 # Choose a random host from the remote # list for load-balancing. Otherwise # try hosts in the order specified. ;remote-random # Keep trying indefinitely to resolve the # host name of the OpenVPN server. Very useful # on machines which are not permanently connected # to the internet such as laptops. resolv-retry infinite # Most clients don't need to bind to # a specific local port number. nobind # Downgrade privileges after initialization (non-Windows only) ;user nobody ;group nogroup # Try to preserve some state across restarts. persist-key persist-tun # If you are connecting through an # HTTP proxy to reach the actual OpenVPN # server, put the proxy server/IP and # port number here. See the man page # if your proxy server requires # authentication. ;http-proxy-retry # retry on connection failures ;http-proxy [proxy server] [proxy port #] # Wireless networks often produce a lot # of duplicate packets. Set this flag # to silence duplicate packet warnings. ;mute-replay-warnings # SSL/TLS parms. # See the server config file for more # description. It's best to use # a separate .crt/.key file pair # for each client. A single ca # file can be used for all clients. ca ca.crt cert home.crt key home.key # Verify server certificate by checking # that the certicate has the nsCertType # field set to "server". This is an # important precaution to protect against # a potential attack discussed here: # http://openvpn.net/howto.html#mitm # # To use this feature, you will need to generate # your server certificates with the nsCertType # field set to "server". The build-key-server # script in the easy-rsa folder will do this. ns-cert-type server # If a tls-auth key is used on the server # then every client must also have the key. ;tls-auth ta.key 1 # Select a cryptographic cipher. # If the cipher option is used on the server # then you must also specify it here. ;cipher x # Enable compression on the VPN link. # Don't enable this unless it is also # enabled in the server config file. comp-lzo # Set log file verbosity. verb 3 # Silence repeating messages ;mute 20 But when I start server and look in /var/log/syslog, I notice the following error: May 27 22:13:51 myuser ovpn-client[5626]: /sbin/route add -net 10.27.12.1 netmask 255.255.255.252 gw 10.27.12.37 May 27 22:13:51 myuser ovpn-client[5626]: ERROR: Linux route add command failed: external program exited with error status: 4 May 27 22:13:51 myuser ovpn-client[5626]: /sbin/route add -net 172.27.12.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 gw 10.27.12.37 May 27 22:13:51 myuser ovpn-client[5626]: /sbin/route add -net 10.27.12.1 netmask 255.255.255.255 gw 10.27.12.37 And I am unable to connect to the server via openvpn: $ ssh [email protected] ssh: connect to host xxx.xx.xx.130 port 22: No route to host What may I be doing wrong?

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• Windows Azure: Import/Export Hard Drives, VM ACLs, Web Sockets, Remote Debugging, Continuous Delivery, New Relic, Billing Alerts and More

  - by ScottGu

  Two weeks ago we released a giant set of improvements to Windows Azure, as well as a significant update of the Windows Azure SDK. This morning we released another massive set of enhancements to Windows Azure.  Today’s new capabilities include: Storage: Import/Export Hard Disk Drives to your Storage Accounts HDInsight: General Availability of our Hadoop Service in the cloud Virtual Machines: New VM Gallery, ACL support for VIPs Web Sites: WebSocket and Remote Debugging Support Notification Hubs: Segmented customer push notification support with tag expressions TFS & GIT: Continuous Delivery Support for Web Sites + Cloud Services Developer Analytics: New Relic support for Web Sites + Mobile Services Service Bus: Support for partitioned queues and topics Billing: New Billing Alert Service that sends emails notifications when your bill hits a threshold you define All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note that some features are still in preview).  Below are more details about them. Storage: Import/Export Hard Disk Drives to Windows Azure I am excited to announce the preview of our new Windows Azure Import/Export Service! The Windows Azure Import/Export Service enables you to move large amounts of on-premises data into and out of your Windows Azure Storage accounts. It does this by enabling you to securely ship hard disk drives directly to our Windows Azure data centers. Once we receive the drives we’ll automatically transfer the data to or from your Windows Azure Storage account.  This enables you to import or export massive amounts of data more quickly and cost effectively (and not be constrained by available network bandwidth). Encrypted Transport Our Import/Export service provides built-in support for BitLocker disk encryption – which enables you to securely encrypt data on the hard drives before you send it, and not have to worry about it being compromised even if the disk is lost/stolen in transit (since the content on the transported hard drives is completely encrypted and you are the only one who has the key to it).  The drive preparation tool we are shipping today makes setting up bitlocker encryption on these hard drives easy. How to Import/Export your first Hard Drive of Data You can read our Getting Started Guide to learn more about how to begin using the import/export service.  You can create import and export jobs via the Windows Azure Management Portal as well as programmatically using our Server Management APIs. It is really easy to create a new import or export job using the Windows Azure Management Portal.  Simply navigate to a Windows Azure storage account, and then click the new Import/Export tab now available within it (note: if you don’t have this tab make sure to sign-up for the Import/Export preview): Then click the “Create Import Job” or “Create Export Job” commands at the bottom of it.  This will launch a wizard that easily walks you through the steps required: For more comprehensive information about Import/Export, refer to Windows Azure Storage team blog.  You can also send questions and comments to the [email protected] email address. We think you’ll find this new service makes it much easier to move data into and out of Windows Azure, and it will dramatically cut down the network bandwidth required when working on large data migration projects.  We hope you like it. HDInsight: 100% Compatible Hadoop Service in the Cloud Last week we announced the general availability release of Windows Azure HDInsight. HDInsight is a 100% compatible Hadoop service that allows you to easily provision and manage Hadoop clusters for big data processing in Windows Azure.  This release is now live in production, backed by an enterprise SLA, supported 24x7 by Microsoft Support, and is ready to use for production scenarios. HDInsight allows you to use Apache Hadoop tools, such as Pig and Hive, to process large amounts of data in Windows Azure Blob Storage. Because data is stored in Windows Azure Blob Storage, you can choose to dynamically create Hadoop clusters only when you need them, and then shut them down when they are no longer required (since you pay only for the time the Hadoop cluster instances are running this provides a super cost effective way to use them).  You can create Hadoop clusters using either the Windows Azure Management Portal (see below) or using our PowerShell and Cross Platform Command line tools: The import/export hard drive support that came out today is a perfect companion service to use with HDInsight – the combination allows you to easily ingest, process and optionally export a limitless amount of data.  We’ve also integrated HDInsight with our Business Intelligence tools, so users can leverage familiar tools like Excel in order to analyze the output of jobs.  You can find out more about how to get started with HDInsight here. Virtual Machines: VM Gallery Enhancements Today’s update of Windows Azure brings with it a new Virtual Machine gallery that you can use to create new VMs in the cloud.  You can launch the gallery by doing New->Compute->Virtual Machine->From Gallery within the Windows Azure Management Portal: The new Virtual Machine Gallery includes some nice enhancements that make it even easier to use: Search: You can now easily search and filter images using the search box in the top-right of the dialog.  For example, simply type “SQL” and we’ll filter to show those images in the gallery that contain that substring. Category Tree-view: Each month we add more built-in VM images to the gallery.  You can continue to browse these using the “All” view within the VM Gallery – or now quickly filter them using the category tree-view on the left-hand side of the dialog.  For example, by selecting “Oracle” in the tree-view you can now quickly filter to see the official Oracle supplied images. MSDN and Supported checkboxes: With today’s update we are also introducing filters that makes it easy to filter out types of images that you may not be interested in. The first checkbox is MSDN: using this filter you can exclude any image that is not part of the Windows Azure benefits for MSDN subscribers (which have highly discounted pricing - you can learn more about the MSDN pricing here). The second checkbox is Supported: this filter will exclude any image that contains prerelease software, so you can feel confident that the software you choose to deploy is fully supported by Windows Azure and our partners. Sort options: We sort gallery images by what we think customers are most interested in, but sometimes you might want to sort using different views. So we’re providing some additional sort options, like “Newest,” to customize the image list for what suits you best. Pricing information: We now provide additional pricing information about images and options on how to cost effectively run them directly within the VM Gallery. The above improvements make it even easier to use the VM Gallery and quickly create launch and run Virtual Machines in the cloud. Virtual Machines: ACL Support for VIPs A few months ago we exposed the ability to configure Access Control Lists (ACLs) for Virtual Machines using Windows PowerShell cmdlets and our Service Management API. With today’s release, you can now configure VM ACLs using the Windows Azure Management Portal as well. You can now do this by clicking the new Manage ACL command in the Endpoints tab of a virtual machine instance: This will enable you to configure an ordered list of permit and deny rules to scope the traffic that can access your VM’s network endpoints. For example, if you were on a virtual network, you could limit RDP access to a Windows Azure virtual machine to only a few computers attached to your enterprise. Or if you weren’t on a virtual network you could alternatively limit traffic from public IPs that can access your workloads: Here is the default behaviors for ACLs in Windows Azure: By default (i.e. no rules specified), all traffic is permitted. When using only Permit rules, all other traffic is denied. When using only Deny rules, all other traffic is permitted. When there is a combination of Permit and Deny rules, all other traffic is denied. Lastly, remember that configuring endpoints does not automatically configure them within the VM if it also has firewall rules enabled at the OS level.  So if you create an endpoint using the Windows Azure Management Portal, Windows PowerShell, or REST API, be sure to also configure your guest VM firewall appropriately as well. Web Sites: Web Sockets Support With today’s release you can now use Web Sockets with Windows Azure Web Sites.  This feature enables you to easily integrate real-time communication scenarios within your web based applications, and is available at no extra charge (it even works with the free tier).  Higher level programming libraries like SignalR and socket.io are also now supported with it. You can enable Web Sockets support on a web site by navigating to the Configure tab of a Web Site, and by toggling Web Sockets support to “on”: Once Web Sockets is enabled you can start to integrate some really cool scenarios into your web applications.  Check out the new SignalR documentation hub on www.asp.net to learn more about some of the awesome scenarios you can do with it. Web Sites: Remote Debugging Support The Windows Azure SDK 2.2 we released two weeks ago introduced remote debugging support for Windows Azure Cloud Services. With today’s Windows Azure release we are extending this remote debugging support to also work with Windows Azure Web Sites. With live, remote debugging support inside of Visual Studio, you are able to have more visibility than ever before into how your code is operating live in Windows Azure. It is now super easy to attach the debugger and quickly see what is going on with your application in the cloud. Remote Debugging of a Windows Azure Web Site using VS 2013 Enabling the remote debugging of a Windows Azure Web Site using VS 2013 is really easy.  Start by opening up your web application’s project within Visual Studio. Then navigate to the “Server Explorer” tab within Visual Studio, and click on the deployed web-site you want to debug that is running within Windows Azure using the Windows Azure->Web Sites node in the Server Explorer.  Then right-click and choose the “Attach Debugger” option on it: When you do this Visual Studio will remotely attach the debugger to the Web Site running within Windows Azure.  The debugger will then stop the web site’s execution when it hits any break points that you have set within your web application’s project inside Visual Studio.  For example, below I set a breakpoint on the “ViewBag.Message” assignment statement within the HomeController of the standard ASP.NET MVC project template.  When I hit refresh on the “About” page of the web site within the browser, the breakpoint was triggered and I am now able to debug the app remotely using Visual Studio: Note above how we can debug variables (including autos/watchlist/etc), as well as use the Immediate and Command Windows. In the debug session above I used the Immediate Window to explore some of the request object state, as well as to dynamically change the ViewBag.Message property.  When we click the the “Continue” button (or press F5) the app will continue execution and the Web Site will render the content back to the browser.  This makes it super easy to debug web apps remotely. Tips for Better Debugging To get the best experience while debugging, we recommend publishing your site using the Debug configuration within Visual Studio’s Web Publish dialog. This will ensure that debug symbol information is uploaded to the Web Site which will enable a richer debug experience within Visual Studio.  You can find this option on the Web Publish dialog on the Settings tab: When you ultimately deploy/run the application in production we recommend using the “Release” configuration setting – the release configuration is memory optimized and will provide the best production performance.  To learn more about diagnosing and debugging Windows Azure Web Sites read our new Troubleshooting Windows Azure Web Sites in Visual Studio guide. Notification Hubs: Segmented Push Notification support with tag expressions In August we announced the General Availability of Windows Azure Notification Hubs - a powerful Mobile Push Notifications service that makes it easy to send high volume push notifications with low latency from any mobile app back-end.  Notification hubs can be used with any mobile app back-end (including ones built using our Mobile Services capability) and can also be used with back-ends that run in the cloud as well as on-premises. Beginning with the initial release, Notification Hubs allowed developers to send personalized push notifications to both individual users as well as groups of users by interest, by associating their devices with tags representing the logical target of the notification. For example, by registering all devices of customers interested in a favorite MLB team with a corresponding tag, it is possible to broadcast one message to millions of Boston Red Sox fans and another message to millions of St. Louis Cardinals fans with a single API call respectively. New support for using tag expressions to enable advanced customer segmentation With today’s release we are adding support for even more advanced customer targeting.  You can now identify customers that you want to send push notifications to by defining rich tag expressions. With tag expressions, you can now not only broadcast notifications to Boston Red Sox fans, but take that segmenting a step farther and reach more granular segments. This opens up a variety of scenarios, for example: Offers based on multiple preferences—e.g. send a game day vegetarian special to users tagged as both a Boston Red Sox fan AND a vegetarian Push content to multiple segments in a single message—e.g. rain delay information only to users who are tagged as either a Boston Red Sox fan OR a St. Louis Cardinal fan Avoid presenting subsets of a segment with irrelevant content—e.g. season ticket availability reminder to users who are tagged as a Boston Red Sox fan but NOT also a season ticket holder To illustrate with code, consider a restaurant chain app that sends an offer related to a Red Sox vs Cardinals game for users in Boston. Devices can be tagged by your app with location tags (e.g. “Loc:Boston”) and interest tags (e.g. “Follows:RedSox”, “Follows:Cardinals”), and then a notification can be sent by your back-end to “(Follows:RedSox || Follows:Cardinals) && Loc:Boston” in order to deliver an offer to all devices in Boston that follow either the RedSox or the Cardinals. This can be done directly in your server backend send logic using the code below: var notification = new WindowsNotification(messagePayload); hub.SendNotificationAsync(notification, "(Follows:RedSox || Follows:Cardinals) && Loc:Boston"); In your expressions you can use all Boolean operators: AND (&&), OR (||), and NOT (!).  Some other cool use cases for tag expressions that are now supported include: Social: To “all my group except me” - group:id && !user:id Events: Touchdown event is sent to everybody following either team or any of the players involved in the action: Followteam:A || Followteam:B || followplayer:1 || followplayer:2 … Hours: Send notifications at specific times. E.g. Tag devices with time zone and when it is 12pm in Seattle send to: GMT8 && follows:thaifood Versions and platforms: Send a reminder to people still using your first version for Android - version:1.0 && platform:Android For help on getting started with Notification Hubs, visit the Notification Hub documentation center.  Then download the latest NuGet package (or use the Notification Hubs REST APIs directly) to start sending push notifications using tag expressions.  They are really powerful and enable a bunch of great new scenarios. TFS & GIT: Continuous Delivery Support for Web Sites + Cloud Services With today’s Windows Azure release we are making it really easy to enable continuous delivery support with Windows Azure and Team Foundation Services.  Team Foundation Services is a cloud based offering from Microsoft that provides integrated source control (with both TFS and Git support), build server, test execution, collaboration tools, and agile planning support.  It makes it really easy to setup a team project (complete with automated builds and test runners) in the cloud, and it has really rich integration with Visual Studio. With today’s Windows Azure release it is now really easy to enable continuous delivery support with both TFS and Git based repositories hosted using Team Foundation Services.  This enables a workflow where when code is checked in, built successfully on an automated build server, and all tests pass on it – I can automatically have the app deployed on Windows Azure with zero manual intervention or work required. The below screen-shots demonstrate how to quickly setup a continuous delivery workflow to Windows Azure with a Git-based ASP.NET MVC project hosted using Team Foundation Services. Enabling Continuous Delivery to Windows Azure with Team Foundation Services The project I’m going to enable continuous delivery with is a simple ASP.NET MVC project whose source code I’m hosting using Team Foundation Services.  I did this by creating a “SimpleContinuousDeploymentTest” repository there using Git – and then used the new built-in Git tooling support within Visual Studio 2013 to push the source code to it.  Below is a screen-shot of the Git repository hosted within Team Foundation Services: I can access the repository within Visual Studio 2013 and easily make commits with it (as well as branch, merge and do other tasks).  Using VS 2013 I can also setup automated builds to take place in the cloud using Team Foundation Services every time someone checks in code to the repository: The cool thing about this is that I don’t have to buy or rent my own build server – Team Foundation Services automatically maintains its own build server farm and can automatically queue up a build for me (for free) every time someone checks in code using the above settings.  This build server (and automated testing) support now works with both TFS and Git based source control repositories. Connecting a Team Foundation Services project to Windows Azure Once I have a source repository hosted in Team Foundation Services with Automated Builds and Testing set up, I can then go even further and set it up so that it will be automatically deployed to Windows Azure when a source code commit is made to the repository (assuming the Build + Tests pass).  Enabling this is now really easy.  To set this up with a Windows Azure Web Site simply use the New->Compute->Web Site->Custom Create command inside the Windows Azure Management Portal.  This will create a dialog like below.  I gave the web site a name and then made sure the “Publish from source control” checkbox was selected: When we click next we’ll be prompted for the location of the source repository.  We’ll select “Team Foundation Services”: Once we do this we’ll be prompted for our Team Foundation Services account that our source repository is hosted under (in this case my TFS account is “scottguthrie”): When we click the “Authorize Now” button we’ll be prompted to give Windows Azure permissions to connect to the Team Foundation Services account.  Once we do this we’ll be prompted to pick the source repository we want to connect to.  Starting with today’s Windows Azure release you can now connect to both TFS and Git based source repositories.  This new support allows me to connect to the “SimpleContinuousDeploymentTest” respository we created earlier: Clicking the finish button will then create the Web Site with the continuous delivery hooks setup with Team Foundation Services.  Now every time someone pushes source control to the repository in Team Foundation Services, it will kick off an automated build, run all of the unit tests in the solution , and if they pass the app will be automatically deployed to our Web Site in Windows Azure.  You can monitor the history and status of these automated deployments using the Deployments tab within the Web Site: This enables a really slick continuous delivery workflow, and enables you to build and deploy apps in a really nice way. Developer Analytics: New Relic support for Web Sites + Mobile Services With today’s Windows Azure release we are making it really easy to enable Developer Analytics and Monitoring support with both Windows Azure Web Site and Windows Azure Mobile Services.  We are partnering with New Relic, who provide a great dev analytics and app performance monitoring offering, to enable this - and we have updated the Windows Azure Management Portal to make it really easy to configure. Enabling New Relic with a Windows Azure Web Site Enabling New Relic support with a Windows Azure Web Site is now really easy.  Simply navigate to the Configure tab of a Web Site and scroll down to the “developer analytics” section that is now within it: Clicking the “add-on” button will display some additional UI.  If you don’t already have a New Relic subscription, you can click the “view windows azure store” button to obtain a subscription (note: New Relic has a perpetually free tier so you can enable it even without paying anything): Clicking the “view windows azure store” button will launch the integrated Windows Azure Store experience we have within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  You can use this to browse from a variety of great add-on services – including New Relic: Select “New Relic” within the dialog above, then click the next button, and you’ll be able to choose which type of New Relic subscription you wish to purchase.  For this demo we’ll simply select the “Free Standard Version” – which does not cost anything and can be used forever:  Once we’ve signed-up for our New Relic subscription and added it to our Windows Azure account, we can go back to the Web Site’s configuration tab and choose to use the New Relic add-on with our Windows Azure Web Site.  We can do this by simply selecting it from the “add-on” dropdown (it is automatically populated within it once we have a New Relic subscription in our account): Clicking the “Save” button will then cause the Windows Azure Management Portal to automatically populate all of the needed New Relic configuration settings to our Web Site: Deploying the New Relic Agent as part of a Web Site The final step to enable developer analytics using New Relic is to add the New Relic runtime agent to our web app.  We can do this within Visual Studio by right-clicking on our web project and selecting the “Manage NuGet Packages” context menu: This will bring up the NuGet package manager.  You can search for “New Relic” within it to find the New Relic agent.  Note that there is both a 32-bit and 64-bit edition of it – make sure to install the version that matches how your Web Site is running within Windows Azure (note: you can configure your Web Site to run in either 32-bit or 64-bit mode using the Web Site’s “Configuration” tab within the Windows Azure Management Portal): Once we install the NuGet package we are all set to go.  We’ll simply re-publish the web site again to Windows Azure and New Relic will now automatically start monitoring the application Monitoring a Web Site using New Relic Now that the application has developer analytics support with New Relic enabled, we can launch the New Relic monitoring portal to start monitoring the health of it.  We can do this by clicking on the “Add Ons” tab in the left-hand side of the Windows Azure Management Portal.  Then select the New Relic add-on we signed-up for within it.  The Windows Azure Management Portal will provide some default information about the add-on when we do this.  Clicking the “Manage” button in the tray at the bottom will launch a new browser tab and single-sign us into the New Relic monitoring portal associated with our account: When we do this a new browser tab will launch with the New Relic admin tool loaded within it: We can now see insights into how our app is performing – without having to have written a single line of monitoring code.  The New Relic service provides a ton of great built-in monitoring features allowing us to quickly see: Performance times (including browser rendering speed) for the overall site and individual pages.  You can optionally set alert thresholds to trigger if the speed does not meet a threshold you specify. Information about where in the world your customers are hitting the site from (and how performance varies by region) Details on the latency performance of external services your web apps are using (for example: SQL, Storage, Twitter, etc) Error information including call stack details for exceptions that have occurred at runtime SQL Server profiling information – including which queries executed against your database and what their performance was And a whole bunch more… The cool thing about New Relic is that you don’t need to write monitoring code within your application to get all of the above reports (plus a lot more).  The New Relic agent automatically enables the CLR profiler within applications and automatically captures the information necessary to identify these.  This makes it super easy to get started and immediately have a rich developer analytics view for your solutions with very little effort. If you haven’t tried New Relic out yet with Windows Azure I recommend you do so – I think you’ll find it helps you build even better cloud applications.  Following the above steps will help you get started and deliver you a really good application monitoring solution in only minutes. Service Bus: Support for partitioned queues and topics With today’s release, we are enabling support within Service Bus for partitioned queues and topics. Enabling partitioning enables you to achieve a higher message throughput and better availability from your queues and topics. Higher message throughput is achieved by implementing multiple message brokers for each partitioned queue and topic.  The  multiple messaging stores will also provide higher availability. You can create a partitioned queue or topic by simply checking the Enable Partitioning option in the custom create wizard for a Queue or Topic: Read this article to learn more about partitioned queues and topics and how to take advantage of them today. Billing: New Billing Alert Service Today’s Windows Azure update enables a new Billing Alert Service Preview that enables you to get proactive email notifications when your Windows Azure bill goes above a certain monetary threshold that you configure.  This makes it easier to manage your bill and avoid potential surprises at the end of the month. With the Billing Alert Service Preview, you can now create email alerts to monitor and manage your monetary credits or your current bill total.  To set up an alert first sign-up for the free Billing Alert Service Preview.  Then visit the account management page, click on a subscription you have setup, and then navigate to the new Alerts tab that is available: The alerts tab allows you to setup email alerts that will be sent automatically once a certain threshold is hit.  For example, by clicking the “add alert” button above I can setup a rule to send myself email anytime my Windows Azure bill goes above $100 for the month: The Billing Alert Service will evolve to support additional aspects of your bill as well as support multiple forms of alerts such as SMS.  Try out the new Billing Alert Service Preview today and give us feedback. Summary Today’s Windows Azure release enables a ton of great new scenarios, and makes building applications hosted in the cloud even easier. If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today.  Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• LLBLGen Pro v3.5 has been released!

  - by FransBouma

  Last weekend we released LLBLGen Pro v3.5! Below the list of what's new in this release. Of course, not everything is on this list, like the large amount of work we put in refactoring the runtime framework. The refactoring was necessary because our framework has two paradigms which are added to the framework at a different time, and from a design perspective in the wrong order (the paradigm we added first, SelfServicing, should have been built on top of Adapter, the other paradigm, which was added more than a year after the first released version). The refactoring made sure the framework re-uses more code across the two paradigms (they already shared a lot of code) and is better prepared for the future. We're not done yet, but refactoring a massive framework like ours without breaking interfaces and existing applications is ... a bit of a challenge ;) To celebrate the release of v3.5, we give every customer a 30% discount! Use the coupon code NR1ORM with your order :) The full list of what's new: Designer Rule based .NET Attribute definitions. It's now possible to specify a rule using fine-grained expressions with an attribute definition to define which elements of a given type will receive the attribute definition. Rules can be assigned to attribute definitions on the project level, to make it even easier to define attribute definitions in bulk for many elements in the project. More information... Revamped Project Settings dialog. Multiple project related properties and settings dialogs have been merged into a single dialog called Project Settings, which makes it easier to configure the various settings related to project elements. It also makes it easier to find features previously not used  by many (e.g. type conversions) More information... Home tab with Quick Start Guides. To make new users feel right at home, we added a home tab with quick start guides which guide you through four main use cases of the designer. System Type Converters. Many common conversions have been implemented by default in system type converters so users don't have to develop their own type converters anymore for these type conversions. Bulk Element Setting Manipulator. To change setting values for multiple project elements, it was a little cumbersome to do that without a lot of clicking and opening various editors. This dialog makes changing settings for multiple elements very easy. EDMX Importer. It's now possible to import entity model data information from an existing Entity Framework EDMX file. Other changes and fixes See for the full list of changes and fixes the online documentation. LLBLGen Pro Runtime Framework WCF Data Services (OData) support has been added. It's now possible to use your LLBLGen Pro runtime framework powered domain layer in a WCF Data Services application using the VS.NET tools for WCF Data Services. WCF Data Services is a Microsoft technology for .NET 4 to expose your domain model using OData. More information... New query specification and execution API: QuerySpec. QuerySpec is our new query specification and execution API as an alternative to Linq and our more low-level API. It's build, like our Linq provider, on top of our lower-level API. More information... SQL Server 2012 support. The SQL Server DQE allows paging using the new SQL Server 2012 style. More information... System Type converters. For a common set of types the LLBLGen Pro runtime framework contains built-in type conversions so you don't need to write your own type converters anymore. Public/NonPublic property support. It's now possible to mark a field / navigator as non-public which is reflected in the runtime framework as an internal/friend property instead of a public property. This way you can hide properties from the public interface of a generated class and still access it through code added to the generated code base. FULL JOIN support. It's now possible to perform FULL JOIN joins using the native query api and QuerySpec. It's left to the developer to check whether the used target database supports FULL (OUTER) JOINs. Using a FULL JOIN with entity fetches is not recommended, and should only be used when both participants in the join aren't the target of the fetch. Dependency Injection Tracing. It's now possible to enable tracing on dependency injection. Enable tracing at level '4' on the traceswitch 'ORMGeneral'. This will emit trace information about which instance of which type got an instance of type T injected into property P. Entity Instances in projections in Linq. It's now possible to return an entity instance in a custom Linq projection. It's now also possible to pass this instance to a method inside the query projection. Inheritance fully supported in this construct. Entity Framework support The Entity Framework has been updated in the recent year with code-first support and a new simpler context api: DbContext (with DbSet). The amount of code to generate is smaller and the context simpler. LLBLGen Pro v3.5 comes with support for DbContext and DbSet and generates code which utilizes these new classes. NHibernate support NHibernate v3.2+ built-in proxy factory factory support. By default the built-in ProxyFactoryFactory is selected. FluentNHibernate Session Manager uses 1.2 syntax. Fluent NHibernate mappings generate a SessionManager which uses the v1.2 syntax for the ProxyFactoryFactory location Optionally emit schema / catalog name in mappings Two settings have been added which allow the user to control whether the catalog name and/or schema name as known in the project in the designer is emitted into the mappings.

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• ODI 12c's Mapping Designer - Combining Flow Based and Expression Based Mapping

  - by Madhu Nair

  post by David Allan ODI is renowned for its declarative designer and minimal expression based paradigm. The new ODI 12c release has extended this even further to provide an extended declarative mapping designer. The ODI 12c mapper is a fusion of ODI's new declarative designer with the familiar flow based designer while retaining ODI’s key differentiators of: Minimal expression based definition, The ability to incrementally design an interface and to extract/load data from any combination of sources, and most importantly Backed by ODI’s extensible knowledge module framework. The declarative nature of the product has been extended to include an extensible library of common components that can be used to easily build simple to complex data integration solutions. Big usability improvements through consistent interactions of components and concepts all constructed around the familiar knowledge module framework provide the utmost flexibility. Here is a little taster: So what is a mapping? A mapping comprises of a logical design and at least one physical design, it may have many. A mapping can have many targets, of any technology and can be arbitrarily complex. You can build reusable mappings and use them in other mappings or other reusable mappings. In the example below all of the information from an Oracle bonus table and a bonus file are joined with an Oracle employees table before being written to a target. Some things that are cool include the one-click expression cross referencing so you can easily see what's used where within the design. The logical design in a mapping describes what you want to accomplish  (see the animated GIF here illustrating how the above mapping was designed) . The physical design lets you configure how it is to be accomplished. So you could have one logical design that is realized as an initial load in one physical design and as an incremental load in another. In the physical design below we can customize how the mapping is accomplished by picking Knowledge Modules, in ODI 12c you can pick multiple nodes (on logical or physical) and see common properties. This is useful as we can quickly compare property values across objects - below we can see knowledge modules settings on the access points between execution units side by side, in the example one table is retrieved via database links and the other is an external table. In the logical design I had selected an append mode for the integration type, so by default the IKM on the target will choose the most suitable/default IKM - which in this case is an in-built Oracle Insert IKM (see image below). This supports insert and select hints for the Oracle database (the ANSI SQL Insert IKM does not support these), so by default you will get direct path inserts with Oracle on this statement. In ODI 12c, the mapper is just that, a mapper. Design your mapping, write to multiple targets, the targets can be in the same data server, in different data servers or in totally different technologies - it does not matter. ODI 12c will derive and generate a plan that you can use or customize with knowledge modules. Some of the use cases which are greatly simplified include multiple heterogeneous targets, multi target inserts for Oracle and writing of XML. Let's switch it up now and look at a slightly different example to illustrate expression reuse. In ODI you can define reusable expressions using user functions. These can be reused across mappings and the implementations specialized per technology. So you can have common expressions across Oracle, SQL Server, Hive etc. shielding the design from the physical aspects of the generated language. Another way to reuse is within a mapping itself. In ODI 12c expressions can be defined and reused within a mapping. Rather than replicating the expression text in larger expressions you can decompose into smaller snippets, below you can see UNIT_TAX AMOUNT has been defined and is used in two downstream target columns - its used in the TOTAL_TAX_AMOUNT plus its used in the UNIT_TAX_AMOUNT (a recording of the calculation).  You can see the columns that the expressions depend on (upstream) and the columns the expression is used in (downstream) highlighted within the mapper. Also multi selecting attributes is a convenient way to see what's being used where, below I have selected the TOTAL_TAX_AMOUNT in the target datastore and the UNIT_TAX_AMOUNT in UNIT_CALC. You can now see many expressions at once now and understand much more at the once time without needlessly clicking around and memorizing information. Our mantra during development was to keep it simple and make the tool more powerful and do even more for the user. The development team was a fusion of many teams from Oracle Warehouse Builder, Sunopsis and BEA Aqualogic, debating and perfecting the mapper in ODI 12c. This was quite a project from supporting the capabilities of ODI in 11g to building the flow based mapping tool to support the future. I hope this was a useful insight, there is so much more to come on this topic, this is just a preview of much more that you will see of the mapper in ODI 12c.

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• Building a Distributed Commerce Infrastructure in the Cloud using Azure and Commerce Server

  - by Lewis Benge

  One of the biggest questions I routinely get asked is how scalable Commerce Server is. Of course the text book answer is the product has been around for 10 years, powers some of the largest e-Commerce websites in the world, so it scales horizontally extremely well. One argument however though is what if you can't predict the growth of demand required of your Commerce Platform, or need the ability to scale up during busy seasons such as Christmas for a retail environment but are hesitant on maintaining the infrastructure on a year-round basis? The obvious answer is to utilise the many elasticated cloud infrastructure providers that are establishing themselves in the ever-growing market, the problem however is Commerce Server is still product which has a legacy tightly coupled dependency on Windows and IIS components. Commerce Server 2009 codename "R2" however introduced to the concept of an n-tier deployment of Microsoft Commerce Server, meaning you are no longer tied to core objects API but instead have serializable Commerce Entity objects, and business logic allowing for Commerce Server to now be built into a WCF-based SOA architecture. Presentation layers no-longer now need to remain on the same physical machine as the application server, meaning you can now build the user experience into multiple-technologies and host them in multiple places – leveraging the transport benefits that a WCF service may bring, such as message queuing, security, and multiple end-points. All of this logic will still need to remain in your internal infrastructure, for two reasons. Firstly cloud based computing infrastructure does not support PCI security requirements, and secondly even though many of the legacy Commerce Server dependencies have been abstracted away within this version of the application, it is still not a fully supported to be deployed exclusively into the cloud. If you do wish to benefit from the scalability of the cloud however, you can still achieve a great Commerce Server and Azure setup by utilising both the Azure App Fabric in terms of the service bus, and authentication services and Windows Azure to host any online presence you may require. The architecture would be something similar to this: This setup would allow you to construct your Commerce Services as part of your on-site infrastructure. These services would contain all of the channels custom business logic, and provide the overall interface back into the underlying Commerce Server components. It would be recommended that services are constructed around the specific business domain of the application, which based on your business model would usually consist of separate services around Catalogue, Orders, Search, Profiles, and Marketing. The App Fabric service bus is then used to abstract and aggregate further the services, making them available to the cloud and subsequently secured by App Fabrics authentication services. These services are now available for consumption by any client, using any supported technology – not just .NET. Thus meaning you are now able to construct apps for IPhone, integrate with Java based POS Devices, and any many other potential uses. This aggregation is useful, and forms the basis of the further strategy around diversifying and enhancing the e-Commerce experience, but also provides the foundation for the scalability we want to gain from utilising a cloud-based application platform. The Windows Azure application platform is Microsoft solution to benefiting from the true economies of scale in terms of the elasticity of the cloud. Just before the launch of the Azure Platform – Domino's pizza actually managed to run their whole SuperBowl operation from the scalability of Windows Azure, and simply switching back to their traditional operation the next day with no residual infrastructure costs. The platform also natively can subscribe to services and messages exposed within the AppFabric service bus, making it an ideal solution to build and deploy a presentation layer which will need to support of scalable infrastructure – such as a high demand public facing e-Commerce portal, or a promotion element of a brand. Windows Azure has excellent support for ASP.NET, including its own caching providers meaning expensive operations such as catalogue queries can persist in memory on the application server, reducing the demand on internal infrastructure and prioritising it for more business critical operations such as receiving orders and processing payments. Windows Azure also supports other languages too, meaning utilising this approach you can technically build a Commerce Server presentation layer in Java, PHP, or Ruby – or equally in ASP.NET or Silverlight without having to change any of the underlying business or Commerce Server implementation. This SOA-style architecture is one of the primary differentiators for Commerce Server as a product in the e-Commerce market, and now with the introduction of a WCF capability in Commerce Server 2009/2009 R2 the opportunities for extensibility of the both the user experience, and integration into third parties, are drastically increased, all with no effect to the underlying channel logic. So if you are looking at deployment options for your e-Commerce application to help support demand in a cost effective way. I would highly recommend you consider looking at Windows Azure, and if you have any questions in-particular about this style of deployment, please feel free to get in touch!

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• Big Data – What is Big Data – 3 Vs of Big Data – Volume, Velocity and Variety – Day 2 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  Data is forever. Think about it – it is indeed true. Are you using any application as it is which was built 10 years ago? Are you using any piece of hardware which was built 10 years ago? The answer is most certainly No. However, if I ask you – are you using any data which were captured 50 years ago, the answer is most certainly Yes. For example, look at the history of our nation. I am from India and we have documented history which goes back as over 1000s of year. Well, just look at our birthday data – atleast we are using it till today. Data never gets old and it is going to stay there forever.  Application which interprets and analysis data got changed but the data remained in its purest format in most cases. As organizations have grown the data associated with them also grew exponentially and today there are lots of complexity to their data. Most of the big organizations have data in multiple applications and in different formats. The data is also spread out so much that it is hard to categorize with a single algorithm or logic. The mobile revolution which we are experimenting right now has completely changed how we capture the data and build intelligent systems.  Big organizations are indeed facing challenges to keep all the data on a platform which give them a  single consistent view of their data. This unique challenge to make sense of all the data coming in from different sources and deriving the useful actionable information out of is the revolution Big Data world is facing. Defining Big Data The 3Vs that define Big Data are Variety, Velocity and Volume. Volume We currently see the exponential growth in the data storage as the data is now more than text data. We can find data in the format of videos, musics and large images on our social media channels. It is very common to have Terabytes and Petabytes of the storage system for enterprises. As the database grows the applications and architecture built to support the data needs to be reevaluated quite often. Sometimes the same data is re-evaluated with multiple angles and even though the original data is the same the new found intelligence creates explosion of the data. The big volume indeed represents Big Data. Velocity The data growth and social media explosion have changed how we look at the data. There was a time when we used to believe that data of yesterday is recent. The matter of the fact newspapers is still following that logic. However, news channels and radios have changed how fast we receive the news. Today, people reply on social media to update them with the latest happening. On social media sometimes a few seconds old messages (a tweet, status updates etc.) is not something interests users. They often discard old messages and pay attention to recent updates. The data movement is now almost real time and the update window has reduced to fractions of the seconds. This high velocity data represent Big Data. Variety Data can be stored in multiple format. For example database, excel, csv, access or for the matter of the fact, it can be stored in a simple text file. Sometimes the data is not even in the traditional format as we assume, it may be in the form of video, SMS, pdf or something we might have not thought about it. It is the need of the organization to arrange it and make it meaningful. It will be easy to do so if we have data in the same format, however it is not the case most of the time. The real world have data in many different formats and that is the challenge we need to overcome with the Big Data. This variety of the data represent  represent Big Data. Big Data in Simple Words Big Data is not just about lots of data, it is actually a concept providing an opportunity to find new insight into your existing data as well guidelines to capture and analysis your future data. It makes any business more agile and robust so it can adapt and overcome business challenges. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will try to answer discuss Evolution of Big Data. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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