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  • Segfault when iterating over a map<string, string> and drawing its contents using SDL_TTF

    - by Michael Stahre
    I'm not entirely sure this question belongs on gamedev.stackexchange, but I'm technically working on a game and working with SDL, so it might not be entirely offtopic. I've written a class called DebugText. The point of the class is to have a nice way of printing values of variables to the game screen. The idea is to call SetDebugText() with the variables in question every time they change or, as is currently the case, every time the game's Update() is called. The issue is that when iterating over the map that contains my variables and their latest updated values, I get segfaults. See the comments in DrawDebugText() below, it specifies where the error happens. I've tried splitting the calls to it-first and it-second into separate lines and found that the problem doesn't always happen when calling it-first. It alters between it-first and it-second. I can't find a pattern. It doesn't fail on every call to DrawDebugText() either. It might fail on the third time DrawDebugText() is called, or it might fail on the fourth. Class header: #ifndef CLIENT_DEBUGTEXT_H #define CLIENT_DEBUGTEXT_H #include <Map> #include <Math.h> #include <sstream> #include <SDL.h> #include <SDL_ttf.h> #include "vector2.h" using std::string; using std::stringstream; using std::map; using std::pair; using game::Vector2; namespace game { class DebugText { private: TTF_Font* debug_text_font; map<string, string>* debug_text_list; public: void SetDebugText(string var, bool value); void SetDebugText(string var, float value); void SetDebugText(string var, int value); void SetDebugText(string var, Vector2 value); void SetDebugText(string var, string value); int DrawDebugText(SDL_Surface*, SDL_Rect*); void InitDebugText(); void Clear(); }; } #endif Class source file: #include "debugtext.h" namespace game { // Copypasta function for handling the toString conversion template <class T> inline string to_string (const T& t) { stringstream ss (stringstream::in | stringstream::out); ss << t; return ss.str(); } // Initializes SDL_TTF and sets its font void DebugText::InitDebugText() { if(TTF_WasInit()) TTF_Quit(); TTF_Init(); debug_text_font = TTF_OpenFont("LiberationSans-Regular.ttf", 16); TTF_SetFontStyle(debug_text_font, TTF_STYLE_NORMAL); } // Iterates over the current debug_text_list and draws every element on the screen. // After drawing with SDL you need to get a rect specifying the area on the screen that was changed and tell SDL that this part of the screen needs to be updated. this is done in the game's Draw() function // This function sets rects_to_update to the new list of rects provided by all of the surfaces and returns the number of rects in the list. These two parameters are used in Draw() when calling on SDL_UpdateRects(), which takes an SDL_Rect* and a list length int DebugText::DrawDebugText(SDL_Surface* screen, SDL_Rect* rects_to_update) { if(debug_text_list == NULL) return 0; if(!TTF_WasInit()) InitDebugText(); rects_to_update = NULL; // Specifying the font color SDL_Color font_color = {0xff, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00}; // r, g, b, unused int row_count = 0; string line; // The iterator variable map<string, string>::iterator it; // Gets the iterator and iterates over it for(it = debug_text_list->begin(); it != debug_text_list->end(); it++) { // Takes the first value (the name of the variable) and the second value (the value of the parameter in string form) //---------THIS LINE GIVES ME SEGFAULTS----- line = it->first + ": " + it->second; //------------------------------------------ // Creates a surface with the text on it that in turn can be rendered to the screen itself later SDL_Surface* debug_surface = TTF_RenderText_Solid(debug_text_font, line.c_str(), font_color); if(debug_surface == NULL) { // A standard check for errors fprintf(stderr, "Error: %s", TTF_GetError()); return NULL; } else { // If SDL_TTF did its job right, then we now set a destination rect row_count++; SDL_Rect dstrect = {5, 5, 0, 0}; // x, y, w, h dstrect.x = 20; dstrect.y = 20*row_count; // Draws the surface with the text on it to the screen int res = SDL_BlitSurface(debug_surface,NULL,screen,&dstrect); if(res != 0) { //Just an error check fprintf(stderr, "Error: %s", SDL_GetError()); return NULL; } // Creates a new rect to specify the area that needs to be updated with SDL_Rect* new_rect_to_update = (SDL_Rect*) malloc(sizeof(SDL_Rect)); new_rect_to_update->h = debug_surface->h; new_rect_to_update->w = debug_surface->w; new_rect_to_update->x = dstrect.x; new_rect_to_update->y = dstrect.y; // Just freeing the surface since it isn't necessary anymore SDL_FreeSurface(debug_surface); // Creates a new list of rects with room for the new rect SDL_Rect* newtemp = (SDL_Rect*) malloc(row_count*sizeof(SDL_Rect)); // Copies the data from the old list of rects to the new one memcpy(newtemp, rects_to_update, (row_count-1)*sizeof(SDL_Rect)); // Adds the new rect to the new list newtemp[row_count-1] = *new_rect_to_update; // Frees the memory used by the old list free(rects_to_update); // And finally redirects the pointer to the old list to the new list rects_to_update = newtemp; newtemp = NULL; } } // When the entire map has been iterated over, return the number of lines that were drawn, ie. the number of rects in the returned rect list return row_count; } // The SetDebugText used by all the SetDebugText overloads // Takes two strings, inserts them into the map as a pair void DebugText::SetDebugText(string var, string value) { if (debug_text_list == NULL) { debug_text_list = new map<string, string>(); } debug_text_list->erase(var); debug_text_list->insert(pair<string, string>(var, value)); } // Writes the bool to a string and calls SetDebugText(string, string) void DebugText::SetDebugText(string var, bool value) { string result; if (value) result = "True"; else result = "False"; SetDebugText(var, result); } // Does the same thing, but uses to_string() to convert the float void DebugText::SetDebugText(string var, float value) { SetDebugText(var, to_string(value)); } // Same as above, but int void DebugText::SetDebugText(string var, int value) { SetDebugText(var, to_string(value)); } // Vector2 is a struct of my own making. It contains the two float vars x and y void DebugText::SetDebugText(string var, Vector2 value) { SetDebugText(var + ".x", to_string(value.x)); SetDebugText(var + ".y", to_string(value.y)); } // Empties the list. I don't actually use this in my code. Shame on me for writing something I don't use. void DebugText::Clear() { if(debug_text_list != NULL) debug_text_list->clear(); } }

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  • ASP.NET MVC 2 throws exception for ‘favicon.ico’

    - by nmarun
    I must be on fire or something – third blog in 2 days… awesome! Before I begin, in case you’re wondering, favicon.ico is the small image that appears to the left of your web address, once the page loads. In order to learn more about MVC or any thing for that matter, it’s better to look at the source itself. Since MVC is open source (at least some part of it is), I started looking at the source code that’s available for download. While doing so, I hit Steve Sanderson’s blog site where he explains in great detail the way to debug your app using ASP.NET MVC source code. For those who are not aware, Steve Sanderson’s book - Pro ASP.NET MVC Framework, is one of the best books to learn about MVC. Alrighty, I followed the article and I hit F5 to debug the default / unchanged MVC project. I put a breakpoint in the DefaultControllerFactory.cs, CreateController() method. To know a little more about this class and the method, read this. Sure enough, the control stopped at the breakpoint and I hit F5 again and the page rendered just fine. But then what’s this? The breakpoint was hit again, as if something else was being requested. I now hovered my mouse over the ‘controllerName’ parameter and it says – favicon.ico. This by itself was more than enough for me to raise my eye-brows, but what happened next just took the ground below my feet. Oh, oh, I’m sorry I’m just typing, no code, no image, so here are a couple of screen captures. The first one shows the request for the Home controller; I get ‘Home’ when I hover over the parameter: And here’s the one that shows the same for call for ‘favicon.ico’. So, I step through the code and when the control reaches line 91 – GetControllerInstance() method, I step in. This is when I had the ‘ground-losing’ experience. Wow, an exception is being thrown for this file and that too in RTM. For some reason MVC thinks, this as a controller and tries to run it through the MvcHandler and it hits this snag. So it seems like this will happen for any MVC 2 site and this did not happen for me in the previous version of MVC. Before I get to how to resolve it, here’s another way of reproducing this exception. Revert back all your changes that you did as mentioned in Steve’s blog above. Now, add a class to your MVC project and call it say, MyControllerFactory and let this inherit from DefaultControllerFactory class. (Read this for details on the DefaultControllerFactory class is and how it is used in a different context). Add an override for the CreateController() method and for the sake of this blog, just copy the same content from the DefaultControllerFactory class. The last step is to tell your MVC app to use the MyControllerFactory class instead of the default one. To do this, go to your Global.asax.cs file and add line 6 of the snippet below: 1: protected void Application_Start() 2: { 3: AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas(); 4:   5: RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes); 6: ControllerBuilder.Current.SetControllerFactory(new MyControllerFactory()); 7: } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Now, you’re ready to reproduce the issue. Just F5 the project and when you hit the overridden CreateController() method for the second time, this is what it looks like for me: And continuing further gives me the same exception. I believe this is something that MS should fix, as not having ‘favicon.ico’ file will be common for most of the applications. So I think the when you create an MVC project, line 6 should be added by default by Visual Studio itself: 1: public class MvcApplication : System.Web.HttpApplication 2: { 3: public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes) 4: { 5: routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}"); 6: routes.IgnoreRoute("favicon.ico"); 7:   8: routes.MapRoute( 9: "Default", // Route name 10: "{controller}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters 11: new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults 12: ); 13: } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } There it is, that’s the solution to avoid the exception altogether. I tried this both IE8 and Firefox browsers and was able to successfully reproduce the error. Hope someone will look at this issue and find a fix. Just before I finish up, I found another ‘bug’, if you want to call it, with Visual Studio 2008. Remember how you could change what browser you want your application to run in by just right clicking on the .aspx file and choosing ‘Browse with…’? Seems like that’s missing when you’re working with an MVC project. In order to test the above bug in the other browser, I had to load a classic ASP.NET project, change the settings and then run my MVC project. Felt kinda ‘icky’, for lack of a better word.

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  • Pre-rentrée Oracle Open World 2012 : à vos agendas

    - by Eric Bezille
    A maintenant moins d'un mois de l’événement majeur d'Oracle, qui se tient comme chaque année à San Francisco, fin septembre, début octobre, les spéculations vont bon train sur les annonces qui vont y être dévoilées... Et sans lever le voile, je vous engage à prendre connaissance des sujets des "Key Notes" qui seront tenues par Larry Ellison, Mark Hurd, Thomas Kurian (responsable des développements logiciels) et John Fowler (responsable des développements systèmes) afin de vous donner un avant goût. Stratégie et Roadmaps Oracle Bien entendu, au-delà des séances plénières qui vous donnerons  une vision précise de la stratégie, et pour ceux qui seront sur place, je vous engage à ne pas manquer les séances d'approfondissement qui auront lieu dans la semaine, dont voici quelques morceaux choisis : "Accelerate your Business with the Oracle Hardware Advantage" avec John Fowler, le lundi 1er Octobre, 3:15pm-4:15pm "Why Oracle Softwares Runs Best on Oracle Hardware" , avec Bradley Carlile, le responsable des Benchmarks, le lundi 1er Octobre, 12:15pm-13:15pm "Engineered Systems - from Vision to Game-changing Results", avec Robert Shimp, le lundi 1er Octobre 1:45pm-2:45pm "Database and Application Consolidation on SPARC Supercluster", avec Hugo Rivero, responsable dans les équipes d'intégration matériels et logiciels, le lundi 1er Octobre, 4:45pm-5:45pm "Oracle’s SPARC Server Strategy Update", avec Masood Heydari, responsable des développements serveurs SPARC, le mardi 2 Octobre, 10:15am - 11:15am "Oracle Solaris 11 Strategy, Engineering Insights, and Roadmap", avec Markus Flier, responsable des développements Solaris, le mercredi 3 Octobre, 10:15am - 11:15am "Oracle Virtualization Strategy and Roadmap", avec Wim Coekaerts, responsable des développement Oracle VM et Oracle Linux, le lundi 1er Octobre, 12:15pm-1:15pm "Big Data: The Big Story", avec Jean-Pierre Dijcks, responsable du développement produits Big Data, le lundi 1er Octobre, 3:15pm-4:15pm "Scaling with the Cloud: Strategies for Storage in Cloud Deployments", avec Christine Rogers,  Principal Product Manager, et Chris Wood, Senior Product Specialist, Stockage , le lundi 1er Octobre, 10:45am-11:45am Retours d'expériences et témoignages Si Oracle Open World est l'occasion de partager avec les équipes de développement d'Oracle en direct, c'est aussi l'occasion d'échanger avec des clients et experts qui ont mis en oeuvre  nos technologies pour bénéficier de leurs retours d'expériences, comme par exemple : "Oracle Optimized Solution for Siebel CRM at ACCOR", avec les témoignages d'Eric Wyttynck, directeur IT Multichannel & CRM  et Pascal Massenet, VP Loyalty & CRM systems, sur les bénéfices non seulement métiers, mais également projet et IT, le mercredi 3 Octobre, 1:15pm-2:15pm "Tips from AT&T: Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Database, and SPARC Enterprise", avec le retour d'expérience des experts Oracle, le mardi 2 Octobre, 11:45am-12:45pm "Creating a Maximum Availability Architecture with SPARC SuperCluster", avec le témoignage de Carte Wright, Database Engineer à CKI, le mercredi 3 Octobre, 11:45am-12:45pm "Multitenancy: Everybody Talks It, Oracle Walks It with Pillar Axiom Storage", avec le témoignage de Stephen Schleiger, Manager Systems Engineering de Navis, le lundi 1er Octobre, 1:45pm-2:45pm "Oracle Exadata for Database Consolidation: Best Practices", avec le retour d'expérience des experts Oracle ayant participé à la mise en oeuvre d'un grand client du monde bancaire, le lundi 1er Octobre, 4:45pm-5:45pm "Oracle Exadata Customer Panel: Packaged Applications with Oracle Exadata", animé par Tim Shetler, VP Product Management, mardi 2 Octobre, 1:15pm-2:15pm "Big Data: Improving Nearline Data Throughput with the StorageTek SL8500 Modular Library System", avec le témoignage du CTO de CSC, Alan Powers, le jeudi 4 Octobre, 12:45pm-1:45pm "Building an IaaS Platform with SPARC, Oracle Solaris 11, and Oracle VM Server for SPARC", avec le témoignage de Syed Qadri, Lead DBA et Michael Arnold, System Architect d'US Cellular, le mardi 2 Octobre, 10:15am-11:15am "Transform Data Center TCO with Oracle Optimized Servers: A Customer Panel", avec les témoignages notamment d'AT&T et Liberty Global, le mardi 2 Octobre, 11:45am-12:45pm "Data Warehouse and Big Data Customers’ View of the Future", avec The Nielsen Company US, Turkcell, GE Retail Finance, Allianz Managed Operations and Services SE, le lundi 1er Octobre, 4:45pm-5:45pm "Extreme Storage Scale and Efficiency: Lessons from a 100,000-Person Organization", le témoignage de l'IT interne d'Oracle sur la transformation et la migration de l'ensemble de notre infrastructure de stockage, mardi 2 Octobre, 1:15pm-2:15pm Echanges avec les groupes d'utilisateurs et les équipes de développement Oracle Si vous avez prévu d'arriver suffisamment tôt, vous pourrez également échanger dès le dimanche avec les groupes d'utilisateurs, ou tous les soirs avec les équipes de développement Oracle sur des sujets comme : "To Exalogic or Not to Exalogic: An Architectural Journey", avec Todd Sheetz - Manager of DBA and Enterprise Architecture, Veolia Environmental Services, le dimanche 30 Septembre, 2:30pm-3:30pm "Oracle Exalytics and Oracle TimesTen for Exalytics Best Practices", avec Mark Rittman, de Rittman Mead Consulting Ltd, le dimanche 30 Septembre, 10:30am-11:30am "Introduction of Oracle Exadata at Telenet: Bringing BI to Warp Speed", avec Rudy Verlinden & Eric Bartholomeus - Managers IT infrastructure à Telenet, le dimanche 30 Septembre, 1:15pm-2:00pm "The Perfect Marriage: Sun ZFS Storage Appliance with Oracle Exadata", avec Melanie Polston, directeur, Data Management, de Novation et Charles Kim, Managing Director de Viscosity, le dimanche 30 Septembre, 9:00am-10am "Oracle’s Big Data Solutions: NoSQL, Connectors, R, and Appliance Technologies", avec Jean-Pierre Dijcks et les équipes de développement Oracle, le lundi 1er Octobre, 6:15pm-7:00pm Testez et évaluez les solutions Et pour finir, vous pouvez même tester les technologies au travers du Oracle DemoGrounds, (1133 Moscone South pour la partie Systèmes Oracle, OS, et Virtualisation) et des "Hands-on-Labs", comme : "Deploying an IaaS Environment with Oracle VM", le mardi 2 Octobre, 10:15am-11:15am "Virtualize and Deploy Oracle Applications in Minutes with Oracle VM: Hands-on Lab", le mardi 2 Octobre, 11:45am-12:45pm (il est fortement conseillé d'avoir suivi le "Hands-on-Labs" précédent avant d'effectuer ce Lab. "x86 Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure with Oracle VM 3.x and Sun ZFS Storage Appliance", le mercredi 3 Octobre, 5:00pm-6:00pm "StorageTek Tape Analytics: Managing Tape Has Never Been So Simple", le mercredi 3 Octobre, 1:15pm-2:15pm "Oracle’s Pillar Axiom 600 Storage System: Power and Ease", le lundi 1er Octobre, 12:15pm-1:15pm "Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure for SPARC with Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c", le lundi 1er Octobre, 1:45pm-2:45pm "Managing Storage in the Cloud", le mardi 2 Octobre, 5:00pm-6:00pm "Learn How to Write MapReduce on Oracle’s Big Data Platform", le lundi 1er Octobre, 12:15pm-1:15pm "Oracle Big Data Analytics and R", le mardi 2 Octobre, 1:15pm-2:15pm "Reduce Risk with Oracle Solaris Access Control to Restrain Users and Isolate Applications", le lundi 1er Octobre, 10:45am-11:45am "Managing Your Data with Built-In Oracle Solaris ZFS Data Services in Release 11", le lundi 1er Octobre, 4:45pm-5:45pm "Virtualizing Your Oracle Solaris 11 Environment", le mardi 2 Octobre, 1:15pm-2:15pm "Large-Scale Installation and Deployment of Oracle Solaris 11", le mercredi 3 Octobre, 3:30pm-4:30pm En conclusion, une semaine très riche en perspective, et qui vous permettra de balayer l'ensemble des sujets au coeur de vos préoccupations, de la stratégie à l'implémentation... Cette semaine doit se préparer, pour tailler votre agenda sur mesure, à travers les plus de 2000 sessions dont je ne vous ai fait qu'un extrait, et dont vous pouvez retrouver l'ensemble en ligne.

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  • SQL University: Database testing and refactoring tools and examples

    - by Mladen Prajdic
    This is a post for a great idea called SQL University started by Jorge Segarra also famously known as SqlChicken on Twitter. It’s a collection of blog posts on different database related topics contributed by several smart people all over the world. So this week is mine and we’ll be talking about database testing and refactoring. In 3 posts we’ll cover: SQLU part 1 - What and why of database testing SQLU part 2 - What and why of database refactoring SQLU part 3 - Database testing and refactoring tools and examples This is the third and last part of the series and in it we’ll take a look at tools we can test and refactor with plus some an example of the both. Tools of the trade First a few thoughts about how to go about testing a database. I'm firmily against any testing tools that go into the database itself or need an extra database. Unit tests for the database and applications using the database should all be in one place using the same technology. By using database specific frameworks we fragment our tests into many places and increase test system complexity. Let’s take a look at some testing tools. 1. NUnit, xUnit, MbUnit All three are .Net testing frameworks meant to unit test .Net application. But we can test databases with them just fine. I use NUnit because I’ve always used it for work and personal projects. One day this might change. So the thing to remember is to be flexible if something better comes along. All three are quite similar and you should be able to switch between them without much problem. 2. TSQLUnit As much as this framework is helpful for the non-C# savvy folks I don’t like it for the reason I stated above. It lives in the database and thus fragments the testing infrastructure. Also it appears that it’s not being actively developed anymore. 3. DbFit I haven’t had the pleasure of trying this tool just yet but it’s on my to-do list. From what I’ve read and heard Gojko Adzic (@gojkoadzic on Twitter) has done a remarkable job with it. 4. Redgate SQL Refactor and Apex SQL Refactor Neither of these refactoring tools are free, however if you have hardcore refactoring planned they are worth while looking into. I’ve only used the Red Gate’s Refactor and was quite impressed with it. 5. Reverting the database state I’ve talked before about ways to revert a database to pre-test state after unit testing. This still holds and I haven’t changed my mind. Also make sure to read the comments as they are quite informative. I especially like the idea of setting up and tearing down the schema for each test group with NHibernate. Testing and refactoring example We’ll take a look at the simple schema and data test for a view and refactoring the SELECT * in that view. We’ll use a single table PhoneNumbers with ID and Phone columns. Then we’ll refactor the Phone column into 3 columns Prefix, Number and Suffix. Lastly we’ll remove the original Phone column. Then we’ll check how the view behaves with tests in NUnit. The comments in code explain the problem so be sure to read them. I’m assuming you know NUnit and C#. T-SQL Code C# test code USE tempdbGOCREATE TABLE PhoneNumbers( ID INT IDENTITY(1,1), Phone VARCHAR(20))GOINSERT INTO PhoneNumbers(Phone)SELECT '111 222333 444' UNION ALLSELECT '555 666777 888'GO-- notice we don't have WITH SCHEMABINDINGCREATE VIEW vPhoneNumbersAS SELECT * FROM PhoneNumbersGO-- Let's take a look at what the view returns -- If we add a new columns and rows both tests will failSELECT *FROM vPhoneNumbers GO -- DoesViewReturnCorrectColumns test will SUCCEED -- DoesViewReturnCorrectData test will SUCCEED -- refactor to split Phone column into 3 partsALTER TABLE PhoneNumbers ADD Prefix VARCHAR(3)ALTER TABLE PhoneNumbers ADD Number VARCHAR(6)ALTER TABLE PhoneNumbers ADD Suffix VARCHAR(3)GO-- update the new columnsUPDATE PhoneNumbers SET Prefix = LEFT(Phone, 3), Number = SUBSTRING(Phone, 5, 6), Suffix = RIGHT(Phone, 3)GO-- remove the old columnALTER TABLE PhoneNumbers DROP COLUMN PhoneGO-- This returns unexpected results!-- it returns 2 columns ID and Phone even though -- we don't have a Phone column anymore.-- Notice that the data is from the Prefix column-- This is a danger of SELECT *SELECT *FROM vPhoneNumbers -- DoesViewReturnCorrectColumns test will SUCCEED -- DoesViewReturnCorrectData test will FAIL -- for a fix we have to call sp_refreshview -- to refresh the view definitionEXEC sp_refreshview 'vPhoneNumbers'-- after the refresh the view returns 4 columns-- this breaks the input/output behavior of the database-- which refactoring MUST NOT doSELECT *FROM vPhoneNumbers -- DoesViewReturnCorrectColumns test will FAIL -- DoesViewReturnCorrectData test will FAIL -- to fix the input/output behavior change problem -- we have to concat the 3 columns into one named PhoneALTER VIEW vPhoneNumbersASSELECT ID, Prefix + ' ' + Number + ' ' + Suffix AS PhoneFROM PhoneNumbersGO-- now it works as expectedSELECT *FROM vPhoneNumbers -- DoesViewReturnCorrectColumns test will SUCCEED -- DoesViewReturnCorrectData test will SUCCEED -- clean upDROP VIEW vPhoneNumbersDROP TABLE PhoneNumbers [Test]public void DoesViewReturnCoorectColumns(){ // conn is a valid SqlConnection to the server's tempdb // note the SET FMTONLY ON with which we return only schema and no data using (SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand("SET FMTONLY ON; SELECT * FROM vPhoneNumbers", conn)) { DataTable dt = new DataTable(); dt.Load(cmd.ExecuteReader(CommandBehavior.CloseConnection)); // test returned schema: number of columns, column names and data types Assert.AreEqual(dt.Columns.Count, 2); Assert.AreEqual(dt.Columns[0].Caption, "ID"); Assert.AreEqual(dt.Columns[0].DataType, typeof(int)); Assert.AreEqual(dt.Columns[1].Caption, "Phone"); Assert.AreEqual(dt.Columns[1].DataType, typeof(string)); }} [Test]public void DoesViewReturnCorrectData(){ // conn is a valid SqlConnection to the server's tempdb using (SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand("SELECT * FROM vPhoneNumbers", conn)) { DataTable dt = new DataTable(); dt.Load(cmd.ExecuteReader(CommandBehavior.CloseConnection)); // test returned data: number of rows and their values Assert.AreEqual(dt.Rows.Count, 2); Assert.AreEqual(dt.Rows[0]["ID"], 1); Assert.AreEqual(dt.Rows[0]["Phone"], "111 222333 444"); Assert.AreEqual(dt.Rows[1]["ID"], 2); Assert.AreEqual(dt.Rows[1]["Phone"], "555 666777 888"); }}   With this simple example we’ve seen how a very simple schema can cause a lot of problems in the whole application/database system if it doesn’t have tests. Imagine what would happen if some outside process would depend on that view. It would get wrong data and propagate it silently throughout the system. And that is not good. So have tests at least for the crucial parts of your systems. And with that we conclude the Database Testing and Refactoring week at SQL University. Hope you learned something new and enjoy the learning weeks to come. Have fun!

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  • Beginner Geek: How to Use Bookmarklets on Any Device

    - by Chris Hoffman
    Web browser bookmarklets allow you to perform actions on the current page with just a click or tap. They’re a lightweight alternative to browser extensions. They even work on mobile browsers that don’t support traditional extensions. To use bookmarklets, all you need is a web browser that supports bookmarks — that’s it! Bookmarklets Explained Web pages you view in your browser use JavaScript code. That’s why web pages aren’t just static documents anymore — they’re dynamic. A bookmarklet is a normal bookmark with a piece of JavaScript code instead of a web address. When you click or tap the bookmarklet, it will execute the JavaScript code on the current page instead of loading a different page, as most bookmarks do. Bookmarklets can be used to do something to a web page with a single click. For example, you’ll find bookmarklets associated with web services like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pocket, and LastPass. When you click the bookmarklet, it will run code that lets you easily share the current page with that service. Bookmarklets don’t just have to be  associated with web services. A bookmarklet you click could modify the appearance of the page, stripping away most of the junk and giving you a clean “reading mode.” It could alter fonts, remove images, or insert other content. It can access anything the web page could access. For example, you could use a bookmarklet to reveal a password that just appears as ******* on the page. Unlike browser extensions, bookmarklets don’t run in the background and bog down your browser. They don’t do anything at all until you click them. Because they just use the standard bookmark system, they can also be used in mobile browsers where you couldn’t run extensions. For example, you could install the Pocket bookmarklet in Safari on an iPad and get an “Add to Pocket” option in Safari. Safari doesn’t offer browsing extensions and Apple’s iOS doesn’t offer a “Share” feature like Android and Windows 8 do, so this is the only way to get this direct integration. You could even use the LastPass bookmarklets in Safari on an iPad to integrate LastPass with the Safari web browser. Where to Find Bookmarklets If you’re looking for a bookmarklet for a particular service, you’ll generally find the bookmarklet on that service’s site. Websites like Twitter, Facebook, and Pocket host pages where they provide bookmarklets along with browser extensions. Bookmarklets aren’t like programs. They’re really just a piece of text that you can put in a bookmarklet, so you don’t have to download them a specific site. You can get them from practically anywhere — installing them just involves copying a bit of text off of a web page. For example, you can just search the web for “reveal password bookmarklet” if you wanted a bookmarklet that will reveal passwords. We’ve covered many of the must-have bookmarklets — and our readers have chimed in too — so take a look at our lists for more examples. How to Install a Bookmarklet Bookmarklets are simple to install. When you hover over a bookmarklet on a web page, you’ll see its address begins with “javascript:”. If you have your web browser’s bookmark or favorites toolbar visible, the easiest way to install a bookmarklet is with drag-and-drop. Press Ctrl+Shift+B to show your bookmarks toolbar if you’re using Chrome or Internet Explorer. In Firefox, right-click the toolbar and click Bookmarks Toolbar. Just drag and drop this link to your bookmark toolbar. The bookmarklet is now installed. You can also install bookmarklets manually. Select the bookmarklet’s code and copy it to your clipboard. If the bookmarklet is a link, right-click or long-press the link and copy its address to your clipboard. Open your browser’s bookmarks manager, add a bookmark, and paste the JavaScript code directly into the address box. Give your bookmarklet a name and save it. How to Use a Bookmarklet Bookmarklets are easiest to use if you have your browser’s bookmarks toolbar enabled. Just click the bookmarklet and your browser will run it on the current page. If you don’t have a bookmarks toolbar — such as on Safari on an iPad or another mobile browser — just open your browser’s bookmarks pane and tap or click the bookmark. In mobile Chrome, you’ll need to launch the bookmarklet from the location bar. Open the web page you want to run the bookmarklet on, tap your location bar, and start searching for the name of the bookmarklet. Tap the bookmarklet’s name to run it on the current page. Note that the bookmarklet only appears here because we have it saved as a bookmark in Chrome. You’ll need to add the bookmarklet to your browser’s bookmarks before you can use it in this way. The location bar approach may also be necessary in other browsers. The trick is loading the bookmark so that it will be associated with your current tab. You can’t just open your bookmarks in a separate browser tab and run the bookmarklet from there — it will run on that other browser tab. Bookmarklets are powerful and flexible. While they’re not as flashy as browser extensions, they’re much more lightweight and allow you to get extension-like features in more limited mobile browsers.

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  • Scripting Language Sessions at Oracle OpenWorld and MySQL Connect, 2012

    - by cj
    This posts highlights some great scripting language sessions coming up at the Oracle OpenWorld and MySQL Connect conferences. These events are happening in San Francisco from the end of September. You can search for other interesting conference sessions in the Content Catalog. Also check out what is happening at JavaOne in that event's Content Catalog (I haven't included sessions from it in this post.) To find the timeslots and locations of each session, click their respective link and check the "Session Schedule" box on the top right. GEN8431 - General Session: What’s New in Oracle Database Application Development This general session takes a look at what’s been new in the last year in Oracle Database application development tools using the latest generation of database technology. Topics range from Oracle SQL Developer and Oracle Application Express to Java and PHP. (Thomas Kyte - Architect, Oracle) BOF9858 - Meet the Developers of Database Access Services (OCI, ODBC, DRCP, PHP, Python) This session is your opportunity to meet in person the Oracle developers who have built Oracle Database access tools and products such as the Oracle Call Interface (OCI), Oracle C++ Call Interface (OCCI), and Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) drivers; Transparent Application Failover (TAF); Oracle Database Instant Client; Database Resident Connection Pool (DRCP); Oracle Net Services, and so on. The team also works with those who develop the PHP, Ruby, Python, and Perl adapters for Oracle Database. Come discuss with them the features you like, your pains, and new product enhancements in the latest database technology. CON8506 - Syndication and Consolidation: Oracle Database Driver for MySQL Applications This technical session presents a new Oracle Database driver that enables you to run MySQL applications (written in PHP, Perl, C, C++, and so on) against Oracle Database with almost no code change. Use cases for such a driver include application syndication such as interoperability across a relationship database management system, application migration, and database consolidation. In addition, the session covers enhancements in database technology that enable and simplify the migration of third-party databases and applications to and consolidation with Oracle Database. Attend this session to learn more and see a live demo. (Srinath Krishnaswamy - Director, Software Development, Oracle. Kuassi Mensah - Director Product Management, Oracle. Mohammad Lari - Principal Technical Staff, Oracle ) CON9167 - Current State of PHP and MySQL Together, PHP and MySQL power large parts of the Web. The developers of both technologies continue to enhance their software to ensure that developers can be satisfied despite all their changing and growing needs. This session presents an overview of changes in PHP 5.4, which was released earlier this year and shows you various new MySQL-related features available for PHP, from transparent client-side caching to direct support for scaling and high-availability needs. (Johannes Schlüter - SoftwareDeveloper, Oracle) CON8983 - Sharding with PHP and MySQL In deploying MySQL, scale-out techniques can be used to scale out reads, but for scaling out writes, other techniques have to be used. To distribute writes over a cluster, it is necessary to shard the database and store the shards on separate servers. This session provides a brief introduction to traditional MySQL scale-out techniques in preparation for a discussion on the different sharding techniques that can be used with MySQL server and how they can be implemented with PHP. You will learn about static and dynamic sharding schemes, their advantages and drawbacks, techniques for locating and moving shards, and techniques for resharding. (Mats Kindahl - Senior Principal Software Developer, Oracle) CON9268 - Developing Python Applications with MySQL Utilities and MySQL Connector/Python This session discusses MySQL Connector/Python and the MySQL Utilities component of MySQL Workbench and explains how to write MySQL applications in Python. It includes in-depth explanations of the features of MySQL Connector/Python and the MySQL Utilities library, along with example code to illustrate the concepts. Those interested in learning how to expand or build their own utilities and connector features will benefit from the tips and tricks from the experts. This session also provides an opportunity to meet directly with the engineers and provide feedback on your issues and priorities. You can learn what exists today and influence future developments. (Geert Vanderkelen - Software Developer, Oracle) BOF9141 - MySQL Utilities and MySQL Connector/Python: Python Developers, Unite! Come to this lively discussion of the MySQL Utilities component of MySQL Workbench and MySQL Connector/Python. It includes in-depth explanations of the features and dives into the code for those interested in learning how to expand or build their own utilities and connector features. This is an audience-driven session, so put on your best Python shirt and let’s talk about MySQL Utilities and MySQL Connector/Python. (Geert Vanderkelen - Software Developer, Oracle. Charles Bell - Senior Software Developer, Oracle) CON3290 - Integrating Oracle Database with a Social Network Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Google Maps. There are many social network sites, each with their own APIs for sharing data with them. Most developers do not realize that Oracle Database has base tools for communicating with these sites, enabling all manner of information, including multimedia, to be passed back and forth between the sites. This technical presentation goes through the methods in PL/SQL for connecting to, and then sending and retrieving, all types of data between these sites. (Marcelle Kratochvil - CTO, Piction) CON3291 - Storing and Tuning Unstructured Data and Multimedia in Oracle Database Database administrators need to learn new skills and techniques when the decision is made in their organization to let Oracle Database manage its unstructured data. They will face new scalability challenges. A single row in a table can become larger than a whole database. This presentation covers the techniques a DBA needs for managing the large volume of data in a standard Oracle Database instance. (Marcelle Kratochvil - CTO, Piction) CON3292 - Using PHP, Perl, Visual Basic, Ruby, and Python for Multimedia in Oracle Database These five programming languages are just some of the most popular ones in use at the moment in the marketplace. This presentation details how you can use them to access and retrieve multimedia from Oracle Database. It covers programming techniques and methods for achieving faster development against Oracle Database. (Marcelle Kratochvil - CTO, Piction) UGF5181 - Building Real-World Oracle DBA Tools in Perl Perl is not normally associated with building mission-critical application or DBA tools. Learn why Perl could be a good choice for building your next killer DBA app. This session draws on real-world experience of building DBA tools in Perl, showing the framework and architecture needed to deal with portability, efficiency, and maintainability. Topics include Perl frameworks; Which Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) modules are good to use; Perl and CPAN module licensing; Perl and Oracle connectivity; Compiling and deploying your app; An example of what is possible with Perl. (Arjen Visser - CEO & CTO, Dbvisit Software Limited) CON3153 - Perl: A DBA’s and Developer’s Best (Forgotten) Friend This session reintroduces Perl as a language of choice for many solutions for DBAs and developers. Discover what makes Perl so successful and why it is so versatile in our day-to-day lives. Perl can automate all those manual tasks and is truly platform-independent. Perl may not be in the limelight the way other languages are, but it is a remarkable language, it is still very current with ongoing development, and it has amazing online resources. Learn what makes Perl so great (including CPAN), get an introduction to Perl language syntax, find out what you can use Perl for, hear how Oracle uses Perl, discover the best way to learn Perl, and take away a small Perl project challenge. (Arjen Visser - CEO & CTO, Dbvisit Software Limited) CON10332 - Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service’s Connect PHP API: Intro, What’s New, and Roadmap Connect PHP is a public API that enables developers to build solutions with the Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service platform. This API is used primarily by developers working within the Oracle RightNow Customer Portal Cloud Service framework who are looking to gain access to data and services hosted by the Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service platform through a backward-compatible API. Connect for PHP leverages the same data model and services as the Connect Web Services for SOAP API. Come to this session to get an introduction and learn what’s new and what’s coming up. (Mark Rhoads - Senior Principal Applications Engineer, Oracle. Mark Ericson - Sr. Principle Product Manager, Oracle) CON10330 - Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service APIs and Frameworks Overview Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service APIs are available in the following areas: desktop UI, Web services, customer portal, PHP, and knowledge. These frameworks provide access to Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service’s Connect Common Object Model and custom objects. This session provides a broad overview of capabilities in all these areas. (Mark Ericson - Sr. Principle Product Manager, Oracle)

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  • Try a sample: Using the counter predicate for event sampling

    - by extended_events
    Extended Events offers a rich filtering mechanism, called predicates, that allows you to reduce the number of events you collect by specifying criteria that will be applied during event collection. (You can find more information about predicates in Using SQL Server 2008 Extended Events (by Jonathan Kehayias)) By evaluating predicates early in the event firing sequence we can reduce the performance impact of collecting events by stopping event collection when the criteria are not met. You can specify predicates on both event fields and on a special object called a predicate source. Predicate sources are similar to action in that they typically are related to some type of global information available from the server. You will find that many of the actions available in Extended Events have equivalent predicate sources, but actions and predicates sources are not the same thing. Applying predicates, whether on a field or predicate source, is very similar to what you are used to in T-SQL in terms of how they work; you pick some field/source and compare it to a value, for example, session_id = 52. There is one predicate source that merits special attention though, not just for its special use, but for how the order of predicate evaluation impacts the behavior you see. I’m referring to the counter predicate source. The counter predicate source gives you a way to sample a subset of events that otherwise meet the criteria of the predicate; for example you could collect every other event, or only every tenth event. Simple CountingThe counter predicate source works by creating an in memory counter that increments every time the predicate statement is evaluated. Here is a simple example with my favorite event, sql_statement_completed, that only collects the second statement that is run. (OK, that’s not much of a sample, but this is for demonstration purposes. Here is the session definition: CREATE EVENT SESSION counter_test ON SERVERADD EVENT sqlserver.sql_statement_completed    (ACTION (sqlserver.sql_text)    WHERE package0.counter = 2)ADD TARGET package0.ring_bufferWITH (MAX_DISPATCH_LATENCY = 1 SECONDS) You can find general information about the session DDL syntax in BOL and from Pedro’s post Introduction to Extended Events. The important part here is the WHERE statement that defines that I only what the event where package0.count = 2; in other words, only the second instance of the event. Notice that I need to provide the package name along with the predicate source. You don’t need to provide the package name if you’re using event fields, only for predicate sources. Let’s say I run the following test queries: -- Run three statements to test the sessionSELECT 'This is the first statement'GOSELECT 'This is the second statement'GOSELECT 'This is the third statement';GO Once you return the event data from the ring buffer and parse the XML (see my earlier post on reading event data) you should see something like this: event_name sql_text sql_statement_completed SELECT ‘This is the second statement’ You can see that only the second statement from the test was actually collected. (Feel free to try this yourself. Check out what happens if you remove the WHERE statement from your session. Go ahead, I’ll wait.) Percentage Sampling OK, so that wasn’t particularly interesting, but you can probably see that this could be interesting, for example, lets say I need a 25% sample of the statements executed on my server for some type of QA analysis, that might be more interesting than just the second statement. All comparisons of predicates are handled using an object called a predicate comparator; the simple comparisons such as equals, greater than, etc. are mapped to the common mathematical symbols you know and love (eg. = and >), but to do the less common comparisons you will need to use the predicate comparators directly. You would probably look to the MOD operation to do this type sampling; we would too, but we don’t call it MOD, we call it divides_by_uint64. This comparator evaluates whether one number is divisible by another with no remainder. The general syntax for using a predicate comparator is pred_comp(field, value), field is always first and value is always second. So lets take a look at how the session changes to answer our new question of 25% sampling: CREATE EVENT SESSION counter_test_25 ON SERVERADD EVENT sqlserver.sql_statement_completed    (ACTION (sqlserver.sql_text)    WHERE package0.divides_by_uint64(package0.counter,4))ADD TARGET package0.ring_bufferWITH (MAX_DISPATCH_LATENCY = 1 SECONDS)GO Here I’ve replaced the simple equivalency check with the divides_by_uint64 comparator to check if the counter is evenly divisible by 4, which gives us back every fourth record. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to test this session. Why order matters I indicated at the start of this post that order matters when it comes to the counter predicate – it does. Like most other predicate systems, Extended Events evaluates the predicate statement from left to right; as soon as the predicate statement is proven false we abandon evaluation of the remainder of the statement. The counter predicate source is only incremented when it is evaluated so whether or not the counter is incremented will depend on where it is in the predicate statement and whether a previous criteria made the predicate false or not. Here is a generic example: Pred1: (WHERE statement_1 AND package0.counter = 2)Pred2: (WHERE package0.counter = 2 AND statement_1) Let’s say I cause a number of events as follows and examine what happens to the counter predicate source. Iteration Statement Pred1 Counter Pred2 Counter A Not statement_1 0 1 B statement_1 1 2 C Not statement_1 1 3 D statement_1 2 4 As you can see, in the case of Pred1, statement_1 is evaluated first, when it fails (A & C) predicate evaluation is stopped and the counter is not incremented. With Pred2 the counter is evaluated first, so it is incremented on every iteration of the event and the remaining parts of the predicate are then evaluated. In this example, Pred1 would return an event for D while Pred2 would return an event for B. But wait, there is an interesting side-effect here; consider Pred2 if I had run my statements in the following order: Not statement_1 Not statement_1 statement_1 statement_1 In this case I would never get an event back from the system because the point at which counter=2, the rest of the predicate evaluates as false so the event is not returned. If you’re using the counter target for sampling and you’re not getting the expected events, or any events, check the order of the predicate criteria. As a general rule I’d suggest that the counter criteria should be the last element of your predicate statement since that will assure that your sampling rate will apply to the set of event records defined by the rest of your predicate. Aside: I’m interested in hearing about uses for putting the counter predicate criteria earlier in the predicate statement. If you have one, post it in a comment to share with the class. - Mike Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • Integrating Coherence & Java EE 6 Applications using ActiveCache

    - by Ricardo Ferreira
    OK, so you are a developer and are starting a new Java EE 6 application using the most wonderful features of the Java EE platform like Enterprise JavaBeans, JavaServer Faces, CDI, JPA e another cool stuff technologies. And your architecture need to hold piece of data into distributed caches to improve application's performance, scalability and reliability? If this is your current facing scenario, maybe you should look closely in the solutions provided by Oracle WebLogic Server. Oracle had integrated WebLogic Server and its champion data caching technology called Oracle Coherence. This seamless integration between this two products provides a comprehensive environment to develop applications without the complexity of extra Java code to manage cache as a dependency, since Oracle provides an DI ("Dependency Injection") mechanism for Coherence, the same DI mechanism available in standard Java EE applications. This feature is called ActiveCache. In this article, I will show you how to configure ActiveCache in WebLogic and at your Java EE application. Configuring WebLogic to manage Coherence Before you start changing your application to use Coherence, you need to configure your Coherence distributed cache. The good news is, you can manage all this stuff without writing a single line of code of XML or even Java. This configuration can be done entirely in the WebLogic administration console. The first thing to do is the setup of a Coherence cluster. A Coherence cluster is a set of Coherence JVMs configured to form one single view of the cache. This means that you can insert or remove members of the cluster without the client application (the application that generates or consume data from the cache) knows about the changes. This concept allows your solution to scale-out without changing the application server JVMs. You can growth your application only in the data grid layer. To start the configuration, you need to configure an machine that points to the server in which you want to execute the Coherence JVMs. WebLogic Server allows you to do this very easily using the Administration Console. In this example, I will call the machine as "coherence-server". Remember that in order to the machine concept works, you need to ensure that the NodeManager are being executed in the target server that the machine points to. The NodeManager executable can be found in <WLS_HOME>/server/bin/startNodeManager.sh. The next thing to do is to configure a Coherence cluster. In the WebLogic administration console, go to Environment > Coherence Clusters and click in "New". Call this Coherence cluster of "my-coherence-cluster". Click in next. Specify a valid cluster address and port. The Coherence members will communicate with each other through this address and port. Our Coherence cluster are now configured. Now it is time to configure the Coherence members and add them to this cluster. In the WebLogic administration console, go to Environment > Coherence Servers and click in "New". In the field "Name" set to "coh-server-1". In the field "Machine", associate this Coherence server to the machine "coherence-server". In the field "Cluster", associate this Coherence server to the cluster named "my-coherence-cluster". Click in "Finish". Start the Coherence server using the "Control" tab of WebLogic administration console. This will instruct WebLogic to start a new JVM of Coherence in the target machine that should join the pre-defined Coherence cluster. Configuring your Java EE Application to Access Coherence Now lets pass to the funny part of the configuration. The first thing to do is to inform your Java EE application which Coherence cluster to join. Oracle had updated WebLogic server deployment descriptors so you will not have to change your code or the containers deployment descriptors like application.xml, ejb-jar.xml or web.xml. In this example, I will show you how to enable DI ("Dependency Injection") to a Coherence cache from a Servlet 3.0 component. In the WEB-INF/weblogic.xml deployment descriptor, put the following metadata information: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <wls:weblogic-web-app xmlns:wls="http://xmlns.oracle.com/weblogic/weblogic-web-app" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd http://xmlns.oracle.com/weblogic/weblogic-web-app http://xmlns.oracle.com/weblogic/weblogic-web-app/1.4/weblogic-web-app.xsd"> <wls:context-root>myWebApp</wls:context-root> <wls:coherence-cluster-ref> <wls:coherence-cluster-name>my-coherence-cluster</wls:coherence-cluster-name> </wls:coherence-cluster-ref> </wls:weblogic-web-app> As you can see, using the "coherence-cluster-name" tag, we are informing our Java EE application that it should join the "my-coherence-cluster" when it loads in the web container. Without this information, the application will not be able to access the predefined Coherence cluster. It will form its own Coherence cluster without any members. So never forget to put this information. Now put the coherence.jar and active-cache-1.0.jar dependencies at your WEB-INF/lib application classpath. You need to deploy this dependencies so ActiveCache can automatically take care of the Coherence cluster join phase. This dependencies can be found in the following locations: - <WLS_HOME>/common/deployable-libraries/active-cache-1.0.jar - <COHERENCE_HOME>/lib/coherence.jar Finally, you need to write down the access code to the Coherence cache at your Servlet. In the following example, we have a Servlet 3.0 component that access a Coherence cache named "transactions" and prints into the browser output the content (the ammount property) of one specific transaction. package com.oracle.coherence.demo.activecache; import java.io.IOException; import javax.annotation.Resource; import javax.servlet.ServletException; import javax.servlet.annotation.WebServlet; import javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet; import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest; import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse; import com.tangosol.net.NamedCache; @WebServlet("/demo/specificTransaction") public class TransactionServletExample extends HttpServlet { @Resource(mappedName = "transactions") NamedCache transactions; protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException { int transId = Integer.parseInt(request.getParameter("transId")); Transaction transaction = (Transaction) transactions.get(transId); response.getWriter().println("<center>" + transaction.getAmmount() + "</center>"); } } Thats it! No more configuration is necessary and you have all set to start producing and getting data to/from Coherence. As you can see in the example code, the Coherence cache are treated as a normal dependency in the Java EE container. The magic happens behind the scenes when the ActiveCache allows your application to join the defined Coherence cluster. The most interesting thing about this approach is, no matter which type of Coherence cache your are using (Distributed, Partitioned, Replicated, WAN-Remote) for the client application, it is just a simple attribute member of com.tangosol.net.NamedCache type. And its all managed by the Java EE container as an dependency. This means that if you inject the same dependency (the Coherence cache named "transactions") in another Java EE component (JSF managed-bean, Stateless EJB) the cache will be the same. Cool isn't it? Thanks to the CDI technology, we can extend the same support for non-Java EE standards components like simple POJOs. This means that you are not forced to only use Servlets, EJBs or JSF in order to inject Coherence caches. You can do the same approach for regular POJOs created for you and managed by lightweight containers like Spring or Seam.

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  • The blocking nature of aggregates

    - by Rob Farley
    I wrote a post recently about how query tuning isn’t just about how quickly the query runs – that if you have something (such as SSIS) that is consuming your data (and probably introducing a bottleneck), then it might be more important to have a query which focuses on getting the first bit of data out. You can read that post here.  In particular, we looked at two operators that could be used to ensure that a query returns only Distinct rows. and The Sort operator pulls in all the data, sorts it (discarding duplicates), and then pushes out the remaining rows. The Hash Match operator performs a Hashing function on each row as it comes in, and then looks to see if it’s created a Hash it’s seen before. If not, it pushes the row out. The Sort method is quicker, but has to wait until it’s gathered all the data before it can do the sort, and therefore blocks the data flow. But that was my last post. This one’s a bit different. This post is going to look at how Aggregate functions work, which ties nicely into this month’s T-SQL Tuesday. I’ve frequently explained about the fact that DISTINCT and GROUP BY are essentially the same function, although DISTINCT is the poorer cousin because you have less control over it, and you can’t apply aggregate functions. Just like the operators used for Distinct, there are different flavours of Aggregate operators – coming in blocking and non-blocking varieties. The example I like to use to explain this is a pile of playing cards. If I’m handed a pile of cards and asked to count how many cards there are in each suit, it’s going to help if the cards are already ordered. Suppose I’m playing a game of Bridge, I can easily glance at my hand and count how many there are in each suit, because I keep the pile of cards in order. Moving from left to right, I could tell you I have four Hearts in my hand, even before I’ve got to the end. By telling you that I have four Hearts as soon as I know, I demonstrate the principle of a non-blocking operation. This is known as a Stream Aggregate operation. It requires input which is sorted by whichever columns the grouping is on, and it will release a row as soon as the group changes – when I encounter a Spade, I know I don’t have any more Hearts in my hand. Alternatively, if the pile of cards are not sorted, I won’t know how many Hearts I have until I’ve looked through all the cards. In fact, to count them, I basically need to put them into little piles, and when I’ve finished making all those piles, I can count how many there are in each. Because I don’t know any of the final numbers until I’ve seen all the cards, this is blocking. This performs the aggregate function using a Hash Match. Observant readers will remember this from my Distinct example. You might remember that my earlier Hash Match operation – used for Distinct Flow – wasn’t blocking. But this one is. They’re essentially doing a similar operation, applying a Hash function to some data and seeing if the set of values have been seen before, but before, it needs more information than the mere existence of a new set of values, it needs to consider how many of them there are. A lot is dependent here on whether the data coming out of the source is sorted or not, and this is largely determined by the indexes that are being used. If you look in the Properties of an Index Scan, you’ll be able to see whether the order of the data is required by the plan. A property called Ordered will demonstrate this. In this particular example, the second plan is significantly faster, but is dependent on having ordered data. In fact, if I force a Stream Aggregate on unordered data (which I’m doing by telling it to use a different index), a Sort operation is needed, which makes my plan a lot slower. This is all very straight-forward stuff, and information that most people are fully aware of. I’m sure you’ve all read my good friend Paul White (@sql_kiwi)’s post on how the Query Optimizer chooses which type of aggregate function to apply. But let’s take a look at SQL Server Integration Services. SSIS gives us a Aggregate transformation for use in Data Flow Tasks, but it’s described as Blocking. The definitive article on Performance Tuning SSIS uses Sort and Aggregate as examples of Blocking Transformations. I’ve just shown you that Aggregate operations used by the Query Optimizer are not always blocking, but that the SSIS Aggregate component is an example of a blocking transformation. But is it always the case? After all, there are plenty of SSIS Performance Tuning talks out there that describe the value of sorted data in Data Flow Tasks, describing the IsSorted property that can be set through the Advanced Editor of your Source component. And so I set about testing the Aggregate transformation in SSIS, to prove for sure whether providing Sorted data would let the Aggregate transform behave like a Stream Aggregate. (Of course, I knew the answer already, but it helps to be able to demonstrate these things). A query that will produce a million rows in order was in order. Let me rephrase. I used a query which produced the numbers from 1 to 1000000, in a single field, ordered. The IsSorted flag was set on the source output, with the only column as SortKey 1. Performing an Aggregate function over this (counting the number of rows per distinct number) should produce an additional column with 1 in it. If this were being done in T-SQL, the ordered data would allow a Stream Aggregate to be used. In fact, if the Query Optimizer saw that the field had a Unique Index on it, it would be able to skip the Aggregate function completely, and just insert the value 1. This is a shortcut I wouldn’t be expecting from SSIS, but certainly the Stream behaviour would be nice. Unfortunately, it’s not the case. As you can see from the screenshots above, the data is pouring into the Aggregate function, and not being released until all million rows have been seen. It’s not doing a Stream Aggregate at all. This is expected behaviour. (I put that in bold, because I want you to realise this.) An SSIS transformation is a piece of code that runs. It’s a physical operation. When you write T-SQL and ask for an aggregation to be done, it’s a logical operation. The physical operation is either a Stream Aggregate or a Hash Match. In SSIS, you’re telling the system that you want a generic Aggregation, that will have to work with whatever data is passed in. I’m not saying that it wouldn’t be possible to make a sometimes-blocking aggregation component in SSIS. A Custom Component could be created which could detect whether the SortKeys columns of the input matched the Grouping columns of the Aggregation, and either call the blocking code or the non-blocking code as appropriate. One day I’ll make one of those, and publish it on my blog. I’ve done it before with a Script Component, but as Script components are single-use, I was able to handle the data knowing everything about my data flow already. As per my previous post – there are a lot of aspects in which tuning SSIS and tuning execution plans use similar concepts. In both situations, it really helps to have a feel for what’s going on behind the scenes. Considering whether an operation is blocking or not is extremely relevant to performance, and that it’s not always obvious from the surface. In a future post, I’ll show the impact of blocking v non-blocking and synchronous v asynchronous components in SSIS, using some of LobsterPot’s Script Components and Custom Components as examples. When I get that sorted, I’ll make a Stream Aggregate component available for download.

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  • The blocking nature of aggregates

    - by Rob Farley
    I wrote a post recently about how query tuning isn’t just about how quickly the query runs – that if you have something (such as SSIS) that is consuming your data (and probably introducing a bottleneck), then it might be more important to have a query which focuses on getting the first bit of data out. You can read that post here.  In particular, we looked at two operators that could be used to ensure that a query returns only Distinct rows. and The Sort operator pulls in all the data, sorts it (discarding duplicates), and then pushes out the remaining rows. The Hash Match operator performs a Hashing function on each row as it comes in, and then looks to see if it’s created a Hash it’s seen before. If not, it pushes the row out. The Sort method is quicker, but has to wait until it’s gathered all the data before it can do the sort, and therefore blocks the data flow. But that was my last post. This one’s a bit different. This post is going to look at how Aggregate functions work, which ties nicely into this month’s T-SQL Tuesday. I’ve frequently explained about the fact that DISTINCT and GROUP BY are essentially the same function, although DISTINCT is the poorer cousin because you have less control over it, and you can’t apply aggregate functions. Just like the operators used for Distinct, there are different flavours of Aggregate operators – coming in blocking and non-blocking varieties. The example I like to use to explain this is a pile of playing cards. If I’m handed a pile of cards and asked to count how many cards there are in each suit, it’s going to help if the cards are already ordered. Suppose I’m playing a game of Bridge, I can easily glance at my hand and count how many there are in each suit, because I keep the pile of cards in order. Moving from left to right, I could tell you I have four Hearts in my hand, even before I’ve got to the end. By telling you that I have four Hearts as soon as I know, I demonstrate the principle of a non-blocking operation. This is known as a Stream Aggregate operation. It requires input which is sorted by whichever columns the grouping is on, and it will release a row as soon as the group changes – when I encounter a Spade, I know I don’t have any more Hearts in my hand. Alternatively, if the pile of cards are not sorted, I won’t know how many Hearts I have until I’ve looked through all the cards. In fact, to count them, I basically need to put them into little piles, and when I’ve finished making all those piles, I can count how many there are in each. Because I don’t know any of the final numbers until I’ve seen all the cards, this is blocking. This performs the aggregate function using a Hash Match. Observant readers will remember this from my Distinct example. You might remember that my earlier Hash Match operation – used for Distinct Flow – wasn’t blocking. But this one is. They’re essentially doing a similar operation, applying a Hash function to some data and seeing if the set of values have been seen before, but before, it needs more information than the mere existence of a new set of values, it needs to consider how many of them there are. A lot is dependent here on whether the data coming out of the source is sorted or not, and this is largely determined by the indexes that are being used. If you look in the Properties of an Index Scan, you’ll be able to see whether the order of the data is required by the plan. A property called Ordered will demonstrate this. In this particular example, the second plan is significantly faster, but is dependent on having ordered data. In fact, if I force a Stream Aggregate on unordered data (which I’m doing by telling it to use a different index), a Sort operation is needed, which makes my plan a lot slower. This is all very straight-forward stuff, and information that most people are fully aware of. I’m sure you’ve all read my good friend Paul White (@sql_kiwi)’s post on how the Query Optimizer chooses which type of aggregate function to apply. But let’s take a look at SQL Server Integration Services. SSIS gives us a Aggregate transformation for use in Data Flow Tasks, but it’s described as Blocking. The definitive article on Performance Tuning SSIS uses Sort and Aggregate as examples of Blocking Transformations. I’ve just shown you that Aggregate operations used by the Query Optimizer are not always blocking, but that the SSIS Aggregate component is an example of a blocking transformation. But is it always the case? After all, there are plenty of SSIS Performance Tuning talks out there that describe the value of sorted data in Data Flow Tasks, describing the IsSorted property that can be set through the Advanced Editor of your Source component. And so I set about testing the Aggregate transformation in SSIS, to prove for sure whether providing Sorted data would let the Aggregate transform behave like a Stream Aggregate. (Of course, I knew the answer already, but it helps to be able to demonstrate these things). A query that will produce a million rows in order was in order. Let me rephrase. I used a query which produced the numbers from 1 to 1000000, in a single field, ordered. The IsSorted flag was set on the source output, with the only column as SortKey 1. Performing an Aggregate function over this (counting the number of rows per distinct number) should produce an additional column with 1 in it. If this were being done in T-SQL, the ordered data would allow a Stream Aggregate to be used. In fact, if the Query Optimizer saw that the field had a Unique Index on it, it would be able to skip the Aggregate function completely, and just insert the value 1. This is a shortcut I wouldn’t be expecting from SSIS, but certainly the Stream behaviour would be nice. Unfortunately, it’s not the case. As you can see from the screenshots above, the data is pouring into the Aggregate function, and not being released until all million rows have been seen. It’s not doing a Stream Aggregate at all. This is expected behaviour. (I put that in bold, because I want you to realise this.) An SSIS transformation is a piece of code that runs. It’s a physical operation. When you write T-SQL and ask for an aggregation to be done, it’s a logical operation. The physical operation is either a Stream Aggregate or a Hash Match. In SSIS, you’re telling the system that you want a generic Aggregation, that will have to work with whatever data is passed in. I’m not saying that it wouldn’t be possible to make a sometimes-blocking aggregation component in SSIS. A Custom Component could be created which could detect whether the SortKeys columns of the input matched the Grouping columns of the Aggregation, and either call the blocking code or the non-blocking code as appropriate. One day I’ll make one of those, and publish it on my blog. I’ve done it before with a Script Component, but as Script components are single-use, I was able to handle the data knowing everything about my data flow already. As per my previous post – there are a lot of aspects in which tuning SSIS and tuning execution plans use similar concepts. In both situations, it really helps to have a feel for what’s going on behind the scenes. Considering whether an operation is blocking or not is extremely relevant to performance, and that it’s not always obvious from the surface. In a future post, I’ll show the impact of blocking v non-blocking and synchronous v asynchronous components in SSIS, using some of LobsterPot’s Script Components and Custom Components as examples. When I get that sorted, I’ll make a Stream Aggregate component available for download.

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  • top tweets WebLogic Partner Community – June 2013

    - by JuergenKress
    Send us your tweets @wlscommunity #WebLogicCommunity and follow us on twitter http://twitter.com/wlscommunity. Please feel free to send us your news! Lucas Jellema ?Getting started with Java EE 7: The Tutorial http://docs.oracle.com/javaee/7/tutorial/doc/home.htm … Simon Haslam I'm looking forward to starting a "WLS on ODA" proof of concept - some ideas for testing: http://www.veriton.co.uk/roller/fmw/entry/virtualised_oda_proof_of_concept … Frank Munz ?It's not too late - I just submitted two presentations about #OracleWebLogic and #Coherence for the @DOAGeV conference in Nürnberg. Did you? Arun Gupta ?Tyrus 1.0 User Guide: https://tyrus.java.net/documentation/1.0/user-guide.html … #WebSocket #JavaEE7 #GlassFish Arun Gupta #JavaEE7 Launch Webinar Technical Breakout replays on Youtube: http://bit.ly/12uUicT JSON 1.0 , EJB .2, Batch 1.0 more coming! OracleBlogs ?FREE Virtual Developer Day: Java SE, Java EE, Java Emebedded on Jun 19th and 25th http://ow.ly/2xBkwV Markus Eisele #Oracle #JavaSE Critical Patch Update Pre-Release Announcement - June 2013 http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/javacpujun2013-1899847.html … #security OracleSupport_WLS ?Simple Custom #JMX MBeans with #WebLogic 12c and #Spring http://pub.vitrue.com/3kEr Oracle Technet Building Java HTML5/WebSocket Applications with JSR 356 - 4pm - Grand Ballroom Salon A/B #qconnewyork WebLogic Community Oracle Fusion Middleware (OFM) 11g (11.1.1.7) Starter Kit available & Customizable Demos http://wp.me/p1LMIb-BK Oracle Technet #Java EE 7: Moving Java Forward for the Enterprise | @java http://pub.vitrue.com/tHiM OTNArchBeat ?Oracle Forms to ADF Modernization Reference - Convero (AMEC) Project | @AndrejusB http://pub.vitrue.com/lZPR WebLogic Community ?ExaLogic In Memory Applications & Whitepapers Building Large Scale E-Commerce Platforms & Rethink the Entire Application Lifecycle… WebLogic Community ?Coherence YouTube videos http://wp.me/p1LMIb-BG Arun Gupta ?WARNING: Next 2 days are going to be loaded with #JavaEE7 launch related tweets, and offline next week! JDeveloper & ADF Using Contextual Event in Oracle ADF http://dlvr.it/3Vpybr Oracle WebLogic Check out new blog on #hybrid_cloud & why choice is important http://bit.ly/1b1QGhL Andrejus Baranovskis Oracle Forms to ADF Modernization Reference - Convero (AMEC) Project http://fb.me/1M9iWNmAw WebLogic Community WebLogic on Oracle Database Appliance by Frances Zhao http://wp.me/p1LMIb-BE OTNArchBeat ?New: A-Team Chronicles >> A great resource for technical content covering Oracle Fusion Middleware / Fusion Apps http://pub.vitrue.com/qbzS Oracle for Partners ?Take Java To The Edge: Java Virtual Developer Day – June 19 & June 25 http://bit.ly/19fGlSX Adam Bien ?Looking forward to tomorrow's #javaee7 + #angularjs #html5 marriage at #jpoint. See you there: http://www.jpoint.nl/meetingpoint/editie-2013#sessie-1 … shay shmeltzer ?There is a new patch for the #Oracle #ADF Mobile extension - use help->check for updates to get it. Frank Munz ?Not using @OracleWebLogic 12c yet? Australia does! Reviews from my @AUSOUG workshops in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. http://goo.gl/BfVc4 Arun Gupta ?WebSocket, Server-Sent Events, #JavaEE7 sessions accepted at #jaxlondon ... that's gonna be at least third trip to London this year! WebLogic Community SPARC T5-8 Delivers Best Single System SPECjEnterprise2010 Benchmark running WebLogic 12c http://wp.me/p1LMIb-BC WebLogic Community The Ultimate Java EE Event - 16 Power Workshops mit allen wichtigen Java-EE-Themen http://wp.me/p1LMIb-BY Oracle WebLogic ?@OracleWebLogic 7 Jun New Blog Post: Using try-with-resources with JDBC objects http://ow.ly/2xryb5 JDeveloper & ADF Switching Lists of Values http://dlvr.it/3PbCkw WebLogic Community ?YouTube channel Learning Oracle's ADF http://wp.me/p1LMIb-zA Markus Eisele [GER] RT @heisedc: #Java-Entwicklung in #Oracles Public #Cloud http://heise.de/-1866388/ftw OracleBlogs ?Coherence Incubator & Community Source Code & Release Documentation http://ow.ly/2x2fXK chriscmuir ?New blog post: Migrating ADF Mobile apps from 1.0 to 1.1 https://blogs.oracle.com/onesizedoesntfitall/entry/migrating_adf_mobile_apps_from … JDeveloper & ADF ?ADF JavaScript Partitioning for Performance http://dlvr.it/3Trw15 WebLogic Community WebLogic Server Security Workshop June 27th 2013 Germany http://wp.me/p1LMIb-C7 WebLogic Community Oracle Optimized Solution for WebLogic Server 12c http://wp.me/p1LMIb-BA WebLogic Community Virtualize and Run Your Forms Applications in the Cloud - Now On Demand http://wp.me/p1LMIb-By Lucas Jellema Innteresting presentation on various aspects of end user assistance in Fusion Applications (ADF based): http://www.slideshare.net/uobroin/ouag-ireland-final2012slideshare … Adam Bien ?Summer Of JavaEE Workshops And Gigs: Free Hacking night:11.06.2013, Utrecht JavaEE 7 Meets HTML 5 and AngularJ... http://bit.ly/11XRjt4 WebLogic Community ?Real World ADF Design & Architecture Principles Trainings Germany, Poland & Portugal http://wp.me/p1LMIb-Bw Oracle for Partners ?JAVA Virtual Developer Day – June 19 & June 25 - Watch educational content and engage with Oracle experts online https://oracle.6connex.com/portal/java2013/login/?langR=en_US&mcc=OPNNSL … Markus Eisele ?[blog] Java EE 7 is final. Thoughts, Insights and further Pointers. http://dlvr.it/3SrxnB #javaee7 WebLogic Community Oracle takes the top spot for market share in the Application Server Market Segment for 2012 http://wp.me/p1LMIb-Bu OTNArchBeat ?Oracle ACE Director @LucasJellema is "very pleasantly surprised" with the new ADF Academy. http://pub.vitrue.com/8fad chriscmuir ?Sell out crowd for our ADF architecture course in Munich #adfarch pic.twitter.com/zhNtQJ25JV Markus Eisele ?[blog] New German Article: Java 7 Update 21 Security Improvements http://dlvr.it/3Sc8V9 #java #heise #security Markus Eisele ?[blog] New German Article: Oracle Java Cloud Service http://dlvr.it/3Sc20V #java #heise #OracleCloud OracleSupport_WLS ?Troubleshooting and Tuning with #WebLogic - Developer Webcast now available on #Youtube http://pub.vitrue.com/GSOy Andrejus Baranovskis New ADF Academy - Impressive Concept for ADF eLearning http://fb.me/2kYSMKKR5 OracleSupport_WLS ?Removing a #weblogic domain properly http://pub.vitrue.com/ZndM WebLogic Community WebLogic Partner Community Newsletter May 2013 http://wp.me/p1LMIb-Bp Oracle WebLogic ?Blog: Troubleshooting tools Part 3- Heap Dumps #Oracle #WebLogic Read the series http://bit.ly/14CQSD2 Oracle WebLogic ?Blog: #WebLogic_Server on #Oracle_Database_Appliance- How to conjure a WebLogic cluster- http://bit.ly/11fciHA Oracle WebLogic ?Check out new cool features in Oracle Traffic Director- http://bit.ly/11fbz9h WebLogic Community Additional new material WebLogic Community April 2013 http://wp.me/p1LMIb-zM WebLogic Community New WebLogic references - we want yours http://wp.me/p1LMIb-zK OracleSupport_WLS ?#Weblogic Session Replication jsession ID and F5 http://pub.vitrue.com/dWZp OracleBlogs ?top tweets WebLogic Partner Community May 2013 http://ow.ly/2xc8M5 WebLogic Community Welcome to the Spring edition of Oracle Scene http://wp.me/p1LMIb-zE Andreas Koop ?[blog post] ADF: Static Values View Object does not show any values (solved) http://bit.ly/14RDZ8p OracleBlogs ?ADF Mobile - accessing the SQLite database http://ow.ly/2x85r0 OracleSupport_WLS Youtube channel- Troubleshooting and Tuning with #WebLogic.#JRockit #SOAP #JRF http://pub.vitrue.com/qMxu Arun Gupta Next Java Magazine is all about #JavaEE7...productivity, HTML5, WebSocket, Batch & more. Subscribe http://ow.ly/lkD5D (@Oraclejavamag) Oracle WebLogic How to configure a #WebLogic cluster on #Oracle_Database_Appliance? It’s easy, read how. http://bit.ly/11fciHA Oracle WebLogic ?Blog: How to use Heap Dumps to troubleshooting memory leaks- #Oracle #WebLogic_Server http://bit.ly/14CQSD2 OracleBlogs ?Over 100 Images To Be Added to NetBeans Platform Showcase http://ow.ly/2x7Fvp Lucas Jellema A new release of the ADF EMG Task Flow Tester is now available for both JDeveloper 11 R1 and R2. https://java.net/projects/adf-task-flow-tester/pages/GettingStarted … WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: twitter,WebLogic,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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  • C# Extension Methods - To Extend or Not To Extend...

    - by James Michael Hare
    I've been thinking a lot about extension methods lately, and I must admit I both love them and hate them. They are a lot like sugar, they taste so nice and sweet, but they'll rot your teeth if you eat them too much.   I can't deny that they aren't useful and very handy. One of the major components of the Shared Component library where I work is a set of useful extension methods. But, I also can't deny that they tend to be overused and abused to willy-nilly extend every living type.   So what constitutes a good extension method? Obviously, you can write an extension method for nearly anything whether it is a good idea or not. Many times, in fact, an idea seems like a good extension method but in retrospect really doesn't fit.   So what's the litmus test? To me, an extension method should be like in the movies when a person runs into their twin, separated at birth. You just know you're related. Obviously, that's hard to quantify, so let's try to put a few rules-of-thumb around them.   A good extension method should:     Apply to any possible instance of the type it extends.     Simplify logic and improve readability/maintainability.     Apply to the most specific type or interface applicable.     Be isolated in a namespace so that it does not pollute IntelliSense.     So let's look at a few examples in relation to these rules.   The first rule, to me, is the most important of all. Once again, it bears repeating, a good extension method should apply to all possible instances of the type it extends. It should feel like the long lost relative that should have been included in the original class but somehow was missing from the family tree.    Take this nifty little int extension, I saw this once in a blog and at first I really thought it was pretty cool, but then I started noticing a code smell I couldn't quite put my finger on. So let's look:       public static class IntExtensinos     {         public static int Seconds(int num)         {             return num * 1000;         }           public static int Minutes(int num)         {             return num * 60000;         }     }     This is so you could do things like:       ...     Thread.Sleep(5.Seconds());     ...     proxy.Timeout = 1.Minutes();     ...     Awww, you say, that's cute! Well, that's the problem, it's kitschy and it doesn't always apply (and incidentally you could achieve the same thing with TimeStamp.FromSeconds(5)). It's syntactical candy that looks cool, but tends to rot and pollute the code. It would allow things like:       total += numberOfTodaysOrders.Seconds();     which makes no sense and should never be allowed. The problem is you're applying an extension method to a logical domain, not a type domain. That is, the extension method Seconds() doesn't really apply to ALL ints, it applies to ints that are representative of time that you want to convert to milliseconds.    Do you see what I mean? The two problems, in a nutshell, are that a) Seconds() called off a non-time value makes no sense and b) calling Seconds() off something to pass to something that does not take milliseconds will be off by a factor of 1000 or worse.   Thus, in my mind, you should only ever have an extension method that applies to the whole domain of that type.   For example, this is one of my personal favorites:       public static bool IsBetween<T>(this T value, T low, T high)         where T : IComparable<T>     {         return value.CompareTo(low) >= 0 && value.CompareTo(high) <= 0;     }   This allows you to check if any IComparable<T> is within an upper and lower bound. Think of how many times you type something like:       if (response.Employee.Address.YearsAt >= 2         && response.Employee.Address.YearsAt <= 10)     {     ...     }     Now, you can instead type:       if(response.Employee.Address.YearsAt.IsBetween(2, 10))     {     ...     }     Note that this applies to all IComparable<T> -- that's ints, chars, strings, DateTime, etc -- and does not depend on any logical domain. In addition, it satisfies the second point and actually makes the code more readable and maintainable.   Let's look at the third point. In it we said that an extension method should fit the most specific interface or type possible. Now, I'm not saying if you have something that applies to enumerables, you create an extension for List, Array, Dictionary, etc (though you may have reasons for doing so), but that you should beware of making things TOO general.   For example, let's say we had an extension method like this:       public static T ConvertTo<T>(this object value)     {         return (T)Convert.ChangeType(value, typeof(T));     }         This lets you do more fluent conversions like:       double d = "5.0".ConvertTo<double>();     However, if you dig into Reflector (LOVE that tool) you will see that if the type you are calling on does not implement IConvertible, what you convert to MUST be the exact type or it will throw an InvalidCastException. Now this may or may not be what you want in this situation, and I leave that up to you. Things like this would fail:       object value = new Employee();     ...     // class cast exception because typeof(IEmployee) != typeof(Employee)     IEmployee emp = value.ConvertTo<IEmployee>();       Yes, that's a downfall of working with Convertible in general, but if you wanted your fluent interface to be more type-safe so that ConvertTo were only callable on IConvertibles (and let casting be a manual task), you could easily make it:         public static T ConvertTo<T>(this IConvertible value)     {         return (T)Convert.ChangeType(value, typeof(T));     }         This is what I mean by choosing the best type to extend. Consider that if we used the previous (object) version, every time we typed a dot ('.') on an instance we'd pull up ConvertTo() whether it was applicable or not. By filtering our extension method down to only valid types (those that implement IConvertible) we greatly reduce our IntelliSense pollution and apply a good level of compile-time correctness.   Now my fourth rule is just my general rule-of-thumb. Obviously, you can make extension methods as in-your-face as you want. I included all mine in my work libraries in its own sub-namespace, something akin to:       namespace Shared.Core.Extensions { ... }     This is in a library called Shared.Core, so just referencing the Core library doesn't pollute your IntelliSense, you have to actually do a using on Shared.Core.Extensions to bring the methods in. This is very similar to the way Microsoft puts its extension methods in System.Linq. This way, if you want 'em, you use the appropriate namespace. If you don't want 'em, they won't pollute your namespace.   To really make this work, however, that namespace should only include extension methods and subordinate types those extensions themselves may use. If you plant other useful classes in those namespaces, once a user includes it, they get all the extensions too.   Also, just as a personal preference, extension methods that aren't simply syntactical shortcuts, I like to put in a static utility class and then have extension methods for syntactical candy. For instance, I think it imaginable that any object could be converted to XML:       namespace Shared.Core     {         // A collection of XML Utility classes         public static class XmlUtility         {             ...             // Serialize an object into an xml string             public static string ToXml(object input)             {                 var xs = new XmlSerializer(input.GetType());                   // use new UTF8Encoding here, not Encoding.UTF8. The later includes                 // the BOM which screws up subsequent reads, the former does not.                 using (var memoryStream = new MemoryStream())                 using (var xmlTextWriter = new XmlTextWriter(memoryStream, new UTF8Encoding()))                 {                     xs.Serialize(xmlTextWriter, input);                     return Encoding.UTF8.GetString(memoryStream.ToArray());                 }             }             ...         }     }   I also wanted to be able to call this from an object like:       value.ToXml();     But here's the problem, if i made this an extension method from the start with that one little keyword "this", it would pop into IntelliSense for all objects which could be very polluting. Instead, I put the logic into a utility class so that users have the choice of whether or not they want to use it as just a class and not pollute IntelliSense, then in my extensions namespace, I add the syntactical candy:       namespace Shared.Core.Extensions     {         public static class XmlExtensions         {             public static string ToXml(this object value)             {                 return XmlUtility.ToXml(value);             }         }     }   So now it's the best of both worlds. On one hand, they can use the utility class if they don't want to pollute IntelliSense, and on the other hand they can include the Extensions namespace and use as an extension if they want. The neat thing is it also adheres to the Single Responsibility Principle. The XmlUtility is responsible for converting objects to XML, and the XmlExtensions is responsible for extending object's interface for ToXml().

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  • CEN/CENELEC Lacks Perspective

    - by trond-arne.undheim
    Over the last few months, two of the European Standardization Organizations (ESOs), CEN and CENELEC have circulated an unfortunate position statement distorting the facts around fora and consortia. For the benefit of outsiders to this debate, let's just say that this debate regards whether and how the EU should recognize standards and specifications from certain fora and consortia based on a process evaluating the openness and transparency of such deliverables. The topic is complex, and somewhat confusing even to insiders, but nevertheless crucial to the European economy. As far as I can judge, their positions are not based on facts. This is unfortunate. For the benefit of clarity, here are some of the observations they make: a)"Most consortia are in essence driven by technology companies making hardware and software solutions, by definition very few of the largest ones are European-based". b) "Most consortia lack a European presence, relevant Committees, even those that are often cited as having stronger links with Europe, seem to lack an overall, inclusive set of participants". c) "Recognising specific consortia specifications will not resolve any concrete problems of interoperability for public authorities; interoperability depends on stringing together a range of specifications (from formal global bodies or consortia alike)". d) "Consortia already have the option to have their specifications adopted by the international formal standards bodies and many more exercise this than the two that seem to be campaigning for European recognition. Such specifications can then also be adopted as European standards." e) "Consortium specifications completely lack any process to take due and balanced account of requirements at national level - this is not important for technologies but can be a critical issue when discussing cross-border issues within the EU such as eGovernment, eHealth and so on". f) "The proposed recognition will not lead to standstill on national or European activities, nor to the adoption of the specifications as national standards in the CEN and CENELEC members (usually in their official national languages), nor to withdrawal of conflicting national standards. A big asset of the European standardization system is its coherence and lack of fragmentation." g) "We always miss concrete and specific examples of where consortia referencing are supposed to be helpful." First of all, note that ETSI, the third ESO, did not join the position. The reason is, of course, that ETSI beyond being an ESO, also has a global perspective and, moreover, does consider reality. Secondly, having produced arguments a) to g), CEN/CENELEC has the audacity to call a meeting on Friday 25 February entitled "ICT standardization - improving collaboration in Europe". This sounds very nice, but they have not set the stage for constructive debate. Rather, they demonstrate a striking lack of vision and lack of perspective. I will back this up by three facts, and leave it there. 1. Since the 1980s, global industry fora and consortia, such as IETF, W3C and OASIS have emerged as world-leading ICT standards development organizations with excellent procedures for openness and transparency in all phases of standards development, ex post and ex ante. - Practically no ICT system can be built without using fora and consortia standards (FCS). - Without using FCS, neither the Internet, upon which the EU economy depends, nor EU institutions would operate. - FCS are of high relevance for achieving and promoting interoperability and driving innovation. 2. FCS are complementary to the formally recognized standards organizations including the ESOs. - No work will be taken away from the ESOs should the EU recognize certain FCS. - Each FCS would be evaluated on its merit and on the openness of the process that produced it. ESOs would, with other stakeholders, have a say. - ESOs could potentially educate and assist European stakeholders to engage more actively and constructively with FCS. - ETSI, also an ESO, seems to clearly recognize these facts. 3. Europe and its Member States have a strong voice in several of the most relevant global industry fora and consortia. - W3C: W3C was founded in 1994 by an Englishman, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, in collaboration with CERN, the European research lab. In April 1995, INRIA (Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et Automatique) in France became the first European W3C host and in 2003, ERCIM (European Research Consortium in Informatics and Mathematics), also based in France, took over the role of European W3C host from INRIA. Today, W3C has 326 Members, 40% of which are European. Government participation is also strong, and it could be increased - a development that is very much desired by W3C. Current members of the W3C Advisory Board includes Ora Lassila (Nokia) and Charles McCathie Nevile (Opera). Nokia is Finnish company, Opera is a Norwegian company. SAP's Claus von Riegen is an alumni of the same Advisory Board. - OASIS: its membership - 30% of which is European - represents the marketplace, reflecting a balance of providers, user companies, government agencies, and non-profit organizations. In particular, about 15% of OASIS members are governments or universities. Frederick Hirsch from Nokia, Claus von Riegen from SAP AG and Charles-H. Schulz from Ars Aperta are on the Board of Directors. Nokia is a Finnish company, SAP is a German company and Ars Aperta is a French company. The Chairman of the Board is Peter Brown, who is an Independent Consultant, an Austrian citizen AND an official of the European Parliament currently on long-term leave. - IETF: The oversight of its activities is by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), since 2007 chaired by Olaf Kolkman, a Dutch national who lives in Uithoorn, NL. Kolkman is director of NLnet Labs, a foundation chartered to develop open source software and open source standards for the Internet. Other IAB members include Marcelo Bagnulo whose affiliation is the University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain as well as Hannes Tschofenig from Nokia Siemens Networks. Nokia is a Finnish company. Siemens is a German company. Nokia Siemens is a European joint venture. - Member States: At least 17 European Member States have developed Interoperability Frameworks that include FCS, according to the EU-funded National Interoperability Framework Observatory (see list and NIFO web site on IDABC). This also means they actively procure solutions using FCS, reference FCS in their policies and even in laws. Member State reps are free to engage in FCS, and many do. It would be nice if the EU adjusted to this reality. - A huge number of European nationals work in the global IT industry, on European soil or elsewhere, whether in EU registered companies or not. CEN/CENELEC lacks perspective and has engaged in an effort to twist facts that is quite striking from a publicly funded organization. I wish them all possible success with Friday's meeting but I fear all of the most important stakeholders will not be at the table. Not because they do not wish to collaborate, but because they just have been insulted. If they do show up, it would be a gracious move, almost beyond comprehension. While I do not expect CEN/CENELEC to line up perfectly in favor of fora and consortia, I think it would be to their benefit to stick to more palatable observations. Actually, I would suggest an apology, straightening out the facts. This works among friends and it works in an organizational context. Then, we can all move on. Standardization is important. Too important to ignore. Too important to distort. The European economy depends on it. We need CEN/CENELEC. It is an important organization. But CEN/CENELEC needs fora and consortia, too.

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  • Improved Performance on PeopleSoft Combined Benchmark using SPARC T4-4

    - by Brian
    Oracle's SPARC T4-4 server running Oracle's PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 combined online and batch benchmark achieved a world record 18,000 concurrent users experiencing subsecond response time while executing a PeopleSoft Payroll batch job of 500,000 employees in 32.4 minutes. This result was obtained with a SPARC T4-4 server running Oracle Database 11g Release 2, a SPARC T4-4 server running PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 application server and a SPARC T4-2 server running Oracle WebLogic Server in the web tier. The SPARC T4-4 server running the application tier used Oracle Solaris Zones which provide a flexible, scalable and manageable virtualization environment. The average CPU utilization on the SPARC T4-2 server in the web tier was 17%, on the SPARC T4-4 server in the application tier it was 59%, and on the SPARC T4-4 server in the database tier was 47% (online and batch) leaving significant headroom for additional processing across the three tiers. The SPARC T4-4 server used for the database tier hosted Oracle Database 11g Release 2 using Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM) for database files management with I/O performance equivalent to raw devices. Performance Landscape Results are presented for the PeopleSoft HRMS Self-Service and Payroll combined benchmark. The new result with 128 streams shows significant improvement in the payroll batch processing time with little impact on the self-service component response time. PeopleSoft HRMS Self-Service and Payroll Benchmark Systems Users Ave Response Search (sec) Ave Response Save (sec) Batch Time (min) Streams SPARC T4-2 (web) SPARC T4-4 (app) SPARC T4-4 (db) 18,000 0.988 0.539 32.4 128 SPARC T4-2 (web) SPARC T4-4 (app) SPARC T4-4 (db) 18,000 0.944 0.503 43.3 64 The following results are for the PeopleSoft HRMS Self-Service benchmark that was previous run. The results are not directly comparable with the combined results because they do not include the payroll component. PeopleSoft HRMS Self-Service 9.1 Benchmark Systems Users Ave Response Search (sec) Ave Response Save (sec) Batch Time (min) Streams SPARC T4-2 (web) SPARC T4-4 (app) 2x SPARC T4-2 (db) 18,000 1.048 0.742 N/A N/A The following results are for the PeopleSoft Payroll benchmark that was previous run. The results are not directly comparable with the combined results because they do not include the self-service component. PeopleSoft Payroll (N.A.) 9.1 - 500K Employees (7 Million SQL PayCalc, Unicode) Systems Users Ave Response Search (sec) Ave Response Save (sec) Batch Time (min) Streams SPARC T4-4 (db) N/A N/A N/A 30.84 96 Configuration Summary Application Configuration: 1 x SPARC T4-4 server with 4 x SPARC T4 processors, 3.0 GHz 512 GB memory Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 PeopleTools 8.52 PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 Oracle Tuxedo, Version 10.3.0.0, 64-bit, Patch Level 031 Java Platform, Standard Edition Development Kit 6 Update 32 Database Configuration: 1 x SPARC T4-4 server with 4 x SPARC T4 processors, 3.0 GHz 256 GB memory Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 Oracle Database 11g Release 2 PeopleTools 8.52 Oracle Tuxedo, Version 10.3.0.0, 64-bit, Patch Level 031 Micro Focus Server Express (COBOL v 5.1.00) Web Tier Configuration: 1 x SPARC T4-2 server with 2 x SPARC T4 processors, 2.85 GHz 256 GB memory Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 PeopleTools 8.52 Oracle WebLogic Server 10.3.4 Java Platform, Standard Edition Development Kit 6 Update 32 Storage Configuration: 1 x Sun Server X2-4 as a COMSTAR head for data 4 x Intel Xeon X7550, 2.0 GHz 128 GB memory 1 x Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array (80 flash modules) 1 x Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array (40 flash modules) 1 x Sun Fire X4275 as a COMSTAR head for redo logs 12 x 2 TB SAS disks with Niwot Raid controller Benchmark Description This benchmark combines PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 HR Self Service online and PeopleSoft Payroll batch workloads to run on a unified database deployed on Oracle Database 11g Release 2. The PeopleSoft HRSS benchmark kit is a Oracle standard benchmark kit run by all platform vendors to measure the performance. It's an OLTP benchmark where DB SQLs are moderately complex. The results are certified by Oracle and a white paper is published. PeopleSoft HR SS defines a business transaction as a series of HTML pages that guide a user through a particular scenario. Users are defined as corporate Employees, Managers and HR administrators. The benchmark consist of 14 scenarios which emulate users performing typical HCM transactions such as viewing paycheck, promoting and hiring employees, updating employee profile and other typical HCM application transactions. All these transactions are well-defined in the PeopleSoft HR Self-Service 9.1 benchmark kit. This benchmark metric is the weighted average response search/save time for all the transactions. The PeopleSoft 9.1 Payroll (North America) benchmark demonstrates system performance for a range of processing volumes in a specific configuration. This workload represents large batch runs typical of a ERP environment during a mass update. The benchmark measures five application business process run times for a database representing large organization. They are Paysheet Creation, Payroll Calculation, Payroll Confirmation, Print Advice forms, and Create Direct Deposit File. The benchmark metric is the cumulative elapsed time taken to complete the Paysheet Creation, Payroll Calculation and Payroll Confirmation business application processes. The benchmark metrics are taken for each respective benchmark while running simultaneously on the same database back-end. Specifically, the payroll batch processes are started when the online workload reaches steady state (the maximum number of online users) and overlap with online transactions for the duration of the steady state. Key Points and Best Practices Two PeopleSoft Domain sets with 200 application servers each on a SPARC T4-4 server were hosted in 2 separate Oracle Solaris Zones to demonstrate consolidation of multiple application servers, ease of administration and performance tuning. Each Oracle Solaris Zone was bound to a separate processor set, each containing 15 cores (total 120 threads). The default set (1 core from first and third processor socket, total 16 threads) was used for network and disk interrupt handling. This was done to improve performance by reducing memory access latency by using the physical memory closest to the processors and offload I/O interrupt handling to default set threads, freeing up cpu resources for Application Servers threads and balancing application workload across 240 threads. A total of 128 PeopleSoft streams server processes where used on the database node to complete payroll batch job of 500,000 employees in 32.4 minutes. See Also Oracle PeopleSoft Benchmark White Papers oracle.com SPARC T4-2 Server oracle.com OTN SPARC T4-4 Server oracle.com OTN PeopleSoft Enterprise Human Capital Managementoracle.com OTN PeopleSoft Enterprise Human Capital Management (Payroll) oracle.com OTN Oracle Solaris oracle.com OTN Oracle Database 11g Release 2 oracle.com OTN Disclosure Statement Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Results as of 8 November 2012.

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  • Java JRE 1.6.0_65 Certified with Oracle E-Business Suite

    - by Steven Chan (Oracle Development)
    The latest Java Runtime Environment 1.6.0_65 (a.k.a. JRE 6u65-b14) and later updates on the JRE 6 codeline are now certified with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i and 12 for Windows-based desktop clients. Effects of new support dates on Java upgrades for EBS environments Support dates for the E-Business Suite and Java have changed.  Please review the sections below for more details: What does this mean for Oracle E-Business Suite users? Will EBS users be forced to upgrade to JRE 7 for Windows desktop clients? Will EBS users be forced to upgrade to JDK 7 for EBS application tier servers? All JRE 6 and 7 releases are certified with EBS upon release Our standard policy is that all E-Business Suite customers can apply all JRE updates to end-user desktops from JRE 1.6.0_03 and later updates on the 1.6 codeline, and from JRE 7u10 and later updates on the JRE 7 codeline.  We test all new JRE 1.6 and JRE 7 releases in parallel with the JRE development process, so all new JRE 1.6 and 7 releases are considered certified with the E-Business Suite on the same day that they're released by our Java team.  You do not need to wait for a certification announcement before applying new JRE 1.6 or JRE 7 releases to your EBS users' desktops. What's new in in this Java release?Java 6 is now available only via My Oracle Support for E-Business Suite users.  You can find links to this release, including Release Notes, documentation, and the actual Java downloads here: All Java SE Downloads on MOS (Note 1439822.1) 32-bit and 64-bit versions certified This certification includes both the 32-bit and 64-bit JRE versions. 32-bit JREs are certified on: Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Service Pack 2 (SP2) Windows 7 and Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) 64-bit JREs are certified only on 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1). Worried about the 'mismanaged session cookie' issue? No need to worry -- it's fixed.  To recap: JRE releases 1.6.0_18 through 1.6.0_22 had issues with mismanaging session cookies that affected some users in some circumstances. The fix for those issues was first included in JRE 1.6.0_23. These fixes will carry forward and continue to be fixed in all future JRE releases.  In other words, if you wish to avoid the mismanaged session cookie issue, you should apply any release after JRE 1.6.0_22. Implications of Java 6 End of Public Updates for EBS Users The Support Roadmap for Oracle Java is published here: Oracle Java SE Support Roadmap The latest updates to that page (as of Sept. 19, 2012) state (emphasis added): Java SE 6 End of Public Updates Notice After February 2013, Oracle will no longer post updates of Java SE 6 to its public download sites. Existing Java SE 6 downloads already posted as of February 2013 will remain accessible in the Java Archive on Oracle Technology Network. Developers and end-users are encouraged to update to more recent Java SE versions that remain available for public download. For enterprise customers, who need continued access to critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for Java SE 6 or older versions, long term support is available through Oracle Java SE Support . What does this mean for Oracle E-Business Suite users? EBS users fall under the category of "enterprise users" above.  Java is an integral part of the Oracle E-Business Suite technology stack, so EBS users will continue to receive Java SE 6 updates from February 2013 to the end of Java SE 6 Extended Support in June 2017. In other words, nothing changes for EBS users after February 2013.  EBS users will continue to receive critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for Java SE 6 until the end of Java SE 6 Extended Support in June 2017.  How can EBS customers obtain Java 6 updates after the public end-of-life? EBS customers can download Java 6 patches from My Oracle Support.  For a complete list of all Java SE patch numbers, see: All Java SE Downloads on MOS (Note 1439822.1) Will EBS users be forced to upgrade to JRE 7 for Windows desktop clients? This upgrade is highly recommended but remains optional while Java 6 is covered by Extended Support. Updates will be delivered via My Oracle Support, where you can continue to receive critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for JRE 6 desktop clients.  Java 6 is covered by Extended Support until June 2017.  All E-Business Suite customers must upgrade to JRE 7 by June 2017. Coexistence of JRE 6 and JRE 7 on Windows desktops The upgrade to JRE 7 is highly recommended for EBS users, but some users may need to run both JRE 6 and 7 on their Windows desktops for reasons unrelated to the E-Business Suite. Most EBS configurations with IE and Firefox use non-static versioning by default. JRE 7 will be invoked instead of JRE 6 if both are installed on a Windows desktop. For more details, see "Appendix B: Static vs. Non-static Versioning and Set Up Options" in Notes 290807.1 and 393931.1. Applying Updates to JRE 6 and JRE 7 to Windows desktops Auto-update will keep JRE 7 up-to-date for Windows users with JRE 7 installed. Auto-update will only keep JRE 7 up-to-date for Windows users with both JRE 6 and 7 installed.  JRE 6 users are strongly encouraged to apply the latest Critical Patch Updates as soon as possible after each release. The Jave SE CPUs will be available via My Oracle Support.  EBS users can find more information about JRE 6 and 7 updates here: Information Center: Installation & Configuration for Oracle Java SE (Note 1412103.2) The dates for future Java SE CPUs can be found on the Critical Patch Updates, Security Alerts and Third Party Bulletin.  An RSS feed is available on that site for those who would like to be kept up-to-date. What do Mac users need? Mac users running Mac OS 10.7 or 10.8 can run JRE 7 plug-ins.  See this article: EBS 12 certified with Mac OS X 10.7 and 10.8 with Safari 6 and JRE 7 Will EBS users be forced to upgrade to JDK 7 for EBS application tier servers? JRE is used for desktop clients.  JDK is used for application tier servers JDK upgrades for E-Business Suite application tier servers are highly recommended but currently remain optional while Java 6 is covered by Extended Support. Updates will be delivered via My Oracle Support, where you can continue to receive critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for JDK 6 for application tier servers.  Java SE 6 is covered by Extended Support until June 2017.  All EBS customers with application tier servers on Windows, Solaris, and Linux must upgrade to JDK 7 by June 2017. EBS customers running their application tier servers on other operating systems should check with their respective vendors for the support dates for those platforms. JDK 7 is certified with E-Business Suite 12.  See: Java (JDK) 7 Certified for E-Business Suite 12 Servers References Recommended Browsers for Oracle Applications 11i (Metalink Note 285218.1) Upgrading Sun JRE (Native Plug-in) with Oracle Applications 11i for Windows Clients (Metalink Note 290807.1) Recommended Browsers for Oracle Applications 12 (MetaLink Note 389422.1) Upgrading JRE Plugin with Oracle Applications R12 (MetaLink Note 393931.1) Related Articles Mismanaged Session Cookie Issue Fixed for EBS in JRE 1.6.0_23 Roundup: Oracle JInitiator 1.3 Desupported for EBS Customers in July 2009

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, March 28, 2010

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, March 28, 2010New ProjectsFeed Tracker: Feed Tracker allows you to track your favorite feeds (RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0) and open them up directly in your browser.FIM 2010 Resource Management Client: The Forefront Identity Management 2010 Resource Management Client is a library to communicate with the FIM 2010 web service. The development langu...Infection Protection: A game about controlling disease outbreak in a city. Developed for OGPC 2010, using Qt.OrthoLab: Homepage of Orthocone open-source laboratory.Paragliding ThermalMarker: Paragliding / Hanggliding Windows Application that receives waypoint files and returns only the thermals that get triggered more often in a place.RSSFalls: RssFalls makes it easier for developers to download RSS or Podcast enclosures.String Library for C++ Language: StrLib++ is a string library for C++ language. for now it support only ANSI strings, later Unicode support will added for UT8, UTF16 and UTF32 for...Sweeper: Sweeper is a Visual Studio 2008 add-in for C# that takes care of many of the trivial code-formatting issues that developers run into - particularly...System.Common: A .Net library that provides methods, properties and more that the .Net Framework doesn't provide.Tiveriad: The framework is designed to help you more easily build modular Windows applicationT-Shirts Online: Online shop build in Silverlight 4 using DIBS as payment module.New ReleasesArkSwitch: ArkSwitch v1.1.3: This release has some important changes. Thanks to MichyPrima for helping with some of the code. 1. Improved theming to more easily support multip...Catharsis: Catharsis 2.5 on catarsa.com: The Catharsis framework has finally its own portal http://catarsa.com The latest release version is 2.5 - string names of properties are not any ...EffiProz - A Pure C# Database: EffiProz CF 1.0: EffiProz for .Net compact framework.Encrypted Notes: Encrypted Notes 1.6: This is the latest version of Encrypted Notes (1.6). It has an installer - it will create a directory 'CPascoe' in My Documents. Once you have ext...Extend SmallBasic: Teaching Extensions v.009: Added Pentagon Crazy Recipe QuizGapi.NET - .NET (C#) wrapper for Google API: Gapi.NET 0.5.0.0: - Fixed some minor bugs. - Add minor features. - Performance improvement. See code check-ins for detailed informationHouseFly experimental controls: HouseFly experimental control: Alpha version of HouseFly experimental controlsiTuner - The iTunes Companion: iTuner 1.2.3738 Beta 2: V1.2 allows you to synchronize one or more iTunes playlists to a USB MP3 player. Beta 2 resolves all known issues. This continues the evolution ye...jQuery Library for SharePoint Web Services: SPServices 0.5.4: IMPORTANT NOTE: This release is in an alpha state. You should only download it if you know what you are getting and are interested in testing it f...JSINQ - LINQ to Objects for JavaScript: JSINQ 1.0: This is the first stable release of JSINQ. It is fully compatible with the 0.9 beta release. It contains the following new features: Now supports ...MSBuild Mercurial Tasks: 1.0.0 Beta: First release of the application. This version integrates all the basic functionalities of Mercurial as defined in the Use Case 1.Open Portal Foundation: Open Portal Foundation V1.4.2: What's news? noscript template was updated naming convention for layout autogenerated controls now use the "master" prefix. The documentation ce...Open Portal Foundation: Open Portal Foundation V1.4.4: What's news? ASP .NET Master page support for custom aspx integrated pages New usercontrols for ASCX, ASPX and Master page integration : Link: f...Paint.NET PSD Plugin: 1.5.0: RLE compression is now working fully on save. File sizes are now competitive with Photoshop's. Saving takes about twice as long with RLE compressi...Paragliding ThermalMarker: ThermalMarker_Alfa0.1: Release Alfa 1Simple Service Locator: Simple Service Locator v0.7: The Simple Service Locator is an easy-to-use Inversion of Control library that is a complete implementation of the Common Service Locator interface...String Library for C++ Language: Release 0.9: version 0.9 beta release DO NOT USE IN SERIOUS PROJECTS this release use default application heap, and because visual studio is using special debug...Sweeper: Sweeper Alpha 1: SweeperA Visual Studio Add-in for C# Code Formatting - Visual Studio 2008 Includes: A UI for options, Enable or disable any specific task you want ...T-Shirts Online: 1.0: First release of the online shop.Twilio Server Library for .NET (TSL.NET): v0.1.0 Beta: This is the first release of TSL.NET. This v0.1.0 release is a Beta. Subsequent builds will be posted as v0.1.x and release-candidate Betas will be...Vr30 OS: Facebook 1.0: Connect you to Facebook without your web browser.Vr30 OS: SkyBlog 1.0: SkyBlog without web browser.Vr30 OS: YouTube 1.0: Youtube without web browserWeb Image Resize Handler: Web Image Resize, Zoom, Rotate and Greyscale v.1.0: Efficient Web Image Resize, Zoom, Rotate and Greyscale cacheing handler for ASP.Net.WinXound: WinXound 3.3.0 Beta 1 for Mac OsX: This is the first Beta release for Apple Mac OsX (Universal Binary). DEBUG HELP NEEDED ! Please signal bugs, suggestions or feedback to: stefano_b...Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpRawrWBFS ManagerASP.NET Ajax LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitAJAX Control ToolkitLiveUpload to FacebookWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMost Active ProjectsRawrjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesManaged Extensibility FrameworkBlogEngine.NETMicrosoft Biology Foundationpatterns & practices: Composite WPF and SilverlightLINQ to TwitterFarseer Physics EngineTable2ClassNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Module

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  • Is RTD Stateless or Stateful?

    - by [email protected]
    Yes.   A stateless service is one where each request is an independent transaction that can be processed by any of the servers in a cluster.  A stateful service is one where state is kept in a server's memory from transaction to transaction, thus necessitating the proper routing of requests to the right server. The main advantage of stateless systems is simplicity of design. The main advantage of stateful systems is performance. I'm often asked whether RTD is a stateless or stateful service, so I wanted to clarify this issue in depth so that RTD's architecture will be properly understood. The short answer is: "RTD can be configured as a stateless or stateful service." The performance difference between stateless and stateful systems can be very significant, and while in a call center implementation it may be reasonable to use a pure stateless configuration, a web implementation that produces thousands of requests per second is practically impossible with a stateless configuration. RTD's performance is orders of magnitude better than most competing systems. RTD was architected from the ground up to achieve this performance. Features like automatic and dynamic compression of prediction models, automatic translation of metadata to machine code, lack of interpreted languages, and separation of model building from decisioning contribute to achieving this performance level. Because  of this focus on performance we decided to have RTD's default configuration work in a stateful manner. By being stateful RTD requests are typically handled in a few milliseconds when repeated requests come to the same session. Now, those readers that have participated in implementations of RTD know that RTD's architecture is also focused on reducing Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) with features like automatic model building, automatic time windows, automatic maintenance of database tables, automatic evaluation of data mining models, automatic management of models partitioned by channel, geography, etcetera, and hot swapping of configurations. How do you reconcile the need for a low TCO and the need for performance? How do you get the performance of a stateful system with the simplicity of a stateless system? The answer is that you make the system behave like a stateless system to the exterior, but you let it automatically take advantage of situations where being stateful is better. For example, one of the advantages of stateless systems is that you can route a message to any server in a cluster, without worrying about sending it to the same server that was handling the session in previous messages. With an RTD stateful configuration you can still route the message to any server in the cluster, so from the point of view of the configuration of other systems, it is the same as a stateless service. The difference though comes in performance, because if the message arrives to the right server, RTD can serve it without any external access to the session's state, thus tremendously reducing processing time. In typical implementations it is not rare to have high percentages of messages routed directly to the right server, while those that are not, are easily handled by forwarding the messages to the right server. This architecture usually provides the best of both worlds with performance and simplicity of configuration.   Configuring RTD as a pure stateless service A pure stateless configuration requires session data to be persisted at the end of handling each and every message and reloading that data at the beginning of handling any new message. This is of course, the root of the inefficiency of these configurations. This is also the reason why many "stateless" implementations actually do keep state to take advantage of a request coming back to the same server. Nevertheless, if the implementation requires a pure stateless decision service, this is easy to configure in RTD. The way to do it is: Mark every Integration Point to Close the session at the end of processing the message In the Session entity persist the session data on closing the session In the session entity check if a persisted version exists and load it An excellent solution for persisting the session data is Oracle Coherence, which provides a high performance, distributed cache that minimizes the performance impact of persisting and reloading the session. Alternatively, the session can be persisted to a local database. An interesting feature of the RTD stateless configuration is that it can cope with serializing concurrent requests for the same session. For example, if a web page produces two requests to the decision service, these requests could come concurrently to the decision services and be handled by different servers. Most stateless implementation would have the two requests step onto each other when saving the state, or fail one of the messages. When properly configured, RTD will make one message wait for the other before processing.   A Word on Context Using the context of a customer interaction typically significantly increases lift. For example, offer success in a call center could double if the context of the call is taken into account. For this reason, it is important to utilize the contextual information in decision making. To make the contextual information available throughout a session it needs to be persisted. When there is a well defined owner for the information then there is no problem because in case of a session restart, the information can be easily retrieved. If there is no official owner of the information, then RTD can be configured to persist this information.   Once again, RTD provides flexibility to ensure high performance when it is adequate to allow for some loss of state in the rare cases of server failure. For example, in a heavy use web site that serves 1000 pages per second the navigation history may be stored in the in memory session. In such sites it is typical that there is no OLTP that stores all the navigation events, therefore if an RTD server were to fail, it would be possible for the navigation to that point to be lost (note that a new session would be immediately established in one of the other servers). In most cases the loss of this navigation information would be acceptable as it would happen rarely. If it is desired to save this information, RTD would persist it every time the visitor navigates to a new page. Note that this practice is preferred whether RTD is configured in a stateless or stateful manner.  

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  • Reg Gets a Job at Red Gate (and what happens behind the scenes)

    - by red(at)work
    Mr Reg Gater works at one of Cambridge’s many high-tech companies. He doesn’t love his job, but he puts up with it because... well, it could be worse. Every day he drives to work around the Red Gate roundabout, wondering what his boss is going to blame him for today, and wondering if there could be a better job out there for him. By late morning he already feels like handing his notice in. He got the hacky look from his boss for being 5 minutes late, and then they ran out of tea. Again. He goes to the local sandwich shop for lunch, and picks up a Red Gate job menu and a Book of Red Gate while he’s waiting for his order. That night, he goes along to Cambridge Geek Nights and sees some very enthusiastic Red Gaters talking about the work they do; it sounds interesting and, of all things, fun. He takes a quick look at the job vacancies on the Red Gate website, and an hour later realises he’s still there – looking at videos, photos and people profiles. He especially likes the Red Gate’s Got Talent page, and is very impressed with Simon Johnson’s marathon time. He thinks that he’d quite like to work with such awesome people. It just so happens that Red Gate recently decided that they wanted to hire another hot shot team member. Behind the scenes, the wheels were set in motion: the recruitment team met with the hiring manager to understand exactly what they’re looking for, and to decide what interview tests to do, who will do the interviews, and to kick-start any interview training those people might need. Next up, a job description and job advert were written, and the job was put on the market. Reg applies, and his CV lands in the Recruitment team’s inbox and they open it up with eager anticipation that Reg could be the next awesome new starter. He looks good, and in a jiffy they’ve arranged an interview. Reg arrives for his interview, and is greeted by a smiley receptionist. She offers him a selection of drinks and he feels instantly relaxed. A couple of interviews and an assessment later, he gets a job offer. We make his day and he makes ours by accepting, and becoming one of the 60 new starters so far this year. Behind the scenes, things start moving all over again. The HR team arranges for a “Welcome” goodie box to be whisked out to him, prepares his contract, sends an email to Information Services (Or IS for short - we’ll come back to them), keeps in touch with Reg to make sure he knows what to expect on his first day, and of course asks him to fill in the all-important wiki questionnaire so his new colleagues can start to get to know him before he even joins. Meanwhile, the IS team see an email in SupportWorks from HR. They see that Reg will be starting in the sales team in a few days’ time, and they know exactly what to do. They pull out a new machine, and within minutes have used their automated deployment software to install every piece of software that a new recruit could ever need. They also check with Reg’s new manager to see if he has any special requirements that they could help with. Reg starts and is amazed to find a fully configured machine sitting on his desk, complete with stationery and all the other tools he’ll need to do his job. He feels even more cared for after he gets a workstation assessment, and realises he’d be comfier with an ergonomic keyboard and a footstool. They arrive minutes later, just like that. His manager starts him off on his induction and sales training. Along with job-specific training, he’ll also have a buddy to help him find his feet, and loads of pre-arranged demos and introductions. Reg settles in nicely, and is great at his job. He enjoys the canteen, and regularly eats one of the 40,000 meals provided each year. He gets used to the selection of teas that are available, develops a taste for champagne launch parties, and has his fair share of the 25,000 cups of coffee downed at Red Gate towers each year. He goes along to some Feel Good Fund events, and donates a little something to charity in exchange for a turn on the chocolate fountain. He’s looking a little scruffy, so he decides to get his hair cut in between meetings, just in time for the Red Gate birthday company photo. Reg starts a new project: identifying existing customers to up-sell to new bundles. He talks with the web team to generate lists of qualifying customers who haven’t recently been sent marketing emails, and sends emails out, using a new in-house developed tool to schedule follow-up calls in CRM for the same group. The customer responds, saying they’d like to upgrade but are having a licensing problem – Reg sends the issue to Support, and it gets routed to the web team. The team identifies a workaround, and the bug gets scheduled into the next maintenance release in a fortnight’s time (hey; they got lucky). With all the new stuff Reg is working on, he realises that he’d be way more efficient if he had a third monitor. He speaks to IS and they get him one - no argument. He also needs a test machine and then some extra memory. Done. He then thinks he needs an iPad, and goes to ask for one. He gets told to stop pushing his luck. Some time later, Reg’s wife has a baby, so Reg gets 2 weeks of paid paternity leave and a bunch of flowers sent to his house. He signs up to the childcare scheme so that he doesn’t have to pay National Insurance on the first £243 of his childcare. The accounts team makes it all happen seamlessly, as they did with his Give As You Earn payments, which come out of his wages and go straight to his favorite charity. Reg’s sales career is going well. He’s grateful for the help that he gets from the product support team. How do they answer all those 900-ish support calls so effortlessly each month? He’s impressed with the patches that are sent out to customers who find “interesting behavior” in their tools, and to the customers who just must have that new feature. A little later in his career at Red Gate, Reg decides that he’d like to learn about management. He goes on some management training specially customised for Red Gate, joins the Management Book Club, and gets together with other new managers to brainstorm how to get the most out of one to one meetings with his team. Reg decides to go for a game of Foosball to celebrate his good fortune with his team, and has to wait for Finance to finish. While he’s waiting, he reflects on the wonderful time he’s had at Red Gate. He can’t put his finger on what it is exactly, but he knows he’s on to a good thing. All of the stuff that happened to Reg didn’t just happen magically. We’ve got teams of people working relentlessly behind the scenes to make sure that everyone here is comfortable, safe, well fed and caffeinated to the max.

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  • SSIS: Deploying OLAP cubes using C# script tasks and AMO

    - by DrJohn
    As part of the continuing series on Building dynamic OLAP data marts on-the-fly, this blog entry will focus on how to automate the deployment of OLAP cubes using SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) and Analysis Services Management Objects (AMO). OLAP cube deployment is usually done using the Analysis Services Deployment Wizard. However, this option was dismissed for a variety of reasons. Firstly, invoking external processes from SSIS is fraught with problems as (a) it is not always possible to ensure SSIS waits for the external program to terminate; (b) we cannot log the outcome properly and (c) it is not always possible to control the server's configuration to ensure the executable works correctly. Another reason for rejecting the Deployment Wizard is that it requires the 'answers' to be written into four XML files. These XML files record the three things we need to change: the name of the server, the name of the OLAP database and the connection string to the data mart. Although it would be reasonably straight forward to change the content of the XML files programmatically, this adds another set of complication and level of obscurity to the overall process. When I first investigated the possibility of using C# to deploy a cube, I was surprised to find that there are no other blog entries about the topic. I can only assume everyone else is happy with the Deployment Wizard! SSIS "forgets" assembly references If you build your script task from scratch, you will have to remember how to overcome one of the major annoyances of working with SSIS script tasks: the forgetful nature of SSIS when it comes to assembly references. Basically, you can go through the process of adding an assembly reference using the Add Reference dialog, but when you close the script window, SSIS "forgets" the assembly reference so the script will not compile. After repeating the operation several times, you will find that SSIS only remembers the assembly reference when you specifically press the Save All icon in the script window. This problem is not unique to the AMO assembly and has certainly been a "feature" since SQL Server 2005, so I am not amazed it is still present in SQL Server 2008 R2! Sample Package So let's take a look at the sample SSIS package I have provided which can be downloaded from here: DeployOlapCubeExample.zip  Below is a screenshot after a successful run. Connection Managers The package has three connection managers: AsDatabaseDefinitionFile is a file connection manager pointing to the .asdatabase file you wish to deploy. Note that this can be found in the bin directory of you OLAP database project once you have clicked the "Build" button in Visual Studio TargetOlapServerCS is an Analysis Services connection manager which identifies both the deployment server and the target database name. SourceDataMart is an OLEDB connection manager pointing to the data mart which is to act as the source of data for your cube. This will be used to replace the connection string found in your .asdatabase file Once you have configured the connection managers, the sample should run and deploy your OLAP database in a few seconds. Of course, in a production environment, these connection managers would be associated with package configurations or set at runtime. When you run the sample, you should see that the script logs its activity to the output screen (see screenshot above). If you configure logging for the package, then these messages will also appear in your SSIS logging. Sample Code Walkthrough Next let's walk through the code. The first step is to parse the connection string provided by the TargetOlapServerCS connection manager and obtain the name of both the target OLAP server and also the name of the OLAP database. Note that the target database does not have to exist to be referenced in an AS connection manager, so I am using this as a convenient way to define both properties. We now connect to the server and check for the existence of the OLAP database. If it exists, we drop the database so we can re-deploy. svr.Connect(olapServerName); if (svr.Connected) { // Drop the OLAP database if it already exists Database db = svr.Databases.FindByName(olapDatabaseName); if (db != null) { db.Drop(); } // rest of script } Next we start building the XMLA command that will actually perform the deployment. Basically this is a small chuck of XML which we need to wrap around the large .asdatabase file generated by the Visual Studio build process. // Start generating the main part of the XMLA command XmlDocument xmlaCommand = new XmlDocument(); xmlaCommand.LoadXml(string.Format("<Batch Transaction='false' xmlns='http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2003/engine'><Alter AllowCreate='true' ObjectExpansion='ExpandFull'><Object><DatabaseID>{0}</DatabaseID></Object><ObjectDefinition/></Alter></Batch>", olapDatabaseName));  Next we need to merge two XML files which we can do by simply using setting the InnerXml property of the ObjectDefinition node as follows: // load OLAP Database definition from .asdatabase file identified by connection manager XmlDocument olapCubeDef = new XmlDocument(); olapCubeDef.Load(Dts.Connections["AsDatabaseDefinitionFile"].ConnectionString); // merge the two XML files by obtain a reference to the ObjectDefinition node oaRootNode.InnerXml = olapCubeDef.InnerXml;   One hurdle I had to overcome was removing detritus from the .asdabase file left by the Visual Studio build. Through an iterative process, I found I needed to remove several nodes as they caused the deployment to fail. The XMLA error message read "Cannot set read-only node: CreatedTimestamp" or similar. In comparing the XMLA generated with by the Deployment Wizard with that generated by my code, these read-only nodes were missing, so clearly I just needed to strip them out. This was easily achieved using XPath to find the relevant XML nodes, of which I show one example below: foreach (XmlNode node in rootNode.SelectNodes("//ns1:CreatedTimestamp", nsManager)) { node.ParentNode.RemoveChild(node); } Now we need to change the database name in both the ID and Name nodes using code such as: XmlNode databaseID = xmlaCommand.SelectSingleNode("//ns1:Database/ns1:ID", nsManager); if (databaseID != null) databaseID.InnerText = olapDatabaseName; Finally we need to change the connection string to point at the relevant data mart. Again this is easily achieved using XPath to search for the relevant nodes and then replace the content of the node with the new name or connection string. XmlNode connectionStringNode = xmlaCommand.SelectSingleNode("//ns1:DataSources/ns1:DataSource/ns1:ConnectionString", nsManager); if (connectionStringNode != null) { connectionStringNode.InnerText = Dts.Connections["SourceDataMart"].ConnectionString; } Finally we need to perform the deployment using the Execute XMLA command and check the returned XmlaResultCollection for errors before setting the Dts.TaskResult. XmlaResultCollection oResults = svr.Execute(xmlaCommand.InnerXml);  // check for errors during deployment foreach (Microsoft.AnalysisServices.XmlaResult oResult in oResults) { foreach (Microsoft.AnalysisServices.XmlaMessage oMessage in oResult.Messages) { if ((oMessage.GetType().Name == "XmlaError")) { FireError(oMessage.Description); HadError = true; } } } If you are not familiar with XML programming, all this may all seem a bit daunting, but perceiver as the sample code is pretty short. If you would like the script to process the OLAP database, simply uncomment the lines in the vicinity of Process method. Of course, you can extend the script to perform your own custom processing and to even synchronize the database to a front-end server. Personally, I like to keep the deployment and processing separate as the code can become overly complex for support staff.If you want to know more, come see my session at the forthcoming SQLBits conference.

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  • Beginner’s Guide to Flock, the Social Media Browser

    - by Asian Angel
    Are you wanting a browser that can work as a social hub from the first moment that you start it up? If you love the idea of a browser that is ready to go out of the box then join us as we look at Flock. During the Install Process When you are installing Flock there are two install windows that you should watch for. The first one lets you choose between the “Express Setup & Custom Setup”. We recommend the “Custom Setup”. Once you have selected the “Custom Setup” you can choose which of the following options will enabled. Notice the “anonymous usage statistics” option at the bottom…you can choose to leave this enabled or disable it based on your comfort level. The First Look When you start Flock up for the first time it will open with three tabs. All three are of interest…especially if this is your first time using Flock. With the first tab you can jump right into “logging in/activating” favorite social services within Flock. This page is set to display each time that you open Flock unless you deselect the option in the lower left corner. The second tab provides a very nice overview of Flock and its’ built-in social management power. The third and final page can be considered a “Personal Page”. You can make some changes to the content displayed for quick and easy access and/or monitoring “Twitter Search, Favorite Feeds, Favorite Media, Friend Activity, & Favorite Sites”. Use the “Widget Menu” in the upper left corner to select the “Personal Page Components” that you would like to use. In the upper right corner there is a built-in “Search Bar” and buttons for “Posting to Your Blog & Uploading Media”. To help personalize the “My World Page” just a bit more you can even change the text to your name or whatever best suits your needs. The Flock Toolbar The “Flock Toolbar” is full of social account management goodness. In order from left to right the buttons are: My World (Homepage), Open People Sidebar, Open Media Bar, Open Feeds Sidebar, Webmail, Open Favorites Sidebar, Open Accounts and Services Sidebar, Open Web Clipboard Sidebar, Open Blog Editor, & Open Photo Uploader. The buttons will be “highlighted” with a blue background to help indicate which area you are in. The first area will display a listing of people that you are watching/following at the services shown here. Clicking on the “Media Bar Button” will display the following “Media Slider Bar” above your “Tab Bar”. Notice that there is a built-in “Search Bar” on the right side. Any photos, etc. clicked on will be opened in the currently focused tab below the “Media Bar”. Here is a listing of the “Media Streams” available for viewing. By default Flock will come with a small selection of pre-subscribed RSS Feeds. You can easily unsubscribe, rearrange, add custom folders, or non-categorized feeds as desired. RSS Feeds subscribed to here can be viewed combined together as a single feed (clickable links) in the “My World Page”. or can be viewed individually in a new tab. Very nice! Next on the “Flock Toolbar is the “Webmail Button”. You can set up access to your favorite “Yahoo!, Gmail, & AOL Mail” accounts from here. The “Favorites Sidebar” combines your “Browser History & Bookmarks” into one convenient location. The “Accounts and Services Sidebar” gives you quick and easy access to get logged into your favorite social accounts. Clicking on any of the links will open that particular service’s login page in a new tab. Want to store items such as photos, links, and text to add into a blog post or tweet later on? Just drag and drop them into the “Web Clipboard Sidebar” for later access. Clicking on the “Blog Editor Button” will open up a separate blogging window to compose your posts in. If you have not logged into or set up an account yet in Flock you will see the following message window. The “Blogging Window”…nice, simple, and straightforward. If you are not already logged into your photo account(s) then you will see the following message window when you click on the “Photo Uploader Button”. Clicking “OK” will open the “Accounts and Services Sidebar” with compatible photo services highlighted in a light yellow color. Log in to your favorite service to start uploading all those great images. After Setting Up Here is what our browser looked like after setting up some of our favorite services. The Twitter feed is certainly looking nice and easy to read through… Some tweaking in the “RSS Feeds Sidebar” makes for a perfect reading experience. Keeping up with our e-mail is certainly easy to do too. A look back at the “Accounts and Services Sidebar” shows that all of our accounts are actively logged in (green dot on the right side). Going back to our “My World Page” you can see how nice everything looks for monitoring our “Friend Activity & Favorite Feeds”. Moving on to regular browsing everything is looking very good… Flock is a perfect choice for anyone wanting a browser and social hub all built into a single app. Conclusion Anyone who loves keeping up with their favorite social services while browsing will find using Flock to be a wonderful experience. You literally get the best of both worlds with this browser. Links Download Flock The Official Flock Extensions Homepage The Official Flock Toolbar Homepage Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Add Color Coding to Windows 7 Media Center Program GuideAdd Social Bookmarking (Digg This!) Links to your Wordpress BlogHow to use an ISO image on Ubuntu LinuxAdvertise on How-To GeekFixing When Windows Media Player Library Won’t Let You Add Files TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7 Microsoft’s “How Do I ?” Videos Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause

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  • Massive Silverlight Giveaway! DevExpress , Syncfusion, Crypto Obfuscator and SL Spy!

    - by mbcrump
    Oh my, have we grown! Maybe I should change the name to Multiple Silverlight Giveaways. So far, my Silverlight giveaways have been such a success that I’m going to be able to give away more than one Silverlight product every month. Last month, we gave away 3 great products. 1) ComponentOne Silverlight Controls 2)  ComponentOne XAP Optimizer (with obfuscation) and 3) Silverlight Spy. This month, we will give away 4 great Silverlight products and have 4 different winners. This way the Silverlight community can grow with more than just one person winning all the prizes. This month we will be giving away: DevExpress Silverlight Controls – Over 50+ Silverlight Controls Syncfusion User Interface Edition - Create stunning line of business silverlight applications with a wide range of components including a high performance grid, docking manager, chart, gauge, scheduler and much more. Crypto Obfuscator – Works for all .NET including Silverlight/Windows Phone 7. Silverlight Spy – provides a license EVERY month for this giveaway. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Win a FREE developer’s license of one of the products listed above! 4 winners will be announced on April 1st, 2011! To be entered into the contest do the following things: Subscribe to my feed. – Use Google Reader, email or whatever is best for you.  Leave a comment below with a valid email account (I WILL NOT share this info with anyone.) Retweet the following : I just entered to win free #Silverlight controls from @mbcrump . Register here: http://mcrump.me/fTSmB8 ! Don’t change the URL because this will allow me to track the users that Tweet this page. Don’t forget to visit each of the vendors sites because they made this possible. MichaelCrump.Net provides Silverlight Giveaways every month. You can also see the latest giveaway by bookmarking http://giveaways.michaelcrump.net . ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DevExpress Silverlight Controls Let’s take a quick look at some of the software that is provided in this giveaway. Before we get started with the Silverlight Controls, here is a couple of links to bookmark for the DevExpress Silverlight Controls: The Live Demos of the Silverlight Controls is located here. Great Video Tutorials of the Silverlight Controls are here. One thing that I liked about the DevExpress is how easy it was to find demos of each control. After you install the controls the following Program Group appears complete with “demos” that include full-source.   So, the first question that you may ask is, “What is included?” Here is the official list below. I wanted to show several of the controls that I think developers will use the most. The Book – Very rich animation between switching pages. Very easy to add your own images and custom text. The Menu – This is another control that just looked great. You can easily add images to the menu items with a few lines of XAML. The Window / Dialog Box – You can use this control to make a very beautiful “Wizard” to help your users navigate between pages. This is useful in setup or installation. Calculator – This would be useful for any type of Banking app. Also a first that I’ve seen from a 3rd party Control company. DatePicker – This controls feels a lot smoother than the one provided by Microsoft. It also provides the ability to “Clear” the selection. Overall the DevExpress Silverlight Controls feature a lot of quality controls that you should check out. You can go ahead and download a trial version of it right now by clicking here. If you win the contest you can simply enter your registration key and continue using the product without reinstalling. Syncfusion User Interface Edition Before we get started with the Syncfusion User Interface Edition, here is a couple of links to bookmark. The Live Demos can be found here. You can download a demo of it now at http://www.syncfusion.com/downloads/evalstart. After you install the Syncfusion, you can view the dashboard to run locally installed samples. You may also download the documentation to your local machine if needed. Since the name of the package is “User Interface Edition”, I decided to share several samples that struck me as “awesome”. Dashboard Gauges – I was very impressed with the various gauges they have included. The digital clock also looks very impressive. Diagram – The diagrams are also very easy to build. In the sample project below you can drag/drop the shapes onto the content pane. More complex lines like the Bezier lines are also easy to create using Syncfusion. Scheduling – Another strong component was the Scheduling with built-in support for Themes. Tools – If all of that wasn’t enough, it also comes with a nice pack of essential tools. Syncfusion has a nice variety of Silverlight Controls that you should check out. You can go ahead and download a trial version of it right now by clicking here. Crypto Obfuscator The following feature set is what is important to me in an Obfuscator since I am a Silverlight/WP7 Developer: And thankfully this is what you get in Crypto Obfuscator. You can download a trial version right now if you want to go ahead and play with it. Let’s spend a few moments taking a look at the application. After you have installed Crypto Obfuscator you will see the following screen: After you click on Assemblies you have the option to add your .XAP file in: I went ahead and loaded my .xap file from a Silverlight Application. At this point, you can simply save your project and hit “Obfuscate” and your done. You don’t have to mess with any of the other settings if you don’t want too. Of course, you can change the settings and add obfuscation rules, watermarks and signing if you wish.  After Obfuscation, it looks like this in .NET Reflector: I was trying to browse through methods and it actually crashed Reflector. This confirms the level of protection the obfuscator is providing. If this were a commercial application that my team built, I would have a huge smile on my face right now. Crypto Obfuscator is a great product and I hope you will spend the time learning more about it. Silverlight Spy Silverlight Spy is a runtime inspector tool that will tell you pretty much everything that is going on with the application. Basically, you give it a URL that contains a Silverlight application and you can explore the element tree, events, xaml and so much more. This has already been reviewed on MichaelCrump.net. _________________________________________________________________________________________ Thanks for reading and don’t forget to leave a comment below in order to win one of the four prizes available! Subscribe to my feed

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  • Emit Knowledge - social network for knowledge sharing

    - by hajan
    Emit Knowledge, as the words refer - it's a social network for emitting / sharing knowledge from users by users. Those who can benefit the most out of this network is perhaps all of YOU who have something to share with others and contribute to the knowledge world. I've been closely communicating with the core team of this very, very interesting, brand new social network (with specific purpose!) about the concept, idea and the vision they have for their product and I can say with a lot of confidence that this network has real potential to become something from which we will all benefit. I won't speak much about that and would prefer to give you link and try it yourself - http://www.emitknowledge.com Mainly, through the past few months I've been testing this network and it is getting improved all the time. The user experience is great, you can easily find out what you need and it follows some known patterns that are common for all social networks. They have some real good ideas and plans that are already under development for the next updates of their product. You can do micro blogging or you can do regular normal blogging… it’s up to you, and the way it works, it is seamless. Here is a short Question and Answers (QA) interview I made with the lead of the team, Marijan Nikolovski: 1. Can you please explain us briefly, what is Emit Knowledge? Emit Knowledge is a brand new knowledge based social network, delivering quality content from users to users. We believe that people’s knowledge, experience and professional thoughts compose quality content, worth sharing among millions around the world. Therefore, we created the platform that matches people’s need to share and gain knowledge in the most suitable and comfortable way. Easy to work with, Emit Knowledge lets you to smoothly craft and emit knowledge around the globe. 2. How 'old' is Emit Knowledge? In hamster’s years we are almost five years old start-up :). Just kidding. We’ve released our public beta about three months ago. Our official release date is 27 of June 2012. 3. How did you come up with this idea? Everything started from a simple idea to solve a complex problem. We’ve seen that the social web has become polluted with data and is on the right track to lose its base principles – socialization and common cause. That was our start point. We’ve gathered the team, drew some sketches and started to mind map the idea. After several idea refactoring’s Emit Knowledge was born. 4. Is there any competition out there in the market? Currently we don't have any competitors that share the same cause. What makes our platform different is the ideology that our product promotes and the functionalities that our platform offers for easy socialization based on interests and knowledge sharing. 5. What are the main technologies used to build Emit Knowledge? Emit Knowledge was built on a heterogeneous pallet of technologies. Currently, we have four of separation: UI – Built on ASP.NET MVC3 and Knockout.js; Messaging infrastructure – Build on top of RabbitMQ; Background services – Our in-house solution for job distribution, orchestration and processing; Data storage – Build on top of MongoDB; What are the main reasons you've chosen ASP.NET MVC? Since all of our team members are .NET engineers, the decision was very natural. ASP.NET MVC is the only Microsoft web stack that sticks to the HTTP behavioral standards. It is easy to work with, have a tiny learning curve and everyone who is familiar with the HTTP will understand its architecture and convention without any difficulties. 6. What are the main reasons for choosing ASP.NET MVC? Since all of our team members are .NET engineers, the decision was very natural. ASP.NET MVC is the only Microsoft web stack that sticks to the HTTP behavioral standards. It is easy to work with, have a tiny learning curve and everyone who is familiar with the HTTP will understand its architecture and convention without any difficulties. 7. Did you use some of the latest Microsoft technologies? If yes, which ones? Yes, we like to rock the cutting edge tech house. Currently we are using Microsoft’s latest technologies like ASP.NET MVC, Web API (work in progress) and the best for the last; we are utilizing Windows Azure IaaS to the bone. 8. Can you please tell us shortly, what would be the benefit of regular bloggers in other blogging platforms to join Emit Knowledge? Well, unless you are some of the smoking ace gurus whose blogs are followed by a large number of users, our platform offers knowledge based segregated community equipped with tools that will enable both current and future users to expand their relations and to self-promote in the community based on their activity and knowledge sharing. 10. I see you are working very intensively and there is already integration with some third-party services to make the process of sharing and emitting knowledge easier, which services did you integrate until now and what do you plan do to next? We have “reemit” functionality for internal sharing and we also support external services like: Twitter; LinkedIn; Facebook; For the regular bloggers we have an extra cream, Windows Live Writer support for easy blog posts emitting. 11. What should we expect next? Currently, we are working on a new fancy community feature. This means that we are going to support user groups to be formed. So for all existing communities and user groups out there, wait us a little bit, we are coming for rescue :). One of the top next features they are developing is the Community Feature. It means, if you have your own User Group, Community Group or any other Group on which you and your users are mostly blogging or sharing (emitting) knowledge in various ways, Emit Knowledge as a platform will help you have everything you need to promote your group, make new followers and host all the necessary stuff that you have had need of. I would invite you to try the network and start sharing knowledge in a way that will help you gather new followers and spread your knowledge faster, easier and in a more efficient way! Let’s Emit Knowledge!

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  • Movement prediction for non-shooters

    - by ShadowChaser
    I'm working on an isometric 2D game with moderate-scale multiplayer, approximately 20-30 players connected at once to a persistent server. I've had some difficulty getting a good movement prediction implementation in place. Physics/Movement The game doesn't have a true physics implementation, but uses the basic principles to implement movement. Rather than continually polling input, state changes (ie/ mouse down/up/move events) are used to change the state of the character entity the player is controlling. The player's direction (ie/ north-east) is combined with a constant speed and turned into a true 3D vector - the entity's velocity. In the main game loop, "Update" is called before "Draw". The update logic triggers a "physics update task" that tracks all entities with a non-zero velocity uses very basic integration to change the entities position. For example: entity.Position += entity.Velocity.Scale(ElapsedTime.Seconds) (where "Seconds" is a floating point value, but the same approach would work for millisecond integer values). The key point is that no interpolation is used for movement - the rudimentary physics engine has no concept of a "previous state" or "current state", only a position and velocity. State Change and Update Packets When the velocity of the character entity the player is controlling changes, a "move avatar" packet is sent to the server containing the entity's action type (stand, walk, run), direction (north-east), and current position. This is different from how 3D first person games work. In a 3D game the velocity (direction) can change frame to frame as the player moves around. Sending every state change would effectively transmit a packet per frame, which would be too expensive. Instead, 3D games seem to ignore state changes and send "state update" packets on a fixed interval - say, every 80-150ms. Since speed and direction updates occur much less frequently in my game, I can get away with sending every state change. Although all of the physics simulations occur at the same speed and are deterministic, latency is still an issue. For that reason, I send out routine position update packets (similar to a 3D game) but much less frequently - right now every 250ms, but I suspect with good prediction I can easily boost it towards 500ms. The biggest problem is that I've now deviated from the norm - all other documentation, guides, and samples online send routine updates and interpolate between the two states. It seems incompatible with my architecture, and I need to come up with a better movement prediction algorithm that is closer to a (very basic) "networked physics" architecture. The server then receives the packet and determines the players speed from it's movement type based on a script (Is the player able to run? Get the player's running speed). Once it has the speed, it combines it with the direction to get a vector - the entity's velocity. Some cheat detection and basic validation occurs, and the entity on the server side is updated with the current velocity, direction, and position. Basic throttling is also performed to prevent players from flooding the server with movement requests. After updating its own entity, the server broadcasts an "avatar position update" packet to all other players within range. The position update packet is used to update the client side physics simulations (world state) of the remote clients and perform prediction and lag compensation. Prediction and Lag Compensation As mentioned above, clients are authoritative for their own position. Except in cases of cheating or anomalies, the client's avatar will never be repositioned by the server. No extrapolation ("move now and correct later") is required for the client's avatar - what the player sees is correct. However, some sort of extrapolation or interpolation is required for all remote entities that are moving. Some sort of prediction and/or lag-compensation is clearly required within the client's local simulation / physics engine. Problems I've been struggling with various algorithms, and have a number of questions and problems: Should I be extrapolating, interpolating, or both? My "gut feeling" is that I should be using pure extrapolation based on velocity. State change is received by the client, client computes a "predicted" velocity that compensates for lag, and the regular physics system does the rest. However, it feels at odds to all other sample code and articles - they all seem to store a number of states and perform interpolation without a physics engine. When a packet arrives, I've tried interpolating the packet's position with the packet's velocity over a fixed time period (say, 200ms). I then take the difference between the interpolated position and the current "error" position to compute a new vector and place that on the entity instead of the velocity that was sent. However, the assumption is that another packet will arrive in that time interval, and it's incredibly difficult to "guess" when the next packet will arrive - especially since they don't all arrive on fixed intervals (ie/ state changes as well). Is the concept fundamentally flawed, or is it correct but needs some fixes / adjustments? What happens when a remote player stops? I can immediately stop the entity, but it will be positioned in the "wrong" spot until it moves again. If I estimate a vector or try to interpolate, I have an issue because I don't store the previous state - the physics engine has no way to say "you need to stop after you reach position X". It simply understands a velocity, nothing more complex. I'm reluctant to add the "packet movement state" information to the entities or physics engine, since it violates basic design principles and bleeds network code across the rest of the game engine. What should happen when entities collide? There are three scenarios - the controlling player collides locally, two entities collide on the server during a position update, or a remote entity update collides on the local client. In all cases I'm uncertain how to handle the collision - aside from cheating, both states are "correct" but at different time periods. In the case of a remote entity it doesn't make sense to draw it walking through a wall, so I perform collision detection on the local client and cause it to "stop". Based on point #2 above, I might compute a "corrected vector" that continually tries to move the entity "through the wall" which will never succeed - the remote avatar is stuck there until the error gets too high and it "snaps" into position. How do games work around this?

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  • xml file save/read error (making a highscore system for XNA game)

    - by Eddy
    i get an error after i write player name to the file for second or third time (An unhandled exception of type 'System.InvalidOperationException' occurred in System.Xml.dll Additional information: There is an error in XML document (18, 17).) (in highscores load method In data = (HighScoreData)serializer.Deserialize(stream); it stops) the problem is that some how it adds additional "" at the end of my .dat file could anyone tell me how to fix this? the file before save looks: <?xml version="1.0"?> <HighScoreData xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <PlayerName> <string>neil</string> <string>shawn</string> <string>mark</string> <string>cindy</string> <string>sam</string> </PlayerName> <Score> <int>200</int> <int>180</int> <int>150</int> <int>100</int> <int>50</int> </Score> <Count>5</Count> </HighScoreData> the file after save looks: <?xml version="1.0"?> <HighScoreData xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <PlayerName> <string>Nick</string> <string>Nick</string> <string>neil</string> <string>shawn</string> <string>mark</string> </PlayerName> <Score> <int>210</int> <int>210</int> <int>200</int> <int>180</int> <int>150</int> </Score> <Count>5</Count> </HighScoreData>> the part of my code that does all of save load to xml is: DECLARATIONS PART [Serializable] public struct HighScoreData { public string[] PlayerName; public int[] Score; public int Count; public HighScoreData(int count) { PlayerName = new string[count]; Score = new int[count]; Count = count; } } IAsyncResult result = null; bool inputName; HighScoreData data; int Score = 0; public string NAME; public string HighScoresFilename = "highscores.dat"; Game1 constructor public Game1() { graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this); Content.RootDirectory = "Content"; Width = graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth = 960; Height = graphics.PreferredBackBufferHeight =640; GamerServicesComponent GSC = new GamerServicesComponent(this); Components.Add(GSC); } Inicialize function (end of it) protected override void Initialize() { //other game code base.Initialize(); string fullpath =Path.Combine(HighScoresFilename); if (!File.Exists(fullpath)) { //If the file doesn't exist, make a fake one... // Create the data to save data = new HighScoreData(5); data.PlayerName[0] = "neil"; data.Score[0] = 200; data.PlayerName[1] = "shawn"; data.Score[1] = 180; data.PlayerName[2] = "mark"; data.Score[2] = 150; data.PlayerName[3] = "cindy"; data.Score[3] = 100; data.PlayerName[4] = "sam"; data.Score[4] = 50; SaveHighScores(data, HighScoresFilename); } } all methods for loading saving and output public static void SaveHighScores(HighScoreData data, string filename) { // Get the path of the save game string fullpath = Path.Combine("highscores.dat"); // Open the file, creating it if necessary FileStream stream = File.Open(fullpath, FileMode.OpenOrCreate); try { // Convert the object to XML data and put it in the stream XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(HighScoreData)); serializer.Serialize(stream, data); } finally { // Close the file stream.Close(); } } /* Load highscores */ public static HighScoreData LoadHighScores(string filename) { HighScoreData data; // Get the path of the save game string fullpath = Path.Combine("highscores.dat"); // Open the file FileStream stream = File.Open(fullpath, FileMode.OpenOrCreate, FileAccess.Read); try { // Read the data from the file XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(HighScoreData)); data = (HighScoreData)serializer.Deserialize(stream);//this is the line // where program gives an error } finally { // Close the file stream.Close(); } return (data); } /* Save player highscore when game ends */ private void SaveHighScore() { // Create the data to saved HighScoreData data = LoadHighScores(HighScoresFilename); int scoreIndex = -1; for (int i = 0; i < data.Count ; i++) { if (Score > data.Score[i]) { scoreIndex = i; break; } } if (scoreIndex > -1) { //New high score found ... do swaps for (int i = data.Count - 1; i > scoreIndex; i--) { data.PlayerName[i] = data.PlayerName[i - 1]; data.Score[i] = data.Score[i - 1]; } data.PlayerName[scoreIndex] = NAME; //Retrieve User Name Here data.Score[scoreIndex] = Score; // Retrieve score here SaveHighScores(data, HighScoresFilename); } } /* Iterate through data if highscore is called and make the string to be saved*/ public string makeHighScoreString() { // Create the data to save HighScoreData data2 = LoadHighScores(HighScoresFilename); // Create scoreBoardString string scoreBoardString = "Highscores:\n\n"; for (int i = 0; i<5;i++) { scoreBoardString = scoreBoardString + data2.PlayerName[i] + "-" + data2.Score[i] + "\n"; } return scoreBoardString; } when ill make this work i will start this code when i call game over (now i start it when i press some buttons, so i could test it faster) public void InputYourName() { if (result == null && !Guide.IsVisible) { string title = "Name"; string description = "Write your name in order to save your Score"; string defaultText = "Nick"; PlayerIndex playerIndex = new PlayerIndex(); result= Guide.BeginShowKeyboardInput(playerIndex, title, description, defaultText, null, null); // NAME = result.ToString(); } if (result != null && result.IsCompleted) { NAME = Guide.EndShowKeyboardInput(result); result = null; inputName = false; SaveHighScore(); } } this where i call output to the screen (ill call this in highscores meniu section when i am done with debugging) spriteBatch.DrawString(Font1, "" + makeHighScoreString(),new Vector2(500,200), Color.White); }

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  • Anatomy of a .NET Assembly - CLR metadata 1

    - by Simon Cooper
    Before we look at the bytes comprising the CLR-specific data inside an assembly, we first need to understand the logical format of the metadata (For this post I only be looking at simple pure-IL assemblies; mixed-mode assemblies & other things complicates things quite a bit). Metadata streams Most of the CLR-specific data inside an assembly is inside one of 5 streams, which are analogous to the sections in a PE file. The name of each section in a PE file starts with a ., and the name of each stream in the CLR metadata starts with a #. All but one of the streams are heaps, which store unstructured binary data. The predefined streams are: #~ Also called the metadata stream, this stream stores all the information on the types, methods, fields, properties and events in the assembly. Unlike the other streams, the metadata stream has predefined contents & structure. #Strings This heap is where all the namespace, type & member names are stored. It is referenced extensively from the #~ stream, as we'll be looking at later. #US Also known as the user string heap, this stream stores all the strings used in code directly. All the strings you embed in your source code end up in here. This stream is only referenced from method bodies. #GUID This heap exclusively stores GUIDs used throughout the assembly. #Blob This heap is for storing pure binary data - method signatures, generic instantiations, that sort of thing. Items inside the heaps (#Strings, #US, #GUID and #Blob) are indexed using a simple binary offset from the start of the heap. At that offset is a coded integer giving the length of that item, then the item's bytes immediately follow. The #GUID stream is slightly different, in that GUIDs are all 16 bytes long, so a length isn't required. Metadata tables The #~ stream contains all the assembly metadata. The metadata is organised into 45 tables, which are binary arrays of predefined structures containing information on various aspects of the metadata. Each entry in a table is called a row, and the rows are simply concatentated together in the file on disk. For example, each row in the TypeRef table contains: A reference to where the type is defined (most of the time, a row in the AssemblyRef table). An offset into the #Strings heap with the name of the type An offset into the #Strings heap with the namespace of the type. in that order. The important tables are (with their table number in hex): 0x2: TypeDef 0x4: FieldDef 0x6: MethodDef 0x14: EventDef 0x17: PropertyDef Contains basic information on all the types, fields, methods, events and properties defined in the assembly. 0x1: TypeRef The details of all the referenced types defined in other assemblies. 0xa: MemberRef The details of all the referenced members of types defined in other assemblies. 0x9: InterfaceImpl Links the types defined in the assembly with the interfaces that type implements. 0xc: CustomAttribute Contains information on all the attributes applied to elements in this assembly, from method parameters to the assembly itself. 0x18: MethodSemantics Links properties and events with the methods that comprise the get/set or add/remove methods of the property or method. 0x1b: TypeSpec 0x2b: MethodSpec These tables provide instantiations of generic types and methods for each usage within the assembly. There are several ways to reference a single row within a table. The simplest is to simply specify the 1-based row index (RID). The indexes are 1-based so a value of 0 can represent 'null'. In this case, which table the row index refers to is inferred from the context. If the table can't be determined from the context, then a particular row is specified using a token. This is a 4-byte value with the most significant byte specifying the table, and the other 3 specifying the 1-based RID within that table. This is generally how a metadata table row is referenced from the instruction stream in method bodies. The third way is to use a coded token, which we will look at in the next post. So, back to the bytes Now we've got a rough idea of how the metadata is logically arranged, we can now look at the bytes comprising the start of the CLR data within an assembly: The first 8 bytes of the .text section are used by the CLR loader stub. After that, the CLR-specific data starts with the CLI header. I've highlighted the important bytes in the diagram. In order, they are: The size of the header. As the header is a fixed size, this is always 0x48. The CLR major version. This is always 2, even for .NET 4 assemblies. The CLR minor version. This is always 5, even for .NET 4 assemblies, and seems to be ignored by the runtime. The RVA and size of the metadata header. In the diagram, the RVA 0x20e4 corresponds to the file offset 0x2e4 Various flags specifying if this assembly is pure-IL, whether it is strong name signed, and whether it should be run as 32-bit (this is how the CLR differentiates between x86 and AnyCPU assemblies). A token pointing to the entrypoint of the assembly. In this case, 06 (the last byte) refers to the MethodDef table, and 01 00 00 refers to to the first row in that table. (after a gap) RVA of the strong name signature hash, which comes straight after the CLI header. The RVA 0x2050 corresponds to file offset 0x250. The rest of the CLI header is mainly used in mixed-mode assemblies, and so is zeroed in this pure-IL assembly. After the CLI header comes the strong name hash, which is a SHA-1 hash of the assembly using the strong name key. After that comes the bodies of all the methods in the assembly concatentated together. Each method body starts off with a header, which I'll be looking at later. As you can see, this is a very small assembly with only 2 methods (an instance constructor and a Main method). After that, near the end of the .text section, comes the metadata, containing a metadata header and the 5 streams discussed above. We'll be looking at this in the next post. Conclusion The CLI header data doesn't have much to it, but we've covered some concepts that will be important in later posts - the logical structure of the CLR metadata and the overall layout of CLR data within the .text section. Next, I'll have a look at the contents of the #~ stream, and how the table data is arranged on disk.

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